"Ohhhh," the mother wailed, cringing as if the words she heard were lashings from a barbed whip. "God forgive me, God forgive us all." She stretched up, her hands clasped imploringly in front of her toward Wendy. "You forgive me, my child. Please say you do."
Wendy only turned her back. "I'll never forgive you for what you did. Spying on me like some horny old voyeur in a peep-show, getting your kicks, ending up screwing Clyde."
"Oh, darling, I couldn't help myself. You mustn't hate me, Wendy, you mustn't. I've been so long without a man…"
"So she saw us," Preston threw back. "Big deal. So she got excited by it, well that's human, too. Sex is exciting, Wendy; why do you think there's so much of it around? Look at the ads, the books, the films. Jesus, grow up and stop being such a prude."
"A prude!" Wendy blurted. "I'm not a prude!"
"You sure the hell are. You loved fucking with me, and yet you refuse to allow your mother the same God-given privilege, and refuse to admit that you were doing the exact same thing, right down to getting hot watching! You did get hot, didn't you, watching your mother fingering herself last night."
"No," she said too quickly, blushing. "I was sickened."
"You… you saw me?" Marleen asked incredulously and in a hushed, hoarse voice. "You saw…?" Oh God, it was worse than ever!
"Well, I don't care if I did get hot," Wendy snapped defensively at Preston. "You sound as if you think it was great that my mother was doing it with Clyde while watching us."
"I do… as long as she enjoyed it," he replied smugly.
"And, and I bet you'd like to fuck her yourself!"
"Yeah, I would, she'd be damned fine." He grinned lasciviously. "Fuck a hell of a lot like you, I'd guess."
"Ohhhhh!" the disturbed teenager moaned, and she whirled around and dashed from the beach, tears of humiliation and confusion, anger and bitterness flying from her eyes, the shock of finding her mother making love to Clyde coupled with her own loss of innocence and the smarting remarks by Preston too much for her dazed, benumbed senses to handle. Her only thought was to run – run anywhere as long as it was away from there. She crashed and stumbled down the path, not minding the briars and whipping branches that seemed to try and stop her. There was no more she could say or do, not now, not at any time. She'd never go back to her mother; never, never, never!
"Wendy!" Clyde yelled, and spun to start after her, but Preston placed a restraining hand on his arm, preventing the boy from hurtling in chase for the girl. "Let go! Let go, you son of bitch!" Clyde roared at the man. "I've got to get to her before…"
"Before nothing," Preston said sternly. "There's not a thing you can do for her right now, and you'd only make matters worse. Believe me. Stay here."
"But…"
"Her mother is the one who should go after Wendy."
From the quivering, wretched woman lying on the ground came the murmuring, trembling chant, "No… No… No."
"Yes, Marleen," Preston said, hunkering his naked body down beside her. "You must talk to her, somehow convince her that what she saw and did wasn't some horrid sin."
Mrs. Franklin felt as if she was made of molten lead, her muscles ties of spasming knots which made her want to jump, but the pain in her mind throbbed with an irrational heat which forced her to lie still. She couldn't think, couldn't act… everything was secondary to the shame and remorse she wallowed in, the indelible self-accusation that she was everything her daughter had called her far more damning than Wendy's invectives. What difference did it make whether Wendy was being made love to, what excuse was it that her child was doing it first? None – for that was what Wendy was, a child, easily led astray; she as her mother should be there to save her, to defend her innocence from sensuality instead of becoming a lewd partner in the wild debauchery. Her long entombed desires, bursting into freedom from the erotic presence of Preston, the brandy, and then the lascivious sight on the beach were the reasons for her actions, but not exonerations. She wanted to die…
"Listen to me, Marleen," Preston said softly.
"No, go away," she mewled defenselessly. "Leave me alone…"
"You want your daughter to forgive you, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, but she won't. She can't."
"Nonsense! She shouldn't have to forgive you, because there's nothing to forgive…"
"Oh God, there is," she croaked fervently. "I was like an animal, just like your dog's bitches in heat, just like Wendy said."
"You were a human being. A woman, enjoying a man the way nature intended you to, and built half of your body to, and regulates your chemistry too. I told Wendy to be honest with herself, and I'm telling you the same thing, and if you'll be honest, you'll see that you had one hell of a good time and nobody was harmed, not as long as you don't go around thinking sex is dirty."
"I never had another man except my husband," Marleen groaned. "Marriage… love… fidelity…" she babbled in a husky broken shell of a voice.
"Sure, and when you find a man to love again, then the sex you have will be fuller and more meaningful than any other, but there's also the sensible truth that sex for physical gratification is also an important part to a healthy person's life. Now stop blaming yourself for being what you are and go after Wendy. She needs you…"
For a moment, the mother hesitated in mindless turmoil, trying to sort out her upheaval of moral outlook. The amorality which Preston was propositioning was against everything she'd ever believed in or taught Wendy to revere, and he was wrong… And yet, she had liked seeing her daughter and Preston making love, liked it and became excited by it and had reveled in Clyde's young penis driving hotly up inside her vagina – and it had been all too obvious that her daughter had loved Preston's cock inside her, too. She shook her head; how could she even admit that she wanted it this way? The revelation that she did made matters even worse, bothering her still more, for now she was sure she was sick and perverted, feeling no true shame for her actions, but only an emptiness and ache inside her belly which was even now crying out for more. Her flesh had not only betrayed her, but she knew intuitively it would again and again, if and when the opportunities arose.
Slowly, like an automaton, she rose and straightened her wrinkled dress. She averted her eyes, wet and puffed, from Clyde and the man who had taken her daughter's virginity, a shiver of nausea rippling through her as she considered once again Wendy and her hatred. But in the one fact that she had to go after her daughter again, Preston was right. She had to make every effort to reconcile their disgraces, to rebond the tight adhesion between them. It was with that one slim hope, and the prayer that Wendy would have cooled down a little by the time she reached her, that made Marleen lurch forward in the direction her daughter had fled.
"What do we do now?" Clyde asked, puzzled.
"We wait," Preston said confidently. "We wait and let nature take her course. And then, in a little while, we'll go looking for them. You, me… and King."
Wendy Franklin, once virgin, once so sure of herself, slumped to the moss-covered ground in a small glade, panting exhaustedly from her running exertion and emotional frenzy. Her skin was pale and flowing with cold water in place of blood, and she was as confused a little girl as any could have been. She lay down, letting the last warming rays of the sun filter through the trees and dapple her soft skin, and she tried to sort out her ambivalent feelings now that the first, blushing shock of all that had transpired was wearing off.
Mentally she was enmeshed in the guilt of having succumbed to temptation and allowed herself to display her sweet; tender pussy to Clyde last night, and abandon herself to David Preston today, and she swallowed and looked ashamedly down at her young, firm body with its snowy breasts and flat stomach and dark triangle of fleecy pubic hair, and she had to admit that there weren't any signs of dissipation, that outwardly there was no way of telling that she had just been soundly fucked – except for the dried patches of Preston's sperm on her matted pubic hair and white, trembling thighs. Miserably, she realized that although her dream had been hopelessly shattered, that now her husband – whoever he might be someday – would no longer be able to tenderly enter her and possess her as a virginal bride, she wasn't entirely filled with abomination. There were the long-standing agonies to contend with, but they were in the back of her mind now, all of the warnings she'd been weaned on so much hot air after seeing her mother and Clyde.