Susie Learns the Hard Way Page 5

  Slowly she pushed the key into the slot, hoping it would work. When she moved in she was the first tenant in the newly-refurbished building and when she’d called at the agents’ office for her key she’d been invited to help herself out of an old biscuit tin. ‘They’re all the same, dearie,’ said the woman in the office. ‘It’s easier that way, but you can change yours if you like, and then the next person can keep theirs the same.’

  She hadn’t changed the lock, and she was hoping that the people upstairs either didn’t know about this estate agent’s convenience factor or, like her, simply hadn’t bothered to do anything about it.

  Her hand was trembling as she paused a moment, then applied pressure. The key turned easily and silently and the door opened just as quickly, so that she almost fell into the hallway.

  With the door wide she knocked again, ready to say she’d seen it open and was merely concerned about burglars.

  ‘Hello?’

  Her voice echoed into the emptiness. There was no answer. This was the moment of truth. She breathed in deeply and stepped swiftly through the doorway, closing it softly behind her until the lock clicked home.

  To her left was an open door to the bathroom. It looked as though this flat was identical in layout to her own; she already knew the bedroom was directly above hers. That meant the kitchen was to her right and the second door led into the lounge. The curtains were still drawn but she could see the big television at the far end of the room, with three armchairs circled around it. Apart from some scattered cans and crisp packets, there was nothing else in the room at all.

  The door at the far end of the hallway led into the bedroom, she knew, and though she’d been expecting to uncover her evidence in there, she hadn’t expected the rest of the house to be so bare.

  The bedroom door was closed, and she paused, stupidly wondering if she should knock. Her heart already was, hammering inside her chest. Taking the handle firmly in her fingers, she gave it a twist, and the door opened onto the half light forcing its way round the edges of the curtains, still drawn, like those in the lounge.

  As she stepped inside the door swung silently shut, powered by a large spring; obviously this was a room in which privacy was necessary.

  It was oddly dark, but her eyes were accustomed to the artificial twilight, and she saw the big double bed was neatly made, pillows plumped and sheets straight.

  The dressing table was bare; not a pot nor a tube, no tweezers, brushes or combs. No woman still lived in this room, Susie knew at once. The wardrobe was bare as well, empty wire hangers, crumpled plastic bags from the dry-cleaners, no more.

  There was a chest of drawers, waist-high, where you might keep knickers and jumpers. The top drawer was open an inch, and it looked empty. She tugged the handles and it made a creaking sound as it pulled back.

  The loud bang that followed it came from outside in the hallway.

  It banged again. The unmistakable bang of someone knocking on the front door of the flat!

  She froze, holding her breath, waiting for whoever it was to go away. There was a long pause, followed by a scraping sound and then the thud of the front door swinging open on its hinges and bumping the wall. Then there were more bumping noises and rustling too. Someone was coming through the front door!

  For a moment she almost screamed. Then she almost fainted. Cold fear iced her spine. Hot flushes seared her groin. Her hands trembled, her breath gasped. She spun round, looking for another way out, but she knew there wasn’t one. She knew she could open the window and knew equally well she could never jump to the ground. She’d been afraid of heights since she was a child. And anyway, she’d only break a leg or her neck on the solid concrete below.

  Out in the hallway she heard a voice – a man’s voice. Even her last hope, that it would be the woman who lived here, had been snatched away. It was him! The slaver! The man who kidnapped women and sold them to the Arabs!

  But wait a minute. Who was he speaking to? And who was that answering?

  It was another man! There were two of them! Now Susie was certain she was in deadly danger. Little whimpering gasps came from the back of her throat. Maybe they wouldn’t bother selling her to the Arabs. Maybe they’d just kill her! Or worse. But there was nothing worse than being killed, was there? She hoped not.

  She crossed to the window, but one look confirmed what she already knew. It was too high to jump, even if she had been brave enough, and there was no handy drainpipe or overhanging branch like there always is in films. She was trapped!

  She looked around the room, searching for somewhere to hide. The wardrobe!

  But it was a cheap piece of chipboard, hardly big enough to get in. And anyone opening the door couldn’t fail to see her.

  Under the bed!

  It was an old-fashioned ironwork affair, with a mattress on springs, and tall legs. Lots of room underneath, but it was hardly a place of concealment. She’d be as visible as a... as a... oh, forget it, just plain visible. And she needed to be the opposite.

  Behind the door!

  If anyone came in she could stand behind the door! And then, when it swung shut on its spring, they’d see her and kill her.

  But she could hold it, grab the handle and hold it. That would do it. She almost ran across the room on tiptoe, freezing when she realised the bedroom door wasn’t shut. The spring wasn’t strong enough to close it properly, just push it to. She put one eye to the crack, and was rewarded by the sight of a small sliver of wall, which was all she could see. She pressed her ear to the crack instead, and that was better, because the murmur of conversation became separated into words, some of them recognisable.

  She strained to hear as much as possible, picking out words and trying to string them into a sentence, or at least a meaning...

  ‘No, she’s not very... be gentle... rough stuff. If you treat her... she’ll... full strength... couple of minutes... please yourself... door at the end... going out now... back later, so just... when you’ve finished with her.’

  How on earth did he know she was there? And why didn’t he seem to care?

  More mumbling came from outside. She pressed her ear to the door again.

  ‘Sure, she knows how to... and make it last.’

  The second man spoke, a hoarse whisper she couldn’t decipher at all. The reply was crystal clear, though, just a single word. ‘Annie.’

  There was more whispering from the croaky voice, which again she didn’t understand. But what she heard of the reply explained everything.

  ‘Course he won’t... any time, he said... help myself... keep the key.’

  One of Andy’s mates had brought one of his mates round to enjoy the pleasures of the house. That was why he’d telephoned first and why he’d knocked on the door before retrieving the key from whatever hiding place he knew it would be kept in. He didn’t know that Annie had been sold hardly twenty-four hours earlier. He – or the croaky one, anyway, was expecting to find her in.

  In her bedroom!

  Fear ran like ice-cubes down her back and into her stomach, and it was as if the contracting muscles squeezed her like a peach, making the syrup run.

  There was a louder mumbling from outside and the front door banged shut. For a moment she thought she was safe, that they’d both gone, but then she heard a shuffling noise – the sound, she realised, of someone taking off a coat. There was still someone there in the flat. A man, a stranger, black, white, nice, nasty, handsome, ugly, violent, friendly – she didn’t know. But she was about to find out, because he was about to do as instructed, and come through the door to please himself with Annie. Who wasn’t there.

  But Susie was, and when he saw her he’d – he’d think she was Annie, she realised, with a sudden rush of relief. He’d never been there before, never seen her before. He’d think she was Annie, so he wouldn’t think she was a burglar, so he wouldn’t call the po
lice, or tie her up till Andy returned. He’d just... he’d just... oh God!

  What he was going to do, unless Susie told him the truth, was imagine her to be some form of sex slave, and do whatever it was men did to sex slaves. But if she did tell him the truth she’d go to prison at best, or a lonely grave at worst. Or maybe get sold to the Arabs, like Annie.

  There wasn’t much time, and there wasn’t much choice.

  The door opened, suddenly and silently.

  There was no time. And no choice.

  The man who stood there looking at her was old, sixty at least, and the light framing him from behind lit up the white fuzz of his unshaven cheeks and the crumpled outline of an old and much-worn jacket which might once have been the top half of someone else’s suit. It certainly didn’t fit the man who was wearing it now, nor did it match the baggy corduroy trousers gathered in bunches around legs which were clearly too short for them. As he shambled into the dimly lit room, revealing a shirt open at the collar, Susie caught the scent of last night’s drink and stale tobacco.

  ‘Hello, my dear. Annie, isn’t it?’

  Susie squeaked quietly and he nodded approval. ‘I see you’ve dressed the part,’ he croaked, and she realised that her breaking-and-entering clothes might easily be mistaken for a school uniform; blouse, pleated skirt and socks. He took a step closer, and as the bedroom door swung closed on its spring, the light in the room faded so he was just a shadow, and the croaky voice assumed a sinister aspect.

  Intending to say something intelligent about misunderstandings, but almost paralysed with fear, Susie only made a small noise in her throat. She backed away as the man advanced. Her legs stopped when they bumped the edge of the bed, and she sat down suddenly.

  ‘That’s my girl,’ he wheezed, pulling off his jacket and dropping it on the floor. ‘That’s my girl.’

  Wanting to tell him in words of one syllable that she most certainly was not his girl, Susie made some small bleating noises.

  Presumably taking this to be a sign of pleasure or encouragement, or even both, he shuffled closer. She instinctively tried to squirm back away from his grasp, realising almost at once that it made her situation worse instead of better, placing her in the middle of the bed with her feet on the edge and her knees raised, allowing him to look straight up her skirt. It was not an opportunity he wasted, and his watery eyes suddenly seemed to find focus, boring in on her groin. She felt his gaze on her like a physical thing, a hot glare that added to the heat between her legs. The effort of screwing up the muscles of his eyes seemed to deplete his ability to control the rest of his face, and his jaw muscles slowly slackened, letting his mouth hang open.

  Susie was afraid to move; she could feel the terror all over her body, in the sharply tensed muscles of her toes, the rigid stillness of her arms and legs, the cold trembling in her tummy, and the warm oozing sensation between her legs as liquid soaked into her panties.

  As if in sympathy, a long strand of saliva dribbled from the corner of the old man’s mouth, slowly lengthening towards the floor in a series of gentle, elastic jerks. Susie watched, spellbound, as a fresh flow of it surged out of the visible gap between his dentures and his shiny pink gums while he stared at the feminine curve of her within the soft material, saw the darkening dampness and the deep furrow at its centre.

  Susie knew she had to speak now, or not at all.

  His hand, fingers spreading and closing into a bony claw, lifted from his waist.

  It was slow motion to Susie; a gradual movement that seemed to last for minutes. Now his hand was in mid-air, stretching slowly forward, slowly downward, moving lower between her thighs, reaching nearer until his fingertips were almost brushing the tight curve of her knickers, and she sat, paralysed with indecision and fear, unable to do anything because she couldn’t decide what to do. And as she wondered again whether she should speak – it was too late.

  With an appreciative sigh, like a man dying of thirst swallowing a glass of chilled lager, he grasped the area of his delight and sighed again. His scrawny fingers clawed at the soft mound inside the swell of her knickers, felt the heat and moisture her fear had produced, and wriggled about as if trying to force a hole in the material or push it all the way inside her.

  Susie squealed again, louder and more convincingly this time, she thought, but clearly not loud enough, as she felt his fingertips digging with jerky movements that sent little tremors through her.

  ‘Arrr,’ hissed the old man, blowing a gale of old beer across her face. ‘Yer like that all right.’ And he rummaged about between her legs with enthusiasm, provoking a fresh flow of moisture from her body. To start with fear had been the source of her trouble, though the old man didn’t know that. But now the natural reaction of her body was adding to it, and her knickers were flooding with slippery juices.

  She thought again of protesting, of explanation and escape, but it really was too late.

  For his groping fingers had clawed their way around the elasticated edges of her panties, slipped inside, and were mauling roughly at the soft slickness of her tender flesh. The heat and wetness inspired him still further and suddenly a bony finger thrust easily inside her. Susie gasped in shock and horror, and was mortified to feel the reflexive twitch of her hips. Now it really was too late.

  ‘You’re good and ready, you are,’ croaked the old man, little knowing how right he was. ‘But wait till you see what I’ve got for yer.’

  Without removing his hand from her groin or his wiggling finger from inside her, he began unbuckling his belt. Susie groaned in dismay, feeling her body responding shamefully to his rude fingers. He let his grubby trousers drop to the floor and stepped out of them, the action pressing his knees right up against the edge of the bed, standing so close she could smell him; a musty, bookish dampness from his clothes, and the warm saltiness of his body.

  Susie stared, mesmerised like a rabbit in a set of headlights, as he fumbled beneath his shirttails, and suddenly produced a stout erection in purple and red, blue-veined and knotted.

  ‘Here you are then,’ he wheezed, as if he were giving her some sort of prize, and he waggled it from side to side.

  She was going to tell him then, as he raised one knee onto the edge of the mattress, bringing the shiny bulbous end of it within inches of her nose. She was going to shout ‘stop!’ and tell him there had been a mistake. But as he shifted his weight onto that knee he leant heavily on his left hand, ramming his finger deep inside her until the knuckle thudded home against her bone with a solid thump.

  ‘Aaah!’ she gasped, feeling the instinctive reaction as her thighs opened wider and her pelvis rolled upward in welcome. ‘Aaah!’ she groaned again as he rammed another finger alongside the first and her traitorous hips bucked upwards of their own accord.

  Gradually he began to find the required co-ordination and his fingers started to slide in and out in a steady beat, the knuckles thudding solidly against her each time, the fingers pulling all the way out until she was empty and aching before they slipped back in, spreading her pussy and plunging right up inside her.

  ‘Mmmm...’ Her eyes were half closed, that lidded look of sultry arousal she always wore at such moments, and she spread her thighs even wider, lifted her hips higher, and luxuriated in the sensations as his fingers pushed into her.

  ‘Mmmm... mmm... mmm...’ She made soft moaning noises and slowly reached up with one hand for the long thick shaft which bobbed around in front of her face.

  It was red-hot and rock-hard, though the leathery flesh was loose like an ill-fitting sleeve, and the veins were gnarled like knotted string under the skin.

  ‘Arrr,’ grunted the old man as her dainty fingers curled around him, and then grunted again as she slid her grip up until she’d reached the tip and then slowly pulled back, rolling the foreskin away from the glistening purple bulb. Up and down, very slowly, moved her hand. And she watched, a
lmost hypnotised, captivated as always by the workings of the male organ and the feel of its thick stiffness filling her fingers and her palm, the stickiness of its fluids as it oozed a thick, white juice.

  ‘Arrr,’ wheezed the old boy again, his own hand still busy inside her panties.

  ‘Mmmm...’ breathed Susie softly, as his fingers pressed deep and his thumb flicked lightly across her nut-hard little bud.

  She wasn’t conscious of moving forward, but she did, and unbidden her lips slowly peeled apart and her mouth closed around the end of the shaft, her tongue flickering across the smooth top as she leaned further towards him, swallowing him down to where her fist grasped him halfway along the shaft.

  ‘Arrr,’ he grunted his approval, and his fingers stiffened inside her.

  ‘Uurrgghhle...’ she gurgled, as the sensations flooded her groin and she felt the beginnings of an orgasm clutching the muscles at the top of her thighs. Suddenly it became very important to come at once, and she indicated this by sucking hungrily, pulling the erection into her mouth, licking and sucking at the very tip as her fist began steadily pumping, flicking the leathery foreskin over the rounded helmet while at the same time flexing her hips against his hand.

  The old bloke was perfectly still, not moving a muscle, luxuriating in the sensations as Susie’s naughty mouth sucked wetly on his knob and her hot pussy ground down on his rigid fingers, firmly fixed in place now as she grabbed his wrist and held his hand still so she could thrust herself against it, hips rising and falling as she worked the two fingers in and out, her head bobbing, and her juices flowing freely between the two intruders, soaking her panties.

  There was a minute, perhaps a little longer, in which they stayed like that, the old man stock still, Susie squirming on the bed, hips grinding, head nodding, both of them totally absorbed in the feelings that grew and grew; oblivious to the traffic outside, the radio playing somewhere across the street, or the whine of a Jumbo six miles overhead. For them there was just semi-darkness, the intimate squelching as her body moved against his, and the thunder of their pulses in their own ears.