Chapter 10
Late that night Francie arrived at Gracie's flat. He had been very busy making inquiries. It was surprising how many people noticed things and how easy it was for a determined investigator to find out what had been going on anywhere.
He was savage with jealousy. His inquiries seemed to show, with little space for doubt, that Hartnell had been visiting her flat and staying for periods, sometimes all night.
Francie would have taken some convincing that his suspicions were not justified. For everything fitted - except exactly how it had started.
He recognized Gracie's superior education and intrinsic quality. Those were the things he lacked. Deep down he knew he wasn't and never would be a "gentleman." Normally he wouldn't think about it, for his admiration of class frequently mingled with and became a sort of contempt. But during the last few hours he'd really been working himself into a state about the things he'd lacked, the qualities he'd never had. And Hartnell had them - that was the rub. Hartnell was a natural for Gracie and she for him. Francie's feeling of inferiority had shot up by several degrees. What use was his authority with the gang, his toughness, his money compared with that breeding which Hartnell exuded.
His jaw was still sore from the blow Hartnell had given him. It had taken all his control to let that go. He had let it go because he'd noticed Gracie's concern. Something had clicked in his mind in a flash and he had wanted to find out in his own good time so that he didn't get excited about nothing and make a fool of himself.
Now he was certain and the certainty made him savage. Gracie had been a virgin when he'd had her, but he'd never succeeded in making her love him. He knew she hated him, but he'd always hoped that somehow the hate would change, do a volte-face and that one day he'd have her in the way he wanted her.
She was the person he had come nearest to loving in his own, ungiving way and although in his moments of desire he'd submitted her to him with violence, wanting to destroy her in the way he'd wanted to destroy Lady Anne so that he could make her vulnerable, he'd always regretted it afterwards. Even when he was humiliating her in bed, she made no response, suffering him with pained resignation, not cooperating one iota. And afterwards he'd felt defeated.
Otherwise he had treated her well, giving her money, leisure, her flatlet.
And now Hartnell had her. He had no doubt she had gone to him of her own will. Perhaps she even loved him. The thought drained him of all veneer of gentleness, leaving his hands twitching for a throat to encircle. He would punish Gracie and then he would wipe out Hartnell. That would avenge his defeat. And afterwards he would treat Gracie just how he felt, no more kindness.
It was some time since he'd been to see her, thinking perhaps his absence might make her change a little towards him, want him, perhaps. Seeing her this afternoon had given him a flush of desire for her and now his desire was sadistic, now that he knew she'd used that absence not to come closer to him, but to go away from him altogether.
She opened the door and he imagined she was a trifle nervous when she saw who it was.
"Hello Gracie," he said. "Expecting someone else?"
"Yes, I have so many visitors," she mocked. She had recovered her composure immediately.
"I thought maybe our friend Roger was due to arrive," he said savagely.
Gracie turned towards him and the color drained from her face, the fought-for composure lost in a second, everything given away.
"What on earth do you mean?" she asked. She couldn't keep the tremble from her voice.
Francie's face was a mask of fury. Her fear told him all he wanted to know.
"You know what I mean," he said softly. "I been checking up on your activities, Gracie. They haven't pleased me one little bit."
Her eyes were wide with fright. Just when it had seemed there was hope, everything was dashed like this. She tried to think clearly. But the only things in her mind were her fear and hatred of Francie, her love for Roger.
"So you've been having a little affair with our fellow crook, have you? Got class 'asn't he. Sort of thing you like, eh Gracie? But you don't think I've got it, do you?"
His voice was menacing, the edge of the snarl like a razor.
"How many times 'as he been here, Gracie? What does he mean to you? What are you like in bed with him, eh?"
His voice had risen and he followed her slowly across the room as she backed away from him.
"Answer me," he snarled. "What's between you two?"
Gracie was unable to utter a word and the blow for her silence slashed hard across her mouth.
"Answer me, answer me!" Francie's voice had risen almost to a scream and with the second blow something snapped inside Gracie. Her fear for this brute had continued so long that it was either forever, or it would break into rebellion.
"We love each other!" she hurled back at him.
Francie drew back as if he had been whip-lashed. His hard eyes blazed with something between horror, hatred and disbelief. Slowly they settled into pinpoints of hatred.
He stood over her, his whole body tensed as if at any moment he would start to beat and kick her until she was a mass of pulp.
"How did it start?" he breathed.
"We met in a restaurant," Gracie flared.
"And when did he first screw you eh, when did he first put his bloody prick in you?"
"The first night," Gracie screamed. "We made love that night because we were already in love that night." Her eyes had narrowed. Now she had rebelled there was no going back and she knew that each of her words was cutting into Francie like a knife. "I brought him back here," she snapped, "and we made love several times and it was wonderful, Francie. It wasn't like your masturbation in me Francie, with me hating your guts. No, it was wonderful because I was loving him."
Francie's hand slashed across her face. His eyes were bulging almost out of his head. He slashed her again and she caught at his arms, grasping, trying to defend herself.
His next blow hit her in the solar plexus, doubling her up and then she was on the floor and he was slashing her face with his hand again and again until she'd almost lost consciousness.
Francie wanted violently to hurt her, to humiliate her. He also wanted to rape her. There was a sexual side to his sadistic beating. Images of Hartnell making love to her crowded in his mind sending his penis up into erection with a jolt as his hands slammed into the smooth flesh. He wanted to sink his penis into her, submit her violently, painfully to him, but the thought of Hartnell having her gently, lovingly, filled him with a need to humiliate her in a way that would really bite deep so that she couldn't imagine it was her lover between her legs.
He began to tear at her clothes as she lay on the floor. He didn't care how they came off. He didn't undo any buttons. They ripped off one by one and he flung the rags aside.
He saw her body naked and prostrate, beautiful, as he remembered it, unchanged since the last time he'd had her - and yet all that happened to it since he had.
He picked her up in his arms, tingling at the feel of the soft flesh against his hands - the firm back and the long thighs.
Without effort he flung her on the bed and began feverishly to strip off his own clothes.
Gracie lay on the bed, winded still, eyes almost closed, face bruised and aching. She knew he was going to have her and the thought made her sick. But she felt too weak to move, too feeble to resist.
He came at her and his mouth was a fleshy snarl, his eyes crazy. His penis was taut. It looked like an enormous bud bursting into blossom on the end of a thick, woody stem.
She wondered, vaguely, how her words had had that effect on him. She wished she was dead. She wished she and Roger had cleared out when he'd first suggested it. She felt that she would die, that everything was over. And then Francie had seized her with such force that she screamed out. He was forcing her to her knees. There was nothing she could do against his maniacal strength. He held her at the waist in a grip of iron. She felt his steely penis push crudely against her. Felt it press against her anus. Realized in a rush of horror and humiliation that he was trying to bugger her.
She tried to struggle weakly, but her stomach was still tight with pain and his grip was too strong. His prick was jerking between her buttocks, his hands pressing down on her waist. She felt a dull discomfort between her buttocks and then a sudden spasm of pain so overwhelming that she screamed again and tried desperately to jerk away.
There was a thick, excruciating intrusion in her anus. It was filling her, moving coarsely, rapidly in with a searing possession. She could think of nothing but the pain as the thickness burst into her, moving up and seeming to spread out to tear the flesh from her anal passage.
Francie's mouth was uttering silent oaths. This was what he would do to the girl who had become Hartnell's. This was what he'd do to the demure, unwilling Gracie. This was the way he'd destroy her. By ravishing her virginal anus. That was what would humiliate her most, that was how he'd get at her.
He was right in it now. A few furious thrusts had taken him right in up to the hilt, making her scream and choke beneath him. It was the tightest passage he'd ever known.
He gritted his teeth, holding her waist in a pulverizing grip, pushing her down into the bed, punishing the bottom that reared up and billowed out toward his eyes. It was a beautiful bottom, he thought, wildly. Gracie was beautiful. But he'd ruin it, he'd ruin her. He'd make her his through sheer humiliation.
He jerked into her with long, hip-grinding crushes which made him bite his lips at the sensation.
When he rammed in, his skin was pulled painfully back in a sharp blaze of prickling crush. When he withdrew to the tip, her passage seemed to drag at his rod as if loathe to let it retreat.
"What would Roger think if he could see you now?" he grated, through his panting breath. "How do you like it in your ass, Gracie?" His eyes blazed with sadistic fury.
The pain was dull and consistent now and Gracie lay bent over under his heaving weight, with tears running silently down her face.
She had never thought of such humiliation. She felt she would never be able to look Roger in the face again. Her buttocks were thrust up at Francie. She could feel the heat of his body against her thighs and the ovals of her behind. He was joined to her body by this unused back passage, working into it without thought for the pain, mental and physical, she was suffering.
She thought dully that she would rather be dead. She felt the salt of her tears on her lips as her mouth opened in an involuntary gasp. Every time he smashed his phallus into her there was a confusion of pain as if she were being impaled on some enormous, sharp stake.
It seemed as if his organ was right up in her belly, tearing her entrails to pieces, as if suddenly he would tear some part of her and in a flare of pain and light and shame she would sink into death. She felt super-naked. She could hear his gasps, his muttered obscenities, his crazy references to Roger. She couldn't think of Roger in the same thought as this. Roger was another life. As Francie jerked extra hard she coughed into the pillow. She was sure she'd be sick, now, at any moment. She hoped her heart would cough up and leave her just an untouchable corpse.
Francie was in delirium. A crazy, hating grin was pulling his lips back from his teeth. For the moment, for the first time since he'd known Gracie, she was completely subjugated to him, completely in his power. He knew this, because he knew she had lost the power of thought, was aware only of the raping, the plunder of pain at her anus, her stretched yielding anus. The pain, the sensation he was inflicting was the only reality for her in this moment.
He jammed his penis into the softening moistening cavity, destroying her, annihilating her with every stroke. This was the shock which would make her remember him, indelibly, forever.
His staff was a weight of sensation, It was heavy, charged with a squeezing agony of rupture. He could hardly bear it. His prick in Gracie, in this secret place of hers. He was destroying her, she providing him with this sadistic ecstasy. If it could go on, go on. ...
But already the flush was burning his face, his thighs, was a simmering throb inside him.
His penis was palpitating like a beaten drum, seeming to grow huge with an audible pulsation. His loins were a fervor, his body swelling into a great burst of triumph. There was a fluster, a tingling, a wincing, a heaving, a burning inside him, a maze of shoulder-quivering below him, blonde hair awry scattering a pillow, waist curving, buttocks flowering. His eyes seemed to mist over, his mouth opened: this was triumph, this was subjection, owning, possessing, a gushing, a racing up to the brink, hesitating, agony and through - overflowing in a great, never-ending stream of passion into those softened, brown depths of her rectum, pouring his venom into her body.
And then it had dissipated and Gracie was lying sobbing quietly and there was no passion, only irritation and the knowledge that the moment had passed and she was still not his, but growing stronger and away from him with every cooling minute that passed.
Gracie had quieted. As he had discharged she had reached the point where she had thought she would faint, that this pain could not go on with her still conscious and aware of it.
But now it was over and there remained only the naked moistness at her anus, the feeling of enlargement, inflammation, the sensation that something huge and foreign was still in her back passage, the soreness and the shame. She couldn't look at Francie.
She heard him moving about and at last he; spoke to her. His voice was harsh.
"Get dressed. We're leaving."
She moved her face, turning it towards him without looking at him.
"Why? Where are we going?" she asked dully.
"To my place. And you're going to stay there, until we've dealt with your boyfriend."
"What are you going to do with him?"
She looked at him then and sat up, naked on the bed. She hated him.
It took several seconds for his words to sink into her mind.
"What are you going to do with him?"
Her stomach had frozen. She wouldn't have believed she could have forgotten her own shame and pain so quickly.
Francie grinned - an extremely unpleasant grin.
"When we get to the docks tomorrow night," he said, enjoying every word, "he's going to disappear. It'll be rather convenient because there's quite a lot of water there. When they find him he won't look quite the same as he did."
Gracie stared at him. She couldn't speak. She thought her world had collapsed earlier in the evening, but now she realized it was only at this moment it was collapsing.
"You can't . . . you can't," she breathed.
Francie chuckled. He had dressed and he smoothed a pocket handkerchief into place.
"We'll see," he said. "Anyway, I shouldn't count on seeing Mr. Roger bloody Hartnell again."
"I won't see him again," Gracie said with quiet intensity. "I'll do anything you like. I'll stay with you forever, Francie."
He sneered.
"You'll do that anyway," he snarled. "Until I want to get rid of you."
She stood up and padded over to him in her bare feet. Her eyes betrayed her desperate agony.
"Francie, please. Just get rid of him, let him go, tell him you don't need him anymore, please."
Francie glared at her.
"Very concerned aren't you," he snarled. "Want him to fuck you a little more do you?"
"I promise you, Francie, I'll never see him again. I won't even think about him."
Francie laughed mirthlessly. His eyes were narrow. He felt a returning flicker of sadism.
"You stupid bitch," he snapped. "Do you think you can bargain with me? Nobody bargains with me. I do what I want."
She stared at his eyes and saw the merciless gleam. She was all churned up, but there was nothing she could do. She remembered the revolver which, with astonishing intuition she had given to Hartnell that very afternoon. But it gave her little comfort. Francie was too old a hand at this sort of thing.
"Don't stand there unless you want another beating," he snarled. "I told you to get dressed."
Mechanically she did as he ordered and in a daze of fear she went down with him to the car and got in.