Chapter 1

Margaret Sorenson spilled another quarter-cup of Spic 'n Span into the plastic wash bucket and swirled it around with her delicate hand, feeling the grit instantly dissolve into sterile suds. She churned the suds to life and dipped her scrub brush into the hot soapy water to continue the humble task of scrubbing years of accumulated wax from the yellowed floor of her landlord's kitchen. Her modest red and white checkered house dress, still speckled with furniture polish from yesterday's house cleaning, pulled across her lap to expose her slim thighs. Margaret poked a finger to tuck a strand of blonde hair behind her nape-tied scarf and, wiping a purling drop of sweat from her unwrinkled brow with a swipe of her sudsy hand, sat up to admire the rewards of her plebeian task. In an arm's stretch semi-circle around her, an oasis of white glistened in a desert of sandy yellow. Another two hours of sweating and scrubbing and backache, and she would have worked off one week's rent here at her Geary Street apartment in downtown San Francisco. But the thirty-eight year old woman refused to complain; at least she had a roof over her head, which was a lot more than many women in her situation could brag of.

The proud Swede had seen many an unfortunate woman in the social security collection lines. Single women, many not over forty, bent and stunted from malnutrition and medical neglect, a hive of buzzing, scraggly children at each side, pulling on her work-wearied body, each claiming a part of a mother who hadn't the energy left to enjoy her blessing of motherhood. And in the welfare lines too... unkempt, dirty hair, worn-down heels on blistering over-sized shoes bought for a quarter at St. Vincent de Paul's. The poverty and humility brought tears to Margaret's eyes. No, she would never resort to such poverty, even now in her widowed years. She would work off her debts with honest physical labor and not complain how many backaching hours it took to satisfy Roger Blasser's insistent demands.

After all, as landlord's go, he had been sympathetic enough to appreciate her dour situation since Sandor was killed in the construction accident down south of Market Street. Then, too, her poverty was only a temporary inconvenience; the union lawyers were working overtime trying to get a court date to settle the lawsuit involving Sandor Sorenson's needless death in the explosion that rocketed him twenty feet in the air to crash on the steel beams still loaded on the flat-bed truck below. When the case was finally settled, the union lawyers anticipated a $500,000 settlement for his death, plus another $100,000 for her trauma and personal loss; that didn't include either of Sandor's two life insurance policies that would come due in two months.

When her ship came in, she'd pack up her modest belongings and buy a ticket back to Sweden where her relatives were crying for her. But that was in the future and the thirty-eight year old husbandless blonde realized she must cope with the squalor of her existence until she could free herself. She would put up with the wheezing hydraulic brakes of the city's busses that roared beneath her bedroom window, and the cockroaches that infested every openly seeping draining in the soon-to-be condemned apartment house where a conglomerate of centurians, widows, taxi drivers, hippies left over from the flower days of Haight Street, and single-parented children hovelled in the ruins of what was once an elegant place to call home. It had its amenities, too. The rent was extraordinarily cheap for San Francisco, and transportation was readily available for people like Margaret who couldn't afford a car. Then, too, the landlord would accept excuses when the rent was late, like now; or better, still, he would accept what humble labor she could offer in exchange for a place to call home.

In the three years she had occupied her third floor one- bedroom apartment here on Geary Street, she had grown comfortable and had made friends with some of the occupants who shared the ten-story eyesore. After Sandor's death the widower from upstairs whose television set she had tolerated at three o'clock in the morning for three yeas without protest, ingratiated himself by inviting her up for coffee and to watch the afternoon soap operas. And Lola from across the hall had invited her to Saturday afternoon Matinees. So it wasn't as if nobody appreciated her loss. Roger, too, had invited her to his apartment on several occasions, a truth which brought a blush to her cheeks and she kneed over to the far corner of the kitchen, pushing her sloshing mop bucket along ahead of her.

Roger... she mused, watching the water drip from the natural bristle scrub brush before descending it to the floor. Roger had been more than kind. Sandor wouldn't approve of her cooking and cleaning for another man, she thought guiltily; but what was she to do? Spend the rest of her life holed-up crocheting and mending house-dresses? Ah, it was silly! There wasn't anything between she and Roger. Margaret levered herself to her knees and elbows and dug the brush into the yellowed linoleum, watching cakes of dirt and wax lift like magic. But her mind wasn't on the floor, it was on Roger. Roger would be home soon, and for some unexplainable reason, she didn't want him to see her on elbows and knees like a common scrub lady. she was only thirty-eight; she had time to live... and love.

Oh, sure, he'd kissed her one time and hugged her, lifting her off the floor with his strong Arabian arms. But that was just kidding around, nothing serious. Roger liked women, Margaret knew with a small pang of jealousy. She'd seen several women, all dressed for the night club and heavily made-up, leaving his apartment at strange hours. Margaret sat up on her haunches, yanking down her dress that had hiked up to her thighs. Yes, she reasoned generously, Roger should have many women, he surely had the looks of a lady's man with his black thick hair and rich tanned skin. For a man of forty-five, he still carried himself in a dignified manner, straight and tall and strong. Margaret liked that. Sandor had been a strong man.

Tonight she would cook for him. Oh, he wasn't subtracting anything off of the rent for her kitchen labors, but he'd once said he loved meatballs and gravy, and Swedish meatballs was her dish -- and it would be good having a man praise her cooking again. It had been so long... so darned long since she'd had anything to look forward to.

Margaret had cleared the gravy-smeared plates and run warm water from the dripping faucet to rinse them off before the cock- roaches decided it was time for a meal and came lurking out of the woodwork in silent armies. In the living room off the kitchen, she could hear the television set's scratchy roar; it sounded like a baseball game. Suddenly she remembered the world series season was upon fans everywhere; Sandor had always watched it, too, sitting in his favorite overstuffed chair, nursing a can of cold beer. The remembrance brought a smile to her lipsticked lips. Running a dishpan full of hot water, she set the dirty dishes in to soak and walked into the screen-lit room to sit beside Roger.

Roger smiled down at the blonde woman beside him and slipped his arm around her, never taking his eyes off the television set. Somehow it all seemed comfortable, and Margaret felt no guilt at this man showing a gesture of absent-minded affection toward her. She basked contentedly, sitting back on the aging springs of the sofa, and pulled a hand crocheted afghan over her knees that had been folded and thrown over the back. Her full stomach and after dinner glass of wine suddenly made her feel drowsy and she took the silent liberty of resting her head on Roger's shoulder.

"You're a hell of a cook," whispered Roger when the Gillette commercial interrupted the game. The Arabian landlord gave her shoulder a gentle nudge. His hand felt strong and powerful through the thin fabric of her cotton dress.

"T'ank you. And did you like the way I clean your floors?" she asked in her sing-songy Swedish accent, squeezing a little closer to the man's side.

And then, without a word between them, Roger allowed his fingers to slide along the upthrust swell of her breast until his opened palm cupped the full swinging mound of her tit delicately. He could feel her body stiffen, her breath suddenly coming faster as with one finger, his middle one, he caressed the inviting softness of her breast, rubbing the swollen tiny peak of her nipple through her flimsy dress as he admired the ample, womanly figure she still possessed. She was a specimen of health, her skin tight and resilient, so typical of blonde Nordics, and her shimmering blonde hair showed only one streak of platinum gray. Roger could hear a little purr coming from her lips, and he smiled to himself savoring the effect he was having on her... he had her wrapped around his finger, that was for sure, right where he wanted to keep her. She needed affection, that he knew and in return she would bring him a gold mine if only half of those law suits and insurance policies came to fruition. A lonely woman in a strange country with no man... hell!

He tweaked the sensitive nipple with his thumb and index finger, and she shivered involuntarily from the tip of her toes along her spine to her shoulders. Pausing for a moment, he moved his exploring hand around the firm curve of her breast until his fingers found what he was looking for: with practiced deftness, he eased the zipper down along the satiny plane of her back until he reached the taut elastic band of her panties. He stopped there an instant slipping his fingers between her warm flesh and the tight band, far enough down the hollow of her naked back to reach the first few inches of her fleshy buttock crevice. Teasingly, he flicked a finger against the tightly puckered ring of her anus and felt her quickly shrink away.

Shit, I'll bet old Sandor never poked his prick in there, Roger mused to himself.

He massaged her nakedly sensitive flesh in slow concentric circles as his hand eased back along the smoothness of her back until he reached the stretched fabric of her dress, pulled taut now over her shoulders. Pausing first to unsnap the tiny three hooks of her bra, he then eased the shoulders of her dress down along her arms until the dress hung limply over her whitely firm breasts.

He stopped his smooth seductive motions and looked Margaret over again, eyeing hungrily the rich, womanly full swells and hollows of her well-formed body. Yes sir, she was quite a nice looking woman, all right.

Again with his right hand, Roger tumbled the fabric of Margaret's dress and the sheer tissue of her bra over the bulging mounds of her breasts, exposing the twin half-dollars of her fully erect nipples, all pinkish and excited at being exposed to the air and to his eyes. They swelled even more rigidly as a sudden chill breeze caressed them, sending a burst of rippling electricity through her breasts and down into her man-hungry belly, fanning the embers of a long-dormant fire that once burned there.

Yes, God help her, she had been so long without a man, so long she had nearly forgotten the magic of a real man's touch, the thrilling ecstasy of being looked at and caressed this way.

His outstretched fingertips brushed lightly over the soft, warmly beckoning bulge of her tits, first one, then the other, before finally clamping tightly over the ripely mature mound, squeezing the delicate ivory-white flesh between his clenched fingers.

Margaret could stand no more; she had kept silent as long as she could. "Oh, you are a sweet man, Roger. Oh, it feel so good."

Her knees were opening and closing like an accordion and she flung the afghan to the floor; her firmly fleshed buttocks were ground tightly against the sofa. Margaret could feel the warm dampness of love juice spreading between her thighs as the cheeks of her fully rounded ass clenched like starving lips at the fabric, beneath them. Even his touch was driving her almost insane with heated desire; she was going out of her mind with blind passion... a scream was ready to burst from her lungs any second now from the agonizing deliciousness of his knowledgeable fingers were bringing her. She offered no resistance as he shoved her over onto the cushions of the long sofa, stretching himself out beside her and continuing to relentlessly caress the nakedly soft white mounds of her full fleshy breasts. A low moaning cry escaped from her lips as he roughly squeezed the tenderly pulsating nipples between his fingers, toying with them mercilessly as her whole body trembled and quivered from his touch.

His hands left the feverishly jutting nipples and slowly eased along the flat plane of her belly. Margaret's body arched off the sofa as his fingers slipped once again under the waist- band of her panties, brushing over the fluffy mound of her sparse pubic hair until his hand made a maddening electric contact with the warmly moist lips of her cunt; even in the dim light of the television Roger could see her flesh was covered with a million tiny goose-bumps as she shivered convulsively at his wonderful touch.

"Oooo, it is so nice, so nice..." the love-starved widow murmured mindlessly, floating in space now at the ecstasy of a man's hands down there on her naked cunt.

Clutching the moist flanges of her pussy with his palm, Roger ventured a finger between the wetly pink ridges, and Margaret gasped as her feverish loins suddenly ground tightly up against his hand. His middle finger now slowly explored the entire hot length of her narrow wet slit, starting with the taut muscular ring of her anus, easing over the hard membrane of flesh that separated the two enticing channels before the probing finger finally reached the moistly clasping sheath of her pussy.

The soft pink walls parted unhesitantly as his outstretched rigid finger slipped into the warmly clasping tunnel, and he could feel the fleshy passage open hungrily as he probed it deeply with his finger.

"That feel good?" he asked, sure of himself now.

Margaret tried to reply, but as her lips parted to speak, Roger sadistically squirmed a second stiffened finger into her constrictive passage, burying it up to the last joint in the warm juicy depths of her cunt. Only a muffled cry of pain and pleasure came hoarsely from her throat.

"Well, like it or not?" he teased again, grinning down at her between pearly white teeth accentuated by his bushy black mustache and flashing chocolate eyes. He wiggled his two fingers deep inside her hot, softly-layered flesh.

"God, oh, yaaaa!"

Roger's ravishing finger slipped from her pussy wetly clasping grip, and he tantalizingly dragged his fingertip along her warm slit until he found the throbbing little bulb of her clitoris. Using just his thumb and forefinger, he squeezed the incredibly sensitive nerve-ending as the sex-hungry widow moaned and squirmed beside him on the sofa. Back and forth, as if playing with a marble, he rolled the pulsing little nodule, and Margaret gasped and choked for air as rippling waves of undiluted passion and ecstasy swept over her shamelessly aroused body.

As her naked pelvis ground upward tightly against his palm, Roger continued his maddening assault on her loins, twisting and pulling on her hardened pink clitoris until she moaned and cried out loudly from the delightful agonies of his skillful fondling.

"Don't stop, please... Don't stop!" she screamed between hissing teeth, her shrill words reverberating above the roar of the baseball fans on television.

Sensing she was near her orgasm, Roger began to roughly rub her moistly throbbing cuntal slit with the tips of his fingers, stroking over the quivering fleshy peak of her clitoris and along the hot furrow between the hungrily pursed lips of her cunt.

"Oh, yaa, ya, ya!"

Suddenly Margaret's buttocks and back arched high off the sofa, and as if she were possessed by dozen demons, her warmly moist cunt began grinding madly against his open hand as a long pitiful moan slipped from her parched half-open lips.