time.'
Julie glanced involuntarily at Jim. His eyes were dead. They gave her the creeps. She had never seen eyes quite like them before, and she thought that the absence of any emotion at all was more frightening than it would have been if Jim had been looking at Pete with flashing rage. She thought that it was good that Jim was tied now, because if he could get loose he would probably kill Pete. Pete would kill him with the rifle, but she had a feeling that Jim would reach Pete and kill him before dying. And she didn't want Pete dead at the price of her husband's life, she told herself. That was too high a tariff to pay for one dead hoodlum.
'Yes, sir,' she said, looking away from Jim. She got up, hugging the robe about her demurely. Max had let the girls put on robes again, because he said it was boring looking at naked women after a while.
When they were in the bedroom she turned toward Pete, ready for his hands, steeling herself against the repellent touch. What she got was a complete surprise.
He hit her in the belly with his fist. It was a harder blow than she had ever felt. She hadn't known that pain could come so suddenly and so strongly. Julie doubled over her hands, and stepped back. Pete tossed the rifle to the small bed and grabbed Julie by the hair. He pulled her upright and punched her in the face. He didn't hit her as hard this time, probably because he didn't want to damage her face. Still, it was painful. Julie let out a little yelp and tried to pull away. She lifted her hands to cover her face from any subsequent blows, vaguely conscious that the robe had fallen open. She didn't care, at the moment.
Pete let go of her hair and grabbed her hands in his. He pulled them down. 'Now, now,' he said. 'If you cover your face up, how do you expect me to hit it? That's cheating.' He let go of one of the hands and, before Julie could raise it again, he hit her, a slap this time. It stung badly.
'Please!' she cried, the words tumbling out in a garbled almost incoherent fashion. 'Please, Pete, what have I done?'
'You little bitch! You're mine. Max traded you to me for your little sister. She's his. You don't go to bed with nobody but me, you understand?' He slapped her again, then hit her in the belly with his fist once more. Julie doubled over again, and he let her drop to the floor. She choked back the vomit that rose in her throat. All she could think of was that she hoped he wouldn't hit her again. Then she looked up from the corner of her eye, afraid to let him see her looking, and noticed the bulge at the front of his pants. He was excited! This kind of thing made him horny. She wondered how much more of it he'd go in for before he worked himself up enough to rape her.
He grabbed her hair again and pulled her up. Julie came to her knees, her robe hanging open, and grasped his legs, partly for support and partly to keep him from hitting her again. She could feel his hands on her shoulders, trying to pry her away from his legs. She clung to him, crying against the front of his legs, 'No, please, I'm sorry, Pete, please, no more. I'm sorry!' Pete rammed his fist against the side of her head so hard it dazed her for a moment. And it knocked her a little away from him. When her clinging arms brought her forward again, she felt the bulge of his pants against her face, and it gave her an idea.
Just as Pete tried to pull her back again, she grabbed the zipper of his pants. She was lucky to get it on the first grab, she thought vaguely, and tugged it down. Pete slapped her on the head again, too incensed, apparently, to notice what she had done. This time, when she got herself close against him again, she reached inside and grabbed the cock. It was stiff, and large and hot to her touch. She felt his body jerk as her fingers closed over the shaft, and after one spasm of surprise, he held still.
Julie ran her thumb over the head of the cock once, with enough pressure to send a sudden, quivering thrill over Pete. Then she kissed it, touching the very tip of the organ with her tongue. There was another twitch over his body, not as strong this time, but somehow more meaningful, as though he had held himself still for what he knew was coming.
Now that she had started, Julie felt a twinge of remorse and self-disgust, but it was over quickly. She still ached all over from the beating he had given her, and anything was better than that, she thought, and besides, she would have ended up doing this anyway, when he had worked himself up enough to demand it. Better to do it now, and hope to avoid the beating.
She began to run her tongue over the head of the prick, lightly, laving it with her saliva, while her hands moved over the shaft of the organ with delicate movements, exciting him more. Pete was grunting with pleasure now, and she knew she had him, that she had escaped further punishment, at least for the time being. She turned her head and ran her tongue up the length of his shaft, raising another thrill in him. She could feel the clenching of his body against the sensations she sent coursing through him.
His cock was enormous now, heavy and throbbing and glistening with the mixture of her saliva and its own lubricating juices. Julie pursed her lips and slipped them over the head of the prick, exerting a friction that sent a violent tremor of joy over Pete's body. Pete reached down and clamped his hands on her shoulders in an involuntary spasm.
She began to rock her body back and forth a little, maintaining the tightness of her lips on the cock's head, and Pete cried out repeatedly with pleasure too sweet to contain.
Julie stopped for a moment. Her muscles were losing their power to move her. It was a wearying exercise at best, she thought grimly. While she rested her legs she went to work with her tongue again, licking and laving and washing away at Pete's cock, over the head and up and down the length of the shaft.
Then, when she felt a modicum of strength returning to her thighs and knees, she began the rocking movement afresh, and this time Pete was far enough along so that it didn't take long to bring him to his climax. In a moment, just the time it took her to stroke her lips twice across the head of his prick, Pete came in her mouth, his cream flooding into her throat like a hot, alkaline torrent. The sting and taste of it was a reward to her. She had made him hit a good one. He wouldn't be mad at her now. She continued the stroking of his prick, speeding it up to get the last drop of pleasure into his body before he went soft in her mouth. Pete grunted and then cried out, and his cock was still rigid. There was another burst of come into Julie's mouth and throat, and she swallowed it deftly, and went on with the stroking movements, although by now her legs were sore from the exertion, and her knees were smarting from the friction with the wooden floor.
Chapter Twelve
It was called a whippet, and it was probably the most deadly, close-range, personal weapon ever devised by man. Max was rather proud of his handiwork, really. He had learned about the whippet from a fellow cellmate, and this was his first attempt at making one. But the skillful work had all been done by the Winchester Repeating Arms Co.
When he and Pete had been out hunting for the women, Max had seen the tool shop and hadn't thought much about it at the time. It had simply been there, and he had filed the information away in his mind in case he had need of it later.
Then Pete started acting funny toward him, and he realized that he had made a mistake in thinking the man wouldn't mind sharing Julie with him. It had to be that. There was nothing else that could account for the subtle change in his attitude toward Max.
So Max decided to find some way to give himself an edge over Pete. Switching weapons with him had been the first thing that entered Max's mind, and Pete had agreed without a murmur. In fact, Max thought at first that Pete had been a little too cooperative about that. It occurred to Max that maybe Pete had foreseen the weapon switch and had done something to make the shotgun inoperative. But no. That wasn't likely. Pete wasn't a man who would deliberately fuck up a weapon he might need later. And anyway, Max was certain that Pete didn't suspect Max of having guessed his intentions. When Pete undertook to settle the score he would do it when the odds were all on his side. And he'd do it with little or no warning. Maybe just enough warning to let him gloat a bit.
So Max decided to get himself a bit of an edge in the form of the whippet. He had brought the shotgun out to the toolshop and put it in the vise. With the aid of a hacksaw, he removed the barrel just ahead of the tubular magazine. Then he removed the stock just behind the pistol grip. What he had when he finished wasn't the beautiful Winchester shotgun he'd had before, and it wouldn't be very useful on a duck hunt. But for his purpose, it was lethal.
The whippet was short enough now to be concealed beneath a long coat. There was a pair of overalls hanging on the wall. They were the kind that fit right over regular clothes. Max put them on, then thrust the
