Chapter 5

Judy recovered from that spasm of delight to find herself staring up at three people she could only think of as strangers. True, Lowell and she had a measure of intimacy established; they'd screwed in the woods-he'd helped her get over being a virgin-but she didn't feel she really knew or understood him. As for Gwen and Edith, they were hardly even nodding acquaintances. Edith surely wouldn't nod to her if they met on the street, and Gwen came from a world even more alien to Judy's than the Porters and Lowell.

Strangers, then, they hovered over her and stared at her nakedness. They weren't simply looking at a naked body; they were looking at a girl who was spreadeagled and being felt up-and who was writhing to the pleasure of it!

Omigod! How lewd can I get! How far will I go to prove to myself I can do what I want to! And then, shriveling inside, she thought, How can I ever look any of them in the face in the morning?

But the broad, rough-skinned hand was still on her pussy and the fingers refused to be ignored. They poked and rubbed and probed and she couldn't keep her hips from undulating or shut out the sparks of delightful sensation that leaped inward. She couldn't prevent her breath from coming in trembling gasps or stop her boobies from wobbling. Not even the horrible awareness that Edith had most likely tried twice to kill Colleen was enough to overcome the delicious waves of excitement that washed over her.

"Oh, my! What pretty little tits!" exclaimed Gwen. "Oooh!"

"Quite firm, too," observed Edith. "Surprising thrust for a position like that."

Gwen scoffed at Cal. "Pretty crude, aren't you? How come you only got her half undressed?"

Cal replied with a good humored laugh. "What's the goddamn hurry? I got what I want."

"Shame to leave a nice figure like that only half uncovered." Edith surveyed Judy critically. "Can't tell if she's really got a good build or not."

Cal sighed. "Always bitching! Well, I'm not letting go. If you want her naked, be my guest."

Gwen giggled. "Your husband's so delicate," she remarked to Edith. "How do you stand it?" She knelt and reached under Judy, working the zipper the rest of the way to its stops.

They'd have to untie her to get it off, Judy thought. They couldn't leave her spreadeagled this way and get it off.

But Lowell lifted her hips while Gwen slid the skirt upward under the taut buttocks. Judy winced and shut her eyes, mortified, as she felt the dress being pulled away from her pussy and exposing her gently rounded belly. Without fuss, they worked the wadded garment over her breasts and shoulders and head. Gwen left it stretched between Judy's elbows and stood for another long look.

"Hmm! Gee, she does have a figure! And her hair's natural! Ooh, look how thick that fur is!"

Judy felt herself flush furiously. She could stand any amount of handling better than the comments, she thought.

Edith dropped to the floor beside the table and felt Judy's breast. "God, these are firm!" she exclaimed. "Did you feel these breasts, Cal?"

"Of course! Had a good mouthful of the chocolate one."

"Oh, Christ, Cal! Won't you ever get over that small town drivel about chocolate and vanilla faucets?" demanded his wife in exasperation.

"I doubt it."

Judy admired Cal's imperturbable manner. She admired the skill of his fingers a great deal more. He was massaging the inner walls of her slit and she could feel the skin tightening over the mounds of her pussy as she swelled. Threads of excitement quivered throughout her body and she lost track of which muscles were jerking. Her hips twisted continuously, though, and she tugged fiercely at the bonds that held her wrists and ankles.

Edith's fingers felt entirely different on Judy's breast from either Lowell's or Cal's. They were smaller, for one thing, and smoother. But they seemed to her to have a more delicate touch, as well, and they pinpointed centers of sensitivity the men's hands had merely brushed by accident. To Judy's amazement and consternation a whole new body of pleasure waves started swelling over her. When Gwen joined Edith and began fondling the other breasts, Judy felt herself slipping away from reality into a hazy world of sensation and response. Whatever self-control she'd retained seemed to desert her in a rush. She writhed violently and had trouble simply trying to sort out the sources of the clashing jolts of excitement.

But she did watch Lowell, who continued for a time to stand over her and study the orgiastic scene. She was struck by the expression of blazing intensity in his eyes. It was almost a gloating look, she thought in distraction. It was almost an unholy glee at the way she and her three tormentors had merged into a single writhing being in their mutual enjoyment. She blamed her impression on the distortion caused by her own wild emotional state and quivered with anticipation when the quiet figure finally stirred.

Before adding his caresses to those she was already enjoying, he brought several cushions. With one hand under her to raise her from the table, he slid one cushion after another beneath her. Their softness padded the support and removed the irritation of hitting the hard surface, but they stretched and arched her, too, so that her nerves seemed to he closer to her skin.

He bent over her then to drag his fingers lightly along her taut muscles. To her, they felt like fingers of fire, arousing throbbing wells of delicious reaction and intensifying her awareness of all the other sensations that assailed her. Dimly, she realized Cal was stepping over one of her thighs and settling between them. She felt the pressure of his arms wedged against the tender inner muscles and his fingers spreading her already gaping pussylips. And she felt a warm, intimate pressure descend into the yawning depression around her cuntmouth. She knew instantly it wasn't the smooth-domed cockhead she was waiting for so eagerly. It was too broad and flexible and gentle for that. But at a light, deft stroke along the floor of her slit she awoke to the fact she was feeling Cal's mouth and part of his face.

"Oh! Ahhh!" Moans of delight burst from her gasping throat. "Cal ... Oh, Cal!"

He licked slowly and deliberately and every stroke of his tongue aroused her to a new level of ecstasy. She threw herself from side to side on the cushions, her buttocks hardening and her belly jerking frantically.

"Oh, please!" she wailed. "Oh, please! I'm so excited!"

Lowell crouched by her hips and nibbled at the straining flesh. She gasped and cried out, astounded at the intense pleasure the unexpected nips induced in her. He nibbled along her side and upward onto her now protruding belly and searing tides of heat surged over her. The two women had individual approaches to nipple stimulation. Gwen rubbed her teeth on the one she held in her mouth, rolling and twisting it while her tongue lay wet and warm on its tip. The squeaking of enamel against rubbery flesh made Judy's shoulders jerk erratically. Edith had sucked nipple and aureole past her teeth, sheathing her teeth with her lips, and she scrubbed the tender lump with the broad surface of her tongue while she gulped at the tingling flesh.

"Oh, dear God!" Judy rolled her head wildly as she sensed the approach of an orgasm. "Please, please! Somebody fuck me! Please!"

Lowell stopped tonguing her navel and raised his head. "Come on, Cal. She's pretty new to this. You can finish eating her some other time." He uttered a low, wicked chuckle. "Man, she's got something inside that tight little twat of hers just eating itself up waiting for a nice, juicy cock!"

"Oh, yes! God, yes!" Judy panted. "Please! I've just got to have it!"

Cal straightened and ran his hand over her belly. "Okay, baby. Got that little cunt all warmed up. Might as well give it something to chew on."

She quivered with impatience while he jerked off his clothes. She had only momentary glimpse of a gnarled, stubby hard-on before he dropped to his knees between her thighs again. He used his thumbs to stretch her pussylips apart while he positioned his cockhead. But at the first thrust, the meaty head plunged through her cuntmouth and bored the length of her vagina.

"Ahhh! Ohhh, yes! Oh, Cal! Mr. Porter! Fuck me good!"

He extended his legs, letting each of them rest on one of hers, his insteps hooked over her ankles and his knees lying outside hers. Supporting his upper torso on his forearms, he let the weight of his ass drive his cock. With bold, powerful strokes, he pistoned the heavy cock in her, grinding her clitoris under his pelvic arch at each surge.

She groaned. His belly was a hard, wire-bristled slab of rock riding over the sensitive, drum-taut mound her arched position presented. His thighs ground on hers and the steel wool coarseness of his pubic hair rubbed her pussy raw. The in-and-out sawing of the gnarled, warped shaft inflamed her cuntmouth and brought tears of passion to her eyes. His cockhead was a huge bulb in the middle of her gut, levering among her organs and making them churn. She hovered at the edge of orgasm, delayed only by her inability to clutch at the hairy beast on top of her.

But as Cal's thrust grew increasingly urgent and his panting changed to guttural grunts and his sweat poured over her, the need to clasp him in her arms diminished and her excitement became a savage, buffeting lust.

"Oh, Cal! Fuck! Fuck hard! Harder, Cal!" And then she cried, in an undulating scream, "Now! Blast me!"

Cal roared like a rutting stag. He slammed against her pussy and hung on it, quivering, while fierce jerks of his cock pumped his cum into the greedy cunt.

Judy's muscles softened and she sagged against the cushions. She closed her eyes and rested her lips against one arm, her breath puffing on the warm skin. Cal collapsed, then wearily propped himself up to relieve the pressure on the slender body beneath him.

"You've got an educated twat, kid!" he exclaimed. "Gnaws at a guy's cock like it had teeth!"

She mumbled, "I didn't know." He was likely just saying that, she supposed-probably some kind of line he fed every woman he fucked. She wasn't equipped any differently, so far as she knew.

"Lot of broads never do learn how to do that," he said in a confiding tone. "Be surprised." I couldn't care less!, she thought. Not right now! All I want to know is when you are going to untie me. Her joints were in agony. She knew she wasn't being injured, but the agony only partly offset the total numbness of her hands and feet.

Cal made no move to withdraw his softening cock from her; in one way she was glad, because the continued sense of fullness was a pleasant element of the long slide from the heights of stimulation she'd scaled. If only he could untie her without moving!

She felt something at her wrists and heard Edith murmur, "Better get the poor child loose. Her fingernails are blue."

Gwen replied petulantly, "What makes her a 'poor child,' for God's sake? She's only a year younger than me!"

"Of course, dear," remarked Edith sweetly. "But you've probably got at least five years' experience on her."

"Oh, shit!" Gwen snorted. "Not unless she's completely innocent!"

"Well, don't go betting any of my money," Lowell said. "She was a virgin yesterday morning."

"What!" Cal yelped. "You busted a cherry yesterday without even giving me a coin flip?"

Lowell laughed derisively. "You're a big boy now, Cal. I figure a guy does his own prospecting for cherries. Besides, what's so great about punching a virgin? Unless a guy's so uptight he needs the ego boost of saying he's the first one in?"

With her wrists untied, Judy began to suffer the pain of restored circulation. Somebody was chafing her hands, but she hadn't the energy to turn her head and open her eyes. And somebody else was unfastening the knots at her ankles. She realized too late the agony of recovering from being tied was worse than that of being helpless. But she knew secretly she'd experienced excitement at a rare level. She'd go through it again someday. And she wouldn't fight it. Not with the right man.

When Cal finally did pull his dripping cock out of her and let her up, she wriggled back into her dress at once. Lowell laughed at her.

"I don't care!" she flared. It did seem ridiculous, and she was embarrassed to seem so prudish. But it was a compulsion; if they couldn't see the naked flesh, maybe they wouldn't remember how she'd looked on that table every time they looked at her.

She sank exhausted into one of the deep arm chairs and watched the other four. She easily understood the savage excitement of the two women and Lowell; they'd had the stimulus of watching Cal while he'd fucked a newcomer to the group, and they hadn't had any relief. What startled her was the way Cal's limp cock filled and hardened the moment he got his hands on Gwen. And she was distinctly uncomfortable as she watched the tenderness and growing intimacy between Lowell and his sister.

Warned by Cal's quick recovery, she took the first chance she had to sneak out. She'd no more than gotten inside her own room than she heard a light tapping on the door. She opened it a crack and peeked out, half afraid it might be one of the two women coming to take her back to the party, but it was Colleen.

"Oh!" exclaimed Judy happily. "Come in!"

Colleen entered quietly and crossed to the door connecting Judy's room to Sarah's. She closed it silently, then came back and sat on the edge of the bed.

"You okay, girl?" she asked. Judy nodded. "A little sore here and there, but not hurt,"

"Worth the trouble?"

Judy hesitated. "I'm not sure. With the right men it would be. Maybe the right women would help, too. Mr. Porter doesn't really turn me on that much."

"You left early."

"Yes. They're still at it."

Colleen clucked. "Go take a shower. Helps get the stiffness out. Washes off the sweat and whatever, too."

When Judy came out of the shower, primly clad in her pajamas, Colleen insisted on giving her a massage. The strong, work-hardened fingers soothed and relaxed her; she caught herself wishing home had been like these moments with Colleen. The housekeeper said little, but she was gentle and motherly in what she did say.

"You don't mind, do you?" she asked once. "I know I ain't like your own mother, but you're just the age my baby would be now. If only Oliver hadn't been such an important man, " she sighed. "There's a few families in the world just can't spoil their name without it takes something away from all the folk. Oliver just couldn't have let it be said him and an Irish servant girl had a baby out of wedlock."

Judy listened drowsily. It wasn't strange, probably, that Colleen should have that one kink in her memory. It would be far easier to accept the idea that she'd succumbed to her employer's advances than to admit that she, herself, had been his child and conceived by somebody else. And apart from that self-deception, the woman seemed shrewd and alert. It would have been impossible to replace her-to find any one person who would cherish all the tasks it took to keep Garlock Heights alive.

Judy tiptoed into Sarah's room after Colleen had left; she felt guilty about having left Sarah and had to be sure she was in no need. She was startled to find Sarah wide awake and serenely composed.

"Hello, child. You've learned about that swapping game, haven't you."

"Why, Sarah! Yes. I ... "

"Never mind. It's good to know what it's like.

Maybe you'll want to do some more and maybe you won't. But you know." She changed the subject without a pause or transition. "Terrible accident you had, Judy. Lucky you're alive."

"Yes."

"That was deliberate. Those stairs were sound." Judy gasped. How does she know? she wondered.

"Funny thing..." Sarah skidded onto a tangent again. "Funny thing about premonition. There really is a sixth sense, you know. Now take Lowell. You weren't any more than out the door yesterday than Lowell started muttering to himself. 'Damn kid's going to go right straight to Colleeen,' he said. Yes, he did! 'Go right straight to Colleen and then down the back steps for a shortcut to get her some coffee. Just sure as hell!' he said. And that's exactly what happened, isn't it! But we don't trust premonitions. We don't do anything about them. Think how he'd have felt if you'd been killed!"

Judy shuddered. A lot of good that would have done! She tensed. "You heard him say that?"

"Of course."

"But . .. but you...." To all appearances, she recalled, Sarah had lapsed into one of those near-coma states that told so surely of her coming death.

Sarah laughed. It was a low sound Judy had to strain to hear, but it had all the dirty, triumphant, scheming overtones a laugh could hold. "It wouldn't have done for Lowell to hear what we were talking about yesterday, child. Now, would it?"

"Sarah! You were! You were faking!"

"A convenient thing, my dear. I consider it a rare privilege. It won't last forever, I suppose."

"Why .. . why you scoundrel!" Judy gasped with suppressed laughter.

"He interrupted us too soon, child. I wanted to ramble just a little more. The fact is, you're the child Colleen had to give up eighteen years ago. Where else would Oliver send his granddaughter but to his sister?"

"I thought so!" whispered Judy. She listened to bath water running in the apartment next door and felt a sense of closeness to the marvelously preserved woman in there who was her mother. The comfortable feeling she'd had with Colleen during the massage-the warmth they'd shared-all of that was right. "I knew it was too much of a coincidence, Sarah! I knew it! She's a little confused, though. She keeps saying Oliver was the father."

Sarah smiled tolerantly. "She'll get that straightened out, dear. It's a harmless little obsession ... a notion she got in her head when Oliver .. . when he had the accident." She shook her head. "So tragic. I really think Oliver was beginning to turn human, too. He'd even let Mike come to be with us for a couple of weeks." She stared into space, musing silently.

Judy watched patiently. She wondered about Sarah. The woman seemed too vital to be dying. If it had been cancer or some other terminal disease it would have been understandable for her strength to rally this way at times. But it hardly seemed reasonable when she was dying of the injuries she'd received in the crash. Colleen's bath water stopped running and Judy visualized her mother-still a desirable piece of tail, as Edith and Lowell had both remarked-lowering herself into the steaming water to soak. She could even hear splashing and a moment of vigorous thumping. Colleen was a vital, lusty woman. It was a shame she couldn't have had a more rewarding life, but maybe that could be rectified to some small extent now.

Tomorrow, she thought. No, tonight! As soon as she finishes her bath! I'll go to her and tell her! We'll have a cup of coffee together and get to know each other the way a girl and her mother ought to. And we won't have to be apart! And it won't matter who came along nineteen years ago and made promises he didn't keep She waited. She'd hear the water draining and know Colleen was out of the tub-or ready to get out. She thought she heard Colleen's door open and close quietly, but Colleen wouldn't leave a tubful of water and...Judy stiffened. Penelope would have! Penelope drew only hot water into the tub. She let it sit until it had cooled to the right temperature! Some silly thing about hot water losing some of its hardness in the heating process. Maybe Colleen was like that.

She rose and whispered to Sarah. "I want to see if Colleen's in her bath or not. I'm going to stick my head through the door and call to her. Okay?"

Sarah nodded emphatically. "Of course! And ask her what on earth she's doing taking a bath at this time of night. It's past midnight!"

Judy opened the interconnecting door. She heard nothing. That must have been Colleen going down for coffee, she thought. She turned to Sarah. "I think she must have gone downstairs for something. If it's all right, I'll wait in there for her."

"Certainly, dear. I'm all right. You go on in." The apartment was neat and cheery. Judy could see into her newly identified mother's bedroom, where the covers had been thrown back from the crumpled bed.

"No!" Judy protested aloud to herself. "She wouldn't get out of bed to take a bath! Why would anybody? Not unless she were sleeping with somebody." She realized she was listening to water dripping into the filled tub-a drop at a time, at long intervals-so she was instinctively counting while she waited from one to the next. The sound annoyed her, as dripping faucets always did, and she finally rushed toward the bath to tighten the faucet.

Colleen was in the tub. Water lapped gently over her face, blurring the strong lines of her jaw and the crinkles around her eyes.

Judy held her breath. She fought to suppress the horrified scream that swell in her throat. She had to yield sooner or later. And with the release of tension the scream brought, it also brought unconsciousness.

The sun was shining through her window when she awoke. She lay for a time with gritted teeth and clenched fists while she tried to convince herself she'd had a nightmare. But it was no use. And while she was trying she became aware of the fact she was listening to Sarah's waking breathing. She stumbled out of bed and pulled her robe around her, then went in to Sarah.

"Child, child!" Sarah's voice was soft and compassionate. "Are you all right?"

"As much as I could be," Judy replied. She wailed suddenly. "She didn't even know! She never did now about me!"

Sarah reached up to lay her fingers on Judy's arm. She squeezed while Judy's trembling subsided. At last she said, "She knew. She knew, child."

"No, she didn't! How could she?"

"I don't know. But she did. She knew when we got the first letter from John McAllister."

"What! What letter?"

"When you turned eighteen. He wrote to Oliver .. . said they'd kept their end of the bargain. The money was all used up, he said, and if Oliver didn't want to take care of you, you were on your own. And Oliver talked to Colleen." She paused for a moment, then added, "We were on our way to the McAllisters when the accident happened. We were going to get you. And Colleen knew."

Judy listened in stunned silence. As she slowly recovered a measure of reason, she shuddered. "Sarah! I heard the killer go out of Colleen's room! I heard her door close just before I went in to wait!"

"Well...You didn't, child."

"But-"

"I know. You told me you had. You went in to wait for her. But they had to come through this room when you screamed. Her other door was bolted on the inside."

Judy clearly heard the note of puzzlement in Sarah's voice. She couldn't believe what Sarah was saying. "It couldn't have been! They'd have had to come through here!"

"I know. And we knew they didn't. Child..."

"Yes?" Judy knew what Sarah was trying to tell her.

"Child, nobody killed Colleen. She did it, herself."

"No! No, Sarah! She couldn't have!"

"She couldn't go on living without her father. He was all she'd ever had in the world. Don't feel bad, dear. Having you was like getting to know a total stranger."

"But Joey! The coffee!"

"She wouldn't leave him alone, would she? Just that one cup, Judy. She could have used anything from my stand. And then herself."

Judy shook her head and stumbled from the room. She stopped at the sound of Sarah's voice; "Don't go, child. Stay while you let yourself adjust. Come, I'll just go on about myself and maybe about Oliver. I'll just remember aloud while you get used to it."

Judy returned obediently and sank onto the bedside chair, hands folded listlessly in her lap.

Sarah rambled. Judy listened half-heartedly when the woman mentioned the relationship between Oliver and Mike.

"Unhappy day, that was. Too much alike, perhaps, and born into worlds that didn't meet. Mike was as powerfully determined as Oliver-never compromised in his life. And he and Oliver held to different sets of principles," she sighed. "I always thought I could have seen the overlap if I'd known what the disagreement was. But neither one would say a word about it. Not one word! And Mike left hating Oliver, and Oliver watched him go, hating him just as heartily."

"And Oliver didn't change the will?"

"Oh, no, dear! What was right was right, you know. Property rights had nothing to do with a man's beliefs, you see. They were a matter of blood lines ... and alliances. No, nothing could have induced Oliver to change that document." She sighed again. "Only three things were ever important to that man, Judy. One was his principles. The second was his blood. And the third was the Garlock name. 'That's part of the legacy,' he said more than once. 'A man's got no more right to trifle with that than with the principle in his estate.' And that was probably the one thing he and Mike never did disagree on."

Funny, thought Judy. Colleen said that, too. The Garlock name was a sacred thing.