Chapter 1
Heather stared in shock, in utter disbelief, unable to reconcile what she'd heard with what her mind told her could not be so. Stiff-lipped, she asked, "W-what? What did you say?"
The man showed his teeth at her; at the younger sister by her side. "Said I mean to fuck you, city woman."
Hands shaking, Heather reached for her sister. "Come on, Honey. This man must be insane, and we'd better get away from here."
That's when the man slapped her, suddenly and viciously along the cheek, and Heather staggered, almost fell off the sagging porch. She caught the rail for support and spread her feet. Her eyes were out of focus and there was a buzzing in her head, but she heard her sister squeal, and heard the ominous rumbling of the big hound in the yard.
"Don't," she said. "Oh, don't hurt the girl.. . . "
And as he dragged Honey by on the wooden porch, the man struck Heather again. This time she fell to her knees on the rough boards, her head swinging and her mouth open. It was some kind of crazy dream, she thought, some wild nightmare that couldn't last forever, that would soon end and allow her to wake up.
The hound snarled in the yard, deep and menacing, and the threat echoed around inside her head. Clinging to the porch rail, Heather fought to clear her eyes. She wanted to scream, to yell for the police, for anyone who might help-but there was nobody to help this far out in the piney woods. There was only the snarling hound, and the man who seemed more animal than his dog.
Slowly, Heather came to her feet again, and saw the man looping a piece of rope around her sister's wrists. Another loop, and Honey was tied to a porch post.
The man said, "You just set there, little woman. You can watch how I fuck the other'un, and see what you got comin' afore long. Might tell you, do you try to run, ol' Bigdog yonder will tear your little ass off."
Heather said, "I-I have some money, some travelers' checks I can sign. . . . "
He moved toward her, pale green eyes holding to her throat, licking at her breasts. "I 'spect you'll sign 'em, all right. But right now ain't the time for that; it's the time for takin' off that city dress and gettin' yourself ready to fuck."
"Wait," she said, "please-I don't understand. I mean. . . . "
Snakelike, unexpectedly, his lean hand flashed out and hooked into the front of her thin summer dress. Heather gasped as the material ripped away, as he jerked again and held the filmy green dress in both hands. He watched her reaction as he shredded the material, as he tore it without effort into rags and let them fall to the porch.
"You got some fine titties there," he said, showing the long teeth at her in a wet smile. "Let's see 'em in the light."
Trembling, Heather reached around and unhooked the bra before he could tear that off, too. Although the hot, muggy air clung to her exposed skin, she felt pin prickles arising. She tried again: "I-I can get you a lot of money."
He pointed a fingertip at her panties, and Heather hurried to peel them down, her very-soul shrinking within her taut body as she exposed her secret places to his lascivious stare.
"Well, now," he said, licking at his lips, "always wanted to know was a redheaded woman red on the pussy, too. Sure is, ain't it? Looks like it'd burn a man's pecker clear off. City woman like you knows all the tricks, I reckon."
Heather took a backward step, feeling with her left foot. Behind her, the dog growled deep in its black chest and she flinched. She couldn't run off and leave her sister to this brute, anyway. Even if she could get past the hound, she was still responsible for Honey's well-being, as she had always been.
"Go on in the house and take a quilt off'n the bed," the man ordered. "Never mind peelin' your eye at the gun over the fireplace, neither; it ain't loaded. Move, woman!"
His eyes touched her as she walked past, and the feel of them upon her buttocks was a terrible intimacy. Heather hadn't even liked to be naked with her husband, not naked right out in the open, and walking nude before this stranger was a revolting thing. But she was afraid and she was still in a state of shock. Pausing at a rumpled bed inside the shadowed clutter of the cabin, Heather lifted the patchwork quilt and turned.
Better her than her sister, she thought, at least she had been married and knew about men. Honey was only sixteen years old, and innocent. But this terrible man meant to-to have intercourse with the child, too. Maybe Heather could find some way to stop that-bribe or tempt the man somehow or, failing that, get Honey and herself away where they could find police, find help.
Her face hot with shame, Heather moved back onto the porch of the weather-beaten shack, carrying the quilt in front of her body, grateful for its shelter. The man said, "Spread it yonder, where your sister can watch good."
Honey said, "Heather-don't worry, we'll be okay."
Heather glanced at her sister bound, sitting tied to a post as if she were some lower form of life. Then she spread the quilt as she had been commanded, laying it smooth across the uneven boards, blushing again as she realized that the man was standing behind her and eyeing her buttocks.
If only she hadn't taken the other man's advice and come up this back road looking for a cabin to rent; if only she hadn't yielded to impulse and run to earth here in this backwoods country. She should have kept going, traveling anywhere out of the country, even. They might have made it fine, even though she felt the Company had people checking airports and bus lines. That's why she hadn't driven any farther than Memphis before switching rental cars, leaving the second one in Jackson. The Company would be nosing around rental agencies, too. But its thugs wouldn't know where to start from Jackson; there'd been an ancient train, then a dusty bus, and a cheap car bought from a lot in Meridian.
"You got you a fine ass, too," the man said behind her, and Heather sat back on her heels. He put a bare and dirty foot against the small of her back and shoved her flat on her stomach. "Yes, sir, a mighty fine ass, all soft and shiny. Sure glad ol' Artis headed you this way, but I 'spect he's frettin' over it some himself. Ol' Artis always been a cunt chaser, but I reckon he never got none good as yours."
Heather rolled over and drew up her knees protectively, crossing her arms over her breasts as fear bit deeper into her heart. She forgot that her younger sister was forced to watch her shame, forgot the other fear that had driven her from her home up north; now there was only the man taking off his overalls, the horrible hillbilly man who meant to-to rape her.
Even with her husband-her dead husband-Heather had never been exactly comfortable about sex. It had always been something under the sheets, a quick and hurried thrusting that had never quite completed the promise of her body. But now, now with the strange man stepping out of his clothing here in the bright hotness of a summer day, she knew that all her nightmares were about to come true, that a brutal, debauched man was just about to stick his evil and ugly penis into her-her thing-and soil it.
"Look here," the man said, "look here at this piece of meat; ain't many city men got meat like this, I 'spect. And I ain't put this pecker into no woman for so long, it's about forgot the feel of hot pussy. Reckon it'll remember soon enough."
Ugly, Heather thought, staring mesmerized at the man's outthrust penis-so ugly and threatening-a penis was bad enough in the dark when it felt for her pubic mound, but out in the light like this. Heather shuddered and drew into a tighter ball. The head of it was a deep pink with little bumps scattered over its surface. There was a slit in it, a blind mouth without eyes over it, and-oh no!-something shiny was oozing out of the slit.
The shaft of it was thick, long; it had veins curling up and around its pale white flesh, and it rose menacingly from a nest of corn silk hair in the man's crotch. It was too big, she thought, her husband's penis hadn't been that big, and since Vic's thing was the only one she had ever taken inside her unwilling body, there was the chance that she couldn't stretch enough to fit something larger. So big and so ugly this one was, and she wondered fleetingly how it was possible for some women to actually like having a thing like that pushed into the privacy of their inner bodies.
He was kneeling upon the quilt now, the heavily tanned portions of his neck and hands odd against the whiteness of the rest of his body that had never been open to the sun. He was holding his penis in his right hand, fondling it with obscene affection, while his left hand reached out to touch Heather's buttock. She flinched and shivered, and a scream gathered itself deep within her being, but she dared not let it burst forth. This depraved man would beat her for screaming, she was certain.
Breath caught in her tense throat, Heather clenched her hands as he stroked her haunches, feeling and caressing in a way that made her feel dirty down below the skin.
The man said, the words rasping out of his throat in a growing excitement, "I never screw no woman without she knows who's puttin' the pecker to her, every whore in the county knows me by name and never makes no complaint. I'm Arley Santee, and I been wantin' to fuck me a genuine, high class city woman all my life. Been wantin' to stick it to a redheaded woman, too, and I guess I'm just pure-D lucky you're a redheaded city woman. I got to thank ol' Artis for tollin' you up to the house."
Heather's eyes were distended, and her mouth went dry as a pulse beat heavily in her throat. "P-please," she said, "oh, please don't do this to me. I-I don't like it. Oh, please!"
His hand clamped down on her buttock and Heather groaned at the sudden pain. Arley Santee said, "You'll like it from me. You're agoin' to get fucked by a farm boy for a change, and you'll like it so much you're going to be hollerin' for more prick. Just because you're some kind of high class city bitch, don't try and act shitty around ol' Arley, 'cause I'll just tear up your ass for it."
With that, he flipped Heather over onto her back and slapped her arms away from her breasts as he forced one knee between her legs.
"Them nipples is near about long as a Jersey cow's," he said. "I purely appreciate good titties on a woman, I sure do." And Arley put both his lean, tanned hands upon her breasts.
He kneaded them, pushed them down with his palms and let them spring up again. He rubbed the nipples between thumbs and forefingers and Heather felt them turning stiff, felt them hardening. She bit her lips in disgust at her own body, and knew the reaction for what it was-nothing sensual, but only a response to stimulation.
Forcing herself to look at the man, she saw again his cornsilk hair, the old paleness of washed-out green eyes, the sunbrowned face, and the teeth long and sharp as those of his vicious hound. Arley, he said-Arley Santee-and Heather wondered if many victims of rapists knew the names of their ravishers.
"Big, solid titties," he was saying as he worked his knee up between her thighs. "Good titties all round and full." Arley dipped his body suddenly, and Heather writhed at the impact of his face upon her breasts.
Oh, no, she thought, oh, no, no! He was snuffling at her nipples, mashing them with his hands and rubbing his whiskery cheeks against them. Bestial, she thought, childish and animal-like and, oh, lord, wet and suctioning! He was mouthing her nipple, drawing it between his teeth and lapping it with his hot, wet tongue. Nobody had ever done that to her before-not her husband, and not the two boyfriends she had before Vic.
The sensation was maddening, a jarring, violent feeling that swept through her body, spreading quickly from the hot, pulling mouth upon her nipple. Heather's body squirmed, heaved in reflex, and she caught at his head to try and pull him away from her breasts before-before something she didn't know but was afraid of.
Arley Santee wouldn't let go. She let out a noise of pain as he bit down upon the tender flesh of her breast, and he chose that very moment to shove his hand between his knee and her pubic mound. Her eyes flew wide at the shock. He kept sucking at her nipple while he played with her mound, while he violated the sanctity of her vulva. It was wrong-wrong-and the sinful whiplashes of her guilt stung Heather as this man, this stranger, this rapist roughly fondled her crotch. Her legs shook and her feet kicked gently against the quilt beneath them.
Suddenly, brutally, he let his teeth rake across her nipple and jerked his face up so he could fasten his mouth over her own. Oh, lord, oh, help, she thought helplessly, futilely-and his thick, wet tongue pushed irresistibly through her lips and into her reluctant mouth.
Heather made strangled noises, hurt sounds, as he tongued over her teeth and the roof of her mouth, as he licked and pushed the extension of himself into her unwilling mouth. Then he was drawing upon her own tongue, sucking it back into his mouth, chewing lightly upon it, then harder until her body bucked in painful outrage below his.
Arley's hard hand clamped upon her sensitive mound, and Heather moaned, twisted, in an effort to get away. But there was no chance, no hope, and when his finger pushed violently up into her quivering labia, up into the lips of her entrance, Heather could only recoil in outrage. It went inside and it felt around and it tickled-but she would concentrate upon the invasion, upon the force, the unwelcome entry of it. Still, there was a tickle that she struggled valiantly to deny.
"Hot and tight," he panted into her gasping mouth. "Yeah, you redheaded city slut, it's all hot and tight and just turnin' slick for me-get-tin' all ready for ol' Arley's hard prick to fuck it."
His hand slid under her back, moved to the small of her back, and levered her lower body up, her thighs veeing apart from the weight of her own legs. He was prodding at her vulva with the head of his penis, pushing the blunt end of his thing against the resilient and dampening lips of her mound.
No, she thought, something had to happen to stop this; someone had to appear and drag this animal from her body-police, a neighbor, some stranger coming up the twisting dirt road-oh, no, no-not inside her labia, not pushing cruelly and steadily up into the lips of her thing, her vulva.
Inside her. It was inside her, the knobby head of his penis shoved savagely up into her vagina, moving deeper and -deeper as his pelvis thrust forward and his penis lifted. Heather felt the man's crotch push against her own, felt the sac that contained Arley Santee's testicles as it came against the cleft of her buttocks.
"Clear to the root," Arley panted, "got it stuck up this red, hairy pussy clear to the root, and it's fine, hot cunt, like satin inside."
Heather closed her eyes and tried to lie supine as Arley drew the length of his penis back, back to the distended head. But his hand in the small of her back hiked her toward him, and now his other hand cupped the cheek of her rear end. Arley moved her lower body to suit himself, and when he stroked his long, thick thing back into her shuddering vagina, she felt the driving force of it all the way up into her body.
Another man's penis was moving within her sheath, a man not her husband, a man who didn't love her or even pretend to. This one had slapped her and bitten her tongue, he would beat her senseless if she tried to resist him. Yet he was doing it to her, slaking his lustful, animal need with her slack and shamed flesh. He was stroking his hard, swollen thing into her private little cave, and she tried very hard to divorce herself from the sordid reality of what was happening.
But the rhythm was solid, deep-there was a movement primeval to the thrusts, a pushing of hard flesh within soft flesh, a greased and titillating sliding of male cupped by female, and some dark racial memory forced Heather to throb with the rhythm.
Her head rolling from side to side, her hands turned into fists that desperately grasped the guilt beneath her back. She was conscious of sweat sliding over her skin-her own and Arley's-and somehow that slippery mixing of body juices was just as bad, just as sinful, as the blending of their flesh.
Heather reached up to push weakly at his shoulders, but he was kissing her again, sucking at her lips and tongue, and she didn't have the strength to fight him off. His penis lunged into her, backed out, only to hammer deeply once more, and each successive thrust shook her entire body.
Against her teeth, he said, "Layin' the meat to you, city cunt, fuckin' you good, you city bitch. Roll that fine, smooth ass woman! Shake your ass while I pump the prick into you-you hear me, bitch?"
His fingernails bit into her tender skin and Heather squirmed in pain, wiggled in reflex as much at his awful language as at the digging of his fingers into her butt. Oh, she thought, as Arley burrowed his penis into her rippling vagina and withdrew it some more, oh, she hadn't thought of her buttocks as her "butt" for years. It was his vile talk, his bad words-his, not hers.
"That's it, woman! Yeah, that's the way to go to town-shake your belly and hump it up to ol' Arley. You got a fine, sweet ass, and you're grind-in' it like a fresh-fucked bitch dog-yeah, yeah."
But she wasn't grinding; it was the way he used his hands, the way he was lifting and shaking her torso. That's what was making the movements-those things and the pounding, piercing surges of his male thing within the recoiling walls of her clinging vagina. "Oh!" Heather gasped as a wave of pleasure crashed into her body. In spite of her conscious effort to control herself, Heather felt her passion mounting. She could feel his balls crashing against her asscheeks with each deep thrust and they felt like hammers driving nails of joy into her flesh. His penis so completely filled her that it threatened to tear her cunt mercilessly apart.
Then suddenly, as a riptide were overtaking her, she screamed, digging her nails into his back and kicking his raging buttocks with her heels as if she were spurring a horse on. "AAAAAA-IIIIIEEEE!"
And Arley, unable to control his pent-up passion, unleashed a white hot load of viscous cum into the very shadowy depths of her ravenous cunt. "Hottest piece of ass I ever screwed," Arley grunted, and started to back out of her body.
Heather clung to him, tried to keep him inside her cunt, but he only laughed and jerked his cock from the silken meshings of her flesh suddenly so rich and so feminine. "The hound's growlin', " he said. "Means that somebody else might be sniffin' down the road. Don't you worry none, city woman, you and me is goin' to fuck some more, right soon. But you don't want to get all that greedy, little sister there needs some prick, too. I swear, I never seen such wigglin' around and pussy grabbin' as she done while I was stickin' the meat to you."
With that, Heather subsided, too guilty to turn her head for the expression upon Honey's face. All her repressions came roaring back, and all the shalt-nots echoed in her brain, and Heather realized that she was a loose and abandoned woman. What she had just done, the things she had just felt, were far worse than taking her dead husband's money and fleeing to the deep south with it. At least she could rationalize about that, even though the Company wanted it back and said it had been stolen. Heather couldn't find a single excuse to justify the pleasure she had felt on being raped.
And in front of her own teenage sister, too. Before Honey she had writhed and bucked like some sex-maddened prostitute, and she hoped fervently that her sister could find the goodness to forgive her for the transgression.
Arley Santee lied in his animal's teeth when he said that Honey had been holding herself and squirming in passion; the girl had only been trying to get away.
The man was back into his overalls, straps on his lean shoulders, and he had gotten the gun from above the fireplace. Heather watched him jack a shell into the chamber, watched him stand listening intently to the big, mean dog in the swept-clay yard.
Looking anywhere but at her sister, her baby sister, Heather pulled the quilt around her sweaty body, trying too late to hide it from other eyes. She saw the hound standing stiff, alert, one paw lifted from the ground. Then he relaxed, went droopy all over, and up on the porch, Arley San-tee laughed.
"Reckon it was just somebody passin' on the country road down yonder. Ain't much travelin' up this way, and when they is, it's more'n likely some scutter don't want to be seen, neither. Folks run a little whiskey hereabouts."
Swinging the rifle back over one shoulder, Arley grinned down at Heather. "You don't need no corn to make you all hot and heavy. I swear, back there a spell I thought sure you was goin' to make that red pussy bite off my prick. But I can use a drink, and I 'spect your sis there can, too. She didn't get her nooky off like you done."
The hound turned around twice and lay down under the chinaberry tree, baleful, yellow eyes fixed on Heather. She would never be able to get past him, even if he fell asleep.
"I'll loosen your hands, sis," Arley said. "Just take you a big swaller out'n this jug, and it'll fix you right up. Go on, I said, drink it!"
How could she, Heather wondered, how on earth could she have responded in kind to the bestial sensuality of this woods' runner? But, then, how could said Heather Hyatt Luther be trying to hide from men who were after the rest of Vic's money, and who might kill her when they found it?