"Good photography, Priss," Clete said. "You're a real artist."
Priscilla chuckled bitterly. "Look at that little pink asshole dance and twitch! Fuck, I'd like to see that dog screwing it, right there in her ass, while her husband watches."
Clete said nothing. He didn't want anything to happen to DesirЋe. He cared about her, wanted her in his bed again and again and again. He didn't really want that filthy dog anywhere near her again. That damned dog, and Mark Denning, had first ruined everything he loved, DesirЋe and Nancy. Even Johnny Canning and the stinking, hypocritical preacher Hemmings had had her. Clete knew that the only way to assuage the pain he felt was to take her again, on a regular basis.
"I'd like to have that tape," he told Priscilla. "I've got an idea for it."
Priscilla looked at him as if he were crazy. "You don't think I went to all the trouble of staging that shoot just to let you have it. I've got my own plans for it. I'm going to destroy that little bitch for what she's done, and I'm going to have Mark Denning eating out of my hand. I'm going to grind him down and wreck his political career – if he doesn't toe the line. Maybe I'll just use him and wreck him anyway. I'm not sure, but this tape is the first step on the road to revenge."
Clete looked at the hard, malicious eyes of the ravishing beauty he was speaking with, remembering her naked body, spread and revealed, the night before, in all its feminine sweetness, and it was difficult to believe the hate he now saw in this divine creature. He understood her desire for revenge, for he had felt it himself just the day before, but making love to lovely DesirЋe had somehow cooled his destructive urges, at least temporarily. Now all he wanted was Mark Denning's young wife, her soft, moist, fragrant body at his disposal always.
"So give me that tape, and I'll be going," Priscilla ordered. "You stay quiet until I give you a call and give you instructions for the second part of my plan. Want to hold on to the stills for a while? Be my guest. The video is all I need for now."
"What do you have in your head, lady?" Clete asked, going to the television and opening the glass cabinet doors underneath.
Priscilla lit a cigarette and exhaled contentedly. "Mark Denning is flying in tomorrow to help deal with that corpse found out on Smith's ranch. I'm going to be meeting him."
"You? Won't DesirЋe go to meet him?"
The hateful beauty shook her head. "She's going to have car trouble. You're going to see to that."
Clete nodded. His jealous affection for the young blonde bride made him more than happy to see that her husband would be separated from her tomorrow afternoon. It might even give him a chance to get together with her again.
Priscilla stood up. "Here, give me that tape."
Clete handed it over and stood up. "What time do you want her car to give up the ghost?"
"The plane comes in at two-thirty. He's supposed to meet with the town council at five. So you know what to do."
"You got it, baby," Clete said.
"Don't 'baby' me, Clete," Priscilla warned. "Let's keep our relationship realistic, shall we? You're way below my class, and don't forget it. You got to see my bare ass last night, but that was part of the plan. It'll never happen again."
Priscilla didn't say goodbye.
But when she had departed, Clete smiled. He had his own plans, and Priscilla was in for a bit of a surprise. Below her class? Who gave a fuck?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Not wanting to abandon Tanya and yielding to the girl's insistence on staying with her, DesirЋe took her friend with her to the appointment with Dr. Hemmings. Leaving Tanya in the waiting room, the blonde, younger girl went in to face Hemmings and a man he introduced as a specialist on animal-transmitted diseases, Dr. Alex Braun, who mentioned a list of maladies including rabies, distemper, schistosomiasis, tuberculosis, and canine brucellosis. DesirЋe had heard of some of them, but not all, and while Hemmings considerately left them to stay in the waiting room with Tanya, Braun explained that it was the latter, which he later called simply CB, that was transmitted by sexual intercourse with dogs.
"Dr. Hemmings told me that you were, uh, taken against your will, DesirЋe," Dr. Braun said, "so please don't feel ashamed. I'm a doctor and I've seen many cases, many of them victims of dog rape. Symptoms, once they set in, are dreadful, with rotting skin, pustules, blindness and insanity. But if prophylaxis is applied before the disease's onset, a full recovery can be expected. Weekly visits for injections can prevent its being passed on to sex partners and family."
DesirЋe looked at the man as if he had pronounced a death sentence. Rotting skin and pustules? Insanity and blindness? She did want to die, most certainly!
"Medication is necessary and advisable unless the animal can be proved free of the disease," Braun said. "Is it possible to test the dog?"
Tears filling her eyes, DesirЋe shook her head. "They're hunting him now, but so far they haven't caught him."
Braun said quietly and earnestly, "Then I strongly advise a weekly treatment of prophylactic drugs. Success is guaranteed provided the treatment is strictly adhered to, and danger to loved ones is eliminated."
DesirЋe thought silently in her mental frenzy. Of course, she didn't want to transmit it, this canine brucellosis, to her Mark. She nodded her understanding.
"CB is easy to treat provided it's caught in the early stages. It is a relatively unknown disease to most doctors. Doesn't even appear in most medical books. It isn't that common, you see. Less than one in a million. Intercourse with dogs is very rare."
The girl burst out sobbing. Yes, she was a one in a million slut who had had sex with an animal. But she had to make sure that it never happened again and get her cure. "Please, Dr. Braun. Please! You must! Cure me." She calmed her sobs and looked up with injured eyes. "Please."
Dr. Alex Braun smiled benignly at the ravishing blonde beauty seated across from him, his expression professionally warm and sympathetic as he leaned back in his chair, his hands joined at finger-tips, his relaxed presence and fatherly bulk putting DesirЋe at ease immediately.
Remarkable, he thought, smiling inwardly at this stroke of good fortune, struggling to hide his glee that she had accepted his story on the fictitious disease he called by the made-up name of canine brucellosis. Surely, the Gods must be smiling upon him this day, he mused, as he listened to her hesitant, shamed, and more often, weeping little tale of repugnance about her surrender to the raping dog. Ravishing, absolutely ravishing! Yes, he must play these cards carefully, cautiously, while Hemmings was out of the room. He knew of his colleague's plans, with which he was here to assist, but there was no reason why he shouldn't sample the goods himself before turning her over to Hemmings for a life-time of pleasure.
DesirЋe told him all, holding back nothing, surprising herself at her uninhibited divulgence of even the more lurid details to this tall, heavy, successful-appearing man with the black mustache and the graying temples she had known only a matter of minutes. Of course, he was a physician and that was her singular cause for talking to him. There was no reason why she should be suddenly astonished with her actions. She needed medical assistance.
"Mrs. Denning," Braun spoke smoothly, reassuringly. "You have done the very proper thing in coming to us." He stood slowly. "It might help put you at ease to know that I combine psychology with epidemiology."
DesirЋe raised her eyes. "I didn't know," she said. She was pleased.