Butterfly (65 page)

removed her bra and panties.

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When she tried to cover her nakedness with her arms, he got hold of her hands and

dragged her over to the bed. Flinging her down onto her back, he proceeded to tie each of

her wrists and then her ankles to the head and foot of the bed.

“What are you going to do?” she cried, struggling against the silken bonds.

“Teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.”

She heard the sound of his zipper. Then the bed dipped and he was suddenly between

her legs. “Wait—” she said breathlessly. But he was inside her at once, with one painful,

startling thrust.

She screwed her eyes shut tight. Her hands curled into fists beneath his cruel assault.

She clenched her teeth together to keep from crying out.

She thought it would last forever, the unrelenting attack. He seemed to be slamming

against her, punishing her. He didn’t talk. She heard his heavy breathing, the intermittent

gasps. She felt herself slowly sink into a spinning whirlpool; she felt herself being drawn

to the focus of the attack, to the weapon that was violating her. She could see it in her

mind; she concentrated on it. The whirlpool spun faster and faster until nothing existed

at all except the fire deep down in her pelvis, the burning hunger in her legs.

Finally, unable to hold it back any longer, she let out a long high-pitched cry. Her

body arched, shook, and then fell still.

Very gently he withdrew, still hard, and retreated into the bathroom. He ran cold

water in the sink and coaxed his erection down. He hadn’t ejaculated; he never did with

her. It saved him for the next member.

When he came out a few minutes later, she was stretching and smiling up at him. He

untied the scarves without saying a word, and started for the door. “Wait,” she said, run-

ning after him. “I have something for you.”

This time it was a small gold package. He didn’t open it now; he would save that for

later. But he knew it would be something very expensive. She was one of Butterfly’s more

generous members.

41

Linda was hurrying down the hall so fast, and not watching where she was going, that

when she collided with José Mendoza, the orthopedic surgeon, she nearly flew off her

feet.

But he caught her and said, “Whoa, my friend! Where is the emergency?”

She bent to pick up the files she had dropped. “I’m sorry, José! It’s just that I’m late for

an appointment in Beverly Hills.”

He helped her retrieve the scattered papers and said as he handed them to her, “I have

never known anyone to be always in such a hurry as you, Linda. I think it is not good for

you, such a pace.”

She laughed breathlessly and made sure the files were all in order. Then she tossed her

hair back off her face and smiled at José. “You’re one to talk! I’ve seen medical students

run down the hall after you while you’re lecturing them.”

“We all have our unseen phantoms, my friend. Maybe we should run from ours

together. Do you have time for a drink?”

“Not tonight, I’m afraid.” She looked at her watch. “I’m already late.”

“And what is in Beverly Hills?”

Her smile grew wistful. What was in Beverly Hills? Perhaps, she thought, peace of

mind at last.

“I’m sorry, José,” she said, starting to hurry away. “But I really must run.”

“Hey,” he called after her. “I hear you quit that television show.”

“Yes,” she said over her shoulder. “Do you want the job?”

He laughed. “Not on your life, my friend!” And then she was gone.

Linda sped down Wilshire Boulevard, trying to make her Ferrari fly. Once the deci-

sion had been made to return to Butterfly and give it another chance, Linda didn’t want

to waste a single precious minute. She was now a very determined woman.

The disastrous evening in her bedroom with Barry Greene had so upset her that she

had visited Dr. Raymond several times in the past three weeks.

“It was too soon,” the psychiatrist had said. “You weren’t ready for him.”

“I thought I wasn’t going anywhere at Butterfly. I was getting discouraged, and anx-

ious.”

“You haven’t given Butterfly a chance, Linda. You never let the companion go far

enough. You should avail yourself of the excellent opportunity Butterfly has to offer you.”

“I can’t seem to help myself, Virginia. As soon as he starts to venture into that area, I

freeze up. I just can’t let him see me.”

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“But you have to, Linda. Think of him as a sex therapist.”

Virginia was right, and Linda knew it. That was why she had joined Butterfly in the

first place. Linda decided she had to go back, be with her masked companion again, and

help him to help her.

An attendant met her at the back of Fanelli and escorted her up in the elevator. The

room she was admitted into was a familiar one—the canopied bed on the dais, the drapes

and bedding all the color of peaches, the champagne carpet. Refreshments had been set

out: chilled wine, liver pate and toast points, fresh fruit. But Linda wasn’t interested in

food. After quickly running a comb through her hair, she tied the mask in place and

turned at the sound of the other door opening.

He wore a tuxedo this time. It made him look tall and elegant. Even the mask seemed

right, somehow.

They danced for a while, slow and nice, and drank some wine. And then he began to

make love to her.

As they lay on the bed together, Linda naked except for her half slip, he moved his

hand tentatively down to her waist and held it there, a question in his eyes. Linda held her

breath. She wanted to stop him; she had to hold herself back. She let him continue his

exploration, beneath the slip, up along her thigh. Then she said, “Wait.”

He waited. He lay on his side, one arm under her shoulders, the other over her thighs.

His masked eyes watched her.

“I…” she began. “I have a problem.”

He kissed her and murmured, “Relax. Please…”

She couldn’t. Her body was rigid as she felt his hand move beneath her slip, move into

a place where she had never before allowed a man to touch her, except for her two former

husbands. As his fingers explored she closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding. She

wanted to stop him, but she was determined to go through with it.

“Let me look,” he whispered.

She nodded and felt the silky slip ride up and gather around her waist. The cool air felt

strange on her pelvis. He parted her legs slightly. Then he kissed her again, and held his

face inches from hers while he stroked her. First, her upper thighs, her pelvis, and

abdomen, to relax her, to massage the stiffness out of her body. After a few minutes Linda

began to feel sexual desire, she wanted him to enter her. But he kept at his exploration,

letting her excitement mount. And then his hand went farther until she felt—nothing.

“I can’t feel that,” she said, her excitement dissolving, her sexual desire ebbing.
This is

the way it always goes. This is when the lovemaking ends.
“It’s scar tissue. I have no feeling

there.”

When he didn’t react, when he didn’t pull away as the others always did, she opened her

eyes and looked at him. There was tenderness in his gaze. “Can you feel that?” he asked.

“No…”

“Tell me what happened.”

“I was two years old,” she said in a faraway voice. “We were in the kitchen, my mother

and I. She was ironing and I was sitting in my high chair, near the stove. She said that it

happened so quickly she couldn’t possibly have stopped me. She said one minute I was

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sitting there playing with my blocks, and then next I was screaming.” Linda looked away.

“Apparently I had reached up and pulled a pan of boiling water down onto myself. My lap

was scalded. Mother rushed me to the hospital, where they told her I had third-degree

burns from the waist down. I had to have skin grafts, a series of them, over a period of

years.”

“Is that why you never let me touch you there?”

“I was afraid you’d be…repulsed.”

His look turned to one of puzzlement. “Why would you think that?”

“That’s how men react to my scars.”

“I didn’t.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“If you hadn’t told me about the scars, I wouldn’t have noticed them. Whoever worked

on you did a good job.”

She brought her head back to face him again. “But other men—”

“You look almost normal down there. Your only problem is the loss of sensation. But

I think—” He moved his hand again. “How about here?”

“No.”

“And this?”

She hesitated. Then she felt his finger enter her. “Yes, I can feel that.”

He bent his head and kissed her. Then he said, “Look at me.”

She met his gaze. His eyes were dark and mesmerizing. They held her fast while his

hand moved again, this time in a different rhythm.

And then there was something—pressure…

She rolled her head away.

“Look at me,” he said again, softly.

She felt herself grow tense. What was he doing?
It isn’t going to work!

But his caress was compelling. Lost in the depths of his black eyes, Linda felt her ten-

sion start to melt. He began to probe deeper, and when he touched a certain spot, she

caught her breath.

“There,” he whispered. “It’s there…”

“What—”

“Relax. Don’t fight me. Let me do the work.”

And then she felt a sensation she had never felt before. Her eyes widened; she stared

up at him. “What are you—”

“Don’t talk,” he murmured.

He stopped moving. They lay on the bed, as still as a painting. Even his hand had

stopped, and yet Linda was beginning to feel something down there. He was pressing on

a certain spot, nothing more, just pressing upon a point she hadn’t known she had, deep

inside herself. And as he pressed, holding her gaze with his eyes, she started to feel a

strange warmth spread through her, as if it were radiating out from that center point. She

suddenly wanted to move, to ride with him, but he kept her still.

And then it happened. All of a sudden she cried out and arched her back in a wave of

overwhelming pleasure.

42

Beverly Hills: 1983

Something strange was going on at Fanelli.

Bob Manning, the manager of the store, wasn’t sure exactly what it was or when his

suspicions had been first aroused—it was only a feeling he had, a sense that something

wasn’t quite right. He wondered if it wasn’t his imagination that sometimes the male

models fell silent when he came into the dressing room, or that he sometimes thought he

caught secretive looks passing among them. Whatever it was, imagined or real, he decided

on a particular rainy morning in early February, when L.A. was held in a gray and wet

thrall and the store was more crowded than usual, to leave his office and take a casual

stroll among the customers.

For a man who was just about to turn seventy, and who had spent sixteen years of his

life in a hospital, Bob Manning was remarkably fit. Of course, he kept himself that way,

partly because it was expected of him, being a man who had to deal with Beverly Hills’

upper crust on a daily basis, but mostly because he wanted to make up for those lost years.

He dressed extremely well in silk blazers and wool slacks, with a fresh rose in his lapel

every morning, and whenever he walked where he could be seen he concentrated on min-