The Insiders

All right, bitch, he kept thinking, all right, then, get it, grab yourself one, and hurry, damn you, hurry, because I'm going to shoot my load all the way inside you any moment now!

Out loud, his voice prodded at her, urging her, "Come and get it, get fucked, baby," and she started to moan, and then she was saying, "Yes—God, yes!" and the last "yes" was a kind of scream.

He felt her start to contract convulsively around him, and that did it for him, too; there was no holding back now, and he had to let it go, to let the explosion of himself happen—the eruption into warm, tight, woman-cunt, not caring who or what the woman was; and it didn't even matter that his hands were hurting her and his mouth was bruising hers; she was taking it, wanting it, screaming for it.

"That was very good, lover," she said minutes later, her voice sounding only slightly breathless. "But get off me now, there's a good boy. I'm finding it hard to breathe, and besides, someone might come."

"That's a good one! All of a sudden you start to think about someone surprising us. 'Someone might come'!" he mimicked her cruelly, but at the same time, he did as she demanded—rolled off her body and reached for a cigarette before he reached for his swimming trunks.

Gloria, unlike Eve, ignored his sulks. Carefully, and quite daintily, she was slipping her bikini back on, fussing with the top.

"After that, I could use a drink. I'll ring for Hill, shall I?"

She pressed the bell-button that was set into the low table beside the pad where they now lay again, quite decorously.

Against his will, David was impressed by Gloria's coolness and the composure of her manner. Who would guess, looking at her now, that she'd just fucked like a great golden beast? Their eyes met for an instant, and she chuckled, a throaty, sexy sound.

"Don't try to figure me out, David, darling. It's a waste of time. I've tried analysis for a whole year, and even my analyst couldn't figure me out for sure—no one can!"

"Not even Howard?" he said spitefully, unable to help himself.

She chuckled again. "Especially not Howard, although he tries the hardest. He does come the closest to understanding me, though. In fact, he's very understanding. He knows little Gloria needs her fun—and variety, too. He doesn't mind, as long as I screw him, too, as often as he needs it."

Gloria slipped on her sunglasses and lay back on the pad.

"Tell Hill I'd like a long, cool daiquiri, would you, lover? I think I'll catch some shut-eye until he gets back with the drinks. I certainly do feel very good and relaxed. You perform much better when you're not too drunk, darling. Do remember."

He had to bite his tongue to keep from saying something that would have sounded spiteful. Damn her barbed tongue, and damn the way she thought she could just turn him on and off like a fucking robot built for her pleasure. He'd have to teach her different—Gloria could learn, too.

He saw Hill walking toward them, his white duck trousers reflecting the sunlight, and tried to appear as relaxed and nonchalant as Gloria did.

Quite unbidden, the thought of Eve came into his mind. The last time he'd been down here, Eve had come with him. Suddenly, he wished that she were lying beside him now.

CHAPTER EIGHT

EVE HAD BEEN WORKING all morning with a cameraman and two assistants interviewing demonstrators who were protesting the tearing down of an old apartment building. It was fortunate, she thought, that her assignment that afternoon was outdoors, close to the waterfront, and the cold, salt breeze blowing in across the bay had cleared her head. When she'd called the answering service on her return to the apartment, the girl who handled her calls had given her Peter's message along with the rest.

"Your doctor called—he said he could squeeze you in tonight if you called him right away."

She couldn't suppress a smile, even while she wondered what had prompted Peter to call her on a weeknight. Maybe he wanted her to make another tape for him! However, once she had taken her shoes off and cleaned the day's makeup off her face, she was sufficiently intrigued to call him back.

Peter wanted her to go with him to a party, a big one given by a well-known rock singer. He wanted someone ornamental to take with him, he told her, apologizing for the last-minute invitation.

"I really hadn't intended to go," Peter explained, "but Ray called me this afternoon and went on about it. Used to be a patient of mine, and he wants me to meet his latest girl friend."

To bribe Eve, he mentioned cunningly that there were bound to be photographers present in droves, and she'd get her picture in the society pages for a change. He added significantly that it might make David sit up and take notice, and that was what decided her in the end. Peter was right; let David see that she was circulating and perfectly happy without him.

Peter arrived in his English sports car to pick her up in exactly an hour, and Eve decided that he was really quite a fun escort when she could get him away from the dark little restaurants he loved to frequent. He was the perfect escort in public—attentive, handsome with his clipped David Niven mustache and Pierre Cardin clothes, and he had a dry sense of humor and could make her laugh, too. So what if he had his little quirks and perversions; they only made him seem more human, and, after all, who didn't have hang-ups?

After they had arrived at the party, and following the introductions and naming of drinks, Eve and Peter joined a small knot of people gathered under a graceful arch in the enormous living room of the new house. It was a housewarming, thrown to celebrate an architect's achievement and the completion of the famous singer's San Francisco town house. And Eve agreed, along with everyone else, that the house was not only well designed but beautiful inside.

Peter started talking to the singer, and their conversation was low-voiced and intimate and excluded the rest of the group. Eve stood there fiddling with the thin stem of her martini glass, looking around her for familiar faces. So far she had spotted quite a number of celebrities, but no one she knew personally.

Her eyes wandered, then came back with something like shock to one particular face—the kind of face, the kind of man that any woman would stare at. At the back of her mind was the feeling that she had seen him somewhere before—not in the flesh, perhaps, but in a newspaper or a magazine; perhaps even on TV. Who was he? He stood slouching carelessly, looking bored in spite of the attentive-seeming inclination of his head, listening to something that the singer's girl friend was saying to him, her hand touching his arm. He was surely the best-looking man that Eve had ever seen, and she found it hard to believe that such classical good looks existed. She found herself trying to place him—a male model from out of town? Or maybe even a movie star come up from LA for the party?

The recognition, the feeling of having seen his face somewhere before was an elusive, intangible thing, and she caught herself watching him while he talked, looking almost unconsciously for a gesture, a certain kind of shrug that would mark him as one of the gay crowd.

Jerry Harmon, who had done the Stud pictures and article on her, walked up to the man and said something in his ear, ignoring the singer s girl; and she clutched more tightly to the golden man's arm, demanding his attention. Eve had named him that already because of the way he looked, and she watched now the somehow intimate way his gilt head bent toward the other man's dark one, even while his eyes continued to watch the woman who stood so close to him.