Chapter 1
Jonathan Oliver Winters successfully negotiated the last stretch of road leading to Romina's home, despite the fact that both of them had been drinking very heavily at their graduation party. Generally speaking, the evening had been fun for Romina, and she was happy to be finished with the tiresome business of classes and teachers and examinations and anxious to start the real life. On the other hand, she realized that she was going to miss the informal, good-natured companionship of her schoolmates and friends. They would all be separating now, inevitably, even though they had just finished swearing eternal promises to stay in touch. The out-of-towners would be returning to their home cities. Those who lived here in Boston would be getting married or going to work and starting their careers. All of her friends seemed to have their plans for the future completely made and of all the people she knew, Romina was the only one who had not yet decided what she was going to do with her life.
The idea of teaching in a grammar school or taking a position as a secretary in an office appalled her. She had majored in English literature in college and was finding that while the study of Shakespeare and Milton was an excellent general preparation for a lot of things, it was specific training for nothing in particular and despite her high marks and quick intelligence, it was clear that she would have to start at the bottom of the totem pole.
Jonathan parked his father's Oldsmobile in the alley next to her home, calculatingly moving the car far enough into the drive so that it could not be observed from the street, but not so far that they could be seen from the window. He had also carefully cut the motor just as the automobile left the street so that Mrs. Santini, Romina's mother, would not hear them arrive and interrupt the little project Jonathan Oliver Winters doubtless had in mind.
The lush black-haired girl sighed with irritation, having watched the boy go through this same painstaking procedure at least once a week for the past two years. Now the usual ritual would begin. After he had spent all that money on showing her a good time, she could hardly refuse him a few good-night kisses. Excited by this minimal bodily contact, Jonathan would press his attack, fumbling with the back of her dress with one hand while he stroked the tops of her knees with the other. Romina would soon be as busy as the general of an army, repelling an invasion here, warding off a thrust there, seizing a hand prepared to strike against a vital target down there and wiggling to avoid a frontal assault up here. The two of them had gone through this same exercise at least one hundred times in the two years they had been dating and in the privacy of her mind, Romina often wondered what it was about her that kept him returning to the attack week after week with no encouragement from her whatsoever and no hope of success.
When Jonathan's physical approaches had been spurned, he would normally turn to verbal arguments, talking about the new morality, the permissive society and the joys of the sensual life, all of which he had read about extensively in books. The young man was going on to law school next year and he could be quite eloquent when he wanted to be. When they had finished with sociology, he would launch into poetry, frequently reciting Marlowe's "The Passionate Shepherd to his Love" which he did rather well. Then he would make one final lunge, Romina would break away and their evening's entertainment would be over for the week.
Romina continued to accept dates with Jonathan and refuse offers from other boys because she had learned that the would-be lawyer could lose his case gracefully and peacefully. Some of the other boys she had dated were not so easily discouraged and after a couple of wrestling matches, some of which had come close to ending in disaster, she had decided to restrict her dating to people who quoted poetry.
"Romina," he said suddenly after they had both sat quietly for a few minutes, "Romina. I'm going away next week. My uncle wants me to work in his law office in New York for the summer to get some practical experience before I start Columbia in September. I guess I won't be seeing you much after this week, unless you decide to come to New York and work."
"I hadn't made any plans," she replied hesitantly, uncertain as to what he was getting at and wondering if this were a new tactic of some kind.
"We've been good friends, honey, and I want you to know that I'll always remember you. There's no point in pretending that this has been any great love affair. I'm not accusing you of anything, just stating the facts: you don't love me now and you probably never will. But I've been pretty fond of you and I want you to know that I'll miss you."
Romina was suddenly touched. After all, he had been a good friend and a very considerate escort, despite these little grab sessions after every date. But of course he was right; it had not been a great love affair. Romina's experience with men and love was limited, but she knew there would have to be a feeling deeper than friendship before any sparks could fly and until the sparks started flying she would have to go on refusing. But now he was telling her good-bye in no uncertain terms and she felt a little sad. Everything would be changed now. A whole new life was beginning and she suddenly realized that she was going to miss Jonathan Oliver Winters more than she would have believed possible. Acting out of impulse, she leaned forward and kissed him tenderly on the lips, thinking as she did so that it was the first time in their relationship that she had made the first move.
Instead of making his usual lunge in her direction, Jonathan contented himself with slipping an arm around her shoulders in the most brotherly fashion and prolonging their kiss. How much nicer it is like this, thought the young girl vaguely, when I don't have to worry about defending myself every minute. She had been kissed any number of times during her college career, but she had never been able to sit through one of these sessions without the morbid fear that she was doing something very evil and that she must continually remain on her guard against the possibility of losing her virtue. The Italian family in which she had been raised was big and great, but there had never been any doubt in the education Romina had received from her mother that there were certain things one could not do until after marriage.
As she shifted slightly in her seat, her foot struck against an object lying on the floor.
"Oh look!" she cried disgustedly. "We forgot to give them the wine!"
"It slipped my mind," admitted the boy. "Just as well, I'd say. The label's about ready to fall off. Where did you get it anyway? It looks a hundred years old."
"My mother would kill me if she knew," Romina explained. "I don't know where it came from originally, but we've had a half dozen bottles of it sitting in the cellar ever since I can remember. One of my relatives must have brought it over from Italy. I asked my mother once if we could drink some, and she almost went into convulsions. She said I could have some at home with my husband after I was safely married, and not before. She's never even let me touch it."
"What'll you do if she notices one is missing?" questioned the would-be lawyer, his legal mind already functioning.
"I could say I accidentally knocked it over," shrugged the young girl, crossing her bare legs and studying the label on the old bottle. "I thought it would make a nice hostess gift."
"Well, there's no point in smuggling it back into the house," offered Jonathan, reaching into the glove compartment and extracting a combination bottle opener and corkscrew. "We'll have a farewell toast." The cork was crumbling with age, but the young man managed to pull it out intact. He gallantly offered the first swig to Romina. Feeling a little funny about drinking directly out of the bottle, she raised it to her lips and took a healthy swallow.
The wine was somewhat warm after sitting on the floor of the car and had a pleasantly stingy taste, sharp but agreeable.
"It's still good," she commented, puckering her lips slightly from the heaviness of the flavor. "Here, you try some."
The boy drank deeply from the bottle, smacking his lips in a satisfied way as he handed her the bottle back. The two of them were thirsty and they drank and chatted, neither of them anxious to bring their last evening together to an end. Finally, when they had drank all but a few swallows, Jonathan recorked the bottle and laid it on the floor, settled back against the seat and threw an arm carelessly around her shoulders. Normally, for Romina, this was the signal for her to pull cautiously away, but she felt unusually mellow after drinking the wine and relaxed against his chest, deciding that this was, after all, their last night together.
Jonathan ran his fingers through her long black hair, touching her lightly behind the ears and caressing the back of her neck while Romina remarked to herself that there was nothing immoral about this and noted how nice it felt. Smoothing her dress down over her white full thighs, she remembered how her mother had protested against her wearing this outfit as she was leaving the house for the party earlier that evening. She giggled a little drunkenly at the thought and Jonathan interrupted their kiss to offer her a penny for her thoughts.
"I was just thinking about my mother," she answered.
"If my kisses remind you of your mother, there is definitely something wrong with my technique," he joked.
"No, it isn't that," she laughed. "Mom was terribly worried about this dress I'm wearing. She said it was immoral!"
The young man glanced down at the lithe beautiful girl he had been dating for two years and now would probably never see again. She had the body of a young Greek goddess, with full lush breasts straining against the fabric of the flimsy miniskirt her mother had condemned as indecent. The skirt was unusually short, revealing the girl's creamy fluid thighs and slender tapered legs. Her black smooth hair, worn long and flowing over her shoulders emphasized the texture of her smooth fair skin. Romina's mother had been wrong in saying that the dress was immoral since on another girl it would have been regarded as perfectly normal. With Romina's voluptuously curved young shape, unfortunately, almost anything she wore looked slightly immoral and Mrs. Santini had been struggling for years to dress her daughter in baggy shapeless garments which would conceal her large ripe breasts and tantalizingly firm thighs from a lusty world.
Late in the evening while she was dancing, one of Romina's straps had broken and the other one began to bite painfully into her shoulder. After a few unsuccessful attempts to repair the situation with a safety pin, she had removed them both, allowing the gown to slip even lower over her widely spaced well-formed breasts. Now, as Jonathan looked down on her, he could see the beginning of the dark area around her nipples and gloomily admitted to himself that this was probably all he would ever see.
Since the weather had already turned quite warm, Romina had gone out without stockings and as she moved on the front seat of the car, the dress climbed up toward her hips, revealing her splendid well-tanned legs. Tearing his eyes away from this vision, he turned her head toward him again and kissed her lightly on the lips. To his surprise, she did not retreat as usual, but sighed languidly and nestled closer into his arms.
Running his hands over her smooth warm shoulders without provoking any objection, Jonathan became bolder and allowed one of his hands to drop to the tops of her breasts. Romina immediately caught his hand but the strange wine had burned away the fine edge of her moral sense and she did not brush it away as usual but pressed it more firmly against herself. This was unfamiliar terrain for the girl and she noticed with surprise that she was breathing faster and wondered if the liquor was responsible for these strange sensations. She could feel her full brown nipples expanding and hardening, something which had never happened before under these circumstances and the black-haired, full-breasted girl was puzzled for a moment, wondering if something was physically wrong with her. It occurred to her wine-dazzled mind that this was precisely the kind of dangerous situation her mother had warned her about, but somehow the older woman's words did not seem applicable to the things she was feeling. She did not love Jonathan, this she knew even when intoxicated, but she found it impossible to deny the slow burning sensation which was rising unbearably up between her thighs.
Romina slipped her hand inside the young man's jacket and rubbed his chest affectionately, at the same time releasing her hold on his other hand. A little amazed at his own success, the daring boy deliberately slipped his fingers down the front of her dress and cupped her smooth white breast in his trembling hand.
The effect on Romina was amazing! Until this point, she had been rational despite the wine and almost calm, experimenting a little with her emotions and her body and listening very carefully to that voice in the back of her head telling her that the situation was becoming dangerous. Now the voice had almost disappeared and she was conscious only of the waves of pleasure which began to rush through her wine-numbed body.
Her mother had warned her repeatedly that it was sinful for her to touch these parts of her body or let anyone else touch them and she had never before known this kind of stimulation. As Jonathan's kiss persisted, she felt his hand gliding gently along the silky smoothness of her legs and without thinking, she spread her thighs slightly, allowing a sigh to escape her lips. Another powerful wave of pleasure started up from her now sensually quivering hips and into her flat smooth little belly and she moaned slightly as he removed his hand from her breast, reached around behind her and deftly undid the zipper on her dress. There was a feeling of enormous relief as her large, ripely youthful tits tumbled free of the restraints imposed by her dress and before she could collect her thoughts and stop him, Jonathan bent swiftly and fastened his mouth on the tip of one nakedly throbbing breast.
Panic fighting with the growing lust in her body, she tried drunkenly to force his head away from her traitorously responding nipple, but then surrendered as a new surge of lewdly wicked sensation swept over her trembling body, and she pulled him even more tightly against her.
"Oh God! Jonathan ... you're driving me mad!" she mumbled, amazed at the suddenness with which this powerful emotion had swept over her. She had never dreamed herself capable of doing things like this, or allowing a man to touch her in this way. This was precisely the kind of thing her mother had always warned her against and now it was happening and she was doing nothing to stop it. What would become of her? What did this mean?
The young man moved his lips adroitly from one breast to the other, sucking her hard brown nipples gently between his lips and licking them softly with his tongue and Romina hardly noticed as his hand began caressing the soft, inner flesh between her limp, unresisting thighs. Her own hands were busy as well, hungrily touching his chest and face in a way she had never done while they were dancing.
His fingers continued to commit their delicious aggression, moving up the softness of her naked thighs to caress her warmly quivering stomach. Her dress lay bunched uselessly up around her waist, her succulent young breasts bare and her tempting loins protected only by the pair of flimsy white nylon panties she was wearing. Romina played with the buttons on his shirt, suddenly realizing she was unbuttoning him, possessed by a frantic, unconscious desire to feel his chest against her naked breast tips with nothing in between. Jonathan, amazed by his sudden success with a girl who had permitted him nothing more passionate than a friendly kiss for over two years, summoned up his courage and decided to go exactly as far as she would let him. Moving his hand slowly and carefully down the warm flatness of her stomach, he slipped his fingers beneath the thin nylon crotch band of her panties to her softly curling pubic hair and enclosed her wet throbbing pussy hotly in the palm of his hand.
"Ahhhhhh!" she groaned, sliding her almost naked young buttocks further down in the seat and spreading her legs even wider to allow him more complete access to the warmly throbbing cunt lips in between. In her wine-clouded mind, Romina slowly became conscious of the fact that her hips and loins were no longer accepting orders from her brain. Without realizing it, she had been grinding her buttocks fiercely into the seat, twitching and squirming as Jonathan increased the tempo of his caresses. As his hand swept over her tiny tingling clitoris, the whole world seemed to change for her. She forgot about the possibility of her mother coming out to investigate or the fact that this was supposed to be their last night together. The sensations he was creating in her trembling body filled her mind completely and she made no protest when he lifted her buttocks off the seat and slipped the frail white panties down over her smoothly rounded buttocks and sleek thighs and onto the floor. She had never before been naked in front of a man and the cool evening air teased against the rising moisture up between her legs, adding to the frenzy of her excitement.
With the last protection of her panties gone, Jonathan's hand returned to the moist warmth of her pubic region and she groaned as his middle finger began to part the softness of her cunt hair and slowly, teasingly, penetrate the wetness of her tiny virginal vagina. Romina was only technically a virgin, having lost her physical virginity while horseback riding as a teenager, but this was the first time in her life that she had ever had the experience of feeling the inside of her vagina touched and a tingling sensation unlike anything else she had ever known dominated her belly and loins, the most maddening pleasure she could imagine.
Jonathan looked down on the writhing, nakedly moaning girl with pure amazement. His own excitement increased by leaps and bounds as he studied the rapid rise and fall of her rib cage and the excited little throbbing motion of her nipples, now hard and tantalizing. Many a night he had thrashed around in his lonely bed imagining her mountainous young breasts nude and defenseless in his hands, and he had difficulty believing that they were finally within his reach, open and offered up for anything he chose to do with them. Below the crumpled useless dress which had so inadequately covered her firm luscious body, his hands had full possession of the thin hair-lined slit of her cunt, exposed and visibly glistening from her wetness even in the half-light of the moon.
Then with, with a sudden inspiration, he dropped to the seat and nuzzled his head between her open legs, snaking his tongue hotly into the thin fleshy gap his fingers had opened in the softly curling matte of her pubic hair.
"Aaaaagggggg!" she groaned, so loudly that he was afraid that someone would hear them. As be swirled and licked voraciously at the warm feminine fluids of her open hungry cunt, he undid his trousers and taking her hand in his, he wrapped her small thin fingers around his now rigid cock.
Romina thrilled inwardly when she heard his gasp of pleasure and she pressed his length with her fingers as hard as she could. She had seen her boy-cousins in the bath as children and remembered a male penis as a puny, limp little thing. Despite her modern education in biology at the university, she had never quite understood how such an inadequate instrument could ever accomplish all that the textbooks had claimed it could do. Now, in spite of the strange effects of the wine, she understood.
Throwing herself back on the seat, she pulled the still astonished Jonathan over her, waiting impatiently for him to drop between her widespread legs as he fumbled with his pants in an effort to free himself for intercourse.
"Come, come, oh God, come!! " she called to him drunkenly and he dropped his trousers on the floor of the car. Now naked himself and ready for action, he poised himself between her outstretched knees and plunged forward, accidentally forcing one of her legs against the car horn as he struggled to enter her body.
"For Christ's sake," he yelled, yanking her knee away from the horn as he felt his cock begin to wilt from the sudden shock and noise. But the horn did not stop, continuing to blare out into the night, advertising to everyone within a radius of five hundred yards that something was going on in the alley of the Santini house.
Jonathan, using language which Romina had never heard before, struggled violently with the horn, his cock going completely limp as he fumbled with the steering wheel.
Sobered suddenly by absolute terror, Romina dove for the floor of the car, searching desperately for her white nylon panties. At the same moment, Jonathan abandoned his futile attempts to repair the horn and started to struggle into his pants. The two of them banged their heads together, cursed each other furiously and managed to get more or less dressed by the time Mrs. Santini poked her head out the bathroom window and asked them angrily what was wrong. Buttoning his shirt frantically and jumping out of the car, Jonathan pulled up the hood and yanked the horn wires free, restoring silence to the night.
Assuring her mother that she would be right in, Romina made a few last-minute adjustments to her appearance in the rear view mirror and accepted a cigarette from Jonathan to calm her nerves before facing her mother. Their last few minutes of conversation were strained, neither making any reference to what had just happened, or almost happened. When the cigarette burned down to the filter, Romina allowed the young man to peck her on the cheek and fled the car, her mind still filled with fear and wonder.
Now somewhat sobered by her experience, the lithe young girl fully expected that her mother would take one look at her face and know instinctively what had happened, but the older woman seemed distracted and unhappy, lost in her own thoughts. Romina noticed what seemed to be tears in her mother's eyes as she entered the living room and found her bent over a newspaper.
Mrs. Santini, at forty-five, was still an attractive woman, the startling good looks she had boasted as a girl having mellowed gracefully into the gentle dignified beauty of middle age. She had devoted most of the last twenty years to raising her daughter, carefully stretching out a small inheritance received from her father, a successful Italian immigrant who had made his money in the clothing trade. A deeply religious woman, she lived and prayed for the day when her daughter would be securely and happily married and begin producing grandchildren for her.
Mrs. Santini had not remarried after the death of her husband and Romina had never known her to take the slightest interest in another man. The two women, mother and daughter, were unusually close, and Romina was sufficiently upset and worried by what had just happened to feel the need to confide in her mother.
"Mom, I've got to talk to you," she began bravely, sitting down across from the gray-haired woman and lighting another cigarette, despite her mother's often expressed disapproval for her smoking. "Mother, something terrible just happened ... I mean it didn't happen but it could have---"
"I heard the horn blowing," Mrs. Santini replied inconsequentially, apparently still distracted by her own thoughts. "Will Jonathan be able to repair his car?"
"Yes, I don't know, that's not what I meant. Mom, you know I've always tried to be a good girl. I've listened to what you said, always, and tried to avoid bad situations."
"What are you trying to tell me, Romina?"
"I'm trying to tell you something went wrong tonight! Jonathan told me he was leaving for New York and probably wouldn't be seeing me again. He was kissing me good-bye and suddenly I ... I lost control. I don't know how it happened. It wasn't his fault, the poor thing, he's been the perfect gentleman for as long as I can remember and he didn't start it, I did. Mother, it just came over me, this ... this feeling!" And she burst into tears and buried her face in her mother's lap.
"Did it happen?" the older woman asked gently.
"No," sobbed Romina in reply. "But no thanks to me. The horn got stuck and brought me to my senses in time. Oh, what does it mean? How could this happen to me?"
Romina was genuinely perplexed at her own behavior. She had deliberately neglected to mention her theft and drinking of that bottle of Italian wine, but she frankly failed to see how it could have had any effect on the situation. Despite her mother's strictness on the" subject of alcoholic beverages, she had drunk wine frequently at family get-togethers and occasionally had taken enough to get tipsy. Never had she felt emotions remotely resembling what she had experienced tonight. No, she decided, it couldn't have been the wine. But what had it been?
Mrs. Santini stroked her daughter's hair for a few minutes before answering.
"It isn't your fault, baby," she said finally. "This was built into you before you were born. I hoped and prayed you would inherit my blood and not your father's but I realize that I've been fooling myself for a long time. You're your father's daughter and there's nothing that can be done about it."
"What do you mean?" questioned the girl. "What about my father?"
Mrs. Santini carefully folded her glasses and put them away, giving Romina the opportunity to observe that her mother had, in fact, been crying. The older woman sighed heavily, avoiding her daughter's eyes as she began to speak.
"Well, you know that my family came from Northern Italy. They were all quiet, calm people who worked hard and when my father came here to this country, he didn't come as a penniless immigrant. We were respectable law-abiding people. Your grandfather never approved of my husband because he was a Sicilian. It seems foolish sitting here in Boston, but these things are important in Italy. The northerners think of Sicilians as terrible lawless noisy people and I guess most of the time that's what they are. Your father was different. He was kind, very considerate, but he was every inch a Sicilian. I ... I guess I'm beating around the bush, but the fact is that he was an extremely passionate man. I don't mean just in love, but in everything. He was capable, sometimes, of flying right out of control. And I think you've got some of his character in you. That's why I tried so hard to teach you to look before you leaped because he never did."
Romina was moved by this admission and startled to think of her mother confessing that her late husband was an "extremely passionate man." Somehow she could not imagine her quiet staid mother having anything to do with passionate men and the thought rather shocked her. What kind of man had her father really been? Was there some shameful family secret she knew nothing about?
"Mom, tell me a little about Dad," she pleaded. "You hardly ever talk about him!"
"What is there to say, really? We knew each other for such a short period of time. He came here from Italy to get a new start on life. We didn't know each other very long before we were married and I got pregnant with you almost immediately. Then he had to fly back to Italy on Christmas because his father was dying and the plane crashed. It happened all so fast. Fortunately, my father had made some money and we never had to worry about starving."
"Yes, but what was he like?" Romina insisted, still unsatisfied.
"He was a very good man, no matter what people may say. He was not well educated because he never had the chance to go to school but he was intelligent and always had a great interest in education. It was he who insisted that we teach you Italian. He would have loved to hear how well you speak the language now. He'd be so proud of you."
"But ... aren't there any details I should know?" Romina persisted.
"What good are details?" Mrs. Santini exclaimed, making a gesture of resignation with her hands. "Why should I burden you with these things? It's bad enough that every Christmas day for the rest of my life I will remember getting that telegram saying that his plane had gone down."
"But Mom, why aren't there any pictures of him around the house? I'd like to know what he looked like at least."
"Oh, I've explained a million times that he had this thing about photographs. He never let anyone take a picture of him and there weren't even any photographers at our wedding. It must have been some Sicilian superstition. Just as well. Forgetting's hard enough without having the house plastered with pictures that only bring back memories."
"But Momma..." Romina began again, but her mother cut her off with a wave of the hand and rose unsteadily from her chair.
"I'm tired, honey, and we've both had our share of emotional upsets for one day. I'm going to bed." Letting the newspaper she had been reading fall to the floor, Mrs. Santini kissed her daughter and moved off toward her bedroom, walking slowly and tiredly.
Strange, thought the girl, now alone in the familiar room. She was unhappy about something before I came in. Was she thinking about father? Or did something in the newspaper make her sad?
Idly, the girl picked up the newspaper and scanned the front page. The news was usual: a revolution in South America; the cost of living was expected to rise; the vice-president had made a speech. Mrs. Santini rarely followed news stories and hardly ever bought a paper. What could the problem be?
At the bottom of the page, a short article caught Romina's eye and her lifelong interest in Italy inspired her to read it.
Palermo, I June (AP) According to Police officials here, the legendary Sicilian bandit, Il Volpe, has once again narrowly escaped capture by Italian law enforcement officials. Sources in the Ministry of the Interior state that pressure to find Il Volpe mounted after the Baron Gianfranco delta Ville, one of Sicily's wealthiest men, was robbed of nearly a quarter of a million dollars. After mobilization by elements of the Italian Army, a painstaking search was made of the hill country near the Western Sicilian town of Strappani, long a headquarters for the bandit's operations. Two days ago, a company of Army regulars surprised Il Volpe in an isolated farm house together with five or six members of his band. After a furious fire fight, troops stormed the building, only to find it inexplicably empty. Since then no trace has been found of the bandits and the local Army headquarters today announced that the search was being suspended for the time being.
Il Volpe, whose name means "The Fox" in Italian, has long been a popular hero of the peasants in this poor and underdeveloped region of Sicily and it is believed that much of the money stolen from the Baron della Ville has found its way into the pockets of the poorer farmers and shepherds in the countryside. Il Volpe achieved national attention a few years ago when he prevented a Northern Italian bank from carrying out a widespread program of foreclosing overdue mortgages on peasant farmers in the Strappani area by systematically assassinating bank officials. After five years' intermittent warfare, the bank was forced to conclude an informal truce and the peasant-farmers were allowed to keep their farms.
In contrast to the popular image of the bandit, Il Volpe is said to be soft-spoken and well educated, a man in his mid-forties. As a youth, he was accused of a crime of honor, having murdered a policeman who had molested his sister. He fled to the United States in 1949, but Italian authorities were able to trace him and requested his extradition. In 1950, he was deported to Italy. Upon his arrival in chains at the Palermo airport, he engineered the first of a series of sensational escapes, fleeing into the mountains where for twenty years he has carried out his "Robin Hood" operations and successfully defied the efforts of the Italian police to put him under lock and key.
Beneath the news story, there was a photograph of Il Volpe, obviously taken by the police during one of the outlaw's short periods of captivity. The face was thin and sensitive with large intelligent eyes and a strong nose. It was the picture of a very hard man, obviously capable of killing, and yet Romina found the face strangely appealing. Thinking of the comfortable weakness of a man like Jonathan Oliver Winters, Romina allowed her fantasy to play for a moment, imagining what it would be like to be kissed by Il Volpe. If a puny, would-be lawyer could arouse that much passion in her, think what this fiery outlaw could do!
Ah, but these were foolish and sinful thoughts because there were no romantic outlaws in her life and even the puny would-be lawyer had just said good-bye and fled to his uncle's law office in
New York. Enough! she told herself sternly, shaking herself to drive away these impure ideas. There would be time for all this when she found the right man and married him and meanwhile there would be no repeat performances of tonight's filthy little spectacle, no matter what passions she had supposedly inherited from her mysterious father. She shuddered at what she had almost done with Jonathan and scolded herself for letting a silly picture of some Sicilian bandit get her all worked up a second time.
Folding the newspaper carefully, she switched out the living room lights, checked to see that the front door was locked and retired to her bedroom. Her sense of depression returned as she closed the door behind her and faced the neat comfortable room she had slept in for most of her life.
Here I am, she said as she languidly removed her clothing, twenty-one years old. All my life people have been telling me that I am beautiful and I don't even have a boyfriend any more! Struck by a strange compulsion, she stood in front of her full-length mirror and studied herself as she removed each garment. Her breasts were widely separated and unusually full, but a lifetime of athletics had kept them firm and bouncy. With surprise, she noted that her nipples were still swollen and extended, and even ached a little. She ran her hands over the brown, ripe little buds and they reacted immediately to her touch, straining desperately against her fingers and frightened, she pulled her hands away. For some reason, the face of that bandit, II Something-or-other, remained in her memory and she fought off a temptation to go and read the newspaper article about him again.
Instead she hung her dress carelessly over the back of a chair, kicked off her shoes and giggled involuntarily as she discovered that she had put her panties on inside out when the car horn had unexpectedly begun to advertise their presence in the alleyway. She slipped off the panties, still moist in the vagina band from her earlier passion, and faced herself again in the mirror.
She would have to start watching her weight carefully in a few years, she decided. Now, her waist was slender and girlish, and her tummy was flat and smooth, but Italian girls had a tendency to spread in their twenties and Romina resolved not to be one of them. Her mother was still trim at forty-five and she could-do the same.
Studying her pubic region in the reflection, she observed with a shock that there were still fine pearly droplets of liquid from her own body on her thighs. The soft dark hairs of her pussy were moist and matted and she could clearly see the red parted lips of her tiny vagina, usually closed and out of sight, but now open and exposed where Jonathan had teased them into excitement.
Frightened by the force of her own sexuality, she quickly snapped out the lights and jumped into her single bed, not even bothering to put on a pair of pajamas. It was almost four in the morning and she felt a curious combination of drunken excitement and sleepiness, her mind invaded time and time again by strange fantasy images of Sicilian bandits, sometimes merging with Jonathan. For a few moments, she fell asleep, immediately lapsing into a dream that she was again in the front seat of the car necking, but her partner was not Jonathan but Il Volpe, whose picture she had seen in the paper, and he was caressing her tenderly with a sureness and skill which poor Jonathan had never possessed. Her eyes opening as she fell out of the dream, she discovered that she was covered with sweat and that the hand in her dreams which had been stroking the trembling lips of her vagina was in actual fact her own. Throwing off the blankets and retaining only the sheet, Romina turned over on her stomach and wrapped her hands around the pillow to keep them out of temptation's way, but as soon as consciousness began to fade, she reentered the dream world and her hips began grinding inexorably into the mattress. Telling herself that she was asleep and therefore not fully responsible for what she was doing, her hand once again crept down to caress the soft moist fleece between the legs. As she fingered the soft fleshy folds of her cunt, she found that the sensation increased in strength and intensity and in a few minutes she cried aloud in the night as a storm of incredible pleasure swept over her. Then, exhausted, she slept.