Chapter 5

There was no hurry about it. The good feeling was there, but it was only a warm awareness. There was plenty of time. Ernie held her hand as they walked across the road. It made her feel nice. Ernie was never vulgar about it. She'd been out with Ernie enough so that they both knew what would happen, but he was never vulgar about it. Some boys, knowing her as a soft touch, were unfriendly in public. Ernie always spoke to her wherever they met. y "Ernie," she said lightly, feeling good, feeling as if it were a fine night and that something nice would happen. "I've decided that I like you."

"I'm overwhelmed," he said. He was carrying his guitar in his other hand. "Of course, you can't help yourself. I'm devastating to all women."

"Ass," she said, squeezing his hand.

There was a light in the girls' room. "Your parlor or mine, sweet prince?" she asked.

"Yours. There may be dirty socks lying around in mine."

He opened the door for her and let her walk in first. The bedside lamp was on and one bed was rumpled.

"Hmmm," Ernie said, looking down at the mussed bed.

"Hmmm," Tina echoed, feeling a little jolt of excitement as she thought of Pat and Tom Jack coupled on that very bed. She felt almost perverted, because she had an urge to use the same bed.

"Wanta beer?" Ernie asked. "I guess."

He went into the other room and came back with two cold ones. Tina got a tissue out of a box and wrapped it around the can to keep it from chilling her hand. She sat down on the unused bed. Ernie was standing up. There was only a straight backed chair in the room. He pulled it over with his foot and sat down. His guitar was lying on the other bed. She picked it up and held it out toward him.

"Sing me a song, Ernie."

"I can't disappoint my public. What'll it be?"

"Something sad."

"They're all sad when I do them."

He sang softly, playing the accompaniment out of tempo, no using a pick so that the nylon strings gave out a soft tone. He had a pleasant voice.

Tina leaned back against a pillow, her legs straight in front of her, ankles crossed. He was such a nice fellow. He sang well for an amateur. She drank small sips and looked at him. His blond hair was mussed from the afternoon on the beach. He looked down at his hands while he sang. Tina felt warm toward him. For a moment she forgot why they were alone in the room.

The last chord of the guitar died away slowly, sweetly. Tina liked the song. She liked the line about the story of I love you. She had never really loved a man, but she would someday. Someday, Mr. Right would come along and she'd love him as no woman had ever loved a man and the story would have no end. For a moment, she felt as if she would like to cry. It seemed so wonderful to think that someday there would be someone who really cared, who would love her and look after her and deliver her from that fearsome need which drove her from one set of arms to another.

Ernie tossed the guitar onto the bed. He sat down beside Tina, not touching her at first. He looked down at her and smiled and say, "Hey, old Teen."

"Hey, old Ern." She smiled up at him. Everything seemed to be so right, things were all in their proper places. He would kiss her soon and then it would be good. It would start passions churning in her and then they'd build and build and maybe there would be-

"It's been a nice day, hasn't it?" He was looking at her with a peculiar expression of tenderness on his face. "They're a bunch of swingin' cats, aren't they?"

"A bunch of tipsy cats after all that beer," Tina laughed.

"They don't know nothin'. " It was his second favorite expression.

Tina voiced his first favorite: "They don't care." She did like Ernie. He was always saying that he didn't care, but he did. He cared about people. He never really did anything to help people, but he never did anything to hurt them, either, and that was more than you could say for a lot of people. No, Ernie didn't care, but Tina had another description of him. He was mildly nuts. He was a man at loose ends with the world. He had no place to go and was in no hurry to get there. He managed to get a few kicks and he was fun to be with.

"Ernie," she said, not really wanting to be serious, but feeling warm toward him and suddenly just a little bit curious about him. "What are you going to do with yourself?"

In a way, in asking him, she was also asking herself. In the pause which followed her question she had time to think about it. She had no big decisions to make in the next three years. It would take her that long to finish school. The old man would keep the loot coming. He considered her liberal allowance a good investment. It kept her out of his hair. But after three years? She tried to imagine herself working at a job. She didn't know what kind of job. She'd never even thought far enough ahead to decide what she was going to take up as her major field of study in college. She tried thinking about herself in an office, neat in a skirt and blouse, taking dictation or something. It might be all right, having something to do, some set routine, some responsibility.

"What are you going to do when you get out of school?" she prodded.

"I think I can postpone that problem indefinitely," he said. "First I'm going to get a B.A. in Campusology. Then an M.A. in Sexology. Then field work for my doctorate."

"You can't just be a professional student."

"What's wrong with it?"

"Nothing, I guess." But it saddened her. Ernie had a wonderful personality and seemingly endless energy. He could do almost anything he wanted but the trouble was he didn't really want to do anything.

Suddenly she laughed.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing," she said. Because she was laughing at herself. Who was she to criticize Ernie? She didn't even make good grades because she didn't care about anything except that one important thing in her life.

"Ernie," she said. "How about kissing me." That solved the problem temporarily.

"I can take it if you can," he said.

He put his hand on her stomach. Her bathing suit was still slightly damp. The warmth of his hand told her that she must be slightly chilled. It would be nice when she was in his arms, warmed. She felt it begin inside, felt it become delightfully sensuous, melting, all from one touch of his hand.

He leaned down and placed his lips on hers. It was a touch kiss, dry, closed lips. He brushed his lips back and forth and she was kissing him through a smile, liking the little tickly sensation, feeling good, warm, wanted. He was such a nice man. She let her lips relax and he tasted the moist insides of her mouth as the kiss became wet, loose, relaxed. He leaned on one elbow and looked into her face and saw beauty, delicate, fragile, wonderfully feminine. Tina was, he felt, by far the prettiest girl he knew. There was a little ruffle of lace along the top of her bathing suit, rounding across the upper bulge of her breasts. She was all girl. She was soft and clean and desirable and-

He frowned.

She was totally promiscuous and that was strange. It was strange that she was that way and it was even stranger that he felt a little black displeasure when he thought about it. It didn't seem logical that she, with her marvelously beautiful face and her perfect body and her clean, tasty lips and nice breasts, could place so little value on what she had to offer. What the hell? She was crazy, that was all. It was her wagon and where she wanted to drive it was her business.

But her eyes were so blue, so large, so clear.

He was on his side, pressed against her, his legs warm against her long flank. Her head was turned to meet his lips and the kiss was a mutual feeling out, a warmth between them.

She touched his shoulder and let her hand stay there, not pulling on him, just luxuriating in the beginning of the desire in her, waiting, content to wait for the moment, knowing that it would come and that she would feel those wonderful tensions and then She felt the old fear. Then? Would it be the same as always? Would he lift her to panting nearness and then leave her to wail inside with frustration? "Ernie?"

"Hmmmm?" He said it through a kiss with more force behind it, his tongue smoothing the inside surfaces of her wet lips.

"Make it good for me, Ernie."

"llmmm."

"Make love to me for a long, long time. Get me real hot. Make me get so hot I'll beg for it."

"What do you want me to do."

"You know."

"No. You tell me."

"Kiss me," she said. "Then play with me. Kiss my breasts."

"Slave driver."

"Ernie."

"Huh?"

"Please, please make it good for me."

There was a quality of desperation in her voice which touched him deeply. He thought he understood Tina Franklin better after hearing her beg like that. He felt her utter frustration. He would make it good for her if it were humanly possible. He would do it if it took all night. He gathered her into his arms tenderly. He could feel the long, smooth length of her legs under him, the softness of her breasts on his chest. He tasted the sweet woman taste of her and smelled her hair. He searched out little hidden areas of her mouth with his tongue and was lifted from casualness by her responsive answerings. He pushed away the straps of her swimsuit and folded the garment down, turning the lined bra outward to expose her breasts. Beautiful, peaked breasts, rose-tipped points with nipples slightly flattened by the bathing suit.

"Hey, you're still damp."

"I don't care."

"Let's get you out of this thing." He rolled her over, zipped the suit down the back and tugged it away. He watched her white buttocks come free and liked their roundness and touched her. Her skin was cool. She didn't help. She let him tug the suit away and then she lifted one leg lazily to kick it onto the floor. She flopped over on her back.

"Hang tight," he told her.

He went into the bathroom and got a rough-napped towel. She was lying as he had left her, legs slightly parted, dark sex exposed. He rubbed her with the towel, starting softly, then making his strokes vigorous. He rolled her over onto her stomach and rubbed her back, the swelling rise of her rump. He used both hands to rub her long legs. He rubbed her with the rough towel until her skin was glowing, until he could feel warmth with his hands. He bent to place his-lips on the indentation of her spine just above the swell of her buttocks.

There was a vague, salty taste to her, a lingering reminder of the sea. He brushed his lips up her back, kissed the back of her neck after pushing her hair away. He tickled her ear with his lips and she giggled. She moved lazily.

"You're wet," she said.

He had forgotten all about his own trunks. He was lying atop her, her buttocks soft under his growing manhood. He left her for a moment and discarded his trunks. He kissed the soft areas of her back and pressed hardness into the crease of her buttocks.

She turned under him and they came together automatically. He felt her good then, soft, oiled, mellow warm. He pulled away, remembering his promise. Her breasts were mounds of delight to be kissed and manipulated. Her breathing was fast, her eyes closed, a tiny smile of pleasure on her lips.

He bit her nipples, holding his teeth behind his lips, and he felt them harden and become little points of desire. He liked to look at them, pink nipples protruding from rose brown circles at the tips of the sensitive mounds. Her hips made rolling movements and she was beginning to gasp.

His hand went down and over the loving tilt of her stomach and found the hard, cushioned mound and his fingertips felt the silky hair and went over the hump to touch moistness. She sighed.

He could feel the tension grow in her. He liked the way she would arch upward at his touch and then hold herself absolutely still, her rump clear of the bed, while he toyed with her highly sensitized labia. She used her hands to press his face into the warmth of her breasts. He bit a nipple playfully and was rewarded by a moan of sensuous pleasure. He wasn't going to do it then, but he had to feel her, sample the furnace of her interior heat. He pushed her legs up, feeling the warmth of her soft inner thighs on his side, until she was bundled into a fetal position, he on his knees between her legs. He guided himself with his hand until he was moistened by the oils of her love and she was a squirming readiness under him, pushing upward, feeling for him, wanting it, the penetration which was just a hint of things to come.

He wanted to go into her, but she was not begging. He moved his body, felt the hard, tiny core of intensity of her passions and rolled it, using his hand to guide himself in small, tantalizing circles. She moved wildly under him, arched to reach for him, but he would not allow her to pull him into completion. He teased her, circling the seat of her need, touching her softness then to feel her tense in waiting, hear her gasp in expectation and lunge upward.

He fell atop her, without the full contact and kissed her breasts while she tried to move downward, but her wetness was against his stomach as she made copulatory movements.

"Now, Ernie," she gasped, her hands on his back, tugging at him.

He let his body ride up. Her legs were still high, clamped around his body. He let contact come, brushed heat and softness, pulled away to tease her more. Her breath was hot on his cheek when he kissed her.

"Now, Ernie."

He kneeled and used his fingers tenderly, teasingly.

"Now, Ernie. I want it now. Please, Ernie."

He buried his lips in the soft warmth of her stomach. He could feel her heat against his chest and she was moving, jerking, pulling at him.

"Oh, please," she begged. "I want it now. Right now. This minute."

She was oiled, opened, ready. He let entry come slowly and she completed it, lunging upward, clinging to him, her legs thrown high to take him as deeply as possible. He covered her lips with his and reached deep to taste her sweetness and her tongue was wild. The movements were heaven. They were slow, soft yet solid, deep probes going into wonderful woman, the most wonderful woman he'd ever known, a body so attuned to his that his every move brought the right counter-move.

It was too good. He felt it grow in him. He tried to hold back. He wanted to make it last longer for her. He tried not to think about her goodness, her warmth, her soft, sliding, parting tissue. He wanted to be able to ignore, for the moment, her mellow-ripeness, her wild passion, her total warmth, her giving of wonderful thrills. He tried to stave it off by thinking of something unpleasant. He thought about his father and his step-mother and all the unpleasant things which had happened at home after his father remarried, before he was old enough to escape. But she was too hot, too much woman, for him to ignore.

Tina felt almost complete. She was love fulfilled. She was the eternal woman giving woman's gift to the world and she felt so good, ecstatic, confident. It was so good, so very, very good. There was the powerful stretch of tensions in her and she was growing tighter and tighter and he was so good in her. He was loving her, doing it for her, she could tell. He wasn't tearing away at her in selfish abandon. He stroked her deep and good and even, and she was going to find it this time. She was going to stretch and stretch and that damned tension was going to snap and it would be so wonderful.

She leaned far back, hugging his sides with her knees, raising her buttocks to take all of him into her, to feel him better, to know his probing manhood in the depths of her being. She'd finish it this time. She was so near the peak. She was sure that Ernie was the one. He was crazy, but he was the one. He was Mr. Right, the man with the key, the man who was going to break the tensions inside her and-

"Oh, no," she gasped. "Oh, please, no."

He was sounding deep inside her, giving himself with lusty pumpings. She was so near, so near. She fought desperately to join him. She was given a huge thrill by his passion, his deep poundings, his giving of his maleness to her unbearable need. She gasped and moaned and lifted herself to feel him but she was falling backward off the mountain. So near!

She felt true panic. She wanted to scream, scratch, bite, do violent things.

He began to fade in her and she lunged upward and upward. He made token plunges into her, even though he was highly sensitive after his massive release.

It was no good. The goodness was gone, leaving her only that desperate need and the knowledge that she would have to continue her search. The thought was painful. If only he could go on a little longer.

She pushed him away and threw herself down on him, kissing him, begging him with her whole body to come back to life.

He didn't speak. He lay on his back and held her close and felt as if it were his fault. But how could a man do more?

She kissed his chest, biting his small male breasts. She had to have him again, have him while that stretched tension, that vast rubbery feeling inside, was still strong. She found him, shrunken. With a gasp of hopeless lust she went down. He looked at her brown hair and felt surprise. She'd never done that before. She used him lustily and her soft mouth started it for him again. When he was ready she came to him, putting herself over him to slide down his body to penetration. Then she was doing it all, sliding up and down his body to plant him inside, cover him, close herself over him and she began to hope.

It was pure sensation. It was good. It was life itself and it went on and on until he climaxed with great reluctance, looking up at her guiltily. Her body was still working as he went. Then, exhausted, he left her, ebbing away.

She felt as if she were something big and brittle and that she would shatter at a touch. She fell atop him, tense, stiff, trying to hold back her need to weep in frustration.

"Sorry, Teen."

She didn't dare speak. She just lay on him and wanted and wanted and there wasn't anything to help her. There was something wrong with her. It was like all the other times and it wasn't his fault. He'd done all a man could.

"Teen?" His voice was tender.

"Yes."

"You didn't make it."

"No."

He was silent for a long time. When he spoke she could barely hear him. "Do you ever make it, Teen?"

"Of course I do." Because she couldn't admit openly that there was something wrong with her, that she was an incomplete woman.

"Hey, Teen." He sounded unsure of himself. "Maybe," he said, then stopped.

"Yes?" She was wildly hopeful that he had some idea, that he could do something.

"Maybe-maybe it's something physical."

"What do you mean?" she asked fearfully, not wanting to discuss it.

"Well, have you ever talked to a doctor about it? It could be something wrong-"

She jerked away. "There's nothing wrong," she said. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"Geese," Ernie said. "I only mean-"

"I know what you meant," she said angrily. "But there's nothing wrong with me that someone who isn't a rabbit-"

"Rabbit!" Ernie sat up.

She knew she shouldn't have said it, but there was that overwhelming want in her and she had been so very close. "If I could ever find a man-"

"Now, come on, Teen, I didn't mean anything." He wasn't angered by her outburst. On the contrary, he was saddened.

"Oh, didn't you? Weren't you trying to alibi away your own inadequacy?" Even as she said it she knew she was being completely unreasonable.

Ernie got off the bed. He picked up his trunks and stepped into them. "Listen, Teen," he said patiently. "It wouldn't hurt anything if you went to a doctor, maybe even a head shrinker."

"Get out," Tina said. "You get out of here, you rabbit."

"All right, Teen, I'm going." He paused at the door.

She was kneeling on the bed, her wonderful body tense and angry. He felt something he couldn't explain as he looked at her. "I'm sorry," he said.

"Go away;" she said.

When the door closed, she fell onto her stomach and cried. The sobs jerked her body and the great, burning need was in her and she was helpless. Oh, God, she had tried. She had tried and tried and tried and she wasn't like other girls. She had this thing, this great thing, which demanded gratification. She tried with man after man, how many? Christ, too many. She felt used and dirtied and yet she knew she'd try again.

That was the most terrible part of it all, that knowledge, even when she was freshly disappointed, freshly used, that she would try again. There was no use in telling herself that she wouldn't do it again. She'd tried that. It didn't work. She would try again. However, it was time to stop going at it helter-skelter. She wouldn't just accept anyone who came along next time. She'd choose more carefully. The matter of finding Mr. Right needed some thinking. First, she reviewed what had gone wrong in the past. She could remember most of them vividly. Only a few were faceless shadows. She remembered short men and tall men and thin men and husky men and older men and boys. She remembered way back, when it first began, when the boy in her class asked if he could bring a friend along to fool around. Two of them touching her, nice.

She remembered times in the back seats of cars, in motel rooms, on blankets. One after the other she reviewed them and then she went back to the beginning again. Two of them, touching her, thrilling her. Two of them!

She felt a warm glow. All right, if that's what it would take. If she could ever find the key, just once, if she could ever break that horrible tension just once, then it would be easier the next time.

Two of them.

She got off the bed, found a dry bathing suit in one of her bags. She walked purposefully across the road to the strand. The fires were still glowing brightly. Someone was singing, mixed voices blending inexpertly. She looked up and down the strand. The groups were all mixed up. The shake-down period was over. They were paired off and there were more girls than boys. It wouldn't be easy to do as she had planned within the group. There was too much intermixing, too many spectators. She looked down the beach to the pier and saw the fishermen standing, small and distant, under the lights. She swallowed. She could go to the pier and ... and what? Walk along to the first three or four men and say, "Do you want me?"

No. That was out. There was the amusement park, though. There would be lots of boys there. High school boys ran in packs. How many times had she seen three or four of them in a cruising car, making wolf whistles at the girls? The twinge of interest inside told her she had found the answer.

She'd have to have a car to go to the park. Borrow Ernie's? Not-likely. Pat's? Pat had driven down in her convertible. That was it. She'd tell Pat that she needed to go to the store for something and then she would find out if she had the answer. She looked at her watch. It was late. She'd have to wait.

She joined a group, had a beer and thought about it with tightened stomach, more and more sure that she had the answer. The breeze was from the sea, warm and soft. The kids down the beach sang a slow, sweet tune. She drank her beer rapidly, had another and gradually felt herself relaxing as alcohol began to infiltrate her blood stream.