Maybe she didn't know.
Betsy had been so confident that this scheme would work, that Sibyl would find out what boys were for, that she'd forget all about her half-repressed incestuous yearning for Ed.
Sibyl took to sex like a dog takes to eating shit. Wayne wasn't enough for her. She rode and sucked his cock till he couldn't stare it hard, and then she wrapped her legs around Jim's face while he was trying to ball Betsy, and before Betsy knew what was happening, she found herself a fifth wheel on an overloaded wagon.
It was as if Sibyl wanted to bathe her body in cum. Jim ate her out to a moaning orgasm, she sucked his cock and made his jism flow like a fountain into her red hair, across her pale, freckled face, her tongue snaking around to lick up stray trickles of seed. She fucked him, too, romping up and down on his stiff cock with sensuous body action that all too soon caused him to lunge upward, dumping his load into the rubber that encased his dick. She even persuaded Wayne's cock to revive by the promise of taking her anal cherry. Her words helped, nearly as much as the firm, fine quality of Sibyl's sucking, and a fresh erection soon sprouted from Wayne's loins. "Okay," she told him, leaning forward with hands braced on her knees, her slim ass upthrust and ready, "I want you to shove that big prick of yours all the way up my cute little butt. What are you waiting for, Christmas?"
He'd given it to her, too, Betsy remembered. He'd spread her asshole, steered his cock to the anal pucker, and he'd shoved his, way inside. Betsy watched in fascination, recalling how much it had fucking hurt the first time she'd ever let anyone do that to her. But Sibyl didn't scream or sob. She grunted as the dick moved inside her, and then the swiveled her ass in a sexy jiggle that began to swallow up Wayne's cock, and in no more than thirty seconds, they were fucking for dear life. Sibyl's mouth was set in firm determination and her nipples were a hard, swollen pink.
She let him cum in her ass, since it was perfectly safe, and when he finally took his prick out of her, sticky goo oozed from her rectum. Sibyl rubbed herself, soaking her fingers in the spilled jism, and she offered a taste of it to Betsy, who refused.
Sibyl's initiation was successful, yes, but there was a coldness to the girl's attitude that bothered Betsy. The blonde girl liked to think of herself as a survivor, a manipulator, but she couldn't have used anyone the way Sibyl used Wayne and Jim. Sibyl played them off against one another, teasing arid tempting each by her performance with the other. After that first brief spell of necking with Wayne, Sibyl didn't even bother kissing either of the boys. She made them hard, she fucked them, she sucked them, and when they'd both been drained she wanted no more to do with them. They were only hard cocks to give her body pleasure. As the sun crept lower down the western summer sky, Sibyl tensed her body in the brook, put on her borrowed jumpsuit, and said, "Why don't we all go home now? I don't think anything else is about to happen."
That coldness seemed to remain with Sibyl through the next evening. Betsy had gone up to the Bogarts' for a cookout, a swim, and an all-night visit. She brought her most chaste bikini, splashed in the pool with Ed, and ate barbecued hamburgers with a ravenous appetite. Sibyl didn't swim. She sat on the patio in her jeans and sweatshirt, turning the hamburgers as they cooked and watching the proceedings with an alienated eye. She only spoke when spoken to, and then as briefly as possible.
In fact, she was such a stone bummer that Betsy found herself paying much more attention to Sibyl's father. Why not? She dug Ed, anyway, and even if he didn't mention the other afternoon, she could see it in his eyes when he looked at her. He was remembering, too, and she was certain his memories jibed with her own. And wasn't this what she'd been angling for? An invitation to stay overnight with Sibyl, a chance to pop into bed with her dad again? He touched her once, when they were in the pool, under the water where Sibyl couldn't see. His hand on her leg, moving up her thigh, onto the straining crotch of her bikini pants. She could feel her pussy hum in reply as he held on, squeezing her through the tight nylon, and she closed her legs upon his hand, intensifying his caress. Then he'd let her go and he was swimming away. She bided her time after that, confident she could manage what she wanted.
The chance came. Sibyl was in the kitchen making coffee, and Betsy and Ed were alone in the living room watching a rerun. "I've missed you," Betsy said. "I've missed all of you."
He smiled, patting his knee. She went to him, sat down, her arms around his neck. He smelled very nice this evening – a virile cologne mixed with the lingering aroma of Sail tobacco from his pipe – and Betsy enjoyed nuzzling his skin. About the time his hand closed upon her breast, unfettered beneath the clingy halter shirt she wore, she whispered in his ear, "I want to fuck you again. And I think you owe me one, since I did fix up Sibyl yesterday. She had a good time, she met some new people, and that's what you wanted. Soooo…"
Betsy didn't feel it necessary to mention the details of Sibyl's date, and certainly that would spoil the effect she was constructing. Ed's hand squeezed on her tit, making her nipple pop up big and hot. She touched the front of his trousers to trace the outline of his recumbent cock. It was soft now, but when her mouth started working, when she teased his knob with the stiff points of her nipples and let him taste the honey dripping from her cunt, she knew it would get hard.
"Tell you what," she said. "As soon as Sibyl goes off to dreamland, I'll just hop and skip down the hall and, before you know which end of you is up, this end of you will be up, bigger than life and twice as tasty. Say about one o clock?"
He nibbled on her lower lip while she purred with delight.
"All right," he said. "I owe you for being nice to Sibyl."
If anything, Sibyl's attitude was even worse after the two girls went up to bed. The young redhead seemed incredibly surly, uncommunicative, and Betsy asked if she were angered by anything. Sibyl only shook her head, not even deigning a verbal reply. Betsy shrugged, stripped, and went in to take a bath. She wanted to be fresh and bright and clean for Ed.
Alone in her bedroom, Sibyl smote her knee with a fist. That rotten tramp! She'd heard them, making plans when they thought she couldn't hear. That was the only reason Betsy had come to spend the night, so she could get into Daddy's arms again. Oh, she could see it now, the two of them, rolling on the bed, sweating, moaning, their bodies joined in sex. Sex! What was the big deal about it, anyway? Sibyl had drowned herself in it yesterday but it meant nothing to her. Nothing at all. She could scarcely remember what either of those boys looked like, now. They were just bodies, and she'd used them to please herself the way Betsy had showed her. She should be satiated by that afternoon of fucking, but she wasn't. A canker gnawed her from the inside out. And to think that in another hour Betsy and-and… She didn't even want to think about it, but she found herself unable to think of anything else.
Sibyl eyed the small vial she had taken from Daddy's nightstand while he was still downstairs. His sleeping pills. Sometimes, when he worked late and his system was supercharged from writing, he needed a pill to get to sleep. If they worked on a tense man…
"Here," she told Betsy when the blonde girl returned all scrubbed and glowing from the bath. "A glass of milk, I always have one before I go to bed, and I thought you might want one, too."
Ed Bogart lay on his bed in the dark. He was wearing just a short, velvety robe, tied in a loose knot. It was a souvenir from Saigon, made of authentic Chinese silk, decorated with Ming designs. The room was dark with moonlight filtering through the window. A lovely summer night, he thought, and soon to be even lovelier.
Betsy. A delicious young piece. He should feel guilty for screwing her – she was young enough to be his daughter – but she was so Goddamned hot he couldn't resist her. That day by the pool he'd sized her up from the start. A small-town girl with a large-city sex drive. Definitely the manipulative type, out to get whatever she could get and damn the consequences. So different from Sibyl. It was amazing they had enough in common to become friends. But she might be good for Sibyl, too. Help her get out of the house, meet people, enjoy life for a change. God knew, she was good for him. Cheryl was the only local talent he'd sampled, and she was good, too, but she had her drawbacks. For one thing, Cheryl was too old. A small-town girl in her late twenties, single, definitely out to trap a man. She'd hinted half a dozen times that if he asked her to go west with him and Sibyl at the end of summer, she'd be delighted to pull up stakes and go. She understand that she was just a good fuck as far as he was concerned.
Betsy, on the other hand, seemed to know that instinctively. She had no hooks out for anyone. All she wanted were the good times. If he was using her, so was she using him. A little more use was definitely in order, he told himself, just as he heard the doorknob turn.
"Finally," he said, and there was a quick flash of a nude girlish figure entering his bedroom. His eyes were nearly adjusted to the darkness, but she moved with a swift, lissome grace, right to the window. She pulled the curtain shut, blinding him suddenly as even the moonbeams were cut off, and in another second her warm body was beside him on the bed.
"Hi," she whispered in a low invitational tone. Her mouth touched his, her tongue protruding slightly, and he caught it with his own, pulling it into his mouth. She melted against him, naked, warm, her legs encircling him. Funny, he thought, she felt a little small in the dark. Her hips didn't seem as full, her breasts more conical than before. An illusion of darkness, no doubt. Her nipples were hard and hot, and he opened his robe to let them smolder upon his bare, broad chest. She snuggled in against him, making her tits wobble sideways on his skin, and she reached down to untie his robe, to let it flop open, her hands, making a catcher's mitt on his cock.
He hadn't erected so fast since he was a kid, just beginning to get around girls. She had electricity in her hands and it flowed into his manhood. The change was so abrupt he sighed deeply to feel it, his cock first soft then agonizingly hard and getting harder as she handled him.
He stroked her head, wanting to twine his fingers in her long blonde hair, but she was wearing a scarf, silky enough to settle for. Her mouth was all over his face, kissing, biting, leaving hickies. In the morning he'd look like a measles case, but it was night and he didn't care. He strained at her, making his cock jump and do sexy show-off tricks in her hands, and he beard her giggle delightedly between kisses.
Ed moved the girl onto her back. She was limber as hot rubber in his hands, folding into whatever position he wanted. Even in the dark his eyes could pick up a faint outline of her body, and he followed that outline with his fingers, touching her everywhere, hearing her cooing responses, feeling the tingles of arousal that rippled in each of her limbs.
His mouth sucked hold of her tummy, upping and nibbling the delicate flesh. He rimmed her navel with his tongue, then hesitated, deciding where to go next. Her pussy was awash with wet readiness as his probing finger determined easily, and the agitated squirming and whispered endearments told Ed that she loved to be finger-fucked. But instead of dipping in for a round of cunnilingus, he slid his mouth upward, tongue flicking the under curves of her conical titties. They felt smaller than before, but much firmer, harder. It must be the darkness, he thought, or else I'm losing my memory. He considered turning on the bedside light so he could refresh his memory, but by that time her right nipple, stiff and fiery, had intruded itself between his ups and he was sucking it appreciatively and the light seemed unimportant.
Her boobs responded well to his mouth. He could feel a tantalizing shudder coursing through their conical peaks, and the nipples throbbed excitedly when he pulled them with his lips. She had a sweet taste, almost a jasmine. "You know," he said, leaving off his nursing for a moment, "the way you taste reminds me of Singapore. I knew a girl there!"
"I don't want to hear about other girls," she whispered in that same low husk. "I want you to fuck me."
"Of course," he replied gently. Reminiscing about other girls was impolite and possibly a sign of old, age, Ed told himself tonight belonged to him and to Betsy. No one else. He gave her tits a parting kiss, then moved toward her waiting cunt.
Her pussy opened as soon as his tongue made contact, and he was spearing deep inside with sure, clever strokes. Her cunt was delicious, tighter than he remembered, and much, much sweeter. It snapped at him with desperate muscular tugs of its own, and he let his tongue be massaged by her. God, she had a sweet one! Its muscles pulled his lingual member in a clutching, caressing manner, and he had only to move with her. He could feel her clit, already stiff, wet and hot, and he used his finger on it while he tongued her cunt. She began to squirm and writhe, her little whispery voice moaning and twittering, and he thought of her as a delicate little bird.
The muscles of her thighs jerked as he licked her out, and he moved his face in closer so that she could wrap him round with her legs. Her pussy was the freshest, daintiest, sexiest he had ever smelled. It had a clean virginal quality, as if it had never been used before, though he knew that, couldn't be at all true. He'd fucked her to a fare thee well by the pool the other day, and she had come to him with plenty of experience inside her panties. It didn't matter. Virgins were such a bitch anyway, always screaming and crying and protesting. On a wedding night that was okay – Sibyl's mother had been virgin when they married and he had enjoyed teaching her to use the delightful body God gave her – but for sexual sport, a girl couldn't have too much experience. Unless she was worn out, and Betsy Pike was far too young to be worn out. Her lovely, tight cunt was proof that she had plenty of game left.
She made contact with his dick. A fresh spurt of throbbing hard seemed to ripple up and down his cock as she used him in her clutching fist. Her nails were sharp, scraping the flesh but seeming to know where lay the thin line between pain and pleasure. She moved on him in a sensuous hand-job manner, caressing him from corona to balls, and Ed's loins began to move with her rhythmic masturbation.
"Please," she said softly, "I want to suck you while you suck me. Move a little closer."
He was happy to do just that. She had a loving mouth, be remembered well, and she could drink cum like nobody's business. He was eager to fuck her, but hard-ons were never a problem with Ed. If he emptied his first erection into Betsy's sucking mouth, there would be another to take its place, and very soon. He'd fuck her or die trying.
The first touch of her lips on his pulsating cock was like a premonition of heaven. She kissed him, a wet, passionate kiss, and then she started using her mouth on him, loving his knob only at first, loving it with everything she had. She kissed him, licked him, tongued him, squeezed him between her lips, and the edges of her incisor teeth scraped with anguishing slowness on the purple engorgement of his knobby cock-head. The only thing she didn't do was stuff him into her mouth for a session of super-hot suckling. Maybe tonight she wanted to demonstrate that she knew other techniques as well.
She kissed and nibbled the underside of his shaft, moving on him from the flaring bottom of his pecker point to the dangling heaviness of his testicles. She had a way of accentuating his protuberant cock that sent shivers up and down his spine. God almighty! Betsy Pike was wasted on a small town like Albany, Ohio. It was saddening to think of her squandering that natural sex talent on small-town cowboys. She should be lying on silk sheets in a penthouse apartment, brightening the hearts of horny, generous millionaires.
He felt his balls being suckled, one at a time, and he wished her mouth weren't quite so small, that she could get all his scrotum inside for some heavy duty nursing. He'd met a few girls who could do that, but not many. And the way Betsy mouthed him was so sweet, so perfect, that he didn't mind. She hadn't even been this good, this hot, this innovative, that day by the pool. He'd have to see her again while he and Sibyl were in Albany. Betsy was an acquaintance worth cultivating.
Almost before he knew it, she'd quit sucking his balls and was making an oral pattern of ascent on his stiff dick. Her lips clutched at his knob once again, tongue tracing a sensuous, almost evil course on the sharp, well-defined rim of his glans. Ed shuddered instinctively, repressing the urge to come immediately, all over her caressing lips. He was like a high school boy getting his first blow-job, he thought reprovingly. Where was his self-control? It was a point of pride with Ed that he gave his partners their pleasure before he took his own. He never threw himself upon a woman, humped until he'd emptied his jism, then left her to her own devices. Plenty of guys did that, sure, but those men rarely found themselves invited back for seconds. And as Ed licked the girl's cuntlips and responded to her inspired cocksucking, he found himself thinking ahead to fourths and fifths.
He felt her teeth, but only for a moment. They grazed his cock-head as she took him into her mouth. He braced himself, fighting the urge to thrust it home. Most girls didn't know how to take a cock fully. They could only suckle the tip and the stalk just below. And with a long, thick peter like his own, getting deep-throated was an even more elusive pleasure. The half-caste girl in Singapore – she could do it like a Goddamned angel. A secretary in D.C., too. Not many more. Plenty had tried, especially since Linda Lovelace had turned throat fucking into a household word, but the thickness of Ed's cock was an inhibiting factor.
Or so he thought until he felt his cock pressing home, into what seemed a wet, bottomless cave. The ease of it was most startling. Betsy had shown no indication the other day that she…"Jesus!" he groaned, his nuts dancing on her chin, his cock fully inserted in her wonderful, beautiful mouth! He could feel her tight throat on him, could feel the splendid suction of her cheeks, and he could taste the increased dripping of her slit which told him that she, too, was excited by her special talent.
Ed fought his dick out of her mouth, fearing he might strangle the girl in his enthusiasm, but she held him by the ass, refusing to let him be fully extracted. Her mouth was a toothed leech on his glans, keeping it in her, tickling with tongue to bring him back, and he gave her full rein. When she flogged him that way with her tongue, when she urged him with her lips and, teeth, who was Ed Bogart to refuse?
He went in her just as fully the second time, his balls again bumping her chin with a jolting shudder that made him fight back the urge to come once more. It was clear to him that he couldn't resist forever. Before many more minutes had elapsed, Betsy would have a mouthful of cum – a big mouthful, if that twinge in his balls was any indicator – and he wanted her to feel a release too.
She was taking care of his cock. Her head had assumed control and she moved on him like a tube, letting his dick thrust her throat-deep each time, her mouth fondling it unbearably. Ed let her go, resuming his cunt-gobbling, this time with a raw passion he had rarely exercised on a casual sex mate. She seemed to call for more than normal measures, and he gave her his very best. His fingers spread her pussy to its widest, he fucked inside with as much of his face as he could jam into her slick wetness, and he strove to bury his tongue in her sucking hole of a cunt.
Obviously Bets was relishing his mouth work. Her clit was swollen to enormous size, perfect for a session of biting and sucking, and he alternated that with his forays into her rippling cunt. She was so wet, so hot, so tight – if a model were ever needed for the perfect cunt, Ed had a candidate who could win hands down. He lapped at the pussy juices which seeped from her, then jabbed his thumb in as she came.
She whimpered to the prick with which she fucked her sweet, eager mouth, and the vibrato of that whimper was an invitation hard to resist. It tickled up and down the buried shaft and he could feel himself swelling like a balloon inside her. Ed didn't want to squirt yet – the buildup was so erotic he wanted to savor it – but Betsy kept groaning and moaning as the tremors of orgasm passed through her churning snatch. He grunted once into her wet, open gash, his lips brushed her clit, and he felt as if someone had suddenly pinched his balls with pliers. The stones slammed together, burst, and a river of jism rushed upward, its flood unstoppable.
He poured that cum into her mouth, straight down the open tunnel of her throat, and he could hear the mighty swallows as she gulped it down. He knew he was coming a torrent, that he was spilling a week's worth of hot, salty seed into Betsy's gullet, and he wondered if he'd have any left for later. But later would have to take care of itself. Her hands were caressing his nuts, her mouth was tight and furious on his dick, and she was drinking his jizz like a well-paid whore.
After he'd spilled his juice, after his cock had slipped from her mouth, she touched him there with fingers had seemed to take sadistic pleasure in stroking his raw nerve endings. His dick ached unbearably but it refused to go down. He touched it too, testing its stiffness, and he knew that he had to have her again, now, while both of them were still ripe and ready.
Ed shifted position. He grabbed her head and smashed her face with the power of his hungry kiss. Betsy's mouth was still half-full of his cum, and when he touched his lips to hers, the stuff began to leak from her in a thick stream. Ed didn't mind. He'd tasted his cum on lovers' lips before and he'd do it again. If it was good enough to pour into a girl's mouth, it was good enough to have in his own. He squeezed her tits, felt them harden in his hands, and then she was reaching for his cock, pulling herself upon it.
Her cunt opened as she scooted into position, and Ed was on her, in her. Her legs were up, resting on his shoulders, and he lifted her ass from the bed as he barreled into her. They couldn't kiss in this position, and he missed the fragrant, sexy taste of her mouth, but he could hear the moans of "Yes, yes, yes, just like that – oh, fuck me, fuck me deeper!" They were like whip cracks, spurring him to obey her panted commands, and he slammed his cock into her splayed cunt.
She was tight but greasy as hell inside. Her tightness, far from inhibiting the pleasure, intensified it. Ed could feel her inner cunt parting as his big dick speared inside, he could feel it springing back into shape as he withdrew for yet another plunge, in endlessly elastic recurrence. Now, here, in the dark, on his bed, she was so much better than she'd been the other time. He couldn't believe it was the same girl. There was a fresh, invigorating, openness to her response which he found more erotic than anything he had ever experienced. If she weren't so young, if she weren't Sibyl's friend, he'd have been tempted, strongly tempted, to make her his mistress, to move her into his home, his bed. He'd have taken her to California with him, too, ensconced her on the silken sheets she deserved, fucked her crazy every day and night.
If it weren't for Sibyl. He couldn't really have a sex life, not the kind he wanted and needed, as long as Sibyl was around. She wouldn't understand. Probably she'd never understand. And until she went away to college somewhere, or found herself a boy, he'd have to continue in just this fashion – hasty assignations with eager, complaisant women who had to be hustled out of the bedroom before his daughter got wind of what was going on. And there had never been a woman as eager or complaisant as Betsy Pike was at this very minute. If he'd been romantically inclined he might have allowed himself to fall in love with her pussy. Perhaps with the entire girl. Only teen-agers mistook hard-ons for the blinding flash of true love, though. Or did they? Ed closed his eyes in the darkness, trying to remember how the sun had shone in Betsy's golden hair, the way her muscles rippled when she walked, the firm uplift of her tits, the graceful curves of her ass. She hadn't seemed so distinctive at the time. Why was she now attacking him where he lived? Perhaps if he turned on the light and saw her smiling young face convulsed with the passion of fucking, she might lose all the allure given her by darkness. If so, he didn't want it to happen. He was in love with something – not Betsy, but certainly the way she balled, and he wanted to hang on to that feeling as long as he could.
Despite the size of his dick, her cunt had no difficulty taking him all. He could feel himself penetrating her completely, bumping his knob on the mouth of her womb, and he could feel the quivering shudders of delight which trembled in her body. She whispered cries of excitement. Why didn't she give vent to her emotions and cry aloud? Sibyl was fast asleep by now, and the girl always slept like, the dead. He remembered the ear splitting pitch of Betsy's orgasmic moans and shrieks, so demonic they sent chills down his spine, and now the bed was rattling louder than the girl's voice. He reached down, his fingers tickling her ribs. Anything to get more life out of her mouth.
She twisted and wiggled as he tickled her, and she groaned and laughed and snickered, but Ed could sense that she was striving to hold herself back. Why? He began to fuck her harder, to see if that might loosen whatever reins still controlled the uninhibited teen-ager who shared his bed.
Her cunt squeezed him when he plunged inside, and he could sense that she was near another orgasm. So, for God's sake, was he! Ed could feel a tightening in his nuts which he wanted to resist as long as possible. He braced himself against her uplifted legs and tried to slow down his thrusts, to stretch out the pleasure of fucking Betsy until it could be better than best.
But how could he slow down when her cunt was pressing him like a vise, urging him to do more than fuck? Even as he struggled to cut his speed in half, her pussy was sucking at him with the full power of its muscular control. She grew tighter upon him, pulling his peter when it tried to withdraw, pulling him even more fiercely when be returned to her depths, and Ed realized that he was no longer in charge of this screw. Betsy was fucking him for her pleasure and she would not be denied anything. He could do no more than lay upon her and make his cock available for her satisfaction. No woman had ever dominated him in this way before, but it was not unpleasant. If she wanted to play this game, he could find it in him to play it with her.
Near the end, he didn't even have to fuck. Her cunt was jerking him off with its own rippling contractions, and he knew that she was on the brink of climaxing. He put his hand on her tit and felt the swollen cone, the hammering heartbeat just behind. He could have heard her pulse, Ed was sure, if his own hadn't been rushing through his ears at the moment. He too was on the verge, ready to drop over.
When his cream gushed, it was through no doing of Ed's. She had pulled his peter and teased the cum from his nuts, and it was her cunt which sucked up his juices, squeezing his dick till he gave her more. And it was her cunt which felt like a blazing fire – but a wet, incredibly wet fire, too. It lived, it breathed, it pulsated as his cock throbbed inside it, and he could sense the weakening of his muscles. Drained more fully than he had ever been drained before, Ed collapsed against her.
They fell onto their sides, her legs still drawn to her tits, his cock inside her. Ed was awash in the juice which flooded her tight young pussy, and she held him there with cuntal muscles of lovely clutching strength. His cock refused to go down. Something about her was too strong to resist. Ed knew that he was ready to fuck her again. He might ejaculate blood instead of jizz, but he had to fuck her again.
"You on top this time," he suggested, shaking his dick inside her. Their faces rubbed together and he could feel the moisture of tears on her cheek. He kissed at those tears. "What's wrong, Betsy?" he asked.
"Am I good?" she whispered. "Am I good?"
"Good?" he said. "You're the best. Ever." And he meant it. What was there about her voice, about her question? Betsy didn't have to ask if she was good. She knew it. Why should she need reassurance now? And why, for Christ's sake, should she be crying? Ed jiggled his cock to underline his renewed need, and they slid into new position. Tie was on his back, the girl seated on his loins with his cock thrust deep inside her. Now she could really control the fuck, by rising and falling with as much speed as she chose. He felt her hands base themselves on his lower stomach, felt her squirm to test the fit of his peter in her cunt, and she began to bob up and down rapidly. God, the friction! he thought as his cock moved inside her pussy. He was almost convinced that he truly was in love with this beautiful child, mad as the idea might seem. Perhaps in the cold light of dawn.