When Ramona, a shy, naive young woman, inherited a "haunted" house from her long-lost uncle she didn't believe in the supernatural. However, one night as she lay in her bed she awoke to the feel of cold, clammy hands fondling her soft, tender skin . . . And then . . . Through the haze of pain the willowy brunette knew that no ethereal wraith had mauled her so. The determined girl set out to unearth the mystery that shrouded the house in an enveloping fog. Or would she endure the eternal agony of the damned for her curiosity?
Chapter One
"Really, Mister Saumont!" Ramona protested, her proud breasts jiggling indignantly as she resisted his embrace.
"You want the job, don't you?" he asked with a smile, his hands straying up and down the length of her arms. "Deanna tells me you work in a crummy hash house down near Macy's. You don't look like the type of girl who wants to hide her treasures behind the greasy counter of a hamburger stand."
The girl regarded him petulantly. She didn't like the way his eyes roamed over her body so freely or the intimacy of his stroke on her bare arms. The mischievous glint in his dark blue eyes told her she would have to play his game if she really wanted to get the hostess position in his club.
"You must realize," he said huskily, drawing her closer and crushing the firm yet resilient rondules of her breasts into his chest, "there are plenty of other lovely female bodies to grace Exotic Eden. If I can't even properly interview you to determine what you have to offer, I'm wasting my time, and you'd better run on back to your greasy spoon."
Deanna had said it would be so easy! Ramona thought frantically. Fine roommate she'd turned out to be! She hadn't told Ramona what the interview would be like; she'd just said Mister Saumont was a pleasant, good-looking fellow and she thought Ramona would like him.
Ramona began to wonder if the job would really be worth it. Should she keep working in that hot grill room and fending off the passes of truck drivers, cabbies, and janitors, or should she risk her reputation by putting herself in line for passes from wealthy businessmen, lawyers, and cosmopolitan playboys of the jet set? She couldn't see much difference, morally. Besides, her parents weren't here to worry about her reputation. She'd been orphaned at eighteen when both of them had died in a plane crash, and since she was an only-child and neither of the parents had any other living relatives, Ramona was on her own now. It was her life to do with as she saw fit, so ... at least there'd be good pay and the chance to meet more interesting and more affluent people in Exotic Eden, a private men's club.
"Well," Saumont murmured, still holding her insistently, "make up your mind. What will it be-your honor and that two-bit hash stand, or beautiful clothes and wealthy men to pet you?"
His hands were boldly tracing the outline of her opulent breasts and feeling the indentation of her tiny waist through the silk jersey of her dress. She squirmed as his palms cupped the firm checks of her buttocks, then one hand strayed across her nearly flat belly and wavered hesitantly above her crotch.
"Please!" she protested again.
"Please what?" he queried. "Do you or don't you want something better than that lousy-smelling hash house?"
"I . . . I . . ." she stammered uncomfortably as his hands continued to explore her contours.
"All right, Miss Jahn," he told her, dropping his hands. "You're wasting my valuable time. You'd better go now."
She regarded him thoughtfully as he returned to the papers on his desk and began studying them.
He wasn't a tall man, not more than five-foot-eight, but every inch was solid muscle. She'd felt the rocklike hardness of his thighs through his tailored slacks and she could see his powerful arms, their solid biceps, bulging beneath his short-sleeved white shirt. The shirt was open down the front, partly revealing the curly blond hair of his chest. To her, he was built like a Neanderthal. However, she thought his other features quite handsome-almost perfect-except that his skin was too pale due to his fairness and the long weeks of spring, when he was too busy to be on the slopes at Aspen or Stowe. She gazed pensively at his thick golden hair and deep blue eyes, the slightly upturned nose that lent him a boyishly light-hearted air, the little laugh lines that etched the corners of his mouth and crinkled his eyes, giving him the young-but-wise appearance of an experienced playboy.
It couldn't be that hard to allow him to finish the interview, she thought. She hadn't had much money since she was eighteen, once all the bills and funeral costs had been paid, even after the lawyer had sold her family home in Delaware. But it wasn't worth thinking about. Without an education beyond high school, there wasn't much she could do except . . . Her father had told her she'd never have to let any man use her body in return for favors or material gifts, but that had been when he was alive and able to look after her. She was twenty now and had to make it on her own, and she desperately wanted to have a few good things to call her own before she settled for marriage with some rough-talking truck driver-for lack of opportunity to do any better-and spend the rest of her days and nights wondering if and when he'd be coming home to her.
"Mister Saumont?" she quavered, trembling so she had to bite her lip to keep it from quivering.
"Hmmmm?" he looked up with a bored air. "Oh, I thought you'd gone, Miss Jahn."
"I ... I'm sorry for behaving so childishly, sir," she began haltingly.
Saumont shrugged his shoulders impatiently and settled himself on a corner of his desk, swinging one leg over the front of it and planting the other squarely on the plush blue carpet.
"Th . . . that is," she hesitated in an effort to stop stuttering, "I . . . Mister Saumont, what do you want me to do?"
The young man surveyed her briefly. She wasn't much shorter than he. Her figure was slender and willowy, with amazingly full breasts, slim hips and thighs, and that tiny waist. He really wanted to get a look at her naked.
"You want to finish the interview?" he asked curtly.
She nodded, still trembling.
"Well, then, take off your clothes."
Ramona looked at him, stunned.
"Go on, strip, honey. I can't hire you without looking you over." He rose from the desk and approached her. "Otherwise, get out and stop wasting my time."
"Are . . . are you always so gruff?" she tremored.
"Gruff? Me?" he laughed. "No, Miss Jahn. I just haven't interviewed many girls who've hesitated the way you have. Most of them can't wait to show off what they've got."
"Oh," she replied in a small voice.
"Well ..'.?" he demanded, waiting.
Ramona looked at him. She still had some doubts, but then the glint of his onyx and diamond rings caught her eyes, and she thought perhaps she'd earn enough to have one of those someday if she was a good hostess.
Slowly she unfastened the hooks at the nape of her neck. Then the ominous sound of her rasping zipper filled the room. Her face flushed darkly.
"Need help?" He grinned that boyishly lecherous grin again.
"No," she told him firmly, and continued to pull at the zipper.
She pulled the jersey cloth off her shoulders and down her hips, and bent to step out of the pale-yellow and green dress, her long hair hanging in thick waves around her face. She peered through the veil of soft tresses and saw he was waiting patiently, expectantly, for more. She stepped out of her mini-heel shoes. Her long, slender fingers pulled at her white nylon slip and drew it over her head. Standing there in her plain cotton bra, white lace panties and beige pantyhose, she glanced at him for his approval.
His eyes seemed to have tactile sensitivity as they roamed over her face and body. Briefly, they touched her thick, soft hair, her naturally arched brows and lash-fringed brown eyes, her babyishly pug nose, the fullness of her lips and the haughty line of her defiant chin. Then, more lingeringly, his eyes traveled lower, measuring the size of her breasts, trying to discern the outline of her nipples and the downy mound of her crotch . . .
What more does he want to see? she wondered.
He was making her terribly uncomfortable, almost panicky. She felt cold and embarrassingly exposed, worse than when she had to have a physical at the doctor's. And she still had on her underwear!
"Your costume for working here would be somewhat more revealing than these undies, Miss Jahn," he explained as he walked around her, getting the full scope of her dimensions.
He plucked at the hooks and elastic back of her bra, saying, "You really will need some new clothes. These are terrible!"
"But-oh!" she cried as she felt the fastenings of her bra give way.
His warm hands deftly guided the shoulder straps down her arms and she tried to catch the bra cups as they fell from her breasts, but this electric touch on her bare flesh melted her strength and the bra fell unhindered to the floor. Then his fingers were inside her panties, and pantyhose, inching them down from her narrow waist and over her hips and thighs.
"Is this really necessary?" she cried, grabbing his hands as if to halt him.
"You want the good things of life, right?" he taunted.
Her hands relaxed and he stripped her undergarments the rest of the way down her curvaceous legs, his hot fingers savoring her delicate flesh.
"Walk around," he commanded as she stepped out of the fallen lace and nylon. "I want to see you in action."
She moved slowly, stiffly, across the room, her flesh prickling with goose bumps.
"Look alive!" he called, pacing back and forth to view her from different angles. "Straighten up! Be proud of your tits. Relax! You have a beautiful female body, remember? Swing those hips seductively. I've got a thousand Adams out there who want to be tantalized by Eve. Now . . . that's better!"
It was the longest walk of her life. To keep herself going, she tried to concentrate on the large rectangular office with its handsome furnishings-the deep couches and chairs covered with thick white, black and brown furs; the pale blue walls hung with richly colored paintings by Renoir, Gauguin, and other artists who delighted in the female form; the plush indigo drapes that covered the long windows on two of the walls, one behind the desk and the other behind a long couch. While the young club owner surveyed her from every angle, Ramona did her utmost to relax but she couldn't because she'd been brought up to believe a nice girl hides her body from the world and reveals it only to physicians and to her husband, if she has one.
"You act like you've never been nude in front of a man before," Saumont chided, approaching her to guide her shoulders back and placing his palms on her hips to direct the motion of her buttocks. "Never had a man touch your naked ass before, either? With a body like yours?"
There was guarded approval in his tone, but Ramona wasn't sure she appreciated it. It was none of his business whom she chose to display her body to. And if someone had played with it, that too was private and personal. She'd made love intimately with only two men in her life, and she felt that was her concern alone. Each time, it had been something she'd wanted deeply, enough to ignore her upbringing. Having felt a great deal for the young men involved, it had been easier to throw her principles to the wind when she was with them. But this man was so impersonal, and the situation was entirely different. The nausea that churned in her belly when she went to a strange physician was nothing compared to what she felt under Saumont's intimate touches and insolently caressing looks.
The spicy briskness of his masculine cologne nearly suffocated her as his sensitive fingertips continued to trace her outlines. No matter how much she tried to think of him as desirable, she couldn't untie the knot of nervous fear in the pit of her stomach.
"You look like you think you're going to be raped, too," he said caustically. "Do you really think I'd do that?"
She shook her head, unable to force out a word.
"Smell nice," he murmured, pressing his nose to her neck and breasts. "Madame Rochas, hmmm?"
Ramona began shaking visibly.
"Cold?" he asked, enfolding her in his arms. "That better? Stop trembling so, ma petite! I won't hurt you!"
The strength of his arms and the hard pressure of his body on hers did strange things to her. The scent of his after-shave lotion filled her nostrils and she found herself panting for air as he crushed her breasts into his pen-filled shirt pockets.
"Aaaah, very nice!" he whispered, moving against her so her nipples grazed his bare flesh through the open front of his shirt, his chest fur tickling her tits tantalizingly.
"Oh!" she cried, inadvertently looking up in surprise and lifting her lush lips toward his open mouth.
He darted his tongue out to savor her lips and pressed on her jaws to force her mouth open. When she held it firmly closed, he swirled his tongue over her delicate neck and into her ears. Urgently, he pushed his belly against hers, and she could feel the tightening lump of flesh at his groin growing swiftly and thrusting persistently at her crotch.
As she pushed her hands between his chest and her breasts in protective reaction, he said, "Why fight me? Just think, if you'd learn to make love properly, you could reap a lot of benefits-like a nice apartment down near Central Park, real jewelry and furs to adorn your beautiful body, maybe even a wealthy playmate. You might even become the steady mistress of some young, good-looking man of means who'd watch over you and take very good care of all your needs."
He drew her to an oversized couch covered with black fur and pressed her onto it on her back as he asked, "How long's it been since you've had any really nice clothes, any decent furniture or a comfortable place to live? You think Deanna likes that rat-trap you live in? You wonder why she came to her old friend Saumont for a job?"
"Old friend?"
"Sure, we went to school together back in Milwaukee. Now, baby, you don't think I'd hurt a friend of Deanna's, do you?"
"No," Ramona murmured, still not quite sure of him but more distraught over her own self-doubts.
"I like you," he told her, stretching out almost on top of her.
He began playing with her breasts, rubbing her dark nipples between his thumbs and forefingers, watching them grow thick and firm. Delight gleamed in his eyes as he rotated his belly on hers and nibbled at her brown aureoles.
"Ooohhh!" she moaned, writhing beneath him.
He responded by running one hand down her curvaceous right flank and through the crinkly-soft pubic hair to touch her pussy.
"Nooooo!" she cried, squeezing her legs together and trapping his hand.
"No?" he asked, flicking his forefinger against her clitoris. Then his hands tightened in a meaningful but not quite painful grip on her tit and cunt. She looked fearfully into his cold blue eyes. Words formed deep in her throat but her trembling lips wouldn't say them. She knew submitting to this man would mean she wouldn't have to spend the rest of her life in a smelly, grease-ridden hash house, but it would also mean she'd have to throw aside all the puritanical sex morals she'd ever been taught. She sighed. She couldn't pass up the chance to have everything she'd only dared dream of before.
Her body went limp and a slow smile formed on Saumont's face. Once again he was in control of the situation and his sensitive fingers roamed her flesh with abandon. He was thinking that Ramona would be one hell of an attraction in the costume of the hostesses at Exotic Eden. Dressed in simulated leaves that barely covered their twats and nipples, they were exciting Eves to the wealthy men who frequented the private club, but Ramona would really have the old boys' tongues hanging out.
Saumont was intoxicated by the delicate fragrance of her perfume as he thought of her delectable contours on display for the Adams, who paid a handsome sum each year to be allowed to partake of the treasures of the fascinating night-club garden. Yes, Ramona would be a delicious addition to the club.
Her skin was soft and silken to his touch. She was still trembling, but she would soon get used to his demands, he assured himself. The cushions of her breasts were succulent and deep, heaving with the quickened pace of her heartbeats. Her lips parted, quivering, and her eyes closed as if to shut out the sight of his ravishing face.
He plunged a finger into her slit and probed. Involuntarily, she withdrew from his invasion, jerking beneath his heavy frame. He found the pink bud of her clitoris and tickled it.
"Aaahhh!" she cried.
Again and again he plucked the hypersensitive little nub until her abdominal muscles spasmed and her cunt juices flowed and her thighs reluctantly spread to accept him. Sliding between them, he jammed his finger deeper into her cunt while she writhed at his damning touch. He was probing for her hymen. When he found no obstruction, he thought, So the little bitch isn't a virgin! Well, I'll make her show me how much she knows! She'll work for her little leaf suit!
Their eyes met defiantly. Ramona knew she'd have to please him if she was to have the job and she'd come too far to turn back now. His hand caught hers and drew it to his groin, where he'd unzipped his trousers.
"Nice?" he demanded with a grin, making her fingers clasp the ballooning cock.
She could feel it grow in her fist. The pulsating vein that mounted its wrinkled length thumped into her palm. It was hot and sweaty with passion and swelled outward as he held her fingers firmly around it. His other hand pulled out his testicles as his slacks slipped down his thighs, and Ramona realized too late that he meant to place his balls in her free palm.
The masculine odor of his loins filled her nostrils. In her palm his soft, flaccid balls were torrid and alive with the production of sperm. She felt them become turgid in her grasp. As her hands filled with his masculinity and her nostrils flared with the overpowering scent of his sex, Ramona sensed the weakening of her defenses.
No! No! her mind rebelled. Please, don't!
But the long, hard shaft of his prick wavered in her hand, demanded to be free. Like a dancing cobra it spat a drop of white fluid and waggled its crimson head before her.
Suddenly he was thrusting the hardened rod into her, ramming mercilessly and deep.
"Yiiieeeee!" she wailed, hammering the couch with her fists. Oh, no! God, no! It's a dream, a nightmare. Not real! It can't be real! But it was. The pain was very real. She couldn't stop it, couldn't change it!
Then the pain cased and she felt the beginning of that tremendous sensation that leads to bliss. Mustn't let him enjoy it. Mustn't! But the job! Torn between desire, doubt and repulsion, she was caught up on the wings of the lust that engulfed her belly.
Her legs locked around his hips and she swayed with his long drives into her cunt. The tight-muscled rings of her vagina hugged the spearing rod of flesh, sheathing it like silk until they were one. Together they moved and expanded, pulsated and careened. Slowly the membranous sheath took on the fire of his prick, becoming a molten, liquid mass.
The sounds of their groaning and the gurgling that bubbled in her throat filled the room, punctuated by the slapping of his balls on the bare flesh of her upturned buttocks. The odor of their sexual sweat drowned their colognes and perfumes.
His hands kneaded her tits as he pounded down into her. Her hips rose upward to meet his thrusting and together they strove for the climax. Ferociously she clawed at his arms, leaving streaks of blood.
Through the fog that shrouded her brain, she realized she would have to prove herself to him. She had to be something better than a lonely, straggling, two-bit hash waitress. Hating herself every second, she pulled his head down to hers and their tongues met. Running her fingers through his thick hair and down the nape of his neck, she drew him to her breasts, passing them up to his hungry mouth.
All the while she tried to make her loins do the wonderful things she'd been taught by her former lovers to make intercourse longer and more pleasant. She hated him for making her attempt to give him the joy she'd reserved only for those she loved: everything that had made sex so good and satisfying with Danny before he went to Vietnam, never to come home again; everything that had made life so complete with Ray before he decided to become a priest. They'd given her so much and then they'd gone away, the only people who had ever truly loved and understood her. What was left? Playing Eve by night with a hundred lecherous, sex-starved men-men who could look but not really touch until after hours, when the club closed about three in the morning.
So this is what life is about, she thought angrily, thrusting her hips up to his. Keeping men happy in order to get a few of the joys of life, some of the luxuries.
Their groins were locked together wetly. Ramona could feel the seepage of her own juices spilling out of her pussy and matting their enmeshed pubic hair. Saumont was plunging harder now and she could feel the spastic jerking of his cock that heralded his approaching climax.
With all the strength she had left, she gripped his bucking body to hers and held him inside her. They careened together on the soft, resilient fur coverlet as he rammed into the torrid depths of her vagina.
With a final shattering drive, he pumped so frantically he made her teeth chatter. "Aaaaiiiiieeee!" she wailed.
His cock blew its load into her in torrential floods of white-hot cum, filling her and spilling the lava of human eruption over their still churning groins. When he had spent himself, he withdrew wetly and noisily from her pussy and collapsed by her side.
"Okay?" she demanded, still panting. "Shall we try again, or do you think I'll make it here?"
"You know, doll," he said thoughtfully before his eyes closed, "somehow, I think maybe you're all right."
'Well, thanks," she returned unappreciatively. While she dressed she cursed herself for having thought for one moment that giving herself to a strange man would be such an easy way to get this job. But now that she'd begun, she wouldn't turn back. She couldn't do any worse by herself than she already had. Besides, she'd wanted to live well for too long to pass up this opportunity now.
"Oh, chick, one more thing . . ." Saumont called laxily from the sofa. "No fraternizing with the clientele."
Ramona regarded him with a bewildered and somewhat hostile air.
"Club rules," he said. "What we don't see after hours is your affair of course. But we pay you only for your work at the club."
"And that action on the couch?" she demanded, pulling up the zipper of her dress.
"Just like my nookie every now and then," he said with a sleepy smile. "Might as well have a little action whenever and wherever I can get hold of it. Besides, I like to make sure my hostesses are seductive enough to guarantee a come-on for all the Adams that pack this place so hopefully."
She nodded and pulled on her shoes. He was sleeping peacefully when she slammed the door.
In the reception room, a pretty blonde secretary grinned up at her knowingly. "Friday at seven-thirty," she said sweetly as Ramona passed.
Day after tomorrow, Ramona mused. And all it took was an hour to recast the dumb, puritanical orphan, Hah! Wait'll I get hold of that conniving Deanna!
Chapter Two
Ramona went straightaway to quit her job at the hamburger grill near Macy's. It didn't take her long, as she'd never liked the position anyway. Her boss was a temperamental Irishman who couldn't live from one day to the next without debating the hellfire out of customers and help alike. One had to be patient and have a bit of the fiery Erin strain to put up with it. As a peace-loving person, Ramona had found her skin quivering with apprehension whenever he went into one of his tirades.
She also took this opportunity to let his grabby son, a student at Bronx College, know just what she thought of his efforts to feel her up behind the counter and in the steam-filled kitchen.
Back at the tiny two-and-a-half room apartment she shared with Deanna, she showered and changed. Such bravery plus her success in landing a new job demanded some type of celebration, she decided. She just had to get out and do something different to congratulate herself, since she was about to start a new and better life. Better? Well, she hoped it would be.
She put on a rose-colored sweater and matching wool skirt, then rummaged through her dresser drawers for the scarf she'd recently purchased to match the outfit. It wasn't in its usual place nor anywhere among her clothes. Deanna must have borrowed it, Ramona thought in exasperation, just as she borrows so many other things.
Wearily, she opened the top drawer of her roommate's dresser. In a tangle of scarves and hankies she found the Japanese silk scarf printed with rose blossoms and green leaves.
Deanna was so messy-she never made her bed or straightened her dresser drawers. She was forever living in the remnants of madcap yesterdays, as she always strewed her things around carelessly before falling into the tangle of her bedclothes in the wee hours of the morning, after her usual late dates.
Ramona didn't know what kind of girl had put up with the effervescent little beauty before they'd met at the restaurant a year ago. Deanna had been a little more familiar with New York than Ramona; however, she'd seen a great deal more of it through the numerous jobs she'd had. A flighty, not-too-bright, but exceedingly attractive girl, she'd had no trouble acquiring jobs or having a very active social life. Her only difficulty had been in maintaining a steady wage-earning position.
Ever since they'd begun to room together the previous summer, Ramona had been doing all the housework. Whenever she'd tried to hint that her friend could help out, the other girl hadn't seemed to give it a second thought; for while Deanna might say she'd begin the very next day, tomorrow never came for her. So, because of her placid nature, Ramona silently continued to take care of the household duties alone.
Now she began to fold the tangled apparel as a matter of habit when suddenly she remembered this was supposed to be her holiday. Deanna could just live with this mess she'd made for another day! Shoving the things back into the drawer, Ramona dislodged a stack of letters and sent them flying through the disarray. Damn it! she swore to herself. Can't even properly hide her love letters!
She gathered them up and was neatly arranging them in an orderly pile when she saw an envelope with her own name on it. Picking it up gingerly, she turned it over in her fingers. It was definitely addressed to her, Ramona Jahn, from some law firm in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Her first thought was, God! Is some tourist suing me for spilling soup on him? The postmark was April 18, so the letter was almost ten days old! And opened! What was Deanna doing opening her mail?
Slamming the drawer shut, she turned to her twin bed and flopped on her stomach to read the letter. Nervously, she pulled the stiff white paper from the envelope and unfolded it.
She could think of no one who'd want to contact her through attorneys, as she had no close friends except Deanna and no relatives since her parents had died, not even any cousins or second cousins that she knew of. But it seemed she did have-or once had-an uncle, for the letter stated that attorneys Billings and Richardson wished to inform Ramona Jahn of the death of her uncle, Rolf Hecht, since she was listed as the sole beneficiary in his last will and testament. They respectfully requested that she reply by letter or in person with proof of her identity so she could legitimately claim the estate of the deceased, whereupon the lawyers would execute the will without further delay.
Uncle? Ramona thought in bewilderment. Rolf Hecht? Should I know him? She was sure both her parents had been only children, and the name Hecht wasn't at all familiar. Her mother's maiden name had been Follansbee. So who- The front door slammed and laughing voices filled the living room. Deanna was lisping coyly, in her high, lilting voice. Why men found that lisp endearing, Ramona would never understand, but their masculine approval was the reason her friend had never bothered to correct it. If anything, she'd tried to perfect it!
"The same old Deanna," said a deep male voice. "You're as cute as ever."
Saumont! Ramona sat bolt upright in the middle of her bed.
There were loud slurping sounds, and Ramona didn't have to look to know the girl was moaning delightedly over his devouring mouth on hers and the skillful way his hands were traveling over her body. The girls had double-dated on occasion, and besides, Deanna had no qualms about bringing her dates home to bed while Ramona was trying to sleep in a bed not more than four feet away. What a shock it had been to Ramona to awaken that first night to the sound of a squeakily protesting bed and thrashing bodies deep in the throes of orgasm.
Having experienced the ways of Saumont just that morning, Ramona could imagine he and Deanna must make quite a team. Here it was only two-thirty in the afternoon and already he was hot for more sex.
"Oh, darling!" she heard the girl gurgle once more.
Can't she think of anything else to say? Ramona wondered as she sat quietly, mentally counting to fifty. She was a shy, quiet girl, one who said little even when spoken to. People found it easy to take advantage of her, as had Deanna, because she was usually reluctant to cause a disturbance even in her own defense. But, as her mother had once said of her, "she may be slow to anger, but when she does, look out!"
"Yves, you jutht do the wildetht things to me!" Deanna burbled.
"Lead the way, doll, and I'll show you more."
Deanna was giggling, and Ramona could hear the rearranging of clothes as her roommate gaily led her stud to the bedroom. They halted momentarily on the threshold when they saw Ramona on the bed.
"Oh," Deanna said. "I didn't know you were home."
"Got a new job, remember? So I quit the old one and here I am."
"Thatta girl, doll-face!" Saumont cried as he came around Deanna and entered the room. "Start at Exotic Eden tomorrow night, don't you? Don't forget your fittings tomorrow morning at ten."
"I won't, Mister Saumont."
"Yves to you, honey," he told her, coming over to the bed to pat her shoulder. Turning to the young woman in the doorway, he asked, "Didn't you tell her my first name, baby?"
"Oh, Ramona'th all buthineth and profethional," she responded. "Rethpect and dithtance at all times, that'th her motto. She doethn't even believe in a little friendly hanky-pank behind the counter at work, do you, hon?"
"Not really," Ramona answered, still clenching the letter in her fist.
"I keep wondering how she made it with you," the other girl said, flouncing into the room and sprawling seductively on her own bed, her skirt high on her thighs.
"We managed," he told Deanna, joining her on the bed and running his hands over the bared ivory flesh just below the black lace of her panties.
Ramona tried not to look. The petite brunette with whom she roomed was all female animal at times. Sometimes she wondered if the girl did it purposely to shock her puritanical mind. "I hate to disturb you," she said hesitantly. "Oh?" uttered the pretty brunette, obviously too engrossed in exchanging caresses with Yves to care that anyone else was there.
"Not at all," was Saumont's response. "The more the merrier. Want to join us, Ramona? You don't mind, do you, Deanna?"
Deanna was too busy undressing him to mind. "That's not my intention," Ramona said evenly. "Damn, I was afraid of that!" he moaned dramatically.
"This is a serious matter, Mister Saumont!" "Isn't sex?"
"That depends on the participants," she told him edgily.
"Two femmes and an homme," he mused. "That could be spectacular!"
"You've got the wrong second girl for that kind of thing," she said icily.
"Oh, damn, Ramona!" wailed her friend. "You can be a drag at times! If you can't have fun with us, why don't you go on out?"
"Because I was here first," Ramona said, rising from her bed. "I rented this place quite a while ago, and as I recall it, you were without a job or place to sleep when I invited you to stay here till you could find a position. And you took your own good time, I might add-it was three months before you could lower yourself to do waitress work at the grill around the corner."
"Really, hon! Is this the time to start a petty quarrel? What's the matter? Fight with your boss?"
"No. And this isn't petty. But I might say that tampering with the private mail of other people is a grave offense, punishable by law,"
The other girl jerked herself to a sitting position, nearly knocking over Yves, who had been diligently opening her blouse and pulling a plump breast from her sheer brassiere.
"You borrowed something of mine once too often," Ramona informed her, going to the dresser to retrieve her scarf, "and since you're such an untidy housekeeper, it was necessary for me to search for the missing article."
"You went through my drawer?"
"Only for what was rightfully mine. Strange that I found something else of mine, isn't it?" she queried, waving the letter as she paced by the feet of their beds.
"Really, Ramona, I meant to tell you!"
"I'm sure," Ramona returned sarcastically.
"She really did," Yves interjected, coming to Deanna's defense. "It was opened quite by accident. She was in a hurry on her way to see me about the job last week that when the mail came, she shoved it all in her purse to read in the taxi on the way over. She was so excited she tore yours open by mistake."
"Last week this came?" Ramona demanded, shaking the letter at the two conspirators on the bed.
"Honest, Ramona," wailed the other girl, "I was so upset about the mistake I was just trying to get up my courage to tell you."
"Have there been any other letters I haven't received?"
"No. Honest to God!"
"Now calm down, ladies," ordered Yves, getting up from the bed. "It was a harmless mistake. Now everyone knows and all should be forgotten. No one's been hurt by it, so forgive her, Ramona."
"Forgive? But I might never have known!"
"Nonsense. I was going to speak to you about it anyway," he assured her. "After all, what would you want with your uncle's old island off the cold dreary coast of New England."
"You've read the letter too?" cried Ramona. "Everyone seems to know about this but me. And I'm the beneficiary of this will!"
"You really shouldn't get so hot and bothered," Yves said, trying to guide her gently onto the bed. "After all, I'm doing you a favor. I'm offering to buy that dump of an island from you."
"Dump? You've seen it?" she demanded, evading his strong hands. "Who gave you the right? And if you say one more 'after all,' I'll-"
"Deanna, do you have any tranquilizers in the place? I do believe she's overwrought."
"Overwrought?" Ramona fumed. "My mail is private property. My estate from a lost uncle is private property. And some idiot who thinks of nothing but the satiation of his damned sexual hungers wants to buy my island as a favor to me! Why? You don't know anything about me beyond that. . . that screwing you gave me in your office."
"So ... I like you."
"Like me, bullshit!"
"Ramona!" her roommate exclaimed tremulously. "You don't swear!"
"Oh yes I do, when some goddamned assholes get me stirred up enough!"
"But Yves was only trying to be helpful!"
"Like you were, when you said getting this position as a hostess would be so easy?" Ramona yelled. "Sure, he's been helpful. First he practically rapes me and makes me feel like a street slut, then the two of you read my personal mail, check out what I'm heir to, and decide it's not right for me, but grand for you. How in hell would you know what's right when you don't even abide by the laws of the federal government or common decency!"
"All right!" Yves bellowed, taking her by the hand and yanking her into the front room. "So we're such bad people! Come on, I'll call the lawyer and arrange for you to meet him right away and see your island so you can decide for yourself."
He plopped her into a threadbare easy chair by the phone, lifted the receiver to his ear and dialed.
"Hello," he said into the phone after a moment. "I'd like to speak to Mr. Richardson of Billings and Richardson. Yes . . . yes. Just a moment please. I have a client here who wishes to speak to you . . . Miss Ramona Jahn."
He handed her the receiver and watched her with a critical eye as she talked.
"Mister Richardson?" she stammered. "I ... I just received your letter about my uncle's will. Yes, this is Ramona Jahn. When . . . when may I have an appointment? Is tomorrow too soon?"
She looked hesitantly at Saumont, who waved approval. Returning to the phone, she said, "All right, I'll fly to Boston and take a bus from there as soon as possible. I should be there by late tomorrow afternoon. All right. Thank you. Goodbye."
"Well?" asked Yves, waiting with his arms across his chest.
"He said he'd pick me up at the bus station in Portsmouth."
"Fine. Are you satisfied?"
She didn't answer, so he sighed and waved his hands in despair, groaning, "Women!"
She was still somewhat apprehensive and sat there pensively looking at the letter still gripped in her hands. Have to get a ticket on the shuttle flight from Kennedy to Boston and check Boston-to-Portsmouth on bus schedules, she told herself forcefully.
As she lifted the telephone book to her lap to check the yellow pages, she was aware of the resumed activities in the bedroom. The bed was protesting loudly and sounds of their passionate mumblings assailed her ears. She decided to get sortie fresh air and check at the nearest bus station in person rather than by phone.
"Mmmmmm!" Deanna moaned shrilly as Ramona slammed the door behind her.
Chapter Three
Ramona took the eight o'clock flight out of Kennedy Airport for Boston and easily made the ten-thirty Trailways bus for Portsmouth. She was thrilled at the thought of seeing New Hampshire and its coastline for the first time, knowing that there was an island waiting there for her-if, indeed, she did have a long-lost uncle-and that it was her property alone.
Oh, dear God, she prayed, please don't make me have to sell it to pay his funeral expenses! Can't I have something, even this small piece of property, to call my own? It would be so grand to have something of value, no matter how insignificant, that was all mine.
Ahead of her, the bus driver smiled, realizing she was a stranger to the area as she pressed herself to the window, trying to get a look at all the famous sights of Old Boston. He was a young man and decided to try to impress her, since she was the only youthful and attractive woman in the sparsely filled bus he was swinging through the narrow streets.
"Picked a bad time to travel," he ventured in husky voice, glancing over his shoulder.
"Hmmmm?" Ramona returned, looking up in surprise at his unexpected attention to her.
"Lousy time to travel," he told her. "Spring's the worst time of yeah around heah. Why you think there are so few people heading nohth?" He jabbed a thumb back toward the other passengers.
Ramona had barely had a chance to count the tops of the heads scattered through the bus when he called out, "Quick, on youh left! You'ah missing the Commons."
She looked out in time to get a glimpse of a long gray stretch of trees and walkways.
"Now, if you were to come back in the summah," he hurried on in that curious New England accent, "that'd be nice and green, not barren gray. And the swanboats! You shouldn't miss them, eithah. Damn!" he cursed, and thumped the steering wheel. "Talk too much. We just passed the old Nohth Church. You know, '. . . one if by land, two if by sea' and all that Longfellow stuff."
Ramona was busy trying to take in the blur of old grey edifices and black wrought-iron fences. She could have sworn she'd seen cobblestones in the narrow side streets leading up from the main avenue. Avenue? Hadn't some sign back there said Boylston Street? Oh, well, maybe she was remembering from a tour guide book.
"Speaking of Longfellow," the young man in front of her was saying, "You know Mothah Goose, don't you? The nuhsery rhymes, I mean? Well, they say she's buried in one of those little cemeteries back theah."
Here we are back at death and burial again, Ramona moaned to herself. Bad enough that I think of it. Now some helpful stranger. . . well, this is an old city, and everyone who's made it famous is gone, even Kennedy.
"Had a great auhnt who loved history," the driver was telling her. "Used to take me to all the historic sites, even the old graveyahds. Couldn't get anyone else to keep her company. Since I was her brothah's only grandson and less skittish than my sistahs, the folks figuhed I was a safe bet to keep the old lady humohed. Wouldn't have minded so much, but she used to really go wild ovah those original epitaphs. Kept a notebook of 'em. Lived in Glouscestah and it was only a shoht hop to Salem. Did she love to take the bus ovah theah to read the gravestones! You do know about the witches and all, don't you?"
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see him craning his head to look at her briefly to see how interested she really was. Her skin was crawling by this time. The Boston traffic was as bad as New York's, and she could already imagine ending up in a crash like her parents-oh, God, what a thought! Cars careened out of side streets and taunted each other with "dare you" techniques that left her heart jumping. She closed her eyes for a moment and prayed, God, please make him talk about something else. Please! And please make him watch the road carefully. Do grant us a safe and pleasant trip!
"Hey, you feel okay?" he asked with concern.
"Of course," she said, trying to smile enough to reassure him so he'd return to his driving. "A little tired, that's all. I was up at five this morning to get ready for the plane."
"Oh," he said as he returned his attention to the wheel and the action of the traffic before him.
She sighed in relief, feeling more secure as he edged the huge silver bus around the evil-looking, madly honking cars below her window.
Feeling as though she owed him some token of her appreciation for having resumed his proper duty of careful driving, she explained, "I came up from New York this morning to check on an island my uncle left me in his will."
"An island?" the young man repeated incredulously. "I've heard of being left castles on the moors, swamplands in hurricane territory, even treasure maps to pirates' gold. But your uncle must have been some eccentric. Who ever hears of owning an island any more? It's like owning the Brooklyn Bridge."
Ramona withdrew her feeling of appreciation for the tactless driver.
"I didn't really know this uncle," she said icily, "and one takes what one is given. I didn't choose the island, he did . . .probably with good reason. New Hampshire is supposed to be a beautiful state and I understand the coastline's a real tourist attraction. The lawyers assured me it was quite legitimate-my uncle's claim to the island, I mean."
"Sorry," he apologized. "Didn't mean to upset you, especially with youah just losing a relative and all. Just seems rathah fantastic. Imagine, a real island! You must be really excited. Bet it's bettah than having a castle, like in my kid sistah's romantic novels-a place to be stranded with the right man. Ha, ha!"
She didn't join in his laughter. He obviously found it all too amusing, comparing it to adolescent reading material. Like his sister, Ramona had once had faith in the magic quality of romance and happy endings. Then she'd learned the bitter lessons of death and competition in the employment and social realms. Never having been much of a fighter at heart, she was easily pushed around by people with more aggressive personalities. It was one of the things both Ray and Danny had chided her about, but she'd just smiled it off. What did it matter? She was just one insignificant person in a world of billions. There were thousands worse off than she. That's why she'd put up with that despicable character, the cafe boss' son who posed as an intelligent college student. He wouldn't have anything to do with her socially, but he used his position at the diner to have his fun with her and the other waitresses. Damn him! He'd thought of her only as a female, not as a person. He'd been interested in her for sex and nothing more!
When she didn't join the driver's laughter, he grew quiet. It was clear to him she didn't intend to give him the opportunity to show her he might be that "right man" to be stranded with on her island.
As they crossed the Mystic River Bridge he tried once more calling her attention to Bunker Hill. When she couldn't spot it, he said in exasperation, "Ovah theah to the right. That gray towah is the monument."
"Oh," Ramona returned in a faint voice as she spotted it through the windshield. "I'd expected a hill of sorts, not just a little cement spire to commemorate such an historical moment as the beginning of the Revolution."
"Yeah, most of the tourists are usually disappointed," he agreed. Then he fell into a long silence.
The afternoon was dark. Only a few rays of sunlight filtered through the gathering cloud banks in an already leaden sky. Having looked forward to seeing the seashore, Ramona was distressed to see the beaches so bleak and forbidding. Old dried seaweed and grayed weather-beaten driftwood were strewn over the grimy winter sands. The tide was just coming in, so there was several yards of mud on the shore. Ramona could almost smell the powerful fishy odor as she remembered it from the shores where she'd played during her childhood summers. Then she became aware of a draft, and the realization that someone had opened a window on the chill April air of New England made her nostrils flare, actually sucking in the rank odor of the mud flats. For a moment she felt the welling of nausea in her throat, but then, to her relief, it passed.
"Peeeyyyeeewww!" the driver exclaimed. Then he turned slightly to whisper, "Theah'll be days like this you won't fohget if you stay on youah island, unless you'ah fah enough out so the tide doesn't go out on you."
"You're the third person who's tried to talk me out of keeping my island," she said resentfully.
"No offense meant. Just can't figyah out what a pretty young girl like you wants with an island, especially in springtime. The only time of yeah it'll be nice is summah and early fall, and unless you've got a husband to enjoy it with and pay the taxes on it, why hide youah self? Unless you plan to open a resort, and that'll take lots of money and time."
He certainly doesn't know how to impress a woman, she thought. No wonder he's out here driving a bus for days on end. I'd chase him out of my house if he were married to me. She wanted to ask him why he didn't take one of those Dale Carnegie courses on "how to win friends and influence people," but it was too much against her nature to say anything so pointed.
One by one, people got off at Seabrook, Hampton and Rye-a businessman, a middle-aged woman who looked as if she might be returning home from visiting her grandchildren, and a withered little old woman with rimless glasses and an armload of library books. Maybe she's a librarian, Ramona thought. Poor thing! Probably the only life she has is in books.
There was one elderly couple left at the back of the bus and a pimply-faced, sullen adolescent who got on at Hampton. He stared at her briefly as he took the seat across from her and then apparently found the bleak seascape out his window more in keeping with his mood.
Ramona hoped the lawyer would be more cheerful than these silent companions, she hadn't seen any of them smile even once. Glancing upward into the driver's mirror, she found his sober face intent on the road ahead of him. Looking at him prompted her to wish the lawyer would also turn out to be a little more tactful!
"Pohtsmouth!" called the driver as he swung into the parking lot of the bus station.
"Oh, dear, already?" she said, mouthing the words frantically under her breath.
She saw the hostile youth across the aisle eyeing her suspiciously, as if to say she was too young to be talking to herself and too old to be afraid of a strange place.
She gathered her purse and shopping bag full of curlers and cosmetics, and half-stumbled into the aisle. While he watched she tried primly to compose herself. Walking down the steep steps and off the bus, she caught a side glimpse of his slow, mocking grin.
He's glad someone else is as unhappy as he is, she told herself. Now why should I be unhappy? That little brat tried to unnerve me!
She wanted to say the word to his face-brat!-but she knew she couldn't. Instead, she began looking around for whomever might be waiting to meet her. There was no one, not even any cars parked on the street. There was only the bus. The driver handed her the battered old blue suitcase from the side luggage compartment and disappeared into the station office.
In a few moments he came out.
"Youah auhnt meeting you?" he asked in passing.
She shook her head. "I don't have any relatives now. A lawyer's supposed to meet me."
"No friends heah?"
"Just the lawyer."
"Good luck," he told her, swinging up into the driver's seat.
As he backed the silver cruiser out of the parking lot, he called out the window, "Bye! Hope you like youah island!"
Then he was gone as the bus became a disappearing speck in the distance. He was the closest she'd come to finding a friend, and now he was gone, leaving her with mixed feelings of regret at being alone and suspicion that his last two words might have been his idea of a wisecrack.
She began to wonder where the lawyer could be. Her watch said five past four, and it seemed much later due to the threatening cloud cover. She hoped it wouldn't storm her first time out. Gathering her bags, she made her way into the terminal office to ask if the lawyer had perhaps left a message for her. She found he hadn't.
Yves had promised to wire or phone and tell him the exact time of her arrival. She began to think he hadn't done it. In any case, it seemed the attorneys would have checked the bus schedules. There couldn't be that many Boston-Portsmouth busses.
She paced the floor, looking out the window at intervals to see if anyone had driven up. It was getting colder and she was thankful she'd worn her winter coat instead of the trench coat Deanna thought more sexy-looking. Ramona preferred being protected against the weather elements rather than playing femme fatale to any males she might meet.
"But, darling!" Deanna had protested. "Better to be attractive and helpleth. Then the men will protect your!"
Deanna had a one track mind. Not that the idea didn't appeal to Ramona, but she'd heard how cold-blooded and unfriendly New Englanders were. She wasn't taking her chances of freezing to death in the meantime.
She'd just about decided to go into the depot restaurant to warm up over a cup of hot coffee when a new Mustang arrived. It didn't look like the type of car a professional man would drive on business, but the tall, handsome man who emerged from it in a smart, dark, well-tailored suit made her hope he was Richardson.
He was a half-hour late or more, but she didn't care any more when he smiled down at her and said, "Hi! Would you be Miss Jahn? Ramona Jahn of New York City?"
His enunciation was clear and he didn't drop his r's the way the bus driver had. It was a deep masculine voice, and he was much younger than she'd expected, in his early thirties, she guessed.
"Yes," was all she could manage to say, trying to compose herself after the long trip with its frustrations and disappointments.
"I'm Carl Richardson, your uncle's attorney," he said, offering her his hand. "Sorry to be late."
"Perfectly all right," she answered accepting his handshake. "It was thoughtful of you to take time to come for me."
"Not at all. I'm paid to be of service to my clients, though I must say I'm not always this lucky. Most of them thus far have been over fifty and preparing wills. Nice to have someone young who's looking forward to life."
Deciding not to take it as the compliment it was intended to be, she asked, "Shouldn't we be getting started? It's late."
"If you want to," he told her. "However, I think it would save you some time if you knew there'd been an offer made for the property you've inherited."
"Oh?" she returned. "But I haven't stated that I wish to sell it."
"You probably won't like it, particularly at this moment," he explained. "It's a bad time of year and the place really looks desolate. I'm sure a young and attractive girl like you wouldn't want to leave such a lively and interesting city as New York for the loneliness of an island off cold New England. The little town closest to it goes to bed at six p.m., so you'd have nothing much to do. But with the money you could get for the property, you could travel and get quite an education and gather memories that would stay with you a lifetime. And you wouldn't have to worry about the taxes and upkeep on this place."
"Perhaps you'll be kind enough to let me decide for myself, sir," Ramona said firmly, gathering her things once more. "Thank you for the advice, but I always like to know exactly what I'm doing and I can't sell my uncle's estate without having seen it."
"As you wish. It will be a pleasure to take you there."
"You're sure it's no inconvenience?"
"Positive," he said with a smile. He took her suitcase to the car, guiding her with his free hand at her elbow.
He was cheerful and conversation during the long drive that took them down bumpy unpaved roads off the main highway to the little fishing village of Allentown. It was a town of five hundred people who made their living by catching lobsters and fishing. It was one of the few places that still managed to make tourists unwelcome and preserve its sanctity, as the locals liked to term it.
Ramona was flattered by Richardson's personal attention, for he was being more friendly than professional in his approach with her. He was a tall, lean man with Nordic features, pale skin and bright blue eyes that had a charming twinkle. Her spirits were much higher now in spite of the dreary day and pot-holed roads.
They arrived at Allentown just before five-thirty. Its one main street, along the waterfront, sported a general store/post office, a shop with boating equipment and fishing gear in the window, a doctor's office, a deserted-looking mortician's parlor, and a few other shops and offices. A small inn stood on a hill behind the village and there were houses beyond that disappeared into the woods surrounding the area. Ramona's eyes turned to the fishing skiffs huddled together in the bay down at the docks. The town's one gas station was there to service both cars and motor-driven boats.
Richardson drove into the little station, where a man sat on a bench outside the door methodically smoking a pipe. The lawyer got out of the car and walked around to greet him.
"How do you do, Mister Perkins," he said, shaking hands with the man. "Remember me? Carl Richardson of Billings and Richardson, Attorneys at Law, in Portsmouth? I was out to see about Blood Island last week."
Blood Island? Ramona's mouth went dry. That couldn't be her island!
"Well, now," the old man on the bench responded slowly, "lot o' people come through these paths. Can't say ah do and can't say ah don't."
"Surely, Mister Perkins, you remember that we spoke about the death of Rolf Hecht and I told you he'd bequeathed his estate to his niece in New York. Perhaps the young lady would like to see his grave, too."
"Well," the old man began again, "ah laid him out myself. Ouah undahtakah left these pahts, yah know. But whahr ah laid 'im . . . cai'nt rightly recall. Twas on the island, ah know."
"But it was only five months ago!" protested the young man.
"Lot o' things happen in five months, sonny. Lots o' old folks heah-abouts. More'n young'uns."
"Look, I know you're a busy man, Mister Perkins," the lawyer persisted, "but, perhaps you might at least know someone who could ferry us out to the island."
"Nobody ain't gonna take no cah," the old man said, looking benignly at the little Mustang.
"All we ask is transportation out there so the young lady can sec the place she's inherited."
"Tain't wohth it. Pretty young girl, out theah alone. Best she sell it," rasped the man.
"Agreed, Mr. Perkins. And she already has an offer which I think she may take after she sees the place, so if you'll be so kind as to direct us . . ."
Ramona couldn't see much of the little man in his denim overalls and plaid winter jacket, because a limp, worn, brimmed hat drooped around his face, hiding all but his pipe between clenched teeth. But she was beginning to feel somewhat impatient. At this point, the man lazily stretched an arm out toward the wharf, using his pipe as a pointer.
"Young Owen Hansen always has a boat ready foh making repaihs, rescues and the like in case he's called out."
"Thanks," Richardson returned. "And could you direct us to a restaurant? We might like to have dinner after she's seen everything."
"At the inn," said the man. "But befoh scven-thihty. Moll doesn't take to strangahs wantin' suppah aftah that."
"Let's stop at the store and pick up some groceries, then," Ramona suggested. "I don't know how long I'll want to stay."
"You'll have to wait a bit," Perkins told them, rising slowly. "I'm tendin' store while Moll cooks suppah up at the house."
"You're the gas station attendant, the undertaker, general store manager . . . what else?" asked the young woman.
"Well, now," he said again, rubbing his chin and eyeing her suspiciously, "could be I'm a lot of things. But right now I don't cotton to chattah with furrinahs."
"Forget about the groceries," Richardson intervened impatiently. "We won't be that long, I'm sure."
He returned to the car and swung it down toward the docking area where they'd seen a man working on a small motor launch. He had appeared to be the object of Perkins' gesturing.
Ramona wanted to protest but checked herself. She was lucky that the lawyer had been good enough to meet her at the bus and bring her out here. In another few moments he had parked the car and they were beside the launch, talking to the boatman.
"I don't know," the man responded to their request, surveying them critically. "Gettin' late, and a sou-eastah's been threatnin' all day."
"Surely you could take us out for just a half-hour and bring us back," the lawyer insisted. "We won't be long. After all, it's money in your pocket."
The boatman was a short, husky man whose loose blue jeans and whispering oilskin poncho made him look small and clumsy. There was a shadow of black bristle on his square jaws and his large dark eyes were thoughtful, with an almost lazy air. His unkempt dark hair was covered by a wool cap.
"Money isn't as impohtant to us as it is to you city people," he told them.
"Please, sir," Ramona pleaded stepping forward. "My uncle left me this island and I do want to see it."
He scrutinized her for a moment before answering, "Rolf Hecht's niece? You shouldn't want to be going out theah. But if you do, I'll take you."
When they were settled in the skiff and heading out over the water toward the fog-shadowed gray mound Hansen said was the island, she turned to the young man at the back of the boat and called over the rushing wind, "Why shouldn't I come out here, Mister Hansen?"
He pretended not to hear her so she pressed the question again.
"I wouldn't want to know so much at once if I were you," the lawyer called into her ear, one hand on her shoulder.
His eyes were gentle when she looked into them and demanded, "Why? Is that the reason you didn't tell me much about the island, even when I insisted on seeing it?"
"Later." He smiled kindly as he spoke the word with finality.
The young man at the back of the launch eyed them silently. Was he really as hostile as he looked? Ramona wondered. They slowed as they approached the rocky shore of the island, most of it rough cliffs reaching ten to twenty feet above the shore. Through the mist she could see the stark, gnarled fingers of stripped trees reaching skyward. Half the land seemed obscured by the Gothic spires of black pines, but off to the right rose the monstrous shadow of a large old house crested with a lonely turret she knew in an instant was a widow's walk.
Hansen's voice behind her summoned her attention, but she couldn't turn her head from what she had come to claim-this strange, gaunt, mist-shrouded land and house.
"He should have told you. It's no place for a woman to live alone. Even youah uncle learned the truth of the curse."
"Curse?" she breathed the word.
"This was a beautiful, peaceful island when the Indians hunted and fished heah," Hansen continued. "When they welcomed the white man, they didn't know he'd murdah and take these lands from them. There was a brutal massacre that wiped out a little Indian village heah. The last words of the chief's wife, her infant son dead in her arms, were to curse all white men who set foot on this island, condemning them to a bloody and painful death."
"This is hardly necessary!" protested the lawyer.
"I . . . it can't have anything to do with my uncle's death," she said in a hushed voice as the boat bumped the dock.
"That's not all," the man behind her continued relentlessly. "Foh all who came heah, disease and violent death threatened. During the Civil War it was used as a foht to protect the shore. Many Confederate soldiahs were held heah, spies were questioned and executed right up theah in front of the house. One spy had a devoted wife who followed him and swore to wreak vengeance on anyone who hahmed him. She stabbed six guahds before they caught her and hung her, but she'd been too late to help her husband, anyway. They say she walks that roof all night long, looking foh him, still hoping, her skirts whipping in the wind. Clubs and fraternities from nearby schools often use this island as their initiation grounds. No one has ever lasted long heah. Everyone who's evah been heah after dahk has seen her, even youah uncle. He lasted longah than most of the othah doubting owners. Five months, to be exact." "How did he die?"
"That's quite enough!" ordered the lawyer, who had leaped to the dock and caught the ropes of the launch.
The other man continued as if he hadn't heard. "Stabbed in the neck, right in the jugulah vein."
"I told you to shut up!" shouted Richardson.
"Blood Island," Ramona murmured. "Blood Island!"
Chapter Four
Side-stepping the rotted wooden steps, they climbed to the top of the steep, rocky cliff. It was only a short climb, but in the heavy fog the precarious ascent left Ramona breathless.
The rough ground underfoot was overgrown with thick vines that caught at her feet like a thousand groping hands. Richardson took her by the arm and guided her across the distance that separated them from the house. She couldn't help looking at what lay ahead of her rather than watching her feet.
There were no sounds of animal life around, none of the scampering or chattering or chirping that usually filled a woodland. For some reason even the birds were quiet. From the distance came a lone shrill cry, as if in warning, as a gull winged shoreward. Involuntarily Ramona jumped toward the tall man walking beside her.
He chuckled and she withdrew, trying to compose herself.
"Guess I'll have to get more cases like this one," he told her. "With estates like this and more heiresses like you, I'd be a happy man."
"You're not?" she ventured, making an effort to share his humor.
"At the moment, I'm very happy," he assured her, his hand squeezing her arm fondly.
She wasn't sure whether she should be grateful or not, but the warm sincerity of his expression told her his remark had been harmless yet honest, so she tried bravely to return his grin.
The house was much bigger than she expected.
It seemed to grow as they approached, lifting its steeply pitched roof higher, like a mighty giant raising its imposing shoulders. The natural, weathered boards of the exterior had never been painted and almost seemed to breathe with a life from within. The dark brown-gray roughness resembled the scales of some ancient reptilian gargoyle. High on the rooftop the wooden balustrade had rotted away under years of nature's torment and had been replaced by metal bars and railing making the widow's walk look more like a prison catwalk.
Ramona dropped her gaze, lest in the mounting darkness she see that ghostly image she feared her human eyes might encounter as had so many others. Perhaps it really had been more a prison than a vigil post to the woman who grieved for her lost husband, she thought. She was shivering, not sure if it was caused by the cold dampness of the air or her own anxiety.
As they approached the house, it seemed gaunt and lifeless except for the bulbous eyes of the bay windows, which seemed to regard them malevolently. It seemed to her that the house hated her and was warning her away, yet her feet kept right on going, stumbling through the tangled vines that criss-crossed the pathway to the front door.
"You still want to go in?" asked the young man beside her as they stood before the imposing front door that had griffin guards with gruesome countenances banking the doorstep.
She nodded and looked at the lion's head knocker on the door, its teeth bared and a worn brass ring through its nostrils. Evidently, at one time someone thought the island a lovely place and built this home with the intention of staying, she mused. But the lion's face was worn and gaunt from the winds and rain, pocked with shadowed holes so it looked almost like the skeleton head of a man, the remnants of his hair streaming backward like the thousand snakes of Minerva's crown.
The only thing she'd ever had to call her own-a haunted house on an island laden with threats of death. Surely, she told herself, it must be much more pleasant here in the summer, and in the fall alive with the brilliant flames of the maple trees and soft vibrant green of balsam and pine.
Richardson viewed the house skeptically, then tried the door. It was unlocked but creaked open with a great deal of difficulty.
"Why wasn't it locked?" Ramona demanded.
"I don't know," the young man said, shrugging his shoulders. "It was open when I first came."
She looked at the lock as she followed him in. It was broken, but whether or not it always had been she didn't know. Maybe her uncle hadn't felt it was necessary to fix it, since there was no one else around. The house was almost dark because only a little light pierced the grime of the window panes. Deep shadows filled the corners as if crouched in readiness against the invaders.
"Oh, let's leave the door open!" she begged as he pressed himself against the creaking mass of wood to shut it. "It's so dusty in here it's suffocating me."
He left it half-open and began to lead her through the rooms. Could he hear her heart beating so loudly? Had her tremulous voice betrayed her trembling body? She followed him silently, hoping he couldn't detect her childish fear.
The living room was long and deep with a big fireplace. The ashes of a long-dead fire spilled onto the Oriental carpeting as though someone had forgotten to close the flue against the wind. Victorian furniture with dark red velvet upholstery filled the room. The color of blood for Blood Island, her mind taunted her. She tried to shake away the morbidity of her brain's teasing. A genuine horse-hair sofa in front of the fireplace caught her attention and she went to touch it.
Her grandmother had told her they scratched terribly. Her hand hung in mid-air. Somehow she couldn't touch it. It was old and represented the past and . . . and death. Suddenly Richardson was beside her, pounding the cushions until the dust rose in little gray clouds.
"Oh!" she cried, stepping backward. She began coughing fitfully.
"I'm sorry," he said contritely, grabbing her by the waist and swinging her away from the swirling dust, "I was just seeing how dirty it was. Thought maybe you wanted to sit down."
Ramona was still choking. The tears in her eyes stung as she insisted, "I . . . I'm all right. Just got a faceful of dust. Whew! Honestly ..." she coughed some more . . . "I'll be fine in a minute."
"Sure?"
He pounded her back and she leaned limply into his embrace. The hardness of his chest felt firm and good. Finally, she was panting but no longer strangling on the cloud of dust that had assailed her. Sighing deeply, she pressed her forehead into the soft wool of Richardson's jacket, trying to regain her senses.
Suddenly aware of the warmth of his arms around her through the thickness of her winter coat, she pulled back. His hands went to her arms as he regarded her with concern.
Flushing darkly, she murmured, "Hadn't we better see the rest of the house?"
His eyes gave question to the utterance.
"I didn't mean to be so childish," she informed him. "Let's look at the rest of the house, okay?"
"Sure you feel up to it?"
She nodded. "Why not?"
There was a whining creak from the hall and the front door slammed. She jumped. And as the lawyer took her hands, she knew they were icy and trembling.
"Just the front door," he said with a grin. "Wind must've come up."
Lowering her eyes to the floor in embarrassment, she was keenly aware of his watching her. When he turned to lead her through the rest of the house, she was glad he hadn't debated her determined attitude again.
Slowly, she began to take some interest in the exquisitely designed Flemish and French wallpaper he showed her with the spearhead beam of his penlight. Bewigged gentlemen, full-skirted ladies, graceful bridges and elegant gardens graced the walls. Antique Dresden china lined the china cupboards and mahogany sideboard. At the long mahogany dining table was a large, delicately turned silver candelabra. The tall, narrow windows of the downstairs rooms reached nearly from floor to ceiling and were hung with rich, dark velvet draperies-burgundy in the living room, moss green in the dining room, and midnight blue in the study to the left of front door, across the hall from the parlor. Unlike the portrait of the stern-faced man she'd glimpsed above the living room mantle, the picture above the library fireplace was of a stormy sea and a clipper ship tossing on its frothy waves. Beneath was a tarnished bronze plaque with an inscription she could barely discern.
The young lawyer took a pair of glasses from his jacket pocket to read, "Let there be no mourning . . . when I cross the bar."
Kipling? The words were vaguely familiar. It was from a poem her grandmother had often asked be inscribed on her tombstone, "Crossing the Bar." Grandmother. The fiery little woman who'd dragged Ramona to funerals to listen to fanciful predictions of Heaven and Hell for the dead, the more interesting of which she kept notes on in a little red notebook. Red for blood, Blood Island.
"Please, let's see the rest," she demanded, hurrying him on, not even waiting to examine the handsome old secretary in the corner nor the crammed bookshelves that lined the walls and reached from floor to ceiling. Not even the deep-cushioned window seats of the front wall beckoned her.
Their footsteps were hushed by the heavy Persian and Oriental rugs. Only occasionally would they step on exposed wide-board flooring and hear the creak of the ancient wood. The kitchen stone fireplace with built-in ovens and a large black crane for holding kettles suggested that this had been a colonial home, added onto by its many owners due to frequent changes of ownership. It could have been such a large, sunny, cheerful room, Ramona mused, looking out the back windows. Overgrown bushes blocked the view of whatever lay beyond.
Upstairs were large, cobwebbed, dusty bedrooms filled with more Victorian furnishings, high poster beds with thick feather mattresses, commodes with chamber pots, and handsome highboys of an earlier day. Each bedroom had a trunk at the foot of the bed, a chair or two, and a narrow closet.
Ramona was surprised at herself for insisting on seeing everything. That included the attic with its many storage trunks, discarded furniture, even a broken old cradle which she rocked longingly.
"Don't do that!" a voice echoed in the back of her brain.
Abruptly she stopped. Over her shoulder she saw the tall blond man fingering some old clothes in the dim light of an attic window whose shutter he'd opened for more light. Her gaze returned to the little wooden cradle and she knelt beside it. She began once more to move it as she had rocked her favorite doll cradle as a child.
"Haven't I always told you?" a thin voice out of the past hissed through her mind.
Grandmother! "Rock a chair or cradle when it's empty and someone will die!"
"No!" Ramona whispered. "No!"
"What's that?" Richardson called.
The sound of his voice made her jump and stumble to her feet, overturning the cradle. Fragments of decayed blankets spilled out.
"Waaaaaahhh!" cried a tiny dark object, tumbling from the depths of the hooded cradle.
"Ohhhh!" the girl exclaimed as she fell back into the arms of the approaching lawyer.
"What is it? What happened?" he demanded as she hid her face in the warm security of his chest, her heart thumping against him through the open front of her coat as he held her close.
When she could stand alone he held her chilled hands in his and let her step away from him to explain that she'd tipped over the cradle.
"Clumsy of me, really," she added. "But something fell from it, wailing like a baby."
Flashing the beam of his little flashlight over the area, he saw nothing. He put an arm protectively around her shoulders and said, "Just a mouse, I'll bet. You disturbed his peace and frightened him away."
Laughing half-heartedly, she joined him to see what he regarded as a treasure find. Pulling out worn, moth-eaten pieces of cloth and eventually a whole suit, he told her, "Look, real Union uniforms from the Civil War. Wouldn't be surprised to find a Confederate outfit, as well."
He flourished the pancake hat of navy blue, its tattered bullet holes fanning the air into tiny currents. Her glance fell to the ripped, blood-stained collar of the uniform. Could he have been one of those guards? Had the man who wore that suit been murdered by the woman from-?
Wind whistled through the thin broken panes of the window behind them, rattling the shattered glass. Wailing like a banshee, it wound around the house, becoming increasingly forceful.
"Storm coming up?" Richardson looked out the window, but it faced the forest of trees on the same side of the house as the library. "I'll go up and check from the widow's walk. That should give me a commanding view of the area."
Ramona had found a handsome, dark satin skirt and was holding it up to her waist, thinking how much warmer these elegant skirts had been than the mini style currently popular. Her own wool traveling suit left little to be imagined of her cold, goose-fleshed legs.'
"You're not leaving me here in this attic alone, are you?" she demanded as he started to mount the winding metal stair that had replaced the original stairway.
"Just for a moment. You'll be all right." He turned and thumped up the echoing stairs.
"Not on your life!" she cried, chasing after him. "Please don't leave me here alone-not just yet!"
It was Ramona who emerged on the turret first, the wind catching at the skirt she still held clutched in her hands and whipping her hair out behind her in long billowing waves.
"What're you doing?" Richardson laughed. "Playing the role of the lady of Blood Island?"
"Hmmmmm?" she responded, looking at him and then at the skirt. "My God! Could this have been hers?"
"I doubt it," he told her, but she'd already flung it from her.
Caught on the wind, it soared like a black wraith until its heavy weight finally took it groundward.
Richardson moved along the walk beside her and she was glad when he put an arm around her and bent close to talk into her ear, though the wind seemed to die somewhat. They were looking down at the dock when he asked, "What do you see? Where's Hansen's boat?"
"I don't know," she answered, trying to see through the fog that had quickly covered the dock and shore. "He wouldn't have gone off and left us, would he?"
"I don't think so," Richardson said with a hint of doubt in his tone. "But you know we're not his responsibility, and the fishermen of the area are. He's supposed to be ready at any time, especially during a storm, to help boats in distress. This could be the beginning of a squall, and he might have had to answer an S.O.S." "Squall?"
"Small storm," he explained. "Remember Hansen telling about a sou'-easter coming up? The old-timers around here don't like these storms. Could be worse than a squall."
"But it's not hurricane season!"
"On the ocean there are other storms besides hurricanes that can be just as violent and as destructive. If the lobster pots are lost, the nets torn and damaged, some boats sunk, it all adds up to a big deficit for a community that depends on the sea for its livelihood."
Ramona nodded silently, pulling her coat tighter around her shivering frame. Mutely, she let him lead her downstairs, stopping to fasten all the doors and shutters tightly.
"We better go down to the beach to check on Hansen," he told her. "He wouldn't have gone off without leaving our things, anyway; my jacket and briefcase and your bags. Say, did you arrange this? I wondered why you insisted on bringing your suitcase."
He was chuckling, but she felt it necessary to say, "Now you know I didn't talk to him privately at all, though it is true I brought my things because I hoped to stay here tonight."
When he returned to the top of the cliff with their things a few minutes later, she shuddered inwardly.
"Looks like you have your wish," he smiled down at her as they returned to the house, "don't look so glum. It's a lovely old house. At least, it was in its day."
"Mister Richardson," she said as she waited for him to push open the door, "I'm truly sorry to have inconvenienced you so much. All this trouble! I feel terrible about it!"
"Call me Carl," he told her, grinning. "Might as well be on a first-name basis since we're stranded here together. Stop worrying about it. I haven't been so lucky since I dreamed I was stranded on a Polynesian Island with Nancy Kwan about ten years ago. And this is for real!"
He put their things down by the broad winding stairway covered with wine-colored carpeting.
"You're very kind to joke about it all," she persisted. "Too bad this isn't a dream. You could have had Nancy Kwan and I might have found a real live uncle."
"Wouldn't you rather be with a real live me?" he queried with a pout of mock disappointment. "At the moment you look more inviting than an ethereal brain image of Nancy Kwan. You're three dimensional. And besides, the only reason I had that lousy dream was because I was under sedation after an appendectomy."
"Oh, that's a shame," she whispered, wondering whether to feel sorry for him or let him continue his efforts to cheer her. "Really, Mr. Richar-"
"Carl!" he said firmly. "And can I drop the Miss Jahn? It really makes me feel ancient and stuffy. How about it, Ramona?"
"Friends usually call me Mona for short," she volunteered.
"Do I qualify?" he demanded.
"Not until you either light some candles or find the electricity, if there is any," she remonstrated. "Can't talk to you unless I can see you."
"Shall I leave?" he teased, withdrawing into the deepening shadows.
"No, no! Please don't!" she cried, reaching out to stop him. "You're . . . it's just that I'm so alone here without you. I need your masculine support."
"That's encouraging." He returned to her with a smile. "I'm delighted to be needed by a damsel in distress."
"Really!"
"Don't spoil my fun, little lady," he pleaded. "I always wanted to be a knight in shining armor, but I was born too late. So now I just get to play Don Quixote."
She socked him playfully on the arm and was surprised at her forwardness, but after a moment of embarrassment, she joined in his laughter. Suddenly she was more alarmed to find herself in his arms, their mouths pressed tightly together. His hands pushed her coat from her arms and shoulders and it fell silently to the carpeted floor. Intoxicated by the feeling of his firm muscles and his masculine physique, she pushed herself against him. His male scent was strong in her nostrils and his breath hot and rushing on her upturned face as his tongue pried at her lips.
Carl clutched her slender body to his, feeling the swell of her breasts on his ribs. His hands savored her feminine contours as he drew her against him. Cupping the soft cheeks of her buttocks he pressed her into his loins, and she could feel the growing hardness of his penis. Her tantalizing perfume taunted him and her mouth and body were yielding.
Their tongues met. His tongue filled her mouth, exploring its recesses and savoring its nectar. Her fingers stroked his neck and pulled his head tighter against hers.
No! Her conscience called out to her. You hardly know him! It's too much. Too soon! You'll be on the floor in two more minutes. Stop it!
Her slender hands reached between them to push at his chest as she pulled her mouth from his.
"No," she whispered. "Can't. We must stop."
"Why?" he asked as his tongue persisted and tasted the salts of her face and neck.
"Got to," she said weakly. "Please. We hardly know each other."
"But here we are," he returned hoarsely, his lips frantically tracing her face, "all alone on an island. What else are we to do?"
There was a whine behind them and they turned to see the door slam shut.
"All alone in a haunted house!" Ramona added, shuddering.
"Except for the lady," Carl teased, pulling Ramona close again. "She seems to have less trouble closing that door than I have opening it. Talk about the weaker sex!"
"Please!" Ramona cried, withdrawing from his embrace again.
Suddenly they heard the sound of footsteps in the upper hall, heavy and plodding. They froze. A door slammed. Two seconds later there was the sound of shattering glass.
"You stay here!" Carl told her, and began to climb the carpeted stairs.
"You're not leaving me alone!" she whispered back, and followed him.
They searched the rooms one by one. In the bedroom closest to the attic stairs they found a wall mirror in pieces on the floor. The bed covers had been torn apart, drawers had been opened and thrown on the floor-it looked like a hurricane had hit the room!
From above came the thumping of feet on the metal stairway to the widow's walk. Carl raced up the stairs with Ramona at his heels, but when they reached the turret, they saw no one. In the distance, through the swirling fog, rose a laughing voice, high and almost shrill.
"The curse! Death to those who come to Blood Island!" ii cackled.
The mist seemed to lay icy gnarled fingers about Ramona's bare throat. Beside her, Carl stood stock-still, his face starkly white, his blue eyes wide with amazement and perhaps fear. She groped for his hand and found it as cold as hers.
When he looked down at her, he tried to smile and ignore the ominous warning. He joked half-heartedly, "Seven years' bad luck for a broken mirror, huh?"
She nodded and answered, "For whoever broke it. Surely not for us."
"No," he agreed. "Surely not for us."
But maybe for me? she asked silently.
Chapter Five
Carl found some canned goods Ramona's uncle had stored in a kitchen cupboard and they discovered some wine and Scotch in the dining room sideboard. He fixed them both a couple of strong Scotch and waters to calm their nerves before she tried to cook on the gas stove in the kitchen.
"What if it doesn't work?" she asked worriedly. "Stop being a pessimist, Mona. Of course it'll work."
He checked the pilot, then lit it after turning on the bottled gas behind the stove. He tried each of the burners and they found all worked perfectly.
"How about that?" he inquired proudly.
"Great! Now, if you'll get the fireplace going for some heat, I'll light some more of those candles you found in the sideboard."
"Last time I get stranded with a slave-driver!" he cracked.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, taken aback at his assessment of her personality.
"Well, she'd have to be as beautiful as you," he said with a grin.
"No, really, I should be ashamed to have dragged you out here and gotten you stuck like a prisoner with me."
Her dark eyes clouded and he began to realize how sensitive she was. He knew she'd never intended to cause him any trouble and had planned to stay here by herself. He was glad he'd been left with her, for she would have been terrified alone. Whoever the intruder was, he probably wouldn't bother two people as much as he would have just one person.
"Hey, stop pouting," Carl reprimanded her, leaving his fire preparations. "I know you didn't get me stranded out here on purpose. You just wanted to see the place, and you had every right to expect me to escort you. But if I'd known there was going to be so much trouble with this old house, I'd never have let you come."
"What?"
"In other words," he whispered into her thick, fresh-smelling hair, "I wish I'd taken better care of you. I think you'd make a better friend than client."
"Oh, we shouldn't!" she protested as his arms closed around her.
"You act like a pure-bred puritan," he said with a laugh. "This is the right place for romantic notions, this house. But as for the time and circumstances, would I have had a better chance if I'd called on you in that restaurant you work in? If this were New York and the Four Seasons rather than the kitchen of a haunted New England mansion . . . ?"
"Your investigation of my whereabouts was more thorough than that or you wouldn't have found me, would you, sir? A hamburger shop across from Macy's hardly qualifies in the category of the Four Seasons."
"But who says I would have wined and dined you there? Everything must have its proper setting. Nancy Kwan under moonlight and palm trees on a sandy beach, you by candlelight and soft music."
"Under the fog in a groaning mansion," she quipped.
"Let me do the scene setting," he told her. "You're the leading lady, but it's the man who directs. Remember?"
"My apologies." She laughed nervously, shivering.
"Cold?"
She nodded and he returned to building up the fire while she turned to the cooking. He was nice, she conceded. She really liked him. But for some reason, probably just her long-ingrained principles, she couldn't surrender to him as easily as he wanted.
After dinner she pleaded a headache and retired to the bedroom at the head of the stairs, which she'd cleaned and prepared somewhat for the night, putting a clean sheet on the mattress of the big four poster. She'd also put a fresh sheet on the bed in the room across the hall for Carl and had tidied the dusty, cobwebbed chamber as best she could, using the bed drape as a dust cloth.
"Sure you're not afraid of me?" he teased as she said good-night to him in the hall.
"Would I ask you to sleep across the hall from me if I were?" Ramona protested, anxious not to have her will challenged at this point.
As she turned toward her room, he called, "Mona, I hope I haven't forced myself on you or made you angry if you didn't really want my attentions."
She smiled. "I would have let you know," she assured him, wishing she were as strong as she claimed. "Pleasant dreams."
Carl went to check the kitchen fire once more to be sure it was out and she watched for his candle as he returned to his bedroom. Then she put out hers.
"All right?" he called one last time.
"Yes," she replied, and softly closed the door before returning to her bed.
It was a long time before she could drift off to sleep. The strange noises of the old house and the memory of the intruder stayed with her. A tree scraped its branches against her window like something clawing at the glass wanting to get in. The boards of the house sighed with age. Every now and then she could have sworn someone was out in the hall whispering but she was sure Carl would have knocked if he'd had anything to say to her.
The darkness took on fanciful shapes. From the deep corners rose wraiths with piercing eyes. They all stared at her and pointed their fingers, whining, "Death! Death to those who come to Blood Island!"
It had to be her imagination. It had to be! Dear God! Oh, my God, protect me, she prayed over and over until she drifted off to sleep.
She was dreaming, and someone was calling, "Mona! Mo . . . o . . . o . . . na!" through the mist of fog that surrounded the island. Somehow, she knew it was the voice of her uncle, Rolf Hecht. He was calling her, calling her to him.
"Mo . . . na . . . aaa!"
"Where are you?" Ramona cried, searching the misty darkness.
"Here. I'm here," he answered, his chilled hand touching her bare arm.
"Y . . . you're so cold!" she whispered. She was surprised at his mocking laughter. "And so would you be, my dear!"
Why didn't he finish? Why didn't he say it was because he was . . . dead! She struggled in his grasp and awoke in a cold sweat, staring into the piercing eyes of ... a ghost?
"Shhhhh," it hissed. "I don't want to hurt you. I have just come to warn you."
Ramona opened her mouth to scream, but a cold, clammy hand slapped down over her lips before they could let loose their horror.
"Scream and I'll kill you!" threatened the hoarse voice.
A cold sharpness was pressed to her throat. In a moment she knew it was the blade of a knife.
Slowly a heavy, damp presence pushed aside the warmth of her winter coat, which she'd been using as a cover, then it came down on her body. Through the thinness of her nightgown she felt the bulky figure and the slippery slickness of something long and hard protruding from beneath a leathery robe that felt to her like grasshopper skin. The weight of this huge thing, bringing dreadful expectations, drugged her with helpless fear.
"Pretty little thing," whined the voice. The fingers that had clasped her mouth traced her facial features like a hundred long-stemmed feelers.
Soon the blade left her throat and the hand that held it was encircling her breasts, squeezing one nipple, then the other. The heavy bulk was rocking restlessly on her crotch.
With effort she drew the sound from her aching lungs. An eon passed before her vocal cords responded, "Eeeeeee!"
In a moment the bulk was gone. With her eyes clenched tightly closed in terror, she only felt its heaviness leap from her quivering body and heard the whisper of its robes disappearing in the night.
Had an eternity really passed before Carl burst through the door? In a few moments he was at her side, holding her tightly while she wept.
"It was here!" she sobbed hysterically. "Right here on top of me!"
The words strangled in her throat as if the unseen phantom was yet with them trying to choke off her voice. But it was only her fear. The fear born of seeing, feeling, touching the haunting, gruesome specters of night known only to places of violent death and terror.
"It's all right," Carl tried to reassure her, holding her tightly to his chest. "It's all right. Whatever the thing was, it's no longer here. It's gone."
"It was terrible!" Mona sobbed. "It called to me. Held a knife to my throat!"
"Yes, yes," whispered Carl, rocking the quivering young woman in his arms, her face tightly hidden in his neck.
"Big and wet," she continued hoarsely. "In a long robe that felt like grasshopper skin."
"Now, now," he continued, trying desperately to soothe her. "It was just a nightmare."
"But it wasn't!" she screamed, drawing back to face him squarely. "It wasn't! It was here. Honest to God, it was here in this room, lying on me. So heavy! It was heavy and rocked on my . . . my abdomen. It even clutched at my-!"
He watched her skeptically as she showed him, her hands touching her groin and breasts. Would a ghost be heavy and grab at her female anatomy? he pondered. He didn't believe in phantoms, but whatever this one was, it had tried to rape her, he was sure.
"I'm going to look-" he began, but the sound of feet thumping up the metal stairway to the widow's walk stopped him.
They thundered upward, echoing through the house. Carl jumped up and raced out the door.
"No, please!" Mona cried after him. "It has a knife. You've nothing!"
But he was gone. She heard his footsteps, bare and slapping on the hard metal steps to the roof. If anything happened to him she would be all alone.
Outside the house she heard laughter, loud and malicious. As it drifted away she felt herself going cold once more. Standing in the hall waiting for Carl, the shadows whispering and taunting, the house moaning in the deepness of night, she felt her blood run through her veins in icy trickles.
This hadn't happened-not to her! Death had taken those she loved and now it was coming for her! In this house, on this island, lurked hate and violence. The people of the village had known it, Carl had known it, but only Hansen had warned her. Why Hansen?
Haunted house? It wasn't possible! Ghosts? No. There weren't any! Then why had so many people been scared away? Why did this island and house warn and frighten away all who came? Who had killed her uncle? Oh, dear God! She too would die as her uncle and those before him. Had not the creature said so?
Death had touched all those who'd meant so much to her. Now she was what the grim reaper wanted In the bus coming up here, she'd felt it. The driver had seemed destined to crash that vehicle, but maybe the others hadn't been marked for death as she had, so the reaper had waited and planned for her here. Grandma had always believed in psychic phenomena. She'd said, even before she boarded that plane for a visit to California, that she wouldn't make it back. The plane had crashed just outside Cincinnati.
Ramona had been supposed to go on that plane trip with her parents the day they died, but had begged to stay home to be with Danny his last day before going to Vietnam. Then he'd been lost as well.
Distantly, she heard feet thundering down the stairs in the attic again. Carl? Or . . . what if he'd been . . . !
Carl! Carl! Mona tried to run to the door, but her feet wouldn't move. Then out of the dark attic stairwell came a small halo of light. In it she saw a starkly white face, the eyes dark caverns of fear. It came toward her slowly.
"Carl? Carl?" she said, hearing her voice quaver.
"It... it just disappeared," came his distant voice. "I heard it, but saw nothing!"
The fog came into the house, drifting in with its long winding tendrils circling about her ankles and wrapping around her body, dragging her downward. It laced its chilling fingers about her throat and threatened to cut off her breath. Snaking before her eyes, it pushed her further and further away from Carl. She could hear him calling, but he was too far away to reach or answer.
"Mona! Mona!"
When she opened her eyes he was there, sitting beside her. She reached out to touch him to be sure he was real and he caught her hand. It was warm on her icy flesh.
"Okay?" he asked, bending over her as she lay on her bed.
"Okay?" she repeated stupidly.
"You fainted in the hallway."
"I did? Oh, I thought. . . that is . . ."
"Too much happening," he told her gently. "You were overcome with fright."
"It wants to kill me," she said as if in a trance, her eyes looking blankly at the ceiling. "I was afraid it would kill you, too, all alone up there."
"Of course it won't," he assured her kindly. "Never met a ghost yet that was going to kill me."
"Oh, you shouldn't joke. What if there are ghosts and this house is haunted? I don't want you hurt on my account!"
"Don't worry. Nothing's going to touch me. I keep a rabbit's foot handy. Even keep my keys on it so it's twice as efficient."
"Thank you," she whispered, looking at him through the darkness, unable to say the words she wanted to. "Thank you for being here."
"Like I told you, I always wanted to be stranded on an island with a beautiful female. But who would have thought a cold, wet island off the coast of dull, dreary New England would have helped me out? Still, I suspect you'd rather get some sleep than listen to me, so I'll say good-night again."
As he rose to leave, Mona felt that cold wave of fear sweeping over her again. If she was alone, the creature might come back. Even if it didn't, she'd be alone with the whining winds outside, the creaking boards of the walls, the insistent scratching of tree branches on the window, all the phantom shadows and whisperings of before.
"Carl, don't leave me, please," she begged.
His hands were warm on hers as he said, "You know I'd love to stay, but you also know I want you. Since you don't want sex, I don't think it's a good idea for me to be in a bedroom with you."
"I ... I trust you!"
"You think that's enough?" he queried, standing beside her bed. "I'm not such a grand knight that I'll sleep on the floor all night."
Mona sat in the center of the bed. Slowly she edged to one side.
"It's a big bed. You won't have to sleep on the floor on my account." She patted the mattress beside her, bidding him welcome and adding beseechingly, "Please, don't leave me alone again!"
He lay down beside her and she settled back in the softness of the mattress, pulling her winter coat over her. He lay there with nothing to warm him. She hesitated only a moment before she rolled to his side and drew her coat over him as well.
She could smell his maleness and feel the tautness of his muscles. As her arm grazed over his body to bring her coat over him she was sharply conscious that he was wearing only his undershorts. He apparently had not stopped for his clothes before coming to her when she screamed. It was comforting to know that he'd been so alert and gallant, yet his near-nudity was disconcerting as they lay together, a man and a woman alone and needing each other.
Carl was aware of her suppressed sexuality as he took in the scent of her perfume, the velvet softness of her arm, the delicate female form that had felt so good to him as she clung to him in fright a few minutes before. Her nightgown was thin cotton; under the brief beam of his penlight he'd seen her ripe round breasts shadowed beneath the light cloth just before she collapsed in front of him.
She'd been light in his arms, the nipples of her breasts brushing at his chest through her nightgown as he held her close. And the small round cheeks of her buttocks had yielded softly to his clasping fingers. His hand had stroked one smooth thigh as he laid her on the bed and pulled his hands from beneath her shoulders and derriere.
He had longed to touch the ivory stain of her inner thighs as they lay open and relaxed in her unconsciousness. He was tempted to feel the soft down of her mound before she came to and realized her short nightie was high on her thighs, but she had come to then, and he was left with dreams of what might have been.
Now he lay at her side. Her long, soft, dark hair spread out under her head, its fragrance filling his nostrils. Those soft, doe-like eyes were closed against the night and her succulent pouting lips parted as her warm breath escaped silently. Under the heavy coat he could feel the feminine contours of her flesh against him as she sought to share her wrap.
"Mona," he whispered, "it won't work."
"What? Why?" she demanded.
How could he tell this lovely timid female that her perfume intoxicated him and her thinly clad flesh taunted him and filled him with need? She acted like such a "babe in the woods" when he tried to embrace and kiss her. Many girls liked to have fun with no strings attached, but this one seemed to want to play for keeps. What did she want out of life? Didn't she know she had to play by the rules of the real world, not her dream world of goodness and light?
"You don't seem to understand, Mona," he said with firmness. "You're a female and I'm a male. We just can't spend the night in the same bed, practically naked, and not feel some attraction toward each other!"
"But ... is it so necessary to ... to ... ?"
"Mona, you're a woman, delicate and beautiful. I'm a man and I have feelings, a male's needs and desires. We're alone and close enough to touch each other's bodies. Doesn't that mean anything to you? Don't you understand?"
After a moment's silence he heard her say in a strained tone, "Yes. I think so."
"Mona, baby, I need you!"
He turned on his side and put his arms around her, pulling her closer to him, his lips searching for hers. Her flesh was cold and her mouth trembling at his touch.
"Is it so necessary?" she protested again.
"You're flesh and blood, aren't you?" he demanded. "You're a human being with the same emotions and desires as the rest of the human race!"
"But I hardly know you!"
"That means little when we're out here alone like this."
"Oh, please!" she whimpered. "Can't you understand?"
"All right," he said kindly. "I'll leave you alone, but I'll have to go."
"Why?"
"Why? Why do you think? I'm no saint! You expect me to stay and not get a hard-on?"
"Oh!" she cried, turning away as if she'd been slapped.
"Look, I'm sorry, honey. It's . . . well, it's a fact of life, that's all."
He started to rise, but her hand stayed him. To be left alone and to know she'd hurt his feelings, the only friend she had here . . . she would die! Oh, no! It would be hell, torture through the whole night, being alone and knowing she'd alienated her one friend through her own outmoded principles.
"Please! Please stay. I'll try to be good," she promised.
"You?" he demanded incredulously.
In answer she snuggled closer to him until he could feel her breasts and abdomen against his flesh. When he came down to her lips, he found them soft and succulent. But when he tried to pry them open, they were firmly shut. His embrace relaxed.
He's going to leave! she thought wildly. Carl, no! Please, no! Her arms went around his broad shoulders, her fingers tantalizing his neck as she pulled his head to hers once more and opened her lips willing to greet him.
Deep into her mouth swirled his tongue. Mona's mind reeled. Think of Danny. No! Not Danny. He's gone. Think of Ray. Yes. Celibate now. But he wasn't then. Not a few months ago when he taught me how to love. Love him! While he loved God more! Taught me to love and left me. Ray! Ray!
Carl's hands were urgent on her as he tongue-fucked her mouth with ardor. His hands searched the reaches of her buttocks, squeezing them, inching the frail cloth of her nightie higher.
Mona's hand tried to stay him, but when he started to withdraw from her, threatening silently to leave her alone, she dropped her hand.
The cool rounds of her asscheeks were resilient like dough in his kneading fingers as he pried them and searched the intimate cleft that separated them.
Why, oh why! Her mind wailed. They're all alike. Men! Want your body, but not yourself, your spirit. Give them some female flesh and they don't give a damn what's inside, bitch or saint, someone who hates or loves them. A female slit and breasts are all they want. Nothing more! And yet if I don't give him something, I'll be alone again. Alone and afraid. Defenseless. After all, I owe him something, I suppose. He's been so kind and good, but for this. Oh, Carl! Carl! Ray! Danny! Oh, Danny!
Carl's mouth had found her breasts now, were licking the salty ripe fruits. Into his mouth popped the thick brown stems of her nipples. He sucked and chewed them into full red strawberries. Mona's hands were on his head, desperately wanting to stay his devouring mouth, but the haunting darkness beyond inflamed her dread of loneliness and her fingers stroked his neck as if in loving caress.
His strong lean body leaned onto her slightness. His sturdy, masculine frame was cold as marble. Like the Renaissance sculpture of Michelangelo or da Vinci, she thought, paralyzed beneath him. So beautiful. So handsome and perfectly male. But so cold and desperate. The maleness in him overpowered all else. He was first of all a man directed by the demands of his loins and second a protector of the woman. Yes, just like in Yves' club. She would be there first to keep a male happy, second . . . second . . . Was there anything a woman was really supposed to be beyond a sexual playmate? Sometimes she wondered.
Carol rocked himself onto her body. She could feel the growing hardness of his penis through the cotton of his undershorts. It pressed into her belly as he gyrated into the flatness of her stomach. Oh, Carl! You can't! she pleaded silently. Don't do it! Why, oh why does it have to be this way? You're not Danny or Ray! Mona, Mona! Where is your courage? Don't let the shadows mock you. Don't let the wind and the trees laugh at your fear. Over and over again she fought the lonely fear of the room, trying to force herself to make him go and spend the night alone without him.
His fingers played at the soft hair of her cunt, pushed between her thighs to pry at her slit. Titillating the tightly clenched lips of her vagina, he was surprised to find her hand trying to stop him. He pulled his burgeoning cock from his shorts and pressed it into her hand. When she tried to withdraw, he forced her hand to clench around it.
Hot and quivering, it seemed alive as a separate entity in her palm. The thickening vein that ran along its side pulsated into her sensitive skin, stirring her with tiny electric charges of damning desire. It wasn't Danny's. Don't make me do it, she wanted to plead. But the words were strangled in her throat. Unless she took his prick she would be left alone with her fears in the darkness with all the sounds of night to taunt her.
Carl's slathering lips coursed her breasts and belly intimately now. His fingers dug deeper into her snatch, hurting her until her muscles relaxed in a moment of weakness and his whole hand sank into the grotto of her crotch. Quickly her thighs closed, but he was already there, searching blindly for the small thread of her clitoris.
"Ohhhhh," she moaned, and then he found it, brutally pinching the sensitive little organ as he grasped for it in the small space allotted him for movement. "Eeeyyaahhhh!"
Her legs swung involuntarily open and Carl dropped between them. Gently he touched and culled it to excited stiffness all the while whispering apologetic and loving endearments to Mona as his lips paid homage to her neck and breasts.
Mona began to move beneath him. He could feel the muscles taut and spasming in her satin thighs. Though her head tossed to and fro, avoiding his mouth and mumbling incoherently, he could feel her responding to his titillation. Her hips jerked beneath him as she tried to stay the urge to rotate them up to his stimulating fingertips.
Wrapped tightly about his cock, her fist could feel the rock-hard flesh jumping to be free. When Carl tried to take it from her, she held it firmly and defiantly. His weight shifted on the soft mattress and she felt herself sliding from him. The blackness enveloped her and sound of the tree branches clawing at her windowpanes pricked at her consciousness. Was she going to be left alone to the Stygian night of unseen blue felt and heard horrors known only to this house and island? Carl, don't leave me! Not yet! Not yet!
Were those her hands that cupped his penis and placed it so gently on her puffy, inflamed vagina? Was it really she who clasped his testicles, massaging them lovingly while directing the burning head of his rod into her torrid, itching labia?
Carl came down on her once more, his parted lips on hers, and she welcomed the sweet draughts of his tongue's saliva as if it were an intoxicating liquor to quell the throbbing terror that filled her heart. She let him manipulate her breasts into fullness and tweak the dark aureoles of her nipples into hard nubs. Knowing he was about to take her, she tensed into rigidity. It hadn't been that painful since the first time!
"Aaaauugghhhh!" she cried.
The ramrod of his prick speared the sensitive edges of her moist pussy. Its harsh pressure lunged against the tight elastic opening of her cunt. He shoved harder.
"Yyiiieeee!" she tremored as the tip slipped through, cruelly stretching the tight rubbery opening until Mona felt as though her thighs would split apart with the relentless outward pressure.
"Relax!" he hissed, pushing deeper and thrusting her legs out and up to her breast to give him greater access.
He fell forward, his weight smashing her full firm tits back into her chest. Thrusting his hips forward at the same time, he slid his long thick cock into her cunt like a raging freight train pushing the soft moist flesh of her vaginal walls in rippling waves before it. There was no stopping it until with a loud groan his balls smacked heavily into the upturned cheeks of her tightly clenched ass.
"Oh, God! God!" she cried. She had never been so filled in her life.
It felt as though he had ripped her vagina in a thousand tiny shreds as he speared into her without mercy or thought of injury. And now, now his selfish shaft lay sunk deep in her belly, filling every part of her insides. There wasn't one tiny ridge of flesh on it that she couldn't feel as it pressed against the soft flesh of her cunt like a sword sliced cruelly into its piteous victim's belly.
Driven by raw lust, he ground his prick deep into her, mindless of the pain he caused. Gyrating and rocking above her, he stimulated the savage burning that turned from torture to sheer bliss. Mona's body began involuntarily to react. There was no longer any reason to fight the lewd flames of desire coursing through her veins. She had lost the battle against him. Though the thought of her total surrender sent chills running along the base of her spine as she felt him skewering wetly into her, the black world outside their coition was pregnant with horror and helplessness against the unknown.
Her whole body twitched and writhed beneath him and she groaned incessantly into the moistness of his mouth. Low hums of servile acceptance, swelling in passionate torrents from deep in her chest, broke forth. Her face was contorted with lust and every muscle strained. Her nostrils flared and a light sweat filmed her face and disheveled hair.
He lifted her buttocks up so that her vagina would flower open to receive his cock to greater and greater depths. The pain was almost gone now. His impaling rod of flesh jerked and quivered beyond control within her.
Mona thrashed under his pounding weight as they rose and fell in the wild abandon of sexual lust. Carl grunted and groaned while his prick bored far up into the hidden, untouched recesses of her womb. Like a lunatic he crashed into her in hot pursuit of the treasure he sought in the miraculous ecstasy of orgasm.
"Aaaaaggghhhh!" she screamed, her breath piercing the stagnant air with its cry.
Like a piston gone mad, the ramrod of his prick plummeted into her womb.
She strove with it to keep the hard ridges of its barreling length within her.
He twisted and pounded above her, forcing his prick to ravage the depths of her cunt. Again and again he drove into her, his blue eyes unseeing; only her image, like an imprint on his madness, remained. His fingers were electrified at the plundering, manipulating and ravishing of her tits.
Mona's legs locked around his heaving torso, her heels whipping at his back, her nails clawing his flesh as she sought to pull him into her. The rock-hard column of his prick was caught in the tense muscles of her channel, her cunt sucking it deeper as her hips and thighs writhed and contorted beneath his thrusts.
Make me forget! she wanted to shriek. Make me forget! There is no house, no island, no fog, nothing to call out or make noises in the night! Only Carl. Tall and strong. Handsome and masculine. Pretend! Pretend it's a lovely warm exotic isle. Just you and Carl. Why am I doing this? Make me forget! Harder! Push harder! I want to know only your penis deep inside me. Only you and me joined as one. Adam and Eve before life and death were truly begun. Only us!
His pungent male odor was suffocating her and his muscles were hard to her touch. They were like marble, a Renaissance statue, not flesh and blood. Her lips ajar with panting moans and mewlings, she could taste his salty sweat as he thrashed against her and sputtered his mad gutteral curses at the pain and blissful torture of the strangled cock in her belly.
Suddenly it began fitful spastic jerkings and she knew the time had come. She was exploding in her own womb, gushing forth the cum of her own climax.
In long hard drives he pounded into her.
"Yaa . . . aahh!" came a fitful cry. Was it from him or Mona?
With a careening, searing lunge he speared her womb, his cock gushing forth in long, torrid spumes of sperm. Erupting with fury and passion, the jet-like streams of white, sticky cum cascaded into her womb, flooding her belly and channel, drowning his jerking cock.
Her buttocks were wet with the hot, spilling fluid and their short pubic hair matted with the liquid as their groins merged and ground together once more. His balls, wet and shrinking, slapped against the upturned cheeks of her ass with the rhythm of their final spurts.
When he was milked dry, his balls hanging limply in his crotch, she surrendered his equally depleted and flaccid prick. It withdrew wetly, almost bubbling with the memory of its spent enthusiasm.
Carl lay exhausted beside her in the yielding mattress of the high four poster. He was panting, but his hands still held her protectively, caressing her gently.
"Hurt you?" he whispered.
"No," she responded, cuddling up to him once more. "You assured me."
"That I'm strong or what?" he demanded with a chuckle.
"Just that there's a man in the house to watch over me," she answered.
"And more," he insisted, pressing his groin to hers once more.
Chapter Six
A brief rainstorm in the night washed away some of the heavy fog and made the house look more welcoming in the morning light. Memories of the intruder, the terrifying sounds of night in the old house, and the destruction in the far bedroom remained with Mona, not easily shaken.
Hansen returned to take them back to shore. He didn't explain his absence of the previous afternoon. Apparently he thought it unnecessary. Richardson started to reprimand him for leaving them without notice, but with a glance at the lovely female who had slept in his arms the night before, he checked himself.
On shore Carl asked, "Well, shall I tell the man who offered to buy your island you're ready to sell?"
Mona looked at him thoughtfully before replying.
"I still haven't decided whether or not I should," she told him. "Your client will have to wait."
"Even after last night?"
She nodded. "Thank you for everything. You've been very kind."
He took her proffered hand. "But you're not staying, are you?"
Mona looked back toward the distant island. "My uncle entrusted it to me. Though I don't remember him, I feel I owe it to him to know exactly what he's left me before selling it."
"But you'll be all alone," he protested. "At least, take a room at the inn and only go out in the daytime."
"I'll think about it," she said. "Oh, one question." "Yes?"
"You said my uncle had been dead for five months, when you were discussing him with Mr. Perkins. Why did it take you so long to find me if my uncle knew about me?"
"As you said, thorough legwork," Carl said. "New York's a big place and your uncle hadn't been sure you were even there. He hadn't seen your father for over twenty years, and that was back in San Francisco."
"Oh," she responded. "Well, then, I'll be in to discuss the matter with you in a few days. Until then, thank you so much."
Clasping her hands warmly, he told her, "I'll probably be out before then, Mona. Too worried about you. Take care, okay?"
When the handsome little red Mustang had disappeared down the road, Mona made her way to the general store to buy groceries for her stay. She was surprised to see Hansen there talking with Mr. Perkins, their feet perched on the shelf of a little pot-bellied stove as it crackled forcefully against the cold morning air.
"You really stayin'?" Mr. Perkins demanded as his eyes followed her around the many shelves of the store.
"Why not?" Mona asked. "My uncle left me the place, didn't he?"
"Ay-uh," said the man, nodding affirmatively.
"What he's trying to say," Hansen intervened, "is that it doesn't seem right for a propah young lady to stay out theh alone on that island."
"What does he think I ought to do?" she demanded.
"Sell it. He's willing to make a reasonable offah foh the place."
"But what if I don't want to sell?"
"Just trying to save you a lot of trouble, miss," the younger man explained.
"Maybe she ain't really the Jahn girl," Perkins said in his monotone as he sucked on his pipe.
"What are you talking about?" she retorted. "The lawyers seem convinced I'm the Ramona Jahn they're looking for. Why do you question my identity?"
"You can prove it?" asked Perkins.
"You want my birth certificate? Social Security card? Genealogy?"
"Don't get upset, Miss Jahn," Hansen said in a soothing voice. "Perk doesn't mean anything by it. He just wants to make sure everything's in ordah around heah."
"You've been unfriendly since I arrived. Is it because you think I'm not the heir the lawyers claim I am?"
The two men looked at each other silently, then Perkins rose.
"My sister Moll has been wantin' to have tea with you, Miss Jahn. It'll be bettah if you have a lady friend while you ah heah."
"Doesn't anyone around here feel I'm capable of making my own decisions?" she asked in exasperation.
"Men nevah do," called a voice from the door. "We women have to make sure they ah fed and clean, but they still want to make all the decisions, as if we ah morons."
Mona looked up to find a middle-aged gray-haired woman standing on the threshold. She was a big woman who enjoyed her own cooking, judging by the plumpness of her hips and legs, but Mona couldn't call so much of her largeness fat as solid muscle. The woman looked like she helped chop the kindling wood for the stoves and fireplaces of her inn. Indeed, she looked capable of weathering any of the stern winds and rugged storms of the area.
"How do you do, Miss Jahn?" the woman said, coming forward to extend her hand. "I'm Molly Whipple, Perk's sister. If you intend to stay with us, I'm sure we'll be seeing a great deal of each othah. It's a small town, you know."
"Yes, I'm pleased to meet you," Mona returned, not at all sure she was yet.
Moll Whipple was a couple inches taller than Mona. Her gray eyes were dictatorial and her handshake told the girl she could well take care of herself. In her plaid woolen Pendleton jacket and dark gray wool skirt, she was an imposing figure, one who knew how to handle a man's duties as well as keeping a kitchen stocked with wholesome, delicious home-baked foods.
"I wish you would considah taking tea with me, in spite of these impolite acquaintances of mine," the woman quipped with a glint of humor in her eyes.
Mona suspected that the woman was good-natured though very dry-humored. Though not particularly taken with Moll, she decided it was best to make a bid for friends while she was here.
"Thank you. It's kind of you to think of me."
"Nonsense! You're doing me a favor. If you only know what bores my usual tea companions can be!"
With a haughty look at the two men by the stove she led the girl to the back of the store and a curtained-off room that was furnished as a combination kitchen-sitting room. A fire burned in the Franklin stove in one corner. Mrs. Whipple ignored the big round table in the center of the room and waved Mona to a deep-cushioned easy chair by a window looking out over the woods behind the store. Through the white nylon curtains the girl could see the crusted mud ruts of the back yard and the green spires of the woods towering above the naked maples of spring.
Mrs. Whipple brought hot tea and a plate of freshly baked apple turnovers. Mona hadn't had any since her grandmother had died. Her mother had never enjoyed baking. It brought memories she tried to shut off with conversation.
"Did you know my uncle, Mrs. Whipple?"
"My, you really were well brought up. Even that young squirt I taught out there, Owen, hasn't called me anything but Moll since he graduated from school. Now, did I know your uncle? As well as most, I guess. Quiet man, paid his bills and kept his mouth shut. That means a lot to the folks around heah. Being a woman and a teachah, I talk more than most, but on the whole people economize on their words heahabouts."
"Didn't he have any friends, Mrs. Whipple? Anyone to talk to?"
"Well, now, nevah saw any visitahs out theah. None that came from shore, that is. Whole town would have known if somebody went out theah. Could be he had company that came in boats that we nevah knew about, though. Now and then he'd come in foh his mail. Came from all ovah-Boston, New York, California. Business, imagine. Sometimes he'd come up to the inn foh a home-cooked meal." "He was happy, then?"
"As fah as I know. Why?" asked Moll, regarding her suspiciously.
"Just . . . well, I'm glad he was, though it doesn't explain his murder or . . ."
"Or what?"
"The house. It . . . well, Mister Hansen says it's haunted."
"And you believe him?" the woman cried incredulously.
"I don't believe in ghosts and all that, honestly," Mona said, shifting her position in the chair while Mrs. Whipple went to the stove for more tea. "It's just that . . . well, something happened last night."
"Like what?" the older woman demanded, coming to pour the tea.
"There was an ... an intruder, a . . . well, I don't know. Just something that messed up one bedroom and attacked me last night."
"Attacked you?"
"It ... he had a knife and threatened to kill me if I didn't leave."
"Have you told Perk?" the woman asked impatiently.
"No. I think Mr. Richardson was going to. He thought it would be easier for me that way."
"Perk!" called Mrs. Whipple. "Perk, come in here!"
The man appeared at the doorway, his long sweater and too-large overalls hanging off his thin, bony frame, emphasizing his smallness. Since his sister was several inches taller than he, Mona wondered how they could have had the same parents. Moll had certainly turned out to be the more formidable figure, and her brother offered no picture of security in spite of his obvious official capacities in the community.
"You knew about the trouble out at the island last night?"
"Ay-uh," he drawled slowly, still puffing at his unlit pipe. "Fellah from Pohtsmouth told me just afoh I came ovah to open the stoah."
"You can't let her go back out there if there's trouble on the island!"
"Who's makin' her go back out?" he asked, blinking his little eyes behind his rimless spectacles like a lazy cat. "Offahed to buy the place from her."
"Perk, you ah just plain stupid sometimes," reprimanded his sister. "Of course she doesn't want to sell her uncle's propehty. But she certainly doesn't have to put up with people trespassing, either."
"Maybe it was a spook," the little man drawled. "You know perfectly well there's no such thing, Perk!"
"Maybe ah do, maybe ah don't," he answered. "Don't see how ah'm in any position to know right now."
"Seth Perkins, use your hoss sense!"
"I am, Moll. And I don't see why anyone'd want to hurt a stranger," he said as he came over to take a turnover from the dish on the table. "Scare her away, sure. But hurt, it ain't likely. Just some fella can't pay rent shackin' out there. Don't want no trouble from furrinahs."
"But I've more legal right to the land than he," insisted Mona. "Why should he threaten me?"
" 'Cause he's one of us. Knows he belongs. You ah an out-o-statah." Perk licked the spicy apple sweetness off of his fingers and took another pastry before continuing, "Nothin' to worry about. You don't bothah him none, he won't bothah you."
"That's hardly very comforting, Mister Perkins," the young woman said disdainfully.
"I quite agree," Mrs. Whipple joined in. "Maybe Perk's right, but let's not take any chances. I'm going back with you."
"What?" Ramona and Seth chorused in surprise.
"She can hardly go back to that dreadful place alone while someone's trying to scare her away. I'll make my presence known for a few days and end it all," she said forcefully, and rose to call an end to the discussion.
Mrs. Whipple returned to the island with Mona. The latter had little to say about it, for the formidable woman seemed unshakeable in her decision. Rather than risk further ill feeling, the young woman accepted her presence in its more than maternal capacity. The older woman was quite perfunctory in her orders and expectations, and Mona found herself more supervised than chaperoned as the woman directed the spring cleaning of the old house until its rooms were at least inhabitable.
Hansen made several trips to the mainland to fetch cleaning equipment and necessary kitchen items for the women. He even turned on the electricity from a small generator at the back of the house. When his duties were done, Moll shooed him away with the distaste of a society woman for an alley cat.
At the dock Mona thanked Owen for his assistance in making the place more livable. For the first time, his dark wind-burned face beamed a smile at her. He wasn't handsome, she thought, but he had a pleasant face.
"I'll come back tomorrow to see how you are," he promised, his dark brown eyes warm and friendly.
"It's not recommended," she warned with a laugh. "Mrs. Whipple doesn't seem too fond of you, for some reason. When she said good-bye, it sounded final."
"My usefulness is ovah as fah as she's concerned," he told her. "But she's still Perk's sistah. She no more believes in ghosts or ill-intentioned intrudahs than he does. This is her generous nature you ah being blessed with."
"Oh? Do you believe in ghosts or in whatever was here last night?"
"I'm part Indian. Hadn't you guessed by my coloring, Miss Jahn? I don't trust anyone. That's a New England trait toward outsidahs, but an Indian learns not to hold too much faith in even his fellow townspeople. Moll taught me that. She herself trusts no one but herself. Her husband didn't live long enough to make her sure she could rely on him."
"She's a widow?"
"Husband died in the wah," he said. "Look, you mind if I see that you ah all right tomorrow?"
"Not Mrs. Whipple too?" she queried with a grin.
"God help anything that tangles with her! See that squirrel shotgun she brought with her? She knows how to use it bettah than any man in town."
"But I may need that protection," Mona said with a frown.
A wind rustled through his thick black hair and a shadow crossed his craggy face. "I hope not, but since you'd be out heah all alone otherwise, it's best to have one friend. I'd like to offah my friendship too."
She surveyed his high cheekbones, the straight black brows above his shadowed eyes, his long flared nostrils and the thin lips pursed in seriousness. He wore a short-sleeved shirt today, though the sky was still overcast. Under it his muscles stretched the cloth till it seemed it would rip. Yes, he was a man who could be dangerous as well as a good protector, she though. Perhaps because he'd been more sincere and honest than the others, had treated her as an equal rather than a child, she felt a certain respect for him. Not fully trusting the domineering woman at the house, and knowing Moll wasn't especially fond of Owen, she decided to accept his gesture of friendship with wariness.
Extending her hand, she thanked him. "I would be grateful," she smiled.
"You ah wise if you still don't fully trust me," he complimented her.
With a wave he was gone, his little skiff heading out over the waves to the mainland.
Mona stood watching him. Would it be as demanding as her friendship with Carl? Protection for a price? She shivered. Somewhere there had to be someone she could really trust, someone to be a true friend. Things were never so bad if one had a friend to turn to.
Deanna? If she hadn't been so easy-going with Deanna, she might have known about this house earlier; then the decision-making would be all over by now. Damn Deanna and Yves for trying to take advantage of her when she wasn't looking!
And Mrs. Whipple and her brother? No. They probably trusted the man with the knife more than her, trusted the attacker more than the victim. Now that was something to ponder!
She looked up at the house, the windows flung wide to let in the fresh air. It was late afternoon, and in the fading light under a cloudy sky the building was taking on its phantom countenance once more. Dark and malevolent, it stared back at her, its front door propped open by heavy books. It seemed to be smiling slyly at her, inviting her in as the spider invites the fly into its web of danger and death.
High-piled thunderclouds scudded across the sky above the turret, whipped on by a reckless wind. Through the trees chased the ocean breezes, shaking the leaves and wailing around the branches. Suddenly the wooded shadows took movement and seemed to grow before her. A cat-bird called out from the depths of the shadows and seagulls screeched overhead. Was it the catbird calling her, or Mrs. Whipple?
From the distance came a sad and lonely cry, "Mo . . . ooo . . . naa! Mo . . . na!"
Her feet tripped on the tangled vines as she ran to the house.
Chapter Seven
Mrs. Whipple was an excellent cook and housekeeper if not an especially interesting companion. She insisted that they sit in the library after supper and read books. Mona, unable to think of an excuse, reluctantly agreed and found herself curled up in one of the window seats, a book opened on her lap while she watched the hearth fire.
The older woman sat in one of the deep leather armchairs before the hearth, a book of poetry on her lap. Aloud, she admired the color of the leather. "Oxblood red, nice coloh. Deepens more and more with age." She was talking to no one in particular.
The thought wasn't appealing to Mona. She pretended to be interested in her book.
"You like poetry?" the woman asked. "Youah uncle did. One of his favorites was Crossing the Bah. Notice it above the mantle? 'Let there be no mourning when I cross the bar.' "
Mona wondered why some people had to be so morbid. But Moll seemed to be oblivious of it, so Mona let it go. Before she could answer the woman, Moll was saying, "My favorite was always Poe. 'Many a year ago in the kingdom by the sea . . .' You know that one? Annabelle Lee? 'The winged seraphs of heaven went envying her and me . . . and that is the reason as all men know, in that kingdom by the sea, that wind came out of the sky by night, chilling and killing my Annabelle Lee . . .' He had real feeling, that man." She sighed. "Or maybe you like someone more recent, like Edgar Lee Masters. Wasn't his Spoon River Anthology tremendous? Those epitaphs really made those people live on. Doesn't writing like that really move you?"
Mona thought of her grandmother's little red notebook of funeral orations and recalled what the bus driver had said about his aunt writing down the epitaphs of interesting graveyard headstones. She thought of her uncle and his death. What would his monument say? Murdered by an unknown assailant? Murdered by the ghosts of Blood Island? With Perk for a sheriff or whatever he was, she was sure no murderer would be caught. Perk seemed totally uninterested in anything outside his pipe and meditations, and he wasn't even worried about the thing that had attacked her last night. Didn't he believe her? Maybe he hadn't even cared about her uncle. Maybe Rolf Hecht had reported something about intruders, to no avail!
She became aware of a soft steady tapping at the window beside her. Tapping? She didn't remember seeing any trees outside this window. Not daring to look up, she continued to watch the dancing firelight while Mrs. Whipple chattered on about poetry and how it soothed and stirred the human soul.
"Mo . . . na! Mo . . . ooo . . . na!" wailed a wind that buffeted the panes of the bay window. "Mo . . . na!"
It was her imagination-it had to be! She picked up her book and almost ran to sit by the fire.
"Are you cold?" asked Moll.
The young woman nodded.
"Probably best thing for you to do is crawl undah the covahs," the older woman told her.
"Owen brought some blankets ovah this aftahnoon. You'll soon get wahm."
"Oh, I'm really not tired," the girl protested.
"You don't have to sleep, child. Just get warm."
"But the fire's so nice and cozy."
"You scared?" Mrs. Whipple demanded. "Is that why you don't want to go up? I'll be up shortly, and I'll leave my door open. We'll be right across the hall from each othah."
"Please, may I wait for you?" begged Mona. "I know I shouldn't be frightened, and I'd have had to be alone tonight if it weren't for you. It's just that . . . well, tonight you're here. As long as there are two of us together, maybe he won't come again."
"I'm sure he won't, not when he realizes Moll Whipple has taken you as a friend," she spoke as if her name and presence were invincible, all-powerful.
Mona wondered if it would be so easy as she watched the woman tend to the fire and place the screen before the glowing coals. Then they went upstairs, turning the lights off behind them. They bade each other good night and retired to their rooms, changing into their nightgowns and climbing into bed.
It was dark, pitch-black. Mona longed to leave the hall light on but was afraid of incurring Mrs. Whipple's further disdain. The quilts on the bed were warm and heavy. She was glad for Hansen and Moll, for the warm covers they'd provided.
The branches outside her window scratched at the panes as the wind mounted, circling the house with its wailing moan. Insistent and demanding, it rose and grew louder, rattling the window and whistling through the loose chinks of the building. Didn't it bother Mrs. Whipple? Wasn't it making her cold and shivery?
In the darkness she could hear the older woman's nasal breathing become abrupt snores as Moll lapsed into the blessed limbo of sleep. Mona prayed for the oblivion of sleep, too, but it wouldn't come.
She drew the covers over her head as the shadows and darkness emerged in phantom shapes around her and the adamant gusts outside her window seemed to grow to whirlwind proportions. Soon it took up the chant of the catbird in the woods. "Mona" it called again and again. She couldn't block out the sound of it, couldn't blind herself to the images that taunted her from the darkness. Every board in the house seemed to whine and join the chorus of her name. "Mona! Mona!" Oh, God! Grant me sleep. Don't let me imagine all this! I wish Carl were here again to hold me, even if I do have to pay dearly for his protection. What good is a snoring old woman across the hall? Would she hear me if I screamed?
Louder and louder shrieked the wind. More persistent grew the clawing branches at her window The room seemed to vibrate with the whining woodwork. She dared not look from beneath the covers. She wouldn't.
"Ah, Mona. Mona, you didn't leave," came a sad thin voice. "I told you to leave."
She lay paralyzed with fear. No! God, no!
A hand gripped the heavy quilts and tugged them back from her clutching hand. Her eyes opened and saw the figure she dreaded, the hulking shadow with the long whispering robes.
"Why did you come back? Didn't you understand? You will die!"
No! No! The words caught in her throat. She could smell the damp saltiness of the sea from the shadow. It was big and clammy with the dampness of the ocean as if yet shrouded in a mist of fog.
"Oh, it is too bad, my pretty. Such a shame to hurt you."
Those cold, wet hands reached out to caress her face. Her flesh was frozen, drained of warmth at the touch of this awesome specter. She could hear him breathing hard in short gasps, deep and hissing. Him? Or her? She didn't know. Didn't want to know. If her lungs would only respond, she would scream-scream until her entire body vibrated with the action of her lungs and vocal cords. Straining every muscle and clenching her fists, she opened her mouth, but a heavy hand stinking of dead sea life was laid like a lifeless rock on her lips, to muffle whatever sound might have come from her.
Suddenly it ripped the bed covers from her, the air was cold on her skin, causing it to prickle into little bumps of goose-flesh. Her eyes watched, spellbound in dread of what might happen. The hand was still clamped over her mouth. In her fright, she could barely breathe. Choking and whimpering, she struggled to be free, tried to wriggle from the phantom's clutches and push away that gruesome hand.
It was strong, strong and forceful, pinning her wrists together on her breast. In another moment, the long leathery robes whispering, it was stretched out on top of her, heavy and freezing cold, the dampness of its body chilling her and leaving her trembling.
No, please, not again! she longed to cry out. But its hands were powerful and bruising, staying her impotent attempts at freedom.
She was soaked and shivering through the thin nightie. Fear, cold, and wetness plagued her along with the horrors of the night. She felt she was about to die, she was so chilled and trembling. The apprehension and terror mounted within her. Her heart beat loudly and she feared that hulking shadow atop her would feel and hear it too in its tremorous palpitations.
The stench of the hulking figure was suffocating. It was the smell of rotting life and the sea. Decay and death was dripping from it with horrid putridness. She thought she would vomit. She couldn't breathe, because every breath drew in those wretched, malodorous fumes. Deep into her lungs and belly it was sucked. Her insides felt contaminated with the filth of decay and death.
Is the sea where he comes from? her mind queried. All life comes from the sea, so does death too call from there? Her brain reeled with the cataclysmic thoughts spurred by the fantastic fears of her heart. Does this then represent death? It is death! It's come for all those I love, and now it comes for me!
Mona tried to scream, but the hand was insistent on her mouth.
"Remember the knife? Scream once and it will slice your throat from ear to ear. Then you will squeal like a stuck pig with good reason!"
The cold blade lay on her neck once more.
"Understand?"
Trying to nod, she registered the answer that she did quite well understand.
A freezing, clammy paw went to her breasts. Manipulating them like elastic dough, the intruder massaged them into firm fullness. With seeming delight he squeezed her nipples into hot blossoms of fire.
Oh, God! This is worse than with Carl. Worse than last night! So much worse! Carl was human and handsome. This? What is this? Ugliness hidden in shrouded robes that comes in the dead of night to threaten and hurt.
Its breath came in short rasping gasps. It was torture to listen to its harsh, throaty rattle. Like the final rattle of one dying, its breaths clattered in the echoing chamber of its throat.
Those gnarled, chilly fingers ripped at her nightgown, wrenched it downward to expose her breasts more fully to the onslaught. Dripping its hot saliva on her naked tits, it began to gnaw at her flesh like a hungry dog. Its jagged teeth chewed at the delicate, fragrant flesh until it was raw and bleeding. Leaving her with a burning ache of shame and humiliation, it nibbled at her brown aureoles until they were broken and ragged.
Stop! Stop! Mona tried to cry out, but the words choked within her. Wrestling beneath the creature, she heard it hiss, "The knife! You forget the knife?"
Mona didn't forget and she was stilled.
The fingers, dank and freezing, pressed into her crotch. Again she sought to check the invasion. But the knife, cold and unyielding, slipped beneath her gown to press on her nude belly.
Her wrists locked by powerful gripping hands at either side of her hips, she felt the hoary face of the hooded figure lean toward her crotch. Locking her thighs together, she refused to open them.
"One more time," hissed the voice in warning, "and no more!"
Reluctantly her legs parted, and into the soft fur of her pubic mound dived the gluttonous head, unseen but felt on her most sensitive anatomy parts. Oh, never, never again! To die might be far better. Surely, the traumas of the unknown world can not be so shattering. Oh, God, forbid it!
Slathering loudly and animal-like into the succulence of her pussy, the thing was obviously enjoying itself. Appalled and devastated, Mona could feel the sensation of its teeth and hoary face in her slit. It devoured the juices of her cunt with pickled relish. Ravishing her, tantalizing her clitoris, it drove her wild with excitement and craving lust.
Her mind rebelling but no longer controlling her anatomy, Mona felt destroyed. Annihilated! Her surrender was nearly complete. Brain reeling with the multiple traumas of fear, repulsion, hate, lust and pain, she felt driven beyond the realms of control. Into the depths of abandon and raucous degradation she hurtled. Sensations of pain, lust, filth, decay and reptilian leatheriness-slippery cold clamminess-gripped her. Above all was the catastrophic sensation of hanging precariously, tottering on the brink of passion and ecstasy. Hating herself, she felt the overwhelming desire of her loins envelop her. She was lost. Lost and forever destroyed!
Practically insane with savage abandon and lust, she spread her thighs wide for the intruder's huge, fantastically monstrous cock. As it filled her cunt, she lifted her buttocks in welcome to give it greater access. Longer than any prick she had ever felt before it plunged deeply, fathoming the depths of her vagina. It was so thick and hard-a rock-like column that seared her with a violence and maliciousness that would leave her forever ragged and scarred.
"Yyeeeeiiiieeee!" she cried.
Her muscles clenched and unclenched as the voluminous cock pumped in her tight little pussy. Like a plumber's plunger in a tiny toilet. The tight circles of elastic membrane stretched and enfolded it, but still the silk-like sheath wasn't big enough. The searing pain caused by the monstrous cock's tearing of her delicate tissues brought tears to her eyes-tears of humiliation, distress, and terrifying pain.
Ramming into her womb, it continued the rhythmic in and out motions of fucking. Hard, long and fast came the thrusts of the palpitating, swollen rod of flesh. Nothing so catastrophic, so burning and aching, had ever filled her as did this thing. Stop! Stop! You'll kill me, she wailed silently. You'll kill me, kill me!
The sensations produced by the sliding in and out motion of the prick caught her reeling mind as the driving thing rammed forcefully through her belly. She was becoming like an animal driven by lust and savage fury, her pain turning to ecstasy. In unison with the stinking shrouded creature lying on top of her, she began to gyrate, rock and careen in the ancient, timeless ritual of sexual intercourse. Deep in the throes of coitus, they rose to the pinnacle of orgasm.
When they reached it, they froze, holding tightly lest they lose the magic blend. Her legs locked tight around the cold, wet, leathery body, Mona clung desperately, as if for her life. Then she felt herself coming.
From the well of her womb bubbled forth the nectar of orgasm, the sticky-sweet juices of fruition. They erupted and flooded her loins, spilling out of her uterus to drown the spasming cock to drown and mat her pubic down and the genitals of the creature.
Then he, too, was coming. She could feel the rumbling explosion deep in the unseen testicles as they slapped against her upturned buttocks. The spastic jerks of the huge cock became long measured lunges into the furthest reaches of her belly. Then, with a final bed-shaking plunge, the prick drove its load home.
"Eeeee!" she screamed as his sperm jetted into her.
Hot spurts of thick, torrential cum filled her cunt and flowed out to trickle down her naked butt. In long bursts it filled her womb until she thought it would rush upward and pour out of her throat.
It's so forceful, so monstrous! Her mind cried out again and again. It'll fill you to bursting. You'll explode and die! Die! Ramona Jahn, you're going to die.
It shoved its enormous impaling rod into her for the final time, then withdrew. But the membranous sheath of her snatch couldn't let go, fastened to it by sheer resistance to the stretching as well as their glue-like cum, so torn bits of bloody flesh remained on it as it was yanked out.
With the rush of blood from her pussy. Mona felt all her strength drain away.
The fog laced through the windows and under the door, swimming up to envelop the bed. She saw it swallow the intruder and leave her alone with nothing but its own gray mist and her fears. Then . . . nothingness.
When she awoke the room was still in blackness. The weight of that terrifying torso was gone, but the sounds of the wind and branches still clamored and wailed at the window, and the smell of decay and the sea was still in the room. Then it is here! The shadows seemed to move in affirmation as she tentatively ran one hand between her legs and it encountered her sore and bleeding vagina. So it is true! It did happen! I had intercourse with that repulsive, hoary creature of the night!
"Want more?" croaked a voice from the shadows, approaching her. The dark hooded figure with its long noisy robes and that permeating stench of death came toward her.
Mona sat bolt upright in the bed, shrieking hysterically. She didn't even hear the noise across the hall, but the creature did. Cursing her, it fled through the hall, up to the attic and the widow's walk.
"What is it? What is it?" cried Mrs. Whipple, running into the room with her gun.
"It was here!" sobbed Mona, pointing toward the hall. "It's gone through the attic."
They heard a strange, crazed laughter from outside and Mrs. Whipple threw open the window. She fired into the darkness. The laughter stopped.
"Well, that one's got some buckshot in his pants," the woman assured her.
She seemed overly confident to Mona. Nothing could convince the young woman she'd ever be safe again.
"You hurt?" the older woman questioned.
Suddenly Mona felt despair. Mrs. Whipple was so sure the intruder was just a harmless trespasser, yet the young woman knew better. How could she explain to this stalwart protector that while she'd slept her charge had been raped? The formidable Moll would think the girl should have put up a better fight or at least screamed sooner to ward off the assailant, and since she hadn't, it must mean Mona had willingly submitted and was therefore less, far less than the proper young lady they'd assumed her to be.
"A few bruises, I guess," the girl told her woefully. "He had his knife and meant business when he threatened me."
"Nonsense! If he'd wanted to, he could have killed you long ago."
That settled that! She could never tell Mrs. Whipple the truth about the incident, couldn't let her know she'd been raped. The woman would never believe Mona's explanation of how and why she'd let it happen.
"Sure you're all right?" the older woman asked again. Her tone implied she didn't need an answer; she was already positive very little had happened and the intruder was harmless, and after firing the relatively harmless buckshot, she assumed that warning would be sufficient to keep the man away.
"Yes, Mrs. Whipple," Mona returned in a tired tone.
"Now, you get some sleep or you'll be exhausted in the morning," the older woman told her as she started on her return to her bedroom.
In a few moments they were settled again in the blackness of night. Again came the familiar sounds of the house, the wind, the tree . . . and the shadows seemed to loom into a thousand hooded intruders.
From across the hall, Mona could hear the snores of Mrs. Whipple peacefully slumbering once more. How can she? this house? On this island! She pretends to be my protector, but she sleeps through his threats and rape. What will I do?
Unable to sleep, she lit the small bedside lamp and rose to walk around the room. It was cheerless, but at least the blackness and ominous shadows had fled. Pacing the floor, she longed for sleep and the relative peace of mind she'd known just a few days before in New York. It seemed like centuries ago!
The next thing she heard was the ring of bullets ricocheting off the ceiling. She jumped to the window, off to one side, to see where they were coming from.
"You little fool!" shouted Mrs. Whipple as she dived through the door and doused the lamp. "Get away from that window! If he really wanted to kill you, you'd be a sitting duck!"
They waited in the darkness, but no more shots came. All was silent.
"What'd you do to turn him against you so much?" demanded the older woman.
"Me?"
"He really wants you off this island. He could've killed you if he'd wanted to, but he's just trying to scare the hell out of you!"
The woman watched her suspiciously. She didn't trust Mona at this point, but Mona didn't care. Moll Whipple was no friend to her. The old bitch was siding with the intruder-a rapist, marauder and now a potential murderer!
Chapter Eight
Ramona was up even before the sun had begun to streak the sky across the waters of the Atlantic. She stood outside the house, wrapped warmly in her winter coat, her hair blowing out behind her in long billowing waves.
Her breasts and vagina ached terribly, a raw reminder of the intruder and his brutal lust. In the house, Mrs. Whipple slept peacefully, unconcerned about the attacking trespasser. Her words still rang in Mona's ears: // he really wanted to kill you . . . just trying to scare the hell out of you that's all. Well, Mrs. Whipple, he's done more than that. Much more!
She longed to walk, but where to? To explore the island alone would be foolish at this point. Even to explore around the house would mean searing reminders of the rape from her ragged labia. She winced at the thought.
Owen Hansen would be here sometime this morning. He would come to see if she was all right. He didn't trust the judgment of Perk and Mrs. Whipple, and he'd told her not to even trust him. Maybe it was wise. But then if there was no one who cared, no friend . . .
From the distance she heard the putting motor of a launch. Her feet skipped over the vines and rocks that cluttered the path to the bank. At first, the sharp sting of her crotch halted her, but her feet wouldn't be stayed. By the time she reached the ledge overlooking the dock, her genitals were aflame and her breasts ached as if beaten from her unsteady bouncing over the rough turf.
Momentarily the burning sensation filled her and caused her vision to blur, as if she were all alone in a long dark tunnel receding from the world of sight and sound, touch and smell. Everything was so far away. Don't close your eyes, she told herself. Don't give in. It will pass.
"Miss Jahn! Ramona!" a voice echoed down the cavern of emptiness.
Slowly, the veil that had blurred her view slid away. She heard the sounds of the gulls and of scrambling feet growing closer. Someone was coming up over the rocky embankment.
"Ramona! Are you all right?" called a husky voice. A strong hand gripped her arm.
She looked up into the face of Owen Hansen. His dark eyes were clouded. He looked worried.
Then everything was all right. She could hear again, she could feel her legs beneath her, weak but standing, she could see his face clearly.
"Why didn't you answer?" he asked, looking into her face with concern.
"Answer?"
"When I called."
"I ... I didn't hear you," she stuttered, sharply aware of the scalding sensation between her thighs that forced her to stand with them apart.
"You're awfully pale," he said urgently. "Has anything happened?"
"Happened?" she returned dully, tears pricking the corners of her eyes.
"Something has. I know it!" he cried, gripping both her arms and looking at her so closely she dropped her eyes in shame.
"Mrs. Whipple will tell you," she said in a hoarse tone. "It wasn't important."
"Not important? To hell with Mrs. Whipple! What do you say about it?"
"I... it doesn't matter," she stammered, turning away.
He caught her and turned her to face him, causing her thighs to rub together. She caught her breath sharply and swayed.
"Something's wrong," he said. "We made a deal about my seeing that you were all right. Now I'm heah you seem reluctant to tell me what's going on. Why? Is it so bad?"
When she didn't answer but reached out to grasp his arm for support, he put his arms around her waist to hold her. Mona looked up at him unsteadily. His face registered genuine concern. She wondered if she should tell him, but feared he, too, wouldn't believe her.
"Bettah get you up to the house to lie down," he said, moving to take her in that direction.
"Oh, no. Please not yet!" she implored. "I . . . it's so nice out. I don't want to go in. The fresh air is good for me."
"Youah afraid of the house? Couldn't be in the daytime. Is it Mrs. Whipple you don't want to see?"
"Please, let's walk. I ... I haven't really seen the island yet."
"If you feel okay," he conceded kindly. "Oh, yes!"
They walked together around the southern curve of the island, where the house was situated well inland. The sun was above the water now, breaking it into millions of sparkling diamonds while the seagulls dipped down in graceful swoops and head-long dives for their morning fish and shell foods. It was peaceful and pleasant.
"Oh, it is a beautiful place, after all!" Mona cried ecstatically. "Aren't the gulls lovely? I never knew those birds were so big!"
They watched one gull swoop down in a head-long plunge into the ocean. In half a second he came plummeting upward in the same straight vertical drive, his direction reversed. A fat fish wriggled in his sturdy ivory bill. He brought it to the beach and stood there for a moment on a rock, as if to regain his breath. His gunmetal gray body was large and solid; there was a black streak across his dripping wings. His white head matted with moisture and his round black eyes sharp and glaring, he seemed to survey the land as if he were the proud sovereign of the domain. Then he was gone, soaring skyward with majestic grace.
"You will learn to appreciate the gulls much more if you stay here," Hansen returned with a smile. "They are the constant companions of lonely fishermen."
"Not like an albatross, I hope!"
"I suspect you read too much," the young man answered with a thoughtful grin. "Come along with me one day and learn through experience what the albatross' distant cousin is like. Rather think you might enjoy a holiday and learn to appreciate New England when this is all over."
Mona walked along, watching her feet, hoping it wasn't too noticeable that they were moving measurably apart in her stride.
"It would be fun," she said wondering if the day would ever come when she could take that holiday. Perhaps she would give up first and return to New York, though she knew if she did she could never return to New Hampshire or the seashore without thoughts that would send her scurrying homeward.
The chill wind of the eastward side blew against them. She felt it lick her legs and thighs with its cold tongue. It helped the burning sensation a little and she was grateful. They were at the rear of the house, an area overgrown with vines and bushes. Tall elms and maples obscured the windows on that side of the building. To Ramona it was just as well. She felt no warmth toward the ugly old mansion. She clung to it only because it had been her uncle's and now she could call it her own.
"Want to sit down theah?" asked Hansen, pointing out a mossy slope in a small cove. "It's usually a pretty soft cushion if you watch out for the rocks."
She nodded and let him help her down the short, steep ledge to the dark green slope. "It won't stain?"
"Haven't noticed that it does," he returned, "but you won't find a softer seat anywhere. Even in youah uncle's haunted palace."
Smiling gratefully, she lowered herself to the moss, trying to find a comfortable position. It was difficult, for every way she could think of sitting would create pressure on her raw labia. She finally settled on her knees, pretending to be interested in the rocky shore, picking up stones and pebbles to throw into the water.
Hansen continued to view her with concern.
"Are we on a first-name basis yet?" he questioned with a grin. "Didn't bothah you back there when I called you Ramona, did it?"
She shook her head.
"Mrs. Whipple doesn't call me anything but 'child' now and then. And being 'Miss' is terribly formal."
"Pretty name, Ramona," he mused. "Different."
"My father named me after some place he liked in the South Pacific during the war."
"At least, that's what he told youah mom, eh?" he said with a grin, "Never thought of that," Mona returned with a smile. "Maybe that's why she preferred calling me Mona for short. Only my father called me Ramona."
"Kind of sad, but very pretty . . . the sound, I mean."
He was leaning back on his elbows, looking out to sea, Mona noticed for the first time that he hadn't worn his usual loose-fitting dungarees and jacket. He wore trim black trousers that clung to his long, smooth-muscled legs and a jersey that stretched across his broad chest, a light blue wool mainliner over it. He'd even brushed his hair smoothly into place, though the sea breezes threatened to riffle it again. There was a hint of Old Spice on him too. Mona smiled quietly to herself. Wonder what that's all about, she pondered.
The wind died and the sun disappeared above the bank of clouds. Is the sky here always so leaden? She mused. The gulls sat quietly on the shore as if waiting for something.
"Looks like another squall coming up." Hansen said.
"Soon?"
"Soon enough," he answered absently. "Ramona? Or should I call you Mona?" "Whichever you like," she replied, looking at him.
"Promise to call me Owen?"
She looked into his laughing eyes. She still thought he wasn't handsome, but there was something appealing about him. He wasn't much taller than she, probably about five-ten or five-eleven. Still, he seemed bigger and stronger than Carl Richardson, for all the lawyer's height. There was something sturdy, strongly virile and masculine about this man.
Nodding in agreement, she responded, "Okay, Owen."
"Now that I've come out heah to see how you are-"
"And at the crack of dawn," she interrupted with a look of stern surprise.
"I've got a lot of work to do, young lady," he insisted. "Soonah I see to you, the soonah it gets done."
"Oh, I didn't mean to keep you from your work!" Mona protested.
"The soonah I'll get back heah in the evening to sec you again," he continued as if she hadn't interrupted him, a smile creeping across his face till the corners of his eyes wrinkled.
It was the first time she'd seen him smile so meaningfully. It was a pleasant smile and she realized he could be a very warm person to be with.
"You mind?" he asked seriously.
She shook her head and looked down at the rocks on the shore of the little cover. His hand reached out and touched her arm.
"Don't you know it's impolite to turn your back on people who are talking to you?" he teased.
"Won't you come sit down and try out these prize natural cushions?"
Ramona smiled back at him apologetically and he pulled her down beside him. She winced at the sudden disturbing of her sore crotch, then forced a smile and arranged her short skirt and coat around her legs as she hugged them gently to her, her thighs slightly parted to the cool air.
"You have absolutely no coloh," he chided. "Now are you going to tell me about last night or am I to listen to dull old Moll Whipple and conjecture about the rest?"
"What difference does it make?" she said with a shrug. "My uncle was murdered here, and what does Perkins care? He doesn't seem to be interested or even active in his role as sheriff or whatever he is."
"You'll get used to Perk. In his own quiet way, he usually comes through."
"He and his sister don't quite believe what I say about the intruder. They rather suspect he's a friendly New Englander and I'm a hare-brained, hysterical foreigner."
"You'll get used to that, too, if you stay around like your uncle did. After a while people will either accept you or tolerate you. Being tolerated isn't so bad. You get preference to outsidahs and strangahs aftah that."
"How comforting," she said with a wry grin, trying to move her hips to take the pressure off her vagina.
"You sure youah all right?" he persisted. "Look, if it has to do with last night, I don't think like Moll or Perk."
There was a leaden silence between them before she answered.
"It came again last night with the knife and threatened my life. A little while later, after Moll scared it away, it shot at me."
"You said 'it'," he told her. "You believe it's not human?"
"I don't know. It's big, wet, cold. It wears a long, leathery robe that rustles when it moves."
"The Lady of the Island?"
"No, definitely not," she said with finality.
"Not with the long, rustling robe?"
"It may not be human, but it's certainly not female, either."
"Youah talking in circles," he insisted.
"I'm saying that, dead or alive, it's not a woman."
"You must have good reason to say that."
"Forget about it, will you?" she cried in exasperation, starting to rise.
His hand caught her and she fell back onto the slope, her legs clamping over the burning wound of her slit.
"Ohhhh!" she cried, her eyes clenching with pain. Biting her lip against the tears, she tried to struggle to her feet.
"He hurt you, didn't he?" demanded the young man.
When she didn't answer, he repeated the question.
"Forget it!" she implored. "Forget it!" she implored.
"Why? Did you want it to happen? Are you glad of it?"
"No! No!" she cried vehemently, shaking her head.
"Did you tell Moll?"
"She wouldn't have believed it. She'd have thought I should have been able to fight him off!" She choked the words out, trying to hold back the tears of pain and humiliation. "I was so afraid! Petrified! When he put the blade of that knife on my neck, my muscles turned to liquid. They wouldn't respond. I couldn't fight, couldn't even scream. I didn't know if he was real or a ghost! I never believed in phantoms before, but everything here is so frightening, so horrible!"
The tears flowed freely down her cheeks then. She couldn't stop them. Her lower lip trembled as she kept her sobs stilled.
"It's all right," he tried to assure her, his big hands gripping her shoulders firmly. "I understand."
"Do you?" Mona whispered hoarsely. "Have you ever been terrified? Ever thought there really might be a world of the supernatural?"
"I think man hopes to kill his fear of the supernatural through destroying his belief in God," Owen said philosophically. "God represents the unknown, a world unexplored, unseen, yet always there. Kill Him and you've killed the demon specters of the unseen world too."
"Do you believe?"
"I don't know," he returned. "You think one ought to? Can a man really destroy all that the human mind and imagination have created and solidified through the centuries? Even if you kill the idea, do you kill the mind and imagination that created it? If there's a good God, one suspects, there's also the bad Satan, each with their cohorts. Legends, histories, jokes, songs, plays, moral lessons, laws, wisdom, and even science have had their foundations laid on the belief in the supernatural. We can deny it's existence now, thousands of years later, but can we destroy it without destroying the framework of our existence and the elements of man's brain which created and nurtured it?"
"As long as we live, then," she said, "There'll be doubts and half-beliefs that maybe there are such creatures as ghosts and other specters?"
Owen shrugged his shoulders.
"Who's to know? So long as there's a church, a law, a set of moral codes, someone will wonder and suggest it to others to speculate."
"You know, Mr. Hansen," Mona said with a smile, "You've made me feel better already."
"Wish I could say the same for you," he said with a morose look. "You still call me Mister Hansen when we'd agreed on Owen. And worse, I must leave you in the care of a skeptical old woman who slept through your struggles and pain last night."
Mona hung her head as she knelt before him, thighs parted, resting her arms on his uplifted knees. She hated to discuss it. Remembering the terror of it all just made it worse. It made her more conscious of the pain in her breasts and groin.
His hand gently lifted her chin.
"It shouldn't have been this way," he whispered. "If I'd only known, I wouldn't have let it happen."
"Why should you care?" she murmured. "I'm a stranger."
"Not any more, youah not. Not to me, anyway, and you won't remain a strangah to othahs heah, eithah, if I can help it."
Their eyes met and she felt something powerful and warm in them. His Old Spice smelled so good, and his hands were so firm, yet, so gentle. He came forward and encircled her in his arms. Never had she felt so safe and secure, even here in this dreadful place.
His mouth was gentle and her lips needed no urging to welcome his searching tongue. The island slipped away with the call of the gulls and she found the peace and security she'd sought in his strong embrace. Nothing had ever seemed so perfect to her before. She didn't want to leave his arms.
For a moment she thought she would never again be afraid. But then he pulled her down beside him in the moss and reality was with her again.
"Auuggghh!" she moaned at the rubbing of her firm flesh upon the torn fragility of her loins.
"I hurt you," he said with a worried look.
"It's not you," she told him. "Not you!"
"I shouldn't have brought you here," he said with conviction. "Should have been firmer about it."
"No I would have come by any means I could," she insisted.
"But this didn't have to be! It shouldn't have been!"
"How could you have prevented it?" demanded Mona.
"I don't know," he returned. "But I ... I just shouldn't have let it!"
He seemed a perturbed man who wished to undo what he'd had no control over. She stroked his cheek comfortingly. It was over and done. She just wanted to forget. Forget!
Smiling sadly she looked deeply into his eyes, trying to tell him what her words couldn't. His fingers played her hair and his lips sought the sweet salts of her face and neck.
Why did it feel right with him like it had with Danny and Ray? Even he said not to trust him. Would he, too, betray her? Would he take her love and leave her? Perhaps like Carl all he wanted was her body. What then?
They lay for a long while together, talking and making love. His kisses were loving and kind. Could they be false? His hands gently caressed the bruised swells of her breasts. Could they hurt her as well?
The longer they stayed there together the more his lips and fingers sought her, tried to reach her breasts and crotch. How long could she forestall his desires? Inside her taunted the fear that he only wanted her as a female not as a person.
Oh, please! I'm so tired of playing, of running. God! Help me!
"I hope I'm not disturbing anything!" boomed a deep voice behind them.
They sat up quickly, Mona scrambling to her feet to avoid further irritation to her loins. There on the embankment behind them stood the formidable Mrs. Whipple, her gray hair tightly drawn into a bun at the nape of her neck, her lips drawn in a thin tight line. Her eyes were cold steel as she spoke, her arms akimbo as if facing truant children in her classroom.
"Owen, you always were good at playing around. Too bad you can't do a lick of work as well. I told you to stay away for a reason and I meant it."
"Look, Moll," he tried to tell her. "We're two grown people. You may be used to dominating others around heah, but not out-sidahs."
"You'hr right, Owen," she answered. "You always were an out-sidah. I was trying to help Miss Jahn, but she apparently doesn't respect the wisdom of those older and wiser than she. Probably the reason she infuriated the trespasser to shoot at her last night or didn't she tell you?"
She looked down at Ramona as if she could knock her down with a simple stare. The girl returned her steady gaze defiantly, yet there were no words that the omnipresent figure on the hill would listen to so she didn't bother to speak.
"If I'd known you were the type of girl who fools around with strangehs," the woman accused, "I never would have offehed my friendship or protection. You apparently don't need it. Staying out heah alone with that fake lawyer and last night making that harmless trespasser use gunshots to frighten you away,"
"What? What do you mean, 'fake lawyer?' " demanded Mona. "I was stranded out here with him. I never intended to be alone with him for the night!"
"Hah! A likely story!" spat the woman and turned on her heel. "But-!"
"Let her go!" Owen insisted. "She never would listen to reason. I could tell her I was responsible for that first night with the lawyeh and she would just laugh, saying it was because I wanted my fun now. A share of the profits, you might say."
"Do you?" Mona asked skeptically. "You said you should have prevented my ever coming here. Is it true you could have?"
"Mona, you don't think I. . ." he asked, staring at her numbly.
"You told me not to trust you either," she said. "Now what? No one for a friend. What do I do? Sell out? Abandon this place? Why is everyone intent on getting rid of me?"
"Mona! Mona!" he called after her as she climbed the embankment and ran off towards the house. But she wouldn't stop. She was deaf to him now.
Chapter Nine
Mrs. Whipple insisted that if she were to remain on the island Owen had to leave. He refused. No matter how often she told him how safe the two women were if Ramona would behave herself the young man wasn't in agreement.
Mona had never seen two people cause so much hair-raising friction before. Fights had always bothered her and she stood watching this one until her skin crawled and she was unable to intervene. Every time she spoke she was cut off by an irate Moll Whipple who "knew" what she was doing and didn't need the "likes of a loose-moraled child" to interrupt. In despair Mona returned to the beach wondering if she should leave and end the whole mess.
But that was exactly what they wanted. Fear, hate, threats, gunshots or rape, she was going to see this through to the finish! Even if she were killed? The thought sent shivers down her spine. She wouldn't think of that possibility.
Owen finally found her down by the dock.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked as he came to stand beside her. "You're not thinking about leaving are you?"
"That's what you all want, isn't it?" she demanded. "You wanted to scare me away. Why? What is it about this island that you can have it while I, the legal heir, cannot?"
"No one's trying to prevent that."
"No? Not the trespasser who keeps threatening me, telling me to get off before he kills me? Not the lawyer who wants me to take his offer for the place? Not Mrs. Whipple who can't really stand strangers in her peaceful little town?"
"Don't get excited," he told her, trying to draw her to sit on the rocks.
"You even forget that I can't sit very well today, Mr. Hansen," she accused. "You men are all alike. Use a woman and forget her. Isn't that so?"
With that she ran up the embankment and across the tangle of vines as fast as she could, her legs flying apart.
"Please!" he shouted and followed her.
In a moment he had caught up with her and grasped her arm.
"You can go any time now, Mr. Hansen. I no longer require your services."
"Someone's got to stay with you!"
"There's always Mrs. Whipple," she said, mockingly gesturing to the house.
"Not any more," he told her. "She blew up and took off in a huff."
"What?"
"She's gone, Mona. She left the house shortly after you did, calling us a couple of 'ingrates'. She's really mad!"
"Oh, God!" she moaned. "Why? And there's that horrible thing, or man, out there. She'll be hurt for sure."
"The indomitable Moll Whipple?" he chortled. "I doubt it. I'd hate to be that trespasser if he pulls anything on her."
"But he's got a knife and he seems so big!"
"Hah! Nothing's biggeh or mohe dangerous than Moll," he said. "Besides, she's been trying to get a man since her pooh husband was killed oveh twenty yeahs ago. She's so damned egotistical and domineering she couldn't get anotheh silent, persevering man. If he tries to lay her, she'll go willing. Then Heaven help him!"
"Really!" Mona wailed. "Must you!"
"Sorry," he said reticently. "But it's true. Anything she gets will be long looked for, and if she gets any surprises of violence she deserves them."
"Owen!"
"There, I feel betteh you remembered my name," he said with a grin. "Look, I'm not out to bug you. But why do you think she knows youhr uncle betteh than anyone else? She's been throwing herself at him since he got heah,"
"But she doesn't like out-of-staters!"
"A male is a male when the only available men in town have been spurning you for yeahs."
Mona couldn't help but be somewhat amused by it all. Reluctantly she agreed to have him stay though she yet doubted his interests in her being on the island. She was beginning to wonder if anyone in town had something to do with her uncle's murder. Maybe it had been the trespasser who wanted the island. And from the way Perk and Moll talked they wouldn't prosecute a fellow New Englander even if he was in the wrong so long as the victim was in their terms, 'a furriner.'
By afternoon Moll Whipple still hadn't returned and at Mona's insistence the two went to search for her. The woods were deep and dark. Mona had yet to hear any animal life about and wondered if it was because of the trespasser and murder of her uncle. Maybe the trespasser lived on the meat of the wild life and they were frightened into silence with his hunting. She dreaded the thought.
Once they heard the catbird answer their calls for Moll.
"Moll... lll! Moll Whipple ... llle!" it cried through the darkness of the forbidding woods.
"Oh, Owen," cried Mona in exasperation. "Where could she be?"
"Ow . . . wennn!" wailed the bird. ". . . she be . . . eeee!"
Involuntarily she stayed close by his side as the catbird echoed her words. He chuckled and tussled her hair.
"He's just having fun with you."
"Who?"
"The catbird. He loves to repeat," answered Owen, then he demonstrated. "Hah-loo! Wharh ahre you-ooo!"
"Hah-loo!" came the return. "Whar ahre yooooou!"
"Oh, Owen! Please let's go! It's so creepy here!"
"All right. Com'on. 'Bye', Moll!"
"Bye, Moll! Mo-lll!" called the bird.
The air was heavy and the sky darkly forbidding as they approached the house. No gulls were in the sky and even the water was still as glass.
Mona looked at the house. It was huge, black and forbidding. She hated to go in. She knew too well the shadows of the house and remembered only the hurt and sadness of her days there. It seemed to blink its reptilian eyes malevolently at her and she could almost see the shadows moving inside before she had reached it. She couldn't go inside. Not just yet! Please, Owen. Don't make me go in just yet!
"Storm coming up," Owen said quietly.
"Soon?"
"Hour or so, maybe more," he returned. "Can we stay out just for a little while," she tremored the words.
"You don't want to go in, do you?" he said gently, looking from Mona to the house.
"Can't blame you. Big old thing was neveh much to look at. But then, you've mohr to hate it foh. It's given you nothing but trouble. Trouble and pain."
She felt his eyes on her and couldn't look at him. She flushed darkly, embarrassed. "I'm sorry."
She shook her head at his apology and turned away to look out over the bay to the shore. The little town looked like a child's toy under the lowering clouds and stagnant air. The ocean waters before it were merely a dark looking glass. Everything was still and silent. Not a branch stirred to proclaim life's existence. It was eerie. And her flesh prickled with unknown fears causing her to shiver again as she had so often done since coming to this place. She, the steady, responsible, quiet person who never showed emotion before. Now she jumped at the tone of a voice slightly off-key, ran from the shadows of night, and feared the people around her. What had happened to her!
"Bad weatheh in the Spring," said Owen. "You wait till Summeh and Fall. Then you'll like this place real well."
"You think I'll still be here?"
"If I can help it, you will be heah."
"Dead or alive?" she demanded cruelly, staring deeply into his rough hewn face.
"I s'pose that was necessary," he said hoarsely. "Told you not to trust me."
"I'm sorry," she said contritely, her face falling. "I don't know what came over me. I've never said anything like that before. Only when I'm up against a wall do I say something so ... so pointed."
"You've been backed into a corner for two long days and nights," he told her. "You've a right to blow off some steam. More if you like."
"No I don't!" she told him, choking back the tears. "No one has the right. Besides, you've done nothing to hurt me that I know of. I shouldn't have."
"But I've given you every reason to doubt me," he said evenly.
His face was hard and serious. Was this the face of a man who would kill her? The face of someone who would rape her, like Carl and the trespasser? Oh, please, no!
His gaze was steady, but his eyes were still warm and gentle. Was that just to win her confidence or-!
Her legs seemed like liquid beneath her and she thought she would fall, but his arms were strong around her. When she felt her knees give way he was there and he held her gently as they both sunk to the ground.
Was that her voice that was babbling so incoherently?
"I'm afraid, Owen. So afraid!"
"I know, darling. I know," he whispered softly into her hair.
"Please don't leave me. Please!"
"I won't. I won't!"
His mouth was hot on her face, smothering her. Their tongues met and she knew nothing but him.
She was whole and alone with him. There was safety in his embrace. Wasn't there? Please, never let go, she begged silently. Never let go! I need you! Good or bad, I need you!
Don't be like all the others! Don't use me! Love me, if only for a few moments. I need you!
His hands undid the buttons of her coat and slipped beneath the light silk jersey of her blouse. Don't hurt! Please don't hurt! But his fingers were warm and gentle as they loosened the straps of her brassiere and cupped the soft swells of her womanhood. His fingertips plied the torn nipples of her aureoles and somehow made them delight in his fondling.
For a long time they lay there sharing the nectars of their sexes while his hands caressed the fruits of her femininity. When he put his hand upon her abdomen she didn't protest. It felt strong and good.
Slowly it began to stroke her hip drawing her skirt higher and higher until his palm was on the naked flesh of her alabaster thigh.
No. Don't! she wanted to protest, her hands reaching down to his. Please don't hurt me! I'm so afraid!
Gently he cupped her hand in his and continued his fondling reaching under the silk of her panties to her pubic mound.
"Owen. Owen, no!" she pleaded.
His mouth closed over hers to silence her and she felt his fingers pull at her panties, dragging them downward.
She wriggled beneath him. You're like all the others. All the others! You don't care! All you want is my body! My body!
She thought she would drown in the stillness of the air. She couldn't breathe. Above her she saw the house looming larger and larger. It swelled and taunted her with its malice, its hate for outsiders. The whole island slid and shook beneath her with its curse, despising her for her being there. It loathed her presence and her desecrating its ground with the blood and cum of her white female body. Oh, let me die! she begged. The sky rushed down to meet her with its heavy dark clouds. Let me die!
Her panties were gone. Tossed somewhere she could not see and his fingers were titillating her female mound. Stop! Stop! Why couldn't she move? Scream? Fight!
But she was tired. So tired! And afraid! Impotent with fear she lay on the ground, the dark face of the Indian above her, serious, intent, his eyes glazed with desire.
He pulled her thighs apart while she stared up at him, scared and helpless. His kisses and fondling her tits didn't seem to revive her. Mona lay there barely conscious, filled with the loathing and despair that left her features numb, her eyes deep pools of fathomless abysses that knew only the black terror of night, loneliness, and physical pain.
Owen pressed his nose and tongue into her moist, raw slit. Automatically her loins cringed with the soreness and irritation. His hands were firm upon her ivory thighs, delighting in the satin smoothness of them. The scent of her sex was strong and intoxicating. Her cunt was fragile and yielding.
Palms stroking the velvet warmth of her round buttocks, Owen found the kindling heat of desire warming his groin and sparking its fires in telepathic explosions throughout his nervous system. The tiny bursts of fire reached his extremities and merged in the raging fire of lust. His palms doubled, grasping the succulent meat of her buttocks with the abandon of wild passion eager for its fill.
The fragrant perfumes of her freshly scrubbed body and the shining waves at her shoulders were enticing. He was drugged with her beauty and her desperate need that left her helpless and tantalizing to him.
He could hear the rising sobs of her breast in the distance.
"I won't hurt you. I promise, I'll be gentle," he told her.
Her legs trembled on either side of him, yearning to close. She wanted so desperately to fight him. Why did she feel so helpless.
"I won't take you, I promise you!"
Wouldn't take her? What then would he do?
Then his mouth leaned over her splayed thighs. His perspiring face leaned into the shadowy hollow of her crotch and he lifted her buttocks to bring her closer. His mouth met the silky muff of her vagina and his tongue darted between the puffy labia into her pink slit. Oh, the sweet flavor and satin texture of it, his mind reeled with the fantastic sensations of his mouth. A lone finger reached up and traced the frail labia and stirred the thick, short curls that encircled it. Her skin burned at his touch and quivered with the irritation and excitation of her pussy.
He could ear her groan as his nose nudged at the rounded softness of her cunt ensnared by the delectable scent of her love nectars as they spilled from her womb and perfumed her slit with their oily lubrication. Feverishly his scalding taste buds quested the taut string of her clitoris, provoking the slender and highly sensitized thread to quiver. Again and again he plucked the sensitive cord into blazen fury and the erotic tempo that would vibrate its writhings throughout the entire being of its female shell.
"Ooonnhhh!" Mona sobbed, sinking deep into the oblivion of her hell.
The taut muscles of his body were a wild blaze of passion, triggered by the slightest tension between his mouth and her cunt. Owen was only vaguely aware of the sinews of her torso being similarly charged as he dove deeper into her pussy.
His tongue ravaged her with a swirling fucking motion, frantically scouring the fathoms of her cunt. The perceptive taste buds flickered through her pulsing slit with the intimacy of a cock that longs to know the depth and breadth of its being for the duration of a lifetime. Around his devouring mouth the delicate labia of her pussy sucked him gently, trying desperately to draw him into her, to hold him.
Mona writhed and moaned beneath him, her body melting into the frantic, erotic rite of passionate lust. Their torsos gyrated into one with the omnipotent, catapulting rage of sexual desire gnawing desperately and voraciously at their loins.
"Aaaaahhhh," she groaned with the furor that attacked her cunt and frustrated his reckless oral screwing of her slit.
Echoes of their guttural emissions, the burbling ecstasy and desperate cries of their mounting need and frantic quest sounded distantly through the vacuum of air that surrounded them. Together they jerked and rolled locked in the primitive union of abandon of the male and female of their loins.
Sweat glossed their bodies and made their clothes cling to their skin as they twisted and writhed with the onslaught of orgasm.
"Eeeeeyyyiiii!" she wailed above him, flailing with the cumming of her womb.
Into his face gushed the sweet nectars of her sex as he drank them with voraciousness and a lust driven by his loins. Owen devoured the fruits of her sex feeling the swelling of his cock soar beyond control.
It ached and throbbed with the mounting pressure of his burgeoning testicles. He longed to press the emblazoned prick into her cunt, but the memory of her agony from the rape forced him to continue his eating of her instead.
When she was done he returned to her tits to roll the turgidness of her nipples between thumb and forefinger.
Mona looked into his face contorted with the heat and bursting of his groin. He started to rise and move away.
"No," she whispered catching him. "You . . . Why didn't you take me?"
"Why do you think?" he demanded, the urgency of his prick calling him away. "You've been hurt enough."
"But you could have. You knew I couldn't fight any more."
"Look, I've got to go!"
"Let me," she begged reaching out her hand. He regarded her critically.
'Please, you were good to me. You didn't have to-!"
"I took advantage of you. Now I can suffer the consequences!"
"No, please! I ... I want to!" she implored. "Want to?"
"Give it to me," she whispered, her hand pressed into his groin.
Owen let her unzip the fly of his trousers and take out the ballooning prick. It pulsated warmly in her hand. She trembled and he started to withdraw, but she held on to it tightly.
She grappled the massive flesh of his cock in one hand, burrowing the other into the dark pubic hair behind to tantalize the twin blue sacs of his balls. He could feel the gentle touch of her fingertips as they plied the loose foreskin of his prick up and down the length of his stiffening shaft. His thighs jerked involuntarily as her skillful manipulation heightened the frenzied palpitation of the rising vein that coursed his male organ to the fiery crested head.
Mona's fingers titillated his balls with gentle urgency, inciting them to riot, flooding with the hot lavas of life. The voluminous pulsating rod of his prick trembled furiously in the heated clutch of her fist.
She hadn't held a prick like this since Ray had taught her so determinedly and persistently, insisting that it was better to preserve her virginity. She couldn't tell him about Danny. The words wouldn't come. So she had learned to satisfy him for a long time through this. It had repulsed her, but Ray hadn't.
Now Mona held Owen's cock. She barely knew him. And the thought of lifting a new male organ to her lips made her shudder with nausea. But she felt she had to do it. He was watching her painfully ready to run, leave her as a child unable to meet the demands of womanhood.
Lifting the swaying cock to her lips, she was determined to show him that she could satisfy him. Whether it really mattered to him or not she was going to prove to him she was a woman, a woman who could take care of a man if she really wanted to.
Furiously it throttled the tender parting lips of her mouth. In the heated embrace of her lips, the liquids of her mouth caused tickling currents to cascade the ridged entity of his prick.
Mona sat leaning over Owen's lap, sucking the quivering organ of his groin. Her tongue coursed the wrinkles of his cock with intimacy, relishing every drop of salty sweat forming on the taut shaft. Her small teeth squeezed into the rubberiness of his penis grazing the bulging vein along its side and causing the enflamed head to froth with the white stickiness welling up from his testicles.
The burning ache of his male organ quaked through his grasping, spastically clawing fingers and he found himself pulling her clothes from her shoulders, ripping her brassiere from the delicate orbs of her breasts. His lips parted, fevered and gasping as he pawed the resilient fruits of her lush womanhood.
The pungent odor of his masculinity filled her as she forced her mouth through all the intricate rituals Ray had taught her. Mona's head felt strange and hollow as if it might fall and shatter like a piece of Dresden china. At last she didn't feel or hear anything outside her mechanical, lust-filled world. She didn't see or feel. The hands that clutched at her swinging tits and thick-stemmed nipples went unnoticed and her own fingers kneaded urgently at their task in the filling balls of his groin.
Her mouth engulfed his prick more deeply, her tongue swirling round and round his throbbing meat with the furor of insatiable hunger. The tiny, even teeth nettled the grooves of his flesh with tantalizing sawing strokes that threatened to burst his ballooning cock.
Their sinews alive and tensed with passion triggered his driving organ. Thrusting it into her mouth with the desperate need of his sex, he began the pounding fucking of her mouth that would summon his cumming.
Deeper and deeper he plunged with his threatening load of cum. Longer and harder came his drives into the soft, scalding liquid wall of her oral cavity.
Owen clenched at her breasts with the urgency of his screwing. His lust rose to abandon as in fever pitch excitement he grappled her head and rose to his knees to guide her actively bobbing head in the ritual of their oral coition.
"Aauuuuggghhh!" he groaned with the furor of his turbulently seething balls.
They gurgled and moaned together with the bliss of their primitive lust. Gyrating and lunging with the intentness of his screwing prick and her madly masticating mouth.
Sweat dripped from their bodies and they could feel the spastic tremoring of his cumming welling in the depths of his groin and rolling outward toward the pinnacle of his climax.
Frozen in the heated, torrid ecstasy of their orgasm, he came. The red-hot poker of his cock jetted forth, erupting its scalding lavas into her gulping throat. The floodgates of his dam had given way deep in his testicles still in the clutch of one delicate hand.
"Eeeeyyyuuunnhhh!" the vibrations of his vocal chords filled the air, trembling through his chest though it seemed a foreign voice that cried out.
Mona's swallows were loud and punctuating to the gushing molten liquids that filled her with each lunge into her sucking, gluttonous throat. Even when his limp prick was spent she milked his testicles gently for the last precious drop. Then gurgling with satisfaction she slumped to the ground before him.
"Mona! Mona!" cried Owen, leaning over her.
There was a soft whimper and the tears flowed freely down her cheeks. It hadn't been Ray at all. In spite of all her wishing and pretending it couldn't be Ray! It was someone else. Someone she hardly knew!
Suddenly she felt the curdling, nauseating twisting of her intestines filled with the white sperm of his loins. Oh God! her heart cried out. What have I done!
Her head was heavy like lead and she felt herself spinning downward to meet the heaving ground. Before she could stop herself she had crashed into the hard earth face first with a resounding crack.
Chapter Ten
Mona was sitting in the deep cushioned leather couch of the library when her uncle's business partner arrived. She could hear his voice rough and demanding in the hallway as he demanded to speak to her. Her head ached from hitting the ground so hard, but the desire to see someone who might have known her uncle very well spurred her to call out to the protesting Owen who wanted her to be left in peace.
"It's all right, Owen. If he's a friend of my uncle's I want to see him."
"Okay. But he betteh make it fast. I want him off this island befoh the storm gets heah."
The young man ushered in the stranger, a short, stocky man with a bald head and bouncing jowls that made him look like an angry bulldog. His teeth were yellowed from too many cigarettes and one hung, stuck to his bottom lip, as he talked out of the side of his mouth.
"You Ramona Jahn?" he queried, his piercing blue eyes tiny and penetrating, surveyed her critically.
She shrunk back into the couch with the sensation a female often feels when a man gives her the scathing look that undresses her to, in his mind, better see her. She folded her arms across her breast as if to hide herself and drew her legs under her.
"Yes," she answered evenly. "What is it that you want?"
"Just got back from a business trip that took too long. Lawyers tol' me Hecht's dead. Real blow!
Been workin' together for years, me'n him."
"Oh, I wasn't told what type of business he was in," returned Mona. "I guess they thought it wasn't necessary."
"Yeah, like they thought it wasn't necessary to inform me or my New York office," fumed the man pacing around the room poking at the book-lined shelves.
"I'm sorry, but you still haven't told me what business you're in."
"Ain't important! What's important is that I want this island," he said in his fast clipped manner as if he were in a hurry. "Half of it's mine by rights, Hecht stayed here as sort of a caretaker. Be willin' to pay you reasonable for his half."
Ramona was taken back at his rambling dialogue. He was a man who knew what he wanted and wasted no time in making sure he got it.
"What if I don't wish to sell, sir?"
"That's ridiculous! What does a young girl like you want a stinkin' mud hole like this for?" he replied gesturing round him. "You gotta be kiddin' if you think you want this place."
"Then what makes it of interest to you?" demanded Owen. "If you'hr down in New Yohk, what do you want it for?"
"Ain't none o' your concern, buddy!" rasped the man, jabbing a finger in the younger man's direction. "This transaction's between me 'n the lady. Now butt out!"
Owen's face drained of color and he stood silently watching Mona for a decision from her. The girl could see he was anxious for her to give him the motion to throw the man out. But she wasn't ready. She had to know about her uncle.
More, she wanted to know why the island was so important to him and the others and so ridiculous for her to keep.
"He's a friend of mine," she told the man. "Any business affairs that concern me at the moment concern him as well. Owen is just watching out for me."
"Yeah? Well, he don't have to now. My business here can be short 'n sweet if ya listen to reason."
"I'm listening," she said. "Now explain to me why you want the island so much that I don't need it."
"Look, babe," the man said coming to stand beside the couch and make his point clear. "You're a kid, a young chick. You got a big future in cities like New York or Boston. I can set you up with the right kinda dough and you'll be swinging. Stick with this pile o' dirt and you'll be scrapin' to pay the taxes. You'll die young with no real men to treat you good 'n havin' to kill yourself to meet the tax payments on this place."
"And what makes this place so valuable to you?" demanded Owen.
"Now look, junior. I tol' you to keep your mouth shut 'n I meant it!" croaked the man wrenching his cigarette from his mouth and punctuating the air with it. "This is between me 'n the little lady."
"How do I know you're my uncle's partner?" interrupted Mona. "No one ever told me about his business."
"It wasn't none o' your concern," the man told her. "Besides, them lawyers done a half-arsed job of this thing. If they'd checked with me they woulda known this ant hill belongs to me, not you."
"But you said you were willing to pay me for my half of the land!"
"That was before you proved such an unreasonable woman," he snorted. "Was doin' the ol' man a favor to offer you dough for what wasn't yours in the first place. You know, in memory of our friendship 'n all that. But you ain't cooperating. Come to do you a favor 'n you spit in my face so I'll have to take the place myself."
"Look, you haven't got any right to talk to her like that!" fumed Owen stepping up to the couch. "You haven't even presented youhr credentials. How do we know who you are? You could be just some troublemaker up heah to-!"
"You punk!" yelled the man. "Ain't nobody ever taught you to keep your mouth shut around things that weren't none o' your affair? How many times I gotta tell you it's up to me 'n the doll here!"
Owen looked at Mona askance, beseeching her silently with his eyes for permission to throw the man out. She was grateful for his presence and support, but she couldn't let him throw the man out just yet.
"What did you say your name was?" she asked turning to the man.
"Didn't!" he snarled and began pacing about the room again with Owen following him with his eyes warily. "It's Earl Conner, if it makes a hell o' lot o' difference to you! By rights this island is mine!"
He stopped by the desk and banged his fist resoundingly on the mahogany surface. His face was red with anger when he turned to face them, his cigarette dripping from his jaw and his steel gray-blue eyes ablaze.
"Death of my partner legally reverts full possession of this island to me! Ya get that? Unnerstan'! I got the law on my side!"
"Well, perhaps you'd better see the lawyers then and tell them that," Mona told him, hoping her voice was steadier than her nerves. "They think this place belongs to me and they're the ones practicing law around here."
"Think you're smart, eh?" bellowed the irate man.
"No," Mona said evenly. "I think you'd be smart if you checked with the law that's on 'your side' though. As soon as you've established legal ownership I'll be glad to remove myself from the premises and forget this places existed."
The little man regarded her suspiciously as he asked, "You got some ace up your sleeve? Why you actin' so calm about this?"
"You want me to behave like an hysterical female?" she queried coyly.
"Just act normal! That's all!"
There was a half-smile on Mona's face as Owen moved around the couch to stand between them.
"Are you finished?" he asked over his shoulder. "Would you like him to leave yet?"
"Yes," returned Mona wearily. "If Mr. Conner doesn't wish to discuss my uncle or their business, there's nothing more I want to talk to him about."
"Sure?"
"Positive! Good-bye, Mr. Conner. It was kind of you to stop by to pay your respects for my uncle."
"We're not through yet, little lady!"
"Miss Jahn says that you are," Owen intervened. "And as she is the hostess here you'll have to leave."
"We'll see about that!" stormed the older man as he stomped over to the couch where Mona still sat.
Owen stepped up to the man and cut off his approach to the girl.
"You heard what she said," he warned the man. "Good-bye, Mr. Connah."
"Con-ner!" shouted the man. "And you ain't seen the last of me!"
"As soon as you've seen the lawyers, Mr. Conner," Mona said sweetly.
"I don't need no lawyers to take what's mine, lady. And don't you forget it!"
"Are you threatening Miss Jahn?" demanded Owen, glowering down at Conner.
"Threatening? Hell, no. Ain't no court in the world that could use that as a threat to what happens to illegal squatters," said the man looking around Owen to the young woman on the couch. "Remember, Miss Jahn. No such thing as squatters rights no more. You press me 'n you'll see what I mean."
"Good day, Mr. Conner!" she said evenly.
"I'll be back!" yelled the man as he turned on his heel and left the room. "For you, little lady, the day's just begun."
The echo of the slamming door resounded through the house and Owen went to the front bay windows to make sure the man was really leaving.
"You suppose he really meant all that?" asked Mona.
"He won't hurt you," answered Owen. "I'll see to that."
"I'm scared, Owen," she said with emotion.
"Why does he want this place so bad when he says such bad things about it? And what did he meant that the day had just begun?"
"I don't know, but I don't want to take any chances," said Owen, turning to face her with a frown. "I'm taking you into the village for the night."
"No, Owen."
"Look, Mona. There's no sense in taking foolish chances out here with a man like that," argued Owen, striding towards her. "He looks pretty dangerous to me."
"But this is my place!" Mona said, rising from the couch. "If I leave, it's admitting defeat."
"It's admitting common sense," he returned. "You want to be safe, don't you? Live to tell youhr grandchildren about this? Well, then you'hre going into town."
"Do you want me off this island, too?"
"Mona! Listen to reason," he begged. "That man as much as threatened yohr life! Between him, the guy that attacks you in the night, the usual haunts of this damned island, and that storm comin' up, I got a feeling you should be in a safer place than this."
"Owen, I want to trust you!" she cried. "But you're like all the others wanting me off this island. How do I know you're not with them and against me!"
She turned and ran out the door.
"Mona!" he called, following her. "I'm not! Please believe me. I'm with you and no one else."
"How can I know!"
Running blindly up the stairs, she felt desperately alone. Everyone wanted her away from here. The place was good for everyone but Mona. Why? Why couldn't she have something just once? Those she loved were taken from her. Now any possessions she might want were being snatched from her.
The upstairs was dark. Already the shadows were fanning through the hallway with the bedroom doors closed. Everything was so quiet, as if the house were a tomb. She was all alone. A storm was coming. She was alone with the treacherous lady of the island who wailed the lonely hours of the night on the widow's walk. Alone to face the attacking intruder who came in the night. Alone to face the fulfilled threats of Conner, her uncle's partner. Alone!
Her legs were weak beneath her. Her flesh was cold. She was trembling uncontrollably before she reached the top step and she felt her heart in her throat. It was hard and strangling lump that wouldn't yield to her swallowing, but ached all the more. The fear of her thumping heart clawed at her flesh, raking it icily into welts of shivering bumps. She seemed suspended above a fathomless abyss of black and unknown terror. Only to await the snapping of the fine thread that held her there, she quivered with dread at the fall beneath her.
"Oh, God! God!" she murmured, sinking to her knees on the steps.
"Mona!" a voice echoed in the distance. "Mona!"
What does it want? Her mind cried out.
Strong arms encircled her and held her close to a strong hard chest. The voice continued, "Please believe me, Mona! I don't want you hurt. How can I have you if you'hr hurt. Mona, I want you!"
Was it Owen? Was he telling the truth? There was the sound of rushing wind in her ears as sound returned to her in full volume and she could feel her extremities once more. Slowly she opened her eyes. Owen was looking down at her anxiously.
"Are you all right?" he asked softly.
She nodded slowly, but didn't move.
"I told you not to trust me," he told her with a grin. "And now I'm paying the consequences."
"Don't like them, huh?" she responded.
"Watching out foh youhr welfare sure isn't helping mine, let's put it that way," he said with a rueful smile. "Something like 'having youhr cake and eating it, too'. Keeping you safe doesn't exactly mean that I'll eveh get to know you any betteh foh myself."
Mona looked at him, bewildered.
"You women are all alike," he complained, pulling her to her feet and standing beside her. "Like to have things painted in black and white with lots of pretty overtones thrown in."
"Owen . . ." Mona began in a strained tone.
"Shall I demonstrate?" he demanded and pulled her face to his.
His lips were warm and gentle. Once more she seemed to be fading from reality drawn into the secure haven of Owen's arms and mouth. She felt safe here against ghosts, rapist, Conner, and the other evil forces of hate and fear that hurt her physically and emotionally. Never let go, she begged silently. Never let go!
Only vaguely were they aware of the big front door squealing open. It was just a brief moment before loud voices filled the hall.
"Oh, cool! What a fantastic relic!" squeaked a female voice.
"Hey, look up there! Wow!" a husky voice joined in. "That doll's doing great now."
The couple on the stairs looked down into the front hallway. There by the open front door stood Deanna and Yves Saumont. They stood looking up at the two on the stair as if they'd just arrived for a cocktail party.
"Hey com'on, Mon!" called Deanna as she pulled off her spring coat to reveal a pretty, most brief mini-cocktail dress of gold lame. "Introduce your company so we can all get down to having a good time and get-acquainted party!"
Things were at their worst and Deanna had to be there. If her life hadn't already taken a turn to the worst, Mona was sure Deanna would insure its direction at this point.
"Well, com'on, doll!" Yves was insistent. "Four can be more fun than two when you play it right, you know. But then I forget, you're still learning, no?"
"What are you doing here?" asked Mona coming slowly down the stairs.
"And why not?" demanded Deanna as she swooped through the rooms to appraise the premises. "We're friends, aren't we? Decided to thee if any of your ghosts had gotten you."
Wouldn't she ever drop that lisp?
"As you see, I'm perfectly safe," returned Mona as she reached the bottom of the stairway with Owen directly behind her.
"So we noticed!" said Yves with approval while Deanna gave Owen full length survey with her eyes.
Somewhat perturbed, Mona continued, "Owen Hansen, this is Yves Saumont and his girl friend is Deanna de Renta, one time roommate of mine."
"What?" cried the other girl. "Oh, she's joking, of course, Owen. Why we're best friends."
The men shook hands and Deanna bounced over to kiss Owen resoundingly on the mouth. She would have accepted more, but Owen was too chagrined to offer.
"Any friend of Mon's," the girl started to say.
"Any friend, clothes, land, home, furnishings," quipped her friend wryly, "automatically becomes Deanna's and her latest male's by some strange quirk of default."
"Mon! That's not fair!" wailed Deanna with a pout.
"No, it isn't," agreed Ramona. "I don't feel well and I'm very tired so if you'll excuse me . . . Please tell me what it is you want and run along. I don't want to have to worry about you with a storm coming up."
"Storm?" asked the pretty brunette. "It's warm outside. Suffocating for April. You really think it's going to storm?"
She could really be so stupid at times! How was she going to get rid of Deanna and Yves. They'd just complicate her problems.
"Can you explain, Owen?" Mona begged.
"Oh, do! I'd love to hear!" the other girl grabbed his arm and pulled him into the living room to sit on the couch.
Sitting with Owen, curled up beside him like an affectionate kitten, Deanna seemed quite content. Mona wished she could feel so happy. Yves clasped her by the waist and pulled her off the bottom step towards him.
"You really get any action from him?" he queried. "I'm much more fun, no? At least more handsome!"
Really! She thought miserably.
"Yves, don't you understand? I don't feel well!"
"I've just the cure, darling," he told her happily. "You've been too long without. I'll fix you up in no time."
"Yves Saumont, the day you have something else on your mind besides sex I may be glad to see you. However, at the moment, it won't do me a bit of good."
"What are you, a nun!" he cried. "Don't be ridiculous. Everyone thrives on it. Besides, I came to do you a favor."
"Your ideas of favors aren't the same as mine," Mona replied wrenching herself from his grasp and walking away from him.
"You mean you still want this place?"
Mona stopped and faced him.
"If that's what you came for, forget it. I'm not selling to you or anyone else. If it's not a fit place for me, I can't see why anyone else is so anxious to have it."
"But you'd lose on it, baby!" insisted the young man, coming toward her. "Paying taxes and all would drain you. But for me, it would be a moneymaker!"
"As a fun house?" she questioned with a laugh. "A real haunted house? Too bad! Salem and its witches aren't that far away. And there's a big amusement park not far away in Maine, Old Orchard Beach. No, Yves. You can't make a fortune that way."
"Who's talking about kids and haunted houses? This is an amusement center and fun house for men. A real Garden of Eden like my club in New York. A place to go to for the holidays and get away from the wife and kiddies, all the grind of city living. I'll fix up this place and fill it with Eves for the wealthy Adams of the cosmopolitan realm. Even as a winter wonderland this place could be a gas."
"I should have known," said Ramona with a groan. "It just seemed so . . . so-!"
"Hey!" interrupted Deanna, skipping into the hallway, her hand still tightly clutched to Owen's. "This is a swingingly spooky pad!"
"Great, Deanna," Mona returned without enthusiasm.
"You never were a lot of fun," accused the girl. "Maybe that's why he's so dull too. Not even one pass."
"We're strange people up here," said Owen. "If you two want to get out before the sou'-eastah breaks, I suggest you move right away."
"Yo even talk funny," squealed the brunette with a giggle. "Oh, Yves. Can we stay? I've never been in a hurricane before. And in a spooky old house. Wouldn't it be fun?"
"Sure, Mona and I haven't finished our business yet anyway."
"You're mistaken, Yves," Ramona told him. "We have finished our business. And I'm not sure as it's wise for you to stay."
"Oh, you don't mind, Mon!" persisted her friend. "Yves and I are good sports. Just give us a bed. We don't need to be entertained, do we, doll?"
"Why doesn't anyone ever consider asking me what I think?" demanded Mona. "After all, I am the hostess here."
"Oh, Mon, don't be tho thtubborn!"
"Yeah, honey. All my hostesses should be in the nude or with little leaf costumes and very hospitable."
"Ooohhhh!" cried Mona, furious with everyone. Even Owen had stood back and let her face these people alone. "Owen, tell them to leave! Explain the south-easter to them!"
"I'm with you, Mona," he told her. "But I can hear the wind starting. I think it's too late."
"No it can't be!" she protested, running to look out the door.
But there was already someone standing there. The short, jowled partner of her uncle.
"Mr. Conner, I thought you'd gone!"
"Told you I'd be back and I meant it," he said with a grin.
"You see that gray thing out there in the water?" he asked pointing towards the docking area. "That's a cruiser, not a usual private one, but one designed like a coast guard cutter. In other words, it's armed. Do you understand."
Through the silent, stagnant air Mona saw the small yacht with men standing near small gun turrets. She didn't have to be any closer to feel the terror and weight of its threat.
"If that's not enough, we have some friends waiting on the other side of the island," the man continued. "It's a somewhat larger vessel, but if you'd care to see it, I'm sure you'll be amply satisfied that you've been surrounded. Haven't even got a ghost of a chance."
"Wow! How cool!" squealed Deanna from behind Mona. "Not a 'ghost of a chance' in a haunted house. You're great, mister!"
The man paid no attention to her. He was watching Mona's face for her reactions.
"Make up your mind, little lady," he told her. "You got till tomorrow morning at dawn. Got the picture? Leave and sign over all rights to me or pow! I tell those men out there to cut loose."
"You can't do that!" protested Mona. "The villagers can see this island. They'll send out the coast guard before you can do anything."
"Don't count on it, baby," Conner said, chewing on his cigarette. "Storm coming up, remember? A few more minutes and the town won't see nothin' over here. Right now that boat's one of two pleasure craft come to visit you."
"Two?"
"Yeah, kinda looks like you're havin' a party," the man told her with a sly grin.
Yves looked at her sheepishly as she turned to face the others.
"I rented this yacht down below here at a place called Hampton. Some buddy of mine knew about it. We stopped in town to make sure this was the spot and said we'd come out for a party."
"You're with him?" she demanded gesturing to the man behind her.
"Hell, no, honey!" he denied. "Never saw him before. I just came here to sec about buying the island."
"What?" yelled Conner. "Ain't no one gonna buy this island. It's mine! You got that? It's mine!"
"Who're you?" asked Deanna. "None o' your damned business!" shouted the man. "Just remember I'm in charge here. I own this island. Ain't no buyin' or sellin' lessin' I say so!"
"Okay. Okay!" Yves said calmly. "We got the message."
"Now we can make this short and sweet," said Conner. "Little lady, you just sign this little legal paper I got in my pocket and you can all be on your way with no trouble at all. Don't sign it and that gun's trained on this place."
He pulled a folded piece of business stationary from his jacket pocket to show her.
"But if you're in here they won't fire," stated Owen coming over to stand by Mona and read the document.
"Already got that taken care of," retorted the man. "Don't need advice from no squirt like you."
"This turns everything over to you," said Mona, looking up from the paper. "It makes no mention of your 'legal claim' to this island."
"You're just saving me the time and lawyer fees, doll," Conner informed her. "Better sign while I'm in a good mood. Come morning you better be gone 'cause I hate people in the morning."
"Don't threaten her!" demanded Owen.
"Shut up, punk!" spumed the little man, his jowls white and quivering.
Owen grabbed his shirt collar and drew him off his feet, glaring into his eyes. The little man returned the stare evenly.
"Let go or I give the signal right now!" declared Conner frostily.
"Make him stop!" cried Deanna. "Yves, he's going to get us killed!"
"Deanna!" reprimanded Mona as Yves moved forward to intervene.
"Mona, I'm too young to die!" responded the girl. "You may not know how to enjoy life, but I do! And I'm not going to lose out just because of you and your ridiculous notions of right and wrong!"
"No one asked you up here, Deanna!" Mona cried. "You're in danger because of your own stupidity, not mine!"
"Oh, if I'd only convinced them I was you the first time," said the brunette with a sigh. "Then Yves would be building his club and everything would be fine. You might even one day be grateful for what we tried to do."
"Grateful!"
"Your friend ain't gonna get no island no matter how you slice it!" bellowed Conner as he extricated himself from Owen's grip with Yves' help. "The place is mine and that's it!"
"You needn't shout," said Deanna coyly as she sat on the bottom step of the stairs and crossed her legs, hiking her skirt up her thigh. "We understand perfectly. Don't we, Mona? She's going to sign your paper right now, aren't you dear?"
"Since when do you think you can run my life, Deanna de Renta?"
"No one's running it, dear. We're protecting it for your own good."
"Well, I'll' decide that!" Mona said firmly, ripping the paper in half. "There Mr. Conner, give your signal. I have a feeling that the people in this house aren't exactly Noah's ark material. You might as well fire!"
"You can't do away with other lives just like that!" cried Yves.
"If you can run mine, determine my future, Mr.
Saumont, I most certainly can influence yours in the same manner!"
"But you weren't hurt!" protested Yves. "The lawyer didn't hurt you, did he?"
"Lawyer?"
Oh, my God! Ramona's mind whirled furiously. First the two had opened her mail and kept the news of her uncle's death and estate from her. Then they'd pretended to be her to get the island. Had they sent her up with a phony lawyer? Richardson wasn't the real lawyer? Did they know about the intruder as well?
Her legs were like rubber under her. The house was spinning around her. Ghosts, intruders, rapists, phony lawyers, friends who tried to take everything she had, now a man who was threatening to kill them all. Was there no one at all who was honest? Perk didn't seem interested in her uncle's murder. His sister defended the intruder and went off and left her when Owen offered his protection. And even he said not to trust him! What now? What now!
She seemed to be running down a long empty hall way. It was huge and echoing. Someone was shouting her name until it thundered in her ears, but she couldn't find who called. There were shadows leaping at her from walls. Wouldn't the hall ever end? She couldn't feel her legs beneath her and yet she was tired, so tired and weak. Suddenly the floor dropped from under her and she was falling into a vast, black abyss.
When she came to she was lying on the couch in the library before a blazing hearthfire. Outside she could hear the tumultuous roar of the wind and the thundering torrent of sleet and hail. She shivered more from the sound than the damp chill that filled the house.
"Are you all right?" asked Owen leaning over her.
"I think so," she answered with a nod. "What happened?"
"What didn't?" he responded, trying to joke with her. "The whole world must have caved in on you. I'm sure the whole situation looked pretty hopeless and overwhelming at the time."
"Is Conner still here?"
"Can't you hear them?" asked Owen with a grin. "They're getting along famously."
Listening carefully Mona became aware of laughter and physical commotion in the living room. They're not! She wanted to block out the vision her mind immediately conjured at the noise.
"Not in my house!" cried Mona, struggling to her feet.
"Hey, calm yourself!" warned Owen. "There isn't too much you can do." "We'll see about that!"
He followed her out the door and into the living room. The three were having a marvelous time all right. There were several half-empty bourbon bottles on the tables. They had apparently brought along their own refreshment. Joyously rolling in the throes of love-making, the nude trio were making a regular orgy of their party. They didn't seem to notice the couple who had entered.
Yves' hand struck out at a small black box on the horse hair sofa and it throttled into action, issuing forth the seductive music of a strip tune. His face registered contentment as he fell back to his caressing of Deanna's plump, full breasts.
"How long have I been out?" demanded Mona incredulously.
"Long enough to set up a liquor cabinet, a temperamental tape recorder, and strip three bodies," returned Owen, engrossed in the ravishing of the luscious female body on the floor.
Ramona had to lean against the doorway for support as the two men enjoyed the plunder of the willing female. Deanna was sucking the cock of the little man with ardor as if it were a taffy lollipop while Yves screwed her cunt. Everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves immensely, but Ramona wanted to vomit remembering the raw ache of her vagina after the intruder raped her. It seemed ages ago, but the scene on the floor made her relive the agony of its moments again.
Finally they lay exhausted and Yves was putting on another tape to blare out its sensuous beat in competition with the storm. Mona slid silently out the door and up the dark stairway to her room. But Yves saw Owen watching her leave.
"Hey, com'on! The more, the merrier," he quoted with laughter. "Bring on the other pussy!"
But Owen shook his head and started to turn away.
"You're normal, aren't you?" demanded Yves. "Get in here and have a roll."
Mona turned at the head of the stairway to look down at Owen. Would he join them? He was only human. And for a man it was much harder to refuse. His eyes met hers with longing. She couldn't go down there with him, no matter how much he wanted her. His glance went to the living room. Once more she felt lost and alone. This time she didn't look back.
She tried to lock her door but the latch was rusted and broken. From the sounds coming up from the living room, she felt that they were having enough fun downstairs. They probably wouldn't bother her so she just leaned a chair under the knob to bolster the door and undressed to go to bed.
After a while the music, laughter, and gutteral moans of ecstasy blended with the whining tumult that clattered outside her window. As Mona drifted off to sleep she could hear only the scratching of the wildly blown branches at her window, the screech of the wind, and the clamor of sleet and hail upon the house and window panes. Already the shadows were dancing their macabre dances on the wall and she was left alone to watch, forgotten. Pulling the covers over her head, Mona buried herself in the cold yielding feather mattress, shivering until the sheets around her absorbed her body's warmth.
It was many hours later, or was it only a few, when she heard the rattle at her door. It seemed an incongruous part of her dream in which she and Owen were in a lovely sailboat on a summer day watching the gulls and seeing New Hampshire's coast. The beautiful stretches of sand and trees. Colorful birds and frolicking wildlife. What was that rattling? It sounded as if the door were going to break down. There was no door on a sailboat!
There was a loud crash and she awoke to the howling wind, icy sleet upon her windows, and two men panting in her doorway. She pulled the covers around herself and lay still without breathing, afraid to be discovered, half-believing that they couldn't see her.
"Hey, doll! Com'on out 'n play!" laughed Yves drunkenly as he staggered through the door.
"What'sh ya hidin' for?" demanded Conner. "You ain't afraid o' ush!"
First the intruder. Now two drunken maniacs! Owen! Owen, where are you?
Yves lurched onto the bed and patted her body through the covers.
"Yep. It's here. Just what we came for!"
"Lemme at it!" croaked the older man, joining him to rip the blankets from her struggling hands. "Oh, it'sh a live one!"
"Get out of here! Both of you!" screamed Mona.
"Now, doll. Don't get upset," said Yves calmly. "Just stopped in to let you know you weren't forgotten."
"Thanks. Now you can go."
"Without a proper thank you?" demanded Conner incredulously. "Hey, 'bout time someone taught you proper, lady. You don't seem to know too much 'bout how to treat a man."
"I don't need your advice!" cried Mona. "Now get out. Owen! OWEN!"
"Don't waste your lung power, baby," said Yves. "He can't hear you with this storm. Besides, Deanna's got him pretty well out of commission at the moment. He couldn't move a leg in this direction if his life depended on it."
"Get out!"
"Don't be hard to get along with, doll-face!"
The two men were already actively exploring her body through the thin material of her nightgown. Mona cringed against the pillows, trying to slap their hands away. But they were insistent.
"I told you!" she cried, jumping out of the bed and running to the door. "Owen! OWEN!"
Yves was right behind her and grabbed her from the open door, dragging her back to the bed. He lifted her bodily and tossed her onto the high mattress.
"NO! NO!"
She struggled vainly while the two tore off her nightgown and began in earnest to explore the female treasures of her anatomy. Their hands were hot and sweaty as they manipulated her full breasts and plied the dark nubbins of her aureoles. Yves pressed his fingers into the softly muffed mound of her cunt and tried to force her thighs apart. She kicked while holding them stiffly together.
"Nooooooooo!" she wailed and found Conner's mouth pressing hers, his thick tongue stinking with tobacco pushed between her lips.
She nearly choked trying to force him from her, his long tongue was strangling her throat and cutting off her oxygen.
His flesh was soft and flaccid as she pushed at him and she knew it was waxy white from too little exposure to the fresh air. It made her think of an overgrown, demented idiot with baby flesh. The overpowering smell of his tobacco was putrid, she wanted to wretch.
This man had determination, purpose, in his striving at her nipples, his mouth bruising hers as his whisky-soaked tongue choked her. Suddenly his fists were pelting her cherry-tipped breasts with clawing blows. His mouth was eating at hers, his teeth chewing her lips. Why couldn't she scream and shove this hulking mound of flesh from her?
Ramona writhed beneath him trying to find a way to counter his ferocity. Her hands pushed his shoulders up, away from her body and she looked at him sternly and squarely, for a long moment until his panting body stilled and his gaze met hers.
Yes! Take a good look, Mr. Conner, she wanted to say. It's not the usual type of female you get. And certainly not Deanna de Retna. It's Ramona Jahn, Puritan and a lady. She doesn't make it with every man that comes her way.
He plummeted against her, a black shadow that crashed into her with the force of a tornado, his lips and teeth ravaging hers, his hands grappling her tits.
"Naauuuuuhhh!" she wailed, flailing at his heavy body.
Yves' fingers clawed at her cunt with fury. He was pushing her thighs apart. Between the man at her head and the strong fingers at her crotch, she felt powerless to stop them.
Panic stricken, she wished she had never found the letter. Why had she ever come! If only she were safe in Ray's arms once more! Ray! Even he'd deserted her. There was no one now. Owen! He didn't come when she cried out. Even if he could hear her over the storm, he was probably too involved with Deanna to care. Why wasn't she like Deanna. Her kind were always taken care of, petted, loved, spoiled. Try to be good and honest and you end up raped, plundered, and deserted. What was the use of struggle or even living!
Yves' muscles were tensed for action. Drunk or not, he could handle anything she gave him. Nothing she could do would stop him. Sensing the crotch of his body over her and feeling the smooth tightness of his biceps as they stroked against her naked hips and belly, she knew all defense was useless.
"Come on, female," his thick tongue taunted her. "Show me that a lady's pussy is any better than a willing little bitch's. Show me there's more difference than a willing, sucking slit and a tight little cunt like yours. Is that all? Or maybe a lady has some tricks that a practiced slit doesn't know. You been holding back on your goodies?"
Hot with fury she tried to squirm from their grasping paws. She wouldn't hold still for them! Never would they get her body willing! There was a loud crack and Mona felt the burning sting of a handprint on her buttocks.
"You're not going anywhere, pet- Not till we've had what we came for!"
"No! I won't! You can't make me!" she protested.
"Wanna bet," slurred the older man. "Let's show 'er, Saumont."
Like a sack of grain, her body was tossed and bolstered into the position they desired. Crouched on her hands and knees, Mona felt limp and her elbows and knees kept giving way. Again and again came the loud crack of Yves' strong hand on her buttocks leaving her burning and sore, tears stinging her eyes. She sobbed without restraint.
Without warning Conner thrust his head into her face. In the shadowed darkness he cupped his huge, dangling cock, ramming it into her face.
"Like it, little lady?" he demanded, his body pushing against hers, crushing her full tits cruelly into her chest. "Wanna try it? Huh? It's even better'n it looks."
Cold sickening horror drenched her with a chilling sweat. What did he mean? What would he do to her?
"Com'on, lady. Open up. You're gonna' get the treat o' your life."
Mona swung her head backwards to avoid his onslaught, a feeling of sheer terror and nausea consuming her.
She could smell him so strongly now. All her senses reeled, but seemed sharply, bitingly aware of his presence in sight, sound, and smell. He was all cock, huge and hairy, sickeningly, ghostly white white and horribly etched with those blue-tinged veins that showed so grossly under transparent, colorless skin. His balls knocked against her as he shoved his prick into her face. They were dripping twins of winkled, seemingly lifeless sacs that were swelling like balloons. His whole groin was a mass of coarse dark pubic hair covering milky, sharply defined contours of flesh stretched like dried, loose leather across a framework of knobby, gnarled twigs.
He hadn't washed recently and was heavily scented with masculine colognes. The smell of intense, lingering sweat and cum from his recent endeavors emanated from his loins and armpits as strongly as the wretched stale tobacco odor. The fumes twisted at her intestines until she thought she would vomit.
His breathing was loud and rasping, coming in snorts as if he were trying to catch his breath. And she could hear the rumbling of gas in his belly.
Go away! Oh, God make him go away!
"Kiss it! Go on! Love it!" demanded the man. "It may be the last time you ever got to love a cock like this."
He rubbed the length of his long stinking cock against her cheek, across her lips, and under her eyes and nose.
"Do it!"
With trembling lips she let it touch her. Repulsed and terrified, she allowed her lips to graze its surface.
Behind her she could hear Yves panting. He was stroking her thighs and buttocks, pulling her legs apart to receive him.
"Always wanted to take a stubborn, arrogant little bitch like you this way," she could hear him say. "Think you're too good to give a guy some action unless you get him for life. Well, baby. I'm going to show you a thing or two."
Like an animal! He was going to mount her like an animal!
She jerked and wriggled below him, trying to prevent his taking her. His hand sliced through the air and seared across her ass.
"Eeiiiii!"
She could smell the heavy odor of his whiskey breath over her shoulder. Mixed with his overpowering masculine smell of sweat and sex, the stench further weakened her and her head started to throb unmercifully with the crushing fumes and the soreness of her fall that afternoon.
His strong hands caressed her silken curves and finally clutched at her tits as if they were about to milk the teats of a cow. She'd never been so heated with fury-so insulted at the touch of a male! Yves was trying to humiliate her, punish her. Why? She'd never done anything to him!
Fingers teasing her breasts, he frolicked with them, molded them until they were bruised and bleeding. And his turgid prick probed blindly at the crevice of her wet ass.
Mona could feel Yves' fingers slipping between her labia. For half an instant there was a cold breeze on the hot wet indises of her cunt as the labia slid around the fingers closing off the air of the room. Three blunt fingers swirled in the rosy warm flesh of her pussy, plucking the delicate, tensed thread of her clitoris. They crushed it with their toying, pushing onward down the passageway as far as they could to the opening of her womb.
Deep and hard they screwed into her. Punishing her with his fucking fingers, his thrusts made her body jar and sway with their action.
"Nnnnnaaanngghh!" Mona protested.
But Yves was smiling behind her. He was pleased with himself, taking her like this, treating her like an animal. She was just like the women who drove men to his club in search of females who remembered the real purpose of Eve, to serve a male.
Her eyes jammed shut and the pain of his prick cutting through her body in place of his fingers seared her brain as her mouth contorted with the emerging cry.
"Yyyyiiiii!"
Yves groaned and bellowed with his own pain and exertion, his huge, fully-ridged cock driving into her. She could feel every crease and swell in its volume and length, so tightly was it jammed into her.
He began the long thrusts into her, pulling long and hard, ramming sharply and profoundly till she thought her uterus would burst with its massiveness. Its hardness ground within her, aching and leaving raw the sensitive flesh it had fathomed.
As his nails dug into her breasts she heard the gutteral voice of Conner ordering, "Suck-Lick!"
He jerked her head forward as though to rip her hair out by the roots. And then . . . the monstrous cock filled her mouth, almost strangling her as it pressed against her soft palate and gorged all the way back to her tonsils. She gagged and her stomach heaved. She groaned, her eyes closed tighter with the horrible thing throbbing urgently in her mouth.
"Okay, little lady. Show your stuff!" grunted Conner, twining his fingers more cruelly into her hair and jerking her head up and down.
Helplessly, her mouth moved up and down on the great prick.
Oh God, the thoughts ran wildly through her tortured brain. If she made him have an orgasm, would he leave it at that and let her go? Suck, lick, suck, suck, and lick again. She forced herself through the motions of loving his prick. Harder . . . cum . . . please cum! Cum and let me go. The words raced through her like wildfire as she sucked like a hungry child feeding at her mother's breast to end her misery.
As she sucked, the huge cock pulsed in the soft wetness of her slaving mouth. There was a stale, musty taste on her tongue and the back of her throat. How long? How long! The pain and humiliation of her degradation at mouth and ass were driving her mad.
End it! End it! Cum and be over with! But then that obscene, lewd sperm of his would explode and fill her. She wouldn't let it happen. She'd jump away! To let him fuck her mouth and fill her with his cum would be terrifying. Mona couldn't let him have the satisfaction.
The dirty, lecherous man was crazed with passion, screwing in and out of her mouth like an avenging angel of doom, spitting obscenities down at the top of her bobbing head as though she were a slave.
"Suck it, bitch. Use your tongue, swirl it around. Yeah! Harder! I'll teach ya!"
Furiously and desperately she worked at her task. Her mouth ached. End! End! Before she collapsed and died of pain and hurt, humiliation and exhaustion.
"Aaahhhhhh!" cried the man tugging at her hair.
Before Mona could jerk her head away she felt the huge pulsating cock fucking into her mouth, expanding like a giant balloon and his steel-like hands clamping vise-like on either side of her head, freezing her into position. It exploded into her, the hot, sticky sperm came in great powerful spurts that bloated her cheeks so she had to swallow to keep from choking to death. Again and again he gushed into her mouth while she tensed her muscles to swallow faster and faster until she nearly collapsed for lack of air.
Yves was gripping her ripe, hanging tits, pinching her nipples. Tugging and manipulating them he rode her buttocks with the frenzy of a bronco gone mad.
The heat and animal nature of her own body and the furor of her hate and anger spurred her to keep up with him, surpass him. She would show him yet who was master!
Together they rode the pulsating, savage rhythm of their lust-borne orgasm. Gyrating, writhing, pounding against each other with the arcs and dives of their fertility rite, they went with the violence of the storm that wracked their loins. Their groins locked tight in the masticating joining of their sexual organs, chewing, sucking, and pulverizing into the tender flesh of the other.
As suddenly as his needs took hold of him, came the explosion of his cumming. Meeting hers with the impact of two bursting dams, the fluids of their sexual procreation rushing forth to flood and drown in all their path.
"Eeeeeyyyiiii!" Mona cried with his final scouring plunge.
The white-hot cum of his orgasm overflowed and matted their groins locked in coition. The sticky sperm dripped slowly down her crotch and was like glue on her thighs and pubic hair.
Yves' heavy balls slapped against her buttocks in the savage tempo of his orgasm. And finally exhausted of their ammunition, his prick shrunken and limp in her pussy, he withdrew. With a loud pop he retreated and dragged out his long deflated cock to leave it hanging shriveled and wet in his groin.
All three collapsed on the bed, the two men atop Mona. Yves and Conner immediately fell into a deep slumber punctuated by rasping snores while Mona panted loudly gathering her strength and courage to crawl out from under them and make her way downstairs.
When she finally did reach the living room, a sheet wrapped tightly around her she found Deanna and Owen in a naked and weary embrace upon the living room floor. The tape recorder droned on, the hushed music sensual and provocative. Slowly Owen lifted himself from the sprawled female on the floor and Mona realized she was asleep. He pulled on his undershorts before he was aware that someone was watching him.
"Mona!" he whispered, facing her.
She looked at him with misgiving. He was human. And he was a male. All males were the same. What could she do? But when he came toward her she ran. At this moment she couldn't face another man. It just wasn't possible!
Chapter Eleven
By morning the storm had calmed. In the gray and murky stillness of the air they felt the tension of the new day. Conner was still insistent that Mona sign over her part of the island to him. When she refused, he stalked to the door to leave.
"You'll regret this!" he shouted as he started out the door.
"Where do you think you're going?" demanded Owen, grabbing him by the arm.
"Get your hands off me," snarled the man. "I don't have to tell you nothin'!"
"If your men are firing on us, they'll have to fire on you as well!" Owen told him.
"That's what you think, buddy!" rasped the man, trying to shake him off.
"I'm with you, man," said Yves, coming to help Owen subdue the older man. "So long as he's here they won't dare fire."
"That's what you think!" growled Conner. "You'll find out! Soon as it's clear enough for my men to see, they'll fire according to their orders, with or without me."
"We'll find out, all right," Yves agreed as he and Owen wrestled the husky little man into a chair. "And you'll see how well your men can obey orders."
"Oh, Yves!" protested Deanna. "You're not going to let them shoot us, are you?"
"Who, me, doll? Not on your life! I've got nothing to do with it."
"But. if Mona thigns the paper, we're thafe.
Right? Make her thign and there won't be anything to worry about."
"Just sit down and relax," Owen commanded. "Things'll be all right if you don't get too excited. Conner doesn't want to be killed any more than we do."
"Ohh! What do you know!" cried the girl in exasperation. "Mona, listen to reason, will you?"
"You listen for once, Deanna," Mona returned. "This time / make the decisions and everyone plays my way. You've gotten me into enough trouble. Let me make my own for a change."
"But we were only trying to help you!" protested the brunette. "Can't you see that? If Yves had taken this place you never would have had this trouble."
"Just shut up!" shouted Mona. "I'm sick and tired of everyone wanting this place, trying to hurt, threaten, kill, and rape me. And you haven't been the least of the offenders, Deanna. You head the list of those who've tried to take advantage of me."
"Yves!" pleaded Deanna.
"Don't look at me, honey. She's got a more level head than you ever did." "What?"
"You got to admit, love, your big advantage in life is your body, and only your body."
"Oooohhhh!" whimpered the girl as she ran off into the library.
"What're ya gonna do with me?" demanded Conner.
"Who knows?" said Yves with a shrug of his shoulders casting a questioning look at Owen. "Got any rope out in the kitchen or any place? Maybe he'd like to be tied up like a real prisoner."
"It shouldn't be necessary so long as someone has a gun," replied Owen. "Did Moll leave one here, Mona?"
"No need to bother in that line," interrupted Yves, pulling a gun from a shoulder holster beneath his coat. "I always come prepared and I'm sure if we check this gentleman we'll find a similar weapon."
"Why, you smart punk!" accused Conner.
"Sit still!" ordered Yves as the two men searched him and found a small, blunt-nosed pistol. "Now just rest easy until your men decide it's that time."
"Are you worried?" asked Mona. "Think they'll shoot you, too?"
"You sure ain't like your uncle!" retorted the older man. "He was a hell of a lot more likable."
"If he was like you, I'm sure he was!" mocked Owen. "You know anything about the old lady that was here, Moll Whipple?"
"Moll Flanders I heard of. Moll Whipple must be one o' you guys. With a New England tag like that one she'd never make it in history books."
"I have a feeling he doesn't know where Moll is," Owen said to Mona, "but I think I ought to go look for her just in case, don't you? With all this trouble, there's no telling what'll happen."
Mona nodded and watched him go out into the gray-misted morning. Soon it would be clear enough for the men out there to see the house, even if the mist hadn't cleared to shore. The men could shoot and be gone before anyone could do anything about it. She shivered at the thought of it all ending with one burst of fire, while she had been fearing ghosts, rapists, and mysterious attackers since coming to this place.
"Yves, I don't want to die!" simpered Deanna, returning as Owen shut the front door. "Let Conner go and we'll be safe."
"Don't be dumb, Deanna," he argued. "This guy knows they won't shoot with him in here."
"Who you believin', honey? That idiot frog or me? / know my men. He doesn't!"
"Mona, how about fixing some breakfast," said Yves. "I'm starved. Can you cook? I know Deanna can't."
"Okay," responded Mona, glad to leave for the peace of the kitchen. "Bacon and eggs?"
"Sunny-side up," he called to her departing figure.
While she cooked, Mona kept looking hopefully out the window to watch the weather. It was wet and dark outside, quiet like a tomb It seemed the world lay in silence, as if in a vacuum, awaiting a holocaust. She shuddered at the thought.
Breakfast was almost ready when Yves arrived in the kitchen to check on the spicy odor of the local hickory-smoked bacon and crackling spatter of frying eggs.
"Wow! This female can cook!" he exclaimed, embracing her shoulders as she bent over the stove. "Domestic if not amorous. Well, can't have everything, can we?"
Ramona continued cooking, not at all amused by his insinuation.
"How soon do we eat?" he demanded, looking at the table by the hearth fire on the inside wall of the kitchen. "Ah, you have the table set. Mind if I sit and wait? Maybe I can get a cup of coffee."
He sniffed loudly and murmured ecstatically, "I believe that's the real stuff!"
Mona looked at the gurgling coffee pot on the back of the stove. It was emitting that pungent, aromatic scent of perked coffee that wasn't available when one bought a cup of drip coffee at the corner restaurant.
"You look like one of those old Maxwell House ads on television," Yves continued as he settled himself in a wicker chair by the table. "Mama busy at the oven, with a bubbling percolator on the back burner. Is it really good to the last drop?"
The only way to quiet this effervescent idiot, she thought, is to give him something to keep his mouth busy. She poured him a big mug of steaming coffee.
"Great!" he exclaimed. "Knew I'd get to you sooner or later."
"Mostly later," she taunted him. "Aren't you supposed to be guarding Conner?"
"Left him with Deanna. Don't worry. I think she's got the message. But just in case, I took the gun. Don't take any chances with hysterical broads."
"With Deanna, I wouldn't," said Mona, returning to the stove. "She only understands one thing. I'm glad you didn't leave her the gun. But what's she supposed to do if he tried to break away? Scream?"
"Don't worry, doll. I've thought of everything.'
"I'm sure."
"Hope you weren't very fond of those red curtains in the living room," he said. "As a matter of fact . . ."
"The cords that tie them back to the sides of the window made really good rope to tie the guy up with," Yves continued, slurping his coffee.
"Glad they're good for something. I was wondering how to change those curtains so the room would look half decent."
"How about my eggs, doll?" he implored, moving to embrace her.
"You'll get them a lot faster without pawing."
"Who's pawing, babe? You just don't know how to live!"
"Spare me," she answered, carrying the frying pan to the table to put his breakfast on his plate.
In the living room, Conner was doing some fast talking to the fluttering little brunette who sat wrenching her hands, wishing Yves would return.
"You really oughta listen to me, girl," Conner told her.
"It's not me!" she protested. "It's Mona who's so stubborn! She'll never give in. We'll all get killed!"
"Not if you don't want to, doll," insisted the man. "Come with me and only the idiots here will get done in. Besides, I can offer you much more than that two-bit night club man in the kitchen."
"He's my friend," Deanna retorted defensively. "What can you give me that he doesn't?"
"You wouldn't have to work in no night spot for me, kid. Just keep your pretty body in a nice apartment on Park Avenue for me and you'll get the same clothes and goodies that the ladies on the Ten Best Dressed List get. Unnerstand? You'll be living like Jackie Onassis, Grace Kelly, and all those others, with hardly no effort but to keep ol' daddy here happy. Can you do that?"
"You know I can!"
"Well, you gonna' sit there all day waitin' for H-hour? You wanna blow up with these cats?"
"N-no!" she stammered nervously, getting up unsteadily.
"Then do something before my guys get itchy!"
"They wouldn't shoot you, would they?" she asked, reluctant to move against Yves' wishes.
"You gonna take the chance?" he demanded, eyeing her lovely petite body with desire. "Hate to see those nice tits and pretty pussy o' yours get wasted so young."
"Oh, please don't let them kill us. I don't want to die!"
"Let me go 'n' I will," he replied.
The young woman disappeared into the library and returned with a letter opener to cut the cords. When he was free, they stood looking at each other.
"You mean that about Park Avenue, mister?"
"You wanna try me?"
"Please take me with you. I hate this place, and I don't want to die with them just because Mona's stupid enough not to give you this horrid old island."
Conner nodded and took her by the arm.
"Come on, babe. We're goin' for a cruise," he told her, leading her out the door.
Two minutes later Yves and Mona were startled by a volley of gunfire.
"My God! They're shooting at us!" she cried.
"Those aren't the cruiser guns!" called Yves as he raced to the front of the house. "Mona! They're gone! Conner and Deanna are gone!"
Ramona ran after him, colliding with him as he stopped short on the threshold of the open front door.
"Careful!" he yelled back at her above the sound of gunfire. "Get back till it's over."
In the dark mist outside they could see the red-white flashes of gunfire preceding the echoing shots. When it was over they could hear Deanna weeping.
"Please, please don't kill me! I'm not Mona. Honest to God, I'm not Mona!"
She crouched near the fallen Conner, shuddering and sobbing loudly.
An older man and Owen came out of the mist, followed by two men in gray business suits. One of the men bent over Conner, checking his bloody shoulder and listening to his heart.
"He'll be all right," he called to the man behind him. "Call for a Coast Guard cutter and ambulance."
"Owen!" cried Mona. "What about the armed boats?"
"Coast Guard's already on the way and probably have them in their sights by now. I called them as soon as I got away from the house."
"You did?" Mona queried. "But what about Mrs. Whipple?"
"She's already on her way home. She's pretty fed up with the whole thing."
"Home? But where was she?"
"With me," interrupted the older man with Owen.
Where had she heard his voice before? In the darkness, she couldn't be sure. He was wearing oilskins so she couldn't tell much about his shape. He was obviously tall, with a bony, gaunt face but that was all that was visible in the eerie light of the eye of the storm.
He rustled in his leather garb, sending chills through Ramona.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"Rolf Hecht," he told her with a smile.
Rolf Hecht, returned from the grave?
"You can't be! They said you were dead!" she cried.
"That's so," he answered in a rasping voice, placing a cold clammy hand on her face.
Her mind reeled. Why is he so cold and wet? They told me he was dead. Dead! Is he? Oh, God, what is this?
She fainted.
Chapter Twelve
When Ramona once more became aware of her surroundings she found herself in the library with Owen and Rolf Hecht. She stared at them silently for a moment before speaking. Somehow she had been used in a plot she didn't understand, of that she was sure. But she couldn't comprehend a de man's coming back to life.
"I don't understand," she whispered.
"You don't?" said Hecht. "You're the second girl to claim this island. That other one, outside, tried to say she was my niece. Now she refuses to acknowledge the name. Are you really Ramo Jahn?"
"I'm tired of playing games and having people suspicious of me," she said angrily. "I'm the only one here I'm sure of, and I won't tolerate any more of your accusations."
"I'll vouch for her," said Owen. "You can take my word."
"I'm not so sure I want your help," Ramona told him accusingly.
"I can't blame you," he said with a grin. "I told you not to trust me and I meant it. Unfortunately, I was part of the plot here to use you, but no that I know you, I don't think I'd do it again."
"Plot! You used me?"
"I'm with the FBI, Mona, investigating drug smuggling.""
"Drugs? Here?"
"This is a center for dropping smuggled drugs into the country," croaked Hecht. "Boats disguised as fishing craft bring in drugs and I distributed them from here. This far north, no one suspected anything. Especially when a respectable New England community didn't recognize what was going on. They just like peace and quiet. I didn't bother them and they didn't bother me."
"You're a drug smuggler? Heroin, opium, things like that?"
"Don't sound so surprised," rasped the man. "It's more common than you imagine." "You got away with it."
"In today's world, the good guys you used to read about in your King Arthur books don't always win, love," he told her with a wry smile. "It was a great setup. Worked for ten months till the cop in town, old Perk, caught on."
"Perkins? You mean he really takes an interest in his work?"
"Don't let him fool you. He's one of the best!" Owen told her.
"But. . . even Mrs. Whipple didn't believe me about the intruder!"
"She does now," Owen said with an accusing look at Hecht.
"Why?"
"It's all rather long and complicated," Owen said hesitantly.
"Are you really my uncle?" she demanded, turning to Hecht. "I can't believe a real uncle would have put his own flesh and blood through something like this!"
"Maybe that's the answer," croaked the man. "We're not of the same flesh and blood. Your grandparents took me in as a child. I was one of those delinquent orphans. Too many would-be parents and no one who would keep me. Your father's folks really tried. They wanted more than one child even if your grandmother couldn't have any more. I was a big disappointment and ended up giving your Grandfather ulcers and spurring on his heart attacks that subsequently killed him. I don't suppose the family talked much about me after I ran away from home at sixteen."
"No. They didn't," she responded with finality.
"So when I got caught at the game here we decided that the big leader would only come up if someone threatened his nice set-up. We planned to say I was killed and set out to find an heir for the property who would draw my partner to the scene with some of his big gun men. He's been caught with the goods on him, you might say. There were boats waiting to come in with the drope."
"You!"
"For a lighter sentence, why not?"
"You haven't changed a bit, have you?"
"Had no intention of hurting you. You showed and that was all we needed. You could go away and we could make like you were still around. You were bait to draw the attention of the big cheese to emphasize the importance of this island. After it was established that you were here we'd pack you off with scares and threats and you wouldn't have to face him."
"The rustling skirts and the rasping voice. It was you!"
"I didn't say I was a saint, did I?" he said defensively. "And when nothing else got you to leave, I figured being the 'good Joe' wasn't that effective. Show you some rough stuff and maybe you'd get the message. But you didn't!"
"Not your message, no!" she cried, biting her lip against the stinging tears that threatened and trying to stand up.
"Look, I told you I was the black sheep of the family. You'll just have to do like your folks and forget me. I've always been in too much trouble with the law to hope I'd ever come out smelling clean just once."
"That you'd rape the grandchild of the people who took care of you and loved you!"
"So I have no scruples," he returned with a smile. "A female is a female. Wouldn't have done any better if your grandmother had been worth attacking."
"Is that why Mrs. Whipple believes me now."
"She's mad 'cause she knows you got some action and she didn't. I laid it on as to how it wasn't worth my efforts on an old body like hers."
"Oh, go away! I don't want to talk to you anymore!"
The two men in gray stepped forward to take him away.
"Not even a kiss for your uncle before he goes off to see the judge? I'm going to be years without a woman."
"It might do you good!"
He shrugged and allowed himself to be led away.
"Was it all him?" she asked Owen. "The threats and money offers for the place?"
"Hell, no. Saumont arranged the lawyer, but Perk smelled him out right away. Figured the girl was a plant as well. He had the state troopers pick up Richardson as soon as he got outside of town the second time."
"The real lawyers would be able to prosecute in the meantime, hmm?"
"Right. Perk also tried to protect you by buying the place when he figured you were probably the legal heir after all. So one of those offers you can account to him."
"And Mrs. Whipple? Was she helping too?"
"Moll's no great actress. She's been hot for your uncle since he arrived. She didn't know the whole story, but figured he was out here someplace. When I arrived on the scene, it was a threat to her chances with the old boy because he'd have to think of other things besides her and that elusive entity called love."
"And he didn't play along."
"No. She's disappointed it's all over, but that doesn't protect the next available male who comes to town," he told her with a laugh.
"Well, I'm sure glad it's over," Mona said with a sigh. "When can we leave?"
"For good?" he asked. "You won't take me up on that boat ride this summer?"
"Well, with Hecht alive, I'm no longer an heiress," she returned, getting up from the couch. "Besides, if you're with the government, you can't spend much time here."
"I was brought up here and I'm like a homing pigeon. During the right seasons this place can be lovely. Wouldn't you like to sec it and find out?"
"I'm just a poor working girl, Owen. I can't let big men like you turn my head."
"Why not?" he asked, embracing her and pulling her lips gently to his. "With Hecht locked up someone's got to take care of the property. I'm sure it can be fixed up."
His arms were strong and warm. As always she felt security in them. And his mouth was always so gentle and loving as their tongues exchanged the sweet juices of love.
"How do I know I can trust you now?" she demanded, pushing him from her. "You haven't been great so far."
"You're right," he said, pulling her back to his chest. "You can't trust me. I think I love you, but like all men, at the moment I love your body more than you."
"Owen!" she cried, trying to pull away.
He laughed, his arms tightening around her.
"Let the old lady of the island have a real show," he cried. "Today I'm as hot for you as those other fellows have been."
"Why you despicable-!" she shouted, breaking away from him.
"Do you believe me?" he asked with a twinkle in his eye.
What was he trying to say. Don't trust him. And don't trust what he says? Oh, she was so tired. If she could just leave here and forget. Leave this place to the ghosts that haunted it! Then she could return to her dull, lowly city life and peace.
"Mona, I do care about you!" he insisted.
"I didn't ask you to!" she retorted, looking out the window at the lifting veil of fog. "You men think a girl has to hear the words 'I love you' in order to get what you want. Don't feel badly if the words don't come easy. She couldn't say them to you that easily unless she were well practiced."
"Which makes her gifts less meaningful," he returned.
"You're an authority?"
"On women?"
"I don't care if you are!" she said walking beside the bookshelves and running a long delicate finger along the row of dusty texts.
Suddenly he was behind her, his hands gentle on her shoulders and his mouth searching at her neck.
"You'll take me anyway?" he asked softly.
There was no answer. He cupped her soft full breasts in his hands. Through the soft jersey of her dress they were yielding and warm. For once she didn't try to escape his touch. She seemed willing.
Owen turned her to face him and found her lips open to his mouth. Burning desire enveloped him and his hands explored her lush body as she pressed against him. Would she really be so willing?
They sank to the carpet together and he found her already squirming to be free of her clothes. His mouth covered hers and he pressed his masculine frame onto the luscious contours of her feminine body as she came up to meet him.
