Chapter 10
Ramey watched nude men dragging naked, screaming girls into the pool, trying to outdo the perverted show Tino had just put on with Delia. All he had to do was sit around a little while longer and he'd have enough material for a new volume of abnormal sex psychology.
One of the things that struck Ralph Ramey was that although Moratta gave all his guests a very free hand with the women, he himself remained aloof. Was it possible that a man like Moratta, still young and oozing animal vitality could get his hump-kicks by just watching others? Or was there another reason he let sex shows run rampant on the estate? Some reason that he even let his son, little Phil, get glimpses of sex acts no child his age should ever see?
The answer, he told himself, would be worth a great deal of money. Also, it might save him from destruction if Moratta decided to throw him to the wolves.
He sat in the patio while two more girls-the unfortunate brunette who'd been carried into the bushes by two men, and a tall, statuesque redhead, ran naked through the patio, directly toward the shelter of their rooms.
The brunette was alert and angered, more normal then the redhead who seemed dazed. The latter walked stiffly. He put her down as a victim of shook and wondered what kind of rape had happened to her.
He got up and rounded the house and walked off the estate, through the front gate, and down the highway. It was hot and dusty, but more pleasant than the cool, luxurious rottenness he'd just left behind him.
He walked perhaps a mile before he came to a small country store. It was a leaning, weather-beaten little place with an unpaved lead-in from the highway indicating poverty of the first order.
It was generously decorated with brand-name refreshment signs, the whole atmosphere suggesting a wistful hope of business.
Ramey pushed the screen door open. It banged behind him and agitated a host of flies waiting to invade the dusty interior. He squinted his eyes, adjusting them to the comparative darkness and they focused on a rather pretty girl of perhaps twenty, waiting behind the counter.
She wore a plain blue cottom dress under which a pair of magnificent tits, amply nippled, pressed hard against the cloth.
"A hot one today," Ramey commented. "Do you have any cold Coke?"
The girl bent over what must have been an iced container under the counter. She came up with a dripping bottle.
As she uncapped it and handed it to Ramey, a rear door opened and a little old man shuffled out in carpet slippers. He peered at Ramey over narrow steel-rimmed glasses.
"Didn't hear no car," he said.
Ramey couldn't tell whether this was an accusation or a comment. "I walked," he said. "I have no car of my own."
The man became definitely suspicious. "Where'd you walk from?"
"From up north-about a mile, I imagine."
"From Moratta's place?"
"That's right."
The man glared at the girl. "Jenny you get in the back! I'll take care o' things out here."
The girl pouted. "Aw, Paw-"
"Get, I tell you. This is no place for a decent girl."
"Now, see here," Ramey said. "If you're implying."
"Ain't implying nothing, mister. This is a public store. But I don't want no daughter of mine talking to one of your kind."
Ramey's sudden anger was stifled by amusement. "How do you know what kind I am?"
"You're staying at that cesspool of sin ain't you?"
One thing was apparent to Ramey. He was in the company of a hard-back, old-line religionist. "Yes," he said. "As a matter-of-fact, I am. But I could be there for other reasons than the ones you have in mind."
"You a doctor or something? Anybody sick there?"
"I'm not a doctor. And nobody is sick to my knowledge. But do you always judge people on the company they keep-or the company you assume they're keeping?"
"You're a pretty fast talker." The words were accusing and thick with suspicion. But the oldster was doubtful. "I ain't one for condemning a person without proof."
Ramey's obvious rejoinder would have been that he wasn't on trial. But he chose to play it differently.
"That's a good Christian attitude," he said. "It's like breathing a breath of fresh air to walk into your store."
"Air ain't fresh at all in here," the man snorted. "But I got to admit that if you belonged with that gang you'd be there worshiping Satan with them instead of walking around in the hot sun."
"Thank you." Ramey realized that subtlety was lost on the old man. Still, he proceeded cautiously, "I was an invited guest, but I'll have to admit I was a little surprised at the goings-on."
"Just as bad as ever, huh?"
"Pretty bad," Ramey admitted.
"Slipped up there one night, I did," the old man said. "Thought it was my duty to see if what I heard was true-about the goings-on there, I mean." He stared in righteous wrath. "I sure found out. Women running around stark naked. Men chasing them. Screaming-laughing-wicked revels."
"You've been in this fine country a long time, I assume."
"Born here," the oldster asserted virtously. "Buried my wife here. Raising a daughter in the path of righteousness."
"A good man," Ramey said piously. "About this fellow Moratta. He must have a bad reputation with the local people."
"Ain't much godliness left even around here."
"You mean the local people don't care?"
"New generation coming up. Live and let live, they say. But they mean sin and let sin. Plenty of the old residents ain't any .better than they ought to be."
"Was Mr. Moratta ever married?"
If the oldster thought he was being pumped he certainly didn't care. "She was a wild one. Used to hammer over the roads in one of them sports cars. Crazy and wild. If there was ever a woman who worshipped Satan with men, she was it."
"What ever happened to her?"
"Lord only knows. I think maybe her husband took a horse-whip to her. Should have. If ever a woman deserved a hiding-"
"Was there ever any rumor of trouble at Moratta's place?"
"When wasn't there trouble? Yelling and screaming-"
"But his wife isn't around any more? She disappeared?"
"Can't say one way or another. I've always been a man who minds his own business. Ain't seen her on the road for quite a spell."
"Did you ever hear of a man called Lyman? Steve Lyman?"
"Sure. He and his woman used to have a shack over on Sunrise Lake. There was a woman no better than she ought to be too. Some of the boys around-about claim they saw her swimming stark naked more than once."
"Maybe she wore a skin-colored bathing suit," Ramey said innocently.
The old man shook his head. "She was a brunette. And the boys around here got pretty sharp eyes," he stopped significantly. "At least no woman that wasn't a daughter of Satan wasn't dead set on flouting God."
"I see," Ramey said gravely. "Are the Lyman's still on Sunrise Lake?"
"Nope. They ain't been around for a couple of years. Maybe he caught his wife naked and took a whip to her. Maybe he was ashamed to come back after he found out what was going on."
Ramey set his empty bottle down and pointed to an open carton of cigarettes. The old man took out a pack, blew a thick coat of dust off it, and handed it to Ramey.
"That'll be forty cents, mister," he said. He gave the man a dollar and took the change he scrabbled out of a tin box.
"Thanks," he said. 'The Coke was a life saver."
"Come back any time. Appreciate your business."
Ramey left wondering if there were any whip marks on the back of the old man's daughter....
He walked back as he'd come, planning to return to Moratta's place and avoid contact with any of the other guests until things quieted down. Then he would go about his own vital business.
But there was an interruption. A quarter of a mile from the store, and beyond the sight of it, a thick bank of trees came close to the road. As he was passing them, the undergrowth parted and an attractive face peered through.
It was followed by an equally attractive body and the girl the old man had ordered into the back room stepped out onto the pavement.
"Mister-can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Why of course."
She was wearing a man's shirt, now, tucked into a pair of blue jeans. There was still no brassiere, and the lovely tits were as prominent and more tempting than before.
"The way my father sent me away-" she said. "I was ashamed."
"No need to be. All young people are supposed to obey their parents."
"But it isn't fair. Not even letting me talk to a good-looking man. I'm not a kid any more. I'm seventeen years old."
"He wants what's best for you."
"He's plain mean," she said angrily. "But I didn't come to talk about him." She paused. "You're-you're from New York City, aren't you?"
"Yes." He glanced up the road.
"If you're not in a hurry, I know a place near here where we can sit and talk."
The invitation didn't make Ramey too happy. He had no wish to become involved with the underaged daughter of the character he'd just spoken with. But he was after information.
"That might be pleasant," he said. "For a little while."
She pushed the foliage back and he followed her in off the road, thinking with amusement how Lee would have reacted to a picture of this scene-of his going off for a rendezvous with a girl whose over-ripe breasts were falling out of her shirt.
The girl led him a quarter of a mile in the general direction of Moratta's estate. There, she veered to the left and approached a small lake-hardly more than a pond-but clear and blue and cool.
It had a grassy bank and the girl dropped lithely down into a cross-legged sitting posture and looked up at Ramey.
"I wanted to ask you about New York Qty."
Ramey chose a spot beyond reach of the girl where he braced his back against a tree and had a view of the lake. "What did you want to know?"
"Is it like they say? Beautiful clothes in the shop windows? Excitement-night clubs?"
"Yes. But a city like New York is a point of view. The glamour they talk about is mainly in people's minds. It can be the most lonely place in the world if you have no friends."
"That would be impossible. Having no friends among millions of people."
"You've never been to New York Qty?"
"The furthest I've been from where I was born-in the back of the store-is ten miles. That's how far it is to where I go to school." There was bitterness in her voice. 'That's the law. The law says you have to go to school. Otherwise he'd have never let me get that far."
Ramey felt uneasy. He wished he hadn't come. He didn't care to listen to the frustrations of an angry child.
"He probably has plans for you later. He wants you to be well grounded in love for home and family. There's plenty of time. You're very young."
"I'm seventeen." She looked up quickly. "My name is Jennifer-Jenny Haynes."
"I'm Ralph Ramey."
She was moving close to him. She had given up the squatting, cross-legged position and was stretched full length on her face with her head close to his feet.
"Just how old should a girl be before she makes love with a man?"
The question, thrown abruptly, scratched away a little of Ramey's poise. He covered his surprise with a laugh. "I really don't know."
"Isn't seventeen old enough?"
"No. I don't think so."
"A girl should get kissed at least by the time she's seventeen."
"You've never been kissed?"
"I never had a chance."
"But you've been to school dances. Boys have brought you home."
"I've never been to a dance in my life."
"Well, you're still young," Ramey repeated lamely.
"He keeps saying that too."
"He," spat out contemptuously, evidently referred to her father. She eyed Ramey moodily. "You think I'm forward, don't you? You think I'm brazen. Walking up to a stranger and talking to him about love. But certainly there must be a reason."
"Tell me."
"It's because things have been the way they have. I never get a chance to talk to a man. I've thought about that a lot and so I made myself a promise."
"What was it?" He could see that the girl's frankness did not come easily. There was effort behind it.
"I promised myself that if I did get a chance to talk to a man, I wouldn't be shy-I wouldn't waste the opportunity."
"That's sensible," Ramey said with a certain dubiousness in his voice.
"Sometimes, at night, I just about go crazy."
"I imagine at times it can get monotonous out here alone."
"Not that so much. I mean inside. I get feelings I can't explain. I-I want to feel a man's arms around me."
Ramey wondered, desperately, what there was about him that drew the confodence of people-that caused them to look on him as a father confessor. It was a talent and a valuable personality asset. But at the moment he could have done without it.
"There will be plenty of time for that," he said.
"Time! Time! That's what my father keeps saying. But what if something happens to me? What if I die at eighteen. Look what I'll have missed."
"That may be true, but the odds are against your dying."
"Oh, you don't understand."
"I do understand."
Her face brightened and Ramey saw in it, the beauty and allure the glow-that youth and desire create automatically.
"You do?"
"Of course. It's a matter of-"
She drew closer. "Mr. Ramey-will you kiss me?"
It was ridiculous, but he felt terribly embarrassed. And again his thoughts went back to Lee. She would have gotten a real kick out of this. He could hear her cynical drawl:
"Go ahead Casanova. Give the little girl a thrill. And if you say you're only doing her a favor, I'll break your neck."
The girl twisted up toward him and put her arms around his neck. Her lips found his. He put his arms around her instinctively, but he didn't draw her to him. He felt out-of-place and awkward, holding her there.
Her lips stayed motionless against his and he waited for her to draw away. But when she did it was only an inch or so. Her breath was on his face as she said. "When people kiss they open their mouths, don't they?"
"I guess they do-sometimes."
"That makes it more fun." She again put her lips against his and this time they opened.
My God, he thought. She's only seventeen! I'm a cradle-snatcher!
Her arms were tight around his neck. He would have had to be a stone man not to respond.
You're a heel anyhow, Ramey, he reminded himself. You're a dog and your soul is long gone anyhow. So why not-?
She pushed him sideways. The tree no longer supported him and he went onto his back. She came to him, her lush tits as warm and eager as the tongue that continued to search.
For a girl who was without experience in love, he thought, her instincts worked surely and boldly, her body eagerly against him.
Almost before he knew what she was doing, she'd taken his hand under her shirt. There it found warm, thrilling breasts.
She pressed her cheek to his. "The man teases the woman," she said. "He plays with her. He gets her excited and makes her ready for love."
Obviously, she'd found a book somewhere on the art of love and was quoting it. Then she displayed an individuality by saying. "I think it should be the other way, too. The woman should play with the man and tease him. Why should the man do all the work?"
She then displayed an eagerness to put this conviction into practice by grabbing at his pants zipper. "Good grief!" her exclamation came spontaneously.
"Get up-please."
She didn't seem to hear him. Her eyes still wide, she said, "If you don't frig me, I'm going to go to the State Police barracks down the road and say you did it by force!"
Before he could answer, she nuzzled up against him and boldly unzipped him. Her fresh youth and beauty had aroused him and now with her threat, Ramey threw caution to the winds. He unbuttoned her blouse and as her fresh young titties sprang up at him, began to kiss their cherry-red nipples. Her body tossed in excitement as Jenny felt a man's lips there for the first time.
She pulled off her jeans and panties quickly and Ramey was soon naked with her. His lips worked downward and they flicked the crevices of her navel on her round young belly, she implored, "Fuck me now! I'm burning up!"
She parted her vibrant cuntlips expectantly as Ramey shoved in his huge, stiff prick as gently as possible into her cunt. He felt her flinch for a moment and knew he was the first to fuck her and that he had just broken her cherry. Then he lunged into her more powerfully and quickened his hump-rhythm as he sensed she was nearing her peak. Suddenly, he felt her buttocks tense and her belly and thighs thresh under him in a wild frenzy.
"Oh, Ralph, Ralph! This is the most wonderful feeling in the world," she gasped.
Ramey arched into one last convulsive thrust as jolting jets of sperm surged through his cock into her welcoming cunt. Jenny held him tight, his gasps of pleasure joining her happy cries as a woman's greatest sensation churned through her entire being from her writhing pussy.
Jenny held Ramey as if she never wanted to let him go while they gasped to recover their breath.
"Thank you, Ralph darling," she whispered. "Thank you so much for making me a woman!"
"You sort of forced the issue," Ramey said drily.
Jenny laughed, "I never would have gone to the State Police. I was just playing poker and you fell for my bluff."
"I'm not sorry I did, Jenny," Ramey said with a satisfied smile. "I'll never forget the sweet fucking you gave me on this summer afternoon...."