Chapter 1
Four A.M. and the city finds itself poised in that half-life between t.ie final dying gasps of what night-life remains, and the first tenuous wonders of the new day about to dawn. The wind is bitterest now, tearing in from both sides of the island to meet somewhere between 7th and 8th Avenues, and God help the tramps who have to spend the night in it. Or anyone else, for that matter. Those few unfortunates who are still out from the night before, and are only now making their way homeward cast their eyes nervously into every doorway, and study each lurking shadow, for it is a rule-of-thumb that the great majority of people still on the streets are there because there's no where else for them to go.
"Cold blooded bastards," muttered Roger Stoddard.
"Who's that, dear?" asked Meredith from the bed.
"Those punks down there. See them?"
"No dear, I don't. I'm over here on the bed, and I can't see that far, and if you were over here on the bed with me, you wouldn't be able to see that far either and you wouldn't be so worried about it."
"So what do you expect me to do? Just ignore them."
"Perhaps they'll just go away if we ignore them."
"Meredith, you're what's wrong with this fucking city. Damn it all, don't you see? We're the rightful owners! Not them. Not that walking trash that's down there now ... infesting the sidewalks, cluttering the subway grates ... I tell you, it makes me sick. We own it, but they get to enjoy it, while we have to hide out in our apartments, too frightened to move, bolting our doors ... peering through cracks in the curtain at every sound...."
"Roger, can I ask you something?"
"Huh? What's that?"
"Is the tape recorder running?"
"No. Why do you ask."
"Because I can't for the life of me imagine why else you would be babbling this ponderous prose at me, if you weren't recording it to transcribe later on for your next book."
"I resent that, Meredith. I resent that highly. Do you have to always make fun of me."
"Oh Roger, you can be so tedious at times."
He stayed at the window.
Finally, Meredith let out a sigh of exasperation.
"Roger, do tell me what has you so utterly captivated. Please. You know how I hate to be ignored."
He was silent a moment, and she began to speak again, but he waved her silent. "Roger!"
"Quiet! Can't you see I'm watching."
"Yes, I can see. Would you please tell me what you are watching?"
"A mugging. What else is there to see at four A.M.
"Really? A genuine mugging?"
"Yeah."
She jumped out of bed and ran over to him. Her naked body was clearly outlined in the bright pre-dawn moonlight. It was a cloudless sky and the moon hung low in the west, shining right into Roger's the bedroom window of Roger's fifteenth floor apartment.
She looked down. "Where."
"Right down there."
"You mean those tiny little people standing in a group?"
"Yeah. Except they aren't so tiny. Not at street level anyway."
"Oh, this is exciting. Shouldn't we call the police?"
"Why bother? They'll just tell me to mind my own business. Not enough manpower, you see."
"Oh, but that sounds dreadful."
"It is. I tell you, this used to be a fine city to live in."
"Roger, would you please look at your surroundings. By my calculations, it still is a fine city to live in."
"This isn't the city. That's the city, down there, with the street smells, and--and the sidewalk vendors and the news stands and the three-card Monte games. And damn the bastards, they've taken it from us. And I'm getting sick of it."
She wrapped her fingers around his neck and began to massage the tense muscles.
"Well, why don't you do what you always do, dear. Why don't you write a book trumpeting one cause or another."
"Meredith, you're making fun of me."
"Yes, but only in a playful manner. You shouldn't take me so seriously Roger, really you shouldn't." He stared at her.
"Sometimes, I don't even think I know you."
"Roger, that sounds like something from a soap opera. I knew you should have never taken that job with NBC last summer. Ever since you cranked out those scripts for "The Dumb and the Useless', you haven't been able to speak ordinary English. Roger, your problem is you live all your excitement in your books. You should stop complaining about not being safe on the streets, and just go outside once in a while. It would do you a world of good. Other people go outside. I was talking to Jim Corman and his wife last week and they go out all the time. Roger, they went to the theater. Can you believe that. They went to the theater Roger. You know, it still thrives, down there around 42nd street. People still go to it, Roger. They aren't like you Roger. They don't spend their days being paranoid and then convince themselves that they're living, Roger."
He turned and stared at her, and then in a growl he said, "Paranoid, am I? How dare you."
She turned back to the bed with a merry chuckle.
"It's easy Roger. I simply say what I see. And I see a paranoid man. Either that or one that's just too damn lazy to get out and face life. You're going to let your entire life run out, Roger, and all you will have done is pound on the keys of your typewriter. Doesn't that ever worry you, Roger? My God ... what if the truth got out?"
"What truth!"
"You know what truth, Roger. You know very well what truth. That Roger Stoddard, action writer, the real man's novelist, is a pussy."
His eyes grew wide, and he turned his massive frame from the window to stare at her.
"You dare to call me that? Me? Roger Stoddare?"
"Oh Roger, drop it! You're starting to sound like a PR release. You've forgotten that there's a real world that is supposed to go alone with your fictional world. The fiction is supposed to come out of the real world, Roger, not supplant it."
"Take it back."
"Take what back?"
"You know what."
"No, I don't. Tell me. Take what back."
"Pussy. You called me a pussy."
"Oh ... is that what has you so upset."
"Take it back."
"No."
"Take it back!"
He was beside he now, standing next to the bed and looking down at her.
"Roger, I'll take it back if you prove me wrong."
"What do you mean?"
"Fuck me, Roger. Make love to me. Make love to me like one of the studs that you write about. Stop imagining it, Roger, and do it. Live it. Step back into the world, Roger."
He frowned, looking down at her with a puzzled look. Then, he began to smile.
It was a pained, uncomfortable smile. She sensed that once again, he was slipping away from her.
"Roger, come to bed with me, please. Please come to bed with me."
He turned away from her, feeling empty inside. She'd spoken no words that he hadn't already come to terms with long ago. But they still hurt. They were still difficult to swallow. He wished she hadn't said them. He could have done very well without hearing them.
Suddenly, the bed springs squeaked.
She was right behind him, sliding her fingers between his legs.
"Roger," she whispered, sensuously, "Roger, I'm not going to let you get away. I've got you, and I'm going to keep you."
She pressed up against his balls, gently, feeling the mushy glands squish in between her fingers.
He froze in his tracks.
She pressed against the base of his cock and he felt it get stiff at once.
"Oh yes," she sighed, "I love to feel your cock," she said.
"Well, if you're so hot on getting out of here, why don't we go downstairs and fuck on the sidewalk. How would that be?"
"Roger, it's February. It's 17 degrees outside. Why would you want to go outside?"
"I don't. I'm perfectly content to remain indoors where it's safe."
"Roger, you don't make any sense."
"And you think you do? That's the trouble with you, Meredith, you keep on trying to elevate our arguments to lofty metaphysical heights, and it really just boils down to the fact that you're not getting laid enough. Right?"
She frowned a moment, feeling like she should get mad at him....
But then she squeezed his cock some more and said, "What of it? You can either waste time pointing it out to me, or you can fuck me. Personally, I'd prefer the latter, but if you want to talk, I'll listen. God knows, I've gotten enough practice."
He then found himself faced with the same option ... feeling like he should get mad, but finally deciding that if they just went ahead and fucked, it would probably smooth things over real sweet.
So he turned around and pressed his hips against her pelvis this time, feeling her fingers stroking his cock with loving attention. It was already getting quite stiff, and he could imagine how it would feel pressed in between her pussy lips, so warm and wet and mushy and nice.
She pressed her hips back against his, and began to focus the tip of his cock, sticking plainly up against his pajamas, onto her clit.
"Feel me?" she asked him. "Don't I feel good?"
"You feel grand, baby. But that's nothing new. You always feel grand."
He slipped his hand up between her thighs, and felt her parted flesh already steaming with her juice.
"Mmmmmmmm," she moaned as soon as he touched her clit.
"You like that, don't you." 'You know I do. You know how much I like it."
He pressed the tip of his finger against her clit, and found that the bud of nerves had already become swollen and hard, engorged with blood.
"Oh yes, I love it when you touch me like that," she said. Please, press harder on it. Rub it. Pinch it. Do whatever you want to it. I love it."
Roger thought to himself that he really had been ignoring her lately. He was a damn fool too. Not every man had a woman as beautiful and as passionate as Meredit.
Perhaps, as he'd often feared, she really was just after him for his money, but he could live with that. He needed no attachments in his life, he needed no one clinging to him, telling him that they loved him madly and that they couldn't live without him. He'd avoided marriage all his life for that reason. He wanted to avoid permanence. Commitment.
Meredith demanded neither.
But she did demand something that perhaps he was unable to give her. Excitement. It was as she'd said, he spent most of his life punching typewriter keys. Not a very exciting existence. Of course, in literary circles, he was mentioned, and more important, he was read and talked about, and some were even calling him the Hemingway of the eighties. Not the title he'd have bestowed, but in today's world of mass consumption and Ad-agency gimmickry, any title would do. Anything to enhance the recognition factor.
So, he wrote about men alone, men faced with ultimate choices, men who defined their lives by their actions. Men who didn't bother wondering about the ethics of a situation, who simply perceived the need for action, and acted.
Heroes, in a world that had come to distrust heroes.
He was a writer. He didn't write period pieces, or historical fiction, or fiction that depended on setting ... so he didn't need to travel. He simply wrote. But was Meredith right? Was he losing his ability to experience life first-hand?
He followed his eyes back to the dark patch of pubic hair between her legs, and took a deep breath through his nose.
Her aroma, thick, sensual, pungent, wafted up to him, filling his brain with erotic impressions, like a bag filled with marbles.
"Oh, please keep touching me, Roger, please touch me. Fill me up. Stretch me: Please."
He slid a finger up into her soft pussy and felt the walls spreading apart, giving way to his relentless pressure.
There was a throbbing in his cock now that would not be stilled, and in his balls there was a constant ache, a feeling of utter fullness, as if they both were getting ready to explode.
"Fuck me, Roger," she moaned after he worked his fingers around in her cunt for a while. "Fuck me. I can't wait. I need it. Please."
He smiled, knowing from the sound of her voice that he had her, if he wanted her. Had her in the sense of having an enormous amount of power over her. He knew now that he could play with her, toy with her, lead her to the edge, and so long as he refrained from pushing her over the edge, she would continue to beg him, plead with him, promise him anything, do anything, whatever it took to gain that release that she so desperately needed.
"Roger," she gasped, "please, don't make me wait."
He looked down between her legs. There was moisture spread all across her inner thighs, glistening in the moonlight, a pale blue.
He touched her clit again.
He thought he could feel it twitch. There was a shudder that raced all through her body.
"I feel you moving, baby," he said to her. "I feel you getting all worked up."
"Roger, please, please, don't punish me :ike this. Please. Do it to me. Give it to me."
He got into the bed beside her, kneeling over her, and pulled his pajamas off. His cock stood straight out from his body, pulsing and pounding.
"I want that, Roger," she gasped, "I want it so much...."
"All right, honey, I'll give it to you. Just be patient. I'll give it to you."
He lowered it to her lips, and pushed it in just a little ways, not even burying the entire glans.
Nonetheless, she began to moan and thrash about wildly, jerking and shaking her hips, pressing them upwards, trying to fill herself with his organ.
"Uh-uh," he said, "not yet."
"Oh Roger, why are you doing this? Why do you have to wait till you get into bed to prove how decisive you are?"
He ignored her remark, knowing how easy it was for her to get frustrated once she'd been aroused.
He brought the head of his cock up through her slit and pushed it into her clit.
She let out a long, low moan, gasping her cries of ecstasy.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," she moaned.
He pressed it against her harder, and started to jerk it back and forth across her hard bud of nerves.
She continued to shake and quiver. He could see her fine breasts jiggling in the pale light that filtered in through the window. Her nipples stood out in sharp relief, taut, hard, aroused.
They were simply darkened ovals in the dim light, but he knew that the points were now a flaming red, and that the more aroused she became, the brighter and more fiery her nipples would grow.
She was starting to babble now. He was surprised to see how hot she was getting. He thought that maybe he really had been neglecting her more than he usually did, and for a moment, he had a pang of regret that he couldn't give her the kind of affection that she craved.
But he could only do what he could do, and he could only give what he could give. More than that was simply beyond his ability to comprehend.
He was masturbating himself now, stroking his cock with long, steady strokes as he held his glans against her clit, pounding the stiff shaft up against the pink meat of her cunt.
"Oh, that's so good, that's so very good. I can't stand it, it's so good...."
She was moaning, and rolling her head from one side to the other, placing her hand to her mouth and biting it, trying to keep herself under control, but Roger could see that she was rapidly approaching orgasm.
As he heard the intensity of her screams suddenly rise up to a much higher pitch, he pulled his cock back, just at the moment that, had he continued, he would have sent her spiraling over into the blank pit of orgasm.
She sucked in her breath, and arched her hips, and then a low moan of frustration slowly eased past her lips.
"Why did you stop, why did you stop," she moaned.
"Easy, baby, take it easy. I'm not going to leave you stranded."
"Oh Roger, please, won't you just stick it in me...."
But then her voice trailed away as he began to manipulate her hard clit with his thumb and forefinger again, pressing it tightly, squeezing it, harder, harder, harder--!
"Oh!" she cried out."
"Did that hurt?" he asked.
"Oh ... a little ... but that's all right. It felt good."
"Oh, I see. Into pain, are we."
"You know that. I've told you my fantasies before."
"Urn hmmmm. Maybe now's the time to work through some of them."
"Oh, no. Not now. I just want a good old-fashioned fuck. Is that too much to ask?"
He lowered his mouth to her cunt and started to suck on her clit.
The flesh was all soft, loose, and mushy, and it was easy for him to suck it up into his mouth. He could feel her tight, hard, clit in there, and as he pressed it against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, she started to moan and cry out even harder than she'd already been doing.
"Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes," she babbled, letting the words spill from her mouth like drops of water from an overturned glass. He was careful not to press too hard on her clit, keeping the contact consistent, but light.
"Yes, yes, that's it, that's it ... " she sighed.
He let his tongue drop down through her slit again, let it lick over her hole, and he made sure that all the surrounding tissues were well lubricated. Then, when she was truly ready, and he sensed that she really couldn't wait any more, he raised himself back up and positioned himself between her legs once more.
He placed his cock against her hole and began to shove it into her body.
She moaned, cried out loud, and raised up with her hips to press back at him.
He felt her lips part, spreading around, and as his cock slid further and further into her, the began to gently press back against the sides of his shaft, coating it with their warm liquid, flowing now in an ever increasing bath.
"Oh, baby, you feel fine," he said.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled him down against her breasts. He could feel her nipples pressing against his, and he moved his chest from the right to the left, letting them rub against each other.
"Good ... that's good ... " she said. "Keep doing that-OH!"
He suddenly shoved further inward.
"Easy, easy, you're so big, I need time to get used to you. Slow, just go in slow and easy."
He held his cock here it was, buried a little over halfway inside her cunt, and the, instead of pressing onward to bury the rest, he instead pulled it back part way.
That had the effect of distributing the juices flowing around the shaft a little more evenly, so that when he pressed back inside her, she was able to take more of him without any excessive friction building up.
As soon as he felt his cock hit a point that had not been lubricated yet, he repeated the process, until finally, his pelvis rested against hers, their pubic patches intermingling in one lump of kinky, moist hair.
"Oh, Roger, you're so big," she moaned.
"You fill me so well, so totally ... I love it. I need it. I crave it. Give it to me."
"Gladly, my dear," he said, and plunged his cock deeply into her, burying it now with a single thrust.
She cried out.
"Oh GOD!!! Yes, yes, yes, that's it. Oh, fill me up, baby, fill my cunt."
The muscles along the side walls of her cunt were spasming, contracting wildly against the shaft of his cock, squeezing like a tight rubber glove.
He felt his glans pressing against the back wall of her pussy, stretching the elastic membrane as far as it would go.
He feared that if his cock had been any longer, he would have split her open.
But she was used to it. She knew what to expect and she loved it. It was what she needed.
"More, more," she begged.
So he pulled his cock all the way out of her slit and then after holding the glans for a moment just inside the lips of her cunt, just long enough to make her wonder if he was going to give her any more, he plunged it back inside again.
One solid thrust, one massive, overwhelming stroke.
He felt his balls react to that one, felt them start to tingle, and he suddenly realized that he wanted this fuck to last a while. He didn't want to shoot off yet, not before he'd had a chance to give her everything that she wanted from him.
So he slowed down.
He pulled back again, pulled once more nearly all the way out of her cunt, but again he just held his glans there at the opening, letting the ridge along the base rub across the rim of her hole, stroking all of the surface area at the same time.
He heard her suck in her breath, hold it a long time, and then let it out in a single burst, quickly sucking in another.
Her muscles all seemed timed with her breathing. Every time she sucked in a breath, her body shook.
The muscles in her abdomen would grow tense and tight, and her legs, wrapped around the small of his back, would tighten even more around him, pressing him to her.
"You're getting pretty worked up, you know that?" he asked.
"Um hmmm. Now, you tell me," she whispered, scarcely able to get the words out, "isn't this better than standing at the window and complaining about the city?"
In response, he buried his cock again in her cunt, though this time, instead of making the entire thrust with a single spurt of energy, he allowed his cock to cover the distance slowly ... taking his time. There was no need to rush, he told himself, no need whatsoever.
He would let the glans press through the contracted membranes, that always, no matter how many times he split them, seemed to have pressed back together with exactly the same pressure, gently caressing his cock, stroking the entire thing with their soft, wet, warm, velvety surface. She was smooth as silk, and every bit as luxurious.
He once more felt his cock pressing against the back wall of her cunt, and this time, instead of pulling back out, he began to rotate his hips, moving them in a circular motion, stretching the rim at the opening to her cunt, and letting the glans move back and forth against the rear wall of her pussy.
"Oh my God," she moaned again, her hips jerking wildly. "That feels so fucking good, I can't stand it."
"Sure you can, baby," he said. "Sure you can. Seeing as how I'm not giving you a choice. You're just going to have to lie there and stand every single bit of it."
"Mmmmmmmmmmmmm," she cooed softly in his ear. "That sounds divine."
His hips were rolling faster now, faster and faster, his cock still scraping against the back wall of her cunt, and he listened closely to her breathing trying to see if she was getting close to coming yet.
Her moans were becoming short and jerky, her breathing staccato, and her fingernails were digging into his arms and his back.
Pretty good clues, he thoguht. It was a safe bet to assume that she was ready to go blasting out of her mind at any second.
And then, before he could even do anything about it, he felt his own balls suddenly go into a spasm, felt his cock rear up, seem to grow even stiffer, if that was possible, and then, his sperm was shooting down the length of his fleshy tube, to slosh around inside her cunt and mix with her own pungent juices.
"Oh God, Oh God, Oh God, I can feel you, I can feel you, you feel so hot, so hot...."
He was surprised by the sheer volume of cum that he produced.
Suddenly his cock seemed to be swimming in a sea of juices. There was virtually no friction remaining, and damned if she wasn't still shy of coming. He was afraid that if he left her high and dry, she'd just go right back to all that bullshit about him living all of his excitement in his books. That was one thing he'd noticed about Meredith, and about all women in general ... they didn't have a thing to nag about, as long as they were properly fucked. Bitches.
So, lacking friction, he'd just have to make it up with his spirit.
He began to rotate his hips once more, stretching her hole as far as he could. That should have some effect, he thought, seeing as how she had one of the most sensitive holes he'd ever encountered in a woman.
Deeper, deeper, harder, harder ... e felt her starting to respond more intensely now, hear her moans start to pick up speed. It was sort of like trying to start an engine on a cold morning.
"Oh ... oh ... oh ... " she cried, then increasing it to oh-oh-oh-oh," and then OHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOOHOHOHOHOH ohohohohohohohohoohohohohohohoh....
There's the ticket, thought Roger.
Because as soon as her moans seemed to go to auto, her hips went smashing up against his body, and they stayed there. She was at her peak. He'd pushed her up, and now, it was simply a matter of time and gravity before she'd spill over.
Her eyes were closed, and she had stopped breathing altogether.
Her body was a single clenched muscle. She seemed to have become a lump ... a block that had fused all of its movable parts together.
Finally, she fell back on the bed, but she was just getting started. That was only the first wave subsiding. Immediately, another struck her with the same fury as the first.
"Oh My GOD!!! " she cried, and then, once more, she said nothing, closed her eyes, sucked in her breath, and held in that one position.
"Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes," she managed to moan as Roger pounded his cock into her, with a fury that surprised even him.
"Oh yes, you're so good, you're so good, yes ... fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, please ... don't stop don't stop, don't stop."
She finally managed to collect her senses to the point here she could began to match his rhythm.
Roger, to his immense delight, found that his cock was still hard, and was able to thrust into her cunt again and again.
"You're so hard. How do you stay so hard. It's amazing. I love it. I love it. Oh yes ... fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, FUCK MEEEEEEE!! "
And then, another wave of orgasmic fury rolled over her, every bit as intense as the first.
Again and again, her body was wracked by jolting waves of ecstatic fervor that left her drained, left them both coated with sweat, left them gasping for breath.
Roger, feeling his cock finally begin to shrink, and feeling her body finally begin to rest a little, let his tired organ slip out of her body, and then he fell over to the side of her.
"You're exhausted," she said sympathetically. "You worked so hard ... my big strong man."
He felt her fingers probing around his body, stroking his sweaty skin, massaging him, playing with his hair, and then, finally, moving back down to his cock, wrapping around it.
"You know what I like about you," she asked.
"No ... but I have a feeling you're about to tell me."
"I like the fact that I can touch your cock after we've fucked and you don't mind. Some guys feel like it's too sensitive to touch."
"Sweetheart, you can touch it any time you want."
"Like right now?"
"Isn't that what you're doing?"
"Urn hmmm ... and I think I might just keep it up till it gets hard again. What do you say to that?"
"Well, it sounds like I might have to fuck you again, in that case."