Chapter 7

I seemed to feel Faye's thighs straddling me heavily. Even though I felt tired and unwilling, she drew my stiff prick within her warm cunt. She writhed her hips and churned her cunt, even though all I wanted was to sleep. Her twat trembled and shook as she whirled her way to a satisfied, yowling release-but this time it was for herself alone. My body felt like a heavy lump of lead had been laid across my middle and my cock and balls I had never felt so completely exhausted and drained in my whole life.

Opening my eyes with an effort, I saw that I was lying against the curb in the street. Punchy as I was, I tried to inch myself upright and finally made it.

I managed to find my car, to fumble around for keys, summon enough strength to press the gas pedal, and slowly and cautiously take off. My belly was sore, and if my face looked the way it felt, it must be badly brusied. Evidently, Vince Bodine had found sadistic, perverted pleasure in venting his rage on me for some time after I had passed out and could no longer feel or care.

My neck muscles, especially, gave off excrutiating twinges, the result of the hammerlock the guy called Pete had used on me to reduce me to helplessness. I felt my neck gingerly, half expecting to find splintered bone chips piercing the flesh.

By the time I reached home, I had worked myself into a real state of lust for revenge. My thoughts might be as dark as a starless night, but my rage against Vince Bodine offered a striking mood contrast; it was the brilliant red of a young man's blood ... Vince's.

Another question plagued me. How had Vince known that Gretchen and I had set an earlier date for our wedding than the one we had originally contemplated? She hadn't had time to circulate the news through any ordinary channels, so how in hell had he managed to stumble on the information so quickly?

At the moment, thinking was just too damned painful, so I had to give it up.

I parked the car in the driveway leading to the monstrous old apparition of a house which was reminiscently referred to by all and sundry as "the ole Overton place."

The house, once a landmark pointed to with pride by the entire surrounding community, now was in a state of dire decadence. It was sorely in need of paint and practically every kind of repair. The grounds, also, mutely pleaded for a renaissance, a restoration to their former green, spreading glory. On the oceanside, the pier which once had resounded with laughter and with gay banter, now stretched grayly into the water, rotted and unsafe.

I went to my room and fell on my bed, painfully sore and sorrowfully exhausted. Nothing penetrated the thick mists of despair that hemmed me in. Even the loud drunken noises emanating from my grandfather's adjacent room, couldn't begin to keep me awake.

I arose just before noon, telephoned the office and instructed Faye to cover my tardiness with whatever lie she cared to invent. Then I cornered Granddaddy Cass in the living room and asked him about the mysterious woman of the past for whom Conrad Hammond and he nearly had come to death-grips.

"Woman?" my grandfather seemed surprised and his bleary red-----rimmed eyes blinked in puzzled fashion. "I don't know of any woman. How in the devil did you come by such a nutty idea?"

"From several responsible sources," I told him.

"And who was this femme fa tale supposed to be? What was her name?"

"That's what I'm asking you," I returned sternly.

Granddaddy Cass heaved a long, alcoholic sigh and shook his head.

"Somebody's been having pipedreams," he said. "Conrad Hammond and I never had trouble over a woman."

Then he brightened. "Unless it was that teenaged whore, Inge, who he sent to bamboozle me. Is it she who you're talking about?"

"I'm not referring to Inge," I snapped, "this woman was around before Inge was born."

"Then you've got me in the dark-I don't have the faintest idea what you are talking about," my grandfather stated, flatly.

I looked at him long and speculatively.

"You know what I think, Granddaddy?" I said at last. "I think you're lying. I think you and Mr. Hammond did battle over some broad in the long ago. And I have a notion that she is the real cause behind the battle you two have fought over all these years."

I was sure my grandparent paled beneath his normal bewhiskered flush.

"Suit yourself! Think what you damned please!" he growled with a scowl. "You think you're so damned smart!"

He averted his eyes and reached for his bottle of bourbon. I turned and left him. If the reprobate insisted on drinking himself to death, I wasn't going to hang around to witness his slow suicide.

I parked the car on a side road within sight of the Hammond mansion so I could watch the place, unobserved. To say the least, I was confused. How Vince Bodine seemed to know my plans almost before I knew them myself, troubled me like a sliver you can't quite get at. He just had to have an inside track.

As much as I hated to admit, common sense told me that it had to be Gretchen who told him the news, which made the whole deal even more confusing.

Babbs had sworn that Gretchen not only willingly, but eagerly, joined Vince for some hot screwing between the sheets. I had refused to believe her. Now I wondered.

One thing, though, I damn well was sure of. I wasn't about to get married until I knew the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It would have to be not merely stated, but proven. Money or no money, I didn't relish the idea of finding myself hitched to a cheating broad who would jerk off her lacy panties and spread her twat whenever she saw or heard from Vince.

The mere thought of such a state of affairs wrought havoc with my proud Overton ego. Married or single, it hurt my pride even to consider Vince man enough to take any cunt away from me. I guess all men are the same, when it comes to pussy.

I made up my mind to find out what, if anything, was between those two. I had one slim fact with which to start. There had to be a line of communication. Otherwise, how did Vince know so much so fast? It was almost as though he had been looking over our shoulders as we decided on the stepped-up wedding date.

I didn't like it one damned bit.

It was about two o'clock now and the sun was high and hot, a great ball of orange fire almost straight overhead, making an effort to melt the universe. Still, I stayed behind the wheel, perspiring, brooding, and perplexedly smoking one cigarette after another.

Twenty minutes later, I saw Gretchen emerge from the mansion and climb into the T-Bird. She whipped the car out of the concrete driveway and came speeding past, her red ponytail tied at her neck with a bright green ribbon, flying. Her lovely face seemed sternly set.

I gave her a couple of yards heads tart, then I pulled out behind her. Maybe I was only heading for another blind alley of suspicion and indecision, but tailing her was the only thing I could think of to do. And I had to do something.

If she was on her way to meet Vince, I damned sure wanted to know about it. I had to see it with my own eyes.

Ahead, Gretchen was wasting no time. She had that little crimson sports job wound up in high gear just as though it had been built to stand in for a rocket and was working it up toward a take off into outer space.

Crazy women drivers, I thought angrily. It's a wonder somebody doesn't wind up in a hospital or in a morgue every time one of them crawls behind a wheel. I had to gun hell out of my car just to keep her in sight.

The Hippies Grotto was five miles north of the town proper, flanking the ocean, and it was the jumpingest joint this side of the Atlantic. Just beyond the swinging doors, was a world gone completely crazy, a world of tail-twisting, giggling teenagers, shimmering, contorting, leaping, romping, swirling young maniacs, gone ape under the crashing impact of the so-called musical notes which almost literally beat at them from an elevated platform upon which stood three tall and skinny horn blowers, gyrating suggestively, a guitarist twanging away at his overheated strings as though his life depended on it, a gone-crazy bass drum, and a wild piano, all of which formed a group of way-out musicians, known as the In Jims.

The In Jims wore bristly beards fringing their cadaverous faces. They had uncannily bright and shinging eyes which gave them the weird appearance of creatures from outer space, come to mesmerize our younger generation through the power of their fantastic sound machines and a deluge of sexy sounds, impossible to recognize as any earth-originated language.

Why Gretchen had entered this madhouse was beyond my powers of surmisal. It was as incongruous a setting for her as one could possibly imagine. Cool, often remote, except when her passion was aroused, she wasn't the jumpy, jivery type. I could no more picture her doing an uninhibited f rug than I could see her at a kitchen table, her delectable curves hidden by a volumninous apron, peeling vegetables for a soup or for a stew.

Then why in the hell was the queenly Gretchen here? My eyes swept the ass-jiggling mass of springy humanity.

Gretchen had already disappeared somewhere in the midst of the ever-moving throng.

Her courage alone, surprised me. I quailed at the thought of attempting a dangerous feat like braving the jostling young flesh. A person could get bumped to death in less time than it would take to tell!

Not wishing to further jeopardize my already badly bruised ego, I skirted the perimeter and found a reasonably safe-looking exit through which I started to pass. Then I halted, abruptly.

Outside, on the sunny and comparitively quiet patio, Gretchen and Vince sat at an isolated table which sprouted the staff of a huge, gaily-colored umbrella. Each sipped what looked like a Martini. Their faces were partly in shadow, but still I could see them clearly.

At the sight of them, nausea like a double-fist, struck at the pit of my stomach. I no longer was slightly confused. I was deeply confused. Why, I kept asking myself. Why?

I remained immobile, even breathing quietly, while I continued to watch, their expressions added to my already keenly-whetted curiosity. A smile played at the corners of Vince's mouth. He seemed to be listening hard, albeit indulgently, to something of which Gretchen was trying to convince him. Her face was completely grave, even to her eyes which held no sparkle, no smile. She actually appeared to be frantic, more than anything else, as her lovely slim hands gesticualted ceaselessly. I couldn't quite catch what she was saying, but it was clear that words were pouring in a torrent of sound from those luscious lips. I silently cursed the screaming young monsters, the so-called music at my immediate rear.

Within moments, my feeling of surprise fused into a hot, brooding anger. I ran my hand over my belly with a gentle, exploratory pressure. It still was very much troubled by pain from the merciless pounding Vince had given it last evening while his cohort, Pete, held me, tightly-clamped and defenseless in that neck-cracking hammerlock.

Revenge can be beautiful, I thought. If I got it, that was. I meant to try.

I headed straight for the absorbed couple. When Vince saw me striding purposefully toward them, he paled and rose to his feet. Gretchen turned to stare, her features frozen in an expression of acute despair.

I didn't give a damn about anything just then. I suppose they could see reckless fury written all over my face. Vince averted his gaze, glancing quickly from left to right, obviously seeing a fast means of exit. If he did chance upon one, he must have thought it would be too late, because he didn't make a break.

I was in no mood for small talk. I let go with a swinging haymaker aimed at his chin, which he ducked with surprising adroitness. The force of my pile-driving effort swung me around with my back toward him, and I felt his fist connect hard under the lower rib at the small of my back.

I was aware of pain shooting all through me, but it was nothing compared to the fury inside me which was tying my belly muscles into knots. I swung back, intent on a kill. Vince was reading the unmistakable message of murder blazing from my eyes, decided to run for it.

I was after him like a hunger-maddened cheetah. I caught him with a knee-high tackle from behind. He was propelled forward, with his face grinding into the hot sand just off the edge of the ceramic patio.

He rose groggily and we struggled, locked together at first, then jerking apart and trying to land punches everywhere we could and as hard as we could. He put up one hell of an all-out defense, trying to keep my fists from pounding his face to a pulp. As tough as he was, as skilled in every tactic of dirty fighting, ordinarily he might have succeeded not only in warding me off, but in giving me plenty of punishment.

Not this time, though. The force of brutal hate inside me was so huge, so powerful, I hardly felt his frantic, jabbing blows. I had his features pretty well mangled and bloody by the time a pack of teenagers, summoned no doubt by Gretchen's screams, tore us apart.

Looking down at the battered bully, I felt a little better. I brushed sand off my face and off my clothes. Then, looking neither at Gretchen, nor at Vince, I strode back to my car, got in, and drove away.

The trip back to town gave me time to cool off so I could think rationally. One thing was sure. From now on, I would have to watch it, not once in a while, but all the time. Vince would be laying for me, and now it would be for real. He was the vengeful type who never got over a grudge or forgot a beating. I would have to be careful passing any dark alley. What I would really need would be an ever-watchful eye in the back of my skull.

Whatever happened now, it had been worth it. Beating hell out of him had been kind of soul cleansing. I would never have been able to live with myself if I hadn't at least tried.

He sure had played havoc with me that night when his sidekick, Pete, first made sure I was helpless. Who had this guy, Pete, been anyway? It almost had to be Pete Baker, Faye's husband.

Faye had mentioned that her husband was one of those health fanctics who went in for weightlifting workouts, wheat germ, blackstrap molasses, the whole muscle-increasing bit. The guy who had pinned me with that hammerlock that night certainly had been powerful enough to pose for an ad touting any kind of health device. I supposed, from now on, I would have to watch out for him, also.

Hell, I'd be safer in a damned war!

An amusing thought hit me at this point. I smiled, wondering what Pete Baker's reaction might be should someone tell him that his wife Faye was fucking it up at least once a month with his good old buddy-buddy Vince Bodine.

I glanced in the rearview mirror just then and saw Gretchen coming up fast in the red T-Bird. She must have been doing close to a hundred. I knew, without even a second thought, that I would never be able to outrun her. The hell with it, I thought. Let her go.

She tooted her ridiculous musical horn as she pulled alongside me, motioning frantically for me to stop. When I didn't, she took a swipe at my left front fender which brought both cars so close to disaster that I let out a yelp and jerked my foot off the accelerator.

She came to a stop a few yeards ahead of me on an asphalt apron. Then she climbed out of her car, came over to the door of mine, and got in beside me.

"You've got to listen to me, Phil," she half demanded, half pleaded. "I owe you an explanation. I have to make you understand."

I sulked, hunching down behind the wheel.

"You don't owe me a damned thing," I said stiffly.

"Yes, I do, too. And I won't attempt to hide my trouble from you any longer. Vince Bodine knows something about me and he's blackmailing me, Phil. That's why I had to meet him today-I didn't want to. I can't get rid of him."

I glanced at her, with a thirty below zero look. "Do tell," I said, with bitter sarcasm. "What do you take me for, Gretchen? A complete fool? You've been lying to me from the beginning. Well, a guy gets enough after a while. I was warned about you and Vince-Babbs tried to warn me that you and he were using her apartment for your fucking. But I didn't have enough sense to listen. Now I know she was right about you all along. I'm through, Gretchen. The engagement is off ... as of this minute. I've had enough of your screwing behind my back. I don't want any more."

"No, Phil," Gretchen pleaded clutching my arm. "You don't mean this! I don't blame you for feeling hurt, and I know I shouldn't have kept anything so important from you. But what could I do? I've been hysterical with worry. I don't know how to deal with Vince and his threats. Phil, honestly, you've got to listen! You've got to believe me! I haven't had any choice! Vince is cruel, merciless ... he refuses to leave me alone!"

I snorted. "Okay, what is this big deal he's supposed to be holding over your head?"

I could feel her tension increasing. Then she let go of my arm and burst into tears.

"Phil, please don't ask me to bare my shame to you," she sobbed. "I made a mistake once, quite a while ago ... it was something horribly wrong and shameful, and I can't bear to even think of it, much less to have you know. Please don't demand that I tell you. Please just trust me. Vince found out, and he's been making me pay ever since. Oh, I just don't know what I'm going to do!"

"We all make mistakes. You can tell me ... if it's wild enough for me to believe, perhaps I can think of someway to help."

She fell against me, sobbing, and clutching at my hand. "I can't, honey! I just can't force myself to talk about it. It's too embarrassing. You might never speak to me again as long as I live, and I couldn't stand that, darling. I just couldn't stand it."

"Try me and see. I'm not made of stone, you know."

"No! No! No! I can't...."

I glanced at her flushed face, her wild-looking eyes. I didn't know what to think. If she was lying, she was in the wrong niche of life. She could have been an award-winning actress.

"So you don't intend to tell me, and that, apparently, is final?"

She shook her red head violently. "I just can't. Believe me, Phil. More important, trust me."

"How has Vince been making you pay off? How much have you given him so far?"

She faced me painfully. A new wave of tears flooded her hazel eyes and ran unashamedly down her cheeks.

"It hasn't been money that he wants ... I wish it had been."

I frowned, knowing perfectly well what was coming.

"It's been sex, Phil. It's true. I have been meeting him at that girl's apartment-Babbs. I had no choice. Vince would demand that I meet him there, that I let him fuck me ... or he would expose me. I would be petrified with fear, afraid to disobey. Oh, you can't imagine how awful it's been, having to undress in front of him, having to submit to him, while he laughed at my embarrassment and didn't care how reluctant I was. And later ... his hateful hands, over every inch of my body!"

Gretchen shuddered in revulsion. "I've driven myself half crazy, trying to think of some way to escape him."

I considered all that she had just said, and I decided that she wasn't lying. I felt protective toward her. It was right up Vince's alley to pull a stunt like that on a helpless girl.

"All right, all right," I said, putting my arms around her. 'There, there. Just take it easy, baby. I wish you could tell me what he has on you ... but if you can't, you can't."

"I wish I could, Phil," she whimpered, snuggling closer. "I really wish I could bring myself to bare my soul to you. Right now, though, it's impossible. I'm too ... too ashamed. I phoned Vince last night after you left. I told him we had set the date for our wedding. I begged him to leave me alone. He just laughed."

So that was how Vince had known so quickly. It figured.

"How about after we're married," I worried. "Vince still could pressure you, couldn't he? He would still have you under his thumb, and you still would have to do as he said."

She sat up, facing me.

"No. After we're married, I could tell you about it," she said, her eyes glowing. 'Then we could work it out together. But I want to know that you trust me enough to marry me first, darling. That way I'll know you love me enough to stick by me. After that, well find some way to deal with Vince."

She leaned forward and kissed me. "Don't you love me enough to go along with me on that, Phil?"

I sighed. Gretchen knew it meant my surrender.

"Maybe I'm a fool, honey, but I'm so gone on you, I can't seem to let you go," I said. "So you see, I don't have much choice either. I have to believe you, whether or not I want to. That's how badly I'm hooked."

Her slim, cool fingers caressed my face, and she smiled happily through her tears.

"You're such a warm, wonderful human being, darling," she cooed. "I know what ... let's go home. I want to give you some real good humping. I want to show you how much I adore you and appreciate you ... just how desperately I yearn to be your wife."

Warm-lipped and starry-eyed, she was so beautiful that, when I looked at her, it actually hurt.

"I'm all for that, sweetheart," I said. "I'm for that kind of idea any time and all the way!"

She laughed and kissed me and got out of the car.

"Meet you at my place in fifteen minutes," she giggled. Her eyes were bright with promise of hot humping.

"I'll be right behind you," I assured her.

Gretchen, naked, was even more exquisitely beautiful than she was dressed, which was saying something. The striking purity of her complexion was not confined to her face. It extended down the length of her entire body, from her sweetly rounded throat to the tips of her dainty, panited toenails.

"Undress me," she had whispered, enchantingly.

As I fumbled nervously with buttons and buckles, she laughed at me, teasing me with nibbling little kisses, with tickling caresses under my balls, right through my pants.

I almost went out of my skull. "You're adorable, Gretchen!"

"Prove how much you love me, Phil!" she demanded.

I lifted her silken nakedness into my fiercely enfolding arms and carried her to the bed.

"Hurry!" she cried as soon as I laid her down. She held out her arms.

I tore out of my clothes as fast as I could, which was plenty fast.

"How about the servants?" I asked. "No danger of one of them barging in while we're screwing, is there."

She shook her head. "They won't bother us. They wouldn't dare enter my room except first thing in the morning to clean up. Quit worrying, lover, and just fuck me. Oh, darling, fuck me every exciting way that you can think of to do!"

Today, she was more exciting than she ever had been before. Heat seemed to emanate from every curve, every hollow of her flawlessly sculptured body, from the faintly pink softeness of her melon-like tits, from her long, lust, tapered legs. I was speechless with wonder and with desire, but I was not too overwhelmed to reach for that inviting cunt to move in close with lips, with hands, with gently colliding stiff prick and balls of my own hot body.

"Fuck me, Phil! Hold me and fuck me ... I want to show you how much I want you," she coaxed.

I needed no urging. I was all over her in a hurry.

Her warm, firm breasts pressed against my chest, her lips curved against mine. My blood began to boil. My lips sought her opened mouth, our tongues teasing and intertwining. A tomtom of expectation rose high and drumming in my brain.

All of the cold doubt, the dark wondering was seared and melted away in the fire of our embrace. This was Gretchen and this was love, and all of it belonged to me. She was going to be mine forever.

My hands thrilled against her skin, exploring along her breasts, her hips, her thighs. Our breaths caught as my cock thrust into her warm receptive cunt. Closely we lay, soft flesh crushed to hard flesh, belly against belly, thighs against thighs, my cock and her cunt glued, loath to separate, mutely pleading for more, more, more.

We fucked sensuously, the rhythm of our bodies so perfectly matched, it excited us to dizzying heights of lustful delight. I felt my senses reeling and soaring.

The tempo of our fucking grew more and more vigorous. Gretchen's sweet breath gasped against my ear, increasing my own fever. My cock trembled with urgency as she lifted to meet me with her own furiously demanding cunt.

We seemed suspended on a piercing peak of intense emotion, and we frigged each other more desperately still as the final painful ecstasy shook our entire beings, and I shot huge gobs of hot scum into her convulsing cunt. Later, her svelte body curled around me, her great hazel eyes looked at me soulfully as we exchanged lover's sweet confidences.

A frown crossed her handsome features and she said, "Phil, darling. I must prove that I really love you. Ask me anything, and I'll do it for you!"

She had been fondling my ever-ready stiffening dong and impulsively, she leaned her mouth toward it. I thrilled as I felt her lips bathe my prick with the softness of moist goose-down. The sensation was incredibly intense, yet sweet, as her mouth glided in loving rhythm up and down the shaft of my pulsing cock. I erupted with the fiery suddenness of a red-hot volcano, my prick gushing with the violent spurting sperm of the fabulous release Gretchen's lips gave me. And she swallowed it all....

"I believe anything you say, darling," I gasped. "Only don't do that again to my poor cock ... at least not for a little while...."