Punish Me, Please Me
Ashley Zacharias
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2010 Ashley Zacharias
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Contents
Bless Me, Father, For I Have Sinned
This is an anthology of short stories that I wrote in 2009 and 2010.
If these stories have a common thread, it is that all are about women who send themselves into a little, mundane hells-on-earth for a short time in order to improve their circumstance in some substantive way. One woman wishes to seize control of her father’s empire, another to relieve her oppressive boredom, another to protect her church, another to advance her career, and another to earn a university degree. These women may all be masochists to some degree, but their primary purpose is to gain something specific that they want.
While all of my stories may offend because of their kinky sexual content, each story may also offend because they depict various vocations in an unflattering light. An evangelistic minister is portrayed as a greedy man who fleeces his flock; a grade school teacher shown as being bored by an unchallenging profession; a Catholic priest as a potential pederast; a middle manager as ethically unprincipled; and an artist as naïve in expecting her audience to appreciate her work more.
If you want my apologies, I offer these. I’m sorry that I see my elderly parents sending money from their pensions to a wealthy television evangelist because he tells them that it will help them get into heaven. I’m sorry that my children had a few grade school teachers who were disinterested in doing their jobs properly. I’m sorry that the Catholic Church has spent so many years protecting a few evil priests, transferring them instead of defrocking them. I’m sorry that I spend so much of my career working for incompetent managers. I’m sorry that artists have canned their own shit and sold it as art.
But, like the characters in my stories, these are individual cases. I have known many sincere and ethical ministers; grade school teachers who were dedicated to their jobs; Catholic priests who devoted their lives to improving the world; managers who worked with their staff and resources to accomplish important goals; and artists who gave me profound experiences. I have not generalized from the individual characters in my stories to every minister, teacher, priest, manager, and artist. If you do so, then you do so of your own accord.
These stories are presented in the order in which they are written. I hope that my writing has improved enough during those two years that you, tolerant reader, can see a difference in the quality of the writing between the first and last story.
You may also notice another trend. As I wrote more, I became bolder. But what does “bolder” mean to a writer of kinky pornography who has always described bizarre sexual acts using the bluntest language possible? In my case, it means becoming self-assured enough to write less about the sex itself and more about the circumstances that lead up to it. In a nutshell, I became bold enough to try to give my readers more story than porn. You might even argue that the last story in this collection is hardly about sex at all.
I hope that you enjoy reading this collection of fantasies as much as I enjoyed writing them. And if even one wife gets so hot that she has to drop her ereader in the middle of a story and rush off to jump her husband’s bones, that would be wonderful.
Ashley Zacharias, 2011
The auditorium was filled to capacity; people who couldn’t find seats lined the walls at the back and side of the room. So many people had come to see the renowned atheist debate an even more renowned evangelist, yet the audience was coughing and shuffling their feet – a certain sign that the debate was failing to hold their interest.
Thomas Stone – “Dr. Stone” to his students, “Doubting Thomas” to the preacher standing behind the opposing podium – realized that he had to add spice to the debate right now. He stopped himself from droning on about the robust nature of scientific inquiry and executed a perfect verbal about face. “But all that aside, the bottom line is that it is better to believe that there is no God at all than to worship the evil being that is described in the Bible.”
Brother Jeremiah rose to the bait immediately. He pounded his podium with his fist and shouted, “Blasphemy will not win this debate. You present yourself as a man of logic, yet you are reduced to calling God names. I despair for your immortal soul.” The audience fell silent; the debate looked like it was going to be fun after all.
Dr. Stone shook his head. “I’m not simply calling God names; I’m referring to His actions as recorded in the Bible. You do believe the Bible, do you not?” This was a purely rhetorical question and Stone continued without waiting for an answer. “The Bible says that God ordered Abraham to kill his own son, Isaac. Abraham claimed that God stayed his hand at the last minute. Isn’t the truth obvious? When Abraham had his knife posed above the chest of his innocent son, he knew that he was about to commit an evil act. It was not God, but his own conscience that stayed his hand. It may have been the style in ancient times to call a man’s conscience ‘God’ but I think everyone in this room today would see it differently. If a good man thought that God had commanded him to commit an evil act, then he would have to conclude that God was evil. No evil being should be obeyed, whether He is called God or Satan. I say again, it is better to believe in your own conscience than in an evil God because, the final decision must always be a decision of conscience.”
Jeremiah shook his finger at Stone. “You are deliberately misinterpreting the story by omitting the lesson that God was teaching. He was testing Abraham’s faith. When Abraham showed that he trusted God even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his own son, God rewarded him by saving the boy. We are all tested by God. He made the story of Abraham exceptionally clear so that when we are tested in more subtle ways, we will recognize that He is doing the same to us. Every single day, I invite God to test my faith with equal severity.” He turned his eyes to heaven, and intoned, “Lord, please test my faith. Let me show you how I trust you completely. Lord, I dedicate my life and my daughter’s life to Your will.” He turned back to the audience, “I do not suffer the least fear that my Lord will abuse my trust. My daughter and I are safe in His hands.”
He nodded at a beautiful young woman wearing a conservative skirt and blouse in the first row. She stood, raised her clasped hands above her head and shouted, “Amen, father. Praise the Lord!” Jeremiah’s daughter, Susanna, was always present at his public appearances. She was a critical aspect of his brand identity; her face had featured prominently on his television program since she was an infant. Since turning twenty-one last year, she had been taking an even more prominent role in Brother Jeremiah’s ministry. Clearly she was being groomed to serve as the second-in-command, a role left vacant five years ago when her mother, Sister Ruth, was killed in a tragic, highly publicized automobile accident.
The audience applauded the woman’s support for her father. Stone suspected that most of the women were applauding the heroic way that she had borne the tragedy of her mother’s death and continued to maintain her mother’s memory. Most of the men in the audience were applauding her long blond hair and finely featured face; not to mention the full figure that her conservative-appearing clothing had been tailored to emphasize in a subtle way.
The preacher was wily; Stone wanted to call that tussle a draw but he knew that he had press harder or it would be a point lost for the side of reason. “Your problem is that Abraham’s situation was not unique in the Bible. God commanded others to commit similar evil acts with a different outcome. Surely you are familiar with the story of the Levite priest and his concubine in the Book of Judges. A Levite priest and his concubine are invited to spend the night with an old man and his daughter. A mob gathers outside his door, demanding that the priest be sent out so that they can sodomize him. Instead, the old man and priest offer the man’s virgin daughter and the priest’s concubine to the mob so that they can satisfy their lust by raping the women rather than the man. What’s God’s message there? That raping women is all right as long as it doesn’t involve homosexuality? And what happened? The concubine was given over to the mob and gang raped all night – raped to death – and her body left on the doorstep in the morning. Guess God forgot to stay the mob’s hand that night. Maybe He doesn’t like women who’ve been sold into slavery by their fathers as was the concubine. These are not unique stories. The Bible is filled with rapes, murders, slavery, wars, all in the name of God. I’d rather believe in men of conscience than in an all-powerful God who could stop these crimes with a twitch of his nose, but prefers to let evil rage rampant throughout his Holy lands.”
“Again, you are deliberately misinterpreting the lessons being taught. Those are not God’s actions. Those are the actions of men. Your ‘men of conscience’ raped that poor woman to death, not God. God gives us the gift of free will and tests us to see what we do with that gift. We don’t always pass the test. And when we don’t pass the test, we are the ones doing evil, not God.” Jeremiah thundered in his familiar powerful voice, “Read your bible a little more carefully, sir. In every story you cite, it is the conscience of men that failed God’s tests.”
“And you don’t think that is evil? A God who lets men do His dirty work for Him when He could stop it at any time?”
“What alternative do you propose? That He turn men into automatons? Oh, yes, I almost forgot. That’s exactly what you think men are. Just machines made of flesh and bones that have been shaped by evolution to do only those things that give them pleasure and avoid pain. I prefer God’s way, thank you very much.” The preacher grinned with satisfaction.
At that point, Dr. Stone had little choice but to launch into an explanation of natural selection and evolutionary psychology. Brother Jeremiah let him drone on without interruption; he knew how to give a scientist enough rope to hang himself. Within five minutes, the auditorium was again filled with the sound of coughing and shuffling feet. Stone had lost them again. He had to go back on the offensive. He abruptly wrapped up his explanation and shifted gears. “We have concrete evidence for the scientific view, you have no evidence for God whatsoever. Worse, for centuries, every time religious leaders have pointed to anything, from lightning striking a tree to the sun rising in the east to the complex structure of the human hand, as evidence of God, science has given us a better explanation that doesn’t need divine intervention. Science has learned so much that you have to deny evidence that we can all see with our own eyes, like dinosaur bones or geological strata, just to give God a place in the world. Open your eyes to the truth and the world will be better for it. Scientific explanations tell us how to solve our problems. Religious dogma asks us to keep suffering in the dark.”
The preacher had to defend himself against that charge. “I see the same world that you see, but I see God’s hand at work throughout the whole world, the same way this podium is proof of the carpenter’s hand. This podium, this room, this building didn’t assemble itself by random pieces of wood falling together in a chance arrangement. The world itself proves the existence of the Creator. Your sin is denying the evidence that you see all around you. Science prides itself in seeing a leaf here and a branch there, but fails to see the forest.”
Jeremiah was trying to lure Stone into delivering another long, boring monologue about the details of evolution. Stone knew that he would lose the audience permanently if he got sucked into that trap a third time.
When he glanced down at the front row, Susanna caught his eye and smiled with the brilliance of an Easter dawn. Damn, she was a beautiful woman. And she was doing her best to distract him. He almost lost his train of thought and had to force himself to look away from the siren.
Concentrating his gaze on Jeremiah, he realized that logic wouldn’t win here, entertainment would. Instead of leaping to defense of evolution, he stayed on the offensive. “I don’t need a whole world to convince me of the existence of God. All I need is for him to pop up for a few seconds in person and say, ‘Here I am.’ I believe that you exist because you’re willing to stand right there in front of me. I believe that every person in this room exists because they all are right here.” He gestured at the audience and, reflexively, glanced down at Susanna again.
She winked at him with one of her big, deep blue eyes.
He almost lost it, but, with a heroic effort, looked away and kept talking, “If God exists and He’s all-powerful and He wants me to believe in Him, all He has to do is walk onto this stage as a concrete, physical presence, wave His hand, and say, ‘Hi, I’m here,’ and I’ll be an instant believer. In fact, I guarantee that every single person here will believe in God if he just shows up in person for a few seconds.” Stone looked around theatrically. “Well? Where is He? We’re all waiting.”
Jeremiah was not intimidated. He laughed deeply and sincerely. “God did appear in person and speak to us. Don’t you remember? That person was Jesus Christ. Jesus is all the proof that any man needs.”
“Not good enough,” Stone said. “Jesus was a great man, but he was born of a woman like any other man. He ate and slept like every other man. He bled when he was wounded and died like any other man.
“The world was filled with men claiming to be the Messiah. Jesus simply happened to be more persuasive than the others. Jesus was a great man but he is not evidence of God. He never said, himself that he was God. Or the Son of God. Read your Bible. He never made that claim. That was an invention of his followers decades after he was dead and buried.”
That got the preacher’s attention. He flushed with anger and shouted, “You deny that Jesus was God and you will burn in hell. The Bible tells us that he was the Son of God and he performed miracles to prove it.”
Stone answered fire with cool reason. “Probably not. You are aware that no one who wrote the New Testament saw him perform any miracles. None of them ever met Jesus in person. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote their gospels decades after Jesus died. They were merely relating stories that had been passed down to them through oral tradition. Actually, most of Jesus’ life and death was taken from much earlier pagan mythologies, including the virgin birth, rising from the tomb, the whole shebang. We have earlier writings of other people performing every miracle that the gospels say Jesus did. It’s a lot like saying that the latest Batman movie is the truth and that all the earlier movies, comics and television shows were not.”
Now he was really hitting hard; Brother Jeremiah was furious. “Comparing Jesus to a comic book character insults us all. You will burn in hell if you do not repent. I pray for your soul.”
“Don’t bother praying for my soul. Pray for God to step onto this stage and introduce himself. That’s all it would take to make me religious. Just ask him to come here as real as you and me, shake my hand and introduce himself, and I’ll believe that he exists just as surely as I believe that this podium exists.” Stone knocked on his podium to emphasize his point.
Jeremiah looked at Stone with a wily expression in his eye. “No you won’t. If God appears here in the form of a man, then you’ll dismiss Him the same as you dismissed Jesus a minute ago. If He appears here in his true form, the power of his appearance would strike you dead on the spot, along with everyone else in this auditorium. If He appears as a burning bush or in some other symbolic form, then you’ll dismiss that as a parlor trick. You don’t have an open mind. You are so fixed in your disbelief that there’s no way that God can appear on this stage that would convince you.”
“Not true. I would be willing to accept any violation of known natural physical laws as evidence of a supernatural event as long as the phenomenon is clear and unambiguous and as long as safeguards are in place to rule out trickery or accident. There is a standing prize of a million dollars that will be awarded to anyone who can reliably demonstrate a supernatural event. Unambiguous evidence of God would certainly qualify.”
“What is money when a man’s soul is at risk? You can keep your money. All I ask is that you give your soul to God. I propose that if God reveals his presence through a sign tonight that you’ll submit to God’s will. You’ll come to my church, be baptized, and attend Christian service weekly. Will you allow Him to save your immortal soul?”
Stone was taken aback. He had not expected to have to risk his time and reputation on the outcome of some spurious test of God’s existence. He looked at the audience and saw a thousand eyes watching for his response. He was trapped. “As long as the test is clear and cannot be won by trickery, I’ll accept your challenge. But what if you fail? Are you willing to give up your faith and deny God’s existence?”
“It is against my religion to risk my immoral soul, but I’ll offer you what you value more – my daughter. I have seen you looking upon her with lust in your eye. As Abraham offered to sacrifice his son, as Lot offered his daughters to the Sodomites, as the old man you mentioned in Judges offered his daughter to the mob, so I’ll offer my virgin daughter for your base and vile use if God does not answer my prayers.” Jeremiah considered it a coup to get away with describing the atheist as ‘base’ and ‘vile.’ That was an association that would stick in the audience’s mind.
The audience buzzed with excitement at the preacher’s proposition. They loved titillation. Jeremiah was a master of public relations and he knew that he would get national attention for such an audacious proposition. He also knew that Stone could never agree to such a thing. It would cast him in a terrible light.
He was not surprised when Stone immediately tried to temporize. “I can’t entertain that bet. Your daughter is a free, independent person. She’s not chattel that you can give away.”
Susanna leapt to her feet once more, raised her arms heavenward and shouted, “Praise the Lord. I put my trust in God. You can do as you wish with my body as long as my soul is safe in the Lord’s hands.” With her hands held high, her breasts strained against her blouse, thrust toward Stone like a pagan offering. He felt a stirring in his pants and suddenly grew fearful that he would get an erection right here in front of the entire audience. Once again, he had to force himself to turn his attention from the daughter back to the father by brute force of will.
Jeremiah raised his arms in imitation of his daughter and shouted, “Hallelujah, Lord. Test us and you will find our faith strong. It is the godless man who must fear God’s test, not us.”
The audience applauded enthusiastically.
Stone was losing them to cheap theatrics; and he hated to lose. “Name your test, then.” If the test were fair, he did not doubt that he would win. But that was as far as the theatrics would go; father and daughter would find some way to squirm out of their commitment afterward. If nothing else, they would pray together and God would tell them privately that he had relieved her of any obligation to slake the lust an unbeliever. Claiming that God had changed his mind had worked for Abraham. The faithful had the benefit of thousands of years of finding cheap justifications for doing whatever they wanted at the moment.
“No, sir,” Jeremiah replied, with false piety. “It is you who is testing our faith so it is up to you to tell us what you would consider a fair test. We only risk these frail bits of mortal clay and dust, you risk your indestructible immortal soul. What would you take as indisputable evidence of God’s presence on Earth?”
Stone shrugged. He was tempted to ask for a burning bush to appear on stage, but realized that asking for something ridiculous would only make him look ridiculous. He needed something that looked scientific. Something that was simple to understand, quick to execute, and foolproof. He plunged his hand into his pocket and drew out a quarter. “The chance of a tossed coin landing heads up is fifty-fifty. There is about one chance in four thousand of throwing heads twelve times in a row.” He did not know why he chose the number ‘twelve;’ maybe because Jesus had twelve disciples. “It’s not entirely beyond chance, but I’m willing to risk one chance in four thousand and I’m sure that your all powerful God would have little problem influencing the outcome of a dozen flips of this coin.”
“No problem at all,” Jeremiah blustered. He looked at his daughter. “Let us pray.”
She mounted the stairs at the end of the stage and walked gracefully toward her father. She had been raised in front of cameras and crowds; her comportment was perfect. The crowd stood, en masse, and cheered wildly.
Stone was reminded of the story of the mob at Lot’s door. A screaming crowd evoked primal fear. With a flash of insight, he realized that an outcome in his favor could be physically dangerous for him.
Jeremiah had brought this ‘debate’ to exactly the place that he wanted it. Logic and reason had been obliterated by raw lust. The stage was his workshop, emotion his tools, the mob his raw materials. No matter what happened next, Stone had lost.
Still, he had to go through the motions of a fair test. He raised his arms, asking for silence. It was a long time coming. While he stood there, Jeremiah and Susanna stood apart, side-by-side, arms raised, his hands clasping hers in a gesture of joint prayer, eyes turned to heaven, praying loudly, begging God to spare her the humiliation of ravishment by an unbeliever, begging Him to reveal Himself tonight.
Slowly, the audience began to sit back down, but it was a good five minutes before Stone could be heard. Eventually, though, the only sound in the auditorium was the prayers of the preacher and his daughter. Stone pointed to a distinguished-looking man sitting in the second row. “You, sir, in the gray suit. Would you mind stepping up here and helping us out for a few minutes.”
The man nodded and made his way onto the stage; he had considerably less grace than Susanna and less charm than Jeremiah. He looked stolid and honest.
Stone handed him the coin. “Is this a regular quarter, two-sides, not weighted in any way?”
The man looked at the coin carefully, before saying, “Looks like any other quarter to me.”
“Jeremiah, if we could interrupt you for a minute.”
Jeremiah and Susanne continued to pray, oblivious to Stone and his volunteer.
He walked over, stepped behind the daughter to get close to the father, tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “I would like you to inspect the coin and observe the process. I don’t want any accusations that anything was done wrong later.”
The daughter turned to look at him and, as soon as her face was turned from the audience, she let her distaste show. She hissed quietly, “I bet you don’t,” then turned back and resumed praying loudly along with her father.
Stone hissed back, “I don’t need to risk accusations, the chance of a half dozen heads in a row is slight, a dozen is miniscule.”
“Odds mean nothing when God intervenes,” Jeremiah responded gravely. But he lowered his arms and released Susanna’s hands. “We will watch your test if you wish.”
“I wish it.”
The three stepped over to the volunteer. Stone asked Susanna, “Would you like to inspect the coin?”
“I have no need to trust you. I trust God. He could make even a two-headed coin land tails up if He desired.”
“Flip the coin into the air, not too hard, we don’t want to lose it, and let it fall to the ground,” he instructed the volunteer.
Jeremiah began to pray again, but Susanna watched the coin, aware that it was her lovely virgin ass at stake.
The coin fell, bounced and rolled a few feet, then dropped flat. The volunteer bent over it. “Heads,” he announced without touching it, waiting to see if Stone wanted to confirm the result.
“Praise God,” Jeremiah intoned.
“Thank you, Lord,” Susanna echoed.
“Toss it again,” Stone instructed without walking over to look.
The volunteer retrieved the coin and tossed it again.
The audience held its collective breath; the ring of the coin bouncing on the floor echoed.
“Heads again,” the volunteer announced.
“That’s two,” Stone said, wondering if maybe God was intervening. Two heads in a row was hardly unlikely, one chance in four, but the test was already going in the Christians’ favor.
Jeremiah and Susanna continued to pray loudly, thanking the Lord for his mercy.
The volunteer tossed the coin again and bent to look.
“Tails,” the volunteer announced.
Stone felt unexpectedly smug. The Weak Law of Large Numbers had triumphed over God.
Jeremiah and Susanna continued to pray loudly, but they had heard the result – their prayers changed from pleading for intervention to acceptance of God’s will.
The crowd was silent, waiting to see what the Christians would do.
Jeremiah continued to speak to his God, making brief references to Daniel in the Lions’ den, Jonah in the belly of the whale, and the trials of Job. Finally, he promised to abide by God’s will, however difficult his trials and fell silent.
Susanna looked less happy with the outcome of the coin toss, but kept her face composed in a mask of serenity. Stone could only see her emotion as a twitch in her eyelids and a quiver at the corner of her mouth. Lovely eyelids, luscious mouth.
He had nothing to say so he waited for her to speak, curious how she would play her hand.
She spent a moment in silence, wrestling with her emotions, then, when she was sure that her voice would be strong and steady, said, “I will spend tomorrow praying for strength, praying for God’s forgiveness for our arrogance in daring to put him to our test, and then will allow my father to deliver me to your door at seven in the evening. I consent to your use of my body in any way that you desire throughout the night.”
The crowed erupted into a powerful roar of combined lust and anger. Stone feared that they might begin to riot in the auditorium. He feared for his life.
Jeremiah turned to the crowd and held up his hands in supplication. Without waiting for the roar of the crowd to abate, he shouted, “We accept God’s will. As always, God will do whatever is best for us, His children.”
The crowd roared more loudly. Stone could barely hear Susanna say, “Give me your address so we can get out of here.”
He wanted nothing more than to be gone as quickly as possible, so he pulled a business card from his wallet, scrawled his home address on the back, and handed it to her.
As calmly as though she were taking a stroll through church, she walked alone across the stage, down the stairs, and up the aisle to the main entrance. She was fearless. She was the perfect martyr. The crowd parted like the Red Sea before Moses’ staff and let her leave unimpeded. Not a single person dared reach out to touch her. Not a single man in the audience wanted to be seen as the same as the vile, base atheist.
While all eyes were on her, Jeremiah, tapped Stone on the shoulder and said, “We’ll leave by the stage door. You and I can’t go down there.”
Thus, when the crowd looked back to the stage a minute later, it was empty. The debate was over. After a minute of silent confusion, people began to mill around in the aisles and then trickle out through the doors, discussing what they had witnessed in loud and confused chatter.
* * *
The next morning, the city newspaper carried the headline, “Atheist Wins Virgin in God Bet.” The story covered the debate briefly but inaccurately, giving considerable weight to Brother Jeremiah’s demonstration of his faith in his God and completely ignoring Dr. Stone’s long explanations of science and evolution. The story drew a muddied parallel between scientists’ belief that random mutations drive evolution and Dr. Stone’s belief that random coin tosses could reveal God, making both ideas sound equally ridiculous. The stakes of the wager, the woman’s body against the man’s soul, were described in sarcastic terms that made Stone look like a lust-obsessed pervert and Susanna like an Old Testament martyr. Jeremiah was quoted extensively in the article but the reporter had not bothered to phone Stone for a comment.
When he read it, Stone concluded that the reporter must be a Christian fundamentalist, possibly a member of Jeremiah’s extensive broadcast congregation.
The story was accompanied by a full-color portrait of Susanna in a choir robe. She looked ravishing. The picture alone would double the number of men who bought the paper to read the story.
Stone did not consider himself to be a lust-obsessed pervert, but his loins stirred involuntarily when he saw the picture and remembered the terms of the bet. She was gorgeous and she had, at least for the moment, offered herself to him.
Of course, Susanna would never present herself at his door. Even Stone, himself, could come up with a half dozen religious reasons for her to renege on the bet.
If she did show up, there was no question but that he would have to send her away without laying a hand on her; without even a chaste kiss on the cheek. As desirable as she was and as horny as he was – his wife had left him for a mathematician last year and he had only recently tried dating again – he was still a gentleman to the core.
He looked at the picture again. The couple of women that he’d gone out with last month had been middle-aged professionals, not young and beautiful like Susanna. Even when he had been her age, he had never dated such a beautiful woman. It would take no small effort to send her away without even a kiss, but send her away he would, even if he had to spend the next two months jerking off in regret.
* * *
Stone was sitting in front of his computer when his doorbell rang at exactly seven that evening. He had spent most of the day trying to write a chapter on punctuated evolution for a book that he hoped would become a best-selling undergraduate text – that was the only academic writing that paid well – but had not managed to write more than a dozen words. His emotions were in turmoil; Susanna’s promise to “deliver herself to his door for his use” filled his imagination with images of her naked, nubile body. That kind of biology was not suitable for inclusion in an undergraduate textbook.
He told himself that he did not want her to show up at all, but he ached to see her lovely face up close and personal, even if only to tell her that he was relieving her of any obligation. He had made his intellectual point; he did not need to exact revenge on her body.
When he rose from the chair, he had to reach inside his briefs and adjust his erection. He wished that his prick knew what his brain had decided: that it was not going to see any action tonight. At least, not with the lovely Susanna. Only what he could provide himself.
When he opened the door, she was standing on his porch, dressed in a calf-length pleated gray skirt and white blouse, almost the same clothes that she had worn to the debate. Her makeup was perfect, not quite enough for him to see that she was wearing any cosmetics, but just enough to make her look stunning. Her long blond hair flowed over her shoulders in great golden waves. Her head was slightly bowed; she did not meet his eyes.
She was the perfect picture of a young woman submitting to a man’s will.
She was holding a small overnight bag. Her pajamas and toothbrush? She looked like she was going on a sleepover.
Looking past her shoulder, he saw Jeremiah standing beside his car, a white Lincoln Continental. A uniformed driver was holding the rear passenger door open for him.
The porch was bright under the glare of a portable floodlight mounted on a television camera. A bulb flashed. Then another and another from different directions. Someone had invited the press. It hadn’t been Stone.
Before he could say a word, Susanna pressed past him across the threshold. The brush of her breasts against his chest was electrifying. As soon as she was inside, she told him to shut the door.
“Wait a minute,” he replied, stunned by her determination to get inside quickly. “You have to leave. I don’t want you in here. I want you to go away.” He wasn’t sure where he had found the strength to tell the lie.
She pulled the door out of his loose grasp and shut it firmly herself. “I’m not going anywhere until noon tomorrow. You’re going to spend the night raping me, sodomizing me, utterly degrading me.” Her velvet-soft tone did nothing to mask her steel determination.
“No, I’m not,” he said. He could be as determined as her. “Don’t get me wrong. I want to make love to you. You’re a desirable girl. Very desirable. But I won’t rape anyone.”
“Don’t be an idiot. You have to. You don’t have any choice. Don’t you get it?” She looked at him with the pity that one would give a retarded child. “If you don’t rape me, then Daddy will win. He’ll say that, just like Abraham, God spoke to you and stayed your hand. If I’m still a virgin tomorrow, then he’s going to announce to the world that my virginity is living proof of God’s existence. Your silly coin flipping wasn’t a symbol of anything. I am the symbol. If I’m still intact tomorrow then I’ll spend the rest of my life being my father’s personal Daniel, having spent a night in the lions’ den and emerging unscathed because of my faith in God. If you don’t touch me, he’ll have a hundred thousand new converts within a week. Suckers will be lining up to give him donations. You can’t just take my virginity; you’ve got to bust me good. You’ve got to make a statement. When I walk out of here tomorrow, I’ve got to be bleeding from both ends so the world can see that Daddy’s just a psycho whoremonger, pimping out his own daughter in God’s name. Those are the rules of the game.”
“I don’t like those rules.”
“Tough. Them’s the breaks. You made up the game, now you’re stuck with the outcome. Look at this as your golden opportunity. This never happens. Beautiful young virgins don’t walk into older men’s houses asking to be ravished. But it’s happening now. I’m standing here demanding that you ravish me. Be selfish. Be brutal. Take what you want. You can do anything you want short of maiming or killing me. I’ve given you my consent, publicly and irrevocably. I want you to rape me and keep raping me until noon tomorrow, no matter what I say later. It doesn’t matter if my courage fails and I scream and beg you to stop, you have to keep on using me every way you can imagine.” She dropped her bag by the door and walked through an archway into his living room. “The sooner we get started the better. You want to ravish me on the floor right here, right now? Or flip my skirt over my head and take from behind like a dog, bent over that chair? Or do you want to drag me upstairs to your bed? There’re good points and bad for each option. The bed would be most comfortable and the bloody sheets will be a terrific prop. You do have white sheets, don’t you? On the other hand, the chair is the most degrading and that counts for a lot. But the floor will leave nice bruises and burns on my back if you pound me hard enough. What do you think? You’re the rapist, so it’s your choice. Just go for it. You’ve got to assert yourself or I’ll just run right over you. I can be bad that way. Don’t let me get the upper hand.”
“Are you really a virgin?”
“In every orifice. I’m a public figure. Daddy barely lets me out of his sight long enough to take a dump. No guy’s ever had a chance to so much as kiss me on the lips, much less make me a woman. Now, you get to do it all and I expect you to plow me like a rutting goat on crack.”
He winced at the metaphor and tried to soften the image. “Do you really want to make love to me?”
“No!” She was emphatic. “If I did that, then I would be committing the sin of fornication. I won’t commit a sin. I have to be unwilling and you have to rape me. Then I’m a victim, not a sinner. That’s my rules.”
“Can I get you a drink?” Stone needed time to think about his situation. He had been so busy lusting after Susanna during the last twenty hours that he had not considered the implications of winning the God bet. She was right. If she walked out of here untouched, her father would have the greatest propaganda tool since the Resurrection. He was damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. Damn.
“I don’t drink,” she replied. “But you go ahead if you need it. I won’t mind. I hear that a glass of whisky can help stir up a man’s lust. You are a man, aren’t you? I mean a real man? God, I hope you aren’t homo. You don’t look like one. If you are, it’s all right. You can bust me up with your hand or a cucumber or something, but I’d rather get the real thing the first time, you know.”
“I’m not gay.”
“Good. So how about having that whisky now. Or vodka or whatever real men drink.”
“Scotch. I’m partial to single malt scotch.”
“Well, you tell me where it is and I’ll pour you a glass. Think of it as part of the service. The first part of a full night of service. I’m a full service woman.”
He gestured toward the kitchen. “I’ve got a bottle in the cupboard above the refrigerator.”
He waited in his living room, listening to her bang around in his kitchen and trying to think his way out of this mess. He hated thinking that he was capable of rape but the idea of making love the beautiful virgin in his house was making him as hard as a rock. And she was consenting, wasn’t she? Hundreds of people had heard her offer herself to him last night. There was video and photographs of her voluntarily walking into his house. She had told him explicitly that she wanted him to ravish her. He was free to do anything he wanted.
His prick was telling him exactly what he wanted.
It had been weeks since he had had sex with a woman; and neither Dr. Worther nor that friend of Gary’s had been any great shakes between the sheets. And he had never made love to a virgin.
He tried to imagine what was going through her mind, but was at a loss. She seemed to be volunteering to be raped, but it wouldn’t be rape if she volunteered, would it? Wouldn’t that be consensual sex? Her whole attitude seemed to be tongue-in-cheek, but there was considerable potential for the night to go badly for her. Didn’t she realize the risk that she was taking by coming here? He was a rational man, but she was putting an awful lot of pressure on him. He could feel his logical shell cracking under the pressure of his animal emotions. She was young and inexperienced, but, when he looked at her, he didn’t see anything naïve about her. She seemed to know exactly what she wanted and was determined to get it.
Susanna returned with a water glass half filled with scotch. Fourteen-year-old Oban cost sixty dollars a bottle – she was handing him about ten dollars worth. He was glad that he had not splurged on thirty-two-year old, or he would be downing more than he could afford.
“Here’s your glass of liquid manhood. Drink up.”
He cringed at the implication that he needed to get drunk to perform. She had a vicious tongue. He set the glass on his coffee table, untouched.
“You want it like this?” he asked.
“Do me. Or call a friend over if you’re not up to it yourself. Or call a few friends over and let everyone do me. It’s up to you how I get done, but I will be done before I leave.”
“Let’s go up to the bedroom. The stairs are down the hallway.”
“You want me in the bedroom, you can drag me up there.” She tossed her head of long, thick hair at him in defiance.
“I’m not dragging you anywhere.”
“Don’t be a pussy.” She slapped him hard across the face. He froze in shock at the sudden pain. She slapped him again. “Are you just going to stand there and take it, or are you going to act like a man and defend yourself?”
She raised her arm to strike him a third time, but he grabbed her wrist. “Stop that.”
“Make me,” and she slapped him with her left hand. “Pussy.”
His face was stinging. He grabbed her left wrist, too, putting them at a momentary impasse – both his hands were occupied holding both her wrists. She jerked her arms back, trying to break his grip, but only managing to press her body against his. His chest felt on fire where her breasts were crushed against him; his groin inflamed where her crotch was grinding against his cock. Her face was thrust into his. Her eyes were glowing. Hate? Lust? Desire? He could not discern her emotion. He tried to kiss her, but she squirmed and turned her face away. He released her wrists and grabbed her hair on each side of her head to force her face back to him and ground his lips against hers. She opened her mouth and pressed back against him, wrapping her arms around his back to clutch him tight.
When he broke from her, he kept his hold on her head, looked down into her eyes and said, “You want this? Take off your clothes.”
She snarled back, “You want my clothes off, you can tear them off.”
He dropped his hands past her neckline, grabbed each side of her blouse between the second and third buttons and pulled hard in opposite directions. Buttons flew across the room. He heard cloth tear at her shoulder. Jerking the front of the ruined blouse back past her arms, he yanked it from her shoulders, leaving it tangled around her wrists, the tight buttoned cuffs keeping it from falling over her hands.
She froze in shock at the sudden exposure of her torso, clad only in a lacy white bra. Without pausing for thought, he slipped his fingers around the inside edges of the bra cups at her cleavage and pulled that apart, too. The bra parted in the center, far more easily than he would have expected. He would never know that she had used a seam ripper to weaken the center section of her bra, as well as other critical parts of her clothing, anticipating this eventuality. His motion jerked the cups away from her tits, and snapped the straps off her shoulders. The remains of the undergarment dropped down her arms to rest on the blouse that was still wrapped around her wrists, further restraining her.
She tried to raise her hands, as though to cover her breasts in a classic gesture of maidenly modesty, but the fabric that entangled her wrists forced her arms to remain behind her back and she could only jerk her hands ineffectively, making her tits bounce and jiggle.
Stone’s wife had been more modestly endowed; he had never dated a woman with such large, perfect tits. He grabbed them firmly, one in each hand, and began to squeeze and massage them.
Susanna moaned. He did not know if she were moaning with pleasure or moaning because he was hurting her. But she pressed herself forward into his hands so he chose to believe the former. He pushed slowly against her, using his weight against her, forcing her to step backwards until her calves were pressed against his ottoman. Continuing to push, she bent at the knees and sat on it. He put a knee beside her hip and pushed her all the way down on her back until her head and shoulders were lying on the sofa cushion, her blonde hair spread in a golden corolla around her face. Only then did he release her breasts, and stand back to look at her.
She remained where he had put her, her chest was heaving, her lips parted to draw air. Her eyes stared at him, wide, waiting to see what he would do to her.
She looked unbelievably desirable.
He had to have her.
Her hands were still trapped in her torn blouse and bra, now pinned under her hips against the ottoman. When she tried to sit up, her lean abdominal muscles rippling with the effort, he swooped down, grabbed her ankles and pulled her feet off the floor to the height of his waist, preventing her from rising.
She struggled against him, but was not seriously trying to escape, merely flexing her muscles, further arousing him.
When he spread her legs, her skirt slipped past her knees. Her ineffectual struggles worked it up her raised thighs toward her hips.
He saw bare flesh above the tops of nylons that were held up by a white garter straps. He pushed himself between her spread knees, released his hold on her ankles, and shoved the front of the skirt past her hips to her waist. Rather than pantyhose, she was wearing a traditional garter belt and cotton panties. Not erotic fantasy-wear, but the simple, functional undergarments that a housewife would have worn in the early fifties.
Stone was more excited by the naïve innocence of those undergarments than he would have been by some black leather and lace thing that had been designed to appeal to a fetish connoisseur. These were real. Almost without volition, his hands reached to her hips, pushed the garter straps aside, grabbed her panties at the waistband and pulled in two directions. The material tore away, first along the seam at the waist on the left side, then across the crotch, revealing tight golden blonde curls. Below that, swollen pink lips that parted to reveal slick red flesh, glistening with moisture.
She was ready for him.
His hands were trembling, shaking almost too hard to unbuckle his belt and unbutton his pants, but he managed. He did not bother with the zipper, but slid his pants and boxers down to his knees as soon as he had loosened his waistband.
He fell upon her, full length, grabbing her shoulders with his hands and staring directly into her eyes as he pushed and thrust against her vulva with his rock-hard cock. He found the entrance to her cunt and watched her face as he pushed into her. She grimaced in pain as her maidenhead parted under his pressure.
She had told him that she wanted to be busted open hard. So be it. He pounded deep into her without hesitation. She whimpered and he pounded harder. She began to cry softly and the tears welling in her eyes spurred him on. He was beyond caring what she wanted; he had to get what he needed.
He was a man and a man’s got to do what he’s got to do. Steinbeck knew whereof he wrote.
He took her long and hard with utter selfishness. When he finally spent himself into her, she was sobbing, already mourning the loss of what she had had been saving for a decade, what she had expected to save for her future husband. It did not matter that she had asked for this violation – had deliberately taunted and humiliated Stone until he had done as she demanded – she had been violated by a man that she did not even like, much less love. He had taken something from her that she could never get back.
Even after he withdrew, she felt his seed inside her, deep where only her true love belonged. She drew her knees together and brought them to her chest. Finally extricating her arms from her ruined blouse, she wrapped her hands around herself.
He stood and pulled his pants back up to his waist, then looked down at the woman who had drawn herself into a fetal position. Her flat shoes had been knocked off during his assault and lay askew on the floor in front of the ottoman. She looked bereft. Stone touched her shoulder gently and whispered, “I’m sorry.”
She twisted around to look at him though tear-blurred eyes and replied, coldly, “Get some rest. You’ve got a lot of raping left to do before noon tomorrow. You haven’t touched my ass yet and you’re going to have to fuck my mouth sometime as well. And, if you can manage to get it up after all that, you have to fuck my cunt again. Once is not nearly enough. You’ve got to be man enough to do it right or it won’t be worth the cost.”
Hearing such brutal language from the beautiful, tender, abused woman rocked Stone back on his heels. Very well. If she wanted brutality, he would give it to her. He looked at the blood from her deflowerment smeared between her legs and across the beige ottoman. He had made a good start, but if she wanted more, then he would carry on with pleasure.
Only a few minutes after finishing Act One and he already felt himself twitching in preparation for Act Two. He, too, could be a five-times-a-night man when he had such a delicious object to slake his lust.
He took a deep swig of scotch from the glass on the table, sat back in his easy chair to enjoy the view between the curled woman’s legs, and began to stroke himself in preparation for the next round.
Taking him in her round little ass would be a damned hard trial for her, but a pure joy for him. He had seen The Last Tango in Paris with his wife. She had wanted to try the experience and had helped him recreate what had happened in the movie, so he knew how to do it. If Susanna insisted that she wanted him up her butt, then he would be happy to give it to her in spades.
He warmed his gullet with another gulp of Oban.
Damned happy.
* * *
All had been quiet for a long time. Half an hour? An hour? Stone didn’t know; he never wore his watch inside the house and deliberately kept no clock in the living room. He had furnished this room for reading, conversation with friends, and quiet contemplation. And now, apparently, for raping virgins.
The raped virgin in question mumbled something.
“I beg your pardon?”
Susanna gathered her courage, turned her head to look at him and said, loudly and clearly, “Are you ready to sodomize me yet or do you have to call up a couple of your friends to do your job for you?” She let her head fall back on the sofa cushion.
He looked at the woman. She was still curled into a fetal position, but sometime in the last little while, she had pulled her skirt back down to cover her ass and thighs. “I can do just fine without any help,” he snarled, rolled to his feet and strode across the floor.
She flinched at hearing his footsteps approaching. Her mind might be telling her that she wanted to have her asshole raped but her body certainly did not want to suffer the pain. While he approached, she kept telling herself that it would be over soon and that she would survive.
He wrapped his hand deep in her hair at the back of her head and pulled her to her feet. She shrieked in a small voice. He told himself that, soon, she’d be shrieking with a hell of a lot bigger voice. He was appalled to observe his own cruelty, but that did not deter him. He told himself that it was the scotch warming his gut that was in control now, but he knew that the drink was just an excuse. He was going to do what his prick told him to do, booze or no booze.
When he started to drag her away from the sofa, the pain was intense. She screamed and reached behind her head and grabbed his hand with both of hers, trying to reduce the pressure on her scalp and keep him from pulling out her hair by the handful.
He half pulled, half dragged her to the kitchen. Without letting go of her hair, he yanked the refrigerator door open and grabbed a handful of margarine from the butter dish. Left hand cupping a generous scoop of margarine, right still wrapped in her long blonde hair, he pulled her across the room to the kitchen table and roughly bent her over it. He kicked her legs apart, and then released her hair so that he could use his right hand to pull her skirt up to her waist and push her ass cheeks open to reveal her puckered little pink asshole. She was clean as a whistle. Her asshole pulsed involuntarily in anticipation of imminent abuse.
He smeared the margarine over her hole and then jammed as much into her as he could with his middle finger. He couldn’t get much inside, she wouldn’t be particularly well lubricated, but that was her problem. She had told him that she wanted to bleed from both ends. He would give her what she asked for. He only cared that he had enough lubrication to keep himself from getting chafed.
He wrapped his hand back in her hair to make sure she stayed bent and open to him, and then shoved his pants down. He was hard again; this was far more exciting than making love to a woman his own age in the dark in the traditional missionary position.
He forced himself into her slowly; the extent of his mercy was to give her a few seconds to try to accommodate him. It was almost no mercy at all. She screamed loudly; beat a tattoo against the floor with her stockinged feet, and twisted her head back and forth, desperate to get free; desperate to move her asshole away from the cock that was straining her tight little ring of muscle. He wrapped his left hand into her hair as well, smearing greasy margarine into her lovely locks, and applied unrelenting pressure to force the head of his cock further and further into her asshole, feeling her rings of muscle resisting at first, then contracting in an attempt to expel him, and then slowly failing and allowing the inevitable violation of her anus. He began thrusting in and out, slowly, regularly. Looking down, he could see a fresh scarlet smear on his shaft. A blood vessel had burst somewhere inside her. She was getting exactly what she had asked for; she was bleeding from both ends. He kept fucking her anyway.