The Insiders

by Rosemary Rogers

  She heard Jerry Harmon's voice.

  "We watched you through the two-way mirror for a while, after you disappeared in here. Whatsa matter, Brant baby, you getting selfish?"

  "Yeah, you usually call us in sooner. You're slipping as a host—you used to be better about sharing, didn't he, Mel?"

  She didn't want to hear what they were saying—even meeting Brant's cold eyes, locked with hers, seemed to be better than the things they were saying.

  "Too bad, Eve. But maybe you prefer it this way.*

  His voice was soft, meant for her only—his words cruel. He pulled the spread from her suddenly nerveless fingers and moved back, shrugging carelessly, letting those others crowd closer in, their eyes leering, their words beating against her ears.

  "Hey, Brant, how come you didn't have her all tamed and quieted down for us?"

  "Because she's a fighter, and she's stupid. But maybe it takes more than just one guy to keep her happy."

  "Bet that's it, huh, baby? But don't worry, we'll make you happy—very happy!"

  A man—his face looked somehow familiar, but she didn't know him—put his hand on her breast and squeezed.

  She tried to roll away from him, and someone else grabbed her leg.

  "If it's going to be a gang-bang, then I want in on it, too—women's fib and all that!"

  A woman's wet mouth grazed Eve's; she turned her head away, but not quickly enough. The woman laughed.

  From somewhere above her, sounding far away, Eve heard Brant's voice again.

  "Hey, Jerry, get that damn camera rolling, will you? Eve Mason is going to get screwed, and we're going to add a new movie to the collection."

  There was more laughter and cheering, and Eve wanted to close her eyes—that was her only escape from the nightmare now, she realized sickly.

  Hands reached for her, touching, grabbing, holding. There were too many of them to fight off, but she fought, anyway. The fights blazed into her eyes, and her arms and legs had started to feel like lead weights; but the things they were doing to her, the obscene, ribald comments, were not to be endured. She had to do something to feel herself still alive; keep struggling against them for as long as she could.

  The smell of their bodies, the heat of them, seemed to suffocate Eve. She panicked and heard her own cries and moans and useless pleading over the laughter and the obscenities and the hoarse, excited breathing.

  Someone held a small silver spoon under her nose, trying to make her snort up the white, powdery substance it contained. She screamed and felt her lips and tongue grow numb as it spilled.

  Hands pulled at her legs, dragging them so widely apart that she screamed again with agony. A man knelt on the bed, his fingers incongruously gentle as he held her labia open. His voice sounded slurred, and she suddenly knew him even in the middle of her nightmare— Brant Newcomb!

  "I want you all to see what I discovered. Isn't she beautiful? Jer, why don't you zoom in and get a close-up of the sweetest cunt in the world."

  "Damn you, Brant Newcomb, damn you, damn you!" she sobbed until some other man, kneeling over her head, pushed his penis into her mouth, gagging her, making her retch.

  Their hands and mouth and stiff, thrusting cocks were everywhere on her body—hurting her, invading her, ravaging her, while she shuddered and cringed and made choked, terrified animal noises in her throat.

  It was no use, they kept telling her; no use fighting, no use struggling like an insane creature. Why didn't she give in and have a good time like everyone else? Couldn't she see that they were trying to teach her how to have fun?

  Eve wondered vaguely, with the part of her mind that was still capable of reasoning, why she didn't yield, give in like they said, let them do whatever it was they wanted to do with her. She had been screwed before, abused before, and maybe if she did stop fighting them, their cruel game might lose some of-its savor. But she caiddn't stop—couldn't stop her biting, kicking, and

  clawing; her screams of fear and almost witless panic.

  She continued to struggle and thrash about, so that they had to hold her down, cursing at her stubbornness. Another man thrust his penis in her mouth, and she bit down on it, hearing his yell of pain and shock, and feeling in her turn the pain of his hand slamming across her breasts.

  "Bitch! Goddam bitch!"

  Someone laughed.

  "So keep your pecker out of her mouth, then. There's other ways."

  There were other ways, and they tried them all, while her awareness of what was happening and kept on happening began to come in patches now as her brain tried to detach itself from her bruised and violated body.

  But by now she wasn't the only one—she was the center of a monstrous orgy, a tangle of bodies, male and female, copulating around her and across her and over her and everywhere else in the room. Reflected in the mirrors, they looked like a mass of writhing, squirming snakes.

  Eve struggled to breathe, to remain human, to proclaim her humanity and her individuality—to survive.

  Were they still taking pictures and making their dirty movies? The white, bright lights had changed into flashing kaleidoscope colors that seemed to well and surge and glow around her with herself in their center, being sucked down into a Hell peopled with writhing, joined bodies—ugly, hurting—Dante's Inferno come to life. A nightmare! Worse than a nightmare because she couldn't escape merely by waking up—she was trapped, caught up in it, part of it.

  But it couldn't be happening, couldn't be real—you read about this kind of thing, but it didn't happen, not to her, not to Eve Mason, Dave's girl.... People didn't really do these things to other people; you read about it, talked about it, watched X-rated movies, but you stayed outside of the nightmare—didn't you? Didn't you?

  Hell it was, and the voice of the serpent whispered in her ear again. She had been on the point of escaping, detaching herself completely, and then Brant Newcomb's voice brought reality sharply and painfully back.

  "Eve, damn you, will you stop trying to fight it? Even Francie had more sense than you. It's too late, baby, you can't stop it, so why don't you join—join in the fun, Eve. Come on, lie still for me and let me fuck you. Don't you know I've wanted to fuck you from the very first time? Stop fighting me, and I'll make it good for you—god dam you, stop fighting!"

  Mindless, wordless, she shook her head at him, against his insidious words. Someone, straddling her body, grabbed her ankles and pulled them upward and back while Brant knelt between her spread thighs. She felt herself an offering, a sacrifice to the old pagan gods —wasn't this the way primitive tribes raped captured maidens?

  Suddenly, she felt him drive himself deep inside her —deeper than any of the others had gone. She felt him battering up against the opening to her womb, and the pain was so great that she screamed, over and over again, until she fainted—with her screams still echoing in her ears.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  EVE CAME FLOATING BACK to consciousness again, and she was still in bed. But a different bed this time, in a different room. Brant's bed? Brant's room? Horror washed over her all over again when she saw him there, sitting on the side of the bed, watching her.

  There was no one else there now, but she was still defenselessly naked, and she hurt all over when she moved. Her body started to struggle again involuntarily. He put a hand on her shoulder, pushing her down against the pillows, and she wanted to scream again.

  "You don't have to go on fighting. They've all gone home, and the party's over." His voice was even, betraying no emotion.

  "Oh, dear God!" she said aloud in a ragged whisper. She stared at him, seeing his beautiful, corrupt face. Her mind was still freewheeling from the drug he must have given her, and she felt as if she were floating, without sensation. Numb inside and out.

  "Hardly apropos," he said dryly, making the unreality sharpen. "Didn't you know I'm the Devil?"

  Her subconscious mind believed him somehow, and she could feel herself shrink away, bits of long-ago trivia drifting back int
o her mind. Didn't they use forked, pointing fingers to ward off the Devil? Or, in later times, a crucifix?

  Why don't I wear one any longer? She brought her hand up to touch her bare neck in a curiously childish, forlorn gesture.

  "I had a friend, a physician, check on you while you were still out. He said you're going to be okay."

  His voice was still even, but his eyes, flicking over her, had a strange and unrecognizable look in their depths.

  She shrank into herself, mistrusting him, fearing him, suddenly wishing she could cover her body from his eyes even now.

  "Goddammit, you should have been sensible!" he said suddenly. "The stuff I had the man put in your drink earlier on was supposed to turn you on and take care of all your damn stupid inhibitions, but I guess he miscalculated. So things got out of hand—I didn't mean for them to go as far as they did, but we were all pretty high, and you were supposed to be, too."

  She winced at his offhandedly contemptuous tone. A stammer in her voice, she said, "You—you have to take by force? And what all of you did to me—was it just for kicks? Is that the only way you can make it with a woman? Is your appetite so jaded it has to be rape, or a—a gang-bang?"

  He leaned over and slapped her coldly and deliberately. The pain brought tears to her eyes, but it helped clear her head, too. It gave her some pitiful measure of satisfaction to know that her words seemed to have gotten to him, and now, suddenly unafraid, she couldn't stop.

  "Did what I just said hit home, Brant Newcomb? Did it get under your hide, you bastard? And what is behind the mask, anyway, man or—or fag?"

  No, she wasn't afraid of him now. What more could he do to her? She could see the angry flush that came up under his bronze skin, and was glad she had finally

  made him react. Was that what his real problem was, that he was a closet homosexual, trying to hide his real tendencies from the world by acting the satyr? Was that part of the reason that he seemed to hate and despise women? She said so aloud. "Is that why you're a sadist? Do you have to put women down?"

  He stood up, and for a moment she thought crazily that he was going to fall upon her and rend her—finish what he and his friends had started.

  But his voice, when he spoke, was very controlled, very quiet.

  "I think you're trying to provoke me into fucking you again, baby, and I really don't want to any longer. There were too many others just now, and even I can be fastidious sometimes."

  He walked away from the bed to a concealed closet in one of the paneled walls and came back carrying her coat.

  "I'm sorry, but this is all you have left to wear. I'll buy you a new dress to make up for the one I ripped off you." He handed her the coat "Get up and put it on, and I'll take you home."

  Somehow, she found her voice. "I don't want—" she began, but his voice cut across hers.

  "I don't give a damn what you don't want, Eve. I said I was taking you home, and I am. Either you come with me, or I have to figure that you enjoyed what happened a few hours ago and want more. I can always call some of my friends back, you know. Or would you prefer someone different?"

  She could not help shivering. The look in his eyes made her afraid all over again. Hating him, hating her own weakness, she sat up. Her head starting whirling dizzily. Remembering something she had read somewhere, she lowered her head to her knees and hoped the faintness would go away.

  "You—I'm not going to let you get away with this, you know," she said unevenly. "I'll go to the police— the DA—someone!"

  His voice sounded bored, almost weary.

  "Ah, you're full of shit, doll. Is that the worst you can do? Once you're capable of thinking straight, though, I don't think you'll do anything. I bet you've forgotten all the pictures we took. We even made a movie, close-ups and all, and I'm sure you're very, very photogenic, even under those circumstances. Now, how would you feel if a lot of other people got to see some of those pictures? Your family, for instance—your boyfriend, whose spying you were doing last night. And of course all the other beautiful people you work with. The underground press would really have a field day. Is that what you want, luv?"

  While he'd been talking, Eve had been thinking of the pictures. Oh, God! How could she have forgotten that part of the horror? She felt sick, remembering the flashes, the lights hot on her body—people taking pictures, laughing while the others opened her, examined her body minutely and intimately, touched and fucked her as if she'd been a thing without feeling, a toy for their amusement. And the worst part had been the way they had looked inside her, violating her with their probing eyes and fingers, using her without pity or humanity.

  Eve had to force herself to look up at him.

  "I hope you drop dead. I'd like to kill you myself. I hope I never have to set eyes on you again!"

  He recognized the venom as well as the defeat in her voice, and smiled coldly. But his eyes still held the same measuring look that had puzzled her earlier.

  She tried to stand, but she was so dizzy that he had to help her—politely wrapping the coat around her shaking body and even buttoning it up for her while she swayed against him involuntarily. He stood so close to her! If only her hands weren't so nerveless and would do what she wanted them to do; if only she had a weapon—she'd have killed him! She wanted to slap his face with all the force she could muster, to leave deep, bloody tracks in it with her nails, marring its perfection. But her hands felt as if they had weights attached to them, and her mind kept trying to escape from her weak and aching body.

  Observing her, noticing the way she shied away from his touch, Brant Newcomb could not help feeling a grudging land of admiration for her guts and stubbornness as well as, he admitted with surprise, a sudden spurt of desire for her body. But this time for her willing body, not the way it had been tonight. Maybe if the gang had not burst in when they had, he might have gotten to her after all—made her his casual possession, like countless other women before her, starting with Syl. Yes, always starting with Syl. His usual goddam nightmare, his one weakness. Fighting with himself, he pressed his fingers into Eve's arm as he started to help her walk outside, and felt her flinch. But she said nothing, would not even look at him. Well, what did he expect? She had just been gang-raped and had fought them all, all the way, he remembered with annoyance. She was a stubborn bitch, but it was only natural that she should hate and mistrust him.

  They went down in the elevator to his garage in silence, and he helped her into the car he would use tonight—one of the three he kept there. She flinched away from his touch again, so he deliberately lingered over it, letting his fingers close over her thigh after she was sitting beside him, and hearing her gasp of pain and rage.

  Sliding into the seat next to her, he wondered if she'd really try to do anything about what had happened, and grinned mirthlessly to himself. Like hell she would! Now that he had pictures of her and she knew it, all he had to do was remind her occasionally, and she'd be good and manageable, just like the rest of them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  BRANT THE MANIPULATOR! He was good at that. Manipulating people, using them—especially women. Never a woman yet that he hadn't been able to control and to break, even Syl—shit, no more thoughts of Syl! He'd paid a shrink for three years of analysis to be rid of Syl and his memories of her—and what few hang-ups and self-doubts he had left by then. And since Syl, he had discovered so many things! Money talks, he had found. Money talks loudest and laughs last. He could buy anything and anyone he pleased, get away with practically anything he wanted to get away with, with all his damned money. Anything at all...

  Brant drove carelessly but competently, as he did everything else. The traffic had thinned down considerably by this time in the morning, but the usual fog had wet the pavements, so that he was forced to drive a trifle slower than he usually did.

  He lit a cigarette and offered Eve one, but she shook her head, refusing even to look at him as she huddled up against the door on the opposite side in the ridiculous grea
tcoat she wore. They stopped for a traffic light, and now he studied her profile openly, reaching out suddenly to touch a bruise that showed darkly against her cheekbone.

  "You won't be able to work for a while with that. I'll send you a check."

  She jerked her head away sharply at his touch, turning to look at him at last, speaking with her voice low and husky and full of the venom and hatred she felt.

  "I wouldn't accept anything from you, Brant Newcomb. Not even a million dollars. You can keep your goddam conscience money!"

  The light changed, and he put the car in gear as they crawled up a steep hill.

  "Baby, I have no conscience. You ought to know that. But you—you're still full of fight, aren't you? Well, maybe your boyfriend will take care of whatever excess energy you have left. I presume he's good at that."

  No reaction from her this time. Well, he hadn't really expected any. And he was starting to feel tired, too; to get that flat, stale taste in his mouth that always came after a party, after the drinking and the drugs and the women and, yes, the men, too—at the kind of party it had been last night it didn't seem to matter very much after a certain point who did what to whom. Ah, shit, he thought bleakly, suddenly, what is everything about? The parties, the orgies, the constant search for new faces, new kicks—it was all getting stale and pointless. Maybe what he needed was to go on a cruise again— go island-hopping in the sloop. But alone, this time. Or maybe he'd take Pedro along to keep an eye on the boat, spell him while he slept, and do the cooking. Pedro was a good sailor, and he wasn't the talkative kind.

  Yeah, that was it; that was what he needed. To get away someplace. No gang, no liquor, no drugs, and no women. Except maybe for the island women who wouldn't know Brant Newcomb from Popeye the Sailor. Women who'd fuck a man only if they wanted him, the man, and not the aura of money and power and wicked-ness that clung to him. Women who were free and uninhibited and honest and had no hang-ups at all. Damn his money, anyhow! It hung like an albatross around his neck sometimes. Like the memory of Syl. His lost innocence, bis lost love. Syl. He wondered savagely if her name would hang suspended in his thoughts forever.