Chapter 3
Lazily, like a queen enthroned and awaiting the dutiful obedience of a servant, Eleanor Landers watched him from the bed as he went to the dresser, opened the top drawer and took out the bottle of Scotch. Her secret smile kept edging her petulantly ripe mouth as she saw him stare at the label on the bottle. Poor lamb, she thought contemptuously, probably thinks he's going to have a regular orgy.
"Don't tell me you don't drink, Tom," she said condescendingly.
He looked up and grinned at her. "Sure I do. Only now that football season's starting, we're supposed to be in training."
"Well, one little drink isn't going to hurt you, you know. Besides, I'm not on the team, so let me have mine now, hm?"
"I'll say you're not," he admiringly retorted, and now for the first time since he had crawled in through the window, he seemed to look at her, to be physically conscious of her. He walked slowly towards the bed on his way to the bathroom to get the glasses, stopped at the mirrored door, faced his own reflection. Then he grinned again. "Well, hi there," he greeted himself, waving the bottle. "Look at you. In a lady's room and all."
Privately, she had to fight an impulse to giggle at his use of words. "And all" was, no doubt, his small town hick's way of implying going to bed with her. Just like all men, she thought, they have to talk about it to work up their courage. Well, go right ahead, Tom Jenkins. And then see where it gets you. Oh, is this ever going to be a scream!
Squirming indolently on the bed, she purred, "I see my mirror's the attraction for you, Tom. Would you rather look at it than at me?"
"Nope," he chuckled. "Just had to make sure it was me, all right. And it is. Up here all alone with a gorgeous gal in Comstock Hall. It's like I'm dreaming."
Then he pulled open the bathroom door, and went inside, and came out with the glasses, setting them down on the night table while he uncorked the bottle of Scotch. As he poured, he looked at her, his dark blue eyes intense and appraising, and Eleanor had to admit to herself that he was quite good looking, in an unrefined, thoroughly masculine way.
"There you are," he handed her a glass with about two fingers of Scotch. "That enough?"
"It'll do nicely, thanks. Sorry I haven't any ice or soda."
"It's the sentiment that counts, I always say." He lifted his glass. "Here's to a long and happy friendship."
"Does that leave any room for Elly?" she couldn't help being catty in her imminent moment of triumph.
"Hey, now," his voice was soft but taut, "let's leave her out of this. This is just between the two of us, you know."
"No, I don't, Tom. You mean, it's all right for you to be unfaithful to her, and I suppose, just like every man, you've got the old double standard...two for you and none for her. Suppose she was up in some fellow's room right now?"
He flushed and shifted his feet uncomfortably. "I said, cut it out. You know she isn't. A guy can't help going overboard, not for a gorgeous creature like you, and you know it. Besides, you sort of challenged me, and I've been taking a dare ever since I was old enough to walk on top of a board fence. Broke a rib that way once, when I was eight, but I did it long enough so the other kids saw I wasn't chicken."
"So you're a hero. I knew that when I met you at the sweet shop, Tom. You'll be ail-American. And the season starts next week, doesn't it?"
"Yep, a week from Saturday. We play Mannering, the weakest team on the schedule."
She sipped her Scotch and eyed him speculatively, the mocking little smile still edging her moist red lips. She'd put on a specially alluring lipstick to give her mouth the sensual moist quality she knew was exciting to men. Henri had told her that the lips of a woman capable of passion should always be moist. Damn itshe wanted to forget that louse!
"Tom, tell me something about yourself. I really don't know much about you except that you play football and seem to have got through three years at this rustic retreat."
He sat down on the edge of the foot of the bed, nursing his drink, continuing to eye her. Inwardly, she had to smirk at the way things were going; he was looking right at the cleft of her breasts, and she was willing to bet that Elly Douglas' complexion was unhealthily pale compared with the rich cream of her bare skin.
"It's not all that bad, Eleanor. Marwell's rated pretty high scholastically. I could have gone to the U. of Chicago or Missouri, but my folks live in Galesburg and that's nice and close for driving up weekends. Besides, the English Lit course and the commercial classes are about as good as you'd find at the bigger colleges. And what I don't learn about journalism here, my dad will teach me when I get out of school."
"Oh?" She shifted back against the pillows, finishing her drink, set the empty glass down on the night table. "How, Tom?"
"He owns a string of ten small town dailies and weeklies through the state, and I'm to go to work on the least profitable when I finish next June. If I do well, maybe I'll get to edit one of the better ones."
Eleanor Landers frowned. She was mentally revising her opinion of this handsome, lanky brown-haired senior who had bitten on her very first lure at Marwell. It turned out he came from a well-heeled family; anybody that owned ten papers had to have loot. Appearances were so often deceiving; she hadn't rated him for much more than a farmer's son.
"Well, I wish you luck. And I'm sure you'll make the paper pay off, with the initiative you showed climbing up here, Tom," she teased, drawing up one stockinged knee and clasping it with both slim hands, careful to let the robe hide the fact that all she had on was a garter belt.
"You know why I did, Eleanor." He finished his drink, got up and put the glass next to hers with a clink. He grinned as he lazily came back to his place at the foot of the bed. "See? We're already starting to make music together, honey."
"Are we, Tom?" She swayed her up-drawn knee from side to side in a studied slow pattern, flexing the muscles of calf and knee so that his eyes could feast on the gauzy sheathed regalia of that flawless limb.
"Why else did you think I risked my hide and scholastic standing coming up here, baby?" Now his voice was deliberate and hard, as if he knew the score too. She frowned and reached back with her left hand to smooth the oval bun of coppery hair, aware that the gesture arched out the surging cantaloupes of her bosom tightly against the green satin robe. He was just a little too hep for a hick, and she might have a few minor problems bringing off this little coup of hers. But when the day came that she couldn't frustrate a college hayseed, she might as well give up and get out of circulation. And she certainly wouldn't prove her right to membership in Marwell's most exclusive sorority.
"Why exactly did you come, honey?" she drawled.
He chuckled harshly as he shifted his place to sit along the edge of the middle of the bed, and he put his right hand on the shapely lower curve of her upraised stockinged calf, slowly caressing the resilient flesh through the gauzy nylon. "I thought you had a yen for me, that's why, Eleanor. The way you went after me in the sweet shop and then the way we necked under the bleachers. Any guy, even a freshie, would get the same idea."
"Take your hand away, Tom, please. And don't be vulgar. Are you suggesting that I'm easy? That maybe I'd issue the same invitation to anyone in pants on campus?"
"Oh, no. You're a slick chick, I'll give you credit for that, Eleanor baby. Too slick for this little town, and you've already told yourself that. It comes right out on your face and in everything you say and the way you say it. But as it happens, you picked the one guy who knows the score about dames. Don't let my pinning Elly Douglas fool you, baby. We're going to be married in about two years, but till we are and as long as I'm reasonably discreet so she doesn't find out, I mean to have what fun I can. Not just because it's available either, Eleanor, because I'm discriminating too, you see. Or didn't you give me credit for that?"
"Now you're being insulting!" she flashed as she swung her legs down off the bed on the other side and stood up, smoothing down the robe so nothing would show. "Maybe you'd better leave. You've had your drink and we've had our chat and I know where I stand. And I certainly don't propose to be your convenience till you decide to marry that four-eyed farmer's daughter."
"Which shows how much you know about Elly Douglas, baby. You better get yourself better grapevine connections. She happens to be the daughter of a topnotch Romance language professor, and her mother has had two fair-selling novels published the past five years. They own a summer house in Kennebunkport and live the rest of the year in Wilmette, which ought to mean something to you, being from Chicago as you are."
Her cheeks were red with anger and humiliation, especially at the way he was smiling, just as if he'd seen through her little scheme. So maybe it had backfired, but she still would have the upper hand when the rumor got gossiped around campus and to the ears of the DGT prexy.
"That may be," she conceded, her head high and her voice disdainful, "but she still goes around looking like an utter droop. If I were a man in the know, I'd never announce my attachment to a girl like that, I'd simply play the field."
"Well, honey, you can start playing, because I'm the leader of the field at Marwell," he mocked her as he came round the bed and grabbed her round the waist, roughly pulled her to him.
"Just like that, hm?" Her green eyes fixed him with cold contempt, and her delicate nostril wings flared and shrank. Supremely sure of herself, Eleanor Landers didn't even try to push away his steely fingers against her waist, but relied on her hauteur to stare him down. "You're quite some chick," he appraised in a muttered voice, putting his lips to the V-top of that creamy, velvety cleft bared by the gape of her robe and rubbing his mouth slowly, sensually, over the warm quivering skin. "A teaser at heart, but you try to show how sophisticated you really are. Isn't that your game?"
"You seem to know all about me."
His mouth roamed downwards slowly, pressing through the green satin over the very crest of her left breast, and she shivered voluptuously, closing her eyes for a moment. But it would be too easy to fall into his counter-trap. "I will say you're a smoother operator than I'd counted on," she vouchsafed. "But now this has gone far enough. Why don't you be a good boy and go back to your frat house? You can dream about the way it might have been if you'd been willing to shed that devoted little girlfriend of yours. Because I'm not about to replace her as a mistress till you're ready to make it legal with her. And I'm sure she's so simon-pure she won't let you go to bed with her till you do put the ring on her finger."
"And what if I said I'd marry you? Would that make you any more ready to take that robe off and be honest for a change? You've put on a real swell act, Eleanor, and I give you credit, though I don't know what you're trying to prove."
"I honestly don't think you're the type I'd pick as a husband, Tom, to be truthful."
"I didn't think so. So then-" with a jarring laugh, he pulled her to him again, and crushed his mouth on hers, while his hands swiftly untied the bathrobe. She spluttered and tried to fend off his hands, but he had already won the advantage. And, pushing her away, he dragged the robe open and for a breathtaking moment devoured the magnificent creamy verve of her nudity, piquantly set off by the narrow garter belt whose tabs dug into the ivory columns of her palpitating thighs. "Very nice. But it's just a facade, Eleanor. Now that I've seen it, I think I'll try the freshmen contingent. I might just find a cute little number who isn't trying to impress everybody on campus and just wants a nice friendly roll in the hay. So long-and thanks for the drink."
Her face flaming, she pulled the robe closed and belted it, then slapped his face with all the strength of her arm.
"Get out of here!" she shrilled.
"I will. And thanks for that too. Now I know what you are, Eleanor Landers. A snob and a teaser. You've made a great start at Marwell. I just hope everybody else doesn't find you out the way I did."
"I said get out!" she cried, beside herself.
"Sure. Right now." He walked over to the window, shoved it up higher, sat down on the sill and swung his legs out, looking back at her with an amused grin. "It was very educational. But I'll keep your secret, teacher. I won't tell the other frat men what a fraud you are. Pity, though. You've got a gorgeous shape under that robe, but it's going to go to waste."
She took a step towards him, face contorted in frustrated rage and humiliation. His laugh floated back to her as he disappeared, and she heard him climb down the drainpipe the way he had come.
It had backfired and got out of hand. But she'd still have her triumph. Suzy Mersh would spread it all over campus tomorrow how a certain sophomore beauty from Chicago had turned the tables on a well known football hero-no names would be mentioned, but the buildup would get her the invitation she coveted from Delta Gamma Theta.
And strangely enough, even though she could anticipate that victory, it was a hollow one. For Eleanor Landers was lying face down on the bed and sobbing softly. She had almost wanted to make Tom Jenkins take his insult back, and there could have been only one way to do that. Because his vigorous male appeal had very nearly been stronger than she had reckoned.