And there was no telling how long it had gone on after she had passed out… she only knew that she woke up stiff and sore all over, naked, lying face down on a bed, her gracefully curved buttocks naked to any further ravagement.
She had awakened to stagger to the bathroom, moaning, her proud breasts quivering, her fingers feeling for the shower faucets. Hot water hissed down in needle points and Nancy stood, her magnificent body surrounded by billowing steam, and let needle points of hot water stab at her flesh. She soaped her body completely and winced at the cries-cross of red welts on her stomach and the various plum-blue bruises on her soft flesh.
She was drenched by the steaming hot shower, staying under it longer than intended, finally leaving reluctantly.
She dressed and let herself out of the elegant bedroom. It was a bedroom that Nancy was to come to know in the future months. She would come to it many times in her life. She would come to know its bathroom and its ever-stocked wet bar and its closed-circuit television and its little carved box full of drugged delights. She came to know that… in the narrow space of that room… when she occupied that space… for that time, at least, she was queen. When in that room, she was treated like a lady and her every wish was immediately granted.
Beyond that room… she was treated like a common slut.
Nancy came to like that room and its raw entertainments as she came to know it. She drove home, tired, aching, falling into her bed utterly exhausted.
She awoke with a guilty consciousness. She woke up to face a gray morning and the sight of Allan.
Suddenly… insanely… her life was submerged in Allan. She cooked for him… they entertained together… they went out to expensive restaurants together… life suddenly was all Allan and her whole day and night were caught up in his personality and career… she was the good wife and the perfect hostess. She carried the demure role out to the point where she believed it…
And then the phone would ring…
She would answer it and it would be the slightly drunken insinuating voice of Tom… usually he would be in a bar somewhere with music and idle chatter behind his phone conversations… the idle suggestion that she attend a party… the icy tinkle of an empty drink swirled around… the sound of voices very near the receiver saying something smutty… Tom Nelson at some far-out party, some bar, calling, asking for a favor.
Tom had given her the negatives and photos of her naked dancing. He had been good to his word… however… there had been some pictures taken subsequently… some very good pictures.
It didn't take her long to realize she was in a ever narrowing trap. She knew that there were always going to be pictures. After awhile… she was even willing to pose for them… in fact, she got a kind of masochistic pleasure out of Tom taking pictures of her hungrily sucking big thick cocks or getting fucked by one, two, three men at the same time. Willingly, knowing he was going to use the pictures to blackmail hers she posed for him. She posed naked and obscene, committing anything asked of her.
She knew she was in a trap and her time with Allan… her time with him when he was home and full of what was happening at the bank… Allan was like a rock and Nancy leaned against him… hoping… dreading against the day… the day when she would be discovered.
She was leading a double life. She was a frigid wife on one level… she existed as Allan's elegant shapely wife on one level… and… when the phone rang… when the phone rang during the day when she was alone and home… when she picked up the phone and heard the slightly drunken, casually sloppy voice of Tom.
And her life changed.
She was constantly blackmailed. It seemed she couldn't think of anything else than being blackmailed. She was always buying her way to freedom… she would buy her way by going to a party in return for which she would receive pictures, pictures that had been taken by someone… pictures of her… if only she would go to a party… if only she would give in.
One party led to the next until she no longer cared about anything… even Allan. Nothing seemed to matter… her life was so bad, so evil, so committed to obscenity. There didn't seem anything left to live for. There came a time in her life when it no longer seemed worth living. It was then she thought constantly about suicide. She felt she was a thing, a piece of flesh to be driven into an orgiastic state.
And then there would be the sunny mornings with Allan and the need to react as a good wife.
Her life was becoming crazily split between Allan and another whole life of lewdness. Allan… and his friends were beginning to notice how heavily she drank… there was talk about it…
Allan would calm her and provide an emotion anchor for her, and then he would go off to the office… and the phone would ring. It was always Tom at some cocktail lounge, some bar, calling… with the sound of cool jazz in the background. Tom always to be somewhere, some place, where something exciting was happening. Always he was drunk and always he wanted a favor. More and more however, it was getting to be a favor for Fred Hartman. She found herself on his estate, in the bedroom provided for her where she could feel like a queen.
Yet, like the taste of ashes in the mouth, like a cold gray Monday morning a dawning with a drizzle, she knew her life couldn't go on. Once again, the phone rang. She answered it wearily, knowing who it was, not even really wanting to bargain. At the last party thrown by Fred Hartman, Ben and Herman had fucked her simultaneously on the stage and then she had greedily crawled about and sucked the cocks of all eleven guests. She had sucked each guest in his chair until he had pumped white-hot cum into her gluttonously sucking mouth… and Tom had taken pictures of her… and… she had willingly posed… and had driven home in the dawn… and talked to her nosy neighbor, Mrs. Hunter… and thought about suicide for the thousandth time… a victim of the evilest type of blackmail and her own darkest lusts.
And then, it all ended. The horrible nightmare was over! She was summoned to the Hartman estate at mid-day. Puzzled, she went, not knowing why she had been summoned at that strange hour. She was ushered into the office of Fred Hartman himself. Usually, if anything, she saw him right before performing at one of his parties. Now, she was in his office… and Tom Nelson was there.
Hartman's office was full of clean lines and bright color. Tom Nelson was poised at a small wet bar. Hartman ignored him, smiling at Nancy and politely offering her a seat. Nancy looked up at Hartman and found him tanned and tawny and at ease. Both of them looked at Tom Nelson who was terribly drunk.
His face was red and his clothing was messy… it looked as if he hadn't changed in days. His eyes were wetly flat and unfocused as he smiled. He raised his glass in a hollow toast… it was dry. He shrugged and poured another.
Fred Hartman nodded in a dry abstract way at Tom Nelson. "He was always an amusing nuisance. Now he's a definite problem. I offer no excuses. Sometimes, regretfully, I have to deal with people like him." Hartman stood up, tall and austere, his hands in his pockets. "I am lazy. I am slovenly. For this, I must apologize. I employed a person like Tom Nelson, never thinking of how he got hold of someone as lovely as you, never bothering myself to ask why."
Silently, dike a magician fanning out cards, he spread out pictures of Nancy… dozens and dozens of obscene pictures of Nancy taken by Tom Nelson with Rita's enthusiastic co-operation. He threw down a thick sheath of black negatives. "I'm sorry," he said, "I really didn't know he was blackmailing you." He seemed almost embarrassed. "I thought… I thought you were doing it of your own free will… because you wanted to."
Nancy looked away from the pictures. Always, in the past, she had been promised the negatives if only she would… always, in the past, she had given in, even though she knew that more pictures of her were going to be taken.