Chapter 9
Earlier that same day, shortly after two o'clock in the afternoon, Elaine Olsen wakened to feel sunlight slanting through the glass terrace doors to caress her nude body.
Drowsily Elaine lay with her arm crooked across her face. She saw through partially-closed eyes the expensive modern furnishings of her bedroom. The sunlight falling across the terrace to kiss her golden skin was tinged with the reddish haze of afternoon, reflected and refracted by windows of apartment towers that reared above the street in this uptown section.
A dim remorse suffused Elaine mind as she lay thinking of Brick, letting the fumes of the martinis she'd drunk until four in the morning work themselves from her body.
After leaving the settlement last night, Elaine had driven uptown to a fashionable club and spent a lonely evening consuming cocktails one after another, forcing herself to face the reality of having lost Brick. She was tortured by passion and pain as a Latin band filled the suddenly-garish, suddenly-cheap club with rhythmic noise.
As she stretched languorously now, golden-nude upon the expensive sheets, Elaine wriggled her toes. All the gin and vermouth in those drinks-drinking so much was a sign of weakness. Why should she, Elaine Olsen, daughter of one of the richest men in the city, succumb so easily to defeat?
Wasn't there strength left in her to fight for the man she loved?
Didn't she have other resources with which to win Brick back?
His caresses last evening, their shattering, blissful intercourse, proved that he still desired her. It was only this foolish sense of duty to a dead brother that had driven him into the slums and away from two lucrative careers in athletics and business. Damn him, Elaine thought, rising, stretching, he won't escape so easily!
Moving with her golden buttocks shifting from side to side in subtle rhythm, Elaine crossed the bedroom and closed the drapries. Far south in the distance the span of the interstate bridge revealed Brick's approximate whereabouts. Elaine's certainty increased:
Yes, she'd return there again, and still again, because she loved Brick deeply, and intended to live with him the rest of her life. No matter what she had to do, she'd win him back.
Approaching the wall, Elaine touched a button. With a whirr of electric power the closet rolled open, revealing row upon row of costly dresses. For a moment Elaine was assailed by new doubts.
Had Brick only cared about the Olsen money?
No, that couldn't be. Else why had he walked away, down to that hideous Godforsaken street to somehow atone for the callousness of a society that had let a well-bred boy like Chip die in an auto crash, victim of the festering sickness that seemed to grip America these days, loosing the wolf-packs in the street, the cruel boys whose only concern was mindless violence for its own sake?
Then was there any other reason Brick had left her? Perhaps some flaw in herself she'd never suspected before?
Momentarily alarmed, Elaine pulled the full-length mirror from its concealed bracket, swung it so she could see herself fully and honestly and objectively.
A long moment she scrutinized her golden image.
From pink-enamelled toes, full and rounded calves rose up. Her thighs, too, were firm. A little large perhaps, but sensual, almost like a dancer's.
Turning, Elaine critically surveyed the long gold curve of her flawless backbone, a sweeping plane that divided sharply into a pair of creamed-gold buttock-mounds, their undersides full and saucy.
What about the breasts? Could there be a hidden defect?
But there was none her ruthlessly appraising eye could detect. She lifted one immaculate golden cone and then the other, studying their rich protrusions. They were large without being pendulous, possessing a firm life of their own. The aureoles, a darker, more creamy-gold hue than the flesh itself, were as big as half-dollar pieces, while the nipple-ends, umber nubs, stood proud and spongy-firm at each high, pointed cone apex.
The lower surfaces of her breasts curved back to her body in provocative half-circles. From there her tapering belly dove down to gilt majesty.
Elaine stroked her body a moment, facing it honestly and seeing, without excuse or wishful thinking, a perfect love-device, a receptacle and a tool of passion that would have brought her-and Brick too-enduring happiness.
Reaching for underthings in a costly fruitwood bureau recessed in the mammoth closet, Elaine remembered their last time together, the night of the dance on Meyer Jannings' yacht in the river, Labor Day weekend.
After that night the quarrels had started with a vengeance, but that evening there had been gaiety and searing passion, and complete, utter intimacy for Elaine and Brock, the kind of intimacy she knew she must recapture no matter what the cost.
Her lovely features hardened a little as she thought it again: no matter what the cost.
Meyer Jannings was her father's partner in the investment banking firm. He could afford a diesel yacht, not to mention the finest of catered meals, the most expensive liquor and even a Ricardo Temple society orchestra to play from under paper lanterns decorating the yacht's stern as it cruised toward the three-mile limit with its cargo of bankers and brokers and bankers and brokers' wives. Among the polished, expensive crowd, Brick had been the only throwback, the only man who lived by his body's strength.
But already his liason with Elaine was opening profitable doors, assisting him in building a lucrative insurance business to round out the off season when the pro team didn't play.
For Elaine, that last night before the quarrels began, the rest of the people on the yacht hadn't existed. There was only Brick, Brick holding her in his arms as they tangoed, oblivious to the other dancers, to the swirl of music and the chatter of sophisticated voices.
Suddenly, as the moon rose over the river and the whiskey sours they'd laughingly consumed at cocktail time worked their warm magic in Elaine's veins, she found herself pressing intimately against Brick while they danced. His cheek was warm against hers. Their thighs caressed. Elaine's belly hovered very near Brick's, their hips moving to the beat of the Latin rhythm.
Arm around Brick's neck, Elaine whispered:
"What are you after, you ungainly ape, that brings you into such glittering company?"
"The Olsen dough," he laughed.
His hand was firm at the small of her back, stirring little squiggles of excitement in her buttocks as his fingers toyed with the silk of her cocktail dress.
I'm just a vicious, unprincipled bum from Pittsburgh out to make a pile."
Elaine threw back her head and gazed teasingly into his eyes.
"Brick, you fool-!"
"Don't call me a fool. Especially since I'm going to be your husband by Christmas."
"But I love you, silly. And-" Elaine suppressed a giggle. "-confidentially, I almost wish we didn't have to be so damned proper. Oh, I want to make nice legal babies, Brick. But damn it, you make me feel so much a woman whenever we go to bed. I suppose it's because we're not married and probably wickedly wrong for having each other so often."
Very seriously, Brick looked at her and said:
"Honey, even if you locked on iron armor plate and told me I couldn't take you to bed until we were both forty, I'd still marry you. I'd marry you if you wore a gunny sack and sold apples in the subway. That's because I love you like absolutely crazy."
Pleased by his sentiments, Elaine kissed him as they danced. Under her skirt the whisper of her nylons excited her, sent impossibly warm jets of stirring passion rippling through her body. Their lips lingered together a little longer than necessary. Heedless of what the guests might say, Elaine probed Brick's mouth with the tip of her tongue, felt the tip of his respond.
She buried her head on his shoulder, the weight of his muscled chest inflaming each of her breasts in turn.
"Oh, Brick, I love you. I'm going to make a scene, darling. I'm going to get very warm and so something indecent right here on deck unless-"
Brick's sudden seizure of the small of her back told Elaine, thrillingly, that he was responding. She clutched him feverishly while they swayed with the music.
His voice, low and earnest, buzzed in her ear, the breath tickling and teasing:
"You're the most beautiful woman in the world, Elaine. The dearest-"
"Where can we go, Brick? Oh please, darling, take me somewhere. I can hardly stand being this close and not being able to love you."
A chuckle from Brick:
"I'm afraid Jannings didn't lend me a plan of the staterooms."
Tearing herself from the contact of his body with effort, Elaine seized his hand and led him through the crowd. The inebriated guests hardly gave them a second glance.
"Come on! Brick, we'll find one. We must. Oh, sweetest, I'm all on fire, I want you so badly I can taste it. Brick-stop a second. Kiss me."
Powerfully his mouth met hers, their lips sliding and slipping as they kissed frantically in the shadows near the rail.
Brick's hand stole up between their bodies, teasing her breasts, toying with them, one after another.
Then he held her with both arms locked around her steaming body, breast to chest, belly quivering against belly, thigh tight and pressing with vibrant force against thigh. The Ricard Temple band jingled a noisy foxtrot somewhere. The diesel motor of the yacht throbbed, echoing the stir and pulse Elaine felt inside her flesh as Brick seized her hand and pulled her along, matching her eagerness now.
Near the bow Brick fumbled at a stateroom door, found it unlocked and led Elaine inside with a relieved sigh.
They kissed even more violently. Elaine panted: "Brick, make me all nude for you, nude as I can be.
Then make love-wild love, darling!"
Breathlessly her hands roved his clothing, urgent in her desire to be free of clothes and loving with all her strength.
Brick's fingers were capable in the dark, tantalizing her flesh even as he helped her free of her dress, one by one peeled the smoky nylons from her thighs, then assisted her out of her slip and unfastened her bra.
Elaine's panties burned like silken bonds as Brick's naked body crushed her spine against the rough cotton coverlet on the lower bunk. Elaine's palms, moist with the perspiration of desire, slipped up and down his back rapidly as he kissed her neck, her belly, showered kisses everywhere, his lips growing more demanding and his flesh also.
"Brick--I want to be so nude for you-"
"I want you nude, Elaine. Oh, God, yes, I love you so much-
Then she was nude, shadowy-nude in the dark, flesh afire with her love for him, flesh craving him over every aroused inch as they tussled and nuzzled and kissed.
Finally unable to stave off the hunger, they let the pulse beat of love consume them.
"I love you Elaine, I truly love you."
"Only love me now, Brick, love me now!"
"Elaine-Elaine!"
Yes, darling, yes my lover, yes Brick!" she screamed, on a rising note of seared passion.
Frenzy gripped them both, frenzy of love-locked leg and bent back, and frenzy of near-completion and shattering finish.
They thundered together up to the heights of fulfillment-
Shuddered there on a peak of ecstasy-
Then fell back down with her cry of completion murmuring at last to sibilant contentment in the dark.
A dismayed frown creased Elaine Olsen's patrician brow as she tried to recapture that moment, standing before the mirror in the shadow and gleam of the drape-shrouded bedroom.
No recapturing was sufficient. No tingle of memory stirring her gold loins would serve.
She stepped into her transparent panties and smoothed them with her palm over the tender curve of her belly. Her mind was cold as she considered the various strate-gems she could employ to recapture Brick. She must have him whole, to share his passion day after day, year after year. But perhaps, unless she acted with alacrity, he might slip away, forget the tingling pleasure their bodies had given each other.
Even last night, having him on the couch at the settlement house, the climax had not been as sensational, as awe-inspiring as when there were no ill feelings between them.
Her body would not win him, though, Elaine decided. She snugged up her nylons and fastened them to her garter belt. The real obstacle was the settlement house itself. If it were gone-
Twenty minutes later Elaine drove the Bentley from the garage of the apartment tower.
Another twenty minutes after that, she had interrupted an important conference at her father's investment banking house and was seated in Aretmus Olsen's private office, talking softly but earnestly. In each syllable was the sound of the tigress fighting for her mate.