Debbie Hale had made up her mind: somehow or other she would have to run away from school and get back to New York City. Drastic things were taking place at home, things which she knew she must prevent-even if it took drastic measures to do so. She was lying across her bunk in the Martha Washington Dormitory, staring vacantly out of the window at the multi-colored panorama of the countryside: the gently rolling hills covered with their carpet of still-green grass, the maple trees shedding their leaves of scarlet and gold, a pheasant rising gracefully from a clump of foliage near the edge of the campus. The sun, a great, golden, glowing balloon sinking slowly over the horizon, added its own special aura to the scene. Debbie's limpid blue eyes took it all in, but her mind was still occupied with the letter she had just read.
The letter was from Debbie's mother, Denise. She had found it in her box when she came in from the library about an hour earlier, had taken it to her room, puzzled and curious that her mother should have bothered to write to her. The two seldom communicated, even when they were in each other's presence-which was seemingly as seldom as each of them could manage-so Debbie had guessed even before opening the envelope that it contained some shocking news. She had been right. There, in the pale glow of her desk lamp, Debbie's trembling fingers had held the expensive note paper as she read:
"Debbie, darling, Your mother has the most magnificent news for you. I know this news will come as something of a shock to you. In fact, I haven't yet gotten over it myself. I won't bother my baby with a lot of boring details at this time, as I know you must have lots and lots of schoolwork to do. So I'll just give it to you straight, as they say in the movies, and fill you in on the whole, wonderful thing later.
Hold on to your hairpiece-Mother's getting married! His name is Sidney Kane (you know, of the real estate Kanes). I've only known him for about six weeks, but I know enough to know he is sweet, intelligent, and charming. And that I love him very much, as I am sure he loves me. I hope-no, I'm sure-we'll all be very happy together. We plan to get married a week from Saturday (just a simple ceremony at his apartment on Central Park West) so you won't have to miss any classes to be with us. Sidney will send a car up for you so that you won't have to ride that smelly, old bus-isn't that sweet of him? I'm sure you will love Sidney just as I do.
Love, Denise.
Debbie had stared dumb-founded at the letter for several minutes after having read it, hardly able to believe her own eyes. Denise could not be serious. She just couldn't. But even as Debbie tried to convince herself that her mother was just playing some sort of weird practical joke, she knew that such was not the case. She knew, lying there across the bunk in her dormitory room, that Denise was serious, that her mother actually intended to remarry after all these years.
And Debbie knew she could not allow her to get away with it. Somehow, she would have to prevent this monstrous thing from happening. But how? What could she do?
Perhaps a good hot shower would help her mind to begin functioning constructively, she decided. Sitting up on the edge of the bed, Debbie kicked off her loafers and slipped out of the blue blazer jacket which identified her as a student of the Cannabis Academy for Girls. She had been wearing that blazer, or ones like it, for nearly three years while receiving a good, college preparatory education and training befitting a young lady of her social strata. Now, she mused sadly as her fingers nimbly unfastened the buttons of her crisp, white blouse, she was about to chuck it all just as she was on the verge of graduating in the upper third of her class. She was ready to give up everything to stop her mother from betraying a marriage which had long since been declared legally null and void. But as far as Debbie was concerned, Denise's marriage to Mike Hale, Debbie's father, was still quite valid and she intended to see that it remained so.
The thin blouse fell open and Debbie shrugged out of it, letting it fall to the floor as she stood up to remove her skirt. As she began fumbling with the catch at the waistband of the skirt, her eyes were attracted to the image of herself reflected in the full-length mirror. The clasp gave way and her skirt rustled to the floor to gather in a woolen pool at her feet. She stepped out of it and took a couple of steps toward the mirror, then paused to study her physical self more closely.
Her auburn hair was long and hung down about her shoulders, the wavy strands curling up like smoke. She gazed for several seconds into her own incongruously blue eyes, noting the way they caught the light and seemed to shine with a brilliance of their own. Her lips, devoid of lipstick, were pink and even when relaxed seemed to be pouting. They curled up slightly at the ends as Debbie smiled in self-satisfaction. She had, she admitted to herself, an unusually pretty face.
Now her attention strayed lower, to her womanly body. She was still wearing the coarse, white bra that most of the girls at Cannabis wore. It was at least two sizes too small for Debbie, however, because she was overdeveloped for her age-or, for that matter, for any age. Her lush, voluptuous breasts strained at the confining garment, bulging out and spilling soft white flesh out of the tops of the C-cups, and fractions of an inch below the lower rim of the garment. Reaching her arms behind her, Debbie undid the catches at the back of the wide band, wincing a little at the momentary pain as the bra pinched those tender mounds. She breathed an audible sigh as it sprang open, as if propelled by a hidden spring, and the two great glands lurched to freedom.
Debbie shrugged her shoulders and let the bra slip to the floor, her eyes still fixed upon her mirror image, assessing her own beauty. She moved her shoulders a bit and watched in youthful fascination as her oversized breasts swung from side to side, then, as she became rigid, jiggled independently for a moment. Actually, Debbie had mixed feelings about her bosom. On the one hand, she knew that such large, perfectly-formed organs, with their ruby-red, silver-dollar-sized tips, were the envy of her schoolmates-most of whom were average-sized adolescents. Already, at seventeen, Debbie had the breasts of a woman. More accurately, she had the breasts of a striptease dancer. While she was in some ways proud of them, she also felt somewhat embarrassed at the obvious gawking stares they drew when she walked the streets, even at home in New York City, where most people are so jaded they wouldn't look twice at a Martian hailing a taxi on Sixth Avenue. And, as she stared now at those great twin beauties, she knew that someday they would begin to sag as the tissues grew tired of supporting their weight.
But that day, she reminded herself, was far in the future. For now, they were firm and magnificent, only slightly overshadowing her other charms: her smooth little belly, concave beneath the rib cage, then swelling slightly near its base; her tiny waist, curving outward at dainty, but well-developed hips; firm, fleshy thighs joined to delicate, classically-formed legs. Yes, as Debbie stared at her body clad only in sheer, snow-white panties, she knew that she was a beautiful, desirable girl-woman.
Turning from the mirror, Debbie slithered out of her panties and strode across the room naked, glancing over her shoulder once to study the sensual motion of her hips and buttocks as she walked. Although she was a virgin and admittedly naive to the ways of eroticism, Debbie knew that with her looks and her body, she could have almost any man.
As these self-revelations joined with the other, more disconcerting thoughts swirling through her mind, a vague plan began to suggest itself to the innermost recesses of her psyche. She snatched a robe from the closet and, without giving a thought to her total nakedness, stepped out into the hall and started toward the shower room several doors away. She was still preoccupied with thoughts of herself and of her voluptuousness and of her mother's shocking plans-too preoccupied to notice that the shower room door had cracked open a couple of inches, then silently but swiftly closed as she approached.
She pushed open the swinging door and, as her feet touched the cold tile floor, went up on tip-toe. No sound came from the archway leading into the shower area. Debbie had not expected to find any of the other girls taking a shower at this time of the evening, so she was not surprised. She opened the linen cupboard and started to take down a towel and washcloth from the shelf, when she caught sight of something which made her catch her breath in shock and horror. There, in the semi-darkness of the linen cupboard, sticking out from beneath a partition covering the auxiliary water heater, were two-no, three pairs of feet and legs! And the feet were wearing men's shoes!
"Oh!" The cry was weak, a reflex action. Debbie began to back away, gathering the bathrobe in front of her, dropping the towels to the floor. "Oh..." she said again, this time a bit louder, building up to the scream of terror which was inevitably coming.
"Hey, Debbie, wait a minute!" a male voice whispered urgently. "Wait, don't scream." The feet beneath the partition moved, as if the creature above owned them all. "It's me, Billy Coverdale."
Still incredulous, Debbie backed a few steps further toward the door to the hallway, watching in disbelief as the feet came out from behind the partition and advanced into the light. Debbie stopped and stared as her eyes passed up the pants legs and the blue denim CPO shirt to meet the face of...
"Billy Coverdale! What on earth...? "
Debbie had gone out with Billy, a rather handsome, but-she had always thought-rather immature first-classman at Arnold Military Academy, located a few miles way from Cannabis. She gathered the robe hastily about herself, trying vainly to completely cover her nakedness.
Two other boys, whom Debbie also recognized as cadets from AMA, stood behind him. One, a freckly-faced redhead with a crew cut and a pudgy face, blushed crimson at the sight of the nearly-naked girl. The other, a rather nondescript looking boy with dark, wavy hair, had an awkward, embarrassed smirk pasted across his face as his eyes examined the ceiling. Billy started to take another step toward Debbie.
"Hold it right there," she said firmly, having regained her composure somewhat now that she recognized the intruders. "You'd better explain what you're doing in here-and make it good."
"Keep your voice down, for Pete's sake!" he pleaded hoarsely. "Look, it's not what you might be thinking. Me and Danny and Jimmy here, we made this crazy bet with some guys at the Academy, see."
"No, I don't see," Debbie retorted, beginning to relish the three boys' nervousness as it gradually dawned upon her that they were almost her captives, completely at her mercy.
"Well, I'm trying to explain, if you'll just listen," Billy Coverdale said. "And please-keep your voice down. If we get caught in here like this, it's phffft!" He made a slashing motion across his throat. His nervous companions nodded in agreement.
"Phfft!" the pudgy redhead affirmed.
"Yeah-phfft!" assented the other.
"Well, anyway," Billy Coverdale continued, "we-me and Danny and Jimmy here-we bet these other guys that Colonel Parkinson, the chief of staff at the academy, had false teeth." Noticing the smile that suddenly broke across Debbie's lips, Billy hastily placed one finger over his own lips. "Don't laugh. Just let me finish."
More relaxed now, and thoroughly enjoying the unease of the three errant cadets, Debbie leaned back against the wall by the door and managed to drape the cotton robe about her shoulders so that it thoroughly covered her. The pudgy-faced redhead let out a sigh of relief. The wavy-haired boy looked relieved and disappointed at the same time. Billy Coverdale still looked worried as he glanced nervously back and forth from Debbie to the door, as if expecting to see it come bursting open at any second.
"Okay, so it turns out that Colonel Parkinson doesn't wear false teeth. Now do you understand?" Billy said husk-fly.
"I'm afraid I still don't see...."
"This is the payoff on the bet. We lost, so we have to swipe all of the shower fixtures out of your dormitory. These guys have girlfriends over here who will tell them whether they're missing or not. If not, these guys who just happen to be upperclassmen of high rank just start riding us into the ground." Billy smirked, shrugged his shoulders and extended his hands out to the sides, palms upward. "So, here we are."
"You mean, here we are," Debbie said softly, fixing Billy Coverdale with an icy stare. She didn't care much for Billy anyway, since on their last date a few months earlier he had taken her to a party and had gotten her drunk, then had tried to undress her in the back of someone's car. One of her girlfriends had saved her from him just in time, and she had never forgotten the incident nor forgiven the un-chivalrous cadet.
"Well, look. We'll just slip out that door real q.uiet-like, and be on our way with the shower fixtures, and no one will be the wiser," Billy suggested, taking a tentative step forward.
Debbie held up one hand like a traffic cop signaling halt. "Not so fast, cadet," she snapped. "Suppose you get caught trying to sneak out of the dorm-then what? I mean, what will the housemother and the dean think if they find out that I was in here with you-like this." Her head dropped as she indicated her scanty attire. "They'll ask why I didn't let out a peep. It's going to look kind of strange, isn't it?"
"Aw, come on, Debbie. We're not going to get caught. We got in without getting caught, didn't we? Almost all of the girls are in that assembly over at Rhodes Auditorium or studying at the library, and old prune-faced Miss Manville is over at the dean's office. We saw her go in before we came."
Debbie's mind was frantically sifting, digesting, and analyzing the facts of the situation, trying to find a way to turn it to her advantage. She shifted her gaze from Billy Coverdale to his companions and back again, stalling, stalling.
"For gosh sake, Debbie," Billy said, accidentally blurting out in a normal tone of voice which boomed like thunder in the tiled echo chamber of the shower room. He winced at the sound, then cocked an ear to listen for any tell-tale reaction from the hallway. There was none. "Look," he said, reverting to the urgent whisper, now even softer than before, "we're wasting time. If you don't let us out of here pretty soon, the old bag is going to come back and then we'll really be stuck. And you, too. They'd kick you out of here so fast you'd never know what hit you," he added, studying Debbie's face to see if his warning had had the desired effect upon her. She showed no visible reaction.
But inside, Debbie felt a warm glow spreading through her body, and she could hardly help smiling just a little as she realized that Billy Coverdale had given her the solution to her most immediate problem: how to get out of Cannabis without arousing her mother's suspicions. She would get herself expelled! The school would be too embarrassed and afraid of scandal to tell Denise exactly what happened, and Debbie would have a valid reason for coming home. Then she would have a whole week to either dissuade Denise from marrying the Kane jerk, or to figure out a way to sabotage their plans. It was perfect, made to order by Cadet Billy Coverdale, who was just about to be elected the chief goat of Arnold Military Academy.
"I'm going to let you dear cadets go," Debbie said, with a sly smile upon her sensuous lips, taking a couple of steps toward the trio. All of the boys' faces brightened with joy and relief, and they started as one toward the door. Debbie stopped them all cold in their tracks by casually dropping her robe to the floor to pose naked before them. Stunned by the sudden unveiling of her voluptuous magnificence, the three youths stood entranced as she took a bold stance, feet planted firmly wide apart, hands upon hips, shoulders thrust back so that her mammoth breasts jutted proudly forward, their crowns staring back at them like two big, bloodshot eyes.
"But first," Debbie announced flatly, "we are going to take a shower together. I need someone to wash my-uh-back!"
CHAPTER TWO
Several seconds of inaction passed. Seconds which seemed like an eternity to Debbie as she fought to maintain her haughty, shameless pose, struggling against her normally conventional nature, valiantly resisting the urge to bolt and run from the room in shame. She wondered if the three boys noticed the nervous twitch of her belly, or that the hoydenish smile upon her face was strained and false.
She need not have been concerned. The three cadets were too enthralled by the aspect of her naked white body to speculate as to whether her apparent wantonness was genuine or feigned. The one called Danny-he of the red crewcut and freckles-stood as if rooted to the tile floor, his mouth slightly ajar, his pudgy, normally pink face flushed crimson, his labored breathing causing an asthma-like rattle in his chest. Jimmy, the dark-haired cadet, was also immobilized by Debbie's voluptuous beauty, his body still leaning forward as it had been when her sudden disrobing interrupted his flight. Billy Coverdale's hand went to his blondish hair as if to brush it back, then paused there in a gesture of open shock.
Six young male eyes visually caressed every inch of Debbie's milk-white flesh, and three heads swiveled as a unit, following the sensuous sway of her lush breasts as she began walking slowly toward the door to the shower stalls, her lithe hips swiveling in an openly suggestive manner.
"Well?" said Debbie, pausing scant inches away from Bill Coverdale, the nipples of her breasts grazing the blue-gray woolen shirt of his uniform. Her moral reservations were rapidly subsiding now and she was beginning to actually enjoy this bizarre charade, reveling in the obviously devastating effect her behavior-and her nakedness had upon the three boys. Her lips parted a bit, and the scarlet tip of her tongue peeked out from between two rows of perfect white teeth, then slowly, like a tiny red serpent, slithered across her lips, leaving a trail of glistening moisture. She panned across the trio of bewildered faces, then locked eyes with Billy Coverdale.
Her hands glided upward, caressing her upper thighs, her hips, tracing parallel paths over the contours of her belly, finally pausing to cup those two ripe beauties which sprouted from her chest, lifting each of them and preferring them like a melon vendor inviting examination of her wares. "Are you guys going to wash it, or are you just going to stand around gawking at it until Miss Man-ville comes back and catches us?"
She was immediately sorry she had mentioned the name of the dreaded housemother, for Billy Coverdale's enraptured expression suddenly changed to one of apprehension, and he took a couple of steps backward, breaking contact with Debbie's bulging bosom and staring at her warily, as if studying the face of a mortal enemy. For him, the spell had been broken. He was smelling a trap of some sort, and although he had no idea what it was, he seemed to sense that he was to be among the rats to be caught in it. He glanced about for an escape route, but there was none other than the door through which he and his companions had entered The only thing which barred his exit was Debbie's naked body.
"Say, look, Debbie," Billy began, his eyes darting nervously from her face to the door behind her, "what are you trying to pull? You trying to get me in trouble to pay me back for that night in the car? Is that it? Well, you know it's going to go just as hard for you as it will for me if we get caught in here."
"No, Billy, I don't want anyone to get into any trouble. I just don't feel like taking a shower all by myself. That's all." Debbie started toward Billy again, and he retreated still further.
Throughout the brief exchange, the other two cadets had remained silent and attentive-attentive to Debbie's exposed secrets. Now the one called Jimmy broke his silence.
"What the hell's wrong with you, man?" he snapped at Billy, still not taking his eyes off Debbie. "Can't you see that the chick just wants to have a little fun? I mean, man, if you're chicken, you can just buzz off. Me and Danny here'll be glad to oblige the little lady. Right, Danny?"
The pudgy face opened and closed, but no words came forth for a couple of seconds. Finally the voice, shaky and hoarse, returned.
"Damn right!" Danny croaked. "I haven't had a shower since this morning. His scarlet face broke into a leering grin. "And anyway, I haven't done my good deed for the day, so I might as well wash Debbie's ... uh ... Debbie's ... uh ... Debbie's back for her and kill two birds with one stone. Ha-ha!"
Debbie smiled triumphantly, then began undulating toward the shower room. She could almost feel their eyes fixed upon her jiggling buttocks and she cooed over her shoulder: "Last one in's an old dead rat."
There was a blur of motion as the three cadets went into action simultaneously. Danny and Jimmy were coming out of their uniforms as if a cash prize awaited the first one stripped, and they staggered and stumbled over each other trying to follow Debbie's bouncing bottom into the shower, their pants half-on, half-off. Leaving a trail of clothing strewn in their wake, they both reached the narrow doorway at the same time, and their naked bodies wedged together for several seconds as they struggled frantically to extricate themselves, grunting and straining, and finally popping free to go hurtling into a stream of cold water which suddenly spewed forth from an overhead nozzle.
Debbie's backside bobbing in all directions was the first sight that greeted Danny as he recovered from the chilling shock. She was dancing up and down as she tried to adjust the hot water valve to make the stream more temperate. Jimmy, who had fallen flat on his belly in front of her, looked up through the spray to see her mammoth breasts joggling about like giant coconuts during a hurricane.
"Aaaaah," Debbie sighed, as the water grew comfortably warm. She threw her head and shoulders back, planting her feet wide apart to fully experience the tingling caress of the shower, presenting an even more provocative view to the prone Jimmy.
"Man, oh, man!" he cried, his voice booming against the tiles and reverberating throughout the room. "Gimme the soap and let me wash it for you!"
Debbie just giggled and continued to move her body this way and that, catching the water and letting it cascade over her voluptuous contours. But Danny had already grabbed a bar of soap and was going to work on Debbie's back as if it was the rear deck of a new Jaguar, soaping her with broad strokes from her shoulder blades to her buttocks, addressing the majority of his attention to the latter portion, using his empty hand to smooth the foam about. Debbie giggled and cooed, thoroughly enjoying his attentions and the warm feelings they aroused in the pit of her stomach.
Through the stream of water pouring over her eyes, Debbie studied the two naked boys. She'd never seen a post-pubescent male body completely exposed, so she took this opportunity to satisfy her natural curiosity. Jimmy was the slimmer and more well-built of the two, with muscular arms and a hint of dark hair on his broad chest. Danny, the chubby one, was behind her, so she couldn't see him, but she could feel the evidence of his excitement brushing against her naked buttocks.
Her eyes continued to explore the contours of Jimmy's body, following the rivulets of water as they ran down over his belly, gathering at his navel, then trickling down the thin line of dark hair that led to the root of his abdomen. She stared in open-mouthed excitement at his aroused body. He was beautiful, and at the same time, terrifying to her. She felt hypnotized by him, unable to look away and yet feeling ashamed for looking at all.
Golly, she thought, it looks just like ... like....
But her mind could not finish the sentence. A warm tingling sensation began to grow in her loins, and she felt an uncontrollable urge to caress Jimmy, to see what he felt like. Her right hand, trembling with the excitement of reaching for the unknown, slowly bridged the gap between them and her fingers, at first tentatively and then firmly, encircled him. Instinctively, she began to massage him, beginning with a slow, even stroke, then building up to a more vigorous rhythm.
"Oh, wow!" Jimmy gasped, almost dropping the bar of soap he was using on Debbie's mountainous breasts. "What are you trying to do to me, chick?"
"I ... I'm just washing you," Debbie stammered.
"Well, rub-a-dub-dub!" Jimmy replied, beginning to work more vigorously with the soap on Debbie's breasts, inserting it into the deep cavern between them, then massaging each of them with his free hand.
They were so large and slippery that he couldn't grip either of the mammoth glands, especially with hands that were shaking as if palsied, but he managed somehow to pinch her ruby-red nipples between thumb and forefinger. A low, animal-like moan escaped Debbie's lips as she began to succumb to the erotic stimulation, and Jimmy answered with a strangulated snarl of passion as her fingers closed upon him tightly and her hand continued stroking.
Jimmy's hand, still clutching the slippery bar of soap, went lower, drawing circular patterns upon Debbie's quivering abdomen, sliding over and around her hips, blazing a foamy trail to the virgin wilderness at the junction of her thighs.
As Jimmy began to massage her with the bar of soap, working up a thick, foamy lather, Debbie gave way completely to the sensations raging within her. She opened her mouth and moaned softly, then swooned in ecstasy, pinning the unsuspecting Danny (who was still washing her backside) against the wall. Debbie felt an unknown force insinuating itself between her buttocks and realized, to her own surprise, that her body was trying to respond to it. She was lost in a maelstrom of strange emotions, not knowing exactly what was happening to her, but at the same time welcoming it.
She pushed back against Danny with all her might, opening her thighs by planting her feet further apart, giving both Danny, at the rear, and Jimmy, at the front, freer access. The shower seemed to have grown louder until finally it was roaring in her ears like Niagara Falls. The hot water beat upon her flesh and she seemed to be scalding from within. Her knees became weak and her feet lost their purchase upon the slippery tile floor. She was powerless to stop herself from doing a ballet split, slipping right down to the floor.
Somehow, Debbie could not figure out how, Danny's head had become caught between her thighs, and when she went down she found herself sitting right in his face. He gurgled like a drowning man, but made no effort to free himself, and suddenly Debbie felt the most delicious sensation shooting up from her loins.
Jimmy, who was still standing, moved closer, and Debbie sensed, rather than saw, his desire, since her eyes were tightly shut. She opened her mouth to cry out, but the cry was immediately stifled as Jimmy moved swiftly to shut her up.
"Oh, boy!" cried Jimmy.
"Mmmmmm, hmmm," replied Debbie.
"Uh-oh!" exclaimed Danny, peering out from between Debbie's straining thighs. "Don't look now, folks, but I'm afraid we've got company."
"Oh, my goodness!" screamed a feminine voice from the doorway.
"Oh, hell!" exclaimed Jimmy, dropping the soap as he pivoted about to confront the specter of Miss Manville looming in the doorway, blocking their only escape route.
Debbie, still squatting upon Danny's pudgy red head and still gasping for breath from the effects of Jimmy's wash job, opened her eyes and tried to focus upon the angular face that glowered down at her. The girl's mouth was half-open and her dazed manner made her appear doped. But she began to recover rapidly as she realized that her original purpose had been accomplished. Miss Manville had caught them in the act.
Miss Manville's homely, craggy face, the face of a confirmed spinster housemother, was contorted into an expression of violent horror as she surveyed the bizarre scene. There, before her very eyes, as naked as the day she was born, with soapy lather running down between her thighs, was one of her nicest girls! Crouching before her was a young man, equally naked, and whatever he had been doing when she had first happened upon them may not have been specifically covered in the house rules but was obviously unlawful in any case. And peering out from beneath the girl's ample buttocks was the pudgy round face of yet another young man, and he, too, was naked. Miss Manville was speechless with horror.
"Hey, Debbie-let me up!" a voice gurgled. Debbie looked down and suddenly realized what she was sitting on, but the excitement of the moment had virtually paralyzed her and she could only stare down at Danny's red hair as things began to fall back into place in her mind. "Come on, let me up," the boy cried again. "The soap suds are running into my eyes!"
"Miss Hale, I want an explanation this very moment!" Miss Manville finally barked.
"Well, say something, chick," pleaded Jimmy, still standing in a crouch before her. "Say something. Do something."
Debbie raised her head to gaze at Miss Manville again. The water was still streaming down upon herself and her two showermates, but she made no move to turn it off. As she stared dumbly at the glowering housemother, a flash of blue-gray material passing through the outer room behind the woman caught Debbie's eye. She realized immediately that it was Billy Coverdale. He had apparently hidden back by the water heater and was now making his bid for freedom. As he disappeared from view, Debbie heard the soft hiss of the automatic door-closer on the door leading to the hallway. Miss Manville never even noticed.
Debbie threw back her head, oblivious to the cascade of water which flowed into her mouth and nostrils, threatening to drown her.
Then Debbie did something. She laughed like hell.
The midnight bus to New York City pulled out of the Cannabis depot just a few minutes late. Debbie, exhausted from the feverish activity in the shower a few hours earlier, and from haggling with Miss Manville in her office afterward, and from packing hastily shortly thereafter, collapsed into a window seat near the rear.
She had managed to convince Miss Manville that she would probably find herself suddenly unemployed if the dean ever found out that two cadets had managed to sneak into her dormitory for a naked orgy with one of her charges. So, Debbie had suggested, "Why not just tell the Dean you caught me with my hand in the dormitory's cookie jar?" (Where money for maintenance expenses was kept.) "That way, you'd be rid of me anyway; my mother wouldn't find out what a naughty, naughty little girl I was; and you'd still have your job."
It had taken some doing to convince the housemother, especially since Debbie's scheme included letting Danny and Jimmy go scot free. But after an hour of haggling, including much pleading and whining from the two cadets, Miss Manville had come around. Of course, the dean had been thoroughly shocked when she was told that Debbie, who had always been one of her favorites, was a sneak thief. She agreed that it would be better for all parties concerned if Debbie caught the first bus for home. The dean said she would telephone her mother the next day to explain. And that, for the time being at least, was that.
Now, as the bus roared through the autumn night, Debbie rested her head against the reclining back of the seat and tried to concentrate upon the immediate future. She had managed, within the brief span of a few hours, to get herself kicked out of Cannabis. Now she had to worry about how, within the brief span of one week, to get Sidney Kane kicked out of her mother's love life.
A warm glow of confidence swept through her body as drowsiness gradually overcome her. An old football cheer she had heard somewhere echoed softly in her brain, and a cat-like smile pulled up the corner of her lips as it silently serenaded her to sleep.
We did it before and we can do it again, a silent voice chanted. I did it before, and I'll do it again.
CHAPTER THREE
As Debbie was beginning her impromptu journey, De-nise Hale, Debbie's mother, was puttering about the spacious living room of the six-room apartment she and her daughter had called home for the past four years. They had moved into the comfortable but not lavish apartment after Denise and Mike Hale had finally called it quits after a little over twelve years of trying to live down a mistake. The apartment had never been a real home, not like the little house the three of them had shared in Connecticut had been. That house had been sold and the proceeds put in trust for Debbie's education. That was one thing about Mike: he was always conscientious about his daughter's welfare. Unfortunately, he had not seemed to Denise to have been as concerned about the welfare of his wife.
Denise, a tall, willowy woman with cool, blonde features and a lithe, shapely body glided about the room, her brocade housecoat swirling about her like a priest's cassock as she emptied ashtrays, picked up a few stray magazines, and generally tidied up in preparation for the arrival of her midnight guest. She didn't want her husband-to-be to think she was not a good housekeeper.
A baby picture, taken when Debbie was just a few weeks old, caught Denise's eye, bringing her up short. She didn't know exactly why-maybe it was the emptiness of the apartment since Debbie had returned to school at the end of the summer, maybe it was because of the letter she had received from Mike a few weeks earlier-but whatever the cause, Denise had found herself lapsing into nostalgic moods quite often during the past several weeks. And although she resisted as strongly as she could, memories of past events kept cropping up like weeds in the garden of her consciousness. Or were they like perennial blossoms?
Denise went to the small bar in one corner of the room, mixed herself a dry martini, then returned to relax upon the sofa, her eyes drawn irresistibly to that baby picture. In her mind's eye, she saw herself once again as a girl of seventeen, full of enthusiasm for life and full of love for the handsome nineteen-year-old college engineering student who had wooed and won her heart during that long ago summer.
She closed her eyes impulsively, and that night on the beach at Fire Island swirled into sharp focus. She could almost feel Mike's powerful arms about her. Her nostrils dilated involuntarily at the memory of his masculine scent. And a voice, her own voice as it must have sounded there in the cool darkness, echoed within her memory, acquiescing to his fervent request, imploring him to be gentle. He bad been gentle that first time, and as she relived it now, Denise could almost experience the magnificence of it all over again. And she could almost feel the surge of his masculinity as he spent himself.
Denise forced her eyes to open, dragging herself back to the present. She took a tentative sip of her martini, savored its tangy flavor for a few seconds, then took a long, deep swallow, wincing only a little as the potent concoction burned a path of liquid fire down her gullet. For some reason, she really was not sure why, she felt like getting a bit tipsy. Was she still in love with Mike Hale, even after all these years apart? Even after the misery he had caused her, the loneliness of being married to a man who spent nine months of every year in another part of the world? She had tried in every way she knew how to show Mike that his wife needed more than three months of loving per year, to convince him that his daughter needed a father for more than ninety days annually. But Mike had simply grown more distant and more absent as the years had worn on, until finally Denise could take it no longer. He did not even contest the divorce action.
Denise took another long swallow of the martini, draining the glass. As she rose to mix herself another, she continued to speculate about the reasons for the failure of her marriage. It still seemed to her now, as it had seemed to her almost from the beginning, that Mike had never been able to overcome the feeling that he had been "forced" to marry her before he was ready. Of course he really hadn't been forced, at least not overtly. But his own sense of decency had compelled him to marry Denise, to make her an "honest woman." Debbie had been born six months after the wedding. It had meant that Mike had had to work and go to school at nights, and Denise knew that he felt that his career had been delayed by their untimely union. Fortunately, none of his animosity had been directed at Debbie. In fact, he had seemed to transfer his love for Denise to their dark-haired daughter. And, even though he spent little time with them after he had graduated and begun taking overseas assignments, the bond between father and daughter had grown stronger through the years.
Denise stirred the vermouth and vodka vigorously, swirling it about in the crystal pitcher, then poured the clear mixture into her empty glass. She took a sip, then downed it all at a gulp. The effect was immediate. After the initial shock had worn off, the warm, pulsing excitement began coursing through her veins. Her head felt a bit light, but not unpleasantly so. She glanced at the electric clock behind the bar and noted with some Irritation that it was nearly twelve-thirty. What, she wondered, was taking Sidney so long?
Sinking onto the couch again, she began riffling a deck of cards nervously, toying with the idea of playing a game of solitaire. Solitaire. It sounded ominous. She replaced the deck on the teakwood coffee table. That table had been sent to Denise from the Orient nearly seven years ago. Mike had been working on a bridge project, had seen the table and had it shipped to her as a surprise. It had been one of the few gestures of love he had shown her during those years, and she had been unable to bring herself to part with the table, although she had sold all the other items of furniture from the cottage in Connecticut. Or had the table really been intended for her? Maybe he had really bought it for Debbie's benefit.
Debbie and Mike had been almost like lovers when he was at home, Denise recalled. Not in a sexual way, of course, but in that they seemed to have a rapport, a deep regard for each other's feelings that Denise and Mike had never been able to recapture after their first few months of marriage. Denise tried to tell herself that she was not jealous of her daughter, that she never had been jealous. She loved Debbie as much as Mike, and she was sure that in her own fashion Debbie felt as strongly toward her. It was just that they were so different. Denise was willowy and blonde, with long, slim legs and a small but adequate and well-proportioned bust. Debbie had obviously inherited most of her physical traits from Mike's side-the dark hair and robust physique which had blossomed so rapidly within the past few years. And she was like Mike in other ways, too, Denise had noticed. While Denise was more reserved and calculating, Debbie tended to be impetuous, quick to make decisions and to take dramatic action on the spur of the moment. This characteristic often gave Denise pause to worry about her daughter, but she had felt inadequate to cope with it. Her feelings of inadequacy, along with her inability to communicate with her daughter, had influenced her decision to send her to that swank, upstate boarding school three years ago.
Denise felt herself growing drowsy as her mind continued to pore over these aspects of her life. She knew that Debbie had never gotten over the divorce and the girl had even told her mother once in a moment of anger that she felt that her parents were still married, no matter what the courts said. "And I intend to see that it stays that way," Debbie had shouted. Somehow, Denise knew that she meant it. She wondered now how this daughter who had become as a stranger to her had taken the news she had broken so impersonally in her letter? And what, if anything, she might try to do about it?
Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the front door closing, followed by the familiar footsteps in the vestibule. She started to rise, then, swaying unsteadily from the effects of her two swiftly-downed martinis, gave it up and flopped back down on the couch. Her housecoat became disarrayed in the process, gathering itself under her as she sat down, leaving her legs and several inches of thigh exposed. Denise didn't bother to cover herself as Sidney entered the living room.
He paused in the middle of the room for a few seconds, studying Denise as one might a beautiful painting. Neither of them spoke for several seconds. "Hello, beautiful lady," he finally said. Denise smiled demurely, she hoped-unable to be sure because of the fuzzy alcohol feeling in her brain.
Sidney was tall, about six feet, with dark wavy hair parted at one side and worn long in the fashion so popular with Broadway actors and show people. He claimed to have been on the stage at one time, but Denise had no first-hand knowledge of it, having met him only four weeks earlier. She had been completely overwhelmed by his cool, sophisticated manner, and his suave good looks. And, in her longing for the love she had not experienced for so many years, she became hopelessly enamored of him after their first dinner date. Two nights after that he had taken her to his apartment overlooking Central Park and there, in his mammoth king-sized bed, she had rediscovered the magnificent glories of sexual love.
Sidney winked at his fiancee, then made his way to the bar to pour himself some Jack Daniel's. Denise was a bit disappointed that he hadn't at least kissed her cheek before pouring himself a drink, but she knew enough about
Sidney to know that such gestures were not characteristic of him. He had never kissed her, nor even held her hand, before he had taken her to bed that first time. But once they were both naked, he had turned amorous in a fashion that Denise had never known before. His lips had roamed over her quivering body, touching her in the most intimate of places, the tongue darting out to sting her at the most sensitive spots. He seemed to know exactly what to do and how to do it, and he had played her nerve endings as a virtuoso upon his harp. It had turned into a night of wild abandon, with Sidney carrying her to ever greater heights of ecstasy until she had finally cried out as if in pain.
Spasms of delight had wracked her body and she had clung to him as a dying person might cling to life itself, moaning and writhing beneath him, a woman possessed. She remembered tasting blood in her mouth and of seeing a brilliant flash of light before she blacked out. It had been the first time in her life she had ever actually fainted from ecstasy at the climax of the love act. When she had awakened, she had discovered that she had bitten her lover's shoulder like a wild animal, bitten him and drawn his blood. Her body had been bathed in cold sweat, and she had lain panting and quivering on her back as the lingering strains of the love symphony continued to vibrate upon her nervous system. And she had heard his voice, the voice of this man who had freed her from the chains of loneliness and sexlessness, asking her to be his wife. As if in a dream, she had heard herself moaning "Yes, yes, my darling."
Sidney finished preparing his drink-three fingers of sour mash whiskey with a dash of bitters on the rocks-and crossed the room to join Denise on the couch. He stared into his glass, took a healthy swallow, then turned to face her. Denise gazed into his eyes and realized that she was gazing into the eyes of a man she hardly knew. He was an almost perfect stranger to her, but he was to be her husband. As if reading her thoughts, Sidney smiled broadly, at the same time placing his left hand upon her bare thigh.
"Mmmmm. You look good enough to eat," he whispered, leaning closer to nibble at her ear. "But first," withdrawing his head, "we should talk business."
"Business?" Denise said, giving him a quizzical look. "Do you realize, dearest, that it's almost one-thirty A.M.? And you want to talk business? What...? "
"Oh, it's nothing serious, baby doll. Just a little financial deal I've been cooking up with a certain producer." He glanced at her, taking a quick swallow from his glass and letting his hand ride up her thigh before continuing. "Well, this producer has offered me a chance to buy in on an upcoming Broadway show."
"A Broadway show? But isn't that kind of risky?"
Sidney's hand began to massage her thigh in a slow, intensely exciting manner, tenderly clutching the soft white flesh and advancing even higher, gradually losing itself beneath the brocade of the housecoat. Denise was naked beneath.
"No, this particular show isn't risky at all. It's a J. Cannaday production." Sid smiled knowingly as he noted the obviously impressed reaction to his dropping the name of Broadway's top hit maker. "He hasn't had a flop in years. People go to see his shows just because he's attached to them."
Sidney swallowed the last of the sour mash, set the glass down upon the coffee table, then returned his attention to Denise. His hand had never ceased its provocative journey, and was nearing its destination. Denise struggled to appear calm, but her breathing had grown noticeably heavier and her efforts at self-control were obvious to the experienced man.
"Well, anyway, this producer says he'll let me in for twenty-five percent. II I can come up with fifteen thousand dollars by next Wednesday." Before Denise could register surprise at the figure, his hand darted to its target, and she gasped at the sudden shock wave it sent rocketing through her body.
He leaned forward and kissed her tenderly upon the lips, caressing them with his tongue. As her mouth opened in joyful acquiescence, he crushed his to hers, and their tongues probed each within the mouth of the other, making contact and retreating erratically, like fencing foils in combat. A moan came up from deep within her only to be swallowed in the kiss.
Denise felt herself sliding downward onto the carpet, her housecoat being dragged up about her waist. Sidney's hands were dancing over her body like wild animals now, clawing at her housecoat, and probing within to pinch and knead her breasts. She could feel the nipples rise and harden in immediate response, and she arched her back to give him fuller access to them.
"Well, I guess we can talk about business later," he mumbled, before filling his mouth with her quivering right breast.
Denise sighed luxuriously, arching her back to force her breast deeper into Sidney's moist gullet. She could feel the sensitive areola growing hot and the nipple becoming hard as his experienced tongue played with it. Without warning, he pulled away from the right breast and immediately went to the left, sucking and nibbling at the sensitive tip until it, too, was glowing bright red and throbbing with passion.
His hands were not idle, gently stroking the smooth, tender flesh of her inner thighs, then caressing her at the most sensitive point of her body. Denise writhed against Sidney, opening her thighs and locking her legs about his midsection, almost crying out from sheer delight.
"Oh, darling," she cried at last, unable to stand it any longer. "Take me, please. I need you. Now!"
Sidney wasted no time heeding her plea. He sat up quickly on his haunches, forcing her to release the leg scissors she had on him, and swiftly but carefully unbuttoned his shirt and threw it aside, baring his manly chest. Denise's hands were already groping frantically at his trousers, deftly undoing his belt and unzipping his fly.
As he stretched out on top of her, Denise, with clawing, anxious fingers, managed to pull his pants and underpants down far enough for him to work them loose with his legs. Denise's housecoat, although still fastened at the neck, was a forgotten garment, open down the front, completely exposing her naked charms to his lust-filled eyes.
For several seconds, Sidney, a sly, almost sinister smile upon his lips, gazed deeply into Denise's eyes, watching her writhing in the throes of passion as a cat watches a mouse in its death throes. Then, suddenly, brutally and without warning, he lunged. Denise, taken by surprise, cried out as if in pain. But her fingernails dug into her lover's back and her legs flew around his waist, gathering him in.
The room was silent, save for the erratic panting of the two lovers thrashing against each other on the floor and the slapping sounds of their perspiring bellies colliding with ever increasing rapidity.
Denise's eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling, but focusing on thin air as she felt herself being lifted, carried up, up, and away toward the peak of sexual stimulation. She felt disoriented, fragmented, as if her mind was no longer a part of her body, as if her body was functioning of its own accord, seeking its own rewards, completely independent from her conscious self.
She was aware of Sidney laboring against her, aware of his hot breath upon her neck, of his powerful arms about her, of the strong hands gripping her buttocks and pulling her hips upward with every thrust, and acutely aware of his lunging presence. She was aware of him as an object, a great, pleasure-giving machine, some sort of erotically programmed humanoid tuned in to her body's wave length.
A feeling of growing panic surged through her as she tried to visualize his face, to see him as a man, as a personality, and found that she could not form a clear picture of Sidney in her mind. Then, just as he groaned and glued himself to her with a shudder, and just as she, too, trembled with the magnificent sensation of release, a face did appear to her, just for one agonizing instant.
It was not Sidney's face, however. It was Mike's.
"Oh ... ooooo!" she cried, crushing the hard, male body to her. "I love you so much...." She caught herself before she uttered his name.
After Sidney had left, Denise lay awake in the darkness of her bedroom, naked beneath the covers, remembering the majesty of this most recent episode. But this time, something had been different. He had seemed somehow more distant, his lovemaking more studied and less spontaneous than before. Or had it been really spontaneous before?
Denise tried to crowd these doubts from her mind, tried to think only of the joy he had brought into her life and of the happy day when she was to become his wife. She wanted to look forward to endless nights of such ecstasy, but her mind kept coming back to the nagging questions. What is Sidney really like? Is he in love with me? Or is there another reason for his attentions?
And as the night wore on toward dawn, the questions still dangled in the air, unanswered.
CHAPTER FOUR
It was between three and four in the morning when Debbie's bus pulled into the Port Authority Bus Terminal near Times Square, and almost four on the dot when the cab dropped her in front of the apartment building. With the help of the night doorman, she managed to lug her two suitcases into the lobby. Her big trunk containing most of her belongings was being shipped down on a later bus, a fact for which she was extremely grateful.
As stealthily as possible, she let herself into the apartment, then stood silently in the darkened vestibule, her ears listening for signs of life. Nothing stirred and she breathed a quiet sigh of relief, knowing that she wouldn't have to face Denise and the inevitable scene until later. Grasping the two suitcases firmly and being careful not to bump them against the furniture, she picked her way on tip-toes through the living room and down the hall, past Denise's bedroom to her own.
She was so exhausted that she barely managed to get out of her clothes before collapsing naked across the bed and drifting off into a deep slumber. Numerous images swirled through Debbie's mind: faces of people-Denise, Billy Coverdale, her father, Miss Manville, Sidney Kane, as she imagined he would look, with tiny horns sprouting from his forehead and a long, pointed tail swishing back and forth from beneath his black frock coat.
Clouds of steam rushed forth, obscuring the faces in a blue, impenetrable haze. Debbie felt cold and clammy as she groped through the mysterious fog. Suddenly it parted. She was standing in the shower room back at Cannabis. She was naked. Someone, a man, was standing before her, but she could not make out his features and she had to squint and lean forward to see that he was Billy Coverdale.
Billy was standing at attention, wearing the full dress uniform of Arnold Military Academy: the black shako with a navy blue brush at its crown and a white leather strap beneath his nose; the bluish-gray tunic adorned with two rows of shiny brass buttons down the front and long tails hanging down in the back; long black socks; and shiny black shoes. Something was missing. Debbie's mouth opened in surprise as she realized he was not wearing trousers, or even underpants. And that he was most certainly at attention was most evident!
Suddenly, Billy clicked his heels and took two military steps forward, halting and snapping his heels again a few inches in front of her. Her nipples were touching two of his brass buttons and Debbie felt a strange urge to giggle. She felt contact at another part of her body, but her large breasts prevented her from seeing what was happening.
Billy's face was stiff and impassive, just as she'd seen it when she had seen him drilling on the parade ground with his company one Sunday afternoon. She started when his mouth opened and he barked, as she'd heard the sergeant bark on the rifle range during that same guided tour.
"Ready on the right! Ready on the left! Ready on the firing line!"
His dark eyes bore into Debbie's, and she began to feel that warm feeling at the root of her belly again. Their bodies were barely touching, but she felt as if someone was burning her with a hot poker. From somewhere, a voice cried, "Fire!" and Billy suddenly lurched against her.
Fireworks began to explode, sending showers of bright red, white, and blue sparks flashing through the air. She realized that they were not in the shower room at Cannabis any longer, but on the parade ground at Arnold. As Billy continued to lunge at her, somehow remaining at attention, the faces of Danny and Jimmy materialized in the background. They were both saluting. A band was playing "Stars and Stripes Forever."
Danny and Jimmy faded away, dissolved, then were replaced by Denise and Mike, standing hand in hand, smiling proudly at her as she and Billy continued their bizarre military dance. Debbie wanted to cry out, to explain to her parents that she couldn't help herself, but they smiled reassuringly as if they understood. Another form insinuated itself between Mike and Denise, hurling Mike away with a swift blow and placing an arm possessively about Denise's shoulders. She frowned, but made no effort to escape. It was Sidney Kane, exactly as Debbie had pictured him earlier, but this time he was holding something in his right hand.
Debbie, staring transfixed over Billy's shoulder, saw that the object Sidney held was a long, red pitchfork. He left Denise's side, advancing toward the young couple, brandishing the implement menacingly. Debbie again felt the urge to cry out, to warn Billy of the danger approaching him, but before she could utter a sound, Sidney had plunged the diabolic weapon into Billy's rigid back. A burning pain flared in Debbie's abdomen and she realized that she and Billy had been pinned together, impaled upon Sidney's pitchfork.
She looked down to see her blood and the cadet's blood oozing out of their bellies and mingling together in a sticky red stream that ran over the prongs of the pitchfork. Sidney Kane's laughter echoed throughout the world. Debbie screamed.
"Debbie! Debbie!" cried Denise, shaking her daughter vigorously by the shoulders. "Wake up, child! You're having a nightmare."
"Oh, Mommy," cried Debbie, sitting up and throwing her arms around Denise and attempting to hide her tear-streaked face in the soft sanctuary of her mother's breasts. "Don't let him...."
"Who, darling? What's wrong?" Denise asked, taking her daughter in her arms and gently stroking her dark hair. Denise had been surprised-frightened is really the word-when she'd head Debbie cry out in the night, but her motherly instincts had overridden the shock of finding Debbie home and she had managed to compose herself enough to attend to her. It was a good feeling, holding her daughter in her arms and comforting her. It had been a long time since she had felt needed by Debbie, a long time since she'd felt like a mother at all.
Debbie, regaining her senses and her composure, gently freed herself from her mother's embrace and sat up on the edge of the bed beside her. She was a bit surprised to see that Denise was as naked as she, and her eyes involuntarily scanned down over her mother's body, subconsciously comparing it with her own. It was a good body for a woman of thirty-four, or for any woman. Delicate, fragile, not voluptuous like her own. Debbie envied her mother her figure, but she knew that her mother envied her hers, too, so that made things even.
"Well, hi, Denise," Debbie said, with an air of exaggerated cockiness. "Got a cigarette?"
"Sure, right here in my pocket," Denise replied sarcastically, indicating her nudity. "I suppose it would be presumptuous of me to ask what you're doing home in the middle of the semester."
"Oh, it's not the middle of the semester," Debbie said. "It's just the fourth week."
"So explain to me what you're doing here during the fourth week of the semester, then," Denise countered, fixing Debbie with a no-nonsense glare. She was no longer playing protective mother to frightened infant, but stern guardian to truculent ward.
Debbie breathed an impatient sigh and, fixing her eyes on an imaginary spot on the ceiling, quickly recited her cover story about having been caught in the act of pilfering the dorm's cookie jar and being expelled immediately. When she finished, she turned to look at her mother and was met by an expression of profound skepticism.
"You know I don't believe a word of that," Denise said flatly. "But," she continued, standing and moving toward the door, "I won't press you for the truth right now. You get some sleep. We'll discuss this whole thing later."
Debbie lay back on the bed as her mother went out, switching off the overhead light as she went. She stared into the darkness, knowing that sleep was out of the question. She had almost blown her cover by freaking out over that crazy dream, and she knew that she'd have to get herself together if she hoped to succeed in scuttling Denise's marriage plans in the few days allotted to her. Denise was suspicious of her motives for coming home. Debbie realized that she'd have to allay those suspicions by being the sweetest, most obedient daughter any woman ever had. Otherwise, when she went into action, Denise would immediately assume the worst.
Still, Debbie mused confidently, if she catches me and Sidney together, doing that, she's not going to think very highly of him-even if she's sure that I engineered the whole thing.
Debbie felt a chill run up her spine. For the first time she had admitted to herself that her plan included the seduction of her mother's lover. It was a frightening thought, but not entirely unpleasant.
Well, she thought, if he's going to be the first, I just hope he makes it worth my while, "Now, listen, Specs," Sidney Kane was saying over the telephone, in his penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park, "just be patient with me a little longer and I promise I'll make it worth your while."
Although it was a cool night, the French doors separating the spacious living room from the flagstone terrace were ajar. Despite the autumn breeze sweeping in, Sidney was perspiring as he grunted into the mouthpiece in response to the voice on the other end.
Sidney dabbed at his forehead with a silk hanky and licked his lips nervously as he listened respectfully. His eyes went wide suddenly.
"Why can't you wait two weeks?" he blurted. "Look, you know I'm getting married, and I'm sure to have the dough by then. ... Well, sure I'm working on it, and maybe I will have it this week, but...."
He winced at something the other party said, then sighed and, with a tone of abject defeat, nodded and replaced the receiver in its cradle. He didn't even look up as the rustle of nylon announced the entrance of another person into the room.
The girl-she didn't appear to be over sixteen but was, perhaps, nineteen or twenty-stood behind him and began gently massaging his shoulders with long, graceful fingers. She had long, dark brown hair, and beneath the thin fabric of her negligee one could make out the contours of a voluptuous figure. The tips of her large breasts were dark circles beneath the nylon, her hips were broad and her thighs tended toward fat. She had the face of a campfire girl and the body of a Roman whore.
"Gee, Mr. Kane," she chirped, "you sure look worried for a man who's getting married in a few days."
"Oh, dry up, will you?" Kane grumbled, still not looking up from his lap. "And stop calling me Mr. Kane."
The girl wrinkled her brow and looked pouty for a moment. Then, seeing that her performance was having no effect, shrugged her shoulders and wiggled out of the room. Sidney turned in his chair and watched her departure, studying her jiggling buttocks as they danced around beneath the diaphanous gown.
"Hey!" he called, stopping her in her tracks. She looked over her shoulder questioningly. "Your mother know where you are?" Sidney asked.
"Axe you crazy, Mr. Kane?" the girl shot back. "She thinks I'm at a pajama party." She thought a moment, then added: "Come to think of it, I guess I am!"
Sidney, laughing heartily, rose from his chair and approached her. Sweeping her up into his arms, he carried her into the bedroom. "Time for some more party games," he quipped, kicking the door shut with his foot.
It was twenty minutes before reveille at Arnold Military Academy, but about fifteen cadets were already up and sitting around drinking coffee in the orderly room of the Charley Company dorm. The O.D., a freckle-faced kid with horn-rimmed spectacles perched upon the end of his pug nose, was leaning back in his swivel chair with his feet resting on the desk. The other cadets were either leaning against the wall or sitting on the desk top, listening intentiy to Cadet Pvt. Jimmy Dennis, who was chattering excitedly as he paced about the floor.
"So, anyway, we're all three naked, see? And she's jumping around like an epileptic with poison ivy and I'm washin' her boobs, see? Wow, man, you should see the jugs on her-I mean, they're like grapefruits-watermelons! And Danny here," indicating Cadet Pvt. Danny Sykes, a pudgy redhead who stood grinning proudly behind him, "is behind her doing gosh knows what, and all of a sudden, she gets down on her knees and grabs my...."
At that instant, the door burst open and Cadet Corporal Billy Coverdale, his handsome features set and grim, charged in. He stopped a few inches from Jimmy, who had stopped in mid-sentence and turned to see the intruder. A heavy silence hung over the room.
"Who grabs your what?" Billy asked in a soft, but menacing tone.
Jimmy's mouth opened and closed several times, but no sound issued forth. Danny started easing toward the door, but a sharp glance from Billy stopped him dead in his tracks.
"I ... I ... I was just telling the guys here about the fun you missed out on over at...." Jimmy stammered, lamely waving his hand in the general direction of Cannabis School for Girls. "I mean, you're not sore, are you?"
"Stand at attention, mister!" Billy barked. "You too, Sykes." Danny and Jimmy exchanged glances, then snapped to. The other cadets grinned and leaned forward, eagerly awaiting the rest of the fireworks.
"Now hear this, and hear it good," Billy continued, shouting at the two rigid cadets. "If I hear another word about this incident, if I even hear so much as a certain party's name mentioned around this academy-no matter who I hear it from-I'm gonna come looking for you two and somebody's going to get his tail kicked all over the parade ground. Got that?"
"Yes, sir!" the two of them snapped in unison.
"All right," Billy growled. "Now get upstairs and start cleaning up your personal areas-and mine, too. Dismissed!"
Danny and Jimmy bolted for the door as one, first colliding with it and jamming it shut in their haste, then, after wrestling with each other for the knob and finally yanking it open, getting jammed together in the narrow opening. An assist from Billy's boot sent them flying into the hall. As their footsteps clattered up the stairs, the other cadets roared with laughter.
"Hey, Billy," one of them finally managed to cough. "You must be kinda sweet on that chick, huh? What's her name, anyway? They never got around to telling us."
Billy grinned as he adjusted his cap and started for the door. "Go to hell," he said good-naturedly, blushing just a little.
Debbie was up at seven A.M., puttering about the kitchen fixing breakfast for Denise and herself. Her mother hadn't stirred and Debbie knew she probably wouldn't be up for another half hour. She knew that Denise loved eggs Benedict, so she had decided to make that as a surprise to help ease the tension between them and to make her mother more receptive to her explanation of why she was home.
While the sauce was simmering, Debbie sat down at the table with a cup of coffee and the morning paper, idly flipping through the paper. As she passed through the entertainment section, her eyes were caught by a familiar name in one of the columns.
She turned back to the column, a gossip column, and found the item. It read: "Sidney Kane, of the real estate Kanes, seems to be the picture of affluence, despite rumors to the effect that he is near the end of his inheritance. Other tongues are wagging about Sid's impending marriage to a beautiful divorcee. She's thirty-ish, and some say she's too 'old' for Sid, whose past female interests have all been non-voters, if you get our meaning....
Debbie got the meaning, and she smiled into her coffee cup at this evidence that her job might not be such a difficult one after all.
The telephone rang, interrupting her thoughts. Debbie jumped up and answered it on the first ring, not wanting it to disturb Denise before she had breakfast ready.
"Hale residence," she said.
"Hi. Debbie? This is Billy...." the voice on the other end announced.
"Well, Mr. Coverdale, I can't imagine why you called, but I have nothing to say to you, so you just wasted fifty cents," Debbie said coldly.
"Gee whiz," Billy said, "I just called to tell you I'm sorry about what happened and everything. And I'm getting a pass this weekend, so I wondered if maybe I could see you when I get to New York?"
Debbie smiled slyly, obviously flattered at the boy's attention, but not ready to let him off the hook.
"I'm afraid I'll be quite busy," she said. Then, after a long pause: "But, if you want to give me a call, maybe I might find a few minutes for lunch on Sunday."
"Lunch?" Billy exclaimed. "I thought...."
But Debbie had already hung up, a smug smile creasing her lips. Her dream came back to her, and she frowned a bit as she tried to interpret its meaning, especially the part involving her and Billy and Sidney Kane's pitchfork.
CHAPTER FIVE
The breakfast gambit had been a success, all things taken into consideration. Denise had grilled Debbie about her alleged thievery, asking her over and over again why she would do such a thing when she knew that all she had to do was wire home if she needed extra money. Debbie had countered that by saying she had needed the cash immediately and had intended to replace it.
"Are you sure you're not scheming a way to break up my relationship with Sidney?" Denise had asked later, as she prepared to go out.
"Oh, Mommy," Debbie said, reverting to the seldom-used diminutive to put Denise off. "I'm surprised you'd think such a thing. Actually, I'm really happy for you and I can't wait to meet the lucky guy. After all, he's going to be my..." the word stuck in her throat, "stepfather and all."
Denise did not seem completely convinced, but she was obviously in a hurry and it seemed evident that there was no more she could get out of Debbie, so she put on her coat and started for the front door.
"Oh, by the way," she said, pausing in the vestibule. "You'll be getting your chance to meet your future stepfather in just a couple of hours. He's coming over around eleven. I hope to be back by then, but if I'm not, ask him to wait. Tell him I've gone to the bank. I'm sure he'll wait then."
Debbie simply nodded, fighting to keep a straight face so as not to betray her anxiety. Her first opportunity to put her plan into action seemed about to present itself and her stomach felt queasy with nervous anticipation.
Then there was that remark Denise had made about the bank. Debbie recalled the item she had read in the paper, the rumor that perhaps Sidney Kane was not as financially stable as he appeared to be. Her mind jumped to the obvious conclusion: He was trying to gouge money out of Denise-and, worse yet, he was succeeding.
The queasy feeling in her stomach disappeared and was replaced by a feeling of calm resolve. There was a job to be done, and Debbie had to do it. She strode purposefully into her bedroom and began sorting through her clothing, trying to decide upon the ideal outfit for the occasion. It had to be seductive, revealing, but not obvious. She couldn't wear the green mini-dress with the low neckline: what would a girl be doing sitting around the house at eleven in the morning all dolled up in a party dress? On the other hand, she didn't want him to see her looking too frayed at the edges, like in a pair of faded short-shorts and halter.
Now what, she wondered, would Brigitte Bardot wear in a situation like this? A light flicked on in her mind as she realized that the answer was hanging on a rack in the bathroom.
The door buzzer sounded at eleven sharp. Debbie, who had drunk two shots of gin to help settle her nerves, took a deep breath and wrapped the bath towel about her naked body, tucking it together at the top in back so that it fell open in a V, completely exposing her from the buttocks down. She took a look over her shoulder at herself in the mirror, standing up on her toes to make her rosy cheeks flex and stand out saucily. It was perfect.
Now if she just had the nerve to go through with it....
The buzzer sounded again and Debbie hurried to the door, paused a moment, then threw the latch so that it made a loud snap, and began walking away. Sidney Kane pushed the door open and stepped into the vestibule. The first sight that greeted his eyes was the back of Debbie's head, and then his eyes fell upon her provocatively jiggling, wiggling behind.
His mouth fell open and his throat went suddenly dry at the sight. He wanted to clear his throat or make some sound, but he couldn't bring himself to do it.
Debbie did not look back as she crossed the living room toward the hallway leading to the bathroom, but she walked at a medium pace, making sure that her unseen audience got a good view of the performance-and the performer. She smiled to herself and uttered the lines she had been rehearsing all morning as she disappeared into the hallway.
"Mother, you really should try to remember your key when you go out. I mean, suppose I wasn't here to let you in?"
Kane's eyes glistened with lust and he grinned self-consciously after Debbie had left the room. There was no need to say anything, yet. She'd find out about her mistake soon enough, he concluded. So, he hung his coat in the closet and went to the bar to fix himself a drink.
Debbie closed the door to her room and threw off the towel, A film of perspiration was forming on her forehead as she dashed about the room, gathering up the things she was going to wear at her second entrance. The fact that Kane hadn't spoken, hadn't attempted to let her know she was revealing herself to him, confirmed her suspicions about the type of man he really was. She was confident that he'd be an easy mark. But she had to hurry if she expected to have him set up before Denise returned.
Without bothering to put on a pair of panties, she wriggled into a pair of skin-tight short-shorts that hugged her loins and buttocks so firmly that every contour of her pelvic region stood out like rough terrain on a bas-relief map.
She was about to put on a bra when the telephone rang. Debbie snatched up the extension by her bedside. It was Denise.
"Is Sidney there yet?" she asked.
"No," Debbie lied. "Not yet."
"Well, he should be there any minute. I'm tied up here in the loan department, but I should be back in about an hour. If anything comes up, you can call me here."
Denise rang off, and Debbie stared at the telephone for several seconds, pondering the significance of her mother's words. To think that Denise was actually borrowing money for that ... that. ... Words escaped her.
She returned to her dressing, picking up the bra, then, thinking better of it, threw it aside. She wanted to make it easy for him. Rummaging through the suitcase again, she pulled out a striped tee-shirt that one of the girls at Cannabis had given her as a birthday gift.
It was made of a stretch fabric and was about a size too small, so Debbie hadn't worn it. But she knew that it was perfect for the situation at hand. She struggled into it and studied the effect in the mirror. Her breasts seemed immense as they strained against the taut fabric. Her nipples made easily distinguishable points. Satisfied, Debbie threw her shoulders back and pranced out of the room.
"Oh!" she said, putting a hand to her mouth in mock surprise when she entered the living room and found Sidney Kane sitting in an easy chair sipping a highball. It was no effort to blush as she recalled having exposed herself to him at the front door. She was genuinely embarrassed, just as she had been during the shower room incident at Cannabis.
"Was that you I let in a few minutes ago?" she asked, her eyes widening as Sidney, smiling broadly, rose from his chair. "I thought...."
"I know," Sidney said, offering her his chair with a gesture of his hand. "But it's all right. I didn't look."
Debbie smiled inwardly, thinking, I'll bet you didn't look. She studied Sidney carefully as she sat down on the couch, ignoring the proffered chair. She had to admit that he was a good-looking man, nicely built and well-dressed. Her mother had good taste, and Debbie found herself looking forward to what she hoped was about to take place.
"You must be Sidney," Debbie said. "Mom said you were coming by, but I didn't expect you so soon. I hope I didn't embarrass you."
"Oh, no, of course not," he replied, sinking back into the chair and smiling confidently. "You, of course, are Deborah. I've been looking forward to meeting you. I must say, I'm impressed with my future stepdaughter."
Debbie smiled bashfully, then got up and walked over to the bar, taking heavy steps so that her breasts jogged about beneath the tight jersey. From the corner of her eye, she could see the gleam in Sidney's eyes, and she grew more confident by the moment.
"I'm going to fix myself a drink," she announced, pouring gin into a highball glass and dropping in a couple of ice cubes before filling the glass with Seven-up. "Can I offer you anything?"
"Not right now," Sidney said, picking up her suggestive tone. "Maybe later. Uh ... what time will your mother be back?"
"She said she was going to the bank and wouldn't be back for a couple of hours," Debbie replied, not really lying, since Denise had left two hours earlier. "So we'll have plenty of time to get acquainted," she added pointedly.
"Say, aren't you a little young to be imbibing?" he asked, as she situated herself on the couch. "I mean, does your mother...? "
"I'm a big girl now," Debbie countered, taking a deep swallow from her glass. "I'm eighteen, and I do what I want to do. Denise-Mom-and I have an understanding, you see."
"Oh," Sidney said, licking his lips nervously.
"Well, if you're going to be my stepfather and we're going to be so close, why don't you come over here where we can talk without yelling at each other," Debbie said, patting the cushion beside her.
Sidney shrugged and came over to sit beside her, leaving a few inches of space between them. Debbie, chattering about school and a number of inane things, gradually shifted her body until her bare thigh was touching his pants leg. A feeling of satisfaction crept through her as she felt him answering with a flex of his thigh muscles.
Spying a magazine lying on the couch on the other side of him, Debbie impulsively leaned across him, stretching out until her breasts grazed his trousers. The magazine was just beyond the reach of her outstretched fingers.
"Oh, darn!" she exclaimed, trying to right herself by placing a hand upon Sidney's thigh and pushing down. She was nearly erect when her hand slipped and plunged into his lap. Her fingers groped about for support, and Sidney drew a sharp breath between clenched teeth.
"Golly, I'm sorry," Debbie said, taking her hand away. "I hope I didn't hurt you."
Sidney's face was covered with beads of perspiration, and his hand was shaking as he fumbled about in his pocket and pulled out a hanky to dab at his sweating brow. He grinned nervously.
"What time did you say your mother would be home?" he asked, his eyes fixed upon the twin points bulging beneath her pullover.
"Oh, not for a long time," Debbie answered, suddenly remembering that Denise was due any minute. She had to work faster. A sudden inspiration struck her, and she turned to Sidney with a look of deep concern.
"This may sound strange, coming from an almost perfect stranger," she began hesitantly, staring deeply into Sidney's eyes. "But since you're going to be my ... father ... well, maybe you can help me...."
Sidney tried to look fatherly, but his eyes betrayed the lust burning within him as Debbie continued her speech.
"Well, you see," she went on, placing a hand on his left thigh, "I've got this problem. Even Denise-Mom-doesn't know about it. I mean, it's not the sort of thing a daughter talks to her mother about. I've even been to psychiatrists about it, but they don't seem to be able to help me, either."
"What is it, child?" Sidney said, his voice cracking as Debbie's hand crept up his thigh, squeezing him suggestively through the fabric of his trousers. "You can talk to me."
"I thought so," Debbie said, inching her hand closer to its destination and relishing the nervous twitching that had begun at the corner of Sidney's mouth. "Well, you see, I just have this thing about older men. It's like a compulsion, you know? Take right now, for instance: I don't even hardly know you, but I feel just like grabbing you by the...."
Sidney moaned and bared his teeth as Debbie demonstrated.
"Ooops!" she blurted. "See? I went and did it again. You won't tell my mother, will you?" Her hand had not released its grip as her eyes searched his.
"Oh, no," Sidney replied hastily. "No, of course not. You can trust me."
"I thought so," Debbie said again, squeezing him con-spiratorially. "But anyway, about my problem," she continued, massaging him through his trousers and leaning forward until her breasts grazed his quaking shoulder, "I'm just beside myself with worry. When I get around an older man-such as yourself, for instance-I get all tingly and, well, hot."
Sidney's eyes were blazing and his breath was coming in quick gasps, as Debbie's nimble fingers continued to caress him. Without warning, Debbie grabbed his right hand with her left and brought it swiftly to her lap.
"Here-feel!" she cried.
Sidney reacted immediately, grasping a handful of material and giving it a robust squeeze. Debbie let out a deep sigh, opening her thighs involuntarily, no longer sure that she was just acting.
"See ... what ... I ... mean...? " she gasped, fumbling with the zipper of Sidney's trousers, then plunging her hand inside the opening.
Sidney had dropped all pretenses of fatherly concern. His head had somehow found its way beneath her tight jersey and she felt his tongue darting about upon the nipples, first one and then the other, making them both harden with excitement.
Debbie began caressing him more vigorously, just as she had done with the cadet in the shower room, and somewhere behind the red haze that filled her conscious mind, she felt herself standing on the threshold of success. Just a few more minutes and Denise would get a real eyeful....
Sidney's agility surprised her. Somehow, he had gotten his head out from under her jersey and she felt his hands upon her shoulders, powerful, demanding, pushing her down, down. She clung to him with her right hand, but slipped from the couch onto her knees on the floor.
His hand was at the back of her neck, forcing her head closer, closer, and suddenly Debbie realized what he wanted from her. She almost panicked and broke free, but as she stared at the objective he was pushing her toward, the importance of her mission came back to her.
Oh, well, she told herself, licking her lips in anticipation. It's all in the interests of a good cause.
She opened her mouth to take a deep breath, and at that very instant, Sidney pushed her head down. The world seemed to go from red to blue to orange to purple to near-black. Debbie could hear Sidney gasping and moaning, but she was only partially aware of what she was doing. Then, several things happened to make her acutely aware.
Sidney uttered a tortured cry and shuddered, his fingers grasping her hair painfully. The sound of a key turning in the front door lock rattled through the living room like a gunshot. Debbie, realizing that victory was within her grasp, tried to hang on, but Sidney grabbed her by the shoulders and pushed her violently away, sending her staggering backward across, the room to plop unceremoniously into the easy chair he had earlier occupied.
"Well, well," Denise said, coming in and giving Sidney a peck on the cheek. "I see that you two have been getting acquainted."
Debbie thought for a moment that Denise had seen what was happening, but her heart fell as she realized that Sidney had managed to hide the evidence, before Denise had entered from the vestibule. It would be fruitless for her to try to incriminate him by word of mouth-and anyway, she couldn't speak without swallowing. And she wasn't the kind of girl who'd do that!
"So how do you like your stepfather-to-be, Debbie?" Denise asked brightly, turning to face her daughter.
Debbie tried to look nonchalant as she said, "Mmmmmm?"
"What?" Denise said, frowning.
"Mmmmmm, hmmmm," Debbie replied, rising and walking swiftly from the room, making her way toward the bathroom.
"Well, what's wrong with her?" Denise asked, puzzled.
"Oh, she insisted upon having a little gin," Sidney alibied, running a finger around the inside of his shirt collar. "Guess she got a little sick."
Debbie ran cold water in the bathroom basin and watched intently as it flowed down the drain. Then she cupped her hands and caught some water, sipped it and washed it around in her mouth.
Darn, darn, darn! she thought, pounding her fist on the edge of the basin. Just when I had him where I wanted him, too.
Her nerve endings were still tingling from the previous minutes' excitement. She threw cold water in her face, then dried it.
Well, she consoled herself, listening to muted laughter coming from the living room, there'll be a next time.
CHAPTER SIX
Debbie had difficulty sleeping that night as she worried about what her next step was to be. She had overheard Denise telling Sidney that the bank would not be able to clear the loan for a few days, perhaps as long as a week, so Debbie was somewhat relieved about that. But now that she had thrown herself at Sidney, she feared that he might be wary of her in the future. The first time had been easy-the next time was bound to be more difficult.
The next day, Saturday, Debbie placed a call to Inter-Continental Construction Company, the firm Mike worked for, identified herself as his daughter and asked how she could contact him in case of emergency. She was told that he was working on a bridge project in a remote area of Thailand and could not be reached by telephone. A wire in care of the American Express office in Bangkok might reach him within a week's time, she was told.
Armed with this information, she tripped over to the Western Union office and posted an urgent cablegram. It read:
"Daddy. Please come home immediately. Denise in danger. We need you. Love, Debbie."
She could only hope that Mike would heed the message without telephoning first, or if he did telephone, that she would be around to take the call so she could impress him with the importance of his immediate presence. If Denise found out about the cablegram, she'd tell Mike to forget it and Debbie's efforts to sabotage the wedding would be exposed. Sending the wire was a calculated risk, but one Debbie felt she had to take. After all, what good would it do to break up Denise and Sidney if Mike wasn't around to reap the benefits?
When she arrived back at the apartment, it was almost noon. Denise was up and gone. Debbie fixed herself a peanut butter sandwich and sat down to watch TV in the living room. On an impulse, she picked up the telephone, called information and asked for the number of Sidney Kane on Central Park West. The operator gave her the number, and Debbie dialed it. The monotonous buzz-buzz of a busy signal came over the line.
She hung up and dialed again. Still busy. A few minutes later, she tried a third time, but the line was still tied up. As she replaced the receiver in its cradle, her eyes fell upon a scrap of paper lying on the floor near the coffee table. Debbie picked it up. It was a note from Denise, informing Debbie that she and Sidney had gone out to Long Island to look at houses and would be back around six o'clock.
Debbie frowned in concentration at the note. It seemed odd to her that Sidney, who supposedly lived alone, could be talking on his own telephone while he was out on Long Island looking at houses. Maybe the receiver was off the hook. Debbie dialed the operator and asked her to check the line.
"There is a conversation, that line is in use," came the answer.
Debbie hung up and, moving with a sense of urgency, grabbed her coat and left the apartment. She was going to pay a surprise visit to her intended stepfather's residence, just to see what she'd find. If she found Denise and Sidney there, she could explain that she'd been looking for them and wanted to go out to Long Island with them. If she found someone else there-well, she'd just have to play it by ear according to who it was and what they were doing there.
The Madison Avenue bus was crowded with Saturday shoppers, but the trip uptown only took about twenty minutes. Debbie wondered who, or what she would find at Sidney's apartment as she walked across town. The building was an impressive edifice with a canopy and a snappily-uniformed doorman.
He looked a little leery when Debbie asked to go up to the penthouse, but finally he shrugged and ushered her into the automatic elevator. The elevator rocketed straight up to the fifteenth floor. Debbie stood in the plushly carpeted hallway for several minutes, marveling at the opulence of the building. Then, remembering her mission, she pushed the mother-of-pearl button next to the door of Sidney Kane's apartment.
The muted chimes were still playing a soft tune when the door was flung open suddenly by a buxom, young brunette wearing a transparent shortie peignoir. The girl was naked beneath the skimpy garment and Debbie's eyes opened in surprise as she stared at her voluptuous curves. The other girl's eyes were wide with surprise, too, and for several seconds neither of them spoke. They just stood there in the doorway staring at each other.
"Golly," the girl said at last. "I thought you were my ... uh ... Uncle Sidney. Who are you?"
"I guess I'm your Cousin Debbie," Debbie replied sarcastically, brushing past the girl and entering the apartment. "Where is our dear 'llncle' anyway?"
"He went out with his fiancee to look at some property, I think," the girl said, closing the door and following Debbie into the swank living room.
There was an alcove with a fully-stocked bar at one end of the spacious room, and Debbie went straight to it. She dropped her coat across a chair and mixed herself a stiff gin and soda, took a healthy slug from it, then turned to confront her companion, who was standing in the middle of the floor studying her quizzically.
The girl seemed oblivious to the fact that she was nearly naked, and Debbie felt slightly embarrassed as she stared at her. She had made up her mind, however, to try to find out who this girl was and what her connection was with Sidney.
"Well, 'Cuz', " Debbie said, "you already know my name. So what's yours?"
"Oh, you can call me Candy. Uncle Sidney does," the girl replied, giggling as she bounced across the room to plop down on the sofa.
Debbie polished off her drink, poured herself another, then sat down on the sofa next to Candy. She noticed that Candy was staring at her chest, and Debbie took a deep breath and leaned back luxuriously.
"Gee, are they real?" Candy said suddenly.
"What?" Debbie responded.
"Your ... uh ... breasts," Candy answered.
"Sure they're real," Debbie shot back in feigned annoyance. "Just as real as yours."
"And almost as big, I'll bet," Candy said, with just a hint of cattiness in her tone.
"What do you mean, almost?" Debbie said, annoyed. "They're bigger."
"Well, prove it then, cousin," Candy sneered.
"What are you-some kind of a nut?" Debbie said, getting up and moving to the bar for another drink. She was stalling for time, trying to figure out how to gain Candy's confidence. She hadn't expected she'd have to put on a striptease to do it.
"Oh, come on," Candy said, almost as if reading Debbie's thoughts. "I'm just curious is all-and anyway, I'm a girl, so what harm will it do? I'll bet you're embarrassed because you're wearing falsies."
The last remark went straight to Debbie's feminine ego. She took a healthy swallow of her drink and began unbuttoning her blouse. Candy's eyes were wide with admiration as Debbie unhooked her bra and threw it across the bar, baring her magnificent breasts. The gin had begun to take effect and she felt bold and reckless. With a taunting expression on her face, she walked over to stand in front of Candy. Taking her naked breasts in her hands, she held them out and bent over until the rosy nipples were almost poking the other girl's eyeballs.
"Satisfied, Miss Smarty?" Debbie taunted.
Candy gulped, blinked, and then blurted: "I still don't think they're bigger'n mine." So saying, she stood up and whipped off the peignoir, standing breast-to-breast with Debbie. Suddenly, she grabbed Debbie by both wrists and brought her hands up to her breasts. "Here-feel!" she commanded.
In spite of herself, Debbie closed her fingers upon the other girl's mammoth globes, feeling the dark nipples harden against her palms. She had never touched another girl's breasts before, and she felt a strange tingle of excitement as Candy began to return the caress.
"I guess it's a dead heat," Candy whispered, leaning closer to Debbie so that their hands were trapped between the two pairs of swelling mammaries. Suddenly her lips were upon Debbie's. Debbie tried to pull away, but Candy's fingernails dug into her breasts, commanding her to stay. She felt her lips opening and the other girl's tongue probing within her mouth.
Debbie swooned onto the couch, her hands still clutching Candy's breasts, pulling the girl down on top of her. Her entire body quivered with excitement and strange words swirled about in her confused mind. Words like lesbian and homosexual; words that frightened her and excited her at the same time.
Debbie could not think about what she was doing. She was being swept along by the current. Candy's hands roamed over her body, gentle but demanding, searching and probing every secret area of her. Their lips strained against each other's, their tongues lashed back and forth in silent combat. Debbie felt her skirt being pushed up about her hips. Dainty fingers were pulling her panties down over her trembling thighs. Suddenly Candy's lips were gone from hers. She felt hot, sucking kisses at the nipples of her breasts, then upon her quaking belly, on the soft, warm flesh of her inner thighs.
She moaned in delight as Candy continued her relentless assault. Debbie spread her legs, writhing her hips in response to Candy's expert ministrations. She felt possessed by demons, strange lights seemed to be flashing on and off in her fevered brain, and suddenly a great shock wave of passion swept over her and she cried out, tangling her fingers in Candy's hair.
"Good, huh?" Candy said brightly, beaming at Debbie proudly. "Bet you can't do that."
Without thinking, Debbie pushed Candy onto her back on the floor and fell upon her, crushing their voluptuous breasts together. Both girls were perspiring freely and their bodies were sticky against each other. Debbie tasted the salty sweat in her mouth as she locked her lips upon one of Candy's dark nipples, nursing at it like a starving infant until she felt the bud grow turgid and hot upon her tongue. She felt Candy's hands upon her shoulders, urging her to move on, but she hesitated from fear and embarrassment. Finally, feeling that she owed it to her, Debbie kissed the girl's naked belly and perspiring thighs, then began imitating Candy's earlier performance.
Later, the two girls, both exhausted but feeling strangely exhilarated, sat up on the sofa and chatted girlishly. Candy was still naked and Debbie wore only her skirt. Her other clothing was strewn about the room.
"You ever do that before?" Candy asked. "I mean, with a girl?"
Debbie laughed nervously before replying. "No, I never did. Did you?"
"Oh, sure, plenty of times," Candy replied, stroking Debbie's breasts with one hand.
"Mmmmmm, that feels good," Debbie said. "But I don't like it. I mean, you don't have to stop or anything, but I'll never do what we did again. It's just not my style, I don't think."
Candy took her hand away and pouted for a few minutes. "I was just trying to have a little fun," she said petulantly. "Uncle Sidney knows I like girls, and he doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. In fact, he once had me and another girl do it right here in the apartment so that he could watch."
"Why don't you come off that 'Uncle' jazz?" Debbie said suddenly. "He's no more your uncle than he is mine."
"Well, a girl can't be too careful, you know," Candy replied defensively. "I mean, how could I be sure you were one of Mr. Kane's girls, too? He never told me about you."
"You mean, he's got other girls like us? And he tells you about them?"
"Oh, sure," Candy said. "Let's see: there's Marsha, and Linda, and that little bitch, Elaine-I swear she's not a day over fifteen but Mr. Kane said she's of age, so who am I to argue-and Louise. And you. But I can't figure out why he never mentioned you."
"Well, we just met the other day," Debbie explained, hoping to change the subject before she had to make up a complete lie to cover her true identity. "But I don't think we're going to see each other any more. He's getting married at the end of the week."
"So what? That won't stop him. He told me so. He's marrying some old bitch-she must be thirty-five if she's a day-and then he's going to rent an apartment for me to live in as soon as I'm eighteen and can leave home. Maybe he'll let you move in with me."
Debbie stifled the anger that welled up within her at the derogatory description of her mother. She knew she couldn't afford to blow her cool at this crucial point, just when she was getting the real goods on Sidney.
"Well, if he's going to do all that," Debbie said, wrinkling her brow in puzzled confusion, "why is he getting married?"
"For money-what else?" Candy shot back. "Don't let this place fool you. Mr. Kane's almost broke and he owes some gamblers a lot of money. He got drunk one night and told me when we were in bed. He's just marrying this old broad to get himself straight."
"I see," said Debbie, nodding her head thoughtfully. "Well, I guess I'd better be going."
"Me too. I'm not even supposed to be up here today, but I thought I'd surprise him. He told me to be out of here before he got back."
The two girls dressed quickly and left the apartment together. As they rode down in the elevator, Debbie turned to Candy and admonished her not to tell Sidney that she had visited the apartment.
"My lips are sealed," Candy said, giggling. "I wouldn't want you to get into any trouble. You're going to be my roommate, aren't you?"
Debbie shuddered at the thought as Candy's hand grasped her by the left cheek of her buttocks. "Yeah, sure we are," she said, gently pushing the insistent hand away as the elevator doors slid open. The doorman smiled knowingly at the two teenagers as they crossed the lobby and stepped into the street.
"Want to take in a movie with me?" Candy asked, popping a wad of bubble gum into her mouth.
Debbie mumbled an excuse about having to meet her mother to go shopping and the two girls parted. Debbie shook her head in amazement as she watched Candy switching down the street, drawing stares from passersby-male and female alike.
By the time she got back to the apartment, Debbie's mind was swimming with information. She had discovered for certain that Sidney Kane's interest in Denise was more fiscal than physical. And that the rumors she had read of in the newspaper column were most certainly true: he was in need of money, and he had an almost insatiable appetite for voluptuous young girls. In addition, she had discovered that Sidney was in debt to a gang of bookies or something.
But how, she wondered, as she let herself into the apartment, could she use this information? Should she continue with her original plans, or should she modify her plan of attack in order to better utilize these new bits of information? There seemed no way to change at this point, but she wondered if....
"Well, hello there, Princess," said a young masculine voice, as Debbie stepped into the vestibule. It was Billy Coverdale, neatly attired in his Arnold Academy uniform. He was seated on the living room sofa. Sitting with him were Sidney and Denise. All three were sipping cocktails, although Debbie wondered if Billy's wasn't really a cocktail.
"Well, this is quite a surprise," Debbie said, as she hung her coat in the closet, not attempting to hide the sarcasm in her voice. "I certainly didn't expect to have such a distinguished visitor. Or are you visiting me?"
"Debbie, Cadet Coverdale said he just happened to be in the neighborhood and thought...." Denise began.
"He'd drop by," Debbie concluded, striding to the bar to fix herself a drink.
"Aren't you drinking quite a bit for such a young lady?" Sidney Kane interjected.
Eyes flashing, Debbie whirled about to confront her accuser.
"Don't you tell me about overindulgence, Mr. Kane!" she snapped.
Billy, Denise, and Sidney sat stunned at her outburst. It was Denise who finally broke the surprised silence.
"Debbie, what's gotten into you?" she said. "Sidney was just being...."
"Would you believe 'fatherly'? " Debbie cut in. "Or perhaps he was playing Dutch Uncle. He seems to be pretty good at that." Then, spurning the highball she had already poured, Debbie strode from the room, mumbling incomprehensible apologies as she hurried to the privacy of her bedroom.
She heard Billy and Denise calling her name, but she rushed to her room and slammed the door behind her. She collapsed across the bed and burst into tears. It had been a nerve-wracking day. She had learned too much, too rapidly. Not only about Sidney Kane and his sexual and financial chicanery, but also about herself and the kinds of things she might be susceptible to.
As she drifted off to sleep, she felt Candy's hands roaming over her body, and suddenly she felt very, very ill.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Debbie slept late the next day, Sunday. When she got up it was after eleven and she was alone in the apartment. A note on the kitchen table informed her that Denise had gone to Sidney's apartment for the day. As Debbie sipped hot coffee, she marveled at Sidney's gall; putting up a teenaged tart one day and entertaining his fiancee the next. From now on, however, she realized that she would have to control her temper. Her outburst of the previous evening could be smoothed over, but any further such displays might put both Sidney and Denise on guard. Debbie determined that she would play it cooler henceforth.
Then there was Billy Coverdale popping up like that. Why did he have to come barging in right now? she wondered. All he could do would be get in the way. If he thought she was just going to go rushing into his arms with joy, he had another thing coming. Debbie still remembered the time he'd tried to seduce her by force, and she wasn't ready to forgive him yet. Furthermore, she held it against him that he had escaped from the shower room after having witnessed her brazen display. He was the only person who was there who was not bound to secrecy for reasons of self-preservation. For all Debbie knew, he could have been blabbing about it all over the military academy. The very thought made her blush.
And there was that weird dream she'd had where Billy was making love to her standing at attention on the parade ground, while her parents watched with obvious approval. What did that mean? Well, Debbie didn't have time to worry about that. She had to plot her next move, to find some way of laying a trap for Sidney, a trap from which there was no escape. And she had to do it by Friday.
Debbie picked up the telephone and started to dial the number of Inter-Continental Construction Company, then remembered that it was Sunday, the offices would be closed. She had wanted to check up on the progress of her wire to Mike in Thailand, but she'd just have to sweat it out until the next day. Dejectedly, she replaced the telephone receiver in its cradle.
Debbie's head was throbbing and her mouth was dry and sour tasting, even though she had just brushed her teeth. She had a hangover from the sizable quantities of gin she had consumed the day before. She wasn't normally a heavy drinker-in fact, she'd hardly taken more than a few drinks in her young life. But in the past few days, under the pressure of the situation and the things she felt compelled to do, alcohol had proved to be a valuable medication. She remembered hearing Denise make some remark about "the hair of the dog" being the only cure for a hangover, so she went into the living room and poured herself a double gin with tonic.
A half an hour and two drinks later, Debbie was feeling a bit woozy, but at least her hangover was gone. She was on the verge of dozing off on the living room couch when the doorbell sounded. As she started across the room, Debbie was surprised to find that her legs were a little wobbly, but she managed to regain her equilibrium by concentrating on walking straight and erect.
Debbie called out through the door to ask who was calling, half-hoping that it would be a telegram from Mike. The muffled but quite recognizable voice of Billy Coverdale answered. Debbie frowned and shrugged her shoulders, then started to take the latch off the door before she realized that she was wearing only a pair of thin nylon bikini panties. Should she have him wait in the hall while she went in to dress, or ... what? The booze had her head spinning and even this minor problem seemed to be a major dilemma.
Oh, what the hell? she thought. He's seen it all before, and he knows better than to try anything in my own home. She was also thinking that a little frustration would serve him right, although she couldn't be sure why she was so determined to hurt him.
Billy's mouth dropped open before he could say a word when the door swung open to reveal Debbie standing there before him wearing only the see-through panties and clasping her hands to her naked breasts, covering the nipples in a display of modesty that hardly seemed appropriate or effective.
"Oh, hi, Billy," Debbie said brightly, without a sign of embarrassment. "I didn't expect you so soon. I'm not even dressed yet, but you can come on in."
As he followed her into the living room, Billy's eyes were fixed upon her wiggling buttocks grinding against each other beneath the transparent panties. His hands felt sweaty and it was all he could do to keep himself from tackling her and taking her right there on the floor. But some sixth sense told him that would be playing right into Debbie's hands. This was her way of wreaking revenge for some real or imagined wrong. Billy made up his mind to play it cool, just as if she was wearing a shroud that covered her from head to toe, instead of parading about like a ten-dollar whore.
Billy sat down on the couch across from Debbie, who had stationed herself in an easy chair across from him. Neither of them spoke for several minutes. Debbie had taken her hands away from her breasts and her big pink nipples were like two great eyeballs staring right into Billy's heart. She smiled to herself and sipped her highball as the cadet, with studied casualness, lit up a cigarette.
"Aren't you afraid you might catch cold sitting around like that?" he asked coolly.
"No, but if it upsets you, I'll change into something more modest," Debbie answered with a sly smirk, uncrossing her legs and sitting with her knees slightly parted.
"Oh, no, no," Billy answered quickly. "Doesn't bother me a bit. I just thought...."
"Well, if it's not bothering you, how come you lit your cigarette on the filter end?" Debbie shot back, laughing as she rose and wiggled from the room.
Cursing beneath his breath, Billy hastily crushed out the foul-smelling cigarette filter. He was angry with himself for having exposed his nervousness. A few minutes later, Debbie returned wearing a green mini-dress that was cut low in the front, exposing the bulging tops of her breasts, and which barely covered her pelvis, exposing her lush white thighs almost completely. A green ribbon in her dark hair provided just a touch of innocence. Billy could not help but register admiration by raising his eyebrows slightly. She was a gorgeous creature, dressed or undressed, and he vowed silently that someday she would be his.
"Well? Are you taking me to lunch or not?" Debbie said, slurring her words a little.
They made a strikingly handsome couple as they walked up Madison Avenue; he in his neatly-pressed uniform, Debbie in a brown mini-coat. It was a cool day, but the sun was shining brightly and so they just walked around for a while enjoying the sunshine before dropping into a little restaurant on Second Avenue.
All eyes were on Debbie as Billy helped her out of her coat. But as they sat in a dark, secluded corner, the warm glow of pride she had momentarily felt quickly dissipated as she became preoccupied with her problems.
She asked Billy to order her a vodka martini, extra-dry. He frowned, but summoned the waiter and placed the order, then as an afterthought, ordered a stein of beer for himself.
Billy studied Debbie in thoughtful silence for several minutes as she gulped her martini. Finally he spoke, leaning across the table to place a hand upon hers.
"Say, Debbie, what's bugging you recently?" he said. "I mean, I'm not trying to pry, but...."
"But you are," she snapped. "Who says there's anything wrong wish ... wif ... with me, anyway."
"There's obviously something wrong, and even a blind man could see it," he replied. "You're so stoned right now you can hardly talk straight, and I've never known you to take more than a rum and coke-mostly coke-every now and then. Furthermore, you were always a kind of prude when it came to sex-and don't I know it-but ever since that incident in the shower room, you've been acting like a call girl who took an overdose of Spanish fly."
Before Debbie could protest, Billy plunged on.
"Well, that's not quite true," he continued. "At least, as far as I know you haven't actually gone all the way or anything-certainly not with me. But what's with all this prancing around naked in front of every male over the age of twelve? Okay, okay, so maybe that's exaggerated, too. Still...."
Billy stopped in mid-sentence as Debbie hung her head and began softly weeping. He squeezed her hand and tried to stammer out an apology, but Debbie shook her head. After a few seconds, she regained her composure somewhat, excused herself and went off to the ladies' room to repair her makeup.
When she returned, her face was somber and her voice was softly intense when she spoke. Slowly, she told him about Sidney Kane, about his reasons for wanting to marry her mother, why she had staged that performance in the shower and why she had been drinking so heavily.
"If I didn't get tanked up," she explained, "how could I stand to go through with all this?"
She had prudently decided against telling him that she intended to seduce Sidney, telling him instead that she just wanted to get the goods on him in some way that would show him for what he really was to prove to Denise that he was a phony, a lecher, and an opportunist of the worst sort.
"Well, maybe I can help," Billy said. "I could take a week's leave from school and keep an eye on this character until I found some way to make him tip his hand. I didn't like his looks anyway, when I met him yesterday. He looks like some kind of Broadway sharpy to me."
Debbie looked at Billy with new eyes. She knew that he could get into a lot of trouble if he went AWOL from the academy. She was tempted to refuse his offer of assistance, but she knew she could use help and the feel of his hand on hers was indeed comforting.
"Golly," she said, "are you sure...? "
"Sure I'm sure. Now, let's start figuring out how we're going to operate," Billy said, becoming suddenly business-like.
"Just one thing," Debbie interjected. "I'm the commanding officer in this operation, and if you're going to help me, you'll have to agree to do things my way, even if you don't like some of the things that might happen. Okay?"
Billy frowned, sighed, then nodded his reluctant assent. like two secret agents, they leaned toward each other across the table and began whispering fervently, oudining a general method of operation. It was quickly decided that Billy would be the leg man. He would pick Sidney up every morning and follow him until he went to bed at night, keeping an eye out for shady-looking characters he might be meeting.
Meanwhile, Debbie would continue operating in her own inimitable way. She was careful not to give Billy any details about her modus operandi. She didn't want him to think her a complete slut, and anyway, he might chicken out if he knew that the plan included the seduction of Sidney.
At that moment, in the penthouse on Central Park West, Sidney Kane was doing a bit of seducing of his own, the willing subject being his fiancee, Denise. Both of them had had several martinis and were feeling playful and uninhibited. They had been smooching like teenagers on the couch, gradually getting hotter and more intimate, until Sidney finally began undressing her.
Denise did not-could not-protest as he ripped off her panties impatiently and began fondling her most intimate parts. Her own hand found its way into his trousers to return the caresses, and she felt the room tilt as he swept her up into his arms and carried her into the bedroom, where he dropped her unceremoniously upon the king-sized bed.
Denise sprawled there, arms and legs akimbo, her body open and inviting, her abdomen quivering in anticipation. Sidney stood over her beside the bed, leering down at her for a few agonizing seconds, then hastily undressed and lay down on top of her. Denise wriggled her hips, trying to capture him and quickly satisfy the lust raging within her.
But Sidney played coy, pulling away just at the crucial point, driving Denise mad with desire. His lips planted hot kisses upon her neck as she wrapped her long legs about his middle, trying her best to force him into making the ultimate contact.
"What about the money, Denise?" he asked huskily, whispering into Denise's ear.
"Oh, Sidney!" she moaned. "I told you they wouldn't be able to clear it before tomorrow or the next day. Now let's...."
Before she could finish the sentence, Sidney had bridged the gap. Denise felt his hard masculine body lunging against her, felt the curly hairs of his chest scratching the sensitive nipples of her breasts. Her arms and legs encircled his torso, her fingernails raking imaginary furrows in the flesh of his back, her heels beating a rhythmic tattoo upon his buttocks.
Without breaking their rhythm, Sidney began to roll over, turning them onto their sides, then pulling Denise on top of him as he rolled onto his back. Being careful not to break contact, Denise arranged herself over him and continued the rhythmic motion. Sidney's hands were at her breasts, squeezing and pinching the nipples in time with her lunges.
Suddenly, Sidney grabbed Denise by the hips and stopped her. She moaned in frustration as he detached himself and slipped from beneath her.
"Oh, darling," she cried. "Please don't leave me now...."
But Sidney ignored her plea, forcing her to remain on her hands and knees while he positioned himself behind her. Denise gasped in surprise and tried to pull away as she felt a sudden pressure in a most unexpected place.
"Oh, no," she cried. "Don't make me...."
But it was too late, Sidney, his strong hands grasping her hips to prevent her escape, had achieved his objective. Denise ceased her struggling, determined to please him, despite her own distaste for the act.
Finally, it was over. Sidney cried out as if struck over the head and collapsed upon her back, knocking Denise flat and pinning her to the mattress with the weight of his exhausted body.
Denise, in addition to feeling frustrated, felt terribly humiliated at what had just transpired. She lay there with Sidney's body crushing down upon hers, and her mind raced back over the years, back to a little house in Connecticut, back to another man who had loved her with tenderness and compassion-when he had loved her at all. And, for a fleeting moment, she realized that were it not for reasons of personal pride and insurmountable obstacles, she would take that other man back into her arms, back into her heart, back into the sanctuary of her body.
With an effort of will, she drove these thoughts from her mind. There was no sense dwelling upon the impossible, she reckoned. She had Sidney, and she loved him-perhaps not with the same intensity as she had loved Mike, but he was hers now, and she would soon be his.
"Thank you, baby," Sidney said finally, rolling off of her to lie beside her. "I know you probably didn't like it, but...."
"Oh, no, darling," she said quickly. "I didn't mind. In fact, I kind of enjoyed it. I enjoy everything that makes you happy."
Denise turned her head away quickly so that Sidney would not see the glaze of tears forming in her eyes.
Later, they had an early dinner at a nearby restaurant. It was nearly eight when Sidney dropped Denise off at her apartment building. They kissed in the lobby and, after she had boarded the elevator, Sidney left the building and set off in the direction of Madison Avenue.
He didn't notice the uniformed figure that stepped from the shadows and dogged his tracks from a distance of a few hundred yards.
Nor did he notice that that figure melted into a doorway when the black limousine rolled to the curb and two men hopped out to confront him. Sidney and the two men stood talking, he gesturing animatedly while the two looked at him grimly. He looked dejected when they finally got back into the limousine and sped off.
Sidney turned and entered the lobby of a hotel, heading straight for a bank of telephone booths. Billy, being careful to stay clear of his line of vision, slipped into an adjoining booth and pressed his ear to the wall separating his booth from Sidney's. The voice was muffled, but distinct.
"Listen," Sidney was saying in an agitated tone, "what's the idea of having your thugs stop me on the street? I told you, you'd get your money in the next couple of days, and you will. My fiancee is working on it and...." A pause.
"Okay, okay," Sidney resumed. "So I got your warning. Now lay off. All right, you'll get it by Friday. You know you can trust me. There won't be any need for any rough stuff."
Billy turned his head and pretended to be talking on the telephone when Sidney hung up and stormed out of the booth. The cadet need not have bothered to hide his face, as Sidney was obviously too preoccupied to notice anyone else. He headed straight across the lobby and disappeared into the bar.
Billy slipped out of the booth and left the hotel, his eyes searching for another public telephone in the neighborhood. He was burning with excitement, although he wasn't sure why. He had some information, but would it be of any use to Debbie?
He went to a drugstore on the corner and called Debbie to report.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The news that Sidney's gangster friends were acting very unfriendly toward him alternately elated and frightened Debbie. On the one hand, she was glad to hear that they were harassing him because such a situation offered the possibility that he might be pressed into taking some hasty action that would tip Denise off to his selfish desires. On the other hand, it also raised the possibility that these men might be dangerous to everyone who had anything to do with Sidney-including Denise and herself.
Monday came and went without a word from Mike and without any new developments. The Inter-Continental Construction Company said they could only assume that the message had been delivered but it would take at least a week before they could be certain-unless Debbie heard from him before that time had expired. And Sidney had seemed to be playing it cool where Debbie was concerned. Not once since their first meeting had he contrived to be alone with her nor, indeed, allowed such a situation to develop.
Denise, in the meantime, seemed to be growing apprehensive and even, in some ways, morose as her planned marriage became more imminent. Debbie felt, judging from her mother's nervousness and the way she would sometimes become silent and withdrawn, that
Denise wanted to back out, but did not have the strength to do so.
She wants a man, Debbie opined, and since she can't have Daddy, she's willing to take what's available.
"So why don't you just tell her that's where it's at and tell her you'll stick by her if she backs out or something?" Billy said, when Debbie attempted to explain it to him.
"Don't be silly," Debbie shot back. "If I did that, if I ever even hinted that I thought she was making a mistake, she'd be more determined than ever to go through with it."
"But why?" the boy asked, puzzled.
They were sitting in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village. Denise and Sidney had gone to a Broadway play and Denise had told Debbie not to wait up, so they assumed that she'd be spending the night with Sidney, which meant that Billy was relieved of the responsibility of following him.
Debbie sipped her cappucino and wrinkled her nose at Billy in an exasperated way to show him what she thought of his masculine stupidity.
"Because she just would, that's all," Debbie finally said. "Because she's a woman, I guess. And a mother. You'd have to be a woman to understand."
Billy looked properly abashed and took a bite out of a piece of pastry on the tray before him. He decided to change the subject.
"Say, Deb, are you going to ... uh ... well, you know what with me after this is all over?" he asked.
"Well, to begin with," she began, looking somewhat annoyed, "I don't know what, and if you think I'd do something like that just to repay you for helping me, well, I don't know what kind of girl you think I am but I'm not. Just because I took my clothes off and took a shower with those two friends of yours and just because you came over and found me wearing just my panties and...."
Debbie broke off in mid-sentence as she realized how ludicrous her explanation sounded. She and Billy laughed together, and she felt his hand creeping up her thigh beneath the table.
"Okay," she said, pushing his hand away gently. "You can strike what I just said from the record, but I still don't want you to think I'm going to pay you off with my body. If you're not satisfied with doing me a favor, then forget it. I didn't ask you for help, you knowyou volunteered."
Billy shrugged and put his hands back on the table, remembering the old military axiom: "Better to fight and run away and live to fight another day." Seduction would have to wait until the project was successfully completed. That is, if there was to be a seduction. Billy wondered.
After reviewing the situation and deciding to continue operating in the same manner, looking for an opening into which they could insert the shaft into Sidney's schemes, Billy took Debbie home in a cab. She allowed him one deep, soulful kiss, a kiss to which she responded with a fervor that seemed full of promise for the future. But when his hand crept under the hem of her mini-dress to dawdle about the elastic band of her panties, she jerked away violently and, breathing heavily, hopped from the cab at her doorway and escaped into the lobby.
Billy, remembering how responsive she had been at one moment and how resistant at the next, scratched his head in wonder at the unpredictability of women as he made his way home.
Debbie, in the privacy of her bedroom, was pondering much the same question. She wondered, as she lay there naked in the darkness, why she had felt so tingly inside, why she had felt such a strong surge of desire when Billy's lips met hers and why she had fought him off when he attempted to continue the contact in a most natural and expected manner. One of her hands absently, almost as if guided by a will of its own, found its way to the junction of her warm thighs as she remembered the touch of
Billy's hand. She wanted him to touch her there, and there, much the same as she was doing to herself. But for reasons that even she did not understand, she felt that she must not allow herself to surrender to him.
Was it egotism, false pride that made her so reluctant to give herself to Billy? Or was it that somewhere within herself she realized that she did not really love him, although she did like him more than a little bit? She had been willing, no, anxious to surrender her precious virginity to Sidney Kane, a man whom she hardly knew but deeply despised, and she had had few qualms about cavorting about in the nude with two perfect strangers in the shower room at Cannabis.
Debbie opened her thighs wider and slowly massaged herself, hoping to relieve the tension building up within her aching loins.
Perhaps, she thought, the key to her seemingly contradictory attitudes and actions was contained in the very fact that Billy was not a faceless stranger or an almost anonymous enemy, but a friend whom she felt some emotion for. Maybe, just maybe, she couldn't let Billy go all the way with her just because she felt there was a chance that she could love him, and if so, she would rather that their first coupling be a special occasion, a romantic and memorable event rather than a sordid moment stolen in the darkness of a secret rendezvous on the back seat of a parked car.
Debbie could actually feel the heat burning the palm of her hand as she continued her solitary massage. She was startled to hear someone breathing heavily in the darkness, panting like some wild animal, and for a frightening moment she thought that Denise had entered and was watching her. Her eyes searched the darkness and she froze, even holding her breath. It was then that she realized that the gasping sounds had come from her own throat. With that realization came another: that of exactly what she had been doing to herself.
She was confused and embarrassed and agitated and afraid. Caught up in the turmoil of recent events, she could no longer distinguish between right and wrong, nor could she come up with definite explanations for her own actions. She thought of the girl named Candy and the illicit interlude they had staged in Sidney's apartment. Was she, Debbie, some kind of a lesbian. And of her wanton performance with Sidney himself in the living room of her own apartment? Could this be an indication of possible nymphomania? And, of course, there was that infamous business in the shower. Was this evidence of neurotic exhibitionistic tendencies?
It was becoming more and more difficult, as the plot of her sabotage scheme thickened, to convince herself that her actions were simply tactical moves motivated by practical necessity. She was beginning to wonder if there were not other, darker motives surging beneath the surface; motives that she could not admit to herself.
By the time she escaped the confusion of pointless self-analysis into dreamless sleep, Debbie's eyes were brimming with tears and her stomach felt as if it was tied up in knots from tension.
Where was Mike, she wondered. Why did he not answer her telegram? Why didn't he come home to protect her and Denise from the awful things that were happening?
Sidney Kane didn't sleep much that night, either. For one thing, he was worried about the confrontation on the street earlier with the two hard-faced toughs. One of them had said, "Either pay up by Thursday or by Friday you'll be going to a funeral instead of a wedding." It was obvious from his expression that the funeral he had referred to would be Sidney's own.
But something else was worrying him, too. Debbie. As he tossed about in his bed, he saw her angelic young face and those almost unbelievably ripe breasts dangling before him in the darkness, their rosy nipples swollen and throbbing with adolescent passion. He could feel her lips upon him, just as they had caressed him that wonderful but frightening day he had first met her.
Over and over again since that incident, he had admonished himself to stay away from the little nympho (which is what he believed her to be, for she had told him as much herself), but each night the memory of her hot teenaged body returned to him and he knew that he must have her, completely-as completely as he had possessed her mother. Nevertheless, he knew that to be caught with her under circumstances similar to those which had prevailed at their first meeting would certainly result in the loss of both Denise and Debbie.
No matter what happens, he thought, I must control myself-at least until after the wedding.
But even as sleep overtook him, he wondered if he would be able to pass up any opportunity to take her.
He began to snore, and he began to dream. The dream, like the snoring, was becoming a regular part of his nightiy routine.
He was walking through a meadowland of knee-length green grass and bright yellow daisies. The sun beamed down and the smell of lilacs was in the air. Sidney could see himself moving through the grass as if in slow motion, and at the top of a far-away hill he could barely distinguish a white form gleaming in the sunlight.
As he drew nearer, he could see that it was Debbie, naked and dancing through the flowers like a child at play. Her voluptuous breasts jiggled and danced about like lush ripe fruit swaying in the summer breeze.
Sidney increased his pace, breaking into a run as he tried to catch up with her. She seemed not to have seen him, but she was running away, down the opposite side of the hill into a narrow valley intersected by a rushing stream. Sidney raced headlong down the hillside, his hands clawing the air vainly as they sought the warmth of Debbie's curvaceous buttocks.
She reached the bottom of the hill well ahead of him, turned, and, laughing like a child, threw open her arms and lay on her back at the edge of the stream. The swirling waters splashed over her breasts and belly, creating a whitish foam between her thighs.
Sidney's clothes were whisked away by the wind as he came closer, closer, ever closer to his goal. Debbie's voice came to him like music from heaven.
"Take me," she would say. "Love me, Daddy; love me...."
With a superhuman effort, he leaped at her, sailing through the air with arms outstretched like a championship diver. Her arms and legs were pointed skyward, offering him a divine target. Sidney came down and landed with a thump!
And, as he had each time he had dreamed the same dream, he awoke to find himself lying stretched out on the floor beside his bed.
Snarling and cursing, he threw himself back into bed and spent the rest of the night staring at the ceiling.
CHAPTER NINE
Wednesday and Thursday proved to be days of frustration for Debbie, Denise, Sidney, and Billy. Denise's frustration came in the form of another delay from the bank's loan department: it would be at least another week before the loan could be granted, but it was virtually certain that the money would be forthcoming. This news, of course, frustrated Sidney, who in turn, frustrated Denise even more by becoming suddenly platonic toward her.
Debbie was frustrated because there had been no new opportunities to trap Sidney into exposing himself to Denise as a lecherous fraud. Billy was frustrated because he had followed Sidney all over Manhattan and hadn't caught him doing anything more intriguing or incriminating than spending an inordinate amount of time playing touch football with a group of teenaged girls in Central Park one afternoon while Denise was at the bank. The cadet cursed himself for not having carried a camera with which to record Sidney's over-aggressive defensive play. Billy was also frustrated by Debbie, who seemed to become more determined each day that their relationship would remain strictly on a sibling basis.
By the time Friday dawned, Debbie was at the point of desperation. The wedding was set for the next day, and Denise set out early in the morning to do some lastminute shopping in preparation for their honeymoon trip to Acapulco. It had been Sidney who had come up with the idea of taking a trip, an idea which had occurred to him on the spur of the moment, just after Denise told him about the delay in the bank loan.
Realizing that she would have to take drastic action before the day was over, Debbie called Billy and told him to rush over so that they could plan a foolproof, last-ditch assault.
They sat at the kitchen table sipping hot coffee. Billy, who had lost much sleep-and much of his enthusiasm for the project-sat bleary-eyed and unresponsive as Debbie unfolded her hastily conceived plan.
"What we'll have to do is this, see," Debbie began. "I'm going to call Sidney up and tell him I have to talk to him about an urgent matter. I'll go over there and stall around until you telephone and give me the signal."
"Telephone you and give you what signal?" Billy asked, puzzled but not enthusiastic.
"The signal that Denise is on her way over, silly. You're going to wait downstairs in the lobby until she comes home, and you're going to tell her that I called you and told you to have her rush right over to Sidney's because I needed her. You make it sound very urgent and mysterious, see, and impress upon her that there isn't a moment to waste on telephoning. That way she won't call up and put him on his guard."
"On guard against what?" Billy queried, his eyes narrowing into suspicious slits.
"Don't you worry about that," Debbie countered. "I'll take care of that end of it."
"Yeah, but who's going to take care of your end while you're up there alone with that dirty old man?"
"Oh, he's not old," Debbie said, trying to change the subject without arousing Billy's suspicions any further. "He isn't a day over forty."
"Well, I don't know about all this," Billy said, running a hand nervously through his hair. "I hope you're not going to pull another one of those shower room scenes and get yourself into trouble."
"Oh, pooh! You know I wouldn't do anything like that again. And anyway, what kind of trouble could I possibly...? On second thought, don't answer that question. You just do as I tell you. Remember our agreement?"
Billy sighed regretfully and nodded, making it quite clear by his manner that he felt he had been trapped into participating in something he was beginning to find extremely distasteful. Nevertheless, he had made an agreement, and anyway, he knew that if he refused to help, Debbie would go it alone.
A few minutes later, Debbie took the first step in putting the plan into action. She called Sidney Kane's apartment. It was not yet noon, and when Sidney answered, his voice was harsh and raspy like that of a man who has just been aroused from a sound sleep. Which, in fact, he had been.
Billy frowned disapprovingly as Debbie cooed softly and seductively into the mouthpiece.
"Hello, Sidney? I hope I didn't get you up, but I just must see you before it's too late. ... This is Debbie, of course. Yes, it?s very urgent. It's about my 'problem', the one I was, uh, discussing with you the other day when Mom came in and interruped us. ... Oh, you do remember! Well, I'd like to finish the discussion properly before you and Mom go off on your honeymoon. ... I'll be going back to school and it may be a long time before we get a chance. Maybe we'll never get another chance, and it means so much to me. ... You will? You do? Oh, Sidney, I hoped you'd feel that way!"
Before she hung up, Debbie set a date for around noon.
"We're in business!" she cried exuberantly after replacing the receiver in its cradle. "He's biting like the sucker cat he really is."
Debbie left Billy brooding in the kitchen while she hurried to her room to make herself alluring and glamorous.
She used a bit more makeup around the eyes than usual to give her face a more wanton expression. For a few minutes she pored through her closet, searching for something appropriately seductive to wear, finally deciding on a white mini-dress that was almost too short for public wear. She had already decided against wearing a bra, then an even more daring thought occurred to her: she wouldn't wear any panties, either!
Tingling with excitement, she wriggled into the dress and stood before the mirror, studying the overall effect. Every outline of her body was visible through the clinging fabric. She realized as she pirouetted that she would have to be careful not to sit or bend over in Billy's presence, because such positions were liable to expose her secrets. He was balky enough already. If he saw that she was going over to Sidney's half-naked, he'd probably queer the whole deal by forcing her to stay or, failing that, by tipping Denise off to the whole plot.
The thought of Billy trying to preserve her honor made Debbie feel good and warm inside, but this was no time to allow silly sentiment to stand in the way of aggressive action. She threw on a coat and, calling to Billy to accompany her, left the apartment.
She left Billy in the lobby of the building and hailed a taxicab to take her to Sidney's. On the way over, she watched the buildings flash by, trying to count the windows in a vain effort to take her mind off of the terrible thing she was about to do.
She wondered if it would hurt, if Sidney would be brutal or tender with her, or if he would make her do something out of the ordinary. Ruefully, she reminded herself that the only thing she could call "out of the ordinary," considering the experiences she had already subjected herself to, was the fundamental act of love itself!
And even if she succeeded with her seduction plan, suppose Denise didn't show up at the apartment until late? Debbie knew that Sidney was already near the boiling point and would not stand to be put off indefinitely. He would have Debbie that afternoon, telephone signal or none.
By the time she had boarded the elevator in Sidney's building, Debbie was trembling with fear and something else. Anticipation? she wondered, as she stepped off on the top floor. Could she be looking forward to giving herself to this man whom she hated so vehemently?
Before she could press the button, the door to the penthouse suite swung open and Sidney, grinning lecherously, bowed and bade her enter. Debbie noticed that he was wearing a satin bathrobe and a pair of silk pajamas, which told her that he was ready to strip for action at the drop of her panties-if she had been wearing any.
Sidney took her coat and Debbie blushed as his eyes swept over her. She fought down a sudden urge to turn and bolt from the apartment. Instead, she sat down on the sofa, being careful to arrange her dress so as to give herself the maximum amount of coverage possible, which was barely enough.
Sidney, playing the role of the suave and sophisticated host, offered her a martini, which Debbie accepted by nodding her head nervously. She was afraid to speak for fear that her voice would crack and give her away. She wanted to seem quite composed and anxious for seduction, but the palms of her hands grew clammy and she felt prickly under the armpits. Playing the cool, calculating sexpot was not going to be easy under the circumstances.
After he had given her the cocktail, Sidney perched himself on a barstool a few feet across the room and, smiling down at her, asked if she was ready to begin their "discussion." He smiled in an almost fatherly manner, and Debbie thought for a moment of Mike, her real father, and wished that he could have arrived in time to save her this humiliating experience.
"Well," Debbie began, uncrossing her legs and then crossing them in the opposite manner.
A glimpse of female flesh flashed in Sidney's eyes as the girl's thighs parted for an instant. He cocked an eyebrow.
"I see," he said knowingly.
"See what?" Debbie asked, not quite understanding. "I haven't told you anything yet."
"Oh, you've told me quite a lot, my dear," he replied, setting his drink down upon the bar and coming over to sit beside her. "There are some things that can be said without words, especially by one as beautiful and desirable as yourself."
With that, he put one hand upon her right thigh and gave the soft flesh a suggestive squeeze. Debbie almost spilled her drink in her haste to move to the end of the couch, putting a couple of feet of space between them. She couldn't allow things to move too rapidly, not yet. Not until she heard the telephone ring twice and then stop, Billy's signal telling her that Denise was on the way.
"I'm not sure you understand, Sidney," Debbie stammered, taking a quick but healthy swallow of the cocktail. "I just wanted to talk-really talk, I mean."
"Sure you did, child," Sidney said with a leer, fixing his eyes upon her lap, and sliding closer to close the gap between them.
Debbie looked down at herself, following the direction of Sidney's gaze. She caught her breath with a gasp. The hem of her ridiculously short dress had ridden up about her hips when she had moved to escape him, leaving the lower part of her completely exposed. Had it not been for the fact that her legs were crossed, her secret would have been out. As it was, it was obvious that she was wearing no pants.
"Oh, my goodness!" she blurted, leaping to her feet just as Sidney made a grab for her. "I think I've lost something in the cab on the way over here!"
"Hey, what is this?" Sidney growled, picking himself up from the couch where he had sprawled. "Did you come over here to discuss your problem or what?"
"That's what I told you," Debbie replied coyly, retreating to the far side of the room as Sidney rose and began advancing slowly toward her. "I just wanted to discuss it, not demonstrate it."
"Then why didn't you wear any underpants, little Miss Neurosis?" he asked sarcastically, stalking her as if she was a skittish bunny rabbit. "I guess you just felt like getting a little fresh air."
Debbie blushed crimson and side-stepped quickly as Sidney made another clumsy grab at her. She suddenly realized that she didn't want to go through with her plan. Denise could have Sidney if she wanted him so badly. Debbie just wanted to get out of that apartment while she was still intact.
"Well, if you think you're going to back out now, young lady," Sidney hissed, moving to block her path to the door, "you've got another think coming. I haven't been leaping out of bed every night for nothing."
Debbie didn't understand that remark fully, but she understood the implications. He had managed to back her into a corner, where she cringed in fright.
"I'll tell my Mommy," she wailed, trying desperately to pull down the hem of her skirt and holding her thighs tightly together.
Her efforts to preserve her modesty and her suddenly child-like manner seemed to excite Sidney even more. His lips curled up into a sneer and his eyes glazed over with obvious lust as he grabbed Debbie by the shoulders and held her in a vise-like grip.
"Your, 'Mommy' wouldn't believe a word of it," he said confidently, placing his face a few inches from hers. "She thinks you're out to bust us up anyway. She told me as much herself. Come to think of it, I think she's right. I think that's why you pulled that brazen stunt in the living room that day, and that may be why you're here right now, to set me up."
Debbie was sobbing openly now, the tears streaking her cheeks and making dark lines of mascara on her face. She looked like a forlorn little girl who had been caught playing in her mother's makeup kit, but the rise and fall of her luscious breasts straining against the fabric of her dress gave the lie to that picture.
Fear and remorse had taken complete possession of Debbie. Her earlier resolve and bravado were gone. Her body shook uncontrollably as Sidney, still grasping her shoulders, pulled her out to the center of the room. She was unable to resist, but unable to comply. She could only stand and endure.
Sidney continued to taunt her as his hands went to her quaking thighs, stroking and pinching the warm, perspiring flesh, then continuing upward between them to take greater liberties.
"So you thought you could keep ol' Sidney out of the family, huh? Afraid you'd get cheated out of your share of Mommy's loot, huh? Wanted to keep it all to yourself, huh?"
And with each "huh"-a grunt rather than a spoken word-Sidney pinched Debbie at her most sensitive point, bringing an answering groan, gasp, or cry from her lips.
"Oh, please stop," she sobbed, feebly brushing at the hand which was violating the sanctuary of her body. "You win, I'll leave you alone. Just let me go. Please!"
Debbie could not understand the endless conglomeration of sensations flooding her body. She felt more ashamed, more humiliated than she could have ever thought possible, but at the same time she felt a gnawing, voracious hunger building up within her. She thought of Billy, and she wished that they were his hands upon her at that moment, rather than those of Sidney Kane. She wanted to claw his face and run away, but she could only stand trembling in abject confusion as he continued to abuse and excite her.
Suddenly, his hand left her. There was the sound of tearing cloth and Debbie realized to her horror that he had torn her dress off. She didn't attempt to move from the spot, but tried in vain to cover her nakedness with her hands. Sidney laughed wickedly as he studied her standing there with one hand at her thighs and the other clasping one breast.
The room tilted for Debbie as he gathered her into his arms and lowered her to the floor. His hands were upon her naked body again, this time more insistent, more anxious, pinching, patting, caressing, probing.
Debbie held her eyes tightiy closed and clamped her thighs together. She cringed as she felt Sidney's lips, hot and demanding, upon hers. In spite of herself, she opened her mouth to accept his tongue. For long minutes they kissed, sucking at each other hungrily.
Debbie felt her thighs opening gradually, ever so slowly, as Sidney's practiced lips went to her quivering breasts. She cried out once in pain as his teeth clamped down on one sensitive nipple, then moaned long and low as the bite subsided into a tender oral caress. Her nipples felt as if they were aflame, and she could not believe it was her own voice that said softly: "Please don't hurt me; it's my first time."
That announcement was greeted by an animal-like grunt from Sidney. It had not even occurred to him that he was about to take a virgin. In his excitement, he almost spent himself prematurely, but he managed to regain control in time. Swiftly, he raised himself from the girl's trembling adolescent body and deftly divested himself of his robe and pajamas.
Then he resumed kissing her passionately, worshipping at the sacred altar of her body with devout lips, tasting the sweet nectar which was to him like heady wine. He was no longer the sneering, gloating seducer, but a man possessed by insane desire, the ruler but at the same time the slave.
Debbie raised her knees, opening her thighs as she did so, and Sidney, accepting the blessed invitation, shifted his body into position for the final assault.
Debbie's eyes were still tightly closed, and she tried to imagine that it was Billy poised above her. At this point, however, she just wanted to feel the hardness of a man joined with her aching, sex-starved body. She gritted her teeth in anticipation of the first stab of pain.
Sidney raised his hips, took a deep breath, and ... froze.
"Well, well, well," a gravelly masculine voice growled. "Now ain't this real cozy? Daddy's teaching his new stepdaughter a brand new game!"
Debbie's eyes opened wide with shock and surprise. She had to twist her head to find the intruder. Sidney was still looming over her, his hands planted on the floor on either side of her head, his knees resting between hers, his hips poised in mid-air. She, of course, was lying on her back, in the position of one about to be possessed.
Standing at her head was a huge man with a crew cut and a face that appeared to have been carved from granite. He was grinning broadly, exposing a set of teeth that was far from complete. In his right hand, a few feet in front of Sidney's gaping mouth, was a gleaming blue-steel automatic. As ludicrous and embarrassing as their positions were, neither Sidney nor Debbie could move a muscle.
"Hey, Shorty!" the gravel-voiced man cried, turning slightly toward the doorway but not taking the pistol away from Sidney's blood-drained face. "Come here and take a look at the lovebirds!"
The front door closed softly and another pair of feet came into view. Debbie followed the trouser legs upward to a skinny frame and an even skinnier face that stared down from End of that skinny body. This man was gaunt, and the sight of Debbie and Sidney poised on the brink of total intimacy seemed not to amuse him at all. His face was expressionless, his thin lips a narrow line without a hint of a smile, his beady blue eyes as cold as ice cubes. He was holding a snub-nosed revolver.
The skinny one's foot lashed out and grazed Sidney's ribs, sending him sprawling on the carpet. Debbie's attention was held fast by the two pistols, and she was afraid to move for fear of startling the pair. She just lay there, her eyes like small plates, sprawled out flat on her back with the untasted delights of her body exposed to view. She was too frightened to think of modesty.
The skinny gunman, who had not yet spoken, motioned to Sidney with his pistol, directing him to take a chair on the far side of the room. The great one with the gravel voice and the granite face just stood grinning down at Debbie.
"You know, you can get up from there if you want, Miss," he said, not impolitely. "I'm afraid your future step-father is going to be tied up for a while, so there's no need in you lying there waiting for him to finish the job."
"Cut the comedy and tie this joker up, Slug," the skinny one said, in a voice that resembled no other sound so much as that of fingernails on a dry blackboard.
Debbie managed to scramble to her feet as the one called Slug pocketed his automatic and took a length of clothesline from his coat pocket.
"Hey, look fellas," Sidney stammered, as the big hoodlum began wrapping the rope around him, binding him to the chair. "Let me put some clothes on so we can talk about this business like gentlemen."
"You ain't been talking like no gentleman," Slug growled, continuing with his work. "Anyhow, the little lady over there ain't got no clothes on and you don't hear her complainin', do you?"
The hoodlum's remark brought Debbie partially back to her senses. She realized that she was naked in the presence of these strange and obviously violent men. She had seated herself primly on the sofa, sitting there in a state of dazed, semi-shock, oblivious to her lack of clothing. Quickly, she reached for her dress, but the movement caught the skinny one's eye and he turned suddenly, pointing the gun in her direction.
"I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't make any sudden moves while we're talking business with Mr. Kane here, Miss," he screeched. "One of us might get jumpy and a terrible accident might happen. Anyway, you look just fine the way you are. Gives the place some class to have a naked young broad around."
He gave a little cackle, his first show of amusement, and turned back to Sidney, who was firmly trussed up and pale as a ghost. The skinny one started to say something to Sidney, then turned and glanced back at Debbie who had put the tattered dress back down and was sitting with hands folded in her lap. The hood turned back to Sidney, then back to her again, doing a classic double-take.
"Hey, Miss," he said suddenly, his grating voice filled with awe. "You know, you got maybe the most fantastic set of jugs I've ever seen on a broad in my life!"
"Me too," said Slug, grinning again.
Debbie blushed. She felt flattered, but the momentarily pleasant feeling was quickly replaced by fear when she realized what the two thugs were thinking.
"I wonder what they feel like," Slug said with a tone of reverence. "They look so round, so firm, so...."
"If you say it, so help me, I'll belt you one," the skinny one rasped, snatching his gray fedora from his head and slapping the bigger hood with it. "But now that you mention it," he added, a lecherous grin splitting his weasel's face, "they surely do look fully packed!"
"Say, look fellas, why don't you just let me go and you can stay here and have a good time with her? Your boss will be none the wiser. How's that sound for a deal?" Sidney offered.
"Who the hell are you to be offering any deals?" the skinny one cackled. "You're in captivity, sucker. We can do anything we want, to her, and to you, too. Now shut up your face before I split it with this gun butt."
"Hey, Spike," the one called Slug said anxiously. "Are we really gonna have a little fun with the doll here? Huh? Are we?"
Debbie buried her face in her hands as the full impact of her predicament fell upon her. She tried to cry, but no tears and no sobs came forth, just dry, wracking gasps.
The two thugs seemed unmoved by her display of emotion. They ignored her for several minutes while they returned to a discussion of the business at hand.
"You take care of the telephone?" Spike asked.
"I didn't have to," the big guy answered. "He's got plug-in phones and they was all plugged out when we got here. Guess Sidney didn't want to be disturbed while him and his future step-daughter was gettin' acquainted!"
CHAPTER TEN
Everything had seemed, from Billy's limited vantage point, to be going off according to plan. Denise had arrived at the apartment building about an hour after Debbie left for Sidney's and he had followed her instructions to the letter, telling Denise to rush right over to the penthouse, making it all sound very urgent and mysterious. Then he had rushed to the nearest telephone booth to make the signal, two rings, then hang up before anyone answered.
Now, he was puzzled. What was he supposed to do next? He had had no further instructions from Debbie and had not formulated any plan of action on his own. He paced the lobby for a few minutes, then decided to go hang around outside Sidney's building to see if he saw anything strange going on, although he couldn't imagine what he might see from the street.
Billy hailed a cab, then saw that one was pulling up in front of the building to let out a passenger. He waited for the cab to stop, then opened the door for the man to disembark. He was tall and muscularly built, his handsome face burned brown by the sun of some far-off clime.
The man looked somehow familiar to Billy, although he could not remember having met him anywhere. He was just about to get into the cab the swarthy stranger had just vacated, when he remembered where he'd seen that face-in a snapshot in Debbie's wallet! It was her father!
"Mike Hale!" he cried after the man who was just going into the building. "Mr. Hale!"
Mike Hale turned, a puzzled frown wrinkling his brow. Billy rushed over to him and introduced himself as a friend of Debbie's. When he heard that, Mike immediately began pumping Billy about the mysterious "trouble" Debbie had mentioned in her telegram.
"There's trouble all right, Mr. Hale, but I don't think I oughta be the one to tell you about it," Billy said. "I think you'd better talk to Debbie and your wife-that is, your ex-wife."
Mike looked pained at Billy's reference to Denise, but he quickly passed it off. Although Billy was reluctant to take Mike up to Sidney's, the older man insisted upon seeing Debbie and Denise right away.
"I took a special company jet over from Bangkok," Mike said, "and if I can get this business setded, whatever it is, I might be able to take it back this afternoon. If not, well, we'll just have to see what's what first."
All the way over in the cab, Billy was nervous and apprehensive. Mike didn't even seem to know about Denise's marriage plans, and he wasn't about to tell him. Not now. It was Debbie's show-let her handle it, Billy told himself. He just told Mike that the girls were visiting with a friend. Which, after all, was nearly true.
Denise hadn't bothered to ring the doorbell when she arrived at the suite. She had just barged in with her own key. The first sight that greeted her was that of her own daughter sitting on the living room sofa naked as the day she was born.
"Debbie! What on earth...? " she began, starting toward her. She was stopped short by two men brandishing pistols. They had been standing off to the left, out of her line of vision, and when Denise saw them-and their weapons-her legs went suddenly weak and she collapsed on the floor in a faint.
When she came to, she was naked, tied to a straight-backed chair, back-to-back with Debbie, who had been tied to a similar chair. The two hoods had carried them into the bedroom, then had returned to the living room to discuss their plans for Sidney. They seemed undecided as to whether they should simply throw him off the terrace of his suite and make it appear to be suicide, or take him for a one-way ride to Queens, where his bullet-riddled body could be found propped up in a parked car as a warning to others who like to bet but hate to pay.
"Mommy," Debbie whispered, "I'm scared."
"So am I, baby," Denise answered softly, touching her daughter's unseen hand with one of her own. "But don't worry; I don't think they'll hurt us."
"Oh, come on, Denise," Debbie said a bit more loudly, resuming her more customary manner. "Here we are, two attractive young women, both naked as jaybirds, and there they are, two ugly men with guns, both about to commit murder-and you say they're not going to hurt us? Are you outta your...."
"Okay, Debbie," Denise sighed in exasperation. "I was just trying to be properly reassuring as mothers are supposed to do in situations like this. I guess this is just another example of what a lousy mother I've been all along."
"No you haven't, Denise," Debbie countered. "It's all my fault. I've been a lousy daughter. I got us into this mess right now by trying to meddle in grownups' business."
"But if you hadn't tried to meddle, I would have wound up marrying that ... that ... ugh!" she said, ending with an audible shudder.
"You know what I wish?" Debbie sighed.
"Probably the same thing I wish," Denise answered.
"I wish we had Mike back."
"Me too."
The sound of the doorbell ringing in the front room shushed Debbie and Denise. Both strained their ears trying to hear if the hoods were going to answer. Debbie thought she heard the sound of the doorlatch being opened. Then, suddenly, the quiet was shattered by a gunshot.
Spike's grating voice let out a howl of pain. "I've been hit! I've been hit!" he wailed.
The sounds of scuffling, of furniture being overturned, of heavy bodies smashing against the walls and thudding to the floor reached the two captives' ears, but they could not tell who was winning, or for that matter, who was fighting.
Then there was silence, punctuated only by an occasional moan. Suddenly the bedroom door burst open and a bulky form stood silhouetted against the light from the hallway. Neither Debbie nor Denise, who were sitting sideways to the door, could make out the man's features, and they both held their breath as they waited for him to identify himself as friend or foe.
"You ladies planning to join a nudist colony, or do you always sit around in dark bedrooms with no clothes on?" a familiar voice boomed.
"Mike!" they cried in unison, straining against their bonds.
Mike rushed to them and quickly freed them, and Debbie and Denise flung themselves into his brawny arms, showering his handsome face with motherly and daughterly kisses, both oblivious to their nakedness, overwhelmed with joy at being alive and free and in the arms of the man they both loved above all others.
"Hey, hey!" Mike admonished, gently freeing himself. "I think you girls are forgetting your manners. And your clothes. We're not alone in this place, you know. Aside from the three birds in the living room-one of whom was tied up when we got here and the other two who are now safely trussed-there is a certain young military cadet who accompanied me."
"Billy!" Debbie cried, bolting for the door. She had completely forgotten him in the excitement. She had forgotten something else, too-her clothes-but Mike's big hand clamped down on her shoulder and dragged her back before she could race out into the living room and Billy's waiting arms.
"I think you'd better wear something a little more suitable for the occasion of greeting the young man who saved your life, young lady," Mike said good-naturedly.
Sheepishly, Debbie started prowling through the drawers of Sidney's bureau in search of something she could wear. She uncovered a blue mini-dress which was just about her size buried beneath some men's shirts in a bottom drawer. The name "Candy" was embroidered just inside the collar.
As she slipped into the garment, Debbie wondered what her mother was going to wear. A soft moan from the darkness and the rasping sound of a zipper being opened made her realize that Denise didn't need any clothes-not yet.
Billy was nervously pacing the living room floor when Debbie came out and threw herself into his arms. The two hoods were tied up and gagged, stretched out upon the floor much the same as Debbie had been earlier. Sidney was still tied to the chair, and he, too, was wearing a gag-Debbie was burning with questions about what had transpired while she and Denise were tied up in the other room. But she found herself burning even more with desire for Billy's hard young body. She gave herself up to his anxious embrace and molded her hips to his, undulating her pelvis suggestively and his hands gripped her buttocks through the thin cloth of her garment.
His tongue probed the warm interior of her willing mouth, and Debbie gladly returned his kiss, exploring every crevice and crack in his mouth with her own darting tongue.
Billy, with a guttural snarl from deep in his throat, lifted her from the floor and, gathering her into his arms like a baby, carried her from the living room and down the hall into a darkened spare bedroom.
In the darkness, Debbie felt herself being lowered, felt the softness of a bed beneath her. There were hands touching her, touching her in places where she had been touched before, but never with such tenderness, never with such love.
She allowed Billy to help her out of the dress, and she-with trembling fingers-helped him to get out of his uniform. Those same fingers began caressing him, returning the passion she felt, sending out messages that words could never express, messages as old as life itself.
She felt his hard young body on top of her, and her thighs opened to enfold him in the ultimate embrace. Debbie sucked in her breath sharply as a sudden pain knifed through her loins, then she felt herself being transported through a psychedelic wonderland of joy and passion as Billy made her a woman in the most profound sense of the word.
Debbie arched her back and flung herself up at him, matching each thrust with an upward lunge. The room was silent, save for the sounds of their labored breathing and the slap-slap-slap of their young bellies colliding rhythmically.
Billy, realizing that he was approaching the point of no return on the road to the summit of release, tried to withdraw, but Debbie's powerful thighs locked him to her. They surged against each other, their bodies quivering and wracked with spasmodic waves of pleasure. Then, like the tide at its ebb, they each relaxed, almost collapsing in each other's arms.
In the next room, Denise and Mike were lying in a similar embrace and feeling a similar feeling. Denise cuddled up in Mike's arms, resting her cheek against his broad, hairy chest. Suddenly she sat up.
"Oh, my goodness!" she said. "Do you know what day this is?"
"Mike frowned at her through the gloom. "No, what day is it?" he asked.
"Well, let me put it this way: it's just about nine months until Debbie's birthday."
"Oh," said Mike, failing at first to get the significance. Then, as it dawned upon him, he sat bolt upright in bed.
"Hey, that's right! And where'd she go, anyway? And where's that boy scout who brought me over here? Why, I'll...."
Denise put a hand on his arm and drew him gently back into the bed.
"I'm afraid, dear, that if there's anything to be prevented, it's already done!"
