Chapter 6

Kurt moved through the darkness as if he were without a will of his own, as if he were a robot motivated by the senses and desires of another. He did not know why the look upon Laura's face had torn him from the fleshy offering of Penny. He knew only that he had to find her.

When he came to a section of the beach that was blocked by a wire fence, Kurt turned and headed up the steep hill of sand that led away from the water. He had covered a hundred feet of the climb when he noticed a circle of sand dunes to the right. He stopped and looked in that direction. Then, slowly, he moved toward the shelter they provided.

Kurt saw the tracks leading up and over the smallest dune. They were small. He knew Laura had made them. His heart quickened its beat. He followed the tracks.

At first Kurt saw no sign of Laura Standard. But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness he saw the small figure hunched in a corner of the sand wall, looking very small, very lost, very, very far away from the college activity that had been brought to the beach.

His feet sank into the sand up to the ankles as he moved down the sand dune. When he reached the bottom he paused. Only then was there a sign from Laura. Her head raised. Then it quickly looked away.

"Laura," Kurt called.

There was no answer.

"Laura, I want to talk to you."

Still no answer.

"Laura, goddamn it, talk to me."

The head raised again. Then she spoke. "Go away. Just go away and leave me alone."

Kurt walked directly toward her. When he stopped in front of her, she raised her head again, then lowered it. He did not speak, only towered above her like a giant figure that had come out of the night itself.

"Laura, what are you doing sitting in a corner all by yourself," Kurt said, lowering and sitting on his heels in front of her.

"Leave me alone," she said, not looking at him.

"I won't."

"Please."

"Look at me, Laura."

She did not move.

"I said look at me, goddamn it!"

Her face turned. Suddenly, it was spotlighted by the moon which had found its way into the secret place among the sand dunes. Her cheeks were tear-stained. They made Kurt feel very sad, and he wondered why this emotion seemed to prevail every time he was near the pretty, changeable, dark-haired girl who seemed so out of place at Funston College.

Kurt lowered from his heels to sit cross-legged in front of Laura. When she turned her head away, he smiled, then reached out and cupped her chin and turned her face toward him.

What's the matter?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said.

"Do you want me to tell you what's the matter?" he said as if he were talking to a child. "No."

"Yes you do."

"I don't." She hesitated, then tried to turn her head, then said, "Please I just want to be left alone."

"I won't leave you alone," he said.

"I wish you would."

"No you don't," he told her.

"But I do!" she blurted, much as if she spoke to convince herself.

"This is what I think, Laura," he said. He paused, then continued, "You came to the beach party tonight and you wanted to find me then when you did find me with Penny Smith you felt hurt and ran away."

She glanced at him. "Such an ego Oh, how you love yourself."

"What I said is the truth. Admit it."

She glanced at him again, looked away, then returned her eyes to stare directly into his face.

"Say I'm right," Kurt encouraged.

"All right, it's the truth," Laura said. "But I can't imagine why I don't know why I wanted to see you tonight. It's all very confused there are a lot of confused things in my life. I I don't know why."

"I do," Kurt said, smiling.

"You do?"

"Yes."

"Why?" she asked.

He did not immediately answer. Instead, his eyes raced over her body. She was dressed in tight shorts and a peasant blouse and the effect was one of considerable daring that was nevertheless tempered with a little-girl mood.

"Why did I want to see you tonight?" Laura asked.

"For this," Kurt said.

Quickly, he reached his hands out and gripped her by both shoulders. Slowly, he pulled her toward him. She allowed his hands upon her and permitted her body to glide forward.

When she was in his arms, he held her very gently. And he did not immediately kiss her. Instead, he looked into her face, at her eyes and the way they blazed with fire when they were absent of glasses as they now were, at her lips, full and red and soft, and at her dark hair which was loose and now trailed behind her to wind on the sand.

"What are you frightened of, Laura?" Kurt asked.

"I don't know."

"You're trembling."

"Yes."

He held her a little tighter. "Is that better."

"I don't know."

He looked at her for another few seconds, then, cradling her in his arms as she stretched across his lap, he kissed her. It was like an old sensation returned to him. Her lips, pressing their heat against his, were well-remembered and Kurt wondered how it was possible that he had learned their feel and texture and sweetness so fast.

Laura did not give her mouth passionately. Rather, her lips remained closed, but soft, willing, but with restraints placed upon that willingness. Kurt respected the attitude. But his hands did not. They roamed Laura's back, circling, pressuring, rubbing, moving to the small of her back to circle again, then going lower to her buttocks which he gripped and kneaded.

Laura's right arm circled Kurt's neck. It held him strongly. And as she clutched to him, her lips parted. Kurt's tongue darted. It met the jam of Laura's. They clashed. Then they withdrew and took turns giving and receiving the sweet-tongue-nectar of the other.

Kurt's passion, first tempted then made strong by Penny Smith, now boiled for the girl he held in his arms. For a moment, Kurt thought of it and wondered if it represented some cruel unfairness, wondered if passion raised by one should not be culminated with another. But then he realized that even when he had been with Penny his passion had been yearning for the strange girl who now stretched before him.

Regretfully, their kiss ended. Laura's eyes remained closed for a moment. Kurt looked into her face. Her lips remained slightly parted and they looked as soft as rose petals, were that soft, Kurt reminded himself.

When Laura opened her eyes, Kurt smiled at her. Then, very carefully, he brought one hand to her front and gently undid the top button of her blouse. Then he freed the others. The blouse parted revealing the brown flesh of the girl broken in the middle by a white bra. And in a moment, the bra was freed by Kurt's fingers, too. It fell away from her. Her breasts stretched upward to him. He touched her at each nipple, then cupped one breast fully in his fingers. She trembled. She closed her eyes again, at the same time arching a bit upward.

Kurt watched the rise and fall of her breasts as they beat the passionate rhythm of her increased breathing, an increase that Kurt knew was caused by desire and the closeness of their bodies that made desire's accomplishment not far from realization.

Kurt bent and kissed the nipple of each breast. He did it gently as if he were bedding children for the night. But as he raised to look down on her again, Laura's arm snapped hard around his head and she forced him to greater kissing attention.

Now, Kurt kissed and mouthed her breasts furiously, taking them, shaking them, pulling and wiggling and circling them until Laura cried out little sounds of hurtful pleasure. And her grip upon his head tightened, forced him closer and tighter against her flesh.

Kurt lost himself in the delight of the young girl's body. And as he kissed and mouthed and knew her upper flesh, his hand worked at the side zipper Of Laura's tight shorts. When it was unclasped, she raised, and even as he stayed attentive to her breasts he freed the shorts from her body. And she was naked. And beautiful. Desirable and almost violently passionate.

There was a momentary parting of their bodies as Kurt withdrew from Laura to free himself of his own clothing. But then there was the smack of their bodies again, better and hotter this time because of the nudity they had attained.

Laura moaned softly. She continued to tremble. But when Kurt kissed her on the mouth again, she quieted a bit did that and held him tight with her arms.

This kiss marked the end of patience for Kurt. He pulled away from her abruptly, then raised on his knees at her feet. And then he loomed above her, hesitated, lowered slowly halted, then plunged onward to his prize.

Kurt moved again, rising high, then lowering in the first motion of a series of movements that were made for giving and receiving, for thrill and the approach to greater thrill.

Laura labored beneath him. But only for awhile. Then, her eyes sought his face so close above hers and her eyes rounded and turned frightened looking. One hand went from his neck against his chest. She pushed. Her hips stopped their riotous rise and fall.

"Please No. NO!" she suddenly wailed.

Kurt paused a moment, then continued.

"NO, NO, Noooooo," she whimpered, turning her face away from his.

Kurt's head nearly burst with the pain of her words. Heat swamped him. Anger pestered at all of his body. And he would not stop could not stop. He pounded harder, turning his act of love into punishment and vengeance and anger filled disappointment, using her now as a vessel, not a recipient, as a means to his necessary end rather than as a partner with whom he wished to share the excitement of love.

And at the end, while Laura fought him hard to free herself from his onslaught, he gripped her fighting hands, pinned them over her head and restrained them as he thumped the final volley of his lust to her body.

He left her immediately, breathing hard, his face a mask of anger and disbelief. Laura rolled away from him, turned on her side and for a few moments buried her face into her arms, sobbing into the sand.

Kurt merely settled back on his heels and looked at her. Looked anger and confusion and all the things that she had caused. He did not move when, still sobbing, she raised, picked up her clothes, and without looking at him, hurried from the scene of her violation.

Kurt did not move. He did not turn and watch her disappear over the sand dune. He merely stared at the spot where she had been, more confused than he had ever been in his life

angrier, more hurt, and deeply pained that he had thought of the unusual Laura Standard in the terms of love, in the terms of an emotion that for awhile had made him question the uselessness of his own life. But only for awhile had he questioned. Now he would merely take

take and like and know everything and everyone that it was possible to know on the campus of Funston College.