Chapter 3
The Rombaugh Fruit Company was the largest fruit brokerage, packing and processing firm in the area. In addition to purchasing apples, prunes and other crops from orchards for packing and resale to distributors in California and the East, the company operated a cannery and bottling plant for apple sauce and juice.
Its rambling structures lined two spur tracks of the Union Pacific and comprised the largest single enterprise in the Fruitvale area. Quite a few persons were employed in the plant, storage rooms, and on the shipping docks, their numbers fluctuating with the seasons. But the office force comprised only ten, all of whom were employed on a year-round basis.
The company was owned and operated by Louis Rombaugh, who had inherited it from his father and had nearly doubled its scope and volume of operation in the last thirteen years. A man of huge physique, he was known throughout much of Southwestern Idaho as "Big Lou."
The company's office was located at the front of the old original structure a two-story, yellow, frame barn which housed packing and box-storage rooms. Jill arrived there at ten minutes past nine in the morning and opened the heavy, glass-paneled door.
She had chosen the same skimpy print dress she had worn during the second part of her bus ride the day before. Most of her clothes had been purchased by her mother or under her mother's watchful eye, and they were drab, shapeless nothings. Jill had been forced to pack them because she had little else. But she certainly didn't want to wear an outfit like one of those on her very first day at the office.
She stepped into the large room which was divided by an old-fashioned wood fence. In front of the fence there was one desk, and this was occupied by a thin-faced woman of forty. Opposite this desk, along the front wall between the windows, were several plain wooden armchairs. On the other side of the fence, desks were arranged in a double room, with two private offices enclosed by partial partitions at the side. Filing cabinets and office machines were arranged at the rear, and there was what looked like a storeroom or supply room behind that. There were high-arched windows on two sides and, on the inner wall, a large map of the United States on which many interconnecting lines were marked in red. Jill assumed these were rail routes, since the map bore a railroad's name and insignia.
She glanced past the woman at the front desk and studied the persons who occupied the double row of desks behind the wood fence. There was about an equal division of men and women. Jill noticed particularly a young man at one of the front desks. He looked good to her and she smiled. It took him a moment to recover from the happy surprise of her spontaneous friendliness and to smile back.
"May I help you?" the thin-faced receptionist asked.
"I hope so," Jill replied sweetly (She had a sweet manner with both men and women, having learned early in life that sweetness brought approval.) "I'm Jill Marshall from Portland. I believe Mr. Rombaugh is expecting me."
"Is he?" The receptionist obviously was trying to figure out who this pretty young caller was and what she wanted ... or what Big Lou wanted of her.
"I'm his niece," Jill smiled in response to her unspoken question, rather than to the spoken one.
The other woman smiled then. Her face apparently was not too used to the exercise. "Oh, yes. Mr. Rombaugh said you would be coming to work here. Welcome to the company, Miss Marshall."
"Jill, please. And thank you."
"If you'll just wait a moment, I'll see if yoor uncle is free."
She left Jill standing beside the front desk and pushed the swinging gate in the wood fence. She turned into the first partitioned office on her right.
Jill looked around, her face expressing happy innocence while her body spoke to the male members of the office force in another language altogether. The young man at the front desk, whom Jill had smiled at before, was staring at her. Oh, he's getting ideas, Jill thought. He's just wild to love me, he is!
"Jill! Honey!" The big man in shirtsleeves who bounded out of the partitioned office and now stood on the other side of the fence, surveying Jill with evident pride and pleasure, was fifty years old, had a head proportionate in size with the rest of his body, and a bushy shock of iron-gray hair. His blue-striped shirtsleeves were turned back to the elbows, his tie and collar were loose, and the protrusion of his large stomach had caused the rim of his trousers to curl down over his belt.
His face was fleshy, a little red, and very genial-looking. He was, quite obviously, a man who liked people, and whom people liked.
He swung the wooden gate open. "Why the dickens didn't you call me, the way you said you were going to?"
Jill was smiling. "I didn't want to be a bother," she said. "Anyway, I can take care of myself. I got off the bus at about ten last night and got a room at the hotel."
Responding to the gesture of Big Lou's outstretched arm, Jill walked past him and through the doorway into his private office. Though she was his niece and just a kid, Big Lou couldn't help but look at her bottom, which twisted a soft and perfectly-contoured invitation from beneath the thin, snug-fitting dress. He had noticed her breasts, also, then he thought about the problem he was going to have keeping both the packing house and office males away from her.
Jack Able, the young man at the front desk, turned back to his work as soon as Jill had disappeared into her uncle's office with Big Lou following behind. But Jack didn't return his thoughts to the work right away.
He had studied Jill's bottom, too. He had noted the pliant twist of the matched curves, restrained only lightly by her thin dress of polished cotton and whatever skimpy garment she wore beneath.
He had also studied her breasts as she passed. They had quivered and jiggled ever so slightly as her heels came into contact with the hard floor. She was all live action! Wow!
"Did you see what I saw?"
Jack turned to Tom Colby, a co-worker who had moved up beside him and whispered, so that the females around them wouldn't hear.
"I saw," Jack said.
"Eat your heart out, boy. She's the old man's niece."
"I heard," Jack responded laconically. "Isn't that the way?" Tom Colby asked rhetorically. "The best is always out of bounds for some lousy reason or another."
"She'd be out of bounds to you, anyway," Jack said. "You're married."
"Why'd you have to bring that up?" Tom grumbled good-naturedly and headed back to his desk.
Jack stared down at the papers in front of him, but he continued to see the image of Jill's twisting bottom. And her quivering breasts. And her bottom again. She was great coming and going, and there weren't many of that kind around.
Jack Able was twenty-three, single, and had worked for the Rombaugh Company for a little over a year. He'd been placed by an agency in Boise. As far as he was concerned, the job was just a paycheck and Fruitvale was only a place to cool his heels until the urge struck him to move on. He was slim, clean-cut, a little taller than average, with brown hair neatly combed and parted. His face was serious but pleasant, with brown eyes which were inquisitive and lips full enough to suggest an appreciation for sensual pleasure.
The old man's niece, he thought. That would stop a lot of guys. Jack wasn't at all sure that he would be stopped particularly if she kept smiling at him as she had. She certainly looked like a responsive type. And she was of age, he judged, though probably not by more than a year.
He continued to think of her for quite a while as he fingered the papers in front of him. He glanced at Marjorie Steck, at the front desk, and guessed that Marjorie was still thinking about her, too. Marjorie hated every good-looking female in town. Now she had another one to add to her list. This one would head the list, most likely.
Jack smiled to himself. One of these days, before he left the company, he would take old Marjorie out and show her some loving. He'd give her a tussle that would knock some of the meanness out of her.
But he wasn't going to think about Marjorie now. No, indeed. He had something far finer to train his sights on.
Big Lou dropped his bulk into the leather chair behind his desk and looked at his niece's crossed knees. Danged short skirt! he thought. A man can see nearly all she's got. I'll have to do something about getting her to wear more modest clothes than that.
"Well!" he beamed. "So you're Sarah's little girl! My, the time sure flies! Last time I saw you, you were ... let's see ... musta been about eleven or twelve, weren't you?"
"Thirteen. Uncle Lou."
The aliveness of her eyes disturbed him and he looked down. "You were just a gangly kid, anyway. Now look at you a woman!"
Jill laughed. "You look the same, Uncle Lou big and handsome. I'll bet you're a lot like Daddy was."
Lou became serious. "You don't remember your dad at all, do you?" . She shook her head.
"You were let's see three years old when he passed on, I guess."
"I've always missed him. But Mother's done everything in the world for me."
"Your Mom loves you a lot."
"I know that, Uncle Lou."
"Well!" He slapped a thick hand against the desk. "Time you were getting started. First off, I wanta introduce you to all the folks here. Then ... hey, I've gotta find you a better place to live. That hotel's no good for a young lady."
"I like the hotel, Uncle Lou." She smiled as she said this, but there was a glint of determination in her brown eyes. "I want to stay there."
Big Lou blinked at her. "Well, all right, Jill. If that's what you wanta do. But there are a lot of nicer places. I still wish you'd think over my invitation when we first started talking about you coming to work here Fanny and I would like to have you move in with us."
"Thanks, Uncle Lou. But I told you I want to feel as if I'm really on my own. That's the whole idea of leaving home this summer."
"Okay, honey!" He gave her a broad grin. "Whatever's gonna make you happy. That's the way I want things to be. But I'm gonna keep an eye on you just the same. I promised your Mom I'd do that. Now ... " He placed his broad beefy hand against her bare arm, just below the shoulder. "Let's meet the folks."
Jill's job was that of stenographer-clerk, which would give her an opportunity to use her shorthand and typing, as well as provide her with some needed experience in filing and operating business machines. This was really a "make-work" job, in that no one had recently quit the Rombaugh office and Big Lou hadn't, of course, discharged anyone. The company's business was steadily growing, but at a modest rate which did not at the moment require the hiring of additional office personnel. Lou found a job for Jill at his sister's request. As for the money, this didn't amount to too much and was, he felt, the least he could do. He had helped Sarah out financially from time to time in the past.
Jill's first day was not very different from the first day of any new addition to an office staff. The time was spent mostly in getting acquainted with the people and with the duties of the job. There was no real work expected of her during that day, and this suited Jill fine. She didn't care particularly for work, anyway.
At lunchtime, Big Lou insisted on taking her to the local cafe where he regularly ate. He introduced her around.
During the afternoon he was gone from the office for much of the time, and this gave Jill her first real opportunity to get to know the people she was to work with.
Her initial impressions were confused. Though the office staff was small, even ten people were a lot to meet at once. She had trouble keeping their names straight and in picking out and remembering individual characteristics.
There were two who did make definite impressions on her, however: Marjorie Steck, and Jack Able.
Marjorie didn't like her. That was obvious. The woman was pleasant enough on the surface, but Jill could see behind this facade. Jill caught the critical glance which the thin-faced older woman frequently cast her way the pursing of thin lips and the glint of envy in sharp, gray eyes.
As for Jack Able, his response was exactly the opposite. Jill could tell that he liked her very much indeed. And he was the sort, she judged, who went after what he liked.
Jill deliberately encouraged him. She stayed as close to him as possible, asking innumerable questions, smiling and looking him warmly in the eyes, showing her legs, switching her backside, bending low over his desk so that he could see deeply down the valley of her breasts.
By the time the workday as over, she had him pretty well interested. She felt certain of this even before he asked her for a date. He suggested they have dinner together and take in a show at Boise, which was about half an hour's drive from Fruitvale.
"That sounds wonderful, Jack," she said, "but I'm really awfully tired. This has been such an exciting day, I think I'd like to go to bed early tonight. Ask me again, though, will you?"
Jack said he would and as she said good night, to him, she caught the wistful quality in his eyes. Interested? Oh, yes, indeed! Jill glowed with pleasure at the thought of the fun she had in store.
She walked directly from the office to the cafe where she had had lunch with Big Lou. No sooner had she sat down at the counter than a man who was several plates away an older man with a smoothly shaved face, fresh haircut, and wearing neat if inexpensive slacks and a sports shirt picked up his cup of coffee and carried this to the place immediately next to hers.
The man smiled. "How do you like our little town, Miss Marshall?"
Jill looked at him, and it was a few minutes before she realized she had seen him before. He was the disreputable character who had been standing on the sidewalk and had ogled her right after she'd gotten off the bus. But what a change! He looked almost like a different man.
Jill smiled. "Oh, I love Fruitvale, Mr. ...?"
"Just call me Pete," he said. "Larrabee's the last name."
"How did you know who I am?" Jill asked sweetly.
"I checked around." A foxy twinkle showed in Pete's eyes. "After the way you smiled at me last night ... well, I was interested enough to do some asking."
"Oh." Her smile was almost demure. "Maybe I shouldn't have smiled the way I did. Sometimes people misunderstand. But I guess I'm just friendly. A person can't help the way they are, can they?"
"Not only can't they help being what they are," Pete said, "they shouldn't even try. Anyway, you're darned sweet ... in every way."
Billy Tribbett, who worked the cafe counter, moved up to them.
"Can I buy you dinner, Miss Marshall?" Larrabee asked. "I'd be mighty pleased."
"Well, all right. Thank you, Pete." She smiled again. "I think that would be very nice."
Excitement started to generate deeply within him. This girl liked him. And she really was friendly. You could never tell about young females. Sometimes they actually preferred older guys. This one sure seemed to.
Mort Hopper hadn't gotten very far with her the night before. Pete had found this out, as he had found out a lot of things.
Pete hoped to do better this evening than Mort had done.
Pete hoped, with luck, to go all the way, even if she had to be forced a little.
Had Jill ever submitted herself to a psychiatrist's professional care, he might have traced her peculiarly ambivalent attitude toward men to the conflicting influences which two women had cast upon her life during its formative years.
But Jill had never gone to a psychiatrist. Her mother had never seen the need of taking her, and certainly Jill had seen no need to go. She was happy. She enjoyed life. She enjoyed boys ... now men. She had no psychological problems.
Or so she thought.
She had worked out a course of conduct, as far as males were concerned, which ingeniously resolved the potential conflict that her training and early environment had threatened to produce.
She was aware, however, of a vague sense of disquietude at times, whenever she thought seriously about the future. She knew she would be expected to get married some day ... and she wanted to get married, she guessed. At least, she wanted to live what was regarded as a normal life, and this just naturally included a husband and children.
But that was the future, and the future somehow had a way of taking care of itself. For the time being, everything was fine.
Jill had grown up with the words of her mother, which followed the same monotonous pattern whenever the subjects of "boys" or "Love" came up. And Jill's mother managed to bring up those subjects often. That was her duty, Sarah Marshall felt. She had to protect her young daughter from the torment which she herself had experienced at the hands of the father Jill had never really known.
Men were to be feared. This was the main thrust of Sarah Marshall's argument. Men were selfish, inconsiderate creatures who sought satisfaction for themselves at the expense of women, and they thought nothing of inflicting the most grievous physical hurts. Jill would have to guard particularly against them, her mother had warn:', because Jill was so very attractive. Men would be after her, and Jill was apt to find their attentions exciting.
She could go out with them, of course. This was expected, and Jill would be considered peculiar if she shunned a normal social life. But she must always say "no" whenever they tried to take advantage.
The main point of her mother's admonitions was. as Jill understood this, to be nice to boys and use them for whatever social advantages they offered, but never to permit them to use her for their own ends.
Eventually, of course, Jill would get married, but by then she would be older and wiser, and her mother would help Jill pick out just the right man. He would be someone who could offer all the advantages which a beautiful girl had a right to expect and who, because of the moderate nature of his desires, would not inflict any more suffering upon her than was necessary.
That was the sum and substance of the training which Sarah Marshall administered almost unceasingly, beginning even before the time when Jill's breasts first began to bud.
So much for Sarah Marshall.
There was another Marshall woman, however. She was Jill's sister, Edna.
Edna was sixteen when Jill turned twelve. Edna had been going out with boys for a couple of years. She had learned a thing or two for herself and, while she seldom openly challenged her mother's preaching, she frequently filled Jill's tender ears with what to Edna represented the truth as far as boys and love were concerned.
Edna's "truth" directly contradicted that of their mother.
The older girl had inherited their father's dominant characteristics and she had been subjected, much more than had Jill, to their father's influence. Also, Sarah Marshall hadn't turned quite so bitterly antagonistic toward men until after her husband, the girls' father, had died.
Edna's views on the composite subject of boys and love might have been summarized as: Boys were a kick. A boot. A charge.
Loving was for fun.
As to the physical suffering their mother had foretold in case Jill were to yield the ultimate favor, that was of hooey! Jill would just about go out of her mind with thrills, Edna assured her. The first time there might be a little hurt, but that would last for only a minute. Afterward, she had a lifetime of pleasure to look forward to.
That sounded good to Jill, so good that Jill began to think quite a lot about the forbidden pleasure.
One Sunday afternoon when her big sister went into the living room with a boy friend, Jill determined to do some spying on them. She had to find out what this fabulous experience was like whether this was all fun, as Edna had said, or filled with suffering, as represented by her mother.
Jill was going on thirteen and had never dated. Edna had just turned seventeen and was one of the most popular girls in the senior class at high school. Jill would see. She would find out.
The tree outside the living room window the window at the side of the house which couldn't be seen from the street and which was near the end of the Marshall's commodious davenport was large, thick with foliage, and had one sturdy, straight limb which angled across in front of an upper corner of the window.
When they were younger, Jill and Edna had spied on one another in play from that limb.
By straddling the limb at a certain place, a person could bend slightly forward and peer down at the living room without being seen at all, thanks to the angle and the protective foliage of the tree.
This was the position Jill now assumed. There was no one to see her from outside, for the garage was between the tree and the neighbors' house, and her mother was away that afternoon.
This was before a strange and never-completely-diagnosed malady had consigned Sarah Marshall to a wheelchair. But even then Sarah was not healthy. Jill couldn't remember a time when her mother had not complained of one ailment or another, all of which had gone beyond the ability of medical science to cure.
So Jill, dressed in a blouse and a pair of pedal-pushers which made tree climbing easy, took up her point of vantage. And here was what she saw, furnishing quite a graphic introduction to Nature's all-time best seller The Book of Love:
Edna, a honey blonde of more spectacular dimensions than those which Jill ultimately possessed, was lying on the davenport with her teen-age lover, and her lover had pulled Edna's dress all the way up to her waist. Below the waist, Edna wore only panties. The boy was caressing Edna's panties lovingly as they kissed, and Edna was ... Oh, no!
Jill nearly fell out of the tree.
But she didn't. She held on. And as she held on, she continued to watch.
She watched Edna caressing the boy--who also had been liberated to a certain extent, from the artificial restraints of clothing and Jill marveled at the implication of what she saw. The boy happened to be tall. And he was very passionate at that moment.
Jill's first conclusion was that her mother must indeed have been right in all her warnings. The sight before Jill's shocked twelve-year-old eyes seemed to suggest this, for how indeed could this boy love Edna without hurting her severely? To Jill, there didn't seem to be a way.
She continued to watch, awe-stricken, as the young man's caressing of her sister became extremely bold and began to point the way toward the ultimate experience. All this time Edna's hand continued to move caressing the boy.
Jill had, of course, never touched a boy that way. She had never really thought of it. But she was some four years younger, and that made all the difference in the world.
The boy now had his hand on Edna's bare bottom caressing, patting gently, and kneading the plump and resilient half-globes. He had slid Edna's pink panties downward, so that they comprised little more than a rayon rope about the girl's upper legs.
Edna was squirming, continuing her caressing of him, and they kissed one another with quick little nips at the mouth, the cheeks, the throat, and at the mouth again. Their lips clung together, and Jill could see their facial muscles working.
As the kissing went on, Edna's boy friend temporarily abandoned the lush contours of her bottom to run his free hand to the top of her dress. He felt for the tab of her zipper, found this, and began to ease the zipper down. Mere moments later, he was working one-handed the hooks which held Edna's brassiere.
Edna's breasts had fascinated Jill during the years Jill had watched them grow. They had grown from absolutely nothing to full, firm, melon-like protrusions which stood high and handsome on her chest, with tips of fiery red that could stick way out when Edna ran her fingers back and forth across them. Jill had seen her older sister do this.
Now that Jill's bosom was sprouting, she was extremely bosom-conscious. She could hardly wait until she had a bosom such as Edna had. Then the boys would look at her, too, the way they did, at Edna, and they would wish that they could...
But the boy who was with Edna on the davenport didn't have to wish.
Not any more.
Now he had a free field.
Jill watched as he played with her sister's large pink-tipped breasts, and then as he kissed her. Why, he was actually kissing her nipple! He had his mouth there, his lips parted, and as the muscles of his face worked, Edna appeared to be going out of her mind with delight.
Jill wondered how she would feel, having her nipples kissed.
Next, a great deal of twisting around took place on the sofa and, when this was completed, Jill realized she was about to see what all the talk was about the talk, the whispers, the giggles, the nudges, the secret yearnings ... and the warnings she had received from her mother.
At that moment, Jill felt very sorry for her sister. Jill didn't see how Edna could possibly let this boy do what he obviously wanted to do so badly.
But Edna didn't seem to be afraid. How brave she was! Why, she wasn't fighting the boy at all.
She actually seemed eager. She was pulling at him, her legs having gone in such a way as to prove she wanted him, and to show where she wanted him, as well. To this tender objective, the boy was now preparing to go.
Jill wasn't sure if she could continue to look.
But look she did.
She stared all the harder as the boy made his move. Then, even through the closed window, she could hear her sister gasp and cry out.
Oh, he's killing her! Jill thought. Maybe Edna really didn't know how this would be. Maybe she's never done this before and was just putting on when we talked.
Jill's sympathy for Edna's plight was short-lived, however, for the younger girl soon realized that her big sister was not suffering pain. Her sister was having herself an ever-loving ball! She was bounding and pulling at her boy friends back. She was crying out. Between the two of them, they were punishing the davenport as that venerable old piece of furniture had never been punished before.
So this was Jill's introduction, though vicarious, to the realm of Eros. There is much more which could be said about that afternoon what Jill saw and how she reacted to the experience. But our purpose is served by a recognition of the fact that Jill's introduction tc erotic love seemed to confirm both preconceptions she had previously held. She was convinced that what her sister had said about love being a ball was true ... at least, insofar as Edna was concerned. How could Jill doubt this, in view of the evidence she had seen? But, at the same time, she had been encouraged to believe that her mother was at least partially right, as well. Love could bring pain. Jill had only to think of herself in Edna's place, with that big, passionately-aroused male going after her. Maybe this was what Edna liked, but to Jill there would be pain. There would be a lot of pain. Her mother had surely been right about that. Again Jill couldn't doubt the evidence furnished by her own eyes.
She approached her direct experiences with boys with both these convictions firmly implanted in her mind and each of them was strengthened, as the years went on, by all she heard from both sides. Her sister's assurances were a lure which led her on, but her mother's admonitions proved to be quite an effective brake whenever Jill reached the fateful moment.
Jill's natural resourcefulness resolved the conflict, however. Though this resolution left something to be desired, and did not promise permanent satisfaction, its very restrictiveness yielded satisfactions of a new and different kind. Jill began to glory in her ability to make a male want her. She began to feed on the look she saw in their eyes.
Refusing a man the ultimate triumph gave her a different sort of pleasure. She hadn't expected this. She was having her kicks, but none of the pain, and in this way she was getting the better of them. She was defeating the entire world of men at their own game.
As for the physical side, Jill found that not too much imagining was necessary in order for her own hands to take the place of a boy's ... particularly when she had let the boy's hands wander over her just a short time before, had let him stimulate her to the maximum possible extent and do nearly everything except the ultimate. Sometimes, if the boy was skillful enough, he could even provide her with a release, as she had learned to do for him.
The latter was one of the techniques Jill relied upon to protect herself.
Her system was well-conceived and, for the most part, worked satisfactorily. She fancied herself ahead of other girls and even a little better than they were. Her beauty was glorified. Men paid homage to her and yet she remained inviolate. She had everything ... she thought.
This vague dissatisfaction she brushed aside. The gnawing worry about tomorrow was unacknowledged.
The original fear which her mother had planted in her mind was still there, undiminished by her experiences. The day was bound to come, though Jill refused to admit it, when that fear would have to be dealt with.
Had Jill sought competent professional aid, a cure for her condition could doubtless have been found. But who visits a doctor when they consider themselves well? Jill knew she deviated from the norm, but she assured herself that she'd found a better way. When a small voice told her this wasn't so, she told the voice to be still.
The world at large didn't question that she was what she seemed: a girl who was glad to be alive, pleasant and well-adjusted, if perhaps a bit too conscious of her beauty and too eager to show her beauty off.
There were, however, a number of boys and men who knew differently. Some of them cursed her in their memory. Some of them, when they thought of her at all, were inclined to shake their heads and regard her as a very special kind of kook. None of the relationships had lasted long, many had been for just one night, and some had been marked by sudden explosions of bitterness.
But Jill had brushed this aside, also. The bitterness had been a symptom of how cleverly she had turned the tables on these men, she assured herself.
They had been out to take advantage of her and she had foiled them, while gaining enjoyment for herself at the same time. Their masculine egos couldn't stand that.
As for what they had sometimes said about her ... well, they hadn't meant those things. Not really. They had admired and desired her of this she was sure. The bitterness at the end could not cancel out that fact.
Each new man offered a new challenge, and each one, in his own way, offered a new kind of thrill. For instance, there was Pete Larrabee.
During dinner, Jill had laughed and talked a lot, almost as if she were out with a boy friend, and Pete Larrabee was encouraged about the prospects.
He had reached the tentative conclusion that she was a nympho who preferred the company of older men because they knew better how to satisfy a girl.
Pete owned a 1953 Hudson Hornet, in which he had traipsed around the country for several years. The car had clocked over seventy thousand miles before he'd bought it off a lot in Galveston, Texas, and Pete had at least doubled that. During this time, he hadn't put any more in the heap than he could possibly avoid, and the results of this treatment showed. That day he had cleaned the car up a little, however, and the Hornet was now parked at the curb, several car-lengths from the front door of the cafe.
After Pete had paid the dinner check and when he and Jill were walking to the door, he said, "How about a little ride in the country-that is, if you've got nothing better lined up for tonight?"
"All right," Jill responded immediately. "I haven't had a chance to see much of the area around here at all. I just got in last night ... " She laughed confidentially and added, "As you very well know. Today I put in a full eight hours at work."
They had already discussed her job at the Rombaugh Company, which Pete had known about before he met her at the cafe. (After talking with Billy Tribbett, who had been on duty at the cafe counter when Big Lou had brought Jill over for lunch, Pete had rightly assumed that might drop in for dinner as well.)
Pete led the way to his Hudson. "This ain't much of a car," he said apologetically, "but it's good enough for a guy who's just bummin' around like I've been."
Jill registered no disapproval as far as the car was concerned. She smiled at him. "You never cared much for getting married and settling down, huh?"
"Oh, I did when I was young. But that marriage taught me a lesson I never forgot."
He held the door for her and watched as she got in and swung her legs around. Tasty, he thought.
He walked around the front of the car, climbed behind the wheel, and turned the starter until the Hudson's old engine caught hold. There was a lot of clatter. A mechanic could have filled both sides of a service ticket with just what he heard wrong in that few seconds of idling.
Pete let in the clutch and the old heap rolled away from the curb. "How'd you like to see some of the orchards outside of town?" he asked. "Since you work at the Rombaugh Company and all, and since your uncle owns it, I should think you'd be kinda carious about how the fruit grows."
"Yes. That sounds interesting." Jill cast him another smile.
"You know, there's one thing I just plain can't understand," Pete said as they jogged along.
Jill was watching him attentively.
"How come you ain't stayin' with your uncle instead of in a room at the hotel? I mean, your uncle's got that big old house of his, and there's just him and his wife. I understand they never had any kids."
"I wanted to be on my own," Jill said. "Uncle Lou invited me to stay with him, but I prefer my independence. Maybe that sounds silly, but that's the way I am."
"Oh, no," Pete told her. "I don't think that's silly at all." Then he leered. "Couldn't be that you kinda like to be able to date whoever you want? Could that be the main reason?"
"Mmmmm ... maybe."
"You're a mighty pretty girl, Jill. There's hardly a man who wouldn't do just about anything for a chance with you."
"You really think so?"
"Darned right! I'm a lot older than you are, but you sure make me feel like a high school kid again."
She laughed softly.
Dusk was falling over the countryside, and there were few cars on the narrow back road along which
Pete was driving. They passed dairy farms and chicken ranches, then came into the orchards. Soon the road was lined with row after row of apple trees, their limbs growing heavy with green fruit. Props were in place beneath many of the limbs to keep them from breaking under the weight of the ripening apples.
"What you'd say we pull in somewhere along here and take a closer look at the trees?" Pete suggested.
"I'd like that," Jill said with apparent naivete. But she knew what Pete had in mind she knew, and she had every confidence that she could handle him.
The reactions he'd been getting from the beautiful young woman were almost too good for Pete to believe. He began to wonder if she might be playing him for money ... but, heck, she could see from the looks of the car that he didn't have much. When he'd told her he worked at the feed store, jockeying sacks of meal, she hadn't changed her attitude at all. And she certainly wasn't a common tramp, like the hag he'd dated the night before.
No, she's gotta be looking for the same thing I'm lookin' for, Pete concluded. Man,-what luck!! I really latched onto something this time!
He pulled up a dirt roadway leading through the middle of an orchard and stopped the car. The air had cooled now, with a slight breeze stirring the apple leaves.
"Let's get out," Pete suggested. They did.
After they had looked at the maturing fruit on the boughs and Pete had given an inexpert commentary on apple growing, a subject which he actually knew little about, he suggested they sit down on a little patch of wild grass which had been missed by the last disking of the ground. Jill agreed to this. She was about the most agreeable girl Pete had ever met ... as well as one of the most beautiful.
He wondered how she would react when he made his first move of a strictly personal sort. Would she make a show of resisting or would she come hungrily to him right away?
Pete wanted to learn the answer to this question as soon as possible. He was afraid to delay, as if perhaps some unseen clock would strike the hour and she would disappear or turn into a common creature, like Cinderella at the stroke of midnight.
He took a long look at her, seated on the grass beside him. He admired the full twin-thrust of her bosom, the slimness of her waist, the warmth of her hip structure, and the shapely lengths of her legs. Her thin skirt now ended some two inches above her knees. She was wearing stockings that day, of course, since she had dressed for the office, and Pete could see the lower portions of the dark bands which encircled the tops.
"You got a boy friend, Jill?" he asked her.
"Goodness, no! I've just arrived in town."
"I meant in Portland. You must have a boy back there you liked pretty well."
"Oh, I dated several. There was no one special."
He hesitated, squinting. "You like ... older guys usually?"
"I think older men are very nice." She said everything in such a sweet way that a man was tempted to believe she was innocent. But her apparent willingness, and the suggestive way she dressed these didn't jibe with the other. She was kind of a mystery, this one.
"Lot'sa young girls sweet girls, I mean, like yourself-would be afraid to be alone with a guy my age, and a drifter and all. They'd be afraid that maybe he'd ... well, try to take advantage of 'em."
Jill smiled. "I'm not afraid of you, Pete. Nothing you could do would make me afraid."
Well, there was his signal. He couldn't ask for a greener light than that! She was practically telling him to go ahead. His idea about her was sure as heck right, he concluded. She was as eager as he was.
So why should he wait? There just wasn't any reason at all.
He gazed at her face, the softly-encouraging look in her brown eyes, the inviting moistness of her lips. He dropped his eyes to the top of her dress, where the thin fabric was standing a little way out from her body because of the way she was seated; this gave him a view of the tops of her breasts and the valley which plummeted between them.
His gaze sped downward to her legs and where her skimpy dress ended. He could grasp the hem and lift, he thought. A quick, firm tug would be all that was needed, and he would have her peeled like a banana. Then there would be nothing to stop him but a scrap of silk.
He didn't want to frighten her by moving too fast, though. Better to try for a kiss first.
Jill was enjoying herself. She could see how badly this funny old man wanted her, and that gave her a boot. She supposed he hadn't been out with anyone half as pretty in years. Maybe never. She tried to imagine what was going through his mind right then. He was probably looking forward to what a thrill he was going to have when he got her on her back on the grass. He was imagining the sensation when he pressed to her, then felt her yield and receive him.
But he was going to be disappointed as far as the receiving was concerned.
She wasn't going to receive him at all.
He's about ready to make his move, she realized.
She could tell by the little changes around his eyes. She could see he was gathering his nerve, focusing his thoughts on the impending action.
He leaned to her, his arms reaching and face tilting so they could meet, mouth to mouth.
The keenest thrill Pete Larrabee had known for a long time sped through him as their lips touched. Jill's lips were soft and moist and parted. He spread his own, pulling her tightly against him and feeling the erect mounds of her bosom. He moved his tongue.
Her own tongue was waiting right at her teeth. She pressed, as did he, and their tongues slid along and around. He pulled her even more tightly, her thinly-covered back burning his rough hands with excitement.
His fingers touched the track of a zipper. Pull that, he thought. Pull that and go for the bra. That's the best way.
The zipper yielded easily, and then he had his lands on her warm, silken back. She wore a bra, all right. Well, he had known that.
He went to work at the hooks of her bra. At this point, Jill broke their kiss and eased away, gently pushing against his arm which was around her.
"Let's wait for a minute," she said, breathing easily. "I don't like to be rushed."
"Sure," Pete agreed. Things were going so well, he didn't want to spoil them by being impulsive. He could wait for a little bit. The longer he could force himself to wait and look at her and think of what a thrill this was going to be, the more enjoyment he would have.
Jill left the back of her dress standing open, and Pete had managed to release one of the hooks on the bra. One more and he'd have the job done. Jill was going to let him do this, but she wanted to tease him a little more first. She wanted to enjoy the look on his face.
"Do you really like me, Pete?" she asked, her voice velvety, live coals burning in her eyes.
"Dang, I'm crazy about you!" he exclaimed. Then he decided to let his actions speak for him once more. She had said she didn't like to be rushed, but Pete couldn't hold off. She was just too luscious.
His eager lips chewed at hers and his tongue was a still-twisting goad. She closed her teeth gently and drew.
His hands clawed at her brassiere.
Pete was not the most skillful man in the world where the removal of ladies' underwear was concerned. The sort of women he was accustomed to dating weren't apt to wear any; or, if they did, they usually removed their own as soon as he'd put his money on the table.
But Pete got Jill's bra open. He peeled the loose ends forward, leaning back and working her dress down at the same time.
Everything she wore above the waist fell to her lap.
Her breasts stood nude before him.
Pete Larrabee was not particularly a breast-man. That is to say, he didn't go ape when a stripper twirled her tassels. These attributes were exciting, but so was the rest of the girl. He liked hips; he liked buttocks; and he liked legs, too. Probably, if he'd been forced to express a choice, he would have said he liked legs best of all. He liked to kiss up and down a smooth-creamy set of legs, and then he liked to finish where the kissing was the very best. He restrained this urge with a lot of women because ... well, a lot of them just weren't appetizing. But this one man, this one would be honey!
At the moment, he was appreciating the beauty which Jill's full breasts had to offer. Round at their bases, they swelled forward and tapered to thrusting tips. The tips were set in fairly large aureoles which were well defined, lightly pebbled, and capable of responding to a man's caresses almost as demonstrably as the nipples themselves. The nipples, though not yet fully extended, were thick and growing firmer by the moment. And they were the clearest, freshest pink that
Pete Larrabee had ever seen.
Pete liked pink nipples, and a guy just didn't see many that were as pink as those.
"Man, they're beauts!" he exclaimed indelicately.
Jill, her face a little flushed, watched him closely "You really think they're good?"
"Good? They're terrific!" He followed with an alliterative allusion, coupling the word terrific with a plural noun of questionable propriety.
Jill scowled. "Please don't talk like that. I'm not the sort of girl you can use words like that to."
"I'm sorry," Pete murmured and seemed to mean this. "My tongue sorta slipped."
"All right, but please be more careful." She leaned to his approaching hands.
Pete clutched the luscious fruits of her bosom, squeezed their resilient roundness, and tugged at their ripening tips. The tips became wholly ripe very fast.
He leaned further forward and eased Jill to a recumbent position on the grass. As he kissed a nipple lingeringly, Pete figured he was two-thirds of the way home. Just flip up her dress and null down those panties this was all there was left to do. Then he could enjoy her legs to his heart's content. He could pet them and kiss them and arrange them the way he liked. Finally, when he'd kissed his fill ...
Wham! He would take her.
So Pete Larrabee thought.
Jill let him kiss her nipples, and she squirmed with the excitement which the moist, suctioning caresses sent through her body. She let his hands pet up and down her sides, drop to her legs, and grope at the hem of her dress. She let Pete crouch beside her, in an attitude which suggested that he was ready to spring. And she enjoyed the look of him as well as the physical stirrings throughout her body.
Now he had the hem of her dress, and now he was pulling this upward. Her legs, clad in nothing but the sheerest stockings, became visible to their tops. The smooth, pinkish flesh above her hose was exposed to Pete's eyes as he lifted his face from her bosom. Thin, white garter straps stretched upward across this delectable territory and passed beneath the lacy edges of the orchid-colored panties which now came into view
Pete caressed her legs with one hand as he used the other to tug her skirt and slip from beneath her buttocks and arrange both garments at her waist. She was nearly nude from head to toe, except for a froth of fabric about the middle. Her panties concealed little, and her stockings nothing at all.
Pete bent to fasten his lips at a point just above the rim of one stocking. He nibbled gently and trailed his tongue along. Jill shivered. He was not an attractive man and he was twice her age, but he knew how to stir a woman. He was aggressive and sure of himself now, and this thrilled Jill particularly, because she was about to call a halt, and she had every confidence that she was about to do this with success. As confident and experienced as he was, she was going to call the turn on him.
This would have been difficult for her to do, excited as she was, except for the fact that a fear tends to grow larger the longer it goes unchallenged. Now she felt she couldn't possibly go all the way with a man. This was out of the question. What was more, she believed she didn't really want to.
She extended a hand, groped a little, and brought a happily-startled growl from Pete as her fingers found what they were seeking a tiny metal tab. She pulled this.
"Oh, baby! Hey, you sweet little ... unn..." He was kissing her very passionately now, as Jill caressed him. He had kissed all the way around each of her legs and was nuzzling along the straps of her garters. He went as far as he could go before being stopped by lavender lace which was anchored by a thin elastic band.
Pete reached for the elastic at the top of her panties.
Normally Jill would have stopped him right there ... but she had an idea of what Pete wanted to do and she wouldn't mind this in the least. This would solve her problem of physical satisfaction on the spot, so to speak, and when she got back to the hotel she could climb into bed and go right to sleep.
So Jill let the man remove her panties.
He stretched the top toward him, denuding her cute navel and the soft little rise on which this dimple sat. He began to roll the panties down. Jill lifted her buttocks at the proper moment, so as to make the process easy, and her panties then were sliding down her legs and off.
She moved her legs for him.
He growled.
He clutched her about the hips and she couldn't see him at all.
But she could feel. Oh, glory, how she could feel him!
Her legs flexed and waved as he made wildly exciting love to her. The excitement built quickly. Her caressing of him became stronger and more vigorous.
He raised his head. "Hey, take that easy!"
"Don't stop!" Jill ordered. "Oh, don't ever stop!"
"Yeah, but ... "
"Please ... please..." She pressed her free hand against the back of his head.
He resumed loving her in this perfectly delightful way as her own caressing of him continued. She was inching up ... and up ... and then she knew she was very close to her goal. There were only a few seconds now...
Her hand flew.
The timing proved exactly right. Just as Jill exploded with a quaking, shuddering spasm which sent warmth flooding throughout her body and made her head reel, the man reached his apex, too. She could feel this. And she could hear his strangled groan.
She removed her hand and lay back with her eyes closed. Deep breaths were causing her up-thrust breasts to heave, sending delectable shivers through them.
When she opened her eyes, Pete was staring down at her, an inquisitive expression on his face. "You like to do that, huh? Gives you kind of a kick?"
"I like what you were doing."
He laughed. 'T don't doubt you did. Most gals do."
She sat up. "Hand me my panties, will you."
"Now, wait a minute..."
"My panties," Jill repeated, a trifle sharply. "I want them."
"But we ain't goin' back yet. Why, heck-fire, I ain't even touched you hardly."
"That was good," she said. "We don't need any more."
"The devil ... "
Jill got to her feet, letting her skirt and slip drop. Her bosom quivered in high-thrusting ripeness.
Pete looked up at her. "I want to stay here for a while. I want to do this right."
"No." Jill saw her panties and went to pick them up.
"You don't want to?"
"I'm a virgin," she said calmly.'
Pete swore in surprise. He stared at her, and then he grinned. "You're puttin' me on, little lady. You ain't gonna get away with this."
Jill's eyes became hard, and her fingers nervously worked at the top of her handbag. "Please. Let's not have trouble. Everything was too good to spoil."
"Good, huh?" Pete sprang to his feet. "Well, if you think I'm about to be satisfied by what just happened, you'd better think again. I want you, and I'm gonna have what I want!" He began to move toward her.
Moving swiftly, Jill's right hand dipped into her purse and out again. There was a clicking sound, and five inches of razor-sharp steel leaped from her closed fist. "Don't take one more step."
Pete cursed foully, but he stood still. She looked as if she meant business, and that switchblade she was holding was long enough to cut out a man's stomach.
"If you touch me again," Jill said evenly, "I'll use this. And if you don't drive me back to town, I'll tell my uncle on you when I get there. He'll have you thrown into jail. You know he can."
Pete knew.
Anyway, right then he didn't have the spunk to fight. She'd taken all the starch out of him for awhile.
He arranged his clothes, cast her a resentful look, and plodded in the direction of the car.
Jill picked up her bra, and jammed this and her panties into her purse. With her bag over one arm and the switchblade still clutched in her other hand, she restored the top of her dress and reached around her back to close the zipper.
She continued to hold the knife as she and Pete drove back to town.
For awhile there was utter silence. He was in a dark mood, but the evening had been quite pleasurable to her. Finally she said in her usual, sweet way, "This wasn't really so bad I mean, you did enjoy yourself, didn't you?"
"You lousy little..." He issued a string of expletives that made Jill's cheeks burn.
"I told you I don't like that kind of talk," she said.
Pete delivered a short, explicit comment about what she could do.
"All right! If you don't want to be nice, we may as well not talk to one another."
That suited Pete, and there was silence for the rest of the way.
So ended a "date" such as Pete Larrabee had never had before, in all his forty-two years.
As for Jill, she considered it too bad that men had to be so stubborn. She never liked having to show the switchblade, and she hated to use it. She had never been forced to do so really. The most she had ever done had been to prick several guys on the skin. One of them had bled a little, but he'd been all right afterward.
Why couldn't they just accept her way of doing and let matters drop?
She guessed they couldn't because of the way they were made. If she were one of them, she guessed she would probably feel the same way.
She smiled to herself. She had gotten the better of old Pete, all right! She got the better of all of them, one way or the other.
And Pete had satisfied her, too.