Chapter Twenty-Two
The rattly old pickup slowed, raced its motor, turned into the short road with a clatter and stopped. A lean man in faded overalls got out and kicked the door shut.
Scarpo said, "Go across there and see who he is."
Geech slid out of the jeep in the early morning light, and stepped out onto the white sand clearing before pulling the magnum from his belt. That was a mistake.
The man was quick and handy with the long shotgun. Its muzzle swung up to cover Geech before he could do more than cuddle his pistol in his hand.
He said, "Let it fall."
Geech hesitated, and that was his second mistake. The man pulled trigger on the shotgun, and the blast knocked Geech back into the trunk of a water oak. He tried to lift his pistol, but when he got it about hip-high, the shotgun slammed another load of pellets through him. Geech bounced off the tree trunk and fell over onto the ground.
The man jacked another shell into the shotgun and looked around. When he turned the white target of his face full toward the jeep, Scarpo centered the crosshairs of the scope upon it and stroked the hair trigger of the carbine. He didn't need a second shot. The man in overalls spun around and the shotgun flew off into the brush, and the man turned over like a kid's top that had run out of spin.
Scarpo came out from behind the jeep and went to stand over the stranger. He toed him over onto his back and looked dispassionately into the face with its staring eyes of pale green, and the hair so washed-out blond that it seemed white. The bullet had gone in at the left cheekbone and come out the back of the head; the white sand was soaking up a lot of red.
Squatting beside him, Scarpo fished out a wallet, thumbed through it, read a name aloud from a driver's license: "Santee; Artis Santee." A few dollars in the wallet; Scarpo took it and stuffed the cheap plastic back into the man's pocket, then took hold under his arms ad dragged him into the brush to drop him out of sight.
On the seat of the pickup was a brown paper bag half full of jewelry. Scarpo spilled it out, poked among it and grunted. The guy must have been a freak for costume stuff; all of it was dime store. Only after he'd gone to the jeep and found his ejected cartridge casing, only then did he walk over to Geech.
"And you thought it was a lockup, you dumb bastard."
He dragged Geech off into the brush, too, being careful where he placed his feet, watching closely for snakes. Wiping his sticky hands on the grass, rubbing them dry in a spot of sand, Scarpo checked the ground around the jeep, scuffed over footprints, and set about disabling the vehicle.
Straightening up, he used his handkerchief to wipe over the steering wheel, the dash, the canteen. He wiped his bald head and sighed, then cradled his carbine and plodded up the trail that led from the clearing. He still had a job to do.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Heather came slowly awake, stretched and yawned. She felt cool, but warm; she felt wonderful, for it had been a wonderful night, and she lay snuggled to the man who had made it so, loving him.
Opening one eye, she looked out across the yard and saw the alert head of the hound, the tangled lump that was her sister and Arley Santee under the covers. Just coming dawn, she saw; in a few hours, the summer sun would broil down upon them all, banishing the cool comfort of now.
Dawn. Arley's brother was supposed to come back today, and they'd get rid of Grady Cordell. Oh, lord, she thought, and felt beneath her skirt for the pistol. It was still there, and she let out the breath she had been holding. The gun gave them a fighting chance, Grady said.
Poor love; he couldn't be very comfortable with his wrists locked around the post like that. But he had done just fine last night, anyway. Managing to turn over onto his side, he'd been able to stroke his big thing deeply and strongly into her eager sheath, once she got a leg over him and helped him stick it in.
Beautiful, it was, the thick meat of it moving hotly and superbly within her clenching cunt; lovely and magic and gorgeous, and she had swished her yearning pussy around in it, gyrating her ass shamelessly and nibbling her labia on the slidy shaft.
And she had whispered against his hairy, sweating chest, hissed the bad words, the exciting words, into the base of his throat, "Oh Grady--fuck me, darling. Push that big cock so far up into my cunt that it can never get back out again. Oh Grady, oh, my love, oh, my tremendous, darling prick."
Because she had been so stirred by feeding him her nipples one by one, Heather thought it might be a good idea to suck upon his, and it was. Grady bucked and heaved at the wet caress, and almost shoved his thrusting cock through her. It was so great to luxuriate upon the length of it, to fondle her fingers into his hairy balls, to know the pounding of that splendid rod as it probed far up into her belly.
"Yes, my love-yes my glorious, loving fucker -oh, screw me until I can't catch my breath. Ram that huge prong up my pussy, make my ass shake-ahh, my darling-ooh-I'm about to come and I don't want to come yet because fucking you is so good, so goood."
But of course she had come, trembling and swiveling her hips, bitting at his nipples and squeezing his flailing balls in her hand. And she had kissed him to keep herself quiet so Arley wouldn't wake, kissed him with thrusting tongue and raking teeth, while that lovely monstrous cock stroked and stroked into her shuddering cunt.
Surprisingly, she'd come again, reaching another almost immediate orgasm when he let go that magnificent jetting of sperm, of hotly flushing semen that sprayed her cervix and saturated the walls of her vagina and came flooding stickily out through the rippling lips of her stretched pussy.
Then she'd said it into his panting lips, whispering it so that no one else could hear, "I love you, Grady Cordell."
And he said back, "I love you, Heather."
She hadn't asked him then if he was married, though the idea had crossed her mind. She didn't ask because it didn't really matter; she was Grady CordelPs woman, and would be, wherever he went, anything he did. If she had to share him with a wife, so be it. She'd share him with Honey, too. A little bit of him was better than all of the other two men she'd known.
Breathing the male scent of him, smiling her lips into the hair of his broad chest, Heather fought to bring herself back to the hard reality of the blooming day. The pistol, the handcuff keys, and now she thought she could steel herself to shoot a hole through Arley Santee, so that Grady would be protected for now and forever-more.
Moving up his relaxed body, she kissed the corner of his mouth and the fake bandages she'd placed over his eyes last night before they made love. She put her lips to his ear and said, "Wake up, sweetheart, it's daylight."
He moved his face and she knew he was no longer asleep. Heather said into his ear, "When he comes this way, when he's away from Honey and that dog, I'll point the gun at him and make him toss the key to the handcuffs over here on the porch."
"Aim it low," he murmured, "at his belly.. Cock the hammer back and aim it low."
"I will," she promised. "I won't let him hurt you, darling."
That's when the faint echo of shots reached the house and the yard-two deep sounds, a pause, a lighter noise.
The hound leaped up and growled, hackles rising the length of its back, teeth showing yellow in the early light. Arley Santee came up a moment later, staring around, rifle lifting to the ready before he fully realized where he was.
"Shots," he said. "Them was shots from down to the county road." He came to his feet with one bound, strode lean and rangy for the porch. "Shots -and Artis due back this mornin'. You son of a bitch lawman-they was a trap laid, wasn't it?"
He had one foot on the bottom step when Heather sat up and pointed the barrel of the pistol at him, aiming low and for the belly, like Grady said. "D-don't come any closer, Arley!"
When her thumb clicked back the hammer, the sound was as loud as the far-off shots had been, and as threatening.
Arley looked at the pistol, then at her face. The rifle hung low in his right hand. He said, "You hunted up that handgun in the house. You white trashy city bitch-you thought you could slip one by me."
"I'll shoot," she said. "I swear, I'll shoot you."
"Believe you would," he said, peeling back his lips and showing his long teeth at her. "Looks like you got some iron shoved up your ass to make you a backbone, and I purely believe you'd shoot ol' Arley-if I hadn't took all the shells out'n that thing."
Grady said, "Heather!"
And she pulled the trigger. The gun snapped. "You cocksucker!" Arley said, and swept the barrel of his rifle up and across as he leaped up the steps. It caught her high on the side of her head and Heather saw fireworks going off behind her eyes. The pistol flew off somewhere and since the rifle had stunned her, she only felt a thump when Arley kicked her in the belly.
Heather couldn't see very well, but she could hear plainly. Arley said, "I'm goin' to tear out your pussy, widder woman. But first I got to know what happened to Artis."
She shook her head and pushed herself up from the porch and tried to tell Arley that he shouldn't kick Grady, too. But Arley kicked him again, and yelled down at him, "Bastard! How come they shot at Artis? Whyn't you tell me there was a trap set? You big po-lice bastard."
Heather made it to one knee, and her head throbbed agony. Her hands felt over the boards of the porch for a weapon, for something, anything.
And Honey jumped up the steps straight for Arley's back; her bent knees caught him low in the spine, and her hurled weight drove them both across the porch and into the wall of the shack. The crash rocked the house, and a tin pan fell clattering off the wall. Clawing at his face, hissing, Honey tried to take him apart, but Arley rolled over and got the butt of the rifle into her belly to throw her back and away from him.
The tin pan rolled to Heather's knees, and she caught it up in time to swing it viciously at the dog's head and he came lunging open-mouthed and fanged at her sister. The clang turned the hound off stride and he hit the edge of the porch, snapping at air.
Honey bounced up with an empty fruit jar in one hand. She flung it at Arley and it splintered against the gun barrel as he got it up in time.
Heather ran at him with her head hound and arms folded across her stomach. She hit him in the ribs and knocked him staggering down the porch, and jerked a brush hook off the wall to chop it at the hound when he leaped again. It fended Bigdog off, up-ended him into the yard on his back with his legs kicking.
Arley fired the rifle.
The bullet kissed just past Heather's cheek, and she stumbled backward. Her sister's hand caught her elbow and kept her from falling. Together, they stood and stared at the crouched man with the pale green eyes who held the gun muzzle on them.
Bigdog rolled over and came back up the steps, jaws slavering. Arley stopped him with a shouted word, and the hound dropped back reluctantly into the yard, panting and exposing his teeth.
Arley said, "I might just let him rip the bellies out'n you cunts. You no-good bitches, turnin' on me thataway. But first, they's Artis, and I got me three live hostages here. You, Grady! What's the sheriff goin' to do, slip up on the house now that he's got Artis? I swear, boy-if my brother's dead, I'll make you all wish you was nice and cool in hell, 'steada' here with me!"
Heather saw Grady's big arms soften, the muscles easing from the struggle he'd been waging with the post he was cuffed to. He said, "I don't know what they'll do."
"Get up," Arley snarled. "All you cock suckers get up. Here's the key, woman-unlock him. We're all headin' for the river."
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The paths went this way and that, most of them no more than rabbit trails in the woods, most vanishing into the marsh, but some continuing over ground that looked pretty shaky to Scarpo.
The fucking women, he thought, they naturally had to screw up things. This should have been a nice clean hit, a simple contract uncluttered by no more than finding out where the money was. But the fucking women had to run to a lousy place like this, away the hell out in the jungle where snakes crawled around, where there were no roads, no phones.
And where crazy farmers got out of trucks ready to blast with shotguns. Not that it mattered much about Geech; the kid was too hungry. He wouldn't have lasted long in the Company, anyway. But Scarpo worried a little about what it meant-the farmer with the shotgun, and the costume jewelry. Could that cheap stuff have been for the broads? Did they have guards around the fucking place?
He moved slowly up a twisting trail, only to see it end in some tall swamp grass. Looking over the waving stuff, he could see the river, brown and ugly, moving like a snake itself, turning through stumps and logs.
A jay screeched behind Scarpo, and he whirled with the carbine snapping up; only the flutter of bright blue through the treetops stopped him from loosing a full automatic burst. Hands shaking, he lowered the gun and made his way back to the forking of the path.
Which way now? Gray moss hung low in the trees, and bushes grew everywhere. Scarpo tried to line himself up by squinting at the sun, but all it did was damned near blind him. Sweating, he slapped at a mosquito that bit his neck, and looked down to see dirty water oozing up around his feet, coming right up through the ground where he was standing.
"Jee-sus," he said, and backed warily down the path again. Something moved in the tall grass, swaying it, and he kept the carbine pointed that way. Sweat got in his eyes and he leaned back against a tree to wipe the moisture away.
A big green locust whirred off the bark just at his head, and Scarpo leaped out, swinging the carbine like a club. The blow pulled him off balance and he went to his knees in a wet spot. Panting, fumbling for the lens caps he'd knocked off the scope, Scarpo cursed, erect again with mud down his legs, sticky, viscous mud that clung when he tried to wipe it away.
And a little red centipede stung him out of the mud. He slapped it against the carbine stock and squashed it, but the base of his thumb began throbbing right away.
"Son of a bitch," he said, and moved up another trail, mumbling to himself. "Fuckin' jungle-bugs and goddamned snakes and swamps. Nobody lives in a fuckin' jungle."
He was scared. For the first time in many years, Scarpo was scared, and he knew something of the flavor of fear that had been felt by the people he'd carried contracts on. But facing up to a hit man wasn't anything; everybody had to die sooner or later, and if a guy screwed the Company, he knew what to expect and took his chances.
But out here, in this stinking hot jungle where snakes wiggled right next to a guy, where they bit at him-Scarpo shuddered and looked carefully at the weeds before he put a foot down. If fear rode him now, fear also drove him onward, because nobody missed out on a contract for the Company. That's what the kid Geech had been hoping, that Dominic Scarpo would back down on the hit and let him take over.
Geech was dead, and Scarpo was watching for snakes.
A blunt head stretched out, tilted up at him. Scarpo fired. He clung to the trigger of the carbine as if he didn't know the weapon was on full automatic, and half the clip pounded out to smash bullets into the ground turtle, to hurl the terrapin's shattered shell bloody through the cattail grasses.
In the rolling echoes of the shots, birds shrieked and something furry crashed off through the brush. Scarpo gibbered and fired another burst that way, chipping bark from trees and cutting down a bearding of gray Spanish moss.
He backed away, stumbling back, eyes wide and staring at the gray-black thing that came hesitantly from the undergrowth and stared with red rodent eyes at him. It was the biggest fucking rat he had ever seen, its long yellow teeth bared at him, its naked tail curled over its back. The goddamned thing was big as a dog, and when it growled, it sounded like files rubbing together.
"S-shit," Scarpo said, and fired the last of his clip at it, so frightened that he missed by six inches, and only chewed up the watery turf as the opossum waddled off.
Turning, Scarpo fled blindly, axing the carbine barrel at thin vines that curled down from the trees like snakes. He splashed through the muddy slough and out into it as the water rose brown to his hips.
He stopped then, staring back over his shoulder at the rushes, the reeds still waving and bobbing from his passage. Down the slough, something moved swiftly through the water, rippling the surface. Feverishly, Scarpo thumbed the magazine release and dropped the empty clip into the water. When he fumbled a full one into place, the water had risen to his belly, and the underwater thing had disappeared.
He had to get back to the land, out of the water, but when he moved his feet, they had a lot of trouble getting out of the mud that clung to his ankles. The more he kicked down, the deeper the mud got, and when the water was to his chest, Scarpo panicked.
Struggling, Scarpo sank deeper in the stuff, and flailed with his free hand, trying to pull through the fluid mud, trying like hell to make it to shore. He actually made about a yard, but the slop had reached his throat by then, and the carbine weighed a ton because he had to hold it above his head to keep it clean.
No, he thought, goddamn it-he wouldn't throw away the gun. He'd need it when he got out of this fucking mess. The broads-the women had to be hit, soon as they told him where the money was. They had to be hit, because the Company said so.
The mud lapped his chin, and Scarpo threw back his head to keep it from his mouth. He screamed then-hoarse and loud and long, and when the mud got in his mouth, he fired the whole clip of ammunition at the surrounding jungle, killing it back for killing him.
And when he went under, Scarpo still held onto the carbine.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
They were in a knot at the edge of the flowing river, and Arley told them to stay quiet while he listened. Heather clenched her sister's small hand and sent a silent message of comfort to Grady. Listening, too, she heard only the soughing of the morning wind in the tops of the pines, and the murmuring of the river as it passed around the fallen tree close by.
She looked across the big eddy and when her glance came back to the tangled roots of the tree, Heather drew a sharp breath. The head sticking above water there was huge-leathery skin, hooked beak, unblinking eyes. Her fingers tightened convulsively on Honey's hand as she stared at the monster. The big turtle Arley had talked about-the loggerhead, he called it. The thing looked like something reptilian out of the prehistoric past. She never thought one could be so big. As she watched, the head drew beneath the brown water, and the surface swirled after it.
"Down there by them willows," Arley said. "Got me a boat under the branches. Go on down and drag it out, Grady, haul it up here."
"He can't see!" Heather said. "He might fall in, or . . . "
"Shut up," Arley hissed at her. "You shut the hell up, widder woman."
"I'll find it," Grady said, and moved slowly, feeling each foot out in front of him. Even though Heather knew he could see a little through the slits she'd left in his new bandage, Heather's entire being yearned to help him.
"Slip across the river," Arley said, watching the handcuffed man move along the river bank. "Let the boat go downstream, and do they ever find it, they'll figure we climbed out there, not up here."
"Let us go," Heather said. "We can't do you any good now."
Cocking his head, Arley said, "Do me the best now. They come after me, I'll have me some swap -and if I'm pressed too hard, I'll just leave the law a body to hold 'em up some."
Honey said, "He-he'll do it."
"Hush!" Arley said sharply, and they all heard the rapid firing of a gun some distance away. Arley rubbed his chin, looked over to where Grady was awkwardly wrestling the boat from its hiding place, and said, "I be dog; reckon they ain't got ol' Artis yet. Still shootin' down by the slough. Hurry it up, Grady, I got to haul ass out'n here."
Knee-deep in water, Grady hauled and tugged at the wooden boat, fighting it to the bank near them. Heather saw that it was small, that it might not hold all four of them, and her heart rose in her throat. Grady, she thought-he meant to leave Grady here, and meant to leave him dead!
"Climb on in," Arley directed Honey, and the girl let go Heather's hand to step into the wobbly boat. "Widder woman . . . "
And Heather said, "No. You'll have to shoot me here, and have all the deputies hear the shots. I won't get into that damned boat until Grady's in it. You're not going to leave him behind."
"You smart-ass bitch," Arley said. "I can knock you in the head, well as shootin' you."
Grady climbed into the boat, his weight lifting the bow so that the whole thing threatened to drift out into the current. "Come knock me in the head, Arley." He held out his manacled hands, big and powerful.
Arley shoved Heather at the boat. "Bunch of cocksuckers. I mean to make you all pay for it."
Dangerously low in the water, the boat eased out when Arley pushed it off the bank and stepped in; he sat down quickly, rifle across his knees, staring hate at Heather, at the others facing him.
Closer, louder, a burst of shots rang out over them, and Arley's head jerked around. That's when Grady yelled, and rocked the boat so hard that it turned over and spilled them all out into the water.
Fighting up in the darkly swirling waters, Heather's head broke surface and she saw Grady battling to take Arley's gun away. They went under and came up again, grunting and splashing, and Arley must have been kicking Grady in the belly all the time. But the rifle came away in Grady's cuffed hands, held by the barrel, and whipped itself on up and over in a dripping arc to land with a shower of droplets, in the edge of the tangled roots.
Heather swam for shore, shouting for Honey, and got her mouth filled with muddy water. Then she saw the girl climbing out on the opposite bank and knew a surge of relief.
Arley sputtered, and when she gained the bank, she looked back and saw his arm rising and falling. He was cutting at Grady with his knife! Sunlight winked off the wet and wicked blade, and Grady dived underwater. His handcuffs, she thought-oh, lord, he had to swim with his hands chained together. He could drown-he could tangle in the roots of some sunken tree and never come up. Shaking, climbing out, Heather leaped for a tree limb and brandished it as a club.
But Arley wasn't coming at her. He was churning furiously toward the downed tree, the tangled roots where Grady had scrabbled the catfish -and where the rifle had landed! She could barely see the butt of it, standing above the surface.
Running around the shore, Heather tried to make her way out along the tree trunk, but rotten limbs made such a barricade that she could never reach the gun before Arley did. She sobbed out her defeat, and fell to her knees. He'd win after all; Arley Santee would get his gun and shoot them before he ran. There was an insane look to his wetly straining face that said he didn't care if anyone heard the shots.
"Grady!" she screamed. "Stay away-stay away! He's getting the gun! Honey-run, Honey -oh run, run!"
Arley tugged at the gun butt, found the barrel stuck, hung up in the roots, and bobbed his head under water, yanking at the weapon. His head broke the surface again, his pale yellow hair plastered to his pink scalp, his mouth open wide, stretched ugly wide in shock and terror.
"Loggerhead! T-turtle's got me! Help-help! Oh shit, he's bustin' my fuckin' arm-help me!"
Arley's head went under and swapped ends with his feet. They kicked furiously, throwing water wide. Then he came up again, spitting dirty water and screaming, but there were no words in his screams now-only the cold horror of the monstrous thing that had his hand and was dragging him down into the depths of the river.
Migod, she thought-the dog!
Skidding around on her knees in the dirt, Heather poked out with her tree branch, but the growling had stopped, and she saw the big hound lying motionless and strangely flattened out. She saw Grady Cordell's big, wet body bulking tall and wide above it, the bandages ripped from his eyes. He must have caught the hound in mid-air, clubbing it with his great fists, battering it down and unconscious, if not dead.
Arley screamed again, this time through a throat full of water, and Grady came trotting to the tree, went crashing and slipping out along the trunk to the netting of twisted roots. He couldn't climb through them, not with his cuffed hands.
Arley Santee's agonized face broke water just once more, but only in a momentary wave of bubbled river, and as it hung there in awful dread, a red stain lifted from below and spread around him.
Then he was gone, and the blood spread itself thin on the moving river to also vanish.
Grady backed down the tree trunk and leaned to help Heather to her feet. "Come on, girl-can't anybody help him now."
She swayed against him, feeling his hairy body wet and slick, feeling a letdown in herself that unhinged her knees and turned her weak clear through. Eyes fluttering, she hung precariously upon the ragged precipice of fainting.
But it wasn't over yet. She saw the hound move, saw him roll onto his belly and get his legs under him. Light came back into the fierce yellow eyes.
"G-Grady! The dog."
He turned, his manacled hands out, then cocked to one side, as if he were holding an invisible bat. Feet spread, he waited for the dog to move.
Bigdog rumbled deep in his massive chest, came up to all fours and trembled there.
Grady said, "Get! Bigdog-get!"
The hound growled, hesitated, swung its head from side to side, seeking something and not finding it.
"Get!" Grady said.
The dog stopped growling. He backed along the river bank, gathered his back legs under his belly, then whirled and trotted up the path toward the house.
"Wow," Heather sighed.
"Yeah," Grady said. "Hate to have to kill a dog just 'cause he's a good one; most dogs don't get to choose a master."
"I'm coming!" Honey called from the far bank, and took a running dive into the water.
They waited for her to reach them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Grady Cordell wasn't married, and had never been in his twenty-eight years. But his home was well kept by a visiting maid and the house had the feel of happy people in it.
Heather came out of the shower a new woman, hair washed and skin scrubbed to a healthy pink-ness. She reveled in her cleanliness and in the air-cooled comfort of Gady's home. Picking a light green robe that was saucy and see-through, she slid her feet into heeled slippers and found a bit of ribbon to hold back her damp hair.
Listening, she heard her sister singing in the shower, and smiled because they could both be safe and happy. The ugliness and the terror was behind them, left at that awful shack in the river marshes. Heather shivered, so many dead menthe drowning of Arley in the river, the bodies of his brother and a strange city man found shot near the road.
And Grady said that someone else had disappeared, whoever had been doing all the shooting. Plenty of sinkholes and quicksand to fall into, he said, if a man didn't know the country. Heather had considered telling him about the money, the hundred thousand dollars that had started her running, and she'd decided to go through with it.
In a little while, when the three of them got together and were able to relax, to think and move freely after their ordeal. She looked into a mirror and touched up her lips, brought a vial of perfume from her suitcase and scented her underarms, behind her ears, her navel.
In the bathroom, the shower was turned off, but Honey continued to sing in her small, clear voice. Heather put the perfume bottle on the dresser and stared into the mirror; the bruise at her temple didn't show with her hair hiding it, and none of the horror had left an outward mark. The inner scars would heal, she was certain, Perhaps Grady Cordell didn't know it yet, but he would help the healing.
Honey bounced into the bedroom, only a towel wrapped about her slim hips, her dainty breasts jiggling and her face all aglow. "Wow-I feel great after all that sleep and food, and getting cleaned up. And you look great in that sexy robe. Nothing under it, is there?"
Grinning, Heather said, "I may never wear panties again."
"Right on," Honey chortled, and plopped onto the king-sized bed. "Hey, the whole thing did us some good, right? I mean, you're not hung up on sex anymore, and I know what it's all about now, with my whole life ahead of me. If Arley hadn't made us do it, we'd have never even tried going down on each other."
Heather felt her face go warm. She hadn't forgotten that, either, but it was an effort for her to discuss it. But in her newfound honesty, she said, "Did-did you like it, dear?"
"Didn't you?"
Nodding, Heather admitted it. "Yes, I liked it very much. It was-so intimate, so close and giving. It was different than when Grady did it to me."
"Oh-Grady? When was that?"
"The first time on the porch, while you and-Arley were in bed. I-it never happened to me before, and he kept urging me up his chest with his knees because his hands were tied and-and, well, when he put his mouth on me, when he flicked his tongue." Red-faced, Heather stopped talking and turned from her intent sister.
"You freaked out," Honey finished for her. "Who wouldn't? And, wow, that big prick of his."
Heather swallowed, all her old reflexes, all her previous programming reacting to shout out at Honey, to reprimand her for using dirty language. But the memory banks were weaker now, the old tapes shaken up by the events of the past few days. She took a deep, steadying breath and said, "Yes, his prick. Isn't it just wonderful?"
He knocked at the door of his own bedroom, a difficult tapping that told them he was now uncertain, also caught up in all the rules and regulations, tangled again in the mores of the past. Heather glanced down at her younger sister sitting pertly on the bed with her breasts exposed, and Honey nodded, so Heather said, "Come in."
When Grady entered the room, his eyes went first to Heather standing tall and shiny in her appealing negligee, then dropped to Honey and widened at the sight of her modeled breasts with the impudent nipples. He looked firmly back into Heather's eyes.
"Ah-you girls ready for something long and cold? A julep, maybe?"
Honey smiled innocently up at him. "I think we're more ready for something long and hot-and stiff. Aren't you all rested up yet, Grady?"
He swallowed, looked helplessly at Heather.
"I-look, girls, we were trapped back there at Santee's, and you were forced into some things you'd never do on your own, and . . . "
"And they were pretty good," Heather said, surprising even herself. "I said once that I couldn't really be jealous of Honey, and now I'm more certain of it. She and I have more between us than just the bond of kinship now, a new closeness, and a love. If you don't want to lay us, because we made oral love to each other and liked it. . . "
"Lord, no," Grady said hastily. "I like to do it myself, to go down on a woman; you know that, Heather."
"I don't," Honey pointed out, and eased the white fluffy towel away from her thighs. All the rich vee of her furry mound gleamed up at him, and at her sister. "Isn't it nice that you're a king-sized man, so that you have this handy king-sized bed. The three of us will fit very nicely together on it, don't you think?"
"You're damned right," Grady Cordell said, and began peeling out of his clothing.
Heather walked around to the other side of the bed and took off her robe, letting it drift to the floor as she kicked out of her slippers and stood for a moment proud and naked. She lifted her fingertips to her nipples and caressed their erect hardness, delighting in the thrill of giving in to her impulses.
She lay down and watched him approach, his beautiful big cock reaching out like a thick and shapely club. He said to them, "How are we goin' to get about this? Leavin' it all up to me?"
"No way," Honey chuckled. "Ladies first, to coin a phrase. I want you to eat me, darling; just like you ate my sister-only with a refinement. I'd like her to ride that gorgeous cock at the same time, while I watch her face and ride yours. Think you'll dig that, Grady?"
"Sure," he said. "I'd be a fool if I didn't."
So he lay full length and bulky on the bed, and Honey kneeled over his face. Shivering a little in anticipation, Heather climbed over his body and kneeled erect above his up-thrust prick. She reached down and held its throbbing power in one hand, running her thumb over the bulbous head with its small and sticky mouth.
"Together," Honey sighed, and lowered her ass gently downward as he slid his arms between her thighs, brought his hands up and around to cup the sleek and provocative cheeks of her ass as they came toward his face.
Heather tried to time her own downward motion with Honey's setting the spongy-hard tip of his cock against the hairy trembling of her pussy lips and pushing against it. Her labia spread, opened with a damp and eager elasticity, and the knob worked itself into her vulva. It was wonderful and filling; it was meat in her cunt, where man-meat belonged, where she needed to have it and hold it.
"Ummm," Honey moaned blissfully, and Heather stared as her sister pushed the heavily fleeced mound into Grady's chin, covering his open mouth with her pussy lips, wriggling the crack of her sweet ass right down into his forehead-but delicately, because it still had a bandage across it.
"Oh, Grady-oh, darling-shove your tongue right on up inside my cunt. That's it, baby-oh, yes, that's the way to eat my pussy!"
Heather ground her own ass, and the heavy shaft slid thrillingly up into her hotly clenching vagina-up and up until it struck her cervix. Her sheath was bulging with his cock, and the thick, mossy root of it nearly flattened her pulsating clitoris.
"So big," she said, her breath catching in her constricted throat, "oh, Honey-it's so big that it fills me up, fills my cunt from one end to the other. When-ooh!-whenever I wiggle even the slightest, it rubs my clit and drives me crazy. Ahh-ahh-fuck me Grady, darling-fuck me strong and deep."
"Darling," Honey breathed, gyrating her belly so that her crotch slid over Grady's cheeks and chin, so that his teeth could rake the length of her cunt lips. "Darling-Heather, darling."
Honey reached out, and her small fingers skipped like quick butterflies over Heather's breasts. Heather gasped and pressed against them, lifting her own hands up and under her sister's arms to fondle her sister's lovely young tits. Rocking upon Grady's stiff rod, loving the sensation of it sliding greasily around inside her tightly packed pussy, Heather caressed Honey's tits, rubbed her palms over the taut nipples, kneaded the little mounds.
It was marvelous to feel Honey doing the same to her own tits, to stare entranced into her sister's hot eyes and know she was making love with all she had. They shared the same man and the same wants, and Heather leaned toward the girl, her eyes shining and her lips opening.
Their mouths met and, with a groan, Honey shot her tongue into Heather's mouth, sliding it between her teeth and tapping the tip along the roof inside. Heather sucked upon it, glorying in the taste and texture of the vibrant thing.
They kissed and clung to each other's tits; they gave themselves up to the outpouring of sensation in them and on them and around their shuddering bodies. For all the while, Grady was eating at Honey's cunt and pouring his huge prick up into Heather's pussy.
Honey's teeth raked Heather's, and the girl gasped, "Oooh-c-coming, coming!"
And Heather sighed, "Yes-oh yes-I'm coming, too!"
His prick thrust strongly, solidly, up into her cunt, and she clenched upon it with all her strength, tried to have her rippling sheath devour him as she was devouring her sister's mouth and lips and throat. The magic feeling burst into her, fanning out from the vibrancy of her clitoris to fill her vagina and tie her asshole into a pulsing knot.
Grady lunged again, arched his back, and pounded the head of his cock into the cup of her womb. His spraying semen jetted into her twitching pussy, splashed hot and thick over the rippling walls of her vagina, and came flooding out to wet his own spasming balls.
Gently, clinging to each other with mouths and hands alike, they rolled off the man and lay sobbing for breath while the tender waves of ebbing raptures washed them. Quietly and in love they lay with each a leg over his body, and he kissed the calf of Honey's leg, drew his lips warmly over her ankle, and moved farther to take her toes between his teeth and worry them.
His knee slid seeking until it found the wet warmth of Heather's pussy, where it snuggled and rocked slowly, sensuously, arousing her again before her blood had really stopped its racing. But then he abruptly pulled himself away and slipped off the bed. Heather turned starry eyes up at him and he said, "I don't know about you girls, but I sure as hell need that long cold one now."
With his oiled and glistening prick waving at half-mast before him, Grady marched from the bedroom, and Heather heard the clinking of ice in the kitchen. She lay warm and still, soaking his semen within the adoring confines of her cunt, her lips only inches from the passion-swollen ones of her sister.
Honey murmured, "Do you want me to eat you now?"
Heather kissed the girl. "Of course, and I want to suck your sweet little pussy, my darling. But we can always do that later-after we've worn out poor Grady."
"Yes," Honey agreed, "after we've fucked him until he's helpless. So let's go have a couple of drinks with him."
Naked and stimulated by their unabashed nudity, they sat at the kitchen table and drank deeply of the dark, minty juleps, both of them loving the man with their eyes and yearning to him with their flesh.
Grady mixed another round in tall, frosted glasses, generous with the rich, brown bourbon, and held his glass to them, "To us-and all the bad behind us."
Heather drank and said slowly, "Not quite oil the bad, Grady." He looked a question at her, and while she still had the courage, she told him rapidly of the flight they'd made from New England, the money her dead husband had taken from the Company, and how she had come here to escape the certainty of gangland vengeance.
"It's a hundred thousand dollars," she said. "We stopped and rented a post office box in that little town about a half hour north of here. De-sota. It's a combination box, and I wrote the numbers into my telephone notebook to hide them. I just put the money in an envelope and put the envelope into the box."
Grady grinned incredulously at her. "A hundred thousand, and you just-hell! You couldn't have picked a better hiding place; that old postmaster knows every rule in the book by heart and he wouldn't even bend one by lookin' into a lawfully rented box." He stopped smiling and frowned. "Then that man Artis Santee shot, and the bullet that killed Artis-gunmen sent after you by the Company, I guess. They got that close."
"What-what will we do with the money, Grady? I thought it should belong to me, but now I'm not so sure. I'm afraid to keep it, afraid they'll send more men after it, and after us. If they found us once, they can do it again, and I don't want any more trouble. Not now."
He thought about it, turning the glass in his big fingers. "You know the address where your husband picked up the books he worked on? Could you maybe mail a package there and be sure the right people got it?"
"I think so," Heather said. "They probably haven't moved because of just me. They're not really afraid of me hurting them."
"But they're in business," Grady said. "They think in terms of profit and loss, just like any legitimate business. And there's a good chance they'll take a deal that cuts their losses. They already lost one man down here-two, I reckon, if we don't find the man that shot Artis. We got their old car, and we backtracked somebody off into the swamp, only the footprints didn't come back out. So if you send them a package with-say half the money, and I was to slip in a dead man's drivin' license from up there-I'd say they'd take it pretty good and check off the rest."
Heather gnawed at her lips. "I suppose so, and yet . . . "
"The rest would get you a good start somewhere." Grady said. "And there's Honey. And it ain't like you could give the money back to the numbers players and the kids who bought dope."
"I'd like to start right here," Heather said, and Honey added, "Right on!"
"I don't know," Grady said, and finished his drink. Burly and hairy and splendidly naked, he walked to the sink and poured himself another one. "This here is a little bitty town; the sheriff only checks me about once a week. Folks hereabouts like to gossip a lot, and it wouldn't look right for two imagine women to be just livin' with me, and me an officer of the law."
"Why-" Honey said, jolted. "Why, you bastard."
"Not unless the widow woman was married to me," Grady went on, unperturbed. "That way, wouldn't anybody dare talk about her baby sister stayin' with us. That would be plumb acceptable to everybody, right on down to the church deacons."
Honey said, "You lovable bastard."
"Speakin' of which," Grady said, and when he moved back to the table carrying his glass, Heather saw he had a full erection again, "bastards and lovin' and such like, I reckon I get to pick my way now."
"I don't know," Heather said, "since I'm paying about fifty thousand dollars, maybe I should be the boss."
"It's worth it," Honey said. "Don't haggle over a few bucks. What's your pleasure, man?"
He led them back into the bedroom, and motioned at the bed as he slowly drained his glass. Then Grady said, "You on the bottom, Heather, since Honey is the littlest. And Honey, suppose you just kind of snuggle down on your sister with your belly up and that cute lil' pussy shinin' at me. One pussy on top of the other, like, and both of you spread your legs wide, 'cause I aim to screw you good, both of you."
"Hey," Honey breathed, "he means to change over on us, take turns fucking us."
"I'll be fair and square," Grady said. "Five strokes in one cunt and five strokes in the other--no more and no less."
Heather laughed. "Good trick, if you can do it."
She lay down on the bed with her feet wide apart, and her sister backed her delightfully shaped ass up to Heather's crotch, wiggled against it for a second or two, then hiked herself to lie upon Heather's body.
Heather cupped the girl's tits in both hands, and Honey's fingers strayed down to tickle into Heather's mound, parting the pubic hair and dipping tantalizing into the dampening pussy lips.
"Now that's a sight to make any man climb a wall," Grady said, staring down at them. "One pretty pussy on top the other-one of 'em red and the other brown, and both of 'em with sweet pink lips all ready for the screwin'. "
He crawled between their veed thighs and set himself, fondling a crotch with each hand, rubbing his knuckles gently into their mounds and fingering the cracks of their asses. Heather clung to her sister's tits and kissed the back of her neck as Grady guided the blunt end of his eager cock into her labia.
"Bottom one first," he sighed, and as he pushed the thick pole into Heather's ready vagina, he also pushed his hairy belly into the wetly throbbing vulva of the girl above. When he sent home his prick to the hilt, and rolled his pelvis to make the spongy head of it feel around inside Heather's steamy box, his belly ground sensually into Honey's gash.
"Three-four and-uhh-five!" he said, and Heather writhed as he pulled out and lifted himself slightly up on his knees to set his prick, all slippery with her juices, against the hunching pussy of her sister.
"Shove it to me," Honey cried, and rolled the clenching cheeks of her smooth, warm ass against Heather's groin as her excited cunt accepted the length of Grady's oily prick.
His balls came swinging against Heather's crotch as he fed the meat to Honey, and she found herself counting the thrusts-four, five!
Honey cheated. She threw one leg over his back and tried to hold his cock within her gulping pussy, but Grady firmly shoved her back down, and lowered his drippy rod to slip it into Heather's willing cunt again. She wiggled violently upon it, grinding her ass and feeling Honey slide around on top of her heaving belly.
But only for five long, deep pushes, and she let Grady out of her fevered body so he could fuck her sister some more. It went on for only two more round trips, and Heather gave him credit for staying power when he was into her hotly swiveling well again. She felt his strokes grow ragged, felt them fall off the steady rhythm, and knew he was about to come.
On the fourth thrust, she jerked back her ass so that his prick whipped out, and with a help from her hands on her sister's belly, she guided the girl's quivering cup to the head of Grady's flexing cock.
He got it into Honey and trembled it there. Heather felt the lifting and falling of his balls as they let go their load of newly manufactured semen. She felt quite unselfish for letting Honey have his come, since she had taken the last ejaculation he loosed.
"Oooh!" Honey cried out, threshing wildly upon the deeply buried prick, her sleek ass bucking and humping. "Ohhh, my love, my love-I'm coming with you-coming and coming and coming!"
Tenderly, Heather held her sister as her orgasm subsided, until Honey went softly and sweetly limp. Heather felt like the big sister, and the mother, and the lover, too. It was a wonderfully mixed feeling, and she kissed Honey's ear, cupped
Honey's tits to keep the sensation alive and flowing.
Grady backed out of Honey, and his dripping prick left a trail of adorable stickiness on Heather's pulsing mound. She lay quietly until Honey rolled from her body, and then changed positions with the girl, changed ends so that when she stared hungrily down into Honey's freshly screwed vulva, her own cunt was poised above Honey's panting mouth.
"Go to it, girls," Grady said. "I'll just set back here and watch my wife and my sister-in-law go sixty-nine. I always wanted to be with two pretty women who loved each other much as they both loved me. Ain't many men that lucky."
The position was different, and the wet steam rising from Honey's slit was mucky, intriguing, so Heather plunged her anxious mouth right down into it. Hot and slidy, trembling and creamy; the well was deep and saturated, and her tongue probed it as her teeth raked and her lips locked over the cunt lips. Sucking, rolling the distended and shivering clitoris, Heather ate blissfully into her sister's pussy, luxuriating in the fluids that washed her cheeks and chin.
And she groaned into the fragrant cave when Honey took her own cunt into her mouth. Her sister was more practiced now, and ate tenderly of the tissues and membranes, licking and lapping and giving such ecstasy that Heather could stand it not a second longer.
Heather came. She clamped her thighs strongly about her sister's head and thrust madly against her sister's mouth and teeth and came in an upheaval of passion and lust and crazily lascivious love.
And a scattered string of heartbeats later, Honey twisted and squirmed in her own convulsive cresting, biting the insides of Heather's thighs and raking the cheeks of her ass with clawing nails.
Then Heather let go of herself completely. In a softly gathering blackness, she turned her face for air and snuggled her cheek to Honey's glorious young pussy.
Somewhere in the tender clouds above her, she heard Grady Cordell say faintly, "Soon as we can get the license."
And in a voice like a small silver trumpet, she heard her sister say vaguely, "We'll mail all the money back. No sense taking a chance on losing any of this."
"Talk about that," Grady said.
Heather went nicely and warmly to sleep, knowing that she no longer cared about money or anything else. Only Honey and Grady; and she slept securely, knowing that they both cared as deeply for her.