Chapter 9

There is considerable truth in the adage "Nothing succeeds like success." Observe how a plain girl, believing herself loved by the man of her choice, acquires a glow akin to beauty! With men, it is slightly different. An ill-favored human male, whom the ladies do not find attractive, tends to be either too brash, or too humble and begging in his advances towards women. Fearing the public humiliation of a rebuff, he approaches the object of his affections or lust either flippantly (so that her pride is wounded) or slyly, (in which event he incites her to fear and contempt). A single success, however, will transform the cringing poacher into a heroic hunter. The knowledge that at least one woman either loves him or desires him physically gives him a confidence which usually expresses itself in seeming nonchalance and a moderate, suave pride which few women can resist. And so it follows that the man who is dogged by failure in amorous matters frequently spoils his chances by nervously trying to rush things, he who knows that a certain girl is very eager to give him what he wants can afford to bide his time with other women. A failure is no longer a tragedy since he can console himself with the argument that if young, pretty, attractive "Edith" is ever ready to bare her loins to him, why should there be no other Ediths willing to share their beds with him. This sureness of his own seductive powers enhances his charm, so that when he least needs a woman he can get one-perhaps not the first one for whom he casts his net, nor the second or third ... but time is on his side. While waiting for fresh conquests, he has his open-thighed "Edith" for the satisfaction of his immediate sexual needs.

Lew's "Edith" was called Brenda. Ignoring the fact that he had blackmailed her into becoming his mistress again, he was aware only that she quite obviously enjoyed their days and nights of copulation. He was proud of himself and his pride was destined to pay dividends.

A few days after regaining possession of Brenda's long, slender, passionate body, Lew received from his "chief" an order to meet a Norwegian seaman at an address in Stepney, to purchase from him, at a prearranged price, a valuable consignment of a substance about which it is advisable to say as little as possible, and to hand over the said package to one of the "lieutenants" in the Saloon Bar of the "Cavendish Arms," which is a stone's throw from Leicester Square; and behind the bar of the Cavendish stood Sadie Paignton, who occupied the attic immediately above the apartment Lew shared with Brenda and Ian.

Since Valerie's death, (and even previously) Lew had made several attempts to get on good terms with Sadie, who had always managed politely to keep him at a safe distance. He held no attraction for her but she had avoided offending him since she had no wish to antagonize her nearest neighbors.

"Hello, Lew" Sadie said greeting him in her friendliest tones. "What'll it be, love?"

Feeling for the first time that he could treat her as an equal, rather than as one who had something he wanted and could not have, he said grandly that he'd "have a Guinness and you'll have anything you imagine."

Having served him with his glass of black cream, she poured herself a dry Martini. She was about to engage him ins idle; chatter when two or three customers ordered drinks. She raised her glass, thanked Lew, quickly took a sip and went about her business, returning to him whenever she had spare minute. Sadie was, perhaps, doing no more than her duty-her barmaid's duty toward a client who had invited her to drink at his expense-and her social duty toward her neighbor; but Lew sup-posed that her devoting as much time to him as possible betrayed her romantic interest, which belief augmented his self-confidence to such an extent that he shone.

During one of-Sadie's busy periods, a burly, handsome, tastefully dressed man entered the bar, took in the entire scene with his sharp, black eyes, and moved to Lew's side.

"Give me a large Scotch!" he replied when Sadie asked for his order. "No! The sight of this gentle-man's glass gives me a thirst for Guinness."

Thus Lew recognized the newcomer as the person to whom he must deliver his dangerous parcel. As they drank their porter the two men discussed beer. It was almost dosing time when the hefty racketeer left the bar, taking with him the package of precious weed, in whose place he left a newspaper between the pages of which was hidden the envelope containing Lew's reward for the trouble and risks he had taken.

And moments later Sadie accepted a third gin and Italian from Lew.

"If you'd like me to see yer 'ome," Lew told Sadie, "I'll wait till ye've done."

Even with all his new confidence in his seductive powers, he had not expected her to respond favorably to his suggestion. But she did.

"I shall only be about half an hour. Shall I serve you another glass to keep you company while you're waiting?"

"Do that and 'ave another yerself!"

Shaking her head "no," the brightly smiling bar-maid filled another glass with brunette nourishment.

On the way to the bus Sadie clung to Lew's arm, making more than one person wonder what the auburn-haired beauty found to attract her in the sandy-haired runt who glowed with pride at her side. In the bus she snuggled cozily up to him, as though he and she had been sweethearts for many months. He was consequently surprised and hurt by her refusal to allow him to accompany her beyond the door of his own apartment and even more so by her turning away her head when he tried to kiss her. But he refused to give up hope.

After a few weeks his patience was rewarded in a slight degree. At the door of his apartment, one night he kissed her as audaciously as he dared, and the ardor of her response surprised him. He crashed his tongue through the defenses of her lips and her serpent advanced to do battle with his. Bending her backwards, he raised his right knee between her thighs, and exerted strong pressure on her loins. She groaned and sunk her teeth into his lips. Writhing and breathing heavily, they swayed together until they lost their balance and stumbled against the stairs leading up to her room. She broke away from him.

"Quiet!" she whispered. "Brenda will hear us and she'll be out to see what we're up to."

He pursed his lips pleadingly and motioned up-ward with his head. She understood.

"All right, but promise you'll behave yourself!"

In her room they could play with. fire to their hearts content; and they did so until she felt his hands roving constituted an "incendiary" menace.

"Don't, Lew! I don't feel strong enough to resist."

"Why resist?"

"I can't go on and on letting one man and then another strip me," she moaned seductively.

"Once more wouldn't hurt; and anyway we're friends."

"Lew, I want you as much as you want me.. .more..." she sighed pressing herself luxuriously against the length of his body and thrilling to the jerking of his penis, which she felt through his clothing and her own. "Because I haven't had a man-I mean er-really had one-in a long time and since you've been bringing me home I've given up all my old boyfriends. So you're all I have. But you've got Brenda. You get me all hotted up and yourself too. Then you go home and take it out on Brenda. I just have to suffer alone."

His hand fondling her thighs, outside her dress, he insisted that she did not have to suffer alone when he was eager to banish her solitude and soothe her pain.

"And Brenda?"

"What's it go to do with her?"

Everything, darling! How long do you think she' going to slave for you and your baby while you spend all your money and time on me? And Lew, you don't expect me to be satisfied with a quick session of loving whenever you can slip away from her for a few minutes do you? The next lover I have must be a real, full-time lover. I don't want to rush you or anybody else into settling down with me for life-but I'm no naive young girl. I've reached the age when a woman wants a man she can come home to-and a man who comes home to her. I want an All Night man, Lew. And I do really want you, Lew, but all night and every night and even at lunchtime on the dining room table."

Her words and her deep, throaty, sensual tones were music to Lew's sex, which grew and throbbed within the confines of his painful pants. He thrust his tongue deep into her slavering mouth and kissed her until perspiration prickled her whole body. She uttered little cries and clung desperately to him, longing for him to ravage her; but he underestimated his victory over her.

"But you don't understand." he argued. "Brenda will stay as long as I keep the child. She stays for him, not for me. She doesn't care whether I come home or not, as long as she has the child and enough money to get him what he needs. So I can come here whenever you want me to-nights and in the daytime too."

She got up from his knees but stayed near him.

"Lew, I want you to listen to all I have to say. I don't really feel like talking. I'd rather you were doing things to me but we've got to get things straightened out. I'm not a jealous woman. If you choose Brenda instead of me I shan't bear you or her any malice and we shall all stay friends, able to look one another in the eye but you must choose. You can keep her and leave me alone, so's I can spend my free time with a man who wants me and no one else!-I don't want to come between you and Brenda. But if you need me as badly as I need you, you'll get rid of her. Then I can give up this place and live with you. With what you can earn and my pay and only one rent we'd manage nicely and we'd have fun and games morning, noon, and all night. I'd teach you things you've never dreamed of, but it must be regular. Either of us can break it off whenever it gets boring, but as long as we're together it'll be love and I do mean love, all the way. What I won't have is a hole-and-corner romance, in which you pretend to be true to Brenda and creep up to me on the sly. She'd find out sooner or later and life for me would be such hell that I'd have to start looking for a room some-where else and I've got used to this one. I don't want to leave this room unless it's to live with you openly."

What Lew wanted was to lie down with Sadie every night, throw her across the table before and after her midday stint at the "Cavendish Arms," and keep Brenda downstairs as an insurance against Sadie's finding some other man more attractive than him. He realized, however, that Brenda was not the sort of girl whose motives for staying with him could be convincingly explained to a third person. Neither Sadie nor any one else would ever believe that Brenda so loved Valerie that she would not only care for her deceased friend's baby, but also bare her breasts and loins regularly to the onslaughts of the said friend's sadistic widower. He had to choose. And the grass always seeming greener on the other side of the fence, he decided to give up the girl with whose private flesh he was already utterly familiar rather than throw away a the chance of being master of a body of which he had no knowledge. Nevertheless, he saw no harm in making a final effort to gain possession of Sadie without accepting her conditions.

He drew her down to him and she came willingly, her mouth thirsting for fresh contact with him. As they kissed lewdly, his hands floated upwards inside her skirts until his fingers felt the moistness of her panties.

Her "No!" was so voluptuous that he was encouraged to press the palm of his hand hard against her steaming crotch. "No!" His hands rose until his fingers were at the waistband of her panties which they started to pull downward. She went on murmuring "No! No, Lew! Lew! No, Lew!" It was only when he stuck the crooked finger of his right hand deep into her oozing vagina that she uttered a "No!" which really sounded like a negative command instead of a positive plea. By then Lew was too excited by success to heed her order. He thrust in his thumb and drove her to a delicious frenzy by his tickling of her clitoris.

"Lew, you promised to be good. Stop it now!"

He did stop fingering her, but not in answer to her command. He felt that she was well and truly ready for him, whatever her lips said, and he was in a hurry to set WS' long ready phallus free to cut into her. She saw it, and realized that he was going to pierce her with it, go on jabbing it into her until it had spat its fertilizing seed into her receptive, baby-seeking womb. Afterwards, he would either have repeated the operation regularly on his own terms or contented himself with Sadie leaving Brenda to nurse her shame and solitude and perhaps a child as well.

"No!" she cried, "Save it till you've sent Brenda away with the baby!"

"Too late!" he bellowed, letting his full weight fall onto her belly. His dagger sought her sheath but she held him off, jerking her bottom from side to side so that his eager battering ram crashed first against one of her humid thighs and then against the other. The struggle added to her own excitement as well as to his, so that when he realized he could not hope to win and fell away from her, she begged him to bring her to her climax with his mouth.

Eagerly and without the slightest ceremony, he dragged her down to the carpet. He stuck his tongue into her sex and his manhood into her mouth, which he almost immediately filled with his sperm. After a few seconds the quivering of her belly and her sharp little cries of delight told him she too had reached the top of the glorious hill. He crawled round until his face was level with hers. He kissed her and she tongued some of his sperm into his mouth, nibbling the remainder appreciatively before allowing it to slither down her smiling throat.

"That's just a thousandth part of what it'll be like," she whispered tiredly, "if you choose me. Go now! I'm serious this time."

She got up, patting her clothing into of order. At the door she kissed him lasciviously.

"Don't come to see me again before she's gone for good. But for God's sake, do come back!"

Lew said nothing to Brenda about his discussion with Sadie, though she already knew her lover was passing a lot of time upstairs. Nor was she in a position to prevent his doing so. She knew he was spending money on his new friend which ought to have been going into the pockets of the landlord, the butcher, the baker, the milkman and the grocer.

Yet she never reproached him.. When she asked for money and received none, she made no comment, fearing that to anger him might cause him to go back on his promise to keep the child. This failure to criticize him gave him an opportunity to accuse her of sulking, which offense justified his thrashing her prior to their devoting a few hours to the appeasing of their mutual sexual appetites.

Bearing in mind the advisability of striking while the iron is hot, Lew was determined to waste no time in getting Brenda and Ian out of the apartment. He would call Alan the following day and suggest that he and Sylvia take immediate charge of the baby pending the legalizing of the adoption. Only when he was sure they were still willing to take the child would he break the news to Brenda. In the meantime she was at his disposal for a final, unsuspecting night.

Lew saw to it that she served her purpose and it must be added that what she was required to do and to permit him to do to her gave her at least as much pleasure as he derived from it all. He had taught her to be proud of her right to grovel in his filth and her own. Nothing he demanded, however perverse, unnatural or revolting to "normal" people, shocked or displeased her. He was her Master. And if he did not bore holes in her belly or cut off her breasts, it was because he was afraid to do so and not because she would have refused to allow him to do such things.

After a night more degrading and thrilling than any which had preceded it, Brenda struggled with her household duties, while Lew broke to Alan and Sylvia the good news that the sooner they took charge of the baby the happier he would be. Sylvia insisted to Alan that they should drive to Lew's apartment at once, but Alan saw the sense in Lew's suggestion that they give Brenda a few hours to get Ian ready. It was agreed that the would-be parents should collect their baby at three o'clock.

The only person whose wishes were to be considered was Lew. The hour decided upon gave him time for another session of fornication with Brenda prior to telling her that she had until three o'clock to prepare the baby for the journey to its new home. That also gave him the hope that, after Ian's departure with his aunt and uncle, he would be able to go up to Sadie, before she returned to the public house, and inform her that Brenda either had left or was preparing to leave for good. He fancied that Sadie would be so moved by his haste to fulfill her wish, that she would prostrate herself at his feet, begging him to squirt into her loins the last miser-able drops of his sap. The gods were on Lew's side.

Brenda, feeding the beloved child she was so soon to lose, smiled brightly at her highly satisfactory lover when he re-entered the apartment. He planted a Judas kiss on her wide open mouth. (Ian would deny all knowledge of her and her doings be-fore he'd miss a single drop of the bottle's nourishing contents.) "Mine hour is not yet come," she said, mocking Bible knowing but wait until my disciple has emptied his bottle! I shall put him in his manger and then it'll be come, come, come all the way.. .filling my belly and flowing over into the hairs of my crotch and onto my thighs."

The clock in Lew's pants crowed and Ian pushed the depleted bottle away. Bending over the now al-most sleeping boy in his cradle, nurse felt sweating hands on her bare knees and thighs, fumbling in the region of her navel. Feeling herself de-pantied and so liberated, she fell back into the arms of her lover, who took her tenderly at noon and continued to delight her until shortly after one o'clock.

"You'd better get all Ian's things together," he announced. "Man's coming to pick him up at three."

Tired and drugged by the joys of the past hour, she reacted as violently as though he had read a headline from a week-old newspaper.

"Why?" she asked vaguely.

"Sadie, upstairs, needs it badly." He replied lazily. "I want to ,give it to her but she says you've got to go first.. 'went to see Alan and Sylvia this morning. They'll look after Ian until they can adopt him legal like and they're comin' three o'clock."

Moving about in a dream, Brenda busied herself collecting all sorts of things her lost baby would need. When she saw something belonging to herself, she picked that up too.

"You'd like me to clear out as soon as possible? I thought so. If you'll give me time I'll put dean sheets on the bed. No whore-likes to have it shoved to her in a bed which stinks of the juice of her predecessor."

When all Ian's clothing, toys, plastic bathtub, and so on were packed, Brenda started getting her own accounterment together. As she did she began to think more clearly-to realize what was happening. The effect of the drug was wearing off so that the indistinct clouds in her head were taking the shape of a great unhappiness, which she must seek a way of escaping. Was there a way? Pleading with Lew would be of no avail. She had kept nothing back from him. Having given him all a man can desire of a woman, she had nothing to offer him by way of a bribe. Sadie had everything. She had given promises in the form of kisses. To get the rest, Lew had to toe the line, which was what he was doing. Brenda thought of asking Lew to remain the boy's legal guardian while allowing her to care for the child quite independently of him; but how can an unmarried girl earn enough to support herself and a baby and simultaneously look after the baby?-by cutting herself in two? She herself would have to go to a hotel until she could find a small apartment somewhere-and she still had to find work too. In the long run the baby would probably be happier with Alan and his neurotic wife who might in fact lose her neurosis in her preoccupation with the wee laddie.

As she was becoming resigned to the new situation, the idea entered Brenda's head of going back to the Richter Hospital. She had been happy there and she had left on the best of terms with her superiors, some of whom had even assured her that, should she ever wish to return, every effort would be made to find a place for her. Militating against her seeking reinstatment on the staff of the hospital was the probability that Peter Buxton was still there. It would be rather embarrassing to have to work again in fairly close contact with him al-though there was really nothing with which he could reproach her. She had not been engaged to him and they had talked of marriage only in the vaguest of terms. Furthermore she had not broken with him. It was he who had insisted they must cease to see each other in the event of her going to live, however virtuously at first, with a man who had once been her lover. He had forecast that she would eventually go back to Lew and had said that even if that did not occur, there was no point in a courtship when one of the parties involved considered herself bound by a vow which would, in all probability, bar her from marriage for twenty years. She had lad to agree that his arguments were reasonable and they had not quarreled. But she still felt that to be in a position where she had to speak to him several times nearly every day would be humiliating.

In her determination to leave Lew's apartment as soon as possible after Ian's departure, she packed her cases quickly and with little care. She had almost finished the task when Alan and Sylvia arrived. With the exception of Ian, everyone concerned was eager that his transfer from Brenda's care to Sylvia's should be effected with the minimum of delay and formality. Brenda wanted to get it over quickly because she was miserable and wanted to be alone when she burst into tears. Alan and Sylvia, believing possession to be nine-tenths of the law, wanted to get Ian away from Lew before Brenda persuaded him to change his mind about letting them adopt the boy, and Lew wanted them all out of the way as quickly as possible so that he could go up to Sadie and put his dirty mark on her. He was so impatient that when Brenda tried to give Sylvia some hurried advice and data relative to Ian, he suggested that she go home with them. "Tell 'em all they need to know about him and come back for your luggage this evening! I'll stay in t'elp yer with it."

Alan thought that a very good idea, so of course Sylvia also expressed her approval. To Brenda it meant stretching out her agony, but she would have endured worse than that to be sure that Ian was going to be looked after properly.

Brenda was the only member of the adult quartet who realized that the article being handed over from one couple to another was a small human being. To Lew it was just a useless and troublesome bauble left lying about his apartment by one of the women with whom he'd had fun in bed and else-where; Sylvia (and to a lesser degree Alan) acted more or less as though she were buying a puppy to amuse herself with and keep her company when-ever Alan had to absent himself from the house. Sylvia had acquired something. That was what mattered to her. Lew, on the other hand; literally rubbed his hands with glee, less at the thought of having freed himself from responsibility for the baby then in anticipation of his exploitation of a female body which had hitherto been denied him.

When he burst into Sadie's room without knocking and cried "It's all fixed. The baby's-gone and so has Brenda," she replied "What do you expect me to do about it?"

He grabbed her, hugged her, pawed her with lascivious crudity and gave her a short, hard kiss.

"Do?" he said with jovial seriousness. "Get them drawers off and let me give you a taste of this in the right place!"

"Don't be vulgar, Lew, and don't think I'm silly enough to make love with you without being sure you're on the level. You're not trying to pull a fast one on little old Sadie, are you, wise boy?"

by way of reply, he took her more tenderly in his arms. Their mouths met in a long, saliva-laden kiss, in which he begged of her and she promised to grant his request.

She playfully closed her thighs around his right hand, which was fondling the smooth coolness between the tops of her stockings and the frilly edge of her panties. Having whispered "take me down to see my new home," she stuck her tongue in his ear. He groaned and pressed her backwards until she was lying on the table, her thighs wide apart, his legs between them and the weight of ',his body on her abdomen. He jerked his crotch backwards and forwards in imitation of the copulatory gesture of the male of the human and certain other species.

"In case you don't know," he gasped, "that's how it goes, but wi' out pants and panties."

She drew his face down to hers stuck out her tongue to flick the tip of his.

"I bet I've had more of it than you have, honey; and enjoyed every minute of it," she whispered enticingly. "I'd like some more of it too before I go to work. Only first I want to go down and have a look at the apartment "

He was too busy clawing at the buttons of her dress to take any notice of her plea to see his apartment. He knew she only wanted to be sure he was not trying to trick her into becoming his mistress while Brenda was still queen of his castle.

"Lew, you are inviting me to live with you, aren't you?" she asked pouting prettily after a long, sweetly scalding kiss, of which she was the initiator.

"Of course, I am" he answered with complete sincerity. "I'd be a fool if I didn't."

"That's as nice a compliment as I ever had. Lew, it's a long time since a man saw me without a stitch on. Look at me that way!"

He was in no condition to make really virile love to her, but his mouthing of her sex the previous evening had brought her to the first apogee she had experienced in about a year, in fact since the occasion when, having thrown Bernie out of her room, she had masturbated with the handle of a walking stick. Consequently, her need was so great that gratitude diminished her critical faculties. Indeed she enjoyed Lew's easy loving sufficiently to post-pone her reluctant reentry into her exquisite undies and frock until her only hope of arriving at the "Cavendish Arms" before opening time resided in her finding a taxi.

"Has Brenda really gone? she called running away from him after a lingering kiss at the door of her room.

Halfway between her apartment his she paused again.

"You can tell me the truth now." she said. "It doesn't really matter. We're together.. .bless you! Come to the tavern and bring me home?"

"I will, if Brenda lets me."

"You bastard!"

He spat into her upturned face.

"Lovely bastard," she exclaimed. "Catch me be-fore I get to the door and you can have me on the footpath!"

She dashed downstairs with Lew in pursuit. He did not catch her, but she waited on the doorstep for a long, wicked osculation.

A happy young girl, in love for the first time, she hurried away from the handsome boy who had just washed away her innocence by pouring his virginity into her.