Chapter 6
WE FELL TO THE FLOOR IN A KIND OF MINDLESS trance. Joe was every bit as excited as I was, and I could tell by the way his hands fondled me that he had lost the shyness that once had held him back. The trial, the prison, and the long separation had pushed back the curtains of restraint.
His hands cupped my breasts and tore at the bra that held them away from his touch. I helped him, and together we loosened the strap at the back between my shoulder blades and jerked it away. My flesh fell free and eager into his hands. He pushed the blouse off my shoulders and raked it down until I was naked to the waist. I closed my eyes, possessed by the thrill of knowing that Joe wanted me ... craved me.
When his fingertips touched the nipples of my breast I gasped with pleasure. He whispered in my ear as he massaged the tip-ends of my breasts until they were erect and hard. He kissed my throat, the lower part of my neck, and then slid his mouth down to find one of the nipples. I moaned as he glued his lips over the hardened knob and began to suck.
I had never know it could be so wonderful. I felt that I was floating into a kind of dream-all fire and ringing bells. The pleasure twisted up into my throat and then down into my whole body. I ached to have his hands caress me all over. My need matched and even exceeded his. After all, I had waited for this as long as he had! But even in my ecstasy I felt the need to be cautious.
"Darling-what if somebody should come?"
"Nobody-will," Joe breathed hoarsely. "It's safe!"
I hoped that he-was right, but the fire that was trickling into flames inside my body would have blinded me in any event. I pulled his head closer to my breasts and moaned as his mouth nibbled and pulled at the taut peaks of my torrid breasts.
With one free hand Joe explored his way under my skirt. His warm fingers fumbled past the stretched tightness of my hose and garter and found the silky barrier of my panties. I trembled. I could have fainted with pleasure.
"Yes!" I hissed, my voice so choked with desire that I couldn't recognize it. "Yes ... feel me there, too! Oh, I love that ... I want you to do that!"
He needed no farther invitation. Both his hands disappeared under my skirt and found the elastic of my panties. His thumbs hooked expertly over the tops and peeled them down. I felt the silky material roll down like warm water over my writhing flesh. He pulled the panties to my knees, and I helped him work them quickly down to my ankles, and off. I was naked now under the short skirt, naked and shamelessly alive to his every whim. I wanted him to touch me there, tease me, play with me until his pleasure was as great as mine.
When his hand invaded the soft flesh of my upper thigh again, I shivered and made a little yelping noise deep in my throat. He didn't stop-and I didn't want him to stop. His hand crawled between my legs and buried itself in the fluff of hair. I sighed and fell back, letting my legs open for him. I couldn't have been more numbed with the sweetness of the moment if a thousand volts of electricity had been shot through me.
His fingers worked into the hair, and found the lips of my cunt. He probed and rubbed and found the answering quiver of flesh, the hot moistness that told him of my stimulation. When his finger worked suddenly, deeply, between the edges of flesh I crushed my teeth against his neck and began to give him savage love-bites. That only excited him more.
"The skirt, baby," he husked. "Let's get it off!"
By now I was too aflame to protest. Joe half lifted me up. Together we worked the skirt off my hips. It fell in a twisted swirl at my feet. Now I was naked in the dim light of the little room. Joe pulled a handful of the thick, black choir robes off the wall and spread them on the floor. He kissed me and lowered me to the robes. I lay quietly waiting for him to join my body to his.
Quickly he got out of his own clothes. I watched, fascinated by the realization that at last we were to be one, mated and joined as we should have been so long ago.
When he sank over me I felt his body fit into mine: contour into contour; flesh against flesh. I held him tight, pressing my fingers into his back, pulling him greedily over my breasts and thighs. Our mouths found each other once more and our tongues lashed deeply, wetly together.
"Open your legs," he begged.
I did as he asked, and it seemed that if my passion grew any higher I would scream. My thighs were thumping. A strange, raging impulse was pounding away where Joe's fingers had so recently probed. I felt that I could demand anything of him now. I wanted to feel him there, to feel his proud, stiff rod seeking entrance and being granted it.
And yet when it came, it was in an explosion of agony and sharp, violent pain. I cried and groaned. Once I let out a stifled yelp which he controlled by putting his hand over my mouth.
"The pain will be just for a minute," he promised, his voice husky with desire. "Remember, darling, that I love you!"
The agony grew into a sharp throbbing peak as he entered me. I winced as the enormous stiffness that he possessed probed, inch by inch, into my virgin cleft. And when he made a sudden, sharp plunge and buried himself all the way in, I screamed through my clenched teeth. Love was painful to me-and yet there was a dark, grinding joy to it. And once he was in me, the pain ebbed away through swirls of the most delicious pleasure I had ever experienced.
He waited a moment for me to adjust to what he had done, and then he began to move his hips up and down. The pleasure was indescribable. I knew now what drove Stella Baker to such shameless depths in seducing. He pumped faster, and I demanded he increase even that. Instinctively, I worked my legs up over the small of his back so that he could have more freedom of movement, and so that the pleasure would be greater for both of us.
The next few minutes passed so swiftly that they seemed like clouds moving quickly over a hot sun. I rolled in billows of pleasure as a series of throbbing climaxes rocked me over the edge of restraint. I know now that an animal couldn't have behaved with less abandon. I ground the heels of my feet into Joe's back, urging him to quicken his pounding lust. My fingernails made long, scraping marks over his shoulders and I fed the gorged and burning nipples of my breasts into his mouth at every opportunity.
By the time Joe found release-in a thrust of white hot spasming-I was limp with satiated pleasure, like a hive robbed of all its honey.
Joe fell across me, his knees digging into the robes on which I lay. We did not uncouple, and I could feel his thick rod still throbbing inside me, milking the last sweet drops of pleasure from both of us.
Our mouths found each other like moist sponges, and we kissed passionately to drain the final joy from the act of love.
At last Joe stirred and rolled over on his elbow. His eyes roamed over my nakedness and stopped on the trembling peaks of my breasts. He smiled happily and touched one jutting nipple. He played with it, sending even newer thrills through me.
"It was wonderful, darling...." I breathed.
"It was for me too," he said, thickly. "God-how I've dreamed of having you like this!" His eyes were dark and silent for a moment. He was looking at me tenderly.
"You waited for me, Mary," he said, slowly. "It was your first time ... wasn't it?"
"Yes ... yes, of course it was, Joe. I told you I'd never let any other man touch me. I'd rather die than do that."
He looked away. "I feel like a heel," he muttered, miserably.
"No ... no, you shouldn't."
"The way you-waited," he continued, quietly, "you waited and I didn't. I couldn't even be honest enough to stay away from other women when I had the chance, when I had somebody like you."
"It isn't your fault, Joe. It's just the way things are."
He looked at me. "How can you want a guy like me, Mary?" he asked.
I felt my heart sink.
"Because I love you," I said, simply.
He watched me for another long moment without speaking, and then he said: "I want you to know that no matter what happens, I love you."
"Nothing is going to happen," I smiled. "Nobody has to know about this afternoon. We're together, that's the important thing. And nothing ... nothing in this world can keep us apart. We'll meet. We'll find ways of meeting."
He nodded, a strange sad look in his eyes.
"Joe ... what we've done this afternoon ... we did because we love each other," I continued. "I'm even glad that it happened in a chapel. It makes it ... well ... even more right."
He nodded and then looked away.
"We'd better get dressed," he said, soberly. We'd better not stretch our luck too far, eh?"
That night after dinner, Warden Baker retired to his study to do some paper work. Stella and I did the dishes together.
There had been a kind of armed truce between us for the three days I had been at Mason Reformatory. We had spoken only a few words to each other, a strained politeness that was getting on my nerves. So I was glad when Stella suddenly began to chat.
I responded as warmly as I could. But I should have known something was behind Stella's sudden change of tone. She wanted something from me, and so I wasn't surprised when she turned with her hands still in the dish water and lowered her voice to a whisper.
"I'm going to see Monk tonight. You can do me a favor by keeping Ben occupied."
I stared at her, the old disgust returning. But I didn't dare make her angry. "What do you mean occupied?" I demanded.
"I mean talk to him-do whatever you canto keep his mind off the fact that I'm not in the house."
"Suppose he tries to find you."
"He won't as long as you keep him busy."
I dried a dish in silence. And then I shook my head. "I don't like deceiving the warden. He's been nice to me, and...."
"Listen to me, you silly little slut," Stella hissed. "Do you think I don't know the game you're playing?"
"Of course you do, but I told you, it's only because I love Joe."
"And you don't think I love Monk; is that it?"
"I don't know ... but I think if you did, you wouldn't have done what you did with Joe."
Her eyes burned into me. "Maybe that's because you and I aren't built alike, sister! You're young and easy satisfied. Me, I'm not. I know all about your background, sheltered and pampered and brought up to think there's only one man in the world fit to crawl into bed with you. Well, I grew up on another street. I had to make it with my body for years before I was lucky-if that's the word for it-lucky enough to marry somebody like the warden. When you've been used to having men want you ... and used to wanting men ... it's not easy to say no to a good looking piece of young stud like Joe Phillips."
"I suppose not."
She spat out some breath contemptuously. "I know what you think of me. You think I'm a whore; and you feel sorry for Ben Baker. Maybe what you don't know is that he's still in love 'with his dead wife. He wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole. We haven't slept together once."
"Well," I stammered, embarrassed by her sudden raw confession. "The warden isn't exactly a young man."
"You're telling me," she huffed. "But if it wasn't for me, he'd be dead right now-dead from drinking. After his wife died he came into Pleasanton every night of the week and sat in the corner of this bar I-worked in, ordering double shots one right after another. I felt sorry for the old bastard. I began to talk to him. And the first thing you know, he asked me to marry him."
"You didn't have to."
A sneer curled her lips. "You ever work from five 'til after midnight toting drinks in a cheap bar."
"No, I...."
"You're damn right you haven't. Well, then, who are you to tell me it's wrong to take advantage of any kind of offer that would take me out of that dump and put me in decent clothes and a nice house?"
I had no answer for that. Deep in my heart I began to feel sorry for Stella. I wanted to apologize to her, but something held me back. I decided she would resent an apology as much as anything else, coming from me.
"So the least you can do for me is to help me if I ask you," Stella demanded. "After all, did I spill the beans about your little tricking-out this afternoon?"
My heart froze in my breast. "What do you mean?" I stammered.
She grinned wickedly. "You know what I mean ... I mean what you and your precious beau were doing in the chapel this afternoon. How was he, honey? Good as you expected?"
I colored and looked away. She made me feel cheap, and I was frightened that Joe and I had been sp easily caught.
Suddenly she patted my shoulder with a rough gentleness. "Don't worry-my lips are sealed. But remember, we're in this thing together. You got your man and I got mine. You help me and...."
"Stella."
We both froze. It was the warden calling from his study.
"What you want, hon?" Stella called back.
"Have you seen my pipe ... the briar?"
"I think it's on the table by your bed. Just stay where you are, hon ... I'll ask Mary to get it for you!"
She turned to me, her eyes narrowing shrewdly. "There you are," she breathed. "Now you take him his pipe-and keep him occupied. If he does find out I'm not here, then you makeup something. Something good!"
"But what?" I pleaded, desperate.
She smiled loosely. "Tell him I had to see a friend about a dog."
Keeping Warden Baker "occupied" wasn't as difficult as I had thought. He never once mentioned Stella; and I wondered, as we talked, if he wasn't aware of Stella's frequent trysts with Monk. Perhaps he knew and didn't care.
I was beginning to believe that Mason Reformatory was the most complex nest of spies and informers in history. Certainly if Joe and I had been observed going to the chapel, then our every move would be watched. And I wasn't foolish enough to believe that only the prisoners had spies. The warden undoubtedly had his share.
We talked for almost an hour. I was ready to go to my room, to give up the pretense of sheltering Stella's little escapade-when I heard the front door slam. I saw the curious look pass over the warden's face and I cursed Stella for being noisy. It was odd that she would take such elaborate precautions to sneak away from the house and then come banging back in like that.
"Must be Stella...." Warden Baker said, his voice dry as cotton.
I said nothing.
But if I had, it would have been forgotten in the confusion of the next few minutes; because, almost immediately the door of the warden's study was pushed violently open, and Stella staggered through it. I stared up at her in disbelief.
Her hair was disheveled and a trickle of blood was splashed across her forehead. She was holding her head and sobbing.
"Stella!" the warden gasped, starting up from his chair.
And then we both saw the other figure-the one behind Stella. He wore the prison-gray uniform, but he had a rifle in one hand, one like I had seen Monk carrying. And in his other hand he held a pistol, pointing it at the warden.
And then I realized the man was Joe.