For one wild minute she considered the idea of getting up and running out of the room, grabbing up her clothes and racing up the stairs and to hell with Stella James. But the moment passed and the thought went with it. She just didn’t have the nerve to run away now.
After what seemed like much longer than it was, Stella strode back into the room. She didn’t bother to explain where she had been or what she had been doing. Instead she sat down on the edge of the bed facing Susan. The familiar smile reappeared on her face.
She reached out a hand and stroked Susan’s cheek. Susan tried to relax and respond to the touch but she found it impossible. She seemed to be frozen inside — Stella’s hand on her cheek was nothing, just a lump of clay.
“You’re lovely,” Stella was saying, “and I want you very much. But I guess you know how much I want you.”
Words of love. But this time they were just words, dead words, empty words. This time they meant nothing to her, meant even less than they must have meant to Stella. Instead of a sexual response Susan could think of nothing but the essential emptiness of the situation.
Stella’s hand moved to her breast. Her hand was very large and her fingers encircled the breast, the nipple snug in the girl’s palm. The fingers began to manipulate the breast just as so many fingers had manipulated Susan’s breasts so many times.
But this time it was nothing — no feelings whatsoever coursed through her body. There were times before when her sexual partner meant little or nothing to Susan, times when the woman involved was a good deal less attractive than Stella.
But never before had her body refused to respond.
Stella’s thumb and forefinger found the nipple of Susan’s breast and began to play with it. Stella pulled and squeezed at the nipple and it grew hard, but Susan knew that it was only a reflex. Fingering automatically made a nipple harden — and she was still unmoved, still unexcited, still cold and fully unresponding.
Stella smiled. “Don’t you like what I’m doing?”
No answer.
“It’s all right. I know you enjoy it — you’d just prefer to lie there while I do all the work. Well, that’s all right, dear. I’m enjoying myself.”
More caresses. More words.
Nothing.
Stella lowered her mouth to Susan’s other breast and began to plant little kisses on the softness of it. Her tongue bathed the firm flesh and made little circles around the nipple. Her teeth found the nipple and tugged at it like a playful kitten with a ball of yarn, but the only sensation that hit Susan was one of pain mingled with irritation.
This was wrong — this wasn’t what she had wanted at all. This was cheap, cheap and ugly and dirty inside. It wasn’t love, but she hadn’t wanted love. But it wasn’t even good healthy animalism, wasn’t even the strong and beautiful meeting of two bodies.
It was revoltingly tawdry, unexciting sex. It wasn’t what she wanted, and all at once she knew what it was that she did want.
She wanted Ralph.
Ralph.
His face came into her mind — strong and masculine and, for the first time it seemed to her, attractive. The image brought a sensation of fear with it, but now for the first time the fear was tempered with something else. Ralph wouldn’t hurt her — wouldn’t do anything to her, not unless she let him, not unless she wanted him to. With Ralph whatever did happen would happen because both of them wanted it, because both of them needed it.
But this—
This was what she had known, what her entire sexual life had been. But it was no longer enough. She needed more.
Stella was still busy with her breasts, but it was as though it wasn’t really happening, as though Stella’s hands were the wind and Stella’s mouth was the rain. They were nothing to her, nothing at all.
And, lying there on the bed, she felt like a prostitute. She felt lower than that — she felt like filth, cheap rotten filth that didn’t have the guts to do what it wanted.
And she knew that she had to get away from Stella right away. Before it was too late.
She sat up suddenly on the bed, pushing Stella away from her as she did so. The woman’s mouth went wide and the smile was gone from her face, replaced all at once by an expression of complete surprise.
“What’s the matter?”
She couldn’t talk.
“Damn you, what’s the matter?”
Susan tried to stand up but Stella’s arms held her where she was. She couldn’t move. “Let go,” she said. “Let go of me.”
“Not until you tell me what’s bugging you.”
“Let go!”
Stella released her.
“I can’t,” Susan said. “I just can’t go through with it and that’s all there is to it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I can’t… let you make love to me.”
“Why not?”
“I just can’t.”
Stella’s face clouded. “I don’t get it,” she said, honestly puzzled. “You were the one who came in here all hot to trot. What changed your mind?”
“I—”
“Wait a minute.” Stella smiled again, sure of herself once more. “Haven’t you ever done this before?”
It would be so easy to lie. So easy—
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve done it before.”
Sometimes lying wasn’t as easy as it seemed.
“Then—”
“I just don’t want to make love with you.”
Stella took a deep breath. “Say that again.”
She repeated it.
“You mean you’re going to leave me like this — all steamed up with no place to go? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I’m sorry — but that’s it.”
There was something new in Stella’s eyes this time — something ugly and horrible. Her hands reached out and gripped Susan by the shoulders, her fingernails digging into the girl’s flesh.
“That,” she said, “is what you think.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m going to have you, sister. Even if I have to rape you in order to get you.”
She twisted on the bed but she couldn’t get away from Stella. The woman’s hands held her tight and she wasn’t strong enough to get away. Then Stella’s body was coming down on hers, pinning her to the bed, and Stella’s hands released her and encircled her back.
It was almost funny — she had been so afraid of men and here she was being raped by a woman!
Stella’s mouth came down on hers and Stella’s hips began to grind into hers. It would be easy to submit, easy to just lie there until Stella was done with her.
Easy.
But impossible.
Reaching out wildly, her hand fastened on a lamp on the dresser by the side of the bed. She yanked on it and pulled it free.
Then, swinging with all her might, she brought it down on the back of Stella’s head.
Chapter nine
For a sickening moment Susan thought she had committed murder. Stella went limp all at once and collapsed upon her in a tired heap. Her breasts pressed against Susan’s stomach and her head lay at a crazy angle on Susan’s breast. She didn’t seem to be breathing.
Susan felt for a pulse and found one. Then she noticed that the older woman was breathing, slowly and weakly but steadily. She waited for a moment to make sure that the breathing would continue; then she slipped out from under Stella’s naked body and hurried into the front room.
She dressed quickly, not caring how she looked. She let herself out of the apartment and closed the door behind her, taking the stairs two at a time until she reached her own door. Once on the way her dress bunched up and she almost fell, but she managed to keep on going until she was back in her own room. She locked the door behind her and sat down heavily in the chair, barely able to breathe.