Ellen quivered and waited for the weight of his naked body to fall suddenly and heavily in plundering passion on her vulnerably reclining form, but it didn't. Instead, he sat quietly next to her, his deep breathing the only evidence of his rising passion, and glanced for a moment at the flickering shadows the candle cast on the crumbling walls before he turned slowly to her small deliciously curving form. Ellen didn't have to glance to the side to know that he was studying her barely covered young body, his hungry eyes traveling a slow burning path of hot desire and admiration up the entire length of her form, coming to rest on the protruding outline of her large ripely firm breasts beneath the torn ragged tee-shirt.
"You're pretty," Ellen suddenly heard a voice speak softly below the frantic rising shrieks of Sylvia that were rapidly growing louder in intensity from the other room, and her first impulse was to cast a frightened glance around to see who it was that had spoken so gently. But no new assailant appeared, there was only herself and Billy on the mattress with their two separate shadows dancing against the wall. It was Billy who had spoken in that strange, suddenly tender voice. But it was a Billy that she hadn't prepared herself for after the long day in which he had seemed even more aloof and dangerously angry than usual. She had sensed a certain well-hidden protectiveness in his attitude towards her at first, but after his humiliating encounter with the stranger it had seemed to vanish. Now its reemergence left her confused and frightened. She had finally decided after permitting Vito's sadistically cruel assault on Sylvia – and obviously enjoying what the little killer had done to his ex-girlfriend – that he was as much an animal as the others. But now with this sudden tenderness of the leader she was unsure again.
"I hope they didn't hurt ya," he spoke to the wall and then bent his head, almost as though he didn't want to face her from shyness or embarrassment.
"I'm still alive," Ellen said suspiciously and glanced at his profile in order to see his reaction to her words. She didn't want to get her hopes up. She was surprised when he sighed heavily in seeming agreement at the horror of her predicament the previous night.
"Aaaggghhhh – No! You're killing me-eeeeee!"
Sylvia's high piercing shriek that came down the hall like the long wail of a siren interrupted the tender scene. Ellen hoped desperately for the second time since she had entered the small cave-like room that Billy would get up and close the door, but he didn't and she was still too aware of the power of life or death he had over her to ask him to do anything at all for her. Instead, he once again won her startled surprise when he unexpectedly reached into the pockets of the pants he had already removed and left on the floor, and then lit a cigarette; his face turned towards her revealed an unhoped-for gentleness over the flare of the match in his hand.
Ellen waited for a seeming eternity while he leisurely smoked the cigarette and her torn emotions gradually changed from suspicion and fear to relief and acceptance. Yes, she thought, there was just no way of getting around the fact, as shocking and unacceptable as it would be if she were still back in her normal world, that it was better that she be sexually taken by Billy – as she knew he was going to do in a few minutes – than that she find herself once again suffering brutal and sadistic indecencies at the callous hands of the others.
This reassuring train of thought came to a sudden halt when Ellen noticed Billy impatiently stubbing out his cigarette on the dirty bare floorboards after only two puffs. He turned towards her, revealing his fully naked body for the first time, and to her own surprise and amazement she didn't cringe or even glance away. She supposed that they had beaten and abused her so much in the last twenty-four hours that nothing could move her now except the terror of being thrown to the others to be used as a plaything as she had been before. Ellen jerked suddenly as Sylvia's abjectedly pleading moan and loud, sadistically gleeful laughter came from the next room. Yes, yes, she shuddered and sank back onto the bed, anything Billy did would be better than being the subject of those foul male comments coming down the hallway now, indicating that Pop was fucking into Sylvia while Cash and Vito watched in lewd pleasure.
Billy laid his hand on Ellen's shoulder, mistaking her slight tremble in response to the crude remarks from the other men, as the beginning of surrender. And in a way, the half-drunk gang leader was right. Ellen's will to resist had finally been destroyed by the unrelenting torture and cruel pain that the men had put her through. At some inexact moment since the convicts had forced her into their truck off the country road, she had given up the struggle. She, herself, wasn't sure of when the exact turning point in her anguished emotions had occurred, for her resistance had disappeared so gradually and imperceptibly under the seemingly endless torture. All she knew now was that her hopes had changed, and she no longer aspired to escape the men but simply to endure them… to exist… to live! More than anything, she hoped that they wouldn't hurt her any more, and that when Billy made love to her, he wouldn't do it too cruelly. Her determination had been overcome by a fatigue-wracked desire to escape further pain, and now the tenderness with which he caressed her helped allay her fears… and she lay beneath him quietly and unprotesting.
The convict, sobering now from the sight of the voluptuous young girl stretched languidly on the bed beside him, looked at her almost with reverence. He would have given anything in the world to possess her under different circumstances; to come home from a big office where he had a good thing going that enabled him to make the right pay-offs and live in peace… and find her waiting for him. Yeh, she was surrendering to him now. But what else could the poor little bitch do? He would have given everything to feel her squirming beneath him, needing him as much as he needed her. Or if not her, at least someone like her, someone young, pure, innocent, who thought he was and always would be Number One. The others had taken her last night, it was true, but he had heard her screams as they forced themselves on her with sheer brute strength; and anyway, her being there in the first place had been his own fucking fault. Then he'd heard her finally cumming and he had wished he'd been the one to do that for her. No, that didn't really count; the real obstacle between them was the ugliness of his past, his present, and his future. She was something only vaguely glimpsed through lace curtains, singing at a piano, when you're broke and on the lam. He could hardly expect her to throw herself at a two-bit criminal with his record. And tomorrow his role as fugitive would be sealed forever; sure, he'd be the big man then, but there would be no more chances for him to make a new start of it. After tomorrow, having a girl like that… well, it just couldn't happen! He would try to make it out of the country, and then maybe after a few years he could stop running, settle somewhere and build a new life. No, he would be lucky if he was still alive tomorrow night, and after that he might as well face the fact that there would be nothing but to keep moving. Forever.
And… there was nothing he could do to stop the plan now. If he didn't participate in the killing, the other would do it… after leaving his body somewhere as destroyed evidence. There was not even any going back to prison now. He was trapped just like the senator, whom he didn't care about one way or the other. Except that he, Billy, had always been trapped.