The black menacing shadow slid along the wall of her hotel room from the open window to her bed. Waking out of a sound sleep, she lifted her head.
A man clapped his hand over her opening, protesting mouth. His fingers were firm yet gentle. He was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, black tights, and gum-soled shoes. His long lean body was dynamic with muscular power, like a coiled steel spring.
"You won't get hurt-if you do as I say!"
Bobbing her head up from the pillow, she mumbled against his pressed palm. "Uh-huh!"
He removed his hand. Instantly he was in bed with her, his flat hard torso mashing into her soft curves.
"If anybody asks you, I've been here all night."
She propped herself on one elbow to peer at him in the darkness. "What's this all about?"
A heavy fist pounded on the door. "Open up!"
She lay immovable, hesitating.
"Okay," he said easily. "Answer it. Only be careful!"
She flung back the sheet that covered her and swung her legs over the side of the bed. She had the presence of mind to slip her feet into her high heels. She stood up beside the bed ,a queen-sized blonde in a sheer black nightie that fell only to mid-thighs.
Turning her back to him, she walked on her long limber legs toward the door. Her breasts, the size of cabbages, rolled unfettered and the halves of her deep-dimpled buttocks rubbed each other intimately.
"Who's there?"
"Police!"
She yanked the door open. A big blue-uniformed cop stood in the doorway. "You alone, miss?"
"No."
Now was her chance to get rid of the dangerous intruder. Her upper thighs and lower belly were still warm from the pressure of his hot masculinity.
The swelling throb inside her breast made the rebellious mischief of her nature come sashaying forward wantonly.
The big cop was trying to see into the dark room. "What's the matter?"
"Myer-husband-"
"Let me in."
She looked indignant. "No."
"I want to see your husband."
"Oh. Yes."
She stepped aside for him. The cop entered and snapped on the bright ceiling light. It glowed on her butter-blonde hair. He dropped his eyes to her body appreciatively. Her thick dark nipples spiked through the sheer nightie like pushbuttons of pleasure. His big fingers twitched to thumb them.
He tore his eyes away from her and looked at the man in the bed. The intruder had discarded his black sweater and a bare muscular arm was now limply exposed over the cover. Black rumpled hair smudged against the white pillow. He had a bronzed face with Cherokee cheekbones. His eyes were closed.
"He's asleep," she whispered.
The cop hushed his own voice. "So I see. Everything's all right. Sorry to have bothered you, miss-ma'am!"
She smiled warmly. "That's all right."
"Good night."
"Good night." She closed the door after him and locked it.
She was halfway back to the bed when he opened his eyes. They were like slits of glittering jet and they assessed those jumbling mounds of gauzy-covered flesh as she came toward him.
The reckless monkey in her became playful, taking command. She bent over toward him, her hair a cowl of amber, putting her palms flat on the side of the bed, her arms straight down. Gravitational pull did astonishing things to her breasts. They hung to her elbows, the dark cleavage mashed between her upper arms. The billows of creamy flesh, swinging free, left crescents of sweat where their plump undersides had adhered to her chest. The sweat cooled on her skin in the night air, causing her little delicious chills.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"Taffy Forrest. Who are you?"
"Never mind my name."
"What have you done?"
"Relax. I haven't committed murder."
She stood erect slowly, trying to be more sedate. "You'd better go."
"When the coast is clear." He continued eyeing her brightly. "You give me a great idea."
She pouted at him. Every man who laid eyes on her thought that. And it always turned out to be the same old thing. Why couldn't this one be a little more original?
"I'm sorry," she said. "I need my sleep. I have to be fresh for an appointment tomorrow morning."
His fingers closed on her left wrist. A moment later she was startled to realize that he was taking her pulse. As cool as she tried to pretend she was, her own throbbing senses were giving away the truth.
"What do you do?" he asked.
She carefully disengaged her wrist from his pulse-probing fingers. "I'm an actress. I'll do anything. Stage, TV commercials, underground movies."
"You'll do anything. You mean you still haven't found a job! How long have you been in New York?"
"Six months."
"Where did you come from?"
"Cherry Point."
His black eyes gloated at her bulging bust. "Naturally,,' he said with a white-toothed grin.
"Why should I tell you anything about myself? You won't tell me anything about yourself."
He refused to rise to the bait. "You want to be a success? You've got the looks. Terrific. But nobody wants to work with a cold tomato. Give, baby, give."
Her eyes strayed to the middle of the bed. The thin sheet was inching up, rising to a high peak. Obviously he had discarded the binding tights too.
Little gulps of excitement went swallowing down her suddenly parched throat, spilling molten desire into her lower abdomen. She had seen stallions mating mares on the farm. Last year her Red Devil had serviced a whole herd of brood mares and she had watched each furious covering with thrilling enjoyment. Grooming him, running her trembling, exploring fingertips over his muscular might, she knew vicariously the deliciously ecstasy those mares were experiencing.
Scorching hot daydreams while lying in the old stable, her long lean legs in tautly stretched jeans locked tightly around a fat bale of straw, a bale as broad as Red Devil's back. Quivering at the forbidden thoughts of secretly substituting herself and letting Red Devil think she was one of his choice mares. His foaming red-eyed lust would know no bounds. He would drown out her own bonfire with his prodigious power. Imagine those news-paper headlines. Blonde mates with stallion and it's a huge success. As the fantasy swelled and burst, her broad hips thrusting, jockeying, harder and harder, faster and faster, she finally fell over into the sweet-smelling hay limp and sweat-soaked, gasping until her strength returned.
"Make me want to engage you," he said.
She drew back from the bed. "What are you offering?"
"All the parts you can play. All the acting at your command. Only none of it's make-believe. It's all real."
"What are you paying?"
"High stakes. Sell yourself to me."
She didn't like the word sell. It sounded too much like offering the services of a streetwalker. Yet she liked his sincerity. Perhaps she hadn't sold herself properly. It wasn't because she didn't know how or didn't want to. She thought that a successful actress held herself aloof from those earthy temptations. She could have been wrong.
She surveyed him from under her hooded eyelids. A mystery man, who was hunted by the police, offering her a job. He intrigued her all the more.
The light over her head still blazed. She meant to keep it on and show herself off.
Smiling, she undid the loose fastening in front of her nightie and it drifted apart down the front.
His face set in an expression of intense lust. His eyes bored into her roundly molded belly. It had the appearance of freshly rising dough.
She saw the hard muscled male give another violent upward thrust.
She glided toward the bed, bending over. Her hand rested lightly on him. The man was certainly in dire need.
"Red Devil," she murmured as she let her hand slide down to where it was rooted in his flat belly. Her silvered fingernails bit into him through the thin sheet and it pleased her perversely to watch his lips skin back from his clenched white teeth.
Wild with desire to see all of him, she whipped the sheet away. Her dilated eyes glazed at his nudity, the way he was like a young stallion, crued and all physical.
She was hardly aware that she was dropping the sheer nightie from her white shoulders, letting it whisper to the floor. She eased into bed with him, fondling him the way she had fondled her beloved stallion, and in her dazed eyes there was very little difference.
His flat pale lips were kissing her face, her throat, her big pendant breasts. Like a mare, she whimpered for him. He flung her over on her back and she had to toss her head to get the blonde mane out of her eyes. His head and sinewy shoulders became a large black silhouette against the ceiling light. She closed her eyes and the light came in pink streaks through her eyelids. He was invading her and the blotted light turned fire red. She groaned in unbearable pleasure as he moved in one impatient lunge.
"Red Devil," she moaned. "Oh, Red Devil." Her fingernails clawed at the rippling muscles of his shoulders and flanks.
He drove himself with each gallop of his lean hips. It was as if time had suddenly caught up with them. They had to get it over with and quickly.
Sounds, coming and going at once, caught in his straining throat. She knew he had reached his limit. She strapped her soft limbs about his middle. His sinewy body lurched and kicked several times before she knew he had fulfilled his passion. She squealed under the impact, her own body responding along with his.
The silence that followed was eloquent. It spoke of lingering pleasure and satiety. Finally he stirred and glanced at the expensive Girard-Perregaux watch on his wrist.
"Time to go."
Briskly he got up and clothed his arms, legs, and torso, almost too hastily Dreamily she didn't want him to leave. Even in repose, his vigor lay like a sleeping serpent. He was a true stud in every sense of the word.
"If you're still looking for a job tomorrow night," he said, "meet me in the dining room of the Hannacroix Hotel."
He turned out the light. "Any time you're ready."
Before she could say another word, he was across the room and vanishing out the window. The cheap curtain fluttered emptily on the night breeze. He disappeared like a magician's illusion. The whole thing might have been an illusion, an erotic dream. But the way his body had pounded against hers was too real.
Taffy turned on her side. Something hard and round rolled beneath her. She put her hand under her hip and picked up what felt like a little glass ball. Curious, she jumped out of bed and turned on the light to examine it.
In her fingers was a highly polished orb of bluish-green translucent quartz. It was a gem stone, a cat's eye, probably found in Ceylon. She knew he hadn't lost it. He had deliberately left it for her. It wouldn't be very valuable. More or less a colorful keepsake, a good luck charm.
Strange man, she thought. What was he up to?
Dropping the cat's eye into her big handbag, she went back to bed. Thinking warmly about him, she sprawled languorously until she fell asleep.
CHAPTER TWO
Riding on the crosstown bus the next morning. Taffy glanced at the newspaper lying in her lap:
'GREEK AMBASSADOR'S WIFE ROBBED OF JEWELS'
Although the alarm was given almost immediately, the slippery cat burglar had made his escape down the precipitous side of the hotel. The missing valuables included gold bracelets, earrings, and a $10,000 medallion depicting the bust of Eros.
She lifted her eyes from the page and breathed deeply. She that's who he was! Cat's eye. Cat burglar. That gave the gem stone even more significance.
Whether or not she ever saw him again, she would never forget him.
Last night he had mentioned high stakes. She admired him for his daring. If she wanted to get anything out of life, she resolved, she would have to be more daring too.
She got off the bus in the Forties and went up one flight to the offices. She stood primping outside a door.
TURNER'S THEATRICAL AGENCY
The man who guides the stars
She was wearing a black patent leather suit, a picture hat, and white high-heeled Courreges boots. The outfit had taken her last nickel. She didn't even have lunch money left.
Jerking her little jacket straight at her rounded hips, she took a big determined breath and opened the door. The dark-haired girl at the desk looked up, her unbelievable breasts pointing straight at Taffy across the typewriter.
She spoke around a cud of chewing gum. "Yeah, honey?"
"I want to see Mr. Turner." The girl looked her up and down. "Yeah? And then what?"
Taffy squared her shoulders, her own breasts making the girl's eyes pop. "Look. I want to see him. Is he in?"
"What if he is?"
Taffy shouted: "I want to see Mr. Turner!"
The door to the inner sanctum opened and the opening framed a huge man with a bald done. He had a complexion like raw hamburger. The moist stump of a cigar was stuck fiercely between his yellow teeth. His small eyes fell on Taffy and they narrowed. He was mean looking. He gave the distinct impression of getting some sort of evil pleassure out of everything he did.
"Who's doing all the yelling? You?"
In desperation, Taffy stepped in front of him so that he couldn't close the door again. He glared at her, his cigar rolling obscenely in his discolored
"Please, Mr. Turner, I'd like to talk to you."
"You sure? I deal with women. Real, grownup women, who ain't scared of nothing."
"I'm not scared of anything, Mr. Turner. Not any more."
"No? What's your story? You hungry? You in trouble? Can't go home to mama?"
"I just want a job."
"All right." His eyes were peeling the clothes from her. "We'll see how bad you need one. Come in." He let her squeeze past him, then he turned to the secretary. "I don't wanna be disturbed. This's a private interview."
The dark-haired girl looked aghast. "Not another one, Mr. Turner! You'll kill yourself!"
He drew himself up sternly. "Let me worry about that!"
He came in, closed the office door, and turned the key in the lock.
She stood before him, her fingers fumbling nerously with her patent leather skirt.
"What kind of a job?" he asked, leering at her.
"Anything.
He screwed the cigar around in his sneering mouth. "Have you ever been in bed with a man?"
She flushed, but stuck her chin out. "Yes, of course I have."
"Why're you ashamed to admit it?"
"I-I didn't come here to be hired as a call girl."
"Of course not," he growled. "And I don't do that kind of hiring. Only do you realize what you're getting into?"
"Yes, Mr. Turner. Show business."
"Well, all right, then!" Turner's eyes lit up expectantly. "Start showing!"
"What?"
Obediently she lifted the skirt. The sheer nylons displayed lovely slim columns that rounded softly at her lower thighs.
Turner groaned impatiently. "All the way up."
"All the way?"
"Yeah. Clear up to the waist. Give Uncle Turner a great big break."
She felt warm all over as she slowly pulled the skirt up around her narrow waist and stood revealed before the sweating fat man in her little net panties and brief garter-belt.
Turner took a deep breath and stared unashamedly at the sight.
The slim legs were long and beautifully turned shafts of soft whiteness that looked satin-smooth above the welts of the nylon hosiery. The tender thighs rose to the brief V of fishnet panties that were completely transparent.
She was aware of what he could see and she was shaking a little with a vague and pleasurable thrill at being so revealed.
Turner spoke hoarsely. "Keep it up and turn around."
She turned slowly. She knew that he now stared at the large, rounded curves that glimmered like white globes through the net material.
"Drop them," he said.
She hesitated.
"Come on. Don't waste my time, girlie. Drop them or get out."
Her trembling fingers unfastened the pantie top and she wriggled the scanty garment down her legs, flicking it away over her boots.
"Now bend over forward."
Slowly she bent forward, the width of her broad bared hips spreading, the breech widening.
"A little farther over," he said.
She bent still more, her buttocks arching toward him.
Her wonderment at his momentary silence ended when a burning rod branded her across her wide rump. She locked her teeth in time to choke off a cry of searing pain.
Shocked, she whirled around, seeking the source of this outrageous humiliation. Turner, his fat face grimacing in fiendish glee, was brandishing in his right hand a rattan cane that was as thin and flexible as a buggy-whip.
The cane made a whizzing arc through the air and spat across her bunched-hard behind. The blow stung like blazes and she danced away from it.
"Barry Finn-" he panted.
Whizz! Flick!
"-the TV comedian-"
Whizz! Flick!
"-is looking for a gal-"
Whizz! Flick!
"-a big beautiful doll-"
Whizz! Flick!
"-to announce his show-" Whizz! Flick!
"-she has to be able to-" Whizz! Flick! "-take discipline-" Whizz! Flick!
Her hindquarters bobbling, she pranced around the desk, trailed ruthlessly by Turner and the flogging cane. The blows were landing indiscriminately, on the upper curve of her buttocks where they rounded firmly out from her arching back, across the full swell of them, and against the thick crease below them. A few whacks blistered the backs of her pumping thighs.
He lowered his arm and took a deep breath.
Grunting and wheezing from the exertion, he cried: "Yeah, yeah. I can sell this merchandise, all right."
Triumph coursing violently through her veins, she dropped her skirt over her punished backside. Her knees were trembling with the tension of the experience.
Silently they faced each other across the desk.
Finally he spoke. His voice was hoarse with the strain. "I'll place you with Barry Finn, girlie. When can you go to work?"
"Any time," she whispered. "Tomorrow?"
"Can do!" His casualness seemed forced, unreal.
She looked quickly around. Her fishnet panties were lying on the rug. She didn't bother to pick them up.
Blindly she" started from the office, her rear cheeks burning scarlet, her knees trembling.
She stumbled out past the open-mouthed and wide-eyed receptionist and down the stairs, terribly conscious of her thumping heart.
She was clear out on the street before she realized that she had not left her name and address with Herschel's secretary.
She didn't go back.
It was a long, hungry, fruitless day. At six o'clock she screwed up her resolve and walked determinedly into the dining room of the Hannacroix Hotel. She was immediately sm-rounded with elegance, red damask wall hangings, and dim lights. It was still early and the dining room was almost empty.
A tall maitre d', faultless in evening clothse, stepped soundlessly toward her.
"May I help you, miss?"
The voice caught her. She glanced up. He had shaved so smooth and close that his high cheekbones gleamed.
Her blue eyes enlarged with surprise. She was staring into the bronzed, handsome face of her favorite cat burglar.
CHAPTER THREE
"You!" she exclaimed. "You work here?"
"At your service."
"You never told me your name."
"They know me as Pierre Risque."
"Oh! You're French!"
"Yes. It helps when I have to read a menu."
"Why do you work here, Pierre?"
"Rich people eat here. I like to study their habits. I'll show you to a table."
She smiled ruefully. "Sorry. I haven't any money."
He bowed slightly. "This is on the house, Taffy."
"Thanks, Pierre." Her belly was a glossy swell in the tight black patent leather skirt. She put her hand considerately on it. "I'm all empty inside."
He studied her carefully. "I'll take your word for it."
He led her to a table in a secluded part of the dining room. Nobody else was near them. He held the back of the chair for her.
She sat down slowly, easing herself into the seat gingerly. "After the caning I got this morning, I haven't been sitting very comfortably."
His dark eyes probed her. "You didn't care for it?"
"Let me put it this way, Pierre. It could be exciting-if done by the right person."
He handed her the menu. "I suggest oysters. Do you like them?"
"No. Not particularly."
"Oysters lead a very interesting sex life. When one of them gets tired of being a boy it becomes a girl. They're alternating hermaphrodites."
"Wouldn't that be fun if we could do the same thing?" she smiled.
"Have you ever wanted to be a man?"
She shrugged provocatively. "Lots of times."
"Good for you," he said with a suddenly dazzling smile.
It was her turn to be puzzled. "Why?"
"You'll find out later. Getting back to the oysters-"
"What is this lecture leading up to, Pierre?"
"Pearls," he said. He had a very determined look on his face.
"Pearls? Oh, yes, you would be very interested in pearls."
"Right now, Norma Bays has a rope of black pearls. Beauties." His eyes were coldly calculating. "Since you did come here, I assume you wish to work with me."
She lifted her big blue eyes. "Will it be fun?"
"All the fun you can take." He beckoned a waiter. "I'll stand beside you and talk while you eat."
"Good. I'm starved."
She skipped the oysters and ordered Bismark herring canape, stuffed rolled shoulder of lamb, an oven browned potato, buttered sliced Harvard beets, pineapple ring and cream cheese salad, a blueberry tart, and coffee.
"That should fill you up again," grinned Pierre.
"Ooooh, yes."
"Are you a gymnast?"
"In high school I was at the top of my class on the parallel bars."
"That explains the overdeveloped pectorals. Can you drive cars?"
"All kinds. Why?"
"After you've had dinner, you're going to be an attendant in the Hannacroix Hotel parking lot. You'll be parking cars."
"What?"
"The regular attendant is absent. I made sure he was sent on an errand and he won't be back till later this evening. You'll take his place."
"But I've never done anything like that before."
"Don't worry, Taffy. You'll fit in fine. And you'll look terrific in those apple-green coveralls."
"What's the purpose of all this?"
He dropped his voice, whispering in her ear. "You work there till Mr. and Mrs. Bays drive in. I'm expecting them. This is their in-town night. They've reserved a table and they're attending the opening of a show later. As soon as Bays turns over his keyring to you-you bring it to me. Understand?"
"Y-yes. I understand."
Three quarters of an hour later she was standing in the glare of the spotlights on the parking lot. The apple-green coveralls had been tailored for a boy, not for her sensational development. They were much too skimpy. Every time she took a deep breath the middle seam bisected her so high in the crotch that she gasped.
More cars than she expected were arriving. Men at the wheel, driving past, would take one look at her, slam on the brakes, then drive recklessly in. All of them made some kind of a pass at her, but she attended stritly to business.
She had just parked a car and was standing there working her hand between her legs, trying to ease the straining coveralls, when a shiny black Cadillac rolled in.
She hurried across the lot toward it. A man and woman got out, both dressed in evening wear. She had a lot of soft chestnut hair tipped with streaks of tawny. A mink stole covered her shoulders.
The man was middle-aged and eyed Taffy appreciatively through his horn -rimmed eyeglasses. He didn't look at Taffy's face.
"Well!" He smiled broadly as he handed Taffy his keyring. "Something new has been added to the old lot. I must say-"
"Frank!" said the woman sharply. "Let's go. We're late."
"Yes, dear."
They walked away.
Taffy looked down at the keyring. There was a metal tab attached and on it was engraved: Bays.
She breathed a sigh of relief. One more car to park and that was it.
She went into the hotel through the service entrance and signalled Pierre from the kitchen doorway. He came toward her with an unhurried stride.
"The keys," she said.
"Perfect. The regular parking attendant should be back any minute. So you change into your street clothes and meet me in the lot as soon as you can."
"Where are we going?"
"For an auto ride."
"You can get away?"
"I can always get away."
She went into the attendants' locker room, peeled off the coveralls, and got back into her patent leather suit.
When she walked out into the parking lot he was waving to attract her attention from the bucket seat of a low-slung foreign car.
"I'm the only maitre d'," he said, "who drives around town in an Italian Maserati."
She got in and they drove out of Manhattan across the 59th Street Bridge and raced through Queens to the north shore of Long Island. The roadway wend ed through the exclusive estates just outside of Huntington.
He pulled up in front of a red brick attached house and assisted her out of the car. Boldly he escorted her up the walk to the front door and opened it with one of the keys on the ring.
He semeed familiar with everything. He knew his way around. Without hesitating, he guided her up the stairs and snapped on the bedroom lights.
She blinked her big eyes at him. "Isn't this dangerous, Pierre Neighbors might see the lights."
He smiled. "They'd think the Bays were home."
"But somebody might come over to borrow er-"
"Some birth control pills? This is the bedroom, Taffy. Perhaps the Bays-we-don't want to be disturbed."
"Y-yes, I see," she nodded vaguely.
His dark eyes glowed at her. "Once I've got what I've come for"-his eyes went to the big Hollywood bed-"we won't want anybody disturbing us." Dare he do that after robbing a strange house? Forbidden excitement welled up in her throat and almost smothered her.
He had opened a clothes closet, pushing aside the hanging gowns and reaching up to a high shelf for an old hat box.
"People," he said, "are so careless about the way they hide valuables."
He shook the box. Something rattled inside. Grinning, he flipped off the box lid and reached his hand in.
Before her amazed eyes, he lifted out a string of lustrous black pearls.
"Worth a fortune," he said. "Don't fret about the Bays. These're insured, honey."
"What'll you do with them?"
"Fence them. That's how I can afford the Maserati." He held them up to the light. "Just a minute. I like to make sure."
He pulled the string of pearls across his strong white teeth. Frustration darkened his face.
"What's the matter?" she said.
"Dammit! These're fakes! Where're the real ones?" His lean face lighted up. "She's wearing them!"
He tossed the hat box back onto the shelf and dropped the string of pearls into his jacket pocket. "What're you going to do?"
"We've got to go back to town and get them!"
CHAPTER FOUR
Pierre glanced at his expensive wristwatch. "By now they're at the show. If I can time it right, we'll be able to run into them at the second intermission." He looked at her patent leather suit. "You can't go like that."
She was incensed. "What's wrong with this?"
"Nothing," he smiled. "Wrong for evening wear. See what she's got in her closet. Luckily Norma's a big gal."
She rooted through the clothes. She found a long pale-blue jersey sheath. "It'll stretch," she explained.
She picked up a pair of black satin pumps with sky-high heels. "I'm glad she's got some good taste in clothes."
"Hurry up, Taffy. Put them on."
He walked out into the hallway, pacing, while she remained in the bedroom and changed.
When she emerged she said: "Everything she's got is a few sizes too small."
His eyes jumped at her. No wonder. The pale blue jersey clung like a body stocking. She only had a fishnet bra on underneath. Her panties had been left behind on the floor of Turner's office. She had breasts like Eve, created to suckle a whole race of men.
She saw him swallow the big lump in his throat. "If it wasn't for those damn pearls-" He was reaching out to touch her, then clenched his fists hard. "You'll need something on your shoulders, Taffy. Take her silver fox boa. It was made for you."
"Thanks, Pierre," she smiled. She was entering into the spirit of the adventure. When she slipped the opulent silver fox across her shoulders she believed it was hers.
They put out the lights, left the house locked up, and drove back to the city.
The marquees on the theatres blazed with lights. He parked near one of them and helped her out of the car. They entered the lobby.
"Did we miss much?" he asked the theatre doorman.
"The first two acts. Intermission's just starting."
The doors were open and part of the audience was milling out into the lobby to smoke and discuss the merits of the show. From his height, Pierre darted glances around, picking out celebrities in the crowd.
He touched her arm. "There they are. Follow my lead. Play it up big."
He elbowed ahead of her to where Frank and Norma Bays stood, both looking somewhat bored.
Four pairs of suddenly interested eyes bounced and ricochetted off each others' bodies.
"Frankie!" Pierre was saying jovially, reaching out a hearty handclasp.
"Sorry, old man," said Frank. "Your face is very familiar, but I can't seem to place-"
"Pete Tremont. I'm the junior partner at Curran & Black's. We've bumped into each other several times at the Stock Exchange on Wall Street."
"Oh, yes, of course. Pete Tremont."
"This is my wife Taffy."
Frank's eyes, behind the hornrims, swam all over Taffy. "Charmed." He reached out for her hand and held it as long as possible. She felt, his palm break into a sudden sweat. "Oh, yes. This is my wife. Norma."
Norma didn't seem to mind Frank's delayed reaction in introducing her. Norma's hazel eyes were busily giving Pierre a close inspection tour.
While it was Pierre who interested her, there were apparently other distractions that drove Norma out of her feminine mind. "Taffy! That dress you're wearing!"
Taffy was uncomfortable as probing eyes turned on her. "What's the matter with it?"
"I've got one just like it!" exclaimed Norma. 'You must have got it at Anatole's."
"Yes," said Taffy with a slow smile, "as a matter-of-fact, I did."
Norma wrinkled up her nose in humorous annoyance. "The old rascal! He told me he was giving me an exclusive original!"
"He told me the same thing," said Taffy. They both laughed. "Love your mink," she added.
"Been watching the show?" asked Frank.
"We just arrived," said Pierre.
'You didn't miss much. It's a bomb. Norma and I were trying to make up our minds about what to do."
"Let's skip it," said Norma. "I have a better idea. Let's all go up to our hotel suite for a few drinks."
Pierre's eyes were on Norma's slim white throat. Whenever the mink parted, when she breathed, he could glimpse the black pearls. "Hotel?" he said.
"We live out on the Island," said Frank. "Whenever we come into town like this we get a hotel suite for the night."
"Great," said Pierre. "What do you say honey?" he addressed Taffy.
She watched Frank. He couldn't tear his eyes away from her. He seemed particularly fascinated by her gleaming spike heels. There was a bold crimson curve to her smiling lips and she let one of her long-fringed eyelids flutter in a wink.
"Sounds like fun."
"Where are you staying?" said Pierre.
"Just around the comer." Norma grabbed Pierre's arm and made off with him in a hurry.
In the street, Taffy and Frank let Pierre and Norma go ahead of them, Norma's crystal heels clacking loudly on the sidewalk.
"They make a nice couple," said Frank with a suggestive undertone.
Taffy knew what was in Pierre's mind. He wanted to separate with Norma and get his hands on her pearls. This meant that Taffy had to keep Frank occupied.
"So do we," she smiled.
She began to use her walking hips with a rotary action like a washing machine. Her pelvic motion expressed graphically that it could take any man to the cleaners.
His eyes were bouncing all over her like pinballs. "My wife may have the same kind of dress, but she never looked like that in it."
"Thank you." Her smile broadened. "Frankie."
His hand on her arm urged her faster.
They entered the huge hotel and were whisked up in the elevator.
Norma was laughing loudly at something dirty that Pierre had said as she headed across the suite to the liquor bar. "Can you two handle straight London gins?"
"Try us," said Pierre.
They all settled down with potent drinks and a few more blue stories made the rounds. The atmosphere was getting properly heated up for the real purpose of the evening.
Frank swallowed his second gin and said: "We are four civilized and sophisticated adults. And. Taffy and Pete, you wouldn't have come up with us if you didn't like us. Now I'm frank. Get it?" tittered Frank, a little high. "I can see, I can see. You like Norma, don't you, Pete?"
Pierre glanced at Norma and smiled. She had taken off the mink stole and the black pearls were breathtaking against her white throat and bosom. "I'll say I do," he said.
"She's getting a big yen for you," chuckeld Frank. "Oh, shut up. Frank!" cried out Norma. But her flustered look only indicated that she was trying to cover up her confusion.
"Now, now!" admonished Frank. "We're all candid. I like Taffy and I'm not ashamed to admit it."
"All right," said Pierre. "What're you suggesting? That we swap wives?"
"Wait a minute!" said Norma loudly. The drink was getting to her. "Don't the wives have anything to say about this?" She turned to Taffy. "Would you swap your husband for mine?"
The decision seemed to rest on Taffy. She shot a glance at Pierre. His eyes told her to follow now through. She smiled back at the others. "Why not? I think Frankie is cute."
"That's my gal talking!" grinned Frank.
Norma stood up on her crystal heels, swaying, uncertain of herself. "What do we do? Make a scramble right here on the rug, like four rotten eggs?" Her mouth made a big leer at Pierre.
Frank frowned at her. "Take Pete into the bedroom. I'll slay out here with Tally."
"What're you going to do with her?" questioned Norma suspiciously.
"We'll think of something."
"As for me"-Pierre suddenly swept Norma off her feet and lifted her in his arms-"I'm through wasting time. I wanted to hop into bed the minute I laid eyes on you."
She clutched her white arms around his neck as he carried her off into the bedroom. He kicked the door shut.
Taffy turned toward Frank. He set down his glass and slipped his arms about her narrow waist, pulling her in to him tight.
She could feel him throbbing to life against her thigh. An itch that had started while she was wearing those chafing coveralls and that had grown during the evening into a compelling demand to be scratched was making her squirm.
"Is there another bed?" she breathed.
His voice was choked. "Forget the bed. I don't need one. Now right now. A man likes something different. A new kind of thrill. His wife doesn't go in for it. Not my wife. I can take her for a straight balling any night in the week. She has no objection to that. But, baby, you don't know how a guy like me wants something else so badly I go nuts just seeing gals walk by in the street."
She moved obligingly against him, bunching up her red lips. "What's my li'l Frankie want so badly? Huh? French culture?"
His lips looked parched. "Could use some of that loo, sugar. But there's something else bugging me."
"What is it?" Her hand caressed his cheek. "Tell Tally."
He said in a hoarse whisper: "Your shoes."
"Shoes?"
"Those long thin heels are killing me. Just thinking about what they could do to me. I want you to use them, baby. Kill me with them."
"Just my heels?"
"They're everything, baby! Everything!"
"All right," she said with a sudden giddy rush of excitement. "How do you want me to do it?"
"Neither of us has to undress." He knelt beside a chair with a hard wooden seat. He zipped down and fumbled inside; then he exposed himself much to the girl's peculiar form of embarrassment, under these strange circumstances.
"Now," he said, his voice trembling, "you get up on the chair."
She had difficulty climbing up, with the tight dress and the tall heels. He reached out a quivering hand to assist her and she grabbed the back of the chair. Then she stood up straight, like a queen on a pedestal. She looked down at her feet.
The very act of her climbing on the chair had aroused him. There was something very strange, very unusual about the whole thing. He looked all excited.
"Use your feet, baby," he urged.
Looking down at what was happening, she slid her feet sideways so that he was between the high heel and toe, the high arch bridding over him. The satin finish touched him briefly, causing him to shudder with anticipation.
"Mash with the soles," he directed.
She turned her whole body, bringing the soles in line. She came down, not too heavily, rolling her soles back and forth. It was a bizarre reaction.
"Press harder," he commanded. "Rub them down."
She pressed harder and rubbed.
"Oh, baby, baby, that feels good," he moaned.
She brought in variations. He throbbed harder.
"Heels, baby, heels," he panted.
She rose up on her toes. She had to be careful now. Those heels were like spikes. They could go right through flesh. They came down gradually, rolling and twisting, trying to find a center of gravity. It was like trying to balance on a piece of garden hose.
She lifted up again, relieving the awful pressure, then drummed her heels. It reminded her of the time she had used this ancient foot method to press wine out of swollen ripe grapes, trampling out the vintage.
Breath whistled out of him. "Come on, baby. Come on down. Get your weight on it!"
"Frankie! I'm heavy!"
"Your whole weight!"
She slowly let her body relax, beginning from her slim ankles all the way up. Pounds and pounds building up on her spike heels riding the target.
He was wincing, trying to speak, but unable to get intelligible words out.
She relaxed that final pound.
He groaned as his hands feverishly caressed her calves and ankles.
He got one word out. "Again!"
She was apprehensive for him, but she obeyed. She lifted up slowly, then just as slowly brought all her weight to bear on her sky-high heels.
His fingers clawed into her calves. She was amazed as little throbs under her lifted her heels hydraulically. So great was the male response to carnal stimulation that it was tougher than steel and more explosive than dynamite.
He made gurgling sounds in his throat and jerked his body as if to get free. She had him pinned by her heels to the chair-seat. Throbbing pulsed under her. Her downcast eyes saw his spurting finish. She lifted her heels, saw that he was satisfied, leaving her heel marks emblazoned in him.
She was careful not to skid on the slippery surface of the chair as she got off.
CHAPTER FIVE
It was one o'clock in the morning when Pierre drove Taffy into Sin Alley. It was a little lane in the Village that had originally been Sinclair Alley, but some critic of the neighborhood's morals had obliterated the last five letters from the street sign. It remained in approriate commentary.
On the drive downtown, Pierre said: "When I got Norma undressed, it was an easy matter to switch the fake pearls in my pocket for the rope she was wearing. Now when she goes home to Hun tington she'll think that some petty thief stole the fakes."
"You don't think they'll ever connect us with it?"
"Never!"
"What about the next time they come into the dining room? They'll recognize you, Pete."
"Who ever looks at a waiter's face? Or, for that matter, a maitre d's?"
She had to admit he had a point there, though she would have looked at his face-and the rest of him-anywhere.
"Where are you going?" she asked in a low voice.
"Your hotel romo isn't paid up, is it?"
"No. I'm broke."
"You're going to my pad," he said. "Sin Alley."
"Oh."
Sin Alley was narrow with leaning lampposts. It looked as if time had stopped there fifty years ago. She liked its quaintness. He pulled the Maserati into a stone tunnel that led to an old carriage house and helped her out of the low car.
They entered the house next door and went up to the second floor.
"I have an extra bedroom," he said, showing her into it. "Hop in and get some rest. You have a busy day tomorrow."
"Have I?" She turned her large eyes up to his face. A question had been torturing her all the way home. "Was she good?"
"Norma?" His smile flashed. "Pretty good. I'm ready to go right to sleep."
"Well, then, good night."
He backed out and closed the door.
Her bed was comfortable and she had all the conveniences, but she tossed around for over an hour. She had given Frank plenty of satisfaction, but just doing that for him hadn't satisfied her She wanted Pierre's strong hungry manhood and plenty of it. She hoped that he had included himself in her plans for tomorrow.
When she woke up, sunlight was bright through the window. She stirred when she smelled bacon and eggs sizzling and heard him puttering around in the kitchenette.
She got fully dressed before she went out to him. He was wearing a chef's hat and setting the table.
"Coffee?" he asked.
She yawned. "Plenty of it. Black and strong. Thank you."
She sat down and hungrily forked up the crisp strips of Canadian bacon and three country fresh eggs sunny-side.
"The rest of your clothes are at the hotel?"
"Ummmm-hmmm!" Her mouth was full. "Just a suitcase."
"I'll get them for you after breakfast." He considered her seriously. "When you met me last night you told me about getting a caning. How did that happen?"
She described the experience she had in Turner's theatrical agency, giving all the details.
He was smiling. "Barry Finn! I've been wondering what he had a sweet tooth for!"
"Birching girls!" she said vehemently.
"Taffy," he said, "you're going-to accept the job."
"What!"
"Temporarily. Finn is a racehorse fanatic. He owns a stable of them. One of his nags. Slewfoot, by some freak of nature, won the Preakness. He had a gold model made of the horse. It's studded with diamonds and priceless. Till now, I haven't been able to dope out a way into his apartment."
"You want me to go up there," she said.
"Here's what we'll do. While I'm getting the rest of your clothes, you phone Turner and tell him-"
By the time Taffy reached Barry Finn's Park Avenue apartment it was nearly two in the afternoon. She stood outside the apartment door, nervous excitement coursing through her. She was wearing a skin-tight flaming red corduroy skirt and a thin wool sweater of a matching red. She rang the bell and then stood there with both her hands tugging the skirt smooth at her hips.
"Come on in!" called out a voice familiar to millions of TV addicts. "This's open house! Everybody's welcome at Tiffany Towers!"
She pushed open the unlocked door and walked in on tall heels. Immediately she saw three men. One was making himself at home on the couch. The second, peering near-sightedly through eyeglasses, was at the piano.
The third was walking unconcernedly out of the bathroom. There was a safety razor in his hand, partially shaved-off lather on his face, and all he was wearing was a pair of heliotrope shorts with horseshoes embroidered on them.
She halted. "I'm Tally Forrest."
"Hey!" said the one in the shorts. "And I'm flabbergasted! That old creep told me he was sending up a babe for an audition, but wowweee!"
This was Barry Finn talking. To quote TV fan magazines, his private life was filled with more yocks, more boffos, than he could ever cram into the hour he spent before the cameras in the prime spot every Wednesday evening. He had wisecracked his way to success on the floor of the late spots, the Borsch circuit, tonks, and penthouse night clubs. He was the great ad-libber, the squelcher, the fire hose with hecklers.
He scraped some lather off his throat and flicked it across the big room at the man on the couch. "Taffy, that's Manny Beerman. He writes all my jokes. This isn't me talking. He's throwing his voice. Stand up and take a bow, Manny."
Beerman didn't stand up. lie had jet-black eyebrows, a chubby form, and he was drinking a glass of celery tonic. "Hello." he said. He looked pessimistic.
"I pay him $1000 a week to write smashero gags, and all he says is hello!" Finn pointed the razor at the man at the piano. A cigarette was dangling from the pianist's pallid lips. "Hank Sommers writes songs and jingles for blackmail prices. He's earned more money from one limerick than Shakespeare did for all his sonnets."
Sommers looked at her appreciatively over an accumulation of scratch-sheets and tip-forms. He began to thump out A Pretty Girl in like a Melody.
Taffy smiled her thanks warmly at Sommers.
Finn continued shaving in the egg-shaped mirror over the sham fireplace. "Take your clothes off, Taffy, and sit down."
She sat down, but she didn't take anything off.
"So this is going to be an audition," said Beerman. He looked as if he had been weaned on vinegar and acid. "I'll call room service. I like to nibble while watching a circus."
Finn turned toward him critically. "How can you think of food at a time like this? You'd better switch to a better brand of plasma."
Beerman jotted something on the back of an envelope. "Keep on talking," he encouraged. "Soon I'll have all of next week's show."
"Look," said Finn, hastily finishing his shaving. "Why don't you two make like balloons and blow?"
Sommers looked at his watch. "I've got a date with Cissie, the bewitching cigarette girl."
Beerman grimaced. "She wouldn't go out with a bum like you."
"I'll get into her panties without any trouble." Sommers went striding toward the door. "Last time I saw her she was starved for affection."
"She might've been satisfied since then," said Beerman.
"Sour puss!" Sommers went out and banged the door.
"How can I help having the personality of a dill pickle," complained Beerman, "when I keep getting compliments like that all day?"
"Resign from the human race," said Finn. "Say the word we're all waiting to hear."
Beerman got up. "Goodbye."
"That's the word," said Finn. Beerman walked out.
Finn dater back into the bathroom and she could hear him slapping his face. He reappeared, smelling strongly of after-shaving lotion, his cheeks pink and shining.
She looked at his brief undershorts. "I'm sorry, Mr. Finn. I should have come at a more opportune time."
"Doll, the time couldn't be more opportune. You big hunk of strawberry shortcake. Any time you walk in that door is all right with me."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Turner gave you a pretty good idea, didn't he? Play the game with me and I'll give you a contract to appear on my show. Gal announcers are the big thing." He crossed the room and locked the apartment door. "Stand up."
She uncrossed her long legs and stood up. "Yes?"
"Strip," he ordered. "I was going to have you wear a doggy costume. Now I'm too important for that. Just strip."
Wondering what kind of screwball ideas this joker might have, she carefully started taking off. There was not much underneath the red corduroy skirt and red wool sweater. She dropped the scant panties and unhooked the bra. Her breasts were like two huge scoops of vanilla ice cream, each one topped with a wild cherry. They hung heavy like overripe fruit.
He caught his breath at the sight of her and she saw a convulsive movement in his shorts.
He gave breathless instructions. "You're big dog.
A bitch. And I'm going to train you to take commands. I'm your master. Get down on all fours. Down, girl, down!"
Embarrassed at assuming such a position, she slowly sank to her hands and knees. Her big breasts pendant beneath her, swung with every movement.
He reached into a desk drawer and took out a long dog whip. He flicked it tentatively across her upraised rump. "You need to be housebroken. Do as I command and you can stay!"
CHAPTER SIX
Her all-fours position and the crack of the dog whip subjugated her. She conditioned her mind to the part she was playing. The more I act like a dog, she thought, the more successful we'll be.
"What'll I call you?" considered the famous funny man. "Nukie! That's it. I knew a gal named Nukie. She was a dog too. Pay attention, Nukie!"
He laid the whip across her bare skin where it was shining smooth on her plumped-up buttocks. She flinched a little, but it felt more pleasant than painful.
Punctuating his commands with spits of the whip, he said: "Wiggle your tail, Nukie!"
She lifted her knees a little off the floor and twisted her behind from side to side.
"Show more enthusiasm! Shake it, Nukie!"
She wrestled her hips more vigorously.
"Now if you're a good gal, I'll give you a dish of dog food. Hungry?"
She let her tongue flop out and her open mouth panted.
"You look hungry, Nukie. First I wanna see if you've learned all your lessons. Sit up and beg! Come on! Sit up!"
She squatted on her haunches, her elbows held in to her sides, her hands hanging like limp paws from her loose wrists. She kept breathing fast through her open mouth.
"Nice, Nukie. Roll over and play dead."
She rolled over on her back, her crooked arms and legs in the air.
He couldn't resist quirting her across the belly and breasts.
"Up again, Nukie! Bark, bark!"
She tumbled over on her hands and knees.
"Woof! Woof!"
"Hungry, girlie? You wait a minute!"
He vanished into the kitchen, allowing her a moment to sag her muscles and rest her lolling tongue.
He came back out with a deep dish of dog food. "How much do you want it, Nukie?" She wagged her tail. "More than that!" She sat up and begged, her tongue flopping. "Let me see your mouth now water!"
She let saliva drip off her tongue. "Now you look hungry." He slid the dish under her lowered head. "Eat it up! All of it!"
She felt a moment of disgust, burying her nose in the dish.
"The best I could buy," he said. "Prime horsemeat."
She chewed, gulped, and swallowed. It didn't taste as bad as she imagined it would.
"Good doggie. You gobbled it all up. Now you're going to get your reward. You know what it is?"
"Woof?"
"Are you a dog who wants another dog?"
"Woof! Woof!"
"You'll get what all good dogs deserve. A date with Fido!"
"Woof! Woof! Woof!" She waggled her expressive tail enthusiastically.
He was behind her and she saw his discarded shorts flung across the room.
"Don't shake so damn much," she heard him say. "I won't be able to control you."
He was down on her, covering her from the rear. His arms clasped her around the upper torso, his hands fondling her dangling breasts. She felt his desire and she tilted her pelvis up a little more to make it less uncomfortable.
"Next time," he panted, "we'll both be in dog suits. More realistic. Man, you're a big girl!"
He was hard and cruel, engaging her, and they were together like two canine beasts.
"Oh, baby," he gasped. "I've seen-two dogs like this-what a thriller that must be-!"
He held her tight and worked like frenzy. She quivered for him like an obedient mate.
He groaned. "Here comes a litter of pups for you! Awwwww!"
The fiercely impelled heat of his loins was felt by her. They remained together for a long moment, she on her hands and knees, partly supporting him on her bare back, then he moaned and slipped off.
He got groggily to his feet, shaking his head to clear it. "-Brother! That was the wildest orbit yet! Baby, you're in my kennel! You've got a lifetime contract with ole Barry! Just bark any time and I'll come running!"
He staggered into the bedroom.
She slowly got to her feet, changing from a four-footed beast into a human. She followed him into the bedroom.
He had flopped across the bed. "Be my guest," he breathed. "You must be as pooped as I am!"
She launched her nude body into the bed beside his. They both lay there, fighting exhaustion.
After a while she raised her golden head and looked around. The four walls were littered with pictures of horses.
"I thought," she said, "that all the horse talk was a gag."
"It's no gag."
"I love horses," she said.
Interest aroused, he raised up on his elbow to study her closer. "You do?"
"I've followed them at the Kentucky Derby, also Paris Grand Prix, Ascot."
"Hey! You are my dream gal!"
"I heard you had a diamond-studded model of Slewfoot."
"I have. Only I keep it locked up in that cabinet."
"Oooooh! May I see it?"
"You can see anything I've got, doll."
He forgot how pooped he was as he scrambled off the bed. He searched in the pocket of a pair of pants hanging in the closet and took out a key chain. One of the keys unlocked the cabinet.
With respect, he lifted out his holy of holies.
The gold horse with the diamond saddle and a harness made Taffy's big eyes glitter. It stood about a foot high.
"How much is it worth?" she asked.
"When they made this, they threw away the price tag."
"Leave it out for a while, Barry. Let it dazzle my eyes."
"Sure, sure. Just like you dazzle my eyes, doll."
"Can I have lunch here?"
"Wanna move in?" he invited.
She wrinkled her nose playfully at him. "We'll get dressed and call room service."
"Anything you say. Later on we'll climb into our doggy suits for a real bowwow."
"Good." She wiggled out of the bedroom to pick up her dropped sweater and skirt and get herself into them. Then she picked up the phone. Winking over it at Finn, she asked for room service. "What would you like, Barry?"
"A big bite of you," he teased.
"Stop that. Be serious."
"I can't stop. There's no money in being serious."
"He'll be right up," she said and put down the phone.
Five minutes later there was a discreet knock on the door. She jumped up in a flurry of girlish impetuosity and answered it. A tall handsome waiter pushed in a rolling table. The food on it was covered with a large white cloth. "Set it here," she said.
She saw Pierre's dark eyes dart around the room and go spearing into the bedroom. He had spotted the trophy. He proceeded to set the table in the living room, transferring everything from his own wagon.
There was a moment when Finn's back was turned and in that split second Pierre was inside the bedroom. The golden horse was whisked underneath the large white cloth and when Pierre wheeled away again, the trophy went ,with him.
On their plates were Swiss steak sandwiches, stuffed celery and ripe olives, and orange chiffon pie.
Finn vigorously stirred up his coffee. She watched him drink it in thirsty gulps. Pierre was thorough. Finn's coffee cup was laced with knockout drops. A mickey finn for Barry Finn. TV's top comic would have appreciated that nifty.
She ate quietly as she watched his eyes grow heavy lidded and then droop closed. His body keeled over.
He would be blacked out for hours. By the time he woke up and found his trophy missing, to say nothing of Taffy, it would be too late to sound an alarm for anybody.
Carefully wiping her lips with her serviette, she rose quietly and walked unhurriedly out of the apartment.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"What'd you do with old Slewfoot?" she asked.
"Converted it into cash," he said. "You don't think I keep things like that around, do you?"
"How much did you get for it?"
"Far less than Finn figured it was worth. Since it was hot, they haggled me down. But I got plenty all the same. Plenty."
"With all that money," she said, "let's go out tonight and burn down the town."
"Tonight," he said, "you're hopping a plane for England."
"Oh, no!" she cried with frustration. "Oh, darling, no tonight!"
"Darling," he murmured. "You haven't fallen for me, have you?"
"Do you think I'd do all this if I hadn't?" she retorted angrily. Angry at herself for getting her emotions tangled.
"It can't be helped," he said. "I mean this trip. Have you heard of Racy Eastmond?"
"Who hasn't?" The heiress to all those millions. I should have been born so lucky. She's always in the society colums. I suppose it's her you want to rob next!"
"Don't knock it, Taffy. It's a living. Listen carefully." He paused to get his plans clearly lined up. "Tomorrow she's flying back from London in a chartered plane. I know from a reliable source that she's going to smuggle a jewel into this country. It's an enormous 21 karat sapphire. Very few people would recognize it as a sapphire. It's orange. Who ever heard of an orange sapphire?"
"What do I do?" she asked petulantly.
"You'll take the place of the airline stewardess on the plane. When Racy flies back tomorrow, you and she will have the whole plane to yourselves. It'll be up to you to convince her that the customs agents have got wind of the smuggled sapphire and that they'll be waiting for her to disembark with it. I want you to make her give it to you."
"Is that all? That about the pilot and co-pilot?"
"They're not in on any of it. They're there to drive the jet-liner."
"What about passports and permits and all the rest?"
"You don't have to worry about that. You won't be leaving Croydon Airport. I have got a passport for you. I don't let grass grow under my feet."
"Nor any other place," she said crossly.
"And I've got your bag all packed."
"How could I do without you?"
"You'll find your airline hostess uniform in the suitcase. Change into it a ladies' rest room when you land. Here. I've written down the number of the airliner you're to report to on arrival." He handed her a slip of paper.
"Thanks," she said.
"Now," he smiled, "I'll drive you to Kennedy Airport."
She got several hours sleep on the jet flight eastward to London. During her waking moments she studied the hostesses and their mannerisms.
It was dawn when she got to Croydon. Lugging her suitcase, she went into the airport restaurant and had breakfast. Looking at things a little more cheerfully after her morning coffee, she repaired to a niche in the ladies' room and locked herself in. She opened the suitcase, taking out the powderblue stewardess uniform and trying it on.
It was very tight, especially the skirt. She ran exploring hands across her derriere. "Golly," she said to herself, studying her reflection in the washroom mirrors, "I look like a big bird. With a tail wind I could fly back to New York without a plane."
She walked out across the airport. She had a tremendous following-all male eyes. She continued walking, her skyline heels tapping on the tamarac, toward the chartered airliner.
The pilot and co-pilot were smoking cigarettes near the ramp. They both stopped talking to each other and watched her, open-mouthed, as she approached.
The co-pilot, a Britisher, grinned at her. "You Yank gals are getting bigger and better looking all the time."
She let the compliment fly by. "Has Miss Eeastmont arrived?"
"Not yet," said the pilot. He sounded like a Yankee.
"No, ducks," said the co-pilot. "She'll be taking her own bloody time about it."
"Mind if I go aboard?" she asked. "I'll wait for her in there."
"No objection," said the pilot.
They both turned their heads to watch her as she went up the steps of the ramp, the skirt pulling taut about her bottom cheeks and rounded thighs at each lift of her legs.
Inside, she sat down in one of the seats, wondering how long they would have to wait for the madcap heiress.
There was a screech of rubber tires on the pavement outside. She got up and looked out the plane's window. A limousine was rocking to a stop. A leggy vision with flaming red hair was scrambling out of the back. Gripping a little traveling bag in one gloved hand, she ran across to the waiting airship.
There was a patter of feet on the ramp. Taffy stood ready in the aisle. Georgeous green eyes in a setting of white skin and bonfire hair burst in. Burst was about the only word Taffy would have used to describe the entrance.
Lustrous red lips opened wide. "Hi! I'm Racy!"
"I'm Taffy," she smiled back.
Racy shot out her free hand and clasped Taffy's in a surprisingly masculine grip. A little thrill went through Taffy at the pressure of those strong slim fingers.
Racy threw over her shoulder: "I'm ready to go! Blast off;"
"Yes, Mis Eastmond!" responded the pilot.
The two men entered the forward section and the ramp was removed. The jets belched flame.
"Fasten your seat belt," smiled Taffy, crisply imitating an air hostess.
She flopped into a seat herself and held on as the jet took off. It circled Croydon and then leveled off smoothly over the Atlantic.
Racy unfastened her belt, crossed her legs, and relaxed with a cigarette. She was wearing a green sheath from Paris that further brought out the blaze of her hair.
Taffy walked up and down the aisle a few times, making sure that Racy got a good look at her front and back.
Racy studied her with searching green eyes. "How tall are you, Taffy?"
"Five-nine. Without heels."
"I've had boy friends shorter than that."
"You never married any of them," said Taffy. "They're all after my money."
That' thought Taffy, is just an excuse for not getting married. Racy knew plenty of well-heeled guys.
"How long'll this flight take?" asked Racy.
Taffy made a guess. "Almost four hours."
Racy's green eyes grew quizzical. "What do two gals do to kill almost four hours?"
"Magazines?" suggested Taffy.
"Magazines bore me sick."
"There are two men up forward."
"Those two jacks in the cockpit don't mean a thing to me. Would you believe this, Taffy? I get a bigger bang just looking at you."
Taffy had paused in the aisle, only a few feet from where Racy was sitting. Both girls surveyed each other.
"I like you, Racy."
"I like you too, Taffy. You look like a fun gal."
"I have to warn you about something. I want to help you."
"Warn me about what?"
Taffy said slowly: "I have a boy friend in customs. That's how I got the tip. Racy, they're wise to you. They know you're going to try to sneak in with that orange sapphire."
"What're you talking about?" The friendly smile faded on Racy's beautiful face. "I don't know anything about an orange sapphire."
"No?" said Taffy skeptically. "If I were you, I wouldn't try it. Customs regulations are getting rougher. They'll find it on you and make it tough for you. The least thing that can happen is lossing the sapphire. You don't want that to happen, do you?"
"Seize and search. My boy friend knows. They wouldn't miss a thing."
"No? How would they go about it? asked Racy with a consuming curiosity.
"I'll show you."
Taffy sat down beside her on the seat, her blue eyes frisking over the redhead's body. The tight green sheath was pulled back, exposing Racy's rounded kness.
"Obviously," said Taffy, "you're not hiding it in those openwork pumps. But it could be concealed somewhere else."
"Where?" said Racy with a dare on her lips.
Taffy laid her hand on Racy's knee. The warmth of the leg came through the sheer nylons. Taffy's long, pearl-colored fingertips inched under the hem of the skirt and slid sensuously along the inside of Racy's slender thigh.
The smile was frozen on Racy's gleaming lips and the flesh of her leg trembled at Taffy's touch. Taffy felt her own little torches being lighted, deep down inside.
Taffy reached the welt of the stocking, tugged high with garter snaps, and she continued upward, stroking the creamy whiteness of the thigh, feeling Racy's muscles tense there as her legs parted. Taffy's searching fingers touched panty leg.
"Take off the dress," she said huskily.
"Anything to oblige," said Racy laughingly.
She found a zipper, slid it down, and rising a little in her seat, yanked the green dress off over her head. She tossed her flaming hair to settle it down again after the whirlwind of removing the dress.
She was in white lacy bra, lace panties, and garter belt.
"See any sapphire?" she tauted Taffy. "I'm not through, Racy."
Taffy's hand glided inside one cup of the Bra, the straps stretching taut. At the intimate touch, Racy's jaw hardened as she clenched her teeh to control herself. Her eyes were getting a glassy look. Taffy felt the straining, rigid evidence of the redhead's desire. Racy moaned low in her throat.
Taffy reached behind and undid the bra and it fell. The twin glories of Racy's breasts sprang into view.
Taffy examined them for a moment. The bosom was young and high and full, though it compared now here in size to Taffy's own. It was trembling with emotion and eagerness. Looking at it that way, Taffy was stirred by the whiteness and femininity.
Racy reached out and her hands clasped the back of Taffy's neck. She pulled Taffy's head forward until the blonde's face was buried in the deep cleft between the breasts. Taffy was smothered with intoxicating perfume. She had to respond to this titillating invitation. She covered the deep valley with little kisses, then worked her head back up. The nipples, staring her in the face, were sticking out at her like a pair of impudent little tongues.
Taffy ran the pink tip of her tongue like a paintbrush over each one. Racy moaned again and her hips moved, describing little circles of passion as they rose and fell on the seat.
Taffy unsnapped the garter belt and flipped it off. Racy arched her body so that Taffy might easily remove her panties. Taffy guided the scant lace off the long slender legs.
Racy lay back and groaned a little. "Go ahead! Search all you want to!"
"I won't miss anything," promised Taffy. Viewing what lay before her, her own body was shaking violently.
Taffy's delicate, fingertip touch probed the secrets. Racy winced now in delicious agony.
"Turn over," prompted Taffy.
Sighing, Racy rolled over on the seat. Taffy stared into the cleavage of the shapely derriere. Placing both her hands on the massed tender flesh, Taffy experimentally parted the cheeks.
Racy gasped. "Do you think Pd stick a sapphire in there?"
"I can think of better things," said Taffy, short of breath.
Temptation overpowered Taffy. It was like putting a rich cake covered with marshmallow in front of a famished man. She bent her head, taking little bites, her tongue darting in all directions.
Face-down, Racy squirmed and shuddered. "For Pete's sake, Taffy, let me turn over!"
With a mighty wriggle, she was on her back, her widespread limbs all askew and making her a divine subject.
Taffy's hungry mouth never ceased. Her tongue stretched out longer, poking and curling, setting fire to everything it touched. Lips kissed lips.
Racy's fingers clawed into the flax-yellow hair, her back strained up as she pushed everything she had into Taffy's devouring face. She cried out wildly as she went gushing and spinning out into space over the mid-Atlantic.
Panting, Racy lay in a heap, recovering from the exhausting ordeal, then her fingernails raked along the back of Taffy's powder-blue hostess jacket.
"Get that uniform off!" she commanded hoarsely. "Get it off, you big blonde nymph before I tear it off! You're going to get everything you gave me-and more!"
CHAPTER EIGHT
Taffy was drained. No wonder Racy had never married any of her boy friends. She was an outand-out lesbian. She knew more ways of pleasing another girl than Taffy ever heard of. She had Taffy popping like a string of firecrackers.
Limply Taffy was getting dressed again in her stewardess uniform when the pilot announced over the loudspeaker: "We'll be landing at Kennedy in half an hour!"
Racy had slipped back into her green sheath and she was curled up on her seat, looking as contended as a big redheaded pussycat that has lapped up all the cream.
"Never enjoyed a flight more," she smiled at Taffy. "I'll have to recommend this line to all my friends."
Taffy looked solemn. "Racy, do you trust me?"
"After that? Of course I trust you."
"Then give me the sapphire." Racy merely stared at her.
"We'll touch down in less than half an hour, Racy," she reminded her. "That's how much longer you're going to keep it anyway."
Racy sighed at the inevitable. "I know you're right. It's in my little flight bag. How'll you get out with it?"
"No trouble. My boy friend's in customs."
"So you told me."
Racy reached over to where she had tossed the blue flight bag when she first came aboard. She opened it. There were a few unimportant toilette articles on top. Burrowing down, Racy found what she was looking for and brought it out into Taffy's sight.
It was orange-yellow and enormous. Taffy blinked at it.
"Can't you just see that resting on my decolletage?" said Racy. "Everybody'll probably mistake it for a nice big amber birthstone."
"How-how much is it worth?"
"About $15,000." Racy thrust it at her. "Here. I'll trust you to take it through customs for me. What've I got to lose?"
Wordlessly Taffy took the gem.
"I'll be stopping overnight at the Waldorf," explained Racy, "before going on to Dad's estate in Westchester. You can bring it to me at the hotel."
"Yes, Racy," said Taffy.
The plane landed and the girls, carrying their own little bags, went their way through customs. Taffy stepped up to a counter to make out her declaration. The man facing her in the custom inspector's uniform was tall, lean, and dark.
"Miss Forrest," he murmured, "what have you got in that bag?"
"Nothing very valuable," she replied. He pawed through it. "You're right. Nothing very valuable." He signed and stamped her paper. "You'll find the taxi stand just outside. Get into a cab. You know where to go."
"Yes," she said. "Thank you for being so kind." She went out and took a cab. "Times Square," she told the driver.
As she drove away from the immense airport, she looked back through the rear window.
The tall, dark man in the custom inspector's uniform was coming leisurely out of the building and getting into his Maserati.
In Times Square, she dismissed the cab and stood on the comer of Broadway and 42nd Street. Almost immediately Pierre drove up in the Italian sports car.
She handed him the blue flight bag. He said: "Take another cab back to Sin Alley and wait for me while I fence this sapphire. How was the plane ride?"
"A ball. I feel bad, cheating Racy like this."
"It's nothing to have a conscience over," he assured her. "She was going to cheat the government, wasn't she?"
He drove away and she flagged down another cab.
It was now early afternoon and Sin Alley was bright with sunshine. It was hardly believable, she thought, that this morning she was outside London, meeting Racy for the first time. She wondered if they would ever run into each other again.
She paid off the cabbie and stepped away from the curbing. A female figure blocked the doorway to Pierre's house.
There was a momentary locking of stares, Taffy's intense blue ones probing the depths of the sparkling brown ones.
"Hullo?" said a husky, sexy voice. "I heard Pierre had taken you in."
"Word gets around fast," said Taffy boldly.
"Not fast enough. Or you may have already heard about Cosette and Pierre."
Cosette was more brilliantly beautiful than the average looker. Every detatil of her makeup was slaved over. Long-blue-black hair tumbled to her wide shoulders in an air of abandonment. Long beaded eyelashes were meticulously glued on. Real eyebrows were shaved off and dark brown strokes were penciled on. The lips were boldly shaped, gaudy red, and slick with petroleum jelly.
The figure, in a white turtleneck sweater and tight grey skirt, would have made an Egyptian mummy rise up with lust. The exaggerated breasts stuck out in skewer points. The waist pulled in incredibly small. The hips and buttocks were delightfully proportioned curves. In her needle-thin heels she was as tall as Taffy.
"Cosette and Pierre?" repeated Taffy. "No. I haven't heard."
The stunning brunette jabbed herself between the pointed breasts with her stiff forefinger. "Me! Me and Pierre!" The dark eyes danced down over Taffy's blue uniform and the husky voice continued : "Airline hostess. I love those outfits myself. I knew a fellow who raped only airline hostesses."
"You must have a charming circle of friends," said Taffy tartly.
"If you stay here long enough, you'll find out how charming they can be."
"What do you want with me?" said Taffy impatiently.
"I don't want anything with you. I'm waiting for Pierre. I've been hanging around so that he can't miss seeing me. I want him to rape me."
"Ordinarily," said Taffy, "I'd think you were cracked. With Pierre involved, I can understand how you feel."
"I'm sure you do. It's wonderful, actually, talking to a gal who understands. He knows me well enough. He's caught my act at the Black Sheep enough times."
"Oh, you're an entertainer."
"Yes. Swell act. Pierre caught it one night and came back to my dressing room to tell me how much he liked it. I flipped over him right away. I'm real gone on him. I keep getting in his way, hoping he'll do something about it. But so far-" Cosette's rather long face fell.
"Well," said Taffy, "if you keep propped up in the doorway like this, he can't help falling over you."
"No," said Cosette wistfully. "You just keep hoping." She maneuvered to get past the brunette.
"Where are you going, Taffy?"
"Upstairs to lie down. I'm beat."
Cosette looked sad. "I wish I could say the same."
Taffy went on up the stairs. Cosette's husky voice haunted her. It sent a chill down her spine. In the apartment, she peeled off the stewardess uniform and sprawled on the bed in her room.
The slant of the sun was lengthening across the room when she heard Pierre enter the apartment.
She had been lying on her bed in bra and panties. Modestly she flung a robe about her shoulders and came out.
The custom inspector's uniform was gone. Pierre was once more in neat civvies. He held up a roll of banknotes for her to admire.
"That operation went smoothly," he said.
"Teamwork," she smiled. Her face smoothed out again as she thought of something. "Did you stumble over that ravishing creature in the downstairs door?"
"Cosette?" he grinned. "Yeah."
"She was-very anxious to see you."
"I know. I gave her a boot in the can and sent her on her way."
"Oh?" In a way Taffy was pleased to hear about this harsh treatment meted out to what looked like a strong rival. "She wanted you to take her by ofrce."
"She'll have a long wait."
Taffy was a bit puzzled. Pierre went for the girls. Why not Cosette? "She's extremely attractive."
"I know. She knows how to make herself look that way."
"What's wrong with that? Every gal-"
"Don't you know?" he said. "Know what?"
"Cosette," he said, spacing out his words for emphasis, "is a TV."
"Tv"
"A transvestite, a flaming queen, a female impersonator."
"What? But she-he-looked so much like-"
"It's his job to look like the real thing. He dresses in female underwear, wearing a stuffed brassiere, fanny falsies, a garter belt and sheer hose and those high heels. He has half a dozen wigs, all costing about a century each, and he plasters his face with the best of Max Factor. He's a mockery. A fake through and through."
"There's one thing about"-Taffy couldn't bring herself to think of Cosette as a male-"her that's real."
"What could that be?" asked Pierre with amused tolerance.
"She's got a bad case of the hots for you. And, like any other woman, that could make trouble for you-and me too!"
CHAPTER NINE
Pierre was not visibly disturbed about whatever trouble Cosette might make for Taffy and him. He seemed to dismiss the possibility from his mind. Instead he was full of plans for the immediate future.
"Get some more rest," he told her. "You'll have an exerting night."
She groaned in dismay. "Don't you ever rest?"
"I'm ambitious," he grinned. "Besides, I had a good night's sleep last night while you were winging to London."
"What is it this time?" she asked wearily.
"There's a billionaire's yacht moored a short distance out in the Hudson. Tonight on board there will be a private party for members of the international jet set. Among the guests will be a Chinese cutie named Lily Dong. Everywhere she goes she carries with her a fabulous piece of jade."
"How are you going to get on board, Pierre?"
"No trouble for me. I've wrangled a gilt-edged invitation. As for you." He cocked one eyebrow waggishly. "Can you swim?"
Before dinner, there were cocktails in the captain's private suite. The men and women gathered there were few in numbers, but every character was colorful.
Pierre sipped a dry Martini, letting his appreciative gaze run down the well-filled sari of a nearby maharani. Her arms and throat were exquisitely encrusted with Indian jewels set in bright yellow gold. A tempting dish on all counts.
But not quite as tempting as Lily Dong. The Chinese beauty was slim and straight, saffron-skinned and almond-eyed. The elaborately embroidered Mandarin silk sheath she was wearing made Pierre's well-oiled pistons race. It was high-necked and as tight as the skin on a bologna, slit up the sides to the top of her sulphurous thighs. Her tiny feet were shoed in stil heels. When she moved he saw the slender buttocks dimple through the thin silk.
Pierre made the obvious approach. First, flatter her about her becoming appearance.
She gave him a shy little smile over her aperitif. "M-goy nay. Thank you. You speak Cantonese?"
"A little."
"Let us make duck talk," she suggested. "Ju-i. As you wish."
"Ching! Please! You have eyes like a tiger."
"M-goy nay!" he smiled. "Thank you!"
"Not all Westerners approve of this form of dress," she said, slowly for his understanding, charmingly adding to his fund of international customs. "We Chinese have our own ideas of propriety. There is nothing improper about revealing the thighs." She moved a leg gracefully and he could see slim amber-colored thigh almost to her hip. He felt his abdominal muscles tighten.
"Oh, but," she said with a smile, "the throat is something else."
He glanced at her throat. It was modestly concealed by a high tight neck collar.
"A hint of the throat," continued, "is very naughty. I made sure that none of mine shows, you see. This collar is especially stiffened with plasatic."
At that moment dinner was announced and the guests filed into the dinning salon. "You have an escort, Lily?"
"No," she said, wistfully sad. "I am a widow."
"My condolences." He extended the crook of his arm. "Allow me."
Smiling happily she took his arm in fragile fingers and they went in to dinner together.
Food was prepared especially for each individual guest. He feasted on a superior blanquette de veau and a splendid bottle of Beaujolais. He watched Lily do justice to boiled duck, candied walnuts, rice fritters, almond juice, fresh bamboo sprouts, yellow fish lips, and sharks fins.
While they supped, he adroitly brought the subject around to jade.
"Yes," she said in her tinkling music box voice, "it is very precious. In the esteem of the Chinese, jade outranks all the other gemstones. It is called the sacred stone of China. It is cool and so smooth to the touch it seems soft. It is most sumptuous when a woman experiences it against her skin."
"I have heard," he said, "that you possess a treasure in the rarest of Imperial green jade."
"Yes, I do."
"May I see it?"
The faintest of blushes tinged her primrose cheek. Her long black eyelashes fluttered down in maidenly confusion. But only for a moment. "It is the sort of object one shows only in a bed chamber."
"Why?" His voice was low. None of their table companions could pick up a word of what they were saying to each other. "Is it a collector's item of erotica?"
"Yes." Her tone was hushed. "It was created during the dynasty of Huang Lo, the Ribald Emperor. It is the only one of its kind in existence. The jade replica."
"Where do you keep it?"
"In my cabin."
His pulses leaped. "You must show it to me, Lily."
She hesitated.
"You must!"
Her almond eyes darted around the table. "Yes. As soon as it is proper to leave."
They swallowed what remained of their food.
She stood up. "Come with me."
She walked ahead of him down the companionway, as slim as a reed, only the delightfully refined gluteal play of her roundly embossed posteriors hinting at her carnality. There was nothing as crass as a wiggle. The movement was firmly controlled and lady-like.
In her cabin she unlocked a bronze box, inlaid with gold and silver, with the three wise monkeys carved on the lid. Revently she lifted out the replica. It was immense in size, carved with exact fidelity to nature, and perfectly polished, out of an unmatched block of fine olive-green jade.
"This has been handed down from empress to empress." She laid it gently in his hands.
It had the waxy feel of real flesh. He thrilled, thinking of the numerous Chinese queens who had cooled their passion with it.
"You have," she said, "in your Western culture the legend of Cinderella. How a prince seeks his love with a glass slipper. It can fit only her foot. Then is it so strange that each empress sought the masculine foot to match that model of perfection?"
"They were looking for a mythical man."
"I don't think so." Her slant eyes roved over him. They were shining like fresh drops of India ink. "There are such men."
"In fairy tales," he insisted.
"I must be frank with you. In the past year, it has taken the place of my departed husband."
"This is cold comfort for a warm woman," he sympathized.
"A lonely widow," she murmured, "must console herself."
He handed it back to her.
"It is beastly hot tonight," she said.
He was beginning to think the same thing. Yet her brow remained as cool as the jade she was caressing in her long, tapering fingers.
In the center of the cabin was a floor fan. She touched the knob with the tiny toe of her shoe. The blades whirred and stirred the stifling air.
She stood directly over the fan, her feet apart. The flowing air eddied upward between her legs, fluttering the silk panels of her dress against her thighs.
She said: "There was more to my invitation than having you see this yang. Are you prepared to watch me demonstrate its use? It becomes even more life-like when absorbed by a woman's body."
She grasped the replica at its base with both hands and forced the conical head against her belly. He watched it make a deep indentation in the soft flesh, trailing slowly toward the ultimate source.
Then with it still gripped in her right hand, she moved her left hand into the cloth slit over her thigh, drawing the silk garment away, strip teasing, exposing the smooth nudity.
"Observe me, tiger eyes."
Was he man enough, she was challenging him, to compete with that jade replica?
I a woman had to resort to that in his presence, it would be a slur against his virility that he would never live down. Not only that. His own desires were perking for her, his own muscles twisting into tortuous knots.
He reached out and took the green yang from her hand. "You won't have to do that, Lily." He laid it lengthwise on the table.
"I was hoping I would not," she murmured. Her eyes fluttered down over him like coquettish buttterflies. "Let me inspire you, tiger eyes."
Her fingers opened the high collar and folded it away from her neck. Her throat was a slim yellow column. He stared at the delicate hollow of her throat as if he had been forbidden to gaze upon her deepest female secret.
She ran her trembling fingertips into the hollow, her eyes never leaving him, watching his own reactions. Then her hand found a hidden zipper and she emerged from the embroidered silk sheath like a moth from a cocoon.
She said in her tinkling voice: "There is an old Chinese saying that a woman with big breasts is immoral."
She certainly would not be considered immoral in China. She wore no bra. She would never need any. Her breasts were shallow tea saucers, almost no breasts at all. He preferred girls with big breasts. Like Taffy. But now he caught his breath, perversely fascinated, as the rest of the silk sheath slipped to the floor. She was shaped like a slender boy fashioned to serve as a female.
He removed his own clothes.
She swayed before him like a willow in a sum mer breeze.
Easily he attained full arousal. Never before in his life had he pitted his personal physical properties against those of the gemstone he was stealing. He couldn't let it outrival him.
Feverishly her glances darted back and forth, measuring and shaping. Her slipe eyes grew rounder with awe.
Half swooning, she sank to her knees in veneration, her velvet lips kissing and nuzzling.
For two thousand years the yellow empresses had to worship this length of jade. Tonight it is my destiny to welcome into my inner temple the living specimen."
He reached out his hands and touched her narrow shoulders to claim her. Obediently she rolled over on her back on the floor.
Slowly, ceremoniously, as befitting this great moment in Chinese history, he lowered himself on her.
As she fought with little sharp white teeth and long fingernails, biting and clawing and scratching, he wasn't which one of them was the tiger.
CHAPTER TEN
One hundred yards away from the starboard side of the sleek yatch Taffy stood on the end of a dark wharf, taking off her clothes.
Pierre, on board, had hung a disk of luminous-painted metal out of Lily Dong's porthole. That told Taffy which stateroom they were in.
The moon was out and it was a fine night for swimming. Taffy dropped her panties and looked down at the black water slapping forlornly against the piles of the pier. She wasn't going to wear a swimsuit. She would only have to take it off and dry herself anyway, after returning from the yacht.
She tossed her thick blonde hair back and dived in. The plunge cooled her warm skin. She struck out with a bold stroke for the glimmering side of the yacht.
She treaded water close in under the porthole. Pierre was going to tie a cork buoy to the jade object and toss it out of the cabin. Her wet hair streamed water into her eyes and she flicked the damp strands away from her face.
Something hit the water with a loud spalsh ten feet from her.
She pivoted her head around, trying to locate the buoy.
A hoarse voice floated down from the deck rail above. "Hey! What're you doing down there?"
She looked up. A sailor was peering down over the rail at her. She hadn't expected to be discovered. Now she couldn't go for the cork buoy without having the deckhand spot it also.
What was she going to say? What excuse could she give? That she was taking a moonlight dip?
She couldn't just swim away again. She was responsible for retrieving the loot.
"I-I fell overboard!"
The deckhand's eyes goggled at the way her big breasts were ballooning up on the surface like water wings. "Like that?"
"Well, I jumped, really. I got hot."
"I'm getting hot too. I'll get you up in a jiffy. Here's a ladder. Grab it."
"I'd rather-"
"Where else d'you think you're going?"
A Jacob's ladder splashed down within reach. Seizing it, she got one foot up and into a rung. Water ran out of her gleaming nude body in the moonlight as she scampered up.
She flopped onto the deck like a fish-hooked mermaid. The deckhand was a youth, tall and skinny, but the look in his eyes was a carnal as she had ever seen.
"Let me help you, baby." His hands were slithering all over her wet skin. "I'm Skeeter."
"I suppose," she said, standing up as magnificently as a Valkyrie, "your excuse is that you've been at sea so long."
"Long!" he gurgled, drooling. "Five whole hours!" He eyed her narrowly. "I'm wise to what to what you're trying to do."
His implication scared her. Did he know about the robbery?
"What?" she brazened.
"You're trying to crash the party."
She breathed a breast-heaving sigh of relief. "That's silly."
"Oh yeah? When we were in dock I watched all the tail coming up the gangplank. Nothing like you hit me between the eyeballs. You're as tow away. The captain's a strict one. You know what he'll do if you're caught?" He tittered. "Put you in the brig!"
"Oh, no!" she said frantically.
"Look, baby. He hasn't found you yet, has he?
I'm standing watch. Nobody else's on deck." Bells chimed.
"It's time I went off watch," he continued hoarsely. He fingered the fork of his white sailor pants obscenely. "I could make sure nobody found you. Hide you out."
"All right. Don't keep gawking at me." She shivered as the night wind dried the droplets of water on her. "Find me a blanket or something."
"Follow me."
They slipped off the upper deck and down a steep flight of steps, she padding on the wet soles of her bare feet. Below, in the passageway, he kept glancing back at her to ogle the swank of her broad hips.
At the end of the passageway he opened a door and waved her inside. It was cramped quarters with only one bunk.
"What's this place?" she asked.
"My kip. Take it easy, baby. Nobody'll be the wiser."
"Listen, Skeeter," she pleaded earnestly. "I did want to crash the party. But it was because I had to find someone. Now if you'll give me some clothes and let me look-"
"Not so fast, baby," he smiled crookedly. "This party's gonna last a long time."
He reached out and cupped one of her huge breasts in his horny palm.
She backed off. "Now cut that out, Skeeter. I'll-"
"You'll do what?" he snickered. "You'll well, maybe? That'll bring all hands running. Do you think you can handle a whole crew?"
"I'd love to stay, Skeeter. Only I've got to find-"
"Imagine how I feel! Surrounded by all these pussycats and all of them off limits. Then something like you gets tossed at me."
She was in a bind. If she yelled and someone else rescued her, the captain would ask her a lot of embarrassing questions.
She would have to get it over as soon as possible. Cool him off with a quickie. Then get him to cooperate with her.
Anyway, she was furious whenever she thought of Pierre with that. Chinese fortune cookie. He had made love to her only once, that first night in her hotel room, and had short-rationed her ever since. The samplings of sex she had got from Barry Finn and Racy Eastmond had only felt her all hot and bothered.
She lay back luxuriously on the bunk.
"You wanna play with a big gal?" she teased. "Are you man enough?"
Judging from the outline in his tight sailor pants, he would have no trouble passing for an adult male.
Slobbering over her, he kicked off the pants. His power was evident as he leaned over the bunk.
Impetuously he flung one leg over her, using her rounded belly as a saddle, and seized her. He moved forward, her big lolling breasts open before him like a gate.
Gurgling with desire, he curled his hands outside her breasts, sandwiching them in tight over his eagerness. She craned her neck down, staring into his foaming hog's eye. He jockeyed forward. She reached with her long tongue, as if for a strawberry ice cream cone, flecking away.
He winced at her soft touch.
"Careful, baby. Wanna have me spit right in your eye?""
"You'd better not."
"How mucha this d'you think I can take?" he panted.
She knew what was coming if she didn't take direct action. With a tremendous heave of her hips off the bunk, she unhorsed him. He lurched sideways, grabbing anything for support. She was up and swinging over him. He turned over, catching himself, flopping on his back in the bunk. There was a brief scramble for position, and then she was over him, staring down at him, both her desperate hands on him, feeding him into herself, like an automatic machine.
She experienced the tortuous pleasure of a male being dominated by her and her lips skinned back from her strong white teeth with the pain of it. But it was the kind of pain she drove herself onto. She completely overpowered him, pinning him to the bunk with her weight and her spread hands on his chest and shoulders.
She felt his muscles tense and knot into that final spasm. She worked with more force and power. His body shuddered on the bunk .twisting under her, lifting her, his panting mouth uttering foul phrases that only served to sting her own pas sion.
His spitting relief was like splashes of liquid upon a hot stove, sizzling where they struck, scattering into molten cells. Her whole body turned to melting wax as she responded onto him. She curled up and folded down over him, her arms buckling like warm tallow, her mouth falling open to cry out in smothered agony.
He sucked for air. "Baby, bay! I'll never be the same again!"
"Yes, you will." Limply she crawled away. She was all flushed out. That had been good for her. "Get me some clothes, Skeeter."
"Gimme chance." He struggled to get to his feet and his knees sagged like putty. "Lemme hunt through some of these sea bags."
A little while later her upper torso was covered in a thin white skivvy shirt, the stencilling on the back reading Property of U.S. Navy. Her thick nipples showed through it in dark-circled shadows. Skeeter had been hard put to fish up a pair of sailor pants with a broad enough seat. As it was, the ones she now wore fitted her joggling cheeks like a second skin. The waistline had to be gathered, in large folds around her wasped midsection. She slipped her feet into soiled white sneakers.
She giggled. "How do I look, Skeeter?"
"I'll sign you on any time, baby."
"Now just point me in the direction of Lily Dong's cabin and-thanks!"
Skeeter shrugged. It that was what she wanted, it was okay. He guided her to another part of the ship and indicated the door.
"Good night, Skeeter."
"You sure you don't want me to hang around?"
She shook her blonde head. "Uh-uh!"
He walked away. She waited till he was clear out of sight before she grasped the doorknob and thust the door in.
She was half hoping to catch them in the midst of something.
Pierre turned his face toward the opened door. He was in the act of getting into his dinner jacket. Otherwise he was fully dressed. Taffy's searching eyes skidded toward the bed.
Lily lay draped on it, on her back and stark naked. She looked as if she were completely out.
Pierre's eyebrows raised in surprise. "Taffy? Is that you?" Her appearance in this nautical outfit surprised him.
"Come out here!"
He shrugged into his jacket and came out, closing the door softly behind him.
"How is she?" asked Taffy.
"In Nirvana. Oriental seventh heaven. What the devil are you doing aboard?"
"Long story. I'll tell you about it after we get out of here. The important thing is that I didn't get a chance to pick up whatever you tossed out the porthole."
"Damn!" he said. "Now it'll either go all the way out to sea or somebody else'll find it."
She was curious. "What's it look like?"
"It's long and green, like a big cucumber, floating away on the tide."
CHAPTER ELEVEN
They sat at the breakfast table in his rooms at Sin Alley.
"Sorry about last night, Pierre. Do you think it's gone for good?"
"Possibly not. Somebody might find it. If that happens, I'll hear about it."
"Then you'll try to get it again?"
"Of course."
She looked at what he was eating for breakfast. It appeared as if he were in training for some sort of marathon. "What's all that glop?" she asked.
"This, young lady, is not glop. This is a massive dose of vitamin E. This is a swig of pure wheatgerm oil. These are eight raw egg yolks. This is a jigger of thiamine. And after all this, I'll take a jolt of male hormones."
"What's all that for? Are you sick?"
"No. All this is to reinforce my virility. I might feel like an old, old man after the wedding."
A thrill of anticipation shot through her. "Wedding? Ours?"
He regarded her seriously. "No. Of course not."
The adoring light in her face faded. "Oh!"
"Did you ever hear of old lady Thumm and her four daughters?"
"No," she answered sullenly.
"Society snobs," he explained. "Blossom-that's the old lady-has been married seven times. Today makes her eighth try for happiness."
Taffy glanced up, interested in spite of her disappointment. "The mother's getting married!"
"Not only that. She insists on doing it in white, bridal veil and all. She claims that if a gal feels like a virgin she should dress like one. Her four daughters are going to be bridesmaids. I've fixed it so that you'll be a bridesmaid too."
"Good. At least I'll get somewhere near the altar."
"The wedding will be a real swinger. The guests will wear all their jewels. It'll be like wading through Tiffany's window."
"It all makes sense except for one thing. Why all the wheat-germ oil and the raw eggs?"
"The four daughters," he said, "are all nymphos". Contemplating such a thought, his face turned a little pale.
"And you-?"
"They'll be wearing all their rocks. I'll have to undress all four of them."
"My goodness!" she exclaimed. "Is there anything else I can get you?"
He had a wry smile. "A few dozen fresh oysters."
Pierre had girded his loins, so to speak, for this one. Elegant in black cutaway and striped trousers, he arrived at the cathedral with Taffy on his arm. She looked like an angel in blue, her cornsilk fanning out on her shoulders from under a large picture hat.
As they stepped inside he turned to her and said: "I wish this was our wedding, Taffy."
The smile she bestowed on him was adorable.
The bride was ready to walk up the aisle between gilded cakes of doves. Blossom Thumm, her big bust jutting in white satin, beaded with seed pearls, was as radiant as any bride in her fifties could look. A fixed smile was painted in crimson on her lips and her calculating eyes were trained on the man waiting for her at the altar. He was about forty.
The bridesmaids gathered behind Blossom, Taffy joining them. Pierre's curve-observing eyes sought four of them. Joyce, Bee, Jinx, and Sonia. All four of them looked and walked as if they had just witnessed a pornographic movie.
All those aphrodisiac recipes brought his masculinity to full bloom.
He was amused at the amorous response that went through the four girls like an atomic chain reaction. First Joyce saw him, then Bee caught it, then Jinx, and then Sonia. Their eyes glazed and their mouths parted with wet lips as they breathed faster. The mighty organ boomed Wagner's Wedding March. They were now moving up the aisle, Blossom trailing a 30-foot train.
Joyce nudged the bride. "Come on, mother! Hurry up!"
Bee trod on Jinx's high heels. Goaded, Blossom walked faster, her broad beam shaking.
Watchfully Taffy followed behind them all, her full lips set in a grim line.
The ceremony didn't take long. There was a colorful swirl down the aisle of the packed cathedral and a posing for pictures on the outside steps.
Blossom hoisted up the white satin train, displaying a surprisingly good pair of legs, and skinned off one of her rose garters. She flung her bouquet and the garter out into the expectant crowd. Taffy caught the garter.
In a shower of rice, Blossom and her new groom dashed for the lead limousine. It took off, old shoes and tin cans dragging behind it.
Pierre was gripped by four pairs of determined female hands. "You're coming with us!"
He was hustled into the second limousine and they blasted away after the first one. He was squeezed in with four fumbling hard-breathing girls.
Jinx had got the edge on the other three. She sat mashed against him. "Now that the wedding's over," she breathed, "the bridesmaids can have a few moments of their own."
His eyes sparkled, not only at all the jiggling breasts and flying soft hair, but at the diamonds and pearls. They were marquise-cut, square, round, and pear-shaped, set in four-leaf clover patterns, lilies of the valley, hearts entwined.
Sonia reached a hand over his lap and laid it on his thigh. "Mother isn't the only one who's going to have fun."
Fingers toyed with him through his pants leg.
"Girls," he beseeched them. "I'm just one poor guy and there are four of you."
Bee's heavy-lidded eyes were only inches from his own. She was a fluffy redhead. "You look like the kind of a guy who can take care of four girls."
Sonia; a fetching brunette, giggled. "Testing one, two, three, four!"
At this moment he felt sure he could do it.
"Girls, I'm at your service."
Jinx squirmed against him. "At our mercy, you mean."
The cars drew up before the hotel where the reception was to be held. As he crossed .the sidewalk in the female clutches he saw another car pull in and Taffy got hurriedly out. Thank heaven, he thought, she wasn't far behind.
"Look," said Joyce. "We've got to make a showing at the reception. A few drinks and then we'll split."
"Mother'll make straight for a bedroom any way," said Jinx.
They hurried into a large ballroom, other guests swarming behind them. The bride and groom cut a towering, seven-tiered cake, releasing two lovebirds which fluttered around the room.
Magnums of champagne were passed around.
"What're you drinking, honey?" asked Joyce.
"We don't even know your name, doll," said Bee.
"Pedro."
Sonia tittered. "Now we know what to put on your tombstone."
"What're you drinking, Pedro honey?"
"Straight vodka."
"Better all have some," said Jinx.
They swilled vodka.
"There goes mother!" observed Bee.
"And here we go!" rejoiced Joyce.
They bundled Pierre toward the elevators. Out of the tail of his eye he caught the blue figure of Taffy following somberly.
"Plenty of bedrooms upstairs," said Sonia.
"How do you want it?" he asked. "One at a time?"
"One at a time?" scoffed Jinx. "That'd take all day."
"At least two at a time," said Joyce.
He felt like a man being rushed to his execution.
The elevator shot up to a quiet floor and they all laughingly entered a suite.
One of the girls locked the door and threw the key away.
"The bedroom's in there, honey baby," said Bee. "You go in there and get ready."
CHAPTER TWELVE
All three of them dived for the huge Hollywood bed. They piled in together, the two pairs of feminine hands pawing and pulling at him. The intense expressions on the girls' faces and the fixed look in their eyes told him that they were no longer playing around. They had gone beyond the limit of preliminary teasing and their bodies were aching for the vigorous desires of an unquenchable male.
Their lungs working like bellows, both girls wriggled on their backs, their limbs spread apart, their hands tugging him toward their ripe rewards.
If he didn't want to be ripped apart, he had to make his choice in that split moment. Which one of the two to start with? He always favored a blonde, and Joyce's silken topaz hair, half-closed blue-shadowed eyes, and wet open lips were irresistible. His hardened bronzed body moved over hers while beside them brunette Sonia groaned with impatience.
"Twenty times each!" murmured Joyce. They were making up rules for the fun and games.
He sunk himself into her and watched with escalating excitement the way her scarlet mouth wrenched around and the way her white teeth buried themselves in her lower lip to keep from crying out in pure joy.
Sonia was raised a little, her eyes on them, counting out loud."-twelve, thirteen, fourteen-"
Ornery nymph, he thought.
"Twenty!" gasped Joyce, her eyes closed.
It took all of his will power to wrench free. Her sweet-scented flesh had maddened him for more the way banderiilas madden a proud bull to make him increase the ferocity of this charges.
Crazy to keep the pace from slackening off, he jerked himself away from Joyce and leaped at Sonia, She had braced herself, wide out and waiting. Their bodies smacked together, joining in one furious lunge.
Her body twisted on her shoulders, her black hair spilling all over the pillow, whites showing in her dark eyes. She locked her arms around his body.
The blonde was dilated for him now. She took his plunging assault smoothly. She wrapped her arms around his neck possessively. Her hungry teeth nibbled into his earlobe as she husked: "Give it all to me first! Come on, you big stud!"
"Save it for me," cried the brunette, "and I'll give you a real finish ... Hey! ... Twenty!"
He tore himself away from the blonde. It was getting to be a labor of love, trying to hold out as long as he could, not knowing which one would take him first. Russian roulette in bed with a couple of dolls.
"Please, please, please!" begged the brunette, kissing and kissing his face.
His teeth locked together as he controlled all those surging desires that boiled again and again to the top. The brunette's body flopped in a wild peak under him. For a moment he thought he had lost. His head swam. Then he tightened his rein and yanked himself free.
"You gave her a long count," gasped the blonde as he toppled on her. "All the better. You're ready for me now."
"Like hell he is!" snarled Sonia. "A brunette'll take him every time!"
Twenty!
"Oh, no, no!" begged Joyce. "Don't stop nowww!"
Her raging body blistered with the heat of her ardor.
He rose from her shuddering body. The brunette lay waiting for him.
"Give a redhead a chance!" interrupted another voice. "You think we can wait all day?"
Bee had flung herself between the blonde and the brunette. The sight of her white untasted flesh was like the final goad to the bull. The red-hot poker of his body dominated her, taking her in the moment of truth.
She squealed, her hair flaming all over the pillow, as his body erupted and reached a peak at the same time.
He ground his teeth together, trying to keep it from happening all at once. Somehow he succeeded. He couldn't spend it all in one place. He had a large order to fill.
The blonde and brunette sat up, saucer-eyed, as the redhead recoiled from him, twisting free and doubling up in the middle of the bed. She clutched her violated belly as if she had a sudden attack of colic.
He knelt on the bed, looking down at her. His own magnificent muscles hardly sagged.
"Who's next?" he demanded.
"Me!" said cinnamon-brown Jinx.
Her maroon eyes were already caressing him.
The three dolls in the bed had been at least partially satisfied. Jinx was fresh. He bounced off the bed and made for her, ready to seize her. He wrestled her to the floor.
"Get him down!" called out the blonde from the bed. "We'll all finish him!"
He was willing to be finished any way they liked.
Jinx got him down supine on the thick carpet. Their bodies linked, she sat upon him, looking down into his face with a lewd expression on hers, her breasts shaking away. The others came around them, staring down.
Joyce pushed down and embraced him. First his lips pursed up to kiss, then his long tongue leaped up.
The feminine-charged atmosphere of this female invaded bedroom exploded within him. He responded by loving Jinx.
Joyce, at his head, suddenly sank away from him, sagging onto her hands and knees.
Jinx flopped over on her side on the carpet.
He got up and sat on the edge of the bed, fighting to get his strength back. Bee and Sonia, the redhead and the brunette, came to him and knelt at his feet. They stroked him tenderly, uttering endearments, paying homage with their lips.
"Pedro! Pedro!" shuddered Sonia. "Don't make me wait any longer!"
"Baby," he muttered, "you're going to get yours! Right-' now!"
Her body shivered as he laid her on the bed. Male and female tangled and melted together, their bodies together. He could go now, really go, making every long stroke a rhapsody.
Her body quaked once, then again, before his own paroxysm came.
Sonia rolled away and blonde Joyce took her place.
His desires knew no limits as he kept on and on. He waited until she was sated before he spent himself.
Bee came to him, her hair a bonfire.
He was weakening and he knew it. It took all of the wheat-germ oil, raw egg yolks, and vitamin E, plus memories of all the blue films he had ever seen, to keep him going.
Bee was dangling limp arms and legs when he finished with her.
Jinx waited.
He knew his eyes were haggard. His flesh was toil-worn. He was worked out, his muscles drooping.
Her lips moved, wet and smiling. "I said you were a guy who could take care of four gals. Don't make me out a liar."
He grabbed her to him and pinned her to the bed, reveling in the way her eyes rolled up in their sockets. He gave it all he had to achieve sensation. His surface nerves seemed numbed, as if with novacaine. It took all the friction he could give it for titillation to reach down to the nerve-roots and electrify his shattered impulses.
She was begging him to end it before the final peak of lust came.
He rose up. The four girls were sprawled around the bedroom in attitude of satisfaction. He got to his legs. Weak-kneed, he tried to walk, his insides drained out of him.
He heard one of them stir behind him. "Don't go, Pedro," she implored faintly. "Don't go."
Gathering up his clothes, he fell out of the room.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Pierre had known in which hotel the reception was going to be held and he had supplied Taffy with master keys. She merely had to time herself before entering the suite. She opened the door with one of the keys.
Feminine clothing and jewels were scattered all over the living room. Coming from the bedroom were the squeals of the girls, the tumbling of bodies, the creak of the bed, and the very stench of rut.
Taffy clawed her hand into the pit of her belly, almost vomiting in her need for him. She swallowed the nausea back down and went scurrying after the jewels. She crammed them all into her big straw handbag and went out again, relocking the door behind her.
Her beautiful face grave, she took a cab back to Sin Alley.
It was nightfall before Pierre returned. He looked beat.
"Sorry, Taffy," he said. "I had to rest up. Those four meat hounds put me through the chopper. Besides, I came on a clue to the missing jade."
"You did?" Her interest heightened.
"Got it through the grapevine. The skipper of a garbage scow fished it out of the bay. He didn't know what to do with it and palmed it off for fifty bucks to lecher named Nitro. The skipper figured that it was just the thing that Nitro's gals could use."
"Do you know Nitro?"
"Yes. But he hasn't got it now. A couple of his best prosties had been picked up by the vice cops and tossed into the detention house. Nitro had the jade piece smuggled in to them. The gals are making good use of it inside the jail."
"I see," she said slowly. "And now you want me to go into the detention house and get the jade out."
He smiled. "You're learning."
"How am I going to get in there?"
"Get arrested. We're going out. I'll tell you what to wear. Just do as I say."
After dark, on 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue, Pierre and Taffy stood close together. He was dressed in a conservative business suit, looking like a gentleman. She wore a thin kelly green sweater that exaggerated her bust size, her hips slaunched wickedly in a ready-to-split kelly green skirt, and her long slim legs were perched high on skyscraper heels. Her face was heavily made up.
A policeman approached along the neon-lighted street.
Pierre "made a sudden grab for Taffy's arm and held her tightly. "Officer!"
The policeman shifted his course toward them. "Yes, sir?" he asked respectfully.
"This young lady is bothering me," protested Pierre.
"Bothering you?" The policeman eyed her flamboyant curves. A lighted sign was blinking behind his eyes: Prostitute!
"She tried to pick me up," said Pierre. "Solicit me."
"I see," rumbled the policeman. "Do you want to bring charges against her?"
"I certainly do. I believe it's duty of every citizen to help rid the street of this unsavory element. A decent man can't walk along the block without being insulted by the likes of her."
"Okay," said the policeman. He grabbed Taffy's other arm. "Come along with us, sister."
"Hey!" struggled Taffy. "I ain't done nothing Lemme go!"
"Resisting an officer?" The policeman gave her a whap across her big fanny with his nightstick.
Her rear cheeks joggled under the too-tight skirt. "Move it!"
They all moved toward the police station.
Later in the evening, Taffy piled out of the department of correction van with a lot of riffraff and was hustled into the detention house. There were questions by matrons and forms to be filled out and then she was sent through the showers.
She took a brief sluicing under tepid water, then stepped out of the snower stall onto the cold porcelain thing. A square towel lay over the back of a wooden bench for her. Battered slippers were on the floor.
The shower in the opposite stall stopped suddenly and a bleached blonde emerged, drops of water beading her naked white skin. Taffy saw the big upthrust breasts, both of them obscenely tattooed. The body tapered at the waist and flared provocatively at the hips. The bleached blonde's hard eyes sought out the hidden places of Taffy's body at first glance.
Instintively Taffy drew one rounded thigh in front of the other, but the other girl luxuriated in her own nakedness. She grimaced a smile at Taffy, then turned her back. Raising her arms high and walking on the balls of her bare feet, she did a few steps of a body-twisting dance, her over-developed buttocks wriggling like breasts.
She swung back abruptly to catch Taffy's inquisitive stare. "I'm Maxine Richards. What're you in for, hon?"
"Streetwalking," said Taffy nonchalantly.
"I guess we're just a coupla call girls," said Maxine. "Wanna team up?"
"What for?"
Maxine stared back, her lynx-like eyes glistening. "To bust outta here. What else?"
At that moment the crisp voice of the matron broke in. "All right, girls. The nurse is waiting. This way."
Taffy and Maxine accepted the coarse cotton nightdresses and slipped them on. Each was given a toothbrush, a plastic cup, a cake of soap, and a comb.
After an humiliating examination by the nurse-Taffy had to let a masculine-looking heavyweight in a white uniform peer curiously into every one of her body cavities-the girls were marched upstairs. They were in a narrow tier of cells. The officer unlocked one and motioned Taffy and Maxine to step inside.
She said curtly: "Food'll be brought to you in half an hour. Is there anything else you want to know?"
Taffy shook her head.
Brazenly Maxine said: "Yeah! Where can I get a man?"
The iron door scraped closed with a jarring thud. Keys rattled in the lock.
The next morning they were marched in for breakfast. Afterwards she was called into the office to be asked more questions. When she returned to the inmates she learned she and Maxine had been moved into the dormitory.
A half dozen girls squatted about the foot of a bunk. Maxine sat cross-legged on it, talking animatedly, but she stopped talking suddenly at the sight of Taffy.
Taffy hesitated, not wanting to break into the group without an invitation.
"Hey, hon!" called out Maxine. "Take a load off your feet. Come and join us. The water's fine."
The rest of the girls turned to look at Taffy, many of the stares downright envious.
Maxine kept a heartiness in her tones. "We've been yakking about the trade. A chick like you must do all right. Even when a cop busts you, he wouldn't believe a kid with an innocent puss like yours could be a prostie."
Taffy acted hardboiled. "You'd be surprised."
Most of the girls were smoking bombers done up like ordinary cigarettes. These had been smuggled in like everything else. The sweet, acrid odor of the gauge lay heavy in the still dormitory.
"You want a bammie?" asked Maxine. Before Taffy could refuse, she was tossed one. "Come on, hon, light up. You'll be kipping on foam rubber tonight."
To refuse now would bring on catcalls and spiteful remarks.
She let one of the other girls light the stick for her and drew in with little puffs, trying not to inhale. Even so, she could feel the light-headedness creep over her. Maxine's features grew indistinct and her voice came from far away.
"See! I told you," said Maxine. "The babe's no square. She's a down cat. Hey, Taffy, you wanna join up?"
Taffy tried to clear her head, aware of the danger that lay beneath this show of friendliness.
"Join up?" she repeated dazedly.
"Yeah, with Nitro. These're all his gals. We're getting ready to take over this dump."
"Sure, sure. What's there to lose?" Taffy let the roach drop from her hand and it smoldered on the cement floor.
Maxine's sneering face loomed closer. "We mark all Nitro's gals."
Some unknown horrible thing was about to happen to her. Fear became a blinding thing. She had to get out, to run. She turned on her heels.
One of the girls stuck out a foot and tripped her. She fell flat. Before she could rise, Maxine was astride her back.
"Get her over!"
Many obedient hands seized Taffy and flopped her over on her back. The tip of Maxine's bomber glowed between her sneering lips. "We're not trying to hurt you. We're only gonna brand you." Her tough jaw shot around. "Get that big one out!"
"No, no!" hollered Taffy. "Not there!"
Claws pulled back the cotton dress, baring her right breast. She felt the heat of Maxine's reefer against soft flesh.
She tried to scream, but a fleshy thigh was across her face, muffling her gagging mouth. Pain passed through her like an electric shock. She thrashed out wildly with her long legs and heard a cry of agony as her flying heels struck something soft and yielding.
Then, as suddenly as she had been sattacked, she was free, lying on her back on the cold cement floor.
As she rolled over, she saw a big matron padding into the dorm. Maxine huddled at the end of her cot. One of the other girls was doubled over, gasping for wind, after getting that kick in the belly.
"What's going on?" rumbled the matron. "What happened to you?"
Taffy got up slowly. "I tripped."
The matron's hard eyes filmed with anger. She spoke in a slow ponderous voice. "I been hearing about you, Maxine. I been hearing you and your bunch of punks have been thinking of taking over."
"You been hearing right, you fat creep," snarled Maxine. "What're you gonna do?" she taunted. "Gimme a dose of solitary?"
They all laughed.
"I can handle the likes of you myself." The matron reached out suddenly and grasped a handful of Maxine's long bleached hair. Maxine's head twisted and jerked around. Maxine's hand struck up at the big arm. The matron made a little grunting sound and Maxine moved quickly, driving her bent knee into the pit of the big woman's stomach.
The matron's mouth went slack. She leaned forward, gasping for breath. Maxine struck out with her fist, but the matron straightened up so that the blow only grazed her chin.
Maxine yelled: "Come on. Get her." But none of the other girls moved. It wasn't their fight.
The big woman suddenly came to life. She took a slow step toward Maxine. The bleached blonde gave ground, then came rushing in, her fists flailing like a man's. The matron seemed to pay no attention to the blows. She lumbered forward, a smile now creasing her fat homely face. Maxine drove her left fist deep into the matron's breast. Taffy winced in sympathy.
The matron tried to reach for her antagonist, but Maxine sidestepped, striking again. The matron's hunting expression did not change as she slowly advanced. Maxine was forced to retreat between two bunks.
The matron let go a clout that was heard all over the dorm. It connected solidly with Maxine's jaw. Maxine's eyes glazed and her mouth gaped open. She tumbled to the floor and lay still.
The matron rubbed her big hands together and stared around at the silent girls. She said softly: "Anyone else wanna try on? Anyone think they can take me?"
No one answered.
The matron chortled: "Yellow, all of you, and it's too damn bad, cuz I been aching to lay my hands on the whole lot of you filthy stinking queers."
She stalked away.
Hurriedly Taffy bent down to minister some aid to the fallen Maxine.
Maxine was already coming out of it, groaning: "What'd she hit me with?"
"I think you're all right."
"That settles it. I'm busting out. You coming with me?"
"Yes. But not until-"
"Not until what?"
"Not until you get me that thing you promised."
"That damned dildo!" cursed Maxine.
"You can get it?" beseeched Taffy.
"Of course I can. Only I'm not bringing it into this dorm. All these man-hungry monkeys'll want it." Her voice had dropped to an undertone. "We'll find a quiet spot. An unused cell. When do you want it?"
"Tonight."
"Okay " Her voice grew louder and more strident. "Help me up!"
"Tonight," said Taffy later to Pierre.
He was playing the part of a sympathetic visitor.
"Where'll you have it?"
"In a cell on the north side of the building."
"I'll be waiting in the street. Lower it down to me on a cord."
"Easy. This Maxine can get anything we need Cord she'll have."
"How're you going to get out? Have you given that any thought?"
"Maxine's making a jail break."
"Be careful, Taffy."
She looked up at him with big innocuous blue eyes. "Why?"
"I wouldn't want anything to happen to you."
"Do I mean that much?"
"I'd be lost without you."
"Darling," she said, "I'll get out as soon as I can."
Her eyes were full of him as he went out.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Later Maxine showed Taffy how to make a lethel blackjack by dropping a cake of soap into the toe of a stocking and twisting it around
"That lousy screw!" she cursed, meaning the fat matron. "No one belts me in front of my gals and gets away with it! I'll crack her rotten skull!"
They waited in the dark doorway that led from the dormitory. "Aren't the other gals coming?" asked Taffy.
"They're all too chicken to bust out. It's you'n me, hon. Don't go soft, now. Just follow me." She was thoughtful for a moment, something occurring to her. "Hey, where's that green thing?"
"It's laying right where I left it," answered Taffy.
"Where's that?"
"In the bung upstairs "
"Too late to get it now," shrugged Maxine. "Some of the other broads'll find it and make good use of it. That's my present to this dump."
Maxine peered out. Down below Taffy could see the light from the matron's open door.
"She's coming!" warned Maxine. "All right. Make it good."
The heavy tread of the fat matron's shoes echoed on the stairs. Taffy held her breath, hoping no one would get hurt In the last moment she had a dreadful urge to warn the matron.
Before she could recover herself, Maxine moved out like a fury. There was a scuffle of feet, a muffled cry, and the thud of a heavy body falling.
Taffy looked out into the dark hallway.
Maxine was reaching an arm toward her. "Hurry up, the other belt!"
Taffy handed her the leather strap she was carrying. Maxine snatched it from her and tied it in a loop about the matron's stout ankles. She had already stuffed an old cloth strip into the fat woman's mouth and had bound her hands behind her with another belt.
Hobbled, the matron kicked out wildly.
Maxine swore "That'll hold you, you tramp."
She snatched up the keys from the floor and they dangled in her hand. "Come on!" she yelled.
Taffy had an apprehension that the whole detention house could hear them make their getaway.
The two girls raced down the stairs, almost tripping over each other. They came to an abrupt halt at the front door.
Maxine fumbled frantically with the lock. In her nervousness she dropped the keys.
Another matron appeared, this one tall and gaunt. "What're you two up to?"
"What's it look like?" snarled Maxine.
She swung the homemade blackjack in a long loop. There was a bop when the bar of soap came in contact with the matron's cranium. The matron's eyes rolled up and she sank quietly to the floor.
Taffy had snatched up the keys. One fitted into the lock and the tumblers fell into place. The door opened. "Come on, Maxine! Let's get moving!"
They tumbled through onto the street steps, their shoes clattering in the dead of night, and they went pelting up the street toward the comer.
A long shining sedan was waiting for them. As they raced for it, the rear door opened invitingly as if by magic. Maxine took the lead and sprang into the back of the car Taffy was only one bound behind her. As soon as they had pilled up inside, the car took off with a smooth glide that whisked them out of the neighborhood in seconds.
Taffy and Maxine straightened themselves up on the rear seat. Taffy could see that the other occupant with them, besides the driver, was a lantern-jawed man.
"Meet Jimmy," said Maxine. "Hi, Jimmy!" Jimmy grunted.
"He's Nitro's first lieutenant. He don't say much. He's the strong silent type."
"So I notice," said Taffy.
Conversation died until they pulled up in front of an abandoned theatre in the west forties. Taffy and Maxine got out and Jimmy stood near them.
"I'll be going," said Taffy.
"Oh, no, you don't," said Maxine. "I promised you a hookup with Nitro. And a promise is a promise. Ain't that right, Jimmy?"
"Sure is," said Jimmy, getting a clutch on Taffy's arm that was unbreakable.
She was going to accept their kindness, it seemed, even if they had to force it down her throat. Taffy was led up the back alley to a door. Once inside, the lights were on and she could see where she was going. It looked just like the backstage of hundreds of other old theatres.
Smiling at doing a happy service, Maxine rapped on a dressing room door.
"Whozat?" asked a male voice inside.
"Maxine and friend!"
"Enter!"
Leaving Jimmy outside to guard the portal, the two girls entered. Taffy saw that the dressing room was fixed up to serve as an office. Sitting at a cloth-covered dining room table, a squat man with a balding head was eating his dinner off bone china with sterling silver flatware. He wore a dark suit and a silver tie and there was a gloomy look on his face, as if business hadn't been so good lately.
The gloomy look began to melt away when his heavy-lidded eyes fell on Taffy's face and abundant figure.
"Whozis?" he asked.
"Taffy!" introduced Maxine with lots of verve. "Ain't she a doll! I told her you'd take her under your wing, Nitro."
"First thing first." He ate a piece of roast Long Island duckling without taking his eyes from Taffy bulging bustline. "I'm glad to see you outta stir. You said you'd break out and you did. I like a bird who's good to her word. Where'd you pick up the pouter pigeon?"
"In the pokey. She'll be great for you. She's an all-around gal."
"I can guarantee her nothing," said Nitro. "It's my firm policy, no matter how highly recommended, to test every broad before I sign her up."
"Sure, Nitro!" agreed Maxine. "Like I said, you'll love her."
"I hope so, my dear Maxie." His eyes weighed the possibilities of Taffy. "She looks like she's built to take everything. But we'll see."
"What makes you think I'll wanna stay?" spoke up Taffy. She was miffed at being treated like a prize Holstein.
"What? What?" Nitro wiped giblet gravy off his lips with a napkin. "I can guarantee you at least forty customers a night! And on very good nights it'll run up to sixty!"
"Sixty!" Taffy was aghast. "Is that all?"
"Huh! Big time operator!" leered Nitro. "Think you can do better than Maxie?"
"I didn't say that!"
"That's okay, hon," smiled Maxine. "No harm done. There's nothing like a little friendly competition."
"In half an hour," said Nitro, "that theater out there is gonna be fulla men, at a hundred bucks a head, all foaming at the bit to see a whore show called Bride of the Regiment. You'll make a delicious dish as the bride and there'll be a dozen studs waiting in the wings for a crack at you."
"I can't," said Taffy lamely. "I don't know the script."
"No trouble, hop," said Maxine. "You'll hear a recording-long playing-coming through the loudspeaker. It'll tell the whole story. All you have to do is hip-sync."
"Hip-sync!"
I have to get out of here, she thought.
"Before that begins," he resumed, "we'll have a little private performanre." He waved his hand across the table. "Set an extra chair for Taffy, plizz."
"Sure." Maxine put another chair across the table from Nitro. "Sit down, Taffy," he said.
"Inviting me to dinner?" Taffy sat down, facing him, crossing one knee high.
"In a manner of speaking. Maxie, you stand back a ways. Pretend you're a waitress. Watch her style." He gazed back at Taffy and she could see his eyes glimmer up with anticipation. "Most men, you'll agree, love a French date."
"I agree," said Taffy.
"Now, here's the scene." He chewed his food faster with mounting excitement. "We're together in public, in a restaurant. You understand what I need. Only we can't do anything openly. That waitress has sharp eyes." He paused to chuckle lewdly. "So, baby, when no one's looking, you slip down in your chair and duck under the table."
"What?"
"The long table cloth'll hide you. All right. Let's go." He fidgetted. "Take a drink first. Maxie, bring her some brandy."
Maxine, acting like a blase waitress, her hips swinging in wide arcs, sauntered over from a liquor bar with a glass of brandy.
"Now," said Nitro, his oily eyes sliding around. "The waitress has turned her back. Quick, baby! Under the table!"
Taffy let her broad bottom slide off the seat of the chair and she sank out of sight beneath the enveloping white tablecloth.
She was on her hands and knees under the table, the cloth all draped around her tent-like, just enough light seeping through to permit her to see what she was doing.
The lower part of Nitro's body and his legs were in front of her. His thick thighs were spraddled out expectantly. Above she could hear the clink of a fork on a plate.
"More coffee, sir?" she heard Maxine ask, still play-acting the waitress.
"Yeah. Thanks."
"Where's your young lady friend?"
"Gone to see a man about a dog."
What an act! Taffy took a deep shuddering breath. Get it over with, she thought, quick!
She touched one of his bulbous knees with her fingertips, sliding her hand gently toward his middle. She felt muscles leap eagerly to greet her experimenting fingers. She squeezed her fingers on his pants leg, shaping him as if he were a lump of modeling clay, kneading the contour into high relief with the hardness of marble.
She leaned her head forward and opened her mouth. She kissed him and felt his responses.
His hand tore into the roots of her hair and she knew she had him.
Chomp, chomp, chomp!
A gasping sound came out of his lower belly. The hand tearing at her hair-roots went flaccid and relaxed.
"What a hellova way to go!" he groaned. "Get up outta there!"
She climbed back onto her chair and looked across the table at him. All the ruddy color was washed out of his face, leaving his complexion like chopped liver.
Someone knocked on the door.
Maxine opened the door. "Hello!"
Pierre was standing there.
He smiled apologetically. "I'm one of your paying customers, Nitro. Only I can't stay. I'll give you $500 if you'll let me spend the rest of the night with your best gal. And I'll take that one!"
He pointed at Taffy.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The way Pierre showed up in the clutch and rescued Taffy was simply explained. He had recovered the jade objet d'art that Taffy had lowered from the cell window. Then he waited in the street until Taffy and Maxine made their jailbreak. All he did was follow the shiny black sedan in his own car until it reached the theatre. He saw Maxine and Jimmy take Taffy inside. Getting in himself wasn't much of a problem. A lot of other men were buying their way in to see the lewd show.
Nitro hated to lose his star performer. "Money is money." He was full of those little homilies. Pocketing Pierre's $500, he said to Maxine: "You'll have to wear the filmy negligee, Maxie."
As they left, Pierre murmured something to Taffy exhausted. She fell asleep beside him in the Maserati. When they reached Sin Alley, she was slumbering so deeply that he had to lift her out bodily and carry her upstairs to bed.
Bad dreams made her toss restlessly. When she woke up it was mid-morning.
She came out into the kitchen to find him drinking coffee, cappuccino style.
"Have some," he said.
"Thanks. What happened last night?"
"When?" He topped her cup with whipped cream and sprinkles of grated orange peel and cinnamon.
She averted her face coyly. "After we got home."
"Nothing," he said.
She was sure of that. If something had happened she would have known it. Plenty. "Oh," she said with disappointment.
He sat down again. "How would you like to meet a man who had $30,000 in diamonds?"
She tried to look at things from the bright side. "Wonderful." She sipped from her cup. "You know what they say about the friendship of diamonds to gals."
"I said he had $30,000 in diamonds."
"Oh?" She was disappointed again. "I feel the loss already."
"His name's Rudy York. I want to see him and ask him some questions and try to get him to open up.
"Why him?" she asked. "If he no longer has the loot."
"There's been nothing about it in the newspapers. All that's buzzing around is his name and a list of the stolen property. It all smells fishy." He regarded her steadily. "Something else I want to tell you, Taffy. Cosette is trying to freeze you out. He was over here the night before last, while you were in the slammer, trying to convince me he could take your place."
"She was?" Taffy couldn't think of Cosette as a he.
"Strange thing. Cosette was wearing an amethyst pin. It was exactly like the one on York's stolen property list."
"You think she stole the diamonds as well?"
"That's what we've got to find out. Get your shoes on. You can size York up while we talk."
Fifteen minutes later they went down to the Italian runabout' and got in. He steered up the West Side.
"Do you think he'll be in at this time of the afternoon?" she asked. "I hope so."
Rudy York was in. When they reached the third floor apartment door they could hear the strains of Bela Bartok's Hungarian folk songs on a hi-fi inside. Pierre rang the doorbell. The volume of music softened. There was a rattle of a safety bolt being yanked back before the door opened cautiously. A man in shirtsleeves looked out.
"Mr. York?"
"Yeah." York examined the pair carefully, his eyes lingering long on Taffy's face and figure.
Pierre was studying him too. He seemed to Taffy to be a tough customer.
"This is Miss Virginia Rivers," said Pierre. York smirked a hello at her. "I'm Dr. Kroy."
"What kinda doctor?"
"A psychoanalyst."
"A real one?"
"You can look me up in the Directory of Medical Specialists."
"I should go to so much trouble. I believe you. What do you want?"
"We came to see you about your diamonds."
York shot a scared look up and down the hall. His voice dropped a decibel. "Who told you about that?" he rasped.
York's actions weren't those of a man who obeyed the laws. Pierre, it was certain to Taffy, had a hunch about him.
"Not the police, apparently," said Pierre. "Do you want to talk about it inside? No use letting the neighbors get an earful."
"Yes, no, come in, excuse the housekeeping. I live alone. Sit here-Miss Rivers? You want I should turn off the music?"
"No," smiled Taffy. "Leave it on. I like it."
Pierre took a chair on the other side of the room, turning York to face him, so that Taffy could study him from the sidelines.
Pierre was crisply professional. "Why haven't you gone to the police about it?"
York hesitated. "I was hoping to recover them myself."
"I'd like to offer you my services."
"As a head shrinker?"
"In getting the gems back for you."
"Why're you mixed up in my affairs?"
"I have a patient. She has a guilt complex. She thinks she stole your diamonds."
"Oh, she does, does she? Well, if she's got them, she can give them right back. No questions asked."
"It's not so easy. I don't know if she's telling me the truth. But you know who took them. If you'll tell me what happened, there's a fifty-fifty chance that it might be worked out. Tell me your side of it. It might help speed the return of your jewels."
"I dunno," said York doubtfully."
"Whatever you tell me," encouraged Pierre, "will be held in strict confidence."
"Why? I'm not one of your patients."
"No, but we're doing this in behalf of my patient. And that's confidential."
York paced the room. T gotta get those diamonds back, that's for sure. They're my whole business. If what I tell you won't go any farther-"
"It won't."
York knotted his big fists. "If I could see that black-headed floozie, I'd bake her talk!"
"Black-headed floozie?" asked Pierre mildly.
"That's your patient, ain't it?"
'I haven't said what she looks like. Let's get on with it. You're in the diamond trade. Where do you keep your stones-when you have them?"
"In my money belt." York sat down, facing Pier re. "I'd like to see somebody take it away from me-" He deflated like a pricked balloon. "While I'm conscious," he finished lamely.
Pierre grinned. "The babe gave you a mickey, did she?"
York muttered: "That damn teaser! That was the only way she could get to me. Nobody can break in here. I got nine-inch safety bolts on front and back doors, as well as roller locks. And if anybody did get in, they'd have to belt me out first."
Taffy had been admiring him. "You look more than a match for any man, Mr. York."
He grinned sheepishly at her. "But-" he shrugged. "Every man to his weakness." He kept giving Taffy a long glance, concentrating on her crossed knees for a moment, then goggling at her big breasts. He grew red as his temperature rose. With an apologetic cough, he turned back to Pierre. "I might as well spill the whole story, doc."
Pierre closed his eyes gently and placed his fingertips together. He must have seen psychiatrists do that in the cinema. "Pray do," he said.
"Well," said York, "I'm pretty much of a lone wolf." He smirked again at Taffy as he said wolf. She gave him another big encouraging smile. It strengthened him to go on and incriminate himself. 'I don't mix much with anybody. When I do-" His face clouded again at the thought of his latest conquest and defeat. "I like to prowl around the after-hours bottle clubs. I meet some off-beat characters there and everybody is in a mood for fun."
"And," interrupted Pierre, "you carried the diamonds around with you as you prowled."
"Sure. Nobody had the nerve to try anything funny with me. You see, I had to carry the stones with me because I never bothered to get the necessary trade license for my business." He grinned embarrassedly. "That makes me slightly illegal."
"Slightly," agreed Pierre. "Were they smuggled as well?"
"No comment," growled York. That was why he didn't want the cops in. He grimaced. "It was at one of these late bottle clubs that I ran into this Joan O'Hara, as she called herself. Well, any man who was lonesome would have gone for this whore. Excuse me, Miss Rivers. She's as easy to pick up as a ten-dollar tip. Long black hair flowing down over her shoulders. A ripe figure busting through a skin-tight sheath dress. And using all the tricks at her command to rouse a man. She went to work on me, all right, and like a wall-eyed sucker I swallowed the bait."
He mopped his flushed red face wiht his handkerchief.
"She knew enough about me and my habits to play me in close. She told me that she was just cr-rrazy to hear some Richard Strauss on hi-fi and it naturally followed that I suggested that she hear some Strauss-in my apartment. On the way up here she was full of promises, but no performance. I thought that once she had a few more drinks the barriers would be down. I mixed two bourbon highballs and gave her one. She looked cuddly on the sofa. It must have been while my back was turned that she slipped the knockout into my glass."
Taffy was amused at York's recital of woes.
"How can people be so mean?" she sympathized.
"Yeah! I thought things were warming up at last. I remember getting a glimpse of long lovely legs in dark opera-length hose when everything went hazy. The lights went out. When I woke up it was near dawn. I was cold and sprawled out on the sofa. My clothes were rumpled. Naturally, I thought, only I'd been too pie-eyed to remember the fun. I was alone, I soon discovered, and my money belt was gone. She'd done it the only way it could have been done. And I was so sizzling mad I could have killed somebody."
He stopped in a black humor.
"Lucky you didn't," said Pierre. "If we return the diamonds to you, everything will be square. You agree?"
"Tell me where she is," said York brightly. Taffy could read his mind. He wanted to find his Joan O'Hara first.
"That's another of my confidences," simled Pierre. He had got from York all that he was going to get. 'We had better go, Virginia."
York walked them to the door. "I'll be seeing you again, I hope." His eyes were boring into Taffy. "Real soon. And with the diamonds."
"Oh, yes," she breathed.
Pierre smiled politely and followed Taffy out.
As they got into the Maserati, he said: "You did a lot to soften up the big bad wolf. What do you think, Taffy?"
"Was it Cosette? York's description was too flimsy to really identify her. She sounded like the heroine of a paper back novel."
"We're going to see the lady ourselves."
"Trouble is," said Taffy, "she didn't swipe those diamonds for sentimental reasons. By this time they've gone to a fence."
"That's what I'm afraid of," he said.
"Where does Cosette live?"
"Evergreen Apartments."
Pierre drove into a posh neighborhood. He helped Taffy out at the curb in front of an apartment house.
"5B," he said.
Taking Taffy's arm, he led her inside. A self-service elevator took them up to the fifth floor.
He rang the bell of Apartment 5B. Nobody answered.
"Anybody coming?" he said in an undertone. She looked each way. "No."
He took skeleton keys out of his pocket. In a moment the door was unlocked.
"We haven't been invited," he said, with a motion of his hand toward the open door, 'but Cosette doesn't stand too much on convention."
He moved carefuly into the foyer, calling out: "Anybody home?"
Stil no answer.
The foyer led into a sitting room, tastefully furnished. There was a breakfast nook and another door off to a bedroom.
He walked into the bedroom. "Search the drawers," he said.
The room was ultra-feminine with a big Hollywood bed. Taffy opened the drawers of the vanity table. Undies and hosiery came into view, silks, satins, nylons. Under a pair of cobwebby black lace panties Taffy found a fat roll of greenbacks, held with a rubber band. It was a typical female hiding place.
"I found it," she said.
He took the roll of bills out of her hand and rapidly counted them. "$20,000. A nice round figure."
"Cosette fenced the diamonds," he said. "I thought you said they were worth $30,000," said Taffy.
"$20,000 would be the marked-down fence's price. The diamonds are gone. We're out of luck."
"What are you going to do with that money?"
He tossed it back into Cosette's drawer. "I don't stoop to petty thievery. There's no kick in stealing plain money."
"What'll we do now?"
"Wait for Cosette. He wants to take your place with me. We'll have a showdown and see."
Taffy had confidence in herself. Having a showdown with Cosette didn't worry her.
Taffy continued to be interested in the contents of the apartment while Pierre took his ease in a chair, waiting.
There was a tap of high heels coming in the door.
Cosette came to a dead pause at the entrance to the bedroom when she saw her unexpected visitors. Taffy's blue eyes scrutinized the brunette. The black hair hung limp and lustruous on the slim shoulders. She was wearing the kind of dress that brought out a man's eyes. Abnormally pointed breasts stabbed through the thin fabric.
"Well, well!" said the husky contralto. "Make yourselves at home!"
"I thought you'd be glad to see us," grinned Pierre.
"You-yes," said Cosette. "You know Taffy."
Cosette shot her a scathing glance. "Met her." She entered the bedroom, stumbling a little on those sky-high heels.
Taffy was thinking: She could fool me!
Casually lighting a cigarette, Pierre regarded both feminine figures through a haze of blue tobacco-smoke. "It's time we got something settled. I can only use one partner."
"I know I'm better than she is," glared Cosette.
"Prove that," said Pierre.
"I just stole handfuls of diamonds," bragged Cosette.
"I know," said Pierre. "A nice haul."
"What more proof do you want?" Cosette swaggered across the room, her well-defined hips drawing eyes like a magnet, to where Pierre sat contemplating her. She slipped a slender arm around his broad shoulders.
Watching them, Taffy could feel her blood boil. Jealousy? Of course she was jealous! I'll scratch that cat's eyes out!
An enticing hip had settled itself down on the arm of Pierre's chair. Cosette purred: "You can have a lot more fun with me than you can with her."
To prove it, she leaned her hand gently on his thigh, the fingers playful. He sucked in a deep lungful of tobacco smoke to try to control himself.
Taffy had seen his reaction. He could go for this fake female!
Cosette cooed: "Tell her to go, darling."
Pierre placed his hand on her hip and pushed her temptations away from him. Cosette had to slide off the arm of the chair. She stood up and looked venomously at Taffy.
"We're only wasting time," he said. "Okay, I'll make my choice. I need a gal who makes a vivid impression in clothes."
Both of them struck imposing attitudes for him.
"You look like a couple of dolls," he said, admiring them both. "But with me, things go a lot further. I want to see how well you strip."
"Strip?" said Cosette with a flutter in her velvet voice. "I don't mind. But how far?"
"All the way," he said.
Cosette looked apprehensive. "I don't want to go all the way."
"You'll have to," said Pierre, "if you want me to pick between you and Taffy. Otherwise, it's no contest. Ready, Taffy?"
"Ready!" she sang out with a big confident smile.
"Girls," he said, acting impartial, "stand a few feet apart. Give yourselves plenty of room. Ready?"
They both nodded.
"Start stripping!"
A girl, thought Taffy, can get so accustomed to doing this that it becomes automatic. She had to concentrate on giving Pierre a special thrill with each garment that fell.
She was wearing a little grey form-fitting suit. It was hardly able to contain her big curves. Gratefully she unbuttoned the tight jacket. Only a white net bra was underneath. Her breasts rolled up out of it like creaming surf. She unzipped the skirt that was glued to her hips, tummy, and thighs. She corkscrewed her hips out of it and let it drop around her ankles.
Cosette had already removed her own clinging dress. She was moving slowly now, hesitant at revealing her secrets. Taffy still had to admire what she saw of Cosette. The large pointed breasts that stuffed the black bra still looked real in their flesh-colored abundance. The torso was clad in an all-over form-hugging garment made of pink stretch material.
Taffy jigged in place in bra and panties.
Cosette's disrobing hands fluttered to a halt.
"The rest of it, Cosette," said Pierre.
A troubled expression on her face, Cosette slowly peeled off the body stocking. Under it was a girdle with padded hips and fanny. The lean bare waist, sucked in with excitement and trepidation. With agonizing slowness, Cosette, unhooked her bra and let it slip away. Gummed to her own chest were false breasts of extra-large size made of soft vinyl. They were the color of human skin with angry red points.
"Please," moaned Cosette, "you've seen enough."
"All, said Pierre.
Unhappily Cosette unstuck the falsies. They fell from her hands and bounded on the floor like big rubber balls.
There was nothing there now except a pale, flat, hairless male chest.
"Damn you!" swore Cosette. "Take a good look!"
Hooking thumbs in the waistband of the girdle, the femme strained to get the binding garment off hips. It came away, taking with it the rounding padding of derriere and belly.
Taffy's curious eyes searched the pitiful body for signs of manhood. The development was painfully small. He was a peanut of a man.
"The wig," instructed Pierre.
With a sob, the wig came off.
He had a completely bald head.
The entire body was hairless.
"Good grief," breathed Taffy, "you poor thing. What happened to you?"
Cravenly Cosette tried to hide his masculinity with cupped hands. "Alopecia totalis."
"What?" said Taffy, not comprehending.
"Completely without hair," supplied Pierre.
Taffy looked with shocked eyes at this very unmasculine man. It was this gaze of horrified rejection that finally broke the female impersonator. With a cry of anguish, the thin body launched itself full length on the big bed and began to sob heartbrokenly.
Pierre snubbed out his cigarette. "Let's go, Taffy."
Quickly she got into her clothes. Mr. Cosette was still sobbing on the bed when they left.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
"Cosette," said Pierre, "won't be coming back. Not into our lives."
"I feel sorry for him," she said.
"I guess it is tough," he admitted. "He's trying to make it in a woman's world and all the odds are against him. I had to show him up. Make him see he couldn't compete with a real woman."
He bought a newspaper and led her into a fashionable restaurant. "We haven't had lunch."
While waiting for their order, he glanced at the newspaper. "Look at this," he said with mounting interest. "Queen Elena of Pandorra has just arrived in this country. She's stopping at the Vanderlip. Pandorra," he informed her after reading some more, "is a little principality between Spain and Portugal. Dethroned by the vicissitudes of internal politics, Queen Elena had to flee her country. A revolutionary faction has taken over. She did manage to escape with the crown jewels." He blew out his lips in a surprised whistle. "A tiara and septre encrusted with diamonds worth a queen's ransom. And this quote from the queen herself: 'I'm the lonesomest woman in the world.'" He looked up at Taffy.
She grabbed the newspaper. "There's no picture of her."
"I know what she looks like."
"Gorgeous, I suppose," she mumbled.
He had a far-away look in his eyes. He didn't answer her remark. "We missed out on York's diamonds, you know."
"And you have your heart set on diamonds today," she said, a bit coolly.
He grinned. "Diamonds and Queen Elena. Tonight we'll have both."
"Why do you do this, Pierre? You have enough now to stop."
"It's too much fun."
"It's dangerous, Pierre," she pleaded. "One of these times you'll get caught."
"Not for a long time," he assured her. "You wouldn't quit? Even for me?"
"Are you asking me to?"
"Not asking. Just suggesting."
"I don't think I could. You wouldn' want me to, either. Think of how dull it would be if I were just a maitre d'?"
A waiter served a salad. She nibbled at it. "Do you like me, Pierre?"
"Like you!" His eyes blazed at her. 'You're simply the most wonderful gal I ever met. I didn't think they made them like you."
"I'm glad you think that."
"How can you doubt it?"
"After that first night, you haven't shown me."
"Shown you?"
Her slim legs were crossed underneath the table. She slowly raised one glossy spike-heeled pump and let the caressing toe of it slide in between his legs. Even through the thin shoe-leather she felt the welcoming response of his muscles.
He stared across the table at her.
She smiled at him and wiggled her toe vigorously He went for his salad like an over-stimulated rabbit.
His smile wobbled a little. "As a kid, you must have loved playing with matches."
She continued her teasing smile. "I kept starting fires. Now I want to start a conflagration."
"Keep this up," he choked, "and it'll take the whole fire department to put me out."
Relentlessly she kept it up. She was determined to have him blazing so high for her that he couldn't hold back his ardor any longer.
She shifted her tickling foot, seeking the more sensitive. She saw sweat glisten on his smooth bronze forehead.
"Give up?" she asked, her white teeth clenched viciously.
"I'd better," he gasped, "if I want to walk out of here under my own power."
One last rubbing of her gleaming patent leather and then she lowered her foot.
"Now eat your lunch," she said. "You'll need all your strength."
"I know I will," he said.
She wrinkled her nose playfuly at him. "I hope you'll be calmed down enough to leave."
"It'll be an effort," he replied.
Late lunch over, they left the restaurant. She thought he was going to steer immediately for home, but instead he drove her to an exclusive ladies' dress shoppe on Madison Avenue.
"What are we doing here?" she asked.
"I have special tastes I like to cater to," he said.
She was willing to go along with any of his tastes as long as the results were gratifying.
"What does the young lady wish?" asked the couturiere.
"I'll tell you," said Pierre.
He picked out for her a black satin evening gown, floor length, with a knee-high slit in front. It was strapless, its neckline plunging deeper than a scuba driver.
"Try it on," he said.
Taffy went into one of the private dressing rooms. Breathlessly she got into the gleaming gown. It was so daring she hesitated to set foot back into the shoppe.
At last she stepped out. The scooped out front just missed showing her nipples. Her long legs were sheathed as if in a mermaid's tail. Even with the slit to the knee she could barely hobble.
A high voltage charge leaped out of his dark eyes at her.
She turned around and tenderly put her hands to the rounded masses of her buttocks. "Too tight?"
"No," he said at once. "It's just right. For me." He picked up a magnificent stole of Russian lynx and draped it about her bare white shoulders. "She'll take it," he announced.
Taffy made a move to return to the dressing room.
"No," he said quickly. "Leave it on. I want you just the way you are. How much?" he said to the modiste.
She named a staggering sum. He peeled off bills and took the receipt.
Nestling herself in the fluffy lynx, Taffy let him lead her out to the Maserati.
Seating herself carefully in it, she said: "I didn't think you had a fetish for slinky black gowns."
"I have," he said. "It will help me immensely tonight."
"Anything for you," she smiled happily.
He drove away through the streets and finally stopped in front of an elegant hotel.
A brass-buttoned doorman came bounding out of the entrance toward them.
"The Vanderlip!" she said, surprised. "What're we doing here?"
"This's where Queen Elena is staying. Remember?"
"Queen Elena!" she said angrily. "You tricked me! You've still got her on your mind! I thought this was going to be an evening with me!"
"It will be with you, my sweet. But why not mix a little business with pleasure?"
"Oh Pierre, you're impossible!"
With the doorman's help, she got out of the low car. Gallantly Pierre took her elbow as she hobbled into the lobby. Every eye was on her.
Stopping at the desk, Pierre said: "Queen Elena's suite, please."
The clerk smiled unctuously. "I'm sorry. Nobody's allowed to distub her."
"This," said Pierre, "is the Princess."
The clerk ogled. "Princess!"
Taffy, standing proudly, certainly looked like a princess.
"And she's not used to waiting," Pierre informed the clerk.
"Sorry. I didn't know about the Princess. Shall I inform Her Highness-?"
"No. We'll surprise Mama."
"Yes, yes. Eleventh floor."
"Thank you." Pierre offered his arm to Taffy again and they made their way to the elevators.
"I shouldn't," she said, still angry, "do anything for you again." Ever.
"I promise things will be different after tonight."
Her full lower lip trembled with frustration. "I wanted it to be us tonight. When I think of what I did to get you excited-for her-I could now scream!"
"Taffy," he murmured, "you're an adorable devil. I swear that whatever I do tonight I'll be thinking of you."
"Ha ha!" she laughed hollowly.
The elevator took them up to the eleventh floor.
"Which door?" Pierre asked the elevator operator.
"Any one of them. She's rented the entire floor."
When they were alone in the corridor, Pierre rapped briskly on a door that had a Do Not Disturb sign on it.
There was a movement inside and a female voice asked: "Who is it?"
"A friend," he answered. "To chase away your loneliness."
The door swung open.
Her shape filled the doorway. She had the face of a woman in her fifties with a nose too large. The thick body had 250 pounds of fat on it. The red dress stretched for yards in every direction, ready to split in a dozen places from the strain of the giant-sized breasts and the sow belly.
Taffy could easily believe she was looking at the homeliest woman in Europe.
She stole a glance at Pierre. Momentary panic seized him.
The royal eyebrows, thick and black, raised. "Si, senor?"
Pierre recovered and smiled his most charming. "Manhattan welcomes you, my queen, and offers you the services of an escort."
Her black eyes had banked fires in them. "You?"
"Si. si!"
The black eyes merely ricochetted off Taffy and rebounded to Pierre again. "You for me? Come in, come in!"
Warmly Pierre took the queen's arm and strolled inside with her. Taffy followed, looking at the rhythmic bouncing of Elena's big hams underneath the red dress.
Taffy smiled to herself. So this was what he had to please. She was mad enough at him to think that he got what he deserved.
Once inside, he introduced Taffy. "She must stay," he explained to Elena. "She's a sort of handmaiden. If need be, she will help."
"I won't need any help," said Elena, her eyes fixed on him. "But if you say so, she can stay."
"I want to see you-regally," he said. "In your robes. And all that goes with it."
"Yes," she said eagerly. "I will dress for you. Wait, querido!"
Her gigantic hips went shagging off into another room.
Taffy turned to him with a smirk. "You don't intend to go to bed with her!"
"Of course. That's why I brought you along."
"You want me to watch you and her! You've got your nerve!"
"That's the only way I can do it, Taffy."
"I have a good mind to walk out and leave you flat."
"Taffy!"
"No!"
"Taffy, I love you!"
He sounded so sincere that she softened all over. Her knees felt as if the joints had turned into soft butter. "Oh, darling! Tell me a thousand times!"
"I'll show you a thousand times. I won't be able to do anything with her unless I'm looking at you."
"All right! This once!"
Queen Elena walked back toward them majestically. She was wearing a loose purple robe trimmed with ermine. On top of her head was a scintillating crown and she held a sparkling septre upright in her hand.
"My queen!" cried Pierre, bowing low.
Taffy, following his example, tried to drop a curtsy in her tight black satin gown.
His eyes were dazzled by the crown.
Elena observed him looking at it. "This," she said, "represents that rare mountain ram of my beloved Pandorra. They say that ages and ages ago my royal family was sired by a ram."
On the tiara the ram's head was sculptured in diamonds. It has bordered with white roses made of diamonds and leaves fashioned of diamond baguettes.
"I'm fascinated by the history of your family," he said.
Her black eyes were assessing his worth too. "The legend is that the last queen will also meet a ram. I believe it will happen. Soon."
She smiled at him with square slabs of teeth.
He glanced at Taffy. "Prepare the way to the boudoir."
No matter in which direction Taffy turned, the way led into a bedroom. She walked slowly before them, knowing that his eyes were devouring her shapely hindquarters so flagrantly displayed in the skin-tight gown. She moved, all her ball-bearings working.
In the bedroom she picked up an atomizer as she passed the dresser and sprayed the bed with perfume. Then she stepped back, trying to get out of the queen's sight, but keeping directly in his line of vision.
"Remove her robes!" said Pierre.
From behind, Taffy reached out and carefully disrobed the queen. The sight beneath was unbelievable.
Elena stood naked. Her monster breasts, the size of watermelons, were pendulous with their own weight. She had hips like a hippo. Massive thighs tapered down into small ankles and feet. She balanced on tiny points like a spinning top.
Taffy took the sparkling crown and sceptre.
Elena reclined on the bed and Taffy watched him love up those foothills of flesh. His eyes remained on Taffy. Only the sight of her, she knew, was bringing him to full arousal.
"My queen," he murmured. His now nude body settled down over the grotesquely huge one.
Taffy gave him something to stare at. She let the lynx fur slide off her own naked creamy shoulders. She moved slowly about.
She bent deeply forward, letting him look into the succulent valley of her breasts. She turned away from him, her back to him, bending far over, her rear spreading firmly in the glowing black satin.
She ran her hands over herself, puffing up her chest until the thin material all but split apart.
His eyes fevered on her. She saw explosions going off behind the dark pupils. His eyes widened, then squeezed shut. She saw his mouth fall open and his whole handsome face contort as wild passions racked his whole lean body.
Her own body was moist and warm as she saw his sinewy buttocks twist and flail upon this mountain of woman.
She was gargling in Spanish. "Querido, querido!"
Somehow he kept on after that first thunderbolt. Only by feasting his eyes on Taffy's sensational curves could he have kept on.
Taffy's lips moved, whispering: "For me! Give it to her again for me!"
Spurred on by Taffy's encouragement, he overcame his faltering movements with a superhuman effort. His body ripled in a smooth pace once again.
Elena was hysterical with delight. "Go!" she groaned. "Go! Go!"
He kept going his eyes pinned on Taffy.
He pushed himself beyond endurance. Watching, him go through his second orgy of desire, Taffy felt her own body respond for him, leaving her rounded thighs hot and moist.
"Enough! Enough!" begged Elena. "Now I can sleep!"
Looking at the windows, Taffy was surprised to see that night had fallen.
Exhausted and sweating, he rose from his mighty task.
Elena reached out a hand to caress him. "Return tomorrow!"
"Si!"
He got dressed, slipping into his clothes with haste. The queen lay on her back, her eyes closed. Taffy felt that the obscenity of her bloated body should not remain on view. She covered it with a single silk sheet. Then she tiptoed away from the side of the bed.
Pierre held her lynx stole for her. Once it was around her shoulders, he solmenly picked up the ram's head tiara and set it firmly on her golden head.
Without a word they left the queen's suite, Taffy walking proudly.
They rode down in the elevator to the lobby.
Escorting her, Pierre cleared the way. "The Princess! Make way for the Princess!"
The diamonds scintillated on her head. She carried herself nobly. The crowd separated to let them through. The doorman, opening the great glass doors, bowed deeply.
They passed out into the street, walking in a stately fashion toward the waiting Maserati.
She carried herself with her head up in the stars. She was a Princess.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The next evening Pierre made Taffy ready to drive out to the Aspinwall estate in Suffolk. "What's he got?" she asked. "A collection of opals worth $50,000." She had a feeling of dread. "Opals are bad luck."
"Who said so?"
"Everybody knows that."
He grinned at her superstition. "An old wive's tale." He handed her a large pasteboard box with a costumer's name on it. "Our method of action will be simple, Taffy. This's a maid's outfit. Put it on. I'm going in a chauffeur's uniform. The house will be empty. The Aspinwalls are going into town. The maid and chauffeur have the night off. When we drive up in the rented Rolls, anybody seeing us will think that the domestics have returned."
She nodded and took the box. Going into her bedroom, she tried on the maid's outfit. It was white silk, so thin and form-fitting that even a pimple on her flawless skin would have shown through. A frill of apron partly concealed the bold outline of her full belly like a peplum.
She modeled it for him, turning on her glitter heels, then sitting down and crossing her glamgams to get an eyeful of him. He was in dove-grey chauffeur's livery, with a snug tunic and leg-molding breeches that descended into shining black boots. His exhibition of manhood made her pulses quicken.
"When do we start?" she asked anxiously. "Now."
He drove the Rolls out into the lonesome stretches of Suffolk. The house they approached was set back on a large lawn. All the lights were out.
Daringly he drove up to the front door and parked. They both got out. With his trick keys, he worked for thirty seconds on the lock and the door opened. He went inside, lighting the lights.
His theory was that if you saw a house lighted up and people moving around inside, the last thing you'd think about was burglars.
A pall of apprehension still hung over her. She moved uneasily. "What if someone should ring the doorbell?" she asked nervously.
He smiled calmly. "Answer it."
"Where do they keep the opals, Pierre? In the safe?"
"Aspinwall thinks that that's the first place a burglar would look. So he's been trying to play it smart. Too bad for him that he talks too much at the dining table in my salon. Go into the kitchen, please."
She walked ahead of him, rocking her crazy hips. She turned around helplessly. "Where?"
"The refrig," he said. "Oh."
He yanked at the stainless steel handle of the big white cold storage vault. The light inside came on as it opened up. All kinds of perishable foods were on display.
He motioned toward the kitchen sink. "Turn on the hot water."
Obediently she turned on the faucet. Warm water flowed out.
He slid one of the trays of ice cubes out of the freezer compartment. He ran the tray under the stream of hot water, melting the ice cubes.
Opals began to roll out of the tray into his waiting hand.
"Look at these!" he said enthusiastically. "They are the finest I've ever seen!"
He carefully wiped each one off with a dishcloth, holding them up to the light. She saw his eyes dance as they caught the flash fire.
"And these are the rarest of all," he said "Harlequins."
She saw the spangles and patches of brilliant color like those of a Harlequin masquerade costume.
He began dropping each one into her cupped hands. "They shouldn't remain cold. Keep them close to your body."
She cuddled them to her big bosom, the refracted light staining her white silk front iridescent with greens, blues, yellows, reds, and blacks.
He produced a small chamois bag with a long string. He held the bap open while she let the opals trickle through her slim fingers into the opening. He drew the drawstring closed.
"Put this around your neck."
"I don't like to wear them."
"Nonsense. You'll make them sparkle."
He slipped the noose of string over her dazzling blonde head. She settled it around her throat so that the bag fell in between the marvelous mounds of her breasts and nestled there.
She was getting more and more jittery. "Now let's go, Pierre."
"No, not yet. Remember the night we went out to the Bays' house for the black pearls?"
"Yes," she breathed.
"I said I wanted to make love to you. Right there. I should have. You said yesterday that I haven't been devoting myself to you. From now on this is going to be part of the action. Every night we're out like this I'll make love to you."
"Oh, darling," she whispered. Impulsively her body moved toward his. "But not in this house."
"Why not? We have time. We'll be gone before the Aspinwalls get back. And it's more thrilling this way."
She didn't need any more convincing. Her own burning desire for him was overpowering her. He could have her right there on the kitchen floor. She didn't care where.
"The master bedroom," he said. He always did things in style.
They hurried up the broad staircase.
He turned on the bed light so that they could see each other.
Standing beside the bed, she flung her arms about his neck. The bag of opals seemed to shoot red flames between the pressure of their embracing bodies. Their lips became bruising fires. She squirmed closer to him, her big buttocks bunching and lumping under the thin tight silk, her thighs receiving the charged up messages his masculinity was sending.
The long sweet kiss ended in a loud suction as her head tumbled limply back. "Oh, darling, darling."
"Mon cherie! What a fool I've been! Why did I deny our love so long?"
"It doesn't matter! Make up for it now, darling, oh, please, please, make up for it now!"
"Yes. But let's be safe. Don't undress."
"I can't wait to undress!"
She stepped back, feverishly working her tight skirt up her pale lovely thighs. Glancing at him, she saw his eyes pop wider. She wore no panties.
"I was hoping," she said, intoxicated with passion. "Hoping."
She toppled back into the bed.
He paused only long enough to get his own zipper down. Then she was seeing him through half-swooning eyes, hovering over her, lowering himself down, trying to be gentle in his fierce urgency.
She clenched her teeth and moaned. He was bigger than ever. All of her wild, scalding, stallion daydreams were incarnate in this man.
Their bodies became one, moving like a fabulous oiled machine.
As he stirred her around like a caldron, a fear stabbed into her mind. The superstition of the opals burned between them like an evil omen. Making love in this strange place gave her little convulsions of panic. What if they were caught-?
Her yellow hair whipped about on the pillow with fright.
"Oh, Pierre! Let's stop!"
He gasped. "One-minute-more-"
His final tension knotted within her. The bed heaved under her frantically jerking behind. Her eyes glazed as his release jetted scalding hot.
Scared by the furious peak of his libido, she lost control of her own reactions. Involuntarily her sheath of muscle closed on him. A medical word that had haunted her for years floated ghost-like through her troubled mind: Vaginismus.
All the circumstances surrounding their reckless act now concentrated in her adductor muscles. She could not regulate these personally. She was no more responsible for it than the thudding of her heartbeat or the bubbling of her sweat glands.
With a violent spasm, she became as a pent up as a vise.
For a moment he was too caught up in the throes of his own desire to realize what was happening. When he tried to move away, he couldn.
"Baby," he muttered. "Ease up."
"I can't," she whimpered.
"What do you mean, you can't?"
"I can't control it." She held on to him with steel strong arms.
He made experimental backward lunges with his hips. Their bodies remained locked tight.
She saw sweat sheen on his forehead. "Has this ever happened to you before?"
"A few times. It's nerves. Panic brings it on."
"What's that?" he gasped.
"What?" Her panic tightened another notch.
"The door!"
There were sounds below, then feet ascending the stairs.
Pierre's body twisted and wrenched but they still clung to one another.
His violent exertions had spent everything he had into her. He sagged weakly with her on the bed.
A man and woman were approaching the master bedroom.
"Damned bunch of bores." the man was saying. "Who wouldn't be bored?" she replied caustically. "Listening to your same dull stories!"
The man swore at her as he opened the door.
"What the hell have we got here!"
Aspinwall, a pudgy banker, was staring in. His wife was crowding her flabby face over his stooped shoulder, her eyes bulging at the sight.
"Our maid and chauffeur!" She was nearsighted. "Using our bed!"
"They're not ours!" croaked Aspinwall. His rimless eye glases steamed as he savored the situation. "Haven't you two at least the decency to stop!"
Pierre lay limp.
Taffy, all tousled and sweat-soaked .sobbed: "We-can't-"
Caught in the act.
The newspaper ran snide stories about their predicament and subsequent arrest. The cat burglar and his pussycat, they called the luckless pair. The papers gave detailed accounts of the stuck-fast situation, revealing that it had taken a doctor with a hypo loaded with morphine to knock Taffy out sufficiently to pry her loose from her lover.
They had first passed themselves off as a pair of over-amorous servants who mistakenly got into the wrong house. This defense was shattered when the bag of opals was discovered around Taffy's neck.
They spent the rest of the night in jailhouse cells. Well separated.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The next morning Taffy was brought into court, still dressed in the white silk maid's outfit.
The judge leaned over his bench, an inveterate girl-watcher. "Well, young lady, what have you got to say for yourself?"
"Please don't. be too harsh on him," she said, indicating the slumped form in the chauffeur's livery.
"Him! Don't you think you're as guilty as he is?"
"No, not really." She trembled a brave smile at the judge. "I knew what he was doing, but I wanted him to quit. Wasn't it I who caught him? Subconsciously, I suppose, I didn't want him to get away with it any longer."
"Fortunately for you," said the judge, "Mr. and Mrs. Aspinwall are not so vindictive this morning. They've recovered all their opals and they told me in chambers that it was the most exciting evening they've had in a decade. However," he went on gravely, "I cannot let this man off scot free. He will be bound over for trial in a felony court."
Her big blue eyes were shining with tears. "How long a term will he get?"
"At least a year. Mr. Pierre Risque!"
Pierre stood up stiffly. "I'll take my medicine."
Taffy and Pierre ran into each other's arms.
"You're not afraid?" she said.
His mouth was tangled in her long soft yellow hair. "As long as I know you'll be waiting, I can do a year with a head stand."
"I'll be waiting, darling."
"As for you, young lady-" began the judge.
A feminine voice emerged from the courtroom. "I'll keep her well occupied for a year."
The judge said: "Yes. I've made arrangements to parole Taffy Forrest in your custody."
Taffy's head shot around. Advancing toward her she saw the green eyes and blazing hair of Racy Eastmond.
Taffy trembled at the thought of serving her sentence. Trembled with suppressed eagerness and excitement.
She walked into Racy's bedroom, balancing the breakfast tray. Her black French maid outfit was a mere suggestion of the real thing. An exquisitely tiny French apron of filmy nylon cut provocatively low in front, revealing all of her overripe breasts but the nipples, swept down and around to reveal her pretty bare back. There was no skirt to hamper her. Only panties that were scanty and sheer covered her roundly rich bottom. Long thigh-high black opera hose embellished her lithe legs and skyscraper heels graced her feet.
She walked toward the bed with her spine switching to and fro.
Racy lay in the bed, her own breathtaking figure out-lined by a single silk sheet.
With her full rouged lips pouting, Taffy strolled toward her mistress, weaving her swelled buttocks from side to side, her motions fluid yet obscene. An alluring fragance wafted from her silken body intoxicating Racy, sending her into a whirling state of delirium, and she propped herself up in bed to take in the wonder of Taffy's magnificent figure, especially the crevice of the huge white hillocks.
"Come here!" ordered Racy from a dry throat. "Come here!"
Racy flung off the sheet. She lay nude on the bed, her body superb.
Taffy put down the breakfast tray and leaned over the bed. She sighed when the cool soft hands reached out for her flesh under the skimpy maid's costume. They moved together swiftly and silently, each tasting the sweetness of the other's flesh, sharp nails becoming claws, soft pants giving way to quick yelps as they battled, two physically matured she-creatures thrashing about in the heat of love.
"This's only part of it," gasped Racy. "Some days-I'll be the maid-and you-"
"Anything you want," panted Taffy. "I want only ... you!"
Mouths mashed, their demands increasing, the combined-moans bouncing from wall to wall, awakened sensual appetites and urged them both on to a stronger, more satisfying, more lasting fulfillment.
Both of them harmonized their flesh, flowing together, Taffy underneath, spread-eagled, and Racy above undulating her well-upholstered pelvis.
Taffy's gasp was barely audible when Racy's tongue, hot and syrupy wet, lashed the red-peaked breasts, delving into the seemingly endless crevice between them.
With a howl that was at the same time hysterical and arresting, Taffy slid her fingers through the thick flame-red hair and arched her back to cushion Racy's steaming face in the heaving up mounts of joggling white flesh. "Oh, Racy Racy, that feels so good!"
"Baby, baby!" Racy worshiped the strapping blonde's body, massaged the dome of a stomach with her hand, varnished the rotund buttocks with her lips, parted the cushioned thighs and knew how to use her mouth.
But it was the bosom, those luscious and Armas-fruit breasts that drew Racy's hands again and again. She cupped the gorgeous mounds, rolling them until the nipples danced crazily and she squeezed and pinched the crusty tips until Taffy, eyes half-closed, aflame with desire, drew up her legs and hammered the bedclothes with her fists.
"Ohhh ... darling ... please ... if you only knew what that does ... to me ... to me ... to meee! Ooooohhhh!"
She floundered under the redhead in a paroyxsm of relief.
"Now me, baby, please ... now me!"
Racy rolled away and lay limply, only her wide mobile hips in motion, agitated by the disordered tangle of Taffy's butter-yellow hair dropping upon her upthrust bust.
Eager to service her wild mistress, Taffy busied herself, almost angrily in her greed to reach the delectable goal. When she did, she cherished it, introducing unhoped-for joys. Racy held back a choked sob, then catching her breath, screamed.
Now Racy tossed her hips up in a tumultuous surge and, seething like a caldron, she tugged Taffy down. Racy's bottom perfected a rhythm so fantastically rapid, so piston-like and jarring, it was amazing.
Taffy, tormented by the hard clasp of the thighs, lost all balance as her senses floundered. Drugged, she gave up the last vestige of sanity and became as frenzied as her partner. Her hands traveled down over the high swell of Racy's fast-hopping body, gripping each pulsing cheek she buried her face in the shivering loaves of the redhead's breasts.
The eddying pool became a sea of passion. The waves mounted, pounding upon the shores of lust, growing in intensity. Then, deep sighs ended the moment and the tides subsided, drifting far out to dissolve into nothingness.
Their sweat-soaked bodies broke. Their marriage of lust ended.
Racy staggered into the bathroom shouting: "Whew! Me for the showers!"
Taffy lay scrambled on the bed, the maid's outfit all but torn from her body. The roar of the shower could not drown out her thoughts. Oh, it had been heavenly. She passed her quaking hands down over the mountainous peaks of her magnificent breasts and massaged some life back into them. She was proud of their wealth and what they could do to Racy.
As she touched their now tender tips, there was a slight twinge of pain. Racy just could not have enough of them, it seemed. Just thinking about the games that the redhead's sultry mouth played sent tremors along her limbs. Oh, Racy!
Racy poked her dripping head out of the shower. "Hey! Are you going to lie there all day?"
"Ohhhh," groaned Taffy, reluctant to move.
"This reminded me. A party at the swimming pool tonight. Minikinis for all. And remember you'll be there to serve!"
Wow, sighed Taffy, what an evening that will be.
If she had to spend a year in servitude waiting for Pierre, this was the way to spend it.
She stood outside the prison gate, near the parked Maserati. She tried to imagine what Pierre would be like after twelve months with only the memories of making love to a woman. She wore an explosive sweater and skin-tight skirt that would bring him back to realities in a hurry.
The gate clanged and he walked toward her briskly.
She searched his face. He had lost his healthy bronze look, but she had never seen so much pent-up lust in a man's eyes. Pierre's black eyes glittered with it.
He folded her tightly in his arms and she felt him thrusting against her.
He said hoarsely: "Do you think that that unfortunate mishap will ever happen between us again?"
He was thinking of the awesome night they were trapped after stealing the opals.
"Only if we're stealing jewelry at the time," she said.
"Then I'll have to stop stealing jewelry," he said.
She gasped a little at the heat of him. He kissed her. "I am going straight and honest," he said.
"I just want to marry you and live decent. I'll get a job and be honest from now on."
They turned toward the waiting Maserati and got into it, Speeding away to Sin Alley.
