Chapter 1
His rod was going to split. Not only the pants made tight by its swollen length, but his prick itself was going to rip itself open. The throbbing of it was like a drum beat, or like the slow hammering of a timing bag. It was killing him.
Rush stared at the tight dress that clung to every line of the woman, at the slit skirt that peeled back to expose so much silken thigh, and thought that two years without a woman was too damned long. His throat choked up as she turned and held out a drink to him. His hand shook as he accepted the glass.
"Hey now," she said softly. "You've got it bad. I never shook anybody up like that before. I mean-I felt that powerful yen of yours at the club, but-"
"You can throw me out," he said. "I hope you don't, but I'll cut on out if you want. Otherwise I-I'll just have to put my hands on you."
Rush gulped the drink without tasting-it. He'd had seven or eight before it, watching this beautiful woman do her strip act in the club. Funny they hadn't made him fly any higher; he'd been two years without a drink, too. The hacks at Soledad prison didn't serve drinks or make women available.
Her almond-shaped eyes were on his, testing him, weighing him. He thought that this lovely Chinese stripper was wondering if he was weird, if she should have brought him to her apartment. Lei was her name, Lei Ng, and she was all the women he'd dreamed of while locked away in the joint. He was damned lucky she'd brought him this far.
She'd made up her mind. Her lips softened and her dark eyes marked him okay. His cock ached as she stepped back and made a sudden graceful move with both hands; her dress lifted up and away, and she stood there proudly naked before him. Her breasts were high and stiffly nippled, her skin smooth and golden, the crisply curled hair of her pussy was black. Black as the wealth of hair that hung all the way down her back to her rounded ass.
Rush's hands tore at his shirt, his pants; he kicked off his shoes and somehow got out of shorts and teeshirt. He couldn't wait. He caught her to him, crushed those nippled tits to him in a frenzy of need that had been building up for a long, long time. He didn't want to hurt her, but maybe he did.
Her mouth was hot and wet, her tongue a quickly darting little animal that tried to hide from his. But her warm, smooth body writhed against his, ground and squirmed against his, and she had his hard, pulsing rod in one soft hand.
They went to the floor together, him tasting the flavor of her, the woman taste, the female spiciness of her mouth and her silken flesh. Rush pulled a nipple into his mouth and held himself in so that her questing hand wouldn't blow him off.
Her mound was satiny, the hair tickling his palm, the moist heat of it cupped close and hungrily. He couldn't wait; he had already waited too damned long. He spread her legs and lifted himself between them, aching and shivering all over. Lei helped him, guided him with her soft, warm hand into her soft, warm box.
Then she brought her arms around his neck, and lifted her long, silken legs to seat him better when he lunged into her. Her breasts flattened against his chest and her mouth clung savagely to his, her sharp teeth raked across his as she met his driving passion with her lifting, twisting pelvis and the sure strength of her pussy.
He laid it into her, trying to hold off, trying like hell to keep himself from blasting off at the first constriction of her cunt upon his driving prick. But she was too much for him, and Rush turned loose in a twisting, grinding plunge that buried him to the root inside her. He clutched at her buttocks, dug his fingers into their smooth, hunching roundness as Lei clamped upon his cock.
Rush made some kind of noise into her mouth, some moaning sound that could not tell of the tortured nights of anguish in the joint, that could never speak of the need and longing. He was ashamed it was over so quickly, yet glad it was done in the act of doing-not because of some wet dream or a queen's sly hand upon his prick, or the wriggling invitation of a half-mast's tail pressed into his hard-on in the chow line.
The bastards had never let him alone. For two painful years, they had never let him alone. But they hadn't tried any muscle again-not since he punched out three of them, bang-bang-bang. It didn't take much to rap out jocks and queens; not when a guy knew how to fire the hands.
And not when the hands were good once more.
"Hey now," Lei said gently beneath him, "hey man-you're so eager-"
And that was true also. He was still eager, still hard and powerful inside her caressing box. Her fluids and his, made her hotter, more slippery, and Rush stroked her some more-long, lingering, feeling-around strokes that touched bottom and all sides. He was good for her, good with her, and the magic depths of her were his to explore, to plumb, to seek out in his swollen cock.
Lei's legs lifted once more, but this time to cross with hungry zeal across his sweaty back, to lock her pelvis tightly to him so that her pubic hair became one with his pubic hair.
"Ahh-" and she lifted to him.
"Hey man-" and she drew back, wriggled back only to force herself forward upon his pile driving prick.
"Ooh, baby-" and she ground just as hard upon him as her body would allow.
Good and hot and slippery inside; hairy and clenching and all soft satins along her thighs; shapely and quivering, the cheeks that fit so snugly within his hands.
This one for the long, hot nights with eyes open and seeing all the fine girls on the ceiling of the sweating cell.
That one for the hard-on in the showers, with the bastard queens simpering close by and offering cartons of smokes for it.
This grinding thrust into her box for the jockers that touched his ass in the corridors.
That jamming lunge into her shuddering velvet hole for the sons of bitches all-the hacks and before them the cops and the bastard judge and the stupid jury.
And now-now-with Lei Ng crowding and moaning and shaking her lovely ass-now, this climbing, screaming, booming off load that wet her, drenched her as it shook him loose from his heaving backbone.
This was for the career shot down, the big money kissed off, the one chance Rush Scanlon ever had of being somebody, you bastards. This pumping semen, this spurting stuff was for all the hard work and the hammering, for being a monk when everybody else was screwing all the beautiful, hot girls.
Screw you all.
He rolled from her, and she allowed him to slip out of her, to slide, yet hard, from the enchanted suctioning of her organ. He trailed a track across the impossibly smooth and flawless skin of her thigh, that golden skin that looked as if it had been polished and stretched over some inner light.
Lei put her hand gently upon his cock and rested it there, calmed him there. Her hair spilled over his chest and down his belly, hair the color of midnight in the high mountains, hair that smelled like all the young girls walking sweetly among all the springtime gardens.
This woman, maybe his first real woman, this giving and accepting woman with the almond eyes and the sexy body, lay her face upon his trembling chest and snuggled close to him, not even knowing his name, not giving a damn that he was fresh out of Soledad prison. He was grateful to her and would always be, for this was the stuff of the nightmare dreams in the joint; the hotly beautiful broad who took you for yourself, the classy chick who was a dancer-singer-actress-millionaire-movie star and would screw you until your nose bled, man.
Only, the sad bastards who made it out on the streets, never really found a woman like that. They found the hookers and bar flies and old ladies, and the guys made them do until they got busted again and could go back to dreaming of next time, next time, while they screwed the queens or got screwed by the jockers, and went on seeing how it ought to be, in their heads, and on the black ceilings of the cells.
But look here what happened to Rush Scanlon. Look here at the fabulous body curled up to his, at the shiny nipples, almost black, they were so dark, and look down there at that Oriental princess skin and that damply gleaming patch of hair between her thighs, and tell it around that Rush Scanlon made it all the way.
He still couldn't quite figure it all out. Ten guys-twenty maybe, had tried to make it with Lei Ng that night. It wasn't as if a beautiful stripper ever got hard up and went home with the first guy that asked her.
Some of those Johns had money, too; it showed in their clothes and confidence and the soft grace of them. Yet Lei had chilled them and took up with a guy who could only stare hungrily at her through three shows.
"Vibes, baby," she murmured against his chest, "good vibrations, doll. I knew we'd fit when I saw you watching me like you could spread me on toast. It doesn't happen that way often, believe me. I'm kind of choosy who I bring home to my rice paddy."
Tentatively, he stroked her hair, touched that wealth of deep soft wonder with gentle fingertips. She made purring noises and burrowed deeper into his flesh, her breath stirring the little gathering of hairs on his chest, her tongue flicking out to taste him. She was a lot of woman, proud and eager and knowing. She nipped his skin delicately with her teeth and her hand roamed over his belly and down between his legs and cupped his sack.
Rush drew in a deep and shuddering breath as she slid down to take his nipples in her mouth, and to roll them one at a time in between a sharpness and a wetness that made him gasp. Down his ribcage and his belly, and striking like a hot serpent into his belly button. He reached up and behind him blindly, and caught hold of table legs, one to each hand, so he could try and crush them as Lei probed among his pubic hair and found the slowly rising, slowly stiffening shaft of his sex.
Her tongue touched him retreated, advanced on him again. Warm, damp, exciting, it was teasing him into spasms. It was going to happen to him now, and he was going to let it happen, because this was a woman doing it, and not some simpering queen. It would be different with a woman, with this woman; it would be good.
Lei drew the knob into her mouth, pulled it right on in there and worked it over with obvious pleasure, her fingers busy at root and sack and over his lower belly. Rush clamped down on the table legs, squeezed hard on them and squirmed on the floor, arching his back and heaving with her as she built up a pressure upon him, bringing him to a climax, moaning and groaning.
He'd been right. It was good with this woman. It was something to remember, to treasure as he'd treasured the erotic dreams in the joint, a thing to cling to as he had held onto the bigger dream of the championship.
And the big money; and the thing that would have set him free in the mountains.
Slowly, lasciviously, she kissed her way back up his belly and across his chest and finally into the hollow of his throat. That rich hair sheeted him again, and he thought hazily that a man could hide forever in its scented softness.
Outside the building, a sea bird cried harshly as it lifted in the early morning light; a curious wind fingered the window lightly, and moved on, taking its faint salt odor with it. Lei was warm against him, fitted against him, and the two years of tension was gone, pumped out in the sweet convulsions of sex.
It was right and it was good to lie this way with a naked woman, and Rush kept his eyes closed as he breathed in the warmed scents of her body and hair. He heard her breathing slow itself, and felt the relaxing of her body; Lei Ng was asleep.
Rush let himself drift, let himself slide down the darkening slope of consciousness, his arm around the Chinese girl, his flesh aware of the caress of her flesh. Lucky bastard; maybe finding and making Lei had changed his rotten luck. It was past time for a change. Man-how many guys could claim a score like her, and not be shuckin'?
He had to admit he'd been double lucky, to walk into just that club for his first drink, his first sullen celebration of freedom No tail of Rush Scanlon; no parole requirements to meet, because he'd done every damned day of his time, and the fall had been rough for him. Rush had done hard time, counting the days, the nights, the seasons.
Maybe it was all changing now. First the club, "The Shipwreck", and the blowup pictures outside displaying the charms of Lei Ng, "seductive Chinese Princess who does the dances of the temples." Then the mast built into the mirrors behind the bar itself. Hell, he'd been so wrapped up in the bumps and grinds of the Chinese stripper that he hadn't even noticed that mast at first.
The whole club was decorated with bits and pieces of old ships and fishing boats that had piled onto the rocky coastline of Monterey County, but that mast was special. It was off the fishing boat Bianca; there was a brass plate on its steel column that said so. The plate gave the name of the ship, its captain, and the date of its wreck. There could be no mistake about it.
Rush remembered that wreck, because it had spun him into the icy, rock-toothed surf; because it had damned near killed him.
And he knew that mast, since he'd carefully taken off a small patch plate, and even more carefully put it back into place, re-daubing its screw heads with grey paint and staining the new paint with grime so it wouldn't stand out.
Rush Scanlon had sat stiffly and unbelievingly on the bar stool shaped like a captain's chair, and stared at the mast between the blue mirrors and flanked by a hundred different bottles. He stared at it almost as hard as he'd watched the convolutions of the Oriental stripper as she'd shaken those high, erectly nippled breasts at him, as she'd rolled her silken belly and bumped her sequined crotch at him.
He wanted the stripper, sure-needed her gyrating, sexy body so much that he raised a hard just wishing he could make it with her, and he'd kept that swollen erection until some kind of magic had worked between them and Lei took him home with her.
But Rush also wanted some way to get at that boat mast, that grey phallic erection off the Bianco. He had to find a way. From the first stunned look at it, he felt a sudden lift and surge of hope that everything hadn't been shot down after all, that maybe, just maybe the big dream could come true.
Because that mast held the stuff to make it come true, held the rainbow in its waterproof belly, wrapped in square kilos by oiled paper and sealed with wax.
Heroin.
Possibly two hundred thousand dollars worth of it.