Betsy Seven and a Half The worst thing about nude bars is not the sleaziness. You get used to that. It's that the whole experience is one big tease. You get to see all the tits and pussy you want, as close as you want, but you can't touch anything. And the more into it you get, the more frustrated you go home. I got to touch a little of it tonight. There was a new girl, redhead, rail-thin, tits about to burst from her implants. I hadn't seen her there before. "Natalie," her name was, or so the DJ said. I got a couch dance from her, fifty bucks to have her writhe around on me for one song. Most of the girls at that place don't like customers to touch them, even during the couch dances, but Natalie took my hands and put them on her tits right away. They felt like beach balls, or giant zits. I was afraid to squeeze her too hard. The hard-on she gave me gradually subsided after the dance, leaving behind an ache in my groin. That's when I started thinking of Cindy again, or more specifically, Cindy's mouth. As much as I hated her, no one else I'd ever known gave better blow jobs than she did. Tonight's case of blue balls rapidly extinguished what little enjoyment I was getting from watching the dancers, so I decided to call it a night. I slunk out to my car and drove home, intending to go straight to my collection of porn and beat off. It didn't quite work out that way. The first sign of anything weird was a low moan coming from the alley next to my apartment building. Half-moan, half-whimper--a sound of pain. I'd experienced enough of it--first-hand and otherwise--to know. I glanced down the alley. Three large figures around a smaller one on its knees. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see that the smaller figure was a woman, bare-breasted, arms around her waist as if she were protecting herself. One of the larger figures smacked her across the face. She took it, only letting out another quiet sound of pain. That was when I saw the man holding his erection in his hand, offering it to her. Thinking I knew what I was seeing--not really thinking much at all, honestly--I turned immediately into the alley. "Hey!" All four of them looked in my direction. As I got closer, I saw three young guys in expensive suits standing around an even younger girl. "Mind your own business, man," one of them snapped. The other two came up on either side of him, blocking my way past. I clenched and relaxed my fists. "Get out of here. Let her go." They laughed. I stepped closer, and one of them tried to push me back. I grabbed his wrist and jerked him forward, twisting his arm behind his back as I swept his feet out from under him with my leg. He went straight down on his face. The other two came at me, and the nearest one I redirected into the alley wall. The third one had some martial arts training, and he threw a kick at me. I blocked it and slammed my heel against the side of his knee. There was a sickening crunch as the ligaments gave way, and he went down screaming. The second guy had started to come at me again, but his friend's predicament stopped him in his tracks. He backed away, holding his hands up. The girl was on the ground, cringing. I helped her to her feet. She pulled her top over her head and down over her naked breasts. "Come on." She grabbed a scruffy backpack off the ground and followed me out of the alley. The guys who had assaulted her stayed where I had left them. I lived two doors away, but I felt a definite urge to get out of the vicinity until things calmed down. I kept walking up the street, and the girl followed me. "Are you all right?" I finally got a good look at her: Short, big brown eyes, long brown hair, big tits filling out a black tank top. She could have been Cindy's kid sister. She couldn't be more than nineteen, probably less. "Yeah," she said, "I'm all right." She felt gingerly at the bruise next to her left eye. "Look, thanks, but this wasn't what you think it was." "What do you mean?" "They weren't raping me or anything. We kind of had a deal, you know, it just got out of hand." "A deal?" Then I realized what she meant. "Oh." She looked past me, still rubbing her eye. "Yeah." I looked behind us. We needed to get away from that alley for the time being. "I don't want to leave you alone with those three back there. You want to get a cup of coffee or something?" She shrugged. I took that for a yes and headed a couple of blocks down the street. I got a better look at her as we passed under a streetlight. Sixteen, maybe. No more than eighteen. A street kid with her whole life in an overstuffed nylon backpack. Cute, but getting worn out fast. I'd seen that look in her eyes before, but only in guys who'd seen combat. I figured she probably had, just not the sort I was used to. There was an all-night diner on the corner. We took a stall in the back. I'd been checking behind us the whole way, watching for her assailants--or customers, I supposed--but there was no sign of them. The waitress appeared. I ordered a coffee. Betsy looked at me, a mixture of hope and wariness in her face. "You mind if I get something to eat?" "No. Go for it." She ordered a double cheeseburger, a salad, chili fries, and a large soda. I wanted to ask if she'd eaten recently, but the answer to that question was fairly obvious. "What's your name?" I asked when the waitress left. "Betsy. You?" "Howard Bloom." "Thanks for the food." "No problem." We didn't say anything else for a while. I knew better than to ask stupid questions about how she ended up on the street. Whatever it was, I doubt she wanted to talk about it. "You look a lot like someone I used to date," I said. She looked up from her meal. "Seriously?" "Yeah. Girl I lived with briefly. Name was Cindy." "She dump you or you dump her?" "Caught her with someone else." She nodded. "I can believe it." I lifted my eyebrows at her. "What does that mean?" "You look like a guy girls would screw around on." That remark rendered me speechless. Betsy just stared at me. "It's true, right? I bet you get a lot of action, but the girls always dump you afterward." I looked away from her. I'd just saved this girl's ass and bought her dinner, and she was insulting me. Even if what she was saying was true. "What about you? You make a habit of handing out blow jobs in dark alleys?" "Why? You want one? Payback for saving my butt or something? Is that how it works?" "You don't owe me anything. Your gratitude would be nice, but if I broke up a good business deal, I apologize." She shrugged, looked down at her meal. "They paid me first. I always get the money beforehand." "How much? I'm just curious." "Twenty." "For a blow job? That's cheap. What else?" "That's all I do." "Regularly?" She speared a french fry and stuffed it in her mouth. "When I need the cash." "Tonight should last you a while, then." Another shrug. "Week, maybe." She looked up. "What about you? What were you doing out there at three a.m.?" "Heading home. I live in the building next to that alley." "From what? Work?" I paused for a moment, then thought, who cares? "Nude bar." Her eyebrows went up a little. "You were at a nude bar?" "You sound surprised." "No. It fits. Nobody at home?" "A cat." "What kind?" "Mixed. Tabby. Female." "What's her name?" "Six-and-a-Half." She laughed in disbelief. "`Six-and-a-Half'? Her name is `Six-and-a-Half'? What kind of fucking name is that?" "She's a cat. Who says cat names have to make sense?" She snorted. "That's mean. She deserves a normal name." "I'll call her Betsy, then." She didn't say anything, and I saw something cracking in her eyes. She looked down rapidly. "Don't call her that." "Why?" "Because I suck." About a dozen possible responses spun through my head. "Why do you say that?" "Why do you care?" "You can't throw out something like that and expect me to ignore it." "Look, do you want to go fuck or something? Is that what you're expecting out of me?" "I'm not expecting anything. I just asked why you think you suck." She looked up at me now, radiating hostility. "And you're going to convince me I don't, is that it?" "You can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped." "Well, I don't want your fucking help." "Good. So there we are. Now you can answer the question." She glared at me for only a moment before her eyes closed and she sagged in her seat. Then she started stabbing her fork aimlessly at the salad in front of her. "I left home because my stepdad was making me suck him off, and my mom said I was lying about it. I figured if I was going to do it, I might as well get paid for it. Is that what you want to know?" I had expected something like that, but it still hit me in the gut to actually hear her say it. "I'm sorry." "It has nothing to do with you. Why would you be sorry?" "I just am." "Don't be. I'm doing fine on my own." "It didn't look that way to me." "So they rough me up a little first. It happens. They paid me, okay? That's all I care about." I wanted to tell myself I didn't know why I was trying to connect with her, except that I pretty much did. "Okay," I said. "Now you can ask me something personal." Betsy looked up. "What do you mean?" "I pried something that's none of my business out of you. It's only fair I let you do the same." She stared at me hard for a second or two. "What was that girl's name, the one you said I look like?" "Cindy." "What happened with her? You caught her fucking someone else?" "Sucking. Not fucking." "She was giving him a blow job?" "Yep. She was good at it. Part of the reason I let her move in. I guess she figured she was good enough that her talents were worth sharing." She laughed. "Shit." "She said I had no business getting upset. That we weren't exclusive. Then the two of them wanted to have a threesome." She laughed again, harder. "She wanted to fuck both of you at once?" "Yeah." "Why didn't you do it?" "I was too pissed off and confused. The guy looked like a loser. They were too smug about it. I don't know." "Did you love her?" I shrugged. "I was getting there." "Do you know karate or something?" she asked a few minutes later. "Some." "When you showed up, I thought those guys would stomp your ass. I thought, God, who is this dork? I was afraid they'd kick your butt, then mine, just because they could." "Yeah. It was maybe not the smartest thing to do." "So what do you do? Where did you learn to do that?" "I was in the Navy." "Huh. You ever kill anyone?" "I worked on airplanes." It wasn't precisely a lie. I was trained to work on airplanes, before the Navy decided I'd be better at something else. "Oh. That's cool." She picked at her french fries again. "There're some people I'd like to kill, but I probably couldn't do it." "Killing is overrated." Quick factoid: I've killed six-and-a-half people in my life. Five were my own. The other three I split with my swim buddy. You're not supposed to count your kills, and the SEAL psychologists we dealt with tended to go on about how messed up it would make us if we did it, but everyone did anyway. You couldn't help it. They told us in BUD/S, "Your first kill is always the hardest, but it will get easier after that. What you don't want is for it to get too easy. The day you stop thinking about it is the day you need to get some help." I never stopped thinking about it. I still hadn't. I could recall every single one of my kills. The first one was on the beach in Kuwait City during the Gulf War, the night the ground forces finally got on the move. My team came ashore as part of a big feint, a ruse to make the Iraqis think the First Marines were staging a landing in Kuwait City, to distract them from the real thrust straight up across the border. We set a string of explosives along the beach, and the guys in the Special Boat Squadron spent the rest of the night strafing the coastline with miniguns and rockets. The Iraqis bought it, though the war was such a mismatch that I'm not sure how much difference we really made. I had just laid my last charge when I saw an Iraqi sentry coming up the boardwalk. My swim buddy and I dropped down, trying to lay low, but he kept coming. He would probably have seen us soon, and he seemed suspicious already. So before he had a chance to spot us, I took him out. I had expected my first kill to be hard, but my training took over: pop up, sight down the barrel, squeeze off a burst. My MP5 burped softly, and the guy simply dropped. We finished the job, packed up, and swam back out to the boats in the harbor. It had seemed too easy, and it was. The hard part came later, after the adrenaline wore off. And it never got any easier. That guy on the beach in Kuwait was little different from me, just a soldier doing his job. He would probably have killed me had I not gotten him first. The only real difference was that he was most likely a draftee who had no choice about being on that beach that night. Betsy and I talked for a while longer. Eventually she finished her meal, stuffing down every last crumb. She let it settle for a few minutes before sitting up and grabbing her backpack. "Look, thanks for the food and all, but I got to get going." "I guess this is the point where I'm supposed to ask if you have a place to stay and if you want to crash at my apartment." "Yeah, and we go back and fuck or something because you saved my butt. I don't have the energy for it tonight, sorry." I took a napkin and scribbled my address on it anyway. "If you change your mind, this is where I live." She hesitated for a moment, then took it, shoving it into the pocket of her jeans. "Yeah. Whatever. See you around." I didn't watch her go. By the time I got home, it was almost four a.m. and I was too tired to beat off. I fed my cat, then lay in bed trying not to think about Betsy sleeping next to a dumpster. I was just getting to sleep when I heard the door buzzer go off. At first I thought I had dreamt it. I sat up in bed, listening for any sounds. I heard nothing and lay down again. Then the door buzzed again. I got up and shuffled over to the call box. "Hello?" Her voice came crackling up from the street, wary and defiant. "It's Betsy." She didn't say anything else. I let her in. When she appeared at the door, she looked up at me like a cornered rat. "I just need to crash on your couch for a few hours, okay? I won't bug you, and I'll be gone in the morning." "It's already morning," I muttered. I stepped back and let her in. She looked around, clutching her backpack to her chest. I rubbed my eyes. "Take the bed. I can sleep on the couch." She glanced at me suspiciously. "Seriously," I said. "I don't have to work tomorrow." She nodded. "Thanks." I showed her into my bedroom and dug out some blankets to make up the couch. As Six-and-a-Half realized that I was sleeping out there and some strange person was in the bedroom, she appeared from my closet and hid under the couch. Betsy emerged as I was getting situated. "Mind if I use your shower?" She didn't have to say why. I could see the reasons in her stringy hair and grimy fingers. "Go ahead. Take a bath. Whatever you want." She disappeared again. I lay there listening to the tub filling up and tried not to think of her naked in there. I was once again drifting off to sleep when she returned to the living room. "Howard?" I squirmed around to look at her. She was wearing a white tank top and boxer shorts, and I could easily see her dark nipples through the fabric. Her hair was wet and her face was tense with a mixture of confusion and gratitude. "What?" "Do you want me to give you a bj? I will if you want... if that's what this all about." I groaned. I did want one--my balls were still loaded from my visit to the strip bar--but not under these circumstances. "No. Go to bed." She went. It was almost noon when I woke up. I peeked into the bedroom. Betsy was still out cold under the covers. Her backpack was at the foot of the bed, her meager collection of dirty clothes spilling out onto the floor. I shouldn't have done it, but I couldn't help myself. Something made me want to know who she was. I knelt down next to the backpack and started poking through it. The smell of unwashed clothing was enough to deter me momentarily from my snooping. Instead of rifling through her belongings, I gathered them all up and carried them to the washer-dryer combo in my kitchen. I separated out the clothes, wrinkling my nose as I did it, and started a load of wash. What was left wasn't much. Her wallet--a Kate Spade, I noted with some surprise. I wondered if she stole it. According to her driver's license, her name was Elizabeth A. Powell, and she lived in a suburb outside of town, one that made me think she probably didn't steal the wallet. She was eighteen, five-foot-three, one hundred-twenty pounds. The wallet held sixty-seven dollars in cash, three twenties from last night plus change, and an assortment of crumpled photographs: Betsy and some friends, Betsy and a dog, Betsy lined up with the family at Christmas. This last one had someone torn out of it, whoever was standing next to her. All the photos had dates imprinted on the lower right corner, and the shot of her and the dog was only a couple of months old. I wondered how long she'd been on the street. Besides the wallet, I found a toothbrush, a hairbrush, a crushed box of condoms with three still left, several tampons, random make-up, a battered paperback book, and two magazines. Shoved into one of the side pockets of the backpack was what looked like a rusty steak knife. I put everything back the way I found it and returned it to the bedroom. Betsy was still asleep, having rolled on her back now. I could see her nipples again and forced myself not to stare too long. - She slept until three that afternoon, finally emerging groggily from the bedroom while I was watching TV. "God," she muttered. "Sleep all right?" She nodded, pulling the tangles out of her hair as she staggered into the kitchen. As she walked past, my eyes darted over her big breasts before I could stop myself. She didn't seem to notice me watching and began poking through the refrigerator. Then she looked over. "Uh, do you mind if I eat something?" "Go ahead. There's not much, but you're welcome to it." She grazed in front of the open refrigerator for a few minutes, gobbling up leftover pizza and some other odds and ends. Then she plopped herself next to me on the couch, pulling her knees up to her chest. "What are you watching?" "Old movie." She sighed. "I haven't watched TV in so fucking long. I didn't think I'd miss it, but you do, you know?" "How long?" "Six weeks." I'd figured longer, but not by much. She wasn't hardened enough yet to have been on the street more than a few months. We sat there silently watching the movie. Betsy kept glancing at me every now and then but said nothing. With the position she was in, I had to force myself not to stare at her breasts. The cleavage alone, pushing out the neck of her top, was enough to resurrect the ache in my balls. The cat appeared and hopped up on the couch between us. She regarded Betsy warily but let her scratch her head. Soon she was purring and rubbing against Betsy's leg. "Is her name really Six-and-a-Half?" "Yeah." I could see the question in her eyes again--What kind of fucking name is that?--but it never came. When the movie broke for a commercial a bit later, she got up and returned to the bedroom. "Hey! Did you go through my stuff?!" "I washed your clothes. They seemed to need it. I didn't snoop through anything else." Her anger fizzled, but she was still clearly unnerved. She looked back and forth between me and the pile of folded laundry next to her bag. Then she started getting dressed, not bothering to close the bedroom door. At that point, I gave up trying not to watch her. She didn't seem to care. When she returned, she was wearing jeans and another tank top, though she'd finally donned a bra. She sat back down on the couch. "You should have asked first. But thanks." The day drifted by, and Betsy remained on my couch, even after I got up to take a shower and get dressed. I wasn't sure what to do with her except that I didn't really want her to leave and I couldn't quite nail down why. Maybe I could let her stay another night, but I sure as hell couldn't leave her here when I went to work. I'd probably come back to find my apartment stripped clean. As the sun began to set, Betsy started watching me nervously, waiting for some sign about what to do. "Should I go?" she finally asked. "Do you want to?" She squirmed. "I don't want to bother you." "I don't want you to go if you don't want to." "Do you want me to stay?" Behind the wariness, the need in her eyes was evident. "I'd like you to," I said. She looked down, then up again. "Why are you doing this? You don't even know me." "I don't know." The cat was still curled up next to her, and Betsy rubbed her head again. "Okay. I guess I'm staying." That night she wouldn't let me sleep on the couch. I didn't want her sleeping there either, so eventually we agreed to share the bed. I promised to leave her alone, but I wasn't sure she believed me, not that it stopped her from climbing in with me. I could feel her warmth next to me in the dark. She lay still for a while after I turned off the lights, as if she were waiting for something. Then she rolled over toward me. "Howard?" "Mmm?" "If you want . . . to do something . . . it's okay. It's what I've been doing since I split." I pondered that for a moment. "I'm not the first guy to think he's rescuing you, am I?" She answered me tentatively. "No." "And you slept with them?" "Blow jobs. That's all. Do you want one?" Yeah, I did. The question was whether I should let her. "It's up to you." She slithered under the covers and slipped her hand into my shorts. At first she just played with me gently, stroking me until I got hard. Then she took me into her mouth, bobbing and swirling her tongue. Her technique was pretty basic, nothing like Cindy's, but it was enough. She kept moving up and down steadily, and as I got more aroused, I reached for her, stroking her head. She pulled up her top and let her big tits fall free. I reached under and started fondling her. Pretty soon she had me on the brink, then I was spurting into her mouth. She stopped moving at once and tightened her lips around my erection. When I was done, she withdrew. I felt her shiver slightly as she swallowed. She returned to her pillow and lay on her side. "Was that good?" I nodded. Then she said, in a soft voice, "I've had a lot of practice." The tone of her voice made me cringe. "Tell me what happened," I blurted out. She didn't say anything right away, and I wondered if I'd stepped over the line. Then she started talking. Her father left her and her mother when she was five. Her mom was a bum-magnet. A succession of boyfriends passed through the house for a few years. When she was ten, her mother, then a secretary, married her boss. Things were good for a few years after they moved in with her stepfather, who was the vice president of something. "Then I started getting my tits," she said bitterly. Bit by bit, her stepfather began paying more and more of the wrong kind of attention to her. His eyes seemed perpetually glued to Betsy's chest. She tried to avoid him, but he pursued her, frequently walking into her room or the bathroom unannounced on some pretense. Eventually, she thought, he had seen enough to want more. One weekend a few months earlier, while her mother was out shopping, he came on to her. He was a big man, far too large for Betsy to fight off. That first afternoon, he just fondled her breasts and tried to kiss her, but things went further each time after that. Soon he got her to masturbate him, then to suck him off. She put up with the forced blow jobs for a week before tearfully confessing everything to her mother. Instead of helping, her mother went berserk and accused her of lying and trying to wreck her marriage. Betsy was so scared she fled the house that night. I felt ill when she was done with the story, and I suddenly wished to God I hadn't let her give me that blow job. "And that's why I suck," she said. "I'm sorry. I know that's worth nothing, but I am." I felt her reaching for my hand. "It's not worth nothing." She squeezed it tightly, and I pulled her toward me. "I've never told anyone that," she said. "Guys always ask, you know, `How did you end up like this?' and all, but you're the first one I told the truth to." I held her for a few moments. "I didn't fix airplanes." She lifted her head from my shoulder. "What?" "What I told you, about fixing airplanes in the Navy, that wasn't really true. I was a SEAL." "One of those commando guys?" "Yeah." I could feel her breathing against me, the rhythmic pressure of her breasts against my chest, coming just a bit more rapidly than it should have. "So you did kill people?" "Another night." My throat tightened. "I'll tell you about that another night." I hugged her. We went to sleep. There was no way I could let her back on the street after that. I left her at my apartment when I went to work, and though I half-expected some comeuppance for my naïveté when I got home, I discovered she'd cleaned the place and restocked the refrigerator. I tried to pay her for the groceries, but she refused to take my money. She offered me another blow job that night. I tried to talk her out of it, and we had a ten-minute discussion about her six weeks on the street before she convinced me she really wanted to do it. We made out for a few minutes and undressed each other before she slipped under the covers and swallowed me up. Afterward, I tried to return the favor. She resisted me only a little as I rolled her on her back and kissed my way down her chest. I suckled her dark little nipples for a while, pushing her tits together to tongue them both at once. When I slid down between her legs, she whimpered and clawed at the sheets. I slurped at her sex for several minutes, rubbing her clit steadily with my tongue, before she lifted off the bed in climax. I got her off twice before she pushed me away. The next morning, she made me lunch and wrapped it up in a sheet of newspaper for me to take to work. I was still uneasy as I drove away from the apartment, but I didn't know what else to do with her. We traded oral favors again that night and every night that week. But I didn't try to take it further, and neither did she. - "Howard? What's going on here? I mean, what are we doing, exactly?" It was Friday night, a week after I met her, and we were eating dinner. I burped and sat back in my chair. "I guess we need to figure that out." "I'll go any time you want me to. I can deal with it." "I don't want you to go." "Then what do you want from me?" I stared at her, wondering that myself. She still looked a lot like Cindy, but her demeanor had really changed. Her street-girl façade had gradually crumbled over the last week, and I wasn't sure what was under that shell. Part of me wanted to give her some speech about helping her get her life in order, but the patronizing flavor of that really turned me off. If I was going to do it--and I still wasn't sure it was something I had any business doing--there was no need to say it. And doing so was enough of a task that I didn't want to trivialize it by pretending to care so deeply about a girl I'd known all of a week. "I like having you around," I said finally. "Isn't that enough?" This wasn't what she was expecting, and she struggled with a reply for a few moments. "I guess so. I like it too." "Okay. We know what the issues are. No need to beat it to death." She nodded, looking down. "Yeah. Thanks." - That night, when I turned out the lights, she rolled against me, looking for attention again. We started making out, undressing each other, fondling and caressing the way we'd been doing. She had learned how I liked to play with her big tits, and she spent a while straddling me and letting them hang in my face. Eventually she went down on me, but this time she unexpectedly stopped after a few minutes. She lay beside me, pulling me toward her, and I realized she wanted me on top of her. I got the message. I had to find a condom in my nightstand, but that took all of a minute. When I rolled between her legs, she stopped me for a moment. "I want to do this. But I should tell you something." "What?" "I'm a virgin. Down there, at least." She could sense my surprise even with the lights off, but I managed to avoid saying anything insulting. I probed forward with the head of my dick and discovered she was telling the truth. She tensed up, pulling me closer as I pressed against her hymen. It split with only gentle pressure, and I felt her cringing under me with the pain. I moved into her slowly, and she started to relax. She moaned softly as I filled her up. I moved in her slowly, my surprise unabated. She had told me several times she just gave blow jobs for money, but I hadn't really thought she meant nothing but blow jobs, ever. Yet obviously that was the case. I didn't let myself think too hard about why I might be different. I took my time with her, kissing and caressing her as I made love to her. She started to respond a few minutes into it, moving with me, rolling her hips. Only then did I really appreciate how much smaller than me she was. When she slid her legs over mine, her feet barely reached halfway down my calves. I could cover her completely, making her tits pillow out to the side when I lay on her chest. I hadn't thought much about the age difference before then, but it suddenly struck me that I was thirty-four and I was having sex with an eighteen-year-old. If Betsy was having such thoughts, there was no sign of it. She started gnawing on my shoulder, moaning softly. I moved faster, rocking against the tight pressure of her virgin flesh in a steady rhythm. She moved in synch with me, pushing her hips up with each thrust. I bottomed out deeply inside her, and she let out a quiet whimper. I felt the tremors of her approaching climax. I'd held myself off long enough that I was still a ways from coming myself, even though the thought of giving her her first real orgasm sent a thrill through my gut. She came less than a minute later, a jerk against me, teeth clenched, hands squeezing my arms tightly, a long shiver through her body. I kept it up, loosening the brakes now, trying to bring myself along too. I drove harder into her, groaning. When she started to come again, that was enough to push me over, and I squirted off deeply into her. - "You're probably hoping for some kind of explanation." She was lying across my chest in the darkness. "Whatever you feel like telling me." "My stepdad never let me date much. I know it was because he wanted me for himself. I think part of the reason I left was that I knew he was going to fuck me eventually, and I just couldn't stand the thought of that happening. And when I hit the streets, I didn't want to let go of that part of me. I didn't care much about the blow jobs, but that seemed like the only part of Normal Betsy I had left." "And?" "I wanted to give it to you." I couldn't bring myself to ask why. Something told me I might not like the answer I got. So I just held her as we fell asleep. - A couple of weeks went by. Without really having discussed it at all, I realized we were essentially living together. Betsy got a job waiting tables and otherwise kept house for me while I was at work. We stopped talking about how we met and just talked about what we were doing now. After I finally felt comfortable enough to tell her about the things I'd done in the Navy, she started calling me "Gumby," which was my nickname in the SEALs. I started calling her "Viagra," since I soon developed a propensity for near-instant erections any time she got within two feet of me. She thought that was hilarious. Yet, for all the surface contentment, I could still sense the damage inside her, and I sometimes wondered how long this could last, if she had really left the bad times behind and moved on. Now and then, she fell into bouts of melancholy, though I knew better than to press her on it. As I told her that evening, we both knew what the issues were. When she wanted to talk about it, she would. And one night, she did. She had been in a bad mood most of the day, snapping at me over something trivial when I got home from work, then staying silent the rest of the night. She surprised me by demanding sex that night and proceeded to fuck me with a violent urgency I hadn't seen before. I enjoyed it, but I was also a little worried. As we lay panting on the bed afterward, as I watched the sweat beading in the narrow cleft between her breasts, I nudged her affectionately. "What brought that on?" She stared blankly up at the ceiling. Then she answered me. "If I asked you to kill my stepdad, would you do it?' Her words struck something inside of me, hard. The room seemed to spin for a moment before I got control of myself again. "Are you asking me to kill him?" "I'm asking you if you'd do it." Would I? I wondered. "If you want me to kill him, say so." I watched her chest rise and fall with each breath. Her eyes closed slowly. "I want you to kill him." Just a job. That was what we told ourselves in the SEALs. This is only a job, we're protecting our country, we're warriors, this is what we do. It's not personal. Betsy's stepdad was a child molester rapist. He would get away with it unless I did what she wanted. I knew her well enough now to know she would never go to the police about this. She didn't trust anyone anymore. Anyone except me. And I wasn't entirely sure about even that. Did he deserve to die for what he did to her? Maybe, maybe not. But, I told myself, he probably deserved to die more than that guy on the beach in Kuwait. Six and a half. Would one more make that much difference? I closed my eyes, feeling a familiar but unwelcome calm settling over me. I may have to rename my cat, I thought. "Okay. I'll kill him." The next day, I drove Betsy to her old neighborhood. She was still and silent the whole way. We went past her house, then her stepdad's office, as I decided what to do. The simplest way was just to take him out with a rifle through his bedroom window, but Betsy rejected that idea immediately. "No. He has to know it's because of me. He has to know why." "That means we have to grab him." "Can you do it?" "I may need your help." She nodded. "I want to help. I want to watch him die." I had to burn a few sick days at work. Grabbing him required that I spend several days watching him and getting familiar with his routines. He seemed to stay at the office until well after dark, going home around seven or seven-fifteen. He took the same route home every night. He was a big guy, about as tall as me but heavier. Luckily, most of it looked like flab. He drove a Mercedes and dressed well. I got close enough to him once to spot the Rolex on his arm. I began to get some ideas. "There are only two things we really need to do here," I told her a few nights later, "grab him cleanly and get away without leaving a useful trail." She was sitting at the kitchen table, arm folded flat across it, head on her arm. Six-and-a-Half was sitting in front of her, and Betsy was stroking her slowly. "Then what?" "Take him out of town. Out in the woods, probably." Her eyes flicked over at me, then away again. "How would we do it?" "Would be better to use his car. Carjack him, maybe. Less evidence." "No. I mean, how would we kill him?" "Lots of ways to do it," I said. "Depends on how easy you want him to go." She glanced at me again, uneasiness lurking in her gaze. "You've done this before." "Yes," I said simply. I could tell she didn't like what she was seeing. She looked away from me and went back to stroking the cat. "Okay. What's the easiest way?" "Assuming he's immobilized, strangling him." "Does it hurt?" Another fairly simple answer. "Yes." She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. "Okay." The next day, we went shopping for the items I needed. A new set of clothes for both of us at a thrift store, several other things elsewhere. I picked a spot for the killing and explained what I needed her to do. She had to meet me there, which meant she needed to drive my car out of town and wait for me. We split up at six, and she headed out to the woods. I took the bus to the stop nearest her stepfather's office. It was already dark, and I walked toward the office building slowly. Her stepfather's car was there, and I walked past it once to gauge the distance. Then I found a good spot to wait. I needed a gun for this, but not necessarily a real one; in my jacket was a very realistic replica I picked up at a costume store. Real guns were traceable, this thing was not. At five after seven, I saw her stepfather emerge from the building. I got up, slumping my shoulders and walking slowly toward the building, trying to look like an inoffensive janitor. He saw me and dismissed me quickly. He unlocked his car with a little remote as he approached. I had gauged the distance so that I passed his car just as he was getting in. Then I moved quickly toward him, opening the passenger side door and sliding in beside him. He was frozen in shock long enough for me to get the gun out. "Shut the door. Start the engine. Get moving." His face went pale, and he looked away from me. "I have money. Take it. Take the car." "Start the car and get moving. I won't ask you again." Hands shaking, he struggled to comply. I told him to drive out of the lot and turn right. I kept the gun on him, but he didn't look at me. "Please. I have money." "Drive. Don't talk." Soon we were out of town and heading toward the woods. He got even more agitated as I told him to turn off the road to the spot I had picked out. Betsy should have been there already, though I told her to park my car a good half a mile away. He parked the car where I told him to and shut off the engine. I'd been thinking the whole way about what he did to her, and his submissive response to this carjacking was not improving my opinion of him. "Get out." I climbed out as he did, keeping the gun pointed in his direction. I came around to his side. "Empty your pockets and take off that watch." I wasn't here to rob him, but not doing so would raise eyebrows when the cops found his body. He complied rapidly, dumping everything on the hood of his Mercedes. When he was done, I pointed the gun into the woods. "Over there. Go." "Please. Take it all. You can have it." I had him back up to a tree and put his hands behind it. I used a plastic zip cord to bind his wrists tightly together and a strip of cloth to gag him. When I was done, I saw that Betsy had emerged from the shadows. An anguished look twisted her face. He didn't see her at first, but when he did, his eyes bugged out. He started mumbling through the gag and struggling against the cord around his wrists. She stepped up to him. I stepped back. He started whimpering in fear. I waited for Betsy to say something, but instead she wound up and kicked him hard in the crotch. He squealed, and his legs buckled. She did it again, then just stomped her foot against him, crushing his balls between her boot and the tree, grunting through her clenched teeth at the effort. He was gasping for breath now, sobbing, sagging downward. Only then did I see the knife in her hand, the same steak knife she had in her backpack the night I found her. I wavered for a moment, then stayed where I was. She reached for his crotch and struggled to unzip his fly. I couldn't understand him with the gag in his mouth, but he was obviously begging her for mercy. She got his dick out, took it in her fist and jerked on it. He moaned in pain again. I took a step toward her, then another, not sure what to do. "What's the matter, Dad?" she snarled. "You used to like when I did this." She jerked him again, then put the knife against his dick, and he squealed in terror. That broke me out of my inertia. I came up behind her and pulled the knife away. "Give me that thing. We don't have time for shit like this." She squirmed in my arms but let me drag her away from him. When they were far enough apart, I whispered to her. "Listen to me. If you do it, the cops are going to wonder why we cut his dick off and look a lot harder at this. Let it go." She closed her eyes and drew in on herself. "Just kill him," she whimpered softly. "Get it over with." I took the knife from her. She turned away, unable to watch. I zipped up her stepfather's pants and straightened up his clothes. I saw some gratitude in his eyes. He didn't understand. Then I slit his throat. The knife was just sharp enough to do it. Less work than wringing his neck, I thought afterward. We left his car where it was and took his wallet and watch. Betsy had left my car a ways up the road in a county park, and we had to hike through the woods to get there. Luckily I had scouted out the route the night before. Betsy fell behind repeatedly, and I had to keep grabbing her to pull her along. Her hands were cold and clammy, and even in the dim moonlight, she looked pale and uneasy. Suddenly she stopped and bent over. "Wait," she gasped. I knew what was coming but could do nothing to stop it. Betsy clutched her stomach and vomited several times onto the ground below. "Fuck," I muttered. "That's evidence. Move." I pushed her aside and rapidly covered the vomit with dirt and dried leaves. Betsy continued retching against her empty stomach for a few seconds. When I had concealed things as best I could, I straightened up and fought my desire to yell at her. "I'm sorry," she whimpered. "Come on." I dragged her the rest of the way and reached the car about ten minutes later. Per my instructions, Betsy had parked in a patch of gravel to avoid tire tread prints. We changed out of the thrift shop clothes and bagged everything up, then climbed into my car. I drove back onto the main road. Betsy's cheeks, wet with tears, glistened in the dim light from the dashboard. "You okay?" She nodded, but said nothing. On the way back, I found an isolated dumpster and disposed of the clothes. The knife, watch and rubber gun went through a sewer grate. Then we went home. It was a few days before anyone found the body. The killing made page 1 of the local section of the paper, and the police called it a carjacking/homicide. They professed to have few clues. I wondered what Betsy's mother might tell them, if she would mention Betsy running away or if the police would even ask. Betsy thought not. "My mom doesn't give a fuck about me," she said. Whatever might have happened, no one came looking for her. She was near-catatonic for a few days, and it began to get on my nerves. "Just swallow it down," I told her. "Stop dwelling on it. What's done is done." Her eyes slowly swung around to me. "Is that what you did?" "It's all anyone can do." "It hurts." "You lost your virginity. You'll get over it. Just deal with it." After a month, I started to relax, figuring the trail had gone cold. The real problem was, so had Betsy. The catatonic spells had subsided, but with them went any sign of life in her eyes. I knew why, or thought I did, but knowing the reasons didn't make it any easier to watch. I was about to say something the afternoon I came home to find her lying naked on my bed. "Take off your clothes. Fuck me," she said. I tried to grin, but the blank look on her face confused me. "What brought this on?" "Howard, just fuck me. Come on." I undressed and lay down beside her. She sat up at once and took my dick in her mouth, slurping and massaging me with her tongue. I lay there and let her work, closing my eyes as I grew rapidly erect. She bobbed over me steadily for a minute or two before withdrawing and pulling at me. I found a condom and rolled over onto her. I tried to slow things down with a little foreplay, but she only let me suckle her tits for a few moments before pulling me into position. I found her wet and ready as I sank in. She pushed herself up at me, urging me on, moaning. Giving in finally, I began fucking her in earnest. Soon she was bucking up at me, clawing at my butt, and just as she let go and came around me, I went over the edge myself and poured myself into her. I lay flat on her, catching my breath. She pushed up at me, rolling me off. Within a minute, she was sitting up again, pulling off the rubber, and taking me back into her mouth. I laughed weakly. "You're insatiable today." She didn't answer me. She just sucked hard, trying to stop my dick from deflating. At first, nothing happened, but within a few minutes I felt my erection returning, felt my dick aching from reawakening this fast. Betsy bobbed up and down over me like that until I was good and hard again. Then she sat back, reached for a rubber, and the moment it was on, threw a leg over my waist and straddled me. The sensations of sinking in her tight pussy shot through my gut, but I was miles from getting off. I just held myself up and let her bounce on my dick however she wanted to do it. She rode me energetically for ten or fifteen minutes. She came twice and kept going, until the sweat was beading on her upper lip. By then I was getting closer myself, and she knew it. She stopped, grabbed my shoulders, and rolled over, pulling me on top again. "Fuck me. Fuck me hard. Come on." I did, but I had to to get off. She squealed and thrashed around, humping herself at me with each thrust. I was soon slapping against her pubic bone as I rose back toward orgasm. It was too soon, and my whole dick ached with the impending release. I cried out, groaning, as I finally spasmed again inside her. She came with me, arching her back, body locked in agony. She rolled me off again. I lay there gasping for breath. I felt her moving beside me and didn't quite realize what she was doing until I felt the rubber sliding off and her mouth closing over me again. "Jesus, Betsy," I moaned. "Wait a second." I tried to push her off, but she wouldn't let me. I relented and lay still, figuring my dick wasn't going to cooperate anyway. For a few minutes, it didn't, but she kept going. Slowly, I felt things starting to regroup down there. Betsy kept a tight fist around me, forcing the blood into the head to create a semblance of an erection. Bit by bit, it came back. As I grew hard again, she bobbed more deliberately over me. I wondered at her stamina, and by this point she finally seemed to be running down, for she stopped several times to replace her mouth with her hand. She would stroke me rapidly, just slurping on the head with her lips, then going back to sucking me off. I waited for her to mount me again, or something like that, but this time she just stuck with the blow job. It took a good ten minutes before I felt something starting again. Betsy's face was dripping with sweat by now, and she kept having to wipe her forehead clean. "Come on. Come. Come in my mouth." I groaned, trying hard. Between hands and mouth, she brought me to the brink in a few more minutes, and this time it almost hurt. But she got me off, and a few pitiful remaining spurts of come flowed into her mouth as I came. I lay there like a dead man, wondering what this was all about. Betsy rose from the bed and went into the bathroom. I heard the shower start, then heard the change in resonance that meant she had climbed in. I must have dozed off, because the next thing I knew, she was nudging the bed. I opened my eyes and looked up to see her standing there, fully dressed, backpack on her shoulder. "I gotta go. Thanks for everything." I struggled to sit up. "Go? Where?" "Anywhere. Out. It's over, Howard, I'm sorry." I shook my head in disbelief. "What? Why?" "Just because." Her eyes darted away, then back--wary, embarrassed. "I just got to go, okay?" I rubbed my head as this sank in. "At least give me a reason." "We both got what we wanted, right? You got to fuck me senseless for a couple of months, I got to give my fucking stepdad what he deserved. Isn't that enough?" I gaped at her. "You have to be kidding me." She squirmed, readjusting her backpack on her shoulder. "Look, what did you expect? That we'd live happily ever after or something? I told you when I met you that you seemed like the kind of guy girls dump." After everything I had done for her, that was really too much. I had to look away from her. "Fuck you. Just go." "Please don't be mad," she softly. "Go. Get out." Silence for a moment, then the sound of her feet receding. The door opened, then slammed shut. I saw her only once after that. It was a Saturday night, and I was on my way home from cruising the bars again. I walked past an alley. The sound of a slap caught my attention. She was down about thirty feet away, on her knees, in front of some guy in a leather jacket. He had her hair in his fist, and his dick protruded from his jeans. "Bitch," he grunted. "Swallow it." She shuddered briefly as she gulped down the guy's come. Then our eyes met. Looking back at me, I saw that Iraqi soldier in the split-second before I killed him. I left her there and went home. The cat curled up on my lap when I got back. I scratched her head, staring across the room. "Seven-and-a-half," I said to myself. "Maybe eight." She looked half-dead already. The rest of her wasn't my responsibility.