Yes, she'd do what Max had ordered her to – she hardly had a choice, anyhow – and she might as well enjoy herself on the road. She'd make sure this young moral zero gave her the kind of fucking she hadn't had for a long time. Anna mentality wrinkled her nose as she thought about the short, sharp, and brutal fuckings she got from Max. He'd been a lot better at first, but was now obviously bored with her. He just used her as an instrument to work off his need to hurt.
Anna liked people but she had no illusions as to the kind of human relations that went on in big business and big government. There was a whole breed of eager young executives who'd walk over their grandmother to gain the power and influence they craved, and she was having lunch with one now. She felt sorry for his wife.
But Anna played her part well. Knowing what she had to do, and hating it, she threw enough half-veiled sex-signals to Jack to rattle him for the rest of the day. Sensing Jack's ever-increasing desire to make love to her, Anna put him off, turning down an invitation to dinner that night. She knew if she played him long enough, he would be eating out of her hand in no time. That might be valuable to her in case of a confrontation with Max. Allies, even allies bought with sex, could sometimes make the difference between defeat and survival.
So Jack went back to the office, faintly uncomfortable, vaguely realizing that somewhere in the course of the meal he'd lost the initiative with Anna. His instincts told him to forget about her, that he was putting himself in the way of a forceful personality he couldn't control, but at the same time, the image of Anna's twin rounded hemispheres of lush breast, spilling out of her low-cut dress, burned in his brain, inflaming his nerves and filling his whole being with lust. He knew she was going to sleep with him – they'd all but arranged it at lunch. Only the place and time remained to be filled in and, by God, he'd do it!
Damn the consequences.
Anna took her time getting home. Max didn't let her out of the house by herself very often, so she amused herself window-shopping and leisurely studying the people on the busy streets.
How different life could be! she thought bitterly as she watched a young woman walking breezily down the street, humming happily to herself, obviously her own mistress, free to go where she wanted to and associate with whom she wished. Anna stopped before a travel office and stared for a long time at the brightly colored posters, advertising trips to the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Europe, South America. She had traveled when she was younger, just out of school, and had loved it. For more than three years she had lived and worked overseas, immersing herself in alien customs and languages, thrilling to that peculiar type of freedom that comes from being a foreigner in other peoples' lands, free of their native cares and obligations, but able to enjoy the best that land can offer.
God, I'd love to go back! she thought in near despair. But I'm a slave, a slave in late-twentieth-century America, a slave to that miserable bastard, Max Flaherty!
It had happened almost a year ago. She had been to visit her father, and found him in an angry shouting match with a man she had never seen before – Max Flaherty. The man left and the incident had faded from her mind. Then one day Max had showed up at her apartment saying he had a proposition for her. He made it short and simple. He told her he had enough on her father to hang him, not figuratively but literally. He showed her papers and documents that connected her father to an old crime, a murder that had taken place nearly twenty years before. He'd turn her father over to the police, unless…
Ten minutes later, after futilely pleading for him to change his mind and leave her and her father alone, Anna was lying naked under Max's heavy sweating body while he brutally fucked her.
And, of course, it didn't stop with that one time. He came back again and again, and every time that Anna submitted to him, the next time came easier. Finally, he had ordered her to move into a house with him, the one they were living in now. Anna was glad that they were half-way across the country from her own home. She was horrified at the thought of her father finding out she was with Max. She knew he'd demand that she stop it, and even go to the authorities and turn himself in, if that would free her of Max.
Anna loved her father – he was all she'd ever had since her mother died when Anna was still a baby. She never told him she knew about the murder in his past – she knew he would be ashamed before her from then on. So she stayed with Max, putting up with his crudities, letting him use her body as he wanted to, and hoping that somehow the whole nightmare would go away.
Max had money, and she had to admit that for the most part, her life was physically comfortable. And sometimes he was even good to her, in his own way, including her in his brutal sense of humor, treating her as a confidante.
But he had clearly begun to grow tired of her a couple of months before. That was what Anna had hoped for, trusting that he would eventually throw her out, bored with the ease with which he could claim her body and the lack of any genuine participation on her part. But now she was sickened by what he wanted her to do – to use her as an entree into Pam Hollister's bed. Clearly, even if he was bored with her, he wasn't about to let her go. Slaves were hard to come by nowadays, and she knew she'd be used until there was nothing of her left.
Despair had made Anna bitter by the time she walked back in the door of Max's house.
"Where the fuck you been?" he demanded angrily, glancing at his watch. "I told you, no fucking around with that young punk until I give the word."
"For Christ's sake, get off my back, Max," she snapped back. "We haven't even been holding hands. I'll do your fucking dirty work for you, but I don't want to catch shit for it every ten minutes."
"Well, well, aren't we independent," Max said in mock surprise. "Don't tell me the troops are about to revolt!"
Anna tensed. When Max seemed the most pleasant he was often at his deadliest. "Okay, now what happened? Did you get the job?"
"Of course," Anna said tiredly. "He was too busy staring at my tits to think of saying no."
"I get the impression you don't like him."
"If there was something to like, I might. He's good-looking enough. But there's nothing under that neat, clean exterior but pure greed."
"Good, they're the easiest kind," Max said with a laugh. "And when do you think the mating will take place?"
Anna flinched at the cavalier way that Max was disposing of her body. Just like a slave, she thought. "He says there's going to be a big company party in about two or three days. That sounds like the best time. People go a little out of their heads at those things."
"You've done a good job, Anna," Max said good-humoredly. "You deserve a reward."
"The only reward I want is a way out of this mess," Anna snapped.
"Maybe you'll get it," Max replied.
"What do you mean?" she asked, suddenly wary.
"If you keep playing ball with me, I might let you go. What would you say to my giving you that evidence I have against dear old Dad?"
"You've said that before," Anna said bitterly. "Are you playing with me again, because if you are…"
"You'll never know for sure, will you?" Max said with an evil grin. "But you can't take the chance. I promise you, some day you'll bore me so much I'll toss all those incriminating documents in your lap, and you can split. You can count on that – you just don't know when. So you keep playing ball with old Max, and everything'll turn out ale right."
Does he mean it? Anna agonized. Is this just another of his sadistic games? Hatred boiled up in Anna's heart. Someday he'll go too far, and then… Some of her hatred spilled over onto her father, and Anna was filled with a bitter resentment that an act of his could have put her in this predicament. Maybe she should face him, have it out, but she was afraid. Afraid of how she would hurt him, and afraid that he might do something desperate to free her that would end up with his own destruction.