Lucia pulled a clothes pin from her mouth and silently cursed the day eight years before when Antonio had showed up in her village, the shiny bumpers of his Inca Cola delivery truck outshined only by the dazzling gold cap on one of his front teeth. That smile--oh,that smile! How she loved and hated that man's face! She was only fourteen then, but when he asked her one day to ride with him to his next stop, Villa Maria, she had accepted, even though she knew it was wrong. And when he had stopped the truck half-way along the eighteen-kilometer ride to the village, and had slid his hand gently but awkwardly down the front of her blouse and layed his coarse fingers on her still-forming breasts, she had allowed him to, gazing dreamily into his dark twinkling eyes--eyes which seemed to her to exude the very essence of life itself. And when on his next visit he had loosened her skirt and committed THE ACT with her, she had not resisted, had even felt a twinge of pleasure, even though she knew from what the nuns had taught her that to feel pleasure, especially in such a sinful union, was not a woman's right.

• edward3