Chapter 15

From the office, Donna and Jeff went to a little Italian restaurant in the Forties and had themselves a meal, loaded with hot spices that sobered them in a quick hurry. While they ate, they talked.

"I own an apartment in Jackson Heights," Donna told him as she wound spaghetti around her fork. "I don't live there. I just bought the place as an investment when I first came to New York. It's got ten units and one of them-a one-room, furnished apartment just happens to be vacant. It's not the greatest but, at least, it'll be someplace where you can stay until you get settled."

"But I don't have any money to pay for an apartment," he pointed out. "Just a few bucks I got from the Brunos"

"So who's asking for money?" Donna wanted to know as she mouthed her spaghetti. "The apartment's been vacant for three months. What'll it hurt if you live there on the cuff for a couple of weeks? You'll pay me when you get a job."

Jeff's first thought, now that he had a place, was Janice. In spite of the way they'd parted in the motel, there was no question in his mind that she'd see him again, give him another chance to patch things up, if only he could get in touch with her. He asked Donna would she help.

Donna stared at him, incredulously. "You've gotta be crazy. You want to get both of us killed?"

"There's no other way I can get in touch with her."

"Consider yourself lucky."

"Please, Donna."

Donna wrapped more spaghetti around her fork as she looked across the table at him with grave concern. "Why don't you do yourself a favor and forget about her?"

Jeff frowned. "You don't like her, do you?"

She shrugged as she downed the spaghetti. "I don't have any feelings toward her one way or the other. I just know she's no good for you."

"Why?"

"You said yourself-she's married to a bastard-and that's reason enough."

He kept frowning as he looked down at his plate and toyed absently with his food. "I've got to get in touch with her. It's important. And if you won't help-I'll have to risk contracting her myself."

"You know you're a damn fool, don't you? No girl's worth getting killed for."

"She is."

Donna looked at him with mild disgust and for a moment it looked as if she might be going to argue. But she took another mouthful of spaghetti, masticated and swallowed it, then said resignedly: "Okay, Mr. Harlow. Like I said you're a damn fool, but I guess I am one, too." She sighed. "When do you want to see Mrs. Suicide?"

It was about ten o'clock the next evening when the superintendent of the apartment building, where Donna had let Jeff stay, rapped on Jeff's door and informed him that there was a call for him on the pay phone in the lobby. Jeff's heart banged furiously against his ribs as he hurried down the one flight of stairs and into the phone booth. It was Janice! At the first sound of her voice, the clouds lifted from Jeff's troubled world and everything was suddenly bright golden sunshine.

"Oh, Jeffrey darling," she poured into his ear over the wire. "Donna told me where you were. Oh, darling, I'm so glad I found you. I've got to see you ... tonight ... can I come over there?"

"How soon?" he almost gurgled in his excited anxiousness.

"I've got to stop off at the club first, show myself," she told him. "But I'll be there, darling, as quickly as I can."

It was shortly after twelve midnight when Janice tapped lightly at the door to Jeff's apartment. He opened the door at once. She waited until she was safely inside and he locked the door behind them, then she fell into his arms.

Hungrily he closed his mouth over hers; tongues tangling. He seemed to melt right into the softness of her body.

"Oh, Jeffrey darling," she whispered when finally she drew back from him to catch her breath. "I was so foolish to think that I could just walk out of your life, the way I tried to do yesterday. Every second away from you has been torture. I knew the moment I left you there in the motel, that you were right and I was wrong-about everything."

He didn't care which of them was right or wrong. He knew only how deliriously happy he was that she had come back to him. He held her close to him as his hands moved from her hips upward to her fascinating, resilient breasts and then behind her to the long zipper at the back of her skin-tight, white satin gown.

The next instant the gown had glided down her goddess-like body to the floor to reveal that she wore nothing underneath.

He picked her up in his arms, her long, golden hair flowing behind her as he carried her toward the bed in one corner of the big room. Her naked skin scorched his fingers and he paused on the way to kiss her passionate lips. He placed her on the bed and leaned over her. With unbridled emotion, he wanted to possess her completely-in every way.

He kissed her vibrant breasts, her distended nipples, the deep dimple that was her belly-button and then the fleecy warmth of her thighs. She squirmed and twisted as the heat began to generate inside her. Then suddenly she pushed him away.

"Lie down, darling," she whispered ardently. "Let ME make love to YOU tonight! A night I promise you'll never forget."

He wasn't about to offer any arguments to a request like that. He simply stretched out on his back on the bed and let her have her way with him. From that moment on-nothing seemed quite real. It was more like one long, wonderful, uninterrupted dream made up of all the thoughts and wishes and little dreams that a man could have.

This, after all, was the girl he loved. The girl who could incite him with a mere kiss, or a glimpse of her exciting, magnificently-formed body. The girl who one day would be his wife-to belong to him-him and no one else.

This, too, was the girl for whom he had travelled three thousand miles. Because he knew now that he had NOT come to reap revenge from Val Salem. He came to get back the woman he loved.

What Janice did to him during the next few hours robbed him of all sense of time and place and whisked him off to some strange paradise that was more beautiful than the powers of the human mind could conceive. He just lay there, watching every little movement of her body as she slowly undressed him. The mere touch of her fingers as she unfastened a button, or slid open a zipper, or undid a snap excited him. Her gentle hands were so soft and sure, her touch light and delicate.

Jeff listened to her whispered words of love and sugar-coated threats of how she was going to make him feel before she was done with him. These, coupled with her hands teasing his flesh, made him grow bigger, tight-skinned, hot sensitive.

Occasionally the temptation to put his hands on her naked body got too much for him and he'd reach out to fondle her swinging breasts, or feel the moist heat between her thighs. She'd let him satisfy these desires for a few seconds, then brush away his hands and move out of his reach.

As naked as she now, Jeff lifted himself off the bed in blind groping, pleading with her to bring him relief; not knowing how much more of this tantalizing, tortuous pleasure he could take and still retain his sanity. It was almost as if she were getting some sort of strange sadistic enjoyment out of teasing him; seeing just how much stimulation he could endure.

And then he felt the first warm brush of her breath against him ... the first shocking stab of her tongue ... and then her scalding mouth covered him. Flames swept back through his body and melted all reality and all reason within him. He didn't want her to stop now ... and she had no intention of stopping. She was going all the way.

Slowly and beautifully, Jeff felt the climax beginning far out in his extremities. Then all at once it seemed to get out of control as it built rapidly inside him with the fury of a full-scale tornado-carrying along with it all his pent up emotions and desires-toward one focal point that he could feel swell and swell. He tried to hold back and prolong that one, final, scintillating moment-but the fierce demands of her sensation-inducing lips proved too great-and suddenly everything burst!

She held him, arms wrapped tightly around his hips, and wouldn't let him go until she felt the climax gradually recede and knew that he had throbbed out the full measure of pleasure she had caused him. But they both knew full well that it wasn't over for either of them.

She lay there on the bed beside him and gave him only time enough to recover before he was aware of her hands caressing him again, softly but persistently, in a determined effort to restore him to life. Her kiss and the magic of her body would have eventually done it. But she didn't want to wait. She was too impatient. So she brought into play her uncanny sense of knowing exactly the right spots to touch, the most sensitive areas to tease-and in nothing flat she had him ready to go again.

"But this time you get a thrill," he told her.

She smiled and looked up at him through long lashes; her sun-gold hair half-covering her slightly flushed face. "You really want me to have a thrill? I know a way. You stay where you are."

As he continued to lie there on his back, she spread apart his legs and bent them up slightly at the knees. Then she assumed a kneeling-sitting position between HIS legs, and with her BACK to him, she fitted herself to him and then leaned forward so that she could rest on her elbows on his bent knees.

He believed that one of the greatest thrills she'd shown him so far, was that moment when she eased back against him until her buttocks rested against his stomach and she had taken him completely. He wondered if the sensation she was receiving was as great as the one she was bringing him. He got his answer the moment she began to move against him. She moaned and screamed like a wild animal that had coupled with its mate and her gyrations suddenly became those of a maddened, furious, sex-starved woman. He felt the succession of eruptions that occurred in her loins and deep in her spasming interior. The last one was so violent that it brought him on almost unexpectedly. With a complete lack of control he boiled over inside her.

She accepted all he had to give her and wanted more. And before the night was over she took more ... leaving him in a weakened, helpless state of blissful serenity with the most wonderful feeling that ever possessed him-the feeling that now at long last she belonged to him-his, body and soul.

Unfortunately this was NOT true-A fact she made very clear to him when, about an hour or so before dawn, she slipped unceremoniously out of bed and reached for her gown.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asked, looking up at her from his pillow.

"Home."

He sat up abruptly and frowned. "At this hour?"

She leaned forward and kissed him.

"I still have a husband, darling," she reminded him and saw him pout. "I'm sorry, Jeffrey, but I do. And I'd better be home when he gets there."

"I'll get dressed and go with you," he offered as he started to swing his feet to the floor and grab for his clothes.

"No. You stay right where you are. My car's parked just down the block. I'll be perfectly safe."

She had on her gown now and turned so he could zip up the back. He kissed her bare back and made her shiver before he drew the' zipper closed. She glanced around the room to make sure she was leaving, nothing behind. Then she got into her white heels, leaned into the bed again and brushed his lips with a kiss.

"Good-bye, Jeffrey darling," she whispered.

"Good-bye?" he echoed. "That sounds pretty final."

She shrugged as she drew erect. "After all, darling, I can't very well be with you seven nights a week."

"When will it be seven nights a week?" he wanted to know with a tinge of desperation in his voice. "How long is it going to be before you don't have to run away from me-not ever?"

She smiled mirthlessly. "I don't know, darling. I thought we closed THAT door yesterday in the motel?"

He didn't comment. He just stood up, wrapped one of the bed sheets around his naked middle and walked with her to the door and opened it.

She told him she'd get in touch with him the first chance she had. Then she kissed his lips once more and she was gone.