Chapter 1

Christine Bernard laid down her briefcase containing a stack of compositions from her Junior English class on the writing desk before her window looking out on Everest Avenue. From it she could see the murky, surging waves of Lake Michigan. Though it was the beginning of May, tornados and storms and unseasonal chills had altered the usual pattern of spring in Chicago. But on the Friday evening, it was once again warm and even sultry, the darkening sky having the foreboding clouds of a sudden thunderstorm.

She decided to take a shower first, and since she had had a heavy lunch with two members of the faculty of Midland Circle Junior College, on the Southwest Side, where she had been assigned to teaching last September after getting her certificate from postgraduate studies, she would forego supper till after she had gone through these themes. That would leave Sunday afternoon and evening, and perhaps even a part of tomorrow, free with her date with Henry Brandt, who wanted her to marry him and for whom she had discovered a curious conflicting mixture of feelings, part desire and part fear of becoming emotionally involved. It was the more difficult because Henry had been divorced, was forty, and had three young sons, aged from six to eleven. He too was an English teacher, but at Creighton College in the Northwest Suburb; they had met five months ago at a writer's conference at the Sheraton-Chicago, he had read a paper on modern American authors, and she had gone up to chat with him after the meeting. That had led to his suggestion of dinner and discussion the following week, and just two weeks ago, he had asked her to marry him.

Yes, there would be an intellectual companionship; he was personable, with a wonderful library, and he liked many of the same books she did. And certainly his boys seemed to adore her; the youngest, Calvin, had said, "Oh, Daddy, what a pretty lady!" It would be nice to have a ready-made family without the ordeal of bearing children; indeed, Henry had mentioned almost apologetically that he didn't want any more.

But of course she shivered to think of it, he would want ... well ... sex with her. And till now at the age of twenty-five, Christine Bernard had been a sheltered virgin. Not that she wasn't aware of how Henry's children had come into the world and what occurred between a man and a woman long before their coming, but simply that to this moment, she had never even so much as gone to bed with a man.

Her parents had been famous actors appearing on New York's Broadway as much as in London's famed Picadilly Square. They had broken apart twelve years ago, after an angry row over her father's fondness for young chorus girls, and his counteraccusation that her blonde haughty mother, Verna, liked both boys and girls. It had been an ugly heart-wrenching affair carried by the tabloids of both countries throughout the divorce. After it she had gone to live with her mother's elder and spinster sister, Elizabeth Ascot, a high-school teacher on the North Side of Chicago. From Aunt Elizabeth, Christine had gotten her inspiration to continue her own career in that same noble profession of giving enlightenment to young boys and girls. From the dour, angular woman, too, she had had the awareness of how ugly sex could be, how annihilating to a woman's pride and spirit and personal liberty. Now her aunt was dead these past two years, and Christine still hadn't forgotten that winter night when, just a few months after coming to live with the woman, she had found her weeping and staring at a faded newspaper clipping. It was then that Aunt Elizabeth had told her, "You must never make the mistake I did, Christine, dear. Men want only one thing from a woman-her body. They give her promises, create all sorts of fantasies and paint a rosy life, but when it comes down to it, once they've enjoyed what they want of you, they cast you aside and go on to the next conquest. I-I was in love with a painter, dear, and I--I-we were l-lovers. And he promised to marry me, and then he ran away with one of his dirty, naked models, and married her. And this-this clipping here is the story of his divorce and the scandal she caused him because she found out, as I did early, what a chaser he was."

She was thinking of this as she walked into the bathroom and began to undress, tugging her pretty blue rayon dress over her head and then the white nylon slip, glancing at her reflection in the full-length bathroom door mirror. In school boys had whistled at her, said dirty things; in college, even, there had been older boys to whisper sly proposals in her ear, even to put their hands on her, and she had angrily denounced them, remembering what Aunt Elizabeth had said of what they wanted from her. But even now, this marriage to Henry Brandt, if she agreed, would mean ... that he would have the right to see her like this, touch her here and there ... do ... things to her. A hot wave of flushes flooded her exquisite satiny pink-and-white skin as she reached behind her to unfasten the snaps of her bra. She saw in the mirror the image of a dazzling pocket Venus, five feet and a quarter inch in height, with long shimmering dark-brown hair in a fluffy pageboy that fell caressingly about rounded, dimpled shoulders. Her face was a sensitive oval, with widely spaced, very large dark-brown eyes fringed with thick, short lashes and highlighted by thin, expressively curving brows. Her dainty nose was just a trifle snub, with thin, sensuous flaring wings, and her mouth-the upper lip somewhat riper than its kissable twin-was small and supercilious. She looked even more ingenuous now, still wearing the harlequin glasses she affected in the classroom to make her look older, more prim, a proper teacher for the young.

Her hands covered her naked breasts as she glimpsed them in the mirror, and the blush deepened. They were round, ripe, widely spaced and set high on her satiny chest, the aureolae narrow and of a dark coral shade in which the soft crinkly buds of her nipples palpitated. She slid down her matching nylon panties, and stood in her white satin-elastic garterbelt that hugged the tops of sheer, snug beige nylon hose. Pedestaled in four-inch-heeled black leather pumps (to minimize her petite stature in class), her voluptuous body rippled and tremored, the heels causing long undulations to ascend her sinuously high-set calves, the elegant rondures of nervously muscled, gradually ripening thighs that serged into compact, jouncy, upstandingly rounded buttocks with a sinuously narrow crease separating them. She would see the winking "eye" of her navel, a shallow niche in the carnation-sheened flesh, and then the thick dark curls of her mount, and her blushes deepened.

Hastily, sitting down on the taboret beside the laundry-hamper to draw off her garterbelt, pumps and hose, she got in the shower, then soon emerged, a rosy Venus, towelling her breasts and belly, but from sly moment to moment her eyes glanced furtively at the mirror. For subconsciously, Christine Bernard was in love with herself, aware of her physical beauty and its enticement. And while at the same time she detested the salacious and crude sex-lusts of the youths she taught-she had heard enough of their obscenities and profanities shouted in the corridors and on the recreation field-she couldn't help being secretly titillated by the knowledge that they found her desirable and, of course unobtainable.

There were times when she would go walking in the park near Lake Michigan, two blocks from her apartment, studying how men seated on the park benches-even old men-or walking across the .street would stop to gawk and stare after her. When on such occasions her eyes met theirs, she would give a contemptuous toss of her lovely head and curl her soft red mouth in an expression of utter contempt. But invariably, once beyond such scrutiny, her heart would be beating a little faster and she would feel delicious little twitchings along the sensitive surfaces of her inner thighs. And late at night, when she couldn't sleep, the recollection of her "conquests" would make her sometimes slip a dainty forefinger towards the moist, thick-fleeced core of her womanhood and touch and tickle lingeringly until at last the sweet oblivion of draining release was granted. And that sufficed. Only she knew this means of appeasement without granting a single iota of herself to the predator, the ruthless uncouth beast that was the male animal who went about on two legs instead of four....

Donning a yellow satin hostess robe and putting on a pair of soft fluffy mules, she moved back to the writing desk, opened the briefcase, and with a sigh, attacked the themes. They would have to be graded with comments and returned by Monday afternoon, and she knew in advance what to expect. Last Monday, after a discussion of the poetry of Amy Lowell and the latter's famous "Patterns", she had assigned the general theme of "Daydreams", urging her students-who ranged from a very precocious 16-year-old to a surly long-haired youth of nineteen-to set forth their wishes for the kind of life they ultimately wanted to lead.

Oh, yes, it was quite as she had expected. Typed or laboriously handwritten pages of their hopes and dreams, most of which narrowed down to making a lot of money, being famous, having important jobs; and the girls, even more predictably, wanting to marry a handsome rich man and travel all over the world and have jewels and fine clothing and furs.

Again she sighed, and reached for the next to last theme. It was very neatly typed on an electric typewriter, which was strange to start with; nobody in her class had access to such a machine, she was fairly sure. Then her eyes widened behind the harlequin glasses, and she let out a gasp. The very first lines had sent another flood of crimson staining her high-set cheeks, spreading almost to her dainty little ears:

Christine, my girlish queen-

I see you enthroned in rich raiment, with a tiara on your head and a scepter in your hand, in a glistening gown of transparent sequins which falls to your slim ankles, your head held regally high, a scornful and teasing smile on your moist red lips. You are alone in the palace, reigning supreme.

Then suddenly the tapers are extinguished, and shadows engulf the great throne room. Out of the darkness strides a masked man with a naked sword in his hand.

He mounts the stairway to your throne, seizes you by the wrists and takes you captive. In vain you cry out: your guards have fled, there is no one to come to your aid. He laughs, a hollow, mocking laugh. Then, flinging you over his shoulder, he mounts astride his great white charger and gallops through the forest for long hours till he comes at last to a gloomy castle on a far distant hill.

He crosses the moat over the lowered drawbridge, and the gates are at once opened for his return with his queenly prize. Dismounting, he drags you. still crying out for help, into the castle, where two brawny Amazon guards take charge of you and ruthlessly drag you down the stairwell to a dark, dank dungeon. The creaking door is swung back and the cruelly smiling women strip you naked, shackle your wrists high above your head, place metal gyves about your bare ankles and leave you there to your mounting terror in this Stygian darkness.

You weep endlessly, your heart beating madly as you await a sound, but there is none. At last, after you have fallen into a fear-haunted restless sleep, the door suddenly swings open. The masked man enters, holding a torch high in one hand, a whip in the other. He sets the torch in the metal bracket above your head and laughs again. Then the song of the whip is heard in the dungeon. Lightly at first, the caressing lash flicks your bare thighs, your soft panting breasts, your tender belly where the navel is a wanton hollow hinting at the sweeter oasis of your love-temple-and there too the tip of his silken lash pays homage to your delicious nakedness. But then the lash falls more painfully, and you twist and writhe, prey to its diabolical kisses which score your squirming buttocks and back and sides in angry, burning weals.

At last you implore mercy. He demands that you abdicate your throne and become his harlot, the lowliest of his slaves. When you hesitate, the whip sings again, leaping between your struggling naked thighs, over the heaving mounds of your naked bosom, till you are mad with the unending torment. You whimper that you will surrender if only he will show mercy, and he blows out the torch and falls upon you ravenously.

Then you shriek as you know at last the will of man, the all-conquering. And when he strides out of your dungeon, sated with your quivering bare body, to leave you once again in terrifying darkness, he calls out mockingly, "I shall return when my flesh hungers for yours again, my Christine. Wait there for me, my naked slave, my dungeon whore, to await my pleasure. For it is all you exist for henceforth till the end of your days of beauty!"

The pages fluttered from her nerveless hands; she rose abruptly, her face scarlet. There had been more, much more, and it had become still more explicit and graphic. The writer had described her captor's eventual return to the dungeon and the demands he had made on the naked helpless queen, and Christine could scarcely believe the erotic fantasies the author of this theme had conjured up. There was no signature-only a final typed line, as a kind of postscript, "If you would visit this dungeon, come Saturday night to 1728 South Crosswell Avenue and ring the bell three times."

It was incredible, monstrous! Who in her class could have such a degenerate mind, could be so sexually depraved as even to think up the ways by which her body had been made the instrument of such fanciful lust? And who, even admitting that some of her male students were known to date frequently and boast of their affairs, had the verbiage and imagination to set all this down? And, which was still more frightening, who had the audacity to turn this horrible piece in as a bona fide theme to be graded for marks in her class? No one she knew or recognized from that flowery literary style; even the address cited at the very end meant nothing to her, either.

But assuredly, something would have to be done. She would have to learn the writer's identity, and either have him seek psychiatric help or else report him to Dean Munson. Such a person would be dangerous. Yes, she would go to the address in the letter tomorrow evening, and confront this obscenely bold, precocious boy who had dared to put her into his own nasty, dirty dreams. She would reason with him at first, warn him of the great dangers he ran by even thinking such filthy thoughts about a decent young woman. Why, in all the time she had had this class, she had never once had any personal discussion with any of her students from which they could have gotten the slightest notion of her own personal affairs. Never once had she even hinted at the subject of ... of ... sex. And now this!

She pulled open the drawer of her writing desk and hastily stuck the offensive theme beneath a stack of file folders, then rose abruptly, biting her lips, strangely ill at ease. The low, distant rumble of thunder made her shiver, for whoever the writer of that-that horrible trash-was, he had evoked a mood of shadows and violence that lingered even now, though she had put away the dreadful pages far out of sight.

Then she started, a hand to her throat, as she heard the front door bell. She wasn't expecting anyone. Henry Brandt had said he would call her for a dinner date next week, as he was supposed to be out of town most of this week doing some special research at the Cleveland Public Library; his college had the Easter break this first week of May, while hers had come two weeks ago.

She walked to the door and pressed the "Talk" button, called, "Who is it?"

"Henry Brandt, dear. May I come up for a minute?" was the unexpected answer.

"Oh-I-I-y-yes, H-Henry, just a minute," she stammered. She pressed the admittance buzzer and hesitantly opened the door without taking off the chain, just to make sure. There were so many robberies these days, one had to be awfully careful. Not that it wasn't Henry, but then someone could have found out his name and might be using it to gain entry to the apartment....

But when she saw his tall gawky figure standing in the landing, recognized his gray car coat and, since he had his fedora hat in one hand and a tissue-wrapped box in the other, saw the thinning dark-brown hair with the receding line at the forehead, she hastily drew off the chain and opened the door, stepping back. "I-I didn't expect to hear from you till tomorrow, H-Henry," she quavered as he entered, then shut and locked the door behind him.

"I know. Forgive me for coming so late without calling, but I just got back from Cleveland and I wanted to see you, Christine, dear," he said gently. "Here, this is for you."

"Oh, t-thank you, Henry. Did you have a nice trip?" She accepted the tissue-wrapped box, moved over to the low wide couch near the window. "Take off your coat and do sit down."

Draping his coat over the edge of the couch and putting his fingers on the little table just beyond, Henry Brandt seated himself, cleared his throat and eyed his young fiancee.

Christine, trying to conceal her agitation from the unexpected literary effusion she had just read, seated herself at the other end and occupied herself with unwrapping the box. "Oh how nice-only you know I shouldn't eat a lot of candy, Henry," she said at last, with a shy glance at him. "I really think your boys would enjoy it a lot more-why don't you give it to them instead? But it was sweet of you to think of me."

"I've got presents for them, don't you worry, honey," his voice was suddenly husky. "You know, the candy was-well, just an excuse to come visit you. You-you made me very happy last week when you said you'd marry me. And so-well, honey, I-I wanted to talk about plans. You know. Now my school ends June twenty-fourth. What about yours?"

"The twenty-sixth, Henry." She kept her eyes averted, the candy box in her lap, more and more distracted by the alarming theme. She knew she didn't dare share it with him; it would have been unthinkable. And suddenly she was conscious of the fact that under the zippered, tightly clinging hostess robe, she was naked. Her bosom began to rise and fall eratically, and once again an adorable blush stained her cheeks.

"Great! Well, why couldn't we be married, say that last Saturday in June, then? And leave on our honeymoon right after. I was thinking about Mexico. Or would you rather go to Hawaii, dear?" Henry Brandt surreptitiously had moved closer to her and, once again clearing his throat, stared greedily at her with what was more than academic interest. The tight cling of the yellow satin against her round full firm breasts and thighs, the warm carnation tinting of her skin intensified by the shower and towelling, the scent of her delicate perfume, crystallized his desire for her.

"I-I hadn't thought about a-a honeymoon," was her nervous answer. "Er-can I get you a drink?"

"No thanks, Christine, dear.' If-well, if you want the ttuth, I just dropped in to see my girl." Now his voice was hoarse and trembling, and he moved still closer, till at last his thigh brushed hers. Christine gasped nervously, glanced at him with large startled eyes, and then flushed hotly as his gaze met hers. For Henry Brandt was perspiring, and, taking out a handkerchief to mop his face, he again cleared his throat, as if about to make an announcement in his classroom.

"T-that was thoughtful of you, H-Henry."

"Yes, well-anyway, don't you think we ought to make definite plans? You said you'd marry me-or have you changed your mind, darling?" His voice now took on a kind of wistful, almost plaintive tone. Suddenly, Christine felt a twinge of distaste; was it loneliness that had made her accept this her really first suitor? Was it because he had offered the security of marriage and she regarded this as a bulwark against the crudities of the male to which she had been subjected since her early teens? She forced herself to put aside this disturbing afterthought; there was much to be said for an intellectual marriage where two persons shared the same scholastic and artistic interests.

"N-no, I haven't changed my mind," she at last replied. "The first week in July would be all right, I suppose. And I haven't been to either place, so you decide for us, dear."

Henry Brandt's myopic eyes grew watery, and then he beamed. Overjoyed, he suddenly put his arms around her shoulders and planted a long, almost panting kiss on her soft trembling lips. "Darling!" he breathed as he released her, "you don't know how happy you've made me. I-I'm terribly in love with you, Christine. Fact it, I catch myself behaving like a schoolboy. Even to dreaming about you-"

She started convulsively, and once again the telltale blush of emotional agitation suffused her cheeks. "D-dreaming about me, H-Henry?" she tremulously echoed.

"Uh huh," he murmured slyly, pressing himself still closer to her till there could be no mistake about his suddenly amorous mood. "All sorts of things, not the kind a stuffy old English teacher usually does, either. Do you want to hear about them, sweetheart?"

"PI-please, Henry-I-I'm not feeling at my best this evening. I-my class is giving me trouble-"

"I understand, dearest." His left arm went around her waist, and his right hand caught both of hers and squeezed them. "I know just how you feel. You're lonely, as I am, ever since Martha left me for another man. That was the real reason we divorced-I don't think I ever told you, dear. Yes, she was unfaithful all along, but it took me years to find out. So really, sweetheart, in spite of my age, I've never honestly had a girl who truly loved me. And that's why-well, after that lonely trip, I wanted so much to see you because I'm wild about you, dearest. You've brought back my youth-even to my dreams-"

Before she could interrupt or anticipate him, Henry Brandt had leaned forward and kissed her mouth, this time darting just the tip of his tongue between her lips, while his right hand, releasing hers, suddenly moved to cup one of her firm young breasts and squeeze it, then rub his palm lingeringly back and forth over the nippled breast.

"Ouff-ahh-n-no! Don't-Henry, please stop it-" Christine spluttered, twisting her face away, and with both hands she seized his caressing hand and forced it away from her now tumultuously heaving bosom.

"But, darling, we're engaged, and I thought you wanted to be loved-" he panted.

"N-not t-that way-please-I-I'm upset-I don't want to be angry with you-but won't you please g-go now, please, Henry?" she rose from the couch, digging he fingernails into her palms.

"I-I'm sorry." Instantly he was contrite, like an abashed schoolboy caught in error. "I should have known better than to force myself on you, Christine. I-I'll call you next week, then. Maybe we can have dinner and talk thing over?"

"Y-yes. That would be all right. T-thank you for the candy, Henry."

"It was nothing." He seized his coat and hat, walked to the door, looked back forlornly. "Well, talk to you next week then, honey. Good night."

When the door closed behind him, Christine Bernard sat down on the couch and burst into almost hysterical teats....