“I took another shower,” she said. “I take a lot of showers. Especially when it gets warm. In the summer I take three or four showers a day.”
He could smell the sweet after-bath smell of her. She smelled of soap and water and young beauty. He looked at her and saw how alive she was with youth. But, Christ, she was so damned young! She looked like the sister he had never had. She was young, far too young, to be in his room in the middle of the night.
“What do you want?”
She pouted. “That’s not a nice way to talk, Johnny,” she said. “You could at least invite me in.”
“Close the door,” he said.
She came in and closed the door behind herself “Does it have a lock?”
He took a breath. “The two-by-four,” he said, pointing to it. “The hunk of wood. You jam it under the knob and it locks the door.”
“I know how it works,” she said. She locked the door with the two-by-four and turned to face him again.
“Now what do you want?”
“I got lonely. I thought maybe we could sit and talk for a few minutes.”
“Lonely?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your old lady out?”
The girl’s face darkened “She’s drunk as a pig.” she said. “Every night wine. She drinks this cruddy muscatel. It’s so sweet you could puke. You ever taste it?”
He shook his head. He didn’t like wine.
“I had some one time. I got, you know, dragged, sort of. So I drank a few glasses of her cruddy wine. She never missed it. It tasted rotten but it made me feel all funny.”
“I can imagine,” he said.
“All warm,” she said. “All funny inside.”
He took a deep breath. “Look,” he said, “I don’t get it. I’m sorry I walked in on you when you were in the shower. It was a mistake. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So you can split now. I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “But I want to stay.”
“Linda.”
Very nonchalantly she sat down on the edge of his cot, her eyes on his face. She crossed one leg over the other, and he got a momentary glimpse of the interior of her warm young thighs. He swallowed.
Easy, he told himself. You don’t want this one. Tomorrow you get out, you start a new life. Complications you don’t need. Fourteen year old girls you don’t need.
“And you want me to stay,” she went on.
“Like hell I do.”
“Maybe you don’t now,” she said softly. “But you will, in a minute or two.”
The towel slipped a little lower on her breasts. They showed halfway to the nipple. It seemed impossible for a girl her age to have such large breasts. They were a pale pink and they looked as firm as melons.
He tried to remember what it was like with a younger girl. Dammit he’d spent too much time with older broads. It was hard to think of what it was like with something nice and young. But Linda was just plain too young.
Wasn’t she?
She smiled. She reached out one hand and began to stroke his chest through the sheet. The sheet was all that covered him and she stroked his chest slowly. Steady he told himself. Steady. Just relax and maybe she’ll go away.
But in spite of himself he found himself responding to her. He was losing ground and she was gaining, and he knew now that it was only a matter of time. He saw the hunger building in her eyes and guessed that it was inevitable.
But such a young girl! Hell, she was a virgin, too — he was sure of it. And if there was one thing he didn’t need, it was a fourteen-year-old virgin. He needed her like he needed a fractured skull.
“Nice Johnny,” she cooed. “You don’t know what it did to me when I was in the shower and you were in the room. I could tell you were watching me. I thought you were going to take off your clothes and come into the shower with me. I was hoping you would. I wanted you so bad that after you left I was practically shaking in the shower.”
The mental picture was too exciting for words.
His opinion of her was beginning to change. If this was a virgin, he thought, then so was he. This didn’t talk like a virgin or act like a virgin.
And, he went on, if she wasn’t a virgin it didn’t matter how young she was. If somebody else had already copped her, he might as well take advantage of the situation.
Why not?
“It’s warm in here,” she said. “I don’t really need this towel any more.”
And she dropped the towel.
The full sight of her bare young body was almost too much for him. Her breasts were large and they swelled outward with all the zest of full-blown youth.
His eyes followed the lines of her body. Her waist was slender, her stomach gently and perfectly rounded. Her thighs columns of pink marble.
Very nonchalantly she crossed and recrossed her legs. Once again his blood began to pound in his veins.
“You’re sweating,” she whispered. “I guess you don’t really need that sheet at all.”
And she drew the sheet from his body.
He saw the way she looked at him. This was no virgin. The eyes that studied him were not the eyes of an unexperienced girl.
Not by a long shot.
“That’s better,” she said. “Cooler. In fact it’s too cool now, Johnny. Maybe we ought to huddle together for warmth. Do you think that would be all right?”
He reached for her.
She drew away, her eyes twinkling. “You’re very impatient,” she said. “Don’t you think I ought to turn out the light?”
There were so many times when he wished the lights were off. So many women were not worth looking at, and with the lights out you had a chance to forget what they looked like.
Linda was different.
He caught her arm. “Leave the lights on,” he said. “I want to look at you. I want to watch your face.”
She giggled.
“And come here,” he said “Now.”
She came into his arms at once. She wasn’t giggling any more and he knew she wouldn’t be giggling until after they were done. She pressed her body to him and he held her tight.
Her skin was moist and warm from the shower. She felt unbelievably clean and she smelled marvellously sweet. He ran a hand through her silky hair, then took her face between both of his hands and kissed her.
She knew how to kiss. Her tongue crept into his mouth and she drove her body against him, pushing him down on the bed. The kiss lasted a long time. Then she leaned over him, supporting herself on her arms and gazing down into his eyes.
He reached up, took hold of her pony tail and snapped the rubber band that held the strands of golden hair together. “To hell with this,” he said. “Your hair’s nice. I like it down. Loose, like. It’s good like this.”
She spread her hair out. It flowed over her shoulders and she looked a little older. But that didn’t matter. Right now he didn’t give a damn how old or young she was. He knew only that he wanted her very much.
She continued to press against him, her eyes dreamy. “Johnny,” she said softly, “do you like my breasts?”
He smiled. “Nice,” he said.
“You like them?”
He nodded.
“Then show me how you like them.”
His hand went to her breast and cupped it gently. He didn’t even move his fingers before she started to shiver. He liked the way her breast felt. It was the firmest he had ever had his hand on.
“That’s nice,” she purred. “They’re a big pair of knobs, aren’t they? I was flat as a pancake until a year ago. Then they started to sprout and they didn’t stop. This last month was the real sprouting time. They grew an inch a day, I swear to God. But I think they’ve stopped growing by now.”