Nick hesitated about waking her. He enjoyed her unique beauty with a sense of anticipation. He knew nothing about her, which made her mysteriously attractive. She had come to him last night, probably saved him from monstrous indignity. She had elected to sleep beside him of her own inclination.
A point came when Nick could wait no longer. He leaned forward, touching her.
"I was going to pretend I was asleep," she murmured. "What would you have done?"
"Raped you," he admitted....
Both were rebounding-she from a husband, he from a nymph he had not yet married. They met where couples swapped nightly in--
Summer Heat
1
NICK HARPER had always believed in not looking back. He had mistrusted even memories of Cynthia Roberts.
Now she was again a part of the present They were in the same room alone with one another.
Cynthia, nearly nude, poured his seven-dollar bourbon over the ice she had put into two tall glasses. The color of her bikini blended with the tawny tone of her flesh. Only the bind of the scanty halter destroyed the illusion of nakedness.
"Say when," she said in a voice he had once thought melodic. "When."
She poured an extra finger past his exclamation. She would not have touched a bottle four years before. She had been prim, beautiful and unavailable. Now as she brought both glasses, the roll of her voluptuous body was deliberately an offering. He accepted the drink with steady fingers. But the steadiness was self-enforced. He was excited and disturbed.
"Here's luck," he said. "May you find what you came for."
"Here's to you," she corrected him. "I already know what I'm going to get."
The whiskey flowed ineffectually down his throat. Cynthia's presence in his cabana was hitting him more than any liquor could. His trunks, still wet from the tepid surf, seemed to bind him like a harness. The soft scent she wore in her hair was destroying his harshly imposed control. Although heavy curtains provided a half-dark, the lusty new sparkle of her blue eyes knifed into his awareness.
"Why not kiss, me, Nick?" she asked quietly.
The girl he remembered would not have asked for a kiss. But a little of his romantic memory lingered as his arms slid around her lithe body. Her warm mouth met his. Her lips parted. He closed his eyes as his embrace crushed her bold firm breasts into distortion against his chest.
Was he also disrupting an image of the past?
He felt her body kiss his from hp to thigh. like a captured snake, with tiny tightening and loosenings, she worked her flesh against him. Where had she learned this sort of caress? Her tongue struggled with his. The movements of her flared hips became subtly insistent. He let his hands move smoothly down her back and into the edge of the low-slung bikini.
His thumbs hooked into the cloth. Her whimper of eagerness escaped the lass they exchanged. They tumbled to the lounge. Her fingers stirred on the elastic waist of his trunks.
He said to the girl he remembered, "Cynthia, you're sure this is what you want?"
She laughed. "Yes, Nick. I know what I want." But her laughter was someone else's, not the remembered girl's.
Never look back, he advised himself. Which was enough for now. His hands toyed with the halter button. Her lass became sharp and brutally possessive.
Once he had been eager and adoring. Once she had been shy.
He rolled her nude body under his own. She was white heat and soft velvet.
She wailed quietly, her fingernails digging into his taut back, "Oh, Nick, I'm terrible-but I love this. I love you, baby, and you're killing me."
The words had meaning only as music would-they conveyed lust and sorrow, pleasure and loss. His ardor was swift and willing. Her arms clung. A devastating moment prolonged itself. From her lips bubbled laughter that was half hysterical, half pleading. Nick forgot she had ever been a virgin.
Cheek to cheek, stealing breath from each other, they rolled and flowed through the moment. As Nick's passion roared, he felt her body quake and vibrate in his arms.
Release and regret, poignant and treasurable, came at the same instant.
* * *
"Don't be that way, Nicky," Cynthia murmured. "I'm a big girl. I knew what I wanted and whom I wanted it with-the minute I saw you waist-deep in the surf. I've only been here two days. I guess I was ready for love. The beautiful beach, these marvelous cottages and all the pretty and vivacious people. I never even dared hope it would be you. You seemed like part of the long-ago."
"Four years," he said. "There have been other women, lots of them. You know that?"
She looked at him soberly. "There hasn't been another man," she said. Seeing his look of disbelief, she protested, "That's true. I wasn't ready. I'm grateful that you were the man. Suppose I'd waited until I was twenty-three and chosen the wrong one?"
He tried to hold her close to himself.
"Do you love me, Cynthia?" he asked.
She squirmed from his arms and sat up, her back bowed so that her perfect breasts protruded delicately from her rib cage. "I didn't say that, Nick," she reminded him. "I just said I was ready for love and there you were. There's a difference."
She was playing with him. She reached for his cigarettes on the stand beside the bed. The move exposed her intimately. She lit the cigarette and placed it between his lips.
"No lipstick on the tip." She laughed. "You nibbled it all off."
"You pushed it down my damned throat," he countered.
She made a face and administered mock punishment by becoming a writhing, sensuous tease again.
He pushed her away from him. "Give me a few minutes," he asked. Her body was sweet and warm to his touch. "I'm just an average male, honey, not a stud."
"How long are you going to be here, Nicky?"
"As long as I want. Haven't you heard? I quit my job. I'm down here to take it easy, spend some of the money I've banked in the past seven years and just be lazy old Nick."
"I've a month" Cynthia said. "I was promoted to feature articles last year. I didn't take a vacation. I was too anxious to get at my new job. As a result, this year I have four weeks. Nicky, are you glad we happened to come to the same resort?"
"You know I am, honey. You're more than I bargained for, even at forty dollars a day."
"Would you have found a girl if I hadn't shown up?" she asked with a trace of the Cynthia he had known.
"Hell, yes," he said. He had no knowledge of what had changed her in four years. He was not sure he had a right to ask.
He had always been his own man, responsible for what he thought and did. He assumed that she also was a self-contained human.
"I'd have found a girl," he continued, "as I would have found the hotel bar er the best spot on the beach. I know how to relax. I was very much in love with you once. I got over it. Men and women in sob stories carry a torch forever and ever. Not in real life. Just the same, I'm curious about the girl I once knew. Does she still live within you somewhere?"
The tempo of Cynthia's breathing changed. "Which girl do you like best?" she whispered.
He had no time to tell her-the purely carnal impulse she aroused made an answer pointless. She took the cigarette from his fingers and snuffed it out in the ashtray. She ground the hard tips of her breasts against his chest. The smoke from his dying cigarette made her squint. For a moment Cynthia looked like the calculating mother of all whores. Without waiting for kisses or fondling, she sprawled on him, captured him in her body's delicious warmth.
Memory, he thought, was a tyrant. Memory came back when he wanted it least, reminding him of the girl he had known as Cynthia Roberts, urging him to continue his quest for her.
Until now he had the wide world in which to search--a comparatively easy task. Now he had to find her in this seeming slut.
He started his search in the manner which presented itself-through passion.
A knowing smile showed on her carmine lips. Was she looking into his mind-consciously trying to make him forget every other woman-including herself as she had been?
Her hair fluffed over his face as her teeth sank daintily into his taut pectoral muscle. He stiffened his powerful legs and punished her with convulsions of ecstasy.
Minutes later she sighed contentedly.
"You're the most wonderful man in the world-and I'm sure you're the best lover. Oh, Nicky, this is all a woman could want."
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"I'm sure, Nicky."
He rose on an elbow. "Most women are less generous than you seem to have become. They want some kind of reward for their favors. Sometimes they'll settle for a promise." He heard the sarcasm in his voice, knew it for a bluff. He had a feeling for this girl. "Will you marry me, Cynthia? We could have a ball. I used to be in love with you and I'm still curious as hell about the girl I knew four years ago-"
She trembled and was still. Her eyes were soft and hurt. She slowly disengaged herself from his touch and rolled away, her face turned to the ceiling.
She said, "I'm flattered. But I can't say yes. I'm engaged to someone else. He loves me very much, Nicky. He's insanely jealous, not of other lovers, because before you, there have been none."
"I don't know if I believe that," Nick said quietly. "If I were engaged to you, I'd be jealous too."
"Nicky, why? I've owned that ridiculous bikini for a long time. But I never let anyone take it off before."
"I wish I were sure of that," Nick told her. He added, remembering the girl she had been, "I guess I'm sure. I guess I believe you. However, won't this afternoon cheat your fianc'' a bit?"
She shook her head. "He won't be cheated, believe me. The truth is, I had to find out what kind of girl I really am. I don't know whether or not I want to marry anyone now, Nicky. What we've done this afternoon is so beyond my wildest imaginings that I'm more confused than ever."
He had an involuntary sense of letdown. This luscious hoyden in his arms was more complicated than he had dreamed she could be. He was not about to give up his search for the real Cynthia-but he had a sad sense of distance from her.
She was asking lightly, "Can I have a raincheck on your marriage proposal-just in case I find I want it?"
"Sure. Be my guest," he answered with equal lightness.
2
THE SUN BORE DOWN and the humidity closed in, putting a gloss to the nearly naked bodies along the beach. Most of the bodies were handsome. An observer would have spotted few fat girls among the brightly painted cabanas and striped umbrellas. The mile of white sand was chiefly populated by sleek, tanned people--either young or youthful.
They sunbathed, surfed and laughed, with much casual kissing and careless handling. When the sun went down, they would enjoy other pastimes.
Nick Harper could not have cared less.
He lay belly down on a beach pad, letting the sun drive strength into his six-foot-two of inert length. He was exhausted. Two days and nights of intermittent love-making had only heightened Cynthia's apparently insatiable desire.
Whenever he had tried to be serious and to speak of romance, she had kissed him and twisted his words until they were speaking of sex.
He had succumbed each time.
Nothing in his experience had prepared him for the girl that Cynthia had become. He found he was clinging to a belief that she would tire of this furious lovemakingthat she would wake up some morning in need of the land of love he really wanted to give her.
They played at respectability. Her cottage was many removed from his. They would meet on the beach for a swim and repair to one cottage or another for their intimate moments. Had she been a little disappointed in some aspects of passion? At times he sensed her discontent when she played with him as if he were a big handsome doll.
The depths of her sexuality made him wince. She thrilled him when he thought no further thrill was possible.
She was getting her hair done this afternoon in the hotel beauty salon. The prospect of lying belly down and alone on the beach was restful.
The roar of the surf was a soothing sound that compensated for the bathers' sensual laughter and one girlish voice in particular which had the cutting quality of a rusted hunting knife.
A woman's voice was important. Cynthia's was deep, not quite husky, vibrant with emotions which always seemed on the verge of passionate display. She had plunged into sex with Nick as if into a scented bath. He had felt once or twice that she was using him not as a lover but as a teacher. She wanted to explore and exploit every sexual possibility.
She was still Cynthia. In all fields but one she was a perfect lady. Sometimes her old shyness showed. She would respond to the natural and artificial beauties of the beach with the enthusiasm of a wide-eyed country girl. She was the precise combination of lady and tramp most men dreamed of but never found.
His respite ended when a quantity of warm sand trickled on his back and Cynthia's throaty laugh followed the involuntary tightening of his muscles. Nick rolled over.
She stood above him, her hips encased in tight white shorts. A boldly flowered blouse outlined her breasts. Her hair, no longer in soft swirls, twisted to form a crown above her oval face.
"Like it, Nicky?" she asked, turning slowly so he could get the full impact of her beauty.
"Great. You weren't long."
"My hair is easy to handle," she said with a touch of smugness. "Now I need a drink. Go change, baby. I'll meet you in the bar."
"Want to come with me while I change?" he asked, surprised at her unusual suggestion that he go anywhere near a bed by himself.
"And louse up a twenty-dollar hair-do? Hurry, Nicky."
He needed only minutes to shower and dress. He was amused to discover what was needed to slow up Cynthia's sex drive-a new hair-do.
He studied the crowd idly on his way back to the bar. Since his reunion with Cynthia he had paid little attention to others.
He knew this beach from several visits in the past The visits had been brief, stopovers enabling him to corner some sand-nympho, vent his pent-up masculinity, get boiled and catch the next plane to Lisbon, New Orleans or wherever else Apex wanted him. He had deliberately chosen the beach for this vacation because the scent of sex and merriment hung over the luxurious hotel day and night
The crowd was half monied people, half adventurers. The two elements mixed beautifully under the warm sun and the blue-black night sky. The beach furnished someone for everybody-husky beach studs for the plump divorcees, lithe talented young babes for the weary businessmen. For those with exotic tastes, so-called health and exercise clubs were available among the palm gardens. Rubbers, pounders, grabbers could perform either conventional revitalizing services-or other services not usually listed.
He met and returned the questioning glances of a chic young girl in expensive beach togs. At any other time he might have swung in step beside her. Now he merely nodded and continued on his way, disinterested in the kind of affection the flashing eyes offered. He still seemed to enjoy getting the come-on.
* * *
A blip of jealousy crossed his mental radar as he saw how the pack had closed in on Cynthia. She had half consumed a whiskey sour. Two handsome men flanked her at the bar. She sat like a blonde goddess, her laughter and brilliance sparkling. The laughter was always the right note, the brilliance never phony. Cynthia had class. The asset, an intangible when added to her voluptuous beauty, was enough to draw every man at the resort.
"Anybody care if I take my gkl out of this wolves' den?" he asked.
The man on Cynthia's right turned out to be Cobb Carter.
"Nick, old boy," Cobb greeted him with a rich man's grace. "When did you get in? Haven't seen you for two years-the time that Italian bombshell-pull up and let me buy you a drink."
"You two know each other?" Cynthia asked.
"We do." Nick pushed Cobb's drink by one place, put his hand on the precisely tailored sport jacket sleeve and boosted Cobb to the next stool. "Hasn't he introduced himself? Cynthia, meet Cobb Carter, sportsman, loafer and defiler of innocent maidens. This is Cynthia Roberts, Cobb. Roll down your upper hp because she belongs to me."
"Grossly unfair, old man. You know I have no time for virgins. I'd like you both to meet Serge Reilly, a newcomer who's testing the reputation of our beach."
Nick considered the man called Serge. Some of his clothes were expensive. He wore a two-hundred-dollar sport jacket and a three-ninety-eight shirt. His trousers were not good, but his shoes suggested a fifty-dollar bill. He was handsome in a lean esthetic way and was probably undependable in a tight spot. He spoke briefly, with a tinge of Boston. He had an annoying habit of letting his legs shift nervously. At each shift he touched Cynthia's thigh with his own. He was a hunter, Nick decided.
Seated between Cynthia and Cobb, Nick was jovial with the rest. They had a second round of drinks and were talking about getting together later in the supper club when Cobb lowered his voice.
"Called Grace since you arrived, Nick?"
"No."
"Too busy?" Cobb nodded sideways toward Cynthia, who was talking to Serge about Apex News.
"I don't know. Just say I wasn't ready for Grace's brand of whoopee."
"She won't like your not calling her the moment you got off the plane," Cobb warned him. "She always had a thing going about you. I think that for you she'd slow up the mad pace. Going to call her?"
"Sure," Nick replied, with the definite intention of not calling Grace Moray. Until now he had not thought of another woman here. Cynthia had occupied him. Grace Moray, the absolute queen of sex unlimited, would have been no help in his new love affair.
He knew Grace well. The wealthy divorcee shuttled between Florida and New York, from San Francisco to Paris. Once she had turned up in Singapore while he was covering a Chinese border incident. He had never flattered himself that she was chasing him, but she had met him at odd times and in unlikely places too often for pure coincidence. She had a fabulous house on a magnificent estate behind the beach. He remembered nine bedrooms and a bar from one of her incomparable and uninhibited parries.
"You'd better call her." Cobb laughed. "If she finds out you're here, she'll be all over you like a spring fog. And she won't knock before she enters, either."
"You have a greasy mind," Nick said. He nodded toward Serge. "Who is the underfed Valentino?"
"Beats me, old man. Has money, good manners and a stiff backbone. Plays moderate golf and carries his liquor well. What else should I worry about?"
"Beat you at cards?"
"We don't play cards. He's never been here before and he's content to amuse himself with the girls I'm tired of. Completely agreeable chap. Cynthia's a beauty, isn't she? Where'd you meet her? Or should I ask how much she costs?"
Nick gave Cobb an unglamorous account of Cynthia's beginning. He painted her as the girl he once had known-calm, sweet and naive. Once or twice Cobb looked past Nick's chin to see if they were both talking about the same girl.
He finally remarked, "You don't care if old Cobby doesn't go for that dossier? But if that's the way you want it, I get the word. Hands off it will be."
The party broke up at five. Neither Cobb nor Serge showed any effect of several drinks. Nick was merely warm. But Cynthia, her overwhelming beauty already the center of attraction in the sophisticated bar, was beginning to laugh too loud and too often. Plans for the evening were left dangling. They were all too well mannered to press for promises. Nick, uneasily proud of her, loaded Cynthia on his arm and guided her to the patio.
Cynthia laughed as the sun made her blink. "I'd hoped it was dark," she said.
"It's all one to me. You're beautiful in the sunlight or the night."
"And in the dark?"
"I don't know. You always want the lights on," he teased.
"Nicky, let's go to your room."
"That character's talk get you steamed?"
She pouted. "He said some nice things about me. You aren't the only man in the world."
"I'm the only one for you, though," he reminded her, holding tight to her arm. "I was just teasing, honey. How did you like Cobb?"
"He's rich, isn't he?"
"Moderate. His money will outlast his glands."
"Now who's talking sexy."
"Me. Can't imagine why, however."
"Murder," she murmured.
They hurried down the walk toward his cottage.
* * *
Throbbing with her own curiously aggressive response, Cynthia came into Nick's arms the instant he closed the door behind them. He knew what she wanted-his hands working up and down her back, his tongue battling hers in open-mouthed passion. The way her fingers plucked at the nape of his neck, the softly sensuous beat of her hips to his, were as addictive as morphine.
He started her toward the bed for the delicious ritual of undressing her. She freed herself and, standing inches apart from him, unwound the chiffon scarf from around her waist. She immediately proceeded to make herself a turban out of the scarf.
"I'm going to fix my hair," she explained, "so you won't make me look like a rag mop."
He unbuttoned his shirt and unsnapped the waistband of his slacks as he watched her build a protection for every wave and swirl. With sex running down his spine, he still savored the domesticity of the moment. She was a while with her twirling and pinning, long enough for him to prepare two bourbons over ice. "Nick?"
She was peeling out of her shorts. Her blouse reached to the hipbone. He lost track of what she was saying. "You're delicious," he affirmed.
"Sure. Now listen, Nick. We were in the bar. I heard you and Cobb mention a woman named Grace."
"I thought you were listening to Serge's pitch."
"Would that be Grace Moray, Nicky?"
The Cynthia he had known would never have heard of Grace Moray.
"Yes, now that you mention it. Why?"
She whipped off her blouse. Was she using her beauty for bargaining? If so, what did she want?
The pink berries that tipped her jutting breasts were hard in the net brassiere. He had learned that those vibrant nubbins were precise barometers of her sensual climate. They stiffened, softened and throbbed as Cynthia's emotions pulsated, sometimes a hundred times in an hour.
"I want to meet her," Cynthia said quietly. "Why?"
She unsnapped her brassiere and whirled out of it into his arms. That beautiful body seemed to house two persons-one the careless eager nymph, the other a scheming minx who could kiss him with open lips while calculating her next word.
"I have a friend in New York," she whispered into his ear as though reciting a sonnet. "A publisher-when he heard I was coming here-said to look her up. He said the most interesting things about her. Please set up a chance for me to meet her."
"Sure. Some other time." Nick found that thrilling impulses were spreading through his body. He was aware of a difference in Cynthia. Her body was eager, but her thoughts were elsewhere. Her fingers made no exploration. She would not allow her oddly wrapped head to touch the bed.
Before this evening he had always felt he was gladdening her with his passion. Now she seemed to be making a concession, complying with the routine of love.
He felt challenged to exert his strength, to smother her with kisses and force her response. He sought new ways to make her gasp in wonder. His lips trailed kisses over and under her breasts, across the heaving contour of her abdomen and down her hips. Her hands played affectionately with his hair. The lukewarm quality of her acceptance was maddening.
She twisted and freed one tapered leg from his encompassing embrace, rose on one elbow and leaned forward. Her breast grazed his cheek.
His kisses became deep and insistent. He could feel her breath start to quicken. Her body swayed erratically. She gasped and fell back, her hips twisting to meet his kiss.
The turban she had fashioned was coming loose and she did not care. His passion would not wait. He clambered upon her. She trapped him with arms and lips and the grip of her taut thighs. They whispered together silently in the sweet soft ways they had learned.
* * *
"Call Grace Moray," Cynthia said. She lay unmoving beside him. "Can't reach the phone."
Cynthia giggled. Her fingers teased the still fluttering muscles of his lean belly. Her touch moved downward, then up to toy with his chin. "There's much more to love than I'd ever dreamed," she said. "It gets better as you go along."
"If it gets much better I'll die. How much can a girl stand?"
He kissed her gently, feeling a stir of male pride at her implied compliment. He waited for more praise of his qualities as a lover but she changed the subject
"Grace Moray. Nicky, I've got to meet her."
He decided to humor her. "Just how much did your friend tell you about Grace?" he asked.
She lowered her eyelids. "Oh, just that she's a divorcee with a lot of exciting friends, and who always makes room for one more."
"I see. All right. But don't say I didn't warn you."
He stood up, stretched his muscles and went to the phone. He needed a minute to remember the number. Grace would be soaking her fantastic body in a scented bath right around now, if her schedule was unchanged. Grace liked to face an active evening in a state of relaxation. The telephone rang three times. The familiar lazy drawl took over. "Racy Gracie here, darling."
"Icky Nick on this end," he said. "How's my best girl?"
He could hear the splashes as she bounced in her bath. "Nick Harper? Oh, my dear-where on earth are you?"
He did not say he was in bed with another woman. "At the beach. I've been here a few days and I'm finally rested enough to pick up a phone."
Cynthia, curled under his free arm, tried to put her head to the earpiece to hear what Grace said.
"Tonight? I have a party going and you can be the guest of honor. Just a few of my closer friends. Nicky, I'm so pleased. I've been saving you the biggest itch since New York."
"Take it easy. Is it all right if I bring a friend? She wants to meet you. Says she knows one of your victims in New York."
"She?"
"The most absolutely she you ever saw."
There was a pause during which Cynthia giggled softly and did annoyingly cute things to him with her forefinger and thumb.
"Bring you friend," Grace said, less excitedly. "You sound like a man with a social disease, Nicky."
"Maybe. Nothing that penicillin will cure, though. What time?"
"Within the next thirty minutes-eightish."
"Eightish, then. Bye-bye."
He turned to Cynthia and playfully touched the rigid tips of her breasts. "Satisfied?" he asked. "Never."
She laughed and slipped into his arms.
3
GRACE ADDISON had been fourteen when she stood in front of a full-length mirror and first decided that she was made for love. She was already used to the adulation of schoolmates and adults. But that day in front of the mirror, she had become her own foremost admirer.
She had caressed her amazingly developed breasts, wriggled her hips and kissed noisily at her reflection.
Nothing in fifteen years of experience since that day, not the two inadequate husbands or the succession of lovers, had changed her mind.
Her breasts no longer thrust up and out, had acquired just the right amount of weight to make them sensuously pendant. Her hips had broadened past the svelte trimness of youth and she liked the change. Her skin was clear and pink-toned. If she kept a hard pace, she showed no ravages, perhaps because she had remained faithful to at least one person-herself.
She kissed the mouthpiece of the gold French phone and nestled it on its cradle. The echo of Nick Harper's voice made her throb indecently and happily. For Nick and Grace, the separation had been too long.
She had never made up her mind about Nick, that handsome and talented nomad. Grace had traded her money, her body and the aura of her social position for the favors she wanted from virile men-and a few oddly special women. She retained attorneys to keep her disengaged from the consequences of her passions. She had seldom been rebuffed by any love partner. But Nick had not seemed impressed by her beauty and money, except for the quick, very sweet interludes she had managed to create at certain times. Nick had no glue in his character. He could walk off and leave a passionate woman, pulsing with permissiveness and adoration, as if she were a hag with a runny nose. Grace had given up on Nick a dozen times, but the sound of his voice was electric. He always seemed to turn up again and she always responded to him.
She had been Grace Addison, then Grace Thomas. Now she was Grace Moray. She was twenty-nine, richer than ever before. As she toweled her lush body after her bath, she decided that she had never been more physically attractive. She was a dish, all right-and, as a result, she was going to see Nick again in the company of another woman. The prospect was not flattering. But Grace would see Nick any way he came.
A few perfunctory brush strokes modeled her auburn hair into soft cascades over her ivory shoulders. She powdered her body with jasmine, missing no undercurve nor sensually warm nook of her splendid torso. Make-up was no problem with Grace. Her perfect skin and richly colored lips needed little improvement. She outlined her eyelids lightly with a brown pencil, her mind on Nick and the imminent party. Tonight would be the time for a novel costume-she would wear what she called her shocking stocking.
The garment was russet-toned, a magnificent and expensive skin of intricate lace and faithful contour that reached from toe to shoulder. To put it on meant fitting and petting and coaxing but when at last the mesh melted against her body, the effect was of a delicate tattoo, done by a loving and expert artisan.
The neckline was deeply veeed to her navel. Over the furious lift of her breasts, the material folded, wrinkled and swelled just as Grace did. A single concession to the proprieties was an intense concentration of pattern at the fork of her thighs.
A low-slung kilt, barely more than a sash, was supposed to be worn over the stocking. Grace postponed adding the kilt.
Surveying the effect in the mirror, Grace knew she could count on intriguing any man in the world-any man but Nick. Nick was bringing a girl. He might need more than a lightly shrouded body to interest him in Grace. He might need to have his girl kept busy. Out of sight was out of mind.
She called the service quarters to make sure Adelaide had the party well in hand. Satisfied, Grace dialed a friend's hotel. Waiting while the switchboard rang a room number, she finger-traced the lace pattern over her flat abdomen, starting minor tingles to replace the fluttering that Nick's call had started.
A modulated male voice said, "Yes?"
"Serge, baby," she purred. "I'm glad I caught you. Love me?" When his reply came swiftly and ardently, she laughed. "Tonight, lover boy. I'm having a small party. I want you to come. Can do?"
She ignored his joking reply that he had not yet recovered from her last party. "Be serious, fool," she told him. "If you do what I want, you'll need only your charm, not your marvelous backbone. Though it breaks my heart, I'm going to stick you with a girl. I don't know her name or what she looks like. But the man I want is bringing her and you're going to take her out of his reach. Booze her up, charm her down or show her that suffragette's delight you're so proud of, but keep her out of my hair till I get a job done. Does Gracie make herself clear, darling?"
* * *
The Moray mansion looked like a conventional house only when the portable shutters were in place following hurricane warnings. In the swiftly settling twilight, Grace's home was a Moorish palace, rambling, bordered in red tile and lush tropical plantings, without plan. The rooms were sprinkled with perverse disorder among inside patios, broad terraces and arch-bordered walkways.
Grace had furnished with emphasis on sensuality. Her authentic Arabian couches and floor divans were set upon Turkish rugs of priceless value. Brass sconces and Armenian wall tapestries made striking backgrounds for her highly polished cabinets, regal chairs and richly laden buffets.
A reporter had once called Grace's house a hodgepodge of Oriental indiscrimination. Nevertheless the mood of the rooms was not long in exerting its influence on most visitors. The decor had a rhyme and reason.
Legs of heavy tables were phallic symbols, as were the heavy chandeliers that dangled from the vaulted ceilings. The tapestry figures would not reveal their true nature until the second or third inspection, after which the careful indelicacy of certain figures and their actions became breathtakingly obvious. Guests would become aware, within half an hour, that all of the firm shapes had some indescribable masculinity-the soft things, such as embroidered velvet, cushioned divans or the receptive depths of each chair, were inevitably feminine. The house was a museum of lust, a decorator's nightmare and a sensualist's delight, exactly suited to Grace Moray and the select group with whom she played her private games.
Tonight the party centered in the main room, ninety feet from wall to wall and containing a sunken fountain.
The pulse of music was punctuated by the laughter of early guests. Grace stood at the buffet, nibbling nervously at no-calorie appetizers to sate the unreasonable hunger which sensual anticipation always started within her. She felt a slight twinge of jealousy as Sophia Young reacted to the attentions of her two escorts. One was a Tom and one was a Mike. They were no more than unusually pretty examples of the genus beach boy. Hundreds like them cluttered the dunes with their tanned muscles and boldly brief shorts. They were massive sex machines who fed only on money, not emotions.
Grace knew both boys would be fine lovers, indefatigable studs in casual slack suits with well-worn zippers. They flanked Sophia, drinks in hand, pounding her lush body with their eyes, following each twist and movement with appreciation. Grace imagined invisible antennae sprouting from those wavy heads of hair, by which the boys counted the richness of the surroundings and the probability of rent money. Though this pair was new to her, she knew their breed. She was glad Sophia had invited them-she herself would have no time for Sophia tonight.
She saw Nick Harper. He had just come in from the front portico with a beautiful blonde.
Grace was instantly and ragingly jealous of the girl's youth and freshness. Only a girl with perfect breasts and narrow hips could have worn that high-necked black sheath. One extra ounce of maturity, one weary line at breast or underarm, would have made the gown seem obscene. But the dress was right for Nick's new blonde.
Grace greeted them with more gaiety than she felt.
"Well, baby, baby," she murmured, stretching to kiss Nick's cheek while her throbbing breasts kissed his chest. 'You're a sight for my tired eyes."
Nick introduced the blonde.
"Cynthia, I'd like you to meet a very dear friend. Grace, this is Cynthia Roberts, an equally dear friend. Cynthia is a newspaperwoman, a fellow worker of mine."
The blonde was getting the full impact of Grace's stocking suit. With seeming carelessness, Grace put one hand to the girl's waist and kissed her on the lips, clinging to the moment a bit longer than was required in mere greeting.
"I'm so glad you could come," she said, folding Cynthia against her with a possessive arm. "Do come in and meet the early drinkers."
"What a marvelous house," Cynthia breathed. 'I've never seen anything like it. And I did so want to meet you, Mrs. Moray. Jim Lambert told me to be sure and look you up. Do you remember Jim?"
Grace could not answer for a second. Her arm around Cynthia and the pressure of her hip against the svelte shape of the beautiful girl had momentarily stunned her into tingling anticipation. She could smell the woman underneath the scent of expensive perfume, and the subtle movement of lithe muscles as they slowly walked toward the others was nearly hypnotic. And in Grace's memory was the tiniest twitch of Cynthia's lips during that greeting kiss.
"Yes," she said finally. "I remember Jim. I'm surprised that you would know him, too. You look like a nice girl-almost too nice to be here. Come on and meet the gang."
"Take it easy," Nick grumbled. "Let her get used to your people in small doses. Cynthia, Grace is a witch."
"I think she's wonderful," Cynthia told him. She was clearly still fascinated by the toe-to-shoulder stocking.
The laughter went out of Sophia's sexy mouth when Grace introduced Cynthia and Nick. The beach boys looked Nick up and down before they made anything special of Cynthia. Grace tried to stay calm. She had thought the sight of Nick Harper would send her into private paroxysms of ecstasy.
But he was only the same old Nick.
Cynthia was young and fresh and challenging. She led them to the bar.
"I'll make your first one, kiddies," she said. "After that you can call on my girl Tina or hustle your own poison. Cynthia, may I fix you one of my secret-formula specials?"
"Of course. I'd love to share your secrets."
"It's no damned secret," Nick protested. "She uses aphrodisiac. She pays a fortune to have it smuggled into this country. And for your information, Gracie, Cynthia doesn't need any. Neither do you."
Grace leaned across the bar and patted Cynthia's hand.
"Mere man," she said huskily. "How does he know what two women need? You are the most beautiful girl I have seen in years. Tell me, Nick, are other newspaperwomen ever so lovely?"
Nick made some land of answer. In the background, the pulsating music, Sophia's ribald laughter and the clink of glasses were meaningless sounds. Nick was a shape on a divan. Grace's mood, one she could not have predicted, was one of furious desire for Cynthia.
She said, "Nick, why don't you go rescue Sophia while Cyn and I get acquainted?"
"Please, Grace," came Nick's sober response. "Ease up."
Cynthia told him, "She's right. Go talk to your old friends."
Nick went reluctantly, but Grace did not care how he went as long as he left the obviously interested Cynthia to her.
When he was out of sight in the crowd Grace asked softly, "Instant tea, wasn't it?"
"I'm not sure of what you mean," Cynthia replied.
"You're sure," Grace said positively. "Maybe you don't know the name of the game but you want to play. I know that, honey."
"You frighten me," Cynthia whispered.
"I don't frighten you. You frighten yourself, Cynthia. You didn't know that you could want another woman, did you? You didn't know that I could excite you-that any woman could."
"Is that what you do for me?" Cynthia asked agitatedly.
"You were born for me, darling," Grace murmured.
She let Cynthia weather a moment of confusion and embarrassment before she asked, "Are you in love with Nick Harper?"
"I think so-or perhaps I'm in love with life because of him. One can't always tell the difference."
Grace started to comment-then saw Serge Reilly striding in from the hallway. He was his usual tall, confident self, handsome in that damned esthetic way, dressed like a sloppy millionaire and wearing his masculinity like a recruiting flag for virgins. Cynthia said, "Serge Reilly."
"You know him?" Grace asked.
"I met him and Cobb Carter in the hotel bar this afternoon. He's very handsome, isn't he?"
"Handsome and unmarried." As Grace came to her feet, she let her hand trail over Cynthia's leg. "But he's just another man, darling. Believe me, one's like another."
* * *
Serge waved gaily to Sophia and her two escorts. Grace met him at the bar.
He took in her voluptuous near-nakedness with hot eyes.
"Send them all home and let's you and I make music," he said gallantly. "Or something. You're beautiful, Grace."
"Oh, Serge, I'm so sorry. The girl I spoke to you about on the phone isn't going to come, after all. But you won't be lonesome, baby. Lydia should be here any minute. Come on, I want you to meet Nick's new girl."
"We've already met," Serge said. "She's a knockout. Who else is coming?"
"Maybe Cobb. He's bringing a new one. She ought to be a real addition to our crowd. Just got her second divorce. They say the testimony blistered the paint off the judge's bench."
She hastily excused herself, noting a fresh arrival. Lydia Doran was a synthetic blonde under twenty, so vivacious she even interested the two beach boys. Grace introduced Lydia to Cynthia and Nick, who had managed to gravitate back together.
Following the introduction she slyly captured Nick and eased him into an adjoining alcove.
"It's been a long time, baby," she breathed, slipping her arms around his neck to let him feel all her softness. His hands were on her back as they kissed, but without enthusiasm in spite of the intensity of her open-mouthed assault on his lips. "Hey," she teased him. "Cynthia is something?"
"Cynthia is something," he admitted. "You're as lovely as ever, Grace. That lacy mesh whatever-where were you when I was eighteen?"
"Like it?" She laughed, standing and turning completely around to give him a view from all angles. "It cost too much and has one drawback."
"Chilly?"
"No." Grace returned to Nick's half-hearted embrace and let her body ripple against his with all the meaning she could muster.
His second kiss was warmer but suggested none of the virility she knew he was capable of. Grace decided she would have to be patient. She clung to him, kissing him lightly as he told her about quitting his job.
When he got around to talking about Cynthia, she listened with intense interest. The sounds from the living room had changed from amusement to a higher, more strenuous emotion. Before long, she knew, Lydia and Sophia would break through some barrier of restraint. Meanwhile, Grace had heard not one word from Nick as to Cynthia's sexual inclinations. It was unlike Nick to spend time and money on a girl to whom he could not make love.
"Is she going to be shocked by us?" Grace asked.
"Probably. I still am," he said. "Grace, take it easy on her this first time, will you? She's not like most of the girls you and I know."
Grace laughed throatily and cuddled against him. "You idiot, she's a woman, isn't she? You're just being selfish. You want her all for yourself."
"Yes," he said seriously. "I do want her for myself."
Grace shrugged out of his weak embrace. "Okay. But you're setting yourself up in the center alley, Nicky. She can be had."
She had said enough They returned to the group.
Grace saw that Cobb Carter was working on the project, too. The willowy brunette whom Cobb had evidently brought was the kind of man-killer Grace had known before. She was dressed in white floor-length folds of heavy silk. The dress hung from dun straps over her square shoulders. The gown was loose and, Grace suspected, was worn over nothing but slim nakedness. The girl, backed up against a pillar by Serge Reilly, was enjoying the pressure of his charm.
Nick had headed for Cobb and Cynthia. Grace moved toward the area where the beach boys were crowding Sophia and Lydia. The latter was already leaning against the big blonde boy, her cheek pressed close to his as she sipped her drink. His hand.was flat on her bare back and his fingers worked in crude massage. Sophia and the other boy began to dance. Grace felt a tinge of excitement as she saw how Sophia's dark body clung to the big youth.
Grace detoured to the controls behind the portico drape. She turned a switch and the lights dimmed.
It would be interesting, Grace mused, to see how Cynthia reacted to what was sure to come. It would be doubly interesting to see how Nick Harper reacted to Cynthia's initiation into sexuality, Moray style.
For her own part, Grace loved sex. She saw it as an art form, a career, a way of life. Sex was a common language. People of all sorts could make contact with one another, when all other communication broke down, through sex alone.
Grace did not think of herself as an immoral woman. She would have considered herself bad if she had not paid her bills or if she had spoken too harshly to a servant.
But sex and morality, in her way of thinking, were things apart.
4
NICK WAS UNABLE to get rid of the concern that made a tight ball in his belly. He knew why Grace had turned the lights down. The gesture was a signal. Everyone now was free to act as he or she liked. Cynthia, laughing and playing kitten, seemed entranced with Cobb Carter and his smooth line of sophistication.
Her first drink tonight had revived her recklessness of the early afternoon. Nick could think of no way of cutting off her liquor without raising a fuss. She was dancing with Cobb now, her body arched, her ears turned to his smooth conversation, her eyes on the exciting tableau all about her. One guest here could stimulate another.
For the moment, Grace had intruded between Serge Reilly and the slimly devastating Betty who had come with Cobb. Nick stood alone, feeling like a fool. In desperation, he tagged Cobb off the floor and picked up the dance step with Cynthia.
"Well, hello," she greeted him with a laugh. "I'm having fun."
"Thought I'd lost you," he said. "What do you think of Grace and her parties now?"
"She's wonderful, Nicky. I'm so excited. I never knew people like this before. The little girl with the ponytail went off with the big one, didn't she?"
"They'll be back in about seven minutes," Nick predicted. "Cynthia, let's get out of here. This is no kind of a party for you. I should have known better than to bring you here."
She stiffened in his arms. "You don't want me to have any fun, is that it? You seem to be well known by one and all-and I saw you and Grace out there in the hall. Well, I'm a big girl and I can take care of myself. Don't spoil things, Nicky."
"Easy," he said. "You don't know how rough this game can get. And don't be fooled by Cobb's super-duper line, either. He'll have his pants off and be right in the middle of it before the night is over."
"You mean, they'll start an orgy?"
"Not at first. They'll go off in pairs, try a few things, and then pair by pair, they'll drift back into the group and after a few more drinks, they won't bother to drift off. Please, Cynthia. You know how I feel about you. Let's get out of here."
"Silly," she said, her eyes shining in the dim light "I wouldn't miss it for the world."
"Cynthia, please."
"Oh, look at her," Cynthia exclaimed. Nick turned.
Sophia had gone into a limbo dance in front of a low cocktail table. She had dragged her dress well up, exposing legs that were corded with the strain of her undulating. The stretch of her nylon panties seemed the barest concession to modesty. Her buttocks, thick and protuberant, bunched under her arched torso. Her flesh snapped and rolled as she lowered her knees and approached the table. One of her shoulder straps broke under the strain. The watchers applauded as her massive left breast popped free.
The boy she had been dancing with stepped forward and snapped her other shoulder strap. Sophia's laughter was loud as she added a particularly lewd movement to her lithe body. Every other movement in the room had ceased.
The limbo dancer's knees were twisted painfully, the tendons of her legs seemed ready to tear. She began to move under the table. As her hips made the passage, she thumbed her panties as far down her spraddled thighs as they would go.
Nick felt Cynthia tremble with excitement. The beach boy moved to the other side of the table to meet the voluptuous, twisted shape undulating through limbo. The clutch of Cynthia's fingers on the back of Nick's neck was indicative of her thoughts. Nor was Nick immune. His eyes flicked to the others. Grace was hunkered down on one lace-clad knee, her voice raised in encouragement. Cobb was cheering. Serge Reilly and the sleek divorcee were inching toward the door leading to the back rooms.
Cynthia moaned, "Oh, Nicky, look. Just look."
Nick jerked her roughly and, as if in some passionate trance, she allowed him to drag her away from the nearly completed dance. In the hall, he picked the first door he knew would lead to a bedroom.
He had some thought of slowing Cynthia down, even if he could not cure her eagerness. And, he admitted to himself, he needed her as much as a man could need a woman. He knew what Sophia had been offering to the first taker. He pushed Cynthia into the bedroom and snapped on the wall switch.
Cynthia gasped. Nick was startled into momentary paralysis.
Grace Moray's latest recruit was contorted in stark nudity on the long-sized bed, face drawn into near agony as she vibrated under the furious kisses of the equally nude beach boy. His wavy hair bobbed in the deep cradle he had formed of Lydia's thighs and heaving abdomen.
Lydia screeched as the light bathed her passionate moment The big youth rolled off the bed to the floor. "Dammit," he yelled. "Get out."
"Sorry, old boy," Nick managed. He dragged Cynthia out of the room, closed the door and lifted her in his arms. She was limp.
Little blubbers of pleading came through her dry lips. Nick carried her to the next door. No one had preceded them in the darkened room. He left Cynthia on the bed while he locked the door against any intrusion such as the one they had just perpetrated. When he returned to Cynthia, she had already slipped out of her gown.
They loved swiftly and blindly, then lay exhausted in the dark.
"Let me just rest for a while," Cynthia said. "I had too much to drink too fast, Nicky."
Nick stepped into his shorts and trousers. "We could leave now, Cynthia," he said gently. "What can possibly be left for us at this party?"
"I just want to rest, Nicky, without thinking. Please, go ahead and join the others. Maybe a little nap will clear my head."
She rolled to one hip and smiled as if in comfort. He was comforted in the only way a passionate woman could accomplish, but he was also worried. Cynthia had become a wildly abandoned creature, eager for his flesh, seemingly dedicated to unlimited lust. She had reacted to the episode in the living room and to the stark obscenity of the other bedroom just as he had feared she mightand just as Grace Moray had promised him she would.
When he looked down at her bare breasts, the tips showed her inner tension, despite the apparent relaxation of her body. Her eyes were closed, yet an infinitesimal flicker of her eyelids showed she was neither weary nor calm. He finished dressing. She did not stir.
"Want me to lock the door from the outside and come get you in half an hour?" he asked, bending to kiss her shoulder.
"Please don't. I'd rather not feel locked in. I'll get up and lock it from the inside after you go. Just knock real loud in about an hour. Okay, Nicky? I'm so tired."
Her kiss was languid.
Nick waited in the hall until he heard the lock click. He walked slowly toward the living room, his steps rubbery from the half hour of hectic lovemaking. He hesitated at the threshold, debating whether he ought to return and insist that Cynthia dress and leave with him.
Grace Moray came toward him. Her body touched his demandingly as they swung to the record rhythm together.
"Well, baby," she purred. "You getting long-winded in your old age."
"Long-winded?"
"I saw you leave the gathering darn near an hour ago. Where's Cynthia?"
"She had too much to drink. She's resting."
He did not see Sophia or her boy. When he looked about, Nick discovered that the only other persons in the big room were Cobb Carter and the pert maid who was cleaning up the glasses at the bar. One divan held the strikingly full satin gown that Cobb's date, Betty, had been wearing.
"Cobb lost his girl?" he asked of Grace.
"Cobb loses about three a week to Serge, baby." Grace laughed. "You'd never believe what that pirate carries around to poke fires with. Betty got what she came for. One minute she was dancing with Serge and the next minute she stepped back, shrieked like a shot rabbit and dropped her gown. The last I saw of them, she was leading the race for a bed. Nicky, no one has laid a hand on Grade tonight. Take me to my room, baby, for old time's sake? Cynthia will never miss it."
He chuckled. "Why don't you rescue old Cobb?"
Grace stopped in her tracks and let go of him. "You stinker. Why did you call me at all tonight?"
"To tell you the truth, because Cynthia wanted to meet you. I'm sorry, Grace. I just happen to be in love-for once in my life. Is that a ticket to oblivion?"
Grace was slightly mollified. "In love, are you? We'll see."
She seemed to fold. The next thing Nick knew she was tearing expertly at his trousers. He realized suddenly that both Cobb and the barmaid were gone. He was alone with Grace in the enormous room. He no longer could doubt what Grace intended to do.
The insistence of her fingers was expert and exciting. A flood of rich, exquisite memory made Nick tender and responsive under her kisses.
The memories soured abruptly.
"Dammit, Grace," he gasped. "What do you take me for?"
Her laughter was garbled. Nick caught her under the arms, lifting her erect. Against his will, as she seemed to know, he found himself trying to lead her to one of the divans. Whimpers of eagerness escaped her lips. When they reached the corner he had chosen, she managed to turn so that he fell to the deep upholstery.
She straightened and began to peel the stocking suit from her trembling body.
First a shoulder, then the other, curve after curve, she emerged from the gold-brown lace. When the garment was low on her hips, she gathered it in a tight roll where the delectable auburn V marked the division of her thighs. Her laughter was soft. She twirled in front of him in pure vanity.
With a cry of eagerness, she fell to her knees beside him. For a few intensely intimate minutes he forgot about Cynthia Roberts and the world in general. Grace was world enough.
* * *
He was chagrined, but not surprised, to discover that they had had an audience. The burst of laughter from Sophia and Mike made Grace crawl over Nick and bury her face in his heaving chest. But she made no move to roll up her lace suit again. Her kiss was affectionate on Nick's cheek.
"So who's in love, baby?" She laughed. "Grace hasn't lost her punch yet, has she? Oh, you two-go off somewhere and smell armpits."
In the boisterous moment that followed, Nick managed to put himself back together. He squirmed away from Grace, who was immediately taken over by others.
Nick moved to the bar in a daze, shocked at what he had let be done to him while Cynthia trustingly slept.
He made himself a stiff drink and started back to the bedroom where he had left Cynthia. He stopped in the hallway. Betty, nude except for a baggy T-shirt that made her slim shape seem even slimmer, was kissing Serge Reilly at the end of the hall. He was bare to the waist. The shirt Betty wore was obviously his. Nick was surprised by the peculiar muscularity of the man. When Serge pushed Betty back into the room the slam of the door was solid.
Nick knocked on the door that protected Cynthia. When he had no response, he supposed her asleep. He tried the knob and it opened under his hand. He stepped inside, closed the door and switched on a light. Cynthia, nude, was where he had left her but her appearance was different.
She was limp as though in death. Only the rise and fall of her breasts told him she was breathing. Her body was covered with small red welts of the kind that only passionate lips could make.
He could visualize the rising fervor of those lips as they approached the vulnerable areas of Cynthia's beauty. Once before at the beach he had seen a soft white body thus decorated. The girl had admitted spending the previous evening with Cobb Carter.
How long had he been gone? How long had he lain under the spell of Grace's perversely wonderful lovemaking? He moved to the bed, looked down as Cynthia opened her eyes. She rolled to one hip in a swift effort at hiding. He could see the welts that spotted her buttocks. He grabbed at her, dragging her half off the bed.
"You dirty, cheating bitch," he said.
"Oh, Nicky, I couldn't help it." She threw herself into his arms. "I dozed. When I woke up, there he was, half naked and crazy. Before I could stop him, he was all over me. Nicky, it was terrible, but I just couldn't fight him off. Will you ever forgive me, Nicky? Say you will."
He felt like hurling her across the room. Yet while Cobb had had his way with Cynthia, Grace had had her way with Nick. He saw himself and Cynthia the way they were, not the way he hoped they might be. She had signed no paper, promised him nothing. The idea that she belonged to him was his own invention.
"I'm sorry, baby," he murmured. "But you made a dirty picture for me to walk in on. I know about Cobb Carter. And I suppose he has as much right to make love to you in his way as I do in mine. But this house and Grace-the whole dissolute crowd, including me-I don't like them any more. It hurts land of deep to realize you've joined the club."
All she understood was that he did not hate her.
Her laughter was soft and tender and she was once more his girl. "I knew you'd understand, Nicky. I've never lived so fast, so madly in all my life. Nicky, do you loathe me for enjoying myself? You've lived so fully, I feel by contrast like a little girl when I think of how sheltered I've been."
"What's wrong with being sheltered until the right man comes along?" he asked into the tangle of her hair.
She let go of him and rested one knee on the edge of the bed while she inspected the red marks on her skin. She was beautiful, he thought, even when scarred by another's unrestrained lust. As she fingered her tender skin, he saw the tips of her breasts assume a significant rigidity.
"How does a girl know who is the right man?" she asked.
"Put on your clothes, honey," he told her.
"I have to shower," she said, glancing toward the adjoining bath. "I'm a mess." She gathered her hastily discarded gown and under things. "Go on ahead, baby. I'll shower and dress and be with you in a jiffy. Fix me a drink, too. I'll be there before you know it."
He kissed her and patted her bottom. He thought of what she had said when he was in the hall. She had come out of sleep to find Cobb with her, half naked and grasping.
But how had Cobb gotten into the room unless Cynthia had unlocked the door? She must have lied, must deliberately have opened the door to Cobb Carter.
He went on into the living room, deciding he must be patient but watchful from now on. Cynthia was only human-bold-blooded, eager, sensually alive.
She had come to the beach after her years of chastity. He had not prevented her when she gave him the honor of being her first man. Was he broad-minded enough to understand her fascination for Cobb's brand of lovemaking? Innate masculinity forced him to be jealous. Once they escaped this party, he would be careful never to expose Cynthia to these people again.
The party in the living room had deteriorated into a listless orgy of lewd laughter and lazy fondling. Lydia, the ponytailed neophyte, was clad only in panties and a brief brassiere. Sandwiched between the beach boys, she was dancing a sterile version of a far from sterile ritual. Cobb and Sophia were rolling in lethargic merriment on a divan. Betty was back in her flowing gown, Serge Reilly in his shirt. Counting noses, Nick was aware that Grace Moray was not among the revelers. He went to the bar.
"Two bourbons, big and over ice," he ordered. "Where is Mrs. Moray?"
The stolid maid looked at him with more than her usual blankness. "I wouldn't know, Mr. Harper."
"You haven't changed much in two years, Tina. Maybe prettier, now that I look at you."
"I'm getting old inside," the girl said with sudden friendliness. "You work for Mrs. Moray for three or four years, you get old inside, no matter how you look outside."
Nick knew how she meant the complaint. He turned his gaze toward the hallway, watching for Cynthia to appear. She would need more than a jiffy, he knew. Women had no idea of how long it took them to bathe and dress and refresh their make-up. He drank his drink and hers, then ordered two more.
When he turned to the hall door again, he saw Grace and Cynthia coming toward him arm and arm. Cynthia was laughing in a way Nick could identify. Grace wore a short jacket over her mesh suit. Grace took her arm from Cynthia's waist when they reached the bar.
Grace was saying, "Well, he's waiting all right, honey. You'd better take him home. He's had all he can stand for one night."
Nick knew what she meant.
She was making a joke of his feelings for Cynthia.
5
NICK AWOKE the next morning at ten. He lay in bed, allowing the previous evening to boil through his memory. Cynthia would not tell him what she and Grace had talked about, nor had he the nerve to ask what they might have done in the very long time he had waited at the bar.
Grace was no lesbian. But as Nick knew, she played sex games. He had missed none of the mischievous glances, the careless but deliberate fondling that passed between Cynthia and Grace.
Maybe Grace had respected his stated claim on Cynthia, maybe she had not. To Grace, sex in any form was important. As for other passions, her taste for unlimited sex had probably eradicated her ability to love.
He had no doubt that Lydia had recently been a conquest of Grace's. He remembered how Sophia had been initiated into Grace Moray's circle. Sophia had been in the process of acquiring an education when her path crossed Grace's-the girl's only problem had been that she was highly sexed. For a month or two, Grace had kept Sophia in a constant state of hysterical exhaustion, then had turned her loose to other friends. To all intents and purposes, Sophia was lost as a human being. She was a sex machine now, an indelicate, abandoned nympho who did not question what a man did to her as long as he took a long time about it. Lydia would meet the same fate. Would Cynthia be next on Grace's list of degradation?
Half an hour later when he had made no contact with Cynthia, his nervousness doubled. He toured the coffee shops, the beach, the bar, all the shops along the mall. He returned to the nearly deserted beach and walked it from end to end.
Finally Nick went back to the bar, perched on a stool and ordered a pick-me-up. He considered calling Cobb's room. But Cobb would merely tell smooth lies. If he called Grace, if she learned how worried he was, she would laugh at him.
By noon he was trembling with fear. He put on his beach shorts and sought out the space he and Cynthia had chosen as their own. The usual crowd of laughing, cavorting nymphs and satyrs began to gather.
Serge Reilly, lean, tanned and alert as a hawk, approached with a beach blanket and a transistor radio on a sling. Nick found himself disliking the tall man intensely. He was obviously rich, possibly a gentleman as the breed went. But why was he allowed to live, with those sharp eyes perusing every lithe torso, every laughing face-as if searching for victims?
Grace had hinted that Serge was a nympho's dream of a stud. Certainly he had taken over Betty, the lean divorcee, within minutes of her arrival with Cobb. Cobb had not seemed to mind. He had practically pushed the slim brunette to the phallic idol-so he could be free to find Cynthia? Nick tried to dismiss the idea that last night's party had been a conspiracy to take his girl away. He was the one who had called Grace, not the other way around. Any party in the world would have been excited by Cynthia's beauty.
At three in the afternoon, he could stand no more. Once again he began the rounds. He left Cynthia's cottage to the last. When her voice answered his knock, he could hardly open the door fast enough.
"Holy smoke, where the hell have you been?" he exclaimed.
She snuggled into his greedy embrace. "Shopping. Did you miss me."
"Shopping? Where."
"In the city with Grace. Look."
She whirled out of his arms and went to her wardrobe. She pivoted with two hangers. Pendant from each was a shriveled but recognizable duplicate of the lace stocking suit Grace had worn the previous night, except that the colors were different. One was black, the other flesh pink.
"Aren't they beautiful? I just love them." Nick peered at a tiny tag on one of the suits. Three hundred and sixty dollars, "I didn't know you had that kind of money," he said slowly.
Cynthia giggled. "I don't. I was going to pass them up, but Cobb paid for them."
"Cobb Carter paid for these?"
She pirouetted happily. "Sure. He took us to town in his Caddy. Nick, these are wonderful people-I never felt so good-or so appreciated-in my whole life."
"You can't wear them anywhere but in this room," Nick said.
"Oh? Why not, Nicky?"
"Because if you wear them anywhere else, the entire beach will know why Cobb Carter bought them. Monkey bites are his trademark."
She laughed and tossed the garments to the bed. As she returned to his arms, her lips came up to his. "You're jealous," she accused. "Cobb is nice, Nicky. So I was out of my mind with booze and excitement last night. Today he was a perfect gentleman and never even put a hand on my knee."
Nick was abruptly enveloped in heat. He held her closer, smothered her happy face with kisses. Her body began to pulse with the subtle invitation he desired. His day of worry had sparked frustration and desire within him. All he felt now was unrestrained passion.
Cynthia dropped one hand from his shoulders and insinuated her hand down the front of his trunks. They stood in the grip of anticipation until Nick could bear no more. Cynthia made no move to strip. Instead she fell back on the bed and dragged her skirt up. The shock of seeing her naked loins made Nick vicious with desire--and fear for her.
She wailed, "I'm so happy, so alive-love me, Nicky, and never stop. Be patient-you can't understand-"
His lust and fear assaulted and entered her.
"Beside this, what else matters?" he asked huskily.
Her fingers pinched and fondled the thick, furiously working muscles of his back. The spasmodic kicking of her heels gradually settled into hard digging as she lifted herself to his love. He drove harder and harder into her body.
They had been like this in the beginning, just Cynthia and himself, consuming each other in the flame of passion. This was the way he wanted it. If he had to be patient until she wanted nothing else, so be it. While he passed from thinking to feeling, he wondered briefly if Cynthia had called Grace-or had Grace made the approach?
* * *
He left her at six, with a dinner date set for eight. Calmer, reassured by her graphic demonstration of love, Nick made his way to his own cottage. He had time for a shower and nap of his own, he decided. A surprise awaited him. Stretched out on his bed, her slender body clad in stretch pants and blouse, was Lydia Doran. She was balancing a glass of his bourbon on her flat stomach and her ponytail lay over his pillow like a pennant.
"Hi, man," she said, rising to one elbow. "Remember me?"
"Hell, yes," he replied.
She shook her head in appreciation. "Boy, you're even prettier in the daylight than you were last night. Pour yourself a drink and talk to me, handsome."
"How old are you?" he asked. He poured the drink.
"Head age or bottom age?"
"Down the middle."
"Old enough to know a real man when I see one. Did you see those two switch-hitters go for the jumping jack act when I caved in last night? What a pair of muscled mama's boys. Hey, you're supposed to sit beside me."
"What's so big about me?" he asked.
"Come on, man. I spotted the trapeze Gracie was swinging on in the living room. Further, she says you're the greatest. I think she's in love with you, Nick Harper."
"So what are you? A she-John Alden."
"I'm a burning body. Care to rescue me from the fire?"
"Like no. I'm engaged to Cynthia," he said, knowing he stretched the truth.
"Like idiot," she giggled. "Look, so you're engaged to the swinging blonde. But I have a hunch you're not going to make the marriage department until your girl gets all she can use of Grace Moray. That English plain, handsome?"
"You're out of your dirty little mind," Nick said. "Sure," she said, settling back on the pillow with a shrug that went all the way down to her sandal-clad heels. "Look. I've been through it and I know. If you didn't see the storm warnings last night, ask your babe where she has been all day. You're out, buster, at least for thirty days or so. So I've come around to keep you sagged-and to refresh my memory about men who are men, not goats who get goodies by bumping horns."
"I'll bet your mother is proud of your lingual gymnastics," Nick growled. "How about getting to hell out of here so I can shower?"
"Be my guest," she laughed. "I'm the best little old backwasher on the beach. I drop the soap just often enough to make it interesting. Let's go, Nick. I've been thinking about you since my dirty little eyeballs first spotted you last night."
She swung off the bed. Nick stared at the unbelievable youth, the flippant perkiness of her breasts, the sleek contours of her legs and hips. He saw the challenging grin on her petulant lips and knew her for a blatant, cheap, promiscuous bit of fluff.
He also knew she was probably telling the truth about Cynthia and Grace.
So what the hell?
"I'm not up to the reputation Serge Reilly has," he said.
"That fink? I haven't got enough money to interest him, so I'll have to take your word for it."
"I thought he was rich," Nick observed.
She stood up and pulled off her knit blouse, reached back to unsnap her brassiere and moved to the door of the bathroom. She looked back over her shoulder and grinned.
"Boy, you want to talk or make tally marks on the wall?"
Disconcerted by her brazenness, Nick watched her go, heard the water in the shower. He slowly dropped his trunks. He felt like a heel, like a schoolboy, like a fool who was trying to turn back the clock to youth.
He entered the bathroom. She had unsnapped the band holding her ponytail in shape. Her synthetically blonde hair was thicker than it had looked. Her face, now turned up to the spray, seemed older.
She turned.
"That's my boy," she burbled through the water. "Quit staring. Half the blondes at the beach started out as brunettes."
She met him at the shower door. Nick hated himself for the eagerness created in him by her slippery, squirming body and firm kiss.
Once he was in her arms, he lost the sense of a cheap beach affair. Her kiss was clinging, passionate, less demanding than Cynthia's would have been in the same situation. But Grace Moray was a good picker.
Lydia, her back to the tile wall, inched up to nullify his extra height. Nick made a seat of his big, undercurled hands and forgot to think about anything.
They played the vacation sex game according to the rule-and the rule was, no holds barred.
Lydia did not argue when Nick pushed her out. He still had time to dress and be at Cynthia's cottage by eight. He was heady from the day's sexual avalanche, amused by Lydia's blase attitude toward what they had shared. She had a bit of minx that seemed to enjoy the fact that she had taken something from Cynthia.
Nick knew only that after five minutes away from any other woman, all he could think about was Cynthia. He had long ago lost any illusions about sexual encounters. In the sensuality of a resort like this one, the importance of a brief affair, a chance excursion into furious desire, was reduced to nil-except when he thought about Cynthia, writhing under the assault of Cobb Carter.
Cynthia was breathtakingly beautiful in mauve. Her arm in his, on their way into the dining room, gave him the same clinging, vibrating delight he had known from the beginning. Cynthia had the rare ability to make a man feel like the only male in the world. In his vanity, Nick almost forgot that she had spent most of the day with other partners.
They talked of nothing serious over cocktails. But when the fine band prompted them to try their luck on the small crowded floor, Nick felt panic rise in his throat once more. The beach community seemed like a boiling cauldron of promiscuous sensuality, threatening himself and Cynthia with old-fashioned hellfire and more modern disaster.
"You drive me crazy, Cynthia," he breathed into her ear. "I love you so much it hurts."
She murmured, "You've made me so happy. I wish this vacation could go on forever."
"It can, darling," he told her. "Marry me, Cynthia. You know I love you and I'm sure you love me. Why wait? Why risk some meaningless happening that might destroy the wonderful love we've found?"
"You're talking about last night, aren't you, Nicky?"
"Last night, yes. And today. This is a wild bunch we're involved with. They do things most people would never even dream up. And none of what they do has meaning. When I went back to my cottage this afternoon, Lydia Doran was there. Said she hadn't had a chance at me last night and had come around to make up for the omission. I told her to skip it. You're the one I'm in love with-so much that I had a jealous fit when you told me Cobb and Grace had taken you shopping today. These playmates of ours can bring nothing but trouble."
He felt her tense at the mention of Lydia, was pleased that jealousy could affect her. Then she raised her face and smiled.
"Nicky, I think you're wonderful," she said. "But I'm not in love with you. Not the way you want me to be. I'm not sure I'm in love with the man I got myself engaged to, back home. That may be off, for keeps. Maybe time will show me you're the one I want forever and ever-but I do have to have tune."
"Time to do what?" he asked.
She sighed. "Time to find out about myself, first of all. Nicky, can't you understand? I'm a writer. I want to be a success at my work. And I want to know about men."
"Men like Cobb Carter?"
She nodded. "Nicky, Cobb is a fine human being. He got carried away last night. You can't blame people for being themselves. He apologized today-and I forgave him."
Anger silenced him. They went back to their table and Nick ordered another round of drinks for them. Cynthia was driving him to despair. Considering her present attitude, he should have stalked out of the picture. But he could not help feeling that she was too young, too green about the intricacies of man and woman relationships, to know that she was ruining her life.
"Does it mean anything to you that I love you?" he asked.
"Of course it does. Nicky, it's terribly flattering. Of all the men I've ever met, you are the most intensely male."
"What's holding you up, then?"
She dropped her eyes. "Maybe you're not the man for a girl like me."
"Cobb Carter is?" he demanded angrily.
"You said it, I didn't," she snapped back at him. "I like Cobb. A lot. I want to see more of him before I make up my mind."
"My first competition was your previous engagement. Must you always have two men to choose from?"
She began to cry, controlling her sobs so that no one a table or two away could have noticed. "Let's go back to the cottage, Nicky," she suggested when the brief storm receded. "I'm confused. I want a quiet place."
Nick sensed that her confusion had little to do with her former fianc'. A certain sound to her voice when she spoke of Cobb, a peculiar lilting tone, made him sure she had turned down Nick Harper, temporarily at least, in favor of the millionaire. Their evening in ruins, he took her back to her cottage. For the first time since he had found her on the beach, she said good night at the door. Nick stalked off, hands thrust angrily into his jacket pockets, his vanity a shambles.
6
THE RIFT LASTED because Nick could find no way to end it. He and Cynthia saw each other, but no matter when he met her, on the beach, at the bar or just by knocking on her door, she was always two minutes away from some appointment.
She admitted that her phone was constantly summoning her off, now that Grace and Cobb and Betty had adopted her into their circle. Once or twice she urged Nick to come along to a cocktail party or a dinner engagement in the plush restaurants along the beach.
He felt her invitations were not genuine. Cynthia was affectionate, sweet-and unavailable, just as she had been years ago in her time of innocence. From her sudden adoption of high-necked, long-sleeved dresses, he deduced that she had seen Cobb in private more than once. The thought of Cobb marring her beauty made Nick heartsick.
On the morning of the third miserable day, Nick stretched on the sand and resolved to spend more hours alone. He knew most of the crowd by now. At eleven, Serge Reilly would come out, swim a little and sit in the sun so the bright-eyed nymphs could check the bulge in his tight trunks. Three melon-breasted girls from the corn belt would appear, followed by their usual swarm of overly muscled beach boys.
The old boy with the bald head and paunch would arrive about noon. Later the beach would sparkle with clusters of plumper matrons and more beach boys.
This was supposed to be fun, a happy people at play.
Serge came at eleven as Nick expected. However, instead of finding a place of his own, Serge came directly over to Nick and tossed down his beach pad. He grinned and flopped out.
"Hi, Harper. Care if I join you?"
"Be my guest," Nick muttered.
"Missed you at Grace's shindig last night."
Nick twitched with pique. "Didn't know she was pitching a binge. How are you and Cobb's Betty working out?"
Serge sat up, hooking his elbows over his knees. He stared at the surf and shook his head. "Funny gal," he said with unusual thoughtfulness. "I figured she was going to be a world beater. Oh, well. Can't win 'em all!"
"I lose as many as I win," Nick admitted.
"Lost your girl to Cobb's muscular mustache, huh?"
"Easy, man," Nick warned him.
"Come off it, Harper," Serge laughed. "I have eyes."
"How come you haven't given her a try?"
"Well, first I figured you had her staked out. Then I was busy with Betty. Then Cobb moved in and he's my friend. On top of that, I don't think she has a dime. Satisfied?"
"What do you care about her money?"
Serge grinned. "I have what I have because I care about money. The minute a man doesn't care about money he runs out. And she strikes me as the kind of girl who could trap you into the license office while your guard was lowered. Or am I wrong?"
"I don't get much kick out of discussing women," Nick observed. 'Think Cobb is serious about her."
"Ask Cobb," was Serge's reply. "Maybe I will."
They talked about the beach crowd for a while, then fell silent in the soothing heat of the midday sun. Presently it was one o'clock-time for a quick check of Cynthia's cottage.
Nick felt like a schoolboy hanging around for a glimpse of the girl in the next block. But he could not help himself. He worried about Cynthia constantly. As he got up and dusted the sand from his legs, Serge opened his eyes.
"Don't bother," he said. "She's gone into town with Cobb."
"What are you talking about?" Nick demanded.
"Oh, man," Serge mocked him. "I he on this beach just like you do. I've seen you checking her out two or three times a day. I just thought I'd save you a long hike in the hot sun."
"Maybe I was going down to my own cottage to get a drink."
"Good. Care if I join you? I've a slight sinking spell myself after last night."
"Like I said, be my guest," Nick replied. He disliked the man's arrogance, despite the fact that Serge was smooth and cautious. He also sensed some contest in the man's behavior, as if they were both out for all they could get at the beach, devil take the hindmost. One thing Serge had, though, was information. He knew more than Nick did about people who had become Cynthia's crowd.
As they entered his cottage, Nick stopped worrying about his appraisal of Serge.
Lydia was on the bed, naked as a snake, with only a beach towel dragged carelessly over her middle.
"Oh, for gosh sakes," she gasped, rearranging the towel.
Serge had stopped, blinking to accustom his eyes to the dusky interior after the bright sun outside. Nick saw no reason for asking Serge to leave. Some of his bitterness of the past three days had turned to indifference.
"You fooled me, Harper," Serge admitted, closing the door behind him.
"You've met Lydia?" Nick asked.
"Sure. Hi, Lydia."
"Now wait a damned minute," Lydia said, struggling erect under the towel. "Or didn't you know I'd be here, Nick?"
"I've been on the beach since ten o'clock," he told her. She had sampled his fresh bottle, but he poured her another drink as he set up two for himself and Serge. Half the ice in the little room chest was gone. "Well, now that we're all acquainted, let's drink to it."
"To what?" Lydia demanded.
"Whatever is on your evil little mind." He laughed.
Lydia looked at Serge, then back to Nick. She seemed a little in doubt about her status. She let her towel slip as she downed half her drink in one gulp. Suddenly she grinned. "Well, there's a hundred gals out there on the sand scratching for one man. Why should I complain about two?"
Serge stood up. "Thanks for the drink, Harper. I'd better go back and warm up my share of sand. You won't be out for a while, I'd say."
"Chicken," Lydia snapped. "Have another booze. It may make me look better. As good as that big skinny Betty, anyway."
Serge raised an eyebrow and slowly sank back to his chair. He held out his glass to Lydia. She hesitated, then rose and carried his glass to the table that held Nick's bottle. Her back was bare from her flowing hair to her heels. While she stood pouring, she did some private thing with her buttock muscles. When both men chuckled, she did it again.
She brought the drink to Serge and stood close, her eyes on the tight fit of his black swimming trunks.
"Boy, a girl could get raped around here," she exclaimed.
"Wasn't that what you came for?" Nick asked. "Yeah, man," she replied and pitched the towel into a corner.
"I'll flip you for firsties," Serge said to Nick.
"Let's leave it to the lady," Nick suggested.
Lydia leaped on the bed, rolling and twisting so she exposed every delectable charm. "What is this, a town meeting? Don't be so polite. The lady will find a way to accommodate you both."
Nick expected Serge to back out-certainly Nick had no intention of entering a three-sided game with another man. But Serge stepped out of his trunks. Moving toward the bed, Serge represented the absolute ultimate in sex, his lean body slightly stooped, his aquiline face a mask of intense desire. Lydia rolled partially away from his outstretched right hand, then as if committing herself to a perilous gamble, rolled back and met him with grasping hands and wriggling hips.
Nick eased himself out of the cottage. He was sure neither of them knew he had left. As he closed the door, he heard Lydia's cry, half of pain, half of ecstasy.
As if drawn by a magnet, Nick headed for Cynthia's cabin. Maybe he could take a leaf from Lydia's book of tricks and just go into the cottage and wait. A vestige of pride took over-Nick was no male Lydia. He headed for a small bar where swimming togs and sandy feet were permitted, ordered a double bourbon and was halfway through the second before his nerves had settled.
He seemed to have lost Cynthia and, although Lydia was a minor treasure, he was certain that she too would never come back after knowing Serge. Nick snorted a mirthless laugh. Outclassed by Cobb and his agile tongue, displaced by Serge and his inimitable male equipment. In a merger of disgust and self-pity, he stared around the bar for a likely prospect to soothe his wounded vanity. He saw some half dozen available girls, but beside the two women he had lost, none of them rated a try.
In a wave of compulsion, he checked Cynthia's cottage again. He tried the door and found it locked. He eyed his watch. He had been gone from his own place for an hour. Could Lydia take the muscle out of Serge in a mere hour? The man had looked formidable. Nick went back to the bar and had another drink, knowing it was one too many.
He decided that he would go back to his cottage. If the lovers had not left, he would throw them out and let them wind up their joust in the sand. It would give Nick some satisfaction to seize Serge by the scruff. He probably would not need to manhandle Lydia-she would follow Serge like an adoring slave.
He deliberately did not knock. He wanted to be ruthless.
Lydia was lying sprawled on one hip, as naked as before. Serge Reilly was not in sight. As he closed the door, Lydia rolled over, put her hand to her stomach and grinned ruefully.
"Hey, you could get a gal killed, running off and leaving her to that horse. Pour me a drink, if there's any left."
"You okay?"
She laughed. "I'm okay. But the things that can happen to a girl from Rochester."
Nick poured a drink and brought it to her as she sat up, apparently dazed. "I expected you to throw rocks at me," he said.
She hooked one arm around his waist and pulled him close. She kissed the rippled muscles of his belly. "Silly. No girl-likes a moose like that. Just like no real woman cares a damn for those oversized muscles on the beach. Sure, I wanted to give him a try, but I was real put out that you went off and left me with him. He's a terrible animal, Nicky. His smoothie technique is just a veneer. You never saw a guy go so completely nuts. I think he's so fascinated by his ability to hurt a woman that he goes out of his damned mind."
"You okay?" Nick repeated stupidly.
"Sure I'm okay. Hand me the beach towel."
He gave her the towel. She burbled whiskey through her teeth and covered her mouth with a ball of towel. Then she tossed the towel away and turned her face up-
"You may kiss me now, baby," she said.
He complied with little eagerness. Her passions also were obviously spent. "Mind if I sit here and talk to you?" she asked.
"Okay. But put something on. If you want to talk, I'd just as soon keep my mind on what you're saying."
She covered herself. "I'll bet you were a bear when you were eighteen," she said.
"Is that how old you are?"
She smiled crookedly. "Years, or miles?"
"What are you looking for, Lydia?"
"Not what I got this afternoon. I don't know, Nick. I was pretty green when I came here with my folks a year ago. They could stay only three weeks, but I had another free month before I was due back at college. The night they left, I got goofy and let a big muscle-head take me over. Two days later, I met Grace in the hotel bar. I guess you know about Grace?"
"Yes."
"Two months with her. I adored every minute of it-but she got tired of me, I guess. Anyway, she just pushed me out of bed without an argument or a sorry. I've been here ever since, living it up. Do I have to have something to look for?"
"What do your parents think about your staying here?"
"There's two things I do well Telling lies is the other one."
"Another drink?" he asked. "You shorted the first one."
"You don't think I'm a terrible little whore."
"Are you?"
She shook her head. "I don't know what I am. Would you care to marry me?"
He laughed. "I have other plans."
"I told you she was going to hang you up, daddy-o."
"Maybe. Maybe not. She's a little like you, I think. Once she has her fling, she'll start to think like a woman. I can wait, if I don't go out of my mind before she wises up."
Lydia slithered off the bed and pulled on her stretch pants. Her movements showed some awkwardness. Nick decided that if he ever had the excuse, he would break Serge Reilly's nose on general principles.
"She's nuts," Lydia observed. "No woman can live with a man like Cobby boy."
"Live with Cobb Carter?"
"Last night he asked her to marry him in front of ten people. I thought she was going to go for it, too."
Whatever else they said, Nick did not remember. He was seeing Cynthia, dazzled by Cobb's wealth, excited by his lovemaking and clever adoration, walking down the aisle with her wedding gown securely high to cover the scarlet marks of Cobb's strange passions. He could also look ahead six months and see Cobb working on some fresher lovely at the handiest bar. He could see Cynthia sitting alone, her heart broken by the kind of desertion that began in the marital bed. She was a woman who needed a man's love from early morning to late at night. She needed tenderness and affection and in return she would give her undying devotion. But right now, he thought, she needed someone to straighten out her scattered emotions.
Talk would do no good. Talk had never deterred him in his own youth from doing the things time proved to be unprofitable. He could hardly kidnap her. He would have to operate in some different way.
"Doll, how would you like to go home?" he asked Lydia.
"May I come back-tomorrow?"
"What will you think if I tell you no?"
She jerked her blouse from the floor and wriggled into it. The tips of her solid breasts made buttons. They gyrated as she gathered her long hair and sleeked it into a ponytail.
"M think you're a big nut. But I'll love you for being at least half faithful to your snooty Cynthia."
"You're a pretty girl. Also young and tender."
She grinned. "Tender is the word," she admitted, patting her lower abdomen. "Okay, big boy. I'm gone. Kiss me goodbye."
He kissed her goodbye. She was crying.
Nick set about sobering up. He started with black coffee from a thermos decanter, followed up with a vitamin pill and a ten-minute nap.
Sober, steadied and determined, Nick calculated that under normal conditions Cobb Carter would just about now be showering and changing into clothes suitable for the evening.
Nick planned no violence, simply because Cobb was not a violent man. His task would have been a hundred times easier, Nick mused, if he could have made Cobb mad enough to fight.
He stabbed the doorbell of Cobb's expensive hotel suite with a brutal finger. A minute of waiting passed. The door was opened by Betty. Nick already knew Cobb was not the kind to stick to one girl, even if he had proposed marriage in front of a dozen people.
"Well, Mr. Harper," Betty exclaimed. "Do come in."
"Cobb in?"
"In-but down." She laughed, seized his hand and tried to drag him closer. She wore a thin negligee. Close up, she was appealingly slim, with none of the boniness Nick would have expected in so narrow a body. Her black hair was loose and flowing, her huge dark eyes perfectly made up.
"Down?"
She laughed and pushed him toward the sitting room. "I kill 'em," she boasted. "Not really. But he was up half the night and I made him take a nap so he wouldn't fall asleep tonight in the middle of a floor show. Must you see him?"
"I must."
She nodded toward a door. "In there. You wake him up. He bites sometimes."
Nick closed Cobb's door behind him. The sound made Cobb turn over in bed and open his eyes. He was dressed in slacks and an open-necked sport shirt. For the first time Nick saw the man without Cobb's polish showing. Within a few seconds, Cobb came to a seat on the edge of the bed and shook himself into the familiar image.
He said, "Nick, old boy. What brings you? Was I ever sound asleep. Sit down, pour a drink, do something while I get my wits."
"What I want to talk about can't wait-Cynthia."
Cobb squinted with one eye. Nick felt he was being weighed and measured. "I'm not sure I want to talk about Cynthia. But we'll try it, Nick."
"You know I'm in love with her?"
"That's all right. So am I," Cobb said.
"I want to marry her," Nick persisted.
"You'll make it. At least she told me she preferred you to me when I asked her to be my wife. What's the problem?"
"She told me otherwise," Nick said dully.
Cobb stood up and adjusted his shirt collar. "Nick, I think the young lady is playing games with both of us. Did it ever occur to you she might not know what she wants yet?"
"You telling me the truth, Cobb?"
"Only because it's a habit of mine to tell the truth. Nick, she's a wonderful girl and I fell hard. But she's thirteen years younger than I am and no matter how much I want her, I suppose I'd have worn myself out waiting for her to catch up. I asked her to marry me because I had to, but-" he nodded toward the door-"Betty's being here should prove I'm not crying over my turn-down."
Nick was relieved, not elated over Cobb's obvious retirement from the field. He found it difficult to believe that Cynthia, a neophyte at the vacation game, could show the evasive duplicity Cobb had inferred. Perhaps the beach had gotten through to her. She had received two bona fide proposals of marriage in a week, had played one man against the other-why? She had either become artful in the ways of the world since he had known her four years ago, or she was a flutter-headed coquette who needed a good overhauling with a heavy palm on her lovely bottom.
Nick left Cobb's apartment trying not to think of a third possibility. Having plunged into the sexual morass he had unwittingly furnished, could Cynthia have become attached to the life of a no-holds-barred nymphomaniac?
7
THROUGH SOME miracle Nick did not care to question, Cynthia came back to him that evening. He kept his mouth shut, choosing to play the blase escort and lover, the enthusiastic but sophisticated man of the world.
He despised his fears-yet he dared not risk an argument about what she had been doing, and with whom. If he noticed any difference in the words she spoke or the kisses she bestowed on his eager lips, he was not sure that the difference was one he understood. She dropped little asides about Grace and Cobb. Nick had the impression of a series of parties and exclusions which she felt had been perfectly innocent.
More than that, she met him on the beach the next morning at ten, in the briefest of bikinis and the happiest of smiles. No matter how closely he looked he could not detect even the tiniest sign of Cobb's attentions. Which proved nothing-Cobb was as capable of normal physical relationship with a woman as any other man, indulging in his pet perversity only when carried away by a new beauty.
"Gee, you're getting tanned, Nicky," she purred as she wiped his back and shoulders with suntan oil. "You're by far the prettiest man on the beach."
"I've had a lot of time to take on a tan. In case you don't remember, I've been lonesome since you found all the new friends."
"Don't be so stuffy, baby." She laughed. "Hey, there's Serge Reilly."
Nick nodded. "Yep. Every day about eleven Serge shows up and gives the girls a treat."
"He's kind of-well, reserved, isn't he?"
"Meaning he hasn't made a pass at you yet?"
She giggled and seemed to stretch out with deliberate emphasis on the contour of hip and thigh. "I never gave him a thought, Nicky. You suspect me of so many ulterior motives. But he's rich and handsome and Cobb says the woman who gets Serge is going to, have something to boast about."
"Did he say what she could boast about?"
"No. But I respect Cobb's judgment."
"How about mine?"
She patted his flat hard stomach. "You're prejudiced, baby. But I love to have you jealous of other men's attentions."
"Yeah, sure, certainly." Nick sighed.
"He's coming over," Cynthia reported.
Nick knew better than to raise his head and look. Cynthia was excited enough without having him act like a schoolboy. Serge came into his vision edge.
Nick greeted him. "Didn't think you'd make it today," he said with an intonation they both understood.
"Hi, Cynthia." Serge's tone was careless. "Best-looking girl on the beach, by far."
"Thanks, Serge. It's early, though. Tell me that at three this afternoon."
"Will do, if I stick around that long."
Nick saw Cynthia squirm at the casual slight. Obviously Serge was not interested in her. He sat down in the sand much closer to Nick than to Cynthia.
"Yesterday," he said.
"So?" Nick acknowledged.
"You know her address?"
"I thought you weren't interested in poor girls."
"I'm not. I just wanted to apologize," Serge said. "For what? She's a big girl."
"Not that big." Serge made an unhappy face. "No. I said some things to her I didn't mean."
Cynthia tossed a handful of sand at Serge, then another at Nick. "I just hate men who talk about another woman in front of me. like high-school lotharios."
"We're through talking," Nick said, as much to Serge as to Cynthia. "About women, that is."
Cynthia stood up, dusting the sand away from herself with long smoothing gestures. Not much sand fell, but she managed to emphasize every curve and hollow of her splendid body. Neither man missed the intriguing show. "Nicky, I'm going for a swim. Why don't you hike over to the bar and pick up something to drink? Bring some ice, too. Can do?"
"Hard stuff or soft stuff?" he asked, getting to his feet.
"What on earth is soft stuff?" she asked flippantly. She ran down the beach toward the surf. Not many other girls were on the beach yet, none in the water. Every eye, young or old, watched her avidly. Nick headed for the bar. Having Cynthia for a girl, a private girl, was the kind of medicine all men needed, he decided.
If the medicine did not kill them.
* * *
He secured a big multicolored bucket from the bar. As he came off the walk and headed for his place on the beach, he saw the knot of people at the water's edge.
Even as he stared, he saw Serge Reilly's brown back, bowed under Cynthia's weight, rise out of the group. Cynthia had one arm around the man's lean shoulders. Her head lolled. She was limp.
Nick dropped the bucket and met the procession. Serge was leading with his delectable burden.
"What happened, baby?" Nick exclaimed.
"The most terrible cramp," Cynthia moaned. "Then I started to go under and swallowed half the ocean. Serge got to me just in time. Gosh, I feel sick."
"Shall I carry you to your cottage, Cynthia?" Serge asked.
"I'm all right," she whispered. "Just let me lie on my pad and get my breath."
Nick wanted to wrench her out of Serge's arms, but he controlled his jealousy. When she was settled on the pad, Serge remained kneeling beside her. Cynthia's trembling right hand traveled to his chest.
"Thank you, Serge," she breathed. "I'm sure I would have drowned if you hadn't come after me."
He chuckled. "Not a chance. Every man on the beach, including the lifeguard, was on his feet and running after your first yelp. I was just the lucky one to reach you first."
"Which means that you were watching pretty close yourself," Nick couldn't help saying. His good sense stopped him from a display of anger. "Thanks anyway, Reilly. I'd hate to lose her, you know."
Serge looked up. "Did you bring something to drink? We could use it."
Nick retrieved the bucket he had dropped.
Within minutes they were all laughing over cold beers. Nick had swallowed some sea-water in his life. The way Cynthia went after the beer made him reasonably sure she had never done more than wet her petulant lips with the big ocean. Despite her story of a leg cramp, she did not speak of it again until Serge volunteered to massage the culprit limb, from the bottom edge of Cynthia's bikini to her trim ankle.
"Oooh, that's nice," she murmured. "You have such strong hands. Nicky, crack me another beer, please?"
Cracking beers and making sotto-voce comments was about Nick's role for the next hour. Was Serge's sudden interest in Cynthia due to his vanity over being a hero?
Nick, infuriated, decided that one more male had succumbed to Cynthia's voluptuousness and coy provocative manner. From the way Serge's eyes were stripping the halter and bikini bottom from her lithe body, Nick could bet on a new problem.
With a lesson learned from previous experience, Nick kept his mouth shut. Serge was too smooth to resent thinly veiled insults. Cynthia was too headstrong to be swerved from her obvious enthusiasm for the handsome bachelor. When enough sun had been absorbed by all, Nick found himself in a new bind.
"I'll carry her pad and stuff down to her cottage, Nick," Serge said arbitrarily. "You won't have to go out of your way."
"What makes you think it's out of my way to walk her to the cottage?" Nick demanded.
"I never gave it that much thought," Serge admitted.
"Nicky, are we going to go to dinner tonight?" Cynthia asked. Suddenly her hand was gentle on his arm. "I'll be fine after I've had a nap and settled my nerves."
"Sure." He had lost a battle and he knew it. Serge had started off toward the beach walk, Cynthia's beach pad curled under his arm. Nick looked down at Cynthia. "Want me to come along, baby?"
"Oh, Nicky, don't be ridiculous."
"Okay, so I'm nervous about that skinny fink."
"Well, don't be. He's very nice-and he saved my life. See you about eight?"
"Six," he corrected her. "Well go down the beach and have a few drinks at the Ranch. Okay?"
He dropped his head and her lips met his in a quick, half-completed kiss. Then she turned and scurried after Serge. Nick waited for her to turn for a last wave. She never looked back. His backbone stiffened with rage as he watched them go arm in arm toward her cottage.
He sat down on the sand and waited. If Serge came back within a few minutes, everything would be fine.
After an hour, when there had been no sign of Serge, Nick cursed his own stupidity for letting Cynthia go off with the hawk-nosed menace. Nick felt he had been shuffled and cut like a deck of cards. He doubted that Cynthia meant to make him look like a sucker, but he had no doubt about Serge Reilly. He had claimed to be interested only in sexy women who had money, but as with Lydia the day before, he had turned on his lecher switch one second after holding Cynthia in his arms.
* * *
Morose, dissatisfied with himself and everyone else, Nick darkened his room with his heavy drapes and spread out on the bed, drink in hand.
He took a hard look at himself. He was Nicolas Harper, twenty-eight, strong, worldly, neither poor nor wealthy. In his life, following the dictates of a world news service, he had known women from New York to the Saigon waterfront. He had known men from the execution chamber in San Quentin to the Swiss banks where the world's tycoons kept their getaway money.
Now he was hooked on invisible barbs surrounding Cynthia Roberts. He had been outsmarted by a clown whose greatest asset was more horse-like than human.
Hardly ten days before, Nick had taken Cynthia, an eager virgin, on her first flight into sexual fulfillment. Today he was sure she had faked a cramp in the ocean just to try the Reilly reputation for size. Grace must have touted for Serge, because Grace was a woman to whom such things mattered.
Nick writhed in agony as his mind conjured dirty pictures. He started several times to get up and go to her cottage, but he clung to his wounded sophistication, admitting that he too was not perfect.
Right here on this bed, he thought, with Lydia. With Grace at the party. And if Serge had not been with him yesterday, he would have again succumbed to the charms of the young nympho, he was sure. He was also certain that he had wilted under Grace and Lydia simply because he had wanted to wilt. If he allowed Cynthia one bit of independence, she had a right to whatever her own desires demanded. He was the one who had proposed, not Cynthia. She had plainly told him she was not yet ready to make up her mind about marrying anybody.
Nick began to think about what she had told him of John Teel, the man to whom she had been engaged before she came to the beach. He sympathized, whoever the man was. Probably a strait-laced New Englander who had been as appalled by Cynthia's spiritual wildness as Nick was shaken by her physical abandonment. First John, then himself, then Cobb. Next? Nick Was sure that Cynthia would wreak havoc with Serge Reilly's professed creed in relation to rich girls. And just as surely, Cynthia would walk off and leave Serge talking to himself because there was no doubt in Nick's mind that in the end she would want a man who was not steeped in subterfuge, regardless of his wealth or position in life.
He had a long wait until six. Nick was glum when he reached Cynthia's door. He knocked and was answered by a soft permission to enter.
The cottage was darkened. Cynthia was in bed, the covers pulled to her chin, her body a curved ball under the blanket.
"Nicky, I'm so sick," she wailed. "Close the door. The light hurts my eyes."
Concern hurting him, Nick went to the bed and sat down. "Hey, you must have swallowed more of the ocean than I thought. Think I should call the hotel doctor? He might give you something for the nausea."
She shook her head. "I'll be all right, Nicky. Maybe I had a shock. Just as soon as I got out of the sun, I collapsed like a rag. Please, darling. Let me rest. Go to dinner by yourself. I couldn't eat a thing, even if I felt like getting up."
"Would you like me to sit here and keep you company?"
"No, no," she murmured. "I just want to rest. Alone."
He sat thinking. Maybe she had gulped too much sea water, at that. With three or four beers for a chaser, the briny drink might be doing real damage. The sun had been damned hot. He glanced about the large, beautifully appointed room. Her bikini was a damp small heap on the carpet. Nick picked it up and carried it into the adjoining bath.
What he saw was like a slap in the face. He knew why Cynthia was sick.
Serge had been careless. A wild man, Lydia had said. On the marble-topped washbasin counter two or three crumpled hand towels were mute testimony. They showed a few bloody flecks. He noted a jar of cold cream, lid off. Two huge, unfeminine fingers had gouged a deep track into the soft white cream. Nick clamped his jaw, draped the bikini over the shower rod and went back to the bedroom. He stood looking down at his merciless love. He had never struck a woman in his life, but he had an urge to whip Cynthia's face with front and backhand swipes until she whimpered for forgiveness.
"All right. You rest, Cynthia. I'll see you tomorrow."
The fury in his voice made her open her eyes. She sighed.
"Don't, Nicky," she whispered. "Just don't hate me."
"It was Serge, wasn't it?"
"No," she replied. "It was me, Nicky. Oh, I know how you must feel. First Cobb, then Serge. Nicky, how does a woman cope with herself? Are other women like me--unable to control the way they think and act? I don't want to be a tramp."
"Then why act like one?" he growled and went to the door.
"Nicky?"
"Yes?"
"Don't blame Serge. It was all my fault."
"Why the hell should I worry about Serge, or you either, for that matter? You're both over twenty-one."
She turned over laboriously. "Nicky, come see me in the morning. Early. Promise you'll come back when I'm able to think more clearly."
He laughed and slammed out.
* * *
He was as drunk as he had ever been when a thin, demanding hand turned him slightly on the bar stool, Nick fought to focus his eyes. Betty materialized out of the fuzz, her face wreathed in a broad and full-lipped smile.
"Greetings, maid of the mist," he said. "My mist."
"I thought wolves lost their hair when they were boiled," she laughed. "You've been soaking it up for hours, Nick. Why?"
"Why you been watching little old Nicky for hours?"
"I haven't. But you were here when Cobb and I went out, and you were here when we came back, and you are still here."
"Good stool," he muttered. "Fits my butt fine."
"A bed would fit it better," she said. "Bartender, is he paid up and in good standing?"
The barman grinned. "Yep. Quietest drunk I ever knew."
"Come with Betty, drunk," she said. "I'll row you home and tuck you in. Come on, Nick. You've had it."
"Not all of it," he muttered. His hand slipping around her waist seemed to be circling a post. She was soft about a quarter of an inch deep, and the rest of her was whipcord. She was strong. He stumbled twice before they reached the outside walk and she kept him straight, or at least leaning. She seemed to know where his cottage was. Nick let her boost him in the proper direction. He had the distinct idea that she was half made of heliotrope, or that she had bathed in shaving lotion. The concept seemed comical and he started to laugh.
"Big funny," she said. "The mighty Nick Harper being stumbled home to bed."
"Mighty?"
"Tell you later," she said. "All I have to go on now are some editorial opinions by your friends."
"You better belt old Nicky when we get where we're going. If I'm still on my own wheels when we stop this damn hiking I'm having a hunk of you."
"Not after this binge, Nicky lad," she said with a knowing laugh. "Upsie daisie."
He had left his cottage open and she foiled his grasp by pushing him headlong toward the bed. When his knees hit an edge, he tumbled forward on his face and the world swirled in unmerciful circles. He remained motionless, unable to raise himself.
Strong fingers were peeling his coat off. The nausea came back when he was shoveled onto his back. He felt his trousers snap open. In a sick swoon, he relinquished his clothes simply because he did not care what happened.
He heard her say Thooie" when his shorts came off. Then his two hundred pounds was rolled and pushed and after a bit, he decided he was in bed. The pillow felt wonderful, the sheets cool. He decided to take a nap.
When he awoke, daylight of some sort was visible. He was lying flat on his back and his mouth was a mass of caterpillars. He gathered his courage and struggled up on one elbow. He was naked and in his own room.
A slender body lay beside him. Betty was lying on her back, with one arm over her head. She was lean, meatless. The covers came only to her waist. Her breasts were barely larger than his own. Her nipples rose straight up, as if trying to make up for the lack of flesh beneath.
Out of curiosity, Nick gently folded the covers back and exposed the prominent hipbones and the juncture of her concave belly and man-slim thighs. He ignored the urge to wake her up with an inspirational kiss. Instead he slipped out of bed and went to the bathroom. While he went through the motions of washing his teeth and restoring his civilized appearance, memory of last night sprang to life in his blood. He went back to his bed and its intriguing occupant, silently telling Cynthia to drop dead.
8
NICK HESITATED about waking her. Lying on his side, his entire being throbbing with unreasonable desire for the sleek girl who had played nurse to his drunk, he enjoyed her unique beauty with a sense of anticipation. He knew nothing about her history except for vague generalities, which made her mysteriously attractive. She had come to him last night, probably saved him from monstrous indignity. She had elected to sleep beside him of her own inclination. She had evidently wanted him and had been willing to wait.
A point came when Nick could wait no longer. He leaned forward, touching her hip first, then moving his lips lightly to hers. She did not open her eyes but raised one arm and rested it on his shoulder.
"I was going to pretend I was asleep," she murmured. "What would you have done?"
"Raped you," he admitted. He gathered her suddenly writhing body into his arms. Last night he had thought her strong. Now he found her urging herself upon him with more eagerness than strength. Her kiss was fire, open-mouthed, absorbing, as if every gland in her body were pouring forth adoration. She was like a snake, her legs and arms slithering from one grasp to another, never failing to tantalize his straining body in each new movement. In desperation, Nick finally forced her to remain still for a swift, penetrating moment. He was instantly surrounded again by her marvelous agility. Though she clung tenaciously, she reserved enough slack to whip her lean bottom in a way that caused him to gasp in happy shock.
"Hit me," she said in a remarkably calm voice.
He tried. Then he let his weight ride hard on her and she did some mad thing with one long leg and turned them both. He rolled but she followed him. For a wonderful minute he was content to lie under her snapping body while she hammered him with her agile hips. She made the turning gesture again and they rolled the other way. Nick knew they were going off the bed and he thrust out his arms to save them both. Betty's legs drew up and lashed around his waist and her arms were like chords around his back. When they hit the floor, nothing changed. His legs and his arms seemed unimportant. She was clamped around him firmly. Her body did gyrations he was briefly incapable of meeting. Her laughter was low and eager. In pure adventurousness he struggled to his feet. She still clung, like a part of himself.
"Walk this way," she panted. "Dance with me."
Her hair swirled as he turned and stepped. He felt his strength ebbing and allowed his body to collapse to the bed. He rolled her beneath him, sensing a new gigantic demand in his flesh.
Her arms released him suddenly, her legs straightened and she planted both heels firmly. In his blind passion, he felt her body tighten and arch, lifting him easily. She did a secret devastating dance with the inner strength of her ecstasy. Nick felt his brain explode.
* * *
She threw a sheet over Nick and slipped into her gown while the room-service waiter put their breakfast on the table. When the ticket was signed and the boy had gone, Betty shrugged out of the gown and was again naked.
"You're a new one on me." Nick laughed. "I think you're wonderful."
Her laughter was pleasant. "Sneaky, huh? Talent I have, brains I have not. Come on, I'm hungry. Put on a pair of shorts or I'll never get a chance to eat."
"How the devil do you expect me to eat with you as naked as a-"
"A pink snake?" she filled in for him. "I haven't gained a pound in fifteen years. Do you mind me being skinny, Nick?"
"Somehow, you aren't skinny," he said gallantly. "Slim, maybe."
During breakfast she told him something of herself. "I was an acrobatic dancer until I was twenty-five. A contortionist. I'm double-jointed, limber as a string and I went through some good training. All it got me was pregnant by a show producer who turned out to be my first husband. Currently, I'm on the rebound from my second husband. You like my rebound, Nick? At least, what you've sampled so far?"
"You know I do."
She seemed to have no sentimentality-yet she was sometimes wistful, sometimes vulgar and always intriguing. She astounded him when she carried the tray to the door and doubled over into a complete jackknife to put it on the walk outside. Then she folded up on his lap and helped him drink the last of the coffee.
'Tfou're nice," she said. "I think Cynthia is giving you a hard time."
She had surprised him. He was at a loss for an answer. "Oh?"
"Cobb, too," she went on. "Oh, I don't care for myself. I'm on my own and I'm not looking for a new man. But after a girl has been married to a couple of stinkers, she feels bad when a couple of good guys get it in the neck-from the same girl. You're in love with her, aren't you?"
"I thought so." He chuckled. "After this morning, my standards are a bit different."
"Don't be an idiot. I'm a divorcee who's out to play."
She was telling the truth. She was playful for both of them. She showed him how she could stand on one thin leg and stretch the other to the top casing of the bathroom door. Nick clapped his hands. From high lacks she went into back bends that hurt Nick in their extremity. She could put both feet behind her head and roll around on the carpet like a slightly angular ball. In this brutally revealing shape, she used her strong, spidery arms to clamber up on the bed. There she rocked on her curved back until Nick leaped for her in furious desire.
"Hoped you weren't a weary willie." She laughed and unfolded around him with suddenly gentle demand.
"You're a nut," he told her, "but a delightful nut."
Betty's love after breakfast seemed softer, less violent and more intense than during their first encounter. She wanted to be kissed gently at each progressive step of their desire. Nick's innate masculine vanity responded to her abrupt change.
He wanted her to want him with more than her fantastic body. He curbed his natural instincts to give him time for tenderness. Just as he had decided that Betty was not as hard and indifferent as she had claimed, they were interrupted.
Cynthia stood in the doorway, her lush body silhouetted against the bright sunlight. He dragged a sheet over Betty and managed to bide his own unreasonable passion.
"Oh, Nicky," Cynthia cried. She backed out, pulling the door shut as she left. She seemed ashamed of having disturbed the lovers on the bed.
"Now we did it, didn't we?" Betty murmured, her arms sliding free of his shoulders. "I didn't mean to louse you up, Nick."
He laughed in embarrassment. "Me? I'm a big boy. But she'll think you-oh, hell!"
"Don't worry about what she'll think of me, Nick. She already knows about me. I got boozed at Grace Moray's the other night and went through my old act-naked as a pink snake, that's me. But I don't want her to get the wrong idea about you."
"Wrong idea? What's wrong about us?"
"I mean, I came to you, not you to me."
"Does that make a difference?"
She rolled out from under him. All thought of sex had gone for them. "Dope. Of course it makes a difference. A woman knows the score."
Nick fell silent, his initial startlement passing. He had detected more than disgust in Cynthia's voice. She had been surprised, hurt and jealous. Until now she had been content to play her own games, as though certain that good old Nick was waiting around for her to smile his way.
"Nick, I'll go talk to her, if you want me to," Betty said. Her tone struck him as peculiarly adult. "I don't care if she thinks I'm a chippy and a ass. She's nothing to me. But you deserve a break. If she's the one you really want, I'll do my best to square things for you."
Nick thought a moment. "You're a babe from way back," he told her, putting an affectionate kiss to her furrowed brow. "But something tells me this was like the fifth straight pass. Nothing but good. Maybe we woke Cynthia up. Besides, any man who apologizes for falling into your velvet trap is not much of a man. I just don't happen to be a damned bit sorry. In fact, I'm glad."
She patted his cheek. Thanks, baby. Nonetheless, I hope I didn't cement her to Serge Reilly. He was popping off to Cobb last night. I know about Serge. If a woman happens to need him, he's never far away."
* * *
In the next few days, Nick decided that Cynthia needed Serge. She was with him on the beach and she waited for him at the bar. On two occasions Nick saw the grinning, attentive Serge handing Cynthia into a rented limousine on their way to some dress-up party. He made no special attempt to avoid her. She returned his greetings with pleasant indifference.
Betty did not come back to his bed. He guessed that she was more than a little attached to Cobb Carter. Her eyes, meeting Nick's as their paths crossed, were frankly impersonal. Nick went through four celibate days morosely. He drank too much, moped too much and began to dislike the beach. The sun beat hotly on his head, the sand blew into his eyes and every merry couple or group on the sand seemed a direct insult to his misery.
He thought several times of packing up and finding new scenery, new faces and, perhaps, new romance. But in the quiet hours before sleep, he could not escape the fact that Cynthia Roberts was still the woman he wanted.
He went to see Grace Moray simply because he knew she could not be shocked and was a good listener as well. She had not called him since the night of her party. When he accused her of deserting him, she laughed.
"Nicky, I thought I recognized the signs right from the first. And I was right-at least about you. I don't think the same applies to your girl, however. If you care about what I think, I'll tell you about Cynthia.'
Nick sipped his cocktail and looked at her lush body. She wore creamy silk lounging pajamas and exuded provocation with every movement. "Okay. Tell me."
"She asked me to throw another party. I did. I used to depend on Sophia to get the ball rolling. You know how she-likes to toss that hide of hers at a man. But it was Cynthia who started the brawl last week. She was damned near too much. She took Cobb first, then one of the other boys. She got sauced, too, and tried to climb in bed with me. I backed off-you know I don't like to follow a man. That's your sweet naive Cynthia, Nicky. A knock-'em-out nymphomaniac whose fire never goes out."
Nick shook his head. "And now Serge Reilly," he added.
Grace let a new emotion cloud her pretty face. She gulped her drink, then nervously rolled her glass so the ice tinkled and swirled.
"Serge," she said, "is something else."
"I know," Nick agreed.
"No, you don't." Grace spoke quickly. "You have to be a special type of woman to know about Serge. Cynthia seems to be that kind of woman. It takes one to know one, Nicky. I've half-loved you for a long time, but not for the same reason I'd go for Serge if I were a few years younger."
"What's the big deal?" Nick asked. "I admit, I don't like the man. At the moment, he seems to have walked off with my girl. What's his secret?"
Grace refilled their glasses before answering. She sat beside Nick, her thigh pressed tightly to his. The scent of her perfume flooded his brain with recollection.
"He comes onto a woman like a starved animal, Nicky. He's rough and careless. He makes you think you're the only female in the world and every time is the last chance he'll ever have to make love. He's sort of psychopathic about it. You have to be damned careful because he'll fix you so you can't sit straight for a week if you make any mistakes. I know he sounds like a beast-but if you're that kind of woman, you don't really mind. And when he's through, he changes into a sweet considerate lover who seems to hang on your every word, every sentiment you express. You wouldn't recognize him, Nicky. Can you understand what he does to a woman who's a little starved for both kinds of love?"
"Maybe. But neither you nor Cynthia is a woman starving for love."
"It isn't a matter of how much. Maybe starved was a bad word. Anyway, he's different from you, Nicky. You give a woman ideas about home and kids and a two-year-old station wagon. Serge gives a woman ideas about one long, unending binge of sex, sugar-talk and the kind of pain most women like, even if they do holler for the police one in a while. Do I sound like a damned idiot? Because that's what he makes of us. Sorry."
Nick leaned back on the divan. Grace's shoulder was soft against his chest. "You think a lot of Serge privately, don't you, Grace?" he asked.
She turned her face. "He baffles me," she admitted. "I know he has money because he spends a lot of it. I know he has education, too. When he hasn't the smell of a woman in his nose, he's the world's finest charmer. Am I discouraging you, Nicky?"
"Sure are. But the Cynthia I once knew-how could she go to pieces so completely in two weeks? Shell be worth the waiting if she ever comes to her senses."
"Don't count on it, baby," Grace said, letting her hand drift down the front of his shirt. "I never came to mine."
'You're going to get yourself in real big trouble if you don't watch those sneaky fingers," he warned her.
She popped the waistband of his slacks. "If you think
I'm giving advice for free, you're a bigger dunce than I thought."
He twisted, but now away from her hand. "I'm not smart, that's for sure."
"Don't try," Grace said.
He shuddered, half at the thought of Serge and Cynthia, half from the impact of Grace's kisses. He was at once thoroughly miserable and completely exhilarated. Before he relaxed under the spell of Grace's adept passion, he thought he knew how Cynthia could maintain what amounted to separate selves.
Grace curled her fingers in his hair.
9
NICK STAYED the night with Grace. Once they started making love they could not stop while either had any strength.
The telephone shook them out of bed at nine. The call was from the yacht club, warning Grace of hurricane indications off the coast.
"I've ninety thousand tied up in the Dolphin," Grace fretted. "Nick, she's fast. There's time. Let's take her behind the reef. There's good anchorage there and protection from weather. Anyway, we can invite some others and have a party. Want to?"
Nick groped for his shorts. "Why not?"
"Hurry. I'll make some calls. You don't need anything. The Dolphin is equipped with everything from toothbrushes to penicillin. Shall I invite Cynthia-without Serge?"
"Your boat," he laughed. "But I'll bet she won't come without her boy."
Within the hour, they were on their way to the yacht basin in Grace's Mercedes. The groundskeeper had begun to put up storm doors and the club swarmed with owners and hired hands securing expensive yachts against the threatened blow. The Dolphin was a hundred and ten feet of Grace Moray, a sleek, sensuous deck cruiser in the command of a stolid captain and three young crewmen.
Cobb and Betty were already aboard when Nick and Grace arrived. The others began to arrive within minutes. Nick recognized the usual crowd, with a few newcomers. Rather than frightened or apprehensive, they were all gay and anticipatory. The deep rumble of twin diesels caused the Dolphin to vibrate slightly. Nick hovered by the port rail, his eyes on the broad dock.
"Quit worrying," Grace said, hand on his arm. "She said she'd come-without Serge. We'll wait till eleven. Captain Yardin says the warnings are not serious yet. We can make the cove by two or three this afternoon, which is plenty of time."
"I'm not worrying," Nick said.
"Our crowd look right to you, baby? The blow can't last more than a day or so, so there's plenty of stuff to keep you fresh."
"There she is," Nick said. A cab had pulled up at the edge of the dock.
"See? She'd never miss one of my parties."
Nick went down the short gangplank and took Cynthia's bag from the cab driver. Cynthia smiled. Nick knew a small surge of pleasure. After she had paid the driver, he urged her ahead of him up the ramp.
She murmured, "It's a beautiful boat. I didn't even know Grace owned one."
"Your education is not quite complete," Nick told her. "I hoped you would come, Cynthia."
"She's here too, isn't she, Nicky?"
"Who?"
"Betty."
"With Cobb," he said. "Watch your step."
"Watch your own step," she snapped back.
One of the deck hands took Cynthia's bag and Nick lost her while she was being settled into her cabin. The party enjoyed a few minutes of excitement as the captain eased the Dolphin into the clear.
Grace's stolid maid appeared on the fantail. She was pushing a fat-tired cart loaded with bottles, glasses and ice chest. When the cart wheels were locked into prepared deck fixtures, Grace announced that the bar was open.
They faced a fifty-mile run through relatively open water. The deck hands were busy lashing bleached canvas over the stanchions. They passed several other craft heading for easier water. Nick, feeling secure in the complete worthiness of the yacht, joined the others. Cynthia must eventually reappear.
The heat was stifling. A rising wind brought no relief. The party turned restless within an hour. The afterdecks were nearly private while the crew was busy forward. Grace's passengers seemed to accept isolation, the feeling of containment in a small world where anything was permissible. As the men changed into trunks and the women into bikinis, heat and liquor accelerated their instincts. As usual, Sophia was the first to discard her halter. A guest whom Nick knew only as Sam took the girl down on the fantail divan and began to maul her.
Some danced, laughing at the peculiar steps they originated between the music and the slight roll of the boat. Nick found himself in a wicker deck chair, facing the companionway from which Cynthia would have to emerge. His concern was a mental matter. Grace had wrung him dry.
He could no longer take pride in Cynthia as a prize, even if he won her back. What he wanted, he supposed, was to redeem the girl she once had been. If she went the way of Sophia, life would taste bitter to him forever.
He waited, trying to think above the whine of the wind and the revelry around him. He was surprised by a plump, giggling redhead with grotesquely huge breasts badly confined by a halter. Her name, he remembered, was Kate. She had come aboard with a dignified man named Albert. Kate splayed herself out comfortably on Nick's lap. He noticed a slight rash on the inside of her thighs.
"Ha," she chortled. "I'm glad Grace found some fresh stock. Things were getting so bad I was about to go back to my husband. Known Grace long?"
"Years," he said. "I'm a working man and don't get around very often."
"Don't tell me I've a chance to pick up a week-old yen.
"I haven't the slightest idea what you mean," Nick said.
She looked pensive. "Love to do it on a boat. There's a certain motion only the waves can produce. Now, baby?"
"A bit later," Nick told her.
She sighed. "Okay. But it's a promise, huh?" She struggled her weight up and, with hardly a backward glance, headed for Mike, the beach boy. This would be a hurricane, Nick decided, to end all hurricanes.
He left his chair and went to look for Cynthia.
* * *
She called, "Come in," when he knocked at her stateroom door. Space was at a premium. When he had closed the narrow door behind him, he was hardly six feet from Cynthia. She stood in front of the built-in dresser, wearing a filmy shift of sheer white that took on a pink tone against her flesh. She did not turn, but her eyes met his in the mirror. She continued repairing her lipstick.
"Thought you'd jumped overboard," he said. "The party is well on its way. You're beautiful, Cynthia, in case no one has told you lately."
"What do you want?" she asked, neither warmly nor coldly.
"You. The captain can marry us in ten minutes."
"With that bony Betty for a bridesmaid?"
Nick grinned. "And Cobb can be best man, seeing Serge is not aboard. Oh, Cynthia, to hell with yesterday. I'm thinking about the tomorrows."
She turned and he saw tears in her lustrous blue eyes. She extended her hand to his. "Nicky, don't say things like that. I'm having trouble enough without you and your darned calf eyes."
"Trouble?"
"Trouble with myself. I shouldn't have come to this yacht party. I dread going up on deck. I know exactly what will happen to me-and to you, too."
"Why does anything have to happen?" he asked. "Why must you be afraid of yourself?"
"Nicky, that first afternoon in your cottage. What did you think when I let you make love to me so quickly?"
He grinned self-consciously. "Maybe I thought I was nature's gift to women," he said. "And maybe I thought you had remembered the old days, just as I had. I didn't ask questions, Cynthia. Maybe I was out of my mind with happiness."
"So was I, but for a different reason. Nicky, I never did love you back at Apex. I didn't know what love was. I'm not sure I do now either, but I do know about myself. Nicky, I can't be yours alone as long as another man can turn my thoughts to jelly. Right now I'm willing to marry you, or anything you want. You're wonderful, all a girl like me could logically desire. But I'm not logical. I'll walk up there on deck and take one look at Sophia with whoever, or at Cobb with Betty or at Grace and the wheels will start that I can't stop. What do you want with a ass like me?"
Nick put his hands to her shoulders and pulled her close. The feel of her body, the sadness of her face, made him angry, although he could not understand why.
He savored the scent of her hair and the shape of her lush body in his hands.
She accepted a kiss that was offered in helpless adoration.
"Baby, let me explain something. About Betty."
"Nick, I don't-"
"Shut up and listen. Never mind how, I could not have stayed out of bed with her, unless I'd been hit over the head. Five days before, I was with Lydia Doran. I slept last night with Grace. The very first party you and I attended together, Grace and I-well, just believe I was no saint. What makes you think you're different from other people? Sure I went for some side trips. But I wouldn't have even considered them if you had told me you loved me."
"But I go so crazy, Nicky."
"Everybody goes crazy-once they decide to go, baby."
"You think a marriage license would cure that, Nicky?"
He shook his head. "No. But a marriage license is a start. Nobody is a complete rat, Cynthia. Just stay out of the candy shop and you'll develop a taste for home cooking. We could save each other, Cynthia. We're both in trouble."
She turned away in what looked like shame. Her confession had not surprised him-yet he sensed another barrier between them. Not Serge, not Cobb, but some personal thing she carried within her own mind. He refused to believe that the barrier was something in her body.
He felt that she was compelled by some inner carnal fear-as if she expected to find in herself a sin that was past forgiveness.
He kissed her with waning tenderness. He felt the quiver of her body and the pulsation of her open mouth under his. When he shoved her back on the bunk, she let him press his heavy demanding weight over her thinly clad flesh. When he swept the filmy shift up her thigh, she whimpered and welcomed his eager fingers with a twisting lift of her hips.
Once more he believed against all evidence that his love could cool the wanton drive within her. He did not have to pretend his ardor. Her surrender fired him as if he had never known a woman before in his life. He had nothing to say nor did she. He snapped his trunks down and kicked them off his ankles. Her cry of eagerness as he came to her was animal in tone.
He had been an idiot to think that Serge could have changed her. Her delectable freshness was the same. Yet now she helped him with the same brutal maturity of purpose he had known in Grace and Betty. Her knowingness only made him more eager to fulfill her demands. He wallowed in her response.
When he was all but lost in excruciating happiness, when he had ceased to think of anything but Cynthia, she made an awkward movement that broke the marvelous spell. Her eyes opened and her lips nibbled forcefully at his and her right hand moved swiftly between them.
The moment of confusion existed only within his brain. Her body's femaleness convulsed around the root of his drive. His gasp was half shock, half exultation. Hers was one of pure elation.
"You see," she panted. "You see how aggressive I am? But Nicky, Nicky, I can't stop wanting a man."
His laugh was short and hard, more at his own willingness than because of her panic. "So what's new, baby?" he exclaimed. "What in hell took you so long to graduate from kindergarten?"
* * *
By the time the Dolphin reached the cove, half of the merrymakers were unhappy. The broad bay was relatively calm as yet because its palm-studded flanking reef broke the force of the rising wind. But the Dolphin, swiftly positioned and securely anchored, was subjected to a strong undertow. The big yacht responded and the stomachs of the guests followed suit.
At sundown, the weather was better. The impending hurricane had shifted its course and had struck south of this resort. Cynthia was one of those who had been laid low by the roll and pitch. Himself a good sailor, Nick had joined Grace and Lydia and the fat man named Sidney in the deck salon, to drink and laugh and wait out the warning.
"Be fine in the morning," Captain Yardin told them. "Do we head back tonight, Mrs. Moray?"
"Why should we?" Grace put the question to the others.
No one but Nick could think of any good reason for terminating the excursion and Nick kept his mouth shut Grace made a check of the guests below decks and reported that no one was ill enough to give up. One by one, the passengers reappeared. The party gathered momentum once more.
Nick could not feel like one of the group. His hands moved, his lips talked and he laughed and danced with anyone available. Inside, his thoughts were of Cynthia.
She appeared at nine, her radiant self. She puzzled him-her mood of the early afternoon was gone without a trace. Dancing with Nick she was light, airy and just a little flippant in her comments about the party.
"I'm glad the wind died down," she said. "I thought it was going to spoil this lovely brawl. Doesn't Grace look cute in that striped jersey and the sailor pants?"
"You're pretty cute yourself," Nick volunteered. "Feel okay?"
"You've got hands, find out for yourself."
He lost her during a temporary lull in the music. The plump girl, Kate, cornered him despite his best efforts to escape. She explained that her husband, Albert, had hustled Sophia into a stateroom. Nick held his ground with some difficulty. He lost sight of Cynthia. In despair, he counted noses. He could not find a man missing. But their hostess was missing. Roughly Nick excused himself from the plump guest and made a quick tour of the yacht.
"Have you seen Cynthia lately?" he asked Betty.
Betty, her lean body draped over Mike's thick arm, patted Nick's cheek. "Poor baby. Just won't give up, will you? Try Grace's cabin. But knock before you enter."
Kate trailed down the companionway, her lips promising all sorts of lewdly suggestive endearments, her hands already fumbling with the overstuffed dress she had donned when the sun went down. At Grace's stateroom door Nick stopped to get rid of the fat girl.
"Come on, baby," she pleaded. "My stateroom is just down there. I'm popping and snapping like a new saddle for you. Any way you want me, baby, but don't hang me up."
Nick kissed her moist mouth. "Okay, but give me a minute, Katie. Go on down and roll the covers back. I'll be there before you get that lipstick wiped off your face."
Giggling with eagerness, she rolled down the companionway. She turned, blew him a kiss and rolled her broad hips. Nick waved back.
He listened for some sound beyond Grace's door. He could hear voices and was sure one was Cynthia's.
He was trying not to feel sick. What a man and a woman decided to do together was a form of love. What two women did together could be perversion. Losing Cynthia to Cobb, or Serge, or any other man was not nearly as difficult as the thought of losing her to Grace.
The time had come for him to assert himself. He opened the door. His presence was apparently not noticed by either of the panting, straining women on the bed.
Cynthia lay flat on her back, her arms and legs out-flung, her eyes closed. Her mouth was slack. She was naked except for her black stockings and one high-heeled pump. Even as he watched, Grace's bowed body, her black hair tumbling like an apologetic curtain round her head, seemed to writhe and plunge over Cynthia. The spastic flutter of Cynthia's leg kicked the other pump to the floor. She seemed to bunch. A cry of passion escaped her lips. There was a slithering, a massive movement of white bulbous flesh as Grace pivoted, turning her bareness to Cynthia's kiss. The two bodies came together with subtle undulations. Nick had never witnessed a viler scene-yet he recognized deeply passionate loveliness in the way both bodies responded to the strange embrace.
"The garden of Sappho." Cobb Carter's voice came over Nick's shoulder. "Makes you damned well jealous of a woman, doesn't it?"
Startled, Nick stepped back. Cobb did not move. They stood shoulder to shoulder in a kind of hypnosis.
Grace lifted her head and saw them. She smiled. She took one hand from under Cynthia's buttock and waved at them in a weak gesture of dismissal, scorn and indifference. Then she tipped her head and her hair dropped over Cynthia to shut out her vision. Nick saw Cynthia's hands kneading and petting Grace's hips.
"We ought to leave," Cobb decided. "Some one is coming down the companionway, Nick, my boy."
At the sound of his words, Cynthia tried to squirm free. Grace seemed to sag. Her arms and legs held the other girl's twisting body as if she were some bulbous cat clinging to its prey. Nick stepped in and Cobb followed Cynthia clawed for freedom and Grace cried out and leaped away. Cynthia slithered off the bed on the far side. Grace laughed. Nick wanted to kill them all.
10
CYNTHIA STRAIGHTENED, a smile on her face. His world dropped out from under Nick. Recklessness fired his blood. He moved around Cobb and made sure the stateroom door was locked. When he turned again, Cynthia had crawled back on the bed. Her arm went around Grace.
"Dammit," she said to Nick. "You could have waited a minute, couldn't you?"
"Go ahead," Nick said. "I'd like to see what happens when the rubber band snaps."
"It doesn't snap," Grace said. "It just quivers and turns to mush and honey."
"Very clinical," Cobb observed, tugging his shirt out of his blue yachting trousers. "Most interesting, kiddies."
"I thought you knew?" Nick said harshly.
"One never really knows how it is with one's lover," Cobb admonished him.
"Well, Nicky," Grace said, lying defiantly beside Cynthia once more, "are you satisfied?"
"Not quite," he replied.
Cynthia stretched luxuriously, then pressed Grace's head close to her cheek. "Nicky, for gosh sakes, don't take things so darned seriously."
Nick looked at Cobb, who seemed to be atrophied with revulsion. Both fascinated and repelled, the two men watched Grace and Cynthia squirm together to rebuild their interrupted passion. Nick had no qualms about Grace. Her life had been one grand orgy after another, with no holds barred and inventiveness the passport to new horizons. Now Cynthia seemed to be enjoying the two pairs of hot eyes even more than she enjoyed the nearly professional caresses of her lover.
Nick knew she was deliberately cultivating their stares. Some portion of her mind shone through her wide blue eyes, even though her head was beginning to roll. She was clinging to consciousness, even while she let her lush body respond to Grace. Once more that feeling of being witness to something neither completely lewd nor entirely despicable came over Nick.
Grace, intent on the delectable offering, began to speed her kisses, making them deep and wrenching. Nick saw Cynthia's eyes close and her lips draw back in the mock agony of fulfillment. The sounds now were as graphic as the sight, grunts and whimpers that mixed in a symphony of lust
The union was abruptly over, at least for Cynthia. The two men stared in disbelief as she cried out and twisted away from Grace, whose series of spasms seemed endless. Finally Grace sat up and dragged a rumpled bedspread over herself and her girl friend.
"So okay," she said to Nick and Cobb. "Now you've seen it. She's had it-just like she's been asking for it. She's all yours, boys. I'm getting out of this huddle while I can."
Their hostess pulled on her sea clothes, shook her hair into some semblance of order and went to the door. On her way, she bent swiftly and kissed Nick on the mouth. Then she was gone.
"Nicky?" Cynthia called, not turning or looking up.
"I'm still here."
"Cobb, too?"
"I always wait for the crowd to leave first," Cobb replied.
Cynthia's laughter seemed senseless. For Nick, the moment was tragic. He walked over to the bed and looked down.
Cynthia's eyes were mocking him.
"Was it beautiful, Nicky?"
"Hideous," he corrected her. "Maybe a little exotic."
"Understatement, old man," Cobb said, moving to his side. "Too damned shocking."
Cynthia sat up, letting the spread fall away from her breasts. She straightened her loose hair, then shook herself, as if to ward off some mysterious chill they could not feel in the stuffy stateroom. "Which one of you would like to marry me now?" she asked.
"What the hell kind of a game are you playing, Cynthia?" Cobb asked. "All right. I'll marry you, Cynthia. Now or later."
"Well, Nicky?"
"So will I-if you'll promise to give up this crowd for good."
Cynthia reached out and took each man by the wrist. Her fingers were strong. "Do you greedy men remember that first party at Grace's? How Lydia was dancing between Tommie and Mike? I want you to dance with me like that. Here, on the bed, naked."
Nick's head whirled. He looked at Cobb and the pained expression on the rich man's face told Nick they shared the same horror. Then Cynthia threw aside the bedspread and lay back, writhing, her eyes fixed on them in pure coquetry-or madness. "Well, are those pants glued on, or are you just little boys who would rather play alone?"
She had to be sick. Nick could imagine no other reason for her request. His eyes met Cobb's. They were waiting for her to sleep.
* * *
Nick's first thought in the morning was of Kate. He wondered if she were still in her stateroom waiting. Then he shuddered as the memory of the night rushed into his consciousness. He could not remember going back to his own stateroom because sometime after the first mad, completely insane adventure into mass obscenity, they had raided Grace's private liquor locker. The whiskey had changed nothing but the mood. He had, he supposed, joined everyone else in the conquest of Cynthia's insatiable desires. Later, aided by exhaustion both mental and physical, the liquor had mercifully taken over. He was grateful that he could not remember the end of the night.
The time was ten in the morning. The boat seemed not to be rocking. A great floating palace of dissipation and depravity-he had joined the club for sure. How could he justify his acts? Cynthia? He had the feeling that at some point yesterday she had passed the no-return marker, had ceased to be capable of right or wrong. Love, emotion, the future, none of those things entered the world that she had chosen. No matter what she decided next, her mind was between clouds, her body dedicated to some shrine he did not recognize.
His compulsion to join her headlong dive into sensuality was largely composed of fear. He thought of what might have happened if someone else had opened Grace's door. At least, Cynthia had been protected by men who loved her and a woman who was wise in the ways of lust. But what was the difference now?
He and Cobb and others had brutally and endlessly shared the same woman.
A cold shower cleared Nick's head but changed nothing in the record.
Grace's maid was serving breakfast to Albert and Sophia. He was as quiet as Sophia was loud. Kate was slumped in a deck chair, pouting. Grace was talking to Captain Yardin. She smiled at Nick with no message behind the greeting.
The deckhands had removed the storm canvas. The surface of the cove was smooth, disturbed only by small boats going to and from the dozen yachts anchored about. The day was already hot, but with a dryer heat than yesterday's. The sun played tag with a few colossal thunderheads that drifted northward on the breeze. A beautiful day in a beautiful place and Nick was so unhappy he wanted to vomit.
'I won't say good morning." Cobb Carter spoke from the companionway. "I know how you feel so there's no point in asking. We must have killed two quarts between us. Seen our little Miss Muffet yet, Nick."
"I doubt if she can walk," Nick said brutally. "I suppose a man doesn't have to understand everything in this world," Cobb observed. "There's not much left, is there? Do you suppose she's on dope yet."
"Who knows? Cobb, I feel like a stinking rat."
"Maybe Grace was smarter than either of us. Remember? She said, 'She's had it'-and it sounded accurate."
Nick nodded. Cobb ventured, "You have a problem over there."
"Kate? I know. Why me?"
"She's been through the rest of us. When she got around to me last year, she weighed three hundred pounds. Down at least sixty since then. It was an experience."
"Frankly, I'm not up to Kate."
They had coffee, which helped. No one except Kate seemed ready to resume the merriment. Nick guessed it would be three in the afternoon before any one else generated any muscle. He was considerably relieved when Kate moved forward and began to talk to a deckhand who was folding and storing canvas.
Some attention was claimed by a small, slowly moving boat that had left the dock and headed for the Dolphin. The boat held three men. Nick recognized Serge Reilly as one of them. The pilot was a yacht club aide, the third man a stranger. As the small craft approached, Nick saw Serge speak to the stranger.
The man seemed intensely interested in the Dolphin. He was about thirty-five, dressed in yachting togs and bland of manner. A ruffle of crisp blonde hair stuck out from under his cap. When the boat bumped the platform of the Dolphin, he leaped out as if he had made the gesture before. Serge followed him to the deck. When Serge spotted Cobb and Nick, he came to them directly, the stranger beside him.
"Boy, you guys were hard to locate! John, meet Cobb Carter and Nick Harper. Gentlemen," he added, "this is John Teel, our Cynthia's fianc'."
* * *
Whatever Nick expected from Cynthia, it was not her swift, open-armed reception of John Teel. Everyone on the fantail seemed shocked as she kissed John with the right amount of propriety, then tucked him close and walked him to meet Grace. This was a complication Nick could not have anticipated in ten guesses.
Cobb seemed equally shaken. John Teel was an impressive man. His obvious culture, his clever words and his complete aplomb amid the patently sexy group showed the restraint of good breeding plus the sophistication of travel.
"Where did he come from?" Nick asked Serge, who also seemed taken aback.
"New York," Serge muttered. "Got into town yesterday. Checked Cynthia's room in the middle of a half-hurricane. The hotel people sent him to me, knowing Cynthia and I--. Well, I called Grace when I couldn't find anybody around the hotel. Her cook told me where you'd all gone. Being slightly teed off at having been left behind, I volunteered to show him where the Dolphin was. We drove up in his rented Rolls. The guy spends money like it's going out of style."
Nick kept his own counsel. Serge also volunteered the information that John thought of Cynthia as his, that he had talked of how sweet and gentle she was, and how he had made a mistake in allowing her to go off without him.
"My, my," Cobb breathed. "What a shock the man is in for. Though I must say, she seems glad to see him."
Nick inwardly probed for the panic button and did not find it. Was this the reason Cynthia had gone wild? One last fling before she married the very eligible John Teel? She had made a fool of him, of Cobb, and perhaps of Serge. Here was her handsome fiancee, ready to reap the profits of their wheeling and dealing. When Grace brought John and Cynthia to the three glowering men who had been Cynthia's lovers, the axe fell hard.
"Cobb, can you loan Johnny some clothes? You're about his size. He's going to stay on board and go back with us tomorrow."
Nick grinned. "All you'll need aboard this boat is a change of socks, Mr. Teel. You don't wear anything else long enough to get it dirty."
"Fine. I'll settle for a pair of socks and some swim trunks. Can you oblige me, Mr. Carter?"
"Definitely, old chap," Cobb agreed. "Well, Cynthia, you've been damned secretive about your young man."
Cynthia clung to John's arm and swept them all with a bland glance. "Even steven," she said. "I wouldn't tell him about you, either. John, dear, I need a drink. Tell the pretty little girl in the black ballet skirt. Bourbon, that's a nice boy."
John went to the bar. Cynthia faced her friends boldly.
"I guess this is where we separate the men from the boys, huh?"
"Don't be snotty," Grace snapped at her. "This is a better bunch of men than you think they are."
John came back with Cynthia's drink. "I'd say it's weather for a plunge," he suggested.
"I'll have the boys launch the swimming float. It will take about the same time for everybody to change," Grace told them. "Come on, John. I'll show you where your stateroom is. Cobb, get his trunks, will you? Let's go, people, let's go."
* * *
Nick swam idly with the rest, but his mind was on Cynthia. By her own words, she was not sure of herself and John. She had mentioned her engagement to John as little as possible. She once had said that John was out of the picture.
But Nick was sure that John was right in there. He was a lot of man and he had an incomplete picture of Cynthia. She could marry him and fly back to New York with no trace of soil on her wedding gown. Nick did not intend to talk, and he guessed that neither Cobb nor Serge were the kind to carry tales. If this had been Cynthia's plan from the beginning, she was well on her way to success. John Teel might never know the difference. On the other hand, he might wind up with a broken heart. Nick could do little but await developments.
After the swim and drinks, the jaded members of the party seemed to revive. Nick stayed out of the rising storm. He kept watching Cynthia. She seemed not to be the same girl. She stayed close to John and guided him away from Sophia, Lydia, or any other obviously recharged battery.
Betty interrupted Nick's solitude.
"Now what, baby?" she asked. "Give up?"
"No. Just backing up for a running start."
"Sure." She laughed. "Nicky, want me to run interference?"
"What?"
"Take him out like a bee's stinger, baby. It wouldn't even be unpleasant. He's a hell of a looking man."
"Five will get you ten you can't make a foot of ground," Nick growled. "Cynthia tells me he blushes going by a burlesque house."
"So in about thirty minutes that liver-lipped Sophia is going to turn our dear John a bright shade of boiled lobster. When he runs down to his stateroom to hide, I'll wrap him up like wow." She whipped her lean hips in a way that Nick understood. "That is, if you'd like to get back in the game with Cynthia."
"Maybe you aren't his type," Nick kidded her.
"Then I'll push that blubber-bottom Kate into his stateroom. Would she be more his type?"
"Thanks, Betty," Nick said tiredly. "But let's see what happens on the natural. Seems to me Cynthia has been a good girl for about six hours, plus or minus. She must be about ready to shift gears. Isn't that a hell of a thing for a man to say about the woman he loves?"
True to expectations, Sophia was not long in breaking down. She rid her splendid body of her halter and went into a jungle dance in tempo with the ship's hi-fi. Nick saw John turn stiff as ice.
Kate was next. When her halter dropped, the dual dance became an obscene fantasy. John turned to Cynthia. She hesitated just for a second before she let John lead her to the forward deck.
Grace, trim in a flowered shift, headed for the wheel-house. Shortly afterward, the deck crew became quite busy. The boarding ladder came up on the davit, the diesels deep in the yacht were coughing into life. Within minutes, both mud anchors were hoisted, making twin paths of froth as the boat got under way. Grace had evidently decided to terminate the party. Nick walked to meet her as she came back from the bridge.
"Quitting?" he asked.
"Don't be a dope, Nicky."
"What then?"
She glanced up to the bow section. Cynthia and John were watching ahead as the yacht threaded through anchorages into the channel behind the reef. "Ever been to Bimini, Nicky?"
"Can't say I have."
"Beautiful islands," Grace said. "Water, water, water. Takes a big day to make land. Maybe more. I figure that this party would just about make a believer out of John Teel if we can keep him for three or four days."
Nick kissed her mockingly innocent face. "You bitch," he said affectionately.
"Just trying to keep the fight fair, Nicky. You still want her, don't you?"
Nick hesitated. "Yes, so help me."
"Five will get you a trip around the world she breaks before he does," Grace said. "That sweet-little-thing bit will go up in flames the minute some man waves a hot rocket. Nicky, why do men go down so hard for a chippy bottom?"
"I love you dearly but I think you've got the wrong label for her, Grace. I know her. I helped make her what she seems to be. But there's something about Cynthia that we don't know. If I don't go out of my mind finding out her secret, I'll let you in on it later."
"Nuts," Grace snorted. "She's got a very common disease and I ought to know-I've had it all my life."
They went back to the fantail for a drink. The Dolphin cut to port and knifed through the gap in the reef. When the yacht picked up an easy roll, the guests quit their playing and crowded around Grace for an explanation. She told them her plans. A few shouts of pleasure and
Pement went up. ate came at Nick again. He condescended to pat her om.
ll
JOHN OPENED his stateroom door with his left hand His right hand was still pressed to his mouth. Cynthia's good-night kiss had been like fire. In the small but luxurious cabin, he tried to straighten his thinking. The steady throb of the diesels was not pleasant. He would have preferred taking his wife-to-be away from this yacht, its passengers and owner.
Although one or two of the guests seemed decent enough, sophisticated but reserved, he disliked all the others.
He had seen women before like that wild Sophia or the child-like blonde who had made four different trips into the yacht's interior with four different men. But he had seen them in far parts of the earth while he was young and in the service. He had never touched their kind.
Betty, the acrobatic dancer who could bend backward far enough to kiss her own inner thighs, had disgusted him. He was also ashamed of what had happened in his own trousers when Cynthia had expressed her natural nervousness after the series of nasty scenes had insulted her sense of propriety.
He had arrived just in time, he thought. Had he known she had fallen into such a crowd of dissolutes, he would have been at her side from the beginning of her vacation. He sat down, his hands and knees quivering with feelings that were alien to him. He wondered what it would be like to hold his hostess close without her clothes, and his sense of decency made him shudder before he was able to control the vision.
This was definitely no place for Cynthia. He had been just too late, and too much the gentleman to protest when he had discovered the yacht's destination. Now he was faced with several days of dangerous associations. Perhaps he could charter a plane from Bimini, an emergency measure his mother would approve of. He was sure that Cynthia would be more than happy to escape the ship.
He recalled the moment of fire her kiss had given him. He could still feel the pressure of her marvelous body against his. He had a distaste for his own improper thoughts. He loved Cynthia for her purity. Although he expected to have several beautiful children with her, he did not think of her as a vessel for sex.
He liked the Dolphin. She was not new and she had a few fine lines that might make her a bad sea boat in northern waters, but the accommodations were excellent. John was used to money and monied people. There was no question in his mind about the cost of the yacht nor the affluence of the guests. He had liked the chap named Carter and the huge man introduced as Nick Harper. On the whole the men aboard were acceptable. The women disturbed him.
In the shower, he kept remembering Sophia's abundant flesh and the way she laughed when one of the men played with her. He had seen bare-breasted women before, in Cannes, at the Riviera, at many fashionable spas, but there was something deliberately carnal about the women on the Dolphin.
He toweled himself briskly, washed his teeth and brushed his hair despite the fact that he was only going to bed. Good grooming was part of his life. He had acquired certain habits which kept him organized. All he needed was his pair of pajamas. When he went into the stateroom, they were laid out on the bed, but Sophia was sitting on them.
"By gosh, you are for real." Sophia laughed. She wore a yellow shift that was no match for the push of her long conical breasts.
He jumped back into the head and tried to close the door, but it jammed on the damp towel he had draped over the doorknob. The luscious laugh followed him and made his spine tingle. "My robe," he said through the door. "Will you hand me my robe, please, miss?"
"Maybe later," she replied. "Got a drink in here some place?"
"I don't think so," he raged. He was inexpert at rudeness, especially when he had nothing whatever to wear.
He snatched a dry towel from the rack and wound it around his waist. He looked down and wryly recognized that he was not only embarrassed-he was also aroused.
He heard a low vibrant humming. He opened the door.
"Don't be so bashful, honey," Sophia said. "We're all friends on this little old boat. Hey, you're kind of pretty."
"Is there something you wanted?" he asked stupidly.
She swung her strong legs up on the bed. When she leaned back on an elbow, the shift moved up a few inches. He wondered why she had bothered to wear it--certainly not for modesty.
"I think you misunderstand," he said with a sigh.
"You stand there and think about it, honey," she told him. "Then if you get any ideas, you come here and tell big mamoo all about it. Okay?"
He wondered if he was going to be sick. A grinding sensation started in his stomach and worked into his no throat, down into his groin. Sophia extended one smooth arm and snatched his towel away.
He gasped. But he knew what he had to do. He pushed her back to where she had been before, perched on his pajamas. He joined her, using her body as tidily as he used other accessories.
She was more fun than his silver-backed brushes.
When he awoke in the morning he was ashamed of himself for about four seconds. The seconds passed and John lay quietly, feeling pleasantly detached, a thing that shifted slightly with the roll of the yacht. He thought he detected a new taste in his mouth and when he tried to place it, all he could remember were Sophia's breasts. He was numb from belly button to knees.
He had a score to settle with his conscience. Well-organized as he was, he knew the sooner he faced the job, the better. He was in a vacation area among people who could afford the best. He deplored that two moralities existed-one public, the other private-but when in Rome, and all that. At least he had not misbehaved where anyone could see him. He had not fallen from respectability. Other sins could always be atoned for.
Nonetheless, he thought, he had done a terrible thing to Cynthia. He had violated the trust and confidence she had given him.
Would he make a full confession to Cynthia? What would he say to Sophia when he met her within the next few minutes? John was not sure. He dressed, straightened his back and went up the companionway.
The group was at breakfast in the salon. Neither Cynthia nor Sophia were present. The plump woman and the slim young blonde were there, along with Nick Harper and the hostess, Grace Moray. They greeted him warmly and John responded automatically. His attention was largely demanded by the barely covered charms of the women. Their exposure held a different meaning for him from yesterday's. He seemed to have acquired some sophistication.
"Little rough this morning, so we decided to eat in here," Grace said. She told her maid, 'Take Mr. Teel's order. Perhaps he'd like a Bloody Mary to settle his stomach."
John, who had never touched alcohol before two in the afternoon, found himself saying a Bloody Mary would be fine.
"Really, I hadn't counted upon such a friendly group," he said, noting the nipple tips under Lydia Doran's jersey shirt. "And I certainly had no idea I was going to be a guest on so fine a boat. Is Cynthia sleeping late?"
"She's a lousy sailor," Nick told him. "She may never appear until we tie up at Bimini."
"I didn't know that," John admitted.
"Who needs her?" Lydia asked. She reached across the table to pat John's hand. Her touch was like fire, despite the fact that her fingers were cool. He grew hot all over as Sophia came into the salon. She was dressed in a skintight brown slack suit and her hair was done high, secured by a jungle-red band.
"Oh boy," she said. "Doesn't the damned ocean ever quiet down? Hi, folks. You too, Mr. Teel."
John was startled. She was barely acknowledging his presence. She sat down beside Nick and pinched a strip of his bacon. In leaning, she let the tip of her right breast dip close to Nick's coffee. John gulped his drink too fast and started to choke. The rubbery Kate pounded his back enthusiastically. Out of the comer of his eye he could see the bounce and wobble of her monstrous breasts.
"Bimini by six," Grace told them. "I've had Captain Yardin radio ahead for reservations. A day or so ashore will get the rest of the crowd back on their feet. All right with you, Mr. Teel?"
"My damned name is John," he said with unfamiliar emphasis. "Fine with me. In fact, I'd be more than happy to make it my treat. This is the best excursion I've been on in many years."
Sophia's laughter was throaty and rolling. John forgot to blush. Light talk followed and Serge Reilly appeared. Serge had been John's first friend in the group. By the time breakfast was over, he had a solid feeling of belonging. He also had a hard time not winking at Sophia when her eyes met his. And he had no intention of confessing anything to Cynthia, at least until this cruise was over.
* * *
Shortly after noon the sea became a bit easier. But Cynthia did not appear. John was not pleased by her absence, but he had ceased to worry.
"Get down this way often?" Serge asked him.
"No. But it's a condition I think I'll remedy. That is, if Cynthia wants to visit after we're married."
"She's quite a gal," Serge remarked. "She shook our bunch up considerably."
"How did she meet Mrs. Moray?"
Serge explained some connection with Nick Harper of Apex News. John was reminded that he and Cynthia had not always seen eye to eye about her career nor about the people who made up the contemporary literary set in New York, a fast lot.
But the New Yorkers had been amateurs compared to the guests on the Dolphin. John apparently had chased Cynthia from one playful group to another, even more playful. From where he sat with Serge on the cabin deck, he could look down on the fantail. Nothing spectacular was happening, but he had the impression that two or three were squirming with impatience.
"This may be personal," John said. "But do you have a special girl aboard, Serge?"
Serge grinned. "Well, yes and no. Yes, I thought I had, but now I don't know. No, I haven't a special girl because the one I really like is-well, difficult, to say the least."
"Oh?"
"It's not simple. like last night. I'm ready to make you a ten-dollar bet you can't get Sophia back into your cabin tonight."
John fought for breath. His face grew hot and his spine crawled. Did everyone know that Sophia had visited him? From Serge's tone, the incident might be common knowledge aboard. Yet Sophia had said nothing suggestive to John since breakfast. He refused to deny or admit a thing.
"Whom will I have, then?" he asked, shocking himself with his own bravado.
Serge shrugged. "What's the difference? Every woman aboard is pure talent. Even the fat one would be fun-one time around."
John's daylight code was fighting for supremacy. "Not a very good set of surroundings for Cynthia, is it? I mean, after all, she's engaged to be married. Perhaps she's staying in her stateroom to keep from being embarrassed."
"Perhaps. You didn't know Grace before?"
"No. I knew her husband slightly, on the Exchange. Decent chap. She took him for a bundle, I guess."
Serge looked at him oddly. John realized he had expressed a thought he had not intended. He had slept with a strange woman, had been caught at it and now he had virtually insulted his hostess.
"I didn't mean that the way it sounded, Serge. I apologize."
"Hell, don't bother. She brags about it after five drinks." Serge rattled the ice in his drink. "I think she's a wonderful woman. If she took the guy, he had it coming.
"To be sure. This Nick Harper. He seems to be a cool sort. Cynthia never mentioned knowing him in New York."
"Women don't always talk," Serge observed. "He's a cool sort, all right."
Was there a slight tone of bitterness in Serge's voice-or even jealousy? John was beginning to form a picture. These people drank hard, loved indiscriminately and let tomorrow take care of itself. But underneath their sophistication throbbed real human-likes and dislikes. He suddenly recognized himself among them. He was not yesterday's John Teel. Part of him was back in New York in his mother's serene duplex. Part of him was at his brokerage office desk. A lot of him was wound up in the beautifully blonde Cynthia whom he loved deeply, even if he could not approve all of her flippancy. But a big new part of him liked to lounge on the deck, drinking before any logical cocktail hour, discussing women with the blas' Serge, whetting his new-found appetite on the sound and look of ladies who were not altogether fastidious.
"I think I'll go down to my cabin and stretch out for a few minutes," John said. "See you later?"
"Nap would be a good idea. If this party moves ashore tonight, no one will sleep, I guarantee. See you later."
John went down the ladder and left his empty glass on the portable bar. A thin demanding set of fingers curled around his arm. He turned, saw the dancer, Betty.
"You've been avoiding me," she said. She was tall and striking, a memorable figure. "Get yourself another drink and come whisper in my shell-pink ear. I do have good ears, don't you think?"
She turned her head and pushed her hair back. More interesting than her ear was his quick glimpse down the wide neckline of her dress. The blackness of her breast nipple was only slightly less exciting than its obvious rigidity.
"Lovely," he breathed. "Maybe I'll have another, at that. I had it in mind to go down and rest for a few minutes."
"Hey, let's do that," Betty enthused. "I'm getting tired of this pitching deck. And those darn kids dry-humping each other."
"Dry-humping?" John murmured.
"Give me a tall Collins, will you?" Betty asked the maid. "John, what are you drinking?"
"A Collins will be fine," he said. He was suddenly unwilling to be different. While the drinks were fixed, he glanced at the supple Lydia and the big handsome boy named Mike. They were dancing-if you could call it that-to the hi-fi. He swallowed hard. Then Betty was pulling him toward the companionway to the staterooms.
"My cell or yours?" she asked.
"Yours," he replied, for some reason not wanting to be a rogue again on his own bed.
"Great. Plus I've a bottle when this runs out."
"There's not much sit-down room," Betty said in her compartment. "Kick off your shoes and curl up on the bed."
To help him decide, she kicked off her own shoes and folded into the most amazingly compact shape he had ever seen. The way her long legs were tucked under her body made her slacks wrinkle in a disturbing fashion. John took his shoes off and left a distance between himself and the girl. She floated toward him with one of her acrobat's gestures, wound up with her shoulder resting against his chest. Her scent was violet, he guessed.
"Are you having fun so far?" she asked.
"Damn right." John laughed. "I've never had a conversation before, for one thing, with a human ball."
Her answering laughter was husky. "I see you are a man who appreciates nice things. Do you think I'm nice? I mean, I don't look so skinny up close, do I?"
"You're not skinny," he said gallantly.
"I used to wear falsies." She giggled. "They kept getting hung up on barhops, vest buttons and shelves. Made me look top-heavy and made men mad when they found out I was part phony. After two husbands and my twenty-fifth birthday, I discovered it didn't make any difference, really."
"I think you're fine," John assured her.
"Thanks, Johnny Teel. I like you, too. I was sorry when I pulled the long match."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Last night, silly. Sophia and Lydia and Grace and I drew matches for you. Sophia won. I still think Cobb Carter tipped her off some way."
"Good Lord," John exclaimed. "You're serious?"
Once more she did some miraculous floating thing and it seemed to him she swam out of her slacks with hardly more than a shudder. Her blouse was extra long. But as John stared, the line of her slender thigh raised havoc with his imagination. "I kiss good," she said, raising her lips. "Would you like to try?"
John went to the stateroom door and tested the lock twice. When he turned, she had twisted once more. He was not sure how he was to kiss her but she showed him by opening her mouth and dragging his tongue half out of his throat.
His hands went under the blouse. The feel of her throbbing muscles made him dizzy. He held on as they fell to the bed in a close embrace.
She locked her legs around his hips, then managed to get one busy hand down to his trousers. He felt the waist loosen. She peeled him with her agile thighs and kicked his trousers off with her deft feet.
"Oh-ho," she gasped when he made a little movement he had learned from Sophia. "Not that way. Take it slow and let me do the gymnastics."
He did as she demanded. His brains seemed to turn to jelly as their bodies locked, twisted, played, loved.
A voice deep within him kept protesting. But the protest was a wind that fanned the flame.
12
AT THE DOLPHIN'S destination, the party found the suite Grace had reserved, consisting of six bedrooms, a playroom with built-in bar and a central garden that held a pool and neatly secluded niches.
The sleeping arrangements, at least as they were planned by the management, were wholly respectable.
Nick found he was to share a bedroom with Cobb. Whether anyone would get to sleep that night, however, was uncertain.
Cynthia recovered from her seasickness the moment they entered the bay. She latched onto John Teel and Nick prepared with little enthusiasm for the night of revelry Grace had promised them all.
At one point he managed to get Cynthia into a secluded spot in the garden. She was radiant, affectionate and yet curiously demure when he kissed her.
"I'm a dud on a yacht party, aren't I, Nicky?" she asked.
"You're never a dud, Cynthia. Most of us were a little green around the gills a time or two. Except John. He's a good sailor."
"You want to talk about him, don't you?"
"Not really. I want to talk about you," Nick said. "Are you and I through? What about Cobb?"
She lowered her eyes and placed one trembling hand on his chest. "Oh, Nicky, I don't know. What kind of person am I? I think I'm beginning to find out. Grace was right. I chased her. I had to know what a woman could do for another woman. I won't say I disliked what happened, especially before you two broke in on us. But afterwards I was afraid. There you were, with Cobb. I knew both of you loved me in your own way and I needed help. I needed a man or two to let me forget how I'd felt with Grace. Can you understand that?"
"I don't want to," Nick growled. "I don't understand you at all, Cynthia-I can't even call you a ass and let it go at that. I go nuts thinking about you and Cobb, or you and Serge-and I don't know how many other men. Somehow I control my jealousy and wait. I'm no angel, either."
"But?"
Nick sighed. "But. But John Teel is something else again. He's a nice guy. Why the hell you didn't marry him when he first asked you I'll never know. Just the same, I hope to beat him to the wire, Cynthia. I may even be a little nasty in the running."
"To my trained ear, Nicky, it sounds like you are trying to tell me something."
"Do you love him?"
She did not answer.
"Okay," he went on. "Are you going to marry him anyway, love or no love?"
She said only, "Nicky, I need a drink."
"Later. Finish mine. Dammit, Cynthia, do you get a lack out of tearing a man's heart out?"
"Don't make me cry," she warned him. "Be nice to me.
"Be nice to you? Please, Nicky, please, Cobb, please, Serge-be nice to Cynthia." He ripped the names at her. "You could get your neck broken by any one of us for the way you shuffled us around. Especially me. What the hell do you think a man is made of?"
She turned and seated herself on a short marble bench. Nick stood above her, his blood racing with anger and desire. She had too much power, he thought. She could talk sweetly, pleadingly, then rip off her clothes and go hog-wild with one man or several, then crawl back into his arms and be sure of his forgiveness-or at least his tolerance. Now he had little more to say, despite the volumes he thought.
"Nicky, you're right. But you and Cobb and the rest of them are different from John. I guess I'm the only woman he ever really loved, except his mother, bless her heart. That's why I'm so confused. I kind of feel-well, responsible for John. You and Serge and Cobb are men who can make it anywhere, with any woman. John has only me. He needs me. Then there's the other thing."
"What other thing?"
"Me. Nicky, do you think you know about me? I know I've seemed like a dirty, promiscuous slut. But I'm not. Some day you'll understand. What makes me afraid is that John may never understand-if he finds out. I had no idea he would follow me down here. I don't know now what to do. I can't go back now, never mind why. If John stays here with us, he'll find out things I never want him to know."
"Then all I ever meant to you was a quick and dirty escapade that John couldn't learn about?"
"No. I don't know what I thought. But not that, Nicky. Why do men believe everything follows some rule of their own making? Isn't it possible that things just happen?"
"I still want to know your plans with John Teel."
Without answering, she stood and put a gentle hand to his shoulder, letting her fingers trail affectionately along his neck.
"What if there's no answer now?" she said.
Then Lord help John. But don't expect me to feel sorry for him. I need a drink," Nick said.
* * *
Actually, the night was mild compared to some others. Nick found himself with Cynthia most of the time because John Teel was preoccupied with Lydia Doran. They all had dinner in the tropical dining room. The Latin dance band was too compelling to resist. Nick was relieved that the party had slowed down. After Cynthia's plea for understanding, he was moved to watch her closely and objectively.
Several times he caught her staring at John, who was dancing with Betty or Lydia. Her eyes were speculative. Once her hand turned cold in his. At another time, she looked at Nick as if she could not stand another moment of not being kissed and caressed. Between these pensive moods, she was gay and friendly and sophisticated. For all his close observation, Nick was unable to satisfy himself that he had either won or lost.
By midnight, he decided that time was in his favor. John Teel's dancing was no longer formal. When Sophia leaned her lithe body across the table, nearly spilling her huge breasts out, John looked vulgarly happy. Nor did he shy away from the provocative Betty when she demanded he dance with her. Another few hours with this crowd might turn Cynthia's idealistic fianc' into something less admirable.
The party coasted to a halt by two in the morning. Serge and Tom took a dip in the pool but their splashing and thumping failed to catch on-the merrymakers were tired.
Nick found himself unable to sleep. Cobb, his roommate, was already breathing the deep, happy breath of a weary man.
Nick stopped trying to sleep. With his shirt outside his trousers, he went through the sliding glass door for a quiet smoke in the garden. The night was cool but still humid. He glanced at the cottage where Cynthia and Kate were paired off as he walked among the lush plantings.
John Teel was perched on a low wall at the back of the courtyard. Nick joined him.
"Hello, Harper," John said pleasantly. "Couldn't sleep so I came out for air. You too?"
"Yeah," Nick admitted. "Who you with?"
"Sidney. He snores."
"Looks the type. Nice evening, wasn't it?"
"Tops. The group is charming."
"That's the last adjective I'd use, but they're fun."
John peered through the night at Nick as if to see more deeply. "You're in love with Cynthia, aren't you?" he asked.
"I am. No law against it?"
"Don't be belligerent. Of course there's no law against it. In fact, I'm surprised that every man in the state isn't in love with her."
"Let's limit that to every man she's met." Nick laughed. "Worry you?"
"Not really. I don't think she's in love with me-has never been, actually."
"What am I supposed to say to that?"
"Whatever you like. I was in love with her, but she wasn't in love with me in the same way. I suppose she was impressed and I'm sure she thought she could love me after a time. At any rate, she accepted my ring--which I notice she isn't wearing."
"Did you ask her about the ring?"
"No. Thought I'd wait for her to tell me. I don't think I care any more."
"You sound like a man about to welsh on a poker debt."
John chuckled. "You're smart, Harper."
"You don't love her any more?"
"I didn't say that," Teel pointed out. "If I think of love and marriage, I can't think of anyone but Cynthia."
"You're just not thinking about love and marriage, is that it?"
"Smart," John echoed. "I've discovered a way of life I can't be mad at. Make sense?"
"She might marry someone else-me, maybe, while you're trying to make up your mind. Or do you think this kick she's on will keep her on ice for a time?"
"You think she's on a kick?"
"It looks that way. Have you told her yet what you've just told me?"
"Didn't have a chance. You didn't let go of her all evening."
Nick's thoughts were mirthless. First Cynthia, now John, the ultra respectable. Maybe, Nick mused, he had discovered a new fever, a disease carried by lush microbes named Grace and Betty and Lydia and Sophia. And Cynthia? Who was Nick to claim the disease was deadly?
"I suppose a man ought to get some sleep," he observed.
"I suppose. I don't relish spending the rest of the night with portly Sidney," John said. "We could find another room or two in this hotel."
"Or we could go back to the boat."
"We?" Nick queried.
I'm sorry. I just said it without thinking."
"It's not a bad idea. I'm not big for sharing a room with a man," Nick admitted.
"Let's go back to the yacht," John said with waxing enthusiasm.
Nick agreed. They stepped over the wall together. In a few minutes they were on the pier. Four large yachts were tied up along the dock, all silent. On the stern deck of the Dolphin, a light cast soft rays over the teakwood deck and the neatly arranged chairs.
They said good night and John went down to his stateroom. Nick made his way to the galley amidships and scrounged in the stainless steel and multiple cupboards for something to eat. After a sandwich, he went to his cabin and tumbled into bed. He felt better.
* * *
Before dawn a strong breeze sent surges past the breakwater. Nick awoke to the sound of the Dolphin straining at anchor. He was ungodly thirsty and sticky with the heat. The ornate clock in his stateroom said five-thirty. He parted the drapes over the oval port and saw the pale gray bay. He felt a longing for ice-cold soda water. With no thought of chance spectators, he rolled his bare body out of bed and went for the drink he needed.
He was two steps into the salon before he saw the others, curled together like a pair of spoons. Grace Moray and Serge Reilly. They were asleep and nude, their only covering a deck robe already half lost to the floor. Serge held Grace close. Nick felt a lonely pang of jealousy at the way her head seemed to fit in the curve of Serge's arm.
They looked curiously proper to Nick, he was not sure why. They were two half-boozed people who had wanted to be alone, not merely to play at sex, but to sleep in deep embrace because they liked each other. He backed out of the salon and closed the walnut door. He went to the galley and found some tonic in the refrigerator, which helped his thirst, but not his head.
He had a second shock when he went back to the companionway. Muffled voices and definitely feminine giggles were coming from John Teel's stateroom. With Cynthia foremost in his mind, Nick boldly eavesdropped. But the giggler was a strange woman, at least as far as he could identify the sounds she was making. Not that it mattered, he mused, except as a point of curiosity.
The girl-voice quit giggling and uttered plain words. "Oh, come on, you can too. I'll help you, Johnny."
The voice was the same one that asked what you cared to drink-it belonged to Grace's maid and general bartender. Nick would not have picked her for the socially aware John but John could do his own picking now. He seemed to have come of age.
Nick took a shower, wondering how Cynthia would take the change in her fianc'.
He could not help but feel that Cynthia was undergoing some drastic mental conflict. By her own words, she was torn between illogical loyalty to John and a force within herself.
How great a disappointment would it be for her to lose John Teel? Would she go headlong into the same kind of meaningless existence enjoyed by Lydia or Sophia? On the other hand, she might fall into Nick's arms if he were available.
Sophia had money enough to pay her way. Grace had total economic security. Lydia was a sophisticated whore whose parents could keep her in shoes if not in luxury. What would Cynthia be? A beautiful and predatory version of Lydia, he was sure. She talked about her career as a writer, but Nick doubted that she could make the grade, particularly in her current state of confusion.
She would need help. He intended to be on hand when she sent up her distress signal. He looked into the salon as he passed. Serge was now curled in the lush, protective softness of Grace's body and all of the blanket was on the salon floor. The sight of Grace's familiar contours made Nick's spine tighten.
He proceeded toward the hotel. Could be he had some mental straightening to do himself.
13
THE VIBRATION and roll of the Dolphin told John the yacht was at sea. He checked his watch. He had slept till noon. Four hours had passed since the wild and merciless Tina had slipped out of his arms and gone to her quarters. John sighed in relaxation. Sophia had been savage. Betty had been talented. And Tina had been desperate. Her four-day exposure to all the sensuality of a Grace Moray party had pitched her nerves to a point above highC.
He decided he might not know a hell of a lot about women but he meant to find out more. His worldliness was progressing. He had found a unique pleasure in giving Tina a fifty-dollar bill before she left his stateroom. The act of paying a lovely girl for her services seemed to take John Teel out of the Freshman class. He tried successfully not to think of the coronary his behavior might cause his mother.
What about Cynthia Roberts? John's new confidence sagged. She expected him to be the same John, the sweet and adoring suitor, clamoring for her hand in holy matrimony. How could he tell her that when he stripped her mentally and compared her to Sophia or Tina, she lost some of her sparkle?
He thought of Cynthia as the dear clinging girl, the softly shy and sweetly naive bride. She could never, he decided, come to him with wild eyes and clutching fingers. She would want to undress in the dark and make him work to rid her body of a lacy nightgown. She would, perhaps, weep a little and make him feel self-conscious about his new-found sophistication. He thought of Sophia's brutal kisses and gurgling laughter, of Tina's pure animalism and the wild gymnastics of Betty's double-jointed body.
Groomed and dressed as well as he could manage with his impromptu wardrobe, John went to the salon. The sea was running high enough to make the heavy yacht roll. He checked for Cynthia among the guests on the fantail but did not find her. When he turned, Tina was coming toward him with fresh coffee.
"Good morning, sir," she said formally. "Would you like breakfast now?"
"Yes, thank you." He felt a momentary shame. "Poached eggs and toast will do nicely."
"Three eggs," she said decisively and left.
John reminded himself that she would naturally be discreet She had been paid. He wondered how many other members of the party had sampled the pretty domestic's wares-and how he stacked up with them. When she brought his breakfast, he started to ask her, but she left him too quickly for the question to be completed.
Grace and Nick Harper entered the salon with easy greetings. Grace seemed concerned that some had come back to the yacht to sleep instead of staying on shore.
"What time did you say you came on board?" she asked Nick.
"About two, wasn't it, John?" Nick suggested.
"Yes, about two," John agreed.
Grace sighed. "Sleep good, you two?"
"Never opened my eyes till nine-thirty this morning," the big man answered. "You, John?"
"Woke up an hour ago," John said.
Grace smiled broadly. "Good. We'll be back at the beach tomorrow evening about eight or nine. I imagine Cynthia and that big baby of a Tom will be glad to see the last of the sea. Sidney didn't look too healthy when we went past the breakwater, either."
"I don't think his wife Alice is having much fun," Nick observed.
"The fat and the lean and the wrinkled lose out," Grace said. "Why don't you boys give them a break?'
"Mike can do it," Nick told her. "If his bunk buddy is under the weather, hell have some steam to spare."
"Aren't they disgusting?" Grace remarked with no censure in her voice. "Do they shock you, John?"
John raised his eyebrows. "Am I missing something? I don't know what you're referring to."
"You will," Grace warned him. "Just don't let your zipper slip around either of those beach boys. I don't see how Lydia puts up with them."
"Maternal instinct," Nick said.
After more talk about the beach boys and Lydia, John and Nick were left alone. Grace went to see to her other guests. John liked Nick. He found he felt comfortable with the handsome newsman.
"I suppose I ought to apologize to Sidney for running out on him. He's really a nice fellow."
"Don't bother," Nick replied. "They tell me he snored up a storm till dawn. Sleep okay?"
"Fine, sure."
"I thought you did," the other man remarked. "I went for a cold drink about daylight."
"Went where?"
"Right by your stateroom door."
John's confidence fluttered and fell. "Now see here, old man. I don't want you to think-"
"All I meant is, I now understand what you were trying to say last night."
"I suppose a gentleman would have it out with his fianc', wouldn't he?"
"You don't believe that. If you do, forget it. Women have secrets just as men do. We're all allowed to keep some things to ourselves."
John tried to read Nick's eyes with no success. Was the man trying to be destructive?
T must be an idiot," John exclaimed bitterly.
"No, John. But don't sell other people short. Nor yourself. If you're looking for an excuse not to marry Cynthia, go down and tell her what you've decided. I'll be happy to marry her on the rebound, or any other way I can get her."
"You think I'm a jerk, don't you?"
"No, I don't. I think you're hogging an inside track and I'd like to derail you any way I can."
* * *
Ten minutes on the afterdeck made John sick of himself. He had prided himself on his responsibility. Watching Lydia, he felt guilty. He turned and went below to the door of Cynthia's stateroom, where he paused and rehearsed some not very logical words.
How did one tell a girl like Cynthia that he no longer wanted to marry her? Could he say he had learned that he was actually a stinker? For years he had played a game he no longer believed in. The worst she could do was weep and accuse him of being a beast. He knocked on her door.
"Come in," he heard her summon him.
After one step inside, he was not sure what he wanted. Cynthia was lying in bed, her shoulders propped with two fat pillows. She wore a white satin bedjacket. Her blonde disordered hair gave her pale face a golden background. For the first time he saw her bold, melon-shaped breasts unconfined by a garment meant for public view.
She enthused, "I was just thinking of you. I'm sorry this darn old boat makes me sick. Not very much company, am I? But I feel better. Grace gave me some pills. I'm sure I'll be fine before long. Having any fun?"
John patted her hand. "To tell you the truth, yes."
"Wonderful. Would you mind kissing me to raise my spirits?"
John leaned over her and, for a heady moment, the warm womanly smell rising from her breasts mixed with the scent of her hair and he reveled in her sweetness. Her mouth touched his. He forgot to close his lips. He was surprised by the quick clasp of her right hand around his neck. Her tongue tip moved forward and pushed boldly. She turned so that he had to perch on the edge of her bed to complete the burning kiss. The demand of her arms caused him to twist and, before he realized it, his weight was pressing upon her, his own lips working to hers in passionate eagerness.
When he dropped his hand, more to brace himself than to explore, he realized that beneath the bedjacket was nothing but warm flesh. She did not flinch when his fingers roamed to the swell of her hip.
"That's what I needed," she breathed into his lass. "Oh, Johnny, kiss me again and again and again."
Her bedjacket fell open under his chest. Fleetingly he remembered a billiard rule about keeping both feet on the floor, before he tore up all the rules and turned over on her body. His weight seemed to make her stronger rather than to crush her. She worked one leg from under the covers and curled it over his back. He felt her heel snuggle into him. He held her more roughly. She did not protest. Her gasp was not one of complaint. He sensed the roll of her abdomen as his body exulted beyond control.
"Cynthia," he told her, "you're wonderful."
Her laughter was from deep within. "I thought you were so innocent. Oh, Johnny, lock the door."
When he stood up, the full impact of her abandonment hit him. She lay back on the bed, more than half of her body fully exposed, one leg drawn up, her breasts bare, their pink tips seemingly ready to burst into blossom.
He stumbled to the door and set the lock.
When he turned back, she was naked and lifting her arms to him. He went to her blindly and took her.
She was not like the other women. She was Cynthia. She was special. Again and again he dipped into the carnal paradise of her body.
At last she had had enough and so had he.
* * *
One of his first sensible thoughts when she finally let him rest was that Nick Harper had known what was going to happen. John heard Cynthia's soft breathing and tried to orient what had happened so swiftly and delightfully with the things he had known a week ago. Nothing jelled.
He hardly knew the woman beside him-yet there was no secret of her body that was hidden from him now. She had led him like a novice through adventure after adventure and the words for what she had made him do to her were beyond his ability to speak. Suddenly he laughed.
"What's funny, Johnny?" she asked, snuggling closer to him.
"Me," he admitted. "I came down here to tell you I don't want to get married. Will you marry me anyway, Cynthia?"
"No, John. But I still think you're a fine man-and a heck of a lot better lover than some."
"You've had others?"
"Yes, Johnny."
"Why are you turning me down?"
"Because I'm in love with someone else, Johnny."
"Nick Harper?"
She did not answer directly. "Why do you want to marry me, Johnny? I mean, I'm not the virginal girl you thought."
"That's why," he had to admit.
"I'm better than Sophia or Betty?"
"And Tina," he said with unaccountable boldness.
"We've suddenly grown up, haven't we?"
"My mother would die," he said irrelevantly.
"So would I have-a month ago."
"I don't suppose there is any use asking what happened to the innocent, wide-eyed girl I used to know?"
"The same thing that happened to a certain man I know."
"No," John contradicted her. "I know what happened to me. I just came to the end of a road and there was a passionate woman waiting for me."
"I took a detour," she said soberly after some thought. "I was coming back to the road, Johnny. I still mean to come back."
"But not with me."
"Johnny, I'm not right for you. I mean that. Right now you're happy with me and what we had together. But as years passed, I think you would start to despise me. Whatever else I am, I've proved one thing to myself-in your sense of the word, I don't have class."
He tried to protest. She stopped him with an order.
"You'd better get out of here, Teel, while I can let you go"
Perplexed but not unhappy, John did as she told him.
Lydia Doran was a dozen feet away and heading for the salon when he closed Cynthia's door behind him. John had the distinct feeling that she had been listening at the door. At the foot of the steps to the salon, Lydia turned and faced him. She was a child and John knew it. But her behavior had a certain forlorn abandonment that made him blue without knowing why.
She stood with her pushy little breasts cleanly outlined by her jersey shirt, her slim rounded hips a tantalizing shape in the white duck capris. She was not as pretty as Cynthia, nor as fleshy as Grace Moray, but the tilt of her head was adult, even with her ponytail. He walked toward her and she waited.
"You're a little snoop," he said, smiling to soften the words.
"Give her to Nicky," Lydia said.
"Nick seems able to speak for himself."
"Nick is a big collie dog," she said positively. "You don't need her anyway."
"How do you know what I need, young lady?"
"Come off it, grandpa. I was born forty years older than you. I say give her to Nick."
"Why?"
"She's a wild one, that's why. Nick can handle her. You never could. You need a woman who can make decisions."
"Where does one find that sort of marvel?"
"One puts one's hand out and lays the palm, with slightly curved fingers, over the nearest female belly, that's what one does."
"With a bit more sophistication than you credit me with, I could have been your father," John said.
"Okay, be my father," she said, taking another step toward him. "Be something to me, John Teel."
"You disturb me," he said with dignity.
"You've disturbed me for three damn days. Don't you think that after these muscle-happy morons, a girl knows a man when she sees one?"
John wilted. "You think I'm something special?"
She glanced past him at the companionway, and specifically at Cynthia's door. "I don't expect you to have much steam left but I'm willing to sit down and talk. U you're interested in true confessions, that is."
"You're direct, to say the least."
She pushed him toward his stateroom door. "I told you-you need a woman who can make decisions. I drink, too. Got a bottle in your cell?"
"No."
"That's okay. We can use the intercom and order one from the bar. Hey, you're nice." John grinned happily.
14
WHEN HE LEFT the Dolphin, Nick felt like an immigrant landing on a strange shore. He had no feeling either for the yacht, the dock, nor for himself. He tried to show some enthusiasm as the group made their goodbyes.
John Teel and Lydia seemed enthralled with each other, he noticed. But he was too numb to care. He gave Grace and Serge Reilly the same unconscious attention. None of the others interested him except Cynthia. Wan and shaky from her final four hours on the Dolphin, Cynthia allowed him to escort her to her cottage. She was quiet, thoughtful and uncommunicative. By the time Nick walked through the night to his own cottage, he was lonelier than he remembered ever being before.
He felt worse in the morning. Halfway through breakfast in the grill, he decided he had had enough of this beach and its false sensual excitement. He felt drugged by the heat and could find nothing attractive in the luxury about him.
But when he tried to think of a new place, a fresh vista, Cynthia, a golden specter, seemed to hold him back.
He tried twice to pack-and twice he emptied his bag and threw shirts and socks and underwear back into dresser drawers. He was hooked. Until Cynthia said yes or no with conviction, he would have to keep trying. He was sure that, unless she was forced to make a decision, she would never escape the lust and abandonment of the beach.
He still could not believe that she wanted to be what she seemed-a wanton.
He had hlced John Teel. But John lacked the experience and strength that Cynthia now needed. John could offer wealth, security and a marital serenity which would be of no real help to the confused girl. John was a child about women, though he had grown up superficially during the last day or so. Cynthia needed a man. Most of alL she needed to be jerked away from the dissolute whirl of her immediate surroundings.
As he headed for Cynthia's cottage, he nursed an inner fear of Cynthia's ability to hold him off, proffer excuses and delay the decision he wanted. She had been as elusive as a wet eel, even though at times he had felt she was entirely his. Was she playing some monstrous game with him as well as herself? Hell, was he even being a man as far as she was concerned?
He reached a sudden conclusion and, before reaching her door, reversed his route.
A plan formed in his mind.
He headed for the sands.
He spotted what he wanted near the boardwalk. Her name turned out to be Helen. Within an hour, Nick had charmed her nineteen-year-old mind into a turmoil. Helen was sleek as a seal, pretty as a picture and greener than grass. Nick meant her no harm whatever. Instead he gave her a tour of the beach and an evening of dining and dancing.
By midnight when he returned the starry-eyed girl to her room, he was satisfied. Cynthia had seen them dancing and laughing.
He found another girl at breakfast the following morning. Her name was Angeline, she wore horn-rimmed glasses, a forty brassiere and a studious attitude. Nick picked a place fully a hundred feet from Cynthia's beach pad and was gratified to learn that Angeline's real academic interest was in the male anatomy.
Under other circumstances, he would have been embarrassed by the girl's taste for unrestrained petting on the sand. But now he was glad to let Cynthia watch until : she finally stomped off to her own cottage. He had trouble getting rid of the eager Angeline, but the success j of his two-day campaign made the extra effort worth while.
By making a few telephone calls the next day he was able to anticipate Cynthia's plans. Either Grace or Cobb ; had a reasonable idea of where Cynthia planned to spend the day and the evening.
Nick and a willowy brunette named Vera managed to show up at a dine-and-dance spot twenty miles from the beach. The looks Cynthia gave them both were alternately hot and cold, mostly cold. Nick drank too much, laughed too loudly and danced until his feet hurt. He did ; not avoid Cynthia and managed to be drunkenly gallant. But after he paid her a wild compliment, he walked off and left her group with no seeming concern.
The single flaw in his plan was provided by John Teel. Nick had assumed that John had cooled in his ardor for j Cynthia. Yet John was invariably her escort whenever Nick managed to waltz his latest companion across her horizon.
After five days of playing the flitting Romeo, Nick called Grace again.
"I hate phones," she said. "Come on over and I'll buy you a drink, Nicky. Anyway, I've a problem of my own j and I need a man's advice. Okay?"
Nick agreed.
When she met him at the door of her sprawling house, ; he saw an unfamiliar furrow of concern on her brow.
"You're pregnant," he laughed, placing his arm around her shoulders. She smelled of good perfume. He had almost forgotten how hard her sexiness could hit him.
"Nut. Where have you been for a week? They tell me you've been raking the sand for goodies. You're the talk of the beach."
"Well, dammit, I came down here for a ball and I'm having it."
"Sure, Nicky." Grace pushed him toward a deeply upholstered chair and made finger signs at Tina. "Well, it's working, slightly."
"What's working?"
"Come on, boy. This is Grade. Cynthia's burning down."
"Yeah, with John Teel lighting both ends of her candle."
"They're still sort of engaged. At least, she's gone back to wearing his ring. I happen to have a little different angle on her situation, however."
"Like?"
Grace swung to a seat beside him. Her smooth thighs in gold lame capris made a pretty series of curves as she crossed her ankles. She put her hand on his shoulder and fiddled with the hair at the nape of his neck, not provocatively but with the familiarity of an old lover.
"Your sweet little Cynthia has a problem. Several, in fact. Let's see. First she was engaged to Johnny. Then you proposed. Then Cobb went for her. Even Serge was slightly off his trolley over her. She had everything going her way, and I mean going. Things have changed, Nicky."
Nick interlaced his big fingers and tried not to be eager. He twirled thumbs nervously before he realized he was telegraphing his emotions. "Okay. I'm listening."
"She thinks you gave up on her, for the first thing. She popped out with John's diamond three days after we came back from the cruise. But that was because John was bedridden with a disease called Lydia. Sure, Cynthia finagled John into taking her to dinner and around, but he always smelled like Lydia's perfume. Then she tried Cobb again and ran smack into Betty's well-staked claim. I think she's lonesome and scared. She's trying to convince herself and John that they still have something going."
"Well," Nick murmured.
"Well, hell. She's hurting."
"There was always Serge, wasn't there?"
Grace winced. Nick looked at her in surprise and thought about the scene he had witnessed in the salon of the Dolphin. At the time, Grace's nap with Serge had seemed like what she might do with any man who currently attracted her.
"What do you know?" he commented. "You have a tender passion."
Grace nodded. "Sickening, isn't it? Racy Gracie, stopped by a stone wall. What can I do, Nicky?"
"What's the problem? You're over twenty-one."
"Oh boy," she muttered. "Little you know of problems."
"Number one?"
"Serge himself. I don't know a damned thing about him, Nicky. No one really does. When he's mad, he looks like a gangster. When he's happy, he hurts girls where it counts. He's been down here a month and I've never known him to make a pass at any woman who didn't have a big bank account-except Cynthia, and she's enough to shake even the most ardent fortune hunter. I don't know where he comes from or what he does for the money he spends. All I know is that I'm hooked for the big fink."
"Wedding-bells hooked?"
She sighed. "If that's what it takes. I vowed never to do it again after my last husband. That's problem number two. Me."
"Has he proposed yet?"
"He never will, I think."
"Why not, if he's as much in love with you as you say you are with him?"
"That's why I wanted to talk to you. What kind of a man do you think Serge is, Nicky? I mean, male-wise."
"He struck me as a selfish, conceited rapo whose fascination with himself revolved around his ability to make a woman yell," Nick said brutally. "Not much of a recommendation, huh?"
"Fits most men." She laughed. "Third problem. Nicky, I've got a lot of money. More than most people guess. I could marry you and never miss a minute's sleep worrying about being taken. For some reason, I'm scared of Serge. On the other hand, he never gave me much of a tumble until the yacht trip. I keep telling myself that if he were a fortune hunter, he would have been on me like rain from the first day Cobb brought him around and introduced him. When I'm with Serge, I don't care. I only care in the early morning hours."
"So what do you want from me, honey?" Nick asked gently.
"You've got a lot of connections in New York. Can you have him checked out, Nicky?"
Nick frowned. "Yes, I can," he replied. "But I'm not going to do it."
"Why not?"
Nick laughed, mostly at himself. "If I can be in love with Cynthia, knowing what we both know about her over the past few weeks, you can afford to be in love with Serge Reilly, no matter what his background or intentions are. Besides, you can hire better detectives."
"Whose side are you on-his or mine?"
"His, maybe. If I learned one thing from Cynthia, it's not to jump to romantic conclusions-and not to judge people by the people they go to bed with. Any more questions?"
"Yes. What are you going to do about Cynthia?"
"The same thing you're going to do about Serge. Wait and see. Meanwhile, I believe I'll get drunk."
He stopped at four bars. By the time he reached the hotel, he had a new sour viewpoint and a twenty-dollar cab bill. He was Nick Harper, successful news journalist. He had the ability to think for himself and the inner dignity to stand his ground against all comers, including a wisp of a blonde.
Why had he been wrong from the start? Four years ago he had been hit between the eyes by a sweet young innocent with cornflower blue eyes. That girl was dead. Now he had made a fool of himself over a bold-breasted nympho who wept for herself against a man's chest and at the same time planned to go to bed with the first oversexed stud she could find.
The least he could do, he decided, was to tell her off.
Instinct alone wobbled him through the hotel lobby and out onto the flagstone walk that ran the length of the beach cottages. The sun hurt his eyes and the heat beat down on his muddled head, but nothing would relax his jaw.
Once and for all, he told himself. Now or drop dead.
He almost entered the wrong cottage before he staggered down to Cynthia's door.
Bust in and give it to her good, he thought.
The knob turned under his hand but the door was locked. He hesitated, swaying slightly, trying to hear some sound from within. A muffled noise, real or imagined, made Nick back off and brace himself. He launched his two hundred pounds at the wooden panel.
The door popped and swung open like a gun, skidding
Nick halfway into the room. On hands and knees, he stared and came cold sober in a split second. Tangled in obscene lust, Tom and Mike were frozen in mutual caress, their nudity gleaming with perspiration. The drapes were closed, but the light from the overhead fixture cast revealing rays on their homosexuality. Sitting at the desk to Nick's right was Cynthia. She was fully dressed, a mere interested observer. She held a pencil in her right hand. Nick thought she was sketching until he saw that the pencil was poised above a shorthand pad.
The two beach boys scrambled apart A cry of despair escaped Cynthia's lips. Nick took a long step and swung his right palm hard across her face. The crack was pistol sharp. Cynthia was knocked into a limp, whimpering huddle. Nick stalked out of the cottage, leaving the door open behind him.
He felt sick to his stomach.
15
SERGE REILLY counted his money and set aside seven hundred dollars. The amount of his hotel bill. He had muffed. Blew the whole bundle and had only a good tan and a psychic bellyache to show for it. He no longer had time or money enough left to work a quick deal with one of the fat she-gorillas on the beach. He cursed his own stupidity and thought about Grace Moray.
She was exactly the kind of prize he had come to the beach for, a rich, good-looking widow with an itch that he could handle. She was everything he had set his sights on. He had been shooting high for a shoe clerk. He flexed his back, testing the sore place that was the residue of his original good luck. He grinned at his own forlorn image in the hotel-room mirror.
The florist's truck had hit him like a champion's tee-off. A month in a cast had given him time to think about the fat settlement he was sure to get-also time enough for a dozen man-hungry nurses to convince him that he could have feminine attention for the asking.
His lawyer had nicked him for a third of the eighteen-thousand-dollar settlement. But to a shoe clerk used to eighty dollars a week, twelve thousand dollars had looked like the springboard to riches. Ten weeks at the resort had reduced the twelve to one. Serge minded the Joss less than he minded what had happened to himself. He could have played as happily at Coney Island for a tenth of the fee which this hunting trip had cost. And he would not have wound up with the knot in his belly about Grace Moray.
Dressing for cocktails tonight with Grace was like tying on his own blindfold before a firing squad. She would be sure to want dinner at an expensive place and he would wind up in the morning with little more than bus fare back to New York. There he could apply for a job as an experienced shoe clerk, dressed in a two-hundred-dollar suit and fifty-dollar Swiss shoes, with a rock in his guts because he had fallen in love with Grace Moray and was not man enough to tell her what kind of a jerk he was.
He cursed hurricanes in general and John Teel in addition. If John had not insisted on following Cynthia, and the hurricane had blown up like it was supposed to, the cruise would have never occurred. Up to that fatal evening, he had thought of Grace as a rich bitch with a taste for every land of sex except the legal variety.
Worse than the way he felt about her was the way he thought she felt about him. They had come together like two tons of mush and among the other buttons her crazy fingers had pushed had been one he never had known existed. Love, he thought, was like malaria. Anyone could catch it.
The burr of the room phone annoyed him. He picked up the receiver and provided the cultured voice he thought would be expected. He listened to Cynthia's plaintive wails.
"All right. Come on up, Cyn. But I've got a date at five-thirty so don't be angry if I rush you."
He frowned at himself as he tied his tie. He had wasted a week and several hundred dollars on Cynthia Roberts. She had been great for kicks, but an idiot could have guessed that she was gone about Nick Harper. She was, Serge thought, a thorough-going kook, and a crying kook was more than he had patience to endure-particularly on the last night he could spend with Grace.
* * *
Serge looked at the wilted, imploring Cynthia in disbelief. "How the hell would I know where to look for Nick? If he isn't in his cottage or the bar or on the grounds, where would I look?"
"Grace's? I called Cobb's room and he's out. I think he and Betty went to town. Oh, Serge, I've just got to find Nick before he does something foolish."
"Why would he do something foolish? And what do you care? That's Johnny's ring you're wearing, in case you've forgotten."
"Serge, I love Nick Harper," she said.
"After you tried me and Cobb and all the rest of the men on the beach, is that why you're ready to love him? How high a hurdle do you expect a man to leap? How damned much woman do you think you are and what set him off this afternoon, if I may ask?"
The story Cynthia poured out was fascinating-only her extreme earnestness permitted him to believe what she said. When she described the scene Nick had burst in upon, he controlled a shudder of sympathy for Nick.
"Whatever else I've done, no matter how rotten it was, could be given a name. But watching Mike and Tom-how must it have looked to Nick?"
"You'll never know," Serge said. He put on his jacket and stood for a moment with his hand on Cynthia's shoulder. He thought he understood her at last. He suggested, "The thing for you to do is gather all your evidence and go to Nick's cottage. If he isn't there, sit tight and wait Meantime, Grace and I can look for Nick. She knows every inch of this area."
"Please don't tell her what I've told you."
Serge hesitated. "I think I'm going to tell her, Cynthia. I have a confession of my own. Someone else's troubles may make mine easier to understand. Beat it now and keep your fingers crossed."
She wrestled the big diamond from her ring finger. "Will you give this to John if you see him, Serge?"
"Send it to him. Put it in an envelope and have the bellhop take it to Lydia Doran's room."
"You're cruel, aren't you, Serge?"
He grinned. "So they say. Cruelty is part of my charm."
* * *
Serge knew every arch and cornice of Grace's house. Her image had been in his mind every waking moment since the cruise. But when Grace floated out to meet him, Serge had the feeling that he was witnessing the birth of everything beautiful and fresh in the world. He also knew from the informality of her lounging pajamas that they were not going out for drinks. When she melted into his embrace every nerve in his body screamed for want of her.
"Hi, man," Grace murmured, placing her head to his chest.
"Hi, woman," he returned. "Done any dreaming lately?"
"Some. They get dirty toward the end and I always wake up too soon. I must eat more oysters. Care if we don't go out tonight?"
"Tires flat on the Mercedes?"
"I have a guest. Nick Harper. Drunk. Heartbroken. Soaking in my bathtub."
"Do tell," Serge said to a fleeting vision of Cynthia. "Love can be a very painful thing," Grace observed.
"Buy me a drink and I'll tell you just how painful it can be. If you don't already know."
He dropped to a broad divan while she went to make them a pair of drinks. Tina, he supposed, would be minding Nick. Cynthia, he supposed again, would be curled up on Nick's cottage bed, crying one tenth as hard as she deserved to cry. Serge wished he could cry too. For the first time in many weeks, he was at a loss for words.
'I'd like to jerk Cynthia's hairs out one by one," Grace said as she brought the drinks. "Nick doesn't deserve the beating she's been giving him. Damned few men really love a woman and if she finds one who does, she shouldn't tease."
"A shame," Serge told her.
"Love is lousy. Here's to love," Grace said.
He stopped wanting to tell her anything. He alone knew that this was the last time they could be together. She lay against his arm, her warmth and softness hurting him as though she were already a memory. Her pajamas twisted to the shape of her big breasts. She rolled to meet his lass.
They had started their love on a physical basis. The need for coy beginnings was long past. As his hand went under her short jacket, smoothing the silk of her back, she tugged at his clothing with more than casual intent. Almost instantly, his mood of hopelessness vanished and Serge was afire with desire.
She raised herself enough to let her breasts swing on his chest. "Let's don't high-school it, darling," she murmured. "Come into my parlor, pretty fly, and let mama spider kick her eight long legs."
They walked to her bedroom. The journey was painful to Serge. Better if he could have slapped her bottom and roughly told her what he would do to her. The roughness would have contained and soothed his sorrow. But their progression was a lilting, gentle thing. They relished the anticipation almost as they would the consummation.
She was quicker than he to disrobe. When he turned, Grace was sitting on the edge of the king-sized bed, her arms hugging her breasts.
Her hands reached out to sandwich his lean hips. She wanted to kiss him-intimately. He stared down at her softly bowed back and knew his power over her emotions. With a short cry of affection, he gathered her up and touched her quivering lips with his. They tumbled over the bed in furious embrace.
He had learned trickery from a dozen women. He was ware of Grace's adept maneuvering. They were lost in a murmur of rubbing flesh and hasty breath.
Suddenly fear of tomorrow penetrated his desire. He tried to hold back his fury. This episode had to be the rest, the most soul-wrenching, body-hurting encounter they had ever known because it would be the last Tonight he was Serge Reilly, the handsome, rich and accomplished lover. To let the shoe clerk intrude into this last lovely moment was unthinkable, and Serge played the glorious woman in his arms like a fine violin.
Less esthetic delights began to assert themselves. She nibbled at his lips, biting, caressing with her tongue. He began to inhale the scent of love, and the flesh under his fingers pulsated with response.
They turned. Her out-flung leg straightened. With his sharply inhaled breath, he caught stray tendrils of her hair. He began to lose his determination as a new, driving, demanding strength surged from his taut back. All thought faded as the growing apex of sensation speeded his thrusts.
"If I die now, I don't care," Grace whispered. "Don't die-because I can't stop loving you." For a bare moment, she seemed to arch away from the bed. He looked through purple and scarlet, half-blinded by the last of his animal instinct. When he could see again, she was a soft, unstriving shape under him and he was a heavy, immobile weight crushing her into the bed.
Suddenly he smelled new leather and the scent of shoe dressing. He left her, stood up.
"You're crying," Grace exclaimed. "Oh, darling, was it that wonderful for you, too?"
Serge looked down at her. "It was probably the worst instant I shall ever spend in my whole damned life."
She sat up hastily. "Explain that," she said without inflection. He explained, reaching for his drink. She started to laugh. Serge felt as if she had thrust a hot iron through his groin. He clutched the glass in his fist, hating himself for having told her about the few dollars he had left to get back to peddling shoes. He hated the beauty of her, rolling and bouncing on the bed as the throes of merriment stung him with littleness.
He walked forward, nude, male and angry beyond reason. He had told her, which was a hard thing for a man to do. She was laughing at him, which was a cruel thing for a rich, beautiful woman to do. With sudden fury, he poured his cold drink on her convulsing belly. Her startled scramble, the gasp of shock, made him superior again.
"Serge. Oh, you silly darling." She dabbed at her wet flesh with her palm. "I'm not laughing at you. I'm laughing at me. Don't you know anything about women at all?"
"I didn't have the laugh track coming," he growled. "I had no intention of being a funny man when I told you I loved you."
Grace rolled off the bed and came to her feet. "Snook," she said plainly. "Up to ten minutes ago I wouldn't have had you with wreaths and bells. I had you figured as a fortune hunter with the hindquarters of a horse and the guile of a wiggly snake. I thought you had me figured for a diamond-studded pork chop. I was wrong-I was laughing at a dream come true. Care to try for a new category, shoe clerk?"
"Grace, don't play with me," Serge warned.
"Who's playing? I have three houses, a yacht, four hundred acres of oranges and more money in the bank than I've gotten around to counting. If you like, I'll live on what you can make selling shoes, if you're that kind of a hard-head. What the hell else do you want, an affidavit?"
He was not going to lose her. He said her name joyously.
She flicked her hand across his groin. "Later, darling. Let's get Nick sobered up so he can go home. Naked men in my bathroom make me nervous."
16
NICK SNAPPED his checkbook shut, crammed the cashier's receipt into his jacket pocket and headed for the bell captain's cubicle.
"I'm checking out," he told the attendant. "I'll call when I need a hand with my bags."
He tried to ignore the later-than-midnight crowd filtering from the hotel ballroom. Their laughter cut him like a knife. Everybody else in the world seemed happy, he thought. He saw Grace and Serge, giggling and simpering as if they alone had discovered love. Cobb and Betty deserved each other and seemed to know it. John Teel had discovered women.
Nick's disgust with the world accorded perfectly with the slight remaining liquor-sickness in his guts. He had no idea where he would go at one in the morning, but he knew he had to get away from Cynthia Roberts and the poison she represented. He could forget her as he had forgotten a few others.
He snapped on the overhead light inside his cottage and looked at the girl-shape in his bed. The shape was familiar. No other woman in the world had exactly that hip curve or flowing blonde hair. Cynthia was asleep.
Nick allowed himself one bitter minute during which he stood and hated her. Right up to the last, he thought, she was still playing her game of kiss and kill. He thought about picking her up and hurling her out before she could awake and turn his courage to butter. His nose tingled with the scent of her perfume. Her clothes, neatly spread over a chair, showed some slightest memory of the forms they had enclosed.
Nick saw her open case, one he had seen in her cottage a dozen times. He had always assumed it was a make-up kit. But the interior of the case looked about as feminine as a file in a city clerk's office. Nick frowned and stepped forward. Had she left it open on purpose for him to see?
He noticed a bundle of pencils of various length, some sharp, some dull, nestling between two stacks of shorthand pads. He saw the notation on one of the covers. "T and M, Homo."
Ten years had passed since Nick had used his reporter's knowledge of Gregg. But when he flipped the cover back, the knowledge returned.
"There's one on you toward the bottom," Cynthia's voice came from behind him. "In fact, you're in many of my notes, Nicky. Every time you took a flyer with Lydia or Betty or that fat slob of a Kate."
"I missed Kate," he said, turning to face her.
She was leaning on one elbow in a way that made her breasts roll under her bed jacket. She smoothed her hair back and rubbed her eyes.
"So you missed Kate," she agreed. "Anyway, most of the material is about me, Nicky. Me, six men and the women who make this beach the most glamorous gutter in the world. It's all there, down to what men say when they want you, when they have you and when they want you to leave so they can try the next in line. Grace's story is there and so is Sophia's. In fact, the story of everybody I've met at the beach is there-except mine. Would you care to hear mine, Nicky, before you throw me out?"
"Talk," he said.
She moved from his bed, sat cross-legged on the floor, her fingers shuffling through the two dozen shorthand pads. She talked.
"I told you, baby. I want to be a writer. My publisher friend puts out a pretty scary mag. He told me he'd give me top preference on a series of articles on resort sex and the kind of people who pay fabulous fees for it. The chance to byline a successful series was more than I could pass up. Only I didn't know sex from syntax."
Nick leaned forward. "You went out of your mind just to get a few accurate notes on sex?"
"Writers have gone to jail to write about convicts."
That's different. They were other people. You're Cynthia."
Cynthia tossed the pads aside and climbed to his lap. He held her, but not with the crushing strength he felt rising in him. Her arm was lazy on his shoulder. Her face was pensive. Nick felt himself going under.
"I went too far, didn't I, Nicky? But that was your fault, darling."
"My fault?"
She nodded. "I came to the beach with a big dream under my pillow. I didn't know how to begin until you showed up. Then a dream I'd almost forgotten came back to haunt me."
"But I told you I loved you," Nick protested. "I asked you to marry me, Cynthia. You treated our love like it was part of a dirty imported movie, with fights and grips and cameras."
"Silly," she murmured, kissing him, "you were on vacation. I was working. I told myself that if you were sophisticated enough for Grace or the other girls on the beach who seemed so damned happy to see you, you'd be understanding enough to see it through with me."
"You sure ask a hell of a lot from a man."
"I ask a lot more from myself, Nicky. I wasn't sure I could go through with the assignment. And when John showed up from New York, I realized what I'd done. I'd risked your love and become the kind of a woman he could never understand."
"Did you love John?" Nick asked.
She snuggled against him. "Some. But not like I love you, Nicky. I felt responsible for Johnny. He was such a dear, innocent guy, until he came on the Dolphin. Now I know he can find whatever happiness he deserves without me." She giggled. "Boy, he learns fast"
Nick took a deep breath for the question he had to ask. "Do you honestly think you can give up all the new excitements, now that your notes are complete?"
Her lips, soft and parted, were only a lass away from his. "Of course I can't give them up, Nicky. But I picked me a man who knows them all and if either of us need new excitements, I think we can invent them together. Okay?"
