from the deep easy chair he was lying back in, puffing on an enormous cigar.
June was really shocked and didn't know what to reply. He had been so charming and affable right up until that moment. What had she done to offend him?
'Ho-hum, I guess it's time for beddy-bye. It's been a long day,' Nina said, rising to her feet with a meaningful glance at June. 'Bring your glass along, honey, and we'll finish up our nightcaps while I'm showing you your room and where everything is.' She led the way from the living room with that supple graceful walk that June had noticed earlier and admired so much. Everything that Nina did was stylish and elegant, and next to her June felt like a hulking country clod, although God knows the slender blonde woman was the essence of warmth and friendliness itself and certainly not in the least bit condescending.
As she rose rather unsteadily, June said goodnight to Axel who merely grumbled something curt and unintelligible and continued to glower at the wall like a huge cross old bear.
Goodness, he certainly was a moody man… She didn't envy Nina having to put up with such sudden outbreaks of bad humor if they occurred often. It probably had something to do with the difference in their ages because Nina couldn't be more than thirty while Borman must be close to fifty… her father's age.
To her mortification the voluptuous brunette found that she was actually weaving as she followed her hostess down the hallway to the guest bedroom. Such a thing had never happened to her in her whole life before. It must be the wine, she decided. They had drunk both white Bordeaux and red Burgundy, all imported from France, and it had gone so well with the different courses that she had drunk a great deal without realizing it.
'I think you'll be comfortable here,' Nina said, patting a large double bed covered with a lovely satiny aquamarine comforter. 'Over there is your bath…' She pointed to a door across the room. 'And if you'll just wait a second, I'll see if I can find a nightie that will fit you. You certainly have a magnificent figure,' she smiled, looking June over with frank admiration in her eyes.
'Oh,' June protested, blushing at the compliment. 'Don't bother. I can just sleep in my slip.' Then she blushed even harder when she thought of how the last couple of months she had been sleeping in the raw so that she could more quickly satisfy her ever-demanding body. God, for the past four hours she hadn't even thought of… that… and now she could already feel the blood beginning to race through her veins in anticipation of the moment she would be alone in that wonderful big bed. No, dammit! She wouldn't touch herself tonight, she resolved. It would break the spell of the whole day.
Nina had been quietly watching the crimsoning face of her beautiful raven-haired guest and speculating as to what thoughts were passing through her mind to make her blush so furiously. The excited tingling in the pit of her own tummy told her that she would find out before too long. Axel had finally explained to her the first part of his plan and intuitively she knew that he was right. Her husband, as she had learned many years before, had an unerring instinct about women like June Wright; he claimed she was the type of woman who by nature is overwhelmingly sensual but who for one reason or another has not yet been awakened to the full hidden depths of her sexuality. Nina shivered with inward delight at the thought of the role she had been assigned to play in June's awakening. Moments like these were the spice of life to her.
'It's no trouble at all,' Nina said, placing her snifter of B-and-B on the bedside table as she left the room. 'I'll be right back.'
June was wandering around the spacious room admiring the paintings on the walls… they were all abstract but in soothing subdued colors that went perfectly with the rest of the decor… when she heard Axel's voice raised in a loud angry roar and the sound of shattering glass followed by a heavy smack of flesh against flesh. Seconds later Nina came running breathlessly into the room, slammed the door behind her and locked it. One entire side of her delicately featured face was blotchy red where Axel had obviously slapped her with all his might.
'That rotten bastard!' she gasped, panting like a hunted animal as June instinctively ran to her and enfolded her slim pliant figure comfortingly in her arms. She could feel the older woman's heart pounding rapidly against her breast and a tremor rack her trembling body.
'God, I'm so ashamed!' Nina choked out finally when she had gotten herself under control. 'I never dreamed he would do that with a perfect stranger in the apartment. Not that you're a stranger,' she added quickly with a grateful glance at June. 'I feel as if I've known you all my life.'
'Oh, Nina, come over here and sit down,' June begged almost tearfully, leading her hostess over to the bed and still hugging her tightly to her breast as though she were a frightened child. 'Why on earth did he strike you? Does he do it often?'
'Oh no, only when he drinks too much sometimes,' Nina said mournfully. 'And when he's been around some woman he knows he can't take to bed. He's very much attracted to you, you know, June.'
'What!' The idea that a man as old as her father could desire her physically shocked June to the roots of her being. 'I just can't believe it.'
'Well, it's true,' Nina smiled ruefully. 'I know all the signs, believe me… June, I hate to ask you this on such short acquaintance, but would you mind if I slept in here with you tonight?' She slyly eyed her guest to see if there was any sign of reluctance but there was none, so she went swiftly on. 'By tomorrow morning Axel will have slept it off, but if I go out there now he might really work me over. I'll be safe in here with you. Come to think of it, you'll be safer too if I'm in here with you.'
'Wh-what…?' June faltered, uncertain that she understood. 'You don't really mean he would…?'
'Break down the door and rape you?' Nina finished the unspoken thought for her. 'He might. He just might. He's never done anything like that up till now, but he seems to get crazier and hornier each year instead of calming down like most men do when they grow older. That bastard had a hard on for you as big as a telephone pole all during dinner. I'm amazed you didn't notice it.'
'Wh-what…!' June stammered again, hardly able to believe her ears that the elegant sophisticated Mrs. Nina Borman would use a coarse expression like 'hard on'. She hadn't heard that since the girls used to whisper it in high school.
'Oh, I'm sorry if I shocked you, honey,' Nina said understandingly, placing her slender petite hand on June's larger one. 'It's just that when Axel hits me, it makes me feel degraded like a… like a whore. And then for some reason I want to degrade myself even more and talk like a whore. Say things like — cock, fuck, ass, cunt… Damn him anyway!' She grabbed up her snifter and downed what was left in the glass in one gulp. 'Sometimes I wonder why I stay with him.'
June gazed at the abused wife with her heart full of compassion. She very clearly understood Nina's compulsive need for self-degradation… self-debasement. God, who could understand it better than she could? She had been involuntarily debased by the vile spectacle she had witnessed on the porch that afternoon, and for months afterward had continued to defile herself, plunging headlong into an apparently bottomless pit of lonely self- debauch. She picked up her own glass and slowly drained it. She felt completely sober. The fright she had experienced seemed to have cleared her head.
'Fuck! Shit! Piss! Cunt! Cock! Cocksucker!' Nina spat out the lewd words again, balling up her little hands into fists and jabbing out at an imaginary target. 'That's all I am, a cocksucker. My husband's private little cocksucker. Rub my back for me, will you, honey,' she begged plaintively, stretching out suddenly on the bed. 'It's the only thing in the whole world that calms me down. My nerves feet like they're going to jump right out of my skin!'
Aghast at the stream of filth spouting from the married woman's lovely mouth, June dazedly began to stroke her back through the sheer silk material of her cocktail dress. Nina's head was resting in the crook of her arm so that her exquisitely sculptured face was turned toward June in semi-profile. Was it possible, June wondered, that those delicate cherry red lips which looked so innocent and pure had actually been forced to close around the loathsome penis of that hulking brute out there in the living room? Probably… She was beginning to believe that Axel was capable of anything. She knew from her readings in abnormal psychology that people did indulge in such disgusting practices, and hadn't Cliff said that her own sister…
June suppressed a sudden urge to retch but oddly enough she felt no repulsion for Nina, only sadness that the older woman had the misfortune to be married to a sadistic animal like Axel Borman. Her hand slowed in its smooth stroking and she gently massaged the nape of her hostess' neck, feeling the soft warm flesh through the curling tendrils of short blonde hair there.
'Oh, that feels good, your hand on my skin,' Nina purred contentedly. 'Let me take off my dress.' She jumped quickly off the bed, unzipped her dress and let it puddle to the floor, then unhooked her brassiere and tossed it carelessly on top of the dress. June modestly turned away her eyes but not before she had a glimpse of Nina's small but beautifully shaped breasts which stood out in pearl-white perfection against the tan remaining on the rest of her
