For a long time, Candy Mullender lay immobile, the fire in her lust-heated pussy banked and forgotten. It sickened her to think of a healthy young, handsome man like Lee Ashley with a monkey on his back. She had seen too much of that sort of thing. Her fury abating, she vowed she would try to help him if he wanted help. Meanwhile, she would clean up again and go home. Maybe even have one more drink than she should, making a grand total of two.
Taking her second shower within two hours, Candy Mullender examined herself as best she could in the light of the trauma which she had experienced, and she faced certain facts.
She decided definitely she had repressed herself too much. She certainly didn't have to turn into a wanton slut, but she was a healthy, passionate woman of twenty-five who looked almost ten years younger and was extremely attractive to men. And she enjoyed performing on stage, she enjoyed having dinner in a good restaurant, going to the beach and all kinds of things. She did not like to be pawed and mauled yet urgently wanted and needed physical contact with males. And, she told herself with what she thought was honesty, she was not a cocktease or a show-biz whore. She had never played games with any of the agency people just to get ahead.
She had confidence in her talent and ability, and if these things led her to make a lot of money, and public adulation, that would be nice. If they didn't, she could always join some repertory company and really do some acting. She was well known for her acting talents.
Candy was not happy with the way the agency, personified by the ebullient Jason Wells, set about exploiting her talent and looks, but realized that any star who made it big had to give a bit, allow promotions which might be personally distasteful in order to reach millions of people instead of a few hundred.
Jason Wells had put the whole scheme together. He had invented the person of Candy Mullender by promoting her face and body and made her one of the hottest young stars in the business. Candy had wanted to build her career on her own talent and gift for acting, but the agent knew better, and she had gone along with his judgment. Financially, he had been right-she made five or six times what she could make as a single. She was being developed. She was on TV regularly, which helped keep her in the public eye, putting her in every decent movie she was offered. It was understood that in time she would be able to do movies of her own choice, ones that give her a chance to really act. From a business point of view, it was beautiful. To live in it was hell. But no more hell than is involved in carrying trays in a pancake house, or being a cocktail girl or a telephone operator, and the work certainly paid much better. And it was nice, when she was promoting a movie, not to even have to sign credit cards for anything, to know everything was handled in advance by Jason Wells.
"Count your blessings, dum-dum," Candy Mullender muttered to herself as she dried off and dressed in a short, baby blue dress and matching calf-high leather boots which matched her eyes. She left the studio building and found her Mercedes SL-220 sports coupe in its shaded parking stall. It was painted a soft baby blue. She was supposed to be conspicuous. The car would do almost a hundred and fifty miles an hour, and if she didn't collect ten speeding tickets a month, he wanted to know why.
Candy Mullender had refused flatly to live anywhere close to the city. She had found a ranch style house of modest dimensions high in the woodland hills, where she lived alone. Set among eucalyptus and oak trees, it gave her the privacy she needed when she could afford the time. She had a part-time maid who saw to it that the place was clean and stocked with food.
She let the powerful car have its head, spending the frustrations in her young and eager body. The aerodynamic design glued it to the road, aided by the hydraulic suspension system. She was cruising at a hundred and thirty miles an hour when she passed the California Highway Patrol car, that was doing a comfortable eighty. Far back in her rearview mirror, she saw the red lights begin to flash. There was no oncoming traffic and she punched the hot machine hard, staying well ahead until she came to a sharp turn where there was enough space to pull over. She lighted one of her rare cigarettes and watched them go roaring by, their car going at full speed. She was still there five minutes later when they had managed to shut off and return. They did not look happy, but the one with sergeant's stripes had himself under control. They parked their car in front of the Mercedes as if afraid it would flee and bent down to talk to her through the window. He was polite in a strained way as he inquired whether she had any idea how fast she had been going.
Glancing at the stop-needle on the speedometer, Candy Mullender said, "Roughly 137.5802 miles an hour. Start writing."
He had his citation book out, but slipped it back into his pocket. He stepped back to admire the sleek car, which came only up to his hips, and said, "What is it?"
She told him. She told him what it could do, and he didn't believe. He was tall and lean, maybe in his mid-thirties, and handsome in a rugged sort of way. He looked like he might have had to deal with a few bum violators a few times-there were scars. She knew he had eyes for her. She saw he wasn't wearing any rings. And she was hungry for a man. Candy Mullender climbed out of the cool German car, with a flash of golden thighs, and said, "There's ten miles of good road ahead. Take it for a spin. I was blowing dust, and you can write me. You look like a man who knows wheels. Roll it!"
The challenge was too much for the cop. He wormed his way info the bucket seat, took a moment to figure out the gearshift and said to his partner, "Clock me… I'm invited."
He took off in a cloud of dust, with the other cop in the passenger side. Candy Mullender watched her car disappear, thinking that all cops weren't necessarily pigs. And these two had left their car behind.
Well, that could be fun too. She had never been in one of the California Highway Patrol cars. She got into the driver's seat. She knew how police cars worked, but it took her a minute to find the switches for the red lights and siren. And then she was after them, hitting the accelerator hard, the wind tearing at her hair as she sat crouched behind the wheel.
The sergeant was feeling out the sleek Mercedes, or she knew she would never have caught them. Candy brought it alongside on the eight-lane divided road, and laughed at their looks of astonishment. They waved her down at the next turnout.
"I hope nobody saw you in that can of iron," the sergeant said.
"Would anybody believe?" she countered. "I doubt that… I don't believe." "You like my car?"
"Quite a set of wheels," he conceded.
Candy Mullender fished her wallet out and handed him her license.
"You can't think I'll write you after this," the sergeant said.
"You can write down my address."
He did. With a grin and a wink, she dropped into the bucket seat of the Mercedes again and took off in a cloud of dust. She was only mildly piqued when she realized that he hadn't recognized her name. But then, he'd been looking mostly at her legs. And his car… it could move.
Maybe a man like the sergeant, a lean, mature man who knew his business could bring her to the release she needed so much. She hoped he would find some reason to call by her house.
Once home, Candy Mullender put the fast car away and restlessly prowled the house, wondering what to do with herself. She was restless as a cat in a strange garret. She felt the unsatisfied yearning in her sleek body, wanted desperately to finish what had been started. She turned on the color TV console and found nothing at all to interest her on any of the channels. The maid had come and gone hours before. There were no nearby neighbors, and if there had been, she probably wouldn't have been on intimate terms with them anyway. She often wondered what the other people who lived in the hickly-wooded hills of the area were like. Did they have regular families, go to workaday jobs and the PTA and Safeway and things like that? Undoubtedly they did-but they lived in another world.