Ted glanced down startled. It was the big one, Albert. While she had been looking the other way he had scooted closer. "Thought you were going to fall overboard," he muttered and let go of her ankle.
I'll just bet you did, she thought, but she didn't say it. Instead, she gave John's course a final check and went down the cabin scuttle, feeling the boy's eyes on her every step. She wished she had never put on shorts and halter but she had and it was her boat and she was damned if she was going to let a fourteen-year-old discomfit her. If there was to be any squirming and embarrassment, let him do it.
She had had her share during auditions. God, those auditions! When she had been a little girl trying to make a place for herself in the world of ballet it had seemed to Ted that the entire theatrical world was one big cock-and aimed straight at her. She remembered one day when she had been twelve, just starting to sprout those tiny bulges ballerinas wore behind their nipples. Mr. Sprague, her manager, had somehow managed to shunt Momma off on some fool's errand while he arranged the interview with Mr. Hammel who was casting an extravaganza. Since she was only twelve Ted had supposed she was going to dance. Not that she didn't know about casting couches and all that jazz, but twelve-year-old virgins walk around encased in an armor of "it can't happen to me." Ted knew it only happened to older girls. Mr. Hammel, it turned out, was not exactly connected with the world of ballet. But he had a lot of money and be was surrounded by people actively engaged in making some of it rub off on them. Mr. Hammel, somewhat to his own amazement, found himself producing a show. He had been totally immune to the boys in the company. He had shared a laugh with his wife when the girls tried various shortcuts to opulence. In desperation, the promoter decided to see if there weren't some hidden trigger he could pull in Mr. Hammel's psyche.
Ted had worn street clothes for the interview. As a matter of fact, they had not been the clothes she would have chosen. She wore a straw boater hat, patent "little girl" shoes with a single buckle, a skirt shorter than her tutu which required that she stand very straight unless she wanted to show her pink rayon panties. Over it all she wore a middle blouse which, though loose, had been cut somehow to reveal the just-rising buds of her inchoate breasts. In an oversized handbag she carried her dancing costume.
Mr. Sprague had had a few final words of wisdom. "You want a big part, don't you?"
Ted had nodded. After all, what had she been twisting her ass into a pretzel these last seven years for?
"Well, Mr. Hammel is the man with the money. Whether the show gets produced depends on how much he likes you. If I were twelve and wanted a big part I'd do everything I could to make Mr. Hammel like me." And with this advice Mr. Sprague had abruptly disappeared.
Mr. Hammel was old. Thinking back on it now, she supposed he had been maybe forty. His hair was thinning and he had a small mustache. He wore a suit like everybody else she knew and he sat behind an immense desk. In the corner of his office was a couch of the type she was in later life to associate with psychoanalysis.
Mr. Hammel had pushed a button on his desk and in reply to a squawky female voice had said, "Miss Burton, please see that I'm not disturbed until I call you again."
"Well," he said with artificial joviality to the little girl who sat primly in front of him, "I suppose you're a veteran in show business."
"I've been dancing seven years," Ted said.
"Hmmmmm. Would you mind standing up?"
Ted had been standing up for ballet masters as long as she could remember.
"Do you have your costume with you?" Ted nodded toward her oversized handbag.
The man behind the desk thought a moment. He seemed to be having trouble with his breathing. "Uh, I suppose in show business you get used to undressing in front of people… " He left it dangling.
"I guess so," Ted said. It seemed to her that in practice somebody's tights were always ripping.
"Well," Mr. Hammel said, still having some kind of trouble with his breathing, "I've seen plenty of ballet costumes." He forced an artificial laugh. "See one and you've seen them all. The problem in casting this show is, are you mature enough?"
"I don't wear a bra yet if that's what you mean," Ted said.
That was exactly what Mr. Hammel had meant but he hadn't expected it from a twelve-year-old. Somehow his whole blueprint for seduction was going wrong. A twelve-year-old virgin was supposed to be timid and, above all, ignorant. He guessed it must be show business. "Uh," he tried again. "Uh, perhaps we could save a lot of time if you just got out of your street clothes so we can see your figure. No use wasting time getting into a costume."
If all he wanted was for her to take off this silly middy blouse and the too-short skirt Ted didn't mind. After all, she showed more every time she went swimming. "Unbutton me, please," she said, and turned her back.
Mr. Hammel seemed all thumbs as he fiddled with buttons at the back of her neck-which wouldn't have been there in a real middy blouse but this was something out of the wardrobe department and the front and neckerchief and all the rest were actually one piece all sewed together. Finally she swirled away from, him and removed the blouse herself with one fluid motion. Beneath it she wore a white rayon slip which covered her body down to the too-short skirt.
While Mr. Hammel breathed harder and seemed almost ready to have an attack of asthma she folded the middy blouse neatly and put it over the back of the chair. Then before he could waste more time fiddling with her skirt she undid its single button and lowered the zipper. When she stepped out of it Mr. Hammel gasped.
Ted couldn't guest why. The rayon slip covered her almost as thoroughly as her outer clothes had. She had listened to the boys and some of the older girls in the studio talk about fetishists-whatever they were-and some of the other weirdoes encountered in the confusing and sometimes terrifying world outside the studio. Mr. Hammel had asked her to undress so she was going to undress. Without any of the coaxing or long, slow buildup he had engineered in his dream production of this incident, she crossed her hands and whipped her slip off over her head with a minimum of hair-mussing.
Mr. Hammel's face was very red. He was breathing as if he had a chicken bone lodged in his throat. Ted posed before him in single-buckle, black patent leather "little girl" shoes. She wore white ankle length socks and pink rayon panties. From the waist up she wore only a ribbon in her hair. Her tiny breast buds were just sprouting, making her nipples stand out a half inch from her thin muscular chest. Her small, slight body was as trim as seven years of constant exercise could make it. She was still a virgin.
Mr. Hammel just stared. Ted waited for him to say something. When he didn't she paused another moment, then grasped the back of the chair and twisted her slight, muscular body into the First Position. Still Mr. Hammel stared.
Slowly, Ted worked through all the classic positions, showing off her expertise to a man who would not have known a ballerina from a B-girl. When she was finished he still sat red-faced and gasping behind his desk. Ted wondered what she ought to do next. Mr. Sprague had told her to be nice to him. Was she supposed to make him fudge…?
The man behind the desk finally found his voice. "Uh," he began, "how old are you?"
"Twelve. I'll be thirteen in June."
Clearly, Mr. Hammel was undecided about something. "I, uh-" He cleared his throat and tried again. "I've heard you people in show business look at things differently, from the rest of us."
"What things?"
"Oh, uh-" He paused and swallowed again. "Things like taking your clothes off."
Ted wondered what he meant. "Do you want me to take off my shoes and socks?" she asked.
Apparently that was not exactly what Mr. Hammel had had in mind.
Ted was used to shedding her panties. They made a line and bulged in the wrong places if she left them on under a ballet costume. But nobody in the studio had ever asked her to take them off in front of everybody. Still… Mr. Sprague had told her to be nice to Mr. Hammel. Maybe he wanted to check up on how mature she was.
Mr. Hammel had finally found his voice again. "This show may run several years," he explained. "And we can't have any sixteen-year-old twelve-year-olds turning matronly in the middle of the season."
"You want to see if I have any hair down there," Ted translated. Before he could answer she matter-of-factly peeled down her pink rayon panties. Bent over, she thought a moment, then took them the rest of the way off from around her ankles. Clad only in her black patent leather "little girl" shoes, white ankle socks, and a pink hair ribbon, she went through the ballet positions again.
Mr. Hammel's asthma seemed to be getting worse. His face was pink and he was breathing with great difficulty. Ted finished twisting her slight nude body through the positions and asked, "Is there anything else you want to see?"
There wasn't. Mr. Hammel had been dreaming and wanting to see something very like what he was seeing at this moment ever since he had been twelve himself and very close to seeing it until the neighbor girl's mother had come home at an inopportune moment. He couldn't trust himself to speak. Choking, trying to control his breathing, he gestured toward the couch.
Still clad only in white anklets, black patent leather shoes, and a hair ribbon, Ted sat on the edge of the couch. After a moment Mr. Hammel came to sit beside her. He didn't sit very close. He seemed almost afraid to touch her. "Uh," he began, "uh, you want this part real bad?"
"I guess so," Ted said. "It could help start my career."
Mr. Hammel put a timid hand on her thigh. Ted had felt so many men's hands on her body twisting her this way and that, pushing her ass in, pulling it out, making her suck in her tummy that another man's hand on her leg was no big deal. But she was twelve and not totally stupid. She began to suspect what was on Mr. Hammel's mind. It didn't shock her. It only surprised her somewhat. She was twelve-just starting to sprout and there were other girls in the company with very nice little bodies, girls sixteen, eighteen, even in their-twenties. "Did you know," she asked, "that girls who want to be really good dancers have to be virgins?"
Mr. Hammel's hand came off her thigh. "Why?" he asked.
"I don't know. It's something to do with stretching your bones out of shape or getting pregnant or something. But I know it's true. Everybody tells me."
"Isn't it awfully hard to live up to?" Mr. Hammel asked.
Ted shrugged. "Maybe someday. Not now. I don't really care about it that much." To her mild surprise she found she was starting to care more than she ever had before. Something about sitting here naked on the couch beside Mr. Hammel was more wickedly exciting than anything she had ever experienced in all her twelve years. She wondered what it would feel like it Mr. Hammel were to take off his clothes too and lie down on top of her and stick his thing inside that little slit that had never had anything inside it except dust from the practice floor and lint from her ballet tights whenever she half tore herself in two doing the splits.
She thought about how it felt when she let her legs spread wide apart, so wide that the hairless lips of her vulva spread wide apart and her tiny, still-unlicked clitoris rubbed against the seam that ran up the middle of tights. It tickled and made her feel warm and giggly all over. She had often wondered if the other girls had experienced the same sensation when their cunts opened. She had heard stories from other girls her age about putting a finger down there and tickling until Something Nice happened.
Ted had always intended to try it herself some day but six hours at the bar were enough to send her home ready for bed every night. Somehow she had never gotten around to it. Being a dancer, no matter what aging satyrs like Mr. Hammel might think, was hard work.
"It must be an exacting profession," he said.
Ted didn't understand what exacting meant.
"Hard work," Mr. Hammel explained. "Why don't you just lie down and take a little rest on the couch and I'll do some nice things to make you feel better."
"I was a virgin when I came in here," Ted said.
"Don't worry," Mr. Hammel consoled. "You'll still be one when you walk out with a contract for that part."
Ted swung her thin muscular legs up onto the couch and lay back. Though she had never been fucked, she knew how it was done. Mr. Hammel was a grown man but he was also flabby. If he tried to climb between her legs he just might find his neck in a scissors grip he would never forget.
But she soon discovered she didn't have to worry. Mr. Hammel didn't try to get on top of her and force his way between her legs. Instead, he knelt on the floor beside the couch and began kissing her tiny, hard-muscled belly.
Ted sighed at the memory. It had been twenty-seven years since poor Mr. Hammel had buried his face in her immature belly and… At thirty-nine her body had finally made it to what most girls had at twenty. Standing in shorts and halter bracing herself at the windward sidestay she knew she could stiffen every prick in the yacht basin-and especially the fourteen-year-old's who was steering. She wondered if the other boy was grown up enough to think about girls.
Anyhow, it was cruel and unusual punishment to make the boy look at her superb and eminently fuckable body when he knew he would never get into it. She had gone below to fix lunch.
Ted thought a moment, trying to guess what boys this age and from this background might like. She had a few real goodies aboard-some Iranian caviar among other things. Chances were a ghetto boy would take half a taste and spit. Suddenly she remembered. That asshole of a marlin fisherman in the next slip who had decided she would be a quick and easy lay… He had brought over a load of garbage one night. She had tossed it in the refrigerator without-looking.
She opened the reefer and tore the bag down the side. It was full of hot dog makin's. She gave a mental sneer at the he-man fisherman who had retired in precipitate confusion when she had lifted a hundred-pound anchor with one hand rather than scratch a freshly varnished deck. She hoped he had found a girl somewhere mentally and physically equipped for hot dogs.
But this, she realized, was ideal for these two boys. She started making hot dogs, trying to ignore the fourteen-year-old at the tiller whose eyes alternated between his course and her ass. Then abruptly the boy was in the cabin with her. "Can I help?" he asked.
Ted gave a quick look topside. Thirteen-year-old John was steering. From the heel of the hull and feel of the seas she guessed he was holding a fair course "Why not?" she said and handed Albert a jar of mustard.
The boy surprised her by washing his hands before he started smearing mustard on buns. Hope for the masses yet, she thought. She tried to think of something they could talk about. "Do you think you'd like to be a sailor?" she asked.
"If you mean go in the Navy the answer is no."
"I mean just to get a job of some kind around boats," she said. "Lots of young people work their way around the world."
"What's there?"
Ted shrugged. "Adventure, I guess."
Albert surveyed her shorts and halter-clad body from fourteen-year-old eyes. "I wouldn't have to go off clear 'round the world for what I want," he said.
Ted felt herself blushing. Not just her face. To her annoyance she knew her whole body-acres and acres of smooth, white skin was flushing beneath the boy's avid gaze.
She supposed she ought to slap him. She was nearly forty. This fourteen-year-old snot had no business talking that way to her. But… she tried to be honest. She could have worn something else a little less revealing. She knew damn well her body was still better than plenty of twenty-year-olds. She had asked for it. She shouldn't penalize the boy for doing what comes naturally. Besides… it felt good to stand here and be wanted. How long had it been since she had been wanted by any man she could stand thinking about?
Mostly she got dipshits and gone-to-seed rumpots like that marlin fisherman who still carried a mental image of himself twenty years younger and twenty pounds lighter. She didn't need fucking that bad. She didn't need it at all. But it would be fun to… she wondered if in her old age she was turning into the same kind of lecher old Mr. Hammel had been that day when she was twelve and had taken off her clothes and laid down on his casting couch.
With his face buried in the firm muscularity of her little gently-rounded belly Mr. Hammel had breathed so hard and fast she had feared for a moment he was having some kind of attack. "Oooohhhh!" he moaned, and nuzzled her, ploughing gentle furrows back and forth, up and down her soft smooth belly with his nose.
Ted didn't mind. It was easier work than stretching her ass out of shape at the exercise bar. She wondered how long he would keep it up, or if he would want her to do anything else. She knew from whispered commentary that the boys were in the habit of putting their mouths in all sorts of unusual places but she had never heard of men doing that to girls. Mostly men seemed to want to put their thing between a girl's legs and ruin her figure and fix it so she could never dance again.
But Mr. Hammel didn't seem to be trying to do that. His hands were caressing her now, running softly up and down her firm thighs, memorizing the gentle contours of her incipient breasts. His hand felt funny running over the tender new swelling behind her nipple. To her surprise, her tiny virginal nipples had risen to pebble-hard rigidity under the touch of his hand. She could feel an odd warm tingle inside her belly too as he kissed and nuzzled his way up and down it. She had never felt anything quite like it before. It felt good.
She decided just to lie back and let him do what he wanted, providing he didn't try to put his thing inside her. She closed her eyes and it was just like old Miss Jacques rubbing out a cramp.
Like hell it was. Ma'mselle Jacques had possessed a pair of arms like a wrestler and what the ballet bar couldn't tear loose she could. Mr. Hammel on the other hand was soft, smooth and gentle the way things always were in her dreams when she went home dead tired after six hours of practice and fell exhausted in her bed to dream of soft gentle hands soothing her tired body. His mouth and nose tickled a little bit on her belly but she didn't mind. It felt nice to feel a man's warm mouth go up and down, back and forth kissing the ache away.
Gradually she realized he wasn't kissing back and forth. Mr. Hammel seemed to have established a home base in her navel. From there he was kissing his way outward in ascending spirals that tickled her flanks, led nearly up her midriff to where the flesh was growing and swelling behind her nipples. But his nuzzling and kissing seemed to grow more intense each time he approached the bottom of one of his swings, approaching ever nearer the bare Sony prominence of her mons veneris.
Actually it wasn't bare. Down between her legs were a half dozen long coarse hairs and the outer surface of her crotch was already downy with the fuzz that within months would become a luxuriant mat of fur she would have to trim lest it create too much of a bulge inside her nearly transparent tights. Ted wondered if she should have trimmed those half dozen coarse hairs before this interview. But… how could she have known she was going to have to undress? She wondered why Momma or Mr. Sprague hadn't warned her.
Meanwhile it felt nice to he back naked on the couch and let Mr. Hammel kiss away. He wasn't doing her virginity any harm and he seemed to be enjoying it though she couldn't imagine why and if this was what it took to get the part well.
She tried to relax and ignore the tickle each time his mouth wandered away from her crotch to kiss her skittish flanks. It felt nice. Almost as nice as when he wandered upward to kiss the place where someday she would have tits. But it felt even nicer when he stayed down there to kiss the bony prominence of her crotch.
She felt a sudden scare when his hands pulled her knees apart but she was reassured when he made no effort to climb in between them. Instead he began kissing her legs, working slowly up one and down the other, kissing the tender inner surface of her thighs, working his way down to her knees and ankles, then back up to thigh again. From the way he dodged from thigh to belly and back again Ted gained a sudden suspicion. She had heard the older girls talk about it so she guessed such things actually happened. But she had never thought they would happen to her!
Ted caught her breath. Would he actually do it? She didn't know whether she wanted him to or not. She knew enough to realize it wouldn't make any real difference, she would still be a virgin even if he went at her with a spoon arid a fork. But was it true? Did men actually eat pussy?
Mr. Hammel sure acted like he was working up to it. He was kissing her belly, kissing her legs, nuzzling the soft tender skin of her inner thighs as he circled ever closer to her secret slit.
Ted didn't know whether she wanted him to do it or not. But abruptly she realized she was letting her legs fan wider apart, drawing her heels up and bending her knees to make it easier for him to find his tender target. She could feel the cool air of the office on the open lips of her vulva. It felt just as if she were doing the splits without any tights on-except that she wasn't stretching and straining and hurting and going to need an hour in a hot bath afterward. Instead, this felt good. It felt so good she knew she wouldn't mind lying here all afternoon and letting Mr. Hammel kiss his leisurely way up, down and around her naked little body. It sure beat dancing.
But would it get her the part? She put a hand on the back of his neck and asked him.
"Yes!" he assured her. "It's yours. You'll be the prima ballerina for as long as you want it."
Ted thought it was crazy. She wouldn't do it even if she was paid for it and here he was doing it for nothing. But even if it was crazy and kind of dirty, it felt-interesting. She lay back and let her flexed knees fall wider apart.
Mr. Hammel lost no time in accepting her invitation. Both of his hands grabbed her muscular little dancer's ass and drew her to him. His face penetrated hitherto unplumbed depths between her thighs. Ted felt a funny tingling in her belly. It felt good. It felt like something nice was going to happen soon but she couldn't guess what. She wondered what would happen if she were to close her thighs in a scissors over Mr. Hammel's head. Chances were this florid middle-aged man had no idea of the strength in a pair of legs that had spent six hours a day for the last seven years at the practice bar. But then, Ted decided she'd better not let him find out.
It was much nicer just to lie back on Mr. Hammel's couch, clad only in black patent leather shoes, white ankle socks, and a pink hair ribbon. She wondered what Mr. Hammel was going to try next. Surely there couldn't be much fun in what he was doing. All he was doing was to put his head between her legs and kiss the soft inner surfaces of her thighs, working ever closer to her pee hole but never quite making it. She wondered if he ever would.
What would it feel like to have somebody's mouth on her pee hole? She had heard the boys talk about doing things like that and she knew some of the older girls in the troupe did some very odd things among themselves. But boys and girls alike had always been nice to her. She was the youngest. Maybe that had something to do with it.
She tried to relax and just let it happen. If Mr. Hammel wanted to lick her pee hole it wasn't as if he wanted to fuck her and destroy her virginity. It might feel funny but she was sure it would be nicer than six hours practice. And it couldn't hurt half as much as the first time she had spent two hours doing the splits.
She wondered… Ted had seen the boys' cocks often enough as they shed street clothes and hurried into tights. She had seen the older 'girls' cunts too and it had always been a puzzlement how anything as big as a boy's cock could go into a hole as small as… maybe, she guessed, that was why it ruined girls for dancing. Something that big might start a split that-once a girl spread her legs and settled to the dusty practice floor, maybe she would just keep right on splitting…
Mr. Hammel was moaning and crooning as he nuzzled her crotch. His hands left her ass and she saw him struggle with his belt. A tiny spurt of worry shot through her. If he was going to take off his pants maybe he was thinking about… Ted knew she didn't really have to worry. If Mr. Hammel tried to put his thing into her she could break his arm.
But he didn't seem to be trying. He managed by super-human effort to get out of his trousers and shorts without removing his face from her crotch. But he didn't try to climb on tap of her. Instead, still kneeling beside the couch with his head buried in her crotch, he captured her hand and guided it to the hot hardness of his throbbing cock.
Ted didn't know what to do. Was she supposed to squeeze it, rub it, or just hold it? She closed her tiny fist around it the way he seemed to want her to do. Meanwhile, Mr. Hammel was diving deeper into her crotch. She could feel his breathing quicken, feel the warm dampness of his breath in her open lips. Then suddenly his wide open mouth closed over the gaping hairless lips of her vulva, shutting out the cold air and enveloping her with a soft damp glowing warmth. It felt good.
After a moment she felt his tongue begin its first timid exploration of the tender territory between the lips of her cunt. It tickled but it tickled so nice she liked it. She didn't care how long Mr. Hammel kept his mouth down there as long as he was as soft and gentle as he was now. But what was she supposed to do with his cock?
Suddenly and unexpectedly she felt one of his hands on her ankle.