Chapter 5
Sleep, blessed sleep, smothered the agonizing consciousness of misery, but when Adrian awoke late the following morning, misery was again her company. She had been raped and whipped, degraded and humiliated to say nothing of the threats. Her body felt every stroke of their cruelty now. From the tips of her red lacquered fingertips to her matching toenails, Adrian Parmenter was a fleshy canvas of black and blue with a contrasting red strip crisscrossing her lovely tan back.
God, she couldn't let Jack see that whip mark! Pain stabbed behind her puffy eyelids as she rolled her head on the pillow to squint at Jack's slumbering body lying comically on top of the covers, stripped down to his striped boxer shorts, necktie, one shoe and socks. His breathing rumbled and wheezed from his heaving chest, and despite his disheveled appearance, a grateful feeling exploded in her throat and bubbled up, swelling until it spilled out of her mouth in a grateful sob. She was with Jack! Safe with Jack!
Whereas before she had been up to her ankles in Wade's immoral sewer, now she was struggling to keep from drowning in his muck. Instead of maintaining her distance, she'd thrown herself in his hands . . . tied her own ropes. Once more she was Wade's branded property.
Worse still. . . she'd reveled in the filth. Wearily, she sat up, feeling the pit of her stomach gurgle with sickness. Five years of reforming her lifestyle, moderating her lustful habits, only to discover it amounted to nothing . . . a bitter joke. She swallowed to keep from gagging on her own ill humor.
Carefully hiding her welted back from Jack's view, she leaned on one shakey elbow and looked at her husband snoring beside her. God, she needed him now! "Jack?" she called out softly, feeling a tear scald in one green eye. "Jack, honey . . . wake up." She shook his shoulder roughly; he mumbled incoherently, groaned, and swatted at her hand as if it were an annoying mosquito. "Come on, please!" she pleaded, wanting him to make love to her in his sweet and pure way and wipe out the sickening memory of last night's rape.
"Leave me alone," he mumbled, licked his parched lips and snored open-mouthed. Her creamy breasts, shadowed by a faint veil of nylon, crushed against his broad chest, her puffy nipples tickled by his chest hair as she leaned over to kiss him on his clammy forehead. A whiff of alcohol-breath almost made her sick.
Her mind was numbed and she wished her body was also. Slowly, unsteadily, she rose to her knees on the firm mattress and experimentally lowered one leg off the bed and onto the carpeted floor. Moving didn't hurt as badly as she'd feared, so she slid off the bed and limped toward the bathroom, every step causing a dull ache to stab through her buttocks. Her tears were blinding and she felt her way into the shower where she turned the water on full blast and stepped under the spray. She stood there, face uplifted to the punishing maelstrom and when that didn't hurt any longer, she seized the faucets in both hands and twirled the dials and gritted her teeth against the onslaught of icy, numbing water. That seemed to revive her body, though it would take nothing short of seeing Wade Collins' dead and bleeding body with one foot cemented in two tons of concrete to completely heal the pain.
She stood for a blurry moment, toothbrush poised half way to her succulent mouth, studying her image in the medicine cabinet mirror. Something within her cringed and died. Except for a few love bruises and the fading welt across her back, she was a bronzed statue of perfection. To see her, who would knew what disgusting scenes she'd lived through only hours before. Except for the eyes, that is . . . they told all.
She dressed quickly and ordered coffee from room service, and settled down in the hotel suite with a cigarette. Last night was a blur.. . a horribly ugly re-run of a blue rated movie. The acrid coffee was a perfect companion for those rancid memories and, vaguely, she remembered them slapping her awake, swashing ice water over her face. Perry and Chet had lingered over her body like vultures, sticking their fingers up in her vagina and probing at her anus, making sickening jokes while they forced her into a second round of cock-sucking. When they couldn't get aroused any longer, they dressed her and drove her back to the hotel and dumped her out on the curb like yesterday's garbage.
Adrian had worked half the newspaper crossword puzzle when a loud groaning , followed by shuffling feet sounded from the bedroom. There stood Jack, feeling worse than dead, a picture of disheveled humanity in boxer shorts and tie dangling around his neck like a loosely knotted noose. His eyes, red and glassy, had obviously seen the bottom of too many shot glasses. He was a mess, a pathetic mess.
"Let's go back to Miami, Jack." Her voice was soft and whimpery, cajoling and very empathetic. Her silken robe swooshed as she uncurled her legs from under her.
"Agreed.. . " Jack scratched his head and plopped wearily down into a chair. "Has Wade called?"
"No . . . " She lit another cigarette.
"Shit. I've got to talk to him. We're this far from wrapping things up." His index finger and thumb measured a small, shaky space. "Man, oh man.. . " he shook his head. "I can't believe what I've gone through."
Something within Adrian withered at Jack's selfishness. Didn't it matter what she'd suffered? A cold rage, chilled by Wade's inhuman treatment of her and frozen solid by Jack's indifference, blew through her trembling body and she tried to control her temper. Nothing was fair. That old feeling of numbness and indifference to herself clouded back. She was no good, life was deplorable, everything a cruel joke . . .
She watched her husband reach for the phone and dial Wade's number. God, how well she knew that number . . . and how many times had she fingered that same sequence, dying inside as Jack was now. The sore muscles in her stomach tightened into sailor's knots.
"Christ, I hope to hell I didn't blow it by getting too loaded last night." Jack, staring at the floor, sat with his head in his hands, phone to his ear, a still life of self pity. Adrian didn't listen to the conversation with Wade's Girl Friday, but from the crash of him banging down the receiver, she knew all was not well.. . a fact she could have revealed to him long ago.
Jack heaved a sigh and slumped back in the chair, dejected. "He's left town for a while. That's just wonderful . . . " He stomped to the bathroom, got dressed and told her to pack. She did-happily.
In route to Miami, the conversation settled on Wade Collins; the subject festered and swelled in her mind like an infected wound. "I don't understand the guy's reasoning . . . Christ, some of the silly questions they asked me . . . "
The steward, standing next to Jack, delivered their drinks and he paused long enough to hand her three dollar bills and cast a lingering look at her well cupped buttocks beneath her slim fitting skirt.
"Like what?" probed Adrian, trying to piece together the lurid jigsaw puzzle of Wade's interest in Jack's small business. Chicken feed . . . money to feed his 'zoo' was all it amounted to in Wade's eyes.
"Like . . . um . . . " Jack took a long drink of his scotch; it stayed down. "Like, um . . . do I have a security clearance . . . have I ever been to Saudi Arabia . . . dumb stuff like that. God knows what that has to do with selling real estate to old people."
"Oh." Adrian sat strapped in her seat, her milky breasts straining against the jersey of her blouse as she leaned over to watch Phoenix disappear under the jet's wing. An inkling of something ugly crept into her mind. Wade was after her, true, but he also wanted Jack. What and why? For some unexplainable reason, she found herself reverting back to one of the last parties at Wade's place.. . the one infested with Arabs doused in sweet smelling oils and long white caftans. Then there was Joe Granger . . .
Adrian remembered his scrubbed ail-American clean-cut looks in contrast to the swarthy, lecherous Arabs. He'd sat observantly and disinterested in the whorish women and never involved himself with any of them. Joe didn't fit into the jagged pattern from any angle. Aside from his name, he remained an enigma . . . though he seemed to be favored by Wade.
The cold, horrible feeling that something wicked was brewing in Wade's perverted mind made her flesh crawl with a thousand unseen insects. What did he want of her?
In the following ten days, Adrian pondered that question until the possibilities ran so thin the subject seemed to wither up and blow away like so much dandelion seed. She plunged back into the housewife roll avidly as a new bride. In bed, Jack's loving touch was like ointment on a sore wound. Life was normal, healthy. She frequented the Racquet Club every day and perfected her serve and she relented to accepting a few professional pointers from Barry Danley.
One night Jack burst into the house with a message, just as she was pouring the white sauce over her Greek moussaka. "Wade Collins called, honey! Imagine that! Says he's ready to roll with the business. We're rich!" He plucked the wooden spoon from her lotion soft hand and tossed it into the sink. "Come on, I'm taking you out to dinner. You know what a break this is for me?" His strong arms linked around her slender body, sweeping her off her feet and giving her a dizzying twirl.
To prevent another squabble, she feigned enthusiasm. "Yes . . . Jack, I know."
He sobered. "Sorry, honey, but he wants me to come alone to Phoenix this trip. Don't mind, do you?" he asked solicitously, explaining that he and Wade's lawyer would tie up the loose ends without Collins.
"You say Wade won't be there?" Her pale green-apple eyes burned brighter and she arched an eyebrow.
"That's right, hon. He's going to be out of town."
"Take care, darling and be careful . . . " Adrian muttered to herself, standing on the observation deck and watching Jack's jet soar into the sky until it became a singular silvery dot heading west with the sun. Anxiously, she drove home, feeling deep inside her lovely bones that soon the scorpion would crawl out from under his rock to strike again. Her intuition was keen.
The telephone rang infernally the second she stepped inside the door. Cautiously, she picked it up, as if it might sting.
"Hello, Adrian . . . ? " The suave, unctuous voice of Wade Collins purred in her ear.
"My limo will be there in two hours. Be ready.. . "
"I'm not going . . . "
"Don't be stupid, Adrian. I've got your husband, remember?"
"Okay . . . just this once, but you be straight with him. If you pull any funny stuff I'll kill you. I swear to God I will!"
Wade chortled happily. "Dress for the occasion, my dear, these Arabs like their women sexy."
The phone clicked dead and Adrian stood with it poised noiselessly to her ear as if waiting for a miracle to erase that conversation. While Jack was holed up in Phoenix signing papers and working, she would be held captive in Wade's house slaving over naked men's bodies . . . a slave in his harem.
She dressed carefully. Above all, she had to please Wade in order to protect Jack. The party would last two nights at least, and she swore she'd gut it out, wallow in lewdness like pigs in mud if that's what it took . . . and of course, it would.
The hour was near. Wade was always on time. In one scrambled motion, she filled a glass with scotch, threw it down her throat and ambling over to Jack's desk, pulled open the top drawer and rummaged through the envelopes and papers until her fingers felt the icy steel of Jack's .38 pistol. Emotionlessly, she checked it for bullets and tucked it into her black satin handbag.
Now she was ready for Wade . . .