Chapter 14
She came out of the bathroom, her supple and lovely body outlined by the light, her golden hair a halo framing her shadowed face. Ben Argon reached out to crush the butt of his cigarette in the tray on the night table as he watched her moving toward him in slow, shy steps. It was that moment of day when dusk and dark were mingling and the blinds of his window were slanted just enough to allow grayish rays of dimming light to penetrate the drabness of his room. As a result, the sight of her in the half-darkness was dream-like.
"Was I long?" she whispered, kneeling on the side of the bed, the tips of her young breasts jiggling with the movement.
"Much too long," he murmured, aching with want and love.
She caressed his bare chest, as though memorizing the lines of his powerful body. "I'm cold."
Ben drew her down to him and kissed her parted lips fiercely, giving vent to the emotions within him. She clung happily and he could feel prolonged tremors rippling through her nakedness. It was as if she was seeking to draw warmth from him with her mouth and body. And when he eased his lips free to breathe, her face nuzzled and burrowed into the side of his neck as if in an attempt to get even closer to him.
"You feel so good," she sighed, covering his bigness with her slender figure and curling her arms around his neck. "So strong."
Argon kissed the fragrant hair and stroked the fine slope of her silken back and felt her relax. "I love you," he said simply, wanting to say it at that moment.
Kathy moaned happily and writhed so that she could capture his mouth again. It was almost as though she was trying to pour herself into him between his lips and her tongue caressed him with an ardor that belonged to an older woman. A wiser woman.
Ben held back his hunger, the same old guilt returning to torment him. He eased her to one side easily and cradled her in his arms as he adjusted the pillow beneath her blonde hair. "Let's talk a while," he mumbled stiffly, not wanting to take her until he was somewhat cleansed of worry and misgiving. "Did you have any trouble getting away this afternoon?" She snuggled close. "No...."
"Has your stepmother said anything to you?"
"Helen? What do you mean?" He hid his relief. "Nothing. I just wondered what you told her when you left ... where you were going ... you know."
Kathy toyed with the curling hair on his chest. "She seemed glad to see me go. As a matter-of-fact, she hasn't spoken to me at all the last few days. She's ... she's been drinking a lot." Kathy sighed and rolled over to lay on her back. "Let's forget my family, Ben. Let's forget everybody except ourselves."
Argon ran his palm across the tight skin of her flat belly and enjoyed the way she reacted to his touch. "Was your father home when you left?"
"He was going out. A business appointment, I think. Why?"
"Do you love him very much?"
Kathy's head turned so she could look into his eyes. "I suppose so. What's this all about, Ben? You look so ... serious. You're not still feeling guilty about me, are you? Because I'm so young?"
Ben shook his head. "It isn't that, Kathy. It's something else. I think your father is in trouble."
"Oh?"
"Big trouble."
"Does it involve you?"
Argon reached for a fresh cigarette. "It might," he murmured, flicking a match into flame.
Kathy studied him a moment. "I think I understand. It's police business, isn't it?"
"If I'm right about ... about my suspicions," Ben answered, looking into her worried eyes. "I could turn my back on it, I guess."
The young girl moved her blonde head in a vague manner before responding in a soft whisper. "No ... no, not you. You'd never be able to do that and I wouldn't expect it of you."
Argon stared at her. "You sure, Kathy? You mean it?"
She put her small arms around him and placed her head on his chest. "Yes, Ben, I mean it. You do whatever you must do. I love my father but ... but I love you much more and I wouldn't want anything to spoil what ... what we have." She was quiet for a moment, her naked body still under the gentle caress of his hand. "Now I know what's been bothering you whenever we've been together. I'm almost glad it's because of my father ... I thought it was me...."
"Never you," Ben muttered, losing himself in the soft texture of the golden hair. "Never."
"Tell me again, Ben."
"I love you."
"Really? Enough to marry me? You don't have to, you know. I don't care. I want to be your wife more than anything I've ever wanted in my life but I wouldn't care just as long as I could be with you this way."
"I'm going to marry you."
She stirred, kissing his throat. "When, Ben? When?"
"Soon."
She rose on her elbows and smiled. "Do you think you'll ever get tired of me? I mean, after a while?"
Argon grinned, aware that she was deliberately putting an end to the sobriety of their conversation and grateful to her for not having asked any questions about her father. "Probably...."
She scowled cutely. "That's what you think. I won't let you get tired of me. I'll see to it."
"Oh?"
She rose higher, her youthful body gleaming. "Don't you think I'm capable of it? Want me to prove it to you?"
"A good cop always demands proof."
She laughed and brushed her loose hair away from her radiant face. "All right, officer, you asked for it."
Argon blinked in honest surprise as the warm lips and moist tongue commenced a rapid-fire assault on his body. He heard her giggle muffledly as he caught his breath and sought to check the hot darting kisses that traveled wildly over his chest and stomach and thighs. "Where the hell did you learn to kiss like that?" he muttered gruffly, catching hold of her hair and pulling her mouth away from his aroused body. "And I want the truth, dammit."
Kathy laughed teasingly. "I'll tell you after we're married. Now be quiet and let me prove what a wonderful wife I'm going to be."
Her kisses came again, passionately alive, breaking through his resolution. Desire leaped within him and he muffled a groan as she greeted it with panting desperation and eagerness. The awkwardness of her lovemaking betrayed that she had already consumed the sketchily-superficial amount of experience she had put so brazenly on display for him but the unadorned and artless passion of her feverish love was doubly exciting.
"Come up here, you little minx," he growled, lifting her squirming body effortlessly in his arms.
She cried out with savage delight as he took possession of her and her supple body quaked in rhythmic convulsions of ecstatic completion before finally going limp. "Oh, Ben ... Ben , . ." she sighed heavily, beside him, one arm across his chest and her cheek against his shoulder. "Will it always be this way for us? Tell me it will be, Ben. Forever and ever and ever. Tell me, Ben."
"Always, baby," he whispered, holding her close, feeling the strange reverence that always seemed to come to him whenever she was near.
She closed her eyes and he watched her drift into a sated sleep. The room was faintly cold and he kept her warm with his body. The shadows gave a subtle magic to the sweet lines of her legs and hips. Her virginal and pointed breasts rose and fell in a gentle rhythm, accompanying the soft sound of her breathing. The blonde hair veiled her flushed and pretty face and her lips were parted and glistening.
Ben Argon had not known that anything could be so beautiful, that anything so beautiful could be so close to him, a part of him. He had never known that he could feel such love, such possessiveness, such contentment. He could not allow anything to taint the wonder of what he had discovered. He could not allow the corruption of others to mar the purity of the love this young girl had brought to him.
It was at that moment that Ben Argon decided to turn his back on the sins of Charlie Aiken. And, because one decision could not be separated from the other, it was at that moment that he made up his mind to marry Kathy and take her to start life anew in some other part of the state.
She'd made the telephone call the minute she realized that both Kathy and Charlie planned to be out of the house all evening. It had been a dangerous thing to do but she'd been drunk and the inner unrest had nagged until she'd been left with no choice. An hour had passed since she'd completed the call and hung up the receiver and she'd spent the long minutes drinking heavily and thinking morosely about her life, both past and present and future.
Ben and Kathy....
Helen and Charlie....
No, it wouldn't work that way.
Helen heard the knock on the back door and managed to push up from the couch without falling. She steadied herself and walked toward the kitchen, the liquor sloshing over the rim of the glass as she attempted to drink from it enroute. She stumbled and spilled a portion of the drink on the front of her robe. Brushing at the wetness and trying to clear the cobwebs from her brain, she reached the kitchen door and unlocked it.
There were three men standing in the outer darkness.
Helen squinted at them. "What is this?"
The only familiar face grinned. "I brought along a couple of buddies of mine, sweetie. I figured you wouldn't mind. They're real great guys, I swear. C'mon, let us inside."
Helen shook her head dully, sensing that she'd gone too far. "No ... no, not them ... just you...."
The one closest pushed by her and the other two followed.
"Wait," she mumbled, holding onto the door for support. "You can't come in here like this. It's not right for you to-"
The three of them laughed and ignored her. One of them moved her away from the door and closed it. Another went to the refrigerator and took out some cans of beer. She tried to speak to the one she had called, the one she had met that afternoon at the gas station, the one she had permitted to put his dirt-caked hands on her body. She tried to tell him he had gone too far in bringing his two friends but the words came out all jumbled and incoherent.
They were laughing again. "Ain't that something?" the mechanic chortled, his arm around her waist. "She forgot my name already. She invites me up here to have myself a ball and she don't even remember my name. Didn't I tell you she was a real swinger?"
Helen felt herself being ushered through the house by the three strangers. They kept her from falling and their hands were moving on her body and her dizziness was increasing. She thought of Ben Argon and of his huge hands and of how they could make her feel. Then she was drinking again and on the couch and they were taking the robe off her and her breasts felt heavy and swollen. She wondered where Charlie was and why he'd been so upset and nervous and mysterious that evening before leaving the house and taking the car. She felt someone kissing her and she tasted beer and garlic and hands were pushing her backwards to the cushions and she wondered if Charlie was meeting a woman somewhere.
Then she was being loved and there was no time for thought of Charlie or Kathy ... but only of Ben....
The man above her grunted annoyedly. "Tommy, sweetie, remember? Tommy ... not Ben...."
One of the other two who sat watching laughed. "Hell, what's in a name, huh?"
The other chuckled. "Maybe she calls everybody Ben?" he offered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Besides ... the way she moves, she can call me anything she damn likes."
Helen Aiken turned her face away from the sound of their crude voices and deeper into the enfolding softness of the cushions as her love-starved body continued to seek out its own appeasement there in the living room of the quiet house. She was glad she was drunk. She was glad she had found the strength to violate all that she'd always held sacred in her marriage. She was glad there were three men and not one. It would make her sin all the more unforgivable. It would insure the destruction of her marriage.
The heat began to suffuse her and she moaned hungrily.
"You can never tell about these rich ones, can you?"
"Geez, I ain't never seen a broad so wild."
"Hey, Tommy, save a little for us, huh?"
"Man, just look at her go!"
Come home, Charlie, she thought fleetingly, hazily. Hurry home, Charlie. Come home soon so you can see what you've done to me. Come and watch me destroy myself, Charlie. See the truth and then set me free. I haven't the courage to do it myself, Charlie. You have to be the one to break the chains that are pulling us both down into the dark waters. Hurry home, Charlie!