Chapter 12

The storm was tropical in its force and we sat sweating in the car, the windows rolled up, as I leaned forward and tried to see the highway.

"I think I better pull over," I said. 'This is getting dangerous." The windshield was a sheet of rushing water and at times the force of the wind-driven rain seemed ready not only to stall the wipers, but rip them off.

"Oh, no, Carl," Jamie said. "No, go further, please. Away from town. I've got to get away from town for a little while. I just have to."

"All right, baby," I muttered, and held my hands on the steering wheel with an effort, because in that closed, humid car, I was sweating so badly my hands were as slick as though they had been greased.

But another five miles and the force of the wind was bucking the car and I could only creep along and hope I wasn't near the shoulder. "Christ, I've got to pull over and find some shelter," I said. "It's just not possible to go on."

Jamie sighed. "I guess you're right. It seems it might just pick us up and blow us away, and I'm simply sweltering."

"Just where in hell are we?" I asked. "Wait, I see something on the right. What is that? It looks like a relay tower for high-voltage electricity."

"Oh, I know where we are then," she said. "Just beyond that tower, there's a road to the right, if I remember correctly, the left side as we turn, the one the wind's coming from, is a high bank for several hundred feet. The road was cut through a hill, I guess."

Jamie remembered correctly and I managed to crawl off the highway and make the shelter of the hill. That took the force of the wind off us and since it allowed the wipers to work again, I could see the road ahead. It was blacktop, full of pot-holes and in places it was like driving over corduroy.

"What's that building on the right?" I asked.

She leaned forward. "There's an old sign that says 'bait,' but the place looks deserted to me. In fact, I can see huge cracks in the walls. If anybody lives there, they're drowned by now."

I risked getting off the blacktop and pulled around behind the rotting, one-room shack, which was obviously deserted. There was an overhang from the roof, and we were fairly effectively shielded from most of the storm. To our right was a lake or bayou or river-it was difficult to say. I cut off the motor and lowered the window a little, then as I took out my handkerchief and brushed sweat from my steaming face and forehead.

Jamie was dripping with sweat, her pale face soaking, her thin blouse so wet her bra was clearly molded against the material, and there were spots of sweat on the jeans.

"Don't brush off the sweat," she said. "It makes you look sexy."

"I take it that's a compliment," I said.

"Of course, sir," she said, and nodded. "For you, I have only compliments."

I slid across the seat and put my arm around her. "Jamie, baby, what's wrong with you? What in the hell has happened? In the name of God, talk to me."

"Do you really want to talk?" she asked, and looked up with a faint, provocative smile twisted on the corners of her lips. "We don't have long together, Carl. Do you want to waste the time talking?"

"You're talking riddles again, crazy girl," I said, and brushed a tangle of blonde hair from her forehead. "I'm not going anywhere, Jamie. Not without you. I'm not going to lose you again."

Sighed. "Carl, listen. I was, well, I was fond of you in Rome. But that's been a year, and things have changed. I've changed. Oh, Carl, how I've changed. Now, I was just a little depressed about a couple of things and wrote you that stupid letter. like I said, I sent you another letter asking that you not come."

"Jamie, I'm in love with you," I said. "And baby, you're in trouble, real trouble. You look awful. And you look like you're about to go off the deep end. Now, dammit, I'm going to help you. I have some idea of what's happening, and I intend to. . . "

Her kiss was sudden and sucking, a wild, wicked kiss that made gasp. Her tongue moved against mine, then lashed the roof of my mouth, while she rubbed her breasts hard against my chest, and clawed at my neck with her nails.

And with ragged breath against my cheek, there came a short grunt of pure animal lust. When I pulled from her mouth a couple of minutes later, she was sucking at my tongue and biting my lower hp, and she had curled a leg between my thighs and her knee was rubbing expertly to send sheets of tense, hot desire over my body.

"Jamie, listen, wait," I mumbled, but her pale face was strange, blood-red now, twisted into a mask of beautiful, abandoned passion, with the blue eyes half closed as though drugged.

"Don't you want me, Carl?" she whispered, her voice hoarse. "We don't really have anything to discuss. I made a mistake asking you to come and now I want you to leave. But just this once, Carl, I want you."

"Jamie, wait a minute," I gasped, but her fingers were doing things over my body that made me want her very badly.

She was biting my ear now, tonguing the ear, her lips hot, wet and hungry and she tore two buttons getting my shirt open. She was like a frenzied animal, and I was rapidly losing control of myself. But I knew something was terribly wrong, and that I would be making a mistake to take her this way. . .

"Damn you," she suddenly said, and shoved me away, her blue eyes blazing. Then she burst into tears, and huge teardrops streamed down her red cheeks and mixed with the sweat.

"Take it easy, baby," I said soothingly, but I was burning up, with the heat in the car, and with my own heat.

Her nostrils were flared, her lips moving slightly, her breathing fierce and desperate.

Suddenly she scrambled over the seat, and climbed up onto the back seat. She tore her blouse open and pulled it off, then reached for the bra snap.

I turned, and leaned over the seat. "Jamie, I love you and want you, of course, but not like this."

"Not like what?" she asked, as she tore the white bra off and her breasts spilled free, mild-white mounds bathed in sweat, the too-long bright red nipples seeming to glow with a red-molten fire. "This is sex. What other way is there?"

I went over the seat as she unfastened the jeans and started jerking them off. I reached her just as she dropped them to the floor, and I stared at her luscious, sickly pale body, at the milky-smooth thighs and the tiny piece of white panty cloth that was ripped in two places is front to show a hint of the huge mound of matted blonde hair I remembered so well.

I caught her wrists as she tried to kiss me again and shook her so that her tangled, sweat-streaked blonde hair flew down and was matted to her forehead.

She struggled furiously for an instant, then went limp and fell back. I let her go.

"What's wrong, Carl?" she asked in a whisper. "I'm a big girl now. I go all the way. You spent every night for three weeks trying to get me to go all the way in Rome. Well, you're in luck today." She laughed, and traced a sharp fingernail around the bottom rim of the ripped panties. "Fight me or give in, but before you take me back to town, I'm going to have you, Carl."

I sat there staring dumbly at her naked body, aroused beyond endurance, and totally unsure of what to do.

"Poor panties," she said in a soothing voice and shook her head. "They were brand new. That's what I get for not being able to wait."

She suddenly pulled the panties off, dropped them on the floor, and in the same motion flew against me again, and sucked a wet, searing kiss over my mouth, her lips pumping, her hands going berserk on my neck and ears and in my hair, while her knee shoved against my trapped, throbbing prick. I gasped, and all resistance fled-fled down my soaking, screaming body and my prick flared up, dancing like an insane puppet to each touch of her knee.

I kissed her fiercely, and slid my hands over her glistening back, and when I squeezed her wet, squirming buttocks, it was like grasping two handfuls of syrup that has just gone solid from excessive heat.

Jamie mashed the wild kiss harder, her teeth nibbling, her lips sucking and her tongue lashing the inside of my mouth, while her boiling, irregular gasps of breath poured against my burning cheeks.

"Aaaah," she moaned. "Aaaaaah"-through the sloppy, artless kiss, and then, as her nails dug ten points of pain into my neck and she humped at my thigh: "Uh, uh, uh, aaaaah" again.

I tried to grasp the jerking buttocks but they were so slick it was difficult, and finally in a moment of blinding passion in which my prick throbbed with the ecstasy of pained arousal, I dug my nails into her buttocks and slammed her body against mine, and she ground her breasts against my chest and through my shirt I could tell the long, red nipples were so firm they must be aching.

"Your clothes," she gasped as she pulled from my lips and tore at my shirt.

I helped her tug it off, as she sat on a leg and hunched up and down, and tried to lick my lips, my ear, my chin, my chest. We somehow got the T-shirt off, too, and then she put her little hands palms down and flattened them against my stomach and shoved them below my belt, and leaned against me hard, with her nails digging into my stomach while she bent her head and tongue kissed my chest and nipples.

I kissed her ears and her damp, tangled hair and scraped my finger along her slick, jerking body. Then I grunted as she pressed her nails harder against my stomach and nearly took my breath away.

I was bursting with desire, the urgent throbbing of my prick sensitized to acid-sharp rawness by memories of Jamie in Rome, of all the times I had petted with her. And now I was ready to devour the scalding body that was hunching and clawing and biting at me, and my breathing brought animal lust sounds that matched hers.

Moving with clumsy, lust-heavy fingers we fumbled my pants and shorts off and fell cramped onto the narrow seat while the wind shifted and rain spray blew through the open from window and chilled our sweat-hot bodies with cold mist that made me shiver in a strange, warm way.

I fell between Jamie's open thighs and hugged her glorious body to mine and she enclosed me and rocked back and forth, while I kissed and bit her ear. A lone, slender finger trailed points of pain across my buttocks, paused then plunged deep and twisted. The blade of pain tore my buttocks apart, and I sank my teeth into her neck and she scrambled so that my erect prick fell against her large, damp vagina and she groaned and wrapped her legs around me.

I ripped her thighs apart and for a moment fingered the slick, pulsating lips of her vagina, then rammed down into that, sucking, burning hole of honeyed delight. Jamie was rigid a fraction of a moment, her hands doubled into fists so tight the nails drew faint traces of blood in her palms.

Then her body went berserk, and she rocked and wrapped herself around me, muscles strained and pulsated in her buttocks and thighs and in the vagina, muscles that worked the slick, sticky-tight flesh against my frantic prick. And I grasped her buttocks and pumped steadily, twisted, changed the pace, thrust and teased and hurt, worked steadily once more.

We bit each other, clawed and scratched and thrashed, our breathing impossible and inhuman, and I soared up that peak of blinding pleasure and as though a hand had reached up through my prick, into my gut and my soul and jerked hard, a searing release built up.

I moaned and whimpered and my nipples ached, and then came the explosion: a razoredge of burning release poured through my body and I screamed and thrust a final time, then collapsed on Jamie's inhumanly hot, white heaving body.

She lay still now, too. That is, she was sexually spent, but some of her muscles still quivered as though she had worked them to such a peak of unnatural excitement she could not control them, and her breathing was so irregular and so fierce it jerked even the bulk of my large body.

And so we lay wrapped about each other, sweat-slick and chilled by the rain spray, the hving dead gasping out breath after what the French call

"the little death."

Then Jamie stirred, and my drained, withered prick, still lying there at the wet lips of her vagina, stirred with her and life began to swell into it once more, and I felt the breasts rubbing beneath me and kissed her forehead and cheek and slid a hand along her side to her thigh.

She jerked, lay still, sighed with her eyes closed, doubled her hands into quickly opening fists. Then she opened the eyes and with surprising strength doubled her legs and twisted savagely beneath me.

"Get off, you're mashing me, you're hurting me," she whined, in a panicedged voice, and beat at me with her little fists.

I scrambled up, gasping for breath, "Listen, Jamie," I started, having no idea what in hell to say.

She scooped up her clothes. "Don't talk now, dammit," she snapped. "I'm burning up and covered with sweat and feel awful. Let's get out of here. You get dressed back here and I'll take the front seat. Just don't talk to me, dammit. I feel awful."

I nodded and sat back against the seat, rivlets of sweat cascading down my body. As Jamie climbed over the seat, for one beautiful instant her naked buttocks were thrust up, and I saw several broad red welts that I had not inflicted with my fingers and which I had not noticed in the heat of lovemaking.

When we finally got back near town, the rain had slacked up. Jamie insisted I take her straight home. She sat huddled in the corner between the seat and door, her legs doubled up on the seat and her arms wrapped around them as though she were trying to draw her body together as tightly as possible and escape from everything external.

"Jamie, it's no good my taking you home now," I said, as I stopped for a red light. "Dammit, we've got to talk. I'm here to help you. Don't you understand that I can help you, baby? If you'll just.. . . "

"Do you see the policeman directing traffic?" she asked. She sat up abruptly and put her hand on the door. "Unless you promise to take me directly home I swear I'll jump out of the car and tell him to make you leave me alone."

Her blue eyes were wide and her voice rising with the tinge of panic.

I nodded. "Okay, calm down. I'll take you home. But I'm not leaving Harrisville, Jamie. Don't be ridiculous, baby. Don't you understand that I can help you?"

The light changed and I drove slowly down the street. The rain was falling heavier now and the humidity was up again.

"Don't you want to get cleaned up?" she asked. "I'm just soaking wet and feel dirty and awful. I could spend an hour in a hot shower."

"Sure, I want to get cleaned up," I said. "All right, why don't I drop you off and then I'll pick you up in say an hour and a half.. . "

She shook her head. "Just drop me off and leave me alone. I mean, until tomorrow, Carl. I simply can't spend any more time with you today or tonight. I'll try to make it up for your having come this far for nothing. If you insist, I'll make love to you again. Any way you want. But you can't help me, as you say. Carl, a year has passed, and I've changed. Everything has changed, and you have no idea what is happening to me or my father, or anything in this town, and you're not being smart. . . "

"I'm smart enough to have figured out that you and your father are in some kind of serious trouble, because of the freeway interchange, and somehow because of those girls, and baby. . . "

Her laugh was sudden and harsh, coming from that lovely, slim white throat. "Those girls have played with you like you were a toy. You're really going to be a big help, aren't you, darling?" Her tone was lightly sarcastic. Then it altered abruptly into a slow, dull deadly pitch. "The only way you can help me and my father is to get the hell out of here. Your coming has only complicated matters, and if you want me to tell you what I really think about you, and hurt you? Why not just remember our good times in Rome, and call this afternoon's little lovemaking payment on an overdue debt."

I turned the corner onto her street. "What hold do the girls have on you, Jamie? What control do they have over you? And what about that so-called rape? And what happened to your father? He hasn't been physically sick, but something has drained him. I'm not leaving, and I know too much already, baby."

I pulled up in front of her house. It was pouring rain. Suddenly, she slid across the seat, her smile bright and her blue eyes sparkling.

"Silly, the girls just don't like me," she purred, and kissed my cheek. "They took great delight in playing with Jamie's boyfriend while she was away. And then telling me all about it. Oh, they're some bunch, aren't they? Me, I just found I like to make love. I wouldn't have anything to do with that bunch of creepy little perverts. Now look, you call me tomorrow, and we'll go out again. Maybe down to the Gulf and spend the day. I'll be rested then and feel better."

I smoothed her hair from her forehead and started to tell her she was lying through her teeth. But I just kissed her forehead. I forced a smile.

"I was stupid with the girls," I said. "I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. Look, if we can go away, maybe we can spend the night together." I laid it on thick, as if I believed her every word. "I guess I don't understand things down here in Harrisville, Jamie. All that waiting put my imagination into high gear, I guess."

"Okay, look, I'll run now," she said, and brushed my lips with hers. "Tomorrow, everything will be fine, darling. I'm sorry I've snapped at you and been such a little bitch. But I really am beat, and this heat just takes something out of me."

"Sure, I understand," I said. "It takes something out of me, too. Look, I'll call you around nine in the morning, all right?"

"Yes, I'll be waiting," she said, kissed my cheek quickly, then slid across the seat and climbed out into the rain. She ran across the lawn and as I leaned over to shut the door, I saw Peggy Sue staring from the upstairs window. This time she did not wave.

I drove slowly off. I decided to go the hotel, take a hot shower, a short nap, then have something to drink. When I was rested and reasonably calm, I would make a decision. And it would not be the kind of nebulous what-can-I-do decisions I had made when being played by the girls.

In combat, and in diving, in most work I've done there is a point at which each man makes a decision, considers that he may die or be badly hurt, but he makes the decision and goes on.

In some three hours I was going to make such a decision, and then I would do what had to be done, and to hell with the consequences.