The power. Good God, the power he had over them now, would always have over them, from this day forward! He could come into their homes, into their most sacred and private places, and once inside do whatever he wished with them. And not just with the women. Men too. If he ordered it of them, the men would mewl and crawl to him on their hands and knees. They would beg him to screw their wives. They’d give him their daughters, their girl children. They wouldn’t deny him any experience, however extravagant or outrageous. He would demand every thrill, and he would enjoy each of them. But on the whole, he would be a benign ruler, a benevolent dictator, more like a father than a jailer. No jackboots in their faces. He laughed at that last thought. Ten years ago, when he was still conducting lecture tours and writing about the future of behavior modification and mind control, he was subjected to extensive ridicule and vehement condemnation from some members of the academic community. In lecture halls, all but forcibly detained at the end of his speeches, he had listened to countless self-righteous bores droning through homilies about invasion of privacy and the sanctity of the human mind. They quoted hundreds of great thinkers, epigrams by the score — some of which he remembered to this day. There was one about the future of mankind amounting to little more than a jackboot in the face. Well, that was crap. Jackboots, and the cruel authoritarian state they symbolized, were only a means of keeping the masses in line. Now, with his drug and the key-lock program, jackboots had become obsolete. No one would have a jackboot pushed in his face. Of course, for selected women, he had something else to push in their faces. Massaging himself through his trousers, he laughed. The power. The sweet, sweet power.
“Brenda. ”
Shuddering, gasping, her knees bending slightly, she climaxed as her index finger worked industriously between her legs.
“Brenda.”
At last she looked up at him. She was beginning to perspire. Her hair was dark and damp at the brow.
He said, “Go to that sofa. Kneel on it with your back to me, and brace your arms against the pillows.”
When she was in position, her white butt thrust up at him, she looked over her shoulder. “Hurry. Please.”
Laughing, he shoved the coffee table out of the way, sent it sliding off the carpet, across the hardwood floor and into the magazine rack. He stood behind her, dropped his trousers and his yellow-striped shorts. He was ready, the veins about to burst, hard as iron, bigger than he’d ever been, big as a stallion’s gun, a horse cock. And red. So red it looked as if it had been smeared with blood. He ran one hand over her buttocks, over the golden hairs on her back, along her side, under to the swinging breast, pinched the nipple, smoothed her flank, pinched her ass, slipped his fingers between her thighs, to her pubes. She was wet, dripping, far more ready than he was. He could even smell her. Giggling, he said, “You’re a bitch in more ways than one. A regular little bitch dog. A little animal. Aren’t you, Brenda?”
“Yes.”
“Say you’re a little animal.”
“I am. I’m a little animal.”
The power.
“What do you want, Brenda?”
“I want you to screw me.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
“How bad do you want it?”
“Real bad.”
Sweet, sweet power.
“What do you want?”
“You know!”
“Do I?”
“I already said!”
“Say it again.”
“You’re humiliating me.”
“I haven’t even begun.”
“Oh, God.”
“Listen to me, Brenda.”
“What?”
“Your cunt’s getting hotter.”
She groaned softly. Shuddered.
“Feel it, Brenda?”
“Yes.”
“Hotter and hotter. ”
“I don’t — I can’t—”
“You can’t stand it?”
“So hot. Almost hurts.”
He smiled. “Now what do you want?”
“I want you to screw me.”
See, Miriam? I am somebody.
“What are you, Brenda?”
“I am the lock.”
“What else are you?”
“A bitch.”
“I can’t hear it often enough.”
“A bitch.”
“In heat?”
“Yes, yes. Please!”
Poised to enter her, dizzy with excitement, demoniac, electrified by the power he held, Salsbury had no illusions that his orgasm, deep within the silken regions of this woman, was the most important aspect of the rape. The spasmed outpouring of a tablespoon or two of semen was only the punctuation at the end of the sentence, at the conclusion of his declaration of independence. During the past half hour, he had proved himself, had freed himself from the dozens of bitches who had messed in his life all the way back to and including his mother, especially his mother, that goddess of bitches, that empress of ball-breakers. After her came the girls who were frigid and the girls who laughed at him and the girls who whined about his poor technique and the girls who rejected him with unconcealed distaste and Miriam and the contemptible whores to whom he had been forced to resort in later years. Brenda Macklin was only a metaphor, written into his life by chance. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been someone else this afternoon or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. She was the voodoo doll, the totem with which he would exorcise some of those bitches from his past. Each inch of prick he jammed into her was a blow to the Brendas of years gone by. Each stroke — the more brutal it was the better — was an announcement of his triumph. He would pound her. Bruise her. Use her until she was raw. Hurt her. With every blade of pain he sent through her, he would be cutting each of those hated women. By mounting this lean blond animal, by battering relentlessly into her, tearing her apart, he would be proving his superiority to all of them.
He seized her hips and leaned close. But as the tip of his shaft touched her vagina, even before the head of it slipped into her, he ejaculated uncontrollably. His legs gave way. Crying out, he fell on her.
She collapsed against the pillows.
Panic took him. Memories of past failures. The sour looks they gave him afterwards. The contempt with which they treated him. The shame of it. He held Brenda down, weighed her down. Desperately, he said, “You’re coming, girl. You’re climaxing. Do you hear me? Do you understand? I’m telling you. You’re coming.”
She made a noise, muffled by pillows.
“Feel it?”
“Mmmmm.”
“Do you feel it?”
Raising her head she said, “God, yes!”
“You’ve never had it better.”
“Not ever. Never.” She was gasping.
“Feel it?”
“Feel it.”
“Is it hot?”
“So hot. Oh!”
“Coasting now. You’re coming down.”
She stopped squirming under him.
“Drifting down. It’s almost over.”
“So good…” Softly.
“You little animal.”
With that the tension drained out of her.
The doorbell rang.
“What the hell?”
She didn’t react.
Pushing away from her, he swayed to his feet, tried to take a step with his trousers around his ankles and almost fell. He grabbed his shorts, jerked them up, then his trousers. “You said you weren’t expecting anyone.”
“Wasn’t. ”
“Then who’s that?”
She rolled onto her back. She looked sated.
“Who’s that?” he asked again.
“Don’t know.”
“For God’s sake, get dressed.”
She rose dreamily from the couch.
“Quickly, damn you!”
Obediently, she scuttled after her clothes.