The sun outside her window was bright and warm. She heard a mockingbird singing for the first time in a week. She sat up in bed and let the sheet slip from her naked tits and looked out the window at the thick foliage in the yard.
The bird was perched near a fire-red hibiscus blossom. It cupped its beak up and piped with clear tones, running scales, trying a little cardinal and oriole and warbler at the seine time, experimenting with the sounds, playing with them happily.
Vera smiled broadly and stretched. her arms and body. She felt wonderful. She felt alive and renewed. She felt better than she had for-a year.
She showered lazily, dressed slowly, choosing a white mini with a low neckline. A virginal color. She was hardly that. But she felt like it. She hummed to herself as she brushed her hair and made it shine in the sun.
She went out of her room and down the hail and stopped up short. She looked at them, sitting there at the dining table over coffee, talking in low voices.
Max got up from the table and nearly bowed. His eyes flicked over her appreciatively, a gesture to her beauty. He smiled handsomely, paternally.
"Good morning, Vera," he said. "I just stopped by to have a chat with you and Roger, but I didn't want to disturb your sleep.
She felt her spine stiffen warily. She couldn't help it. She looked at him oddly, aware that he had fucked her two days ago. She wondered why. She wondered why she had let him. He was appealing, but he wasn't that appealing to her. The episode seemed a hundred years ago, and that made her feel strange.
"What do you want, Max?" she asked, aware of the curtness of her voice.
"Well, I've already talked to Jack Cutter this morning, and he tells me you haven't been in yet." He smiled quickly. "There's no immediate rush, of course, but I would like to hear something before the meeting next week. I have commitments and schedules to meet, you know."
He glanced at Roger, then back at her. "Roger tells me you're concerned over the image to your husband's chain the Loon Key unit will make. I'd like to take you down to the Key and have you talk to the residents there, just to see what they all think about it."
"I don't think that's at all necessary, Max," she said. "I've pretty well made up my mind."
"That's what Roger was telling me. I'd like you to be open-minded about it, Vera. Just this once. Just do me this one favor, and I won't bother you about it any more, all right?"
"C'mon, Mom-be fair," Roger said.
Vera sighed heavily. Maybe it would be best to keep him guessing. If he were as slick as Thorne said, he might think up something tough to fight if he knew he'd lost. Maybe he'd get to work on gathering up another 3 percent vote against her,
"All right," she said finally.
She made breakfast for herself and Roger. Max had more coffee. He was very amiable. He told good stories that were interesting and entertaining.
On the way to Loon Key, he slid from anecdotes about fishing and boating to Thorne.
"You know, there are two sides to everything, Vera. Thorne was against this unit from the start, but your husband went ahead with it. He was a wise businessman, your husband. Younger men just don't have the experience or foresight to see things we old-timers see. That's not a condemnation of Bundt, exactly-not that by itself."
"What do you mean?" she asked, growing wary.
"Well, there's a case to be made against him. Not just by me, you understand, but by others in the company. Peterson, Harmon-men like that. They say Bundt came up too fast, that he isolated Paul from what was really going on, that he gave advice that would make him look good but wasn't in the best interests of the company."
"Hah!" Roger cackled. "I knew it! Big whiz kid!"
"They say he's trying to gain control. They're afraid he'll even try to marry you to get it." Max shrugged. "That's what they say, Vera. They're a little afraid of his ambition. I think that's why he talks against me so hard. He knows I'll stop him-Roger and I," he added quickly, giving Roger a fatherly punch in the shoulder.
Vera didn't respond. She felt an icy shiver go through her. He was lying, of course. Thorne wasn't like that. Was he? Marry me, Vera-tomorrow…
She shivered again, and her breakfast turned to a strong mixture of bark and lead in her stomach.
They crossed the 'humped, narrow, old bridge onto Loon Key and pulled off the highway at the first tourist shack, the weathered, wind-blown, decrepit crab shack where Nate Mackton lived.
There were barnacled crab and lobster pots piled high, cracking in the sun. An old yellow dog lay in the shade, thumping up little puffs of dust with his tail. Nate turned a leathery, gnarled face toward them and spat into the dust and came over to see if they wanted some crab claws.
The motel was the best damn thing ever happened to Loon Key. He wasn't the only one who said so. They all did. One after the other. It was as if Max had paid them off in advance. There was only one exception.
Her name was Martha. She ran a sundries store, old and neat. She was nut brown from the sun, pushing seventy, scrawny through the face and shoulders but fat in the belly. She wore baggy green pants and a checkered shirt.
"Paul Hanson," she said, her tone oddly soft. "Good man. Came in here regular to drink his tea all the time. Some foreign brand I had to import from Palm Beach-Burmese. Got two boxes left. Drank it by the gallon. His heart, you know. Had to quit coffee. We talked a lot while he drank his tea."
Vera looked at the woman. She felt a sudden lump in her throat. This was the "other woman". The one Paul had confided in the past year. The one who'd heard all she should have heard, the one he'd forsaken her.
She suddenly loved old Martha. There couldn't be any jealousy over this kindly soul. There could only be a feeling of inadequacy in that the woman had offered him more comfort than Vera could have given him-more understanding about the heavy decisions over the motel. Perhaps she had been the one to tell him to sign his stock over before he died. She wanted to ask. One day, she'd come back and talk to Martha and learn what had happened to Paul the past year-what had happened to him inside, the things he couldn't talk to his wife about any more.
"The motel? I told him to burn it down. I came here forty years ago to get away from the damn things and all the people they bring. I don't want Loon Key to become a tourist trap. I want it to stay bare and raw, just the way it was made to be." She went on. Max slid a glance towards Vera and smirked. An old bird-watcher nut who was going senile, that's what he thought of her. And. so what did her opinion matter? In five years, she wouldn't be around any more anyway. A lost soul in the path of progress who cared more for pretty sunrises than money. A nut.
Max drove across the street and down, parking under the motel canopy, out of the hot sun. "Well?" he asked, turning towards her. "One negative out of how many? And a screwball at that?"
"Yes," Vera said, hiding the fact that she thought more of that one nut's opinion than all the money-hungry others.
"I've got to go in a minute. This took longer than I thought it would, and I've got to tell a guy I'm going to be late for a meeting."
"I'm going in, too," Roger said. "I gotta take a leak. You coming, Mom?"
The sun was hot. She sighed and got out. Max went ahead of them. She took a critical look at the lobby this time. It. was attractive and cool. As a building, it wasn't ugly. But the meaning of it was.
She heard them in the office; She went in. They were in a small room off the office. The door was marked with an Authorized Only sign.
Max sat at a console, instructing Roger on something. There was a small TV screen centered at it. There were stacks of videotape canisters in ordered array on shelves and a large bank of numbered lever switches.
"This is what Dancer rigged up," Max said, turning to her, smiling. "When someone registers with the movie option, and pays, of course, we flip the lever for his room, and his TV is cut into the circuit."
"That's not all, Mom," Roger said excitedly. "Check this."
Max started to stop him when he reached for a lever. Then he didn't. Vera felt a sickening premonition. Roger flipped the lever, and the small screen bloomed to life. She stared at it and sucked in her breath and felt her emotions spin.
It was the interior of one of the rooms upstairs. The waterbed was there, the big chairs, the night tables with the control panel. But she wasn't looking at the peripheral images. Her eyes were fixed on the bed, on the unmistakable image of Thorne Bundt-her Thorne. He was lying on his back. He was naked. His head lolled back and forth, and moans came from a speaker below the small monitor.
He wasn't alone. Joyce and Rainey were on the bed with him, and they were doing everything to him Joyce's inventive, cunning mind could dream up.
Her bald pussy gleamed in the screen. She rubbed it while she fucked up and down along Thorne's sturdy, stiff cock, the same one that had been so wonderfully imbedded in her cunt last night, the one that had given her back a sense of meaning to life.
While she watched, Rainey positioned herself so tat she could lick and suck at Joyce's cunt and the sliding prick. Her smooth, tight ass rounded over Thorne's face, blocking it out. She lowered her hips, spreading her dark-flirted cunt over his mouth. In a moment, she moaned with bliss and made small circles with her ass, and there was no doubt that he was drilling into her pussy, sucking her bloated, wet cuntlips for her.
Vera stared. An icy hollowness yawned in the pit of her stomach. "No!" she cried wildly. "It's a trick! I don't believe it!" She looked for a sign of his being forced. She didn't see any. Max flipped the lever off, and the screen went dark. He stood up and took her arm.
"Let's go upstairs and see if it's a trick, Vera, he said, grinning in a way that was suddenly not at all paternal.
There was no resistance left in her. She stumbled on stiffened legs beside him as he guided her up the stairs and down the balcony. He talked on the way.
"I don't think you realize what you just saw in there, Vera. I don't mean Bundt. I mean the potential.. Not only can we show movies to the warns, but we can look in on the rooms over the monitor."
"And it makes movies on the videotape," Roger added, cackling over the genius of it all. "Not for blackmail exactly, Mom. Let's just say, for a little extra money, depending on the guest."
She looked at her son. No. She looked at someone who had the same general appearance as her son. He was really a stranger.
"Maybe not money, Roger," Max said. "Take Bundt, now. What do you suppose he'd pay to get hold of that tape? Co-operation? Stock votes in our favor?" He laughed with a victorious sound.
They marched with funeral solemnity. It was fitting. Something had died-several things. Her trust in Thorne. Offering to marry her and then climbing onto the waterbed with both of them. Her hope to win out against the evil surrounding Max Sawyer had died, too. The life's work of a good man. It had all died with that one brief scene.
They stopped in front of a room. She turned her head towards the clean ocean. The building cast a long shadow towards ii as the sun sank lower into the Gulf on the other side. Max forced her head around with his hand. She heard moans and sighs coming from the room. The image blurred in her mind before she could squeeze her eyes shut and stop looking at it. They were still flicking. And Thorne was straining his hips upward as he came into Joyce's sucking, gleaming cunt.
Somewhere in the corner of her vision was Dancer, lurking evilly, thin-lipped and watchful, his eyes slitted with the pleasure of Thorne's degradation.
Vera choked out a harsh sound. Max let her go. Roger took hold of her and led her into the next room, closing the door. He half pushed her onto the waterbed, then began unbuckling his pants. She stared at him, not even caring when his prick sprang up towards her, stiff and ready.
"Watching them made me horny, Mom," he said, coming onto the bed.
"Get away from me, Roger," she said. Her voice was hollow. There was no force in it. He grinned and reached behind her and unzipped her white mini.
Yes, take it off Remove the virginal white. It's a sham. The whole rotten world is a sham. Take the money and run. If you don 't, some other slippery bastard wilt Friend, husband, lover, son-some bastard will, and you 'II get fucked anyway.
Roger slipped her dress from her body. He laid her back and rolled her from buttcheek to buttcheek as he slid her panties over them and off her hips.
His prick bumped against her outer thigh. He was breathing heavily, the sound frill of lust. She hadn't remembered his breathing that way before. That made sense. He wasn't the same any more. Max had changed him. Now he was going to change hen
"God, you've got nice fits, Mom," he said. He took one into his mouth and sucked it.
"I'm your pretty lady," she said hollowly.
"Roger, don't."
"You didn't say that the last time we were up here. You said, Roger, fuck me. Hey, what's the matter?"
"Roger, you're a selfish, stupid bastard."
His face pinched together slightly. "Don't call me a bastard, Mom. You sounded like him just now." "I'm beginning to think like him. About you." "Cut it out, Mom." "Go to hell, you bastard."
"I said cut it out! Goddamn it, I don't have to tae that kind of shit from anybody any more, not even you! I've got it made now! I'm gonna be Vice President, Max said so. It's all in the bag, Mom. And he's giving me Rainey, too, slicing her away from Dancer just as soon as it's all over next week. Damn it, Mom, be happy!" he cried, shaking her by the shoulders, making her tits jiggle on her chest.
"You poor dumb bastard," she said.
"That's enough!" he cried.
He put his hands under her ass and heaved. Vera rolled onto her stomach, her body tossing with the motions of the bed. She felt Roger climb over her back, felt his hands on her buttcheeks.
"Oh, noooo," she moaned.
He pried her asscheeks apart with his palms. She felt her bung pulse in and out. Something slippery and warm touched it, and then she felt his tongue licking up her deep crack, centering over the puckered hole, drilling into her brownie slightly, getting it wet and slick.
Then he was climbing over her back again, and the spongy head of his cock was nosing between her cheeks. He slipped it down and flicked it quickly into her pussy, flattening against her, puffing in her ear.
He drew it out, slick and glistening with her cunt juices, and he probed for her asshole with it. He got it caught in the tight bung. He pushed forward.
"Bastard! Bastard!" she cried.
He held her down with a hand in the middle of her back. There wasn't much will or strength in her anyway, and she didn't fight hard. He'd fucked her every other way. Why not a royal cornholing while he was at it? It would be the last time ever. The last time she'd have to look at his bastard's face across the breakfast table in her house ever again.
Her asshole burned. It stretched and resisted. Her muscles quivered and strained, and sweat popped out in glimmering beads on her forehead. She didn't scream. She wouldn't give him the pleasure of hearing her plead, and beg and scream. She tried to feel excited. She wanted her asshole to open up for his bastard's cock so that he could flick her and shoot his stinking load and get it over with.
But there was nothing there, no feeling. Only pain.
He pushed and strained. He wormed his prick into her butt inch by burning inch. Her asshole was in flames, but she didn't let him know that. He finally sagged against her back, his prick imbedded fully in her bung.
"God, what a tight fuck!" he said. "Mom, you're the best and tightest luck I've ever had, I swear you are. Feels terrific, doesn't it? Hey, aren't you glad it's my cock cherrying your ass instead of Dalton's?"
He laughed shakily, his voice full of emotion. He withdrew slightly and fucked into her ass again. He started a rhythm that made the bed heave and toss and her ass flare open as if she wanted it.
"Mom! Jesus, Mom! I'm going to come already!" he choked.
"Good, good. Come in Mommy's ass, you little bastard."
"Stop calling me that! Stop saying it!" he cried wildly.
He banged his hips against her ass mercilessly, fucking her and fucking her. She whimpered finally, burying her face into the yielding bed. Her tits pushed into it and were cupped warmly by it. Her pussy ground against it, and her asshole burned and burned.
Roger shouted in her ear. His cock exploded. Slippery jets of cum spurted up her bowels like a warm, white enema. Vera nearly cried with relief.