Ginny’s apartment was only a few blocks from the Brighton Beach shore, and the day was so mild she decided a stroll on the Boardwalk would be just the thing for her. No one would be swimming at this time of year, and she would probably have the long promenade to herself.
Smiling, she turned the corner and headed for the shore.
Unfortunately, quite a few people had gotten there ahead-of her with the same idea. The Boardwalk wasn’t exactly crowded, but there were enough people on it to rob her of her privacy. Most of them were old men and ladies, but there •were some young people, too—young men, leaning against the railings, smoking cigarettes, talking, and watching.
Naturally, they started watching Ginny the moment she appeared on the Boardwalk.
It didn’t bother her too much at first. It felt like all the other countless times she had felt herself being observed by men. It was always an irritation, but usually she could put up with it.
Today, however, it got on her nerves. She couldn’t put her finger on the difference, but there was something odd about the day, and about the sight of those men watching her. It caused a funny little fear to grow in the pit of her stomach, and forced her to increase her pace from a stroll to a brisk walk.
The men were watching her. On either side of the Boardwalk, behind her and as far in front of her as she could see, they sat on the benches and the rails, their eyes fixed on her belly and breasts as she approached, on her buttocks and calves after she had passed.
Their combined gaze was so naked that Ginny began to feel naked herself. She knew she was decently clothed and that the watchers couldn’t see any more of her than they could of any other woman, but she felt nude just the same. She wanted to cover her breasts with her hands so they couldn’t feast their eyes on the thrusting contours, but that would only call attention to her. She wanted to press her palms over her legs, hiding the little pucker of material where her skirt molded itself against the flexing V of her thighs. She wanted to grab
her buttocks, but that would reveal her breasts, and if she grabbed her breasts, her loins would be revealed, and if she . . .
The dream. It all came back to her in a rush, and she realized what was wrong. This stroll along the Boardwalk was just like the dream; a long diminishing perspective, vanishing in the distance as if it went on forever, and lined on both sides with watching males. Just like the dream—except, of course, the men weren’t naked, and neither was she.
Only the intensity of their lustful watching was naked.
Knowing the source of her feelings didn’t make them any less strong. The Boardwalk reminded her too vividly of the dream for her to take any pleasure in her stroll. She hated to give up, because it really was such a nice day, but she had no choice. The men were watching her, and that spoiled it.
Sadly, she turned from the Boardwalk and went down a ramp to the street. She was about to head toward home when an idea struck her. She looked around, and found what she hoped for.
Beneath the Boardwalk, just to the right of the street-ramp, there was a narrow space big enough for a person to fit through. And beyond that opening was the portion of the beach that stretched beneath the Boardwalk. She’d been under there before—it was a nice shady spot, and the summer bathers used it often when the sun became too strong—but she had always entered it from the beach side. It had never occurred to her until now that a pedestrian on the street might get under the Boardwalk without first getting down on the beach.
She went to the opening and looked through it. The sand was cool and dappled with sunlight falling through the board structure overhead. When she peered around the corner of the opening, she saw a long track of deserted shady sand running off into the distance as far as the Boardwalk itself.
She stepped through the opening. As far as she could tell, there wasn’t anyone around besides herself. Overhead, the men were standing and watching in the sunlight, but down here in the dark coolness, she was all alone.
She took off her shoes and wriggled her bare feet in the sand. Then she began to walk.
It was perfect. On one side was the concrete abutment on which the Boardwalk rested; on the other side was the open-aired view of the sand and the sea. There was no one on the beach anywhere, and the ocean was empty of ships. The scene gave her the illusion that she was the only person on earth, and she walked along happily, letting her mind drift, losing track of how far she had come.
The peace and calm lasted only until the voice spoke.
“Hey, honey.”
She surfaced from her dream with a lurch. The sound of the words made her heart leap into her throat, and it took her a second to discover why.
The voice was that of a man.
She turned her head slowly, trying to locate him. When she finally spied his figure, her heart left her throat and sank into numb panic.
He was standing only a few yards away, near one of the large pillars which supported the Boardwalk. He had probably been concealed behind that pillar all along. His position effectively blocked off the beach from her.
“Hey, honey,” he said again. “What you doing?”
She stared at him. He was young, perhaps a year older than herself. He was slimly-built and wiry, and his face was pockmarked. Under the messy strands of his hair, his eyes looked at her, making no attempt to conceal the thoughts behind them. His thin-lipped mouth was twisted up at one corner.
He spoke again. His voice was nasal and grating on ha ears. “You walking, or what? You with anybody?”
She didn’t answer. He looked past her for a possible companion, then apparently decided she was alone. His smirk grew into a smile as he began to walk toward her.
“Walking all by yourself under the Boardwalk, huh? Funny thing for a broad to do, ain’t it?”
She knew his type—self-centered, egotistical; even his walk was insolent. He was just another of the rotten young punks that infested the area. She was sure she could handle him.
“Go away, little boy,” she said.
He snorted. “Little boy? Who the hell you calling a little boy? You got a snotty mouth—you know that?”
“You got a snotty nose,” she replied, tossing her head. “Go home and let your mother wipe it.”
Her insults didn’t seem to have much effect on him. He was drawing closer. In a moment, she would have to start backing away from him, and she didn’t want to do that.
“Go play in the sand,” she said. “Leave me alone.”
“What did I do? Tell me—what’s so terrible? All I did was ask you if you were walking, is all. You don’t got no reason to be mad about that.”
“I don’t want any company. Get out of the way.” He had almost reached her now, and she tensed her muscles, ready to leap out of his reach if he attempted to grab her.
But he didn’t. He stopped with only a few feet separating them. He looked into her face, then dropped his eyes to the curve of her breasts. She felt his gaze travel down the length of her body, down to the loins, down along the columns of her thighs and calves. She shivered.
“Hey—you’re a nice dish, you know? Anybody ever tell you you’re a nice dish?”
“Yes,” she lied. “My boyfriend. He’s a cop.”
The fellow stared at her for a moment, then burst into laughter. “A cop? What do you know about that?”
“He is,” Ginny persisted. “Coney Island Precinct.”
“Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret. My brother-in-law’s the Mayor.” He threw back his head and roared with laughter.
Something snapped inside Ginny, and she moved. There was just enough space between the fellow and the nearest support pillar for her to make it to the beach, and the safety of the open air.
She dug her bare feet into the sand and spun past him. His arms came out for her and she felt his fingers graze the material of her blouse. Then she was out of range and running toward the sunshine.
But sand is not a good surface for running. It’s hard to get any traction on sand
, hard to maintain balance when it shifts beneath your feet. Ginny slipped once, regained her equilibrium, then skidded again. She pinwheeled her arms, trying desperately to remain on her feet, but to no avail.
She dropped onto the sand on her elbows and knees.
An instant later, he was beside her.
“Hey—you run pretty good for a broad. You got muscles, I bet.”
She was about to sit up when she felt his hand curl around one of her calves. His fingers squeezed the flesh, then moved up quickly to the back of her knee.
“Keep your hands off me,” she said, trying to make her voice calm-around the hoarse wind of her breathing. “You touch me again, and I’ll scream.”
“Baloney,” he said. “I want to see what kind of muscles you got.” His hand scooped up under her skirt, rode the back of one thigh to her buttocks. His fingers closed around a tender globe and dug in painfully.
She inhaled deeply, filling her lungs for a scream that would be heard from one end of the Boardwalk to the other.
It never left her mouth.
He glanced up at her face, saw the scream coming, and hit her with his fist.
The world went black and red for Ginny. She felt an explosion of pain across her jaw, felt herself reeling backward, then ceased to feel anything.
CHAPTER 8
TED MORTON HAD this picture in his mind.
It had come to him while he was making the call to that number on the card. Even before the party on the other end had lifted the phone and begun to speak, the picture had been forming.
The sound of her voice gave the image depth. The words she said added detail to it. Her immediate understanding of his tastes and desires completed the picture in full perspective.
When he left the phone booth and returned to his basement apartment, he carried with him a vision that excited him almost to the point of intoxication.
Madam Fury—he simply couldn’t get her out of his mind. All afternoon, as he made his usual rounds, piling the garbage, checking the operation of the furnace, repairing a window-sash here and a leaking pipe there, he thought only of Madam Fury. Several of the tenants noticed his distraction and commented on it.
They smiled, punched him chummily on the arm, and asked if he were in love.
Ted Morton returned their smiles, and didn’t answer.
In love? Well, in a way, maybe he was in love. But it wasn’t the sort of love the tenants could ever understand.
It would have taken a psychiatrist to understand it.
In Ted Morton’s mind, Madam Fury was tall, teller than his own six foot one. She was slender, but not at all skinny. She was lithe and sinewy without being overly muscular. She was beautiful, but she wasn’t soft. Her face was lovely, but cruel. Her hands were delicate, but powerful. Her eyes were set deep, but glowed with a strange fire. Her hair was black as midnight.
And, naturally, she was nude.
That was the most important feature of Morton’s dream. Madam Fury was naked. And not simply for the purpose of displaying her figure, not because she was preparing for a sexual interlude, not because some man was waiting to mount her and make use of her cruel voluptuousness.
She was nude because nudity was her natural state. As Morton pictured her, she would have no need of clothing. Women wore clothing for only two reasons—to conceal their bodies because of society’s restrictions, or to artificially enhance their imperfect bodies.
Neither of these considerations could possibly apply to Morton’s idea of Madam Fury. She wouldn’t worry about society or its laws—she was above such things. She lived alone in a house somewhere, surrounded by her pleasures, and she never stirred from it, and so she could spend all her days aloof from the world, her body naked and perfect—and beckoning.
As the afternoon passed, the image of Morton’s dream-woman became more and more vivid. Gradually, he added details to her body, dredging bits and pieces of females he had known out of his memory, and putting Madam Fury together out of the corpses of past pleasures, like a Frankenstein’s Monster.
Her skin—Morton recalled a girl he had enjoyed about a year before, She’d been a cheap little slut, with shapeless breasts, skinny legs, ratty hair, and a slack stupid mouth filled with cracking chewing gum. But her skin was flawless and smooth as polished marble, white on the surface with a rosy underlayer of healthy color. He could still remember how well that pure skin had taken bruises, and the way the bright strawberry welts left by his blows had flowered along the unblemished perfection of her body.
Madam Fury would have skin like that.
And her breasts—To Morton, a girl’s bust was of no special interest. Unlike most young men, he attached no significance to a woman’s bust development, except as vulnerable objects which responded quickly to his torturing fists and fingers. But once, years ago when he’d been younger, he met a girl with breasts that caused even him to sit up and take notice. The breasts had been round. Not teardrop-shaped, or pear-shaped, or oval—they had been perfectly round. Their upper curves-had been identical with their lower curves, as if they were halves of the same perfect sphere. And the puckered punctuation of the nipples had marked the dead-center of each mound; small sculpted circles of delight, no larger than bottletops, and as absolutely circular as the firm thrustings they capped.
Morton recalled well how those breasts had felt in his hands, how their tips had responded to his brutal kiss, how the rounded flesh had resisted his assaulting fingers, yielding just so far and no further. It had been delightful. He couldn’t remember anything about the girl except her breasts, but that was enough.
Madam Fury would wear just such a set of proud breasts.
And her torso—Morton had picked up a dancer once in the Village, and gone with her back to her apartment. The girl had been drunk and a bit of a nut in her way, and she had refused to let Morton touch her until she had displayed her skill as a dancer. The dance, she said, was very important to her life. So Morton had allowed her to have her way, and she had danced for him. As she danced, she removed her clothes, piece by piece, until she was entirely naked. Even then, she’d continued to dance.
He had watched her torso with fascination. The girl was limber and strong, and the skin of her body hugged tightly against the rich understructure of her frame. There had been deep scoops of shadow beneath her flaring chest, and her belly had been concave, bracketed by full-fleshed hips. The torso had been bisected neatly by a center-line of muscle, beginning in the valley between her breasts, running down into her navel, then down again to divide the tensed muscles of her abdomen. The line had disappeared finally in the fluff at her loins. Firm, lithe, insanely flexible—her torso had still possessed the power to arouse him even after his fists had scarred and bloodied it.
Madam Fury would have such a torso.
And her legs— The girl told Morton she was a swimming instructor at a women’s gymnasium, and Morton had no trouble believing it. Her body was tight and hard, and not really very attractive, except for her legs. The exercise of swimming had done marvelous things to her legs, molding them in curves and flows of flesh that were maddening in their femininity. Her thighs had been just big enough for a man’s fingers to encircle completely. There was a space between those thighs, a long V beginning at her knees and going all the way up to the base of her belly. Below the knees there was a smaller space, which disappeared where her calves pressed together, and reappeared as her legs swept down to her slender ankles and delicately-boned feet.
When she turned around, Morton had been treated to the sight of twin lovely buttocks, hollowed at their outer edges, tucked under firmly where they met her thighs, as sleek and round as the rump of a wild young mare. Morton had been so enhanced by that girl’s legs and buttocks that he’d attacked them first. The fact that he hadn’t ruined them forever could be attributed only to the girl’s remarkably muscular development.
Madam Fury would certainly have buttocks and thighs and calves just like that
And so
Morton passed the day, in recollection and anticipation, and when the evening finally rolled around, he was damned near out of his mind with excitement. Alone in his apartment with all his duties done, he paced the floor, smacking a fist again and again into a cupped palm. He felt caged, thwarted, trapped by the slow crawl of time. He tried not to look at the clock, but he couldn’t help himself. Every time he looked, it was a half-hour or more earlier than he expected.
What would it be like? he wondered. Would Madam Fury service him personally, or would she assign another girl for the job? Would he have any opportunity to vent his terrible lusts on her, or would he be forced to settle for a lesser woman? If he was assigned some ordinary girl for his pleasure, would the chance to get at Madam Fury herself come afterwards?
What did she have planned for him? Remembering the way she had spoken on the phone, and equating that with his own mental image of her, he had the conviction that her service would be unique. It was always nice to have a girl at his mercy for the use of his mouth and fists and driving lusts, but there was nothing unusual about it. It could be purchased almost anywhere. Quite often, Morton got it for nothing.
Madam Fury certainly had something more elaborate in mind. She knew Morton’s tastes, and she’d said on the phone she would have no trouble satisfying them. Didn’t that indicate her services would be a bit on the off-beat side?
Morton thought so. Morton couldn’t conceive of it being any other way. Morton could hardly wait to find out.
So he paced the floor, smacking his fist into his hand, his teeth set tightly, his powerful muscles bunched, his vision blurred with red anticipation.
The hands of the clock crawled toward midnight.
* * *
Burton Small was also half-crazed with waiting.
It had been many years since he’d experienced anything to equal the sensations which assailed him that afternoon. He recognized the feeling as happy anticipation—and he couldn’t recall the last time he’d felt anything remotely like it.
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