The Insiders (11 page)

He moved back, his cold eyes watching her.

"But I've forgotten—you're the one who likes to be hurt and then screwed, right? Or is it that you like to be screwed so it hurts? I forget easy, but I do remember that's why you're here, isn't it?"

Her pride smarting, she squatted on the floor, staring up at him.

He was jeering at her, playing games with her, and she didn't like it.

"You—you bastard. No guy ever complained about the way I give a blow job before. What do you mean, I need to take lessons?"

"Talking's a waste of time, baby. You came here to get screwed, and now I'm ready for you. And you do need lessons, but I don't have the time or the inclination to give you any. Now get on that bed and get yourself ready while I shuck my clothes."

Something in the contemptuous tone of his voice, the studied cruelty of his words, got through to her, and suddenly she didn't care if he screwed her or not.

She stood up, her face flaming with rage.

"Don't talk to me like that, Brant Newcomb. I'm no whore
!
"

He hit her across the breasts, and the pain and shock made her yell.

"Sure you're a whore, Francie. Every woman I've ever known is a whore—for some man. Get on the bed and spread your legs—real wide."

She backed away from him, her eyes studying his face warily. Suddenly she was no longer sure of herself, and she was scared of this man—there was no feeling in him.

Her breasts ached and stung, and her eyes blurred with tears. She saw him reach out and flick a switch; then she heard a whirring sound.

"You're—you're going to take pictures?"

"Movie, Francie. My friends and I make some of the best skin flicks you've seen—no
acting
, either."

His eyes moved over her; they were without depth, like glassy blue marbles.

"Hurry up, Francie, or you
’ll
get me mad again. Or is that what you're trying to do—make me mad?"

His pants were flung aside—she noticed that he had not bothered to wear shorts under them. He came to her, and she felt him push her backward with what was almost a kind of relief. He hit her again, and she heard her own groan of pain, but she continued to lie there with her eyes tightly closed and her legs open, feeling the familiar tickle of desire begin to grow and expand in her.

The hash was working on both of them now—he seemed to move in slow motion as he made her pose for him, contorting her body grotesquely, hitting her when she was too slow in obeying him or seemed reluctant. And in the end he turned her over on her stomach and beat her across her ass a few times with his belt while she rubbed herself against the silky sheets and screamed for him to fuck her, get on with it—anything—just make her come.

He came into her savagely, fingers twisted in her hair; and almost immediately, Francie could feel herself start to climax—a never-ending spiral of feeling that took her up, up, her body arching and jerking under his until he exploded into her.

Afterward, lying beside her on the bed, he acted as if the violence and passion that had erupted between them had not touched him in any way. He was cool, remote, even polite. It was hard for Francie to imagine that just a few minutes ago he had attacked her like an animal.

He poured wine into a glass for himself—champagne again for her.

"You didn't even put a hand up to cover your face when I hit you, you stupid little bitch. I could have really marked you up. Don't you have the normal self-preservation instinct?"

He confused her.

"I don't know," she answered him honestly. "All I care about is being able to come, and when you hurt me and beat me, it's like you're telling me to feel, you know? Like you're telling me you know I'm here, you want to put me down, you're doing something to me, and that means you want me."

"I don't know if I really do understand, but so what, if it turns you on. How old are you, by the way?"

His question caught her by surprise, so that she stumbled over her lies, her voice uncertain.

"I'm—I'm twenty."

He slapped her hard, knocking her off the bed and onto the floor.

"You're a lying cunt. Now tell me."

"Okay, okay, so I'm still nineteen."

This time, he got off the bed and pulled her to her feet by her hair, walking her over to the far corner of the room, where he calmly proceeded to wipe off all her carefully applied makeup with tissues dipped in cold cream.

Francie wriggled and cried and called him all the filthy names she could think of until he smacked her a few more times across the rump. Then she begged him to stop.

"I'm seventeen," she sobbed. "Really, I swear it. But I'll be eighteen this year, soon after I graduate. Honest, Brant, I'm not lying this time."

Like an alley cat, she rubbed herself up against him, touching him eagerly, licking at Iris skin with short, urgent jabs of her tongue. Suddenly he began to chuckle, his anger gone.

He carried her back to the bed and taught her how it felt to have a guy go down on
her.
Always before, it had been the other way around; she'd never had this happen to her before, and the sensation was wild and exquisite. Francie thought she'd go crazy with joy.

After a while, he moved his body alongside her, sixty-nine-fashion, and she tried to reciprocate, being more careful, gentler this time. But what he was doing to her felt so good that sometimes she forgot what she was supposed to be doing, and then his teeth nibbled at her clitoris until she screamed. Nothing she had ever experienced before could compare with this. . .. Francie thought she would never stop coming.

Suddenly he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, making her ride him until he climaxed inside her. Aside from the way he seemed to swell and start to throb in her, the only indication Francie had that he had made it was the way his hands tightened around her sore hips, making her ciy out. Through it all, his face remained bland, cold, uncontorted. She decided he was the strangest guy she had ever met, and then, without warning, he lifted her off himself and tumbled her backward off the bed and onto the soft carpet, ignoring her as if she had suddenly ceased to exist for him.

Francie could tell, just looking at him, that already he was bored with her. Those blue eyes of his still seemed to glitter coldly, but he had shadowed them with too-long lashes.

"Do it again," she begged him, still squirming on the floor where he'd let her fall.

"Why?" His voice sounded pleasant, but his words stung. "Even if I could, I don't think I'd want to. You forget, there's no mystery left to you, Francie. I know all your secrets now; there's nothing to find. And that sadomasochistic bit can be a drag; it's no new kick for me, anyhow."

"I don't care! Brant—please, please be nice to me! Don't you understand? I really do dig you. Nothing before has been this good for me, this far out. I dig your scene—all this. Let me stay, and I'll do anything you want me to—anything—you know I will. Brant, please?"

He stood looking down at her, still nude, still bored. Annoyed by his indifference, she reached up between his legs, her fingers like claws. But he was quicker than she; his hand slammed into her face, knocking her backward onto the carpet with her head ringing.

"Fucking bastard! You
hurt
mel"

"But you
like
to be hurt, baby—remember? And remember, while you're about it, that I
don't
dig being hurt."

He just stood there watching her, his face unreadable, and she began to sob with her mouth open, bawling like a child—all mouth and screwed-up eyes.

"Oh, shit, what a stupid little cunt you are! Your tears don't affect me one way or the other, Francie, but you are beginning to bug me. What in hell are you looking for?"

"If you won't let me stay, can't I at least see you again? Please, please let me keep coming. I swear I won't bug you, and I'll do anything you tell me to do... ."

"If I let you come back, you bet you will, baby. Heck, who knows, maybe some of my friends might get a kick out of your kind of thing."

He smiled at her, but there was no mirth in his smile.

"Just remember—no complaints or whining afterward. You'll have to act like a big girl and look out for yourself—and you'll have to do as you're told. You on the Pill yet?"

"I've been on the Pill since—since I was a freshman. Oh, Brant—thanks!"

Brant grimaced into his drink. He wondered why he had let her have her way. Sometimes, when the wrong mood hit him, he wondered about everything—his whole way of life. Why did he
bother?
Always looking for new kicks, new women, new entertainment. What was it his shrink had told him? Something about the rich constantly needing to be entertained? He'd told him something else, too—that he had a subconscious death wish, that he was trying to destroy himself, as well as other people. But then even psychiatrists didn't know everything. No one knew anything. Men kept creating new gods, when the only
real
power was there already, inside themselves. But what the heck, this was no time to indulge in introspection.

He watched Francie over the rim of his glass. She was sitting up now, rubbing her knuckles childishly into her eyes. She looked like such a kid without all that makeup on and her dark hair falling around her face. . . . But then, there was the surprise of finding out that she wasn't—not by any means. Maybe Francie, too, in her own peculiar way, was hell-bent on self-destruction, just like he was. Maybe that was the common bond between them. Whatever it was. . . . He kept studying her.

And then he told himself with a mental shrug to forget it. What did he care what her hang-ups were or how she had acquired them?

Brant had never before
met a chick who was a complete masochist, who really
dug
being hurt the way Francie did. Sure, there were plenty of women who went around asking for it, who craved it subconsciously; but then when you gave it to them, they squalled. And then there were those others who'd do it for money. But this one, this chick really
enjoyed
it; he suspected it was t ho only way she could come, because to her, sex had to be mixed up with pain. And maybe she'd prove a new kind of kick for the crowd, at that.

He walked over to the phone and began to dial.

"Get over here and make it big," he told her harshly.

She crawled over on her hands and knees, her eyes suddenly bright. Just as if he'd offered her some kind of treat to stop her from crying.

"Jerry? About the party tonight. Yeah, I know. But
I
've got this bird I'm bringing—Frances someone— remember her? Yeah—that's the one "

His voice went on, without a pause in it, a hesitation that would show she was getting to him. But Francie
knew
she was because she could feel him getting bigger, harder already.

Still talking, he grabbed her by the hair, bringing tears to her eyes, and pushed her mouth onto his cock. 1 le filled her mouth, hurting the soft part at the back of her throat, making her gag. But she could take it! Anything Brant did to her she could take, because she loved him. Yes, she did, she really did! She clasped his body with her hands, feeling the hardness of the muscles in his buttocks under her palms.

He was still talking on the phone to Jerry as if nothing were happening, but she didn't care.

He
was happening; he was big for her. No matter what he did or how he acted, he did want her. It reminded her in some weird way of the times when she was litde and Daddy beat her—the times before the accident that had killed him, and mother, too. Her eyes closed, Francie remembered.

First—yes, it had always started with the trip down to the cellar. He'd make her go ahead of him, and he'd be right behind, the belt swinging from his hand, swishing in the air. And she'd be crying harder and harder, begging him not to beat her, to give her one more chance to be good for him, but he wouldn't answer. The stairs going down to the cellar always seemed endless to Francie. And then, when at last they'd reached the bottom, she'd cry even harder and louder, beginning to squirm already.

"You know you've got it coming, Frances," he'd say sometimes, his voice sounding sad and very deep. "I don't understand why you keep doing these things, telling so many lies. After all the promises you've given us, after all we've told you and given you, your mother and I. Why, Frances, why?"

But sometimes he'd be so mad at her he wouldn't even trust himself to speak. He'd just make her bend over the old pickle barrel in the corner and pull her skirt up, and then the belt would come whistling through the air and the pain would explode across her body—making her scream and yell her promises not to be bad anymore, to listen to Mama and her big brother and to stop her stealing and lying. But Daddy wouldn't stop beating her until his arm was tired, she guessed, and her behind felt like it was on fire. All the time he was beating her, she'd have to stay bent over, and she'd rub herself up against the roughness of that old barrel while the belt made her squirm and dance with pain. And then the pain would get mixed up with something else after a while—and when it was over and she was held in Daddy's arms again, sobbing, and he'd tell her how much he loved her and that he only beat her for her own good,
because
he loved her, why even then, Francie knew she'd go and do something bad again real soon, and it would all start over

After the accident, Dave had been the one. Dave, her big brother, so many years older than she that she'd always been in awe of him. It hadn't been easy at first, making him mad enough so he'd spank her. He'd told her once he'd always been sorry about the way Daddy used to beat her—he thought they should have tried psychology on her, instead. But after the time he'd come home to find she'd deliberately cut up one of Mama's fine linen tablecloths to make herself a sundress, he'd given up on the psychology crap. He'd spanked her on that occasion, and from then on, he'd do the same whenever she did anything he didn't like—sometimes just because her grades were poor.

Dave never did take her down to the cellar to do it, like Daddy used to, but somehow, with Dave, it was even more exciting. Especially the feel of his bare hand on her buttocks while she pretended to squeal and beg him for mercy.

Without quite realizing what she was doing, Francie had one hand between her thighs, touching herself.

Brant hung the phone up abruptly and began to chuckle.

"Goddam, but you're a horny little animal, aren't you?" he said. Francie couldn't make a sound in reply, but it didn't matter.

"You're going to have lots of excitement this evening," he told her, his hand in her hair hurting her just enough to make her whimper and wriggle. "Now, take your fingers out of your cunt—I want you to be good and hungry for it when the time comes."

She clutched at him again with both hands, enjoying the sensation of servicing him, obeying him, belonging to him. God, but he was big! So big her throat ached and her jaw muscles hurt from holding her mouth open to take all of him.

Now that he was off the phone, he came quickly, his hot juices spurting down her throat. She hadn't swallowed a man's come since the very first time, the time when she was fourteen and it was her first month in California—her first month in school, as a matter of fact.

Dave had moved the family from the small Midwestern town she'd been born in to the West Coast because he'd been told the job opportunities were better— and then he started leaving them on their own most of the time, with just the dumb old housekeeper to watch them.

Thinking about it—about herself then—Francie could not help grimacing. She'd been so damned green in those da> that no one would have believed it, and then those four boys who thought she was just a prick-tease had taken her one day into the old house that everyone said was haunted, and had raped her—first one by one, and then two at a time. She'd sure grown up in a hurry then!

Francie told Brant about it later, while they were taking a shower together. She was feeling very, very good—she loved him more than ever, and she wanted him to know everything about her. Brant, in spite of his offhand manner and his sudden cruelties, was being nice to her now—he'd even sent his manservant out to buy her a dress to wear to the party, after letting her pick the style from one of the magazines he'd had lying about.