Chapter 8

ON A MOUNTAINSIDE overlooking Coaltown were the expensive and exclusive Tudor Academies, the twin prep schools for boys and girls. Most of the students hailed from Philadelphia, New York and Boston, offspring of the finest families. They rarely fraternized with the natives, except for surreptitious occasions when the older boys from Tudor East went into town to visit the houses of prostitution on the waterfront. The girls from Tudor West led a completely cloistered life. Tudor West was off limits to the boys, and vice versa. The inmates, male and female, eyed each other with hot eyes at a distance through the steel picket fence that separated each institution from the other. Infrequently, a boy and girl would manage to slip away for an assignation in the woods, but security and supervision in the girls' school was generally too tight for it to be a common practice.

Only once in the twin schools' history had the barriers come down, so to speak, one spring when the lads of Tudor East had taken inspiration from the celebrated panty raids that were the rage at Ivy-League colleges for a few years. All four terms of boys stormed the girls' citadel, marching around the dorms and chanting in lusty voices.

"We want panties! We want panties!"

The genteel young ladies of Tudor had let down their hair that night, not to mention their drawers. A shower of intimate lingerie floated down to the eager boys. A few of the more zealous girls didn't even bother to remove the panties. They jumped out of the windows, themselves. The consequences of that raucous rebellion had been a score of dismissals and two pregnancies. It never happened again, but the boys of Tudor East still talked about the "big night" with wistful nostalgia after the lights were out in the dorms. The new boys who had not participated were most affected by the lurid accounts of the hanky-panky that supposedly had taken place during the famous raid.

They would lie on their hard cots, rigid with lust, envisioning the girls of Tudor West wagging their bare buttocks and bare breasts out the windows to inflame the boys. And they would pretend that the girls were stroking their hot bodies with cool, velvet fingers.

"I'm sick of doing it to myself," fifteen-year-old Steve Lewis complained to his roommate constantly. "One of these nights I'm going to sneak across the road and get me a real piece. Those babes are as hot for it as we are. Did you ever watch them panting through the fence over the guys in their gym shorts? Billy Watson said he showed it to them once, and they almost broke down the fence to get at him."

Karl Schultz snorted and put down his math book. "Watson is full of it! Anyway, you couldn't get near one of those broads even if she'd let you. They've got Dobermans patrolling the grounds at night."

Steve laughed slyly. "They don't scare me, pal. I know a way to get inside the girls' dorms without even leaving this building-by the door, that is."

Karl sat up in surprise. "You got a genie, I suppose?"

"Something just as good. The other day I was looking at the blueprints of this school in the library. Did you know that both schools, all the buildings, are heated by a central system?"

"Sure."

"Did you know that there are miles of underground tunnels through which the steam pipes run, and that the tunnels are big enough for a man to crawl through?"

Karl whistled in awe. "Now, I get it! Lewis, you are a genius, I have to concede it."

Steve smiled superciliously. "Thanks. So, suppose you and I conduct our own private panty raid some night. Even if we don't make out with the girls, we'll have a treasure of lacy fluff that the pussycats keep their goodies in to make our lonely nights more bearable."

"Fetishist!" Karl sneered.

"It's better than nothing," his friend said.

On the day that the plague hit Coaltown, Steve told Karl, "Tonight is the night. Excitement is in the air. I hear there's all kinds of wild parties going on in the girls' dorms."

He was right. The same afternoon, Barbara Jensen, who taught Greek drama at Tudor West, phoned her husband at Coaltown High School. "The dean wants me to sleep over tonight to help keep order in the dorms. The girls are very restless over this plague business."

Jensen, who had just finished his lewd interlude with Laura Watson, was glad to hear it. He needed time to compose himself after the mad thing he had done. "Perfectly all right, dear," he assured her. "Your mother is perfectly capable of taking care of the baby."

It was arranged for Barbara Jensen to sleep in the room occupied by Sonia Fisher, a Tudor senior.

Supper hour was six o'clock in both Tudor schools, and Steve and Karl chose this strategic hour to make their foray into the catacombs of the heating system.

"The girls' dorms will be empty now," Steve said as they crawled through the cold, clammy tunnel, illuminating their way with a flashlight. After some time, they emerged into the dark cellar of a building that Steve judged to be a dorm. In stockinged feet, they crept up a black service stairwell. On the first landing, Steve opened a door a few inches and peeked out into a deserted corridor.

"Coast is clear," he announced. "Let's go."

They padded down the hall, examining the name-plates on the doors. Steve read a familiar name and grabbed Karl's arm.

"Sonia Fisher," he said. "I remember her. She was captain of the girls' debating team that beat us last year. A real sleazy number. Come on, let's go." He opened the door and slipped into the room.

Karl Schultz was nervous. The invasion of the girls' dorm had sounded like fun when they planned it. Now he had second thoughts. "Maybe we ought to go back," he said. "If we get caught here, we'll be kicked out of school."

"Nobody is going to catch us. We'll hide under a bed and wait for Sonia to come back and undress for the night. You can bet that will be some show. After she's tucked in and asleep we slip out, take a couple of pairs of panties for souvenirs and retreat. When the other guys hear about it, we'll be heroes."

Reluctantly, Karl went along with him. The girls' rooms were fancier than the boys' quarters at Tudor East. Lace curtains, vanities, and flowered bedspreads that brushed the floor.

"Perfect," Steve said, lifting the spread on one of the twin beds in the room. "We'll never be spotted under here." Grunting and straining, the two boys just managed to squeeze under a bed. "Just don't sneeze," Steve warned his friend.

Barbara Jensen arrived at her temporary quarters before Sonia got back from supper. She decided to change and shower before the girl put in an appearance. I

Beneath the bed, the boys' eyes bulged. "Holy cow!" Steve whispered to Karl. "That isn't Sonia! She's too old to be one of the girls. It must be a teacher!"

Teacher or not, their hearts raced. Barbara Jensen was quite a dish. She had a luscious, hourglass figure that even the severe black dress, which was the uniform of all teachers at Tudor West, could not depreciate. Barbara was sorry she wouldn't be with her husband that night. For some reason that she could not explain, she was in the mood for love. Ordinarily, she seldom gave sex a thought during working hours, but this day she had been obsessed with daydreams of herself and Andy lying close on their bed after a stimulating shower.

I'll have to settle for a cold shower now, she told herself with wry humor. Real cold!

Humming, she took off her dress and slip and posed before the vanity mirror in her bra and panties. They were scandalous French creations, the bra a half cup that did little else but support her ripe, round breasts and left her nipples brazenly free. The panties consisted of two small triangles of black lace, front and back, that barely retained a semblance of modesty. She touched each nipple with a finger, pushing it in and letting it spring out again.

Above the neck, she was a plain, pretty girl of 25 with even features and large, brown eyes. Her dark hair was pulled back into a tight bun at the base of her neck.

Peering out from their hideaway, the boys were panting with lust. Neither of them had ever seen a woman this naked before. Their hungry, adolescent bodies ached in torment as she unfastened the bra and let her magnificent breasts tumble free. Barbara studied herself in the mirror, cupping her hands beneath the fleshy fruits and lifting them high. She liked her body, pampered it with the finest, most delicate lingerie under the horrible, shapeless garments she was compelled to wear on the job. With her back to the interlopers under the bed, she rolled her panties down over the swelling globes of her buttocks. The panties floated daintily around her ankles, and she bent over to pick them up.

Karl thought his eyeballs would burst. He felt Steve's fingers biting into his arm, heard his muted groan. He knew he couldn't take much more of this without losing his head. He had all he could do to keep himself from charging out of their hiding place and assaulting that bare, beautiful bottom. He was truly relieved when the woman went into the bathroom and out of sight.

"I've had enough," he said to Steve. "Let's grab her panties and bra and make a getaway."

"Don't be a nut!" the husky blonde boy said. "They'll be coming back from supper about now. We'd be caught for sure."

It proved to be true. Soon there was a loud commotion in the corridor outside the room, scuffling feet and girlish voices and laughter. A little later, Sonia Fisher came into the room. She was a willowy brunette with long, straight, black hair and exotic features. Her lithe body rippled with feline grace beneath her blouse and skirt. Her dark eyes widened as Barbara Jensen came out of the bathroom, naked.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Jensen," she said respectfully. "I didn't know you were showering."

Barbara grinned. "Perfectly all right. After all, this is your room. I'm the intruder." She felt the girl's gaze on her magnificent breasts, and was pleased by the admiration she read in the look. She was proud of her body and enjoyed showing it off. The hunger she read in her husband's eyes when he looked at her in the nude excited her as much as his caresses did.

"Could I borrow a nightgown, Sonia?" she asked the girl.

"Of course." Sonia opened her lingerie drawer and picked out the most expensive nightgown she owned. It was a pink, frothy thing that billowed out in rich folds below the hips. Barbara slipped it over her head and examined herself in the mirror.

"It's lovely, dear," she said. "A little tight in the bosom, but lovely."

The girl blushed and touched her own smaller breasts self-consciously. Barbara's breasts swelled in secret satisfaction, nearly spilling out of the low neckline.

"Sounds like a stampede of cattle out in the hall," she said, frowning.

"This plague has all the girls hopped up," Sonia said. "There isn't going to be much sleep in this dorm tonight. A bunch of pajama parties are underway already."

"Are you going to one of them?" Barbara asked. She sat down at the vanity and undid the bun, letting her luxuriant hair uncoil down her back.

"I can't. I'm up for sorority punishment tonight for speaking out of turn at the last board meeting."

The teacher laughed. "That's too bad. I hope they're not too hard on you."

Sonia threw herself down on one of the twin beds. The springs snapped against the heads of the boys hiding underneath it, making them wince.

"I'll get a paddling. That means sore bottom for a day or so."

Barbara frowned. Physical punishment was theoretically forbidden by the academy rules, but the sororities ignored the restriction, and the faculty members tacitly looked the other way. Hazing and paddling were old, American institutions.

"I think I'll put on my heavy Levi's," Sonia said. "They absorb some of the impact." She got up and unzipped her skirt, took it off and walked to the closet in her blouse and pink panties. Barbara admired her. She had long, lovely legs, slender but shapely. Her bottom was pleasingly plump in the clinging panties.

The bedlam in the hall was worse now, and Barbara debated whether or not she should go out and pull her teacher's rank to quiet it down. Before she could make up her mind, the door of the room burst open and a swarm of girls pushed inside. Most of them were wielding short-handled paddles with broad, oblong wooden faces.

"Sonia!" they screamed in unison. "To the gantlet, girl!"

Barbara Jensen was unnerved by the wild expressions on their young faces. They looked more like a lynch mob than a group of sorority sisters. Paying no attention to her at all, they flocked around Sonia.

"Wait for me to get my Levi's on," the girl protested.

"No!" they thundered. "You come just as you are!"

They grabbed her arms and carried her out into the hall, ignoring her pleas. Butterflies fluttered in Barbara's stomach. Her breasts were uncomfortably hot and constrained in the nightgown's tight bodice. She got up and walked on shaky legs to the door. The violence in the air frightened her.

While the lower-grade girls formed a ring of spectators, the senior sorority members lined up in two rows, facing each. Their faces were inflamed with excitement as they waved their paddles in the air. At one end of the row, Sonia Fisher was pushed down on her hands and knees, with her pert buttocks upturned to receive the prescribed punishment. The thin panties molded her rotund cheeks like a second skin.

"Move, girl!" the sorority, president roared, and started the proceedings with a lusty whack of her paddle on Sonia's buttocks. The poor girl yelped in pain and plunged into the gantlet like a shot rabbit. Two paddles whistled down and smacked her, one on each cheek. The crack of wood against flesh echoed along the corridor. Agony exploded through Sonia's buttocks and radiated down her thighs and up into her tummy. Tears gushed uncontrollably from her eyes. She floundered along desperately with the panic of a fox fleeing from the hounds. The hysterical shrieks and laughter of the other girls rang in her ears. She had never heard them like this before. They reminded her of a mob in an ancient Roman arena, howling for the blood of the Christians.

Halfway down the line, she was grabbed and held. Greedy hands pulled at her panties, working them down over her buttocks. Sonia screamed in terror.

"No! Please don't!"

In the doorway of the room, Barbara Jensen watched in horror and indignation. She struggled through the tightly packed girls around the gantlet, shouting at the top of her lungs.

"Girls! Girls! That will be enough. Remember, you're young ladies!" She might as well have been screaming at a blank wall. The mob stood firm and wouldn't let her through.

Sonia's panties were all tangled around her thighs now, further impeding her. She struggled along with her naked buttocks vulnerable to the flailing paddles. Her smooth flesh turned from satiny-white to pink, then to pale crimson and finally to fiery red. Her tortured cheeks bobbed and throbbed as the merciless paddles battered them from side to side. Screaming in agony, she finally reached the end of the row and collapsed in tears.

As rapidly as the mob in the hall had assembled, it dissolved. Girls ducked back into bedrooms, the sorority sisters made off, waving their paddles victoriously and laughing like she-devils. Barbara rushed to the prostrate girl and helped her to her feet. The teacher was pale and trembling with outrage.

"Those little monsters!" she said. "They haven't heard the last of this. I'm reporting this disgraceful exhibition to the dean first thing in the morning!"

"Oh no!" Sonia blubbered through her tears. "If you report it, I'll be drummed out of the club. You know how sorority laws work? They'll say I finked out on them."

Barbara knew, from her own days at college. She helped the girl hobble into the room, supporting her with an arm around her slim shoulders. Her inflamed buttocks were puffy and sore, the skin stretched shiny and red over the angry flesh. Each step was pure agony.

"They even hit the backs of your thighs," Barbara said sympathetically. "I hope your back isn't injured. Better take off your blouse and let me see."

She helped Sonia remove her blouse and brassiere and examined her bare back. There were a few welts, but nothing serious. "Better lie down on your stomach," she advised. "I'll get something to soothe you, dear."

Naked now, the girl kneeled gingerly on her bed and eased herself down in the prone position. Barbara observed that she had nice, little breasts, round and firm and fleshy. Sonia was really a lovely girl, so feminine, and as graceful as a cat Her black hair hung about her face in a gleaming frame that set off her pale, exotic face. She reminded Barbara of an Indian princess. In the bathroom, the teacher found a bottle of fragrant, emollient oil. She hurried with it back into the bedroom.

The two boys under the bed were getting jittery.

The episode of the paddling had been a frightening thing to listen to, even though they couldn't see it. The sorry sight of Sonia Fisher when she came back in the room told a grim story. The boys felt the madness singing in the air, and it frightened them. Even so, Steve was perversely excited by the girl's swollen, bruised buttocks. Peeking through the fringe of the bedspread, he watched her lie down on the bed across the room. Her panties, bra and blouse lay in a small heap on the floor not far from the bed they were hiding under. When Sonia buried her face in a pillow and the teacher was in the bathroom, he could not resist an impulse. Holding his breath, he stretched one arm out from under the bed, reaching for the discarded clothing.

"You're nuts!" Karl hissed in his ear.

Steve's fingers snagged the pink panties and pulled them into his hiding place. He folded them up and made a little pillow on which to rest his cheek.

Barbara sat down on the bed and poured some of the oil into the palm of one hand. "Now just relax, honey," she said. "This will make you feel better." Gently, she applied the oil to the girl's smarting buttocks, massaging the sensitive skin in small circles with her fingertips. It was a crime, she thought, to abuse such a perfect body so brutally. The tender cheeks were so round, so smooth, the texture of the flesh like velvet under her fingers.

Sonia winced at the first painful touch of the older woman's hands. Her thighs and buttocks were on fire. The rich oil was cool and soothing, and quickly, the worst pain began to subside. Barbara Jensen had a gentle, healing magic in her hands that penetrated layer upon layer of skin and flesh to the very marrow of the girl's bones. A delicious lassitude pervaded Sonia's body. Her eyes drooped, and, if she had been a cat, she would have purred with pleasure. There was a sudden difference in the warmth she felt in her buttocks. It went clear through her, gathering in a sweet pool in her tummy, like honey. The perfumed oil oozed down the round slopes of her bottom and between her thighs, causing a slight, pleasant itching sensation in her flesh.

The night was warm and humid. Barbara stroked the girl lethargically, feeling the heat more than she had felt it all day. Her face was flushed, and her body was uncomfortably hot under the thin nightgown. Her breasts felt positively trapped in the bodice.

Her laughter was high-pitched and giddy as she stood up. "I'm going to take this nightgown off, Sonia," she said. "This room is sweltering." She slipped it over her head and draped it over a chair. Then she sat down on the bed again and resumed her ministrations to the girl's pretty bottom. The flush on her face spread across her bare breasts and down her midriff, fanning out across her belly and thighs. Barbara was alarmed to see that her nipples were blossoming like roses. Familiar sensations flickered around her erogenous zones. Familiar, yet totally alien to the present situation. All day long she had been preoccupied by the mild tumescent state of her body. She had wanted her husband. Now she wanted him desperately. It was ludicrous to think of making love while she was massaging the svelte body of a young girl, Barbara told herself, but she was powerless to stop the rising tide of her desire.

Sonia was stirring strangely under her caresses, moving her hips from side to side and moaning softly. Barbara was fascinated by her hands and fingers, almost as if they belonged to someone else. The fingers of one hand trailed down the soft insides of the girl's thighs.

"Oh, Mrs. Jensen!" Sonia cried out suddenly. She rolled over quickly and sat up. Her exotic face was ablaze with lust, eyes heavy-lidded, nostrils flaring, lips parted sensually. Barbara was a helpless victim of emotions she could not understand. She wanted to get off the bed, get away from this new personality confronting her, but her arms and legs were too heavy with the pulsing of hot blood.

"Don't stop, please," Sonia said softly. She smiled and grasped one of Barbara's hands, placing it on her warm, soft belly. Sighing, she arched against the hand, trapping it in the hot pocket of her thighs. Fire flashed up Barbara's arm and spread like lightning through her body.

The girl smiled. "You have such beautiful breasts, Mrs. Jensen," she murmured. She cupped one of the luscious fruits in her hands and brought it to her lips. Barbara moaned in anguish as the gentle mouth devoured her turgid nipple.

"No, Sonia, no!" she protested, but it was a feeble protest, drowned out by the fierce pounding of desire in her loins. The girl pushed her back on the bed and pressed her lithe young form against her, breast to breast, belly to belly, thigh to thigh. Barbara Jensen, stunned by what was happening but powerless to stop it, closed her eyes and let herself be carried away. The girl's hands and mouth teased her artfully, teasing her body until she was mad with lust. She cried out in ecstasy as Sonia tongued her navel. Soft hands slipped around her hot thighs and kneaded her quivering buttocks. Barbara's hips surged up eagerly to receive the final, wondrous, intimate kiss. Her greedy, frantic hands found the girl's buttocks, still flaming from the paddling. The two girls lost themselves in blind passion. Their lovely bodies writhed and twisted against each other in the glorious sunburst of completion.

Underneath the other bed, the two boys watched in fascination. "It's wild!" Karl whispered. "Two girls! Can you imagine?" He turned to look at his friend, but turned away quickly in embarrassment. Steve was rubbing himself against Sonia's panties, eyes closed, an ecstatic smile on his lips.

When it was over, Barbara Jensen was filled with remorse and self-revulsion. "This is terrible!" she said, sobbing into her hands. "I never knew I could do a thing like this."

Sonia laughed sympathetically. "Don't make a federal case out if it, Mrs. Jensen. It's the specialty of the house, here at Tudor West."

Barbara stared at the girl incredulously. "You mean you've done this before? With other girls?"

The dark girl's eyes gleamed wickedly. "Dozens of times. Most of the senior girls do. How do you think we get our kicks?"

"Stop it! I don't want to hear any more!"

"Well, you're going to hear it!" Sonia said bitterly. "You can't shut a bunch of healthy, red-blooded, mature girls up in a prison like this as if they were nuns. We're not nuns! We don't want to be celibates. The only chance we get to even look at the opposite sex is through an iron fence. After four years at Tudor, a girl is ready to climb walls, go out of her mind. The only sexual outlet available to us is what you and I had tonight." She grinned tauntingly at the older woman. "It isn't too bad, is it Mrs. Jensen? You were crazy for it, I could tell."

Barbara blushed and averted her shamed eyes. "I'll never understand it as long as I live. Nothing will ever be the same again."

"That's silly," the girl said gently. "You'll go right on making love to your husband, and you'll forget all about this. You're an educator, Mrs. Jensen. Educators are supposed to be always seeking new experience. Well, chalk tonight up to experience."

When they were in bed, Barbara stared numbly at the dark ceiling. Sonia was right, she knew. She couldn't allow five minutes of misguided passion to ruin her life. She was not a Lesbian, she knew that too. What she had done with Sonia tonight, she would never do again. It was one of those moments of madness that comes over every man and woman at some point in their lives. She thought of the plague raging the town below. That was madness too, and madness is infectious.

She smiled guiltily in the dark. Sonia had been right about another thing. She had enjoyed it! Her body was drained, and her mind was at rest. Smiling, she fell asleep.