Chapter 2
Sonja responded sleepily to the insistent ringing of the telephone. Jon's smooth, tanned body sprawled at her side, oblivious to all but his dreams.
"Yeah," her voice breathed into the mouthpiece of the phone. She opened one eye and glanced in the direction of the clock on her bedside table and couldn't believe that anybody would have the audacity to call her at eight o'clock on a Saturday morning.
The familiarity of the voice on the other end jolted her into a complete awakening. "Hello, Sonja. Ted. Charlene with you?"
Sonja bristled at the way her ex-husband always had of making a question sound like a statement. She could picture him at the other end of the line, self-assuredly patting his dark, trim mustache; tall, slender, perfect in his well-pressed slacks.
"No, of course she is not here with me, you idiot. This is not my weekend, remember?" Sonja shot. "And how come you, the 'fit' father, doesn't know where his daughter is?" She was always ready to take a jab at him for dragging her into court nine years before and winning the custody of their small daughter convincing the judge that she was an unfit mother, too dedicated to her career; that he, the respectable college professor, could make a much better home for a child.
Unruffled by her retort, he replied, "We had a little spat yesterday morning before I left for my first class. When I came home for dinner, Charlene had left a message saying she was having dinner at a friend's house. After dinner I had an appointment."
Sonja found herself recoiling more and more as her ex-husband went on recoiling not at the information, but at the uncomfortable feeling his snide, arrogant voice always induced these days. His stilted style of speech had always made Sonja cringe, but now, since the divorce and the subsequent custody difficulties, she discovered he was able to produce a physical nausea with a few short words. He was continuing, "And when I came home very late, I naturally assumed Charlene would be in bed where she belonged. I expected Cora, my housekeeper, to know if she wasn't."
"Why should your housekeeper do your job while you're out on the town?" Sonja snapped. "She probably spent the night at Lisa's."
"Your mind is always a source of amazement to me," Ted replied sarcastically. "Naturally, the first thing I did was call Lisa's house. I was told Charlene didn't even have dinner there. However, it's possible Lisa is lying and does have knowledge of her whereabouts. In any case, before I accuse anyone, I thought it wise to check with you."
"Ted, if anything's happened to my daughter I guarantee I'll rip off your balls with my fingernails."
The unruffled Ted replied easily, "You tried many years ago, my dear, to rip off my balls. But they're still there, plump and active." Then, his tone changing to one of measured seriousness, he added, "If I thought anything had happened to our daughter, I would have the police on the phone right now instead of abusing myself like this. Now, why don't you get up off that well-screwed ass of yours and see if our daughter is actually there? Or is it asking too much for you to get out of bed? I know it's your favorite piece of furniture."
Angry blood rushed to Sonja's head. "All right, you pompous prick, I'll look. But I'll tell you one thing first"
"You always wanted to tell me one thing first. And it's always in that undeniably picturesque but limited language of yours. I will now address you in terms you cannot fail to understand. Get up off your fucking ass and look for Charlene. I'll hang on."
"You do that!" Then, determined to have the last word, she added, "But you can bet I wouldn't have my sixteen-year-old daughter running away from home because I treated her like a twelve-year-old." She threw the phone down and jumped out of bed.
Jon, awake by now, watched her tall, well-endowed body slip into a negligee and bounce out of the bedroom.
The door to Charlene's room was closed, suspicious in itself. She always left it open when Charlene wasn't there open, symbolically inviting the girl's next visit. Could the wind have slammed it shut?
She stopped thoughtfully before opening the door and considered the situation. Could Charlene have walked in last night while she and Jon were making love? If so, had she witnessed the lovemaking? And, that being the case, what might she have seen? A little fucking? A little sucking? Well, so what? Charlene would be a woman soon if she wasn't already. Sex was something she'd better learn the right way instead of fucking up her life with some backwoods jerk the way most girls did.
Sonja firmly believed young girls of her own era had been intimidated, confused, frightened, and then, finally, sexually dried up by all the nightmarish taboos forced upon them by their mothers and society. It was, in fact, something of a miracle that she herself had finally disentangled her own life to the point that she could enjoy it. Thank God, she thought, over and over again, for the fashion industry and the way the breaks had fallen. She had not only been able to make her way without the stuffy bastard now waiting on the phone, but had also discovered the joys her body afforded her. Well, with Charlene, shortcuts would be taken. Sonja would be instrumental in opening the doors to the fashion world, and, as for sex well, why not? Sonja suddenly discovered herself hoping Charlene had witnessed the whole episode with Jon.
Charlene could go places in the fashion world. With her face she could become the top cover girl in the country. There was no end to what she could do, but to do it she'd better know how to use her assets to best advantage. Beauty alone was not enough. She'd better know how to get and keep a man until she was through with him. She'd better know all the tricks. What better lesson could she have than to witness her own mother in action?
Charlene was waiting, wide-eyed, in her bed. She had heard her mother's ranting and then she had heard the padded footsteps approaching her door. Then nothing. She knew her mother was standing just outside. Why didn't she enter? Would she be angry to find her there? No, not that. Her mother was always happy to see her. However, this was the first time she had ever arrived unannounced. Maybe her mother actually was temperamental, volatile, vociferous all those things Dad called her but Charlene couldn't remember Sonja ever becoming really angry with her. With Dad, yes almost every night for the first seven years of her life she had heard screaming and ranting and raving, and Dad's quiet voice in the background saying things like, "Try not to sound like the fishwife you are," or, "Your breeding is showing, my dear." And with each insult from her father, her mother had become more enraged.
But she had never seen her father lose his temper, not, that is, until yesterday morning. She shuddered with the memory. Her mother's flare-ups were pale in comparison.
The door opened. Sonja stood there in a thin black negligee, honey-blonde hair falling loose to the shoulders, utterly lovely even without make-up, Charlene thought.
Sonja let out a sigh of relief and strode to the bed to hug her daughter. "Baby, thank God you're here. I was so worried when your father told me you had disappeared." For some reason not apparent to Sonja Charlene overreacted as her mother embraced her, touching her shoulder.
Nothing went over Sonja. "What's the matter, baby?" she asked, as she lifted the puffed sleeve of Charlene's nightie. The girl's shoulder was bruised with an ugly green and yellow welt.
"Who did this to you?" she demanded.
Charlene lay hard against her pillow, unable to answer. She knew her mother would be quite capable of going immediately to West-wood Village and putting a bullet through her father's head.
Then Charlene saw something she had seen only once before when the judge had decreed the father, not the mother, would have custody of the seven-year-old child. She saw tears well up in her mother's eyes.
Then they were in each other's arms, both crying. It lasted but an instant, and then Sonja withdrew, her tears suddenly replaced by a cold anger. She pulled the covers down and began to professionally examine her daughter's body. She found another bruise on her left thigh and ugly red welts on her usually unblemished young buttocks. "That cocksucker," she muttered under her breath.
"Okay, baby, tell mother about it," she said, turning the girl over again, covering her.
Charlene sucked in her breath and gave her mother an appraising look. Never before had she seen her mother in such a cold, stony anger. Storming and shouting she was used to, but this was altogether new. What was happening? Her father always before cool and controlled and her mother always before the one so quick to express rage seemed to have reversed their roles. Now there was murder in her mother's light green, slightly slanted eyes. Furthermore, when her mother spoke next, it was clear she wanted direct answers. "Charlene, let me have it straight. From the beginning."
Charlene told the story. Her father had been rummaging for aspirin when he came across her birth control pills. She hadn't even considered hiding them he'd never come into her bathroom before, much less examined her medicine chest.
He had stalked into her room and demanded, "Where did you get these pills, Charlene?" He was holding the small bottle. The blood drained from her face. She could do nothing but stare at him, at the half-full container.
He stepped forward and slapped her across the face. "Answer me, Goddamnit!" He had never before slapped her.
She was dumbfounded, stunned. And then she began crying.
"Well?" he repeated, still enraged.
"You slapped me!" Charlene accused.
"Of course I did, you slut. Now answer me!"
It was all Charlene could do to gather her voice. When she did speak, it came out as a defensive scream. "A friend gave them to me."
Then, gathering steam, somehow realizing she was better off on the offensive, she asked a question of her own. "What right do you have snooping around in my medicine chest? I'm just keeping them for a friend."
"You're lying, you little bitch." He had never, never used such invective before. The tears poured out faster than ever.
"What friend?" he demanded.
She didn't answer.
"A name, please."
Again silence.
He hit her on the arm. She slumped to the bed.
"All right. The name of the boy you're screwing! Right now!" He hit her again, this time with his doubled fist against her thigh.
By this time, Charlene wasn't even conscious of the fact that her father was using such vile language. She responded, as if by reflex, "Leave me alone. I'm not doing anything. I'm not doing anything bad!"
"Is it that Goddamned long-haired Beldon kid?"
"His hair isn't that long!" she blurted. "So, it is him!"
Then unceremoniously, he pulled her over his knee as if she were an eight-year-old. He spanked and spanked with a rigid, furious hand, until she screamed for mercy. Then, finally, he threw her down on the bed with explicit threats of what he would do if she fooled around any more. The episode ended as he stalked out of the house, still enraged.
Sonja had remained quiet until Charlene finished her story. Then she asked, "When you ran away, Charlene, was it a matter of being impetuous or was it thought out:planned? I mean, are you here permanently?"
"I'll never go back, Mother," Charlene answered, breaking into tears again. "I'm afraid of him of what he'll do to me if he gets mad again. I've never seen him like that. I don't know him any more."
"All right, baby," Sonja soothed. She patted the girl's golden hair down and away from her tear-stained face. "Everything will be all right."
"I knew what I was doing, Mother. I couldn't pack a bag because Cora would have seen me leave with it. But I really did come to stay."
"All right, darling. Now, tell me, what'd you do all day? Why didn't you call me immediately?"
"I did, Mother. You were working on a commercial. I just didn't leave a message with your service."
Damn! Sonja thought. What luck! I wasn't there when my daughter needed me. For a moment Sonja felt as if the fates were conspiring against her, but then she dismissed the thought.
"What did you do then, honey?"
"After I managed to pull myself together, I called Tom and we took a drive to the beach and talked. I had to have somebody to talk to, Mom... "
"Of course you did."
Charlene continued, "It wasn't just the scene today, Mom. I mean, Dad never hit me before, but he's always been so strict it's always been an event in my life to get out of the house. Whenever I could. Any way I could."
"He's a hypocritical monster. Besides, a girl needs her mother when she goes through puberty and adolescence. That judge should have had his balls fed into a meat-grinder."
Charlene couldn't help smiling. Her mother's descriptions were so colorful, her language so honest. Whatever she was, she was not a hypocrite.
Sonja's mind was now clicking at full speed. Not only did it hurt her to see her daughter abused especially by that prick it enraged her to think Charlene might have been marred professionally. Bruises on the arms or legs would prevent Charlene from modeling bathing suits, welts on her fresh young buttocks would keep her from a nude centerfold. Goddamn him, she thought, his cock should be threaded on an icepick. But at least one good thing would come out of all this. She would get her daughter back. Maybe it wouldn't be legal custody, but it didn't matter as long as they were reunited. A quick thought flashed in her mind.
"Stay where you are, baby. I'll be right back." Sonja sailed out the door.
When she returned, she led Jon with one hand and carried a Polaroid camera in the other.
Charlene, despite herself, felt a little flutter in her tummy at the sight of Jon so rugged-looking, dark hair still rumpled from sleep, just a towel wrapped around his manly waist.
Sonja whipped the covers off Charlene and began to pull her nightie up over her head.
"Mother! What're you doing?" Charlene clutched the fabric to her chest.
"Do you want to go back to your father?"
"No!" Charlene wailed protestingly.
"Well, we're going to get some photographs of the damage and in living color. Now be a good girl and let's get this off."
Charlene reluctantly allowed her mother to lift her gown, then lay there, covering her breasts. She gave a sidelong glance in Jon's direction. He had a devilish grin on his face.
"You'd better get over this shyness if you're going to become a model, sweetie."
Charlene's blue eyes opened wide. "But am I, Mother? Dad wants me to be a schoolteacher."
Sonja snorted.
"Let's get one of the arm like this," Jon said, pulling Charlene's hands away from her young firm breasts and plumping the pillow behind her.
"Wait a minute," Sonja said. She fanned Charlene's long golden hair over the pillow and tilted her face at a three-quarter angle. Her upthrust breasts peaked out from beyond the bruised arm. "Perfect. Get a real close-up of the bruise."
Jon crouched down beside the bed in order to get just the upper portion of Charlene's body. And then, although she wasn't really looking, Charlene caught sight of the head of his large penis as the towel parted. A tremor rippled through her. The camera clicked.
After sixty seconds he pulled off the developing strip.
"My, God, she's photogenic," Sonja said as she examined the photograph.
"Let me see," Charlene said, forgetting her exposed breasts, jumping out of bed. When she saw the picture, she let out a little "Oh," obviously pleased with her likeness.
"Okay, baby, off with the panties," Sonja said, leaning forward and giving a quick yank, leaving Charlene with nothing on except an ankle-hugging film of rayon.
"Mother! Must I?"
"You betcha. We're going to get some great shots of those bruises and welts before they have a chance to fade. On the bed with you." She gave Charlene a gentle push and whisked the panties all the way off. At this point, Jon entered the activity.
"Let's have her like this," he said, arranging Charlene languorously across the bed on her back, with nothing protecting her proud young pubis from his eyes pulling the bruised leg up, adding a soft caress to her inner thigh.
A thrill shot through Charlene like an arrow. She sucked in her breath and hoped he wouldn't notice the effect he had just had on her.
The camera clicked again. They waited for sixty more seconds to tick off.
"I just remembered," Sonja announced, heading for the door, "I left your fucking father hanging on the line. I'd better get back to him and let him know what I think of all this. Go ahead with the next one, will you, Jon?"
Charlene looked both pathetic and appealing her long slender legs draped loosely, the large bruise brilliant against her peach-colored flesh.
"Okay, baby," he said, turning her over onto her stomach, letting his hand brush by her soft blonde pubic hairs as he lay her across a pillow. Charlene thought she would die from inner excitement.
In her bedroom, Sonja was hissing into the phone. "You motherfucker, how dare you beat that child?"
"You're overdramatizing, as usual," Ted replied, his voice calm. "Charlene got a well-deserved spanking, that's all."
"Bullshit! Who are you to sit up there on your turd-covered throne and pass judgment?"
"I am her father. And don't forget it!" His voice was firm, confident. But somewhere beneath this cocksure exterior, Sonja could detect an uncertain wavering.
She smiled. She was getting to him. She tapped a cigarette out of the pack on her bedside table. "I suppose you'd like your daughter to be too dumb to take birth control pills and get knocked up then be stuck with an asshole like you for the rest of her life." She calmly lit her cigarette.
"I expect my daughter to behave like a lady. I don't want her to grow up in your whorish footsteps." His voice was now considerably louder than usual, confirming her confidence. Sonja smiled to herself as she waited. She knew what would come next.
"Oh! Wait a minute. Now I get it. You supplied her with those pills."
"You're getting smart in your old age. I did indeed give her the pills. And I did it on her doctor's advice. He could see, even if you couldn't, that she's growing up."
"You filthy bitch!" he rasped. Then he regained his control. "I'm not going to argue with you. Get Charlene ready. I'll pick her up in an hour."
"Good. That'll give me time to have the police here, waiting." Sonja felt enthralled as she prepared to play her last trump card.
"Police! What do you mean?"
"Just exactly that."
"Just exactly what?"
"Listen, you prick, and listen good. I have beautiful color shots of that poor battered child. I also have a witness, and I would just love to have the police here, as witnesses, too put it in their report, take you in. Nothing could give me greater pleasure. So please hurry over."
There was a long silence. "It wouldn't stick," he finally replied.
"Wanna bet? I've got evidence. I even have enough contacts to get it in the papers. I can see the headlines now. College Professor Booked for Child Abuse. I'm sure the dean would love to keep you on after that."
There was a momentary silence. Then, in a low, deliberate voice, he asked, "What do you want?"
Sonja took the last drag on her cigarette and stubbed it out. What a satisfaction! she thought. She had won.
"I want my daughter here with me. Furthermore, this is where she wants to be. If you must be dragged through mud before you'll give her up, then I'll do that, too. She'll never go back with you even if I have to take her to juvenile court and have the judge appoint a temporary guardian. But you'll be ruined in the process."
"Be reasonable, Sonja." His voice was smoother now silky, oily, conniving. "You know very well this is the first time I've hit her. I am certainly not a child beater because of one spanking"
"Spanking?!" Sonja cut in. "That was a beating! It was brutal!" A pause. Then, "It won't happen again."
"You're fucking right it won't happen again. Because she won't be with you again!"
"Now, just a minute. What about her future? She was going to go to college this fall and get a teaching degree."
"Big deal! Why in the hell should that beautiful kid become a dried-up schoolmarm when she can make ten times more money becoming a model maybe an actress."
"Look, she's got brains. Why do you want her to follow in your worn-out footsteps?"
"I haven't done badly. And Charlene will do even better. She won't have to struggle to learn the ropes the way I did because she'll have me to give her a head start. She'll be seventeen in November. That gives her only one year and four months until she'll be legally of age. I suggest that if you don't want to lose her completely you back off and send me a notarized statement that she can remain with me until she's eighteen."
"Why don't you stop being a vengeful, selfish bitch, and do what's best for the child?" he snapped, making his last stand.
"I am doing what's best for the child," Sonja snapped back. She just couldn't remain cool for very long when speaking to this man. "And you don't kid me for one fucking second. I know what your problem is. You couldn't stand the idea of her having a little sex with that harmless boy because you want to fuck her yourself!"
"What kind of a sick remark is that?" Ted shouted into the phone. He was beaten, his control completely gone.
"When you pulled her little lacy panties down to spank her, you probably came in your own!"
"You miserable cunt!"
His phone went dead with a slam. Sonja, calmer now than she could ever remember, put her own instrument softly into its cradle.
She smiled. Maybe she hadn't ripped Ted's balls off, but she had sure as hell given them a mighty painful twist.
"Okay. That's enough, baby," Jon said, giving Charlene a gentle caress on her red rump. "Boy, your old man sure gave it to ya." Impulsively he lowered his lips to one of the red welts and let a gentle kiss linger there. "If I was your old man, I'd only shower you with kisses. You're really a sweet kid."
He felt her tremble in his arms and turned her gently on her back. He kissed her on the forehead, the eyelids, the cheeks, then fully on her soft, pliable mouth. She felt his tongue touch hers and found herself responding as she never had with Tom. She sucked on his tongue as she had seen her mother do the night before on this very person's cock, then she put her own tongue into his mouth exploring timidly at first, and then, as the act became more natural, searchingly. His hands drifted to her full young breasts, then one hand moved surely down the even terrain of her flat stomach to the silken pubic hairs, and then farther still to the inside of her satiny thighs.
Charlene moaned with anticipation and parted her legs instinctively. The hand, as she had hoped it would, found its way into the open wet folds. The fingers slid over her creamy little pearl, and then his middle finger found its way into her warm depths. Charlene held her arms tightly around Jon's neck in complete acceptance.
Slowly he released his mouth from hers and moved it down her chin, then her neck, to one pink-nippled areola where he sucked and nibbled gently, on down with his tongue to her tummy, licking, nibbling, brushing her fair flesh with his lips, over the sweet furry mound and on into the warmth of her responsive thighs.
She was undulating her slim, curved hips sensuously when, at last, his warm mouth found her succulent lower lips. At first, when she realized that his mouth and lips were really licking at her vagina her open, pulled-apart vagina she felt an impulse to jerk away, not because she was shocked or because it was new, but simply because she had been with Tom the night before and she could remember his young thunder bursts of semen shooting into her with the volume and power of a geyser. Three separate times one after another! My God, she thought, I must be full of it! But just then Jon hit a particularly sensitive spot and she managed to forget the whole thing.
Again fully relaxed, she sighed with pleasure as he sucked and licked and flicked his tongue against the taut little jewel. It felt like velvet against her. She moaned and whimpered with delight she was his to do with as he pleased. A gush of heat filled her whole being on the peak of ecstasy and she began to involuntarily shiver, then tremble, then shake in great torrents of release.
So this was what it was really all about, she thought vaguely. And then her mind went blank again as he unrelentingly sucked and lapped at her sweetness. She rolled on and on, mindless now, into the land of the indescribable multiple orgasm.
It was during this last release from glorious agony that Sonja with good news on the tip of her tongue returned to Charlene's room. She stopped in her tracks as she saw her daughter and lover. Her first reaction was one of combined shock and jealousy; but it didn't last long. Strangely, she found herself viewing the scene as if Charlene were only an extension of her own secret being.
She regained what composure she had lost. Her mind quickly computed: It'll be good for Charlene to learn the finesse of lovemaking. It'll help her to conduct herself with men who'll be important to her future. Just so long as she doesn't get hung up with Jon. And just so long as Jon has enough left for me.
As Sonja went discreetly to her room to lay out delicate plans for her daughter's career, Sonja's lover went about not so discreetly the very delicate business of laying her daughter.
Sid Morris appraised Charlene approvingly. Sonja's little girl was a lovely little piece all right, as well as a perfect size ten for his sportswear line. He remembered when Sonja had begun her own modeling career with Hollywood Sunwear eighteen years ago. His business was new then and Sonja was a great asset. Many was the time she'd go out with a big buyer and help swing the sale. Now, at the very least, he felt he would have owed it to Sonja to hire her little girl even if she hadn't been a knockout. But this was really a stroke of luck. The girl had nicely rounded ski-slope breasts, just the right size for a bikini. Most these models if thin enough through the middle and hips were usually too flat-chested. And her little ass curved out nicelyjust right to make a bikini look good, but not enough to make it vulgar. That was the trouble; girls either had nothing in a bathing suit or else they looked like they were pouring out of it. But no matter how the ultimate customers actually looked, if the buyers saw the suits on somebody like Charlene they bought them by the warehouseful. You had to understand psychology in this business if you planned to last. For every manufacturer that made it, five went broke.
Charlene was walking and pivoting for Mr. M. as he was called just exactly the way Sonja had taught her. Actually, Charlene had been reluctant to try out for Mr. Morris cold, and had asked her mother if she might not take a lesson or two at a modeling school.
"Hell, no!" Sonja had replied. "That's a lot of shit. Especially when you've got a mother like me. Those schools are for kids who have slobs for mothers... or for overweight girls... or girls who don't stand up straight or walk well... or don't know how to do their hair or make-up. Your hair is natural and your make-up is perfect. And you're doubly fortunate to have inherited my complexion on top of which you've the most magnificent coloring one could have for sportswear. Nothing's worse than having a girl to model play clothes who looks like she's just been dunked in a pot of white flour. She should look like she goes to the beach and plays tennis and rides a bike. And that's just what you do."
"But what about the actual modeling, Mom?"
"You have the carriage of a princess, and no modeling school in the world can give you that. You're born with it. And if I can't teach you the actual turning and pivoting and how to show the clothes to best advantage, then I should turn in my mannequin's badge. Remember, I taught at Lenore Lee Worth's School of Modeling when I was pregnant with you."
Charlene came out of her reverie when Mr. M. patted her on the fanny. "Okay, babe, you've got the job. We bring out a line six times a year, and I can use you about a month each time to show and then be fitted for the next line. That'll take care of half your year's income."
Then, pausing in his enthusiastic spiel, realizing, it seemed, the need for something a bit more personal, he went on, "You know, Charlene, you sure do look a lot like your mother did when she was your age... and, I hope you understand, that is really quite a compliment."
He led her by the arm back to the dressing room where the other model was writing out tags for a future line. She wore a blue smock, carelessly open, and didn't seem overly concerned about modesty. Panties and bare breasts were plainly visible.
"Joyce," Sid Morris said, introducing the girls with a gesture of the hand, "this is Charlene. She'll wear all the bikinis and low-cut lounge-wear. Show her where to put her things and then take her to Ruth for measurements." Turning to Charlene, he continued, "Can you start tomorrow, honey? I hope so, because you're just in time to get some of the holiday line cut on you."
"Sure, Mr. Morris. Whenever you say." She still felt a little overwhelmed by all this. She had shown up at her mother's the previous Friday and it was just Monday now. A miracle of sorts a weekend of icepacks, of sunning by the pool, a little make-up and presto: no bruises.
"Okay, babe. Nine to five, an hour for lunch, and a hundred and fifty a week. Give your Mom my love and tell her to drop by sometime."
"She would have brought me today, but she had to have a fitting for the March Company fashion show.