by the Old World courtesy of his handing her in and out of the car. At dinner in the Wilmette home, seated beside his mother and sister before a beautifully set table, she observed also his adroit manipulation of the conversation so that it constantly evolved about her, concerning her likes and dislikes in the arts, her views on civic and world affairs. In short, he was treating her like an adult equal instead of being 'on the make,' as so many of her previous escorts had been.
After coffee and liqueurs, Laura and Fern Cantwell exchanged a quick glance, then Arnold's mother smilingly remarked, 'Now, Miss Woodling, if you'll excuse us, Fern and I go to bed early these nights, so we can be rested for the wearisome work of this redecorating which your very gifted stepmother is handling so expertly for us. I do hope you'll visit us again very soon.
Alone with the handsome architect, Heather eyed him, a cynical smile on her petulant mouth, and drawled, 'Arnold, you've really got it made. You're the living prototype of the Establishment. A swanky pad out here in the sticks where nobody tries to rip you off, a plushy job where you can do what you want-high society personified. Not many women ever get to be in your shoes.'
'Do I detect the envy of a Women's Libber in that comment, Heather?' he reached over with his monogrammed lighter and lit her cigarette before his own.
'Not really. Maybe I just don't like to live by convention.'
'Since you're in such a fighting mood, how about some chess?'
'Suits me. Where's that fancy board of yours?'
'I moved it downstairs to the basement recreation room while this first floor is being remodeled. By the way, thanks for being nice to my mother and Fern. They like you.'
'Thanks. They're square too, but I don't mind their kind. And they sure think the sun rises and sets in you, Arnold.' She gave him a mocking little smile as she rose and followed him down the narrow little stairway to the basement. For her date tonight. Heather had restyled her lustrous, soft coppery-red hair into a short pageboy with curls turned under, put on only a touch of pale pink lipstick, and worn her prettiest dress, a green rayon print with short puffed sleeves and V-shaped collar, the skirt ending an inch above her shapely knees. Though fond of white calfskin knee-length boots, which she invariably wore on the Midlothian campus, she had tonight substituted trim three-inch-heeled black suede pumps and her gauziest copper-toned nylons which accentuated the alluring pale ivory sheen of her skin.
Arnold Cantwell stood aside at the door of the recreation room to let her go ahead of him, his lips pursed, his eyes scanning her voluptuously ripe figure. There was a miniature bar at one end, with leather-padded stools; tables for pingpong and billiards, two armchairs, a backless, low, long black leather-upholstered couch, and the familiar table with the ivory chess pieces set out on both sides of the inlaid board. The walls of this attractive room were decorated with glass-covered, silver-framed Currier amp; Ives prints.
Heather walked over to the side of the board on which the white pieces were arrayed, glanced mockingly at the architect, and proffered, 'Maybe we ought to play for stakes, the way the American masters used to do at the Coney Island concessions back in the Thirties.'
'What did you have in mind?'
Her eyebrows arched insolently. 'I'll think of something-no, maybe I'd better not. I might shock you.'
'You know, Heather, I've the impression you think I'm old enough to be your father. I happen to be thirty-two, which means I'd have had to conceive you towards the latter months of my eleventh year. About that time in life I was having trouble with algebra, not girls.'
She shrugged as, still standing beside the table, she reached out to move the king's pawn two squares forward. 'You probably never had trouble with girls, not a square like you, Arnold.'
'So that's what you think?'
'If you want me to be perfectly truthful, yes. That's why, though you've certainly been very courteous and treated me like a lady, I've a feeling nothing much is going to happen. So I'd just as soon have it understood at the start that I like playing chess with somebody who knows how to play, but that's about all'
'Sit down and let's play, then. I'll play the French Defense, P-K3 to your first move,' he said curtly as he seated himself and made the move. Heather giggled, pulled back her chair, and seated herself, and the game began.
Half an hour later, the red-haired beauty, In her Intense determination to win; had begun a premature king's side attack. Five moves later, scowling as she stared at her hopeless position, she shrugged again, this time in resignation, and turned down her king. 'I guess you've got me, Arnold.'
The prematurely gray-haired architect shoved back his chair and rose, studying his lovely, petulant red-haired opponent, who leaned back in her chair to look up at him with a defiant, sulky frown. 'I have, at that, Heather, and I appear to be stuck with you.'
'And what the hell is that supposed to mean, Arnold?'
'Just that I'm going to take you up on your proposal of stakes for the winner, my girl.' He moved swiftly round the table, caught her by the wrist and yanked her to her feet. As she gasped in startled surprise, Arnold Cantwell doubled her captive wrist behind her back with her left hand, then calmly slapped her cheek smartly with his other palm, and before she could recover from the shock of this unpredictable behavior, kissed her hard on the mouth.
'Damn you! Let go of my wrist, you bastard!' she huskily gasped, squirming and twisting to evade him.
'I see. You're like most sophisticates of your type, Heather, all talk and pretense and no real sincerity.'
'Ohh! And you-you're a rich, parasitical snob, you are!' she hissed, and, drawing back her hand, slapped him back across the mouth.
Arnold Cantwell chuckled. Then, without haste, he circled her waist with his left arm, crooked his right arm round her knee hollows and lifted her up in the air, and carried her over to the couch. Frantic with chagrin, Heather kicked wildly and struck at him with her fists, her pumps flying off to land on the floor with a thud. Ignoring her furious struggle and her profane threats, he forced her down on her belly on the couch, then swiftly yanked up her skirt and lace-trimmed white nylon petticoat to expose the ripely curved, creamy thighs above the tops of her copper-tinted hose and the provocative little white nylon panties which left the base of her opulent young buttocks temptingly bare.
'Goddamn you, what the hell are you doing-pull my skirt down-stop it, Arnold, I tell you-ouch- hey-noooooo!' For he had yanked her panties off and flung them onto the floor, then applied five or six stinging swats with his right palm on the lush rondures of her bottom summits, imprinting a bright crimson hue on the smooth satiny naked skin. Then, even as she kicked and ragingly cried out, he turned her over onto her back and swiftly and agilely mounted her. Heather's cat-green eyes, supremely dilated and glistening with fury, fixed on him with disbelief: he had yanked down the zipper of his immaculately pressed trousers and emerged a formidably long, broad-tipped penis whose dark veins stood out ominously against the tightly drawn skin of the shaft.
'For Christ's sake-Arnold-what do you think you're-oh you bastard, no!' she shrilled, trying to fend him off with her fists, trying to kick and twist herself off the couch. But already he had seized both her wrists, and, forcing himself between her plump quivering, flexing thighs, mockingly lowered his face to hers and sibilantly rejoined. 'Why, I'm going to fuck you, of course, Heather. I won the game and I claim the prize.'
Adroitly, he shifted hold of both her slim wrists to his left hand, and deliberately slipped his right hand down between their bodies till he palmed the thick forest of dark red silky curls shrouding her soft fleshy cunt. Heather wriggled frenziedly, her face scarlet and twisted into a vindictive mask as she kicked her stockinged legs out, then lifted them and jammed down savagely with her heels against his buttocks.
'You want to kick, do you, Heather?' again he chuckled as, staring down at her angry, reddened face, he forced his prickhead against the lips of her fleshy vulva. Then, even as she uttered a shrill shriek of fury at this obscene usurpation of her body, Arnold Cantwell nimbly knelt up, seized both her nylon-sheathed knees with his hands and forced them back against her heaving breasts, thus lewdly gaping the pink maw of her cant as well as the shadowy ambery groove which led to the furtive crevice of her anus.
'Stop it, you Goddam son of a bitch you, stop that!' she shrieked, beside herself, flailing out uselessly with her fists and trying to roll this way and that. But he maintained her, his strong fingers sinking into her knee hollows to flatten her round breasts down with all his strength as, with a mocking little smile, he bent his head and thrust his tongue into the distended cleft of her yielded cunt.
Heather frantically kicked her stockinged feet this way and that, again exerting all her strength to try to roll away from him, but in vain. Uttering hoarse, in-coherent cries, her lovely face congested with rage and shame, she continued to strike out at him with her fists. But Arnold Cantwell, with surprising dexterity, kept her in that
