Chapter 1
He was momentarily stunned with shock when he saw Nora alight from the taxi out front. Coming to any man wasn't Nora Connel's schtick, and his first reaction wasn't one of sex or sensuality. He thought instead, in panic, My God, I've been fired.
"Alan, darling," she said, when he opened the door for her. Beyond her, the neighborhood was enmeshed in sable soft dark of early evening.
He held the door open for her. She gave him a brief kiss on the chin, purposely missing his mouth. "So this is where you live, darling. How quaint."
She paused in the foyer, waiting for him to take her cape. Finally, he remembered. It wasn't easy to think around Nora, even in the office, because one's eyes wanted to widen to encompass the beauty of her sleek elegance, her exquisite breasts, her trim hips and precision turn of thigh, calf and ankle. What she was, was walking perfection.
He watched her looking around and knew she was faintly amused. This place wasn't much. It glittered with newness and with the odds and ends of his life with Caroline. It had all looked pretty ordinary until Nora walked in, but now he saw it was strewn, littered, untidy and inconsequential.
"I hope this is a pleasure trip," he said, trying to smile. He admitted he wasn't in the dedicated upper echelons where a man had to be to rate or interest a woman like Nora Connel.
He was thirty-one, tall, slender, in conservative slacks and a Banlon shirt he'd pulled on when he came in from a shouting fest with a neighbor in the alley. He felt sweaty. Nora liked men who looked like Cary Grant which he didn't men who belonged in the Cary Grant tax bracket, which he never would. He looked like what he was, an ordinary character, not good-looking, but attractive, and Caroline had told him he looked honest. He had wondered if this were a compliment. From Caroline, it was probably meant to be.
Nora would never say anything like that except in coolest ironic jest.
He also knew his face was sunken and carried the memory of recent unhappiness, disenchantment. Nora wouldn't care about this, either.
"A pleasure trip?" Nora said with a faint smile. "I hope so, too."
He invited her into the cluttered living room. He had not yet had time to remove the traces of his small dog. Tippy's pillow was where she'd liked it, near his reading chair, her toys marred the pattern of the carpeting. Music played softly, emanating from the stereo-FM, and tuned low.
She looked around for a place to sit, finally chose the couch. Her smooth, tailored skirt rode high above her knees, exposing the pale gold of upper legs, the warm curves. She appeared unaware of her skirt. She lay back and he drew his gaze upward to the smart, piled coiffure of red-gold hair, neat curve of brows above wide, almost protuberant off-green eyes. Her face was slender, with the high planes and narrow lines of a high-fashion model. Her nose was patrician. She had the most lovely shaped mouth he had ever seen. Her teeth were just less than glitteringly perfect, which made her appear slightly human to Alan.
He grinned, thinking about mussing up that coiffure, smearing the eye-liner, ripping away her dress to get at those bazooms. It didn't make much of a picture. It lacked reality. Strange, looking at Nora like this, you couldn't imagine her giving herself, or being taken, either. Maybe she didn't exist in the world of bed and wonderful sexual bouts, but lived only for the planes of high finance, fashion and jet-set activities.
He went on standing, uncomfortable. "Imagine meeting you here," he said, trying to smile. "What's a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?"
Nora patted the couch beside her. "Sit down, darling. I won't bite you. Not for a while, anyway. I never bite until after my third martini."
He recognized this as more than a casual order for refreshing stimulants, but he ignored it. He sat beside her. "After the rough day at the office," he said, "I'd have sworn I'd be the last person you could stand to look at."
"It's been rough ever since you submitted the first draft on that stupid TV script about the twenty-grand murder. One of the reasons I'm out here."
He drew a deep breath. "I'm surprised at your attitude toward that script, Nora."
"Why?"
"Because it doesn't seem important enough to matter."
She laughed, but the laugh had a chill in it for Alan, at least. "The little, unimportant things are the ones that trip you up, Angel get you fired by your clients, run your Neilsen ratings down, cost you your job."
Oh, oh, he thought, your job. Here it comes. "Sorry, Alan, but it just hasn't worked out. I know I got Duke and Thompson to hire you, but it didn't jell, darling. Sorry. But as of..."
"I'd submit another script, but we're working so close to deadline," he said, lamely.
"I know, doll. If there were time, I'd throw it out. But I want changes, even if you work up until rehearsals. It doesn't hit me. The great unwashed public isn't going to buy it."
He smiled. "Come on now, Nora. Don't tell me that your taste is in common with the unwashed!"
"I don't like the script." There was a whiplash in her voice. She was the boss suddenly, and her smile was almost filthy. One forgot the pert up-thrust of those boobies, the inviting sleekness of her thighs.
"I'm sorry. Throw it out."
"You know we can't. But a few simple changes. Why can't we discuss them?"
"You think we ought to?"
"What does that mean?"
He spread his hands. "It's just another script, Nora "
"Is it?" Her strange green eyes were fixed upon him as if she were trying to see what made him tick, what he'd eaten for breakfast, how long since he'd shaved. "Where'd you get the idea?"
He shrugged with that helpless feeling. She knew all this. He had the sense she was pushing him for reasons he couldn't compute.
"I got this idea from the same place I've been getting all my ideas for recent shows," he said. "At your suggestion, Nora, I'm using what unsolved files Los Angeles county will permit. I got this idea from that same file."
"You sound odd, Alan, when you discuss it."
"Odd?"
"Yes, you do. You appear to have an added interest in it "
"If I do, it's just my protective sense. I've put a lot of work into it."
And a lot of thought?" Her voice probed.
"Yes. And a lot of thought. So when you want to throw it out, if I get over-protective, that's the only reason."
"We're not going to throw it out, Alan. But it's not a very good murder case. It lacks everything. And that's a reason I'm here. I decided I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to find out what you like about it."
He got up and prowled the carpeting before her. "I'm sorry, Nora. If I ever had a reason for wanting to write this script, it's gone now."
She leaned forward. Her voice was chilled. "What's the matter with you, Alan?"
He tried to laugh. "Nora, I know I owe my job to you everything I've been able to do since Caroline died "
"Forget all that." Her voice cut across his. "I don't care about that brainwash. What's the matter with you, right now? What's on your mind?"
He tried to smile. "You mean besides sex?"
"I mean besides sex. You're acting odd, Alan, and I must know why."
"I can't tell you that."
Her face darkened. She said, "Why not?"
"Well, I don't know what you think, but it's even less important than the script changes. It's about Tippy."
"What?"
"My dog. The puppy. It belonged to Caroline. She was crazy about it. Then when Caroline died, I kept Tippy."
"Alan, have you been drinking?"
"No. But I've been in a kind of hellish neighborhood battle about Tippy. Remember I told you yesterday at lunch about my neighbor across the alley? Old man Sheram? How he hated Tippy and threatened to poison her. You said there had to be something good about anybody who hates a dog. But Tippy It didn't make sense that a man like Sheram would hate a little dog like that enough to kill her."
"What?"
"Well, that's it. Yesterday when you laughed at me, I saw how trivial the matter was. You said I was becoming an average suburbanite, fighting with my neighbors over my dog, commuting into L.A. to work. You said it was part of living out here in Island Groves if I could call it living."
"Yes. It didn't seem very urgent to me," Nora said, and her tone said it lacked urgency even now.
"But you were wrong. It was serious. This old character is violent-tempered. I think, too, he suffers hardening of the arteries, his brain lack oxygen. He's get on one subject and shrill like a parrot, until everybody hears him.
"That was bad enough. But then, today when I came home, I found Tippy. She'd been poisoned. The scene between Sheram and me out in the alley would have won both of us Emmy awards. I accused Sheram of poisoning Tippy. He shook violently, pointing to places in the garden where Tippy had dug. Neighbors came out to watch and cheer us on. I walked away. But not soon enough. I said things I shouldn't have said. I threatened to have old Sheram arrested."
She laughed at him. "Darling, you are all upset now. Look, your hands are shaking. Why don't you fix us a martini, and we'll relax? We can let the script go for the moment."
He drew a deep breath. "I don't have a drop of liquor in the house, Nora."
"For hell's sake, why not?"
"You know why not. I'd drink it if I did."
"That's normal usage," Nora said.
"For you. For normal users. Yes. Not for me. One drink and I'm I'd walk through glass for more. You know all that, Nora. I've stayed off the juice since I came to work at Duke & Thomson. The only way I can stay off it is to stay away from it."
"Ordinarily, doll, I'd applaud," Nora said, shifting on the couch. "But listening to your Odessey has me thirsty. Let's send out for gin and vermouth. I make a very dry martini. And I promise I'll limit your drinks."
He bit at his lip. She was his boss. She knew his recent past history. She was already bugged about the script he had turned in. He nodded, went to the phone, called the nearest package store, and asked for immediate delivery.
When he came back, Nora seemed more relaxed. She stood up. She came to him and stabbed him with those nipples. Her breasts gave and he felt himself sinking toward her. She kissed him, but kept it light.
"You know I came to dinner, don't you?"
"Oh, Lord. We'll have to go out somewhere."
"Don't you even have a couple of steaks in your freezer?"
"Sure, but "
"Let me get into something comfortable and I'll broil us steaks, and well stay in, and eat and drink and talk script."
Alan felt that this was the fitting climax to a strange day: an unexpected hooraw over a script, old Sheram's poisoning Tippy, his shouting at the guy in the alley, and now Nora's showing up here to cook for him.
It was as if the world had shifted just slightly off-axis.
"That sounds great," he heard himself saying. "I don't know what I have around here for you to put on that's more comfortable "
"You got an apron?"
"An apron?"
"I'm going to broil steaks, aren't I?"
"Oh, sure." He found one of Mrs. Miner's aprons in the kitchen. His housekeeper went in for utilitarian fabrics, but he chose the frilliest she owned.
Nora was standing at his bedroom door when he returned with the apron.
Something caught at Alan. He admitted what it was: pure old lust who had said the purest love is lust? Well, never mind who said it, Alan saw how true it was in that moment.
He held out the apron to her.
He looked at her, the superb breasts, the sleek belly, the rise at her thighs. He thought about the way she was ever cool, superior, always in command. He wanted her in bed, where he'd be in the saddle, in command. But he knew better.
He wasn't rich enough, VIP enough, or extraordinary enough to rouse the least mating instincts in Nora, if she had any. She'd never married. She was a woman who knew what she wanted, would do anything to get it.
Unfortunately, she would never want Alan Taylor.
She gave him a brief smile, closed the bedroom door. He went to the kitchen and took the steaks from the freezer. He placed them on the table. The doorbell rang and he went out and paid the delivery boy for the liquor.
The dinner components were lined up on the table when Nora entered the room, but Alan forgot them instantly.
Alan felt breathless with wonder and disbelief. He couldn't believe what he saw.
Nora wore only high-heeled slippers, bikini pants and bra, and the apron. This didn't make sense at all.
Alan wanted to grab her. He wanted to smash his mouth over hers, to feel the heat and goodness of those provocative lips. There was a creamy pinkness about her breasts and even her long legs, that persuaded you she'd stepped off a calendar by Vargas. He had never believed he would be permitted to see the spectacle taking place before his eyes.
He wanted to grab her, but he didn't move at all. He warned himself to play it cool because one fact was certain: This doll was playing with him, pushing him, and he didn't know why.
His breathing quickened as his gaze relished the thrust of breasts, the sleek rise of her buttocks. He was not ordinarily a wary or suspicious man. But he could not believe that she had come to him for this, even when she was, to all intents and purposes, naked for him.
There was a remote coldness about her even when she stood in bra and panties. He wasn't the only man at Duke & Thomson who had ravished this incredible body in fantasy, but he was one who had resigned himself to accepting it as mission impossible. Even now, staring at her nudity, it seemed unlikely.
"I'll fix drinks," Nora said after a moment.
He only nodded and didn't move.
She moved past him and gently clawed his cheek with her nails. "Alan, you're staring."
He groaned aloud. "What else?"
She gave him a faint, twisted smile and said, "Why, darling, how nice."
She fixed the martinis in a pitcher and Alan enjoyed the view until it became too painful to watch, and then he turned away. A sweet-hot ache battered at his loins by now.
She handed him a martini. He took it, astonished his fingers didn't tremble. He was proud of himself. Cary Grant never did it with more 'lan.
She laughed because he drank off his martini so quickly.
She took the glass from him and didn't offer him another. He felt the burn of the gin, bracing himself.
"I'll broil the steaks," Nora said.
"I don't think I could eat one," Alan said. What he meant was he was afraid he couldn't keep it on his stomach, the way he wanted her.
She laughed. "Of course you can. You'll feel better after we have a steak and salad."
Alan didn't answer, but he could have told her only one thing could restore him to sanity just now, and it wasn't a three-quarter-inch steak, medium.
The gin had mercifully lowered a film of gauze between Alan and the outside world, including Nora moving around the kitchen.
He came up behind her and planted his mouth at the soft nape of her neck. She laughed and shrugged him away. "You give me goose bumps," she said.
"You'd be surprised where I've got goose-bumps," he told her.
"No I wouldn't. You be a good boy. It's going to be a long evening."
He caught his breath slightly. He said, "Nora, why are you here?"
"What? I told you. The script-"
"No. What's the real reason? Are you sorry for me?"
She looked across her bare shoulder at him. "Why should I waste pity on a young, handsome, virile man like you?"
"I don't know. Maybe because I live out here in Island Grove, alone in the paradise for young marrieds. Maybe because I haven't had anyone since Caroline died." He winced slightly, thinking this wasn't strictly true. He'd had Connice. But he'd mistreated her from the depths of his self-pity and destructive drinking bouts, and he had driven her away. He couldn't count Connice. "Because I'm alone."
She laughed, placing their steaks on platters on the table alongside a tossed salad he hadn't seen her prepare. He felt anguish, knowing how liquor poisoned him. One drink, and everything changed, whole sections of time slipped past unnoticed.
She said, "Do I look the type who'd give a damn one way or another for some lesser human being?"
"You never have before."
"Well, what do I look like now?" She straightened before him and the gauze curtain burned away before his eyes. She squared her shoulders, pushing those barely-concealed boobs out toward him. Her creamy-pink body gleamed. He had never even imagined this quality of loveliness.
He said, "My God. My God."
"Not original, but expressive," she said. "I'm glad you're pleased. Come on and eat your steak before it gets cold."
Nora sat down and fell to eating as if she were fully clothed, in La Scandia during a crowded lunch hour, and as though ravenously hungry.
She chewed lustily. "I put my whole self into everything I do," she told him.
He sighed, watching her. The lights seemed caught on the inner curves of her breasts, pulling his gaze there.
He cut a slice of steak, and chewed at it without vigor or interest.
"Eat," she advised. "You'll need your strength."
Alan felt the heated rise of anticipation. There was no sense denying the obvious any more: Nora had come to him tonight. It didn't make sense. But here she was, and he was going to have her.
He pushed aside the steak, reached out for the pitcher of martinis. He poured himself a glass of the colorless liquid. He heard Nora's approving laughter.
She said, "You finally begin to believe, don't you? You know now why I'm here?"
He laughed. "Can't you chew any faster?"
"Drink your martini, darling. Don't rush me. I don't like to be rushed. There's plenty of time for everything we want everything."
He finished off his drink and reached out for another.
He was sorry he'd done it. The rest of the night lacked clarity. No matter what wondrous things Nora did for him, and she was a witch of wonder, he never fully responded because liquor is a depressant, not a stimulant.
He would have failed altogether, except that Nora herself was stimulant beyond belief.
Everything that happened to him was filtered through the occluding fog, but there were moments of brilliant dimensions.
She pushed away her plate and came around the table to him. She sank to her knees before him, and this alone was enough to unsettle him: few men had ever seen Nora Connel on her knees.
"You do want me, don't you, darling?"
"Oh, Lord!"
She pressed her face down upon him. "It's so hard to wait?"
"It's so hard," he said.
She laughed. "We don't have to wait any more, darling."
He removed that damned apron first. Then he lifted her in his arms. She was surprisingly light. Looking at her fully dressed, her coiffured hair piled high, you thought of her as a stately, remote woman. She was really small. She weighed hardly anything. He strode through the house with her and laid her down on his bed.
He leaned over her and unsnapped her bra. Things clouded over then, and he was afraid he was going to pass out. He cursed inwardly because he had drunk that martini. This naked body was intoxication enough for any man.
He pressed his mouth over her breast, sucking at the nipple. He heard her moan in pleasure. She cried out, "Oh, yes, darling, suck them. Suck them hard. Suck them for me, darling. I love it."
He nursed at her breasts and she pressed his face fiercely into their deep, luxurious softness.
Still nuzzling at her crimson nipples, he rolled her bikini panties down along her legs. She caught them, pulled them off and threw them away. He heard her kick off her shoes.
"And now darling it's your turn," she said. "Just yours. I want you naked, too. Lie down, and I'll undress you."
He toppled beside her on the bed, lying on his back. The ceiling swam strangely and her lovely face moved above him like something in an unreal vision. She took a long time undressing him because she loved him with her hands and lips as she removed each piece of his clothing.
She had not lied! Whatever she did, Nora did it with all her concentration. No wonder she was a top executive in a man's world. She knew how to get what she went after.
Alan grinned drunkenly, lying back, luxuriating, pleased and praising the gods that for some reason he couldn't fathom, it was he she was after at the moment.
At last his clothing was gone, and they were like Adam and Eve in the Garden. Only better, because Nora was the latest of the breed, an Eve of pizazz, knowledgeable, the ultimate.
She pushed him down and he saw her dimly above him. Her immaculate hair was mussed. This was almost as exciting for him as her nakedness; it was that unusual. He reached up, running his fingers through its rich texture.
Then he felt her come down slowly on him. He groaned and she whispered, breathless.
When she was upon him she would not permit him to move, and she moved only the muscles of her stomach and thighs.
He gasped aloud in delight at what she was doing to him. It was the most painful ecstasy he had ever endured.
And more than that, it was supersonic delight for her. Nobody had to tell him that she drove herself insane with what she was doing. It was clear enough.
He reached up, stroking her hallucinogenic breasts, crushing her nipples until she cried out, pleading for more.
"Oh, so wonderful," she breathed.
"How long can you stay?" he begged.
"All night."
"Only all night? Then let's not waste it."
"We won't ... waste it, darling! We won't ... waste any of it!"
She toppled forward upon him, wriggling her hips wildly, as if her body were infested by fire ants. She crushed her mouth over his and dug her fingers into him.
The shock of her sudden climax sent tremors through Alan and he stroked her bare flesh roughly while his tongue thrust far into her mouth.
She groaned and sagged upon him. She lay still for a long time, and he didn't move until desire drove him to thrust upward with his hips. He felt her rising again to a state of intense lust. She breathed raggedly, her fabled breasts quivering.
Allan rolled over upon her and she parted her long legs wide. Then with a sharp cry, she locked her ankles about his waist as if obeying his unspoken command.
"I've got you now," he gasped.
"Yes, darling, you've got me now!"
"I've got you where I want you."
"Yes. Show me. Show me. Show me!"
He showed her. He did not know if his long abstinence, his need, or his fantasies about her brought him to new heights, but he showed her. He thrust faster and faster, driving himself to her until she began to make mindless little noises and he knew she was reaching another crest, and this time he went with her. It was charged fission, it was the end of the world, it was Armageddon. It was good, truly good.
He sagged upon her, but she would not release him. Finally she pulled away and they lay together on the rumpled sheet. For the moment he was finished, but he saw that she was already aroused again.
"Give me a few minutes," he pleaded.
"Don't worry, darling. I'll take care of everything."
And she did. She slid down to him, and catching his breath, Alan kneeled over her on the bed.
Gazing about the pink-fogged room, Alan felt the delights her mouth stirred through him. And he shivered, thinking this was a perfect way to use that perfect mouth.
She went wild, reaching for him, and making him ready had aroused her to a fevered pitch. Alan found it unbelievable that she should be so wild for it. He didn't stop to think about nonessentials, but dedicated himself to pleasing her.
He remembered vaguely about midnight she had gone away to the bathroom. Then she had brought drinks for them a small one for him, but it battered at his consciousness, anyhow.
The hours after midnight had an unreality about them that would remain forever clouded. He was like a sexual prodigy; he wanted her when he thought he was so dead he would never want any woman again. Any woman? Perhaps not. But Nora? She was here, and her heated mouth and her gyrating thighs incensed him, and he loved her in every manner he could think, remember, devise.
He tried to pace himself, but this was no good. One didn't pace himself with a partner like Nora. She knew too many varied ways of throwing everything out of gear. She lay quiescent for a few moments, and then rose to a state of near hysteria, the kind that took Alan along.
He fell away, finally, quivering with exhaustion. Dimly he watched her dress, wondering why she left him at this hour, and from what well of reserve she found the strength to mix them one last drink, call a taxi, and then go away, kissing him heatedly. This all must have happened. He was sure it did, but only because it was the logical sequence of events.
He sank into deep sleep, his mind still rattling around and around that same tormenting, unanswered question: thank the gods she came to me like this, but why? Why?