Free Seducer by Fletcher Flora

simply impossible to get it through your head that things are not constantly the same.”
    “You look charming the way you are.”
    “Do I? You don’t,” she said. “You look rather absurd.”
    He was silent for a few seconds, the flush of anger deep and ugly in his dark cheeks. For a moment, watching him warily from the corners of her eyes, she thought that he was going to hit her, which was something he had done before in anger.
    The thought sent a little shiver of aberrant excitement through her folded body held steady by the clasp of her arms around her knees. He was dark and ugly and exciting in anger, and he often did blindly exciting things, although sometimes painful.
    Now, however, he seemed to think better of violence. She could sense the fury draining from him, the color of rage leaving his cheeks. He reached out and drew a surprisingly gentle finger down her arched spine.
    “Why do you stay on and on here, Maggie?” he said. “You don’t give a damn about college.”
    “I’m a career college girl. I plan to spend my life at it.”
    “Be serious for once. Why don’t you give it up? There are lots of things you could do that would be more fun and make you some money besides.”
    “Why don’t
you
give it up? You’ll probably flunk everything at the end of the term and get booted, anyhow. You could try working for a change.”
    “I will if you will. Give it up and go away, I mean. Let’s go away together, Maggie.”
    “Fat chance.”
    “Why not?” he asked.
    “I wouldn’t go across town with you.”
    “Please.”
    “No, damn it! No, no, no! And don’t beg. You only sound foolish when you do.”
    “All right,” he said. “All right, by God!”
    He swiped at her suddenly, before she had even an instant in which to duck or defend herself, and his heavy open hand cracked against the side of her head. Still clasping her knees, she spun comically on the pivot or her tail, then went sprawling on the floor with arms and legs flying. She was up on her knees in a flash, spitting obscenities and coming at him with open claws, but he swept her arms aside with a contemptuous gesture and clipped her brutally on the jaw, his hand folded this time into a fist. She fell away again in a flash of pain and garish light fading swiftly to brief darkness, and when the darkness receded she was flat on her back on the floor, pinned beneath the weight of his hard body. She spat in his face and cursed him, but he had been relieved by the catharsis of violence and did not care at all.
    His grip was almost gentle and did not hurt her in the least, but it was very strong, unbreakable, and it was impossible to scratch his eyes out, as she had threatened. This, however, was only something she had said to goad him, anyhow, and he was in fact now doing, beginning to do, what she had expected and wanted.
    There was a morning newscaster in the box where Brad had been. He watched Buddy and Maggie with professional gravity as he read the latest releases.

8
    “W ILL YOU have some tea now?” Madelaine asked.
    Brad looked up from the book he was reading. It was a dull book, he thought, but even the dullness was pleasant, something he badly needed after the stormy session with Cornelia and the trying television session in the morning.
    It had been altogether a pleasant afternoon, a welcome change of pace, and he had spent most of it doing exactly what he was now doing, sitting before his living room fireplace, in which there was a small wood fire, reading sporadically the agreeably dull book.
    “Is it time?” he said.
    “It’s nearly five.”
    “Really? It doesn’t seem possible. Saturday afternoons at home always pass so quickly. A characteristic, I suppose, of all good times and things.”
    “That doesn’t answer my question.”
    “What? Oh, yes. The tea. I believe I’ll have a cocktail instead, if you don’t mind.”
    “I suggest that you don’t. We’re going to the picnic party at the Nortons later, you know,