Chapter 6

Wade Sampson paced the tiled floor of the Sheriff's Department basement office, impatiently slapping his hands together. Jo's new job was a hindrance to his plans, and he didn't know what to do about it. Not that he intended to support her as an alternative; far from it. But the daytime hours during which she was working were just the hours he needed her to put into operation the scheme he had contrived to bring down the pot-selling Aliens. Especially Jessica Allen, known as Jessie to her longhaired friends.

He slowed his rapid stride and stared thoughtfully at the far wall. Did he really need Jo to bring it off? He needed a woman, and by God, he had a woman. No way was he going to coax the Allen woman-or her husband either-into his nearly soundproof basement office when they both knew they were doing something illegal, unless he applied a sugar coating to the sour pill. And that was where the woman came in. He'd been thinking all along in terms of Jo, but it didn't need to be Jo.

He went behind his desk and sat down, drawing the telephone toward him. Yes; this could be a sugarcoated job indeed. He released the phone and picked up the phone book, riffled the pages rapidly, then jotted down the number he sought. He lifted the receiver and dialed, drumming on the desk top with his free hand after listening for the dial tone and laying the receiver down.

"I'd like to speak to Mrs. Bryson," Wade said in response to the masculine "Hello" when he had the receiver at his ear again. He waited until he heard her "Yes? Who is it, please?" uttered in cool, confident tones.

"This is Wade Sampson," he said. He was enjoying himself. He could almost picture Lucille Bryson looking over her shoulder at her husband in the same room, wondering what to say.

"Y-yes?" she said again, and he grinned at the sudden hesitancy in the previously crisp voice. "You have-what is the message you have for me, please?"

"The message is for you to haul your big ass down to the Sheriff's Department office right now," Wade said in a menacing tone.

"N-now? But it's inconvenient for-can't we make some - some other arrangement? I really-"

He had no intention of letting her off the hook. "I said now," he growled. "Or would you like your husband to receive a Polaroid shot in the mail?"

"I'll 1-leave right away," she said hurriedly. "S-since you say it's so important."

Wade's hard grin extended from ear to ear. "An' never mind your girdle," he advised. "We can get to the seat of things quicker that way.

Get the picture?" The line hummed emptily. "I said do you get the picture?"

"Y-yes," she said faintly.

"Good. Don't keep me waitin'."

He banged down the phone, moved out from behind his desk, and resumed his pacing, but slower now, almost with a swagger. This was really a ten-strike, he congratulated himself. It was so much better than using Jo there was no comparison. Two birds with one stone. That was the name of the game; two birds with one stone.

He had meant to tell her to use the side entrance leading down from the parking lot, but he had forgotten. He shrugged; it really didn't make much difference. With the hold he had on Lucille Bryson, the whole town could see her walking in from the main street as far as he was concerned. And Lucille Bryson's concern was the least of his worries.

He contained himself but just barely while he waited for her. At the sound of her high heels on the stairs leading down to the basement from the municipal offices, he faced in that direction expectantly. He was almost sure he knew what her attitude would be.

Nor was he wrong. Lucille Bryson finished the descent of the stairs and walked directly toward him. She began to speak when she was still five yards distant. "I'm not sure you realize how awkward a position your phone call put me in, Mr. Sampson," she said smoothly. Wade listened admiringly. No imperious theatrics she knew instinctively it would avail her nothing. No, he was being appealed to now in the name of reason. "I had hoped you were gentleman enough to consider the episode of the other afternoon a closed matter," Lucille Bryson continued. "I believe that even Mrs. Tucker would feel I paid a steep price for-"

"Mrs. Tucker has nothin' to do with the price," Wade cut her off. "This is between you an' me, sis. Understand?"

"Not entirely," she said slowly. "What- what do you intend?" He saw that she was sorry she had asked the question as soon as she uttered it.

"You don't need to worry about puttin' ideas in my head," Wade said breezily. "I already got plenty. Involvin' you, too, would you b'lieve? Now I was sittin' here a few minutes ago, an' you know what come into my mind? All of a sudden I had a mental image of your big, handsome, tight-lookin' bare ass, an' I thought to myself, well, now, Wade, couldn't you use a little of that?"

Lucille Bryson wet her dry lips nervously. She wore no makeup, and her pale features approached dead pallor. "Please," she began.

"So I decided to get your ass down here an' backscuttle it," Wade interrupted her again.

She stared at him blankly. "B-backscuttle? What-"

"You mean you don't know? Backscuttlin' is fuckin' you dog-fashion. You'll love it."

Two bright blotches of high color appeared on Lucille's cheekbones. "That's the most indecent-"

"But first I got somethin' else for you to do," Wade went on. He had dealt with so many women that he now had a formula: keep them confused. Keep them off-balance so they couldn't set themselves for a counterpunch. From sniveling teenager to haughty matron, they all responded to the same stimuli. "Listen close, now."

Lucille listened numbly to his instructions, barely comprehending them. From the instant she heard his voice on the phone she knew it portended: blackmail. Sexual blackmail. She had thought fleetingly of telling Paul and enlisting his assistance. But to tell Paul of her experience the other day? She couldn't. He wouldn't understand. She couldn't herself.

She found herself seated behind Wade Sampson's desk while he pushed the telephone in her direction. She roused herself from the dread which had enveloped her from the moment he spoke those awful words with that sly grin. "Why?" she asked. "Why am I making this phone call for you?"

"Because I damn well good an' say so!" he snapped. "There's the number. Dial. I told you what to say. An' don't blow it or you'll wish you hadn't."

She dialed shakily, struggling to bring herself under control. "I'd like to speak to Jessica Allen, please," she said when she had the connection. At least her voice sounded steady, no matter how her nerve-ends were quivering. "This is Lucille Bryson, Mrs. Allen," she said, and waited for the polite acknowledgement. "We have a small problem involving one of your pupils, and we wondered if you'd be good enough to come downtown and give us the benefit of your experience with this individual before we try to make a determination as to the best course to take. No, not terribly serious. Pilferage. Yes. But of course a decision must be made. You will? We'd appreciate it. Yes. The Sheriff's Department. Yes. Thank you."

"Great!" Wade enthused. "Perfect!" He rubbed his hands together. "Ohhhh, what I'm plannin' for that bitch!"

"But why?" Lucille asked blankly. "I understand that the life-style of the Aliens is unorthodox, but-"

"The life-style of the Aliens includes sellin' marijuana to school students," Wade cut in. "Whaddya think of that?"

"It must be stopped," Lucille said promptly.

"It's gonna be, sis. It's gonna be."

They sat in silence then until Jessica Allen came down the stairs into the office. She had on a shapeless granny gown that swept the floor, and her hip-length black hair trailed down her back. Lucille noted with distaste that it appeared to have gone uncombed for days. She noted also that despite the free-flowing skirt of the gown it was drawn in tightly under the breasts in a manner which suggested no brassiere underneath. Lucille's lips tightened. This was certainly a poor example for a school teacher's wife. And hadn't she heard that Mrs. Allen occasionally did substitute teaching herself?

Jessica Allen looked from Lucille Bryson to Wade Sampson. "I hurried as fast as I could," she said with a little smile. She was a slim girl, high-breasted, with dark eyes set in a pale face framed in the mass of her long black hair. "Who is the culprit?"

"You are," Wade Sampson said curtly, and watched her smile die. He moved toward her with a deliberate swagger. "You an' your husband have been sellin' pot to the school kids."

"No!" she said immediately. "Whoever says so, it's a lie!" She looked at Lucille. "You didn't say-"

"Admit it!" Wade roared, startling her with his bellow so that she took a backward step. He pursued her, towering above her as she shrank away. "You been doin' it right along, haven't you?"

"No! it's not true! Somebody's lying! We've never-"

He slapped her heavily, the sound of his palm on her cheek a crackling explosive noise. Jessica Allen staggered sideways from the force of the slap, almost losing her balance. Lucille's eyes widened.

Wade pursued the girl again. "Admit it!" he said menacingly, looming over her. He seized her shoulder when she tried to evade him and slapped her again. Then he backhanded her other cheek. She gave a strangled outcry as a thin trickle of blood started downward from her left nostril. She swiped at it with her hand, looked at the hand, snuffled the blood up again, then started to cry.

"Admit it!" Wade said again, more softly but also more threateningly. "We've got signed confessions from kids who bought."

"They're lying! I want to talk to my husband! I want a lawyer! You can't-"

He slapped her while holding her arm. Her head rocked and she cried out sharply. "You're not gonna like your face in the mornin', Jessie," he observed.

She straightened up, tears streaming. "All right, you yokel!" she said defiantly. "Just leave my face alone. Sure we've been selling pot. But you need evidence of a sale, and you don't have it. My admission means nothing. You can't get a conviction without evidence."

"Nobody's lookin' for a conviction," Wade said. "You two are gonna leave town."

"You can't make us! We have contracts! You-"

"You're just about to have your mind changed," Wade told her. He dragged her by the arm to a corner of the room while Lucille struggled to keep up with fast-moving events.

"You let me alone!" Jessica Allen cried out furiously. "What do you think you're doing?" Her outburst was provoked by Wade's unhooking a pair of handcuffs from his belt and enclosing both her wrists in one cuff. Lucille swallowed hard at the memory of her own recent incarceration in just such a trussed-pig manner.

Wade held the struggling girl effortlessly while he untied a rope on the wall and lowered a steel ring which had been unobtrusively snugged against the ceiling. When he could catch the ring in the hand not holding Jessica Allen, Wade snapped the other handcuff to the ring and immediately pulled the rope through its pulley until the girl's arms were extended straight above her head and she was standing on tiptoe. "You let me-down!" she panted, but with more fear in her voice than anger. She twisted to try to watch„Wade.

"Presently," Wade said in good humor. He knotted the rope on its bracket and walked to his desk. He winked cheerfully at the watching Lucille. "Lots better solutions than draggin' a lot of local kids into court, right?" he said. He opened his desk drawer and removed a braided riding quirt, half-stiff, half-flexible with a flat popper on its end. "You'll hear some soprano singin' now," he assured Lucille.

He strode back to Jessica Allen, his bootheels ringing on the tiled floor. She eyed the quirt in his hand fearfully. "You're insane!" she blurted. "I'll sue! I'll-stop that!"

Wade Sampson had seized the hem of the granny dress and started to draw it up her back. She kicked at him, but he evaded it easily. "How about that, Lucille?" he asked buoyantly. "Not a stitch of underwear." Lucille stared at slender white legs, a trim, almost boyish bare bottom, and a smoothly curved back as Wade bunched the granny dress around the girl's neck and secured it by drawing a folded bit of it through a handcuff.

Wade pulled out the quirt from the boot into which he had stuffed it while getting the granny dress out of the way. "Now I'm just gonna show you how we feel in this town about people who sell pot to our kids."

Jessica Allen tried to twist her bottom away from Wade's upheld quirt but he stalked her calmly. "No, no, no!" she called out frantically. "We'll leave! We'll leave!"

"You're damn right you'll leave," Wade said, and swung the quirt.

Lucille shivered as the rounded leather whistled through the air and cracked viciously upon the girl's white flesh. Jessica Allen threw back her head and yelled hoarsely as a stark white line sprang up on both buttocks. It immediately turned pink and then an angry red, and Lucille could see the weal rising.

Wade whipped the quirt in a flat arc into the wildly prancing nether rotundities, and the girl bounded into the air from her tiptoe position, her stomach outthrust grotesquely. She danced from one foot to the other with her surprisingly full breasts bouncing madly. A second red line sprang up beside the first as Jessica Allen shrieked mournfully.

Cr-rack! "Owwww!" The twisting white figure displayed sparse dark hair at the juncture of her thighs, and Lucille wrinkled her nose in distaste when she saw that the armpits were similarly unshaved.

Cr-rack! "Owooooooooo!" The weals overlaid each other now, red turning to purple; Wade lengthened his arm swing and cut hard at the quivering globes which tried to turn themselves inside out at each unbearably hot kiss of the braided leather.

Cr-rack! "Aieeeeee! Oh, Godddd; You're- KILLING meeeee!"

Cr-rack! "Agrrrrrhhhhh!" The full-throated scream echoed hollowly from bare walls and tiled floor. Lucille shifted position uneasily on her chair, horrified at the merciless whipping but unable to remove her eyes from the swaying, dancing buttocks into which the quirt almost disappeared each time before rebounding from the striped flesh.

Wade coolly walked around his victim, whipping steadily. Inevitably he caught up with each frantically pivoting turn aimed at evading the cutting quirt, and each time he had the plunging nude behind in his sights he whirred the barely pliant leather into the convulsed flesh.

The girl's screams weakened and died out to whimpering moans. She hung limply in the cuffs with only her whipped hindquarters reacting to the flaming bite of the quirt. Her head hung loosely although it jerked at each sizzling impact. Wade stopped whipping and stooped to examine more closely his handiwork. Layers of weals overran each other, and he thrust the quirt back into his boot.

Swiftly he lowered the girl until he could unlock the cuffs. He frogmarched her, still with her dress around her neck, across the room and extended her face down across his desk. Lucille listened to the panting breath and soft moans and looked at the quick tremors running through the slender white thighs below the red-white-and-purple damp-looking flesh of the skinned rump.

Wade marched around the desk until he was at the girl's head. "Send your husband down to see me if he don't like what you've got to show him," he rumbled. "An' tell him that if the pair of you are still in town next week you'll be down here for an encore. An' every week after that." He leaned down toward the sobbing girl whose strangled breaths punctuated each word. "Y'hear me?" he barked.

"Ohhhh, y-yes!" she moaned.

"Then take off. Haul your ass out've here."

For a moment Jessica Allen didn't move. Then she placed her hands on the desk top and laboriously pushed herself upright. Lucille could see the fluttering muscles in her thighs and the damp sparse triangular beard where she had wet herself a little. The girl raised her arms and freed the dress upon her shoulders, shaking it down to conceal her nudity. She whimpered and then groaned as the coarse material slid over her welted behind.

She turned blindly away from the desk and wobbled unsteadily toward the stairs leading to the first floor offices. She started to climb the stairs, supporting herself on the handrail, but paused on the second step. "Owoooo!" she exclaimed at the pull of newly used muscles in her striated seat. Then she slowly resumed her climb. A muffled sob escaped her at the top of the stairs, and then she was gone.

Lucille drew a deep breath. It had been a dreadful exhibition, she told herself. Inhuman. Savage. Then why did she feel such an E-string tightening of her body-flesh and a suspicious dampness between her own thighs? The fear that it might easily be her own bare buttocks writhing under the lacerating impact of the cruel quirt didn't fully account for it.

She looked away from the head of the stairs toward Wade Sampson, and her mouth shaped itself into a soundless O. Wade had his uniform trousers unzipped and a ponderous-looking erection in his hand. "One more cut on her prancin' ass an' I'd have come off in my pants," Wade said casually. "I'd've fucked her afterward, except I don't go for those skinny-assed broads. Not when there's one like yours around. Take your pants off an' get over the desk like she was." While speaking he had opened a desk drawer and removed a blanket which he folded and laid across the desk.

Lucille swallowed nervously. Words of protest died unspoken when she saw the quirt projecting from Wade's boot. Meekly she stood up, raised her skirt, and slipped down her white panties. She caught sight of a large damp spot on the crotch, and she flicked a glance at Wade. Had he noticed, too?

"C'mon!" he said impatiently. "Spread it out."

Lucille raised her skirt again and lowered herself upon the several thicknesses of blanket whose rough texture scratched at her bare belly but protected it from the hardness of the desk. It was an extraordinary sensation to lie there helpless with her heavy-looking, firm-fleshed, bell-shaped hemispherical globes glistening whitely in the glare of the overhead fluorescent lighting. The roughened texture of the skin of her bare behind evident after her paddling had been almost fully restored to its usual waxen glossiness.

"Goddam!" she heard Wade's voice as he moved in behind her. "That's spread enough for a forty-acre lot!"

Lucille flinched as he gripped her firmly by the waist and slid her backward on the blanket until her crotch hung over the edge of the desk and he had unimpeded access to it. Almost at the same instant she felt his muscular erection bumping the backs of her thighs and then fumbling its way in between her taut hind cheeks. She quivered all over as the head prodded her vagina from underneath.

"Ohh!" Lucille exclaimed faintly as Wade steered his blind-eyed steed expertly into her orifice. Its breadth distended her sex-passage forcefully, but the discomfort passed after a moment.

"What y'all sayin', baby?" She heard Wade's voice as though from a great distance, and she could imagine his hard grin. His words distracted her from concentrating upon a fiendish tickling arousal in her entire genital area. "That you can feel it jus' as plain?" the hard voice continued.

Lucille shut her eyes and tried to close her mind to the sound of the mocking voice. Sparklers of acute sensation were shooting volcanically eruptive quakings all through her most sensitive flesh. Wade slammed his weight forward suddenly, and Lucille almost shrieked as the hard penis rasped her already stimulated clitoris. She couldn't seem to catch her breath as the penis began a rapid in-and-out movement whose friction translated itself into additional delightfully wicked stimulation.

She was totally unprepared for the orgasm which overtook her. She felt her nipples stiffening madly as her pelvis thrust itself backward upon the rigidity boring her pink-lipped trench. Her buttocks widened and contracted furiously as she deluged the sturdy staff plunging in and out of her bristling-haired aerie.

Above her bowed back Wade Sampson chuckled cynically. "Think you might even get to like it one of these days, sweetie?" he inquired. Lucille's gasping breaths as her orgasm ran its course was his only answer. She couldn't speak. She had read about orgasms, but she had never experienced anything remotely like this in her married life with Paul.

Wade paused suddenly in his performance of herculean thrusting of his rocklike lance upward between Lucille's fruity buttocks. He removed his prick entirely, shining with her spend, and fumbled for her ass-cheeks with both hands. He spread the solid-feeling globes widely, exposing the inner recess of seldom-seen perspiration-dampened female flesh down to the brown-buttonholed anus. Deliberately he took his dripping cock and rubbed its sticky slippery coating between the hind cheeks and especially around the tight-looking asshole. He removed his prick and used a finger to work Lucille's own come inside her tight-sphinctered back opening.

Halfway back to reality after the mind-bending acuity of the series of pulsating sensations that had assailed her trembling vagina and left her mentally reeling, Lucille raised her head at the feel of activity in a part of her body she had never verbally referred to in all her life. She twitched her hips uneasily, trying to dislodge the fingertip partly inside her rectum. Then the finger was gone, and she relaxed, trying to savor mentally the recently experienced sensation.

Behind her Wade Sampson deliberately lined up the head of his tumescent prick with the brown berry he was still exposing by holding apart Lucille's hind cheeks. Then he surged forward after the blunt purple head made contact with the slight depression. Lucille gasped as the big penis forced itself forward and the taut flesh around her anus began to curl inward from the pressure applied.

"Ohhh! Ohhhhh! Owwwww! OWWWWW!" she cried out at the steadily increasing pain. "You're not-in the right-PLACE! Owwww! Ooooooh, please! P-lease! Ahhhh! OWWWW!"

A jolting, tearing sensation inside her rectum was followed by a really excruciating flash of pain. Lucille screamed and struggled frantically. Wade pinioned her writhing hips with his weight momentarily, then cautiously began an in-and-out movement in the rectum he had pierced. Lucille's struggles and pleas gradually subsided as the white-hot agony in her rectum became a dull-burning ache. Her bulging eyes and wide-open mouth slowly returned to normal as the penis continued to distend her. With the cessation of Lucille's struggles, Wade began to enjoy his ass-fucking of the plump-buttocked woman. With more restraint than he would have employed in the use of her cunt, he plunged his prick with ever-increasing ease inside her tight-clasping anus. The pressure of his knobby prick-head had him standing on his toes to avoid a premature come.

He reached underneath her suddenly and fumbled for her pussy. He inserted a finger in her dripping chute and searched for her clit. The second he touched it Lucille became galvanized. Her hips threw themselves in all directions with such force that he almost lost his prick-hold inside her distended rectum. Then he felt the uncontrollable contractions of her vaginal walls upon his probing finger as Lucille swam hazily in another semi-delirious eruption of long-static juices.

Her relaxed state permitted Wade additional penetration, and he slammed his hard belly into her sweaty backside with extra force as he frictioned himself into his own spend, which sent orgasmic shivers all the way down to his heels.

Lucille raised her head for the second time just as Wade pulled out of her anus with a loud sucking noise. She felt his overflowing semen running down the backs of her thighs as the renewed quick flirt of pain at his withdrawal failed to seriously disturb her lassitude after her second orgasm. She felt weary, and abused, but oddly at peace.

"Okay," Wade's voice said loudly from behind her. "School's out, sis." His palm cracked lightly upon her bare seat in what for him was almost an affectionate gesture. "That's a real snug little asshole you got there, baby. We'll use it again. Or maybe we'll try some-thin' different the next time."

Use it again? Try something different next time? Lucille's mind retreated hastily from the implications in Wade's remarks. She levered herself upward from the blanket on legs that threatened to refuse to support her. She picked up her panties from the floor and wiped herself, vagina and anus, before realizing that Wade Sampson was standing, hands on hips, penis restored to his trousers, watching in amusement. She thrust the soiled panties hurriedly into her handbag and shook down her skirt.

He ushered her to the door.

Lucille drove homeward with her brain a whirling kaleidoscope of mingled emotions she was unable to sort out. She knew the animal abuse and misuse of her body should have completely disgusted and alienated her. Instead, she could still feel a faint glow at the memory of Wade Sampson's thick penis plunging deeply into her vaginal cavern.

What in the world was happening to the Lucille Bryson she had known all her life?

Selling marijuana to school children was indefensible, yet how could she condone Wade Sampson's judge-jury-and-executioner approach to the solution of the problem?

The comfortable judgments of the world she lived in seemed to be collapsing all around her.

"It's because I've been so deeply disturbed since I left my husband that I came to see you," Jo Tucker said to Dr. Paul Bryson. She was sitting on a low sofa in the church study while he lounged in a swivel chair. "And I thank you for the opportunity of talking out my problems like this."

"I suppose you miss him sexually, too," Paul Bryson said in a sympathetic tone.

Could Wade be right about this bird, Jo wondered? It was the third time he had steered his counseling to a sex area since her arrival. She had worn her lowest-cut bra and a loose blouse, and she had caught him eyeing her once or twice, but a man wouldn't be human if he didn't look. Her skirt was ridiculously short, too, hugging her bottom and then flaring inward to shape and hobble her upper thighs despite its brevity. She sat on the low couch which thrust her knees upward with her legs primly together. She had already tugged her skirt downward with no appreciable lower-thing coverage a dozen times during the interview.

"I'm ashamed to say that I do, Dr. Bryson," she answered his question with pretended embarrassment. "It's-it's very difficult for a woman alone."

"I'm sure of it," he agreed. "But I'm afraid the ministry to this day hasn't come up with any better solutions than enough physical labor to cause tiredness and a cold shower. Are you thinking of going back to him?"

Jo hesitated. The simulated counseling was coming dangerously close to parallelling her own musings at night in her lonely room. She wasn't the type of woman who was meant to live alone. It was ridiculous in the extreme to think of returning to Tom Tucker's belt, and yet-

"I can't make up my mind," she confessed. "He's such a brute, and yet I miss him." She smiled brightly. "I suppose you feel a woman is insane to return to a man from whom she can expect bare-bottom thrashings?"

His eyelids flickered. "It depends upon the woman," he said gravely. "If there were sufficient compensations..." He didn't finish it.

What the hell, Jo thought, there's one way to find out about this guy. She stood up from the couch with exaggeratedly parted legs showing a distinct flash of bared upper thigh. "Excuse me, Dr. Bryson, do you have a bathroom near? I'm ashamed of myself, but talking about Tom I have such a feverish-" She stopped and closed her eyes. "I feel so-s-so dizzy," she resumed in a faint voice. "I think I'm- going to-"

From an upright position she allowed her knees to sag. Her hips struck the couch, bumping her onto the floor as she let herself collapse limply. She was careful to let the friction applied by the couch elevate her short skirt front and rear. She rolled onto the floor, partly on her back, with all of her thighs and her pink-pantied crotch exposed.

For an instant there was silence in the church study. Then she heard movement. Eyes closed, she sensed Dr. Paul Bryson kneeling beside her. Then, incredibly, she felt a hand cupping her sex through her panties. She had all she could do to remain motionless.

The hand departed but was at once replaced by a linger which traced the whole outline of her sex-furrow inside her panties. Delicately the finger wandered until she could barely restrain a shiver. She slitted one eyelid carefully. Dr. Paul Bryson was staring downward at his wandering finger, a bemused look on his handsome features.

He's not afraid that I'll come to suddenly and catch him at it, Jo realized suddenly. I'm already a lost sheep whose word against his would count for nothing. That's why he feels he can be so bold. She sighed deeply, twisted onto her side, then farther onto her back. She opened her eyes and looked around her. The wandering finger had removed itself at her first movement. "Let me help you up," Paul Bryson said smoothly. "I'm afraid you fainted during a hot flash."

"Oh, my heavens!" Jo exclaimed, glancing down at her exposure as though just realizing the extent of it. She scrambled up with his assistance but refused to look him in the face. "I'm just simply mortified, Dr. Bryson," she said with seeming earnestness.

"Don't be," he responded. "You do have a real problem." He hesitated. "I think further therapy might be helpful. But not here. Perhaps if we made an appointment to meet at your place some evening?"

Jo nodded numbly. This was a sexual iceberg? She hadn't met many men in her life who moved as quickly or as surely. Of course the circumstances were somewhat special.

"Shall we say tomorrow night?" Paul Bryson continued. "Talking this out and perhaps some additional mental therapy will do you good, I'm sure."

Jo nodded again. She was thinking that it was a good thing her landlady was deaf as a mackerel and went to bed at seven p.m. evenings. She had a feeling that mental therapy wasn't going to be the only happening in her hitherto lonely room.

And looking at the handsome visage of Dr. Paul Bryson, she found herself anticipating it.