Chapter 14
Anita had had a busy week.
J. Edward Coleridge was in some kind of snit-he was taking heavy losses in the stock market, it seemed-and instead of the regular Friday night visits, he had wanted her three times a week. And the banker had been worked up to fever pitch, slamming the whip against her buttocks till she yelled in pain, then compelling her to whip him until blood flowed.
That sort of thing took a lot out of a girl. Of course, he paid her extra for these visits-$50 an hour, instead of the old $30. Even so, she was showing the strain of having to cater three times a week to the abnormalities of J. Edward Coleridge. And there were all her other clients to deal with as well. And there was Joyce.
Night after night, Anita and Joyce grappled deliriously. They had been keeping steady company for two months, now, and the passion hadn't dimmed yet. Anita could not get enough of her. And Joyce seemed to feel the same way. They caressed one another's breasts, they rubbed bodies with gay abandon, they led each other from climax to climax to climax.
And then they lay naked in each other's arms, drifting pleasantly along toward morning.
"Have you heard anything about that fellow who murdered his wife?" Joyce asked one day.
"He got off," Anita said.
"Really! How'd he work that?"
"Justifiable homicide, or something. You know. You bust in, and there's your best friend taking your wife, and you go berserk. No jury'll send a man to the chair for that kind of killing."
"Provided it was kosher," Joyce said.
"This sounded like it. He wasn't the kind of man to go around murdering people just like that. He must have blown his top. Especially the way the guy was giving it to her. That really must have teed him off."
"You haven't heard from him since he got out?"
"No," Anita said. "I guess he's given up sex for good, or something. A pity. I could count on a regular $50 a week from him. Plus extras. And he was such a nice guy, too. Not a creep like most of them." She yawned. "Come closer, will you?"
"Gladly."
Anita's hand closed over the warm, pulsing globe of the redhead's left breast. Joyce's fingers wandered down Anita's body.
Their lips met.
Their tongues touched.
Their bodies arched and strained. Anita climbed i over Joyce, sitting astride her with her back toward Joyce's face, and bent forward. She lifted her buttocks. Joyce came to a half-sitting position.
Simultaneously, the two girls went into action.
It was a new position for them. A Lesbo named Marijane had taught it to them only a few days before, and they liked the novelty of it, and they had been trying it ever since. Life was always full of pleasant little discoveries like that.
Anita sighed and gasped as Joyce's hands and lips worked their magic. She burrowed forward, reciprocating the favor. The two girls soared together toward the heights of pleasure.
Then, afterward, they lay in each other's arms again, warm, snug, happy.
"I'm so glad I found you," Anita murmured.
"Not gladder than I am."
"We're going to have a great time together," Anita said. "This is only the beginning."
She reached over, kissed Joyce's nipples. They rested for a while.
Joyce yawned. "What time is it?"
"Three in the afternoon."
"Time to go to work," she said. "So early?"
"I'm turning a trick at the Waldorf-Astoria today," Joyce said. "Convention of surgeons in town, and one of them phoned me. They want me there at four-thirty when the afternoon session breaks up."
Anita giggled. "Watch out they don't operate on you, now."
"I'll keep an eye on them."
"You better. Those surgeons are sneaky louses. They start fooling around inside you with their hands, and first thing you know they get your appendix out."
"Don't worry," Joyce said. "Nothing's coming out of me today. It's all going in the other direction."
Joyce rose, crossed the room, began to get dressed. Anita watched, enjoying the view of Joyce's taut, full buttocks, of her ripe, heavy breasts.
Joyce left. Anita stretched out to get some more rest. Her own first trick of the day was at seven. That gave her a few more hours for lazying around.
This was the day, Fred Markell decided. He had waited long enough, biding his time. He was going to see Anita.
He dropped in on her uninvited, ringing the bell of her East Side apartment at half past three in the afternoon.
She came to the door, looking sleepy and surprised to see him. She was wearing only a gauzy gown that hid little of her full-fleshed beauty. Her nipples plainly showed through, jutting against the flimsy fabric, and Markell could see the deep indentation of her navel, and the firm, shapely pillars of her thighs beneath the gown.
He had been living a life of purity for nearly two months, now, broken only by his single round with the Puerto Rican girl. His entire body went tense with desire at the sight of those lush breasts and rounded thighs scarcely concealed by her gown. He stood there silently at the door, frozen, hypnotized by her beauty. He drank it all in, remembering what it had felt like to cup those breasts in his hands, to lie between those solid. thighs, to taste the honey of her lips. He trembled.
"Freddy!"
"Hi, Anita," he said with a grin. "Long time no see, huh?"
"Jesus, Freddy-" She seemed taken aback, her poise and professional calm deserting her for a moment "Come on in," she said. "But-God, you should have called first!"
"Why? Got company here?" he asked.
She smiled faintly. "No, silly. But-but it would have given me some time to get washed up, presentable. That's all."
He stepped inside, closed the door.
He looked at her. She turned away from him for a moment, and he saw the curving globes of her buttocks. The filmy gown hid nothing at all.
"How's about a kiss?" he asked.
"Well, sure. Sure."
Then she was in his arms, and the fleshy balls oi her breasts were tight against his body, and ne was hungrily reaching for her, crushing his lips down onto hers.
But she didn't kiss back with the old warmth. There was an element of reserve, almost of fear. He forced his tongue between her lips and into her mouth. His hands clawed at the mounds of her breasts.
She stepped back. "Easy. You'll rip my gown if you do that."
"Take it off, then! You know how long it's been since I saw you?"
"Okay. Okay."
The gown dropped to the floor. All her magnificent opulent nudity was on display for him. His brain tingled at the sight of those deep breasts, those perfect little nipples, the flawless white thighs with their delicate traceries of blue veins. She smiled, seeing the look of rapt fascination on his face, and turned in a complete circle, showing him her steep-breasted profile and then the meaty lusciousness of her naked buttocks.
When she was facing him again, he said, "You heard the story, didn't you?"
"You and your wife? Sure. It was in all the papers. So the trial's all over, huh? They let you go?"
Markell nodded. His eyes glowed as he stared at her stunning nudity. "Yes," he said. "I'm a free man now. I hope you understand why I couldn't call you all these weeks, Anita."
"Sure, I saw that," she said. She was looking at him strangely. "You must have really blown your top, Freddy. Killing your wife like that. And Jack. Poor Jack. He was the guy who first gave you my number, wasn't her
"Yes. That's right."
"Poor Jack. He didn't deserve that, Freddy. Your own friend. And your wife was just a witch, anyway."
Markell shrugged. He didn't want to stand around here talking. He wanted to throw himself on her, to clasp her beautiful body to his, to ravish her, to taste her lips again, to take the heavy globes of her breasts into his mouth and draw on them, to caress the coolness of her buttocks, to plunge his quivering, yearning manhood into the hot chasm of her desires.
But he held back. He said, "I bad to kill her, Anita. I didn't want to, but Janet had to get put out of the way. It was simpler all around to kill Jack too. I felt bad about it, but after all, he was taking my wife, and so I had to-"
"You mean-"
He cut her off. "And now I'm a free man," he went on. He rubbed his hands, drank in her nudity with his eyes. "Some time this spring, we can get married, Anita. At long last."
"Married?" she said, blurting the word out as though thunderstruck by it.
He was surprised at the vehemence of her reaction. He blinked and said, "Ot course. Why did you think I'd do a thing like that? Certainly it wasn't out of jealousy, Anita."
"But-but-" Her lips were trembling, now, and she crossed her arms over her breasts in an odd gesture of shame. "Who said anything about marriage, Freddy?"
"Why-I assumed-" He stopped, contused.
"Don't you remember when I said we'd soon be together all the time?"
She shrugged. "I figured you meant you'd be taking me over as a full-time mistress for a while."
"I meant marriage."
She was staring strangely at him now. "But-no, Freddy. This is ridiculous. It's absurd. I don't want to marry you. You or anybody else."
He gaped at her. A terrible pounding began just back of his forehead.
"I killed Janet so I could marry you," he said in icy tones. "It was murder. I planned it, Anita. Just so I could be free to marry you. I invited him out to the house for the weekend, I left the two of them alone together, I hid in the garage. I did it all so I could marry you."
She shook her head. "I was married once, Freddy. When I was seventeen. You didn't know that, did you? But I left him after a few months. I couldn't stand it. One man, thinking he owned me. Thinking he could take me any time he wanted, just snap his fingers and I'd come running, ready to love him. No. I'm not a monogamous girl. I get tired of a man after six, seven months. Sometimes even quicker, Freddy. I can't help the way I am."
There was a pain around his heart, now. A needle-like stabbing. "I'm rich, Anita. I can give you everything you dream of."
"I'm rich too," she said evenly. "I got a fat settlement from my husband, and I earn plenty doing what I do. I'd rather have my freedom. You keep your money."
"But-but-" He moved toward her. His groping hands reached out toward her bare breasts, but she stepped away from him before his fingers could close on those twin coral-tipped ivory hillocks.
She shook her head. "It wouldn't work, Freddy. I'd be cheating you inside a few months. That's what my nature is. You want to buy me a couple times a week, that's fine. But not marriage. No."
"Please! Please marry me, Anita!" It was practically a wail now, a desperate cry wrenched from the depths of his soul.
"No, Freddy. That's final. God, Freddy, if I married you and cheated on you, you might decide to shoot me. Just the way you shot Janet. I'm afraid of you, Freddy. A man who'd shoot one wife would shoot another."
"I swear-I'd never harm you-"
"You never planned to harm Janet, either." Her eyes were glistening, now, and her big breasts rose and fell rapidly, her nakedness becoming all the more maddening to him as she voiced her repeated refusals. "I'm scared, Fred. Get out of here. I don't want to see you any more. Not even twice a week like before. I just changed my mind. What you did was crazy, killing your wife. I couldn't dream of marrying you. Especially after-after-" She giggled. "A call girl marrying a murderer. Some marriage that would be. Go on! Get out!"
"No!" he cried. "I want you, Anita. I love you! T love you!"
"Well, I don't love you," she returned. "Let me tell you one last thing. One bit of information you ought to have. I'm a Lesbian, Freddy."
"No. That's a lie."
"Is it? I'm in love with a girl named Joyce. She stays here with me. We make love late at night. She's a call girl too, and we earn our money giving out for men, but we get our real pleasure sleeping with each other."
"You're making all that up," Markell said hoarsely. "You can't possibly be a Lesbian."
"For a couple of years now. I'll prove it, if you want. I'll show you a little gadget Joyce and I sometimes use on each other. It straps on. We can pretend we're being had by men, when we use it. And-"
"No. Stop this crazy talk! I want to marry you!"
"Don't be a nuisance, Freddy."
"Come here. Let me make love to you. Let me show you how much I love you."
"Will you get out of here?"
He stood stock-still, dumfounded, numbed. Then he blurted, "If I can't marry you, I'll kill you! You did this to me! You made me kill my own friend-my wife-you Jezebel! If I can't have you nobody will!"
He lurched forward hysterically, arms outstretched toward her.
She eluded his grasp. She sidestepped him, her bare breasts swaying tantalizingly. He clawed at her, and his hand closed on the meaty curve of her left buttock, and he gripped the flesh for an instant, but she broke free, scampering away, a nude nymph. His hand blazed where he had touched the bare flesh of her buttock. He felt dazed, confused. There was a savage pounding of desire in him. He was on fire.
"Kill you," he grunted. "Nobody going to have you if I can't have you-"
She dodged around him, ran into the next room. He followed her, her retreating buttocks drawing him like magnets.
There she was, standing next to the bed, now. Naked, the high, firm cones of her naked breasts heaving excitedly. The nakedness of her dazzled him. She was so young, so beautiful in her pink-and-gold nudity, her blonde hair dishevelled, wild.
She was reaching into the desk drawer, taking something out-
"Anita!" he wailed. "Anita!"
"Leave me alone, Freddy. I'm warning you, get out of here and never come back."
He looked at her, beheld her naked and stunningly beautiful, her body gleaming with sweat, her breasts rising and falling, her nudity maddening him to berserk fervor. He longed to throw himself on top of her, to possess her.
He saw the little gun in her hand.
He charged forward like a bull in rut. She screamed, and he stopped short a few steps from her as the first shot caught him in the belly.
"Anita-Anita, I love you-"
He dropped to his knees. Blood was starting to spurt from him. She was standing above him. He lifted his head, past the splendor of her thighs, past the flaring beauty of her naked hips, past the deep bowls of her breasts, to her lovely face.
She was laughing now. The emergency was over.
"-love you-"
"You damned fool," she said.
The next shot smashed through his brain.