The Insiders

"Sure you're a whore, Francie. Every woman I've ever known is a whore—for some man. Get on the bed and spread your legs—real wide."

She backed away from him, her eyes studying his face warily. Suddenly she was no longer sure of herself, and she was scared of this man—there was no feeling in him.

Her breasts ached and stung, and her eyes blurred with tears. She saw him reach out and flick a switch; then she heard a whirring sound.

"You're—you're going to take pictures?"

"Movie, Francie. My friends and I make some of the best skin flicks you've seen—no acting, either."

His eyes moved over her; they were without depth, like glassy blue marbles.

"Hurry up, Francie, or you’ll get me mad again. Or is that what you're trying to do—make me mad?"

His pants were flung aside—she noticed that he had not bothered to wear shorts under them. He came to her, and she felt him push her backward with what was almost a kind of relief. He hit her again, and she heard her own groan of pain, but she continued to lie there with her eyes tightly closed and her legs open, feeling the familiar tickle of desire begin to grow and expand in her.

The hash was working on both of them now—he seemed to move in slow motion as he made her pose for him, contorting her body grotesquely, hitting her when she was too slow in obeying him or seemed reluctant. And in the end he turned her over on her stomach and beat her across her ass a few times with his belt while she rubbed herself against the silky sheets and screamed for him to fuck her, get on with it—anything—just make her come.

He came into her savagely, fingers twisted in her hair; and almost immediately, Francie could feel herself start to climax—a never-ending spiral of feeling that took her up, up, her body arching and jerking under his until he exploded into her.

Afterward, lying beside her on the bed, he acted as if the violence and passion that had erupted between them had not touched him in any way. He was cool, remote, even polite. It was hard for Francie to imagine that just a few minutes ago he had attacked her like an animal.

He poured wine into a glass for himself—champagne again for her.

"You didn't even put a hand up to cover your face when I hit you, you stupid little bitch. I could have really marked you up. Don't you have the normal self-preservation instinct?"

He confused her.

"I don't know," she answered him honestly. "All I care about is being able to come, and when you hurt me and beat me, it's like you're telling me to feel, you know? Like you're telling me you know I'm here, you want to put me down, you're doing something to me, and that means you want me."

"I don't know if I really do understand, but so what, if it turns you on. How old are you, by the way?"

His question caught her by surprise, so that she stumbled over her lies, her voice uncertain.

"I'm—I'm twenty."

He slapped her hard, knocking her off the bed and onto the floor.

"You're a lying cunt. Now tell me."

"Okay, okay, so I'm still nineteen."

This time, he got off the bed and pulled her to her feet by her hair, walking her over to the far corner of the room, where he calmly proceeded to wipe off all her carefully applied makeup with tissues dipped in cold cream.

Francie wriggled and cried and called him all the filthy names she could think of until he smacked her a few more times across the rump. Then she begged him to stop.

"I'm seventeen," she sobbed. "Really, I swear it. But I'll be eighteen this year, soon after I graduate. Honest, Brant, I'm not lying this time."

Like an alley cat, she rubbed herself up against him, touching him eagerly, licking at Iris skin with short, urgent jabs of her tongue. Suddenly he began to chuckle, his anger gone.

He carried her back to the bed and taught her how it felt to have a guy go down on her. Always before, it had been the other way around; she'd never had this happen to her before, and the sensation was wild and exquisite. Francie thought she'd go crazy with joy.

After a while, he moved his body alongside her, sixty-nine-fashion, and she tried to reciprocate, being more careful, gentler this time. But what he was doing to her felt so good that sometimes she forgot what she was supposed to be doing, and then his teeth nibbled at her clitoris until she screamed. Nothing she had ever experienced before could compare with this. . .. Francie thought she would never stop coming.

Suddenly he rolled onto his back, pulling her with him, making her ride him until he climaxed inside her. Aside from the way he seemed to swell and start to throb in her, the only indication Francie had that he had made it was the way his hands tightened around her sore hips, making her ciy out. Through it all, his face remained bland, cold, uncontorted. She decided he was the strangest guy she had ever met, and then, without warning, he lifted her off himself and tumbled her backward off the bed and onto the soft carpet, ignoring her as if she had suddenly ceased to exist for him.

Francie could tell, just looking at him, that already he was bored with her. Those blue eyes of his still seemed to glitter coldly, but he had shadowed them with too-long lashes.

"Do it again," she begged him, still squirming on the floor where he'd let her fall.