Her thoughts seemed so loud to her, that she wondered why he couldn't hear them, too. They almost exploded her head. Then something did explode in her head.
She felt the quivering tremor start to travel from where he was probing her wet nest, upward throughout her body. As her entire being quivered, the hot, spurting streams in her mouth poured down to meet the other warmth. She swallowed and swallowed, and then everything went black.
When she came to her senses, she could hear the mocking sound of Gerault's laughter ringing in her ears. There were two suite strong odors in the atmosphere. One she recognized as the acetic-acid smell of the photo-fixative. It took her a moment to identify the other. Then she brought up a tentative hand and moved it across her mouth. As she withdrew it, she opened her eyes, and watched as a sticky string of semen trailed from her chin to her finger.
Her eyes lifted to look past her impregnated hand, and she met her father's gaze. With the return of his conscious mind to the sane control of his faculties, his eyes betrayed his sickness and misery with what they had done under the control of their subconscious lusts. She couldn't know just how much of his horror was due to her display of depravity, but at the thought of losing his love and respect, she was as heartsick as he possibly could be. The tears welled up in her eyes. "Oh, Daddy Chuck! I'm so ashamed!"
She thought that a little of the horror faded from his eyes, as his hand reached out to pat her consolingly. But when it touched the warm satin of her bare thigh, his hand jerked away quickly, and he blushed with the memory of their closer body contacts.
"Tres bien," said Gerault. "This set of pictures will do very nicely. But we make sure of our bargaining position, non? We now start the next act of our circus. You may use the bathroom. Yvette!"
The frowzy girl took Darla's arm and led her out of the room and down the hall. In a few minutes, they returned, and Yvette took Fleming to the bathroom. While they waited, Darla was turning over some frightening thoughts in her mind. Then she spoke.
"I am feeling very dizzy." She had put her hand to her head, and pretended to sway on her feet as if disoriented. Le Boeuf reached out and took her arm to steady her.
"I have forgotten, because of all that's happened," she told them. "I'm supposed to take a special tablet my doctor gave me. If I take one every day, I should be all right."
"Ah, yes. The medicine in your purse. You may take one when we return below."
The initial victory almost made Darla smile, but she continued her slight swaying, as she headed for "second base" on her hit.
"I think my mother has forgotten, too. You see, she has the same problem, and the same treatment, but I don't know if she had her tablets with her when you picked her up."
"Of this I am not sure. Yvette checked her belongings. In any case, perhaps you have enough to share yours? You should not be here many more days. I would not wish to visit your hotel suite to get her medication; the gendarmes may – how do you say it – may have staked out the scene?" Gerault seethed to enjoy displaying his knowledge of American slang.
"Yes, I think I have enough for both of us for a few days," Darla replied. But her joy over the victory she had won was diluted by the uncomfortable knowledge that it might be too late for her to resume her pill schedule. She knew that the two days she'd been without it were dangerous cays, due to the tremendously increased fertility which resulted from using the pill, then stopping at the wrong time.
She tried to drive from her mind the picture of the offspring Le Boeuf might have given her. She shuddered, and the Moroccan's grip on her arm tightened, and he led her to the bed, where she sat down.
Fleming returned, and Yvette remained in the hall. Gerault studied Darla for a few seconds, then looked at Fleming.
"I think we will give you a rest, now, and bring our other performers up here. Yvette, see to it that the girl has water with which to take her medicine." He nodded at Fleming. "Get your clothes on, and we will take you back below."
When they were dressed, they were escorted back downstairs to their shackles and Yvette brought Darla a glass of water. The worried girl took the container from her purse and removed two of the tiny pills. She swallowed one, using two sips of water from the tumbler Yvette provided.
"Merci bien," she told Yvette as she returned the glass. Then she handed over the other pill. "Pour ma mere, s'il vous plait." The French girl merely nodded, then walked over to Ann and handed her the pill and the glass. When she was finished, Yvette let her continue holding the tumbler while her shackles were being unlocked.
Le Boeuf had been releasing Tommy, and now the two of them were led upstairs. It was very silent in the cellar for several minutes, and then Fleming spoke to his daughter.
"God knows what this will do to your mother. Sometimes I think she's stronger, mentally, than I am. But what they're going to do to her now may be more than she can take. God have mercy on me for getting us into this!"
Darla, whose mind was busy imagining the scenes which were about to take place upstairs, did not answer.
The silence returned to the dungeon like atmosphere. The light was off, now, and to Fleming, it was as if he were a prisoner in the Chateau d'If. His ears strained to pick up any sounds from the rooms above them, but all he could hear was an occasional deep sigh from Darla, and the rasping sound of his own breathing.
CHAPTER FOUR
Ann Fleming had steeled herself to meet almost any kind of abuse she could imagine. What she had seen in the photos delivered to the hotel convinced her that she could expect sexual assaults from either Gerault, Le Boeuf, or both. She had not seen the photos taken just a few minutes before, in this room, nor had there been any opportunity to learn what Chuck and Darla had undergone while upstairs.
She didn't really want to know. She could imagine all too easily the further rape of her look-alike daughter by these Frenchmen. And she didn't like to think of that sleazy, smelly Yvette toying with Chuck's equipment, either. She didn't like the thought of those family jewels, which had given her so many pleasurable delights, in the garbage-like vault of that French whore!
Nor did she care to picture her son's defilement by the woman. Yet, she knew it must be intended. Just as she fully expected to be invaded by the Frenchmen who now ushered her into the bedroom.
"Take off all your clothing!" Gerault ordered them.
Ann almost protested against their forcing both the mother and the son to disrobe in the same room. But she remembered the threats issued downstairs, and decided to hold her tongue. As she removed her clothes, she detected the faint smell of semen in the room. A little shudder ran through her. That smell was always an aphrodisiac trigger for her. Even now, under these agonizing circumstances, it got to her.
She felt their eyes on her, and knew they were admiring her ripe body, which had retained its lushness with scarcely an added wrinkle or ounce of fat, since Tommy's birth. She was thinking of Tommy, and of the delight she'd experienced when he nursed on her milk-laden breasts as an infant. Now, as he undressed in her presence with obvious embarrassment – she noticed that he was very much the virile young man. In recent years, since he'd struggled through the first stages of puberty, she hadn't seen him without at least a pair of shorts or bathing trunks. He certainly was not her "little boy" any more. In fact, she colored blushingly when he inadvertently looked her way.
She stood there, vulnerable in her nudity try, and felt the quick touch of his gaze on her body. It made her feel more exposed to be seen by her own son than by these depraved strangers who were their captors.
Tommy was blushing, too. The sight of his mother's unclothed body affected him strangely. Mothers were supposed to be different from other women. He realized that they had the same basic equipment, but somehow it seemed indecent that this woman who had given birth to him and cared for him all these years, should have the ripe, exciting figure of a girl many years younger than her 39 winters.