Chapter 1

Isabel Fairbanks sat in the library of the well-appointed manse and blandly regarded Monica Simpson sitting in the straight-backed chair opposite. Isabel knew what Monica wanted, and she knew exactly how she was going to handle the situation. She had seated Monica with the room light behind Isabel's chair and in Monica's face, causing her to squint slightly.

"Speak up, Monica," Isabel said briskly. "My husband always has something for me to do immediately after the mid-week services we've just concluded, and I really should be getting at it."

"I won't take long," Monica promised, but she hesitated, as though having difficulty in getting started. "I'm here because, well, it's about-" She stopped.

"Yes?" Isabel prompted her.

Monica drew a quick breath and plunged ahead. "I wish you'd reconsider asking for my resignation from the church's ladies' aid committee."

"Why?" Isabel asked bluntly.

Monica's half-smile vanished almost as quickly as it appeared. She was a pretty redhead whose well-rounded curves were emphasized by a dress a half-size too small. "It would be the Christian thing to do," she said.

Isabel's stare was icy. "I believe I need no instruction from you in my Christian duties, Monica," she replied frostily. "If I asked you to leave the church, that would be un-Christian. I feel under the circumstances you are no longer a fit individual to remain a member of the committee. As committee chairman, I would be lax if I condoned it."

"My husband will want to know why I resigned," Monica said quietly. "And he won't be satisfied with any answer I can give him. You may not know my husband, Isabel, but I can assure you that any dissatisfaction with me on his part takes drastic forms."

"You'll have to pardon me if I consider that irrelevant," Isabel said coolly. "Since you force me to speak plainly, we're discussing here the situation of a woman who is conducting an immoral love affair with a man other than her husband, are we not? A man several years her husband's junior? A man, in fact, her junior?"

There was a momentary silence before Monica spoke again. "This is a small town," she said finally. "Word will get back to my husband of the committee's action. At the very least he'll divorce me."

"It seems to me that's his affair," Isabel said with practiced mildness. "And yours. Our duty here lies merely in conducting churchly affairs with a dignity denied us by your behavior, since you compel me to be frank about it. Of course, you're welcome to discuss the matter with my husband."

"You know I couldn't do that,"

"Then we're wasting time, aren't we?" Isabel rose to her feet. "I hardly think an appeal to the committee will avail you much, Monica." She smiled coldly. "The committee members are unlikely to call to their husbands' attention their possible defense of your escapades."

Monica rose to her feet, too. "You really are a bitch, aren't you?" she observed. "I can't stop you from doing this, but I'll tell you something. You do it, and I'll get your ass. I'm not helpless."

"You'll forgive me if I don't see you to the door," Isabel said frigidly. She left the library with her head held high. The statement was typical of Monica, she thought in disgust. Lashing out blindly at all around her. Isabel knew she was acting correctly, so what availed further nasty debate on a subject she already considered closed? She knew Monica would never approach her husband, Ralph, who might well have taken a softer view of the situation, but Ralph's chilly exterior effectively prevented communication with his parishioners on intimate matters.

Isabel moved lightly toward the rear of the ranch-styled manse. She had been truthful in her statement to Monica that Ralph always had something for her to do after the conclusion of mid-week services, although she knew Monica would never dream to what Isabel was referring. It was the part of the week she liked the least, and she always felt a sense of relief when it was over.

Isabel Fairbanks was in her twenty-seventh year, a woman of medium height and one hundred and thirty firmly fleshed pounds. Upswept black hair framed features that were handsome rather than beautiful. Her father had been a minister, like her husband, and she could never remember a time when her choices in life hadn't been automatically laid out for her.

A graduate of Radcliffe, she found herself over-educated for their current congregation, a prosperous but mainly blue collar group whose practical attitude toward life often frustrated Ralph's spiritual efforts. Isabel had become active in several community matters she knew characterized her in the eyes of many as a do-gooder. She consoled herself with the knowledge that the work needed to be done.

As a minister's wife, she had come to regard other women as chipped vessels needing both restraint and guidance.

Her own four-square outlook on life was simple: sinners must suffer and repent.

She entered the manse's master bedroom and began to undress.

Dr. Ralph Fairbanks sat at the desk in his study, making notes in his journal as he always did after a service. Jotted observations, essentially: old Mrs. Holcomb had seemed especially distracted, while Harold Tennant had walked with a pronounced limp. Items such as these when commented upon after the Sunday service helped to cement the image of a young minister in rapport with his congregation.

He closed the journal with a sigh. He had been a brilliant divinity school student, but he lacked the common touch. He knew that he was regarded as a cold fish. Occasionally he wondered if some of his male juices had evaporated because he had been raised from infancy by two maiden aunts. He had married only because it was a requirement in his profession prior to receiving his first post. It had been time to get married, and Isabel, coolly attractive and with the proper credentials had been available.

His wife exasperated him at times with her continued meddling in church affairs. She intimidated him, too, with her constant self-righteousness; he was all too conscious of his own doubts before decision-making moments. He supposed that Isabel's effective upper hand in their marriage had begun with the honeymoon, during which her by-the-numbers approach to sex had almost emasculated him. She had insisted upon reading aloud to him a marriage manual prepared for ministers' wives.

Dr. Ralph Fairbanks knew he was an attractive man. More than once he had surprised a speculative gleam in the eye of an attractive female parishioner, but he had never felt the slightest inclination to follow through. It would be folly. He was aware that his role in life was more as a spectator than as a participant, but he had given up attempting to plan a breakthrough.

His glance strayed to the clock on the corner of his desk.

He rose to his feet, his tennis-conditioned body lithely balanced.

He left the study, closing the door as he turned and walked toward the master bedroom at the rear of the manse.

Monica Simpson sat on the worn sofa in the living room of her apartment, staring moodily into the contents of her glass. It was her third drink, but she didn't feel them. In consequence, her friend, Lucille Garvey, sitting across the room, looked flushed and bright-eyed.

Monica knew she might just as well take an ad in the paper as tell her troubles to Lucille, but she felt she had to talk to someone. "She wouldn't even listen to me," she concluded her tale of the conversation with the minister's wife.

Lucille paused to shape her words. "What happens now?"

Monica shrugged. "Pete will hear about it from some busybody." Pete Simpson was head bartender at the liveliest nightclub in town. "And then he'll come home and wear out my ass before he throws me out in the street." She tried to laugh, but it caught in her throat.

"Everyone knows Pete's a brute," Lucille said sympathetically. "Didn't you tell Mrs. Fairbanks that?"

"I wasn't going to get down on my knees to her."

Lucille took a sip from her glass. "Will Pete really whip you?" "Yes."

Lucille circled her lips delicately with the tip of her tongue. "But that's dreadful!" She leaned toward her friend. "What will he do?"

"Stripe my bare behind with his belt." Monica contemplated the thought in silence for several seconds. "And then more than likely lock me out on the other side of the door."

"Stripe your-" Lucille Garvey paused as a little shiver ran through her. "But that's dreadful, Monnie!" she repeated. She swallowed an excess of saliva in her mouth. "What are you going to do?"

"Holler like hell while I'm getting it," Monica said wryly.

"You should leave right now!" Lucille said indignantly.

"Where would I go?" Monica asked logically. "I haven't a quarter. And under the circumstances, I don't think any of the local women will invite me for a visit." She smiled when Lucille looked away guiltily. "I have to face the music, that's all."

"But it's ridiculous for you to stay here when you know that Pete will mistreat you!" Lucille protested.

"I'm hoping I can make a deal with him," Monica replied. "After he works out his anger on my tail, I'll ask him if I can stay while I find a job and a room. He might say yes." She brooded about it for a moment. "And then again he might not."

"I still say it's the height of foolishness for you to stay here when you're sure that Pete will abuse you physically," her friend said warmly. She hesitated before continuing. "I should think you could look for help to the man who-" She stopped, floundering.

"The man who's been fucking me?" Monica asked with an attempted insouciance that didn't quite come off.

"Monnie! How you talk!" Lucille exclaimed, but there were two spots of color in her cheeks.

"He isn't going to be any happier about this being out in the open than Pete is," Monica predicted darkly. "I know damn well I can't look for any help there." She shook her head ruefully. "I don't know why it is I seem to run to the brute type." She grinned impudently at her friend. "But you'll have to admit it's the single flaw in my otherwise sterling character."

"I just don't see how you can be so casual about it, Monnie."

Monica's renewed shrug was fatalistic. "What good will it do me to be anything else?" She studied her friend speculatively. "Haven't you ever strayed off the reservation, honey? Or have you been off it and been more discreet than I was?"

"Of course not!" Lucille flared, but her color deepened. "I wouldn't even think of it! I wouldn't dare!"

"It's the daring that makes it so exciting," Monica said. "When you know you're out on a limb, and you can almost hear the sound of the saw, and you know you're going to get blistered if you're caught, but a man's big prong has you nailed to the bed, plunging in and out-" "Monica Simpson!"

Monica laughed. "You ought to try it sometime, Lucille. Greatest thing in the world for tired blood. How about another drink?"

"Oh, no! I've had too much already. Harry might smell it on me now."

"You sound nervous about your own lily-white ass. Although Harry somehow doesn't seem the type to work out on it."

"He's not, but he wouldn't speak to me for a week."

"An attitude that saves wear and tear on the gluteal region," Monica observed.

"It's an attitude that infuriates me!" Lucille said surprisingly.

Monica looked at her curiously. "Better stick with what you have, kiddo. Take it from the Voice of Experience. Sure you won't join me in one more?"

"I have to get home." Lucille picked up her gloves and handbag. "I may call your later, Monnie."

"Not tonight," Monica said firmly. "You can learn the gory details in the morning. If I'm still here in the morning."

She ushered her friend to the apartment door.

Bobby Maxwell parked his eight-year-old car in front of Cindy Gaynor's house and turned to Cindy on the front seat beside him. His gray eyes appraised her sweetly innocent features framed in soft blonde hair that descended in sweeping wings to her shoulders. "You've changed, Cindy," he said softly.

"Changed? How?" she asked. "Since we were in school."

"You shouldn't have dropped out of school," the girl said earnestly. "That's why you're having so much trouble finding a good job."

"Oh, I make a few bucks," he said carelessly. "The factory pays me for playing with its football and baseball teams. And something comes up once in a while." He leaned across the front seat toward the girl. "But I really can't get over the change in you."

"You're exaggerating," she said, but she was smiling.

"The hell I am. In school you were so skinny it was hard to see you. Now ..." He dropped a hand on Cindy's thigh and squeezed lightly while his eyes caressed the outline of her breasts under her thin blouse. "You've got the meat where the meat should be, Cindy."

She moved her thigh away from his hand. Despite his choir boy features, Bobby Maxwell was far more man than boy. Cindy tried to keep from revealing the quick stir of inner excitement she felt at his touch. "Dr. Haley said I was a late-bloomer," she said lightly.

He moved still closer to her on the front seat of the car, his brown-haired head so close to her blonde one that his lips grazed her ear. Cindy tried to stifle a shiver that rippled through her. "Are you a virgin, Cindy?" he murmured against the captive ear. His hand dropped once more on her warm thigh and this time disappeared under her skirt.

"It's no sin to be a virgin," Cindy retorted, groping through her skirt for the hand advancing teasingly well up on her thigh.

"And I'll bet you've got the cutest unused cunt," he whispered.

The forbidden word startled her. "You mustn't, Bobby," she protested, as much to his use of language as to the fingers crawling up her inner leg. She seized his wrist, but his greater strength slowed the ascending hand hardly at all.

An electric shock ran through her when, despite her best efforts to restrain him, Bobby's fingers first touched, then tickled, then cuddled the whole of her pantied crotch. "Ahhh, Jesus, that's a fat little pussy!" he crooned.

"Bobby!" the girl exclaimed in panic at the sudden flood of sensation assailing her. The male fingers played lightly with her secret flesh, evoking a swelling of the labial lips she could actually feel. She was afraid he could feel it, too, through the thin fabric of her flesh-strained panties. "We're . . . right out ... on the street!" she protested breathlessly. "Someone ... my mother . . . might see!"

He turned his head and lingeringly kissed her soft neck. "Oh!" Cindy breathed as she experienced a quick gush of moisture where the probing fingers titillated her glowing sex spot. "Bobby! No!"

He moved his hand abruptly, but he kissed her neck again as goosebumps rose visibly on the white skin of her forearms. "I'll meet you tomorrow behind the library," he said briskly. "Same time." He gave her a brightly cheerful smile. "Bring flesh. Heated." He leaned across her to open the car door on her side, and a hand under her elbow assisted her out of the car door. She felt a friendly pat on her bottom just before she stood erect on near-trembling legs. The old car roared away as Bobby gave her a casual wave.

Cindy stood on the sidewalk in front of her house, hoping her confused stimulation didn't show in her face. Her rapid pulse and fluttering heartbeat slowly subsided. In high school Bobby Maxwell had been an athletic god she worshiped from afar, uncomplainingly accepting that he couldn't see her own skinny, straggle-haired blondeness.

She had been surprised when Bobby appeared suddenly with his car this afternoon and offered her a ride home from her part-time job at the library. And she had been surprised-and yes, she had to admit it, thrilled-by his bold advances. Bobby was a handsome boy, and Cindy had had very little experience with boys.

She sighed unconsciously before entering the manless home of her widowed mother. Inside, she went into the kitchen with its enticing odors, again hoping that her excitement didn't show. "Do I have time for a bath before dinner, Mother?" she asked, kissing Rochelle Gaynor's cheek.

"If you hurry, dear," her mother replied.

She went up to her own room where she approached the floor-length mirror attached to the bedroom-side of her bathroom door. There she raised her dress and slip in both hands until the crotch of her panties was visible. She stared silently at the damp spot visible upon the gusset. She touched herself lightly there, the mirror faithfully reflecting the image of the sweet, blonde girl with a finger probing between her thighs.

Cindy still felt half-dizzy from the surfeit of emotion she had so suddenly experienced on the front seat of Bobby's car. She removed her dress and slip, then on impulse faced about and looked over her shoulder into the mirror at her pantied rear. She pulled the panties down slowly until all her white behind showed. Quietly, she examined the slender stalk of her waist below which glistened the surprisingly fruity-looking twin globes of her silky, nude buttocks.

Cindy reached behind herself to pat the resilient flesh, then swing it lightly from side to side with flirting motions of her hips. The flaring hemispheres danced and jiggled and swayed delightfully, dazzling in their whiteness. Bobby could never call her skinny now, Cindy reflected.

She turned and faced the mirror again. She pushed the panties farther down in front until all of the sloping bowl of her pearly white round stomach was exposed. Blonde, mossy curls on her lower belly trailed downward into the juncture of her thighs. She touched herself again where Bobby had touched her, then shivered.

She was ashamed every time she relieved herself in her bedroom with a finger inserted inside her chubby, silky furred pussy. It temporarily relieved the itch, but it had never felt like it had in Bobby's car. She had been ashamed with him, too, but only because she was afraid he could sense the uncontrolled state she had so quickly reached with him. She still didn't quite understand how it had happened, or why she hadn't more vigorously repulsed his advances.

She went into the bathroom and turned on the water in the tub. Returning to the mirror, she posed once again with her nude bottom pointing at it. She wriggled her hips again, watching in the glass the expansion and contraction of the deep crevice separating her snowy hind cheeks.

Only Dr. Haley, upon the examination table, had ever set masculine eyes upon Cindy Gaynor in such a state.

Only Dr. Haley, until now.

Deputy Sheriff Curt Sylvester led the weeping girl into the sheriff's office on the lower floor of the courthouse building with a hard hand upon her elbow. "Sit down over there," he ordered, pointing to a chair. Reddened eyes streaming, the girl complied with a choked sob.

He sat down behind his desk, glancing at the wall clock. Had he been away long enough to miss Monica Simpson's call confirming their date for that night? Actually it was Sheriff Carlson's desk at which he sat, but the elderly sheriff had been ill for some time. Curt had long since come to think of it as his own desk.

Curt Sylvester was a burly man, thick-shouldered and short-necked. Although only twenty-five a belly protruded over his belt, but it was a hard belly. His eyes were small and his black-haired, bullet head close-cropped. His expression was usually an intimidating glower. He was highly aware of the prerequisites of his office and not at all bashful about employing them to his own best advantage.

He had been with the department long enough to know where quite a few private skeletons were buried in the community. Even influential businessmen smiled weakly at Curt's heavy-handed, razor-edged witticisms. He had a reputation as a hard man, and a man with a hot temper, both of which he delighted in and did nothing to refute.

He glanced at the clock again. Should he call Monica and see if he had missed her call? No, better to finish up here first. He regarded the sniffling girl in the chair with lips slightly drawn back from his heavy-looking teeth. Not much to look at, he concluded silently. Red hair, a blocky-looking body, fat calves with coarse-looking tufts of hair the same hue as that on her head adorning them, a round, vapid face surmounted by thick glasses. No beauty here.

"Well?" he demanded so suddenly that the girl jumped.

"Yes, sir?" she responded timidly, gulping back a sob.

"What's your name?" "Lucille Redmond." "Where do you live?"

"Two twenty-nine South Hartford Street."

"What's your father's name?"

"He doesn't live here. My folks are divorced, and my mother remarried and lives in California. I live with my aunt."

His interest increased. No parents on the scene. "How long have you lived with your aunt?"

"Over five years."

He got up from his desk, walked around it, strode to the girl's chair, and bent down over it. She shrank back at his nearness. "Do you know the penalty for shoplifting?" he blared at her.

Silent tears streamed anew down the pale roundness of her cheeks. "No, I don't!" she sobbed.

"How many times have you done it before?"

"This was the first time, the very first time I ever even thought-"

"You mean it's the first time you got caught," he cut her off sharply.

"No, no! You've got to believe me! You've got-"

"What's your aunt going to say when I telephone her, Lucille?"

"Oh, please! She'll die! She'll just die!"

"Does she spank you when you need it?"

Surprised, the girl stared blankly at him. "No-not for a long t-time," she said shakily.

"Did you hear what Doug Carroll said to me when he turned you over to me in his store?"

"No, s-sir."

"He said he didn't care if I brought back a bill of particulars for him to sign to prefer charges against you or if I just saw to that you got a good ass-blistering." The girl remained silent. "Well?"

"W-well, what, sir?" she asked.

"What's it gonna be, Lucille? Charges preferred against you for shoplifting or an old-fashioned bottom-warming?" The girl stared at him helplessly. "Take your pants off," Curt said in pretended disgust.

The girl swallowed. "Y-you mean n-now? Here?"

"I mean I'm either gonna tell Doug I fanned your butt or I'm gonna take charges for him to sign. Your aunt's not in the habit, so it's up to me. I don't like to see a kid like you with a criminal record, Lucille, but I'm damned if I'm gonna encourage you at the game, either. Take your pants off."

She rose to her feet slowly. "What about Donna? My aunt? Will you tell-"

"There's no point in upsettin' her about somethin' for which you've already paid the tab," Curt said with practiced ease. "You take your lickin' an' we'll forget the whole thing."

"You won't spank me and then tell her anyway?"

Solemn faced, Curt Sylvester crossed his heart.

The girl reached up under her skirt and began to draw down her panties without disclosing more than a glimpse of her white, heavy-looking thighs. Curt returned to his desk when Lucille's panties collapsed around her thick ankles and she stepped out of them. "Put your belly right down here," he told the girl, patting the desk top. She shuffled slowly toward him, crying again.

Swiftly he stooped and removed from a bottom drawer of the desk a rubber sheet which he spread under the knee hole of the desk and slightly in front of it. "How old are you, Lucille?" he asked to distract her as he stood her on the rubber sheet and bent her forward over the desk.

"Seventeen, sir."

Almost in the same motion he bent and seized her left ankle, drew it sharply to the left, and cuffed it with a legcuff the other end of which was attached to the leg of the desk. When he did the same with her other ankle, the girl was flat on her stomach on the desk top with her legs spread-eagled the width of the desk. "What are you d-doing?" she asked in rising panic as Curt rose and casually flipped her skirt and slip up on her back.

He gazed with satisfaction at the solid, blocky bare buttocks ornamented with downy bronze hairs. A sprig of bushy-looking reddish hair thrust backward from between the girl's parted thighs. The girl tried to raise herself from the desk, but Curt placed a hand in the small of her back. "Don't make it hard on yourself," he said coolly.

"But you can s-see everything!" the girl panted, struggling in vain against the cuffs.

"This is the only thing that concerns me," Curt announced, slapping a bare haunch sharply. The girl flinched and whimpered as the imprint of his palm sprang up upon a nude hind cheek, first in stark white and then in blushing pink. "An' baby, I'm gonna make this ass of yours really smoke till you'll think three or four times about shoplifting again."

He began to spank in earnest, sonorous-sounding, crackling impacts of his palm upon alternate naked hind cheeks that resounded throughout the office. He hadn't been too surprised to find a totally acceptable-looking female behind despite the girl's fat calves and heavy thighs. Long ago he had grown used to finding pleasant surprises under unprepossessing-looking skirts. His heavy lips loosened lasciviously as the girl wriggled and rotated her buttocks. The sauciest of the local little pullets lost their ginger when Curt Sylvester got a shot at their tail, and he spent the greater part of his waking days scheming for and arranging just such confrontations.

The girl cried out at each increasingly heavy blow upon her smarting flesh.

Curt paused while he opened a desk drawer and removed a ping-pong paddle. A third of its surface had been removed along with a quarter of its weight. The remainder was pitilessly effective in contributing a hellish flame to a feminine behind.

A new note entered the girl's outcries with the first impacts of the paddle upon her agonized bottom. Her hind cheeks clenched convulsively at each burning kiss of the paddle. She screamed as her stomach climbed involuntarily from the desk top. Curt thrust her back down again, spanking mightily, his face nearly as red as the hot-looking, youthful hemispheres dancing madly under the paddle's severe stimulation.

Lucille humped herself up and down as Curt's big hand held her while the paddle pursued her flaming seat. She twisted frantically from side to side, revealing again the bright red bush that covered but did not conceal a husky-looking pink slit. She yelled hoarsely as she found herself totally unable to escape the terrible little paddle blistering her naked rump.

The gyrating buttocks had turned to a deep rose color. Curt watched until the girl's thrashing thighs began to tremble and then suddenly became flaccid. He gazed in satisfaction as Lucille lost control of her bladder and urine gushed down her legs onto the rubber sheet. He withheld the paddle, studied the rough, maroon hind parts for a moment, then returned the paddle to the desk drawer.

"Can you hear me?" he demanded after a time during which Lucille's whimperings had died to throaty sobs.

"Y-yes," she whispered.

He unfastened the cuffs and she raised herself from the desk painfully, cradling her big, scarlet cheeks in both palms. She rubbed herself feverishly, looked down at the puddle between her feet, and began to cry helplessly, great round tears cascading down her round cheeks, flushed from yelling.

"You be here a month from today," Curt told her. "I don't know if you got the message yet. You-"

"Ohhh, I have! I have!" the girl pleaded.

"You be here a month from today," Curt repeated inexorably. He was staring at the girl's plump belly, pink from scraping the desk top, and her bronze-haired crotch as she half-faced him.

"An' we'll see if you can talk me out've repeatin' this dosage. Now get yourself cleaned up an' get out of here," he concluded abruptly.

Ashamedly aware of his gaze upon her semi-nude body, the girl awkwardly pulled down her slip and dress, wincing as she tugged them over her cherry-red behind. Tears still streamed from her reddened eyes.

"When are you gonna be here?" he pressed her.

"A m-month from today," she responded. "But please-"

"Don't make me come lookin' for you," he said warningly. He looked up at the wall clock. The bunched tightness in his groin, always an aftermath of these deliberately staged spankings, made Monica's presence desirable. "Hurry it up," he urged the sniffling girl.

Five minutes after her departure he locked the office door and left, too.