Chapter 1

“Coach Garber! The Waynesboro Superintendent of Schools has suspended the entire coaching staff! Any comment?” a reporter called out.

“No. I do not want to do anything to prejudice the investigation, one way or the other,” Martin Garber replied. “The league authorities will weigh the evidence and make their decision based upon that. The Jefferson High School football program will abide by those results.”

“Would you say that there is plenty of evidence, Coach?” another reporter piped up. “After all, there is at least some video footage of every game for the past several seasons.”

“I would not venture an opinion on that score,” Martin replied. “What constitutes admissible evidence is, again, up to the league to decide.”

“Do you believe that the Marauders will be suspended as a team?”

“Again, that is the league’s decision. I will not attempt to influence it.”

Variations on that theme went on for another ten minutes before the reporters gave up. Martin did better than the Principal, who let slip HIS opinion as to whether the Waynesboro coaches should retain their jobs. That was all the reporters were going to get.

“Thanks for coming in, Martin,” the Principal said, shaking his hand. “This thing is likely to be a hornet’s nest. The way you kept the boys from trying to get even on the field was inspired leadership – although I must say that it is only one instance of many I’ve seen this year.”

“They’re a good group of boys,” Martin replied. “They have their heads on their shoulders much better than any team I’ve ever coached. I know I failed the boys last year, but...”

“We’re all aware of your loss, but you seem to have picked yourself up and gotten past it,” the Principal noted.

“Yes, sir. It’s all part of the little success story we’re generating here at Jefferson,” Martin smiled.

“I was surprised at the team table at the Homecoming dance. Usually, the team attracts girlfriends who are more ... ah ... decorative. Todd in particular...” the Principal mused.

“As I indicated, sir, the boys are a bit more well-grounded this year – more into substance than appearance. There are some fine young women in that group,” Martin noted.

“Todd’s little girlfriend, crying her eyes out – that was a real gut-wrencher,” the Principal noted. “And the fact that she WASN’T one of the ‘beautiful people’ heightened the impact tremendously!”

Martin grinned. “You didn’t have to try to keep her out of the locker room, Sir! She’s a little fireball!”

The pair chuckled, shook hands, and parted on that note.

“Amy?” Kelly Samuels’ voice on the phone brought Amy Winston up short. “I may have started something I can’t handle.”

“What, exactly?”

“It’s about Bethany and Julio. I more or less arranged to put them together this afternoon, but I don’t think Bethany can handle it. I think she needs to see how it’s supposed to be, but I can’t imagine how to fix it, and I’m not sure Julio is the one.”

“Tell me about it,” Amy invited.

“Julio ... well, I don’t have to tell you about Julio,” Kelly mused.

Julio Vasquez was a silver-tongued Latino womanizer who had cut quite a swath through the local female population, starting in high school. Problem was, somewhere along the way he had collected bad habits. His seduction tools were well-honed and tended to reduce young virgins – which he specialized in – to putty in his hands, but his approach to the sex act itself left hordes of young women damaged goods, mentally scarred by the brutality of their defloration. Julio’s technique, after his smooth and gentle warm-up, was to be rough with the actual penetration, taking advantage of his victims’ surprise and pain and the resultant dry clench of their ultra-tight vaginas to more or less masturbate himself quickly to climax. He would then withdraw, leaving the women unfulfilled and believing that’s all there was to the sex act.

No one knew where he got the habit – it may have been from his first time, as young males tend to be quick on the trigger – and he wasn’t deliberately evil, either; he too thought that the act was supposed to go that way, and while he was more than a little self-centered, he wasn’t sadistic. It had taken Kelly to bring him past this, with the help of Amy and Toby Tolliver, Julio’s sister Bonita and her boyfriend Terence Carter, and a conspiracy that might seem from the outside to have a cast of thousands.

Kelly’s grip on Julio wasn’t total. The man was vain, childish and egotistical, and Kelly – being a big and not tremendously beautiful woman – did not fit Julio’s personal standards or, more importantly, the public standards of his reputation as a Lothario. But Kelly had some things going for her that other women didn’t: blackmail material that would ruin Julio’s reputation, the ability to both mother and physically master the tall but narrow Latino, and the sexual skills that made her his premiere sexual partner to date, out of hundreds. These were the tools Kelly was using to slowly domesticate the skittish Latino Don Juan.

“Anyway,” Kelly continued, “Bethany is one of Julio’s victims, and she’s got it bad. I really don’t think she’s a lesbian – she loves her toys too much – but she’s a man-hater, because of Julio. I want him to fix it – he can, now that I’ve trained him a little – but I don’t know if Bethany will hold still for it. She’s so angry.”

Bethany, Kelly, and Julio were contemporaries, a couple of years out of high school. Bethany’s sister, Gina, was a current Senior and a member of the cheerleading squad – and highly-sexed. Bethany wasn’t her sister; she had been better presented in high school, but she’d let herself go some – a symptom of her basic issue, no doubt. Gina was stocky, but Bethany had moved on to plump – and might keep going, such was her poor self-image.

“We’re stuck with this tonight?” Amy’s complaint was just south of a whine – she and Toby had had a rough week.

“Yeah, me and my big mouth,” Kelly sighed. “Bethany called yesterday, wanting to play, but I was bowlegged from Julio and of course she doesn’t believe that I have a boyfriend at all – I wonder why?” Kelly smiled crookedly into the phone – it was her firm belief that only a miracle could have gotten her ANY man, let alone Julio. “Anyway, I promised an introduction, and Bethany wants to prove that whoever he is, he’s just another asshole. The fact that he’s THE asshole is gonna make that hard to handle.”

“You don’t ask for much, do you?” Amy chuckled ruefully. “Hang on a second.”

Amy began communing with Toby over their telepathic link. The pair went back and forth for a bit and Amy went back to the phone, “All right – call Julio. We’ll want him here first. Then we can work on the plan and you can bring Bethany in. Maybe ... maybe you want to tell her that the boyfriend thing has collapsed.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It’s a white lie, but we need to get Julio’s hands on her before she freaks, and that’s probably the only way to get her to let her guard down. Tell her ... tell her you’ve discovered what’s going on with Gina’s club and that you have a surprise for her. That will get her in the door. We’ll talk more when you have Julio here.”

“Okay. Thanks,” Kelly murmured. “I know I’ve asked you guys for miracle after miracle. If you ever need anything, you won’t have to twist my arm.”