"Do you remember when that little Marshall girl's mother caught you trying to do it with her in the coal shed?"
"I'll say I remember it! She gave me such a lacing with an old belt that I couldn't walk straight for a week. Do you remember how Mr. Peters used to send me out on fake errands so he could have you alone in the house and diddle you with his fingers?"
And so, immersed in reminiscences of the past, some laughable, some pathetic, some tragic, the time flew by, and the sound of movement and conversation elsewhere in the house reminded me that it was high noon.
"I'm going to call Hester to introduce you to her. She's the girl that was with me in that darned old reformatory. She's my best friend; if it hadn't been for her, I don't know what would have happened to me."
I jumped up and went directly to Hester's room. Finding her awake and languidly engaged in combing her luxuriant hair I danced up to her.
"Oh, Hester, I've got the grandest surprise for you! Powder your nose and come quick to my room. There's somebody there waiting to see you! It's my brother Rene, come back from Canada! He came at nine o'clock this morning and Lafronde woke me up! I bet you'll fall in love with him when you see him; he's the handsomest fellow you ever saw!"
My excitement was contagious, and Hester rushed to make herself presentable. As soon as she was ready I led her to my room where Rene was waiting.
"This is Hester, my very dearest friend, Rene. Next to you, I love her more than anyone in the world!"
"Gee, I don't blame you for loving her, Sis!" exclaimed Rene, as he jumped to his feet and admiringly appraised Hester's dark beauty. "I could love her myself without half trying!"
"Well," I said, judiciously, "she's the only girl in the world that would be good enough for you, and you're the only fellow in the world that would be good enough for her, so that leads to only one logical conclusion."
Hester stayed with us until, despite my protestations to the contrary, she felt that we might wish to be alone, and with a promise to see Rene again before he left, she slipped out, closing the door behind her.
Rene wished to leave around one-thirty, and anxious to be as close to him as possible during the remainder of his visit, I again sat on his lap.
Before long, new temptation began to assail me. Tentatively, I felt around inside his clothing with my hand until I found what I was searching for. It stiffened out magically under my fingers. For a few minutes I squeezed it, thrilling to the quick transformation and the significant throbbing which my touch had evoked.
"Once more… before you go?" I whispered, squeezing it tightly.
"Just what I was thinking myself!" he answered huskily.
"You lie underneath and let me get on top, like we used to do in the attic!" I suggested.
"Suits me, absolutely."
And this is how it happened that Hester, returning to bid Rene goodbye as she had promised, on opening the door was confronted by a most poetic sight.
I, for greater freedom of movement, had thrown off the dressing gown and, crouched over Rene with my bottom in the air, was working frantically up and down on the pivotal point which projected from his middle.
"T-a-ah!" she gasped, "… I didn't think… excuse me…!" and she closed the door and fled precipitately.
"I forgot to lock the door!" I murmured, guiltily.
"Not the first time, Sis!" he retorted.
"Well, it doesn't make any difference here," I answered, resuming my efforts to attain the objective which had been uppermost in my mind up to the moment of interruption.
After Nature had taken her pleasant and satisfying course and the inward fires which consumed me had again been temporarily lulled with a copious shower of masculine sperm, Rene departed.
Hester had not returned, and so as soon as I had bidden him good-bye at the door, I returned to her room upstairs.
"Jessie!" she exclaimed, "you could have knocked me down with a feather!"
"Oh, that was nothing," I answered lightly, thinking she had reference to opening the door without knocking. "It didn't startle your modesty, did it?"
"But… but… your own brother!" she whispered, in low, shocked tones.
For a moment I failed to grasp the import of her words. When comprehension dawned on me, I burst into laughter.
"Didn't you know, ha! ha! ha! Didn't I tell you, Rene isn't my real brother, he isn't any blood relation to me at all, he's only a stepbrother!"
A look of relief passed over Hester's face.
"Jesse, no! You never told me that before! You used to talk about him in the reformatory, but you never said he wasn't your real brother. Gosh! I never was so surprised in all my life as when I opened that door and saw you on top of him, naked! I could hardly believe my eyes!"
"We were just renewing an old love affair that started when he was eight and I was six!" I answered, laughing. "What did you think of him?"
"Well," she replied, smiling, "let's go downstairs right now and tell Lafronde that we've just discovered we're lost sisters, so the next time he comes, he can be a brother to both of us!"
CHAPTER 10
The days slipped into weeks, the weeks imperceptibly, into months, and almost before I realized it, a year had gone by. Barring the few disagreeable incidents of a minor nature such as those I have described, the time had been passed on the whole both pleasantly and profitably.
Miraculously, I had escaped all three of the afflictions whose menacing shadows are ever close at the heels of those who traffic with their sexual favours: syphilis, gonorrhoea and pregnancy, the Three Horsemen of the Prostitute's Apocalypse.
My health was good, and I had gained in weight, having added several pounds of flesh which improved my figure even though at the cost of some of the juvenile slimness which in the beginning had been such a valuable asset. Nevertheless, I had for some time been observing a gradual change in my physical orgasm which was becoming more and more pronounced, and the condition was one which is not common in the walk of life I frequented.
I will speak plainly. Sexual sensibility, which is that capacity to respond easily and actively to erotic excitation, diminish rapidly in the majority of professional prostitutes who are obliged to exercise their sexual functions with a frequency far in excess of the provisions of Nature. The sexual act becomes a mere routine in which pleasure or orgasm is only simulated to satisfy the customer's ego.
They moan and sigh and murmur passionate endearments, but if their minds could be read, the hollow mockery would be apparent, for one thought only occupies them: a wish to be finished and rid of the man as quickly as possible.
This is the rule which should have applied to me, but didn't.
Desires which should have been appeased by all too frequent gratification were quieted but for a moment, and almost at once flamed anew with increased insistence. And the tendency was growing. Strange as it may seem, sometimes after having had orgasm effected as many as half a dozen times in a single afternoon and evening, I was obliged to masturbate before being able to sleep.
Pathologically and physically, I was oversexed, designed, seemingly, by Mother Nature herself to be a whore.
Now in this propitious moment there entered into the horizon of my life, for the first time, a really sinister influence. And though in that influence I myself sensed a spirit of perversity I was drawn toward it like a moth to the candle. Knowing that the destiny it signified was evil, I had no wish to resist it.
Montague Austin-what memories that name evokes. Memories of passion, cruelty, horror, blended with the cloying and intoxicating poison of a transcendental lust which knew no law other than that of gratifying its own frenzy.
I was supposed to have been infatuated with the man, but I never loved him, nor thought I did. No, I did not love him, but I did love the mad transports, the exquisite torment of lust which he, as no other man before or since, had the power to awaken in me. As an addict to the scented dreams of opium, so did I become an addict to Montague Austin. He was to me a fatal drug which held me a willing victim in its embrace.