"I don't know," he said. "Give me a couple of days to think about it and I might have an answer." He turned and flashed a smile at me. "I've never thought about owning an animal."

We drove the rest of the way in silence. It wasn't far. I recognized the spot where Helen had gone off the road. Tracks indicated she had been pulled out already, and as we approached the kennel, I recognized her car in the parking area.

Helen came bursting out of the office when she saw me get out of the truck.

"Holy Smokes, Bea," she shouted. "I called the cops on you. What happened to that other truck?" She looked at John and smiled. "it doesn't look to me like you were in any trouble exactly."

"Wait until I tell you," I said. "You're just looking at the happy ending. This is John, Sis. John, this is my sister, Helen."

The introductions over, Helen started in about having a "goody" to tell me. It couldn't be any more interesting than the one I had for her, I said. She went back inside to telephone the police that I had been found, and I talked with John.

"If you want to heat things up, it's all right with me," I told him, "but it will have to be without strings." I explained about my job, my love of New York, my desire for independence.

"After you know me awhile," I went on, "you'll see that I value friendships highly. I'm independent," I said, "but I need people, also. Even men."

"An independent women can't hope to be any man's pet," he said. "I'll take what I get. What do I have to lose? "

"Why, you lose me, John," I said.

"On your terms I never really have you in the first place," he came back.

"Materially, no!" I exclaimed. "But why is material possession the only way to think about your relationship with a woman. Are we really just property? A man's daughter leaves home, he doesn't have her materially and, yet he still has her in other ways, still loves her, and she him."

"A man wants to feel he's important to a woman," he stated.

"You don't think the father is important to the daughter?" I asked.

"It's a special relationship of diminishing importance in his everyday life. Anyway, Bea, you're comparing apples to oranges," he said. "Granted, the pair bond between a man and a woman should not be an owner-possession thing, I don't think you can compare a daughter to a wife."

"I guess what I was trying to say was that you speak of your daughter as yours all of your life, whether she's there at home with you or not, or whether she's had ten husbands in Timbuktu, she's still yours, your daughter." I insisted.

"Go on," he said, calmly.

"Why then, the moment a woman ceases to act as if she were an indentured servant, or what is the term, having left my bed and board, does she cease to be your wife? You've had a more intense relationship with her than you've had with any other woman, yet you'll put up with less."

"It must be," he said, "that people have a low regard for the objects that have satisfied their sexual appetites, and a high one for those who have not. If we all could fuck our mothers and our daughters, our sisters and our aunts, we might see a little more clearly."

Helen interrupted our discussion by her return. "They want to talk to you, Bea," she said.

I stepped into the office. There was no one inside, but I noticed the telephone off the hook and picked it up. Since Helen had brought them into it, I decided to tell the police the entire story. I told them I would not sign a complaint. I was in Texas only a few days, I said, and didn't want to stay.

They settled for a description of the truck, and the names of the boys involved. They would pick them up for questioning, and perhaps put a scare into them.

Just as I was hanging up, the tall, pot-bellied man who ran the place came into the room from a rear doorway.

"Glad to see you back, miss," he said. "Your sister was plumb worried about you." He fumbled in a shirt pocket for a cigarette. "Did she mention my cheetah?"

"You have a cheetah?" I asked him.

"Most beautiful cat in the world," he asserted, lighting the weed, and blowing out the match with his first puff.

"I promise to ask her," I said, turning to go. He was leaning on the counter with both hands. The sleeves of his shirt were rolled up past his elbows, and I noticed the arms were quite hairy.

"You all come back, now," he waved. He had a look about him, the kind of an expression on his face I used to think belonged only to old torn cats.

Helen was suggesting the four of us, Jack, herself, John, and I, get together that evening. She suggested her place, but John came in with a good pitch for his place in the woods.

As I rejoined them I said we might have to wear hip boots. John laughed.

"I told your sister I lived on a muddy road," he said to Helen, "but it's actually quite dry at the moment."

"Well," said Helen, "let's hope it doesn't rain then. His place all right with you, Bea?" she asked.

"Well, those aren't exactly the conditions I had anticipated," I put forward. "John told me he lived alone."

"I see," said Helen, catching my meaning. She looked from one of us to the other, savoring the thoughts she must have been thinking.

"But let's see what develops," I continued, smiling up at John. "Well have to postpone our debate," I said to him.

We parted then. As we were driving off, John pulled the pickup alongside my window. He was holding something tightly in his fist and extending it outward.

"Present for you," he said. "Compliments of John Young."

I reached up and took it. It was my torn underpants. I looked at him in complete surprise. "How did you?"

"Wedged down between the door and the seat," he said. "See you later," he waved, and drove off.

I held the torn, stained reminder of the morning's adventure up for Helen to see.

"Come to think of it, Sis," she observed, "I'd like to hear your story first."


Chapter 5

I was in the bathtub soaking, telling Helen of my narrow escape that morning. I had filled the tub full and was able to submerge all of me, except for my head. The water was good and hot.

Helen was sitting on the toilet seat in her robe listening intently, her feet propped up on the edge of the tub. I could see everything she owned in that position, and what I saw was deliciously pleasing.

Remembering the comments made about my hairiness that day, I wondered what, if any, remarks would have been said had it been Helen there instead of me. Certainly no man in his right mind could fault that pussy.

Her hair was much lighter than mine and formed a perfect triangle. Whereas mine tended to grow wild, hers almost seemed sculpted, the margins clear, the hairline well defined. The hair itself glowed in contrast to my own, which could look dull, lacking the magical highlights I observed now in Helen's.

Her well-developed lips formed a perfect cleft. No open gash here, no flabby distended labia. Just Helen's fat little pussy for all the world to see. I wondered how much Jack appreciated that darling cunny.

Helen observed my rapture and, noticing the source of it, closed her legs and tucked in her robe.

"You can make a girl horny sometimes, Bea," she noted. "There are times when I think you appreciate me that way more than Jack. He's never one to drink me in with his eyes like that."

I lifted a leg up out of the water. "I wish I had it all together like you," I told her.

"Bea Starr, you're still fourteen years old wishing you were seventeen, aren't you?" she maintained. She got up off the seat. "Here, let me scrub Your back."

I sat up, swirling the water around me. My back was piping hot.

"I better take my robe off," Helen said, "or it'll get wet for sure." The robe dropped and she stood there, naked, as close to me as ever I could remember. Uncontrollably, my hand reached up and lightly touched the top of her thigh. The wet fingers trailed off down and back into the tub.

She bent over and started scrubbing my back with a soapy washcloth. Her large breasts swung in unison with her movements. I turned my head to get closer to them, and one slapped against my face, the hard nipple tracing a line across my upper lip. Indescribable urges were tormenting me.

"Hey!" I cried. "That's heavy cargo."

She laughed. She was rinsing the back now, lifting the water up with both hands and letting it stream down from my neck. Running her flat hand back and forth across, she seemed satisfied no more soap remained. "There!" she said, straightening.

I rose from the water and stood there as she handed me a towel. She had put her robe back on, and as I stepped out of the tub, she went out the door. I dried myself off quickly and got into my own robe.

Helen was seated at the vanity when I entered the bedroom.

"Let's hear your story, sweets," I urged, flopping on the bed. "I'll bet it has something to do with a cheetah, am I right?"

"Did Telford tell you?" she asked, slightly surprised.

"The guy at the kennel is Telford?" At her nod, I went on. "Only that he owned one and to ask you about it. He looks like a guy that would own a big cat. What happened after I left?"

"After you left I got out of the car and stood, leaning up against it. It makes me nervous to just sit in a parked car alone. I watched the cars go by, and saw the black panel truck, too. Some kid was driving. He slowed down and mentally undressed me as he went by.

"I remember thinking, these guys will be back to give me a hard time. To my surprise when they did, there were you in the middle looking out at me. I couldn't understand why you hadn't stopped to explain what was going on.

"My next thought was that you hadn't stopped because they had kidnapped you, horrible as that sounded. I started hiking then back to the kennel as fast as I could. It must have taken me ten or fifteen minutes. When I burst into the office I really startled Telford. I was so out of breath I couldn't make much sense, my words were mostly gasps, I guess.

"Telford finally got the gist of my story and told me to wait and see, that you had probably picked up a ride to the AAA station. Just in case, I thought I had better call them anyway. If you did show up, they would simply tell you I had already called and told you to wait there.

"I did that. I called them and no, you hadn't arrived yet. They wanted the Triple A number, but I didn't have it. You had taken the card, remember? They finally agreed to send the tow truck out, anyway. One down, one to go, I thought.

"Telford kept telling me to relax, and then offered me a drink. It sounded like a good idea, and I told him to make it real stiff. He said, "it'll be that, all right" and asked me to join him inside.

"We went through a door in the back of the office down a hallway to a door he had to unlock to open. Turned out to be a kind of lounge, you know, soft chairs, lots of pillows, a bar on one side.

"He mixed me a drink he called a tomcat. It tasted good, like punch almost, but what a wallop. He waited until he thought I was reeling, and then told me he had a friend who would like to get acquainted with me.

"At first, I thought, he's got some kid there who's going to come in and really take advantage of me. But, no. What he's talking about is a big female cat, and I mean cat. He opened a door in the room and in bounded this thing. It had legs as long as mine, and black spots all over it.

"The thing was purring like crazy and kept getting down on its knees and elbows and crawling across the floor, its tail way up in the air. It reminded me of the way they get Lassie to crawl on TV when she's acting a part where she's wounded.

"After crawling like that for a while, the big leopard would throw herself on her side and roll over on her back, feet up in the air. She would do this once or twice and then get back up and start meowing. And what meowing! In that small room it was frightening."

"Telford is enjoying every minute of it, of course. He sat there and just roared, that big belly just heaving up and down."

"Finally he said, 'let's have some fun' and went over to the wall and pushed a switch. The whole Wall opened like locks on a canal and out came a low king-sized bed along the floor. It finally stopped before it knocked me down."

"He wanted us to take our clothes off, but I said nothing doing. Wait until you feel all that fur against your body, he said.

"At that point, Bea, I was confused. I still didn't hanker to strip down for that big galooka for any reason, but wasn't sure at the same time what he was intending."

"Do as you please then, he said. Watch, if you want, he told me. They pay good money to see this in Saigon, and so on. My first impulse was to turn around and get the crap out of there, but you know, Bea, how funny I can think something is when everyone else is somber-faced. I stayed."

"Telford started taking his clothes off. When he was fully stripped, he looked a sight. That man is the hairiest thing I've ever seen. There wasn't a spot on that body that I could see that wasn't covered with hair, except for what was dangling out of you know where. He paddled over to the bed with the cat and both of them started rolling around in it. He grabbed the cat in a tight embrace and wrestled with it as they rolled."

"Sure you don't want to try it, he asked me, stopping to stroke the animal down the back. The big cat loved it all and purred and purred. It sounded as though they were building a subway underneath the building, the purring was so deep-throated. I was sure, I said."

"I saw then that Telford was getting a hard-on. It just came bobbing up out of the mixture of hair and fur on the bed. He sat up and clutched it in one hand as if he didn't know what to do with it. His eyes had a glassy look, and I thought for a second he was going to sit there and masturbate. He came out of the trance and reached with his hand for a spot far down on the cat's underbelly. With his thumb and forefinger, he tweaked the spot several times. The effect of the cheetah was instantaneous. It immediately locked itself into that crawling position I told you it was doing before. It threw its tail up and started creeping forward on the bed."

"Now I noticed, where I didn't before, a large pink hole with a cream-colored rim pouting open several inches down from the tail. It caught the light's reflection and glistened. Telford got down on his knees behind the cat and placed the end of his tool square at the lustrous center of that hole. The purr changed to a lower-pitched vibrating noise, and I saw the flesh around the hole push up and outward as if seeking to grab hold of the intruder that bad disturbed it."

"The man eagerly allowed the grasping hole to have its victim. The rim leeched around the end of his rigid penis and began pulling it in as a snake might convulsively swallow a young pig."

"The cat's vibrating noise increased in intensity. It turned its head around as if to check on the source of the thing penetrating it and opened its mouth in a deep wail. This wait kept threatening to reach shriek proportions. Telford's organ had gone all the way in, but instead of pumping in and out as you would have expected him to have done at that moment, he made a series of uninterrupted vibrating movements forward. They were of a very heavy nature affecting every muscle in his legs. He was a big man, and it was something to see the cat tearing him up like that. He came suddenly, violently, as if all the juices in his body had been sucked out through that one part of him."

"The cat had taken it all but would not let the man go. I saw the mixture of pain and pleasure on his face. The beast greedily maintained its hold. It wanted more, but the man had no more to give, except the flesh itself."

"The cheetah was screaming loudly. Telford himself was bellowing and digging his fingers into the animal's sides, pushing himself backward. If anyone had been outside the door and heard all that commotion, they would have thought someone was being fed to the lions. It was a terrible din. It was so wild, I stood up and edged toward the door. I was afraid the cat would come for me after finishing up with Telford."

"He finally got himself out of the cat's ass and sat on the end of the bed. He pushed both palms down around covering his genitals and howled. The howling was interrupted by an occasional outburst like 'hah' and 'oho' and 'fat fuck'. He paid absolutely no attention to me. The cat was flopping all over the bed doing those rolling motions I told you about. It looked quite pleased. It stopped the rolling only once to reach down and lick at itself a few times and then went right back to the rolling and tossing."

"Mizz Smallwood, Telford finally said to me, come on over and give the little baby a hug. She won't hurt you, he went on. She's just the softest most lovable thing in the world."

"The whole business had frightened me as I said, but it had also made me a little hot. After all, Telford didn't have any clothes on, and they had been doing it there right in front of me. I half wished the big cat had been a tom and I might have been tempted."

"I was willing to settle for Telford even. All that hair, and that big belly, not to mention that rod of his, I thought maybe he had in mind to use me for dessert, but when he got up, he walked back of the bar and washed himself off in a little sink that was there."

"Shall we have a drink then, before we leave, he said, putting his shirt back on. I knew then he was in love with that cat and no other pussy. I was still half-clobbered from the last one and told him no thanks."

"He got all the way dressed then and put the cheetah back where she had come from, and we came back down to the office. It was not long after that the tow truck came."

I looked at my sister when she had finished the story. "You mean," I said, "he never once hinted at wanting to have intercourse with you?" I turned over, propping my head on my elbows.

She shook her head.

"Amazing," I declared. I decided to tell her the whole story about Cameron then. She listened, laughing at some of the ways I was describing the scene in the Scotsman's living room.

"Well, it's true," she remarked when I had finished. "A person becomes very devoted to a pet. I have to think of myself with Clyde. Bea, you've never owned any pets and don't know," she chided. "I'm surprised, too," she continued, "considering your occupation."

"Maybe that's why," I suggested. "It may be that I did not want to become too attached to an animal."

"Or a man either," she came back. "You're going to end up an old lady having to pet your own pussy if you're not careful. I don't know where you got to be so independent."

"But you don't just have intercourse with Clyde," I said, changing the subject. "I mean, you're not so wrapped up with him that you can't think about doing it with anyone else." I got up off the bed and walked to the window.

"I suppose if it weren't for Jack, it might end up that way," she posed. "Jack keeps me in touch with the world of people somehow. Telford and this bagpipe player don't have another human being in the house to remind them."

"That's it, isn't it?" I surmised, turning from the window. "They get so they like it that way and no other, and when the opportunity comes along to go to bed with a real woman, they either don't recognize it or can't work up any interest."

Helen was blushing. I knew she must have been thinking about Clyde. She did like it when the pooch did it to her, and maybe liked it better than with Jack, well, certainly with Jack, and for all I knew, better than with anyone that she had done it with since Clyde first screwed her that night.

"Bea?" she queried. "Do you honestly think we'll find Clyde?" The tone of her question implied she was falling into depression again.

"You've done everything anyone could do in the situation," I assured her. "I'm optimistic myself, and you should be, too." I walked over to her and patted her shoulder.

"I miss getting it," she said, "getting it good like that, and this morning, watching Telford do it to his cat reminded me." She bent her head down and kissed the back of my hand.

"Well, there's always the pony," I remarked.

Her eyes lighted up. "That's true," she declared. "I had forgotten about him." She stood up and went over to the window. "He's down there grazing." She turned to face me. "Let's get him inside. It's my turn, isn't it?"

She took off for the stairs with me following. We kept colliding with each other in the run and started laughing. Helen reached the back door first and opening it said, "You get him, Bea. Your robe is heavier than mine." It was true. You could see right through the thin nylon of her robe. The firm breasts were heaving outward as she tried to catch her wind after running so hard.

I stepped out into the yard. The pony, expecting a handful of grain, came trotting up to me and worked its lips at my right hand. It had such a soft mouth. A light breeze was playing with the snow white mane, and the afternoon sun gave its tawny hide an almost golden sheen.

"You can have some grain," I said softly to him. "But first a little fun inside." I gave him a pat on his cheek, and guided him back into the kitchen.

Helen was holding the door open. "Do you think we can get him to do it again?" she asked as we came inside. "Oh, I'm so hot," she squealed, clutching her crotch through the robe. She did a little jumping movement and followed us into the living room.

The pony walked to the center of the room, lowered his head and shook it four or five times. He put one foreleg out stiff in front of him and licked at one of the joints.

Helen had taken off her robe and was walking around him looking longingly at every part of him. She came up to him and ran her thighs along his flank.

"Just the feel of him is enough to set you off," she declared. "What marvelous hair!"

She knelt down on one knee and started caressing the folded skin out of which his enormous shaft would surely emerge if she were successful.

I knelt down on the other side and watched her ministrations. She was feeling his testicles with her other hand, cupping her hand under first one and then the other, and then trying to feel the weightiness of both of them at once.

"What big balls!" she oodled.

The pony turned his head and stretched it backward under his belly as if to nibble at her kneading fingers, but otherwise was showing no reaction to her efforts.

"How did he get hard yesterday?" I asked her.

"I don't know," she answered. "I just walked into the living room, and there it was, coming out."

"Do you suppose he knows?" I wondered out loud. "Or is it an involuntary action?"