Chapter 8
Anger, shame and regret churned inside Ricky as he stood at the side of the road and jerked his thumb at the passing cars.
Come on, someone, stop! Can't you see you're holding up a murder? Delaying the extermination of a worthless worm?
The cars kept right on going. It was almost as though the drivers had heard his thoughts and wanted no part of his plans.
The longer Ricky stood there, the more his anger was overridden and swamped by regret over his actions of the morning.
The hell with that, he told himself. She's been asking for that for a long time! What am I supposed to be made of, steel or something? When a woman's always there, always half naked, sexy and seductive as hell, it ceases to matter who or what she is.
He was rationalizing, and he knew it. And the fact that he was bothered him. No matter what he had done in the past, he had never felt any guilt about it. Sex was a part of life, he figured, and life was a jungle where you fought to get as much of the good things as possible. But now he felt as though his conscience had been dragged through a meat grinder.
The longer he stood there, the more the misery inside him rose until it seemed it would drown even his hate for Baxter Shaver. By the time a car finally slowed and stopped, he had almost lost interest in going anywhere but kept on signaling automatically, knowing he couldn't go back to the house and face Sheila.
"Ricky Garrett!" a surprised female voice said. "What on earth are you doing here?"
It was Alix Harper, and Ricky was as surprised to see her as she was to see him.
"Trying to get a ride to the other side of town," he said, not even attempting to smile.
"Oh. Well, perhaps I can drop you somewhere," she said. "I'm on my way to the Head Start school."
She was wearing a brightly printed, jersey dress that clung lovingly to her outthrust breasts and fell in soft folds across her thighs. Leaning across the seat, she unlocked the door and motioned for him to get in. She certainly seemed more friendly than the last time he had talked to her.
"Thanks, Miss Harper," Ricky said, sliding into the seat beside her. "My car broke down, and I have to go see ... a friend."
"I'll take you as far as I'm going," she said. "It'll give us a chance to talk."
"I don't know anyone I'd rather talk to than you," he said in an effort to keep up his usual facade of charming sincerity.
Alix gave him a sharp look. "You look and sound very odd, Ricky. Is something wrong?"
"No, nothing," he said, but his voice caught a little.
"Did something happen at school?" she asked, frowning as she maneuvered the car through traffic.
"No," Ricky said, wishing he could overcome his depression and get back to his usual mocking way. "What made you ask that?"
Her tongue flicked at her lower lip nervously. "I thought maybe Pat Donovan might have made trouble for you."
"No," Ricky said, watching the flexing of her thighs under the clingy material as she drove and remembering the carroty triangle of pubic hair that lay at their apex. "Donovan doesn't frighten me."
"Well, he does me," Alix said. "He can be quite violent, you know, and he talked to me about you . . . said something that we really should talk over."
"Yeah? What was it?" Ricky asked, but his voice was dull and lifeless.
"Ricky, are you sure you're all right? You don't sound like yourself at all. Your voice is so sad and . . . well, melancholy."
Ricky's lips twisted into a wry smile. "Pretty drippy, huh?"
"No, not really. I think I like you better this way than I do your usual brashness and superficiality."
"When I'm in the depths of despair you like me better? Well, that's about par for the course."
Alix flashed him an appraising look. "Aren't you just feeling sorry for yourself?"
"Yeah, sure, that's me, Ricky Garrett, the original crybaby." He was beginning to feel a little better just sitting here in the car with her, watching the play of muscles in her calves and thighs as she shifted gears and braked the car to a stop at a traffic signal.
She turned to look at him. "What happened to your face?"
Ricky fingered the cheek Sheila had clawed. "I guess the cat scratched me."
"She must be pretty wild."
"She is," Ricky said shortly, not wanting to remember what had happened between him and his mother. He much preferred to concentrate his thoughts on the exciting woman beside him.
"Where does your friend live?" Alix asked as they passed through the downtown area of the town. "Who is he?"
"You don't know him," Ricky said, not sure now that he'd even go to Shaver's place. It was much pleasanter just to sit here and inhale the rich warmth of Alix's perfume and fantasize about making love to her than to keep his rage at the boiling point against the principal.
"All right," Alix said, "then let's get back to the problem of Donovan."
"What problem?" Ricky's voice was far away, but his thoughts were quite close. They were frolicking in the lovely forest of coppery hair that covered the teacher's mons Veneris.
"You know very well what problem!" Alix said sharply. "You started the whole thing. He's saying that I . . . that I've been having an affair with one of my students . . . with you, in fact."
"What?" Ricky sat up straight in the seat and stared at her. "He said . . . oh, you're putting me on."
"No, I'm not. He stopped me on the front steps one night after school and told me he knew about us."
"Well, well. How about that? So old Donovan thinks we're balling, huh?"
"You don't have to sound so pleased about it," she said.
"Why not? It's a compliment. I'm delighted that anyone would link my name with yours."
Alix frowned. "You're obscuring the issue. Donovan says you're the one who told him I was your . . . uh . . . girl."
Ricky stared at her for a second, then threw back his head and laughed. "Oh no, he didn't fall for that bluff, did he? I knew he was a mush-headed jerk, but I didn't think he'd take that seriously."
"Then why did you say it?"
"Because it was the only way I could think of to get the big ape to leave you alone."
"Oh. Well, that was very decent of you. I appreciate your intentions, but it didn't help. He's still after me."
Ricky scowled, his anger finding a new focal point. "That bastard! I ought to lay for him some night with a baseball bat and ..."
"No, Ricky, no! Don't even say such things!" Alix said with a shudder. "I hate violence."
"Sometimes that's the only way to handle people like Donovan," Ricky said and wondered what Alix would think of him if she knew he'd been on his way to try to kill a man out of insane jealousy over his mother. He winced inwardly. That shocked even him when he put it that baldly.
"You still haven't told me where your friend lives," Alix said, slowing the car. "I'll drop you off if it's not too far."
"No, don't bother," Ricky said. "I've changed my mind. Just let me off anywhere along here, and I'll hitch a ride out to the beach."
Alix turned to look at him again, her eyes puzzled. "You really don't have anything to do with yourself today, do you? I thought you always had a project of some kind going."
"I do, I do," he said, recalling that his chief project for some time now had been the rape and degradation of Miss Alix Harper. Somehow it didn't seem quite so intriguing now, although he wanted her more than ever.
"But you're not going to devote today to it?"
"Uh ... no, I don't think I will," he said, looking down at his hands so she wouldn't see in his eyes the scene being enacted in his head, the scene that was to have been the culmination of his plan for her-Alix stretched out helplessly on a bed, perhaps with her hands and feet tied to the bedposts with her own nylons, bra and panties. She would struggle and cry while he loomed over her with his throbbing cock bared . . . running it over her belly . . . rubbing it on her face . . . forcing it into her mouth . . . listening to her sobs of shame and terror before he came in her mouth.
Ricky shook off the rush of erotic thoughts as Alix started to speak again.
"Maybe you'd like to go along with me," she said on impulse. "We could use some extra help at the Head Start school, and you might find the project interesting, even inspiring."
A sneering remark was on Ricky's lips, something about not being the do-gooder type, but it died as he caught the expectant but wary look on Alix's face.
"Sure," he said, "why not? I guess there are worse ways I could spend a Saturday afternoon."
"Afterward, maybe we could drive out and take that walk along the beach you were talking about," she said.
A definite tingle of excitement ran through Ricky. Spending the whole afternoon with Alix and then being alone on the beach with her afterward was more than he had any right to hope for.
Hours later as the sun was starting to sink behind the sand dunes and the Atlantic reflected the golds and reds of its fading glory, Alix and Ricky got out of her car and wandered down the low rise to one of the many beaches that ringed the peninsula on which Point Storm was located. Later in the season the beach would still be jammed this time of evening, but now it was deserted.
"Looks like we've got it all to ourselves," Ricky said, tossing the blanket they had brought from the car over his shoulder.
"Yes," Alix said. "Well, what did you think of our program?"
"Interesting," Ricky said. "I liked the kids. That's funny, too, because I don't usually dig anyone under fourteen any more than I do anyone over thirty."
"They were crazy about you," Alix said. "I didn't know you were such a good storyteller. Those fairy tales you were telling seemed to give some of them a real incentive to read for themselves."
"I guess it comes from spending so much time making up plausible lies," Ricky laughed. Alix was walking a little ahead of him, the wind whipping her hair around her head like a red flag and plastering the short, jersey skirt to her legs.
Looking at the smooth flesh of calves and thighs as the skirt flew up around them, Ricky felt the same unreasonable excitement that she always aroused in him.
"It's lovely down here this time of year," Alix was saying, "the sea and the sand are so peaceful, and it's kind of nice to get away from people for a while."
"Yes, isn't it?" Ricky said, but his mind wasn't on the sea or the sand. His eyes had come to rest on the delightful mounds of Alix's buttocks, reminding him of how Bobbi's strong fingers had pressed into them the night he had watched them together, of how the blonde gym teacher had held Alix with thighs spread wide so her tongue would have free access to the honeyed recesses of the redhead's cunt.
Alix stopped and looked back at him inquiringly, saw the look in his eyes and frowned, shaking her head. "You seemed so different today but now ..."
Ricky dropped the blanket in the shelter of some rocks and moved to stand close beside her. "But now?"
"But now I wonder if you aren't the same old Ricky, sneering at the world around you and trying to get everything without giving anything in return."
"I'll show you what I want," he said, taking her in his arms and crushing her against him. He thrilled to the feel of the pliant wonders of her breasts squashed into his chest and to the warmth of the soft woman flesh molded to his body.
"This is what I want and this is what I'm willing to give for it," he said, pressing his groin into hers so she could feel the swollen shaft pushing at the plump mound at the base of her stomach.
"No, no ... oh God, no!" Alix moaned, but he stifled the cries with his mouth over hers, catching the parted lips in a bruising kiss and letting his tongue surge into the warm, exciting cavern beyond.
Alix struggled to free herself, but all she succeeded in doing was firing the heat of his passion higher. As she kicked at his shins and beat against his encircling arms, her full breasts as well as her belly and soft, hairy pussy rubbed against him, driving him out of his mind with lust.
"Alix, I want you," he whispered when she finally broke away from his kiss. "I want you more than I've ever wanted anything in my whole life."
"Well, I don't want you! I don't want any, She stopped in mid-sentence, gasping as he rolled his pulsing cock into the fleshy mound of her sex.
"Yes, I know. You don't want any man," Ricky murmured, kissing his way down her neck and up again to her ear. "But maybe I can make you want me."
Alix's green eyes were wide with surprise. "How did you know that? Who told you?"
He was on the verge of telling her the truth. The pictures of the two of them were hidden in his room, but it wasn't only the lack of proof that stopped him. Somehow he didn't want to force her any more. He wanted her to accept him, to give herself to him as she had to Bobbi.
"Nobody told me," he said soothingly. "It's just that you and Miss Whitney are such close friends that it must be something like that."
"No one else has noticed anything out of the way," Alix said defensively. "Besides, it's not true! You can't prove it!"
"I'm not interested in proving it right now," he said. "All I'm interested in is this . . . and this."
He took a breast in each hand, caressing the full, sensitive mounds through the cloth of dress and bra. The tips firmed and pressed against his palms as though asking for a more intimate caress. One hand ran down across her belly to cup the mound between her thighs, feeling the springy cushion of hair and the plump lips it covered and stroking a finger up the slit to test its heat and moistness.
"Please, don't, Ricky!" Alix begged, trying to ignore the wave of sensuality that flooded her senses. "Have you no decency? I didn't think you'd do this to me. You stopped Donovan from raping me. Surely you're not going to do it now!"
"No, I don't want to rape you. I want to love you," he said, sinking down onto the blanket and pulling her with him.
"But if you know what I am, you know the kind of love I want," Alix said. "So why would you try to force another kind on me?"
"Because I think it's the kind you really want, that after you've tried it you'll realize how inadequate and unsatisfactory a relationship like yours is." He unbuttoned the front of her dress as he talked, easing it off her shoulders and kissing the snowy upper slopes of her breasts while his fingers worked at the hook of her bra.
"No, no, you're wrong! I'm perfectly satisfied! I love Bobbi! We mustn't do this ... We mustn't!"
Alix said, but she was breathing rapidly, and her eyes were soft and limpid. Her body against Ricky's was warm and yielding, and the boy knew she was his for the taking, perhaps not without more verbal persuasion, but his before the evening was over. All he had to do was give her mind a reason it could accept; her body didn't need one. It was already convinced.
"Alix, I've loved you for over a year, thought about you every minute of the day and night, dreamed about what it would be like to have you. Please let me love you ... I need you so badly."
"Need me? I don't understand," she said, her brain spinning dizzily as his hand moved between her thighs to stroke the bare inner surfaces.
"There's been a terrible thing in my life ... an affair that I know is wrong for me. Well, not exactly an affair, but a sick desire for a woman I can never, never have. And it's gotten worse since I fell in love with you, and realized you were out of my reach too. I've got to break the destructive bonds of lust that are closing in on me, and you're the only one who can help me! Please, Alix, please!"
There was confusion and doubt in Alix's eyes, and he was afraid he had gone too far, sounded too dramatic. With a despairing groan because he realized he meant every word of it, he dropped his head to her bared breasts and drew a big, firm nipple into his mouth.
Alix made an involuntary moaning sound. "Oh God, when you do that I can't . . . can't . . . You are an experienced little monster, aren't you?"
Ricky laughed tensely, feeling that she wouldn't reject him now. He pushed the dress down off her hips and caught at the edge of the blanket to fold it around them as he crushed Alix against him. Their mouths met and fused hotly. This time he felt her moist tongue stroke tentatively against his. His hand glided down her side and resumed its caressing of her satiny upper thighs. Then he let it drift across her hip to the resilient flesh of her uppermost buttock. He kneaded it through the fragile fabric of her panties until she rolled onto her back, knocking his hand aside.
Ricky wasn't discouraged. He bent his head to her breasts again and found them warm and alive under his lips. His mouth moved over them at will while Alix watched. She just lay back and let him take his pleasure from the delicious mounds, neither offering nor denying them to him, simply accepting his eager worship.
His hand slid down onto her thighs again, touching them as he had always wanted to when he sat in class with his eyes glued to her tightly closed knees while she read a Shakespeare sonnet or exclaimed over the beauty of Keats or Shelley. He had sat through numberless hours waiting for her control to relax just the tiniest bit, for her knees to open ever so little so that he could look up to the creamy inside of those columns of delicious flesh. He had missed half a semester of work just waiting for those thighs to open. Now they would. His fingers stroked caressingly over the silken skin, palm curved around the dimpled knee before sliding upward to the first beginnings of downy fuzz near the point where the thigh tapered into her groin.
"You have got to be the most beautiful woman in the world," he whispered huskily, sucking one pointed nipple and then the other while his fingers played with the elasticized edge of her panties, prolonging the pleasant agony of knowing he would soon slip them under it and into the fiery forest of pubic hair.
"What are you waiting for?" she asked. "This kind of sex means nothing to me, but since you think I'm the only one who can help you, I'm willing to let you . . . well, you know. So go ahead and get it over with."
"Thank you, Alix," he whispered, locking his lips on hers again and stroking his tongue deep into her mouth. The hand on her breasts rubbed and squeezed the delicate flesh, gently pinching the nipples into rigid peaks and then enjoying the feel of them tickling across his palm.
The fingers of the other hand toyed with the tendrils of silky red hair that had escaped the edge of her panties. Touching the barrier of cloth between her thighs, Ricky held his hand still for a moment. If she was feeling as little excitement as she apparently wanted him to think, why was the crotch of her panties soaked with the honey of her secretions? Why did the perfume and musk of her pussy fill his nostrils?
Alix wasn't only agreeing to let him fuck her, she wanted him to. Maybe she didn't want him as badly as he wanted her, but her body was definitely responding to his. No matter what her mind might be telling her, her body was warm and sexually aroused.
"So much woman," he murmured, suppressing a triumphant chuckle, "and such a waste to throw all this away on that dumb, blonde jock."
"Don't talk like that," Alix said, but her body rolled up tight against his, bringing the mound of her sex into contact with the hard shaft he had just bared. The heat of her vulva through the thin cloth brought a grunt of passion to his lips and sent his fingers probing under the edge of her panties, snaking their way through the thick foliage to separate the hairy lips and slide between them into the slick, hot interior of her cunt.
Alix made a little animal sound deep in her throat as Ricky began to skillfully manipulate the slippery labia and finger the hard little pea of her clit. That he was causing sensual pleasure was obvious. Her breath was coming quickly. Her buttocks rolled slightly. Whatever else this beautiful redhead might be, she wasn't cold. She was as easily aroused, once she permitted intimacies, as any of the more readily available women Ricky had known.
"Darling, darling Alix," he whispered as he tugged the nylon panties down her legs and off. Slipping between her legs, he shoved them wide apart and pressed the throbbing length of his prick right down the middle of the fluffy mass of red hair, feeling the oiled readiness of the rosy slit.
"Hurry, Ricky. Take me!" Alix cried, her hand . darting down to touch his distended penis.
Blinding flashes of erotic shock waves exploded in Ricky's brain as the soft fingers explored his impressive sexual equipment. Falling forward on her, he breathed hotly against her ear.
"Do you like that?" he whispered. "Do you want it?"
"Yes, yes," she panted, her last bastion of resistance gone. "Do it, do it, please!"
"Do what?" he asked, wanting to hear the excitingly explicit verb from her sweet lips.
"You know ... oh damn you, Ricky! Fuck me . . . fuck me!" she gasped and flung her legs wide for the asked-for penetration.