Chapter 1
They had eaten in an Italian restaurant in North Beach, then bar-hopped along Broadway until well past midnight. But behind all their apparent carefree gaiety was a tempering gloomy resignation, and the sexual tension hovered always in the air between them. And though they had agreed beforehand that that night would not be spent lamenting or arguing about tomorrow, Barbara Halperin sensed what her fianc' had on his mind when he suddenly steered her into the dark quiet little bar at the foot of Grant Avenue around the corner from the Broadway and Columbus taxi rack.
"Now we're gonna have one last one. For the road," Greg Benson said with a hint of sarcasm or bitterness as he felt the supple blonde's slight reluctance to go through the door. "And yes, we are going to talk about what's been on both our minds all evening. So don't argue with me."
Barbara sighed and shrugged her shoulders, offering no resistance as Greg guided her to the rear booth of the almost deserted lounge. He left her sitting there and went up to the bar to order a pair of gin and tonics, then returned with the drinks and slid into the booth beside her.
"Here, drink up," he said, pushing one of the glasses into her hand.
Fully aware that she'd already imbibed a dangerous amount of alcohol, Barbara nonetheless obediently drank, the effect hitting her almost immediately to cause a further lightening of her head. In spite of the dread of the debate she knew was about to come she was acutely aware of the masculine presence of the man she loved sitting beside her, and she realized that her present hyped emotional state had combined with the alcohol to make her even more vulnerable to the purely physical need that had been stirring all evening long through her virginal young body.
"All right," Greg said after they each had a stiff shot of gin. "For the last time forget this foolishness; marry me now, come with me overseas. I can even put off leaving for a week if you want to make it the big church wedding like we always planned."
"Greg
"Shhhhhhh.w He covered her lips with his hand to stifle her protest and doggedly continued: "Now you can't make that much money teaching school and with the money I'll be making over there we'll never need it anyway. And where I'm going I am going to need a wife, I mean you."
The sensuous blonde gritted her teeth slightly in exasperation, not sure how to respond. Of course they'd been over all this before and always reached the same impasse. Perhaps, she thought now with the alcohol weakening her resolve, Greg was even right. He was certainly right about the money. With the cost of living what it was today her salary as a high school teacher in Northern California would leave her very little extra after she supported herself, and as a petroleum engineer for an American oil company in the Persian Gulf Greg would be, monthly, putting a small fortune into the ' bank. During his service in Abu Dabhi literally all of his living expenses would be taken care of by the company from the subsistence allowance he received in addition to his salary, and Barbara knew that if she accompanied him, as his wife, those allowances would almost double.
"I mean, what's all this idealism anyway?" Greg prodded, looking almost angrily into her soft blue eyes.
"It's not idealism," Barbara said with another sigh. "Maybe its selfishness. I studied to become a teacher. I at least want to try out what I learned. I'm not ready yet to become a housewife, a dependent, in a foreign colony of American dependents. I'm just not ready and you've got to understand it."
"Oh hell, all right. I guess I do understand it," Greg conceded. "Score up another one for Women's Lib." He paused, lifted his glass and drained it. As his arm moved up around her neck and his hand lay softly down over her shoulder to the smooth bare skin of her generous upper breasts exposed by the low-cut cocktail gown she wore, the look on his face suddenly changed to the most intense and commanding stare Barbara thought she had ever seen. There was something almost hypnotic about the way he fixed her with his steel gray eyes, and though his hand felt light on her shoulder and upper breasts there was a strength and a firmness in the way that he held her that reminded her hers was definitely the weaker sex no matter what anyone might say about Women's Liberation. "All right," he repeated, still staring intently into her eyes. "I'll catch my plane for Beirut tomorrow. You catch your bus for Eureka next week. Tonight you're going home with me.
Before she had time to protest he kissed her, his lips covering hungrily and hard over hers, his tongue snaking forcefully into her mouth as his hand pressed down against the voluptuously pliant swell of one of her half-protected breasts. Little ripples of unwanted delight tingled through Barbara's urgently swelling nipple as Greg cupped his hand more firmly over her breast, the friction of the material of her flimsy brassiere on her sensitive little bud causing it to perk suddenly to full rigidity within the constricting cup. He reached around her back with his other hand, turning her to face him in the booth and pulling her body tightly against his own.
Then as suddenly as he'd begun the kiss he broke it off, drawing back to stare almost fiercely into her flushed and lovely face.
"Finish your drink. Let's go."
"But.. . , " Barbara began weakly, almost overpowered by the determination she perceived in his voice and in the way he was looking at her.
"Finish it."
Greg lifted his own drink and downed the rest of it in several rapid gulps and after a second or two Barbara followed suit. Then they were up and moving toward the door, Greg striding swiftly before her, Barbara half-following, half-being pulled along behind by the vise-like grip with which he held her slender wrist.
A taxi was just pulling to the curb as they reached the corner of Broadway and Columbus and, still dragging the speechless blonde behind him, Greg barged directly in front of an elderly tourist couple to open the rear door and virtually shove her into the back seat. Ignoring the shouts of protest from the tourists, he climbed in behind her and gave the driver the address of his Telegraph Hill apartment. Only when the light changed and the taxi pulled away did he consent to release Barbara's wrist.
The virginal young blonde's alcohol-muddled brain was a labyrinth of conflicting images and she didn't even know how to react to her fianc''s sudden brash seizure of the initiative. His tactics had changed so rapidly she still hadn't had time to adjust her own defense, yet something in his uncharacteristic aggression was stirring in her own body a longing and hunger that made it all the more difficult for her to cope with the brazen attack.
"Greg," Barbara managed, at last having found her voice. "You've got.. . you've got a long flight ahead of you tomorrow and if you don't get some sleep you'll be in terrible shape tomorrow night when you land in Lebanon."
"I get to Lebanon day after tomorrow morning," retorted Greg. "And I'm going to be screwed up for three days no matter what I do. Haven't you ever heard of jet-lag?"
"And . . . and it's just going to be a long night of insomnia and frustration if we try to sleep together," Barbara continued uncertainly. "You remember what it was like the last time we tried . . . the last time we tried that.. . . "
The slender blonde's voice almost faltered as she saw the look with which Greg reacted to that piece of pragmatism. Then a little gasp rose in her throat as his next remark made it clear to her and the taxi-driver as well what he really had in mind:
"Honey, I'm not talking about another night of frustration. You're going home with me now and you're going to bed with me to relieve the frustration we've both been needlessly subjecting ourselves to all this time."
Oh my God, she thought. He was really serious. And in her present emotional state of mind she even saw a logic in what he was proposing. She had long been convinced, on an intellectual level, that her vow to remain a virgin until marriage was outdated and even impractical. Greg was the man she was going to marry. Her having guarded her chastity through five-and-a-half years of college went against the present socially acceptable standard of behavior and even made her somewhat of a freak among her more liberated female contemporaries, this granting the fact that having finished high school at sixteen and completed her masters' studies by the time she was twenty-one made her younger than most of the graduate students at S. F. State with whom she'd associated. But she'd made a vow when she first left home for college and watched a series of roommates go through a series of usually disastrous and un-fulfilling deflorations. Always stubborn, she had stuck to her vow even after she'd fallen in love with Greg. Somehow she'd even led him to agree, in principle, to see things her way.
"I know what you're thinking," Greg said, still staring deeply into Barbara's troubled eyes. "And I want you to forget it."
"I can't forget it," the blonde whimpered. "Even if maybe I do want to, I can't."
"Yes you can," he insisted, his hand moving around her shoulder and again dropping down to cup over the sensitive half-revealed swell of her breast. "You're going to sleep with me tonight and we're going to make love just this once before I go."
"Greg!" Barbara gasped, noting the way the taxi driver was regarding her in the rear-view mirror. "He can hear us," she added in a whisper.
"Then don't argue and we won't have to talk," Greg answered, again covering her lips with his mouth and thrusting his hands over her breasts in an almost brutal and lustful kiss.
But now in spite of all her embarrassment and indecision Barbara found herself melting almost willingly into her lover's arms, her body squirming warmly against his until she could feel the tell-tale bulging erection that tented up his trousers pressing firm against her belly to only further impress upon her confused consciousness the seriousness of his obscene demand.
Then almost before she knew it the taxi had pulled to a halt outside Greg's apartment building. He paid the driver and they were out of the cab, entering the building, riding the elevator up. Greg opened the door and she walked, almost trance-like, before him into the cozy den. Without hesitation he guided her to the bedroom door, then pushed it open, pausing just outside, and turned her forcibly to face him.
"Now. Go in and undress and get into bed. I'll be there in five minutes."
Looking into his eyes, Barbara knew he wasn't kidding. It was all happening too fast for her. He was ordering her around like she was some kind of harem girl and he wasn't even giving her the option of saying no. But in spite of the little surges of yearning coursing through her breasts and down between her thighs she still felt compelled to resist. She couldn't give in just like this, after all the frustration she'd put herself and Greg through during a year of increasingly heavy petting since they'd first started going out together.
"Greg," she began after a pause, her voice quivering with her own building lust. "We can't. Not like this. We just can't."
Greg's voice was remarkably calm and self-assured as he answered steadily, "We can and we're going to. I'm not going off to the Persian Gulf and leave you here saving it for me for a whole year. Because if I do leave you . . . like this . . . I won't trust it being here when I get back."
"Greg!"
"Now go on in and get undressed."
"But . . . we've already waited all this time."
"I know we've waited all this time. And Barbara, that waiting was just sheer fucking nonsense. We're not waiting any longer."
Almost mortified by the vulgar language he'd used right in front of her, Barbara didn't resist as he pushed her backward through the door. But in spite of her shock the coarse image the word prompted to dart through her mind only increased her weirdly building excitement, and she was completely at a loss for what to say or do as Greg suddenly turned and walked away.
Her heart beating rapidly, Barbara waited just inside the door and watched Greg cross to the liquor cabinet and pour himself a drink. She waited for him to turn and look at her again but he merely stood with his back to her, drinking in silence.
At last she retreated into the room and flicked on the nightstand lamp, then stood staring silently at herself in the mirror, still not certain what to do. But one thing she did know: Greg was dead serious in his plan to seduce and deflower her tonight. He was so bent on accomplishing his purpose that she didn't dare imagine what he would do if she tried to say no. And she knew that deep down inside she couldn't blame him for the way he felt. He was perfectly right, this day and age, in demanding that she submit to him before they embarked on this long year of separation.
But it was still almost without conscious thought that the sensuous young blonde reached up and undid the zipper down the back of her low-cut cocktail dress, the upper half of the sexy garment falling away suddenly to completely reveal the lush upstanding swells of her breasts. She gave a little wriggle of her hips as she shed the dress down off the flare of her buttocks and her long slender thighs. Then it dropped to the floor at her ankles, leaving her naked except for her brassiere and her flimsily clinging little bikini panties.
Her breath coming in low strained gasps, Barbara gazed through narrowed eyes at the reflection of her sensuously exposed body in the three-quarter length dresser mirror. Her supple frame bore not an inch of superfluous flesh. Her skin was creamy smooth, golden-bronze tanned except for the thin bikini-bottom outline of white and the fainter lightening across the rose-tipped swells of her high, tautly upstanding breasts standing out proud and firm beneath her gently sloping shoulders as she reached back and unsnapped her brassiere, releasing her full breasts. Her legs were long and shapely, her thighs tapered, her waist narrow and her buttocks tightly rounded and firm. The soft light-brown triangle of pubic hair nestled down several inches below the neat little hole of her navel was sparse and silken as down.
Her eyes fixed on her forbidden little vee of hair, as she slowly rolled her bikini panties down off her hips, and she felt more acutely aware of her inviting sexuality than she had been in years. Perhaps it was immodest for her to think it but she sensed that she had a body that was made for making love. And now she was so excited she could hardly stand it, though she still hadn't consciously come to terms with the final drastic decision she knew in the back of her mind was going to be forced on her very soon. She still hadn't admitted to herself that she was going to let Greg actually take her carefully guarded virginity. She had merely obeyed his command that she come into his bedroom and strip naked and wait for him. That still didn't mean she was really going to let him do it. After all, he had seen and touched and held her nearly naked body before, though even now the very thought of submitting to that exquisite and salacious teasing kind of fore-play caused her skin to prickle with puritanical indignation.
Then Barbara was startled from her reverie by a sudden loud heaving of breath and she looked up wide-eyed to see Greg standing in the door, staring open mouthed at her naked and golden body.
"God, honey," he said in a voice slightly slurred by alcohol. "You are so beautiful, I could . . . "
He didn't finish the sentence but as she stood feeling completely vulnerable and exposed before his leering stare Barbara's passionand alcohol-altered mind raced through a shocking montage of lurid images of the things he might have said he could do to her. My God, never had he looked at her like this before, not even the other time she had consented to strip nearly naked and sleep with him in his bed. His expression reflected a sheer animal lust, and she felt a flutter of fear and excitement race through her belly as she realized that, with the amount he'd had to drink, he probably wouldn't give in to her wishes even if she tried to absolutely refuse the demand he'd made for her to offer up her virginal body to him tonight.
Barbara could only stare in mingled apprehension and fright as Greg stalked toward her, and before she could bring herself to move he was on her, gathering her strongly into his arms and pulling her vulnerable nakedness hungrily to his chest. He kissed her with brutal animal fury, breathing gustily into her open mouth, his hands crushing over the sensitively exposed skin of her back as he held her limp and helpless in his powerful grasp.
There was a hollowness in the pit of Barbara's stomach and she didn't find the strength to resist even as she felt herself being forced backward toward the bed. She felt so warm and safe in his arms, her breasts such a perfect fit against his muscular chest, her thighs so soft against his. Even her stomach seemed contoured to the hard-throbbing bulge looming up in his trousers to prod threateningly against the mound of her cunt. It was if her body were somehow one with his, and she yielded without struggle as he pushed her down into a prone position on her back on the top of the bed. Then her eyes widened slightly as he got to his own feet and, his eyes never leaving her open spread-eagled nakedness, kicked off his shoes and began hurriedly tearing at his trousers and shirt.
Barbara lay mesmerized in a dreamy paralytic lassitude as her determined fianc' stripped off his clothes. Her eyes roved with unwilling hunger over his broad square shoulders and rippling pectorals, her gaze descending compulsively lower as he undid his belt and unzipped his trousers. Then a spontaneous little gasp rose in her throat as in one swift motion he jerked his trousers and jockey shorts down off his hips and suddenly the fully erected shaft of his cock burst freely into view, pulsing as though with a feverish excitement of its own, the shaft, a hardened blood-pumped muscle, the head, a menacingly swollen purple.
She had seen it before, and once when they were playing around she'd even consented to use her hand to relieve his building lust. But she had never seen it looking like this. My God, it appeared big and hard as a horse's penis and Barbara shuddered at the very thought of even trying to take that enormous rod of flesh up into the tight sensitive virginal opening between her own legs. Then somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that the only reason Greg's cock must look so much bigger and so much more menacing than it ever had before was the fact that she actually was thinking about letting him use it to penetrate her virgin pussy, and with that realization came the final shattering awareness of the dangerous state to which her situation had deteriorated.
But before she could move, her lover and fianc' was on top of her, now naked also, his hands exploring hungrily over her helplessly exposed body, mauling and bruising her breasts as though he wanted to punish them for their loveliness, his strong body pressing down heavily on hers to pin her abjectly beneath him.
"No Greg," Barbara whimpered, her sudden fear giving her the will to resist where moral considerations had already almost failed.
But it was as though she had not even spoken and he went on mauling her like a sex-starved animal, his lips sucking hungrily at the desire swollen buds of her breasts, his hands clawing at her tingling goose-bumped flesh, raking down over her ribs and the smoothness of her belly, down, down between her thighs into her soft thin curls of cunt-hair until suddenly she went stiff from the sheer raw sensation as his fingers trailed along the already lewdly moistened slit of her cunt, starting to part and spread her hair-lined lips.
"Oh God," Barbara groaned from the illicit electric stirrings of excitement the lewd titillation sent surging through the nakedness of her open loins. In a half-hearted attempt at self-defense she tried to wriggle from beneath him and, sensing her continued reluctance, Greg only dropped his body even more heavily down upon her. At the same time he used his knees to pry her thighs wider apart and as he dropped between them she suddenly felt the surging hardness of the throbbing shaft of his penis prodding threateningly right up between her legs.
The pinioned blonde's whole nakedly writhing body jerked in a sudden fearful spasm and a low moan spewed from her lips as she ground her buttocks down into the bed in an effort to escape the imminent rape of her secret genitals. She flailed her head from side to side, her eyes wide with terror as Greg levered further up on her body, at the same time working his outstretched middle finger even deeper up into the delicately moist folds of her little pussy entrance.
"No, please no. You can't do it to me. Not like this. You can't rape me Greg! This is me, remember? Barbara!"
Then for the briefest instant the aroused and frightened blonde experienced a mingling of relief and simultaneous bitter disappointment as the pressure against her skewered genitals suddenly ceased, as Greg raised his head up from between her naked breasts and lifted himself slightly to take some of the weight off her pinioned flesh. But she realized that her curious disappointment at the prospect of escape must have shown in her face, for suddenly Greg grinned almost cruelly, dropping his body down again on hers and lunging forward to prod his turgid penis even farther up between her thighs, an almost vicious smile twisting his lips as he spoke:
"It's not really rape, is it baby? When you're my fianc' and you came with me here of your own free will and stripped yourself naked in my bedroom. And don't worry, I hadn't forgotten who you were. I know it's you, and that's why I'm going to do it."
Then again he dropped his face to her naked breasts, cupping one of them in his hand to guide her tinglingly erected nipple between his eagerly sucking lips, biting down on it so hard she cried out in a startled little gasp.
"Oh please," Barbara whimpered, still feeling a compulsion to fight back though she knew she'd already given away the fact that she wanted him to continue every bit as much as he did. Her whole body was crying out with inflamed and surging need and even in her half-conscious delirium she knew that she wanted Greg to continue in spite of all her protest, wanted him to force her so that finally it would be done and over with and afterwards, if she survived the unnatural and seemingly impossible penetration that was to come, she could perhaps somehow console herself with the rationalization that her breaking of her vow to herself had been his fault rather than hers.
Then her eyes closed as he fixed his lips over her other tingling little nipple to begin a now gentle sucking pressure. At the same moment his hand slipped from her cunt, coursing up over the throbbing bud of her clitoris, and a moment later he slipped downward, sliding down the length of her still forcibly parted thighs, his tongue dipping teasingly into her sensitive little navel before leaving that little aperture to trail suddenly lower.
Now once more Barbara's eyes opened wide with shock and moral indignation as she realized what Greg intended to do. This was much more than she was prepared to be forced to submit to but her surprise and her paralyzing lust left her incapable of moving to put up a defense as Greg's head disappeared suddenly right down between her thighs.
"Nooooooh," the lust-incited blonde virgin wailed in unconvincing protest as Greg's thumbs pressed outward against the softly hair-lined lips of her cunt and she felt the cool air wash teasingly up into her chaste, desire-burning orifice. Then a low gasp escaped from deep in her chest as his breath danced through the sensitive golden curls of hair and the tip of his tongue flicked into sudden exquisite contact with the hard-pulsing bud of her clitoris. Then, spreading her moistened pussy even wider open to his leering gaze, he flicked his tongue lizard-like straight up into her moist opening, burrowing it like a snake right up into her dilated vaginal passage.
"Oooooooh Jesus," the spread-eagled young woman wailed in response to the sudden wet contact. She'd never felt anything like this in her life and she thought she would die from the sheer maddening sensation as his tongue burrowed deeper up into the inner warm furrow of her loins. Then, unable to contain herself, she reached down, running her fingers into his curly dark hair to pull his face even tighter to her loins as she lunged her buttocks up from the bed in a sudden humping motion. Her mind almost blanked out as his lewd oral stimulation continued, and then a moan of disappointment rose to her lips as suddenly it ended and Greg was again sliding upward over her body.
Barbara's aroused cunt was left tingling with the fire of unsatiated lust and now she made not the slightest move to resist as Greg seized the heated hardness of his cock, guiding it up between her thighs until suddenly his spongy cock-head pressed against the warm entrance to her now completely lubricated and readied vagina. At the same time he reached with both hands to seize her wrists, pinioning them tightly above her head to further arch and part her breasts. An instant later she heard him groan and with a sudden mighty lunge he rammed the bloated head of his cock right up into the elastically tight opening of her vagina.
"Aaaaagggghhhhh!" Barbara cried out as though a spread-eagled prisoner at the beginning of a session of torture. The sudden sharp stabbing pain snapped her completely back to reality and she tossed and thrashed with all her strength as the searing penetration continued, his swollen cock-head ramming slowly deeper and deeper, pushing up into her cunt with a viciously penetrating fury, brutally forcing the soft walls of her vagina in pressured waves before it. There was no stopping him. Her hymen tore like tissue with a brilliance of fire-white pain, and she cringed beneath him as she felt her vagina completely filled, his hard-throbbing cock sunk up into her virginal depths to the hilt, enclosed in the warm moist sheath of her previously unviolated cunt like a fiery lance driven deep up into her entrails.
"Oh God," the cringing blonde wailed in shame and agony, her whole body aflame from the brutal laceration. Yet she knew that at least the worst was over, and for a moment Greg lay completely still up in her, as if considering a reprieve. In spite of her bitterness at being so brutally taken she was still grateful for this little breadcrumb of mercy and she didn't resist as Greg again covered her mouth with his, snaking his tongue hungrily between her half-gritted teeth. Then she tensed as he flexed his penis to ram it even deeper up into her quivering loins, and a moment later he began to move.
Mortified by her continued pain and fear, Barbara lay almost still, her body limp as Greg slowly drew his penis out of her wounded, blood-moistened cunt and then pistoned it slowly inward again. She felt completely lacerated and opened, injured beyond all repair, and she thought she would die if she ever had to submit to anything like this again. She could still feel the stabbing pain at his first brutal penetration, and for a moment that pain completely seized her mind. It was only minutes later, as Greg's humping movements increased and she found her own body slowly and sensuously undulating in response, that she realized the pain was not nearly as acute as before. It was there, yes, a lingering gnawing presence that could not be denied. But it was tempered by something else, the warmth of his body on hers, the caress of his hands on her breasts and tingling nipples, and most of all that slow ceaseless pumping back and forth in and out of her loins that was a raw, maddening stimulation that would not stop, and his pubic area kept rubbing against her throbbing little clitoral bud.
"Oh!" Barbara gasped, hardly able to comprehend what was happening to her as she suddenly began to slither her cunt up and down on his still ruthlessly violating shaft of flesh embedded up between her thighs. My God, as much as it hurt it almost felt good and her body had been responding even if her mind was repelled. But most important of all was the fact that it was done. She was a virgin no longer, and it wasn't even her fault. She had been raped, but the rape had been committed by the man she loved, and with the increasingly exhilarating sensation his continued assault of her helpless little genitals inspired to surge over her goose bumped flesh, she could only vow that after this she would love him all the more. My God, why had they waited so long? This was wonderful! It was exquisite! It was like nothing she'd ever known, and with a sudden squeal of delight she suddenly thrust her face up from the bed, shoving her lips against Greg's, opening her mouth wide to suck his tongue deep down in her throat.
"Oh yes," she moaned almost straight into his mouth. "Yes! I love it. Fuck me, Greg. Fuck me!"
That was more than Greg could stand. It had been weeks since he'd been out with a woman other than Barbara and his own near-rape of her gorgeous body had pushed him to the brink of losing all control. Now her surrender after the way she had fought him and screamed and cried in protest gave him a sense of masculine triumph that was too much to contain. He had asserted himself and he had been victorious and even as he reveled in his conquest and began to pump and buck without further restraint, racking Barbara's now eagerly responding young body with a series of mad staccato lunges, his semen was almost boiling over in his balls.
"Oh yes, fuck me, fuck me," Barbara chanted in wanton delirium as the rhythmic pounding of his hard cock-shaft over the little bud of her clitoris reached a frenzy.
And Greg was fucking her, but it wouldn't go on for long. His sperm-swollen balls felt as if they were ballooning out of his scrotum and he let himself go completely as the surging liquid of his cum began its mad swift dance up the pistoning shaft of his cock. The lust-swollen head of his penis pulsed deep up inside Barbara's sex-ravished cunt as he rammed in to maximum depth, and his searing semen spurted forth like an erupting geyser from the slitted little glans at the tip.
Greg continued to hammer up and down into Barbara's spasming, eagerly clutching pussy, racking her body with the fury of his successively violent lunges until he'd pumped every drop of his white hot cum up into her torn virginal cunt. She didn't even realize what was happening until moments it was over. Then, as she continued to grind back against his pubic mound, her cunt hungrily sucking and milking at the deflating shaft of his cock, he collapsed heavily, almost as though in sleep upon her.
But the frustration she experienced was balanced somewhat by her physical relief at the realization that her ordeal was over, and as she sighed out deeply she wrapped her arms still lovingly about his back to hold him tightly to her, wondering if she should be glad or sorry about what he'd forced her to do.
Greg lay still on her for a moment longer. Then he withdrew and rolled on his back. He turned to face her, kissed her, drew back to look, smiling, into her eyes.
"See?" he said. "See why I wanted to do that? Now we will be together. Always. Now you have to go to the Gulf with me."
Barbara hesitated but a moment, a fluttering of excitement coursing anew through her breasts as she considered that alternative under the light of this new development in their relationship. But it took her only that moment to make her decision, and when she spoke it was with a conviction that came from the heart.
"No Greg. I'm not going to follow you to the Persian Gulf just because you made love to me, even if we should have done it long ago. I'm still going to do what I set out to do. I'm going to make a life for myself, for this one year at least."
Greg sat up abruptly in bed, staring down wide-eyed at the lushly naked body he'd just so ruthlessly violated. "But how.. . after that . . . how can you let me go away alone? I mean, the way you've always felt.. . your . . . your vow?"
"I don't know," she answered honestly, a lump welling in her throat as she got the first inkling of something she still wouldn't have dared to verbalize in her mind. "But I do know that you brought me up here with the idea of seducing me or raping me or maybe a little of both so that I would feel obliged to forget my own career and go away with you. And I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to abandon everything I've studied for just because you've.. . because you've fucked me.. . . And that's that."