Chapter 1
If this damned world would just stop closing in around her, Martha thought. It was just too much! Her nipples pressed hard against her blouse as her breathing grew heavier. Maybe she was going to cry. No. She determined herself not to.
"Martha... Don't go, or wait until the semester's over, and I'll go with you."
Martha looked at Ken a moment and then averted her eyes from his. She studied the wisp of fine yellow hair angled across his broad forehead and shifted her attention to the soft lips, outlining his wide, generous mouth, which was always so ready to smile. It wasn't smiling now.
"I don't want to wait, Ken," she said finally. "I need to get away now."
"You're only running. You can't run away from yourself."
She forced a laugh. "No, I'm not," she objected. "I told you, I just need a vacation."
"What about your courses, honey? You'll flunk the whole semester if you go now."
Martha shrugged lightly, feeling her shoulders lift the waves of her golden hair and slide it silkily down her back. She knew everything about her was sagging and depressed. She could feel the lines of her face droop with weariness. She straightened her whole body, lifting her fine chin, revealing the slender length of her neck, arching her spine so that her high breasts tipped up inside her blouse with forced enthusiasm. She turned a bright smile on Ken that went all the way up into the green pools of her eyes.
"I'm not going to flunk," she said. "I'll withdraw. There's still time. I know if I stay on the way I'm doing, then I'll really flunk."
"Honey, what's the matter? Isn't there something I can do?"
"Yes. Quit making a big thing out of something that isn't. I need a vacation, that's all. I just need to get away for a while."
"But on a tour of South America."
"Why not?" she laughed. "I think it sounds exciting, don't you?"
He passed his fingers through his hair and wrinkled his forehead. "Yeah-but I was hoping maybe we could do it together."
"You don't have time, Ken. You don't have time for years. Besides, right now the most important tiling for you to do is get through medical school."
"We would have time if you'd marry me. We could make time. There'd be a way to work it in."
She looked away quickly and glanced around the interior of his small apartment, at the neat rows of books, the bed in the corner with its geometric-figured spread adjusted just so. It was the kind of room she envied, because everything looked so tidy and arranged and simple. It indicated a life that would be the same way-not like hers, not all botched up and smudged and circular. She knew he could find the way and the time for them to go together.
"Ken, you've wanted me to make a decision for a long time-a firm, concrete decision about something, anything-remember? Well, I've made one. I'm leaving tomorrow, because I need to get away. Now, why are you trying to take my hard-won decision from me?"
"Because I think it's a mistake, Martha," he said earnestly.
"Everything I do is a mistake, according to you!"
"Come on, honey-you know that isn't true."
Martha felt his arms fold around her and pull her slim body against his. She fought for a moment, then let him engulf her. His strength gave her a feeling of security. She listened to the strong beat of his heart and inhaled the warm fragrance coming from his chest. She stared along the line of Ken's shirt buttons to the rise of material in his lap and wondered what he would do if she were to voluntarily reach down and cup his cock and balls in her hand to demonstrate how much she really did want him.
A tightness constricted her throat, and she felt her eyes burn. It would be so simple, so easy and decision-less for her to give in and stop fighting him, to let him gather her up in his strong arms and lay her out on his precise bed and fuck her once and for all. Then it would be done. The torment would be over. She would have been caught and deflowered and made love to by a real man-one as good and kind as she remembered her father having been. Even if it meant she would have to trust her life to him, it would be so easy.
"Ken...." she whispered.
"Oh, honey," he said gently, rocking her. "Why do we have to go around and around all the time like this? Why can't you say you'll marry me? Why won't you let me take care of you and love you the way we both want, instead of trying to run?"
Because I don't trust you! she wanted to cry.
"Maybe when I get back, Ken," she said instead. "Maybe then I'll know. That's one reason I want to go. I need to get away."
"From me?"
"You know I didn't mean that." Martha lifted her head from his firm chest and looked at Ken. She punched him with weak-hearted playfulness and made herself smile again. "Would I have hung around for nearly two years if I'd wanted to get away from you?"
He smiled for the first time. It was a bright, winning smile that lit up his whole face and always filled her with happiness. Hi was the kind of smile that she could lose herself in and could allow herself a moment's escape in from the never-ending pressure of self-doubt and indecision that formed the core of her life.
"No," he said. "I guess you have a point there. But don't you think that's a long enough time to be acquainted, as they used to say?"
She cocked her head in a half-teasing way. "Why have you put up with me so long, Ken? Do you really want my cherry that much?"
"Honey, that isn't fair," he protested. "You know it's because I love you."
"Oh? Then you don't want it?"
"Of course I want it, Martha. Honey...."
"What if I said you could have it right now? What if I fell into your arms and begged you to stuff me full and tear my insides to shreds with all that meat down there? Then would you leave me alone? Would you go away and stop pestering me to marry you?"
"You teasing devil," he laughed, his voice going shaky. "I'd only fall more deliriously in love with you than I am already."
"What about your schooling, Ken? You wouldn't have the time or the money to put up with a wife, would you?"
"We could work it out...."
"like some of our friends have done, you mean?"
The smile went off his face. She felt cruel for having said it, but she couldn't help herself. They both knew she was referring to some couples who had lived together, married or not, the woman working to support him long enough for the man to finish his school and outgrow her before he left her.
"Do you really think that of me?" Ken asked, his voice low.
She turned away. "I didn't mean to say that. I'm sorry."
"How many times do I have to promise that I won't leave you."
"I said I was sorry."
He forced her to turn around. "Look at me, Martha-look at me and listen hard. I love you. I won't leave you. I'm sorry your father ran out on you and your mother, but you can't regard every man as having that potential in mind. It isn't fair."
"It wasn't fair of him," she said.
"You've heard only one side of it, Martha. How your mother could have stayed bitter for so long, I can't understand. But it was her personal misfortune, not yours. You have your own life to live, and I want you to live it with me. Can't you understand that?"
"Ken, don't," she said. "Don't spoil my last night with you like this."
"You make it sound permanent."
She rumpled his hair. "It's only two weeks."
He sighed heavily. "Now I'm sorry." He smiled again. "All right, what shall we do?"
She faced him again and imagined the sparkle of brightness the stinging at the backs of her eyes had caused. She felt a rush of emotion go through her and make her breasts throb. The longing that had been boiling inside her for nearly twenty years welled up in a strong wave, making her suddenly want to love and be loved in return, freely, without the fear her mother had instilled in her so well. It made her realize again that she would have to decide someday or grow as withered and drawn and cynical as her mother.
She began unbuttoning her blouse while the feeling was still strong. She watched Ken's face while she removed the garment and reached behind her back for the catch of her bra. Her high, smooth, tits stood free and gleamed with the depth of color that came from her creamy skin. Her nipples inflated and grew red, and she licked her lips with the desire that was in her.
"What are you doing, Martha?" Ken whispered huskily.
She unfastened her short skirt and slipped the material over her smooth hips, standing close to him in thin, blue panties. The golden thatch of her cunt showed through and made wrinkles in the material around the thin line of her slit.
"Any fool can see what I'm doing, Ken," she answered. "I'm offering myself to you."
"Do you mean it this time-really mean it?"
"Here I am." She smiled prettily and pushed her hips forward, more confident and sure than she'd ever been.
"Are you certain this time?"
"You talk too much. You always talk too much."
His big hands held the sides of her hips. He leaned forward and pressed the side of his face against her abdomen, feeling the slick material of her panties, inhaling the honeyed aroma from her virginal cunt.
He stood after a moment and encircled her with his arms again. Martha thrilled to the strength in them and allowed her body to mold itself to his broad, firm contours. She felt her nipples dig into his shirt and become warmed by his body heat. His belt buckle pressed coolly against her naked flesh. She shivered as the wide spread of his hand covered her back and slid down her spine to cup her round, trembling ass-cheeks in his palm.
"Ken, hurry," she whispered. "Before I change my mind."
He picked her up easily and carried her to the bed. It barely sagged under her weight. As she watched him unbutton his shirt and work at his pants, the doubts began creeping back in again to make her thighs tremble against opening to him.
It wasn't the first time Martha had done this. It wasn't the first time she'd decided to make the choice and go through with giving herself up to him. But if it happened this time, all the way, it would be the first act of defiance toward her mother, the first break in the strangling hold her mother had. If it happened this time, she would tip over the edge and immerse herself in Ken's life, canceling the trip, marrying him, trusting him totally the way she'd been taught was stupid and wrong.
His cock speared forth from his thighs. Its thickened length pulsed and swelled with pent-up desire. His testicles drew up with readiness and became firm between the fine tendrils of his pubes.
Ken knelt beside her, and his expression was full of love. Martha could feel it radiating from him, and she couldn't understand how she'd been so cruel to him for so long, averting his desire to make a woman of her. Always before, she froze up with her fears, and they finished by masturbating each other like children. It was only in the past few months that she'd allowed them to progress beyond that to the more satisfying methods of release. Martha looked at the wide swell of his cockhead and swallowed with a reflexive spasm.
"Martha...."
She lifted her hips. Ken's fingers gently took hold of the elastic top of her panties. He pulled them down, and she rocked her pelvis back and forth to allow the nylon to pass over the round, full swell of her ass-cheeks.
Ken stared tenderly down on her golden cunt. His eyes traveled over the silken cleft. His hands held the sides of her hips, and his thumbs reached for the puffy lips of her cunt to pull them aside and reveal the pinkness of the gap between them. His head dipped, and his soft lips pursed outward. Martha's thighs trembled apart and admitted his kiss.
Sensation seared through her body, and she arched her back and moaned. Her hands sought her breasts and squeezed them as she tried to infuse so much passion into her body that she wouldn't be able to think. If she couldn't think, then she couldn't resist. And it would be done and over before she knew what had happened.
"Ken-hurry!" she whimpered.
He covered her with his weight. His lips found hers and kissed them heatedly, smearing the aromatic oils from her pussy over her face so that she could taste herself.
His prick slid along the inner flesh of her thighs, reaching, straining for the satiny entrance to her virginal cunt. Fluid seeped from his cockhead and mixed with the slippery flow from her cunt. Oil-covered velvet, warmed by passion, touched her pussylips. She trembled and quaked under the contact and whimpered against his probing tongue. Her pelvis lifted and rocked back to accept his thrust, as if it were begging for the plunge that would rupture her and impale her on his huge cock.
She imagined the delicate tissues of her cunt being torn, being run through with the thick shaft of his prick, like some kind of specimen he was tacking to his tray for dissection and display, like a conquest hard fought for and finally won, like an object of gloating pride. She knew the image was unfair, the motive not Ken's. But she couldn't stop it from coming.
"Ken..she cried. "Ken, no...."
"Martha, don't fight. Let it happen, darling! God, let me love you and take care of you!"
She twisted her head aside and shook it back and forth under his lips. She clamped her thighs together, making the spear of his cock ride up the inside of her slit and bump along the ball of her clit to stab into the soft flesh of her belly. His balls pushed heavily into her crotch, and she rolled her hips to the side.
"I can't do it, Ken!" she sobbed.
"It's all right, darling, it's all right." He spoke quickly, reassuring her, smoothing his palm over her forehead.
She wanted to cry out that it wasn't all right-none of it-that he should go ahead and ram himself into her and make her bleed and yell and scream for more. But she knew Ken would never do that to her, because then it would be over for them both.
Instead, she twisted on the bed and reached for his hips, sliding her head under his belly, wrapping her fingers around his strong, pounding cock. She felt him lift up slightly. His silky hair fell between her thighs as his head dipped and his lips smothered her pussy with passionate heat. His tongue laved her slit up and down its length, and she opened her mouth to take his swollen cockhead into it.
She sucked fiercely on him, milking his cock with her tongue, drawing frantically on his tube of passion to make his juices flow into her. She sobbed and sucked and pressed her tits up into his abdominal flesh and prayed he would understand how sorry she was. She tasted his Beeping discharge of oil, and she wrapped her fingers around his buttocks to pull his middle tightly to her face, begging him to release himself with a flow so copious it would choke her and burn her throat in punishment for having failed him again.
"Martha..." he cried, spearing his tongue into her cunt. The point of it flicked against the tissue barricading her womb and the rest of herself from his love.
Martha felt him raise her pelvis up. His fingers dug into the flesh of her ass with only a trace of pain-not enough, not enough. She wrapped her thighs around his head and squeezed hard, hoping to hurt him so that he would hurt her back and give her the punishment she deserved. She quavered with joy when his thumb slid into her ass-hole and made a burning sensation whip through her bottom. Then she came hard and gobbled at his face with her ravenous pussy. Her labia and vaginal walls spasmed shamelessly around his tongue in the only kind of giving she knew. Her throat opened to accept the pulsing rush of his semen-warm, slippery, heady, as good and clean as the rest of him.
"Oh, Ken," she sobbed finally, hugging his hips, her voice muffled against his thigh. "I'm sorry, darling, I'm sorry."
He straightened around and held her tightly, and she could smell her fragrance all over his face.
"I know you love me, Martha," he said. "You couldn't do-what we do and not love me. Why can't...."
"I nearly did it, Ken! I nearly let you do it. I need more time. I don't know why, darling, but I do. I know it's crazy to be able to make love to you in every way but the right one. But I just can't. Maybe when I get back . . .Ken, don't give up on me. I need you not to give up."
They looked at each other and understood the meaning of what she'd said-the way her plea for time was a test.
"I won't give up on you," he smiled. "You know that."
"You'll still be here when I get back?"
"I don't know if I will or not," he joked.
"Don't tease me, Ken."
"I'm not. I might get so lonely I'll jump on the first plane and follow you." He smiled and made her laugh and snuggle against him with contentment.
"If you do that, then the whole purpose of the trip will be foiled. Besides, you'll mess up your classes, too."
"Uh-huh," he chuckled. "So you are trying to get away from me, aren't you?"
"Not you, Ken," she said quickly, unable to look him in the eye. "Just away. From everything."
"What secret lover is paying your way, darling? You haven't told me a thing about it, you know, except that suddenly you're going."
"You know you're my only lover," she laughed. "With the condition I'm in, who else but you could stand to put up with me?"
"If that was a compliment, it had a peculiar flavor." He kissed the tip of her nose. "Did your mother give you the money?"
"No. I wouldn't take her money. I saved it."
"I'll bet she's glad you're going, though, isn't she?"
"Why do you say that."
"You know why."
She ran a fingertip along the line of his boyish chin. "You shouldn't take Mother personally, Ken. She would act the same way about any man she thought I was interested in-or she thought was interested in me."
Ken gazed into her green eyes for a long moment and ran his hand up her back, massaging her spine. He cupped her head and pulled her down to kiss her again.
"You're coming back, aren't you?" he asked.
She hesitated a moment too long, then smiled too quickly. "Well, I hadn't thought of that," she laughed, struggling to get up. "Maybe I'll just get lost in the Amazon or something and live with the Indians. Being a headhunter shouldn't be too far out of my line."
"Yeah," he said. "Or maybe you'll fall madly into bed with some hot Latin stud who won't take no for an answer."
If I did, Martha thought, he wouldn't want me to marry him. I wouldn't have to worry about an empty future the way I do with you, darling.
"Maybe," she said teasingly. "Would that make you angry?"
He looked at her. His fine hair looped in odd directions over his head. "I don't know," he said seriously. "If it would solve whatever's bothering you, I might give him a medal."
"Do you really want me that much, darling?" she asked with a trace of surprise. "Even without the cherry you've been waiting so long to get?"
He shrugged his broad shoulders in answer and watched her step into her panties. She pulled the material over her swelling ass-cheeks until it was snug against her crotch. Her firm breasts moved pertly on her chest, the tips peeping through silky strands of her golden hair. She tossed her hair back over her shoulders and slipped into her bra.
"What if I did the same thing while you were gone?" he asked finally. "Would that make you angry?"
"You've already had other girls, Ken."
"Only at the beginning-before I came to love you so much."
She turned to face him. "How could I be angry, darling? We're not married, you know. I don't have any claim on you."
"The hell you don't,"
"Maybe it would be a good thing, even-for both of us to get away from each other and
"Is that what you want?" he asked softly.
She buttoned her blouse slowly, watching her fingers work. "You're always willing to accommodate me, aren't you, Ken?" she stated.
"You mean, I'm too willing? Would you rather I get tough and throw you around a little?" He laughed quietly. "You'd take that just about as well as I could do it, and you know it."
"I have to go home now," she said, turning from him.
"Hey, wait a minute," he said, jumping off the bed. He approached her with his cock dangling between his legs and saw her avert her eyes. It was always that way. As soon as the moment of passion was over, they were supposed to stop having genitals. Everything was supposed to be neutered and neutral. He quickly slipped into his pants and stood in front of her by the door. "You haven't even told me the name of the travel outfit, where you'll be, or anything."
"I know," she said. "I don't want you following me. I don't even want to give you the chance."
"What if something happens-to your mother, maybe?"
"It won't. She's too mean to have anything happen to her."
"Well, hell! Does she know where you'll be? Maybe something will happen to me. Or maybe you don't care. Maybe that would solve all your problems, huh?"
"Ken-please don't give me a bad send-off. Let's leave it the way it's been. It's been good tonight. I nearly did it, darling. Think about how I nearly let you capture me, while I'm gone."
"All right," he said tightly. "I'll think of how good it nearly felt to sink my prick into a woman's cunt again. Then maybe I'll do more than just think about it."
Martha watched him a moment and then lifted her mouth up to kiss him quickly, coolly, as if she were saying goodbye to an old friend. She hurried out the door and down the hallway, knowing what her mother would say if she could have heard him just now: Just like a bastard, Martha. Didn't I tell you?
But by the time Martha was at the bottom of the stairs and walking out in the warm, Florida night, she didn't care what her mother would have said. She wanted to run back upstairs and throw herself into Ken's arms and tell him how good he was, how gentle and kind, and how much she loved him. But she hurried through the lot to her car because she'd made her decision and she drove toward home.