Chapter 1
Adrian Parmenter walked off the astro-turfed indoor tennis court and headed toward the upstairs snack bar for a frosty glass of iced tea before retiring to the sauna. Barry Danley, the resident tennis pro at the Miami Beach Racquet Club, stopped in mid-serve and watched her with a cool, studious expression before the elevator doors closed in on her. She reappeared in the balcony snack bar, sitting down at a private table. A smug grin formed on his lips. Sure enough, the balls quit slamming as every man in the club was caught off guard, watching Adrian strut her stuff.
. "Let's take a little break here!" he called out to his students. "Practice your serves for a bit and I'll be right back!" He wiped his brow on the sleeve of his warm-up jacket and gave his racket a few practiced swirls. Once off the turf, he lit a cigarette and watched Adrian one floor above as she sat down and crossed her magnificent tan legs.
Barry, a recent competitor in the Virginia Slims Tournament, was something of a local hero. His students considered him an excellent teacher-particularly the older, wealthy females, who paid him well off the court for his professional services. On the court and in the bedroom he was calculating, cunning, and never wasted a move. Appearance-wise, he was cigarette ad material: tall, blonde, all-American. He moved among the wealthy Miami Beach socialites with confident ease.
He could calculate a woman's performance in bed by how she served a tennis ball, and judging from Adrian's wicked serve, she had to be a mass of raw naked lust behind closed doors! Yet something animalishly instinctive and evasive about her character baffled him.
He took the stairs in three strides and paused at the cigarette machine, fed it three quarters and pulled the Camel lever, one eye zeroing in on Adrian's perfect profile. She was one gorgeous piece of ass! Out on the courts her movements were perfectly synchronized and panther-like, her game a keenly wicked one as she pounced on the ball with liquid ease. She stood with long lithe legs and slim thighs, their sun-bronze shimmer accentuated by the stark white tennis dress she wore, and the stylish snap-on visor with the clear plastic bill cast green shadows over her satin forehead, adding mystique to her classic features. Coolly watchful, Barry had watched her pivoting, that pleated skirt hiking up to show off the white panties with the tight band hugging her pouty pubic mound down between her dark naked thighs. Her hips were slim and her buttocks two luscious handfuls. If her bottom was food for a man's libido, her top half was downright devastating! Her breasts ballooned out in a dreamy cleavage covered by a fine mist of perspiration. Christ, he would love to have licked the sweat off her gorgeous breasts!
Some thought her Mexican, others Indian, but in truth, she was Armenian-American with a few gypsy genes thrown in. Her nose was delicately small with curving nostrils and Barry had overheard remarks from older Jewish ladies, hinting at a good plastic job. Adrian's lips were full and lush with barely a wrinkle in them-always with a slightly swollen poutiness. Jesus, to have those succulent lips wrapped around his cock, nibbling babyishly!
The tennis pro took a long slant-eyed drag off his cigarette, studying through the smoky haze, Adrian unsnapping her visor and laying it on the chair next to her as the waiter set her iced tea before her and tried to sneak a peek down her creamy cleavage. Two buttons had wiggled open during her game and she left them tantalizingly open, deepening the view between. She signed the chit, her pale green eyes looking out over the courts below as if looking at something only she could see.
Every male member of the Miami Beach Racket Club would have forfeited his membership for fifteen minutes in the sack with this desirable sex pot! But now.. . how to get to her? Barry wasn't the only baffled one. Everything about Adrian reeked of sex . . . the way she lit her cigarette, wiped the perspiration from her forehead, even the way she raised a fork to her mouth and wrapped her succulent lips around a wilted green . . . fairly shouted of sex. No . . . lewdity, a cattish cunningness that could claw and scratch a man's ego to bits. That's what fascinated Barry . . . that unconquerable unholiness, a feeling for the wild.
Nobody had the facts on this woman and she refused to enlighten anyone. She lived in Phoenix prior to Miami and had few friends. Jack, her husband, seemed an okay guy, based on Barry's standards . . . a healthy, good looking real estate salesman who was making a killing off the rich Jewish geriatric market.
Nothing could crack her shell; she seemed to live in an invisible glass cage like a knick knack . . . something to be looked at. God forbid should you touch it! Two things could make a person that wrapped up in herself, thought Barry. Either she's an uptight frigid bitch, or she's scared of something. Barry's male instincts opted for the latter: he'd caught her looking at men with those liquid, jungle eyes, but the moment they sensed her stare . . . poof! Off she went.
Enigmatically aloof, he'd approached her from every angle but rape. In one of his less cautious moments, he'd offered to buy her a drink.
"That's nice, but I came here to play tennis."
"Okay . . . right on."
A second time, freshly showered and dressed, he stopped, lit a cigarette at the bar and smiled his camera grin. "May I join you for a drink?"
Adrian had taken her time in answering, sitting back and raking her cat's eyes over his muscular frame, taunting him, playing with him. Apparently, he hadn't passed her test. "Thank you, Barry, but I'm expecting my husband."
Barry smiled through gnashing teeth. "Another time, maybe?" Bitch! Fucking cunt!
Other times she appeared less confident, casting wary glances in all directions like a caged animal. What the hell was she so afraid of? Adrian Parmenter was justly reticent.
To Adrian, her past was disconnected from the moment.. . something dead and gone like passing seasons. Her new life with Jack was healthy, and she guarded any hint at her past involvements in Phoenix.
Barry stubbed out his smoldering cigarette and watched the waiter deliver a message . . . from a lover, a friend? Adrian picked up her visor cap and brushed hurriedly past Barry, heading downstairs for the locker room where the thirty-nine year old Spanky stood unwrapping fresh towels, a non-filter cigarette dangling from her thin, taut lips. Her eyebrows arched and knitted defensively against her own smoke. When Adrian rushed in, Spanky stopped working, ran a hand to smooth back her ducktail haircut and watched. A real butch lesbian, she suffered the brunt of tasteless jokes around the club-harmless jokes. Spanky played it cool, never making a pass at the hundreds of naked women who disrobed before her hungry eyes. Adrian was one heck of a temptation, though, as she stripped to the nude, her body a masterpiece of concave and convex curves, all rippling and tanned to an even Polynesian bronze.
"Adrian . . . how's 'bout a nice rub down, huh?" the short haired locker-room lesbian suggested, trying to control her quivering voice and her heated excitement at the thought of running her oiled hands over the sensually naked curves of Adrian Parmenter's stretched out body.
Adrian tossed her ponytail over her shoulder and smiled politely in refusal. "Sorry, Spanky, but Jack's coming home early With a business friend." Spanky shrugged her heavy shoulders nonchalantly and went back to her towels, her heart beating faster as Adrian ran naked into the shower, her buttocks slim and firm and her breasts swaying with their milky load.
True . . . the waiter had delivered a note warning her of an at-home meeting. Dried and dressed now, she slipped on her large rimmed sunglasses, jumped into her yellow MG and sped on home to the suburbs to the AM radio disco beat. She didn't mind Jack showing her off to his business acquaintances, but had she known who the mysterious acquaintance was, she would have taken the long detour home.. .
Out of breath, she burst into the house with thirty-two minutes to spare and, jumping into a slinky afternoon wrap-around fashioned from wet-look honey beige, she pulled the lash tight, molding the shimmering outline of her lush curves until the puffy outline of her nipples showed through. In the full-length bedroom mirror Adrian studied her reflection, turning to get a full profile view, patting her stomach to flatten it and throwing back her shoulders. Hmmmmm . . . she cupped her breasts as if weighing them, pleased to see they hadn't sagged under their burdensome weight. Satisfied, she smeared a glossy smudge of lip gloss over her rose-succulent lips and pulled her long ponytail up into an off-sided topknot, as she'd seen in the last French issue of Vogue magazine. After a few narcissistic pirouettes, she rushed to the kitchen to mix a batch of martinis and to arrange a plate of appetizers: herring in sour cream, an array of French cheeses, crackers, and crispy raw vegetables.
When the doorbell rang, she swooshed towards it and came face to face with her past!
Hawkishly leering, Wade Collins stood coolly appraising Jack Parmenter's wife. Wade Collins the real estate tycoon . . . infamous playboy of the gambling capitals of the world, newspaper society page material, cruel fornicator of women. He shot her a lopsided caging grin. "Hello, Mrs. Parmenter, good to meet you."
Wade Collins, mystery to the press, was no mystery to Adrian. The aroma of cologne couldn't cover the acrid scent of his madman perversions, his rancid sense of humor or the stench of his venom. Adrian Parmenter knew this well. . . once she had been his mistress.
Adrian's heart stabbed in her chest and the blood drained from her face while her hand shot out to grab for support the door that seemingly faded away from her in a dizzying splash of stars and buzzing sounds. Wade Collins' face faded like a bad dream upon the first buzz of the alarm. Jack was mouthing silent words, his face dripping as do Dali's watches.
It took a while to find her pulse.
Then, with a start, her vision fuzzy, a voice and body breathing close over her, she stirred on the couch. That nearby body slapped her ashen cheeks, a look of terror and concern clouding once handsome features. Adrian gazed up at her anguished husband. "Wh-what happened?"
Jack let out a long sigh of relief. "Christ, honey, you scared me to death! You passed out, just like that!" He snapped his fingers and turned to Wade. "Hey, watch her for me, will you?" Jack stared down at where half of one puffy nipple had found its way clear of her bodice and he began to cover it, until he remembered a little see-but-don't-touch tactics was always good for business. "And no hanky-panky while I'm getting the smelling salts." In a wink, he was out the door.
Oh God, he was still there!
"Certainly," Wade nodded, suave and smiling with mock sympathy as he watched Jack scurry out of the room well out of earshot. With painstaking slowness, the sympathy faded from his cold steely eyes and he sat down beside her. "I told you I'd catch up with you!" he spat.
Adrian swallowed dryly and turned her ashen face to the side. "Leave me alone, just leave me alone!" Her voice sounded soft and pathetic as an injured kitten.
Wade snickered sadistically. "Don't tell me what to do, you little cunt!" He tweaked her exposed nipple until it puckered to his will and pinched it brutally until it hardened into a rose bud. "You ran away from me once and I swore to God I'd catch up with you . . . and when I did . . . I" His expression changed schizophrenically into a ripe, leering smile. "Naughty girls get their behinds spanked, Adrian!"
Adrian's heart thundered in her ears. "For God's sakes, leave me alone, Wade. I'm begging you!"
Wade threw back his balding head and let out a sardonic chuckle, one all too familiar to her: it signalled his mental lapses. Wade was a brilliant, perhaps ingenious, man by intelligence quotient standards, but unfortunately, his brain's chemistry was sorely imbalanced. He could change from tender to cruel in the flicker of an eyelash, from love to hatred and back again before you realized you were the target.
"You were always good at begging, my dear. I had something to do with that, didn't I, Adrian, you little bitch!"
Adrian's face twisted into a knot of despair and fear. "Wade, please leave me alone . . . let me live my life. I'm not the same person. I've . . . I've changed! I don't get off on that stuff anymore."
His eyebrows raised in interest and he gave her a cool, observing look that reeked of sadism. "We'll have plenty of time to discuss it.. . later."
That last word stuck in her brain like an aneurysm, and was twice as painful.
A swoosh of movement announced Jack's return, smelling salts and cold washcloth in hand. His eyes did a double take on Wade's hungry glare to Adrian's exposed, hardened nipple and back again. Putting distance between the two of them, he knelt at her side and stroked her lotion soft hand in his. "You must have worn yourself out playing tennis, honey.. . . "He paused. "Christ, you look as if you've seen a ghost. Want me to call Dr. Dandrick?"
What doctor could heal the infected wound of a sordid past?
"No . . . honey, thanks . . . I'll be alright." She pressed the cold washcloth to her forehead with the tips of her burgundy lacquered fingertips. "Sorry for this inconvenience, Mr.. . . Mr.. . . Collins, isn't it?"
Collins' lips twitched in a smirk. "Wade.. . Wade Collins. And may I add, Mr. Parmenter, you are a lucky man to have such a lovely wife.. . ? "
Adrian withered . . . the scorpion was ready to strike again, ready to dig his venomous tail into her life at the most unsuspecting and unpropitious moment. Hot and cold . . . manic depressive . . .
Jack helped her into the bedroom and she laid to rest like an injured victim, while he and Wade Collins resumed their business talk. The room began to close in on her, its walls pulsating in drumming patterns through dimly focused eyes. This had been her retreat, her hideaway, a place safe from ugliness, decorated in innocuous eggshell white and Wedgwood blue, a study of restfulness. Now it, too, was infested with Wade's paralyzing presence. As she lay half-comatose, she could feel his lingering glares, his unspoken threats, smell his poison. She shivered.
Closing her eyes, her mind reeled back in time like a corny midnight movie. . . back to Phoenix and to her two years-seven hundred and thirty days in the clutches of Wade Collins. Hell . . . she whimpered, it would make a great movie. In a sickening moment of self-hatred, she blamed herself for this lurid mess . . . but then, she had been a victim of circumstance . . . hadn't she?