Chapter 2
Jody struggled to the compact bathroom and hunkered on the open seat, weeping with dismay as the hot trickle seemed to scald her insides. Her mouth worked with thirst and her stomach growled with the normal, youthful pangs of hunger.
She braced her hands and arms on the sides of the wash basin, took a deep, ragged breath and opened a tap. Tears flowed down her pallid cheeks. He had shut off the water and she couldn't even wash her hands.
Weakly, uncertain in the ungaugable sway of the bus, she floundered out of the bathroom and tried the closet door to retrieve the blanket. But he had locked it. And she was alone, naked in the half-light, half-dark.
"Oooooohhh, Clemson," she wept softly. "Why?" She sprawled on the bed, oblivious to the vulnerability and lewd posture, legs flung wide, ass humped invitingly, aching crotch exposed. Why, she began to think seriously, had he abducted her? Was it just that he had a penchant to ravish her? She choked off the painful sobs and tried to recall. But, she could remember nothing beyond drinking that vodka collins in the locker room. If it were drugged, how did he manage to sneak her away into the motor home and not be seen?
She wiggled forward and parted the heavy drapes, wanting to see out. She had lost all conception of time, had no perception of direction. The glass had been swabbed with paint.
"Clemson!" she screamed, almost incoherent with hate, anger and frustration. "If I don't appear in Las Vegas in a couple of days, you will be hunted down and maybe killed for what you're doing to me."
Jody writhed on the hard bed, coiled her body tightly, then kicked out full-length, feeling sick and ashamed from her debauchment.
Without warning, a radio station was piped into her little bedroom-prison cell. It only added to her gloom as the announcer said that there was a great deal of doubt that "Miss Jody Freeman would compete in the Las Vegas net matches. She hinted very strongly that she might not compete because of exhaustion. She said she might take off on a leisurely vacation for a couple of weeks. Several of the established pros on the circuit said that if this new star of the tennis world from Spokane did enter, she would be very hard to beat." The report continued with the fact her uncle-manager was in Europe and wasn't expected back in time for the Vegas matches and this may be a disappointment to Miss Freeman who has relied heavily on his presence and moral support ever since her parents died when she was five and he had raised her.
The radio was tuned out and Jody shivered with grief and misery. That is why he is so confident he'll have no trouble or be in danger of arrest. No one, really, expects to see me show up in Las Vegas.
She turned onto her stomach and cradled her haggard face in her arms and cried softly.
Her sleep was fitful, her fragmented dreams painful. She was in center court in Las Vegas with twenty-thousand eyes on her. And the people were laughing and pointing and her opponent was leading thirty-love. She groped instinctively to loosen the bind of clothing in her crack. But she was naked. And sitting high in the judge's seat was the pale-eyed Bert Clemson. There was a high-pitched reaction from the crowd when he announced that he knew for a surety that the nineteen-year Jody Freeman no longer was a virgin. And she was so mortified that she stood as if petrified and let the serve sizzle past her for an ace.
Her dreaming drifted and she was fretting about luggage and personal effects at the Los Angeles motel. But she seemed to see herself sitting somewhere in a daze and watching a man carry her things from the motel and stow them someplace.
The bus swung suddenly to the right and she was heaved forward as it was braked sharply. Jody was conscious of mixed feelings of dread and gratitude. She could ask Clemson for something to drink and something to eat--but she would have to endure his greedy, covetous eyes. Maybe even another sexual demand.
A sickening, squeamish sensation assailed her as she heard, very faintly, his barefeet padding toward her and she could feel the gentle sway of the vehicle of his movement. As she heard a key turn in the aisle door, she started to fold an arm over her hot breasts and fan a hand across her crotch. But she flopped her arms at her sides, fearing such a gesture might infuriate him and he would slap her around again. Her head still hurt and there was a small cut in her lower lip from the last time.
Her face was turned to the ceiling as the door opened, but her eyes swung to regard his shadowy figure. He was again wearing the khaki shorts, but he was barefoot and naked from the waist.
"Bet you could go for a drink, huh, Jody?" Clemson said softly. "And something to eat. How you gonna pay for food and drink? I know you don't have that L.A. check."
She didn't reply. That was true. After photographs, she had returned it to tournament officials to be forwarded to various accounts in Spokane banks. Uncle Fletcher had arranged for that. Accounts for savings and expenses and trust funds. She was about to tell him that she had no money, merely drew a small weekly stipend for incidentals and girlish whims. "I am extremely thirsty," Jody agreed, astonished by her croaking voice. "And hungry. And please give me some clothes," she added, hating the imploring tone she couldn't keep from her voice. Tears poured from her eyes and distorted his bony face.
"What the hell you need clothes for?" Clemson mocked. "Where we are, it's gonna get too hot to wear clothes. You don't want clothes here in the desert."
For the first time, she turned her face to him, forgetting the tears that flooded saltily from her eyes. "Why did you have to take them in the first place?" she demanded accusingly.
"Well, I had several stops to make before we left L.A. and I didn't think I had to worry about you streaking down the sidewalk," he explained, backing along the aisle. She heard the door of a refrigerator close with a hush sound, then there was the clunking of ice cubes and liquid being poured from bottles.
"You can come on forward, Jody," Clemson called amiably. 'It's a beautiful day. We can go outside for awhile, until it gets hot, if you want to."
"Something to wear," she shrieked at him, lurching to a sitting position. "Pleeeease? Some clothes, Clemson?"
He was silent and she waited expectantly. Then he yelled at her, "Shut up that goddamned whining and get your little ass up here or go thirsty." She felt faint and again demoralized.
She lingered on the bed, still hoping he would bring her something to wear, dreading going out to him naked and letting him see her in full light. Finally, slowly, she shuffled off the bed and moved forward uncertainly, instinctively trying to conceal her nudity with arms and hands. He thrust a tall glass at her and she glared at him resentfully as she saw carbonation bubbles.
"I'd prefer just water," she protested softly. But she took the glass with her left hand, leaving her breast cones exposed to his eyes. "Take what you get and appreciate it and get your butt on outside," Clemson snarled at her, slapping her bottom hard as she carefully shuffled past him. The force of the slap propelled her far forward, almost to the door beyond the small dinette.
"Outside," he snapped, following her. "Not naked," she pleaded.
"Go on," he ordered, kicking her buttocks smartly with the side of his bare foot. "Ain't nobody within a hundred miles or so to see you."
She thought she had never felt so vulnerable as when she made the long, naked step down to the desert ground, with bare breasts bobbing freely, curving buns of her butt scissoring.
"Baby, you got it all," Clemson breathed heavily behind her. "You play championship tennis and can maybe take it all in Rome and Paris and Wimbledon. And you got the niftiest pair of boobies and saucy ass cheeks I've ever seen. And, you got a maddening pussy that was virgin until a few hours ago. And I had the privilege of firing the first volley into that."
Carefully, she pranced away from him to avoid his touch. His tennis euphemism disgusted her. Greedily, she licked at the frosty moisture forming on the outside of the glass. "I want just plain water," she sulked. "Not a soft drink."
Her heart skipped as his face tightened, eyes glittered and he doubled a fist. "You drink what I give you--or nothing." And Jody tilted the glass and drank. Ginger ale. And it wasn't until she had consumed half of it she realized it was heavily charged with alcohol. Probably vodka.
"You son of a bitch," she sobbed, glaring at him through tear-clouded eyes. But the coldness of the drink and the liquid, itself, was refreshing and stimulating. And she turned her back, strode away from him as she emptied the glass. Silent sobs railed through her lithe body as the liquor bubbled and seemed to explode in her empty stomach.
In a matter of minutes, she was giddy and dizzy, the clean, austereness of the desert unreal to her dazed eyes. She couldn't focus on the barren hills and mesas. And she couldn't label the color of the sagebrush and greasewood. She squinted at a swerving swooping, circling, gliding eagle to the east where the sun had already troweled the sky with a liquid brass.
"Don't wander too far," Clemson chortled, "a desert beast might get you."
Jody shrugged her bare shoulders, knowing his glittering eyes were on the smooth flare of her hips, devouring the satiny swell and curve of her buttocks. The only beast in the desert she feared and dreaded, she mused, was Clemson. She had hunted and captured rattlesnakes near Spokane on a high school biology class field trip. And who was afraid of jack rabbits and coyotes and little lizards?
"Want another drink?" Clemson taunted. "You can have an icy beer, if you prefer."
Vaguely, she heard his coarse laughter. "Why are you doing this to me?" she shrieked at him, stumbling to her feet and weaving toward him. "Blackmail? You want money? Let me go and I'll have Uncle Fletcher get it for you when he returns from Europe. I haven't got any money."
She cried softly, let him take the glass from her as she stood there in the loud silence of the Nevada desert, a hundred miles or so north of Las Vegas. Numbly, she accepted the fresh drink and gulped at it hungrily. "If you let me go and I can play at Las Vegas and win some money, I'll give it all to you."
"Drink up and shut -up," Clemson said softly, roughness gone from him at the time as he looped a long arm around her shuddering body and hugged her nakedness to him. "That would be okay--but I doubt I'd live long enough to blow the first stack at the craps table."
For a moment, Jody sobbed against his bare chest, rubbing her tears onto him and feeling a comfort and reassurance she always got from snuggling to her uncle. She pressed back and away from him, dully resentful of his hand caressing her titties and fondling the smooth, tight-skinned cheeks of her behind.
"How long will you keep me?" she muttered. "You're going to kill me!"
"Ooooh, noooo," Clemson protested, moving behind her, up against her. "I ain't gonna do anything like that. Just keep you 'til after that Vegas match."
She regarded him numbly as he opened a compartment of the bus and set up two folding patio chairs. Timidly, she padded into the shade of the huge vehicle. Resentfully, she tried to run thoughts coherently through her fuzzed mind. What he had said about not living to spend money she might win perplexed her. And he would only keep her until after the tournament. Could it be that someone didn't want her to compete at Les Vegas?
"Pick out a chair, Jody," Clemson said. "Want some music? I'll turn on the radio."
She swung a chair away from the other so he couldn't sit and stare directly at her exposed breasts and at her defenseless crotch. She slumped into the chair, crossed her thighs high and twined her ankles.
"Who wants me out of the Vegas meet?" she demanded when he returned. She grimaced as country rock music blared out into the golden cleanness of the desert.
"Shit. What you talking about," Clemson said, kicking the other chair so that he sat facing her. "What lovely tits. You know, Jody, I think you're one of the youngest girls I eve- fucked. I was surprised to discover you were still a virgin? I thought--as close as I've heard you and old Fletcher are--that he probably had slipped into you long ago. Maybe he likes it sucked. Is that it? He ain't never screwed yer li'l pussy 'cause he prefers blow-jobs, havin' you suck him off. Is that it? Huh?"
Jody nearly gagged on the drink and sliver of ice. "You're sick and disgusting," she managed, unable to meet his hot eyes.
As if he hadn't heard her, his feverish, carnal eyes flashed from the tufts of hair squeezed by her tensed thighs to her tits, to her pinched, frowning lips. "Bet that's it. You know, Jody, I like it, too. Having my cock blowed. I truly love having a pretty gal sucking my hard prick."
A scream of contempt and terror built deep in her belly, surged chokingly into her chest and finally blared shrilly from her mouth. She threw the half-full glass of ginger ale and vodka at him.
"Shut off that stupid cowboy music," she screamed, feeling she was tottering on the cliff of insanity.