Wilhelm Reich, the noted psychologist, in Character Analysis says, "The human animal longs for full ... realization of bisexual emotions; at the same time, they are hated for their perverse distortions." Lisa hated sex. It was dirty, filthy, degrading; at best, a means to an end, a necessary evil in a tight spot. But then she met Shag, and found she was capable of love after all ... though he forced her through unspeakable degradations for his profit ... She never learned of a tenderness which did not turn on her savagely, mocking her hopes, desires and body. In the beginning, Lisa could take care of herself, all right, having learned the hard way since the day she was raped twice within twenty-four hours ... by a pig of a man ... and then by his wife ... Lisa learned to protect herself from those who would befriend her as well as those who would torment, and she did so viciously. But she never learned that most important of lessons; defense from herself ... that inner, lust-filled, insatiable, craving self which revealed itself in New York's sex jungle ... She was doomed from the moment she arrived at Fallonhurst, the Lesbian-ridden, sadistic sin prison!
CHAPTER ONE
The big eight-wheeler rolled east, a sleek aluminum job with everything outside looking normal. But inside, things weren't quite that way. No load. Only a frightened, naked girl and a hulking man in the back, with another girl and a driver in the cab. A cozy little group heading east. The girl up front had chestnut-copper hair. The driver kept looking at the way the lights from the instrument panel put highlights into it.
"Are you the same all over, baby?"
"You'll never know, buster."
The girl had a lot more than just the hair. With the right clothes she could make the scene anywhere in New York and she knew it. New York City, her goal. And now she was on her way.
The driver had a lean, hungry face. Its most arresting feature was a pair of hot eyes that marked his hunger for the girl beside him.
She regarded him coldly. "We made a deal, remember? You roll me east and you boys get the blonde."
His eyes kept darting across at her. "Me-I got a thing about hair."
"The blonde's got hair."
Momentarily diverted, the driver adjusted the big inside mirror. He focused it on the glass panel of the door from the cab into the back of the truck. His hungry eyes narrowed and he grinned.
"Pete's got the light on."
The chestnut-haired girl looked out the cab window at the passing night. "How's Betty taking it?"
The driver's grin remained. "She's taking it. Can't see much of her right now. Pete's big. He hides a broad when he's working."
A cry filtered through into the cab. In the back, where it had originated, it was louder but it came through only faintly.
The cry drew the girl's cold eyes to the mirror. By the light of an overhead bulb back there through the small window, she saw two white legs folded back at a wide angle. A pair of white arms. Ineffectual hands clawing at a broad, blue-shirted back. A mass of blonde hair spread on a pile of dirty furniture pads.
Measuring by the frantic, passion-mad lunging of the blue-shirted man, the girl estimated the rape as being near its culmination. A long moan erupted louder now-from the scene behind.
The driver stared at the mirror. He licked his thin lips. "God! He's pushed her three feet."
The girl turned her gaze back out the window. Her face would have been beautiful if it hadn't been so cold, bleak and hostile.
"She'll live."
"Uh-huh. And I'm next."
"Are you sure you figured things right?" The girl in back screamed. "She likes it," the driver said, almost drooling now. "I asked you-"
"Sure-sure. I figured it right on the nut."
"This heap won't be missed?"
"Not 'til Monday morning. We'll cut way south from Pennsylvania by that time. Then we'll ditch it."
"Where?"
"Virginia-North Carolina, maybe. We'll play it by ear."
"You drop me in Philly."
"Somewhere near."
"And take the blonde with you."
Even though the deal satisfied him, the driver regarded the girl with a wariness that came from a mixture of contempt and awe.
"Boy, honey, you're about as rough as they come."
The girl's head jerked around. "What the hell do you mean by that?"
"Buying your way east with another broad-a kid like that. Then dumping her. Man!"
"I look out for myself! If I don't, nobody else will!"
"That's what they say."
The door opened to the accompaniment of heavy breathing. In the mirror, the girl saw the blue-shirted man. Beads of sweat had formed on his face and run down his chest. His skin was wet and his shirt was hanging open. He'd pulled up his slacks.
The driver checked the dark road. There were no headlights in sight. He braked the big truck. Then he turned and looked at the blue-shirted man, an eager question in his face.
"Your turn," the man grunted.
"Good?"
"Damned good."
"Tight?"
"Tight as hell."
"You're a couple of animals," the girl sneered.
A sob came from the back as the still-gaspina; man growled, "Shut up, baby, or we'll pull over and do a double on both of you."
The girl's fingers caressed the handle of a switchblade knife in the pocket of her slacks. "If you want to lose your guts, just try it."
The man growled as he changed places with the driver. The latter went through the small door. He moved with such eagerness that he didn't close it after him. He had already started opening his trousers.
The girl looked back through the open door and saw the blonde come up off her back where she had been lying exhausted, still spread-eagled. The blonde girl's eyes widened in fear and despair.
"No! Please-no! I can't-"
"You can take it baby," the second rapist crooned. His eyes and his grin were bright with lust as he half-turned and looked back toward the cab. "She know any tricks, Pete?"
"Please-no," the girl moaned.
"Teach her some," the new driver growled. If he'd enjoyed raping the blonde girl his face did not show it. His mouth drooped sullenly and his release of the brake was a vicious gesture.
"She's a good kid," he muttered.
The face of the girl beside him wore a sneer. "I notice that didn't stop you."
The driver did not reply and the girl continued to look back through the open door as though from some dreadful fascination.
The second rapist was now standing over the blonde girl, looking down at her.
"Turn over, baby."
The command was sinister enough to bring a look of quick fear into the blonde girl's eyes. "No!"
"Turn over-face down."
"I'll be good," she whimpered. "Please. Not that.
I'll be good."
The girl up front grabbed at the door and slammed it shut as the big truck started to roll.
A cry of high pain came from the back. It was cut off sharply as though a hand had gone over a mouth. The girl up front glanced at the driver, wondering, perhaps, if he would intercede in the blonde girl's behalf.
But he remained silent, rolling the truck along the turnpike, staring out ahead sullenly.
There was a mile of silence. Then he spoke. "How was it in there?"
The girl glanced at him in surprise. She hadn't expected anything from him except maybe a snarled insult.
"Lousy."
"Did they feed you good?"
"The food was all right."
"Then what was your beef?"
"The place was full of Lesbos."
"Tough?"
"Real tough. If you were lucky you got a matron. They left you alone if you got a matron."
"You look like you could take care of yourself."
The girl's smile was one of satisfied memory. "Uh-huh. A big brunette tried to take me."
"You handled her?"
"I handled her."
"What were you in for?"
The girl suddenly appeared to realize she'd gotten almost friendly. "For picking my nose," she sneered.
The girl raised her eyes to the mirror. The man in the back hadn't turned off the light. He sat, his head thrown back and his teeth gritted, against the wall of the truck. He held the blonde girl's head in both hands, his fingers clutched into her hair. His palms were pressing hard against her head. The girl gripped his body with one hand, saving herself from injury as his hips jerked rhythmically, and this protection he allowed her.
The sounds the girl was making did not reach the cab; choked-off sounds that would be soft and blurred and desperate.
"God! Men are pigs!"
The driver glanced over, surprised. His eyes had been on the road but now he turned them to the mirror.
He'd reverted from his hypocritical sense of disgust because he now grinned evilly.
"A guy ever get you that way?"
"None of your damned business."
He was pleased at finding a way to irritate her. "How was it?"
"Shut up."
"Not so bad when you get used to it."
"I said, shut up!"
He looked critically into the mirror. "Your little friend's getting used to it."
"I hope they get you for stealing this heap. I hope they get you into some police station and cripple you."
He scowled. "I got some rope back there. How'd you like to get tied up? I could teach you some real tricks, then."
The girl took the knife from her pocket and snapped the blade open. Her voice took on a colder, evener tone. "Just shut up and keep driving or you won't be able to. I'm not kidding."
The man glued his eyes to the road and fell silent.
After a while, the door opened. The man who had forced the blonde girl into degeneracy, leaned weakly against the back of the seat.
The girl looked at him. A look of dazed aftermath was still on his face as he savored the ecstatic experience.
The driver glanced around. "You have fun?"
"Yeah. Wow!"
"Tricks," the driver sneered. The girl twisted out of her seat. "Get out of my way."
The man moved aside. When she passed him, he dropped into the seat she vacated. "Man! That was good," he murmured dreamily. "We're going to keep the kid-take her south-dump her later."
"We got other things to do besides horsing around with women."
"We're clear. They won't finger us."
"You're pretty damn sure."
"Look, nobody saw us in that town long enough to remember us. They won't miss the stuff from the jewelry store until sometime Monday. It was a clean job. No muss. We snagged this truck fifty miles away. We'll be halfway across the country before they even start thinking."
"But grabbing this damn truck-"
"What better way is there to roll than in an eight-wheeler nobody's looking for?" He grinned. "Besides, if we didn't have the truck, those broads wouldn't have thumbed us."
The driver looked at him sourly. "We sell the stuff and split," he said. "You're too hot for women. You're headed for trouble. I don't want to be around."
"I notice you took your licks."
"You want to make something of it?"
The other was grinning again. "Licks. That's an idea."
"You and your damn trick stuff!"
"Hell. Why not give the little girl a break? Shell be surprised."
In the back of the truck, the blonde girl, completely naked, was on her hands and knees in one comer. Her head hung low.
She rasied it as the other girl approached. Her eyes were full of hurt and misery. "Lisa-" she mumbled. "What-?"
"It's all right now, baby. They're through. "Was it-bad?"
The girl's throat strained and heaved. "The last it was awful!"
There was the innocence of a hurt child about her even though she was definitely no child. Her voluptuous, oversized melons of breasts were out of proportion to her small body. There was another dry, gagging sound and then a sob as she clung to her friend; or the girl she took to be her friend.
"Lisa. They seemed like nice men. Why were they so mean?"
The chestnut-haired girl stroked the matted blonde locks. "That's the way men are, honey."
"Did they-hurt you?"
"No. They only wanted you. I tried to talk them out of it," she lied, "but they said they would kill us."
"It's all right. Just so they didn't hurt you. You're my friend. You got me out of Fallonhurst. We're going to New York and get jobs and have a nice apartment."
"Sure, baby. Wait a minute."
The girl went forward and opened the door. "Haven't you got anything clean in here?"
The thin-faced man grinned. "Just pull her clothes back on."
She went back to the blonde girl. "I'll help you dress, honey. Then you try and get some sleep."
Trustingly, the blonde girl allowed the other to help her. She lifted one leg and then the other as her panties were pulled back on.
"I feel icky," she murmured.
"Never mind. You can take a bath later."
"They broke my bra."
"You don't need it. Just put the sweater and slacks back on."
Having gotten the girl dressed, her betrayer said, "Now lie down, honey, and get a little sleep. I'll see that they don't bother you again."
The blonde girl smiled and closed her eyes. "I'm tired, Lisa. I'm kind of worn out."
"Has your stomach quieted down?"
"Yes."
"Then get a little sleep."
Betty the innocent and Lisa the enigma.
Betty would always be innocent no matter what happened to her, no matter what degenerate tricks men taught her. And she was destined for many of these, many men and many, many tricks before she became too old and shopworn to be attractive to them and they let her rest.
Lisa, the enigma. She was another matter. The men who touched her would suffer for it or give her value in return. Lisa was the sort of girl who learned quickly and never forgot. The laws of survival were harsh and they lashed back at you if you violated them by taking chances and being kind to people. They left you standing on a cold wintry comer if you failed to use every advantage offered. Life, Lisa had discovered, was a battle fought in a jungle and friend was nothing but a word. Friend was the name of an advantage people took when you trusted them and left yourself open.
Lisa was nobody's friend.
Nobody's fool....
The truck rolled on. Lisa stayed in the back. She slept. Then she was awakened by a sound and saw the thin-faced man standing over Betty.
"How's she doing?" he whispered.
"She's not ready for another one, if that's what you mean. When your pal got through with her she was sick."
"They all get sick at first. Then they get to like it."
"Says you."
He scowled. "Who the hell are you to tell me?"
"Who the hell are you to come prowling back here? It wasn't in the deal."
"Maybe I'll put it in the deal. Whyn't you leave her clothes off? She looked cute that way."
The switchblade snapped. "How would you like to get fixed up, buster? The hard way."
He muttered a curse and evidently decided it wasn't worth it.
"There'll be plenty of time."
"Then wait."
He returned to the front. Lisa glared balefully after him. Plenty of time? That was what he thought.
An hour later, the truck slowed down and pulled off the road. When it stopped, she moved up front. They were just getting out.
"What's the deal?"
"We're hungry. We gotta eat," the thin one said. "Lot's of trucks here. We're safe for half an hour."
"What about us? We're hungry too." The sullen man sneered. "Got any money?"
"No."
"Then you don't eat."
The two men walked away. Lisa cursed them silently until they got out of sight and then left the cab. This place where they'd stopped was on the Pennsylvania Turnpike and the restaurant was a big one. Close to fifty people were seated at the long, curved counter.
Lisa went to the door and watched until the two men had seated themselves. Then she went to the far other end and selected a stool. They did not see her.
It so happened that the stool she selected was beside a middle-aged man in a blue suit. It was a seat Lisa had not taken by mere chance.
She sat silent, waiting for service, and after a few moments, the man turned his head and smiled at her. "The food is good," he said, "but the service is lousy."
"I've never been here before," Lisa said.
"Heading east?"
It was a silly question. On that side of the turnpike she couldn't have been going any place else. "Uhhuh. I'm going to Miami-I hope."
"You hope?"
"I've got to get to the east coast first. And I'm fresh out of a ride."
"How come?"
"The guy I was riding with-he didn't think I paid him enough."
"How much did you pay him?"
"Enough. But he wanted it oftener than most guys."
The man grinned. "Me-I'm reasonable. I don't ask too much."
"I'm reasonable too. How soon are you leaving?"
"Ten minutes. You got to eat, though."
"That's all right. I'm not hungry. I'll wait for you outside."
"My car's in the middle of the third row back right next to the turnpike. A green Chevy coupe.
Arizona license plate."
"I'll wait there." Lisa gave him a friendly, tremulous smile, strictly for its own value, and went outside.
There, she waited five minutes beside a phone booth. Watching through the window, she saw the waitress bring the man's coffee. Immediately, she went into the phone booth and put in a dime and dialed:
"Give me a police number, honey."
"You wish to be connected with the police?"
"That's the idea."
There was a rattle of connections and a heavy voice identified that end as being a station.
Quickly, Lisa gave the man the name of the restaurant. "There's a big aluminum-panel eight-wheeler here. It's got a Missouri license plate." She gave them the number.
"Who are you, lady?"
Lisa ignored that. "There are two men in it. They stole the truck and they've got a girl in the back. They'll be heading east and south."
The timing was perfect. As she hung up, Lisa saw the man get off his stool and move toward the cashier. He seemed to be in a hurry and there was a spring in his step. Reasonable? Lisa smiled coldly. They were all alike. He was after everything he could get.
But he was a fool and that made everything all right.
She was waiting by the Arizona license plate when he got there and her nerves stayed tight until they rolled out onto the turnpike. You could never tell.
Sometimes the cops could move fast. But as the green job picked up speed there was no sign of the law entering the stop-over.
Lisa summed up and was satisfied with the way it added. Those two would get theirs. And Betty would be far better off back in Fallonhurst than on the road with a couple of sex maniacs.
And Lisa? She was on her way. A surge of quick, fierce joy swept through her. She was so suddenly happy that she was really almost tempted to pay this guy off. In a way, he was entitled to it for being a part of her good luck.
The chances of getting a ride at that stop-off hadn't been as good as it might have appeared. Late at night, travelers were wary of pickups. Warnings were posted everywhere.
But she'd hit on the very first try. And even though she had boobs and legs to make any man drool, it had still been beautiful luck.
The man had been driving in silence. A shy one now that he was faced with it, Lisa thought.
"My name's Tom," he blurted.
Lisa, laughed inwardly. His name was anything but Tom. "I'm Lisa," she murmured.
"Hello, Lisa."
Her hand moved lightly. Maybe he was a phony. Maybe he was too scared. Some of them were.
Her hand went along his thigh, moving upward. It found what it was seeking, then drew suddenly away.
No, he wasn't a phony. He was ready and waiting. But enough of a gentleman to let her pick the place and the time.
She watched the road, looking for the right place. When she found it-that would be the time....
CHAPTER TWO
It had started at Fallonhurst, a place where they sent women and girls who had not behaved themselves. Women and girls, and that was a shame, because putting some of the girls in with certain of the women spelled ruination for the young ones.
But not for Lisa. Nobody was going to ruin Lisa. That had already been done.
Fallonhurst was in bad shape. It was one of those institutions where things had not been good and then had gone gradually from bad to worse. Inevitably, as such things go, it would reach a point where an incident became public and there would be a huge, self-righteous cleanup with much juicy newspaper copy.
Bribery was rampant, liquor flowed in reasonably generous rivers, and what with very few males around, Lesbianism was the order of the day. And what men there were, who wanted them, got their kicks also.
But the blowup to come didn't help Lisa or the girls already trapped in Fallonhurst.
Lisa entered the place warily. A clean reception center with crisply-uniformed guards and matrons and an air of general efficiency. She was processed and escorted through the white rear door and then things began to deteriorate.
The matron who took her back was big, thick-legged, muscular and her grammar and diction deteriorated incredibly once they were out of the reception center. They went down a long corridor and she indicated another door with a jerk of her thumb.
"In there, honey. Medical."
The words were innocent enough but other things were highly suspicious-the way the nurse stiffened her thumb and jerked it upward by way of gesturing was noticeable. The context of the grin she employed as she spoke made Lisa wonder.
She did not wonder long, however. They entered a small anteroom off which two doors led and Lisa moved toward one of them.
"Not there, honey. This one. That one's for the slobs. They get a quick once-over. You rate the complete treatment."
What did that mean? Lisa remained silent and followed the matron and found herself in another small room.
"You strip here. Wrap that sheet around you if you want to. Then go in and see the doc."
It was all routine and legal so far; nothing Lisa could object to. If you hadn't broken the law and went to your own doctor for a physical, a little more consideration with finesse came into play. But in an institution like Fallonhurst, a physical was a physical You stripped and held still for it.
Lisa took off her clothes while the matron watched. The matron obviously appreciated what she saw. The tiny eyes in her big-dish face glowed as she ran them over Lisa's breasts and down her smooth, flat belly. They went lower and stayed there.
"Honey-you're stacked."
Lisa said nothing. She'd learned early in life that until you learned the situation, silence was the best bet. Here, it looked as though the score was a big number for the help against zero for the inmates. But Lisa remained silent.
The matron laughed. "The quiet type, huh? You want the sheet?"
She made it sound as though refusing the sheet would be a mark in Lisa's favor, but Lisa wrapped herself up and followed the matron toward still another door.
The matron opened it but then made a quick arresting gesture.
"Oh-oh-hold it a minute."
A cry of protest had come from the next room at the moment of the door's opening and Lisa looked past her matron to see a big, beautifully shaped brunette standing naked against a table. The brunette was at bay, facing another matron and a young man in a white coat.
"The hell with you," she said. "I'm not climbing on that table and putting my feet in those things."
"Hold it," Lisa's matron repeated. But she did not close the door and they both stood watching, the matron with that nasty little smile on her face. "Watch this," she said. "Maybe you'll learn that it pays to do as you're told."
"Look, baby," the other matron was telling her beautiful but rebellious charge, "this isn't a Park Avenue doctor's office. This is Fallonhurst. Here, you do as you're told."
"The hell you say," the brunette snarled. "That guy isn't getting me on that table."
"He'll get you there, baby. The easy way or the hard way. Which do you want?"
Lisa evaluated the situation instantly. The brunette was a fool. She would have a hard time at Fallonhurst until they finally broke her spirit. If she had any sense she'd climb on the table and take whatever they dished out, because she was going to get it anyhow and if she fought them, maybe worse.
The white-coated man was annoyed. He addressed the matron as he glanced at his watch. "Look, it's past my lunch time already-"
Obviously, he wanted to leave, a fact that, in this highly unique situation, seemed illogical. But Lisa's instincts told her the white-coated man was a type; one not the least interested in the brunette or her gorgeous body.
"Leave her to me," the matron said.
"You can't handle her."
"I'll call in a couple of trusties."
The man glanced at his watch again. In doing so, he noted the open door from which Lisa and her matron watched. He couldn't have cared less.
"Okay," he said. "I'll send in a couple as I go out. I'll be back in half an hour or forty-five minutes."
He sent three, not two; three well-muscled Amazons in light blue dresses who looked as though they were going to enjoy their work.
Give in, you fool, Lisa thought as she watched the naked, sleekly-beautiful brunette crouch there like an animal at bay. Take the easy way. It saves wear and tear. All they're looking for is an excuse.
A rebellious inmate. It was necessary to apply force.
That was the way the report would read. If reports were still necessary at Fallonhurst.
It wasn't that Lisa cared in the least what happened to the brunette. It was just that she hated stupidity and it annoyed her to see a stupid person functioning.
Also, it was indicitive of the character life had shaped for Lisa that she had no admiration for the brunette's courage as she stood there facing the four Amazons-ready to defend her body from them as best she could.
She'll make them take it away from her, Lisa thought. And they'll take more than if she just gave in.
The matron beside Lisa neither moved nor spoke. She seemed oblivious of Lisa's presence. She was in a world of her own, vicariously participating in what had occurred-what was to come.
The matron in the examining room gave the brunette one more chance. "On the table, sweetie." But she was hoping for more rebellion. Her tone indicated this. She did not want the brunette to submit meekly. It would be more fun the other way.
And the brunette did not disappoint her. She crouched and braced herself and snarled with her beautiful dark eyes. Her breasts with their great dark nipples rose and fell magnificently.
"All right, girls," the matron said. "Just don't break up the equipment."
"I'll break up her equipment," one of the trusties muttered. It had been the first sound from any of them and the big redhead who made the threat looked entirely capable of backing it up.
"Me first," she said, and moved forward.
"Maybe Jennie can handle her alone."
These words from Lisa's matron mirrored her own tight excitement and identified the big redhead as possibly .a leader among the inmates of Fallonhurst.
As Lisa watched, she unconsciously set up a defense; out-lined to herself how she would have met the redhead's attack if she had been in the brunette's place.
Look for the soft spots and wait for them. That was Lisa's silent advice. A few well-timed knee-jabs, elbow-digs, and the judicious use of stiff fingers in the eye would reduce any attacker.
Of course, if and when they ganged up on her, there wouldn't be much the brunette could do except take it and try to like it.
But the redhead was moving in alone. Evidently she had a reputation to protect. "Okay, honey," , she crooned huskily. "Just take it easy. Mommy isn't going to hurt you."
She took cautious steps forward.
The brunette, crouched and waiting, then revealed her inexperience by kicking out too soon and too high.
The money goes on the redhead, Lisa thought, and remembered a Lesbian fight she'd once witnessed in a basement night club during the small dark hours one morning. The aggressive one hadn't been able to wait for a bedroom and had gone after the other right there in the club. Money had been bet on the outcome and Lisa had won five dollars when the defeated girl had crawled sobbing across the floor toward the victor, eager after the beating to do her bidding, even there in front of drunken witnesses. The technique Lisa had witnessed was interesting, but the five dollars was far more important.
And here in the examining room, the brunette was obviously going to lose because she didn't know how to fight. She must have been a dancer, Lisa decided because her slim, flawless leg came out and went high, not bending at the knee.
But all the girl did was catch the redhead's skirt on her foot and lift it above her thick waist.
The others laughed.
"She can't wait to get a look, Jennie," one of them chuckled.
Jennie growled and backed away. Then she rushed her victim.
Lisa's matron, quivering with excitement, whispered, "Watch Jennie." She dug a painful elbow into Lisa's naked ribs.
As the redhead came at her, the brunette slipped skillfully aside. The redhead thudded into the examining table.
"I said be careful of the equipment," the matron warned angrily.
The redhead turned, her mouth twisted by ugliness. "Stand still, you!"
The brunette had moved into the open. She looked around for a wall to brace herself against but she was blocked in all directions by enemies.
She turned her head and saw the open door in which Lisa and her matron stood. Perhaps this was an escape-route. She lunged in that direction.
But perhaps she wasn't such a hot dancer after all, Lisa thought. She should have been able to avoid the fat, clumsy leg one of the grinning Amazons stuck out.
But she did not avoid it. She stumbled and went down sprawling-flat on her belly.
The redhead did not pass this opportunity by. She lunged at the prone brunette and bent down. Then one hand, the fingers splayed into claws, darted down.
As the claws reached their target, the redhead went down on one knee. The fingers closed into a gripping fist. The brunette squalled and tried to scrabble to her feet and escape. This brought added pain and another squall.
"Got 'er!" Lisa's matron whispered triumphantly. It was as though she herself had achieved the cruel coup upon the body of the sprawled brunette.
It was obviously a catch-phrase with sinister implications, Lisa thought, a recognized technique used at Fallonhurst and applied to unwary females. It had the opposite connotation of, Keep your legs crossed, another catch-phrase Lisa had heard in the grim jungle of survival.
The redhead was motionless on one knee, grinning down at the brunette now. For a few moments she enjoyed the writhing and the struggling of the beautiful body she controlled by the pressure of one fist.
Then she squeezed. The brunette cursed and pounded the floor in sheer frustration.
"Lay still, honey," one of the Amazons advised, "or you won't have it any more."
"You'll be scalped," another one chuckled.
"Careful, baby. Jennie's scalped 'em before."
"You'd look real funny without it."
The brunette lay there and cursed them and this they enjoyed too. The weak ones, the pleading, simpering ones had their uses, but the fighters were more fun, and this gorgeous blackhead was a real prize. Jennie had her and they envied Jennie.
But then, Jennie was a leader and always got the best.
"Okay, honey," Jennie said, "Let's take it slow and easy-"
The brunette cursed and sobbed. She lay on her cushiony breasts and lifted her head and pawed desperately back toward the seat of the humiliating pain and entrapment.
Lisa watched and neither admired nor hated the big redhead for what she was doing. It was realism. It was life. It was survival. If the brunette had "gotten" the redhead she would have been equally entitled to the pleasure of punishing her victim.
That was how it was in Lisa's world.
The redhead allowed the brunette to paw helplessly for a few moments. Then she closed her fist tighter and twisted.
"Owww! Damn you!"
"Easy baby. Real easy."
Jennie was obviously the one to fawn over and praise.
"Spread 'em, honey. Easy now," Jennie crooned.
Another twist and the cursing brunette obeyed. She had not surrendered and this was evidently not demanded. She was required only to submit to superior force. Lisa did not object to the curses or the incredibly lurid descriptions of what the brunette would do to her if she ever "got in the saddle."
These descriptions changed Lisa's opinion of the girl. She knew tricks Lisa hadn't even heard of-ways to reduce and humiliate an enemy-and she described them eloquently. The girl had been around. She knew the ropes.
The broad was stupid so she deserved what she got. Some of them never learned and they usually ended up scarred by some ingenious trick of sadistic degeneracy.
This had not happened to the brunette yet. Her body was flawless, utterly perfect. It brought looks of drooling anticipation to those who watched and waited, hoping to share in it.
So Lisa had no pity for the brunette as she carefully and gingerly obeyed the leering redhead's orders; watched her come slowly to her feet, tensed for the next twist; trying to be obedient and thus avoid it.
"Uppy, uppy, honey-easy now. Let's walk to the table."
The brunette tried to straighten and was jerked back down into the humiliating position.
"Easy, baby. Not too high. Just walk like you were sitting down. You'll get the hang of it."
One of the Amazons laughed. "She'll get the hang of it quick with Jennie teaching her."
The victimized girl did as she was told-walked almost on tiptoe as though she were straddling a ditch as she and her tormenter moved toward the table.
And even as a thoroughly experienced citizen of the world of survival, Lisa felt a sense of unreality. What kind of a place was this? Why didn't somebody come? Why didn't Authority appear and put a stop to this? Then she realized Authority was already there in the persons of the matron beside her who now gripped her arm and enjoyed the sick, vicarious pleasure of what she was watching. Also in the person of the matron who stood beside the table, her hand on one of the straps that were there to bind a rebellious inmate's foot into the stirrup to which it was attached.
"We better use these," the matron said. "She's not going to behave."
Then the most unreal part of it took place. Strapped to the table, the brunette was hidden from view, surrounded by gross bodies. There was momentary break in the wall of heavy, uniformed flesh and Lisa saw an avid mouth descend to cover the lush nipple on that Amazon's side of the table. Then other backs were bent and the brunette's hopeless cursing increased in ferocity.
Lisa's matron appeared to be awed. "She sure doesn't give it away. She'll be just as rough the second and third time unless Jennie just ups and beats her ears flat."
That there would be a second and a third time seemed a foregone conclusion if the matron's tone was any indication.
One of the brunette's hands came inside between two of the closely pressed bodies. Lisa watched as it groped at nothing, doubled into a fist and sought to pound the fleshy hip against which it was pressed.
Lisa's own flesh crawled at the thought that came to her. She also was a prisoner in this place. She was being shown this grisly scene for a good reason-so she would know what happened to inmates who had to be "gotten."
The matron's hand was on her shoulder and she reached up and touched it, making the touch a shy friendly gesture.
The brunette was no longer cursing. New sounds came from her throat. Jennie's broad back was bent near the center of the table and none of the others had invaded her territory. She had it all to herself.
The brunette moaned, a catch in her throat. "Damn you! Oh, damn you-damn-"
The words drifted off into another moan-one that held overtones of humiliation and despair and anger. But held also a reflection of pleasure she did not want but was powerless to avoid; pleasure forced on her, to which her body reacted because it could not help doing so.
"Oh-oh, God-"
"That's better, baby," Jennie crooned. Then she was silent and there was no sound until the brunette cried out again.
"Oh-don't stop. Don't stop, you witch! Please don't stop."
The matron looked at Lisa, a shade of triumph in her eyes. "I guess I was wrong. She just wanted to be coaxed a little. After that she came around fast...."
Fallonhurst. There had been more-much more during the three months before she cracked out, but she didn't want to think about them now. Maybe later she would think about them.
"What about your boy friend?"
"What boy friend?"
"The one you're running away from?"
"You mean you thought I was leaving a friend at the restaurant back there?"
"Weren't you?"
"No. Like I said, he was just a guy who wanted too much."
The man hadn't forgotten Lisa's hand reaching out to find him. He'd been waiting for her to do it again. "What do you consider too much?"
"One thing-playing around in a car going sixty miles an hour. It's too dangerous."
"I agree with you there."
"Up ahead. There's some woods. We could stop."
It was very late and very dark and there were only a few cars on the turnpike. At times there were no headlights in either direction.
"You could pull off and park. Nobody would bother us."
"What about the police patrol."
"They don't come by at this time of the morning, do they?"
Lisa deliberately made it sound exciting to him by putting eagerness in her own voice. That way, even if he were reluctant, there was strong temptation.
He pulled over when they reached the trees. "I guess we can take a chance." He laughed nervously. "After all, you said you don't like men to ask for too much."
As he locked the car, Lisa clung to his arm and noted that the keys went into the outside breast pocket of his jacket.
"I didn't mean you," she said.
If he'd had doubts, they faded. They crossed the level turf that separated them from the grove.
As Lisa walked, still clinging to his arm, she estimated the distance and wished it were a little farther. It would do though, she thought.
In the shelter of the trees, she turned and lifted her face to his. The kiss was inviting, voluptuous. Her tongue sought his and found it and as their mouths laved together she unbuttoned his shirt and slipped her hands inside.
He wore no undershirt and her fingers played over his bare flesh.
"You have a wonderful body," she whispered.
It really wasn't much of a body. Strictly run-ofthe-mill with a paunch developing; a paunch that he was pressing against her flat belly in order to show her that the condition her hand had found was still very much present.
Still holding his mouth in the grip of her passionate kiss, she opened his trousers and pushed them down. She was breathing audibly now, passionately inviting him, keeping him occupied-anything to prevent an objection to the undressing.
"Your body," she whispered. "I want to see it."
On his part, he was sure he'd been really lucky. He'd stumbled onto a real nympho. This was his obvious decision.
Lisa dropped to her knees. Her face was close to him, her breath touching him through the opening in his shorts. She allowed her lips to brush his bare flesh "Raise your foot," she whispered, putting a choke into her voice.
Eagerly, he pressed his body toward her, hunching his hips and bending his knees. His hand reached down and sought to anchor on the back of her head.
She slipped from the grip. "No, take them off first. I want to see your body. I want-"
If he had any idea he was being suckered he did not profit by it. He demanded only one assurance; that she grip him; the reassurance of her warm palm around him.
She gave him this, gladly, in return for his lifting one leg and then the other. She pulled the shorts down feverishly, first pulling the front forward to clear them from his body. Then they followed the trousers, tossed a few feet away.
"Your jacket," she said. "To lie on. Then I'll let you undress me."
It was his golden opportunity. The boys at home would never believe this. His eagerness said that those thoughts were probably going through his mind. He stood there now in his shirt and socks and shoes, and Lisa laughed softly. There was a warm intimacy in the laugh as she said, "Do you do it with your shoes on?"
They were loafers and they slipped off easily. She laid them on the pants and shorts and then spread his jacket on the grass.
You lie down first. I'll make love to you. Then-"
She knelt beside him, caressing his prone body. "Close your eyes, honey," she whispered.
Her hands were intimate and frank and familiar. They did the things he'd imagined a girl doing to him in his fantasies. Her hand was so understanding, teasing; gentle as her lips would be. He waited.
"Just one second, honey," she whispered.
She hurried to where his clothing was piled, swept it up into her arms and ran. The hand that had skillfully half-lifted him to erotic ecstasy now clutched the keys to the car.
Her flight had been carefully calculated. She was almost out of the woods before he opened his eyes to see what had happened to her. She was many feet across the turf before he assured himself that which seemed apparent actually was happening.
"Hey!"
His voice followed her but she was running at high speed, coming ever closer to the car. She would almost reach it before he got to the edge of the woods.
When he did get there, he would realize his nakedness and hesitate, even in the darkness. That hesitation would be the margin of an easy victory.
She was in the car and behind the wheel before he started running. And she rolled out onto the turnpike with many feet to spare.
His, "Hey! Wait! Don't leave me this way!" floated faintly after her as she gunned the motor. As the little green coupe kited down the pike, her joy was fierce and complete.
She'd struck a blow at men! She'd gone out of her way and taken a dangerous chance in order to strike it. The trick hadn't been necessary. Nor had it been done on the spur of the moment. She'd planned it from the beginning and tried to add to her chances of success by telling the man she was heading for Miami. If he told the police-which he would have to eventually-they would look south. Or so she hoped.
These were her thoughts as she left the turnpike at the next interchange and started north, watching for a place to veer eastward toward her goal. New York City.
As she drove through the night, she laughed. A man in nothing but his shirt seeking help. A traumatic situation.
She laughed again and wished him luck. He could always go back in the grove and finish the love-making himself. But she had a feeling he was probably no longer in the mood.
She looked at the gas gauge and found that her luck was really in. The needle pointed to a mark very close to full.
New York City.
Lisa Hart laughed again, but not at the hapless man she'd left behind. She laughed from sheer joy.
In her pocket was over a hundred dollars she'd stolen from Chick Bell.
She owned the world....
CHAPTER THREE
Chick Bell. He'd turned out to be Lisa's white hope in escaping from Fallonhurst. And her need to escape had been so great that she'd been able not only to endure his presence, but to allow his hands and his mouth to touch her.
As a result of watching what had happened to the unfortunate brunette, she'd submitted to the physical examination when her turn came. And it hadn't been so bad, really. Disgusting and humiliating, spread-eagled on that table with her knees up. But not half as bad as some of the things she'd seen in the wards.
Wards rather than cells, because Fallonhurst was a special kind of institution. It was a jail all right, no doubt about that, but the inmates had been considered in need of psychiatric help. And their crimes against society had been of such a nature that cells and bars were not considered necessary.
Perhaps some of them would have been benefited by mental therapy, but that aspect too was clouded and nullified by graft and laxity on the outside.
Lisa's first psychiatric session almost caused her to burst out laughing. She was taken by a matron to a small room with a couch but where two people awaited her, not one.
Then it was explained. The doctor, a small man with a Hitler-type mustache and a maimed right hand, was a Hungarian. He could not speak English. The girl who sat beside him was his interpreter.
Lisa almost whooped! She'd had one experience in psychiatry. It hadn't been too good, but she'd learned enough to realize that the rapport between the doctor and the patient was of the utmost importance. In her case the rapport had become a little too close, but that hadn't lasted long.
And now this! Psychiatry through an interpreter! Not really important, though, because they hadn't gotten around to calling her in again after that one session.
Other things of interest had taken place during those three months. However, the laxity at Fallonhurst was the most obvious point and the most easily noticed.
Lisa was assigned to Ward Seven and it appeared that it was run by a buxom matron, Miss Henders. But Lisa found this was not the case.
When Miss Henders left in the middle of the afternoon, Lisa was approached by a big woman inmate whose masculine tendencies were glaringly apparent. She wasted no time.
"I run this place," she said. "You'll stay in line and obey orders or you'll get in trouble."
"What orders?"
"Any orders."
Lisa was willing to go as far as she could to avoid trouble, but she knew there was a point beyond which you couldn't go. That had been the girl's mistake in the operating room. She merely fought everything and everyone in sight without using her head.
If fighting was necessary, Lisa could do her share, but only after she'd sized things up and knew the score.
One thing here was for sure. The ward was a rat's nest of Lesbianism. That meant that in order to be completely accepted you had to practice one-way love.
"You get to like it, honey."
Someone, somewhere in Lisa's previous twenty-six years had put it that way. But Lisa knew it couldn't be that way in her case. At the time, she'd stoutly vowed that they'd have to tie her down and take it away from her. But she'd gained experience and now she wasn't quite sure of that. You could do anything once or twice in the name of expediency. In other words, you always used your head and kept your eye on your own goal.
But still, there could always come a time when you had to fight. And where the big butch who'd challenged her was concerned, Lisa felt the time might come quickly.
She shrugged. "I mind my own business-"
"My name's Mabel, honey, and I might mind it for you once in a while-okay?"
"I don't look for trouble."
"Well, if you do look for it here, you'll find it."
She obviously wanted a fight, possibly to impress the court of hangers-on who followed her. A leader, Lisa had learned, had to work at keeping up the image-particularly a bullying leader.
"Right now," Mabel said, "the washroom needs cleaning."
This was k. Lisa's instincts told her she wasn't even being given time to find out the score. This was it.
"Okay," she said, "go clean it."
They were in the day room, a big open space with chairs and tables grouped here and there and windows that looked out onto the lawn. It was a beautiful lawn because the tax-paying public could see it as they drove by. But inside, things weren't so good; at least not for Lisa, as the inmates of the Seventh Ward sensed a fight and began gathering around like vultures around a feast of carrion.
Lisa took two careful steps backward. She wasn't in the least fearful of the big butch. She'd found there was no point in going through life afraid. She'd finished being afraid on her fifteenth birthday-the day after she'd been raped twice in twenty-four hours.
Her eyes darted around the circle. They were moving in, but not too close. They would watch. They wouldn't fight Mabel's battle for her. Only later would they move in to pick the bones if they were told it was all right.
Mabel, the big butch brunette, was surprised by the defiance. Lisa was not small. She was five feet seven and there were good muscles under her sleek skin. But she was no physical match for Mabel.
Just a shade of uncertainty touched the big woman and she studied Lisa.
Lisa, in turn, was weighing her adversary mentally and planning her fight. A knee to the groin would be good but there was risk in getting too close. A kick in the belly would be fine, too, but there was also the risk of it missing if the timing went wrong.
Forked fingers in the eyes. That was the best bet. Even if you missed the target you could usually get away.
Mabel took a forward step. Lisa crouched slightly, took a half-step back, and waited. She saw a slight hesitation on the part of the big butch and it told her a great deal.
Mabel was a bully and hence, somewhat of a coward. She wanted the odds in her favor. No hidden traps, and she was bothered by Lisa's lack of fear. Lisa was supposed to fear her bulk and thus give Mabel half the victory before the fight started.
Mabel tried for a verbal advantage. "Baby, I'm going to take you apart and let the girls put you back together again."
Lisa didn't bother to reply.
"You'll be a lot better off if you just clean that bathroom and save the wear and tear on your hide."
Mabel didn't want to fight. Lisa realized that; at least not until she got a better line on Lisa and her capabilities. She regretted moving so quickly.
But she couldn't back down now. Lisa had to obey orders or others would start rebelling.
But then Mabel had a piece of luck. The door opened. Miss Henders had returned unexpectedly. This gave Mabel a reprieve. And Lisa too, for that matter.
"What's going on here?" the matron asked, frowning.
"We're just getting acquainted," Mabel said.
Miss Henders kept on frowning as she went into her office and Lisa learned something else. Mabel was not her official underling. The orders Mabel gave were her own and were not backed up by the matron. But another thing was also apparent. Lisa and Mabel were going to clash.
The clash came two days later, and would be indirectly responsible for Lisa's escape from Fallonhurst so it was of some dubious value.
But that night an incident came about that made the clash certain if it was not certain after the first brush.
Lisa drew a bed at the far end of the dormitory and was thus not put into the middle of a typical Ward Seven night. She'd gone to bed and was dozing after "lights out" and for a time all was quiet.
Then a deep sigh of contentment touched her ears. Then a giggle, followed by other soft, suspicious sounds. Lisa turned over and peered through the semi-darkness along the dormitory.
What was happening was obvious. The girls were pairing off for the night. Later, Lisa learned something about Fallonhurst policy. On the theory that containing an evil was easier than stamping it out, all the Lesbian element in the institution had been gathered into one ward.
Thus, Lisa's decision that the place was riddled with vice did not hold. Ward Seven was no indication of what went on in the other wards.
She lay listening and watched the silhouettes in the two lines of beds. Those that had acquired two occupants humped high in the gloom. The empty ones seemed sadly deserted.
The first pair of lovers who achieved ecstasy were not bashful about allowing it to be known. A high, thin cry of pleasure cut the darkness.
"Oh, honey-love me-love me!"
There was the sound of a sharp struggle and another cry. "Oh, no! Please."
"Yes, damn you. Yes."
"Be gentle with me."
This brought cynical laughter from listeners. And a born mimic burlesquing the plea: "Be gentle with me. Don't take me apart tonight. Tomorrow will be better."
There was a sudden thrashing in one of the beds and an occupant fought her way back to air. "Damn it! What are you trying to do-smother me?"
And the cynical mimic-observer: "It's dark down there, honey."
And from another: "But isn't it fun?"
Then a harsh voice: "Shut up or I'll come over there and knock your boobs off!"
Lisa closed her eyes and sighed wearily. The children's hour at Fallonhurst.
I've got to get out of this dump or I'll go nuts, she thought desperately.
Another laugh: "Aren't you glad they give us nightgowns instead of pajamas? They're so much more convenient."
A passionate struggle began in the bed next to Lisa and she got up and pulled her nightgown tight around her and hurried toward the bathroom. There at least, she could be alone for a while.
But this was not the case. As she closed the door behind her, she heard a soft sob. There was a nightlight in there and its dim rays picked out a pathetic white bundle crouched in one comer. The bundle whimpered. "Please don't," it moaned. "Leave me alone."
Lisa was not in the least touched but she was curious. "What's the matter. Did somebody work you over?"
"They won't leave me alone."
"Why don't you complain to the matron?"
"Are you kidding? She's worse than the others."
"What's your name?"
"Betty Smith."
Lisa, braced against one of the wash basins, tumbled in the pocket of her nightgown for cigarettes. "Smith," she murmured with a cynical smile. "It's a common name. Everybody is named Smith or Jones in places like this. Only the Smith and Jones girls get into trouble."
The flash of Lisa's match revealed a small blonde head on top of the bundled nightgown there on the floor.
"Can I have one of those?"
Lisa gave Betty a cigarette and leaned forward to light it for her. As the blonde girl raised her head, Lisa saw instantly why she would be popular in Fallonhurst's Ward Seven. She was very pretty freshly and childishly beautiful, and very feminine.
"I guess they would want to take the bloom off you. What happened to chase you in here?"
"That Mabel! She's so mean!"
"You can say that again."
"She wanted me to make love. But it's so ugly! Last night I was asleep and I woke up and there she was. She tried to get me to and I wouldn't and then two of her friends came over. One held my legs and the other practically sat on my head. It was just ugly. And then she did it to me-"
Lisa remembered what had happened to the strapped brunette in the examining room. She wondered how the brunette was faring.
"So tonight," Betty went on, "I was afraid to go to bed. So I hid in here."
Lisa dragged on her cigarette and considered the situation. But not from Betty's standpoint. She couldn't have cared less what happened to the little blonde. If you went around worrying about other people in this world, all you got was trouble for yourself.
She pondered things strictly on the basis of her own survival. The showdown with Mabel had to come and it could come in two ways. She could allow herself to be pushed into a comer where she would have to fight, or she could go on the theory that attack was always the best defense.
That was the plan she decided upon. Make the issue herself. And Betty could be the nub of that issue.
"You'd better come back and sleep with me," she said.
Betty sniffled doubtfully. "I've seen you around. You're nice. You're a lot cleaner and nicer than Mabel. But-"
"But it's so ugly," Lisa prompted with amusement. "Uh-huh."
"Well, you don't have to worry. I feel the same way about it. But if you stick with me, they'll think we're lovers and leave you alone."
Betty's eyes glowed in the dim light and she broke into a smile. "Golly! Would you? You're wonderful."
"Come on. You'll catch cold on that floor."
Back in the warmth of Lisa's bed, Betty sighed and snuggled close. Lisa's mother instinct did not respond in the least. It couldn't respond because it was non-existent. But Betty's close proximity was not unpleasant. Perhaps a certain spark of protective instinct did flare deep in Lisa's cold depths.
"What are you in for, honey?" she asked.
"Shoplifting-kind of."
"What do you mean-kind of?"
"It was in a big store where I lived. I saw a nice compact and didn't have the money."
"So you snitched it."
"Uh-huh. But I was coming back later and pay for it."
"Of course."
"Then this man caught me and took me to his office. He talked to me a while and said he wouldn't tell, that everything would be all right."
"Then he reached under your skirt and pulled your panties down."
"Uh-huh. How did you know?"
"I'm a good guesser. After he played around a while he told you to come back."
"That's right."
"And he figured he had a nice little thing going for himself. But it went wrong."
"Don't bother telling me. It doesn't matter. But he saved his own skin by sending you to the pokey."
"I couldn't understand it-after what we'd been to each other."
"Did you tell them?"
"Yes. And they sent me to a psychiatrist."
"It figures. The guy was such an upstanding citizen, they wouldn't believe you. Or claimed they didn't. They did believe you, though. They believed every word of it."
"No. They thought I was lying."
"No, honey. It's just that the guy was more important to the system. His wife probably still wanted him and the company needed his brain, so the easiest thing to do was railroad you out of the picture. Good old Frank just had a small understandable lapse. Or was that his name?"
"His name was Ben."
"Uh-huh. Go to sleep and dream about him. By the way-how old are you, Betty?"
"Twenty-three."
"Don't you have any folks?"
"My father is dead. My mother married again. She's in New York City. Her name is Gifford now. Clare. She married a man named Lew Gifford and didn't want me around. She said I upset him."
Lisa chuckled coldly. "I can imagine how."
There was a silence with Betty cuddling contentedly.
Then Lisa said, "Tell me about your mother."
"There's nothing to tell. She had a hard time when she was young. Times were hard then and she did everything she could to make a living after my father was killed."
"How did he die?"
"He was shot in Arizona-near the border. They said he was bringing something illegal into the country, but it wasn't true."
"Of course not. He was shot by mistake."
"How did you know?"
"It figures. Any time anybody gets shot it's a mistake."
"My mother tried everything to make a living. And they were mean to her. They accused her of posing for some pictures that weren't very nice. They put her in jail for a little while."
"But that wasn't true either."
"No. She was just in the place looking for a job when the police came."
"And the pictures really weren't of her at all."
"No. They were of a girl who looked like her."
"Where did this happen?"
"In a town called Mesa. It wasn't much of a name but it was a pretty big town."
"What's your real name, honey?"
"Spencer."
"It's a nice name. Go to sleep now, and get some rest so we can get up in the morning and have a wonderful time in this happy place."
"You're funny," Betty murmured sleepily.
"Uh-huh. Sometimes I just laugh and laugh...."
Betty's going into Lisa's bed was a thing not unnoticed. It worked out as Lisa had thought it would. Mable had made a play for Betty and Betty going to Lisa constituted a rejection of Mabel in the eyes of Ward Seven's population-something Mabel could not tolerate without losing face.
The challenge came the next morning.
"You've got a long nose, baby," Mabel said.
"What does that mean?" Lisa demanded.
"It means you smell things that don't belong to you and take them to bed with you."
"I didn't see any claim checks."
"You didn't look far enough then. But it's there. So lay off."
"You've got a real big mouth," Lisa said. "But I can close it." Attack. The best defense. Lisa moved forward with narrowed eyes.
"Not here, you idiot. We'd both go into solitary. We've got a place to settle things."
"Where? In the superintendent's office?"
"Don't be funny. Outside."
"I'd like that. I like the fresh air. This place stinks."
"Tomorrow afternoon. We'll show you."
The we was to imply that Mabel had the whole ward behind her. But Lisa doubted this.
She took Betty into bed with her that night also, and was not challenged. Evidently a truce had been declared until the time of battle.
It took place that afternoon behind an old shed on a far comer of the grounds. This was an area not covered by the grounds staff of Fallonhurst. A kind of jungle discovered by the inmates and ignored by everyone else.
In order to insure privacy, only a small group of observers was allowed to be present.
"Your gang?" Lisa sneered.
"Pick three of your own. I'll pick three."
"I don't need anybody yet"
"Trying to back out?"
"The hell with you!" Lisa pointed. "You-and you-and you." She did not even know their names.
Allowed two hours on the grounds, the contestants and the audience drifted to the battleground in ones and twos. Lisa was shown the way by one of the girls she'd picked-a big, pallid woman who remained silent and appeared to be a most dubious ally in this situation. Lisa found Mabel and the others already there when she arrived.
There were no preliminaries. Mabel said, "All right, honey-now you're going to get it." And she charged.
Lisa slipped aside and was forced to jerk her hair out of Mabel's grasp by sheer desperate force. This spun Mabel halfway around and Lisa kicked out viciously and raised a welt on the bigger woman's thigh. Mabel snarled and charged again. Her strategy was to get her hands on Lisa. Then her brute strength would be the deciding factor.
One of Mabel's advantages was a loyal audience. The three she'd chosen to watch were clearly on her side, while Lisa's blind selections stood in a sullen group and seemed more worried about being discovered than watching the fight.
One of Lisa's followers was particularly malevolent. She glared at Lisa venomously and said, "Knee the witch in the gut. Rupture her!"
Mabel attempted to do just that after two tries at comering Lisa and failing. But her legs were too big and too slow and Lisa used the time to demonstrate a technique seldom used between female fighters.
A straight right to the jaw.
Mabel was wide open and Lisa's fist splatted against her mouth and brought a look of pain and surprise. But that was about all. Lisa did not have enough power in her punch to do damage other than to draw blood.
The punch actually did Lisa damage in that it enraged the big brunette, who regajned her balance and charged in furiously.
This time, she got her hands on Lisa and hauled her to the ground. The watchers leaned forward avidly, their comments indicative of what they wished for Lisa.
"Bust her wide open."
"Jam her head into the wall."
Lisa fought and clawed desperately, but Mabel's bull-strength prevailed. Grinning, Mabel seized Lisa by the hair and banged her head against the hard ground.
Lisa saw stars.
The second contact of her skull with the ground dazed her and she went limp.
This was what Mabel wanted-a few moments to manipulate Lisa's inert body. Lisa felt herself being twisted and turned and when her head cleared, she found it locked tight between Mabel's thick, powerful thighs. Her face was turned inward and to the rear and there was the smell of sweaty flesh in her nostrils and the taste of it in her mouth. The highest parts of Mabel's thighs were squeezing down on Lisa's throat from either side, almost, but not quite, cutting off her breath. All Lisa could see when she opened her eyes, were two huge mounds of flesh with a dividing line between them.
She heard a victorious, satisfied voice. "If you bite, I'll cripple you."
A dire threat because Mabel now had Lisa in a position where she could do anything she wanted in leisure and with impunity.
Lsia took a deep, reeking breath. Mabel took note of it with a thick chuckle.
"That tickles, sweetie."
There was laughter.
Lisa began to fight. Restricted as she was, this took the form of trying to kick her way out of the hold. She lifted her legs and spread them wide for leverage, and threw her whole body into the effort. But it only brought fresh pain to her tightly clamped neck. She felt a hand on her head. Mabel had reached back and was jamming Lisa's face deeper into her own flesh.
"Nice, huh?" One of the watchers asked enviously.
"Shut up and watch," another ordered. "You're supposed to be keeping an eye out."
Lisa kicked again and felt hands on her naked body-naked except for a pair of flimsy panties. Then they were gone and she knew Mabel had gotten help from her allies.
Lisa dropped back, half on her side, sprawled half on her back, exhausted.
"You took the fight out of her," someone commented.
"Uh-huh," Mabel grunted. "Now let's decorate her up a little. Give me a handful of dirt."
Lisa fought and writhed through the next few moments of humiliation and pain and laughter from the watchers. Her arms flailed uselessly as she made helpless gestures toward protecting her exposed parts. Now someone was holding her by the ankles.
"Another handful," Mabel said.
Lisa tried to fight. She would have bitten her way out if she could have managed it but she was even deprived of her teeth as weapons. So rigidly was she held in the thick fork of Mabel's gross body that she could not get a grip on the slippery flesh with her teeth. It was a scant inch too far away. Only her tongue, hardly a lethal weapon touched Mabel as Lisa tried to get a mouthful of flesh to bite down on.
But she kept on trying, mainly to keep her mind off the pain and humiliation of what was happening to other parts of her body.
"Now that stick."
It was Mabel's voice and Lisa lunged with the fresh strength of desperation and panic. "No! No!"
Then another voice, sharp with warning. "Cheese it! Somebody heard. Somebody's coming."
And Lisa was left alone. But only after Mabel, freeing her and rising from the ground, grasped her head in two strong hands and slammed it against the wall of the shed.
Lisa blacked out in the thundering crash of the contact.
Total blackout did not seem to last long. Consciousness returned hazily; a half-, or quarter-conscious ness in which Lisa lay helpless in what seemed to be a dream state.
There was someone present but she thought it was not Authority. Someone else. Things were being done to her. Unpleasant, but not in the class of punishment Mabel had administered. Almost pleasant by comparison. She was being turned on her back and comparatively gentle things were done and then she was rolled onto her belly again. Then there was a weight and effort-at least it seemed that way in the dream.
Someone was very close to her.
When consciousness worthy of the name returned, whatever had been done to her was all over. She rolled off her belly and looked up. She saw a man. He was grinning. There was satisfaction in his face. He was tightening his belt and pushing his shirt in.
"Somebody really worked you over, honey," he said.
Lisa knew instantly that he was one of her kind. Heartless, cynical, cold, without compassion in any form. She accepted him on that basis. Instantly hating him as much as he hated her because it was their joint nature to hate. It was what they did easily. It was their instinct to be contemptuous of each other.
She stared at him and then looked down at herself, sprawled naked there on the ground.
"It wasn't my imagination. You did it while I was out."
He grinned, lounging there against the wall, not at all embarrassed. "A guy pass up a chance like that? You're out of your mind."
Lisa sat up. He made no gesture toward helping her.
"You couldn't handle the big broad."
"She had help."
He looked at the small pile of wet mud by the wall. "They all helped I' guess." He picked up a stick that lay nearby, tossed it end over end, and caught it.
"Good thing I happened along."
"The hell with you." Lisa came painfully to her feet. "God! I've got to get out of this place."
"It might just be arranged."
She frowned at him. "Who the hell are you?"
"Name's Chick Bell. I work around here sometimes."
"Long enough to get the price of a bottle?"
"Maybe. But I know my way around."
"You mean you can get me out?"
"Could be."
"How soon?"
"Not so fast."
Lisa bent painfully down to pick up her panties. Slowly, she lifted one leg and then the other and pulled them into place.
Chick Bell continued to grin. "The butch was rough."
"Never mind her. What's with getting out of this place?"
He squinted at the high wall. "That's not the way if it's what you're thinking."
"I'm not thinking. I'm asking."
"I can get you out."
"What will it cost me."
"I liked what I had. Let's say some more of the same."
Lisa thought swiftly. It was worth it. "Okay when we get out."
"Uh-uh. How about some more samples before we start?"
"When would we go?"
"As soon as I can arrange it."
"And in the meantime-?"
"You take little trips out here on your recreative periods."
"All right."
He took a step toward her but Lisa held up a hand.
"Not now. I'm too sore."
"Okay."
"I'm going to show you I'll hold up my end," she said.
His grin deepened. "That's all I want, honey. Just hold up your end and I'll do the rest." His grin deepened. His expression said, Baby, having you over a barrel is going to be great.
Aloud, he said, "But you've got to hold it still. I'm a guy that doesn't like to keep reaching. I want it right there in front of me where it's easy to get at."
If Lisa's resolve was going to falter, it would have done so then. She would have thrown dirt in his face. The fact that she held still for the insults, proved she would hold still for anything he had to offer-for as long as she had to.
Now she smoothed down her skirt. "Pardon me, mister. Right now I've got to go in and win a fight."
"Win! You just lost it."
"Not me. That was only the first round...."
CHAPTER FOUR
Lisa smiled as she remembered what had happened that night in Ward Seven. But then, quite suddenly, there was no time to think. It was four o'clock in the morning and she was driving through a small, sleepy little town on the way to New York City and there was a policeman sitting on a motorcycle in a dark, empty gas station.
Rage flared through Lisa. What the hell was he doing there? Why wasn't he home in bed like honest people? His eye was on the green coupe and Lisa saw him throw a leg over the cycle as she drove past. If he flagged her down, it was curtains. No driver's license. No identification. A car perhaps already reported as stolen. She heard the cop gun his motor and roll out into the street. She saw the single headlamp in her rear-view mirror.
Her first instinct was to push the gas down and get all she could out of the coupe. But it wouldn't be enough. Her second thought was to pull up and meet the guy with a big smile and ask directions.
That wasn't any good either. Too obvious.
That left only one thing. Do exactly as she was doing. Drive along well inside the speed limit and wait to see what would happen. Play it by ear. When he stopped her she still might be able to make a deal. The cop was a man and she could show him a nice length of leg. Right up to the top if necessary.
Play it by ear and hope.
The light got bigger, the sound of the motorcycle louder. Then it was suddenly gone. Lisa peered back through the mirror and realized the cop had turned off into one of the residential streets. He had been on his way home.
Her sweep of distorted gratitude was so great that she loved the man for a moment. She felt like getting out of the car and getting down on her knees for him-if he'd been there.
Then reality asserted itself and she sneered at the stupid idiot. He'd had a big pinch right in front of him and hadn't had sense enough to make it.
She drove on, the fierce elation that had buoyed her since leaving Fallonhurst, coming to lift her again. So confident did she become, that she took a chance and stopped at the next drive-in and had breakfast. The counterman was too sleepy even to notice what a nice dish his first customer was. She drove away with a sense of even greater confidence.
Around ten o'clock, she pulled into a fair-sized town in New Jersey and passed a bus stop where perhaps fifty people stood waiting.
This gave her an idea and she drove three blocks and parked the car in an alley and hurried back to the bus station. Her luck was fantastically good because just as she got back there, before anyone had a chance to look at her and perhaps remember, a New York City bus pulled up.
She got a seat by the window in the back and the man who sat down beside her dived into his newspaper, and paid her no attention whatsoever.
The bus pulled into New York City a little more than an hour later and Lisa went straight to a pawn shop and bought a fairly decent-looking suitcase.
Faith in her slogan, "All men are pigs," was bolstered when the proprietor looked appreciatively at her bosom and offered to take the price of the suitcase out in trade. A quick few minutes in the back room between customers.
Lisa considered swiftly, decided the price of the bag wasn't worth it, and sneered at him.
She left the pawnshop and found a reasonably shabby-looking hotel and took a room. The bellhop who showed her up to the seventh floor was very old and not interested in trade, so she was not bothered.
Alone, she estimated her progress and found it satisfactory. Floor Seven in even this cheap hotel was far better than Ward Seven at Fallonhurst.
She undressed, took a hot bath and got into bed. It was the most luxurious feeling she had ever experienced.
As she drifted off to sleep, she thought of Betty and hoped her little friend was making out all right. Maybe Betty was back at Fallonhurst by this time.
As to her own danger, she wasn't greatly worried. "I never killed anybody," she murmured. "And that's the only rap they really keep after you for ... "
But then, in her dreams, she was committing murder....
It was all so terribly vivid-so real. She was back home-the only place she'd ever stayed long enough to call home-in Bensonville. She'd come home from school just as she had that day before her fifteenth birthday and was in the bedroom changing her clothes when he came home. He was the man her mother had gone to live with after she'd left Lisa's real father. He had a name but Lisa seldom used it. Lew Bode. Just as she had a name. Helen Bode. They had this farm and she was his wife. Or maybe she wasn't. Maybe they just lived together out of habit. Anyhow, Lisa's mother had gone there to work-to be the cook and maid and anything else they needed, the one stipulation on her part having been that she could bring her daughter.
It was all right with the Bodes. They'd made quite a lot of money on their farm and had finally gotten to be a couple of slobs. It was the only way Lisa could think of them.
It wasn't just that they were dirty and slovenly and fought all the time. It was something else. Nor was it that they drank a lot-both of them. Lisa's main dread of them was something she couldn't quite put her finger on. But it was there.
And on this particular afternoon, when her mother had driven the car to another town to pick up some special supplies Lew Bode had ordered, Bode poked his head into Lisa's room and grinned.
Lisa saw that he was drunk. If she had cringed perhaps everything would have been all right. But she was standing there in her panties and bra with a towel in front of her and she was scared.
"Get out of here."
His grin vanished. "Now listen here-"
"This is my room-mine and Mom's. You get out."
"This is my house, young lady. You watch your lip."
"You get out."
He had been drinking heavily and he staggered in and loomed over her, his thick underlip jutting out and his eyes bloodshot.
"I hate you! You're dirty! Get out!"
He seized the towel and jerked it away. Lisa backed off until she touched the bed. She opened her mouth to scream.
Bode, a look of quick fear on his face, reached out and caught Lisa around the waist and pulled her close as he plastered a huge hand over her mouth.
"Now you shut up!"
She struggled, her eyes wide and terrified over his hand.
"You shut up, see? No little kid like you is going to get me in trouble."
This wasn't exactly like being in a city, but there was hired help around the place. Someone could probably hear a scream and come to investigate.
His anger was probably a defense mechanism against his fear, a way of telling himself indignantly that this wasn't his fault. He hadn't come to hurt the little tramp.
But there was also desire and lust and Lisa's beautiful, half-naked little body against his.
The liquor was in him and it made him unstable mercurial of mood and reaction.
"I never get none from that wife of mine," he whined. "Never none at all. You understand, don't you, honey? You understand how it is with a man?" But he lashed out, knocking her back across the bed.
His hand slipped away. Lisa started another scream.
"You be quiet! Understand?"
Then his weight was upon her, his body arched as he held his face up away from hers so he could look at her.
"You know how it is, don't you, honey? You wouldn't blame a man."
Lisa said nothing. She was in pure terror.
"You be nice to me. Then I won't do anything to you. I won't slap you or-or do anything like that as long as you're nice to me and don't yell."
Lisa's mind tried to work. If she wasn't nice to him he would hit her again. Maybe he would kill her. If she was nice to him, everything would be all right. So she said nothing. She lay there in silence, trembling under his weight.
He took this as consent and drooled as he smiled. He lifted himself off her and lay stretched beside her. But one of his big hands was close to her head-poised there like a dreadful threat-half doubled into a fist.
He tickled her with a thumb, sickeningly coy. "What we got under there, honey-huh? What we got under there?"
Frozen, she let him remove her bra and felt his wet mouth sucking at her flesh. He made noises like an animal ravenous for food-a ravenous pig. He raised his head from this first feed, his leer deepening.
"And what have we got under those, honey?"
He removed them, lifting Lisa's thighs and buttocks. He dropped them and looked and then raised his eyes to hers in genuine wonder.
"You're only fifteen years old? You're sure, honey?"
He did not wait for the answer that was not forthcoming. He again plunged, his hand busy now, below-searching, finding, hurting dreadfully.
Then there was the piggish, lustful weight of him, and the thing Lisa should have given later, in love, wrested from her in lust and brutality.
A nightmare of lunging, grunting struggle. His hand over her mouth toward the end as her screams arose again.
Then it was over. He tottered to his feet looking even more terrifying in his obscene male nudity. He looked at Lisa with doubt and confusion and there was probably regret and perhaps some shame in him.
He took her ankles gently into his hands and lowered her stiff legs and placed them carefully together.
"Now you sleep, honey. You rest, see. You're a woman now. How about that? You're a woman and not many girls get to be women at fifteen." He paused in his fear and regret to remember the thrill of it. "But you were ready, honey-you sure were ready."
Lisa whimpered.
"You take a little sleep now. We'll talk later...."
Lisa did not dream all of it. Part of it was dream and then she would half-awaken and remember and then go back to sleep again-there in the cheap hotel room in New York City.
All so long ago, as time had gone-for her-fast and furious after that. And it was kind of funny a funny idea struck her and made her smile as she lay there. He said, You get some sleep, honey.
And now, ten years and more later; she was finally obeying him. She'd slept.
Sleeping; awakening; dreaming.
Asleep again now, she dreamed of lying on that other bed when she would be fifteen years old the next day and had been raped and was a woman before her fifteenth birthday.
She lay there and dreamed it as it had happened; opened her eyes in her dreams and saw his wife, Helen Bode standing by the bed.
Even then, in the reality, her image had been deceptive. She'd looked motherly. Now, in the later dream-distortion, she looked even more so.
Lisa began to cry.
"What's the matter, kid?"
Lisa told her-blurted it out between sobs and Helen Bode was lying on the bed beside her, holding her in her arms, stroking her hair.
"Don't worry, baby. That husband of mine-he's a pig. He disgusts me. Don't worry. T won't let him touch you again. You just trust me."
It was so comforting. She'd been wrong about Helen Bode. She was nice. She understood.
Helen Bode continued to comfort her gently, soothingly.
"You're such a beautiful little thing."
And a little later, the same words of awe and surprise that her husband had used.
"Why you are practically a woman, little sweetheart."
And the second hammer blow from destiny with the hammer scarcely having been lifted from the first one. The same piggish lust. The same drooling, obscene hunger, the same ravenous technique.
And a far deeper scar in the soft, emotional ground of a deeply sensitive nature. Long afterward, in her dreams, Lisa heard the sounds of that particular brand of degeneracy; felt the sickening, wet contact; experienced the bewildering physical reaction of a young body's automatic reply to the erotic....
"Now, honey," the evil voice crooned "Wasn't that nice?"
Lisa shuddered, emptied and confusingly spent. It had been wonderful and horrible. It was all mixed up. She didn't know. She was sick inside and terribly frightened.
"Sleep now, sweetheart. We'll talk later." They both wanted her to sleep. They both wanted to talk. They'd both been pigs. So long, long ago.
And now, finally exhausted, Lisa slept in that shabby hotel room in Manhattan....
CHAPTER FIVE
Lisa liked the neighborhood. It was in the east '80's near Central Park and it smelled of money. This point had bothered her because money was the basic idea of the whole thing. If there was no money, what she planned would not have made much sense.
She checked the address again and then entered a towering apartment building where a uniformed doorman saluted her respectfully. But there was no reason he should not have done this because she'd spent forty of her precious dollars on clothes and wore a quiet, yet tasteful dress that needed no apology.
She checked the directory and then entered the self-service elevator and pushed the 26th-floor button. On the way up, she had her first doubts, her first butterflies-in-the-stomach type of worry.
It was one thing to plan an operation with the safety of distance between you and your objective, and another to approach that objective and come face to face with it.
But she wasn't going to turn tail and run. She'd come too far and the trip had been too perilous for that. She found her door and pushed the bell.
A middle-aged maid answered. As she opened the door, her face had been at rest, so to speak-passively alert to reflect in any direction depending upon who had rung.
When the woman saw Lisa her expression faded slightly toward cordiality, but the wariness remained. She was going to make no mistakes.
"Yes, Miss?"
"I would like to see Mrs. Gifford."
"Do you have an appointment?"
"No, but I'm sure she will see me. My name is Lisa Harcourt."
Like most people who use aliases, Lisa chose one that remained in the neighborhood of her true name. She had debated using any at all and had decided to do so but she was still a little vague as to the need of it.
"Is Mrs. Gifford acquainted with you, Miss Harcourt?"
Lisa wanted to slap this stupid watchdog in the face. What right had she to be so nosy? This witch had better be careful, she thought. If things work out right I might have her fired.
Lisa smiled calmly. "Just tell Mrs. Gifford that I'm a friend of her daughter."
The maid's eyes widened just enough to tell Lisa that Mrs. Gifford having a daughter was a surprise to her.
"Please step inside. I'll tell Mrs. Gifford that you're here."
Lisa entered and sat admiring the luxurious foyer, and hugging herself at her good fortune. All fears, all doubts, had vanished now. Faith in her own destiny had come to the fore and taken over.
Then the maid came back, her face frigid. "I'm sorry, Mrs. Gifford says that she has no daughter."
The maid marched grimly to the door and opened it. All that was missing to round out the picture of militant belligerency was a pistol or a saber.
Lisa left a trifle dazed. She hadn't expected to have it work out quite this way. But by the time she'd reached the lobby, the stunning effect of the dismissal had worn off.
The stupid witch! With a face like that, she'd have a hell of a time getting another job when the time came.
Anger oozing from every pore, Lisa walked to the first drugstore, where she found and opened the telephone book. She found her number and rammed a dime in and dialed as though she hated the holes into which she pushed her finger.
There were four rings and the voice of the maid came over the wire. "The Gifford residence."
"This is the girl you just threw out. Now I have a message for Mrs. Gifford and you'd better give it to her. Tell her that I've got some pictures for sale some pictures taken in Mesa, Arizona, of a girl named Spencer-Clare Spencer. I thought she might like them for her scrapbook."
There was an uncertain silence. Then the maid replied. "Where can Mrs. Gifford call you if she's interested?"
"I'll call her back in an hour. Tell Mrs. Gifford that if she isn't interested in the pictures, I'll try to sell them elsewhere."
"Very well."
The maid hung up and Lisa went out into the street and began walking rapidly. Her face was hot but the weather was not warm enough to justify this. She realized the heat was emotional. She'd stepped over the line. She'd made the pitch.
And this was blackmail.
A little of the fright came back, but her anger at being treated like a tramp by the maid still predominated. Then, as she walked, the fear increased as she realized a mistake she'd made. She'd told the maid too much.
That was what came from being new at any game. In the beginning you made mistakes. She'd stupidly told the maid enough to give her blackmail material against Mrs. Gifford if she was smart enough to use it and had the inclination.
Lisa's spirits dropped. She needed a drink, but hesitated to go into any of the bars she passed. If she'd laid out trouble for herself, she might be remembered.
She walked. The time dragged by. Finally, after forty minutes, she could bear it no longer. What was the difference-forty minutes or half an hour? The cat had jumped one way or the other by this time.
She went into a drugstore and again dialed the Gifford number. The maid did not answer.
"This is Mrs. Gifford."
Lisa detected fear in the voice, or thought she did. It lifted her spirits. "I called a little while ago about-"
"You're Miss Harcourt?"
"Yes."
"I wonder if you'd drop up to see me? Perhaps we can talk."
Lisa emerged triumphantly from the drugstore. "You're damned right we can talk," she murmured grimly....
"Exactly what do you want of me, Miss Harcourt?"
Lisa sat quietly in Mrs. Clare Gifford's luxurious apartment, but there was nervousness behind her smooth facade. This was it. The demand. Her answer to Clare Gifford's question would make the blackmail attempt official. What if there were a tape recorder hidden somewhere? What if there were a couple of cops waiting outside the door.
Lisa didn't want to think about that, nor did she want to answer Clare Gifford's question.
She stared at her host. Clare Gifford was a pathetically well-kept blonde. Money and skill had been used to fight the washed-out look that is the light blonde's destiny as age advances. The wrinkles, tightened away and retightened, were still stubbornly there, waiting for a chance to turn into crepe skin and deep ravines.
Clare Gifford wore an expensive but somewhat skimpy house coat-as though showing her body were a habit or a compulsion. She'd kept her figure well and had a sex-aura about her that possibly still captivated her husband, although Lisa was sure he'd long since made contact with younger sex partners and probably Mrs. Clare Gifford wasn't getting much any more.
Her legs were still nice. The thighs Lisa could see as Clare crossed her legs were still seductive. They promised some excitement and no doubt the average wolf would have taken a crack at her.
But there was something sensed rather than seen. The ample hips gave an impression of having been used often and over a long stretch of time. Any man would know he had experience here.
Thus Lisa subconsciously evaluated Clare Spencer-Gifford until she found a satisfactorily evasive answer to her question.
"Don't you want to ask me anything about Betty, your daughter?"
Clare Gifford's slightly faded blue eyes were vague and troubled. "That was so very long ago. I'm sure Betty is doing well."
"She said Mr. Gifford didn't like her. But I'm sure it wasn't that way."
"I don't understand."
Lisa's courage was rising in ratio to the uneasiness and fear Clare manifested and made apparent.
"I think perhaps you felt he would like her too much."
"You're being impudent."
"I'm a realist."
"Frankly, I'm more interested in the pictures you have to sell."
"I have no pictures, Mrs. Gifford."
"Then why-?"
"I don't think I need any pictures."
Obviously, Clare Gifford was also an amateur to the role of a blackmailer's victim. She was displaying far too much fear and vulnerability. The look of relief on her face amused Lisa.
"Then you have nothing!"
"Mrs. Gifford," Lisa said sweetly, now risking a tape recorder or cops or anything else of danger. "Why would pictures be necessary? It's what I know that counts. The records are all there in Mesa, Arizona."
"It was so long ago."
"That's what records are for. To keep track of things that happened long ago."
"How much do you want?"
"I just want a break, Mrs. Gifford. I'm not hard to get along with." Lisa waved a graceful hand. "You've got all this. I've got nothing." There was a pause. "I assume your husband doesn't know about Mesa or your ex-husband being shot-"
"You know that too?"
"I know a lot."
Clare Gifford's signs of distress heightened. She got up and walked rapidly back and forth across the room. Her eyes were haunted. She nibbled nervously at her lips.
Definitely, Lisa told herself, a pushover for blackmail.
"I've got to think," Clare Gifford blurted. "I'm reasonable. How long will it take?"
"Give me a couple of days."
"That's a long time. I'm broke. I haven't got a dime."
"I can make you a loan."
"All right. Let's call it a loan."
"I have some small cash here in my desk."
She went to a drawer and came back fumbling with a small sheaf of bills. She made an attempt to count it and failed. She thrust the money at Lisa.
"Here. Take this."
Lisa accepted the money and put it into her bag without counting it. "This will do for a couple of days," she said.
Clare Gifford ran her fingers through her hair in distraught fashion. "Now please go! I must think." She was bordering on hysteria. "Please go. I can't stand looking at you."
Lisa arose, vaguely frightened. What sort of a person was she dealing with? "I can find my way out," she said, and moved toward the door.
She opened it and was looking into the cold, hostile face of the maid.
"Show this person out, Laura," Clare Gifford called. "The visit is completed."
"I'll call you in a couple of days," Lisa warned.
"This way," the maid snapped.
By the time they reached the door, Lisa had reached a conclusion. Laura was tough. Laura was made of hard metal. Laura was a person to be very careful with.
Had she been listening?
As Lisa went down the elevator, the slam of the door still ringing in her ears, she tried to evaluate Laura. Was she loyal to Clare Gifford, or did she have ideas of her own about how to use the information she'd received?
Back in the street, Lisa's courage returned to full power. The hell with them. The hell with all of them. She had them where she wanted them and she was finally going to get a break.
No, not get a break. That sounded too much like luck. She was making her own break. What she got she would deserve. If you sat around and waited for the dice to roll right, you never got anywhere.
When she got back to her room, she counted the money Clare Gifford had referred to as small cash. It came to three hundred dollars!
Lisa whistled softly. The stupid dame had made a big mistake. She'd given Lisa an idea of what to ask for in the final settlement. Not highly versed in blackmail and a little timid about the whole thing, she'd thought in terms of a modest stake-perhaps a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars. And she'd had every intention of making that the last; of vanishing with the money and not returning.
But new vistas had opened. Why not five thousand? Or even ten? And with Clare Gifford so obviously fearful, why walk away from a good thing?
Giddy with the novelty of the new world that had opened to her, Lisa threw herself down on the bed and laughed.
But then she found that there had been more strain in the interview than she'd imagined. Now she felt a reaction. She was tired.
But whatever tension there had been no longer existed. She felt deliciously relaxed and light-hearted. As she lay there, this sense of well-being merged with pleasant fantasy as her eyes grew heavy. It was a time of triumph and as she went half-asleep, her mind went back to another time of triumph. A somewhat different time.
And a different type of triumph....
Again, she walked away from the shed where Mabel had head-locked her to the ground and inflicted indignities and humiliations upon her that were actually lower than animal. Sadistic, lustful indignities that the psychophants of the big brunette butch had watched with sick fascination and loyal sniggerings.
That had been a bad afternoon, because, to top it off there had been the second humiliation, lying there helpless while Chick Bell performed his bestiali ties. She was sure that was what it had been but was in the unique position of not being able to tell because of prior soreness and abuse. But it certainly felt like it.
Her knees had been a little wobbly and her thighs had quivered from weakness as she returned to the ward. A few wise and leering eyes watched her as she passed through the recreation room but there was no one in the dormitory and she had the luxury of solitude as she threw herself on her bed.
For a short while, she allowed herself tears. But not for long. The whimperers in this world, the weepers, never got anywhere. It took guts and courage, not tears, to survive.
She lay there for a long time, no one bothering her. She had no desire for food and no one questioned her absence from the dining hall. Evening came. She heard the inmates in the recreation hall as from a long distance away.
Then they began filtering into the dormitory. Lisa lay without moving. She heard their whispers and gigglings as they relived her humiliation and passed it on to the others. It was embroidered in the telling:
"Mabel made her crawl. She really did."
"Mabel made her get down on her knees and lick her feet.
"Did you hear that? Did you hear what they said Mabel made her do? Get down on her knees and lick her."
Giggles. Whisperings.
Lisa lay as though sleeping.
A timid hand touched her shoulder and she knew who it was even before Betty spoke.
"I'm sorry, Lisa. I'm sorry that big slob-"
"Shut up. Go away."
"But-"
"I said, beat it."
Hurt, Betty went away. Lisa waited for what she knew must come. Mabel would have to extend her triumph. She would have to exhibit her victory to the whole ward so they would know who was boss.
She heard Mabel's voice, harsh, unpleasant, talking to others, issuing orders that were promptly obeyed, savoring the moment to come; letting Lisa lie there and suffer in anticipation.
Finally, late in the evening, she approached Lisa's bed. "You! Up off your lard. That bathroom's still got to be cleaned."
Lisa did not move. Mabel came closer. A knee nudged Lisa's thigh.
"You-I gave an order-"
Lisa went into action like a coiled spring suddenly released. She'd found an ugly little two-foot club on her way in. It was clutched in her fist now, and as she came up, she swung it viciously.
The aim was true and there was a thunk as it found the side of the surprised Mabel's head. The blow was perfect. Not hard enough to knock Mabel out-just hard enough to daze her.
Mabel staggered backward toward the next bed. Dull terror welled from her eyes as she threw up a pawing protective arm.
Lisa's next blow went under it, smashing into Mabel's kneecap. The quick agony brought a squall of pain and Mabel tilted forward.
Lisa was on her knees, now, her body balanced on the hard mattress. She drew the club back and showed Mabel another cruel method of attack by jamming the end of the club viciously into her belly just above her ample crotch.
Mabel's eyes bulged. Her mouth flew open and she gagged audibly as her knees weakened and she went down.
There was just enough space to accommodate her bulk from neck to buttocks between the beds and she had dropped, through reflex action from Lisa's punishment, into this terribly vulnerable position.
Now, down there on her hands and knees, she looked up at Lisa in terror, her eyes dulled as though, in addition to the blow on her head, Mabel was trying to figure out what had happened.
Lisa raised the club again.
Mabel's lips moved and a babble came out that sounded like, "Please don't hit me. Please don't."
Lisa stood poised, completely in control, over the hulking Lesbian.
"Back up."
Mabel stared, uncomprehending. How could she back up when her buttocks were pressed against the frame of a bed that was bolted to the floor.
"Back up. Under the bed. Crawl back. Squat down and make it or take a split skull!"
So far as Mabel's expression was concerned, she was facing madness. She had seen madness before and she wore the expression of one who sees death close by.
"I can't," she whimpered hoarsely.
Lisa's eyes blazed and she lifted the club.
"No! No! I'll do it."
Desperately Mabel spread her big legs, thus lowering the level of her back. She pushed frantically backward on the heels of her hands and began crawfishing backward under the bed. Lisa stood where she was until Mabel's buttocks appeared on the other side. Mabel stopped hopefully.
"Farther back. Don't stall."
Mabel continued to crawfish until the sharp rim of the bed frame was pressing into the small of her back. The nightgown she'd been wearing had long since been pulled up tight around her shoulders. The whole lower part of her heavy body had come inch by inch from under the bed entirely naked.
The inmates of Ward Seven had moved softly and fearfully forward and now crowded that part of the dormitory. Lisa ignored them.
"That's far enough," she snapped, and jumped lithely over the bed to check the result of her demands. They were spectacular, to say the least. Mabel's bulk protruding from the trap into which she had been forced. The narrow confines forced her to maintain the spraddled squatting position and her fear of Lisa's wrath prohibited her from dropping to her belly.
Her eyes aflame with hate, Lisa began using the club as a paddle, its surface smacking against Mabel's big rear and buttocks with each blow. Then her whole posterior was a bright red.
Breathing heavily, Lisa stopped and went around to the other side. Tears were streaming down Mabel's ugly face.
And Lisa was particularly gratified to hear the comments from the assembled harpies. There was no sympathy for Mabel. She had been a tyrant and they were being freed from her.
"She can dish it out but she can't take it."
"Lisa ought to ram that club-"
Lisa surveyed the packed groups. "Anybody want to get even with her?"
None was that brave. Lisa lowered her eyes toward the cowering Lesbian. "Anything more out of you, butch, and I'll kill you-get that? I'll break your skull or put a knife in you."
Mabel, her tears streaming, sobbed. She had been broken completely.
"Now crawl out of there."
Mabel obeyed and stood rubbing her back.
"Now that bathroom. You were saying something needed cleaning in there?"
"I'm sorry-" Mabel blubbered.
"Shut up. Get into the bathroom. We'll see about this crawling and licking business...."
Lisa had been lucky. Her punishment of Mabel had not been interrupted by Authority. And nothing would be said. She was sure of this.
From that moment on, she would rule Ward Seven....
But she hadn't wanted to rule it. She had wanted only to plan her escape without interference. And that, she had been able to do.
She remembered it now with lazy satisfaction as she lay drowzing on the bed in her hotel. Now there was nothing to do but wait for her new triumph to bear fruit.
Life had turned good for her. And it had been easy. So wonderfully easy. All it had taken was a little imagination and a lot of guts.
But she'd earned it. That was sure. She'd come to the big city and conquered it.
From now on, the sky was the limit.
Almost asleep now, Lisa was brought sharply awake by a knock on the door. Her mind worked swiftly. She had left the light on and she glanced at the clock. She was surprised at the time. It was evening. Four hours had passed since she'd talked to Clare Gifford.
Not much time.
Lisa was frightened, but she was wary as she went to the door.
It was a middle-aged bellhop. He smiled and revealed two gaps in his teeth but he was obviously still hopeful.
"There's a phone call for you, Miss Harcourt. Thought you might want to answer it."
Lisa's mouth twisted in contempt as she brushed past him toward the phone at the end of the hall where the receiver was hanging loose.
"Why shouldn't I want to answer it!"
The bellhop went downstairs shaking his head sadly as Lisa picked up the receiver. "Hello."
"This is Laura Crew, Mrs. Gifford's maid. I have a message for you."
"I'm listening."
"Mrs. Gifford would like you to meet her tomorrow night. Are you familiar with Greenwich Village?"
"No."
"She wishes you to meet her on the west side. She will be waiting for you in her car at the comer of Twelfth Street and Eleventh Avenue."
"What kind of a neighborhood is that?"
"It's somewhat lonely there at that time of night, but quite safe. I think you'll understand Mrs. Gifford's desire to make her contact with you as private as possible."
"It figures. But her husbands is away at work in the daytime. Tell me, why can't I come over to her apartment?"
"There are others around. I think you might at least respect Mrs. Gifford's wishes in this matter. You have brought her enough trouble."
Lisa considered the proposition. "Will she have money with her?"
"I think you will find her quite generous. It is her desire to be rid of you. She will be glad to pay, and handsomely."
"All right. I'll be there. But you tell her I don't want this thing to drag out. I want it over and done with."
"You can be sure Mrs. Gifford wishes the same. Tomorrow night at eight, then?"
"Okav."
Lisa hung up the phone and went back to her room. Things were moving faster than she'd expected. But that was all to the good....
CHAPTER SIX
Lisa wondered what kind of a car Mrs. Gifford would drive. No less than a Cadillac, surely-and possibly a Rolls Royce or some other sleek foreign job.
She found the designated comer after two inquiries and felt a little nervous when she got there. Nothing but factories and warehouses. And at this late hour all the workers had gone home. A few cars went by and a few curious drivers seemed to be wondering what she was doing there all alone. But none of them stopped.
But then a shabby sedan pulled up and the driver, a dark-haired young man with a heavy sun-tan threw a quick question.
"Are you waiting for Mrs. Gifford?"
Lisa nodded uncertainly.
"Get in. I'll take you to her."
"But-"
The young man was annoyed and, it appeared, a trifle bored. "That's the deal, lady. I was sent here to pick you up. Take it or leave it, but make up your mind."
Lisa wanted to leave it. But there was a great deal at stake. Could she afford to? What if she backed away and then later Clare Gifford changed her mind? Besides, it seemed logical that she would send somebody. She probably didn't want to take a chance of being seen. Maybe her husband was suspicious of her and was having her followed. Lisa had no way of knowing why, but it was possible.
So, in the end, greed prevailed.
She got into the car beside the young man and he took a long, lazy look at her legs and her thighs as her skirt came up high in the narrow seat.
Lisa pulled at her skirt. "Where are we meeting Mrs. Gifford."
"Down the street a ways," he said, and demonstrated his skill at lighting a cigarette with a match pack with one hand as he drove.
"I'm new in the city," Lisa said. "I had a hard time finding the right comer."
He grunted. "The Village is rough getting around in. But Twelfth and Eleventh is pretty easy."
They stayed on deserted streets, zigzagging for a dozen blocks or so. Then, quite suddenly, in the middle of one of these blocks, the young man turned the wheel sharply and pulled in toward the curb. There was a driveway over the sidewalk at that point and as his wheels turned, a door opened, an overhead garage or warehouse door, and in a matter of seconds, the car was in a large, empty place with the door closed.
"Is this where-?"
"This is where we talk, honey."
A blazing overhead bulb was snapped on and Lisa got quickly out of the car. "This is a trick. Mrs. Gifford isn't here!"
The young man got out on the other side and lit a cigarette. He said nothing.
"Who are you? What is this? I'll call a cop."
He was a good-looking young man and while he stood there, he unconsciously took out a comb and ran it through his hair. He wiped the comb off and put it back into his pocket.
"That's a real gasser. You don't want any cops around, honey."
Lisa was drawing away. Her eyes darted about. The place was big and empty and had a deserted look about it. A factory once, perhaps, or maybe a garage but now with all the equipment removed.
The car had stopped at one end and Lisa was backing away from the young man. He followed slowly, his hard heels echoing every forward step.
"I'll scream," Lisa warned. And her voice was repeated by the hollow walls as they threw it back at her.
"Nice piece."
This new voice came from somewhere and Lisa, who had been concentrating on her abductor, whirled to see three other young men regarding her from the other direction. They'd evidently come through a door she hadn't seen-a door that had opened very softly.
They were of a cut-polished hair, pants too tight They all had cruel mouths and under the casual manner they shared, there was a lustful intentness.
"Where'd you pick her up, Keen?"
"Found her standing on a comer."
"Couldn't keep her out of your car, huh?"
"Hell, no. She climbed right in the window."
There appeared to be another in the far left comer of the building. Lisa started in that direction. Instantly, one of the young men, moving like a cat, cut her off in a wide, circling movement. When he reached a point between Lisa and that place of dubious escape, he immediately lapsed into the slow, lazy, slouching posture that characterized all of them.
Now, Lisa stood surrounded, the four having circled her. They moved in with taunting casualness.
"Let me out of here."
Keen grinned. "Honey, meet Shag and Mike and Kitch-friends of mine."
Shag was the smallest in height and outer dimension, but not otherwise. His face was sallow and his hair had a greasy look, but he postured grossly, lewdly, proud of his obvious strength.
Mike was bigger in breadth and shoulder. He had great hairy arms and his shirt, half open, revealed a mat of hair, on a broad chest.
Desperate thoughts flitted through Lisa's mind. She'd walked into a trap! And, God-these four could take a girl to pieces!
Her eyes flitted from one face to another and their eyes all said the same thing:
Sister-you're going to get raped.
Instinctively, she looked in Shag's direction and her eyes dropped below his belt. He saw this, interpreted her frighened thought, and grinned, glancing quickly down himself.
Keen was moving in behind her. "Relax, honey. Be one of us."
Lisa bolted toward the widest space presented, that between Mike and Kitch.
Kitch was the quietest, and, in Lisa's panicked mind, the deadliest. His hands touched her first. With a quick, shake-like movement, he blocked her and seized her wrist.
"Let me alone!"
The other three moved in. Lisa screamed and an open palm was slammed against the side of her head. It dazed her and the scream dribbled into a whimper.
"You got the sack?" Kitch demanded.
"Right here," Mike growled, and Lisa fought uselessly as she saw a small, black bag with drawstrings around one end pulled open by Mike's thick fingers.
"Not over my head," she gasped. "I'll smother."
But that was the idea. The bag was pulled down over her head and the drawstrings tightened securely around her throat.
"You'll get plenty of air."
This was true. She could breath there in the pitch darkness, but the bag seemed to be a concentration point of all the terror in the world.
"Who's first?" a growling voice demanded.
After that, they were quiet, possibly, Lisa thought, not wanting to leave their voices stamped into her memory.
She kept on fighting as she was picked up and carried. They were going down some stairs after a door was opened and several hands were busy on her body.
"Let's get these off."
"Can't you wait?"
"I'm impatient."
Would they start fighting among themselves? It was a faint hope-Lisa's last hope as they arrived at whatever place they'd taken her and began to strip her.
The panties had been removed on the way down the stairs and avid hands had minutely examined what they had covered.
The place they were in was cooler, a dank basement, she thought, because of the air that swept up under her skirt on her nakedness as they put her on her feet.
She felt her blouse and bra go and then her skirt and she now wore nothing but a thin garter belt, her stockings and her shoes.
"Let her walk around a while. A naked broad in high heels sends me."
This was Kitch, Lisa thought, but the voices were all one voice to her now; sinister, cruel mouthings in this purgatory into which she'd been carried.
She stood alone, no hand touching her.
"All right, baby. Walk."
Lisa stood there, teetering dizzily.
"I said, walk."
A hand was cruelly thrust from behind. Lisa's body arced out grotesquely, but entertainingly, if the laughs and the sound of appreciation were indicative. Dizzily, she began to walk.
She had been clawing at the bag over her head, but the drawstring was tied in a hard knot and her efforts had been valuable only in the amusement she'd offered her kidnappers.
"Man, she's stacked."
"Nice job."
"Wave it at us, honey."
Beasts! Degenerates! Animals. These descriptions boiled through Lisa's mind in her terror. She was afraid to die and that was what was in her mind. When they were through with her, would they kill her?
"Please take this off my head. I'll be good to you."
"She says she'll be good to us."
"Dance, honey. Wriggle it. Show us how you'll be good to us."
Pathetically, Lisa tried to show them. She performed as she had seen it done in night clubs. Twisting, writhing. Hoping.
"There's a post right in front of you. Show us what to do with a post."
The steel support post touched Lisa's breasts and belly. It was cold. Once she had seen a stripper, eager to please an audience, function against a post, and she tried to do it the same way.
"Faster, baby."
"Harder. Put your soul into it." Laughter.
"Baby-is that with all your soul?"
The cruel hand was thrust again and Lisa's reaction, a quick impression of suddenly trying to climb the pole, amused them immensely.
"The hell with this," a voice growled. "Come on, baby, we'll have a little privacy."
"Who said you could go first?"
"Who said I couldn't?"
A hand grasped Lisa's arm and pulled impatiently as she unwrapped her arms and legs from around the post. She was led away and a voice warned:
"Don't leave her all banged up."
The answer was a growl and a door closed and Lisa knew she was alone in another room with one of the rapists.
"Take the hood off, please."
She did not want to be all banged up, and when the man led her to what was obviously a cot, she demonstrated an eagerness to please.
A hand on her chest told her this was Mike, the brutish-looking one. He could easily bang a girl up and Lisa ran her hands over his chest, through the thick hair, and talked to him from the darkness of the black bag.
"If you'll take it off I can be nicer to you."
"I'll leave it on."
To block his likely aggressiveness, Lisa appeared herself eager. "You are a man!" She said. "You're the kind of man a girl likes to go to bed with."
But he seemed, to some extent, to be held in abeyance. He did not viciously lunge and begin taking her like the bull-elk he reminded her of. She lay on the bed and he stood over her and allowed her hands to run over his body. Hoping to keep him gentle, Lisa made her touch gentle. Her fingers ran along the edge of his shorts as they protruded from his slacks, worried lightly at his belly and navel.
"Do you like that?" she asked.
He said nothing, indicating that he probably did. He climbed on the bed, straddling her, but remaining on his hands and knees. Lisa's hands wese busy.
"Pull in your stomach."
He took a deep breath, filling his great lungs and putting a space between his belt buckle and his belly.
Lisa's hand slipped down inside. Pulling the belt outward with one hand, she caressed his thighs with teasing hands, feeling his male eagerness that was symbolic of male power over the female.
Trying desperately to hold him enthralled until she could achieve her purpose, she unbuckled his belt and zipped his slacks down.
"More room to work," she whispered through the cloth. And added for its erotic benefit: "I love the touch of a man."
She got no verbal encouragement, but Mike's silence, was encouraging in itself. Obviously, this was something new to him. His previous sex life had been that of the animal he resembled. Probably his women had been too frightened to make gestures of any sort, Lisa thought.
Her hand went past the point of his vicious potency and found the broad, muscled thighs and buttocks. Now, Lisa's arm was pushed into his opened slacks almost to the elbow, that elbow bent for the contact of her hand against his flesh.
She felt the big thighs quiver and drew her hand lightly along the division between them.
"You're all man," she murmured "I like the feel of you."
Maybe I should have been an actress, she thought. I'm making this slob think I really do like this.
Or perhaps he didn't care. Perhaps he was interested in only the skillful work of her hand as it came forward, caressing, kneading, tantalizing. Until it found its logical goal.
His knees bent and strained. His breath began flushing in and out of his lungs like water sluicing through a sewer. This was the way Lisa described it to herself, contemptuously, triumphantly, as his passion heightened.
Then his great body pressed down hard on her hand and she had difficulty in keeping it moving. His knees and thighs and belly furnished most of the movement and when the logical result of her manipulation, the goal she'd struggled to achieve, was reached, Lisa celebrated with a silent sneer.
I outsmarted you, you rat! Now, let's see you do something!
His breath was harsh against the black cloth over her face, but she knew she had nothing more to fear from him. He was not imaginative. He could hurt a giid by sending her limping away from brutishly forceful contact. He knew no tricks-none of the degeneracies-only the thrusting punishment his grossness could inflict. Without the potency of which she'd temporarily robbed him-the easy way-as she put it, he was harmless.
"You witch," he grunted and there was confusion in him. He'd been robbed but was too dense to figure out exactly how.
"God!" Lisa whispered. "You're all manl"
Whether this touched his ego, she did not discover. Probably it didn't. He lay for a few moments with his whole weight upon her and she asked, "What are they going to do with me?"
His next grunt turned into a snarl as he got up from the couch. Then she heard the door slam.
One down, three to go, she thought.
The first fear was gone now. She was still frightened. But there was no panic. Her characteristic instincts for survival had come to the fore. This was a situation and she would face it and do her best. But she would no longer be impeded by a mind clouded with fear.
She lay still, feeling empty. Her right arm muscles ached from the manipulating effort. Her fingers were stiff, as though they had been forced to massage steel. She flexed her fingers and lay there. And still the door did not open.
This brought only abstract wonderings. Something was delaying them. An argument about who would be next, perhaps. A visitor who had to be gotten rid of. It made no difference. They would be in, one by one, to partake of the goodies they'd forced her to display so temptingly as she'd staggered naked around the floor out there and showed to them so obscenely against the steel post. They would want to sample first-hand, her dexterity.
But she was having a respite and as the minutes passed, she lapsed into that protective device nature gives many animals. When there is something to be faced, they curl up and go to sleep.
Lisa did not curl up. She lay there feeling very relaxed and comfortable now that she had faced and accepted the situation she was in. Her eyes closed. And she went into that odd half-sleep-the waking doze in which her mind always went back to what she had been-to the rungs of the ladder up which she had climbed.
Back to Fallonhurst and Chick Bell....
CHAPTER SEVEN
After Lisa had defeated Mabel that night in Ward Seven, she had won a leadership she did not want. The whole thing was distasteful to her and only stiffened her resolve to escape the place.
She got no pleasure whatsoever out of the manner in which the other inmates turned on the gross, unhappy Mabel. She was sneered at, insulted, and heckled in a thousand ways.
This caused Lisa to liken Ward Seven to a jungle where a hated bully had been dethroned. When this happened in a true jungle, the beaten leader was able to slink away. But Mabl could not do this. She had to remain, and take the results of her own brutality.
Only little Betty profited greatly from the victory over Mabel. Under Lisa's protection, she was left alone. And she was grateful to the point of annoyance, serving Lisa like a slave-making her bed, seeing to it she did not have to lift a hand toward her own comforts.
But this, Lisa did not relish either.
Until she found a way to use Betty profitably as a go-between. She instructed Betty in this new duty, and she made and kept contact with Chick Bell at a risk that in no way endangered Lisa.
Then, finally, after two long months, she brought good news.
"He wants to see you tonight at ten o'clock."
"That's silly. I can't get out at ten o'clock."
"There's a way," Betty assured her eagerly. "The second-shift matron goes at nine forty-five and the night matron is always late. She doesn't come in sometimes until ten-thirty."
"How does that help? The ward's locked."
"He's got keys. He'll come in and meet you in the basement by the garbage cans."
"That's exactly where his kind should be met."
"What?"
"Never mind."
"You go to the bathroom at ten o'clock and then slip down the stairs. The lower door will be unlocked.
He'll be waiting there."
"All right."
"And he says one more thing."
"What?"
"Meet him in your nightgown."
Meet him in your nightgown. Sure. She should have expected that. A nightgown doesn't get in the way.
Lisa spent the rest of the day steeling herself. Being nice to men, while not exciting, had seldom been repulsive to her. But there was something about Chick Bell that grated on her. More than that. She loathed him. The very thought of his touching her gave her goose pimples.
But that part of it had to be faced.
She faced it that night after everything went off as planned. He hadn't changed. Her loathing did not lessen as she caught first sight of him slouching against the whitewashed wall, one foot propped up on a garbage can.
"You look right at home."
Knowing he held the power, he took his foot down and turned toward the outer door. "Okay. The hell with you, baby. Rot in here for all I care."
"Wait a minute."
He turned back. "You look like hell in that sack."
"It's what they give us. Betty said you wanted to see me."
He shook his head. "Uh-uh. Not me. I thought you were the one that kept yelling about getting together."
He was going to make it as difficult as possible, and in her hatred of him, she visualized him in the hands of some strong men-turned upside down in one of those garbage cans with his pants down and a couple of paddles going at his rear end until it was as red as a sunset. And that, if she'd had her way, only have been the beginning. Her loathing forced her mind into areas where it seldom went. Men. But abnormal men. She could use a couple where Chick Bell was concerned. She would have loved to see him helpless and yelling from the pain the men she envisioned would have been capable of inflicting upon him. It would have been a fine vengeance for what he intended to inflict upon her, and no doubt would before she got what she wanted from him.
"I wanted to see you, yes," she said, forcing friendliness into her voice. But it did not fool him. He grinned contemptuously.
"You hate my guts, don't you?"
"Yes," Lisa said. "But you hate mine, too."
"Uh-huh. You're a broad I like to see crawling. You're a type that's got it coming."
"Then we understand each other. That's a step in the right direction."
"Sure we understand each other. But I understand you better than you think. You've been throwing that little blonde at me from the beginning."
"How have you two been getting along."
"Do you want a kick in the teeth? That little wench still thinks the stork brought her."
"You should have been able to get what you wanted from her."
"But there was nothing I wanted. Me, I like sharp women. And I had me a sharp woman."
"Meaning you had a sample of me."
"Uh-huh," he retorted with the relish of rememberance. "And I want me some more." His had a leer that was infuriating to Lisa and now it twisted his mouth. "In fact I can't remember what you looked like. Show me, baby."
"You love to get a girl in a spot like this, don't you?"
"I had me one in a spot like this a long time ago. I made that little chick yell uncle in four different languages. You remind me a lot of that little chick."
"Betty's nice if you'd just take a good look at her."
"I looked. I didn't like what I saw." His face hardened. "Show me, baby."
He was a pig. They didn't make many like him.
For a moment, Lisa lost control. "The hell with you, she hissed.
He shrugged. "Okay. Rot in here."
Lisa reached down and grasped the single garment she was wearing. She began lifting it. His eyes bored into her body.
"Higher."
The nightgown came up over her thighs and belly. "Higher."
Cursing him under her breath, Lisa continued to lift. Her navel exposed, the lower edge of the gown she gripped in her fists revealed the lower half of the lush lobes of her breasts. "Higher."
"What do you want me to do. Pull it over my head?"
Her breasts were completely exposed now and his eyes ate at her body like unclean mouths.
"Lord, what a body you got, honey."
"You're seeing all of it. Are you satisfied?"
"Not all of it. Turn around."
Lisa obeyed, happy that she didn't have to look into his face.
"Bend over."
"What are you going to do."
"I said, bend over. And put your hands against the wall."
"My nightgown will fall down if I let go of it."
"Not if you bend over far enough."
Again, Lisa was tempted to revolt, but the thing at stake-freedom-was too great. She steeled herself. Why couldn't he act like a man? Why couldn't he throw her down and take it if that was what he wanted? Where had he leanred these filthy, sneaky little ways of humiliation and degradation?
"Lean out farther. Brace yourself against the wall."
Lisa felt like the suspects in pictures she'd seen of policemen frisking possible felons. The process of making them put their hands against the wall and lean forward was scientifically prudent in such cases.
But in this case it was different. Chick Bell wanted her naked with her legs apart and her hands braced against the wall for another reason.
She expected to feel him on her exposed body at any moment. Her flesh tightened and cringed against the contact she envisioned.
But it did not come. Instead, she heard his satisfied chuckle. "Okay. Turn around now and come over here."
He was leaning against the wall but while her back was to him, he'd adjusted his clothing. "You scum!"
He was too happy with his advantage to spoil it by resenting her hatred. At the moment, her hatred did not matter to him.
"Okay. Come over here."
No use fighting it, she told herself. He was going to get what he wanted and arguing would only prolong it. She wanted to get it over with. She swallowed hard and unconsciously wiped a hand across her mouth as she took four slow steps forward.
They faced each other, their eyes, full of mutual contempt met full on. He stood with his back against the wall, his legs open and braced slightly.
"Well, you can't do me any good up here."
Again she swallowed hard. She closed her eyes. The cement was hard against her knees even with the nightgown for a cushion. She knew he was leering down at her.
"What are you waiting for?"
Why was it so difficult? He was only a man. They were all the same. If you knew one you knew all of them. The technique with one was no different than the technique with another. Still, she had to plead. "Do I have to?"
And for a moment he sensed her loathing even more deeply and he wondered. "Why is it so damned tough for you? You've done it before."
She opened her mouth to speak but the words were blocked. His hands were cupped on either side of her head, directing it and there was only one direction to go.
They posed there in silence, his eyes on her. She was motionless except for occasional nervous movements, twitches.
Gradually, his expression changed. His eyes clouded with the preoccupation of the effect upon him. He lifted his head, and his eyes closed and his jaw muscles tensed. His knees bent slightly and his hands on the back of her head were like hands of iron.
Lisa reached out on either side of him and braced her hands against the wall, applying pressure against the urging of his hands and she wanted to cry out, for God's sake do you think I'm a machine? but then she took one hand and gripped it around him in a tight fist to insure a margin of safety and her own flesh was soft against her lips.
He began moving his body in short, spasmodic jerks and the end was hastened-one she dreaded and yet would welcome because then it would be over.
The cement hurt her knees. She tried to think of that pain but she could only think of the gates opening soon, this presaged by the heightening glaze of his eyes and the straining of his face, his hips forward and the pressure of his hands slamming her mouth against the flesh of her own hand.
The moment arrived. .
"Wow-oh, wow, baby!"
She could not help trying to pull away even as she told herself. He's just like any other man. But her strength was frantic and he was forced to follow her, going forward in obscene little hops as she drew backward.
Then he didn't care and let her go and staggered back to the support of the wall.
She knelt where he left her, glaring at him. Hating him and by the time she'd staggered to her feet, he was again conscious of her presence.
"God," he muttered in honest wonder. "Nobody ever did it for me like that before."
Lisa walked to one of the garbage cans and was in the act of bending over it.
"Uh-uh." he warned sharply. "Don't."
Her face rigid, she turned to look at him. He shook his head.
"Don't, baby."
If she'd had a weapon, she could have killed him then. Forcing this final indignity on her when the indignity would do him no physical good whatever. Not allowing her even a gesture toward her own dignity.
But it evidently meant a great deal to him, because he grated, "You do, and it's off. You'll serve out your time in here."
She turned her back on him and stood rigid, tried to clear her mind of thought. He saw her back stiffen, and perhaps he thought of a child being punished. He grinned.
"Is it so damn hard to take?"
Was the pig pleading for understanding? Lisa turned, the muscles of her belly fighting against nausea. The spasm passed.
"Is that all?" she gasped.
"All for tonight."
"Then give me something."
His leer had returned. "Honey, I just gave you-"
"Cut out the filth for a minute. Give me some assurance. When are you getting us out."
"Us?"
"Betty goes too."
"Why?"
"Because I want her. I may have a use for her."
"You are a witch. Why get the kid in trouble?"
"You've got a hell of a nerve saying that. You with your damned, rotten-"
Her outburst seemed to comfort him. He grinned as he watched the jerk of Lisa's body through her nightgown. "You've got the chills, honey. Must be your bare feet on the cold floor."
It was a source of great satisfaction to him. Lisa struggled to control her voice and find words.
"When are we getting out?"
"Tomorrow night. But on one consideration?"
"Another one?"
"You said you wanted to go to New York."
"That's where I'm going."
"With me."
Lisa almost lunged at him with her fingernails aimed at his eyes, but again she held herself. "Alone with Betty."
"Honey. We've got a lot of loving to do. We haven't even started yet."
Lisa strove to control her rebellious thoughts. Every time she grimaced, his grin deepened.
"You'll have no hold over me after I get out of here."
"Are you kidding? We stay together. The first time you don't bend over or kneel down or lie down when I snap my fingers, the next cop we meet will have a customer."
"He'll have two customers. Both of us."
"Me? Honey, you could never win. Go on thinking I'd be in trouble if it makes you feel better. But I wouldn't be. I wouldn't be in any trouble at all."
"You'd lie."
"Sure. And they wouldn't believe your story. The minute you quit giving you'll land right back here."
"You said tomorrow night. How do we do it?"
"You get down here the same as tonight-both of you if you want to take the little blonde. You fix your beds with pillows so you look like you're still in them and bring your clothes with you. Leave the rest to me."
Time had passed. Even now Lisa wasn't sure she could get back to the ward unseen. So she would have to leave the rest to him.
"Okay. We'll be here."
His leer faded. "Wow," he murmured again. "How can one dame be so damned good-both ways? Baby, even unconscious you were better than any six dames I ever met."
God, why was I ever inflicted with him, Lisa asked silently. Then, not trusting herself to speak, fearing that she might ruin everything at the last minute, she turned away and went quickly back up the stairs.
Then she was thankful for at least one bit of good luck. The matron had not arrived on duty. Lisa slipped back to her bed and lay staring at the ceiling. Then, after a while, she went to the bathroom and brushed her teeth savagely.
After that, she slept.
The hours of the following day dragged slowly. She kept her secret to herself, not even telling Betty until the last possible moment.
Then she put the preliminary plan into effect. After the lights went out at nine-thirty, while the other inmates of Ward Seven were busy with their own affairs-pairing off for the night, attempting new conquests-she smuggled two tight bundles of clothing into the bathroom and hid them behind one of the toilets. Then she took Betty into bed with her.
The matron busied herslf in her office for a time and then, after a cursory look down the ward, went off to whatever plans she had for the rest of the night.
Five minutes later, Lisa and Betty were in the basement by the garbage cans. Chick was waiting. He looked at his watch.
"The wall patrol goes by in five minutes. After they pass we've got to move. So get your clothes on."
He watched while they stripped off their night gowns and dressed-two beautiful naked women standing before him at once. But he scarcely glanced at Betty. His eyes laved hungrily over Lisa.
When they were ready, he glanced at a small bundle Lisa was carrying-a tightly wrapped towel.
"What's that?"
"A couple of things I need," she replied casually. "We're ready now."
"Wait here a minute."
He returned from the yard short moments later. "Come on. And be quiet. We've got a lot of open lawn to cross. Don't run. Walk."
They went out and moved through the night. After they'd gotten clear of the building, Chick whispered, "Now! Follow me."
They ran until they came to the wall that faced the grove skirting the highway running east. There was an old, forgotten gate in the wall at this point, neglected. They had to crawl through heavy underbrush to reach it. Chick kicked it open and when they were outside, pushed it shut behind him.
"Did you fix your beds so it looks like you're in them?"
"They're okay," Lisa said.
"I've got a jalopy stashed in the side road right down there."
They were moving through the grove of trees now, clear of Fallonhurst: the world waiting for them. Lisa reached out and touched Chick on the arm.
"Wait a minute-I'm bushed."
He scowled. "This is no time to-"
"Isn't it?"
"she asked softly.
He turned. This was something different. His doubts, charged with a quick eagerness her manner generated in him, was apparent even in the darkness.
"Chick-" Her hands brushed his chest softly and moved down into the area Chick most understood. She laughed softly at what she found.
His instant readiness.
"But last night you said-"
"That was last night. A girl can change her mind, can't she?"
"You didn't want any part of me."
"Maybe I did. Maybe I just couldn't stand being a sucker and I didn't think you were really going to help me get out."
Betty was on ahead in the darkness. She stopped, and her plaintive voice came back to them. "Lisa-"
"Wait a minute, honey. Well be along."
"Wow! Can't you wait?" Chick's complaint wasn't a complaint at all. It was an expression of pleased excitement.
"We can make it quick," Lisa whispered. "A girl likes to show her gratitude."
"Then you did like it last night!"
"If I didn't, would I be wanting another sample?"
His voice had thickened with hot anticipation. "Okay, there you are, honey."
"Not standing up. When your knees start shaking, you might fall down."
His laugh was a skittery sound there in the grove as he dropped to the ground and pulled her to her knees.
"Make it quick, baby. Real quick."
"I'll do my part. The rest is up to you. How fast can-?"
There was a thudding sound and a quick, snapped-off grunt of surprise from Chick. Another thud.
Then Lisa, the honey gone from her voice was whispering in fierce satisfaction. "You lousy crud you've forced me for the last time! You didn't think I was going to have you on my back in New York, did you?"
She threw away the short, ugly-looking sash-weight she'd found in the bathroom of Ward Seven and had brought out wrapped in the towel.
Then, just before she came to her feet, she touched her unconscious rescuer and laughed. Nothing like a crack on the skull to soften up a crumb's manhood. Faster than the other way. And a lot more satisfactory.
A few moments later, Betty was asking, "Where's Chick?"
"He changed his mind. He's staying."
"Staying!"
"He thought he was going too," Lisa said with a relish Betty didn't understand. "He was all ready, but it didn't work out that way." Lisa's laugh confused Betty even further.
"I don't understand."
"You don't have to. Come on. I've got the keys. Let's get that jalopy rolling...."
But it rolled only four miles and stopped.
"What's the matter?" Betty asked. "Are we out o! gas?"
Lisa cursed. "How the hell do I know what's the matter? I'm no mechanic."
"When a car runs out of gas-"
"Oh, for Pete's sake, shut up! The gas gauge is broken. Everything else is broken on this pile of iron. We're stalled four miles from nowhere."
"We have to go back?"
"Like hell we have to go back. We'll try hitching a ride."
And then fickle fortune, having had a little sport with Lisa, decided to better her lot. Two headlights appeared on the highway. Lisa stepped into the road and waved an arm. The vehicle stopped. It was a huge aluminum eight-wheeler.
"You stay right there," Lisa said. "I'll do all the talking."
In a few moments, she was negotiating with the two men in the truck.
"Sure," the driver said, "we're heading east, but what is there in it for us?"
"You got any cash?" the other man asked.
Lisa had a roll of bills she hadn't counted yet. She'd lifted it from Chick's pocket along with his keys.
"We're flat broke," she pleaded. "Honest-we haven't got a dime." As she spoke, she fingered the switchblade she'd also found on Chick. "Give us a break, mister."
The driver grinned. "You're not broke, honey. You're carrying it right with you. And we got some blankets in the back of the truck.
Lisa felt like taking the knife out and jamming it into his belly. Neither of these rats was going to touch her
"See my friend over there? The little blonde? You can have her."
They weren't sheltered men by any means. They'd been around and were familiar with the world. But they both blinked and regarded Lisa blankly.
"Well, what about it? You can see her from here. Right there at the edge of your headlights."
They looked and glanced at each other. "She's stacked," one of them commented.
"You won't be shorted. She's equipped too."
The driver was eager but groping. "You mean for a trip east we can-"
Lisa was uneasy. She wanted to get out of sight and be on her way. Chick wouldn't remain unconscious forever.
"What's to understand? You can have the blonde. You said you've got blankets. There'll be plenty of time."
"What's she got to say about it?"
"She doesn't count. She'll be agreeable. If not, you can take it away from her. I keep my word."
"You keep your word!" the other man marveled. He looked at the driver. "This is just too good to pass up."
Lisa motioned quickly and Betty ran to the truck. "Get in, honey," Lisa said. "These nice men are going to give us a ride...."
And that was how it was arranged. That was Lisa's good luck.
She was on her wav to New York....
CHAPTER EIGHT
A hand touched Lisa's bare shoulder. She awoke, returned to reality with an emotional thud. This wasn't yesterday at Fallonhurst. This was tonight in New York City. She was lying naked in a small room where she'd been mauled once and now the second hood had come in to get his kicks.
Her hand went out quickly, instinctively, to fend him off. It touched him.
Oh, God. This was the strong one. The one so proud of himself.
This was reality.
"Hi, honey."
Alone with her, he didn't seem vicious. No doubt he was going to get what he came for, but maybe not brutally. He sat down on the edge of the cot and stroked the naked breast closest to him. He was chuckling.
"You crossed Mike real good."
"He told you?"
"Here, let me take that damned thing off your face."
He undid the knot she'd picked at and failed to loosen. He pulled the black bag off over her head and she saw his grinning face by the light of a naked bulb he'd snapped on.
"One at a time, huh?" Lisa said wearily.
"Keen and Kitch-don't worry about them. They aren't interested. I'm all there is, honey, now that you melted Mike down. He won't be any good for hours."
Shag seemed to think this was a hell of a joke and Lisa was glad if it would keep him in a nonvicious mood.
Shag looked at the bag and tossed it away with contempt. "That was a stinking thing. Keen's idea."
"What was he afraid of-that I'd bite him?"
"He's degenerate-always looking for off-trail kicks. He thought he'd get a bang out of seeing a naked broad floundering around with her head in a bag. These guys get odd ideas."
He sat stroking Lisa's breast with a strange gentleness that was not unpleasant in comparison to what she'd been through. He seemed in no hurry.
His smile was friendly as he took Lisa's hand and put it where he wanted it. "Get acquainted with me baby. It won't be as bad as you think."
He was an oddball but somehow Lisa didn't hate him. Maybe not hating him was her way of hoping he'd be gentle.
Shag wasn't bad-looking, but he was slim and that was what put him in such grotesque contrast with the towering Mike. It was as though their parts had been exchanged. This would have been funny to Lisa, but nothing was funny. This wasn't a funny time.
"How did this happen?" she asked.
He seemed to admire her for not complaining. She was getting it and that was that but she didn't whimper and he liked that.
"Keen got the deal and rang us in. There was some dough."
"You mean somebody paid you to pull me in here and strip me and rape me?"
"Keen got the dough. He rang me in-gave me a few bucks. It was our trick. The other two came along for kicks."
"Why were you so long?"
"Arguing with them. They wanted to bring you out and make you put on an act. They had some cuties figured out. They're damn degenerates. We chased them."
"Won't they go for the cops?"
"Are you kidding?"
Lisa shielded her eyes from the light. So Clare Gifford had given her the business. She'd paid money to get Lisa scared off her back. Had she succeeded? Lisa wasn't sure.
She stroked Shag pensively, wondering how rough it would be, but she was of a strange turn of mind; in a strange mood. She was frightened but not in the way she would have expected. It was like being frightened of a necessary operation she had to go through.
Somehow, she didn't blame Shag. Weirdly enough, she conceded that he had a right to his kicks.
She felt his finger on her cheek and lay very still while it traced the contour of her lips. He went around her lips slowly and then gently pushed the tip of his finger into her mouth. She opened it for him. The finger slid between her teeth and found her tongue and he traced a circle on it and she thought of Chick and remembered the sickening part of it. Why had it been so sickening with Chick? Because she hated him? Twice before she'd been comered into that and it hadn't sickened her. So why had she rebelled both physically and emotionally against Chick?
Shag's finger played gently around inside her mouth and she wondered vaguely what erotic satisfaction he was getting from the play. Was he testing her? Was he seeking an excuse to punish her? If she bit down on his finger would a fist smash into her face?
She didn't think so but found no difficulty in caressing his finger with her tongue and forming her lips around it as though trying to gentle him by cofrom its length, operating.
He pulled it back and her eyes questioned. "There?"
He shook his head, smiling gently. "No, baby. Straight."
She watched as he went through swift motions and stood naked beside the bed. She moved a little to accommodate him as he stretched out beside her and took her in his arms.
A captive lover, she gave him her mouth when he sought it with his own and felt his hand cupping her breast and neither of these attentions was unpleasant.
He opened her mouth with his tongue and she knew what he wanted and treated his tongue as she had treated his finger, as though seeking to draw from it.
He lifted his head and focused his eyes on her face. "Tears?"
"I guess so."
Two tears were slipping down her cheeks and her mouth trembled. "Afraid?"
"A little, I guess."
"It won't be too bad."
As he gently licked away both tears, Lisa, though she did not define it as such, was struck by the rigid demands of life's reality. Shag was gentle and considerate but when she'd told him she was afraid, he did not relieve her of what was to come. This had to be. She had to give what he had to take from her. He hoped that it would be joyful for her but even if it were agony, that would make no difference. She was going to be taken.
It was almost as though destiny, not Shag, were demanding it; with Shag only an instrument of destiny.
His mouth was on her breast, his tongue teasing, hardening her nipple. She arched her back and pressed it deeper into his mouth as a gesture of recklessness.
He was upon her now, his weight horizontally distributed along her body. Again his mouth found hers. His knees worked, trying to press her knees open to admit him. His alerted flesh pressed hard against her belly was frightening and she lost some of her courage and whispered, "The other way?" Her question was a timid plea; that of a patient trying to avoid the surgeon's knife.
"No, honey. It would be worse."
Perhaps he was right, but the other way-surely that would not affect her as Chick had-would give her more control somehow. It would not have been so distant, so very far away.
"Are you ready?"
"Yes."
She opened her knees and thighs to him and as he reached for her with that frightening pressure, she panicked a little and tried to reach down with her hands.
He held them away. "No," he said. "I-I want to help."
"I don't need any help."
He touched her, still gentle, still careful, controlling the passion Lisa knew lay just below his surface.
He raised her knees and spread her thighs outward and pressed slowly, watching her face as he did so, reading her uncertainty and fear in her eyes.
She gave him a timid smile even as she caught her lower lip between her teeth.
"Relax, honey. Just relax. Leave it to me. It won't be so bad."
They looked deep into each other's eyes, both searching for something in addition to what was being done. He moved his body slowly, almost imperceptibly.
Then he smiled. "See? It wasn't so bad."
"You mean it's-"
"Partly. Not so bad is it?"
She laughed giddily, lightly. "It's like waiting for a dentist to pull a tooth. You're afraid. Then-it's out."
"Uh-huh."
Curiosity delayed him. His eyes were quizzical. "You act as though it were the first time. It isn't."
"You know? You can tell?"
"Sure."
This bothered her. "You mean I'm-?"
"Not at all honey. You're great. I can just tell. So why the big deal now?"
"You can't blame me. When I looked at you saw-"
He laughed, his ego preened. "Sometimes it's a handicap."
"I guess you have to find women who have-" He had been observing her closely and his hips and thighs had been moving, more a gentle probing action than a pursuit of passion.
Getting me ready, Lisa thought lazily and suddenly she felt safe there in his arms, joined with him there under those violent circumstances.
Faster now, faster, as he allowed his passion partially to take over while he watched her eyes.
"How's that, honey?"
"It's-good."
"It's supposed to be."
"I like it."
He grinned tenderly. "A kid with her first toy." A sudden violent thrust. Her eyes opened wide. "This is-it?"
"This is it honey."
But she did not cringe away. She braced her heels against the thin mattress and rode up against him and it was with a sense of hot inner triumph.
I'm gonna make it! I'm-I'm a woman! Fleetingly, against the backdrop of her mind, came the question: What did I consider myself before!
But she did not bother to answer. This new door that had been flung wide to her was too wonderful and exciting. She searched and found his mouth with hers and pushed his lips open with her hot tongue, wanting frantically to participate more and more and more.
He was the bull now, the action of his body more blows than thrusts. Each move a calculated smash against her body as though he had to break down even the liberties which he'd been allowed.
Wild thoughts flooded into Lisa's mind: I'm one with the whole world. The world is me and I want to take all the planets with me too. This is not enough. "Oh, more! More!"
In a sudden and complete loss of all control, she smeared her open mouth against his, slavering, seeking with her tongue, trying to heighten the sensuous joy of mutual joining.
"Harder! Harder!"
He wasted no energy in words, throwing all his violence into the rutting action of his body.
But it was not enough for Lisa. She strained hard at her own body.
"Help me! I want the pain too!"
He did not understand what she meant for a moment. Then he did, and lifted his weight from her and braced himself with his knees and seized her ankles. His momentary hesitation was a question. Was she sure?
"Oh, yes-yes! Make me helpless!"
He strained upward against her legs, using her ankles as grip, and he saw her teeth gleam as she grimaced in savage joy at the unfamiliar straining of her body.
She was a beautiful beast now, grunting against the pain that excited her beyond words. "Harder! Harder!"
Her legs straightened slowly and became the widest possible V as he forced her into a contortionistic posture, an incredibly taut posture of moving flesh.
While his own action continued, smashing, brutal, uncaring.
"Don't stop! Don't stop any of it!"
He pressed her ankles harder and her face became wildly contorted.
"Don't stop-even when I scream."
The inexortable pressure continued and if he had not been approaching the height of uncontrollable passion, he would have been frightened at what he was doing to her. He would have been appalled at the distortion that had been forced upon her.
Lisa's body, with her hips as the tortured joining place, was doubled over. The tendons behind her knees were stretched to the point of agony as he forced her legs into this unnatural position.
The silence was broken only by Shag's retching breath as it pumped in and out of his laboring lungs; by that and the frantically-rhythmic sound; an erotic echoing of his lusting demand from her willing body.
Then his rhythm broke as one of his knees slipped, and his body was clear of her. Frantically, he sought to rejoin her, as though he'd fallen from a train that was moving away from him.
His search was entirely blind and he did not realize his error even as he read her reaction in her face; the sudden, wide opening of her eyes; a surprised, bulging look; the quick, fish-like opening of her mouth and the squall of protest that erupted from her taut throat.
Then she screamed.
But the scream came only dimly to his passion clouded senses as he resumed pursuit of his own ecstasy. She was not a person any more. She was merely an instrument he was using to produce ecstasy in himself.
He reached the unbearable end to the accompaniment of Lisa's screams. His mouth ravened at hers and her screams went down his throat and into him.
Then, his weight holding her in the same brutal position, he collapsed into helplessness of his own, and they lay there, still joined, but motionless.
Lisa did not fight. She clung to him and whimpered against his sweat-streaked face.
Gradually, reason returned to him. He lifted his head and looked down into her face and she knew he realized his mistake-the brutal manner in which he'd unknowingly finished.
His look was of helpless apology. "God, baby. I'm sorry."
"It's all right, darling. You didn't know."
"But-you must have been in agony." He started to lift away, but she clung to him. "Oh, careful. Don't move. Wait. It doesn't hurt now."
"You must be-numb."
Her giggle verged on hysteria. "You'll have to move slow and careful-unwind me. If you just get up, something might break."
Slowly, carefully, he moved.
She grimaced. "You didn't-ease up. A man's supposed to relax-."
"I will."
Again, she had her lower lip between her teeth. "Maybe we ought to wait."
"It will be a little while."
She sighed and caressed his shoulders. "God, what a man you are."
"How can you stand to be doubled-up?"
"I can't, but I'm afraid of what will happen when you undouble me. I might come apart."
They lay there, clinging to each other, both preoccupied with a kind of wonder they had never before known.
Lisa felt giddy, drunk with reaction. She giggled. "If I came apart, which half would you take?"
He half-grinned. "That's an old joke. The same as two men who owned a cow. One had to feed the front half and the other milked the back half."
She rubbed her cheek against his. "Would you rather have my back half only or my top half to feed?"
"Would you rather be fed?"
Her eyes were still hazy with passion. That was the difference between them at the moment. His passion was spent, but hers had been left unexploded by the mistake of direction that he had made.
She did not want to tell him, though. The needle-like frustration of being left halfway up the rainbow was exciting in itself. "I wish you could have both at once," she whispered.
"That would be pretty difficult."
And for a moment, Lisa was confused. This man with whom she lay interlocked. So close, so intimate. Had he lately been one of the four kidnappers? Had he been the slight young man who'd moved toward her, cat-like, his chest bulging toward her in vicious anticipation?
With all his gentleness, had he actually raped her into submission?
Her face jerked suddenly. "Yipe! Ouch!"
Then it was over-the quick, violent, pulling of the tooth.
"It was the best way," he said.
"You're-you're unbelievable! She marveled. "There must not be another man like you on earth."
"There aren't many women like you."
Lisa's legs had sprung up from their position of farthest tension and Shag eased them gently down to the bed. He rubbed the tendons of her knees and massaged her until she was completely straightened out.
"God," Lisa smiled. "I wouldn't want to go through that every morning before breakfast...."
When they came out of the small room, they found Keen lounging against the fender of the car. The intimacy they'd created between themselves, hadn't extended to him, and he eyed Lisa impersonally.
"It sounded like you ripped her to pieces."
"I almost did."
Keen was puzzled at the smile this brought to Lisa's face.
"Huh! You must have made her like it."
Shag's smile was close to a smirk. "What do you think?"
Lisa's hand slipped into Shag's as Keen said, "The way she yelled I thought you were using judo."
Objectively, idly, Lisa thought how nice it would be to slash Keen's handsome face with a razor. Then it occurred to her that it would be pleasant to hear him scream as she had screamed.
And for the same reason. Such things did happen, she was sure.
"You didn't tell me too much," Shag said. "What's with this bit? You said a dame paid you to get this chick off her back."
Keen sensed hostility in Shag. "It was kind of like that."
"What's the word now?"
"The same. She stays off the dame's back. But why the hell are you interested? You got paid for having fun."
Lisa was even more confused. How could she hate Keen so intensely and at the same time exonerate Shag for his far more vicious part in the affair.
Because he's a man, maybe, she thought. Maybe she hated Keen because he wasn't. He'd wanted her only for degenerate tricks that might amuse his twisted sensibilities.
But if that held, why did she hate Chick with even greater intensity? It was too big a puzzle to figure out on the spot.
"So she lays off your dame. That's it?"
Keen shrugged.
"Okay," Shag said to Lisa. "Let's blow."
"You taking her with you?" Any objections?"
Keen had objections but they were too vague to voice. It was mainly that Shag was taking over. There was something he didn't like about that.
Shag took a slow step toward his erstwhile ally. There was only the vaguest indication of a threat in his manner but there was an indication.
"Any objections?"
"No, I guess not."
"Okay, then let's blow this dump."
"You had a hell of a lot of fun," Keen said, "How about giving me the dough back?"
"Uh-uh. It's enough for a good dinner and we're hungry-right, baby?"
"I'm real hunry," Lisa said with a triumphant look at Keen. She'd beaten him in some subtle way that was very satisfying. Later, she would mull that over to.
But right now, she was hungry and she and the man who'd come to rape her were going to dinner....
CHAPTER NINE
Lisa awoke in a pleasant lassitude. She'd been dreaming of Shag. This was logical because she had never before had anything like him. He had opened a new world to her and in her dream his weight was upon her, he was filling her and his whispering voice, savage yet gentle, was in her ear.
I'm going to ball you like you've never been balled before, honey. After me, no man will ever satisfy you again.
Yes-oh, yes.
Her nostrils filled with the smell of him, her mouth yearned for the taste of him while his sweat and skin rubbed hard against her answering sweat and then there was the pain of his frantic mistake and the wondering after each movement if she could stand the next and wanting to tell him what would happen if he kept it up-what had to happen-and wanting to ask if she would ever be the same again after his doing that to her. But:
Oh, Shag! Do it! Oh, lover, destroy me!
A knock on the door. And Lisa was awake. Vaguely, she remembered that she hadn't locked it because after Shag brought her home there had been something on her mind-something she had to try something she had to know about. But she hadn't been able to put it in words. She was too timid, too shy with Shag to ask about such a thing.
She, Lisa-timid-shy? That was a laugh. But still, that was how it had been. She could only show him, suddenly there inside the door. Because she'd been thinking about it all the way home.
There in the restaurant when she'd taken the bread stick from the bowl of bread and rolls they'd brought to the table and put it into her mouth. It was hard, thickly-crusted and it would have crunched between her teeth if she'd bitten down on it, but she didn't do that. She looked across the table into Shag's eyes and had put the bread stick into her mouth and then pulled it out again.
He'd watched curiously. "You got bad teeth, honey?"
"No. My teeth are fine."
"Why don't you chew that bread stick then?"
"I don't want to. I want to hold it there for a minute. Then I'll eat it. Biting it would be cruel. And it wouldn't taste the same."
"You sound as though you've had a lot of experience with bread sticks."
"None at all, except when they were forced on me.
His eyes twinkled impishly. "Do you like them?" Lisa thought of Chick and retched emotionally. "Awful. But there are bread sticks-and bread sticks."
"They're all the same."
"You'd think so. But I don't believe it's true."
He was chuckling and she wondered about how he would look below the edge of the table and she would have reached over and touched him to find out but it was too far.
All the way home, while he was talking about other things, she was thinking about it.
She had to know.
So when they got inside her door and he turned from closing it, she grabbed, and he looked down at her in surprise.
"What the hell, baby-?"
"Do you mind?"
It was silly, asking so politely, so formally, looking up at him as though he were a king and she a peasant awaiting the touch of his hand on the top of her head.
"No, I don't mind."
He stood with his back against the door and as he looked down at her he unconsciously took a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it.
"Want a drag, first?" he grinned.
"No."
He didn't help her. He made her do it all herself and it was exciting. Fumbling with his trousers making way.-seeing him again with that delicious mixture of fear and fascination.
She took a deep breath like a person preparing to dive into deep water. Then she was in the deep water, learning all the paradoxes, the contrasts. Strong dominance, yet dove-gentle. Brutally demanding, yet love-tender.
She closed her eyes and moved because all the space was filled between them and there was so little room, and room was so important, pleasing him was so important.
No other way now, she thought. This was the third and the best. She must make it the best for him, because the idea of his ever going to any other girl with maybe more desire for him was unthinkable.
Everything so tense. A great strain on her. She was moved to a point beyond speech-a point beyond caressing.
He pushed her away. "Start over," he said, and she knew what he meant, and was grateful for his guidance. She slipped softly about her duties and he looked at the ceiling and took a deep drag off his cigarette.
And it was not the same. Not the same as Chick. So much different. So wonderful.
She worked faster then. Be stirred, my darling. Get excited. Show me that I'm good. Make me know I'm a good lover.
He was stirring, moving. His trousers and shorts came down and were bunched around his knees. More movement, and she thought he was disappointed in her and was drawing away. But then he was against the panel of the door, his cigarette gone, his ear pressed against the wood as though listening for something. But there was nothing to listen to. Only things to be felt and reveled in, and Lisa reveled in the feel of his taut thighs and buttocks and was grateful for the help and the guidance and the suggestion of his turning. She buried her face in the effort to prove herself as she reached around and caressed him with her hands also.
And she was succeeding! Even from her place, removed from his heart, she could hear it pound, the vibration of its urgent beat reaching her, stirring her too with the delight of delighting him.
Stirring depths she did not know existed. Bringing new demands from within.
She moved at him and delighted in the smothering and lack of breath, and he was bending over and moving toward her, his hands reaching back for her but not touching her, only clawing in space.
And now, gloriously, she took command. Her own reaching hands found and gripped and then she let go. He teetered and slipped to the floor on his back.
This gave him access to her, and his hands were like two sides of a vise on her, holding her tightly. He had been stirred beyond a safe point now, and in savage demand, he rolled over, rolling her over at the same time, and locking her arms under his knees so they were spread and helpless and her head and whole body were helpless too. She could only kick her legs against the vise. But his position, body resting clumsily on knees and chin and shoulders, was rigidly effective and he was, to Lisa, like the bottom of a dark well where she was jammed in tightly.
No one to hear. No one to care. She had tempted destiny and destiny was replying. She had been curious. Her curiosity was being satisfied in lustful violence.
Lisa could hear the harsh sound of lust-charged breathing and gasping. Rhythmic breathing, punctuated by a grunt of effort from above.
Lisa's heel pounded the floor. She clawed, wild and animal-like at the smothering oppression. The sweat she felt was from both their bodies, from the effort of erotic combat.
She choked in helpless protest, her nails going to his back to claw and fight and tear at the waHs of the well.
Then it happened.
Then Shag fell away and lay on his back, gasping and limp.
Lisa rolled over and went up on her hands and knees, gasping. "You-"
"You asked for that."
And destiny laughed. You wanted to be. raped. It was arranged. What's your complaint!
But not that way! Not mauled by love! Even his painful first mistake hadn't been that bad. You aren't strangled that way.
Thus she protested in her mind, because she had no voice. And perhaps it was her imagination, but there seemed to be a sore, punched spot inside at the pit of her stomach. But that really couldn't be.
But then, in the complete perversity of female love, Lisa rolled over and went into Shag's arms.
"You almost killed me."
"I'm sorry."
"I don't mind what you do with me. Do everything you can think of. But don't kill me."
He was contrite. "Honey, if it happens again, do this."
He was showing her, and now that it was all over, she laughed in her throat.
"Do that and I won't tear your hands away."
It was funny now as she lay close to him and tasted the sweat on his neck. "Which is best-to get my teeth knocked out or-"
Funny. Because it was over and he was holding her.
That was how it had been and why she'd forgotten to lock the door, crawling off to bed and carelessly leaving the door open so the bellhop could have come in and raped her if he'd known. You could never tell about cheap hotels.
But he hadn't, and now there was a second preemptory knock on the door. "Come in."
A woman entered. Clare Gifford's maid, Laura Crew.
Lisa stared as the iron-faced woman walked to the bed and looked down at her.
"There is a bruise on your cheek."
Lisa did not explain.
"What business is that of yours."
"I'm glad to see it. I hope they worked you over. I hope you have bruises from top to bottom."
Lisa sat up in bed. The truth dawned. She pointed a finger. "It was you. It wasn't Clare Gifford. It was you who called in those animals."
Laura Crew smiled. I don't know what you're talking about?"
"You paid Keen to take me off Clare Gifford's back."
Her simulated coyness was vicious in its contempt. "Why, whatever gave you that idea?"
"It's true."
Her smile was brightly curious. It changed her face and Lisa saw that she was not as old as she looked. It was her habitual, grim expression that made her look that way. The smile, even laced with hostility as it was, took years off her, and Lisa also saw that the rest of her matched the younger Laura Crew. In her late thirties. Certainly no more.
"I have nothing to do with it, of course," Laura Crew said, "but what did they do to you?"
"Haven't you talked to Keen?"
Then Laura stopped playing cat and mouse. Her smile faded. "I did put them onto you and I wouldn't have cared if they'd killed you. I've got a good thing at the Gifford's, and I'm not letting a little tramp like you mess it up."
"At least we understand each other. What are you doing, blackmailing her too?"
"I wouldn't stoop to such a thing."
Then Lisa realized the truth. How had she been so dense? Why hadn't she seen it before? Now she became starkly aware of the big, lush melons of breasts Laura Crew tried to hide behind a tight bra and a loose, flowing blouse. She saw the smoothly moulded thighs that pressed against her plain, unobtrusively-hued skirt.
Clare Gifford was going to bed with her maid!
How long has it been going on?" Lisa asked.
Laura reddened and anger blazed in her eyes. "What are you talking about?"
"You know damned well."
"And what business is it of yours?"
"You had me worked over in an empty garage. If I'd been killed you wouldn't have cared. So I'm making a few things my business."
"You'll get yourself into worse trouble."
Lisa thought she detected uncertainty in Laura's face. The woman didn't look as sure of herself as she wanted to appear.
"Maybe you're in a little trouble yourself, sweetie," Lisa said. "This working-over bit can go two ways. What if I told you I'm a very good friend of one of the boys you sent to rip my clothes off? What if I told you he knows some hutches in Greenwich Village who would like to spend a night making you do tricks. Just for kicks, they'd do it. They wouldn't have to be paid. I've got a hunch you're pretty appetizing under those sloppy Sal clothes you wear."
"You're a witch!" Laura snarled, thinly.
"Look who's calling who names? In fact, I might work you over a little myself. I've had a pretty broad experience in a lot of fields."
"I'm sure you have."
"I was in a place once where three broads picked out a fourth and had her crawling around the floor with her mouth open-and not just her mouth. I watched and learned a few tricks. You'd get a big kick out of them."
"You're-disgusting."
"Sure I am. But you aren't. You're-"
"I'm decent. I don't go around spewing filth oat of my mouth."
"You're a damned hypocrite." Seeking ways to rake her claws over Laura Crew's ego, Lisa moved recklessly in experimental directions. Her own ego uncaring, Lisa sensed that Laura Crew cringed from vulgarity of any sort.
"Look, honey, why don't you just strip down and crawl into bed with me. We can have some fun. And your rich uptown lover will never know the difference."
"I wouldn't touch you with gloves on."
"All right. I'll do the touching. You just stretch out here on the bed and I'll make you happy."
Wondering what on earth she would do if Laura took her up on the offer, Lisa smiled her invitation. But there was no danger. Laura Crew backed away toward the door.
"I'm leaving. I can't stand the smell of this foul place."
Lisa laughed.
After Laura Crew left, Lisa lay back in bed and wondered if she'd handled it right. Perhaps she shouldn't have baited the woman, but her belligerent attitude had irked Lisa.
Actually, she held no enmity toward Laura Crew at all, which was very strange. She should have hated Laura venemously for arranging to have her hauled into that place and raped and abused.
But if that hadn't happened, Lisa would never have met Shag.
At the thought of him, Lisa lay back and hugged herself. No longer bothering to marvel in the change that had taken place in her own thoughts and attitudes, she smiled dreamily and whispered, "Anything, darling. I'll do anything you want me to, any way you want it. I'll crawl on my belly and kiss you while you put your feet on me if it will make you happy. And you can do anything to me you want to-any place you want to do it. I don't care how much it hurts."
She gave no thought either, to the emotional area into which she'd moved. Perhaps, deep down inside, there was an uneasiness at the trend of her fantasies. The sensuous pleasure she found in thinking of Shag was like a narcotic. It turned sex into a wonderfully lovely thing, the switch so sudden that she should have been suspicious of it.
But it was too delightful-too much of a wonderful novelty and she wanted only to enjoy it.
With a final moment of regret that she had not told Laura she no longer had the least interest in blackmailing Clare Gifford, she allowed herself to lapse back into the lazy, partially-sleeping reverie where there were no problems.
There was only Shag, and with a sensuous gesture, she pushed the sheet away and bared her naked body to him, stretching her legs apart invitingly and sliding her hands down her belly and along her thighs.
"Nice, darling?" she murmured, her eyes closed. "It's all for you. Every square inch of it."
He was Shag, but he was not Shag. He was a sweetly sensuous thought-material for dreams that she could stretch and shape as she pleased. In a sense, he was the trigger she had used to snap the shutter that opened her to the delights of her own body. In a way it was as though she were finding it for the first time.
She ran her hands lightly over her thighs, felt their smooth contour, their firm, warm inner sides. She touched herself lightly and drew her hand away quickly with a small inward gasp of delight.
Lifting her hands, she cupped them over her breasts and fingered each nipple until it was hard and erect. She bent her neck and cupped the left one in both hands and tried to raise it high enough to touch the tip of the nipple with her reaching tongue. She just made it and the contact was strange and electric. She fell back, smiling.
She knew she was being an idiot but she didn't care. Vaguely, she recalled a story she'd once heard about a female contortionist who needed no one, neither man nor woman, because she had learned to make love to herself.
But I have Shag. Am I beautiful, darling? How do you want me?
Lisa smiled, her eyes closed, she reached down and caught her ankles in her hands and drew them upward and apart. Slowly, sensuously, until they were high and at the greatest possible width.
This way, darling? Does that please you?
In her reverie she pretended that he was very much pleased.
I'm all yours. Play with me.
The strange, wonderful, new world of erotic fantasy. She was deep in its caressing depths as Shag caressed her intimate body. She lay still, her legs braced wide for his pleasure. She smiled and shivered as he touched delicate nerve ends, her own hand easily shaping into the image of Shag enjoying her body.
More, darling. Don't be afraid of hurting me.
She shivered in delight as he went farther.
Back behind the glow of fantasy, a voice of sanity whispered: This is self-abuse. But she answered it petulantly. All right. I've got a lot of catching up to do.
Haven't I, Shag?
He laughed and his hand went lower and she giggled.
You beast. That tickles. Wait, darling.
She turned her long, beautiful body until she was on her belly. Then she drew her knees up and spread them and looked back at him upside down between her breasts.
She smiled and pressed backward grotesquely and lewdly, visualizing his face at the far end of the tunnel through which she peered.
What are you doing down there, darling? Aren't you ashamed of yourself?
His smile said he was not.
You're a devil, but if you must, let me help.
Bracing herself on her chin, she reached back and moved herself with both hands until the tension was almost painful. But the sense of being exposed to him was delightful.
If that's what you want, darling. Anything! Anything!
Moving her body clumsily, like a crab hunching itself backward through sand, she pressed herself toward him, farther and farther.
Then he would allow her to go no farther and held her there while he satisfied his insatiable lust.
She moaned and began moving her hips and buttocks up and down against the delicious contact.
Darling-ok, darling!
In obedience to the command, her hips and buttocks moved violently. Dimly, as a moan arose in her throat, reality tried to break through. Reality tried to tell her that Shag wasn't there. That this was a grotesque and difficult way to achieve the ecstasy she sought.
But she did not hear the voice. She heard, rather, the soft, ravenous sounds of insane love-making, the frantic slaking of his lust for her.
Oh, darling-I'm going to scream! Don't stop. Don't dare stop. Faster-harder! Take me, sweetheart.
Her eyes glazed from the rising delight.
The other now! Oh, please-the other. Smash me down. Destroy me, lover. Rip me apart.
She heard her own screams, but they were in fantasy too, screams save from when she was bent double and Shag was frantically and unknowingly torturing her with his vastness ripping viciously and creating strain and distortion nature had not intended her to experience and had made scant allowance for.
Those screams, in the silent room, and the pleasure of reverse service to her phantom lover through begging him for mercy.
No! No! I can't stand it! I can't take it! You're killing me! Have mercy!
Then Lisa collapsed, her legs hanging off the bed, the post keeping her from slipping down to the floor. The post hard and unyielding, but exciting with its smooth after-thrill of warmth.
Even this was a source of pride to her.
My lover. He never stops being a man. I'm not able to take away his manhood. It is there always. Ready. Waiting.
Her own passion spent, Lisa felt shame seeping in. Self-disgust was a part of it and she reached for the sheet to cover her naked body.
But, as in other cases, she fell back into that elemental animal ability to escape crisis in oblivion. Before she had drawn the sheet over herself, she was asleep.
And another dream came quickly. The door opened. Shag looked in and then approached the bed. There was someone with him. Another man.
"There she is. Still not interested?"
A new voice. "Man! Somebody already worked her over."
"She gets excited even when she's alone."
"Nice," the voice gloated. "Real nice. You see something like that, you want some of it."
"Okay. There it is."
"Not here."
Shag's voice, sneering. "Oh, the shy type."
"No, just sensible. At my place."
"That'll cost more."
"You sure she'll hold still for-for what I want?"
"She'll hold still. If not, we'll hold her still. But like I said. It'll cost."
"Okay. Maybe it'll be worth it."
There were receding footsteps and the door closed and there was silence.
Lisa opened her eyes. Had it been a dream?
Then she did not worry about the incident because she suddenly began worrying about herself. All this was so new. It wasn't as though it had come gradually. That was what made it frightening. Suddenly she was no longer able to separate fantasy from reality.
So she was not so much concerned about what Shag had said as with whether or not he'd actually been there.
Then she drifted off to sleep again.
In sleep, the dreamless kind, everything vanished.
There were no problems....
CHAPTER TEN
"Certainly, Shag, anywhere you say."
"The guy's a friend of mine and he asked us to drop in."
That us thrilled Lisa deeply. It meant that Shag thought of her as a part of himself-as his girl. Nothing had been discussed in this respect and even though only two days had passed since Shag had gently guided her through the fears and tenseness of becoming his sex partner and thus opened a new world to her, it was as though their relationship had been long established.
He came to her room that morning and found her in bed. As though they were old friends, he casually undressed and crawled in with her.
"How's your bankroll?" he asked as he toyed with the big, brown nipples that were waiting for him.
"Not so good."
She looked fondly into his face and with one hand, again investigated the development that had first frightened her and now turned her to liquid, quick-flowing desire every time she saw him.
"You didn't bring much dough with you?"
"I had over a hundred dollars, but it goes fast."
His eyes vague with thought, he turned his casual attention to her navel, stretching it with two spread fingers and looking inside.
Lisa massaged him gently, the thrill running up her arm and all over her body.
"Then we'll have to see about picking up some bread," Shag murmured.
"What do you do for a living, darling?"
He moved his hips to give Lisa a freer movement of her hand. "Oh, a job here, a deal there. I got twenty bucks the other day for the garage job."
It seemed so strange, hearing him say that and not resenting it in the least even though that job had consisted of stripping her naked and making her do the kind of tricks that would amuse degenerates.
"Are you still sore?" he asked suddenly.
"A little."
"I won't last long."
Lisa's soft flesh cringed instinctively. When Shag had done it, she was sure the soreness would remain forever.
"How much did Laura Crew pay Keen to have me worked over?"
"He didn't say."
"She was here."
Shag did not seem interested. "He didn't tell me much about the deal."
He put his finger into her mouth and felt around and then moved down to the big brown nipple and closed his lips over it and teased it, his eyes objective and thoughtful. Lisa ran her fingers through his hair.
"This man, is he a good friend of yours?"
"Oh, I see him around. Turn over."
Tensing a little, Lisa obeyed. "Shag-that's not ready so soon. I-"
"Don't worry, baby. Everything will be all right."
In some ways, he was a strange lover, going through the movements automatically, it seemed, even when his mind was elsewhere. He reached down and moved her buttocks to make it more comfortable for himself but did not force her legs apart. Then, pushing her hair up off the nape of her neck, his whole weight spread evenly along her body, he began worrying at the base of her skull with his teeth, biting the tendons gently as though preparing to grip her there and thus form an anchor for erotic activities.
Lisa's buttocks were tense as his body lay poised over them.
"Where does your friend live?"
"Out on the island."
"That's Long Island?"
"Uh-huh. He's got a place out there. Lives alone. The guy's filthy rich."
Slowly, gently, Shag grasped her hair and lifted her, pulling it back until it was parallel to her prone body. There was strain on Lisa's neck but it wasn't too great.
"You'd be a nice target this way," he said casually. "What do you mean?"
"If there was a guy in front of you. This bed is just the right height. All he'd have to do would be to stand there and get his kicks."
"Would you let a man do that to me, Shag?"
His laugh was light and noncommittal. "No room between the bed and the wall, baby."
Lisa buried her face in the pillow and waited. Shag's hips were moving lazily. "How will we get to Long Island?" Lisa asked.
"I've got an old klunker. It rolls. Relax, baby. Keep your legs together. I'll handle it."
"Not-there-"
"Don't worry, baby," he chided gently.
As he pressed her legs apart very slowly and lazily with his knees, he slid his hands under her body and cupped her breasts, gripping each nipple between a thumb and finger. He began rolling them gently.
"You don't work at any steady job, then?" Lisa asked.
"Me? No. I don't like being restricted."
He was probing gently, searchingly, with his hips.
"I don't even know where you live, Shag."
"I got a pad in the Village."
She felt him as his skillful search ended and he found what he sought. She tried to widen her knees.
"No. Leave them. They're just right."
Slowly, teasingly, he moved forward.
"Are you getting excited?"
"Uh-huh," Lisa murmured. "Can't you tell?"
He chuckled as he rolled her nipples and felt their erect eagerness. "I can tell."
"This is how it is when people are married, I guess."
"How do you mean?" Shag asked, amusement in his tone.
"Well, I guess when people are married, a husband can do it any time and any way he wants to."
He laughed as he performed a careful repositioning of his body-going up on his knees while moving only his legs and nothing more.
"Uh-huh. I guess so. While she's bending over the sink."
Lisa had relaxed and was drifting partially into reverie.
"Lift her skirt and-"
"On the lounge in the living room."
"While they're watching TV."
"He could pull her out of the shower and take her all wet and slippery."
"After she's soaped herself."
Lisa sighed. "He could-oh god-"
Lisa's suddenly outraged body lunged upward as Shag, using his knees for leverage, and without warning, threw his total weight downward and forward.
Lisa's head strained upward, her neck taut, her face twisted into a grimace of agony. "Ouch! Shag!"
He was silent as she twisted and strained, trying frantically to escape him, sensing wildly that she was being slipped upon a great spit over glowing coals.
But she could not escape. There was his weight and a fiendishly clever restraint he'd devised that held her down like a tent pegged to stakes-his tight grip on her nipples, almost pulling her breast out by the roots, extending them like ropes fastened to her chest.
"Easy, baby," he whispered gently. "This is rehearsal."
That last escaped her completely. But later, she was to look back at the motionless interlude that preceded his first, savage move as a quiet that proceeded a violence that extended on and on. From one incident to the next, that violence was to sweep her.
Now she was concerned only with the moment. The sudden, agonizing movement and the ones that followed one upon another.
As she lay there pressed like a bug-eyed frog, it was again like the bottom of the dark well but this time she was upside down in the well-shaft, stuck there.
Shag released her nipples and hooked both hands over her shoulders for better leverage.
His rising passion was poured in grunts of effort and a storm of hot breath fanned her ear. Each motion was a supreme effort followed by a grunt of triumph as it occurred.
"Oh, Shag! Oh, God!! You're killing me."
"Sure baby. Rehearsal!"
The last word reached her this time. Rehearsal for what? Then he seemed to belong and her own delight began rising. Sweat began pouring and his belly against her buttocks were lubricated and slid smoothly.
"You-need me-baby-"
"Yes-yes-I need you. Oh, Shag! You beast!"
It was a term of wild endearment rather than a curse. And he answered it with a grotesquely reversed compliment. "I need-a broad like you to have around-"
Her giggle was semi-hysteria. "To bend over the sink."
It was as though they were whizzing at incredible speed down a long, joyful highway toward-toward what?
"To pull out of the shower all soapy."
Two degenerate children finding a wild, dangerous new ecstasy.
"To catch squatting in the garden!"
One of his hands left her shoulder in wild, crazy desire, he crammed fingers into her mouth and pulled her jaw down against its hinges.
"Bite me, and I'll rip you wide open, he gasped.
His body moving wildly, he now used his other hand to find her tongue. He tried to grip its slipperiness and pull it from her mouth but she knew that if he succeeded he might be handing it to her a few moments later.
My God. He's a wild man! He'd rip my tongue out by the roots.
But it was a mental exclamation of wonder rather than of fright. Then, her ecstasy suddenly upon her, she forgot everything else and thrust her tongue out, far into his hand, seeking to drive it deep into his closed fist as she screamed, the scream a croaking sound retching up out of her throat.
The unbearable ecstasy was the greatest she'd ever known, dwarfing all that had come before and she knew it must have been the same with him because they strained upward and then collapsed completely at the same moment.
And neither of them, it appeared, was able, for a time, to move a muscle. Every part of Lisa's body went limp She realized her cheek was resting on Shag's wrist, her mouth lax and open, her tongue extended and lying limp in his open palm.
Her mind worked and gave a cry of triumph: But he's tired too. Not like that last time. I beat him. I beat him. He's tired and helpless.
They lay as though paralyzed, only their pounding hearts and retching lungs still able to function.
Finally, Lisa pulled her tongue back into her mouth and laughed shakily. "God! I couldn't stand many of those."
"Why, baby," he said in tender mockery. "That was just a rehearsal!"
"You said that before. A rehearsal for what?"
"You'll see," he said gently. "But right now, we've got to get the hell out of here. We've got a date on Long Island...."
As Lisa lowered herself gingerly onto the lumpy cushion of Shag's ancient jalopy, she marveled at the resiliance and recuperative powers of human flesh. She'd dreaded the moment, but it wasn't bad at all.
The trip itself was quite pleasant. Halfway there, Shag pulled suddenly into a parking space in front of a bar.
"We need a drink," he said.
Lisa laughed. "Wouldn't it be better to wait and freeload off our host later? Neither of us has too much money."
"Oh, I've got a few bucks," Shag said easily.
Inside, without consulting Lisa, he ordered two double Scotches.
"But I drink bourbon, honey."
"You'll like Scotch," he said casually.
And when the drinks were served, and he lifted his shot glass in salute, she imitated him and poured it down straight in order to please him.
"Stout girl," he smiled, and they went on their way.
But it seemed to be Shag's day to drink and they stopped off twice more before they reached their destination. As they pulled in between two tall stone posts and went up a winding drive, Lisa laughed giddily.
"Everything's spinning. You didn't tell me you were going to bring me out here drunk."
"Baby, you're kidding. Three little ones!"
"Three doubles! That makes six. This car is rocking like a boat."
He glanced at her. "You're not going to embarrass me by being one of those chicks who can't drink, are you?"
"Of course not, Shag."
She wanted so much to please him that the thought of embarrassing him was almost sobering. Still, she saw two men-twins-waiting for them in front of a big stone house, and the two merged into one only when the car stopped.
"Vance," Shag called out. "'This is Lisa. Lisa Vance Hall, our genial host."
He was a tall, tweedy man with a pipe in his mouth and the hand he extended to Lisa as he opened the door, was big and moist.
"Welcome to Butterfield," Vance Hall said, and Lisa tried desperately to keep from falling down as he helped her from the car.
Shag, in no way affected by the drinks, came around front and took Lisa by the elbow as Hall escorted them toward the big, cool-looking mansion.
The emptiness was what struck Lisa's teetering mind. "Are we the only ones?"
"They'll be others later," Hall said easily. "Come on inside. We'll have a drink and I'll show you around the place."
Impressions flitted vaguely across Lisa's consciousness. An impression that there was something between Hall and Shag. She thought she caught looks between them that were more than casual-a questioning look from Hall and a quick, answering glance from Shag. But she was too busy keeping her balance to give anything else much thought.
The place smelled of money. Even in her dizzy condition, Lisa could smell it. The bar toward which Hall escorted them was nothing but a blank wall when they got there, but he pushed a button and the wall opened. There was a completely-equipped bar behind it.
"What are you folks drinking?"
"Scotch," Shag said. "We're taking it straight today."
He winked at Lisa and when she made a gesture of protest, he leaned close and whispered. "We can't insult his hospitality."
Bravely, Lisa gripped her glass, teetered, and dropped into a chair.
And then, quite suddenly, everything changed. Hall, who had been the image of a perfect host, said, "Look, maybe she's had enough. We don't want her to collapse on us."
Shag studied Lisa with an eye to that possibility while she returned his gaze dully.
"Maybe you're right. How is it, kid? Can you stand up all right?"
Even though the world was spinning, Lisa's faculties still worked. She struggled to her feet. "Wait a minute-what is this?"
"It's okay, honey," Shag said gently. "Vance just wants to have a little fun."
"You mean you brought me out here to-?"
"Baby! You make it sound bad? What's wrong with our making a few bucks?"
"Shag-please-" , But it all seemed to be spinning by her. She saw Vance Hall frown as he asked, "Can she still respond? Maybe she's too plastered."
"Not a chance," Shag said loyally.
Hall wasn't necessarily convinced. "You know I get my kicks in a specialized way-not out of a window dummy.
"She's okay. I'll show you."
Shag dropped into a chair and pulled Lisa down on his lap. She struggled a moment, bewildered, and then was helpless to resist what Shag had in mind. He put his arms around her, locking her arms close to her sides. Then, obviously knowing the sort of erotic thrill Vance Hall liked, he pulled Lisa's skirt up and folded it against her belly.
Helpless, she sat there on his lap, under his control, exposed from her navel down. She kicked in rebellion, her long slim legs lashing out as she struggled.
Shag was not at all disturbed nor was his poise shaken. He acted as though he were subduing a rebellious child. "Now just take it easy, honey. We don't want to disappoint Vance, do we?"
It was a kind of waking nightmare with Lisa, the Scotch roiling in her belly, she unable to cope with it.
He was using his feet, now, to push her ankles apart, and when he'd forced enough room, he nimbly hooked his feet over her ankles and forced her to stretch her legs for Hall's edification.
He was obviously sick, had long since passed the point where normal sex relations found any response in him. His eyes stared at the body that Shag's outwardly pressuring feet forced into sight, her hips and abdomen revealed through her thin panties.
"She's got to respond," Vance Hall muttered, as though vital things depended on it.
"She will," Shag said easily. Then he whispered in Lisa's ear, "Come on, honey-show the man."
Lisa was frozen in a kind of unbelieving horror as Shag caught the band of her panties and pulled them down over her belly.
But he did not strip them off completely. With an instinct for finesse-no doubt realizing that Hall was sated with total nudity, Shag pushed both hands down Lisa's belly under her panties. Not a great deal was hidden because the panties were translucent, but a slightly different affect was achieved-one that Hall seemed to appreciate. His eyes were bright as he watched and he kept rubbing his palms together in a circular rhythm.
Helpless, Lisa lay sprawled on Shag as his hands went under her panties. The position he'd forced her into, left her hunched partially on her shoulders with her belly bulging upward above the place Shag's hands began to work.
"No, Shag, please!"
The room spun. His voice seemed to be coming from everywhere. "Easy, baby. Just make out like we're all alone."
"Of course," Hall said. "Just act as though I'm not here."
Lisa looked down at herself sprawled there awkwardly; stared as though she were watching the manipulation of some other girl's body.
But it was her own. The touch of Shag's hands against her flesh left no doubt of that.
Hall watched the movement under the thin cloth of the panties. "This is only a preliminary, of course," he murmured.
Preliminary? God! What are they going to do to me? Lisa asked herself.
But it was what Shag did at the moment that occupied her. He knew how so well-the delicate nerve ends-the touches and movements to which a girl had to respond even against her will.
"Oh, Shag-Shag-"
She knew he was grinning up at Vance from back beyond range of her own eyes. He said, "Look at her expression."
"She does seem to like it," Hall said. "So many of them fight and do not react."
Lisa was two people all mixed up there in the haze of alcohol. The drinks had sharpened her sensitivities to a point where her body wanted to thrust up and press itself against Shag's skillful hands. She was not exerting inward pressure now-that she lay there with her legs sprawled out over his, not caring much what happened. The other Lisa, the quiet one inside, was heartbroken and horrified. While the sensuous one pushed her hips and bottom up for the attention Shag was giving her, the other one could only plead.
"Shag-please don't do this to me in front of another man!"
"But honey, what's the difference? You like it, don't you?"
"If we were alone-anything-anything you could do to me, but-"
She was all mixed up. The world was all mixed up.
"See?" Shag said to Vance. "She's responding. She's coming around."
"Oh, Shag! Damn you!"
It was horrible-the way he spoke of her as though she were an animal performing in front of an audience.
Look at the cute tricks she can do!
Shag said, "She's not mad at me. She's cursing for more, not for less. I've got her right on the edge and she wants to go over."
The trouble was it was so devilishly true. He had her on the edge-at a point she was straining her legs outward and lifting her knees-showing herself shamelessly to the degenerate Hall, who was now squatting down for a better look.
Hall glanced up at Shag. "You're sure she isn't acting?"
"Look at her, man! Put your hand here and find out."
Lisa writhed as a third hand was applied to her bent body. Hall's eyes glowed. "You're right. She responds beautifully. You'd be surprised how many girls-"
"Shag! For God's sake!" Lisa writhed and screamed. He had never exhibited this sort of skill before. He had never been so sadistic. And worst of all was his objective, clinical explanation to the pervert into whose power he'd delivered her.
"She was ready all the way out," Shag said. " Anytime I could have stopped the car and pushed her over the seat."
"A fantastic capacity," Hall marveled.
The inhibited Lisa writhed inwardly. Were they crazy? Were they animals who thought everyone else was an animal too?
She writhed inwardly but the other, the sensual Lisa writhed outwardly, her eyes rolling upward, her mouth open, her widely splayed hips jerking upward and outward to find closer contact with those devilish hands.
"Oh, Shag-don't do this to me!"
"What she means is do it harder," he said softly.
"Don't leave me hanging!"
He released his grip and Lisa slid to the floor. In the twisting and turning, her panties had come down to mid-thigh and as she pulled her knees up against her breasts, Hall peered lustfully at her exposed posterior as it jutted up toward him.
"Tell me," he said, "would she have responded this way if you hadn't filled her with Scotch?"
"I doubt it. Her inhibitions had to be dulled."
Lisa was sobbing, an odd, dry, tearless sob. She was pawing at herself and Hall's eyes glowed sickly.
"Would she ah-finish-?"
Shag looked at Lisa critically. His eyes told her that he was aware of the turmoil inside of her. He knew the torture of being on the edge and helpless to push over on the rainbow side. So close to the ecstasy, yet so far from it.
"I don't think so," Shag said. "She has a little too much resentment."
Like an animal, Lisa howled inwardly, as Hall looked at Shag with admiration and said, "You're very expert. You knew how to trap her right on the peak."
And Shag answered, "She's exceptional. Most girls wouldn't balance there. They'd fall over."
Hall looked at Lisa wistfully. "I'll bet it would be something, watching her do it."
"She'd be all over the room."
"You-you beasts-"
Shag dropped to his knees and laid a soothing hand on Lisa's belly. And it was all mad-crazy mad-because even for that little gesture, she was grateful; grateful that he was going to pull her panties up and her skirt down and treat her like a human being.
Even as this feeling came, her spirit raved against it:
What's happened to me? I'm Lisa Hart. I'm tough and I'm hard and I've fought my way up. But here I am. I'm lying on a floor with my pants down begging a man to be kind to me.
I've lost my mind.
And there was no kindness, no gentleness. He wasn't pulling her panties up. He was pulling them off.
"When we get rid of these pants, you can see for yourself, Shag said.
And even then, Lisa was defending him in her heart. Shag isn't this way, she told herself. It's just the man he's dealing with that's degenerate. He's the kind of a beast that has to have special things from a girl to get his kicks. Shag isn't abnormal.
She kept telling herself this as Shag pulled her pants completely off and lifted her legs and spread them.
"She's ready all right. Do you think I can push her over?"
A nightmare sequence and Lisa tried to tell herself that was all it was. You didn't question a nightmare. And only in a bad dream could a thing like this happen.
"Sure you can," Shag assured Hall.
Hall was looking around. "How about over the coffee table."
Shag looked at Lisa speculatively. "She'll probably yell."
"That's okay. There's nobody around to hear."
Lisa's eyes widened in fear. "What are you going to do to me?"
"Take it easy, baby." He caught her by the wrists and lifted her up. "That coffee table will be good."
It was a log about a foot thick, the bark taken off and the surface highly polished. It sat solidly on six legs and was over six feet long with the top side flattened.
"We could put her over one end," Hall said, "but I guess we'll have to tie her legs."
"I think we could hook them around the legs at the end and then maybe hold her wrists along the table while you get your kicks."
"Shag! What are you going to do?"
"Now, baby, you're not going to fight me are you?"
Fight two grown men? What would he the use? But at the same time, Lisa realized she had changed. The old Lisa would at least have tried.
"Maybe she'll like it," Hall said.
"Sure she will," Shag said.
Shag's words struck Lisa with horror. Was he right? Was she actually looking forward with excitement to whatever it was they planned to do?
While she wrestled with this point, she found herself kneeling at the end of the low-log coffee table with its end pushing hard against her naked belly. The legs were close to the end and angled outward, as though they had possibly been made to order for a situation such as this; one in which a girl's kneeling legs could be hooked around them and her arms pulled forward along the log. This strain drew her bottom taut against the end of the log.
Lisa looked dully at Shag who was now facing her and straddling the log, pulling hard on her wrists.
"Oh, Shag-no! Don't do this to me."
He smiled at her tenderly. "But honey, we need the bread. We're stony broke, remember? And Vance Hall is a generous man."
"What's-what's he going to do to me?"
"It won't be so bad."
She twisted her head around to look and saw Hall standing there with a feverish look in his eyes. He was staring at the beautiful round melons that presented themselves from the tight, squatting position that Lisa's imprisoned legs forced her into.
He was holding two instruments. One was obviously a paddle, but exceptional in that it had a long, flexible handle. Lisa realized how flexible as Hall bent it into a circle and she watched it spring viciously as he released it.
"You're not going to use that thing on me!"
Lisa began to struggle, pulling hard against the restraint Shag was exerting.
Then she emitted a shriek of pain as the paddle smacked against her taut rump with all the resiliency of the supple handle.
"He gets his kicks that way, honey," Shag soothed. "Let's humor him."
The paddle smacked her again, cracking like a small pistol. This brought a second shriek of pain.
"Honey," Shag said, "Save it. He hasn't started yet."
"Shag! Please! Don't let him do it to me."
"But baby, it's not as bad as the other."
Lisa lay her cheek against the smooth surface of the coffee table and sobbed. When the paddle hit a third time, she did not scream.
Kneeling beside her, Hall pulled it into a circle and let it spring out again. He smiled. "That side's nice and red," he announced. "Now well do the other."
Lisa's mind wasn't keeping up with the punishment. Her body jerked obediently with each resounding smack of the paddle, but she was wondering: What other! Did Hall have more painful tricks than this one?
He did. She realized this when a high-pitched shriek of pure agony burst from her throat and her belly lunged hard against the end of the log. There was a thump and she realized she'd lifted the coffee table off the floor in her agonized reaction.
Wildly, she twisted her head to see what had been used on her and saw that Hall was triumphantly holding a second paddle-a long strip of what appeared to be flexible bamboo about an inch wide.
Using the leverage of its whole length, Hall had applied it vertically instead of horizontally.
"Down the middle, honey," Shag explained.
"You beast! I can't stand it!"
Hall was paying no attention. Concentrating on his work, he skillfully manipulated the long thin paddle as accurately as a bull-whip expert might apply the end-thong of his whip.
"I can hit the exact square inch I choose," he said proudly. He again demonstrated, and again Lisa lifted the coffee table from the floor in her quick agony.
She heard her own voice begging, imploring, pleading, but it did no good. Or did it? Hall had changed his technique now. He was down on one knee, peering closely at his target and his use of the thin whip became very delicate. The blows were not nearly as hard but they came more frequently.
And now, they didn't hurt. It was only the comparison, of course. Lisa told herself this as she cringed there waiting, the taut strain of her exposure giving Hall an almost flat surface upon which to work.
But he was gentle now, almost caressing in the manner and skill with which he snapped the end of the bamboo whip against her flesh.
Shag was watching her face now, half-smiling, and he relayed its message to Hall. "That's it. She likes it."
Lisa hated it, but she couldn't help herself. In his way, he was fiendishly clever as Shag. Sharply, but still softly, the bamboo caressed the narrow surface against which it was aimed.
"She's stopped screaming," Hall said.
"That's okay-she'll start moaning in a minute."
Lisa began cursing them. Every vile name she could think of spewed from her lips by way of defense. She would die before letting that pig know he was driving her crazy; that he'd picked up where Shag had left off and was pushing her closer to the unbearable ecstasy she had only lately discovered as possible.
She moaned, straining down hard-back against the wrist pressure Shag maintained.
Hall had momentarily stopped, he was staring at his target, his tongue running hotly over his lips. "Come and look," he said.
"It's okay," Shag answered, "I know. Didn't I tell you? I wouldn't lie to a pal."
The caressing snap of the bamboo continued. Then Lisa lost. She surrendered and a long moan escaped from her throat.
The punishment ceased and the moan was answered by Hall with an inarticulate gasp of sick hunger and need. He'd gone to both knees during the last moments of his delicate punishment and he remained there and Lisa now lunged softly away from the touch of him upon her quivering, shrieking flesh.
She saw Shag's grinning face there in the silence broken only by the animal sounds from behind.
A hog rooting in a trough.
Lisa pressed her hot face against the coffee table. Shame flamed through her. But then she resisted it. This wasn't her shame. It was Hall's. And it was Shag's. Why should she be ashamed of what Hall was doing to her?
In a wild, reckless denial of the shame, Lisa raised her head and faced Shag. She half-smiled, thus revealing the chaotic delight that was rocketing through her body.
Then she surrendered completely. Straining her head back, she gritted her teeth and grasped at the ecstasy to which Shag had almost brought her and now Hall was pouring to her in full measure.
It's happening, she told herself. Why shouldn't I enjoy it? I paid enough for it.
But as the unbearable delight turned her entire body into a flowing stream emptying out upon the whole world, she realized this must be greater because of the torture Hall had inflicted. The slapping of the paddle and the pin-point bite of the bamboo had done something to her receptive powers and now she was able to give Hall more and more. She moaned and lost all control.
"Oh, don't stop! Don't ever stop! Keep on doing it to me! Keep on balling me that way forever!"
Through the rainbow haze, she saw Shag's grinning face. In the thundering of the ecstasy, his voice came from far away.
"Didn't T tell you, you'd like it, baby?"
He released her wrists but she stayed as she was-straining her body outward, wanting Hall to reach ever further. Then he fell away and she turned and saw him lying on his stomach, hypnotically rubbing his face against the thick, soft rug.
She squatted there weakly, waiting for Shag to lift the table and release her....
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Three hundred bucks, honey, Shag said. "Not bad for one afternoon's work, huh?"
He looked at her fondly over a table in a Village coffee shop and it occurred to Lisa that anyone observing them would have seen a nice, wholesome young couple enjoying a summer afternoon.
"Shag," she said, "is that what you've got in mind for me? Selling me to degenerates?"
"Baby-we have to have bread."
He charged her complaint off with that, and turned to admire a girl who had just entered. "Look at the boobs on that one," he muttered.
"I suppose you'd like to work on them."
"Me? Honey, I'm a one girl man. Your boobs are plenty all right for me."
"They're not as big as hers."
"They'll do."
"Vance Hall got his money's worth out of them," Lisa said bitterly. She recalled what had happened after she'd been released from the coffee table. While she lay exhausted on the floor, Hall had rolled over on top of her and found her mouth. From that point on he'd become a marathon guy. The kiss lasted ten minutes and when he was through with that, he knew the inside of her mouth clear down to her tonsils. Then he'd worked on each boob for what seemed hours.
But that was only the preliminary. His virile passion finally aroused, he found the target toward which he was moving and Lisa cushioned him there on the floor for an interminable time. Until she thought, My God! Is he going to ball me forever?
Then he was through. Or so she thought. After a reasonable time, Lisa said, "Get off, please."
He responded viciously, snarling like an animal and Lisa looked toward Shag in alarm. It was comical in a way because Shag sat there on the lounge with a drink, reading a book.
Hall stayed where he was, leaving things as they were. Then his passion arose again and he started all over. Lisa's stiff legs arched and her body felt as though a lash poker had been used on it.
But while Hall was grunting and rutting the second time around, she divorced herself from it to ask what had happened to Lisa? Where had the fighter gone? Where was the girl who would have broken this beast who was now balling her like a mad bull would have found a way to cripple him the instant he laid a hand on her.
She felt his thudding rhythm and a great sense of despair flooded her. She sobbed.
Hall's rhythm broke. He frowned and turned his head to look at Shag.
"She's crying."
Shag looked over, concerned. "What's the matter, baby?"
"What's the matter?" Lisa wailed. "My God! What do you think I am? A damn balling machine? I can't take it any more."
"Maybe she never met any real men before," Hall said.
"Could be," Shag replied pensively.
"Will you stop talking about me as though I were an animal-a mare or a cow or something! I'm a human being!"
Then it was even funnier. Shag came over and knelt down and put a pillow under her head while Hall, his incredible lust mounting higher, went into a frenzy of violence, pouring himself to her in a mad explosion.
As he collapsed for the second time, his exhaustion almost a pitiful thing, Shag came to Lisa's defense.
"Maybe you'd better give her a rest."
Lisa wasn't thinking very straight at that point. She laughed. "Well, thank you, gallant knight! You're wonderful! Thanks for coming so nobly to my rescue."
Hall had rolled off. There was a look of satisfaction on his face. "A solid hour and ten minutes," He gloated. "I guess I'm in pretty good shape."
Lisa was laughing hysterically and Hall sat up. "What's wrong with her?" He asked wonderingly.
"She's a little tired. She'll be all right."
Lisa clung to Shag and cried herself out as Shag tried to comfort her. "Baby," he said, "this is what women are made for."
"Not all the time!"
She had never met anyone like Shag and when they were back in the car heading back to the city, she wondered what to do. During the final half hour, on her knees in front of Hall with the incredible monster sprawled on the lounge with his head thrown back and his legs sprawled and the idiotic look of ecstasy on his face, she knew that when she got free of this trap she would do something.
But what?
Now that she was free, she discovered that there was no such thing as freedom. Shag was her prison. Shag was her trap.
This was love?
Oh, God!
Yet, she knew that if Shag had stopped the car and casually said, Get out and take your pants down and bend over, honey, she would have had to do it.
She had heard of the power some procurers held over prostitutes who loved them. Was that what she had become? Shag's prostitute? The thought made her sick.
Yet, she could not walk away from him....
"Three hundred bucks, honey. You don't find one like Hall very often."
"Shag-what are your ideas about me?"
"What do you mean-ideas?"
"What are your plans? Are you going to take me from one man to another and get me mauled and balled until I'm no good any more and then desert me?"
He was horrified. "Why, honey! What a rotten thing to say. This money is as much yours as it is mine."
"Then give me my half."
"Don't be unreasonable. I'll hold it 'til we build up a real bankroll."
"Then what will be do?"
"Get out of this town. Take ourselves a vacation. Lay on the sand somewhere and-"
"Is it better doing it on the sand than on a rug or in a dirty bed somewhere?"
He looked at her tenderly and smiled, "Sweetie, you're just feeling low. A good dinner and a few laughs and you'll feel great again."
"Shag-would you let another man ball your wife?"
He eyed her warily. "What's the point?"
"Will you marry me?"
The question knocked him completely off-guard. "Are you kidding? Marry a cheap, two-bit tramp-" He caught himself and laughed, but Lisa was up and out of the coffee shop and gone.
She ran blindly for two blocks with people turning to look, but this was the Village and if she'd fallen down and wallowed in the gutter they would have done the same, stopped and stared.
She turned a comer and went into Washington Square and dropped to a bench. She sobbed quietly until all the tears were gone and then tried to organize her mind for some intelligent thinking. What had brought her to this point? Why had nothing worked out for her? She'd certainly tried. But everything had gone bad. She'd just had no luck.
But that didn't mean there wouldn't be luck tomorrow. The thought brightened her. So she'd had a little difficulty. The thing to do was to take destiny by the ears She laughed. The way Hall had taken her by the ears those last few seconds A lighter, brighter world.
Everything would be all right.
She got up from the bench and started walking. But soon, she was forcing herself to go in that direction. Then she stopped and turned and went slowly in the direction she'd been trying to avoid.
But she kept on walking....
"Surprise, baby," Shag grinned as she opened the door to her room. "Surprise. You didn't expect to find me here, did you."
Lisa closed the door and moved toward the bed upon which he lay comfortably sprawled.
"I knew you'd be here."
"You're kidding!"
There was such an honest sincerity about everything he said and did. Such a beautiful innocence in his rottenness.
"I knew you'd be here. I wasn't coming back. I tried to stay away but I couldn't."
He grinned. "That's my baby."
"Shag."
"Yes, honey?"
"Put your hands on me." As his eyes questioned innocently, Lisa said, "On my knees. Run your fingers on my thighs-on the inside."
"Oh, I get it. You want your kicks."
"Uh-huh."
That hadn't been exactly it. She'd wanted to experiment. In a sense, Shag was dope to her and she was like an addict who desperately wanted to break the habit and had decided on just one more fix as proof that it wasn't really a habit at all.
"Up my legs," Lisa murmured.
"Get on the bed, baby."
"No. I just want to stand here and have you do it to me-like once before."
She stood by the bed, her legs braced apart while his hand went up under her skirt. His fingers danced along the bare flesh above her stockings. They went high. She shivered.
His eyes opened in mild surprise. "No pants."
"I took them off in the hall."
"You came in all ready. I guess you did expect me to be here-or were you getting ready for a little private session?"
Lisa didn't answer and he pushed his hand along the curves of her legs and reached up behind and ran light fingertips over the small of her back.
He watched her face. "You go for that, don't you?"
"You're a devil," she moaned. "Sure I am."
"You're the only man I could ever stand to have touch me."
"Then we've got it made."
He had pulled his arm partially through and was caressing her high up on both sides of her inner thighs. Lisa closed her eyes and tried to be objective. What was different about his hands? Any other hands would have been repulsive.
Was this love?
If so, then love was destruction for her. Did she want to be destroyed? He withdrew his arm. "Turn around, baby." Lisa turned.
"Stretch a little and bend over."
She did as he ordered bending forward slightly and for some reason thought of a summer storm in the country, of running naked with Shag chasing her, catching her, throwing her down all wet and slippery.
But in a mud puddle. The cleanness of the vision was destroyed by the mud puddle and they were rolling around like two hogs and he was rutting her there in the mud. She banished the vision with a soundless sob deep in her throat as he pushed his hand through and touched her navel with one light finger. Then he cupped her belly in his hand and began teasing her with his fingertips.
She could not see his face, but she knew there was a look of amusement on it. She was his flesh-and-blood-puppet and his power over her amused him. And even while he was tender with her, he was also contemptuous.
He had drawn his arm back now and was touching excruciatingly and the hot pleasure danced in her frenzied mind.
"You've got a real handful there, baby."
His lazy, tender, contemptuous voice.
"Play with me, Shag," Lisa said, her breath catching. "Play with me."
But really, she was saying, Degrade me, Shag. Make me crawl. Don't treat me like a lover. Degrade me like an animal. Don't take me into a clean, perfumed bed. Throw me in a pile of filth and rub my nose in it.
His hand drew away slightly, downward. She bent her knees and followed it and knew that the grin on his face deepened.
She tried to steady her mind and look objectively at the rotten, ecstatic glory in this.
Make me squat and crawl, Shag. Turn me into the animal I knew I am. Make me grunt like a sow and drool like an animal in heat, Shag.
Oh, God! Lisa-you're lost-you're lost She had to clutch at the edge of the bed now, to keep from falling because she'd followed his re treating hand so far that she would have toppled over.
This is madness-rotten madness A life based on the flesh and when the flesh becomes old and dried out and empty, there is nothing God help me But the excitement! The electric excitement in this fantastic buildup toward the ultimate. The excitement of cringing there, bathed in the delight and waiting, never knowing when a whim of brutality would seize him and there would be a sharp movement that would send her scuttering up the wall, wordless sounds coming from her throat as she clawed for the ceiling.
It was quickening-oh, it was quickening!
Her breath came faster and she knew her eyes were bright, fear of the future gone in the delight of the moment. She ran her tongue along her lips. Why was he waiting, waiting, so delightfully torturing her.
She heard a shriek and thought it was her own but it was out of memory-something she had once seen, or rather had been told about, and that was enough, of a girl naked in the basement of Fallonhurst where the hose was-this girl naked with three matrons disciplining her-disciplining-that was a great word for it. They were cooling her off and they'd chased her around and then the one that had the hose shoved it against her after they'd gotten her against the wall and she was shrieking and trying to climb the wall to get away from the hose but the matron held it right where it was and the girl kept lumping up off the flood toward the ceiling.
Oh, God! She was practically on the floor now, with only Shag's lazy hand between her and the dirty carpet and there would be a big grin on his face.
"Like it, baby?"
"Yes-yes-"
Had that been her voice? That weird croak? "You're wonderful, baby."
"Oh, Shag-"
Then the shriek was hers and she wondered why it didn't bring a knock on the door-but everybody minded their business in this hotel.
They didn't care about a girl being followed around a bed by a man bent on torturing her-making her crawl and writhe and twist and beg with his eyes, bright demon's eyes, looking down at her.
"Shag-please-oh, please-stop!"
"Climb on the bed, honey."
His voice so soft and tender, as if he were talking to a beloved child.
"Please, Shag-"
"On the bed."
"Yes-but let me get there."
"Crawl, baby."
"You dirty beast!"
She sobbed, but where were the tears? Her eyes were dry and her throat was dry because all the tears were being drained from her body elsewhere.
"On the bed."
"Yes, Shag-yes-but slow and careful-" First one slow leg lifted, then the other, so as not to make him mad or there would be brutality that would send her clear across the bed and against the far wall and up to the ceiling, clawing-shrieking.
"Oh, Shag-be gentle with me-"
"Honey, you're wonderful."
Crazy-madness-all madness On the bed, crouched, poised, waiting for violence. Waiting to be hit with violence from behind. Waiting for the lustful thud of flesh on flesh.
But instead, hurled violently over, the soft underbelly up and exposed and unprotected. Legs wide. Knees forced hard against tight-nippled boobs.
And the vicious, lust-crazed face coming down.
"Shag-be gentle But even in the savage, vicious ravishment, there was triumph. She'd broken through his mask of gentleness. He was himself, lusting, rutting, defiling degenerate. The pose was gone.
It was too violent to last and when it was over there was a long, silent time with sweaty bodies, sliding loose, and no manhood left.
No manhood left.
Like a rattlesnake with its fangs pulled; its venom expended.
"Let me play with you, Shag."
"No."
"Why not, darling?"
"Good God! What do you want from a man?" Vance Hall didn't even have to be played with."
"That guy's a monster."
"He was quite a man."
"Are you kidding?"
"Shag-"
"For God's sake, leave me alone."
"You don't love me-"
"You stupid broad! I'll go find you a bull somewhere."
Lisa laughed. She'd won....
CHAPTER TWELVE
But she hadn't. After they left the bed, she watched him come from the shower and stand naked, toweling himself-it was the same as before-an insatiable hunger-a need that would be fulfilled only by more and more and ever more.
She had won nothing. "Eat, baby?" he asked. "Uh-huh," Lisa said listlessly. "We'll go to a steak place and lay it in-get our strength back."
"All right."
They left the hotel and as they walked down Eighth Street, his eyes were calculating.
"I know a guy we can get two hundred bucks from."
"The prices are pretty high in this town."
"A special job. This guy goes the other way and he wants to get back on the right track. A lump of clay lying on a bed-that won't do him any good at all. He needs-"
"He needs to be seduced back on the right track."
"You said it, honey. We'll rehearse it first. You'll have to tease him-show him-then back away."
"Make him really want me."
"Baby! You're wonderful!"
She clung to his arm and allowed herself the luxury of being proud-a girl walking down the street with her man.
A moment of luxury she would never have again.
Because when they got in the restaurant, she smiled at him across the table and said, "I'll be back in a minute."
He was studying the menu and didn't look up, thinking of course that she was going to the powder room.
But instead, she went out of the restaurant and walked five blocks to a police station she'd seen on her first day in the Village.
She walked up to the desk and the cop sitting there put down his pen and said, "Yes, Miss?"
"My name is Lisa Hart. I'm a fugitive. I escaped from a place called Fallonhurst, in-"
"Fallonhurst? I've heard of it. It's-"
"Yes. I broke out. I'm giving myself up. I want to go back."
The cop scowled at her and then motioned to another cop standing by the door that led back to the cells.
"Okay, sister. We'll have to hold you while we check."
That was the way she wanted it. And in the whole, terrible nightmare, there was a nice part-something for her mind to dwell on.
Shag would never know what happened to her where she went. She would go back and serve out her term and then pick life up wherever she found it. He would never know what happened to her.
