Chapter 7
When Claudia walked into the hard sunlight of a warm August afternoon she had no notion of any definite objective. She felt the wonder of freedom. There was no remorseless curtain she had to limit her activities for; no dirty background atmosphere; no undue familiarity and pointless obscenity; no chains to bind her now. She celebrated her Independence Day by buying a new hat.
For days she lived a life of ease, slept late and lounged about her apartment. She felt something would turn up, it always did. Claudia was the kind of person life seeks out. Her existence had been like a chart of American finance: up and down, peaks and valleys. She was in a valley now and satisfied to remain thus for some time to come. She liked living alone and as she pleased. She began to read again and to go to art galleries and concerts. She burned with an insatiable intellectual curiosity. And all about her she could see no man or woman who could extend her mind and make her fight to rise to new and greater heights. There appeared no one who could test the elasticity of her mind. She knew that all about her in the city were men and women who could aid her in her desire for mental rebirth. The city was full of vital and interesting persons, but how to find them? And what did one do after they were found. You couldn't very well burst right into their presence and ask them what they thought of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony or A Nude Descending the Stairs. It just couldn't be done that way. You had to be presented in the conventional manner. Claudia looked about her for someone who had an entree to Chicago culture.
One day she found that someone.
She had gone for a dip down at the lake. Lake Michigan had become a symbol in her life. It brought her placidity and contentment. Whenever life became too enormous and troublesome she could always clear the fog within her by looking at the blue expanse of water that made summer heat bearable in Chicago.
Now she stood on the shore, dripping water: tall and straight and full at breast, hip and thigh. The sun had lent to the usual creaminess of her skin a kind of a golden glow, and now, as she removed her bathing cap, her luxuriant hair flowed over her shoulders and framed and caressed the loveliness of her face. Although it could not be truthfully said that Claudia was an unhappy girl, nevertheless there was a toast to her beautiful countenance which made her stand out from the vacuous, fleshy faces about her like a rose in a bed of weeds.
That was the picture which confronted Jose Vidal, the internationally famous Mexican artist, as he sat with his sketchbook in his hands. He took one look at Claudia and his mind was made up. There was about him, as there is about all great personalities, an air of directness and an absence of stupid subterfuge. He walked over to where Claudia stood and addressed her simply: "You are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen in my life."
Claudia's eyes swept over him slowly and fearlessly, like one fine animal surveying another. Vidal was secretly delighted by her natural poise and dignity.
"Is mere physical beauty all you desire of women ? "
Her deep, slightly husky contralto voice intrigued him. By God, he thought, here was a woman among all these pallid sticks. And a woman, a real one, was always worth painting.
"Beauty in a woman, as in anything else, is a virtue. Life is not overabundant with loveliness."
"But," she went on, "does not one weary of beauty? Don't you think contrast is necessary so that the eyes of the beholder are not blunted to a constant level?"
"Yes," he answered. "If I look at that fat woman over there"-he indicated the woman -"and contemplate the ugliness of her dead folds of flesh and then bring my eyes back to your slim beauty, it is true that my pleasure is intensified. However, that is something else.
I have my work to do and I must get along. Do you mind very much if I sketch you as we talk?" He began to make sweeping strokes on his sketch pad without waiting for an answer. Claudia was amused by his way of taking everything for granted. As he sketched her she took advantage of his preoccupation to study him. He was slender and tall; his skin was olive and his hair gleaming black; but it was his hands that fascinated her: long and tapering and strong, with meticulous nails. He wore a well tailored pair of gray slacks, and a gray and black striped Basque jersey, out of which his well muscled neck rose in a bronze column. Everything about him indicated culture and feeling. Here was a man, she felt, who knew life in all its moods, who was not to be taken in by vulgar sham and pretense. He would have the courage to go through his allotted span of years in the manner in which he saw fit and not the way others deemed judicious and proper. This man had much to offer her.
"Will those sketches give you enough material to work on?" she inquired.
"Yes," he said briefly. "But then again, the idea for a picture is taking form in my mind; in fact I could do a series of pictures. Yes" -his eyes were glowing as he talked. "Yes, I think I could turn out something of importance." His eyes narrowed into dark slits as he put his fingers under her chin and studied it, studying her face from various angles. It was all so impersonal that she could not resent his liberty with her person.
He scribbled something on a scrap of paper.
"I'll expect you tomorrow afternoon," he said as he handed it to her. He gave her a last piercing look as though he wished to carry away a lasting picture of her, and then he strode rapidly away with a bounding stride.
Claudia looked after him until he was lost to sight. Then she studied the scrap of paper he had left in her hand. It read: "Jose Vidal, Tower Court, Studio B."
He seemed too sure of himself and of her, too, she thought resentfully. She was a personage in her own right and she was not so sure she liked the way he took things for granted. Nevertheless, she knew she would seek him out. Once more life held out a promise.
The next afternoon Claudia found the studio after a prolonged search. It was located in a rebuilt garage in one of those little-known Northside streets on the fringe of the Gold Coast. She walked up a flight of rickety stairs until she reached a humorous sign of a goat nuzzling in a garbage can. Above it was lettered simply "Jose Vidal, Enter." She opened the door and the strains of a musical voice singing a haunting Spanish tune accompanied by a low twang of a guitar came to her ears. She entered the room a little hesitantly. Vidal was lying on a low settee, a bottle of wine on the floor close at hand. When he saw her, he waved his hand negligently and went on singing. There was something amusing about this to her. She took her hat off and walked around the place, studying the pictures which covered the walls and the objects strewn about in picturesque confusion. Most of the stuff was definitely Mexican in motif and flavor.
Claudia was impressed by the careless richness of everything. The sun streamed into the room through a skylight overhead. The entire arrangement mutely attested to a warmth-a lust for life that was a rarity in most of the homes she had had access to. This place was furnished to live in and not to show to company.
"Sit down," Vidal said, "and make yourself at ease."
She found a comfortable chair and sank into it.
"I don't know what you're thinking," he told her. "Honestly now, isn't there something sinister to you in all this?"
"Yes," she said frankly.
He laughed delightedly. "Ah," he said. "You have the naivete of a child. But let us get down to business. I want you to pose for me. You must. I am prepared to make it worth your while. I have conceived something definitely new, and you are a perfect subject for my idea."
When he told Claudia that she would find the work dull, he was guilty of no exaggeration. It was trying and productive of aches and pains, but fortunately she possessed a little dancing training and a healthy body-all this helped her to maintain her poise. In addition, Vidal did not mind if his models talked while he worked and he was ever a source of interest to her. He knew so much; he had traveled in many strange lands and expressed himself well. He had the free soul of a great artist and was recognized as such by competent critics. There was absolutely no superficiality to the man. Claudia learned a great deal.
The days went by and he made any number of canvases. They were splendidly done, too. Several he had already sold to dealers who called at his studio from time to time. It was plain that he was trying to exhaust all the pictorial possibilities she possessed. He told her so. "I have in me the germ of a great idea. When the time is ready I will tell you what it is. In the meantime we go along as we are."
People streamed in and out of the studio in an unbroken flow: the very cream of Chicago's social and intellectual personages. To Claudia there was wonder in this constant exchange of thoughts, ideas, talent and banter. Old or young, good-looking or plain, rich or poor, they all had this in common: an unaffected naturalness and a keen enjoyment and appreciation of life in all its phases, good, bad, sublime and ridiculous. You were liked for what you had to offer. Claudia was liked. Beauty, youth and wit were an offering of considerable magnitude.
She was impressed by all this and confided her reactions to Vidal. He laughed. "This is nothing. Tonight I will run a party at my studio and you will see something. This is not life; Faw!"
After the afternoon's work, Claudia went home to dress for the party. She looked forward to the evening with considerable anticipation. She bathed and groomed herself with great care, standing before her bathroom mirror, which framed her glowing loveliness. She ran her hand up her smooth belly and under her pear-shaped breasts pointing straight out before her. She pressed them, glorying in their firmness and in their expression of her wonderful femininity. She donned a gown of red velvet that even Vidal had not seen. Her lustrous dark hair was wound about her proud little head in two thick braids. From her ears hung antique golden earrings.
She was an immediate sensation when she entered the packed studio. When she descended into the pack they divided like the Red Sea before the ancient Hebrews. She approached Vidal with her lilting graceful walk. He wore an air of surprise as though he had never before seen her. "You are dazzling tonight, like a poppy swaying in the wind. You have never looked so lovely."
His admiration was sweet indeed to Claudia's ears. She had begun to think that he had ceased to think of her as a woman but as some object which he was attempting to reproduce on canvas.
Claudia was whirled from this group to that in a series of staccato introductions. Wine and tequila flowed. Everybody drank enormously. There was food Mexican style: tortillas, frijoles, tamales, corncakes and chicken. Several men in native costume plunked at the strings of strange instruments and produced quivering, nostalgic melodies. A girl sang a song which moistened many an eye, then, abruptly, the tempo changed. A slender, lithe girl did a gay, sensuous dance to noisy applause and enthusiastic heys! From then on the party gathered momentum like a snowball rolling downhill.
A couple held the floor while they executed a tigerish, pulsating native dance with much orgiastic wiggling and fondling. They pressed bodies together and he moved his groin in against her, she arching her back inward to meet him. The fiery liquor and food and now this aphrodisiacal dance all had their effect upon heightened nervous systems. Men and women began to nestle closer to each other. There had been no particular restraint upon this party, but now everyone began to unbend in earnest.
A drunken woman had removed the top of her dress and now advanced to the center of the floor to stand like a statue, her fine plump bosom bared to the crowd. She turned as if on a pivot and shook her charms gently to the audience, who cheered madly as her breast quivered like the proverbial "dish of jello on a frosty morning."
Vidal leaped to the center now and held forth.
"My friends," he addressed them gravely. "We are assembled here tonight for one purpose: pleasure."
"Hear! Hear!" they shouted.
"We will now inaugurate something new," he grinned at them all. "I propose a contest. We will offer a prize to the woman whose breasts are adjudged the most beautiful."
A chorus of cheers and protests rent the air. The cheers, of course, came from the masculine element and the nays from some of the women. But in the end the contest was held. All the women were herded together in one section of the room and told to disrobe to the waist. Amid protests and ribaldry, at last they all stood with their breasts bared to masculine inspection. A small riot ensued. All the men appointed themselves as judges and it appeared as though the only manner in which they could estimate the comparative values of the enticing love charms before them was by fondling. They rushed to the women and began to handle their knobs as though they were turning the dials on a radio set. Vidal led the pack to Claudia, who stood like an armed Venus, her twin mounts pointing forward like pink-tipped bayonets. He put his hands in the sweet hollow between the swelling hemispheres. "Ah, Chiquita. It is marvelous to explore those wonderful hills and valleys."
There was no conclusion to this unique contest. It was no longer a question of who had the finest breasts but who would allow herself to be dragged to the floor first. The lights went out and there followed a mad scramble as men and women mingled in an inextricable jumble. Claudia reached out an arm and felt the naked breast of a woman. She clung to it for some perverse reason. Her other hand was seized and dragged to the crotch of a man. In an instant she had his erect penis in her hand and she frigged away until she felt a warm sticky emission in her hand. A mouth was glued to hers and she lay tongue to tongue with someone in the darkness. Another hand had raised her skirts and was gliding gently up the sensitive insides of her thighs. When it got as high as the hairy slit between her legs she crossed them and held the hand a prisoner. Moaning, groaning like an old windjammer before a gale-sea sounds, flapping and creaking in the dark. Her legs were gently but firmly spread and she was speared right between the fat-lipped crease. Her would-be lover was suddenly pulled away and she shook herself free from her other captors and managed to crawl out of the lust-maddened pile and arrange her clothing into some semblance of order. She felt along the wall for where the light switch ought to be and found it after some groping. It was a dirty trick, she thought, but she was fed up with this mauling business. She smiled in the darkness as she clicked on the lights. What a scene met her eyes as they all blinked up in the glare! Men and women were satisfying their desires in chain fashion. In some cases two men were working on one woman. One entered in the orthodox manner through the vagina, while at the same time, the second bored in with his tool from the rear. Between the two they made a three-layer sex-sandwich. The same thing had been done to a great hulk of a man. One woman was sucking madly on his prong, which was so large that she could only take half its length in her mouth, while the other sent her tongue darting like a delicate antenna into his rectum. Here and there one could see the reason for this disproportionate relationship, for the lesbians and homosexuals were plainly identified in that instant flash. One man was reaming another through the rear and ecstasy was written over their features in lustful letters. Two women were lying together and rubbing clitorises with such violence that they were sprawling all over the floor. A kind of a mad cry went up when the lights went on. Having satisfied herself as to what was actually taking place, Claudia doused the lights once more to the accompaniment of a satisfied sigh from the revelers. Immediately afterwards she felt herself in the iron grasp of a strong man. She fought his grip furiously. It was not that she was worried about what might happen, but Claudia meant to have a choice in whom she had relations with. Nevertheless she was borne to a long, low divan in a remote corner of the large studio. Whoever carried her knew the way about the place. She passed her hand lightly over his features and knew instantly that it was Jose Vidal. Her struggles subsided a little, but she would give him a time of it; that was certain.
A pleasurable little wrestling match ensued. With one hand he held her arms and with the other he tried to thread her needle. Just when it seemed that he was about to gain entrance to love's citadel, Claudia invariably made just that little move which frustrated his desire. He was panting and perspiring in the hot darkness. He worked his finger between her buttocks into her rectum. She was taken completely by surprise and gave out a little cry, but it did not feel so bad once he got it in and worked it around. She clutched at his penis and soon took the stiffness out of it while he lay helplessly in the thrall of his orgasm. He cursed in Spanish.
"Nice party, Jose. You really operate a hotbed of culture and erudition."
"You devil! This is to punish you for turning on the lights. I'll show you, you can't make a fool out of Jose Vidal and his friends!"
He had recovered his strength and he hauled and dragged her roughly into his bedroom, which was up a little stairway. He clicked on the lights and threw her on the bed. She looked at him with wondering eyes. She had never seen him so hard and cruel looking before. He reached over his head and took an ornamented riding crop from a peg on the wall.
"Jose!" she wailed. "What do you mean to do?"
He took her in his arms and slipped her between his legs so that he could grasp her waist with both knees, her rump before his face. He raised her dress and bared her milky seat.
"I'll show you what I'm going to do, you white-faced bitch!" The crop descended upon her quivering flesh. She let out a scream and the more noise she made, the harder he struck her. Welts began to appear on her snowy behind. He hit her just hard enough not to break the skin. Gradually the piercing pain dulled and instead of pain a kind of peculiar exaltation grew in her, welled up and threatened to engulf her. She was sobbing now but it was more from a kind of emotional rapture than anything else. At last he had his thrill and he threw her from him and sank his head in his hands. Claudia could only lie quietly in a crushed heap in the corner. Many emotions coursed through her body. She was conscious of a dull throbbing feeling in her posterior and yet she felt as though she had not reached a sexual crisis. The mauling had merely acted as an aphrodisiac upon her. She wanted fulfillment and she wanted it in the worst way.
She looked up to see Jose's shoulders shaking. She rose on tottering legs to see what was the matter.
"Tell me, Jose. What is the matter?"
He did not answer and she inserted her hand between his and felt his face. It was wet with tears. "There, there," she comforted him. "Don't feel so badly about it. I'm sure you just lost your head and goodness knows I gave you cause enough. My big baby! There, there," she crooned like a mother to her infant and pillowed his head upon her bare bosom. Gradually, Jose subsided and became coherent again.
"I can only beg your forgiveness," he said with surprising humility. Surprising in him because he was generally so aggressive and sure of himself. "There is only one way in which I can atone for my sin. You must accord me the same kind of treatment you have suffered at my hands."
He put the riding crop in her hands.
Claudia hesitated. This was not what she wanted. She protested. But he was firm. That was, he said, the only way in which he could save his soul. At last poor Claudia had to give in to his desires. He threw himself across the narrow side of the bed and pulled down his trousers. His backside quivered before her eyes.
The girl struck him feebly.
"Harder! Harder!" he cried in rage, and Claudia began to lay on with a will. The sound of the whip against the bare flesh set fire to the smoldering sadistic instincts which are inherent in the human soul. Each whack touched off something bestial inside of her and now she was out of control. He rolled about on the bed, squirming under the lash, making throaty cries as the blood began to ooze out of his wounds. At last Claudia had reached a stage of passion that she must have coitus or go mad. She flung the whip across the room and tore the clothes from her body. She leaped upon the moaning Jose and tore his penis from his trousers. It was rigid to her touch. Apparently the whipping had had a sexual effect upon him also. Her desire was so inflamed that she mounted him, and spreading her legs, she sank down upon his piercer until his genitals were mashed against her scarlet gash. And now she began to thrash and heave like a wounded animal. It did not take long before Jose's staff wilted under the onslaught and he released a warm inner bath of semen that soothed her torrid crevice. But Claudia was filled with a yearning for satisfaction so strong that they returned almost immediately to the love play. She put his organ between her breasts and manipulated the glorious globes until the thing they imprisoned began to rear its head looking for an entrance. Now Jose placed a pillow beneath her inflamed buttocks and raised her cleft to considerable height. He sank to his knees with her cavity between his legs, winking up at him like a lustful eye. He put the eye out by inserting a rod in its pupil. Claudia could, by raising her head a little, see the pretty play that was going on and derive still greater satisfaction as his piston moved in and out like a highly geared machine. Shivers of delight swept over her in recurrent waves. This was intercourse at its best. Jose had been a little spent and now they both possessed good enough control to give the act an excellent preliminary. The delicate inner wall of Claudia's vaginal tube alternately clutched and released Jose's sexual finger as it probed her insides. Occasionally he would become a little too vehement in his sport and would withdraw his inflamed member completely and she could contemplate his saber affectionately and guide it gently back into its sheath.
Claudia felt the surging flow welling up inside her. Jose was yet a little behind and she reached out her hand and skillfully stroked his hardened genitals to coax from them the sexual sap before she should spend. Under her ministrations the molten lava of love erupted volcanically and they both emptied their stored-up streams. Now, as she lay in that blissful twilight state following the bursting of the boudoir bomb, Claudia thought, what a pleasant price to pay for physical psychical release! Jose lay at her side and looked at her out of humid eyes.
"My querida! Who has ever known so beautiful and adequate a lover! Tristan and Isolde? To every lover it seems his sweetheart is the best. My chiquita! To you . . . no! to us both . . . I will bring immortality!"
Claudia pushed back his mop of tumbled hair with tender fingers. She felt a sudden rush of love for this man that she had never before known for any other. He was hers-hers to mold and influence as she desired. A hitherto unknown maternal feeling coursed through her. She would be everything to this man of talent: sweetheart, wife and mother. Together they would scale the cliffs of life and art. She looked down on him as he lay there. "Jose," she said gently. "Jose." He did not move. She bent over him and saw that he was asleep.
Life with Jose was no simple matter. Who could tell when he would be stirred by a feverish need to create. When in the grasp of the muse he became irascible and single-minded. Fatigue and food became secondary as he worked. The world for him had ceased to exist. Telephones were allowed to ring, invitations were ignored. They might have dwelt on some isolated island.
She was posing in the nude for Jose now. She walked about the studio with her lilting gait while he sat motionless watching the play of her limbs and parts.
"Beautiful! Beautiful!" he would cry out when a particular rippling pose would capture him. "There is music in the sway of your hips, Claudia."
He would of a sudden develop unpredictable moods, sitting her up on an elevation and examining her organs with an abstract air as though she were some new specimen which he was cataloguing in a scientific spirit. It was wearing, but then he would blaze up with a desire to go about and for days they would whirl around the city in a maze of lights, music, liquor and people. Everything he did was unaccountable. Some tormenting inner spirit seemed to egg him on. Life became a series of excesses: excess of toil, excess of emotion and excess of rest. Days would pass while Jose sat like a Buddha. It hurt Claudia to watch him brood. It was a necessary adjunct to his artistic creativeness. He was straightening out and gestating the mass of indigestible concrete birth on canvas. Yet it was a wonderful experience for Claudia to watch a first-rate man at work.
The picture he was working on was taking shape, slowly but inevitably. It was to be called "Nude with a Red Comb." Like all artists Jose wished to paint "the perfect nude." He piled Claudia's lustrous hair atop her head and set an elaborate Spanish comb into its thickness. A diaphanous lace shawl carelessly draped her shoulders, the rest of her was au naturelle. It was splendid material for a painter, especially a fleshly one. Jose had the Latin gift for sensuality and he poured out his skill and genius upon the canvas to capture her superb flesh tones.
"In this cold gray world there is too little that is warm and beautiful. You are warm and beautiful, Claudia. To posterity I will leave a breathing likeness and not a barren photograph. I will paint you so that you will never look the same twice to the beholder. I want to set you down on canvas in all your pulsating feminine loveliness so that many, many persons may feel that they too have known you."
Claudia was a little awed by such a lofty conception. She had a good deal of the earthy quality in her and was irked by what might be called a "Madonna complex."
After his harrowing toil, Jose and Claudia would drink tequila until they would drift together in a nameless state of consciousness. This sort of life had two peculiar effects. It heightened Claudia's fleshly desires and lessened Jose's. She would cleverly arouse his passion, but it was becoming increasingly difficult. Their sexual unions would extend over longer periods of time before reaching an actual climax. During the hour or so it took Jose to arrive at the point of ejaculation Claudia might spend as often as three times. It was maddening to her.
Perhaps, she thought, when he has this picture out of his mind they would return to their former powerful pleasures. Art has ever been a competitor of love.
At last the work was completed. Jose's friends ebbed and flowed through the studio to study his magnum opus. Opinions were conflicting, but all agreed that he had performed a magnificent and very likely controversial piece of work. It hung in an international exhibition in the Art Institute. The newspapers printed reproductions. As usual the reform elements in the city began to attack this portrait of unbridled lust. Clergymen held forth from their pulpits on the viciousness and sinfulness of the nude. Vaudeville comics cracked jokes about what the well-dressed woman would wear in addition to a Spanish comb. And one afternoon a sensation was created by a reformer, L. S. Marrow, who attempted to slash the portrait with a knife which he called "the sword of the wrath of the Lord."
Jose Vidal was world famous in a day. Before Vidal fully realized the import of all the publicity and sensationalism, he and Claudia spent one of those perfect days which one hugs to one's heart for a lifetime, at a cottage in the dunes. It was a bright, blue day: water and sky blended together to produce one single tone. The cottage had been loaned to Jose by a wealthy friend and it reflected the taste of the latter. A fine grand piano practically filled a room. It was here that Claudia sat and made music. Jose sat at the other end of the room smoking. The lines had gone out of his face and he looked once more like the man he had been when Claudia had first met him. The sun poured its warmth and light into the windows and set a fiery crown about Claudia's little head. She was playing some of Brahm's music and it quickened Jose's pulses. He crept closer to her with his noiseless catlike tread. Out of the corner of her eye Claudia watched him and a little smile played round the corners of her mouth. It stimulated her when she saw how much her physical presence meant to the man she loved. Now he stood behind her and she felt him pressing against her back. She leaned against him and his hands crept like great spiders over her breasts and closed about their round softness. Claudia closed her eyes. Her hands dropped from the keyboard as Jose's insistent mouth sought hers and their lips coagulated in a voiceless expression of their love. A passion out of control led them to the bedroom. To Claudia it did not seem as if they were actually moving but as though some unseen and irresistible force was sweeping them. He pressed her yielding softness to him again and again. His arms encircled her like a sinuous brown snake. Their legs and arms intermingled until they formed a brown and white pattern of desire. Then they began to move and surge like a tempestuous sea as they dove deeper into the labyrinthine waters of love. Claudia's half-closed eyes stared out of a little window which framed a small blue patch of sky. A bird soared across the space high into the heavens and it seemed to the girl as she lay there in mounting ecstasy that her inner being was freed and she too was winging her way through the blue vault of the heavens. She was passive through this particular coitus. She wanted so much to give Jose pleasure. She thought of herself as a life-giving fountain giving nourishment to a parched genius, and Jose was really as parched as the corn of his native Mexico. His fingers dug into her silken flesh as he eased himself of his fleshly burden.
There was no sating him on this particular day. All the sex energy he had stored up within him came to the fore. He was like an avid infant sucking with milk-drooling mouth its mother's breast. He leaped wildly out of bed and seized her in his arms and carried her about the room until the pressure of her snowy body made his blood heat again. He kissed her as she coiled her legs about his waist and her arms around his neck. His penis began to prod against her and she drew back her belly and impaled herself upon his sword, locking her legs about him in an iron sex-grip. It took a strong man to stand thus holding the sweet burden while his genitals throbbed and overflowed with semen, but Jose was equal to the occasion and one may say with more than a grain of truth that he did not "let her down."
They rested now upon the edge of the bed. "How strange you are today!" Claudia exclaimed as she watched Jose's penis return to life.
For answer he held her in his lap and lavished kisses and endearments upon her. He fondled her tender body with strong hands and his fingers left their amorous bruising trail, but it was pain-pleasure to Claudia. She loved it.
He raised her as she rested in his lap and then lowered her upon his spear. The entrance from a slightly different angle provided Claudia with a new thrill and made her cry out. But she was held in remorseless hands and she surrendered herself up to carnal delights as his throbbing penis worked its pleasurable way into her depths. They looked into each other's eyes and smiled, understanding that they were contributory factors in the union. There is something wonderful in the knowledge that man is the only animal who is able to perform coitus face to face. Claudia felt Jose's eyes enveloping her as he trained their dark softness upon her. Now his hands grasped the delicious whiteness of her buttocks and heaved her to him as though he meant to run her through with his sword of sex. She squirmed in his grasp and set his organ tingling as she pressed its length within her. She sat alternately limp and loose and stiff and active as she drew the love-juice out of him, causing him to exclaim in delight. The warm flow spurted over
;her glands and into her innermost recesses with a poignancy that was hard to bear. A white trickle ran down her thigh as their mutual gush blended. She tightened her hold on him as she quivered convulsively and drained her ducts of their fluid.
The melting moment over, they dropped back upon the bed to lie in a state of blissful exhaustion.
"Every experience I have with you, Claudia," Jose said, "merely intensifies and increases my appetite. It is strange that constant repetitions do not dull the edge of desire."
"Does exercise weaken or strengthen your muscles?" Claudia asked laughingly. For answer Jose rubbed his face in the fragrant softness of her bosom. "The heavenly pillows!" he sighed.
"You're the first man they have ever put to sleep," Claudia teased. "Look," she continued as she held his lifeless organ in her hands.
"Yes, look," he grinned at her as it began to lift its drooping head.
"I'll bet you don't make it," Claudia challenged him as the noble-headed fellow faltered on its slow rise.
"I'll take that bet," he replied.
The bet hung in the balance as his organ alternately rose and fell. At last Jose took the thing into his own hands and put the thing under Claudia's armpit as she sat in the chair. It didn't take long for the blood to pour into his shaft and swell its walls against her. It felt like the beat of an enormous pulse against her and sent the blood pounding through her veins. Now it stood pointing in the direction of love as Claudia dropped her arm.
"A sign-post along love's highway," said Jose.
"It points to love as certain as a needle on a compass."
"Come, let me thread the needle," said Jose impatiently.
Claudia backed up before his onslaught and he caught her as she reached the bed. She fell backwards upon its softness and her crotch rested just on the edge, affording Jose an excellent view of the rosy nest in its bower of curling hair. Like a homing pigeon he drove into the tempting slit, thrusting his rapier in up to the hilt. He stood over her and his position gave him an unequaled view of her ruby-tipped breasts and snow-capped belly and the tender lips of her orifice as they clung hungrily to his thrusting organ. She moaned gently like the sighing of the wind through the boughs on a calm evening. She raised herself on her elbows so she could see the love-play as Jose's third leg walked all over Claudia's heaven. She reached out a questing hand for his sac, the nourisher of his fruitful tree. When she had it she began to press it with cunning fingers to accelerate the flow of the milk pressure. He in turn stroked her wide-spread thighs, which assumed gigantic proportions as their softness was spread before him upon the yielding bed. How well Jose knew the power of those two thighs which had entwined about him so often! The wonder of her silky skin with its delicate network of blue veins never failed to thrill him. How fragile, yet how strong was the female body in its transports!
There is a limit to human endurance and on this day Claudia and Jose were exploring those very limits. They spent themselves in one final burst of love's nectar, then dressed themselves to motor back to Chicago.
As they rolled through the flat country, through scabrous towns, soiled like the fringes of a long gown on a muddy day, they came into the city of youth just as a reddened sun was reluctantly dissolving into a sky which resembled a careless painter's palette.
When at last they climbed the stairs to the studio, they were pounced upon by innumerable friends and acquaintances who had gathered to celebrate the fact that Jose Vidal had won the grand prize with his masterpiece, Nude with a Red Comb. He had gone away a moderately well-known painter and returned a few short hours later to find himself the toast of two continents. Success, honor and worldwide acclaim were his, and who can say what else, for the asking.
From that day on his attitude toward Claudia underwent a complete change. Always superstitious, Jose attributed to Claudia the main reason for his success. Like some highly impressionable aborigine he began to pay her an awesome respect which at first amused her immensely. She felt flattered at the consideration and reverential affection he displayed for her. But it did not take long before she found his adoration from afar boring. He was like an overly solicitous husband during the pregnancy of his beloved, constantly underfoot with useless cushions and other comforts. It took Claudia considerable time before she could grasp the psychological background which underlay this about-face of Jose. He had placed her upon a pedestal as a kind of lucky star and felt that any violation of her person would be taken by the fates as an act of desecration.
The entire thing began to grow more insane with the passage of time. Claudia happened upon Jose pressing his face into her soiled undergarments. He looked ashamed and backed away before her. He began to pry into her most personal acts. He would often enter the bathroom while she was on the stool and offer some ridiculous reason for the intrusion. He would remain for minutes while Claudia defecated. It appeared to afford him the keenest pleasure.
He burst out into a veritable rash of fetishes, each one more annoying to Claudia. One day she came upon him as he was chewing upon the feet of her discarded hose. She was nearly hysterical as she scolded the peculiar artist. She could not understand the psychic changes the man had undergone. So far as Claudia was concerned he was no longer of any use to her.
Because of the memory of the past and of what they had been to one another she clung to him. At times she blamed herself for the tremendous part that had gone out of him in the creation of his masterpiece. He had put too much into it. That day he had spent with her before he had been showered with universal acclaim had merely been a kind of an extension of the passionate mood into which he had engulfed himself. And now his sexual urge had spent itself and he was diverting his libido into disgusting channels.
Claudia definitely decided to leave him.