Omar Victorine
Violated
CHAPTER ONE
Petite, dark-haired Susan Templar opened the garden door and rushed into the breakfast room, pitching her schoolbooks onto the table with a sigh of relief. The handball practice had been canceled because of the rain, and now she had the whole of the afternoon unexpectedly to herself!
What would she do with it? She could stay home and work or read, of course, or watch television. But she didn't want to read, and German television was so dull. She supposed she could call one of her friends and go on over to see her. But the classmates she really liked at the American school at Konigswinter lived across the river at Bad Godesberg, nearer to Bonn. Besides, the only person she really wanted to see was Stefan.
Stefan was dreamy! He was a student, almost twenty, with blond hair and a way of looking at her through slitted eyes that made her come up in goose bumps all over! The only trouble was that Stefan was German, and her parents didn't approve of him. He was mixed up in politics, her father said sternly, and it wouldn't do at all!
They had absolutely forbidden her to see him any more.
She sighed. It wasn't easy, being just sixteen and the daughter of a United States army man posted to the Federal Republic!
She looked out the window. The wooded cones of the seven hills of Konigswinter loomed mistily through the downpour above the suburban roofs. The nearest one was called the Petersberg. There was a hotel at the top that had once housed the Allied Control Commission. Next to it was the Drachenfels, where Siegfried had slain the dragon.
Had her mother heard her come in? If not, maybe she could slip out again quietly. Maybe she could even go see Stefan!
As she stood listening, her eye fell on a copy of the local paper lying on the table. Automatically, she took in the headlines. The French were quarreling with the Americans over the agenda for the forthcoming four power talks in Berlin. There had been 73 arrests at some demonstration in the city last night. Six people had been killed in a pile-up on the autobahn. The strangled body of a student had been found on a vacant lot near the river. And then, paneled in heavy black type, in the centre of the front page, she saw; POLICEMAN BEATEN TO DEATH: AMERICAN ARMY MAN ACCUSED.
Susan sighed again. That would mean more headaches for her father. Colonel Templar held an important liaison post with the United States NATO forces based in Germany, and one of his duties was to smooth out any difficulties which arose between the American troops and their German hosts. In a few weeks he was to head a completely new Mission formally attached to the German government to make cooperation between the two countries even closer. A murder case involving army personnel at such a time could be a grave embarrassment to him.
She raised her eyes from the paper and met her own troubled gaze in a large mirror set in an ornately carved wooden frame screwed to the wall. Critically, she examined the reflection… soft, dark eyes; short, straight nose; full-lipped, generous mouth and then, half hidden between the open edges of her yellow nylon parka, the ripely swelling mounds of her budding breasts uptilted beneath the clinging black cashmere of her jersey.
Whisking back one edge of the parka, she placed a hand on her trim hip and turned to profile her young body in the glass. Below the tender bulge of her breast with its upthrust nipple, the curve of her breasts melted smoothly into a slender waist which at once flowed out voluptuously to contour the rounded outings of her hips and the slim, tapering thighs below.
It wasn't a bad shape, she supposed. After all, Stefan seemed to find it attractive enough. He was always going on and on about it! If only she could grow just a little bit taller…
For the third time, the young brunette sighed. Would there be a chance of seeing Stefan if she could get out of the house again unseen? Her parents would not be expecting her until at least five-thirty! If he was by any chance at the cafe on the corner, they would have over two hours together before she need come back… and nobody would know they'd even met!
She decided she would try. But it all depended on whether she could get away without seeing anybody! She listened again. There was no sound in the house. Her mother could be out or she could be resting in her room. If she was in her room, Susan would have to be very careful – for she simply had to do something with her hair if she was going to see Stefan! She glanced at the mirror once more; the rain had turned the close-cut cap of dark curls framing her face into a mass of bedraggled rats-tails! She'd have to get to her own room and fix it first.
But the door creaked alarmingly. If her mother was resting, she'd be bound to hear it if Susan went in. The only chance was to tiptoe along the balcony, past her mother's room, and get in by the French window. Holding her breath, the girl eased open the door of the breakfast room and stole upstairs.
There was a door to the balcony on the landing, and she slipped through and crept silently along the rain-wet slate floor towards the far end of the building.
Inside her mother's bedroom, the drapes were drawn across the window and the Venetian blinds were down. Susan gave a small tut of annoyance. Although this meant that she could pass the window without being seen from inside, it also meant that her mother was almost certainly there. She would have to be very, very careful not to make a noise getting into her own room!
For a moment she hesitated – and then suddenly she froze on the wet balcony, the thin lances of rain spearing coldly against her face and pattering on the shoulders of her parka. A deep groan from inside the room had penetrated the closed window!
Oh, my God! Susan thought. She's sick! I'll have to go in and see what I can do! She reached for the handle of the French window in the center of the embrasure and froze again. A guttural male laugh reverberated inside the bedroom!
Susan was transfixed. That laugh was certainly not her father's, yet the groan preceding it had undoubtedly come from her mother's lips! What in God's name was going on? Who was in there with her mother and what was he doing to her? It sounded as if whoever it was was hurting her.
Mrs. Templar groaned again – a longer one this time, with a strange pleading, note to it, almost as though she was being tortured. The groan was followed at once by another laugh and a series of fleshy slapping sounds, like a child's bottom being spanked.
Susan was trembling. Some burglar must have gotten into the house and now he was trying to force her mother to do something. Perhaps he wanted her to tell him where she kept her jewels or give him the combination of the safe behind the picture in the study where her father kept his papers. Maybe he was even some kind of spy!
There was an extension to the phone in a cupboard below the stairs. If only Susan could get to it and call the police or contact her father at his office – she might be able to save her mother's life!
She swallowed nervously and brushed the wet hair from her eyes. She had better get right on back downstairs while there was still time. It was then that her mother's groaning voice broke into words.
"Oh, God! Do it to me like that! Do it again! Yesssss!"
Standing in the rain outside the window, the teenage brunette paled. The voice had been slurred, almost as though her mother was drunk, but there could be no mistake about its tone: it was one of passionate pleading!
Although the man was evidently hurting her, it didn't sound, somehow, as though it was entirely against her will. It sounded, in fact, much more as though she was crying out for him to continue. Perhaps he was a sadist, like some of the men she had read about in her psychology class and was making her beg for more…
The girl hesitated again. What should she do? She could not make up her mind. If her mother was actually pleading for more… No, she dare not call the police or anyone else until she knew for sure just what was going on! She had to find out and there was just a chance that she could. She knew that the drapes in the room were badly fitted: there was often a tiny gap left at the center when they were supposed to be closed. She also knew that one of the thin aluminum slats of the Venetian blind was warped and wouldn't close properly. She had bent it herself one day, stumbling against the blind playing some game with her father. If she could crouch down and line up the two apertures with her eye, maybe she could see into the room.