Chapter 12

Although he stayed with Mrs. Gordon after the harvesting of the last peach, he became a completely unwilling visitor. For three days he worked in the orchards and for three nights she subjected him to the meticulous exactitude of her sexual demands. Where on their first night together she had required him to be the motionless slave, on the second, she reversed the procedure. She demanded that he tongue her feet and caress her breasts and lick the insides of her thighs as she had done with him the previous evening.

But even as he worked his tongue over her middle-aged flesh, he could think of nothing so much as escape. She in her own unique way--perhaps because she had been that person finally responsible for shattering the wall of mystery that hung for so long around his sexual dream of the past--became totally repugnant to him.

Yet he knew very well that he was more than just a slave in name. He was, quite literally, a prisoner in her crumbling house. Now that the peaches were harvested and off to market, he was fully aware of what his responsibilities were. He began to hate both her and himself and what he had to do to and with her.

So involved was he for four days with concocting any plan to escape, that he completely forgot about the young girl he had seen in the peach tree that first day. It was simply as if she had disappeared completely after Mrs. Gordon's order for him to move on.

Because he was preoccupied with plans for escape--because he knew that he was never out of Mrs. Gordon's sight long enough to even attempt the five hundred yard dash to highway and then the time necessary to wait there for a ride to stop for him--he waited and brooded. He was surprised on the fourth day when, while pacing back and forth through the huge but scantly furnished living room of the great house, he heard a slight sound like a hiss.

He turned, saw no one for a moment then, hearing the sound again, looked up and saw the same girl he had seen in the peach tree. She was leaning against a door to another room, apparently one that had at one time been the library. One finger was raised to her beautiful young mouth as the other hand beckoned him to follow her.

Without a word, she led him through the library, around to a flight of back stairs and up to a dimly lit corridor. A moment later they passed through a narrow door at the end of the corridor.

He was surprised to find himself again in the strangely furnished room where he and Mrs. Gordon had shared their sexual adventures for the past three nights.

"What--"

She placed one finger against his lips. "It's the only place she won't look for you," the girl said. "She'd never suspect you came here."

"Okay," he said suspiciously. "What do you want?"

"Out," the girl said. "I've got to get out of here. You could help me. I mean, what's it to you? You've got what you want. As long as you satisfy her weird little slave-master cravings, she'll do anything you like as long as you stay. I just want you to keep her occupied so I can get out."

"Why don't you just go?"

"Are you kidding? She'd never let me get away if she could help it. She's sick, don't you see. Crazy in the head."

"Sure, I know that, but what's she want with you?"

"I know all about what goes on in here." the girl said. "You're not the first one, you know. I've seen her go through the whole routine. It's always the same. She'll pick up someone who comes into the orchard just like you did. Then when she finds out there's no home or folks or anything like that--I mean once she makes sure, she plays her slave-master thing."

"And you want to get out. What about me?"

"I thought you liked the idea. I thought you were a little sick, too. I mean, you're the only one who hasn't complained."

"Look, I can't stand it," he told her. "Maybe we can get out together."

"How? She'll shoot you for a trespasser and if something happens to me, just say you did it to me before she killed you. She's still got friends in this county, you know. My daddy was a pretty important man."

"Never mind that," he told her. "You just go where you're supposed to go and make sure you meet me right in the downstairs hall tonight about half an hour after your mom and me finish dinner."

He formed his plan slowly as he and Mrs. Gordon ate their stately dinner. By now he knew that her daughter, Ruth, was under the guard of the single black woman who cooked for and served them. He also knew that he would enjoy doing what he had to do in order to escape the strangely psychotic Martha Gordon.

As had been their schedule for the past three evenings, he and Martha climbed the sweeping circular staircase immediately after dinner. The previous night she had told him to be her sexual slave and had caressed his body as she wanted him to caress hers this evening. There was no affection, no romance between them, only the strange woman's craving for erotic physical satisfaction. But for the first time in his life, Billy Joe Whyley found that a woman sickened him. He could barely stand the sight of her. His mind churned with guilt because of his knowing the truth of his recurring dream. He had come to the realization that he had never liked middle-aged women--had never really found them attractive. He had been trying to erase the past through them while at the same time being forced to couple with women who reminded him of his first experience--his own mother.

Tonight she was to play the role of his slave and he could play master at will. He was prepared for everything by the time she stripped completely naked for him and spread her legs and arms wide for him on the bed.

But the game he played was, he knew, in deathly earnest. One mistake and it could very easily mean his life.

It was to his own advantage that the very tools she had used on him the previous night were lying handily beside the huge bed for his own use--belts and the great artificial penis, straps and the soft leather whip that stung but did not hurt.

She had no suspicion of his real intentions as he tied her left leg to one of the bedposts. Indeed she suspected nothing as he tied the other leg and both her wrists so that she was spread-eagled on the great bed.

But where the night before she had straddled his face and made him lick her sexual parts until she came to writhing spasming orgasm, tonight he refused to perform a similar act with her. It was that moment when he was standing beside the bed that a look of angered understanding came to her black eyes.

"I showed you last night," she snapped. "You know what must be done."

"Sorry," he said. "This is your last time with me."

"You fool. You think I'm helpless, don't you? Hatti can hear me. She'll come the minute I call."

He reached down beside the bed and found the huge artificial member that she had used on herself their first night together.

"Here," he said as he held it in front of her. "Call on this!"

Brutally he thrust it between her teeth so that it acted as a monstrous gag. As she grunted against the pressure within her mouth and twisted against the leather bonds that bound her to the bed, he searched the room until he found the shotgun she had been holding when first they met.

Carrying the weapon, he scampered down the stairs.

Ruth was where they had agreed to meet, her eyes wide with terror. "Hatti. will tell her," she insisted.

Shotgun at the ready, he accosted the cook in the kitchen. A moment later Ruth had tied her securely to one of the chairs there and they scampered through the moonlight to the highway.

He tossed the shotgun into the orchard and a moment later flagged down a passing truck.

It was just after dawn when the driver let them out. They were miles from Charlottesburg, miles from all their yesteryears and on a highway in southern California.

They walked for a few miles until she announced that she wanted to stop.

"I mean for a couple of days," she said. "Let's go to a motel and just relax while we make some plans. I've got the money. Maybe together we could work something out."

It was in a small motel room just west of the California border that Billy Joe Whyley discovered the final piece to the strange jigsaw of his life and put it exactly into place with a perfect fit.

They had registered as Mr. and Mrs. Elkton telling the manager that they had stupidly left their luggage in the trunk of their car when it was towed away from an accident. Ruth paid for the room in advance and bought them both swimming clothes from the small shop across the street from the motel.

After a long refreshing swim, they came back to the room. Ruth sat on the bed and fluffed her long hair with one hand. "Well," she said to the wall. "We're both free. I've got about five hundred dollars but I don't know what to do."

"I sure as hell know what I'd like to do," he said.

She looked up to his face, then down to the bulge already beginning to show under his swimming trunks.

"I can't," she said almost sadly.

"Can't? Why?"

"I'm not built right. That's one of the reasons she trapped me there. She told me I was born freak-like, that I'd never be able to have anything to do with men. She was ashamed of me, her own daughter, not having the right parts."

"You look all right to me."

"Oh, I want to, but I'm a virgin. She showed me why. I've got a ... what do you call it? ... a membrane....

"I don't believe you," he said. "I think she just told you that."

Ruth Gordon was hardly a shy girl. She had grown up watching the strange happenings in the bed-dominated room where her mother played sexual games and she had always felt free and open about her body because she believed it had no sexual lure.

"Here," she said. "See for yourself."

Swiftly she stepped out of the bottoms of her bikini, revealing lush young hips and a sensuous 'venus mound covered with the softest, most gossamer hair Billy Joe had ever seen.

He took two hesitant paces across the room, staring directly at her womanhood for a long time before he eased her down to the bed and spread her vaginal lips wide with his thumbs.

Her genitals looked exactly like a woman's should, only for him there was a magnetic fascination to them. He could not resist the temptation to press his head down on her and lick out with an eager tongue in order to taste the sweet fragrance of her inner flesh.

"Oh, Billy," she cried out. "Oh, Billy."

Whether she was telling the truth about being unable to receive a man's organ in her own or not, he knew she certainly was capable of experiencing intense sensations on her delicate inner flesh.

He also knew that the very act of kissing and licking her young and eager body sent sensations through his own mind and body the like of which he had never before experienced or ever thought possible.

His tongue sank into the young hot folds of her budding womanhood, licked over sweet flesh and discovered the long erectile nipple of her clitoris.

He licked up and she sighed. He caressed his tongue downward and she gasped. He licked sideways and she cried out in ecstasy.

As he licked the sweet inner flesh between her widely spread legs, he reached up and lifted her bikini brassiere over her almost-hard breasts. He looked over her firm stomach to the pert hardness of young firm mounds and nipples and ran his fingers over their smooth flesh.

Never, even with the bisexual Stella, had he felt such sheer perfection of the female form. Never had he realized how infatuated he really was with youthful perfection and how much he really despised making sexual contact with older women whose bodies had been used and abused and often worn out long years before he had ever met them.

As he worked his tongue in the wet warmth of her widely eager and willing vagina he realized that she was rapidly coming to a climax. Her virgin body had never felt the caress of a man's penis or tongue and the searing pleasure he was giving her was, he knew, too much for her young body to resist.

He felt her fingers twine in the hair at the back of his head, felt her palms pulling his mouth even tighter to her flesh. Then her whole body seemed to snap and spasm at once.

He could feel the ends of her nerves thrashing like an unattended garden hose or a snapped high voltage wire--twisting and churning like a mythical snake committing suicide.

Her young flesh smashed against him and twisted sideways. She called his name and pulled his head tightly to her sexual parts. She would not let go!

For what seemed like pleasurable hours they remained clamped to one another, savoring flesh and sensation, emotion and soul.

Then slowly, they moved away from one another and lay quietly on the bed. Gently he removed her brassiere from above her breasts and then, when she asked him, slipped out of his swimming trunks.

"You're beautiful," he told her as his eyes caressed her young and sensuous form.

"So are you, Billy Joe. You know I've never seen a man before. I mean naked."

"We're all the same," he said.

"Oh no. I can't believe that. I just want to look at you. I want to run my hands all over you."

She laid one hand gently on his stomach and then turned to him, her face doubtful and very serious. "Billy Joe?" she said.

"Yeah."

"I know I can't ... I mean.... well, you know ... "

"That's only what she told you," he insisted. "Well, I'm afraid anyway," she said. "Will you show me things? I mean things like you just did. That felt real good when you kissed me there."

"Sure," he said.

"I'd sure like to make you feel good, too." She reached out shyly to grasp his still hard member. "Oh. That feels good. That feels so big and good."

"You bet."

"Let me suck on it, Billy Joe. Please...."

Without speaking, he eased her head over him. She looked into his eyes and then lowered her mouth to cover his penis. Her lips were warm and soft and her tongue was gentle. She was almost lazy over him as she circled her tongue around his delicate flesh.

He closed his eyes and savored the beautiful sensation of her flesh on his--her beautiful young breasts hanging over him so that as she licked his member he could caress their hard nipples and feel their firm flesh on his fingertips.

With his eyes closed all the world was dark and safe and beautiful and ... and there was no dream....

It was gone. It was as if the loft room in the old rooming house and the dance hall and the strange phantom woman had never existed. There was only one reality to him now and that was Ruth, gently, lovingly savoring the hard flesh of his penis as she ran her caressing fingers over the naked flesh of his body.

He let the sensations flow through him like a slow and easy fire of heat lightning on a humid summer's day, but he knew too that he did not want to come to full and complete release this way.

He had to be inside the girl as men were meant to be inside women. That, he knew, and what they would share then, would be vitally important to both of them.

Gently he eased her away from him and rolled her on her side.

"Not that way," he said. "There's a better way."

"But I can't," she insisted. "I already told you."

"I won't believe that. She only said that to keep men away from you."

She started to say something but his lips muffled hers and they were pressed tightly together in each other's arms.

He could feel her terror of the unknown, but also her eagerness as he eased her onto her back and spread her slender young legs wide to receive his embrace.

Gently, he knelt between her legs and placed the very tip of his shaft against the wet flesh of her budding womanhood. He let the two bodies feel each other and then, gently pressed forward until he rested against a resisting membrane which blocked his passage.

Then he knew the truth. She was no more or less than a virgin as virgins are supposed to be. He was pressing against her maidenhood and she was prepared to give herself totally and only to him for the first time in her life.

"Ruth," he whispered in her ear as he increased the pressure. "It may hurt a little."

"Oh, hurt me," she answered. "Hurt me!"

He coiled his muscles and thrust. A small bit of resistance held him, then he felt it break under his gentle onslaught.

She cried out once, then sighed. He looked to her smiling face, felt her young body around him and knew that he too had discovered something for the very first time in his life.

And, strangely perhaps, he remembered another hotel room which seemed like a million miles and an eternity away. For just a fleeting second, he saw another woman, old and degenerate, who needed young flesh to arouse her sagging passions, who needed closed circuit television programs featuring young bodies twined in empassioned embraces to stimulate her own ancient flesh.

And in his memory he heard her words again:

Is this your first fuck, honey?

"Oh, yes," he said aloud. "Oh yes, it is."

Under him Ruth Gordon did not understand the words, she only understood the great rich and wonderful feeling surging through her and the fact that with him she had found an entirely new and wonderful life.

They both had.