milking him even as her hips continued to move. Her actions succeeded in wringing a grunt from him, and then he was moving faster, accelerating his hips, thrusting and receding, driving into her with greater speed and force, until she could feel his belly begin to churn and tremble, and she knew he was about to come. She wasn't anywhere near a climax of her own, but she knew she should pretend one, so she let out a howl, a simulation or delight that she hoped would be convincing. Then his voice answered hers, and he came, flooding her all at once, and she let out another cry as he topped off his fucking with a last burst of motion.
When it was over, she lay beside him for a long moment, breathing hard, and staring at the ceiling, Julie let the feeling of self-disgust wash over her. It was compounded by the frustration of nearing, but not reaching, a climax. She felt soiled by Pete, as she hadn't felt with Max. She wasn't able to decipher the feeling, but it was there, unmistakably there, and she wished that Max had kept her.
A flood of shame filled her at the thought. If Max had kept her, Sally would have gone to Pete. At least, she thought, it might be easier for Sally with Max. And then she remembered how Sally had looked in the kitchen. It had gone easy with her, all right. She hadn't looked as though she found the experience particularly harrowing.
What did you expect of her? Would you he happier if she'd been broken by it?
Yes, she thought, she probably would be happier if Sally had been broken by the experience, or at least if she had been bent a little by it.
Pete's even breathing told Julie that he had fallen asleep. He could have been faking it, she thought, but she was certain this time that he wasn't. He was asleep, all right.
She looked across the room at the single bed, with the pile of clothing on it. Under that clothing were the guns, the two guns he had put there, loaded and ready to be used. She wondered if she could reach them in a dash, Pete was really out, from the look of him. He hadn't slept this soundly last time. Probably the tensions of the escape had finally left him, and he was exhausted. Yes, she thought, she could probably reach the guns if she really tried it. She would have a very good chance of picking up the shot gun and spinning and firing. She would hardly be able to miss at this range. The shotgun would gut him like a cleaned fish, and then she would be able to pick up the baby and run for the window.
But of course that would leave the rest of them to the tender mercies of Max and Butch. It occurred to Julie for the first time that Max was keeping people apart. Even when the adults were all in the kitchen, the baby was kept in here. And when she had the baby with her, to feed it or something, he would keep the others somewhere else. No one would be able to escape without leaving someone else behind. So he had managed to hold them all prisoners, and at the same time, make them all hostages to each other. Julie felt a flood of admiration for his cleverness. He hadn't made a public statement about the policy. He simply kept them apart, at least one person apart from the others, all the time he'd had them. It was a smart policy. She had to hand it to him. She looked at the bed against the far wall one more time and lay back again. There would be no trying for the guns. Not now, anyway. Not until there was an error, not until Max made a mistake. And that, she thought admiringly, might be some time.
Chapter Six
The run-in with Pete had been a gut twister, Max thought as he walked back to the bedroom. Sally walked along in front of him, holding her robe closed with her two hands.
Things were getting tough now, and he knew they would get tougher. Pete and Butch were necessary for the time being, unless he wanted to kill everyone in the house. And that could lead to greater trouble later. Even a farmhouse in the sticks might hive visitors from time to time. And that meant he needed someone here who belonged here. Someone who could greet visitors and shoo them away without arousing suspicion. The only one he could count on at all was the wife, Julie. And he could only count on her, of course, as long as he had something to hold over her head. Start killing off the others and she might decide to make a try the next time someone came along.
Of course, eventually it would be time to leave the farm altogether and head out for — well, out. But that was in the future. In the meantime it would be best, and safest, to hang out here. And as long as he had this many people to hold captive, he needed the help he could get from Pete and Butch. That meant that he would have to watch them. They were dangerous, both of them. He had known that all along, of course. He had selected them on that basis. Dangerous men were a benefit when you were breaking out of stir, and when you were making your way across the countryside, trying to keep the heat from catching you. They were even a benefit now, keeping three females and a healthy farmer in line. But they were still dangerous, and that meant they were a threat to him as well as to his prisoners.
When he was in the bedroom, with the girl right in front of him, he raised his foot and kicked her in the ass as hard as he could without knocking himself over. She let out a yelp of pain and surprise and fell in a sprawl across the carpeted floor. Max laughed and slammed the door behind him.
'What was that for?' she asked, when she looked up at him.
'Just for fun, sweety. That was the beginning of what you're going to be getting from me from now on.'
She sat up, wincing at the pain in her butt. She looked up at him with something in her eyes he hadn't seen before, a fear that was immediate and acute, as though it hadn't occurred to her before this moment that she was really at the mercy of a man who planned to make her life horrible.
'Get off your ass,' Max said, delighting in the power he held over her. The time to relish the power was over, he decided. It was now time to start enjoying it more directly. It was time to start taking things out on her. Maybe, he thought, if he could take it all out on her, it wouldn't bother him any more. Maybe he could forget the little twat who had gotten him into all this if only…
Sally climbed to her feet, her eyes still wide with fear. 'Look, please,' she said, her voice unsteady. 'Please don't hurt me. I didn't do anything to you, Max. It wasn't me who…'
Max slapped her across the face. He gave it a good swing with his free hand. It stung his palm, and he felt the concussion of the blow clear up in his shoulder. Sally's head snapped back on her spine, and she let out a little cry of pain and stumbled backward, almost losing her footing. She looked up at him again, towering over her, and she screamed suddenly, as though the fear in her gut had become too real, an actual physical pain. Max laughed, feeling the excitement bubble through him as he'd never felt it before. This was great, he thought. This was what he'd wanted to do all that time in stir, all that time. He'd been rotting away for killing someone who had deserved a lot worse than killing. And he should have given her worse. He shouldn't have let her get away from him that easily. Well, now he had a substitute, and she was going to serve the purpose quite nicely, he thought.
He hit her again.
This time it wasn't a slap, and it wasn't across the face. He brought his fist up into her gut with all the strength he had, and she went down on her knees, hugging her belly as though she were holding something she was afraid of losing. Max felt the pure, sexual excitement boil up in him, and he knew he wanted to take the girl, to fuck her right now, while she was in pain from the beating he had given her. While she was terrified. He wondered why he hadn't noticed before how attractive terror could be in a woman. It made them all the more feminine, he thought, all the more desirable. And now he was going to screw this particular one until she couldn't take any more.
Sally was on her knees, hugging her belly, and that held her robe almost closed there. It had fallen open when he had kicked her, and she hadn't bothered to pull it closed again. Her legs were revealed, of course, as the lower part of the robe fell away from them, and her breasts weren't completely covered either. One of them peeked out at him, a rosy nipple flattened and shrunken. The other was partly covered.
Max took a handful of hair and pulled Sally to her feet. He yanked her up with one pull, grunting from the strain. She screamed again, and he was sure it was only partly from the pain of having her hair nearly pulled out by the roots. She was screaming because she was scared shitless of him at the moment, and she didn't know what he planned to do to her next.
'Stand up,' he roared, and she managed to make her legs hold her. Max spat in her face, and the saliva ran down her left cheek in a large rivulet. Sally cried, tears running down and mixing with his spit. He let go of the hank of hair he had grabbed, and used the hand to knock her hands away from her belly. She offered him a little resistance then, probably from a muscular reaction, her arms trying to stay in position to comfort her aching gut.
