by Don Elliott
He slammed her, eased off, slammed again. His lean body was tight against hers. She felt the smoothness of the skin of his practically hairless chest against the deep bowls of her breasts. Her hard nipples dug into him. Her heels latched onto his calves. Her hips vibrated as she thrust against his virile assaults.
There was a burning sensation within her, ecstasy breaking loose, a conflagration of passion.
Kathryn felt the thrashing of his fullfillment.
In answer came the powerful spasms of her own.
As she writhed, naked, gasping and ecstatic on the musty mattress in the dusty cellar storage room, with the Cuban's hard, muscular body pressing down against her, Kathryn felt sizzling, incredible sensations of completion rocket through her. It had been worth the wait, she thought. Worth having to put up with Freddy and that other creep tonight. Because if they hadn't turned her down, she would never have experienced this, and this was an experience that she was never going to forget.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Jim McHughes stared gloomily around the long, high-ceilinged room that was his studio. He didn't feel like painting. He felt like smashing things, like knocking down the walls with his fists.
He was in love. He had asked a girl to marry him, and she had said yes. So why was he alone here in his studio tonight? Why was Ellen in her apartment with Brubaker? It didn't make sense. She didn't seem to understand how cruel she was.
He could take only so much of this treatment. And then he would blow his stack.
McHughes could understand it if she didn't see any men at all, himself included. After all, she was in the process of getting a divorce, and you were supposed to live a pure life until your papers came through. So she could tell him, "I've got to keep away from men for a little while longer, and then I'll be yours." He could accept that.
But no. She slept around like a wildcat. She'd gave herself to him, yes, but she was also still falling flat for her ex-husband. and for other men too. Including this Brubaker, her boss: a fat, greedy sadist who got his kicks by spanking her pretty pink buttocks be fore he drove himself to her brutally to take his pleasure.
It makes me sick, McHughes thought.
I ought to have my head examined for putting up with a deal like this.
The trouble was. he loved her too much. And so he swallowed it when she told him that she wanted to have some bachelor-girl freedom before they got married, that she wanted to go out and sin. He had been tolerant about it at first. Since neither of them pretended to be a virgin, it wouldn't really harm things if she had some loving outside marriage before she got tied down again. But she was carrying it too far.
And the men she was doing it with! A weakling like her first husband, who couldn't seem to get the message that he didn't belong in her bed any more. And this Brubaker, who got her from sheer blackmail. Was that freedom? It didn't seem that way to Jim McHughes.
How long would this go on?
He had tolerated it for months. But now his patience was running out. Even though he was an artist, McHughes had certain old-fashioned ideas about marriage. One of those ideas was that the husband and the wife were supposed to sleep with each other and with nobody else. If he and Ellen were going to get married in the fall, it was high time that she got in a little practice in fidelity.
McHughes had been faithful to her, pretty much, since their engagement. At first, in the fine romantic flush of being in love, he hadn't even looked at other women. Later on, after Ellen quite honestly had told him that she still meant to sleep around for the next few months, his attitude had changed. Angrily, he had balled a couple of chicks just to show his displeasure. Lately he had been keeping himself in check again, trying to set a good example for Ellen.
Not that she paid any attention, though.
He was in a mean mood tonight. He felt brutal and angry. It was the second night in a row that he had had to do without Ellen's company. Last night she had been bouncing the bed springs for somebody, maybe the cast-off husband, and tonight she was with that slob Brubaker, and here he was, on the outside looking in.
He paced tensely around his studio. Finished and half-finished paintings were everywhere, the signs of his success. But success seemed pretty hollow tonight. What good was having the public wild about your work, if you couldn't keep your own love life in order?
McHughes had been painting about eight years. He had a natural gift for color, a natural eye for abstract painting, and his bold, dramatic, oversized canvasses had caught instant attention in the overcrowded art world. They had begun selling right away. Now he had five or six paintings in major museums, and sold everything that he put on the market. He was getting as much as 85,000 for a large painting, and he sold eight or nine paintings a year. He painted more than that, but he kept the rest on hand as a rainy-day fund. A kind of investment against the future. If you flooded the market with your own stuff, you'd only succeed in breaking your price, unless you were somebody like Picasso. Jim McHughes was good, but he wasn't Picasso. So he stashed his paintings away waiting for the strategic time to dole them out on the market.
He couldn't complain about the way his art career had worked out. He had started painting almost as a lark, and it had turned into a profession that was rewarding financially and creatively. He was a popular artist, and the people whose influence counted in the art world liked him personally, maybe because he looked and acted so little like the typical artist. But tonight he was willing to trade his fame for a better relationship with Ellen. He had to get this business straightened out before it tore him apart.
He looked at his watch. Half past nine.
Brubaker was with her now, he thought. He closed his eyes. The scene leaped unbidden into his mind. Ellen, stark naked, lying across the fat man's lap. Her pink, tender buttocks upturned, two curved, delicious mounds of attractive, succulent flesh. His hand descending, again and again, slapping the taut globes. The flesh leaping and quivering under the impact of each spank, growing rosy red.
And then Brubaker on top of her-taking her, soiling her McHughes ground his hands together, cracked his knuckles ferociously. He felt like a caged tiger.
I've got to get out of here, he thought.
Get some action. Get even with Ellen.
He hurried out of the loft building where he had his studio. It was a mild, pleasant spring night. Walking quickly, in his long, loping strides, McHughes turned the corner, headed for the little coffee shop on the next block. He had spent a lot of time there before he met Ellen. There were always girls there.
Available girls.
Old friends. Pals of his student days who wouldn't mind a loving with him now that he was rich and famous. He didn't think he'd have any trouble making a pickup to share his pad for the night.
He was right.
The place was swinging as he walked in. At every table he saw people deep in conversation, earnest-looking, bearded men, girls in leotards and black sweaters, the whole beatnik bit. Jim McHughes had never bothered to grow a beard. He didn't have to advertise that he was an artist. He would leave that kind of stuff to the arty types, the ones who talked a good game but never produced anything.
A bunch of people waved at him. Some of them looked familiar, the rest were just waving because he was the Jim McHughes and they wanted to associate with the famous man. McHughes waved back but didn't go over to any of the tables. He looked around carefully.
He saw what he wanted.
A slender brunette with high cheekbones and bright, sparkling dark eyes. Her deep blue polo shirt out-lined the jutting mounds of two provocative-looking breasts. She was an eye-catching chick, and she was smiling at him; she looked like she'd go like sixty. He knew her vaguely; her name was Cleo something, and she was a would-be artist of sorts.
She was sitting alone. She looked like she was very much available.
McHughes made a beeline for her. She would do very well to help him even the score with Ellen. She was stacked a
nd good looking, and from what he remembered of her reputation, she was supposed to be a hot chick.
He looked down at her. "Mind if I sit down here a while?" he asked.
"Make yourself comfortable."
"I'm Jim McHughes," he said, sliding in opposite her.
"I know. I've seen your work. It's very good. I'm Cleo Morris."
"Hello, Cleo. Buy you a cappucino?"
"Sure-Jim."
He called a waiter over. In this place it was hard to get quick service, but obviously he counted-and ordered. Cleo was giving him the eye. She had bedroom eyes. Also bedroom thighs, he figured. Her breasts were going up and down nicely inside her polo shirt. He was eager to get his hands on those sweet, pink boobs of hers. That would help him forget what Ellen was up to at this precise moment.
He said, "After we have our coffee, what do you say we cut out of here?"
She winked. "Why not?"
"My pad's just around the corner."
"You've got a date," she said.
I'll have more than that, too, he thought. The coffee arrived. "Mud in your eye," he said.
Then someone else arrived, another chick.
She came out of the little girls' room in the back of the coffee house and made her way with switching hips toward their table. She was a leggy strawberry blonde whose loose plaid blouse was not loose enough to hide the fact that she was the possessor of a stupendous pair of bazooms.
She was wearing a puzzled smile, too. She came over and pulled out a chair, and suddenly Jim realized that Cleo had not been alone after all, that she had been sharing the table with a girl friend.
Cleo said, "Jim McHughes, Peggy Gardiner. Peggy's my roommate."
"The Jim McHughes?" Peggy asked.
"I was afraid you'd say that," he answered. "Yes, I'm the Jim McHughes. Want an autograph?"
She giggled. "I didn't mean to blurt it like that. The words just came out. I mean, I dig your work. That's all. I don't want to embarrass you or anything."
"Honest praise is never embarrassing," McHughes said.
Cleo said, "Peggy, Jim and I were just about to cut out of here and go over to his pad. You don't mind, do you?"
"Private party?" Peggy asked.
"I don't know," Cleo said. She looked at McHughes. "Jim, will three make it a crowd?"
That baffled him. Certainly she knew that he hadn't invited her to his apartment to look through his press clippings. Now she was ringing Peggy in on the deal. Did that mean Cleo was trying to get out of making love with him? Or did it mean-
He looked at them both.
I'll be damned, he thought. There was no mistaking the look on their faces. It did mean just what he thought it was supposed to mean.
"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, sure. Come one, come all. We'll have ourselves a ball."
They drained their coffee, and he led them out of there. Five minutes later he was letting them into his studio. He felt a little edgy about this. It wasn't that he was afraid he lacked the virility to swing it, because he knew he could make love half a dozen times a night and not feel winded. No, he was just puzzled by the protocol of the arrangement. He was built like most other men, in that he was anatomically capable of taking on just one chick at a time. In that case, how was he going to Play it by ear, he decided.
"Thirsty?" he asked.
"What's to drink?" Cleo said.
"Red wine, very dry. Interested?"
They were interested. He poured tall glasses of Dago red for them, put a Segovia record on the stereo, and let them wander around, digging his private collection of his own paintings. They were pretty perceptive. The comments they made weren't simply of the ooh and aah school of criticism.
After a while, McHughes filled everybody's wine glass a second time.
After a shorter while, Cleo took her polo shirt off.
She didn't make a production out of it. She didn't even say a thing, no little quips, no self-conscious remark about making herself more comfortable. She jusj peeled the polo shirt off and put it down on the back of a chair.
She wasn't wearing a brassiere. McHughes studied her breasts with an appreciative eye. If she wasn't abashed about showing them off this way, he certainly wasn't going to be coy about staring at them. They were nice boobs, round and white and firm, with the nipples standing up tall and hard. The twin globes swayed prettily as she moved around the studio.
McHughes figured that Peggy would find some way to meet the competition and upstage Cleo if she could, while still being as cool about it as Cleo had been. It didn't take long for Peggy to find a way. She asked McHughes where the John was.
He showed her. He was a little puzzled, because it was only an hour or so since she had come out of the John at the coffee shop. Did she have a weak bladder or something? But when she emerged again, he realized that she hadn't particularly been going to answer a call of nature. She came out with her slacks and panties draped over her arm. She put them down on a chair too, and stood there in just her plaid blouse.
"Is this one of your early paintings?" she asked, as cool as a cucumber.
Cleo had to grin. Peggy had one-upped her in spades! McHughes stared. There was something unusually erotic about a half-naked girl who was stripped from the waist down. He eyed the flat abdomen, the generous buttocks, the trim thighs, and the womanly contours. Cleo, simply displaying her breasts, had real ly lost the round. Because Peggy was showing off the essential stuff, and at the same time was managing to arouse more excitement by letting McHughes wonder about the contours of her breasts.
Of course, he didn't have to wonder long.
The three of them settled down on the rug in the long studio room. McHughes poured some more wine. He looked at Peggy and Cleo and said, grinning, "Between the two of you I've got one completely naked girl, huh?"
They grinned, too. Peggy leaned back and moved her legs in a not very subtle invitation. Cleo stretched, making her heavy breasts rise. They were turning it into a game. Well, he could play along.
He unbuttoned his shirt and took it off.
That was Cleo's cue. She removed her slacks and sat there in black silk panties.
Without breaking the smooth flow of the conversation, Peggy dispensed with the plaid, loose-fitting blouse, so that her only article of clothing was her bra.
McHughes took off his trousers.
Cleo got rid of the black silk panties. She was the first of them to be totally nude and she enjoyed it, stretching out voluptuously on the rug. Her legs were trim and shapely, her thighs on the lean side, making an odd contrast with the abundance of her buttocks.
Peggy ended the suspense by unhooking her bra. Her gigantic breasts tumbled free. There were red lines on the pale flesh where the bra had struggled to confine the globes of sensuality.
Over to me, McHughes thought. He disposed of his undershorts. The three of them, completely naked, remained chastely apart On the floor, talking about or art and pop art and serial music as though for all the world they were in the middle of a coffee shop.
Then McHughes decided it was time to speed things up. He saw both girls staring hungrily at him. They wanted him. and he wanted them, and it was appropriate to stop playing it so cool.
He reached over into a drawer and pulled out a deck of cards. Riffling out the deck, he extended it toward Cleo.
"Pick a card, any card."
She drew. Jack of diamonds.
"Now you," he said.
Peggy picked. Queen of spades.
"Tough luck. Cleo," McHughes said. "You've got to wait for seconds."
He reached out for Peggy. She moved to him easily and her nude, full-blown form glided into his arms. His mouth took hers. His hand went to her thighs. Her heavy breasts pressed against him.
But Cleo was not to be denied. Her fingers snaked their way between the two interlocked bodies and took a firm grasp on McHughes. She began to slide her hand. McHughes didn't want to disappoint her. He h
ad one hand left, and he put it to good use.
Now he was exploring two girls at once. Not a bad life, he told himself. They crawled all over him, rubbing their hard-tipped breasts and hot thighs against him.
But the cut of the cards still ruled. In a few minutes, McHughes found that he could hold out no longer. He drew Peggy's white thighs to him and struck.
She was good. She was nice and warm, and she knew how to use her muscles. McHughes closed his eyes and began, loving her good and hard. At the same time, Cleo buzzed around the perimeter of the scene, and McHughes kept one hand with her, working hard on her. Then they made a Jim McHughes sandwich, with Peggy below him and Cleo on his back.