Chapter 2
Irene Blanchard refilled her ex-husband's glass from the martini pitcher and then returned the pitcher to the refrigerator. "Last one," she said. "Jessie will be home soon, and I've been pouring the booze into you for only one reason." Irene was a slender, thin-featured girl with a thick mop of chestnut hair she wore pageboy style.
"And what could that reason be?" Norman Blanchard inquired with heavy irony. His tall figure looked in good shape even sprawled loosely in a kitchen chair. He wore a loud-checked sport jacket and tan-colored slacks. His features were frank and open in appearance, and he had a quick smile and a breezy laugh. Only his eyes gave a hint of inner fire. He was an automobile salesman, and a good one. Irene was a registered nurse.
"The only thing you're good for," Irene informed him coolly in response to his rhetorical question. She had been married to Norman Blanchard for three years, and they had averaged two or three violently bitter arguments a day. There had been only one place where they hadn't argued.
"You should know, kid," Norman agreed. "I've plowed your furrow often enough that if you had a long, spiky hair on your back for each time you'd look like a porcupine." He downed half his drink, wondering idly why he disliked Irene so much everywhere except in bed. They had just never been able to get along. Both had quick tongues and the uninhibited practice of employing them freely.
"A little less conversation, please," Irene said. She removed her glasses and placed them on the table. The act altered her appearance so that she looked younger than her twenty-seven years. She and Jessie Irwin had shared an apartment ever since the breakup of Irene's marriage to Norman.
Irene reached both hands around to the back of her neck and first unhooked, then unzipped her dress. She peeled it off her shoulders and worked it down her body before stepping out of it. She had the dazzlingly white skin of the true redhead, and her bare shoulders glistened in the light. She removed her slip and stared impatiently at Norman moodily studying the remainder of his drink. "Come on, Norm," she said impatiently. "I told you Jessie will be home soon."
"What the hell, we could always give the kid a show," he said easily. "Brighten up her man-less life."
Irene quirked an eyebrow but said nothing. She slipped her fingers inside the elastic waistband of her little-girl-style panties and pushed them downward, half-turning as she did so in order to present her back. She posed for half a minute before lowering the panties to her ankles and kicking them aside. She knew what turned Norm Blanchard on. No one knew better.
Her ex-husband stared at his former wife's graceful buttock contours, the skin silky-smooth and the flesh slimly finespun in quantity yet delicately full. Irene had the body of an eighteen-year-old and the sexual inventiveness of a Medici princess. It was a combination to which Norm Blanchard returned again and again despite telling himself angrily that the world was full of women, so why come back to this sharp-tongued specimen who continually ripped him up verbally?
But never in bed.
No, never in bed.
She knew what she had in him just as he knew what he had in her. Once, before their life together had become mutually intolerable in its everyday aspects, he had suggested in jest that if a sex exhibition were added to the next Olympic games they should enter because they were a cinch to win. Together in bed they were all-American ass.
He rose from his chair abruptly after gulping down the remainder of his martini. Swiftly he stripped off his sport jacket and toed off his loafers. He unbuckled his belt and removed his tan slacks. Irene turned slowly toward him after taking off her bra. She massaged the underside of her breasts gently with her palms where the bra cups had reddened her white flesh. Her breasts jutted firmly in a surprising plenitude considering her slim physique, the strawberry-pink nipples tightening rosebud-fashion in the sudden coolness after their freedom from confinement.
Neither of them said anything. Irene led the way into the nearer bedroom of the two-bedroom apartment. Norm followed, his gaze hungrily fixed upon the tick-tock sway of his ex-wife's bare behind. He finished undressing and sat down on the bed, and Irene knelt down in front of him between his parted thighs.
He already had a lazy erection, and Irene took it in her soft hand. The thick-stemmed prick in her grasp overflowed her clasping fingers, the blood-gorged head purplish-rampant and the blue-veined shaft turgid with sex-arousal. Irene lowered her head toward the gristly rod and licked delicately at the blunt head. A quick tremor ran through Norm Blanchard's heavy, hairy thighs.
Irene ovaled her mouth and lipped the stout prick-head inside. She worked her mouth up and down on the shaft, sucking gently while she gave an occasional quick swirl of her facile tongue along the corrugation on the underside of the meaty penis. Norm Blanchard's hands came down upon Irene's red hair as she expertly sucked him into consummate rigidity.
"That's enough!" he said suddenly, pushing her away. "Sonofabitch, you've got a mouth like a vacuum cleaner. Get your ass up in the air."
Irene rose from her knees and climbed onto the bed, rolling onto her back. As always, the feel of Norm's brawny cock in her mouth had turned her interior to jelly. In her imagination she could already feel the rigorous distention of her flowerlike pussy-lips by the stiff prick before its stalwart robustness plunged into her hot-yearning cunt. She elevated her long, slender legs and widened them as Norm knelt in front of her.
He paused, crouching, to examine the lengthy, pink-enfolded crease of her sex apparatus. With his thumbs he brushed the silky pussy-hair to either side of her pouting gash, and at his touch upon her most intimate flesh Irene's whole body thrummed like a plucked guitar string. Norm teased the fleshy crevice with a gliding fingertip, and Irene breathed deeply while her tongue rapidly circled her dry lips.
Norm straightened up and shuffled forward on his knees in between her uplifted white legs. He ran the rubbery tip of his lusty cock over his ex-wife's cunt-lips much as he had his finger a moment previously. He verified with the finger that her vaginal entrance was already liberally bedewed with the downpouring from her internal juices, then applied his prick-head firmly to the puckery slot, already turning red from Irene's sex-excitement.
Irene's lips parted and her mouth ovaled in unconscious imitation of the distention taking place below as Norm's unyielding ramrod pierced her, almost as though she once again contained the big prick in her mouth instead of in her cunt. She wriggled her hips slightly as the inflexible prong crammed her depths, joggling herself from side to side to make more room. Her eyes were closed and her breathing labored as Norm began to poke her in vigorous fashion.
"Ohh!" Irene said clearly as the beefy cock began to ramrod her sex-asylum. She strained her slim legs upward to try to contain just a fraction more of the energized monster ravaging her clinging cunt. "Ohhhh, God! It's-so- good!"
It's the only time she has a good word for me, Norm Blanchard thought to himself as he concentrated upon burying his pork in Irene's steaming depths to the final quarter-inch. And he had to admit it was the only time he had a good word for her. Irene was far and away the best fuck he'd ever had. Something about the tremendous combination of his cock and her cunt showered sparks down from the skies.
He dug with his knees as he slammed away at Irene's open-throated, gaping pussy, the whacking sounds of his belly contacting hers filling the bedroom. Irene feverishly threw her bottom upward to help in her pussy's piercing, unconsciously falling into the joint rhythm which had been spectacularly theirs ever since their first time in bed together. "Ohhhhhh!" she moaned, and the moan trailed off to a whimper. "Fuck me, Norm! Fuck meeeeee!"
Her breath caught in her throat as a quick contraction of her cunt-sheath upon the slippery beef engulfed in it tremored her to her curled-up toes. "Norm!" she said urgently, tightening her legs around his back. I'm-coming, Norm!" Her delicately shaped but sturdy bare behind flurried convulsively as lightning bolts energized it. "Norm! I'm- COOMMMMMMMMING!"
Beneath him he felt every slightest nuance of Irene's throbbing cunt as it grabbed hungrily at his prick. He had slowed momentarily to permit Irene to come off unhindered, but now he resumed his deep-plowing action again. Irene's warm, shuddering thighs enfolded him again and her hands played lightly along his hard-muscled back.
Deliberately he held down his own excitement as he fucked his ex-wife with steady, swinging strokes. He knew Irene was almost always good for a second come if she had just a moment to regroup her sexual forces. Already he could feel a tightening constriction of the female thighs enclosing him, along with a quickening thrust of the oozing cunt containing his thrusting big cock.
A quick shiver rippled through Irene's soft flesh as a renewed flame was kindled in her depths. "Ohhhhhh!" she cried out. "There it--is again!" Her gleaming white bottom, glistening with a thin film of perspiration, spiraled upward from the bedsheet. "Norm! Ooooooh, it's-lovely! Harder! H-harder, Norm! Oooooooh! Oooooh! OHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhh!!"
Her voice ran down and her thighs slumped laxly as her second come overwhelmed her. Above her Norm slashed mightily at her slackened cunt as he felt his own eruption near. A slow, tingling throbbing in his prick tightened every muscle in his body including the nape of his neck, and he banged away in blind passion at Irene's relaxed flesh as his loins spurted a rocketing series of jet streams inside her already drenched cunt. When the final burst had wrenched itself from his quivering lance he subsided upon Irene's belly and breasts.
Neither of them said anything.
They had just concluded their only form of successful communication.
After a moment Norm rolled off his ex-wife and stretched out on his side. He was still breathing heavily. Irene rose from the bed and went into the bathroom, where she wet one end of a towel and wiped between her legs carefully. Tiny interior muscles in her thighs were still fluttering from her reaction to Norm's fucking of her, but the immediate postcoital lassitude was already evaporating. She employed a spray-douche and again wiped herself thoroughly before leaving the bathroom.
The bedroom was empty.
She found Norm in the kitchen, still naked, standing at the refrigerator pouring himself another drink from the martini pitcher. "Get your clothes on!" Irene snapped at him. "D'you think I want Jessie walking in on you like that? I don't take an ad in the paper about this sort of thing, you know."
"But you love it," Norm jeered.
Irene didn't deny it. "Get your clothes on," she repeated, and stooped to pick up her own underwear from the kitchen floor. Despite herself her eyes went to Norm's greasy-looking penis, reduced but never small, swinging heavily with each movement he made. She hated herself for feeling so dependent upon that lump of flesh for whose proprietor she felt no other salutatory emotion. It was small satisfaction to her that she knew Norm felt the same way about her. He had a current girl friend, Alice, the most recent in a long succession of girl friends, but after too many martinis one afternoon he had confessed to Irene that none of his girl friends had ever held a candle to her in the pure, unadulterated art of lovemaking.
She used to wonder if such an admission early in their marriage might have saved it, but deep down inside she knew better. They should never have married at all. They were almost complete opposites. Norm was loud, fast-talking, and a natural chaser. Irene was quiet, soft-spoken except when angry, and instinctively mono-gamic. They would never have discovered their total affinity in bed if Irene hadn't succumbed one night to the female urge to find out if this bragging, boasting male actually shot the game he talked so well. The fact that he did had been a mind-bending, body-exhilarating experience which led to marriage against her better judgment. It simply hadn't worked.
Norm dressed in the kitchen while Irene remade the bed. His mind was already on other things; on other ports of call, Irene thought resentfully. "I'll call you," he grunted as he swathed himself again in his jacket, a jacket whose loud checks should have appeared garish but instead appeared merely to highlight Norm's broadshouldered good looks. He had a hand on the apartment door, ready to leave, when they both heard Jessie's key in the lock. Norm stood aside as she opened the door and entered the apartment in her wrinkled skating costume.
"I was just leavin', sugar," he said breezily to Jessie, "but for you I'd make an exception." He reached for her but she evaded him. She had had a lot of practice in evading him, and managed it tolerantly. Norm Blanchard's attitude in life was to punch all the buttons in sight until he found a machine that lit up. Jessie was always scrupulous never to give even a hint that she was moving in on the property of her best friend, Irene, despite the fact that Irene herself repeatedly declared that she had written off the property.
"What happened to you?" Norm demanded when his eyes stopped caressing Jessie's more ample curves long enough to notice that the skating costume encasing them was bunched and lumpy-looking.
"The ice gave way and I went into the pond," Jessie explained. "Fortunately there was a shack nearby where we could get partly dry."
"Yeah, well, you'd better inhale five fingers of whiskey an' take a hot shower," Norm advised. "See you, girls." He went out the door, closing it behind him.
Jessie walked from the tiny hallway into the kitchenette. She stopped and sniffed the air lightly, then looked inquiringly at Irene. "Yes," Irene admitted, "if you'd come home a few minutes earlier you'd have found us in the bedroom." She and Jessie had been good friends even before Irene's ill-fated marriage, and they had no secrets from each other.
"Sometimes I think that man is psychic," Irene continued. "All I have to do is relax and think a naughty thought or two and the phone rings and there he is."
"And you usually say 'Come on over,'" Jessie said gently.
"I always say 'Come on over,'" Irene corrected her. She smiled ruefully. "Even detesting the big hulk the way I do every second he doesn't have his joystick in my playground."
"He's a handsome brute," Jessie said lightly.
"Brute is the operative word," Irene said grimly. "But listen, for once I agree with him; you've got to get out of those things and into the shower. Did I hear you say that 'we' got partly dry in a nearby shack?"
"Wayne went into the pond, too, trying to get me out," Jessie explained.
"How could you get dry inside a shack in this near-zero weather, Jessie?"
"It had a fireplace. And a bed. We stripped and got into the bed while we were waiting for the fireplace to warm it up."
"Ah-ha!" Irene said. "What else got warmed up?"
"Exactly what you're thinking," Jessie admitted.
"With Wayne?" Irene looked doubtful. "Somehow I never think of him in that capacity."
"It wasn't much of a capacity," Jessie replied. "But there we were, and what was I going to do once we thawed out sufficiently to think about something other than how cold we were? I started to stop him once, but he took it personally, as an indication I was turned off by his acne, so finally I let him do what he wanted."
"He should do something about his face," Irene said. "It doesn't have to look that way. When I was working in a dermatologist's office I learned a few tricks myself. But it wasn't any good for you with Wayne?"
"Not very. I don't think he's had very much experience, or practice, or whatever you want to call it. He's not sure of himself."
"But he has the equipment?" Irene asked curiously.
"Above average, I'd say," Jessie returned. She began to remove her skating costume. "Perhaps well above." She smiled at her friend. "Not that I've compared forty dozen male dinguses."
"Shame on you for not doing so," Irene said. She picked up Jessie's discarded clothing and carried it into the bathroom where she deposited it in the hamper. She turned on the shower, encased in a roomy glassed-in cubicle, and adjusted the water temperature to her satisfaction. "There, try that."
Jessie moved past her into the shower stall after encasing her dark hair in a rubber cap. Irene stood watching the gleaming whiteness of her friend's body, its luminescence standing out even against the background of white tile. Belly, bust, and buttocks, Jessie's curves flowed smoothly into each other, each an amplification of Irene's more fragile-looking lissome matching points. "Ahhhhh, that hot water feels good!" Jessie sighed, pirouetting under the steaming water. "There was a while there this afternoon I never expected to feel warm again."
"I'm going to get in there with you," Irene said impulsively. She began to take off her clothing again. Stripped, she put on a matching rubber cap and stepped into the capacious cubicle. There was still a faint pink mark upon her lower belly, the residue from Norm's stomach frictioning against her own. She took a soap bar and began to soap Jessie's full-flowered curves. Jessie took another bar and returned the compliment upon Irene's more girlish dimensions.
The two dazzling white bodies gleamed in the steamy atmosphere. They soaped and rinsed, soaped and rinsed, hands moving ever more slowly, ever more intimately. Irene stood on tiptoe to press a warm kiss upon the nape of Jessie's neck. Jessie soaped Irene's deep buttock-crevice lingeringly, parting the soft globes to finger gently the anal and vaginal orifices.
Irene turned off the water at last and the two girls blended in a long, affectionate kiss. Outside the shower stall they patted each other dry with fluffy towels. Without saying a word they proceeded to Jessie's bedroom where Jessie threw back the covers on the bed. The clean sheet received the two moist bodies which immediately fused in a passionate mouth-kiss.
When their lips parted the only sound in the bedroom was their mutual deep gasps for more air. Their chins rested on each other's shoulders, their eyes closed. Irene began to kiss the creamy skin of Jessie's upper arm, sliding her mouth along Jessie's shoulder, bending her head still more to take in an additional area of Jessie's tender flesh.
Jessie raised a languid hand to take hold of the very tip of one of Irene's strawberry-pink nipples. She squeezed it until it flowered redly, then steered it carefully to rub sexily against her own nipple. Jessie then took both tit-stalks between thumb and forefinger and treated them to a prolonged fondling.
Irene sucked at Jessie's upper arm, then removed her mouth and stared greedily at the red blotch she had created on the white flesh. "You taste so sweet, Jessie," Irene murmured deep in her throat.
She stroked Jessie's bare behind, reaching over her to do it, then inserted a hand between the white thighs and probed persistently until they opened. Irene's parted fingers caressed the satin-smooth insides of Jessie's legs, occasionally permitting her hand to stray upward and brush meaningfully against the silky dark hair surmounting Jessie's pink gash.
Jessie shivered, and her thighs writhed voluptuously. "I-didn't come-with Wayne," she said jerkily. "Help me, Irene."
Irene let her fingers ascend to Jessie's innocent-looking coral cunt-lips and began to tickle them open. She slipped her fingertips into the length of Jessie's crevice and strummed them lightly against the already moist aperture, playing the plumper girl as if she were a delicate instrument. The first joints of Irene's long fingers curled over, working just inside the juicy slit and very slowly insinuating the inner lips apart.
Jessie's arms were around Irene and her hands were on Irene's bottom, kneading the sleek round cheeks almost roughly, pinching large folds of buttock-flesh between her fingers, then slowly letting it escape. Irene's trim-looking bare backside was soon covered with red-looking marks. Jessie then inserted a single finger between Irene's thighs. She lifted Irene's leg and traced the finger firmly across the very center of Irene's dimpled cunt.
Irene lowered the upstretched leg over Jessie's hip, and Jessie's finger sank beautifully into Irene's sex-asylum. The finger pushed with a slight sucking sound between the thick petal-lips and disappeared completely from sight. Jessie began to frig it gently in and out, in and out, using the rest of her fingers to tickle wantonly the hot, moist length of Irene's squirming slot.
They kissed again, moaning deliriously with the sensation of pleasure they were bringing each other. Irene's free hand groped desperately for Jessie's breast, found it, and squeezed the soft melon in agitated, furious fondling. Jessie elapsed Irene's teat with similar abandon. They were amazingly rough with each other.
As if a starting pistol had been fired, they began a simultaneous fucking motion with their hips, driving their straining cunts harder and harder onto the fingers penetrating each. Jessie threw her head back suddenly, breaking the prolonged contact with Irene's mouth during which tongues were exchanged furiously. "I'm coming!" Jessie said hoarsely. "I'm-COMING!" Irene responded with a long moan. Jessie thrashed helplessly upon the impaling finger before slowing to a sighing surcease. The girls remained motionless for a long moment with only slight quivering movements in their thighs betraying their immobility.
Then Jessie raised herself and swung herself around so that her bottom faced Irene's head as Irene reclined on her back. Quickly Jessie's right thighs lifted and came across Irene's body. Jessie squatted boldly astride Irene's shoulders, leaning forward at once so that her hind cheeks opened and the luscious, dew-wet valley in between was blatantly displayed to Irene's eyes.
Jessie bent lower, supporting herself by placing her hands on Irene's thighs. As Jessie bent forward, the full beauty of her scarlet-lipped cunt came into view. From the backward position it looked like a long, deep wound, the puffy lips on either side of the aperture opening to expose the red inner flesh. Jessie's fingers plucked on the soft inside of Irene's thighs, urging them to open.
The thighs parted and lifted, and Irene's surprisingly mature, fleshy-lipped, lightly oozing pussy came into view. Jessie darted her head down upon it, and a spasm rippled through Irene's flesh. At the same time she seized Jessie's parted buttocks and drew them backward and down upon her face. Jessie's mouth and tongue were working busily all over Irene's uplifted quim, until Irene's legs stiffened suddenly, her thighs descended, and her heels drummed spastically upon the bed as a quick come overtook her.
"I can't-reach you, Irene!" Jessie complained hoarsely.
Irene's thighs raised and parted again and Jessie's quick tongue licked lovingly at her friend's overflowing chasm. Irene stroked the wide-beamed hind cheeks of Jessie's upturned bare behind gently, using her thumbs to spread them more widely until the brown anus came into view. It was pursed scant inches above Irene's mouth, and Irene raised her head and deliberately trailed her extended tongue from the base of Jessie's pouting cunt right up the center of her ass-crease, over the hard, taut bump of Jessie's asshole to the beginning of her spine.
Down came the busy tongue, this time to linger at Jessie's rear hole and lap at it steadily. At the other end of the fleshy tangle on the bed, Jessie's dark head burrowed ever more deeply as her tongue thrust vigorously inside Irene's juicy quiff. Irene lifted herself so that Jessie could penetrate still more deeply as her mouth worked violently, worrying the red meat. Jessie sucked large pieces of flesh inward and darted her tongue in faster and faster movements inside Irene's steaming cunt.
Jessie's hands slipped beneath Irene's buttocks and began to squeeze them urgently. Her fingers dug into the loose folds of flesh, lifting, turning, and spreading them in every direction. Her nose buried itself in Irene's slit so deeply that it tickled Irene's aroused clit. Jessie's beautiful ass, still poised over Irene's face, began to bob and weave in wild, frantic spasms, so that Irene had to grip it hard to keep her tongue employed.
The two girls rolled from side to side on the bed, sucking and chewing ecstatically upon the proffered cunts with Jessie's asshole still coming in for special attention. Then Jessie scrunched her backside down completely over Irene's mouth as a second come overcame her, and lapping and sucking sounds attested to Irene's speedy swallowing of Jessie's spend.
They lay inert for an interval, Jessie's breasts thrust firmly into Irene's round stomach, the shapely globes glistening with sweat. Jessie finally twisted aside off Irene's body, switching ends in the process, and they rested side-by-side on their backs with an arm around each other, both upturned cunts still twitching slightly from the aftermath of their exertions. A thin film of perspiration covered both silky-skinned bodies and their hard breathing caused the strawberry-nippled breasts and the grape-nippled breasts to rise and fall in unison.
They smiled at each other and exchanged a kiss, amusing in its daintiness after the immediately preceding fiercely sexual activity. "We'll have to shower again," Irene whispered.
"Yes," Jessie murmured. "Thanks, Irene."
"Thank you, baby."
Jessie sighed luxuriantly and flung an arm over her eyes. "I feel so good now, Irene."
"Someone should teach Wayne a thing or two," Irene replied. "It's lousy to be left hanging like that." She was silent for a moment. "That's one thing you can say about my ex-husband," she resumed. "From the age of twelve Norm probably never left a girl hanging. I should be ashamed to admit it but sometimes I start to come before he gets it inside me."
"He's a man," Jessie said. "Wayne's still a boy. In some ways."
"There's hardly that much difference in their ages," Irene protested.
"But there's a hard masculinity that projects from Norm," Jessie said.
"That's not all that projects from him," Irene giggled. She turned her head to look at her friend speculatively. "You ought to find someone like Norm, Jessie."
"One of these days," Jessie replied lightly. "Speaking of men, Irene, Wayne was giving me a lecture today about not cuddling up more to Milton King. Wayne thinks I won't get the cashier's job unless I do."
Irene had attended several bank parties with Jessie, and she knew Milton King. "For once I think Wayne is right," she said. "Milton King is a slippery piece of goods near a skirt. But what of it if you want the job?"
"You mean I should do it? Let him screw me?"
"Why not? It's the way of the world. You want the job, you go down on your back. It's a big deal?"
"Well, no," Jessie said slowly. "You know I enjoy sex with a man I like. But what I don't like is the thought of that sneering Milton gloating over having had my ass."
"He's not that bad," Irene protested. "He's a rather attractive guy, as a matter of fact, if you're not turned off by prematurely gray hair. And there's no question he's a swinger. Where's the harm in a roll in the hay if it gets you what you want? And if you intend to make a career in the bank, what choice do you have?"
"You sound like Wayne," Jessie answered. "That's about chapter and verse of the preachment I had from him this afternoon." She pursed her lips reflectively. "I don't know. I guess I just don't like the idea of being used."
"You'd be using him, for God's sake!" Irene returned warmly. "You sound like Queen Victoria was still on the throne of England. Snap out of it, Jessie."
"Yes, but-"
"Get with it, Jessie," Irene reiterated. "This is important to you."
"Suppose I wasn't his type?"
Irene snorted with suppressed laughter. "I've seen him watching you, baby. He's already bored your cute little cunny in every way except reality. Take it from the Voice of Experience, you don't have to worry one iota about not being Milton King's type. You can write your own ticket with him."
"But how can I change so suddenly after being so standoffish with him for so long?" Jessie worried.
"Men don't worry about when a girl turns on with them, honey. Just as long as she does."
"But if he's screwing Gloria now would he have time for me?"
"You sound like Alice in Wonderland, Jessie. Just wave it under his nose and make sure you've got a soft spot to land on your back. Listen, what's wrong with fucking for him to get the job and then sticking it up his supercilious ass afterward? With the cashier's job under your belt you'll be getting a shot at his job someday."
"Okay, okay," Jessie said.
"You mean you'll do it?"
"I mean I'll think about it," Jessie corrected her friend. "Let's shower."
Thirty playful minutes later a thoughtful Jessie got back into bed and turned off the light.
She lay in the soft darkness for quite a while before sleep overcame her, thoughts of Milton King and the bank whirling busily through her mind.