Chapter 7
Jay Berry stuck his tongue into Claire's pink ear and chuckled as she shivered and pushed him away. She was like a child who wanted to be petted and yet didn't want to submit to the petting. Her breasts were swollen with an excitement that she tried to deny, and Jay knew that he could end all the pretended indifference by simply reaching out to cup one of them.
He wanted her, and he knew that she wanted him, but the game they were playing bad to go its full course. The excitement had to build up a little mere until it became intolerable. He already had her to the point where she was contributing. She had drawn up a careless knee, and she must know that she was exposing much more sleek thigh than modesty decreed. It was a lovely thigh that promised wiry warmth in the intimate clasp that was inevitable.
Both knew that the tiny touches and whispered words were small bits of fuel tossed into an already unquenchable blaze. Only overt caresses on private parts of their separate anatomies had, so far, been excluded.
She sat up suddenly and teased her disarranged hair into place with a feminine gesture that made her breast jut out in profile. He couldn't resist a momentary press of his lips to the proud flesh, and she allowed him the privilege of savoring the feel of her. Her eyes were cool and level, but her voice was near breaking.
"Will my conscience hurt me afterward, Jay? I'll be an adulteress, won't I? I wouldn't like coming between a man and his wife."
Jay was patiently understanding. "I know. I wanted my marriage to mean something, but it didn't work out that way. You know that she's already seduced Troy?"
Claire nodded. "That's the only reason that I'm with you now. What happened between you two? I mean ... is it something you can talk about without embarrassing me?"
"Sure. We met in Las Vegas over a crap table. She was having fantastic luck, and she claimed that it was due to me being beside her. She'd touch my hand every time she rolled the dice and what with the drinks I'd had, she almost had me believing that we were something unusual together."
"That's not enough to get married on."
"I know. We quit the tables after a while and drank some more. I got wobbly, and she took me to her room. We had sex in about the same casual fashion as we'd have another drink, and it was good. We were new to each other, and the martinis had come pretty fast. For some godawful reason we decided that we had just made a baby, and we cried that the poor little thing was illegitimate. I guess it's too easy to get married in Nevada, because that's the way we found ourselves when we sobered up."
"But if sex was good between you, what came apart?"
"After we sobered up I found out that there was no enticement in her. Maybe it sounds silly, but I like to tease and pet and wonder if I'll get a little. With her it was all open and free and too often and too demanding and ... well, just too much. Hell, she was at me all day and all night. She paraded herself in front of my face like some patriotic idiot constantly waving a flag."
"But I thought that all men like easy sex. I don't think that I could parade in front of you, and I'd hate to have you get down and look at my ... well, maybe I'm old-fashioned about some things."
He kissed the corner of her mouth hurriedly. "Thank God for that. No, I like to see a nude woman, but she was always stressing my obligation to climb on her frame. I have a notion that she's something of a nymphomaniac, but I shouldn't talk her down like that."
"I like her, Jay. She's been very kind to everybody."
"That's the hell of it. I can't get mad at her either. I just know that I get sick to my stomach when I think of that perfumed pussy of hers waiting for me like a bear trap."
"You don't have to be vulgar! Maybe I use perfume on mine. Maybe you'll take me and then say the same things about me."
"I'm sorry, darling, but there doesn't seem to be any other way to talk about it. I don't use vulgarity as a rule."
Claire wasn't sure whether that was the kind of apology or explanation that she needed, but his sly finger tickling her armpit made her giggle, and either he was forgiven or the thing had been forgotten. His worded picture of Helene's eager anatomy had lodged in her imagination, and another bit of fuel had been added to the fire that was making her hips twitch.
Jay turned around and put his head in her lap. She stroked his hair back from his forehead and traced the sensitive line of his mouth with a cool but nervous fingertip. He looked up through the valley of her breasts and saw the flare of her nostrils as she tried to conceal the rapidity of her breathing. He wondered if she had doused herself with perfume, and he put his nose to her lower abdomen to see if the scent had permeated the cloth of her skirt.
Something made him drop his chin to the sharp cleft where thigh met thigh. It seemed only natural to press a kiss there, where her clothing hid the secret of her womanhood. She opened her mouth in shock at his shameful audacity, but then, when he continued to hold the kiss, his warm breath came through to her sensitive skin. Something about the outlaw kiss broke a dam within her, and she felt a terrific yearning to know what a real kiss on her body would do to her. The thought was maddeningly persistent, and it wouldn't go away. She spoke without being fully conscious of speaking. "Jay, would you kiss me there? I mean do I mean enough to you...?"
He looked up at her strained face, and a wry grin came up when he saw what she was going through. The plea was being torn from her unwittingly.
"Is it a condition that I have to obey before I can have you?" He could see by her vehement shake of the head that it wasn't. "Have you ever been kissed there before?" Again there was a short shake of the head.
He could understand what had brought this about. They had teased too long at one another, and although she was no stranger to sex and men, he had pushed her waiting time too far. It was up to him to satisfy her whim or discard all the groundwork that had been laid between them.
He pushed her skirt up her thigh and followed the line of the hem with his lips. He kissed her nylon-clad knee and his mouth left a trail of warm breath on the dimples above it. The net top of her stocking tickled his lips with its raised texture. He lingered on the soft white skin. His mouth slid higher, and a delicate perfume met his heightened sense of smell. So she did use perfume all over.
Her sitting position prevented him from doing any more than pressing his mouth against her pantie-covered lower belly. His chin dug at the joining of her legs, flung them wide to welcome his advance. She dropped her shoulders to the ground and raised her lower body. She thrust herself at his face, and a white nylon seam burned his lower lip as she jerked at him.
He moved between her legs and held her hips while he blew hot breath through the flimsy undergarment. Wind whistled in her throat, and the thigh muscles on either side of his head were taut with silently screaming excitement. She let her body down, and her hands came to grasp his ears and raise his face. He was surprised at the expression of tight eagerness that furrowed her brow and drew her lips in a tight line.
"Good God, Jay, what are you doing to me?
I feel all loose and open inside. I've come twice, and it still goes on. I think I could die this way. Just think what might happen to me if it was bare! I can't bear any more of this. Stop it, Jay."
Her grip on his ears was so tight that he couldn't have continued even if he had wanted to. And he didn't particularly want to at this moment. His own body was demanding that something be done for relief. He closed his fingers on the crotch of her panties and drew them aside. She saw what was coming and tried to prevent it, but he was between her thighs, and she couldn't wriggle free.
He bared himself and made a scant entrance. There was probably no more than an inch or so of union, and that was as far as he got. She would allow him no more of herself than he had, so he made the best of it. He had made a big mistake in acceding to her desire to be privately kissed, because she had eased away the dire necessity of sex need by her several orgasms.
In a grudging petulance, she permitted only what he had gained, and she seemed disgusted that he could enjoy himself so much with so little. Perhaps he should have exerted manhood and claimed the whole of what he picked at, but he was content, and ejaculation came almost immediately. He backed away from her, and she got up slowly and walked to the spring with stiff legs.
Troy and Angela found him sitting dejectedly with a bemused look on his face. He welcomed their interruption, for the blackness of his thoughts were depressing him. He was beginning to believe himself incapable of ever having a successful sex life.
"Hunting? With bare hands? I'm willing and ready, Troy, but I think you picked the wrong guy. I never could kill anything. A nimrod I'm not."
"You and Angela can beat brush for me then. What's needed here are rabbit dogs, and I'm sure you can manage that. Seriously, Jay, we could use your help."
Troy liked the man for his immediate acceptance of a chore that was obviously distasteful to him. They trudged off down the road, and Jay kept them in good humor with a constant line of interesting chatter. Angela sensed the sorrow behind his gay facade, and she had an idea that she knew its source. She made a mental note to pry into him at the first opportunity. For some unaccountable reason, she felt guilty in not including Troy in her endeavor to help Jay. It was very odd, but she felt some sort of obligation to Troy even though there was nothing between them except a sharing of the hardships of this enforced vacation.
There was a hot, hard five-mile hike down the mountain before they neared the fire activity. Troy had picked his location very carefully, and he had chosen an area where sudden bursts or changes of wind would not cause them serious trouble. The ground cover was low and sparse, and the fire nibbled lazily and daintily as it crept along at a snail's pace.
They spread out some thirty feet apart and retreated slowly as the fire forced them back. A covey of quail broke before them and took off in a low flight that carried them out of sight. A chipmunk scolded them as if blaming them for disrupting his life by bringing flame and smoke. Troy knew that the chipmunk would survive this fire. He would crouch in terror at the bottom of his burrow until the fire passed, and he would have enough oxygen to sustain Life, for the blaze was little and it ate only a small bit of air here.
The first rabbit startled them by springing at them unexpectedly in a mad, darting rush and diving into fresh cover behind them. Troy wondered how many times this rabbit had escaped this same fire. The hop-scotched escapes could have been going on for days. Troy remembered a plains fire where hundreds of rabbits and small animals fled in a vast wave.
Angela called to him and pointed to a grass clump before her as Troy rushed over. A jack sat there picking at a flank where the hair had been singed off. Troy's rude club swung, and they had bagged their first prey for the day. Jay caught the next one in his bare hands. There was nothing spectacular in the feat for the little animal had been burned beyond the point where swift movement was possible. Jay would have mourned the animal's death as Troy wrung its head off, but Troy explained that they had merely put it out of its misery. It would not have been able to forage, and it would have died slowly.
The whole hunt was something of a success, and they walked tiredly back to camp with eleven contributions to the community pot. Troy and Angela met addtional labor when they found that no one else had the inclination or the experience to clean the rabbits for cooking. She skinned and he gutted with a miniature pocket knife that he carried because of its screwdriver blade. Troy bemoaned the fact that their kit of survival material was damned small.
There was nothing backward about the dinner guests that evening. The broiled rabbit was tough and barely done when it was grabbed from the fire by the hungry passengers. A large cornmeal loaf liberally laced with canned green beans accompanied the meat, and Troy counted the day a success in that they had not had to rely wholly on their meager food supply.
He learned second-handedly that the two lesbians had seen trout in a spring-fed pond not far away, but when he questioned them, their antagonism toward him wouldn't let them reveal direction or distance. He was angered by that kind of attitude because it jeopardized their chances of coming through this ordeal.
The third member of Owney and Lorena's trio, Janey Daybird, offered him a possible solution. She took him aside and leaned close enough so that her straight black hair brushed his cheek.
"See their boots, Troy?" he nodded. "Kids back home on the reservation could backtrack them to hell and gone wearing shoes like that. Not enough light tonight, but tomorrow you and I could easily find out where they were today."
"And how do we catch the fish? I didn't happen to bring rod and reel." He was being sarcastic, but it was caused by disappointment.
She laughed and patted the back of his hand. "Any Indian kid who can see a fish never goes hungry."