James McClure - The Caterpillar Cop

The total effect was really quite appetizing.

So Jonathan made a slow-motion descent, took the first part of the kiss with a wary pucker, worked gently at her jaw with his fingertips the way he did when giving a worm pill to his dog, and gained entry to her oral cavity.

For one terrifying moment he thought he would have to learn to talk with his hands. And then she abandoned herself to her first adult sensation and took his breath away.

Literally.

Using every muscle in his athlete’s torso to subdue a coughing fit, he went straight into the next stage. Once again his superb fitness was of paramount importance as it allowed him to rest himself gently on top of her right half while taking the weight on his offside limbs. All he had to do now was keep her lips occupied while his body heat sneaked across.

She melted rapidly right down the middle and his knee sank into her warmth. He began a restrained rhythmic movement. Her thighs clamped on his leg so hard he involuntarily broke the embrace.

“You’re strong,” he murmured.

“Riding,” she said. “I’m in the pony club.”

God, you had to laugh. They both did. Only she apparently found humor in the absurd, while he saw it in the unwittingly apt. His laughter was also the release of tension caused by a final anxiety-if she had been pounding about on a saddle, then there would be no need to deflower and that was always a relief. Especially if you had a date with the lads.

“I love you, Pen,” he said.

“Do you really?”

“All of you. Every bit. Can I look?”

Before she could lift her head, he weighed it down with his mouth and sent his left hand down the front of her quasi-Regency dress to twitch the long line of buttons free. His right skillfully disengaged her bra hooks through the thin material at the small of her back.

Then he sat up-startled.

Never, never look a gift horse in the saddle blanket. Underneath, she was incredible. Like cream poured from a jug-a continuity of changing shapes each retaining a perfection of form. It was impossible to note detail.

“You’re…”

Words genuinely failed him.

“Aren’t my bosoms too big? That’s why I always wear dresses like this one.”

“Hey?”

“But this isn’t fair, Jonathan.”

“What isn’t?”

“You looking at me. I can’t see you-can I?”

“Do you want me to…?”

“I mean-without my glasses.”

“Pen, I’m going to, though-all right?”

She nodded.

And when he was naked to his black socks she giggled and said, “You’re still just a blur. You’ll have to find them for me.”

“Touch me instead, Pen.”

She did so, hesitantly. Then like a sculptor running a hand over a work by Michelangelo; there was awe and an urgent lust to create.

He touched her, too, selectively, and forgot to keep saying how much he loved her.

Not that it mattered any longer.

She was drawing him down into her.

It was sheer instinct.

Instinct.

Like the primeval leftover that alerts modern man to a pair of staring eyes.

Jonathan brought his chin up onto her forehead and looked into the bushes.

The eyes stared back.

There was a face, too. The face of a youth with blond hair who was smiling at him through a low fork in a tree.

“Jonathan?”

Her voice was anxious.

A terrible rage lifted him from her and he rolled to one side. She grabbed at him.

“What’s wrong now? Please! We so nearly…”

He pushed her away. He was shaking uncontrollably. His face expressed one thing: revulsion.

Before she could ask him again, he was gone-blundering through the bracken, sobbing, cursing, heading straight for the youth behind the tree.

Who never moved.

Until he was caught by the shoulders and hurled to the ground. Jonathan was drawing back his foot for a kick to the groin when something made him so dizzy and nauseated that he staggered three paces and fell over a log.

Seconds later, she came hopping, a thorn in her foot, into the glade. Bibbity-bobbing about like anything. Weeping, too.

“Love me,” she cried. “I’m not different!”

And she threw herself down beside the dim male form and pulled a limp hand to her breast.

Then she felt the rigor of the flesh.

And blood where manhood should be.

“Jonathan!”

“I’m over here,” he gasped, “by the log.”

For her last rational thought, Miss Jones resolved never again to take off her spectacles.

Poor old Penny Jones.

Murder was not altogether a bad thing, mused Lieutenant Trompie Kramer of the Trekkersburg Murder Squad. It had its advantages. Every murderer thought as much-even if for only a second split like a tree in a brainstorm. And a surprising number of so-called victims did, too, judging by the way they egged the buggers on.

He throttled hard as his long black Chevrolet sloughed suburbia and joined the dual highway to the country club. He licked up a squelch of tomato sauce for an aperitif before beginning on the hamburger.

Then again, take the rest of the mob: ask them how much they would like to live without murder. Not much. Not at all, once they had thought about it. A man with iron in his soul did a lot for the anemic world most people inhabited; everyone from the pale justices, arranging their pens and pencils like knives and forks, to the pinch-cheeked crones with flasks in the galleries, felt better for being there-while the press boys, ever mindful of the public’s needs, added it to all the other good things in the breakfast cereal spooned up over their words. And when the genuine article was not available, there were always the hundreds of murders committed for profit by writers. Yes, they kept things going, just like those pinups in Antarctic weather stations. So at the expense of one, two, say a family of persons, a large chunk of society was kept either too busy or too content or too both to cause trouble. Something that did all this could not be all bad. No, sir.

But wanton sex killings involving the young were quite another matter. Kramer sucked his sticky fingers and wondered why.

He found a partial answer in recalling the Widow Fourie’s reaction a few minutes earlier to the news of his assignment. He had given it to her straight, with an apology for spoiling their plans. When she withdrew abruptly into herself, he had apologized again. It was then that he noticed she was trying to keep her eyes from the door of the children’s bedroom. And that was his answer: this sort of murder was the one kind that could happen to anyone. You and particularly yours were eligible, maybe not this time but next time, no matter how much care you took to avoid sordid situations, no matter how often you slept with a cop. Just to know there was a homicidal pervert at large was to find yourself perversely cursing the fact you had four fine, attractive kids. Attractive! Man, everything sweet turned bitter when there was an animal in the shadows.

An oncoming vehicle glared before dipping its headlights, reminding Kramer of the way expert witnesses always looked down suddenly whenever he said animal. To hell with them and all that crap about mumsy-love and arsehole fix-whatsits; he knew what he was talking about. Human beings you investigated, animals you had to hunt.

And because he was a detective, not a bloody game ranger, this always niggled. So much-

His foot had jumped from accelerator to brake.

Not a hundred yards ahead a Land-Rover had emerged from behind a tarpaulined bulldozer to make placidly for the center island. At its present speed, with the bulldozer already blocking some of the road, the Chevrolet could take only one line into the next bend and that was straight through the Land-Rover.