Chapter 6

ZOE'S FIRST GLIMPSE OF THE TAWNLEY Feather Farm almost took her breath away. The pickup suddenly cut away from the traveled ruts, heading across the pastures and then through two hills-and there it was.

All at once she was out of the wind-blown plains and into a marvelously beautiful canyon; the loveliest place she had ever seen. A gray, stone mansion, with red trim, was built against the rocky ledge behind it, so perfectly that it seemed part of the awesome cliff. It was surrounded by wheel-shaped beds of multi-colored gravel, set with lines of silvered spruces all of the same precise size.

Less than a mile away, a lesser house loomed up, its exterior done in a wild blue that glistened in the fading sunlight. Beyond it, there were so many small houses that Zoe could not count them, in varied and gaudy colors, all set into the cliffs and the valley floor. Away to the right of the big house, there were great sprawling buildings that looked like factories of some kind-and the activity inside them indicated that that was what they were. There were at least a half dozen of them, stretching toward the horizon.

But the thing that fascinated Zoe more than anything else, was the brilliant array of birds, their tail feathers a sea of waving color. Everywhere you looked-on both sides of the great house, around the second house, among the little ones, and far into the endless nooks of this unbelievable valley-there were pens of gorgeous fighting cocks. There must have been two or three hundred different pens, perhaps more, each of them holding several hundred birds. Chut-chutting loudly, calling attention to their spectacular feathers in green and blue and red and black, they strutted proudly about their premises, for all the world as if they owned every inch of the land that their sharpened spurs threatened.

Zoe gasped as she surveyed it all, hardly noticing Link's stopping of the car, his helping her out onto the marble steps that led to the mansion veranda ... God, marble steps yet!

She breathed, "It's--Why, Link, it's the most beautiful place I ever saw in my life! Jock told me it was pretty, but I never dreamed it could be like this!"

His tight face didn't change, and his only answer to her was a deep grunt. She had no idea whether he meant it as appreciation or as a sneer. She followed him up the marble steps and across the spacious porch. He held open the front door with its silver knocker and knob, and walked into Link Tawnley's home ahead of him.

The living room was so vast that she felt lost in it, and the lostness was enhanced by the furnishings that only a man could have chosen. It was done in tan leather, with window coverings of bamboo and carpeting of a hard weave in deep red. There was no frill, no froth, no woman's touch anywhere. The room seemed to shout that its owner did not intend any but male hands to touch it or any but male eyes to view it.

Link said crisply, "Sit down, Zoe. I'll call Jock." He went to the foot of a circular staircase and raised his bass voice to a shout. "Jock! Come down here, boy. You have company."

There was the soft thud of boots on thick carpeting, a floor above them. Then the thudding came down the stairs and into the living room where Zoe sat. She stood up, waiting, hoping-and scared to death. What would Link do with her, now that she had seen his hideaway, if Jock refused to claim her?

The younger man squinted a little in the half darkness of the room, eyeing his father, then frowning-at last peering about. Link snapped on a pole lamp and directed one of its beams toward Zoe. Jock whirled toward her, and his face went as gray as death.

Then, with a great groan of joy, he sprang to her and gathered her in to his arms. His words were a low moan, "Zoe! Oh, God, God ... Zoe, Zoe, it's you!" And he was kissing her wildly, wetly, his tears a flood down both their faces. Long, long he held her there, kissing and crying, his whole body shaking violently, his face mingling his sweat and tears.

When he released her at last, they stood apart with their arms still about each other, and faced Link. The older man had not changed his position since Jock came into the room. He was still standing so stiffly erect that he seemed twice his six-foot height; his hands were fisted and his bronze face was grim.

He waited a few seconds as if expecting them to speak. When they didn't, he said tersely, "Your reunion is touching, children, but if it is as real as it appears to be, why haven't you told me about your wife, Jock?'

The boy hesitated, coughed, and finally stammered, "Well, I--Well, Link, I've been trying to find the ... the right time for it. But you've been gone so much and been so upset by other things when you were home ... that I ... well, I-"

"Never mind." Link's tone was still harsh and unyielding. "You knew I'd refuse to recognize any such goddamn foolishness, and you wanted to postpone a scene as long as you could."

Jock nodded, pulling Zoe tighter against himself.

Link's voice took on an icier note, an edge that was plainly meant to cut deep-and did, straight through Zoe's whole being. "All right, damn it all to hell, I don't disappoint you. You'll get exactly what you expected. I'll annul this silly marriage tomorrow. I don't want any woman here, and I damn well won't have any whorish sister of that slut Clitey hanging around!"

Jock dropped Zoe from his arms and stepped forward, apparently stung into unheard-of defiance by his quick fury. "Now wait a minute, Link! Nobody-not even my father-can call my wife a whore!"

Link's steel-cold eyes blinked in amazement. But he stood his grim ground, leaning forward ever so little toward Jock. "Not even if it's the truth, son?"

"But it's not the truth!" Jock took a step toward the older man. "Oh, I know what Clitey is, damn it. But Zoe isn't. She got to Clitey's the same day we did, fresh from straight-laced Missouri. Nobody had ever touched her before I did. We broke each other in-and fell in love!"

"I know all that. Clitey and I were amused at the thought of your cock and her crotch, both unused, getting together that night. But don't let her inexperience throw you. Any sister of Clitey's will turn into a slut if she's not one already. And how do you know she hasn't become one since you last saw her? She could have screwed a hundred men-and probably has."

"She hasn't, I know. She's not that kind of girl."

"Oh, hell, boy. You don't know a goddamn thing about women-who's good and who's bad among them. But I do, and I know there are damn few who are worth shooting ... Now hear me, both of you. I won't have this girl living her, and that's final. She'll go back to Clitey's, where she belongs, tomorrow, and your marriage will be annulled."

Jock shouted, "I won't give her up! I'll go with her. You're not going to separate us just because you don't want women here!"

His father shouted back, "I can keep you from marrying her until you're twenty-one-and that's three years, son. It would be a longtime to live with a shit, and that's what she'd be if she spent three years in your bed; a one-man slut!"

Zoe heard Jock groan, "Oh, God, God!" as he fell back the step he had taken.

She stepped forward now, closer to Link than Jock had ventured, feeling sudden strength because she was going to do battle for more than her marriage, more than herself.

"Listen to me, both of you men. I'd never have come here, knowing how Link was sure to feel about me, if I hadn't had to ... I didn't want to bear my baby without its father beside me ... Yes, you heard me right! Go on, look dumfounded-and I'm glad you are. Jock got me pregnant the night he married me, planting his baby in me either before or after the ceremony. No other man has been into me since-and I'll let any doctor check me that you want to call, to trace my pregnancy to that night!"

She paused to shake off Jock's arms that had closed around her, to free her cheek of his eager kiss. "I'm carrying your grandchild, Link. You're going to accept it and support it-either here or somewhere else. You're going to let me live with my husband, the man who put this child inside me. I don't care whether you like me or hate me. I'll fight you and anybody else you want me to, for the sake of the baby that's coming out of my body seven months from now!"

There was a deathly silence in the room-a stillness that grew heavier with every breath-that went on and on until Zoe felt suffocated by it. Jock was holding her hand, but standing perfectly still with it in his grasp, his face dazedly aglow. Link's face was ablaze under its tan, his shoulders thrown back, his feet wide apart in a stance of pent-up rage. But neither of them said a word. Nor did Zoe. She had already said all the words she needed to say, or wanted to.

Finally, when the silence seemed to be choking them all, Link turned on his heel and stomped across the room toward the front hall. At the door he swung about and gritted: "Stay then, girl. Even a devil like me can't throw out his grandchild-at least not if its mother will behave herself ... Take her up to the house in the hills behind the factories, Jock. It will have more privacy than any of the others. And it's furnished-if Mendez hasn't moved the stuff somewhere else. You can live there with her, at least until she has this baby that she's making such a goddamn fuss about. But keep her out of my way, boy. If she ever sasses me again, I'll throw her off this place, grandchild or no grandchild!"

Then he was gone. But, to Zoe, he was still there, and she had the feeling that he would always be with them. The magnificence of his bearing, his personality, his strength-all of them were a wholeness that she had never known before, had never even glimpsed in any other man. She was desperately sorry for any woman who had ever loved Link Tawnley or ever would; she was sorry for Clitey, who would "scrub his floors and his boots," if he'd let her. And she hoped, more than any other hope in her heart, that Jock would some day develop a little of Link's magnificence-without any of his meanness.

Jock said, "Gads, you were terrific, baby! I never heard anybody talk up to Link the way you did."

She sighed. "Somebody had to."

His face fell. "I know. I was a washout."

She kissed him. "I didn't mean that. You did all you could-today. But you should have told him a long time ago."

"Sure, I should. I'm sorry as hell that I didn't."

He took her hand, his face losing its apologetic bitterness, gaining relief and joy, and eager anticipation. "Oh, baby, baby, we're going to be the happiest couple in Texas-or anywhere else! I'm going to take the best care of you that I can. You're going to be loved like nobody was ever loved before!"

His voice dropped to a near-whisper. "Zoe, do we have to-to wait till you've had the baby before we can screw again?"

She took his face in her hands and kissed his cheek, his chin, and at last, his lips. "Of course not, Jock, honey. You can screw me as hard, and as often, as you want to, for a long time yet. I've heard women say that a couple can have intercourse up to the last two or three months, And that will give us weeks and weeks of-"

"Of the best damn screwing that any man ever gave his wife."

"Sure, Jock."

She wished, suddenly, that he were a little older, perhaps even a little less boyish in his fervor. All his elation was for her, for himself, for the sexual intercourse he couldn't wait to enjoy. The future seemed unimportant to him, the baby second-best. He wanted to get Zoe undressed and into bed as fast as he could, get his hard on, stab her to his body's content. Nothing else seemed to matter to him at all. Would it, ever?

He pulled her toward the circled steps that led upstairs. "Come help me pack a few things. I'll get the rest of my junk tomorrow. All I need now is a change of clothes and a toothbrush. Well, maybe my pajamas if I ever quit screwing you tonight. Oh, baby, baby, I'm getting it hard already! Shall we get a piece in my room here, before we go over to the house that Link gave us?"

She froze in his arms. "No! For God's sake, no, Jock! We don't want Link coming back to this house and finding us still here.. We have to get out of here as soon as we can. And I'm never coming back unless he asks me to-which we both know he never will!"

Jock paused on a stair step. "Don't feel that way about him, honey. He's mad at us now, but he'll get over it. And, sweet as you are, you'll win him over in no time. The three of us will be having big times together before long." He took her hand and rubbed it against the front of his pants. "Feel of that great big thing, baby. I figured my prick was wasting away, not being used since the night you broke it in. But nothing's happened to it, see? It's the same big prick that I stuck into you on our wedding night. And it's throbbing like hell to stick you again. Come on!"

She ran up the stairs to his room, still holding his hand. Together they caught up socks and underwear, a clean shirt, his toothbrush and electric razor, towels and soap and other sundries. Then they ran back down to the first floor and out into the twilight.

Jock pointed to a house near the narrow horizon, so far away that she had not noticed it when she arrived here. She could only make out its outline in the dusk. He said, "You'll like the house, honey. It's the best Link's got, except his own. He has several guest houses he keeps for special buyers who come to see the birds, and this one is the fanciest of them all. I almost dropped my teeth when he said we could have it."

Zoe was beginning to be achingly tired. She wondered whether she could stand having this boy's hard dauber in her crotch all night, and she could see that he had every intention of keeping it there for hours and hours. She asked, "Do we have to walk to the house?"

He laughed. "God, no, baby." He led the way to the six-car garage and helped her into a fabulous red convertible of some foreign make; she had never seen its equal. As he backed it out Into the driveway, he said, "Fancy, isn't it, baby? Link gave it to me for my last birthday. Paid ten thousand dollars for it ... That's what I was telling you about Link. He's tough as hell-and he's mad as a bull when he doesn't get his way-but if you belong to him, he'll give you the world on a silver feather. And you belong to him now, because I do. He'll give you anything you want, the way he does me, as soon as he realizes that you're part of our family."

Zoe didn't answer. She didn't want to argue, nor to dim the joyous ardor of this gay boy who was her husband. She had a home, a place for her baby to be born-with a name and a father-a wealthy setting that could provide all a child could possibly need. It was more than she had dared hope for when she came here. It was so much that she told herself she must be completely happy about it, completely ready to keep Jock contented-and Link too, if she could.

Tired or not, she knew that she would submit herself to Jock's great urge for sex. There was a warmth within her at the thought of his entrance into her crotch. She could not hope for a climax tonight; she was far too fatigued to work up to that. It must wait until another night, a time when she was rested, when she could try to learn how a woman achieved that acme of pleasure from the sex act. Tonight she would only provide the place for Jock to spend himself, and she would do it without a cry or a complaint.

They found the house furnished, and lovely beyond all Zoe's expectations. Groomed for rich visitors, it had every possible accommodation. She knew she would love looking it over in the morning-when Jock was not pulling her into the closest bedroom; when his prick was not sticking straight out in front of him.

He asked to undress her, and she let him. He caressed every part of her body separately as he uncovered it. He rested his fingers on her abdomen when he saw it, pressing the flesh tenderly, only a little. "You don't show that there's a baby in you, honey. When will you begin to get big?"

"Not for another couple of months, I think."

"God, I'm glad. I don't want to give you up to a baby, not even my own. I don't want to think of you as anybody's but mine, for as long as we live." His fingers found her crotch. "Oh, God, God, baby, I'll go off before I get into you if we don't hurry." He ripped off his own clothes and fell onto the satin cover, pulling her body to his as he went down. "Do you want me to finger you a while, baby? I think I can hold off a few minutes if you want to try. Think you can Work up?"

She sighed. "No, darling, I just know I can't. I'm so ... so tired from the trip and the fuss with Link. You do it however you want to, this time. Take me any way you please. And do it as long as you can hold out, if you want to. I'll try to ... to work up later, maybe in a night or so."

"Do you feel like you're all tight and dry?"

"God, no I'm all wet and warm. I feel sure I'll open up when you put it in. I'll help you every way except to go off with you. I know I will." Then she added, suddenly fearful, "Just don't jump too hard on me, Jock. We don't want anything to happen to our ... our baby."

He pulled out of her and reached for the pillows at the head of the bed. Doubling them both, he shoved them under her. "Here, baby, get your butt up on this. It'll shove your crotch at my prick so I can really stab it ... God, yes, that's just right ... Lord, Lord, I never knew anything in heaven or hell could feel so damn good! I'm going off, baby ... God, I'm going and going, like I'd never stop! Oh ... ooohhh! Lord, I wish I never had to stop going. I wish I had a lot more to drain into you ... Don't move yet, honey. Just leave it in a while and let it soak. It's limp but it still feels good. It's home, and it's going to live right here, right in its own little crotch of a home, for as long as we live!"

She stirred uncomfortably. "Jock, I-I'm getting soaked. You ... you've gone off all over us. Let me go to the bathroom and wash off this mess-"

"Sure, baby. But it's a beautiful mess, isn't it? A mess of our love, the kind of love we're going to make again as soon as we rest a few minutes; the kind we're going to make every night until you have to stop ... Oh, Zoe, Zoe, baby, I love you so much--so awful goddamn much!"

She paused on her way across the room, heedless of her stickiness and discomfort, mindful only of the words she had so longed to hear. She held out her arms, and he sprang to them, clasping their nude bodies so tightly that they were not two, but one;

She whispered, "Thank you, Jock, my darling. Thank you for saying you love me. I was so afraid that all you wanted was my-my sex. And a wife wants more than a bed. She wants the rest of her husband; his heart and his life too."

"You'll have every part of me, baby. You'll share every plan, every thought of mine from now on." He picked her up and carried her on into the bathroom. "Wash up fast, honey, I feel like I can get another hard on in just a minute. We've got an awful lot of screwing to catch up on; to make up for all the time we've lost."

She washed and went back to the bed, hoisting her buttocks onto the doubled pillows, spreading her thighs for the male organ that awaited her crotchso hard, so big, that it seemed not to have been affected at all by its first expulsion inside her ...

When his second climax was done, they rested for an hour or so before their next intercourse. They held each other happily, exploring their own bodies and one another's, marveling at the beauty of man and woman: the perfection of the way they fit together sexually, the masculine organ so exactly shaped to pierce the feminine one and seek out its rightful home.

Jock kissed her great breasts again and again, mouthing the oversized nipples, saying over and over that he was the luckiest man in the world to have such beautiful tits on his wife: the biggest tits, the best tits, the most, gorgeous tits that any man ever sucked on. And Zoe was glad for her big, bouncy breasts, glad that they gave this much pleasure to her husband. Some day there would be milk in her big breasts, and Jock's son, or daughter, would be sucking on them, drawing food from her nipples into it tiny body. And it would be the baby that the two of them had created-had started the night Jock had first forced her to his will.

There was a genuine happiness in this boy's love for her I If she could never love him back, measure for measure-and she could not fully believe that she could ever match his overwhelming delight in their love-then at least she could keep him from knowing it. She could make him the happiest young husband anywhere. She could feed his sex appetite, and tend his other wants as well. She could be all the things that he needed her to be. She could give herself, all the warp and woof of her being, to this man, and to the child that was growing from the seed that he had planted in the depths of her.

She would do that. She would be Mrs. Jock Tawnley in every good way, every kind way, every affectionate way, that she knew how. She had to hope that that would be enough.