Poor Linda Connelly had just wasted her life away ... so far. The weight of being both a virgin and alone in the huge old house was almost too much for the lovely young girl to carry around on her fragile shoulders. With both her parents deceased ... finally ... there was no one she could be with, there in the bleakness of the secluded house outside town. How she longed for someone ... anyone ... with whom she could have a truly meaningful chaste relationship.
Mark Simpson was hardly any girl's dream of charging virility on a pure white horse. Yet he could surely be Linda's dream of mankind. At first, as Mark, escaped from the road gang he was sentenced to work with, stumbled upon the quiet seclusion of Linda's house, it was undecided just who would become the captive virgin first. Though Mark, as well built and as horny as he was, could hardly be called a virgin.
The repressed Linda and the suppressed Mark ... a sex combination with a very short fuse. Little wonder that no time was lost at all in starting the bedtime fun and games, and little wonder that it took thoroughly, as far as both of them were concerned.
Linda could hardly be expected to work up much sweat over the possibility that Mark was indeed an escaped murderer, after all, anyone built like him ... anyone who could screw so well, just couldn't be all bad.
Or could he?
With the detectives constantly prowling around the neighborhood, they had little chance to celebrate the new-found flesh, yet they missed no opportunity, be it outside in the yard beside the pool, or in the water itself. Be it upstairs in the massive master bedroom or on the living room carpet.
And all the while the nagging fear that she really might be not only harboring a fugitive from justice, but sexually pleasuring a depraved killer.
Only the detectives really knew ... and Linda decided that the one sure way she could help Mark would be to delay the one detective long enough for Mark to make his escape.
All she had was her lush body, and Linda wasn't sure that would be enough with which to detain the ruggedly handsome policeman.
Fred Lee Towne's Captive Virgin is his initial effort for Rated X. There will be many more Towne novels to follow.
Look for Rated X at your favorite book store. We will be there, month after month, with only the very best adult erotica for strictly private collections.
Will you please drop a note to Rated X, here at Surrey House, Inc., 6314 Riverdale Street, San Diego, California 92120, and tell us exactly what you want to read in the Rated X books you purchase for your own collection. If you can tell us the subjects, the themes, the methods of handling, then we can take extra measures to please just you. Let us know your personal-likes and dislikes about sex ... the hang-ups you avoid and the quite special things you seek out. We will do our very best to supply them. It is not at all necessary for you to identify yourself, and all replies will be handled in strictest confidence. THANK YOU.
-The Publishers
ONE
Linda stood in the bushes, her entire body radiating the moist heat of fearful excitement. A gray darkness of smoggy, early summer night surrounded her; city lights reflected off the dome of haze, softening the outlines of shadow, making them blacker beneath the overhang of branches. She could see her house on a rise of land below the one on which she stood; it was the last structure beside the asphalt pavement. Beyond this, winding toward her place of concealment, was a gravel surface of unpaved road. The dirt track wound into the hills, making dozens of serpentine loops before it finally descended the slopes and joined another street along the floor of a canyon.
It was foolish of her to be here ... foolish and perhaps a little perverse. The road was a lovers' lane. For all the years she'd lived in her parents' house she had known what happened in these secret glades of darkness. But for years she'd wanted to get close enough to see for herself. Every weekend night for almost as long as she could remember, Linda had lain in her bed, hearing the soft hum of car engines, the hushed, jouncing sounds as wheels left blacktop and bounced slowly along the dirt.
Now she stood in a thicket of manzanita, a few feet higher than the roadbed, gazing down on a car parked in the shadows. She could hear movement inside, the subtle twang of leaf-springs that told her the occupants were engaged in some dark, unhallowed act. It was the first time Linda had ventured beyond the hedge that marked her property line, the first time she had dared come this close to any of the mysterious intruders.
She squatted down, holding the skirt against her legs to prevent its snagging on the branches. She could barely discern a shadowy form inside the car. Night-glow reflected off the windows. Her proximity to this scene of action was more frustrating than she could have imagined. She couldn't see and the suggestive sounds only tantalized her. Yet with all the rest came a certain sense of freedom. Linda Connelly was twenty-four years old, and for the last seven of these years she had devoted herself to the care of her invalid father. But Poppa had died two months ago, leaving the house and a small trust fund ... and a fantastic void in his daughter's life. There had never been time for friends, certainly not boyfriends. She had never dared leave her father alone at night. Thus Linda had never known a man, not in the sense of a male, sexual being. At this stage of her life she had no idea how she might change the situation.
She sighed, spread her elbows to keep from losing her balance. Still squatting, trying to peer through the darkness, she allowed her hands to graze the inner surfaces of thighs, felt the trembling heat of unfamiliar urgency. Her legs pressed together, creating such a swell of sensation from deep within her cleft, it once again made her wobble. She fell forward on her knees, bent double in the raging torrent of exquisite pain. Stop it! her brain kept whispering. Get out of here. Go back to the house where you belong! The ridiculousness of her posture impressed itself upon her, and Linda was about to leave. She was simply going to step down onto the gravel roadbed and walk away ... not caring whether the occupants of the car would see her or not.
But the sound of another engine stayed her. She froze in place and shrank back still further into the bushes. She could see the headlights of a car lurch upward as the vehicle entered the unpaved section of road. Then they went out, turned off as the vehicle moved out of Linda's line of vision, and continued onto the surface of road that wound past the base of the hill on the other side. She could barely hear an occasional crackle of tires across the earth, but by this she knew the car was still in motion.
"Damn!" she whispered. If the second car parked near the exit it meant she'd have to walk directly past it to get home. She leaned her back against the trunk of manzanita and listened intently. The car she had been watching was pulled to the side, at the end of a fairly long, straight stretch of road. Linda could see part of the way toward the bend, and concentrated her attention there, waiting for the second vehicle to appear. For several moments there was nothing, not even a sound. Then the car came into sight, crawling slowly with its lights still off.
The first aspect to impress itself in Linda's mind was the protuberance on the roof ... emergency light mountings ... a police car! Just as this realization struck her, the driver must have seen the car parked ahead of him. The patrol vehicle coasted to a stop, never flashing a brake light. Then it backed up several feet, disappearing around the bend of road. Linda thought she perceived a quick flash ... brake or interior lights, she couldn't be sure. A moment after this, two uniformed men appeared on the road, walking toward the car in front of her. Linda glanced back and forth between the advancing policemen and the darkened vehicle. There was no apparent change of movement within the shadowy interior. The occupants seemed unaware of the others' approach.
Linda's head seemed to spin. She felt momentarily dizzy, watching this real-life drama, wishing she might warn the occupants of the car, yet fairly bursting with the need to know what the policemen were going to discover. Stealthily, the patrolmen crept up on the car, paused at the rear, conferred together for a second and approached the door on the side facing Linda's hiding place. The car had pulled up on its left, so the right-hand side of the vehicle was accessible from the center of the road.
Suddenly, one officer yanked open the door while the other aimed his flashlight into the front seat. There was a muffled cry of alarm, the blur of dark uniforms moving against the sudden glow, and beyond this the glaring whitish-pink of naked flesh! Linda gasped, clamping both hands to her mouth to stifle the sound as she gazed at the unbelievable spectacle. Both occupants of the car were completely naked. The girl was slumped down in the seat with the boy on top of her, their startled faces turned toward the blinding light. For several seconds they seemed to hold immobile, all four actors frozen on their make-shift stage. Linda felt weak, as if all strength and volitional control had been sapped.
One of the cops laughed. "Caught in the act," he said.
"What ... are you going to do?" the girl whispered. Her arms seemed to tighten about the boy as if his closeness might somehow shield her nudity. One heavy, pink-tipped breast projected against the young man's slender torso.
"What do'ya think we oughta do with 'em?" laughed the officer. The two men exchanged glances and Linda realized both were young ... obviously enjoying the situation.
"Might as well let 'em finish,' his companion replied easily. ' Go ahead, kid," he added to the youngster. "Let's see you slip it to her."
The girl, a rather pretty blonde with a buxom, full-fleshed body, had started to cry. Tears streamed from her deep blue eyes, and when it seemed the boy was going to lift free of her she pulled him back with an almost desperate urgency. It wasn't passion, Linda realized. Both kids were far too scared for that. But if the young man got off, the girl would be completely exposed to the two grinning policemen.
"Go on," urged one of the cops. "Fuck her! That's what'cha came out here for, wasn't it?"
"I ... I don't think ... I can," whined the boy.
"You can't disappoint her now," said the officer. "Go on. We won't interfere."
"But ... I mean, afterward..."
Both cops laughed again. "Depends how good a job you do," said one.
The other merely grunted, stroking absently at his crotch. The flashlight had never wavered in his hand, and in its light Linda could see the young man turn his face back toward the girl, seeming to whisper something to her. He was a little darker than she, from what Linda could make out ... a good looking boy, probably sixteen or so. The girl might have been a year or two younger, but it was hard to tell. She lay her head back against the seat. Her eyes were closed, though a steady trickle of moisture ran down her cheeks. Embarrassment had colored her face and shoulders, making the softly rounded flesh blush almost crimson. The ashen color had drained from the young man's features, as well. His skin assumed a more normal tone as he lay his head beside the girl's. It was a terrible moment for them both. This much was obvious to Linda as it must have been to the policemen. Still, the raw, naked sexuality held her spellbound ... affected her much as it apparently did the cops.
Her fascination suppressed any other awareness, and though her own body glowed with pulsing, straining excitement, she was hardly conscious of it. Her eyes held fast on the illuminated interior of the car, on the stage of action where the young man was slowly grinding his loins against the girl. His face was contorted with effort, and desperation made rivulets of sweat course down his face and back. His long, light brown hair tumbled across his brow, and his slender waist rode against the soft warmth of his partner as he struggled vainly to overcome fear-induced impotence.
Each cop was leaning with one hand against the car roof, framing the lighted area with their bodies. If they were speaking, Linda couldn't hear them. The only sound for several minutes was the steady hum of springs and the labored breathing of the youth.
At length, one of the officers chuckled softly. "How are you doing?" he asked the boy.
"I ... I can't," whispered the youngster helplessly. His movements stopped, and he joined the girl in her sobbing misery.
"That's not a very good show," said the cop.
"Sure isn't," agreed his partner. "Guess we'll have to take the two of them in."
"No ... please!" begged the girl. "Listen, if you ... God, my father'd kill me!"
"Mine, too," sighed the boy.
"Well, I dunno..." muttered one of the cops. "Whatta you think?" he asked his partner.
Both youngsters gazed up at them hopefully, their young bodies still pressed tightly together, arms cradling one another as if in mutual supplication ... which in a sense was the case, Linda thought.
"Well ... " One of the officers stood back, ll legs spread apart, rocking slightly as he scratched his head. "I dunno," he said softly. "We're supposed to report this sort of thing..."
"Look, I don't have much money on me," began the boy, "but. . . "
Both cops laughed. "We're not looking for a shakedown," said one of them. He stood beside the door, one hand resting significantly at his crotch. "It's just ... I hate to see the little lady all hot and bothered there, and her boyfriend not able to take care of her like he should."
The kids were beginning to get the point, though it took a moment longer for the truth to penetrate Linda's mind. The police officers were actually demanding the girl give herself to them in exchange for their not arresting her! She could hardly believe it, but the conversation could have no other meaning.
"You mean ... if I ... let you ... You'll let us go ... won't report us?" fumbled the girl.
"We do you a favor; you do us a favor," replied the officer.
The girl began to sob again, as the boy leaned his head against her ear. They whispered for several seconds; then Linda saw them both nod and the boy eased himself free of his partner.
The flashlight went off, leaving the scene in comparative darkness until Linda's eyes accustomed themselves to the lesser illumination. The boy was standing outside the car, closest of the four to Linda. She could see him in profile ... the large, arching flaccidity of his penis as he worked a rubber sheath down its length, dropped the prophylactic on the ground. He stood there a moment more, holding his penis before he released a stream of golden urine into the bushes. Linda froze again, frightfully embarrassed and terrified he might glance up and see her. But the last thing any of them expected was for a spinster neighbor lady to be observing them from the stand of manzanita. The boy turned back to watch.
One of the officers had helped the girl from the car. She stood in trembling nakedness beside the door, hands pressed against her thighs, leaning slightly forward so her heavy tits hung downward. She was a good sized girl, Linda could see, well proportioned, but voluptuous through the breasts and hips. One cop was standing by the outer edge of the open door, keeping an eye on the youth as well as his companion. The other officer was quickly stripping off his shirt and the various bands of leather that surrounded his upper body. He tossed these things across the roof of the car, piling his T-shirt on top.
"Okay, honey," he said softly. "Why don't you just lie down across the front seat? Reach through and open the other door ... more room that say." He laughed softly, starting to work his belt buckle.
Slowly, casting a final glance of helpless appeal toward the naked youth, she obeyed. She opened the other door and positioned herself on her back, head away from Linda. The buxom, pink-fleshed body glowed softly in the subtle overhead light. A slash of pink gleamed wetly against the curly patch of pubic blonde. Her breasts formed the highest points of her body, nipples jutting upward as the heavy cones tended to sag slightly to either side.
The cop stood in front of her, more or less blocking Linda's view as he stepped out of his shoes, danced about on one foot to slip free of pants and shorts. His strongly muscled body arched across the trembling form, crushing down on the girl as a muffled cry of protest rose from her tightly clenched lips. The youth took a step toward them, but the other officer held his arm out to block the way. The boy stepped back, stood with his head bowed, naked and helpless as he watched the policeman abuse his girl friend.
Linda could see the man's hand beneath his groin, watched it slide several times along the heavy shaft. His hips were raised to suspend the straining rod above the girl's tender, softly glowing orifice. His testicles hung against the back of his penis ... heavy, hairy orbs ... barely discernible in the darkness. She saw the muscles tighten across his rear and lower back, heard the girl moan as the cockhead struck her inner membranes and the heavy bolt began to impale her. Several whimpered cries accompanied the officer's initial, lunging entry. Then the great bulk of manhood slid into her and the man's loins nestled in the cradle of her thighs. Linda could see the motion of the girl's legs, rising several times, falling back, lifting again until she suddenly flung her feet up and clamped about the undulating buttocks.
The cop was plowing his long cock into her, groaning in blissful ecstasy as he plunged it harder and more furiously. His legs were spread, feet braced on the ground, which allowed Linda to see the wide, hard column of flesh sink and rise within its heated enclosure. Both bodies were straining, the girl responding to the voluptuous thrill of possession, the man driving his prick deeply, striking solidly so his balls slapped her underside and their feverish motion made the car springs squeal in steady, high-pitched cadence. Linda was bathed in sweat, pressed in quivering debility against the tree. She seemed to hold the swollen might within herself, tried to imagine how it must feel. Her own searing arousal threatened to engulf her, as her mind struggled to comprehend the reality she was observing. Except in high school gym she had never seen another naked human ... certainly not a man, and certainly not anyone actively engaged in sex.
The deeply drawn sighs, the heavy animal moans were building toward a climax as both bodies twisted and writhed together in the car seat. Linda could only remain in her state of vicarious, trembling eroticism. The experience was overwhelming; it forced boiling tides of physical sensation to seethe within her guts, to press the inner tissues until they threatened to erupt through the secret passages of her own sexuality. They were all responses which Linda could not understand. It was a moment of bodily awakening for which she was completely unprepared. She was powerless to look away, yet each glance served only to intensify the feelings that now surged toward frightening heights.
In the end, she had managed to clamp hands against her face, momentarily shutting out the sight as she drove the heels upon her lips and held back anguished cries that struggled for release. Then a rattling, bestial groan announced the policeman's terminal moments. Linda looked in time to see him rise from the dimly lighted interior, his limp cock and strongly muscled body silhouetted against the opening. Behind him, the soft, pink form of the girl lay supine, motionless except for the rise and fall of her rib cage. The jouncing motion reflected on her full, pink-tipped breasts, which seemed to fall toward either side, toppling inward as she exhaled. Her legs were angled in a seemingly disjointed "V," dangling off the seat and leaving a slash of bubbly pink cunt to gleam through the forest of tangled blonde.
Linda could see the boy huddled on the ground, his naked form collapsed beside the officer who had been standing by the open door. The one who had just finished with the girl grinned at his companion, stroked his half-hard penis and turned away to urinate on the ground beside the car. He began to pull his clothes back on. The other man waited, his impatience displayed by the motion of one hand along the row of buttons on his shirt, the anxious shifting of weight from one leg to the other. "Keep an eye on the kid," he muttered to his fellow officer.
The first man nodded, stuffing the shirt into his pants and fastening his belt. He took his weapon from the car roof, strapped it about his waist and motioned for his partner to take his turn. The boy had not moved from his place on the ground.
"Kinda close quarters in there," said the second officer. "Come on out here, honey," he added to the girl. He reached inside the car, grasped an arm and pulled the girl to a sitting position. He eased her out, steadied her as rubbery legs seemed incapable of sustaining her weight. Guiding her gently, the man brought her around to the hood of the car, lifted her so she lay on her back across the warm metal. Whispered, muttered words passed between them, but Linda couldn't make out what was said. The officer stripped his shirt off and placed it on the car seat along with his holster belt. Still wearing his T-shirt, he turned back to the girl. Opening his pants, he pressed his crotch into the wide-spread aperture of her legs.
He took her, standing on the ground with his body arched across the hood, driving her naked flesh against the solid metal. The very barbarism of it made the act more sensual, affecting Linda even more strongly than before. The cries and moans began again, and because of them the heated responses built to new levels of intensity throughout Linda's body. She swayed from side to side, clamped her hands against her inner thighs, drove clenched, doubled fists deep within her cleft. She felt the pulsing heat, the desperate arousal of her own flesh. She pushed harder against the cloth that covered her secret parts, felt a seeping moisture soak the cotton, flood across her fingers in viscous, sticky response to what she saw.
The policeman's trousers had slipped down his legs, leaving the hard, rounded globes of his buttocks revealed. Linda could see the flexing muscles, the dark shadow of testicles as he hammered his loins upon the girl's. Her angle of vision allowed a partial view of the young woman's upper body, the helpless bouncing motion of one breast as the man slammed his groin against her pubis. Suddenly, the policeman's mouth came down upon the up-thrust cone. He sucked it in, compressed its mass to force it between his jaws, caused a frantic squeal of euphoric protest from his victim. This seemed to trigger the ultimate rise of sensation in Linda's loins. She fell to the side, doubled into a fetal position with her hands clutching the saturated strip of cloth between her thighs. She felt a dreadful, contracting pull all through her lower body, culminating into an erupting force that seemed to tear the very lining from her inner being.
She was still on the ground, gasping for breath and barely in possession of her faculties when the second policeman finished. He dressed and the two men left, warning the kids to "keep their mouths shut" and "get the hell out of there if they knew what was good for them."
Finally, Linda sat up, too depleted even to bother brushing the grime and grit from her face and arms. The boy was standing beside the hood, trying to help the girl as she slipped down to the ground. Both were sobbing as their naked bodies slid one against the other. For a long while they stood there, leaning on the car and on each other, arms binding them tightly together. "Are you all right?" Linda heard the boy ask.
The girl nodded, rested her head on his shoulder and wept. "Those bastards!" she gasped. "Those dirty bastards!"
"Yeah," agreed the boy. "But ... at least no one'll ever know about us."
The girl leaned back in his arms, gazing into his face as the tears flooded in fresh cascades from her eyes. "You won't ever tell, will you?" she whispered.
"No," the boy assured her. "Never," he added, kissing her gently on the lips. "Never."
Silently, they limped to the open door and began getting dressed. A few minutes later they slipped inside. The motor started and the car lurched off down the road. Linda remained where she was for almost half an hour. She was so weak it was difficult to stand. Now the exchange was over she found it hard to believe she had actually witnessed it. Finally, she stumbled down to the gravel surface of the road, staring at the tire tracks and footprints in the dust.
"Did I imagine it all?" she muttered. She glanced about, saw the patches of moisture where the men had passed their water. No, there was no denying what she'd seen. It had happened exactly as she remembered it. The soggy bit of rubber the boy had pulled from his penis lay beside her foot. She nudged it with her toe, felt it squoosh beneath the leather. "It happened," she told herself. "Awful thing, but it happened." She turned and started slowly down the road to her house.
For days, the scene replayed itself before Linda's eyes. The picture of the naked, rutting bodies hung within her brain like a dreadful phantom. The muscular forms of the men rose as constant sources of distressing desire. And the girl...
Many times, Linda tried to compare herself with the voluptuous femininity she had seen in the men's possession. When she bathed she would stand before the mirror, examining the contours of her own body, stroking the rounded fullness of her breasts, running her hands along the glowing flesh of her thighs. The dark triangle of her pubic area held the same promise, the same potential. She spread her legs, allowed her fingers to caress inside the gleaming pink slit. Yes, she possessed the full complement of womanhood, and her body swelled with the same compelling qualities. Her figure was firm, the breasts and hips as round and shapely as the girl's ... more so, maybe.
Carefully, she appraised her face. She wore no make-up, but the features were fine and even, perfectly balanced. Her eyes were a light shade of green, and her dark brown hair had just the faintest suggestion of auburn. Her nose was small and delicate, turned slightly upward at the tip. Her lips were full, rosy despite the lack of artificial coloring. They matched the blush of crimson-rose that made her nipples stand in sharp, stark contrast to the creamy white of blue-veined breasts.
The basic attributes were there, she told herself. If only she knew how to use them.
But this wasn't the entire answer, either. Linda realized this, and despite the powerful currents that coursed her body she knew she could never simply give herself to a man. She remembered her mother's injunctions ... many years before, when Linda had been starting high school. Ever since those frightening descriptions of how a boy might take advantage of her, Linda had connected sexual activity with something evil, dirty ... a thing to be avoided. Then her parents had taken a trip to Mexico, driving down the coast while she was away at summer camp. Her mother had died in the same crash that had left her father a hopeless cripple, and Linda had never been able to ask the questions that plagued a young girl's mind. To discuss such things with her father had been impossible, and there was simply no one else.
But the experience on the road had been an awakening. Linda recognized it, though she sought to control the resulting desires. Still, she found herself looking at men in a way she never had before, seeing qualities of sexual potential her mind had never previously registered. In the market, the smile of the box boy became a suggestive leer, the glances of men on the sidewalk a subtle invitation. Several times, she sat by the upstairs window, watching the young man who came to clean the pool. He was usually naked to the waist, wearing faded jeans torn off above the knees so his suntanned skin was exposed to her view ... the play of muscles all along his back and corded belly.
Stop it! she told herself. There's no reason to let it affect me like this! Vm no different from what I've always been! But she was different, and that knowledge refused to be denied.
TWO
Two months had passed, and time partially eroded the worst of Linda's impulsive cravings. The memory of that night faded enough that she could think of other things. Only at night, when she lay in bed, did the images come back to force a regeneration of her internal seething. Another compulsion had built, however, though it was one to which she had not yet succumbed. She wanted to go back to the dirt road, to hide herself in the darkness once again and watch whatever came to pass. She hadn't done this ... at least, not at night.
Several times, she had ventured past the hedge in daylight, strolling the gravel roadway in the full glare of late afternoon sun. She went to the place where the young couple had parked, looked for signs of tire tracks or footprints. The ones from that night were long since gone, obliterated by the passage of other vehicles. The rubber was still there, dried out and ground into the gravel surface until just the thicker, upper circle remained. She had stooped once, touched it with her fingertip, drawing back and wiping against her skirt as if some dreadful contamination had been communicated by the contact. But it symbolized a moment of intense meaning for her. Touching it had stimulated a flood of inner responses.
After that, Linda had refused to venture past the hedge at any time. Strong as the urge might be, she resolved to resist it ... and for several weeks she did. Night after night she listened, sometimes in the stillness of her room, sometimes from the darkened lower portions of the house. During the week there were nights when no cars came at all, but on Friday and Saturday she would hear the inevitable purr of engines and her mind would reconstruct the picture of that night.
Linda couldn't decide whether she cherished the recall or if it should be classed with the unwanted images from nightmares and other troubled memories. Every time she heard tires crunch across the gravel, she sensed a quickening of her pulse and the discomforting flash of heat between her thighs. She saw again the naked youth beside his car, the drooping arch of his sex ... the pink-fleshed body of the girl huddled in the front seat or draped across the hood ... the powerful nakedness of the policemen ... the muscle hardness, the rigid masculinity. The scene might have been a series of photographs, stills taken from some moving scenario and given to her as remembrance of these moments in time ... moments she could not forget or erase.
There was anger in the recall, too ... anger and indignation at the attitude and behavior of the officers. The more she thought about it, the more she tended to identify with that girl, to question what right these men had had to so misuse their official status. If this was an example of law and order, she thought ... well, it was wrong! Never before had she thought of policemen being wrong, and this, too, disturbed her.
Linda might never have given in again, might never have ventured into the darkness beyond the hedge. She had achieved a degree of control, at least of her outward behavior. The crucial incident came on a Friday night in August. She had already gone upstairs to bed, had turned down the coverlet and was about to finish in the bathroom when she heard a car pass through to the back road. Her immediate response was to ignore it, to force her mind to think of something else. But the sound had been different, not the usual slow, almost furtive passage of the average weekend visitor. This car had hardly paused at the edge of the asphalt before its tires struck the gravel.
Police? she wondered. The thought brought the wave of heat she'd come to associate with her mental image of a uniform. She flicked out the bedroom lamp and pulled back the drape. A quarter moon rode high in the smoggy sky, casting a faint, muted glow across the landscape. Yes! It was a police car! She almost turned away, but the persistent memory of those officers that night two months ago irritated her. She hadn't heard another car go in; but she could have missed it, she thought.
The patrol car wasn't far beyond the lower corner of Linda's lot, on the gravel road which paralleled the hedge. It had parked in the shadows, seemingly by itself. For several minutes she gazed down, watching and wondering why the car was there, what the officers could possibly be doing. She could stand in her back yard, she knew, and could probably hear whatever was going on. The hedge would hide her, and if they were going through a similar performance, she'd ... Linda didn't know what she'd do, but she simply had to find out what was happening. Maybe ... if they were misusing another couple ... maybe she'd say something, call out to them from her own property, let them know they were being observed ... that a local resident found their behavior more disgusting than the miscreants they abused.
Linda slipped out the back door, thinking as she did so that she was getting to be a typical nosy old maid ... well, not typical, but certainly nosy and unfortunately very much of an old maid!
She reached the rear corner of the yard, the point where the hedge was thinner than at the front. She could see a gleam of white from a door of the police car, and she started at the sudden crackle of static from its radio. She could hear the officers speaking together softly, the scuffling motion of their shoes against the gravel.
"Think he'll come this way?" asked one.
"Naw, not-likely," his partner replied. "Last time a guy busted outta that camp he high-tailed it in the other direction."
Linda continued to listen, but the rest of the officers' conversation concerned inconsequential matters ... personal comments about mutual acquaintances, finally several expressions of boredom because nothing was happening. At length, one of the officers called in on his radio and apparently received permission to leave. The men got into the car and started down the road.
Linda had remained, seating herself on a stone bench, allowing her mind to wander as she listened to the drone of the patrolmen's voices. They must have been looking for some runaway from a road camp she knew to be located on the far side of the hills. It happened once in a while that one of the prisoners got away, but presumably they were not particularly dangerous as the place was a minimum security installation. Nor, to Linda's knowledge, had any escapee ever gotten into this immediate area.
When the police car pulled away she stood up, intending to return to the house. Instead, she remembered the place where a bush was missing from the hedge. It had died when the row of plants was first put in, and it had never been replaced. The others had grown up to fill the void, but as a child Linda had been able to slip through. The missing trunk left an opening near the bottom, concealed by the neighboring branches, but without any solid obstruction. Why she should think of it now, she could not have said. Still, she went to the place and crept through, coming out on the road where the police car had been.
She looked about, almost afraid there might still be someone around to see her foolishness. But the road was deserted. She walked across and up the gradual slope on the other side. This gave her a view of the canyon floor, where much to her surprise she could see lights and moving figures. There must have been a good dozen men moving about the underbrush, flashing their lights up and across the hillside. Curious, she remained to watch. The lights continued to rove the uneven ground, and occasionally the sound of voices floated up to her. They were uniformed policemen, and they were definitely looking for someone in the brush.
Linda must have watched for close to an hour, seeing the crowd of men work their way further up the canyon. She wondered if the two officers she had watched that night were among the searchers ... wearing their uniforms and putting on this act of dutiful concern. As before, the thought rankled her sensibilities. The behavior of those two cops had so outraged her, it distorted her entire perception. She suddenly found herself able to understand why some people hated the police, reviled them and called them "pigs."
Her back began to ache from standing, and Linda was about to go home when she thought she saw some movement on the hillside where the police had been a few moments before. She edged closer to the higher ground, straining to see through the uncertain light. Yes, it definitely was a man, climbing slowly up the steep incline. The escaped prisoner! she thought. That had to be who it was. She should move, she knew ... run for the house and lock herself inside, maybe call for help. She wondered if the police would hear her if she screamed ... decided they probably could. Yet, she couldn't bring herself to move. She merely watched, as if she were detached from what was happening, as if the man could never reach her up the hillside.
After a while, the figure disappeared from view, hidden by an overhang of cliff. Linda moved back to the road, deciding she really should get out of sight, at least. Instead of going back through the hedge, however, she walked along the road. The man had been so far down the hill she was sure there would be plenty of time to reach the forward corner of hedge and get inside her yard. She was already debating whether to phone the police when she got back inside.
When she reached the front of her house, however, she paused, standing in the shadows and gazing back down the roadway where the fleeing figure would have to emerge. She wasn't acting rationally. She knew it, but the responses of her body seemed momentarily out of control. Again, she could not have explained her motivations. She only knew she had to wait where she was until she could see the man come out of the bushes.
She heard him before he actually appeared. There was a rustling and a sharp crack ... as if he'd tried to pull himself upward by grasping a branch and it had broken in his hand. This was followed by the rattle of sliding rocks. The shadowy form appeared a few moments later, and at almost the same instant someone shouted from further down the road. "Up there! Isn't that somebody up there?"
The figure paused, looked behind him and started running in Linda's direction. The shouts grew louder behind him, though as yet no lights or pursuing men appeared on the roadway. The escapee was close enough for Linda to see him clearly ... a young man, tall, with long blonde hair that danced about his head as he ran. He was dressed in an unpressed blue work-shirt and faded, baggy jeans. He hadn't seen her, wasn't even looking in her direction. His eyes were wide with fear, and his mouth was open to accommodate his heavy, rasping breaths. If Linda had stayed where she was and made no sound the man would have pounded past without seeing her.
Instead, she stepped out of the shadows to see him better. At least, that was the rationale when she thought back on it later. She could never be sure what had actually motivated her action. At the moment, there had certainly been no time to think about it. The young man saw her and veered sharply away, coming to a standstill at the far side of the road. For a second or two he stood staring at her, his mind digesting the fact that what he saw was a woman and that she was alone. Then he bounded across, eyes seeming to project his fear, chest heaving from the violence of his exertions.
"Please!" he gasped. "Please, lady, you gotta help me!"
He seized Linda's shoulders, gazed pleadingly into her face. His touch had awakened a swell of terror, bringing her suddenly back to reality. She tried to pull away from him, but his fingers bit strongly into the flesh of her upper arms. "Please!" he repeated.
"Let me go," she whimpered. But even as she said it, she realized she had tempered her tone. She might have screamed. Instead, she had answered in the same harsh whisper he had used in speaking to her.
"That gate..." rasped the man, pointing toward the side of her house. "Does it go through to the back?"
"It ... it's locked," Linda stammered. She tried to wrench free of him again, but his hold was like steel. She was afraid, but her fear was already tinged with something more. Perhaps it was the realization that he was at least as badly frightened as she ... that, or the youthful impression he gave, an impression that made her see him almost as a child in trouble.
But this wasn't any child who grasped her arms. Almost roughly, he shoved her toward the front door. "You got a key?" he muttered. He kept glancing over his shoulder, and now his urgency was communicating itself to her. Without really knowing why, Linda found herself trotting ahead of him, making no effort to hold back or resist. It would have been useless, anyway; the man was far stronger than she, and he was determined to get inside the safety of her home.
"The key!" he insisted as they reached the door. "You got the key?"
"It isn't locked," she managed. "Look, please ... just go on, leave me alone and I won't tell anybody I saw you. Please!" She turned to face him as she said the last, and for a moment her eyes locked with his. Even in the shadowy darkness she could see the hard-set lines of fear and determination. He was not going to leave. That much was clear. Once he got her inside ... alone...
"I'm not going to hurt you," he whispered harshly. "Please believe me, lady; I'm not going to hurt you!" His grip on her upper arm had tightened in response to the urgency of his words, and while the pain made her wince it seemed to emphasize the sincerity of his promise. Still staring into his face, Linda reached behind her and depressed the latch. The door swung backward into the blackness of the unlighted hallway. With a final quick, furtive glance behind him, the man propelled her through the opening and shoved the portal shut behind them.
They were alone. The impression came much more strongly to her than it had outside. Surrounded by the solid walls, there was no possibility of someone else suddenly appearing ... intruding upon them. "Now listen," said the man .in a deep, controlled voice. "I said I wasn't going to hurt you, and I mean it. Only I've got to get away from the cops. Please ... they'll kill me if I get sent back there!"
"Who ... I mean ... kill you?" she asked.
"Look, I'll explain it to you later if you like, but don't ... do something right now you might feel bad about later. I mean, you look like a nice lady and I know you wouldn't want to hurt a guy if you could help it. Just give me a break right now, and I promise ... promise! ... I won't do anything to hurt you."
He'd moved closer to her in the darkness of the hall. A loose fold of his tattered, sweat-streaked shirt touched her blouse and for a moment his groin had grazed the surface of hers. The contact had surely been unintentional, but the effect on Linda's mind was more profound than his actual words. Somehow, she felt he was telling the truth. Though she was still afraid, she knew she couldn't simply turn him over to his pursuers. Not only did her sense of justice require her helping a fellow human creature, she could not help remembering the disgraceful behavior of those two officers a couple of months before.
"Will you ... help me?" he urged again.
She nodded, knowing he couldn't see her. At the same moment she started toward the stairs and the man's grip loosened on her arm as he followed her. Silently, they padded up the thickly carpeted surface, emerging from the darkness to stand within the glow of light from the bathroom. She turned to look at her visitor, and in that moment the several ramifications struck her anew. She was taking a wanted criminal into her house, thereby making herself some kind of accessory to his guilt. Exactly how the law would look on this she wasn't certain, but she was sure the penalty must be severe. But worse, by doing this crazy thing she was probably placing herself in dreadful danger despite his assurances to the contrary. The man could just as easily rob her, lock her in a closet and ransack the house ... kill her, even.
But these thoughts were a tumbled background to the rest. Her immediate fear was akin to his ... that the police would come and find him. The greater urgency was to keep him safe and hidden. "This way," she whispered. She led him toward the back of the house, to the unused rooms in the servants' quarters. There was a crawl-hole to the attic above one of these, and she pointed it out to the man. "If the police come into the house," she said, pointing up, "just go in there."
The young man smiled in relief, started to answer her. But at that moment the doorbell sounded. They both froze.
"Police!" he muttered.
"Stay here," she told him.
Linda's heart was pounding in her throat as she hurried down the stairs and opened the front door. Two officers stood in the entry way, peering past her into the darkened hall. Quickly, one of them explained they were looking for an escaped prisoner and asked if Linda had seen or heard anything unusual. She hadn't, she assured them and even as she spoke, she realized how foolish she was being.
"Call us immediately if you see or hear anything," said the man. "There'll be officers in the neighborhood until he's caught ... all night if necessary."
Linda thanked the policeman and closed the door. The immediate danger was past ... or was it? She leaned back against the panel, coming more to her senses every minute. What have I done? she asked herself. My God, what have I done? This is the craziest thing that's ever happened to me! She wondered if she should open the door, call the officers back and have the whole thing finished and over with. It would be just that easy, and if she did it right now there would probably be no question of criminal prosecution. She could somehow explain her way out of it ... claim to have been frightened ... not to have realized the man was a wanted criminal. But she couldn't do that. She'd taken him in; it was now her problem. Besides ... She thought of the young man upstairs, pictured him again ... tall, with even, angular features ... handsome ... no mistaking that ... damned good looking with all that sun-bleached hair and dark-tanned skin...
Her mind was still in a terrible turmoil as she mounted the stairs. Was it his physical attractiveness that had made her do this, she wondered. Was that it? Was she so desperate for a man she'd risk her freedom ... maybe her very life to...
He was standing on the upper landing, watching anxiously as Linda approached. Even in the shadowy darkness his animal magnetism affected her. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled halfway up his arms and the brush had torn the cloth so it hung open almost to the waist. The hard wall of chest and abdomen showed darkly through the material, the muted light from the bedroom glinting off a forest of golden hairs.
"They're gone," she said simply.
"I ... I don't know what to say," he muttered.
Nor did Linda. She stood in the upper hallway of her own home, facing this man whom she'd taken in, in a moment of reckless impulse. What was she supposed to do with him, she wondered. More than that, what did he expect her to do?
" ... ah, I'm awfully dirty," he fumbled. "I wonder ... could I use your bathroom?"
"Oh! Of course," she said. "Here ... right here ... " She opened the door to the main bath off the hall, reached in and turned on the light. The young man grinned at her and stepped inside.
Linda stood staring at the door for several seconds until the unmistakable sound of his urinating made her blush and she turned away. Not knowing what else to do, she went into her room and sat on a corner of the bed. "What am I going to do?" she asked herself aloud. How am I ever going to get out of this? She looked down at her dress, absently brushing off the dusty streaks where the hedge had rubbed against her.
She heard the toilet flush and the shower start in the bathroom. He's naked in there! she thought. He's taken off his clothes and he's standing in there stark naked, less than a dozen feet away from me! And the realization forced a flood of images, of warmth as she felt that night two months ago. The picture of unclad manhood hung before her ... manhood and sexual potency. Is that why I asked him in? Am I so ... so sex-starved I'd. . . ? It was a shocking idea; yet it embodied such obvious, elemental truths Linda could not reject the possibility ... not entirely. She sat silently on the bed, listening to the flow of water and wondering what was going to happen when the man came out.
She was still there when the latch clicked and the beam of light flooded the hall outside her room. He stood there for a moment, nude except for a large white towel wrapped around his waist. He held the ragged, sweat-streaked remnants of his clothes in one hand, his other resting against the wooden side of the doorway. The light clicked off, but the man remained where he was, apparently unsure where he was supposed to go. He didn't even know her name, she realized, any more than she knew his. He probably wanted to call out to her, but couldn't say, "Hey, you!"
"I'm in here," she said softly. And even as she spoke she realized what she'd done, how it must sound ... calling him into her bedroom. Too late. He stood in the doorway, his body almost filling the opening, grinning at her ... boyish, young. "These clothes were so filthy I hated to put them back on," he said. "I don't suppose you have anything ... I mean, your husband, or..."
"I don't have a husband," she said simply. "But some of my father's things might fit you." They wouldn't, she thought. Poppa had been a good head shorter than..."Since I seemed to have rescued you, you might tell me your name," she said suddenly.
He grinned again. "Mark," he said. "Mark Simpson."
"I'm Linda Connelly," she replied.
They were silent again for several moments. Mark dropped his tattered collection on the floor, standing awkwardly in the doorway. "Your father ... " he began at length. "Is he ... home?"
"My father died several months ago," said Linda.
"Oh," said Mark. He edged into the room, stood away from the door. His eyes were very blue, she noted, soft despite the deep saturation of color. She knew she should take the initiative, somehow guide the action so he wouldn't think...
Suddenly, he was sitting on the bed beside her, his weight depressed the mattress so Linda had to brace herself to keep from falling against him. "Oh, it feels good to sit down," he said. "I must've been on my feet for twelve ... thirteen hours."
"You must be tired," she replied. She shifted her weight, swung her body back and turned to face him at a canted angle. The motion made her knee touch him, and his face turned sharply so his eyes locked with hers. She knew she should move away, stand up ... maybe show him where Poppa's clothes were. But she couldn't. She was held in place as if by bonds of steel. There was an electric, unspoken communication, a flow of feeling between them that rooted her to the spot.
Later, Linda couldn't explain to herself exactly how it had happened, could never decide if she'd willed it. By her inaction she'd encouraged it; that much she had to admit. She'd also been afraid to anger him, or so she tried to reason.
His face moved toward her, growing larger until the lines of his features blurred and his lips touched softly against her own. The warm, pliable surfaces molded themselves to her mouth and hot breath flooded her lungs. His tongue slipped between her teeth before her mind could recover its composure, before Linda could realize what was happening. Then he was on top of her, his naked skin compressing the sheer material of her dress between them. The residual moisture from his shower penetrated the cloth to make the contact moist and clinging. She felt her breasts on fire, crushed beneath the hard wall of his chest, flattened so the nipples strained against the mat of hair.
"Don't," she whimpered, when his lips came free of hers. "Please don't."
"I just want to thank you," he answered hoarsely. He drove his mouth into the softness of her neck, lips grasping the downy surface above her throat, tongue laving the skin to project a streaming swell of sensation down her spine, across her trembling breasts and midsection.
For a brief few seconds, Linda felt a surge of fear ... a deep, clutching pressure in her bowels that warned of some frightful unknown to come from this intimacy. But it melted, loosened and flowed away beneath the determined caress of Mark's lips and tongue. He probed the crevice between her breasts, sucked the gently rounded channel that marked the center of her being. His hands were under her, unfastening the back of her dress, pulling it down from her shoulders as his tongue slipped beneath the seam of her bra. His warm moisture depressed the slope of cone while his fingers sought the strap, opened this as well and exposed the full-fleshed form. His hands slipped from under her, came up on either side to up about one breast, holding it like a chalice while he kissed the nipple. His lips took hold of it, kneaded it, slid lower so his tongue could flash across the rigid tip.
For Linda, the touch of this man ... the warmth and pressure of his weight on top of her ... all summated into a glowing ecstasy, a furtherance and recapitulation of her previous awakening. The sudden rush of physical sensation, coming upon her with the same unexpected force as the arrival of the man himself, obliterated whatever resistance she might otherwise have offered. It was partially the darkness ... the privacy and the sense of a secret shared. Her tensions seemed to dissolve beneath his gentle, firm demand. The muscles of her arms and legs grew weak, while all the inner portions of her body responded to him.
Her dress was gone ... her undergarments, too. She was naked and somehow free, her flesh exposed to a cool draft from the open window. She had never put the lamp back on, so the silvery glow from the moon and the city lights reflecting off the dome of haze cast a subtle aura about her flesh. It emphasized the darkness of her skin where the sun had baked its surface to a smooth, copper-gold. The creamy white about her loins and torso, wide areas where the swimsuit had shielded her, gleamed with a fresh, radiant softness. The outline of her breasts were edged with silver, their pointed spires almost black in the dim light. The girl, she thought ... like the girl in the car ... just as large ... just as desirable.
His hands were roving across her, warm and comforting despite their work-roughened hardness. It was an expression of admiration, of almost reverential adoration that made her proud to have him fondle and explore these secret parts of her. The moisture of his caress was turning cool on the surface of her breast. Then his mouth came down upon the other and the internal fires flared anew. He was moaning softly, muttering phrases of endearment, of awe and appreciation. The rumble of his voice vibrated through her, projecting its tingling waves to mingle with the rest, pushing Linda ever further into the abyss of sensual euphoria.
Her eyes had been half closed, restricting her vision, permitting her mind and body to respond to the stimulus of his touch and the sounds of his easy possession. She almost feared to look, because the intensity of her flooding emotions already ran so high. But she felt him shift his position, sensed the pressure of his knees on the bed as he sat back and gazed down at her. His hands still stroked her, but she sensed his poised expectancy ... seemed to feel the force of his eyes as they roved the surface of her body.
Linda's eyelids opened and she found herself trying to focus on the man form that rose in naked, unrestricted potency above her. His face was set in lines of gentle concern, it seemed, as if he suddenly recognized her lack of sophistication. When he saw her looking at him, he smiled. His hands cupped warmly, softly about the sides of her teats and the thumbs made easy, rubbing motions across the nipples. "Okay?" he whispered.
Without any conscious willing of it, she nodded. "Yes," she gasped. "Yes." It had been the final moment to retreat. She knew this, knew she should tell him "no," should reject him and send him away. But the knowledge was caged in some distant recess. There was no way to deny him ... no reason why she should, she told herself. Tomorrow? What would she think tomorrow? It didn't matter. Her gaze fell lower on his body, across the solid, sculptured muscles of his chest. The hairy mat of blonde reflected silver-white and gold, fire-spun strands of silk against the darker wall of flesh.
She followed the trail along the center of his belly, saw it narrow where the arch of bone and sinew delineated the lower end of his rib cage and the flesh stretched taut to form a concave extension of his torso. From the width of his shoulders, his body tapered to narrow waist and hips. His darker skin ended abruptly at his navel. Below this he was white, except for the portions where hair grew thick and dark. She could see the almost diamond shape of his patch, the shadowy mat above his hanging organs. Her fingers touched his arms, moved languidly upward to test the hardened power beneath the satin skin. She could feel the weight and rigid thrust of his prick resting on her groin, but her line of vision ended just above it. For the moment she must visualize what lay against her, though the tantalizing urge to look kept hammering at her senses. To do so whe would have had to raise her head; at the moment even this degree of volitional control was more than she could muster.
Her hands moved on, cool fingers sliding from his arms to the contour of his chest, through the unexpected softness of his twisted forest to press against the firm, unyielding wall of muscle. She could feel the thundering beat of his heart, the warmth that flooded out of him, a trembling expectancy that almost matched her own. He wants me, her mind was chanting. He wants me ... he wants me. New waves of heat and unfamiliar desire churned through her loins, and the flesh of her pubis achieved a suddenly heightened sensitivity. The contact of his penis against her became a living entity, a reality instead of the nebulous awareness of a moment before. Her fingers trailed the center of his being and dropped through the tangled mass of hair about his groin.
As her palm closed about the shaft of his cock she raised her eyes again, locked her gaze with his and felt the intensity of his desire. The sprung-steel strength within its velvet sheath leaped against her grasp, startling her and making her suddenly aware of the power implicit in its straining bulk. She did lift her head then, gazed along the length of her own body. She saw the flaring, ruby crown projecting toward her, framed by the sloping, softly glowing breasts. She remembered the policemen and the naked youth in the darkness beyond the hedge ... the girl in her helpless submission ... the driving force of impaling manhood. She let her head fall back against the coverlet and both her hands enclosed the solid flesh column. Her inner body was willing it to enter her; her brain already struggled with the unimaginable sensation she knew must come.
He seemed to sense her willingness, the relaxation of these final barriers that bespoke her complete surrender. He eased away from her, gently pulled his penis from her grasp as his knees nudged her thighs apart. She could feel the heft of his testicles slide across her and fall between her legs, grazing the outer folds of labia as they came to rest at the underside of her crotch. The contact was broken a moment later as Mark's hands took hold of her and repositioned her lower body. His long thick fingers probed her delicate cunt, caressed the inner lining and carried the slick, extruded essence which he used to coat his throbbing prick.
All this she saw through the fluttering shade of lashes, saw or sensed by the motions of his powerful form above her. Linda was shaking so violently it made him pause, lean across her once again and kiss her gently on the lips. He held there several seconds, allowing his cockhead to touch her belly, to press its springy strength against her flesh while he quieted the anxious beating of her pulse and prepared her for his ultimate possession. She felt him move again, though his lips never parted from hers and his tongue remained within her mouth, gliding along the surface of her teeth, reassuring her by its warmth and gentle pressures.
She felt the wide, rubbery crown of his prick rub slowly up and down her slit, sensed its pulsing need to enter and raised her pubis a fraction higher to express her willingness. He touched the inner well, probed it with his fingers before he placed his knob against it. Then, with a slow, even pressure he let his cockhead drop inside.
A flash of pain raced through Linda's body. Her back arched up from the mattress and the force of this response made her lips come free of his. He held in place, neither moving nor retreating, simply allowing his cock to stay where it was while the turmoil of her flesh subsided. She might have cast him away in those initial moments, but Mark refused to let her do this. Though he waited he did not withdraw, and finally she felt the waves of warmth return. The pain subsided and in that instant he gained another fraction of an inch.
The entire crown was in her cunt, then a little more. Each time she tightened or cried out in agony he stopped, sometimes pulling back a fraction of the distance he had claimed ... never rushing her, never driving himself upon her as he might have done. His every move seemed modified by Linda's response, until eventually her body was able to accommodate him. After innumerable moments of tensed, unbearable agony, her inner membranes suddenly surrendered; all the flexing protest left her muscles and her sweat-drenched body fell back against the bed. Mark slid his cock fully inside. He eased his weight across her unresisting flesh and came to lie upon her. His mouth was in constant motion, caressing her face and throat. His tongue probed every depression of her flesh as his hot breath cascaded through her senses, filling her with its pressing, driving strength.
Linda had never been so close to total debility. Her head twisted back and forth and her arms inscribed meaningless swirls across Mark's back. She moaned and muttered a series of incoherent expressions, confessing to the overwhelming emotions that engulfed her. Gradually, Mark began to move his hips. Every thrusting probe of his cock accelerated the racing flood of heat, and every modicum of pressure increased her sense of fullness. It transcended any imagined sensation. It was a completeness she had never suspected.
The massive, driving cock began to batter harder and more furiously. Mark's loins lifted and dropped on hers; his pulsing ball sac was carried free, made to slap against the bridge of flesh below his point of entry. She could feel the greater ease with which he plunged his flesh inside her, knew the lubricating fluids were flooding out to welcome him. She had given in, surrendered fully and completely. She was riding on a cloud of exquisite bliss that floated free of any tie to past or present, to awareness other than the hardness of his impaling cock and the swelling of her own responding cunt.
THREE
At first light, Linda awakened ... emerged through a long, dark passage, traveling slowly from heavy sleep to full, abrupt consciousness. Her naked flesh was compressed to the hard wall of Mark's body. One heavy arm and one leg lay across her and the warmth of his being surrounded hers. She was aware of the mingled odors of sleep and soap and the heavy pungency of his masculine sexuality. Despite the comfortable physical sensation and an undeniable sense of well-being, Linda found the circumstances shocking ... frightening, as they had been the night before.
She twisted slightly, at which the man repositioned himself against her, drawing her more tightly to him. His eyes were closed in gentle sleep, but the weight of his body, the strength implicit in every motion again threatened to overwhelm her. She could feel the outline of his genitals, resting in full-fleshed heat against her inner thigh, the light coating of sweat that made his skin cling to hers. The side of his chest was pressing one breast against her rib cage, his soft blonde hairs creating a tingling, almost tickling response across her own gently receptive surface. She was enveloped in a languid sexuality, a pleasant, floating aura of contentment she would have liked to accept ... which she would have accepted. But fear hovered in the background of her regenerated wakefulness, fear and a sense of having committed a dreadful sin.
It was wrong to lie here as she was, morally wrong. That was bad enough, though the sense of guilt was not strong enough, in and of itself, to compel Linda's withdrawal or self-recrimination. There was more to it than this. Handsome and desirable as this man might be, he was still a wanted fugitive. The police had already come to her door looking for him, and she had no idea what his original crime might have been. He had used her, taken advantage of her weakness and now lay with his body wrapped about her as if to imprison her and assure she could not escape him.
Her own foolishness had been nothing less than suicidal, she told herself. She had no business being where she was, lying in blissful surrender within the grasp of this man, this unknown entity who enclosed her in such exquisite possession. She turned her face toward his, saw the tranquil perfection of his features. It forced another of the continuous, rushing surges to grip her loins. Even in sleep his physical being assaulted her senses. His act of love and the subsequent closeness of his body gave promise of something more than Linda wished to admit.
If I only knew what he'd done to get himself in jail ... into that road camp in the first place, she told herself. How serious an offense can a person commit and still be placed in that kind of institution instead of prison? She didn't know, and the possibilities seemed infinite ... terrifying. Linda tried to slip away from him, but the motion made Mark awaken.
He sighed and stretched, turned to smile at her and pulled Linda hard against him.
"Did you sleep all right?" he asked.
Her face was being held against his chest, where the golden hairs prickled her nostrils and his pungent masculinity rose all about her. "Yes," she whispered, "I slept fine." Again, she felt the compelling surge of fear, knew she should try to escape him. But the soft rumble of his voice vibrated through her body and the strength of his hold rendered her helpless. She could feel the stirring of his penis against her thigh, and this, too, affected her and weakened her resolve. Almost before she knew what was happening he had eased her onto her back and slid his full weight on top. His lengthening penis slipped between her thighs until its springy pressure came to rest against her grasping slit.
"You're beautiful!" he whispered. His lips grazed the side of her face and his sleep-tainted breath assailed her senses. His hands touched the sides of her breasts, holding them so his solid weight did not force them outward. He fondled their pliant firmness, caressed their sensitive, sloping contours. His hips made a gentle, undulating rhythm against her groin while his expanding cock moved easily along the wrinkled folds of her delectable pussy.
"Um, you feel so good ... so soft and warm," he muttered. He kissed her ear, flicked his tongue across the helix and let the searing rush of his breath cascade along the passage.
Linda twisted against him, responding to all the varied stimuli, helpless to do otherwise. For a woman whose soul had been as starved for affection as hers, there was no other alternative. She closed her eyes, cutting off the visual impressions and allowing a flood of satisfying pleasure to engulf her. She had dreamed of this so many times not eactly under these circumstances, but essentially as it was happening. Her flesh was desired by this man. He'd possessed her once and was about to do so again.
She could feel his upper body lift; the cool dryness of air rushed across her bosom as his mouth came down in soft, wet contact with her throat. The movement increased the pressure of his loins, made his cock drive harder against the invigorated tissues of her pubis. Already, a rising tide of heat and desire was building deep inside her; the velvet surface of her skin responded with a cringing lust to the roughness of his palms as they passed across her. He stroked her with a continuous, almost cloying gentleness, fingered her nipples, rolled them between thumb and forefinger until Linda gasped and writhed in the delicious swell of sensation. Unexpectedly, his mouth touched one rigid tip and his tongue made tiny circles about the crest.
Her eyelids fluttered open long enough to perceive the vague, blurred form of his head, the golden blonde of his hair and the powerful sweep of his shoulders to either side. She lay back as his lips slid down the side of her lush tits, came to rest against the center of her chest and his mouth sucked at the soft flesh of her valley. Gradually, he moved lower, onto her belly where he paused to lave the navel. His hands enclosed her breasts and kneaded them in time with his other motions. He was kneeling between her thighs, his prick no longer embedded, but touching against her pubis. It riffled the hairs, struck with irregular, syncopated cadence.
Mark's mouth slid lower, his hands following the soft brushing passage of hair, pausing to massage the trail of moisture left upon her by his lips. He touched the pubic hair, flattened his tongue upon it and depressed a wide swath of fur against the skin. Linda squirmed in helpless response. Her final vestige of sanity told her to resist, but accelerating desire overwhelmed any sense of judgment. No man had ever touched her like this, had ever expressed the affection she sensed or thought she sensed in the gentle demands Mark was placing upon her. With a shuddering sigh she collapsed in utter weakness, expressed her surrender without fully realizing what she did.
Mark's face was pressing hard against the lower end of her fragrant slit, his nose and eyes buried in the silken hairs as his tongue slipped through the tangled forest and probed the expectant flesh beneath. His hands had moved beneath him, palms flattened against the glowing surfaces of her thighs. With a steady, unhurried pressure he drove her legs further apart, allowed his tongue to probe the cleft and seek the tiny nub of clitoris. His cloying touch made her stiffen; then she thrashed her legs against his sides, almost screamed as the intense, exquisite thrill coursed through her. He was moving all about her slit, making hot, wet circles around the small, rigid projection. The outer folds of labia seemed to twist away, folded back upon themselves like the petals of a flower to allow an unobstructed access.
First his lips and then his teeth followed the trail, seizing her tiny organ, twisting it, nibbling it so sharp, fierce sensations sent their trembling fingers across her belly. Sparks of blinding arousal struck her brain, deprived her of any final vestige of reason, left her breathless and quivering in unreasoned acceptance of what he did. Hot, searing moisture had enveloped her straining clit. Hard gentle pressure surrounded it, caressed it and drew forth a further flood of ecstatic awareness. The rough stubble on his chin grated across tender, inner membranes, causing pleasure that bordered pain and produced a bubbling murmur of contentment.
"You like that, baby?" asked Mark. He lifted his head enough to peer across the smooth, undulating midsection. A curling mass of silky, chestnut fur formed a veil through which he saw the vibrant glow of pink-white skin, the curve of diaphragm, the twin, thrusting cones that held their pointed spired high above the rest. Of Linda's face he discerned only the chin and the tangled mass of hair surrounding it. But her lips were parted, trying to form an answer from the gurgling, incoherent background of involuntary sounds. He smiled to himself, knowing he held her helpless. Again he pressed his lips against pulsing flesh, drew fresh spasms of disjointed mutterings as he probed deep within her cunt, slid his tongue ever closer to the well where seething desire boiled just beneath the surface.
When he touched the rim she leaped, jerked back in uncontrollable reaction, taking strength from the fierce response. He continued to caress her, kissed the cunt opening and flicked his tongue within its steaming channel. Linda's arms flopped disjointedly, seemingly broken or boneless as they assumed impossible angles, barely able to make their feeble movements. Her legs clamped tightly along the sides of his body, holding fast and falling back, unable to sustain their pressure. As he sank deeper into her, even these trifling signs of energy subsided; she lapsed into the semi-oblivion of erotic ecstasy. Mark's chin and cheeks kept rubbing and buffeting the insides of her labia, grating on tender tissues with coarse, rough stubble. Yet even this added to the desperate waves of desire, continued to sap her strength and bludgeon back any tendency to resist him. Deep within her tangled thoughts she sensed the urging of reason, some vague, strained element that formed a momentary warmth of fear. But this gathering structure was quickly washed away by the avalanche of sensual desire.
His mouth sealed tightly about the vaginal opening. His tongue traveled deep within the musky chamber, tip twisting this way and that to sensitize each cell and strand of flesh. If he had seen the tattered remnants of hymen, he made no response, ignored it and continued to use her with a ferocity that would have overwhelmed a far more experienced partner. Against Linda, his assault so totally obliterated any normal sanity it compared to atomic weapons against the spears of some savage tribe. Her body had gone completely limp. Except for the spasmodic, quaking contractions that gripped her, she could have been in a coma ... or drugged to paralysis by the effects of a debilitating potion.
When he finally lifted his face again, Mark could see her eyes were closed and her breath was coming in deep, rasping sobs. Slowly, he lowered his chest against her pubis and kissed away the beads of perspiration along the center of her belly. He sensed rather than viewed the fluttering return of life to her features, the flash of green as her eyes tried desperately to focus on his advancing head and shoulders. He paused again between her breasts, gnawed gently at the base of one tit then the other, dropped his mouth about a thrusting cone and sucked it in deep. As quickly as he'd taken it he let it go, drove the wiry brush of chest hairs against the concave of her stomach and twisted his head to bring his teeth against her throat. He could feel the inner motions as she tried to swallow, heard the harsh rush of air along her windpipe.
He sucked again, sealed himself still harder to her larynx and completely stilled the motion of her vocal mechanism. The repositioning of his body had brought a different force to bear upon her slit, and this affected her as profoundly as his hold on her neck. She could feel the wide, blunt crown as it slipped past saliva-coated membranes. His scrotum fell between the sloping sides of her thighs and she felt an urge to draw together, to hold against his balls and make him stay in place. But his knees rested on the bed between her own; the weight of his torso depressed her upper body upon the mattress. Very little of her strength had returned, even less of her ability to command it. As before, she could only lie in helpless acceptance as Mark molded her flesh to the contours of his own, used her and dredged the depths of stored, suppressed emotion until Linda lost all conception of any line between love and physical desire. For the moment, at least, his possession embodied both. It was not a reasoned thought, nor as yet a fully formed awareness. Rather, it seeped through the cells of her brain as a formless adjunct to these other responses. Without benefit of word or conscious cognition it lay within her, coloring her emotions and heightening the degree of her passionate acceptance.
He was driving his loins on hers, causing his pulse-pounding cockhead to separate the delicate lips of her exciting pussy and probe the surfaces where his tongue had already awakened the sleeping nerves. Again, without any volitional ordering of her thoughts, Linda wriggled her hips and brought the pulsing orifice in position to receive his soothing rod.
The motion wasn't lost on Mark, who raised his groin enough to assure a proper alignment. Slowly he began to sink against her. The cockhead slipped smoothly into receiving heat. He was enveloped by his rising lust as the rush of fluids foamed out and all across the surface of his prick. He groaned, emitted a deep, guttural sound just before his mouth came full on hers again. Their tongues met and twisted in the fury of onrushing passion. He was filling her anew with the ascendant power of his sex, taking her and joining their bodies to form a single, inseparable entity.
His arms slid beneath her back and she was crushed in the power of his grasp. He drove the wind from her lungs, absorbed it as it rushed from her mouth. When he exhaled, the flood of air refilled her, bloated her lungs as his cock stretched the vaginal walls. He was completely in her, his powerfully thrusting prick seeming to pinion her body to the bed, to hold it fast and firm so all her other motions had to bypass it.
Mark lifted his face from hers, and unexpectedly his voice rumbled through her. "like it, baby?" he asked. "like this big cock shoved inside you?"
Her brain struggled not to answer him, to somehow deny the undeniable.
"Tell me you like it," he urged. "Tell me how it feels to have eight inches rammed up your pussy!" He laughed softly, brushed his lips across her cheek and seized her earlobe between his teeth. She twisted her shoulder, squirmed beneath this additional torment. His mouth opened wider and surrounded the entire ear, causing a frightful roar of breath and the rasping of flesh against flesh as he tongued the passage, clamped down as if he meant to tear it loose. And all the while, his gently rocking groin kept driving the rigid flesh bolt within her steaming gash.
When at last he pulled his mouth away she cast her arms and legs about him, unable to restrain the need to more fully enclose him. She gripped him with a desperation that gave her answer without the need of words.
Still, Mark insisted. He raised his loins and drove himself against her several times, forcing his cock to slide along the slickness of her passage, the crown to strike and bound across some hidden rise within her body. "Tell me how you like it," he whispered against her ear. "Tell me you love it," he gasped as his face slid against her neck. "Tell me; tell me!"
The warm flow of breath across her throat made the flesh cry out, to crave the fullness he suddenly denied her. "Yes," she whispered back. "God, yes! I love it ... love you!" She continued to mutter a series of incoherent phrases, confessing the deepest emotional surrender. She heard Mark chuckle, felt the vibration of his laugh as he rammed himself against her, sent his fiery cock to the farthest depths.
It made her cry out finally, to beg for his merciful restraint as his penetration projected its peaks of light and dark, its spinning showers of sensual heat and color. She rose against him, felt herself driven back by the fury of his building rhythm. Her legs held tighter, feet overlapped, heels bouncing against the hard flesh of his backside. She could feel the hard, smooth motion of his prick, the fleshy slap of his balls against the under portions of her crotch. Each sensation, each unseen movement of his body on hers was a furtherance of uncontrolled desire. She tried to time herself to meet him; but his rhythm never stayed the same. He speeded up, slowed, sometimes plowed her to the fullest depths; at others he rode her pubis with short, fast strokes that drove her nearly frantic as she strove to stay in place, or escape, when the sensations grew too intense to bear.
Finally, he slowed, started pounding at her with deliberate, fully driven lunges. "Oh!" he groaned. "So good, so fuckin' good, baby! If you only knew! It's been so long ... such a long fuckin' time."
She heard him, yet the words meant nothing. Only the thrill of delight each time his cock plunged into her held any reality for Linda's reeling consciousness. Nothing he could do would have been too crude, too vulgar. He was taking her as no man had ever done before, as no man had ever indicated he wanted to take her. It was a tribute to her womanhood, and it was a sensual bliss that far transcended any imagined joy she might previously have contemplated. The size, the power of him, the strength of his body, the hardness of his chest and midsection, the thrill of his penetrating penis ... all registered in a single sensation of fulfillment. She was happy, she realized vaguely. She was happier and more satisfied than ever before in all the years of her life. Without his asking her she told him once again. "I love it," she muttered. "Big, hard cock ... feels so good ... yes, love it."
"I'm getting there, baby," he whispered. "God, I'm so fuckin' close!" He slowed, held his body taut with half his cock length still buried in her. He hung there motionless, except for the trembling that shook his entire being. "Ah!" he gasped at length. He gritted his teeth, swore softly under his breath. "Oh, I can't ... can't hold it back ... back..." He collapsed against her, allowing the weight of his body to drive his enormous prick to its fullest depth again. He rocked from side to side, holding her with a desperation to match her own. His balls pulled tight against the base of cock and his seed poured into her. He had been helpless to stop himself, and now he almost sobbed with the intensity of his own pulling, spurting discharge.
Linda remained in her heightened state for several moments longer, paralyzed by the white heat of his cascading blast, bathed in his sweat, pinioned and incapable of any additional response. When his grip finally loosened, and his body went completely limp on top of hers, she felt her own tidal surge subside, retreat just short of climax though all the molten lust remained. For the moment, it was over. Linda held a nebulous, unformed sense of loss; yet she couldn't place it. If she had failed to attain some ultimate pinnacle its definition escaped her. Last night ... last night it had seemed ... different. Idly, she wondered, but the mass of his softening cock was still lodged inside her body and his final spasms of desire were gradually subsiding.
Bacon was sizzling on the stove, and Linda was humming to herself. She hadn't done that in ages. She smiled, turned the gas flame lower. Mark was singing too, making loud, deep, off-pitch sounds as he showered. How good that must feel to him, she thought, being able to bathe when he feels like it, to take his time. Wonder how it is in jail ... probably have to stand in line and ... The sound suddenly stopped upstairs, and Linda started pouring batter onto the griddle. Her hands were trembling and she stopped, gripped the stove to steady herself. She wished she knew what he planned to do. She was going to give him a good breakfast, though, something that would really stick to his ribs ... just in case he decided to leave.
The thought saddened her, and she knew she'd really prefer ... Impossible! I can't have an escaped criminal living in my house, even if he is about the best-looking man I ever met, even if he does ... make love to me ... And this thought disturbed her more than the first. Love? No, he really hadn't made love, had he? He'd done other things, but he'd never mentioned love. Foolish, foolish woman!
She felt the fear settle hard and heavy in her gut again. What had Mark done to get himself in jail? If she could only answer that, could be assured his crime was not so great ... maybe her own lawyer could be some help. Maybe there'd be some way to get the whole thing straightened out. Then Mark would be free, and maybe he'd be so grateful he'd...
"Wow! Hotcakes and bacon!" He stood in the doorway, just the damp towel wrapped about his naked body ... golden hairs still clinging to his moistened skin. Linda felt herself melt inside. There was a flood of warmth bespeaking lust, but ... more...
She forced herself not to look at him, at least not directly. That was too disturbing. "Sit down," she said, motioning toward the kitchen table. She turned back toward the stove. She wanted to ask his plans, but feared what he might answer ... knew that any decision would be wrong. If he said he wished to stay, he was placing her in greater danger of criminal prosecution. If he announced he was about to leave ... God, I'd beg him to stay! If he ... Fool!
"You look mad," he said lightly. She had turned to face him, carrying the loaded plate.
"I'm always grumpy before I've had my coffee," she said uneasily. It sounded feeble, but she couldn't think of anything else. Somehow, she felt suddenly uncomfortable with Mark ... not that she was particularly afraid of him, not at the moment, anyway. It was herself she had to fear, she realized. Her own treacherous emotions were really the seat of all her present problems.
"What did you do to get in jail?" she asked suddenly. She hadn't intended to ask it; the question just seemed to pop from her lips.
Mark smiled at her ... painfully, she thought. "I stole some money," he said softly. He looked down at his plate and slowed the motion of his hand which had been hastily carrying forkfuls of food to his mouth.
"Very much?" she asked.
He nodded. "Quite a bit." It was almost a whisper.
"How long...? "
"One year in jail, probation until I make full restitution," he answered.
"You mean you didn't give the money back?"
"I couldn't," he said with a shrug. "I was really stupid ... spent it all on ... nothing ... crap. It always seemed so easy, you see, just tap the till for a little more and a little more. I never took very much at once, and every time was going to be the last. Only it never was, and one day they sent in auditors."
"A bank?" she asked.
"No, big department store. I was in accounts receivable ... just an assistant bookkeeper, but I might have done real well there if I'd used my head. All so stupid!" He looked up at her sharply and she could sense his sorrow, his certain remorse.
"You said ... last night, something about being in danger ... maybe being killed if the police took you back. Did you mean it, or were you just trying to convince me I should help you?"
"No, I was in danger, all right," he assured her. "See, nobody believes I coulda' spent all that money the way I did. They think I must still have it stashed someplace...'least the guys in camp think that."
Whe watched him, wondering. He seemed so big, so strong. "You mean they ganged up on you?"
He nodded. Taking another forkful of pancakes, he toyed with it, soaking it in a pool of syrup. "There's this one gang. They always seem to hang together, ya' know. Well, this one gets the idea I gotta have the cash hidden someplace and he gets the rest to help him. They nailed me a couple'a times, and I don't want to go through that again! This one punk used to be in the Green Berets and he thinks he's some kinda interrogation expert. Shit, I couldn't cut that scene! I took the first chance that came along and split.
"And you never hurt anyone?" she asked.
"You mean in jail?"
"No, I mean ... well, in jail or ... anyplace?" She wished she hadn't asked, because he regarded her with a wounded expression that made her suddenly ashamed for having suggested her doubts.
"I swear, Linda ... I never hurt another living soul in all my life!" His wide, coarse palm came down on her hand, pressing it against the table. His great, china-blue eyes held unwaveringly on hers. "Honest," he added in a whisper. "I've never hurt anybody ... never would."
FOUR
The feelings that struggled for control of Linda's mind were a disturbing assortment of impulsive desires, soaring peaks of pleasure, with a variety of logic to sustain them. When Mark had told her he had never injured anyone, she believed him. His expression had been so innocent and so sincere it left no room for doubt. Besides, she wanted to believe; and that, in the final analysis, was sufficient ground. But the very circumstances of his being here, the possibility of a policeman's coming to her door again ... this continued to disturb her and kept the situation from being the pleasure she would have preferred it to be.
After they finished breakfast, Mark helped Linda with the dishes, and that too was a disturbing experience. His nearly naked body standing close beside her, sometimes brushing against her as they moved about the close confines of the kitchen, heightened Linda's internal confusions. Free of the actual spell he had seemed to cast over her in the bedroom, she was also able to retain some fractional hold upon her established moral standards. While these ebbed and almost dissolved when she looked at Mark, they grew stronger when he was beyond her line of vision.
Nor had Mark said anything about leaving. As a result, Linda found this uncertainty added its tremendous weight to all the rest. She might have asked outright, considered doing it several times. But how should she phrase the question? If I make it sound like I'm asking him to stay, he might. But I'm not sure I really want him to. If I speak as if I want him to leave ... well, I'm not sure I want that either. He's so damned handsome and ... sexy and ... just such a nice guy...
It was a little past noon. Mark was sitting on a canvas chair by the pool, towel still wrapped around him as he read the morning paper. Linda had scanned this before he came downstairs, but there had been nothing in it about the escape. Never is, she thought. Miserable rag hasn't any competition, so the home edition only has news that is two days old by the time you get it. She watched him through the kitchen window, sun glinting off his burnished tan, muscles flowing with elastic smoothness beneath the skin. He's much too big for any of Dad's clothes and the things he had on when he arrived last night are beyond repair. Need groceries, anyway ... might as well get a few shirts and slacks for him. He'll need them, even if he does leave ... doesn't act like he's going to though ... In spite of herself, Linda felt another flush of heat through her loins, knew she wanted him to stay at least another night ... another night of ... love? Was it love or sex? she asked herself. She knew it would be very easy to fall head-over-heels for this guy, and inexperienced as she was she knew she mustn't let that happen. I don't know anything about him, except what he's told me. And that isn't very much, isn't even verified. Verified! Sounds like I'm ready to run a computer check on him!
"Mark I think I'd better run down to the market. There's not much food in the house, and you need some..." She had called to him from the back door. At the suggestion of her leaving he'd bounded up and now stood facing her, a look of consternation on his face. "Is something wrong?" she asked. His face looked so white ... ashen, suddenly ... as if he were afraid.
"No, just. . . " He forced a smile. "No, but you'll ... come back, won't you?" He tried to make it sound like a joke. Only it wasn't. Linda sensed he was more than half-serious, and she realized that what he really meant to ask was whether she intended to return alone.
"Of course I'll be back!" she said lightly. "I live here, remember?"
His face regained its former color and composure. Gently, he placed his hands on her shoulders and brushed his lips across her forehead. "I'll be waiting," he replied in a husky whisper.
At his touch she'd melted, wanted to let her body sag against him, cling to that hard wall of sweat-gleaming muscle. "I ... I won't be long," she muttered.
She found herself driving the station wagon faster than usual, compelled by an unreasoned need to finish her business and get back home ... back to Mark. This wasn't due to any concern over his possibly ransacking the house. The idea of his stealing from her never entered Linda's mind. Nor was she consciously aware of any other reason ... no reason she was willing to admit. If her present anxiety stemmed from a desire to be near him, she refused to recognize it ... shoved the thought into some hidden corner of her mind and buried it beneath her store of other memories and cognitions.
At the market she completely filled a cart with food, finding a seeming endless number of items she thought Mark would like. She was buying enough to feed them both for a couple of weeks, but that didn't occur to her, either. As she wheeled the basket through the supermarket aisles she realized she was humming to herself again. She was happier than she'd been for a long time, maybe happier than she'd ever been before.
The market was in a shopping center, and she went into the men's shop a couple of doors away. She hadn't thought to ask Mark's size. He'd interrupted as she was about to say she wanted to buy some clothes for him. She decided the shirts should be "large," but when the clerk asked her what size slacks she wanted she didn't know what to do, finally she pointed to a hulking teenager talking to some friends outside the window. "About like that boy," she said, "but maybe a little smaller through the waist."
The man found two pairs of perma-press pants and some jeans which he said should fit. "You can exchange them if they're not right," he assured her. "Just don't pull off the labels."
She added some socks and shorts to the growing collection, and a belt, feeling a peculiarly sensual thrill as she touched each item, knowing it would hug his body with an intimacy she could only know for brief moments. The clerk suggested she might like a jacket, so she bought a nylon windbreaker with a fleeze lining. In all, it made a tremendous mass of parcels. After the clerk helped her get them into the station wagon, Linda sat for several moments behind the wheel, turned in her seat to gaze at the stack of bags. What if he isn't there when I get back? This thought struck her with an almost painful impact. He had to be there! If he's told me the truth, he will be. If. . .
When she was near him, facing him, it was impossible not to believe what he told her. Now, separated from his physical being and completely free to come or go as she would, the lingering doubts crept back. As she was driving out of the parking lot Linda spotted a newspaper rack with the late morning edition. She stopped and bought a copy, placing it on the seat beside her.
As she continued back toward her house, she kept glancing down at the paper, wondering if it might contain some of the answers she sought ... a confirmation of the story Mark had given her. Surely by now they must have included an account of the escape. Or was it such a common thing or so unimportant they wouldn't bother with it? The closer she came to her home, the stronger grew her urge to look. Finally she drew up to the curb on a tree-lined residential street and opened the paper.
There was nothing on the first few pages, and her failure to find any mention of it only made her desire to learn the truth grow stronger. She wondered if there was some place she could ask ... police or sheriff station. No, they'd only want to know why I'm interested, and if I give them my name they might come around looking.
On the inside section, under local news, she found it. There was not very much to the article, as if the police attached little importance to it. It simply told of an inmate named Mark Simpson escaping from the road camp, so far having avoided recapture. But the final paragraph stopped her, made a cold lump form in her stomach. "Simpson is also wanted for questioning in connection with the burglary of a home and the beating of its elderly, male occupant. The victim was so battered about the head and shoulders he has been confined to a hospital and is under observation for possible concussion or other internal injuries."
Linda sat staring at the paper. She had read and re-read the column; and now the type began to blur as tears formed in her eyes. It wasn't fear so much as the idea that Mark had lied which disturbed her ... if he did lie. If I only had some way to be sure; if there were just some reliable answer. But, if he did this ... beat that man so violently ... he couldn't tell me. He'd know I'd be afraid of him and never let him stay. He swore to me he'd never hurt anyone ... gave me his word ... looked so innocent about the whole thing!
But there's never been anything violent in his behavior with me. He's always been gentle and considerate ... gone easily when we've ... had intercourse. Maybe didn't realize I'm a virgin ... still took it easy ... still ... Her thoughts broke off in another turmoil and rush of chill. She wasn't a virgin, not any more. And that was a state she could never reclaim ... a condition once gone ... there was no bringing it back. And that was a loss, too, something Mark had taken from her. No! Something I gave him. That's different! I gave myself to him. He didn't force me, or rob me, didn't even hurt me when he could have. I don't think he's capable of violence ... not the man who's held me in his arms ... slept with me ... made love to me...
It had occurred to Linda she might just turn the station wagon around and not go home. It would have been a simple matter to drive into some motel and stay there for several days ... maybe call the police and tell them where they could find Mark. That would be the easy way out of all this, and if she did it they would probably never question her complicity. It would be easy, except she couldn't do that to him. Even as the thought crossed her mind she rejected it. She had to see Mark again, had to face him and watch his expression when she asked about the man and the burglary of his house. Mark couldn't possibly lie about such a thing without betraying some sign of it, she reasoned.
When Linda pulled into the garage she did experience a momentary surge of fear. It came in company with the darkness, fell upon her consciousness as the shadowy enclosure engulfed her station wagon. She shrugged it off and carried the first armload of groceries into the kitchen. Glancing through the window she saw Mark lying on a pad beside the water. Her heart seemed to leap into her throat. He was completely nude, lounging on his back with his eyes closed, sun glinting off the golden hairs at his chest and groin. His heavy penis fell in bloated, sun-drenched repose across one thigh. Quickly, she pulled her gaze away and hurried back to the garage. She refused to look again until she had all the parcels in the kitchen. Then she busied herself putting the perishables away, almost dropping several containers as her quaking hands transferred them from the boxes and bags to their proper places in the refrigerator and on the shelves.
She hadn't stopped until the entire chore was finished. Mark looked up as she came out the back door. He was lying with his feet toward her, shielding his eyes with one hand as he blinked against the glaring sunlight. "I was beginning to wonder what happened to you," he said softly. He smiled at her, lips drawn back from the rows of white even teeth. "Hope you thought to get me a toothbrush," he added. "I had to use a facecloth this morning."
"There're a couple of new ones in the drawer beside the sink," she said. She had reached him by then, stood beside his hip, casting her shadow across his face so he stopped squinting. Suddenly, he grinned self-consciously and looked along the length of his naked body.
"Hope you don't mind," he told her. "But it seemed so private out here, and I didn't have any trunks."
"No ... no ... perfectly all right," she answered quickly. And it was all right, she realized. There was nothing wrong with it ... seemed almost natural for him to be here, natural and ... exciting.
"Do you ever ... I mean, do you always wear a suit?" he asked.
Looks so innocent ... boyish ... like a big, happy kid. "I'm a little conservative," she replied evenly. It was an effort to control her tone. She could feel her voice trying to break, felt the nameless urging as if some wild, impulsive madness assaulted her. She would have liked to cast her clothes aside and stretch out beside him, touching him, maybe, her body as naked as his. She wondered how it would feel to have the sun strike her flesh in the areas that were normally covered, what it must be like to let the air move freely across one's pubic region, to touch the places that were always so carefully covered.
"Why don't you join me?" he suggested.
"Oh, I don't. . . "
"Come on," he urged. "No one's going to see you...'cept me, and there's not much of you I haven't seen before." He grinned mischievously and grabbed her ankle, using it as a brace to pull himself into a sitting position.
He uncoils like an animal, a cat or something ... lithe, strong. "Well..."
"Come on!"
She felt herself growing weak, sensed the burgeoning desire to obey him. She really wanted to toss her clothes over a chair and...
"Come on," he repeated. "I mean it's your house. Who's to say you can't go bare-ass in your own backyard?"
Slowly, Linda began unbuttoning her blouse, slipped it from her shoulders and stepped out of her shoes. The rest followed quickly until she stood above him in just her bra and panties. A final sense of propriety seemed to restrain her; sensing this, Mark leaped to his feet and seized her. He wrapped his arms about her upper body and crushed her tightly against him. His skin was very warm, burning almost from the sun. His genitals pressed their soft, fleshy mass upon the nylon that covered her crotch. His hands were sliding across her back, one of them always exerting the necessary pressure to hold her to him.
She felt the strap of her bra come loose and his other hand move lower, cupping about her buttocks. "Um," he groaned. "You know, with a little bit of make-up you'd really knock 'em dead! Will you get all dressed up for me sometime, let me see how you look when you're going to a party or one of those imagine nightclubs?" His face slid against hers and these final words were whispered into her ear.
Linda felt herself cringing beneath his onslaught and her own, tingling responses. "I ... I guess I don't ever get much more dressed up than you've seen me," she replied. "I don't ever wear make-up or ... anything."
Mark groaned again, contentedly as he continued to hold her. He didn't say any more, eventually stepped back to let her bra fall onto the ground between them. She could see his mounting excitement reflected in the lengthening of his penis, arching heavily outward from its nest of blonde crotch hairs. His legs had gotten red, sunburned, almost matching the hue of his heavy ball sac and the gradually rising shaft. I wonder if his ... his prick can get sunburned ... probably can ... just skin like all the rest. Oh my, wouldn't that fix him good? She started to giggle and Mark lifted her chin so she was forced to gaze into the wide, blue orbs of his eyes.
"What's so funny?" he asked, starting to laugh himself.
"I ... just ... you're starting to get sunburned," she stammered. Her gaze fell once again on his cock, and seeing this his grin spread wider.
"I'd never get that badly burned," he muttered. His hands began sliding down her shoulders, crossed the upper arms and gathered the fullness of her breasts in either palm. "Urn, really nice," he mumbled. He fondled the pliant forms of her breasts, kneaded them, depressed their sides and finally began rolling the tips between the rough surfaces of his fingers. "You really got nice tits, Linda," he whispered. "They're so damned big, but they stand out like the boobs of a go-go dancer. Really nice ... real, real nice!"
He stopped and sucked one nipple into his mouth, flipping his tongue rapidly across its rigid tip. He held one hand beneath the breast, keeping it in position as he played with it. His other palm stole slowly toward her waist, flattened against her belly and slid beneath the elastic. She could feel his fingers crawling through the crisp curls of her pubis, reaching down, stretching to find the upper end of her slit. The rising tides of desire had long since overcome any lingering hesitancy. She grasped the sides of her panties and shoved them over the rounded softness of her hips, wriggled her legs to make them fall and then stepped out of them ... moving carefully so as not to dislodge his lips. With the removal of the restraining cloth, Mark's other hand had slipped between her legs, forcing them apart as his fingers played about her vulva.
Suddenly, he stood back, grabbed her playfully about the waist with both hands and hurled her into the pool. It had all been so unexpected she was almost angry when the cool water closed about her and she realized her hair was going to be totally undone. But as she came sputtering to the surface Mark was already beside her; he grasped her head and held her up. He was tall enough to touch the bottom, so he pulled her easily against his chest, brought her lips to his and kissed her deeply. The pressure of his tongue driving fully inside her mouth made the brief spurt of anger dissolve. Her body melted onto his, floated lazily against him. One strong arm enclosed her waist, pulling her solidly into total contact. His stiffening penis grazed her inner thighs, came to rest in fierce projection along the underside of crotch.
"Wow!" he exclaimed suddenly, propelling himself away from her. His body arched backward chest, belly, groin, finally his flopping, rigid cock all breaking the surface in turn. "Wow!" he shouted again. 'Hey, Linda! You ever make the scene in your pool before?" He grinned at her like some elfish water creature, paddled to keep afloat as he faced her some three or four feet away.
"Really!" She found herself laughing, happy again despite her previous anxieties. In fact, these had been completely forgotten for the moment, and even the coolness of the pool did nothing to retard her accelerating arousal. Just the sensation of fluid across her naked flesh excited her, and the knowledge of all this masculine potential so close at hand did the rest. The residual desires he had left unfulfilled that morning began to build on their former base, to grow and swell until her lust overpowered any semblance of sanity and her only thoughts centered on this man ... on this strong, male being who exerted such power over her very soul.
He laughed again, splashed water in her face and glided up, hugging her, wrapping arms and legs about her. He tweaked one breast, purposely allowed his half-softened penis to graze her agitated pussy. His expression was joking, but the springy rise of his flesh against hers bespoke a degree of serious desire. He winked at her, bobbed his head beneath the surface to press his lips against her eager slit.
She nearly expired from the fantastic warmth, had to grasp the edge of decking to keep her balance as the ferocious sensation bolted through her. His tongue had slipped between the wrinkled folds, laving hotly against the inner surface, tip flicking at the "pee-hole," as he called it, pausing to caress the clitoris. She wondered how long he could stay there, how long these delicious sensations could be maintained. She was giving in completely to the thrill of sensuality. She knew this, but she didn't care.
Suddenly, she felt the wildest sensation yet. Mark began releasing the air from his lungs, held his mouth directly beneath her and slowly expelled a stream of bubbles that seemed to foam all across her underside, seeking the surface along both back and front. She gasped and moaned, leaned her shoulders more tightly against the edge of decking and tried to keep from losing her grip. The giggling sensation, the warmth of his bubbles in contrast to the cooler water of the pool made every nerve begin to tingle, forced her skin to cringe beneath the intensity of feeling. She felt his shoulders between her knees and clamped against them, holding briefly until he pushed against the bottom and propelled himself to the surface.
His head broke water a few inches from hers. He was laughing again. "How 'bout it, baby?" he said and grinned. "You game?" He didn't wait for an answer, merely hauled himself full-length against her. He locked his mouth to hers in a kiss so total it was impossible for either to breathe without drawing the air from the other's lungs, to exhale without blasting the flood down his companion's windpipe. They were both able to stand on the bottom, allowing Linda to rest securely, back braced against the side. Mark's hands became a pair of tantalizing inquisitors. They traveled completely about her, exploring every inch of her body, stroking every softly rounded contour, poking into every fold and crevice. They felt so warm, soft from soaking in the water strong, though, and wide ... powerful. Thick blunt fingers caressed her outer folds, slipped inside and grazed the lining of her snatch. His other hand stroked her ass, cupped about the cheek, slid across and in between. One finger found her anus and probed the gates until her muscle-ring clamped tight to keep him out. He drew her against him again, drove his long burgeoning cock shaft between her legs. But he never removed the finger from its position until the pressure of his grasp began to make it sink inside.
"Oh ... don't! Mark, please don't!" she moaned. Her chin was resting on his shoulder, lips almost against his ear. He must have heard her, but she seeking probe continued to press within her, slipped through the circle of flesh and wriggled into the channel, causing a sudden thrill of expectation to join its clamor to the protesting flood. It wasn't half bad, she realized ... actually felt all right ... good ... better ... Her tensions lessened and she let him do as he wished ... closed her eyes and felt the thrilling contrast where his heated flesh touched hers, so much warmer than those parts of her where the skin was in contact with nothing but water.
He maneuvered her toward the shallow end, turned her about and made her lie with her breasts and belly on the stairs. The double ledge reached clear across the pool, forming a broad surface on which to play their game. But Linda wasn't sure just then, she realized he was about to do something he hadn't done before and it frightened her. Just the prospect of this usage was terrifying, perverse.
Mark's hands reached about her, grasped her breasts, held them firmly, stroked them, played with the nipples until he felt her weaken once again. His groin was pressed against her rear and his hard-sprung cock was sliding gently along the crack of her ass. He wanted her this way, wished to sink his probing shaft into her anus. She knew it, despite her lack of experience ... wondered vaguely if there were some danger in it, if he might really injure her.
"Will it hurt?" she asked timidly.
"No, baby ... not at all. Just relax and it'll feel real good ... real, real good."
"You'll stop if I tell you to?" she asked.
"Sure, baby ... sure. Nothing to worry about. Now just relax and let me do all the work. Nothin' to it, baby ... nothin' to it." He nibbled her earlobe and licked at the opening. His mouth moved down her neck, teeth gripping solidly at the nape, gnawing at the mound of muscle that marked the top of her spine. It sent tingling waves of excitement down her backbone. Warmth seemed to pool about her buttocks, to spread its cloying fingers deep inside her rectum. She felt the sphincter loosen briefly, relax its hold until Mark drove the wide, blunt knob of cockhead against it.
She tightened, then responded to the sharp spasm of pain. "It hurts," she cried. "Mark, I don't think you better. I don't think I can do it."
"Relax, baby," he murmured against her ear. "Just take it easy ... relax. Everything'll be okay." He almost crooned the words, continually brushing his lips across her lobe. His deep, vibrating tones rumbled through her. One arm was wrapped about her waist, fingers splayed against the velvet smoothness of her belly. The other was between their bodies, his finger marking the place where he wished to sink his cock. This smaller probe was showing him the way, assuring the proper target for his impalement.
She had responded to him, forced her body to grow limp and tried to make her ass-hole loose as well. Each time it seemed to answer her command until the awesome pain of his pressing cock forced the ring to tighten. His finger slipped inside again, lodged uncomfortably in the entrance and began a gentle, kneading pressure against the sides. He worked it slowly, moving all around. It made the pain dissolve into tenuous warmth, grudgingly granting a suspicion-laden consent to his being there. But the sphincter remained on guard, ready to clamp tight against Mark's impending invasion.
With his free hand he guided the shaft into position, placed the cockhead to her puckered opening and shoved it down as he pulled his finger back. Linda grasped the stair and screamed, begging him to stop. "Please, Mark! Oh God, please! Mark, I can't stand it! Stop!" she sobbed.
But he was not to be restrained. The flaring knob was in her, held in place as the muscles tightened and gripped his shaft, just below the crown. The huge head formed a flange to keep him implanted, prevented his accidentally gliding free. Linda's entire body writhed and thrashed about in agonized protest, willing him off of her, trying desperately to be free of his unwanted assault. Both Mark's arms surrounded her; one hand flattened against her chest, between the straining breasts. The other depressed her belly to keep her back and ass flush against him. She was powerless to prevent his use of her, and he made no move to lessen his possession. Instead, he began a slow, gradual penetration. His cock slid ever further into her, causing fresh waves of misery with every modicum of space it gained. She was nearly frantic before he finally achieved the maximum and held still, loins pressed firmly on her backside.
Only then, and still very slowly, the wracking pain receded. As Linda emerged from the well of misery, she first sensed the fullness of his possession after this, the familiar, surging heat she had known when he'd taken her before. One of his hands was fondling her now, and this finally decided the issue, increased the growing rush of pleasure. It was still several minutes before the unpleasant sensations were completely gone, but eventually she grew used to him and was able to accommodate his cock without the terrible discomfort.
"Oh," she gasped, at length. "Oh, that hurt!"
"Doesn't hurt now, though, does it, baby?" he whispered. He moved his hips against her, made the heavy shaft move slightly within its channel. It caused a further suggestion of pain, but he stopped this by the pressure of his hand within her cunt, by the warmth of his fingers depressing the entrance of her vagina.
"No," she admitted finally. "No. It doesn't hurt so much any more."
Gradually, as he continued to roll his hips and drive his loins in a circular motion across the rounded smoothness of her ass, the sensations grew more intensely pleasurable. Both hands had seized upon her breasts, adding an additional impetus. Linda felt a swelling pressure build through her lower body, spread outward until she could no longer differentiate between her present source of bliss and that which she'd known before. Mark's heavy, blunted prick glided easily on the lubricating film of water. Finally, he began plunging hard against her. He lifted his hips until he almost freed his cock from its heated emplacement, then rammed himself against her, drove his steel-hard column deep ... deep, deep within her.
"Okay, baby. Feel good now?" he muttered. "like it now?"
"Yes," she admitted, "it's good ... just as good..." Her hands gripped the edge of the stair as her midsection kept floating up and down with his lunging motions. She felt herself strike and bounce upon the lower corner of cement, helpless in his grasp. Each movement contributed its own, fully sensuous response. Heat rose from her flesh to form an aura all about her. Mark's determined pounding was churning their fluid enclosure as Linda reached back, snaked her hand between their straining bodies. She felt his balls strike her fingers, seized the sac and grasped the pulsing orbs. She squeezed them gently, heard Mark groan deeply and felt him alter the angle of his penetration. His hands tightened upon her breasts as his breath came in harsher, more tightly drawn rasps.
She knew that he was close. His respiration and bodily tensions were as she remembered from that morning. But again her own answering responses were just short of matching his. Quickly, with her free hand, she began to fondle her slit, worked a finger into the orifice and manipulated the area of searing warmth until it was adding its own frantic clamor to the rest. This brought her to the brink of climax, forced a surging, upward sensation. She seemed to float toward the same bank of nebulous pleasure she had known the night before ... when she hadn't actually realized what was happening. She heard the deeper groans from Mark as he pulled himself tighter against her back. She knew he was on the verge of boiling release.
Striving desperately to match his pace, she shoved three fingers deep inside her cunt, thus accelerating her own seething arousal. At this, everything seemed to tighten within her. All her vital organs pulled and contracted together in the ultimate spasms of release. Mark's cock sank hard and deep, his breathing momentarily suspended as his entire body went stiff and tense. He remained perfectly still as flooding sperm jutted through his passages, forced his shaft to swell and expand as each spurting blast descended into her ass.
"Oh, that was good," he muttered. "So fuckin' good!" For a long while he continued to hold her, rested his trembling weight against her back until his cock grew soft within her and his body achieved its normal pace and heartbeat. Then he let his shaft slide out, kissed the side of her face and paddled away, across the pool.
Linda turned, rested her back against the stairs. She watched him, floating on his back with the tip of his softened penis poking above the rippled surface like a blossoming flower. The foreskin had slipped back in place to form the outer circle ... flower petals? Nonsense! He hurt me! Vm so sore ... never be able to sit again! He hurt me, and he knew he was hurting me ... didn't slow him down ... made no difference ... made no effort to bring me to the peak when he ... Or did he know ? Can a man tell?
She lay her head back, blinked against the brilliant glare of sky. Mark had deliberately caused her pain, something she had told herself he wouldn't do. Yet, the sensation that followed the pain had been just as exquisite as before, and he must have known that, as well ... knew she'd eventually enjoy it. He'd forced her to endure those first moments, knowing what would follow. Or had he even thought about it? Had he been concerned enough for her feelings to tell himself he'd cause her pain, but eventually she'd be glad of it ... satisfied because of what would follow? He seemed so ... boyish ... innocent. Yes innocent. There just wasn't any other word. The guy was a big, sweet-natured kid ... at least to all outward appearances he was. But under this ... beneath the youthful, enthusiastic facade ... what lay there?
She thought again of the newspaper story and how this contrasted with what he'd told her. Still wondering, almost fearfully, she mounted the stairs and started toward the house.
"Hey, where're you going?" he called.
"We need some towels ... and I've got something to show you," she answered. Had some coldness reflected in her tone? She wondered, couldn't be sure wasn't even sure if she wanted it to. Damn it, she did feel something for this boy, something more than just the lust he generated by his touch. She was teetering on the verge of love, and she realized it ... vaguely, because the sensation was new to her. Still, she had the necessary self-awareness to detect the. impending existence of this deeper emotional involvement.
She took the paper from the kitchen table, grabbed a couple of pool towels from the cabinet near the door, and returned to Mark. He had lifted himself from the water and was rubbing the white bathroom towel across his belly, into his crotch. He made his cock flap about with the motion, pulled at the brown-red sac, stretched it, let his balls tumble against the gleaming white. Stop it! Quit looking at his cock! Her hands were shaking again as she fumbled through the pages and came to the article about Mark's escape. She folded the sheet and handed it to him, pointing to the column without making any verbal comment.
She watched his face as he read, his eyes darting back and forth across the lines. He showed no particular response until he reached the bottom, the part where they mentioned the old man in the house he was suspected of robbing. He looked up at her abruptly, his pain obvious in the baffled expression. "You don't think ... I really did a thing like that, do you?" he asked. He seemed so crestfallen, Linda would not have been surprised to see him burst into tears. At that moment her heart went out to him. She couldn't help it. Her arms fairly ached to hold him and comfort him. But she didn't move. She forced herself to stay in place and wait, forced her face not to betray her feelings.
"You don't, do you?" he asked again. This time there was a genuine plea in his tone.
"I don't know," she said softly. "I'd like to think you didn't." Her own tone had been questioning. Her eyes had never left his face, where the lines of fear and concern continued to deepen beneath her gaze.
"Linda, I swear to you...! " He bounded across to her, grabbed both her shoulders and looked into her face, his huge, blue orbs locked on hers. "Honest, honey honest to God! I never robbed that house, and I certainly never touched any old man. I couldn't! I wouldn't, not ever! No matter what!"
As before, the sincerity of his expression battered down any opposing reason or logic. Again, Linda found herself believing him. But the warning dissent that hovered in the back of her mind had been stronger, this time. So, too, was her desire to overcome it. Even more deeply than before, she wanted to believe ... had to believe. Eventually, after several moments hesitation, she slowly nodded her head. "I believe you, Mark," she whispered softly. "I do believe you."
And her mind echoed the spoken words with yet another admission, one she dared not say aloud. I love you, Mark. I really, truly love you!
FIVE
For the second time, Linda awakened within the enclosure of Mark's embrace. They had slept peacefully through the hours of darkness. The closeness of his flesh to hers, the warmth and pressure of his being, had eased away her lingering doubts and fears. She watched him stir and waken, felt the power of his body flow against her. His hands moved languidly, stroking her back and the soft, ripe fullness of her breasts. She drifted in the final lethargy before full wakefulness, her mind dwelling on the glorious fullness she had known when he possessed her, on the thrusting might of the sleeping sex flesh she now held between her fingers. She stroked it as he did her breasts, felt the foreskin slide back of the crown, touched the tip and pressed against the tiny hole.
Slowly, Mark uncoiled his body, twisting gently away from her. He pulled the covers back and bent to kiss her sleep-softened breasts, allowed his palm to wander across velvet smoothness where the sun had darkened those areas that had formerly been snowy white. Her breasts were aglow with their own internal fires, reddened to a state just short of discomfort. Still, her skin held a heightened sensitivity. When his lips closed about the nipple, Linda twisted and moaned, curled her body toward him and blinked against the brilliant daylight.
"Come on, sleepy-head," he whispered.
She stretched, heard the sinews crackle through her back and arms. She would have liked to have him take her, to use her as he had before. But he slipped from the bed and padded across to the bathroom. Linda gazed down the length of her body, sensed the newly awakened sensuality. Her pulse still throbbed at either temple, and the rush of invigorated life continued to flow throughout her body. She placed a hand beneath either breast, pushed up from the sides and made them stand full, towering above her. They seemed so alive! Her entire being had achieved a new awareness and sensitivity.
Between her breasts and below them, and seeming to stretch toward the farthest distance, Linda saw the glowing, undulating plane of her being. The skin gleamed softly ... satin smooth. The richness of deep, burnished tan contrasted against the light, reddish-pink of her breasts and the area above the pubis.
Rising from this lighter region she saw the forest of tangled hairs reflecting the glare of light along their twisted, upper strands. These shone with a golden red, much brighter than the chestnut mat that stretched beyond. Her fingers riffled the surface, made sunlight dance across the slender filaments. She touched the parted lips she couldn't see, felt a series of responding contractions that projected their echoing sensations through her inner body.
I've become a woman, she told herself. In these few hours since Mark first came to me I've changed and I've discovered a potential I never knew I had. She raised her arms above her head, made every muscle extend as she wriggled sensuously against the sheets. It's love, she thought. It's the same, elusive emotion the poets write about, only I never understood 'til now. Mark's the one who showed me the way ... made me love him. Never spoke of it himself ... never admitted he shares my feelings. But he must ... he has to. How else could he create such a wonderful response in me?
Linda heard the shower start in the bathroom and she sighed. She was not unhappy at his apparent neglect. There was plenty of time for him to tell her of his feelings, to express the reciprocal adoration she knew must exist within him. She swung her legs over the side of the bed, almost forgetting to throw the robe about herself. It wouldn't really matter, though, she thought. If I went about in the nude, what difference would it make ? He-likes to see my body, enjoys it ... loves it? Yes, that too. He loves me!
Linda dressed in the other bathroom and went downstairs to start Mark's breakfast. She gathered up the pile of clothing from the hamper and carried these with her. Still have household chores to do, she thought, and the idea of washing Mark's clothes along with hers was a source of additional pleasure. The jeans and tattered shirt he'd worn when she first saw him were among the items she took onto the service porch.
Mark remained under the shower for such a long time, Linda finally turned the heat down on the stove and stepped into the adjoining area. She pulled the cover from the washer and started stuffing in the clothes. When she came to Mark's jeans she held them, feeling the soft, much-laundered material between her fingers. They were his; they'd clung to his body. She fingered the stains of sweat, remembering these had once been part of his flesh. She shook her head and started to shove them into the washer. I'm being foolish ... like an over sentimental schoolgirl, she told herself. But her handling of the cloth had alerted her to something in the pocket. Automatically, she reached inside, intending no more than to remove whatever it was before it could be damaged in the water. Much to her surprise she produced an unexpected assortment of items a wad of bills that must have totaled a couple hundred dollars, a man's expensive wristwatch and a gold signet ring.
She placed the items on top of the washer and finished loading it, added soap and turned the switch to start it. All her movements were reflexive, done without conscious thought or guidance. Her attention had remained riveted on the small pile of valuables. Where had he gotten them? The question seemed to hammer at her brain. Where had Mark obtained the jewelry and all that money? He surely couldn't have had it in jail. Linda remembered reading somewhere about how they take everything of value away from a man when they book him, only let him have a small amount of cash at any time.
Her skin felt cold, and a heavy lump was forming in her belly. The account of that burglary and the assault upon the old man came to mind ... and it fit! For all Mark's innocent display, despite his earnest protestations, the evidence seemed irrefutable. She couldn't think of any other way he might have obtained such valuables, and the disappointment made her start to cry. She wiped the back of her wrist across her eyes, trying to hold back the tears. She felt a flush of anger, too ... indignation that he had used her this way ... used her and lied to her.
The washing machine clicked into its second cycle, momentarily silent. Linda heard Mark's footsteps coming down the stairs and quickly shoved the pile of jewelry and cash into a drawer. She turned to face him just as he stepped into the doorway between the kitchen and service porch. He was wearing just the towel, again, his body glowing from the hot water and from toweling himself dry. The effect on Linda's emotions was the same as it had been before. She felt her body respond with the now-familiar tingling. Every nerve was alive and ready, every gland seeming to dump its fluid into the bloodstream, bringing her closer to a state of surrender. Does he realize what it does to me ... seeing him like this? Can he appreciate the effect he has on me? Surely, he must ... probably uses it to make sure I do what he wants ... uses me ... uses sex to weaken me and. . .
"You're very domestic this morning," he said lightly.
"Yes," replied Linda sullenly.
"Honey?" He came up to her, lifted her chin and gazed into her face. "What's wrong?" he asked. "You're okay, aren't you? I mean, I didn't hurt you ... yesterday, or something?"
She shook her head. "No," she whispered. She tried to move past him, but he deliberately blocked her way. He slipped one arm about her waist and pulled her against him.
"Something's wrong," he said. "What is it?"
The tears were running freely down her cheeks now. She couldn't control them. Despite her regenerated fear, and all the other negative feelings that went with it, she couldn't help sensing the flood of desire evoked by his closeness. Another moment, just another few seconds and she might give in, might decide it didn't matter what he'd done. But it did matter! If he'd really done this thing, really injured that old man ... of course it mattered. Not only had he lied to her, he'd proved how dangerous he was, how unstable, how-likely it was that he might harm her.
But Linda's own physical well-being was not the prime consideration, nor the real source of her bitter sorrow. She was afraid, suddenly, but more important than this ... far more important, was the destruction of the faith he'd instilled and her certain sense of having been betrayed. Her mind was in chaos, emotions seething and grating one against the other until she shook so badly she might have stumbled had Mark not held her up.
"Linda, for Christ's sake, tell me what's wrong!" he insisted.
"What's wrong? What's wrong!" she almost shouted. "Here! This is what's wrong!" She flung open the drawer, pointed at the crumpled bills and jewelry. "I suppose you're going to tell me you just happened to have that on you in road camp ... that you didn't rob that poor old man and beat him up to get it!"
Mark gazed at the incriminating collection for several seconds, sagging back against the wall. His head hung forward, eyes focused on the floor at his feet. "I didn't steal it," he muttered softly. "And I didn't whip any poor old man." The latter statement came out with a stronger tone and he lifted his face, gazing directly into Linda's eyes. "I've told you the truth from start to finish," he insisted.
Linda started to cry again. "If I could just believe you," she sobbed. "But how can I? How can you explain these things?" She waved her hand in the general direction of the items on the drawer.
Mark sighed deeply. "It's exactly like I told you," he said softly. "I'd been planning to escape for a couple of weeks. I knew it was only a matter of time before things got so rough I'd have to get out of there. Last Sunday was visiting day, and when my mom came to see me I explained it to her. She's a pretty sharp old girl anyway, really a great person..." He blinked his eyes, seeming to be on the verge of tears himself.
"Anyway, I told her what was going on, that I might have to cut out of there. She wanted to go tell the camp director and try to get me transferred or something. But I knew that wasn't the way. If it ever got back that I'd copped out on the other inmates my ass would really have been in the sling! So I asked Mom if she'd get a couple hundred dollars together for me and hide them so I could find 'em when I left. See, we were sent out in work gangs to keep the fire trails in shape, and I knew the area around the camp pretty well. I told her exactly where to leave the money, but I didn't arrange to have her pick me up or anything. If I got caught I didn't want to take a chance on involving her.
"I didn't ask her to leave my watch and ring, but she musta figured I'd want them, because when I picked up the cash the rest was in the bag along with it." He stopped, breathing heavily, and looked sharply into Linda's face again. "And that's the whole story ... the whole truth," he added. "I admit that I stole the money that got me sent up in the first place, and if I could undo that I would. But even before I went to trial I swore I'd never do another dishonest thing in my life. And I haven't! Honest, Linda; I haven't!"
She watched him narrowly, trying to read his thoughts, or at least the clues he gave in his tone and facial expression. The story might be true, she reasoned. It was plausible enough, and there hadn't been any hesitancy once he started speaking. He hadn't appeared to be making it up as he went along. But he could have made it up beforehand ... could have held the story in reserve for just such a moment as this. How could she be sure, she asked herself. How could she ever trust him, be really comfortable with him again?
He started to turn away, making no move to touch her or to further emphasize the truth of his statements. He seemed so crushed and defeated she couldn't help feeling sorry for him, feeling guilty that she had expressed this doubt. If he really was telling the truth, what an awful thing for her not to believe him, to deny him this faith he so badly needed! She rushed to him, threw herself against his back, wrapped her arms about his body and pressed the side of her face into the deep channel along his spine.
"I believe you," she whispered. "Oh, Mark ... please! I do believe you!"
She held him tightly for a long while, feeling the tensions rise and fall within him. Her ear was flat against one sloping plane of muscle so she could hear the heavy, thundering beat of his heart. She did believe him, she kept telling herself. If she didn't, what was the use of anything else? He had come into her life just two days before, and now he formed the most important part of it. Her own wretchedness and sense of guilt at having caused Mark this pain were stronger than any doubts she might have felt. She couldn't tell herself she loved a man one moment, then accuse him of some dreadful crime the next. She'd been wrong, and she needed his forgiveness.
At length, Mark freed himself from her fierce embrace and turned to face her. He hugged her gently and kissed away the streaks of tears. He touched her eyelids with his lips, licked softly at the lashes, and finally locked his mouth to hers. "I love you," he whispered. "I really, truly love you."
His words were a rumbling vibration, swelling through her body as the meaning penetrated her brain. It was the statement she had longed to hear, an affirmation of feelings she had told herself must be there. In those moments, nothing else made the slightest difference. He could have confessed to being an axe murderer and she would still have felt the same.
"I love you, too," she replied in a throaty, broken voice. "God, Mark! I really do love you!"
Their lips came together once again, and Linda gave in completely, surrendered to the blindly swelling urges of her flesh, allowed these to possess her mind until nothing else remained.
Whenever Mark was near her, Linda could think of nothing but her love for him. Only when he was out of sight, in the next room or outside on the patio, was she able to gain some modicum of equilibrium. Yet even in these moments her mental processes were not completely untinged by soaring elation. She ignored any internal urgings to be cautious. That the potential for danger, or that some other dark, sinister unnamed might exist as an integral part of her love, was a conception she tried to suppress. In large part, she was successful. All through the morning and early afternoon she busied herself with housework, purposely forcing herself to stay away from
Mark.
It was not that her love became any less when he was out of sight. Rather, these moments of comparative stability allowed Linda to formulate some plans for the future. No matter how great her love might be, or how overwhelming its effect upon her judgment, certain elements of logic and reason remained. Mark simply had to resolve his present dilemma. To hide him in her house indefinitely would not accomplish this. Unless he somehow made his peace with the law, he would be a hunted fugitive for the rest of his life. Assuming he had told the truth an assumption she insisted on making he actually had little to fear. It seemed perfectly logical to her that a good lawyer should be able to make this point in a court of law, to convince the judge of Mark's genuine fear for his life and advance this as the motivation for his escape. Linda didn't know what the penalty for breaking jail might be, but regardless what it was it had to be better than going through life without ever knowing when the hand of the law was going to fall upon your shoulder.
The whole situation had only one logical solution, then, and that was for Mark to give himself up. Linda would see to it he had proper legal representation, and she convinced herself that his voluntary surrender would be the answer. They could go to the attorney first if need be, ask his advice and proceed from there. It all seemed so reasonable, so clearly the proper answer, she found herself growing enthusiastic at the prospect. It would mean a separation from Mark, maybe several months' separation, but after that. . .
The sun had dropped behind the hills and the intense heat of the afternoon was beginning to wane. It was still pleasantly warm on the patio, however, so Linda served their dinner on a table beside the pool. Mark had put on one of the shirts she'd bought him, and was wearing the jeans. She'd correctly guessed the length of the legs, she noticed, but had slightly underestimated the waist. As a result, the light blue cloth was stretched tightly across his rear and the display about his crotch left little to the imagination. The overall effect was anything but displeasing, she decided.
Linda had made a point of wearing what she considered a sexy outfit, too. Remembering Mark's whispered suggestion of wanting to see her "dressed up," she squeezed herself into the taffeta cocktail dress she had worn on the one occasion when Dad had insisted on accepting an invitation to a party. She remembered that evening as one of the most uncomfortable in her life ... an assembly of older people, all of whom had known her mother and insisted on comparing Linda to the ghostly memory. Even then, when the dress had fit more loosely than it did this evening, she had been self-conscious of the way it made her breasts stand out, how the full skirt had seemed to display her legs when she sat. Her father's friends had all been extremely conservative people, quiet and proper ... church-going, bible-reading, middle class "folks."
Her father had fallen asleep shortly after dinner, and a couple of the men had helped her get him from the wheelchair into the back of the station wagon. That had been the last time they ever went out together ... almost three years ago. It was the first and only time she had worn the dress. She put it on while Mark was cleaning up, and when she stood before the mirror to appraise the effect, she remembered some of the items among her mother's stored possessions. Mom had been much more worldly than her father. Linda knew there were several lipsticks of a darker shade than any she had ever bought for herself. There was also some eye shadow and mascara in the box of cosmetics, some pieces of costume jewelry which her father had insisted be kept in the drawer where her mother had placed them.
With some trepidation, Linda applied the unfamiliar coloring about her eyes. Then she chose a simulated diamond necklace to ornament the swath of bosom left exposed by the low neckline on her dress. She hung a pair of matching earrings from her lobes, and again surveyed the effect in her mother's full-length mirror. She was amazed at the change! Not only did her body seem fuller and more shapely; the jewelry and make-up gave her face a sophisticated, womanly quality she could hardly believe. She had drawn her hair straight back on her head and tied it in a sort of pony-tail. Even this severe arrangement necessary because of that soaking in the pool accentuated the beauty of her features. Finally satisfied with her appearance she went outside and let Mark see her in all this unaccustomed finery, anxiously anticipating his response.
"My God, Linda!" he gasped. He had been sitting with a cocktail in his hand, gazing across the patio when she came out with the tray of food. Slowly, he seemed to unfold from the chair and approached her, reaching out uncertainly to touch her face. "I thought you said you didn't ever dress up. You look really great!"
She felt a rush of blood to her face and knew she was blushing. She tried to cover her embarrassment with a nervous laugh. Mark had remained in front of her, seemingly paralyzed for a moment, staring at her with open admiration. Then, as if suddenly breaking free of whatever enchantment held him immobile, he took the tray from her hands and placed it on the table. Again, his hands moved uncertainly in her direction, but other than his original, light caress upon her cheek, he seemed afraid to touch her.
Linda laughed softly. "I won't break," she assured him.
"I don't know," he whispered. "I ... you ... look like a china doll ... so ... so delicate, really..." He held still another moment, and Linda threw herself against him. They clung together in the gathering darkness, bodies pressed tightly one upon the other, mouths seeking, eyes closed, joined in more than the singular physical contact.
When they had eaten and were sitting together on the chaise, Linda broached the subject that had disturbed her all afternoon.
Mark's hand was lying on top of hers, and as she started to speak she could feel his fingers tighten. " ... so, you've just got to give yourself up," she concluded. "It's the only way, darling ... the only way you ... we'll ever be free."
The only light came from a single candle in a hurricane lamp ... that, and the inevitable night glow from the sky. She could see the earnest consternation on Mark's face, could almost feel the torturous workings of his mind. For a long while he said nothing, and only the hard pressure of his hand on hers expressed the intensity of his heightened anxiety. "I guess you're right," he sighed at length. "The idea of going back to jail ... well, it's an awful thing. You can't imagine just how bad it is," he said more stridently. He turned to face her, his wide blue eyes reflecting the candle's light, both his hands enclosing hers.
"It can't be as bad as what'll happen if they catch you and take you back ... in handcuffs," she answered evenly.
Again, she could feel the tension build as his pressure on her hands increased. But he nodded, an expression of sadness and resignation on his features. "I know you're right," he said.
"I could call my lawyer ... right now, if you want," she suggested.
"No!" he said sharply. "No, not tonight. I'll do it tomorrow ... tomorrow morning. But right now ... I just can't leave you right now ... tonight."
A moment later she was in his arms, each of them whispering words of endearment, admitting the impossibility of giving up this final night together. Mark had overcome his previous awe, and his hands began working deftly to open the back of her dress. He had the zipper pulled clear to her waist when Linda suddenly reached behind her, eased him away. He watched her a moment, puzzled, not knowing if her action was meant to reject him. He sat back, hands at his sides, pressing against the pad. Linda bent her head into his crotch, kissed the solid rise of cock along his thigh before she stood.
As he continued to watch her, she stepped back and started peeling off her clothes. Some savage instinct made her leave the jewelry in place, the necklace and the earrings. Everything else came off: dress, slip, stockings, bra and panties. She did it quickly and deliberately, piling her things on a chair until she stood before Mark with just the glittering rhinestones about her throat and at either side of her face. In the semi-blackness she assumed the visage of some wild, jungle wanton. Her velvet skin reflected darkly in the flickering candlelight. Her breasts stood firm and proud, nipples jutting slightly upward, heavy cones moving with a fleshy, tantalizing fullness each time she shifted her weight. The uncertain light cast glowing patches of reddish brightness across the front of her body, accentuated the sensual qualities of her being. Her pubic shield was a sharply delineated triangle, dark beneath the golden copper where light reflected on the longer hairs.
"Beautiful!" whispered Mark. The almost reverent appreciation was implicit in his tone again, and as before his hands reached out for her as if he were about to touch some priceless, fragile relic. "You just don't know how really great you look," he added softly. "like a goddess ... a real, live goddess."
She laughed aloud, reached back and pulled loose the ribbon that held her hair in place. This fell about her head, framing her face and forming a thick, lustrous cascade that grazed the surface of her shoulders. But she was also affected by the boldness of her own behavior, no less caught up in the wild, uncivilized game than he. Knowing the power her appearance projected, she moved toward him, one step at a time, allowing Mark's uncertainty to increase. It was the first time he had not been completely in control of their interactions.
When she reached him, Linda placed both hands on his shoulders, stood close so his face was only inches from the center of her belly. Gently, she stroked the hard rounds of muscle, allowing her palms to caress his back and the upper portions of his chest. She unfastened the buttons on his shirt, ran her hand inside. She riffled the heavy mat of blonde, touched one nipple and squeezed it as he had hers. She heard him draw a breath, pull it hissingly between his teeth, hold it while her fingers played with the hardening nub.
She unbuttoned the shirt to his waist, pulling it free and shoving it back to completely bare his torso. She slipped onto the chaise beside him, encircled his naked back with one arm as she pressed her lips to the dark, contracted discs on his chest. All this while, Mark had remained in place. His hands still rested on the pad. His eyes were closed, head tipped slightly back as he permitted her to use him, seeming to relish every moment.
Linda pushed the shirt from his body, kissed the depression along the upper side of his shoulder and started working the belt loose at his waist. Mark never helped her, except to raise his lower body when she pulled the jeans down, off his hips. Other than this he permitted her to do exactly as she wished, offering neither guidance nor advice ... forcing himself not to direct her by any suggestive movement nor spoken word. When he was as naked as she, Linda pushed him gently onto his back, easing his legs onto the lounge. She knelt in the space between his thighs, stroking his chest and belly, running her hands along his sides and over the firmly molded muscles of his hips.
His prick had sprung to full erection, extending its rigid might upward across his midsection. The wide, flaring crown lay almost atop his navel, lifting and falling back as its own internal pressures gave it a life and motion that seemed independent of anything else. Linda purposely avoided touching it, teased him to a state of boiling expectancy by caressing the areas all about his groin. But she never alleviated his fiercely expressed desire to have her fondle him, to grasp the shaft and twist it, maybe kiss the wide-spread hood and lick away the drops of moisture collected there.
Finally, she reached into his crotch, hefted the pulsing testicles on the palm of her hand. She held them, pressed her thumb against the sac to drive the orbs apart. Feeling him respond with a desperate, striving twist, she used both hands, grasped one of his balls in each and gingerly applied the pressure of her fingertips all about the fragile spheres. Mark had restrained the impulse to assume control, to place his own hands on hers and guide the action. The situation was too delicious, the reversal of roles too exquisite and tantalizing. His arms remained unmoving beside his hips, though the sensations generated by her manipulations caused him to shift from side to side, finally to grip her with his legs. Only when Linda leaned over him to place her lips on his did Mark reach up, seize the loose-hanging projections of her tits and fondly caress their soft, warm contours.
Gently, Linda took his wrists and placed them back against the pad. "Let me do it," she whispered. "Let me show how much I love you ... give you something to remember, in case..." Her voice trailed off and a momentary sadness seemed to grip them both. She dropped herself atop his body, positioned her loins against him so his turgid cock lay compressed between them. Gently, Linda rocked from side to side, forcing the heated shaft to roll with her motion. It grew more desperately hard, drove into the softer flesh of her underbelly. Her lips were fast on his by then, and her arms wrapped tightly about his neck. For a long while they merely lay together, her movements slowing and finally coming to a standstill. Each responded to a surge of inner warmth, to the emotions expressed by their kisses and the unspoken words of deep affection flowing through their minds.
Eventually, Linda stirred, lifted her loins and reached between their bodies. She grasped the heavy shaft of his prick, squeezed hard about the steely column. Its solid form seemed unbelievably heavy, dense, like a piece of steel enclosed in warm, living satin. She forced the skin to slide upon its inner core, fingered the tip and drew away the oozing beads of moisture. A final kiss and she pushed herself back to kneel astride his thighs. She lifted the springy might of his prick and rubbed the cockhead across her chestnut mat. The urge to bend and place her lips against it was almost more than she could bear, but she hesitated, wondered if such behavior might go beyond some unwritten limit. She gazed down at it, flicked her tongue along the line of her mouth and finally decided there could be nothing wrong ... nothing wrong with anything one of them might wish to do to the other.
She lowered her head, folding her body in upon itself and let her lips come into gentle, grazing contact with the pliant hardness. She touched the tip of her tongue to the narrow slit and tasted its slightly salty essence. Mark groaned and shifted his hips. One hand lifted from the pad as if he intended to touch her head. But it fell back and he moaned again, made a gentle, upward-thrusting motion with his lower body.
Linda's mouth descended on the shaft. She took it halfway into her mouth, sensed the trembling pulse which traveled down its length to communicate the urgent vibrancy through all the rest of his body. He was quaking, now, shivering with a violence that left no doubt of the effect her usage had upon him. Encouraged by this, she attempted to consume the entire mass of his cock, to pull it all inside her and absorb it completely. The wide knob struck the back of her throat, making her gag and forcing tears to flood her eyes. Try as she would, the final third of it seemed beyond her reach.
"Swallow it," he whispered. "Just make believe you're taking down a bit of dinner."
She tried, shoved herself against it and made the muscles of her throat pretend to pass a quantity of food. She felt the slickness pass her palate, bolting into her as Mark lunged upward with his loins. Her lips sank into the wiry crispness about the base and she held him completely within her. She pulled away and tried it again, this time felt the churning reaction in her guts, retreated as a heavy layer of phlegm rose to coat the impaling column. After this, Mark restrained the urge to ram himself inside her. Other than a subtle, barely noticeable undulation of his hips, he lay still and in a state of blissful acceptance as Linda sucked his flaring iron, drawing it deeply time and again, choking on it, adoring it, increasing the cadence and frequency of her absorption.
The longer she worked on him, the easier it became. The projecting shaft had grown so slick it passed through her throat with hardly a pause. She continued to taste the salty bitterness, but this only heightened her lust and made her drive with greater fury along the wide, tapered column. She was gasping for breath and finally had to stop. Her throat felt raw and sore, but she had sensed his pleasure and this compensated for any minor discomfort.
She sat back, once again astride his thighs, her hands sliding along the smooth, slippery cock. Within her loins she felt a hot, savage desire ... the need to have his total strength within her. A tickle of seeping fluids told her how ready her body was to take him. Without pausing to think or plan the action, she rose above him, centered the massive crown against her vaginal opening and slowly eased his cock inside.
She felt it force the labia to part, had to pause and let the intense sensation equalize itself. She looked along the front of her body, saw the jouncing solidarity of her breasts and the line of red where her skin reflected the glow from the candle. She could see the base of his cock, the field of blonde beneath her own darker fur. Desire overcame restraint and Linda lowered herself upon the up-thrust shaft. It seemed to tear into her, to blast her passage open in a single, wrenching tear. But the heavy bolt slipped into her without encountering any obstruction. She sank about it, her inner body seeming to suck it in, just as she had done moments before with her lips. His crown struck the internal springs of sensation and still she forced it further, never stopping until she rested flat against his groin and the darkness of her patch adjoined his field of reddish blonde.
Mark had rested his hands on her thighs as she settled upon him, hissing and sighing as he felt his cock swallowed by delicious warmth. Now, as she drove herself to complete impalement, his grip tightened until he almost hurt her. His eyes came open and his gaze followed the soft, lush contours that hovered above him. As if suddenly aware of the discomfort his hold might cause, he let go of her and let his fingers travel across the elegant, satin warmth. The jewels that glimmered at her throat added just the proper touch of uncivilized barbarism, a suggestion of the primeval state to which their present actions seemed to return them. Beneath the open sky, with the warm summer air stirring gently across their bodies, they might have been re-enacting the rite of some long-dead forebears.
Slowly, Mark began to move his lower body. His prick slipped down, then up, the rhythm growing faster as Linda responded ... rising slightly when his cock shaft descended, pressing down with all her strength when it reached its upward height. For both of them, sensations boiled and strove to reach a summit. Climax threatened to engulf them and make it end. First Mark, then Linda slowed, gradually ceasing to move until the frantic spasms passed. Not soon enough. She saw Mark grit his teeth, heard him sigh and touch the ridge of muscles along his stomach. He couldn't stop himself, not before the spurting fountain erupted within her. She seemed to feel it, felt her own internal organs tense and answer him. A dark, hard weight seemed to gather and contract, to pull every sinew and every reverberating nerve into its vortex. She doubled over, emitted a gasping moan as she felt the flooding tide burst free.
Their lower beings were still tightly joined and sealed; Linda's mouth met Mark's until this second point of contact became as firm and desperate as the other. Each of them had strained and fought against the exquisite thrill that heralded the premature ending of their exotic exchange. Now, with the heavy flow of fluids came the equally debilitating flood of emotions. Their arms held frantically, one about the other. Linda's body sank on top of Mark's, their heated flesh melting into a single, quivering entity until the soaring moments had drained away.
But it ended nothing. Desire returned to each of them in pulsing waves as strong and furious as any which had gone before. She tried to sit again, but he held her too tightly, refused to let her pull away. Instead, he wriggled far to the side of the chaise and eased Linda onto her back. He swung himself half on top of her, centered her on the pad and let his full weight descend to hold her fast in place.
After this, the initiative passed from Linda's hands to his. Slowly, with a deliberately tantalizing restraint, Mark ground his loins against her. He lifted his cock and let it hang suspended at the very entrance to her slit. Then he rammed it home, coming upon her with a rushing impact that sank his probe to the hilt and made her whimper from the weakness he engentlered. The molten fluids of their previous discharge smoothed the way, formed a frothy, bubbled coating ... oozing out of her to puddle on the lounge beneath her buttocks.
She tried to drive herself more quickly, more solidly upon him, but Mark took hold of her arms, grasped the wrists and held her flat beneath him. His thighs slid onto hers, locking these as well. His cock maintained its deliberate, unhurried cadence, sometimes striking with a syncopated rhythm she was unable to foresee. She was pinioned and unable to move, helpless to determine the pace of his assault. Gradually, her own energies started to gather once again, and she eagerly anticipated the moment when she would be permitted to release the rushing flow against him. Then he shifted, moved lower so his balls kept striking the underside of her crotch, swinging in a short, crushing arch that always terminated with a fleshy impact against the taut bridge of sinew. Every move he made, every lunge of his wide, solid cock wedge within her cunt brought a fresh, breaking wave of sheer delight.
"Do you love me?" he gasped against her ear.
"Yes," she told him. "Yes ... so much, Mark! So much!"
"Do you love me or love my cock?" he teased her. "Which one'ya love the best, baby? Which one?"
"Both of you," she rasped. "Oh, both of you ... love you ... love your cock ... love it!"
"Feel good, baby? S'it feel good, sliding in and out of you ... fuckin' you...? "
"Um," she moaned. "So good ... so ... good..."
"Tell me, baby. Tell me you like to get fucked. Tell me. Say: 'I love to have you fuck me, Mark!' Say it, baby. Say it!"
"Oh!" She groaned and twisted her head. "Yes, I love it. I love to have you fuck me, Mark. I love it ... feel it ... make me feel it!"
"Want me ta fuck ya harder, baby? Want me ta really make you feel it? That what you want?"
"Yes," she moaned. "God, yes. Yes, Mark. Yes!"
He slipped his legs inside of hers, braced his elbows on the pad to either side while he lifted his loins above her. Then he struck with a jarring fury, dropped his lower body hard against her, raised and threw himself into her again. He made his strokes grow long and fast, regularly spaced, because there wasn't any time to alternate his rhythm. He drove against her with all the power he commanded, moved so hard and fast there was not the length of a heartbeat between his slamming strokes. His own breath came in rasping sighs, hers in moans of deep euphoria that rumbled up from the center of her diaphragm. Several times his driving lunges forced the air from her lungs, caused muttered phrases to rattle from her lips without Linda's knowing what she said, what words her mind had generated in her twisting storm of arousal.
"Are you getting close?" he asked at length. "You ready to let it go?"
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, very close ... almost there ... almost. . . "
"Me, too," he answered. "Me ... too, I'm coming, baby. I'm coming! I'm shooting a big hot load up inside you ... all the way! Feel it, baby! Feel it!"
Her legs were locked about his waist and her own gushing flood was rushing out to meet him. Her mind was lost within the turmoil of cascading climax, but through the violence of her own eruption she heard him say he loved her. She tried to answer, but found no control of her vocal apparatus remained. Her body was racing through timeless, infinite space ... mind expanded by emotion. Love was a part of this, and so was lust ... pure, animal sensation. It was the furtherance of womanhood, the proof and ultimate justification for her existence. She had pleased him, and in doing so had achieved her own, exquisite reward. She was satisfied and happy ... proud of her acquired abilities, warm and comfortable in her sense of exhilarated liberation.
SIX
Linda's euphoric mood had lasted through the night, and she still experienced a giddy sense of pleasure as she faced Mark across the breakfast table. She smiled and several times a faint, silvery giggle broke from her lips. Mark looked up, returned her gaze and shook his head. "You're nuts," he said, laughing with her. "What's so funny?"
She shrugged. "Oh ... just happy. It's ... like a ... honeymoon, though, isn't it? I mean, the two of us ... all by ourselves, making love every time we get a chance."
He fixed his gaze on her, great blue eyes holding on hers as the smile slowly faded from his features. "Except, a honeymoon is the start," he said softly.
This sobered Linda, as well. She'd almost forgotten. And it was her idea, her insistence that made their separation necessary. She felt a weakening of her former resolve, and every time she looked at Mark it seemed another brick crumbled from the wall of her self-assurance. But no, it had to be. There simply wasn't any alternative. Mark had turned on the kitchen radio, which now filled the void with the plaintive sounds of a love ballad ... appropriately enough, a song about two lovers parting.
"We don't have any choice," she said firmly.
"I don't know," said Mark. He seemed suddenly thoughtful. "What if they nail me for that burglary? What then."
"The old man saw who did it," urged Linda. "All they have to do is let him see you. He'll tell 'em you're not the one."
"We hope," Mark replied softly. "But what if he didn't get a good look at the guy? Or what if I do look something like him and the old fart can't tell the difference? What then? It's my ass, baby ... my ass! That's what!"
"Mark, you're imagining all sorts of things that aren't going to happen. They'll take you in to face him and the old man'll tell them it wasn't you. It'll be as simple as that!"
He shrugged and raised his shoulders, looking doubtful, but otherwise making no comment. The wavering voice of the folk singer rose in its final crescendo, bemoaning the impending departure from his beloved.
Linda was about to speak when the announcer broke in with the morning news. Mark reached for the knob. "Enough trouble without listening to how the world's coming apart at the seams," he muttered.
"A massive manhunt is being organized for the killer of Cyrus Weaver," said the newscaster, "the elderly recluse who was murdered during the robbery of his home..."
Mark's hand held above the dial, both of them straining to hear the rest.
" ... had survived in the hospital since last Tuesday, expired early last evening as a result of injuries received when he allegedly surprised a burglar in his home. Police hope to have the suspect in custody before..."
"Well, that does it!" said Mark harshly. "Now, who's going to testify on my behalf?"
The possibilities were frightening. Linda had to admit this, but she still saw no other way out for Mark. He'd remain a hunted man until he gave himself up, and if they tried him for murder in two years or five years his chances of being found innocent would have to be worse than whatever would happen to him now. After all, if he turned himself in it would be an act of good faith and that in itself would have to register on his side.
"You still want me to do it, don't you?" he said evenly.
Linda nodded. "Yes," she replied.
"Well, I'm not going to," he stated firmly. "I'm not poking my head in the noose for something I didn't do!"
She watched him, saw the fear make his jaw work, muscles undulating below his ears. He refused to look at her, just stared at his half-empty plate. His shoulders slumped forward in expression of defeat. She had never seen him so deflated, nor had he ever so openly exhibited his anxiety.
"What are you going to do, then?" she asked softly. "Run all your life? Wait until you have a home and a wife ... a family maybe? Wait until then to have them grab you and put you on trial for..."
"Oh, shut up!" he shouted. "Just shut your fuckin' mouth!" He bolted up from the table and rushed through the back door.
Linda sat staring after him, shocked by his violent outburst and wounded that his hostile attack had been directed at her. She'd only been trying to help him, after all. If she didn't love him it wouldn't have made any difference what happened to him. She was right. She knew she was right ... unless ... The dreadful, unwanted possibility crept into her thoughts, cast its freezing tentacles into her viscera and clamped about her innards like a cold, steel vise. If she had really allowed her emotions to blind her, if Mark had lied, after all ... that would explain his sudden terror.
And he'd already hedged, even before the newscast about the old man's dying. He'd been telling her he didn't want to give himself up. Because he knew the victim would identify him? Could that be the reason for his hesitancy, right from the start? The questions churned through her thoughts, tearing apart the confidence she had allowed to form and to blind her reason. Then she was sobbing before she so much as thought about it, weeping not only because of the hurt Mark had caused her, but because she saw the entire structure of her hopes and plans crumbling like so much dust.
She got up from the table and looked out the window. Mark was sitting on a deck chair beside the pool. He was wearing his jeans and another of the shirts she'd bought him. Facing away from her, he leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, head braced between his hands. He looked so much smaller, so very much alone. It made her feel suddenly guilty, as if she'd done him some terrible wrong and all his present misery was actually her fault. What if she was wrong? she asked herself. That would be an awful thing! Just like I did before, Vm telling the guy I love him one minute and accusing him of being a murderer the next!
She went outside, letting the screen door bang behind her to warn Mark of her approach. He didn't move, just remained where he was in his posture of complete dejection. Linda started across the cement. She was bare-footed; in fact, she wore nothing but the loose-fitting housedress, with nothing at all underneath it. Her breasts made a saucy, jouncing ripple as she moved, and she cupped her hands about them to stop the motion. It seemed somehow terribly inappropriate ... thoughts of sex at a moment like this. It was wrong, out of place.
She came around to face him, and was shocked to see twin streams of tears coursing down his cheeks. "Mark!" she exclaimed sharply. "Oh, Mark! You're crying!" She squatted down in front of him, tried to take his hands in hers.
"What's the use?" he muttered miserably. "What the fuck's the use? Even you don't believe me. What chance have I got of convincing a judge and jury?"
"But I do believe you!" she insisted. "Of course I believe you!"
"Nobody believes me ... never have." His gaze turned abruptly up to seize on hers, to lock their eyes and freeze her in place. She saw the great blue discs were brimming with moisture, his attitude so pleading and child-like, his entire posture an expression of innocence. Linda felt herself go all soft and warm inside. She loved this man so much!
"I've believed you right from the start," she said. "And I don't care what they say or try to do to you. I'm with you, Mark, all the way!"
He pulled her to him, enfolded her in his arms and held her face against his chest. His solid flesh surrounded her, thighs resting against her rib cage. As before, she could hear the thundering beat of his heart, the blood rushing through his veins. The heat of him, the odor of sex which still clung to his body seemed to fill her senses. It excited her, despite the strength of her other emotions. His very touch was enough to turn her aflame ... now no less than any other time. She was completely helpless to deny him anything ... her physical being, her confidence ... emotional support. No single part of her was immune from his possession.
With seemingly deliberate slowness, Mark slipped forward in his chair. He brought his knees down against the paving stones and knelt directly in front of her. Their bodies were totally in contact, held firmly together by the pressure of his arms around her torso. It was a moment ,of tender exchange, unspoken communication which said more than any words could do. She had expressed her confidence and belief in him, and he was grateful. His powerful body shuddered as he strove to control the residual weeping. Linda tipped her head back, sought his lips and kissed him.
"It really doesn't matter," she whispered at length. "Nothing matters except the two of us ... together."
"That's what disturbs me the most," Mark said. " ... more than anything else, I just can't stand the thought of being separated from you ... even for a little while. I do love you, Linda. You know that, don't you?"
She nodded her head against him. "Yes," she assured him.
She felt his hands working at the zipper on the back of her dress. It surprised her for a moment, but she made no move to stop him. If he could find some solace in undressing her ... in having sex right now ... Perhaps he needs me more at this moment than he ever has before, she reasoned.
The dress slipped off her shoulders and his lips came down hotly, wetly against the flesh. She felt his tongue, his teeth as they gripped her skin and pulled at it. He was hurting her, but it didn't matter. Whatever he wanted, she wanted it, too. Slowly, Linda allowed her body to settle back against the stones. Her dress was gone, and her flesh was glowing brightly in the morning sunlight. She didn't have to look to reassure herself. She knew her slender waist was smooth and unwrinkled, her tits as full and solid as ever. She felt the twinge of pride, again, savored the realization that Mark really desired her ... really wanted her for his very own.
His hand had been behind her neck as he helped her to lie full-length upon the ground.
Once she was down, he slipped free, stood and let his shadow fall across her. Linda looked up, saw his towering form as he began to strip his shirt, stepped out of his jeans to stand in naked glory with his feet to either side of her legs. He was so beautiful, she thought. So perfectly proportioned, so strong and dominant ... so much a man in every way. She looked along the insides of his thighs, saw the underportions of his scrotum, its contents hanging loose and free ... like a bull she'd seen once on a farm. His penis hung almost as low as his balls, soft but heavy, full and powerful even in repose.
For several moments he stood there, gazing down at her. She couldn't read his expression. His face was completely blank, except for the lines of hard concentration. Finally, he hunkered down between her legs, knelt on the hard stone and pressed his lips against her navel. For a long while he kept in contact, raising a storm of torment as he laved and sucked at the shallow depression. He exhaled warm air against her skin, drove his tongue fiercely into the cup. He seized the flesh about the edge, held it between his teeth and gnawed at her. He kept it up until he reached a point where she couldn't stand it much longer. He moved on, traveled quickly across her patch of hair and roughly shoved her legs apart. He probed between, sank his tongue deep within her slit and flicked across the glowing pink of her inner lining. He nuzzled the clitoris until he felt it stiffen, and as he moved below it he gradually eased his body down beside her.
His lengthening cock hung close to her eyes, full, heavy, assuming a brighter red as the direct sunlight struck it. His face still nuzzled her snatch as he grasped one hip and pulled Linda more definitely onto her side. She faced directly toward his groin and the burgeoning sexuality that swayed an inch or so above the ground. It gave her the same impression she had felt before, the image of its having a separate source of life and energy, though it also seemed to tremble in response to Mark's movements. Several times it lifted its crown, the single, rheumy eye seeming to stare at her before it dropped again, gathering strength for its next ascent. Each rise made it grow and swell, however; and its expanding contour held her attention, seemed to hypnotize her like a snake does its victim.
Mark's head was wedged solidly between Linda's legs, his face driven flush with the pulsing inner surfaces of her vulva. As he dabbled at this with his tongue, seized the trembling labia between his teeth or lips, Linda's own desires began tugging at her. A solar warmth was beating down on the upper side of her body; yet the heat being generated by Mark's persistent, driving assault quickly exceeded the sun's. The stones, which had been cool when she first pressed herself against them, now felt warmer. The thrilling sensations rising inside her made Linda oblivious to any discomfort from lying upon their solid surface.
Her attention was concentrated on the rising arch of cock flesh. It was almost fully erect, with tiny, wavering lines appearing along the shaft, impressing their forms into the smooth, velvet skin. Around the crown, the foreskin was folding back like a flower and the inner knob was swelling. It attained a deeper beet-red hue, reminded her of an opening blossom a crimson rose or camellia which spread its petals to the morning light. Mark made an unexpected lunge against her underside, forced his tongue abruptly into her vaginal passage. This made Linda bolt forward and brought her lips almost in contact with his prick. She had been so innervated by the exquisite sensations within herself she had failed to consider his reason for assuming this position. Now it dawned on her, and the thought was hardly formed before she put it into action.
She touched the rigid column of his prick with her tongue, caught at it with the curving tip and drew the cockhead against her lips. She shoved the foreskin back to bare the crown and held this tightly as her tongue began to move against it, traveling in a circular pattern all around the knob of living flesh. She felt the entire shaft assume its ultimate rigidity, sensed its final filling and expansion. She traveled further down the column, let the hot, hard mass of it fill her mouth and come to rest against the back of her throat. She remembered Mark's previous instructions and drove herself more desperately upon it ... made a swallowing motion so the great mast projected its bulk completely into her. Mark had showered that morning, as he always did; so the clean, fresh essence of soap still lingered on his skin. This was mingled, now, with the pungency of sweat and accelerating arousal; a strong, masculine fragrance filled her nostrils. She closed her eyes, felt the curling hairs on his scrotum brush across her lids, tickling her, seeming to beg for admission.
She held his swollen iron at its fullest depth, savored its fullness and forced her body to accept its presence. To do this had become a completely pleasant enjoyable sensation. Finally, she backed away, allowing her pent-up breath to flow out and across the shaft. She heard Mark groan, felt his face press more tightly against her crotch. The surging thrill of this drove her on, made her move with a greater fury. She reached across his hip, splayed one hand against the solid curve of his ass and pulled his groin against her, sucked his flaring cockhead fully down her throat again.
The two twisting, striving bodies were tightly locked, each pulling the maximum heat and energy from the other. They were surrounded by an aura of warmth, and more than warmth. It was as much an emotional fulfillment and display of deep affection that bound them to one another, characterized their exchange, as it was a purely physical act. Neither could possess the other more fully, yet each was striving to do just that. Mark's lips and tongue were never still, were constantly in motion as he roved the dusky pink of her vaginal slit, nibbled at every flange of flesh. He kissed and fondled the folds of labia, teased the tiny, pulsing projection of her clitoris.
Linda finally lifted free of his cock, pressed its warm, slick length against her cheek as she grasped the sac with her lips and pulled it toward her. His balls tumbled with a soft, fleshy heaviness off his thigh, hanging in deep suspension just in front of her. She seized the nearest orb, sucked it into her mouth, rolled the delicate organ back and forth on her tongue. She savored its throbbing mass, felt a responding, jerky motion all along his cock shaft each time she kneaded it. She lunged against him again, grasped the other testicle and held them both within the heated moisture. They almost filled Linda's mouth, made it impossible for her to draw breath, just as his cock had done when it lodged fully inside her throat. But she knew she held the essence of his masculinity within her, and this made the contact more exciting. She tightened her lips about the base of his scrotum, pulled back, forced the skin to stretch as she held his balls hard against the bottom of their enclosure. Mark was quivering more violently, almost as if he sensed his vulnerability, and recognized her possession of his manhood.
Awareness of this symbolism heightened her desire. She gripped more tightly still, pulled his nuts more firmly away from his body. She tried to turn her head enough to twist them, to further constrict their space. In response to this, Mark groaned deeply, grasped her thigh where it rested atop his head, lifted it and brought his mouth against the bridge of flesh that separated her cunt and anus. He seemed about to devour her, his teeth threatening to tear away the underside of crotch. She twisted furiously against him, drove her breasts upon the hard wall of his stomach, crushed them into his flesh by the pressure of her own writhing reaction.
Mark moved deeper between her legs. He circled her ass-hole with his tongue, plunged deep inside the sphincter and felt the startled muscles tighten about him. For Linda, this sensation, coupled with the implicit savagery of the act itself, was an overwhelming blanket of heat-filled pleasure. For the moment she lost all conception of time or place, knew she retained his balls within her grasp, but ceased to move against them. She merely held still in the throes of fiercely tossing emotions. His hand had moved inside her cunt, replacing the motion of his tongue with the hard, dry surface of his palm. This was sliding across previously awakened areas and allowed him to maintain a heightened level of sensitivity which kept her in a state of soaring, tense euphoria.
She finally released his ball sac, let it fall with a wet, heavy impact against his thigh. She was vaguely aware of its gleaming contour, of the fleshy weight and responding contraction that made his balls rise higher, moving toward the base of his cock as she once more took the flaring crown between her lips. Mark had returned his attention to her cunt and had driven his tongue deep inside the pit once more. Linda was approaching the ultimate peak that marked her responding climax. Her body lunged harder, more desperately against him. But despite this, something disturbed her.
Later, Linda was never certain exactly how or why, but she seemed to sense another presence. It was as if a cool hand had been placed against her shoulder. With no greater clue than this, she lifted her head and peered across the flattened plane of Mark's thigh. "Oh, God!" she gasped. Her body stiffened and seemed to freeze. It was this motion more than the sound of her voice that alerted Mark to something being wrong. He twisted about, glancing behind him, and held in the same state of suspended shock as Linda.
A young, bare-chested youth was standing just inside the gate. In one hand he held a pole with a net; his other arm was curled about a cardboard carton. "It's the pool boy," whispered Linda harshly. "God, I forgot all about him!"
The youth was gawking at them, staring in open-mouthed wonderment at the sight of their entwined, twisting bodies. How long he had been there was impossible to tell, but that seemed to make little difference. Though Linda felt the flush of embarrassment began to burn across her face, she was so surprised she didn't even move to hide her nakedness or seek any other cover.
Mark, after another moment of hesitation, gathered his legs underneath him and bolted forward, as if he intended to seize the boy. The shallow end of the pool lay between them, and Mark seemed to hesitate, undecided whether to plunge across it or to go around. In that split second, the young man turned and fumbled open the latch on the gate. "I ... I'll come back ... tomorrow," he stammered.
He stumbled blindly through the opening and the gate slammed shut. Mark had moved to the lower edge of the pool, but he stopped there when the boy bolted out of sight. He remained poised, as if prepared to spring. His bloated cock was still a heavy arch beneath his groin. Other than this his posture reminded Linda of some statue where a sculpture had caught an ancient athlete in a moment of frozen action.
Then Mark moved wordlessly to the gate and gazed along the passage between the house and outer wall. From the manner of his response, Linda had the distinct impression he would have liked to catch the boy, maybe would have done the kid some harm if he could have gotten his hands on him. Had he not been nude, Linda wondered if he might not have pursued him beyond the enclosure of the yard.
"It's all right," she suggested at length. "That's the same boy who's been coming here for months. God knows how many other people he's caught in..." She started to giggle in spite of herself, expeling the nervous energy accumulated as a result of her shocked surprise. " ... in compromising situations. Oh, Mark!" she continued, lapsing into an almost hysterical fit of laughing. "You look so ... funny, standing there like an outraged..." She almost said "husband," but checked herself. " ... lover," she concluded.
"I guess that's exactly what I am," he said harshly. "Fuckin' kid had no business standing there once he saw us." He started back toward
Linda and suddenly stopped again, his face blanching white, blue eyes staring straight ahead of him, focused on nothing. "Shit!" He slammed a fist into the palm of his other hand.
"What's wrong?" she asked. His sudden, obvious fear confused her.
"Wrong?" he demanded. "What if the cops've told him ... him and all the other delivery men and such ... to watch for strangers or suspicious happenings in the neighborhood? Christ, he'll have 'em back here in nothing flat."
Mark slumped onto a chair and his fear communicated itself to Linda. Slowly, she rose from the stones and went to him. "I don't think ... I mean, anyway ... just because I'm ... having relations with a man beside the pool ... that doesn't mean it has to be the one they're after. And you don't even know if they're still looking for you in this area."
"After that newscast this morning, I'm sure they're looking everywhere. And this neighborhood is the last place I was seen. Oh, they'll be around all right. You can be sure of that!"
"Maybe we'd better go inside," she replied softly. She had knelt down in front of him and now tried to place her hand on his thigh. It was a gesture intended to communicate her sympathy and support. Instead of accepting this, Mark glared fiercely into her face, holding her gold-flecked orbs with his.
"Not now," he growled, pushing her hand away. "Not now."
He stood up and turned away from her, walking quickly to the door. Linda stared after him, stunned and hurt by his refusal to let her share his troubles. He spun about and glared at her again. She could see his cock had shriveled up, folding in upon itself as a result of his anxiety. "Come on!" he called. "You better get some clothes on in case you have to go to the door."
Linda shrugged, stood up without answering him and did as he suggested. Together, they entered the house and she noticed Mark bolted the door behind them. "That won't do much good," she said.
"Nothing's going to do any good if they come nosing around here during the day," he replied distractedly. He started grabbing up his clothes and struggling into them. Linda had left her dress in the yard, but rather than risk his displeasure by going outside to get it, she padded up the stairs and took another from her closet. Mark stayed close behind her, she noticed, and Linda had the uneasy impression that he was suddenly on the alert, watching her as if he feared she might betray him.
The tension between them grew worse instead of better as the day progressed. Linda made some sandwiches for lunch, but these were still untouched when the sun began to sink toward the western hills. Mark had found one of Dad's bottles of whiskey and had been drinking it, belting it down from a shot glass since early afternoon. They sat facing one another in the living room, the drapes pulled shut so the room was in semi-darkness. Neither said very much, but Linda continued to feel
Mark was excluding her. It was as if he had drawn a blind or built a wall between them. He remained silent, tossing down his occasional shot of bourbon, hardly even looking at her.
When it was almost dark outside, he finally turned his watery stare in her direction. He was obviously feeling the effect of his drinks ... had to. More than half the bottle was gone and he hadn't eaten since early that morning. "I've got to get out of here," he said suddenly. His voice was low and raspy, but he didn't bother to clear his throat. "Let me have the keys to your car," he said a moment later.
When Linda hesitated, he seemed to fluctuate between anger and disappointment. His wide, blue eyes reflected his hurt, but beneath this she could sense his mounting hostility. "If they catch me with it you can say I stole it ... that I forced you to hide me. I won't give you away," he urged.
"I'm not worried about the car," she said at length. "It's you I'm concerned about ... you, Mark!"
"If you're really worried about me, then for Christ's sake give me the car keys and let me get out of here!"
"But ... what about the things we discussed yesterday ... about giving yourself up and getting this whole mess out in the open ... getting it settled once and for all?"
"Shit, baby! That was before the news this morning. They want me for murder, remember? I'm a hunted killer ... a desperado with a posse on his ass! You don't know how these fuckers think, Linda!" His tone was almost pleading, now, his expression one of innocence betrayed. "I still think..."
"Think, shit!" he shouted. "Come on, are you going to give me the keys or not? Just say 'yes' or 'no' and I'll know where I stand. Either you're with me or you're not ... on my side or theirs!"
"That's not true," she argued. "It's not that simple, Mark. Of course I'm on your side, but you're not thinking clearly. You're scared and you've been drinking and..."
"All right!" he roared. "All right! You won't help me, I'll go it on my own." He stood up and gazed at her as if Linda had disappointed him beyond his ability to express. "I've always had to make it on my own," he added in a softer tone. "I guess it isn't any different now."
"Mark ... Mark, that isn't true. You know I want to help, but ... "
There was a sharp, hard knocking at the door, and the sound made both of them hold in rigid fear. Linda looked at Mark, frightened and completely uncertain what to do. "P-police?" she whispered.
"Nobody else ever knocks like that,' he muttered.
"What should I do?" she whimpered.
Mark glanced about him, grabbed up the bottle and shot glass, which he quickly hid in the sideboard. "Go upstairs," he told her. "Quick! Go up and call down from the window. Tell him you were taking a nap and you'll be down as soon as you throw some clothes on. That'll hold them for a couple'a minutes, and maybe I can make it out the back way."
"Mark, don't you think..."
"No time," he whispered. "No time!" He urged her up the stairs, just as another loud knock sounded from the front. "Go on," he rasped. "Hurry up!"
Linda did as she was told. She went to the hall window, slipping the blouse off her shoulders as she went. She opened the casement and leaned out, just enough for the man below to gain the impression she was nude. "What is it?" she asked.
"Police," said the man. He stepped back from the door and looked up at her a heavily built young man in a somewhat wrinkled suit. "I just want to talk to you a minute," he added politely. "I'm Sergeant Mills."
"Well ... okay," said Linda. "But I was taking a nap. You'll have to wait a minute until I get something on."
"Take your time," said the detective. He smiled up at her and nodded. "No hurry," he added. "Just routine."
Linda pulled her head back inside and fastened the window. She almost ran to her bedroom and stripped the clothes from her body. She took a white, terry cloth robe from the closet and struggled into it. She had been hurrying, and it suddenly occurred to her she should do just the opposite. Deliberately slowing her motions, she took the time to hang her discarded dress in the closet and to place her under things in the dirty clothes hamper. She fluffed her hair in front of the bathroom mirror and shoved her feet into a pair of slippers.
Still restraining the impulse to run, she made her way down the stairs and paused again to light a couple of lamps in the living room. She was still tense and frightened, and her heart still thundered against her ribs. But outwardly she had gained control. She stood in front of the door, smoothed her robe, gave her hair a final pat before opening the portal.
"All right," she said brightly. "What can I do for you, Sergeant?"
SEVEN
Despite her seething anxiety, Linda maintained a calm facade as she faced the big detective. He was not exactly the picture of relaxed confidence, himself, she noticed, but the significance of this escaped her for the moment. He was certainly a large man, she thought ... handsome, with dark curly hair and an open, friendly smile. Several times, his eyes wandered in the direction of her bosom during their silent confrontation. His unguarded interest made her pull the lapels together, leaving her hand at her throat as she returned his stare.
"Well, it's your party," she said with forced lightness. "What do you want?"
"We're looking for someone ... a man," he began uncomfortably. She saw his eyes straining to see around her, into the house.
"Would you like to come in?" she asked.
"Ah ... yes, I would," he replied.
Linda stepped back and gestured for the detective to go inside. Quickly, she tried to see if anyone else was behind him in the darkness, maybe standing at the curb or waiting in a car. There was no one, as best she could tell. In fact, she didn't even see his car. Hastily, she closed the door and caught up with Sergeant Mills in the hallway.
"In here," she said, motioning toward the living room.
They sat facing each other, the detective in a chair, Linda perched on the edge of the couch. "Could I offer you a drink or something?" she asked.
He smiled wanly at her, shook his head. "On duty," he said almost sadly. "You're Mrs.--? "
"Miss," said Linda. "Miss Linda Connelly."
"Well, Miss Connelly, we have a report of a wanted fugitive possibly hiding out in this neighborhood. We're speaking to all the people along this part of your street, just trying to verify some facts and see if you have any information that could help us."
It all sounded casual enough, she thought; but something about the man ... maybe his furtive uneasiness made the warning bell sound in the back of Linda's mind. He wasn't telling her the whole story. She wondered if Mark had gotten through the hedge, how far away he'd managed to travel. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell the detective she hadn't seen anything, but she realized it would be better if she could delay him. The more time she made available to Mark, the more chance he had of making good his escape. She tried to collect her thoughts, to say something to involve the man in conversation. "I don't really know what I can tell you," she said at length. "I did hear a lot of commotion the other night, and a policeman came to my door..."
The detective nodded. "But you hadn't seen anything," he added flatly.
Linda suppressed the image of what she'd seen, and felt, that night, squirmed at the unbidden rush of heat between her legs. "No," she said softly. "No, I didn't see anything then ... or since ... except ... Well, it's probably nothing..."
"What?" urged the policeman.
"Oh, just that I've heard cars going onto the dirt road at night. As I say, I don't suppose it means anything, but I thought I ought to mention it."
She felt foolish, but she hadn't been able to think of anything else. The man was watching her narrowly, an almost cynical expression growing on his face. "How long have you lived here, Miss Connelly?" he asked.
"Oh, for years," she answered quickly, too quickly, she realized. "I mean, I grew up in this house."
He nodded again. "And over these years you must have heard a lot of cars driving onto the dirt road. It's been a popular lovers' lane for a long time. Why should you suddenly question cars going in there?"
"Oh ... well, I guess maybe I was just more nervous than usual. You know, that police officer coming to my door and all. I guess I suddenly started paying attention to every sound ... noticed it more than I would have normally."
The detective sighed, bit his lower lips. He is a handsome guy, Linda thought. She had allowed her hands to clasp together in her lap, leaving her bodice loose again. His gaze kept flicking toward the open "V." Abruptly, he sat back in the chair, allowed his legs to assume a wider separation. Linda couldn't help noticing the heavy, rounded bulge at his crotch, wondered whether his cock was as large as Mark's. Or most men, for that matter. Never seen a ... a cock before. Wonder if Mark's is exceptionally large, or. . .
"I might as well give it to you straight," said the detective sharply. He sighed again before he continued, obviously embarrassed by what he had to tell her. "You see, we've had this neighborhood under surveillance ever since we lost track of this Simpson guy in the area. We asked all the delivery men and service people to keep their eyes open for anything unusual..."
Oh, God, she thought. That little snitch did tell them! Her face blushed a bright scarlet. "My pool man," she said softly.
"Yes, he did report some ... a stranger on the premises this morning." The detective continued to watch her, waiting.
"Well, I ... did entertain a friend ... today," she fumbled.
"A rather close friend, I take it."
"What's that supposed to mean?" she demanded defensively.
The detective cleared his throat. "It means we know you had a man with you in the backyard, and that we know you were ... ah, intimate with him. We're interested in knowing who he was and where he came from."
"I really don't see where that's any of your business!" Linda answered sharply. She was actually beginning to feel the anger she had been feigning, and she wondered if Mark had had enough time to get away. She wanted to ask the detective to leave.
"Fm really sorry to put you through this, Miss Connelly," he said in a more kindly tone. "But since you're not married ... I mean, since we aren't creating complications with your husband by coming here and asking questions, we simply want to assure ourselves you weren't being forced to harbor a wanted criminal."
She responded to his more gentle manner, relieved to have the embarrassing question out and almost answered. "The gentleman who visited me was not any 'wanted criminal', " she said evenly. "He was a friend I've known for a long time, but I'm not interested in seeing him inconvenienced just to satisfy some morbid police curiosity."
The detective nodded. "Okay, we'll have to let it go at that," he said. He started to rise, obviously getting ready to leave. This caused Linda a moment of panic. Once he went outside he'd-likely drive back on the dirt road. If Mark was still in the area ... She had to delay him, any way she could.
"I wish you'd ... stay and have that drink with me," she suggested softly. The words came hard, and the implied invitation registered on the man before she realized it herself. She blushed again at this, standing up quickly to hide her confusion. This motion brought her almost flat against the detective so she took a single, faltering step away from him.
Sergeant Mills' hands shot out and grabbed Linda by the elbows, catching her before she could fall backward onto the sofa. But his touch only added further chaos to her existing mental turmoil. She stood stock still, one part of her mind frozen by concern for Mark, the other nearly paralyzed by his unexpected touch. The net result was total immobility. The detective kept hold of her, his huge, warm hands enclosing her arms for a much longer time than would have been necessary to keep her from stumbling. Her first rational thought was to recognize his obvious attraction. She could play on this, she told herself. He's interested in me ... probably thinks I'd be an easy make because of what the pool boy told him. If I lead him on I can gain time for Mark. . .
"Are you going to have that drink?" she asked again.
"Well. . . " He let go of one arm and glanced at his watch. "Maybe a quick one," he said, smiling.
Linda went to the sideboard and poured whiskey into a couple of tumblers, at the same time making sure Mark's empty shot glass was shoved back, out of sight. She didn't know exactly how to mix a proper drink, but assumed there should probably be ice in it. "How do you like it?" she asked, turning back toward the detective.
"That's fine," he said, inclining his head toward the glasses. He was watching her now, with a far different expression than before. His eyes were a very dark brown, almost black when seen from Linda's distance across the room. He had long lashes, too ... like an Italian, she thought, and the hardness of his body was etched in clear outline against the striped material of his shirt. She felt a sudden attraction for him, though she tried to ignore it. God, just a couple of days with Mark, and I'm panting after some strange man like a bitch in heat!
Regardless of her self-deprecating thought, however, she remained in a state of heightened awareness. The big detective's every motion became a sign of his interest, and Linda felt as if he were stripping her with his gaze. She wished she'd worn something more than just the robe. Too late for that now. Wonder if he knows I'm stark naked underneath.
She handed him the glass and he gulped down half the contents in a single swallow. Then, as if he'd read her previous thought, he grinned, making no further effort to hide his aroused interest. "Are you wearing anything under that robe?" he asked bluntly.
She was about to make a sharp retort when he stepped up to her, placed one massive hand on her bosom and pulled the robe open down the front. He hadn't moved so quickly that Linda couldn't have stopped him had she wished to do so. Both of them recognized this. His intention had been apparent even before he touched her. That she had tacitly agreed was expressed by her not drawing back or placing her hand out to stop him.
The man was grinning at her appreciatively, letting his gaze rove the darkly tanned areas that showed between the folds of robe. "I see you don't always wear a suit," he remarked lightly.
"But you already know that," she answered him.
He nodded. "A good detective always-likes to see for himself." He grinned again and slipped his hands onto the naked skin of her shoulders. He slid them under the cloth so the motion made it lift and balance, ready to tumble away completely. I shouldn't be doing this, she thought. Shouldn't be giving what belongs to Mark to some other man. She felt a twinge of annoyance that the cop had been so sure of himself, and worse ... She experienced the guilty flush of shame at her disloyalty. But her thoughts of Mark reminded her of his need for time. If she had to use her body to delay the detective's pursuit, that was what she'd have to do. It was her only weapon, in a sense, at least her only effective one.
She had tensed when the man first touched her, but she forced herself to relax. If she was going to permit this she couldn't pull it off by seeming to reject him. The man felt her muscular release of anxiety and lifted the backs of his hands enough to drop the robe off her shoulders. This floated down her arms and back, off her fingertips and landed in a pile of white about her feet.
The man stepped up to her, hefted her breasts on the palms of his hands. "You're really stacked, er ... Linda," he muttered. It was his turn to be self-conscious. He smiled crookedly and gazed into the green, gold-flecked depths of her eyes. "Linda," he repeated. "My name's Fred."
"Nice to know you, Fred," she whispered. It was still difficult to keep her voice and body under control. She really would rather have shoved him away and pulled her robe back on. Abruptly, she thought of the two high school kids in their car and remembered how the policemen had misused them. This one's doing the same thing to me, she told herself. Taking advantage of the situation ... though he doesn't know that ... doesn't know why I'm letting him do it. Still wrong ... terribly wrong.
The man gathered her naked form into his arms, pulled her tight against the coarse material of his suit. She could feel the solid warmth of his chest as her breasts were driven almost flat against his shirt. His rising mound flexed hard against her pubis, shoving the material of his pants into the apex of her legs. His lips touched hers, moving against them for just a moment before she felt his tongue slip out and graze the front of her teeth. She let him kiss her, allowed the force of his tongue to drive her jaws apart. The taste of stale tobacco and whiskey flooded into her, seemed to swirl through her senses and make her almost dizzy. She hadn't eaten much that day, either, she realized suddenly; and she'd taken a few sips from her own glass after pouring the drink for Fred. Suddenly subjected to his fierce advance, her own responses had done the rest.
As his mouth continued to work against her and his tongue remained in constant, driving motion, Linda's sense of helpless vertigo grew worse. A couple of times she might have fallen had he not been holding her so tightly. Nor was she thinking of Mark just then. The heated demands of the big detective were obviating her need for any excuse to drive her on. She could still have withdrawn, but she was nearing the point where her emotions would take over completely. He shifted against her and the rough woolen surface of his trousers grated on her skin.
"Um..." She pulled her face back from his. "Your suit's awfully scratchy," she said.
Fred seemed to hesitate, as if considering whether he had time to continue. Apparently deciding he did, he stepped back. "That's easily remedied," hs said and laughed. He whipped the jacket off his shoulders and quickly undid his tie. He tossed his clothing onto a heap on the chair where he'd been sitting. Linda was surprised at the massive configuration of his chest and arm muscles. This man was much more heavily built than Mark, not quite as hard, maybe ... certainly not as lithe. But his finely defined body had a quality that attracted her almost as much as Mark had, physically anyway. As he stood bare-chested, hopping about on one foot, then the other, to remove his shoes and socks, Linda felt the hot, surging lust grow stronger within herself. She really was anxious to see his prick, became so disgustingly curious about it she felt her former guilt begin creeping back around the edges of her mind.
There was no denying her terrible state of confusion. It was impossible for her to still the conflicting doubts and self-accusations that raged within her. If it weren't that I was helping Mark, I wouldn't do this, she kept repeating to herself. It's for him ... him!
Fred had pulled his pants off, and took more care folding them than he had with his other things. Perhaps he was suddenly bashful, Linda thought. It seemed strange that he should be, but the man hesitated several moments before shoving the Jockey shorts off his hips. His entire body was as robust and massive as the parts she'd already seen. His legs were huge and solid, showing deeply indented depressions between swelling mounds of muscle. She watched closely as the shorts dropped past his groin, saw the springy thrust of crisp, black pubic hair that seemed to explode and swell like an expanding balloon as it came free of the restraining cloth.
Below this, his genitals were a great, huge mass. He didn't touch them until he had discarded the shorts, which left his flaccid penis adhering to the front of his ball sac. It fit snugly upon the wrinkled skin, its widened head extending below the rest. He had no foreskin, and above the crown she saw a wrinkled, mottled scar. She hadn't thought about this, not that it really surprised her. She'd read articles in magazines about circumcision, knew it was common enough ... almost universal in some areas. But she'd never seen it and the sight intrigued her.
Fred reached to his crotch and freed his penis, let it swing free of the balls. At his touch it seemed to come alive, making a spasmodic motion on its own, beginning to swell into a huge arch. The head grew larger too, quite a bit wider than Mark's. The man stood back, grinning at her, resting his hands on his hips, his legs spread apart. He was glancing back and forth between Linda's face and his own expanding iron. She could hardly tear her gaze away as his penis flexed and gradually assumed a standing position, rising until it pointed upward at an oblique angle to his stomach. It was much thicker than what she'd seen before, and while it was proportionately shorter than Mark's, it had a more decidedly tapered shape. There also seemed to be a more extreme widening between base and tip, which contributed to its powerful, wicked appearance. It almost frightened her to think of this bulky mast being rammed inside her. But it also excited her, and she could feel the oozing trickle start along the insides of her thighs.
The man was moving toward her then, taking short, wide-legged strides that made his rigid cock bounce in a display of hard-sprung strength. His balls swung heavily from side to side, colliding with the solid thigh muscles a fleshy pendulum with its ballast comprised of two hugely rounded depressions, straining against the bottom of their container. It was exciting, as Fred obviously intended it should be. But his attitude was more cold and superior than Mark's had ever been. Linda found herself resenting it, not so much that she turned away, but to a sufficient degree that it made her see more clearly what sort of line must always exist between an act of love and a display of purely physical lust. She didn't like this man, she decided, but he aroused her. By giving her body to him she was gaining precious moments for the man she did love; the rest really didn't matter.
Without any warning, he scooped her into a fierce embrace. He hugged her so tightly he crushed the wind from her lungs and seemed to threaten the very motion of her heart. Linda tried to make him loosen his hold, but he lifted her instead, raised her feet above the carpet and carried her to the couch. He placed her atop the cushions, bending to lift her legs and position them as well. He was unexpectedly gentle in this, which stifled Linda's half-formed protest. Afterward, he stood beside her, looking along the length of her body. He seemed particularly attracted to the soft, rounded fullness of her hips and the smooth, subtle taper of her thighs. "Nice long legs," he muttered. He knelt beside her, on the floor, making a circular motion across her belly with his hand. It was broader than Mark's and softer, lacked the work-hardened calluses she had always felt when he touched her.
She had the suddenly impulse to make Fred stop, to retreat from this situation before she committed herself to an unpardonable betrayal. She started to lift her shoulders, half rose from the cushions before the detective pushed her back. "Relax, honey," he whispered. "Relax; take it easy." His hoarse, rasping tone reminded her of Mark's words when he'd encouraged her to let him use her anally. He had sounded much the same, and the memory served to further her unwilling misery.
One large, sweat-moistened hand caressed the inner surface of thigh, slid upward and forced itself between the walls of flesh. She let him fondle her, lifted herself slightly to permit his fingers to graze the soft, wet moisture of her pussy. He leaned his face against her, moving so slowly she didn't expect it when he drove his mouth on hers with a fury that clicked their teeth together. This sent a shiver down her spine, made her shift her lower body, inadvertently driving harder against his hand. Fred tightened his hold, almost lifted her pubis by the terrible pressure while his mouth continued to grind fiercely upon her tender flesh.
Then, as quickly as he'd pressed his demanding kiss, the big detective swung his body completely on top, never breaking the contact of their lips as he lunged and slammed his loins against her. The prodding might of cock kept sliding across her belly, jabbing onto her when he lifted his hips, hurting her, yet projecting a ferocious surge of arousal by its very lack of restraint or consideration. Linda closed her eyes, tried to accept everything he did to her with some sort of logical stoicism. But this wasn't possible. Her jangled nerves were too aroused, and her bodily responses were already racing beyond control. She was almost being raped, she told herself, but even this gave rise to a flurry of heated response.
Fred's mouth glided free of hers, dropped against her throat where he gathered in a fold of skin. He caressed and fondled this at first, using just his lips and tongue. After this, she felt his teeth, writhed against the pain, whimpered and begged him to stop. "You're hurting me!" she cried.
"But you love it!" he muttered against her flesh. "You love it, don't you?"
Linda could only gasp and groan in answer to him. Sounds bubbled up from deep within her chest, burst through her parted lips and expressed the degree of her helplessness. She felt as if some ferocious beast were devouring her flesh; yet it excited wave after wave of thrilled delight, debilitated her will to resist. The sensations were peaking beyond her mind's ability to cope with them, rendering her almost delirious. She shivered, all her body quivering as some inner gauge seemed to reach "overload." Her mind could no longer differentiate the source or substance of the myriad feelings flooding into it. Her breath came in short, choppy gasps through a fluid series of plaintive cries that kept breaking from her mouth.
Fred moved down, dropping his mouth about one breast. With a harsh, wrenching pull he sucked it completely into him. He bit down hard about the base, making her shriek with pain that quickly melted into pleasure. But it was purely a physical enjoyment. Even in the midst of this building rush, Linda was aware of the missing emotional catalyst. She had a fleeting impression of being involved in a contest or struggle. Whatever existed between them, it was not the mutual exchange she had known with Mark. A moment later, the realization was consumed in a swirl of boiling sensations. Linda's head pressed back against the cushions; her eyes were closed and muscular spasms gripped her body until she responded to nothing outside the immediate area of herself and the man who continued his tantalizing use of her.
Because Fred Mills was such a large man, he found the comparatively narrow width of sofa confining. His right arm and shoulder were constantly forced to press against his side, restricting his motions and limiting his access to Linda's body. Abruptly, he wrapped one massive arm about her torso and lifted her, carried her over the edge and onto the thickly carpeted floor. Then he hurled himself across her, legs spread wide and arms locked about her chest and upper back. He started to slam his loins against her groin and underbelly, driving Linda nearly wild. In a fresh series of hot, moist seizures his lips and teeth culled further responses from her throat and upper chest. His assault was harsh, almost brutal, but it triggered the full repertory of Linda's newly acquired sensuality. He projected her into a state of blind arousal, brought her flesh to so high a level of sensitivity her brain confused those contacts that would normally have been pleasurable, with those that should have been dreadfully painful. Each time he touched her, no matter how or where, it added to the swell of Linda's desire. And above it all her single, demanding need was to feel his heavy cock inside her. Until he granted her this relief her mind could cling to nothing else.
Finally, Fred allowed the full weight of his chest to crush down upon her, while he lifted his loins and reached between their straining bodies. He seized his cock about the center of its massive girth and twisted the turgid column to make it assume a downward trajectory. Linda felt the great, blunt crown press forcefully against her cunt opening. He'd made her wait, and she wanted it so badly her brain had stifled any recall of her previous apprehensions. Instead she sighed, let her body grow limp and receptive. Her legs moved slightly toward either side to permit his unobstructed access, and a tingling shiver of expectation ran the length of her spine. Even the wrenching brutality implicit in his initial demand excited her, aroused her more fully. As she felt the wide, blunt cockhead begin to force its way through her outer gates, she tensed, emitted a gasping moan and reached beneath his pumping, desperately striving loins.
Her fingers closed about the steely column and gripped it tightly. She could feel the motion of its rigid core, the gristle hardness as it slid within its outer sheath. She was thrilled by its massive girth, tried vainly to make her fingers meet and form a circle around it. But she could only absorb its heat, pull it into herself and passively respond to its driving power. She made another twisting motion with her hips, giving Fred the access he required. His bulbous crown sank into her, drove her resisting flesh apart and lodged inside the pit of searing warmth. As Linda's muscle-ring clamped about his prick, Fred braced his elbows on the floor, stiffened his back and reared upward with his head. The weight of his lower body dropped hard against her, drove his cock shaft along the slickness of her passage. Each modicum of distance he gained produced an increase in the furious lust that wracked his being. In that moment, Fred's control dissolved, became no more volitional than hers. He knew only that his cock was imbedded in fiery moisture, that white heat rose about him. Her gripping cunt channel held him in her, made him a prisoner, trapped by the force of his own impaling might.
Linda struggled to force her hands between their straining loins once more, sought his prick as it rose and fell. His motions had increased until she found it impossible to sustain a hold. Her fingers touched it, grazed the swollen hardness, but slipped immediately off the thickly lubricated surface. Her body responded to such a sense of fullness and exquisite surrender it made no difference that he might be tearing her apart, that the size of his massive cock was more than her passage was ever meant to accommodate.
The thrill of insistent possession had innervated her brain while it brought the rest of her being to a higher state of sensitivity. She felt the heavy, slapping impact as his balls grazed against her hands. She stretched and seized the sac, managed to retain a hold on this despite the fury of his motions. Her fingers enclosed the upper portion, squeezed his sweat-moistened flesh and felt the rumbling groan this possession forced to vibrate through his chest.
As he continued to hammer against her, jammed his iron-hard piston in and out of her, his efforts caused a heavy, gleaming layer of sweat to form upon his body. It trickled from his groin and armpits, ran in tiny rivulets from his brow and down his sides, puddled beneath him and created a sticky seal where the wall of his abdomen pressed its corded strength upon the velvet surface of Linda's belly. A rich, bitter odor of maleness assailed her senses, emphasized the fullness of his domination. Her fingers began to lose their grip upon his testicles, as her hold was weakened by the battering force of his groin against her wrist. Finally, she was forced to let them go.
With this additional latitude and freedom, Fred hunched his back and pummeled her lower body with a completely unrestrained fury. His impaling thrusts were driving both of them toward a rushing climax, and this urgency was further enhanced by the renewed collision of his balls against the underside of Linda's crotch. Suddenly, with no warning other than the steady, rapid hammering, Fred shoved his face against her shoulder, grasped a soft found of flesh between his teeth. He shuddered and groaned as he abused her helpless body ... kept it up until his muscles locked and he went completely stiff. He held against her with his cock buried to its fullest depth, lapsing into a series of bestial, guttural groans. His pulsing balls began to pump their heated load inside her, and with his prick so deeply driven it triggered her response as well.
The pent-up energies of Linda's body boiled up and out, achieved release in the same moment of blinding, all-possessing sensation.
The sweat was cooling across his powerfully muscled back and shoulders; his body had grown limp and motionless upon her. His bloated sex was gradually softening, retracting along the walls of her vagina. A degree of sensibility returned to Linda's mind, and she experienced a moment of shame-filled horror. She had permitted this man to use her, and she'd enjoyed it, responded fully to every element of his brutal usage. But all she'd done had been the result of the awakened sensuality she'd learned with Mark. Because of this ... because she'd sworn her love for him, what she'd surrendered to this other man was not rightfully hers to give. She'd expressed her love for Mark, and she'd accepted his assurance in return. In her own mind no pledge could be more binding.
Still, she reasoned, she'd done this to gain some time for Mark. Her encouragement of Fred Mills' advances had been to keep him in the house and prevent his being able to follow Mark until he had a chance to put some distance between them. Thus the guilt she felt was not so much the result of the act itself. It stemmed from the fact of her having enjoyed it. For this, there was really no excuse.
After several minutes, the big detective stirred. He lifted his head and gazed down into Linda's face. "Guess we really got carried away, didn't we?" he said.
"I guess we did," she agreed.
With another groan, he lifted free, taking no notice of the discomfort he caused her when he wrenched his enormous penis from the raw, aching tissues of her tender vagina.
He heaved himself upward and knelt between her legs, grinning at Linda with a self-assured expression of knowing superiority. It irritated her and made her more annoyed with herself for permitting what had happened. But I did it for Mark, she told herself again. If I hadn't been trying to help him it would never have happened.
"If you want to take a shower," she suggested, "you can use the upstairs hall bathroom."
"Naw, don't have time," replied the detective. "But if you could give me a towel to wipe off this sweat, I'd appreciate it."
Linda brought him one of the old towels she kept on the service porch for use around the pool. She had slipped back into her robe, her skin feeling suddenly sticky and unclean. She watched as the man wiped the moisture from his powerful arms and torso, wishing he'd hurry up and finish. He smiled sheepishly at her, seemingly self-conscious again, now that their bout of love-making was over. He lifted the flaccid bulk of his penis and wiped it dry, worked the towel over his balls and into his crotch.
"You know, you're really something!" he said suddenly. "Maybe we could get together again, some time."
"Maybe," said Linda coldly. Her dislike for the man was growing stronger by the minute, and the tingling sensuality she felt returning to her body as she watched him only aggravated the negative attitude. She didn't want to feel this attraction, but as she watched the fluid motion of solid muscle beneath the smooth, almost hairless skin it continued to affect her. Finally, she forced herself to look away.
When the man had his clothes back on, she stood up quickly, went to the front door. The detective seemed to hold back, lingering in the living room as if he expected her to make some further display of affection or extend a more enthusiastic invitation for his return. But he didn't say anything, and when Linda opened the door he lumbered toward it. He paused again in the portal, looking at her with a suggestion of puzzlement in his eyes.
"Good night," she said.
He shrugged. "Good night," he replied.
Linda closed the door and leaned her back against it. She didn't know whether she should weep or feel a surge of elated pride at what she'd done. She was aware of a bitter sense of degradation. She couldn't rid herself of the guilt engentlered by what she'd done. But it was all so new to her, she reasoned defensively, she was probably attaching a greater significance to the situation than it deserved. Certainly there had been a very decided difference in what she'd given the detective and what she'd given Mark. It was true she'd let both of them use her body, and she'd experienced a tremendously satisfying physical interaction with each. But there had been no emotional involvement with the policeman. Her flesh had responded to him mechanically, and there had been no feeling of deep regard ... certainly no hint of love. In the responses she had made to Mark it had been entirely something else ... even from the first, she realized suddenly. She had liked Mark, been more than physically attracted to him since she first laid eyes on him. Her heart had gone out to him in his need and in his time of trouble. It still went out to him, and she prayed he might understand what she'd done and why.
The idea of simply never telling him did not occur to her. That might have been the easiest solution, but if she kept silent it would leave this lump of guilt to grow and fester. She knew she was going to tell Mark what had happened, confess her own confusion and ask him to forgive her. Surely he'll understand, she thought. He'll know and he'll understand, and in the end he'll probably love me all the more for it.
She moved toward the sofa, not really thinking about what she did. Her bare feet touched the place where she had lain in the detective's arms, and she was startled by the sudden touch of something cold against her toe. She looked, quickly pulling a tissue from the pocket of her robe and dabbing at the tiny puddle of fluid. Then she sat on the couch and stared in unfocused concentration at the opposite wall. She wondered how far Mark had gotten, whether he'd escape this time or if the police might already have him in custody. Nor was she certain what she wanted to have happen. If he got away, of course she'd share his pleasure. But it wouldn't solve anything. If the police did catch him, at least it would force the entire situation to a head and bring about its eventual resolution. Rough as that would be on Mark right now, it would undoubtedly be better in the long run, unless. . .
God! What if they really do convict him of murder? But they can't! They simply can't convict a man for something he ... didn't do. But again the awful possibility rose within her mind. She couldn't eliminate it, not completely. Despite her strongest desire not to credit the suspicion, it still came back to haunt her. What if he really killed that old man? What then? And if he did, and even if he gets away with it ... if I end up knowing the truth ... Could I still love him if I knew he was capable of such a thing?
She sat in frozen silence for a long, long while. The awful questions kept beating on her brain, and the answers were always the same. She simply didn't know. Until the story was finally proved out, there was no possible way to determine how she was going to feel. He's such a nice guy ... if I can believe him. If ... IF! But I do love him, she told herself. Damn it, I can't help it. I love him, and he...?
"That's really the crux of it, isn't it?" she muttered. "Do you love me, Mark? You've said you do, but you've said a lot of other things as well. If you did harm that old man ... and lied to me about it, how can I be sure you didn't lie about the rest?"
She leaned back against the cushions, realizing she had achieved a degree of understanding ... at least of herself. The question didn't hinge on Mark's guilt or innocence. It depended solely on whether Linda could accept his protestations of love for her. If he loves me ... really and truly loves me, there isn't anything I won't do for him, and it doesn't make any difference what else he might have done. I'll stand by him regardless, wait for him forever if need be.
With a sigh of resigned acceptance she got up and started toward the stairs. How long was it going to be, she wondered, before she knew what had happened. Maybe she should have encouraged the detective to return. At least that way she might have wormed the information out of him. Now, unless Mark got in touch with her ... or they caught him, she'd never know. If he escaped and faded into oblivion ... what then? If he loves me, he'll find a way to let me know where he is. If he doesn't, I don't have anything to lose ... never had anything. The thought made tears form in her eyes, again.
She staggered and had to grasp the handrail. Eventually, I'll know, I guess. But how long? How long, Mark, before I really get a look beneath that shell of yours?
EIGHT
Linda had showered and dressed without putting on a light. She made her way about the darkened house, moving as much by feel and instinct as by the little she could see from the night glow outside. She seemed to take a degree of solace from the shadowy gloom, possibly because she knew Mark must be huddled somewhere in the dark, alone ... probably cold and uncomfortable. He hadn't thought to take the jacket she'd bought him, and the night had become decidedly chilly.
It was late, almost midnight. Linda knew she was putting off going to bed in the futile hope Mark might return. He wouldn't of course. There wasn't any way he could. Yet she knew she'd only toss and turn if she tried to sleep, and she was far too nervous to read or watch TV. She'd mulled over the dilemma until her head began to ache, but there weren't any other answers. These were going to come with time.
Finally, she tossed a sweater over her shoulders and went outside,, into the backyard. The sky was overcast, hiding the moon and leaving the area darker than usual. Try as she would, she continued to churn with the disturbing unresolved conflicts. Out here, in her patio, it seemed every item held some memory of Mark. Most were pleasant, but they all contributed to her mental turmoil. She stood by the foot of the pool, gazing through rippled waters at the steps. Mark used her here, as he'd used her in almost every other place she might look. But this was where he had actually hurt her, had rammed his cock inside her anus and done it with such seeming lack of concern he had actually frightened her. Had there been any real significance in that act? she wondered. Had he inadvertently displayed a callousness or brutality he otherwise kept hidden beneath his facade of innocent naivete? She thought of the detective and how much more thoughtless he had been. And he isn't suspected of murdering anyone, she reasoned. Just because a man is capable of getting carried away in the throes of his sexual expression it doesn't mean he's capable of killing anyone.
She tried to recount the other moments when Mark had caused her pain, sought to catalogue them and decide if he might have displayed some pattern of violence she had failed to perceive. But she couldn't organize the various instances well enough to draw any conclusions. Mostly, he'd been considerate with her. Only in moments of anger or fear had he done anything to hurt her, other than that single time in the pool. But it would have been a moment of fear if the old man surprised him in that house, and he knew...
She refused to think about it. Instead, she walked to the rear of the yard and poked her foot into the concealed opening in the hedge. It seemed so quiet, she thought. And now that she stopped to think about it, she didn't hear even the usual night noises, crickets and the rustlings in the underbrush that marked the passage of a rabbit or ground squirrel, the occasional hoot of an owl or the chirp of some roosting bird. She hadn't heard any cars come up the road, either, she realized.
On impulse, she squatted down and slipped under the hedge. The dirt road was deserted. She walked across its gravel surface and onto the bank beyond, climbing the slope until she was high enough to see some distance in every direction. It all seemed peaceful and quiet, hushed beneath the veil of darkness. A light breeze stirred the branches above her, making Linda shiver from the cold and draw the sweater more tightly about her. She turned and started back toward the house.
She was about to step onto the roadbed when she was startled by Fred Mills' stepping out of the shadows. "You're up pretty late," said the detective softly.
"Oh, you scared me!" Linda replied.
"See anything interesting?" he asked.
Linda wondered if there might be a note of suspicion in his tone, but she forced herself not to respond to it. "No, everything seems very normal," she told him.
"Just the way it should be," he said.
"Have ... have you found the man you're looking for?" she asked uneasily.
"Not yet, but we'll get him," said the detective. Linda had moved back from the man as he spoke, and the detective had seemed to accept her wish to terminate their exchange. But as Linda turned away, he called after her. "You know, I really would like to see you again," he said. "I mean ... well, I'm not always that wild. It's just you really turned me on." He covered half the distance between them in a couple of long, quick strides. "You're a damned good-looking woman, you know," he added. "And you got a fire in you that just won't stop!"
"Is that supposed to be a compliment?" she replied coldly.
"No, no ... don't misunderstand me. I like you, that's all. And I want to see you again."
"You mean I'm a push-over!" Her tone was flat and her dislike for the man must have been obvious, even to one as insensitive as he.
She started to walk away again, but he followed her, trying to break through the icy barrier she'd erected between them. Finally, she turned on him in open annoyance. "Look, why don't you go catch a burglar or something. You're a lousy lay, if you want to know the truth, and I don't ever want to see you again!"
The angry words had burst from her lips before she realized what she was going to say. But her expression had been honest, and her barbs certainly seemed to have struck the target. The detective backed away a step and stood staring at her in amazement.
"Tell me," he asked in a softer tone, "did you have this Simpson guy in your house?"
Linda didn't answer him, didn't trust herself to say anything.
"You know," continued the policeman, "if Simpson gives himself up now, he's not really going to be in too much trouble. If we have to hunt him down ... " He terminated his statement with a shrug.
Linda wasn't sure how to read this man. In the house, he'd seemed to accept her story and to believe her when she said she hadn't seen Mark. Now, he seemed to be telling her something he expected she'd communicate to the fugitive. "Didn't this ... Simpson? Was that the name? Didn't he kill a man in a robbery or something?" She'd forced her voice to remain steady, and she hoped her question had sounded casual.
Fred Mills regarded her with a quizzical expression, scratched the back of his head as if trying to figure out what she meant. "Oh!" he replied, suddenly brightening. "No, Simpson's not wanted for that. I guess it went out over the morning news, right after he escaped, that he was suspected of beating that old man and all. No, we got the guy who did that. All we want Simpson for is breaking jail ... want to pick him up before he does get desperate and breaks into one of the houses in this neighborhood." He paused again and watched for some reaction from Linda. "Look, I'm not accusing you of lying," he added. "But if you do know where this guy is hiding out, or if you have some way of getting in touch with him, make sure he knows the whole story. You can also tell him we know why he split, and if he turns himself in the Court probably won't be too rough on him."
"If I see him I'll tell him," said Linda. She was about to continue down the path, but the detective now started in the same direction.
"Come on," he said, "I'll see you to your door." He tried to take her arm, but Linda yanked it away from him.
"I can make it on my own," she said.
The detective shrugged and lumbered off in the direction of the asphalt road. Linda stood watching him a moment, and started back the way she'd come, intending to slip under the hedge and into her backyard. She had just reached the heavy shadows along the row of bushes, and was prodding the underbrush with her foot to find the opening, when she heard a sound and spun around to come face to face with Mark. He grabbed her arm and glared at her angrily.
"You let him fuck you!" he rasped sharply.
"I ... but ... I..." Linda couldn't collect her thoughts. Mark's sudden appearance, and now his anger, rendered her momentarily speechless.
"All that shit about loving me! I'm hardly out of the house before you're making it with another guy!"
"They'll hear you," she whispered harshly.
"I don't give a good fuck who hears me!" He was almost shouting, then, and his fingers had started biting into her arm.
"I do love you," she managed. "I ... didn't mean for it to go that far, but I had to keep him from leaving. I had to give you time to get away."
"So you let him dick you! Real cool, baby, real cool!"
Linda dissolved into tears. "I only did it to help you," she wailed miserably. "That was the only reason! I don't even like that man. I hate him," she added stridently. "I think I really hate him!"
Mark drew a deep breath and let go of her. "Well, while that cop was inside fuckin' you," he said in a deflated tone, "his partner was out here, beating the bushes for me. I didn't have any chance to get away."
Linda was so choked with her sobbing she couldn't answer him.
"He used you, baby," Mark continued. "Figured he'd get a quick piece of ass, that's all!"
"Mark, stop it!" she bawled. "Don't you understand? I was ready to forgive you when I didn't know if you were a murderer or not. Can't you forgive me just this one bit of stupidity?" She looked up at him, blinking back the tears.
He sensed her sincerity and finally responded to the honest misery in her tone. He put his hands out to her and she took hold of them. Slowly, Mark pulled her to him and pressed her head against his chest.
"You really do love me, don't you, Mark?" she whispered.
"How can I tell you any more clearly than I have?" he asked. "Of course I love you, and when I heard that sonofabitch talking to you, I could have killed him. And that's the only time I ever felt like that, baby. The only time!"
He started to kiss her, but stopped short, glancing sharply over his shoulder. The hulking form of the detective was moving down the road in their direction. Quickly, Mark pushed Linda away from him, and for a moment she was afraid he was going to run.
"Mark, don't. . . " she began.
But Mark didn't make any move to get away. He stood his ground as Sergeant Mills came closer to them. "I think you're looking for me," he said casually, when the man was close enough to hear him.
"I thought she was hiding you out," said the detective.
"What do you mean, 'hiding me out'? " replied Mark sharply. "I just asked this lady to stay here and witness that I'm giving myself up voluntarily. I've been hiding in the tool shed at the back of her property. She never knew I was there."
Mark gripped the white steering wheel of the new convertible, pressed his foot on the pedal and felt the satisfying rush of power beneath him. "This is a real improvement over that station wagon," he called against the rush of wind.
Linda turned to face him, holding one hand against her perky little hat to keep it from flying off her head. "With Dad gone, ther" wasn't any reason not to get something we could enjoy," she shouted. She edged closer to him on the seat and Mark slipped his arm around her shoulder. "God, I thought that eight months was never going to end!" she added.
"Me neither," said Mark. "But it's all over now, and it's spring again ... time for everything to start off fresh and clean."
Linda felt so pleased and happy, she was almost at the point of bursting. She had waited out the anxious days before Mark's trial, and had been in the front row of the spectators' section when her attorney pled his case. The judge had been an elderly, stern-visaged man, who scowled continuously through the entire proceeding. But between the lawyer's skill and Mark's forthright statement of his reasons for fleeing the road camp, the Court had merely imposed the remainder of his original sentence. He had been excused the usual year he would otherwise have received for breaking jail.
Now he was free. Linda had driven down to the courthouse almost two hours before Mark could possibly be released and she had been sitting in the new convertible, parked at the curb when he came out. After eight months, they were finally together. She felt herself trembling as she leaned against him. Mark tightened his arm about her. He had been so excited with the car and with the prospect of actually being free, he had insisted on driving up the coast for dinner. Now it was dark ... Friday night, and they were headed home.
Linda's excitement continued to build as they approached her house. When Mark failed to slow for the driveway she sat up. "Hey, this is where we live, remember?"
The front wheels bounced onto the gravel surface, and he smiled down at her. "I got a feeling you haven't ever been back here before ... not in a car," he said.
It took another moment for the full implication of his remark to dawn upon her. Then she settled comfortably against him, letting the warmth of his body flow into hers. If this was what he wanted to do, it was perfect! The streetlights disappeared behind the hedge, and Linda felt her excitement begin to mount. How had he known? she wondered. How had he managed to guess how enticing this place had always been to her? He drove slowly along the length of hedge, stopping a short distance beyond it.
With the lights and engine off, a still, motionless silence seemed to descend upon them. The air was a little cool, just cool enough that Mark had flicked the heater on as they drove, but not so cold that they had been uncomfortable having the top down on the convertible. Now, in the darkness beyond the hedge, they found a warmth that made the exterior temperature immaterial. For Linda, just having Mark beside her, feeling his flesh on hers once more, would have been enough. The added excitement of being on this road, held tightly within his embrace, was more than she'd expected. She felt such a swell of love and affection it seemed to batter her senses. It achieved an enormous depth and grew into a mountain of feelings that were beyond her ability to express.
Over and over, she told Mark she loved him and heard the promises answered, repeated in the same words she used to him. Their mouths joined time and again; their bodies pressed tightly one upon the other. But their expression still fell short of the intensity they really felt. Her inability to communicate more fully gave Linda a sense of helplessness. The heat rising from their beings had overcome any sense of chill, and Mark was already working the fasteners on her dress. She found herself so desperately anxious to feel his hands on her naked flesh, it seemed an eternity before he had the zipper open down her back, before she felt the strap come loose on her bra. As his strong, coarse-surfaced hands began tracing their circular patterns upon the warm, smooth contours of her back, however, she suddenly realized that this was the answer to her previous dilemma.
Of course! That's what it's all about! "That is what it's all about, isn't it, Mark?" she murmured.
He held her more tightly against him, muttered a grunted "Hum?" and sought her lips with his again. She let him kiss her, responded to his pressure and grasped his tongue gently between her teeth. Her hands had slipped inside his shirt open, now, from neck to waist. She didn't interrupt their exchange with useless words, but these continued to tumble through her brain as his hands caressed her and his heated possession began to work its way lower on her body.
So many times she'd heard of "love in its many phases," or read a story where love and intercourse seemed to mean the same and over the last eight months she'd read a good many of these. But until this moment, the full, total significance of the usage had escaped her. As Mark's lips began to nuzzle her breasts, as his teeth and tongue came down about her nipple and all the spasms of delight coursed through her, she sensed the opening of a whole new vista ... an expanded understanding that gave the necessary answer. Sex, with the man you love ... that's love in its highest form ... no way to express it any more fully or completely, no way ... no deeper meaning or sense of total involvement ... no way ... no greater fulfillment.
The well of heat engulfed her, absorbed her thoughts and pulled Linda into a deeper enclosure, enveloped her as she recognized the powerful affection embodied in the naked flesh of this man who held her so tightly. They were still in the front seat of a car, upper bodies stripped and bare. It was an earthy, physical exchange. Yet, Linda perceived a greater symbolism in what they did. Her mind had blasted free of its old restraints and overcome its former, blunted understanding. "It is an act of love. It is, isn't it, Mark?" she insisted.
He felt her tremble, realized she was responding to some earnest, inner anxiety ... not to the gentle coolness of the night. He grasped her shoulders and held her so their eyes were level. They seemed to exchange a flood of meaning, in company with the heat that passed between them. "You're sure of me, aren't you, Linda?" he asked at length. "I mean, you don't still have doubts...? "
"No, no doubts," she whispered. "I only meant ... it seemed everything opened up and I realized ... when we do this ... when we ... sleep together and all ... it expresses something you can't say in words. It does, Mark, doesn't it?" she asked again.
"Of course it does," he assured her. "Of course it does." He felt it, too, understood exactly what Linda was trying to tell him. What they had together, what they shared when they joined their bodies, was something far greater, something more profoundly meaningful than they could otherwise express.
"I guess it comes on many levels love, I mean," he muttered. He trembled as he held her against him. He could feel the rigid tips of her nipples trace their wavering patterns across his chest and he crushed her tightly to him. "There's physical pleasure, and there's love," he continued. "And when they come in the same package, that's the most! It really is ... really, really is!"
His mouth became a frantically moving font of fiery moisture. He sucked the flesh of her throat inside himself, moved to her shoulders and across the upper portions of her bosom. He laved her breasts, kissed and caressed them. His lips and teeth worked desperately against the nipples until her body twisted into his, loving it ... loving him, barely able to sustain the intensity of sensation. He paused, then worked the dress and slip and panties off her lower body, plunged his face against her crotch. One hand remained about her waist. The other rolled the stocking down her long, smoothly tapered legs. His tongue dived into the upper end of her slit and Linda fell back against the seat. Her head collapsed upon its upper edge; her breath bubbled out in panting gasps as Mark removed the final items of her clothing, completely bared her body to his continuous possession.
Moments later, both of them were completely nude, bodies joined across the seat. They had opened the doors, and Linda was wedged into the corner formed by the back and the lower portion of padded bench. Mark was lying on top of her, hardly moving, allowing the weight of his being to press itself on hers. His hands were stroking her arms, the sides of her torso, passing lightly, warmly over the soft, responding velvet. She could feel the heat and driving hardness of his shaft as it extended across her pubis. It was his, but also hers, she thought. There was no part of one that was not also the property of the other. They were complete, together at last and forever.
She tried to move her legs, felt Mark shift to ease the restriction of his weight upon her. He lifted his chest shortly after that, knelt with one knee between her thighs, the other on the seat beside her. Gently, with an almost reverential awe, he ran his hands the full length of her body, watching her without trying to express the feelings that rose within him. Two small, yellowish lights had come on when they opened the doors, and these now glowed out from beneath the dashboard, casting subtle umbrae across Linda's body. Mark took hold of her shoulders and repositioned her so she was lying flat against the seat. He watched the play of light and dark across the velvet sheen of her skin. The summer's tan had faded, leaving her a lighter, honey brown. But she must have sunbathed in the nude, even after he was taken from her. No lines remained to mar the lustrous, glowing contours. Her breasts were full and alive as he'd remembered them ... her waist a trifle smaller, maybe ... hips curving gently outward, firm but soft to the touch. Her triangular pubic patch was darkened by the shadow of his body, but here and there a strand of silky fur stood higher than the rest, reflecting golden red in the muted glow.
He bent over her and kissed the lower corner of her pubic hair, touched his tongue to the steaming warmth that rose from her crotch. He eased her legs apart and kissed the insides of her thighs, evoking a stream of tantalizing sensations that drove Linda to the very brink of madness. His cloying possession continued, forcing wave after wave of heat to rise and the blood to thunder through her brain. She was drowning in his warmth, unable to maintain contact with any reality beyond their immediate presence. She wanted him; her flesh cried out for him to take her and to do with her as he had done before. Her mind had dwelt so long and so desperately on the memory it had gained in size and power ... now embodied an almost mystical significance.
Finally, when she was certain she must expire if Mark didn't move to answer the desperate craving within her, she felt him change direction. The warm, wet passage of his lips began to lay a wavering, uneven trail as he moved toward the center of her boiling passions. She held her breath, tensed every muscle, and finally expelled the air in tiny, rushing gasps. Mark's tongue grazed her swollen clitoris; his lips formed a seal about the labia rim. Each time he pressed onto her, he felt her trembling answer, heard her moan and knew he'd driven her to the peak of expectant desire. Only then did his tongue plunge down, enter the pit of seething, fluid fire. He laved the responding tissues, drove and pressed upon steaming heat, moved in rapid circles all about her inner ring.
His hands had traveled upward, grasping the undersides of her breasts. He seized them blindly, feeling his way without being able to see what his fingers touched. He closed about the tender cones and squeezed them, held well below the darkened crests and forced the inner contents to compact behind the nipples. He twisted them, rubbed his calloused hands across them so her tortured flesh sent out its flood of sensations to join and merge with the swelling euphoria engentlered by his use of her lower body.
Linda twisted to the side, finding her movement partially blocked by the steering wheel. Still, she managed to grasp the head of his prick, felt the sliding motion as the skin slipped forward, forming a thicker gathering about the crown. She tried to achieve a hold that was firm enough to pull him toward her. But Mark wasn't ready. He lowered his face deeper into her slit, tonguing away the heavy stream of moisture that rose to meet him. This motion forced his cock to pull away from her, leaving the rigid projection to sway in springy strength an inch or two beyond her reach.
Finally, he lifted his face, gazed across the gentle glow of her body. "You want that?" he teased her. "Want it, baby?"
"Yes," she told him earnestly.
He seemed to hesitate, to look around as if estimating the space available to them. "Maybe we should go..." he started.
"No!" gasped Linda desperately. "No!" Being here with Mark, on the darkened road which had become a kind of symbol to her, added so much to their exchange that Linda couldn't bear the thought of leaving it ... not now, not before she'd known the exquisite joy of his cock inside her body ... here, right here, in the open, unguarded place where so many others had shared their love. It added a tremendous, thrilling eroticism to everything they did, to every move they made. And out of this stream of thoughts came the memory of the high school kids she'd seen the previous summer. She remembered how the larger of the cops had found the front seat too confining. He'd..."Mark?" she whispered. "Mark, do you want to ... really do something crazy ... really crazy?"
She found no argument. Whatever she wanted, he was willing, was as anxious to please as she. They stood beside the car, bare feet hardly noticing the sharpness of the stones. Cool air moved across their naked flesh, but they barely noticed this, either. They moved into each other's arms, clasped their bodies tightly together, hands roving backs and sides. She felt him cup his fingers beneath the cheeks of her ass, and she did the same to him ... sensed the powerful motion beneath the skin as Mark slowly edged her back, stopped when the fender grazed his knuckles. "Are you sure you want to...? " he began doubtfully.
"Yes!" she answered fiercely. "God, yes! Please, Mark!"
He shrugged, lifted her and placed her body across the hood where the engine's warmth still clung to the metal. She sighed again, settled back and gazed up at the quiet blackness of the sky with its myriad, diamond stars. She thought of the necklace she'd worn that night in the patio, felt the same, surging madness grip her now. Mark leaned across her body, sought her lips with his as his swollen cockhead grazed the lips of her fluttering pussy. She felt the labia folds contract, pull back upon themselves as his cock shaft pressed inside her slit, touched the inner lining, rode across it and rested in gentle strength upon the glowing heat.
Mark seemed to feel the savage craving as strongly as Linda. He pulled her toward him, stood within the enclosure of her thighs and played his hard-sprung cock along the expectant crevice. Again, she willed him into her, and this time Mark responded as if her thoughts had taken command of him. He held his jutting iron so it pointed toward the center of her wide-spread slit. He touched the cockhead to her opening and slowly let it slide within. Linda emitted a series of short, hoarse mumblings, gripped tightly against his hips and locked her feet together against his back. Without pause or hesitation, but slowly, with deliberate restraint, Mark drove his rigid shaft completely into her. He held there several moments, standing with his prick buried to the hilt, balls lying in warm, gentle contact upon the area just below. He leaned across her then, kissed her deeply as he allowed the weight of his chest to descend.
She felt the metal give beneath her, sensed the warmth increase like a solid, enclosing wall around her. This was not the graceful, elegant exchange that young girls dream of, she thought. But neither was their love. Theirs had been a wild, uncivilized encounter from the very start, a lusty adventure in which desire and attraction had flowered into something more. For Mark to take her ... to fuck her here, in the open, with her body stretched backward across the hood of a car, was exactly crazy enough to be appropriate.
Just the thought of her impending impalement brought Linda's lust-filled cravings to a peak. His chest and belly drove harder against her and she pressed higher with her hips, pumped her loins, sighed and closed her eyes as she felt the glorious, filling pressure. She forced her legs to bend, held her feet in place against his ass, but moved her knees and pulled herself more widely open to invite his deepest, farthest penetration.
Mark felt his cock absorbed in greater heat, sensed its imprisonment within the clinging, grasping walls of her passage. Her inner muscles seemed to work against him, to create a series of rippling motions along his shaft and suck it ever deeper, to pull him toward the core of furnace heat. For several seconds he was afraid to move, fearful this slight, additional source of sensation would pull him to the peak and over, make him blast his load inside before he'd half begun.
Only when Mark knew he'd regained control did he dare draw back. Then he slowly let his cock withdraw along the slick, smoothly coated passage. The membranes pressed and tried to hold him, as if reluctant to let him go. He reached the outward terminus, held there as her ring of passion clamped about him, gripped his cock just above the crown. It wanted to draw him back, held as if a hot, warm hand had closed about his prick and wished to lead him by its fleshy leash.
He lowered himself back inside her pit, felt the seething heat enclose him once again, heard the desperate pounding in his brain as it echoed the tugging urgency and made it impossible to restrict his trembling possession. Within seconds he was slamming his loins against her, driving his swollen cock inside her body until the lubricating fluids foamed out around it, ran down the swath of flesh beneath her cunt. Their mouths held tightly together so their breathing became a mutual exchange. Their bodies were joined until they seemed to merge upon a rising cloud that mingled love and desire with all their other feelings, tumbled lust and affection into a single, swirling maelstrom. All elements of their love were blended, the full range from ethereal to profane ... expressed in both their minds with no difference between the highest and the lowest forms.
Mark's furious assault had propelled them to the brink ... and past it, carried them through the ultimate heights of climax. And still his pounding, thrusting might continued to drive itself within her. He churned the fluids of their discharge into a furious, searing invitation for the next. And this came before they could descend from the previous crest, blasted out of them with all the force and power of the first.
There seemed no end to this expression of total merging. Mark filled her and hammered his body against her with tireless lust. Their love was stretching toward infinity, and neither wished to see it end. But their physical beings were finally incapable of sustaining the endless expression. Eventually, after a final exchange that exhausted and drained them both, Mark let his body relax. He lay upon her, gasping and muttering his words of love. He stayed there until his bloated rod had grown almost soft. Then, he eased himself away, stood back on the gravel roadbed and extended his hand to help Linda down beside him.
"Wow! You were really outta sight!" he teased her.
"You weren't exactly impassive, yourself," she replied. She stood on tiptoe to touch her lips to his and turned back toward the car. "Maybe we should go inside and have a civilized ... Oh, dear!"
Mark looked in the direction of her gaze and saw the headlights approaching the farther end of the gravel road. "Quick!" he cried. He raced to the car, yanked the keys from the ignition and gathered up their clothes in his arms. "Where's that damned opening in the hedge?"
"Here! This way!" Linda called. She wriggled through the passage with Mark following right behind her. Hardly a moment after this they heard the car pull up beside theirs. No headlights showed through the branches of the hedge, so the driver must have turned them off as he approached.
"Cops?" whispered Linda.
"Probably," Mark replied.
Suddenly, a flashlight beam struck the other side of the bushes. The flickering glow dipped and ran along the leafy wall. Linda started to giggle, clamped both hands against her mouth to keep the sound from giving them away. Mark was laughing too, as the baffled voices of the officers came to them through the foliage.
"Where the hell'd they go?" asked one.
"I dunno," said the other, "but they musta had a good time. The broad dropped her panties here on the road."
This brought a fresh spasm of mirth, until neither Mark nor Linda could hold it in much longer. Together, they ran toward the house, moving silently across the lawn and pool decking. She felt along the molding above the frame, found the hidden key and let them in. They clung together in the darkness, kissed briefly, and hurried up the stairs. From the bedroom window they looked down, unable to see their car because Mark had parked it close to the side of the road. The black-and-white was clearly visible, however, as well as the moving points of light that showed the officers were still seeking them in the bushes.
"They don't ever give up, do they?" Linda laughed.
"No, they don't," agreed Mark.
She stood back and let the drape fall into place across the pane. Her hand grasped the heavy mass below his groin, fondled the flaccid cock and the full, deep-hanging balls. "I'm glad they didn't get here any sooner," she whispered.
"It might have been embarrassing, at that," said Mark.
"More than that," she added softly. "So much more than that."
"Oh?"
"Don't you see? It was ... for me, maybe more than you. But in its way, doing it out there like we did, it was a sort of 'dream come true'. "
"What, getting screwed in a car ... or on top of it?" He started to laugh again.
"Oh, that's part of it. The rest. . . " She held his cock more firmly.
"Just that?" he asked.
"No, not just that ... not just here..." She squeezed his shaft and felt its returning energies. She waved her free hand toward the window and the hedge below it. "But it all started out there, didn't it?"
"Yes, it did," he replied more seriously. He pulled her to him and kissed her tenderly on the lips. "It started there, but now it's become something more ... always will be more." He urged her toward the bed, and together they slipped between the covers. The world outside continued as it always had, as it probably always would. The protectors of peace and safety continued their futile search. But none of this mattered to Mark or Linda. Nothing mattered ... nothing that existed beyond the hedge ... or at that moment, beyond the warmth they shared in the darkness.
