Junia Wickham was a girl who enjoyed a hot shower at the end of a hard day as much as anyone. At least she had enjoyed her shower, she thought with disgust, until she'd read that darned book on the sexual habits of the adult female, written by some kook with a string of impressive initials after his name. According to this particular savant, the simple act of taking a shower was positively loaded with sexual significance and with hidden meanings of sinister, Freudian implication.
The trouble with that, Junia thought, reaching with long-fingered hands to grip the smooth, round handles of the two valves and turn off the needle spray of water, was that she herself just didn't have any sexual habits and, at eighteen, she was beginning to wonder about herself. Which, of course, was why she'd read the dumb book by Professor What's-his-name in the first place.
The jets of water ceased and she jerked her hands guiltily away from the valve handles, suddenly aware that Professor Whoosis would undoubtedly pronounce them phallic symbols.
"Oh, nuts!" she exclaimed aloud in exasperation with herself as she parted the shower curtain and stepped out onto the mat in the white and green of the tiled bathroom. It was, in part, an act of defiance to stand in front of the full-length mirror, to remove her shower cap from short, blonde hair and begin to dry herself with a rough-napped bath towel. To hell with the menopausal capriciousness of bitter, old men who wrote silly books about the sex lives of females! She deliberately and critically studied her reflection. She wasn't so sure about the face, although it was true that dark brown eyes and light blonde hair did make a startling combination, but the complexion was good and the features regular as well as pleasantly arranged. Like many pretty girls, she had never quite accepted the judgments of those who had told her she was beautiful. She imagined she could find many imperfections of which others seemed blindly unaware.
As for her body, well, now that was a different matter. Concerning the appearance of her body from the neck down she considered herself sole arbiter. She wasn't, she reminded herself virtuously, in the habit of revealing it to the critical scrutiny of the public. Not that she considered it anything to be ashamed of, either. She was, as a matter of fact, quite proud of her body, and this was not the first occasion on which she had lingered in self-admiring narcissism in front of the mirror. She remembered the man who had tried to pick her up in a bus depot. He had leered at her with his lust burning hot and undisguised in his eyes. "Baby," he'd said, "you're just what every sex maniac wants for Christmas." At the time, she'd been furious, and had gotten rid of him by threatening to call the police, but now, safe in her bathroom, she could giggle a little at the memory and even agree that, naked, and with a ribbon and gift card tied about her small waist, she might indeed be welcome beneath the tree of almost any bachelor on Christmas morning.
Glowing from the hot shower and the rough towel, her body might have been sculptured from a living specimen of rose quartz. Her breasts, while only slightly larger than normal for her size, pointed outward, bearing their light burden of pink nipples and darker rosettes proudly, the upward curve of them entrancing, and also quite obviously designed to fit the curve of a man's hands. Her artfully molded torso diminished to a slender waist, swelling again to rounded hips that were divided by a wedge of curly hair slightly darker than that on her head. Her thighs were full yet sweetly shaped and tapered above lower legs that had no need of high heels to display cunningly crafted calves and slender ankles.
Junia's baby fat had long since dissolved and been reformed into the contours of what was definitely now a woman's body. Yet there remained about her that suggestion of tender softness that one associates with children whose bodies have not yet been tempered and hardened by bruising contact with the hard corners and edges of life. The result was to give the impression of a very innocent and very young girl in a woman's body.
As an impression, it was not entirely false, virgins of eighteen being something of a rarity in this day of drive-in theaters, permissive parents and pot parties. Junia was an exception. Her parents were not permissive but rather inclined the other way. She had never been alone in the back seat of a car with a boy, either at a drive-in or in Lover's Lane, nor had she ever been at a pot party. After high school, it had taken six months of constant arguing and pleading to obtain their reluctant consent for her to leave her home town and take a job as a file clerk with Amareo, Incorporated, an electronics firm manufacturing component parts for I.C.B.M.'s under a government contract at Randville, a town three hundred miles from her home and in another state.
Now, for the first time in her life, she was on her own, had her own apartment and had just completed her first week on her first job. She had been scared at first, but, now, already the newness and the initial thrill were beginning to wear off and she was settling into the routine of this other way of living. She was beginning to learn the lesson of loneliness, and to dread just a little the return to an empty apartment each evening.
Perhaps this, combined with her inexperience, explains why she did not hesitate when she heard a knock on her door. It might, she thought hopefully, be one of the girls from the office. She'd made the tentative acquaintance of a few, and had shyly suggested that they would be welcome at her apartment some evening. She donned an ice-blue dressing gown, hastily belted it in front, and went padding barefoot through her combination living room and bedroom.
Her visitor was not one of the girls from the office. She unlocked the door and opened it to be confronted by a man she did not know but whom she vaguely recognized as a face she had seen at the Amareo plant.
"Hi, doll," the man said. "Thanks, I don't mind if I do." He took her completely by surprise as he stepped over the threshold, took the door from her unresisting hands and closed it quietly behind him, never taking his dark, somehow menacing eyes from her face. He was of medium height and build, although the padded shoulders of his suit coat gave him an athletic appearance not justified by the thin, pale face. It was not a strong face, but it was evil, arrogant, insolent, greedy, and infinitely cruel.
Junia took a step backward, repelled and frightened.
"Who? What are you ... ? Why are you here? I didn't ... I-I don't even ... "
He grinned at her, his thin lips curling into a grimace of sardonic amusement. He snapped his fingers. "Can you beat that?" he asked her. "I did it again. Yep, I forgot to call or send up my card." He made her a slight, mocking bow. "Angelo Feroni, one of your fellow slaves at the great Amareo salt mines, doll. I work in production control. Just thought I'd drop by and say hello. Aren't you glad to see me?"
Junia was inexperienced, but she was no fool. She didn't think it took an expert to see that Angelo Feroni was up to no good and that, alone with him in her apartment, she was in big trouble.
"No," she said, "I'm not glad to see you. I didn't invite you and I don't want you. Now please leave at once."
His face remained expressionless but his eyes flashed a momentary message of smoldering hate. "Now that isn't very friendly of you," he said, his voice flat and dry. "Maybe I don't want to leave. Whatcha gonna do about that, baby?"
"I ... I'll scream."
He laughed. "Go ahead. I checked this place out. Only three apartments and the other people are all gone out for the evening. So is the landlady. I gotcha all to myself, honey."
Junia backed up another step until she was pressed against the top edge of her dresser. "What do you want?"
"If you don't know what I want," Angelo Feroni said, "you're dumber than I thought you were. You stand there pretty near naked in that flimsy thing you're wearing and ask me what I want!" He snorted. "What the hell would I want? I want you, baby, and I'm gonna have you. I been watching you at work. You got the kind of stuff that can drive a man up a wall. How long you think a man's gonna watch you jiggling those cans of yours under that sweater you wear, or the way you wiggle that cute little ass, without doing something about it? I'm gonna fuck you, baby. You can get on that bed and open up for me, or you can scream and fight. It's all the same to me. I don't mind belting a babe like you around a little before I fuck her. It's kinda fun. Well, how do you want it?"
Despite what he had told her, and what she knew to be the truth, that she was alone in the building with Angelo Feroni, Junia did scream. Because there was no place else to go, she cowered in the corner between the end of the dresser and the wall and she screamed. She screamed until a hard hand slapped the side of her face with enough force to knock her head against the wall.
"Aw, shut up," he told her. Taking hold of one of her wrists, he spun her out into the center of the small room where he expertly tripped her and caused her to fall across the bed. She kicked at him as he attempted to get on top of her, the blue dressing gown coming open to her navel and exposing the tapered length of her legs. He avoided her thrashing feet and, leaning over her, he casually backhanded her across the jaw, the blow having enough force to momentarily stun her. He took advantage of the opportunity to rip the garment from her, leaving her naked. Then he just stood there and stared down at her, his eyes wide with amazement.
"Jesus Christ!" he muttered. "I figured this pussy was a dish but, god almighty, who'd a thought ... ?" He reached down to unzip his fly and let his prick spring out, long, hard and already trembling with a desire of its own.
It was the first thing Junia saw when she recovered from the blow he had dealt her and opened her eyes. She started to scream again and thought better of it, remembering that he had hit her twice for doing just that. She looked at the thing that jutted from his crotch and she knew both terror and fascination. She was going to be raped. She acknowledged that now, and the fact that there was no help for it. Up to this moment she had supposed he was bluffing, or that someone would, after all, hear her screams and come bursting in to save her. It happened all the time on TV. But now she was faced with the hard, unrelenting reality of a kind of scene that would not fade into a commercial in a few minutes. This man, this hoodlum who had opened his pants and exposed himself in front of her, was surely going to rape her. She would fight, but to no avail. He would rape her and then probably kill her to keep her quiet. In that moment, Junia shed most of the civilizing influence that has brought the race of man from savagery to the space age in only a few thousand years. She remembered a sharp steak knife in her kitchen. To plunge it into Feroni's belly and rip him open would be very nice, indeed, a pleasing and eminently satisfactory thing to do. But, first, she must get off the bed and away from him. Moved mostly by instinct, she selected his crotch and drove the heel of her foot at the point just below his arching, vibrating cock with all the strength of her leg.
Had she known a little more about the anatomy of the human male it probably would have worked. As it was, she was not aware that a man's scrotum is well shielded by his inner thighs when he is standing with his legs together. All she succeeded in doing was to knock him back a step and cause him to grunt with surprise. He caught her ankle and twisted her foot, cursing her savagely. She screamed again, this time with pain, and then she was silent. The third blow to her face had landed just behind the point of her jaw and it had not been delivered with an open hand.
"Try to kick me in the nuts, will you?" he snarled as he set to work on her. He ripped the dressing gown to shreds and, using the pieces as ropes, he bound her wrists and ankles to the four corners of the bed. And that was how she found herself when she came to, spread-eagled and completely helpless. Feroni was sitting beside her, one hand roughly massaging her breast and his eyes gloating as he drank in the youthful perfection of her body.
"Now, maybe you'll behave yourself," he said. He seemed good-natured, almost jovial. "You scream again and I'll stick a Kotex in your mouth," he warned her. "I found some in the bathroom. They make the best gags. God damned if you ain't got the best set of knockers I ever saw on a babe." He rolled a nipple between thumb and forefinger and shook his head in admiration. "You got a great set of legs, too. You oughta wear your skirts a little shorter. I damned near got a crick in my back trying to see under your skirt when you walked down the corridor in the office. I made up my mind right then that I was going to fuck you."
Junia felt calmer, more fatalistic about what was going to happen to her. Faced with the inevitable, she saw the futility of further struggle.
"Do you think you're going to get away with this?" she asked him.
He grinned amiably. "Sure. It's all set. Wait 'til you report to work in the morning. You'll see."
The statement puzzled her and yet was a relief. He apparently had no intention of killing her.
"You think I'll go back there? After this? You think I'd go on working at a place where they hire people like you?"
He looked less friendly. "You damned right you will. You'll punch in tomorrow just like always. Even if you wanted to quit, you'd have to go there to turn in your I.D. card to security and get cleared off the job. You don't do that and you don't get your pay. You ain't that well financed, kid. I checked up on you."
"Suppose I go to the police?"
"Suppose you do? How you gonna prove it, doll?"
"I'll tell the boss. I'll tell Mr. Blackburn himself. He's a nice man. He'll believe me. I know he will."
Feroni laughed heartily. "Baby doll," he said, "you kill me. So you're gonna spill to nice, old, fatherly J.B., huh? Okay, you do that. You tell him all about it. I'm just gonna make sure you got plenty to tell him." He slid his hand down from her breast and let it move across the taut, flat expanse of her stomach. It lingered in the crinkly patch of pubic hair for a moment and then dropped down the curve of her crotch. His hand caressed the furred lips of her vagina. She gasped with fear and indignation when his fingers opened her vulva, exposing the pink, membranous tissue to his touch, and she tried to writhe away from him when he began to force a finger into her. She whimpered in pain and terror but she remembered not to scream again.
"Man, what a sweet, little cunt you got!" he exclaimed, ignoring her efforts to back away from him. "Honey, it's going to be a real pleasure to stick my cock in that. You know something? Damned if you ain't almost tight enough to be cherry. You ever had it before, kid?"
She shook her head. Somewhere she had read or heard that even a determined rapist would back off when it came to violating a virgin. When she looked hopefully at Angelo Feroni she learned the fallacy of that particular legend. His breathing had quickened until he was almost panting, his eyes gleamed with a blaze of lust, and his normally set and hard face was slack with the compulsion that was making him tremble with eagerness to get into her luscious body.
"Sure enough?" he asked her eagerly, his voice hoarse with desire. "Christ! I never expected that kind of luck. I only popped one cherry in my life, and she was only twelve, not a helluva lot of good after I got it. We've got plenty of time. I was gonna fool around some more before I fucked you, but, baby, I don't waste no time when I got a fresh one. You make me so damned hot I can't stand it. Okay, this is where you get it. You scream again and I'll knock your fucking teeth down your throat. See?"
Junia nodded wearily. "All right. Just do it and get it over with and then get out of here."
He didn't answer. He was taking his suit coat off and unbuckling his trousers. She saw that his legs were thin and hairy. Under the base of his now dripping prick swung the ugly bag that she had kicked at and missed. He knelt between her outspread thighs, leaning over and supporting his weight on one elbow while he fumbled at her vulva. Then she felt the warm, wet head of it touching her, forcing itself into her resisting flesh. He put the other hand beside her head and lowered his weight onto her, his chest flattening her breasts.
"Now!" he grunted and began pushing his hips slowly and relentlessly toward hers. She felt the head of his prick advancing into her, penetrating the tightly bound tissue and shouldering it aside. Then came the pain. It was like nothing she had ever known or anticipated. It was doubled and trebled by the fact that he had aroused no passion in her and she was dry, her vagina not lubricated by the body fluids that flow so freely at the height of desire. He made it worse by taking her with cruel slowness, prolonging her agony as he deliberately savored that first penetration, relishing the feeling of flesh being torn and bruised aside. He had a hand over her mouth to muffle the screams she would have given vent to in spite of her determination not to anger him again.
She wasn't even granted the boon of fainting. She had to suffer the torture of that cruel prick until it was in her for its full length, and then he rested only a moment before he pulled it out and thrust it back in again, brutally, carelessly ignoring her agony. He became all animal, his slack lips drooling spittle on her face as he pumped his prick in and out of her, grunting and groaning with the terrible tensions that were mounting inside of him, the blaze of lust that was driving him to go on ravishing her as roughly as possible.
For all his passion, he was a long time reaching a climax. By the time he did, she had begun to get accustomed to having him in her, and the pain had diminished. His sharp hip bones caused more discomfort than his plunging prick. When he did come, it was with a very brief flurry of increased activity, accompanied by unintelligible sounds, and was quickly over, leaving him spent and panting, the weight of his body full on hers.
She patiently endured the pressure, thankful that the ordeal was at last over. She had been raped, she thought dully. It had happened to her, just as she had been warned that it might if she persisted in undertaking the adventure of life on her own in a big city. Dimly she was aware that her subconscious was faintly nagging at her, insisting that she, as a virtuous girl who had been brutally violated, should now be crying, properly demonstrating some evidence of shame and horror. She was not crying, however, and was no longer frightened or even particularly ashamed. She felt a little guilty about this lack of concern, but decided that she was just too damned tired to feel much of anything at the moment but discomfort. She hated her attacker, of course, but even that emotion was somehow remote and detached.
At last, he raised himself on his arms and rolled off her, withdrawing his prick from her body. He sat up and lit a cigarette. Neither of them said anything while he smoked it. He stubbed the butt out in the glass ashtray on her night-stand and glanced at her thighs, not bothering to conceal his disgust at the sight of the blood and drying semen on her legs and on the bedspread.
"You're a mess," he said. "If I turn you lose so you can clean up, will you behave yourself?"
"Yes," she replied. "Aren't you through with me? I thought ... "
"You wanna watch that shit. Thinking can get you in trouble. No tricks?"
She shook her head.
"Okay." He untied the blue strips of cloth that had held her prisoner on the bed. She thought again about the kitchen and the steak knife but, somehow, it no longer seemed as important as it had. He followed her into the bathroom and stood watching her, smoking another cigarette while she showered. She supposed he would rape her again as soon as she had dried herself. She hated the thought of it but felt no fear, only repugnance. She hoped he wouldn't tie her hands and feet this time. Maybe he would leave after doing it to her only once more. When she had finished showering, she went back to the other room and sat on the edge of the bed, making no effort to conceal her nudity and wondering at her sudden lack of modesty.
He sat beside her, but made no attempt to touch her. He had zipped his fly and rebuckled his belt and she felt a faint stirring of hope. She watched with dull curiosity as he pulled his coat over onto his lap and took a pint bottle from it. When he went to the kitchen and returned with two glasses, each half full of amber liquid, she shook her head.
"I don't drink," she said.
He laughed harshly. "You do, now. Toss it down, baby. You have a drink with me and maybe I won't do nothing more to you tonight. Okay?"
She didn't believe him but there was a chance that he meant it. She took the glass and drank a swallow, choking and gagging as the fiery shock of the whiskey hit her throat, but Feroni wouldn't let her put the glass down until she had drained it.
Unaccustomed to liquor, Junia began to feel the effects of the drink almost as soon as it hit her stomach. "All right," she said sullenly, "I drank you're damned whiskey. Now are you going to leave me alone like you promised?"
Feroni grinned. "I'm in no hurry. I like sitting here looking at you. You got one hell of a shape, sweetheart. You weren't bullshitting about being cherry either, were you? You know what I think? I think getting fucked didn't bother you as much as you thought it would. Maybe you even liked it a little, huh? Be a joke if we turned out to be friends."
She regarded him with contempt. "Don't count on it. I didn't like it, and I don't like you. I'll find a way to make you pay for what you've done to me, you ... you sex maniac!"
"Don't be such a snotty bitch," he admonished her.
She didn't reply because she could not. Something was happening to her. She had never been drunk in her life, but she had been around drunks enough to know how they acted. She didn't think she was drunk, a little sick, perhaps, and terribly dizzy, but not drunk. She fought against the nausea and the overpowering desire to just close her eyes and let herself topple over onto the bed. The thought occurred to her that she had been drugged and that was the last conscious thought she was to have for some time.
Angelo Feroni watched her fall back onto the bed, then got up and went to her phone on a stand in a corner of the room.
"Everything's all set," he said into it after he had dialed a number and received an answer. "Get up here right away before the stuff wears off." He hung up and lit another cigarette, going over to sit beside the unconscious girl and run his hand over the silken flesh of her exquisitely contoured thighs. He continued to fondle her body until he was disturbed by a knock on the door. He got up to open it cautiously and admit the burly, shabbily-dressed figure of an older man, one who needed a shave and whose eyes were bloodshot from over-indulgence in liquor.
"Okay, Larson," Feroni said, "there she is. Ain't she something, though? Get your clothes off and get on her. Did you bring the camera?"
The man called Larson nodded, taking a compact, thirty-five millimeter camera and a box of flash cubes from his coat pocket without removing his eyes from the nude body of the girl on the bed. "God damn!" he muttered. His red-veined eyes were greedy and the tip of his tongue flicked out to lick his lips. "You already popped her, Angelo?"
"Yeh. She was cherry too," the Italian replied boastfully. "Come on, get with it. I ain't got all night. You sure you can get a hard? You been drinking a lot lately."
Larson grunted disdainfully as he began stripping out of his clothes. "When I can't get a hard for something like that piece of pussy on the bed, you better call the undertaker." Evidence of the fact that he was telling the truth was plainly presented when he unbuttoned his shorts and dropped them to the floor. His large cock with its bulbous, purplish head stood stiffly erect. He went directly to the bed and mounted the girl, impatiently shoving her legs apart and thrusting his prick into her. "Ah!" he sighed with pleasure as it drove into her body.
Junia stirred and groaned but did not awaken.
"Okay, hold it," Feroni commanded brusquely. There was the blue-tinged flash of a bulb and the click of the camera. "Now take it out and stick it in her mouth."
"You sure she won't bite me?" Larson asked anxiously.
"Naw, she's out cold. She won't wake up until morning." There was another flash. "Good. Now turn her over and I'll get a shot of you with it in her ass. She's probably too small to really get it in but it'll look like it in the picture."
He worked methodically and efficiently, taking snaps of Larson and the girl in various poses until he had used up the film in the camera.
"That's all," he said. "You'll get your money tomorrow."
"Ain't you going to let me fuck her?" Larson asked. "Aw, come on, Angelo, be a sport. It ain't human to let a guy get this steamed up over a dish like this and then make him quit without getting any."
"All right," Feroni said curtly. "You fuck her just once and then you get out of here." He sat in a chair by the dresser, smoking and watching as Larson's bare ass bobbed up and down, his big cock plunging in and out of the girl's vagina. The older man came quickly but apparently with great force. Feroni watched with interest to see how Larson's anus contracted and expanded, like a brown, puckered eye that winked in rhythm with the pulsing beat of his orgasm.
After Larson had dressed and had left, Feroni continued to sit for awhile, still studying the girl on the bed. He seemed like a man trying to make up his mind. Once he glanced nervously at his watch. Apparently having reached a decision, he put his coat on, made sure that the camera was in his pocket and went to the door. He paused with his hand on the knob.
"Damn!" he snarled and turned back into the room. Going to the bed he got up on it and kneeled behind the prone, face-down figure of Junia, unzipping his fly and taking his cock out. He grasped her hips with his hands and lifted her buttocks into the air, spreading the cheeks of her ass with his thumbs. He presented the dripping, smeary head of his cock to the brown button of her anus and pushed, pulling her toward him at the same time. The powerful sphincter muscle resisted him for awhile but at last gave way and his prick slid into her. He groaned with pleasure to feel the hot, tight, inner flesh grasp him like a strong hand and he began fucking her, his facial muscles twitching and contorting his features as spasm after spasm of passion shook him.
"I wish you could feel this, baby," he muttered. "Someday I'm gonna fuck you this way when you're awake and, before I'm through with you, you'll be begging for more of it."
CHAPTER TWO
The alarm woke Junia at six-thirty. She was an earlier riser than most working girls, liking the extra half-hour it gave her to linger over her breakfast coffee and first cigarette. She awoke, turned off the alarm, and started to get up before she remembered. The shock of it caused her to drop back down on the pillow and stare with wide eyes at the ceiling, graying in the pearly light of morning. She lay there for ten minutes, letting the memory of all that had happened to her filter slowly into her consciousness. She had been raped! Right there in the sanctuary of her own room she had been stripped, spread-eagled and violated, her nude body fondled by lascivious hands, gloated over by lustful eyes, and penetrated, her private and secret self exposed and ravished most casually and with brutal unconcern for her feelings. It didn't seem possible. It was a thing that happened only in newspaper stories and in books, not to real girls in real life. Not to her, Junia Wickham.
Yet it had happened. The evidence of it was there in the soreness of her lower body, an unaccustomed painfulness in the muscles of her thighs and a stiff, unnatural feeling in her crotch. She got up and went into the bathroom to stand in front of the full-length mirror, staring at herself in bewilderment.
The thing that puzzled her was that she looked exactly the same as she had on every other morning. It seemed to her that her experience should have left some visible sign, some obvious change that would plainly proclaim her a ravished female, a person no longer innocent or virtuous. There was nothing.
What was even more difficult to understand was that she didn't even feel different. She shook her head, unable to comprehend this phenomenon, and went into the shower to stand under the hot water. When she came out, she felt renewed and refreshed. It was becoming more difficult all the time to really believe that anything unusual had actually happened to her. She put thinking about it to one side until she had fixed and eaten her breakfast and had lit her first cigarette.
Over her second cup of coffee, she came to the remarkable conclusion that, despite the supposed truisms she had always accepted on faith, the importance of virginity was negligible, and sex was a vastly overrated affair ... nasty, painful, and, to say the least, a barbarous imposition, but, otherwise, no big deal. She carefully checked her mental reaction, finding that, unlike some heroine in an old-fashioned melodrama, she felt no compulsion toward suicide, not even shame that a man had viewed her nude body and then had used it to satisfy his lust. All she felt was a profound and smoldering anger that he had forced his way into her room without an invitation and had abused her without her consent. She remembered how she had wanted to kill him, but she knew that now she wouldn't bother even reporting him. He wasn't worth the trouble for herself and the scandal that would surely result. She detested him, but looked upon Angelo Feroni more with contempt than with hatred.
She wasn't aware that the man Larson had been there, too, that he had fucked her and had posed with his prick in her mouth while Angelo took pictures. She didn't notice the burned-out flash cubes in the waste basket by her dresser as she got ready to go to work.
From the window of the city bus, the world looked much the same to her as it had on previous mornings, and, already, the experience of the night before was beginning to fade from her mind.
It did not occur to Junia that there was anything remarkable in her reaction to the affair, anything in the least out of the ordinary in the quick recovery she was making. She was not aware that, in emotional balance, resilience, and the inability to apply common sense and logic to her own problems, she was very nearly a freak in a day and age when the neurotic female was practically the norm. She did not, as a result of her experience, hate men, or herself. About all it meant to her this morning was that she was determined to keep her door locked after this and be darned careful whom she let into her apartment. She would undoubtedly have driven a psychiatrist out of his wits.
As she went through the gate at Amareo, she was not pleased to see Nap Devore was on duty. Nap was one of the many security guards at the plant. She couldn't stand him. It was neither the fact that his square-jawed face and stocky body added up to almost comical homeliness, nor the fact that he had persistently tried to date her right from the day she had first reported for work. It was his small-townness that irritated her. He was so obviously a hick from the sticks, just like herself, and that was the thing that repulsed her. She wanted to feel that, in coming to Randville, she had escaped all provincialism, had left it far behind her. She wanted to achieve the poise and sophistication she fancied she saw in the girls of the big city, and she didn't need a slob like Nap Devore to remind her of her own beginnings.
She flashed her I.D. card at him and would have gone on had he not detained her. "Message for you, Miss Wickham," he said, respectfully touching his uniform cap in an informal salute while his worshipful, cocker-spaniel eyes devoured her. He would, she thought, wag his tail if he had one. "The big boss called down here a minute ago to say that when you came in, you were to report directly to him in his office. When are you going to go to the movies with me, Junia? They got a swell musical on at the ... "
"Thanks for the message," she interrupted him and walked away before he could tell her where the swell musical was playing. She wasn't particularly proud of her bad manners, but, damn the guy ... couldn't he ever take no for an answer? She wondered what J.B. Blackburn wanted with her. Was he going to fire her? She didn't really think so. She was sure that he was, as she had told Angelo Feroni, a nice, old man.
The receptionist in the plush foyer of the Administration Building told her to go right on in, that Mr. Blackburn was expecting her. She opened the mahogany door and entered that hushed, opulent world where dwell the top brass. Even the inch-deep pile of the wall-to-wall carpet on which she stood was designed to impress on visitors from lesser realms that they now stood on sacred ground. Secretaries and other employees invariably found themselves speaking in low-voice, reverential tones when admitted to this holy of holies, but J.B. himself, when in a genial mood, often affected a hearty manner to indicate that even one of the top-ranking, industrial gods could condescend to be democratic on occasions.
"Come right on in, Miss Wickham," he called from behind the altar of his desk. "Please take a chair. And how are you this fine morning, my dear?"
"Fine, thank you," Junia replied, seating herself tentatively on the edge of a straight-backed chair that faced the desk. It was her first meeting with the big boss and she regarded him with frank curiosity and interest. The other employees, especially the women, had spoken very highly of him and now she thought she saw why. For an older man, his good looks were truly impressive, and he practically exuded personality. His face was smooth and unlined, his black hair luxurious and wavy, and with that touch of white at the temples that is supposed to make a handsome, older man look distinguished.
"Fine! Fine!" he exclaimed with more enthusiasm than she thought the subject of her health and well-being really called for. "I asked you to come here this morning to have a very frank and serious discussion with you, my dear," he began, making a steeple of his hands in front of him, the well-manicured fingertips lightly touching. "I'll get right to the point, as I'm sure we both have a busy day ahead of us. Amareo is, as I'm sure you're aware, Miss Wickham, a relatively new corporation. You've been with us nearly a week now and have, of course, been briefed on our history during your indoctrination, so I won't bore you with repetitious details. As you know, we manufacture component parts for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles on a contract with the government. Being new in the area, however, you may not know that we have a rival firm, Mercer Electronics, located at the other end of town. Now here is the situation. The time is nearly at hand for the negotiation of a new contract with the Department of Defense, specifically with the U.S. Air Force. Miss Wickham, would you believe that Amareo stands a very good chance of losing the upcoming contract to Mercer Electronics?" His hearty voice sank to a tone of hushed awe and wonder at the very thought of such a monstrous and unbelievable tragedy. "You've seen this plant, Miss Wickham. You can hardly not be aware of what a marvel of modern engineering it is, of the millions that have been spent to create it. But you haven't seen Mercer Electronics. You haven't viewed at first hand their ramshackle buildings, their antiquated equipment and shuddered, as have I, at their old-fashioned, slipshod methods. If you had, you would ask how an intelligent government could possibly consider awarding an important contract such as the forthcoming one to a definitely fourth-rate company like Mercer at the expense of a modern, industrial giant like Amareo. And you would be quite right in asking that question. Quite right, indeed. It does seem preposterous, doesn't it?
"Well, there is a reason, Miss Wickham. It seems that Mercer, for all of its backwardness and its hopelessly outdated methods, has succeeded in employing a man named Maxwell Kline, a veritable genius among engineers, a man reputably unorthodox, and even of an unsavory personal reputation, but a true genius. We are reliably informed that Kline has created an entirely new and revolutionary system of production, one so fantastically good that even a junkyard like Mercer could, with the help of this new system, out produce Amareo, despite our infinitely better and more modern facilities and techniques. Do you follow me so far, Miss Wickham?"
Junia nodded. "Sure. I can see where it would be tough for you to lose the new contract, Mr. Blackburn, but I don't see why you're telling me all this. I suppose you want me to help, but I don't see how I can. I'm only a file clerk, in fact the most junior file clerk in the industry, no doubt."
J.B. beamed at her his most charming smile, showing two even rows of gleaming white teeth and only a little of the pink hard rubber from which dental plates are made. "Oh, but you're entirely too modest my dear!" he cried, apparently overjoyed to be the first one to call this to her attention. "You have other assets that far outweigh your lack of experience. So here's what I'm going to ask you to do, Miss Wickham. I'm going to ask you to resign from your position here with Amareo and take a job with Mercer Electronics. The changeover will be no problem. I have a man there in that company who is secretly in my employ and he will see to it that you get the job. Not that your pay check from Amareo will cease. Not all. It will come to you regularly every two weeks through the mail, but you will also be receiving a pay check from Mercer. As a file clerk, Miss Wickham, you will be of inestimable value to us while there. After the contract has been awarded, to Amareo of course, you will return here to a much better job than the one you left, and to a sizable bonus ... a very sizable bonus, Miss Wickham."
"In other words," Junia said, "you are asking me to take a job with Mercer Electronics as a file clerk so I can steal the plans for this new production system and turn them over to you. Is that right?"
J.B. looked somewhat discomfited at her bluntness.
"Well, ah, that is ... ," he stammered, "I suppose one could put it that way, but industrial espionage is so much of a standard practice, so universally accepted as one of the facts of the commercial world, that we hardly ever refer to the ... er ... pilfering of plans and such as outright stealing. Anyway, it won't, in this case, be necessary to actually remove the plans from the office at Mercer. It will be quite sufficient to only borrow them long enough to photograph them, after which they can be returned and no real harm done. Right?"
"No harm except that you get the contract and Mercer probably goes bankrupt. Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. Blackburn. I'm not for sale. Was there anything else you wanted to see me about?"
J.B. pursed his lips and made a tighter steeple out of his fingers, the amiable look gradually fading from his eyes.
"Yes," he said, "there is. I really don't mind that you don't buy the package. I would have been disappointed if you had, and I doubt if I'd have trusted you under those circumstances. But you definitely will do this job for me, Miss Wickham. Yes, you most certainly will. Last night you had a most interesting experience and I have here the photographic evidence to prove it." He picked up an envelope from the top of his desk and handed it to Junia. "Please examine those prints, Miss Wickham. I'm sure you'll find them sharp, clear and detailed. Feroni was a professional photographer before he came to Amareo. The man with whom you posed so charmingly is a known radical, a former member of the Communist Party, I believe. You can well imagine what would become of your security clearance if these fell into the hands of government agents. Furthermore, I had Feroni work late last night to run off quite a few copies. It would be no trouble at all to forward a set of those prints to your parents, and to see to it that they were viewed by any prospective employer where you might try to make application for a job. After you have studied them, I think you will agree that the only sensible thing for you to do is to accept my offer and go to work for Mercer Electronics under the conditions I have set forth. What do you think, Miss Wickham?"
Junia had spilled the set of twelve prints out onto her lap and was staring at them in disbelief and horror, her face and neck a violent shade of crimson. She recognized her own nude body contorted on her own bed but the bulky body of the man who was astride her, his prick half-buried in her cunt, was not familiar. In the one where he had his cock in her mouth, and where her eyes were closed as though she was undergoing an ecstasy of passion, his face was clearly visible. She didn't know him.
"These pictures ... this woman ... this couldn't possibly be me," she muttered, her bewilderment, her shame, and her growing indignation rendering her almost speechless. "I've never seen that horrible, old man before in my life. Feroni, yes. So you're the one who sent him to do that to me, you dirty, blackmailing bastard! Damn you! I'll ... I'll ... "
J.B. grinned. "You'll do nothing except exactly as you're told," he replied happily. "Feroni took the pictures after you had unwisely accepted a drink from his bottle. A few minutes later you were dead to the world. Every bum on skidrow could have gone into your room and laid you and you wouldn't have known anything about it, or remembered any of it. Come now, Miss Wickham, let's be philosophical about this. It is a fait accompli, a thing done and over with and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it, so no need to call me names or make threats. Being raped has done you no permanent injury and has, in fact, put you in the way of a very good thing. What say we get down to business? Save the hysterics and recriminations for later and give me your attention while I tell you precisely what I want you to do. Right?"
Junia nodded dumbly. Her hatred for Angelo Feroni had evaporated quickly, condensing down into a residue of contempt, but she knew she knew she would hate J.B. Blackburn as long as she lived. On the other hand, she was a logical, practical person, and she saw that J.B., the rotten son-of-a-bitch, had her. The threat to her security standing she took lightly. There were other jobs. She could always work as a waitress. But the thought of her mother and father receiving an envelope through the mail and opening it to view their beloved daughter sprawled nakedly beneath some nondescript old wino was too much. She couldn't do that to them. She would die first.
"I thought you'd be sensible about this," J.B. said jovially, once again beaming his most charming smile at her. He then proceeded to give her detailed instructions. When finished, he regarded her thoughtfully. "You know," he said, "Feroni really bragged about you. He claimed that you have the most perfect body he has ever seen on any woman. I can think of no reason why I shouldn't avail myself of such a prize package before I send you off to Mercer Electronics. I have a half-hour or more to spend before I have any important appointments. Please go over and lock the door to the outer office and then come back here and strip. I'd like to see these wonders that Angelo raves about."
Junia shrugged resignedly. She had noticed the way his eyes had lingered on the hemline of her skirt and she had expected something like this ... only not in his office. It seemed that she was irrevocably committed to being the unwilling plaything of any man who desired her, and making a fuss about it could only succeed in getting her slapped around. At least, she reasoned, today she didn't have her virginity to worry about.
She got up without comment, locked the door as he had ordered and returned to stand in front of the desk. She began to strip as methodically and indifferently as though in her own room. Just as she had the night before, she felt a fleeting sense of wonder at her lack of embarrassment and shame. She had always supposed that the act of baring her body before a man would be an ordeal requiring the maximum of courage. Perhaps it would be, she thought, if she liked this man or was concerned with winning his approval.
"Well, well!" J.B. exclaimed softly when she stood before him unclothed. "I see that Angelo did not exaggerate. You are, indeed, a work of art, my dear." He got up and walked around her. "Yes," he declared when he had finished his inspection, "I find no flaw in you. You are perfection itself. Too bad, in a way, that I have to send you to Mercer. It would be nice to keep you here for myself. You see, I tired of my wife years ago, and even my latest mistress has begun to bore me. What beautiful breasts! And those thighs deserve to be done in marble by a great sculptor. Please believe me that compliments from me are not easily won. I am a true connoisseur and, if I do say so myself, I have that profound appreciation of the female form found only in men who are real artists at lovemaking. Tell me, is it true, as Angelo insists, that you are sexually unresponsive?"
"What was I supposed to do?" Junia asked. "Did that skinny, hairy, revolting, little worm expect me to go all giggly and cuddly because he did me the great honor of raping me, drugging me, and framing me for blackmail?"
J.B. laughed. "You have a point there, of course. But perhaps you will be different with me. I am neither a rapist nor a sadistic amateur like Angelo. Please be seated on that couch over there and I'll be happy to demonstrate."
Junia sat on the leather couch. She didn't know what he had in mind, or in what way he planned to satisfy himself with her that would be so totally different, but she had some ideas of her own on the subject. She'd let him take her because there was nothing else she could do, but damned if she was going to enjoy it. She'd thought quite a bit about men since attaining her adolescence, had even had a few erotic dreams, and she doubted that she was frigid, but she couldn't imagine herself turning on for a man she hated as much as she hated J.B. Blackburn.
She couldn't imagine what he was up to when, instead of pushing her down on the couch and flinging himself on top of her, he knelt on the carpeted floor in front of her and placed his hands lightly on her knees, gently forcing her legs apart. Her curiosity mounted as he began stroking her thighs, bending his head to kiss the smooth, firm flesh. He worked closer and closer to her crotch, his hands sliding around behind her to grasp the spongy silkiness of her fanny and draw her nearer to the edge of the couch, his lips mumbling over the tender skin of her inner thighs, his nose touching the curly hair.
Because sitting straight up had become a strain, she reclined on the couch but propped herself on her elbows so that she could continue to watch this strange thing he was doing to her. She couldn't suppress a small gasp of surprise when his lips parted the outer skin of her pussy and he kissed the coral-colored flesh of her vulva. He held her tighter now, his fingers clenching and digging into the cheeks of her ass as his kisses became more ardent. Then his tongue shot out, penetrating her vagina. She had expected to be hurt but there was no pain as he fucked his tongue into her as deeply as it would go, only a mildly pleasant sensation. But, when he slid his mouth up to find her clitoris and suck it between his lips, she knew the beginnings of a feeling she had never before known, had not even imagined. It was like a thousand Fourth of July sparklers in her loins, a tingling warmth that grew to a demanding vibration and began to spread upward through her body, making the nipples of her breasts harden and a singing like that of wind-strummed wires in a desert storm in her brain.
She fought against it. She didn't want to like what he was doing to her. She told herself that he was a dirty, rotten, old man, and that he was a nasty, perverted monster, some kind of queer who did filthy, unnatural things to girls. She even convinced herself that this was true but still she couldn't deny the wonderful sensations he was creating in her body with his tongue. She fought against it until her own nature faithlessly betrayed her. She closed her eyes and let herself sink down into the couch, let the newly-aroused demands of her body take over and submerge her consciousness in this deliciously heavenly sensation, too exquisitely lovely and too strong to contend with.
His tongue was doing a slow adagio on her clitoris, every flick of its satiny tip generating waves of passion that surged up through her. From the tension of resistance she went to utter relaxation and then back to tension, but now it was the tension of desire. The muscles in her thighs tightened as she strained toward him and her hips began an involuntary, instinctive motion, a churning, rotating movement. She dropped off her elbows to lie flat on her back. Her breasts seemed fuller, tighter than ever before, so full and tight that they ached. She cupped them with her hands to ease the dull pain and her fingers touched the nipples. It was like touching the bare end of a highly charged wire, the voltage flashing through her system and adding to the passion that had taken over her body. She again touched the sensitized, erectile tissue and received the same thrill. She kept her hands there, her fingertips teasing the tense nipples, every nerve in her body responding to his touch.
She had no thoughts. She had abandoned thinking when she had closed her eyes and had given herself over completely to this rising tide of lust that now engulfed her entirely. In its own way, what Blackburn was doing to her was as agonizing as anything she had suffered at the hands of Angelo Feroni, yet so vastly different that, even though it seemed more unbearable than physical pain, it was such a sweet agony she wanted it to go on and on, with never an end to it.
An end did come, however. It came when shrieking nerves could no longer hold out against the desire that had now become an insanity, a mindless thing that she voiced in sobbing moans of tortured delight as her hips writhed frantically, grinding her hot, dripping vulva against Blackburn's mouth and tongue. Then she was coming, violent paroxysms of passion shaking her body for its full length.
He gave her no rest, violating the somnolent sanctuary of the lassitude she would have sunk into by rising up to suck at her swollen breasts, his hands prowling her body, tracing the lovely molding of her torso, lightly and teasingly stroking her inner thighs, fingering her sensitive cunt and slyly slipping down to touch the small, hidden mouth of her anus. He kissed her hungrily and she didn't mind the taste of herself on his lips and tongue, the musky, exciting, heady aroma of her own body.
When he opened his fly and took his cock out, long, white, and bigger around than Angelo's had been, she let him put it in her hand and she clung to it, enjoying the silky, muscular feel of it and the way it slid back and forth through her fingers all slippery and wet with a warm, sticky slime. He had her hot again and she didn't give a damn what he did to her, just as long as he did something! When he moved over between her legs she eagerly spread her thighs for him, wrapping her legs around his hips and pulling him into her. There was hardly any pain, just a delicious sense of being full. She began immediately to rotate her hips on the pivot of his cock, arching her back and lifting herself to get more of him in her.
He managed to twist himself around and bend his body so that he was able to suck on one of her nipples while fucking her. To Junia, the sensation was fabulous. Then, when he had brought her nearly to the point of an orgasm, he did another unexpected thing. He reached down with one hand under her, parted her cheeks and thrust a finger into her asshole. The strange, erotic act drove her wild with sudden passion and again she slipped over the edge of consciousness into that half-world where her lust was a purple mist that enveloped her, plucking with a thousand hot fingers at the vibration strings of her nerves. Her coming was volcanic and mad, punctuated by muffled shrieks of pleasure as her thrashing hips lifted him a foot into the air and she clawed at his back with frenzied fingers, biting at the side of his neck and drumming on the backs of his thighs with her heels.
She felt the warm, gushing flow of his semen inside of her as her own passion began to diminish and heard his grunting cries of delighted anguish.
When it was over he sat up. She saw from the expression on his face, and from his slightly trembling hands, that he was visibly shaken by his encounter with her.
"You're good!" he exclaimed in hushed awe. "My God, but you're fantastically good! I didn't expect anything like that from you. It's hard to believe you were a virgin only yesterday. When you come back from your assignment at Mercer, I'll make you my private secretary. I'll take an apartment for you, the best in town, and you'll have everything you want. I'll make love to you here in the office every day and spend every night with you that I can."
"All right," she said and hated herself for saying it. Around him she felt submissive and without a mind or will of her own. She detested him and yet she knew that she would give herself to him willingly and even eagerly whenever he wanted her. Right then she wished he would fuck her again, or do that other wonderful thing that he had done to her with his tongue, but she saw that he was straightening up his clothes.
He told her to dress. She didn't want to. She resented the need to cover her body, but reluctantly pulled on her nylons, adjusted her garter belt and donned panties, brassiere, and dress while he scribbled something on an inter-office memo.
"Here," he said, "take this to accounting and draw your pay, and here's something more for expenses." He took his wallet from a hip pocket and laid two fifties on the memo. "I'll call my man at Mercer and tell him it's all set. Now come over here and let me say goodbye to you." He made her sit on the corner of his desk, spreading her thighs so that he could run his hand up into her crotch, push her panties aside and thrust a finger deep into her cunt while he kissed her lingeringly and ardently.
"That's just to remember me by," he told her, his voice shaky with rekindled desire.
She touched the front of his trousers, grasping his half-hard cock through the material and massaging it, hoping he would take her back onto the leather couch again, but he pulled away from her.
"Not now," he said. "But when you come back ... "
Like a woman in a trance, she went out of the office, her eyes glazed with lust. She wondered, in a vague way, why the receptionist in the outer office, a beautiful, sexy-looking redhead, glared at her with poisonous hatred in her aqua eyes.
CHAPTER THREE
Junia Wickham had never been one to devote much time to introspective self-analysis. She was apt to accept herself pretty much the way she found herself and let it go at that. She took no more than a passing interest in the discovery that she was not, despite a fairly strict upbringing by very moral parents, either intrinsically modest or virtuous. She now knew that she liked having her clothes off so that men could see her naked body and, even better, she liked having them make love to her. She no longer regretted her lost virginity. She remembered the few occasions from her high school days when she had been alone with boys and had, mostly out of curiosity, allowed them to kiss her and fumble ineptly with her thighs under her skirt. She wished now that she had not repulsed them, and it seemed to her that she had wasted quite a few years because of a silly and pointless prudishness. Well, now that she had found out what delights she had been missing, things would be different. She even found it in her heart to be grateful to Angelo Feroni.
It took her until noon to check out at Amareo. As she walked toward the gate, she wondered if Nap Devore would be on duty, if he would again ask her for a date and, for the first time, she speculated on what he would look like with his clothes off, his prick pointing stiffly at her. It was not Nap, however, who passed her out the gate.
She returned to her apartment, had lunch, showered and rested for awhile on the bed, not sleeping but lying there rubbing her hands over her naked body and remembering all that had happened to her that morning in Blackburn's office. She fondled her breasts and toyed with the nipples, letting memory grip her and sweep her along on a tide of fantasy until, when it was time to go, the discharge from her cunt had so smeared her crotch and thighs that she had to take another shower before she dressed. The worst of it was, she thought, that J.B. had forbidden her to see him again until her mission was accomplished. But there would be other men. Damned if she was going to sleep alone tonight. No, she'd pick one up off the street before she'd face long, lonely hours of fruitless desire and frustrated passion.
When the cross-town bus brought her to Mercer Electronics, she had to admit that Blackburn's description had been apt. The ancient, brick building looked almost medieval compared to the gleaming glass and steel modernity of Amareo. She learned later that it was, in fact, a converted brewery. Feeling somewhat self-conscious in her new role of industrial spy, she went in to make application for employment.
She had no trouble meeting her contact at Mercer. He was Fred Graz, the personnel manager for the company, and, as such, he interviewed all employees. She waited in his office, her application in her hand, while he finished speaking to the most beautiful woman Junia had ever seen. She was a tall, perfectly proportioned woman with rich, chestnut-brown hair, dark eyes, a complexion flawless and delicate enough to cast doubt on her apparent maturity, and long legs beneath the abbreviated hem of her miniskirt that were impressive even to Junia.
"Gee, I'm sorry, Kay," Fred Graz said to the woman. "Perhaps another time, then?"
"Perhaps," she said coldly and left the office with the balanced walk of a model.
Junia advanced and laid her application on his desk, studying him as she did so. He was, she thought, about twenty-seven, built like a champion tennis player. His hair was a dark, wavy blond, his eyes an off-shade of blue. His face was handsome, the underlying musculature faintly visible beneath the taut, sun-tanned skin, yet she thought she detected a weakness, a kind of small-boy peevishness about his mouth. She was sure that when he stood up he would be above average height. Her next thought was to wonder what kind of a lover he would be.
He motioned her to a chair, glancing at her application and speaking casually to her. Then he leaned forward and said in a lower, more conspiratorial tone, that everything was all taken care of. He'd had a phone call from Blackburn this morning and he had the job all set up for her. She would start as a file clerk in the general office.
"But what do I do?" Junia asked. "I mean what do I do about you know what?" Then she had an inspiration. "I realize we can't talk here, and that it won't look good for you to spend too much time with me on the job, but wouldn't it be all right for you to date me? Tonight, in my apartment, you could give me the details."
He frowned, hesitating, and she held her breath. Damn him! He was a real dream boat and she wanted him, wanted his eyes and his hands prowling at will over her naked body. What the hell was the matter with him? Didn't he think she was pretty enough for him? With the ancient instinct of her kind in such matters, she guessed that it was the other woman, that impossibly beautiful bitch named Kay who was on his mind. She hated her.
"All right," he said, "I guess that would be best," but his reluctance was infuriatingly obvious. "I can't take you out to dinner, and we probably shouldn't be seen together, at least not so soon. What time?"
"At eight," she replied. "My address is on the application."
She spent the rest of the day going through the routine of hiring in and was told to report at nine the next morning.
She ate a lonely dinner in her apartment and spent two hours turning up the hems of all of her skirts and dresses. She had resisted the miniskirt craze, wearing her hemlines just above the knee, but now she cut and sewed ruthlessly. Damned if she was going to be outdone by any long-legged, chestnut-haired Venus named Kay! She chose a shimmery, blue cocktail dress for the evening and, with last-minute inspiration, decided to daringly do without a brassiere, something she didn't need anyway. So what if the outline of her nipples was visible through the fabric? If she meant to pop Fred Graz's eyes out, she might as well go the whole route.
She had decided that he was probably not a martini man, or even a bourbon one, so she had stopped on the way home to pick up a bottle of scotch and some soda.
He arrived only a few minutes late. He seemed nervous and ill-at-ease, wanting to immediately talk business and, she suspected, get away from her as soon as possible, but she put a drink in his hand and got him seated in her only chair while she draped herself as seductively as possible on the bed, seeing to it that the short skirt rode as high up on her thighs as it could go without quite revealing the nylon of her panties.
"How'd you get hooked into this thing?" she asked him conversationally.
He looked glum. "Kay Webster," he told her. "You saw her in my office when you first came in. I've been crazy about her for years, ever since high school. J.B. found out about it, somehow. That bastard seems to know everything. I was Assistant Personnel Manager at Amareo when he propositioned me to do his dirty work for him at Mercer. I refused at first, and then he offered to fix it up so that Kay would marry me. I knew he had some pretty damned devious ways of getting things done and, like a sucker, I believed him."
"He's both clever and unscrupulous," Junia agreed, "but I don't see how he could expect to pull off a thing like that."
"He couldn't, but it took me a while to realize it. Now I'm in too deep to get out and he's got other things on me. Well, at least I'm working for the same company as Kay. How'd he get you?"
"Blackmail. He has some very compromising photographs. I was drugged when they were taken, but no one could tell that by looking at them."
Fred nodded. "His favorite method. Somebody will shoot that son-of-a-bitch someday. It may be me. Here's the deal, Junia. The only job I could work you into was in the general office. That won't do us much good, and for the same reason that we needed you at Mercer. I'm no good to Blackburn either, except that, being in Personnel, I can hire others he sends me. What we need is someone in Planning. The stuff we're after is there in their safe. All we can do is wait for a chance to get you transferred to that office, and then it's up to you. The file clerk who now has the job is going to be hard to get rid of. She's been with company since it started and, believe me, the old bag never makes a mistake, not even a little one. Now that I have you to put in her place, though, I'll have to start thinking of a way to frame her."
"Why not turn Angelo and his little camera loose on her, Fred?"
He laughed bitterly. "On Clara? You should see her. She's a dried-up old spinster who looks like a cross between a Sunday School teacher and a sick dragon. Show a picture of her in the sack with some guy to the F.B.I, and he'd know for sure it was a frame. No, I think Ralph Fallon, Chief Clerk in Planning, is the one to work on. He does all the hiring and firing for his own department."
"Does Mr. Fallon like girls?"
"Does he ever! He's one of these professional bachelors, collects etchings, wears a smoking jacket, has soft lights and seductive music always on tap in his apartment. You know the bit."
She did, at least from the movies and TV. "Sounds interesting. Maybe it's a good thing I shortened all my skirts, or hadn't you noticed?"
"I noticed." He made no objections when she refilled his glass. "I'll bet J.B. noticed, too. The old bastard has screwed everything at Amareo except the janitress and she's a butch. I'd lay odds that he got to you, too."
Junia laughed. "He sure did. I don't like him any better than you do, but the funny thing is that he's actually as good as he thinks he is. I expect you're a bit jealous. Am I right?"
Fred flushed indignantly. "Me? Me jealous of that old man?" he said scornfully. "If it wasn't for his lousy blackmail schemes and the fact that he's got all the power in that outfit, he couldn't get to first base with those women who work there."
"Oh, I don't know," Junia countered, moving on the bed so that her skirt slid up another inch. "I'll admit I'm not very experienced, but I'll bet there are plenty of young guys like you who have to secretly admit to themselves that they just haven't got the charm and the know-how of an older, more mature man like J.B. Take yourself, for instance. Do you think an older man would spend all his time and energy mooning around over some chick he couldn't have? He sure wouldn't. While you're making calf-eyes at Kay Webster, he's making out all around you. And you can't blame the girls, either. After all, these old guys are bound to have more on the ball than a kid. More staying power, if you know what I mean."
"Bullshit!" Fred barked angrily. "I can out-fuck that phony any time."
"Then why don't you come here and prove it?" Junia asked softly. "You talk big, but I'd like to see if you're as good as you claim to be. Don't forget that I was in his office for nearly two hours this morning, with the door locked. You've got a tough act to follow, sonny."
The "sonny" did it. Fred Graz put down his glass and walked over to the bed, his face red with anger but also set with determination. "All right," he said, grating the words out as if they were distasteful to him. "You want me to fuck you, so I will. Are you really that hot-assed, or are you just trying to needle me?"
Junia pulled her skirt up to her navel. "There's my ass," she said, grinning wickedly up at him. "Check its temperature, yourself."
"By God I will!" He sat down beside her on the bed and began rolling her panties down over her hips. He was surprised to see the crotch of the flimsy nylon garment was soaking wet and reeking with the musky aroma of her cunt.
"Take your clothes off while I get out of this thing," she directed him, her voice already husky with desire. He began to comply and she stood up to unzip the blue dress and step out of it, reveling in the thrill of being nude, of seeing the astonished admiration in his eyes.
"Christ!" he exclaimed. "I didn't know you were like this. Damned few women really look that much better with their clothes off."
"How about Kay Webster?" she asked him.
He shook his head. "I've never seen her stripped. She doesn't mind teasing me, but she won't give me any. I think she does it with other guys. She hinted once that she'd been to bed with Max Kline."
Junia smiled a secret smile of triumph. She thought she knew now how to handle Fred Graz. For all his boasting, he was a man who needed reassurance. Well, she would give it to him, make him think he was the greatest lover since Errol Flynn. Greedily she watched his tanned, muscular body emerge, not minding that his uncircumcised cock, square-cut across the end like a section of garden hose, was less than half hard. She knew how to fix that.
When they were together on the bed, she kissed him, rubbing the nipples of her breasts on his chest and reaching down to take his prick in her hand and draw the foreskin gently back and forth over the head.
"You really want it, don't you?" he asked her.
"Of course, I do. Who wouldn't want a man like you?"
She felt his chest expand and his cock begin to stiffen in her hand. She threw a leg over his hip and rubbed her inner thigh on him as she drew his head down to her breasts. He took the nipple in his mouth, but she suspected that he didn't know exactly what to do with it. His hands on her were fumbling and inept. She didn't care. She felt a sudden warmth of feeling for him, something akin to the maternal love of a mother for a little boy, sweet because of his innocence.
It did not occur to Junia that there was anything the least odd, or even precocious, about her attitude. It did not seem to her that she had so recently been a virgin, but rather that she had always been old and wise in the ways of sex. That she was a woman, and therefore moved by instincts as old as Eve, even gave the illusion some validity. She would teach him, make him into a thing of her own creation, and she would love him for thus becoming uniquely hers. So, although her need and her urgency were very great, she was patient and tender with him, leading him in the same subtle way she would have led an awkward boy whom she was teaching to dance, yet making him think that it was he who was leading her and teaching her.
His body drove her wild. It was as smooth as hers, only harder. She wanted his weight on her, the luxurious feeling of her breasts crushed by his broad, muscle-sheathed chest, but not yet, not just yet. His prick was hard, straining toward her, his ardor unmistakable in the way it throbbed in her hand, droplets of pre-orgasmic semen making it slick. Her leg was thrown over his hip and the eager head of his cock was only inches from her crotch. She wiggled closer to him, letting it touch the wet heat of her vulva, teasing both of them by rubbing it lightly up and down on her clitoris.
"Oh, my God!" he groaned. "Junia, for Christ's sake!"
"Soon," she promised him. "Will you fuck me often after this, Fred? Will you, honey?"
"Yes, yes, of course I will, but quit holding me off. Let me do it, Junia! You're driving me crazy!"
"No," she corrected him, "it's you who are driving me crazy, darling. I want you to do it, and I'll let you in a minute, but put your hand down there first and play with me a little." She knew he would lack control and would probably start coming the moment he was in her. She had to be ready for him or she would be left frustrated and unfulfilled. He put his hand on her pussy but all he knew how to do was finger-fuck her. It was pleasant but not what she wanted. She put her own hand on his and guided him, twitching her hips to rub herself on him.
"Oh, that's wonderful!" she sighed. "You're a marvelous lover, Fred sweetheart!"
"You make me want to be," he conceded generously. "You're so damned beautiful, Junia. I'm glad you wanted me."
"I do, I do! That's it, honey. I'm ready now, put it in me and fuck me. Oh, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me!"
She accepted him between her thighs and guided him into her. He wasn't as large as Blackburn, but she didn't care. There was something infinitely nicer and sweeter about doing it with Fred Graz, and she was hotter than she had been with Blackburn.
She had been right about his lack of control. After no more than three thrusts in and out of her he went into a frenzy of activity, grunting and crying out in the poignancy of his passion as he began to shoot into her, fucking the hot come deep into her cunt. But, because she had made him masturbate her almost to the point of an orgasm, she was able to achieve a climax of her own. She startled him with the wildness of her response, the utter abandon with which she plunged into the depths of sensation, the remarkable strength of her legs and her back tossing him into the air and flinging their entwined bodies so recklessly about on the bed that they were in danger of crashing onto the floor.
When the final spasm had shuddered delightfully through her body she released him, let him roll off of her to lie inert and exhausted beside her. After awhile they smoked and talked but, to her disgust, he wanted to talk about Kay Webster. She endured a few minutes of that, then, determined to take his mind off her rival, she began to pet him. She found his lips unresponsive so began kissing his neck and his chest. Experimentally she placed her mouth over one of his flat, hard, little nipples and teased it with her tongue. He shifted restlessly under her but she continued, one hand dropping down to stroke his limp prick and carefully fondle the tight, hairy sack at the base of it. She sensed that, at first, he was annoyed with her, wanting to be left alone, but her persistence was finally rewarded when she felt a stir of life in his cock and a shifting of his hips as he moved toward her a fraction of an inch. Still, he made no move to touch her and she knew the battle was not yet won. She moved down his body, kissing his belly.
A sudden memory came to Junia. It was of one of the pictures Blackburn had shown her in his office. The old, bleary-eyed man had posed for the camera with the head of his prick in her mouth. She wondered what it would have been like to have been awake and to have had that happen to her. She bent Fred's cock upwards, tilting it so that the fore-skinned head was almost touching her face. Moved by impulse, she leaned farther down and put her lips over it. She heard Fred's gasp of shock followed by a straining of his body and a lifting of his hips. She knew then that he liked it, wanted more of his prick in her mouth. It had been half limp a moment before but now it leaped into rigidity as she let it slide back over her tongue. She didn't know how to do it, didn't really understand that there was anything that could be done that way. To her it was just a new game, a fascinating kind of love play. But, when he began running it in and out in short strokes, she tightened her lips on it and let her tongue work on the head and the smooth, slick shaft.
Another memory came back to her. She remembered that in high school she had heard one of her more precocious schoolmates speak of going on a date with a boy the night before and sucking his cock. That was what she was doing, she realized. She was sucking Fred's cock! She wondered why J.B. Blackburn had not asked her to do that. Well, she reasoned, perhaps there had not been time. Later, when she became his mistress, they would probably do all sorts of things like that together. Only she didn't want to become his mistress. She wanted him to make love to her. He was so fantastically expert that she knew she could never refuse an invitation to have that kind of fun with him, but it was Fred she wanted to live with. Maybe he would even ask her to marry him! She wondered if she would be true to him if he did. Undoubtedly she wouldn't, she admitted candidly, but she could be clever about it and he need never know.
Another thought occurred to her. Could Fred be taught to suck her cunt, to give her that marvelous, dreamy sensation that J.B. had induced in her with his cunning tongue? She would see. She began slowly shifting her body on the bed without letting his cock slip from her mouth. When she had completely reversed her position so that her hips were near his head, she spread her thighs invitingly. She glanced up at him and was disappointed to see that he had turned his head away from her. She thought she saw his nose wrinkle in disgust at the rank odor from her steamy, creaming cunt, but she couldn't be sure and didn't want to believe that he found that part of her body so repulsive. Never mind, she consoled herself, it was just that he was timid and inexperienced. He would come to it someday. Perhaps he thought of it with shame, as a nasty, perverted thing. She remembered thinking the same thing when J.B. had started to do that to her. And maybe it was true. Maybe she was some kind of a queer for sucking his cock! Well, to hell with that. She didn't give a damn whether it was queer or not. She liked what she was doing; adored having him fuck her in the mouth; the strange, exotic taste of his semen titillating her palate; the tension of his body transmitting itself to her and driving her to a pitch of excitement that equaled anything she had yet known.
She moved her hips away from his head and, taking his hand, she placed it in her crotch. He finger-fucked her, apparently still not aware of her clitoris. He did it only indifferently, his attention concentrated on reaching an orgasm and not concerned with her need. Then he came, and her mouth was suddenly filled with the sticky warmth of his semen. She gulped it down, swallowing rapidly to keep from choking. She had one hand cupped lightly on his scrotum and could feel his balls pumping madly. When he had finished, he took his fingers out of her pussy and turned over with a deep sigh, presenting his back to her.
She lay there staring at the cheeks of his ass, stunned and hurt by his callousness, the fire in her own body slowly dying, leaving her in a gray world of desolation and rejection. She stayed that way for a long time, letting the pain and the hurt fade to a sort of numb stiffness in her mind. She had no need to wonder why she had let his treatment of her bother her so greatly. She knew why. She knew that it was because she had wanted him to love her, had already dared to dream dreams of marriage. She saw now that she had let her loneliness trick her into making a fool of herself and she realized, for the first time, that she had always been lonely all of her life, even as a little girl.
She was not angry and felt no bitterness toward Fred Graz, only an emptiness and a deep profound sadness.
When she knew by his breathing that he was asleep, she got carefully up from the bed and went into the bathroom to shower. She dried herself and dressed, no longer wanting him to see her in the nude, then she went to sit in the chair and look out through the window at the lights of the sleeping city as she sipped slowly and thoughtfully at the scotch and smoked.
It was midnight before he awoke, sitting up on the bed and running his fingers through his disarranged hair, a bewildered look on his face. At last he oriented himself, lit a cigarette and made some mumbled apology for having fallen asleep. When she didn't answer or look at him, he dressed and said that he guessed he'd better go home because he-had to work tomorrow.
"Yes," she agreed dryly.
He was dressed and ready to go, but he lingered, sitting on the edge of the bed, the silence in the room making him nervous and vaguely embarrassed, but Junia gave him no clue, continuing to look out the window, her back rigid and uncompromising.
He was aware that he had somehow failed her and, in doing so, had failed himself, but he didn't know what to do or say about it.
"Well, I guess I better go," he said again, standing up and edging toward the door. "Thanks for the drinks and for ... well, for everything. You sure know how to show a guy a good time," he blurted. "I suppose you must have been a pro, huh?"
"A pro what?" she asked, turning her head slowly to look at him where he stood by the door.
"Why a pro chippy. I mean you were a whore, weren't you? What I mean is that thing you did ... I supposed that was where you learned doing it. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm pretty broad-minded. I don't see anything wrong in ... "
"Get out," she said flatly, her voice emotionless and dead. "Get the goddamned hell out of here and don't come back. Don't ever come back, not even on business. We can do all of our talking at the office. Now beat it, sonny."
He flushed a dark red under his tan. He opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind and went out, the door clicking shut behind him.
Junia didn't stir for a while, then she finished the drink in her hand and got up. Taking her purse from the dresser, she went out, down the stairs, and into the tunneled darkness of the city street. There was a beer joint on the corner that would still be open. She was not old enough to drink in a public place but she thought she looked at least twenty-one. She would take a chance. If the bartender asked for her I.D. card she could always say that she'd forgotten it and leave.
The bartender hardly glanced at her, but drew her a glass of beer and accepted the twenty cents without question. She had barely begun to sip at it before one of the men at the bar came down to stand beside her.
"Hi, baby," he said. "Can I buy you a drink?"
He was, she judged, in his late thirties, roughly dressed and slightly in need of a shave. He was a burly man with the faint Diesel and lube-oil smell of a truck driver. He'd had enough beer to slur his speech, but he was not drunk.
"No, thanks," she replied, smiling, "but if you'd like to come up to my room with me I've got some scotch."
He looked surprised. "Gee, kid, I didn't know you were hustling. I doubt if I'd have the kind of dough a dish like you would be after. How much?"
It was the second time in a half-hour that she had been called a whore, but this time she didn't mind.
"No charge," she told him, leaning over so that her breast pressed against his arm. "This is my night off, you see, so this one's on the house. You've heard of how a postman takes his holiday, haven't you?"
The man laughed heartily. "You're a great one, you are," he chuckled. "Okay, I'm your boy. I'm Jim Barnes. You could say this is my night off too. My wife is visiting her mother in Cleveland."
She took him up to her apartment and made him sit on the edge of the bed to watch as she slowly and tantalizingly stripped for him, thrilling to the act of revealing her bare body to his openly lustful and admiring gaze.
"Now you," she said. She unbuckled his belt and pulled his trousers and shorts down. As his already hard prick leaped into view, she deliberately knelt and kissed the head of it. She looked up to see Jim Barnes staring down at her, a wide grin on his mouth and his eyes regarding her with happiness.
CHAPTER FOUR
Junia had been working at Mercer nearly a week before she found time and opportunity to meet Ralph Fallon, Chief Clerk of Planning Division. They met at that communal fountain, the Coke machine. He was, she saw at a glance, the prototype of the professional bachelor, and just as Fred Graz had described him. He was approaching middle age and not doing it gracefully, but fighting and protesting every year of the way. She suspected that his black hair, thinning on top, was dyed and she'd have bet that he used expensive face creams in a futile effort to stem the tide of wrinkles that was beginning to crisscross his once handsome face. His body, however, was lean and trim and she imagined that he probably belonged to a club where he religiously worked out daily on the handball court.
"Hello, there," he said, making the "Hello" sound like a wolf whistle. "You must be the new girl in the main office. Humm. Blonde hair and brown eyes. So the rumors are true. They said you were a raving beauty, and now I see that they were guilty of a masterpiece of understatement."
"And you," Junia responded, "can only be Ralph Fallon. The same 'they' you refer to must have been the ones who told me about you. They said I would know you by your gallantry and charm. How unfair of them not to have warned me that, in reality, you would turn out to be a combination of Paul Newman and Gregory Peck."
Ralph Fallon made her a deep bow. "Lady fair," he said, "I salute you. I have always been known as a top-ranking amateur when it comes to bullshitting, but it does this old heart good to stand back and see a real professional at work."
They laughed together so heartily that heads popped out of offices to see what the commotion in the hall was all about. Junia decided right then that she liked Ralph Fallon.
"We seem to be drawing a crowd," he muttered. "Tell you what, I suggest we continue this intellectual discussion over dinner tonight. I think it only fair to warn you that my intentions are strictly dishonorable."
Junia made a mock curtsy. "Delighted, sir, both with your kind offer and your forthright declaration of intentions. I'll hold you to that, you know, and will expect at least one very diligently attempted and flattering pass by no later than the soup course."
He inclined his head. "Have no fear. Your reputation is already shot to hell just from having been seen talking to me. I promise on my word of honor to make a very determined assault on your virtue before the night is over."
Thinking that Ralph Fallon was a dear, and quite the most charming old lecher she had ever met, she went back to her office. Now if she could just become important enough to him so that he would ask for her transfer to Planning Division, replacing old Clara, she would have it made. She would manage to remain hidden in the building some night after everyone else had checked out, remove the plans for the new production system from the safe, photograph them and trade the resulting film to J.B. for the ones of her that he held. She refused to think any farther ahead than that. She supposed she would wind up as Blackburn's private secretary and mistress. Why not? She'd take the old bastard for everything she could get, knowing he'd tire of her after a while anyway. But now, tonight, there was Ralph. Maybe he wasn't as young and handsome as Fred Graz but she'd bet he knew a damned sight more about women and sex.
Ralph called for her at seven and took her to the most expensive place in town, just as she had known he would. He was even better than his word. While they were sipping their martinis and waiting for the soup, he slid his chair around closer to hers and, under cover of the tablecloth, placed a hand lightly on her nylon-clad knee.
Junia smiled at him over the rim of her glass, her eyes twinkling. "I wonder," she mused, "just how far up my leg you would dare go without it becoming obvious to everyone that you were fondling my thigh."
"Precisely eleven inches," he replied instantly. "I've tried it in this place and at this very table enough times to know."
"What a pity," Junia sighed. "That's just barely above the tops of my stockings. Isn't it a shame that people have to waste time eating ... unless of course they eat in bed?"
Ralph laughed. "You're quite amazing, you know," he said. "You look young enough to be going around in a uniform and selling cookies for the Campfire Girls, but you talk like a dirty old woman trying to seduce a choir boy. I find the combination delightful. Where would you like to go after dinner? Dancing?"
She shook her head, her blonde hair rippling in the soft light. "Gosh, no! I heard you had some etchings and ... "
Ralph sighed. "This script seems badly mixed up. You appear to have all of my best lines. Well, here comes our dinner. I hate to gobble and run but, now that the rest of the evening is definitely programmed, for once I will wade through a truly elegant repast like a kid gulping his supper so he can go out again and play."
"Race you to see who gets through first," Junia suggested, "but if you don't take your fingers out of my crotch I'll surely win ... unless you're an awfully fast one-handed eater."
"We'll probably both have indigestion from eating so fast," he warned her as he unlocked the door to his apartment less than a hour later. "Well, here is home. I hope you won't be disappointed. It's just a little place where I can lay my head and a few of my lady friends."
"Oh, it's groovy!" Junia cried, clapping her hands together in front of her in mock, childish approval. "I was just dying to see how a real, honest-to-gosh roué lives! Sort of like an upholstered sewer, isn't it? Do I get another drink before I'm seduced? And how about the music? I wouldn't dream of being ravished without the proper musical background."
Ralph shook his head. "If you weren't so beautiful I'd spank your fanny and send you home. Shame on you for lousing up a perfectly good seduction scene! Music coming up." He touched a button on the wall and the strains of Chopin's sonata in B-flat minor filled the room. "Corny," he admitted, but effective. As for the drink, may I suggest something special?" He went to a small bar in a corner of the living room and picked up a bottle. "This is Peruvian Pisco, a brandy, but there is more to it than meets the eye. You see how dark it is in color? That is because the bark of a certain tree that grows only in the Peruvian jungle has been immersed in the brandy and allowed to soak there. Those clever little Indians down there in that country make a tea from that bark and give it to some shy maiden they hope to seduce. I choose a more sophisticated and civilized way of serving it to my prospective victims. Tea! Ugh. Care to try a shot, Junia?"
"I doubt if I need it," she replied, "But I've been very unkind to you tonight, picking up all your cues, so, to prove my remorse, I'll drink your old Peruvian love potion."
"Good girl," he replied and poured her a generous slug in the bottom of a brandy snifter. "Now for scene two. Come with me, my fair maiden." She followed him to a couch and watched while he lit the crumpled paper under some kindling and logs in the fireplace.
"You know," Junia said seriously, dropping the tone of banter that they had adopted with each other from the first, "I really do like your apartment. I like the music, the fire and even your funny old brandy. What's more, Ralph, I like you. I've only been half-kidding tonight. I'd be terribly disappointed if you didn't make love to me, but I guess I want something more than that, too. Most of all, I want your friendship. Is that asking too much?"
He looked searchingly at her. "No, not too much. If we're to be friends, however, don't you think we'd best begin by being honest with each other? What is it you really want from me, Junia? Don't con me, sweetheart. I'm nearly forty and I look every day of it. Oh, I still get a fairly young girl once in a while. They make a one-night stand with me just for kicks, but never anyone as beautiful as you. Will you tell me about it?"
She shook her head. "I can't tell you, Ralph. Anyway, I see now that I'm not going to get it. You're much too smart for me, aren't you? If you say so, I'll go home now. You don't need to drive me. I can catch a bus. I'm sorry, Ralph."
"Do you want to go?"
"No."
"What do you want to do, Junia?"
"I want you to do what we've been joking about all evening. I want you to make love to me."
"You don't owe me anything for the dinner if that's ... "
"I know that. Damn you, do I have to beg you for it?"
"No, of course not. It's just hard for me to believe that you really want to with me."
"Well, I do. Blame it on the damned brandy. Ralph?"
"Yes, Junia."
"Undress me. Don't make me wait any longer. Please!"
He took her glass from her hand and put it on an end table, then drew her to him and kissed her, his lips surprisingly gentle on hers. She took one of his hands and placed it on her breast.
"Do everything to me, Ralph." she whispered throatily. "Take my clothes off and then use my body, use it in every way that you know. I want to experience it all with you ... nothing left out. Will you do that for me, dearest?"
He nodded. "That's a large order. I may have to drink the rest of that Pisco brandy myself to make it, but I'll try. Jaded, blasé, old men like me can get pretty erotic but I'm astonished to find a young girl like you already wanting those things. How long has it been since your first experience?"
She laughed. "You won't believe me. About one week ago I was a virgin. First I was raped. That didn't count. Then I was seduced by an older man who was fiendishly good. He sucked my pussy and I thought it was wonderful. I've only done it with one other man since then. He looked like a man but he was really only a selfish, stupid boy. Oh, yes, and there was Jim Barnes, a truck driver. He was dumb but sincere and we had a real ball together. You know what I think? I think I don't like young men. I like older fellows."
"Thank God!" he murmured as he reached behind her and unzipped her dress. She raised her arms for him so that he could take it off her. She knew a moment of intense happiness when he unsnapped her brassiere and her breasts were free, free for him to see, to touch, and to taste.
"Magnificent!" he exclaimed. "Kay Webster once spent an evening here with me. I thought she had the most beautiful breasts I had ever seen, but you make her look like an old bag."
Kay Webster was a sore point with Junia and Ralph could have said nothing that would have pleased her so much as what he had just said.
He unfastened her garter belt and peeled her nylons down one at a time, caressing her legs and commenting on the shape of them as he did so. When he had rolled her panties down and tossed them onto the floor, she stretched out luxuriously, arching her back and pointing her breasts at him.
"I love being naked," she confessed, "but it's no fun unless some man can see me. I couldn't wait to get my clothes off for you. Now it's your turn. I want to see your body too."
She helped him undress and was amazed to find him as trim and muscular as he appeared in his clothing.
"You don't need any brandy," she said, eagerly grasping his rigidly hard cock. "Oh, Ralph baby, I love that. What are we going to do first, darling?"
"I suggest a game called sixty-nine," he said, "but not until we've played around a little more with each other first. Sex is like a rare old wine, something to be sipped and savored, not gulped down the way we ate dinner this evening."
"Sixty-nine? What's that?"
"I'll show you, but later." His voice was muffled because he had lowered his head to her breasts and was delicately nibbling at one nipple.
"Ouch. You're biting me."
"Yes. Pain is the most exquisite pleasure of all, as you will see. You said you wanted the full treatment."
"I do. Oh, yes! Now I understand. Don't stop, Ralph. Oh! Bite harder if you want. God but that makes me hot!"
His teeth were like needles on her breasts, sensation running through her like fire. Then he dropped down, abandoning her breasts but continuing to nibble at her belly, the tender skin over her ribs, and then her hips and her thighs, never hard enough to bruise or break the flesh but just hard enough to keep her in a torment of delicious agony that mysteriously translated itself into sexual stimulation. He kept it up until hardly an inch of her body had not been subjected to his sharp teeth and she hated it when he stopped, even though she knew she could not have stood much more ... not when she wanted to be fucked so badly.
He had slipped off the couch and was kneeling between her legs. She thought he was going to suck her then, but all he did was tease her, kissing her pussy and giving it tantalizing licks with the tip of his tongue. He even parted her cheeks and thrust his tongue as far as it would go into her asshole. That, too, was a strangely exciting sensation.
"Now," Ralph said huskily, his voice pulled out of shape by the tension of his desire, "we play sixty-nine." He got up on the couch, mounting her prone body, his knees on either side of her head and his nose touching her pubic hair. "We suck each other off in this position," he explained. "Come as soon, and as many times, as you can. I'll hold off while you do. Do you know how to suck?"
"I ... I guess so. I tried it once, but all I really did was hold it with my lips and tongue while he fucked me in the mouth."
"That's about it, except that it's better if you apply suction on each stroke. Do you think you'll like this?"
"Oh, yes! Hurry, darling!" She had her hands on his hips, pulling him down to her, her mouth eagerly open to receive his prick. She remembered that it was this she had wanted with Fred Graz. Lying there under Ralph, his cock sliding smoothly and silkily into her mouth, memory of her affair with Fred Graz was like an obscenity.
She sucked him lovingly, taking as much of his cock as she could get and adoring the soft bounce of his balls on the bridge of her nose. His mouth was on her vulva, his tongue doing a slow, rhythmical dance on her clitoris as she rotated her hips. Supported on his elbows, his hands were free to clench in the tender flesh of her thighs and buttocks. After awhile, he sought her asshole and forced a finger into it. The sharpness of the pain increased the passion that was already wracking her body with thrill after thrill. He drove deeper into her and then began finger-fucking her there, and that was when she came.
It was totally different from any previous experience she had had. It was an excruciating agony, a gut-wrenching, soul-sundering pleasure that went far beyond pleasure. It was like being pulled apart piece by piece, each ripping and tearing of her flesh more unimaginably delightful than the ones before it. It was a kind of dying, every moment of which was infinitely better, more piercingly and poignantly desirable than a lifetime of ordinary living.
When the last spasm had shaken her from head to foot, he did not desist but kept on with his sucking and licking of her clitoris and his finger-fucking. He gave her no rest, no chance to slide away into the dreamy lassitude of relaxation, but brought her quickly again to a high plateau of sensation. Only a few minutes passed before she was coming again, and it was a keener, more unbearably delightful orgasm than the first one.
She continued to suck his cock, only dimly aware of what she was doing. The constant and repeated build-up and release of sexual tensions had driven her conscious mind to seek refuge in some hidden corner of her brain. She had surrendered her identity as a person, submerged now somewhere in the mass of trembling, over-sensitized flesh and raw, screaming nerves that had become her body. She returned partly to awareness when Ralph's cock seemed to swell and then begin to flood her mouth with his semen. As she gulped the sticky stuff down her throat she came a last time.
He disengaged himself very carefully from her and turned around to lie beside her on the couch, taking her in his arms and cradling her head on his shoulder. He held the length of her body against his, comforting her as she made the long, slow journey back to normalcy. When she finally opened her eyes, he kissed her gently. She returned the kiss and hugged him to her. She smiled weakly at him.
"I didn't know it could be like that." she murmured.
He nodded. "It can be even better. That was only a sample, a beginning. If you feel like it, let's have another drink and a cigarette. What would you like this time? A martini?"
"No. I want more of that Peruvian brandy."
He grinned. "That was actually a gag. It does contain an aphrodisiac, but only a very, very mild one. Your reactions while we made love were almost entirely your own. I serve the Pisco to my lady guests mostly for the psychological effect."
"I don't care," Junia said. "I like it, anyway."
He refilled their glasses and returned to find Junia sitting on the carpeted floor, chin on her knees and arms around her legs as she gazed into the open fire. He lit cigarettes for both of them and sat beside her. They drank and smoked in silence, she wandering far afield in some waking dream of her own fancy, and he content to watch the play of the firelight on her nude body, the way it gleamed from the charmingly disarrayed mass of her blonde hair.
When Junia had finished her drink she lay back on the carpet, her toes to the fire and her fingers locked under the back of her head. He noticed that, in that position, her breasts stood tall and straight, not squashing into puddles the way they did with most women.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful," she said, her voice distant and dreamy, "if we never had to put our clothes on again, never had to go to work, not even to the store, but could stay here like this forever, just drinking and talking and making love?"
He smiled as one smiles at the wonderful, impractical wishes of a wistful child. "If there is a heaven, that must be what it's like. Too bad we can't."
"Too bad you aren't rich. Then we could."
"Unfortunately, I am not."
"I could become a whore. I'll bet I could make as much in two nights as both of us make all week. Then we could have the other five nights all to ourselves."
"You'd do that? You'd hustle just to be with me?"
"Of course, I would. Besides, I think I'd probably like it. If I'd only known sooner what I'm really like, I'd have taken up whoring instead of office work."
Ralph stretched out on the floor beside her and put his arms around her, his hands cupping her breasts and his fingers seeking the nipples. "Whatever your motive was in giving yourself to me," he said, "now I finally believe that lit was at least partly because you really wanted me."
"Because I said I'd hustle for you?"
"Yes. I couldn't let you do it, of course. I'm a dirty old man who has devoted his life to the seduction of young girls, the younger the better, but I'm not a pimp. If I were ten or twenty years younger I'd ask you to marry me."
"And I would refuse. Not because I couldn't love you, but because I couldn't be faithful to you."
"I'm aware of that. I'd rather share you with other men than have any other woman all to myself."
"Then marry me, anyway. The difference in our ages doesn't count. In fact I like it that way."
He hesitated. If he had said then that he would marry her, Junia would have told him the truth about why she was at Mercer, trusting him to think of a way to get her out of her bondage to J.B. Blackburn.
"It's the best offer I've ever had," he admitted. "A shame that it comes too late for me. I'll go to my grave regretting that I must turn it down for your sake."
"Couldn't I just live with you, then?"
"Not even that, I'm afraid. It would be known at the office before long and we'd both be out of a job. But you can come here whenever you want."
"Wonderful!" She covered his hands with her own. "Dig your fingers into me," she begged him, "and bite me again. Make me hurt like you did before. It gets me so excited."
He pinched her nipples and began nibbling at the nape of her neck. Her breathing became rapid and shallow and she wiggled the length of her nude body, pressing her silky butt against his hips. She felt his cock begin to rise, to stiffen and probe its way between her cheeks into the crack of her ass. She felt her passion begin to rise slowly.
"What are you going to do?" she asked when she felt his fingers on her anus, stretching the tight, little opening.
"I'm going to fuck you there," he told her. "It will be quite painful but I think you'll like it."
"I like anything you do to me. I told you I wanted to be used. That's the best feeling in the world, to turn myself over to you completely, to know that I'm giving to you with no restraint. Anything you choose to do to me can only make me happy, and the more thoroughly you use me the happier I'll be."
"All right. I'll take your word for that. Next time you come here to see me I'll have a surprise for you."
"I love surprises."
The head of his cock was pushing at the small orifice of her anus, the pressure steadily increasing. It was an uncomfortable feeling, but she tried to help by shoving back against him. She felt the rubbery muscles indent and then begin to expand, slowly forced aside by the round, smooth knob that was the head of his prick. Suddenly it gave and he was into her for half his length. She screamed at the intensity of the pain that seared her loins like a hot iron, and she kept on screaming as he ruthlessly plunged in the rest of the way. She made no attempt to pull away from him, however, and, when he would have stopped to let her rest and get used to the new sensation, she jerked her hips back and forth wildly, fucking herself on his prick in spite of his efforts to hold her still. With the pain had also come a fierce exhilaration, a sudden lust so savage that, had she been facing him, she would have bit and clawed him like a frenzied lioness.
The pain diminished after awhile, subsiding as the membranous lining of her rectum began to adjust to this new thing being done to it, but her passion continued to mount, especially when Ralph reached around over her hip to her crotch and began fingering her clitoris, masturbating her adroitly and with the expertise developed by long experience.
With fingers as clever and sensitive as his tongue, he brought her quickly to a raging, tempestuous climax. His face in the dying glow of the fire had undergone a transformation. He had been inflamed by her passionate and animal-like response. His eyes glinted as though with madness and his mouth was twisted into a snarling grimace of bestiality. He dug his strong fingers into her breasts, the nails drawing drops of blood, and he bit her back, like a tomcat coupling with a female of his own species. He slammed his cock in and out of her with all of his strength, battering the cheeks of her ass with his hips and gloating over each sobbing shriek she uttered.
Still she pushed back against him instead of pulling away. Her loudest scream was one of dismay when, in the course of their frenetic assault on each other, his cock slipped out of her, and she moaned with relief when it
He kept the fingers of one hand on her vulva, making her come over and over again, each new climax more powerful and more abandoned than the last.
There was as much difference between this kind of sex and ordinary intercourse as there was between an innocent kiss and the game of sixty-nine. Here there was no drifting dreamily away into a half-world of erotic fantasy. She was alive in every muscle, fibre and nerve-ending in a way that she had never been alive before, all of her senses tuned and honed to razor keenness, her awareness more acute than ever.
When he came she felt each gushing spurt of his hot semen as it sprayed the tortured, inner flesh of her asshole. He kept on fucking her while his erection lasted, letting it slip out only when it turned soft and flaccid.
She whirled around in his arms to face him, her face still contorted with lust and her eyes staring wildly at him like the eyes of a crazy woman.
"I'm afraid we got a bit carried away that time," he murmured apologetically, brushing at the bright droplets of blood where his fingernails had deeply marked her breast.
"I could have killed you." she whispered, her voice strained with awe at remembrance of the terrible powers her emotions had released. "If I could have reached you I might have killed you, and I didn't care if you killed me. I didn't care if your cock tore me to pieces, or if your nails ripped me to shreds."
"Sometimes it's like that. The sex drive and the death wish are closely connected somehow. It may be an atavistic thing. There are many life forms in which the female terminates the act of copulation by murdering her mate. Sometimes she eats him."
"I don't want that ever to happen," Junia said. "I want to keep you alive for years and years and years so you can make love to me every night."
CHAPTER FIVE
Junia was busy at a Kardex file. It was the Monday following the night she had spent with Ralph Fallon. Fred Graz came over to stand beside her, pretending to be supervising her work.
"I've got to see you," he whispered. "It's important. Tonight?"
"All right," she replied without looking at him. "The Beacon Street Coffee Shop."
"We can't talk there," he protested. "It's too public."
"Well, we sure aren't going to talk in my room ... not again. The coffee shop at six. Don't be late because I won't wait for you."
He flushed and turned away.
He was there when she arrived at six. She joined him in a booth, noting that he looked nervous and worried.
"Blackburn's on my neck," he began as soon as she was seated.
"That's tough," she replied unsympathetically.
"Damn it, Junia!" he said in a low-voiced growl, "it'll be tough for both of us if we don't get some results soon. The deadline for the contract is getting closer. I saw Blackburn last night and he's having a fit. He wants a report. What can I tell him? What have you been doing?"
She grinned at him maliciously. "You can tell him I've been to bed with Ralph Fallon, and that he might as well forget about me getting Clara's job. I'll bet you didn't know that she's the owner's cousin, did you? Even if she wasn't the oldest, most efficient, and most trustworthy employee in the place, we still wouldn't have a chance of getting rid of her. About all I found out was that Ralph is the greatest lover since Casanova. You can pass that on for all it's worth."
Fred winced, but made no comment. He bit his lower lip and shook his head. "Well, we have to do something and do it damned fast. Have you met Max Kline?"
"Not officially. We nod at each other when we pass in the hall."
"You better start working on him. He should be easy. There's a rumor around that he steps out on his wife all the time. He's the inventor of the new production system. Maybe you can get him drunk and get him to talk. Better, yet, he does some work at home. I've been there at a party and I saw his office. He probably has notes that would be as good to us as the plans, and a damned sight easier to get our hands on."
Junia sighed. "Okay, Operation Max Kline it is, then. If I get shot by a jealous wife, don't ship my body back to Amareo. Blackburn would probably have it boiled down for the fat to make soap for the men's washroom. When that guy wages all-out war, he isn't kidding." She got up and went out without drinking her coffee or saying goodbye.
She walked the three blocks to her room, let herself in and locked the door behind her, then flopped across the bed to smoke a cigarette and think about Max Kline. He was a short, chunky man who gave the impression of great physical strength. He had iron-gray hair, coarse, heavy features, and China-blue eyes that regarded the world with suspicion from under bushy eyebrows. That was about all she knew of him, except the rumors that his sex life was not exactly orthodox, and that he was a woman chaser, although it was said that he was married to a woman of outstanding beauty. It was generally conceded that Kay Webster was, at least on a part-time basis, his current mistress.
Junia fretted about not being able to see Ralph. He had let her know that he was entertaining some other woman for the next few nights. She wasn't jealous. They had settled that problem by amicably agreeing that they would not interfere in each other's affairs.
She considered the possibility of going to the beer joint on the corner and getting herself picked up, but decided it really wasn't worth the trouble. She finally settled for a hot shower and going to bed early.
She awoke during the small hours of the morning, her sleep having been disturbed by a vividly pornographic dream. She was perspiring and half-sick with a nausea of frustrated passion. Even a cold shower didn't help, so she went back to bed and masturbated herself to sleep.
It was late the following afternoon before she got a chance to put Operation Maxwell Kline into high gear. Fred Graz helped by handing her a letter that required Kline's signature and directing her to take it to his office, giving her a significant look that infuriated her. What the hell was the matter with the silly bastard? Didn't he think she had enough sense to know what to do?
Kline's office was a separate room off Engineering. She found him bent over a drafting table.
"May I have your signature on this, Mr. Kline?" she asked as she handed him the letter, standing so close to him that their arms were lightly touching. She was glad that she had worn her shortest skirt and her tightest sweater. She took a deep breath and moved her shoulders, hoping he would realize that she wore no brassiere.
Kline took the letter from her, scowling. He shifted on his feet, moving a few inches away from her as he read it.
"Graz send you in here with this?" he growled at her.
"Yes, Mr. Kline," she replied, her brown eyes widening as though he had frightened her and she expected a reprimand.
He snorted. "When will that silly son-of-a-bitch get the message that I don't like being interrupted with this kind of crap when I'm working? Oh, for Christ's sake! It isn't your fault, Miss ... Miss Whatever-your-name-is. What are you crying about?"
"Miss Wickham," Junia sobbed. "Miss Junia Wickham. I ... I'm new here, Mr. Kline and I don't want to get into any trouble. I'm only a fi ... fi ... file clerk."
"Well, for God's sake quit blubbering. I mean I'm sorry, Miss Wickham. I didn't mean to make you cry. Here, use this." He hastily handed her a man's handkerchief that Junia took with a sniffled "thank you" and dabbed at her eyes.
"You don't mind signing the letter, Mr. Kline? If I go back without it, Mr. Graz might have me fired."
"Sure, I'll sign the damned thing." He took a ball-point pen from his pocket and scrawled something on the bottom of the sheet. "Here. If that piss-ant in Personnel fires you, I'll bust his damned nose for him. I wouldn't mind doing it, anyway. Hey," he exclaimed, taking his first good look at her as she handed back his handkerchief, "you're just a kid! How'd you get a job here, anyway ... lie about your age?"
"Oh, no, sir. I'm over eighteen ... just. I wish I didn't have to work in the office with Mr. Graz. I wish I could work for somebody nice like you."
The craggy brows shot up and the China-blue eyes regarded her with surprise. "Me? Are you kidding? Nobody in this place wants to work around a crusty, mean, old bastard like me. You sure as hell must be new. Haven't you heard what a nasty-tempered guy I am, and how I chase everything in skirts?"
She shook her head. "No. All I heard was that you're a genius and one of the most famous engineers in the world. As far as being chased around the office is concerned, that happens to me everywhere I work. I'd at least like to pick the man who's going to chase me." The last words were uttered in a shy mumble as she hung her head and managed a very creditable blush.
"Well, I'll be damned!" Max Kline murmured, but she raised her head to see that he was regarding her with suspicion. "I don't believe it," he declared. "You've got to be up to something, kiddo. Maybe you're just a habitual cock teaser and you thought you'd get a little practice in on old Maxy. Okay, I'm going to call your bluff. I'll bet you scream your pretty head off." Before she realized what he meant to do, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up against his chest, pinning her there effortlessly while his free hand went up under her sweater to grip one of her breasts. "Now go ahead and yell for help," he challenged her.
"Who needs any help?" she replied and covered his lips with her own. "Don't you think you should lock the door? Someone might come in."
"Damned right I'll lock it," he growled. "By God, you weren't just fooling around, were you? I don't know why you go for me, but I don't turn down anything as young and gorgeous as you." He released her, removing his hand from her bare breast with obvious reluctance. He gave her an affectionate pat on the fanny and started for the door when it opened and Kay Webster came in. She looked startled and then amused, but not as startled as Max Kline.
"Oh, pardon me," she said with exaggerated emphasis. "I had no idea you were so busy, Maxy." She looked at Junia, taking in the girl's flushed look and the disarranged sweater. She smiled sweetly, but a dangerous light shone in her dark eyes. "Isn't this the new little girl from Personnel? What a pretty child!"
"Jun ... I mean Miss Wickham was just leaving," Kline mumbled. "Here, girl, here's the letter." He snatched the piece of paper from his desk, thrust it hurriedly into Junia's hands and turned back to his drawing board, the back of his neck turning red above his collar.
Junia knew when she was outclassed. Being in the presence of the regally beautiful Kay Webster made her feel as awkward and gawky as a school girl. She fled.
"I blew it," she reported to Fred Graz. "I was doing okay until the Webster barged in on us. I left lipstick on Max's mouth so he'll probably spend the next week doing nothing but trying to explain that to the bitch."
"And we don't have a week to spare," Fred responded glumly. "We've got to think of some way of breaking up that affair between Kline and Kay."
"Of course, your motive in that is purely patriotic loyalty to dear old Amareo," Junia taunted him. "Well, I'll do the best I can."
A remark she happened to overhear while standing in line for the time clock that evening gave her an inspiration. Mercer Electronics sponsored a bowling team and two of her fellow employees were animatedly discussing a match to be held that evening. It was mentioned that Max Kline was the captain of the team. That meant, Junia deduced, that he wouldn't be home that night, or at least not until late. If he didn't take his wife with him, and if she didn't have some social obligation of her own, she might be home alone. Junia intended to call on Eva Kline. If anyone could break up the Kay-Max combination, it should be Max's wife. Riding across town on the bus, she worried about how to approach the other woman and then finally decided that her best bet was to appear frank and honest. As far as she could see, the worst that could happen would be for Eva to think her a dumb, snoopy little tattle tale. She had looked up the address in the office phonebook. When the bus stopped three blocks from the Kline residence, Junia suddenly remembered that you don't just walk in on strangers unannounced. She used a pay phone on the corner to call Mrs. Kline.
The voice that answered was well-modulated and gentle. Junia visualized a nice, little old lady at the other end and managed to feel a certain amount of righteous indignation at the two-timing activities of Max Kline,
"I'm Junia Wickham," Junia said into the mouthpiece. "We haven't met, Mrs. Kline, but I'm employed at Mercer Electronics and I've met your husband. I have something I think I should discuss with you. May I have a few minutes of your time?"
"Why, of course, my dear," Eva replied. "Please come to see me anytime. Are you in the vicinity?"
Junia told her where she was and promised to be there in a few minutes. While she was walking the three blocks she had time to wonder whether or not she was making a damned fool of herself, and quite possibly to no purpose.
Well, she would soon know.
It was a two-story brick house, one of the older homes, but in the best part of town. Junia walked up the stone steps and stood before the oak door. There was an old-fashioned brass knocker, but she chose the pushbutton beneath it and heard chimes ring softly in the depths of the house. The door opened and Eva Kline was smiling at her, instantly dispelling the notion that Max was married to a sweet, little old lady. She was about Junia's size and build and in her late twenties at the most. With her black hair, extraordinarily fair skin and hazel eyes, she was unmistakably of Gallic extraction. She wore a black knit dress that left no doubt as to her bust, waist, and hip measurements. She was pretty enough, and poised enough, Junia thought, to be an actress.
"You're Miss Wickham, of course," Eva said, smiling warmly, "and I'm Eva Kline. How good of you to call. I was spending a perfectly wretched and boringly lonely evening with a book I don't even like. I find most of the modern novels absolutely sickening, don't you? Who wants to wade through reams and reams of stuff that reads like it came out of some psychiatrist's file of case histories? But, do come on in. Can I get you a drink?"
Having been put so instantly at her ease, Junia felt less self-consciously dubious about the outcome of her mission. She went on into the pleasantly luxurious living room and accepted the drink that Eva made for her. The woman seemed totally lacking in normal, feminine curiosity, not once alluding to the reason for Junia's call as they chatted together like old friends. While keeping up her end of the conversation, Junia's mind was busy. She should go ahead with her original idea, or simply abandon it in favor of cultivating Eva? After all, her purpose in the abortive attempt to seduce Max had been only to get into this house. Well, she was here now. Perhaps if she made a friend of Eva Kline, she would eventually get the chance to have a look at Max's office and prowl through his desk. Surely he would have kept notes on anything as important as the new production system.
On the other hand, what would Max think about finding her here with his wife, especially after she had so openly thrown herself at him? She finally decided in favor of her original plan.
"Mrs. Kline," she said, when a lull in the inconsequential conversation gave her the opportunity, "I don't know what you're going to think of me for telling you this. Perhaps it's none of my business but, as one woman to another, it's a thing you're entitled to know. As I told you on the phone, I've met your husband at the office. Well, there is another woman who works there. She is the secretary to Mr. Mercer, and she ... "
Eva Kline held up a long-fingered hand. "One moment, please, Miss Wickham," she said. "If you're going to tell me about the affair between Max and Kay Webster, I can save you the trouble and the embarrassment. I'm well aware of the situation. I don't blame Max. Kay is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. In fact, Kay and I are quite good friends. At the risk of shocking you, I'm going to be quite frank with you Junia. May I call you Junia? Max and I have an arrangement. Our marriage was one of convenience for both of us. Max needed a companion, someone to run his house, be a hostess at his parties and a friend at all times. I needed a cover and, for my kind, marriage is the best cover you can get. But we don't sleep with each other. It isn't that kind of a marriage. Max has his sex life and I have mine. You see, Junia, my dear, I am a lesbian. I do like men, but not in my bed. Now do you understand?"
Junia nodded. She didn't. Not really. It was a new concept for her, but she was trying. She did, however, feel like a fool.
Eva smiled warmly and understandingly at her. "It took a lot of courage for you to come here, I'm sure. You must want him quite desperately."
"Want who?"
"Max, of course. You're not the first one, Junia. I'll confess it baffles me. Lord knows Max is no male sex symbol, or at least he certainly doesn't appear so to me, but then I'm in no position to judge. He must have something, however, because girls, especially young and pretty girls like yourself, simply go mad over him. I only wish I could be that lucky with them myself. How bad is it with you, Junia?"
"Pretty bad," Junia said.
Eva considered this, crossing her long lovely legs with a hiss of nylon. "If you're determined to go to bed with Max, I may be able to help you, but please don't think me altruistic. I'm not at all. If I do arrange it for you, it will be in return for certain ... ah ... favors. Max and I are planning a party but we haven't set the date yet. Of course, I intended to have Kay here for him, but I happen to know she'll be out of town over the weekend. If I held my party Saturday night, she wouldn't be able to come and, if I invited you instead, you'd have Max all to yourself. Our parties, you understand, are sex parties. Some of the guests will be my friends, mostly homosexuals like myself, but some will be straight. You might have to pop into bed with several others before you made it with Max. Would that be all right?"
"Sure," Junia replied. "I've never been to a sex party. It sounds wonderful."
"Fine. Then all that remains is for you and I to come to an agreement. Do you know what I mean?"
"Yes, I guess so. I suppose you want to ... to ... well, to do something, whatever it is you do, with me. Is that it?"
Eva laughed gaily. "You're priceless!" she cried. "Absolutely priceless! Don't be offended, my dear, I'm not really laughing at you. It's just that I find your naivete in these matters completely charming and refreshing. You've no idea how bored I am with queers and their blasé attitudes toward life."
"We're alone here now, and have hours ahead of us before Max gets through bowling. If he spends the night in Kay's apartment, he may not come home at all. Will you come in the bedroom with me now and let me make love to you?"
The thought of enduring a woman's caresses neither excited Junia nor particularly revolted her. She even thought it might prove to be at least academically interesting. Either way, whether she became Eva's lover or Max's, or was shared by them, she stood a good chance of eventually having the run of the house, and that was what she was after. She followed Eva across the living room, down a hallway, and up a flight of stairs to a bedroom. She submitted to being undressed by beautifully tapered fingers, slightly tremulous in their eagerness, that touched her breasts, her stomach and her thighs. The disrobing was accompanied by "ohs" and "ahs" of admiration.
Then, because Eva asked her to, she returned the favor. She had to admit, that even from a woman's point of view, Eva had a body that was almost breath stopping in its loveliness of perfection. What a waste of gorgeous flesh, Junia thought. And how Ralph Fallon would love to get his ardent hands and nibbling teeth on those pert brown nipples!
She was not prepared for the moment when they were both nude and Eva suddenly threw her arms around her, hugging her to her so that their breasts touched and kissing her on the mouth. It was a strange sensation to have a woman's soft lips on hers, a woman's tongue darting between her teeth. Yet it was not as bad as she had supposed it might be.
She was due for another surprise. Once in the bedroom and stripped of clothes, Eva seemed to shrug out of her cloak of refinement and culture.
"Okay, baby," she whispered hoarsely, "now we get in bed and I'm going to show you the time of your life. I'll bet you've had your cunt sucked by men. Nobody in his right mind would ever turn down a piece of table pussy like you. But, honey, you've never had it sucked like I'm going to do it!"
Eva drew her down to the bed. As she pulled the covers over them, Junia remembered that she had heard somewhere about women who actually perfumed their sheets. She had never thought to end up in such a bed, and certainly not with another woman.
Eva began kissing her again, her hands stroking Junia's body, seeking her breasts, her fanny, and the sweet flesh of her inner thighs. When she felt the lips as tender as the petals of a flower on her nipples she thought, what the hell? Just relax and let it happen. To her surprise, it did. She found that having her nipples teased and her cunt fingered by a woman produced exactly the same results as when it was done by a man. She began to get hot, responding to Eva's undoubtedly expert manipulation of her clitoris. In a matter of minutes she had forgotten that Eva was not a man, and she was delighted when the older woman slid farther under the covers and went to work with her sucking mouth and her flickering dancing tongue.
She was as good at it as she had boasted, her woman's knowledge of a woman's body and a woman's needs giving her an edge, even over such artists at cunt-lapping as Ralph Fallon or J.B. Blackburn. Junia found herself writhing and twisting happily in the throes of intense passion.
Eva was not a very quiet cunt-sucker. Her enthusiasm precluded that. She did a great deal of slurping and burbling in Junia's pussy, loving the musky reek of the girl's hot and discharging cunt so well that she rubbed her whole face in it and managed to sound remarkably like a hungry hog at a trough. But, for some reason not readily apparent, the sound effects added to Junia's lustful appreciation of what was being done to her, and increased her desire to have an orgasm. But Eva was too experienced to spoil everything for herself by letting the girl come too quickly. With cunning skill, she brought Junia again and again right to the precarious edge of coming, then slackened off, only to begin the build-up again. After a half-hour of such treatment, Junia was wild with desire and frantic with frustration.
"Make me come!" Junia begged her. "For God's sake, Eva, I can't stand any more of this!"
But Eva only laughed, the sound watery and muffled by Junia's pulsing, steaming vulva. Then, when she had her victim sobbing in an agony of despair, she took mercy on her and, with a final swipe of her tongue, sent her over the fine edge, toppling down and down into that bottomless pit where the flames of passion roared and reared up to receive her, wrapping her in ambient tongues of fire. She ceased to exist except as a clitoris, a swollen, throbbing knob of sensation that pulsed in Eva's hot, sucking mouth, dancing to the tune of a tongue that extracted every last quiver of lust, that drew out to its utmost the last convulsion of tortured nerves.
The covers bulged and Eva's head appeared, her face smeared, and her cosmetics washed off. "How'd you like that, baby?" she demanded. "Damned if you haven't got the juiciest cunt I ever sucked. I'll bet I drank a quart of the stuff. How about doing me? No? Well, I didn't suppose you would. Too bad, sugar, you just don't know what you're missing. Say, do you like getting fucked in the ass?"
Junia nodded.
"Swell! Wait a sec. I've got something to show you."
Eva jumped out of bed and opened a closet door. She wheeled out a peculiar machine with a motor, a switchboard, and a long arm tipped with a shaft of smooth lucite. With its chrome and black crackle finish it looked like a very professional something or other, but she'd be blessed if she knew what.
"Max invented it and had it made for me," Eva said proudly. "I sometimes use it to entertain my girl friends. It's a fucking machine. See? There are three sizes of pricks." She indicated the lucite shaft at the end of the arm and produced two more like it, but of varying sizes, from a drawer under the table top that supported the arm and its mechanism. Junia saw that the lucite things were shaped exactly like a man's cock.
"I think I'd like the biggest one," she said shyly.
Eva laughed. "Most of them do." She unscrewed the one on the arm and replaced it with the larger size. She directed Junia to get on her hands and knees on top of the covers, then she swung the arm around so that the lucite prick was touching Junia's asshole. "I'm going to turn it on now. It starts off with very short strokes and then increases the length of them. You can either hold still and let it fuck itself into you, or you can back onto it. Suit yourself. All set? Here goes."
Junia heard the click of the switch. At first she felt only a vibration against her asshole then the beginning of short strokes that hammered the lucite penis at her. She pushed back against it and felt it nudge its way by the sphincter muscles. It was bigger by half than Ralph Fallon's prick and it hurt like hell, but each jab of pain shot a corresponding bolt of passion through her. She was glad when Eve got onto the bed and slid under her between her thighs, her tongue seeking the already dripping and pulsating cunt.
The fucking machine had its mechanical prick all the way into her now, the arm working smoothly back and forth with a perfect rhythm. It occurred to Junia that all she needed now was a prick, a real prick, in her mouth and she would be complete, everybody orifice getting its share of attention. At first glance, she had thought the fucking machine to be a kooky invention, but now she liked it. A girl could pass many a pleasant hour this way on the nights when she didn't have a date. She was sure it could be adjusted to screw her in the pussy as well as in the asshole. She was glad she had come to this house. Eva was a lot of fun and a real champion when it came to sucking cunts. Just wait until she told Ralph Fallon about her adventure!
Even with all her expertise, Eva couldn't hold Junia back very long, not with that lucite prick working in her and making her hotter and hotter by the second! She looked down at her own breasts, elongated and dangling from the position she was in. She lifted one with her hand, bending it up as she ducked her head. She found that she could get the nipple in her mouth and she set her teeth on it, biting it hard enough to send sharp, stabbing pains down through her body to meet those mounting from her rectum, and that was all it took to trigger her orgasm. She came violently.
Eva got up to turn off the machine and Junia fell forward, collapsing on the bed. The lucite prick came out of her asshole with a faint plop of sound, it's clear, polished head flecked with the brown from her lovely asshole.
"Do something for me, baby," Eva begged, dropping down beside Junia. "I know you won't suck me, but will you please suck my tits and jack me off with your fingers? I'm so turned on over you I can't stand myself."
It seemed little enough to do for the other woman after all the fun she'd had herself, so Junia agreed. She took one of the hard brown nipples in her mouth and found the perfumed taste pleasant. She didn't even mind the soft slippery feeling of Eva's vulva and she masturbated her as expertly as she knew how. The firm sweet flesh of Eva's breasts, the intimate, wet warmth of her pussy, and the business of being pressed so tightly against the squirming, passionate body even excited her a little. She made Eva come five times and, when the other woman was finally satisfied, Junia still clung to her, content to pillow her face on the cushiony delight of her breasts.
"You're a good kid," Eva told her, stroking her hair and kissing her, "and I'll bet I'll have you playing sixty-nine with me before very long. Wanna bet, baby?"
Junia shook her head. She didn't think she'd ever do that ... but she wouldn't bet on it either.
CHAPTER SIX
Eva Kline called Junia Friday evening to tell her that the party was all set for the following night.
"There were quite a few of my own friends who weren't able to accept the invitation," she explained, "so most of the guests will be married couples whom Max knows. That means it will be a switch party, and that you'll have to have an escort. Can you bring a man?"
"I'll try to get Ralph Fallon to take me," Junia said.
"Wonderful! Ralph is a doll and all the wives go for him. If you can't get him, just bring anyone. If we can't convert him we can always stash him in a spare room with a bottle. Then you and I can slip away together for awhile. Would you like that, darling?"
"I'd love it," Junia told her. She had been doing a lot of thinking about her affair with Eva, and the more she thought about it the better she liked it, the more anxious she was to repeat the experience.
Ralph Fallon declined her invitation with regret. He explained that he had recently made the conquest of a local girl home on vacation from college and that he had a date with her for Saturday night. Disappointed, she turned to Fred Graz. She hardly considered him an ideal date but she could avoid him at the party, dividing her time between the beds of Max Kline and his lovely wife. He also refused, pointing out that it wasn't a good idea for them to appear to be that well acquainted with each other.
By Saturday afternoon, Junia was still without an escort for the party and beginning to get a little desperate until she accidentally encountered Nap Devore, the security guard from Amareo who had so persistently tried to date her when she worked there. She let him take her to the Beacon Street Coffee Shop and buy her a Coke. There was a certain amount of maliciousness in her heart when she asked him to take her to the party. She suspected that his small-town puritanical soul would get the shock of its life when he found out what kind of a party it was, and it gave her secret satisfaction to know she would be putting him in an awkward and embarrassing position. Well, it was one way to get him off of her back. Once he saw what kind of friends she had, and realized that she was not, after all, a nice girl, maybe he would leave her alone.
The eagerness with which he accepted her invitation, and the adoring and worshipful way in which he gazed at her, brought her up short with the realization that he was in love with her. She was immediately conscience-stricken and ashamed of what she planned to do to him, but could see no graceful way of getting out of it. Nap would just have to be shocked. He would get over it, and get over her as well, so, she rationalized, she was really doing him a favor at that.
When he picked her up at eight she saw that he looked surprisingly good in a suit.
"Gee, Junia," he said, his homely face radiant, "this sure is great. I mean getting to go out with you and all."
She patted the back of his large, freckled hand and gave him a wry grin. "You may not think so before the evening is over. My friends are a pretty wild bunch. Maybe you won't like them."
"Any friend of yours ... " he said confidently.
Eva met them at the door, kissing her warmly and shaking hands with Nap, who was obviously impressed by Eva's beauty and grand manner, as well as by the opulence of his surroundings. Junia felt a mixture of pride and shame.
"He's cute," Eva whispered in her ear. "Where in the world did you find him?"
"He's strictly square," Junia whispered back, "but he was all I could get on short notice. Better see if we can't get him drunk enough to pass out before the fun starts."
Eva nodded. After she had taken them around to make the introductions, she left Junia with Max and took Nap with her to the bar that had been set up at one end of the living room.
"Eva told me she was getting you for me, and what you had to pay for the privilege," Max told her. "I'm grateful to her, but, for Christ's sake, kiddo, you didn't have to do that with her. I thought you'd come back to my office after Kay left, or at least call me on the phone and give me a chance to make a date with you."
"I didn't think I had a chance in competition with Kay."
He snorted. "She bores hell out of me. She was okay at first, but now I'd like to shake her, only she's a babe who hates to turn loose once she's got her claws in a man, and she's the kind who would cause trouble. Don't get too far away from me, baby. When things get started around here, every guy in the place will be grabbing for you and I want to be first."
"That's the way I want it too, Maxy honey, but I have to go to bed with Eva afterwards. I promised her."
"Okay," he growled, "but don't let her make a damned queer out of you."
"Don't worry. What would really be nice would be to have you both in bed at once. I'll bet we could think of a lot of interesting things to do, especially with that wonderful machine you made for her. Have you ever done that?"
His blue eyes lit with remembered pleasures. "Yeh, Eva and I have shared women that way a few times. It's great. Those are the only times when she'll ever let me touch her at all. Too bad we can't do that tonight but we'll have to save it for another occasion. I have a friend who runs a motel about twenty miles south of here on the highway. We go there when we've got something special like that. Less chance of being interrupted."
"I'd love to go with the two of you whenever you say," Junia replied sincerely. "I wonder how Eva is doing with my date."
"She's got him over at the bar and is getting him loaded," Max told her. "I've got to circulate among my guests for a while, baby. Have fun but don't get involved. I'm saving you for me."
A pretty woman in her thirties came up and took Junia's arm. "Come over and talk to my husband," she pleaded. "He's simply dying to get you in a dark corner somewhere."
Junia found herself stuck with a fat-bellied man in his late forties. Eva rescued her before long.
"Now that the social amenities have been taken care of," she said, "it's time to get the real party started. Max is afraid he'll miss out on you so he told me to have you slip out ahead of time and go upstairs. You know where my bedroom is. Go on up there and take your clothes off. He'll be with you in a few minutes. The lucky dog."
"After he and I are through, can't I just wait there for you?" Junia asked.
Eva squeezed her arm. "Of course you can, you darling. One of my queer girl friends is here, and I have to have a session with her, but I'll be up there as soon as I take care of her. Don't worry about Nap. I left a pretty girl there at the bar with him to keep feeding him drinks. Every time he starts getting restless and worrying about you, she pours another martini down him, and the sweet guy is too polite to just walk off on her. Max told me about the trip you two have planned for the three of us. I think it's a wonderful idea, and I plan on having you all to myself a lot, too. I think I may be falling in love with you, darling. Do you mind?"
"No. I suppose not. I know women make love, but I didn't know ... "
Eva laughed her soft, tinkling laugh. "Well, don't let it worry you. Now scoot on upstairs, but don't let Max wear you out. Save some for me."
"I will," Junia promised. As she went up the stairs, she could see Nap standing at the bar, a puzzled, anxious frown on his forehead and a frozen smile on his face as he confronted his captor, a vivacious redhead with white, lovely, bare arms and a bulging expanse of bosom showing above her low-cut gown.
She went on up to Eva's bedroom and undressed, happy to be out of her clothes and to know that she would soon be having a grand time in the bed with Max's cock in her cunt, her mouth, or her ass. She was having a hard time deciding which she really liked the best. To add to her confusion, there was now also the memory of Eva's beautiful perfumed body, and how heavenly it had been to lie in her arms, sucking her titties and fingering her cunt. And, of course, there was the fucking machine, that ingenious device that was the product of Max's engineering brilliance. She opened the closed door and took a quick look to reassure herself that it was still there. It was. In all of its sleek, chrome beauty, it waited patiently, its lucite prick seeming to glow in the dim half-light of the closet. She reached in to pat it affectionately and then closed the door just as Max came into the room.
"Oh, there you are," he said. "I'll be damned if you aren't something out of this world. I can't believe you're really over eighteen. You look about fifteen, but a damned-well-developed fifteen." He was already in the nude. He looked like a gorilla, she thought, a nice tame gorilla. Then she perceived the length and girth of the enormous cock that dangled from his crotch and her eyes widened in amazement.
"Hurry, Max!" she said as she walked around the bed and came toward him. "Let's hurry! I want that big thing in me, darling. My God! Why, it'll be like rape, like the first time I had it."
"Is that how you got broke in? You were raped?"
"Yes." She put her arms around his massive chest and shoulders and rubbed her thighs onto his cock. "He was a nasty little man who tied me to the bed and hurt me terribly. I didn't like him but I don't hate him now. He did me a favor. I've had more fun since then than I've ever had before in my life."
"I don't blame him. I'd rape you myself if that was the only way I could get you." His cock was hardening, pushing against her thighs and seeking entrance between them.
"Rape me now," she pleaded with him, her eyes shining. "That would be fun, wouldn't it? I'll fight you as hard as I can and make you work for it, but you're so strong I know I won't be able to stop you for long. Do you want to? I won't mind if you hurt me. I'll love it."
"Okay," he agreed. "These rooms are soundproofed, so scream if you want to." He picked her up in his arms, threw her on the bed and fell on top of her.
Junia fought. She deliberately made it so realistic that he forgot it was only a crazy kind of sex game. She bit and scratched, drawing blood with her sharp teeth and nails, and she kicked as hard as she could. His greater weight pinned her to the bed and his knees forced her thighs apart, but although his big prick stabbed repeatedly and ineffectually at her cunt, she had discovered that the merest twitch of her hips was enough to make it miss its target.
Groaning with frustration and cursing her for a damned wildcat, Max finally lost his temper and cuffed her on the cheek so hard that it made her dizzy. Still she didn't give in until he tangled his powerful fingers in her hair and bent her head back so that she let out a piercing shriek of agony. Then she forgot to move her hips away from him and he got it into her.
He had no mercy on her. He drove the full length of his ponderous prick into her with one hunching shove of his hips, his back arched and his knees braced to deliver the blow with the entire strength of his body.
Junia screamed even louder than when Angelo Feroni had first raped her, and yet there was as much joy and delight in her scream as there was pain. She wrapped her arms and legs around his apelike body and lifted her hips, not willing to let him pull his cock even part of the way out of her cunt. He kept it there, rotating it so that she felt like an iron bar had been rammed up her guts halfway to her throat, and that it was stirring her insides as a giant cook might stir a cauldron of soup.
The simulated rape had so excited her that she now began to come almost immediately. She was sobbing and crying and kissing him and biting him as she worked her hips in a frenzy of motion. Her first orgasm was hardly complete before she started another. Even in the madness of her passion she remembered something. She put a hand under one breast and lifted it, pushing down on his head. It was a difficult position for a man of his bulk to assume but she finally managed to get her nipple into his mouth while he continued to fuck her.
"Bite it!" she hissed at him. "Goddamn you to hell, bite the fucking thing!"
She screamed again when she felt his teeth like red-hot pinchers on her flesh and she came a third time, stronger even than before.
And he came with her. His Brobdingnagian balls pumped semen faster than her already full cunt could handle. It squirted back out to splatter on her thighs and drip onto the bedspread. His cock stayed hard long after he had finished coming, this condition of tumescence enabling Junia to have two more orgasms before he finally went soft and slipped out of her.
"By God, you're as good as I thought you would be," Max exclaimed, rolling off of her. "Did you like the rape game?"
"I adored it. Sometime I'd like to have you take me that way without any warning, just knock me down on the floor, rip my dress off and fuck me. That would be even better. And I want that big thing of yours in my asshole, too. Do you really like my body, Max?"
"You're the only one I've ever thought could compare with Eva."
"You're in love with your wife!" she accused him, startled at her own flash of insight. "She thinks it's just an arrangement, that you married her to have a housekeeper and a hostess."
A look of pain darkened his eyes. "That's all it is to her, an arrangement. I haven't any kick coming. I knew she was queer when I married her. I didn't know that it would drive me damned near insane to live in the same house with her and never be able to touch her. The only times I can get near her are when we share another woman, like you and I were talking about this evening. Then we play a game where she sucks the woman, while the woman sucks me and I get to suck Eva. Having my hands on her and my tongue in her cunt is like heaven."
"I'm sorry, Maxy," Junia said softly. "I'll play that game with the two of you whenever we can talk her into it. Will that help, darling?"
He nodded and, turning on his side, he put his arms around her and hugged her, kissing her with surprising gentleness.
"You're a damned good kid," he told her, his voice deep with emotion. "I wish I could have both of you, both you and Eva. Too bad there's a law against multiple marriages."
"Maybe I could just live with you," she suggested. "To keep people from talking, you could pretend to hire me for a maid or a secretary. Do you suppose Eva would go for that?"
"I don't know. She might. Jesus! What a wonderful life that would be! But who would you be doing it for ... for me or for Eva?"
"For both of you. It wouldn't be worth anything if it was any other way. Not in the long run. If I didn't love you both the same it would only cause trouble."
"You're right. For a kid, you've got lots of smarts. Don't say anything to Eva ... unless she gets the same idea herself and brings it up. We'll wait until after we've made that trip together and then I'll mention it. In the meantime, though, you better be extra good to her."
"I will. Eva is sweet and being good to her isn't hard to do."
"She's going to want you to suck her cunt."
"I know. I don't suppose it'll kill me."
"Just don't get to liking it too damned much. I'd hate to have you turn out like her."
"Hello, darlings," Eva said, coming into the room. She was nude and Junia felt a small pang of jealousy to see a smudge of lipstick on one of the jaunty, beautiful breasts. "Been having fun?"
"She's marvelous," Max said. "She's the best I've ever had. She's not only the best-looking, but she's also the smartest and the nicest. Furthermore, if God ever created a more passionate woman he's sure as hell kept her hidden where I couldn't find her."
"Hear! Hear!" Eva cried. "If the heavens don't fall, the seas rise up, and the mountains split asunder, it will be a wonder. The compliments you have just heard are from Max Kline, the man who generally speaks of a roll in the hay with the most gorgeous females as, 'Yeh, pretty good I guess,' or something like, 'Oh, she'll do in a pinch.' Congratulations, Junia, this is as great an accomplishment as getting the Sphinx to sing 'Home On The Range.' "
"Oh, bullshit," Max growled. He was obviously embarrassed.
Eva laughed. "Go on, great lover. Go entertain some of our other women guests. It's now my turn with this paragon of all virtues."
When Max had gone, Eva linked her arm through Junia's. "Come on, let's take a shower together. I wasn't kidding about Max. You've obviously made a hell of an impression. I guess you're the first woman I've ever had to worry about. You could take him away from me."
"No," Junia said, shaking her head. "No one can ever do that. Max is in love with you."
Eva looked annoyed. "I know. The idiot. He tries to hide it but it shows all the time. Well, that's what he gets for marring a homo. Just be sure you don't fall in love with him. I'd rather have you in love with me, baby."
"But I do love you, Eva," Junia protested, "and I can't help it if I also love Max. I'd never try to take him away from you, though, because then I wouldn't have you, would I? I'm not ready to give up your lovely body."
"No wonder you charmed him," Eva laughed and kissed her. "I suspected from the first that you had bisexual tendencies, and that all they needed was a little developing. I hope I was right."
The two girls showered together and hurried to the bed, Junia as anxious as Eva to dive under the covers and embrace, to feel her naked body writhing against the other's smooth, warm flesh, the drive of passion already beginning to build in her.
"Isn't this swell?" she exclaimed enthusiastically. "I've hardly thought about anything else but you since the other night. Gosh, I didn't know I could get so hot just thinking about a woman."
"I'm glad you feel that way, honey," Eva said. "Do you want the fucking machine?"
"No. I love it, but I don't want it tonight. I just want you. Eva?"
"Yes, dear."
"Remember what you asked me to do the last time?"
"Yes."
"I think I'm ready now ... at least to try it." She was remembering the plans that she and Max had made. She knew that Eva would ask her again and she had made up her mind that she was going to do it. As Max had pointed out, everything depended on being so good to Eva, on pleasing her so well that Eva would agree to sharing her marriage. She wasn't sure that this was her only reason for volunteering to suck Eva's cunt, but she didn't want to think about that, to admit to herself that she was beginning to feel a strong desire for the more daring intimacies of lesbian love.
"Lovely!" Eva cried. "Oh, I'm so glad, sweetheart! Kiss my tits and play with me a little, and then we'll suck each other off. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to cut all my other girlfriends if you'll come and spend the night with me often. Will you? You can sleep with Max part of the time, too, if you still want him. Please, darling."
"Of course, I will," Junia replied happily. Things were working out perfectly, she thought. If she could just finish her mission for Blackburn, and then get those damned pictures back from him, she wouldn't have to become his mistress after all. She could move in with Max and Eva and live a life of heavenly bliss.
She bent her head to Eva's breasts and took one of the nipples in her mouth. It seemed even better than she remembered. She slid her hand down Eva's flat stomach, toyed for a moment with the black, curly hair and then ran the flat of her hand over the satiny smoothness of marvelously sculptured thighs. When she touched the moist warmth of Eva's widespread cunt, Junia suddenly realized that she was as hot as she'd ever been with a man during preliminary sex play. Passion was a roaring storm in her head as she found the small but well-defined lump of the other girl's clitoris and began to massage it lightly.
Eva's body surged against hers and Junia heard her gasp with pleasure.
"Don't make me come, not that way. Oh, let's suck each other. I can't wait any longer."
"I can't, either," Junia admitted and she turned quickly around on the bed. She did not hesitate for a moment to push her head between Eva's tender, perfumed thighs as soon as she was in position. She thrust her tongue into Eva's gaping, eager cunt, letting the heady aroma of Eva's musk intoxicate her and drive her even wilder with lust. She withdrew her tongue and began frantically sucking and lapping at the hot, wet flesh of the vulva, drawing it into her mouth to drain its juices, drinking as avidly as though dying from thirst. The she found Eva's clitoris and she began teasing it with her tongue, trying to imitate the method Eva had used, and was now using, to bring about a climax.
They both came very quickly the first time. Their passions were so aroused that neither of them could hold back. They twisted and turned on the bed, knocking the covers off, exposing their bodies so welded together by the fierce heat of mutual lust as they climaxed together and then kept right on, making each other come over and over again. Only tiring muscles and complete bodily exhaustion finally caused them to slow their efforts and at last cease altogether.
"Do you think, because I like it so much, that I'll turn homo?" Junia asked anxiously after they had rested.
"No, darling," Eva replied. "I think you'll go right on liking both men and women. I hope so. Max would be furious with me if I ruined you for him."
"You won't be jealous if I still do it with Max?"
"Not at all. Just don't let me catch you making eyes at other women. Kay mentioned you. She's seen you at the office. She'd like to go to bed with you herself."
"Is Kay a homo? I thought she and Max ... "
"She's bisexual, just like you. She was my lover first and then Max took her over, but she's such a bitch that we're both sick of her now."
"I don't like her, either. I swear I'll never even look at another girl, Eva. How could I want anyone as much as I want you?"
Eva sighed. "They all say that at first, but the sad fact is that lesbian love never lasts long between two women, Junia. I hope and pray that we'll be different, but statistics are all against us. Let's just enjoy each other while it does last."
"Okay, Eva, but I think you're wrong. I think we'll always love each other. Eva?"
"Yes, dearest."
"May I suck your cunt again? I don't want to play sixty-nine. I just want to do it to you. I guess I can't believe it's really as good as it seems. I have to keep proving over and over to myself that it is. I'm afraid I'm dreaming and that I'll wake up and you'll be gone and this wonderful thing that's happened to me will disappear."
Eva laughed gently. "I understand, baby. You don't even have to ask. There'll never be a time when I won't want you to suck me. You just do it whenever you feel like it."
"Gosh, I just thought of something. What do we do when we're having our periods?"
"It's terrible!" Eva said. "That's when I'm the most passionate too. All we can do is wait until we stop flowing. Max says he doesn't mind screwing a girl when she's in her period, so it won't be bad for you, but all I can do is suffer."
"I won't let you!" Junia cried impulsively. "I'll suck you then too. You can wash good just before, you know, and a little blood won't hurt me. I won't let you suffer, Eva. I'll bet Max would do that to you, too, if you'd let him."
"I know he would. He'd do anything for me. I'm sorry I have to be so mean to him but I can't stand him that way, except when there's another girl in bed with us and I'm so hot over her I don't give a damn who's down there sucking me off. You're a darling to be so generous. You make me love you more every minute I'm with you. Maybe we will last, after all."
Then Junia ducked down on the bed and parted Eva's thighs. She gave a great sigh of happiness as she lowered her mouth to the pleasures that awaited her there.
CHAPTER SEVEN
"Do you want to stay all night?" Eva asked Junia. They were sitting up in bed, smoking and sharing an ashtray between them.
"You know I'd love to," Junia replied, "but I guess I better not. I have to collect Nap and see that he gets home. I feel responsible for him." She put her cigarette out and got up from the bed. When she had dressed, she came back and sat down beside Eva, taking the older woman in her arms, kissing her mouth, her neck, and her breasts. She abruptly sat up, pushing herself away with determination and laughing shakily. "I better not get started on that again," she declared. "I don't know how many times we've done it, but I don't seem to be able to get enough of you. You stay here and get some rest, darling. I can let myself out. It must be awfully late."
"You'll come back soon?" Eva asked. It was a casual question but her eyes gave it a deeper meaning than her voice. They were dark with emotion, frankly begging and imploring for love.
"As soon and as often as I can," Junia promised, bending to kiss her once more and then straightening up quickly before her own desires could betray her. She stopped at the door to look back and the sight of the half-naked girl on the bed was almost her undoing. Resolutely, she went out into the darkness of the hall and made her way to the stairs.
Only a TV light burned in the living room and the house was silent. The room was a shambles. Discarded clothing was strewn everywhere. A naked couple slept on the couch and another couple sprawled on the floor. The house was silent.
Junia knew what she had to do and she hated it, but that was what she had come there for and she could see no other way but to carry out her original purpose, distasteful though it might be. She had located Max's office earlier and she went directly to it. Finding the door unlocked, she let herself quietly in and took a small pen light from her purse. The tiny circle of light revealed a desk, a filing cabinet, and a drawing board. She decided to start on the desk. Opening the top, right-hand drawer, she began searching through the papers it contained.
"Looking for something?"
The voice, coming from behind her, so startled and frightened her that she nearly dropped the pen light. She stood up, turning to shine it on the man who had caught her in the act of going through Max's desk. He was tall and slender. In the uncertain light from the small flash she got the impression of dark curly hair, a handsome face, and deep-set eyes. He was completely dressed. She didn't recall having been introduced to him at the start of the evening.
"Who are you?" she asked, her voice a husky whisper.
He grinned. "Dave Breton. No, we haven't met ... not until now, Miss Wickham. I was a late arrival. Whatever you're planning to steal, I'd suggest you change your mind. You picked a bad time. Max is up and prowling around the house. I saw him only a minute ago in the kitchen."
Junia didn't deny his charge that she was stealing. Industrial spy was a romantic title, but it didn't alter the fact that she was a thief, or at least was trying to be one, and Dave Breton didn't strike her as the kind of man to be impressed by any alibi she would be able to concoct on short notice. She flicked off the light and started toward the door but he grasped her arm.
"Too late," he whispered. "Her he comes now. Only one thing to do. Pull up your skirt, Miss Wickham."
Junia caught on immediately. Breton planned to help her. The only excuse either of them could have for being in his office would be that they had gone there to make love. She lifter her skirt and bunched it around her waist, hearing the snick of the zipper on Breton's fly. She hurriedly reached for his cock, surprised to find it hard, and tucked it between her thighs. Still standing, they stood pressed closely together, their arms around each other. They were kissing ardently and Breton was hunching his hips at her when the light in the office went on.
"For Christ's sake!" they heard Max exclaim. "Well, pardon me, folks. You don't have to do it standing up. We've got lots of beds in this house." Chuckling to himself, he switched off the light and they heard the sound of his footsteps receding down the hall that led to the kitchen.
"Thanks," Junia said, preparing to disengage from Breton's embrace.
"Don't you thing you owe me a little something?" he asked her, still holding her tightly. "I suppose that's what you came to this party for ... to get fucked."
"Oh," she said. "Sure, if you want to. I thought you were just putting on an act for Max. I haven't thanked you, but I guess this is as good a way as any."
"It's the best way," he corrected her. "You don't know me, but I've seen you before. I can't even watch you walk down the street without getting an erection. We'd be more comfortable on the floor."
"Okay. Do you want me to take my dress off?"
"Please. I've been wanting to get my hands on those boobies of yours."
She turned around so that he could unzip her and let the dress fall to the floor. He took her in his arms again, murmuring something about her being a sensible girl not to wear underwear to a sex party. They sank together to the carpet and he fondled her breasts, kissing the nipples and running his tongue around them.
Junia waited, curious to see what would happen. She wasn't at all sure that Eva had been right in pronouncing her a bisexual. When she was with Eva she could think of nothing but the girl's body, wanting only her mouth on Eva's musky cunt, the scented softness of Eva's inner thighs caressing her cheeks, any other kind of sexual relationship seeming as-dim and unreal as a half-remembered dream.
It was with an odd mixture of relief and regret that she felt herself beginning to respond to Dave Breton's love play. She moved her hips impatiently, wanting his cock inside of her. He sensed her need and her urgency and mounted her. She sighed deeply when he slid it into her. What a shame that Eva didn't have a penis!
"I'm glad you like it." Breton said in her ear. "I was afraid you were a les."
"No," she said, speaking now with assurance, "I'm a bisexual."
"Comes in handy in your business," he commented. She didn't know what he meant, but supposed he still considered her a common thief. Well, let him. It was better than answering a lot of questions. Anyway, it didn't matter at the moment. What mattered was the excitement of being naked on the floor in this silent house under this stranger, his cock doing wonderful things to her. She bent her knees at a more acute angle and lifted her hips, helping him to go deeper into her.
He was, she realized, very expert. He was in no hurry, but was fucking her slowly and lovingly, pausing now and then to kiss her or to lift himself on his elbows and bend his head to look down at her breasts. She knew that they were beautiful and appealing to his eyes and the knowledge made her proud. She wished that there could be more light in the room so that he could more fully appreciate her body. Too bad she hadn't insisted that he undress. How nice it was to have bare flesh in contact with her own!
He kept his cock deeply embedded in her, his frontal bone firmly rotating her clitoris. Her passion rose like an increasing drumbeat, faint and distant at first and then swelling to a demanding roll of thunder that shook her from head to foot. She went with the rhythm of it, her undulating body and swiveling hips picking up the cadence, automatically keeping time as her conscious mind succumbed to the drug-like haze that drew down over it as a veil is drawn, shutting her off behind a screen of lust-induced fantasy. Thought lost meaning. Now there was only sensation and the desire for orgasm, release from the exquisitely sweet torture of greater ecstasy than her body and mind could endure.
She came, not savagely, as she had with Max's big cock in her and with his cruel teeth on her nipple, but with an intensity and depth of feeling that was equally thrilling in its own way.
Breton waited until she had finished and was limp under him before he let himself go. Lying quiescent and spent, she felt every pulsing spurt of his semen as it shot into her.
He rolled off her and would have tucked his cock back into his trousers, but she put a restraining hand on it and sat up to bend over and take the soft, flaccid thing in her mouth. She sucked it slowly and lingeringly, loving the mingled taste of her own cunt and of his semen, not minding that it refused to harden again in her mouth.
"Sorry," he said. "It takes a little while for me to get it up again, even with someone like you."
She let it slip from between her lips and sat up, facing him. "I hope you liked me. If you want, I'll give you my phone number and address."
"I know your address. Liked you? Good God! You're one in a million. You better get dressed and leave now, before Max comes back. I'll see you soon. You can count on it."
As she slipped her dress on she wondered about him. Who was Dave Breton anyway? He knew her name and her address, and had mentioned seeing her on the streets. Well, he had been kind enough not to ask her a lot of embarrassing questions, even though he had caught her at the act of rifling her host's desk. The least she could do would be to return the courtesy and keep her curiosity to herself. She hoped he was as good as his word and that she hadn't seen the last of him. When she pulled her dress down onto her shoulders she saw that he had gone and that she was alone in the room.
She went looking for Nap Devore, finding him sleeping on the floor behind the TV. She had some trouble getting him to wake up.
"Come on," she said. "The party's over. Let's go home."
He sat up and ran a hand through his disheveled hair, then got up without protest and followed her out of the house and down the street to where he had parked his car. She asked him if he felt like driving and he said that he did. She noticed that he didn't have anything to say and that he avoided looking at her. Well, that was that. She figured she knew the kind of small-town mentality that would be his. He probably thought of her as no better than a whore. She was sorry for him, but philosophized that he was better off in the long run to think that way about her.
He didn't say anything until they, drew up in front of her apartment house.
"Junia," he said, his voice low and his head still averted, "I'm sorry. I know I made an awful, damned fool of myself tonight. I had too much to drink and then there was this girl. I didn't mean to do anything like that with her, but I woke up in bed and she was with me, her clothes off and I was ... well, it was already happening. I guess you were looking all over for me and wondering where I was. I felt terrible about it afterward. I guess you won't want to go out with me again, will you?"
Junia had all she could do to keep from laughing. "Was it the red-headed girl?" she asked. "I saw her feeding you drinks. No one could possibly blame you, Nap. She's perfectly gorgeous. Didn't you enjoy yourself with her?"
"Well, yes. Yes, I guess I did, and that only made me feel worse, more of a heel."
"But, why?"
"Because I love you," he blurted. "Because I was going to ask you to marry me."
Suddenly it was Junia who felt like a heel. She was desperately ashamed of having involved Nap in her affairs, and of causing him to be disillusioned with himself.
"Nap," she said gently, "you musn't think of marrying me. I wouldn't be any good for you. I'm not the wife and mother kind. Not at all. While you were having a little, innocent fun with that lovely red-head, I was upstairs getting myself thoroughly screwed by our host. Just before I woke you, I let a man I never saw before in my life fuck me on the floor not twenty feet from where you were sleeping. That was what I went there for. It was a sex party and I went there to get laid. I'm not a nice girl, you see. I'm what the guys back home used to call a 'punchboard.' Now don't you think you better just forget all about me?"
She knew that she had shocked him. She had watched his face go white in the light from the street lamp on the corner. But he shook his head stubbornly.
"No. I can't do that ... just forget you. I don't care about those things you've done, Junia. All I know is that I love you. I want you to marry me. I'll take my chances on the kind of person you are."
She sighed heavily. "I wish I knew how to convince you, Nap. Just take my word for it, I'll never marry you. I'll probably never marry anyone. If you want me, I'll be glad to go to bed with you. Not tonight, please, because I'm too awfully tired, but any other time you say. Do you want to make love to me, Nap? It's all I can offer you."
"Of course, I do, but not this way. I want to go to bed with you after we're married, the way it should be. Will you still go out with me sometimes, Junia?"
"Yes. Aren't you even going to kiss me goodnight?"
With an inarticulate cry he turned to her and put his arms around her. His lips trembled a little on hers from the raging battle of emotion that was roaring inside of him. To Junia's surprise, his kiss had an instantaneous effect on her. It had a jolt, like standing in a pool of water and touching a bare electric wire. She felt her breasts tighten and fill, the nipples hard against the material of her dress, and her hips stirred with a pelvic reaction that was involuntary. She clung to him, wondering what in hell was happening to her. She wanted her dress off, his eyes, his hands, and his mouth on her breasts, his hard cock probing for the opening between her eager thighs.
"I'm not so tired after all," she whispered. "Come on up to my apartment with me, Nap."
He pulled away from her with a groan of anguish.
"No," he said. "Don't tempt me like this. I didn't expect you to be a virgin. How could you be? The man who could leave a girl like you alone wouldn't be human. That's what I have to be, something less than human, so that it'll be right for us when we get married. What's happened before won't count, then. Don't you see, Junia darling?"
They argued for a few more minutes but, in the end, he drove away and she stood on the sidewalk watching him go, knowing, for the first time, what it was like to suffer the hell of a flaming desire and not to be able to satisfy it, to be rejected.
"Damn all idealistic, noble men to hell!" she muttered to herself as she went up the stairs. But she wasn't really hating Nap Devore. She couldn't. No, her scalding and scathing indignation was directed at herself.
The following day was Sunday. Junia slept until late afternoon and then called Fred Graz, making an appointment to meet him at the coffee shop. There she told him how she had failed to obtain the notes from Max's desk and how she had been interrupted by the mysterious stranger, Dave Breton.
"Does Breton work for Amareo, too?" she asked Fred. "It occurred to me that Blackburn may be getting anxious, that he's put another operative on the job."
Graz shook his head. "I've never heard of him by name and the description doesn't fit anyone I can think of. He may be in the same racket. It's possible that there's another company interested in the plans for Kline's production system. If so, we'll have to work even faster. Here's an angle we haven't considered. Ralph Fallon has a notoriously faulty memory. It's a joke around the office that he's always misplacing things and forgetting where he put them. They say he even forgets where he parks his car half the time. A guy like that wouldn't trust himself to remember something as important as the combination to the big safe, the one in Planning that holds all the confidential stuff. He wouldn't keep it written down around the office, either. That would be like locking your door and hanging the key from a string on the doorknob. No, he'd be most likely to keep it at his apartment. You better get back up there and see what you can do about finding it. Get him drunk and passed out if you have to. Okay?"
Junia agreed. She knew that Ralph's college girl had returned to school. She would see him tonight, before he had a chance to work up an interest in some other bit of fluff with miniskirted thighs and alluring breasts.
"Incidentally," she told Fred, "you can quit worrying about Kay and Max. He's sick to death of her. I'm afraid your beautiful, bitchy, dream girl doesn't wear too well, Freddy."
She left him glaring angrily at her.
She called Ralph at three and made a date with him for six. Because she felt that she needed the exercise, she walked across town to his apartment, arriving there only a minute before six. She would have knocked at his door, but it stood open, so she went in.
Everything looked normal enough at first glance and then, as she stood in the middle of the living room, she became aware that something was very wrong. All the drawers in the various cabinets and cupboards were pulled open, even his collection of record albums had been dumped and scattered all over the floor. It was a mess.
"Ralph?" she called. Then louder: "Ralph!"
There was no answer.
She found him in his bedroom. He was on his back on the floor at the foot of the bed. She didn't need to be a doctor or a criminologist to see that his skull had been crushed and that he was very dead. There was quite a bit of blood and the grayness of death that had spread over his face made him look pitifully old.
Junia made it to the bathroom before she heaved up her lunch and dinner. Then she left quickly, leaving the door open as she had found it. She didn't dare report it, but she hoped someone else would find him soon and notify the police. As she walked back through the streets she tried to remember whether or not she had touched anything. Then she dismissed the thought as foolish. What difference did it make? Her fingerprints would be all over the apartment anyway from the evening she had spent there with him. She remembered how the top of his head, with its thinning, black hair, had looked while he had his face between her thighs, and she contrasted that mental image with how it now looked, all crushed and broken, the dyed, black hair soaked in blood. She was almost sick again right there on the sidewalk.
She was ten blocks away from his apartment when she caught a bus. Back in her own room she threw herself across the bed and let herself go, let all the terror, the sorrow, and the horror drain out of her in wracking sobs and seemingly endless tears. She finally cried herself to sleep.
She was awakened by the sound of her door being opened. She sat up, startled in the darkness, knowing she had forgotten to lock the door, the memory of Angelo Feroni's cruel, thin face flashing before her.
"It's okay," a familiar voice said. "It's Dave Breton, Junia."
"Oh. I'm glad it's you, Dave."
He came to sit beside her on the bed, only his knee touching hers.
"I've had a hell of an experience, Dave," she said. "Put your arm around me and hold me for a minute, then make love to me the way you did the other night."
He did as she asked, not petting her but just holding her and letting her pillow her head on his shoulder. It was she who finally took his hand and lifted it to her breast and raised her face for his kiss.
"Now take me," she murmured. "Only this time I want the light on and both of us undressed. Fuck me good, Dave, or use my body in any way that pleases you. I like everything. Just make me forget for a little while what I've been through."
She trusted him not to ask questions and he did not disappoint her. He got up to turn the light on, lock the door, take his own clothes off, and then he returned to the bed to help her out of her dress, brassiere and panties.
"I like your body," she told him when he was again beside her. "It's long and lean and has lots of hard muscles."
He smiled. "I wonder if you have any idea how beautiful you really are, yourself. A man might have a hard time getting those brown eyes and that blonde hair out of his mind and, speaking of bodies, you make the Hollywood sex queens look like worn-out old whores on the day following Navy Fleet Week. So you like everything! That's great. So do I. I could suck your pussy, fuck you in the ass, have you suck my cock, or we could play sixty-nine. All good, clean fun, and I suppose we'll get around to trying most of them before the night's over but, right now, I think I'd like most of all just to fuck you again in the regular, old-fashioned, momma and poppa way. Shall we play a bit first?"
"Yes. I need that. I'm not really turned on, you know. Not yet. But I need to be. I need to have my mind diverted for a while."
He held her close, kissing her while they rubbed their legs together, and his cock, already hard and dripping, made moist tracks on the rose-quartz skin of her thighs.
"Put your prick in me just enough to get all wet, and then let me suck it a little," she pleaded.
"You like the taste of your own pussy that well?"
"Sure. I wish I could bend over far enough to suck myself off."
He chuckled. "I can't say I blame you. I like it a lot myself. Okay." She lifted her leg and draped it over his hip while he fumbled with his fingers to part the lips of her vulva and find the opening of her vagina. It was dry and not ready for him but she dug her fingers into the cheeks of his ass and pulled him into her, yelping a little from the pain of having him enter her that way. When he had fucked her for a few minutes she jerked away from him and squirmed down on the bed to take his slimy cock in her mouth and suck it eagerly.
"Now, I'm getting hot," she said, straightening up. "Men should have a cunt." She giggled. "It could be located right between their balls and their assholes. A girl could get anything she wanted from a man then."
"Would you want me to have a Christine operation?"
"No, no! I wouldn't want your cock cut off, just an extra hole that tasted like cunt and had a clitoris for me to suck."
"Wouldn't it be easier to just graft a cock on a girl?"
"I've thought of that. If I ever find one who's had that kind of an operation I'll marry her, or him, or whatever they'll call it. In the meanwhile, you'll do very nicely, Dave Breton. I was just kidding. I'm not really as queer as all that."
"I know." He was kissing her nipples while his hand traced the lovely lines of her hips and thighs. "You've got a hell of a line of bull," he said suddenly, lifting his face from her breasts and looking her in the eye. "You like to talk and act like an old chippy but I think it's bluff. I think you're just a nice kid who's gotten herself caught up in something she doesn't know how to handle. On top of that, you've discovered sex. You probably think you invented it yourself. What you don't know is that this great enthusiasm of yours will wear thin after awhile. Then you'll settle down, marry some nice guy, and have a lot of kids. I just hope you don't mess yourself up too much first with all this experimenting you're doing."
He only laughed, sliding down on the bed to run his lips over the skin of her stomach. He munched at her, teasing and tickling with his tongue down over one hip and one thigh to her knee, then up the other thigh to her crotch. She spread her legs for him, wanting him to lick her vulva. He did, but only for a moment and then he turned her over and began biting at the cheeks of her ass.
She giggled. "That feels good, but why don't you bite harder? Ouch!" Her excitement rose when he thumbed her cheeks apart and darted the point of his tongue at her anus. She strained toward him and he was able to get part of his tongue inside of her, fucking it in and out of her while she gasped with delight. When he stopped she was ready and she begged him to fuck her.
He rolled her over again and mounted her. She guided him in and this time she was moist and warm, her cunt already throbbing in anticipation of what was to come.
He fucked her as he had the night before, slowly and with consideration for her, making sure that her clitoris was being agitated while he took his own pleasure.
There was little violence in her orgasm, only a profound gratification and a piercingly keen sensuality that seemed to go on and on as though, once she had started, she would never stop. In its own way, the very duration of the prolonged climax was as excruciatingly agonizing as the sharper, quicker feeling of a faster, more explosive orgasm.
"Stop it!" she cried. " I can't stand anymore! No, don't stop! Keep on fucking me, Dave. Oh, God!"
But he couldn't have stopped if he'd wanted to. He had also started to come and, when his sperm hit her, she began all over again.
She went crazy then. It was more than she could bear, but she had to bear it, his arms were locked around her, and he was fucking her furiously, impervious to her screams, to her kicking heels that thudded against the back of his thighs, or to the long, sharp nails that lacerated his back.
She had experienced that rarity of sexual intercourse, the double orgasm. When it was over, she was so drugged and stupefied from the battering her nerves had taken that she hardly heard his question.
"Why did you kill Ralph Fallon?" he asked her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It took a while for the words to penetrate to Junia's consciousness. When they did, she sat upright in bed as abruptly as though she had been goosed.
"What?"
Dave repeated his question. "Why did you kill Ralph Fallon?"
"What do you know about Ralph? How did ... ? Why do you accuse me?"
He was lighting a cigarette and didn't answer immediately. His voice was still casual when he spoke, but his eyes were guarded and calculating. He blew a puff of smoke toward the ceiling. "I was parked across the street. I saw you come out and walk away. You looked like a zombie. I went up there and found Ralph. From the looks of the place, I figured he had something you wanted. You're a strong girl, Junia, and it isn't hard to crush a man's skull with a fireplace poker. Did you find what you were after?"
She was horrified. She stared at him wildly, started to answer, and the, clapping her hand to her mouth, she jumped from the bed and ran into the bathroom. When she came back into the room she was white and trembling, but she had regained some of her composure and she was angry.
"Who are you?" she demanded. "What right have you to accuse me of killing Ralph? He was my friend. I had a date with him for six. The door was open when I got there and I went in. I found him in the bedroom that ... that way. I didn't see any poker by his body. How do I know you didn't kill him yourself?"
"I only do what I'm paid to do," he told her evenly, "and bashing in people's heads isn't what I'm paid for, at least not as a rule. How did you get to his place? Taxi?"
"No. I walked."
"Stop anywhere?"
"Yes. I was a little early, so I stopped three blocks away for a Coke and a hamburger. What's that got to do with it?"
He sat up and ground his cigarette out in the ashtray. "It might have plenty to do with it if I've got the timing figured right. Would the waitress who served you remember you?"
Junia nodded. "Sure. It wasn't a waitress. It was a guy. He wanted to make out with me. I was there for maybe a half-hour while we discussed it. He figured I was a hustler and I let him think so. I was having fun dickering with him over the price. I got him up to fifty for all night and then I looked at my watch and saw I'd just have time to make it to Ralph's by six. I didn't kill him, Dave. Honest I didn't."
"If you're going to sell it," he said, "don't be a sucker. You can get a hundred a night any time. Was Ralph paying you?"
"No, of course not. As good as Ralph is ... was ... he could have charged for doing it, and had a waiting list for his services that was a mile long, he was that good."
"I guess maybe you didn't kill him, after all," Dave said. "I didn't really think so but I thought I'd try it on you for size."
"You bastard!" she snarled. "You dirty, rotten, mother-fucking bastard! You came up here and made love to me just to throw me off guard, and then you put me through a thing like this. I suppose you're a cop. I guess you think that makes it okay for you to be any kind of a no-good son-of-a-bitch you take a notion to be. All in the line of duty, huh? Well, I'm not much and I know it, but I'd a damned sight rather be what I am than what you are!"
"You're beautiful when you're mad," he told her. "Look, if I was a cop, you'd be telling it to the desk sergeant down at the city jail right now. Never mind what I am. I got you out of a bad mess last night with Max Kline, and I can get you out of a worse one if you'll calm down a little and listen to me. You could be in big trouble. I'll bet your fingerprints are all over Ralph's apartment, but I doubt like hell if anyone but I paid any attention to you going in or out. You weren't there at all, understand? You never went near the place. Your best bet is to call your girl friend, Eva Kline, and get her to alibi you, say you were over there drinking tea and teaching her how to knit or something. I have to stay out of it if I can, but, if the worst comes to the worst, I'll cinch your alibi by swearing that I happened to be driving by the Kline place and gave you a ride home. You got it? Okay, get on the phone and call Eva, then go wash your face and come back to bed. I'll bet we can think of some things to do that will take your mind off of it for the rest of the night."
"All right, Dave," Junia said in a tiny, subdued voice. When she had done the things he had instructed her to do, she got on the bed and huddled close to him. "Do you really think I could get a hundred dollars a night?"
"Sure, baby, but it's a lousy racket. The job is fun and the money is good, but the hours are terrible."
The story was in the morning papers and they made the most of it, playing up Fallon's bachelor status and hinting at his reputation as a Casanova. The investigation centered mostly around Mercer Electronics. Junia, along with all others who had known Ralph, was questioned. The authorities seemed satisfied with the alibi she had prepared with Eva's help. No arrests were made and, by the end of the week, it became apparent that Fallon's death was going to become a file number on the list of unsolved crimes.
Fred Graz seemed as genuinely mystified as was Junia. He could only assume, as did she, that someone else, a person or persons unknown, had wanted the combination to the safe even more desperately than he and Junia wanted it.
"Well, we've got one more chance," Junia told him. "I'm going on a trip Saturday with Max and Eva Kline. Their house will be empty all day, and probably until late at night. It's up to you to burglarize it, buddy boy, and find any notes Max may have kept concerning the production system."
He nodded unhappily. Noting his lack of enthusiasm, she wondered if he would find some excuse to chicken out on the job.
Shortly after noon on Saturday, she left with the Kline's for the short trip to the highway motel that they used for a house of assignation. Junia sat in the middle, her hand under Eva's skirt most of the way. Once in a while she would cast a sideways glance at Max and catch his eyes on his wife's legs, on his face a look of yearning hunger that made her feel so sorry for him she could have cried.
The motel was huge and very elaborate, with a bar and restaurant. They took a room and Max sent out for drinks. When they had been brought, and the door again locked, Junia asked if anyone minded if she took off her clothes. She had been afraid that she wouldn't be able to get into a real party mood so soon after Ralph's death, but the petting with Eva on the trip from the city had turned her on and she wanted to be nude, her body on display for their eyes to desire.
"Me, too," Eva declared, starting to strip.
"Be with you in a minute," Max put in, getting up and heading for the bathroom.
"Lordy, how I've been looking forward to this!" Eva cried, coming over to kneel on the floor in front of the chair where Junia sprawled. She pushed Junia's knees apart and began kissing the sweetly shaped thighs. "Let me taste you, baby. I want my mouth on your cunt."
Junia put a hand down to restrain her. "Let's wait for Max," she suggested.
Eva looked up, her hazel eyes clouding with anger. "What the hell is this?" she demanded. "What's between you two, anyway?"
"Nothing," Junia replied hastily, perhaps too hastily. "I just don't want to hurt his feelings is all."
Eva sneered. "Don't feel too sorry for him, or you'll have him bleeding all over you. I like the fact that you're tenderhearted, kiddo, but don't overdo it. It can get goddamned sickening, you know." She got up to go sit on the edge of the bed and pour herself another drink.
"I'm sorry, Eva, Honey," Junia said placatingly, but she was realizing that she had just seen another side of Eva Kline, a side she did not particularly like, and she knew that, already, a little of the fun had gone out of the day.
When Max came back into the room he looked sharply from one to the other of the girls, showing in his shrewd eyes that he sensed the strain that had developed in their relationship. He suggested another round of drinks. They drank them in a suddenly moody and awkward silence. It was Eva who broke it.
"Oh, fuck this horseshit!" she cried. "Is this what we came down here for, to sit around and glare at each other? Let's either have some action or go home."
Junia jumped up and went over to her. She didn't feel sexy and, for the first time, the sight of Eva's bare limbs and lovely breasts did nothing for her, but she couldn't have them going back and catching Fred Graz in their house. She was remembering something else, too. Eva had provided her with an alibi for the killing of Ralph Fallon. She suddenly saw that Eva could become a very dangerous enemy.
"I'm ready," she said, standing in front of Eva with her feet well apart, churning her hips in a lewd imitation of a stripper doing the grind.
"That's more like it," Eva agreed. She reached out with both hands for Junia's hips and pulled her down to the bed almost savagely, plunging her head between the out flung legs with no preliminaries and ramming her pointed tongue into Junia's cunt.
Max sat at the foot of the bed, a frown of worry on his forehead as he watched them. Junia tilted her head to look at him and crooked her finger at him, beckoning. He sidled his bulky body close to her and she took his cock in her hand. She had a hard time opening her mouth wide enough to get it over the bulbous head, but she no sooner had her lips over it than she experienced a change in mood. Dave had told her that she was the nearest thing to instant sex he had ever known, and now she felt that it was true. The big cock sliding in and out of her mouth was stirring and bringing to life her passion, making her long for the taste of the hot semen shooting down her throat.
She watched while Max squirmed around on the bed, saw the naked look of raw and pitiful eagerness on his face as he touched his wife's hips, heard his sobbing sigh, like the distant wail of some dying woods creature in a storm-lashed forest of the night, as he buried his nose in her pubic hair and then slid his tongue down the cleft of her cunt. The slobbering sounds were like crying as he sucked her greedily and ravenously, his prick leaping and swelling in Junia's mouth as his love and his long-frustrated desire translated itself into passion.
Junia was a long time achieving her first orgasm, and she used all the skill she had learned to keep Max from coming too soon. She wanted to prolong it, stretch it out as far as it would go to give Max more time with Eva. She understood now that this was all he lived for, for the rare interludes when his homosexual wife would allow him to touch her. She tried not to blame Eva, not to hate her for the way she treated her husband. She succeeded only in part. But her shaky attempt at rationalization did little to bolster her flagging interest in Eva as a sex partner. She deeply regretted this. She had liked thinking she was in love with the beautiful, black-haired woman.
When Eva's tongue became more and more demanding, Junia found herself afraid to hold off any longer, afraid of what Eva might suspect. She strained then to make herself come. It was a mild orgasm but she faked it, flinging her hips around and thrashing with her legs. Her real pleasure came when Max flooded her mouth with come. Some of it escaped to run down the shaft of his prick, but she caught it with the tip of her tongue and licked it up. She kept on sucking him, even when he began to go limp, unwilling to relinquish his cock until she saw Eva reach down and roughly push him away from her crotch. Junia sat up then, giving his bull-thewed thigh a last, affectionate pat with her hand.
Eva's face was sullen, her eyes accusing, and Junia knew that she hadn't succeeded in fooling the other woman.
"Get dressed and take a walk, Max," Eva commanded her husband, her tone harsh and peremptory.
Max only nodded silently. He donned his clothes and let himself out of the door, closing it softly behind him.
"You think I'm a bitch and you're about fed up with me, aren't you?" Eva asked when they were alone.
Junia shook her head. "No. It's just that I can't help feeling sorry for Max. He's so lonely."
Eva laughed coldly. "The hell he is! He can get more women than Don Juan ever saw. And he does."
"But he doesn't really want them. He doesn't even want me. If you only knew how much in love with you he is."
"Shit! Max is like all men. He just wants what he knows he can't have. I suppose you think I ought to let him put that ugly cock of his in me, tear my gut up with the damned thing. I hate men's pricks! All they do is pound and pound and hurt."
"I didn't suppose you'd ever done it with a man."
"I didn't do it willingly, and I never will. My own brother raped me when I was twelve. He had a cock like a horse and he damn near killed me."
"Oh. Now I understand. But Max would be happy just to suck you off once in awhile. Would it be so terrible just to lie there and let him enjoy himself?"
Eva shook her head. "I tried. I tried when we were first married. I could hardly stand having him touch me. Even his hands on me makes my flesh crawl, but I forced myself to let him do it. You know what happened? He'd suck me until he got hotter than hell and then he'd start begging me to let him fuck me. That was when I quit. I didn't want him doing it to me just now. I knew you weren't really turned on and so I wasn't either. I let him just to please you. I thing I was wrong about you, that we were both wrong about you. You aren't really a bisexual. It was just a new kick that was great for a while and now you're tired of it. Isn't that right, Junia?"
Junia wanted to cry. She squeezed her eyelids tightly shut to discourage the tears. "I hope not. I don't want to be a damned heterosexual. I want to have fun with both women and men. Help me, Eva. Don't let me slide back to being that other kind of a girl."
The look of sullen bitterness faded from Eva's face as she took Junia in her arms. "You poor kid," she soothed. "I don't want to lose you, either, but it may be too late. I don't know. All we can do is try, baby. Come, sweetheart, kiss me. Don't think about Max. Don't think about anything except that I love you. Be my little baby and let me cuddle you. See? Put your head on my breasts. Don't worry about sex. Now cry if you want to."
The crooning tone and the tender, protective arms were too much for Junia. She let her face be pressed to the warmth and fullness of Eva's breasts and she cried, all the uncertainties and the fears she had known during the last weeks welling up in her and spilling over as hot tears, while the older woman continued to comfort her and to pet her.
Her tears gradually stopped when something else began to happen to her. She was never sure exactly how or when it happened, but she finally became aware that one emotion had exchanged itself for another and she was hugging Eva tightly, sucking on one of her nipples and rubbing the other girl's thighs with her own. She did not know, as the wiser and more experienced Eva knew, that any emotionally overwrought person is easily aroused sexually. At what she knew to be exactly the right moment, Eva moved up on the bed, lightly pressing down on Junia's head at the same time and spreading her white, lovely thighs.
Junia needed little encouragement. Slipping her tongue into Eva's steaming pussy was like coming home. She sucked it hungrily, her hands moving on Eva's hips and belly, reaching up to cup the full roundness of her breasts.
She was still at it when Max came into the room. Eva made motions at him and pointed to Junia. He nodded, his blue eyes shining as he dropped his pants and knelt on the bed behind the blonde-haired girl. He gripped her hips and began shoving his big cock into her and now Junia was happy, her tears forgotten. She knew, without looking, that, while Max was fucking her dog fashion, he was not really aware of her, that his eyes were devouring Eva's body, loving her unattainable breasts, and Junia didn't mind, was glad for it to be that way.
There was that strange quirk in her that made her take greatest delight from knowing that some man was using her body for his own pleasure, and it made no difference how he hurt her or whether or not she received sexual gratification in return. She always did, because that was when she was the hottest, and almost anything done to her would make her come, but it wasn't important. Looking back on it, she knew that Angelo Feroni, had he not surprised her and angered her by forcing his way into her room, could have given her much pleasure by raping her. She had often remembered the picture that Blackburn had shown her, the one of the man Larson posed with his cock in her mouth, and remembering it always excited her. If she had met him on the street she would have surprised him by inviting him up to her room. She would have begged him to tie her hands and feet to the corners of the bed and to do anything he wanted to her.
Eva came quickly and violently, and Junia clung to the bucking hips, striving desperately to keep the swollen and throbbing clitoris in her mouth. Nor did she desist, but kept on sucking and slurping at the wet, sloppy, delicious cunt, urging the girl to a second orgasm. She only paused long enough to ask Max to take his cock out of her cunt and put it in her asshole.
"If you want to do that," Eva suggested, "you and I can play sixty-nine while Max cornholes you."
Junia readily agreed, so the two girls lay on their sides and Max got behind Junia, fucking her in the ass while she and Eva sucked each other. His prick, the largest she had ever taken, hurt her but she enjoyed the pain, and she was pleased when Max reached around her to fondle his wife's breasts and Eva didn't push his hand away.
None of them were in any hurry to end it. The two girls were able to come time after time, and they did. Max having already had one orgasm, was able to hold out until Eva and Junia had sucked each other into a state approaching utter exhaustion, then he came with great power, spewing semen into her and turning her usually tight asshole sloppy and loose as he fucked her frantically.
It was late when they drove back to the city, Junia sitting in the middle again. She had one hand in Eva's crotch and the other hand on Max's prick all the way. For the first time since leaving home, she felt that she belonged, that she was part of a family. Yet she knew that Eva had been right, that she would never be a confirmed bisexual, and never a compulsive lover of women. It was just something she could enjoy and then put aside until the next time. She was content to have it that way.
She saw Fred Graz on Sunday. He said that he had entered the Kline home and had gone through Max's desk and filing cabinet, and then through every possible hiding place in the house, without finding a thing that would be of value to Amareo. She believed him when he showed her some pieces of Eva's jewelry he had taken while he was at it. She was furious with him but he explained that it had been necessary. He'd had to break the lock on the filing cabinet, and so had stolen the jewelry to make it look like an ordinary burglary. As he pointed out, the stuff would naturally be insured anyway. He knew where he could fence it in Cleveland and offered to split with her. She indignantly refused.
She got home from the coffee shop to find her phone ringing. It was Eva, wanting to tell her all about the burglary and the loss of her jewels. They gossiped for awhile. As soon as they hung up, it rang again. Nap Devore was on the line and wanted to take her on a date. She begged off, although she did promise to go out with him the following night. She was expecting Dave Breton but, when he didn't come, she had to go to bed lonely and then she wished that she had gone out with Nap.
Her last thought before falling asleep was to wonder if she wasn't treating Nap just about as badly as she had accused Eva of treating Max. She told herself that it served him right. She had offered to let him make love to her and he had refused.
But, later, she dreamed that she was in his arms, his electric kiss thrilling through her in high-voltage jolts. She unbuckled his belt and pulled his trousers down, only to find that his crotch was shockingly smooth and featureless, that he was as devoid of genitals as a department store manikin.
She woke up screaming.
CHAPTER NINE
On Monday, Junia bullied Fred Graz into giving her another letter for Max Kline to sign. She went into his office and locked the door behind her.
"Just in case La Belle Webster is lurking somewhere and has ideas about popping in on us again," she said, smiling at him as he turned to her from his drafting table. Then she went into his arms, kissing him and rubbing her breasts on his broad chest. He held her tightly, reaching down to lift the back of her short skirt, slip his hand under the elastic band of her panties and dig his fingers into the warm, bare flesh of her fanny.
"Maxy, darling," she sighed, breathing heavily because of what contact with his virile, husky body did to her. "Did you talk to Eva yet?"
He looked unhappy. "Yes. I think we blew it, kiddo. I've never seen Eva act this way about another woman. She's usually willing to share with me. Hell's bells! She knows I can get girls easier than she can, and that I always bring them around to the house and give her a chance to make out with them. But this time she's different. I think she's actually jealous of us and wants you all to herself. I propositioned her about having you come to live with us, permanently, and she accused me of trying to take you away from her, of planning to replace her with you. I'm nuts about you, baby, but you know how I feel about Eva."
"I know. Poor Maxy. It was my fault. Saturday, at the motel, I let her know that I didn't want her unless I could have both of you. I guess we'll have to give it up. I'll go to see her once in a while, just to keep her satisfied, and because I really do like having sex with her when she's being nice. But that won't stop you and I from seeing each other, will it? I love having you fuck me, Max honey. Fuck me now, darling. We can make it a quickie, and it'll be exciting to do it right here in the office like this."
"Christ! I don't even have a cot in here."
"Let's do it on your desk. I can sit on the edge of it and you can stand up close. I want to do it that way so I can look down and see your big cock going into me. I don't even have to take anything off. I can pull the crotch of my panties to one side so you can get in. Hurry, Max! I'm dying for it!"
He picked her up and set her on the desk. She spread her beautiful, nyloned legs for him as he unzipped his fly and took his cock out.
"Oh, it's so lovely!" she cried. She took it in her hands and guided it eagerly toward her crotch.
Junia adored being naked for men, but this was somehow even better. There was something marvelously thrilling about having him take her so abruptly and spontaneously right there in the heart of the Mercer Electronics office complex, the click of typewriters and the murmur of voices plainly audible through the thin partition that separated them from their workaday world.
When she pulled the damp strip of nylon away, exposing her cunt, the fabric tore and she laughed gaily, deliberately ripping it the rest of the way. It was so good to look down between their bodies and see the creamy flesh of her thighs above the tops of her nylons and the hair-shrouded cleft of her cunt, looking more daringly naked and exposed because of the clothing that surrounded it. The musk-scented aroma of her own body was rank and strong, making her drunk and dizzy with desire.
She watched in fascination as the head of Max's prick disappeared inside her and the long, huge shaft began to slowly and steadily follow it. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder how she managed to hold all of it. She wrapped her legs around his hips, pulling him even deeper into her, and she kissed him, sucking his tongue into her mouth.
Their coupling was a thing done quickly, compulsively and with violence. Once he was into her, Max fucked her with a kind of desperate frenzy that was akin to rape. He jerked his stone-hard prick in and out of her with an insane recklessness and disregard for any hurt he might do her. He knew that that was how she liked it, how she wanted it from him, that she had a deep need to feel beaten-down and cruelly and ruthlessly used. He knew he had no reason to be concerned about helping her to achieve an orgasm. The very savagery of his attack would so excite her that she would come anyway, no matter what he did to her. And it relieved his own feelings, drained off the charge of hostility and bitterness he always felt after an emotional scene and an argument with Eva.
And Junia loved it. She wanted to shriek and scream with the tension of the unbearably poignant pleasure he was giving her and knew that she didn't dare. All she could do was hang on and let that punishing prick and those battering hips drive her closer and closer to a paradise of ecstasy.
She came before he did. She had to clamp one hand over her mouth to muffle the sobbing cries that she couldn't help uttering. She came again when he did and it was even stronger because, again, she had to restrain her natural impulse to vocalize the peak of passion to which she had soared.
He had to lend her another handkerchief. This one she used to mop up the great gobs of yellowish semen that oozed from her pussy and ran down her thighs.
"I just love having you sign letters for me!" she exclaimed as she smoothed her skirt down and kissed him. "You have such a beautiful, big pen and it's just loaded with ink!"
He grinned in appreciation of her wit. "I'm sorry you can't be my official concubine, but I don't want you to get away from me either. Maybe Eva will change her mind someday."
"I doubt it. I'm afraid I don't like Eva as well as I did at first, even if I do still like making love with her. The trouble is she knows it. It would be hard to fool another woman about a thing like that. The time will probably come when she'll turn against me and hate me."
His China-blue eyes looked troubled as he nodded. "Yeh, homos are like that. Well, I better sign this damned letter so you can get back to work."
Nap Devore picked her up that evening and took her out to dinner. She remembered the nightmare she had had about him and she couldn't keep from glancing surreptitiously at the front of his pants. After they had eaten, he drove north to a small town that was a lake resort and he parked by the shore. He wanted to talk and the subject he chose was, as usual, matrimony.
"Now you listen to me," she told him, half in anger, after listening to him for a few minutes. "When I first met you, you began pestering me for a date and frankly, I just wasn't a damned bit interested. Well, I was wrong. After getting to know you better, and especially after you kissed me the other night, I know that I could get interested. Plenty. But you're so darned dumb about girls, Nap. You think you've got to be the little gentleman to impress me and, honestly, that kind of crap bores the shit out of me. Can't you understand that the way to get somewhere with me is to just take me down and fuck hell out of me? You're the kind who timidly asks a girl to kiss him, when what she really wants is for you to knock her down, rip her clothes off, and screw her until she cries for mercy."
"I know I'm shocking you and hurting you but, damnit, you asked for it. I told you the kind of girl I am. You better get your head out of your own asshole and start realizing that this is the twentieth century, not back in grandpa's day. You either take me the way I am, and on my terms, or get the hell out of my life, for God's sake. Now, either take me in the back seat of this jalopy and fuck me, or take me home."
Pale-faced and visibly shaken, Nap started the engine, backed the car away from the edge of the lake and drove back to the city without saying a word.
Junia was sorry. She felt that she had done the right thing, yet she wished now that she had been less honest, he supposed now that she would never see him again and, too late, she knew that she would miss him more than she had thought possible.
When he pulled into the curb in front of her apartment, she impulsively leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "I'm sorry, Nap," she whispered, and then she got out and ran up the steps.
She was reaching for the light switch when a voice in the dark said, "Hi, doll." Then a fist crashed into the side of her jaw and she fell, sliding down a long, invisible ramp into unconsciousness.
Junia awoke to a feeling of extreme discomfort. She opened her eyes and shut them again immediately. The light had blinded her and the position she was in had made her sick with dizziness. She tried again, more cautiously. She was doubled over so that she was looking at the room from between her own knees. She was naked. Her ankles and wrists were tied together with a strip of cloth. The base of her spine was barely touching the seat of a straight-backed chair that had been placed under her in the center of the kitchen doorway. Her straining arms and legs supported most of her body weight, for she was suspended by a length of knotted sheet from a ventilator grill over the doorway.
A man was sitting at the foot of the bed. He was smoking a cigarette and regarding her with evident amusement. She looked into the dark eyes and thin, grinning face of Angelo Feroni.
"What the hell's the idea?" she demanded.
He flicked an ash from his cigarette. "Oh, nothing much, doll. I had an evening to kill, and I got to remembering what a cute dish you were, so I thought I'd come up and spend a couple of hours with you. When I get around to it, I'm gonna fuck you. You gotta admit that's a nice position I got you in. When I screw a girl," he went on conversationally, "I like to know she's getting all of it. The way I've got you spread open there, we ought to have some real fun out of this. Huh?" He leered at her and grinned wickedly.
"Maybe we could if you had a man-sized prick, you nasty little punk," she snarled at him. "Let me down from here. If you wanted a fuck, you dumb bastard, why didn't you just ask me?"
His grin vanished and he flushed with anger. "You've got to be a real tough-talking chippy, haven't you? You call me a punk again and you'll get more than a fucking. See?" He stood up and walked over to her. Bending down, he deliberately touched the glowing end of his cigarette to the cheek of her ass. She choked back a scream of pain and horror, the smell of burning flesh sickening to her. He straightened up, grinning again, his good humor apparently restored. "Let's don't have any more of your smart-assed lip," he told her.
She watched in silence as Feroni unbuckled his belt and dropped his trousers to his knees, revealing his thin, hairy legs. Under any other circumstances, she would have been amused at sight of the loudly colored, flower-patterned boxer shorts he wore. She had learned her lesson. She was going to keep her mouth shut and not give him another excuse to burn her.
He unbuttoned the shorts and dropped them too, letting his long drooping cock hang free.
"Needs a little stiffening up," Feroni said. "You bite me, you bitch, and I'll knock your teeth down your fucking throat." He then proceeded to whip his limp prick back and forth across her lips. She obediently opened her mouth when he told her to and he shoved the now-hardening organ between her lips. He reached around her legs to grasp her by the hair of her head and hold her rigidly in position while he hunched himself at her, fucking her in the mouth. When he took it out, dripping and slimy from her saliva, he was breathing hard, his eyes filmy with lust.
"Now," he said. He pulled the chair out from under her, turned it around, and sat down on it so that she was suspended directly over his lap. With his hands on her hips, he guided her swaying body to his upright cock. "I guess we'll try the back door first," he told her, pulling her toward him so that his prick slid into her asshole.
Despite her anger and the extreme discomfort of hanging by her hands and feet, Junia almost laughed out loud at Feroni's ludicrous expression of surprise and disappointment when she neither flinched nor cried out in pain as his cock penetrated her. The rotten little worm, she thought with contempt. If he could only see some of the pachydermal penises she'd been in the habit of taking lately, he'd be ashamed to let her view his long thin probe. "For Jesus Christ's sake!" he exclaimed in indignation after only a few strokes. "Your goddamned asshole's so lose its sloppy!" He pulled it out and put it in her cunt. "That's a little better."
It was better because Junia was straining her muscles to make it as tight as possible for him, hoping he would come quickly and then cut her down and leave. She had thought it would be fun to be raped again, but it wasn't, not when it was being done by a man she so despised.
She shut her eyes, trying to forget the pain in her arms and legs, concentrating on Feroni's prick, willing him to come. She ignored the hands that caressed the backs of her thighs and fondled her breasts. Normally, a man's hands on her bare flesh could drive her frantic with desire, but Feroni's hands, moist and too soft for a man, made her think of the way she supposed it would feel to have a garden snail crawl over her body.
Perversely, he took a long time to achieve an orgasm but, when he did, he seemed to go wild, sobbing and cursing and groaning as he fucked her furiously, the upsurging drive of his hips against the cheeks of her ass lifting her several inches into the air and then dropping her, with elbow-and knee joint-wrenching force. It was one of those jolting drops that pulled the ventilator grill loose from the wall above the door and let all of her weight come down on him at once, knocking Feroni and his chair to the floor and pitching Junia, still bound, over his head. His cock pulled out of her. It was still squirting semen and the stick stuff flew like water from a garden hose that is playfully swished back and forth. A glob of it hit him in the eye and the rest of it fell in a rain of grayish-yellow drops on the lapel of his brown suit.
Cursing, Feroni got to his feet. He wiped at his face with a monogrammed handkerchief. He glared down at Junia, whose back was toward him. Her whole body was shaking. He thought she was crying but, when he discovered that she was laughing, he kicked her savagely in the ass with the toe of his shoe. Then he left her there and went into the bathroom to clean himself up and sponge off the lapel of his suit.
"Don't be such a sour puss, Angelo," she said when he came back out. "Take these rags off of my wrists and ankles, and I'll give you a good fuck as soon as you're ready again."
"No tricks?" He looked doubtful.
"No tricks."
He took a switchblade from his pocket, snicked it open with a flourish and cut her free from the strips of sheet that had bound her. He watched suspiciously as she got on the bed and began rubbing her wrist to restore the circulation, "You play rough," she said accusingly. "Didn't you bring Larson and the camera this time?"
He scowled. "Naw. This isn't a job for J.B. I just wanted to get a crack at you on my own time."
"Okay," she said, "Here's the body." She stretched out on the bed. "Make use of it in whatever way you like, but no more cigarette burns."
He made no move toward her, his frown deepening.
"You sure have changed. You talk like an old whore."
She shrugged. "A guy in a restaurant offered me fifty bucks for all night not long ago, but a friend of mine told me I should hold out for at least a hundred. What do you think, Angelo?"
He looked shocked and disgusted. He backed away from the edge of the bed.
"Come on," she said impatiently. "Come over here and take your pants down again so I can get you ready. You want me to suck your cock first?"
"I didn't know you were like this." His scowl deepened. "I thought you were a nice girl. I can get all the whores I want. My kid brother works for the guy who manages all the pros in town. Well, I guess I'll go now."
Junia stared at him, her eyes blank with disbelief as she watched him shrug into his coat and start for the door. As he was reaching for the knob, the door vibrated to a knock on the other side. She knew that knock. She'd already heard it once that evening. A wicked idea came to her. She had not forgotten the cigarette burn, or the indignity of being trussed up like a fowl for the plucking. "Help!" she screamed.
The door burst open and Nap Devore plunged in.
"What the ... ?" Feroni started to gasp, but the final words were cut off when a big freckled fist landed on his mouth, knocking him across the room and into the dresser.
"Look out, Nap!" Junia screamed again. "He's got a knife!"
"Well, why don't you use it, Feroni?" Nap growled, advancing on the more slightly-built man.
"I ... I ... I ... " Feroni sputtered, his eyes bulging with fear and his mouth working, but producing only incoherent sounds. Junia noticed that he was keeping his hands well away from his pants' pockets.
"Yellow bastard," Nap snarled. He shot out a hand and fastened it on Feroni's shirt front, jerking him around and shoving him backwards toward the open door, through which the two men disappeared. A moment later, Junia heard the solid smack of a fist hitting bone and flesh and then the end-over-end sound of someone tumbling down the stairs.
When Nap came back into the room, she had pulled the bedspread partly over her naked body and she was crying quite realistically. He took in the overturned chair, the ripped and knotted sheet, and the broken ventilator grill.
"That settles it," he said firmly. "You have to marry me. You need someone to look out for you."
"Do I, Nap?" she asked in a tiny, tear-wet voice.
"Yes, by God, you do!"
"If you say so, Nap. But I told you what a bad girl I am."
He sat down on the edge of the bed. "I've been thinking about that. I guess I don't care after all. I guess it wouldn't make any difference to me if you'd been a whore. That damned Feroni! I ought to set the law on that rat. Did he ... ? I mean did he ... ?"
"No," she lied. "He took my clothes off and tied me up, and I guess that was what he was going to do, but I got away, only he caught me again and threw me on the bed. He was just going over to lock the door when you heard me screaming and came in. Gosh, but you were wonderful, Nap! I didn't know you were so strong and brave and, oh, everything, just like a hero in the movies." She wondered if she might be plastering it on a bit too thick but saw that she wasn't. Nap blushed a little but his chest expanded a full inch and his voice became a few decibels gruffer, more masculine.
"I've been thinking about all the things you said to me tonight out there by the lake. I guess you're right and that I'm sort of out-of-date. Now that we're practically engaged, I wonder if ... I mean do you suppose it would be all right if ... ?"
"I think maybe it would be," she interrupted him. "The light switch is on the wall by the door, honey."
She knew that she was being wantonly wicked and cruel. Nap was sweet, and memory of their first and only kiss was exciting her, creating a compulsion that had caught her up and was sweeping her along like the crest of a wave. She had no intention of marrying him, but she supposed it wouldn't do too much harm to let him think so for a while. The hell it wouldn't! Well, all right, so it would. But it would also wake him up, make him aware of the facts of life. Oh, damn all rationalizations! she thought honestly. She didn't want to keep him, not on a permanent basis, but she didn't want to let him go either, at least not before they'd made love.
He undressed in the semi-dark but, by the dim light from a street lamp on the corner, she peeked at him. She was pleased to note that the castration nightmare she had had about Nap was without basis in fact.
Napoleon Devore had practically nothing going for him. He was not handsome. He lacked sophistication and poise. As a lover, he was awkward, fumbly and inexperienced. He could not even boast of an outstanding physical development of his penis.
He was also absolutely terrific!
Junia was sure of it when he slipped under the covers and shyly kissed her. It was like that first taste of ice cream on a hot summer day, and yet it was also the warmth of coming home for Christmas. It tingled her from her hair roots to her toenails. She had never known anything like it, not with J.B. Blackburn, Ralph Fallon, Dave Breton, Eva Kline, or even with Max. One kiss made her more instantly passionate than any of those experts had been able to do with their most scientific and erotic forms of love play. She wiggled her body close to his and the overall contact of bare flesh gave her a charge that would have electrocuted an eel. She would not have been surprised to have seen the night-darkness of the room lit by blue sparks.
She had to take one of his hands and guide it to her breast, then place the other one on her thighs. He was trembling. She hoped it was with desire but, if the rigidity of his prick was any indication, she had no reason to worry on that score.
She would have been annoyed at any other man who had wanted to mount her so soon but, with Nap, she was just as anxious as he to have him on her and into her. She was baffled by, and unable to account for, the amazing fact that, after all the cocks and tongues she had had in her pussy during the last weeks, it was by far the greatest thrill of her life when she felt the hesitant, unsure thrust of his prick.
"I don't know what you've got, darling," she murmured, "but, if we could bottle it and sell it to women we'd make a billion. No wonder you left your home town. You must have had all the girls after you."
"No," he denied. "I only did it once before ... with a girl in high school. I've always been sort of afraid of girls."
"Thank God!" she whispered reverently. "I'm going to keep you a secret ... if I have to take you to the North Pole and live in an igloo with you."
"I love you, Junia," he replied simply.
She believed him. If love could do this to a person, it was something she was going to have to look into. She had thought she was a little in love with Ralph Fallon, more so with Eva, and much more so with Max, but nothing like this had ever happened to her.
He obviously didn't know how to do it, so she taught him. She wrapped her legs around him and rotated her body on the pivot of his prick, her hands stroking his back or sliding down to give him an encouraging pat on his ass. She sensed that he was going to come very quickly and she didn't mind. Her own passion had mounted to a wildly demanding need within her, but her desire to give him pleasure was far greater than her yearning for fulfillment. She didn't try to hold him back, but employed all her art to help him come, wanting the hot spurting of his semen in her more than she wanted an orgasm.
To her surprise, she came anyway. The moment she felt the first squirt of it in the depths of her cunt, she began to come. She jerked her head around to find his mouth, and the electric shock of his kiss was like a shot of Adrenalin. She wanted to scream and laugh and cry all at the same time. Her back bowed as she lifted her hips, the muscles of her long lovely legs straining and her fingertips digging into the muscles of his shoulders.
It was rapture. It was bliss. It was a free ride on a roller coaster that went roaring up the track to heaven, transporting her out of the world.
It was like a song, high-pitched and keening. It was the music of the spheres, an ancient song as old as womankind. It was her love song and she sang it with her frenzied, beautiful body, her shrilling, shrieking nerves, as her quivering cunt beat out the throbbing rhythm of her rapturous rhapsody. She had never had such an experience.
When he had expended himself in her, and she had known the last trembling and convulsive twitch of dying sensation, she wouldn't let him go, holding him tightly to her, making him keep his softening prick inside of her as she kissed him, her soft lips showering a frantic rain of affection on his mouth, his cheeks, his eyes, and his throat.
"Do you love me, Junia?" he asked in his naivete.
"I adore you!" she cried. At the moment, at least, she meant it. She had found something so good, so unbelievably wonderful and perfect that she meant to hang onto it, and to hell with playing fair. Marriage? Well, now that was going to a ridiculous extreme. She thought she knew herself pretty well, that she could never stand to harness herself to one man and cut herself off forever from all the delicious cocks and cunts that were just waiting to be sampled. But she would do anything short of that to keep Nap Devore.
She was amazed when she felt his prick begin to harden and swell in her cunt.
"Can you actually do it again so soon?" she asked him.
"I guess so. You aren't tired?"
She laughed at that one. She couldn't help it.
"Darling," she told him, "when I get tired while you're making love to me, it'll be because I've been drawing my Social Security for at least forty years. I'll probably be trying to figure out some way to make you do it to me when we're both in wheelchairs." She wiggled her hips enticingly and was happy when he again began fucking her.
It lasted longer that time, but not as long as it did the third, fourth, and fifth times.
"My God!" Junia groaned, "don't you ever run out of come?"
"I don't know," he admitted, "but I suppose I better go home now. We both have to go to work in the morning."
"You're not going anywhere," she contradicted him, hugging him tightly and entwining her legs around his. "I've got a razor you can use in the morning and you can get to work just as well from here as from your place."
She fixed breakfast for them in the morning and stared at him in wonder over her cup of coffee. She decided that there must be something wrong with her eyes. Yesterday evening he had been definitely a homely man, but some strange transformation had taken place during the night. With the dawn, he had metamorphosed into a truly handsome and dashing figure of a man.
Junia did her work in a daze. She couldn't understand what had happened to her. She had fucked all night before without experiencing this weird and wonderful sense of detachment, this strange sensation that she was going about surrounded by a cloud of rosy pink hue.
She was too lost in the dreamy world of her own to be surprised when Kay Webster came into the office at ten minutes to twelve and asked her to have lunch with her.
Kay took her to a small, dark and intimate place where curtained booths provided nearly the privacy of a bedroom. They ordered club sandwiches and martinis. Junia noted absently that Kay, for some mysterious reason, was being her most charming.
"I know I haven't been very nice to you, Junia," Kay said at last, "but then I didn't understand, my dear. I just thought you were trying to beat my time with Max. Well, I'm sure that, by now, you've found, as I did, that he's really not worth fighting over. And then, of course, when I realized why you quit at Amareo and came to work at Mercer, I saw at once why you have been making up to men like Ralph Fallon and Max Kline."
Junia tried not to show her surprise.
"Oh," she murmured innocently, "and why did I come to work at Mercer, Kay? What do you know about me?"
Kay Webster smiled. "To steal the plans for Max's new production system, dear. Don't pretend. It's all too obvious. But don't worry. I doubt if anyone else has figured it out, and I'll never tell on you. Have you had any luck yet?"
Junia shook her head.
"Well, I'm sure you will. A girl as clever and pretty as you and, if you don't mind my saying so, as ready to jump into bed with anyone whom you think might help you get them, will certainly succeed. When you do, I have a proposition for you. I don't know what kind of a deal you have with old J.B. Blackburn, but I am in a position to offer you ten thousand in cash for the plans. A smart girl could do a lot with that much money."
Junia wasn't so sure that she was a smart girl, but she was at least clever enough to realize that Kay Webster was not likely to have ten thousand dollars of her own to be spending for a set of stolen plans.
"And who are you working for?" she asked the other girl.
"Naughty, naughty!" Kay wagged a playful finger at her. "Mustn't ask such personal questions, my sweet." She got up and came around to sit on Junia's side of the booth. "Now that we understand one another, can't we be good friends? I'll bet I can be nicer to you than Eva Kline ever was." The hand that had disappeared under the hem of Junia's skirt left no doubt as to her meaning. It passed the tops of her nylons, lingered on the tender flesh of Junia's inner thigh for a moment, and then moved up to the panty-sheathed crotch.
Junia sat perfectly still, neither encouraging nor resisting this bold, homosexual advance. She was waiting to see what her own reaction would be, feeling a certain amount of scientific interest and detached curiosity in the results. It was nice, she admitted, to feel Kay's smooth, cool hand on her thigh, and was even nicer when the long, slender fingers worked under the leg of her panties and gently parted the lips of her vulva. She did adore having her pussy played with. But, when Kay bent to kiss her, and lipsticked mouth met lipsticked mouth, it came as a mild shock to Junia that the result was nothing ... absolutely nothing at all. There was no jolt, not even a tingle. It was just pleasant to sit there and have her cunt fingered, but there was no sudden rise of passion, and the kiss, if it did anything, seemed to have a rather dampening effect.
"I'll have to think about your offer," she said, and moved her hips on the cushioned seat so that Kay's hand slipped out of her crotch. She saw the look of disappointment in the dark eyes and on the beautiful face, but she felt no sympathy. Her mind had already returned to daydreaming about Nap Devore and the date they would have that evening.
CHAPTER TEN
Nap took her to the lake again that evening. There was an open-air dance pavilion and they danced under the stars. On the way home, she made him drive off the road and behind some bushes on the edge of a field where he could kiss her, but the kissing only inspired her to become more daring.
"Take me in the back seat and make love to me," she implored him. "My education as a young girl in school was sadly curtailed. I've never had a boy fuck me in the back seat of a car. I'll bet if I'd gone to school with you, you wouldn't have allowed me to be so neglected."
"You wouldn't have looked at me twice," he told her. "I'm so damned homely all the girls ever did was make fun of me."
"You are not homely!" she cried indignantly. "You're the best-looking man in the world. But I'm glad the rest of the women are so blind. I want you all to myself."
They got out in the moonlight-drenched night and climbed into the back seat. She told him she wanted her clothes off, so he helped her undress.
"Kiss my titties," she begged him. "Please, darling!"
With his arms around her waist, he bent his head as she arched her back to press a firm, full breast against his face and she hissed with a sharp intake of her breath as his mouth closed over a nipple. He kept at it, sucking and nibbling at her until her nipples were puffy and swollen.
"Now, kiss my legs!" she whispered hoarsely. "You never have kissed my legs, Nap." She leaned back in the corner of the seat and drew his head down to her thighs. She wanted him to suck her but she was afraid to ask for fear of disgusting him. She was counting on the powerful lure of her musk to draw him to her crotch, to arouse an instinctive desire to drink her sweet body juices.
He caressed the velvety texture of her thighs with his cheeks and mouthed the perfumed flesh, unaware that she was slowly and slyly shifting her position and opening her legs so that he moved ever closer to her waiting cunt. He paused, his nose touching her pubic hair and his fingers clenching in the cheeks of her ass, as he breathed deeply of the invisible incense that rose from her pussy.
Now was the time. "Kiss it!" she whispered at him. "Kiss it, darling. Prove to me that you love me by kissing me there." She put her hand lightly on the top of his head and pushed down, opening her legs farther so that he fell forward, his mouth, chin and nose going between the parted lips of her vulva and touching the pink-skinned and moist warmth of the interior.
He drew back a little. "Are you sure it's all right? You won't think I'm ...?"
"Yes, yes! Yes, it's all right! I want you to. Don't you want to?"
"Yes," he admitted. "I've heard guys talk about it and I've wondered what it would be like. If you're sure ... "
"Of course, I'm sure. Hurry, Nap! The suspense is killing me!"
That convinced him. Tentatively and timidly he pursed his lips to kiss her there. She put her hand on the back of his head and pulled him into it, grinding her hips to wash his face with the wet flesh and hair of her cunt. She gave a great sigh of contented relief when he began licking her.
It was only by accident that his lapping tongue encountered her clitoris and made her come. Her orgasm seemed to excite him tremendously and she expected him to want to fuck her then. Instead, he remained where he was, sucking and licking her with renewed enthusiasm until she came again.
In doing this thing so new to him, so fraught with potential for accumulating guilt feelings, Nap was awkward and unsure of himself, yet love and desire drove him on to achieve a wild and reckless abandon that made up for his lack of practice.
To Junia, it seemed miraculous that anything he did with her was somehow so much better than when she coupled with anyone else. She had been a victim of that movie and television-fostered illusion, common to Americans, that only pretty people make good lovers, and she was reluctant to surrender this illogical but comfortable fallacy.
Not that she was engaged in the cerebral gymnastics essential to reason and deduction at that moment. On the contrary, she had stopped thinking entirely, and had given herself over, quite willingly, to the purely animalistic pleasure of enjoying that state of total sensuality in which one may best appreciate the deliriously delightful ecstasy of having one's cunt enthusiastically, if not expertly, sucked, lapped, licked, and joyously mauled by avid tongue and eager lips.
When he paused at times from his energetic attack on her throbbing clitoris to thrust his tongue into her cunt, she was under the impression that that member of his body was at least twelve inches in length and as big around as his arm. The hands that caressed her thighs and the cheeks of her ass were like no other hands that had ever touched her. As they traced with worshipful reverence the beautiful and beloved lines of her body, they seemed to transmit the same kind of high-voltage charge that she got whenever he kissed her.
He was not very quiet about it, either. He slurped and burbled into her vulva, sloppy now from his own saliva and the drooling discharge of her cunt. Even these pig-like sounds served to increase her already unbearably raging passion, and the rank, aromatic stench of her musk in the close confines of the car drove her so far out of her mind with lust that she lost all sense of time and place. She became a glob of gluten, a palpitating portion of protoplasm, mindless and so over-sensitized that every cell shrieked in silent syncopation with the drum-beat pulsing of her passion.
It was as though her own cunt had swallowed her, had taken her over and grown to woman size so that she was all cunt and nothing but cunt, a big, throbbing, sloppy, reeking cunt that throbbed to the heavenly rhythm of its tortured clitoris.
Coming was the final madness, the over-taxing of sandpapered nerves, the slow explosion followed by rapturous relief as the monstrously swollen cunt reduced in size until it once more assumed its relatively proper position between her lovely thighs and she was once more possessed of a body, once more was merely human.
Nap, reluctant to relinquish his newly discovered portion of paradise, would have kept right on, still hungrily dining at the exotic banquet table of her crotch, but she drew him away from the cooling remnants of the feast and kissed him ardently, smearing both of their faces with the smelly goo from her cunt.
"Now fuck me, sweetheart," she crooned to him. "Oh fuck me sweet and strong and good. Squirt your lovely stuff up into my cunt, darling. Shoot it into me so hard and high that I can taste it in my throat!"
He did and, under her tutelage, he was learning fast. Despite his lust for her luscious body, he was beginning to understand about control. He made it last until she had again experienced an orgasm of such violence that she was trembling with weakness when it was over.
"I didn't suppose any man could do that," she moaned feebly. "You win, darling. I hate to admit that I've been fairly and squarely out-fucked, but it's a fact. Let's go somewhere to wash up and eat. I'm ravenous."
They found a service station on the edge of town where they could use the washrooms. Next door to it was a restaurant. They had started in when Junia put her hand on Nap's arm and stopped him.
"Not here," she whispered and whirled around, dragging him back out onto the street with her. She wouldn't explain until they were again in the car. She was frightened and also angry with herself. She had been made suddenly aware that she had blundered and muddled along through the entire business of being blackmailed and forced into industrial espionage without ever stopping to do much real thinking. It occurred to her that it was about time she started using her brain as well as her body.
She had seen Kay Webster and Angelo Feroni at the counter of the restaurant. She did not think that they had seen her.
What did it mean? It was obvious that Kay was not working for J.B. Blackburn and that the offer of ten thousand dollars had not come through her from him. Blackburn had the pictures that Feroni had taken of her in her room with Larson. He didn't need to try to bribe her. If Kay was not working for Blackburn, then it was likely she was working for Feroni. Which meant that Feroni was either no longer Blackburn's man, or that he was still employed by Amareo but was giving his boss the double cross and was representing some other organization, one that had a lot of money to toss into the game.
Then Feroni had killed Ralph Fallon. Ralph had probably caught the hood ransacking his apartment for the combination to the safe and there had been a fight. If she was right, and common sense told her she had to be right, then an accidental meeting with Kay and Angelo could easily prove fatal. If Feroni gave her credit for being smart enough to pursue the line of reasoning she had just followed, he would have no choice but to silence her as quickly as possible. She remembered the six inches of hollow-ground steel that he had flipped out to sever her bound hands and ankles. She shuddered.
"What is it, Junia?" Nap asked anxiously, his homely-handsome face reflecting his concern. "Something is going on, something that's got you scared and that's made you do a lot of crazy things that aren't really like you. I've felt it ever since you quit at Amareo. What's the trouble, honey?"
She had to clench her fists in her lap and bite her tongue to keep from telling him. She wanted to, wanted to cry on his husky shoulder and pour it all out, turn the now unbearable and scary burden of it over to him, but she was more afraid of losing him than of what might happen to her. For the first time, she became cognizant of the possibility that she might be falling in love with Nap Devore.
"Just someone I saw in there whom I didn't want to have to sit and talk to while I ate," she said. "We can find another all-night restaurant. I think there's one on Fifth."
She made him sleep with her in the apartment again that night. She was afraid to be alone now and it already seemed natural to awake in his arms in the morning.
She came to a decision the following day while at work. It seemed to her that her only hope of getting out of the mess her life appeared to be in was to obtain the plans, turn them over to Blackburn in exchange for the blackmail photos, and then leave that part of the country. She was sure that Nap would take her anywhere she wanted to go. Perhaps she would even marry him after all. If there was such a thing as one man in the world who could keep her so well satisfied that she would not be tempted to stray into other beds, then that man was certainly Napoleon Devore.
She would, she decided, make one more try at getting her hands on Max Kline's notes. That Fred Graz had searched the house with no results didn't mean a thing to her. She considered the pretty-boy personnel manager a bumbling and inept jackass, out of bed as well as in.
She called Eva that afternoon and made a date to see her in the evening. She had no intention of playing fun and games with the brunette but, when she arrived at the house, she saw that her hostess had other ideas on the subject. Eva was wearing a filmy red peignoir and nothing else, the white beauty of her body clearly revealed and pointedly punctuated by the black arrowhead of pubic hair at her crotch. She looked, Junia admitted, like the very personification of sex itself wrapped in a misty flame of passion. But Eva had something else on her mind and she couldn't wait to unburden herself.
"You'll never guess who was here this afternoon," she declared as she poured drinks for both of them. "Kay Webster! It was the first time I'd seen her in simply weeks and weeks. She had the strangest proposition for me. She thinks that Max has invented something, or had some kind of a really good idea, and she wants it. Can you imagine, Junia, she actually offered me ten thousand dollars to swipe it from Max and give it to her? Talk about nerve! Anyway, I hadn't the slightest idea what she was talking about. Do you suppose she's flipped?"
"No," Junia said, "I don't think so. She made me the same offer." And then she found herself telling the whole story to Eva. She didn't know why she was spilling everything she knew so freely. All she knew was that she'd carried the weight of it as far as she could go by herself.
"But, Junia honey," Eva exclaimed when Junia had finished, "what a fantastic situation! You must be scared out of your wits, poor darling. And I'm sure it's all a ridiculous mistake, somehow. As far as I know, Max has never invented anything more important than the fucking machine I have upstairs. I guess he's a pretty good engineer, but he spends so much time chasing pussy all over the place that he hardly has time to spare for being brilliant. But, speaking of upstairs, I've missed you terribly these last few days, Junia. I'm sorry I was such a bitch at the motel and spoiled everything for us by my stupid jealousy. Can you ever forgive me, dearest?"
"Of course," Junia told her. She was basically a soft-hearted person and, furthermore, she could see that, since she had been unwise enough to tell all, it wouldn't be very bright of her to antagonize Eva at this stage of the game.
"Oh, how sweet of you!" Eva cried, setting her glass down and coming over to sit beside Junia on the couch. "Kiss and make up?"
Well, Junia thought with a mental sigh, she had sure as hell let herself in for this. Her and her big mouth! She submitted to the kiss. She was not repulsed by it, but neither did she find it very exciting. It certainly didn't pack the wallop she had learned to expect from Nap Devore's kisses.
"You're still mad at me. I can tell," Eva said, "but I won't let you stay mad, darling. I'll make you love me again. You'll see." She laughed her low, throaty laugh as she pulled the bow of lace loose on her bosom and shrugged the crimson peignoir down to her waist. "I know what you like, baby."
She did have a point there, Junia agreed reluctantly as the vibrantly warm and lovely sex symbols were pressed against her face. In fact, Eva had two good points there. Damn her and her goddamned, beautiful tits! How was a girl supposed to be able to resist their sweet curves so entrancingly mounted with dark, delicious nipples? Fleetingly she remembered Nap's strong, masculine body and then, with a sigh of resignation, she opened her mouth to accept a rigid, questing nipple.
Junia felt one of Eva's hands go under the hem of her short skirt and she automatically raised her hips to facilitate the removal of her panties. She hadn't really wanted to do this, she reminded herself, but, as long as she was here, and as long as all this perfumed and gorgeous flesh was so ardently seeking her own ... Oh, well, Nap need never know. Once they were married, she'd never know this particular thrill again, and one last fling wouldn't do any harm.
"Undress me!" she whispered, her voice fierce with urgency. "I want my clothes off for you, Eva. Oh, God, but it's good to have you again! I thought I'd lost it, lost my beautiful bisexuality. Kay Webster tried to make out with me, but I didn't turn on at all for her. I guess it's just for you, Eva. Let's suck each other's cunts. I want to drink you and eat you, darling!"
"That's more like my own sweet baby doll," Eva crooned. "Of course, we'll drink each other, my pet. All I have to do is see you and I start juicing. Can't you smell me? I stink like a bitch dog in heat."
"Yes, yes! The smell is driving me crazy. I'm creaming, too. I can feel it running down the crack of my ass. Isn't it wonderful to be like this for each other, Eva? All hot and smelly and so hungry for lovemaking?"
"Yes. Let's get on the floor where we have more room."
Still clinging together, the naked girls slid to the carpet, their mouths and their hands frantically seeking each other's flesh. Eva turned around so that she was on her back, and Junia was crouched over her on hands and knees, her asshole resting lightly on the tip of Eva's nose, her cunt drooling into Eva's open mouth. She pressed her face between the white, tender, beautiful thighs, turning her head to mouth the succulent, scented flesh as she worked down toward the bubbling fountain beneath the dark forest of hair.
She dived into the intoxicating depths of the cunt that coruscated wetly in the glow from a bridge lamp, sucking up the sweet, overripe-smelling juices and swallowing them greedily, her hands digging into the undersides of the soft thighs like a woman kneading bread. She pushed her tongue into the gaping vagina, wishing she had a tongue like Max's cock. She found the quivering clitoris and sucked it, as well as the surrounding flesh, into her mouth, wallowing the small lump back and forth, her reward the tensing of muscles and the writhing of passion-tortured hips.
They came, not together but alternately, and, once it was started for them, they kept on coming every few minutes. It was too good to stop, too perfect to give up on until they finally collapsed from exhaustion.
"You know," Eva said, sitting up at last and lighting a cigarette, "I've been thinking. I must be wrong. People don't blackmail girls into becoming thieves, or go around trying to give away ten thousand dollars for nothing. Max must have come up with something darned good. Maybe, with both of us working on him, we can get it away from him, sell it to Kay Webster and split the loot. Even better would be if you and I took the money and went to Mexico. Think of the fun we could have there together, Junia! With that much money, we could buy a lovely home on Lake Chapala. There are lots of rich Americans there. You said once you'd like to try whoring. Well, that would be just the place for it. You could make enough in two or three nights a week to keep us in luxury."
Junia ran a hand through her blonde hair. She didn't dare look at Eva, afraid the other girl would read on her face the disgust and revulsion she felt. It wasn't that she would mind whoring. She considered it a more honorable occupation than being an industrial spy. The thing that chilled her and turned her away from Eva, as though her erstwhile lover had abruptly developed a set of rattles and poisonous fangs, was the casual and heartless way that Eva proposed to steal from Max and then walk out of him, break the heart of good, generous Max who loved his wife so deeply and so desperately.
"I'll have to think it over," Junia murmured. "I guess I better go now. I've got a date later."
Walking down the steps to the street level, Junia knew that she had seen Eva Kline for the last time. All that had once seemed so glamorous and thrilling in their relationship had turned to filth. The marvelous sensations she had just enjoyed in Eva's arms were an obscenity, and she was ashamed of every kiss and every caress she had exchanged with her.
She had three blocks to walk to a shopping district where she could find a public phone and call a cab. No bus for her tonight. She was too anxious to get home and call Nap, tell him to hurry over and take her in his arms. She needed his clean, masculine strength to envelop her in a mantle of reassurance, to wipe out memory of the shame that made her face flame in the cool air of evening.
She hardly glanced at the maroon-colored sedan as she crossed the intersection. It was moving slowly and she had plenty of time to walk in front of it. Motivated by that blind, unreasoning faith all pedestrians seem to have in the good brakes and good intentions of drivers of automobiles, she stepped down from the curb. She had gained the center of the intersection when she was startled into immobility by the roar of the engine and the squeal of rear tires digging out. She stared in disbelief as the monster bore down on her. People simply didn't do that sort of thing! They didn't try to run you down! It was against all kinds of traffic laws. But this particular car was trying to run her down, to smash her flat to the pavement and kill her. At the last possible moment, the adrenalin her heart had had time to pump into her bloodstream went to work and she did a flying leap and a swan dive that Waslaw Nijinsky might have envied. She felt the right front fender of the sedan lightly brush her leg while she was yet in full flight, and then she landed on the edge of the street as the screaming roar of the car flashed by and dwindled in the distance.
She sat up and stared wildly at its diminishing tail lights. Her head hurt, her nylons were torn, and both her knees and her hands were scraped and beginning to smart, but she ignored this trivial damage, her pulse thudding to a new terror. In that awful moment when she had been unable to run or jump, she had had a clear view of the driver of the maroon sedan.
It had been Angelo Feroni!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Despite her bruised knees, Junia ran the other two blocks to the shopping center. With shaking hands she deposited a dime in the public phone and dialed Nap's number. She let the evenly spaced, distant ringing of his phone go on for a full minute before she was willing to concede that he wasn't there, that he had probably gone out to dinner. It was still early and the shopping center was open, the stores brightly lighted and cars in the parking lot. She felt fairly safe for the moment but she couldn't stay there all night, and the one thing she knew that she dared not do was to go to her own apartment. Even if Feroni wasn't already there and waiting for her, she didn't have that much faith in the lock on her door. She thought of Dave Breton. He was a policeman. At least he hadn't denied being one that night. She looked up the number in the front of the telephone book and called the city police.
"Nobody named Breton here, lady," a bored voice answered her query. "Hey, wait a minute. I think I know who you want, only he isn't part of our outfit. Hold on a sec and I'll give you a number to call. Try this." He read off a number and she thanked him, then hung up.
The phone rang only twice before it was answered and she felt almost sick with relief to hear Dave's familiar voice. She had only told him part of the story, the part about Angelo Feroni trying to run her down, when he interrupted her.
"I've got the picture, baby," he told her crisply. "We've been expecting something like this, only I didn't figure it would be directed at you, or I'd of had someone watching you. Look, I can't come out there and pick you up, not right now. Haven't you got someone you can call who'll take you someplace and stash you away until this is over? Whatever you do, for Christ's sake don't go near your apartment."
She told him about Nap Devore.
"Good," he replied. "I've got a girl here in the office and I'll put her to work trying to contact him. There's a coffee shop in that shopping center. You go in there and stay put until either Devore or I can get to you. Understand? Whatever happens, call this number back in an hour. Okay?"
"Okay," she replied. The suddenly overwhelming feeling of relief made her momentarily weak but she crossed the parking lot to the coffee ship hoping, women-like, that no one would notice her ruined nylons and skinned knees.
She was on her third cup of coffee when Nap came in. He looked grim, worried and fighting mad all at the same time.
"A guy from the F.B.I, called me a few minutes ago. He said you were in trouble ... that someone had tried to kill you. What's it all about, Junia?" he demanded.
She shook her head. "Not in here. I'll tell you out in the car."
She did tell him. All she wanted to do was to huddle in his arms and cry, but she postponed that luxury for later and, beginning with the night when Angelo Feroni had raped her, and had framed her for blackmail, she related the whole story, although she expurgated that portion of it that had to do with her love affair with Eva Kline. There were some things she wouldn't have expected any man to have taken in stride.
"I wish you'd told me sooner," he growled. "Wait'll I get my hands on that Feroni rat! All right, I'm taking you to my apartment, and then I'm going after the bastard." He backed the car out of the parking slot and turned left onto the street.
"No, Nap," she pleaded. "I don't want you mixed up in this. Let the police and the F.B.I, handle it. Don't leave me there alone, darling!"
"You'll be all right," he muttered and, by the set of his jaw, she saw the futility of arguing with him.
Nap's apartment, on the top floor of a downtown building, was almost a carbon copy of her own, consisting of a bedroom-living room combination, kitchen and bath. He would have left immediately on his vengeful quest had she not clung tearfully to him, begging him to wait at least until she had called Breton again as she had promised.
Dave, obviously relieved to learn that she was safe, and in a place where Feroni was not apt to be able to find her, gave her strict orders to see to it that Nap stayed there with her.
"This thing is breaking fast now," he told her, "and I haven't, got time to babysit any amateur volunteers."
Nap sitting next to her, overheard. He took the phone from her and angrily replied to Breton's remark, pointing out that, as a security guard, he'd had police training himself and that he wasn't unarmed.
"All right," she heard Dave say wearily. "Get on over here to my office then, but you make damned sure Junia is locked up tight."
Nap kissed her, took his revolver from a top drawer of the dresser and, after exacting a promise from her that she would not open the door to anyone until his return, he left.
Alone in the apartment, Junia showered and looked through the bathroom cabinet for an unguent to dab on her wounded knees.
She was sitting naked on the edge of the bed and lighting a cigarette when she heard the knock at the door. She jumped up, excited at the thought that Nap was back already. She hoped Dave had talked some sense into him and had sent him home. Then she remembered that she wasn't supposed to open the door until sure it was, indeed, Nap Devore.
"Who is it?" she called.
"It's Fred, Fred Graz," was the answer. "Let me in, Junia. I've got to talk to you. I followed you here."
Disappointed that it wasn't Nap, but reassured to recognize Fred's voice and know that her caller was, at least, no one more dangerous than the handsome bungler from the personnel department, she unlatched the door.
"There's hell to pay!" Fred cried as he came in. He was wild-eyed and distraught, his usually well-groomed hair disarranged. "Feroni has gone ape. He's got Kay Webster and is holding her prisoner at some abandoned resort south of town. He wants the plans in exchange for her. You've got to help me, Junia!"
"I don't see how I can help you," she told him. "And I wouldn't worry too much about Kay. I saw the two of them together a few nights ago and they looked pretty cozy to me. Did Blackburn put Angelo up to this nutty stunt?"
"No. Feroni has split with J.B. He's either on his own or he's working for somebody else. I don't know which. But you can help. The plans aren't all Feroni wants. He wants you, Junia. I just talked to him on the phone a few minutes ago. Listen. I've got a friend, an old timer who used to be one of the best peter men in the business. I can get him into the office tonight and he'll blow the safe for me. If I take you and the plans out to where Feroni is hiding, he'll turn Kay loose."
"You must be out of your skull!" Junia exclaimed. "Feroni tried to kill me once tonight. You think I'm going to go out there like a little lamb to the slaughter just so he'll turn that bitch loose?"
"But he promised he wouldn't hurt you," Fred protested. "Probably all he wants to do is screw you again. Hell, you don't mind that. Kay is different. She's sensitive. It would kill her to have him touch her. You've got to do it, Junia."
Junia laughed. "Kay is sensitive all right! Brother! That slut has fucked or sucked practically every man and woman in town except you, you poor dumb cluck."
A sudden change came over Fred Graz. He seemed to grow abruptly taller, his nervous anxiety and fear to leave him, replaced by anger and a look of menace.
"You'll do it, all right," he snarled at her. "I'm taking you out there as soon as the safe has been blown and I have the plans. I'm not playing any little spy game for J.B., now. If I deliver you and the plans I get ten thousand and Kay. To hell with J.B. And to hell with you too, you dirty, little tramp. I haven't forgotten the way you treated me. You going to come along with me with no fuss, or do I have to beat the shit out of you? I won't mind a damned bit."
She saw that he meant it. It was late enough at night now that he could probably knock her out and take her down some back way to his car without anyone noticing. She could scream. Maybe. A fist to her jaw might silence her before she could utter more than a squeak of sound.
"Well, I can't go with you like this," she said, indicating her nakedness. She turned as though to reach for her dress that hung over the foot of the bed. When he stepped back out of her way, she whirled and leaped for the door, hearing him curse as she ran down the hall.
The trouble was that Junia didn't know the building she was in. She couldn't even remember which way she and Nap had come from the elevator to reach his room. In her panic, she ran in the wrong direction. She realized, too late, that the hall was a dead end. But not quite. There was a stairway leading up to the right and she took it, conscious in her desperation of Fred's shod feet thundering down the hall behind her. There was a door at the top of the stairs but it was unlocked and swung open away from her when she hit it with her outstretched hands. She jumped the last two steps and was out on the flat roof of the building.
Young, strong and agile, unencumbered by clothing and spurred on by fear, Junia fled across the wide expanse. Before she reached the far edge, she saw that there was another building, the roof of which was only a couple of feet below the level of the one she was on. In the darkness it seemed close and she did not hesitate, but launched herself across the gap between them. She was already in the air before she saw that the distance was greater than she had supposed, possible even a little more than the mark she had once set when she had been a cup winner at the running broad jump in high school.
She made it with only the balls of her feet touching down on the very edge of the building before she fell forward, tumbled over once in a deliberate somersault and came back onto her feet just in time to see Fred Graz attempt the same leap.
He missed by a wide margin. His scream, diminishing as he dropped the twelve stories, still echoed in the narrow chasm between the buildings when the dull thud of his body striking pavement reached her ears.
She was still there, huddled into a tight, naked ball, clasping her knees and crying when Nap found her twenty minutes later. He had arrived on the street level to find a small crowd watching the white-coated stretcher-bearers load the pulpy remains of what had been Fred Graz into an ambulance. Finding his rooms empty and Junia's dress across the end of the bed, he had imagined the worst. Then, in the hall, he had noticed the fire-exit door to the roof open and had gone up in search of her. Seeing her crouched and crying on the other building, he had deduced what had happened, so he had gone back for her dress, down to the street and up through the other building to the roof.
"Come on, honey," he told her, lifting her by her arms and setting her on her feet, "get into this and let's get out of here. He won't bother you again. They've just taken his corpse away in the ambulance ... whoever he was."
"It was Fred Graz," she told him, her face tear-streaked in the light from the stars. "What a horrible way to go! He was going to blow the safe at Mercer, steal the plans, and then trade them and me to Feroni for Kay Webster. And she isn't worth giving the time of day."
"Did he say where Feroni would be?" Nap asked her as she slipped the dress on over her head and turned for him to zip her.
"Yes. Well, not exactly. He said something about an abandoned resort south of town."
Nap snapped his fingers. "The old River Rest Resort! That's it! Come on. I've got to get in touch with Dave and let him know. He and I have already turned this town upside down looking for that bastard. I'll get you back to the apartment and, this time, you stay there."
"No," she said firmly. "I won't do it, Nap. I'm not going to be left alone again. I'm going with you. I'll stay in the car, but I'm going."
They argued about it on the way back to the room, but she was determined. He cursed when Dave Breton's phone didn't answer.
"Damn him! He said he'd wait in his office while I made sure you were all right. He's skipped out on me."
"You were gone longer than you intended," she reminded him. "Maybe he had to go. He may have gotten a hot tip."
Nap nodded glumly. "Maybe. Well, I'm not going to sit around here and wait for him while Feroni splits out of the country. I'm going out there, myself. We've got a hot tip, too."
"And I'm going with you," Junia announced again.
"All right then, come on," he grunted. They hurried down the hall to the elevator, descended to the first floor, and crossed the lobby to the street. He had parked two blocks away. He waited only a half-minute for the engine to warm up and then rammed savagely away from the curb, making a U-turn on the night-deserted street.
He took the same road out of town that Max Kline had taken when Junia had gone with the engineer and his wife to keep a rendezvous at a motel twenty miles south of town. Her face burned with the memory.
They came to the arched opening that still bore a faded sign: "River Rest Resort-Cabins-Boats-Fishing." He went on by without slackening speed.
"Feroni will be listening for every car that goes by," he explained. "No sense advertising that we're stopping. He'll be expecting Fred Graz, but not this soon. It takes time to blow a safe."
It was a large property with a lot of highway frontage, all of which was fenced. At the south end of the fence, they saw a road, hardly more than two car tracks through the weeds, and Nap cut the engine before they turned off onto it, letting the car roll to a bumping halt in the shadow of some oak trees.
"Now you stay here," he said, kissing her. "I'm going in from the back and take him by surprise if I can. No matter what happens, don't get out of the car. You may hear some shooting, but don't worry about it. So you won some cups for broad jumping in high school? Well, the Marine Corps hung a whole row of medals on me for pistol and rifle marksmanship."
"You be careful," she said just the same as he got out and silently closed the door behind him.
She sat there in quiet terror for what, to her, seemed at least an hour. She heard no shots and Nap did not return. She stood it awhile longer and then the suspense of waiting was more than she could bear. It wouldn't hurt, she thought, just to get out and stretch her legs. She stretched them in the direction of the woven-wire fence. There was a hedge on the other side of it but, where she happened to be was a bare spot. Dim in the starlit distance was a large building which she supposed had once been the resort office, lobby, and probably dining room as well. She imagined that this would be where Angelo would be hiding with Kay Webster. She did not for one moment believe that Kay was a prisoner. That, she was sure, had been sucker-bait to lure Fred Graz. Well, it had lured him ... but only to his death. There were no lights in the building, but then, of course, there wouldn't be. She visualized Nap sneaking up through the rows of cabins between the main building and the river. He had been in Vietnam, she reminded herself, and he probably knew his business. But what if Angelo was not alone? There could be three or four men with him, all heavily armed. The thought struck a new lance of fear through her, fear that was entirely for Nap.
What he would need, she reasoned, was a diversion. That might be all it would take to save his life. Acting in immediate response to impulse, she hooked fingers and toes into the crossed wires of the fence, scaled it and dropped lightly to the ground on the other side. Without giving herself time to think about such trivia as broken promises, she ran swiftly along the fence toward the main building, keeping always in the shadow of the hedge. When she was even with it, she stopped and rested, turning over in her mind the various possibilities, such as throwing a rock through the front window. It was, she knew, a matter of timing. She didn't think Nap would be foolish enough to work close to the building and then holler out for Feroni to surrender. Being only one man, he couldn't surround the place, and announcing his presence would only serve to give the hoodlum time to slip out some other way. No, he would attempt to enter the building and take Feroni, either alive or dead. Knowing Nap's mood, she didn't think he would be particular about the condition" of Feroni's health at the time he finally got his hands on the little bastard.
She was spared the trouble of further analysis of the problem when the somnolence of the night was disrupted by the crack-crack of two shots from the other side of the building. They were answered by a single, heavier shot. That was when Junia ran forward with a rock in her hand and threw it through the plate-glass window. It made a satisfactory noise and the tinkling crash of broken glass was followed by a bewildered curse from somewhere inside.
Give him something to think about, she gloated. Now he wouldn't know how many men were attacking, or which way to run.
She had thrown the rock from the protection of what had once been an ornamental stone fountain and bird bath. She crouched there, so intent on watching for some sight of Nap that she did not hear the rustling stir of oak leaves as the man came up behind her. She was only aware, and then, but briefly, of the exploding pain in her head as she fell forward and down through utter darkness.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Not for the first time, Junia awoke with a headache to find herself naked, tied hand and foot, and with Angelo Feroni grinning at her. Except for the surroundings, it was like sitting through a movie she had seen before. She was lying on a leather-covered couch in a room with bare cement walls that she judged to be part of a basement.
"Well, if you're going to rape me again," she said, glaring up at him, "get it over with, you bastard."
His grin broadened. "You think a lot of yourself, don't you? Well, I got more important things on my mind than fucking you again, baby. I've had you. Remember? What I want are some answers to some questions, like where the hell is Fred Graz and the plans? You've seen him, or you wouldn't know about this place, so don't try to bullshit me. The other thing I want to know is who is that character up there with the gun? He got one of my boys awhile ago, just before Mike, the other one, sapped you and brought you down here. You're lucky you got a lot of hair, doll. Mike is all muscle. Now you've got the picture, so start singing. Where's Fred?"
"The last I saw of him," she lied, "he went off to look for some guy who was supposed to blow the safe at Mercer for him. How should I know where he is now? As for the guy with the gun, he works for an uncle of mine named 'Sammy.' He's just keeping you pinned down until the rest of them arrive to collect you. You've got enough against you now, Angelo. Why don't you get smart and cut your losses by going out there with your hands up?"
She thought he had paled a little at mention of the F.B.I., but he recovered so quickly she couldn't be sure. He sneered at her and shook his head. "Nice try, punchboard, but I don't buy it. You think this is TV, huh? Like a fed going after the bad guys single-handed? Don't give me that shit. Anyway, I don't give a damn if J. Edgar himself is sitting out there. You think I'm dumb enough to hole up in a place where I don't have a way out? I haven't got time to fool around with you, babe. I still want to know about Fred. A friend of yours is here and I think I'll let her see what she can do about getting you to talk. Kay, come in here, honey?"
Kay Webster came into the room. She was wearing tight black leotards and an even tighter pullover that molded itself to her large, firm breasts. She looked, Junia thought, like a prototype of all the women who had ever played the part of gangsters' molls in the movies.
"Take over," Angelo told her. "I got to go upstairs and help Mike cool that boy scout who's running around loose with a gun."
Kay smiled down at Junia. It was not a friendly smile. She made a quick movement with her right hand and six inches of gleaming steel clicked into place. "Just where I wanted you, darling," she cooed, "flat on your back with your clothes off, but the situation isn't exactly the same as it would have been if you hadn't been so snotty with me that day in the restaurant, is it? You could have a good time with Eva Kline, but you thought you were too good for me, didn't you? Well, things have changed. We'll see how smart-assed you are, now." She flourished the switch-blade. "I think I'll start on your face. I hope you've got a lot of guts and won't talk until I've had my fun with you. How would you like a nose bob for openers, doll?"
Angelo Feroni had never succeeded in really frightening Junia, except on the occasion when he had nearly run her down with his car, but Kay Webster made it. The dark eyes, glittering with bloodthirsty eagerness in the beautiful, savage face, scared her so that it made her guts cramp and writhe with terror, like an attack of acute dysentery.
She had only one weapon she could use against the insane sadism of a frustrated homosexual. She used it. She spread her legs as wide as they would go, her lovely thighs gleaming in the dim light from a single bulb that lit the room, her vulva gaping open, the delicately pink and convoluted flesh glistening moistly,
The movement drew Kay's attention, and she paused in the act of leaning over to slash Junia's face with the knife. She stayed in that awkward position, her eyes fixed in fascination on the hair-bordered elliptic of Junia's cunt. The tip of a red tongue flicked out to lick her crimsoned lips as Junia lifted her hips and began to rotate them suggestively.
"A few minutes won't matter," Kay muttered, talking not to Junia but to herself. She swayed for a moment, apparently wracked by indecision. Then, with a moan of agonized desire, she sank to her knees and plunged her face into the aromatic valley, her avid tongue seeking the depths of Junia's cunt. She licked and sucked like a starving woman at a feast, snuffling and grunting in her greed.
No thrill coursed through the blonde girl's body at this contact, only a vast disgust, but she faked it skillfully. She worked her hips, straining and arching her back while her breathing became shallow, rapid, and harshly audible in an imitation of rising passion.
Kay, her lust inflamed by this seeming response, slurped and sucked even more avidly, her hands roaming up and down Junia's thighs, prowling up over her belly and fiercely gripping the rounded and sweetly-fashioned breasts.
That, of course, was what Junia had been waiting for. The knife, she knew, must be somewhere on the couch, forgotten. She suddenly clamped her legs together, holding Kay's head in a scissors grip, the powerful muscles she had developed as a champion track runner and jumper saving her life for the second time that night. She flung herself off the couch so that both of them fell to the floor, leaving the knife out of Kay's reach. She looked down and grinned to see Kay's eyes bulging at her above the blonde wedge of pubic hair, her face turning red from lack of oxygen. Kay's hands beat at her hips, but the frantic tattoo was lessening as the protuberant eyes began to film and then close. Junia didn't slacken her hold until she was sure that the other girl was completely unconscious.
Her hands having been tied in front of her, it was easy for her to reach the knife and cut the cords that bound her ankles. Those on her wrists proved more difficult, but she found that she could hold the knife with her toes like a monkey and then it was simple.
The door to the room was unlocked. She pushed it open a cautious inch and saw that there was more to the basement. It was dimly lit, but she got an impression of a large room cluttered with pipes, laundry tubs, tools, and trash. She could see the entire room and Feroni was nowhere in sight, but it was not unoccupied. A man stood with his back to her. He was a squat, bulky figure that stood on tiptoes to peer out of a small window mounted high on one wall. That, she thought, would be Mike. She thought of the knife she had taken from Kay but discarded it as a weapon. It seemed to her that sticking that gorilla-like brute with the thin-bladed switch knife would be too much like pricking an elephant with a common pin. She moved silently toward him on bare feet, her eyes on an object that leaned against the wall with a collection of other tools. It was a three-foot crowbar with a hooked end like a cane. She carefully picked it up and lifted it over her head.
He heard or sensed her final approach and whirled around, his dull, ugly face stupid with surprise. The steel bar caught him over the left eye and he toppled with only a faint grunt to the cement floor, the automatic pistol he had been holding clattering away from him. Junia scooped it up and darted back into the room where she had been held prisoner. She had heard sounds that had alerted her to the fact that Kay was regaining consciousness. She found the chestnut-haired beauty sitting up and staring vaguely about her.
"Sorry I disturbed you, darling," Junia murmured. "You need more sleep, I'm sure." She brought the crowbar down in an overhand blow that terminated on the top of Kay's head. She observed with satisfaction that Kay Webster could no longer be numbered as among those present.
Going back into the larger room, she saw that, at the far end, was a set of wooden steps leading up to a door. She was considering whether or not she should attempt this means of egress when the decision was taken out of her hands. From somewhere within the building above her there came the sound of a shot, followed by a thudding of feet on the floor, and then the door opened and Feroni was running down the steps toward her, a gun in his hand and a wild, frightened look in his eyes.
Junia leveled the automatic at him and he stopped at the foot of the stairs, staring at her in disbelief. She pulled back on the trigger but nothing happened. She tried it again but the thing seemed to be stuck. She had once fired a .22 target revolver at a tin can, but she had never before had her hands on an automatic and she did not know about the safety catch on the side of the weapon.
Feroni grinned evilly, raising his own gun slowly and with evident satisfaction. Looking into the round, dark bore of the muzzle, Junia thought that it was at least as large as the entrance to a cave.
"This is all for you, baby doll," Feroni murmured, still grinning.
The sound of the shot was like an explosion of dynamite in the confined space of the basement, the sound waves battering back and forth against the concrete walls.
Feroni dropped his gun and grasped at his right hip, then turned, slowly pivoting on his feet as his knees bent and he fell to the floor where he lay moaning and feebly twitching in pain and shock.
Junia looked over her shoulder to see Dave Breton standing there, a snub-nosed revolver in his hand.
"How ... ? Where ... ? Where did you come from?" she stuttered, knowing she was sounding stupid. It was taking her a little effort to adjust to the idea that it was not she who was lying in a heap on the floor instead of Feroni.
"There's a back way," Breton said. "It leads to a boat house. That was the way I came in. I see Feroni had a speedboat all ready for a getaway. Someone driving by on the highway reported hearing a shot here. The local police handed it on to me."
Just then Nap Devore came down the steps.
Breton looked up at him. "For Christ's sake, Nap," he said, "can't you keep this goofy girlfriend of yours pinned down somewhere? Next time you tell her to stay someplace you better handcuff her. In the meanwhile, I suggest you marry her and get her pregnant. Maybe that will tame her down."
"That's exactly what I intend to do with her," Nap replied, putting his gun in his hip pocket and a protective arm around Junia's bare shoulders. He scowled fiercely at her for a second and then he kissed her. "There's another one up there in the lobby," he told Breton, "only he won't be answering any questions for you. I gut-shot him."
Dave shrugged. "No matter. We've got Feroni, Mike and the Webster bitch. One of them will talk enough to send Angelo to the gas chamber for the killing of Ralph Fallon, and the other two up the river for so many years that they won't be feeling very frisky when they get out."
"Well," Nap said, "at least they didn't get the plans."
Breton stared at him a moment and then he began to laugh. He laughed so hard he finally had to sit down on a stack of sacks that contained peat moss.
"There weren't any plans," he said at last, still laughing.
"No plans?" Nap and Junia chorused together.
Dave shook his head. "No plans. It was a frame-up, one that only Mr. Mercer and Max Kline were in on, except, of course, for the F.B.I. I don't know how much you kids know about the Syndicate, but they've changed their tactics lately. The big money still comes from vice, but they're looking for legitimate outlets to get into, things that are both profitable and respectable. What could be more respectable than an electronics company working on government contracts? Only, you see, it just so happens that the Air Force doesn't particularly dig having the public's tax money flow through their hands and right into the coffers of the Syndicate."
"We've suspected for quite awhile now that they had their beady little eyes on Amareo. It's the kind of flashy setup that would really appeal to them. We knew they'd planted Angelo Feroni on the payroll, and that he had connections in Cleveland and Chicago, but we let him stay there. We wanted to see what kind of a move they would make so that, when we did clamp down on them, we could get as many of the top men in the operation as possible.
"Then we got tired of waiting and decided to force their hand. Mercer and Kline agreed to go along with the scheme, and so we started the rumor going around about the fabulous new system of production. But it got away from us a bit. We didn't anticipate that J.B. Blackburn would fall so hard for the gag, or that Ralph Fallon would be murdered, or that Fred Graz would take a swan dive from a twelve-story building.
"I'm sorry about those things, but not as sorry as I am that Blackburn's anxiety over getting the contract messed up your life, Junia. All I can do is promise you that I've got enough on that old bastard to make him cough up those pictures he has of you. He's out anyway. The government has no interest in dealing with a blackmailing scoundrel like him, except to put him in jail if we can dig up enough evidence. Mercer has the financial backing to buy out Amareo and merge the two companies, and you can figure that is what will happen now."
"I won't hold it against you because your scheme backfired and almost got me killed," Junia told him. "It also taught me a few lessons I needed to learn to be a good wife to Nap. But best of all, it brought us together."
Breton nodded. "I guess I better go find a phone and get an ambulance sent out here. You two keep an eye on my prisoners while I'm gone, will you?"
"Sure we will," Junia replied, but, as Breton went up the stairs, her eyes were only for Nap.
And his were only for her as he drew her to him, crushing her pert breasts against his chest, one hand dropping to the soft rounded cheek of her ass.
