Chapter 4

Nina Borman was wondering what the hell her crazy wild man of a husband was up to now as she walked beside him with her hand linked under his arm along the crowded street off lower Fifth Avenue. Because he certainly was up to something, there was no doubt about that. The lithe long-legged young brunette in the cheap, poorly-cut navy blue suit they were following - at least Nina assumed they were following her, Axel refused to answer her questions - turned up the steps of another shabby brownstone house and, after scanning the names listed by the door, hesitantly rang the bottom bell. It was the sixth building she had tried and each time she came out looking more dejected and discouraged. The pure classic beauty of her profile was visible for an instant, then the door clicked and she went inside.

As usual Axel had stopped as soon as the girl turned up the steps and was pretending to examine the wares displayed in the window of a basement "head" shop. Some private eye he'd make, Nina snorted to herself. With his elegant Malacca walking cane and his perfectly tailored grey business suit he stood out like a sore thumb in the motley crowd of long-haired hippie boys and girls who were thronging the sidewalk.

It was growing dark and there was a chill nip in the autumn air that bit right through the white Angora wool coat she was wearing over her black chiffon cocktail dress. When Axel had phoned her unexpectedly that afternoon to meet him at the corner of Fifth and Eighth, she had expected to be taken to the opening of a new art show or a party, not shadowing some poor girl up and down the streets of Greenwich Village.

"Damn you, Borman!" she snapped, using his last name to indicate her exasperation, although she could hardly keep from laughing at the picture he made... the distinguished Wall Street broker staring earnestly down at the beads and sandals and other assorted junk in the window. "Damn you!" she repeated when he didn't even bother to look at her. "If you don't tell me why we're following that poor girl, I'm going home right now."

"How'd you like to suck her pussy?" he shot back at her in a low voice gangster-style out of the side of his mouth.

"Oh, is that what I'm gonna do?" Nina retorted sarcastically, feeling nevertheless a little apple of excitement in her tummy. "Well, what are we waiting for? Why don't we just take her home with us so I can get down to business?"

"Shhhhh," Borman warned her. The brunette was coming out of the door of the brownstone and behind her an enormously fat woman with her peroxided hair up in curlers and her face beet-red with fury was screaming.

"Whore! Harlot! You're all whores and harlots. Out! Out of my house before God strikes you down as he surely will. Out! Out! Out!"

The young brunette half-ran, half-stumbled, down the steps with tears streaming down her frightened face and hurried off with Nina and Borman in pursuit.

"Did you set that up, you bastard?" Nina asked when they had slowed down again. The brunette had stopped and was fumbling in the large rectangular leather pocketbook which she was carrying suspended from her shoulder by a strap. She drew out a handkerchief and began dabbing at her eyes.

"Nope," Borman replied. "But it won't hurt. Soften her up a little more..."

Just then Nina felt someone jostle past her and caught just a glimpse of a long-haired, beetle-browed man who darted between the intervening passersby, ripped the purse from the brunette's shoulder and took off at a dead run down the crowded block.

"Stop, thief! Stop, thief!" Shouting loudly and brandishing his cane like a character in an old-fashioned melodrama, Borman surged after the running figure and a second later both of them disappeared around a corner. A few people turned to stare curiously in the direction of the brunette who was standing there with an expression of bewildered consternation on her face, but no one went up to her to comfort her, just as no one had raised a finger to stop the thief.

About par for Fun City, Nina thought angrily to herself. She suspected at once that her husband was behind the purse-snatching episode and was sure that it was just a gambit in whatever crazy scheme he had cooked up, but the indifference of all the other people to the robbery in broad daylight really got to her. Impulsively... and knowing at the same time that it was probably exactly what Axel would want her to do... she went up to the distraught girl and put her arm around her.

"Don't worry, honey," she said sympathetically. "My husband will get your purse back for you."

"It - it had everything in it," the brunette sobbed brokenly. "All my money, my driving license..." She caught hold of herself and looked gratefully at the slim elegant blonde stranger who had taken pity on her. "God, it even had the key to the locker where I checked my suitcase in it!" she suddenly remembered. "I won't be able to get my suitcase out."

"Don't worry," Nina comforted her again. "Here comes Axel now... my husband. Oh... oh! I'm afraid he doesn't have your pocketbook though." She nodded toward Axel who was barging toward them through the crowd. He was panting like a winded bull, and his heavy square-jawed face was all ruddy with his exertions.

"Lost him, damn it all!" he growled thumping the tip of his cane on the sidewalk. "Think anybody would try to stop him? They just got in my way, that's all. Stupid bastards!" Then suddenly his grim expression vanished and his face split in a charming smile. "Well, I'll be damned," he said to the distressed brunette. "Aren't you Miss Wright from the realtor's office in Laketon, Maryland? I'm Axel Borman. Bought a farm there from Mr. Chisolm last summer. Remember?"

What a god-awful ham you are, Axel, Nina thought affectionately as she watched this minor miracle unfold right in front of her eyes on the sordid streets of Greenwich Village. Recognition dawned in June Wright's eyes and soon her hand was tucked under Axel's other arm as he towed both the women along Fifth Avenue toward Washington Square Park.

"We live just down the street," he was saying to June. "I'm afraid your purse is gone for good, but I'm sure I can get your bag out of the locker without any trouble. You just come up to the apartment and rest for a few minutes while I make a couple of phone calls..."

Wow, those few minutes had really stretched, June was thinking a little woozily to herself about four hours later as she sat cozily curled up in one corner of an enormous couch, warming her second large snifter of after-dinner Brandy-and-Benedictine in the palm of her hand. She was sitting in what was beyond doubt the most lavish and tastefully decorated living room she had ever seen. It was like something right out of the movies, only much better. In fact, the whole evening had seemed enchanted and unreal, right from the minute Mr. Borman had recognized her and brought her here. Why, she was almost glad her pocketbook had been stolen, even if there was over sixty dollars in it, just to get a glimpse of the way Mr. Borman and his charming wife Nina lived. The meal they had eaten, prepared by the Borman's personal French chef, was probably worth sixty dollars all by itself, she figured. She had never tasted such delicious food, and every time she looked out of the dining room window she felt as if she had the whole city of New York at her feet.

The Bormans lived in a duplex penthouse on top of one of the few high-rise buildings in that area. Standing on the terrace before dinner she had been able to look way down at the long rows of shabby brownstone houses and dingy brick tenements like the ones she had been looking for Tiffany in. After two cocktails she had broken down and told Nina and Axel... it was hard for her to call him Axel, he was so imposing, but he had insisted... anyway, she had told them about Tiffany's running away with Cliff. She'd covered up the real story by saying they had eloped together... And about the telegram and how when Cliff didn't meet her at the train as she had expected he would, she had gone to the address he had given. God, she certainly would never forget that place. She thought she had done a pretty good job of describing to Nina and Axel how sinister and awful it had been with all these freaky filthy people lying around in the most awful mess she'd ever seen. Empty yogurt cups and rotting fruit and vegetables in all the corners.

She was certain everyone there was on drugs, and the only one who had seemed to be in a halfway normal state had just laughed when she asked about Tiffany. Nobody has a name here, baby, he had said, and when she showed him the picture of her sister she had brought along, he explained that the place was just what they called a "crash pad." People came and went every day and he'd only been there a week himself.

Then there was the policeman she had asked where the Missing Persons Bureau was. He had snarled at her that Western Union was always making mistakes and that she should check numbers 62 and 52 and 27 and so on before she bothered the Bureau. Why not 18th street, too and 108th street, why not every building in the whole city of ten million or whatever it was... ?

Axel had told her that he knew exactly how callous and indifferent the police appeared to be. It was really because they were overworked, he assured her, but he knew someone in City Hall who would see that her sister's case received the proper attention. Meanwhile, since it had been too late to contact the man he knew who could help about her suitcase, it had been decided that she spend the night with them. After the hostility... the downright inhumanity... of the city it had really been wonderful to meet such warm hospitable people, and June's protest that she didn't want to impose on them was pretty feeble.

"Oh, pooh," Nina laughed. "You're not imposing at all. I'm not as... uh... busty as you are but maybe you can squeeze into one of my nighties. How about a little nightcap before we turn in?" She leaned forward to take the decanter from the coffee table and poured some more of the amber liquid into June's glass in spite of her protests.

"I'm really not used to drinking so much," she giggled a little foolishly. "Cocktails before dinner, wine with dinner and three liqueurs after dinner. Goodness, what would the people in Laketon say?"

"What the hell do people in Laketon drink, for chrissake?" Axel growled suddenly in a surly overbearing voice from the deep easy chair he was lying back in, puffing on an enormous cigar.

June was really shocked and didn't know what to reply. He had been so charming and affable right up until that moment. What had she done to offend him?

"Ho-hum, I guess it's time for beddy-bye. It's been a long day," Nina said, rising to her feet with a meaningful glance at June. "Bring your glass along, honey, and we'll finish up our nightcaps while I'm showing you your room and where everything is." She led the way from the living room with that supple graceful walk that June had noticed earlier and admired so much. Everything that Nina did was stylish and elegant, and next to her June felt like a hulking country clod, although god knows the slender blonde woman was the essence of warmth and friendliness itself and certainly not in the least bit condescending.

As she rose rather unsteadily, June said goodnight to Axel who merely grumbled something curt and unintelligible and continued to glower at the wall like a huge cross old bear.

Goodness, he certainly was a moody man... She didn't envy Nina having to put up with such sudden outbreaks of bad humor if they occurred often. It probably had something to do with the difference in their ages because Nina couldn't be more than thirty while Borman must be close to fifty... her father's age.

To her mortification the voluptuous brunette found that she was actually weaving as she followed her hostess down the hallway to the guest bedroom. Such a thing had never happened to her in her whole life before. It must be the wine, she decided. They had drunk both white Bordeaux and red Burgundy, all imported from France, and it had gone so well with the different courses that she had drunk a great deal without realizing it.

"I think you'll be comfortable here," Nina said, patting a large double bed covered with a lovely satiny aquamarine comforter. "Over there is your bath..." She pointed to a door across the room. "And if you'll just wait a second, I'll see if I can find a nightie that will fit you. You certainly have a magnificent figure," she smiled, looking June over with frank admiration in her eyes.

"Oh," June protested, blushing at the compliment. "Don't bother. I can just sleep in my slip." Then she blushed even harder when she thought of how the last couple of months she had been sleeping in the raw so that she could more quickly satisfy her ever-demanding body. God, for the past four hours she hadn't even thought of... that... and now she could already feel the blood beginning to race through her veins in anticipation of the moment she would be alone in that wonderful big bed. No, dammit! She wouldn't touch herself tonight, she resolved. It would break the spell of the whole day.

Nina had been quietly watching the crimsoning face of her beautiful raven-haired guest and speculating as to what thoughts were passing through her mind to make her blush so furiously. The excited tingling in the pit of her own tummy told her that she would find out before too long. Axel had finally explained to her the first part of his plan and intuitively she knew that he was right. Her husband, as she had learned many years before, had an unerring instinct about women like June Wright; he claimed she was the type of woman who by nature is overwhelmingly sensual but who for one reason or another has not yet been awakened to the full hidden depths of her sexuality. Nina shivered with inward delight at the thought of the role she had been assigned to play in June's awakening. Moments like these were the spice of life to her.

"It's no trouble at all," Nina said, placing her snifter of B-and-B on the bedside table as she left the room. "I'll be right back."

June was wandering around the spacious room admiring the paintings on the walls... they were all abstract but in soothing subdued colors that went perfectly with the rest of the decor... when she heard Axel's voice raised in a loud angry roar and the sound of shattering glass followed by a heavy smack of flesh against flesh. Seconds later Nina came running breathlessly into the room, slammed the door behind her and locked it. One entire side of her delicately featured face was blotchy red where Axel had obviously slapped her with all his might.

"That rotten bastard!" she gasped, panting like a hunted animal as June instinctively ran to her and enfolded her slim pliant figure comfortingly in her arms. She could feel the older woman's heart pounding rapidly against her breast and a tremor rack her trembling body.

"God, I'm so ashamed!" Nina choked out finally when she had gotten herself under control. "I never dreamed he would do that with a perfect stranger in the apartment. Not that you're a stranger," she added quickly with a grateful glance at June. "I feel as if I've known you all my life."

"Oh, Nina, come over here and sit down," June begged almost tearfully, leading her hostess over to the bed and still hugging her tightly to her breast as though she were a frightened child. "Why on earth did he strike you? Does he do it often?"

"Oh no, only when he drinks too much sometimes," Nina said mournfully. "And when he's been around some woman he knows he can't take to bed. He's very much attracted to you, you know, June."

"What!" The idea that a man as old as her father could desire her physically shocked June to the roots of her being. "I just can't believe it."

"Well, it's true," Nina smiled ruefully. "I know all the signs, believe me... June, I hate to ask you this on such short acquaintance, but would you mind if I slept in here with you tonight?" She slyly eyed her guest to see if there was any sign of reluctance but there was none, so she went swiftly on. "By tomorrow morning Axel will have slept it off, but if I go out there now he might really work me over. I'll be safe in here with you. Come to think of it, you'll be safer too if I'm in here with you."

"Wh - what... ?" June faltered, uncertain that she understood. "You don't really mean he would... ?"

"Break down the door and rape you?" Nina finished the unspoken thought for her. "He might. He just might. He's never done anything like that up till now, but he seems to get crazier and hornier each year instead of calming down like most men do when they grow older. That bastard had a hard on for you as big as a telephone pole all during dinner. I'm amazed you didn't notice it."

"Wh - what... !" June stammered again, hardly able to believe her ears that the elegant sophisticated Mrs. Nina Borman would use a coarse expression like "hard on". She hadn't heard that since the girls used to whisper it in high school.

"Oh, I'm sorry if I shocked you, honey," Nina said understandingly, placing her slender petite hand on June's larger one. "It's just that when Axel hits me, it makes me feel degraded like a... like a whore. And then for some reason I want to degrade myself even more and talk like a whore. Say things like - cock, fuck, ass, cunt... Damn him anyway!" She grabbed up her snifter and downed what was left in the glass in one gulp. "Sometimes I wonder why I stay with him."

June gazed at the abused wife with her heart full of compassion. She very clearly understood Nina's compulsive need for self-degradation... self-debasement. God, who could understand it better than she could? She had been involuntarily debased by the vile spectacle she had witnessed on the porch that afternoon, and for months afterward had continued to defile herself, plunging headlong into an apparently bottomless pit of lonely self-debauch. She picked up her own glass and slowly drained it. She felt completely sober. The fright she had experienced seemed to have cleared her head.

"Fuck! Shit! Piss! Cunt! Cock! Cocksucker!" Nina spat out the lewd words again, balling up her little hands into fists and jabbing out at an imaginary target. "That's all I am, a cocksucker. My husband's private little cocksucker. Rub my back for me, will you, honey," she begged plaintively, stretching out suddenly on the bed. "It's the only thing in the whole world that calms me down. My nerves feet like they're going to jump right out of my skin!"

Aghast at the stream of filth spouting from the married woman's lovely mouth, June dazedly began to stroke her back through the sheer silk material of her cocktail dress. Nina's head was resting in the crook of her arm so that her exquisitely sculptured face was turned toward June in semi-profile. Was it possible, June wondered, that those delicate cherry red lips which looked so innocent and pure had actually been forced to close around the loathsome penis of that hulking brute out there in the living room? Probably... She was beginning to believe that Axel was capable of anything. She knew from her readings in abnormal psychology that people did indulge in such disgusting practices, and hadn't Cliff said that her own sister...

June suppressed a sudden urge to retch but oddly enough she felt no repulsion for Nina, only sadness that the older woman had the misfortune to be married to a sadistic animal like Axel Borman. Her hand slowed in its smooth stroking and she gently massaged the nape of her hostess' neck, feeling the soft warm flesh through the curling tendrils of short blonde hair there.

"Oh, that feels good, your hand on my skin," Nina purred contentedly. "Let me take off my dress." She jumped quickly off the bed, unzipped her dress and let it puddle to the floor, then unhooked her brassiere and tossed it carelessly on top of the dress. June modestly turned away her eyes but not before she had a glimpse of Nina's small but beautifully shaped breasts which stood out in pearl-white perfection against the tan remaining on the rest of her body. They were capped by little red berrylike nipples that jutted out so enticingly.

June blushed and guiltily swallowed the saliva which automatically filled her mouth at the sight of those dainty nipples. God, she wasn't going to turn out to have lesbian tendencies too, was she, in addition to being a voyeur? She shook her heavy black mane of hair impatiently to reject the absurd notion, but something dim and shadowy was stirring deep inside her, something vaguely threatening to her already much diminished self-esteem.

Clad now only in the wispiest of panties, Nina climbed back onto the bed and stretched out luxuriously like a contented kitten for June to continue to rub her back. She felt the nervousness in the first touches of the timid girl's hands on her naked back and smiled secretly to herself. She hadn't missed the look of confusion on June's face and that second vivid blush when she dropped her brassiere. This was going to be easier than she had expected. She wouldn't even have to use the series of Climax Illustrated pictures that she had hidden in the dresser before dinner just in case. The pictures showed two ravishing Scandinavian girls fondling and sucking each other's breasts, then tonguing each other's clitorises in the sixty-nine position.

No, Nina was sure it wouldn't be necessary to bring them out. This was going to be a straight seduction scene with no artificial props, and she intended to enjoy it to the hilt. Of course, nothing could replace a man's long thick hard cock which she loved in any part of her body but if anything could, it was a beautiful, almost virginal and potentially passionate young woman like June. A little sixty-nine just between girls would be a nice prelude to whatever Axel had planned for later on. He hadn't taken her that far into his confidence, but the slap he'd given her to set the stage for this scene had been too goddamn realistic. The horny bastard didn't know his own strength.

"Hmmmmmmmmm, that feels so-oooooo good," she purred as June's hands resumed their gentle stroking. "You have wonderful hands. I can feel the electricity coming out of them... the vibrations or whatever it is. You could be a healer." She lay there quietly until the massage had turned into a series of long languorous caresses which set a liquid warmth filtering sweetly through her relaxed body. Then she began to almost imperceptibly undulate her hips against the comforter, pressing her warmly throbbing vaginal mound down on the bed when June's hands traveled up her back to her shoulders, then raising her softened, slightly splayed buttocks to meet them when they descended again. She could definitely feel a tingling current of mounting desire flowing through those feathery fingertips which were dallying now near the base of her spine and expected them any minute to float down between her thighs into the wetly waiting valley of her cunt and finally home in on her pulsing clitoris which was emitting signals of anguished yearning at the rate of about ten thousand per second... But when she accentuated the rotating movement of her hips and spread her legs farther apart in frank invitation, the hands were abruptly withdrawn.

Nina rolled over on her side and looked up at June with intensely glittering dark blue eyes. "God, June, you're magic!" she exclaimed. You almost made me cum just by rubbing my back. Why did you stop?"