Chapter 1
Linda dried herself slowly on the rough towel, listening to the vague sounds of her stepfather moving about the flat. She was trembling slightly; an uneasy excitement flickered through her.
The bathroom door was locked, but soon she would have to open it and go out into the other rooms which seemed to her as frightening and dangerous as a jungle. It was almost certain by now that her mother was not coming back from Brighton until the morning.
When her mother had announced the trip to see Aunt Sarah earlier that day she had almost given way and begged her not to go, leaving her alone in the house with him. One part of her had been frozen with fear and a foreboding of evil; and yet another part, that part which had stifled her words of protest before they found voice, had welcomed the terrifying excitement, welcomed it in that flesh-crawling way in which she couldn't resist a horror film.
She stood, almost holding her breath while looking at herself, in front of the long mirror. Her flesh felt refreshed and relaxed after the bath. She put her hand to her breast, the young, well-developed breast which he had touched the other day. He had come up behind her and put both arms around her, holding a breast in each hand and squeezing gently. Then he had smiled a peculiar smile and gone out into the kitchen to help her mother with the drying up. She had been nonplussed, and then embarrassed, and then frightened. She had even thought of telling her mother, except that her mother hated her so and wouldn't have believed her.
And then, two days after that he had come into the bathroom while she was cleaning her teeth in her pajamas just before going to bed. He had been in his pajamas too and he had caught hold of her as before, only this time he had slid his hands under her jacket and electrified her with the touch of his cool fingers on the soft, resistant flesh of her breasts. He had leaned heavily against her and she had felt his weight on her buttocks. He had pressed her very hard, pushing her forward slightly over the basin and she had felt the hard, bulging thing prodding at her. She had been struck dumb; she had wanted to cry out but her throat had completely dried up in a second and she'd simply leaned over the basin, trembling, watching his face in the mirror come down to her neck, seeing the lips open and then feeling the warm pressure of the mouth on her skin. He'd straightened up then and with that peculiar smile which looked half-mad and yet so quiet and self-assured, he'd whispered: "If you say anything to your mother I'll kill you."
She heard a door close quietly and the images faded, bringing her back to the present. She had read books; for the last two years, since her thirteenth birthday she'd been reading books and thinking about it and feeling it in her flesh with a morbid sort of fear. She knew what he wanted. That was the trouble. She was not so much afraid of him as she was afraid of it and her yearning curiosity.
That had been it she'd felt prodding at her bottom when he'd crushed her over the basin. The uneasy excitement moved fluidly in her from her breasts down to the warmth between her legs. She was almost sick with uneasiness as she looked at her naked young body.
She had only known him for six months. That was the length of time he'd been coming to the house to sleep with her mother. She'd often lain in bed, trembling and listening to her mother's thin, passionate gasps and groans through the wall. They had frightened her, those noises. They didn't seem to belong to her mother but to some lost soul, some lost animal soul caught in a trap. And then she would hear his gasps and finally a long drawn-out, shuddering moan. Then there would be silence for a while until she heard their door open and her mother pad out to the bathroom.
So it would go on almost every night, and she would lie in bed waiting for it to begin, hating it, feeling afraid of it but needing it as if it were something to do with her own flesh so that eventually it was the point of the day she waited for.
Until at last, three weeks ago, when they had got married and he had moved into the house permanently and she had to speak to him, see him, come into contact with him at all times of the day when she was not at school.
At first he had seemed to take little notice of her, but then she had found his eyes on her often when she thought she wasn't being watched. His eyes, with that peculiar smile, took her all in, resting on her hips, on her breasts, making her flush and tremble inside.
She studied herself in the mirror, turning sideways, looking at the young, developed body with its maximum of flesh in the right places. She realized suddenly what she was doing and colored although nobody was watching her. She began to pull on her pajamas. It was becoming embarrassing to stay in the bathroom any longer; she had already waited a long time, hoping her mother would come. But now it was too late.
She pulled her dressing gown around her, wishing she'd made arrangements to stay over at Betty's place.
At the door she listened. No sound. She unlocked the door quietly and stepped out into the passage. Quickly she went to her room. She closed the door and stared at the key in the lock. That seemed the only safe thing to do, but she hesitated to take such a positive action as turning it. That was bringing things right out into the open; she preferred to pretend they didn't exist.
Sitting at the dressing table she began to brush her hair. It was long and red. Her father's hair had been red; and she had his bright blue eyes, his firm white features so they had told her. That was why her mother hated her. She wondered where her father was now and then her heart jumped and began pummeling her as there was a knock at her door.
"Yes?" She tried to keep her voice steady. But even the one little word was too much and curved off crookedly at the end.
"I've made you some cocoa."
Her body tingled as if the tiny hairs all over it were standing on end. He had never done this before. She groped for something to call back, anything to put him off. She glanced at the open window.
The door opened slowly and he came in carrying a steaming cup in each hand. He pushed the door closed with his foot.
Her lips trembled slightly. She went on brushing her hair, mechanically, over and over again, trying not to watch him in the mirror.
"There."
He put one cup beside her on the dressing table and sat on the bed, stirring the cocoa in the other, watching her all the time with that smile.
"You have beautiful hair," he said, still smiling. "Not at all like your mother's."
She didn't answer. She felt as if some essential organ had been taken out of her body leaving a drafty gap which would gradually consume her if the organ was not replaced.
"Astonishing that you're only fifteen," he went on, smiling and seeming to muse. "You have the body of a much older woman."
His words frightened her. He was so calm and sure of himself, like a schoolmaster. She was overwhelmed by his presence so helpless that she still couldn't say a word.
He swallowed his cocoa and stood up. She realized with a stab of shock that he, too, was in his pajamas.
"Drink up," he said. "If you go on brushing you'll wear it away."
Obediently she put down the brush and began to sip the cocoa. Stealthily she watched him in the mirror. He stood still with his arms folded, staring at her, letting his eyes fall from her shoulders to her buttocks. They rested on the firm lines of her buttocks on the dressing stool. With another shock she saw the great bulge in his pajamas down where the thing was. It was enormous and he made no effort to conceal it, seeming rather to lean his hips forward slightly, pointing it at her. She gasped audibly and then regretted it.
"What's the matter?" His smile was broad and insolent.
"Nothing."
She was hot; her face was burning and the uneasy excitement was down there, hot, between her legs again. She shivered in a quick spasm and then stood up.
"I'm going to bed now," she said in a frightened voice.
He didn't answer and made no effort to stop her. His eyes simply roved over her, resting this time on her breasts as if he could see through the thin material of her pajamas and moving down to the V between her legs where her red pubic hair made a tiny bulge.
She stared him in the eyes at last and, once there, she felt lost. His black eyes smilingly overwhelmed her. He reached forward and pulled her towards him. She wanted to resist, but her body went where he pulled and the next minute he was crushing against her and his lips were flattening hers apart and his soft tongue was probing into her mouth.
She closed her eyes, unresponding, but the excitement in her had reached a point at which it had to break. It had moved between her legs like a great itch.
He edged her back towards the bed and pushed her onto it, coming down half on top of her. Now she was on her back in the position the books always described. His face was against hers, that tongue probing; she was trembling violently all over in a way she couldn't stop at all and she wanted to know, she wanted to give.
She put her arms around his shoulders and squirmed against him, her heart fluttering like a bat, blindly, helplessly.
Behind her closed eyes was only a partial recognition of what was happening; full recognition was lost in the trembling, the helplessness.
' The air was cool on her bare breasts. She felt very naked and desired only to be more so. His hands were drawing new sensations from her breasts and then his lips, and behind her closed eyes she wanted him to swallow them because the thrill was too acute.
And then the air was all around her hips, like a caressing hand, and her white buttocks were sliding on the counterpane and between her legs, right up inside her, connected with every part of her being, but above all down there between her legs was the hot liquid feeling of lava bubbling away, threatening to boil over.
His mouth was moving over her body, following his hands, and between the lost, flushed burning a fleeting moment of horror would rake her and then dissimulate in the boiling cauldron of flesh.
Now his pressure was down there along her thighs, stroking them, moving up, brushing gently, sending her giddy with the feeling that she was just a trembling leaf falling, falling.
His fingers were there. It was the last moment. She was still trembling violently as if with a disease. She opened her legs suddenly, spread them apart with a final pain of excitement shooting through her belly. And his fingers entered the elastic, moist tunnel.
She gave a little whimper and closed her legs again, but his fingers were there, crushed between her thighs but inside her, a foreign stimulation. They moved gently like a spider's legs, feeling around in the darkness. Her mouth was open and the uncontrollable trembling went on. His lips were sucking her nipples again and gradually he eased her thighs apart, pushing with his elbow into the soft, glazed flesh.
For her, the room no longer existed, only sensation existed the ravishing sensation of a younger, eager body learning and loving and wallowing in the love.
His fingers were raking her secrets like practiced instruments, titillating her vagina, titillating in an overwhelming flood of intoxication that she could hardly stand even though she knew it had to go on, that there was no going back. She was filled with a great need to debase herself, to abandon herself within his sight, to release a violence of passion. She began to move her legs, to wriggle her behind on the bed, whimpering quietly through her open lips. She wanted no contact with him as such, she needed above all to abandon herself for her own need, now that it was here, had happened, she needed to sweep away all her inhibitions in one swipe, to do everything possible.
She moaned and another fleeting thought came: her mother's moans, the lost animal soul. A fleeting horror came but swept on and she was just a body on a bed, a body filled with need.
His lips moved up from the teats and covered her mouth. She opened her mouth and his tongue moved in.
Somehow, smoothly he was on top of her. She was more naked than ever because her bare, white thighs were out on either side of him and this was the final abandonment. His nude body was warm on hers; the trembling was all inside her now, had withdrawn from the outer skin, but it had passed into him. Through all the sensation she was aware of his trembling body, still sure, but trembling.
All the sensation reached a pinpoint apex down there at the gaping passage between her thighs. It was as if every perception in her had been magnetized down, rushed down through her body to that one acute spot.
She gasped and pushed her thighs flat as the solid thing, so hard and pointed, moved into her. It was too much. Tears of pain came to her eyes. But she wanted it, that was what she needed, anything less would be failure.
She pulled her thighs up slowly and then cried out at the sudden solid invasion. The tears flushed into her eyes and ran helplessly down her cheeks. But that first enormous entry was the worst and now the solidity began to take on a probing rhythm as his hips slid against her thighs and his fast breathing made her suddenly fully conscious of another being with a part of his body inside hers.
She opened her eyes and there was another streak of horror in her head as she was partly aware, through the pain which constricted her, of his black hair and the blue jaw and the heat of his body and the sliding of the skin against hers and the abandonment of her woman-strength to him. She closed her eyes again and the mind glazed over and perception moved back just to the channel of sensation in her loins.
The pain was receding and the firm, sliding pressure which filled her was moving back to the sensation of before only better now, because she was more naked than ever with this filling of her need.
Little spurts of sound shot through his lips as he pushed into her, and they found an echo in the breath which began again to pant from her lips.
She felt his hand move under her bottom, the warmth of his palm balancing her buttocks, she moved her bottom on the hand, feeling the rubbing of skin against skin, letting him have anything he wanted of her because it was what she, too, wanted.
His other hand moved under her and both hands went down her buttocks to the spot where his penis was throbbing into her. The fingers brushed at the ridges of flesh on either side of the passage and she gasped and jerked her hips sharply up against his.
The probing was still advancing, filling her loins with fresh sensation so that she began to groan quietly. There was only a slight soreness now to offset the burning, all-pervading rapture of her body. She pushed her thighs out from her hips, inviting him farther, and she felt his hips wriggle up against the hairy softness of her abdomen.
She was wriggling uncontrollably now, her head flopped back, mouth open. He was biting her neck and beginning to jerk into her with swift, strong strokes which shocked her every moment. She felt very wide open, as if the whole of her inside had been turned out to the open air; she felt hot and wet and in her loins there was an aching of sensation, of reaching for something that would be attained in sudden destruction. This was it, and she was suddenly terribly afraid of it, afraid of it but knowing it must go on, feeling that it would destroy her.
Her body was sweating and longing. The rapture brought tears to her eyes again.
His face came up and swallowed her again, biting her lips, and each bite was a fresh stab of excitement. Her breasts, too, crushed under his body, felt a pain that was almost not a pain. His long rod of flesh was surging fleshily right into her passage. It seemed to expand as he jerked on and on, forcing against the sides of the channel as if it would stretch her until she became just one big hole down there for his use.
His hands had moved back under her buttocks and were squeezing them hard, feeling them, pulling them apart, his fingers stabbing at her anus. She had never imagined that, but his fingers were there invoking a new source of stimulation, trying to enter the other passage.
She pushed her hips into him, pulling her thighs back towards her body. She gave a little gasping moan as he rammed his last length into her. Now there was nothing left of her at all but the enormous well which itched and burned, contracted and seethed with bittersweet excitement.
He was pummeling into her with rapid, staccato strength, gasping continuously with each in-stroke and her legs, she saw vaguely, were moving around, rubbing on his thighs as she squeezed in, falling away in the next second; her hips seemed to have a will of their own, writhing around against his as the weight and solidity within her seemed to grow bigger and bigger, her thought vaguer and vaguer so that she knew only the swirling inside her loins which made her strain and strain against him, wanting him to fill her, to invade every inch of her body. The swirling grew, grew in a whirlpool as if, like the water disappearing from her bath, all the liquids inside her were being sucked down to her vagina where his penis was destroying her. This, this, she thought, now, now. She couldn't stop; it was too late now; this was the destruction, the fulfillment of the thinking, waiting, reading, needing. She uttered a thin scream, jackknifed against him and dug her nails into his shoulders as it seemed that a carnal spirit rushed out of her, sweeping her body like a blasting wind, robbing it of strength, before it plunged down and out of the throbbing orifice between her thighs.
She lay, still vaguely excited, twitching her limbs, but in a half stupor afterwards, while he continued to ravage her in growing excitement. She was pleasurably aware of his moans, his furious thrusts, the way he clutched her behind, pulling it up at his hips off the bed. She gasped as his rod pushed for a moment even farther than before, sending a streak of pain through her belly. And then he had slowed and was groaning like a wounded lion, stiffening into her in sudden rigid jerks until, with a last moan as if he were dying, he shot into her and she felt the hot flood of sperm passing from him to her.
He stretched on her, panting for some time while she thought of nothing but the fact that she'd had it, that there was still pleasure in her loins together with a growing soreness in her vagina.
He rolled off her at last and lay looking up at the ceiling with its ridge of pattern. She didn't move, didn't open her eyes. She lay with her legs spread-eagled, the sperm dripping out of her onto the counterpane until she began to feel normal and slightly cold. Desire had slowly evaporated. She became afraid to open her eyes as reality flooded into her. During the heat, the passion, nothing had mattered, but now she was back before the beginning and without the excitement she'd felt; and a flush of guilt and disgust and horror, that he had done that to her and that she'd assisted and enjoyed, swept through her causing her to shiver. He was her stepfather, her mother's husband. She shuddered again. His great thing had been in her, just the way it had been in her mother, bringing groans and writhing from her just as it had from her mother. That was incest. Was it incest if he wasn't really her father? Yes, it probably was anyway it didn't matter.
She opened her eyes cautiously. His were closed as if he was asleep. She looked at his large, blue-chinned face and averted her eyes.
They traveled down his fleshy, white body and rested on the hump of his penis which curved up over his hairy thighs. She watched it, fascinated and half-revolted. It was yellowish-white and very smooth with a few thin veins standing out on it. A clump of hair spiked out around it, thickly, like a bird's nest. She wished she could see it better without having to change her position and risk disturbing him. She became suddenly aware of her own naked body so close to his that they were almost touching. It wasn't at all the same as when they'd been making love; now it was obscene. She looked at his face again and the eyes were still closed, so she slipped off the bed, picked up her pajamas in a quick movement and tiptoed to the door. He called out as she reached it.
"Where are you going?"
"The bathroom."
She slipped along the passage, remembering that it was the first time she'd ever walked through the flat naked. Once in the bathroom, she locked the door, turned on the light and leaned against the door, bent over, looking at her thighs with the mucous flow oozing over them.
Now it all seemed so fantastically unreal that she felt if she dismissed it from her mind it would not be true at all. But the viscid stream continued in its slow path down her thighs. That was sperm; that was from him; it was inside her. Supposing she had a baby! She dismissed the unpalatable thought. That only happened to other people. Anyway she'd soon know; her period was due in a few days.
She got into the bath and ran the water, sponging away the marks of his passion. Her vagina was definitely sore now. How could she face her mother? The soreness would remind her physically even if she managed to put the memory forcibly out of her head. Tears came to her eyes. She felt she couldn't cope with such a responsibility of guilt. And how could she go on living with her stepfather? She loathed him now. It would be agony to have to sit at the same meal-table with him. And supposing he made fresh advances to her! The probability was obvious and she shuddered at the thought. Now she couldn't bear the thought of his touching her, could hardly understand how it had all happened with such lack of resistance on her part.
She dried her legs and rubbed some talcum powder between them. She thought of him lying on her bed and realized that she couldn't go back there. The thought of seeing him was too much and she had read, too, that some men liked to do it several times a night. She felt very helpless and scared. She wished she could get out of the house, but all her clothes were in her room. She climbed into her pajamas, and sat on the hard, wooden chair beside the washbasin. She would have to stay here in the locked bathroom until morning.
For a long time she sat in the small room remembering the details of their intercourse with reluctant horror. If only it could have been someone else, some boy she knew. But they were all so young anyway. The farthest they'd ever gone was to put their hands halfway up her skirt in a game of "Truth or Dare." She thought of her friend Betty who had also had hands put up her skirt. In fact, once, some boy had almost touched the spot over her briefs but hadn't quite managed it. They had discussed it for hours, going over the sensation they'd had, wondering how it would be to go farther, wondering when and how their first time would be. What would Betty think if she knew! She didn't think she'd be able to tell her; it was too terrible, too shameful.
There was a rattling at the door handle followed by a knock. She stiffened and sat perfectly still, trembling.
"What the devil are you doing?" came her stepfather's voice.
"Having a wash," she said unsteadily.
"You've been having a wash for nearly an hour. Let me in. I need one too."
She hesitated, decided not to answer.
"Let me in I want to have a wash."
"No," she said at last. "I'm staying here until morning."
"Good God, what's the matter with you? Let me in and don't be so stupid." There was an edge of annoyance in his voice.
She didn't answer and there was a silence followed by his receding footsteps and the sound of his door banging. For some time she sat on the chair listening. At last she got up and tiptoed to the door. She put her ear against it and listened again. Then quietly she turned out the light and opened the door. There was no sound from his room in the darkness and with a feeling of relief she hurried quietly along the corridor to her own room. She opened the door softly and slipped inside. She locked it in the darkness, feeling for the key and turning it. She switched on the light, listened a moment and then crossed to the dressing table. What a relief. She bent to look at herself in the mirror, gave a horrified gasp and spun round. Sitting on a chair near the door, half-shielded by the massive wardrobe, was her stepfather. He was smiling at her with the same, strange smile and he rose to come towards her.
"Poor kid," he said. "Why are you acting like this? I suppose you're embarrassed, now?" His voice sounded gentle and reasonable, but underneath was that same menacing power: he and only he was to decide how things should be.
"Don't, don't," she pleaded, shrinking against the dressing table as he came towards her.
He stopped a little in front of her and slipped out of his pajamas. Her fascinated eyes were drawn down to where his organ pointed erectly at her, soaring out from the black hair like a white spear with a dark hilt. She began to tremble again.
"No, no!" she said softly.
His penis was enormous. Now that she saw it erect it was bigger than she'd ever imagined and the skin had drawn back and the red, inflamed knob was like a cudgel. She couldn't believe it could have penetrated her. And there, hanging straight down below it as it swung towards her, were the balls, raw-looking and hair-covered and loose.
He watched her staring at his genitals, smiling with his deep, confident smile.
"It's always better the second time," he said quietly.
"No, no, don't touch me, please!"
When he seized her trembling body she began to struggle, but she was too frightened to struggle very strongly and with a little chuckle he threw her on the bed and ripped off her pajamas. He stood at the edge of the bed for a moment looking down on her body. He pursed his lips and made a sucking noise and then pulled her to the edge of the bed forcing her face downwards across it. She cried out as he shoved into her from behind, pushing her thighs apart with his knees, holding her buttocks, leaning back from her, away from her hips.
Now she was more naked than before because he could watch as he had her, could see his organ moving wetly into her crack as he flexed his abdomen at her soft buttocks. She was trembling violently again and as soon as she'd felt him strongly, sexily in her, she'd forgotten the horror and was again aware only of the all-pervading sea of sensation as his long, relentless flesh greedily ransacked her body.