PARTNERSHIP

After reaching a remote and isolated spot, the car slowed and came to a halt. The doors opened, and two men got out. One drew a 9mm automatic from under his coat; the other, turning, reached back inside and pulled an obviously terrified but only slightly resisting young woman from the back seat. She was nineteen, her eyes dark, her hair long and black, her beauty astonishing. Dressed in heels and a strapless party dress that only covered a small part of her long slim legs, she presented a sharp contrast to the two well-dressed but hard-looking young men.

"Come on, Wendy," the gunman told her. "We might as well get this over with, huh?" He trained the gun on her; the other man, holding her hand, started walking, leading her along.

"Just let me go," she begged, although she did not resist being towed deeper into the woods. "Please, please, what can it hurt?"

The man with the gun laughed. "A lot," he told her. He glanced at the other man. "Isn't that right, Pete? Mr. Stevens gave us a job to do, honey," he went on, looking back at Wendy. "We have to do it. It'll go bad for us if we don't."

"You got that right, Johnny," Pete answered.

She continued to protest and to plead as they led her down a hillside toward a little stream. Here, fully hidden from the road above, they stopped.

"Please, no," Wendy begged again.

Johnny merely smiled. "That's a real pretty dress, darlin,'" he observed. "There ain't no need in ruining it, is there? Take it off, huh?"

Wendy stared at him for a moment, then, evidently deciding that resistance was useless--or perhaps believing that she had a trump card to play--she reached behind herself and unzipped the dress. She took it off slowly and sensually, keeping her eyes fixed on Johnny's face. He kept the gun pointed at her chest, but he watched her closely, with obvious interest, as her perfect high breasts were revealed. Her small pale nipples quickly grew erect. Left with only her panties and her shoes, she stepped out of the dress and handed it to him.

He grinned. "Might as well do the panties too," he suggested. She hesitated a little, but then she pushed the panties down over her hips and stepped out of them as well. Johnny shook his head. "What a God-damned waste," he observed. "Stevens must be outta his mind."

Wendy was trembling more violently than ever. "You don't have to," she pleaded. "Just let me go, I'll disappear, he'll never know, he won't... Please, please, don't shoot me...!"

Johnny shrugged. "Ain't plannin' to," he told her. "Not unless you force me to." Still aiming the gun at her, he took a large switchblade knife out of his pocket and handed it to her. She looked confused; digging in his pocket again he took out a whetstone. "You know how to sharpen a knife?"

"Uh--yes--"

"Good. That thing's dull. Sit down on the ground there and put a real good edge and point on it."

She stared at it for a second, still looking totally bewildered. But then, after a brief pause, she followed his instructions. Sitting on the grass with her legs crossed, she worked the blade carefully over the rough stone.

"Why'm I doing this?" she asked after she'd worked for a couple of minutes.

"You really wanna know?"

"Well, yeah--sure--"

"Well," he said, "after you're done--after you've got that thing razor sharp--you're gonna have a choice to make. You can stick it in yourself or you can let me stick it in you. It don't matter to me, it's up to you."

She looked down at the knife. "You're going to kill me with it?"

"Yeah. Or you can kill yourself. Like I say, it don't matter." He pointed to it with the gun. "Just remember, the duller it is the harder it is to get it in and the worse it'll hurt."

She started to cry, she begged and pleaded more, but Johnny was unmovable. He told her she had to get back to work on the knife, or else he'd use it like it was.

Still crying, she set to work again. Minutes slipped by. At last, dry-eyed, she looked up at Johnny. "It's done," she told him, holding the knife up. "It's as sharp as I can get it."

He grinned. "That's good, darlin.' I sorta thought I was gonna hafta stop you."

She gave him a pleading look. "Johnny, you don't have to do this! Please, Johnny! Let me go, I'll leave town, Stevens will never know a thing about it!"

Johnny laughed. "You think we can trust that, darlin'?" he asked. "You gotta know we can't. We do that and Stevens finds out and we'll be out here with you." He shook his head. "Damn stupid. You were bought and paid for, you had a good clean job in the organization, a nice place to live, a nice car, nice jewels and clothes and shit. You knew what it was about, you took the deal. Hell, Stevens only came around to see you once a week or so. And you had to go and fuck it up, you hadda go and sleep with his grandson. His God-damn grandson."

"You don't understand! Jack Stevens is almost eighty years old! You know what that's like? He can't even do anything anymore! I deserved some kind of life, Johnny!"

He nodded. "Maybe. Maybe so." He sighed. "But you're stupid, Wendy. If you'd gone out to some bar and picked up some dude to boff and Stevens had found out, he'da sent us over to smack you around some and it'd be the dude out here in the woods, not you--you'd been sittin' in your nice apartment with some ice on the black eye I woulda given you. But no, you gotta go and start up with Martin. Well, Stevens ain't gonna have us off Martin. So you're elected."

"Martin loved me! When Stevens died, we were going to get married!"

"Yeah, well. Maybe you shoulda waited, huh? Too damn late now."

"Oh, please, no--I don't want to die--"

"But you gotta. Now. The fact is, ol' Stevens kinda liked you, he said we should let you do yourself if you wanted to. So. You gonna stick yourself or you want me to do it?"

She stared at the knife again. "I--I can't do it--"

"Then I'll do it for you, darlin.' I don't mind. Gimme the knife." Again she hesitated, but finally she held the knife up, offering it to him butt-first. "Okay," he said as he took it. "Come over here, stand with your back against this tree." He handed the gun to Pete; while he kept the gun trained on her, she obeyed. Trembling, her eyes fixed on the knife, she leaned against the rough bark.

"Please," she begged. "Please, please, don't, there must be some other way...!"

"Wendy, I'm really sorry," he told her, apparently sincerely. He stepped up close to her. "There isn't any other way, we gotta do what we gotta do."

She stamped one foot and shook her head. "No, no, no, please, please...!"

Johnny touched her face; she shrank from his hand but he persisted, tipping her face up. He paused. Wendy's lips trembled; a tear ran down her cheek. She looked into his eyes for a moment, then gazed off beyond his shoulder, toward the stream. She blinked, several times; in her eyes there was a look of resignation, of surrender. Johnny smiled at her warmly and touched the point of the knife to her smooth flat belly, just above her navel. Their eyes met.

"Please..." she begged in a very small voice, a voice tinged with hopelessness.

"Sorry, darlin.' Got no choice, it's got to get done. And there ain't no need in waiting no longer."

"Johnneeeee..." Her eyes fell closed.

Johnny hesitated just for a moment. Then, with a single smooth motion, he drove the knife into her body, burying the blade, forcing her back against the tree. Blood welled up around it instantly.

She did not scream; wide-eyed, she grabbed his shoulders and stared straight ahead, over his shoulder. "Oh," she whispered softly. "Oh, oh, my God...!"

Watching her face, Johnny held the blade quite still inside her for several long seconds. When the stiffness of her body seemed to fade a little he shoved the knife hard against her and worked it back and forth a few times. Gasping, her eyes immense, Wendy clutched harder at his shoulders. Almost gently, he pulled the knife free and moved away from her. Wendy, her hands still grasping at him for support, sank slowly down the tree until she was sitting on the ground.

She clutched at her stomach for several seconds before finally looking down at herself. There was a neat little hole in her abdomen, a hole from which blood flowed steadily, streaming down over her legs and groin and pooling beneath her. "Oh, God," she groaned. "Oh, God, you stabbed me... God, I'm bleeding, look at that, I'm bleeding to death...!"

"Yeah," Johnny agreed. After wiping the knife's bloody blade on the grass and returning it to his pocket, he took out a package of cigarettes, shook one free, and lit it. "You are. Like I said, I'm really sorry, honey." He held the pack out toward her. "You want one?" he asked.

She shrank from him. "No! Stay away from me!"

"No problem. Like you said, you're bleeding to death. We don't have to do anything else at all."

She stared at him in disbelief. "You mean--you're just going to--to--sit there and watch me die?"

He nodded. "That's the idea. Unless you want me to hurry things along--or unless you want to hurry them along yourself."

"No!" she wept. "No, just leave me alone!"

"Your call." He rocked down on his haunches, smoking his cigarette and watching her.

Several minutes went by; no one spoke. Johnny finished his cigarette, flipped the butt away. Wendy, still bleeding, moaned and wept. Holding her belly, she rocked back and forth gently.

"Pete, there's a six-pack in the car," Johnny said. "No reason to let 'em get hot, and it's startin' to look like we're gonna be here a while. You wanna go get 'em?"

"Damn, Johnny, why don't you just finish her off? It's gonna be a damn long time before she dies of that gut wound!"

Johnny shook his head. "No. We stick with orders."

Pete swore. "Guess I'll go get the beer, then," he grumbled, and he trudged on up the hill. Several minutes later, he returned with the six-pack. The two men approached Wendy, who looked up at them wide-eyed. But, careful to avoid the pool of blood on the grass, they merely sat down on the ground close to her. Pete pulled a can of Budweiser from the paper carton and handed it to Johnny, then took one for himself.

"You want one too?" Johnny asked Wendy.

Again she stared at him in disbelief. "I guess," she muttered after a moment. "I do feel sorta... thirsty..."

"Gut wound'll do that to you," Johnny said casually. "They say you shouldn't drink anything when you got a gut wound, but in your case I don't guess it'll matter none." He took out another can, popped the top, and handed it to her. As she sipped it tentatively, he lit another cigarette. "You want one of these too?" he asked again, offering the pack.

This time she took one. He gave her a light; she cupped his hand with hers as she lit it, getting a little blood on his knuckles.

"Better watch it, those damn things'll kill your ass," Pete said with a guffaw.

Johnny laughed; Wendy gave Pete a sour look and blew smoke at him. He grinned, shook a finger at her, and took a long swig of his beer. For several minutes they sat in silence, the two men and the naked and slowly dying girl.

"Shoulda brought some food," Johnny observed after a while. He looked up at the sky. "It's a nice damn day for a picnic, ain't it?"

Wendy, holding the cigarette in one hand and the beer in the other, looked down at her belly. The wound had mostly closed, there was only a trickle of blood from it now. "How long... do you think it'll take?" she asked.

Johnny looked at it too. "A long damn time, darlin,'" he told her. "It's closed up, see? 'Course, you're still bleeding inside. It don't hurt much now, does it?"

"No. It feels numb. Feels cold. I feel kinda lightheaded, too."

"Blood loss," Johnny pronounced. "You want speed things along a little, reach down there and pull it open. Or stick your finger down in it."

She shuddered. "I can't do that..."

He shrugged in turn. "Don't matter to me." He grinned broadly. "I dunno know about you two, but I'm having a good time. Doing nothing, sitting here drinkin' my beer and smokin' my cigarette, takin' it easy. Nothing I like better than sittin' around in the woods for an afternoon with a pretty naked girl."

"She is pretty," Pete agreed. "Damn pretty. Whatta think, Johnny? Think if we were nice to her maybe she'd give us blowjobs?"

"You can forget that shit," Wendy told him coldly. "You wanted that, you coulda had it. Before you stuck a blade in me, not after." She took another drink of the beer. "It coulda been nice for you, Pete. That wasn't the way you wanted it."

"We didn't have a choice," Johnny reminded her. "You did. You made the choice to do a thing with Martin."

She shook her head sadly. "No," she sighed. "I didn't have a choice either. At least I didn't feel like I had one." She drank some more of the beer, then looked up at the bright sky. "I dunno, guys. Even if I'd known it'd turn out this way I mighta done it anyhow. Martin's a hell of a guy. Nothing like his grandfather." She looked over at Pete. "I sucked his cock lots of times," she said bluntly. "Lots of times. He loved it, Pete." She took a drag off the cigarette, winced, and leaned toward him slightly. "I'd lick all around his cock and then take it right into my mouth, run my tongue all around it," she went on. "I'm good at it, he always said so, and all the other men who've gotten head from me have said so. You'll never know, will you, Pete? Never know what it's like to feel my lips clamped around your cock." She licked her lips sensually. "Never squirt your stuff into my mouth, never watch me swallow it, never see it on my lips." After taking a final draw from the cigarette, she tossed the butt away and again drank, deeply this time, from the can of beer. "Why don't you touch me, Pete?" she challenged. She cocked one of her legs. "Don't you think I have good legs? Why don't you feel them with your hands. You never will feel them around your middle, like Martin has!"

"Christ, why are you ragging me?" Pete complained. "It was Johnny who stuck you, not me!"

"Maybe so. But he didn't make fun of me!" She took another long drink of beer, then lifted one of her breasts with her hand. "You like these? C'mon, Pete, you--" She stopped, a peculiar expression on her face. "You just.... uhh..."

Her expression changed to one of agony. Dropping the beer can, she grabbed at her belly. As beer foamed out on the grass, she bent over, her eyes wide and her mouth open. "Oh... shit..." She doubled on over, finally resting her forehead on the ground, moaning.

"I guess," Johnny said, "that they were right about it not being a good idea to drink when you have a gut wound."

She forced herself back up to a sitting position. "Oh, God, it hurts," she moaned. "I feel so cold, I'm so scared...!"

Johnny came close, knelt beside her. "You want some more?"

"No! I... I..."

His voice was soft, soothing. "Honey, it's all you got. Faster or slower, those're your only choices."

She turned her head to look at him. "What's... gonna happen, Johnny? How's it gonna be... for me?"

He shook his head. "Can't say for sure. This'll probably pass. But it'll come back, too. Worse than ever, I'd guess."

She cried some more, then looked up at him again, searching his face with her eyes. "Hold me," she pleaded in a child's voice. "It hurts. Hold me and--make it stop hurting--"

He smiled. Moving a little closer yet, he pulled her toward him, put his arm around her. "Okay, darlin,'" he said. He kissed her lightly and caressed her breasts. "I'm here to help you now..."

She clutched at him, again putting her chin on his shoulder, her eyes open and staring. She winced when he pressed the knife's point into her right breast, just below the nipple, indenting it deeply.

"You ready, sweetheart?"

"I--I think so..."

"Here we go, then." He pushed harder; the blade's tip broke through her skin and sank into her breast.

"Oh, my Godddd!" she cried as it began sinking on in, as new blood started welling up and out. She squirmed in his grasp. "Oh, God! Ah! Ah! Oh, it hurts, oh, you're hurting me, oh, please, Johnny, ohhhh...!"

"I gotta hurt you a little more to make it stop," he told her gently. "Just a little more pain, darlin.' Then it stops, it all stops." Listening to the tearing sounds as it ripped through her chest, he forced the knife on in deeper.

He stopped; by then the blade was again completely buried, driven through her breast and down between her ribs. Leaving the knife standing in her breast, he held her close. She wept and trembled.

"It doesn't hurt as bad now, does it?" he asked her.

"N-n-no," she sniffled. "No, I feel weak, so weak--and so cold..."

He started drawing the knife out of her breast. She stiffened and made odd little sounds as it came free. She choked and gurgled; blood ran from the corner of her mouth.

Finally she seemed to catch her breath. She raised her head and she looked down at her chest. They both watched the heavy stream of foamy blood flowing steadily down her chest. He looked up at her eyes. "You wanta do one now?"

She shook her head. "I can't, I just can't. You do it for me--do me again." She sighed and laid her head over on Johnny's shoulder. "I want it to be over, Johnny..."

"Yeah, darlin,'" he said softly. "I'll take care of you..." He tucked the knife up under her ribs and, with a quick movement, ran a couple of inches of the blade into her. She jerked, cried out softly, and trembled. "Take care of you real good." Methodically, holding her close, he ran the full length of the blade on in, provoking a fresh flow of blood. "You just relax, just let it go..."

"Hurts..." she whispered.

"I know." He slipped the blade part of the way out, then drove it home again, at a different angle. Again her body spasmed, but more weakly than before. She drew up her legs, one at a time, then stretched them out again. Again he pulled the blade back, this time pushing it to the right to open the wound. Blood and some clear fluid gushed out of her, washing over her thigh. She sighed deeply and quivered violently as he forced the knife back into her, once again hiding the blade in her body.

"Feel... funny..." she murmured, relaxing against him.

"Just about done," Johnny told her. He drew the knife across under her ribs, opening the wound even more. She shuddered yet again, then suddenly looked up at him.

"Oh... I..." she managed. She stared at his eyes, and her gaze became fixed. He watched as her pupils began expanding.

"'Bye, darlin,'" he said. He drew the knife out of her body again, and laid her down on the grass. Her foot twitched a few times, without coordination.

"She done?" Pete asked.

"Yep," Johnny answered. "She's done."

Pete grinned. "Well, c'mon, let's get her down to the stream, get her cleaned up." He grabbed Wendy's feet; Johnny took her arms, and the two began carrying her toward the water.

"This is one sweet deal," Pete said as they walked. "I just hope the old man never catches on."

"We might be pushing it," Johnny agreed. "This is the third bimbo he's bought that Martin has screwed. Took him a long time to get tired of her and turn her over, too. I gotta tell you, I was getting impatient, I was losing sleep thinking about putting a blade in that sweet little body." Reaching the creek, they dumped Wendy's body in the water. "Well," he went on as Pete, lovingly now, began washing the blood off the corpse. "I'll go on downstream a ways, get cleaned up. And leave you two lovebirds alone for a while."

Pete giggled. "You just didn't know, did you, Wendy my girl?" he asked. "Little toy..." He fondled her cooling breasts. "Martin's had his fun and Johnny's had his, and now it's my turn." Pulling her head up, he kissed her. "You said I'd never feel your mouth on my cock. But I will. And just the way I like it, too!" He laughed even louder. "What a sweet deal. Johnny, my boy, this is a partnership made in heaven!"

Johnny glanced over his shoulder as he walked along the bank. "Well," he agreed, "it was made somewhere. That's for sure."