Chapter 7
Mr. Crispian sat by his window, waiting for the nightly action to begin. So far it was shaping up as a pretty disappointing night. It was past nine o'clock, and he hadn't seen a thing.
After last night, with its views of the blonde girl and the unexpected bonus of seeing those two Lesbian girls making love, the disappointment was particularly keen. Mr. Crispian hopefully scanned his regular round of windows, without any luck.
He had missed out on his blonde tonight. For some reason she had decided to get undressed early. He had been sitting at his window waiting for her, and, sure enough, she appeared and started to peel. But she still had all her underwear on when Mr. Crispian's telephone rang, and he was called away from the window. What a frustrating bit that was! He had been tempted simply to let the telephone ring, on the theory that if it was an important call, and none of them ever were, the caller would try again later. But he didn't have the will power to ignore a telephone call.
So he picked it up, and it turned out to be one of his sisters, living in Philadelphia, calling up for her monthly how's-my-baby-brother call. Mr. Crispian simply couldn't get rid of her. Her husband had left her a lot of money, and telephone expense didn't mean a thing to her.
She talked endlessly. Finally he brought the conversation to a close and hurried back to his window. Too late! The blonde's blinds were drawn! So she had finished with her exercises, and taken her bath, and already was entertaining her nightly company.
Thwarted, Mr. Crispian gnawed at his knuckles. Damn his sister! Damn her! Why couldn't she have called an hour earlier? Why did she have to wait until the precise moment when the blonde started to remove her clothing?
Well, there was nothing he could do about it now. He would just have to sit here and see what else the fortunes of the night would bring him.
Not much, it seemed.
He checked the window of the Lesbians. There was age girl. Dark. Wasn't she ever home? He decided that it had just been blind luck that he had seen her naked that time, anyhow. Probably it would never be repeated.
He check the window of the Lesbians. There was a possibility there. The lights were on, and he could see figures milling around in the apartment. But there were too many figures. Six ... seven ... eight. The dykes were having a party! They were showing off their new apartment. He wasn't likely to catch a glimpse of anything under those circumstances, unless the party turned into an orgy. Most likely, it would be two or three in the morning before the party broke up and the two girls who lived there went to bed. He might see something worthwhile then, but not before.
He checked the window of the fat middle-aged woman. Nothing here either.
A little desperately, Mr. Crispian checked the window of the thirteen-year-old girl he had once spied on. She didn't have much to offer, with her nubbly little breasts and her thin legs, but it was something. Except her light was out.
What am I going to do, thought Mr. Crispian.
He had come to depend on the blonde girl. Night after night, she had provided him with the vicarious thrills that his nature demanded. But tonight, thanks to the ill-timed telephone call from his sister, Mr. Crispian had missed his chance to see her. He was faced with the prospect of an endless evening of boredom.
He sat. He stared.
And then his luck turned.
The light flashed on in the bedroom of the attractive dark-haired teen-ager. She must have just come home from somewhere, for she was wearing a jacket as she entered the room. She took the jacket off and flung it into a far corner.
She's angry, Mr. Crispian thought. Maybe she had a fight with her boy friend.
He waited patiently, his pulse racing. Many weeks had gone by since his one view of her. There was no reason to think she'd let the blind stay open this time, any more than she had any of the other times except that once. But he could go on hoping, at least.
Come on, he thought. Take it off!
She looked really sore about something. She was stomping around the room, picking up things and putting them down. When would she notice that the blind was open, he wondered? Maybe she wouldn't. Maybe His heart soared.
She was taking off her clothes, and the blind was still open!
He strained his eyes to take in every detail. Now she was unbuttoning her blouse, removing it, hurling it into the same corner where she had thrown her. jacket. She was still angry. So angry that she wouldn't remember about the blind? Maybe.
She was wearing a yellow brassiere. Take it off, he urged silently. Let me see some boob-flesh, at least. But she didn't remove it, not yet. She unzipped her slacks instead and flung them after the other things.
Mr. Crispian's keen memory supplied the image of her nakedness from that other time. The lean, tawny, young body, the firm jutting breasts, the solid mounds of her buttocks. A healthy fifteen-or sixteen-year-old animal, in the full pantherish grace of her girlhood.
He wanted to see that body again. All of it. She was down to her panties and bra now. She picked up a hairbrush from the dresser and began to tug it in vigorous, angry strokes through her thick, lustrous dark hair. Mr. Crispian let out his breath in disappointment. No, he thought. First take off everything. Then start brushing your hair.
As though in direct answer to Mr. Crispian's thought, the girl slammed the hairbrush down after perhaps half a dozen strokes. Then her hands went behind her back to unclasp the hooks of her brassiere.
Ah, yes, he thought. That's what I've been waiting to see! At last! At last!
The brassiere came away.
The firm cones of her ripe young breasts tumbled into view.
Once again, Mr. Crispian could see them two ways at once. He had the profile view of the steeply out-thrust mounds, and he could also see them head-on reflected in the mirror, twin globes tipped with delectable little nipples.
She took the panties off, too. Crumpled them into a ball, flung them hard. She was steaming mad, obviously.
And now she was nude.
There was a dry coppery taste of yearning in Mr. Crispian's mouth as he stared. His beady eyes flickered from side to side, taking in the view of those succulent taut-fleshed bare buttocks, the haunches and flanks, the flat young stomach, the ebony shadows of delight.
Just a child, he thought. Fifteen years old, sixteen. Still a virgin, maybe. Beautiful! Beautiful!
Now the girl had picked up the hairbrush again. She was pulling it through her hair, taking out on those dark tresses all the resentment that for some unknown reason was boiling through her system. She gave her hair at least a hundred strokes before putting the brush down.
What now, Mr. Crispian wondered? Time for sleep?
No. She still stood by the mirror. Her hands were on her breasts, now. She was cupping them, hiding them from Mr. Crispian's view, but what she was doing was as exciting as being able to see her breasts. She was squeezing them, playing with them, stirring herself up. The sharp eyes of the watchful peeper saw her face in the mirror, and it seemed to him that her eyes were narrow with lust, that her full lips were thrust out in a pout of desire.
She writhed in front of her mirror. She rubbed her thighs together, wriggled voluptuously, fondled her breasts, made the dark rigid nipples stick out between her fingers. It was one of the most overpoweringly erotic solo performances Mr. Crispian had ever witnessed. The girl seemed to radiate sensuality and desire.
He pushed his face forward, throwing caution to the winds. This was too good to miss. Instead of peeping between two slats of his blinds, he stuck his head in front of the blinds for an unobstructed view.
The girl continued her self-adoring writhing before the mirror. Stroking her breasts, letting her hand steal down her flat stomach to the curved alabaster of her thighs.
Mr. Crispian began to revise some of his thoughts about her. Maybe she wasn't a virgin after all. Maybe she was one of the passionate, swinging girls of today, who start to make love at thirteen or fourteen. He could even imagine what she was angry about. Suppose she had been out with her boy friend, in a parked car somewhere, and she had asked him to make love to her. And he said no. Maybe he was inexperienced or afraid. So she angrily told him to take her home if he didn't have the guts to love her as she wanted.
And she came into her apartment still hopping mad and full of desires. Her parents didn't seem to be home; all the other lights in the apartment were dark. Furious, sizzling with frustration and anger, she stripped off her clothes, not even bothering to draw the blinds. And she began to play with herself, to ease the burning need within her.
It seemed plausible to Mr. Crispian. The peeper stared intently. The girl continued to gyrate and twist before her mirror. He imagined her gasping, breathing hard, throbbing with sensuality.
Then came catastrophe.
The girl turned away from her mirror, suddenly, unexpectedly. She looked at the window, as though noticing for the first time that the blinds were open. She didn't hurry to draw them, though.
She looked out across the courtyard.
And she saw Mr. Crispian.
He was trapped, in full view, his whole head in the window. He froze, not knowing what to do. If he ducked away quickly, he might attract her attention. He couldn't be absolutely sure that she was really looking at his window, after all. Maybe she was just staring vacantly into space. But he had to be careful. So far he had avoided all legal troubles while a peeper.
But he knew how embarrassing it could be if somebody filed a complaint against him.
The girl did see him, though. Not only that. Standing there brazenly naked in the window, her youthful body on display right down to her thighs, she smiled at him.
She winked.
She waved!
Mr. Crispian threw caution to the winds. He broke his freeze and got out of the window in a hurry. Dropping to his knees, he crawled quickly across the floor as though he were under sniper fire. When he reached the doorway he stuck a hand up and snapped off the hall switch, so that his entire apartment was dark, and not just the room in which he had been doing his peeping.
Then he crouched there in the darkness, shivering with terror, his heart pounding fearfully.
She had seen him. The smile, the wink, the wave-those were her mocking, jeering ways of letting him know that she knew what he was up to. He wasn't fooling her. She knew he was a peeper.
Right now, he imagined, she was calling the police. Filing a complaint. And soon The knock at the door. The police wagon downstairs. The arrest, the shame, the punishment.
Up till now, Mr. Crispian had remained detached, remote, like an observer on another world watching these courtyard people through a remote television pickup. You don't expect a person on a television screen to wave and wink at you. He had never had any contact with his victims while he was violating their privacy. But now-now, everything was different.
He found the strength to rise from the floor. He was trembling all over. What am I going to do now, he wondered? He debated leaving the apartment, trying to go out and establish an alibi for himself. He could tell the police that he had been in the corner saloon all evening. The girl couldn't prove that he had been peeping, could she? She didn't have a photograph. If he denied it, it was his word against hers, and what could they do to him.
He felt a little better at that.
Cautiously, Mr. Crispian edged toward a window, not the same one that he normally did his peeping from. He dared to take a squint across the courtyard, just a quick one.
The girl's light was out.
What did that mean? What was she up to?
He pulled away from the window and walked around his apartment like a nervous sparrow. Like a physical blow, the memory of that wave and that wink reverberated in his stunned brain; the first hint from the other side of the courtyard that anybody really saw him.
And now he would The doorbell rang.
Mr. Crispian almost had a heart attack. He reeled dizzily, clung to his balance, felt his skin starting to crawl. The police!
The police were here already!
Stay calm, he told himself. Don't answer. Don't even breathe. All your lights are out. They won't break in. Will they? Maybe they'll just go away.
The doorbell rang a second time, louder, more insistently.
Go away, Mr. Crispian prayed! Go away, please!
A voice said, "Come on, open up. You're not fooling anybody, you know."
It was a girl's voice!
Mr. Crispian still did not move.
"I know you're in there," she went on. "You didn't have time to go anywhere. I saw you peeping at me. Come on, let me in or I'll make trouble for you."
"I-I don't know what you're talking about," Mr. Crispian heard his own voice replying.
"Sure you do, mister. Open up. Open up or I'll start to scream bloody murder. If you do the smart thing, you'll let me in. You won't regret it if you do."
Mr. Crispian was almost paralyzed with fear. He could not think straight. He didn't want to open the door, but he didn't want the girl to start screaming either.
He forced himself to be calm. Open the door, he told himself. Act innocent. Deny everything. What can she do to prove it if you deny everything?
"I'm coming," he said.
He unlocked and unchained the door and opened it. The girl stood in the hall, grinning impudently at him. She was alone. She was wearing a tan trench coat, belted tight at the middle and buttoned all the way up, and her glossy black hair hung almost to her shoulders.
She was the one, all right. The one he had been peeping at just a few minutes ago, the one whose nude body he had ogled so breathlessly. She was very young, Mr. Crispian saw. Sixteen at most. Snub nose, full lips, dark, alert, shining eyes. A good-looking girl.
She stepped into the apartment.
"Hi," she said. "You're older than I thought you were. You're almost an old man. I should have known that a window peeper would be old."
"What do you want?" Mr. Crispian asked in a thick, tension-choked voice.
"Fun," she said. She giggled. "I'm Kathryn. Who are you, you old lech?"
Mr. Crispian moistened his lips. "Please-please, just go away."
She didn't go away. She took a step toward him and said, "Listen, I want some fun, you hear what I'm telling you? I saw you peeping at me. I've seen you sitting there all year, staring across the courtyard. You aren't kidding anybody, mister. Well, I've got news for you. There's something in life a whole lot better than window peeping. And I came over here to show you."
"No, look here-"
"You look here," she said.
She swept her trench coat off.
She wasn't wearing a stitch of clothing. That was how she had crossed the courtyard so fast. She had simply put the trench coat on over her bare body and come over.
Mr. Crispian stared in shock at her incandescently nude body, so unexpectedly revealed. It was one thing to peep at her with the safe distance of the courtyard between them. It was another thing entirely to have her standing here, stripped to the buff, a couple of yards away.
Waves of dizziness swept over him. His knees seemed to turn to water, and he fought to keep from toppling.
Her nipples were little buttons of lust. Her nude breasts were round, high and deep-set, close together, two melons of tawny, firm flesh. Her thighs, parted slightly, were smooth columns of desire. She turned on a slight angle, showing him the succulent globes of her buttocks. She seemed utterly shameless as she displayed her unclad body to him, flaunting it wantonly, almost shoving herself into his eyes.
She said huskily, "I had a date tonight, and my boy friend chickened out on me. He didn't give me what I wanted. Okay. You give it to me. Serve a purpose in the world. Give instead of taking, for once in your life."
Mr. Crispian's lips moved, but for a moment no sound came out. He could not take his eyes from the gleaming globes of those spectacular breasts.
He was pleased, in a way, despite his shock, to know that his guess had been right, that she had come home angry because she hadn't had what she craved. She was a wanton little minx, a tramp at fifteen. But she had invaded the sanctuary of his apartment, and that terrified him. Mr. Crispian wanted her to take her breasts, thighs, taut-fleshed buttocks and her shameless body, and get herself out of here as fast as she could.
But she sidled toward him.
"Come on," she purred. "Give in to me, mister. I'll do you some good. I'll make you feel young again.
What's the matter, you just good for looking? You don't like to do? Don't be a kook. I'm good. You may think I'm just a kid, but I've had plenty of experience; I'm real good. Try me and see. Just try me."
Mr. Crispian found words. "I-I don't want to. Go away."
"Take a feel," she said. "Nothing but the best here, all real genuine Kathryn, no imitations, no padding. Here. Here, cop a feel, peeper."
She seized his hand. She drew it up and clamped it over one of her breasts. Mr. Crispian gasped. He could not remember how long it had been since he had last held a woman's bare breast in his hand. And certainly he had not held many breasts like this one. It was firm and taut, almost hard, though the surface was soft as satin. It stood up high and proud, a girlish breast, though not girlish in size, just in texture and firmness. The nipple was like a hot little rock against the palm of Mr. Crispian's hand.
She slid her naked body closer to him. She was purring and crooning a whispered little song of desire to him. Her hand reached down, found the front of Mr. Crispian's trousers, began to move in a stimulating massage of sinful delegability.
"There you go," she said. "See? See how good that feels? Now all we've got to do is lie down, and you can get on top of me ... "
"No," Mr. Crispian said.
"No? What's the matter with you? Yon just Eke to sit there and watch?" She rubbed her thighs against him. The nearness of her naked body was almost overpowering to Mr. Crispian. The musky woman-smell of her in his nostrils was driving him wild.
How could he tell her that he was afraid?
Afraid of passion, afraid of sex, afraid of all real human contacts? Afraid to join his body to hers. Afraid to take a chance, to drive himself to the passion of ecstasy.
This hotshot teen-ager terrified him. She was like a hurricane passing through his quiet world. He had to get rid of her, he thought feverishly, before he destroyed him.
Mr. Crispian ignored her sinuous, twisting, sidling postures of provocation. He brought his other hand up and clamped it over her other breast. Now he held both smooth, firm, taut globes of youthful flesh in his hands.
Kathryn smiled. "That's it," she said. "You're getting the idea now!"
Mr. Crispian dug his fingertips into the twin mounds. Her breasts were so large that his small-fingered hands could not even begin to cup their entireties. Even so, he got a good grip on them.
He stood there for a moment, his eyes half closed, holding the girl's bare breasts, digging the tips of his fingers into the resilient flesh. His breathing was harsh and ragged, and he felt the unaccustomed drumbeat of desire within himself. But he was not going to give in. The force of lifelong habit was too strong.
He pushed.
He put all his strength together and heaved the girl away from him. Mr. Crispian didn't have much strength to muster, but it was enough, and he caught the nude girl off guard. Her naked body staggered backward.
Then she fell. She landed heavily, solidly, on the firm cheeks of her bare buttocks. She lay there a moment, seemingly stunned. Her legs were spread, and her breasts were heaving wildly.
Mr. Crispian picked up her trench coat and threw it at her. "Get out!" he cried frantically. "Get yourself out of here! Out! Out!"
"GodI" she said. "What a kook!"
"Out!"
She picked herself up. She rubbed the soft globes of her buttocks. Then, shaking her head, she slipped the trench coat on and went out of Mr. Crispian's apartment, slamming the door behind her.
Mr. Crispian, alone again, stood dumbly in the middle of the room. Then, like a man who has had a stroke, he sagged to the floor and huddled there. His body was drenched with perspiration. The image of the nude girl blazed like an atomic flash in his mind.
She was so beautiful, he thought.
I could have had her ... I could have had her....
He looked at his hands. They felt red-hot, where he had grasped her bare breasts. He could still feel the texture of those twin globes of delight, could still feel the way they had given in his hands as he used them as levers to push her backward.
I could have had her ... but I was afraid.
Hot tears flooded down his face. Mr. Crispian put his hands over his eyes and huddled miserably on the floor, sobbing convulsively, his thin frame shaking as the sobs racked and tormented him.
He had never despised himself so much as right at this moment.
Kathryn stood in the hall outside Mr. Crispian's door, shaking her head in astonishment and disbelief.
She had never expected that to happen. Not in a million years. But the world was kookier than she realized. At the age of sixteen, Kathryn had discovered a good deal about life, but she was only starting now to find out how much craziness revolves around the world of sex.
It was hard to imagine, though. She had walked into his apartment, thrown off her trench coat to stand naked in front of him-and he had refused her! He had put his hands on her breasts, taken a good feel for himself and then had pushed her on her bottom!
What a creep, she thought. Her buttocks ached from the fall she had taken. But that ache would go away in a few minutes, she knew. There was a much deeper ache within her, and it would remain with her unless she took some steps to satisfy it right away.
Kathryn was a hungry girl. And what she hungered for was a man.
She had discovered men two years ago, just after she had turned fourteen. Before that, she knew only that sex was something for grownups, something that she wouldn't be able to appreciate until she was much older. Kathryn's first experiments with sex had shown her right away that the grownups were lying, as usual. You didn't have to be over twenty-one to enjoy sex. Sex was the greatest kick in the world, and the only reason the grownups kept it to themselves was because they were cruel and selfish, and had been denied it themselves when they were young. They got even by denying it to the next generation along.
Kathryn was wild about loving.
Kathryn was wild in general, as a matter-of-fact.
At sixteen, she had been loved by almost twenty different fellows, some of them having had her many times. That was the track record for promiscuity among her set of girl friends at high school. She loved it. She couldn't get enough. She liked it every way she knew. She went in for some of the fancy sidelines, too, although she insisted that they all had to lead to the main event.
She didn't think her parents knew what she was up to. They didn't pay much attention to her. All they were interested in was that she got good marks in school, so she could get into a decent college. And Kathryn got good marks. She was up near the top of her class. That made them happy. In another two years, she would go away to some out-of-town college, maybe Radcliffe or Wellesley or one of those, and she would ball her way through the whole Ivy League.
But that was two years from now. Kathryn's immediate problem was getting some action tonight.
She had gone out with a guy named Freddy tonight, a senior at school. It was their first time out. Kathryn was under no illusions about the sort of reputation she had at school, and she knew that when a guy made a point of arranging a date with her, he was interested in getting made. That was okay with her. She was interested in getting made, too.
So she figured Freddy was hot for her lily-white body, and she figured correctly.
The only thing she hadn't figured was that Freddy, at the age of eighteen-minus-three-months, was a virgin. A scared virgin at that. He didn't like being a virgin, which was why he had made a date with Kathryn. "She's a nympho," somebody had told him. "You're certain to score. You don't even have to work at it. Just grab her boobs, and she'll attack you."
This was going to be the big night of Freddy's life. But Freddy goofed.
They went bowling. Kathryn was a fair bowler, and racked up two games with a 145 and a 139. But Freddy, who was big and athletic-looking and well coordinated, bowled a woeful 81 his first game, and dropped to a 72 the next round. That should have been a tip off to Kathryn: Freddy was scared witless.
They got into his car. They drove to a lover's lane at the edge of Federal Park, near the rhododendron garden. That was a traditional place for making out, and even the police had a kind of gentleman's agreement not to come snooping around there.
They parked. They got into the back seat and started fooling around. Freddy unhooked her bra. Freddy fondled her bare breasts. Kathryn's nipples were standing up straight and tall. Kathryn was nice and warm as usual. She figured the evening would end in the appropriate way.
But Freddy went on massaging her boobs, and on and on.
He didn't make any move to get below the belt. Kathryn got impatient. Kathryn reached out and started to unzip his trousers. "D-don't," he said. "Huh?"
"It isn't right."
"What isn't?"
"Putting your hand there," he said. He took his own hands away from her breasts. Kathryn looked at him and realized he was shivering.
"What's going on?" she asked. "You sick or something?" , "I think we ought to go home."
"It's still early."
"I-that is--well, it's the middle of the week. We've got school tomorrow."
"We've got lots of time. Time for a little fun."
"Kathryn, I don't want to."
"You what?"
"I don't want to. I mean, we shouldn't get carried away. A girl has to think about her self-respect. We shouldn't do anything we'd regret later."
"The only thing I'd regret is not making it," she said. Her breasts were swollen, her nipples were hard. "What kind of character are you? You get a girl all heated up, and then you say let's go home?"
That was when he blurted the whole thing out, in a flow of miserable words; how he was a virgin and had dated her because he had heard she was wild, but now that he was down to the crucial moment he was scared; he didn't want to do this after all, and could they please go home?
Kathryn blew sky high.
She called him a pansy and a fink and a lot of worse things. She roasted his ears for a while. The idea that a six-foot-two hunk of virile-looking man would chicken out so totally and ignominiously on a date of this sort was incredible to her. She really ripped into him. By the time she was finished, he was so demolished that he couldn't even drive the car. He gave her the keys, and she drove home while he curled up in a dark cloud of shame as far from her as he could get. , She was still in a cold fury when she got home. Her parents were out. Kathryn stripped off her clothes and took out some of her anger with her hairbrush.
As she thought it over, she realized that maybe she had goofed a little. If she had been tender and sympathetic to Freddy instead of chewing him out, she would probably have overcome his inhibitions and ended the evening with some boffing after all. But to hell with that. She wasn't going to be a nursemaid. Even if she had managed to get him, it would have been lousy anyway, wham, bam, and all over with before she felt a thing.
Naked before her mirror, she rubbed her aching, lust-tainted body, cupped her breasts, sizzled in frustration, rubbing her heated thighs together. Then she noticed the fact that she had forgotten, in her anger, to close the blinds. And she remembered about the peeper.
She had seen him before, sitting by his window, squinting out at the other side of the building. Kathryn knew what he was up to. She usually drew her blinds to keep him from getting a free show at her expense.
But now a mischievous idea came into her head. She was much in need of loving. And there sat this lonely kook on the other side of the courtyard. Why not go over there? Why not get from him what Freddy had been too chicken to give her? It might be fun.
Kathryn was willing to try anything once.
She didn't bother to get dressed again. She just got her raincoat out of the closet and put it on over her naked body. It was funny feeling to walk through the courtyard wearing practically nothing. The trench coat rubbed against her sensitive, throbbing nipples, too. But soon she was on the other side of the courtyard.
It wasn't hard for Kathryn to find the peeper's apartment. She had lived in this building since she was a baby, and she knew which windows belonged to which apartments. He was in the C line of apartments, and all she had to do was count to his floor and ring his bell.
He was older and kookier than she had figured him to be, a dried-out-looking little man in his fifties. But Kathryn was so steamed up by her need that she didn't let that stop her. Since she had bothered to come across and hunt him out, she would give herself to him anyway.
Only he didn't want her. That was the crazy thing. He looked scared half out of his wits, and he grabbed a feel, but then he shoved her over and told her to clear out. Kathryn had been so afraid that the little creep would go into wild hysterics that she left.
Now, as she made her way downstairs again, she was in a worse fix than ever.
Twice tonight she had been turned down by nervous imitiations of men. Two different sets of hands had fondled her bare breasts. She had shown her naked body to a stranger, given him a good look at everything she had, and the best he could think of doing was knocking her to the floor.
Now she had to have a loving. She'd go wild if she didn't. Two frustrations within two hours had left every nerve in Kathryn's youthful, passionately voluptuous body throbbing in wild yearning.
Where to go, though?
Ring doorbells and say, "Excuse me, but I'm loving my way through the building, and I was wondering if you'd like to take a tumble or two?"
Kathryn saw her answer. She wouldn't have to do anything as wild as that.
All she had to do was go to the superintendent.
The super was a young Cuban refugee, about twenty-eight or so, who had been working in the building for the past year and a half. He was sexy in a Latin way, very dark very sleek, very graceful.
He had flirted with Kathryn many times, with winks and grins and an occasional soft phrase in Spanish. He had never actually made a pass, though. He was smarter than that. It was worth his job to make overtures to the nubile young daughters of tenants, and he knew that jobs weren't so easy to find when you were a Cuban refugee.
Kathryn had a pretty good idea that he could be made, though. She would flip her wig entirely if he turned her down too. But she doubted that he would. He had the hots for her. And he was probably in a state of mind where he wouldn't object to a nice easy conquest. He had a wife, a skinny, worn-out little girl who looked twice her real age because she had had four children in five years. Right now she was pregnant again, blown up like a balloon, and Kathryn was willing to bet that with his wife in the eighth or ninth month the Cuban hadn't had any action for six weeks or more.
He'd be ready and eager.
She went down to the basement and rang his doorbell.
Then she waited. It was past ten o'clock at night, and the super didn't often get called to the door at that hour. Moments passed. She heard babies crying and the sound of a radio blaring in Spanish. She debated ringing the bell again.
Then the door opened. The super stood there, a slim, shiny-haired man who managed to look dapper even when, as now, all he was wearing was an undershirt and a pair of soiled khaki slacks.
"Yes?" he said. "Is something wrong?"
"Hello, Juan. I need you to do something for me."
Be frowned. "It's pretty late-"
"Take a look," Kathryn said, and opened the front of her trench coat. She gave him a good view, a clear glimpse of her high, swelling young breasts, her flat stomach, the firm thighs and dark allure. Then she closed the trench coat again. "Let's go somewhere private."
Juan looked dazed. The brief view of her nudity had been so unexpected that it stunned him. He started to speak, but the words came out in Spanish, and he had to change gears and start all over again.
"Do I understand what you want?" he asked.
"It isn't hard to figure it out. Come on, Juan. I'm lonely. You're supposed to fix all the tenants, troubles. So fix mine."
He shook his head in disbelief, then grinned at her Turning, he shouted a couple of sentences into his apartment, to his wife, who was not in sight. He spoke in Spanish. Though he spoke quickly, Kathryn had had enough Spanish in high school to get the drift of what he was saying. He was telling her that one of the tenants needed some emergency work done, and he would be back in a little while.
Kathryn smiled. It wasn't really a lie.
The superintendent stepped out into the hall with her and shut the door.
"This is not a joke?" he asked.
"This is not a joke."
"Will you get me in trouble for it?"
"Listen," she said, "don't ask a lot of stupid questions. I want you, and you want me. That's all there is to it. I'm not up to anything. Will you give me what I want, or do I need to go looking for a man?"
A muscle rippled in his cheek. "Come with me," he said.
Kathryn followed him through the dark, winding labyrinth of the basement. He produced a chain of keys and opened a door. They went into a musty-smelling storage room. The superintendent switched on the light. There were old bicycles and steamer trunks piled up everywhere.
There was also a mattress.
"Wait," he said. "I fix."
He found a tennis racket that somebody had stored down there and pounded it against the mattress. Clouds of dust rose and drifted toward the ceiling.
He went on pounding until the mattress was reasonably clean and almost all the dust was circulating in the air.
"Give me the coat," he said to her.
Unabashed, Kathryn slipped out of the trench coat and stood there in complete nudity, her jutting breasts rising and falling rapidly in sensual agitation. But the slim Cuban paid little attention to her bod ' at the moment. He seized her trench coat by the shoulders and waved it in the air, blowing the drifting dust away into the far corners of the room.
Then he spread the coat out over the mattress, covering it almost entirely. Finally he turned to Kathryn. His eyes sparkled with desire. He reached for her; she rushed to him, and his hands closed on her pulsating, throbbing breasts, and her body writhed against his.
She could feel the musculature of him through the soiled clothes he was wearing. Excitement coursed in her veins. He would not disappoint her, she knew. This long evening of frustration would have a happy ending.
His mouth covered hers. He kissed her ardently, passionately, the kiss of a man who has not been near his lazy, pregnant wife in many weeks, and who is seething with inner hungers. His hands groped at her breasts, her buttocks. His breath was not against her cheeks.
Then he let go of her. He stepped back. Without a word, he began to strip.
His naked body was everything that Kathryn expected it to be. He was lean and hard, impressively male. His hips were narrow and his chest was deep. There was practically no hair on him, and his Latin skin was gleaming brightly with perspiration.
He pointed to the mattress.
"Lie down," he said.
She sprawled out, back and buttocks against her trench coat, breasts and knees upturned to him. He knelt above her. Almost reverently, he put his hands on her breasts, gripped them a moment, then drew his fingers down the front of her body until they came to the warm, palpitating flesh of her yearning thighs.
He touched her. Then he put his lips to her.
He didn't stay there long. It seemed to Kathryn that he was not accustomed to that sort of lovemaking, and that he was doing it simply because he believed that an American girl would like it.
This particular American girl liked it very much. She tossed her thighs, closed her eyes and lay back, enjoying his intimate caress.
Then, slowly, his body slid down to cover hers. She felt him becoming insistent. She was wild and eager, and she thrust upward, capturing him. With a little sigh, he drove himself to her.
At last! Kathryn thought.
It had been a long, long evening. But now she was at the end of the rainbow, the pot of gold.
She moved beneath him, putting all the agility and energy of her youthful body into her thrusts. He met her with answering thrusts of power and poise. He was like a coiled spring, tensed, ready to unwind in a shimmering flash.
Most of the boys that Kathryn had been to bed with in her two-year career of infamy had been high school kids, sixteen, seventeen years old. They were enthusiastic and energetic, but they didn't really know much about the fine points of love, and their idea of lovemaking was to get aboard and thrash away clumsily for a few minutes. Usually they reached the finale pretty fast, though most of the time Kathryn had been able to get some satisfaction, anyway.
Only a couple of her sleeping partners had been what could be called experienced men: a college junior who had been around some, and another fellow who was in his early twenties. But now, in the arms of the Cuban, Juan, Kathryn discovered that she had never really tasted the ultimate joys of the body before. All her other lovers had been clumsy buffoons. This one was a man.
He had finesse.. He had inner confidence. He had a full ration of virility.
He slammed her, eased off, slammed again. His lean body was tight against hers. She felt the smoothness of the skin of his practically hairless chest against the deep bowls of her breasts. Her hard nipples dug into him. Her heels latched onto his calves. Her hips vibrated as she thrust against his virile assaults.
There was a burning sensation within her, ecstasy breaking loose, a conflagration of passion.
Kathryn felt the thrashing of his fullfillment.
In answer came the powerful spasms of her own.
As she writhed, naked, gasping and ecstatic on the musty mattress in the dusty cellar storage room, with the Cuban's hard, muscular body pressing down against her, Kathryn felt sizzling, incredible sensations of completion rocket through her. It had been worth the wait, she thought. Worth having to put up with Freddy and that other creep tonight. Because if they hadn't turned her down, she would never have experienced this, and this was an experience that she was never going to forget.