The Sister's Business
by Charles Gordon


INTRODUCTION 

As in Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape, the protagonist of this novel has the 
surface veneer of herself scratched, and finds that anthropological reality 
lurks very close to the polish and mores acquired through societal guidance 
and taboos. 

A woman who has been patterned in false swirlings and rigid convolutions 
imposed upon her true self, by pressures not of her own making, has long 
been trapped, as have been so many quietly unhappy and silently frustrated 
individuals, in the modern press of obligation and conformation. 

When she is forced by circumstances to flee familiar surroundings, she finds 
herself in a situation totally new, one where force and dominance is the new 
law. Degraded and overwhelmed by brute strength, semi-paralyzed by fear and 
the unknown forces beginning to unleash themselves within her newly awakened 
body, she is at last forced to draw strength and substance from within 
herself, where all true power lies. 

At first buffeted from all sides by a seemingly irresistible and implacably 
cruel fate, she is in danger of being de-individualized, of losing her 
former identity, however unhappy, to the horrors of the imprisoning 
situation in which she finds herself. She has fled from one form of social 
retribution only to plunge into a morass of moral quicksand from which she 
cannot extricate herself. 

Too, she is carrying an added burden besides that of her own guilt-the 
responsibility for another, younger life. Struggling to maintain a grip on 
sanity, she must also be responsible for the safety and well-being of 
another girl. 

Forced to accept the sensual realities of herself, she begins to understand 
her own body, her own mind. Through a form of shock treatment, she feels a 
new concept of herself growing stronger by the hour. She learns to look 
deeply, to feel deeply, and realizes that the primary guilt has been 
society's, not her own, except in the sense that she has allowed herself to 
be manipulated and controlled by other people. 

Gathering courage through insight, and via the introduction of yet another 
ingredient in the form of a real and Randian-selfish man, she slowly but 
positively becomes whole. A brighter life is in the offing for her, and 
because she has learned through experience, she will be ready to take this 
life in both hands, to live and enjoy it to the fullest. 

This novel appears as a study in both personal relationships and the dimly 
understood workings of the human ego, symbolizing the villain forces of 
society in the person of a savagely dominant antagonist. It also shows how 
an individual can and may resist the shapings forced upon her, if she can 
but discover and tap the wellspring of her true identity. 

-The Publisher 

 CHAPTER ONE 

Heather stared in shock, in utter disbelief, unable to reconcile what she'd 
heard with what her mind told her could not be so. Stiff-lipped, she asked, 
"W-what? What did you say?" 

The man showed his teeth at her; at the younger sister by her side. "Said I 
mean to fuck you, city woman." 

Hands shaking, Heather reached for her sister. "Come on, Honey. This man 
must be insane, and we'd better get away from here." 

That's when the man slapped her, suddenly and viciously along the cheek, and 
Heather staggered, almost fell off the sagging porch. She caught the rail 
for support and spread her feet. Her eyes were out of focus and there was a 
buzzing in her head, but she heard her sister squeal, and heard the ominous 
rumbling of the big hound in the yard. 

"Don't," she said. "Oh, don't hurt the girl.. . . " 

And as he dragged Honey by on the wooden porch, the man struck Heather 
again. This time she fell to her knees on the rough boards, her head 
swinging and her mouth open. It was some kind of crazy dream, she thought, 
some wild nightmare that couldn't last forever, that would soon end and 
allow her to wake up. 

The hound snarled in the yard, deep and menacing, and the threat echoed 
around inside her head. Clinging to the porch rail, Heather fought to clear 
her eyes. She wanted to scream, to yell for the police, for anyone who might 
help-but there was nobody to help this far out in the piney woods. There was 
only the snarling hound, and the man who seemed more animal than his dog. 

Slowly, Heather came to her feet again, and saw the man looping a piece of 
rope around her sister's wrists. Another loop, and Honey was tied to a porch 
post. 

The man said, "You just set there, little woman. You can watch how I fuck 
the other'un, and see what you got comin' afore long. Might tell you, do you 
try to run, ol' Bigdog yonder will tear your little ass off." 

Heather said, "I-I have some money, some travelers' checks I can sign. . . . 
" 

He moved toward her, pale green eyes holding to her throat, licking at her 
breasts. "I 'spect you'll sign 'em, all right. But right now ain't the time 
for that; it's the time for takin' off that city dress and gettin' yourself 
ready to fuck." 

"Wait," she said, "please-I don't understand. I mean. . . . " 

Snakelike, unexpectedly, his lean hand flashed out and hooked into the front 
of her thin summer dress. Heather gasped as the material ripped away, as he 
jerked again and held the filmy green dress in both hands. He watched her 
reaction as he shredded the material, as he tore it without effort into rags 
and let them fall to the porch. 

"You got some fine titties there," he said, showing the long teeth at her in 
a wet smile. "Let's see 'em in the light." 

Trembling, Heather reached around and unhooked the bra before he could tear 
that off, too. Although the hot, muggy air clung to her exposed skin, she 
felt pin prickles arising. She tried again: "I-I can get you a lot of 
money." 

He pointed a fingertip at her panties, and Heather hurried to peel them 
down, her very-soul shrinking within her taut body as she exposed her secret 
places to his lascivious stare. 

"Well, now," he said, licking at his lips, "always wanted to know was a 
redheaded woman red on the pussy, too. Sure is, ain't it? Looks like it'd 
burn a man's pecker clear off. City woman like you knows all the tricks, I 
reckon." 

Heather took a backward step, feeling with her left foot. Behind her, the 
dog growled deep in its black chest and she flinched. She couldn't run off 
and leave her sister to this brute, anyway. Even if she could get past the 
hound, she was still responsible for Honey's well-being, as she had always 
been. 

"Go on in the house and take a quilt off'n the bed," the man ordered. "Never 
mind peelin' your eye at the gun over the fireplace, neither; it ain't 
loaded. Move, woman!" 

His eyes touched her as she walked past, and the feel of them upon her 
buttocks was a terrible intimacy. Heather hadn't even liked to be naked with 
her husband, not naked right out in the open, and walking nude before this 
stranger was a revolting thing. But she was afraid and she was still in a 
state of shock. Pausing at a rumpled bed inside the shadowed clutter of the 
cabin, Heather lifted the patchwork quilt and turned. 

Better her than her sister, she thought, at least she had been married and 
knew about men. Honey was only sixteen years old, and innocent. But this 
terrible man meant to-to have intercourse with the child, too. Maybe Heather 
could find some way to stop that-bribe or tempt the man somehow or, failing 
that, get Honey and herself away where they could find police, find help. 

Her face hot with shame, Heather moved back onto the porch of the 
weather-beaten shack, carrying the quilt in front of her body, grateful for 
its shelter. The man said, "Spread it yonder, where your sister can watch 
good." 

Honey said, "Heather-don't worry, we'll be okay." 

Heather glanced at her sister bound, sitting tied to a post as if she were 
some lower form of life. Then she spread the quilt as she had been 
commanded, laying it smooth across the uneven boards, blushing again as she 
realized that the man was standing behind her and eyeing her buttocks. 

If only she hadn't taken the other man's advice and come up this back road 
looking for a cabin to rent; if only she hadn't yielded to impulse and run 
to earth here in this backwoods country. She should have kept going, 
traveling anywhere out of the country, even. They might have made it fine, 
even though she felt the Company had people checking airports and bus lines. 
That's why she hadn't driven any farther than Memphis before switching 
rental cars, leaving the second one in Jackson. The Company would be nosing 
around rental agencies, too. But its thugs wouldn't know where to start from 
Jackson; there'd been an ancient train, then a dusty bus, and a cheap car 
bought from a lot in Meridian. 

"You got you a fine ass, too," the man said behind her, and Heather sat back 
on her heels. He put a bare and dirty foot against the small of her back and 
shoved her flat on her stomach. "Yes, sir, a mighty fine ass, all soft and 
shiny. Sure glad ol' Artis headed you this way, but I 'spect he's frettin' 
over it some himself. Ol' Artis always been a cunt chaser, but I reckon he 
never got none good as yours." 

Heather rolled over and drew up her knees protectively, crossing her arms 
over her breasts as fear bit deeper into her heart. She forgot that her 
younger sister was forced to watch her shame, forgot the other fear that had 
driven her from her home up north; now there was only the man taking off his 
overalls, the horrible hillbilly man who meant to-to rape her. 

Even with her husband-her dead husband-Heather had never been exactly 
comfortable about sex. It had always been something under the sheets, a 
quick and hurried thrusting that had never quite completed the promise of 
her body. But now, now with the strange man stepping out of his clothing 
here in the bright hotness of a summer day, she knew that all her nightmares 
were about to come true, that a brutal, debauched man was just about to 
stick his evil and ugly penis into her-her thing-and soil it. 

"Look here," the man said, "look here at this piece of meat; ain't many city 
men got meat like this, I 'spect. And I ain't put this pecker into no woman 
for so long, it's about forgot the feel of hot pussy. Reckon it'll remember 
soon enough." 

Ugly, Heather thought, staring mesmerized at the man's outthrust penis-so 
ugly and threatening-a penis was bad enough in the dark when it felt for her 
pubic mound, but out in the light like this. Heather shuddered and drew into 
a tighter ball. The head of it was a deep pink with little bumps scattered 
over its surface. There was a slit in it, a blind mouth without eyes over 
it, and-oh no!-something shiny was oozing out of the slit. 

The shaft of it was thick, long; it had veins curling up and around its pale 
white flesh, and it rose menacingly from a nest of corn silk hair in the 
man's crotch. It was too big, she thought, her husband's penis hadn't been 
that big, and since Vic's thing was the only one she had ever taken inside 
her unwilling body, there was the chance that she couldn't stretch enough to 
fit something larger. So big and so ugly this one was, and she wondered 
fleetingly how it was possible for some women to actually like having a 
thing like that pushed into the privacy of their inner bodies. 

He was kneeling upon the quilt now, the heavily tanned portions of his neck 
and hands odd against the whiteness of the rest of his body that had never 
been open to the sun. He was holding his penis in his right hand, fondling 
it with obscene affection, while his left hand reached out to touch 
Heather's buttock. She flinched and shivered, and a scream gathered itself 
deep within her being, but she dared not let it burst forth. This depraved 
man would beat her for screaming, she was certain. 

Breath caught in her tense throat, Heather clenched her hands as he stroked 
her haunches, feeling and caressing in a way that made her feel dirty down 
below the skin. 

The man said, the words rasping out of his throat in a growing excitement, 
"I never screw no woman without she knows who's puttin' the pecker to her, 
every whore in the county knows me by name and never makes no complaint. I'm 
Arley Santee, and I been wantin' to fuck me a genuine, high class city woman 
all my life. Been wantin' to stick it to a redheaded woman, too, and I guess 
I'm just pure-D lucky you're a redheaded city woman. I got to thank ol' 
Artis for tollin' you up to the house." 

Heather's eyes were distended, and her mouth went dry as a pulse beat 
heavily in her throat. "P-please," she said, "oh, please don't do this to 
me. I-I don't like it. Oh, please!" 

His hand clamped down on her buttock and Heather groaned at the sudden pain. 
Arley Santee said, "You'll like it from me. You're agoin' to get fucked by a 
farm boy for a change, and you'll like it so much you're going to be 
hollerin' for more prick. Just because you're some kind of high class city 
bitch, don't try and act shitty around ol' Arley, 'cause I'll just tear up 
your ass for it." 

With that, he flipped Heather over onto her back and slapped her arms away 
from her breasts as he forced one knee between her legs. 

"Them nipples is near about long as a Jersey cow's," he said. "I purely 
appreciate good titties on a woman, I sure do." And Arley put both his lean, 
tanned hands upon her breasts. 

He kneaded them, pushed them down with his palms and let them spring up 
again. He rubbed the nipples between thumbs and forefingers and Heather felt 
them turning stiff, felt them hardening. She bit her lips in disgust at her 
own body, and knew the reaction for what it was-nothing sensual, but only a 
response to stimulation. 

Forcing herself to look at the man, she saw again his cornsilk hair, the old 
paleness of washed-out green eyes, the sunbrowned face, and the teeth long 
and sharp as those of his vicious hound. Arley, he said-Arley Santee-and 
Heather wondered if many victims of rapists knew the names of their 
ravishers. 

"Big, solid titties," he was saying as he worked his knee up between her 
thighs. "Good titties all round and full." Arley dipped his body suddenly, 
and Heather writhed at the impact of his face upon her breasts. 

Oh, no, she thought, oh, no, no! He was snuffling at her nipples, mashing 
them with his hands and rubbing his whiskery cheeks against them. Bestial, 
she thought, childish and animal-like and, oh, lord, wet and suctioning! He 
was mouthing her nipple, drawing it between his teeth and lapping it with 
his hot, wet tongue. Nobody had ever done that to her before-not her 
husband, and not the two boyfriends she had before Vic. 

The sensation was maddening, a jarring, violent feeling that swept through 
her body, spreading quickly from the hot, pulling mouth upon her nipple. 
Heather's body squirmed, heaved in reflex, and she caught at his head to try 
and pull him away from her breasts before-before something she didn't know 
but was afraid of. 

Arley Santee wouldn't let go. She let out a noise of pain as he bit down 
upon the tender flesh of her breast, and he chose that very moment to shove 
his hand between his knee and her pubic mound. Her eyes flew wide at the 
shock. He kept sucking at her nipple while he played with her mound, while 
he violated the sanctity of her vulva. It was wrong-wrong-and the sinful 
whiplashes of her guilt stung Heather as this man, this stranger, this 
rapist roughly fondled her crotch. Her legs shook and her feet kicked gently 
against the quilt beneath them. 

Suddenly, brutally, he let his teeth rake across her nipple and jerked his 
face up so he could fasten his mouth over her own. Oh, lord, oh, help, she 
thought helplessly, futilely-and his thick, wet tongue pushed irresistibly 
through her lips and into her reluctant mouth. 

Heather made strangled noises, hurt sounds, as he tongued over her teeth and 
the roof of her mouth, as he licked and pushed the extension of himself into 
her unwilling mouth. Then he was drawing upon her own tongue, sucking it 
back into his mouth, chewing lightly upon it, then harder until her body 
bucked in painful outrage below his. 

Arley's hard hand clamped upon her sensitive mound, and Heather moaned, 
twisted, in an effort to get away. But there was no chance, no hope, and 
when his finger pushed violently up into her quivering labia, up into the 
lips of her entrance, Heather could only recoil in outrage. It went inside 
and it felt around and it tickled-but she would concentrate upon the 
invasion, upon the force, the unwelcome entry of it. Still, there was a 
tickle that she struggled valiantly to deny. 

"Hot and tight," he panted into her gasping mouth. "Yeah, you redheaded city 
slut, it's all hot and tight and just turnin' slick for me-get-tin' all 
ready for ol' Arley's hard prick to fuck it." 

His hand slid under her back, moved to the small of her back, and levered 
her lower body up, her thighs veeing apart from the weight of her own legs. 
He was prodding at her vulva with the head of his penis, pushing the blunt 
end of his thing against the resilient and dampening lips of her mound. 

No, she thought, something had to happen to stop this; someone had to appear 
and drag this animal from her body-police, a neighbor, some stranger coming 
up the twisting dirt road-oh, no, no-not inside her labia, not pushing 
cruelly and steadily up into the lips of her thing, her vulva. 

Inside her. It was inside her, the knobby head of his penis shoved savagely 
up into her vagina, moving deeper and -deeper as his pelvis thrust forward 
and his penis lifted. Heather felt the man's crotch push against her own, 
felt the sac that contained Arley Santee's testicles as it came against the 
cleft of her buttocks. 

"Clear to the root," Arley panted, "got it stuck up this red, hairy pussy 
clear to the root, and it's fine, hot cunt, like satin inside." 

Heather closed her eyes and tried to lie supine as Arley drew the length of 
his penis back, back to the distended head. But his hand in the small of her 
back hiked her toward him, and now his other hand cupped the cheek of her 
rear end. Arley moved her lower body to suit himself, and when he stroked 
his long, thick thing back into her shuddering vagina, she felt the driving 
force of it all the way up into her body. 

Another man's penis was moving within her sheath, a man not her husband, a 
man who didn't love her or even pretend to. This one had slapped her and 
bitten her tongue, he would beat her senseless if she tried to resist him. 
Yet he was doing it to her, slaking his lustful, animal need with her slack 
and shamed flesh. He was stroking his hard, swollen thing into her private 
little cave, and she tried very hard to divorce herself from the sordid 
reality of what was happening. 

But the rhythm was solid, deep-there was a movement primeval to the thrusts, 
a pushing of hard flesh within soft flesh, a greased and titillating sliding 
of male cupped by female, and some dark racial memory forced Heather to 
throb with the rhythm. 

Her head rolling from side to side, her hands turned into fists that 
desperately grasped the guilt beneath her back. She was conscious of sweat 
sliding over her skin-her own and Arley's-and somehow that slippery mixing 
of body juices was just as bad, just as sinful, as the blending of their 
flesh. 

Heather reached up to push weakly at his shoulders, but he was kissing her 
again, sucking at her lips and tongue, and she didn't have the strength to 
fight him off. His penis lunged into her, backed out, only to hammer deeply 
once more, and each successive thrust shook her entire body. 

Against her teeth, he said, "Layin' the meat to you, city cunt, fuckin' you 
good, you city bitch. Roll that fine, smooth ass woman! Shake your ass while 
I pump the prick into you-you hear me, bitch?" 

His fingernails bit into her tender skin and Heather squirmed in pain, 
wiggled in reflex as much at his awful language as at the digging of his 
fingers into her butt. Oh, she thought, as Arley burrowed his penis into her 
rippling vagina and withdrew it some more, oh, she hadn't thought of her 
buttocks as her "butt" for years. It was his vile talk, his bad words-his, 
not hers. 

"That's it, woman! Yeah, that's the way to go to town-shake your belly and 
hump it up to ol' Arley. You got a fine, sweet ass, and you're grind-in' it 
like a fresh-fucked bitch dog-yeah, yeah." 

But she wasn't grinding; it was the way he used his hands, the way he was 
lifting and shaking her torso. That's what was making the movements-those 
things and the pounding, piercing surges of his male thing within the 
recoiling walls of her clinging vagina. "Oh!" Heather gasped as a wave of 
pleasure crashed into her body. In spite of her conscious effort to control 
herself, Heather felt her passion mounting. She could feel his balls 
crashing against her asscheeks with each deep thrust and they felt like 
hammers driving nails of joy into her flesh. His penis so completely filled 
her that it threatened to tear her cunt mercilessly apart. 

Then suddenly, as a riptide were overtaking her, she screamed, digging her 
nails into his back and kicking his raging buttocks with her heels as if she 
were spurring a horse on. "AAAAAA-IIIIIEEEE!" 

And Arley, unable to control his pent-up passion, unleashed a white hot load 
of viscous cum into the very shadowy depths of her ravenous cunt. "Hottest 
piece of ass I ever screwed," Arley grunted, and started to back out of her 
body. 

Heather clung to him, tried to keep him inside her cunt, but he only laughed 
and jerked his cock from the silken meshings of her flesh suddenly so rich 
and so feminine. "The hound's growlin', " he said. "Means that somebody else 
might be sniffin' down the road. Don't you worry none, city woman, you and 
me is goin' to fuck some more, right soon. But you don't want to get all 
that greedy, little sister there needs some prick, too. I swear, I never 
seen such wigglin' around and pussy grabbin' as she done while I was 
stickin' the meat to you." 

With that, Heather subsided, too guilty to turn her head for the expression 
upon Honey's face. All her repressions came roaring back, and all the 
shalt-nots echoed in her brain, and Heather realized that she was a loose 
and abandoned woman. What she had just done, the things she had just felt, 
were far worse than taking her dead husband's money and fleeing to the deep 
south with it. At least she could rationalize about that, even though the 
Company wanted it back and said it had been stolen. Heather couldn't find a 
single excuse to justify the pleasure she had felt on being raped. 

And in front of her own teenage sister, too. Before Honey she had writhed 
and bucked like some sex-maddened prostitute, and she hoped fervently that 
her sister could find the goodness to forgive her for the transgression. 

Arley Santee lied in his animal's teeth when he said that Honey had been 
holding herself and squirming in passion; the girl had only been trying to 
get away. 

The man was back into his overalls, straps on his lean shoulders, and he had 
gotten the gun from above the fireplace. Heather watched him jack a shell 
into the chamber, watched him stand listening intently to the big, mean dog 
in the swept-clay yard. 

Looking anywhere but at her sister, her baby sister, Heather pulled the 
quilt around her sweaty body, trying too late to hide it from other eyes. 
She saw the hound standing stiff, alert, one paw lifted from the ground. 
Then he relaxed, went droopy all over, and up on the porch, Arley San-tee 
laughed. 

"Reckon it was just somebody passin' on the country road down yonder. Ain't 
much travelin' up this way, and when they is, it's more'n likely some 
scutter don't want to be seen, neither. Folks run a little whiskey 
hereabouts." 

Swinging the rifle back over one shoulder, Arley grinned down at Heather. 
"You don't need no corn to make you all hot and heavy. I swear, back there a 
spell I thought sure you was goin' to make that red pussy bite off my prick. 
But I can use a drink, and I 'spect your sis there can, too. She didn't get 
her nooky off like you done." 

The hound turned around twice and lay down under the chinaberry tree, 
baleful, yellow eyes fixed on Heather. She would never be able to get past 
him, even if he fell asleep. 

"I'll loosen your hands, sis," Arley said. "Just take you a big swaller 
out'n this jug, and it'll fix you right up. Go on, I said, drink it!" 

How could she, Heather wondered, how on earth could she have responded in 
kind to the bestial sensuality of this woods' runner? But, then, how could 
said Heather Hyatt Luther be trying to hide from men who were after the rest 
of Vic's money, and who might kill her when they found it? 

 CHAPTER TWO 

A slow breeze made its way up from the turgid river below the shack, and 
Heather was glad for the stirring of air. Heat from the wood cook stove made 
the inside of the shack unbearable, and, even on the porch, sweat gathered 
on her nearly nude body and her hair felt sticky against her head. 

She still didn't enjoy meeting her sister's eyes, and instead stared down at 
the piece of corn pone she didn't really want to finish. But she needed its 
strength; Heather meant to get away from the shack and the brutal, lewd man, 
so she ate the coarse bread and drank from the gourd of spring water. 

Arley Santee said, "I'll bust us a rabbit tonight, and maybe scrabble up a 
big ol' mudcat for you to cook. And you, baby sister, how you like that 
stump juice?" 

Honey nodded her head, and Heather could see that her sister was well on the 
way to being drunk. Santee was forcing that awful moonshine whiskey upon the 
girl, and she wasn't used to alcohol. 

Heather looked at their suitcases, sitting yet on the first step of the 
porch, where they'd first put them down. She wanted a dress, something to 
replace the one Arley had torn from her body, anything to cover up her 
semi-nakedness, but he had come close to stopping her from putting her 
panties and bra back on. 

"Might's well take off your shirt, sis," he said to Honey. "Let's see what 
kind of titties you got on you." 

Heather cut in, "Please-look, if you'll only listen to reason, I'm sure we 
can work out some. . . . " 

"Woman," he said, "I ain't talkin' to you; me and sis here are workin' up to 
a good screw. That's the way, sis, take that shirt right on off." 

Heather said desperately, "She-she's only a child. If you have to-to force 
yourself on someone, take me." 

His pale eyes glittered up at her. "Oh, I aim to take you some more, woman. 
But I mean to fuck this 'un, too. You might's well get used to the idea, and 
shut up 'til you're spoke to." 

A slight giggle escaped Honey Hyatt as she peeled off her shirt to show that 
she hadn't been wearing a bra. Heather stared in shock at her baby sister's 
bare breasts, and saw that they were neatly, tidily modeled. They were high 
and cone-shaped, and the light brown circles in the centers were offset by 
darker brown nipples that were standing shamelessly erect. 

"Honey!" Heather said sharply, and Arley Santee swung a casual backhanded 
slap that rocked her head. In the yard, the black and tan hound growled a 
warning thunder, and Heather put a hand to her burning cheek. 

Honey said, "Can't help it, got to-to do like the man says. Can't hide it 
any longer. Right, Arley?" 

"Reckon so, city girl. Them are right pert titties, so now let's take a look 
at your pussy." 

"Can't help myself," Honey said, her brown head lolling, her mouth a little 
slack. "Can't be a little kid forever, because the man says get it off." 

Watching her sister rise unsteadily to her bare feet and work at the 
waistband of her shorts, Heather blamed the reaction on the bootleg whiskey. 
Surely Honey wasn't such a hussy, the girl had always been obedient and 
never wild. It must be the alcohol, for Honey ,was now swaying as she 
unzipped and worked the shorts down over her slim legs. Heather saw that she 
did have panties on, and that even though her sister had always seemed 
somewhat delicate, that Honey's body was well-shaped. The thighs weren't 
lush, but dainty, and even if Honey was on the tiny side, she was put 
together with jeweled precision, it appeared. 

"Yes, sir," Arley said, grinning around his jug of whiskey, "that there is 
real pretty hide, all young and tender-like. But get to the pussy, sis, get 
to the pussy." 

Hooking thumbs into the elastic band of her sheer panties, Honey pulled them 
over her squirming hips, down her thighs, and over her knees; then she 
lifted one slow leg at a time, to step out of them entirely. The pubic hair 
on her sister's mound was a deep, rich brown, Heather saw, a match for her 
hair, and Heather had a fleeting gladness that Honey had not been cursed 
with red hair, that she'd taken more after their father. 

Her sister was beautiful, Heather thought, and felt a pang of guilt for not 
having protected that loveliness better. Now the poor child was about to be 
raped, as Heather herself had been raped, and nothing, nobody, could stop 
it. 

Unless-and Heather steeled herself to the thought-unless she could attack 
Arley Santee, hit him with something when his back was to her and he was 
busy despoiling the girl. 

She looked away from her sister's nude flesh, looked around the shaded porch 
to find a weapon in its clutter. She'd seen Arley hang the rifle back over 
the mantelpiece, but she knew it couldn't possibly be reached before he 
reacted. She didn't know how to work it anyhow. 

Past the end of the porch there was a chopping block with a hatchet sticking 
into it. Heather shuddered, she couldn't strike a human being with that-even 
a man so depraved as Arley Santee. A piece of stove wood would be better, 
something to stun him with, so they could flee back to some kind of 
civilization. 

"Like-me?" Honey asked, and Heather caught her breath as the girl rolled her 
bottom suggestively, like one of those obscene dancers on TV. 

"Like you fine," Arley answered. "I'll just lie back here and take me 
another swaller of bust-skull while you come over and straddle me. You ever 
been fucked afore, sis?" 

Swaying boozily, Honey said, "Not yet, but it's about-about time, I guess. 
Is it going to hurt?" 

Heather slid down the porch, moving on her heels, crouching. If she could 
reach the woodpile and get a big, long stick. . . . 

"It'll hurt good," Arley promised, and Heather stared in awful fascination 
at the lifting of his penis, that thick and meaty thing that had only 
recently loosed its spurting inside her vagina. Now it was readying itself 
for an assault upon the virginal mound of Honey, and Heather couldn't allow 
it to happen. She just couldn't. Backing away, she reached the end of the 
porch and slid one foot down for the yard where the woodpile waited. 

Low and throaty, the rumble sounded right at the calf of her leg. Heather 
snatched back her foot, trembling so hard she could barely breathe. That 
damned monster, that hound! He was blocking her way, as cunning and evil as 
his master. She clung to the rickety porch railing, a sob building in her 
throat. Poor Honey; she couldn't help her sister now. 

"A pussy looks funny when you look right up into it thisaway," Arley said. 
"It's made passin' strange-them little soft lips hangin' tight together, and 
that there hood up front. Right pretty hair you got over it, and a fine ol' 
ass, I swear. Come on, sis, kneel down over me with one leg to each side. 
Take hold of my pecker, too." 

Heather bit her lips and closed her eyes; the scene was too painful to 
watch. Poor little Honey would lose her virginity here, with this 
uneducated, animalistic man; she'd have a more difficult time getting 
married, even though this horrible assault would not be her fault. 

It was Heather's fault, she should have taken her sister to a different 
place. It was only a quirk that had brought her to the deep south, 
anyway-some left over legend she had heard at her grandma's knee. Grandma 
had been from around here, from this very part of Mississippi, but surely 
she hadn't been like Arley Santee. No, Grandma was aristocratic and genteel, 
and Heather had learned many of her moral values. 

"Just play with my cock to your heart's content, sis," Arley said, "because 
I'll pull it back, do you try to make me come by jackin' me off." 

Hideously, the dirty words jolted upon Heather's ears, and she did her best 
to reject them, as she hoped Honey was also doing. The girl was numbed with 
liquor, frightened by the ugly power of Arley Santee, but maybe when it was 
over, Honey could keep the event from becoming traumatic. 

"Just steer it to your pussy," Arley commanded. "Guide it on into them pink 
cunt lips and kind of wiggle around until the head of my pecker gets set 
solid to your hole." 

Heather couldn't seal out the language, and her face turned toward them as 
they posed starkly there together; she was drawn by something more 
compelling than the weakened fabric of her moral values. She had to watch 
them because she could not help herself, even though a part of her recoiled 
in distaste from the sight of beginning copulation. 

Her baby sister sat astride of the nude man, one knee on each side of his 
body. Arley was stroking the knees, the upper thighs, and watching avidly as 
Honey pushed the glistening head of his penis into the soft wealth of her 
brown pubic hair. Heather stared at the girl as she held her upper body 
poised erectly, the small mounds of her breasts outthrust with nipples 
stiff. It was as if she was going to stab herself in the crotch, Heather 
thought, as if the girl held a dagger she had to work into her tenderly 
giving body. There was fear, of course, and something elsea determination, 
perhaps. 

Clenching her hands upon her own thighs, Heather sat immobile except for the 
pulse beating wildly in her throat and the heaving of her breasts. The 
moment was at hand; her little sister was going to be deflowered. 

Honey shivered. Heather could see the ripple that passed over her sister's 
flawless skin, and she could also see the meaty pole of Arley Santee as it 
buried its head into the girl's tender vulva. Honey was lowering her body, 
inching slowly and uncertainly down upon that upright shaft of maleness. 
Honey's face contorted and her eyes closed, and Heather thought, it's 
hurting her; it's tearing up into her hymen and hurting her, the poor, 
innocent child. 

"Uhhh!" Honey moaned. "Oh-it's-I can feel it sliding up and up inside me 
and-oh, oh, I'm stretching, stretching. . . . " 

The girl's polished haunches moved farther down, their sweet roundness so 
young and so beautiful. Honey leaned forward as her hips came lower, and her 
firm breasts pointed downward for Arley's hands. He reached up and held to 
them, and Heather watched him roll his belly, saw him hunch his crotch 
upward as the entire head of his penis vanished into the silken lips of 
Honey's young labia. 

"Ooohh!" Honey sighed, her chest coming down and down, her tail riding, 
squirming, wiggling down and down. Another inch of the man's heavy tool 
disappeared into the vulva, and Honey's butt hesitated, seemed to try and 
lift itself away from the thickness of the thing penetrating her unused 
vagina. 

The head of it must be poking against the hymen, Heather thought, that 
distended glans must be shoving insistently against the barrier of 

Honey's virginity-pushing, poking, demanding entrance to the sensitive 
depths beyond. It had happened to Heather once-after nights of sweaty, 
clumsy attempts it had finally happened, and her husband acted apologetic 
for weeks afterward. 

"It's in you!" Arley grunted. "It's stuck clear up into your pussy, sis, and 
damned if you ain't just as hot and even tighter'n the other cunt. Just 
shake your ass, girl, wind it up and shake it so's you can enjoy your first 
fuck." 

Heather stared at his hands as they clung to the cheeks of her sister's 
tail. She saw Honey shake her head and throw her hair from side to side, and 
she saw Arley scrunch down so that he could take one of the girl's adorable 
little nipples into his suctioning mouth. 

Honey lay still atop the man, lay quietly supine as she felt the length and 
thickness of the man's rod buried inside her vagina, as she knew the feeling 
of his pelvis against hers, and the strange pressure into the hood that 
protected her clitoris. 

"Fuck away," Arley directed. "Just do what comes natural to you, sis. With a 
hot, juicy pussy like you got, it must be you're just a born piece of ass so 
just turn it loose!" 

The girl moved, lifted her shapely buttocks slowly and with care, and 
Heather could see Arley's penis being exposed, all shiny with Honey's inner 
lubrications. Up, the girl's butt-her asswent, until almost all his 
thing-his cock-was gleaming in the open. Then Honey slid back down upon the 
shaft, moaning as she did so, and Heather's fingers clawed into the skin of 
her own thighs. 

Her mouth was pulling at the humid air, and Heather's nipples ached. She 
felt dizzy, all soft and limp, and fought against the urgency that was 
rising darkly, violently within her own feverish body. No, she told herself 
savagely, no! This was wrong for Honey, and twice wrong for the older 
sister, for the one who'd had to play both mother and guardian all their 
lives. 

Rocking back and forth upon her heels, Heather fought the badness within 
herself, and watched the sexual scene before her as she might watch a movie 
she had not meant to see, the action fleet and repetitive but never quite 
the same. Honey was moving faster now, wiggling with each hike and drop of 
her ass, her hands clutching Arley's shoulders, her mouth fastened to his. 
It was good inside her vagina, Heather realized, the girl was discovering 
the sensuous joy of having her clitoris stroked by the rhythmic passage of 
Areley's prick. Honey was riding it as if every touch were magic and she had 
to hurry before the enchantment went away, had to hurry to reach the peak 
before the witching hour. 

"F-Far out!" Honey cried. "Oh, yes, lover man, oh, do it to me, darling! 
Stick it deeper and deeper, and-oh-oh, yes, baby! I'm-it's happening to 
me-it's happening!" 

Honey's slim ass jerked and shuddered, and she clawed at the man's 
shoulders, bit at his tanned throat as she went wild in the throes of her 
first orgasm. The girl was coming, Heather thought, and envied her sister 
the sweet, hot rush of torrid sensation that was bursting through her 
vagina-her womb-that was vibrating that young clitoris. 

"Hang on, you cunt! I'm shovin' it to you, fuckin' you right good 
now-yeah-ahhh, yeah! Grind that pussy on my cock, sis, I'm about to come!" 

The girl shook and bounced, as if her body was out of control and hunching 
itself, twisting itself, in a mad hunger for more rapture. Heather's glazed 
eyes saw Arley's balls leap upward as they flexed, and knew that the 
fountaining of his hot semen was splashing into her sister's tightly 
clinging cunt. 

Thighs squeezed tightly together, tits aching and throbbing, Heather cupped 
one hand over her own tremulous mound, fighting the impulse to slide a 
finger into the dewy lips of the pussy itself. She would not do such a 
thing, could not-but oh, oh-the temptation was great. 

Her sister collapsed atop the sweaty form of the man who could no longer be 
called a stranger to either of them, for he had fucked them both, had pumped 
his hotly flowing juices deep up into their cunts, and saturated them with 
his forceful manhood. 

Quaking inside and out, Heather gnawed her lip and watched the little sexy 
ripples that passed over her sister's ass. The girl had gotten her climax 
the very first time out, the first time she had taken a man's penis into her 
sheath, and Heather envied her for that. 

But then she passed a hand over her eyes and shook her head to clear it, and 
she knew by all criteria that Honey wasn't to be envied, but pitied. The 
poor kid had been raped, had lost her cherry-her maidenhead-to that 
backwoods animal who could have no concept of even the word love. 

At least Heather had once known that much, for Vic had loved her in his 
weakly fumbling way. She could never understand how he could be so unsure at 
home and so sharply concise in his work. It took an efficient man to be what 
her husband had been, a very good CPA. If he hadn't been the best available 
back in New England, the Company wouldn't have used him, and she wished now 
that he had been only mediocre. She wouldn't be running and hiding if he'd 
never done the Company's books, she and her little sister would never have 
suffered the ultimate indignity of rape. 

It was all on the recording her husband left in the safety deposit box, and 
she'd felt weird, listening to the voice of a man already buried. But Vic 
had it set up for her to live comfortably; he had been milking the Company 
slowly and carefully for almost a year, covering his tracks as only an 
adroit accountant could. And he told Heather in the tape where the hundred 
thousand dollars was. He also warned her that she'd have to leave quickly. 

"Pick up the money and run, Heather," his voice said. "Go far away to some 
place where nobody knows you, and hide. In a year or two you'll be able to 
start spending the money. But don't let them get to you, or they'll kill you 
for it. It's--it's all I could do for you, Heather, and, look, don't worry 
about the money not being honest. There's no way you could give it back; it 
came from gambling and prostitution and dope, all the stuff the Company is 
mixed up in. So I only stole from thieves. Keep it for you and for Honey, 
and -and good luck." 

The tape had ended, and Vic had never once said "I love you" on it. But 
Heather thought he had; she was certain of it. He'd gambled his life to buck 
the gangsters of the Company, just so she could take care of her little 
sister. His insurance had been good, but nowhere near the hundred thousand 
dollars hidden in the frozen food locker Vic rented by the mouth downtown. 
So she took the money and she ran, just as he said. The trouble was, she ran 
to the wrong place, to a shack she hadn't even known existed before today. 

"Climb off me, sis," Arley Santee said. "I got to get my strength back afore 
screwin' you some more, or your sister there; I'll decide which gets the 
meat, later on." 

Definitely the wrong place, Heather thought. 

 CHAPTER THREE 

"You got to stay quiet," Arley said. "You don't, ol' Bigdog yonder might 
chew off a leg. Course, I don't 'spect you to bust outa' them ropes, but 
just in case, remember that Bigdog's watchin' mighty close." 

Heather's wrists ached where the ropes bit into them, but she didn't 
complain. She watched his back, covered now by the old blue shirt, and the 
crisscrossing of his overall straps. He had some kind of lamp on his head, 
fastened to a billed cap, and from the white flame that hissed in the 
reflector, he could see his way into the deep, thick woods. Heather watched 
him out of sight in the blackness and, when he was gone, whispered to her 
sister, "Honey, can you wiggle over here?" 

Honey said, "No, he's got me tied to a post, too. Besides, there's that 
dog." 

"We've got to get away from here," Heather said sharply. "We just have to. 
He-he may even kill us, rather than let us get back to the police and turn 
him in for rape." 

Honey said, "I don't know how we'll get away. I mean, all tied up like this, 
while Arley is out hunting. Besides, even if it wasn't for the dog, I'm not 
all that sure how to find the road again, are you?" 

Heather struggled with her ropes, but they only bit deeper into her skin, 
and she stopped twisting at them. "N-no, I'm not sure, either. There were so 
many twists and turns, but we have to do something, we have to try." 

"I'm just glad Arley left the rags burning," Honey said. "They don't smell 
very good, but they're keeping most of the mosquitoes off. I'm kind of glad 
Arley let us put on some clothes, too." 

Heather said, "Don't call him Arley-Arley-as if he was a friend!" 

"Well," Honey answered, "he got pretty friendly with both of us." 

"That-that's nothing to make jokes about," Heather snapped. "You could get 
pregnant and. . . . " 

"Not unless your pills don't work," Honey said. "I've been taking them for a 
couple of months, just in case. And, what do you know, I did get raped." 

"You're-you took my pills? Honey Hyatt, you're not the girl I've known all 
these years! I don't know what's happened to you, but this is no joke; we're 
in a very serious position. He-this man is brutal, savage. We should never 
have asked that other man in the truck; we should have just kept walking, 
looking for the cabin to rent." 

"Arley called him by name," Honey said, "called his Artis. They must be 
brothers because the names are too freaky for them not to be. He really 
goofed us up, all right. I mean-leading us most of the way through those 
woods and carrying the bags and all, as if he was being a real polite 
you-all type of gentleman. The bastard, he knew what would happen to us 
here." 

"Honey! Such language. I'm surprised at you." 

"Well," the girl said, "that's what he is, but I'm not all that uptight 
about Arley doing it to me. It had to happen sometime, and it felt pretty 
good. Now I know I'm not frigid, or unable to reach an orgasm, or any of 
that stuff they scare you with in school." 

Heather worked at her bonds again, tugged without much hope at the post that 
held her at one end of the porch. "Aren't you even trying, Honey?" 

"Okay," Honey said, and dutifully twisted at her own ropes. 

The girl wasn't nearly so frightened as she ought to be, Heather thought. 
Did losing her virginity do that to Honey, somehow numbing her better 
feelings and making her more a creature of the senses? Arousal was still too 
new to Heather to be dissecting its motivations and anticipating its goals. 
If she couldn't control her own topsy-turvy emotions, how could she expect a 
child like Honey to do so? 

"I-we can just put all this unpleasantness behind us," Heather said. "When 
it's all done, we won't ever mention it again. It wasn't our fault, and 
nobody can possibly blame us for-for participating in such an orgy. You and 
I were both forced into it." 

Honey stopped working at her ropes and just sat calmly on the porch, her 
legs crossed under her in Indian fashion. She said, "Tell me, Heather, did 
you and Vic ever make it like that? Like you did with Arley, I mean? I heard 
you groan and kind of scream with Arley, but I never heard a sound back in 
the apartment when you and Vic went to bed." 

"Honey!" Heather felt blood darken her face. "Honey Hyatt, that's a terribly 
thing to-to ask anybody, much less your own sister! I'm ashamed of you, 
really ashamed. Just because you've been raped, that doesn't mean you have 
to turn into a dirty-minded girl." 

Honey said, "You really don't have to answer. I'll bet you never swung with 
Vic." 

"If I could reach you," Heather said, "I'd slap your face." 

Honey giggled. "But you did swing with Arley, just like I did. So maybe it's 
not all that bad for us here. I mean, we're hiding out, like we came down 
here to do. For sure, nobody would ever think of looking for us out here on 
the edge of the swamp. And we're getting some kind of education out of it, 
so why not go along with the guy? If we're really nice to Arley, he's bound 
to ease up sooner or later, and then we can cut out-if we still want to." 

Heather shifted her legs to get more comfortable on the porch. "Of course 
we'll still want to. I can't even pretend to-to enjoy sharing his lust. That 
was something freakish today with him. It must have been some kind of 
combination of fear and my protective instincts and-and-well, a lot of 
things." 

"Sure," Honey said, "and I was pretty smashed." 

Heather sat quietly, listening to the noises in the woods. A breeze moved 
off the river she could not see from the house, and a nighthawk cried 
mournfully from some hidden clearing. Marching almost up to the yard, water 
oaks and pines were so thick they made a solid black shadow. Scattered among 
them would be chinquapin and magnolia trees, she knew, remembering the hours 
at her grandma's knee, and the tales Grandma told of aristocrats and woods' 
runners, of honest folk and white trash. 

There'd been other stories, too, creepy things whispered of moonshine stills 
and lynchings, legends that seemed far more real here and now, as Heather 
sat bound helplessly upon a cabin porch and stared into a night peopled with 
terrors and garlanded by the gray ghosts of Spanish moss. 

When her sister spoke, Heather flinched. Honey said, "Arley lives off the 
land, he says. Grows vegetables in back, and hunts, fishes in or out of 
session. He makes whiskey, too." 

"I don't care what he does or how he lives," Heather said. "I only want him 
to let us go. Honey, you didn't hear the stories Grandma told, the things 
she said about the red-necks down here. They're dangerous, bad, they can 
kill people without the slightest compunction. You saw how he slapped me, 
and you know he'd have hurt you if you hadn't done exactly as he said." 

Honey moved her feet, crossed slim legs. "I don't even remember Grandma, 
only what you've told me about her." 

Heather felt the chasm between them, a generation gap as wide as that 
between present-day daughters and their mothers. Yet her sister had always 
been a good girl-a responsible, reasonable kid who did well in school and 
stayed home nights. She'd been a virgin until Arley Santee forced her to do 
it with him, and that meant something in these days of corrupted morals. But 
now Honey seemed to be letting go, to be sliding downhill into a morass of 
carnality. She was so very casual about being raped, about admitting that 
she had known a sexual climax. 

The girl had been nearly as casual about having to leave the north and flee 
down here, she'd helped to buy the travelers' checks, five hundred here a 
thousand there, while Heather was doing the same thing on the other side of 
town. It had actually been Honey's idea on hiding the Company money again 
and a good idea it was. People who might be following them wouldn't find the 
money now and Vic's insurance was more than enough to carry them for a 
while. 

An eerie sound came from the trees, and Honey whispered, "What's that?" 

"A screech owl," Heather said. "Grandma used to imitate its call perfectly." 

"Wow," Honey said. "I thought owls went hoot-hoot; that damned thing sounds 
like a ghost." 

"Don't curse," Heather said, and they went quiet again, hearing the buzz of 
mosquitoes, the movement of trees in an unseen wind. After a while, the 
hound rumbled low in his chest and got up to pad across the hard-baked yard. 
Big-dog stood at the edge of the clearing, and Heather could only make out 
the faint outline of him against lighter brush. A moment later, the dog came 
back to the porch and lay down across the lower step. 

Watching, Heather saw the spot of light dancing about in the woods, a quick 
specter of white moving across black, over green. The carbide lamp on Arley 
Santee's head, she knew, and was conscious of dual emotions. She was sorry 
he'd come back before one of them could work loose and free the other, but 
she was somehow glad that he would be here to protect them from things that 
might lurk in the dark. 

The man came silently across the yard, rifle swinging from one hand, a big, 
shiny fish from the other. The fish was so big it looked prehistoric, some 
monster swum up out of a place where dinosaurs stalked the marshes. Catfish, 
her mind told Heather, one of the huge mudcats that Grandma was always 
bragging on, but that huge? Its tail touched the ground when Arley had the 
wide, ugly head against one hip, and it had whiskers like the moustache of a 
dead Chinaman. 

"Good 'un," Arley announced. "Scrabbled him out'n a cypress stump fore he 
knew what had him." 

The lamp on his head bobbing, Arley kneeled and propped his rifle against 
the porch steps. He lay the fish on the edge of the porch and made a swift, 
deft motion with a knife that had suddenly appeared in one hand. Then he 
stood and threw the guts of the big fish across the yard and into the brush. 

Climbing the porch, he stooped and used the unclean knife to free Heather's 
hands. "Get some matches and kindlin', light you a fire out yonder under the 
iron water pot. Water gets to boilin', dip this here old mudcat into it and 
his skin'll fall off pretty as anythin'. Then chop his head off with the ax 
and bring him in the house. We'll soak him in water with some bakin' soda, 
and fry some of him for breakfast." 

Rubbing her wrists, Heather climbed to her feet and moved into the house 
where she'd seen a box of wooden matches on the mantelpiece. 

Feeling in the dark she found them, struck one, and lifted the glass shade 
on a coal oil lamp to light the wick. Then, moving stiffly and afraid, she 
went back outside to do exactly as she was told, even though the very touch 
of the fish would send cold shivers through her body. 

Honey was probably right about being nice to Arley Santee, so they could 
lull him into not watching them so closely, make him believe that they liked 
being kept as slaves or squaws or whatever his evil mind could contrive for 
them. 

She saw Honey standing on the porch, saw Arley stroking the girl's hip 
before turning to find his quart fruit jar of colorless corn whiskey. There 
was a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from one corner of his mouth, and she 
saw that he needed a shave worse than ever. 

Gingerly, she moved pitch pine kindling under the old iron pot propped on 
crumbling bricks, and the thin pieces burst into immediate flame at the 
touch of the match. Peering into the pot, Heather wanted to dump out the 
water already there, but was afraid she'd have to draw some more from a dark 
well. When it boiled, it would be sanitary, she thought, and carefully 
avoided looking over at the monstrous catfish. 

"Doin' right good for a city woman," Arley said, and she didn't look at him, 
either. He was working on the whiskey, and she was fearful of what the 
liquor would do to him. Surely, she thought, he wouldn't be all that eager 
to-to do it to one of them again, not so soon. 

Her husband had a schedule of twice a week -less if she wasn't feeling well, 
and only after both of them had fresh baths. This woods' runner had already 
had sex with two women within the space of a few hours, and it just didn't 
stand to reason that he would be able to do it again tonight. 

"Take a spell for the pot to boil," Arley said. "Come over here and get you 
a drink." 

Heather looked up. "I-I don't want one, thank you." 

"Didn't ask what you wanted," he said. "Told you to get your ass over and 
swaller a drink of this here good corn." 

Drawing a deep breath, Heather walked across the yard and saw the yellow 
eyes of the big hound dog following each step she took. The dog and the man 
were two of a kind, she decided; both were lean and hungry looking, and both 
were dangerous. 

The corn whiskey was nearly without taste, but when it hit her stomach, it 
burned furiously, and Heather coughed, choked, and gasped for air. She tried 
to turn away, but Arley grabbed her by the hair and twisted her head to him. 
"Take you another 'un," he ordered. "Good for what ails you." 

Struggling against nausea, she swallowed, swallowed again so that the stuff 
he was pouring into her mouth wouldn't choke her. He let her go then, and 
she grabbed the railing for support. 

Arley laughed. "Get you some strength up for fuckin'. I aim to really tear 
up your pussy tonight, city woman, figure to let HI' sister's pussy rest a 
spell, seein' as how she was cherry and must be sore clean to her asshole 
after the screw-in' she give me afore. But you got some lovin' to do 
yourself." 

Heather pulled air into her lungs and felt the sudden onslaught of the 
whiskey as it spread insidious tendrils swiftly throughout her nervous 
system. She'd never been a drinker, and this potent stuff went right to her 
head. The water, she thought, and made her way to the pot to check it. When 
she held the huge fish by the tail and dipped it into the bubbles, she was 
glad for the courage the liquor gave her. She only shuddered a little bit as 
she carried the catfish into the house after Arley chopped the ugly head 
off. 

Scrubbing at her hands in a washbasin, she felt him come up behind her. He 
put both hands under her arms and caught her by the breasts while he shoved 
his swollen penis against her buttocks. He was already stripped, she 
thought, and her head spun as much from shock as from the heady swirling of 
the whiskey there. 

"We'll have us a genuine good fuck," Arley Santee said, and she was so 
numbed that the word didn't cut as deeply into her senses. 

 CHAPTER FOUR 

One man was sleek and dark, the other bald, chunky, and of no particular 
shadings. The dark man was younger by at least ten years and, even though he 
seemed not to enjoy it, did everything the older man said. 

He came back to the car and put his head inside. "They picked up another car 
here, just like you figured, but there's four ways out of town. So which way 
would they pick?" 

Scarpo rubbed his hand over his bald head, hating the heat, the mugginess, 
hating having to sit in it with the air conditioner turned off while the big 
car was parked at the curb. He said, "They been coming on south all the 
time. Stands to reason they'll keep on that way. The broad is smart, though, 
she thought if she turned in the rental car here, that we'd figure she was 
at the end of the line and start chasing around this goddamned hot town 
looking for her." 

The other man stood up again, looked up and down the street. "Cost us a 
whole day, anyhow. What now?" 

Rubbing a handkerchief over his head, Scarpo said, "Geech, we just keep 
going. Next big town, we got it all to do again, check out the agencies. She 
can't leave that car in no little town, only one big enough for rental 
cars." He grunted and climbed out of the Continental, a wide, rumpled man 
obviously uncomfortable in the climate. "I'll go in the bus station and call 
north, have 'em check out the broad's background some more, see if they 
can't tell us about where she'll land when she stops running. You sit in the 
car." 

"Okay," Geech said, "I can take the heat out here." 

Scarpo looked at him. "We don't find Mrs. Luther and her kid sister, there's 
going to be some heat we can't take, from the Company." 

 CHAPTER FIVE 

He brought them inside, behind the screen door that kept out the mosquitoes, 
that held back the night bugs trying to fly to the coal oil lamp. Arley 
jacked a handful of shells from the rifle and put them into a drawer in a 
rickety dresser, then hung the gun on its pegs above the fireplace. 

"You all hungry, or fillin' up on the corn?" 

Honey giggled. "I'm okay." 

Heather wasn't all that okay, the whiskey was buzzing in her head and racing 
through her veins. It was hot, so hot. 

Arley said, " 'Spect we'll wait for breakfast, then; fried mudcat and hush 
puppies, good ol' coffee. Have another drink, you women." 

Honey reached for the jar and drank, wiped her mouth, and sat on the edge of 
the bed, waiting for the man's next order. Heather started to shake her head 
at the liquor, caught a glimpse of Arley's hard, pale eyes, and took the jar 
instead. She didn't even dare fake a swallow with those eyes watching, so 
she choked down a gulp and shuddered. 

"Good enough," Arley said. "You all get naked, now, and we'll have us that 
fuck." 

There was no use protesting, Heather knew, no need to say 'oh, please don't 
make us strip in front of each other'. He wouldn't listen, and it might make 
him angry enough to slap her again. She was almost grateful for the numbness 
of the alcohol, because it made her care a little less that her baby sister 
was about to see her humiliated and degraded again. 

She undressed and stood slumped over, hands crossed before her mound, 
looking down at the shack's rugless floor. Heather heard the bed-springs 
creaking and, from the corner of her eye, caught the flash of Honey's bare 
legs as the girl wiggled out of her clothing. She also saw Arley Santee's 
legs, white and disgustingly hairy. Would the man never be glutted with sex, 
never have his debauched appetites satsified? 

"You two look fine," Arley said, "real fine. I'm right sorry my brother 
ain't here to get him some of this fine nooky, but I reckon I can't wear it 
all out afore he comes home. Artis ain't never had him no city ass like 
this, neither." 

Grabbing at any excuse to delay what was going to happen, Heather said, 
"Artis, your brother? Was that the man who stopped his truck and carried our 
bags up into the woods? We only asked the way to a cabin, one that people in 
town told us was for rent." 

Arley put down his jar of whiskey and moved to Heather. He put his hands on 
her waist and began running them up and down her body. He stood so close 
that the swollen head of his penis touched the skin of her tummy, and 
Heather flinched. 

He said, "Now ain't that slick of ol' Artis? I mean, he seen two city 
pussies just a'standin' in the road, and he figured to send 'em right to his 
brother. I owe Artis for that." 

Heather squirmed beneath his hands, trembled when he mashed her breasts and 
fingered her nipples, and she silently cursed those nipples for responding, 
for going stiff at his touch. Eyes closed, she swayed, and prayed to faint, 
but blessed blackness wouldn't come. Heather felt the man take one haunch in 
his hand, and he pulled her even nearer. With the other hand, Arley guided 
the head of his thing between her thighs and shoved the length of the meaty 
staff along the lips of her vulva-not into the labia as yet, just along it, 
and the upward pressure of the bent-down staff was powerful. It was also 
somewhat tantalizing, but Heather wouldn't admit that. She stood with her 
hands limply at her sides as the man rubbed his hairy belly across her own, 
moved his pelvis insinuatingly, so that his penis pressed against her mound, 
slid over her labia. 

A great, shuddering breath broke from her, and Arley caressed both cheeks of 
her butt as he teased her vulva with his rod. Then he said, "Get up on the 
bed. And you, sis, you just slide that tight ass on over by the wall. I'm 
goin' to screw your sister here, but I want you right to hand, maybe to feel 
up some. Whooie! I 'spect ain't a man in this here whole county had him two 
naked women in his bed afore." 

He let her go, and Heather's legs carried her stiffly to the bed. She sat 
down on the sagging mattress and started to lift her legs, but Arley Santee 
shoved her over-turned her over-and said, "On your hands and knees, like you 
was a bitch dog just comin' in heat. Just stick that fine ass right on up in 
the air, so I can come around behind and mount you like ol' Bigdog would, 
did I give him the chance." 

The room seemed to rock as Heather got on hands and knees. She felt dirtied 
already, felt ashamed of her breasts hanging down, and her naked butt thrust 
high. She hoped beyond hope that her sister wasn't looking at her, hoped 
that little Honey's drinks were putting the girl under. But a quick glance 
to her left told Heather this wasn't so. Honey was turned on her left side, 
nude and staring with obvious interest as the bed creaked under Arley's 
added weight. 

Heather looked down at the hand-stitched quilt beneath her spread hands and 
wished that she had gone straight on to California, maybe even to Japan. 
Running from the possibility of one trap, she had only put her sister and 
herself into a worse web, an entanglement of flesh and passions that it 
seemed impossible to break out of. Yet she had to try, and soon, before poor 
little Honey became as debauched as the evil man who was using both their 
bodies for his selfish lusts. 

"Got you a ass like a good mule's," he said, fondling her exposed cheeks, 
rubbing the head of his terrifying penis up and down in the very cleft 
between her buttocks, teasing the ring of the anus itself. "All round and 
slicky, and them red hairs curl all up the crack. Just you stay braced while 
I get the knob of my pecker up to the lips of your pussy." 

Heather wobbled a bit when he set the blunt and seeking end of his thing to 
her vulva, when he pressed it to her labia. The lips were damp, and 
streached to take him inside, and the hands on her waist urged her backward, 
pulled her lower body down over the hard length of his penis. 

"Uhh!" Arley grunted. "Got it jammed home clear to the root. Got it stuck 
right on up into your tight, hot cunt, city woman. Get the cheeks of your 
ass up to my belly and my cock shoved home in your redheaded pussy." 

He stroked it into her vagina, and Heather hated the response of her fevered 
body, for her thing seemed to go all steamy, to turn itself liquidy inside 
in order to better oil the man's lunging penis. 

"Get hold of them tits," Arley said, "use 'em like they was hand grips. 
Shake that thing, city woman, oh, shake that thing!" 

His hands cupped her pendulous breasts, and his fingers dug into their 
dangling softness. Arley clung to them, and his belly was against her ass 
now, his chest down upon her back, his knees up between her spread thighs. 
He was steadily shoving his stiff prick in and out of the eager sheathing of 
her aroused cunt, drawing the length of it far back, so that only the 
flanged head of it was retained by her pussy lips, then driving it deeply 
with a strong heave of his pelvis. 

Each solid thrust jolted Heather's down-hanging head. Every powerful slam 
made her entire body bounce, for Arley Santee was fucking her harder this 
time, much more savagely than he had screwed her before. His prick hammered 
into her flexing vagina, the head of it a battering ram that shook her womb, 
and from time to time she could feel the flying sac of his balls as it swung 
high up to touch her pubic mound. 

"Fuck you hard, woman!" Arley panted, his fingers chewing into her tender 
tits. "Grind my ol' dick into your high class pussy so you won't never 
forget it. All you goddamn stuck-up city bitches-you been against me all my 
life, you been laughin' at he for bein' a country boy, and I had to put up 
with it-but no more, you hear! Me an' ol' Artis got us a bunch of money now, 
and we aim to fuck all the stuck-up city pussy there is. Uh-uh-uh!" 

He pounded her cunt, ripped his hard staff up into her shuddering cunt, laid 
the meat hard and mean into her while she moaned and rolled her ass, while 
Heather flinched and gasped and took all he had to give. 

The bed leaped and rattled, and Arley's prick made sloshing, sucking noises 
as it churned around inside her maddened pussy. Heather was blind, and her 
tits ached under the gripping of his hands, but she rocked her ass around 
and hunched it back to him. The hotness blazed within her body, and the 
animal-like position they were in made their fucking more primeval, made it 
a basic, wild need that broke foaming throughout the core of Heather Luther. 
Her core was her cunt, and the pinwheeling insanity of her cunt was her 
clitoris, all throbbing and thrumming. 

"Fuck me, fuck me!" she cried out. "Oh, keep on fucking me, you hard-cocked 
bastard!" 

And, in the echo of her cry, Heather faintly heard her sister say, "Wow." 
Ass heaving, she rode back upon Arley's meat, and the sweet craziness 
bubbled, frothed, and made his prick slippery, made his balls wet and slidy. 

"Shootin' off!" Arley muttered. "I'm shootin' off in you, blowin' my come 
all over your pussy!" 

She felt it explode far back into the cup of her womb, knew the sticky juice 
that was squirting spasmodically in her vagina. Her own orgasm surged and 
waned, lifted and fell again, as her cunt luxuriated in its bath of semen. 
When his hands slipped weakly from her tits, Heather reached way back 
between her thighs to fondle the wrinkled sac that held his testicles, and 
her hand also knew the sensitive, lathered lips of her pussy. 

"Damn," Arley sighed, "but you shake a mean ass, woman. Like to tore off my 
pecker." 

He backed out of her, pulled back so that his penis slipped greasily from 
the reluctant grasp of her labia. Heather let go of his balls and, when 
Arley climbed off the bed, she unhinged at knees and elbows, so that she 
collapsed upon the coverlet. 

Panting for air, the sweat running in rivulets off her body, Heather 
burrowed her face into a pillow with a flour-sack pillow slip, and fought 
down the terrible emotions that had taken control of her. Horrible, 
monstrous emotions they'd been, viciously lascivious and insane. The liquor, 
her mind said, seizing upon the nearest available excuse, the raw corn 
whiskey had shaken her mind and weakened all her moral fiber. Heather Luther 
couldn't have said those things, could not possibly have reacted so 
orgiastically, like some woman of the streets. The whiskey and the nervous 
strain she'd been under-those things, and the heat, the tropical lushness of 
Mississippi where the sultry air itself was sensuous. 

She rolled over and looked up just as Arley leaned over and patted her 
sister's crotch, rubbing his fingers into the profuse brown hair of Honey's 
mound. "That about does it for me, I 

'spect. Got to put off your HP pussy until tomorrow, I reckon. But don't you 
worry none, sis, you're bound to get your fair share of prick." 

Heather watched the man's bare butt as he went to the shelf and stood 
drinking over the water bucket, drinking from a long-handled dipper. Then 
she glanced away, angry with herself, solid inside and out, needing a bath 
and a douche. 

There'd be none, at least until tomorrow, she realized. Then they'd have to 
wash in the river, but that was better than remaining grimy and sweaty. And 
maybe she and Honey would get a chance to run away from this perverted sex 
monster. 

Arley walked out onto the porch and said something to the big hound always 
vigilant in the yard, then she heard the tinkle of liquid as he relieved 
himself over the wall. Animal, she thought, just an animal. 

Honey said, "Heather? You all right?" 

"I'm okay," she answered. "I was-a little drunk, I guess." 

"You were a little something," Honey said. "Wow! Do I act that farout when 
I'm screwing him?" 

"Don't say that!" Heather said sharply. "I-we can't be blamed for things we 
do under the influence of alcohol. We're not our true selves then. You and I 
are not common, even if we're in a strange situation where we have to do the 
best we can. So stop using those filthy words." 

"Me?" Honey asked, and rolled onto her back to stare up at the cobwebby 
board ceiling. 

Arley came back in and took another quilt from the foot of the bed. 
Spreading it on the floor, he said to them, "Leavin' the lamp on, and I 
sleep right here. Don't you all forget that ol' Bigdog's in the yard, and he 
sleeps even lighter'n I do." 

"Please," Heather said, "won't you let us go now? We promise not to say 
anything to anybody about-about anything at all. We'll leave the county, the 
state, even; nobody will ever know." 

"Oh, shit," Arley said, "now you got to have better sense than that, woman. 
I can't trust you all a lick, and both of us know that. You'd be hollerin' 
to the law, time you got out on the county road. Besides, I got to stay busy 
doin' something 'til Artis gets back with all that money." 

"I'll give you some money," Heather said, as he kneeled naked upon the quilt 
and took another long pull at his fruit jar before screwing the cap back on 
and setting the bottle aside. How much, she wondered, she couldn't touch the 
caches they'd spread along the route. There was only about a thousand 
dollars hidden in the lining of her suitcase, and less than that in 
travelers' checks in her purse. But even half that much should seem a 
fortune to somebody who lived in a shack like this. 

Arley grunted. "Time I get ready, 'spect I'll take what you got anyhow, but 
I'm talkin' about real money-more'n me and Artis ever seen in our whole 
life, enough to shake this ol' red dust off'n us and go to the city. You 
hush now and go to sleep. You goin' to need your strength tomorrow." 

Heather felt along the mattress and took her sister's small hand. Honey said 
nothing, but she didn't try to draw away. Heather watched the ceiling where 
the oil lamp cast softly dancing shadows, and she felt the sweat drying at 
last upon her skin. The night was a bit cooler, but not much, and the noises 
of the dark grew louder, more frightening. A whippoorwill cried mournfully 
in the forest, and something yapped shrilly in answer. 

The rifle, she thought; if Arley Santee slept deeply, it was possible they 
might reach the rifle and the ammunition. She didn't know how to load the 
gun, though, and he didn't seem like a man who would bluff easily. 

Even if they got by him, there was always the vicious hound, and beyond 
Bigdog, the forest itself, where deadly snakes slithered and quicksand bogs 
waited for things to drown. 

 CHAPTER SIX 

"This fuckin' heat is going to kill me," Scarpo said. "Every time we have to 
get outa' the car, this fuckin' heat comes down on me like a thick, wet 
blanket." 

"You're getting old," Geech said, hands light upon the steering wheel of the 
Continental. "Maybe you ought to fly back and let me handle this by myself." 

For maybe a half mile of highway, Scarpo didn't answer. Then he said, "Maybe 
you ought to call up north and tell 'em that idea. Me, I think you'd have 
trouble finding your ass with both hands, and I think you'd screw up the hit 
if you did stumble across the broads. But maybe the man up north changed his 
mind about sending me to handle things, and you as a backup. Call him up and 
ask him." 

Geech's lips went thin as he pressed them together. "Just putting you on, 
Scarpo. Hell, we work good together. Look, man, I'll get out and check the 
towns, while you keep the motor going and the air conditioning on. Okay?" 

Scarpo looked out the window for a while, and Geech said, "What you figure 
they did with the bread?" 

"I don't know,"' Scarpo answered. "The way Mrs. Luther is playing this, she 
may be too smart to have it with her. Mailed it to herself, maybe; put it in 
a safety deposit box in any one of these goddamned hillbilly towns we been 
through. How the hell I know? But I tell you this-we find her and we find 
out where the money is. I guarantee you she tells us and shows us." 

Geech nodded, slowed the car as they came to a town. "I never figured 
different." 

 CHAPTER SEVEN 

The water felt so good that Heather didn't even care that they were all 
naked together. She didn't fret over the murky, brown color of the river, 
nor the turtles and fish and certainly the water moccasins that lived in it. 
She splashed water over her shoulders, dug her bare toes into the sandy 
bottom, and sighed in pure bliss. Then she lowered her tail and sat in the 
water, feeling it flow coolness and cleanliness over her flesh, and it was 
luxury. 

Arley Santee's rifle stood upon the bank, propped against a tree within easy 
reach, and close by lay the black and tan hound, its yellow eyes fastening 
first to Heather, then to Honey, as if it had placed them in order of 
danger. 

Honey played girlishly in the river, ducking her head below the surface and 
sputtering up again, laughing and skylarking as if she were in some 
civilized swimming pool. Heather shook her head, wishing that Honey would 
take their situation seriously, seeing the girl's slim, diminutive body 
flash wetly, intriguingly, in the early morning sunlight. 

The small but shapely breasts were now diamonded by a spray of water 
droplets, now dipped from sight, and, when Honey stood up, moving her hands 
voluptuously over her wet skin, they seemed to linger in the deep, rich 
curling of her pubic hair. 

Her sister was a beautiful girl, Heather admitted, growing so swiftly toward 
ripeness, but budding more quickly now that her sexuality had been aroused. 
She could hardly fault Santee for staring so hungrily at the young and 
tender loveliness that Honey exposed. And, of course, Arley's thing began to 
lift, the head of it swelling, turning darker, the long shaft getting 
longer, stiffening even as Heather looked at it. She tore away her eyes, 
thinking that he must indeed be some kind of super-male to remain almost 
constantly in a state of erection like that. If her dead husband had been 
even half so amorous, he'd never have had time to get any business done. 

She moved regretfully from the cool caress of the river, feeling the water 
surface lap at her buttocks, at the round fullness of her thighs, at her 
knees, and its touch was somehow masculine. Maybe Vic would have been better 
off, maybe alive today, if he'd paid less attention to juggling the 
Company's books and more attention to making love to his wife. 

Had Vic gotten so much raw delight from doing it with her? She glanced at 
Arley as he moved toward her baby sister, his long penis arching at Honey's 
nakedness. Vic never seemed so excited, so anxious to do it and keep doing 
it, and she would have bet that her husband had never changed over to 
another woman. Vic just lacked the energy-the drive-for that. 

He'd taken care of them, though. Loyally, she stuck up for Vic in that 
department. He had made a good home for his wife and sister-in-law, and 
played a dangerous game with the Company's books, with the illegal money 
that passed through his hands. Vic had risked his very life to provide 
Heather with a financial windfall, and he'd have made it even bigger if the 
tragic accident hadn't happened. 

Arley Santee said, "I got me a wish, I got a need to do it like I heard 
about. Sis, you ever eat a man's cock afore?" 

One foot on the bank, Heather turned, a chill shock slamming through her. 
The words burst out of her, "W-what? You-you mean that perversion-that 
deviation-that-that filthy thing? How dare you, Arley Santee? Damn you, 
youyou . . . " 

Honey only cocked one eyebrow as she moved to shore, and there was a 
half-smile playing about her small mouth. Heather caught her breath in 
horror, and leaped in desperation for the rifle propped against the tree 
trunk. She never reached it. 

The hound's paws struck her violently in the ribs, and, with her arms 
flailing, she was tumbled off the bank and back into the river. As the brown 
water closed over her head, the echo of the dog's snarl was in her ears, and 
she kicked against the sand to thrust herself up again. The damned animal 
might have torn out her throat! 

"Might's well stay there and watch while you keep cool," Arley said. "Me and 
sis here will get to it right on the bank. I've heard tell how you city 
women will suck a man's pecker, suck him right on off, but I never got the 
chance to find out the truth of it 'til now. It don't look like sis minds at 
all. So I tell you what, sis, you just kind of hunker down so you can work 
my toes into your pussy and get your gooders thata-way, while you chew on 
this here ol' pecker." 

Standing waist-deep in the flowing water, Heather felt cold, felt her skin 
go taut and icy. For the first time in her life, she knew what it was like 
to want to kill another human being-if Arley Santee was human. 

"D-don't do it, Honey. Please don't lower yourself to-to such perversion. 
Dirty-filthy . . . " 

Arley said, "You want me to put Bigdog on you there in the river? Be a 
pure-D shame to tear up such fine ass, but I'll flat out see it done, you 
don't let sis alone, and quit runnin' your mouth." 

The dog rumbled, the hair standing up along the back of its neck, the long, 
curved teeth showing. Heather stuffed her fingers into her mouth and bit 
hard upon them, quaking from head to toe, goose bumps racing along her 
exposed skin. Helpless-she was so damned helpless. It was as if she were the 
captive audience for a movie-a dirty movie-with the film rolling and light 
shadows moving provokingly upon a gigantic screen. She could not change the 
plot nor stop the projector; even though, when the scene was done, none of 
them would ever be quite the same again -not herself, not her baby sister 
kneeling now between the legs of that brutal man, not Arley himself. 

He was pushing his toes into the brown pubic hair between the girl's thighs, 
and Heather saw her sister squirming upon them, saw Honey fitting her labia 
to the penetration as if she were highly experienced at such a shocking 
performance. 

"Take hold of my pecker," Arley ordered, sitting back on a log and spreading 
his knees wide. "Kind of roll my balls around in your soft hand, sis. I 
swear, if you ain't the hottest pussy I ever saw, especially for just losin' 
your cherry only yesterday." 

Horrified, Heather watched as Honey played with the penis, the hairy sac, 
and even rubbed her fingers across Arley's penis and over the shiny head of 
his thing. Without further command, the girl lowered her face toward the 
throbbing meatpole, and Heather gasped when her sister kissed the blunt end 
of it. 

"Love it up real good," Arley said. "Lick it all over, like a bitch dog." 

Mesmerized, Heather stood in the moving waters of the Chickasawhay River and 
stared at her baby sister doing the most perverted thing Heather could 
imagine, kissing and licking the head of a man's sex organ. How could she? 
Why didn't she dive back into the river, scream, run-anything to get away 
from such a horribly degrading act? 

But Heather knew why not-for the same reason that Heather wasn't swimming 
off right now. There was the rifle and the savage dog, and one of them 
couldn't leave the other sister behind. They were trapped so completely that 
they had somehow become each other's jailer, locked into this continuing 
nightmare until the dreaded warden tired of his vile games with them. 

The girl cupped the man's testicles and fingered along his shaft, gyrating 
her body upon his foot as she did so. Her open mouth came down upon the 
glans, and her red tongue flicked out to lap the distended head. Heather 
trembled, and discovered that her hands had lifted from the river and were 
now squeezing hard upon her breasts. But only for comfort, she told herself 
as her sister's tongue moved teasingly all over Arley's upright penis-the 
end and the rod and even down to the pale-haired balls. 

Honey was no doubt faking it for both their sakes. As the girl had said 
previously, they had to keep this sex maniac happy and satisfied, so that he 
wouldn't hurt them more. They should lull his suspicions and make him 
believe that they actually liked the awful things he was forcing them to do 
with him and for him. 

"Your mouth is near about hot as your pussy," Arley said, putting both hands 
on Honey's head and pushing her face right on down, so that the head of his 
stiff penis slid into her open lips. "Eat my cock good, sis, show ol' Arley 
how you can suck him off." 

She took it between her pink lips, and Heather saw the swollen and veined 
shaft move partway from sight inside her sister's mouth. Heather pressed her 
palms down upon her aching nipples, and beneath the cooling flow of the 
river, her groin contracted. 

"Ummm," Honey moaned, and Arley dug his fingers into her hair, hunched his 
pelvis up and out, so that his prick fed deep into the girl's mouth. 

He'll strangle her, Heather thought, he'll shove that long meat so far back 
into her throat that she'll choke on it. Helplessly, her own mouth opened 
and her lips moved, but no sounds came out, only the ragged gasping of her 
breath. 

Honey began to suck; her cheeks dipped in and out as she sucked his prick 
like a lollipop, pulling upon the spongy head, letting it go to do things to 
it with her quickly racing tongue-so pink and so hotly wet. She clung to his 
balls, to the root of his pulsating cock, pumping her fingers as if she were 
milking an inverted cow's teat. 

Arley was making grunts and groans and wet sighs, he was rolling his ass and 
humping his crotch into Honey's busy face. He ground at her and stroked at 
her, all the while holding to her head, as if he were afraid she might take 
it away before she shot his load. 

He wouldn't do that to her, Heather thought -oh, no, no-he couldn't possibly 
let the semen go right into the poor girl's mouth! Just before the orgasm, 
Arley Santee would surely pull his prick out of Honey's mouth and spurt the 
thick stuff onto the river bank. Not even a man like him would be so cruel 
as to flood Honey's throat with such a fluid. 

Her eyes went wide, for he wasn't pulling out He was hanging to Honey's hair 
and screwingactually fucking-the girl in the face, his balls flapping, and 
his shaft sliding wetly in and out of her mouth, and by the violence of his 
strokes, Heather could see that he was just about to come. 

"S-suck it, you hot little bitch!" he yelled hoarsely. "Suck my come right 
on up from my balls-eat me, eat it-swaller it when I let it go -let it go!" 

Honey's cheeks went in, and she made moaning noises around the cock in her 
mouth, her lips extended all the way to the root of the rod, and pressing 
against the pubic hair. 

"Comin'I" Arley shouted. "Comin' in your mouth and down your fuckin' throat! 
Swaller my come, you little cocksucker, swaller!" 

Honey kept sucking, and Heather realized that the spurting juices were 
slipping down the child's throat, that Arley's hot thick semen was flowing 
in spasms from the head of his prick, and being gulped down because Honey 
could not help herself. She would have to swallow the oyster-like releases 
or not be able to breathe. 

But she didn't have to keep pumping her head on the prick, and she didn't 
have to continue to play with his balls, Heather thought. Pretending was one 
thing, but taking the act too far was different. Honey couldn't be so 
wanton, none of the Hyatts had been like that. They were all churchgoing, 
moral women who only did their connubial duties because their husbands 
expected it of them. As Heather's mother had said, sex was only necessary 
for the breeding of children, and for keeping a certain amount of harmony 
within the home. No good woman enjoyed it, only fallen women like 
prostitutes. 

"Ahh," Arley sighed. "So that's what it's like, to be sucked off by a woman. 
We got to do some more of that, sis, seein' as how you like it most as much 
as me." Turning his head, his softening penis sliding obscenely from Honey's 
mouth all shiny and drippy, he said to Heather, "You can come on out'n the 
water now. Best we get on back to the house in case ol' Artis comes home or 
sends a message." 

Honey strode back into the river to wash her tail, her legs, again. She had 
a satisfied look about her, Heather thought, smirking, know-it-all look. The 
girl was falling swiftly into the lustful life, and would have to be gotten 
free at the very first opportunity that presented itself. Heather knew 
perfectly well that the girl had used Arley Santee's foot-his toes-to 
masturbate upon while she was sucking-while she had been doing that to him. 

He was getting into his overalls, the rifle close at hand. The hound raised 
his black head as Heather stepped up onto the river bank. Arley said, "You 
watch close to see how sis done it? Your turn's acomin', woman, and I 'spect 
you better be good as your sis at suckin'. You know, one time I heard tell 
there's some men suck on women's pussies, but I don't know how much stock to 
put in a tale like that. Seems right unmanly to me, and I know, for one, I 
wouldn't push my face in the same pussy where I push my pecker. Any of them 
city fellers ever suck on your cunt?" 

Heather shuddered and felt the blood rush to her face. The man was 
impossible, his mind so wraped by perversions that he could think of nothing 
else. "No," she said, "I wouldn't allow such a thing, no more than I'd do it 
myself." 

"Oh, you'll do it," he said. "You got no pick. When I say froggie, you get 
down and hop; when I say suck my pecker, you open your mouth and smile. 
Uppity goddamned city woman, think you got gold asses, but you ain't." 

Closing in upon herself, Heather took the light summery dress from the 
down-hanging tree limb and slipped into it, pushed her feet into open 
sandals whose bright colors were out of place in the woods. Honey came up 
from the river, humming under her breath, and Heather knew a sharp stab of 
anger, for the girl should have washed her mouth and spat herself dry. She 
shouldn't be acting so-so downright bitchy! 

"Watch for snakes," Arley warned. "This time of year, they's always a bunch 
down by the river -cottonmouths, water moccasins, a few copperheads, and 
some timber rattlers. Don't see them lil' coral snakes much, but they're 
here, all right, one of 'em bit a feller over to Shuba Creek last week, and 
it killed him afore he could even split the leg with his knife to suck the 
blood." 

Heather shivered and put one foot carefully ahead of the other as she 
preceded him up along the twisty path. Honey was right behind her, and the 
hound between them and Arley Santee and Arley's rifle. He'd deliberately 
reminded them of the deadly snakes, Heather thought, to show them how little 
chance they had of escaping, even if they could find their way back to the 
far-off county road. 

 CHAPTER EIGHT 

Scarpo came out of the public phone booth, his face red and perspiring. He 
wiped a damp handkerchief over his bald head and put his sunglasses back on, 
then crossed the sidewalk and went into the air-conditioned restaurant where 
Geech was already having breakfast. 

Sitting down at the counter beside the slim man, Scarpo said, "Whooo," and 
tipped up the sunglasses to read the menu. 

Geech said, "It's not bad, maybe it sounds crappy, but this grits and 
sausage with eggs, it's not bad. What'd they say up north?" 

Scarpo looked up at the girl behind the counter. "Prune juice, corn flakes 
and milk, coffee after." And, when she went away, he said to Geech, "They 
found a broad knew her a long time back, knew her family, especially a 
grandma." 

"Corn flakes and milk," Geech said. "You oughta' try these hominy grits and 
red-eye gravy. What's a grandma got to do with it?" 

"Grits," Scarpo said, picking his shirt-front away from his barrel chest and 
flapping it for extra coolness. "Grits sounds like they got sand in 'em, and 
red-eye gravy like you drain it out of a car. The grandma come from a little 
town over in Mississippi, over next door from right here. Shuba. Sounds like 
something you'd put on them grits. They figure the broad's running for the 
old lady's home town, because she don't know where else to run to." 

The girl brought Scarpo's cereal, and he poured milk over it, sugared the 
bowl. Geech said, "Hick town, probably no more than one fuzz in it, if that 
many. A lockup, man, a lockup." 

Scarpo waited until the waitress was down the counter, then said, "We find 
the broads, hit both of 'em after we get the money, and then it's a lockup. 
Not before." 

Geech cleaned his plate and drank a cup of coffee. He glanced often at 
Scarpo with quick, darting looks, and once his lip curled before he could 
control it. 

 CHAPTER NINE 

Arley said, "Takes a right good man to go scrabblin' for a mudcat that 
size." 

Heather turned a fish steak in the frying pan, sweat making a little stream 
down her backbone and between her buttocks. At the table, eating, Honey 
asked. "What's scrabbling?" 

Arley said, "You watch around for places where them big ol' cats likes to 
stay-up under a mess of roots, like, or ahint a stump stuck in the river 
bank. You can do it daytime, but nights is best for scrabblin'. You ease up 
on the bank so you can feel your hand slow and easy up under the roots, and 
there he is-a fat ol' mudcat, just lyin' still in the dark water. You don't 
make no sudden moves, just ease your hand on back and feel him under his 
belly. He'll hang there sleepy-like, if you tickle him light on his belly, 
and then you work your hand on up and slip your fingers quick into his gill, 
or maybe in his mouth, do you get the chance. Oh, he'll fight you then, 
thrashin' around and tryin' to bust loose, but a good man can jerk him out'n 
his hole every time." 

Honey said, "Ooh. I'd be scared silly to try that. I'd be afraid I'd grab a 
moccasin or a turtle or something like that." 

Heather slid a spatula under the cornmealed fish and lifted it to her own 
plate. Strength, she reminded herself, she would need all her physical 
strength to withstand him. 

Laughing, Arley said, "Happens, I reckon, but not to ol' Arley. I been 
scrabblin' out'n that river all my life. Now them folks in town, they act 
like me and my brother ain't got no right to catfish and deer and possums, 
and like that, except when they say a man can fish or hunt. Which is 
sheepshit. Me and Artis been livin' right here since our folks died, and 
doin' right good, mostly. We ain't imagine like them in town, and we sure 
ain't high class like city people, but we make out. And we're goin' to make 
out a whole heap better, soon's Artis brings back all that money." 

Heather sat down at the table, looking down at her fish and turnip greens. 
She took a piece of corn bread and began to eat, even though she felt as if 
she would melt with the heat inside the cabin. 

"Where'd you get all the money?" Honey asked. 

Arley said, "Never you mind. Folks around here said me and ol' Artis 
wouldn't never amount to nothin', call us woods' runners and razorbacks and 
try to jail us for makin' a little whiskey. But we got us some money, all 
right, or will have, time my brother sells them things we got." He broke off 
and got up to drink water from the dipper. "Never you mind." 

The fish was good, Heather found, and the greens fresh. The bread had been 
baked from coarse ground meal and had no eggs in it, but it was surprisingly 
tasty. She looked over at the frying pan still hot on the wood stove, and 
thought that it might be possible to hit Arley with it, or to throw boiling 
grease in his face. Her mind recoiled from the image of such violent action, 
but she forced herself to think the idea through. It could be done at almost 
any time, after she learned how to work the rifle. 

Because the dog would have to be shot. Like the vicious wild beast he was, 
the dog would have to be gunned down before she and her sister could get 
away. If she had the gun and the dog was dead, Arley probably wouldn't dare 
follow them to the county road. He'd run away to hide before she brought 
back the police for him. 

That made her feel much better, just picturing Arley Santee running through 
the woods, no longer arrogant in his strength and his ignorance, just 
scared. Heather finished her meal and picked up her plate, carrying it to 
the pan of water on the stove. The primitive conditions of this shack were 
also beginning to wear on her-no running water, no indoor plumbing, so that 
they had to use an outhouse, with that damned hound of the Baskervilles 
pacing them to and from that private bodily function. 

Once she had liked dogs, Heather thought, but that was before she saw this 
monster, before she had seen so many unnerving things here, and the hound 
was only a small part of it all. Never, never had it even crossed her mind 
that she would actually see a man doing it to a woman, much less that woman 
her own kid sister. And, of course, in her wildest, most erotic dreams-and 
sometimes she did have those-Heather had never imagined watching an act of 
perversion such as she had witnessed at the river: Little sixeen-year-old 
Honey, eating away upon a mans' thing, his penis, his-his prick. 

There, she had thought the word clearly, brought it out in the open to look 
at it mentally, to examine it from all sides with cool logic 

Prick. 

That was no worse than saying penis, or thing, or sex organ, or pecker. What 
was the difference in calling it a prick or a cock or any other of the lewd 
descriptive terms? Nothing was changed by a variance in terms, except for 
some inexplicable reason, Heather felt more sneaky, more sort of passionate. 

She shook herself and scraped table leftovers into a tin plate for the 
hound, thinking that there might also be some rat poison about the house, 
thinking she might slip some of it into Bigdog's food. Maybe she could also 
put some into Arley's. 

Damn the man for stirring her up with such vile urgings, for tempting and 
luring her into debauchery, double damn him for corrupting a virginal child 
and turning her into a wanton. Not a wanton, a bitch. Tell it like it is, 
Honey would say. Okay then-bitch and prick and cock-sucker, and she was 
going to murder that goddamned dog. If it cost her a front seat in hell, she 
was going to shoot or poison or hot grease the hound and the man, who was 
such a son of a bitch that he must be closely related. 

"There," she said aloud, and felt better. 

Honey brought in another pan of water and set it on the stove. "When it gets 
hot, dip the dishes in there and I'll dry." 

"Thanks a lot," Heather said. 

"Look," Honey said, "don't go blaming me. It was your idea to come all the 
way down here, when we could just as well have gone to Europe to get away 
from those . . . " 

She stopped, but when Heather looked around, Arley Santee was staring at 
them with his pale green eyes. "Get away from what?" he asked. 

"Relatives," Heather said quickly. "I-I was having some trouble with my 
husband and . . . " 

"Europe," Arley mused. "Takes a heap of money to go clean off to Europe, I 
'spect. You all got that kind of money?" 

Heather didn't let her sister talk. She said, "It doesn't cost much to fly 
there from New England-a tourist class ticket costs about two hundred." 

He nodded, climbed up from the table and stretched, his lean arms reaching 
nearly to the grimy ceiling. "And you'd spend that much run-nin' from your 
husband? Takin' baby sis along, too?" 

"Of course," Heather said, and to Honey, "The rinse water's getting hot, 
suppose you lend a hand here, young lady." 

Arley grunted, moved toward the porch and a possible breeze. "He mustn't be 
much of a man, lettin' you traipse off that away; not much of a screwer, 
neither. Else you wouldn'ta been so edgy about gettin' fucked." 

Heather spun around, a soapy pan in one hand. "Why you-you red-neck! My 
husband was a good man, a decent man without perversions or-or . . . " 

His lip lifted at her, not in a hound dog's snarl, but like a sneer. "Was?" 
he said. "Reckon you be a widow woman. Now, you tell me who you runnin' 
from, widow woman, and tell it true, else I'll turn that fine ass black and 
blue with my razor strop." 

Honey said, "Oh-oh Heather, maybe you'd better. . . . " 

And Heather said, "Shut up. I-well, my husband took some money from some 
people, and left it to me when he was killed in a freeway accident. 
They-they would have hurt me-and Honey, too-if we hadn't got out of townAnd 
that's the truth." 

"Uh-huh," Arley said, speculatively. 

Getting an idea, Heather said, "They're dangerous people-gangsters. They 
might even be chasing us all the way down here, and if they are, they'd hurt 
you, as well. If they find us here, that is." 

Arley rummaged around on the cluttered top of his dresser, and when he 
turned back to them, he held a black razor strop in his hand. "How much 
money did your husband steal, woman? Enough for them gangsters to trace you 
clear down here from away up north?" 

Heather watched the strap swinging back and forth, and swallowed the lump in 
her throat. "A -he took a thousand dollars. I have it all, in travelers' 
checks. I have to sign them before they can be cashed, and show 
identification, too." 

Arley slapped the leather against his palm and Heather flinched. Beside her, 
Honey caught her breath. Arley said, "A thousand dollars! Now you're 
startin' to make some sense. Why, ol' Artisll only get two, three times that 
much for the old lady's stuff. But I don't know-all the way down here . . . 
" 

"They don't like what he did," Heather said rapidly. "It made them look 
foolish, and it's likewell, as if they have to get the money back andand 
punish me for running. Like a-a feud; that's it, a feud. You can understand 
that, can't you?" 

"Sure," he said, "like bad blood atween folks. I ain't stupid, widow woman. 
And soon's my brother gets back, you'll go into town and cash them travelin' 
checks. But sis will stay right here with Artis and Bigdog, while I follow 
ahint you in town." 

Heather bit her lip. One more gamble lost, but at least the ploy might help 
keep them alive a bit longer. 

Honey said, "Can we go back to the river? It's so hot and sticky here, and 
you can leave a note for your brother, telling him where we are." 

He looked across at her. "You don't much give a hoot, sis, just so you can 
keep on screwin'. Got your belly full of catfish, and now you want your 
pussy full of meat, too." 

The girl shrugged. "Your fault, you know. You started me doing it." 

Arley laughed. "You was purely ripe for fuckin'. Hadn't been me, it would of 
been the first horny stud to lay a hand on that hot HP pussy." 

Heather stacked the plates on the table, think-in that at least Honey had 
diverted the man's attention, although the talk was dirty. She hadn't wanted 
to admit the reason that had driven her down south, but Arley Santee scared 
her weak. He was so damned casual about violence, and certainly had no 
consideration whatsoever for the rights of anyone but himself and his absent 
brother. He'd said something about his brother selling "the old lady's 
stuff, and the thought of that frightened Heather more. There was no sign of 
a woman in the shack, no feminine touch, and there hadn't been in many 
years. Who, then, was the old lady, and why or how could the brothers be 
selling her things? 

"Well, can we?" Honey persisted, "go back down to the river where it's 
cooler? I could bring a quilt to spread on the sand, and you can bring some 
whiskey, and we might all have a lot of fun." 

Arley moved around and picked up a fruit jar filled with the powerful, 
colorless corn whiskey, and also picked up his rifle, and dropped a handful 
of shells into his front overalls pocket. His eyes touched Heather's, and he 
showed his teeth at her, the way the hound might. "No cause not to take it 
easy, maybe get in some different fuck-in'. Besides, we can talk some more 
about that there money your old man stole." 

Heather's shoulders sagged, he hadn't forgotten anything, and she had better 
not keep underestimating his animal cunning. 

"Come on, city woman," he said, and touched her butt with the end of the gun 
barrel to urge her onto the porch and across the yard. 

Her sister skipped ahead, skylarking, going on a picnic, and Heather 
wondered how much of that was false, and how much the child's natural good 
spirits and youthful exuberance. Heather trailed after, watching Honey's 
dancing feet and the slim quickness of her legs, seeing the taut shapeliness 
of her rear end, snugged by the cutoff jeans. If Heather didn't get the kid 
out of here before long, she'd be lost to herself, and to all the morality 
Heather had tried to instill in her. Here she was being overwhelmed by 
sensuousness, by the so-easy rationalizations of helplessness and, 
therefore, guiltlessness. 

And for herself-Heather walked slowly down the winding path that led through 
the trees to the river bank, realizing that she too was thinking almost 
constantly of sex, that she was being forced to think of it through Arley 
Santee's obscene dialogue and insatiable appetites. Never had she been so 
conscious of the movement of her heavy breasts beneath the thin material of 
her blouse, never had she remained so constantly aware of the brushing as 
her thighs kissed each other in passing. And Heather could sense the 
curlings of her pubic hair, knew the pouting softness of her mound in warm 
concealment. 

All because she had been raped and had reached a tremendous orgasm, her body 
was betraying her with its new awareness, its erotic stimulation, and since 
Arley Santee was the only male at hand, she could not even claim that she 
was in love. 

He said from behind her, hissing it, "Hold up. You, sis, hunker down right 
where you at, and you do the same, woman. Stay right quiet. You try to 
holler and I'll blow a hole clean through you, then roll you off in the 
river." 

Heather dropped to her knees. "What . . . " 

"It's Bigdog," Arley said. "He heard somebody comin' to the house. You, 
Bigdog! Hush that growlin' now, I know what you tellin' me." 

Turning her head, Heather saw him moving back up the path, his rifle at the 
ready. The ugly hound dog sat directly in the path, his yellow eyes fixed 
upon Heather, his fangs silently bared. 

Arley's whisper drifted back, "Wouldn't try to run, woman." 

The damned dog. Heather moved carefully around on her knees and whispered to 
her sister, "Go ahead, sneak on down to the river and swim across. When you 
get out, just keep running back toward town. Find a policeman, tell him . . 
. " 

"No," Honey said. "I won't leave you; I won't! He-he'd kill you." 

"Do as I say!" 

"No, I can't, Heather, I just can't." 

The hound growled low in his throat, warning them to silence. Heather 
crouched in the woods and waited to hear something from the direction of the 
shack. For the longest time all she could make out was a mockingbird 
trilling from the very top branch of a sweet gum tree, and, then, the murmur 
of the river across a sandbar below where they all crouched-she and her 
sister and the watchful hound. 

Then the gun went off. Its echo was startlingly loud, reverberating through 
the pines and water oaks, bouncing noisily out across the flowing waters of 
the brown river. When the sound died, Heather heard Arley Santee calling to 
them. 

"Come on back, you women! Bigdog, bring 'em on home. Home, Bigdog!" 

Heather stood up and waited until Honey came to her. Then, holding to her 
sister's hand and walking carefully as the damned dog herded them like 
frightened sheep, she went back up the trail to the house. 

Once into the clearing, onto the hard clay surface of the yard, they 
stopped, and Heather clamped hard upon Honey's fingers. There was another 
man sprawled upon the porch, lying face up and with his arms out flung. It 
wasn't Arley's brother, because he'd been shot. 

There was blood over his face, over his eyes, and Heather caught her breath 
in a ragged gasp. The man looked dead, looked terrible in his well-scrubbed 
khaki shorts and pants and boots. His straw cowboy hat had fallen off to one 
side, and his black hair was matted with his own blood. He wore a wide black 
belt and a pistol holster, empty now. There was a badge pinned to his shirt, 
and, as Heather stared in horror, she saw his chest rise and fall. He wasn't 
dead then, only dying. 

"Goddamned deputy sheriff," Arley grated. "Goddamned Grady Cordell that's 
been bother-in' us for years, but this time I got the son of a bitch!" 

 CHAPTER TEN 

Geech drove the used car off the lot in Meridian, Mississippi. He turned 
right when Scarpo said to, and drove with all the car's windows rolled down, 
for this one wasn't air-conditioned. The car was clunky and vibrated, a 
seven-year-old Chevy that had seen better days. 

"We could have rented a smaller car," he said. "Right there where we put the 
Continental in for a checkup. The Hertz job would be with air, and it'd have 
a local plate, too." 

Scarpo said, "I can take this fuckin' heat, you can, too. I didn't rent no 
car because that meant we could be traced the same way the broad got traced. 
She turned in the car here and since there ain't no trains, they took the 
bus. Shuba, where else? It's about forty miles south of here, her grandma's 
home town. It's good that broads are sentimental." 

"But what the hell we do with this clunker after we find the chicks? Sell it 
back?" 

Scarpo leaned his head out the window so the air could blow over it. When he 
pulled it back in he said, "Yeah, but not to no used car lot; to one of them 
blacks for a few bucks-few enough so he thinks it's hot and keeps his mouth 
shut. That's better than runnin' it into a river or something. Man, only 
forty miles to go." 

Geech said, "It wasn't all that tough, finding them. I could have done it by 
myself." 

Head back on the seat, eyes closed, Scarpo didn't say anything. The wind 
felt good on his face and he thought of flying back with the job done and 
the money in hand, on a different plane than the one this mouthy kid would 
ride. 

 CHAPTER ELEVEN 

His name was Grady Cordell, and he wasn't dead or dying, but for all the 
help he might ever be able to give them, he might as well be a corpse, 
Heather thought. He was blind. 

The bullet Arley fired at him clipped the bridge of his nose and did 
something to his vision. The cut was nasty, and Heather cleansed it as best 
she could with whiskey, and made a dressing and bandage of old flour sacks 
torn into strips. While she worked at the wound, Arley Santee sat in the 
yard with Honey by his side and the jar of whiskey in one hand. His back was 
propped against the chinaberry tree, and so was his rifle. The dog sat alert 
near the porch steps. 

"Shit," Arley said. "Thought I had him right between the eyes. But it's 
better this way, now I think on it. The son of a bitch is blind as a mole, 
and might be I'm goin' to need him, anyhow." 

Heather tied the bandage around the man's head and said, "Can I get you some 
water?" 

"I-I'd appreciate some," he said, his voice deep and slow and brushed with 
honeysuckle. 

"Give the bastard some corn, too," Arley commanded. "I got me some questions 
to ask him, and I don't want him faintin'. " 

Obediently, Heather brought whiskey and water, guiding the liquor jar into 
Grady's hand first, then taking it back and giving him the water dipper. The 
deputy drank deeply of the whiskey and finished the water; she brought 
another dipper and he drained that, too. 

"Enough," Arley said, tapping his own whiskey. "You-Grady Cordell-how come 
you sneak-in' around my place?" 

A big man, broad in the shoulder and narrow of hip, Grady said slowly, 
"Reckon you know why I'm here, Arley." 

Arley drank again, spat on the ground. " 'Spect I do, but you ought to of 
come with help, or maybe you didn't figure on gettin' shot." 

"Didn't at that," Grady said, and Heather saw the seepage of blood through 
the makeshift bandage across his eyes, "but knowin' I was right about that 
old wider woman means something." 

Arley grunted. "Means you're goin' to be a long time dead, you son of a 
bitch." 

"What'd you get from old Miss Martin?" Grady asked. "A few dollars, some 
costume jewelry? The poor old woman didn't have much." 

"That's a flat-out lie," Arley said, and bought himself another drink. "Why, 
me 'n Artis found nigh to three hundred dollars cash money, and all them 
jewels, and some old gold watches, to boot." 

Blindly, big hands clenched, Grady said, "Why'd you have to kill her, then? 
You had it all; she never owned no big store of gold or nothin' like that; 
Miss Martin was just an old widder woman waitin' out her time to die." 

Arley chuckled. "She don't have to wait no longer. Me 'n Artis purely had to 
knock her in the head after she told us where she kept the plunder hid. She 
knowed who we was. Just like you know, Grady Cordell." 

"And I might not be the only one who knows," Grady said, then put his head 
into his hands as best he could, sitting there on the porch with his feet 
tied and his own handcuffs on his wrists. 

"What you mean by that?" Arley asked. "Come on, what you mean by that." 

"My head hurts. I-I didn't mean nothin', " Arley drank deeply of the fruit 
jar and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. "You police bastard, I 
didn't figure you had the guts to walk up on our house by yourself. The 
sheriff come with you ? How come he ain't already bustin' in here?" 

Grady rocked back and forth. "My-my head hurts." 

"You didn't even know these women was here," Arley said thoughtfully. "The 
sheriff hisself would of throwed down on me time I pulled the trigger, so he 
ain't close by. What puzzles me is where he is-and the longer I figure on 
it, the more I 'spect he's out somewheres asettin' a trap for my brother. 
That's it, ain't it?" 

Grady groaned, and somehow Heather sensed that the pain in him wasn't as 
great as he was pretending; he didn't wince when she cleaned the wound with 
whiskey, although that must have burned terribly. He was bluffing Arley in 
some fashion, trying to keep himself alive. 

And possibly she and her sister, too. An old woman had known who Arley 
Santee was, and had been killed for knowing. Wouldn't he do the same to 
Honey and herself? 

"You ain't so fuckin' smart," Arley said, slurring his words a bit. "I 
reckon I won't blow your fuckin' head clean off-not for a spell, anyway, not 
'til after ol' Artis comes home. If he don't come back, and right soon, too, 
you're goin' to wish I'd killed you right off. I'll skin you like a goddamn 
coon, you po-lice bastard." 

A reprieve, Heather thought. The officer had another lease on life, for as 
long as it took Artis Santee to return home from his trip to sell a murdered 
woman's jewelry. Then the deputy and two unlucky women would find graves in 
the riverbed. 

"Well, now," Arley said, his head wagging, and Heather could see that he was 
more than a little drunk, "well, now, seems I got me a heap of company, for 
a little spell, at least. Shame you never got a look at these here two fine 
city women, Grady; fanciest pieces of ass I ever run across. One of 'em was 
cherry afore I busted it. Never figure ol' Arley to have no real pretty, 
high-class city women away out here in the woods, now would you?" 

"Uh-uh," Grady Cordell answered, because he was expected to. 

"Oldest 'un's a pure-D redheaded woman, and the littlest 'un's got brown 
hair on her pussy runs two inches deep and right springy. You ain't never 
had you no ass like they got, Grady. It ain't no countrified ass stall, but 
imagine city cunt, and you know somethin' else? They purely enjoy suckin' on 
a man's pecker, like it was striped candy." Arley laughed, a grating noise 
of cruelty and a promise of further degradation. "Course, they claimed they 
didn't want to stay around and fuck ol' Arley none-but they did; they sure 
as all billy hell did, and they're goin' to fuck him some more, too." 

Honey said into a moment of silence, "I-I will, Arley." 

"Sure you will-but when I say and like I say. And right now, I mean to screw 
your big sister, but you might just as well get bare assed, too. Might be 
I'll change off on your pussy. Never had me two naked women laid out side by 
side afore." 

Grady Cordell lifted his bandaged face. "Look now, Arley, you don't have to 
pick on the women just to get back at me." 

Arley got up off the ground, whiskey jar dangling from one hand, loaded 
rifle in the other. He strolled barefoot and gangling to the porch where he 
put down the jar. Then he slapped the deputy hard across the mouth. 

"You damned right I don't have to do nothin', " Arley said. "I don't have to 
put up with your mouth, nor have to work in no fuckin' sawmill, nor have to 
stop makin' whiskey. I don't have to do a goddamn thing I don't want to do. 
So, right now I want to fuck these here two city sisters, and it makes me 
right glad that you don't like the idea. Makes me right happy to have you 
tied up yonder like a hog ready for the knife while I fuck me two pretty 
girls so close you can hear the sloshin'. " 

Grady didn't answer, even though blood from a cut lip seeped from one corner 
of his mouth. Heather had never hated anyone the way she now hated Arley 
Santee. She watched the big man's hands clench and knew he was in pain, knew 
that the fear was in him of blindness more than of death. While her sister 
was taking off her clothes and walking to the porch, before Arley ordered 
Heather to remove hers, she took the opportunity to lay her hand upon his, 
to tell him tacitly that she understood and hoped he would also understand 
what she would have to do. 

"Show your ass," Arley said, climbing out of his overalls. 

Heather stood up and obeyed, because there was nothing else she could do, 
and her belly curled up inside. This was going to be even worse than being 
forced to have sex before her baby sister, worse than having to watch little 
Honey perform fellatio upon a man. There was another man present now, and 
even though he couldn't actually see them doing it, he could certainly hear 
what was going on. Arley would make sure of that 

And now Heather was going to have to share Arley with her sister, or at 
least be touching while one or the other of them was laid. 

"Yes, siree," Arley said, swaying a little, his pale eyes reddened from 
whiskey and his sharp teeth showing in a sneer. "Yes, mister po-liceman, 
this here is a outstandin' idea. I'll work on it some, and make it so you 
hurt all over, 'stead of just your thick head. Ain't nothin' would make me 
no madder'n to have to see or feel a woman gettin' fucked right by me, and 
knowin' I couldnt get my turn at her pussy. 'Spect you're goin' to get you 
the stone ache, time my brother gets home, account of I'm goin' to fuck 
these here city girls and all you'll have is a big ol' hard-on that you 
can't do nothin' with." 

Heather stood in the gathering twilight, hearing the katydids in the brush, 
and the deep bass call of a low-flying bullbat. She felt the slightly cooler 
air of early evening upon her bare skin, j and the nipples of her breasts 
lifted. 

"Just lie down right there where Grady can feel you next to him-but just 
your arm, or your hand, maybe. I ain't about to put my head in reach of them 
big fists when I'm screwin' you, woman. And, sis, you climb on up on the 
porch and lie down with your legs spraddled out, right there next to your 
redheaded sister. Hey now, Grady, you ain't never seen nothin' like this 
afore-even afore your eyes got shot out. The redheaded woman's named 
Heather, and she's got this here real fine white skin, all milky so you can 
see the blue veins down deep in her flesh. She's got red hair on her pussy, 
too, and big, soft tits. 

"And the little 'un-like a little filly-tits ain't as big, but they taste 
just as sweet, And all that and she ain't old enough to vote, but she's sure 
old enough to fuck." 

Heather glanced up at the deputy's expressionless face and saw the faint 
knotting of his jaw muscles. Oh, how she wished he could see again, that he 
could manage to reach out and tear off Arley Santee's head. Grady seemed big 
enough to do just that, powerful and strong. Maybe his sight would return, 
she hoped, the eyes themselves didn't seem to be injured, only the deep 
slice across the bridge of his nose had done something to a nerve. Maybe he 
could see again, and soon. 

And maybe not. She was grasping at straws again, for now she was more 
certain than ever that Arley would never, never let them go, not alive. 

"Got my pecker in my hand," Arley chorted. "Head of it shinin' like a new 
moon, and I'm puttin' one knee down between Heather's legs and the other 'un 
between Honey's. Sure wish you could make out these two fine pussies 
a-lookin' up at me with the hair on 'em and the pink lips ready for my 
prick. Got four titties pokin' up, and I'm feelin' all over 'em." 

His right hand fondled Heather's breast, kneaded it, pushed down upon the 
nipple, and from the corner of her eyes, she saw his left hand doing the 
same thing to Honey's young-mounded breast. Terrible, she thought, so 
degrading to have to suffer his handlings, to be only a toy for his twisted 
lusts. 

And Honey was shivering. Honey's hip brushed against Heather's, and she 
realized that her baby sister was squirming in passion. That was awful, too. 

Arley said, "Goin' to stick my prick into the redheaded pussy now, goin' to 
run my fingers up into the little 'un's cunt and give her some finger 
fuckin' while I put my meat in her sister's hole." 

Arley's body lowered to hers, and Heather shifted her thighs to accommodate 
him. The sooner she took him inside her vagina, the sooner the obnoxious act 
would be done with, she thought. And she denied the rising of excitement 
within her, because such a wanton response wasn't for her. Maybe for her 
gone-wild younger sister, but not for her. 

"Feels good against her pussy," Arley grunted. "Feels all hot and soft and 
juicy on her cunt lips, Grady, too bad you ain't never goin' to get to screw 
it. Pushin' my cock right on in there now, Grady, I swear this here city 
pussy is sewed together with silks and satins and little pieces of hairy 
velvet." 

Heather felt the slow, steady intrusion of the penis into her labia, felt 
the stretching of those outer lips and the giving of the inner ones as 
Arley's thing worked into her vagina inch by strong, meaty inch. She 
resisted, she kept her legs stiff and held her breath, but the juices flowed 
within her awakened vagina, and, as he thrust the full length of his penis 
into her sheath, the walls of it rippled sensuously upon it. 

Heather's breath hissed out from between her clenched teeth and she rolled 
her head to one side in reflex. She saw her sister hunching upon Arley's 
hand, upon the two fingers buried to the knuckle inside Honey's small mound. 
Heather rolled back her head and closed her shocked eyes; she'd seen how 
Honey's right hand was locked upon Arley's wrist, how the girl was grinding 
upon the inserted fingers. 

Lifting her arms, Heather spread them to keep from grabbing onto Arley's 
shoulders, for his strokes were stimulating her thing now, exciting the 
clitoris, and she fought not to be swept up in the urgency. 

Her right hand came down atop Honey's left, and their fingers intertwined 
before Heather could pull back. Then Arley began to ram home his penis-his 
cock-he shoved his prick to the hilt and jerked it back only to pound it to 
the roots once more. Heather squeezed her sister's hand and her breath 
gusted out in noisy gaspings. 

"Fuckin' her long and fuckin' her strong," Arley Santee panted, his crotch 
sledging against hers. "Hot and juicy inside-oh, yeah-soft and hot and 
wet-shakin' her ass and makin' her city cunt eat up my pecker now-oh, yeah." 

Heather couldn't help herself any longer; flailing out with her free hand, 
she knew the lascivious rolling of her ass and the humping of her sweaty 
belly. She took the driving prick and reveled in its length, in the striking 
of the knob against her cervix, in the heft and thickness of the shaft 
plunging back and forth in her slick pussy. 

The deputy held her hand, the one her sister wasn't clinging to. She'd 
stretched it that far out, feeling for comfort, for something else to hang 
onto. Grady Cordell's big fingers closed warmly over her hand, and his 
gentle grip was understanding. 

The madness raked through her body, and with the cheeks of her ass clenching 
and loosening in rhythm, Heather held to the hands of two people while a 
third one fucked her, while she fucked Arley back in the most abandoned 
fashion, hiking her belly and pulling with her eager cunt. 

"Fucks like a bitch with the pack after her pussy," Arley gasped. "Fuckin' 
me hard and mean, shakin' it like a snake-uh-uh-goin' to shoot it off up 
into her cunt, Grady-hot and slick and humpin' like a fool, and my prick's 
just a-swellin'-uh-uh--! " 

He let it fly into her vagina, released the hot thick semen with a 
tremendous spewing of the stuff. Violently, insanely, Heather reacted by 
twisting and seesawing, by heaving her crotch up to his, and by moaning, 
hissing as her cunt pumped furiously up and down upon his suddenly stilled 
prick. She clenched the two hands holding her own, twisting them and 
shuddering as she climbed so quickly to her own maddened orgasm. 

"I-oh yes, yes-I'm coming, coming! Oh, keep that meat up inside my 
pussy-grind it up my cunt and fill me full of your cream! Oh-oh! I can't 
stand it, can't stand . . . " 

A convulsion rocked her vagina, its core her vibrant clitoris. Her labia 
writhed and her asshole tightened, Heather's head flew back and her eyes 
rolled whitely. Ripple after spasming ripple moved through her belly, and 
the hot gush of her love juices blended with his, mixed with his to ooze out 
of her pussy and over his limp balls and onto the boards of the porch. Her 
thighs were wet with more than sweat, and so was the crack of her ass. 

Heather couldn't think, she could only feel. She wallowed in the feeling, in 
the slidy, slippery feeling of his prick moving slowly within the confines 
of her tremulous pussy. She loved his prick-any prick-every prick that had 
ever been hung on a man. She wanted them all, one at a time, or even tied 
together and stuffed like one gigantic sausage up her slit, spreading it and 
stretching it until it was at the point of exploding like a too-full 
balloon. 

Glady would she blow up with it, scattering the wiggling little pieces of 
her cunt far and wide over the universe. There could be no better way, for 
that would not be dying, only turning into a searing nova. 

Honey took away her hand, but Grady Cordell left his. 

 CHAPTER TWELVE 

"Shit," Geech said. "This can't be it, man. Two, three stores and a post 
office." 

Scarpo climbed out of the old Chevy. "Got a couple gas stations, too. And 
this is it, says so on the post office-Shuba. You got your cover story, so 
when we go in, you do most of the talking." 

"Yeah." Geech passed a hand over his black, wavy hair. "I'm the dumb husband 
let his chick run out on him, came all this way to find her and say I'm 
sorry. You're her old man, come to help me. We don't know where she and her 
kid sister are, but we'd really appreciate help finding them." 

Scarpo nodded. "You got it cold. Try in there first." 

"You think they got a cold beer anywhere in this ten-cent town?" 

"After," Scarpo said, and led the way into the semi-cool of the post office. 
He stood aside while Geech ran through his story, and put in a word from 
time to time. 

But when they ran down, the hillbilly behind the grilled window said, "Ain't 
seen nobody like that and can't help you none." 

Out on the sidewalk again, Geech said, "Think that bastard's lyin' ? I can 
go back and ping-pong him off the wall a few times." 

Shaking his bald head, Scarpo said, "Down the street-the grocery. Get a cold 
beer or a coke; act a little more worried. Maybe your wife's got a sick kid 
back home that needs her bad." 

In one of the general stores, they practiced the new story on an old lady 
clerk, and she said, "Seen two women a spell back get offn the Greyhound. 
Didn't come in here, though; maybe they went across the road to Ebben's. 
Sorry I can't help you no more'n that." 

"Come on," Geech said, "let's go over there; now we know they stopped off 
here." 

 CHAPTER THIRTEEN 

Heather said, "I'm sorry, but I can't do anything as long as he's got my 
baby sister with him. I mean-I realize that we're all in danger, but I just 
can't gamble with Honey's life." 

Grady nodded, the bandages white against the deeply tanned skin of his 
square-jawed face. "You can get that ol' Arley figured on that, too. Just 
like he counted on me bein' blind and on that hound dog watchin' over us. 
Didn't leave anything hang loose; knows a man could sink in half a dozen mud 
holes and quicksand pits between here and the country road, did he take a 
wrong turn off the track. And the only way you could bust me loose of these 
handcuffs would be to saw off the post." 

She came closer to him. "I'll take off your bandages, and bathe your wound 
again. There's not much in the way of medicine in the house, but I found a 
box of aspirins and I'll do the best I can with whiskey and some fresh 
rags." 

When she had the wrappings off, he winced at the light and she said, "That's 
a good sign. Can you see anything but the light?" 

He shook his head slowly. "Just bright and dark. Reckon I'm blind for good?" 

"I only had some first aid courses," Heather said, her hands gentle upon his 
face, sponging lightly at the crusted cut, hoping that she wasn't hurting 
him. "But there were some things about shock-it could be that your sight 
will come back just as before. I hope so. Oh, I really hope so." 

"How'd you and your sister get trapped by 

Arley?" he asked, and she told him about the storekeeper in town who'd given 
her a lift to a crossroads, and told her of a little house that might be for 
rent. She described the man who'd stopped his truck and said he'd take them 
almost to the place, which turned out to be here. 

"From then on," Heather said, bathing his wound and his face first with 
water, "it was hell. He-he raped us both, and neither of us could run 
because of that-that damned dog. And because he always had it fixed so no 
more than one of us could possibly get away. I-I'm very sorry you had to be 
subjected to that scene last night. I'm not-well, things have been so 
changed for us here, and I've been so scared that I don't react the way I 
normally would. I don't mean to come right out and say those terrible 
things, and I never said them out loud before-never." 

Softly, Grady said, "I guess maybe I know how you feel. People can't always 
help how they feel." 

"I don't care for him," Heather said sharply. "In fact, I hate the man and 
everything about him. But-when he makes me d-do it with him, I go kind of 
crazy. My husband was never-I mean, we didn't really make it together, and I 
didn't know what it was like. I-oh, I don't even know why I'm telling you 
all this intimate stuff, but I have to talk with somebody, and my sister has 
gone kind of wild with the newness of sex." 

He nodded. "Helps to talk things out, sets 'em where you can see 'em clear. 
And don't you worry about last evenin', Heather. Flesh and blood is just 
that, and I got to admit that Arley was sure turnin' his knife in me when he 
mounted you and you held my hand." 

Heather felt the blood rise in her face. She was talking about sex to a 
perfect stranger, and she hadn't even had a drink of the corn liquor. She 
changed the subject, although she enjoyed the chance to look him over 
without him knowing it. That broad chest, she thought, with the black hair 
curling up through his shirt collar, and his strong legs. Down there at the 
joining of his muscled thighs with his lower belly would be a thick patch of 
curly dark hair, and rising from it, thick and powerful and very eager for 
its first taste of her body, there would be his thing. 

Voice shaky, Heather said, "I don't know what we'll do. If he killed some 
poor old woman, he'll kill us, too, when his brother gets back." 

"He's off huntin' now," Grady said. "Likely as not, with all our mouths to 
feed, he'll be cat-fishin' tonight." 

"Scrabbling," she said. "He showed us how to do it." 

As she wrapped the bandages over his head and upper face, Heather felt her 
breasts brush his arm, his shoulder. She drew back guiltily, her heart 
beating wildly. What was wrong with her, she wondered. All the forced sex, 
all the pressure on her, and her overwhelming sense of sympathy for this 
poor, hurt man. 

The man who suffered because another man had been doing it to her last 
evening, the man who clung to her hand when she bucked and heaved so 
sensually under Arley's stiff strokes. Would he-could he feel very deeply 
for her, after knowing that about her, after hearing the bad words she had 
spoken in the heat of her orgasm? 

She'd better be worrying about getting them free, rather than dreaming silly 
things about a man she didn't even know. 

"Funny," Grady said, "I wouldn't of thought he had the nerve for scrabblin' 
under roots with conger eels and water moccasins, big ol' loggerhead 
turtles, sometimes-big enough to take off a man's hand-maybe even an 
alligator gar. Set hook fishin' is more the Santee speed, and trap-pin', and 
chicken stealin'-things like that. Your hands sure feel soft and cool, 
Heather. That's a pretty name, too; never heard it down here before." 

She said, "My grandmother came from here. She was a Mixon, but that was a 
long time back, when she was a little girl." 

"Some Mixons over to Clark City, but none left around here. You got a nice 
voice, too; it pours sweet over a man." 

"I-" Heather was flustered, shaky as a schoolgirl. She moved back from him 
and her thigh inadvertently brushed his. "Can I get you some more water? 
There's some biscuits left from breakfast." 

"I appreciate your help, Heather. And try not to fret; soon as my eyes clear 
up, I'll figure a way out of here." 

"The sheriff," she said. "Won't he miss you and come after you?" 

"Not for two weeks or so," Grady said. "I just started my vacation 
yesterday. I come by here on my own time, just to see had the Santees got a 
hand in old Miss Martin's death. Arley shot me afore I knew he was anywhere 
close by." 

"Oh," Heather said, the hope going out of her again. "I see." 

He felt blindly out, and she took his hand, shivering at the warm touch of 
it, remembering how she had clung to it while she screwed Arley Santee. 
Grady said, "Don't worry too much, but do you see a chance, tell me about 
it. We may not have all that much time until Artis gets home." 

Heather said, "It's comforting to have you here-even if you're hurt and tied 
up. I'm sorry you got shot, but I'm glad you're here." 

His hand snugged hers. "Me, too, and I'm lookin' forward to the time I can 
take a good look at you, and see for myself if you're as pretty as Arley 
described you." 

She pulled away, shaken, stirred in spite of her determination not to be. 
She said, "I-maybe it'll be cooler for you, if I can take off your boots." 

"I'd appreciate that," he said, "and if you could loosen my belt, unbutton 
my shirt. This time of year, it's purely hot here." 

Heather controlled her fingers, made them take hold of his low leather boots 
and slide them down, work them off his feet; his socks were next, and she 
could not help the trembling as her fingers touched his skin and brushed the 
hair on his legs. Her head swam, and she found that her breath was coming 
faster. She didn't know what was wrong with her, but whatever was causing 
her excitement, she wanted it stopped. She wasn't like her sister, going all 
passionate at the simple touch of a man-any man. She wasn't Honey, she was 
Heather. 

And she still had to unbutton his shirt. Leaning over him, she reached 
shaking hands out to his open collar, and the chest hair tingled against her 
fingertips. There was a scent to him, too--something deeper than the odor of 
the whiskey with which she had bathed his wound-it was male and sweaty and 
provoking. Heather flared her nostrils at it, and got a button open, then 
another, and another. 

Hesitating, her fingers strayed through the rich, dark hair on his upper 
belly, and she was fascinated by the matting of it upon his wide, deep 
chest. His nipples peeped out at her as she opened the shirt and spread it 
so that he could be cooler-and so that she could see more of him. Heather 
grew dizzy, touching him, feeling the richness of his curly body hair, and 
she slumped forward. 

Grady Cordell couldn't put his arms around her, but his face reached blindly 
up as her breasts came down, and he nuzzled into it. She was wearing only a 
thin cotton dress, with nothing under it, and his mouth probed through the 
material for her nipple. Heather was against him, lying heavily upon him, 
bracing her hands on either side of his chest to keep from bearing too much 
weight down upon him as he lay stretched upon the porch, his hands cuffed 
around the solid post above his head. 

Moaning softly, Heather sat up long enough to whip the dress over her head 
and discard it, then she guided her nipple into his hotly suctioning lips 
again. His tongue licked over her, and she shuddered from head to foot as a 
burgeoning need pulsed deeply within her flesh. When Grady opened his mouth 
so wide and tried to pull in all her breast, his teeth ringing the tender 
mound, Heather pulled gently back and took her wet tit away from him. 

But only because she had to zip down his pants and draw them off, because 
she needed to see and feel and caress the wondrous new meat lifting there 
between his muscled thighs. It rose tall before her staring eyes-long and 
immensely thick, veined, and heavy, and the head of it was a deeply purpled 
knob so huge she could not believe it. 

Heather couldn't believe she was doing what she was, either; it was as if 
her body was moving ahead on its own, preparing to make love to this man she 
barely knew. Her head insisted that this was wrong, sinful, but her flesh 
said how sweet, how warm, how exciting. So she straddled the hairy male body 
with the gigantic throbbing penis, and rubbed her belly against the meaty 
pole. 

It was resilient, but hard at the core; it was silken outside and iron 
inside, and big-so very big. She writhed against it, loving the feel of it 
as it was pinned between her belly and his, sliding the taut nipples of her 
tits across his hairy chest and working her pubic mound wantonly to his, 
feeling the pelvic bone and the swollen sac that held his testicles. 

Then she was surprised; he lifted his knees behind her back and used them to 
urge her upward upon his body, so that she slid across his belly. But that 
felt wonderful, too, so sitting erect, Heather wiggled her crotch into his 
tummy, and he did it again, pushed her with his knees so that she edged even 
higher. Now she was sitting upon his chest with her thighs spread very wide. 

The silence between them stimulated her even more; she didn't want to talk 
about what they were doing. The tacit acceptance was more than enough, and 
she heard only the sounds of their breathing. Staring down at his bandaged 
eyes, Heather wondered why he wanted her to keep moving up his body. 
Already, she was very close to his chin, to his handsome, tanned face with 
the mouth slightly open and his even white teeth showing, and the tip of his 
tongue that moved slowly between the teeth, in and out. 

The idea struck her then, and she thought, oh, no, oh, no! But his knees 
pushed her back again, and this time he had to reach so high with them that 
his face slid down, and suddenly she was against it. 

Her mound was pushed against a man's face! 

Her pussy was there, shoving its red hair into Grady Cordell's face, and she 
saw his nose vanishing into the depths of that pubic hair, saw her white 
thighs against his cheeks, and flinched because she was afraid any 
additional pressure would hurt his wound. 

Grady made his first noise then, the first since they had come naked 
together like this; he said, "Ummm," into her pussy lips, and her labia 
twitched in response. He darted out his tongue and pushed the tip of it 
through the shielding hair, shoved it into her quivering lips, and they 
turned immediately damp at his touch. 

His chin was against the crack of her ass, and Heather lifted ever so 
slightly so that she wouldn't smother him. One part of her mind-the logical 
part-told her that this was wrong and dirty and impossible for her to do, 
her of all people. But that part of her head was overruled by that which 
insisted she would soon know the most loving, the intimate caress a man 
could bestow upon a woman. And she couldn't bring herself to miss it, she 
didn't really want to miss it, so she quivered and wobbled, but did not back 
her crotch away from his mouth. 

And, oh, but his mouth was hot and soft. His tongue slid right on into her 
pussy, wet and thrilling, probing and searching her softnesses. She could 
feel the gentle raking of his teeth along her cunt lips, and knew the hot 
breath stirring in her pubic hair. 

His mouth-oh, lord, his mouth! Pushing into her pussy, gnawing, nibbling, 
making love with his lips and tongue and teeth, he nuzzled her cunt, rubbed 
his cheeks into her thighs, kissed and licked inside her steamy vagina. 
Heather could not help but grind tenderly, sweetly, upon his face, fondling 
his mouth with her humid pussy. 

Lost in the throes of her lust, moaning through set teeth, she was still 
glad he could not see her face, that his eyes could not look into her own 
and see the furious desires churning there. For she wanted him to go on, 
needed him to continue, and she could not let him stop now. 

Grady's tongue found her clitoris. Heather quivered and gasped, and he 
licked, prodded, with his hot, wet tongue, making her tingle, making her 
rock back and forth upon his dear, adorable face. He burrowed deeper, caught 
her clit between his teeth, and the sweet, wild nip of pain made her crazy, 
sent mad tremors racing throughout her vibrant cunt. 

Then he began to suck her. Sighing, groaning into the folds of her wet 
labia, Grady sucked on her clitoris, drawing it into his mouth and tongu-ing 
it back out again. The sensation was fantastic, insane, and Heather swayed 
precariously upon his head, balanced upon the verge of fainting, but wanting 
more, more of this wonderful feeling. 

"Oh, Grady, oh, lover," she wiggled on him, rubbing her dripping pussy into 
his mouth, his teeth, his chin. "Oh, darling man, please don't stop. Oh, 
kiss me and lick me-and eat my cunt! Eat my pussy, Grady! Chew me up and 
suck me down and swallow me-eat me, eat me!" 

Hunching and quaking, Heather came. The magic flooded through her, spread to 
every nerve end and made her belly soft, turned it warm inside. More of her 
lubricating fluids seeped down, dripped out, and Grady kept sucking it down 
his throat, kept swallowing it as if the stuff were the finest of nectars. 
Heather went weak, melted, and, although his loving tongue was still lapping 
her juices, she regretfully drew her cunt away from him and slid her crotch 
tenderly down his hairy chest, leaving a trail of her love fluids. 

She kissed his cheeks, kissed his mouth still wet with her own liquids, 
tasting the flavors of her own pussy and reveling in the sharing of them 
upon and in his panting mouth. Still, Grady had said no word, and she loved 
him more for that. As she moved down his sweaty body, her slippery pussy 
came in contact with the distended head of his penis, and Heather ground 
gently upon it, tried to steer the great knob into her labia with only the 
movements of her ass. 

Failing that, she reached around and took hold of his big cock. It felt 
solid and hot in her fingers, and she didn't even hesitate about guiding it 
into her torrid cunt lips. The labia stretched to accommodate it, but since 
they had been softened and greased by his oral love, Heather absorbed the 
huge glans easily. 

It moved into her cunt as Grady gave a little hump of his crotch, and as she 
wiggled her ass to make it fit better. In and in, deeper and wider, and, oh, 
lord, oh, mercy-it filled her vagina as no man's prick had ever filled it 
before. His cock packed her cunt from one end to the other, the blunt end of 
it nudging her cervix, and the root of it stretching her pussy lips as they 
began to slowly stroke together. 

His balls were tight against her crotch, and his hips rolled as he thrust up 
into her sheath. Strong and thick, long and heavy, his prick worked solidly 
within her wet glove, and she used every muscle she had in her pussy to 
caress his driving meat. Lifting her ass and pounding her belly down, 
Heather rode that behemoth cock, ground and churned her blazing cunt upon it 
as it slid in and out. 

"Oh, lover," she panted, "oh, Grady darling, dearest-oh, sweet man! Your 
cock's so big-so thick-ahh, lover-stick it deep-cream up to the balls-oh, 
feed it to me hot and heavy-fuck mefuck me-oh, fuck me! Make me come, Grady! 
Use that big prick to make me come-ooohahhh . . . " 

Her pussy went slosh-squish, and his prick swelled its head inside. Heather 
gyrated her ass wildly to match his gathering orgasm, to catch up with his 
goodness about to burst forth from the mouth in the end of his lunging pole. 

She made it, for as soon as the head of his cock flexed, she came against 
his pistoning shaft, riding her clitoris feverishly upon the rod. He came a 
heartbeat later, hosing his mighty discharge far up into her pulsating cunt, 
spraying her womb with his hot, thick semen. It kept jetting out in spasms, 
and she felt each release as it added to the flood of come that was 
saturating her pussy and leaking out of her shivering cunt lips to wet his 
groin and bubble over his balls. 

They sighed together, and she kept kissing his mouth until he whispered, 
"They're comin' back through the woods. Hurry-get my pants back on before 
Arley Santee catches us!" 

 CHAPTER FOURTEEN 

Climbing out of the old Chevy, Geech walked back to the dirt road and looked 
up and down it; then he came back to the car and helped Scarpo pile some 
more brush around it. 

Scarpo said, "Drag a bush over the tire tracks, too. Then we check over the 
guns and figure how we're goin' to come up on them." 

"Regular little old cowboy, ain't you?" Geech said. "You learn' all these 
hillbilly tricks from the Indians?" 

Bringing a suitcase out of the back seat, Scarpo opened it and took out a 
short leather case. Putting the bag on the hood of the car, Scarpo opened 
the case and took out a gunstock. Working deftly, knowingly, he fitted the 
stock to a blued receiver and barrel; next came the telescopic sight, its 
delicate lenses covered by soft leather protectors. He swung it to his 
shoulder, checked the balance again, lowered the short carbine to load its 
clip. It took thirty rounds. 

Geech said, "I never saw a guy use no carbine before," when the other man 
didn't answer, dug out his own luggage. He found his pistol, a forty-four 
magnum with a six-inch barrel, and stuck it into his belt, pulling his 
summer shirt out over the butt. "A hundred thou in bills-how much of a 
bundle does it make?" 

"Smaller than you think," Scarpo said. "Now all we got to do is cross the 
road and move along in the trees to some kind of path. The grocery guy said 
somewhere along here. Shit-what's somebody want to live away the hell out 
here for?" 

"Maybe they never rented no cabin." 

"They never come back into town, did they? They're out here, and we're going 
to find 'em." 

 CHAPTER FIFTEEN 

The big hound's hackles lifted, and he rumbled a warning, but he kept his 
eyes fixed warily upon the porch, and upon Heather as she finished 
redressing Grady Cordell. She pawed for her discarded dress and snatched it 
back over her head, smoothing frantically at the wrinkles. 

Arley and her sister came out of the woods, and she saw the bloody squirrels 
dangling from his hand. Honey had the cat and cream look on her face, and 
Heather knew very well that the girl had been playing sex games again, just 
as she knew that the man didn't have to force Honey anymore. The kid was 
becoming impossible. 

And how about herself? What about the older, wiser sister whose duty it was 
to keep them both out of trouble? Heather chewed at her lip and held out a 
reluctant hand for the gray fox squirrels. 

Arley shook his head. "You'd just screw up the skinnin' of 'em. You look a 
mite flushed, city woman. You ain't been playin' games with the po-lice?" 

"Just took off his boots and opened his shirt," Heather said. "It was so 
hot." 

He took the squirrels to the chopping block and dropped them there. Rifle 
slanted over one shoulder, Arley came back to the porch and took hold of the 
handcuffs to give them a savage jerk. Grady's mouth tightened, but he didn't 
cry out, and Arley said, "Reckon you didn't fuck around with them cuffs, 
neither. Fire up the stove, sis, your turn to cook dinner." 

Honey pouted. "But I can't cook as good as Heather, and after we . . . " 

Propping his rifle against the woodpile, Arley flicked out a knife; its 
blade was thin and sharp. He slipped its point into the belly of a squirrel 
and drew it up. He said to Honey, "Don't get the idea your ass is made out'n 
gold, sis. You got other things to do besides screw." 

Honey stamped on across the porch and into the house, and Heather frowned 
after her. As Arley skinned the squirrels, he said, "You, Grady-I ain't done 
with you, by a long shot. But, you know, you just about the luckiest man in 
the county. I got me six fox squirrels here, and all of 'em head-shot clean. 
I swear, I still don't see how that bullet only grazed you. All you Cordells 
must have cast-iron heads." 

"Hard enough," Grady said, his bandaged head swinging toward the other man's 
voice. "I'll make you a trade, Arley-and you know me for a man of my word. 
You take off, soon's your brother gets back-if he gets back-and I give my 
word I won't come after you for a full day. That ought to give you time to 
get a far piece from here." 

Arley chuckled, the noise not a cheerful one, but arrogant. "And leave you 
and these here city women alive? I ain't no flat-out fool, Grady. More I 
fuck these girls, the more I'm decidin' to take 'em with us. Ol' Artis will 
sure appreciate ass like they got, and I ain't never been above sharin' with 
my own brother. But you, Grady, I 'spect the river'll hide you right good. 
If I don't have to swap you for Artis, that is. The sheriff trap Artis, I'm 
goin' to toll you out like a Judas goat, so you can lead him back safe. And 
I always got the women for boot." 

Grady shifted his arms, and the handcuffs rattled against the post. "Never 
been easy to fool you, Arley. Else I'd got you a long time back for makin' 
whiskey." 

Grinning, Arley brought the skinned meat to the porch and handed it to 
Heather. "Don't you forget it, Grady. I always been too slick for you, so if 
you hopin' to slip out on me, just remember you ain't been able to catch me 
all you life. City woman, carry the meat in to sis and bring me a jar of 
corn." 

Inside, Heather said to Honey, "Do you have to act like the perfect bitch?" 

"Oh, nobody's perfect," Honey answered. "Not even you." 

Flushing, Heather hurried back out with the whiskey and the dipper filled 
with water. Arley took the jar and screwed off the top, he gulped a huge 
drink and she gave him the water for chaser. He drank that off, too, and 
said, "You're learnin', redheaded woman. You tell the law here all about how 
your husband done run off with some money? I mean, ain't no sense in ol' 
Grady thinkin' you just a HP innocent woman. Why, hell, policeman, this here 
city gal has got her a whole thousand dollars hid, and there's some real 
gangsters after it." 

Drinking again, Arley kicked off his brogans and propped his bare feet on 
the porch steps. Instinctively, Heather compared him with Grady; she had 
done it with both these men, although she'd never thought to see the day 
when she'd come to that. So she had something to go on, a pitting of one man 
against the other, at least in their styles of lovemaking. 

She corrected herself hastily-not lovemaking where Arley was concerned. With 
him, it was more a hate making, a put-down of all imagine city women, the 
kind who had evidently scorned his crude ways and obscene approach. But with 
Grady Cordell-she glanced quickly at the bound man and felt warmth in her 
face, felt the instinctive tremble of her nipples as they went erectile. 

The gratification she had gotten with Grady was as big as his penis, deeply 
fulfilling and all-encompassing. It had been more for her than the simple 
assuaging of passion, although that had been tremendous, too. But it had 
also been tender and powerful. She thought of the precious intimacy of his 
tongue licking over her stiffened clitoris, of the incomparable thrill his 
ardent mouth had given her. 

It hadn't been dirty; it had not been a thing of shame, nothing to hide or 
deny. Heather felt very proud of it, and even now there was a leftover 
tingle in her thighs, a residual delight that nestled within the still-damp 
confines of her mound. Had Grady been shocked by the dirty words she had 
hurled at him while he was mouthing and chewing upon her pussy? If so, he 
had given no sign of it, but she wished she could see his eyes. 

His seeing eyes, she thought, not a blinded, expressionless pair of useless 
windows turned one way. Oh, please, she prayed, let Grady Cordell regain his 
sight, just let it be shock that's keeping him blind now. 

Arley said, "Me and sis had a real fuckin' down to the river, so I can't do 
much 'til after I get some lead back in my pencil. Fried squirrel and corn 
whiskey ought to do it. Too bad you can't get you none of this here city 
ass, Grady." 

"Too bad," Grady said, and turned to try to get comfortable. 

Heather said, "Can't you let him free of the post?" 

Arley cocked his head and squinted. "Come dinner time, reckon I might. I'll 
run a string to him, though. Never figured to get snapped by your own cuffs, 
did you, Grady?" 

"Never did." 

Taking another swallow of liquor, Arley said, "You mighty damned agreeable, 
all of a sudden. Gettin' your eyes shot out do that? Or it could be you're 
plannin' something with Heather here-like tryin' to save your hide. Never 
mind, Grady, never mind. Blind as you are and citified as she is, the 
quicksand or the mud holes will get you sure as ol' billy hell if Bigdog 
don't get you first." 

She wanted to take Grady's hand, to comfort him as best she could, but she 
knew better than to reach for him. Not with Arley Santee anywhere near, not 
now and not yet, but Heather was conscious of a new determination building 
within her. Before Grady came, she had been without hope, and it seemed odd 
to have it rekindling in her heart now, especially since he was helpless in 
his blindness and only an added burden. 

But he was something else. He was love and he was tenderness, and together 
they could think of a way out for themselves and for her sister. 

Arley was laughing, and she pulled her mind back to concentrate upon what he 
was saying, as the odor of frying meat wafted from the house and engulfed 
them. He said, "Never figured no Chicago gangsters to be after a whole 
thousand dollars dropped in my lap just like two fine pieces of ass done, 
neither. Where you reckon they at, with them machine guns and all?" 

Heather watched Grady's face, but the man didn't show anything. Something 
else for him to accept about her, she thought, a thing more than some 
personal idiosyncrasy like using bad words at the height of her passion. 
Grady was a cop, and if he knew that the thousand dollars was really a 
hundred thousand. . . . 

"Food's done," Honey called from inside the house, and Heather sighed in 
relief at the change of subject. She was ravenous, too, despite the heat of 
the day and the mugginess in the air. All the sex, she thought, it 
stimulated the appetite, among other things. 

Arley was eating heartily, tearing the meat off bone with his long, sharp 
teeth, when Heather filled two plates and asked about feeding Grady. 
"Might's well," he answered, and still gnawing at a leg bone, rose and 
followed her to the porch. 

He unlocked one side of the handcuffs so that Grady could sit up, then he 
snapped them again and ran a length of rope through the chain and back 
around the post. "You ain't goin' nowheres like that," he said, "even if you 
could see good. You got to piss, I'd say do it off the end of the porch, 
'cause ol' Bigdog won't cotton to you out in his yard. Feed him, city woman, 
go on and feed the pore ol' blind man." 

After Arley went back inside, Heather sat on the porch edge and put a piece 
of meat into Grady's hand. When he finished that, she fed him greens and 
field peas a bite at a time, and guided his fingers to the corn bread, the 
extra bit of squirrel. 

He said, "A blind man ain't much, that's for sure." 

"You won't be blind," Heather said. "I'm wishing too hard." 

He dropped his voice, "The stolen money Arley was talkin' about; a trick to 
keep from hurtin' you girls anymore?" 

Heather said, "N-no; it's true enough, and I'll tell you about it when I get 
the chance. But it might help us all, when the time comes." She couldn't 
help lifting her hand and touching his cheek then, to comfort him. She still 
had it there when Arley came out. 

"Ain't that pretty?" he said. "You gettin' horny, Grady? Must be this city 
pussy is gettin' to you, but don't you worry; I'll take care of it for you." 
He pushed a bare foot against Heather's breast, and she shrank back. 
Frowning, Arley said, "Might be you two been fuckin' already, while I was 
down to the river huntin'. I'll see to that after I nap a spell. And, Grady, 
don't get no wild hairs up your ass about jumpin' on me. "I'll be sleepin' 
out there by my dog, with one eye open and one hand on my gun." 

He shoved his toes hard into Heather's breasts again, and she flinched. He 
said, "Go on in the house and help clean up. If you ain't gettin' enough 
screwin', I got somethin' in mind for you." 

She watched him go across the yard and lie down in the shade of the 
chinaberry tree, head propped on his arm and the rifle under his hand. 

Bigdog bellied down on the clay beside Arley, watchful, hating them all with 
his yellow eyes. 

After she and Honey tidied up the dishes and came out for cooler air, her 
sister said softly, "How is he? Looks like he'd have a big one." 

"Honey!" Heather said, outraged. 

"Don't put me on," Honey said. "You're not all uptight about sex any more, 
and I'll just bet you and the fuzz made it while Arley and me were swinging 
down in the woods." 

"Hush," Heather warned, glancing at Arley asleep in the yard. "Grady-well, 
he'll help us to get away." 

"How?" Honey asked. "Bigdog isn't a guide dog." 

"Never mind, he'll help. And, Honey, I wish you wouldn't be so free and 
easy." 

"No choice, big sister, when Arley says frog, I make like a top. If he 
really decides to wipe somebody out, I don't want it to be me-us." 

"Shh," Heather whispered, as Arley muttered and turned onto his back. "He-he 
must be planning something awful for me when he wakes up." 

Grady said quietly, "If you toll him over close to me, I'll get my arms over 
his head and around his skinny neck." 

Honey giggled. "Tell you what-I'll get him to mount me, and then when he's 
pumping away, I'll keep sliding my ass over closer and closer, until you can 
mug him. How's that? Are you kidding, mister? Arley's too shrewd to get 
caught like that." 

"Have you a better idea?" Heather asked. Honey shook her head and looked 
thoughtful. "I don't want to make him mad, Heather. Hehe likes me a lot, and 
maybe if I can keep him happy, he won't hurt us when his brother gets back. 
I mean, we can screw them silly, and after they get all calmed down, we can 
sort of sneak away together." 

"And Grady?" 

Honey got up and went to the far end of the porch, where she stretched out 
in the shade and turned away her face. Heather said, "I'm sorry, Grady, 
she's very young, and more frightened than she'll admit." 

"It's all right," he answered in a whisper. "Could be she'll keep Arley busy 
most of the time." 

Heather said, "I-I hope you won't hate me for anything I have to do with 
Arley. What-the thing you did to me-I never knew how sweet and wonderful 
that could be. It was my first time, and I think you were very nice for 
doing it. I don't want to do it with him, I want it with you." 

"I understand," he said. "I can't think hard of you, Heather, no matter what 
you have to do." 

"Thank you," she said. "Can you get some rest now? If he lets me, I'll bathe 
your wound again this evening and clean you up, maybe give you a sponge 
bath." 

He touched her hand and lay down on the porch. His eyes hurt, she thought, 
the poor man was in such a mental strain, so worried and in pain. And she 
had practically hurled herself upon him for sex, making things even worse 
for him. Or had it? She had taken his mind off his injury, his possible 
lifetime of blindness, the distinct possibility of his upcoming death. And 
the deaths of herself, her sister. Heather was nowhere near so certain that 
Arley would take them along, or leave them unharmed. 

She looked at the dog, and the big hound stared back. Pulling her dress away 
from her body, Heather blew down into the valley between her breasts. Such a 
body, she thought, all these years of being nothing, and then to suddenly 
turn into a vessel of rapture. Men thought she was desirable now-Arley-and 
Grady, too. Certainly she thought of men in a different way than she had 
before. 

And now she wondered what kind of devious sexual tricks Arley would have in 
mind for her when he woke up. 

 CHAPTER SIXTEEN 

They were a hundred yards along the brush when Scarpo saw the snake. He 
froze, the automatic carbine at his hip, and the sweat that was running down 
his cheeks turned suddenly chill. 

The snake saw him, too. It lay coiled in the path, its copper-colored head 
wedge-shaped and deadly, its tongue flicking out and in, the black diamond 
eyes steady upon Scarpo. 

"Jee-sus!" he whispered, and Geech moved behind him, saying, "What's the 
matter, man? What the hell's the matter?" 

"Back up," Scarpo hissed. "Goddamn it, baek up and let me get outa' here 
before that fuckin' snake bites me!" 

The carbine trembled at his hip, and Scarpo backed into Geech, stumbled, 
then crashed into the brush as the moccasin struck at the sound, at the 
flurrying. 

"Son of a bitch!" 

"Blow him apart!" Geech said, whipping out his pistol as the snake recoiled 
and swayed its evil head. 

"No-no!" Scarpo stumbled in the bushes, waving one hand at Geech and 
watching the snake every second. "No-don't shoot, you'll let 'em know we're 
coming'. " 

"But that ugly bastard-look out! He's about to strike again!" 

Stooping, Scarpo found a dry branch, a length of wood mostly solid. He 
sidled around and handed his carbine to Geech, then advanced upon the 
copperhead, poking the branch. The snake struck, hit the branch, and angled 
off. Scarpo's breath whistled from him as he jabbed the wood, lifted and 
slammed it down. Again and again he beat on the writhing snake until it was 
pulped. 

"Jes-sus." Sweating, shaking, he flung the stick into the trees and took 
back his gun from Geech. "I never seen one of them bastards outside a zoo, 
and I didn't want to see it then. That bastard bit at me twice. I damned 
near stepped on it. Jee-sus." 

Geech followed the other man as Scarpo headed straight back toward the road, 
but slower than he came, watching every place he put his feet. When they 
were out in the white dust again, Geech said, "How the hell can we sneak up 
on 'em like this?" 

Patting his handkerchief at his cheeks, Scarpo said "Look, I don't give a 
shit. Them trees could be full of them fuckin' snakes. There ain't no 
traffic on this road, anyhow. We'll walk up it to the corner-to where the 
road forks, like the old lady said. Snakes-Jee-sus! It's not like cuttin' 
through an empty lot." 

Tucking his magnum back into his belly, Geech said, "No, it's not," and 
grinned. 

Scarpo caught him grinning. "Listen, you son of a bitch, anybody with good 
sense is scared of snakes! But that don't mean I'm copping out. I never quit 
on a job yet. Come on, let's go find that cabin." 

 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 

He was drunk and he was meaner than Heather had seen him before. His pale 
green eyes turned red, and his mouth was slack, the stubble on his chin and 
cheeks standing out prominently in the early evening light. Arley Santee was 
drunk, but he wasn't careless, he held the gun muzzle on Grady and had 
Heather open one cuff, then hook him around the post again. 

He said, "All right, city woman-widder woman. Reckon you and him slipped 
around and fucked, so you're goin' to make it up to me." 

Grady said, "Don't hurt the woman, Arley." 

Reptile quick, Arley struck him along the cheek. Grady's head slammed into 
the post and Heather cried out in fear for him. 

"No!" she yelled. "He's hurt, and you-the blood's starting again, staining 
the bandages!" 

"Ain't that a fuckin' shame," Arley said, and backhanded Heather. She 
staggered back and caught the porch rail. On the ground below, the hound 
threatened her with a low growl. 

"Get your asses out'n your clothes," Arley commanded. "Both you bitches get 
naked, quick as you can." 

Head reeling, Heather pulled her dress over her head, and as she hung it 
over the rail, saw that Arley was stepping out of his overalls. His penis 
was erect, poking out and up as if the violence he'd indulged in had 
stimulated it, and suddenly Heather realized that Arley somehow equated sex 
with hurt, or with mastery. 

It wasn't like that, she thought numbly, staring at the fresh stain marking 
Grady's bandages. With Grady it was tender and loving, and neither of them 
had dominated the other. They had shared their bodies, not submitted them, 
and certainly not used them as weapons with which to attack, to destroy. 

"Can't tell which looks the best," Arley said, fondling his rod and grinning 
wetly at them-at Heather and Honey, "The widder's got the biggest tits, and 
I can't fault a pussy with red hair on it. But sis is so young and tender, 
and her little cunt's always ready to take meat in it. So I guess I'll just 
set here and play with my pecker 'til I decide which to fuck." 

Heather gave a little sigh of deliverance, and wanted so much to go to 
Grady, to see how badly he had been hurt. He hadn't even groaned, and she 
could see his big chest rising and falling evenly, so she knew he wasn't 
dead. That had been cruel of Arley to hit him, when Grady's hands were tied 
like that, and if she ever got the chance to pay him back . . . . 

"Reckon you better lie down on the quilt with your legs spraddled, sis," 
Arley said, and Heather saw a faint smile of derision play over Honey's lips 
as she'd been chosen. 

But she didn't envy Honey; she pitied her. Honey hadn't known the huge and 
gentle penis of Grady Cordell, and probably never would. For that, Heather 
pitied her sister. 

"Look at that fine pussy," Arley said. "All that shiny brown hair and them 
tight pink lips that flat eat a man's cock up. Too bad you can't see it, 
Grady. That ass is somethin' to watch, account of sis wiggles it so good. 
Not much bigger'n a minute, she ain't, and it's kind of like fuckin' a 
child, but that makes it good, too. You ever wanted to screw one of them HP 
tight-assed kids you see goin' off to school every day, Grady?" 

Grady didn't answer, but Heather noticed that his lips tightened. Arley 
said, "Widder woman, you get on down there on your knees and take you a 
good, close look at sis's pussy." 

Heather said, "I-what do you mean?" 

"I mean if you don't move your ass quick, you goin' to get it kicked up 
between your shoulders! Get down there," I said. 

Trembling, Heather stepped over to where her sister was lying and dropped to 
her knees. Blushing, she forced herself to stare down between Honey's legs 
at the luxuriant growth of rich pubic hair nestling so lavishly between the 
slim, young thighs. It was the first time she had ever had a close-up of the 
female sex organ, and the sight was revealing, if not just a little 
shocking. 

The labia peeked from its heavy nest of hair, pink and puffy, and down at 
the far end of the half-concealed slit, there was the little dark ring of 
the anus. Honey's thighs were shapely, and her buttocks nicely rounded, 
Heather saw, her kid sister's breasts were not large, but wonderfully 
molded, and the nipples were hard. 

"Like that pussy?" Arley asked, and she could feel his drunken breath 
fanning against her naked shoulder blades. "Lean on over, woman, get closer 
to it-a heap closer." 

Obediently, wondering what it was all about, Heather leaned over and put her 
hand upon the wooden flooring between Honey's fragile ankles. The girl's 
crotch loomed larger, and Heather could make out the faint dampness that was 
beginning to glisten along her sister's swollen labia. Why, she thought, the 
girl was almost squirming in passion, as if she simply couldn't wait for the 
thing Arley was going to give her. 

His hand pressed against her neck. "Closer, city woman, get closer'n that." 

Heather struggled against the pressure of his hand, but Arley clamped his 
lean fingers into her neck and shoved her head lower, pushed it down, down 
until she was practically touching her sister's mound! 

"No-no!" Heather groaned. "You-you can't mean-not that-not me and my 
sister-oh, no!" 

"Oh, yeah," Arley grunted, and gave her neck the final shove. "Stick your 
face right on down into that fine cunt, widder. Do it good, 'cause I catch 
you raisin' your fuckin' head afore sis there gets her nuts off, I'm goin' 
to whip your ass with this gun barrel. Then I'm goin' to make you eat that 
pussy anyhow, so you might's well do it good the first time." 

Eyes closed tightly, holding her breath, Heather turned her face so that 
only her cheek lay against the moist curls of Honey's mound, and her lips 
moved across the inside of the girl's silken thigh. Heather was stunned so 
that she could barely think; she was so shocked, so disbelieving that she 
could not imagine that she was actually in such a position, that she was 
really nuzzling into her baby sister's crotch. 

She had only heard the barest evil whispers of such a thing, of two 
perverted women making a twisted kind of sex with each other, but she hadn't 
really listened to the wild stories, brushing them aside with the logic that 
they couldn't ever possibly concern her. Now they did, and in the worst 
possible manner. 

There was no bad odor; somehow, she had always believed there would be a 
nauseous odor, but all she could discern was a faint musk, a spice that 
wasn't at all distressing. Grady must smell something like that, when he 
moved his mouth close to her own cleft. 

Maybe Honey would help her fake this awful thing, Heather thought. Surely 
the girl wouldn't actually participate in this monstrous affair, even if 
she'd gotten out of hand lately. It was one thing for Grady to use his mouth 
on Heather's organ, but a different thing altogether for Heather to do it to 
another woman, and to her own kid sister, at that. Somehow, it smacked of 
incest, besides being homosexual. 

Something whipped across her up-ended buttocks, and Heather gasped in 
outrage, in pain. 

Arley said, "Get on with it. Put your mouth onto them pink pussy lips, and 
then shove your tongue right on inside. I've heard tell how city women do it 
french to each other, but I sure never thought I'd see me the day when I 
could set and watch. Wish you could see it with me, Grady, I swear. That 
redheaded woman's got her face stickin' in there atwixt her sis's legs, and 
she's just about to start eatin' pussy." 

Mind spinning, Heather put her hands on Honeys' thighs. They felt very soft, 
all sleek and polished. Must fake it somehow, she thought, Honey will help 
to pretend. She lowered her mouth and brushed her lips across the girl's 
palpitating mound, just touching the hair. 

Honey's hands came drifting down and nestled upon Heather's head, and the 
girl said softly, "Ah, yes, darling, oh, that's sweet." 

She's going to do it, Heather thought wildly, Honey's taking up the act just 
as if she knew my exact plans. And Heather dipped her face a little more, 
moved it slowly up and down upon the far fringes of the pubic hair so 
abundant and sultry. 

"Kiss it," Honey purred, and her hands urged Heather's mouth deeper into the 
plush forest, so that Heather's lips came in contact with those other 
lips-softer and longer and quivering. 

For just a fraction of a moment, she hesitated, her mind whirling. The musk 
rose attractively, and the flavor was light, salty-sweet. Honey pushed her 
hands down and her crotch up, and suddenly Heather's mouth was crushed into 
the girl's mound. 

Her teeth scraped the labia, and they parted damply for the intrusion. 
Heather clung desperately to her sister's thighs, but the heaving of Honey's 
belly was too powerful for her, and the lifting, the twisting of the vulva 
rubbed over her chin, her lips, her nose. 

The whimper that broke from Heather's lips was muffled by her sister's 
pussy. Her tongue somehow slid into the wetly caressing labia, and before 
she knew it, Heather was lapping, dipping, into the satin-lined hole, 
pushing her mouth hungrily into the torrid slot, gone completely out of her 
conscious mind and reacting only by instinct. And her primitive instinct was 
to devour this delicious meat spreading itself so invitingly for her 
ministration. 

"Ooh!" Honey moaned, from somewhere above her. "Oooh, Heather, that's 
wonderful! Oh, my sister, lick it deep, feel around in my pussy with that 
hot tongue-yes, darling, you're doing fine. Now find my clit-ahh! Suck me, 
darling, suck me!" 

There was hotness and a wet lunging, a soft encompassing and a hairy caress 
upon each cheek. Nose deeply into her younger sister's lower groin, Heather 
chewed tenderly but avidly into the cunt below, probing with her tongue, 
worrying the lips with her teeth. 

"Eat my pussy, baby! Oh yes, Heather-eat my cunt!" 

And Heather obliged, burrowed farther into the perfumed and sugary vagina, 
tickling as far back as she could reach. She slid her tongue, her slippery 
teeth, up, up, searching for the rubbery nub of her sister's clitoris. When 
she found it, Honey arched her back and clawed in a frenzy into Heather's 
long hair. The girl's hips rolled and her belly trembled, and now the sweat 
slid oily down along Heather's cheeks, and the other fragrant juices 
lathered her tongue, her questing lips. 

Digging her own fingers into Honey's ass cheeks, Heather lifted the 
succulent cunt to her mouth, sucked and sucked upon the clit until she had 
it distended so that she could lock it between her teeth and hold it there 
as a pulsating captive. 

"You're killing me!" Honey screamed. "Oh darling, kill me like that! Eat me 
alive, swallow me down-oh, Heather-Heather-I loveyou, love you! Eat me 
up-I-I'm coming coming coming!" 

With a surge of her thighs and a driving blow of her pelvis, Honey shuddered 
her pussy against her sister's teeth, and Heather forced her mouth as deeply 
into that lovely hot cunt as she could possibly get it, gulping and sucking 
all the way. 

Honey writhed and humped, and it was as if she were fucking Heather's face, 
as if she were using it the way she would screw a man's prick. And as her 
convulsive swiveling slowed bit by bit, the girl moaned softly in the 
rapturous agony of her completion. 

"Ain't that somethin'? " Arley crowed. "Now ain't that purely somethin' ? I 
mean, watchin' two pretty girls do that-one of 'em lappin' into her sister's 
pussy and makin' her come. Your gal friend done the eatin', Grady. Maybe you 
ain't all that anxious to be kissin' her now." 

"You go to hell," Grady said strongly, and Heather's heart leaped within her 
hot, sweaty body, for fear that Arley would hit him again. 

Lifting her face swiftly from between her sister's trembling thighs, she 
said, "Arley-can we do it together, kind of?" 

His head turned to her, and he said over his shoulder to the handcuffed man, 
"I'll bust your head later. Right now, I got me some business with this here 
bitch woman." 

And to Heather he said, "I figure you and him screwed, but knowin' how 
delicate you act about things, I don't figure you sucked him off yet. So I'm 
goin' to fix you up right good, widder woman. I'm goin' to let you suck me 
off, but just to show there ain't no hard feelings, sis there can eat your 
pussy at the same time." 

Wide-eyed, Heather kneeled there on the porch and stared at her tormentor. 
"Oh, no-oh, please, Arley, don't do this to me, I beg you." 

"Shit," he grunted, and used one hand to wave the club of his penis at her. 
"Beg all you want to, but it ain't about to do you a speck of good. You eat 
pussy and you'll eat prick. But sis's tongue up your gash ought to make it 
good for you, make you suck me fine as she done the other time." 

"No!" Heather said, up on one knee and turned to face him. "D-damn it, I 
won't do this dirty thing. I won't!" 

Arley said, "shit," again, and poked the muzzle of his rifle hard into her 
belly. Heather clasped both hands over the agony and fought for breath, 
swaying and sickened. Black spots buzzed behind her eyes and ricocheted 
inside her head. 

"Come on, Heather," Honey said, tugging at her arm. "Oh, please, Heather, 
don't try to fight him, don't make him any madder than he is right now. 
Let's do as he wants; and, look, going down on him isn't bad. I've done it, 
and it's not bad. I-I'll keep you so stirred up, you won't even realize 
what's going on at the other end." 

Arley laughed, the sound like a rusty file across a nail. "Hell she won't. 
I'm goin' to stuff my pecker down her throat like it was a big ol' sausage, 
and she can't hardly ignore a thing like that, now can she, sis?" 

Honey clung to Heather's arm, squeezing the muscle hard, bringing her out of 
her daze. Honey asked, "How-how do you want us to do it?" 

"I figure you can lie down on your back and kind of slide your face in there 
atwixt the widder's legs while she kneels there just like she is. She can 
sit right down on your mouth so you can stick your tongue up it, and I'll 
just take her by the head and ram my cock into her mouth. Everybody can just 
do what comes natural, until they come." 

Shuddering in disgust, Heather rocked on one knee, with the other leg bent 
and braced. Arley dragged up a hide-bottomed chair and sat down in it, his 
knees spread wide. He reached out and took her by the head, drew her down to 
where his ugly penis throbbed with its drop of pre-seminal fluid. She closed 
her eyes. 

 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 

The wizened woman said, "No, sir; no, sir, mister, I never seen no two white 
women come up my road. Not this here past week and not never. Onliest white 
women I sees is them church folks, when they brings me a little somethin'. " 

Scarpo looked at Geeth, then back at the old Black. "Storekeeper in town 
said your cabin was for rent; that right?" 

She bobbed her head, and sat on the edge of her rocking chair on the sagging 
porch of her small house. "Yes, sir, cap'n. Guess so.' 

"Any other cabins to rent around here?" 

"Not that I know of," she answered, wrinkled face intent upon his, rheumy 
eyes squinting. "Wouldn't rent mine, save for I'd purely like to visit my 
brother in Jackson, yes, sir. Wouldn't rent to no white women, neither-did 
folks say maybe I oughtn't." 

Geech said impatiently, "You got any neighbors, old woman ? " 

She craned her neck around to look at him. "Don't lay much claim to 'em, but 
they's them Santees down the road a piece." 

Geech said, "They might of got the wrong turn, man." And to the woman, 
"These Santees-they live back the way we came, maybe up the other fork of 
the road?" 

"You right, sir, right and proper. But was I you, I wouldn't go messin' 
around there none. You ain't lookin' for whiskey makers, is you?" 

Scarpo made a face and wiped his soggy handkerchief over his head and 
cheeks. "Jes-sus-stills and revenuers; would you believe it?" 

Birdlike, cocking her head at him now, the old woman said sharply, "Trash 
they is and I ain't ascared to say it: trash. On top of that, they's bad, 
bad. Always slippin' around with them guns." 

Scarpo said, "Okay, lady. Thanks for your help." 

"They ain't even got a proper road up to they place; twists and wobbles 
every whichaway, and they's potholes." 

"Okay, lady." Scarpo turned from the porch and walked heavily across the 
swept yard and back onto the dusty road. He kept staring at the grass on 
either side, and moved gingerly into the shade where he'd left his carbine 
hidden. 

"Back to the fork in the road," he said. "We missed it." 

Geech said easily, "Been a lot of screwin' up on this job." 

Scarpo stared at him for a second, then cradled the carbine and plodded 
away, not really giving a damn if the younger man followed or not. 

 CHAPTER NINETEEN 

Arley Santee was still drunk, maybe drunker; he'd been through two pint 
mason jars of volatile corn liquor, but Heather couldn't see any appreciable 
change in him since the afternoon. He hadn't stumbled on the path, and he 
wasn't a bit careless with his rifle. The dog hung back as he ordered, too, 
padding guard behind them, a terrible sentry in the humid night. 

The carbide lamp wobbled on his head as he sat down on the river bank and 
turned his face toward the water. He wasn't worried about Grady Cordell 
because one end of the rope that passed around Grady's ankles was tucked 
into Arley's overalls. If Grady moved quickly, Arley could simply jerk his 
feet out from under him. 

Where could a blinded, handcuffed man run to, Heather thought. Arley had 
only hauled him down here to further torture him, to belittle and degrade 
him-as he had done to Heather and to Honey. Remembering, she rubbed her hand 
across her mouth and grimaced. No man should force that kind of thing upon a 
woman, not even a man so lacking in all the human mercies as Arley Santee. 

"Lawman," Arley said, "if you had your eyes back, you'd of seen that big ol' 
loggerhead slippin' his eye under the water yonder. Biggest son of a bitch 
turtle I ever seen on this river, and I 'spect I'll bust him one-if I got me 
the time, after Artis gets back with all that money. Might be busy, though; 
might be makin' the widder there go get me her money she has to sign for, 
might be makin' her suck me off some more, like she done back at the house. 
You like listenin' to that, Grady." 

"No," Grady said. 

Arley moved his head, moved the spotlight of the lamp across the river 
surface. Watching, Heather made out a stump, a log hung up on the far bank, 
and a short forest of cypress trees growing out of the night black water 
near this shore. Would the man actually make Grady go into that river, where 
there was so much chance of him drowning? She hoped not; she prayed not. 

"Reckon you didn't," Arley said, and Heather caught the gleam of the fruit 
jar as he drank from it again. "Reckon when you go to swap slobbers with her 
again, you'll recollect how she sucked a cunt and my pecker, too. Can't 
never trust these city women, Grady; they ain't decent, honest country folks 
like you 'n me." 

His giggle was obscene, a half-mad sniggering that frightened Heather silly. 
When it died, Arley said, "Around to the right, and out yonder some, there's 
a water oak blowed over next to the bank. Them roots makes a good hidey hole 
for mudcats, most nights. Reckon you can scrabble one good as me?" 

"Guess so," Grady said. "Man don't need his eyes to feel under roots." 

"Man needs his feet, though. Couple of dropoffs out yonder, too. You fall in 
one of 'em, I might not be able to haul you back with this here string, 
seein' as how you won't be doin' much swimmin' in your handcuffs." 

Heather said, "Arley . . . " 

And he said, "Shut up, woman. Your mouth's best used for suckin' cocks." 

Face flaming, grateful for the cover of darkness, Heather sank back. There 
was no use in even attempting to reason with the man, he was going to do 
just as he wanted. Here among the three others, he was the kingpin, the boss 
man, the emperor; his word was law, and his punishment swift and perverted. 
That's why he had Grady down here on the blackly flowing river, to punish 
him for screwing Heather. He had already doled out chastisement for Heather 
on the same charges. 

Arley said, "I got the rope on you, Grady. Just ease on out there and bring 
us back some mudcat for breakfast. If you can scrabble a stall." 

Grady stood up, a big shadow in the white flicker of the headlamp, and 
Heather caught her breath, not wanting to see him risk his life on Arley's 
evil whim. 

No more than she had wanted to take his penis into her lips, back there at 
the shack. She couldn't back away now, and she couldn't then. He had her 
head pinned between his cruel hands, and when he shoved his pale-haired 
belly forward, the swollen, purplish head prodded her lips and she had to 
open them or have her skull crushed in his grip. 

His penis slipped into her spread lips, passed softly scraping over her 
bottom teeth, and Heather had shivered like a young tree in a high wind. 
Fighting the impulse to upchuck, she had steeled her body to accept whatever 
indignity he could pile upon it-or into it. And when his prick slid over the 
roof of her mouth and moved to touch the velvet cup of her throat, she had 
managed to take it without becoming violently ill. 

"Step right on out in the water," Arley called to Grady. "Might be you'll 
stomp on that big ol' turtle, and he'll snap off a leg." 

The bastard, she thought, mind unflinching at the curse, for it fit him. 
He'd worked his penis in and out of her lax mouth, snarling instructions as 
to what she was supposed to do with her tongue, and she had obeyed, trying 
to get it over and done with. 

"That's the way," Arley said. "If you miss that drop-off, you can turn to 
the right and feel along them roots. Might not be a water moccasin in 'em 
tonight; was the other night, though." 

She couldn't have done it without the thing that Honey was doing to her at 
the same time. Kneeling over her sister's face, Heather felt the quick, hot 
darting of the girl's tongue, and knew the caress of her lips. By 
concentrating upon her own excitement, she could continue to work upon 
Arley's lunging cock, using her tongue and teeth, sucking with lips until 
her cheeks dipped in, pulling upon his penis head while he groaned and 
bucked in the chair. 

"Swim on off, if you can," Arley said. "See can you out-pull me on this 
rope." 

Honey had probed swiftly into Heather's vagina, reaching full length with 
her tongue, stroking it around and about inside as her lips nibbled at the 
labia and her fingers teased lightly over the cheeks of Heather's ass and 
down through the crack. 

Heather pulled on Arley's cock, sucked it and laved it with her tongue, 
tasting the saltiness of its head and the oozing seminal fluid, knowing the 
hairy thrust as his pelvis came against her lips, as his balls swung 
rhythmically to her chin. 

"That's the place," Arley called. "Right in them roots and on back in the 
mud bank. If you lucky, there's a big old cat up under there, but if you 
ain't-maybe you can snatch out a conger eel afore he eats your thumb clean 
off." 

She couldn't help squirming on Honey's face; the sensation was different 
from when Grady had used his mouth on her, for a woman seemed to know all 
the nooks and crannies of eroticism. Her sister ate her cunt with delicacy, 
with a sensuous concentration that made Heather go wild. In turn, she sucked 
madly upon Arley's slippery prick, so that when it swelled its head and 
prepared to ejaculate, she was caught by surprise. 

Arley's breath hissed between his teeth and the carbide lamp held its bright 
spot upon the head and shoulders of Grady Cordell as the deputy dipped his 
cuffed hands beneath the black surface of the river. 

Heather remembered that he had hissed just that way when he started to come 
in her mouth, and she couldn't get away from it. He clamped her head 
savagely in his hands and stroked his spitting cock far back into her 
throat. The hot semen geysered into her throat, against the roof of her 
mouth, over her tongue. Arley hissed and churned his ass, half-lifting from 
the chair to feed his flood of juice into her face. 

"Got him," Grady said exultantly, and Heather stared to see him lift 
dripping from the water with a big fish thrashing violently from his doubled 
fists. Spray flew and Grady turned to wade back to shore, water pouring off 
him, off the catfish he held. 

If she hadn't swallowed the stuff, she could have choked on it. And just 
about that moment, Honey's tingling suction got to Heather, too. Her entire 
being suffused with a glow of ecstasy, and when Arley drew his wet penis 
from her mouth, Heather trembled in an exquisite orgasm brought on by her 
sister's hungry teeth and tongue. 

"Bring him on in," Arley ordered. "I just as soon keep you on my string, 
anyhow, leastways 'til Artis gets home, case I have to trade your worthless 
ass for him. Then I'll think of some-thin' to do with you, Grady; I'll think 
hard on it and come up with somethin' real, real good." 

When Grady stumbled on the steep river bank, Heather moved to help him, but 
Arley shoved her back. "Tote the fish on home, boy; you a big, strong 
policeman, so you can make it all right by yourself." 

They trooped back for the house, Grady moving ahead in the dark, with the 
big hound ranging ahead of him, crisscrossing the trail from side to side 
and keeping an eye on him. Then Heather and Honey came next, closer now than 
they had been in their lives, and after them prowled Arley Santee and his 
rifle. Because the light was behind the others, they moved clumsily, 
following Grady's lead. Heather sighed with relief when they reached the 
bare yard, because she knew that snakes hunted at night, and any of them 
could have stepped on one. 

She only wished they could step on Arley Santee as well, and break his back 
like the reptile he was. Somehow, by some stroke of good fortune, they would 
soon have to try it. The man's absent brother couldn't be gone much longer, 
and when he came back, the odds would be astronomical against any kind of 
escape. Another gun, another carbon copy of Arley-it would bar them from any 
lingering hope they might still have. 

Another gun, she thought, and wondered where Arley had hidden the pistol 
he'd taken from Grady. A pistol wouldn't be so difficult to work; just point 
it and pull the trigger. But Arley had tucked it out of sight somewhere in 
the cabin, and it might not be all that hard to find. She'd look, Heather 
decided; every chance now, she would search for that other gun. 

"Take care of that fish," Arley said to her. "You know how." 

She took the catfish from Grady and saw that he'd killed it, for which she 
was thankful. She got the fire going under the pot and waited for it to heat 
the water. Looking over at the porch, she saw Grady being chained to his 
post once more, and her heart sank. Heather didn't think she could just 
shoot Arley outright-even though he was a confessed murderer and a perverted 
rapist, and a kidnapper, too. She would need Grady's help. 

But Grady was blind, and handcuffed to the post. 

When she was done with the catfish, she carried it into the house and placed 
it in the pan of water with baking soda in it. She poked through a table 
drawer and looked behind the wood box, but the missing pistol wasn't in 
either place. 

Arley came up behind her and she flinched. The coal oil lamp was burning on 
the kitchen table, throwing its soft light over the shack's interior, and 
the heat of the day had abated somewhat. It should have been a time for 
resting, for gentleness, but not with Arley Santee standing so near. 

"M-more whiskey?" she asked. "I see some jars over there." 

He put both arms around her waist and reached up to cup his hands over her 
breasts, pulling her back into his body. Heather felt his stiff penis 
shoving against her buttocks. He said, "You suck a man's pecker real good, 
woman. Makes me think what else you can do, besides use your pussy like a 
fresh-fucked mink." 

"I don't understand," she said. 

"You ever been corn-holed?" he asked, rubbing his hard into the crack of her 
tail. 

"You-you mean back there? No, of course not, that's depraved! You don't mean 
to-to . . . . " 

Heather bit off her words, knowing by now that begging this animal, pleading 
with him, only whetted his appetite for the sadistic. But her fingernails 
bit into the palms of her hands as she considered his latest deviation, and 
rejected it for the vile thing it was. Maybe he was only tormenting her, 
threatening her with an act that he knew would be unacceptable to her. 

But he meant it. She knew that as he kept pushing the length of his rod 
against her cheeks, as he continued to fondle her breasts. 

"Won't hurt none if you don't fight it," Arley said into the back of her 
neck. "I corn-holed three, four boys when I was young, and it didn't tear 
'em up none. Might be we could grease my pecker and help it slide right on 
up your ass. Thing is, you can loosen up your hole or tighten it-and if it's 
tight, it's goin' to hurt." 

"Let me do something else," she suggested. "Let me do something to Honey 
while she gives you a good time." 

He ran one hand down from her breasts and pushed the fingers between her 
thighs, wiggling the middle one up against her labia. "Thought I'd let sis 
get her nuts off with your boyfriend-seein' as how you sneaked and fucked 
him. Could be he'll like her little pussy better'n yours." 

"All right," she said, feeling beaten again. "All right, Arley, anything you 
say." 

He giggled against her ear and squeezed her mound, squeezed her tit. "I say 
we go on out yonder and watch sis get Grady's dick up." 

 CHAPTER TWENTY 

Greech squatted down and peered closely at the sandy loam of the turnoff 
road. "Look here, man! Women's tracks, and two sizes. They turned in here." 

"Keep that flashlight covered," Scarpo said. "We don't know how far the 
house is." 

Straightening up, Geech spread his hand over the lens and moved it around, 
using only a small portion of the spot. "Road runs out up there, just a dead 
end with a path." 

"Too damned dark," Scarpo said. "Must be a lot more of them fuckin' snakes 
around at night. We better go back and spend the night in the car." 

"Or in town," Geech said. "I'm hungry." 

Hesitating, Scarpo said, "I don't know. We're pretty close to 'em now, and 
if we hang around town, the hick law might want to talk to us. People 
shouldn't remember our faces, Geech. We last the night out in the car, then 
move in early, when we can look for snakes." 

"Hey," Geech said. "There's a car up in the trees there. No-a jeep. 
Scarpo-it's a jeep!" 

They went to it and moved the light over it. Scarpo said, "It's a hillbilly 
squad car. Look at that two-way radio. Over here-yeah, like I thought, 
sheriff's department, it says. Son of a bitch." 

Geech climbed into the front seat of the open vehicle and opened the dash, 
turned and rummaged in the back seat. "Chow call, man. Canteen of water and 
emergency rations. Climb in." 

"What the hell is a cop's jeep doin' parked away the hell out in the woods ? 
" 

Geech popped open a can. "Who knows? Hey, man-jerky and hardtack, like in 
the cowboy movies." 

Scarpo went around and got into the jeep. He flicked on the radio and heard 
only the buzz of static. "Now we got to stay right here and see what about 
the cop. If he don't show by morning, then we fuck up his motor and bust the 
radio, let air outa' the tires. Then we go on up that path and find them 
goddamned women." 

 CHAPTER TWENTY ONE 

When Arley pushed the jar of corn at her, Heather took it gladly. She 
swallowed a big drink, sputtered, swallowed another one. She'd need all her 
strength and energy for this next degradation that Arley had planned, but 
she wanted to be numb when it began. 

"Whole lot better thisaway," Arley said, taking back the jar. "Never watched 
a woman fuck somebody afore, all I ever seen was some of the boys 
corn-holin' each other. Don't give a shit if it is ol' Grady lyin' there 
with his pecker up, neither. Thing is, I get to see sis take that studhorse 
cock up her tight HP pussy." 

Heather reached for the whiskey, tapped it and said, "I wish . . . " 

Arley cut in with, "You wish you had all that big meat for yourself, don't 
you, bitch? Well, you can't have it no more, not less'n I decide. And if sis 
there gives it a better screw, then you just up shit creek." 

Heather blinked watery eyes at her sister stripped to the buff again, at 
Grady lying helpless where Honey had peeled off his pants and opened his 
shirt all the way. Arley had placed the lamp strategically, and she could 
see every movement, but she didn't watch as avidly as he did. 

He said to Honey, "Get with it, girl. See can you give this stud a better 
fuck than your sister." 

Moving slowly, Honey climbed over Grady's still body. Only his penis was 
erect, that huge, club-like thing so long and so thick and risen from the 
forest of his black, curly pubic hair. Heather knew something of what her 
sister felt, knew the fright and compulsion of staring down at that 
tremendous organ, fearful of its size and yet needful to try it. 

Was she jealous that her own sister was going to take into her vagina 
something that Heather was already beginning to classify as her own? Yes, in 
part, and no, in part. Heather's mind had been a jumble since she had been 
forced to give oral gratification to Honey, and since her sister had 
returned the favor. So different-not disgusting at all, even beautiful; now 
she couldn't look on Honey as a child, or as some kind of disturbed wanton, 
either. 

So neither could Heather blame her even obliquely for what she was about to 
do with Grady Cordell; in fact, Heather felt a surge of warmth for them 
both-for the naked, lovely girl and the eye-bandaged, handsome man. She 
wanted to call out something to them-a toast, a benediction, perhaps. 

"Guide it to your pussy, sis," Arley said. "Blind man can't see, only feel." 

His own hands drew Heather close, took the whiskey jar away from her, pushed 
her over into position upon her hands and knees. "While we're watchin' them, 
might's well get at our own fuckin'. " 

She waited, focusing her attention upon Honey and the other man, feeling the 
liquor numbness moving over her own naked skin, trying to forget Arley as he 
sat rubbing an oily liquid over the head of his distended penis. 

Her sister straddled Grady, one hand feeling down to touch delicately along 
the expanded knob, the hard and throbbing staff. Honey moved as if she were 
mesmerized, and the nipples on her tits stuck out like elongated raisins; 
the light picked up the gleaming of her lavish pubic hair, the sleekness of 
her shapely thighs. 

Grady's monster glans rose to nudge her mound, and Honey gave a tremulous 
sigh as she used her hand to steer it to the slitted entrance-way. Heather 
stared in fascination as her sister settled her crotch upon that flanged 
bulb and began to let down her weight, so that it would be forced into the 
tightness of her little-used pussy, where only Arley had been before. 

"Right pretty sight," Arley said from behind Heather. "Sis purely enjoys her 
fuckin', since I learned her how." 

He fondled the up-tilted cheeks of Heather's ass, and she shivered in 
response, more from fear than passion, although the sight of Grady's prick 
sliding up into Honey's stretched cunt was beginning to excite her. 

Grady's thick meat vanished inch by round, fat inch into her sister's pussy 
lips, and when Honey was at last seated upon the man's pelvis, Heather saw 
the look of bliss that spread over the girl's face as she took all that 
lovely cock and realized its enchantment. 

Heather winced when Arley poked a finger at the ring of her anus, but 
remained posed upon hands and knees when he started to grease her there, 
pushing some of the slippery stuff inside. Relax, she reminded herself; if 
she was loose and non-resistant, she wouldn't be hurt-or hurt any more than 
usual-whatever was usual, being screwed in back, in the ass. After this, 
there was no other step down, she thought, and quivered when the warm, oily 
end of Arley's rod prodded at her hole. 

Look at Honey, she thought; stare at Gradysee them make love, for there is 
so much gentleness in that big cock, so much tenderness coiled lovingly down 
within his testicles, waiting to be fountained forth in love. And Honey was 
feeling it, fucking it, gyrating the trim and fragile-looking cheeks of her 
girlish ass upon that huge prick, making the head of it move around inside 
her sizzling cunt. 

Arley had both hands braced on Heather's hips, his thumbs hooked back to 
stretch the cheeks of her ass apart. She felt the point of his cock shoving, 
pushing, thrusting-and the tightly puckered hole of her anus resisted, so 
she pushed back with her inner belly muscles, trying to open for it so she 
wouldn't be hurt. 

There was pain as the head worked its buttery path into her ass, but she 
denied it by watching her sister slide up and down on that other prick, that 
great and adorable prick. 

Arley's thing crowded into her channel, and she heard the sound of his 
animal panting. He pushed again, forcing the length of it into the narrow 
sleeve of her rectum, and Heather bit her lips at the quick edge of agony. 
Watch Honey and Grady, she thought; he's not hurting Honey, he's only loving 
her, pumping his cock wet and shiny in and out of her sweet young pussy as 
she lifts her ass and drops it, wiggles it and hunches it. Oh, how lucky 
they are, how beautiful they are. 

"Got it to the root," Arley rasped. "Yeah, city bitch-I got my pecker shoved 
clear to the balls inside your asshole. How you like this, widder woman? How 
you like ol' Arley to corn-hole you thisaway?" 

"F-fine," she moaned, trying not to let the sob break free. Then his hands 
slid around her body, one to maul a dangling tit, the other to fumble into 
her hairy crotch. 

Arley pulled back, and she thought he was going to tear out her anus, but he 
pushed forward before anything ripped, and Heather grunted as his prick 
reached up into her bowels again. His fingers played into her strangely wet 
labia, and he squeezed her tit. 

Across from them, Honey said down to the man between her legs, "Oh wow, man! 
It's like riding a barber pole-ooh, baby-ooh, darling-every time I grind it, 
my clit nearly explodes. Oh, don't come yet, Grady-please hold it back so I 
can just fuck and fuck." 

Heather quaked as Arley's fingers moved into the lips of her cunt, as he 
rubbed her own clitoris and stroked his cock in and out of her ass. The 
feeling built crazily within her, and she made wild, moaning noises, bestial 
sounds, rocking her ass back upon the driving prick to get the full effect 
of it. 

Mouth sucking for air, tits flopping, Heather humped her ass and shook it, 
ground her pelvis and felt his fingers inside her vagina, felt them 
stimulating her center of excitement. His pole worked in her tight crevice, 
and before she had another moment to wonder how she could possibly reach an 
orgasm in such a way, she had. 

Jittering upon his slippery finger, vibrating upon his cock, Heather knew 
the bursting of sensation from two directions, and the implosion was a 
searing one, an earthquake of flesh and membrane that made her head jerk up 
and down. 

"C-comin'! " Arley grunted. "Y-yeah-comin' up your ass, woman! puttin' it to 
you-shootin' it off away up inside your tight asshole-uhhh! Uhh!" 

The discharge gushed into the throbbing tube of her anus, streamed hotly, 
heavily from the bulge of his flexing prick to soak the cavity he had filed 
to capacity. His balls sapped against her thighs, and Heather came very near 
to collapsing upon the boards of the porch as her elbows and knees weakened. 

Eyelids fluttering, she swayed from side to side until Arley extracted his 
drippy penis from her hole with a loud plop. Then she let herself down and 
curled into a fetal ball, eyes closed and her heart hammering like the 
hooves of a runaway horse. She lay like that for an eternity, before she at 
last remembered that others had been screwing, too, before she thought of 
Honey and Grady. 

Opening her eyes again, she saw them clenched closely, and realized that her 
sister's vagina had been flooded by Grady's semen. It all would have been 
something special, if Arley Santee hadn't laughed. 

Whinnying, he slapped his naked knee and hooted at them all. "Boy howdy-if 
you all ain't a mess! Women a-playin' like your asses made of cake and you 
scared to crack the icin', but turn you loose on a couple of stiff pricks, 
and go flat out'n your heads. I reckon ol' Artis is goin' to be mighty proud 
to have cunts like this all primed for him, time he gets home." 

Arley drank deeply of the corn, slopping some of it over his chin and down 
onto his chest. Heather sat up, suddenly ashamed, sad that he had dirtied 
the moment for them, especially for Honey and Grady. She got to one knee and 
saw her sister lifting slowly, rising carefully, off Grady's still hard and 
erect penis. As it became fully exposed, the length of it glistened with the 
juices left upon it, the blended stuff of her inner lubrication and his 
ejaculation. 

Subdued, Honey found her shorts and slipped into them, then moved out of the 
circle of light toward the outhouse. 

The jar rattled against Arley's teeth, and he coughed. "Too bad you ain't 
goin' to be around after tomorrow, Grady. Guess you best figure that to be 
your last piece of ass-less'n you can coax Heather here into givin' you some 
more. Artis is due back by mornin', and he ain't one to dally. If the 
sheriff don't catch him, then I don't need you no more-and if the sheriff 
does catch him, then I work up a trade. But you and me both know that you 
ain't goin' to leave here alive, swap or no swap. Hell, boy, you ought to 
thank me for makin' your last night on earth a good W 

"Yeah," Grady said, "thanks." 

"You welcome," Arley laughed. "You purely welcome." 

He drew on overalls but no shirt, and stood wobbling with his gun in one 
hand, the whiskey jar in the other. "Hey, sis! Carry us some quilts out here 
and we'll make a pallet in the yard. Do I wake up with a hard-on, I aim to 
work it off in your hot HI' pussy." 

Honey came out of the dark, still quiet, and went into the house for quilts 
and pillows. She brought them out and made a bed of sorts on the ground 
beneath the chinaberry tree, ignoring the big hound that stalked beside her. 

On the bottom step, Arley turned. "Go on and fuck him, widder, if you're 
woman enough after that corn-holin' you got from me. Ain't nothin' left 
cherry to her, Grady, less'n it's her ears." 

He laughed out into the yard and patted Honey on the ass. "Take you a good 
drink of this here bust skull, sis, and the skeeters won't bother you 
atall." To Heather and Grady he called out, "Last night; better make it a 
belly whopper." 

After he had settled down on the pallet with Honey, and she had listened for 
any more noise, Heather whispered to Grady, "When I'm sure he's asleep, I'll 
go search the shack for your pistol. It's in there somewhere, I'm certain of 
it." 

"The corn has him in a pretty good mood," Grady said softly. "Maybe you 
could change my bandages and wash my face." 

"Of course. Oh, Grady, I'm sorry we didn't get to it before," and she went 
to dip water into the pan, to bring the rest of the torn flour sacks and a 
jar lid filled with whiskey. 

Glancing often at the place where Arley, her sister, and the dog lay in the 
shadows, Heather worked the strips of stained linen from Grady's face, 
wincing as the freshly dried blood stuck and had to be soaked away with 
water. 

When they were lifted off, she looked anxiously at the ugly wound across the 
bridge of his nose, but it seemed none the worse for Arley's rough treatment 
earlier in the day. Carefully, delicately, Heather bathed the gash with 
whiskey, peering closely in the light from the flickering lamp. 

Grady blinked, closed his eyes and opened them wide once more. She saw the 
lamplight reflected in his black eyes, and-something else. She saw 
recognition. 

Grady Cordell could see! 

She pressed the back of one hand fiercely against her teeth to keep from 
screaming the wonderful news. Her skin prickled, and she suddenly realized 
that she was stark naked, that the tips of her breasts were only inches from 
this man's face, and that he could see them now. Heather shrank upon 
herself, covering her breasts, feeling at once wildly delighted and also 
embarrassed. 

When he was blind, she had screwed him and accepted the adulation of his 
mouth upon her vagina, but now that he could see her, she was very unsure of 
herself. Grady might not even like her now. 

Whispering softly as a drifted leaf, he said, "Take it easy, Heather. I've 
been thinkin' I could see ever since Arley slammed my head against this 
post. There was sort of a click, and I guess the nerves got straight again, 
or out of shock, or somethin'. " 

"Oh-oh I'm so glad; so very, very glad!" 

Shifting his weight, he inched up on his shoulders and changed positions of 
his hands; the handcuffs clinked faintly against the porch post. "I'm a long 
way from bein' loose. I've been workin' at this post, and it feels like it's 
gettin' wobbly; guess it's about half rotten, like everything else on this 
place. You're a beautiful woman, Heather, you look every bit as good as you 
feel." 

Blood rushed to her face, even though she told herself it was ridiculous. 
She had already done it with this man; already, they had known an intimacy 
that few people are lucky enough to attain, and there was no reason to react 
so childishly to him now. 

"He-Arley keeps the key to those handcuffs in his overalls pocket. We can't 
get to that, but if I find your gun . . . " 

"It will be something," he said. "Meanwhile, I'll keep tuggin' at this post. 
If Artis Santee shows up in the mornin', they won't waste any more time on 
me. Maybe you'd better turn down the lamp, in case he sits up and looks this 
way. And, Heather.. . " 

"Yes?" 

"About your sister. I can't deny I enjoyed makin' it with her, but it was 
like you and Arley in a way. I couldn't pick which one of you I wanted." 

She said, "I understand. And the funny thing is, I didn't mind. At first I 
thought I was jealous, but then I just wanted the two of you to be as happy 
as you could. Is that kind of crazy?" 

"A good kind of crazy, I guess. Be careful, Heather. Don't wake him up and 
let him catch you lookin' for that pistol." 

She drifted into the dark house, finding her way by feel, as if she were as 
blind as Grady had been. Had been, she thought, and the change of tense was 
sweet. Under the matress, behind the bed-nothing; all through the kitchen 
and its pots, the pans, and the jars of vegetables-nothing. No gun to be 
found, and she was getting desperate, thinking of the dawn to come, or 
another man like Arley. 

A sugar can, a flour bin, behind the water bucket-no pistol. And once she 
put her hand upon a many-legged thing that scuttled away, but not before it 
had almost stopped the beating of her heart. At the shabby dresser, she went 
through it drawer by drawer, feeling among rumpled clothing and tattered 
socks. The mantelpiece, and the fireplace-even sifting through the ashes 
left over from last winter-no pistol. 

It was only by accident that she came upon it. Stumbling over an old pair of 
rubber boots sagged against the wall, she felt for them to set them straight 
again, and touched the cool steel of the handgun. Her fingers played over 
it, barrel and cylinder and stock, for she couldn't believe she had actually 
found it. Then she held tightly to its butt and put it behind her still 
naked body to bring the pistol out onto the porch. 

Finding her dress in a puddle by the porch rail, she watched the space below 
the chinaberry tree, and saw only shadows without movement, so she chanced 
slipping the dress over her head, so she could hide the gun in its folds. 

Squatting by Grady, she put her lips to his ear and whispered, "I've got 
it." 

He smiled at her. "That give a fightin' chance." 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO 

The rattly old pickup slowed, raced its motor, turned into the short road 
with a clatter and stopped. A lean man in faded overalls got out and kicked 
the door shut. 

Scarpo said, "Go across there and see who he is." 

Geech slid out of the jeep in the early morning light, and stepped out onto 
the white sand clearing before pulling the magnum from his belt. That was a 
mistake. 

The man was quick and handy with the long shotgun. Its muzzle swung up to 
cover Geech before he could do more than cuddle his pistol in his hand. 

He said, "Let it fall." 

Geech hesitated, and that was his second mistake. The man pulled trigger on 
the shotgun, and the blast knocked Geech back into the trunk of a water oak. 
He tried to lift his pistol, but when he got it about hip-high, the shotgun 
slammed another load of pellets through him. Geech bounced off the tree 
trunk and fell over onto the ground. 

The man jacked another shell into the shotgun and looked around. When he 
turned the white target of his face full toward the jeep, Scarpo centered 
the crosshairs of the scope upon it and stroked the hair trigger of the 
carbine. He didn't need a second shot. The man in overalls spun around and 
the shotgun flew off into the brush, and the man turned over like a kid's 
top that had run out of spin. 

Scarpo came out from behind the jeep and went to stand over the stranger. He 
toed him over onto his back and looked dispassionately into the face with 
its staring eyes of pale green, and the hair so washed-out blond that it 
seemed white. The bullet had gone in at the left cheekbone and come out the 
back of the head; the white sand was soaking up a lot of red. 

Squatting beside him, Scarpo fished out a wallet, thumbed through it, read a 
name aloud from a driver's license: "Santee; Artis Santee." A few dollars in 
the wallet; Scarpo took it and stuffed the cheap plastic back into the man's 
pocket, then took hold under his arms ad dragged him into the brush to drop 
him out of sight. 

On the seat of the pickup was a brown paper bag half full of jewelry. Scarpo 
spilled it out, poked among it and grunted. The guy must have been a freak 
for costume stuff; all of it was dime store. Only after he'd gone to the 
jeep and found his ejected cartridge casing, only then did he walk over to 
Geech. 

"And you thought it was a lockup, you dumb bastard." 

He dragged Geech off into the brush, too, being careful where he placed his 
feet, watching closely for snakes. Wiping his sticky hands on the grass, 
rubbing them dry in a spot of sand, Scarpo checked the ground around the 
jeep, scuffed over footprints, and set about disabling the vehicle. 

Straightening up, he used his handkerchief to wipe over the steering wheel, 
the dash, the canteen. He wiped his bald head and sighed, then cradled his 
carbine and plodded up the trail that led from the clearing. He still had a 
job to do. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY THREE 

Heather came slowly awake, stretched and yawned. She felt cool, but warm; 
she felt wonderful, for it had been a wonderful night, and she lay snuggled 
to the man who had made it so, loving him. 

Opening one eye, she looked out across the yard and saw the alert head of 
the hound, the tangled lump that was her sister and Arley Santee under the 
covers. Just coming dawn, she saw; in a few hours, the summer sun would 
broil down upon them all, banishing the cool comfort of now. 

Dawn. Arley's brother was supposed to come back today, and they'd get rid of 
Grady Cordell. Oh, lord, she thought, and felt beneath her skirt for the 
pistol. It was still there, and she let out the breath she had been holding. 
The gun gave them a fighting chance, Grady said. 

Poor love; he couldn't be very comfortable with his wrists locked around the 
post like that. But he had done just fine last night, anyway. Managing to 
turn over onto his side, he'd been able to stroke his big thing deeply and 
strongly into her eager sheath, once she got a leg over him and helped him 
stick it in. 

Beautiful, it was, the thick meat of it moving hotly and superbly within her 
clenching cunt; lovely and magic and gorgeous, and she had swished her 
yearning pussy around in it, gyrating her ass shamelessly and nibbling her 
labia on the slidy shaft. 

And she had whispered against his hairy, sweating chest, hissed the bad 
words, the exciting words, into the base of his throat, "Oh Grady--fuck me, 
darling. Push that big cock so far up into my cunt that it can never get 
back out again. Oh Grady, oh, my love, oh, my tremendous, darling prick." 

Because she had been so stirred by feeding him her nipples one by one, 
Heather thought it might be a good idea to suck upon his, and it was. Grady 
bucked and heaved at the wet caress, and almost shoved his thrusting cock 
through her. It was so great to luxuriate upon the length of it, to fondle 
her fingers into his hairy balls, to know the pounding of that splendid rod 
as it probed far up into her belly. 

"Yes, my love-yes my glorious, loving fucker -oh, screw me until I can't 
catch my breath. Ram that huge prong up my pussy, make my ass shake-ahh, my 
darling-ooh-I'm about to come and I don't want to come yet because fucking 
you is so good, so goood." 

But of course she had come, trembling and swiveling her hips, bitting at his 
nipples and squeezing his flailing balls in her hand. And she had kissed him 
to keep herself quiet so Arley wouldn't wake, kissed him with thrusting 
tongue and raking teeth, while that lovely monstrous cock stroked and 
stroked into her shuddering cunt. 

Surprisingly, she'd come again, reaching another almost immediate orgasm 
when he let go that magnificent jetting of sperm, of hotly flushing semen 
that sprayed her cervix and saturated the walls of her vagina and came 
flooding stickily out through the rippling lips of her stretched pussy. 

Then she'd said it into his panting lips, whispering it so that no one else 
could hear, "I love you, Grady Cordell." 

And he said back, "I love you, Heather." 

She hadn't asked him then if he was married, though the idea had crossed her 
mind. She didn't ask because it didn't really matter; she was Grady CordelPs 
woman, and would be, wherever he went, anything he did. If she had to share 
him with a wife, so be it. She'd share him with Honey, too. A little bit of 
him was better than all of the other two men she'd known. 

Breathing the male scent of him, smiling her lips into the hair of his broad 
chest, Heather fought to bring herself back to the hard reality of the 
blooming day. The pistol, the handcuff keys, and now she thought she could 
steel herself to shoot a hole through Arley Santee, so that Grady would be 
protected for now and forever-more. 

Moving up his relaxed body, she kissed the corner of his mouth and the fake 
bandages she'd placed over his eyes last night before they made love. She 
put her lips to his ear and said, "Wake up, sweetheart, it's daylight." 

He moved his face and she knew he was no longer asleep. Heather said into 
his ear, "When he comes this way, when he's away from Honey and that dog, 
I'll point the gun at him and make him toss the key to the handcuffs over 
here on the porch." 

"Aim it low," he murmured, "at his belly.. Cock the hammer back and aim it 
low." 

"I will," she promised. "I won't let him hurt you, darling." 

That's when the faint echo of shots reached the house and the yard-two deep 
sounds, a pause, a lighter noise. 

The hound leaped up and growled, hackles rising the length of its back, 
teeth showing yellow in the early light. Arley Santee came up a moment 
later, staring around, rifle lifting to the ready before he fully realized 
where he was. 

"Shots," he said. "Them was shots from down to the county road." He came to 
his feet with one bound, strode lean and rangy for the porch. "Shots -and 
Artis due back this mornin'. You son of a bitch lawman-they was a trap laid, 
wasn't it?" 

He had one foot on the bottom step when Heather sat up and pointed the 
barrel of the pistol at him, aiming low and for the belly, like Grady said. 
"D-don't come any closer, Arley!" 

When her thumb clicked back the hammer, the sound was as loud as the far-off 
shots had been, and as threatening. 

Arley looked at the pistol, then at her face. The rifle hung low in his 
right hand. He said, "You hunted up that handgun in the house. You white 
trashy city bitch-you thought you could slip one by me." 

"I'll shoot," she said. "I swear, I'll shoot you." 

"Believe you would," he said, peeling back his lips and showing his long 
teeth at her. "Looks like you got some iron shoved up your ass to make you a 
backbone, and I purely believe you'd shoot ol' Arley-if I hadn't took all 
the shells out'n that thing." 

Grady said, "Heather!" 

And she pulled the trigger. The gun snapped. "You cocksucker!" Arley said, 
and swept the barrel of his rifle up and across as he leaped up the steps. 
It caught her high on the side of her head and Heather saw fireworks going 
off behind her eyes. The pistol flew off somewhere and since the rifle had 
stunned her, she only felt a thump when Arley kicked her in the belly. 

Heather couldn't see very well, but she could hear plainly. Arley said, "I'm 
goin' to tear out your pussy, widder woman. But first I got to know what 
happened to Artis." 

She shook her head and pushed herself up from the porch and tried to tell 
Arley that he shouldn't kick Grady, too. But Arley kicked him again, and 
yelled down at him, "Bastard! How come they shot at Artis? Whyn't you tell 
me there was a trap set? You big po-lice bastard." 

Heather made it to one knee, and her head throbbed agony. Her hands felt 
over the boards of the porch for a weapon, for something, anything. 

And Honey jumped up the steps straight for Arley's back; her bent knees 
caught him low in the spine, and her hurled weight drove them both across 
the porch and into the wall of the shack. The crash rocked the house, and a 
tin pan fell clattering off the wall. Clawing at his face, hissing, Honey 
tried to take him apart, but Arley rolled over and got the butt of the rifle 
into her belly to throw her back and away from him. 

The tin pan rolled to Heather's knees, and she caught it up in time to swing 
it viciously at the dog's head and he came lunging open-mouthed and fanged 
at her sister. The clang turned the hound off stride and he hit the edge of 
the porch, snapping at air. 

Honey bounced up with an empty fruit jar in one hand. She flung it at Arley 
and it splintered against the gun barrel as he got it up in time. 

Heather ran at him with her head hound and arms folded across her stomach. 
She hit him in the ribs and knocked him staggering down the porch, and 
jerked a brush hook off the wall to chop it at the hound when he leaped 
again. It fended Bigdog off, up-ended him into the yard on his back with his 
legs kicking. 

Arley fired the rifle. 

The bullet kissed just past Heather's cheek, and she stumbled backward. Her 
sister's hand caught her elbow and kept her from falling. Together, they 
stood and stared at the crouched man with the pale green eyes who held the 
gun muzzle on them. 

Bigdog rolled over and came back up the steps, jaws slavering. Arley stopped 
him with a shouted word, and the hound dropped back reluctantly into the 
yard, panting and exposing his teeth. 

Arley said, "I might just let him rip the bellies out'n you cunts. You 
no-good bitches, turnin' on me thataway. But first, they's Artis, and I got 
me three live hostages here. You, Grady! What's the sheriff goin' to do, 
slip up on the house now that he's got Artis? I swear, boy-if my brother's 
dead, I'll make you all wish you was nice and cool in hell, 'steada' here 
with me!" 

Heather saw Grady's big arms soften, the muscles easing from the struggle 
he'd been waging with the post he was cuffed to. He said, "I don't know what 
they'll do." 

"Get up," Arley snarled. "All you cock suckers get up. Here's the key, 
woman-unlock him. We're all headin' for the river." 

 CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR 

The paths went this way and that, most of them no more than rabbit trails in 
the woods, most vanishing into the marsh, but some continuing over ground 
that looked pretty shaky to Scarpo. 

The fucking women, he thought, they naturally had to screw up things. This 
should have been a nice clean hit, a simple contract uncluttered by no more 
than finding out where the money was. But the fucking women had to run to a 
lousy place like this, away the hell out in the jungle where snakes crawled 
around, where there were no roads, no phones. 

And where crazy farmers got out of trucks ready to blast with shotguns. Not 
that it mattered much about Geech; the kid was too hungry. He wouldn't have 
lasted long in the Company, anyway. But Scarpo worried a little about what 
it meant-the farmer with the shotgun, and the costume jewelry. Could that 
cheap stuff have been for the broads? Did they have guards around the 
fucking place? 

He moved slowly up a twisting trail, only to see it end in some tall swamp 
grass. Looking over the waving stuff, he could see the river, brown and 
ugly, moving like a snake itself, turning through stumps and logs. 

A jay screeched behind Scarpo, and he whirled with the carbine snapping up; 
only the flutter of bright blue through the treetops stopped him from 
loosing a full automatic burst. Hands shaking, he lowered the gun and made 
his way back to the forking of the path. 

Which way now? Gray moss hung low in the trees, and bushes grew everywhere. 
Scarpo tried to line himself up by squinting at the sun, but all it did was 
damned near blind him. Sweating, he slapped at a mosquito that bit his neck, 
and looked down to see dirty water oozing up around his feet, coming right 
up through the ground where he was standing. 

"Jee-sus," he said, and backed warily down the path again. Something moved 
in the tall grass, swaying it, and he kept the carbine pointed that way. 
Sweat got in his eyes and he leaned back against a tree to wipe the moisture 
away. 

A big green locust whirred off the bark just at his head, and Scarpo leaped 
out, swinging the carbine like a club. The blow pulled him off balance and 
he went to his knees in a wet spot. Panting, fumbling for the lens caps he'd 
knocked off the scope, Scarpo cursed, erect again with mud down his legs, 
sticky, viscous mud that clung when he tried to wipe it away. 

And a little red centipede stung him out of the mud. He slapped it against 
the carbine stock and squashed it, but the base of his thumb began throbbing 
right away. 

"Son of a bitch," he said, and moved up another trail, mumbling to himself. 
"Fuckin' jungle-bugs and goddamned snakes and swamps. Nobody lives in a 
fuckin' jungle." 

He was scared. For the first time in many years, Scarpo was scared, and he 
knew something of the flavor of fear that had been felt by the people he'd 
carried contracts on. But facing up to a hit man wasn't anything; everybody 
had to die sooner or later, and if a guy screwed the Company, he knew what 
to expect and took his chances. 

But out here, in this stinking hot jungle where snakes wiggled right next to 
a guy, where they bit at him-Scarpo shuddered and looked carefully at the 
weeds before he put a foot down. If fear rode him now, fear also drove him 
onward, because nobody missed out on a contract for the Company. That's what 
the kid Geech had been hoping, that Dominic Scarpo would back down on the 
hit and let him take over. 

Geech was dead, and Scarpo was watching for snakes. 

A blunt head stretched out, tilted up at him. Scarpo fired. He clung to the 
trigger of the carbine as if he didn't know the weapon was on full 
automatic, and half the clip pounded out to smash bullets into the ground 
turtle, to hurl the terrapin's shattered shell bloody through the cattail 
grasses. 

In the rolling echoes of the shots, birds shrieked and something furry 
crashed off through the brush. Scarpo gibbered and fired another burst that 
way, chipping bark from trees and cutting down a bearding of gray Spanish 
moss. 

He backed away, stumbling back, eyes wide and staring at the gray-black 
thing that came hesitantly from the undergrowth and stared with red rodent 
eyes at him. It was the biggest fucking rat he had ever seen, its long 
yellow teeth bared at him, its naked tail curled over its back. The 
goddamned thing was big as a dog, and when it growled, it sounded like files 
rubbing together. 

"S-shit," Scarpo said, and fired the last of his clip at it, so frightened 
that he missed by six inches, and only chewed up the watery turf as the 
opossum waddled off. 

Turning, Scarpo fled blindly, axing the carbine barrel at thin vines that 
curled down from the trees like snakes. He splashed through the muddy slough 
and out into it as the water rose brown to his hips. 

He stopped then, staring back over his shoulder at the rushes, the reeds 
still waving and bobbing from his passage. Down the slough, something moved 
swiftly through the water, rippling the surface. Feverishly, Scarpo thumbed 
the magazine release and dropped the empty clip into the water. When he 
fumbled a full one into place, the water had risen to his belly, and the 
underwater thing had disappeared. 

He had to get back to the land, out of the water, but when he moved his 
feet, they had a lot of trouble getting out of the mud that clung to his 
ankles. The more he kicked down, the deeper the mud got, and when the water 
was to his chest, Scarpo panicked. 

Struggling, Scarpo sank deeper in the stuff, and flailed with his free hand, 
trying to pull through the fluid mud, trying like hell to make it to shore. 
He actually made about a yard, but the slop had reached his throat by then, 
and the carbine weighed a ton because he had to hold it above his head to 
keep it clean. 

No, he thought, goddamn it-he wouldn't throw away the gun. He'd need it when 
he got out of this fucking mess. The broads-the women had to be hit, soon as 
they told him where the money was. They had to be hit, because the Company 
said so. 

The mud lapped his chin, and Scarpo threw back his head to keep it from his 
mouth. He screamed then-hoarse and loud and long, and when the mud got in 
his mouth, he fired the whole clip of ammunition at the surrounding jungle, 
killing it back for killing him. 

And when he went under, Scarpo still held onto the carbine. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE 

They were in a knot at the edge of the flowing river, and Arley told them to 
stay quiet while he listened. Heather clenched her sister's small hand and 
sent a silent message of comfort to Grady. Listening, too, she heard only 
the soughing of the morning wind in the tops of the pines, and the murmuring 
of the river as it passed around the fallen tree close by. 

She looked across the big eddy and when her glance came back to the tangled 
roots of the tree, Heather drew a sharp breath. The head sticking above 
water there was huge-leathery skin, hooked beak, unblinking eyes. Her 
fingers tightened convulsively on Honey's hand as she stared at the monster. 
The big turtle Arley had talked about-the loggerhead, he called it. The 
thing looked like something reptilian out of the prehistoric past. She never 
thought one could be so big. As she watched, the head drew beneath the brown 
water, and the surface swirled after it. 

"Down there by them willows," Arley said. "Got me a boat under the branches. 
Go on down and drag it out, Grady, haul it up here." 

"He can't see!" Heather said. "He might fall in, or . . . " 

"Shut up," Arley hissed at her. "You shut the hell up, widder woman." 

"I'll find it," Grady said, and moved slowly, feeling each foot out in front 
of him. Even though Heather knew he could see a little through the slits 
she'd left in his new bandage, Heather's entire being yearned to help him. 

"Slip across the river," Arley said, watching the handcuffed man move along 
the river bank. "Let the boat go downstream, and do they ever find it, 
they'll figure we climbed out there, not up here." 

"Let us go," Heather said. "We can't do you any good now." 

Cocking his head, Arley said, "Do me the best now. They come after me, I'll 
have me some swap -and if I'm pressed too hard, I'll just leave the law a 
body to hold 'em up some." 

Honey said, "He-he'll do it." 

"Hush!" Arley said sharply, and they all heard the rapid firing of a gun 
some distance away. Arley rubbed his chin, looked over to where Grady was 
awkwardly wrestling the boat from its hiding place, and said, "I be dog; 
reckon they ain't got ol' Artis yet. Still shootin' down by the slough. 
Hurry it up, Grady, I got to haul ass out'n here." 

Knee-deep in water, Grady hauled and tugged at the wooden boat, fighting it 
to the bank near them. Heather saw that it was small, that it might not hold 
all four of them, and her heart rose in her throat. Grady, she thought-he 
meant to leave Grady here, and meant to leave him dead! 

"Climb on in," Arley directed Honey, and the girl let go Heather's hand to 
step into the wobbly boat. "Widder woman . . . " 

And Heather said, "No. You'll have to shoot me here, and have all the 
deputies hear the shots. I won't get into that damned boat until Grady's in 
it. You're not going to leave him behind." 

"You smart-ass bitch," Arley said. "I can knock you in the head, well as 
shootin' you." 

Grady climbed into the boat, his weight lifting the bow so that the whole 
thing threatened to drift out into the current. "Come knock me in the head, 
Arley." He held out his manacled hands, big and powerful. 

Arley shoved Heather at the boat. "Bunch of cocksuckers. I mean to make you 
all pay for it." 

Dangerously low in the water, the boat eased out when Arley pushed it off 
the bank and stepped in; he sat down quickly, rifle across his knees, 
staring hate at Heather, at the others facing him. 

Closer, louder, a burst of shots rang out over them, and Arley's head jerked 
around. That's when Grady yelled, and rocked the boat so hard that it turned 
over and spilled them all out into the water. 

Fighting up in the darkly swirling waters, Heather's head broke surface and 
she saw Grady battling to take Arley's gun away. They went under and came up 
again, grunting and splashing, and Arley must have been kicking Grady in the 
belly all the time. But the rifle came away in Grady's cuffed hands, held by 
the barrel, and whipped itself on up and over in a dripping arc to land with 
a shower of droplets, in the edge of the tangled roots. 

Heather swam for shore, shouting for Honey, and got her mouth filled with 
muddy water. Then she saw the girl climbing out on the opposite bank and 
knew a surge of relief. 

Arley sputtered, and when she gained the bank, she looked back and saw his 
arm rising and falling. He was cutting at Grady with his knife! Sunlight 
winked off the wet and wicked blade, and Grady dived underwater. His 
handcuffs, she thought-oh, lord, he had to swim with his hands chained 
together. He could drown-he could tangle in the roots of some sunken tree 
and never come up. Shaking, climbing out, Heather leaped for a tree limb and 
brandished it as a club. 

But Arley wasn't coming at her. He was churning furiously toward the downed 
tree, the tangled roots where Grady had scrabbled the catfish -and where the 
rifle had landed! She could barely see the butt of it, standing above the 
surface. 

Running around the shore, Heather tried to make her way out along the tree 
trunk, but rotten limbs made such a barricade that she could never reach the 
gun before Arley did. She sobbed out her defeat, and fell to her knees. He'd 
win after all; Arley Santee would get his gun and shoot them before he ran. 
There was an insane look to his wetly straining face that said he didn't 
care if anyone heard the shots. 

"Grady!" she screamed. "Stay away-stay away! He's getting the gun! 
Honey-run, Honey -oh run, run!" 

Arley tugged at the gun butt, found the barrel stuck, hung up in the roots, 
and bobbed his head under water, yanking at the weapon. His head broke the 
surface again, his pale yellow hair plastered to his pink scalp, his mouth 
open wide, stretched ugly wide in shock and terror. 

"Loggerhead! T-turtle's got me! Help-help! Oh shit, he's bustin' my fuckin' 
arm-help me!" 

Arley's head went under and swapped ends with his feet. They kicked 
furiously, throwing water wide. Then he came up again, spitting dirty water 
and screaming, but there were no words in his screams now-only the cold 
horror of the monstrous thing that had his hand and was dragging him down 
into the depths of the river. 

Migod, she thought-the dog! 

Skidding around on her knees in the dirt, Heather poked out with her tree 
branch, but the growling had stopped, and she saw the big hound lying 
motionless and strangely flattened out. She saw Grady Cordell's big, wet 
body bulking tall and wide above it, the bandages ripped from his eyes. He 
must have caught the hound in mid-air, clubbing it with his great fists, 
battering it down and unconscious, if not dead. 

Arley screamed again, this time through a throat full of water, and Grady 
came trotting to the tree, went crashing and slipping out along the trunk to 
the netting of twisted roots. He couldn't climb through them, not with his 
cuffed hands. 

Arley Santee's agonized face broke water just once more, but only in a 
momentary wave of bubbled river, and as it hung there in awful dread, a red 
stain lifted from below and spread around him. 

Then he was gone, and the blood spread itself thin on the moving river to 
also vanish. 

Grady backed down the tree trunk and leaned to help Heather to her feet. 
"Come on, girl-can't anybody help him now." 

She swayed against him, feeling his hairy body wet and slick, feeling a 
letdown in herself that unhinged her knees and turned her weak clear 
through. Eyes fluttering, she hung precariously upon the ragged precipice of 
fainting. 

But it wasn't over yet. She saw the hound move, saw him roll onto his belly 
and get his legs under him. Light came back into the fierce yellow eyes. 

"G-Grady! The dog." 

He turned, his manacled hands out, then cocked to one side, as if he were 
holding an invisible bat. Feet spread, he waited for the dog to move. 

Bigdog rumbled deep in his massive chest, came up to all fours and trembled 
there. 

Grady said, "Get! Bigdog-get!" 

The hound growled, hesitated, swung its head from side to side, seeking 
something and not finding it. 

"Get!" Grady said. 

The dog stopped growling. He backed along the river bank, gathered his back 
legs under his belly, then whirled and trotted up the path toward the house. 

"Wow," Heather sighed. 

"Yeah," Grady said. "Hate to have to kill a dog just 'cause he's a good one; 
most dogs don't get to choose a master." 

"I'm coming!" Honey called from the far bank, and took a running dive into 
the water. 

They waited for her to reach them. 

 CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX 

Grady Cordell wasn't married, and had never been in his twenty-eight years. 
But his home was well kept by a visiting maid and the house had the feel of 
happy people in it. 

Heather came out of the shower a new woman, hair washed and skin scrubbed to 
a healthy pink-ness. She reveled in her cleanliness and in the air-cooled 
comfort of Gady's home. Picking a light green robe that was saucy and 
see-through, she slid her feet into heeled slippers and found a bit of 
ribbon to hold back her damp hair. 

Listening, she heard her sister singing in the shower, and smiled because 
they could both be safe and happy. The ugliness and the terror was behind 
them, left at that awful shack in the river marshes. Heather shivered, so 
many dead menthe drowning of Arley in the river, the bodies of his brother 
and a strange city man found shot near the road. 

And Grady said that someone else had disappeared, whoever had been doing all 
the shooting. Plenty of sinkholes and quicksand to fall into, he said, if a 
man didn't know the country. Heather had considered telling him about the 
money, the hundred thousand dollars that had started her running, and she'd 
decided to go through with it. 

In a little while, when the three of them got together and were able to 
relax, to think and move freely after their ordeal. She looked into a mirror 
and touched up her lips, brought a vial of perfume from her suitcase and 
scented her underarms, behind her ears, her navel. 

In the bathroom, the shower was turned off, but Honey continued to sing in 
her small, clear voice. Heather put the perfume bottle on the dresser and 
stared into the mirror; the bruise at her temple didn't show with her hair 
hiding it, and none of the horror had left an outward mark. The inner scars 
would heal, she was certain, Perhaps Grady Cordell didn't know it yet, but 
he would help the healing. 

Honey bounced into the bedroom, only a towel wrapped about her slim hips, 
her dainty breasts jiggling and her face all aglow. "Wow-I feel great after 
all that sleep and food, and getting cleaned up. And you look great in that 
sexy robe. Nothing under it, is there?" 

Grinning, Heather said, "I may never wear panties again." 

"Right on," Honey chortled, and plopped onto the king-sized bed. "Hey, the 
whole thing did us some good, right? I mean, you're not hung up on sex 
anymore, and I know what it's all about now, with my whole life ahead of me. 
If Arley hadn't made us do it, we'd have never even tried going down on each 
other." 

Heather felt her face go warm. She hadn't forgotten that, either, but it was 
an effort for her to discuss it. But in her newfound honesty, she said, 
"Did-did you like it, dear?" 

"Didn't you?" 

Nodding, Heather admitted it. "Yes, I liked it very much. It was-so 
intimate, so close and giving. It was different than when Grady did it to 
me." 

"Oh-Grady? When was that?" 

"The first time on the porch, while you and-Arley were in bed. I-it never 
happened to me before, and he kept urging me up his chest with his knees 
because his hands were tied and-and, well, when he put his mouth on me, when 
he flicked his tongue." Red-faced, Heather stopped talking and turned from 
her intent sister. 

"You freaked out," Honey finished for her. "Who wouldn't? And, wow, that big 
prick of his." 

Heather swallowed, all her old reflexes, all her previous programming 
reacting to shout out at Honey, to reprimand her for using dirty language. 
But the memory banks were weaker now, the old tapes shaken up by the events 
of the past few days. She took a deep, steadying breath and said, "Yes, his 
prick. Isn't it just wonderful?" 

He knocked at the door of his own bedroom, a difficult tapping that told 
them he was now uncertain, also caught up in all the rules and regulations, 
tangled again in the mores of the past. Heather glanced down at her younger 
sister sitting pertly on the bed with her breasts exposed, and Honey nodded, 
so Heather said, "Come in." 

When Grady entered the room, his eyes went first to Heather standing tall 
and shiny in her appealing negligee, then dropped to Honey and widened at 
the sight of her modeled breasts with the impudent nipples. He looked firmly 
back into Heather's eyes. 

"Ah-you girls ready for something long and cold? A julep, maybe?" 

Honey smiled innocently up at him. "I think we're more ready for something 
long and hot-and stiff. Aren't you all rested up yet, Grady?" 

He swallowed, looked helplessly at Heather. 

"I-look, girls, we were trapped back there at Santee's, and you were forced 
into some things you'd never do on your own, and . . . " 

"And they were pretty good," Heather said, surprising even herself. "I said 
once that I couldn't really be jealous of Honey, and now I'm more certain of 
it. She and I have more between us than just the bond of kinship now, a new 
closeness, and a love. If you don't want to lay us, because we made oral 
love to each other and liked it. . . " 

"Lord, no," Grady said hastily. "I like to do it myself, to go down on a 
woman; you know that, Heather." 

"I don't," Honey pointed out, and eased the white fluffy towel away from her 
thighs. All the rich vee of her furry mound gleamed up at him, and at her 
sister. "Isn't it nice that you're a king-sized man, so that you have this 
handy king-sized bed. The three of us will fit very nicely together on it, 
don't you think?" 

"You're damned right," Grady Cordell said, and began peeling out of his 
clothing. 

Heather walked around to the other side of the bed and took off her robe, 
letting it drift to the floor as she kicked out of her slippers and stood 
for a moment proud and naked. She lifted her fingertips to her nipples and 
caressed their erect hardness, delighting in the thrill of giving in to her 
impulses. 

She lay down and watched him approach, his beautiful big cock reaching out 
like a thick and shapely club. He said to them, "How are we goin' to get 
about this? Leavin' it all up to me?" 

"No way," Honey chuckled. "Ladies first, to coin a phrase. I want you to eat 
me, darling; just like you ate my sister-only with a refinement. I'd like 
her to ride that gorgeous cock at the same time, while I watch her face and 
ride yours. Think you'll dig that, Grady?" 

"Sure," he said. "I'd be a fool if I didn't." 

So he lay full length and bulky on the bed, and Honey kneeled over his face. 
Shivering a little in anticipation, Heather climbed over his body and 
kneeled erect above his up-thrust prick. She reached down and held its 
throbbing power in one hand, running her thumb over the bulbous head with 
its small and sticky mouth. 

"Together," Honey sighed, and lowered her ass gently downward as he slid his 
arms between her thighs, brought his hands up and around to cup the sleek 
and provocative cheeks of her ass as they came toward his face. 

Heather tried to time her own downward motion with Honey's setting the 
spongy-hard tip of his cock against the hairy trembling of her pussy lips 
and pushing against it. Her labia spread, opened with a damp and eager 
elasticity, and the knob worked itself into her vulva. It was wonderful and 
filling; it was meat in her cunt, where man-meat belonged, where she needed 
to have it and hold it. 

"Ummm," Honey moaned blissfully, and Heather stared as her sister pushed the 
heavily fleeced mound into Grady's chin, covering his open mouth with her 
pussy lips, wriggling the crack of her sweet ass right down into his 
forehead-but delicately, because it still had a bandage across it. 

"Oh, Grady-oh, darling-shove your tongue right on up inside my cunt. That's 
it, baby-oh, yes, that's the way to eat my pussy!" 

Heather ground her own ass, and the heavy shaft slid thrillingly up into her 
hotly clenching vagina-up and up until it struck her cervix. Her sheath was 
bulging with his cock, and the thick, mossy root of it nearly flattened her 
pulsating clitoris. 

"So big," she said, her breath catching in her constricted throat, "oh, 
Honey-it's so big that it fills me up, fills my cunt from one end to the 
other. When-ooh!-whenever I wiggle even the slightest, it rubs my clit and 
drives me crazy. Ahh-ahh-fuck me Grady, darling-fuck me strong and deep." 

"Darling," Honey breathed, gyrating her belly so that her crotch slid over 
Grady's cheeks and chin, so that his teeth could rake the length of her cunt 
lips. "Darling-Heather, darling." 

Honey reached out, and her small fingers skipped like quick butterflies over 
Heather's breasts. Heather gasped and pressed against them, lifting her own 
hands up and under her sister's arms to fondle her sister's lovely young 
tits. Rocking upon Grady's stiff rod, loving the sensation of it sliding 
greasily around inside her tightly packed pussy, Heather caressed Honey's 
tits, rubbed her palms over the taut nipples, kneaded the little mounds. 

It was marvelous to feel Honey doing the same to her own tits, to stare 
entranced into her sister's hot eyes and know she was making love with all 
she had. They shared the same man and the same wants, and Heather leaned 
toward the girl, her eyes shining and her lips opening. 

Their mouths met and, with a groan, Honey shot her tongue into Heather's 
mouth, sliding it between her teeth and tapping the tip along the roof 
inside. Heather sucked upon it, glorying in the taste and texture of the 
vibrant thing. 

They kissed and clung to each other's tits; they gave themselves up to the 
outpouring of sensation in them and on them and around their shuddering 
bodies. For all the while, Grady was eating at Honey's cunt and pouring his 
huge prick up into Heather's pussy. 

Honey's teeth raked Heather's, and the girl gasped, "Oooh-c-coming, coming!" 

And Heather sighed, "Yes-oh yes-I'm coming, too!" 

His prick thrust strongly, solidly, up into her cunt, and she clenched upon 
it with all her strength, tried to have her rippling sheath devour him as 
she was devouring her sister's mouth and lips and throat. The magic feeling 
burst into her, fanning out from the vibrancy of her clitoris to fill her 
vagina and tie her asshole into a pulsing knot. 

Grady lunged again, arched his back, and pounded the head of his cock into 
the cup of her womb. His spraying semen jetted into her twitching pussy, 
splashed hot and thick over the rippling walls of her vagina, and came 
flooding out to wet his own spasming balls. 

Gently, clinging to each other with mouths and hands alike, they rolled off 
the man and lay sobbing for breath while the tender waves of ebbing raptures 
washed them. Quietly and in love they lay with each a leg over his body, and 
he kissed the calf of Honey's leg, drew his lips warmly over her ankle, and 
moved farther to take her toes between his teeth and worry them. 

His knee slid seeking until it found the wet warmth of Heather's pussy, 
where it snuggled and rocked slowly, sensuously, arousing her again before 
her blood had really stopped its racing. But then he abruptly pulled himself 
away and slipped off the bed. Heather turned starry eyes up at him and he 
said, "I don't know about you girls, but I sure as hell need that long cold 
one now." 

With his oiled and glistening prick waving at half-mast before him, Grady 
marched from the bedroom, and Heather heard the clinking of ice in the 
kitchen. She lay warm and still, soaking his semen within the adoring 
confines of her cunt, her lips only inches from the passion-swollen ones of 
her sister. 

Honey murmured, "Do you want me to eat you now?" 

Heather kissed the girl. "Of course, and I want to suck your sweet little 
pussy, my darling. But we can always do that later-after we've worn out poor 
Grady." 

"Yes," Honey agreed, "after we've fucked him until he's helpless. So let's 
go have a couple of drinks with him." 

Naked and stimulated by their unabashed nudity, they sat at the kitchen 
table and drank deeply of the dark, minty juleps, both of them loving the 
man with their eyes and yearning to him with their flesh. 

Grady mixed another round in tall, frosted glasses, generous with the rich, 
brown bourbon, and held his glass to them, "To us-and all the bad behind 
us." 

Heather drank and said slowly, "Not quite oil the bad, Grady." He looked a 
question at her, and while she still had the courage, she told him rapidly 
of the flight they'd made from New England, the money her dead husband had 
taken from the Company, and how she had come here to escape the certainty of 
gangland vengeance. 

"It's a hundred thousand dollars," she said. "We stopped and rented a post 
office box in that little town about a half hour north of here. De-sota. 
It's a combination box, and I wrote the numbers into my telephone notebook 
to hide them. I just put the money in an envelope and put the envelope into 
the box." 

Grady grinned incredulously at her. "A hundred thousand, and you just-hell! 
You couldn't have picked a better hiding place; that old postmaster knows 
every rule in the book by heart and he wouldn't even bend one by lookin' 
into a lawfully rented box." He stopped smiling and frowned. "Then that man 
Artis Santee shot, and the bullet that killed Artis-gunmen sent after you by 
the Company, I guess. They got that close." 

"What-what will we do with the money, Grady? I thought it should belong to 
me, but now I'm not so sure. I'm afraid to keep it, afraid they'll send more 
men after it, and after us. If they found us once, they can do it again, and 
I don't want any more trouble. Not now." 

He thought about it, turning the glass in his big fingers. "You know the 
address where your husband picked up the books he worked on? Could you maybe 
mail a package there and be sure the right people got it?" 

"I think so," Heather said. "They probably haven't moved because of just me. 
They're not really afraid of me hurting them." 

"But they're in business," Grady said. "They think in terms of profit and 
loss, just like any legitimate business. And there's a good chance they'll 
take a deal that cuts their losses. They already lost one man down here-two, 
I reckon, if we don't find the man that shot Artis. We got their old car, 
and we backtracked somebody off into the swamp, only the footprints didn't 
come back out. So if you send them a package with-say half the money, and I 
was to slip in a dead man's drivin' license from up there-I'd say they'd 
take it pretty good and check off the rest." 

Heather gnawed at her lips. "I suppose so, and yet . . . " 

"The rest would get you a good start somewhere." Grady said. "And there's 
Honey. And it ain't like you could give the money back to the numbers 
players and the kids who bought dope." 

"I'd like to start right here," Heather said, and Honey added, "Right on!" 

"I don't know," Grady said, and finished his drink. Burly and hairy and 
splendidly naked, he walked to the sink and poured himself another one. 
"This here is a little bitty town; the sheriff only checks me about once a 
week. Folks hereabouts like to gossip a lot, and it wouldn't look right for 
two imagine women to be just livin' with me, and me an officer of the law." 

"Why-" Honey said, jolted. "Why, you bastard." 

"Not unless the widow woman was married to me," Grady went on, unperturbed. 
"That way, wouldn't anybody dare talk about her baby sister stayin' with us. 
That would be plumb acceptable to everybody, right on down to the church 
deacons." 

Honey said, "You lovable bastard." 

"Speakin' of which," Grady said, and when he moved back to the table 
carrying his glass, Heather saw he had a full erection again, "bastards and 
lovin' and such like, I reckon I get to pick my way now." 

"I don't know," Heather said, "since I'm paying about fifty thousand 
dollars, maybe I should be the boss." 

"It's worth it," Honey said. "Don't haggle over a few bucks. What's your 
pleasure, man?" 

He led them back into the bedroom, and motioned at the bed as he slowly 
drained his glass. Then Grady said, "You on the bottom, Heather, since Honey 
is the littlest. And Honey, suppose you just kind of snuggle down on your 
sister with your belly up and that cute lil' pussy shinin' at me. One pussy 
on top of the other, like, and both of you spread your legs wide, 'cause I 
aim to screw you good, both of you." 

"Hey," Honey breathed, "he means to change over on us, take turns fucking 
us." 

"I'll be fair and square," Grady said. "Five strokes in one cunt and five 
strokes in the other--no more and no less." 

Heather laughed. "Good trick, if you can do it." 

She lay down on the bed with her feet wide apart, and her sister backed her 
delightfully shaped ass up to Heather's crotch, wiggled against it for a 
second or two, then hiked herself to lie upon Heather's body. 

Heather cupped the girl's tits in both hands, and Honey's fingers strayed 
down to tickle into Heather's mound, parting the pubic hair and dipping 
tantalizing into the dampening pussy lips. 

"Now that's a sight to make any man climb a wall," Grady said, staring down 
at them. "One pretty pussy on top the other-one of 'em red and the other 
brown, and both of 'em with sweet pink lips all ready for the screwin'. " 

He crawled between their veed thighs and set himself, fondling a crotch with 
each hand, rubbing his knuckles gently into their mounds and fingering the 
cracks of their asses. Heather clung to her sister's tits and kissed the 
back of her neck as Grady guided the blunt end of his eager cock into her 
labia. 

"Bottom one first," he sighed, and as he pushed the thick pole into 
Heather's ready vagina, he also pushed his hairy belly into the wetly 
throbbing vulva of the girl above. When he sent home his prick to the hilt, 
and rolled his pelvis to make the spongy head of it feel around inside 
Heather's steamy box, his belly ground sensually into Honey's gash. 

"Three-four and-uhh-five!" he said, and Heather writhed as he pulled out and 
lifted himself slightly up on his knees to set his prick, all slippery with 
her juices, against the hunching pussy of her sister. 

"Shove it to me," Honey cried, and rolled the clenching cheeks of her 
smooth, warm ass against Heather's groin as her excited cunt accepted the 
length of Grady's oily prick. 

His balls came swinging against Heather's crotch as he fed the meat to 
Honey, and she found herself counting the thrusts-four, five! 

Honey cheated. She threw one leg over his back and tried to hold his cock 
within her gulping pussy, but Grady firmly shoved her back down, and lowered 
his drippy rod to slip it into Heather's willing cunt again. She wiggled 
violently upon it, grinding her ass and feeling Honey slide around on top of 
her heaving belly. 

But only for five long, deep pushes, and she let Grady out of her fevered 
body so he could fuck her sister some more. It went on for only two more 
round trips, and Heather gave him credit for staying power when he was into 
her hotly swiveling well again. She felt his strokes grow ragged, felt them 
fall off the steady rhythm, and knew he was about to come. 

On the fourth thrust, she jerked back her ass so that his prick whipped out, 
and with a help from her hands on her sister's belly, she guided the girl's 
quivering cup to the head of Grady's flexing cock. 

He got it into Honey and trembled it there. Heather felt the lifting and 
falling of his balls as they let go their load of newly manufactured semen. 
She felt quite unselfish for letting Honey have his come, since she had 
taken the last ejaculation he loosed. 

"Oooh!" Honey cried out, threshing wildly upon the deeply buried prick, her 
sleek ass bucking and humping. "Ohhh, my love, my love-I'm coming with 
you-coming and coming and coming!" 

Tenderly, Heather held her sister as her orgasm subsided, until Honey went 
softly and sweetly limp. Heather felt like the big sister, and the mother, 
and the lover, too. It was a wonderfully mixed feeling, and she kissed 
Honey's ear, cupped 

Honey's tits to keep the sensation alive and flowing. 

Grady backed out of Honey, and his dripping prick left a trail of adorable 
stickiness on Heather's pulsing mound. She lay quietly until Honey rolled 
from her body, and then changed positions with the girl, changed ends so 
that when she stared hungrily down into Honey's freshly screwed vulva, her 
own cunt was poised above Honey's panting mouth. 

"Go to it, girls," Grady said. "I'll just set back here and watch my wife 
and my sister-in-law go sixty-nine. I always wanted to be with two pretty 
women who loved each other much as they both loved me. Ain't many men that 
lucky." 

The position was different, and the wet steam rising from Honey's slit was 
mucky, intriguing, so Heather plunged her anxious mouth right down into it. 
Hot and slidy, trembling and creamy; the well was deep and saturated, and 
her tongue probed it as her teeth raked and her lips locked over the cunt 
lips. Sucking, rolling the distended and shivering clitoris, Heather ate 
blissfully into her sister's pussy, luxuriating in the fluids that washed 
her cheeks and chin. 

And she groaned into the fragrant cave when Honey took her own cunt into her 
mouth. Her sister was more practiced now, and ate tenderly of the tissues 
and membranes, licking and lapping and giving such ecstasy that Heather 
could stand it not a second longer. 

Heather came. She clamped her thighs strongly about her sister's head and 
thrust madly against her sister's mouth and teeth and came in an upheaval of 
passion and lust and crazily lascivious love. 

And a scattered string of heartbeats later, Honey twisted and squirmed in 
her own convulsive cresting, biting the insides of Heather's thighs and 
raking the cheeks of her ass with clawing nails. 

Then Heather let go of herself completely. In a softly gathering blackness, 
she turned her face for air and snuggled her cheek to Honey's glorious young 
pussy. 

Somewhere in the tender clouds above her, she heard Grady Cordell say 
faintly, "Soon as we can get the license." 

And in a voice like a small silver trumpet, she heard her sister say 
vaguely, "We'll mail all the money back. No sense taking a chance on losing 
any of this." 

"Talk about that," Grady said. 

Heather went nicely and warmly to sleep, knowing that she no longer cared 
about money or anything else. Only Honey and Grady; and she slept securely, 
knowing that they both cared as deeply for her. 


THE END
