In his book, Sex in Society, Alex Comfort writes: "Forms of behavior have to be considered in the light of what is known of their unconscious origin, in the light of what is customary or tolerated in a given culture, and in the light of the part they play in the individual's mental economy-of who does what, and when and where. It is disproportionate, if we are interested in the social effects, to lay much emphasis on the kind of physical variation or deviation in behavior-such object deviations are of great biological and psychoanalytical interest, because of the light they may throw on the way in which sexual 'releasers' operate...." And a most tight-knit group of students and teachers at the small midwestern college intended to study a whole horizon filled with the most shameless 'releasers'. The big sex lab was underway, and from eager Jim Perry to the insatiable Liza, everyone was almost too suited for the sin project.
CHAPTER ONE
Louise was nearly naked when she paused suddenly, her hands behind her at the catch of her strapless brassiere. All she wore, besides that scanty bit of cloth which tightly cupped the firm hills of her breasts, was a pair of almost transparent panties over her lush loins.
She twisted at the waist to look at Jim, and he felt his blood begin to heat at the sight of those supple lines of nude flesh.
"Even if you are my wife," he quipped, "you're still plenty good looking."
Then he was sorry he had said it. For one thing, the Implication of his lack of interest was a little too close to actual truth. For another thing, Louise obviously was in no mood for jokes-or anything else. Her hands slipped down from the bra catch without loosening it, and her body relaxed its tantalizing twist.
In the blood-colored light of the laboratory, where a single red bulb glowed above the locked door, her skin looked not like the skin of his wife, but rather that of some sexy demon from the underworld. Or else he himself had descended, in this strange room he had helped to design, into an erotic hell of his own creation.
"I don't want to do it again, Jim," Louise said.
Wisps of her shoulder-length blonde hair--red in this place-clung to the moisture which had appeared on her slender neck.
Jim, still wearing his trousers but nothing else, stepped forward to protest, but a look from Louise made him keep his distance.
"I just don't want to any more."
"Why?"
She let her eyes wander over the place, with its clinically bare walls, its clothing rack, its metal table where her purse lay, its glowing dials and banks of switches, and finally its double bed, neatly and (as Jim had assured her before) sterilely made, next to an installation of dangling black wires.
"The reason should be obvious," she said. "I've objected to this violently from the beginning. The whole thing goes against my grain, and I did it at first just to please you. I thought it would be just the one time, but ... "
"I never said that."
"You implied it."
"I didn't promise, I ... "
"Well, there's no sense in arguing about technicalities, Jim. The point is, I'm not going to do it any more."
"But Louise! Speaking of promises, you promised to do it tonight."
She backed away as he tried to touch her.
"It's no use," she whispered, shaking her head as if she might start crying, "I just can't feel a thing in ... in here."
He started to answer by reminding her that they weren't doing it so that she could feel anything, necessarily, but so that valuable scientific data would be recorded on the rotating drums of graph paper which lined the walls in glass-covered cases. But he thought better of it, assuming it would only antagonize her. Instead he tried to sound more tender.
"But it's not so bad, really, is it? And think what a gift you're giving the world with this little bit of unpleasantness."
"What gift, Jim?" she demanded tearfully. "The gift of our marriage?"
"Louise!" he said, shocked.
"And you used the word unpleasantness. Think about that, Jim. Just think about it a minute!" She had raised her voice almost to a shout, caught herself, and continued in a lower tone, though the walls were completely soundproofed. "That's our love life you're talking about. Sex isn't supposed to be unpleasant-not under any circumstances, these or any others. And I just don't like it!"
No doubt it would be pointless to argue with her, he thought. Reasoning was out of the question, and so was anything resembling seduction. How did you go about seducing your own wife? But James Perry, Bachelor of Science, Master of Science, soon-to-be Doctor of Science, was not about to let female emotionalism stand in his way. He used the one tactic he had left.
"You promised," he insisted.
"Oh!" she cried, exasperated, shaking her head with rage. Some of the unfamiliarly red hair fell over her face; and her breasts, pressed into swelling, pointed hills by the brassiere, quivered with the sudden violence of her motion.
Then, giving in to her husband's insistence, she angrily threw her arms behind her-naked, slim legs wide apart for balance-and with a jerk she tore away the cupped strip of cloth and flung it to the floor.
At the sight of her released breasts-not large but perfectly shaped and firmly thrusting upward from the graceful curve of her flat belly and ribs-Jim felt a thrill of excitement. He eagerly unbuckled his trousers and let them join the discarded bra on the rubber-tile floor.
Obediently but sulkily, Louise peeled down her panties, exposing her navel, the smooth lightness of her belly and slender hips, and finally the strangely red, triangular thatch of pubic hair. She sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for him, her arms folded in a way that made the pert tips of her breasts seem to strain forward invitingly. Jim licked his lips, dry with excitement now, but when his wife sensed the direction of his glance she unfolded her arms with irritated haste.
Jim took a jar of translucent jelly from a nearby shelf and went to stand over Louise. Knowing what to do from past experience, she stuck out her hands, palms up; but she turned her eyes away, and her lips pouted in the heavy red light.
Jim dipped his finger into the jelly and applied a dab to the pulse area of Louise's wrists, and then to the flesh on the inside of her elbow.
She shuddered, still refusing to watch. "It's always so cold!"
"It shouldn't be," said Jim, rubbing some of the sticky substance on either side of her neck. "The room temperature is always kept right on seventy-eight degrees, so the jelly ought to be exactly the same. It's a sensory illusion brought on by the fact that-"
"Never mind the scientific explanations," sighed Louise. "I'm just a guinea pig, after all, and guinea pigs are just to be used and not to reason why."
"Oh, Louise, you're no guinea pig!" Jim hurriedly dabbed the jelly on his own skin. "I'm really sorry if-"
"Sorry doesn't help." Louise flopped back on the bed, legs apart, arms spread-eagled. "Oh, well, at least you waited till after the honeymoon. A few weeks, anyway."
Jim compressed his lips and put the jar back on the shelf.
"Well, come on, doc," Louise said, "let's get it over with. I hate injections, so make it snappy."
Jim, by this time, was thinking that he was lucky to have her cooperation in any form, and better not worry about her attitude, however maddening it might be.
Quickly, without replying to her taunts, he pulled the black, rubber-insulated wires from their wall recesses and taped them to the spots on Louise's body which he had prepared with the jelly. Now the metal electrodes would make firm contact with the skin, not penetrating it of course, but lying close against it to pick up the minute electrical quantities of nerve impulses and skin reactions. Other sensing devices, unseen but put into operation within the especially contrived mattress of the bed, would carry their own messages into the wall graphs.
In addition to the direct sensing mechanisms there were numerous metal tubes and glass lenses, like eyes looking down on the naked couple, placed in the walls and ceiling. These took readings by means of infrared radiation, a form of laser radar, and other special techniques devised by Jim Perry and his colleagues.
In the earliest days of the experiments, there had been many more wires attached to the subjects, but it was found that these sensors, however convenient to the recording mechansisms, were inhibiting not only physically but mentally to the couples on the bed. So, over the last nine months of the project, more and more ways of avoiding such inconveniences had been found, and it was hoped that soon all direct wiring-even the few vestiges still necessary under the present system-could be done away with.
Louise lay back and looked up at Jim, disgusted, as he attached wires to his own neck and wrists and inner arms.
"The Bride of Frankenstein," groaned Louise.
Her husband lay down beside her, one arm across her warm waist, his loins pressed against one of her thighs, his legs stretched out against hers.
"Well, go ahead, doc," she said drily, "I can stand the pain."
"If you don't stop talking like that, I won't be able to do a thing."
"Big tragedy," she mocked. "Considering what you probably do around this place when I'm not here, I'm surprised you can ever do anything with me."
"You know there's no truth in that," Jim replied. "Even if I wanted to be unfaithful, I couldn't here-I mean, not with the recording devices, obviously. Unmarried partners are strictly out, and I feel like a fool repeating the same oibvious stuff to you every time we come here."
"Well, you won't have to worry about it any more, because I'm not coming here any more. And from the looks of it, neither are you."
She chuckled, looking at him for the first time since she had turned her eyes away and refused to watch what he was doing with the jelly and wires. Somehow the chuckle broke the barrier between them a little, and Jim's lips sought the warm firmness of her breasts. She seemed to respond in spite of herself, for she pushed up toward him, arching her back.
Now his hand softly and caressingly moved down the outside of one of her legs, crossed her knee, and found its way up the much warmer and softer inner flesh of her thigh. Finally, when he started teasing and stroking her pussy, her hips began to squirm from side to side.
From the corner of his eye, Jim could see the dimly illuminated dial faces responding in the walls, as Louise responded on the bed. He did not want to see the dials, but he could not help it, any more than he could help thinking of the rolls of white paper slowly turning on their rotating drums as the flicking needle wrote out the zigzag message the sensors fed to it.
"All those eyes, those glass eyes," whispered Louise, not smiling any longer, mockingly or otherwise. "And I wouldn't be surprised if old Prof. Alton himself were looking in on us from his own special little peephole-all in the interests of science, of course."
"You're a clever kid, Louise," Jim whispered, "but you talk too much."
Then he closed her mouth with his own, pressing his lips hard against the yielding heat of hers, slowly slipping the tip of his tongue on that familiar journey between her teeth. Her reactions were there, but limited; he could not help thinking in such terms, even at a time like this-terms like response, reaction, limited.
He felt a moment of panic.
Was he becoming a slave to these devices he had created? Was he unable any longer just to feel, to let himself go? Even now, even as Louise's tongue reluctantly met his, receiving his probing stabs, he could not really give himself up to the physical pleasure of what he was doing-not as he had been able to during those first months of their marriage, a year and a half ago. And he could feel the difference in Louise, in the way she moved her legs-not passionately, but dutifully-to accommodate his body.
He was above her now, and the glass eyes watched and the metal walls hummed as he fumbled with one hand to get his cock on target, then thrust his hips down toward his wife's. She shifted a little to meet him, and it was an emotionless meeting, almost as emotionless as the humming of the electrical equipment inside the walls.
"I'm not at my best tonight, I guess," Jim murmured.
Louise did not answer, merely closed her eyes and lay still.
"Well, I can't do it all by myself!" Jim snapped, infuriated by her passivity.
He knew that, fortunately, Louise would rather give in than get involved in a big fight. Her eyes still closed, she helped him with gentle, titillating motions of her pelvis. Her hips slowly pushed forward and up, then back, and he fell in with her rhythm, pushing and pulling in opposition to her. But this was a kind of opposition which brought pleasure rather than pain to both.
The dials in the walls quivered more rapidly, and the faint scratching of needles on paper grew louder. He heard Louise's breath grow more rapid, and knew that its precise velocity and rate, along with her heartbeat, was being fed into recording instruments.
Now, even the self-consciousness brought on by the surrounding equipment, the wires and the watching walls, was overcome by the exciting motions of this female body beneath him on the shaking bed. Suddenly her arms rose from the bed and her nails dug into his hips, scratching him spasmodically, urging him on. He felt the fingernails in his flesh. He felt the eager rubbing of her satiny inner thighs against his ribs, and he was drawn deeper and deeper into a maelstrom of wild pleasure by the beating jungle-rhythm of her overwhelming response to the pounding of his rod.
At last the ecstasy exploded within Mm, and he gave a great gasp and shuddered and fell down on her, as she suddenly went limp and lay still.
"Did ... you...?" He panted.
"No," she announced coldly.
For a while he was too worn out to speak. Then, getting back his breath, he said, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay," she murmured.
She made a motion of her hips to roll off her.
"If you'd tell me what to do," he said, "so I could understand better what you need, then maybe you could...."
"It's okay, I said." She tore away the wires and their tapes from her neck and arms.
Wearily, Jim reached out to squeeze one of her upstanding, resilient tits. She permitted it, then moved from his grasp and started wiping the sticky jelly from her skin with one of the soft tissues supplied in a box on the bedside table.
"So much for my gift to science and mankind," she said, as she began getting dressed. "Now, what do you say let's go?"
"Do you have to act so nasty?" Jim asked, wearily getting out of bed and starting to dress, after following her example with the tissues.
"Yes, I have to," she replied. "And I'm going to repeat myself, just to be sure I'm clear: This is absolutely the last time I'm doing this."
"Here in the lab, you mean?" Jim asked, a little anxiously.
"And maybe anywhere else," Louise replied, but not with any great conviction.
When she had finished putting on her skirt and sweater, and was slipping into her shoes, she looked around the warm, ticking, humming, red chamber. "Anyway, it's all a stupid waste of time."
Jim knew that she knew that this was a surefire way of infuriating him. He could not stand dogmatic attacks on what all of them called "The Project", as if there were no project but their own in the world.
"I won't even bother to comment on that kind of ridiculous statement," he said, zipping up his trousers and looking for his own shoes. "Especially since I've already done so at least twenty times."
"There's nothing ridiculous about it," Louise said, going through her purse for her lipstick and hairbrush. "Once you've found out every little bit of reaction a person goes through when he's sexually excited, what have you got? What good does it do? Is anybody going to be any more excited after he's looked at those mountains of charts? Are any marriages going to be any happier?"
"Yes," Jim said firmly. "Anyway, it's highly probable. We can compare physiological reactions during the sex act to, say, reactions during periods of artistic creativity, or fear, or pain, and we may open all sorts of new pathways to understanding human behavior. And if we must put this on a completely practical level, I'll give you an example. Let's say there's a woman who's frigid, or at least sexually cold to some extent. Instead of just approaching her problem through psychological analysis, we could combine that approach with an exact measurement of the whole range of her reactions, and we could compare them with the reactions of-"
"You mean me," Louise interrupted. "What?"
"You're talking about me."
"What do you mean?" Jim demanded. "I never mentioned you."
"You're talking about this supposedly hypothetical cold woman, but you and I both know that you're really talking about me!"
On the last few words, her voice rose almost to a shout. She turned, her shoulders heaving, and opened the door to the washroom which adjoined the laboratory. "Wait!" Jim called. "I didn't mean-" But Louise slammed the door behind her, and a moment later he heard the faint sound of running water.
Finished with his dressing, Jim went about the lab shutting off switches and closing down equipment. He was too tired and disgusted to bother taking the graph paper rolls, now covered with ink markings like the outlines of mountain peaks, from their rollers.
Harris White would have a minor fit in the morning about this small departure from specified routine procedure, but Harris was such a stickler for exactitude that it was hopeless to try to please him, anyway. Besides, even though Jim Perry was a graduate student and Harris White was an instructor, Jim's inferior academic rank was compensated for by greater capacity for original and creative thought.
The Project would never have progressed as rapidly as it had in its one year of existence if Jim had not been working on it, and everyone knew it-even Prof. Alton, the head of the project. And Jim was more necessary than ever, now that Prof. Alton (he was always addressed as Prof., never Professor, nor Doctor, nor anything else) was showing increasing signs of senility and incompetence. No man of his age would have been allowed to continue as director of such important work, in Jim's opinion, if his brother-in-law had not been the president of the university.
Jim left the sex lab and entered the well-lit, business-like atmosphere of his office, which served as a kind of anteroom to the lab. Other offices were arranged along the sides of the hallway which led from the front door of the small building to the heavy door of the laboratory. Over that heavy, soundproofed door burned a bare, red light bulb, under which was printed in bold letters:
WHEN RED LIGHT IS ON EXPERIMENT IS IN PROGRESS DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENTER
Louise came out of the lab. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but otherwise her face showed no trace of the crying Jim knew she must have done. Jim looked at the pouting, swollen lips, and at the sharp peaks of her tits pushing against the soft fabric of her green sweater, and he felt a surprising tinge of renewed desire. He wanted to grab her in his arms and crush those hot, inviting lips with his mouth, strip off that tantalizing sweater, and throw her on her back on the floor.
But that was impossible. Too much had come between them.
"I don't think you're cold, Louise," he said gently, picking up the conversation where they had left off. "And I certainly don't think you're frigid."
"You do, I know you do! And maybe you're right!"
"No, now listen...."
She swept past him toward the front door, then glanced back toward the lab.
"Did you shut down the sex box?" she asked sarcastically.
Silently, Jim ignored her question and switched off the red light over the door.
When they were outside in the crisp October air, where the bright moon almost outshone the blue rays of the campus street lights, she turned to him and said angrily, "Well, if I am frigid, it isn't because I always was. I was far from cold when we got married, and you know it. I was plenty hot those first few months. And I was a virgin when I married you, so whatever I am is whatever you've made me, whatever you've taught me to be."
"I'm sorry," Jim began, sliding into the driver's seat, "if I had anything to do-"
"If?" Louise exclaimed. She folded her arms exasperatedly as he started the car. "Any woman would turn frigid if she had to make love in that place! It's like screwing in a public square during a Sunday band concert!"
"You've made yourself clear enough," Jim said. "There's no need to be vulgar. Anyway, I don't feel like discussing it any more."
"I suspect you take movies of the whole thing, too, and then you all get together and drool over them
-you and that hot-pants Liza Downs, and Prof. Alton, and even that cold fish, Harris White."
"There are no pictures of any kind, movies or still shots," said Jim tiredly.
He was driving a little above the twenty-mile-per-hour speed limit, curving past the three-story dormitory complex which housed some two thousand of Midwestern University's coeds. Beyond the wide, grassy front lawn, he could see the layered rectangles of light shining through the dorm windows. Jim could never decide whether it was exciting or faintly nauseating to think of such an abundance of female flesh bunched insect-like into a single area. One or two at a time were fine-even a small harem would be delightful.
-But two thousand! That was too much. Dressing, undressing, showering, brushing teeth, studying, ironing, smoking, gossiping-hair in rollers, nubile bodies swathed in plain pajamas or long nightgowns not meant to reveal or excite. It was hard to believe the frequent rumors of Peeping Toms sneaking around the dorms; surely the boys could get a sexier show some place else.
Jim was so absorbed in his reflections on the girls' dorms that he almost failed to see the furtive limping figure that dashed from the lawn into the headlights of his car.
"Jim!" shrieked Louise, grabbing the dashboard.
Jim heard the screeching of brakes before he even realized he'd hit the brake pedal. His reaction bad been faster than he'd imagined possible, and somehow he'd avoided running the man down. As the car rocked to a halt, the man stumbled and caught himself against the fender of Jim's car, and Jim recognized him.
So did Louise. Her hand flew to her mouth in astonishment as she cried, "Prof. Alton!"
Jim jumped from the car and caught the old man around the shoulders, to make sure he wouldn't collapse and injure himself on the pavement. The aged professor was wearing-as always-a dark suit and slightly disheveled tie, but his tie was a bit more disheveled than usual and his shirt was soaked with perspiration. He was gasping so hard, he could only indicate with nods and grunts that he wanted to be helped into the car as quickly as possible. Jim did not hesitate to comply. Louise slid over to the middle of the front seat, and Prof. Alton sprawled next to her, his gray hair falling over his eyes. Still wheezing too heavily to speak clearly, he gestured to Jim to get the car moving immediately.
Jim drove off.
Louise, feeling something hard in her lap, reached down and held up the object she found there-a pair of high-powered binoculars.
"No, no," the old man croaked, quickly reaching for them. Louise let him have the binoculars, which he hastily stuck under the seat. "Just ... just out for a little walk ... nature study, you know...." His voice trailed off as he was again overcome with panting.
Louise looked knowingly at her husband. "Bird watching?" she suggested. "Owls and nighthawks?"
Jim gave her a warning nudge in the ribs with his elbow.
The professor pointed a long, gnarled, quivering finger toward the car's ceiling. "Stars," he wheezed. "Stars and planets. It's a ... a wonderful hobby."
Just then, Jim realized that a car with a red signal light was following him and gaining on him rapidly. He slowed, pulled over to the curb and stopped, and a yellow and black patrol car pulled up behind him.
A moment later the beam of a flashlight swept through the car.
"You on business here?" asked the campus policeman.
"I'm a graduate student," Jim replied, producing his driver's license and student ID card, "and this is my wife."
"Well, in that case, I'm sure you're not the party I'm looking for. And the gentleman over there...?"
He leaned forward, shining the beam of his light on Prof. Alton's pale, wrinkled face.
"I am Professor William R. Alton," said the old man, having regained most of his lung power as well as his dignity. "I head the phychology project in Building Fourteen, and-"
"Oh," the policeman grinned, "you mean Sex Manor." Then he quickly caught himself and resumed his serious expression, handing back Jim's license and ID card. "You folks didn't see any suspicious-looking man in the vicinity of the girls' dorms when you drove by, did you? We've had reports that some old buzzard's been creeping around out there, peeping through those open windows. We try to get those girls to keep the curtains pulled, but they won't do it."
"Exhibitionism," announced Prof. Alton. "Manifest exhibitionism: The desire to display or expose for the view of others all or part of one's own body, and-"
"You mean they like to show off their nakedness?" asked the policeman. "That's a pretty strong accusation to make against those kids ... but then, come to think of it, I've heard of them doing some other pretty wild things."
"The ego is titillated," the professor continued, "by the thought that sexual excitement may be aroused in another person by the display of one's own body." He took off his glasses and wiped them on his jacket, just as he often did when lecturing in a classroom. "Furthermore-"
"Well, thanks very much," the policemen interrupted, "but I've got to be going. Got to track down that old lecher before he rapes somebody, or something."
He turned to leave, then suddenly turned back. "Say, if you don't mind, I was just wondering what does go on over there in Sex Man-I mean, in Building Fourteen?"
The professor cleared his throat, but before he could answer, Louise beat him to it. "Burlesque show every night but Sunday, with audience participation," she blurted sarcastically.
Before the policeman could react, Jim said, "Please excuse us. We're late."
The cop nodded, and Jim pulled away.
"How embarrassing," breathed Prof. Alton, relaxing a little. "To think they might have mistaken me for a ... a sex pervert."
"Well, now, Prof.," Jim said in a soothing voice, "I don't think we ought to equate voyeurism with perversion. After all, a healthy interest in looking at members of the opposite sex is pretty harmless, isn't it?"
"Especially," continued Louise, "in the case of a man who might not have an opportunity to look at shapely young girls in the normal course of his life. Like an older man, for instance. But on the other hand, you boys, over there in your playhouse, have almost unlimited opportunities for-"
"Louise!" Jim cut her off, then stole a worried glance at Prof. Alton, who apparently refused to be drawn out. Jim sometimes enjoyed Louise's rather acid-tongued quips, when they were funny, but he was none too happy to see her sarcasm turned against his superior.
"My car's parked up ahead, there," said Prof. Alton. "On the right."
Jim stopped, and the old man got out. "Good night, Jim," he said unevenly. "Good night, Mrs. Perry."
"See you in the morning," Jim replied.
"Take it easy, Prof.," Louise added.
"Maybe it would be best," the old man suggested, "if we didn't confuse any issues by discussing what happened tonight. I mean, it would be most unfortunate if some people were to hear of it and perhaps suspect that I-"
He broke off, and Jim said, "Of course, of course."
"Especially," Prof. Alton went on, "with the major review of The Project coming up in a few days. The survival of all our work will depend heavily on the review, and we must be particularly careful not to let any thing come up which might be detrimental to us."
"You know I'll do whatever I can to help," Jim promised.
"That's the proper attitude, my boy. And now, good night to both of you."
As the professor doddered off to his car, Louise burst into spasms of laughter. Jim gunned his motor and pulled away.
"For Christ's sake, Louise, he might have heard you!" Jim shouted angrily. "Your remarks were bad enough, without practically laughing in his face!"
"Oh!" Louise howled. "Oh, God, that was the most hilarious thing I've ever seen. Your precious boss, the venerated guide of your sacred scientific expedition, chased down for peeping into girls' dorm windows!"
"Expedition?" Jim queried.
"Speaking figuratively, of course," Louise said. "Oh, good God, you take yourself so seriously these days that you don't even know when I'm putting you on!" She had stopped laughing by now. "So that's an example of the scientific, detached attitude in action," she went on triumphantly. "I knew it all the time. The whole thing was never more than an elaborate excuse for some dirty-minded men-and women, I almost forgot the lovely Liza Downs-to indulge in some pretty dirty-minded little activities."
Jim's hands squeezed the steering wheel as he tried to control himself. "You don't even try to comprehend the true purpose of The Project," he snapped. "If that's all the intelligence and understanding you have, I feel sorry for you."
"Don't waste your pity on me," Louise retorted. "Feel sorry for yourself and your dirty-minded associates. This project is going to be the ruin of every one of you-that is, those of you who aren't already completely degenerate. Prof. Alton is a Peeping Tom, a professional voyeur as well as an amateur one, come to think of it; and Liza Downs, from what I've heard, was the central attraction of some pretty wanton performances before she ever moved here. More than one person has told me the same story, that she and these four men went down to Lake Travis and-"
"Oh, shut up!" Jim barked. "Talk about dirty minds! Just shut up about the whole thing, will you?"
CHAPTER TWO
Jim was late for work the next morning, and when he entered the laboratory building (Sex Manor, he thought, remembering the policeman's words) the weekly staff meeting was already in progress. Jim slid into one of the folding chairs in Prof. Alton's office.
The old man was already speaking, pulling at his nose, as he habitually did when addressing a group. Facing Prof. Alton were the other members of his small staff: Harris White, instructor of psychology, and Liza Downs, secretary and general lab assistant.
Harris turned and nodded to Jim as he entered. Harris was a twenty-five-year-old bachelor, good-looking despite his prematurely receding hairline. He often claimed, only half-jokingly, that relatively hairless men were more virile than their more hirsute brothers. But if Harris exercised his virility, nobody knew about it. He was a self-styled intellectual, with fixed habits and great self-discipline.
He was fond of cold showers and hard work. Almost every day, late in the afternoon, Harris could be seen out on the open-air handball courts, leaping and turning as he swatted the hard little ball against the concrete walls. One of his favorite sayings was, "A man should have a healthy mind in a healthy body." He felt that most human emotions-particularly the stronger ones and especially those related to sex-were very dangerous, and should be either carefully controlled or avoided altogether.
Harris wiped his gold-rimmed glasses with his clean, neatly folded hankerchiief, and fitted them back on his broad brow. It always seemed incongruous to Jim that such a powerfully muscular man, with a neck like a wrestler's, would choose to wear glasses of that delicate style.
Liza, who was wearing her usual rather soiled white lab uniform, turned and gave Jim a different kind of look. It conveyed more than just a friendly greeting; it offered a bedroom invitation, and asked the questions: "Are you ready for me yet, Jim? Have you decided to come around? Is today the day?"
Those were questions she had never spoken aloud; but in her twenty-three years Liza had learned to use her bright, bluish green eyes very well to express such queries in clear, specific terms, just as she had learned to use her lush, mobile lips to send out unspoken invitations which, if they had been written, certainly would have ended with an RSVP. After she'd asked her wide-eyed question, letting the wet tip of her tongue travel over her full, pink lips to emphasize their urgent invitation, Liza turned her blonde head so she was again facing Prof. Alton.
"And so," the old man was saying, pulling his nose, "at this crucial juncture in the history of The Project we all want to be sure that nothing occurs which might endanger the future of our ... ah ... our project. It was an uphill fight from the beginning. The public is slow to accept new ideas, especially bold and daring ideas. Like Fulton, like Galileo, like Columbus, I had to fight every step of the way, and against almost impossible odds...."
Prof. Alton was beginning to repeat things he had said in a dozen other meetings before this. Liza snickered, and the sound suddenly threw Jim's mind back to the afternoon three months before when he had gone into the storeroom at the same time Liza was coming out.
At that time Liza had been with the project for only a few weeks, her predecessor having quit in a huff when she discovered what went on behind the lab doors when the red light was on. Liza was the kind of woman most men would have labeled as sexy, while most other women (such as Louise Perry) immediately labeled her brazen and cheap. Jim had tried not to be influenced by her attractiveness-the sinuous, uninhibited motions of her hips when she walked; the pressure of her huge, beautifully developed breasts against the white material of her lab uniform; the way she let her skirt pull high above her knees when she sat down, revealing the most shapely pair of legs Jim had ever seen.
Nature had been generous with Liza, and Liza was plenty generous about showing off what Nature had given her. From the beginning, Jim couldn't help wondering just how generous she might be with her gorgeous body in other ways. Would she do more than show it off?
But he'd always stopped himself from thinking such things ... until that day in the storeroom.
He did not know anyone eke was there The room was dim, illuminated only by the light filtering through the transom; the overhead bulb had burned out and nobody had bothered to replace it. The room was full of boxes and supplies, with only a narrow passageway for walking down the center. Jim was moving down that cramped aisle, looking for a box of file folders, when Liza surprised him by appearing in the passageway from the back of the room.
"Oh, hi," he said. "Find what you want?"
"Not really," she replied.
Was that a kind of seductive throatiness in her voice, or was he imagining things? Wish fulfillment, Jim concluded. You want to hear it, so you hear it.
"Could I help you?" he asked a little nervously. He was not particularly shy, but he was fairly recently married, happy with his wife, and conscientious about his job.
"Maybe," Liza said, obviously trying to get him to look her in the eyes. "You never can tell what'll turn up in a storeroom."
Instead of backing out of the aisle, which was far too narrow to allow two people to pass each other easily, Liza came on toward him. He turned sideways to let her pass. She too turned sideways, facing him, edging closer in her tight, white, slightly soiled uniform.
It was more a uniform in name and color than in design, Jim thought. The skirt was short, the hem hitting just above her knees, and the neckline of the bodice was cut in a deep V that showed the bare upper swells of two tremendous, jutting globes of flesh.
It was those fleshy globes which wedged Jim against the boxes when he and Liza met. She thrust her belly against him too, letting him feel the ungirdled warmth and softness of the hills and valleys of her thighs and hips.
Immediately, he was aroused. Liza could feel his hardening rod pressing against her, but she remained where she was, obviously enjoying the contact. She looked into his eyes and smiled.
"Watch that, or we may be permanently jammed in here."
"I could think of worse things," Jim said.
"Mmmm," Liza sighed, half closing her eyes and rubbing her belly from side to side against his. "I didn't know I'd find that when I came back here for some glue."
Her mouth was only a few inches from Jim's, but he didn't make a move to kiss her. All his attention was focused on what was happening below his waist.
"Wait," she whispered. Then, with her hands at her thighs, she began to gather up the material of her skirt and slip, pulling them higher and higher until all of the fabric was bunched above her hips.
She was wearing nothing underneath-no panties, no garter belt, no stockings.
"That's better," she sighed languidly, her cat-like green eyes still half-closed.
"Somebody might come in," Jim protested reluctantly.
Before answering Liza took one of his hands and pressed the palm against the warm, supple flesh at the outside of one of her bare thighs. Then she slowly guided it up to cup the underside of a velvety butt-cheek.
"You're right," she whispered then. "And besides, this spot is too cramped. I know a better place."
Her short skirt and slip dropped back into place as she unwedged herself. Keeping her hold on his hand, she led him back to the rear of the storeroom.
"Behind these boxes," she whispered, her lips brushing his ear.
"Liza...."
"I guess I'll just have to admit that I have a touch of nymphomania," Liza smiled. "I mean, in case you're wondering why I'm acting like this. But my kind of nymphomania only comes out when I'm with certain men-not with just any guy."
They were standing in a little alcove formed by packing crates. It was dimly lit and musty.
Jim took Liza in his arms and kissed her. Their tongues met in a wild duel, and Liza's soft, curvaceous body writhed tightly against his, arousing him fully now, almost to a point of unbearable strain. His hands sought her bare thighs and buttocks again, tugging the skirt up out of the way.
"Jim, Jim," Liza mumbled against his lips, "I've been wanting this so much. Oh, God, yes."
"Liza, we can't. Not here, not now."
Any reluctance Jim might have had on marital grounds was gone now, but he didn't relish the idea of getting caught with his pants down during working hours-or at any other time, for that matter.
"Let me do something...." Liza whispered, trailing wet little kisses along his neck and up to his ear. Then, slowly, she slid her body down his, her face brushing his chest and stomach through his shirt. " ... with my mouth," she finished.
Jim felt a deep shudder of pleasure and anticipation run through his body.
"You don't mind?" Liza asked, looking up.
He shook his head, his knees weak, as her fingers worked at his belt and trousers. Then he gave a sudden gasp as Liza's hot, damp hands touched his bared, throbbing penis. She began tickling and teasing it with her fingernails; then she looked up at him, her mouth slightly open, her lips a saliva-glazed pink, her tongue-tip flickering.
"You're sure you don't mind?"
"No, no," he whispered hoarsely.
She bent to take him, and he clutched her blonde hair tightly as the liquid heat of her mouth closed over his rod and the ecstasy began.
He almost fell, then braced himself, with legs wide apart, against the shifting crates and boxes. He was no longer worried about the possibility of being discovered. His total consciousness was absorbed in the skillful work of Liza's suctioning lips and slithering tongue.
"You like?" she gurgled indistinctly.
"Yes. Don't stop, please."
"It's fun to tease you," she said, pulling back. Just the tip of her tongue touched him now.
"No! Don't stop, please! Not now!"
She dove, and the searingly sweet suctioning sensation surrounded his senses again. He grabbed at her-sweat-dampened, tangled hair. And then, like a pot of molten metal, he boiled over. His knees gave way and he held onto her wildly, then slid down beside her on the floor.
After a moment she looked at him, smiled, and said, "I've been feeling this way about you for some time, if you know what way I mean."
"You've given me a pretty good idea," he returned, not able to breathe calmly yet. "But that wasn't much fun for you, was it?"
"Enough for now," she said. "And it'll be my turn next time. I've got you in my debt."
Jim, ran his hands under her skirt and rubbed them over her soft, rounded thighs and hips. Feeling the warmth and smoothness of her flesh, he sensed his virility returning with amazing speed. His caresses became more purposeful and heated. He tried to get Liza to settle back on the floor.
"No." she whispered, shaking her head as she looked toward the door. "Not now."
She kissed him hard on the mouth.
"But soon," she murmured, squeezing his rising rod with her hand. "I can't wait long."
Remembering the storeroom incident now, during Prof. Alton's speech to the staff, Jim wondered why he had not repaid that three-month-old debt to Liza.. Instead of immediately jumping at the chance, he had found himself putting it off, avoiding any encounters with Liza except when other people were around.
Was it because of some overdeveloped moral sense instilled in him by his parents? Was it because of some puritanical sense of fidelity? It certainly wasn't because of total satisfaction with his wife.
He had worried about it before, had called himself a coward, and had decided several times to make a clandestine date with Liza. But at the last minute he would put it off.
Jim turned his attention to Prof. Alton, who was winding up his talk.
"So let us all keep in mind that without funds there can be no project, and that without The Project ... ah...." He pulled his nose. "There will be no more project."
Liza snickered again.
"The board's decision will be made in just a few days," Prof. Alton continued. "Let's get our house in order and present a good front to even the most inquiring eye. The future of sexual health in America may depend on our behavior in the next week."
Liza came straight to Jim as the chairs were pushed back and the director became engaged in a conversation with Harris White.
"Good morning," she said. And then, in a very conspiratorial tone, she added, "I've got the funniest thing to show you. But don't tell anybody. It's confidential."
Liza wagged a large manila envelope at him and gestured toward a side room. Jim followed, watching the fluid shift of her buttocks under the white Dacron of her lab dress. He wondered if she was wearing any panties today. He recalled vividly the full extent of those naked legs and buttocks, all the way from her slim ankles to her narrow waist.
"Look at this," Liza said, when he had closed the door of Prof. Alton's office behind them.
From the brown envelope she pulled a folded length of paper, and let it fall open from her raised hand to the floor. Along the several feet of the strip, Jim could see the mountain-range zigzag line produced by the measuring devices of the sex labbut in this case, the zigzag was more reminiscent of low, rolling sand dunes than a mountain range.
Liza let the outer curve of one of her full breasts touch Jim's arm as she spoke. "Must have been one of Harris' yogurt-and-wheat-germ couple," she said. "I found it on the machine this morning. Have you ever seen anything like it? These reactions have all the impact of someone weeding a carrot patch."
Jim felt the blood rising in his cheeks, and he struggled to think of something to say. Finally he managed to ask, "Is this the male's or female's chart?"
"Female's," Liza replied, "but the male's is not much better. Don't you pity a couple of cold fish like that? If your sex life's that dull, what have you got?"
Jim clutched the strip of paper, sure that he was blushing visibly. Hfe mouth was dry, and the pressure of Liza's breast against his arm didn't help his composure any. Liza looked at him, and suddenly he was sure she had known all along whose chart it was.
"Oh," she said, as if suddenly realizing something. "You ... you don't know whose this is, do you?"
Jim glared at her, anger welling up to replace his humiliation. "Yes," he said tersely.
"You do?"
Liza was blushing now, and Jim thought she was probably the only woman he had ever seen who could do it on purpose.
"Oh!" Liza said again. "Uh ... was she ... with you?"
"Of course!" Jim snapped. "Who else do you think it could have been?"
"I'm sorry," Liza said.
Jim thought he detected a sparkle of delighted triumph in the blue-tinged green pools of her eyes, as she quickly pulled the paper from his hands and folded it.
"I'll file this right away," she said briskly.
Jim grabbed her arm. "Do you think I'm a cold fish?" he demanded, glancing at the paper.
"I wouldn't know," Liza replied, smiling sardonically. "Just because you don't find me desirable, there's no reason for me to assume-"
His mouth descended on hers, shutting off her words, and his tongue attacked hers with fierce stabs. He heard the paper rustling as it slid to the floor beside their clinched bodies.
"I think I owe you something," Jim muttered in her ear, giving the soft lobe a quick but not very gentle bite.
"With interest," Liza said, and she ran hear hand down the front of his body in a way that made him tremble with desire. He covered her mouth again with his own. When they broke the kiss, her breath was swift and hot in his ear as she whispered, "This afternoon, when everybody else is gone."
CHAPTER THREE
"Jim Perry, what are you, a scared little mouse?
Liza stood completely naked, her long, shapely legs apart, her fists on her hips.
"No. Of course not." Jim was not little, nor was he a mouse, but he was scared, so in order not to make his statement a complete lie he added, "I just wonder if this is the ... well, the best time to do this."
Liza looked more like a beautiful but dangerous Greek goddess of war than a woman ready for love-making. Her cropped, dark-streaked blonde hair was like a tarnished helmet, outlining her brow and cheeks and the back of her neck. Her sensual pink lips were set in a harsh threatening expression. Her whole body looked a little bigger and healthier and stronger than most human females'-also a little more voluptuous than most women's bodies. When he'd seen her in her clothes, which always gave her a kind of soft, sloppy appearance, Jim had never realized she would look larger-than-life in the nude. Maybe, he thought, this statuesque, superhuman, breathtaking quality of hers is a result of her mixture of Scandanavian and Russian blood, which she mentions frequently.
Now only her breast seemed tender and warmly feminine. They were very big-too big to be pert and round and upstanding like Louise's. They were like gigantic ripe pears, bursting with juicy sweetness. They were white and succulent and soft-looking, and susceptible to the slightest motion. They trembled now with the vehemence of her words, and the large pink nipples seemed to swell to match her anger.
"What time could be better? Everyone else has gone," she snapped, "and the neat thing about this place is that nobody would dare walk in while that red light is on outside. My God, when I was in high school I'd have given my eye teeth for a setup like this! We used to have to do it behind the furnace in the basement."
"You must have had quite a childhood," said Jim, his ears burning with embarrassment and self-disgust. Maybe he was a mouse.
"It wasn't during my childhood," Liza said. "I blossomed early, and I was a woman by the time I was fourteen. But you're trying to change the subject."
"No, I'm not."
"Yes, you are! You think this place is too dangerous, right?"
"No!" Jim shouted. "I don't think it's too dangerous! So will you shut up?"
Liza shut up, and the flush drained almost immediately from her face, though her whole body still seemed to glow with the heat of hr excitement.
"Oh," she said, relaxing, looking him over seductively. "Got your nerve up, huh?"
"Come on."
"Come on where? I'm all ready. What about you?"
Jim was silent as he unbuckled his trousers. His shirt was already off.
"Sit on the stool," Liza ordered. "I'll help."
She knelt down in front of him, untied his shoelaces, and pulled off his shoes and socks.
"That's real service," Jim said, reaching out to touch her soft, short hair.
"We aim to please," she smiled. "Now stand up and take off your pants."
Jim felt he was too much under her control, but he did not really care under the circumstances. He did as she said, and soon he, too, was naked. Something about the surroundings made him feel terribly exposed. He had not had much experience with women before he married Louise, and he realized more and more that he should have spent less time studying and considerably more time learning about life in the raw.
He took Liza's warm, bore body in his arms and kissed her, feeling her lips yield softly and her tongue seem to melt hotly at the touch of his. But something was wrong. He was too nervous to let himself go completely. Liza seemed to realize it; but now, instead of swelling up like a war goddess, she decided to be understanding.
"Remember what I did to you before?" she whispered. Her full mouth, fragrant with lipstick, brushed his as she added, "Back in the storeroom?"
"I sure do," said Jim. "Want to do it again?"
"Not on your life," said Liza, with a flash of her former anger. Then she softened. "Remember, you owe me something. But I think you need a little reminder of what I did, just to get you in the mood for screwing. Just remember, though, you better hold back so you can take care of my needs."
"Okay."
"Sit," Liza commanded.
He sat on the stool, and she got down on her knees again and placed a hand on each of his thighs. Then she slowly leaned forward, her lips parting, her mouth opening, her hands sliding around to stroke his flanks.
Jim tingled with anticipation, and his whole body seemed to dilate and throb as Liza took his rod into her mouth. His fingers squeezed her great, pliant breasts. Then she went to work on Mm in earnest, swirling her tongue and scraping lightly with her teeth in violent rhythm, as if she would like to swallow him up entirely. He threw himself back, stretching his legs on either side of her, and met the motions of her head with motions of his hips. He clutched her hair with both hands.
"Whoa," she said, looking up at him, smiling slightly, teasingly. "Watch it there, boy. You've got a debt to pay, remember?"
"Over there," Jim said, nodding toward the bed. Impatiently, he rose, pulled Liza to her feet, and led her to the white bed by the wall. The black wires bung over it like severed arteries. "Now you lie down," he ordered.
"Yes, sir."
Liza flopped back on the bed, her breasts spreading into tremulous domes as they were freed of the direct down-pull of gravity. Her legs were wide apart. Jim had never realized that a woman could be so completely uninhibited, so carefree and relaxed about sex.
"Now I'll start repaying that debt," he said. He knelt on the bed between Liza's warm, firm legs. Then, turning from one leg to the other en route, he slowly kissed his way up the insides of her calves and knees and thighs. She quivered as his tongue-top touched the core of all her passion. Then he brought his lips and teeth into play, and soon he had her squirming and panting, just as she had done to him.
"Oh, baby!" she exulted. "Oh, man, is that good!"
Suddenly her thighs clamped over each side of Jim's head, shutting off his vision and almost smothering him as his face became buried in hot, moist flesh. As he struggled to free himself, he wondered if this Amazonian beauty had once been a lady wrestler-it was a real test of his strength. Finally, he managed to free his head enough to make speech possible.
"Hey," he mumbled, "ease up a little there. You don't want me to suffocate, do you?"
"Oh, oh! I'm sorry, baby. I really am. Come here. Come up here to Mommy."
Mommy! Jim thought. Good grief!
An instant later he was cradled in the voluptuous heat of Lisa's embrace, his throbbing loins poised just above her trembling belly. He was about to invade her with all Ms strength, when suddenly she said, "Gee, we forgot something."
"What?" he gasped.
"Those wires and things."
"To hell with the wires!"
"You sure?"
Liza's interruption of Jim's one-track thoughts proved costly. Now, in spite of Ms urgent and towering need, he became conscious enough to feel guilt again. Here he was, wallowing in pleasure with another woman, while his faithful wife was probably on her tiptoes banging has undershorts on the back yard clothesline.
"Oh, cut it oat, Liza," be said gruffly. "You're a sadist."
"Sure, I am," Lisa agreed brightly, reaching over his shoulder to haul down some of the dangling black cords. "I'm a sadist and a nympho and Freud only knows what eke. I'm a real crazy, mixed-up kid. Now, gimme a hand, huh?"
Jim grudgingly humored her, remaining atop her as he hurried to tape the electrodes to her wrists, excitement up to fever pitch. Then she flicked on the switches that set the wall dials glowing and the paper rolls turning.
"That's good enough, damn it!" Jim rasped.
Without further warning, he attacked her with a piercing stroke that shot a vibrant charge through his vitals, and made her yelp with surprise and delight. Jim was too hot now to take it slow, make it last. His hips pumped furiously.
"Oh, Jimmy baby," she gurgled, bumping up to meet his every thrust, her head rolling. "Oh, golly, that feels good. Golly, golly ... golly!"
In only a few moments they went over the top together, soaring with ecstasy like a couple shooting over Niagara Falls in a barrel, seeming to land almost senseless in the foaming roar at the bottom, then emerging to drift calmly through gentle currents toward the shore.
"Oooh," Liza sighed, stretching her legs and pointing her toes, and clenching her internal muscles as if to squeeze out the last droplets of fulfillment.
"Mmmmi ... was that good!"
"Yes," agreed Jim, too exhausted to say more.
They lay for a long time in one another's arms, not speaking, scarcely breathing. Unintentionally, Jim dozed off, then recovered his senses with a jerk.
"Did I sleep long?" he asked anxiously.
"Only a minute or so," Liza purred soothingly, as one of her hands moved his flaccid penis. "Got to revive you now, so we can do it another way."
"I like your directness," Jim said. He felt his rod expanding under her warm touch; she was simultaneously twisting and pumping it with her right hand. With her left hand, she reached around and tickled his balls.
Suddenly he found himself so excited that he could hardly wait. With Louise, it had never happened so fast. "Now," he said. "Quick!"
"This way," Liza said with pleased excitement, as she flung herself onto her hands and knees, facing away from him. "Okay?" she asked over her shoulder, saucily wiggling her expansive butt.
Jim knelt behind her and slid into her slowly. This time he wanted to make it last. Liza made her usual appreciative noises, looked back at him admiringly over her smooth, white shoulder, and licked her lips in a way that was calculated to bring any man to the brink of convulsions in three seconds flat. But Jim kept his lust under control, waiting out those three seconds, then easing back and forth with excruciating slowness.
Ifs too good to be true, he kept thinking. Here I am screwing a girl who looks like a Greek goddess!
He swept his hands delightedly over the hourglass shape of her ribs and waist and hips. He kneaded her resilient butt-cheeks with his fingers. He leaned over and cupped her great breasts-dangling gloriously full and free now-with both his hands nestling his cheek against her back. Then he bit playfully into the creamy flesh just above one shoulder blade.
"Ow," she complained, half laughing. "Come on, now."
Jim quit playing and increased the tempo of his pistoning hip motions. Liza squeezed his rod with her secret muscles, rotated her hips maddeningly, then met his climactic thrusts with ramming counterthrusts. Even though she braced herself against his jackhammer blows with both hands, he still almost blasted her off the end of the bed.
His face contorted; he cried out at the achingly sweet explosion of his lust and locked himself against her, shaking all over. Still spasming with the receding waves of her own climax, Liza collapsed with a groan of happiness, and let her head and shoulders and arms dangle off the bed.
This time neither of them made any comment. They lay there breathing deeply during the timeless aftermath, as the glowing eyes of the dials and lenses kept watch from the walls and ceiling.
"I'm hungry," Liza said, after many minutes.
"Hmm," Jim grunted, not moving.
"Get off, lover. You're getting too heavy."
Jim rolled over, and Liza hauled herself to a slumped sitting position. She yawned. She no longer looked as devastatingly attractive as she had before they started.
"Mmm," she said sleepily, scratching her head, "that was great, wasn't it?"
"You can bet your sweet, sexy ass it was," said Jim, grinning but blushing slightly at his own audacity.
She looked at him and smiled. "Still nervous?"
"Aw, hell no."
"Don't look so sheepish. You're a good-looking, sexy guy. You ought to loosen up and enjoy yourself."
"I already have enjoyed myself."
"I mean in general." She peered at him quizzically. "Jim, tell me honestly, is your wife any good in bed?"
Jim stood up and paced the antiseptic floor, forgetting that he had no clothes on. He knew he should tell Liza it was none of her business what his wife was like in bed, put it was difficult for Mm to speak to anyone so curtly. The truth was too embarrassing, so he had to lie.
"Sure," he replied at last.
"Scout's honor?"
"Come on, Liza. That's not a proper subject for us to talk about. Forget about my wife."
"Judging by that information I got off the machines tiris morning, she's not so hot."
"I said, I think we'd better drop the subject."
"Well," Liza went on insistently, "it's certainly not your fault. You may be a little tense, but you're okay. You're more than okay."
"Thanks."
"So you don't know what's wrong?"
"What's wrong with what?" Jim asked with annoyance.
"Your wife."
He turned, spreading his arms in exasperation. "Nothing's wrong with her. Drop it now, will you?"
Liza shrugged and smiled, tilting her head to one side. "Have it your way then. All tMs stuff's just fodder for the research anyway, I guess."
She took the electrodes from her wrists as Jim started gathering Ms clothing. A minute later she came over to Mm, wearing only her panties, and waved a roll of paper in front of Ms nose.
"Compare that to your wife's record," she said triumphantly.
Jim looked. Liza's record-the mountainous profile formed by the ink on the roll of paper-had a jagged, alpine splendor that made a mockery of the puny squiggles on Louise's graph. The charting of Lisa's neural impulses during her climactic outbursts rose to magnificent heights that overshadowed any of the others Jim had seen in the entire course of the project. He felt shame when he thought of Louise, but pride when he considered the fact that he had caused those stratospheric climaxes in the girl who was facing him.
"You probably react that way to any man you find attractive," he said modestly.
"I don't know about that," she said seriously, studying the chart. "Of course, I've never made love before while I was hooked up to measuring instruments, but I know there've been lots of times when I've been laid by good-looking guys, and felt less than I felt today."
"You've had quite a bit of sexual experience?" inquired Jim, pulling on his trousers.
"Oh, sure." Liza tossed some stray bangs from her eyes with a flick of her head, and buttoned up her lab dress. "I started young, and I've been at it ever since." She pulled on her shoes. "Yes, indeed. Sex is lovely. I really enjoy it."
"Too bad more women don't have your attitude."
"Yeah, I guess you're right. Have you laid a lot of different kinds of girls? I mean, before you were married?"
"Quite a few," Jim lied. "All set to go home now?" She nodded, and he switched off the red outer light and opened the door.
He froze in his tracks.
There stood Harris White in full handball regalia-shorts, sweat shirt, white socks and gym shoes. He was still glowing from his athletic exertions-as were Jim and Liza. The large expanse of forehead beneath White's receding hairline turned even redder as he surveyed the situation.
"Hi," Liza said brightly.
"I ... I wondered who was in there," Harris said.
"It's not quite the way it looks," Jim bluffed, trying to smle. "I mean, we-"
"There's no point in trying to cover for me," Liza interrupted.
Jim felt the shock of her words drain the blood from his head. "What?" he asked dumbly.
"I'm caught, that's all there is to it," she continued glibly. "What's the point in lying? It was all in a good cause, anyway, wasn't it?"
"I...." began Jim, and then he could think of no more to say. My God, he thought, does Liza love excitement so much that she'll ruin my marriage just for the sake of some extra kicks?
"I don't get it," Harris said. He backed up, casting a glance toward the front door of the building. "But then, it's none of my business, is it?"
"Of course, it is," Liza insisted, taking hold of his arm through the gray sleeve of his sweatshirt. "Just wait a minute, please, and listen."
She drew White into the lab, pressed him down into a swivel chair and stood over him, shading him from the ceiling light with the spectacular overhang of her breasts. Jim remembered vividly how wonderful it had felt to have those amazing protuberances naked, squeezing against his chest, just a short time ago.
At the thought of time, he looked at the wall clock.
"Oh, no!" he groaned.
"What?" asked White, turning to look at him.
"It's seven o'clock. My wife and I usually eat supper at six-thirty."
"I guess you won't tonight," Lisa said. "Now, Mr. White, this is kind of hard to explain, but I'll do my best. It was for the good of The Project."
Harris, as Jim knew, was gung ho for The Project, and took a dim view of kidding about it. His ears actually seemed to quiver slightly at the sound of the words. That was what was wrong with Harris, Jim thought; in addition to his being a health faddist, he took everything so seriously that he made himself ridiculous.
"Here," Liza said, startling Harris by thrusting the rolled-up record of her sex session with Jim into the instructor's open hands.
Jim was torn between rushing home to salvage what he could of his wife's good temper and the dinner, and staying to find out what horrors Liza would reveal to Harris.
"I got caught, and I admit it," Liza said bravely. "I've felt very strongly that The Project would suffer to some extent if we didn't have at least one experiment involving an unmarried couple."
White's broad, healthy cheeks took on a slightly blotched appearance, and he looked up quickly from the chart Liza had given him.
"Sooo...." said the blonde girl, with a prolonged and embarrassed shrug, "I decided to go ahead and take matters into my own hands, so to speak."
Harris looked at her, then at the chart, then back at her.
"You?"
"Yes," she answered, with becoming modesty.
"And-?"' Harris looked inquiringly at Jim, who stood frozen, his tongue wedged to the roof of his mouth.
"Oh, no!" cried Liza, bursting into laughter. "Him?"
Jim tried to tug his facial muscles into an expression of wry amusement. "Ha, ha," he said, without conviction.
"I was with a student!" Liza exclaimed. "A student?" Harris asked, in astonishment. "He's over twenty-one," Liza said reassuringly. "Oh. Good."
"I really have to get home," Jim put in now. "I, uh ... well, good-bye."
"Bye-bye," Liza said, with a smile and a wave. "And so," she continued to Harris, "I brought him in here, and ... "
Liza's voice grew dimmer to Jim as he strode down the hall. He felt a pang of jealousy at the mere idea that Liza might have been making love with somebody else instead of with him. That wasn't a healthy way to feel, he knew. It wasn't healthy at all. But he didn't have time to worry about it now. Louise would boil him in cooking oil if he made her keep the dinner warm much longer. He hurried down the steps to the parking lot.
Back in the lab, Liza concluded, "So that's what happened. It seemed to me that, well, I just had to help The Project in the only way I knew how ... sir."
White stood up, brooding over the pinnacled chart.
"This is a serious departure from established procedure, you know."
"Yes, sir." Liza considered putting her finger in her mouth and scuffing her toe in the dirt-but there was no dirt in the lab.
"Prof. Alton would be highly displeased."
"I know. But maybe if he understood, if he agreed.
Liza looked bright with hope, but White dashed her high spirits to the ground.
"Un-likely," he said. "Personally, I have often thought that restricting the experimentation to married couples will result in a paucity of wide-range data, and will severally limit the meaningfulness of the whole undertaking. I have argued with Prof. Alton that it is absolutely essential to scan the whole spectrum of human sexual response, and that it is insufficient to merely isolate those types of behavior accepted by conventional, traditional mores."
"Right!" Liza agreed.
"But, unhappily, our leader is no longer young, and no longer infused with the sort of bold daring that forges new roads into the jungles of the unknown."
"Maybe I could talk him into using unmarried couples," Liza offered, repressing a giggle. She could listen to only so much of White's gobbledygook without laughing out loud.
"If you could," White said, whacking the chart to emphasize his conviction, "you'd be doing a great service for scientific research.
"Maybe I'll just have a go at the old ... at him, then," Liza said, sensing new adventure in the wind.
Harris put down the chart, stared at the wan a moment, then looked at Liza, adjusting his steel-rimmed spectacles.
"There's something I wasn't going to say, but ... Bi fact, this whole thing is a fantastic coincidence. I just checked my campus mailbox, after I finished my handball game, and received a startling bit of news which may affect us all. There's another university, a larger one than ours-I'd better keep the name a secret-which is engaged in exactly the same kind of project as we are."
He looked at Liza, waiting for his pronouncement to take effect.
"No!" she exclaimed incredulously.
"Yes! And, according to my informant, not only did they begin earlier than we did, but they have more money, a large staff, and-this is to the point, volunteers to get in on it. All kinds of people-married and unmarried, young and old.
"You understand? They're letting everybody-"
"Screw for science!" Liza finished for him. Her use of the blunt term brought blotches to crimson not only to White's cheeks, but to his hands, ears, and forehead
"Yes," he said, swallowing hard. "Precisely. And you can imagine what that means to us."
"It means we've got to let everybody here do it too," she said, "or get caught with our pants down. On second thought, pants up might be a better way to put it, under the circumstances."
"An apt metaphor," said White. "Very apt."
He paced the floor nervously, and Liza admired his strong, muscular, hairy legs.
"The question is," he continued, "whether or not we should let this information get beyond the members of our staff. It's especially crucial since we have the review of The Project coming up next week. The board might-if they knew about our competition-do one of two things: They might grant us more money and allow us to use a broader range of subjects, in hopes that we could catch up. On the other hand, they might decide the other university is so far ahead that we might as well scrap this whole project."
"And they'll get their pictures in Life, and we won't!" cried Liza.
"So you see," Harris said, "now there is a slightly better chance that Prof. Alton will accept a suggestion to open our experimentation to unmarried couples. By the way, who is this chap you brought in here this afternoon?"
"I promised I wouldn't give his name."
"Where's his chart?"
"We forgot to-I mean, he didn't want me to hook him up."
Harris looked suspicious. "Well, what good-?"
"I figured one chart would be better than none."
"Maybe, but...." Harris looked at the door through which Jim had disappeared some minutes before. Liza could tell that he didn't believe her story, and that he was certain Jim had been her partner.
"It was Pat Rooney," she blurted.
"What?" White asked blankly.
"Pat Rooney, the football player. I guess it's okay to tell you-he's the one I brought in here this afternoon."
"Do you think you could get him to come here again? And let us record his sexual responses with you? Seems to me you wouldn't have much difficulty persuading him." White bowed gallantly, letting his eyes travel appreciatively over Liza's curvaceous form, openly acknowledging her sex appeal for the first time since they'd met.
"I think he'd come back," she said, "if he knew it was okay with you guys in charge. In fact, I think he's get a kick out of it."
"Undoubtedly."
Maybe he has a sense of humor after all, Liza thought it more probable actually a terribly inhib-pressed leer. These eggheads might not be so bad, if you can just unfreeze them a little.
She considered trying to unfreeze White on the spot, but decided against it. Until now she had figured that he just didn't like girls, period. But now she thought it more probable actually a terribly inhibited man, who sublimated his sex drive and turned his energies to mental tasks and hard-driving athletics. It wouldn't pay to push him. If he was to become one of her conquests, it would have to be through a gradual and subtle process.
"I'll get in touch with Pat Rooney," she said, "and see when he can come again.
"Good. For the present, don't mention it to Prof. Alton. I think we may just have to go ahead-without his knowledge or consent-on these new experiments. At times the service of truth is more important than complete honesty."
"And meanwhile, we'll see if we can't bring the old boy around to our way of thinking," Liza said, emphasizing the our by letting her full lips round invitingly as she pronounced it. Her eyes sent out a torrid invitation before she turned and headed for the door.
"Oh, Miss Downs," White called, as if an afterthought had just occurred to him.
"Yes?" Liza stopped in the doorway and turned to face him.
"Miss Downs, do you play handball?"
CHAPTER FOUR
Jim had to eat a cold supper, alone, on the evening of his sex lab experiment with Liza. Louise locked herself in the bedroom and refused to come out or let him in.
"Don't you think you're being silly about this?" he called through the locked door, a half-eaten chicken wing in his hand. He had to admit that even though he felt guilty, his exertions had made him ravenous. "No!" Louise yapped back at him.
Jim heard her rattling the pages of a magazine. "Men have come home late from work before," he said.
"Work!" Louise spat contemptuously. "Is that what you call it?"
"It's true," he lied. "I had a lot to do."
"I don't doubt that. Who was it?"
"Who was who?"
"Whoever it was you had to dot"
"Oh, come on, Louise. Open the door."
"Shut up and leave me alone!"
Jim went back to the table, finished the chicken and the peas, and carefully put everything away. He considered trying to talk to Louise through the bedroom door again, but decided it would be better to wait and give her time to calm down.
He sat in the living room and watched the nightly TV movie, in which Pat O'Brien or John Wayne or somebody defeated the same old Germans in the same old war for the three-hundredth time that year. Jim wished the local channel would show a few movies about some more recent or more ancient war. But for the moment he had a war of his own on his hands.
After a while, Louise appeared in the doorway, wearing a silky red nightgown. She glared at him through a careless fall of blonde hair, which was much lighter and longer and shinier than Liza's-and more beautiful, Jim thought.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Looking at TV, obviously."
"Obviously. So you weren't up to anything this afternoon?"
"No."
On the screen, somebody with a Brooklyn accent and a wad of gum in his mouth reduced about half the Wehrmacht to a bloody heap with an improvised bazooka. When the noise died down, Louise said, "Okay, you can come into the bedroom now."
But her words were drowned out by another blast from the TV set. "Die you bunch of crossed-eyed, yellow-bellied sidewinders!" cried the inevitable Southerner, unleashing a flood of machine-gun fire.
"I said, you can come into the bedroom now!"
"Wait till after they rape the French girl."
"What French girl?"
"The Germans always rape a girl about this time."
"Okay, if you prefer that to the real thing!"
Louise spun around and stalked away. Jim came to his senses, turned off the TV and followed her. He managed to catch the bedroom door before she could lock it.
"Don't act so ridiculous," he said. "What's wrong with you?"
"What isn't?" Louise looked at him for a minute; then she leaned over, grasped the hem of her red nightgown, and yanked it up. She tugged the gown off over her head and flung it aside.
"Okay," she said, falling back on the bed, "make love to me."
Jim looked at her lovely, naked body with a mixture of appreciation, weariness, and despair. At the moment, making love to Louise was the last thing on earth he felt like doing, after his recent encounter with Liza. But he knew he had to. Resignedly, he took off his tie and shirt.
"What's that on your shoulder? Louise asked. It looks like somebody bit you! It's all red!"
Jim wondered if he blushed noticeably. "Don't be silly," he replied.
He slowly took off the rest of his clothes, and when he was naked he sat down on the edge of the bed.
Louise had noticed that he didn't have a hard-on. "You're not in much of a hurry," she remarked acidly. "Your enthusiasm flatters me to death."
"Well, you're just lying there,"
"What am I supposed to do, stand on my head and twirl tassels or something?"
"I mean, you're just lying there like a log."
"I was under the impression it was your job to turn me on, but maybe I'm mistaken. What do you do for the guys that can't come across down at the lab? Show them dirty pictures or something?"
"There's nothing wrong with that," said Jim. "It's a perfectly normal method of stimulating-"
"Oh, for God's sakes! I didn't ask for a lecture on sex psychology. Why can't you just be a man?"
"Now, wait a minute...."
"I've waited long enough. Just go away and leave me alone."
"Louise, maybe I'm a little more tired than usual tonight."
"Maybe. Now let me go to sleep, will you? I know I'm tired."
She flopped over, turning her face to the wall. He looked ruefully at the delightful curves that ran along her uppermost side, from her shoulder down the slope of her rib cage to the fine slimness of her waist, rising again excitingly over her smooth hip and flowing into the long, undulating perspective of her leg.
But, considering the way Liza had milked him dry, it would have taken more than the mere sight of a lovely body to rekindle his inner fires. Especially when the possessor of the lovely body was furious at him, and simply lay back with a disgusted expression and told him to take her.
Jim sensed that something was wrong with his relationship with his wife which had nothing to do with her quarrel with his work, her suspicions about his fidelity, nor her reluctance to participate in his experiments. It was more serious than those problems. It had to do with his masculinity-he had let her get the upper hand. She felt free to order him around, abuse him and insult him-even to demand that he make love to her, in much the same way as she would demand that a plumber fulfill a contract for repairs.
Maybe he wasn't the man he should be. But once a man got off to a bad start, how did he reverse the trend? Did the error have to become more and more aggravated, until at last it was irreparable? Now, tonight, might have been the time to snatch the reins from her hands and take control-before it was too late.
But he was worn out. Fate had taken away the ammunition he needed to win this battle, which might have been the turning point of their private war. He lay down, his back to Louise, and flicked off the lamp. Before long, he was asleep.
The next morning Liza got Harris White's permission to leave the lab building, and strode across the campus toward the student snack bar. In her tight, short, lab dress, her boobs bouncing and her broad ass swinging, she drew stares and whistles from assorted male youths, some of whom paused long enough in their scholarly pursuits to make such remarks as: "Hey, nurse, is it time for my bath?" Or "It hurts here, nurse. Kiss it and make it well."
Liza, not being a nurse, corrected their mistaken impression with various snappy retorts, like, "If you knew what I really did, you'd ask for more than a bath and a kiss!"
Liza's wisecracks resulted in an almost ear-splitting chorus of whistles and wolf calls. One burly specimen with two hefty education textbooks under his arm followed her all the way to the snack bar door, begging for a date.
"Okay," Liza finally consented. "Come over to Building Fourteen day after tomorrow, in the afternoon. But don't tell anybody about it, or the date's off, understand?"
"Yeah, great! Thanks."
"You're welcome. Meanwhile, don't hurt yourself on the campus playground."
"I won't."
"Bye now. Oh, wait! What's your name?"
"Ray Hopkins. They call me Big Ray."
"I hope for good reason."
"You better believe it, baby!" Liza waved him off and went into the vinyl-and-chrome confusion of the snack bar, where a hundred or so students were busying themselves over Cokes, coffee, math problems, and discussions of free love. She spied her target, Pat Rooney, with several of his beety comrades, pouring over a copy of Plato's Symposium.
"That guy was queer as a three-dollar bill!" cried Rooney indignantly, striking the table with his ten-pound ham of a freckled fist. "I'll never be able to wrestle again without feeling there's something gay about it."
"Who's a queer?" Liza inquired.
She and Rooney had chatted before. He was usually in the snack bar when she came over on her coffee break, and he had often asked her for dates, which she had always refused-partly because she'd had her fill of football players during an earlier stage of her life, partly because she was carrying on an affair with the real estate agent who had obtained her apartment for her, and partly because she was preoccupied with a nagging desire to seduce Jim Perry.
"This guy, Socrates," Rooney explained heatedly. "He used to get himself all oiled up, and pretend he wanted to work out or wrestle in the gym with some kid, and what he was really after was something else, some kind of pre-vert kicks. I mean, man! I can see why they poisoned him. He had it coming. He was really asking for it!"
"What kinda stuff they trying to teach us, anyway?" rumbled one of his companions. Liza recognized the speaker as "Beast" Boswell, star tackle of the Midwestern eleven, six-feet-three, two hundred ninety pounds, and almost solidly covered with black hair except for the area from jutting chin to jutting brow.
Compared to his friends, Rooney looked not only human, but almost intelligent. He was a giant, red-haired, soft-skinned lad, with a physique that Liza knew could turn her adrenalin on high if she gave it half a chance.
"Could I talk to you privately a minute, Pat?" she asked.
He blinked, then got up and followed her to the coffee machine, where they filled their cups.
"How about you and me going out?" he asked, as he always did.
"I've got an even better idea," Liza replied.
"Yeah?" Pat brightened. He tried to rub against her as a bull rubs against a fence post, almost knocking her down. He backed off, then asked, "But what could be better?"
"You might be surprised. Come over to Building Fourteen this afternoon. Can you make it about four?"
"I've got football practice at four-thirty. How about three?"
"Three's fine. I'll see you then."
"But what about a night date, huh, Liza? Please?"
"You're not supposed to go on late dates during football season, Pat. You're in training, remember?"
"Sure, I remember," Rooney whispered, "but what the coach don't know won't hurt him. Don't you tell him, though, or he'll kick my tail off the team so fast I won't know what hit me. And we've got homecoming this weekend."
"That's one good reason why it's better for you to come see me at the lab in the daytime than it is for us to go on a date at night. Right?"
"Right. And maybe I'll really find out why they call that place Sex Manor."
"Maybe you will, big boy. Hang loose, now."
Liza finished her coffee with one swallow, patted Rooney lightly on the cheek, and swung her considerable assets out through the glass doors.
"I broached the subject to Prof. Alton," said Harris, wiping condensed perspiration from his steel-rimmed glasses.
Jim looked up from his desk, and Liza turned from her calculating machine.
"Discussion was pointless," Harris went on, lowering his voice. "He'd rather have that other outfit lick us than take the risk of upsetting the board."
"Upsetting the board how?" asked Jim, puzzled. "What are you talking about?"
"Miss Downs' proposal," Harris explained, "to include unmarried couples in our experimentation."
"Oh," Jim said. He looked at Liza, who gave him a warning scowl. He had been too preoccupied with domestic problems and the news about the competitive sex project to give much thought to the story Liza had invented to cover for him the day before.
"The Prof, said no, in other words," Liza put in.
"Yes," Harris said.
"Are we going to listen to him?" asked Lisa. "I mean, are we going to let that old toad spoil everything?"
Harris was shocked. "Hey, watch it!" he whispered. "He's around here somewhere."
"No, he's not," she said. "He's out taking pictures of buttercups or something. So, what's the answer? Do we accept his decision, or not?"
"We don't have much choice," said White. "He coordinates everything."
"You mean he sticks his nose in everything," said Liza.
"After all, that's his job," Jim interrupted. "He's supposed to be running The Project."
"And you two just do whatever he says, even though you know he's a senile, incompetent, dirty-minded old fool!"
"Miss Downs!" White exclaimed. "Aren't you forgetting yourself?"
"Okay, okay," she said, picking up her purse, "we'll do this right. If Pat Rooney comes in here, tell him I had to leave, will you? Tell him ... to come back in the morning."
"Pat Rooney!" exclaimed Jim. "What would he be coming here for?"
"Three guesses," Liza said, with a suggestive wink.
Jim felt crushed. All day, he had been longing to get Liza back on the bed in the lab-or on any bed, for that matter-while she'd been planning to take on a new lover. But he did not have time to express his feelings to her, because she was halfway out the door already.
"Where are you going?" he called. "To find Prof. Alton!"
Leaving the men speechless behind her, Liza swept across the parking lot to her Mustang, spun the tires, and took off for the Botanical Gardens, where she knew Prof. Alton would be practicing his photographic skills. For, in addition to being an avid bird watcher, the old scientist was an enthusiastic picture-snapper.
He classified his efforts as "nature photography", though rumors had persisted for years that he had managed to lure many a shapely young coed to his home for a session of art poses. If so, Liza thought, Prof. Alton must have been even more skillful at eluding his bloodhound of a wife than he was at taking pictures.
Liza parked at the vine-covered gates of the gardens and entered the maze of plants. It wasn't long before she heard a crackling in the bushes and saw the old professor hunched over the viewfinder of his Leica. Letting her eye follow the direction in which the lens was pointed, Liza did not see any particularly interesting flower, animal, or bird.
"Hi, Prof.!" she called.
The professor turned, cringing as if he feared someone was about to swat him across the ass with a stick. At that moment two heads, a male and a female, both very tousled and decorated with leaves and twigs, popped up from the bushes about ten feet in front of him. The faces registered horrified surprise, then disappeared again, and there were sounds of mad scrambling.
"Ah ... oh ... yes ... ah ... ah ... Miss." The old man was so taken aback that he had to struggle for thirty seconds before producing a coherent, if inane, statement: "It's you, Miss Downs."
"Yes. Want to take my picture?" She struck a pose with one hand behind her head and her hips thrust to the side.
At the sight of all that lusciously sculpted femininity packed tightly into a little white uniform that hit about three inches above the knees, Prof. Alton licked his chops, fumbled with his camera to aim it toward her, and began snapping without even bothering to focus. In the meantime, the highly disturbed couple in the bushes made a more or less secret exit on their knees.
Liza wanted to keep the professor so worked up that he wouldn't even have an opportunity to wonder why she had come after him.
"Want me to take anything off?" she asked cheerfully, undoing the top button of her dress. "Or do you just want a little cheesecake?" She took the hem of her white skirt and pulled it far up on her thighs.
The old man champed his jaws, batted his rheumy-bright eyes, twitched his nose, and kept the camera clicking.
"More?" asked Liza, starting to unbutton further.
Prof. Alton lowered his camera and looked around the paths and rows of plants. "Ah, here ... may not be the best place ... if you would really like to do some art poses, Miss Downs."
"Okay," she said, "where to?"
"Would you be willing to come to my home? My wife is out of town for the day, and ... that is to say, we could ... ah ... work ... undisturbed."
They walked together out of the gardens.
"Shall we take my car?" Liza asked.
The professor agreed, since he had left his automobile at the lab.
They soon were off the campus and on their way through the handsome, wooded section of town in which many of the older and more affluent university teachers owned homes.
"It was a stroke of good fortune that you happened to come along," Prof. Alton said, recovering from his confusion and relaxing happily. "I've always noticed, if you don't object to my saying so, that you have a ... a most handsome body, to put it bluntly, without quibbling, as they say. I'm sure you'll be a superb model. Have you ever done that sort of work before?"
"You mean, strip for guys to take pictures of me?"
"Well, yes." The professor's eyes grew larger with fascination.
"Oh, off and on, yes. But I wouldn't do it for just anybody, you know."
"Ah. No, of course not. Here we are-the red brick house on the right."
"Wow," exclaimed Liza. "That's pretty sharp. I'd heard your wife had inherited a lot of money, and I can see it must have been true."
The professor chuckled with embarrassment and tugged at his nose. Liza pulled up into the broad driveway, then accompanied him into the big, two-story house. A few minutes later they were in an upstairs bedroom overlooking the back yard. Apparently a guest room, it contained a single bed, a dressing table, and the usual odds and ends, all perfectly in order. Over the bed was a large, framed photograph of Prof. Alton and his wife, taken some years ago during a bird-watching hike in the Rocky Mountains. There was another photograph of the professor's wife and her brother, the president of Midwestern University, on the steps of the campus administration building.
Liza wandered around the room, looking at the pictures and knickknacks as she undid her belt, unbuttoned her dress, and slipped it free of her shoulders and arms. Prof. Alton had been feverishly setting up his Polaroid on a tripod-apparently he did not have the patience to wait to develop film from his Leica-and switching on lights.
"Ahh," he said appreciatively, and took a shot.
"Hey!" Liza smiled, giving him a profile of her gigantic, brassiered jugs. "I'm not even ready."
The old man divided his attention between timing and peeling the photograph from its developing layers, and staring at Liza as she finished undressing. After the few .seconds it took to get the picture ready, Liza was entirely nude. She stood at the foot of the bed and beamed at the professor, treating him to the sight of a happy little shake of her magnificent tits. They quivered and bounced, the pink tips dancing as if with joy at their sudden freedom.
"Ah!" the professor exclaimed, and took another picture. "If only I could develop my own movie film!"
"You don't give me a chance to pose," pouted Liza, flopping belly-down on the bed. She squeezed her boobs together with her arms, and gave die professor something like a bird's eye view of two mountainous scoops of vanilla ice cream.
"Wonderful!" he said.
"Wait," Liza put in, looking down the snowy slopes at the pink nipples. "Isn't it nicer when these little things are kind of perky?"
"Yes. Yes indeed."
The professor came over for a closer view as Liza licked the tips of her fingers, then teased the slightly wrinkled buds into taut, full-blooded excitement.
"You want to help?" she smiled.
The old man reached out with rapturous joy to join her in the stimulating work.
"There!" she said finally, and rolled over onto her back. "Isn't that much better?"
Now the pictures practically flew out of the camera and onto the tables, chairs, and floor. Liza posed on her back, on her belly, kneeling, sitting, standing. She got playful, and taking the portrait of Mrs. Alton and her brother from the table, she used it to teasingly conceal various bits of her anatomy while the old man snapped away. She stood on the bed and saucily presented her bottom to the camera, as she encircled the bird-watching photo with her arms.
The old professor was all but reeling from the display of lithe, long legs, trembling tits and bouncing butt. He was even more frenzied when Liza got carried away with the whole business, and began twisting and writhing herself into poses that had nothing to do with any art but the art of love.
She had just thrown herself on her back, raised both feet high in the air, clutched her thighs in her fingers, and lifted her head to look at the camera through the long valley formed by the cleft of her breasts and her crotch-when the door opened and Mrs. Alton, in all the glory of a size-fifty purple dress, walked in.
Liza paused in the midst of pouting her lips and adding to them a provocative glaze of saliva with her tongue. Prof. Alton's lower jaw dropped several inches, and he dove frantically for the pictures within his immediate reach.
With some foresight, Liza had managed to secretly slip several of the shots into her purse, many minutes before Mrs. Alton's untimely arrival.
Mrs. Alton didn't exactly say anything, she just made a lot of strange, loud sounds. She appeared ready to beat a hasty retreat; then abruptly she turned around, took up a stuffed parakeet from the telephone table, and threw it at the professor. Fortunately, her aim was so poor that the mounted bird fell to the floor about three feet in front of her.
"Marjory!" the old man spluttered. "Marjory, please!"
Liza jumped up and scrambled for her clothes as the professor took diversionary action by trying to leap across the bed, but wound up falling on his face on the rug.
"Drooling monster!" shrieked Mrs. Alton, giving him a kick in the ass with the pointed toe of her boat-like shoe.
"Marjory, they're only art photographs!"
"Art!" cried his wife. "You call that filthy, disgusting vulgarity art?"
She made another menacing gesture with her shoe, and the professor did an excellent imitation of a worm about to be stepped on.
"And who are you?" Mrs. Alton shouted, turning on Liza, who was now fully clothed and tugging her skirt into place. "You're certainly no student!"
"This is Miss Downs," said Prof. Alton, sitting up on the rug and wiping his spectacles on his coat. "Miss Downs, I'd like you to meet my wife."
"I'll just bet you'd like it!" growled Mrs. Alton.
"I work at the lab," Liza said cheerfully.
Mrs. Alton's cannonball-black eyes rolled down Liza's frontal protuberances. "I can imagine what you do there!"
"Now, Marjory...." Prof. Alton began.
"William!" shouted the formidable woman. "Get this shameless hussy out of here!"
"You'd better go now," the old man said, nodding frantically at Liza.
"And I don't just mean out of this house," Marjory yelled. "I mean out of that lab, and out of this university!"
"Oh, really, Marjory, I can't...." stammered Alton.
"You can, and you will!"
"He wont," Liza stated quietly. "He what?"
"He won't."
"Young lady, you'll soon see what he will and won't do! I'll have you know that my brother is the president of this institution!"
"I know," Liza said. "In fact, I was so impressed that I kept a few copies of his picture for a souvenir."
And with that, Liza produced one of the Polaroid prints from her purse, at the same time maneuvering herself to a position near the bedroom door. She held out the snapshot so that Mrs. Alton and the professor could lean to within a foot of its glossy surface.
"Isn't that adorable?" Liza asked sweetly.
The snapshot showed her stark naked, standing on the bed with legs wide apart, one hand behind her neck, her breasts swaying and her hips thrust forward in a tremendous, burlesque-style bump. In front of her nude body she held the photograph of the president and Mrs. Alton on the steps of the administration building. The framed picture covered her belly, but only partially concealed the triangular thatch of pubic hair.
Mrs. Alton again did the unexpected; instead of screaming, she squeaked. Then she cried, "Get that picture, William! Stop her!"
"Prof. Alton didn't move.
"I've got more in here," Liza said, shaking her purse at them. "And every one has got your face in it, Mrs. Alton!"
Mrs. Alton made a bear-like lunge, but Liza deftly slipped out the doorway, ran down the hall and the stairs, and charged out the front door. When she was about halfway across the lawn to her car, she turned and cupped her hands to her mouth.
"Yoo hoo! Prof. Alton!" she called.
The harrassed-looking professor and his wife appeared on the front steps, very much aware that several neighbors were out-of-doors, taking in the proceedings.
"Yes?" called the professor, with pretended calm.
Liza went closer, realizing she would not be pursued now that the eyes of the neighbors were on them.
"There's just one more thing," she said. "It's about The Project. Do you recall what Mr. White mentioned to you today, about using people who aren't married? Well, I really do believe The Project needs information on people like that, and I think you should give your permission."
"Well, now, I ... "
"Unmarried?" quavered Mrs. Alton. "It was horrible enough to begin with, but that's going too far!"
"I've already given my opinion," said the professor, pulling his nose. "From a scientific point of view, the inclusion of unwed couples is commendable, even essential. But we must consider other ... ah ... considerations, and...."
"William!" cried his wife. "How can you stand there and deliver a lecture at a time like this?"
"It doesn't matter," Liza said. "You have to give your permission now, anyway."
"What?" The old man stopped pulling his nose.
"I said, you have to give your permission." Liza pulled a stack of Polaroid shots from her purse and held them up. "Remember these? I'm sure you'll grant permission, unless you want some sensational publicity."
At the thought of the student body and the faculty-not to mention the townspeople and the university president himself-being treated to photos of a naked beauty disporting herself in the Alton home, both the professor and his spouse were on the verge of palpitating collapse.
"You wouldn't," gasped Mrs. Alton. "You ... you wouldn't dare expose a picture of yourself in ... in the nude...."
Professor Alton waved his hands nervously before his wife's face. "She would, Marjory! She ... she would!"
"I'd gladly do it," Liza said. "I'm proud of my body." Her eyes moved over Mrs. Alton's purple-swathed bulk. "I guess that's because I've got one I can be proud of," she concluded.
"Oh!" Mrs. Alton cried. She turned and billowed into her house.
"Well, do we have your permission?" asked Liza.
"Yes," Alton surrendered weakly. "But, please, let's keep it in our ... ah ... official family, shall we?"
"Yes, sir!" Liza grinned. A moment later she was in her Mustang, tearing off down the usual quiet street with a roar that brought even more neighbors into their yards.
"That woman is a menace," mumbled Prof. Alton to himself. "A veritable menace."
He dabbed his perspiring brow with his handkerchief, took a deep breath, and went into the house to face the wrath of his wife.
CHAPTER FIVE
When Liza arrived back at the lab triumphantly clutching her photographs in the purse under her arm, she found the door locked. It was after hours, and everyone was gone.
She was too excited, in more ways than one, to go home. She could have called her real estate man, 'but she was getting tired of him, and in any case he never took much interest in anything about her except her body from neck to knees. She wanted to find one of her lab colleagues and crow to him. Jim would be home by now with his little stiff mackeral of a wife, but Harris would be playing handball. Liza jumped back into the seat of her Mustang and took off across the campus.
It was nearing sundown, and most of the students were off the streets. Liza saw that White's car was the only one parked outside the small auxiliary gym-a concrete block building in which the handball courts were located.
Liza could hear him whacking the walls of his court as soon as she entered the building. She walked along the dim corridor that led down the center of the gym, until she located the right court. She knocked at the door, and White opened it. He was red from exertion, and beaded with perspiration.
"Hooray!" cried Liza, grabbing him by the hands and dancing around.
"He said yes?" White smiled and blushed, somewhat flustered by the unexpected attention.
"Yes, he said yes!" she grinned. "So now it's all okay."
Harris closed the door behind Liza, to assure them of a little privacy in case someone else came into the gym.
"How did you do it?" he asked.
"With these," Liza said, hardly able to contain herself. She opened her purse and clawed past her panties and bra, which she hadn't taken time to put on after Mrs. Alton interrupted the photographic session. "Look!"
White's metabolism underwent major and shattering changes as he scanned the shiny pictures with unbelieving eyes. He couldn't believe he was seeing what he was, nor could he believe Liza would show him the photos even if they did really exist. Yet, there they were, big as life.
"Aren't they great?" Liza laughed excitedly, somewhat like a little schoolgirl showing off a straight "A" report card.
"They're ... really ... something...." Harris choked, feeling a beating in his throat that seriously threatened to cut off all transactions between his heart and his brain.
"He'll have to do anything I tell him, now," said Liza.
"Or you'll show these to his wife?"
"Oh, she knows about them."
"She knows?" Harris asked feebly.
"She came in while he was still taking pictures, wouldn't you know? And boy, did she raise hell! I never saw anything like it. But that's okay, because she's even more scared than the old boy is that I'll show these to everybody. Well, don't I get a kiss or something?"
She puckered up and White touched his lips to hers, feeling the heat of her body through his sweat shirt. He was torn between his lifelong inhibitions and an overwhelming desire to throw Liza down and ravish her on the spot.
But there was something else complicating Harris White's reactions: He was in love-in love with one of his students, a black-haired senior named Claire Holmes. Since the first day she had entered his Psychology 101 class, he had been infatuated. Her green eyes, her pert nose, her coral lips, and the just barely discernible dusting of freckles on her cheeks made him stop in the midst of lectures and wonder what he had been saying.
It had become worse lately because Claire, who had been going steady with some boy from out of town, had broken off that relationship and had begun casting gooey, melting green glances in White's direction. White's insides melted in turn, and he felt his athletically reinforced defenses against love and sex begin to crumble. He had begun to lie awake at night, tossing on his bed, with visions of Claire's trim, well-molded figure haunting his brain. Sometimes he slammed the handball for so many hours that his arm felt as if it would drop off, but still it did no good. Clean living and cold showers-habits he had retained since before he had become an Eagle Scout with twenty-four merit badges at the age of fourteen-were no longer any solution. Something had to give.
It was his feeling for Claire Holmes that made Harris doubly hesitant about clutching Liza's hot body to him. He backed away from Liza and bounced the handball on the floor of the court.
"Ever do this before?" he asked.
"Play handball?"
"Sure. Watch, and you can learn a lot in just a few minutes."
He sent the hard rubber sphere bounding from front, wall to ceiling to back wall.
"Wow!" said Liza admiringly. "That was great. Let me try it."
She tried, with dubious results. But White helped her, and soon she could keep the thing going. She was enthusiastic, too, as she was about most things. Laughing and leaping-she had kicked her shoes off immediately-she returned Harris' gentle serves. Soon they were both laughing, breathless and damp from exertion.
"My turn!" Liza yelled.
As she swung to strike the ball, Harris noticed that the top buttons of her dress had come undone, and that the fabric had fallen open almost to her waist. He could see in the flesh the quivering and bouncing and swinging of the great, white tits that he'd already seen displayed to such advantage in the Polaroid shots. Then Liza dove to retrieve a difficult shot, and the short, tight skirt of her uniform twisted and hiked up to reveal the vibrating bottom-rounds of her ass.
Harris, who had voluntarily deprived himself of sex for many months, could stand no more. As Liza dove for the ball, he dove for Liza. The two of them went down with a resounding plop on the hardwood floor, Harris on top of Liza. She didn't try to fight him off, or even act very surprised. She was panting hard, and she ran her tongue over her dry lips, her mouth open. Harris clutched at one of her long legs, eagerly rubbing his sweaty hand over her calf, her knee, her wonderful thigh.
She immediately began squirming her pelvis against his, and sliding her hands under his sweat shirt to caress his bare back.
"Oh," she sighed breathlessly, "you feel so good, so strong. You're a real man!"
Harris jerked her open dress further down off her shoulders, revealing her full, damp breasts with their soft, rosy exciting little tips. He buried his face in the luscious flesh, then sucked at one nipple so hard that Liza moaned with pain.
Liza's hands slipped further down his body, all her fingers active. She unzipped his shorts and clawed them down over his hips and buttocks. Then she yanked his jock strap out of the way, and his pulsing, erect rod sprang free.
"Now, now," she whispered. "I've been ready for this ever since I posed for those pictures. Now comes the payoff."
Harris, for all his inexperience, could tell at first contact that she was more than ready. Her pussy was like a pot of caramel sauce boiling over. He felt as if his cock was being swallowed up in a deep, hot, palpitating, squeezing, mouth that would suck it in entirely, and never let it go.
This was similar to what he had feared in recurring nightmares-the wide mouth of a great fish gulping him down into darkness. But now-unlike his nightmares-this sensation was pure ecstasy.
In seconds, as Liza's body vibrated with wave-like shocks beneath and around him, he felt the same waves begin to send his hips in wild, rhythmic thrusts; and all the ecstasy became concentrated in his throbbing, swelling loins.
Then he climaxed like a fountain of fire, like a volcano spewing waves of lava. He caught a cheek of Liza's buttocks in each of his massive hands, and they rolled over on the floor together, jerking and groaning, two people joined as one.
But Harris' guilt complex about casual sex was not easily shed. It would not let him go just because his lust had overridden it once. Almost immediately, he felt irrational regret. He didn't love Liza; why was he doing this? He loved Claire; why hadn't he been able to resist temptation with another woman?
If Liza had known what he was thinking, she would have given him a spirited lecture on the psychological problems of psychology professors. But as it was, she just said, "Oh, baby, was that beautiful!"
Harris got up and tugged his clothes into place and tried his best to make himself look as if nothing had happened.
"What's wrong?" asked Liza, still sprawled on the floor.
"Nothing, really. I'm just afraid somebody might come in."
"Nobody'll come in. Lie down."
"It's ... uh ... it's late, you know, and...."
Liza decided not to worry about him. "Okay, do what you want. But I'm simply too busted to move right now."
She turned on her side and rested her head on her outstretched arm, as if she was about to go off into a sound sleep.
"They lock up here at six p.m.," Harris said. "It's nearly that now, so we'd better get on out."
Liza gave him a puzzled look, but got to her feet and readjusted her clothing. When she was ready to go, she took a look at White's depressed, solemn face, and said, "I never saw a man look like that before, after making me."
"You've had quite a few lovers?" White asked stiffly.
"Everybody around here asks me that! Yes, I have. Okay? Does that spoil it for you, or something? I mean, you look so mad. We're not getting married or anything, and I assure you I haven't got any diseases! What do you have against me?"
"It's nothing against you, Miss Downs," he answered nervously, "but ... but I don't think we'd better do this kind of thing again."
"I didn't say I wanted to!" Liza shot back indignantly.
"I thought maybe you'd expect ... well, marriage, or something, and...."
Liza burst out laughing. "Oh, that's really too much! No, Mr. White. I don't expect marriage. And I don't expect you to put yourself out by laying me again. Just forget the whole thing ever happened, okay?"
"It's nothing against you, personally," Harris insisted. "It's just that I ... well, I'm involved with somebody else. Emotionally involved, you know?"
"Who is she?" Liza asked eagerly. "I really had no idea."
"I ... I can't say."
"Well, I hope it works out for you." Liza threw one arm around Harris' shoulder, as if they were old buddies. "Forget what happened between us today," she said reassuringly. "Don't let a little thing like screwing a girl just for fun get you down. And don't worry about me-I'll get over it."
They walked through the doorway into the stale-smelling corridor of the gym.
"I'm grateful that you feel that way about it," Harris said.
"Sure. Don't give it a second thought." She looked at him inquisitively. "You sure you won't tell me who it is?"
"Who?"
"Your girl friend."
"Well, she's not exactly a girl friend."
"Okay, boy friend, then."
White did not laugh. "She ... she's a student," he blurted.
Then, because he'd admitted that much, and because he'd secretly borne the weight of his feeling for Claire for so long that he couldn't contain it any longer, he said, "Her name is Claire Holmes."
"Name's familiar," Liza said, shaking her head, "hut I can't place it. I've met a lot of the kids over at the snack bar. I guess it is a problem, you being faculty and her being a student. Can I do anything to help? You want to use my apartment?"
Harris coughed. "Our ... uh ... relationship hasn't progressed that far ... yet"
God! Liza thought, You've got to look for weeks before you can find a real man on these college campuses!
She knew. Looking for men on campuses had been her hobby for several years. She'd found most of the students too young for her, and most of the faculty too old-or old-fashioned. But there were always a few interesting prospects.
She turned to Harris. "Well, best of luck. Say, I've got an idea. Why don't you bring your girl in for a session at the lab? I mean, for the sake of science and all that. Then, if she's any kind of swinger at all-"
"Miss Downs, I may be old-fashioned or something, but I really do think that that would be too far off base."
"So," said Liza, only half smiling, "you're ready to let other people lay down their lives-or their bodies, anyway-for science, but you've got to keep yourself and your sweetheart pure and untarnished?"
Harris White, as Liza knew, could scarcely be expected to see the humorous side of anything. He appeared to be quite hurt and disturbed by her accusation, and after several feeble attempts to make excuses for himself, he gave up and stopped talking.
"By the way," she asked, as they reached her car, "did my friend Pat Rooney show up?"
"Yes, he did. He seemed quite disappointed when I told him you weren't there. But he said he'd come back tomorrow morning."
"Oh, good! I'd better eat my Wheaties for breakfast."
Harris opened the door of the Mustang for her, and she got in and started the car. He bent down and peered at her solemnly through the open window, then said, "One more thing, Miss Downs, if you don't mind my asking. What's come over you lately? I mean, what happened here with me, and over in the lab. It's as if you suddenly took leave of your ... well ... moral standards."
It deeply embarrassed White to question anyone about "moral standards," a term which he generally sneered at, being a man who proudly professed openness, liberalism and freedom from outmoded superstitions.
"Nothing's come over me lately, silly," Liza replied. "I've never had the kind of moral standards you're talking about. But whenever I move into a new place, I have to establish a beachhead before I can move out over the countryside. I always enjoy myself, wherever I go. I like kicks, and I like thrills, and I'm not ashamed of it. And where I can't find excitement ready-made, I try to stir some up."
"I think you're succeeding," he said.
"I sure hope so. Well, I'll see you later, strong man."
She drove off, leaving White standing impressed and confused in the gathering darkness.
His sexual encounter with Liza in the handball court had a very strange effect on Harris-it made him all the more obsessed with Claire Holmes. Liza had opened the great reservoir of virile drives that he had so carefully kept pent up, and now he could not close the sluice again. The foaming white waters, were beginning to exert tremendous pressure, refusing to be contained, threatening to flood his whole existence and drown him in desire.
After his supper of rare beef, raw carrots, and spinach salad, he hoped he would be able to read peacefully until he fell asleep. He put on his pajamas, climbed into bed, and propped himself up with a couple of pillows. He opened a heavy book-The Portable Masock-and prepared to lose himself in studious and penetrating analysis of the human psyche.
But his own psyche was giving him trouble, and he couldn't keep his attention on the printed words. All he could think of was a disastrous combination of Liza's tossing breasts and heaving buttocks, and Claire's lovely slim legs and angelic, sea-green eyes. Images of the two women were still fixed strongly in his mind as he dozed off.
First he saw himself playing handball in slow motion with Liza; then Liza vanished and Claire was in the court with him. She had just stepped into the box-like room, and she was unbuttoning the loose blouse that she wore with her tight, straight skirt. Harris became greatly excited as she took off her clothes, revealing her body to him for the first time in all its fresh, young glory.
While she was undressing it seemed to Harris that he was watching her from a hiding place, but soon they were playing handball together, both of them nude. It was no ordinary handball game, because the air was thick-almost like water-and gravity did not seem to operate except in a very light and terribly lazy sort of way.
Claire leaped up, lithe and slender, and rose diagonally from a back corner of the court all the way to an upper front corner. There she stopped, turned, and walked effortlessly above him, like an astronaut walking in space. Her black hair, long and soft, streamed gracefully behind her.
Harris followed, jumping easily to a point midway between floor and ceiling, where he intercepted the bouncing ball and sent it slowly on a winning trajectory. But it was not a regulation handball-it was Prof. Alton's head. Which might have been frightening, except that the head was smaller than normal, almost round, and seemed to be made of something like soft plastic. It struck both Harris and Claire as funny rather than horrible, and they vied with one another to strike it with mighty blows and send it smashing-though always in slow motion-against the surfaces of the court.
Then, during one of the volleys, Harris realized he was on a collision course with his lovely, flying opponent. He reached out his hands to brace against the impact as Claire came gliding toward him, laughing, her arms and legs spread like a sky-diver's. Harris pulled up his knees, ducked his head, drawing his body into a fetal compactness, except for the outstretched arms. He tried to roll out of the way, but felt his fingertips graze the soft balloons of the girl's breasts, and knew he couldn't avoid the crash. Her laughter enveloped him. He saw her sweet, coral lips, her white teeth, her small pink tongue. He felt her hair floating around him like a net.
He awakened with a loud gasp, in a state of terrible excitement. He grasped at the book, which had fallen from his lap, as if it were his only anchor to reality. His whole body seemed to feel the first split second of dream-contact with the warm, rolling flesh of Clair's body.
At that point Harris knew he had to get Claire, somehow. That was the way he first put it to himself-he had to "get" her. At that thought he felt panicky, as if he had just decided to murder somebody, so he had to clarify the situation for himself.
I want her, he thought. I want to go to bed with her, and hold her in my arms, naked, the way she was in the dream. And ... I want to make love to her. I want her bad.
He didn't pause to reflect that this was the first time he had been entirely honest with himself about his feelings for as far back as he could remember, and he didn't even consider calling up Liza to thank her for the favor of opening the floodgates of his libido. He picked up the phone for another reason-to call Claire Holmes.
The student directory which lay on his bedside table was open, face-up, to the HA-HOM listings. When die university operator answered, Harris didn't need to waste any time looking for the right extension number-the page of the directory had been open to Claire's name for over a week.
"Hello," said a dreary voice at the other end of the line.
"Is Claire Holmes there, please?"
"Clara who?"
"Claire Holmes."
"Wait a minute."
Harris waited more than a minute, and every second of the long, silent period was agony for him. He almost hung up the phone in a panic. What could he say to her? He certainly couldn't just ask her for a date. What if he'd misinterpreted those melting glances he thought she'd been giving him in class? He could make a complete fool of himself.
He was relieved when the dreary voice returned to the wire and said, "She's not here."
"Do you know where she is?"
"Out with some guy, I guess. That's where she usually is."
"Do you know when she'll be in?"
"No. Sometimes I think she stays out all night, and has one of the other girls sign in for her. The housemother's getting suspicious, too.
"You are talking about Claire Holmes, aren't you?"
"Sure. Who do you think?"
Harris thought, could this be some enemy of Claire's, slandering her on the phone? The voice had a distinctly nasty tone.
"Would you be good enough to give her a message?" Harris asked.
"Okay."
"Please tell her Mr. White, her psychology teacher, wants to see her. Tomorrow afternoon, at Building Fourteen."
"Okay, HI tell her if she's here before I go to bed. If not, I'll leave her a note."
"Thanks very much."
No sooner was the telephone back on its cradle than Harris-dismayed at the hints about Claire's nocturnal habits-had a new idea. He picked up the telephone directory, found Liza Downs' number, and called her.
"Well," she said immediately, "it's nice of you to call. Have you forgiven me for this afternoon yet? You're not pregnant or anything, are you?"
"Don't be sarcastic, please," said White. "I enjoyed this afternoon very much. It's just that I don't think we should get too-"
"That's okay," Liza interrupted. "No sermons, please, and I won't be sarcastic. What can I do for you, if anything?"
"You recall the student I mentioned? Claire Holmes? I know you often go over to the snack bar for coffee, and you've met some of the students. I was wondering if you could find out anything about her for me."
"What kind of things?"
"You know, just anything of interest."
"Like what kind of flowers she likes? Or where she was born? Or her maternal grandmother's maiden name? That kind of thing?"
"Yes," White said unhappily. "And ... well ... more personal things, too."
"Like whether or not she puts out?" Liza asked drily.
"That's not what-" Harris interrupted himself with the pretense of a cough. "Yes, frankly. Anything like that."
"Don't you think that would make me seem kind of nosy? Why don't you ask around for yourself? Better yet, why don't you ask her?"
"Maybe I am being devious," Harris admitted. "I don't claim to be perfect. But this is a very difficult situation, considering that I'm a faculty member, and-"
"Okay, Mr. White, to make up for whatever damage I did to your morals this afternoon, I'll do you the favor. But I can't promise that I'll be able to find out anything."
"I'd really appreciate it. And I'm sorry I act like such a fool sometimes." Harris spoke with hesitant truthfulness. "I'm a psychologist, after all, and I know I'm pretty mixed up. I don't need to analyze my childhood or anything to figure that out. So if I don't behave the way you think I should, it's just that ... well, I can't help it. But I'm trying to improve."
"Mr. White," Liza said with no sarcasm intended, "I think you're making real progress!"
CHAPTER SIX
Liza was feeling bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, J as she put it, when Pat Rooney showed up at the lab building about ten the next morning. In preparation for his visit she had worn the cleaner of her two smudged white dresses, and had put on a heavier-than-usual application of eye make-up. She was sitting in her swivel chair, straightening her stockings, when the giant redhead entered the room. She was not aware of his presence until she heard him clear his throat.
"Hi," he said nervously, his eyes fixed on the firm, well-rounded expanse of thigh that Liza had revealed.
She adjusted one of her garter-belt hooks, flipped the hem of the skirt more or less in the direction of her knees, and looked up at him.
"Hi," she said, with a business-like nod and crisp smile. "Sorry about yesterday. Have a seat."
Rooney kept peering about the plainly furnished office as if he half expected a boa constrictor to drop off one of the light fixtures onto his head. Uneasiness about facing the unknown was obviously getting to him. The campus rumors about Building Fourteen-"Sex Manor"-were wilder than any team of psychological researchers could ever have imagined. It appealed to Liza's sense of humor, and to her general desire to create excitement for herself and trouble for others, to increase rather than lessen Rooney's discomfort.
"Don't be frightened," she said. "There's very little pain involved. Go ahead, sit down."
"Pain?" Rooney asked. He sat down gingerly allowing just the outer portion of his beefy haunches to rest on the edge of a wooden chair.
"Oh, nothing to worry about, really. Now, if you'll just sign this release...."
She shoved a sheet of paper toward him across the desk, along with a pen.
"Release?"
"Really, Pat," she said, "you must try to improve your sentence structure. One word at a time just isn't enough to get much across."
"What kind of release? Look, I just came here because you said-"
"I know what I said. You wanted to ... well, we might say, be with me, didn't you?"
Rooney nodded. "Yeah, I wanted to take you out, and everything...."
"And everything. That's what I figured. Now, since you've as much as admitted that you want to lay me, and since I work here and have this sex lab setup at my disposal, why shouldn't we use it? You'll get paid a dollar and a quarter an hour for it."
"But-"
"And more important, since it's strictly against the rules for you to have any dates, and since I've got this terrifically jealous boy friend who'd come after you with a gun if he ever found out ... well, I think it's much better that we get together in the line of duty, for a noble experiment. Doesn't that make sense?"
Rooney looked around the office. "But this isn't the kind of place where-"
Just then Prof. Alton, deep in conversation with Jim Perry, walked into the room. At the sight of Liza, the memories of the previous day flooded back over the old man. He blanched, stopped in mid-sentence, turned around, turned back to Liza, turned around again, and started out the door, leaving Jim utterly confused.
"Oh, gentlemen!" Liza said gaily. "I'd like you to meet Pat Rooney."
"Oh, ah, yes," the professor stammered, "this is one of your, ah-"
"One of our new subjects," Liza filled in for him.
She felt great pleasure at the fierce green light of jealousy that filled Jim's eyes.
The professor came forward hesitantly, holding out his trembling hand, which was soon enveloped in Rooney's massive paw.
"How do you do, sir?"
"We appreciate what you've done for us," said Prof. Alton.
"I ain't done anything yet," Rooney said.
"But just the other day-" Alton began.
Liza interrupted quickly. "Pat's so modest, he just won't take credit for all the help he's giving us. You'd be surprised, Pat, how difficult it is for the poor professor and his colleagues to get the cooperation of the public in this project of theirs."
Having shuttled Prof. Alton onto the track of his favorite subject, Liza was saved from further conversational problems by the old man's eight-minute lecture, in which he compared himself with such misunderstood heroes as Galileo, Fulton, and Mesmer.
Jim, in the meantime, was obviously relieved that Liza was furnishing a cover for him by having Rooney come over and pose as a stand-in for the chart which Jim was responsible for. Still, at the thought of Liza in bed with this big ape, Jim felt as if there were several meat grinders at work on his intestines at once.
Surely she won't go through with it, he told himself. She's just putting on a show for Prof. Alton, and I ought to appreciate it.
When the old man finally finished his speech, Liza said abruptly to Rooney, "Sign here."
"What?"
"The release."
Prof. Alton, having lost his audience, wandered off toward his office. Then he suddenly reappeared.
"Miss Downs," he said waveringly, "you're not going to, ah, to perform a sexual experiment with him today, are you?"
"Yes," said Liza, "of course."
The professor was about to object when the statuesque blonde reached for her purse and said, "Oh, Prof. Alton, I got some of the most interesting pictures yesterday. Would you like to see them?"
The old man gasped, waved both hands in the air, made soundless motions with his lips, and ran out of the room. Jim stood by tensely, waiting to see what would happen next.
"Why do I have to sign?" asked Rooney, trying to make some sense out of the two pages of small print.
"To release us from any responsibility, and to make sure it's understood that whatever you do here is voluntary."
"Responsibility?" Rooney asked.
"Don't worry," Liza said. "We're careful. We've never lost a patient yet. There's really very little risk involved."
"I don't know," Rooney muttered. "I mean, like, I'm not scared or anything, but Homecoming is just a couple days off, and if I was to hurt myself...."
"Oh, I'm sure you're not scared. Pat Rooney, the Backfield Battleship, afraid of a little scientific experiment?"
Liza winked at Jim, who shook his head and gave her a deeply questioning frown. In the meantime, Rooney signed the form.
"Do many people get hurt-like, bad?" he asked.
"She's kidding you," Jim said. "Nobody gets hurt in the sex lab."
"What do I do?" asked Pat, swelling up with new confidence.
"You go through that door there, and wait," said Liza, pointing to the metal door of the lab.
"I'll be waiting," Rooney said, mustering enough guts to grin.
He went inside and closed the door behind him.
"Liza," Jim said immediately, moving closer to her, "you're not really going to...."
Liza looked at him teasingly, pouting her iridescent-pink lower lip. "Jim, dear, I didn't know you cared."
"Of course I do. I can't call you at home or anything because of Louise, but-"
"Well," Liza rejoined, "if you can live with another woman, I don't see why I can't have a little fun of my own, too."
"I don't just live with another woman," Jim said. "I'm married to her. You can't expect me to pick up and walk out on one day's notice."
Liza looked more serious, and she cocked her head to one side. "Jim, would you really do that? Walk out on your wife?"
Jim, looking miserable, walked to the window. Outside, the last leaves of autumn churned in a chill wind, and the campus seemed drab and colorless.
"I don't know," he said. "Sometimes I wonder about the whole thing-what went wrong with our marriage, and why she and I can't seem to get together any more. It's like a wall between us, whatever it is, and I don't know what to do about it."
"Tell Dr. Downs all about it."
"I'm sorry," Jim said, turning back to Liza. "This is a helluva thing to talk about to a woman you're having an affair with."
"Oh," Liza said archly, "is that what we're having? You know the saying, 'One swallow doesn't make the spring.' Well, I think we could also say, 'One screwing session doesn't make an affair.' "
"What are you getting at?"
"Well, Jim, to put it bluntly, under the circumstances you really don't have any right to tell me what to do or not to do-with Pat Rooney or anyone else."
"I do have a certain right," Jim said, with a flash of fighting spirit. "You work here. I'm your superior. If I order you not to carry out an experiment in this laboratory, you can't carry it out!"
"The hell you say?" Liza exclaimed. "Try and stop me, and I'll tell the world who was really in that lab with me the other day!"
"Okay, okay!" said Jim, almost rushing forward to clap his hand over her mouth. "Keep it down, will you? I get the picture."
"It's called blackmail" Liza said smugly.
Jim looked at her with a mixture of disgust and admiration-and flickering desire. "You use your body the way other people use machine guns," he said.
"I like that," Liza nodded. "That's a good turn of phrase."
For some reason, the complete memory of what he and Liza had done on the laboratory bed came back to Jim then, like a surge of electrical power. He seemed to feel her squirming, voluptuous body against his, naked and hot. He seemed to see her bare, tossing breasts and her rhythmically bouncing buttocks. He wanted her now more than anything else in the world.
Suddenly he grabbed her and crushed her against him and buried her protesting mouth under his own. The contact excited him even more, and he grappled to hold her against him, to squeeze the mounds of her breasts, to grind his belly on hers.
"What about Louise?" Liza whispered.
"To hell with Louise," muttered Jim, concealing the deep guilt he felt for saying those words.
Like a lioness who had just struck down her prey, Liza felt the joy of blood-hunger fulfilled. Whatever drove her through life at such a pace, made her thrive on such moments of triumph over others. If Jim could have read her thoughts, he would have known that she wanted him no more-and no less-than any other man in the world, especially now that she knew she could have him.
What she did want from Jim, whether or not she knew it herself yet, was the ruin of his wife. She wanted that simply because his wife was another woman, for at heart Liza was a competitive creature who could never rest until she'd destroyed every possible rival on earth.
She rewarded Jim with a deep, probing kiss that took much of the sdng out of his betrayal of Louise. But then she broke away.
"We've forgotten about the patient," she said, nodding toward the laboratory door.
"Will you really forget about him now?" asked Jim.
"That's a little like asking somebody to forget there's an elephant sitting on the roof of his car," Liza smiled. "I can't just leave him in there."
"You won't let him make love to you, will you?"
Liza gave Jim a long, thoughtful look. She wasn't all viciousness by any means, and in moments of triumph she felt especially charitable and humane toward those who had surrendered to her.
"Do you really want me to deny him that privilege?" she asked.
"Of course!"
"I thought all you scientists were kind of broad-minded about such things. Sex for the sake of research, and all that."
"In this case, research be damned," Jim said, trying to control his voice. "I want you all to myself!"
"That's honest, at least," Liza smiled, chucking him under the chin. "I'll see what I can do."
She turned and walked to the lab door. "Into the fiery furnace," she called back.
Rooney was waiting for her. He had apparently already surveyed the impressive array of panels of lights, lenses, dials and wires. Now all his attention was concentrated on the white, neatly made bed. He looked at Liza, then at the bed, and grinned broadly.
"That's where-" he began.
"Good thinking, stud," said Liza, locking the door behind her and turning on the switch that controlled the red light outside.
She wasn't completely sure whether or not she would comply with Jim's wishes, as she'd let him assume she would. She rarely knew exactly what she was going to do until she actually found herself doing it. Even now, as Rooney came toward her, looming large in the dim reddish light of the lab, she was uncertain how she would react.
"Look," she began, taking a step away from him, "there's a kind of hitch that's come up."
Rooney ignored that entirely, and continued his advance. Liza continued to move backward.
"See," she went on, "my boss thinks this might not be the best time for a ... you know, an experiment like this, and...."
She tripped over a stool behind her and was almost down before she caught herself. Rooney lunged but missed. He grinned more broadly, and continued circling.
"It's more fun like this," he rumbled, "when you play hard to get."
Liza looked admiringly at the boy's huge, muscular body, which was amply revealed by his skin-tight slacks and his chest-hugging T-shirt with "PROPERTY OF MIDWESTERN U. ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT stenciled on the back. She got a good view of the back as she darted around a table, trying to outflank Pat and make it to the door. But he cut her off and charged again. One of the chairs went over, and Liza, enjoying the chase but still more or less determined to elude the football star, tried to stall for time.
"I've got to do this first," she said, edging along the wall, flipping switches.
"We don't need all that crap," Pat grinned. "Come here."
This time when he charged the chase was really on. He moved with startling speed for a person his size, and he got a grip on the collar of Liza's dress.
There was a tearing sound as she tried to jerk away and the buttons popped down the front. Rooney growled with delight and jumped from foot to foot to prevent her getting past him. She was trying to hold up the flapping remnants of her dress when he got another chance at it. She pulled and he held, and she swung around him like a ball on the end of a string, until the last strength of the fabric gave way.
"Ahh," Pat rumbled. The dress was entirely in his possession now, and not a scrap of it remained to cover Liza's wonderful, supple body. She was wearing only stockings, garter belt, and low-heeled white shoes. She had on no panties or bra-sometimes she wore them, but more often she didn't. Her breasts-great, swelling, trembling mountains-took Rooney's breath away.
"Pat!" she panted. "Stop it, now! I warn you!"
"Arrrgh," roared Pat. Apparently her display of anger was not very convincing.
Liza turned and ran. Her strong, graceful back, her twitching buttocks, and her long, curvaceous legs were more alluring than ever to Pat when he saw them in frantic, evasive action. He could smell the feminine muskiness of her bare flesh.
He threw a tackle, just as he would have done in a game to stop the opponents' fullback just short of the goal line. He dropped Liza on her face, and she lay belly down, half-stunned. Before she could recover or try to roll away, Rooney had dropped his pants and was ready for action.
Liza felt as if she'd been struck from behind by lightning.
"Ow-ooo," she howled, arching her back and trying to swing her heels up to defend herself.
But Rooney had ram-rodded all the way in, and he had her pinned. She reached behind her, stretching to try to claw at his thighs or torso. And all the while she writhed and wiggled, trying to free herself.
Rooney, with huge moans of unleashed passion, hurled his bulk against her, making the voluptuous flesh of her ass quake and shudder in rhythmic spasms.
She could no longer claw at her assailant. She had to spread her arms in front of her and claw at the floor instead, so she wouldn't be shoved across the room on her stomach.
"You're hurting me, you bastard!" she yelled.
At last she felt the familiar, heaving, pounding blows that signaled the man's climax. With a cat-like hiss she yanked herself free of the unwanted union, whirled around on her belly, and sank her teeth into Rooney's naked thigh. He howled with pain and tried to hit her, but she was too fast. She rolled away, then faced him on her knees from behind a table.
"I hope you're satisfied," she said, "you lousy, sneaky son-of-bitch!"
She stood up, rubbing her butt, and looked around for what was left of her dress. Her breasts were smeared with grime from the floor, and her knees were an angry red.
"You bit me," Pat announced, surveying the damage to his tree-trunk thigh. A small crescent of blood had appeared on the strangely pale skin.
"I hope it gets infected," she said, stepping into her torn dress. "Now get the hell out of here before I do something worse than that."
"Didn't you like it?" asked Rooney.
Liza had trouble believing he was serious. As covered-up as she could get, clutching her dress to try to hold it together, she turned and faced him.
"You are either the most stupid or the most conceited lout I've ever had the misfortune to encounter," she said, controlling her voice carefully. "Do you seriously think I could possibly have gotten the least bit of pleasure out of what just happened? Do you think all you have to do is put it in me, especially like that, and I'll start whimpering with ecstasy? In case the message still hasn't come through, the answer is no. Now get out!"
"But Liza...."
"Miss Downs to you, from now on."
"I didn't mean-"
"It doesn't matter. You've achieved your purpose, and I've served mine for you. So go away."
She started to open the door, then she paused.
"Look, Rooney," she said. "Don't you tell anybody about this, hear? I mean, not anybody at all, understand? If you do, and if I find out about it, I'm going to pay a nice friendly visit to your coach, and I'm going to fill him in a little on just how well you're sticking to the training regulations. Do you understand, or do I have to draw you a diagram?"
"Shit," Rooney said, "if you tell him-"
"He'll have your tail on a platter, won't he? He'll suspend you from the team."
"And my old man'll cream my ass!"
"Right, Patrick. So you don't tell, and I won't tell. Agreed?"
"Okay," Rooney said. "But you just better not tell!"
Liza opened the door and waited for him to leave.
"I've learned enough to know not to turn my back on you," she said.
He grinned sheepishly as he left. Liza remained in the lab a moment to adjust her clothes as well as she could. A half-minute later, Rooney's big head poked back through the doorway.
"What about my dollar and a quarter?" he asked earnestly.
What Liza said to him then turned his freckled face pale and his ears bright red. He disappeared immediately, and didn't come back again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Harris entered Jim's office from the hale just as Liza came out of the lab after her bout with Midwestern University's star gridiron performer. Jim was in the middle of the room into which both doors opened.
"Good Lord!" Jim exclaimed. "What happened, Liza?"
The two men were frozen by the sight of the smudged, bruised, tattered blonde. She looked to Jim very much like his TV French nurse after she had undergone her nightly rape.
"I tried," Liza said, letting her tongue hang out for an instant.
"That ape! What did he do to you?"
Liza might have lied and said that he'd just shoved her around some, but she knew the sensing devices that were independent of direct wiring would tell the truth, anyway.
"What he thought he was getting paid to do," she said. "I fought it, I really did. Scout's honor."
"Why did you fight?" asked Harris. "I thought you intended to go through with it. Not that I approved, but ... "
"Somebody influenced me," Liza said, looking warmly at Jim, who reached for the telephone.
"I'm calling Dean Williams," he said tightly.
"What for?" Liza asked.
"To report Rooney's misconduct."
"No," Liza said, coming over and forcibly replacing the telephone receiver. "I made a deal with him. He won't say anything if I don't. After all, I led him to expect something, then changed my mind at the last minute."
Both Jim and Harris were more susceptible than they might otherwise have been to Liza's arguments, because the buttonless front and the torn shoulder of her dress exposed a large swath of her bountiful boobs to their view. Whenever she moved, new and exciting vistas of flesh were revealed.
Harris tried to think of Claire.
"There's something wrong somewhere," Harris said.
"In a well-run laboratory project, things of this kind just shouldn't happen."
"And I've got another appointment this afternoon," Liza admitted.
"You don't mean...." Jim began, turning pale. "Another...."
"Yes. His name is 'Big Ray' Hopkins. I met him when I was crossing the campus the other morning. He's an education major. Nice-looking guy. I ... "
Jim slammed his hand down on the table so hard that he winced and Liza jumped. "This has got to stop!" he yelled.
"Don't take it personally, Jim," Harris said soothingly. "Miss Downs is only trying to do her bit for science, after all."
"I know damn well what she's trying to do her bit for, and it's quite a bit she's doing, too!"
Prof. Alton ambled in, wiping his glasses on his jacket.
"Gentlemen," he said, "we must have a conference on the forthcoming review of the project. In view of the competition from another university, which shall remain nameless, we must put forth every effort to polish up our image."
"I was just remarking," Jim said heatedly, "that Miss Downs certainly seems to be putting forth every effort-though just whose image is getting polished, I'm not sure."
"Miss Downs. Ah." An expression of restrained panic came over the professor's face. It took only the mention of her name to derange his nervous system.
"May I go home for a while?" she asked meekly.
"I sort of tore my dress."
"Yes, yes. Of course. Anything you wish, Miss Downs."
"Bye-bye," said Liza, and she scampered out with her purse on her arm.
"That woman...." began Prof. Alton, and then he remembered the photographs.
"She...." began Jim, and then he remembered that Liza could easily reveal enough to cost him his job and his wife.
"Yes," Harris said, wondering why Jim and the professor seemed so perturbed.
After all, he thought, I'm the one who made love to her.
"Staff," said Prof. Alton, "we are approaching a true crisis. Certain ... ah ... recent developments have resulted in new ... ah ... developments in the direction of our research. I have given my permission for unmarried couples to be utilized in the project. I do this with the full realization of the hazards involved, particularly in the area of ... ah ... public relations. I am, however, willing, like Pasteur and Galileo, to risk my reputation for the sake of opening new doors of human knowledge. Especially since our competition apparently stops at nothing, and has a head start on us to boot. There will be prestige and high royalties for the school that publishes its results first. In brief, gentlemen, we must get our sex book out before they get their sex book out!"
Prof. Alton lowered his quivering finger from the air and coughed.
"Are we to publicize this new policy?" White asked.
"I mean about the unmarried couples."
"No!" said the professor. "That is, we won't run ads in the paper or anything. But of course we must recruit. Discreetly, naturally, very discreetly. Miss Downs has ... ah ... offered herself as a ... ah ... guinea pig, and it seems to me that if she can lay herself down on the altar of science, so can others of us. I, unfortunately, have reached a stage in life at which ... I must, in short, pass the torch to the younger generation. Mr. Perry has already done yeoman service here with Mrs. Perry, and I think Jim deserves our utmost thanks for that. Miss Downs is going to, I believe, in the near future, do...."
"She's done yeoman service already this morning," Jim said drily.
"Oh," said the old man. "I wasn't aware."
You never are, Jim thought.
"So much the better," Alton said. "That leaves only one of us...."
He looked pointedly at Harris White.
"That leaves only one of us who has yet to, shall we say, forge new paths by setting an example for the general public. We cannot expect others to accept what we ourselves are unwilling to promulgate. Remember the gallant work of Walter Reed's volunteers who exposed themselves willingly to the virus of yellow fever! Can we today ask less of ourselves? In short, Mr. White, I must suggest directly that you consider offering yourself up, like our heroic predecessors in the vanguard of human knowledge, on the sacrificial fires of scientific inquiry."
"With whom should I offer myself up?" asked White.
"I don't understand the question."
"I mean, as Miss Downs might say, it takes two to tango."
"This is where your ingenuity must come into play," said Prof. Alton. "And of course, we shall all cooperate with one another in trying to make this new direction of our work a success. Only in that way shall we sweep aside like cobwebs the barriers of superstition and erroneous belief."
"Amen," said Jim.
"We might, if necessary, make use of professional talent," Prof. Alton suggested. "Ladies of the street, one might say. I remember in my day there was a house of ill repute just a quarter of a mile from my dormitory. It was called Dolly's Paradise, and I recall that it was most popular with all the young men. Now, surely there must be a similar place in the neighborhood of such a large educational institution as this one."
"I'm afraid not," Jim said. "According to our students, there's too much amateur competition. Remember, coeducation has come in since you were in school."
"Ah," said the old professor, fondling his spectacles. "So in other words, we must do without professional help?"
"Probably," Jim said.
"Well," Alton shrugged, "use your ingenuity, gentlemen, as I suggested, and I'm sure we'll all come through this thing with flying colors."
Jim and Harris nodded, and they'd started back to their respective tasks when Prof. Alton spoke again, very hesitantly.
"About ... ah ... Miss Downs...." he began.
The other men looked at him tensely.
"Ah...." said Prof. Alton. And then he concluded with a single, surrendering word which testified to the power Liza had gained over them all: "Nothing."
Liza went home and changed her clothes, then stopped in at the campus snack bar on her way back to the office. There was the usual conglomeration of young people, most of whom knew her at least casually by now.
She easily found her way into a conversational group clustered around an ash tray overflowing with some two hundred crushed cigarette butts. There were about a dozen people of both sexes contributing to the ash tray's contents.
"Do any of you kids know a girl named Claire Holmes?" she asked.
"Oh, brother, do I!" one girl exclaimed.
Another female voice joined in, "She's what you might call famous around our dorm."
"Why?" Liza asked.
"Why do you want to know?"
"She's a friend of a friend."
"She's a friend of a lot of people, and a very good friend, too."
The first girl laughed. "I assume your friend is a male, Liza."
"Naturally."
"Well, all Claire's friends are male at the moment. Ever since she and her steady broke up-she was pinned, you know, and figured on marrying him-she's gone kind of public."
"Public?" asked Liza.
"She gets around a lot. And when I say gets around, I do mean gets around."
One of the shaggier boys at the table spoke around his drooping cigarette. "You gotta watch these conventional-type chicks when some guy disappoints them. Sometimes they'll go wilder than a Hottentot's grandmother."
"And she never dates the same one twice. At least, not in the same month."
Poor Harris, Liza thought, as she walked back toward her car. Or, should I say, lucky Harris?
She found him at Building Fourteen.
"Not at lunch yet?" she asked, tossing her purse across the room to a perfect landing on her typewriter keyboard.
"I was hoping you might come back with some news about...." Harris stopped and looked surreptitiously around. "About Claire. Of course it's pretty awkward, after what happened between us yesterday, for me to expect you to-"
"I asked about her over at the snack bar." Liza hesitated, looking at Harris' bland, hopeful, worried face. "Couldn't find out much. I guess she's pretty much like any other girl. Why don't you just get together with her, and judge for yourself?"
"How?"
"How, what?"
"How can I get together with her?"
"Oh, Mr. White, honestly! Call her up, or something."
"I did, last night, but she wasn't in. I left a message asking her to come over here this afternoon."
"Good," Liza said. She was hungry, and ready to break off the conversation. "Then you've got it made."
"Hardly," said White.
He waited anxiously from then until after three-thirty, but Claire did not come to Building Fourteen. He called her dorm, but the girl who answered was not able to help. There were no classes at Midwestern after three-forty on that afternoon. Harris waited until four, then had to admit to himself that she either hadn't received his message, or hadn't paid any attention to it.
One possibility intrigued him: Often when he had driven home between four and five in the afternoon, he had seen Claire sitting alone down by the duck pond at the southern edge of the campus. He had never yielded to the strong temptation to stop, but now he got into his car and drove directly past the infirmary, beyond the tennis courts, and through the wooded area that led to the pond. Crossing the old stone bridge, he stopped and pulled into the single parking space at the side of the road.
From that point he could not see the pond, though he could make out the opening among the trees where the water lay. He had preferred to stop at a distance and walk over, to discover Claire-if she was in the vicinity-as if by accident.
Harris decided it must be his lucky day, for not only had Liza failed to bring bad news about Claire, but there was the girl herself, sitting with her knees drawn up on the bank of the pond. Harris pretended not to see her immediately, but approached from a roundabout way, looking up at the small white clouds that sailed through the blue sky. It was a beautiful, early winter afternoon, and the fallen leaves lay thick and crisp on the ground. Harris pulled his jacket tight against the cold air and made as much noise as possible, kicking up the leaves as he circled the edge of the pond.
Unfortunately, the large, bushy squirrels scratching around the bases of the trees made as much noise as Harris did, and Claire did not look up from the book she was reading. Her long black hair hung down like a velvet waterfall, hiding her face. She wore a red wool coat that hung open, revealing her tight, black sweater. Her miniskirt left the gorgeous length of her shapely legs visible well up onto her thighs. The stockings she wore at first seemed to be black mesh, but as Harris moved closer to her, he saw that they were woven into an openwork of fine, elaborate designs which resembled tiny butterflies.
Harris was almost on her before she started, tossed back her hair with a jerk of her head, and looked surprisedly but boldly up at him. He felt as if he were in danger of sinking into the depths of those luminous green eyes.
"Miss Holmes...." he said. "I didn't expect.. " His words trailed off into silence, and she rescued him
"Mr. White. I didn't know you ever came here."
"I don't ordinarily. But I felt like walking today."
"Were you looking for me?" The molten glow he had seen in her eyes during classes appeared now, as if generated by a great heat somewhere deep in her body. It seemed unconscious rather than flirtatious. She smiled. "I said, were you looking for me, Mr. White?"
The half-teasing way in which she repeated her question seemed to acknowledge the fact that she recognized something between them beyond the usual acquaintance of teacher and student.
"No," he answered hastily, and then shook his head. "Yes, in a way. Do you mind?"
He nodded toward the spot next to Claire, and she gestured for him to sit there. Then, when he was settled-nearer her than necessary, as if by accident-he tried to think what to say next. She looked at him questioningly and closed the novel she had been reading.
"Did you get my message?"
"No. What message?"
He explained about having called the dorm, and Claire said it was unusual for her to ever receive a message from her roommate, who hated her.
"I don't know how anyone could hate you," Harris said gallantly, trying to find some way to lead up to the new relationship he wanted to form with her.
"Is ... is anything wrong?" Claire asked. "I mean, with my work?"
"Oh, no, no. The call was ... was for another purpose."
He had settled down so near her that when she breathed her arm pressed against his elbow. She did not break the contact. In another moment her leg, in its enticing black embroidered stocking, was so close to his knee that only the tiniest motion would have been necessary to close the gap. Harris made the almost imperceptible motion-or maybe Claire did, he wasn't sure-and shuddered inwardly with pleasure at the touching of their bodies.
"Miss Holmes," he continued, becoming bolder, "I called you just because I wanted to call you. I mean to say, it wasn't a business call. I ... just felt like talking to you."
She looked at him with more surprise than he'd expected, and he wondered if he'd gone too far. Maybe she was just a typical adolescent flirt-to use the polite name for it-who tested her power to get men excited, or at least get them interested, and then acted astonished when the man expected more. But Claire also looked flustered, as if she was as emotionally involved in the conversation as Harris was.
"I ... I'm flattered," she said. "If you mean you just called me up for no reason other than to say hello."
"Yes," Harris said, "something like that. I hope you don't mind. It's awkward for a faculty member, in a situation like this, you know."
Some of the boldness came back into Claire's expression as she recovered from her surprise. "What kind of situation?" she asked, looking at him directly in the eyes.
"I've become very interested in you," he said.
"A professor should be interested in his students." Her voice was serious-overly serious-but there was a teasing sparkle in her eyes. Her lovely face, with its impudent nose and its dusting of freckles, seemed to invite him to say more, to go further.
"Oh, Mr. White," she said suddenly, "there's a big bug!" And she leaned across him to brush a beetle from his jacket sleeve on the opposite side from which she sat. Her breasts, conspicuous and firmly separated in the tight, black sweater, touched his arm and chest momentarily, then withdrew.
Harris couldn't stand it. And besides, he was at a loss for words, and action was his only recourse.
"Claire...." he said. He slipped his arms around her and kissed her.
The surprise made her mouth tense for a moment, and she seemed about to pull away. Then he felt her soften and yield; her body and-her mouth seemed to thaw at his touch. He had pulled her across his chest, facing him, and the firm swells of her breasts seemed to mold themselves to his body. As her lips parted and her mouth opened, her arms slid around his shoulders. They kissed for a long time-Harris didn't want to move too fast, for fear of repelling her.
She's probably quite innocent, he thought. She didn't throw herself at him in that wild, abandoned, completely experienced way that Liza had-Liza, who knew exactly what went where and when, and set about getting it there in the most direct way possible. But Claire was like a beginner who almost self-consciously practiced what she had just recently started to learn. She was "good", as Pat Rooney might have said, but in a studied kind of way.
When the kiss broke off, they held onto each other as if they'd just saved one another in a flood.
"Mr. White," she whispered, "I've dreamed about having you do that."
"I've wanted to for weeks, since the first time I saw you come into class. Nobody else has ever affected me quite the same way.
"Please don't think of me that way any more."
She sat back. "But it seems so strange, kissing a teacher."
"Whatever you say ... teacher."
She laughed at him, and he stopped the laugh with his mouth, this time not so gingerly as before. Her tongue greeted his with warm swirls, then hot, darting movements against the sensitive walls of his mouth. His hands traveled across her flat belly and up her ribs to the heights that shaped her sweater.
Then, suddenly, he sat back and looked around.
"You're making me forget where I am," he said, managing a smile. "If somebody comes along here, I'm likely to be selling pencils on the corner instead of living happily off one of Midwestern's endowments."
"I guess it's just a question of whose endowments you prefer," said Claire. "Theirs-or mine."
"Come with me," he said.
"Is that an order, teacher?"
"Look," Harris said firmly, when he had pulled her to her feet by her hand. "No more of that, okay? Not even Mr. White, except in class. This is an odd situation, but in a few weeks you won't be my student any more anyway, since the semester will be over. My first name is Harris. Use it. Understood?"
"You're so much more human and ... warm outside of class," she said, surreptitiously squeezing his hand for an instant as they walked away from the pond toward the road.
"I guess my classes are pretty boring."
"No! What's the matter with you? Does the psychology instructor have an inferiority complex?"
"Yes," he admitted. "And I'm very inhibited."
"That's hard to believe!" Claire laughed.
"Well, you'd better believe it. I've spent most of my life with my nose in books, or escaping from my problems and letting off steam in some kind of sports."
"That's a strange combination," she said.
"I'm a strange person, I guess, but maybe I'll improve. Somebody told me the other day that I was improving, and maybe I am."
"I think you're fine already. And by the way, I wouldn't have been so attracted to you if I hadn't liked you in class. So I definitely wasn't bored-at least, not with you. I do get a little tired of hearing about those rats in the mazes. I'd much rather hear about what you do over in Building Fourteen, and I'll bet you don't use rats in your experiments there!"
Harris declined to answer. He opened the door of his car, and Claire slipped into the seat.
"Where are we going?" she asked, scooting over next to him as he took the wheel.
He began to have the feeling that the coast was clear, that she wouldn't say no to anything. And while he had up his courage he wasn't going to waste time.
"To the lab," he said.
He didn't have in mind using Claire in an experiment, though Prof. Alton's pointed words about laying oneself down on the altar of science had-not been entirely lost on him. He thought of the lab because it would be closed by now, and private, and if things developed as he hoped, there was a bed there. He hesitated to take Claire home with him, because of the possibility of scandalous gossip among the faculty neighbors.
"You mean I'm going to be in the clutches of the mad scientist?" said Claire, with a mock shiver.
"Well, I'm not mad," he said. "You've got that much going for you."
They arrived at the unimposing facade of Building Fourteen, and just as Harris had hoped, no cars remained in the parking lot.
"We can have a chance to be alone here, at least," he said.
"At least," said Claire. She was obviously a little abashed to find herself involved with an older man, and a faculty member at that, so she made up for it by putting on a rather brazen, sassy front.
"Did you really think about me before this?" Harris asked.
"Of course. Why else do you think I'd have let you kiss me and everything back there at the pond? I'm not completely promiscuous, you know."
They went into the building, down the central hall toward the office that led into the laboratory.
"So this is Sex Manor," she commented, letting Harris hold her hand as they walked. "It looks more like an old folks' home."
Harris was beginning to have misgivings about bringing Claire here. The place reminded him of their student-teacher relationship, and the bleak, undecorated surroundings could hardly be called romantic. And Harris, being inhibited and relatively inexperienced, was definitely a romantic.
He opened the door to the back office and was a little surprised to see the furniture disarranged, as if the other members of the staff had played musical chairs and hadn't bothered to straighten up afterward. Liza's desk was at an odd angle, and her swivel chair was over in one corner, facing the wall.
"Is this where all the wicked things go on?" Claire asked. "I'm really kind of disappointed."
"They go on in there," Harris said absently, indicating the lab door with its unlighted red bulb. He was still reflecting on the state of the furniture. Maybe old Prof. Alton had gone berserk at last, and had tried to rape Liza.
"Could I see?" Claire requested, going to the lab door. "Why didn't you ever ask me to be a subject?"
"We weren't using unmarried subjects," said Harris.
"Weren't? Are you now?"
"Yes."
"How exciting!"
"Would you ... would you like to be a subject?"
"Oh, sure. I mean, it depends on what I've got to do, of course. You still haven't told me exactly what it's all about. I assume people get naked and do, well, exciting things in there, and you get to watch."
"You're on the right track," he said. "Would you really like to participate?"
"Who knows?" she shrugged. "Let's have a look."
Harris opened the lab door and turned on the blood-tinted lights. Claire stepped gingerly in, as though she thought a trap door might open under her feet and drop her into the jaws of a crocodile.
"Oh, there's the bed," she said, somewhat incredulously. "For some reason I never thought you'd have anything like a regular bed. I pictured something like a special dentist's chair, or a doctor's operating table."
"We wanted to make it as natural as possible."
Claire sat on the edge of the bed and bounced up and down.
"Comfy." She flopped back, arms above her head, and studied the lens-studded ceiling and the electronic patterns on the walls. The miniskirt's hem was just a few inches below her crotch, and the sight of her elegant legs made White's mouth go dry. She bumped her hips up and down to test the springiness of the mattress. "Real nice. Mmm. But I don't know how you could do anything with all those glass things looking at you."
"You get used to it," said Harris.
"Have you done it?"
"What?"
"You know. What people do in here."
"You mean, here? You mean, have I done it here?"
"Well, silly, I assume you've done it somewhere. You're plenty old enough." She sat up. "Oh. I apologize. I didn't mean to imply you were old-just that you're not a child."
"You're not either," said Harris, glancing at the lovely contours of the breasts beneath her sweater.
"I know. But you're avoiding my question. Have you ever done it here?"
"No. I haven't."
He stood in front of her and put one of his hands on her shoulder. Then he felt her long, silky hair and touched her cheek.
"But you make me want to do it here," he said.
She evaded a direct response by looking up at the wires that dangled by the bed.
"What are those?"
Harris explained their function, demonstrating how the sensing elements worked while he attached two to Claire's wrists.
"And some go on the ankles, too," he said.
"Aren't you going to show me?"
Harris knelt and took her slim foot in his hand, and fitted one of the circlets of rubber around Claire's stockinged ankle. His hand couldn't resist sliding over the textured surface of her calf and knee.
"Is that part of the experiment?" she asked softly.
Harris pressed his face against her knee, then against the outer surface of her thigh. "In a way, yes," he answered. "The subject has to get ... excited. Then, as she reacts to stimulation, the nervous impulses are registered there, on...."
Claire looked at the dials on the wall.
"Am I stimulated?" she asked.
"I don't know," he said. "I wish I did. But the stuff isn't turned on."
"I'm turned on," Claire said. She looked at him seriously. "You really get to me, Mr. White ... I mean, Harris."
He sat down beside her on the bed and took her in his arms. This time their kiss was deeper and wilder than before. Claire's head rolled from side to side as her lips sought the fullest contact with his. Her fingers dug into his neck, and she arched her back to jam her breasts as hard as she could against his chest.
Then the door opened, and Prof. Alton walked in.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Good heavens!" he cried, and appeared about ready to turn and run. Then he took a closer look. "White, is that you? Yes. Oh, dear. Oh, my, what a catastrophe we had here this afternoon. You can't imagine!"
Harris and Claire had both jumped up, and Claire was struggling to get the wires disengaged from her wrists.
"We were just...."
"You were just working," said the old man, backing toward the door again. "I'm so sorry. Carry on, please. Lie back down. I was just so upset I didn't think before...."
"What's wrong?" Harris asked.
"We were invaded! By students. By football players. By muscle-bound giants. First came one called-their names are emblazoned on my brain forever-one called 'Big Ray' Hopkins. He was engaged in a discussion with Miss Downs when another arrived. The new one, covered with black fur, was called 'Beast' Boswell. He claimed he should be first, because he had football practice at some early hour."
"He claimed he should be first for what?" asked Harris.
"First with Miss Downs in the lab. You know, congratulate you and this fine-looking young lady on your dedication to science."
"No," said Claire. "We're not-"
"Miss Downs, naturally, appeared both amused and highly agitated at this situation. Then several more arrived. Three, in a group. They looked exactly alike-they had no necks, a kind of sloping line went directly from their ears to their shoulders, and they wore identical sweat shirts. More came, and each seemed astonished and chagrined to see the others. Miss Downs, however, was more chagrined than they. She completely lost her temper. She called for me, but I was helpless against the onslaught. Some caught hold of Miss Downs, and it appeared they might tear her in half. Others began pummeling one another with their fists and feet. It was only when I called the campus police that they broke up the fray and ran. When the police arrived there was, of course, nothing they could do. They were too late. Miss Downs told me not to seek disciplinary measures against the boys because she wanted to handle it her own way-and you can imagine what that means."
"Yes," Harris said. "Fantastic."
"Oh, yes," continued Prof. Alton, "and Jim Perry was hit in the head with an education textbook when he attempted to go to Miss Downs' aid. I must say I was impressed with his courage and chivalry, and so was she. I'm not sure the blow was intentional, but a very large book came flying through the air and laid him out on his face."
"Oh!" Claire exclaimed. "Was he hurt?"
"Not seriously. He was up and around in a few minutes, after Miss Downs put cold water on his forehead with Kleenexes."
"My," Claire commented, "it is exciting around here, isn't it?"
"It's not always so riotous," said Prof. Alton. "I've had enough excitement lately to last me a lifetime. And now, to make it even more trying, my ... ah ... Mrs. Alton hasn't shown up yet with tie car.
As if in answer to his thoughts, a voice something like that of a female hippopotamus resounded through the building: "William! Where are you?"
"Well," Alton said, "there she is. So, carry on! Reattach your wires, and I'll leave you to your own ... ah ... devices. Heh heh."
"Who was that?" Claire asked, as the door closed behind him.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot to introduce you. That was Prof. Alton, the head of The Project."
"The head of The Project?" Claire asked incredulously. "I'm surprised the project ever got off the ground! He must be a hundred eighty years old."
"He is," Harris said, "and it didn't."
"What are you doing?"
"I'm trying to get these things off your wrists, so we can get out of here and go somewhere sane."
"Where?"
"My house."
Harris was a little surprised that Claire didn't resist, but she sat calmly and apparently happily beside him as he drove to the modest, one-bedroom home that he rented in a quiet part of town. He wished now that he had something more impressive to show Claire. The spartan existence he had always led did not result in very romantic surroundings. There was a whole year's collection of professional psychology magazines on the floor of the screened front porch. Several apple cores decorated the otherwise drab living room, which had no pictures, vases, figurines or other adornments, except for a copy of Boy's Life which Harris quickly kicked under the sofa before turning on the lights. His Boy Scouting days had been the happiest of his life, and he had never cancelled his subscription to the magazine.
"This is it," he said ruefully. "It's nice."
"No, it's not," Harris admitted in a flurry of self-recrimination. "It's dreary. Just like my life. There's no spirit to it, no fun, no excitement."
"You poor thing. Do you really feel that way?"
"I certainly do, here."
He went to the kitchen, brushed aside some empty yogurt containers, and opened the cabinet next to the sink.
"Bourbon," he said. "I never drink it as a rule, but we're celebrating. Somebody gave me this for Christmas. Do you drink?"
"Some."
"Here I am corrupting youth," Harris apologized as he poured.
"You can't corrupt me," Claire said. "I'm already corrupted." She took the glass of amber liquid which Harris gave her. "Say, don't you put anything in it?"
"I guess people usually do, don't they?" he agreed. He added ice cubes and water as Claire directed.
Soon they were both well on the way to getting drunk. They sat on the sofa, and Harris propped his feet on the coffee table. He put his arm around Claire, and she rested her head on his shoulder. It was almost dark outside, and the odor of onions and garlic cooking wafted in from the street.
"Hungry?" asked Harris, feeling happier than he had ever felt before.
"No."
He kissed her, and her response was slow and soft but more heated, in a way, than at the lab or the pond. Harris ran his hand tightly over the hard peaks of her breasts, and when she did not stop him he guided her to a full sitting position and lifted the lower edge of her sweater. She dutifully raised her arms, and he pulled the clinging garment off over her head, leaving her long, black hair in a tangle across her cheeks. She tossed the hair out of her face, and Harris kissed her bare, smooth shoulders and inhaled the perfume of her young body as he let his lips wander over the swells of her breasts and the indentation of her narrow waist.
"Mr. White ... I don't...."
"My name is Harris."
"Harris," she breathed, "it's so strange, happening like this." She pressed his face against the heat of her breasts. "I don't think we should ... you know, do so much so soon."
"It isn't so soon," Harris said, trying to unhook her brassiere. He was experienced enough to know how to do it, but not experienced enough to do it very quickly and smoothly. "I've been thinking about you constantly, and we've seen one another every day for several months."
"That's true, and I feel as if I know you well. After all, I've listened to you talk for about thirty hours."
Harris chuckled, but he was getting desperate about the uppermost bra hook.
"Here," said Claire. "Let me."
She stretched back her arms and disengaged the thing herself. The tight cones of cloth loosened and slipped forward and down. Harris gently moved his hand from her shoulders to her breasts, pushing the bra out of the way as he went. It dropped off entirely as his fingers found the hard, elastic points of her nipples. She threw the bra aside and clung to him, breathing less regularly, closing her lips on his neck.
As he explored the contours of her breasts he was astonished at the combination of such soft skin with such firm uplift. Like the peaked minaret of a mosque, each tit stood out in defiance of the laws of gravity. Liza's breasts had been soft and spongy throughout; maybe it was not only her natural development but her age and heavy usage that made the difference. Touching Claire's breasts was like touching something brand new, just out of the package-breasts so young and fresh that they were like roses just opened for the first time to the early morning sun.
"Can we lie down somewhere?" she asked.
That surprised him. He'd kept expecting her to resist; this was almost too good to be true.
"Yes. In there."
With his arm around her bare waist he guided her down the short hall to the bedroom. After a life of pent-up virility, he seemed to feel newly unleashed physical strength surging through him like molten steel. He felt taller and more muscular, as if for the first time he actually sensed his full dimensions. He was like a giant awakening.
In the bedroom he turned on the small lamp and directed the glare into a corner by tilting the shade.
"Let's take off our clothes," he said.
He forgot to undress, however, as he watched Claire step out of her miniskirt and peel off her panty-hose. It was something he had dreamed of seeing for so long that now there was an aura of unreality about it.
He went over and pulled her slender, nude form against him, and kissed her.
"What about you?" she asked, and with that strange combination of innocence and knowingness she began to unbutton his shirt.
He completed the job of discarding his clothing. By then, Claire was lying on the bed. She studied his strong, perfectly developed body with open admiration.
"Somehow I knew you'd look like that," she said.
She was lying on her back, one arm crooked up to support her head. Harris went to the side of the bed and stood over her, looking down. She moved her hand to touch his naked hips, to test the hard plate of muscles that covered his abdomen. Then her fingers touched and stroked and rubbed and squeezed his cock until his knees grew weak, and his blood seemed to surge upward into his erect rod until it was swollen and throbbing with unbearably dilated tension.
He almost hurled himself on Claire, devouring her lips with his mouth, making the bed threaten to collapse as he thrust his body against hers. Then he remembered that he must not be too self-centered, especially in making love to a young girl. He wanted her to enjoy it too, and he had read a great deal about the traumatic effects of inconsiderate sexual attacks on inexperienced women.
But, on the other hand, he had decided that in all probability Claire was not a virgin, and he did not treat her as one. Somehow he'd stumbled onto the right way of handling her; he could tell from the tremors which shook her body as he caressed and stroked and squeezed it.
Claire was a biter. She seemed to be all over him with her mouth and teeth, and she wasn't gentle, either. She almost brought blood to his neck. Then she worked down his shoulder and chest, nibbling and compressing his flesh between her lips, and sometimes giving him pain with the force of her small, white teeth.
. By the time she reached his waist he could wait no longer, and he could tell that she was ready too. "Are you excited enough?" he asked, just to be sure.
"What a question!" she panted. "What do you think?"
"I think you are."
"Are you?"
"Yes, yes."
"Then, please...." She threw back her head and swung her body under his, embracing him with her legs.
Harris felt faint with joy. The feel of her hot, vibrant form beneath him, squirming with desire, was almost too much to bear. He opened her pussy with his hand, and she moaned with pleasure. Then, slowly, he made the vital contact. As his rod sank into her heated moistness, he savored each tiniest fraction of the way. Finally he could go no further. The prolonged, ecstatic journey that united them completely had reached its end, and before they began to move again they clung to each other tightly, locked together.
Then the clenching of Claire's inner muscles excited him so much that he had to continue. The slowness that had characterized his original entry into this state of bliss was now replaced by more vigorous motions. Claire responded with movements of her own. Her hips seemed attuned to his. She seemed to follow him, working herself on his rod with semi-rotations of her pelvis that brought choked gasps to his throat and made fire pound in his veins.
"I love you," he gasped.
"I love you ... now ... please ... don't wait."
He let the ecstasy grip him, and his body jerked in frenzied convulsions as he lunged directly at the innermost core of Claire's being.
She cried out, biting his chest as she flung her lower body upward to meet him. Then a short scream burst from her suddenly wide-open mouth, as if he had pierced her clear through; and she fell back, jerking with involuntary spasms.
At the same time, Harris experienced the most gigantic, shattering overflow of pleasure he'd ever known. He knew he must have it again and again, and he clung to Claire as if he would never let her go.
CHAPTER NINE
"Don't you think you'd better get home?"
Liza asked Jim. "That is, unless you're really planning to divorce your wife."
Jim put one hand on either side of his aching head.
"It feels better," he mumbled.
They were sitting at a table in the darkest corner of Davy Jones' Fishbowl, a bar on the edge of town. Its sole claim to distinction was a glass tank in which a girl called Minnie the Mermaid exposed her shapely frame to the public as she swam underwater. At the moment, Minnie the Mermaid was not on exhibition, but the luminescence of her tank in the wall cast an unhealthy, greenish glow over the faces of the customers. The unhealthiness was most marked in the face of Jim Perry, whose head had been recently bashed by an education textbook.
"Apparently your skull wasn't fractured," Liza said, "or some of those martinis would be leaking out of the cracks."
"Another martini!" Jim commanded a little unsteadily, raising a finger to attract the bartender's attention.
"Jim, you've really had enough. Especially if you have a concussion or something."
"All that's wrong with me," he said, "is that I haven't had enough martinis-or enough Liza."
"You're really drunk."
"It's time I got drunk." He put his arm around Liza's shoulders and sent his hand on several exploratory feels across the most interesting sections of her chest.
"Hey, quit that!" she said.
The waiter stood over them, looking unimpressed. He served the two martinis.
"I didn't order one," Liza said.
"That's okay," Jim told her. "I'll drink both."
"It's almost seven o'clock," Liza complained. "I can't just leave you here in this condition, so please come on."
"Aren't you happy?"
"Sure I'm happy. I mean, I've been happier, but I'm perfectly okay, which is more than I can say for you,"
"I'm happy too," said Jim, half submerged in his martini glass.
"You ought to seriously consider what your wife's going to think."
Jim looked at her with wobbly vision. "I have considered it, and now that you and I are getting married, I guess I'll just stop worrying about what she thinks. Right? Right!"
Jim drank a toast to that.
If there were any words in the English language that could send cold shivers up and down Liza's spine, they were all forms of the verb "to marry." She made an uncertain, choking sound and stared at Jim.
"Getting married?" she managed to blurt at last. "Now I know you're smashed."
"Sure," Jim said, too drunk to follow the conversation very closely. "We didn't spend all those weeks circling around like a couple of dgers tracking one another for nothing, did we?"
"Tigers?" Liza asked dazedly.
"Like dgers," said Jim, raising his glass to meet his grin as his head descended toward the table. "Remember what you did to me in the storeroom? Wow! Louise never did anything as good as that."
"Maybe you didn't teach her very well," Liza said. She was looking for a way out now. Fun was fun, but after the party was over you threw out the empty bottles; you didn't leave them lying around the floor to clutter up the next party. "I mean, maybe she wasn't as experienced as I was when you met me. Maybe she was a virgin, even."
"You're damn right she was! She was the most virginal virgin you've ever seen.
"So you blame her for not getting you sexed-up enough! Isn't that a man for you? Selfish to the core. That poor little thing-what's her name, Elizabeth?"
"Louise," Jim corrected.
"Louise. Poor little Louise, doomed to think she's frigid just because her husband is too self-centered to teach her anything. Spends all his time at the sex lab, watching other people do it."
Jim looked at her suspiciously. "Since when are you so solicitous of Louise? I mean, just because you've got the same husband is no sign you can-"
"We haven't got the same husband!" Liza cried helplessly, rolling her eyes to the ceiling. "Don't even mention the word husband around me!"
"Husband," said Jim. "Husband, husband."
"I'm getdng out of here. No wonder Louise is so-"
"So what?"
"So dissatisfied."
"Who says Louise is dissatisfied?" Jim demanded indignantly. "Who says that?"
"Oh, skip it," Liza said. "Let's go."
"I'd like to lie down with Liza Downs," sang Jim, waving his martini glass. The waiter, mistaking the gesture, came over with a fresh one.
Liza was about to protest very loudly, when suddenly a festive arpeggio sounded from a piano at the end of the bar, and a sourceless voice said, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, what you've all been waiting for-that glamorous damsel of the deep, the star attraction of Davy Jones' Fishbowl, Minnie the Mermaid!"
Jim clapped loudly and repeated the announcement for Liza's benefit.
"Let's go," she said, standing up and pulling at his sleeve. "Or do you want me to leave you here to become permanently pickled?"
But Jim-like all the other men in the darkened room, their intent faces flickering with water-dispersed light-was magnetized by the creature who appeared in the tank.
In a shower of bubbles, she dropped down from nowhere-an apparition with dark, flowing hair and a sparkling fishnet cloak that resembled butterflies' wings. Then, floating underwater, she parted the fishnet and revealed her bikini-clad body. The little bikini was golden, as if made of metallic fish scales, and the girl's eyes had a golden cast, too. Her lips were exceptionally full and seductive, and they never smiled. She seemed in some miraculous way to be looking each individual in the audience directly in the eye.
"She must be a mermaid," breathed Jim. "She can't be real."
The diaphanous cloak floated away over her head as she rose almost out of sight again.
"See," Liza whispered, "she has to breathe. That's no mermaid. Let's go."
But there was no more chance of moving Jim than of moving the building itself, and Liza was interested in seeing how this competitor of hers (to her, all women were competitors) could handle herself.
"It's so hot in here," said a sultry female voice from out of nowhere. "Let's take off some of these nasty old clothes."
Apparently it was Minnie the Mermaid who had spoken, for she immediately unhooked the top of her golden bikini from the front, between her boobs. She took her time about removing it though, teasing the viewers by holding the rotund cups together. Then she parted them just enough to give a glimpse of the deep valley of natural flesh between the two glittering mountains.
"She'll have to breathe again pretty soon," Liza said, but Jim paid no attention.
Then the mermaid, with caressing tenderness, pulled the bikini top apart very, very slowly across her breasts, leaving the coral-tipped white flesh bare to the water and the admiration of the men in the audience-and the jealousy of the women. Even Liza felt a pang of envy as she studied those beautifully shaped, gigantic boobs undulating in their gravity-free environment.
"Wowee!" Jim exclaimed, applauding vigorously. "What a pair of knockers! It looks like Fujiyama just had twins!"
"The water magnifies," Liza said coolly.
Minnie the Mermaid did some graceful underwater exercises that displayed her lithe body, which might have been top-heavy on the surface of the earth, but which here under water seemed perfect. She twisted, somersaulted, and turned so that she could be inspected from every angle.
"I'm part of the astronauts' training program," said the mermaid's sultry, offstage voice. "I'm a specialist in E.V.A. That's Extra-Vehicular Activities. I teach them how to make love while floating in outer space. I also teach advanced courses in E.V.E. and E.V.R.
That's Extra-Vehicular Entry and Extra-Vehicular Reentry."
The audience howled, and Minnie slipped out of her bikini bottom with her back turned. Her naked bottom swayed from side to side like a hula dancer's, inviting the even louder roars that now went up from the audience. After taking her discarded garment up out of sight for a moment, she returned in a slow back flip that first revealed her face, then her breasts, then navel, waist, hips, a tiny golden G-string, and long, slender legs.
"Maybe I could teach you something?" she went on. "Who knows? Too bad you can't join me in here like those lucky fish, and find out."
With that, the mermaid came to the front of the tank, which projected two or three feet into the room, and with a splashing sound brought her head above the rim of the glass. Her body was pressed against the front, and her big breasts were a little like the noses of children squashed against a candy store window.
"Hi," she said in that husky voice, beckoning with her finger. "Come on in. The water's fine." She laughed. "If you don't mind drowning. But who knows? I might be able to make it worth your while before it's all over."
"I'm coming!" Jim yelled, getting up from his chair and accidentally toppling his martini.
"You're plastered!" Liza cried. "Come back here!"
But it was too late. Jim was on his way, and the rest of the people in the room laughed happily, little knowing the extent of his suicidal passion.
"Hi, big boy," the mermaid called.
Jim didn't even slow down. He shoved a table ahead of him against the front of the tank, and it was only then that Minnie, the waitress, and everybody else realized how far he was willing to go. There was a moment of stunned silence as Jim jumped up onto the table and tore off his jacket. Then, all at the same time, the mermaid made a splashing dive backward, the audience stood up, the waiters ran forward, and Jim vaulted over the edge of the tank into the water. Liza sank back into her chair and stared in unbelief.
Jim managed to get his hands on the warm, slippery form of the mermaid and draw her nearly naked body toward him. But it was like trying to hold onto a terrific flounder-and Minnie no longer seemed so anxious to receive guests as she had a few moments before.
Jim could hear nothing from his watery playground, but Liza heard the bartender scream, "Get him out of there before the tank goes!"
It was a good thought, but it came too late. The tank did go. Whether the added pressure did it, or the heaving of two writhing bodies, or maybe the kicking of Jim's shoes at a weak spot, nobody ever knew. But suddenly the glass seemed to bulge and crack. Then it collapsed entirely, sending a mighty flood of water onto the heads of the nearby waiters and customers. The flow inundated the floor so that scarcely a chair or a human being was left standing. And down in the midst of the gigantic gush came the tumbling forms of Jim and his mermaid.
When the tide subsided Liza stood with her hands over her mouth, looking down at the drenched and dripping scene. Water and broken glass were everywhere.
A dazed waiter sat holding Minnie's G-string; it dangled and turned before his eyes like a long, gleaming bracelet. Jim lay completely entangled with the gorgeous, nude, shining body of the swimmer. He was smiling. The mermaid was gasping like a fish out of water. Somewhere a flashbulb went off.
Liza delivered Jim to his front yard and sped away. She knew where she was going, and she was anxious to get there immediately-even at the cost of delaying her already very late dinner. What had happened at Davy Jones' Fishbowl had not been enough to dim the memory of her experience earlier in the afternoon, when almost the entire Midwestern football team had descended on the sex lab like a Mongol horde.
She had told Pat Rooney she'd report him to his coach if Pat squealed about what she'd done with him in the lab. Pat obviously had squealed, and Liza was thirsty for revenge.
She drove up in front of the big, white-columned house, renewed her make-up in the rear-view mirror with the dubious aid of a street light, and walked firmly up to the door.
"Yes?" asked an attractive, thirtyish lady.
"Is ... is Coach Guthrie here?" she asked, like a lost child.
Mrs. Guthrie, seeing Liza's frightened, pathetic expression, hurried to fetch her husband. The coach, a big man with an unathletic paunch, lumbered in from the dining room, wiping his mouth with a napkin.
"Well, what can I do for you?" he growled. Then he got a closer view of Liza, and his tone changed.
"Glad to see you, miss. Have a seat here."
Liza looked at him and her lips began to tremble.
"What's wrong?" asked the coach. "Have we met? I'm not sure I-"
"Oooooo," Liza wailed, bursting into tears. "Oh, coach, how can I ever tell you?"
The coach started to put his arm around her and lead her to the sofa, but noticing that his wife was watching closely and not entirely without suspicion, he just put his hand on Liza's back and steered her in the right direction.
"What is it?" he inquired anxiously. "What can I do for you?"
"Oh, coach, it's so horribly embarrassing, and it'll probably cost me my job, too." She looked up at him, dabbing her big green eyes with a Kleenex, and sniffling. "But where else can I turn?"
"Tell us all about it, you poor dear," said Mrs. Guthrie.
Liza sobbed out her story, or at least a carefully planned version of it, with which Pat Rooney would undoubtedly have found fault.
"He kept wanting me to date him," she whispered, "and finally I told him to come over to our lab, and-"
"Maybe you'd better go on in and finish your dinner sweetie," the coach said to his wife.
"That's all right," said Mrs. Guthrie.
"Well, it's so personal...." Liza continued hesitantly. "I mean, I've always been a nice girl and everything, but Pat ... he was so big and strong ... and the way he chased me and everything ... and he seemed to want me so much, after asking me constantly to go out on dates with him...."
"My players aren't allowed to have dates during the season," Coach Guthrie said, with undertones of anger. "No smoking, no drinking, no dates. Not during football season."
"Oh," Liza said, wide-eyed. "I had no idea. Then I wonder why Pat kept asking me." She clapped a hand over her mouth. "Oh, dear! I hope I haven't said anything that might get Pat in trouble."
The coach cast an outraged glance at his wife, then said kindly to Liza, "well, go on, please. Tell us all about it."
"So I ... I gave in to him," Liza bawled, breaking down again. "At least, I didn't fight back as much as I should have when he tackled me and threw me down on the floor."
"Oh!" cried Mrs. Guthrie. "Carlos! You must call the police, or Dean Whitman, or somebody!"
"Don't worry," rumbled the coach, like a volcano trying to delay an eruption. "I'll take care of this."
"Of course," Liza gasped, "I never would have said anything about it, except that he told. T mean, after he promised me he wouldn't tell, he did. Because this afternoon a whole bunch of boys-friends of his-showed up over at the lab thinking they could ... could get me too. Because he told them, see? And it was like they thought I was up for grabs or something, because I work on The Project. And that's not true at all. I mean, our project is perfectly respectable, but now ... I don't know ... I'll probably get fired."
Liza broke down again, but finally recovered enough to explain, "If you could just ... just ask them to leave me alone."
"I'll have Rooney's-" the coach began, shaking his clenched fist. "And the rest of them. too. Who were they?"
"Oh, no," said Liza. "Just Pat. I mean, the others just heard what he said, and they thought ... well, I wouldn't want anything to happen to them, just as long as they don't bother me."
"Don't you worry a bit," said the coach. "Behavior like Rooney's brings an automatic suspension from the team for at least the rest of this season. I'm getting on the phone right now to take care of that!"
"I'm sorry to ... to, well, cause trouble," said Liza, mopping her nose, "but I didn't know what else to do."
She declined Mrs. Guthrie's kind offer of dinner, and laughed her head off when she got behind the wheel of her car.
CHAPTER TEN
The local newspaper ran the picture of Jim and Minnie the Mermaid on the front page the following morning. The headline read:
SEX STUDENT SLOSHED WITH MERMAID
Under the picture were the words: Something fishy here. Sex researcher joins mermaid for undersea study. Did she answer that age-old question-How?
Louise Perry was not laughing when she handed the paper to her husband. In fact she did not hand it to him; she threw it at him as he lay in bed. half-awake, holding his throbbing skull in both hands to keep it from falling off.
Louise used several phrases which Jim hadn't known she'd ever heard of, and she was out of the room by the time he took a close look at the paper. Luckily-or unluckily-the newspaper's roving photographer had just happened to stop in for a drink at Davy Jones' Fishbowl after the completion of his daily rounds. He had captured the scene in a way that clearly disclosed the mermaid's nudity, without showing any censorable portions of her anatomy. If Jim's arm had encircled Minnie's torso just a fraction of an inch further from her shoulders, the picture would have been unprintable.
Jim was now in one of those states of mind in which he was uncertain whether or not he was alive, and in which he preferred to believe he wasn't. He couldn't even remember how he got home. He did remember Louise shouting at him and hustling him into bed, after which he swiftly lost consciousness until she confronted him, shouting again, with the morning paper.
"Louise," he called weakly. "I ... It doesn't mean anything. I had too much to drink. I don't even remember-"
"Oh, shut up!"
"Don't be unreasonable. I just-"
"Unreasonable?" Louise reappeared and looked at him as if he were totally insane. "I suppose you think I should take this with a happy little laugh and congratulate you for your ingenuity, or something!" She snatched the paper away from him and quoted from the caption: " 'How?' From the looks of her, I shouldn't think you'd have had much trouble figuring out how. Oh! If I could just find the words to tell you exactly how nauseated and disgusted I am!"
"I'm sorry," Jim said lamely.
"I guess you're going to tell me it was necessary because I'm frigid, and you had to find companionship elsewhere."
"Look, Louise, nothing happened. I just-"
"You don't call that some kind of happening?"
"I mean, nothing happened between me and her."
"Well, who's that?" asked Louise, holding the paper close to his face. "Standing there at the edge of the crowd."
"Oh," Jim said. "Well, that looks like Liza Downs, doesn't it?"
"I suppose she just happened to drop in about the time you dropped in. Sheer coincidence."
Jim sat up straighter in the bed and tried to get control of his thoughts. "No. It wasn't a coincidence, of course. It was after work, and I went in there with her to have one little drink. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"If that was all, there wouldn't be anything very wrong. But frankly, I just don't believe that's all there was to it. You've pushed me pretty far, Jim. I hope you realize that. And I'll tell you something else, too, while I'm at it: I don't think I'm frigid. Luckily for you, I'm more faithful to our marriage vows than you are, so I haven't tried to find out. But don't expect me to wait around any longer. For the past few months you've been more married to that lab, and probably to Miss Downs, then you have to me. I could be the hottest thing in town, and you'd never know it. I'm ready to call it quits!"
"Louise!"
Jim felt as if someone had thrown a bucket of ice water in his face.
"Yes, I'm talking about divorce." Tears came into Louise's eyes, and she turned away.
"We haven't even been married two years yet!"
"A hell of a lot that's got to do with it!" she yelled. "It might as well have been two minutes, as far as our sex life's concerned. You haven't even shown any signs of wanting me lately, but that hasn't been as bad as the times when you dragged me off to that lab and wired me to the wall. The rest of the time you've either had your nose in a book, or you've been sniffing around Liza Downs, or something."
Jim couldn't reply; there was too much truth in what his wife had said. Suddenly, he seemed to see his life since their marriage as a strange dream in which he hardly recognized himself. He had pushed her out of his life almost entirely, to make room for his scientific interests; then, when she'd reciprocated by becoming boring to him, he'd turned to Liza. But it wasn't so easy to change-not just by recognizing his mistakes.
He couldn't help thinking of the scalding desire Liza always aroused in him. He might want to change, but could he?
A segment of the previous wild evening came back to him. It was when Liza had been leading him out of the bar after his swim with the mermaid. He remembered writing a check to pay for the broken glass, and he remembered insisting, before he went out the door, on going home with Liza.
"No!" she had said. "What about your wife?"
Jim had started to make loud noises, almost creating another scene. At that point Liza had yielded.
"Okay, okay," she'd said. "Not tonight, but tomorrow night, okay? Tomorrow night, for sure."
"Is that a promise?" Jim had asked.
"Yes. A promise. Scout's honor. Now, come on."
"I'll be over tomorrow night. After supper. You promise?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
And here he was in the light of morning, trying to keep his wife from divorcing him, yet at the same time trying to figure out a way to escape from her in order to be with another woman that night As a psychologist he knew the human mind was perfectly capable of wanting two contradictory, incompatible things at once, but he had never before lived through such a shining example of the situation.
"Louise," he said, "in all honesty, I'll try harder. I can't promise everything'll work out right away, but I'm going to see if I can get it all straight in my mind."
The telephone rang, rescuing him from having to hear Louise's reply.
"It's Prof. Alton," she said, with a glint of malice in her eye as she handed Jim the phone.
The old man was practically incoherent. He had seen the photo and the write-up in the paper. He was convinced that the sex project would never get the funds ii required. He did not sound so much angry as hysterical. All Jim could do was apologize profusely, over and over, and try to soothe the professor by saying that he was sure the board wouldn't hold the misconduct of one member of the staff against the whole project.
"They will!" cried Prof. Alton. "They will, and the hearing's tomorrow morning!"
"Well, look. I'll be in soon, sir. I just don't feel very well at the moment."
He hung up and lay back down on the bed, closing his eyes.
"If I weren't do damned mad at you, I'd feel sorry for you," Louise said. But instead of comforting him, she turned and walked out of the room.
I'll see Liza just once more, he thought. Tonight. And that'll be the last time.
Then he would turn his attention to straightening out his life with his wife.
That night Liza waited for Jim at her apartment.
He hadn't come to the office at all during the day; he had called to say he had a very bad headache, and wouldn't be in till the following day. Harris had answered the phone; he'd seemed amused at Jim's hangover, and had asked Jim if he liked being a celebrity with his picture in the paper, and all.
Harris hadn't reported Jim's reply verbatim.
Liza had received a call too, from Coach Guthrie. He had told her in dulcet tones-as if he thought she might have some special influence with wealthy, sports-minded alumni-that the guilty party was being punished-Pat Rooney had been suspended from the team for the Homecoming game, and would be on probation for the rest of the season.
"I hope you didn't do that just on account of me" had said.
"It's standard procedure for any player who breaks training. Pat's a valuable boy, but I run a clean team, and that kind of thing can't be allowed to pass unnoticed. Without mentioning any names, I read the riot act to the rest of the squad too, so I don't think you'll hear any more from any of them."
Liza sat back in her favorite chair, legs crossed, filing her fingernails, waiting for Jim. She wasn't sure how to handle him. For her the main fun was fishing, not eating the fish. Now that she'd caught Jim, he was more a liability than an asset-especially when he started talking about marriage.
Liza looked around her living room. She'd enjoyed life here, but maybe it was time to move on. The place was getting cluttered, just like her life at the moment. Movie magazines and copies of paperback books lay scattered around the room. The ash trays were overflowing. In the kitchenette all the dishes were in the sink, dirty. The travel posters featuring brilliantly colored scenes of Portugal, Spain, and Italy, which she had Scotch-taped to the walls, were beginning to come loose at the corners. Almost all the plumbing was clogged (Lisa was very careless about what she deposited, purposely or accidentally, in the drainage systems), and the landlord had refused to have it fixed again.
On the whole, it looked like one of those times when a new town was in order-with new men to conquer, new ash trays to fill, new drains to clog.
How could she handle Jim? For some reason she had a tender spot in her heart for that handsome, slender young man, who was just beginning to find out what life was all about. She wanted to wean him away gently and leave him with a good taste in his mouth. He had been one of her mistakes; he and his wife were too vulnerable and too nice. Thinking of them almost made her feel guilty-which was something of a rarity. Guilt feelings were an unpleasant rarity that Liza could do without.
The doorbell rang.
Liza stood up and glanced at herself in the long mirror next to the coat hooks. Her hair gleamed almost golden from a fresh washing; she wore a loose-fitting, red-and-black Oriental jacket, which was cinched at the waist with a sash and flared out to end just below the juncture of her long, shapely legs. Her legs were bare, and she was wearing nothing under the jacket. Her feet were clad in a pair of semi-high-heeled straw sandals.
She knew what Jim was coming for, and she could see no point in making him play hide-and-seek for it.
"Hi, there, baby," she said, opening the door.
She had a rude shock, because it wasn't Jim Perry who walked in. It was Pat Rooney. He pushed his way across the threshold and slammed the door behind him.
"Okay," he bellowed, looking down at her from his towering six and a half feet. "What the hell's the idea?"
Liza was frightened, which was as unusual for her as feeling guilty, but she held her ground and glared back indignantly at Rooney.
"You know damn well what the hell's the idea! Now, get out of here!" she yelled, backing to the wall and pointing toward the door. "I told you if you spread the word around about what we did in that lab, I'd report you to the coach. And that's exactly what I did. Fair enough, isn't it? Now, beat it!"
"You lousy, shitty tramp! You'd spread your legs for the garbage men! You'd do it for anybody! Why shouldn't my friends get a piece of you too? You're public property, aren't you?"
"No!" Liza's reply wasn't so fierce as before. It was defensive. Rooney's words had stabbed at a sensitive core somewhere deep within her, and she felt deeply hurt.
"Sure, you are," the big redhead sneered, letting his voice subside to normal. His eyes traveled with disdain up and down her voluptuous, scantily clad body. "Sure. You're public property, and everybody knows it. I didn't need to tell anybody. When you walk across the campus, they all howl like hound-dogs after a bitch in heat. The smell spreads ahead of you before you even get to a town. At least three of those guys knew all about your reputation before you ever moved here. They got horny as soon as they heard your name."
"Heard my name from you," she said. Now, go away."
"Looks to me like everybody'll soon be able to tell you're a run-down nympho just by looking at you. Aren't those wrinkles I see under your eyes?"
"No! You damned liar, get out!"
"Well, anybody can tell you're no college chick. That's why you get more hoots than action around here.
Who wants stale meat, when he can have fresh?"
Liza started for the door, but Pat caught her by the wrist and held her next to him.
"Those are wrinkles," he said. "You're the type that nobody'll ever marry. Eventually you'll wind up as a crummy old waitress in some crummy old dump, and you'll be screwing for beers out in the back seats of cars."
Tears stung Liza's eyes, and she was beside herself with rage. She yanked against Rooney's grip, then suddenly sank her teeth into his arm. He jerked away before she could do any real damage, rubbed his arm, then nodded toward the door with a grim smile.
"Okay," he said. "Go on and yell."
Don't think I won't, you slimy bastard!"
Liza opened the door-and gasped as two forms as big as Rooney's closed in quickly on her, forcing her back into the room. One of them was the black-furred "Beast" Boswell. The other she had never seen. He was tall and gaunt, with high cheekbones, thin lips, eyes like slits, and gigantic hands.
"Well, what's this?" Liza asked with forced bravado. "Looks like they had a mass escape over at the zoo."
She tried to slip past the hulking boys, but they'd closed the door and blocked her way. One of them caught her by the shoulder, but she tore away and backed further into the living room.
"Are you getting out, or do I start yelling?"
The three moved toward her, led by Rooney.
"I warn you," she said, "I've got a loud voice."
"That ain't all you've got," said Rooney. "It felt pretty good on the floor over at Sex Manor. I've got to admit that. And I've been hankering for another go at it."
"You're damn right, it's good," Liza said. "But you'll never get so much as another look at it, much less a go at it." Then she opened her mouth and screamed.
Rooney lunged forward, catching her just as she stumbled backward over an assortment of old magazines on the floor. He got his huge hand over her mouth, muffling her cries. But she kicked and fought so violently that he had to call for help from his friends.
"Don't just stand there, you guys! Grab her!"
"Can't handle her by yourself?" cracked the tall, gaunt one. "No wonder the coach suspended you."
Rooney looked fiercely angry, and loosened his hold on Liza as if he was about to attack the tall one.
"Goddamn it, Gray!" he yelled, "I don't think that's so funny!"
"Okay, okay!" said Gray. "Get a half nelson on that bitch before she gets loose again."
Liza managed a muffled squeal, but Rooney's ham-like hand once more cut off most of the sound. He moved behind her, pinning her arms in a cruelly tight grip with one of his, and keeping his other hand over her mouth.
Beast Boswell came up to her as she writhed and kicked, trying to free herself. Her shoulders were forced back, and her body was arched forward from the struggle. Beast took one end of the sash in his gorilla fingers and pulled on it. The bow was slowly drawn smaller until the sash came untied and fell from her waist. Then Boswell took one jacket lapel in each of his hands and drew them apart.
Liza's bare breasts, large and quivering, popped into view-then her belly and navel, then her bush and hips and thighs.
Boswell licked his lips involuntarily at the sight of the delicious feast before him.
"Well, well, well," he breathed, "look at what I found. What'll we do with that, boys?"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
In the grip of the three massive males-framed by the red-and-black silk jacket pulled back onto her shoulders-Liza's nude body was like a Greek statue carved of white marble. But it was a statue come to life as she struggled wildly to free herself.
"Take her down," said Gray. "Let's go into the bedroom," Pat countered.
"Who gives a shit about the bedroom?" asked Boswell. "Take her down here."
Liza bit one of Rooney's fingers, and he winced with pain and jerked his hand from her mouth.
"Stale meat, huh?" she spat. "You all seem pretty anxious to get your claws into it."
"It's not my claws I've got in mind," Beast said.
Liza was taking in air for a good yell when Pat clamped his hand over her mouth again.
"The chair," said Boswell, who seemed to assume that he had priority.
The other two dragged Liza backward to a big, overstuffed easy chair with wide, fuzzy arms that sloped up into the back. They sat Liza on the arm of the chair so that she straddled it. One of her legs splayed out across the seat of the chair, and her straw sandal dangled from the end of her toes. Her other foot was on the floor.
Beast Boswell moved toward her, unbuckling his belt.
"Mmmm!" Liza protested, behind Pat's hand. She wanted to say, Keep your paws off me, you half-witted Neanderthal! However, she had to be content with muffled grunting and squealing sounds.
Liza had been through a lot, but she'd never been raped.
Once she'd gone skinny-dipping after midnight with four boys, when they'd all been in high school. What had happened after the swim might have been something like rape, except that Liza had been laughing and giggling while it was happening. And it just seemed to go on happening, and happening, and happening. That hadn't been bad at all; in fact, it seemed to give her an edge on other girls, who'd been laid by only one boy at a time.
Now Boswell, muscles rippling heavily under his trousers. Suddenly Liza felt an automatic surge of sensual anticipation for what a girl with more conventional moral standards would have regarded with horror. In fact, the thought of what this bulging, weight-lifting giant was about to do to her brought thick juices of desire bubbling to the surface of her consciousness.
Then Boswell completed his unzipping and dropped his trousers. Liza wanted to burst out laughing, but she couldn't with Rooney's hand over her mouth, so she bit him again.
"She's laughing," Gray said unnecessarily.
"You're such a big guy," Liza burbled, "but ... but your rod's so tiny!"
She was laughing still when Beast raised his fist to hit her. Gray stopped him.
"Don't damage the goods," he said coolly. "Now go ahead, we haven't got all night."
"Yeah," Pat chimed in, "before she eats my hand clear off."
"I can't do nothin' with her laughing at me like that," Boswell confessed limply. "I'll go, then," said Gray.
Liza stared when Gray revealed himself. His cock was so enormous it made Boswell, look like a Vienna sausage. Liza gasped with a mixture of admiration and fear. She looked up into Gray's cold, narrow eyes as he came toward her. She was eager for him to put that massive thing in her, and that realization made her angry. As he stood directly in front of her, reaching forward to feel the full softness of one of her breasts, the leg which was sprawled across the seat of the chair lashed out like a snake, and she caught him low in the belly with the heel of her shoe.
Gray sank to his knees with a groan, clutching at himself. His face rested momentarily against the inner surface of Liza's other thigh, and she knew she could have delivered a blow with her knee that would have knocked him unconscious. But something held her back-the same thing that prevented her from screaming, even though Pat hadn't replaced his hand over her mouth.
She waited tensely to see what Gray would do.
He got back on his feet, and she could plainly see that her punishment had further excited him, rather than repelling him. His cock was more gorged with desire than ever; lust seemed to throb visibly through his bulging veins, swelling his rod to far greater than normal size.
Then she felt as if she was being buried beneath a landslide of hard-muscled flesh. Rooney and Boswell towered on each side of her, each of them gripping one of her wrists and ankles. She was helpless. Gray jerked her forward until she was perched on the front edge of the round, soft chair arm.
He hurled himself at her, and she felt like she was being split in half. It was as if all the men she'd conquered and thrown aside had come back to get their revenge-in one huge, ferocious, male form. They seemed to say, as they stabbed her deeply and mercilessly, over and over: You thought you'd won, but we've got yon now!
She tried to scream, not so much from pain as from the almost unbearable blending of pleasure and pressure and jolting. Gray's pumping seemed to generate intense heat, as if the friction might actually set her on fire. She was gasping, writhing, jerking-but her efforts weren't intended to get her away from the goring bull who had her down.
"Let go," she moaned pleadingly, looking from Rooney to Boswell. "Let me go." Perspiration poured down her forehead and into her eyes as Gray kept up his apparently tireless boffing.
"Let her go," Gray commanded. When they hesitated, wondering, he repeated it more emphatically. "Let her go, damn it!"
They did, and to their astonishment she didn't begin to flail her formerly spread-eagled limbs in an effort to escape. Instead, she curled herself around Gray's heaving body, clinging to him with both arms and both legs. She ground her hips and belly against him.
Gray slipped his huge hands under her buttocks and stood straight up, lifting her bodily from the arm of the chair. He cradled her as she clung to his neck, and swung her hips to and fro, thrusting his hips forward to meet hers. Then he tumbled her onto the sofa and finished off with blows that jarred her teeth.
She was half-unconscious, feeling as if a tornado had gone right through her. She was still lying there limp and panting, eyes half-closed, when Beast hove into view above her like a dark thundercloud. Her laughing at him had been more to humiliate him than to really express disdain, since she knew from experience that there was not much correlation between size and pleasure in screwing-though in Beast's case the contrast to his monstrous hulk was laughable. What she felt as he lowered himself over her was not so funny. Her pussy was still so hypersensitive after Gray's attack that even the gentlest touch would have been almost too much. And Boswell's assault was like being invaded by an electric mixer.
Liza wriggled and fought, but the other two boys had already seen to it that her arms were secured, and one of them caught her by the chin and held her head down firmly against the sofa cushions. All she could do was buck wildly, like a trapped animal. That type of protest didn't deter Beast at all; it urged him on to greater vigor. He ripped into her like a miniature buzz-saw, and after an eternity he finally groaned and collapsed heavily on her.
Buried under the avalanche of flesh, Liza gasped and moaned frantically, fighting for breath.
"Get off her, man, before you kill her," Rooney
"aid.
Boswell obeyed and stood up, wheezing deeply, his pants down around his ankles.
"Man, I'll teach her who to laugh at. I'm not through yet. Put her on the floor and turn her over."
Gray smiled for the first time-a grim, unpleasant, smile. Rooney looked hesitant, but he wasn't going to challenge the other two. They yanked Liza to her feet, once again taking precautions to prevent her from screaming, and forced her down on her knees. Her cropped hair was tangled and damp with sweat, and her breasts, like great white melons, were glistening with sweat too. Her face was deeply flushed, her lips devoid of make-up. There were red streaks and bruises on her thighs and arms. She was no longer anticipating any pleasure. She was just plain scared.
Rooney and Gray took their places on either side of her, holding her knees to the floor and exerting pressure to force her head and shoulders to the rug, too. She tried to lie down flat, but they made her keep her hindquarters up in the air. They pulled her thighs apart, and the rug scraped her knees painfully.
"Door's open, Beastie, said Gray. "Go on in."
Beast got behind her and went down on his knees. She felt his huge hands on her buttocks, hips and mouth free and screamed again and again.
The door bell rang, and there was a mad scramble in the room. The ring was followed by loud knocking.
"Is there another way out?" Gray muttered, jumping to his feet.
"Try the kitchen," said Rooney in a panicy whisper, as the knocking was joined by rattling of the handle.
"Liza! What is it?" The voice from the hall was muffled but clearly audible. "Let me in!"
Boswell, in the last throes of his climax, lurched to his feet. He yanked up his pants and went after the others in their frantic search for a second exit.
Liza weakly pulled herself to a standing position, swayed dizzily for a moment, and staggered to the door. She opened it, and Jim caught her limp, overheated, naked body and held her up. Before he could begin questioning her, the three boys rushed back into the living room. They had found no back door in the kitchen. The only exit was blocked by Jim and Liza.
"What are you guys doing here?" Jim yelled. He realized it was a stupid question, but at the moment it was all he could think of.
He got no reply, except a rush that could have opened a hole in the line of the strongest football team in the country. With Liza in his arms, he was shoved aside and knocked to the floor in the wild stampede for the hallway.
As he lay there holding her, she wrapped her arms and legs around him as tightly as she could for security and protection. In spite of himself, he felt a surge of desire and planted a quick kiss on Liza's limply parted, almost bloodless lips.
"Oh, no," moaned the beautiful, tousled blonde, "not you, too!"
Jim got hold of himself and scrambled to his feet to pursue the fleeing boys. He got downstairs and onto the sidewalk in time to see their Cadillac convertible squeal off around the corner.
When he returned to Liza's apartment she was lying on the sofa, holding a glass of straight bourbon and pressing a dishcloth full of ice cubes to her forehead. She hadn't bothered to put on any clothes. Jim locked the door and sat down beside her, putting his hand on her huge, heaving breasts to comfort her.
"I tried to catch them," he said, "but they were already in their car and on their way. Did you call the police?"
"Cops?" she asked. "Funny, I hadn't even thought of that."
"I'll call. Do you know who they were?"
"Sure, I do." She told him. "But don't call the cops. I don't like cops. It's too late, anyway."
"Are you trying to protect your reputation, or something? You can't let them get away with this!"
Liza smiled wanly, with a trace of bitterness that would never have appeared before tonight. "Reputation?" she repeated. "The reputation I've got, nobody would want to protect."
"Well, the university can handle this quietly, if you want to avoid bringing in the police. I thought those apes seemed familiar, but I hardly got a good look at them. Tell me what happened."
She gave him the whole story, replete with explicit details. As she sipped from the bourbon glass, she began to take a certain relish in revealing the intimate facts of her harrowing experience. Now that she'd had a chance to think about it, the eagerness her assailants had displayed was restoring some of her badly damaged pride. Rooney's words had sunk deep, and had brought forth repressed fears of loneliness and old age which, until now, had only shown themselves in disguise in Liza's dreams.
To his embarrassment, Jim found himself getting a hard-on despite the fact that Liza had just been raped. He had worked himself up for this evening all day, imagining what he'd do to Liza and she to him. Now her nakedness and her descriptions of multiple sexual assault were not helping any to cool him off. He found his hand wandering over her breasts with greater and greater pressure, and his thumb and forefinger squeezing one of her dilated nipples.
"Jim," she said, "What are you doing?"
"I ... I was looking forward to this very much," he said. "I guess I'm pretty worked up about you."
"Well, I'm hardly in the mood, and you can hardly blame me. But if you're like most men, you wiH."
"You can't blame me, either. You're the sexiest creature in the world, and you're lying there with nothing on, like...."
"I'm not sexy," Liza said. "I'm an old hag. I've been had." She took up her glass and drained it. "Boy, have I been had! And I feel it. You don't want me, Jim." She looked at him seriously. "You really don't. You were just having some trouble with your wife, and you wanted some excitement, and so did I, so I encouraged you. But you and I, we don't go together any more than oil and water. Just think about your wife-she's younger and fresher and actually a lot prettier than I am. I know. I've seen her."
She waved down Jim's attempted protest. She could tell she was on the right track, and that underneath his objections he wanted to hear exactly what she was telling him. "I'm not a sentimentalist about marriage, God knows. But you're stuck with it, man, so make the best of it-at least till you're really sure it won't work. You and I just had a nice affair, that's all. It's over now, and we've got to take it in stride, right?"
Jim was still holding and fondling her big soft breasts hoping vaguely, even as he was agreeing with her, that she would suddenly decide she wanted him to make love to her, at least one last time.
"Now go home, Jim, and take care of Louise-I mean the way you'd have taken care of me if I hadn't been raped tonight. You can do it, boy. I know! You can have her crawling all over you and begging for more.
"After you've proved you can do that, then you can decide whether you want to stick with her. Now pour me another drink, will you?"
Jim obeyed. She'd said something that had made Louise come alive in his imagination, in a way that he hadn't thought of his wife since his work at the sex lab had come between them.
"I'm tired," said Liza, licking the newest dose of bourbon from her lips. "Boy, am I tired, in more ways than one. I think I'll get married myself."
When Jim got home that night he found Louise packing. She looked up-first shocked, then defiant-from the open suitcases on the bed.
"I thought you'd be working late," she said. Her eyes were red from crying, and she gave sarcastic emphasis to the word working.
Jim was unable to speak for a moment. "What are you doing?" he asked, suddenly realizing what a horrible loss it would be to him if Louise really disappeared from his life.
"I'm leaving. All this has been really just ... just too much."
"No," Jim said firmly, coming toward her "I don't want you to leave."
She was wearing a white terry-cloth housecoat that zipped up the back. The neckline was high and the hem struck low on her legs, but to Jim she looked more desirable right now than Liza had ever looked completely naked. She ignored him, and patted a pile of her panties into place in one of the bags. When Jim came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders she stiffened then she began to soften as his lips teased the nape of her neck where he'd pushed her long hair aside. As he continued kissing her, his hands slipped down her back, around her tiny waist, and up the big swells of her breasts. He had to squeeze hard to feel the shapely peaks beneath the thick material of the housecoat.
"Jim ... don't do that," she whispered weakly. "You shouldn't use this kind of thing to influence me to change my mind."
"It's not having this kind of thing that made you decide to leave," he said.
"Maybe ... partly ... but...."
Jim took the metal tab of Louise's zipper and quickly drew it down from her neck to the small of her back. Now he could slide his hands underneath, across her warm ribs, and feel the hot, firm breasts with nothing in has way. The taut resiliency of the nipples told him his wife was responding well to his caresses. It seemed strange to have to worry so much about his wife's acceptance of his sex play; but maybe he hadn't worried about it enough before.
She was melting in his arms now, and he took the next step, gathering up the skirt and pulling it up the lovely columns of her legs so that the whole thing could be slipped off over her head. They were both so frustrated and so long unaccustomed to one another's bodies that every touch seemed like fire. As Jim began unfastening his trousers, Louise unbuttoned his shirt, bit his shoulder just above the collar bone, and followed the parting of the shirt with moist kisses on his chest and stomach.
By the time they were both nude and on the bed, there was no waiting. Each was already almost at the peak. Never had Jim felt anything so hot, so soft, so molten as his wife's pussy when it received him. Their flesh seemed to blend as their hips rocked and caught up the growing rhythm that gave them perfect unity. There was a swift building of sensation, a faster rhythm, a fiercely sustained beat that brought them both clutching and "panting and pounding to the ultimate heights-then sent them rapturously down the roller coaster ride toward peace, and finally sleep.
Jim scarcely remembered hearing the telephone ringing that disturbed him briefly during the night.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Louise's note said: "Jim-I had a call from the boys who found you in bed with Liza Downs at her apartment last night. Good-bye, Louise."
The suitcases and the car were gone. Jim frantically tried to think how he could find her. Where would his wife go? Her nearest relatives were fifteen hundred miles away. Would she accept without question the word of an anonymous midnight caller? Maybe there would be enough doubt in her mind, somewhere, to keep her in the vicinity. He got on the phone and dialed the number of her best friend, Marian Hobbs.
"Marian, this is Jim. Is Louise there?" The reply was negative.
"Are you sure? I mean, if she is, please tell me."
"Of course I'd tell you," Marian said. "What's wrong? Has she left?"
Marian sounded excited, but neither terribly surprised nor terribly disappointed.
"I'll talk to you about it later. I have to go now," Jim said, and hung up.
His next thought was to call Pat Rooney. The mere thought of the slob who had phoned-it had to be such a lie to his wife was enough to make Jim murderous. But he would get Rooney soon enough. Now he had to find Louise, and he didn't even have a car.
He called Harris White. The phone rang many times. Jim looked at the alarm clock: only seven-thirty. Finally there was a click, and a very sleepy young female voice said hello.
"Ah ... I must have the wrong number," Jim stammered. "Harris White isn't there, is he?"
"Sure, he is."
"He is?" asked Jim incredulously.
Then Harris answered, sounding even sleepier than the girl. "Jim!" he said happily. "Say, listen-"
"Louise has left me," Jim blurted. "I've got to do something. I hate to bother you, especially now. But I don't have a car, and I've got to find her. I'm also going to kill that lousy halfwit, Pat Rooney. Could you come get me, please?"
Harris said one or two soothing words and promised to be right over. While he waited, Jim got dressed, called several other friends-married couples-who might have had word from Louise but hadn't, and gulped a cup of instant coffee.
Harris could hardly get a word in as he drove Jim through the campus streets.
"Take me to the athletic dorm, or wherever they cage that Rooney ape, and I'll break his neck. There's no point just wandering the streets looking for Louise."
"Now, listen," Harris said, "that's no way to handle this. You'll just get yourself in trouble. I mean, a teacher can't go take personal revenge on a student without creating a helluva mess."
"I'm not a teacher!" Jim said heatedly. "I'm just a grad student!"
"It doesn't matter. You still can't...."
"Well, let's get Liza and take her to see Dean Anderson. We'll need her testimony against Rooney and those other guys."
"What other guys?"
"Oh, you don't even know, do you?" Jim then filled his friend in on the events at Liza's apartment the night before.
Liza was looking groggy, but was dressed when they pounded on the door of her apartment. They swept her away, and had covered half the distance to the university administration building before she could even ask what was going on. But she agreed quickly, for Jim's sake, to tell the story of her rape to the Dean of Administration.
They were waiting outside his office when his secretary arrived for work and opened the door. Dean Anderson came soon afterward.
"I'm surprised you people aren't all over at the board of regents' conference room," he said.
"Why?" Jim asked.
"For the review of your project. But I suppose Dr. Alton is handling that alone."
"Mr. Perry didn't know the meeting had been scheduled for today," White explained. "He was ill yesterday."
"Yes," said the dean, not quite smiling, "I saw your picture in the paper yesterday with that attractive young lady. Shouldn't swim with your clothes on, Mr. Perry. It's a good way to catch cold."
A moment later the three of them were shown into Dean Anderson's office, where Liza told him the story of the football players' attack on her.
Naturally, the dean was appalled. He expressed his regrets to Liza; then, with controlled fury, he picked up his telephone.
"Miss Thomas," he said, "there are three students I've got to see here immediately. And I mean right now! Get them out of class or bed or wherever they are." He gave her their names, then hung up and addressed the group from Building Fourteen. "This will mean expulsion for those boys, there's no doubt about it. But we must have you, Miss Downs, and you, Mr. Perry, to testify in this case. Could you come back here this afternoon about three?"
They said they could. Then they left.
"Could you do me one more favor, Harris?" asked Jim. "Drop me off downtown where I can rent a car."
"You're not going to search for Louise, are you?"
"What else can I do?"
"Drop me at the lab, please," Liza put in.
"Say, listen," Harris said, "this may not be the most appropriate time to mendon it, but I want you both to know-I got married last night."
Liza's and Jim's astonishment could not have been greater if Lady Godiva had dropped naked into the back seat of the car, horse and all.
"What?" cried Liza.
"I got married last night." He grinned. "Claire and I went across the state line-there's no waiting period, you know-and we got married."
There were loud congratulations, and many questions.
"Well, Harris," Jim said finally, "I think that's about the smartest thing you've ever done."
"If they don't fire you for it," Liza added.
"All my life I've been worrying about things like that," Harris answered. "It's about time I did something I felt like doing."
"Amen!" said Liza. "I think I'll follow your example."
"Liza," Jim said with a shake of his head, "you've never done anything except what you felt like doing."
"I'm getting old," Liza replied. "It's time I repented and settled down."
Jim and Harris both laughed, not knowing the depth of feeling behind the remark.
Jim searched the streets of the town and the parking areas of motels all morning and through the lunch hour. There was no sign of his car. He went back to his house then, hoping without hope that he would find Louise there. She wasn't. He ate a sandwich in the kitchen, listening for the telephone ring which never came.
A little past two-thirty he returned to the campus and parked his rented Ford in the administration building area. He joined Liza in the Dean of Administration's office.
"I've already spoken to the three boys," Dean Anderson told them. "They preferred not to face their accusers, but did admit their guilt. I suppose it was easier for diem. They have been expelled from the university, and in my opinion they're lucky to get off that lightly. Rape is a serious crime in this state, and they know it."
"I'm surprised it was so easy," Liza said, with a deep breath of relief.
"Of course, they attempted at first to shift the blame elsewhere," the dean continued, "but they soon realized that was pointless. Even extenuating circumstances can't-"
"What extenuating circumstances?" Liza asked, with a hint of indignation.
"Well, Miss Downs, they made certain allegations about your character which may or may not be true. In any case, let's forget about it and be glad that the whole business is being handled effectively without creating a major asandal. We all prefer as little publicity as possible, I'm sure." He looked at Jim. "Mr. Perry's swim with that skinny-dipping mermaid has given us all the publicity we can use for the moment."
"I hope that hasn't had a bad effect on our project," said Jim. "Have you heard anything about the board meeting?"
"No," said the Dean, "I've just come back to the office from a luncheon conference downtown, but I did contact Dr. Alton and request that he join us here, along with Mr. White, about three-thirty. I want to discuss the board's opinion with all of you, whatever the outcome was."
They did not have to wait long. Prof. Alton and Harris White appeared, the older man looking extremely dejected.
"The decision was against us," Prof. Alton said as the group took seats in the molded plastic chairs that formed a semi circle in front of the dean's big desk. "Our project is without justification, they say, now that your competitors at ... at that other university have such a head start on us."
"Dr. Alton," said the Dean, "I wonder if it's really scientific to speak of competitors in research work. Scientists seek truth, not personal aggrandizement." He looked hard at the old professor. "At least, that's the way it should be."
"They complimented us on our work, though," Harris said. . "And they seemed to enjoy some of our charts and tape recordings."
"In fact," Prof. Alton added, "the board members were so interested in some of our materials, it was difficult for me to believe they could refuse us funds to further our work." The old man stood up and drew himself straight. "I feel, under the circumstances, that the only thing I can properly do is resign. I intend to submit my written resignation tomorrow morning."
The dean's face exhibited a curious mixture of surprise and half-stifled pleasure. "Dr. Alton!" he exclaimed. "You needn't think of it that way."
"I must," Prof. Alton said. "And besides...." His expression grew dreamy. "It's time I retired. Age is creeping up on me." For a moment his eyes lost their faraway look. "Maybe if a younger man, such as Dr. White, had been in charge of The Project from the beginning, it wouldn't have met with such a sad fate." He held up his long, thin hand to extinguish polite protest. "Before I'm at such an advanced age that I can no longer enjoy it, I want to go to the South Sea-a sort of latter day Gauguin, one might say-and photograph the native ... ah ... fauna."
"While we're on the subject," Liza said, "I might as well tell you all that I'm resigning too."
"Oh, Miss Downs," said the Dean, "I hope you don't feel that you have to leave because of that terrible experience with those unrestrained athletes. It's to everyone's advantage that the incident be hushed up, so you needn't worry that your reputation will suffer."
"It isn't that," Liza said, with an ironic smile at the word reputation. "I'm a rolling stone that wants to stop rolling before it gets clear to the bottom of the hill and lands in a gutter. But I'm afraid this isn't the spot. And besides, with no more sex project, what would I do here? After all that excitement, I could never be just a plain secretary around here. So if you'll excuse me...." She stood up, and so did all the men. "Oh, Prof. Alton, this is for you. With happy memories, I hope." She handed him an envelope. "And Mr. Perry, would you be sure to drop by the lab after you finish here? There's something over there you'll want to pick up."
"A message?" Jim asked.
"Something like that." Now, ta-ta, all. See you around. It really has been fun. And best wishes to you, Mr. White."
"Yes, congratulations, White," said the dean after Liza had gone. "In the turmoil, I almost forgot you were married just last night."
"Thank you, sir."
There was tension in the room for a moment. Then the dean stood up and extended his hand to Harris with a smile.
"Well, I'm looking forward to the pleasure of having you and your wife over for cocktails some evening in the near future."
"Thank you very much," Harris grinned, with a husky return of the handshake that almost brought a wince to the dean's lips.
"Neither of you men need worry about your work here, of course," added the Dean. "Mr. White, you can resume full-time teaching duties after the project is closed-and I'm sure you'll come up with ideas for original research of your own, perhaps related to what you've been doing. And Mr. Perry, you can continue your studies in the same line. As soon as possible you might give me some ideas on other uses for your inventory of equipment over there. In triplicate."
Prof. Alton fumbled with the envelope Liza had given him. "A fantastic woman, Miss Downs," he murmured. "I can't see what this is. My glasses. Where are they? Can anybody see what this is she's given me?"
The men were standing as the group broke up, and Dean Anderson happened to be nearest him. He took the envelope and opened it.
"Seems to be photographs," he began. Before Prof.
Alton could react and snatch the packet back, the dean's eyes grew completely round. He moved the first glossy print to within three inches of his face. "Good heavens!"
Jim and Harris both had a chance to glimpse the picture over the old psychologist's shoulder as the dean hurriedly crammed it back into the envelope. It showed pose, with what looked like a framed picture held over her navel, her nude white breasts as round as harvest moons. In black ink across the bottom corner were the words: "With love to Prof., from Liza."
The professor left as if he was already on his way to the boat that would carry him to the tropics with a gleam in his eye and an itchy camera finger. Harris and Jim walked out to the parking lot.
The weather had grown colder. There was a hint of frost in the late afternoon air, and waves of dry leaves churned over the brownish earth as students hurried by in parkas, heavy sweaters, and colorful scarves. Scraps of white, orange, and blue crepe paper; a big arched banner saying RIP THE REDSKINS; and the sound of a brass band in the distance announced that Homecoming Weekend was at last really here.
"I've got to rush," said Jim. "That may be a message from Louise at the lab." He clambered into the front seat of the Ford. "You and your wife have a good time in Vermont. I'll take over your classes next week, and we'll have a party when you get back."
"Sure thing," said Harris. "Good luck. I'm glad we've got an understanding dean. I never figured he'd be able to get Claire off for a whole week without any trouble."
"It's a good thing you're married to an A-average girl."
"I never knew she was that smart," Harris laughed. "And I'll lay you a bet you'll find your wife within an hour."
"I think you people know something I don't know," said Jim, and he took off with complete disregard of the campus speed limit of 25 miles per hour.
He wasn't disappointed. In front of the lab building was a single automobile-his own. He parked the rented Ford next to it, strode quickly up the sidewalk, and ran through the door and down the corridor.
"Louise?" he called, opening and closing doors. "Louise, where are you?"
There was no answer. He reached the office adjacent to the lab. Nothing-not even the slightest sound. He called her name again, feeling a terrible disappointment.
Then the lab door opened slowly, just a crack.
"Yes?"
"Louise!"
He shoved the door open and enveloped her in his arms, almost lifdng her off the floor of the dimly lighted room.
"Liza answered when I called here," she said, when her lips were free to speak again. "She explained everything to me. "Oh, Jim, I'm so sorry I believed those lies on the phone last night!"
Jim wondered how Liza had explained certain other details, such as how he'd happened to come to her apartment while she was being raped, but he decided he'd better let well enough alone. Louise felt wonderful against him, warming the winter cold from his cheeks and neck. It really did seem to him that it would be possible to make a new start and avoid the mistakes he'd made before.
He looked at his wife. Her blonde hair was crisp and glossy on her neck and shoulders. She sdll had on her trench coat, buttoned and belted.
"Well," Jim said, "let's go home, or else take your coat off ... or something. I don't know. I guess I'm pretty excited."
"Good," she said. "That's the way I want you"
She unbuckled the trench coat belt, and unfastened the buttons. Jim didn't realize undl she'd pulled the coat off that she'd been wearing nothing underneath-only a pair of high heels on her feet, which she quickly kicked off.
"See?" she said to her dazed husband. "I got ready for you."
"I see," he said, completely dazzled by her sleek, high-breasted beauty. "But ... here?"
"I don't want to leave the old place with a bad record of me. Besides, we did fine at home last night. Let's show these beady glass eyes and scratchy rollers just how hot we really can get."
She sat on the edge of the bed, and when Jim had stripped and was attaching the rubber anklets to her legs, she dipped into the jar of translucent jelly and anointed her wrists. Then, while he was fixing her wrists, standing in front of her, she ducked her head down and flicked his cock with her tongue. She succeeded in catching it with her lips, and what she did next made Jim gasp loudly and dig his fingers into her warm shoulders.
"Mmm," she said, licking her already wet, almost drooling lips, "is that good!"
And she went at him again until he fell backward onto the bed, breaking the contact.
"Okay, now," she smiled body. "My turn."
She wiped a speck of saliva from the corner of her lust-swollen lips as Jim kissed her up and down the length of her body, dove deeply to caress her sweet, tender pussy with his mouth, and brought her to squirming, panting, viscous readiness. She was pulsating, throbbing fiercely, when he made the penetration that untied them completely.
"What ... what are you doing?" he managed to gasp. "I never felt anything so good."
She caught the back of his neck as she tossed her breasts from side to side against his chest and nibbled at his ear.
"I don't know what the hell I'm doing," she moaned, "but I'm sure as hell glad I'm doing it!"
With a profound shudder she lifted her legs high in the air and worked them bicycle fashion, creating friction against Jim with her thighs and making herself more wide open to him. Then suddenly she began to make high-pitched, wordless, urgently repeated noises, and the beat of her pelvis became more frantic as she dug her toes into the bed for leverage. Her mouth was open and her head was thrown back to show her lovely face stretched taut with ecstasy.
Then she let the tension explode in a throaty cry, and Jim joined her in the indescribable culmination of their lovemaking.
As they collapsed together on the sheets, still clinging to one another, there was a bright flash, several popping sounds, and a smell of smoke in the air.
"What was that?" cried Louise.
Jim forced her back down with a love-bite on her neck. Then he laughed.
"Nothing to worry about," he said. "We just blew a fuse."
