Chapter 3

George Farrington's white convertible eased up into the circular driveway of the Wilson's Oak Park home. George turned off the lights, and turned to the half lifeless figure on the seat beside him.

"Come on, Laura, you're home," he said dispassionately.

Laura straightened up on the seat, half-heartedly running a hand through her snarled blonde hair. She had been crying all the way home, crying until no more tears would come, and her mascara was now rivered in dried streaks along her reddened cheeks. Her mind was made up. Surely George would understand when she told him how terrible she felt about what had happened, and that it couldn't happen again. And she felt sure he would not tell her husband about her unconscionable infidelity that evening.

"You don't have to walk me to the door, George," she said, as her neighbor got out of the car and came around to open her door for her. "I'm fine, really. There's something I want to say to you."

"You can tell me inside," George said carelessly, taking the key she had pulled from her purse as she stepped out of the car. "What we need now is a little hot coffee."

"No. George, really I..."

"You're not going to say no to me now, are you?" he said, almost pushing her toward the front door. He unlocked the door, and then stepped inside. George looked for a moment for the illuminated night switch, then flicked it up. The fluorescent lights flickered hesitantly before sharing their energy with the rest of the room.

"George, please, not tonight," Laura said wearily, "Really, I'm very tired..."

"I like mine black," her neighbor said curtly, walking into the living room as though he owned the house.

Laura stood in the glaring light for a moment, and then decided it would be easier to give him the coffee, and be done with it. She walked into the kitchen, but could not remember where she kept the coffee. Get a hold on yourself, she thought, as tears started to fill her weary eyes again. How am I going to do anything if I fall apart. Where is the coffee? The white canister stood where it always did on the counter next to the built-in range.

She walked to the counter and removed the wooden lid, automatically scooping six tablespoons of the freshly ground beans into the clean white pot. Staring at the percolator, she became impatient that it would not perk immediately. This is ridiculous, she thought. I'm standing in my own kitchen making coffee for a man who has just made love to me, a man who is supposed to be my friend, and now I've used him, and he is going to think it represents something more. Why must I have these problems? What is becoming of me?

The image Laura saw reflected in the glass door of the oven was one of a woman who did not deserve the good life she had, she thought. I look like a whore, and now I'm beginning to feel like one. But I'll find a way out, I just have to. The coffee started to boil over. It had been perking too long.

"Where's my coffee," George shouted from the living room, just before she swung open the kitchen door and entered the room. Her neighbor was sitting on the overstuffed couch in front of the stone fireplace. He had built a fire that was already roaring, and was looking through a new woman's magazine that Laura had purchased the day before.

"These women's magazines are unbelievable," he said, smiling almost contemptuously at her as she crossed the room. "There is more sex and sex problems in this single issue than anyone could ever find in real life. It's no wonder that women can think of nothing else to talk about, except their sex lives, or the sex lives they wished they had. I probably would too if I read this kind of trash all the time."

"That's not so," Laura said, finding that she was defending herself. She wanted to get to the point and make things clear to George. Confession was supposed to be good for the soul, and she wanted to tell him that she had used him. He was too kind, too intelligent not to understand.

"Those magazines have good advice, George. Maybe if more women read them, and maybe men, too, you and I wouldn't have the marriage problems we do," she said, handing him a cup of hot black coffee.

"Thank you. Here, have some of this," he said, pulling the leather covered liquor flask from his pocket. "I saved some for us."

"No, George, I can't..." she protested as he poured a shot into her cup. "What I wanted to talk to you about, George, is this. What happened tonight was a horrible mistake. It just can't be allowed to happen again."

"A mistake? Who the hell are you trying to kid, Laura? I'm not a school boy. You practically raped me on the dance floor, and certainly didn't object when we drove to Mountain View. Now you are going to try to tell me it was a mistake? What's the matter, didn't you like it? Say no to that and you take the cake as liar of the year."

"George, we were drunk..."

"Oh, hell, that didn't make any difference. You were as horny as a Goddamn bitch in heat."

"Please," Laura pleaded. "Try to listen. I don't want you to misunderstand. You must believe me. I..."

"Drink your coffee. We came inside for coffee didn't we?" he said. "Don't shake your head. Drink your coffee!"

Laura obeyed. His tone frightened her, and she picked up the cup, sipping at the laced drink. Surprisingly the liquor he had poured into the cup wasn't bitter at all. It added a little something to the taste, more of a tang, than an alcoholic taste. She took a big gulp and George smiled.

"George, I was going to try to make Bill jealous. I wanted to use you. I'm sorry for that. I didn't mean it to go so far. I - I just got carried away."

Her neighbor laughed. Use me, he thought, that has got to be the ultimate! She wanted to use me! He couldn't stop laughing.

"What's so funny? What did I say, George?" His laughter increased to almost a roar. "Stop it! Please stop it!" she screamed, suddenly afraid of him.

He settled down for a moment, still smiling his lewdly contemptuous smile. Laura was terrified at the grin on his face, and for the first time since she had known him, she was aware that there was more to his smile than mirth. "Why - why are you laughing at me?" she asked.

"I suppose you could call it a private joke. I've never been used by a woman before, not to go to bed anyway."

Laura sipped at her coffee. She was beginning to feel slightly dizzy again. The movements in the room were slowing down, and the fire made it much too hot for her. She wanted to hurry and undress upstairs and climb into bed.

"I told you," she said. "I didn't want us to go that far."

"Sure you did. Don't you think for one minute that I'm going to believe you. You work well, and fast. I never saw a woman so eager to fuck."

"George!" she exclaimed, unable to say anymore. The word had shocked her, but the thought it conjured up only excited her. She could not understand the sudden erection of her nipples as he had said it. She stared down into the blackness of her coffee, aware of that same familiar tingling in her body that had led to her earlier loss of control, and she trembled slightly. It couldn't be happening to her again! She couldn't be letting herself be betrayed by her body yet another time! She kept her eyes lowered, hoping that George hadn't seen the brief shivers that had left her shaking almost imperceptively as she sat before the fire.

"Now, don't worry, Laura," she heard him say, "There's no need for Bill to know about any of this. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, and besides, if I told him, that would break up our new-found friendship, wouldn't it?"

Laura looked up quickly into the obscenely smiling face of the man she had thought was so gentle and understanding, and saw at once the full import of what he had said mirrored there with unmistakable clarity.

"You don't mean..." she stammered. "You can't mean you expect this to happen again?"

"Sure, sweetheart, why not?" George laughed sadistically. "I mean what the hell - it's a perfect set-up for both of us. You've got my kind of hot little cunt, baby... and I've got all the cock you'll ever need."

Laura gasped at the purposefully shocking language he was using, and then stood up abruptly, moving angrily toward the fireplace.

"There is no need to talk like that, George Farrington," she said.

"Oh my, are your innocent little ears offended, my little Cinderella? Tough shit."

Laura whirled to face her neighbor, stunned and totally confused by this abrupt change of manner.

"You're not going to play little Miss Goody-Goody with me, baby... not for a minute. You loved every minute of what happened tonight, just like I knew you would... and now you..."

"Like you knew I would... ?" Laura repeated, a sudden chill growing in her breast.

George paused, looking up at her, and then his face broke into a large, confident grin.

"That's right, Laura," he said, with sadistically quiet emphasis, "like I knew you would." He watched as Laura sank back down on the couch, dumbfounded, not knowing what to make of his surprising revelation. He saw her small mouth working helplessly around the unspeakable question. "How did I know? Very simple. I could tell you hadn't been getting any from your husband in a long time, but that was only enough to put you in the right frame of mind. You needed a little help to go all the way, and you're drinking some of that help right now."

George couldn't help laughing out loud as Laura's eyes slowly left his, and came to rest on the coffee she still held cradled in her hands, unable to grasp the full meaning of what he was saying.

"No, my sexy little neighbor, it's not just martinis we've been drinking all night. It's a little something special just for you. You wouldn't know the technical name, but you might get the picture if I said you've had a fly in your drink the whole evening. Have you ever heard of aphrodisiacs?"

Laura gasped audibly as she suddenly realized what George had done to her. Then it wasn't really her fault! She hadn't been to blame! She had been drugged... it had all been a horribly premeditated plot, and she'd just been the innocent victim!

With a cry of anguish and anger both, she flung her coffee cup into the fireplace, where it hissed and gurgled out its life in the roaring flames. Then she turned the full fury of her attack on her unsuspected tormentor, not even aware of what she was saying.

"You... you... bastard!!" she cried out. "You had this planned all along! You used me... used me!!... just like I was nothing more than..."

"That's right, Laura, I used you," came the icy reply, "just like you thought you had used me."

"Get out!!" Laura screamed hysterically. "Get out of my house right, now, you... you... Goddamned..."

George ignored her spluttering, and calmly reached over to refill his cup from the coffee pot Laura had brought in, adding a healthy shot from his leather flask. He was going to need it before this night was over!

"Now calm down, Laura," he finally said. "Calm down, and we'll talk about this like two adults."

"There's nothing to talk about!" the young wife hissed furiously, "I'm going to tell Bill everything, do you hear? Everything!! And when he finds out..."

"... he'll divorce you, right?" George finished for her.

"No! Never! Not when I tell him what really happened!"

George looked at his neighbor's distraught young wife, at the sexy swirls of her long blonde hair as it tumbled in alluring disarray across her perspiring forehead, at her heaving breasts and turgid nipples so clearly outlined under the thin material of her dress, and smiled.

"Maybe you're right. Maybe Bill would understand everything," he teased. "But, somehow, I don't think you're going to tell him."

"And why shouldn't I tell him? What makes you think I won't tell him?" Laura said confidently, feeling that somehow she now had the advantage.

"I don't think you'll tell him because if you do, I'll wreck his career forever, that's why." George's voice was still deathly calm, and it made Laura suddenly very uneasy.

"You couldn't. You have no way..."

"Oh, don't I?" George got up now from where he was sitting, and moved so that his back was facing the fireplace, and his eyes danced over Laura's tear-streaked face like a cat playing with his prey. And then, very, very softly, he asked: "Does the name Ferguson mean anything to you?"

Laura felt the room swirl just momentarily as she heard the name, and tried desperately to compose her face into some semblance of control.

"No... no, it doesn't!"

"Then perhaps Coast Financing might jog your memory." George waited patiently as Laura tried to say something. "Oh, come now, Laura... it wasn't so very long ago."

The trapped young wife's eyes never left her neighbor's as she sank down on the sofa. There was no use trying to hide anything. It was obvious that George Farrington somehow, unbelievably, knew everything.

"How... How do you know this?" Laura murmured almost silently.

"Pure chance, actually. Had a friend of mine down for the weekend a few weeks ago. His name is Matthews... lives in San Francisco. You've lived in San Francisco, too, I believe?" George didn't wait for an answer. "Well, Matthews and I just happened to be talking one evening... oh, he's the president of a finance company in San Francisco, in case you're interested... and I happened to mention that I had some neighbors who'd just moved from San Francisco, name of Wilson... Bill Wilson. Well, the name was familiar to my friend, believe it or not..." George came closer to Laura, and looked down on her pitilessly, "... and that's how I know your husband's an embezzler, sweet lady."

"He's not!" Laura cried out, cupping her face in her hands. "He's not!"

"Maybe not. But will his present employer think that?"

Laura could not comprehend the full impact of what was happening to her: Her world was tumbling down on top of her like a fallen fortress, whose walls had been demolished by a tremendous onslaught of cannon fire. Fear was building in her, but so was another unexplained emotion. For the first time in her life she knew that she was completely at another person's mercy, and she was surprised to find that she wasn't as frightened of that fact, as by the uncertainty that life now held for her.

"Do you think you can afford to tell Bill now? I don't think so, Laura. No, you are going to do everything I tell you, baby, and without delay. If not, Bill will suddenly find it very hot here in Oak Park."

"George..." she started to argue with him, but knew there were no words that would change his mind. "What about Abby? She'll find out sooner or later."

"You still haven't caught on, have you?" George laughed. "Abby knows all about this tonight. Do you think she could get a headache after spending half the day getting ready to go out with us? Not on your life! She was out getting herself screwed half silly, just like you. The only difference is, she'll probably never see him again. But I plan to see a great deal of you."

Laura sat motionless as her neighbor lowered himself to the couch beside her. To her horror she also felt a familiar tingling between her locked thighs, a tingling she knew now had come only from the insidious drug she'd been given.

George continued. "I'm going to see a lot more of you, starting now."

"What do you mean?" the distraught young woman asked, between the soft sobs that were beginning to come from her throat. The shock she had suffered, realizing that he was not the kind of man she had thought, still clouded her mental senses and she could not quite grasp what he wanted.

"You're not stupid, Laura. Figure it out for yourself."

"You don't mean that you expect me to continue..."

"Precisely. You enjoyed it as much as I did, probably more. We can continue for a long time, with no annoyances from your husband. His past mistake has become our good fortune. He can't object, and for that matter, neither can you... You're trembling. Are you afraid?"

Laura could not answer. Her voice was caught in her throat, and though she felt the heat from the roaring fireplace, her abused body shivered all over with tiny chills. It might have been easier for her if she hadn't already submitted to this horrible monster once. But the thought of making love with him a second time moved another uncontrollable shudder through her helpless body.

"I want some more of that tight little pussy of yours, baby, and right now," George said, grinning lewdly and looking down at Laura's unconsciously exposed knees. "We're going up stairs, to bed. There's enough aphrodisiac in the two cups that we've had to keep us going all night."

Laura recoiled at his words, realizing fully for the first time what he was saying. She really had been drugged! All of this had been so premeditated that every detail had been taken care of. Laura realized that more than a victim of circumstance, she had become a victim of a drug, a horrible drug that took her control away. Aware of the cause, she now knew why everything had gone into slow motion the whole evening. She knew why his touch had been so satisfying earlier, so intriguing.

"Let's go," George continued, "I don't like to waste time. We're going to screw in your husband's bed. Won't you like that? I'm going to fuck you like you've never had it before, and you won't stop begging for it until you can't take anymore!"

Again the deliberate coarseness of his words caused Laura to gasp, and yet she knew at the same time that he had a hold on her she couldn't possibly break out of. If she didn't give in to his obscene desires, she knew that he could, and would, go to Bill's boss and ruin all their chances for continuing the wonderful life they'd managed to build for themselves in Oak Park. The worst part of it was that if anyone at Bill's meeting in Dallas knew about his past, their life could be ruined just as effectively. So that while Laura had no choice but to give herself to her lustfully scheming neighbor, in order to keep him silent, she knew full well that it might be to no avail: that Bill might come home and tell her that they'd been discovered anyway. And yet there was nothing she could do! She had to submit to George Farrington on the chance that Bill came back from Dallas undiscovered.

Laura was helpless as George Farrington pulled her from the sofa, turned her around, and unfastened the back of her dress, letting it fall to the floor. Her panties were in her purse, where she had put them after they had finished in the car and now she was completely naked as the flaming warmth of the fire licked over the sensitive nerve-endings of her skin like some evil tongue of the devil of lust. Her soft-ripe nipples rose quickly at the sudden exposure to the air, but she stared straight ahead as in a trance as he surveyed her luscious body. In spite of her immobility, she couldn't ignore the unwanted feelings of arousal that were being born of the horrible drug she had unwittingly taken, and she seemed to sense the physical presence of her neighbor's eyes as they traveled over the whiteness of her nakedly exposed body, looking searchingly for flaws that they would not find.

George undressed himself as she stood a few feet from him, his huge penis stiffening now, and swaying lewdly as he stepped toward her. That was the massive organ which had given her so much before, she thought dazedly, and now, it didn't seem to be what she wanted at all. But her body knew differently. A faint dampness began to swell in her velvet-soft vagina, moistening the dark warm passage and softening the already trembling lips of her silken cunt.

"Upstairs," George commanded, and Laura felt her body obeying mechanically. With all the willpower that she could muster, she tried to stop her legs from moving, but it was no use. Each step was as if she were walking on a cloud, moving in a dream world, floating with every motion. She felt his hand touch her softly swaying buttocks as he followed her up the long staircase.

The drugged young wife stopped and turned on the stairs to look down at the man following behind her. She watched his large, still semi-hard cock swing back and forth like a pendulum as he climbed the stairs, and moaned when, his face level with her naked loins, he bent forward and kissed the silken hair on her softly trembling pubic mound. The heat of his lips seared lewdly through her, and into the nakedness of her over-stimulated skin. She could feel his tongue wet a small portion of her nakedly exposed flesh, and the goose bumps rose all over her as it brought an involuntary shudder rippling through her milk-white body.

Oh no! I can't do this, Laura screamed helplessly to herself, and she turned panic-stricken to run into the sanctuary of her private bedroom. George followed her quickly into the room, his smile still bright, even in the dim light. He was a man sure of himself, sure in the knowledge that he could possess this defenseless young girl any way he wished and that no one, particularly she, would stop him.

Laura dropped to the edge of the bed and watched him, her eyes open wide and her tortured mind knowing she could retreat no further. There was nowhere else to go... nowhere to escape to...

"I didn't know you were so anxious." George teased sadistically, his lewd grin broadening. "I'm glad you see things my way. If we cooperate, our times together will be most pleasurable for both of us."

Laura sat on the bed, looking at him in total disbelief. Her gaze was fixed on his eyes, and she clenched her hands desperately into the bedspread.

"I can't do this, George! I don't care what happens, I can't let you do this!" But her words were quiet and unconvincing and there was no authority and only a minor note of conviction in them. Laura knew that the speech she was trying to make would do no good. Her body was warmed by a fire of betrayal that was building down between her shaking legs, a fire stoked only by the obscene picture of the naked man standing before her, and for some reason she knew she would not be able to resist if he so much as touched her.