Web wagged a finger. 'There's something more. I'm only guessing, but she had a bruise mark on her neck, a bruise that she was at pains to conceal. I saw it through the glasses when the wind blew it. Why would you conceal a bruise.'
Nichole again gave a lewd grin, 'When I was afraid they'd be too revealing.'
'Exactly. Her husband goes away and she's concealing a bruise. Perhaps several bruises. And she's sad. Why? Because she misses her husband? Or does she miss being bruised?'
Nichole arched a cool eyebrow. 'If she does, she'll be easy to bring around.'
'No,' Web said, shaking his head, 'if she just missed the bruises, that would tell us a lot about her right away.' His face bent into a superior smile. 'What would you do if your husband was far away for six months, and you liked having him bruise you, you liked being bruised, pushed around?'
Nichole was unashamed, brazen. 'I'd go out and find me someone.'
'Exactly. A woman who enjoys being manhandled, who likes it rough, is a fairly free and sensual person. No, this Kim Stewart stays by herself and looks sad.'
'Meaning what?' Nichole couldn't follow his thought.
'Meaning, her husband got a lithe physical with her and she didn't like it. Klaus, good bodyguard and informant that he is, told me they were drinking at The Red Lion and El Matador the night before he left. From all that Klaus could find out, her husband Henry had quite a bit to drink.'
Nichole felt a familiar shudder and masochistic thrill go through her body at the mention of the bodyguard's name. Klaus was strong and hung like a bull, and he ready knew how to fuck, and she had done a lot of things with Klaus, things she had watched on film afterwards. Klaus, and Ernie, the chauffeur, were sometimes teamed with her when Web wanted to watch or wanted to entertain his guests. She tried not to think of Klaus and concentrated on Kim. She frowned. 'If that's true, if he got rough and she didn't like it, she's going to be tough. Maybe it won't be possible.' She bit her lower lip and looked beseechingly at Web.
Web allowed himself a weary look of polite disgust. He sighed. The trouble with Nichole was – she had no real imagination, no real understanding of carnality. She loved it, wallowed in it, but didn't ready understand it. She had no genius for it. Left to her own devices, she would never land Kim. He saw he was going to have to supervise Nichole's every move, carefully school her on what to say. 'You leap to the obvious fact and your practical, greedy, earthbound imagination is content to rest there. A bruise, a beating, a husband leaving. She did not like being beat up, right?'
'Right.'
'Wrong. That is the most obvious thing. And it's stupid, for it completely rules out what I tell you exists in every woman. Supposing she is troubled because she did like it?'
Nichole tilted her head, suddenly seeing what he was hinting at. 'Possible.'
'Not only possible, it's probable. Supposing she enjoyed it more than she ever suspected? Supposing, for the first time in her life, she was sexually excited?' He leaned close to her, smiling. 'Remember how guilty you felt at first?'
Nichole's nostrils flared with a quick passion at his nearness. It was true. Still, at times, she felt guilty.
Web started the car up and they pulled away. 'We're gong home and make plans. We're going to make them carefully, from your first reunion with her up until the time she stands in front of me.'
Nichole felt a surge of lewd passion at the idea; there definitely was something wonderfully obscene, sexual, and horny in plotting the humiliation of Kim Stewart. She squirmed her fishy young buttocks against the leather seat. 'Tell me what you'll do to her,' she said in a breathy voice.
Web chuckled. 'I'll do better than that. I'll practice them on you.'
Nichole sat with her eyes almost closed, her lips red and pouting and trembled, the nostrils of her pert nose wickedly flaring in unconcealed excitement. She felt her suddenly tingling nipples growing taut, and she crossed her legs and squeezed her thighs tight. Her sensual little body trembled in fine spasms and lewd excitement as she felt her wetly trembling cunt swell and become moist with a hot itching that was sweetly maddening. She needed relief from that itching. She needed to feel on fire and be naked and lewd. She needed to be fucked! She needed her body fucked and defiled. She wanted to be fucked again and again, not just once. She wanted to be fucked by more than one man at the same time. She wanted to be naked in front of Web and have him tell her all the horribly exciting, wicked things that he was going to do to her friend, Kim. She wanted him to practice sex on her.
She said nothing for the rest of the drive through Carmel and through the Pebble Beach gate all the way to the house. She sat trying to calm her breathing and the flaming animal passion that coursed through her body. Web would call her and she would be ready. She gritted her teeth. He knew how to turn her on, he knew how to excite her. Just a few words and he had her feeling hopelessly aroused and ready to fuck anyone or anything. He had her trained, and she clenched her fists and hoped – she couldn't pray – that he would use her… use her body… until she was a screaming, wildly writhing naked mass of wantonness…
Web Hardman didn't know how right he was. It was his genius to detect traces of sexuality or lewdness in a person's make up. Once, in a rare mood, he had bragged that he could talk to a person ten minutes, merely passing the time of day or making polite cocktail chatter, and be able to tell if that person was sensual or not. He prided himself on his knowledge of human nature and his powers of observation. He knew, after watching Kim for a few days, from watching her walk, toss her head, from the way she looked out to sea, the way she held her shoulders and contained her hips, he knew that she was deeply sensual… and ashamed of it!
But he had guessed right about Hank Stewart's wife. She had been brutalized and had, after it was all over, after Hank was long asleep, learned just how much she enjoyed his rough treatment. She had played with her breasts, hurting them, stinging and tingling her nipples and then getting up from the bed, fleeing in a guilty way to the closet where she put on a heavy terry-cloth robe and ran to the bathroom.
In the bathroom, the door shut, she felt safe. She listened at the door and heard Hank's heavy snore occasionally. She was safe, she had time. Her breath coming quickly, her eyes aglow, glinting and reflecting an inner excitement, she turned to the bathroom mirror and pulled the robe back over her shoulders, letting it fall to where it was tied loosely around her waist. She stood, naked to the waist and examined her firm young breasts in the mirror and under the antiseptic bathroom light.
She saw vivid red scratches on her tender flesh and her seeping blood somehow excited her. There were light pink scratches and darkening bruises on her shoulders, neck, and inner arms. Her lips, always full on her wide generous mouth, were a little puffed, and they hurt.
Yet the hurt – all the little hurts – excited her in some alien unexplained way. Guiltily, she wondered if there was anything wrong with her, wondering if she was 'abnormal' in some way for liking it, being excited by it. If only…
She waved a hand in front of her face and refused to finish the thought as her flesh turned to goose-flesh at half the thought.
She stared at her large, softly upthrust breasts in the mirror, cupping one and lifting it, then letting it drop quiveringly free. Her finger and thumb pinched her nipple again, and she watched herself doing it and saw her nipple gather and swell to life and become pointed and taut. Her mouth open slightly, her breath coming lighter and faster, she watched in the mirror as she put both hands on her nipples and pinched. Her eyes were half- closed, a look of indulgent lewdness came over her face as she gently dug her nails into her tender, pinkly pale flesh. Her little nipples grew very taut and even more sensitive; she closed her eyes and shuddered, taking a deep breath. It did feel good, in a strange new way. It felt good! She had never thought about it before nor had anyone ever treated her as roughly as that.
Again the thought came to her. This time she could not resist thinking it out: if only Hank had been rough and loving at the same time. If only he hadn't been drunk, if only he had been sober and treating her rough in a cold calculating way, as part of love-making?
The thought of Hank treating thus as a policy made her body shake in wanton excitement. She trembled from head to foot and felt an arousal, a sex desire and thrill like she never imagined existed. Her hands shaking visibly, she undid the belt of the robe and it fell silently around her feet. Her eyes half-closed, her eyesight suddenly fuzzed and her brain reeling, the young wife looked at the rest of her naked body. Her magnificent thighs were bruised and welted. Her groin was flushed pink. She turned slowly, twisting her head to see her proudly fleshed twin buttocks. A dark, deep shudder tremored its way up her spine when she saw marks where his nails had been imbedded in her softly yielding flesh.
