Chapter 7
Unexpectedly, the flamboyant dancing was fun. Soon Penny, her inhibitions forgotten, and a surprisingly agile Mark Graham were flailing and oscillating with the others, improvising as they went along. It was only out of deference to her panting companion that Penny finally suggested they call it a night and start home.
"They really are exciting-your weird native dances," she declared with the best of intentions.
Apparently the comment did not set too well with Mark, for he frowned ominously. "Must you always make fun, disparage, wear a halo?" he queried. "Have you never thought of changing your image?"
"Certainly not," Penny retorted. "Why should I? Just because you don't like my looks, maybe, or the way I dance? Or because you happen to be in the image-making business? No, thanks. I'm satisfied just being myself."
He grinned and patted her arm, indicating there were to be no hard feelings between them. "It's nothing personal, my dear," he avowed, then proceeded to make it uncomfortably personal.
"Oh, I'll admit you're beautiful, have all the social graces and that sort of thing." He chuckled. "And I won't say you aren't nice to go out with, fun to dance with, a sweet eyeful to be seen with, Penny Gilmore. What I mean is, you have nothing to worry about in the glamour department. But I've been thinking. Seems to me a change of image might be a whole lot of help to you, career-wise."
Penny's eyes flashed fire, though she managed to treat Mark Graham's harangue with the lofty silence she felt it deserved. She would not give this know-it-all the satisfaction of seeing her fly off the handle over his foolish appraisal. Nor would she be baited by his innuendoes into asking foolish questions.
She had not forgotten Mark's earlier remark to the effect that she might be needing a job soon; the implication being that Penny's days in the offices of J. Cyrus Henry, the Smiling Legislator, were numbered. And Mr. Henry was Mark's client-Mark's Number One Image. On the other hand, Mr. Henry was Dad's long-term friend. Nothing could happen.
Penny's resolve to ask no questions was short-lived. They were scarcely out of the disco and seated in Mark's car, leaving for home, when she was much in the state of the cat that curiosity killed. The problem now was how to play it cool; how to find out what she wanted to know without Mark suspecting how much she cared.
And she cared terribly. The very thought of losing her job at this point was sickening. It would mean returning to The Grove a failure. What would the family say? And, even more important, what would David Stewart think?
Meanwhile, Mark Graham, having all but shattered her poise, appeared to have forgotten the whole thing. Wasn't that just like the man! Turning the car, he detoured into a broad street where the houses were distinctive for their architecture and airs of aloofness, and began to drive slowly.
"Here, my lovely," he explained with an elaborate gesture, "is where the big-time diplomats live. Pretty cool, huh?"
"You know them all, too. I suppose-and by their first names." Penny, already distraught, and feeling that Mark was talking down to her, was unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
"Well, no," Mark admitted. "But I am thinking of lining up some clients in Europe and the Middle East. All I need now is someone who can help me make the right contacts."
Penny frowned, believing she had found the answer to at least one question. Mark's reason for wanting to meet her father was quite clear. But there were other questions, even more important to her, and he seemed bent upon forestalling them.
"Well, shall we drive on?" Penny said coldly, clinging fast to the remnants of pride she had left. "I've seen Embassy Row several times since I've been back in the-States. As a matter-of-fact, I've seen embassies all over the world. In Cairo, we lived in a house just as impressive as any of these." She made a sweeping gesture that included all the houses in the immediate vicinity. She waited a moment for that to register, then continued, still coldly:
"In fact, it was a palace, built for a princess. It had solid gold water taps, and a garden as large as a park. And there were servants all over the place. You may not believe this, but it's true."
"I believe it," Mark said, but he tacked on, quite impudently: "Now we've gotten the princess out of the palace, why not let's get the palace out of the princess?"
"Must you always make fun, disparage?" Penny demanded, unconsciously repeating her companion's earlier accusation. "Have you ever thought of changing your image?" Then the questions poured out, tumbling over one another in their haste for expression.
"What did you mean, I might be needing a job soon? What did you mean when you implied I'd have to make myself over if I ever wanted to get anywhere? What would you know about such things, you"-she searched her mind for a suitable American term for poseur-"you phony?"
Mark shrugged. "Could be it takes a phony to spot a phony," he observed, with such surprising good nature that Penny was momentarily disarmed.
"Why, I'm getting along fine with J. Cyrus Henry, your Number One Image. Just fine. If I smile any harder, I'll start looking like the old coot."
Mark Graham made a gesture as if he had given up, and they drove along in a deepfreeze silence, until he stopped the car in front of the apartment house and Penny made ready to get out.
He placed a detaining hand on her arm. "Just a minute, honeybun. There are a few facts of life-business life, that is-you need to know, and I am about to tell you."
"I won't listen. And don't start saying it's for my own good. That's always a prelude to something unpleasant." Penny tried to pull away from Mark, but his hand on her arm tightened.
"Oh, you'll listen, whether you like it or not. I don't expect any thanks. But I owe a lot to J. Cyrus Henry, your long-suffering employer. And I'll be darned if I'll stand around, smiling, while you sit there looking down your nose at everything in sight, and otherwise spoiling a perfectly grand image."
"Pooh-you and your images," Penny derided. "If you're insinuating Mr. Henry might discharge me, you're out of your mind. He couldn't possibly do that. Dad wouldn't let him." Her face burned, and she added hastily, "What I mean is, they've been friends for ages."
"Yes, I know. Come to think of it, J. Cyrus isn't likely to discharge you, friendship or not. He isn't that kind of a 'coot,' as you call him. He'd sooner cut his throat than put a young person-especially one with no visible means of earning an honest living-out of a job. A kindlier man than good old J. Cyrus never existed. What I mean is, he's real."
"Dad says the same thing," Penny admitted. "If he's so real, why does he need you and all that image-building stuff?"
"He doesn't. He's an old-timer, with a built-in image that nothing can touch. Truth is, I need him, just as a lot of other people do."
"Then you're a charlatan, along with several other things I might mention," Penny accused him.
"Never mind about me," Mark retorted. "And you don't need to apologize. In public relations, a man's skin grows thick."
With that, he returned the conversation to Penny's employer, pointing out with evident sincerity some of the qualities that made J. Cyrus Henry a genuinely good if not truly great man. The Smiling Legislator's interest in his constituents sprang from a benevolent heart. He wanted every mother's son and daughter of them to be happy, upright, and gainfully employed.
"He's all but hipped on the subject of young people, their welfare and educational needs." Mark went on to say, "Insists they're the hope of the world-never mind reports to the effect that they're tearing it apart just for the fun of it. Get the picture?"
When Penny did not answer, Mark leaned forward and spoke confidentially.
"But unless you can stomach horror stories, don't let him get started on his pet crusade-the crime wave that's sweeping the country. He's working on ways and means to combat the frightening situation. He fairly oozes statistics on murder, criminal assault, and kidnapping, as well as other major and minor crimes."
"Sounds gruesome," Penny murmured. "You don't need to warn me. I'm not likely to encourage any horror stories. I'm getting goose pimples right now, just hearing you talk about them."
"J. Cyrus is so right," Mark continued. "Something must be done about it, and quickly. Why, even here in Washington, it's getting to the point when a man doesn't feel safe in his own home. And a girl can't step out on the street alone, especially after dark, without taking a chance of getting herself strangled or worse. According to the latest statistics...."
"Stop it, please!" Penny wailed. Her face had turned a ghastly white as Mark made his last pronouncement, and now her whole body was shaking.
With sickening clarity, she was remembering Nellie-May and the way she'd stood in the doorway, looking back at the interloper who was speeding her departure from home, as though reluctant to go out into the oncoming darkness. That had been hours ago. Where was Nellie-May now?
"I didn't mean to scare you, honeybun," Mark said. He put an arm around her protectively, soothing her, and Penny let it stay there for whatever small comfort it afforded.
"Oh, I'm not scared," Penny said sturdily. Not for myself, that is, she added mentally.
Fearfully, she glanced up at the apartment, whose living room windows faced the street, hoping to see lights. The windows were dark, which undoubtedly meant that Nellie-May was still out.
Experimentally, she closed her eyes, as if by doing so she could shut out the ominous truth. But her imagination began to play tricks on her, so she opened them quickly. In that brief instant she had seen a fleeting picture of the young girl, bruised and beaten-perhaps dead-on the historic cobblestones of one of Georgetown's dimly lit alleyways; Husha whimpering at her side.
Meanwhile, Penny felt Mark Graham's arms tightening around her, a circumstance she had been too perturbed to notice. Obviously, he had mistaken stark desperation for conscious encouragement. He was holding her much too close for friendly solicitude. She would have to do something about it.
She tried to leave the car, saying, "Thanks for a most interesting evening. It was fun." She half-heard, but preferred to ignore, the man's muttered soliloquy:
"Hell's bells-a prima donna to the very last gasp! Poor baby, she's scared to death of life. Something's bugging her right now. But she won't let her hair down and be folks. Oh, no! A man can't even try to help her without feeling he's a heel who may be destroying something beautiful...."
His speech incensed Penny. How could he talk that way to her? After all, she was a woman. She had no doubts about that. Ever since Werner Molders had made love to her, showing her the wonders and the delights of the human body, she had been a woman. And she wondered just how much of a man Mark was. Could he call himself a man with a straight face? Could he love her like a man, leaving her satisfied like Werner had?
Penny decided she would have to find out. She knew, even at her young age, that one of the best ways to humiliate a man was to prove him incompetent during sex. So Penny resolved to test Mark in the ways of love, right then and there.
She sat before him, slowly lowering her skirt and revealing a set of purple bikini panties to his eyes, which immediately lit up.
"I want to feel you fuck me, Mark. I want you to show me what a real man you are!"
Mark wasted no time in showing her precisely what she wanted. He motioned her into the back seat of his automobile and moved her down on her back along its length. He leaned forward and firmly locked his lips on hers and began to run his hand beneath her panties, moving his thick finger quickly inside her pussy until she was moaning out loud. Before she knew what was happening, he had added two more of his large digits inside her cunt and was pumping them inside of her, enjoying the sound of her moans. He opened up her blouse and began powerfully squeezing her large breasts, pinching the nipples whenever he felt like it.
Penny protested a bit, but Mark could see that she was really getting quite turned on by his ministrations on her boobs, and that her protestations were virtually meaningless.
He took off his slacks, and before Penny knew what was happening, he had his big thick pecker laid out between her titties and was making a deliciously warm and slippery cavern out of her two huge orbs. With what his cock and hands were doing to her tits, particularly her now ultra-hard nipples, Penny knew that Mark could-and probably would-match Werner as a love maker of the first order. His cock plunged into that milk-white canal that her big tits created and slid to within inches of her ruby red lips. And she didn't hesitate a bit to chew on his purpling velvet-like cockhead as it touched her lips. He was a couple of inches inside her mouth now, feeding his shaft into her and then reeling it back in, each time feeling the intense friction that her mountainous breasts were creating around his pecker.
As Mark pumped and Penny sucked, she also squeezed her tits around his invader, letting her tits love his cock into more and more ecstasy. But Mark knew that he wanted to ball Penny's brains out, so he made sure that he didn't shoot his load into her oral channel. He was saving that sperm-filled onslaught for the depths of her fine glistening pussy.
Mark pulled out of her mouth and from between the cavern made by her red-tipped orbs. He began to move his tongue down her body, stopping at her cunt, and thereby giving his cock a short rest before putting it to Penny ... all the way.
His licker went for her pubic hairs, twirling them around and coating them with saliva. Then, he went for her shining pussy lips, licking, biting, and nuzzling them while sticking his fingers inside and occasionally squeezing her tiny hooded clit, making the nub get harder and harder. No longer could Penny think about testing Mark's manhood. He was passing with flying colors, and all she could do now was enjoy his work upon her body ... her all-woman body.
His tongue went deep into her pinkness, swallowing up the juices and enjoying the musky scent that was tickling his nostrils and making his penis stay hard and at the ready for what was to come....
He blew his hot breath deep inside her cunt, and Penny writhed beneath his mouth, mewling like a cat and feeling like lights and firecrackers were going off inside of her, Mark had his tongue so far in that Penny told herself she wouldn't be surprised if she felt his tongue tickling her breasts ... from the inside. "I want your cock inside, Mark. Please fuck me! Fuccccccckkkkkkkkkmmmmmmmmeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!"
Mark reached down and gave his hard prick a few strokes to get it at its peak length and full breadth and then moved up on top of her so that it was a pubic hair away from her begging pussy.
"You want to know what a man's dick feels like, pussy! Well, here's one that's nice and long and thick and...!"
With that, he slammed home his cock between Penny's twat lips, making the depths of her clutching vagina feel like they were going to burst with its massive size.
As Mark plunged down, Penny thrust her hips upward to greet his muscular onslaught. Her big breasts slammed against his oncoming chest, the noises reverberating off the inner walls of the car. Mark's big cock was so far in and Penny's grasping cunt so tight around it, that it seemed as if the two were one body.
Mark's well-hung nuts felt as though they were about to burst, and that's precisely what they did. The cum shot in gobs from his large piss-slit, filling Penny's inner depths to near-overflowing. Each sperm-loaded shot slapped into the recesses of her vagina, giving her the warmest of feelings inside.
And her well-lubricated pussy was quivering with each burst of cum, letting Mark know that he had satisfied her needs and desires as a woman deserves to have those needs and desires satisfied.
They rested for a few minutes, but soon Mark found that he was hard again, and wanted to have some more fun with Penny's delightful body.
"Have you ever been fucked up the asshole, honey?" he queried.
Penny replied in the negative, but said that it was something she'd sure like to try, considering the size and talent of Mark's cock.
She got up on the back seat on her hands and knees and presented her delicious creamy ass cheeks to Mark's view. In the meantime, Mark removed what remnants of clothing he had on so that he could get the full enjoyment out of this upcoming penetration.
As Mark didn't exactly keep a bottle of baby oil in his car, he had to think about what to use to grease up Penny's puckered asshole so that the entryway would be nice and easy for his huge prick to slide into.
Her amply lubricated cunt was the answer. Mark rolled his thick forefinger around in her cunt for several seconds, exciting the woman's insides once again. As the ooze coated his digit, he knew that it would be just the right liquid to give his cock clear sailing.
He extracted the finger and placed it at the entrance to her brown hole, making the shit passageway glisten beneath his finger. Then he probed inside, feeling the tight hole absorb his loving finger as it would soon be absorbing his big cock.
When things felt lubricated enough, he rubbed some of her juice on his cock and stroked his lengthy shaft a couple of times. He was ready to cornhole her, and he hoped that she was ready too. His cockhead entered her opening.
"Aaaaaaooooooooo!" was Penny's reply as her interior pained her ... but, without a doubt, also pleasured her.
"Take it up your ass, you pussy! Take my thick cock inside your shit chute and enjoy it to the hilt!"
Mark fed a few inches of cock into her asshole and she held her hands up a second, signaling him to stop. But he continued to ease more and more of his pork inside her, knowing that no matter what her hands were indicating, her asshole and her body were crying out for more ... much more ... all of his massive cock.
In time, he was all the way inside her chocolate speedway, his aching testicles ready to shoot another load inside her body, this time, up the rear entryway.
Penny was practically screaming, but she and he both knew it was far more a scream of pleasure than a scream of pain.
The jism was boiling up inside his nuts and soon it spurt out of his piss opening into her backdoor chute, filling it to the point where it overflowed out from between her sweet ass cheeks and dropped onto the back seat. The two lovers fell across the seat, somewhat exhausted, to say the least.
After recovering her senses, Penny's mind returned to thoughts of Nellie-May, and she ran from the car and up to her apartment house.
In the light from the living room, Penny could see Nellie-May curled up in bed, sound asleep. Lying there in the shadows, with her face cupped in a small hand and her bright gold hair splayed across the pillow, she could easily have passed for an innocent, sleeping Gena. On the floor beside the bed was Penny's cherished blue dress, now a crumpled heap, serving as a bed for Husha, who was sleeping as soundly as his mistress.
According to all rules of human behavior, Penny supposed she should have been fighting mad, not only because of the ruined dress, but also because of all the agony she'd been through, for no reason at all! Her only emotion, aside from an odd sense of compassion, was an enormous feeling of relief that Nellie-May-the young ingrate!-was safely home and in bed.
On an impulse, Penny went over and kissed the sleeping girl on the cheek. As she did, she saw that Nellie-May's face was streaked with mascara and her pillow was quite wet.
Why, she's been crying, Penny mused, and began feeling guilty all over again.
As Penny picked up her ruined dress, she spied the borrowed shoes and took them into the living room for closer inspection. The slim high heels were encrusted in a kind of clay-like mud that would not be found within the sacred precincts of Georgetown. The implication was plain. Nellie-May had gone far, stayed long-and walked home!
Puzzled, Penny put the shoes back where she'd found them and retired to her own room to get undressed and to ponder the events of the evening. She was convinced that she had not heard the last of the NellieMay episode, or of Mark Graham, either.
It was possible, she concluded finally, that she would have to change her image a little bit, if only as a matter of self-preservation. But she would do it in her own good time and in her own way, alert to such faults as were so unbecoming in others. Obviously it was impossible to live graciously in a strange new world where everybody was out of step but herself.