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CHAPTER ONE 

The boy was kneeling, running his palms up and down the back of my legs while other people watched. He was about seventeen, a kid with hang-ups, and one member of the therapy group clustered in a crude circle in the big room. His fingers were feathery—they sent tiny chills running up and down my backbone—and he was sobbing softly, almost to himself. 

I had been a little surprised to see him mixed in with the others, who were all in their forties or over, and I looked sharp when I first met him to see if I could make out the heavy sweating and resultant body odor and the smallness of the pupils that are part and parcel of the drug addict. 

It was part of my job. My name is Eve Drum. I am a member of the League of Underground Spies and Terrorists—L.U.S.T. for short—that has been operating in conjunction with the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Administration for the greater protection of the country. Recently, its scope has been broadened. Now it moves hand in glove with the F.B.I. and the Treasury Department, which handles narcotics. 

There had been a rash of drug-addiction cases in this little suburban town of Woodlands Corners. The high school kids were the worst offenders, but there had been an outbreak of heroin addiction discovered in nearby Hartsdale College, too. Parents were in a frenzy, and the small police force was worried. 

Somebody knew the General, who bosses L.U.S.T. 

The General knew me. 

So here I was, with the kid running his fingertips around my soft behind, and I frankly admit—giving me a mild case of the hots. My hips shook slightly, and I wanted to trap those questing hands between my thighs and hold them there. I tried to be nonchalant, but the therapist who sat in on our sessions was a pretty wise cookie. 

"It's for his own good, Miss Drum," he said softly. 

Well, yeah. I'd boned up on group therapy before David Anderjanian, who is my case officer, gave me my final instructions. I know all about it and its theories. The main idea is that you more or less let yourself go, especially in the 'touch' crowd. If you've had an inclination to toy with a nice pair of female breasts and there's a woman patient in the group, you get to give her knockers a nice little feel. If she has no freak-outs about that, of course. 

Maybe somebody pinched her nipples once and gave her an inhibition about such things. In that case, this touching bit might do her good, too. Show her a man doesn't always get rough when he gets to sample a set of mammaries, and she might get to enjoy it. 

The fingertips were coming down my buttocks and toward the center of my sex life. Just a little more and the boy would be giving me a finger job. My eyes pleaded with the doctor, a short, stockily built man with a goatee and a bald head. His name was Jonathan Painter. 

He smiled and shook his head almost imperceptibly. 

Not that I minded what the kid was doing. If we'd been alone I would have enjoyed it no end. My nickname in L.U.S.T. is Double Oh Sex, and I do live up to it. But I'm no show-off, and I don't like to perform in public, even if I have done so a number of times. 

A woman gave a soft cry.

"Yes, Mrs. Honnechik?" snapped the doctor.

"Please! I—"

"You object to what you are seeing?”

"Oh, no. No!"

"You want to join in?" 

She got to her feet. She was in her early forties, damned attractive in the gray shirt-dress of silk pongee with pleated front and low belt. The soft stuff clung to her ripe body, revealing somewhat heavy breasts and wide hips. She was breathing rather fast, and those breasts were shaking slightly even though they were held in by a strong brassiere. 

Her tongue kept moistening her lips and she was looking right at my own size 38s that protruded proudly, somewhat harder than they had been, what with the boy fooling around under my miniskirt. I guess the woman knew what was happening to me; she'd got the hots just from watching. 

"Do you mind, Miss Drum?" asked Dr. Painter.

"Be my guest, Mrs. Honnechik," I murmured dryly.

"Eleanor," she whispered, moving behind me. 

Her hands came up to my breasts, her fingertips gently toying. She found my enlarged nipples through the bra and dress and rubbed them back and forth. At the same time, the boy slipped his hands between my thighs and was feeling up my privacy. My hips jerked uncontrollably. 

Let me explain about group therapy. It concerns itself, first of all, with the interrelations of human beings, Basically, it helps those who are shy or over-aggressive or narcissistic, rebellious or non cooperative, by teaching them the needs and wants of other individuals. It teaches tolerance of others, tones down the fighting instinct, makes the timid ones more comfortable with their fellow men or women. 

Touching has become an integral part of group psychotherapy. By touching one another, you are showing affection. Everybody wants to be loved and needed. 

For instance, even while the boy was fingering my con and Eleanor Honnechik was playing with my breasts, there was a voice inside me telling me that this was a show of my own affection for my fellow man; I was letting them do this to me to teach them that I liked them. I understood that Eddie Taney wasn't the sexually useless—because—the ignorant boy who was having trouble with his studies because he was so obsessed with sex, but that he was one of the human family and entitled to know what girls were like. As far as Eleanor Honnechik went—well, if she wanted to feel a pair of tits, why, mine were hers, girl. Go ahead. 

It was a warm, friendly glow I felt. Aside from the bits of the sex throbs, I mean. 

The three men and the other woman in the group were leaning forward, watching. I guess they knew how I felt, and they were respecting me for it, because they realized I was lending my body to Eddie and Ellie so they could benefit from something that didn't do me a damn bit of harm. 

Doctor Painter was nodding at me, smiling. "Excellent, Miss Drum. You're very cooperative. I'm proud of you." 

I said, "This is doing me good, too, you know. I've always been sort of standoffish, afraid to let anybody touch my body." 

Oooooh, what a lie! But honestly, I had to have some reason for joining the group, didn't I? 

Eddie was rubbing his cheeks against my panty-hosed left thigh. In a moment, he would be kissing. I let my hand fall to his dark hair and ruffled it. I felt like some kind of sex goddess. 

Painter nodded. "I know, I know. This is why I chose you when Eddie explained that seeing girls walking around in very short skirts always made him want to put his hands under those miniskirts to find out what it was they hid." 

"Now he knows," I giggled. 

The doctor frowned. "No levity, please." So I went back to having my breasts handled gently and lovingly while my nipples ached with want and my Hanes hosiery got rather damp between my thighs. It was all for a good cause, but I was by no means unaffected by all this tender loving care. I thought about David Anderjanian and promised myself that after this session, I would ring him up to come out and spend the night with me. I needed more than feeling up right about now. 

Painter rapped with his pencil on a chair arm. "Let's resume our discussion, if you please. Take your seats." 

I sat down beside Eleanor Honnechik. Her face was flushed, her eyes very shiny. The skirt of her pongee shirt-dress was up to the middle of her thighs, so that she was showing off a garter-clasp and a few inches of bare thigh-flesh above her stocking vamp. 

"Eddie, I want you to level with us," said the doctor. "It wasn't just the idea of putting your hand under a girl's miniskirt, was it? It was more than that." 

Eddie hung his head. He was a shy boy. I felt sorry for him. Two red spots blazed on his suntanned cheeks, and his hands were shaking. 

"Maybe not."

"Ah, very good. Please, go on."

"My mother's dead. I ain't got no sisters."

"And?" 

"My father beats me."

"Why does he beat you, Eddie?” 

"Awww, you know. I buy picture books with the girls in them all naked." His head lifted and he glared around the circle. His friends would have been snickering at this, but all he saw now were sympathetic faces, friendly and attentive. He swallowed hard, muttering, "I go nuts, sometimes, thinkin' about girls. 

"So I buy those books. And my Dad found them. He took a razor strop to me. I didn't mind the beating, honest. It was just that he made fun of me. Told me to go out and get a floozie. And I can't. 

Tears came into his eyes and he hung his head. 

Doctor Painter said, "Eddie, what marks do you get in school? 

"Good ones! Straight A's in every course I take. I'm going to get a science scholarship and go to Purdue to study engineering. I want to be an electrical engineer." 

"Eddie has a keen mind," nodded Painter. "He loves to study, to learn. He is far more familiar with books than he is with other people. But he's here to learn that too much study makes for a dull boy. I want him to overcome his inhibitions, I want him to be able to go out of here—eventually, not today—and strike up a conversation with a pretty girl at a party. Even, in time, to go to bed with her. 

"No need to blush, Eddie. This is a natural thing." 

One of the men said. "The doctor's right, Eddie. I wish I'd had his help when I was your age. If I had, I wouldn't be here now." 

Doctor Painter looked at Eleanor Honnechik, "And you, Eleanor? Would you like to tell us anything? 

I heard her draw a deep breath. Then she murmured, "Not—yet. I'm not—sure just why I did—what I did." 

"It was an unconscious reaching back for your mother. Is she dead?” 

The woman gasped in surprise, nodded. "Why, yes.” 

She died three years ago. But how did you know that? 

"It was just a guess based on a theory. You were in the habit of going to your mother with your problems, right? 

"She was a very sensible woman. When she died, I felt I'd lost a part of me." 

"And you have a problem now?" went on the doctor. 

Eleanor Honnechik did not speak, she just stared at her red-nailed fingers that twisted, and twined together. 

"You must talk and act out your problems here. Otherwise, this group therapy won't do you any good. You know that, don't you?” 

Doctor Painter was very gentle. He never raised his voice, always spoke in a monotone as if to imply that he was not here, that it was only a machine listening to their problems. In a way, I suppose it helped them over the bumps. You can tell a machine things you'd never admit to another human being, because you know the machine won't make you the subject of ridicule. 

"Yes, I know that," the woman murmured. "But like Eddie, I'm just not ready to tell everything about myself." 

Painter considered her, his head tilted to one side. "I might, the way Bindrim did in California, ask you to take off your clothes and enter a warm pool. Now, now—I'm not going to do it. I just want you all to think about it. 

"Bindrim found that people sometimes wear clothes as a defense gimmick to hold off other people. They are a shield behind which people sometimes hide. When his group removed their clothes, they admitted they felt less inhibited, less ashamed of their bodies. This in turn made them less embarrassed about sharing their innermost secrets." 

"Misery loves company," I said softly. 

Doctor Painter looked thoughtful. "That may play a part in it, yes. If everyone removes his or her clothes, it is a common sharing, makes them all partners. By stripping away their clothes-shields, they are lowering their guard and will talk more freely about their own particular hang-ups. 

"Would you, Miss Drum, mind taking off your clothes—if everybody else did it? Perhaps then Mrs. Honnechik wouldn't mind telling us her problems." 

Eleanor was flushing, head lifted. "Oh, I couldn't possibly," 

I reached over, patted her hand. "Why fight it, honey? You're here to get help, like the rest of us. Wouldn't it be worth stripping down to get some peace of mind?” 

Her gray eyes stared into mine. I smiled, and her rather large mouth quivered in reply. "Well I never thought I'd be even thinking about doing what you say when I left the house this morning. But—but maybe it might be a good idea." 

Those eyes touched my breasts, then drifted away. 

Doctor Painter looked around our small group. "Would anyone else object to our psychological nudism?" 

One of the men cleared his throat, growled, "Hell! I'm not in shape for that sort of thing." 

"You won't feel inferior once you're naked," Painter murmured. "That's been the experience of other nude groups." 

The men glanced around the circle. "I'll do it if everybody else does," he nodded weakly. 

Eddie sprang to his feet. "I couldn't!” he yelped, red as a beet. 

"Because you have an erection?" the doctor asked gently. 

Eddie hung his head. Everybody could see his young manhood was in a state of want; it was nothing to be ashamed of, it just meant he was a healthy young male.

I said, "Eddie, be proud of your body. I'm sure these men all wish they had your youth, your eagerness." 

One by one the men nodded. 

Eddie pleaded with me with his eyes. I went on smiling and nodding at him. Finally he said, "Okay, okay. I guess I was in a flap for no reason at all. Sure, I'll go skinny dipping." 

The building we were in was a suburban medical center. It was shared by half a dozen doctors and two psychiatrists. The warm pool in the basement could be a whirlpool bath or utilized for a nude group such as we were planning to be. Obediently, at Painter's gesture, we rose from our seats and went down in the elevator to the basement level. 

The women were to undress together, the men on the other side of a solid wall that formed a communal undressing room. It was easy for me to strip; all I was wearing were my Hanes pantyhose, an Olga brassiere in matching black and the Cobbs Corner gray twill. Up came the mini-skirted dress, to be placed on a hanger. My hands reached around behind me to unsnap the Olga bra. It fell away and my pale mammary mounds plopped out into the warm air. 

Eleanor Honnechik paused with her dress up around her middle, staring at my bare breasts and licking her lips. She was lost in some childhood fantasy, I believe. I felt a little sorry for her. She had forgotten to undo her zipper tab, so I took a couple of steps forward in my Hanes sheer-wear and platform soled Capezios. 

"Let me help you," I smiled. 

I ran the zipper tab downward. Her flush covered her neck and ran down across her smooth, creamy shoulders. She was in a bit of a flap, remembering the way she'd played with my breasts. Now my breasts were naked for her to see and she loved the sight of them. 

I put hands to her dress, helped her off with it. The other woman had turned, was staring at us. I smiled at her, said, "We really ought to help one another. Eleanor is nervous." 

The woman smiled, nodding. Her name was Flora Hadley. She was very self-sufficient, and she could do for herself, her dark eyes told me an instant before she turned away. 

Eleanor whispered, "Thank you." She draped the pongee silk over a chair back, which left her in a blue brassiere and blue slip. 

With much wriggling of the hips, she got the slip off. Under it, she had on a black lace and latex girdle. Her pallid thighs were shapely but plump, pressed outward by the tightness of the girdle and her stocking-tops. A big-cupped Warner bra tried to hold in her breasts. 

She was nervous. There were perspiration beads on her forehead, and her hands were quivering as she put them behind her to her brassiere snaps. I caught her hands, pushed them out of the way. One by one, I undid those snaps, then let my hands slide forward to free the bra from her soft flesh. 

The other woman was at the door naked, walking out toward the pool. She closed the door behind her, leaving Eleanor Honnechik and me alone. 

My fingers moved, touched the outer slopes of her blue-veined breasts. The woman gave a low cry, half turned. Her eyes were enormous as she stared into mine. 

"We mustn't," she whispered. 

Her voice said one thing, her eyes another. She wanted me to reach under the partially fallen bra cups, to caress her heavy breasts. It was all there in her eyes. I knew what she wanted, and I was willing, but there was no time. 

"You're right." I smiled. "They're waiting for us." 

I knelt to undo her girdle zipper. Her hands were really shaking now, like leaves in a strong gale, and her flush was fading to an ashen hue. Feverish eyes stared down into mine and a red tongue-tip emerged to lick about lips that seemed suddenly fuller, more sensual. 

My hands parted the girdle, pushed it down and away, baring her gentle mound of belly, the curve of a naked hip. Eleanor Honnechik was shaking so much by this time I had to put a hand up for her to clasp so she could maintain her balance. 

"You'd better—stop," she bleated. "Can you do the rest?” 

She nodded, licked her lips and whispered, "It isn't that I don't want you to—you know. I've never felt like this. I—I'm sah—scared." 

Of her own emotions. 

I had known other women like this one, those who were striped by broad veins of Sapphism but who never suspected it until a moment of truth came along to rip the veil of ignorance from their eyes. I rose to my feet, patted her fanny where it was revealed by the down-fallen girdle flap. 

"I know. I understand. Let's go join the others." 

My fingers pushed down my Hanes pantyhose, then I kicked off my Capezios and stood naked for her eyes to roam. Her tongue licked her lips again. Eleanor Honnechik was worried, yes; but while some monkey on her back was driving her to this group therapy, at the moment she was not thinking of her pains but of the pleasure that flooded her every nerve end. 

She dug this stripping and petting between girls. And she wanted more of it. 

I turned and walked toward the door, letting my soft buttocks twitch and jiggle. She was staring at them with that fever stare. I didn't have to see her eyes to know this, it was almost like a caress. 

She hurried to join me, and as I was dipping a barefoot in the warm pool waters, she was beside me catching my hand and dropping her own toes into the water. We sank downward, bounced up and down to let the warmth and the wetness wash over us, then moved to join the others who were in a semicircle, waiting. 

"Clothes," began Doctor Painter, "are only a shield against a revelation of your innermost thoughts and desires. Concentrate on this fact, think about it. Now that you have discarded that shield, there is no need for any reticence in talking to one another. 

"Now join hands." 

Eleanor was on my right, young Eddie Taney to my left. Through the clear water, I could see that the boy was very much affected by all this nudity. His eyes kept darting from my breasts to Eleanor's and then across the circle to the smaller mammaries that Flora Hadley boasted 

Doctor Painter talked on. "I want you all to think back, to dip into your memories, to recall some pleasant moment in your life. Close your eyes and remember. Think back on that time..." 

There was a little pause. "Now I want you to open your eyes, still recalling that pleasantness, and look each other in the eyes. Find one whose eyes are comfortable and pleasant to stare into. Sink into those depths. She or he will be thinking pleasant things, they will be communicating their pleasure with you, and in a sense, sharing it." 

I found myself staring at the man whose name was Gregory Stone. He was middle-aged with deep lines in his cheeks and around his mouth, as if he had known much bitterness. But his eyes were lively, sparkling. I wondered what instant out of his existence made him seem so happy. 

I was remembering my love scenes with David Anderjanian, my case officer. Someday, David and I may get married; neither of us is quite ready for it yet. But there were many moments we'd had together that I never wanted to forget. It was enjoyable, reflecting on them. It was almost like taking the Boone man into my confidence, eyeballing him this way. I am certain he felt the same way, because his own lips were losing their grim-set pattern and responding to his memories in something like a smile. 

I felt Eleanor tighten her fingers on mine. I squeezed back. 

Doctor Painter was bending above the pool, passing a rose to Flora Hadley who took it and began sniffing at it dreamily. "Pass it on when you are done. Let the others enjoy its scent as well." 

This was all a part of what is known as the "human potential movement," begun at Esalen Institute. There are many parts of this search for joy, for internal delight and self-awareness, including a period for meditation, the employment of the Hatha Yoga posture as a means toward inner peace and understanding, the encounter of individuals within the group so that they can discover how others feel about them. 

It was a drawing out of the spiritual self, which is inclined, in some individuals, to be secretive and non-communicative and as a result, somewhat isolated from the world about it. 

I know I felt freer, more at ease, and I am not an uptight person. I just wanted to sink down into the water and float about in its warmth—which was like the warmth of the womb—and perhaps sing silly little songs with my eyes closed. The others were affected in much the same way. I even heard Flora Hadley humming softly under her breath. 

I was ready to tell anybody anything about myself. These were all my friends. More than that, they were parts of me; extensions, in a sense. What they knew about me made no difference. We were one, we were part of humanity. We were all-in-one, and one-in-all. 

It might have been the voice of Doctor Painter droning on that made me feel this way, as I am sure it did the others. I heard voices, faint and murmurous, in my womb-drifting, the soft words of women, the harsher tones of men, the shrill revelations of young Eddie. 

"I was married four times, and none of the marriages worked out...my fault, I was convinced of this, but I felt like a clam inside when it came to telling a woman the way I felt about her..." 

That was one of the men. And another said, "All my life I've been concerned only with making money, I've neglected my family, and I have a good wife and three fine sons... always believed that the more money a man made, the bigger man he was...the dollar sign was the status symbol of success, and now I'm not so sure. I want to be a part of my family..." 

I paid these words very little attention. I was whispering, "I have no hang-ups, not really. I love my job and I love my bossman most of all and someday I'm going to get the big lug to marry me in a church wedding. I want a flower girl and a white dress and veil and all the trimmings even though I consider myself a mod and make fun of marriage...but I want the wedding with pictures and all that goes with it... 

Eleanor Honnechik was sobbing softly to herself. 

Eddie Taney was muttering, "Man, all these naked broads and me here in the skin to see them the same way..." 

I paddled closer to Eleanor. "Can't go on this way, I just can't..When Bill died I tried, I honestly did, but it was no use...young Billy fights me every step of the way...and now the drugs he takes..." 

A part of me stiffened to attention like a pointer setting his tail at sight of a quail being flushed from cover. She had said the magic word, drugs. It was why I was here in this pool without my clothes. 

We were all in a state of semi-hypnosis, I am sure. The staring into each other's eyes, the warm water, the steady droning of the psychiatrist's voice, added up to the fact that we were out of our skulls and half asleep. 

I didn't dare say anything to Eleanor for fear of snapping her out of her trance. I had to let her go on babbling, but I was zeroing in on her as my primary target. 

Her son was one of the Hartsdale College freshmen who were suspected drug addicts. When our L.U.S.T. agents had discovered that she was enrolling in this group therapy course, David Anderjanian had sent me to enroll, too, figuring I might learn something about the son from the mother. It was much the same sort of ploy that the police use when they plant an undercover man in a jail cell with a prisoner. 

"...gotten down on my knees to him if it would have done any good...but he makes fun of me, calls me a square and—and even worse. I just can't take it anymore, I just can't..." 

She wept and sobbed a little more, but she had done all the talking she was going to do. I said a few cuss words under my breath and put my think tank to work to figure out ways and means to get her to tell me what she wouldn't tell the group. 

Group psychotherapy came into its full flowering during the close of World War II. Until that time, psychiatrists had been more concerned with the individual's needs and emotional disturbances, but gradually thinking changed. Today the therapist is concerned just as much, if not more, with the relation of that individual to the group society in which he moves. 

There are two more advantages of group psychotherapy. From the patient's point of view, it is far cheaper than having individual attention. Secondly, it permits the doctor to treat more patients at one time. 

Men like Pratt, Borrow and Moreno had worked with groups for psychiatric treatment long before the Second World War, but it was only during that war, when the reduced number of trained psychiatrists practically forced them to put their patients into groups, that this new mode of treatment received its greatest impetus. Today, group psychotherapy is very much the thing. 

Eleanor Honnechik blinked at me through tear-blurred eyes, forcing a smile. Her lips were quivering and her chin trembled with the need to shed more tears. 

"Hey, let's have dinner together," I offered. "We can let down our hair and rap all we want." 

"You tah—talk like my boy Billy." 

I smiled invitingly. "Maybe that's because we're more or less the same generation, the under-thirties." 

It was a wise choice of words, I was discovering. Her gray eyes widened to the thoughts that ran in her head, and she opened her lips to say something when Doctor Painter sounded his clicker. 

"Out of the pool. Out now! You've had enough for today." 

I followed Eleanor from the water, padding along behind her to the towel rack. We dried ourselves in the girls' dressing room and then slipped into our clothes. My eyes rarely left this woman whom I had marked for contact. She kept giving me nervous glances, biting her lower lip and frowning thoughtfully, 

I didn't push it. I waited. 

When we were ready to leave, Eleanor followed me out of the Medical Center and walked me to our cars. She hesitated as she went to open her own car door. I was sure she was going to accept my offer to eat together, but she didn't. She got in her car, started it, and sat there just staring into space. 

I shrugged philosophically. I had lost her. 

This meant my contact with the local drug problem was gone, unless I could figure a way to get to her. The group therapy hadn't helped. Nobody else in Woodlands Corners could help me, to my knowledge. 

I'd had high hopes of Eleanor Honnechik. 

I was so disappointed, I wanted to cry.