Unknown - The Watch Dog

But Lucy invited him inside instead; why not? she asked herself, Mother's at home with her boyfriend. If she can play around with a fat old creep like Jerry Marlowe, then I can pick my own playmates too! she told herself assuringly.

And that was exactly what she did. Call it revenge, getting even, even love, but the end result is the same. Lucy Barrett lost her virginity that night in David's third-story studio apartment in Alexandria. It was all over so quickly she could hardly remember it now; of course, being perfectly soused might have affected her memory a bit. And looking back, she felt not the slightest recriminating pang, not one. She took David home to their Valley Farms house the very next night and treated Kate Barrett to a bit of her own medicine. Of course, John Barrett's charming widow was too much the southern aristocrat to make a scene in front of company, even if the guest was, in her own words, «some degenerate hippie creep and probably an addict as well.» The real scene came later, when David dropped her off at half past three in the morning, but Lucy came out ahead on points at the end of round one by turning up the very next afternoon for five o'clock cocktails at the Club with David firmly in tow. Long hair, sandals, dirty jeans, and all. That was the real beginning of a running battle between the Barrett womenfolk that had dragged on for over a month. Kate Barrett with her «gentleman friend» and Lucy with her hippie.

«Hi, baby, been waiting long?» Lucy was so caught up in her reminiscing that she failed to hear David pull to the curb, and that was no mean oversight with his MG.

«No, just a couple of minutes,» she lied to save conversation. «Let's get out of here, David. I'm just not in the mood for school today. I slept through the business accounting class and I was supposed to see the Dean about being late this morning, but I just cut out.»

«Okay, baby, I think you should have split from that lousy place a long time ago. Who the hell wants to go to school to learn to be a file clerk?»

Lucy reached inside and opened the latch of the tiny sports car and then climbed into the passenger seat, doubling her long legs to get them inside. David leered down between them at the snatch of white as her panties showed momentarily. «Hmm, nice beaver shot there, sweetheart,» he said with a phony Bogart lisp.

«Can it, David,» the well-built young blonde shot back irritably. «Step on the gas, will you, I said I wanted to get out of here. How about a couple of beers at Scottie's?»

He threw the gearshift into first and popped the clutch in a howl of burning rubber. «Scottie's?» he inquired over the raucous din of the finely-tuned roadster. «What made you decide that? We haven't been to Scottie's since the night we met. I thought you didn't like the place.»

«Well, that was yesterday and today's today. Now I'd like to have a beer at Scottie's. And then maybe over to your place.»

David did not need any further hints; Lucy was strangely eager to get into bed today, and whatever the reason, he was game. Lucy was the kind of dish some men lived all their lives without once ever having, and she was his for the taking! «Okay, baby, Scottie's it is. And then my place for dessert, right?» he said with a knowing chuckle.

Lucy turned her head and looked at him blankly. «Don't joke about it, David. I need it today, that's all … I need you!»

David pressed the accelerator a bit closer to the floorboards; he'd never seen her quite like this. And Lucy to practically ask for it. Damn that was almost unthinkable! He glanced to be sure she was looking away and then used the heel of his palm to press down the eager erection that was already bulging in his tight Levi's.

The cramped walk-up studio that he rented was, as usual, in need of a woman's touch. Food from meals already digested and forgotten lay hardening in the sunlight that glared in from outside. This place had little to say for it, but its Southern exposure was its one redeeming point. Even in the dead of winter, there was more sun here than in most penthouses. The one large room was papered floor to ceiling with rock posters from the sixties; David had lived in San Francisco then and was, as he told it somewhat sketchily, somehow loosely connected with the defunct Avalon ballroom. Lucy, in her more cognizant moments, guessed that he was perhaps a ticket-taker, but she never ventured to question him further. David was not the kind of person one ever got to know extremely well; she supposed she knew him as well as anyone, and still there were a lot of stones uncovered. Like, for instance, what he did for a living. He did not seem to have a lot of money, but he always had just enough. Yet when she asked him about his source of income, he always answered in some vague generality about being an «agent,» then sometimes a few words about «finders' fees and such.»

Lucy had heard of such things; John Barrett always took her into his confidence. He often said that he wanted no daughter who was capable of being just a housewife: therefore, he explained the innermost workings of his businesses in detail to her as a teenager, usually when she would have preferred television or a drive in the country. But she never let on to David that she had any familiarity at all with the world of business and finance; as far as he knew, she understood just what little they taught her at business school. And that was hardly enough to make a decent secretary. In all honesty, she had to admit, if only to herself, that she had some doubts about David's standing in the financial community, but that never bothered Lucy Barrett. She had all the money she needed, and a lot more corning when she turned twenty- five, so what did it matter if David probably had some part-time job he was ashamed to tell her about. Maybe in a service station since he liked cars so much, she sometimes guessed. But only when it crossed her mind at all, which was seldom.

«Want another beer?» he asked, opening the refrigerator.

«No, thanks, those two at Scottie's were enough for me. I have to go home eventually, and one drunk in the house is quite enough.»

«Ol' lady's on the sauce again?» he laughed.

«Not so bad as before, when Daddy died. But she's knocking down more than her share. And that boyfriend of hers kills a bottle every day or so. Scotch, naturally, at twelve bucks a bottle.»

«Can't the tight-ass afford his own booze? I thought he had tons of money.»

«Yeah, I suppose. He's got lots of money, but he'd rather drink for free, I guess,» the attractive blonde explained as she dropped across David's unmade double bed. She always felt a tingle of excitement when she lay on this bed; this was where she first had a man. This was the only place where she'd had a man.

David kneeled on the mattress beside her, placing his half-full beer on the headboard. «Well, let's not talk about that jerk Marlowe. We've got more important things to do, right, baby?» Lucy felt her whole body begin to shiver as his hands touched the small of her back and then moved down over her soft round buttocks and started to push the hem of her school dress up along the backs of her smooth unblemished thighs. She heard his breathing suddenly grow faster, and she could feel the hot intensity of his stare there between her slightly-spread thighs. He gave her a meaningful nudge and she lifted her hips and then her breasts so that he could pull her dress up and off, pausing first to unzip it at the shoulders.

«Mmmmmmmm,» she murmured softly as his hands smoothly caressed their way down her back as he unhooked her brassiere; that too was removed quickly as she lifted her large firm breasts from the mattress for Davis to pull it away. She felt a quiver of eagerness as her naked breasts rubbed against the sheet; her nipples hardened in contact with the coarse fabric, and Lucy could feel that familiar surge of passion rushing through her chest and loins.