Melanie had been too carefully brought up to suspect that her feelings for her brother were more than romantic fantasies. She had no idea what incest was, and did not recognize her incestuous feelings for her brother for what they were.

But she was definitely aware of sex. She had discovered long ago, when she was twelve, that by touching the soft and delicately fringed mound between her legs with the cuticles of her fingers, she could create the most exquisite sensations. And the whispering, giggling talk of her girl-friends had given her a shadowy suggestion of the actual act of fornication. She had seen men with their shirts off, and she had certainly watched the crotches in men's pants and dreamt about what those bulges contained. Against her father's strict orders, she had sneaked out to watch stallions being mated to mares, and had found the sight extraordinarily exciting, sending a flush of warmth coursing through her nubile young body.

Her one actual contact with sex had come several weeks earlier when she had nearly created a scene by opening the door to her father's bedroom and found him lustily mounting Dahlia, the black girl who helped in the kitchen. Melanie had only caught a glimpse of the lewd scene before she hastily retreated, but it had been enough to sharpen her curiosity. She had seen her father's broad, sweaty, hairy back and Dahlia's luscious, mahogany colored legs wrapped around his waist. She had watched the way his hard buttocks flexed and lifted and fell, and had heard Dahlia's delighted whimpers and moans as the big stud entered her again and again…

Melanie felt a stab of envy for Dahlia which she would never have admitted aloud. The pretty black girl, a gorgeous mulatto, was twenty-five and had worked with the cook in the Wilkersons' kitchen since she was seventeen. Now Melanie realized that her services had been procured in order for Rhett Wilkerson to have a mistress, for she had come to work at the house weeks after the death of Melanie's mother.