"The Two-Way Mirror" - читать интересную книгу автора (Grayson Roger)

Chapter 3

It was his birthday and Jeff Lewis had taken the day off. He had phoned in sick after Toni suggested it, the idea being that they would celebrate the occasion by driving down to one of the beaches after he kept his appointment with the Nathan Brendells. He hadn't cared much either was and would just as soon have gone in, but had agreed to please her. She was a sweet girl, a regular little live-wire who would gladly spend her life on the beach even though she never went near the water, and she was always trying to do thoughtful things to please him… such as the Brendell appointment.

How she had managed to get them to look at his plans was still quite vague in his mind, but he felt certain she had somehow managed it with that voluptuous little body of hers. Ever since he'd known her and they'd been sharing this apartment together she had been trying to sleep with the right people, furthering her career bed by bed, and successfully so he had to admit. She was a clever pixie, cute and lovable with sparkling dark eyes and short-cropped jet-black hair, plus a natural inborn acting ability that was being seen more and more on the screen as the beds grew plushier.

Right now she was lying on her back in their bed watching him dress, naked and sensuously squirming around to tease him with her usual mischievous antics, knowing that he was watching her in the mirror while he knotted his tie. He reflected a trace of a smile in the glass but his heart wasn't in it. He was thinking of the fruitlessness of this appointment with the wealthy Brendells. He entertained no great expectations from the meeting. People of their caliber preferred architect-builders with a reputation and money behind them, not some half-assed fly-by-night with nothing but ambition going for him. Nevertheless, he'd agreed to try after she'd gotten it all set up for him, and try he would…

"You act as if you were going to a funeral," Toni St. Clair remarked from the bed, raising both of her deeply tanned legs ceilingward, her feet together, then lifting her gently rounding hips onto elbow-braced hands, presenting her full, soft white buttocks to him as she pumped her legs in a bicycle exercise.

"Afraid I can't get enthused, Toni," he said, going to the closet for his lightweight summer jacket. "This is about the twentieth set of plans I've burned the midnight oil over, and got nothing but a thanks for letting us see them, Mr. Lewis. We'll call you when we decide…"

"Nothing good comes easy, darling… even me," she said, smiling impishly across the room at him as she continued her nude, provocative calisthenics, her feeling for the handsome, slender-faced, tall young man with the thin-lipped mouth and deep brown, almost ruthless, eyes, obvious in her every glance and gesture toward him.

Jeff grinned back at her as he ran a comb quickly through his long, wavy black hair. Damn her… she was a wild mite of a girl. He strode over and looked down at her, watching her erect, firm young breasts with their partially distended dark red nipples, quiver from the pumping movements of her upthrust lower body. He walked to the foot of the bed and caught at her ankles, spreading them apart so that he could look down at the dark peach of soft silky hair covering her lower belly and the fleshy lips of her narrow vaginal slit that trailed downward to join the split of her soft white buttocks.

"Like it?" she teased, her sprightly smile meant to taunt.

"Didn't you get enough this morning?"

"Do I ever?"

Jeff shook his head, then drew his fingertip tantalizingly through the silken hair, tracing the thin line of her cunt with the faintest of pressure until an obvious shudder rippled the soft flesh of her inner thighs and upward across her flat belly.

"Ooohhhh… you dog, you," she moaned. "I warn you, cut that out or you'll never get out of here…

Grinning, he repeated the torment, causing her to squirm and coo beneath him, until suddenly, she jerked her legs free and swung from the bed, chasing him to the door. In the hallway, he laughed back at her.

"You wait 'til you come home," she said, pretending at anger, the door cracked so that he could see only one of her pretty eyes and part of her smiling, impish mouth. Then: "Good luck, darling."

"Thanks," he said, shoving the rolled-up plans he had spent a week on up under his arm. "I'll need it, I'm thinking."

He took the elevator to the street level and the rear service door to the garage. The Brendells had an apartment out on Wilshire in Beverly Hills, a good ten miles or he would have caught a cab. He was not that flushed even though his present set-up paid him well and Toni split all expenses with him. But he was trying to save every nickel he could, hoping that when another birthday rolled around he would have enough to open his own office. Actually, all he needed was one good deal like this one to put him over the top, not only from the financial end of it, but the prestige gained from building a six-hundred-thousand-dollar home… and out in the valley at that, would be invaluable.

He smiled again to himself as he piloted his Mustang into traffic, Toni's antics coming to mind. God, she was a hot little piece, all right… screw from morning until night, and back around the clock without a break… but she meant nothing to him beyond being a playmate and solid friend, and she knew it. He'd made that clear from the beginning… that their teaming up could be only a game, for convenience and pleasure's sake. All the same, he knew she was in love with him, but as far as he was concerned there never could be anyone but Karen; he would always love her… as long as he lived.

He sensed a tightness in his throat as memories of her flooded his mind. there were never many hours of a day when at least a fleeting thought of her didn't pass through his brain. My God, how he had loved her… how he still loved her. He wondered if she ever thought of him, where she was… if she was happy?

He had never seen her again after the divorce; hadn't wanted any association or mementos to tear him apart any more than he already was. Three days following the signing of the final papers he had enlisted in the Marines and gone to Vietnam hoping he'd get it quickly and put an end to all of his misery. As it was, he hadn't suffered a scratch and decided that he was damned glad about that, too. That inherent desire for survival was much stronger than he had ever realized.

Well, he'd learned to live without her, hadn't he?… even though he'd been certain he never could… but he would never forgive himself for what he had done to her. His horrible raping of her beautiful, soft, virginal body had been the destructive force that had nearly destroyed her completely. She had never been the same after, simply a fear-ridden, lifeless, frozen woman from the moment he would touch her. Oh she tried, he knew that… pretended at love when it was never there… God, there was little else he could do, was there? He hadn't tried to be noble; he owed her that much. She deserved happiness with someone… a full life… so young and vibrant and lovely… God, she might even be married again, he thought, and an emptiness seized at his entrails…

"Well… that's what you wanted for her, wasn't it?" he said aloud to himself. "You… you stupid, high-principled ass, you!"