James Rouch - Civilian Slaughter

“You don’t have one then.” Not that Hyde cared one way or the other. He asked her just to keep her there. For a while longer to have her to himself.

“There will be time enough, when I have put sufficient money away. Perhaps though I will not want anyone. Or like two of the older girls I might prefer to live with a woman. I have never done it with a woman, but I can imagine it, I think. It would have to be a pretty girl, not one of those smelly tweed-wrapped sacks of potatoes who try to be men.”

It felt like he was going to burst. He backed off the stone or he would have come, simply from hearing her talk of such things. The thought was in his mind of how he could grab her and take her right here. Even if she protested, fought him, it would be over so quickly that he could get away without her having seen enough to identify him. But that wasn’t how he wanted it. A thousand times before this night he’d wished a similar fate on the unknown Russian gunner who’d destroyed his face. He was wishing it again now, with every fibre of his being.

In the darkness, perhaps there was a chance, they were all but invisible to each other. No, anything might happen, a beam of light from the hotel, the arcs being switched on again. Worse than not starting, to have her yell with fright when she saw him while they were doing it.

“How are you feeling now?” His mouth was dry, he had difficulty forming the words and they came out as a hoarse whisper.

“You mean you want me.”

“Yes.” He had been nodding like an imbecile for a minute before he could produce the word.

“Do you want to do it here?” She took his silence as “yes.”

“The ground is hard, and this is a good dress. Do you like to do it standing up.”

Christ, he’d have done it standing on his head. He wanted so much just to ram himself inside here, but he had to be careful. He didn’t want to frighten her off. “Can I do it from behind?”

“You don’t want to do anything dirty do you? I don’t like that. It makes me sore for days.”

“Oh no, no.” He struggled for the right words, had heard the disapproval in her voice. “I want to be able to touch you at the same time.”

“All right then.” She lifted her skirt and hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her panties, eased them down and stepped carefully out of them, not letting them touch the ground. “But no tricks. If you try to put it in the wrong place I shall be angry, and go back to the bus.”

“Whatever you say. I’ll do whatever you want.” And Hyde meant it. At this stage of frustration and anticipation he’d have done absolutely anything for her. Even go down on his knees in front and lick her until it soaked him. So long as at some stage she let him penetrate her and stay in her body until the release of the urgent pressure that was making his groin red-hot.

“I am ready.” She braced herself with her feet apart, palms resting on top of a low wall. The silky material of her underwear cushioned her left hand. “Pull my dress right up out of the way.”

In the darkness he had moved behind her and she felt hands bunching her clothes up over her waist. She tensed as the damp tipped warm hardness of an erection slid over her bottom, then relaxed as it moved down and began to urgently probe between her legs. Bending forward slightly she reached down and guided it in. There was a groan behind her and she felt the man’s body shuddering as he penetrated as far as he could.

Her skirt wedged up between their interlocked bodies, fingers slid over her hips and glided gently over her belly to explore among her pubic hair.

Despite herself, her unwritten rule, she knew she was going to come. As she felt him climax she pushed against the wall to force his fingers to greater pressure and then she was gasping and moving uncontrollably as well. “Again. Do it again, the same way.”

Hyde’s breath was lung-hurting gulps of air, like a man who had surfaced from deep under water. With hardly any break to the rhythm of their movements he started again. There was a sudden commotion from the hotel but he paid no attention to it. All there was for him was the woman and what they were doing together. Nothing else mattered, nothing else existed.

“What the hell.”

The thud of the explosion was right over Revell’s bed, and was accompanied by a shower of ceiling plaster that transformed him and the girl to white apparitions.

He’d got used to the yelling of the woman in the room above, but now her screaming went right off the audible scale. A barrage of French invective, gabbled so fast no words were recognizable.

There was the sound on the stairs of someone going down three at a time, and then the crack of a pistol shot accompanied by a braying laugh that could only be from Dooley.

Reluctantly he swung his legs over the side of the bed, and remembering in time that his companion didn’t speak a word of any language he’d ever heard, pointed to his watch, held up five fingers and gestured her to stay there and wait.

As evidence she understood, the Arab girl threw aside the cover and arching her body in the air began to finger herself.

“That’s right. Keep it ticking over. Back soon.” Failing to find any of his clothes, Revell grabbed a corner of the sheet she’d discarded and wrapping it about himself sarong style, went out onto the landing.

“So what the hell is going on.”

There was no answer, but from the flight above came another burst of donkey-like noises. Revell started up, dragging a long white crumpled train in his wake.

“Share the joke then.”

Dooley had gathered quite an audience. He sat on the top step with tears of laughter streaming down his face. “It’s that jerk Garrett. He chucked a thunder flash under Carrington’s bed while he was on the job.”

From the room drifted wreaths of grey smoke and anguished sobbing punctuated by vitriolic swearing.

“I thought Carrington was the great unflappable, so why’s he chased off after the young prat with a Colt.” Scully was minus his shorts, but still had the chefs hat and army boots.

“Carrington might be, but his broad isn’t. First thing she did was jump hard enough to almost yank his prick out by the roots, then when the bed burst into flame she shit herself.” Dooley dissolved in uncontrollable laughter. He was still laughing and holding his chest when a big naked girl came out and dragged him back to his room.

“Anybody know what kind of state Carrington was in?” Revell made it an open question to the assortment of partially robed figures gradually drifting back to bed.

Scully, with both hands cupped over his privates was edging away with his back to the wall. “I saw him about an hour ago. He was well away, at least a couple of bottles inside him. Garrett’s safe enough if he keeps more than ten feet from him.”

With that Scully reached an open doorway, and was suddenly gone.

Faintly, from the direction of the lake, came the sound of a shot. Revell pretended not to hear it, and after disentangling his sheet from the stair rails, returned to his own room.

The dawn revealed long tendrils of mist creeping in off the heath to surround the hotel. Its sickly yellow light did nothing to dispel the chill in the air.

A fire had been lit in a small ground floor lounge, after a long-dead flower arrangement had been removed from the hearth. It lay crushed under the pile of table legs and chair backs that had been broken for fuel.

Garrett sat on the arm of a couch, wincing as their medic dabbed at a cut on his forearm.

“Stop making a fuss.” Sampson threw the wad of cotton toward the fire. It missed and slowly frizzled until a spark caused it to be consumed in an instant. “Doesn’t even warrant a suture. Come to that, it’s hardly worth bothering with a tape, but if you want to try for a purple heart…”