“My God! They’re not!” Bix looked down in panic. “What do you want to scare me like that for?” he asked in an injured tone when his eyes had reassured him that all was well.
“I only meant— Look, let’s just forget it. And let’s forget these, too.” Penny kicked off the riding boots. “They only seem to be confusing us.” Her willowy form floated to the couch and she looked at him hotly. “Come on, lover,” she said in a purposefully throaty voice. “What are you waiting for?”
Bix joined her on the couch. She raised her lips to be kissed. He quickly angled his body‘ and Penny found herself right back where she’d been at the bordello. Her slender pink tongue flicked between her lips and laved the sac of love beneath Bix’s manhood.
“Ahhhh!” he sighed.
Her tongue moved in little tickling circles. Then it described a long, upward arc. Her pert red lips formed a pert red circle. She sipped deeply at the staff of life. It grew more rigid, but the involuntary strokes of approaching fruition which Penny expected were not forthcoming. The darling girl took sterner measures, baring her little pearly white teeth and attacking her task with such dedication that Bix felt a momentary resurgence of his childhood castration complex.
“Careful!” he cautioned.
“Mmmm ju tryna spit thigsub,” Penny explained. “Mau mouse getty dired.”
“Come again?”
“You, dot be. Ad wudziz ’nuf!”
“I can’t understand a word you’re saying. And I wish you wouldn’t bite off your consonants. It hurts.”
“I’b so fussdaded Ig lige dadibe efl‘mor’nad.” Penny raised her head. “Oh, the hell with it,” she said. “I don’t think that orgone box of yours did a thing for you.”
“I’m afraid not,” Bix admitted ruefully. “I guess we’d better just forget it.”
“No!” Penny insisted, remembering her moral obligations, as was the nature of her character. “You rescued me from the brothel and I owe you something for that. And I’m a girl who always pays her debts.”
“But what good is it? Like you say, we’re not getting any place. I just can’t.”
“Where there’s a wile, there’s a way,” Penny said wilily. “All you need is the proper stimulation. Like in The Carpetbaggers. That’s it!” She snapped her fingers.
“What’s what? What are you talking about?”
“Did you ever read The Carpetbaggers?” Penny demanded.
“Nah. I have all I can do to get through Downbeat every week.”
“Well, in The Carpetbaggers, this fellow’s all tuckered out from too much sex and he thinks he can’t make it again. But this hustler, she teaches him better. She shows him how he can.”
“As the Indian said to the mermaid, ‘How?”’
“First she takes a razor and shaves off his whole body. Every hair. When he’s completely hairless, she gets him into a tub filled with warm water. Then she-—uh —she does to him what you wanted me to do to you before.”
“Man, I don’t know,” Bix said.
“It’s worth a try, isn’t it? After all, what have you got to lose?”
“Nothing, I guess. Except maybe a few follicles. Hell, I never used them anyway. All right. I’m game.”
“Good. Come on in the bathroom.” Penny led the way. “Now, get that thing out of here,” she instructed, pointing at the orgone box.
Bix hefted it and carried it into the other room. “What next?” he asked when he returned.
“Where do you keep your shaving cream?” Penny was rummaging through the medicine chest.
“I don’t have any. I use an electric razor.”
“Oh. Gee, in the book she shaved him with cream and a straight razor. But I guess it doesn’t make any difference. The result’s the same. And it’s the result that counts. So give me the electric razor.”
Penny started the water running into the tub while Bix plugged in the appliance for her. Then she took the buzzing razor and carefully ran it over his body, cutting neat, even furrows down his chest and back and arms and legs. “It’s just like mowing a lawn,” she giggled.
“Yeah. Only watch how you’re pulling some of those weeds,” Bix warned as she zero’d in on the area of his groin. “That’s fertile soil and it’s tender.”
“It’s not fertile yet, but it will be,” Penny assured him. “Tender is the right,” she observed, “but the left one doesn’t seem so touchy.”
“Just ticklish!” Bix squirmed.
“There!” Penny stood back finally and surveyed her handiwork. Bix’s naked body was completely devoid of hair. “How do you feel now?”
“Like a cue ball that’s been out in the sun too long. How do I look?”
“Like you should be hanging in the window of a butcher shop,” Penny admitted. “But that doesn’t matter. It’s the results that count. Do you feel like your orgones are stirring?”
“It’s hard to say. I’m itching so much I don’t know what I feel.”
“Well, we’ll fix that. You get into the tub now. What’s this?” Penny held up a plastic container.
“Bubble bath.” Bix blushed. “I like to use it sometimes when I take a bath. I suppose it’s effeminate, but—”
“Not at all. It’s sensual, that’s what it is,” Penny soothed him. “As a matter of fact, we should use some right now. It’ll provide just the right finishing touch.”
She dumped the contents of the container into the water as Bix immersed himself.
Ahnost immediately, he vanished in a mountain of suds. “You used too much.” His voice floated up from the froth. “That’s potent stuff.”
“And so will you be,” Penny assured him. “Now, we’re all ready. Only— Only, where are you?”
“Here I am.” Bix’s head popped up with a huge bubble balanced neatly atop it.
“Oh, yes. But that’s not the part of you I’m looking for.” Penny churned her hands around until she had dispelled the froth and located her target. “There it is.”
She grasped it in her fist and bent her head over to secure it.
“Careful! Don’t make waves!” Bix sputtered.
“Just you hold your breath and let yourself go,” Penny instructed. She pulled upward and Bix’ head disappeared beneath the froth once again.
“HepI’bgoigdrow,” Bix gurgled.
Penny’s head swooped down as her hand released him. Unknowingly, her shoulder hooked the cord of the electric razor. The razor, still plugged in, fell into the suds and vanished. There was the crackle of electricity spreading through a watery conductor and the soap bubbles began exploding rapidly in puffs of smoke. Bix shot to the surface, his body tense and quivering with voltage, his face turning blue, his teeth chattering a stricken SOS.
Penny had stopped before her lips touched either the water, or Bix. Now she drew back a little and hovered there, not knowing what to do. He seemed to be pressure-cooking before her very eyes. But the poor girl was too stunned to know what action to take. She looked into Bix’s eyes for advice, but all she saw was the spark of electricity.
It was, after all, quite a shock!
CHAPTER NINE
FINALLY, THE distraught young virgin thought to pull the plug. The electric shaver ceased its buzzing. The voltage stopped crackling. The water stopped churning. Bix stopped vibrating, and the blue color which had swept over his skin started to recede.
“Sex!” He spat the word out as he scrambled from the tub. “If that’s your idea of sex, I’d rather make love to a pile of radioactive uranium. Man, like that’s one charge without which I can do nicely.”
“I’m sorry,” Penny apologized. “It was an accident. I was only trying to turn you on.”
“And you did,” Bix shuddered. “You did.”
“That wasn’t what I meant. I meant turn you on sexually.”