by Don Elliott
Does she know I'm there, Mr. Crispian wondered?
Does she know I'm watching?
It was a frightening thought. But at the same time it was an exciting thought, a stimulating thought.
Yes, he told himself. She knows I'm watching her, and she's deliberately showing herself off to me. She really wants me to come across the courtyard and make love to her. He laughed at the flattering fantasy. Her shamelessness, her boldly flaunted nudity, it was all an advertisement designed to break down his shyness, he decided.
He could imagine it, now. Watching her parade her bare breasts and buttocks before the window for a while, until he got so hot with desire he could no longer stand it. And then crossing the courtyard, knocking on the door "I'm Mr. Crispian. I live across the way."
"Yes, I know you do. I've been waiting for you, my darling. Why did it take you so long to come to me?"
"I had to be sure you wanted me."
"Yes, yes, I want you," would come the throaty cry of passion.
And then he would fling himself on the soft, throbbing nudity of her, and bury himself in the hot embrace of her body. He'd fondle the breasts that he had stared at from a distance for so long, and go rocketing off to pleasure on her quivering, voluptuous body.
Mr. Crispian smiled. It was something to dream about. It would never happen, of course. Never in a billion years. But he could dream about it.
He brushed his teeth fastidiously and got into bed.
Sleep came swiftly.
CHAPTER TWO
THERE WAS A KNOCK ON ELLEN DAWSON'S DOOR.
She glanced at the bedside clock. Five minutes to ten. He was a little early tonight.
Ellen had finished with her bath half an hour ago. She had shaved her legs and arms and had put little dabs of perfume between her breasts and in a few other interesting places. Then she had donned her filmy white negligee, the one that covered her body without hiding a thing.
Now she swept toward the door.
"Who is it?" she called.
"Jimmy. Who do you think it is?"
"Coming, coming!"
Ellen opened the door. A burly, dark-haired man in his late twenties stood there. He didn't smile. He simply nodded to her and stepped into the apartment.
His dark, gleaming eyes traveled over her body in as parent approval, lingering for a moment at the place where the deep bowls of her breasts thrust against the gauzy fabric of her negligee. Ellen closed the door and locked it.
"I just finished my bath," she told him. "Making myself nice and clean for Jimmy-boy."
"Yeah," he said. "Tonight you get nice and clean for me, and tomorrow you get nice and clean for Joe Blow., and the day after tomorrow-"
"Jimmy, don't start that again."
He scowled at her. "What else do you want me to talk about? This is tearing me apart, Ellen. To see you every third or fourth night like this-"
"It won't be for long," Ellen purred.
"You've been saying that for months."
"This time I mean it," she said. She glided across the room toward him, her breasts swaying voluptuously within the transparent negligee. She came close enough so that the erotic perfume of her body could be wafted into his nostrils to do its witching work. Her pale blue eyes stared intensely into his dark ones. "You haven't kissed me," she said, pouting. "You've been here almost a minute and a half and you haven't kissed me. I'm waiting."
"Sure, baby. Sure."
He reached for her. Ellen slid up against him, putting the lower part of her body tight against his close-fitting blue jeans. The extent of his masculine desires had been clearly visible, due to the tautly stretched faded fabric of the dungarees. Now she could feel the passion in his heartbeat.
She locked her hands behind his neck. She pushed the ripe cones of her breasts into his chest, flattening them out against him. Her nipples tingled with excitement. Her face was inches from his.
"Baby-baby-baby," he whispered hoarsely.
Their lips met.
Jim McHughes' style of lovemaking wasn't a subtle one. The moment his lips were covering hers, his eager tongue rammed like a lance and stabbed its way into her hot, willing mouth. She met it with the tip of her tongue. His hands slid down the back of her body, grabbing the negligee, bunching it up, the strong fingers digging into the ripe globes of her buttocks, kneading the flesh, gripping it.
They stood that way a long while, bodies locked in the middle of the room. When they separated, they were both flushed and breathing hard. Ellen's big breasts were going up and down within her negligee like two live cannon balls. Her breasts were hot and swollen with desire. The throb of lust was painful along the stretches of her thighs, and there was the dry taste of yearning in her mouth.
McHughes looked at her. "I haven't been here in three nights. It feels like three months, Ellen."
"I know. I've missed you so much, Jim."
"Then why can't I see you every night?"
"We'll talk about that some other time," she said. "We've got better things to do now."
"Yeah," he said.
He moved toward her again. Suddenly he dropped to his knees in front of her and caught the hem of her negligee. He began to swoop the gauzy garment upward, baring her shins then her thighs, and then the golden tones of her stomach, the long span of taut abdomen, the delicious mounds of her breasts, tipped with love-cherries that stood up in frenzied anxiety.
Then he pulled the negligee over her head and tossed it aside. She stood completely nude before him, her body proudly and unashamedly bare.
He seized her. He bent his knees and put his lips to her left breast, paying tribute to it with his tongue, creating a sweet suction that sent the fires of sensuality leaping high within Ellen Dawson. Then he moved to the right breast and did the same thing. When he was finished, both nipples were incandescent, and they were hard and swollen so that they seemed three times their normal size.
He knelt. His lips went lower.
He fanned his hands out over the cool cheeks of her bare buttocks, grasping them and pushing her body forward against him. Ellen stood with her legs set, and he pressed his kiss to her curvaceous torso.
He was very busy for a while.
"Oh, yes," Ellen murmured. "Yes, that feels so good, honey, that feels terrific!"
Nude, feet planted firmly on the floor, she closed her eyes, threw her head back, and breathed deeply as she accepted the homage he paid to her beauty. She ran her hands through his thick curly black hair, while his head moved frantically in the attempt to inspire even greater appreciation.
Then he stood up, after drawing a tickling trail of kisses down her thighs. His eyes were narrowed to slits of desire, and his craggy-featured face was scar let with stimulation.
"Get undressed," Ellen panted at him.
The suggestion was hardly necessary. McHughes was already struggling out of his clothing. Nude and heated up, Ellen waited impatiently for him to strip.
Jim McHughes had the build of a stevedore. He was a rugged, thick-bodied man covered with a coarse mat of hair practically from head to foot. But he wasn't a stevedore or a truck driver or a professional wrestler. He was a painter, whose pictures were hanging in more than one gallery. He was considered one of the better young, experimental American artists. You can't ever judge a person's profession from his appearance. There was nothing about Jim McHughes' physical self to indicate that he was a person of artistic temperament at all.
Ellen Dawson wasn't sure that she understood what his paintings were all about. But that didn't matter. She understood the things he could do with his body. In many ways, she and Jim McHughes had nothing in common, but when they got into bed they were of a mind.
He was almost naked, now. His undershorts dropped away, and then his massively male body was bare to Ellen's delighted gaze.
She clutched at his thick wrist. "Hurry," she said. "Oh, hurry."
"Just a second," he told her.
He reached around and drew the blinds shut. Then he followed her to the bed.
"You always leave them open," he complained.
"I'm forgetful," Ellen replied. "Love me, Jim!
Oh, love me hard!"
They sank down together on the bed in a tangle of arms and legs. He clutched at her and caught her, one hand cupping her right breast and the other getting her left buttock. He gave both tender mounds of flesh a good squeeze. Ellen squealed in pleasure.
Then she dropped her head to kiss his muscled chest and solar plexus.
His breath came out in a rush, and his brutish hands massaged her trapezius muscles, alternately pulling and pushing at her. The sensation was so excruciating she couldn't be sure if it was pleasure or pain.
He made a hoarse grunting sound of pleasure. Ellen wriggled around on him, rubbing her breasts from side to side on his hairy thighs as she loved him with dedication. She felt hot all over. He reached forward and got his hand on her; she felt his burning strokes encourage her mounting passions. Her eyes were closed, her heart was pounding.
She moved her head violently. She moved her hands up and cupped the heavy softness of him at the same time. And his hand went further, making her groan.
Then she lifted her head from him and looked up, a wild smile on her face. His virility was more evident than ever. He looked twice as virile, now that she had heightened his excitement.
He grinned at her.
Then he pushed her over onto her back and slid into position.
His big hands seized her thighs and he almost lifted her. His thick, hairy body approached her.
Then he plunged.
At the moment of contact, Ellen let out a long, low sound of satisfaction, a sound of pure feminine contentment at being taken.
He wasn't gentle. He wasn't delicate. He didn't take her in little, easy stages. Oh, no. That wasn't Jim McHughes' way of making love. He simply moved straight ahead, a single brutal stroke that struck the heart of Ellen's passionate emotions.
If Ellen had been a virgin, she would have been howling in agony at that terrifying pounding. But Ellen had left her virginity seven or eight years behind and she had been to bed often enough so that she could take any kind of masculine onslaught. Right now she was hot and eager more than ready, so when he moved to her it was as a more than welcome visitor.
"Oh, God, Jimmy!" Ellen gasped in ecstatic delight. "Go, man, go!"
Jimmy went.
He went quickly. His body was rammed right up against hers.
He didn't hold anything back. His powerful body rose and fell above hers. It plunged and reared and bucked and slammed at her again and again. There was the sharp sound of contact.
He held her tight, a bear hug, punishing her with the fervor of his embrace. The tender globes of her breasts were squashed flat and shapeless against his hairy chest. He held her so closely she could hardly breathe, between the crush of his arms and the shortness of breath that ecstasy induced in her lungs.
She tossed her legs. She drew them up, pointing her toes toward the ceiling. He put his hands on he buttocks to support her. In that position, Ellen's invitation was just properly presented for his acceptance His pelvis ground against hers. The room seemed warns er, fitting for his safari. She locked her legs arouiu. his back.
He seized her buttocks in a terrible grip. And hi attacked with vengeance.
He was like a blazing comet searing her. Ellen's femininity welcomed that, though. She was half delirious with sex, feeling the throbbing waves of delight sweep over her again and again. She wanted him as close to her as he could possibly get. She wanted every square inch of her skin to be in contact with his body. She wanted their embrace to be so ardent that it burned away all desire for hours afterward.
Stirring her round and round, making a drumbeat of passion pound for her, tickling the roots of her emotion with the promise of ecstasy. This was what life was all about, Ellen thought. This was why she was here. To lie under this bull of a man while he tried to become one with her, to subjugate her.
Yes! Yes!
She sucked in breath. Her scissors-grip on his body tightened. Her muscles flexed. His hands clutched at her buttocks more vehemently. Ellen dug her fingernails into the ridged muscles of his back.
Then she screamed.
It was a banshee howl of fulfillment, a wild insane cry of sheer ecstasy. Jim McHughes interpreted it the right way, as his signal to carry her into the final act of this drama of physical passion.
He thrust at her with all the strength of his musculature. Ellen felt him hammering at the vital passions of her, and she simply released her grip on the universe and let herself dissolve.
Pleasure engulfed her.
Her body moved blindly in the rhythms of the finish, and she felt the burst of his energy as he lunged. Then came the fierce, dizzying spasms of her ecstasy, as the muscles of her body writhed through the culminating moment.
The man above her thrust on, in decreasing intensity now, tapering off, bringing her down from the heights of delight, and they made the descent from the summit together, coming down into the afterglow.
It was over.
McHughes' heavy body now seemed only a burden, though she bad not felt his weight at all while he was loving her. He withdrew from her, breaking the embrace that linked their bodies, and rolled over to her side. One of his big arms slipped underneath her, tenderly cradling her shoulders. The other came to rest with the hand cupped over one of her bare, now soft-nippled breasts.
Ellen's eyes fluttered open. She smiled at him.
"That was good," she said.
"It always is."
"No, this was better than usual," she insisted. "I felt like I was exploding all over. I felt like one of the scenes in the things you paint. You know, with colors splashing off in all directions."
He laughed. "Now you know what it's like to be an abstract painting," he said. He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the tip of one of her breasts. It was an oddly dainty gesture for so big a man.
He looked more relaxed, now that they had made love, Ellen thought. He had come in looking like a thunderstorm, his brows furrowed, his face dark Now he was sunny again. But she knew it would not be long before he started harping on his favorite theme again.
It didn't take him long.
He trailed his hand down her bare body from her breasts to her flanks and said, "I wish I could be with you every night, Ellen."
"You will soon."
"How soon is soon?"
"Jim, please-"
"This is tearing me apart," he said. "Why doesn't your divorce come through?"
"It will. It will. The lawyer says it'll be just a few more weeks before the papers are final."
"And until then-"
"Until then I'm married to Ray Dawson," Ellen said. "I can't set up housekeeping with you."
"You could at least stop seeing those other men."
"Don't start up, Jim. Everything was so nice until you brought it up again."
He clenched a fist. "I can't stand the thought of you being with other men, Ellen. Is that so hard to understand?"
"Listen," she said. "I'm just about to escape from one marriage. After I've escaped from it, I'm heading right into another marriage-with you. Don't you think I'm entitled to a little freedom in between?"
"Don't you love me?"
"Of course I do," Ellen said.
"Then how can you sleep with other men?"
"First of all, who said I'm sleeping with anybody? Just because they come to visit me doesn't mean anything. Second of all, I think I'm entitled to do as I please until we're married, or at least until I'm clear of my last marriage. You're free to do as you please, too."
"But I don't want anybody but you," McHughes said.
"You haven't been to bed with anybody else but me in the past six months?" she asked slyly. "Well-"
"Have you?"
He scowled blackly at her. "If I have, it's only because you've turned me away from your bed. I can't help it, Ellen. I've got desires, too. I'm a human being. And if you won't see me more than a couple of times a week, while telling me you want to marry me, is it my fault if I have to turn to other women on occasion?"