Chapter 6
Ellen Dawson rolled to one side, pulling herself free of her ex-husband. Ray lay there grinning up at her in satisfaction.
"That was good," he said. "Oh, Ellen, baby, you're absolutely the most."
She shrugged. Nude, she stood up and walked toward the window. She stood behind the drawn blinds, letting the fresh, cool night air waft over her lust-heated body. Ray got up and walked over to her. He nuzzled his lips against the nape of her neck. His hands slid lightly over the firm mounds of her buttocks. Then hands moved them upward under Ellen's arms and clamped over her high jutting breasts.
"Don't," she said irritably.
"Don't what?"
"Don't put your hands all over me. I'm perspiring. I want to be left alone."
"But you're so good to touch, Ellen." He squeezed her breasts a little harder.
Like a woman plucking some unwanted caterpillar from her dress, Ellen forcefully took his hands and pulled them away from her breasts. She kept her back turned to him. Now, with their lovemaking over and all passion spent she felt guilty, stained, polluted. She should never have given herself to him tonight. Anything that once might have been alive between them was dead and ought to be allowed to remain peacefully in the grave.
"Go home," she said. "Its getting late. I want my sleep, Ray."
He cupped her bare buttocks again. "Let me stay here with you, Ellen."
"That's impossible."
"I won't even try to love you. I just want to sleep next to you all night."
Ellen sighed. "This is stupid, Ray. I'm divorcing you. You've got to make the break and get out into the world on your own. We're through. I'm sorry if it sounds cruel, but that's the way it is."
She opened the blinds a little to let the cool air through. Ray Dawson fell to his knees in back of her. He pressed his cheek against the silken-smooth mound of a buttock. Then he put his lips to the swelling rise of soft flesh. He clasped her around the hips, spreading his hands out on her thighs, and kissed her buttocks.
Ellen scowled. What a pest he was! She didn't want to hurt his feelings, but he kept asking for it.
He loved to be downtrodden and scorned.
She tolerated it while he kissed the firm satiny cheeks for a moment. Then she pulled his hands away from her thighs and shook him off, stepping free of him. Pointing to the pile of his discarded clothing, Ellen said brusquely, "Get dressed, Ray. Go home."
"But-"
"Go home. You want me to call the police? You want me to file a complaint saying my ex-husband is molesting me? How would that sound."
He made an almost feminine pout. "I'm not your ex-husband yet," he whined. "I'm just your separated husband. Please, Ellen, pretty please-"
"You make me sick. Get out."
He didn't move. He remained in a position of supplication on his knees before her statuesque nude form. Ellen looked at him in disgust. She caught him by a thin wrist, tugged him to his feet, and pushed him toward his clothing.
Looking ruefully at her in defeat, he began to get dressed. Ellen watched him, standing with her arms folded across the bare hillocks of her breasts and her legs apart and planted firmly. His eyes never left her. He was hungry for the magnificence of her body. But he had lost her, and the sooner he came to admit the fact the healthier it was going to be all around.
When he was fully clothed, he came toward her again, hands reaching for the taut globular womanflesh of her body. Ellen put up a hand and brushed him aside.
"Let me hold you again," he begged.
"You got all you deserve tonight, and more than that," she said. "You boffed me, didn't you? Isn't that enough? Now you have to cop a feel too? Get out, Ray. Get out and find yourself another woman, and stay with her." She patted herself. "You better take a good long look at me, because you aren't ever going to see me like this again. Or touch or kiss me as you did. I mean that, Ray. From now on I'm going to listen to what my lawyer says about having relations with you. Verboten, you hear. Now go home."
"Ellen-"
"Out," she said, and shoved him toward the door.
He was just a bundle of bones. She didn't have any trouble pushing him through the door. She locked it behind him and walked slowly back toward her bedroom, thoughtfully rubbing her bare breasts.
It had been a mistake to give in to him, Ellen told herself. My lawyer would flay me if he knew.
I'm just too damned softhearted to live.
But what was done was done. She shrugged. He had come here, he had begged and wheedled a tumble out of her, and she had given it to him. She had given it to him in his own special way, too, complete with a nice healthy whipping that had stirred up strange, disturbing lusts within her in the process of turning him on.
But this was absolutely the last time she would play with Ray Dawson, she told herself. He'd just have to face up to it. They were finished, that was all.
Ellen glanced at the clock. Past eleven o'clock.
Well, there went her plan to get a lot of extra sleep tonight. But she'd still be able to catch up a little on her rest, assuming there were no more unexpected callers. Before she could go to bed, though, she would need a shower. That was the trouble with men. They got you so bothered when they loved you. It was always such a sweaty business.
A quick shower and Ellen felt cool, crisp, and clean once again. She popped herself into bed and switched off the light. For a little while she lay awake, wondering in a troubled way what would happen after she was married to Jim McHughes, if Ray still kept coming around looking for a little action. Jim would quickly teach Ray who her current husband was. But it could get pretty violent. Jim might beat Ray to a pulp. Jim couldn't control himself sometimes, when his temper ran loose. Poor Ray. He was such a schmoe. She didn't want anything serious to happen to him, though.
She made up her mind to let Ray know the risks he was running, the next time he came around here. If there was a next time, of course.
Ellen nestled against her pillow. She cupped one hand cozily over her bare breasts and let the other one rest on her cool thigh.
Sleep took her.
When she woke, she felt as well rested as she had in many months. She was cheerful, almost exhilarated. She got to the office bright and early, ready to face any sort of challenge the day might throw at her.
But her good mood didn't last past the first office break of the day.
Bad news presented itself fast.
Bad news went by the name of Paul F. Brubaker, who was her boss. Mr. Brubaker was a pudgy, red-faced, fiftyish man with thinning brown hair. He had a wife somewhere in the suburbs, but he didn't make a point of being particularly faithful to her, and he went to bed with his prettier employees as often as he could swing it.
He had been sleeping regularly with Ellen for more than a year, now. She wasn't happy about it. Ordinarily, she would never have let herself get into a fix like that. But he had moved in on her at a time of crisis in her life-about the time when she was breaking up her marriage to Ray Dawson, and before she had met Jim McHughes.
Ellen had been pretty confused about life just then, and Mr. Brubaker had seen his opportunity. With a paternal-sounding, "Tell me all about it, dear," he won her confidence. He took her out to dinner and used up most of a fifty-dollar bill wining and dining her, and it was a good investment for him, because by the end of the evening Ellen was in a boozy, self-pitying mood and needed company. When Mr. Brubaker offered to see her home, she accepted. Then it seemed proper to invite him in for a little while. He accepted. They had a drink or two. And then, of course, he had her.
Some time after that, Jim McHughes appeared on the scene. Ellen no longer had any need of Mr. Brubaker. But she couldn't get rid of him. He was her boss, after all, and he made it quite clear, without actually coming right out and saying it, that if she nixed his bedroom privileges he would nix her job. As simple as that.
Ellen didn't want to lose her job. Not yet. After she married Jim McHughes, she could quit and laugh in Paul F. Brubaker's face, because Jim's paintings were in great demand, and he made buckets of money. But there's many a slip on the way to the altar, and Ellen didn't care to jeopardize her economic security until that ring was actually on her finger. This was a good job. It was hard work and a headache, but it was also damned good pay, better than a hundred fifty a week, or about twice what she'd probably get if she had to find herself a new job at this point. She needed the money. She hadn't been able to save a dime during the years of her marriage to Ray, and now her legal expenses were running high. Divorces don't come cheap.
So when Paul F. Brubaker came over to her desk during the coffee break and said, "Doing anything tonight sweets?" Ellen knew what the answer would have to be.
He arranged to come over to her apartment around half past eight that evening. He didn't say a word about taking her out to dinner. That part of the deal was all in the past. Now that he had her lined up, he didn't care to spend any of his hard-earned money amusing her. She amused him instead. Ellen felt like a concubine, or maybe like a prostitute. But she didn't have any choice. She had to cooperate with Mr. Brubaker-or else.
That punctured her good mood. She felt so depressed the rest of the morning. And she was still feeling that way just before noon, when Jim McHughes called.
"What are the chances of getting to see you tonight?" he wanted to know. "Pretty slim."
"How slim?"
"Too slim," she said. "It's got to be tomorrow, Jim. I'm sorry."
"Who is it tonight, Ellen?"
"Does it matter?"
"Yes."
"Brubaker."
"He still won't let you alone?"
"I explained all that to you, darling," she said. "Listen, after we're married-"
"After we're married, after we're married! And meanwhile you flop for every-"
"Jim!"
"It's true, isn't it?"
Ellen took a deep breath. "There are special circumstances involved, Jim. We've had this discussion a million times, and I can't have it with you over the phone at the office. Will you believe me when I say that as soon as we're married there'll be no such problems? Now be a good boy, and get back to your easel. I'll see you tomorrow night."
"All right," he said bitterly. "Tomorrow night."
She couldn't blame him for getting sore at her. But circumstances were circumstances. Right now she had to go to bed with Mr. Brubaker. And there were other men, too-casual one-nighters that Jim didn't know about, specifically. She couldn't help it. She wanted her freedom for a little while. She wanted to be a bachelor girl. She had hopped into a miserable marriage before she was out of her teens, and with another marriage on the horizon right away, she had to experience some liberty first, even if it made Jim temporarily unhappy.
Tonight's date with Mr. Brubaker didn't represent liberty, though. It represented slavery. But there was no escaping from her servitude.
Glumly, she went through the rest of the day, conscious of what was going to be demanded of her in the evening. She finished her work, had her dinner, and went home to pretty herself up for the arrival of her boss.
As she stripped for her bath, Ellen caught sight of the peeper at his usual station across the courtyard. Good old peeper, she thought. As dependable as the sunrise. You need something dependable in your life; everybody does. She wondered if she'd miss her creepy audience after she married Jim and moved to another apartment.
She peeled away her clothes, giving him a good view. Breasts and thighs, hips and stomach and buttocks-everything. The creep! It seemed as though most of the men in her life were creeps in one way or another. Jim McHughes wasn't. He was normal when it came to sex. But there was Ray Dawson needing to be whipped with a belt, and this goofy peeper across the way ogling her so desperately, and some others too.
Including Mr. Brubaker. He had his kink, all right. That was one of the reasons why Ellen was de pressed about having to submit to him. She didn't enjoy his cockeyed style of lovemaking at all.
Ellen did a few exercises to give the peeper his final thrills for the evening. Her bare breasts jiggled about as she went through her routines. Then she scooted into the bathroom to freshen up for Mr. Brubaker's arrival. It was almost half past eight when she emerged, clean and sweet-smelling, perfumed and scrubbed.
She got into a negligee that she knew she wouldn't be wearing for long. She settled down to wait.
At exactly half past eight, the doorbell rang. Mr. Brubaker was an extremely punctual man.
"Evening, Ellen," he beamed at her. "My, you look lovely tonight!"
She took his hat like an obedient little slave. She took his jacket as he shed it. He walked across the room and pulled the blind shut. Too bad, peepo, Ellen thought. Mr. Brubaker smiled. He unlaced his shoes.
"A hard day today," he muttered "I thought the phone would never stop ringing. I could use a drink, Ellen."
"Bourbon?"
"Of course," he said.
Ellen started to go past him to get the liquor from the sideboard. As she did, he reached out and caught her, slipping his soft-fleshed, meaty hand deftly under her negligee to grasp the smooth, plump cheeks of her bare buttocks. He held her there for a moment, fingertips digging in. Then he released her. His ruddy face grew even more flushed than usual, and she saw the perspiration break out on the dome of his forehead as desires rose within him.
Slob, Ellen thought, keeping her face a tranquil mask as he fondled the flesh of her buttocks. Creepy Pig.
She got the drinks. She poured a stiff one for him and an even stiffer one for herself. Ordinarily she couldn't bring herself to play his little bedroom game unless she got half looped. The booze helped. It loosened her up, allowed her to cooperate.
While he downed the drink, he talked, a steady monologue about what a stupid witch his wife was and how nobody at the office understood him. In his own eyes, Mr. Brubaker was an extremely sensitive, intelligent man who with a little luck could have been a dynamic figure in modern American industry, instead of running a two-bit theatrical booking agency. Ellen didn't bother listening to him as he talked. She just nodded her head now and then at the proper intervals.
His little bloodshot eyes were fastened on her all the time. He stared at the big globes of her breasts, half visible under her negligee. He peered at the molding of her thighs and their golden reflections.
Then he put down his drink. He leered cheerfully at her and stood up.
"Time for fun," he announced, and began to take off his clothes.
Ellen didn't like Mr. Brubaker's kind of fun, because she knew it would hurt. She waited patiently as he undressed: undid his tie, unbuttoned his shirt, stepped out of his trousers, took off his shirt, dropped his imdershorts. He kept his shoes and socks on. He had never taken them off in Ellen's presence. Maybe his feet were deformed, she thought. Or maybe he had this thing about wearing shoes when he made love. Men could be awfully peculiar that way.
She looked at his nakedness. He wasn't terribly pretty. His shoulders were narrow, and his chest was hollow, and then he widened out toward the middle, with a little overhanging pot. His legs were thin as pipe stems. Ellen figured that when he was young he must have been thin and maybe even good looking. But he had thickened around the gut in middle age.
"Come here," he said.
She went to him. He took her negligee by the hem and drew it up, baring thighs and abdomen, stomach and breasts. He pulled it over her head and off. Then he fondled her body, running his clammy hands over her thighs and her buttocks, gripping the firm flesh sensuously.
He cupped her breasts and hefted them in his hands. Despite her inner feelings of revulsion toward him, Ellen felt her nipples starting to grow hard with desire. There was no escaping desire. Even with a man she disliked, a man who disgusted her, her body would respond when the right buttons were pushed. Her body was a traitor.
Brubaker pursed his fingers around the hard little nubs of her nipples. He pressed them, and he squeezed them, making them grow even harder.
Then he said, "You've been a naughty girl, Ellen."
Ellen sighed. Here we go again, the same old nutty quirk again!
"Have I?" she said obediently.
"Terribly naughty. Terribly, terribly naughty. You deserve to be punished, Ellen."
"Punished hard?"
"Punished to fit your naughtiness," he said. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Ellen. Being such a naughty, naughty girl!"
The baby talk made her sick to her stomach. And it was always like this, every time he came here. Brubaker's kink was just the opposite of Ray Dawson's. Ray liked to be whipped, to be hurt. Brubaker liked to do the hurting.
He was a spanker. That was his kick.
He said, "Lie down and take your punishment, Ellen. Right here on my lap. You've got it coming to you, you know, so don't try to wheedle your way out of it."
"Please don't hurt me," she begged, putting on a real act because she knew that that was what he wanted. He liked to feel that he was a real tyrant. "Don't hurt me, please, don't hit me hard!"
Brubaker gave her a Simon Legree laugh. He sat down on the edge of the bed and patted his knees, beckoning to her. Ellen went over. She stretched out across his legs. The bare globes of her breasts hung past his knee. She could feel the pressure of his flesh at the pit of her stomach. Her pink, delectable, nude buttocks were upturned, two tempting mounds of flesh exposed for his eager palm.
"Naughty girl!" he cried, and slapped his hand against her buttocks.
"Naughty, naughty!" He punctuated each word with a slap. The tender flesh of Ellen's buttock? leaped and quivered as his hand struck down. He hit both, cheeks at once, in short, sharp strokes that connected with maximum impact.
Ellen writhed and twisted uncomfortably on his lap. He wasn't just playing a game. He was slapping and spanking seriously, and it hurt. He was giving the ripe globes of nude flesh real punishment.
She gritted her teeth and bit down on her lower lip. The hand descended. Whack! Whack! Tears of pain began to crowd into her eyes. Ellen sniffled a little.
"Naughty girl!" he cried, idiot-like. Whack! Whack!
Her bare buttocks were blazing hot. The pain tingled all through her midsection. She had to fight hard to hold back the tears as he continued to belabor the tender cheeks, turning the milky-flesh an angry red.
And yet there was an erotic effect, too. For her as well as for him. There always was. Ellen wasn't immune to quirks. She couldn't deny that it turned her on to be spanked in this way.
She felt the warmth flooding her body, felt the tide of desire starting to rise.
The potbellied, middle-aged man above her was grunting and gasping, wheezing from the strenuousness of his exertions. But he went on walloping her. Ellen felt oddly like a child again. The last time anybody had spanked her as a serious punishment was when she was thirteen, she remembered. Her father had done it, after she played hookey from school to go to a carnival. She had been bitterly angry at him, because she felt that a girl of thirteen should not have to expose her body to her father that way. But he hadn't paid any attention to her indignant adolescent protests. He had flipped her over his knee and pushed up her skirt and pulled down her panties to lay bare her newly mature, voluptuous young body, and he had whaled away on the pink cheeks of her buttocks until she screamed from near hysteria and her mother had put a stop to it.
That was eleven years ago. Now she was grown up and supposedly beyond such punishments. But here she was, stark naked on the knees of a nude man, who was more than old enough to be her father, and here he was, slamming his hand down again and again on the succulent mounds of her buttocks.
"All right," Brubaker grunted. "Now!"
She got up. He pulled her over on her back, on the bed. His face was flushed beet-red and his eyes were wild, his manhood savagely aroused.
Her thighs moved. She was lathered and hot, and the spanking had turned her on so much that even Brubaker was an acceptable partner at this moment.
His meaty body descended to hers.
He slid into the sizzling, quivering position.
He moved in short jerky motions, and she answered him with countermotions of her hips and pelvis. She locked her legs around his ankles. Her bare-tipped breasts were pushing into his soft, fleshy chest. He drove at her, digging, invading, shaming her and possessing her.
The explosion of his lusts arrived.
And with it was Ellen's own fulfillment, sudden spasms of ecstasy deep within her, and she rocked and quivered beneath him, turning her head away when he tried to kiss her in the affection of his culmination. She lay there with tingling, aching buttocks and throbbing body. While the man above her went on through the first few moments of aftermath, and then he lay still, rolled free of her, and left Ellen lying there nude, alone with her shame and self-contempt.