Chapter 2
Lucille Bryson paused in her undressing to draw the shades in the manse's master bedroom. She moved about in the resulting semi-darkness, hanging up her dress in the closet and neatly folding her slip before placing it over a chair-back. She struggled with her full-flowing curves, finally succeeding in tugging it downward and stepping out of it with a feeling of relief.
Quickly she removed bra and panties and ghosted about the darkened room like a white wraith momentarily before donning a plain, unadorned, square-neckline nightgown. She had one quick glimpse of her full-breasted amplitude and solid-looking rear in the bureau mirror, and she instinctively averted her eyes before the nightgown descended over her nudity. She sat down on the bed after stripping off the coverlet and waited with folded hands. It was the part of the week she liked least, but a wife had a duty to perform.
The bedroom door opened and Paul Bryson entered. He grimaced at the room's darkness, but made no comment. He had long since given up making comments about his wife's phobia about daylight or lamplight attending their lovemaking. He removed his shoes and then undressed speedily, approaching the bed where Lucille had stretched out on her back.
He knelt on the bed as Lucille drew up her nightgown and tucked it under her armpits. He stretched out on his right side alongside her, slipped an arm under her neck, and half turned her toward him so that his hairy chest rested against her large bare breasts. No word was spoken, nor any kiss exchanged.
With his left hand Paul searched in the dark for his wife's vagina. Lucille widened her thighs obediently, and Paul began to massage her bearded sex-crevice. It was one victory he had won in his marriage. Lucille had banned massage-stimulation at first, but he had insisted he would no longer insert his penis into a dry hole. Lucille had reluctantly given in against her better judgment. She had never heard the word "frigging," but she felt instinctively that such stimulation was un-churchly, to say nothing of being unladylike.
In their whole marriage she had never handled her husband's penis. It was no part of the marriage bargain, she had told Paul Bryson firmly when he suggested it. She suffered his manipulation of her own sexual parts only because she experienced relief herself when she became lubricated. Relief, but no pleasure.
Paul alternately stroked and penetrated his wife's labia with persistent fingering until moistness changed to wetness. He plunged the finger deeply into her sex-chute, drawing spend from the inside with which he coated the outer lips. Too often in the early days of their marriage he had risen from his wife's body with his penis-tip smarting and stinging from unlubricated friction.
Lucille stared upward at the dimly seen ceiling. She closed her eyes as Paul rose from his position beside her. He parted her legs and moved in between them. She widened and elevated them, but it was the moment of the week she hated most. She had all too vivid an image of how she must look, on her back with legs asprawl and her black-haired, spend-wet vaginal orifice upthrust boldly. It was why she insisted upon no lights. Sex was degrading for a woman.
She opened her eyes again when she felt the bulbous head of Paul's long, thick penis slowly penetrating her. Paul sank deeper and immediately began to plunge upon her. She did not hold her husband in her arms. Her arms rested laxly upon the pillows to either side. She hoped it wouldn't take him long for his masculine ejaculation.
Her body moved negligibly under her husband's insistent prodding of her flesh. She changed position slightly once to ease a feeling of strain in her back, and Paul's vigorous pounding at her at once increased. Lucille, however, went limp again as she listened uncomfortably to the wet, slurping sounds created by the rapid passage of Paul's manhood in and out of her vagina. It was all so animalistic.
Paul's deep breathing increased sharply and his hips flurried mightily as his sexual spasm overtook him. His lean belly smacked audibly against his wife's rounded one while the wrenching ejaculations vibrated through his penis, and with a coughing gasp he expired upon her stomach after a final draining spurt of sticky semen.
He rose from Lucille's loosely sprawled figure in less than thirty seconds. His wife permitted no after-sex intimacy. He went into the bathroom and performed a quick cleansing of his sexual apparatus before returning to the bedroom and fumbling in the dark for his clothing.
He left the bedroom without having said a word.
Back at his desk in the study, he looked at his watch and noted that eleven minutes had elapsed since he had departed for his bedroom.
Tommy Johnson entered the back door of his parents' home, in which he had not lived for over a year. He had a room above the local bakery which he paid for by doing odd jobs around the premises. "Hi, ma!" he sang out cheerfully to the bulky woman standing by the kitchen stove. "You gettin' enough from pa these days? I could fix you up with plenty good stuff if you're goin' short."
"You shut your filthy mouth, young man," his mother warned but she was smiling. She examined his features closely. "Are you sure you're eating the right kind of meals, Tommy?"
"Sure I am, ma."
"You don't have to live in that dirty little room, Tommy. Your own room is waiting for you right upstairs."
"You know better'n that, ma." Her son grinned at her impudently. "You'd get too nervous listenin' to me boost my girl friends up the apple tree an' over the roof to my bedroom window."
"You'll get a disease, Tommy. I worry all the time."
"Nothin' like that, ma. I take only prime stuff. About your age." He winked at his mother. "Really ripe."
"You stop that before I take the broom to you, Tommy Johnson. Before I forget it, Wade wants you to call him."
Tommy's smile died. Deputy Sheriff Wade Sampson was Tommy's uncle, the youngest brother of Tommy's mother. "I'm not so sure I want to call him," he declared.
"Why not, for heaven's sake?"
"That man comes on too strong for me."
"Too strong?"
"Ahhh, forget it. I'm not too sure I know myself what I mean. How's pa? In good sexual health, I trust?"
His mother shook her head exasperatedly. "Don't you ever think of anything else except sex?"
"You mean there is somethin' else?" Tommy expertly dodged his mother's half-hearted slap aimed at him. "Come on, ma, admit it, you love to have pa slap the saddle on you, don't you?" He broke and ran for the door as his mother advanced upon him determinedly. "See you later, ma!" he called as the screen door slammed behind him.
"You be here for Sunday dinner, Tommy Johnson, or I'll send Wade after you!" His mother's voice floated after him.
Tommy waved acknowledgment as he climbed into his car. He drove to the bakery and parked in back, then climbed the outside stairs which furnished him with a private entrance to his second floor room. He had had two late nights in a row and felt the need for a restoring nap.
He stripped to his jockey shorts and stretched out on the spartan single bed, his elbow almost dislodging the telephone on the night-stand. He had to grab quickly to steady it. He rolled onto his back and shielded his eyes with his arm. Thoughts of Cathy Riggins danced behind his closed eyelids. Young, fresh-faced, virginal-looking Cathy Riggins. The way she'd acted in his car he sensed it was there almost for the asking. And from the look of it it should be some kind of sweet.
He drifted off to sleep.
The strident ring of the phone woke him. Even as he reached for it sleepily, he became conscious of darkness outside and the sound of rain against the windows. "Yeah?" he mumbled, trying to come out of his sleep-induced lassitude.
"Are you alone, Tommy?" The feminine voice was shaky and strained-sounding.
"That's right," he said more alertly. "Who's this?"
"Jo Tucker. Can I stay with you tonight?"
"Stay with me?" Amazed incredulity threaded his voice until comprehension dawned. "Oh. Tom had found out about Wade?" His uncle's liaison with Jo Tucker was no secret to Tommy.
"Yes." The reply was almost whispered.
"Why don't you call Wade?" The line hummed emptily in Tommy's ear. "Okay, forget I mentioned it. Where«re you now?"
"In the phone booth around the corner from the bakery."
"Come around to the stairs at the rear. I'll have the door open."
"Th-thanks, Tommy."
The connection was gone. Tommy sat up in bed, then slid out and pulled on shirt and trousers. He felt uneasy about getting involved in his uncle's affairs. Wade Sampson's explosive temper was legendary. Still, Jo Tucker had sounded really shook up. Tommy went to the door and opened it. The rain thrummed steadily on the wooden stairway. There was no outside light at the rear of the bakery, but he could see via the streetlight at the corner when Jo Tucker turned into the backyard.
The way she was walking sent him trotting down the stairs barefoot. Jo was half-doubled over, holding her side. "Christ!" Tommy exclaimed involuntarily when he saw her face. It was swollen and misshapen and her eyes seemed glazed. "Take it easy now," he continued. "Let me help you." He put an arm around her gently. "Jesus, you're soaking."
He guided her up the stairway and into his room. She remained motionless in the center of the floor when he left her to turn on the light. He had been drenched himself during the short interval of the ascent of the stairs, and Jo Tucker's bedraggled-looking clothing was sodden.
"He-he threw me out," she said numbly as Tommy approached her. Her dark-red, coppery hair, ordinarily attractively upswept, was plastered wetly to her small skull. "I h-had no place to go. All my girl f-friends are married, and I couldn't go anywhere 1-looking like this." She was still holding onto her side.
"Okay," Tommy said soothingly. "Let's get you out of those wet things."
The fastener at the back of her dress was only half-zipped. "My arms h-hurt too much to reach higher to pull it up," Jo said in a half whisper. She stood doll-like while Tommy pulled the zipper down and gently eased the dress from her shoulders. He did the same with the shoulder straps of her slip, and dress and slip collapsed wetly at her feet after being steered down her body by Tommy.
He turned his attention to her face. Although her lips were swollen enough to give her a slight lisp when she spoke, it wasn't as bad as he had feared at first. There was a lump on one cheekbone and a swelling under one eye. He placed a hand under her chin and moved it from side to side to make sure the jaw wasn't broken. "You'll probably have a black eye tomorrow, but I think we can fix it up," Tommy said. "What happened?"
While speaking he unfastened the hooks of her bra and guided it down over her shoulders. It slid down her arms and joined the clothing at her feet. He pulled her wet panties down over her thighs and added them to the pile. His lips tightened when he saw dark red streaks crisscrossing Jo's plump buttocks. She appeared unconscious of her nudity before him.
"He threw me on the bed and wh-whipped me," she explained in a voice that still trembled. "Then when I stopped yelling he pulled me up and p-punched me all around the room."
"And threw you out into the rain," Tommy added in disgust. "That's about his speed. Look, Jo, a hot bath would do you more good than anything else, but I only have a shower here and that's downstairs at the back of the bakery."
"Please," she begged. "I don't care about a hot bath. I'd just like to lie down and rest."
"What's the matter with your side?"
"It hurts," she said simply.
He removed her hand and deftly applied pressure to her rib cage from the depths of his own athletic experience. Jo winced but said nothing. "Nothing broken, I'm sure," Tommy said. He waved at the bed. "Stretch out while I find a little liniment and give you a rubdown." He had noted discolored dots on her upper arms and lower belly that he knew were incipient bruises from hard punches.
Jo sat down on the bed with a tired sigh. The sigh turned into an indrawn breath as her body weight pressed down upon her striated buttocks. She rolled quickly onto her side, then reached behind her to rub her welts tenderly. Tommy came back to the bed with a wet towel he'd wrung out in cold water from the faucet down the hall. "Hold this against your eye and cheekbone," he ordered. "It will hold down the swelling."
"I'll be all right," Jo said. "I heal quickly." She tried to smile. "I've had practice." She placed the cold towel gingerly to her face. "I know I'm making a holy show of myself in front of you but I can't seem to stop hurting," she said in a muffled voice.
"Forget it," Tommy said briskly. "I've seen a female muff before. Not many as cute as yours, though." He eyed the reddish curls adorning Jo's ivory-white lower abdomen. "Very nice." He unscrewed the lid from a jar of liquid in his hand and bent down over the bed. "This will feel a little warm at first but then you'll feel better." He poured some of the liniment into his cupped palm. "Okay, Jo. On your back."
He waited while she complied awkwardly with another quick indrawn breath as her bottom touched the sheet. Tommy applied a thin film of liniment to her arms and shoulders and began to work it in with a smooth, gliding movement of his palm. Jo relaxed submissively and closed her eyes as the soothing warmth and gliding palm combined for an almost hypnotic effect.
He did her breasts when he saw a bruise on one, then moved a towel to her round belly and sore ribcage. He stopped to fold a towel and place it over her crotch, drawing it inward snugly. "Got to keep the liniment out of your gazebo or you'll be climbing the walls," he explained. ". He applied liniment to belly and thighs, working it in with circular sweeps of his palm. He had started out with only medication on his mind, but the feel of the pliant female flesh under his hand began to get to him. His prick rose stiffly in his jockey shorts, whose tight pressure added to his sensitivity. He tried to keep his face impassive. "Roll over," he ordered.
Jo turned over onto her stomach and Tommy resumed the liniment-massage, starting at her shoulders again. He did her back, stopping only when he reached the little hollow announcing the beginning of the deep cleft separating the brimful haunches. He skipped the red-streaked smooth-ivory backside and massaged the full thighs. "Liniment on your butt would be too hot right now," he said. "I've got some cream."
He finished with the liniment, put it away, washed his hands down the hall, and returned to the bed with a tube in his hand. Jo's previously tremulous breathing had eased to slow-drawn inhalations. Tommy squeezed gobs of cream from the tube onto her upturned bare globes, and Jo shivered. "It's cold," she protested.
"It won't be when I work it in," he assured her.
He rubbed the cream gently into the rotund spheres. He could feel the welts under his palm. Jo moved uneasily but made no sound. "What the hell did he use on you, Jo?"
Her face was against the pillow. "His belt," she said muffedly. "God, that feels good." She was silent after that until he stepped back after completing his task. Jo rolled onto her side again to look at him. "You saved my life, Tommy," she said soberly. "I just couldn't seem to think when I-when I found myself outside in the rain. I never felt so-so completely rejected."
"You'll bounce back in the morning," Tommy predicted.
The redhead was looking around the room. "I'm taking your bed," she realized aloud. She made a move to rise, but he stayed her with a hand on her shoulder. "I can't put you out of your own bed, Tommy."
"Relax," he advised her. "I'll take the armchair."
"We could both sleep here. I haven't many secrets from you now."
He shook his head. "You wouldn't get any sleep with me thrashing around beside you. Get some rest, Jo. I'll get you another cold towel for your eye. If you need to go during the night, call me and I'll show you where the John is." He drew the sheet up over the plump ivory-skinned body as Jo curled up with murmured thanks.
Tommy made another trip down the hall to wring out the towel in cold water again, returned to his room to hand it to Jo, then moved to the armchair. He sank down into its depths and stretched out his legs. He listened for a long time to the even breathing of Jo Tucker on the bed.
And after a while he slept himself.
Wade Sampson stared with steely-hard gaze at the defiant-looking boy in the chair beside Wade's desk in the sheriff's office. Wade was standing beside the chair as the boy looked up at him with attempted coolness that couldn't hide a touch of apprehension. "Well?" Wade rumbled. "I done told you I found pot in the glove compartment of your car. Where'd you get it?"
"First you've got to prove it's pot," the boy said.
"I don't got to prove nothin'," Wade informed him heavily. "Where'd you get it?"
"I want to talk to my father's lawyer," the boy said.
Wade reached down casually and slapped him across the face. "I asked you a question," he said.
"You can't do that!" the boy cried shrilly when the first shock had worn off.
"Don't tell me what I can do, son. Where'd you get the pot?" The boy remained silent. Wade slapped him again. The boy tried to spring to his feet. Wade punched him in the belly, doubling him over, then slammed him back into the chair. He reached down and took hold of the boy's hair to keep his head erect and slapped him hard four times, left-right, left-right. A tiny trickle of blood drooled down from the boy's nostrils, ran off his chin, and dribbled onto his shirtfront. "Where'd you get the pot?" Wade repeated.
Fear had replaced defiance in the young face but the boy tried to hide it. "Wait till my father's lawyer sees this blood on my shirt," he said shakily.
"You ain't never gonna get to show him the shirt," Wade informed him. "But even if you did, can I help it if you're the ignorant type who wipes the shit off his ass with his shirt-front? Now let's cut out the lallygaggin'. You bought pot an' you're gonna tell me from who or you'll have bells ringin' in your ears for a month."
"I want a lawyer!" the boy cried out desperately. "You can't-"
Wade slapped him so hard the chair nearly overturned sideways. The boy swayed in the chair, dazed, his hand raised defensively to his reddening face. "Talk," Wade advised him. "Before I lose my temper an' wear you out. Who'd you buy the pot from?" He raised his hand again when there was no answer.
"Mr. Allen," the boy said quickly.
Wade checked his hand in the midst of its full-armed swing. "Mr. Allen?" he repeated in disbelief. "You mean the teacher?"
The boy nodded sullenly.
"You're funnin' me, boy, an' I don't like that," Wade said dangerously.
"It's true! All the kids buy from him!" The boy's eyes were riveted on Wade's right hand.
"Well, now," Wade said. He straightened up slowly. "Mr. Allen, eh? That longhaired creep?" He thought of something. "An' how about that snotty wife of his with her hair hangin' down to her ass? Does she know about it?"
The boy nodded again.
"Well, now," Wade repeated. "Ain't that the most interestin' thing?"
The boy was beginning to regain his confidence. "But you can't use anything I say here against the Aliens. I know my rights."
"When you gonna get it through your fuggin' thick head you got no rights in this office except the ones I give you? Don't you give me no lip, y'hear? I run better ones than you right out've town. You remember Charlie Grant, the son of the previous office manager at the factory? Whole family just kind of disappeared if you remember." The boy looked puzzled. "Do you remember?"
"I remember Charlie just all of a sudden wasn't in school any more. But-"
"You're right he wasn't in school any more," Wade proclaimed with obvious satisfaction. "Young Charlie was a smartass like you're tryin' to be, my boy. He kept screwin' around the wrong party's daughter after he was told to lay off. I had a little session with him like I'm having here with you, an' he still didn' lay off. So I caught him sneakin' through the girl's backyard one night an' I busted him up a little. Then the next mornin' I went down to the factory an' kind of suggested to his father that the family leave town."
He paused for effect. The boy had been listening, wide-eyed. "But you can't-"
"So the father went to see the mayor," Wade resumed. "An' then I went to see the mayor." He smiled toothily. "An admirable if inexperienced young man whom I've known since he was in short britches. So then the mayor went to see the father, an' the family left town."
"But that's coercion! It's not legal! You can't-"
A hard edge replaced Wade's previously jovial tone. "What you can't seem to get through your head, son, is that I'm the law around here. An' from now on you don't piss till I tell you it's time to piss. Understand? I want no tomfoolery from you. For starters, I'm tell-in' you right now not to breathe a word of anythin' said here to anyone. If I hear a whisper of this has got back to that bastard Allen or his bitchy wife, I'll fracture you, son, an' I promise you that you won't enjoy it. Are you listenin' to me?"
"Yes," the boy said. His tone was still sullen.
"Then don't forget it. I'll take care of the Aliens." He was smiling again, a smile that turned down one corner of his hard-looking mouth. "Without your reluctant testimony." His mouth was smiling but his light blue eyes pinned the boy to the back of his chair with a hard glare. "Now rustle your ass out've here. Just remember I've got your fingerprints on that medicine bottle of pot."
The boy stood up nervously with his eyes again on Wade Sampson's right hand, made a wide circle around the deputy sheriff, and left the office.
Cathy Riggins sat in the semi-dark in her bedroom, her chair drawn close to the window against which the rain was pelting hard. The window was cracked open at the bottom and the damp night-breeze flowed over her pajama-clad body.
She was thinking about Tommy Jackson. His sudden appearance in the library parking lot that afternoon had jarred Cathy's well-ordered life off-center. She could close her eyes and remember him plowing through the line in high school, the shoulder pads adding little to his broad-shouldered, hard-running ability. Tommy Johnson never saw Cathy Riggins even when he looked at her in those days, but Cathy Riggins saw Tommy Johnson. Saw, and yearned silently.
She had heard the stories about his leaving school abruptly after having impregnated the banker's daughter. The banker had sent his daughter to Switzerland and the baby had been placed for adoption. Cathy remembered that her Only reaction had been envy of Barbara Meade, the girl who had borne Tommy's baby.
Coolly she assessed the afternoon. She had never permitted a boy's hand under her skirt, and yet in five minutes Tommy Johnson had been fingering her sex. Deliciously fingering it. She squirmed slightly at the memory. What did he think of her for permitting it? Of course he was probably used to fingering girls' pussies.
Cathy had developed so late she had never had a close girl friend her own age with whom to exchange confidences. She didn't consider herself ignorant about sex; she knew all about boys' pricks and what they did to a girl, although the actual mechanics of the act were fuzzy to her, and she had always been too ashamed to ask outright. She was a good girl; had always been a good girl; but it hadn't been too hard to be when she was a twig-legged sub-teen who even then had eyes for the cherubic smile of the athletic Tommy Johnson.
Her thoughts returned to the episode in the car that afternoon. He hadn't forced her; it was just that his every move was made with a masculine confidence that dazzled her and seemed to guarantee its success. What would it be like to be alone with Tommy Johnson in a place where the eyes of the public couldn't penetrate? She sat and thought about it.
Until a slow-burning itch gathered and expanded in her loins. She drew her legs up, then lowered them. The itch, tantalizingly remote in her flesh, burned on. She tried to ignore it. She never liked this aspect of herself, the moments when her usual good opinion of herself slipped askew. She found her thighs writhing together powerfully, encasing the itch which throbbed both on the surface and deep within her virginal vaginal walls. Finally she stood up resignedly. She slipped her pajama pants down and stepped out of them. She fingered her blonde pubescent curls covering her supple slit as she walked to her bed. She sat down on the coverlet, unconscious of its rough texture against the silky skin of her bare bottom.
Cathy stretched out on her back and elevated her long, slender legs, widening them to make more room for the finger at the gates of her existence. Her soft fleece was already moist. She dipped the finger inside, parting the spongy labia, and a quick tremor ran through her. She withdrew the finger slightly, wanting to prolong the sensation.
But then the burning-itch strengthened, and a slow throb generated force deep inside. Her bell-shaped behind rose slightly from the bed in involuntary tribute to what was taking place within her, and the finger seemingly of its own accord disappeared to the second knuckle. She could feel the pressure upon her hymen from the agitated fingertip.
A slow-boiling upheaval erupted inside her. Her legs climbed, writhing, and a low moan escaped her parted lips. Her finger jerked rapidly in and out of her sluice-box as it became inundated with pearly cream. Her stomach muscles fluttered as her out-of-control vagina thrust back against the probing finger.
"Ohhhhhhhhhh!" she murmured. And then upon a descending scale: "AHHHHhhhhhhh!"
A final twitch or two and the internal quivering ceased. Cathy removed her finger reluctantly. She held it aloft, not wanting to wipe it upon anything that would leave betraying traces. And she had to swab off her overflowing sex-charm. She rose from the bed.
In the aftermath she always had the exasperating feeling that good as it was it might have been better if only she knew what to do for herself. She had never discussed it with anyone. She couldn't imagine discussing it with anyone. But she couldn't escape the feeling that somehow just beyond what she experienced there was still another, more glorious experience.
With these thoughts in her mind she had opened her bedroom door and stepped out into the corridor before she realized she was still without her pajama pants. Cathy's mother, tired-faced, was just opening her bedroom door. She looked in surprise at her semi-nude daughter. "What is it, dear?" she asked. "Do you need a napkin? I have some if you've run short."
"Not tonight, mother," Cathy replied, and walked down the corridor to the bathroom.
The sweet-faced, innocent Cathy Riggins would never be suspected of masturbation.
But the sweet-faced, innocent Cathy Rig-gins had been capable of masturbation even during her mosquito-bite-sized-pink-nipple and first-flowering-fern-on-her-soft-slit days.
Especially after watching the young Tommy Johnson in some athletic endeavor that displayed his penchant for controlled violence.
Cathy returned to her bed after her ablutions, but sleep escaped her for some time.