She'd lain there in his ultra-modern round bed, trying not to look at his wrinkled old man's flesh as he handled her body and murmured over it. Maybe the richest man in Las Vegas if you didn't count Howard Hughes ... All the money in the world to buy himself whatever he wanted, and he couldn't even get a hard-on. Paid her to come to his apartment and take her clothes off, just so he could look at her, just so he could run his hands over her breasts, suck them, finger her a little, giggling the way only the very old and the very rich old men giggle.
INTRODUCTION By Dale Gordon, Ph.D.
Leslie Frankenberg, the heroine of Silver Bells and Cockle Shells, not only provides the reader with an excellent study in morbid psychology, but also gives the author a marvelous vehicle for a spoof on two branches of modem literature-the erotic novel, and the Mike Hammer, blood-and-guts adventure story with plenty of violence.
When we dissociate the plot of this novel from the style and treatment, we see the author challenging the censors in the disturbing area of what is obscene in literature-or in life for that matter. On the one hand we have sex described vividly, almost too vividly; and on the other hand we have blood-and guts violence thrown at us with parts of human bodies flying through the air, guns going off in every direction and blood flowing freely.
These two areas of the book differ so in style it would almost appear that two different people wrote them, and this is precisely the author's intention. In this sense the book was created primarily as a spoof, a caustic look at an argument raging throughout various societies today. In the? homogenous Scandinavian countries, for example, there is an openness toward sex and sexual behavior, a quiet permissiveness. And in these countries the societies are generally peaceful, non-violent. At the same time, the Scandinavian countries look upon anything which deals with physical violence as "obscene."
In our country, the interpretation is quite different. Our attitude toward sexual behavior is only now beginning to become permissive, and that over some dead critics' bodies. We have generally in the past censored anything and everything having to do with sex, and these censorship barriers are not down in all parts of our country by any means. At the same time, we have always been quite permissive in regards to portrayals of violence, particularly physical violence. Gangster movies and bloody westerns continue to be best-sellers in all areas of entertainment. Take the recent popularity of the Pocket Full of Dollars motion pictures as an exam-le. Blood-and-gutters that go from one form of physical violence to another have thrilled Americans for generations.
And, in contrast to the Scandinavian peaceful societies, our society is a violent one. The assassinations of President Kennedy and his brother, and Dr. King, along with riots in city after city and the rapidly rising rate of violent crime, attest to that.
The problem which the author presents here-which is more obscene, violence or sex?-goes to the very core of human behavior. Dr. Roger S. Johnson, director of clinical pastoral education for the Lutheran Hospital Society, made the following comment in a recent conference at the California Hospital Medical Center:
"Perhaps the more we promote intimacy, the less manifestations of violence we should have...."We ask ourselves if research done on individual aggressive behavior is applicable in the social orbit. People act quite differently in a group than as individuals.
"Is a group the sum of its individuals, or something unique in itself? Perhaps affecting individuals and making them behave as they would not behave themselves.
"The capacity for violence exists in individuals, but in a group it is more positive, and our institutions, the churches and others, have never learned to control this, or been very effective attempting to control it...."
Does violence breed violence? Great Britain and other countries seem to think so. They regularly ban most of our movies and television programs which deal heavily with violence, particularly physical violence. And regardless of our opinion in this matter, the statistics do not lie. The United States is rapidly becoming one of the most violent societies in the world.
Does sex breed sex crime? This was a popular belief for many years, and the reason most often given for censorship of sexual material. Yet the statistics seem to indicate otherwise. Where the public attitude toward sex is permissive, sex crime has declined-such as in Denmark during their recent experiment with the legalization of pornography.
There are many psychologists who agree with Dr. Johnson's opinion that perhaps a permissive attitude toward sexual intimacy provides an escape valve which in effect decreases crime and violence. No one can seriously doubt the link between sex and violence, violence growing out of sexual repression and frustration.
This entire argument is deftly summed up in the style and treatment within the descriptive writing in the sequences which take place on the island. These same sequences, I might add, serve as the masochistic dream wish of a seriously disturbed personality-the battleground for an interesting portrayal of inner emotional conflict.
Leslie Frankenberg is a prostitute. A prostitute who sells her body to support her pimp. Suddenly Leslie sees the futility of her life, the hopelessness of her position, the degradation of her body and mind. Her sudden flight to San Francisco and her acceptance of the offer of a job on the remote island have a dream-like unreality, and that's what the author is telling us: that all of this takes place inside Leslie's mind. It begins at night and ends at night. She leaves Ron, and she returns to Ron.
All that takes place in between represents the conflict in Leslie's mind, her subconscious mind. Prostitution itself is a form of masochistic behavior, the prostitute wishing to punish herself, usually her sexual nature, by humiliating herself through sexual slavery. The more degraded the act performed on her, the more her gratification because her punishment is more complete.
We see all of this mirrored in Leslie's dream fantasy of her life on the island. Here women are turned into sexual slaves through operations or. Hie brain. Here Leslie is forced to submit to vile acts as a means of her own self-punishment, and here Leslie's life is threatened, serving to make her humiliation and punishment total.
We also see Leslie's manic-depressive qualities come to the surface momentarily when she almost commits suicide by letting Raymon come toward her and she hesitates to protect herself with a gun in her hand. This is a climactic moment in the story, and in Leslie's emotional battle with herself, the punishment she so desires will be complete if she allows herself to be murdered by Raymon, but at the last possible moment her will to survive breaks through and she kills Raymon.
This is also the beginning of the end for Leslie's conflict. She recognizes that she cannot change life, cannot change herself, cannot overcome her strong will to survive, and she knows that she must return to that which she has tried to escape. In other words, she accepts her life as it is and gives up her dream of finding either complete punishment or escape.
The author's use of symbolism here is rather strong at times. The hero, John, if he can indeed be called a hero, is representative of the sum total of her customers as a prostitute. It is from him that she returns to Ron, and the use of the name "John," the slang term prostitutes use for their customers, in this case is perhaps a bit too obvious. The use of flowers and sex as the principal products of the island can also be viewed in the too obvious category.
All in all, however, the author has tackled a twofold task here and pulled it off quite successfully. That in itself deserves recognition.
Silver Bells and Cockle Shells hardly comes under the classification of an important contribution to literature, but it is a well-constructed novel heads and shoulders above the average piece of erotic fiction. It is both a story that the average reader can enjoy and a study in some rather serious problems which confront our modern society.
-Dale Gordon, Ph.D.
CHAPTER ONE
Leslie propped herself up on her elbow and looked at Ron's satisfied face. In sleep he looked younger, much less than his twenty-seven years. Dark eyebrows arching upward from the bridge of his nose, his eyelashes resting against his bronze cheeks, his mouth vulnerable, soft and partly open. "Bastard," she said softly. That was the trouble with Ron. Too handsome. There would always be some woman ready to pay his way. Make things soft, easy and sexy for him. Tears formed in her eyes and ran down her cheeks, making dark spots in the deep pink silk sheets she had just put on the bed. In a sudden but graceful movement, she swung around and put both feet on the floor, reaching unconsciously for her bedroom slippers with her toes. She loved to walk naked through the apartment, but she could never stand to walk around in her bare feet.
Lifting her brush from the little dressing table, she raised it to her dark hair and stroked it savagely. Electricity flew, crackling and popping as she brushed, going all the way down to her lush hips, the tendrils of fine hair clinging to her flesh and coming away, meeting the brush.
Looking back at Ron, she wiped the tears from her eyes with a tissue and swore softly, leaving the bedroom for the kitchenette, where she put a pot of coffee on to perk and sat down at the table to make out the list she had been thinking about making ever since she got that letter from her mother earlier in the day.
Leslie and Ron always quarreled after she heard from her mother. The letters were crammed full of nice little homilies such as, "If you think you're fooling your father and me you can think again. We know you're living with that weight-lifter." And, "You might be young and beautiful now, but Jewish girls get old and fat quick, so you better settle yourself down and find yourself a good Jewish boy that will marry you before it gets too late." And, "Daddy cried when we got your last letter. I suppose it's too much for us to expect of our only daughter, but it does look like you could try to be decent and not go around selling your body to old men just so you can support that stupid weight-lifter."
All right, she thought sullenly as she looked out at the bright lights of Las Vegas. So it's all true. So Ron is stupid. So I am supporting him. So I'm selling my body to old men in order to do it. And Ron's lazy and he's a bastard and I've been fooling myself when I tell myself he's going to change. But how can you write to your mother and tell her the reason you're staying with some bastardly, lazy, cheating pimp of a weight-lifter is because he's a good piece of ass and a good piece of ass is hard to come by?
But just the same. Yes. Just the same, she wasn't getting any younger. And Jewish girls did get old quickly. Except ... she wasn't going to allow that to happen to her. She looked into the mirror that hung across the table, lifting her breasts to see if they had begun to sag. No. Not yet. They were just right. Firm, hard, the nipples bright pink and soft. Relaxed after having been sucked for twenty minutes by Ron's hungry mouth. God! Just thinking about the way he had made love to her sent chills up and down her back and that little half-pain, a pleasant sensation to the pit of her belly. Made her nipples harden so much she had to run her hand over them to relieve them of their wanting feeling, and when she ran her hands over them she had to run them down her flat belly, hold it, press it the way Ron's hands had done just before he fucked her. He always pressed her belly hard right before he put his big prick inside of her. Pressed it and kissed her tits and one hand always parted her cunt, getting it all ready for him ... Oh, God! She wanted to go in there right now and wake him up. Kiss him awake, covering his face with her kisses, bring her mouth down past his belly, get his cock in her mouth and suck on it gently. He loved to be awakened that way ... but she wouldn't, no. Not right now. She had promised herself that she would make out the list ... and decide what to do ... because she was twenty-four years old and not getting any younger ... and she was smart, hell, she'd been the Salutatorian of her class in high school. A business college bought and paid for by her father ... could make fifty bucks an hour modeling bras and if she got the breaks she could get into the big-time modeling and there'd be no stopping her. Her face didn't have the stereotyped look of a Jew. No big nose, for instance. A nice small nose, a big hungry mouth, beautiful teeth, a dimple in one cheek, big brown eyes and all that lovely hair, hell. The Rons of this world were leeches. Just like her mother said. And old Herb had said it to her just this afternoon when she had let him rub her all over with his withered old prick.
She's lain there in his ultra-modem round bed, trying not to look at his wrinkled old man's flesh as he handled her body and murmured over it. Maybe the richest man in Las Vegas if you didn't count Howard Hughes ... All the money in the world to buy himself whatever he wanted, and he couldn't even get a hardon. Paid her to come to his apartment and take her clothes off, just so he could look at her, just so he could run his hands over her breasts, suck them, finger her a little, giggling the way only the very old and the very rich old men giggle. How did he get any good out of running his old prick up and down her back and turning her over and running it around in little circles on her belly? Not that she minded. No, she'd never minded the Old Herbs of this world, or even the old squares from Chicago who left their wives at home and came to Las Vegas for a fling. Most of the old squares were halfway decent people. Fuck her and pay her a hundred dollars and fuck her again in the morning when they woke up if they could manage it, and maybe give her another hundred, or at least fifty ... No, they didn't bother her. It was the slinky little creeps who liked to stick their mouths inside her cunt and eat the sliced bananas out one by one and then rub her with their bristly mustaches on the tenderness of her cunt until it burned, and them laughing all the while. Goddamn dentist from St. Louis with his one long fingernail on the little finger of the right hand, that one little fingernail with its claw on it, wanted to stick it in her and wiggle it around, goddamn, no! And Ron laughed at her when he told her, the uncouth, unfeeling son of a bitch. And that politician from Columbus who wanted to pee on her hair-now that was the living end ... but for two hundred dollars she'd let him pee on it all right. But just the same she was getting out of it, going away, making a list, making plans, and by God this time she meant it. Ron would just come home tomorrow from his fucking club that cost her seventy-five bucks a week and she'd be gone, that was that, no note, no nothing, just by God, gone!
Only ... What was she going to do?
She looked at the percolator and decided the coffee was dark enough, had perked long enough. Sniffing, she was sure of it. It smelled dark brown and delicious; all she had to do was pour a cup of coffee and get out the pen and paper and start on her plans. No use in putting it off any longer.
That was one thing about her. Once she made up her mind to do something, all hell couldn't stop her.
And she'd always been one to make up lists and check things off ... methodical. Like her dad.
With the coffee steaming in front of her, the air conditioner humming gently, the pen in her hand and the paper a blank sheet of white against the black formica table, she wrote:
Age ... 24.
Height ... 5'5".
Weight ... 117.
Bust ... 34, C cup.
Waist ... 22.
Hips ... 34.
Dark brown eyes, brown hair, creamy complexion, no blemishes.
So much for looks. They won't buy you anything, Leslie Frankenburg. Okay, talent....
She frowned, lit a cigarette, and leaned back in the chair, feeling the Naugahyde against her bare back, feeling the cold of the chrome against the back of her legs.
What have I got for talent? she asked herself. Well ... I can fuck. Yes, but almost anybody can fuck. What else can I do? I'm a pretty good typist. Eighty words a minute. Not bad. But who wants to go to work in an office for seventy dollars a week? What does that get you except a broad ass and a sour outlook on life? Of course, there's a lot to be said for husband material in offices-but who wants to be tied down to an office worker for the rest of her life? Unless he's an executive ... and most of them are already married. Besides, I need to brush up on my shorthand.
Okay. Modeling. The only thing wrong with that is you have to be in New York to really make it modeling clothes, and I don't like New York. Too hot. Too much humidity. Too cold in the wintertime.
Now. I can cocktail waitress and I've made a lot of money doing it, but there again, where would I go to do it? Couldn't stay in Las Vegas. Would be sure to run into Ron if I stayed in Vegas and if I did I'd be on the same fucking merry-go-round with him if I ran into him, because, let's face it ... I can't leave that prick of his alone if I know it's available. And it's available. To me or to anybody else who's willing to whore a little to keep him in the style he's grown accustomed....
"Balls," she said aloud. And stabbed into the paper with her pen, making a little black hole in the paper.
"I'll go to San Francisco," she said softly. "Leave tomorrow and make my plans from there. The first thing to do is get out of Las Vegas. There's always something doing in San Francisco."
She made a list of the clothing she would take with her. Not all of it. There wouldn't be time to pack it while Ron was gone to his club. Besides, there were a lot of things she'd not be needing again. But of course she'd have to take her furs and her evening clothes, and most of her shoes and bags-they were all expensive, and....
Finishing the last of the coffee, she put out her cigarette and went back into the bedroom. She looked down at him, telling herself that she was looking at him, really looking at him for the last time. They'd sleep late the way they always did, then he'd go to his club without bothering to awaken her, expecting her to be there when he came home and she....
Holding back a sob, holding her breath in order to do it, she got in the bed beside him and put her arms around him, her soft open mouth searching for his lips, wanting to give all of herself to him this one last time ... wanting to eat him all up, to gobble him completely, to chop off his prick with her sharp white teeth and keep it in her mouth forever and forever amen, wanting to hold him within her for the rest of her life-wondering even as her lips left his face and went downward and downward as he groaned with pleasure-if it wouldn't be better just to kill him and then kill herself, because God damn! It was going to be a shitty kind of a life without him.
But then. There would be somebody else. Someday. Meanwhile, he was sweet, his flesh smelling of almonds and the pine green soap he used, and very faintly of Jade East, not too much, just enough so that she knew every time she smelled Jade East on a man for the rest of her life she would spill over with the longing empty cunt aching for Ron Davis-number one asshole, number one bum, eight inch prick with the kind of swing to his ass that drove her crazy when he was filling her with it.
Mouth against the flesh of his belly, softly biting, taking little lip-nibbles, so sweet, him coming fully awake at last, his hands reaching for the satin of her hair, getting big fistfuls of it and holding it, wriggling underneath her questing lips. Bastard. He knew what she was going to do. Knew she couldn't leave him alone. And loved it. Loved her mouth going down on him, kissing all the way. Loved to be loved, Ron did. Oh yes. Son of a bitch. Tears in her eyes, burning, batting her eyelashes against his belly, holding back the tears, don't let him know you're crying, oh, hell no! Ron doesn't like a teary woman. Let him remember this one last time without tears. Her chest bursting with the burn of the held-back sob. Mouth hard against the crown of his swollen prick. Skin so soft on it. Sweet soft prick-skin, softer than the finest satin, smooth under her circling tongue. Round and round, teasing him. His balls hard under her fingers, holding them gently with the little threat, hell, if she wanted to she could make him scream. But she wouldn't. And he knew it. All she would ever do for him was make him moan with the delight her tongue gave his prick. Sucking, sucking. Down deep, feeling it going sliding slickly past her tongue, into her throat, that roaring in her ears, he loved it when she put it all the way in her throat. Her jaw teeth a threat along the sides of his big rigidness. Breathing through her nose. Her cunt aching, her clit humming, her mouth oozing sweet juice to comfort his hardness with. His balls jumping, lurching upward, getting ready for release. She could feel it running underneath the skin of them as she cupped them in her hands. Come running and spurting. Making a little sound, almost. Always wondered if she heard the noise or felt it. Thrill like a pain red, wonderful, slashing downward, covering her body like a blanket. His seed banging outward, gushing into her throat, spurting, hard as a hose jet, squirting angrily, bang spang, down into her belly, burning gloriously all the while. She came. Felt her cunt open like a flower and rush outward with all that lovely feeling. Again and again and again, like it would go on forever and ever. Prick going limp in her mouth, he was silent, no sound at all but his steady breathing, harsh and wild as the wind hammering against brick buildings, mingling with her own gasped defeat. His heart and her heart thump-thump; thumping, together. The way they should be. Always should be together, Leslie and Ron ... only....
She took her mouth away and moved upward, resting her head on his chest. His heart still banged away, raising her head up and down with each beat. The last time, she thought, knowing she sounded like one of those stupid girls in the confession magazines. And felt the tears underneath her eyes again and the sob in her throat, bursting her chest, hurting like fire.
Ah, well. Everybody has to sound like a girl in a confession magazine once in awhile.
She knew she wouldn't sleep.
She would just lie there and feel his sweet body underneath her and she would take that memory out in the long cold days empty ahead of her, and she would remember exactly how it felt to be his woman again.
So all right. So all the self-help articles said not to look back, and remembering Ron would be looking back. But if she didn't look backward she wouldn't look anywhere at all. Be a blank. A catatonic-withdrawal patient in some mental hospital, staring at a wall for days at a time.
The next day as she packed she continued to look back. Wrapping the mink stole and the silver fox and the black lamb jacket carefully, putting all the furs together in a little zippered bag. Twenty-one pairs of shoes and a matching handbag for every pair. A whore's wardrobe to cover a whore's body, her stock in trade. Never mind the difference between a whore and a call girl who got a hundred dollars a night. If you screwed for money you were a whore whether you got ten bucks or ten thousand.
And Leslie did not like being a whore.
Ron did. Her whoring had bought him a sailboat, a Lincoln convertible, a wardrobe that was the envy of millionaire playboys. And he liked to sleep between the silk sheets she paid eighteen dollars a pair for. He liked to live in an extravagant apartment on the Las Vegas Strip close to the casinos. An apartment where show business people lived, complete with a black girl who cleaned and cooked and got the hell out of there when Ron wanted to fuck. A swimming pool where he could toast his magnificent body to a deep bronze and walk around the pool and have all the goddamn sluts who made their living showing their tits in the shows; showgirls who stood there naked or practically naked, no talent people who got paid for the size of their boobs and their ability to stand still. But it had been all right until she had found out he was taking them on, one at a time, while she was out making the money to keep him in all the things he wanted. Bastard. Spots on the sheets that were not her spots. Wine colored lipstick staining her silk pillow slips. When in her whole life had she worn wine-colored lipstick? And that final nightmare night when she had been consumed with curiosity and that knowing rage ... and had come home unexpectedly, returning the john his hundred bucks. Found him there in bed with a big blonde from Minnesota. Her white milky ass up in the air, his prick hammering home. Stood there looking at what she had known all along she would find, but still shocked and sick. Like watching somebody die. The same feeling. Like watching her younger sister die of leukemia. Knowing she was going to die. Hopeless. Only a matter of time. But still when the life went out of her, when Betty stopped breathing and was finally, utterly dead! It was still impossible to believe. Like it was impossible to believe Ron would really do what she was seeing him do.
"Get the hell out of my house, you goddamn slut!"
Big blonde flopping to the bed on her belly, looking at her with amazed, slightly blank blue eyes. "Huh?"
Her hands suddenly clutching the heavy glass ash tray, her arm raised, coming down hard, smashing that soft white face alongside the jaw.
"Owwww!" A scrambling of long white legs and swinging tits as the blonde skittered around the room, wildly yelling, "My clothes, my goddamn clothes!"
"Get out naked," screamed Leslie. "What difference does it make if you show your body to the people in the building? Thousands of people pay to see it anyway!" Hurling the ash tray through the air, taking a small satisfaction in seeing it thud softly into the blonde's soft belly. Watching her bring her hands quickly upward, clutching her belly, bending over.
"Ron, help me!" Screeching it, infuriating Leslie even more. Causing her to pick up everything on the chest of drawers and fling it. Her comb, her brush, her perfume bottles. The big green glass figurine of a deer Ron had given her for her birthday. The room a swirling glare of flying objects, splintering glass, the sound of breaking, the blonde yelling, Leslie screaming and swearing-and finally the door opening and the blonde's fat ass disappearing, the sound of her bare feet hammering through the apartment and out the door.
Turned, facing Ron. "You son of a bitch, I'll kill you!"
He smiled. "Ah, baby, don't-"
"Don't you 'ah, baby' me, you filthy chippy! On my money you chippy with that cheap slut! Who got me started in this filthy racket? Why do you think I peddle my ass? Answer me, goddamn you, answer me, oh, you sonofabitching bastard, don't come close to me or so help me I'll run this pair of scissors right through your fucking heart!"
That had been a week ago. And it hadn't made any difference how many times he had promised not to do it again. No difference at all that he was lonely, that he got to thinking about her in somebody else's arms, wondering if she told the truth when she said those bastards got to her. She sighed, listening to the wild beating of her heart, angry all over again, remembering. Hands clutched. Palms sweating. The trouble with her was she was smart. If she wasn't smart she might have believed him. Or closed her eyes to it, ignoring it, going along with it. Doing anything to keep him. Because she loved him. And he was almost worth it. Almost. But not quite. Then that last letter from her mother.
Yes, that was another way of looking back. No matter what the books said, she knew it was the only way to go. Look back. Keep the mad anger hot. Otherwise she'd stop packing and be there waiting with a hot cunt and cool sheets for the motherfucker.
Quickly, efficiently, she was packed, dressed, and leaving the apartment an hour after he had left it. Keeping her promise. Leaving both keys on the coffee table, the front door key and the back door key. And no note. No stupid girlish confession-magazine type note full of undying love and sorrow. Gone. She was just flat-out gone, taking most of her clothes with her, sweating a little in the hot car, waiting until she could turn the air-conditioner on, then grateful for a small thing in life, the cool mechanical breeze that blew over her face and caressed her tanned legs.
Now and then as she drove through the thick hot heat of California, heading north, she entertained herself by thinking of Ron. Grinning bitterly, she visualized him coming home, calling her name and going through the empty apartment. Like that song. By the Time I Get to Phoenix.
Stepping in a restaurant at ten o'clock at night, travel-weary and hungry. Asking the waitress who brought the menu, "What's the name of this town?"
"Santa Barbara."
Christ. No wonder she was tired. She'd driven over seven hundred miles, all of it a blur, through the outskirts of Los Angeles, sped through the hideous smog-bound freeways, something she had hated with a passion, had actually been afraid of, and hadn't even been aware of the miles she had covered; the traffic, the smog, nothing.
As she ate she wondered if she should stop where she was. The waitress told her there was a motel a mile down, very nice. And she was tired. But-she wanted to get to San Francisco. She could sleep after she got there. Getting back into her car she drove, thinking of how it had happened. She'd been working at the Desert Inn. Carrying cocktails, wearing a short and sexy outfit, making twenty or thirty dollars a night in tips, satisfied with life. Away from the cloying concern of her mother, who wanted her to settle down in Seattle, get a nice office job, find a nice Jewish boy and get married. So her mother could stop worrying about her. Be able to say to her friends that her daughter was married, was pregnant, was going to Synagogue regularly.
But there was Ron. He'd followed her to Las Vegas. Was already sticking his big prick in her face and she loved it. There had been other men, but none of them had reached her. She had thought of sex with distaste. Is that all there is to it?
The sweaty-pawed pantings of young boys she went to high school with. "Come on, honey, be nice, come on!" Pant-pant-pant. Plunge-plunge-plunge. "Jezus! That was good, wasn't it?" The sneaked motel-interlude with a married man, a man of the world, suave, knowledgeable, "Wait'll I give you what I've got, sweetheart. You'll never want it with anybody else when I get through with you. I don't like to brag, but I've got 'em calling me up and begging me!"
And she had thought. "Boy. I'm really going to get fucked this time."
And felt nothing. Nothing but the going in and out of a big prick. Hard and banging against her insides. Might as well have been a Tampax, much enlarged and made of flesh and blood, but it was nothing. Nothing!
A truck driver from Toledo. Rough but gentle at the same time. No promises. Just the natural blending of their bodies and she had been hopeful again. And felt nothing.
A doctor who came to the business college and asked to have somebody come and type a paper for him. She went and he kept looking at her and she knew what he was thinking. Eyeing her boobs, looking at her heart shaped face, his eyes lingering on her long firm legs and finally asking her if she'd like a drink. Yes, she'd like a drink. Laughing. Nervous and excited. A doctor would know how to do it, wouldn't he? All that anatomy they had to learn. Sure he'd know. Because it wasn't that there was anything wrong with her ... was there?
Fingering her clit, his voice hoarse in her ear. "Darling, God! You're the sweetest little-"
Kissing her, sucking her breasts, feeling a twinge of something or other down there, responding. He was trembling. Shaking like a leaf, his hot dry hands all over her body at once. Putting her on her back on the examination table in his office. Now wait a minute, she thought. Just wait a minute, I'm about to feel something! But he hadn't been able to wait. Or maybe she should have told him she wanted him to keep up that sweet sucking of her breasts, that tantalizing stroking of her clitoris. Hell, though. He should have known better. He was a doctor! Thrusting his big cock inside of her and going off immediately! Je-zus! Leaving her with a belly ache and too proud to admit she hadn't come.
Five times she'd let him fuck her and five times she had felt something, h r cunt awakening from its long sleep. Beginning to contract, beginning to get an appetite. Her clitoris anxious for the continued stimulation of his fingers, but goddamnit, his prick just didn't do it! The male dancer in a ballet that came to Seattle. Fucked her long and fucked her hard, but didn't get her there either.
And then there was Ron, who came swaggering into the office where she was working, looking for his sister, Irene, who worked for the other attorney. Irene all bright of eyes and blushing, looking at him as if he were the greatest thing invented since money. "This is my brother, Ron."
His eyes on Leslie, melting her.
And she knew. He was the one. Her panties were sticky wet in the crotch just looking at him.
Fucked him three nights later and came all over the place. And kept on fucking him every chance she got, wild for it, him teaching her how to give him head, setting her crazy with his tongue wrap ping around her clit, probing deeply with its bulging soft flesh inside her cunt, making her come just by sticking his tongue into her cunt, his hands hard on her breasts.
God!
Telling her about Las Vegas and all the money she could make. Hell. Leslie, there's a lot of money to be made there. You're wasting your time pounding a typewriter for an attorney. You can make as much in a couple of nights as you make all week long over a hot typewriter.
Her mother called him "that weight-lifter." Afraid for her little girl.
But she went anyway, and got a job on the Strip and made all that money and wrote home and told them how much she was making. And of course, it hadn't been enough money for Ron. He had other things in mind. And talked her into it. Very easily, with the unsaid threat behind his teasing voice, If you don't I'll take my wonderful lollipop away from you; you'll never suck it or ride up and down on it again, baby.
Blushing as she drove along, the lights sweeping away the darkness up ahead, ashamed of the stupid sound of her own voice coming back to her from a year ago, "But what'll you think of me? Are you sure you won't, you know! get to thinking I'm not any good?"
And his comforting laugh, his comforting mouth on hers, his comforting prick down deep inside of her, "Hell, baby, of course I won't think any the less of you. It's a business, pure and simple. Look at all the offers you've already turned down. We can live on top of the world."
It came to her then, and she wondered why she had never thought of it before. He had even screwed Irene, his sister. No wonder she was so crazy about him. No wonder she got mad and wouldn't speak to me when Ron and I left Seattle. I wonder why I never thought of that before.
Not that it made any difference. Her cunt yearned for his prick even as she drove, closer and closer to San Francisco.
Turning the air conditioner off and rolling down the windows. Sniffing the soft summer night, appreciating the cool air scented with flowering roadside plantings. A beautiful city, San Francisco. She'd been there once, with Ron. He'd taken her to Fisherman's Wharf, to the Top of the Mark, had laughed at her as she clung to him afraid, on the trolley cars that really did reach half-way to the stars just like the song said. Straight up, the driver sweating as he pulled against the ropes. Leslie scared and big-eyed, whispering, "Ron, what happens if the lines break?"
"Don't worry," he said, his strong arms around her.
She could see the lights, dim against the dawn, but still the lights of San Francisco. Somewhere in that town is a prick that will do for me what Ron's did. Hell. He can't be unique. The only one-of-a-kind like a Lily Dache hat.
Smiling in spite of her weariness. Pulling into a motel and getting out, her legs weak underneath her, the hum of the highway still ringing in her head.
Sleepy-eyed clerk yawning, shoving a book at her. Writing her name, hesitating, should she use a different "name? Of course not. He wouldn't bother trying to find her. He could find another cunt to support him. Probably had one all lined up right then. Screw him.
She signed it. Leslie Frankenburg. Paid the twelve dollars, was shown where her room was, stuck the key in the lock and tried not to allow herself to feel slapped in the face when she looked at the big king-sized bed staring her in the face, all alone. Dragged her suitcase upstairs, the one with toothbrush and nightwear in it, and fell into bed.
In the morning ... well, no. Not in the morning ... Maybe the next morning, she'd look in the newspaper at the want ads. Sleep all day. Get over the trip. Tired. The taste of toothpaste clean in her mouth.
She went to sleep with her hand resting on her cunt. Maybe she'd dream the hard warmth was Ron. It was her last conscious thought before the pounding weight of sleep carried her downward.
CHAPTER TWO
"Good morning, Mr. Otis," the desk clerk in the St. Anthony hotel smiled, inclining her head at the old man, deferentially, in the manner of good hotel clerks. Mr. Otis had been coming to the St. Anthony for many years. A good tipper. A good old man. Nice. Clean cut. Not lecherous, not one of these crude types, foul-mouthed and full of nasty remarks.
"Any mail for me this morning, Miss Watkins?"
"I'll check." She looked in his box, took out seven letters and handed them to him with a smile. "Pretty popular today, Mr. Otis." He always got a lot of mail when he came to town. Probably nieces and nephews. A kindly old man like that-never been married. He'd told her once he was a bachelor. Probably spent plenty of money on all those nieces and nephews. He often spoke of all the children his four brothers had. Liked to show their pictures. Proud. Talking about the grades Connie had made, the fact that John was studying to be a doctor and young Millard, "Named after me, you know-well, he's going to be a lawyer." She watched him totter away, feeling a pang of envy for those nieces and nephews who would come in for a share of his considerable estate when he passed away. Imagine! Owning a whole island. Bigger than Monaco where Grace Kelly went to live with her prince. Mr. Otis had told her once he'd bought the place shortly after World War II. She'd thought maybe he was interested in her then. She sighed, thinking of her flat chest and her buck-toothed smile. Of her angular frame and her flat ass, an un-likely setting for a cunt as hot as any other woman's, hotter than a lot she had heard about. Nobody seemed to realize that lust was built into homely women just as it was built into the pretty ones. As he walked away sue let her hand slide down to the mound that was concealed under her shapeless dress by the back of the desk. It hurt. It always hurt when she thought about having a man of her own. Wistfully, she thought of how nice it would he to have something made of flesh and blood instead of the unyielding surface of the rubber dildo she had finally gotten up enough nerve to send to one of the banned magazines that advertised them and order.
She watched Mr. Otis walk away, watched the alert expression in his eyes as a sexy little kittenish woman pranced down the lobby, looking at the face of every man she met, She pursed her thin lips. It wouldn't do that one any good to give Mr. Otis that come-hither look. He was strictly business. Hired people to work on his island. Probably too pure in heart to even think of worldly pleasures.
Good old, sweet old, kindly old Millard Otis read the letters the clerk had handed him carefully. He smiled as he reached for the telephone. Good old, sweet old, kindly old Mr. Otis, who fondled his heavy prick with a hot hand and spoke in a genteel voice into the instrument.
His ad in the San Francisco Chronical sounded great: Wanted. Man or woman interested in learning the wholesale florist business, by well-known grower. Will pay salary of three hundred a month while learning, advances in keeping with ability. Living quarters and meals furnished. No experience necessary, but only those interested in working need apply.
Mr. Otis did not state in his ad that he was interested only in those unencumbered by close relatives, a husband or wife or children. He culled most of those who were unsuitable for his strange needs by simply reading the letters of application. The ones that began with such things as My wife and I arc interested, and My sister and I have read your ad-Those he didn't bother to call. Sometimes he was able to discourage an interview by talking with the applicants over the telephone. If a girl said she was married but getting a divorce, she was out. She would be in touch with lawyers or maybe change her mind and write the husband, telling him to come and get her. He couldn't have anything like that going on. Sometimes he would ask, gently, if the applicant realized that for months at a time she would be on the island, ask her if she would miss her family much, her friends ... and even if she said she wouldn't miss anybody, he sometimes had his doubts. Mr. Otis never took any chances, and part of not taking chances was listening to the hunches he had when he was talking to young girls on the telephone.
Of course, he did not limit his 'employees' exclusively to young and delightful girls. Sometimes he liked a tasty young man, providing he had the right physical requirements-and was unencumbered. But it was a long and tedious process, putting the ads in the paper, screening the hopeless letters from the possible ones; then calling the ones he thought might do and asking them to come to his suite of rooms at the St. Anthony.
In order to avoid any kind of suspicion, he didn't always recruit his 'help' from the Bay area. Sometimes he went to the Algonquin in Los Angeles. Once he had gone to Las Vegas, and twice to Reno. Another time he had gone to San Diego. But he really did like the atmosphere of the St. Anthony. The aura of quiet dignity was in keeping with his facade.
As carefully as he had nurtured and tended his most exotic flowers, he had nurtured and tended his facade. He walked with his shoulders slightly bent, a humble figure of a man. He knew he looked a lot older than his fifty-two years. Pleased when his hair turned from dark brown to white, he had practiced the expression of kindly concern until it was almost a part of him, even though it was a mask he allowed to creep over his features when he left his island. At home on Otis Island, he walked with his shoulders back, his white hair blowing in the tropical breeze, his white smile flashing, the years he bore humbly when on the mainland suddenly erased from his bearing. The young things he had brought with him often remarked at the change in him. "My, you look ten years younger, Mr. Otis."
And he would always smile and say, "It's what coming home does for a man."
"Hello, Miss Anderson? This is Mr. Millard Otis. You answered my ad in the Chronicle. Could you come for an interview at-two-thirty?"
Her voice was clear, clean and delightful. His balls tingled as he set the telephone down.
He looked at the next letter. John Sheridan. Hmmmm. His letter said he liked working with flowers, that he had already written and sold a book, was interested in living away from the city so he could write in his spare time. A writer. Hmmmm. Writers are liberal people. Maybe wouldn't be too difficult to talk him into a few choice perversions ... interesting thought ... if he's a slender young man, and clean, with blond hair and blue eyes. Never could stand dark men. Funny. Must be some kind of fetish. Like dark women best, although I'll take them anyway they come: blonde, redhead, or dark. But men with dark hair, ugh. Could possibly give him a try. Might take him and the Anderson girl both back with me. Three-way sex isn't a bad idea. Something different ... the coming thing ... all the books, love a trois....
"Hello. John Sheridan, please."
"Speaking."
"Mr. Sheridan, this is Millard Otis." (Man to man type thing, straight-forward, business-like, the best way to handle this kind of voice. It comes on strong...)
He told John Sheridan to come to the hotel at four o'clock.
That left Leslie Frankenburg. Ahhh. Jewish. A little Jewish girl, blintzes, bagels, beads and bangles, hot natured little bitches-remember Alma who would rather screw than eat, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah..!
Her return address a motel. That was nice. Looked promising. Unless she was shacking up with somebody or living with a husband, of course.
He listened while the switchboard at her motel rang and rang. Listened politely while the operator's voice said, "I'm sorry, sir, apparently Miss Frankenburg is not in her room."
He thanked her, said he would call later and hung up. Miss Frankenburg. Well! That was something nice, at least. No husband.
At two-thirty he opened the door to the timid knock that belonged to Julia Anderson. Not bad. Looking her o er from head to foot. Watching the way she walked, a little too stiff, sort of prissified, but you never could tell about the way they walked; he'd known some hot little bitches who walked that way, their walk a kind of cover-up for their deep desires that came gushing out of their cunts in double-time when he started to finger their cunts a little.
She sat down and gave him a half smile. Stingy-looking lips. Too thin, Shy blue eyes. Freckles. Too thin. No. Definitely not. Might do in a pinch, but he could stay in town for a week or two if necessary.
Liked a little meat on the bones. No tits at all. Might as well be a boy. Stood up. Smiled. "Thank you for coming in, Miss Anderson. I'll decide in a day or two, after I've checked your references. Of course, there are several people interested in coming to the island."
She knew it was hopeless for her. Too bad. He closed the door after her and waited for John Sheridan to come. Drinking iced black coffee and smoking two of his rationed cigarettes, gazing out of the window at the pastel-colored buildings of San Francisco. Fingering his cock now and then, in promise.
Sheridan was a tall and slender youth with blue eyes that were made to order and shock of blond hair worn long-not hippie long-but longer than Mr. Otis was accustomed to. Flaxen-colored hair, quite thick. Smooth sun-tanned skin, liked to swim, he said. An easy smile, an open face. Integrity written all over him. Good-looking. Clean-cut, clean-shaven. "Right now I'm working in a restaurant. Bus boy. I've had three years of college, but I dropped out in order to finish my book. I sold it and knew for sure that writing was my bag. But now I'd like to get away from people. Get somewhere I can work out doors and spend my spare time writing. It seems that I've met too many interesting people and I can't say no when my friends call up and ask me to go out with them in the evening. Discipline is what I need, and a chance to work outside."
"Why do you especially want outside work, Sheridan?"
"Because when I was a kid I had tuberculosis. I need all the sunshine I can get. Besides, I really dig it."
"Mmmmm." Looking at him, at his golden lashes, too long for a boy's lashes, upturning on the ends, a sweet look about this kid. Said he was twenty-one. Didn't look it, but then everybody was looking younger than they really were. Must be getting old. Not exactly feminine-looking, but you never could tell. Well ... "I'll call you, Mr. Sheridan. Within a day or two. I imagine you'll like the work very much. Of course, it isn't settled yet for sure, but out of all the applicants, you seem most fit for the flower growing business. Of course you realize that it is a lonely life. You'll not be in touch with girl friends or relatives...."
"I don't have a girl right now. We broke up six months ago. And my folks are dead. All I have is an uncle I don't write to very often."
"Yes, yes." Hmmmm! How nice! "Well, I'll probably be calling you."
At eight o'clock that night he was finally able to reach Leslie Frankenburg. He felt his prick lurch with excitement at the sound of her voice, low, clear, well modulated and very, very, very sexy.
Yes. She would be happy to come to his hotel for an interview.
He hung up and stood up, dancing about the room. Thoughts of Alma Finkleman filled his mind. Her lush little ass humping furiously under his heaving weight. Liked it in the ass, that girl, and the more she could get the happier she was. Felt bad about killing Alma, as a matter-of-fact. If she hadn't been so damned dumb she might still be living. But stupidity he couldn't stand.
Morning found him awake and vibrant, hard pressed to keep his image of kindly old, good old, sweet old Mr. Otis intact. Elated, on fire with the notion of how Leslie Frankenberg would look, he rushed through his usual breakfast of coddled eggs and whole wheat toast, and then up to his room to interview three more hopefuls, two men and one woman.
He dispensed with them quickly, politely, leaving them without much hope. The first man had black hair and greedy brown eyes, and a beard blue-black under his carefully shaved skin. The second one had an invalid brother and a mother back home in Chicago. Too fat, anyway. Fat men depressed Mr. Otis. They always smelled slightly of rancid butter. The woman was impossible. A mannish haircut, sad gray eyes, bumping fifty if she was a day, began her sentences with, "Mother and I-"
Otis visualized her wrinkled cunt, sadly folding its skin and creeping upward into her vagina, full of clabbered cream and the sickening decay of life with mother, the old bitch, who had apparently kept the girl from the lusts of the flesh. Speaking proudly of her unmarried state, the pride a shabby veneer, sick as the look in her lost eyes, underneath the scab of pride the huntress growing middle-aged and sour,, wanting a prick just like all cunts wanted pricks, but already over the hump, riding the crest of her denials.
He rubbed his hands together, paced the floor, did a jig, grinned at his kindly old face in the mirror, smoothed back his white hair, licked his index fingers and smoothed down his shaggy eyebrows and waited for Leslie Frankenburg.
Shooting up from his chair and forcing himself to breathe slowly, ten times through his nose in order to regain his composure and facade, stooping his shoulders over, carefully adjusting his green grape eyes into an expression of sexless interest, he opened the door.
Gulped. Felt his blood pressure shooting upward. Keee-rist! Straight out of the pages of Playboy, Hugh Hefner, you roughish young man, if you'd seen her first she'd be a Bunny, tits bouncing up and down, saucy little devils, hard nipples plain as day, keee-rist! didn't she wear a brassiere! Creamy skin smooth as a platter of rich cream fit for the tongue of a pedigreed cat, big generous mouth (the better to suck you with m'dear?) dimple in one cheek a sweet reward, big brown eyes, clear and calm, long lashes, artificial? What the hell! Long brown hair, softly waving, hanging down to her bigger than life ass, and oh! What an ass! What an ass-ass-ass!
Pretty as a picture in pink linen from her small-arched feet to the sheath dress eight inches above her knees, matching handbag, matching gloves, keee-rist!
"Won't you sit down?" (m'dear and have some Madeira, about a gallon, get on my bed and let me fuck you a little, right there it is, creamy spread of satin, ohhhh, you little devil, you'd look lovely stretched out with your legs wide open exposing your cunt; I'd like to see it flaming, dripping all over the bedspread.)
She leveled her eyes at him. Folded her hands in her lap. Thinking, not a bad-looking old duck, wonder if he's married ... not that it makes any difference ... island, away from the temptation and the knowledge that there were telephones close at hand. Almost any place was a short distance to Las Vegas by jet. Las Vegas and Ron's stiff and deceitful prick.
Mr. Otis showed her pictures of the flowers in bloom. "They have such heavenly scents, my dear, and the colors-you can't imagine! Every shade of the rainbow." She looked at the pictures and saw a blur of reds, purples, pinks and lavenders, and nodded her head.
"What kind of climate does it have?"
"Beautiful. Simply beautiful. A tropical breeze blows constantly. The temperature hovers around seventy-five degrees, winter and summer. I have to irrigate, because it never rains, which makes it dry. Very pleasant with no humidity."
"But how do the flowers grow if it never rains?" He smiled. "Artesian wells. The most pure, most deliciously refreshing water in the world. You see, the island was created by a volcano. When the crust of new-formed earth cooled off there was nothing but crushed stone and lava rock. Then the wind blew and brought in seedlings. Birds dropped them and desert plants began to grow. It was nothing but a barren island for several years. Then the wells made their way to the crust of rock. In the beginning, the wells gushed upward for several feet. Of course I captured the power created by the underground thrust and put it to good use. The irrigation system is efficient and almost without cost."
She shook her head. "I thought wells only occurred in the middle part of the country."
"Oh, no. Under the ocean floor are many streams, rivers, fed through faults, trickling upward from the force behind them. I've seen a spring gushing its clear sweet water out into a foul riverbed. The artesian wells, the springs and underground rivers are much older than the surface of the earth."
She smiled, showing him her flashing dimple and her perfect teeth. She was getting bored with his patient lesson in geography. There was something about him that bothered her. He seemed too nice. Too kind. Too patently well-behaved, as if he were attempting to portray a kindly and elderly gentlemen, interested only in the wonders of nature. Under his facade she wondered if he wasn't more virile than most men, who at least were honest in their outspoken needs of the flesh. He reminded her of a preacher she had known when she was a child. A Protestant minister who had fucked all the members of the choir. Each lady had wanted to believe what he told them because he told them all what they wanted to hear. They all thought they were the only ones. Her parents had clucked their tongues over the gossip, taking the opportunity to point out to her the sneaky traits of the Christians.
"And these are the main buildings," he said, showing her photographs of a lovely sprawling mansion set into the idyllic splendor of the island. It was a French chateau made of redwood and native rock. "Fifteen rooms," he said. "Of course I have a full time staff for my household. A cook, cleaning help, laundress, a man to tend the cows and horses. We ride to the fields. No automobiles on Otis Island. No telephones, either. You'll be quite out of touch with the world for as long as three months at a time."
His prick throbbed under his pants. Bleep-bleep-bleep. Like one of those radar signaling devices; his hormones clashed, raced; his blood pressure percolated through his veins in red hot jabs; fifty million pricks under each pore of his skin, all with erections. She crossed her legs, exposing six inches of delicious thigh encased in panty-hose. The room air conditioner blew a gusty wind across the room, bringing with it her golden scent of honeydew melon, of honey in the pot, of honey for sucking, oh, yes.
Asking, with her head at a small angle as she looked up at him. Such a small young thing, "Where would I stay? Your ad says living quarters are included."
"Oh, in the main house. Of course, there are some cottages on the place, but many of the men who work in the fields are rough characters, really. I shouldn't want you subjected to--not that any of them get out of line. Mexicans, mostly. I can import them cheap and they're good workers. A few people from the States. But you'd have your own suite of rooms in the main house. Bedroom, bath and a small dressing room. Quite nice, really. And you'd take your meals with the rest of the family. We've a long dining room, quite nice, really." Excitedly, he told himself to stop repeating.
"Ummmm." She allowed her tongue to come out of her mouth a little, just the pink tip. Ran it along the edge of her upper lip, looked dreamily into the distance. "I suppose you have a wife and family?"
"No. As a matter-of-fact, I've never married. I-uh, content myself with my various nieces and nephews. Somehow I was never able to find a wife who would be willing to live in such a faraway place. And the flowers are my life. My love."
I bet! she thought, catching sight of the bulge at his crotch. She said, with a little smile, "It seems like a lot of money. Three hundred dollars absolutely clear. A nice place to stay and no expenses." Fluttered her eyelashes, said, "Uhh," as if she hesitated to mention something so gross, "Exactly what-would my duties consist of?"
"Bookkeeping. Secretarial work. Of course, I have an accountant who takes care of the bulk of the-it's a large operation." He wiped his hot head with his handkerchief, aware of the size of her tits, his eyes bugging out, his tongue threatening to come out of his mouth and slide down to the ground-Christ, he'd be tripping over it next thing he knew. He continued, "Of course, the three hundred is just to start. Within a month I'll know if you're going to be able to handle the work, and if you like it-if you want to stay out there on that lonely island, then your salary goes up to five hundred a month."
"Oh, really," Her eyes flickered. Of course, she'd made that much in three days. Some of the big-time gamblers were free with their money. But even so, it was a hell of a lot-when she considered that it would all be clear-yes, a hell of a lot more than she would make behind some little piddling desk typing briefs and depositions. And she would be away from Ron.
He talked on, managing to keep his hands off of her, babbling of the ocean, so nice to swim in, quite shallow close to the edge of the island, warm and clean, lovely. Finding out that she had just thrown over her boy friend, thinking what a stupid bastard he must be to have allowed this little jewel to get away from him, finding out that she wrote regularly to her mother but had decided to break completely away from her parents. Ah, yes. The mother had probably not liked the boy friend. And when the truth became clear to Leslie, the mother's truth had been too painful a pill to swallow. Therefore, she was going to punish her mother. How child-like. How normal. And how-goddamn, wow! Yeah, baby! hee-hooo! sexy, she was, the little bitch. Five feet five, small waist, big tits, a sweet cunt throbbing away down there, he would fuck her up and fuck her down and fuck her 'round and 'round and maybe this time-this one time, he wouldn't grow tired of her and add her to his lovely and unique collection.
He rubbed his hands together, thinking of John Anderson, wishing he could sample him, also, but knowing it would be best not to confuse the issue. Still, if he was intelligent-and a writer of a book, even one book that sold, he could hardly be stupid. And old Wilson was getting suspicious. Asking what happened to Alma and Phyllis and Emma-Louise and Rhoda, to say nothing of Charlie-that sweet stupid little fairy.
Yes. Maybe he'd better get rid of old Wilson and take Sheridan to fill Wilson's shoes. He'd think it over. "The job is yours, my dear," he said to Leslie. "Suppose you think it over and I'll call you in the morning?"
"Very well." She stood up, her eyes sparkling. Flouncing out the door, her pink dress shimmering in front of his eyes, his hands reaching outward to pat her ass, drawing them back just in time to keep him from blowing the whole fucking deal.
He sat down at the hotel desk. Wrote two names. Wilson. Annette.
Crossed them off by drawing two big black lines through each one. Grinned.
Chuckled a little. Annette would make a lovely addition to his collection.
Wilson ... well, he'd think about Wilson when he got to that particular problem.
CHAPTER THREE
"Sell my car!" Leslie looked at Mr. Otis with disbelief.
"Of course, my dear," he told her in his kindly way. "Suppose you stay on Otis Island for an entire year? It would depreciate terribly in a year's time, to say nothing of sitting in storage getting all dusty and rusty with nobody to drive it. And the expenses of storing, why, it's the only sensible thing to do."
"But I'd be lost without a car," she said.
"Not on Otis Island, my dear," he said. "We use horses on the island. Beautiful spirited beasts. Arabian horses of the finest stock. Do you ride?"
"Yes, but-" She thought. Of course he was right. And he was being kind and sensible. Looking out for her own interests. Even when he had looked at her luggage, the entire trunk and back seat of the Comet loaded with clothing, he had said nothing. He just shook his head and offered to go out and purchase some pieces of luggage to put them in. She'd flung everything in there that wouldn't go into her matched set. Lying there loose, sweaters, scarves, nightgowns, negligees, hat-boxes, blouses, bathing suits, five coats, three raincoats, four carrying cases that held her wigs, her postische and her fall. He'd smiled patiently and was still smiling when he came back with some expensive-looking luggage; even offered to help her get all that junk in there.
He advised her to put the money from the sale of the car in an account in San Francisco. "You won't need much on the island. There's no groceries, night clubs, or clothing stores. You can send your paycheck each month to be deposited in the bank and watch your savings grow." Well. That would be nice. Not as nice as watching Ron's prick grow under her tongue-but then not like watching the money she had peddled her ass for go out in dressing gowns for Ron, expensive fishing equipment for him to use on the sleek sailboat she'd bought him. No more watches, cuff links, two hundred dollar suits, stereo equipment, tape recorders, color televisions, no more-no more-Ron. She wondered what he was doing right then. The bastard. Probably staking out some other girl, getting ready to set her up in the hustling racket.
She had thought they would take a plane, but Mr. Otis did not care to fly. "You'll love a little jaunt down the river," he said, with a kindly and somewhat fatherly twinkle in his eye. Maybe she'd been wrong about him being interested in her ass. Just because most men were, it wasn't absolutely necessary for them all to be. Maybe he'd gotten his dong shot off in the war. He'd been in the second world war. He'd told her that much along about the time he was showing her the pictures of all his nieces and nephews and telling her their names and what they were studying in school. Rich old bastard. Not bad to be around, though. Soft-spoken. Decent. Yes. Well, she'd been wrong before about people.
The sun was shining and the sky was an unbelievably blue when the boat launched at the island. White sand glittered along the shore. Palm trees waved in the breeze. It was warm, but only pleasantly so. As she set foot on the island she was reminded of all the post cards she had seen from faraway places with strange sounding names. Pastel-colored buildings, pink and blue and white, dazzling under the friendly sun. A fairyland. Like San Francisco when the sun is shining, which is a rare happening. "Oh, it's beautiful!"
Mr. Otis smiled. "I thought you'd like it."
John Anderson was smiling, too, the sun golden on his blond head. "The quiet," he said. "Listen to how quiet it is."
There was the light lapping of the ocean against the beach. The soft sound of the wind in the palm trees. From the main house a barely audible humming noise was heard, sweet and low. Somebody singing at their work, no doubt. The air was fragrant with a heavenly scent. Spicy sometimes, sometimes sweet, and overlaying everything else was the lovely scent of roses.
"Tomorrow I'll take the both of you out to inspect the fields," said Mr. Otis. "Today you'll just want to rest and get acquainted with the rest of the family." He opened the sparkling white doorway that led into a dim cool hallway floored with terracotta tile. A short, sweet-faced Mexican woman dressed in the national costume of Mexico smiled, blushed and curtsied. She said something to Mr. Otis in Spanish and he answered her. "This is Maria," he said to John and Leslie. "My housekeeper. Doesn't know a word of English and doesn't want to learn. But she runs a beautiful house."
Maria went about the business of setting the table for the noon meal, counting on her fingers, "Uno, dos, tres," snapping her fingers and getting three more big thick pottery plates from the glassed-in cabinet along the south wall. With the additional three plates, eight places were set at the table. Looking at the gleaming black pottery, the shining crystal, the heavy and ornate silverware set against the satiny texture of the table, Leslie began to feel like a princess. Just call me Grace, she thought, as she noted the expanse of the table. Places to seat at least thirty. And plenty of room left over. The dining room opened into an enclosed patio with pastel-colored furniture surrounding a miniature pool. Everything about the atmosphere gave the illusion of cool elegance. Wide expanses of floor space; yet the arrangements and collections were in excellent taste. Floor length draperies moved under the ever-present breeze at the far end of the dining room. A double door swung open, and a beaming cook bearing steaming bowls bustled into the room, placed the food on the table, bowed graciously to Millard Otis, and left.
"That's Emmalina," said Otis. "She doesn't speak English, either."
"Doesn't anybody speak English on your island, Mr. Otis?" asked John.
"Oh, yes, of course," said Otis. "You'll meet everyone at lunch. Come. Let me show you two to your rooms. There is just time."
Leslie's room seemed the size of a bowling alley, with walls of white textured plaster, and an antique four-poster bed of cherry with rosewood inlay that dominated one wall. The bed curtains were richly embroidered dull gold antique satin that matched the bedspread and the draperies along the eight windows. A lowboy with a marble top of white and an ornate dresser, in the same satiny textured wood of the four-poster bed completed the bedroom portion of the room, along with antique brass lamps and rose colored shades, antique table and two boudoir chairs. The rug was oval shaped, an off-white, with yellow roses. At the end of the room next to one of the banks of windows was an antique love seat arrangement with chairs and a coffee table, and a small desk.
"I hope you'll be quite comfortable here, my dear," said Mr. Otis, opening a door to a bathroom. Leslie gasped at the wine-colored sunken tub, at the wine-colored washbowl surrounded with pink and white marble. Even the toilet sat upon a pedestal of marble. White tile glistened on the floor. Dark wine bathmats contrasted with the pale pink curtains at the window.
"It's beautiful," said Leslie.
Otis smiled. "I thought you'd like this suite. I lid an interior decorator plan all the rooms. Color schemes, decor, everything. You'll find your bags have been brought in while we're having lunch. Perhaps you'd like to take care of your clothing, hang it up and put it away before you see the rest of the island. You might want to do that right after lunch.
John Sheridan's room was done in deep blues and avocado green with small touches of red to offset deeper hues. It was a very masculine room.
Otis left them alone for a few seconds, in the foyer while he was speaking to Maria, the housekeeper. John smiled, extending his hand. "It looks as if we'll be spending our time on an enchanted island, Leslie. Everything is more beautiful than I had imagined. I doubt if we'll feel as if we're really working."
She took his hand, feeling rather foolish, the way she always felt when she shook hands with somebody, and smiled back at him. She liked John. Liked him as a friend, something rare in her emotional background. He was nice-looking and friendly, and there was something about him that might have been very appealing to her if she hadn't had Ron on her mind. She was thinking that maybe-just maybe-the friendship with John might grow into something bigger and better.
Together, Leslie and John were introduced to the members of the staff who lived in the big house; the people who would be their companions at dinner. George Wilson was the plantation overseer. He was an elderly man with a limp, sandy hair, pale eyes and a mouthful of brown-stained teeth accounted for by the Copenhagen snuff box obvious in his upper pocket. He stuck out a calloused hand to Leslie and shook it, looking at her with an odd expression in his eyes, an expression that was a mixture of contempt, worry, anger and approval, all mixed together.
Anette Fouche was a very small girl, barely five feet tall, with dark auburn hair cut quite short, a pale ivory skin, amber-colored eves and a sullen expression on her wide mouth. She appeared to be around thirty or thirty-five. Her hands were large for the rest of her, and heavily ringed. Even her index finger sported a big amethyst. Otis explained that Anette was there on a special assignment. "She's a floral designer, quite expert at her work. Together we're writing a book on the art of floral arrangements. It will be distributed through the wholesale houses along with Otis flowers. Not only is Anette doing the designs, but she's also doing the photography for the illustrations. A very talented young woman, Anette."
The Frenchwoman looked at him sideways out of her amber-colored eyes, and then arranged her features into a careful smile as she extended her hand to Leslie. In broken English she stated, coldly, that she was very happy to make Leslie's acquaintance. For John she had a different expression and a different tone to her voice. It was warm, and her smile was beautiful.
Hans Pedersen was somewhere in his forties, with very blond hair cut close to his head, blue eyes, a scar along one side of his face and an expression of bitterness on his face. "Hans is my botanist," said Otis. "My right hand. Burbank crossed the peach with the apricot and got the nectarine. Pedersen has crossed an orchid with a Camilla and we have on display on the table today a lovely bouquet of cam orchids."
Leslie looked at the centerpiece. It was gorgeous. An arrangement of green and brown striped petals that seemed to be suspended in air fell down gracefully onto a bank of pink and brown striped petals that were part of the same flower.
"In time Pedersen will have crossed all sorts of exotic plants and we will comer the market in unusual flowers," said Otis. "And this is Floyd Rutherford. Floyd was once a high ranking officer in the Marines. He's been with me for more than a year. One of the best dust pilots in the business."
The short dark man with the brown eyes and the infectious smile stuck out his hand and grasped Leslie's in a warm clasp. "Glad to have you aboard. One thing about Millard, he certainly picks his secretaries for looks."
Last to enter the dining room was Millard Otis' valet, Raymon. He nodded briefly to Leslie and John and began to eat quietly, without pleasure. Leslie looked at him and shuddered. He had the face of a corpse. Waxy white and dead-looking, his no-color eyes as dead looking as his face, his mouth a narrow slit that turned down at the ends. He hates everybody, Leslie found herself thinking, then told herself he was probably suffering from ulcers. Or maybe he doesn't like being a valet.
She looked around at the strange assortment of people at the lunch table as she ate the deliciously prepared food, repeating their names to herself and identifying them so she wouldn't forget them. First, of course, there was John, who had come to take somebody's place-somebody Mr. Otis was going to let go. And then there was George Wilson, the ugly old man who took snuff, the plantation overseer. Anette, who was French and a floral designer and a photographer. Anette, who definitely did not like Leslie. Hans Pedersen, the botanist who cross-bred an orchid with a camellia, Hans with the scar on his face. Floyd Rutherford the dust pilot, nice looking, young. At least young enough-enough for what?-well! Her thoughts turning, twisting, finding something very appealing about the dark young pilot with his twisted smile, his shy eyes, his open countenance. What was there about men like that that she found so appealing? Yes. Might as well face it. Floyd the dust pilot reminded her of Ron. He wasn't as big, but he was muscular. Well built and strong-looking. She watched him spreading melted butter and freshly made strawberry preserves onto his sopapillas, and noticed his hands were shaking. Frowned. Wondered why. Dangerous, wasn't it, to be that nervous and pilot a plane over low-growing crops? Hadn't she read somewhere that crop dusters were almost uninsurable? Of course there weren't the hazards of the mainline here on the island. No telephone wires, no. electric wires. Otis had told her all the electric power plants were underground. But just the same it didn't seem reasonable that he should be so nervous that he clang-clang-clanged with his spoon getting out strawberry preserves and still be able to safely get a plane in and out of fields of flowers.
And of course there was Raymon. With the accent on the mon. Feeling that tiny little shivering sensation running up and down her spine when she looked at him, aware of things like ghoul, zombi, the walking dead creeping across her mind even as she tried to shake it away with an uneasy laugh at herself.
John, at her side, asked her what was funny.
"Oh, I was thinking about strawberry preserves, and how they-bring back memories of my childhood. My mother did a lot of jelly making and canning."
"So did mine," said John. "Tomatoes and catsup and peaches and green beans. I'm from the middle west. I think all people do a lot of canning back home. Of course people do a lot of freezing now."
A perfectly innocent statement. Then why did Raymon the valet give them that cold and penetrating look?
In the afternoon after Leslie had put away her clothing, she went with John and Mr. Otis to look at the colorful fields of flowers. It was as John had said, like a paradise. The heavenly scents, the steadily sweeping sprays of the irrigation system. Coupled with the heady blue of the sky and the soft and ever-present breeze, it was like nothing she had ever dreamed of. At four o'clock she realized that as much as fifteen whole minutes had gone by without her thinking of Ron!
By the third day she had grown accustomed to the Spanish-speaking household help, the constant scent of all the flowers perfuming the air, and could remember everybody without getting mixed up on names. She asked Mr. Otis when her duties would begin, and he told her in his kindly way that he thought it would be nice if she just rested until the beginning of next week.
Accustomed to the hectic life of Las Vegas, she soon grew bored with inactivity. At two o'clock in the morning on the first weekend she spent on the island, she awakened from a nightmare, her flesh dripping wet with a cold and terrified sweat. For a long moment she lay in the darkness, listening to the frantic pounding of her heart, telling herself it was just a dream. The tropical moon was full and bright, sending its probing fingers into the room through the open draperies. She could see every piece of furniture in her room clearly, yet she had a horrible feeling that she was being watched. Reaching for a cigarette, she lit it with shaking fingers, telling herself not to be silly. It was just the after-math of the dream. Nothing more.
She listened to the surf lapping gently against the shore, watched the orange glow of her cigarette as she smoked it, and by the time she put the cigarette out she was calm again. But hungry. She supposed it would be all right if she went to the kitchen and rummaged around in the refrigerator. Mr. Otis had told her any time she got hungry she was to make herself at home.
After she had eaten a leftover piece of banana cream pie and drank a glass of milk, she decided to go for a stroll along the water's edge. The night was beautiful. Just warm enough to be pleasant without making her feel uncomfortably warm in her white nylon negligee. The sand was cool and deliciously rough under her bare feet. As she walked she looked at the moon and the stars reflected in the black night of the ocean, barely distorted by the small ripples. Looking at the brightness of the dancing reflections she was reminded of the lights of the Las Vegas strip and felt a pang in her heart as she wondered what Ron was doing. Stubbornly, she brushed them away and swallowed past the lump in her throat. Then she sat down on the beach, unmindful of the sand in her white nylon gown. Leaning against a canoe that was turned upside down on the beach.
From somewhere she heard voices. Soft and blurred by the sound of the ocean and the slight breeze, she was unable to make out the words, but now and then she heard a man laughing. Something about the laugh made the hairs on her arm and the back of her head rise. It sounded like the laugh of the Zombi. The valet, Raymon. She had heard him laugh that evening when he had won a game of pool from the dust pilot, Floyd. It was dry and mirthless sounding as two dry bones being rubbed together. Or the rattle of a rattlesnake just as it is about to strike.
She started to get up, to run back into the house when she heard the voices coming closer. Suddenly afraid again. It had been foolish of her to come out onto the beach in nothing but her negligee. It was lined, but it was still sexy. After all, sex had been her stock in trade. She smiled a little at herself, feeling shy of being seen in a somewhat revealing peignoir when just a couple of weeks ago she was hauling her body out of her clothes as soon as she was given the traditional white envelope with the century note inside. Something about the serene atmosphere of the island had brought out the prude in her, she supposed.
Well, she'd just sit there quietly, under the shadow of the overturned canoe. Wait until they had gone on past her, whoever they were.
The soft sound of footsteps plowing through sand came closer and closer. Then there was a man's voice, rough and threatening.
"The hell you won't. I say you'll do it or I'll know the reason why."
And although the woman was Mexican, her answer came in English. It was Maria, the housekeeper, who, according to Mr. Otis, didn't speak a word of English. "No. You know I can't. He'd kill me and have me in that horrible place right along with all the others if he ever found out."
The man spoke again, roughly. He shook the woman's arm. "Goddamit, Maria, you know he'd never find out! How can a dead man find out about anything?"
"Shhhh! Quiet!" said Maria. The whites of her eyes were startling in the moonlight. Very large. "You don't know nothing about him, I tell you. He's evil. Evil and works spells of all kinds. He'd know if I were to do what you say, so I not do what you say. I absolutely not do it, and you can't make me." She jerked her arm away from the man and Leslie got a glimpse of his face. It was Floyd, the pilot. He ran after the fleeing housekeeper, who had raised her dress up to her knees and was running doggedly across the moon-swept sand. He caught her around the legs and sent her falling face first to the sand. They were no more than fifteen feet from Leslie, who watched with a mixture of horror and fascination.
CHAPTER FOUR
Maria snarled, clawing at his face.
Floyd laughed shortly, his white teeth shining in the moonlight. Quickly, he pinned the girl down against the sand with one strong hand against her chest, throwing her Mexican skirts overhead as she continued to giggle and flail at his head and shoulders. A bright pair of bikini panties were ripped from her bottom and flung on the sand. Maria stopped struggling and reached upward with her hands, pushing the voluminous skirts away from her face, leaving it free. She kissed her captor, murmuring over and over that she loved him.
His harsh laugh rang out over the silent beach. "Love! Shit! You hot little minx!" With a fluid motion of grace, Maria reached for the fastenings of his beach trousers and pulled them down, kneeling at his feet. Her long neck arched. She kissed his feet, her hands fondling his ankles, moving upward as he stood over her, the breeze ruffling his own dark hair. With his arms crossed at his waist he watched her, standing like an aloof god, as she worshiped. Words poured from her open mouth, half Mexican, half English, interspersed with many "ahhhhs" and "ohhhhhs,' Flo-weed, I do love you true-leee--yes I do!" Her eyes were closed as she licked him with her darting little tongue, going upward along his legs, her hands paving the way, getting there first, softly massaging, caressing, adoring him with her palms, her fingers and her questing tongue. Her tongue was wet and shining as it reached his inner thighs, dark against his pale flesh; her hands at last found their prize, his cock, brought it to a massive rigidity and all the time her fingers were busily squeezing, working, encircling, just as her tongue was busily sucking, licking, always on its upward journey.
Erect, her back straight as she stood on her knees, she reached the crown of his penis with her lips. Making a savage-sounding cry that blended with the night sounds of the ocean gently caressing the beach, she swallowed his massive tool, thrusting it into her mouth as she cried out, cradling his balls in one hand while the other one reached around his flat buttocks and pulled him closer to her, deeper down inside her throat.
Leslie cringed against the side of the canoe, her cunt wet with wanting, her mouth quivering for the need of the feel of that giant prick inside her own slavering lips. The shadow she was sitting under barely covered her white gown. Unconsciously, she drew her legs up, opened them and reached for her dripping cunt. As Maria sucked, Leslie fingered, rubbing up and down on the hard flesh of her clitoris, feeling it respond, vibrate, grow ever harder and wetter, feeling the moving muscles of her vagina open and close uselessly, the way the mouth of a fish opens and closes when it sees a hand come over the side of the tank ready to drop the goldfish food in.
Her mouth watered. Her belly felt achingly empty. She whimpered, another hand coming up to her jutting breasts, touching them tenderly, then harder, grasping them and bruising them, the way Ron had bruised them when he was giving her head. When Maria released Floyd's flaming prick from her soft lips, Leslie gasped, totally involved, and her agitated hands were utterly still as she watched. Maria stood up on the sand, pressing her naked body against Floyd, keening the way a cat wails when it is in heat.
His hands caressed her up and down her voluptuous body, stopping and squeezing the two round cheeks of her ass, pulling her quivering cunt close to his jutting prick. Maria's body arched, her feet danced, the heels leaving the ground as she thrust herself upward, hammering back and forth against his slick meat. "Ride it," she cried. "I want to ride it!"
Floyd bent down a little and entered her, causing her to bend her body backward and convulse as his prick slid in part way, lifting her feet completely from the sand. His hands supported her ass, feeding his cock to her cunt a little at a time as he pushed and pulled at her ass, sliding her back and forth along the length of it.
"N'yah! Ohhh! Nice, nice, nice," whispered Maria. "Ahhh! Yes, yes, do eet harder, harder, quicker, deeper, give it all to me at once!"
Floyd knelt, gently putting her ass on the sand, and at the same time slipping her legs upward so her feet were wrapped around his neck. Slowly, he lowered her back to the sand, exposing her straining ass to the full light of the moon, an open and exposed organ of strangled delight as the full length of his prick hammered home. From where Leslie sat, all she could see was the heart-shaped ass, spread wide open, the dark little anus excitedly jiggling up and down from the pressure of the hard prick that was funneling in and out of her cunt. She could hear the strangled cries of delight as the girl twisted savagely under Floyd's staggering attack. She could hear his voice, muttering something too low for her to hear. She could see the straining smashing balls as they hammered against the flesh of Maria's perineum and then she heard the long shrill shriek of Maria, "OOooo-eeee! I'm coming, I'm coming!"
Leslie closed her eyes, imagining that it was herself, her own body receiving that delicious beating. Her hand at her cunt grew vicious, the thumb at her clitoris rubbing it hard, her index and middle fingers slamming deeply inside her vagina. But it was no use. She could work herself up to the peak of slobbering and weak desire. She could feel the come wanting to get out, but she couldn't make herself reach a total climax. No matter how many times her clitoris bubbled upward in frothy release, it was not the same as having a man's prick in there, filling her all the way. It was a psychological barrier, she told herself. Like not being able to eat between meals because she was afraid to get fat, she was no longer interested in eating between meals-in fact she could not force herself to eat between meals. And although she had as a young girl known the secret joys of masturbating until she came, she had tasted of the deeply satisfactory means of human contact, and could no longer satisfy herself with her fingers.
As the man and woman lay on the beach shaken and trembling with the satisfaction they had reached together, Leslie hunkered in the shadows weak and trembling with desire. She felt ashamed. At the same time she was consumed by the ache in the pit of her guts, a physical pain as real as the pangs of hunger, but a different kind of hunger. She remained where she was, silently longing for somebody to hold her, to fuck her, her eyes lingering on the two lovers on the beach, watching them as they stood up, stretched, kissed lightly and dressed before resuming their argument.
Moving away from her she heard Floyd say, "Now will you give me the keys? Look. I promised you. He'll never know."
"I can't," she said. "Don't ask me."
"But only for a minute, Maria! Just long enough to make an impression."
"No. I can't." The girl shook her head back and forth and the rest of her words were lost on the wind, stronger now, bringing the edge of the ocean closer to the place where they had made love. As Leslie watched the surf pounded harder, the tide growing higher, coming closer and closer to the place where Maria and Floyd had thrashed about on the sand. Finally a great wave rolled in and ate into the white sand, bringing with it the loudest sound Leslie had heard since she came to the island. And then the tide receded, an inch at a time, until it was again where it had been when she had first sat down under the shadow of the canoe, all traces of the lovemaking erased from the beach.
Dawn was coloring the sky pink and gold when she finally left. She was cold and her teeth were chattering as she went through the patio to the stairway. She would sleep late. Mr. Otis said it was all right. If she didn't come down to breakfast no-one would care. Nobody would even notice. After all, she wasn't supposed to go to work for a few days.
A sound startled her. She flattened against the wall, afraid of whoever it was, even though she didn't know why she should be afraid. She supposed it was a holdover from her early distrust of Millard Otis that was bugging her, something she had squelched as she told herself she was rationalizing, not really wanting to get too far away from Ron and his powerful appeal.
As she crouched against the wall she tortured herself by thinking of Raymon, the valet. What if he should suddenly appear at her side? What if he reached out one of his cold, dead-looking hands and touched her? She would rather be touched by a rattlesnake. What she had heard was nothing but the sound of a door opening. Mr. Otis was coming from Anette Fouche's room. So! That was the reason the Frenchwoman had disliked her. She and Otis had been making it. And she knew she was far more appealing than the rather haughty-looking redhead.
Otis brushed past her without seeing her. He was patting his prick. He belched as he passed on by and she stifled a giggle. She shrugged as she went on up the stairs to her room. The smile was still on her face as she opened her door. It was Otis's business if he wanted to hump the help, and if the help wanted to be humped ... well ... that was their business. With his prick so big, apparently he had quarreled with the-redhead. For a second she regretted not having reached out and touched him as he passed her on the stairs. She could have managed to seduce him easily enough. And she wondered, in spite of herself, what he would be like in bed. She'd known a lot of older men who were better than young ones. They had more stamina, were able to hold out longer than a lot of the young men. She got into bed and wondered what was wrong with her. Of course she wanted Ron. Of course watching Floyd and Maria make love had aroused her. But even so, Millard Otis held a strange fascination for her. Like the big cats in the zoo ho made her stare at them, made her want to stroke their rippling muscles, but at the same time terrorized her.
Her room was almost light as she stretched out on her bed, taking delight in the warmth of the blanket she pulled up around her shoulders Her eyes lingered on one side of the wall, looking with out really seeing a portrait hanging there. Or was it a painting? At any rate, it was a picture of a young girl, sweet with the softness of youth dressing for a party. The reflected face was in the mirror on the dressing table in front of the girl in the picture.
Somewhere she had seen a picture like that before. No, it wasn't the picture she had seen, it was something about it. The glass had a dull look to it. It was shiny, didn't reflect the way most glass reflected things back into the room. She stiffened as she remembered where she had seen glass like that before. In Phinneas Hadley's house, that was where. She had spent an entire week in the big mansion south of Las Vegas. "He's a weird one, Leslie," said one of the other girls who worked the strip area. "He'll pay you, but he's apt to ask you to do almost anything." She'd said she would do almost anything for money, and at the time she had wondered just how far she would go. Then the other girl had laughed and said, "He wanted to rub his prick up and down my hair. He came in it and then he ate it off the hair."
"Which hair?" Leslie had asked.
"The hair on my head!" The prostitute had been convulsed with laughter and Leslie had waited for the eccentric old millionaire to ask her to let him come in her hair, but he hadn't. Instead he had asked her to watch with him through the two-way picture. He'd giggled and twitched his white mustaches, slobbering all over her as he giggled, his long and bony hands hot on her naked back.
"I've got this set up I can look in there and see everything that goes on. There's a picture just like it in their room. But theirs doesn't have the two-way glass in it. He-he-he, look at 'em go at each other."
Leslie had watched two girls in the act of cunnilingus, the come dripping down both sides of the blonde's mouth as she looked up from the hairy muff of the brunette, a satisfied smile on her face. As the brunette put her head down on the blonde's cunt, old man Hadley had suddenly grabbed Leslie and forced her to bend her neck so that her chin almost rested on her breast bone. She wondered what the hell he was doing, but it didn't matter as long as he didn't break her neck.
She had heard him panting, his breath coming in jagged gasps. His cock was hard as a club, flailing her about the neck and shoulders.
"Take it easy," she'd said.
"Hey," he'd cackled. "Heh-heh-heh." And promptly shot his wad off all over the back of her neck, dragging the head of it around and around, letting it drip and spurt into her ears. She'd squirmed when it ran into her ears, and then he had held her around the neck and slowly, efficiently, and with much relish, licked it all up. He stuck the tip of his tongue into her ears and lapped up the last drop. As he licked he held his breath, and when he was finished he drew a long sigh, belched, said, "Excuse me," and giggled some more. "I bet you never had anybody do that to you before, did you, honey?" he asked.
"No," she'd answered. "Can't say as I have."
"It saves it," he'd said, in a practical voice. "Stands to reason when you stop to think about it. Take a man as old as I am-I'm seventy-three, you know. Can't afford to waste any of it. So most of the time I get myself off in some area where I can get all that juice back into me. It's just a simple fact of increasing returns versus diminishing returns."
She'd almost laughed in his face, but she shrugged. After all, he had agreed to pay her plenty. She'd heard that sperm was pure protein, but anybody smart enough to make billions of dollars in electronics ought to know better than to think he could save his virility by eating it back into his belly.
She smiled as she thought about old Phineas and his two-way portrait, wondering if he was still active sexually. It had been more than two years since she had seen him. Her curiosity was too much for her, even though she kept telling herself that of course the glass that covered the water color wasn't two-way glass. She climbed up on a chair and looked intently at the picture. At first she couldn't see anything but the reflected iris of her own eye. Then she got closer to the picture and looked into another room.
Obviously, it was the room of the Frenchwoman, Anette Fouche. The redhead was down on her hands and knees searching for something on the floor. She found it. An earring, which she screwed into her ear lobe. She looked at the black trunk that was open on the floor. With a nasty look on her face she banged the lid shut and kicked the shiny sides sharply. Then she bent down and fastened the lock.
Somebody knocked.
"Yes?"
"It's me, my dear," said the voice of Mr. Otis.
The impatient look crossed the Frenchwoman's face. But her expression was one of pleasant solicitude as she opened the door. Feeling like she was watching an old-time melodrama, Leslie continued to watch through the peep-hole.
"Still intent upon leaving, my dear?" asked Mr. Otis. He sat down in a plum-colored chair and pulled a bunch of grapes out of a paper bag. "Have some grapes?"
"No, thank you," said Annette. "Yes. I'm still leaving. I can see well enough why you are so taken with the charms of your new secretary. I don't want to stand in your way."
Mr. Otis laughed. "Now, my dear, be reasonable. Miss Frankenberg is simply an employee. You were fully aware of Alma's plans to leave the island. Surely you don't think I can take care of the vast amount of my correspondence alone. Or did you think I should have hired a male secretary?"
"What do I care about whether you have a man or woman secretary?" blazed the Frenchwoman. "Anyway, most of the men who work as secretaries are fairies. I can't see you going for them."
"But there is nothing-absolutely nothing between Leslie Frankenberg and myself," said Mr. Otis, munching on grapes.
"Ah, but there will be," said Annette. "And when it happens I don't want to be around."
"Very well, my dear. When did you plan to leave?"
"Day after tomorrow."
"And how did you plan to leave?"
The amber eyes looked at him angrily. "Well, I supposed you'd be considerate enough to let me use the telegraph system and send for a boat." He didn't answer, so she came close to his face and looked up at him, her small frame quivering with indignation. "Or did you plan for me to swim across to the mainland? A hundred and fifty miles is a long way for a person to swim. Especially somebody who can't swim at all."
"My dear, you are being most unreasonable. Of course I'll call a boat for you. Now please sit on my lap for a moment. I do hate to think of losing you." Her voice was flat. From the place where Leslie was watching she could no longer see the woman's face. All she could see were her shapely legs dangling over the arm of the chair, one curving arm as it went around Mr. Otis' neck, and the crown of red hair. "Millard, you know you don't hate to think of losing me. Don't make things worse by lying. And you don't have to feel badly about the book. I've made all the shots. They're all on film ready to be developed and printed. The book is as good as completed."
His voice was light with a smile in it. Watching the back of his head, Leslie wondered what his expression was like. He said, "You don't need to pretend undying love for me, my dear. I'm quite aware of what your undying love is for. Not every little French girl from Canada has come so close to getting her hands on several millions dollars.
"Oh, bullshit, Millard, Knock off the Canada stuff. I know you've found out I never saw Canada. But I am French."
"Yes," he said, managing to get the sound of sex, hot and liquid in his voice.
Her legs moved, one small arched foot rapidly drawing circles in the air. The arm that had been around his hand disappeared from sight and the man on the chair slumped downward. Leslie could no longer see the back of his head. They spoke together for a few more seconds and then Millard Otis stood up, holding the small redheaded woman in his arms. His face was tanned and healthy-looking, and his smile was white as he carried her to the four-poster and parted the plum-colored velvet hangings. "Undress," he said softly.
Even as she removed her pale green slacks suit, the girl argued. "I don't see why I jump every time you say something, Millard. Even now, I don't see why I do it. I guess I'm just-helpless."
He dropped his own clothing to the floor, mocking her. "About as helpless as a fox. Why can't you be honest with yourself, Annette? You played footsies, hoping to marry me for my money. You ended up getting the best pussy-sucking you ever got in your life. Now you're leaving my island. Cutting your nose off to spite your face. I told you I'd never marry you, so you got your ass out of joint. But you still live and breathe for sex. We could have remained friends, you know."
"Shut up," she said. "I've never remained friends with old lovers. There's something vulgar about the idea."
"Very well. But you don't think there's anything vulgar about the idea of me eating your cunt-now that we're all through?"
"No. Not when it's something I want. It's like being hungry. Just because I don't happen to like the chef doesn't mean that I'm not going to eat her perfectly marvelous food."
Otis reached for her pointed breasts. "You are a bitch, aren't you?" He squeezed the nipples, pulled them toward him, stretching them outward until they were like long pink ropes and allowed them to snap back against her breasts. She squirmed with pleasure.
He knelt, his body surprisingly hard-muscled and young-looking. Burying his face in her muff while his hands continued to knead her pointed breasts, he mouthed her trembling little cunt while she wriggled up and down with pleasure. Her eyes were closed, her mouth a grim line of lust as she allowed him to tongue her, to titillate the tissue of her livid cunt. Up and down the slit his mouth went, his tongue long and hard and pointed, digging away, thrusting, darting, and now and then the tongue disappearing inside his mouth and his white teeth taking little nibbles out of her tender plum.
She remained silent, all of her energy hard on her ass, gyrating it upward, wildly thrashing it about as his teeth fastened on the hard little red ball of a clit. He chewed and she opened her mouth and slobbered, expelling her breath in a long sigh. Sticking two thumbs savagely into her cunt, he dug them in deeply, pulling her opening apart so that it was a big black hole, and thrust his tongue in deep, in and out, around and around. Her flat belly bounced up and down with an inner force. Muscles quivered, breasts swelled to reach her own hands that were wildly squeezing them.
"Bitch," he said shortly, and withdrew his thumbs.
She looked up at him, her expression one of hatred. "Don't stop," she said through her teeth. "Don't stop. Please. Don't stop."
"Tell me what you want me to do," he said, grinning.
"Eat it. Eat it. Please. Do it some more!"
"No. I'm finished with eating it. I want to fuck you now."
"All right. All right. Anything. Fuck me. Do anything you want. Just do it."
She was utterly still, flat on the bed, her legs dangling over the edge where they had dropped when he had finished. The palms of her hands were lying upward, helpless-looking against the bedspread. Her breasts quivered, her belly muscles contracted, her spread open legs exposed her dripping and hungry cunt, but she was unable to move, unable to do anything but lie there and beg him. It sickened Leslie to see a woman, any woman, even a stupid little French woman, reduced to a quivering mass of slavish humanity.
"Get up there on that desk," he ordered.
"Oh, Millard, you know I can't do anything when I'm like this," she whimpered. "I can't move when I get this hot."
He picked her up in his arms and flung her face downward on the desk, her small tight ass curving over the edge of the desk, the fronts of her legs against the knobs of the drawer. Parting the cheeks of her ass he grinned down at the tiny brownish asshole, pulling it apart with his thumbs firmly against the sides, watching it open and close as he manipulated the pressure of his thumbs. His prick was long and thick, the color of scarlet, an angry purple on the flaring crown. Dipping it barely into her juicy cunt, he withdrew it quickly as she moaned, then thrust it savagely into her ass.
She cried out.
He smiled and began to saw in and out of her as she lay passive against the desk, three pens and once pencil round and hard and digging into her breasts as it was flattened and pressed from all the pressure he was putting on her from above.
Slowly, he backed away from her, dragging her off the desk, his hands supporting her at the waistline. She seemed small as a doll, inert, her back bending forward, her arms dangling downward to the floor, her belly held firmly in the palms of his hands. Her ass was a small and quivering mass of flesh as he fucked it, fucked it in and out, holding onto her as he walked about the room, watching his long prick come out of her asshole and then go back in, quickly, with a sucking, gurgling sound each time he pounded his prick home.
Suddenly he turned her around, her small body yielding to his brawny arms, pivoted, spun, skewered on the end of his prick and spinning on it. His hands threw her around and around, her breasts and arms and legs lifeless as he spun her, laughing.
Then she opened her mouth and screamed, a lusty, animal sound of shrieking lust, and began fucking him back, her strength an equal match for his own. Perched on his prick, facing him, humping up and down, slashing his back with her fingernails, drawing the blood and viciously snarling until she tensed, exploded and fell against him, once more flopping lifelessly, arms and legs dangling, held in place by nothing but his long hard prick. He put her on the bed and continued to hammer away at her until he came, slamming into her with complete abandon as he spurted his juice upward and inside of her waiting belly.
Leslie climbed down from where she was watching, shaken. She told herself she was getting to be a regular voyeur, watching people in their most intimate moments. Her cheeks were hot with shame as well as desire the scene had brought frothing to the surface of her mind. Softly, she said to herself as she looked into the mirror, "This place is a fucking sex den."
The next day Annette was gone.
"I didn't see the boat," said Leslie at dinner.
"It came while you were sleeping late this morning, my dear," said Mr. Otis in his kind voice. "Where's Wilson?" asked Pedersen.
"Oh. He left with Annette," said Millard Otis. "He's been wanting to leave the island for a long time. And since John Sheridan was willing to risk a few months of boredom among the flowers, I was able to let him go."
"Nothing but a fucking troublemaker anyway," said Floyd. "I never did like the son of a bitch."
"Floyd! Watch your language. There is a lady present." Otis looked at Floyd angrily, his mouth a thin line of disapproval. Floyd flushed and apologized for his language.
During the night Leslie heard sounds in the room vacated by Annette. She wondered who could be in there at midnight. Against her own will, she found herself climbing up on the chair and peering through the painting. Nobody was in the room, but somebody had just shut the door, apparently leaving, just as she climbed up and looked in. Annette's trunk was still in the same spot on the floor where it had been the night before. Three pieces of luggage were lined up alongside the wall ... expensive white leather luggage with Annette's initials in black. A.T.F.
Puzzled, Leslie got down from the chair. Why would Annette leave her belongings? The wave of unreasonable fear washed over her again. She tried to put it aside. There were a lot of reasons the luggage was left behind. Maybe there wasn't room for it on the boat, for instance.
A knock sounded at her door. She stared at it, and at the night chain she had latched. Of course, she could open the door and look through the couple of inches it would open before the chain stopped it. There was nothing to fear, not really. Then why was she so afraid? She watched the door and waited. The knock didn't come again.
CHAPTER FIVE
Millard Otis pressed down on the stainless steel sprinkler head that protruded from the ground in exactly the same way that all the hundreds of other sprinkler heads did. Looking down at the innocent piece of metal, anybody would think it was just another sprinkler nozzle. It even gushed out hundreds of revolving sprays of streams when the works was turned on. The difference was that this particular head operated the mechanism down below that opened the cellar door. That was exactly what it was. A cellar door set into sod, with green things growing verdantly on the door itself. In the midwest, Millard had seen hundreds of storm cellars, havens from tornadoes that came funneling black and treacherous from the sky, uprooting whole towns, chickens and babies in cradles. His old grandmother, who had finally owned an acre of ground before she died, had begrudged the space taken by the cave. The mound of earth that covered the arched area underground had been thriftily planted in cucumbers. One day she got to looking at the wooden door, an abomination, a barren stretch of her precious land. Two feet wide and six feet in length, the door of silver-gray wood represented wastefulness to her. She went to the grocery and bought orange crates, ripped off the soft pine boards and nailed on lips so that the door was no longer a door at all, but a box. Treating the lumber with oil and formaldehyde to insure against rot, she waxed several layers of brown paper with paraffin, and then shoveled in rich black loam. She carefully seeded her box with tomato seed, covered it with glass to keep out the frost and lo! She had a cold frame. Long before tomato plants were available in the greenhouses, Millard's grandmother had them, hale and hardy, white blossoms stretching wide their tiny mouths for pollen. By hand, the old lady would fertilize the plants, chuckling gleefully when the first hard knobs of green tomatoes were discern-able. When she removed her thrifty plants to the garden long after danger of plants she used her cold frame for lettuce. When the tender green leaves were barely spoon-sized she served it up on her table; fertilized her productive door and planted the empty space in spring radishes. When her radishes were ready to pull up and eat, she was cheerfully making green tomato pie and watching some of the braver plants turn from a sickly yellow to a one-sided red, bragging about her tomatoes that would be ready for eating when other people in town would just be setting out their plants.
Millard had remembered that door when he set about the task of installing his underground chamber. He wanted a door that only he knew about. He wanted it available and ready, and not too far from the house. It was set into the earth and carefully made of strong timber. Then it was oiled and treated and several layers of polyethylene plastic were placed on the surface. In that particular area only Millard worked. Each plot was exactly the size of the door, square and separated by wooden partitions. Blood-red daffodils grew on the door. Next to them grew bright gold daffodils flecked with the blood red. Blue frosted daffodils grew in the next plot and up in the next checkerboard plot grew another square of blood-red plants. Millard was attempting to perfect the strain, but the plants stubbornly refused to duplicate the purity of color the next year. The hybrids, especially in the bulbous Eurasian suede narcissus variety, had long been one of Millard's favorite projects. Together with the frustrating but interesting work of combining a lily of the valley with a bluebell in order to bring forth a marketable and hardy variety of the old fashioned favorite, the entire area of one acre was taken up by these squared-off areas. They were a fantastic sight, flat after flat of exotic plants, each one more beautiful than the other, and a perfect camouflage for the door that opened at pressure from Millard's foot on the sprinkler head. Under the door was a Rube Goldberg contraption that activated in just the right pattern, nothing happened. The electronic device merely remained activated. But when Millard turned his foot a certain angle, turned it back, turned it around so that the metal head was rotated three complete turns, the electronic device whirred into action and the door slowly opened upward. When Millard's foot stepped on the fourth step down, the door automatically closed, leaving nothing for the casual observer to see but a flat of blood-red daffodils, exactly like several other blood-red daffodils in other flats throughout the area. Surrounding the enclosed area where Millard worked on his prize hybrids was an opaque fence of high intensity laminated plastic. It was twenty feet high. The only entrance to the area was a stainless steel door that could only be activated by Millard's set of three keys. Thus he was insured privacy when he chose to explore either the complexities of horticulture or the complexities of what went on below the surface of the plantation.
His footsteps echoed through the long narrow underground hallway. The tunnel was illuminated with electric lights set flush into concrete walls. Turning left, he went through an open doorway into a brightly lighted room and placed Annette on a hospital bed. He gently pulled a sheet up over her naked body, folding it under her chin. Her eyes were closed. She breathed deeply. With a satisfied sigh, he looked into the hospital bed next to Annette's. Marie, the housekeeper, had not moved since he had brought her down the night before. He frowned. "Bitch," he said. "Upsetting my plans. Well, things could be worse. I'm glad it wasn't the cook."
On an immaculately gleaming instrument table was an equally immaculate telephone. Millard lifted the receiver, listened, and dialed one number. In a second he said, "Morgan? I've got two girls. How about Sunday afternoon?"
"Very well," said the voice on the other end of the line.
Otis hung up the telephone. Selecting a hypodermic needle from a sterile cabinet, he drew yellowish fluid into the vial, replaced it in the sterile cabinet, swabbed both sleeping girl's arms with alcohol and then injected the contents of the vial into Maria. He placed the needle in a metal tray and got out another one, repeating the process on Annette. Then he turned out the lights and left the room, continuing to walk through the long narrow tunnel until he reached another door. From his pocket he took out a bundle of keys and inserted one into the lock. It sprung open into a long narrow room illuminated with the same kind of ceiling lights. A tall thin woman stood up when he entered.
Bowing low, she spoke softly. "Master."
"Get me Julia and Franceska," he said imperiously.
The woman bowed deeper. "Yes, Master."
She disappeared into another room, her footsteps making no sound against the heavily carpeted floor. While she was gone he strode about the room, picking up small art objects, looking at them and putting them down. Within a few minutes the older woman returned, a lovely young girl on each side of her. One was a redhead, the other one had black tresses down to her hips. Both wore transparent skirts of pastel colors with nothing underneath Their breasts were bare, jiggling provocatively up and down as they swept quickly down and upward in an attitude of worship.
"That will be all, Geraldine," said Millard. The woman continued to stand, staring at him with lifeless eyes. Her head was bowed in an attitude of humbleness.
The girls walked through the long tunnel with Millard. They didn't smile, nor did they speak. They walked serenely, their heads up, their delightfully beautiful bodies glowing under the lights. Their eyes were lifeless. Seeing but not seeing. The eyes of people who have been hypnotized or people who are in shock. The eyes of sleepwalkers.
Millard opened one of the doors that led off the long tunnel. The room was dimly lighted with indirect lamps set into the ceiling, just as the rest of the lighting was done in the underground rooms. But the lamps were soft, rose-colored and shaded. The floor was covered in a deeply piled carpeting of dark wine red. White furnishings were stark against the dark draperies and rug. Going to a cabinet, Millard took out a bottle of wine and poured it into a crystal goblet. He drank and looked at the girls who stood directly in front of him, their heads slightly bowed, their hands folded obediently.
"Dance for me," he said.
Franceska went to a stereo unit built into one wall. The music was slow, sensuous and haunting. She began to dance, her graceful motions blending with the music, becoming a part of it. Julia walked to the other side of the room and fell into step with the other girl. Together they danced, removing their clothing as they moved their hips and torsos, seductively, each movement intricately beautiful. When the song was finished the girls stopped still, standing again in front of Millard Otis, their heads bowed and their hands folded in an attitude of servitude.
"Prepare the bed, Franceska," said Otis. He reached with his arms for Julia, the redhead, who stood for a moment in the circle of his arms utterly still. "Kiss me." She began to kiss his face, his cheeks, his neck, rubbing her breasts against the roughness of the material of his shirt, reaching with her slender hand for the fastenings of his clothes.
He smiled, allowing the girl to undress him. "Beautiful," he said, looking at her breasts.
Franceska once more stood in front of him, waiting. Shoving Julia to one side, he said, "Get into the bed both of you."
With fluid motions, each girl glided to the bed and got in, their luscious forms pale against the dark wine-colored sheets.
Millard climbed over Julia, who was on the side closest to him. He stretched out in between the girls. "Julia, you suck me. Franceska, you give me a French bath."
Immediately the girls did as he commanded. Astride him, Julia held his limp prick, fondling it for a few seconds, bringing it to a reluctant half-soft erection. Her mouth came down on the head softly, her tongue lapping it in gentle little circles while her hands remained busy on the stem, push-pulling it, bringing it to hard and throbbing life. Her other hand caressed his balls, squeezing them with the gentlest of motions, stroking them with each of the tips of her fingers. The other girl stretched out over his chest, sideways across the bed. Her bright pink tongue came out and licked every portion of his chest, lightly teasing his nipples with the tip of her tongue, her hands busily stroking his hard chest as she licked him from top to bottom, in unison with the timing of the other girl's mouth on his prick.
Millard moaned, his eyes closed in ecstasy, his hips moving up and down to meet the questing tongue of Julia. His mouth opened and spittle formed and foamed in the corner of his lips. Franceska noticed and licked it away.
"Stop," he cried hoarsely. "Stop for a minute!" Instantly, both girls lifted their heads from his body and waited while Millard turned over on his belly. "Now," he instructed. "Tongue my asshole, Julia. Franceska, you can bathe me with your tongue while she's doing it." The girls complied automatically, as if someone had wound them up and held the key while he spoke his instructions. Julia knelt between his strong legs, spreading them a little wider to get at his hard ass. Her delicate hands spread the cheeks of his buttocks in a gentle motion, and without hesitating a moment, her face went down between the cheeks and her darting pink tongue came out, shoving itself into the dark brown anus. The girl continued to keep up the tongue movements for a few minutes while Millard writhed about on the bed. Then with a savage roar, he rolled over again and put the redhead on his towering prick. She came down with a whacking sound, her face as immobile as Franceska's, who was simply lying still and staring at the ceiling.
"Move up and down, goddamnit!" yelled Otis. The redhead began to frantically move up and down on his cock, her back straight as a ramrod as she jounced up and down. "Swivel your fucking hips!" cried Otis, and the girl instantly complied. He reached for the breasts of the dark-haired girl, twisting them brutally as he came. She continued to lie utterly still, her face was a mask, as if she were asleep with her eyes open, unfeeling of anything, even pain.
Roughly, Otis flung the girls to the floor. "Goddamn cold unfeeling bitches," he said. He propped his head up on an elbow and looked at them, lying like statues where he had thrown them. They looked like beautiful dolls, left by a careless child on the floor, arms outstretched, legs at odd angles. Their eyes as lifeless as the eyes of department store dummies in windows.
"Bring me some wine, Julia," he finally said. "And get the hell up from the floor and sit down, Franceska." Julia brought a goblet of wine and handed it to him silently while Francesca sat woodenly on a chair. He drank the wine and pushed back his heavy shock of white hair. "Talk, damn you. Say something, Julia."
"Yes, master," said the redhead. "What would you like me to talk about?"
"Shit," he said. "You, Franceska. Haven't you got anything on your mind?"
The dark-haired girl opened her mouth and spoke mechanically. "No, master. Nothing. Nothing at all. But if the master wishes perhaps I could learn something that would be entertaining to him."
"Balls," he said. His hard strong hands pushed back a sliding panel in the back of the bed and took out a white telephone. After he dialed one number he waited, lighting a cigarette from the tray on the bedside table. "Morgan? Listen. I'm getting tired of the way you're making these girls behave. It's one thing to make them do as I say, and it's another to make them so fucking brainless that they won't do anything without an order. How'd you like to be fucking away and feel like you might as well be jerking yourself off? Christ, it's frustrating as hell to have to stop right in the middle of the action and tell them to fuck harder or change their pace."
The voice on the other end spoke abruptly. Otis listened, nodded his head and spoke again. "Take your time on my housekeeper and the little Frenchwoman when you come over Sunday. Don't botch the job. I couldn't get much out of these girls if the buyers find out they're like a couple of Zombies."
"Go away," he said to the girls. "Go back to Geraldine."
Silently, the girls turned and went toward the door.
"Wait a minute!" Otis jumped up and flung their costumes at them. "Take these things with you. Christ. You don't know a diddly-damn thing, do you?"
"No, master," said both the girls, their voices blending beautifully.
"How would you like it if I sold you?"
The girls stared at him blankly.
He jumped off the bed and began tickling the redhead's ribs. She stood there as if she had turned to stone. He yelled at her in frustration. "Don't you feel anything? You used to be as ticklish as hell."
"Feel, master?" The question was a monotone.
"Go on. Go back to your rooms."
After the girls left, Millard sat on the bed and finished his cigarette. His face was black with anger. After a while he dressed and left the room. When he was upstairs on the ground, he left the enclosed area where his special hybrid flats were and went directly to the compound. The moon was an oval, casting a pale light on the grisly scene in the tool room.
Otis locked the door and turned to look at the carcass hanging on a nail, baked and bloody, spiked through the back like a side of beef. Grabbing a sharp knife from the work counter, he hacked off a slice of the wrinkled dark prick that hung down shrunken and flaccid. He sniffed it, took a salt shaker from the counter, sprinkled the meat and started to chew. He made a face, his eyes taking in the pool of dried blood on the floor where he had bled the corpse, hoping to improve the flavor. Determinedly, he chewed and chewed, adding more salt every time he hacked off a slice, until the stringy member was gone. Then he started on the testicles, chewing harder. When he had eaten all he could, he removed the body from the hook, hefted it over his shoulder and flung it into a barrel of fertilizer. With care, he trundled the dolly under the barrel and wheeled the heavy object out the door and up a slight rise to an old fashioned flower garden.
For the first time since she came to the island, Leslie came down to the dining room in time for breakfast. It was Sunday. The ever-present breeze was blowing the white draperies gently inward. Emmalina was bustling in and out of the swinging kitchen door, depositing great mounds of whipped butter and pitchers of syrup on the table. The waffles were served piping hot along with crisp little sausages, spicy, brown and sizzling hot.
The men looked up from their plates and eyed Leslie. She wore a pale blue blouse with ruffles at the sleeves and matching shorts.
"You look beautiful this morning, my dear," said Mr. Otis, in his kindly and benevolent way. "I imagine your presence at the breakfast table is a treat to every masculine eye in the room, especially the young men who probably feel as if they're serving time on the island."
John Sheridan stood and pulled out her chair. His hand lingered as it swept across the back of her neck. He smiled. "She smells good, too."
Hans Pedersen sniffed in appreciation. "What is the scent?"
"Something a dear friend in Denver, Colorado prepared for me," she said, smiling. "It's called Windsong."
Her eyes met the dark and slightly mocking glance of Floyd Rutherford and she felt her mouth trembling, widening into a deeper smile. Looking from his dark and brooding good looks to the clean blond open countenance of John Sheridan, she found herself wondering which one she would try first. It had been a long time since she had lain in bed with a man. Her body had grown accustomed to the feel of a man's prick in her cunt. She could feel her clitoris thrumming away down there in her crotch as she sat down, and knew that before the day was out she was going to have one of them. It was strange how it had narrowed down to the choice between John and Floyd. Of course, Hans Pedersen was a man, but he seemed too remote, too wrapped up in horticulture to give a thought to a woman. That left Mr. Otis himself, who apparently was not interested in her charms, or at least to date he had left her strictly alone, and Raymon, the valet, who made her shudder just to look at him. So when she got right down to it, there wasn't much of a choice left to her. She smiled equally at John and Floyd, spreading her conversation all around the table, including everyone. But she managed to let both John and Floyd know that either of them stood a chance of getting inside of her before the day was over. An air of excitement was in the room.
Otis smiled at Leslie. "Are you absolutely sure you'll not be bored on the island?"
"Absolutely sure," she said. "Besides, I want to-learn more about growing flowers." She started to say she had wanted to stay because she had to stay away from somebody, but she thought better of it.
"Don't get any notion in your head that you'll wind up mistress of Otis Island," said Pedersen with a harsh laugh. "Every time one of the girls gets ideas like that, Otis ships them home. Like Annette."
"Is that why she left?" asked Leslie innocently.
"Of course," said Floyd. "Everybody knows that."
"I didn't," said John.
"Wait'll you've been here for a while," said Floyd. "Girls come and girls go. but old Millard stays free of the matrimony bonds."
Millard wiped his mouth with a snowy napkin. "Don't let them make you believe it, Leslie. I have no charms at all for the ladies." His laugh sounded greasy, calculated, and his eyes slipped around as if they were encased in mineral oil. Leslie shivered, thinking back to the strange erotic way he had fucked the Frenchwoman the night before she left, thinking of his huge prick, of his strength and endurance. She said nothing, aware of that strange attraction for him down there fluttering around inside her guts. That deliciously repellent attraction that made her giddy with horror of him and at the same time drew her cunt uptight as she imagined how his prick would feel in there.
John walked out of the dining room with her. "What are your plans for the day?"
"This morning I'm going swimming, and this afternoon I'd planned to settle down with a book."
"Sounds pretty dull for a girl like you," he said. His hand was warm on her arm. "How about going out on the water with me?"
"I didn't know we could use the Flowerbelle."
"I asked Otis if it would be all right. He said it would."
"I think I'd rather like that. When we came to the island I didn't really enjoy the ride. I was thinking about-some things I had to sort out in my mind."
"Then we'll go for a little spin," he said.
"But what about your writing? I thought you came here because of your book."
"Oh, I've been hard at it. I'm one of those perfectionists. Do everything three or four times. It's slow, but it's the only way for me."
She picked up something in the last sentence. It's slow, but it's the only way for me. A double entendre? She answered the double statement with a hot flash of fire in her eyes. The look was a promise. She said she'd meet him at the boat house shortly after one o'clock.
When she opened the door to her room she jumped in fright, startled at the figure standing there in the exact center of the room. "What are you doing here?"
Floyd Rutherford grinned at her. "The better to talk to you, my sweet. Thought I'd get my licks in before lover boy Sheridan takes you out on the cruiser this afternoon.
She laughed, sitting down on the edge of the bed. "I suppose next you're going to tell me you've got the biggest prick this side of heaven and all the girls back in the mainland were beating a path to your door to get some of that sweet meat so that's what you're doing on the island!"
"Well, yes," he said, completely unabashed. "Something like that. Why don't you get into the bed instead of sitting on it. I'll show you."
She shrugged. "All right."
If he was surprised he didn't show it. She stripped out of her blouse and shorts and stood there in her scanty panties and bra, reaching around in back to unsnap the bra. His hands turned her around and he undid the snap himself. The lace lingerie fell to the floor along with her panties. His eyes were warm and liquid as he looked at her breasts, his hands caressing them tenderly. "Such little beauties," he said, his voice soft. "Absolutely the most perfect breasts I've ever seen in my life."
"Prettier than Maria's?" she asked, as she rolled on her back. His hand grew quiet at her breasts. "What makes you say that?"
"I saw you shoving it to her on the beach the first night I was here."
He shrugged. "Maria was a pretty little thing. And she was willing. But-I'm sure you know you've got it all over Maria or anybody else, up and down that beautiful body of yours. He lifted his hard chest up from the bed and leaned over her, pressing his face between her deep cleavage. Then his face turned and his mouth found the hardening nipples of her left breasts and began sucking with the gentlest of nursing motions while his hand raced up and down the length of her body, hot and urgent. It settled on her breast, massaging it softly, then fluttered down the high ribcage to her flat belly, found the soft tangle of curls in her mound and continued to go downward, a middle finger parting the curled hairs and finding her bursting clit.
Expertly, he fingered the vibrating little organ, bringing it to blood-engorged hardness, the juice oozing out in a steady stream. All the time he alternated from one breast to the other, sucking gently, then hard, his mouth pulling the nipple down deep inside his mouth where he tongued it, slipping it around from side to side.
She was trembling, her entire body a sheet of fire, attuned to his touch, her hands roaming around his hard body feverishly, grasping his prick in a hot fist, moving it up and down. Her thumb circled around the end and she squirmed and cried out, wanting the juice to get inside of her and burst, wanting the length and breadth of his prick to hammer into her cunt hard. Releasing her nipple, he drew back his head and looked at her, mounting her, enjoying the look of lust on her features. His breath came hard and heavy, close to her ear as he slowly inserted his prick. Her legs went around his smooth back as her ass rocked upward to meet his hammering hardness.
Relentlessly he rocked her, ground deeply into her, his prick a long fiery instrument designed for her express pleasure. Around and around in circles he banged her, thrusting ever deeper with each long drive. Arching her back, she stiffened and exploded with a strangling sound in her throat and went limp for a second, feeling the perspiration between their bodies wet and hot, feeling his chest grinding down hard against her suddenly soft breasts. He grinned and drove harder, deeper, rocking her again, back and forth with a twisting motion that ground slickly against her soft clitoris and brought it back to sudden life. Slowly he fucked her, gently, sweetly, sliding up and down against her clit with each thrust, then filling her cunt with a savage hardness.
Her legs tightened around his back again and her breasts rose hard and hot against his chest. Again her ass began to pivot, meeting him with high arches, and once more she felt the climax building in her breasts, in her belly, flowing out like liquid fire down into her cunt and boiling over. His seed hammered into her as he came with her, riding the crest of her heaving orgasm. His hands reached for her back and held her close to him, his mouth kissing her soft throat as he continued to expel his seed in her with the strength of a spurting fountain.
At last he released her, lowering her gently to the bed. He looked at her peaceful face, at the relaxed mouth and the closed eyelids, and kissed her sweetly. "You needed that as much as I did," he said, as he slowly allowed his snake-like prick to come out of her.
She cried out sharply at the loss.
He chuckled. "Never mind. I'll put it back in again shortly.
They slept for a while, her head on his chest. She awakened in an hour, refreshed, and moved away from him, hot and sweaty where he had touched her. Easing out of the bed so as not to awaken him, she went into the bathroom and drew a full tub of water. She had just climbed into the tub and was in the water up to her breasts when she looked up and saw him silently standing there looking down at her."
He sat down on the toilet seat and lit a cigarette. "What if I asked you to get off the island for your own good? If you get a chance."
She laughed. "What are you getting at? Why should I leave?"
He shook his head. "I don't know. But I'll tell you this. Something strange is going on around here. Something I can't quite put my finger on. I think old man Otis is involved in something other than the growing of flowers. Something-"
She shivered, despite the heat of the water. The word, sinister, rolled into her mind. She shoved the word away and looked at Floyd. "I don't think anything is going on around here except a lot of screwing around. You and Maria. The old man and Annette-and I think Raymon might not be above copping a joint every time he gets the chance."
"You do? What makes you say that? Besides, whose joint would he cop? You don't think old Otis is double-gaited, do you?"
"No, but I think maybe Pedersen might be. There's something strange about him. Maybe they're both gay fellows."
She got out of the tub, listening to the sound of the water as it gurgled down the drain. It was uncomfortably hot and humid in the bathroom. Wrapping the towel about herself, she went into the main part of her suite to dry herself off. He took the towel from her and rubbed her until her skin was red and rosy. When she was dry, he bent his head down and kissed her lips. "Do me a favor, will you? If you won't take my advice and get off the island, at least stop going out in the night alone-and be careful."
She looked at him, her eyes puzzled. "Do you know something for sure? Something you think I should know?"
"Not anything I'd care to tell you about."
"Well, screw you!" she said angrily.
He laughed, pulling her close to him. "I didn't mean that the way you took it. What I should have said was what you don't know can't get you into trouble."
She looked down, looked at his cock, beginning to get stiff again, rising upward. She touched it, her fingertip soft on a little mole on the very tip, a dark flat pigmentation in the shape of a three-cornered star.
"Let's go back to bed," he said.
"No." She would have said she would. She wanted him again. She had been starved for sex. But she had looked out the window and saw the colorful dresses of the Mexican girls who harvested the flowers. "I thought nobody worked on Sunday. The girls are working."
"They don't know the difference. Sunday, Monday, Christmas, every day is just like another to them."
"What do you mean by that?"
He looked at her oddly. "Never mind."
"There's something strange going on here," she said softly. "Something sinister. Evil. And you know, but you won't tell me." She pushed him away. "Leave. I'm going swimming."
When he had left she asked herself if what she felt was real or if it was just that she was getting some mental masturbation-like kick out of the shivering sense of danger lurking over the island.
Dressed in her swimming suit, a two piece and very skimpy bikini, she strolled in the direction of the fields of flowers where the girls were bent over, picking the blossoms.
A high wire fence surrounded the area, but she could see their faces, blank-eyed and mechanical, bending, picking, dropping the long-stemmed snapdragons and stock into the carts they pulled along the rows. They looked like Raymon. The same sleep-walking look on their faces. They didn't smile. They didn't speak. They bent and stooped, their hands reaching down close to the ground where the stem was the longest, sharp scissors in each hand snipping the stalk, and the stalk went into the cart with precision, the hand leaving the soft colors of the flowers and bending again to the next blossom. As she watched, a buzzer sounded and each girl stood up, stretched, reached their arms over their heads as a voice rang out from what she presumed to be a tape-recorder telling them to stretch. Then the voice called sharply. "March to the compound." The girls marched, each dragging their cart behind them, each with that somnambulant expression on their faces, each of them looking more dead than alive. In the sunshine, their dark hair shining, their Mexican dresses colorful and billowing, she was reminded as she watched them, of a strange kind of ballet. The dance of the dead, for truly they were more dead than they were alive.
Open mouthed, Leslie walked along the barbed wire fence, watching the last of the girls as they disappeared inside the long low building the people on the island referred to as the compound. The eerie voice kept on giving instructions, and the girls obeyed them to the letter, as if they were puppets and somebody was pulling their strings. The girls came out of the house, each carrying a paper plate, lining up at the front of the house. They stood at rigid attention until the voice called out, "Bend down. Eat." Horrified, Leslie strained to see what they were eating. They ate with their mouths, like animals, crunching loudly, their hands holding them up as they bent their heads to what appeared an eating trough.
"Like pigs," said Leslie out loud. Her hands automatically went out, touched the barbed wire. Immediately a shock went through her system. She stared at the wire fence, her hands jerked back quickly. The fence had been wired with electricity. It would shock any girl who strayed away from the compound without orders to do so!
She could barely see from where she was, but she was determined to edge up as closely as she could get to see what they were eating. She couldn't quite bring herself to believe that she was really seeing thirty or so young girls eating like dogs. Finally she was able to get a sure look at the dry stuff they were munching. It was dog food. She was sure of it. Alongside the trough where the dry dog food was rapidly being consumed was a watering trough. The girls stuck their faces down close to the running water, lapping it up with their tongues.
He's done something to them! she decided. Without a doubt, he's done something to their minds so they act like animals! Her heart raced. My God! Maybe they were like that, though. She had heard of people who had barely enough mental ability to function like an animal. Perhaps she was misjudging Millard. He could be a philanthropist. Hired the handicapped. But she didn't think so. She didn't think so at all. With a backward glance at the vacant faces automatically chewing up the dog food and licking the wooden trough clean, she fled to the other side of the island, wanting the feel of the sun clean against her body, wanting the cool ocean waves to wash over her, make her believe that she was imagining things, that she had not really seen what she thought she had.
At the water's edge she flopped down on the sand, feeling her heart racing, feeling it slowly calm. Something caught her eye at the edge of her vision. Something moving. A dinghy. Not fifty feet from her, riding the shallow waves close to the shore, seeming to come in, hesitate, and circle in the water.
Was it docking? No. It wasn't. It was going somewhere out of her line of vision, under the jutting ledge of the rocks that rose up from the ocean floor, surrounding that portion of the island. Slowly, she slipped between the rock formations, stepping quietly in her bare feet, hanging onto the hot surface of the rocks and peeping out. As she watched it, the dinghy disappeared. It seemed to go right into a rock, But there had been no sound. It hadn't crashed against the reef, or she would have heard the noise of splintering wood.
Cautiously, she ran out to the water's edge, dropped to her stomach and looked down. What appeared to be an underground cave had swallowed up the little dinghy. Two men had been in the boat. On an impulse, she plunged into the deep green water and forced herself down. When she felt the ocean floor, hard and sharp against her feet, she was surprised that it was no deeper than it was. Opening her eyes, she could see nothing but the water, deep green and silent. Just as she began to surface she saw a light down there in the depths. It wavered and danced, shimmering back and forth because of the waves that rippled all around it, but it was definitely a light. She wanted to stay down there and follow the underground passageway until she came to the light, but her chest was aching for breath. As she surfaced, just as her head bobbed up on the flat water, something caught her ankle and pulled her back down.
CHAPTER SIX
Frantically, she pulled away from the firm grip on her ankle, kicking, splashing, feeling her lungs fighting for air, about to burst, burning. The hand refused to budge. She kicked futilely, splashing and churning the water all around her but the hand stayed, pulling her downward, straight down into the depths of the ocean. Her head reeled. The pressure of the water overhead pushed against her, making it easier for whoever it was that was dragging her into the depths. God. I'm going to die. Drown. The battering thought blared in her brain. Exhale. Fight for time. Let out your breath a little at a time. Don't panic. Slowly, she exhaled and relaxed, allowing her breath to bubble outward, upwards, hoping to con her assailant into believing she was beyond the point of struggling. At last there was no more breath to let out of her lungs. She knew they'd collapse if she didn't get some air in there pretty soon. She longed for the cool clean freedom of air, refusing to allow her mouth to open, to gasp in a mouthful of water, knowing it would be the end. With a final kick born of desperation, she managed to slip away from the hand that held her and shot upward, her hands scooping away great waves as she swam to the surface, feeling the beauty of the air outside with her fingers before her head emerged. Her mouth was blue and gasping. She floated on her back, resting, just for a second. Then she swam hard for the shore, looking over her shoulder just once, fearfully, sure she was being followed.
On the beach she went limp with fatigue, panting for breath, her sides shrieking from the pain from holding her breath for so long. Finally she was able to crawl back to the sheltered spot where she had bathed in the sun. She gathered her sunglasses and towel in her hands and ran toward the house.
Pedersen sat on the verandah reading a book. "What's the matter? You look as if you'd seen a ghost."
"I did, almost," she said. "My own. Somebody tried to drown me back there."
He looked at her quizzically. "Drown you? Whatever for?"
"I don't know." What a question. She stamped into the house and up the stairs to her room. The house was silent around her and as she rested on her bed she listened to the silence, wondering who was home and who was not, tempted to explore every inch of the house.
Walking back down the stairs, her hair combed, her make-up in place, dressed in a fresh pair of pale pink shorts and a matching top, she asked Pedersen where everybody was.
"Don't know," he said. "Millard and Raymon went off someplace together. Making some pictures, I think. At least they had the photographic equipment with them. I don't know where Floyd went. I saw him come out of the side door and go down toward the compound. Sheridan, I think he's fishing; and the household help is in church."
"Church?"
"Sure. The Mexicans have their own little chapel. Not too far from the compound. A pretty little place if you like that sort of thing."
"What is the compound, Hans?"
"What is it? Why, it's a place where the flower girls live."
She leaned against an iron chair. "Why don't they live in the big house?"
"Too many of them. And they're illiterate. They can't speak English, but that's not what I mean being illiterate. I doubt if any of them got past the third grade in school. They work cheap, harvesting the blossoms. Good workers, those girls."
"I saw them. They work like-machines." Pedersen shrugged. "They've never known anything but work. Have you ever been to Mexico?"
"Yes."
"Then you understand how grateful these girls are to have a place to work like this. A clean room, good food, a good salary."
"I suppose so." She lit a cigarette and stood there for a minute, then she said, "I think I'll go for a little walk around the island."
He grinned. "Don't let anybody grab you again." Her eyes blazed. "You don't think anybody pulled me down in the water, do you? You think I'm making it up, don't you?"
Grinning up at her, he said. "I didn't say that. It's just that I don't know of anybody who would grab you and hold you down-tried to get your clothes off of you, or something like that would be a different story. But on the other hand, anybody wants to get your clothes off of you, they aren't going to have to fight, are they, baby?"
"Not necessarily," she said lightly. "I've never believed in putting up a fight over nothing."
"Yeah. That's what I mean. It'd be over nothing!"
She whirled, halfway down the steps leading from the verandah. "Look, why don't you like me? What have I ever done to you?"
"I didn't say I didn't like you. I said a fight over your ass would be for nothing."
"I've never had anybody complain about my ass," she said sharply. "In fact, they always come back for more."
"What do you do, make your living as a prostitute?"
"What business is it of yours how I made my living?"
"None, really. But-I was just wondering-call girls make a lot of money. A lot more than they make on this island. Or did you come from one of the places the federal government furnishes. Room and board-and discipline?"
She stared up at him from the bottom step.
"Why do you ask such a question? Do you, by any chance, come from one of those places? Is that why you're suspicious of me?"
His laugh was short, bitter and explosive. She wondered about it as she walked around the island. Why would he ask her such a question? What was behind it? Hinting that she might have come from a penitentiary! She had an idea that if she thought about it enough she would come up with some kind of an answer. That there was something in the back of her mind wanting to be heard, wanting to tell her something if she could only let it out in the open where she could examine it.
John met her coming back from the other side of the island. He had a string of fish on his line. Great slick blue-gray monsters that hung heavy on the line. He smiled at her.
"Ugh! Don't come close to me with those awful-looking things. What are you going to do with them?"
"Give them to the cook. They're delicious rolled in corn meal and fried in deep fat."
She looked at him without smiling. "How long have you been fishing?"
"Oh, about two hours. Why? Are you ready to go sailing now?"
"Yes. Did you-did you stay in one place all the time you were catching the fish?"
"Yes. Why?"
"Oh. I just wondered."
"I'll take these to the cook. Go on down by the docks. I'll meet you there."
"All right," she said. "But if I'm not there when you get there, send out a search party, will you?"
She went on, her feet stinging once in a while as the sharp rocks penetrated through the soles of her sandals. If he was telling the truth, if John had really been fishing from the pier, then it couldn't have been John Sheridan who had pulled her down, tried to drown her. And Pedersen couldn't have made it back to the house, been fully dressed and clothed by the time she got there. And John had all those fish. Of course, he could have paid one of the men on the island for them ... but she didn't think so. She smiled, realizing she didn't suspect John simply because she didn't want to suspect John.
She heard his footsteps pounding against the shale long before he got there. She was leaning against the boat house, the wind blowing her long hair about her shoulders. When he led her onto the cruiser she felt as if she were embarking on an adventure. She watched his rippling muscles as he handled the rudder, realizing that the slender build he had was deceptive. He was tanned by the sun and his hair was bleached much lighter than it had been when they first came to the island. She stood close at his side, tasting the salt air on her lips, breathing in the clean scent of his manliness. When they were far beyond the island, he looked down at the gauge and swore.
"This is why the old bastard is so generous with his boat," he said bitterly. "There's only one way to go. Back."
"What's wrong?"
He said, "There's barely enough fuel to get us back to the island. We'll be lucky if we get there."
"You sound as if you had other plans."
He looked at her oddly. "I do. I planned to take you back to the states."
"Kidnap me?" she said lightly, with a smile.
"No. Look. Your life is in danger. You answered an ad in the paper and so did I." Briefly, he told her about Floyd Rutherford. "He's a greedy little con artist. I think he spent some time in the state penitentiary. He told me Pedersen had, and old Wilson, whose place I took, was an ex-convict. Millard goes and get recruits from the federal or state prisons. Promises them freedom, sometimes gets them out on an early parole. Then they come to the island and there's no way of getting off. Rutherford's desperate. He's taking all kinds of chances. And he's greedy as well. He's after the control of the island and he's after Millard Otis's ass."
She stared at the calm ocean. The boat was utterly motionless. "I'm not surprised." She told him What she had seen at the compound. "Dog food! Why, they're absolute slaves!"
"That's what we'll all be, according to Floyd," said John grimly. "Either he's talking a good story or sooner or later we all end up either as fertilizer for the flowers or as slaves for the market. He does something to the brain when he's finished with the women. Some of the men he uses in this way, too. If he doesn't think he has saleable merchandise for the whoremongers, he simply kills them."
"But why did Floyd tell you all this?"
"I told you, he's desperate. The other night-I guess it was about a week ago, he talked Maria out of getting him the keys to Millard's special hybrid area. You know, the place where he has certain flowers he's attempting to cross-breed. Well, Maria turned up missing, and right now she's probably on her way to Wilkinson Island, a Zombie. The Frenchwoman, remember her? She didn't leave this island. She's down there-or at least she was down there with Maria, the housekeeper. The basement-well, it isn't a basement, it's really a complex underground arrangement of rooms. Laboratory, operating room, bedrooms, kitchen, quite a layout. There's a doctor, or at least he was once a doctor, according to Floyd, who comes and does these operations. Then Millard transports the girls to Wilkinson Island where he sells them to a wholesale dealer in human flesh."
She looked toward the east. "Seems strange, doesn't it? Home straight ahead, about-what, a hundred miles?"
He nodded. "And I wanted to get you there."
"You aren't just a writer looking for a secluded spot to work in, are you?"
He smiled. "You'll probably think I'm putting you on. I work for the United States Government."
"F.B.I." She said it hopefully, a feeling of warmth stealing over her. If he belonged to the government, then the federal troops would come marching onto the island, flags waving, bugles blowing, just in time to save them from a fate worse than death. At least that was the way it always went in the movies.
"I'm afraid nothing so glamorous. I work for the income tax people. Apparently Otis has been getting away with murder on his tax returns. When they sent me here it was just to do a little sleuthing for money. I didn't know I'd fall in love with a beautiful girl and be trapped on a beautiful tropic island, wondering which day would be my last."
"It's really that bad, isn't it?" she asked, and watched him nod. "It's funny. You know, I think I've known it all along. I think maybe I came into the situation with my eyes open. Even in the beginning, when I was being interviewed for the job, I thought there was something about him that didn't quite ring true. But at the time, although I didn't say it to myself in so many words, I don't think I really gave much of a damn."
His blue eyes looked into her brown ones. She felt like bursting into tears. "But you do now, don't you?"
"Do what?"
"Care about what happens to you."
"Very much," she said, and shivered, reaching her arms up for his shoulders, tipping her head back for his kiss. His hand began to move slowly up and down the length of her body. Her own hands responded on his flesh, caressing him, kneading his solid muscles, reaching downward to his thighs, finally coming to rest at his stiff prick, holding it hungrily in her fingers.
He reached down and pulled her blouse over her head. Then she felt his fingers at the snap of her bra. Her breasts rose free and high at the release and he buried his face between them. "Beautiful," he murmured. "The most beautiful breasts I've ever seen in my life." She felt him tremble before he moved away from her, unsnapping his white ducks at the waistline, letting them fall to the floor. Then his hands pulled her shorts down over her legs, bringing the scanty panties with them. Gently, he put her on the bed and gazed down at her hungrily. "You know I've wanted you from the first moment I looked at you." He fell on her, kissing her body with an urgency that brought an answering fire to her loins. She thought, fleetingly, of Ron, of his dark head at her breasts, of his hands on her body, massaging her belly, and then she closed her eyes and gave in to the excruciating agony of desire that flooded through her loins when he began the steady nursing of her breasts. His mouth was like fire at them, bringing the nipples to erect peaks under his questing tongue, causing them to swell, reaching upward for more. His hands caressed her, each finger a thrilling demand that brought her to new heights of passion. She murmured, responding to his mouth as it kissed her rib cage, her belly, the tip of his tongue riding into her belly button, tantalizing her, bringing a flood of hot juice into her cunt. His lips circled her belly while his hands continued to play first with her breasts and then with her cunt, probing gently, sweetly, one finger at her clitoris, rubbing it with a circular motion until it grew hard and round as a marble, the thick joy running from it in a river. Then his mouth reached her mound, pushing his hands away as he tongued her clit, lapped at it in a tantalizing push-pull motion that brought her hips up off the bed and a cry from her open mouth. He nibbled it, catching the flesh in his teeth, just barely, and let it go while his mouth moved downward and found her hungry cunt, his tongue going in thick and hot, in and out, in and out as she moved her hips and arched her ass into the air, demanding more and more and more.
Hanging onto the back of the bed with both hands, she arched upward and shook her head back and forth, her eyes closed, her mouth open, her tongue lolling out of the side of her mouth. Her hands found her breasts and she squeezed them, an agony of suspense carrying her upward, her face contorted as she reached for the climax he was bound to give her. It came in rich ripe floods, washing over her in lush waves, his thumbs encircling her clitoris, as his tongue went further and further inside her aching cunt. She wailed, long and loud, and the sound washed over her in the throbbing waves of her climax. Her eyelids twitched, her toes curled and her hips flailed the air and dropped suddenly down to the bed as she lay there gasping for breath.
Out of the half-closed eyelids she looked at him pensively. She felt half guilty, half pleased. A feeling of lethargy claimed her and she fell into a deep sleep, awakened a few minutes later feeling refreshed, rested, and very much alive. Her head was resting on his shoulder. "You make me feel guilty," she said.
He held her closer. "I felt great, and even greater when I realized how completely you were relaxed. I picked you up and put your head on my shoulder and you didn't know a thing."
"You could have screwed hell out of me and I wouldn't have known the difference."
"I think you would have," he said with a chuckle. "Sooner or later. But necrophilia isn't my bag."
Her hand went down and encircled his still flaming and hard prick. "It was sweet of you to let me rest, John. How did you know I liked to be licked so well?"
"Most all girls like it once they get somebody who knows how to give it to them the way they like it."
Her finger traced the head of his prick. She raised her head up and looked down at it, thrilled at the length and breadth of it, so much bigger than she would have thought for someone so deceptively slender. Dressed, John looked almost willowy. Without his clothing, his chest was broad and wide, his shoulders heavy and well-muscled. "I want to do it to you now," she said softly.
"Not unless you really want to," he said, continuing to hold her.
"But I do. I do."
She put herself between his wide-spread legs, kneeling. Then she lifted them, putting them over her own legs, bringing his prick within inches of her face. Her hands caressed it lightly, drawing the skin back from the purplish head. It opened and bright liquid oozed from the small mouth. She licked it away, bringing her mouth down on it soft as a whisper, her lips barely holding it as she sucked gently, going ever downward with her lips, her tongue making exotic feeling little circles as she continued to ease the entire length of it into her mouth. She felt it slide beyond her tongue, enter the soft muscles of her throat, felt her chest muscles move slightly, then heave violently. She forced herself to breathe through her nose and the feeling of gagging left her, leaving her with a tingling cunt and breasts that ached for the touch of his hands. Slowly, she reached forward and found his hand, putting them on her breasts. Her eyes closed, her mouth content, his hands pulling her nipples in long milking strokes, she moved her hips and thighs against his balls, capturing them against her flesh as she wriggled upward and downward with her pelvic area. She moaned, his prick down deep in her throat. Her clit rubbed against his crotch, swollen and vibrating, a moist heat beginning to froth from it, her cunt humming as it dilated and contracted. She felt his climax singing in his balls as she dropped her hands from his rigid prick down to the tender hard flesh and held them together. It sang, barely audible, the threat of the coming volcano that was beginning to build inside of him, pulsating upward, coming out in a funneling heat that hammered relentlessly into her throat. Her clitoris bubbled, jiggled and danced, her breasts on fire, her mouth a soft yearning brightness that soared over and under her, all of the juices of her life coming out of every pore as she came. Her breasts released tiny droplets, her clit foamed, her cunt dripped and her mouth tingled as she met his driving thrusts, his pelting soaring release as it drenched her throat.
She remained as she was, allowing him to become completely released. She trembled from head to foot and looked down at him through eyes swimming with tears.
Floyd. The name was an obscenity in her mind. How could she have enjoyed herself with him? But she had. And just that morning. Even so, he had left her unfulfilled. Ready for more. There had been nothing of the joy, nothing of the beauty, with Floyd. The entire episode had been like drinking not-very-cold-water when she was dying of thirst. But John. She had never dreamed he would be like that. Even when she compared him with Ron she felt nothing but remorse. Not the usual remorse that swept over her when she thought of Ron. She was only sorry she had not met John sooner. Because Ron had never made her feel like that. He was nothing. A clod of dirt that had made her come alive. But not really alive. Not like this.
She tried to tell John how she felt, wondering if she were doing the wrong thing. Explaining why she had happened to come to the island, why she had answered Millard Otis' ad. He hushed her. Looking at her with his bright blue eyes full of wonder, he said, "Let's don't talk about it any more. For me you have no past. Not until this moment have you known what it was to love a man. Because not until this moment have I known what it was to love a woman. We'll go on from here."
"Oh, yes." And she knew she loved him. Loved him completely. Ron had been a practice drill. Something that would prepare her for real loving. Like having an animal and learning to love it, and then watching it grow old and die had prepared her to meet death when it happened to someone she loved. She continued to lie there in the circle of his arms for a long moment, looking up at the top of the cabin, feeling the gentle waves under her as they lapped against the boat. And it was all right. Everything was all right. She had finally learned what real love was and it wasn't too late. Nothing before had really ever touched her. Except....
She started, and he kissed her throat. "What's wrong, Leslie?"
"Now I really am afraid. I don't want anything to happen to you and I don't want anything to happen to me. Now that we've found each other, I'm afraid. I wish we could leave together. Now."
"We can't. There's no way possible. But let's don't worry about it. We'll find a way out somehow. And when we do, we'll find out the entire secret of the island. We'll put a stop to it."
"I'm terrified now. To go back."
"So am I. We're working with a megalomaniac." He lit a cigarette and handed it to her, then lit one for himself. She felt a cold chill run up and down her spine as she took a drag. Such a normal thing to do. Have a cigarette after a satisfying session in bed. The cabin was quite comfortable. Even luxurious. She wondered how many women had lain under the hard and thrusting prick of Millard Otis on that very same bed, drugged, or confident that they were going to be Mrs. Millard Otis, Queen of Otis Island.
"John, why do you say that? That he's a megalomaniac?"
"Because of the way he behaves. And his somewhat warped sense of humor. Floyd told me about a certain place on the island where he buries his dead. He has them all segregated. And there's a legend. It's, MARY, MARY QUITE CONTRARY, HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW? WITH SILVER BELLS AND COCKLE SHELLS AND PRETTY MAIDS ALL IN A ROW.
"God!" she gasped. "What a gruesome ... I never thought of that connotation about that old nursery rhyme. Silver bells. The virgins, I suppose. Cockle shells, socks, the young men. And daisies are the pretty maids?"
"I think so. Or zinnias or something common. The every-day type girls. I wonder how many people Millard has murdered?"
"Too many," he said through grim lips.
She had a pink and white vision of a birthday cake as they neared the island. The sun was setting in the ocean, gold and enormous, like a great shining disk falling slowly into the blue depths. The island itself was like a fairyland, with all the pastel buildings burnished with gold. The insistent memory of a long-ago birthday cake came back to her. They had found it, Leslie and a little friend, in a box from the bakery, still wrapped in the bakery paper.
June took the cake out of the box. "Look. D'you suppose somebody dropped it accidentally?"
"Look at the date," said Leslie, pointing at the pink and white frosting. In script, someone had written in pink icing across the white surface, Happy Birthday Sweetheart, June 1, 1968. "It's about three months old. Maybe somebody bought it for his wife and he came home and found she had left him for another man. Maybe he just took the cake out and threw it down in the alley."
"Yeah," said June. They eyed the rose buds, the smooth icing, the pink frosting swirls and the clever green leaves made out of frosting.
"The candy part would still be good," said Leslie. June picked up a rock and smashed the cake. Out of the inside came a moldy smell and thousands of angry black bugs swarmed up onto the smooth white and pink frosting.
That was Otis Island. Pink and white and gold. Cake frosting, pink lemonade, lullabies, singing servants, excellent food and beautiful acres of blooming flowers. But underneath were the black bugs of greed, of madness and torment.
John drew alongside the dock. He held her briefly. It was suddenly dark. The sun had fallen all the way into the ocean, leaving just a trace of gold in the rippling surface. "Stay close to me," he whispered. "But don't tip your hand. Keep your eyes open, and be on guard. I don't think he'll try anything right away. But if he does and you need me...."
She forced a light laugh. "Whistle?"
"No. Scream your fucking head off."
They walked through the shale without speaking, their hands closely pressed together. Lights seemed to blaze from every window of the big house.
As they went into the dining room, John said, "I hope we aren't late for dinner."
Millard looked up and smiled benevolently. In an indulgent voice he said, "Not much. We've just begun. The main thing was, did you children enjoy yourselves? Tomorrow Leslie starts the daily grind, you know."
"I enjoyed myself very much," said Leslie. "It was beautiful."
"And wonderful to get back to the island," John said, his voice sounding very sincere.
"Oh, by the way-" said Millard. "We had a visitor to the island this afternoon. An old friend of mine. Just passing by, and stopped in for a chat. Floyd took it into his head to return to the mainland." He shook his head, his kindly smile fixed on his face. His glasses reflected the lights of the chandeliers. "These young fellows, they certainly can make up their minds to move in a hurry. Why, I thought Floyd was perfectly happy here on the island."
Pedersen laughed. It had a saw-toothed edge to it.
Leslie picked up her fork and began to dip it into the Mexican food. It smelled delicious and suddenly she was ravenous. "What is this dish?"
"Avocado salad, my dear," said Millard. "And the other things, Emmalina is really a magnificent Mexican cook-we have chile relleno, burritos, tostados, tacos ... what's wrong, my dear?"
Leslie's face was white. Her eyes were big and almost black in her face. She looked at Millard calmly, but her face remained blanched. "I bit my tongue," she said, by the way of explanation. Slowly, she forced the forkful of food to her mouth, opened her lips, dragged the food off the fork and forced herself to chew it.
She chewed and chewed. What she was eating seemed to grow larger and larger. When she swallowed it stuck in her throat. But she forced her throat muscles to swallow it on down. Once down there her stomach lurched, threatening to heave it back up her throat. She tried to think of something else. Something other than that forkful of food she had just eaten. Cold sweat beaded her upper lip, bathed the back of her head and ran down her neck. She had never felt so ill in her life. It was all in her head, she knew. The meat had been cooked. It had tasted like beef, or perhaps lamb ... she shuddered and closed her eyes. The room spun around her. She rose, to remain where she was, smiling brightly at Millard Otis, who was eating with gusto.
What Leslie had eaten was the tip of Floyd Rutherford's prick. She would have recognized it anywhere. Next to the opening had been that very small tiny dark mole, flat and shaped like a three-cornered star. Just that morning she had touched it with the tip of her fingers. And that night she had eaten it, all ground up and nestling in a bit of rice, ground beef and pepper sauce.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, John met Leslie in the downstairs hall. They were just going in to breakfast. In a low voice he said, "Otis is going to be away all afternoon. I have the key to his private office. How about one o'clock in your room?"
She nodded, and immediately was beset by the stark white fear of possibility. What if Millard had set a trap? Maybe he was suspicious of John. Maybe he was suspicious of her. Maybe deliberately planned to trick them into thinking he was leaving the island for the afternoon; planning to come into his office and find them there. Catch them red-handed.
Oh, my God! She ate her breakfast without appetite, all the time thinking of what Otis could do to her, what he could do to John. But surely John wouldn't take any chances. Would he? Yes. He probably would. Well, she'd tell him she was afraid to go into the private office with him. Offer to stand by as a look-out. He'd understand. She jumped guiltily when Mr. Otis asked her pleasantly if she'd like some more strawberry preserves.
"No thank you," she said.
"Better eat a good breakfast. We've a lot of correspondence to get out of the way this morning," he said. "And you look a little pale. Aren't you feeling well?"
"As a matter-of-fact, I'm a little out of sorts. I had bad dreams all night long," she managed to say.
It was true, too. Until last night at the dinner table everything John had told her had seemed based on unreality. An impossible situation. But finding that little piece of Floyd's cock in her food the night before had brought the whole treacherous threat into focus. She had heard that sometimes the Mexicans put dog meat into the burritos. She thought of the way the meat had looked, ground fine, in a sauce, rolled up inside a tostado, garnished with lettuce, finely chopped. Her stomach roiled as she visualized somebody grinding pieces of Floyd up and adding him to the sauce. When she heard that they sometimes cooked dogs she had been repelled, but then somebody else had told her that was not true. She had preferred to believe it was not. To eat a dog? But to eat a man!
She heard a voice on the inside of her head.
"You've eaten a lot of them."
"But not that way," she answered silently. And put her cold hands to her hot head and told herself to pull herself together.
After breakfast she sat in front of Millard's big desk with her note pad on her knee. He dictated for an hour and a half. Letters to the wholesale florists scattered throughout the United States and Canada.
"I'd like to take these letters with me when I go to visit Whitestead," he said. "The mail boat comes to that island much more often than it comes to Otis. And some of the correspondence is urgent. Do you think you might be able to have them all finished by noon, my dear?"
"Oh, yes. They'll only take me a little while."
She went into the smaller room and began to type. Using the electric IBM, she was finished with the letters by eleven o'clock. She knocked on his office door. "Mr. Otis, I'm finished. If you'll sign these...."
He looked at his watch. "You are the efficient one, aren't you? Well, well!" He took the sheets of neatly typed letters and placed them on his desk. "Sit down, my dear." She felt his eyes on her as she sat, not looking at him, reminded again of Floyd's cooked flesh in the burritos she had eaten the night before.
His voice was smooth. Oily. "What a lovely picture you make in that beautiful yellow dress, my dear. I suppose you know you're a very desirable woman?" He poured a glass of wine from a decanter and gave it to her. It tasted of ambrosia. She drank it quickly, unable to resist the delicious taste. She listened to him talking, slowly, monotonously, of the wholesale florists who owed him money, of the gigantic operation of the island and the flowers.
Then he gave her another goblet of wine and continued to bore her with talk of the island, and she only half listened to him, answering with a smile or a 'yes' in the right places.
Suddenly he changed the subject.
"I suppose you might think I'm too old to be thinking of such things, but to tell you the truth I've often looked at you since you've been on the island, and I must confess that I've felt a strong desire to take you in my arms."
She didn't say anything. Her eyes strayed to the doorway. It was firmly closed.
"Come. Come and sit on my lap. I'd like to see if your flesh feels as delectable as it appears to these old eyes."
She stood, looking at his face warily.
"Oh, come on! I won't bite you! Besides, Floyd told me before he left that you were quite easy to make out with."
She sat in his lap, feeling his strong arms going around her. Under her ass she could feel his prick, gigantic and hot, giving off heat waves that warmed her sensitive skin. He kissed her cheek and drew his face down to her throat. "Tell me," he murmured. "How did you make your living before you-answered my ad in the paper?"
"I told you I was a cocktail waitress at one of the night clubs in Las Vegas."
"Yes, but what else? Surely a girl with your physical charms could have made out like a bandit with the wealthy old lecherous men who frequent the casinos."
"I didn't care to-to-" she said, feeling his hand slip inside the low neckline of her dress. His hand found her nipple and squeezed it softly. Then he opened it out and began to rub the nipple with his palm. It sprang into instant life. He chuckled. "I always like a girl who has sensitive breasts." His hand moved from breast to breast, remaining flat, with the nipples of each one being brought to hard and bursting life with the tantalizing friction. She pushed her head back up to his shoulder and with his free hand he held it firmly in place, coming down hard with his lips. His tongue was hard as it thrust itself between her teeth. With his other hand on her breasts and his tongue deep inside her mouth, she felt the hot juices begin to flow in her cunt and was suddenly reduced to a squirming mass of desire. In spite of herself she couldn't get the picture of the way he had made love to the Frenchwoman out of her mind. His prick had been big. Bigger than John's. It looked bigger than any she had ever had fucking her before and she wanted to feel it inside of her, driving itself into her with all its strength. Her own tongue rubbed against his, making little circles and sucking it hard. He pulled away from her mouth with his lips and took his hands from the front of her dress. "We'll have a little preliminary before I go away this afternoon. Then tonight you can expect me to come to your room."
"Yes," she said. "Oh, yes." Her thoughts jumbled in confusion. How could she want him when she was afraid of him? How could she love John the way she thought she loved John when she was still capable of wanting Millard Otis? Was something wrong with her. Was she really a nymphomaniac like her mother said? Or was it something else?
Was she fascinated by the evil that she knew him to be? As she fumbled with her zipped at the back of the neck, she was appalled at the itching need that was growing between her legs. Every inch of her flesh ached to have him possess her. In her minds' eye she could see herself stretched out on the soft carpet, his big prick pumping into her as she humped upward to meet it, demanding more.
If John found out, he would never love her again. He would be disgusted with her. Ron had said he didn't care when she came home with a battered cunt. But she had never believed him. And he had said something else that had always upset her. She'd refused to believe it. But now ... now when her breasts hurt for the want of his hands back on them, when her cunt ached to be filled, she began to realize that Ron had perhaps spoken the truth. He'd said, "Leslie, you can't tell me you don't enjoy it with all the men you fuck."
She had always denied it. Sometimes she'd even cried, trying to make him believe her. But he never had. And angry as she had gotten at him, she had always known she could never convince him. Because it was true. She did enjoy it. Every time, with every one of them. But she had loved Ron, at least she thought she had loved him. And now she loved John more than she had ever loved anyone. But Millard Otis was there, dropping his pants onto the floor, his big prick red and angry and swollen, a hungry animal that would devour her. And John was-where was John?
"Why are you looking at me like that?" he asked, as he came to her and held her against his hard naked flesh.
"I don't know. I guess I was-wanting you to hurry."
"What a little whore you'd make," he said. She could feel his prick under her ass. Between her legs and jutting out a good inch or two from the back. He drove it back and forth in the soft indentation between her legs. She reached around backward with one hand and touched the tip. It felt hot to her hand. She moaned and clung to him. He tasted of spice and honey and some exotic kind of flower. His tongue was hard and thick in her mouth, and she sucked it as if it were a prick in there and felt the juices of her mouth begin to flow all around it. He moved it sensually against the roof of her mouth, and she felt the tiny tastebuds rubbing against her and imagined that each taste bud was really a miniature erection, getting rubbed by her tongue, ready to come, and felt herself grow hot and weak in the knees with desire.
She looked up at him helplessly. "Fuck me. Oh, fuck me."
Lifting her to the edge of the desk, he sat her on the edge, spreading her legs wide. Her hand reached down and found her bulging clitoris, one finger probing at the slick round red grape. Around and around went his finger as she closed her eyes and leaned her head against his chest. He stood, his strength equal to a brick building as his finger fucked her, his thumb continuing to encircle her clitoris and three inside her cunt. She could feel her muscles beginning to tense. Feel her clitoris eating away at his finger, the muscle quivering and twitching anxiously, while the muscles inside her vagina clutched hungrily at his hard fingers that probed inside.
But he did stop, pulling her ass off the desk, leaving it in the air. supported only by his two big hands under each cheek. With his head he forced her to lie down on the desk, his mouth sucking at her nipples, biting them until she cried out in pain. With each biting pain of his sharp teeth on the hard nipples she felt her cunt answer in a wave of hot liquid as it clutched at the empty air.
"Put it in me! Quick!" Her voice was hoarse, maddened.
He grinned, raising his head from her breasts, and pulled the cheeks of her ass apart. She looked across the room into a mirror and saw his naked back, her legs hanging down helplessly as he held her ass apart. She felt the air rushing into her gaping cunt and writhed about on the desk top. Then he entered her with full force, thrusting his prick in brutally. It felt big as a log, scraping the walls of her cunt as it went in. In and out he drove it, slamming his long loose balls up against her taut asshole as he went in, withdrawing it until all that was left in was the hard crown. Sometimes he pivoted the crown as it lay just barely on the inside of her cunt, rotating it 'round and 'round as she moved her head and shoulders violently about against the shiny surface of the desk. The rest of her was held in his vice like hands. He was fucking her as she had never been fucked before in her life. Completely his prisoner, held down firmly, open wide to his tormenting prick. Her hands went to her flat belly and felt it heaving up and down as the animal inside of her lurched violently, reaching up to her waistline and poking out her navel as if she had swallowed a live trout and it was violently beating its head against the inside of her belly.
She howled in ecstasy, feeling the deep rocketing of her climax begin to swell and burst in an agony of delight. As if he were unaware of her coming, he continued to bang deeper inside of her, deeper and deeper, spreading her legs wide apart until she screamed, afraid he would rip her into two pieces. She felt his balls straining against her tight asshole, felt her cunt rip as he pushed in deeper and deeper, screamed as she felt the skin tear, and then released her, withdrawing suddenly, and it felt like a long hard snake crawling out of her quickly. She gasped as she felt his strong hands turn her over, placing her belly flat against the edge of the desk. Her ass was sticking straight up in the air, her legs snug against the front of the wood. His big hands came around from the back of her and reached under the desk top, taking both breasts in a brutal grasp. She whined and tried to move away from him. He lurched quickly forward, shoving his huge and throbbing prick against her tight little asshole.
"Ah, no!" she cried, as she realized what he intended to do. "Don't!"
He pushed. She attempted to scramble upwards, to crawl over the top. He laughed harshly. A mean cruel laugh and dragged her back again, pinning her firmly. His hands bruised her breasts. She looked down and saw the flesh coming between his straining fingers, all pink and swollen. She felt his giant prick pushing, straining, trying to get all of its huge girth into her unyielding asshole.
She whined, helpless, as a red stab of pain washed over her. It felt like a knife cutting into her. Cutting and being turned. Scraping. She screamed, feeling the edge of the desk cutting into the tender flesh of her belly. Her hipbones ground against the surface as he thrust his cock in deeper and deeper. The room whirled around her in an agony of pain. Red hot and glaring pain, centered at her tormented asshole, throbbing outward in lightning waves consuming her body.
This is the way he's going to kill me. Too big. Too big to fuck me in the ass like that. He's too big. Or I'm too little. Even Ron had been too big. He had tried and she hadn't wanted him to so he hadn't. Once there was that old bastard from Cleveland who had insisted, and he'd been so skinny in the cock that she let him, making him use plenty of vaseline, and he had fucked her hard and come and she'd felt like she was getting an enema, but that was all she had felt. Not the pain. Oh, no, not the excruciating pain that seemed to go on and on and on, ripping through her helpless body, son of a bitch, did it hurt that much to have a baby? Over and up and down her thoughts turned and twisted, his prick a giant spit, stuck inside of her hard and fast, and finally all the way, ripping through her rectum until there was nothing left of her but a heaving, sobbing, trembling mass of burning flesh. And then he began to shove it gently in and out. She tensed, preparing for even greater pain. It didn't come. Instead a wave of heat such as she had never experienced before began to penetrate her body. Her ass began to shoot upward, hungry for more. She could feel him straining, feel his prick jumping inside of her rectum, growing bigger and longer. His hands at her breasts loosened and went downward, pulling her hips down from the desk. One hand reached around through the muff of hair and found her straining clit, rubbing it hard as he ground in and out of her asshole. She was helpless, hung up on the hook of his cock, completely off the desk now, supported by his hand that encircled her clitoris and the other one that held both breasts brutally.
He panted, harsh short gasps, hammering his giant prick deeper and deeper inside her asshole, and she felt his hand slip from her breasts, felt her chest and head going downward to the floor, and reached automatically for the floor with her hands, speared on his prick as she stood on her hands and took it, screaming long and loud and open-mouthed, the longest come jolting through her as she twisted and turned and convulsed.
His knees buckled under him as he went down, and she felt his seed spasm, spurt and fill her rectum. Her stomach burned with the hot semen. His prick bulged, swollen and hard and hot, expelling his juice harder and harder until it was suddenly no more, and she was sitting with her backbone against his chest, his limp prick stuck up her ass and slowly softening inside of her.
"You liked that, didn't you?" he asked her hoarsely.
She nodded her head. So weak and spent she wanted to die.
"There'll be more," he said. "Much, much more. I'll have you whenever I want you. You're going to be mine and mine alone. I've looked all my life for a girl like you. A hot little Jewish bitch. So hot you don't know your ass from a silver dollar when you want it real bad. You'd fuck an orangutan or a machine gun, wouldn't you? And you're mine, mine, mine, aren't you?"
"Oh, yes," she said. "Yes. Yes. Yes." The flesh of her body rippled with tremors as she was washed with the terrifying memory of it. Terrifying, but still splendidly thrilling, making those little pains come and go in her stomach, shivering little pains that almost brought her to her knees. She was his slave. His absolute obedient slave. He had conquered something in her that had long needed conquering. It was just that she hadn't known-hadn't realized that she had needed this kind of extreme possession. Looking at him, at his mocking eyes, at his hard mouth, she knew. Was absolutely positive that the only way a man could really possess her would be to own her, to humble her right down to the last crumb, take away the last little shred of human decency. Reduce her to a rubble of screaming impulses, enslave her on the end of his hard and hurting prick. She would crawl on her hands and knees to him if he told her to. She would do any thing that he asked her to do. Gladly. As long as he gave her what he alone had to give her.
She crossed her hands under her chin in a prayerful attitude. "Take me with you this afternoon," she begged. Standing there naked and begging, aware of the picture she made with her long hair tangled, hanging down around her waist, her eyes big and ready to burst into tears, her tits jutting outward with gooseflesh on them, the nipples hardening just in memory of what he had done to her.
He laughed. A backward sounding laugh that had not one trace of mirth. "Afraid some of it'll get away from you?"
She nodded, feeling her lips tremble, hating the notion of having her mouth go all soft like that in front of him but at the same time reveling in his ability to make her his abject slave.
He said, "No, I can't take you with me. I have a lot of business to attend to and I don't want you to be in my way. Go to your room. Stay there until I return for dinner."
She reached for her clothes. Slowly, she slipped into her slip and panties and bra, stepping into the dress and pulling it up to her shoulders. "Kiss me good-bye?" She stood there looking up at him, close to him, breathing in the masculine smell of him, the faint scent of leather and tobacco and an oriental aftershave lotion that was so faint as to be almost non-existent.
"Go wash yourself first. I can smell come all over you. Then I might kiss you."
She went into the bathroom and scrubbed her mouth until it was bright red and innocent of even the faint trace of pink lipstick she used. Tasting the soap that was forced between her parted lips she swallowed gratefully. She was doing it for him. Coming out, she smiled hesitantly. He bent down and kissed her lightly, his eyes looking at her as if she might be a new flower, an exotic cross-breed, not quite perfected but something that would do for the present. He patted her on the ass and headed her toward the door.
"Remember. Stay in your room. I don't want you to be any more fucked-over than you already are. I don't like to purchase anything that has been handled and bruised and-well, just fucked-over."
She went, obediently, thrilled at the tone of his voice, and his words. Yes. It was true. He had purchased her. And she loved it.
Once in her room she drew a bath and filled it to the brim. Dropping in scented bath oil she lowered herself into the luxurious hot water, settling down and leaning her head back against the hot tub. The water rippled around her neck. The heat penetrated her body, soothing the tom flesh at her cunt, burning the ruptured membrane around her tortured asshole. Tears came into her eyes as she felt the water bubbling on those sensitive areas. I hate him. He'll never get a chance to do that to me again. How could I have thought I liked what he was doing to me? How vulgar! How positively uncouth! He's a terrible man, a lecherous old pervert. And a murderer, too. He did something to me. Gave me something in that wine he gave me. Otherwise I would never have allowed-Her cheeks burned with humiliation as she thought of the picture she must have made to him, sticking her ass up into the air for him to rape. Telling her to get her clothes off as if she were a patient in a doctor's office-no talk of love in advance-just that abominable way of his, ordering her around as if she were some kind of decadent slave, hurting her, Jesus Christ, if he had tom her cunt very much she wouldn't be any good to John-John with his somewhat slender prick, not that it wasn't plenty long and bigger around than a lot she had seen. But if she was all reamed out, big enough to almost bring Millard's balls inside of her, (and his prick was as big as her wrist) John would never understand, he'd hate her if he ever found out.
Her heart lurched. She broke out in a cold sweat that competed with the hot water.
What if there was one of those see-through mirrors in the old bastard's office? In the wall somewhere alongside John's room, or someplace else where John could have been watching her acting like an absolutely brainless slave, toadying to Millard, mindlessly.
How could she have done that?
She scrubbed every inch of her body, trying to recall how it had happened that he had gotten to her so easily. Why, she thought as she stepped out of the tub onto the thick bathmat, she hadn't protested at all!
She douched, wincing at the acute pain of the hot water and the medicated compound as it stung her frayed cunt.
Squatting down on the floor of her bedroom with a mirror on the floor underneath her, she inspected her bottom carefully, pulling it apart with her fingers the better to see the tear. It wasn't as bad as she had thought. But it did widen her entrance. It would have to heal before she could allow anybody to touch her. What if she wanted to go back into whoring again? Goddamn! Couldn't have a cunt big enough to swallow up the Grand Canyon. Men didn't like that sort of thing at all. Tenderly, her index finger traced the fleshy pulp of her bruised and battered asshole. It was swollen and appeared turned inside out, with all the veins in it poked out and bloody-looking. Traces of bright red blood were in the deep crevices of the pink and puffy surface. She winced as her finger touched a particularly sensitive area. She stood and looked at her dresser, wondering what she could put on it to hasten the healing. Every time I take a shit it'll bleed some more, she thought ruefully. Remembering a jar of Noxzema, she settled for that, and put a generous amount on the end of her finger, raising one leg up to the foot of the bed, sticking the Noxzema in and gasping with pain. Christ! It's setting me on fire!
Hearing somebody laughing softly under the window, she looked out onto the side of the house and saw Millard and Hans Pedersen leaving together. They walked toward the dock where the sailboat glistened white and beautiful under the sun.
Good. They're leaving. Really leaving. Now John and I can go into his office as we planned. Sick with shame, she remembered how eagerly she had told Millard she would remain in her room. Wondering what was wrong with her, what had happened to her to make her behave in such a disgusting manner, she threw on a pair of pale lavender shorts with a matching top. Somebody knocked at the door just as she finished with her hair. "Yes?"
"It's me. I've brought your lunch."
She dropped her hairbrush and listened to it clatter hollowly against the marble top of the dresser.
That was Raymon's voice. The butler. The dead Raymon.
"I don't want any," she said.
"Millard said to make sure you ate it." His voice sounded relentless. As relentless as the sun that shone down outside the house.
"Go away. I'm not hungry."
"No. Millard said to make sure you ate it." The voice was neither angry nor pleasant. It was simply an empty voice, devoid of expression. She had the horrified notion that he would batter the door down, grab her, force her to eat the food spoonful by spoonful if necessary.
Unlocking the door, she said, "But I'm not really hungry."
"Millard said for me to make sure you eat it all." He lifted the napkin from the tray and she saw truffles, artichokes in lemon butter sauce, a broiled steak and a small piece of coconut cake. A tall silver pitcher contained coffee.
"Thank you, Raymon," she said graciously. "I'll eat. You may return within twenty minutes."
He stood and looked at her. His eyes seemed as unseeing as ever. "Millard said to make sure you ate it, that you don't try to throw it in the waste can. He said you weren't feeling well and he wants you to be well-nourished."
"Goddamn! You give me the creeps! Can't you talk like other people? Must you use that sing-song voice?"
"I'm sorry you don't like the tone of my voice. Please eat your lunch so I may go and carry out the rest of the duties Millard has instructed me to carry out this afternoon."
She sat down and ate, trying to keep from looking at the valet as he stood there and watched her consume every bite. He stood motionless, his eyes on the silverware as each forkful of food was carried from the plate to her mouth. Then his eyes watched her chew and swallow. As she ate she wondered what other nice little tasks Millard had left for Raymon to do. What if Millard had left the Zombie to watch over her for the entire rest of the day? Then he'd find out about John. And he'd find out what John was really up to.
A knock sounded again at her door. She jumped-"Yes?"
"It's me. Are you ready?"
She recognized John's voice and was grateful. It was as if she had summoned him merely by thinking about him.
"Yes. Almost."
Raymon stopped her as she started to get up and go to the door. His hand was like ice cold iron at her shoulder, pushing her down into the chair. "Millard said for me to make sure you remained in your room." His fingers bit into her flesh, cold, hard and very painful.
"Why, you son of a bitch!" she screamed. And picked up the pot of steaming hot coffee and threw it into his face.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"John!" She screamed it.
She was on her feet, running toward the door. But it was already opening and John was inside the room, his face startled, looking around to see why she had screamed.
Raymon stood there with his hands down at his side, the hot coffee running down his face and dripping onto his immaculate white suit.
"What the hell did you do to her?" asked John, grabbing Raymon by the shoulder.
Raymon stared blankly. Then one of his hands came up slowly. In it was a very deadly looking gun. It was pointed exactly at John's guts.
"Put that gun down, Raymon," said John.
The valet looked at him blankly, as if he hadn't heard. His hand remained steady on the gun. John raised his fist and smashed the other man in the face. The gun exploded. Leslie screamed. Raymon went down in a huddle to the floor. His face didn't change expression. John remained standing, his hand at his side. Blood was welling out of his wound.
He turned to her slowly. "It's only a flesh wound. Get something to stop the blood. Hurry."
Raymon was on his feet again, coming up slowly, his body working like a machine. His expression was cold, dead, and unfeeling. No anger, no pleasure, no fear showed in his eyes. He said nothing. He merely raised the gun again and squeezed the trigger. Just as he squeezed it, Leslie threw her body against his arm, causing the shot to shatter the mirror above the big antique dresser. John came down hard on the man's hand, chopping at it with the side of his own hand, causing the gun to fly forward and fall onto the floor. Raymon immediately bent forward to retrieve the weapon when John's foot came up and caught him under the chin. Leslie got the gun while the valet toppled over backward, hitting the back of his head against the foot of the bed. He got up, unperturbed, and began to come toward Leslie, who was aiming the gun at him.
John sprang onto him, grappling with him, but the man was like no other human being he had ever fought. John's blows bounced off the other man's face unnoticed. Blood gushed from the valet's broken nose, his mouth flapped uselessly, like an unsecured hinge. He struggled without panting, without swearing, without doing anything but the act of struggling. No motion, breath or words were wasted. He fought with precision, with skill and with complete single mindedness. As Leslie watched, horrified, the automation that was Raymon overcame John's powerful muscles. With a sickening blow to the side of John's head, Raymon stood, shook his head for a second and stepped on John's throat on his way to Leslie, who continued to hold the gun in her shaking fingers.
Her eyes flickered to John, who was stretched out on his back, the blood pouring from the wound on his side, more blood coming slowly from a face wound. He was unconscious.
"Don't come any closer," screamed Leslie. She held the gun with both hands, but she backed away.
"Millard told me to take care of you. To watch and make sure you don't get out of your room. I'm going to do it."
Raymon advanced. She back up. And she was thinking she could not bring herself to squeeze the trigger. Could she? A strong wind seemed to be blowing through her head. Whistling through her ears, whooshing over the top of her head. Inside the wind she could hear her own voice yelling at her, telling her to squeeze the trigger. He was coming slowly, but he was determined. Each step he took brought him closer to her. She didn't want to kill him. She kept telling herself she didn't want to kill anybody. The idea was horrifying to her.
And yet, the wall was behind her back. She could no longer back up. There was no way she could get away from him. She squeezed the trigger.
As she watched, stunned at the impact of the explosion to close to her face, she saw Raymon's head slowly disintegrate. She opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. It was as if all the sound in the world had already been used up in the deafening roar of the gun when she had shot him and that now there was some strangely logical law that demanded utter silence. Utter silence that got through to her from her ringing ears while his brains, small pieces of skull, two oval eyes and shards of hair and shattered teeth flew upward and came downward, hitting the rug in a shower of human parts. Each one falling softly, soundlessly, in the deathly calm.
She dropped the gun from fingers suddenly without nerves.
Her hand went to her mouth, forcing it shut.
Then she opened it again and said, "I've killed him." He fell, slowly, going around in a little half circle, his hands clutching at some unseen object in the air. The fingers closed and his hand followed the rest of his body to the rug where he lay silent among his silent blood, brains, teeth, eyeballs and hair. A small V-shaped portion of his mouth was intact and still on his riddled face along with a half of a nose and a battered cheekbone. The part of the mouth that was left on his face along with his lower teeth in the front of his mouth relaxed, went slack and was still and quiet.
Leslie ran to the bathroom, got towels, rinsed cloths in cold water and swabbed John's face. She stanched the flow of blood from his side, parted the gaping wound, nodded her head as if she had confirmed what he had said, that it was just a flesh wound. Then she bound it, fastened it with adhesive tape and went back to applying cold packs to his face.
"What happened?"
"I killed him." She said it slowly, in wonder.
"How did you do it?"
"Shot him."
"Pretty bad, was it?"
She nodded, and put her head on his chest, feeling her guts squirming around inside her belly, feeling the quick gathering of saliva that just preceded vomiting.
"Take it easy. I'll be all right in a minute or two. Everything is going to be all right." He patted her hand. "No it won't. We'll never be able to keep Millard from finding out we-that I killed Raymon. Then we're both as good as dead."
"We'll figure something out," he said.
"Don't try to sound optimistic. The situation is hopeless."
He sat up, lifting her chin with his hand, forcing her to look him in the eye. "Listen to me, Leslie. Nothing is ever hopeless as long as there is life. We aren't dead yet. And that's the only time when the situation is hopeless. That's the only time. And don't forget it. So shut up and start thinking. If we want to live, we've got to figure some way out of here. The only thing that matters is getting off the island alive. We don't owe anybody anything. We'd like to help the people here on the island, but once we get off the damn place ourselves, we can see that justice is done. Don't lose sight of the only important thing. Which is?"
He waited, commanding her with his eyes to repeat. "Getting off the island alive," she said dully.
"But don't you see it's impossible? Millard and Pedersen have the only means of transportation."
"Yes. But they have to return to the island. They'll have no way of knowing that Raymon is dead until they're at least on the island. We've got to get the boat away from him."
"We have only one course of action. Kill him before he kills us," she said.
"Exactly. And we've got a gun."
"But there are two of them."
"Pedersen is a prisoner. Little more than a slave himself. In a pinch he might turn against Millard." She looked at the dead valet. His parts were scattered all over the rug. He didn't look as if he had ever lived. "I suppose there are probably shells for the gun in Raymon's bedroom."
CHAPTER NINE
They cleaned up the messy brains and blood and scattered dibs and dabs that had at one time made up the different parts of Raymon's head. She washed the rug and he put the body in one of her trunks. A finger stuck out, keeping him from closing the top. She pointed at it, horrified, a shrill laugh on her face as she pointed at the bony, waxy-looking thing with a nail on it, sticking out like a frothy piece of lingerie, while John wondered why the trunk lid wouldn't close. After he had stuffed the finger in and slammed the lid shut, he looked at her. "Don't get hysterical."
"But it seemed so-stupid. Why bother?"
"We might be buying some time. He'll look for Raymon right away. Since he told him to watch over you, your room is the obvious place to start searching. We wouldn't be very smart leaving him around scattered all over the rug, would we?"
"No, but-won't he start smelling in a few days?"
"What difference will it make?"
"What about the broken mirror on the dresser?"
"We can't do anything about that." He dragged the trunk into her closet and stacked suitcases and boxes on top of it. Her furs and evening gowns gave off the perfume of Las Vegas nights. Her nose wrinkled as she sniffed, feeling the nostalgia for the town and the casinos, the noise and the bright lights rush over her.
"If we get out of here, let's go to Las Vegas," she said.
"All right," he answered. "But first let's kill the dragon. We'll rush him as he gets off the boat. The minute he sets foot on land we'll shoot him in the back."
CHAPTER TEN
Millard Otis was in exceptionally good spirits. In his wallet was close to seven thousand dollars, the purchase price for Annette and Maria. Pretty good, considering it was wholesale. Another five thousand had rounded out his day to his satisfaction. That amount had been paid for Cecilia Gonzales, Felicity Gomez, Katherine Montez and Isabella Amorita. True, he had expected a little more for the common Mexican girls, but then Isabella and Katherine were worse than the usual batch in the brain department. Ansel had been blunt when he paid out the money.
"They'll be lucky to end up as chambermaids," he said, with a wry smile. "Those bastards thought they were getting something great the way Isabella and Katherine stood there smiling. Can't tell by the way they look that they're downright brainless. No man wants to fuck a girl who hasn't got enough sense to wiggle a little. Why did Morgan go so deep?"
Otis shrugged. "Sometimes he gets a little knife-happy. But he's the best we can come up with. And we can trust him."
"Those two girls are worse than Mongoloids. At least the rest of the girls remember to hump back at you while they're getting fucked. But aside from that, you know how the market is, Millard. The Mexican girls just don't have the appeal to the general market that the blondes and redheads do. Even Maria ... she brought a higher price because of her pale complexion and blue eyes. Pure Castillian, that girl, or I miss my bet."
"And she could still carry on a simple conversation, don't forget that," put in Millard.
Ansel lit a cigarette, cupping his hands around the match protectively. They were sitting in a bar, at a secluded corner table. "Millard, have you ever wondered if Morgan cuts too much out of these girls brains on purpose? I mean, it's happening so often these days that it seems almost-deliberate."
"Oh, he's a sadistic bastard, I'll go along with that. Especially when it comes to women. You can't much blame him, though. I knew his mother. He had her up to his ass. Then he married Alpha. By the way, where is Alpha these days? I promised Morgan I'd find out. He likes to keep track of her, you know."
"He'll be pleased to know that his wife is now walking around Pickadee Island sucking off men for a buck a throw. This old guy who bought her likes to watch. I hear he's quite a wealthy man. I think he only gives Alpha something like ten minutes to get the job done and when you consider he works her fifteen hours a day, he's making out pretty well. By the way. Rumor has it that you've got a lovely little Jewess over at your island. Private stock?"
"For a while," said Otis with his kindly smile. "She's got a great potential. I gave her a dose of the old stuff we used to use in the wine before we started doing lobotomies. Talk about wild! It was a beautiful experience!"
"You'll get tired of her after a while," said Ansel. "And when you do, remember what I told you about Morgan. Just because money doesn't mean anything to him any more, it still does to us, doesn't it old buddy? Don't let him take too much of their gray matter out."
Hans Pedersen, who had been sitting silently, gazing at his drink, asked permission to go to the restroom. Otis told him not to be gone too long.
The slave buyer looked at Pedersen as he left the table. "What's the matter? Hans giving you trouble?"
"No, but Floyd turned out to be a real headache. I had to kill him."
Ansel stared. "Kill him! Jesus! Why, with Floyd's looks and his ability in the bedroom we could have gotten a fancy price for him. The gay boys go for these little guys like Floyd, especially when they're hung with nice sized cocks. The Floyds of this world seem to stay younger-looking longer. And then there's Jobadilla's. Those old dames would have paid a hundred bucks a night just to screw themselves off on his rod. She'd have paid us a good three thousand for him. Why did you have to go and kill somebody like Floyd?"
Otis looked at his hands. Softly, he said, "Don't forget your place, Ansel. You run your business, I run mine. If I choose to kill, then I kill." He chuckled. "Someday you'll kill somebody. It's the greatest. Absolutely the greatest thrill of all. Some might say I'm perverted because I'd rather fuck a woman in the ass then in the cunt. I really don't care what anybody has to say about my sexual needs. It may come as a surprise to you, Ansel, when I say that the greatest come of all occurs when the heart of a man stops beating under my fingertips. And of course I have peculiar tastes." Ansel paled. He knew Millard's extraordinary taste for raw penis, raw testicles, raw human heart, lungs and liver. He didn't believe Millard's theory that it kept him virile. On the other hand, he knew Millard was somewhere near seventy, yet he was hail and hardy, with the sexual ability of a young stallion.
Pedersen came back from the rest room. Millard stood. "Don't bother to sit down, Hans. We've barely time to stop by the breeding house."
They walked to an area a block from the downtown section of the small island. "How is Martha working out, Ansel?"
"Beautiful," said Ansel Wilkinson. "I think it was a brilliant move on your part to bring her over to run the hospital."
Martha Witherspoon was a muscular old harridan, who had been a practical nurse for better than twenty-five years. She had gone through seven husbands and the eighth one was in critical condition in the hospital when tests showed he was dying of arsenic poisoning. Martha, who had inherited sizeable sums from various insurance companies on the death of her previous husbands, faced the death penalty when number eight died. She was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair when, for some perverse reason of his own, the governor of the state gave her a pardon. The press surmised that the big woman was dying of cancer. The governor was not going to continue his career in politics, so it was surmised that he had pardoned Martha Witherspoon as a gesture toward his support of the abolishment of capital punishment. The truth was that Millard paid the governor a sizeable sum in return for the practical nurse. She would never leave Wilkinson Island.
She ran the hospital/breeding compound with an iron hand. New babies were not only kept in sterile surroundings and fed properly, they were given tender loving care in order to make them grow strong and healthy. Women who were pregnant were exercised regularly, fed a balanced diet and given the best of medical care. A convicted abortionist who had gotten an early parole when he agreed to go to Wilkinson Island to live, delivered all the new babies. He wasn't too unhappy. He fucked Martha at night in their bed and impregnated any woman who struck his fancy when she was in her fertile period. Aside from the doctor, the establishment had three fulltime studs who serviced the girls regularly. Martha saw to the mating, indeed supervised it from a closed-circuit television set she kept on her desk.
As Otis, Ansel and Pedersen walked by the glass enclosed beds, Martha's raucous voice called out instructions. "All right, Gordon. Take out your prick now. Jerk it a little. You're going to fuck Melissa. Remember how good it feels to fuck, Gordon? Remember? Sure you remember. You fucked Joanne only this morning and we damned near couldn't get you off of her. Melissa, lie down. Spread your legs apart. Okay, Gordon. Get on top of her. Stick your prick in her. No, stupid, not in her mouth! Jesus Christ! You think we're in this business for your goddamn pleasure? Stick it in her cunt. Right there, stupid! There between her legs. Right in the same place where Joanne's is. All right. Rise up and down, boy. That's nice. Easy. Now hard. Harder. Shove it harder, damnit! Get it all the way in there. You'll drip come all over the sheets and I just changed them, to say nothing of losing the semen!"
"I'm always afraid one of the babies might be deformed every time I see Gordon seeding one of the girls," said Ansel.
"A lobotomy isn't something that affects the genes, Ansel," said Otis patiently. "I've told you a hundred times. All it does is make the girls tractable."
"Gordon isn't very tractable. Look at him. He wants to do it again." Ansel laughed. "Look at that son of a bitch cling to the girl. Jesus! He doesn't know he's done for, does he? Look at that prick. Limp as a rag! Gordon sure was a total loss, wasn't he?"
"Not particularly," said Otis. "He plants strong babies." They passed the nursery. "There are four of Gordon's young. Perfect specimens, every one of them. Look at that little half-breed, especially. A beautiful child. In fifteen years she'll bring us close to ten thousand. Maybe more."
The breeding women were carefully selected to produce healthy young. When the offspring reached puberty, the lobotomy would be performed, getting them ready for the market. Millard look at his stock with pride. His investment had been small. Several of the women would produce as high as twenty babies before they were slaughtered and turned into food-therefore, his expenses were kept down. It had been a long-range plan and was just getting started. At that time he counted fifteen babies under a year, and three aged around two and one a little over three years old. Fifteen Zombies were pregnant, which would yield quite a crop of new stock within a few months. The culls he would kill. Some of them would go into the dog food plant and be fed to the girls who tilled his flower fields. Some of the more hardy boy children would be separated from the brooder house and sold on the black-market to couples who were anxious to adopt a baby. Boys were not as much in demand as girls. He had sold a particularly beautiful and intelligent girl a year ago for close to a million dollars, and he had not regretted the sale, but it was not something he would want to do often. Millard was a firm believer in the old adage that reaping was in relation to the sewing.
Idly, he watched a coupling between a young boy and an older woman. The woman seemed to enjoy the act immensely, sliding up and down on the boy's stiff rod with rapture written all over her face. She was one of Morgan, the surgeon's, better efforts. As he watched, he wondered what kind of a child he could make inside of Leslie. A child who looked like her would be a prize for any man. Ought to bring plenty a few years from now. Thinking of her lush body, he became anxious to return to the island.
Millard and Hans Pedersen walked into the front hall of the main house just as Leslie and John reached the bottom of the stairway.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"What have we here?" asked Millard, with a bright and angry grin. His gun was out of his pocket long before John, who was more accustomed to a ballpoint pen, was able to reach for his.
Ten minutes later, Leslie and John were securely tied to the operating tables in the underground hospital. Millard fondled Leslie's naked breasts. "A pity," he murmured. "Morgan learned how to do frontal lobotomies when they were popular for mental patients. That's what he was, you know. A psychiatrist. He never was a surgeon. Didn't care much for all that blood. Not until after Alpha castrated him. Now there was a bloodthirsty woman. I expect you're wondering how she went about castrating him." He giggled, running a hand in circles over Leslie's nipple. "Probably spell-bound, and probably thinking I'm using the word as a figure of speech. It's become popular nowadays to speak of a woman castrating a man mentally. Not Alpha. She caught her husband fucking another nurse. She worked at the hospital too, you know. Alpha took a dim view of such goings on. She happened to have a scalpel in her hands and there were Morgan's balls, hanging down and absolutely still, paralyzed, you might say. He'd forgotten to lock the door to the storeroom where they kept the locked drugs. Nobody ever did know why Alpha happened to have that sharp scalpel in her hand. She just opened the door and there was Morgan's ass, right in her face, pumping up and down into the juicy cunt of this young nurse.
"So she slashed away, and the blood gushed up, a hell of a bloody sight. This young nurse screaming her head off, wriggling out from under poor old Morgan. A lot of people think it would have been kinder to let Morgan croak. After all, going around in the world without balls. It kind of does something to a man, especially when his prick was slashed off in the melee. But you know how hospitals are. It would have looked bad not to have patched him up. The emergency room was right across the hall, so after they got Alpha off of Morgan's bloody ass-oh, she was thorough. By the time they heard this young nurse screaming and got over watching her bug-eyed as she ran through the halls with her uniform up around her waist, come running down her leg and all, hell! It took a little time. And like I was telling you, Alpha was thorough. She had that sharp instrument inside Morgan's asshole and she was more than reaming him out. But as I said, they saved the patient.
"After that he took a great interest in surgery again. Completely overthrew all his psychiatric training and went back to the knife. It seemed to have a fascination for him for some reason or another. And he was so kind and all to Alpha. Went to visit regularly, forgave her, brought her roses....
"As soon as she was somewhat rational, they released her in his custody. She was his first frontal lobotomy. Did it on his kitchen table in his home. No anesthetic. Of course he had knocked her out while he was sewing her mouth shut so she couldn't scream. Then he sold her to somebody. He gets a big charge out of doing the operations. Sometimes I think he has it in his mind that he's doing it to Alpha all over again."
He smiled at Leslie. "You've got beautiful tits, sweetheart." He pinched the nipples. Her naked back cringed against the steel operating table. Her eyes glared at him over the white towel he had tied around her mouth. "Full of spunk, aren't you? Turn over, baby. I'm going to fuck hell out of you one last time. While you're still a thinking human being and can enjoy it."
She continued to glare at him, grinding her teeth together under the tight gag. He laughed and rolled her over, climbing up on the operating table as he dropped his trousers to the floor. He looked at John, stretched out on the long steel table, his hands and legs spread-eagled, tied to posts. He began humming a few bars from St. James Infirmary. Laughing, he said, "I don't see what you saw in him, sweetheart. Look at the size of his prick. It won't hardly be worth my while to chop it off when he's been bled. No more than a mouthful, at the best." Turning back to Leslie's ripe lush buttocks, he spread the cheeks apart and rotated the end of his prick against her anus. She squirmed and he grinned.
"Watch this, Hans. I'm gonna make her cry out for more and more. She'll be helpless under the power of my prick. She'll hump up and down and holler and squirm because she's a whore at heart and she'll always be a whore." Pushing his rigid cock in against her strawberry asshole, he drew his mouth wide in a painful expression and sweat popped out on his forehead. "Tighter than hell," he said grimly, gasping. He plunged all the way in, his belly button tight up against the small of her back, straining.
Under him, Leslie bit her lips under the gag and tried not to cry out. The pain was more than she could endure. The little fissures he had caused in her asshole before had barely had time to heal. Red flames shot through her, swiveling and dancing. Yellow flashes came and went in front of her eyes.
Winking at Hans as he rode her, Millard said, "Hey, Pedersen. Let's have a little fun. Call the girls in. Let them work over the lover there stretched out so cold, so pale and so fair."
Pedersen went to the apartment where several girls were sitting around staring blankly at the wall. Humping away, Millard snapped out orders between thrusts. "You, Colette. Get on that blond and puny son of a bitch and straddle him. Suck him off. You, Juanita. Put your cunt down on his mouth. He likes to eat pussy. And Alice, you raise his legs up a little and stick your fingers up his ass. Give him a good send-off into hell."
Leslie raised her head up off the table and looked at John. He shot her an anguished look as his prick began to rise under the French girl's hot moist tongue. The Spanish girl squatted over his face, covering it with her rich black muff. And little Alice obediently lifted John's legs and began to fuck her fingers in and out of his asshole.
John's expression was a mixture of pleasure and pain. His tanned face darkened with blood as he began to move his hips under the steady pressure of the triple play. His neck arched back and Leslie saw the muscles knot as he fought against the pressures that consumed him. Under Colette's mouth his prick grew rigid and hard. Now and then Leslie saw patches of it, pink and throbbing. Slowly, the steady thrusting of Millard's cock as it slithered in and out of her asshole brought the heat to her loins. Despite herself she felt herself building higher and higher. Just as Millard had said, she began humping backwards, bucking and heaving, straining for more and more. Through her nose she moaned and whined and felt the hot juice of Millard's climax pumping into her, bringing her own orgasm to a quick finish. She fell flat on her belly, her heart hammering against the hot wet steel, wet from her own laboring sweat. As she came, John reached his, fountaining his geyser up into Colette's mechanical mouth.
A shadow fell across the open door. "What a beautiful sight," said the creature standing there. His words were cold as pellets of ice. He was the fattest man Leslie had ever seen. His eyes were sunken into his head, almost obscured by the bulging fat cheeks. Seven chins wobbled and hobbled. Grotesque hands were clasped together, the fingers fat as bratwurst sausages and the same ugly yellowish color. His belly stuck out at an angle, so far that the man seemed to be forced to pull his head back far from his shoulder blades in order to keep the weight of his gut from toppling him over on his face. He walked slowly, helping each enormous leg in its forward movement by pushing at it with his sausage fingers. The four steps it took him to get to the table where Leslie lay helplessly staring up at him made him gasp for breath. He wheezed, looking down at her. "What a lovely specimen in feminine depravity," he said solemnly.
Millard pulled his limp prick from her ass. "Scrub up, Morgan. I'm tired. But I want to watch this one."
John moaned and groaned, thrusting the girl who had her cunt in his face to the floor. Millard had forgotten to give them orders to stop. He laughed uproariously. "I forgot to turn off my little fucking machines, didn't I, boy? What a way to go, eh? Beat it, you girls. Go back to the apartment. Tell Geraldine I said you should have baths."
The girls slithered out of the room. The doctor lumbered to the wash bowl where he began to scrub his hands with a brush and liquid green soap.
Leslie's eye saw a sudden movement. Hans Pedersen bent down quickly and removed John's gun from his pocket. A flame jumped as the gun barked. The doctor turned, stared at Hans for what seemed a lifetime, his little beady eyes almost hidden in the folds of flesh startled, full of disbelief. Slowly, he lifted his great sausage hands to the hole in his head and slumped like a bag of lard to the tiled floor.
With an oath, Millard grabbed the automatic he had put on the instrument table and shot wildly at Pedersen. Hans slammed against the wall, blood gushing from a wound in his chest. His eyes blurred as he took careful aim. He was falling when he shot Millard in the head. Pieces of Millard splattered against the walls of the operating room, showering down on Leslie's naked back in a shower of flesh, particles of bone and blood.
Hans lifted his hand and pointed. "Wilkinson Island," he said. "Bondage. Women. Children." His eyes rolled up in his head and he went limp.
Leslie screamed silently, her eyes wild as she watched Hans die. Struggling to a sitting position, she saw the dead doctor and the almost headless body of Millard Otis. She could hear her thoughts scrambling madly, red, yellow and purple, DEAD, DEAD, THEY'RE ALL DEAD AND WE'RE TIED UP. WE'LL DIE TOO, IN AN UNDERGROUND COMPLEX FULL OF ZOMBIES WHO WON'T HAVE SENSE ENOUGH TO DO ANYTHING UNLESS THEY'RE TOLD!!!
Her eyes flicked to John, who was straining against the ties that bound him to the table. He looked at her mutely, blood welling up under the gag where he had bitten his lips as he struggled to get free.
Her hands were tied behind her. John made a sound and waggled his head in the direction of the doctor. She stepped down from the table and went over and looked down at the mound of dead flesh, wondering what John had in mind. She looked at him again and he shook his head up and down, meaning yes, she supposed, but yes, what?
She walked around the room and kept looking at John. Sometimes he shook his head violently back and forth. Meaning no. Dazed, she continued to circle the room, her bare feet cold against the floor, wondering what in the world he wanted her to do. Finally, she noticed that he seemed to be telling her yes when she was close to the body of the doctor. Her eyes fell on the white table, looking without seeing the array of instruments inside a glass covered sterilizer.
Instruments. Cut. Knife. Scalpel. Oh. Yes ... Of course. She realized she was in shock. She realized that her own mind was trying to tell her something. Finally the message came through. Slowly, she backed up to the cabinet and with her-fingers, lifted the lid. Steam hissed out, hot at her back. She turned around and stared at it. Then she stood on a chair and bent backward, slowly, reaching for one of the sharp edged and shiny instruments inside the cabinet. It took her almost ten minutes of agonized clutching and dropping to finally grasp one of the things and keep it long enough to walk with it, clutched tightly inside her fingers, over to the table where John lay.
He looked at her helplessly. She wondered what she should do with it now that she had it. She looked for a long time at one of his hands, purple with the circulation cut off from the bonds, and realized that she could, possibly, cut through the ropes. It took her fifteen minutes of frightened saw mg up and down to cut through the rope. She couldn't see what she was doing, nor could die feel. She heard the rope snap and slither to the floor. She turned around and looked at him, falling to his chest. She he cut his hand a couple of places, and she watch, him shake it, trying to get feeling back into it, the cut places turning from white open mouths to red and bloody ones as the blood began to circulate. She shook with sobs, her tears falling onto his chest as she waited for him to cut her own bonds so she could finish freeing him.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The hotel room in Las Vegas was cool, elegant and very private. Leslie whimpered in her sleep and John immediately caressed her, holding her in his arms and stroking her back. The doctors had said it would probably be a long time before the nightmare experience entirely left her subconscious, bringing on the dreams that she shut out of her mind when she was awake.
She lay in the dark staring up at the ceiling. She knew the doctors were right. It was true that she relived the night of terror over in her dreams. But there was something else that nagged and scraped at her raw nerves. Something the doctors had no way of knowing. She was haunted by a picture of a man astride her back, his prick in her ass, fucking her hard. Her nerves tingled and came to life and she heard him calling her a whore. In her dream, she always answered him. "Yes, I'm a whore." The word echoed back and forth across the mountains. They became distorted and garbled, but they were still distinct to her. Sometimes she went to the conservative home of John's parents back in Cleveland, Ohio, in her dreams. The voice followed her there. Millard Otis' voice, taunting her from his dead lips. "Whore. Whore! WHORE, WHORE WHORE!" John's parents looked at her and turned their faces away, but not quickly enough to keep her from seeing the hurt tears in their eyes.
"Tell me you love me," she said, against John's shoulder, blotting out the sound of the voice, blotting out the faces of his parents.
"Of course I love you," he said, holding her close.
Her voice came slithering and sliding out of a black pit. She heard her mouth shaping the words, but they were silent. Only she could hear them. "You wanted Millard to fuck you. You are a whore."
He kissed her breasts, sucking gently at the nipples. She squirmed with pleasure, feeling a great lassitude sweep over her.
"Fuck me," she said softly.
He straddled her, looking down at her lovely face as her legs wrapped around his back. She felt his huge prick going into her grateful cunt, felt it begin to gyrate, plunge, vibrate. They rocked steadily for several seconds, their heat wrapping them like a blanket, their mouths greedy at each other's lips, their tongues exploring the inside of one another's mouths. She could feel the goodness of his prick plummeting into her, and her own answering need answered him thrust for thrust.
"I love you," she cried. And she knew that she would leave him. That she would get up out of the bed and dress in a little while. He would sleep. She knew she would never come back because she knew that no matter how much she loved life, she was just what Millard had said she was. A whore. Someday, she said to herself as she felt his sperm pump into her strong and deep, filling the aching void within her to complete satisfaction, she would walk down another street.
She came, washing him with her hot thick juice. She clung to him, her thoughts scattered to the winds as she plunged upward, feeling the hard length of his prick down deep inside of her where it belonged.
But then when he slept, satiated, drugged with release, her scattered thoughts fell back into the sad mad kaleidoscope of bad patterns. Yes. She would walk down another street. She would listen to some other man telling her she was beautiful. She would think she loved him, and she would tell herself that she loved him, but all she would ever really want would be a hot and satisfying fuck. She would go home to John and hope she was not going to give him the clap. And she would hope he would not find out that he was married to a whore in her heart. And even as she hoped he wouldn't find out, she knew she would look forward to another man with another hot hard prick ... because that was the way she was.
Suburbia. Station wagons. Kids in school. Weiner roasts and Girl Scout outings Sunday at the beach. Not for Leslie Frankenberg.
The taste of honey in her mouth was fine. But it wasn't always honey that she would crave. Sometimes she wanted the sting of peppermint on her tongue, or the taste of a different kind of prick. Caviar might be lovely, but jellybeans might satisfy her craving better. Steak or lobster was delicious, but a hamburger on a bun might be what she wanted.
All this she told herself as she silently left the hotel room.
As she walked down the street she thought about how nice it was that the babies back there on the island wouldn't grow up to be dehumanized, their brains operated on, turned into Zombies. She thought about a lot of things as the tears ran down her cheeks, thinking of the way he had looked up there, so young, so handsome, his hands flung up on either side of his head. Through her tears the lights of Las Vegas twinkled red, blue, green, silver, gold.
A telephone booth was right outside the Sierra Hotel.
She dropped in a dime, listened to it ding-ding, held the receiver tightly to her ear as she dialed, heard a buzzing-ringing and smelled the scent of flowers blooming on an island, all in one tumbling second, and almost hung up the telephone. It rang six times before the ringing on the other end stopped and the voice said, with interest, "Hello?"
