Chapter 1
Donna Kaiser lay sleepless in her bedroom, studying the billowing drapes over her window, listening curiously, enviously, a little fearfully, to the party noises from the well-lit patio and from the more distant living room of her family's rambling, luxurious ranch-style home. She could hear the muted pounding of the Pacific at the base of the cliff ... the drone of a jet as it followed its flight pattern over exclusive Palos Verdes Peninsula to Los Angeles International Airport.
She slowly worked her legs free of the bedclothes. She was too warm! She rolled over onto her belly, but her thin nightie twisted and bunched uncomfortably. She pressed her face hard into the soft pillow. Her loins were glowing ... glowing ... Her nipples—She tried to sleep! She abruptly twisted around onto her back. Her nightie was a strangling, itchy torment to her hot, smooth skin. Donna clenched her fists. She sobbed and scrambled from her bed. She straightened her nightie and sat on the edge of her bed. She closed her eyes and sighed. She licked her full, petulant lips.
Donna trembled inexplicably when she heard her father's loose, drunken, bull-like laugh dominate a sprinkle of guest laughter. His voice carried for a moment on the erratic breeze: " ... believe it. Where the fuck'll we find a virgin in this crowd?"
Donna blinked rapidly. She let herself fall backward, arms wide, onto the bed. The nightie, for a second, billowed, then settled down onto her lush, prematurely developed breasts. Her button-like nipples were crinkled and hard, aching, itchy! Her round, firm, tanned thighs began to press together rhythmically. The glow in her loins sharpened deliciously. It was so tantalizing. She clenched her fists and jerked open her legs. NO! Something TERRIBLE would happen if she let herself do that! She struggled to sit up again. She looked at the luminous dial of her new watch. Her father had given it to her on her fifteenth birthday, three days before.
Her breasts were so hot! She hated the nights, the trying to sleep, the struggle to keep from touching herself. Every other girl she knew admitted doing it—masturbating. Donna's thighs inched together. The urge in her lower belly ... that awful, alluring, promising sweet tension ... became stronger. But a quivering tension, a fear rose up and kept her from giving in. She sprang to her feet and pressed herself roughly against the wall. She turned and twisted, rubbing her large, round, upturned breasts roughly against her closet door frame. It hurt some, and that drove away the need for a few minutes.
The puffing wind carried her father's voice again: " ... virgin, a virgin, my kingdom for a virgin!"
Donna began to cry. She hit her lower belly and triangle with a trembling fist. "Stop it, stop it!" She glanced at her watch again. It was almost one A.M. Donna knew her father's Friday night parties often lasted until dawn. They always disturbed her. Her body always seemed to burn worse than ever during these endless weekend nights. This night was awful for her. The last year ... as her breasts had grown so alarmingly, had swelled out, had deepened and rounded ... The impulse seemed to whisper in her mind: Do it. You used to do it. You did it a lot, and it felt so good ... When she was twelve and her nipples, like pink buds, had blossomed on her undeveloped chest. And she had discovered her clitoris ...
MOTHER, I'M SORRY—She threw herself, sobbing, onto her bed.
The drapes puffed inward to bring a laughing scream—a woman—her delighted cry: "Frank!"
What had her father done now, Donna wondered. She had often spied on him and his parties. She could now if she wanted to. The 7 x 50 binoculars were in her drawer, waiting. She could stand by the right side of the window and peek behind the drapes and see half the patio, in stunning, intimate detail with the glasses.
One night a man and woman had made swift, frantic, animal love in the bushes under her window. Donna had crept, snakelike, across her bed to her side of the partly open sliding window and listened ... and had even seen ... The man had been bald, with wisps of dark hair spread very thinly over the bare skull. He had worn heavy-rimmed glasses, a madras sports coat, a green tie. The woman had been a redhead, overweight in a tight white gown cut deep to show her big, fleshy no-bra breasts. Her nipples had projected shamelessly. They had kissed wetly, greedily, and the woman's hands had fumbled and groped at the man's pants. He had unzipped and whispered huskily, "Suck." The woman had hiked up her dress and gone to her knees. In the deeper shadows, amid the bushes, she had taken the man's white, stiff organ into her red-lipped mouth. She had sucked noisily, uninhibitedly.
Donna had peered out, almost unable to breathe, shivering, incredibly tense, eyes saucers. Strange chills and heats had sprung to life in her young body. The woman had sucked the man for a long moment, then taken her mouth from him. She had whispered, "That's enough. I want it in me." She had stood and hiked her gown up to her hips. She had leaned back against the window frame. The man had pressed close ... there had been fumbling ... and the woman had caught her breath as he entered and obviously went deep. Donna had had shivers as she interpreted the woman's gasp. And then had come the heavy, erratic breathing, the rustling of cloth and flesh, the bump-bump-bump against the house.
Donna had been thirteen. She had never forgotten the sight/sound of that intense, furtive coupling ... or the explosive, suppressed climax of the woman—the gut-deep grunts and heavings, the animal joy in the woman's muffled cries. And the man's hissed breath as he came, too, and battered her against the wall and window. Donna had been left limp and trembling, biting her lower lip, clutching the bedclothes with tight fists, her thighs tight together, rhythmically tightening and loosening.
Donna turned over onto her stomach and tried again to sleep. The party sounds interfered. She rolled over onto her back. The breeze puffed over her naked thighs and cooled her sticky cleft. She opened her legs wide, then swiftly closed them. She decided to read. She reached up and found the switch to her headboard reading lamp. She squinted in the sudden yellow glow. She pinked and worked her sleeping gown back down under her buttocks and over her knees. She reached for the book she had been reading off and on for a week: Eros and Evil by E. E. L. Masters. She knew her father would not approve. But she had been interested in witchcraft and the occult for over a year. She was a moon child—July 13th—and Venus was also heavy in her astrological make-up. She had just begun to read when she heard the characteristic heavy, limping tread of her father in the long hallway leading to her far-end bedroom. She plunged the book under the covers and switched off her lamp.
His draggy steps came to her door. He rapped lightly. "Donna? Asleep?" His voice could not be lowered to a quiet, non-penetrative level. It was a baritone that could be heard through the thickest walls. Everyone told him he should have been a stage actor. He owned a successful brick factory. Frank Kaiser opened her door slightly and looked in, a crooked smile on his wide lips. At thirty-six he was graying, but he didn't care. He wore his thick brown hair in a disciplined, long style, with elaborate mutton-chop sideburns.
"No, Daddy." Her heart thumped. Her throat tightened and she didn't know why. Her Persian kitten, Tribble, darted by her father's shoes and trotted to the bed. He leaped up, clawed to keep from falling back, and began to purr. He came into her arms. She scratched his ears and stroked his back.
Frank said, "We have a problem." He entered her room. He was a big, heavy man, six foot two, two hundred twenty pounds, and he walked heavy. He came to her bed, the hall light behind him casting his face and front in shadow, in darkness.
Donna tensed. "What's the matter?"
"Well, honey ... " He held a drink in his left hand. He stirred the cubes and amber liquor with a long, thick, manicured finger. He smiled and showed his two gold front teeth. He loved the startled looks he got from staid fellow businessmen when he smiled. He said, "I've got a crazy guest who claims he's a warlock. That's a ... "
Donna breathed, "A male witch."
"That's it. Right-O. Though if his wrist was any limper, I'd wonder about ... Well, he says he has a formula—or a spell—or an incantation, or something that he can recite that will raise the Devil from Hell." He sat on the edge of her bed. Frank paused to swallow from his glass. He coughed. His eyes slid over Donna's bust. Her nightgown was thin and clinging enough to reveal with startling fidelity the size and thrust of her buoyant flesh. Tribble lay against the warm curve of her right breast. He was purring, rubbing his head against her.
Donna noticed the slant of his gaze and flushed in the semi-darkness. To her further embarrassment, her nipples surged with crinkling, puckering stiffness and began to ache slightly with arousal.
Frank shrugged. "This guy is weird. He says he has to have a virgin laying on the rug inside a pentagram he's going to draw around her. She's supposed to tempt the Devil ... like a worm on a hook." Frank threw back his head and boomed a laugh. "Trouble is there isn't a virgin in the house except you, honey." He gazed at her with mock doubt. "You still are, aren't you?"
"Yes." She giggled.
"Would you like to be part of this little game? Everybody chipped at me to come and ask you. We're all drunk as skunks."
"Okay. Should I get dressed?"
"No, come as you are. That's decent enough." He stood up to let her climb out of bed. Tribble jumped off to the carpet. Frank watched Donna swing her long legs out from under the covers. Her nightgown rode up her thighs as she slid to the edge ... almost revealing her triangle. Donna stood and let the nightie settle to its normal ankle length. She went to her make-up table and turned on the mirror light. She drew a comb through her long, honey-blonde wavy hair. There was a funny fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach. She knew she was afraid and didn't know why. She glanced at her father in the mirror. Frank stood a little off-center because of his war-damaged left leg. It was an inch and a half shorter than his right, and a mass of scarred, oddly shaped muscle below the knee. She had seen it twice. Her gaze darted at his loins and saw the ever-present bulge. She knew he was huge there. She had never seen her father naked, but she just knew!
Donna was proud of her lovely hair and body. She knew she was something special, and she had never gone out on a date, never let a boy get close to her, never mixed well with other teenagers. Not since her mother had died. Donna couldn't look at herself, especially at her face, too long in a mirror. Her blue eyes, staring back, reminded her too much of mother's dead blue eyes.
She turned off her mirror light and went with her father down the long hall to the main body of the house. She held his big, strong hand. Voices and party sounds and bright lights increased. Holly Barnes, Frank's girl friend for the past two months ... the only woman friend he'd had since his wife had died ... came out of the bathroom as they passed.
"Oh, Frank, you're not going to do it!"
He grinned loosely, more than a little drunk. "Sure! Donna's game—aren't you, baby?"
Donna nodded, then nervously licked her lips. She liked Holly. She said, "That's a far-out outfit."
Holly wore a shimmering blue culotte with a big front and no back. The sides of her loose, small breasts were pale white in contrast to a light tan on her back and arms.
Frank put his left arm around Holly's narrow waist. "It's only a joke. Come on." His voice pierced the house. It brought guests to meet them as they entered the large, sunken living room.