When young millionaire rakehell Bud Reynolds said pleasure cruise, he meant sin with a capital S. His luxury yacht Merry Mae became a floating lust palace as it headed into the sun-drenched waters where civilization's rules no longer bound men and women. And the crew on this ship wanted no rules at all, unless it was the one law of sinning every minute of the day or night! And they followed the rule from bunk to bunk, mixing and switching as their twisted hungers demanded. Brunette Sue Heller was determined to live up to her name; redheaded Karen Lyons made even the fires of Hell look cool with her sin-filled eyes; blonde Peggy Woods outdid herself in thinking up new variations to every orgy trick in the book ... and the men, the shameless studs led by Bud Reynolds' insatiable demands ... the men outdid themselves as the trip became a non-stop journey to shame with closed circuit TV on board catching every moment, every passion, every impossible degradation....
CHAPTER ONE
The girl in the skimpy bikini came out on the deck of the yacht. She smiled to Jim Mackell, who was sunning himself on deck. Then she walked to the rail and looked down at the clear Caribbean.
She was a long-legged, firm-thewed redhead whose full buttocks and high, heavy breasts strained the fabric of her tiny blue bikini to the breaking point. She grinned and said, "Oh, hell."
She started to take off the bikini.
Mackell watched with keen interest. The girl unhooked her bra and tugged it free. Her breasts rose in proud nudity, two firm, round fleshy globes tipped with small, dark nipples in aureoles of rosy brown. Then she rolled the scanty loincloth down, and stood by the rail completely naked, her tawny body glimmering in the tropical sunlight. Mackell eyed her trim, taut-fleshed buttocks with delight, and wondered how good this girl was.
He suspected he'd have a chance to find out before this voyage went much further.
She delicately lifted one leg and clambered over the rail. She sat there a moment, straddling it, the cold metal passing between her legs. Then she was over, and poised for a moment on the edge, and then she was leaping out into the water. Mackell saw her breasts swaying as she arched downward, and then she hit head first and disappeared from his view.
The cabin door opened and Bud Reynolds came out. Reynolds was the owner of the yacht, and the owner of the naked redhead girl too.
"What was that splash?" Reynolds demanded.
Mackell jerked a thumb toward the water. "It was Karen. She went for a swim. In the raw."
Reynolds chuckled and went to the rail. By this time, Karen had bobbed up, and was lolling in the water twenty yards off the bow, floating with her breast-tips breaking die surface. She waved gaily to Reynolds.
Reynolds waved back. He was a big bull of a man, well over six feet tall, his muscular body tanned so deeply he looked almost like a black. He was thirty-five, and a millionaire a few times over.
"How's the water?" he boomed.
"Great! Come on in, Bud!"
"Not now," Reynolds said. "Well be pulling anchor in five minutes. You better come back on board before we do, you hear?"
"Don't worry," Karen called. "If you leave without me, I'll marry a mer-man."
"Yeah," Reynolds said. "You do that."
He turned and glanced at Mackell. "See that she comes aboard in a couple of minutes, will you, Jim? I've got to go below."
"Sure, Bud."
Mackell ambled to the rail and looked out at the blue waters of the Caribbean, and at the sleek nymph splashing below. Karen was having the time of her life out there. Now a pointed breast would break the surface of the water, now a smooth buttock.
It is going to be one hell of a cruise, Mackell thought pleasantly. This was only the beginning, after all The very first day, and two full weeks ahead of them. Two weeks of freedom from all responsibility.
Mackell said, "You better come aboard now, Karen. I hear the anchor winch starting."
The girl nodded and began to swim toward the yacht. Mackell hooked the ladder over the side as she breast-stroked through the transparent water. She grabbed the lowest rung and looked up at him.
"Give us a hand, will you, Jim?"
"Gladly."
Mackell reached down and caught her by the wrist. She came bursting up out of the water, paused for a moment on the ladder, then clambered aboard.
She stood there only a yard and a half away from him, stark-naked and dripping wet, a hundred thirty pounds of sensual femininity. She was panting from her swim, and her big breasts rose and fell rapidly.
"Give us a towel?"
Mackell tossed one to her. He eyed her again, admiring the totally unselfconscious way she stood here nude, drying herself in front of him. Yesterday, after all, they had met for the first time. And now here she was, all of her, the high, conical breasts, every square inch of her gleaming in the sun and accessible to his eyes.
She smiled at him. She was a magnificent animal, five feet seven, superbly built. She tossed her dripping hair back and said, "I bet I know what you're thinking.
"What?"
"That you'd like to rip one off me."
"That isn't a hard thing to guess, you know."
"I didn't think I was wrong. Well, when do you want to? Right now, in my cabin?"
Mackell lifted an eyebrow. "You're my host's girl. It wouldn't be cricket, would it? At least not on the very first day?"
Karen laughed scornfully. "Hell, Bud won't mind. He's not possessive. Besides, he's got his eye on that Sue of yours. Share and share alike, that's the motto on this yacht."
Mackell didn't know whether to take her seriously or not. There she stood in all her splendid nudity, with her legs apart and her body alert, nothing hidden from him. But was she joking about going to bed with him right now? He didn't want to tangle with a jealous Bud Reynolds. Reynolds had the build of a heavyweight champion, and the temperament of one too.
And yet, to chicken out on something like Karen-
The moment passed. Reynolds appeared on deck again. He grinned genially at them both as though he saw nothing wrong in having his mistress standing naked next to his friend.
He slapped Karen genially on the rump, and left his hand there a moment, fondling the satiny skin of her bare buttocks. "Well, we're under way, keeds. Next stop, Vieques Island, and after that the whole bloody Caribbean. You have a good swim, Karen?"
"Great."
"I'm glad. Suppose you get your butt covered and head down to the galley, now. The girls are getting lunch together, and they wouldn't mind some help."
Karen nodded. She picked up both halves of her discarded suit, and, still nude, went inside.
Reynolds beamed at her. "A great girl, Jim, absolutely the greatest. You don't know what sex is until you've had her. I tell you truly, man. You don't know."
"Don't rub it in," Mackell said. "It's bad enough she's yours, Bud. You don't need to brag."
Reynolds shrugged. "You want her, Jim? She's yours for the night. Just say the word."
"Well-"
"Of course, there's a string attached," Reynolds said. "Sue?"
"You bet, man. We got a deal?"
Mackell turned his palms outward. "I guess so. Well see. I don't know how Sue goes for that kind of stuff, Bud. At least, not right off the bat."
"Well, well see" Reynolds said. "No hurry. The offer's good any time you feel like taking it up."
He pulled over a deck chair and sprawled out on it, his near-naked body in the sun. He closed his eyes.
"Wake me up when chow's on," he said. Mackell nodded. He, too, leaned into a deck chair and let the sun soak him. It was great to bask in the tropical heat like this, while fifteen hundred miles away New York suffered through the snows of January.
It is going to be quite a cruise, Mackell thought. A real ball.
It had been Bud Reynolds' idea to take the cruise. He had made his pile, and owned this big yacht harbored in the lagoon at San Juan, Puerto Rico, and he had decided to get in touch with two of his college classmates, preferably bachelor ones, and have them join him in a two-week Caribbean cruise. With female companions, of course. Bud Reynolds didn't believe in chastity.
So Reynolds had hunted down a couple of guys who, like him, had been members of the Class of '51 at Princeton, and who, like him, were footloose and fancy free now that they were in their middle thirties. Of course, neither of the two guys Reynolds invited were quite as rich as he was, but that couldn't be helped, because Reynolds was richer than most anybody. He had started a small electronics firm right after getting out of Korea, and inside of eight years he had built the company up to a point where its annual sales were $35,000,000 a year and its profit margin a whopping 9%. Then he had seen the company through a public stock issue which had given him five million dollars in cash, plus 100,000 shares of stock currently worth about ten million more, on paper. Whereupon he had resigned as president of the company, accepted a token post as chairman of the board, put enough cash in gilt-edged bonds to keep him free from need for the rest of his days, and devoted himself thenceforward to pleasure-rich and retired at the age of 35.
His two classmates weren't quite that lucky.
Jim Mackell had been an honor student at college, and his keen brain had helped him in later life, though he wasn't any millionaire. He wore the imposing title of Creative Director in a middle-sized New York advertising agency, and pulled down $30,000 a year, which was enough to keep him more than comfortable but which certainly didn't put him up in Bud Reynolds' class. He had a pleasant bachelor apartment in the East 60's, and he had never thirsted for female companionship, there always being a new one coming down the pike when she was needed.
As for Joe Bryce, he had gone into his father's real estate company, and was doing well enough there, though not as well as he'd be doing when old man Bryce finally shuffled off this mortal coil. The Bryce Corporation bought, sold, and built properties all over the country, with a special interest in shopping centers. They did okay, and so did Joe. As Vice-President, he drew $40,000 per annum, and owned ten thousand shares of the company's stock, which paid him another $8,400 a year in dividends. The big boodle would come later, though, since the senior Bryce owned a hundred fifty thousand shares, all of them due to descend to his only child when and if.
So all three of them were doing well enough in life-better than average, at any rate, and in one case a damned lot better than average.
They made a good contrast in physiques, too. Reynolds was big and aggressively male, an ox-strong, rock-hard 220 pounds of muscle and bone. Mackell, though almost as tall, was slimmer, almost fragile by comparison, Eght on his feet and fast-moving, built like a tennis player where Reynolds was built like a piledriver. And Bryce was the shortest of the trio, a sawed-off-five-seven, lean and whippet-like, dynamic, energetic, and wider through the shoulders than you would expect a man of his height to be.
Each one had brought a girl on board, of course.
Reynolds had brought Karen Lyons, the busty redhead with a fondness for bare-butt swimming. Karen was 23, and the daughter of one of Reynold's business associates. She had been keeping company with Reynolds for about a year, and there was not talk about a marriage yet, or even an engagement. Since Reynolds had made him a millionaire, Karen's father did not think it was appropriate to complain if Reynolds now chose to bang his daughter. There were other daughters who could be more virtuous than this one. Besides, Karen was the one who had the say, and Karen was happy with the setup.
Jim Mackell's playmate for the duration of the cruise was a lithe, willowly, leggy brunette named Sue Heller, who earned her daily bread as a model in magazine advertisements. Since she was unfortunately not gaunt and bony enough to work as a high-fashion model, she was forced to take the slightly lower but still generous rates that are paid to girls who are merely sexy. She posed for bathing suit ads, for lingerie ads, for bathtub ads, for anything that required the display of some well-designed anatomy. Mackell had met her the way any advertising man meets any model, in the course of business, and he had been sleeping with her for only about three weeks when the cruise offer came along. She had been delighted to come along.
The only thing Mackell was worried about was that Sue was matrimonially inclined. She was going to be 25 in another week, and the bachelor-girl life was starting to lose its appeal for her. She wanted to settle down. Mackell was certain she'd make a good wife for someone-but preferably for someone else.
The final member of the seafaring sextet was Joe Bryce's companion, a trim little blonde named Peggy Woods. Peggy was 22, and worked at Bryce Corporation as a receptionist. Joe Bryce liked her because she was the right height for him, and because she had the biggest pair of boobs Joe had ever seen on a girl that size, and because she was hot as a pistol and put out for him without any devious ideas of trapping him for keeps She was fun to be with, and fun to bang, and she had good boobs, and what more could a man ask?
What more, indeed?
Jim Mackell took a seat at the table in the spacious galley. The throb of the heavy engines was only a faint murmur under foot. The yacht was a biggish sloop, equipped with all the latest electronic gadgetry, and it hardly needed a human hand at the tiller at all, except in rough weather. Nothing but the best for Bud Reynolds, naturally.
It was lunchtime. They had all flown down to San Juan the night before, and had stayed at the Caribe Hilton overnight, as Bud Reynold's guests, going aboard the yacht after breakfast today So this was their first meal on board. The capacious freezer of the yacht held enough steaks and chops to last for months, and they could vary the diet with whatever fish they caught as they went along.
There hadn't been any time for fishing today, but Sue and Peggy had done a good enough job of fixing ranch out of the provisions on board. All three girls, bikini-clad, circulated in the galley, serving their men. Steak was the main course just now, washed down by good Dutch beer.
Sue slipped into the bench next to Jim Mackell. Mackell wore a pair of trunks, while Sue's red and gold bikini was nothing more than a pair of straps, one high, one low, that just barely managed to cover the essentials. Her thigh was warm against his. She turned and beamed at him, and winked.
"It's going to be a great trip, huh, Jim?"
"You said it," he said. He slipped one hand down out of sight and squeezed the inside of the thigh nearest him. She moved the other thigh over, trapping his hand for a moment between her legs, letting him feel the warm, ripe promise of her womanhood.
Then they fell too.
Mackell couldn't help staring at Karen, because she was right across the table from him. She had donned her bikini again, but that didn't help much. The halter of the bikini was just a tautness of blue cloth covering the middle third of her voluptuous bosom, and it wasn't hard for Mackell to prod his memory and come up with the way she had looked minus the halter altogether, her bare breasts high and firm in the morning sunlight.
And he could clearly see two definite little mounds, sue in the middle of each swelling breast. Her nipples and they seemed to be hard and tall, as though she were in a state of sexual excitement.
She's not the only one, Mackell thought. There was a pounding in his groin and a throbbing in his chest, and he recalled Karen's smiling offer to go to bed with him, backed up with Bud's equally jovial suggestion that they switch girls for a while. Mackell realized that Karen was his for the asking, any time he wanted.
He wanted. As soon as possible.
But he'd have to play it cautious, he knew. He had a good deal running with Sue, and he didn't want to spoil it just yet. He'd have to work things out with care.
They finished lunch. The girls cleared things away. The yacht was heading eastward, and later in the day they would drop anchor off Vieques, a nearly uninhabited island not far from Puerto Rico. Then, in the morning, they would continue on eastward to the Virgin Islands, and cruise through that area for the next two weeks.
Mackell got a deck chair again. Joe Bryce flopped down on a mat nearby. Bud Renolds was below decks, keeping an eye on things to make sure they stayed on course; you could trust electronic gadgets only so far, and the three men had agreed to take turns watching the tiller.
The three girls stretched out on pads in the sun. One by one, they undid the straps of their halters, and lay there bare-backed. Now and then one would half-rise, and a bit of breast would show.
After they had toasted for a while, Karen said, "Suppose I bring a pitcher of drinks? Anyone interested?"
Everyone was interested, unsurprisingly. Karen stood up. She hadn't bothered to put her halter back on.
Her bare breasts swayed gently. The nipples, Mackell noticed, were tall and rigid again. She obviously got a sexual thrill out of exposing herself.
Karen said, "We're all friends here. We don't have to worry about false modesty, do we?"
And, bare-breasted, she walked inside.
Karen's bit of exhibitionism seemed to be the cue the other girls had been waiting for. Because, when Karen returned with the drinks, both Sue and Peggy sat up to take theirs, and neither girl made any attempt to cover her breasts. The whole matter of nudity and near-nudity was being very conveniently settled at the outset of the voyage. Mackell suspected that before much longer, it wouldn't be only breasts that were casually displayed.
He studied Peggy's breasts. The little blonde was really stacked, Macell thought in amazement. Though she was only five-three, and slender, she had bigger breasts even than Karen-two enormous balls of melon-sized flesh sprouting incredibly from her chest. By comparison with Peggy and Karen, Sue looked almost underdeveloped, even though ninety-eight women out of a hundred would have given five years of their lives for breasts like Sue's. It was just that Sue was a normally full-breasted girl, firm and well rounded, while Karen was unusually busty and Peggy approached freak status.
But all three were easy on the eyes. To sit in the sun and sip daiquiris while surrounded by three bare-breasted wenches-ah, that was paradise enough!
Joe Bryce finished his drink. "I'd better go down and relieve Bud," he said.
Reynolds appeared on deck a few moments later.
He grinned at the sight of the three girls.
"That's what I like to see," he said. "Girls getting the best use of the sunshine. Sun's good for you, girls. Makes your boobs grow."
"That's just what I need," Peggy said, giving her enormous breasts a shake and a quiver. Everybody roared with laughter.
The lazy afternoon ticked away. Mackell served his time at the tiller, and then they chanced it on automatic for a while, and finally, late in the afternoon as Vieques approached and the water grew shallow, Reynolds took over again, using the charts. There were coral reefs in these waters, and you had to use the marked channels if you wanted to get past them in one piece.
They cast anchor off shore, about five in the afternoon. A white sandy beach framed in palm trees faced them. The sun was still high, the shadow of the yacht dark against the shallow water.
"Who's for a swim before dinner?" Bud Reynolds boomed.
Without waiting for an answer, he dove overboard. A moment later, all six of them were in the water, splashing each other in a hectic gaggle of gaiety. Mackell decided to have a look at the bottom, and did a surface-dive. The water was only about ten feet deep, here. White sand confronted him, and here and there the ugly black spines of a sea urchin. He swam along underwater until the breath was ready to burst from his lungs.
As he came up, he was aware of another figure swimming toward him-female, red-haired.
Karen.
They popped to the surface together, twenty-fine yards from the others. Karen laughed. Then she dove again. Mackell followed her down. Suddenly she twisted and swam right up against him.
Almost automatically, he caught hold of her breasts. He held them for one dazzling moment, feeling the nipples hard against his palms. Then he let go, and for a second time they surfaced.
She winked at him. "Any time you'd like it, Jim-boy. Any time."
Then she turned her back on him saucily and swam toward the others. Mackell dogpaddled for a moment, his hands still tingling from the contact with those two hard, ripe bosoms. Then, shrugging, he swam after her.
CHAPTER TWO
One by one, they left the water-Peggy first, her golden hair dripping down her back, her big breasts jiggling as she mounted the ladder, and then Joe Joyce, and Sue, and finally the others. Reynolds, squinting at the sky, declared that the time was ten minutes to six, and that after everybody was showered and dressed they'd get dinner under way.
Mackell and Sue headed for the cabin that they shared. The cabins aboard the yacht-the Merry Mae, it was called-were spacious and plush, with deep pile carpeting and double beds, none of this berth business, and a private fresh-water shower in each cabin. Each cabin was like a room in a luxury hotel.
Sue peeled off her bikini bottom, the only garment she had on, and shook her wet hair. "I guess I should have worn a bathing cap," she said. "This salt in my hair-"
"It'll wash out," Mackell told her. "There's nothing uglier than a beautiful girl wearing a bathing cap. The three of you looked like mermaids with your hair floating around uncapped."
"But we aren't built like mermaids," Sue said, laughing. She took his hand and put it on the flat of her belly, and guided it lower, so that he could feel the curling womanhood of her, and then the cool smoothness of her thighs. "I've always wondered about mermaids," she said. "I mean, how do they do it?"
"If I ever meet one, I'll ask her," Mackell said. He was out of his trunks, now. His naked body was close to hers, and she could feel the rigid insistence of his need, his desire. It was desire engendered more by Karen than by her, but she had no way of knowing that.
His hands roved her body. He cupped the fuD rounds of her breasts, and he put his lips to the hollow of her throat, nibbling gently at the salty skin. He moved his body from side to side, rubbing across the satin-smooth globes of her buttocks. His breath began to come in harsh bursts, and so did hers.
"Not now," she whispered. "Not when we're all salty and sticky. Let's take a shower first. And then afterward it'll be better. Okay?"
"Whatever you say," he murmured.
They stepped into the little glass-enclosed shower cubicle. Sue turned the water on, then leaped back hissing, as the coldness of it hit the smoldering tips of her breasts. A moment later, the warm water was flowing, too.
They took a good shower, soaping each other's back, scrubbing the salt out of each other's hair. They gave one another a good rubdown under the brisk cascades. Then Sue soaped Mackell in one particular place, while he stood there grinning. When she had satisfied her urge for cleanliness, she knelt before him and washed her mouth out with soap in a way that wasn't customary in childhood.
Mackell stood it as long as he could. Then, when he began to think enough was enough, he reached down and put one hand over each of Sue's firm breasts, and tugged her to her feet. They finished showering and got out of the cubicle.
"Now we dry off," she said.
She tossed him a towel. He rubbed her and scrubbed her until her skin was pink and glowing, and then she gave him a rubdown. When she finally tossed the towel aside, they were both breathing hard, not entirely from the exertions of drying off.
"There," Sue said. "Aren't you glad we waited and got all that nasty salt off our skins first?"
"Yeah," Mackell said. "But let's not wait any longer, shall we?"
"No " she said. "Let's not"
He came toward her, arms outstretched. As he approached, she unexpectedly leapfrogged toward him. Her body split, her legs going high, and she jumped at him.
He caught her, clapping one hand on each buttock. She wrapped both legs around his hips, locking herself in place. They both laughed merrily as Mackell started to lose his balance; he staggered, tottered, then started to run forward toward the bed.
They tumbled down together, Sue on the bottom. He saw the look in her eyes, that smoky, misty look of pure longing, and realized no preliminaries were going to be necessary.
Her long-legged body went rigid as he took her. She arched her back and gasped at the sudden impact of their union, and her clawing fingers dug into the ridged muscles of his back. He could feel the hard tips of her breasts against his chest.
He. put his mouth to hers as they sank down onto the bed. Her lips parted, and his tongue nipped inside, and was met by the softness of her tongue, warm and agile like a tender serpent. His hands worked their way into position, the right hand jammed between their bodies to cup the swelling rondure of her left breast, while his left hand was down underneath, spread out over the double curve of her velvet-skinned buttocks. He squeezed, gripping firm flesh, and Sue answered with a gasp of passion.
Their bodies began to move.
They had only been making it together for a few weeks, but neither one was exactly a novice at the art of love, and a few days had been all that was necessary for them to master the rhythms of one another's body. Now, they moved with the practiced skill of a couple ten years joined. Thrust and counterthrust, rise and fall, the soft overflowing well of her body engulfing him. He could feel the pounding of her heart back of her full breasts, and the thunder of his own heart was almost deafening inside him.
Sue drew her knees up, up until they were practically at his shoulders. Her straining body tipped upward, allowing him to move to the depths of her.
She was moaning now, making that odd little half-sobbing sound that Mackell had learned meant the approach of her culmination. It was half a cry of wild pleasure, half a cry of pain, since every nerve in her body was tingling and buzzing and threatening to overload.
Her voice tailed off into a banshee wail of eager ecstasy.
It was happening, now, the driving, intense, almost unbearable fury of the completion, the moment of burning fulfillment, the savage slam of finality. Mackell held on tight to her as the inner earthquake started for her, and he reached his own summit and then stayed with her until she came to the absolute finish.
He eased her down again with gentle movements of his body, and then all was still.
They lay in each other's arms, panting, sweating, happy.
Sue smiled. "I guess we need another shower, now."
"I guess we do."
There was a sudden electronic crackle. Then, mysteriously, the booming basso of Bud Reynolds filled the room:
"That was a lovely performance, children. Lovely. Can you do an encore for old Uncle Bud, now?"
Sue and Mackell sat bolt upright in confusion. Sue grabbed out wildly for the blanket in an automatic reflex, covering her nakedness.
Mackell said, "Where the hell are you, Bud?"
"In the radio cabin. I've been listening. You don't mind if your friendly captain evesdrops on your little moments of passion, do you? I've got your cabin wired for sound."
"I sure as hell do mind," Mackell said hotly. "You mean you've been sitting there listening to us all this time?"
"Just the last five minutes," came the ghostly voice of Reynolds. "I tuned in to see what was going on. It sounded pretty violent, man."
Mackell felt himself reddening from head to toe. He glanced at Sue, who looked half amused, half irritated. He saw the speaker, now-a little grille in the wall, that he had taken for a ventilation grille.
He said, "You mean we aren't going to have any sort of privacy this whole trip, Bud? What the hell kind of joke-"
Reynolds laughed. "Don't worry, man. You see the little toggle switch by the back porthole?"
"Yeah."
"Flip it and you'll break the audio circuit. You want privacy, just throw the switch. The rest of the time, leave it open so I can communicate. Okay?"
"Okay," Mackell said, his anger starting to dissolve. Reynolds had had his little joke, and that was that. From now on, he'd remember to flip the switch before engaging in any intimacies.
Reynolds said, "I guess you two aren't dressed for dinner yet, then,"
"I guess we aren't."
"Well, get a move one, then. If you hustle you'll still get to see the sunset. And let's dress up a little, tonight. Make it a real occasion. Our first dinner on board. I'm opening some wine."
The speaker hum died away. Mackell and Sue grinned at each other.
"We didn't say anything incriminating, did we?" Sue asked.
"I doubt it. Just the usual gasps and moans. I hope be enjoyed listening in."
"It's kind of perverted, isn't it?" Sue asked. "I mean, listening to two people make love?"
"It's Bud's idea of a gag. Maybe it gave him a charge to hear us."
"Maybe he taped it," Sue suggested.
I wouldn't put it past him. The bastard'll probably sell the tape as an LP and make another million, too." Mackell laughed and headed for the shower.
This time they did no fooling around under the tap-just a quick scrub-up and out. They dressed quickly, too, donning their best tropical finery, as though they were going to dinner at a plush hotel. Sue looked radiant in a low-cut black dress; Mackell slipped into a white dinner jacket and black Italian silk slacks.
There was no one in the galley but Reynolds. "Dinner's being served on deck tonight," he said "Go right on out. I'm just getting everything ready." He winked at Sue and said, "Hey, you look beautiful. How's about a kiss?"
She looked flustered. Although it hadn't bothered her to run around bare-breasted in the afternoon, Sue seemed embarrassed now though fully dressed. Mackell could guess why, too. It was because Reynolds had eavesdropped on her sounds of lust, and thus had a kind of intimate relationship with her now that had not existed earlier in the day.
But she let him kiss her. He gave her no peck on the cheek, but a passionate, lingering embrace. Mackell stood by, ignoring it.
Then they continued on out. A deck table had been set up, and all the others were waiting for them, Karen in a green dress that all but bared her majestic breasts, Peggy in a similarly revealing red affair, and the men in dinner jackets. A sumptuous table of hors d'oeuvres had been set, and a splendid red and gold sunset provided a magnificent backdrop for the whole thing.
At first, Mackell had been puzzled that Reynolds had not engaged any servants for the trip, no cook, no one even to skipper the yacht. But now he understood why. Reynolds had not wanted any extraneous personnel on board. Just the six of them, unobserved, unspied-on as they made their way across the blessed Caribbean.
Reynolds joined them a moment later, the big man carrying a huge bucket from which a magnum of champagne projected.
"We'll get the voyage going the right way," he said. He set to work on the cork, jockeying it around until it emerged with a superb pop, and arched through the air and over the rail to bob in the water astern.
Everyone was aglow long before the magnum was empty. They started in on the food just as the final strand of sunset stroked the ship. The moon was out, now, a glowing orb, nearly full. The surface of the water seemed to sparkle. From time to time, as they ate, Reynolds would bring out more wine-first a fine light claret, then a full-bodied Burgandy.
It was completely dark when they finished. The water had an eerie translucence, bright moonlight glinting off the sand not far below. The three couples stood at the rail, silent at the beauty of the night. On the nearby island, a few distant lights could be seen, but the beach nearby was totally deserted.
The girls began to clear away the dishes. Reynolds drew Mackell aside and said, "You talk to Sue about tonight, Jim?"
"You mean, switching?"
"That's what I mean."
"I didn't mention it," Mackell said. "There wasn't tine, I guess."
"I know. You were too busy. Well, are you still game? You want Karen for tonight? Or does one round finish you for a while?"
Mackell stared steadily at the massive Reynolds. "I want her," he said. "But Sue-"
"Don't worry about a thing," Reynolds said. "IH arrange it so it works out perfectly I'll get Sue alone and make a pass, and you'll be able to take care of Karen."
"Well-"
"Don't worry, I tell you." Reynolds swung around. "Attention!" he boomed. "Attention, everybody."
Five faces turned toward him.
He said, "I think I ought to tell you folks that tonight is a perfect night for snorkeling. The water's calm and we've got enough moonlight to really light up the bottom. Is anybody in the mood for a swim now? Raise hands."
Everyone's hands went up.
Reynolds said, "It's only fair to warn you that there are certain risks swimming in these waters at night. After dark is when the big boys come out to feed-the barracuda, the giant rays, maybe even a shark or two. You won't get hurt unless you ask for it, but be alert. Don't forget to wear your flippers. You'll be in a hell of a mess if you step on a sting ray in your bare feet."
"If it's too dangerous-" Peggy said doubtfully.
"I've been doing it for years and I haven't been bitten yet," Reynolds said. "Besides, the reef's at its best at night. A million little animals that hide all day come out then. You'll see things you can't ever see by day." He crossed the deck and opened a box of snorkel gear. Reaching in, he came up with an assortment of masks and flippers. He laughed. "We don't need to bother with bathing suits, do we? We're all grownups here."
Without further ado, he began to undress.
All six of them stripped on deck. The evening finery came off, everyone carefully stowing the clothes on deck chairs. It was quite a sight to see the three girls in then-underwear-almost more erotic than in the nude, the way they looked with their nyloned legs and their filmy panties, and the taut straps of their garters against the bare flesh of their thighs.
But then all six stood naked on the deck.
Now there was nothing held back, no longer even a remnant of modesty. That which had been hidden in the afternoon was bare now.
Reynolds said, "Is there anyone who doesn't know how to tree a snorkel?"
They all knew. He handed out the gear, and flippers for each of them. Mackell had to laugh at the sight of the three naked girls waddling around on deck, wearing nothing but masks and flippers.
"You look like a bunch of Martians," he said.
Reynolds was the first over the side. He drifted in water ten feet deep, waiting for the others. Karen was the next to descend, and then Peggy. Mackell stood back to admire the round globes of the short blonde's buttocks as she clambered down. Bryce went in next, slim-hipped, agile, and then Sue, her elegant body just as graceful in total nudity as it had been in her Fifth Avenue dress. Mackell was the last to go over the side.
He lowered himself into the water. It was warm, about 70 degrees, just a few degrees cooler than the balmy night air. All six were gathered in a little group, treading water.
Reynolds was giving instructions. "Don't anybody go swimming out any deeper than the boat. Stay between here and the shore. And don't go off by yourself, either. Always have at least one other person within ten or fifteen feet of you. You don't want to get too close to the reef, either. Just close enough to see, not to touch. Some of that coral can sting."
Mackell put his mask into the water.
It was like peering into another world.
The ocean bottom was alive. The white sand glittered in the moonlight, and, as he watched, an octopus perhaps a foot across slithered past and headed rapidly for the nearby reef, leaving a little puff of brownish fluid hovering in the water as he jet-propelled himself away. An enormous crab scuttled across the bottom, stalking sideways on stilted legs. Half a dozen squid flitted by, moving gravely in a rigid, almost military formation.
Mackell looked up. The group was starting to fan out over the water. He glanced around, looking for Sue. For a moment, he didn't see her.
Yes. There she was.
Reynolds was talking to her.
Mackell nodded. So this was the way Bud was going to do it-proposition her right here in the water. Well, well, well. He imagined it would work. He hoped so. Sue wasn't exactly prudish, but she might have moral reservations about swapping men so early in the trip, even for a night. Well, if she saw him going after Karen, she'd understand the deal, and maybe all would be well.
Where was Karen?
Mackell caught sight of her about thirty yards away. She was snorkeling along the surface, her buttocks above the water.
Mackell swam after her, using his flippers to good advantage. In a moment he was at her side. He fell into formation alongside her, and let one hand rest on her bare buttocks. She turned her head toward him, under water. Their face masks almost touched.
She winked at him.
He winked back.
They understood each other perfectly.
CHAPTER THREE
Sue Heller drifted along slowly, savoring the incredible beauty of the underwater world. She had been to the Caribbean before, of course, but she had never been out on a coral reef at night It was vastly different from anything she had ever seen by day.
Most Of the fish were there, of course, the colorful little ones and the medium-sized ones. But by day you never saw the sea anemones, waving in the current. You never saw the crabs and little lobsters, or the moray eels nosing out of crevices in the coral. Even the coral was different by night. It looked like so much weird-shaped dock by day, but at night it was alive. A million billion tiny tentacles flickered on each lump-the coral animals themselves, catching their evening meals, feeding on the micro-organisms in the fertile water.
Sue stared in wonder. The fact that she was naked helped add to the strangeness of the situation-and the fact that by her side, hardly inches from her naked body, swam a naked man who was practically a stranger to her.
Bud Reynolds had come up to her and had offered to guide her around the reef. She had been a little doubtful, but then she saw Jim swimming alongside Karen.
He showed her a small sting ray, its wingspread about two feet, flapping grotesquely along the bottom in its hurry to get away from them. He showed her the little tubeworms that popped nervously out of sight when you approached them. He showed her a flat, spectacularly colorful butterfly fish that crossed underneath them. He showed her a puffer, lying lumpishly in the sand.
Then he showed hef a gleaming, bullet-headed fish some two feet long, moving quietly through the still waters no more than ten feet from them. And he tapped on her face mask, the signal for her to surface.
Sue put her head above the water and said, "What is it?"
"Barracuda," Reynolds said calmly. "He's not after us. He doesn't want a damn thing to do with us. But we better leave him alone, all the same. Follow me."
He put his head down again, and began to swim away from her, in short, chopping, powerful strokes. Sue followed him, keeping a weather eye out for the barraracuda. But the ugly fish was heading westward to sea, and Reynolds was leading her in toward shore.
Now they were in water shallow enough to walk in.
Sue moved cautiously, not wanting to step on a sting ray or a sea urchin even with the thick rubber flipper on They paused in hip-deep water and looked back. Moonlight glimmered on Sue's bare breasts, and she could see him looking at them with interest.
Two figures were bobbing in the sea not far from the yacht. There was no sign of the other two.
"That's Joe and Peggy," Reynolds said. "Karen and Jim must have found a little nook somewhere."
"You sure they're all right?"
"Sure I'm sure. Karen's a champion swimmer, and Jim can handle himself in the water. They've probably gone ashore right around the bend, there."
The shoreline was choppy, broken by jutting tongues of rock that cut up the beach and provided several secluded inlets. Reynolds turned and walked out of the water, stopping at the edge of the beach to take his flippers off.
"Where are you going?" Sue asked.
"Let's sit in there for a while," he suggested.
Sue nodded. She knew what was on his mind. She could already detect the signs of his eagerness, as his passion became even more formidable. And Sue herself felt a throbbing in her body. She wanted to be had by this strange, dynamic man. Jim was okay, she was tremendously fond of Jim, but she wanted to be had by Bud Reynolds.
At least once.
And what better time than the present?
She followed him ashore. She stood on one leg, leaning against him, as she rid herself of her flippers They left the flippers on the beach and walked calmly, two naked souls in the tropical moonlight, to the little inlet.
It was beautiful, a half-moon of beach thirty feet from time to time. They dropped down at the edge of the water, sitting on sand but with their feet in the water. It was just barely possible to make out the mast of the yacht, but otherwise they were completely cut off from all eyes around.
Reynolds said, "I guess you know what I want."
"I guess I do."
"You want it too?"
"Yes," she said. "Just remember that I'm Jim's girl, though. This is just for once."
"Sure," Reynolds said. "That was the arrangement. And him with Karen. You knew that too, didn't you?"
"Yes," Sue said. "I figured that."
She turned to him. He reached out, and his hands covered her breasts, and they were gigantic hands, so that for the first time a man's hands completely enfolded them. Sue had never had that happen before. His hands were so big, she thought, that they could even cover a pair of monstrous boobs like Peggy's. And probably would, too, before the voyage had ended.
She looked at him. His passion was full, now? and it was almost terrifying. The last time Sue had felt that kind of fear was when she was fifteen, and still a virgin, but not for long. A high school boy friend had initiated her, and when she saw him naked she was horrified. It had hurt, but not as much as she had expected.
And now she felt much the same fear again.
But Reynolds did not plan to take her brutally, it seemed. He kept one hand on her breast, and the other roamed her body, delicately, with a light touch that was truly unusual in so big a man. The thick fingers rested on her thighs for a moment, and then worked gently over them, and she welcomed him, and felt his hand exploring, opening, stirring.
Sue began to gasp. She had always been easy to arouse, and now, under the special circumstances on this tropic isle after a swim in the nude, she was on fire. Even this afternoon's round with Jim, satisfying as it had been, didn't interfere with the new urgency of her need.
Now he was positioning her, working her around, readying her for the consummation. The cool, wet sand felt strange against Sue's buttocks, and now and then a swirling wavelet would wash up as high as her calves as she lay at the water's edge.
"Yes," she whispered. "Yes, now!"
There was a thrust, a sudden movement that seared and exploded its way into the innermost recesses of her need. Sue gasped and tensed at the impact of it, and then he was leaving her, but not completely, and returning, and leaving, returning, leaving....
She quivered and trembled. Her body was on fire. She felt his weight on hers, driving her down against the muddy sand, but there was no feeling of pain, no sense of an oppressive heaviness.
Only that marvelous motion, and the beat, beat, beat of her throbbing body.
Sue began to moan, to throb, to gasp. The excitement was spreading upward out of her middle, now, heading for her heart, for her brain. And Reynolds kept moving, calmly, with a smiling self-confidence that was almost inhuman. He was the most masculine man she had ever slept with. He was fantastic in every way.
Arching her body upward, Sue pressed against him, trying to take as much of him as was possible. For the first time, it seemed that he was relaxing that iron control. She heard him grunt in passion, and the grunt appeared to have been wrung involuntarily out of the very being of him.
Then the ecstasies Sue was experiencing became overpowering. She grinned, as she remembered how Reynolds had eavesdropped on the sounds of her delight earlier in the day, and now was getting to hear them at first hand. She closed her eyes, and as the explosion of lust ripped through her body she cried out, a high, piercing banshee wail of sheer animal pleasure.
The cry carried. Jim Mackell, a hundred yards away on the other side of the beach, heard it. Karen Lyons, warm and naked in his arms, heard it.
"Sounds like they're really going at it," Karen said.
Mackell nodded. For the first time since the whole matter of switching girls had come up, he felt the cold stab of jealously. That sound Sue had made-that was the sound he was accustomed to coaxing from her body. It hurt, suddenly, to think that beyond that pile of rocks Bud Reynolds was in intimate contact with Sue's slim elegant nakedness, and that Bud was giving her the sensations that she normally received only from him.
Stop thinking nonsense, limbo, he told himself sharply. She was wailing like that with a hundred guys before she ever laid eyes on you, or anything else. You're nothing special in her life, you jerk, so why give a damn ij Reynolds boffs her over there? You knew he was going to do it. Anyway, you've got Karen. Make the most o) it, kiddo.
"Come on," he said. "Now!"
He reached out for her again.
They had come ashore almost immediately, abandoning snorkeling for other forms of exercise. Karen had led the way, swimming with steady energy, and Mackell had followed her through the water, delightedly watching the play of muscles in her naked buttocks as he swam along just behind her, her flippers practically whicking his face-mask.
They had settled down in the sandy little cove on the east side of the beach, and there, ignoring the occasional ghostly crabs that skittered in terror past them, they had turned to one another and explored each other's nakedness in the time-honored fashion.
They had been nearly ready to celebrate the age-old rite of union when Sue's bellow of culmination had split the tropic air and brought about a temporary interrupttion.
Now Mackell and Karen resumed. His hands went to her breasts. What great breasts they were, too Firm and hard, the hardest breasts he had ever held, yet not unpleasant, not marble but definitely flesh. Only the nipples felt like marble, little stone points jabbing into his hands.
And her skin was so soft, so sleek, so silky. It was as though she bathed in milk every day He moved one leg over her thigh, and she fastened tight on it and began to move, rocking her body back and forth over his leg while her long, tapering hands roamed his body. Her fingers tugged at the wet mat of black hair on his chest, then slid lower, exploring, finally finding. Mackell caught his breath.
She whispered coyly, "I found something I want. Can I have it?"
"Only on loan," he said. "That'll do, I guess."
"Where do you plan to keep it?" he asked her.
"I've got a place. I'll show you. It'll be safe there, safe and snug."
She spun around, her legs releasing his. Taking his hand, she guided it, and as he found her she sucked in her breath sharply and started to squirm and writhe on the sand.
Mackell started to roll over, but Karen had other ideas.
She pushed him down, his back flat against the sand, his feet dangling in the water. Mackell smiled, understanding.
She clambered to him, the moonlight lancing across her body over her left shoulder, illuminating the heavy curves of her breasts, casting a ghostly glow over her beauty. For a moment she crouched above him, grinning impishly. Then she lowered herself.
Mackell shivered as she imprisoned him with her body. He felt her muscles moving, contracting, and he smiled as he realized that she was one of those girls, skilled in an art as old as the Pharaohs but practiced by few. She knew how to use all her resources to give pleasure to a man. She was using them now. He felt the rhythmic pressure, release, of that soft, invisible fist. His body went tense as he raised his knees and she leaned back against them, her buttocks cool against his thighs.
He looked up at her. He saw her eyes shining in the darkness. He wondered if he was doing anything to her, or whether, after a year of making it with Bud Reynolds, no other male could arouse even a whimper of pleasure in her body.
He found out soon enough.
He moved and moved again, and she answered him with downward pressures of her body, taut against him, and he felt a throbbing beginning in him and in her too. And then the gasping started, and when he looked at her eyes they were shining no longer, for she had them tight shut, and her nostrils were flaring wide and her lips were distorted and ugly in the tensions of excitement.
Mackell knew he could not simply lie here passively, while this gorgeous creature spun herself to ecstasy over him. They had played the game her way this far, but now she would have to yield. The savage drive of his own desire would not let him accept a subordinate position at the moment of fulfillment.
He started to rise.
He didn't stop to question whether or not he could actually get to his feet without breaking the bond that held them. He threw one arm around Karen to hold her in place, and levered upward with the other, all his muscles tensing and straining, and then he had one knee flexed and he was able to pivot to a standing position, with Karen still clinging to him, the rhythms uninterrupted, the inner contractions continuing as before.
Erect, his feet solidly rammed into the sand, Mackell waited a moment, then he took a step forward.
Karen's arms were thrown around him and her legs were locked around his waist. Her breasts swayed and jolted with each step he took, the hard tips grazing his skin, tickling him.
He advanced into the water.
He stood there, in water not quite knee deep, with Karen slung against his body. The moment of completion could not long be delayed, now She was thrusting against him, ramming and ramming again, arid he could feel the sparks of their love-making, the furious fire of it, with such intensity that he feared she'd injure herself on him, and then it was starting to happen, for both of them in the same moment. He had his hands on her buttocks to brace her and hold her, and he felt the jolt of passion shiver in her first, then spread down every nerve channel of her body, and in the same instant there was the fiery release of his own pent-up desires.
They remained as they were for a long moment after it had ended. The water lapped at his knees, and the night air now seemed cool against his sweat-flecked skin. He ran his hands fondly over the satin of her buttocks, and smiled, and she opened her eyes and smiled at him, and he knew that it had been as good for her as it had been for him.
"You can put me down now," she whispered.
He eased her toward the water, and a moment later she was standing at his side He saw the profile of her, the startling jut of her breasts outlined against the night sky, but the nipples were soft, now, and no longer stood out like sentinel-turrets He took her hand and they waded back toward shore to get their masks and flippers.
"We'd better get back to the others," Mackell said.
Karen nodded. She was sitting on the sand, pulling her flippers on, and as he looked down at her, and saw the heavy curves of her breasts he felt fresh desire for her, even now, even after their moment of love.
Easy, pal, he warned himself. Twice a day is all you need. You aren't a boy any more. And save something for tomorrow.
He put his own flippers on standing up, and pulled Karen to her feet. Her breasts bounced delightfully as she straightened up. He grinned at her, and put on his mask, and she donned hers.
They waded into the water. Mackell let Karen get ahead of him, so that he could once again admire the supple beauty of her back and buttocks as she moved. But a moment later she slid forward into the dark water and began to swim rapidly toward the yacht.
The other couples were there already, paddling around in the water near the boat. As Karen and Mackell drew near, Peggy clambered up onto the deck, with Joe Bryce following her. Mackell saw Reynolds give Sue a boost up the ladder, his big hand splaying out over the bare cheeks of Sue's buttocks.
Reynolds climbed up. Karen was next, and Mackell deliberately reached up and clasped his hands around the back of one thigh just where it joined her body, digging into the firm flesh for a moment in what he recognized as a childish attempt at getting even. Then he let go, and she swung up on deck, and a moment later he joined the other five. Reynolds was handing out big towels. The night air was suddenly cold, after the swim.
Mackell peeled off his mask and caught sight of Sue, leaning against the rail as she got out of her flippers.
Her eyes met his for a moment, then looked away. All too obviously she felt guilty about the joys she had shared with Bud Reynolds, Mackell thought.
Reynolds said, "Well, folks, it's past eleven o'clock. What say we get some sleep now, and make it up with the sunrise tomorrow?"
Nobody objected. The three couples began to drift below-decks, Karen returning to Reynolds, Sue coming to Mackell's side. The switch had been only temporary.
Joe Bryce said, "Hey, where did you four disappear too out there? All of a sudden Peggy and I were all alone in the water."
"We were exploring the shore," Reynolds said.
Sue and Mackell reached their cabin and went inside, dumping their discarded clothes on the bed. Naked, still damp, they looked at each other.
"Well?" Sue asked, breaking the ice. "How was she, then?"
"Good enough," Mackell said, eyeing Sue's pointy-tipped breasts, her swelling hips. "And how was he?"
"No complaints," Sue said with forced casualness.
"I gathered that. I heard you yelling."
"Was I that loud?" Sue asked, smiling. "I'll have to remember to be more restrained the next time."
"The next time with him, you mean?"
"The next time with anyone," Sue said "You know there's going to be plenty more switching before we get back to port. You know that."
"Yes."
"But I'm still your girl," she said. She came over to him and leaned against him, the tips of her breasts pressing into him. He put his hands on her back, drew them down to the ripe spheres of her buttocks. She said, "No matter who we sleep with on this trip, we know who we're really with. I'm with you and you're with me."
"Right."
"All the rest is just fooling around," Sue said, smiling warmly. She put her lips to his, and they kissed, not a passionate kiss, simply a friendly one. It was a kiss to seal their return to one another, after the night's adventure.
"You taste salty," Mackell said.
"So do you. I guess we need to take showers again."
He nodded, and they entered the shower cubicle once again, to cleanse themselves of their encrusted salt and sand, and of the lusts they had given to on the beach.
When they came out of the shower, clean and fresh and ready for bed, the loudspeaker suddenly crackled, and Bud Reynolds' voice was heard: "Still awake, children?"
"Yes," Mackell said. For the second time, the hidden sound system had caught him off guard. He had forgotten to flip the switch, and quite likely the eavesdropping Reynolds had overheard his conversation with Sue. Damn him, Mackell thought. But they hadn't said anything discriminating. It was just annoying to have intimacies overheard.
Reynolds said, "Are you two busy right now?"
"We were just about to sack out. Why?"
"I've got something I'd like to show you," Reynolds said. "I think you'll find it amusing. You want to come down to the radio cabin and have a look?"
Mackell glanced at Sue. She shrugged.
"Okay," Mackell said. "Well be there."
CHAPTER FOUR
The radio room was at the far end of the companionway. Mackell and Sue slipped into beach-robes and went down the corridor.
Karen and Reynolds were waiting for them. Reynolds wore a silk dressing gown that just barely hid the rippling bulk of his virility, while Karen was decked out in a shortie nightgown of total transparency that revealed the heavy bowls of her breasts and the lushness of her hips.
The radio room itself was crammed with gadgets of all sorts. Even in his college days, Reynolds had kept his room filled with equipment. It was the same now, except that the apparatus had the costly look of high quality.
Reynolds said, "Your room isn't the only one that I've got wired up. I put some very special stuff in the cabin Joe and Peggy are sharing. This is the first chance I've had to try it out The sound's on the fritz, somehow, but the pantomime's good enough."
Reynolds pointed to the far side of the cabin. He pushed a button.
A television screen lit up. It was a small screen, a twelve-incher, but the picture on it was clear and sharp and unmistakable.
Mackell' eyes widened. He could make out the figures of Joe Bryce and Peggy, gleaming on the screen.
"Closed-circuit TV?" Mackell yelped. "My God, Bud, you can't go spying on people like that!"
Reynolds chuckled amiably "Why not?" he said. "It's my yacht, isn't it?" He gestured at the two naked figures on the screen. "You don't have to watch if you don't want to. I thought it would amuse you, that's all."
Mackell stared at the screen again. He wanted to protest against this outrageous invasion of privacy, but the words would not come. It was as though the ordinary rules of civilization did not apply aboard this boat This was a closed world, the world of Bud Reynolds yacht, where morality was something you altered to suit yourself, as you went along.
Besides, the images on the screen held an uncanny, almost hypnotic fascination He had seen stag movies before, of course But this was no movie. This was real life. These were people he knew, people just two doors down the hall, who were going through the act of love in sublime ignorance of the fact that four outsiders were watching the matters being transacted on that bed Mackell scowled at the screen. But he watched. Intently.
In the ostensible privacy of their cabin, Bryce and Peggy were getting ready to go to bed. Not to sleep, but to bed.
Bryce stood naked by the mirror, eyeing himself. He kept close watch on himself, an adolescent habit that even now, almost twenty years after the end of his adolescence, he had not put aside. Was there a blemish on his chin?. Was he starting to thicken around the waist? He had to know. He had to keep himself young and perfect and handsome.
Peggy was taking a shower, scrubbing away the salt of their long swim. She was turning off the tap, now. As she came out she said, "What do you think the four of them were doing while we were looking at the coral?"
Bryce chuckled. "They were on the beach laying each other, sweet. Beyond the clumps of rocks."
"You're sure of that?"
Bryce shrugged. "Well, I didn't actually see them. But I bet they weren't looking for seashells." He turned and grinned at her. "Tell you something else. too. I saw them going ashore. They played switch."
"You mean-they slept with each other's girls?"
"That's what I mean, baby." Bryce sighed Peggy had lovely breasts and the neatest, most squeezable behind east of the Mississippi, but she could be annoyingly dense sometimes. "I saw Reynolds swim off with Sue, and Karen with Jim. And that's how they swam back, too."
Peggy frowned. "But they don't even know each other. And now, going to bed-I mean, making love, not really in bed, but you know-"
"So?"
"It isn't right."
"Why? Nobody's married. We can switch off all we like and not even be committing a sin."
"But-look, suppose I slept with Bud. Or with Jim. Wouldn't you be annoyed?"
"It all depends," Bryce said.
"On what?"
"On who I got to sleep with," he told her. "I wouldn't like to be left in the lurch. But if I got a wack at Sue or Karen it would be okay."
Peggy looked confused. She was a simple-minded kid, Bryce thought. She lacked sophistication. Going off on a two-week cruise with her boss, and sharing a cabin with him, and putting out for him, all that was perfectly okay in her book, good clean fun and all that. But sleeping with somebody else during the cruise struck her as somehow immoral and dirty and wicked.
She had a lot to learn, Bryce told himself.
But the learning process was already under way. She'd be a whole bunch different by the end of the cruise.
He reached out and pulled her down into the bed with him. It was a hot night, and he kicked the covers off. They lay naked, side by side. Moonlight poured into the cabin through the big portholes.
He found himself envying both Reynolds and Mackell. Not only did they have girls who were personalities, far more interesting and complex than Peggy, but they had been lucky enough to switch off with each other tonight. He wondered why nobody had offered to switch with Mm Was Peggy so stupid she didn't interest either of them? Hell, he thought, it's only the first night. Somebody had to be stuck with his own girl the first night, and it turned out to be him But he'd make sure to get in on the fun later on. A muscle twanged in his cheek as he thought of slamming into that Karen. And Sue with her long legs and round little boobs-oh, yes, he thought, yes indeedy!
But in the meanwhile there was Peggy.
"Come here, baby," he whispered harshly.
She turned to him, and his hands closed on the incredible abundance of her breasts. They were breasts like two swollen melons, like two ripe canteloupes growing from her chest. But the resemblance stopped with size and shape. Canteloupes are hard, and rough-skinned. While these two boobies were soft and jiggly and sweet-smelling and delicious. A man could get lost between them. Peggy was the good old original fertility symbol, the Mother Goddess, and Bryce loved to grab hold of the totems and squeeze.
She ran her hands through his thick, wiry hair and tugged his face down into her breasts.
"Go on, Joey," she breathed. "You know what I like. And you like it too. Go on."
He knew what she wanted. He put his lips to her left breast, taking the hard nipple to his lips and caressing it.
Peggy loved it. Her breasts were the center of her universe, and she went wild when he caressed them this way. It brought out all the maternal urges in her, urges that so far had been totally frustrated. She didn't let him take precautions when they made love, nor did she ever take them herself. She wanted to get pregnant. She wanted her breasts to be full, and then she wanted not her baby but Bryce to take sustenance from them. She had told him that, over and over again.
Bryce had never bothered to tell her that a teen-age attack of mumps had left him sterile, that he was the wrong guy entirely for filling her hips with babies and her breasts with milk. He believed in letting her have her dreams. But he was half curious to see how she'd look with milk-heavy breasts. If she swelled up any bigger, she'd get so top-heavy she couldn't keep her balance. It would be quite a sight, he thought. But he doubted that he'd ever see it.
He finished caressing the left breast and started in on the right. Peggy writhed and squirmed on the bed, gasping in pleasure, pistoning her body in the early throes of her excitement.
Finally Bryce came up for air. He moved himself away from the two huge mounds of her bosom, and looked down, saw the nipples red and tall, and the soft flesh of the breasts looking bruised where he had squeezed. Peggy's eyes were little slits, misty with desire.
"Now we'll do the other thing," she whispered. "The thing you like so much."
She rolled over, flat on her back. Bryce knew what she meant.
She drew his body against her breasts. He began to rock back and forth, slowly, while she pressed the heavy globes of her breasts together, holding him secure.
They had done this many times. When she was apathetic this was the way she gave him fulfillment, rocking him to oblivion with her breasts. Tonight, though, it was only part of the preliminaries. The finale would come in the usual way.
Back and forth, his whole body quivered in the excitement of it. The soft body, so warm, so abundant, so delectable. It wasn't every woman who could satisfy a man this way Karen was probably big enough, Bryce thought, but just barely Sue might have trouble But Peggy was more than ample for the purpose. He could hide himself completely in the swells of her wonderful breasts.
Higher, higher his pleasure mounted until he thought he could stand no more. Beneath him, Peggy moaned and twisted in restless desire. It would be so easy for him to go all the way like this, to accept the quick gift of the fulfillment and roll off her But that would be unfair It would leave Peggy aflame.
"Okay," he said hoarsely. "Enough of that!"
"Don't stop!"
"I've got to," he muttered. "Otherwise it'll be the end right now. You want that?"
"No, no!"
"Okay, then."
He left her. She readied for him, and he settled to her, burying himself at the warm cavern of her body, and she laughed in delight Bryce moved to her, and moved again, and she accepted him, took what he had to give, and gave of her own, and the bed groaned its protest as their moving bodies punished the springs. Peggy's big breasts leaped in a wild carnal dance, and her body moved tirelessly against him, and their mouths came together, his breath in her throat, hers in his, and in another instant they were both soaring up and over, far into the stratosphere, out into the cool, black night of space, drifting effortlessly between the stars just as an hour earlier they had floated gently above the timeless world of the coral reef.
Jim Mackell wiped the perspiration from his forehead. The air in the radio room had suddenly become steamy, supercharged.
He stared at the little video screen. Nothing was happening now. Bryce and Peggy, all passion spent, were stretched out side by side, limp, exhausted, nearly motionless.
Reynolds said, "I think we've had as much of a show as we're going to get." He jabbed the button, and the image on the screen collapsed, spiralling down into a point of light that winked out a moment later. "They put on a pretty good show for us, eh?" Reynolds asked. "A pity the audio conked out. I didn't have time to test it this evening. What do you say, Jim?"
"Not much," Mackell answered hoarsely. He was still overwhelmed by the impact of what he had seen.
He knew it was vicious, ugly, warped, to spy on Bryce and Peggy this way. He had never done anything fouler in his life. To stand here with the other three, gazing fixedly at the screen, drinking in every moment of the action, getting vicarious thrills galore-it was a sick thing to have done, a twisted thing.
But it had been done. And it could not be undone now. His mind blazed with the images that had seared into it. Bryce grasping Peggy's huge breasts, kissing them, squeezing them ... Bryce kneeling on top of Peggy, taking full advantage of her marvelous bosom ... and then finally the wild, slam-bang intensity of their culmination....
While we stood here and watched like a bunch of Peeping Toms, Mackell thought.
He was shaken And so were the others. Sue looked a little dazed by what she had seen. Karen was flushed, excited looking. And the bulge under Bud Reynolds' dressing-gown left no doubt at all about the emotions he was feeling right now.
Mackell realized that he, too, was aroused Even after the day's two rounds, his body was capable of responding to the new stimulation He was ready again. When he got back to the cabin with Sue, he would-
Reynolds said, "How about a little drink? Just for a nightcap, after the show."
"I'd rather skip it," Mackell said. "Unless you want one, Sue-"
"No," she said. "Not now, thanks. It's getting late, and I want to be up early for the sunrise tomorrow."
Mackell moistened his lips. "Are you planning to spy on-to watch Peggy and Joe all during the trip?"
"Hell, no," Reynolds said. "That wouldn't be decent, would it? I'll tip them off I'll let them know about it. My own way, though Don't any of you say a word to them about what you saw."
Mackell nodded He nudged Sue's arm, and the two of them left the cabin.
"Good night," Karen called huskily after them.
They returned quickly to their own cabin The moment Mackell entered, he went to the toggle switch and threw it, cutting off the two-way cabin intercom Reynolds had done enough spying tonight. He wasn't going to eavesdrop on their conversation now. Sue said, "What do you think about it?"
"The TV, you mean?"
"I don't mean the weather."
Mackell shrugged. "Old Bud's got a pretty weird sense of humor, I guess."
"Abnormal is what I'd call it. It's bad enough to listen to what his guests are saying to each other in bed. But to spy on them by television-" She shuddered. "I think it's sickening."
"You want to go back to San Juan?" Mackell asked. "It isn't far. We can tell Bud we've had enough, and he'll take us back."
"Do you want to?"
Mackell shook his head. "No, not really. But I thought, if you were as bothered by all this as you seem to be, maybe we'd better cut out."
Sue quirked her lips. "No. I don't want to leave. It'll be educational, I guess. We'll stay. I just wonder what other little games Bud Reynolds is going to cook up for us as we go along."
She slipped off her robe and got into bed. Mackell glanced at her slim, full-blown nudity, then took his own robe off. She looked at him, saw his obvious need.
"No," she said. "Don't get any ideas."
"I don't follow you."
"We aren't making it now," she said. "You had me this afternoon and you had Karen tonight. That's enough. Even if you haven't had enough, I have."
"Gee, baby, don't be like that," Mackell cajoled. He put his hands on her buttocks. She had turned her back to him in the bed. He ran one hand down over her legs.
"No," she said. "Please, Jim. Don't force me. I don't want to do it."
"For God's sake, why not?"
She rolled over to face him. "Because it isn't me you want," she told him. "You got yourself all worked up watching that television business, and now you want me to cool you off again. Well, I'm not going to let you use me. I'm not going to let you make me a receptacle If you're eager, go into the next room and take care of yourself."
"But the television thing excited you too," Mackell pointed out "Don't try to deny that. I just put my hand there. I know."
"It doesn't matter," Sue said with a divine contempt for logic. "I admit that television stirred me up But I'm damned if I'm going to give in to it-to let myself be aroused by a thing like that And I'm not going to let you satisfy yourself with me, either I'm sorry. Jim. Let's not quarrel about it Tomorrow's another day, and I'm yours any time you want me for me. Now let's go to sleep I want to see the sunrise."
She turned her back on him again. Mackell bit his lip in frustration, and started to reach out for her a second time.
But he knew she was right. The desire that he felt now was phony, and ugly lust that didn't deserve to be gratified It was a direct response to the inflammatory video show that Bud Reynolds had staged for them.
"Okay," he said "Good night, Sue."
"Good night, darling."
He kissed her tenderly on the earlobe. Then he rolled over, putting his back to her. Her buttocks were cool and soft against his.
The desire, being a false one, ebbed away rapidly, and in a few moments he no longer felt any need for sex just then. He closed his eyes. It had been a busy day, a long, long day of sex and salacity, of nakedness, of sun. He was tired to the core.
He pressed his face against the pillow. He thought for a moment about Peggy's breasts, and what Joe Bryce had been doing with them, and the next moment he dropped off into sound sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Morning came.
Mackell struggled to wakefulness His cabin was on the east side of the ship, and sunlight was flooding through the portholes. He sat up, thumbed his eyes.
He was alone in bed.
"Sue?" he called.
No answer She wasn't in the bathroom either He reached across and got his wristwatch from his shoe It was six-thirty in the morning He had missed sunrise by almost an hour Most likely Sue had left the cabin without waking him. and had gone up on deck.
He washed up and found a swimsuit. Then, still a little bleary-eyed, he made his way up front and stumbled out into the brilliant sunshine.
"So you finally decided to get up, lazybones," Bud Reynolds rumbled cheerfully. "We were wondering about you. It's almost breakfast time."
Mackell blinked. Everyone else was up already. Bryce and Reynolds, wearing bathing suits, were leaning over the starboard rail, trawling for fish. Four slim, silvery fish were already in the hopper, Mackell saw.
As for the girls, they were on the port side of the boat, in the water. It was a little startling to behold them, because they all seemed to have come to the conclusion that there was no sense exposing a good bikini to the corrosive action of salt water. Peggy and Sue were as naked as the day they came into the world, while Karen had donned mask and flippers to do some early-morning snorkeling. All he could see of her was the creamy round of her buttocks and the blue plastic snout of her snorkel.
Sue waved to him, her boobs bobbing buoyantly near the surface. "Morning!" she yelled. "Come on in! The water's great!"
Mackell glanced at Reynolds. "You need me?"
"Nope. Go have yourself a swim. But tell Karen to come on in and clean the fish. We're ready to get the fire started, tell her."
Mackell nodded and vaulted over the port rail. He broke the water cleanly and swam toward Karen, reaching out to catch one of her flippers. She came to the surface at once and pushed her mask up.
"Hi, Jim. Morning!"
"Morning," he acknowledged. "Bud says he wants you to come clean the fish. He's ready to start the fire, he says."
Karen sighed. "Her Master's Voice speaketh. Okay, I'm on my way."
She paddled toward the yacht. Sue had swum up by this time, and Mackell, floating lightly in the warm, clear water, grinned at her
"What time did you get up?" he asked.
"Quarter after five," she said "I didn't want to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully."
"How was the sunrise?"
"Magnificent. Just magnificent, Jim. I've never seen anything like it. The whole sky lit up-bright red, and then it turned orange-"
"Maybe I'll make it tomorrow," Mackell said. "I guess I needed the sleep."
Sue laughed and sidled up against him. He put his hands over her breasts and gave them a little squeeze.
"None of that!" Sue said playfully. "Remember, we're in public!"
"I'm remembering," Mackell said.
Reynolds called to them. They swam back toward the yacht. Peggy came up alongside them, and Mackell grinned at her, feeling a little self-conscious after the activities he had witnessed last night. He stared at Peggy's bare, enormous breasts as though he had never seen them before, and wondered what it would feel like to get his hands on them. Last night Karen-maybe tonight Peggy!
Maybe!
They clambered ashore, Peggy first, her firm pale buttocks wigwagging as she went up the ladder. Mackell gave Sue a boost and a little goose, which brought a shrill screech from her, and then he followed her up. They towelled off on deck.
Reynolds and Bryce had each pulled in a fish, meanwhile. Now half a dozen silvery shapes were being readied for the charcoal fire that Reynolds was building. Karen crouched over the deck, knife in hand, efficiently stripping away the scales. She hadn't bothered to put her bikini back on. Her buttocks, pulled taut as she kneeled, were heart-shaped and tawny, already beginning to tan like the rest of her.
But when it was time to settle down in the chairs and actually eat breakfast, all three girls, with one accord, donned their bikinis. Mackell noticed it, and smiled. It was an odd and unexpected concession to the traditional conventions of decency. One might swim in the nude, or sunbathe in the nude, or even squat down to clean fish in the nude, but one did not eat breakfast in the nude. At least not among mixed company.
Breakfast was a joy. The fish were tangy and crisp, and Reynolds had put up hash brown potatoes to go with them, and powerful Colombian coffee. Nobody left a scrap on any plate that morning.
When breakfast was over, Reynolds said, "I figure we ought to pull anchor right away and head east. It's a beautiful day, and we can get clear over to the Virgins before it gets dark. Okay?"
Nobody objected. Reynolds was the skipper, after all. This cruise was his baby from start to finish.
So Mackell winched up the anchor while Reynolds took care of the navigational chores, and by nine that morning they were on their way. They passed through the zone of green, clear water, and out between the jaws of the reef and into the rich, deep blue of the open Caribbean. The sky was a lighter blue, broken only by the tiniest wisps of clouds far off and near the horizon.
Soon Vieques was only a dot to the west. They were in open water, with the many islets of the Virgins lying to the east-St John and St Thomas, the American duo so beloved of tourists, and the less developed British Virgins like Tortola and Virgin Gorda. and then the small, uninhabited cays and rocks that cluttered the Caribbean.
It was a slow, peaceful day. There wasn't much to do but sleep in the sun, and read, and occasionally to fish. Reynolds broke out his deep sea gear, and spent an hour in the chair on deck, while the baited hooks dragged a bloody trail across the blueness.
But so idyllic a day was it that the monsters of the deep were too indolent even to rise to the bait. Shark and sailfish and marlin remained in the depths, and nothing showed but small fry who nibbled mockingly at the bait and darted away again in a flash of gleaming fins.
"Not my day," Reynolds said finally. "Anybody else want the rod?"
Mackell shook his head. He had visions of himself as a deep-sea fisherman, taut in the chair as a massive marlin writhed on the hook, but he knew that It wasn't his line of amusement. Fishing of any kind bored him to tears, and. while he could appreciate the excitement of playing a big boy, he had no urge to interfere with the lives of the leviathans. Live and let live, he figured. Leave deep sea fishing and big game hunting for those who could dig the thrill of the chase.
The bikinis came off again, not long after they were under way. Aware of the dangers of sunburn in areas not used to exposure, all three girls gave themselves a good rubdown with suntan lotion. Mackell watched the pleasant sight of the girls oiling breasts, buttocks, and everywhere. They gleamed, now. Hour after hour, they lay in the sun, toasting to a deep shade of brown.
Mackell yawned. This was the ever-loving life, all right. He pitied the poor bastards up in the frozen North. Thirteen inches of snow only last Tuesday. Heaps of the stuff all over the place. And here he was, lying in the sun, with the gentle roll of the yacht lulling him to sleep, and three naked girls less than ten feet away from him, every one a beauty....
It was the life, all right.
He closed his eyes and slipped into a light doze, as the yacht rumbled onward toward the Virgin Islands.
Karen lay naked in the sun, basking in it, enjoying the warmth of it on her body. It was a good trip, so far. Before they had set out, Bud had been a little apprehensive, knowing that just one puritan could spoil the whole cruise. But nobody was playing the spoil-sport. The others were a little stiff about getting rid of their inhibitions, but with Karen leading the way everyone was rapidly growing accustomed to the easygoing yacht way of life.
Yesterday, for example, she thought, things had still been rather formal. Mackell had looked so startled when she had peeled off her bikini and gone for that bare swim. But he had adjusted to the situation easily enough. And then, later, when all the girls had taken their halters off, it hadn't been hard for her to set things up so that hiding the breasts became an unnecessary bit of prudishness from then on.
And then, the nude swim in the evening, and the switch of partners afterward-
Yes, it was all going nicely. The only hitch had seemed to come when Bud had called Jim and Sue in to look at the television screen That had been an awkward moment. They both seemed a little shocked, as though they felt that this was going too far.
Karen smiled to herself. Soon they'd adjust to such things as readily as they had adjusted to everything else, she knew. Once you toss away some of the conventions, it's not hard to discard the rest. By this time next week, she thought, they'd probably all be making love right out on deck, and never a second thought about it.
She glanced at the other two girls, stretched out naked and dozing on deck pads near by. That Sue was a cool one, Karen thought. No fool at all. She was alive not only between the legs but between the ears as well. If Jim Mackell knew what was good for him, he'd marry her fast. But men never did know what was good for them, Karen thought.
And Peggy, Nothing in the upstairs, but what did that matter? What a spectacular pair of boobs on that girl! She was really hard to believe. Some kind of glandular fluke, that's what it had to be. Karen was a long way from being flat-chested herself, but she wasn't in the same league with Peggy-softballs versus grapefruits, or maybe versus basketballs.
Karen studied the two dozing girls. She had a little project in mind, but who was her partner going to be? Sue? Peggy? Sue was sophisticated, she probably would respond more readily. But Peggy had the greater natural endowment, would be more interesting. Unless poor stupid Peggy reacted in horror to the idea, that was.
I'll give it a try, Karen decided.
She stood up and walked over toward Perry. Peggy was lying on her back, her breasts upturned to the warm kiss of the sun. When most girls lie on their backs, their breasts flatten away to mere points, but even in this position Peggy still looked voluptuously abundant.
Karen crouched over her. "Peggy? Peggy, are you awake?"
"Mmm?"
"You're going to get sunburned, darling. Your breasts. They'll be burned to a crisp. They aren't used to the sun, and your skin is so fair."
"I put lotion on," Peggy murmured, not opening her eyes. "It's okay."
"No," Karen insisted. "It was ages ago. You need to keep putting it on or you don't get protection. No, don't move. I'll do it for you, dear."
Karen glanced around. No one was watching. Mackell was sound asleep, and Bud and Joe Bryce were nowhere to be seen-probably busy navigating, or something. And Sue was dozing, her face turned the other way.
Karen picked up the tube of suntan oil and squeezed some into the palm of her hand. Then, gently, lovingly, she began to rub the lotion over the firm, heavy mounds of Peggy's breasts. Her tapered fingers kneaded the flesh, lovingly caressing it as she rubbed the oil in. Peggy's breasts were as good to the touch as to the eye, Karen thought-wonderfully smooth, and there was a firmness to them, ft wasn't merely flab but honest flesh.
"Isn't that good?" Karen murmured. "Do you like that, Peggy dear?"
"Mmm-mm," Peggy said sleepily.
Karen's eyes gleamed in triumph. She continued to massage Peggy's breasts, rubbing the oil in.
Peggy's nipples started to stiffen.
Peggy was getting excited.
"Now down below," Karen whispered. "Well put a little oil down there, too."
"No-my breasts aren't finished yet," Peggy said.
So she enjoyed it and wanted more!
Karen was happy to oblige. Again she oiled Peggy's breasts, and now the two hillocks of flesh glistened brightly in the midday sun, and the nipples stood up high and hard. Karen felt a pounding in her, a warmth, a fierce need.
She filled her palm with oil and moved to Peggy's middle, then slipping lower, the busy hand circling, now touching the inner flesh of the thighs, now playfully darting between the legs.
Peggy played right along. Even when the caressing hand was at its most intimate, there was no sign of protest, no annoyance. Karen clamped her thighs together to fight back the throbbing of desire in them. This was almost too good. To get this far right out on deck, to be touching her everywhere this way in the first ten minutes-why, it was perfect! It was almost a temptation to part Peggy's plump thighs and get right down to them, out here, on deck, even though Jim and Sue dozed not far away.
But that would be moving too fast, soon, Karen knew. Jim and Sue weren't quite ready to have a Lesbian seduction performed right under their eyes. They had to be initiated, one step at a time, into the subtler practices of the sinful.
Peggy stirred and made a purring sound of pleasure. Karen continued to caress the blonde girl's big breasts and thighs. Peggy kept her eyes closed, but she was smiling, and she was obviously awake and enjoying every minute of what was going on.
Karen whispered, "Now turn over, Peggy. Well oil your back now."
Peggy flopped over. Her back and high, full buttocks rose to the sunlight. Karen filled her palm with suntan lotion and clapped her hand down on Peggy's buttocks, The firm flesh quivered a little. Rivulets of lotion streamed away from Karen's hand, over the arching hill-locks.
Karen's hand moved in a rotating motion, rubbing and squeezing and pressing downward all at the same time. The resilient flesh seemed to welcome the treatment. Peggy kept squeezing her thighs together in pleasure, rubbing them up and down a little, and it seemed to Karen that the blonde girl's breath was beginning to come in ragged bursts.
Karen felt the drumbeat of desire growing louder in her. She longed to take Peggy to bed, to throw herself on those magnificent breasts, those wonderful buttocks, to hurl herself at Peggy's soft round thighs and go rocketing away to bliss.
Did she dare? Out here on deck?
No. Certainly not.
But yet-
"Having fun?" a voice asked lightly.
Karen pulled her hand away from Peggy's buttocks as though the soft flesh had abruptly turned to molten steel. She glanced up.
Joe Bryce stood behind her, his hands on his hips, an ironic smile on his face.
Karen grinned uneasily. "Oh-Joe-you scared me, creeping up on me like that!"
"Sorry. I was just watching you massaging Peggy's butt. What's the matter, does she have a cramp or something?"
"No, I'm just putting some suntan lotion on her. She's exposing some parts of her body that aren't accustomed to the sun. She can get into trouble if she doesn't watch out. This tropical sun-"
"Mmm, yes," Joe said. "You've got to be careful. What about Sue, over there? She's sleeping in the sun. She might wake up with a hell of a burn."
"It's not so bad, with her," Karen said. "She's a brunette. Her skin's tougher. But Peggy's got to watch it, with that fair skin of hers. And redheads like me, too. We have to build up tans carefully." Karen looked down at Peggy, who still lay on her belly, her buttocks gleaming with oil. "You think you're protected now, Peg?"
"I think so. You better wake Sue up and tell her to put the lotion on."
"I'll do that," Karen said. But before she did, she knelt down again, her lips only inches from Peggy's small pink ear. Joe Bryce had strolled away again, to another part of the deck. He didn't seem to have suspected what had really been going on. Karen whispered, "If you want more, come to my cabin about an hour before dinner.
Is it a date?"
Karen held her breath. There was a moment of hesitation. Then Peggy nodded.
"Yes," she whispered. "Okay."
Karen grinned in satisfaction. Rising, she stepped across Peggy and stood above the dozing Sue, looking down.
Karen's body throbbed. She was in a state of high excitement, now. It was too bad that Bryce had had to come along, of course, but even so it didn't make much difference, since she would only continue in privacy what had been begun in public.
She looked down at Sue.
Sue lay on her back, naked, a beautiful sight to behold. Her medium-sized breasts rose delightfully away from her body, and her hips were full and feminine, tapering down to the magnificent columns of her thighs. She was less voluptuous than Peggy, but in her own right Sue had a long-stemmed loveliness that was a joy to contemplate.
First I'll make Peggy, Karen thought. Then I'll go after Sue. There's lots of time for all kinds of fun on this trip.
Karen knelt by Sue's side. She reached out a hand and started to cup Sue's left breast, but drew back when her fingers were only inches from the pucker-tipped swell of tender flesh. She was afraid. The broadside approach that had worked so well with Peggy might backfire with a more knowledgeable girl like Sue. The approach to Sue had to be more subtle, Karen thought.
She touched Sue's shoulder and shook her a little.
"Sue?"
Sue opened her eyes. "What is it, Karen?"
"You've been sleeping in the sun. You'd better put some more lotion on. If your breasts get sunburned you'll be in agony the whole trip."
"I think I'm safe," Sue said. She put her hands to her breasts. "It doesn't take me long to get a protective tan. I'll be okay."
"All the same-"
"Okay," Sue said. "Give me the lotion."
"I'll be glad to rub it on for you," Karen ventured cautiously.
Sue smiled. "That's all right, Karen. I'll do it. You stretch out and get yourself some sun."
She took the bottle of lotion from her. Karen surrendered it in the awareness that she had no secret from Sue, that Sue had deftly blocked the pass.
Karen walked away, and stood at the rail, looking out at the sea. The cold metal pressed against her belly, and she edged forward, letting the chilly steel cool the raging fire in her body. She glanced over her shoulder. Peggy lay sprawled nude in the sun, her buttocks still agleam. As for Sue, she was sitting up, methodically rubbing suntan lotion into her breasts.
There was a dryness in Karen's throat as she watched how Sue's tapering fingers cupped the perfect rounds of her own breasts to apply the lotion. I'd like to do that for you, honey, Karen thought.
First things first, though. Peggy was as good as made. After that, it was time to start to try to seduce Sue. One campaign at a time, though.
Karen left the rail and returned to her mat. She lay down on her back and parted her thighs, drawing her knees up. The sun's warmth penetrated the well of her body, and soothed her. She lay there as though expecting to be taken. The time ticked away. She wondered if Peggy would back down on the promise to come to her cabin before dinner. She hoped not. She was worked up, now, and wanted it tremendously.
Karen opened her thighs to the sun's embrace and tried to relax and wait
CHAPTER SIX
The Merry Mae lay quietly at anchor in harbor at Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, American Virgin Islands. The time was half past five in the afternoon. The tropic sun had descended only slightly, and the day was still in full blaze, and would be for another several hours.
On shore, tourists wandered the narrow streets, hunting for free-port bargains in liquor, cameras, and wrist-watches at Charlotte Amalie's dozens of duty-free shops. The dusky natives, largely untouched by the prosperity that duty-free status had brought to the white shopkeepers, stood in front of their red-roofed houses and waited for dinner time to arrive. A large cruise ship was in town today, and that meant a busy evening for the shopkeepers and for the night clubs.
Aboard the Merry Mae, the six voyagers had all left the deck, since it was obviously impossible to sunbathe in the nude now that they were in a bustling harbor, Besides, it was time to prepare for dinner. It had been arranged that they would go ashore tonight for dinner at one of St. Thomas' finest restaurants, and then go night clubbing. In the morning, there would be time for a little shopping before they continued on to St. John.
Sue Heller stepped out of the shower, nude and still damp, just as Jim Mackell entered the cabin.
"Hi," she said. "Are we in port?"
Mackell nodded. "We just docked. Reynolds is talking to the harbor people. Something about a clearance. I don't follow any of that stuff, but I guess he'll get it all okayed without me." He looked at her. "Christ, you look gorgeous. You got a nice tan today, too."
"I know," Sue said. "And for the first time in my life I have a tan all over, too." That reminded her of something. She snapped her fingers. "Suntan lotion," she said.
"Huh?"
"I'll explain. Shut that thing off first, though." She pointed to the intercom switch.
"Reynolds is on shore. Nobody's listening."
"Shut it off anyway," Sue insisted.
Mackell shrugged and threw the switch. "What's this about suntan lotion?" he asked.
"It's pretty cute, Jim. We've got a Lesbo on board, did you know that?"
"Huh?"
"A Lesbo. A dyke. A bull."
"For Christ's sake, who?"
"Karen."
Mackell stared at her. He remembered the flaming passion Karen had shown last night on the beach, the searing intensity with which she had engulfed him to her body, the furious heat of her desire, the savage fervor of her response. If any woman was all feminine, it was Karen.
"You're out of your mind," he said bluntly. "Karen's no Lesbian!"
"You're mistaken."
"Listen, Sue, I slept with her last night, remember? I had carnal relations. Sex, in other words. The girl's a ball of fire. And she goes for men. If she's queer, then so am I."
"You better start plucking your eyebrows, then, dearie. Karen bats from both sides of the plate. Believe me. I watched her in action today."
"What do you mean?"
"On deck, when we were sunbathing. You were right there, only you were asleep. I had my eyes closed, and I guess she thought I was asleep too, but I wasn't. She came around with this suntan lotion bit. She was all aflutter that we'd get our nipples sunburned if we didn't watch out. So she squatted down next to Peggy and started to rub suntan lotion on her body."
"So what? She was just being friendly."
Sue guffawed. "Friendly? Listen, I watched her squeezing those big boobs. I watched her rubbing Peggy's nipples. And she had her hand between Peggy's legs. You don't need suntan oil in there. Uh-uh. She was getting kicks, squeezing and feeling and rubbing and grabbing. They were both breathing hard. If Joe Bryce hadn't come along Karen might have laid her right there on deck."
Mackell shook his head. "I think you're reading something perverted into a situation where it didn't exist."
"And then she came over to me," Sue said. "She wanted to rub my breasts too. Only I wasn't in the mood to have my uppers massaged. 'I took the lotion away from her and did it myself."
"When she gets through making Peggy, shell try to make me. It's logical enough. I'll give in to her. Then I'll tell you all about it. Will you believe me then?"
"Isn't that going to an extreme, Sue?"
"You want proof, don't you?"
"And you? Suppose she is a Lesbian? Would you want to go to bed with another woman?"
"How do you know I haven't done it already?" Sue asked with a smile.
Mackell stared. "I guess I don't know."
"Okay, then. You leave it all up to me. I'll give you a first-hand answer."
"Hey, don't tell me you're a dyke too!" Mackell blurted.
Sue laughed. "If you want to know, the last time I had any kind of Lesbian experience was when I was in summer camp, at the age of 15, and we had a kind of fad of queerness in our bunk. Then I discovered men and I've never gone back. Okay?"
"Okay," he said. "I'll be happy to drop the whole subject of Lesbianism right now."
"In favor of what?" Sue asked playfully.
"In favor of good old kosher sex," Mackell said. "All day I've been watching three of the best-built broads I've ever seen running around in the nude, and let me tell you, I'm ready now."
"It's almost dinner time," Sue objected.
"So we'll eat a little later," Mackell said. "But I'll have a better appetite."
He pulled off his trunks and tossed them to the floor. The extent of his need was readily apparent. Sue stood in the middle of the cabin, naked, smiling, her breasts rising and falling. Mackell advanced toward her. She didn't retreat.
Their bodies touched. Mackell felt fire shooting through his veins as the tips of her love-hardened breasts grazed his skin, as the soft warmth of her pressed against his body. They went into a close embrace, thighs against thighs, mouth to mouth, tongue to tongue.
They moved toward the bed.
Gently, easily, they reached for one another. Sue's body was incredibly smooth, wonderfully soft. He put his hand to her and found her warm and ready. Her questing hand drew him to her, and he went where she commanded, and glided easily and pleasantly to the beckoning harbor of her, and their bodies began to move in the familiar yet ever-fresh rhythm of their passion....
Peggy Woods tiptoed on bare feet down the central corridor of the yacht. She wore nothing but a light wrap over nakedness. Her skin tingled and gave off warmth; she had almost, but not quite, had too much sun today. There was a glow on her breasts and on her buttocks. If it hadn't been for Karen and her suntan lotion, Peggy thought, she might have had a serious burn.
There was another tingling inside Peggy, too. A tingling of desire, an unfamiliar sensation of lust. She could remember the feel of Karen's hands on her body. It had been so good, so very good.
So very good.
Supple hands cupping her breasts, not a man's hands, thick-fingered and rough, but a woman's hands, applying gentle pressure without hurting the tender globes of flesh. Hands moving to and fro over her buttocks.
Karen's hands.
A woman's hands.
Peggy felt strange. She had never been touched by a woman before, not that way. Men, yes. Many men. Ever since the age of fourteen, men had been having her. She had been precocious, with those big breasts supporting when she was only twelve.
Many men had had her. Some had only hurt her with their clumsy pounding brutality. Others had aroused her passions, but then had reached their own climaxes leaving her still full of frustrated desire. Still others had given her wonderful pleasure, ecstasy, fulfillment. Peggy couldn't remember how many men she had made love with since she was fourteen. Dozens, certainly. Maybe almost a hundred. She hardly ever refused a man.
But now she was on her way to Karen Lyon's cabin. She was going to give herself to another woman.
It was wrong. They said it was wrong, didn't they? It was sick, twisted. Women should not make love to other women. Women should only make love to men, the morals-makers said.
But why?
Peggy didn't know. She had never understood abstract matters like that. The one thing in life that mattered to her was pleasure. When Joe put his hands on her breasts, that was pleasure. When he kissed her breasts, that was pleasure. When he caressed her, that was pleasure.
And when Karen had moved her hands over her body, hands made smooth and slick by suntan lotion-that was pleasure, too. The combination of the sun and her drowsiness and Karen's deft hands had left Peggy throbbing with desire. There was a palpitation within her, a beat of passion that would not be denied.
She was in front of the cabin that Karen shared with Bud Reynolds. Peggy hesitated. Should she knock? Once she went in, she knew she would have to follow through and go all the way.
Maybe Bud was there, she thought. In that case-but, no Karen wouldn't have asked her to come unless she knew they would have privacy.
Peggy knocked. Timidly, uncertainly.
"Is that you, Peggy?" came Karen's voice.
"Yes. Yes."
The door opened. Karen stood there, smiling. She was nude. Her high, rounded breasts were going up and down in rapid agitation. Peggy noticed Karen's reddened nipples standing high and long. Karen's body was a marvelous one, Peggy thought. Everything in perfect proportion, legs and thighs and breasts and buttocks, all the rest, everything just so. She had big breasts, but she was tall, so she didn't look top-heavy.
Not like me, Peggy thought. I'm a freak.
"Come in," Karen cried. "Come on in!"
"Are you alone?"
"Of course I'm alone. Come on in. Bud's on shore talking to the port people."
Peggy stepped inside. Karen closed and bolted the cabin door. She was only inches away from Peggy, and the appeal of Karen's lush, heavy-breasted body was almost overpowering. Peggy felt dizzy. She had never experienced any of these sensations before. Until today, the sight of another woman's body had left her unmoved. Flesh, that's all it was, uninteresting female flesh. It was men who excited her. Women had always seemed defective to her, lacking that vital part that made life interesting.
But Karen was different. Karen excited her in a strange new way.
"You can take your wrap off," Karen murmured. "There's just the two of us here. Would you like a drink?"
"Yes. Yes, please," Peggy said huskily.
Karen had everything all ready. There was a small bar set in the cabin wall, and Karen quickly produced two tumblers of whiskey, dropped ice cubes in, poured soda. Peggy shrugged out of her wrap and, nude, accepted a drink from Karen. She downed it quickly to soothe her tense nerves. She could feel Karen's eyes fastened to her, and it was a tangible sensation, almost as strong as having Karen's hands roaming her body again.
"You have beautiful breasts" Karen said softly.
Peggy shook her head. "No. They aren't beautiful. They're too big. By the time I'm 35 they'll look like udders."
"No. They're so firm, Peggy. So taut."
"But they'll droop. I hate my breasts. I wish I had breasts like yours, Karen. They're so hard. And they'll stay that way. They're in proportion. I'm just a cow."
"Don't say that." Karen smiled. "I'd like to kiss your breasts, Peggy. May I?"
"Of course."
Karen came forward. She put her head down, and lightly, gently took Peggy's right breast in both her hands, holding it just the way Joe liked to hold it, and drew the nipple to her lips, and began to kiss it. Peggy felt a rush of blood to her head. Her veins were congested, aching with desire. She gulped the last of her drink and put the glass down.
She reached out and her hands closed around Karen's breasts. She held them, enjoying the feel of them, the almost rubbery resilience that they had. Not like her own breasts at all. It was wonderful to hold them. And wonderful to have Karen kissing her breasts, too.
Karen was working on the other breast, now. But a moment later she lifted her head. Peggy looked at the older girl. Karen's eyes were misty with desire.
"Let's lie down on the bed," she whispered.
"All right, Karen."
Nude, they stretched out alongside one another. Karen's hands rested lightly on Peggy's breasts, and then one hand slid down the front of her body, pausing when it reached the softness of her thighs. Peggy gasped suddenly.
They lay quietly for a few moments. Karen said, "You've never done anything like this before, have you?"
"No. Never."-Are you afraid?"
"A little."
"Don't be. There's nothing to fear. It's just like making love to a man, only better. So very much better. You can't imagine how much better it is, until you've actually experienced it."
"Do you-do it often with women?" Peggy asked.
"Not often. I save it for special occasions. With special people. The rest of the time, men are good enough for me. I like it both ways."
"How-how do women do it together?"
"There are several ways," Karen said. "I'll show yon all of them, one at a time."
She put her lips to Peggy's breasts again, caressing first one nipple, then the other, until both stood up rigidly like flaming beacons. Peggy lay on her back, submitting quietly to Karen's ministrations.
Karen began to wriggle down the front of Peggy's body. Her hands remained up high, grasping Peggy's breasts and caressing the soft flesh, while Karen artfully drew her lips downward.
Peggy gasped.
She had never experienced anything so intense, so concentrated in its excitement. It was so exciting as to be almost painful. She closed her eyes, clenched her jaws. She lay back, letting Karen continue to caress her and to squeeze her breasts. Peggy felt almost limp with the passions that were coursing through her body now.
After a long moment Karen lifted her head. She wriggled back, up the length of Peggy's body, and offered her own breasts to Peggy's lips. Peggy seized on them hungrily, drawing the firm taut globes to her lips as so many had done to her.
Then their bodies were turning, again. Peggy found her face near Karen's thighs. She pressed her head to the other girl, and at the same moment found Karen doing it to her. Peggy closed her eyes. She inhaled, filling her nostrils with the musky sweetness of Karen, and then her lips touched warmth. And all the while ecstasy rippled up through her own body.
"Now!" Karen cried hoarsely. "Now! Swing around again!"
Their heads were together, now. Peggy rolled over, feeling Karen's body over hers. Just as though Karen were a man. They assumed the regular postion, the position that Peggy knew so well.
Her knees opened. Karen snuggled through them, her body pressing downward against Peggy's. But the sensations were altogether different. Instead of the rough hairiness of a man's chest against her breasts, there were other breasts, warm and soft and hard-tipped. Karen's breasts were crushing into her own, fleshy globes against fleshy globes. And instead of the hardness of a man's lips, there was the tenderness of Karen's. Instead of the harsh business of a man's hips against her thighs, there was Karen's satin-smooth sleekness.
And instead of the sudden masculine invasion, there was only a delicate contact, a subtle friction as Karen's body moved against her own. Peggy kept waiting for the finish to come, but, of course, it never did.
And then it ceased to matter. For, in place of the sensations that she felt when a man was with her, there were new sensations, gender ones but none the less powerful even so. Peggy trembled. She could feel a quivering beginning inside her, the first tentative upwelling of the new flood of ecstasy.
She reached up, locked her arms around Karen. Her fingertips dug deep into the firm, muscular rounds of Karen's tanned buttocks. Karen moved and moved again, her body shoving against Peggy's, the delight mounting with each new motion.
Peggy was gasping, now. It was impossible for her to keep her eyes open. She clenched them shut, and drew her legs apart until the joints creaked in protest, and gave herself up fully to the ecstasies that were flooding her begin.
"Oh, yes!" she moaned. "God, I never knew-who would have dreamed-yes, oh, yes, Karen, darling, yes, darling, yes!"
There was a sensation as of a fire consuming her body. She was drenched in sweat. She heard Karen panting, as though at a great distance. Then came the fierce burst of fulfillment, the moment of climax, unexpectedly intense, and Peggy gave herself up to it completely, almost losing consciousness in the awesome fury of her fervor.
A moment or two after it had ended, Peggy felt sanity return. She lay there with the naked Karen in her arms, and a sensation of utter peace came over her. She felt fulfilled. She felt completely gratified. Whatever she had known before seemed pale and meaningless by comparison.
Peace gave way to sudden apprehension as Peggy realized a fateful step had been taken, a bridge had been crossed. Her eyes had been open to the joy of lovemaking between woman and woman. Would she, she wondered, ever be able to bring herself to sleep with a man again?
CHAPTER SEVEN
Karen put a dab of perfume in the valley between her breasts, and pulled the cups of her strapless bra into place over the twin peaks of her bosom. Behind her, Bud Reynolds grinned and put his hand fondly on her bare buttocks. Karen wore nothing but the bra, her garter belt, and a pair of sheer stockings.
"So it was really good, eh?" Reynolds asked.
"It was great," Karen said. "Hand me my panties, will you? This Peggy is terrific, let me tell you."
"So I gathered when we watched them."
Karen shook her head. "You can't gather a thing until you've had your hands on those boobs. I mean, it was something."
"Was she nervous about doing the Lesbo bit?" Reynolds asked.
"A little. But it wore off fast. She really responded. I thought she'd blow a fuse."
Reynolds adjusted his bowtie. Karen took her low-cut dress from the closet and began to wriggle into it. Reynolds said, "You going to stick with her for a while, or are you going to go right after Sue?"
"Sue can wait," Karen said. "I'll ride this one as far as I can get."
"What about me?" Reynolds said. "When do I get my chance with her?"
"A couple of days," Karen said. "You'll mess things up if you take her now. I'm just getting her warmed up to the idea of sleeping with another woman. If you come along and bang her now you'll confuse her. She isn't very bright, you know."
"With knobs like that you don't need to be bright," Reynolds said. "Okay, though. I'll be a good guy and wait my turn. You and Sue will have to keep me busy, that's all."
"Well manage," Karen said. "Are you all ready to go out for dinner?"
"As ready as I'll ever be."
"So am I. Let's go, then. Everybody else is probably waiting for us."
Dressed in their evening finery, the three couples left the yacht and stepped onto the dock. It was at the time of sunset, and the sky was a mottled red and purple. In the distance, the rounded humps of other islands could be seen, shadowy blue as they jutted from the Caribbean.
A taxi was waiting for them. Reynolds had arranged for it earlier. In they climbed, Reynolds up front with the driver, the rest in the back, with Sue on Mackell's lap and Peggy on Bryce's.
Mackell had been watching Karen and Peggy ever since they had left their cabins. There was no doubt, now, that something fishy had been going on between those two. Mackell still found it hard to believe, despite what Sue had told him, and despite the evidence of his own ears.
He had heard sounds coming from Reynold's cabin around six o'clock. Sounds of lust-laughter, and gasps, and cries of pleasure. But he knew that Reynolds hadn't even been aboard ship at that time. Someone had been making it in that cabin-either Joe and Karen, or Peggy and Karen.
And Joe had a deep bass voice. Whereas Mackell had heard only high voices coming from the adjoining cabin.
Female voices.
Two of them.
And now, looking at Peggy and Karen, it seemed obvious to Mackell that something had taken place Karen always held herself proudly, but now she was positively towering, her back ramrod-straight, her eyes twinkling and alive, as though she had scored some kind of triumph and was still tickled pink about it. You could see the glow all over her.
As for Peggy, she looked different, too. Almost stunned, in fact. Peggy was never much of a conversationalist, but she had said almost nothing since appearing on deck. She had a far-away look in her eyes. She seemed lost in reverie, or perhaps simply confused. Some soul-shattering experience had clearly happened to her in the last few hours.
It was impossible to deny it any longer. Karen, voluptuous Karen, passionate Karen whom he had embraced so eagerly on the beach, Reynolds' Karen-Karen was a Lesbian. Karen had seduced Peggy this afternoon.
Did Reynolds know, Mackell wondered? Would he even care?
Maybe. Maybe not. A guy was capable of spying via closed-circuit television on two of his guests in bed was capable of almost anything. For all he knew, Reynolds was well aware of Karen's illicit proclivities-and got kicks out of listening to Karen describe what it was like to make love to other women.
The taxi pulled away from the dock and headed westward along the shore. The driver, a handsome Negro with brilliant white teeth, said, "To where are we going, please?"
"The Estate Contant," Reynolds told him.
"Ah. Yes. Very beautiful, very beautiful indeed," the driver said approvingly.
In another few moments they had left the town behind, and were winding up into the hills in the heart of the island. Night was falling rapidly. It was almost dark by the time they inched up the final steep stretch of road and emerged at their destination.
"What time do you wish me to call for you?" the driver asked, in his faultless, Calypso-tinged English. "I will come at any time."
"Let's make it ten o'clock," Reynolds said. "We have reservations at the Club Tropique at half past ten."
The driver disappeared. A liveried footman appeared to welcome them to the Estate Contant.
It had once been an old mansion owned by rich settlers. Now, it was a hotel and restaurant, and its position on the hillside gave it a location of surpassing beauty.
They were led to an outdoor patio, from where the view was of a rolling, sloping garden, with the sea visible dimly in the distance. The moon was full tonight, and there was hardly any need for artificial illumination.
"Will there be cocktails?" the waiter asked softly.
There were. The drinks arrived almost instantly.
Mackell sipped his daiquiri and let his other hand rest lightly on Sue's. There was a beauty about this place that was almost breathtaking. Only a few other couples were there, and a wonderful silence hovered over the place. It sparkled in the moonlight. The building had the patina of great age, and the meticulously tended garden added to the atmosphere of comfort and elegance.
He looked at the others at the table He noted a glance passing from Karen to Peggy-an unmistakable glance of affection. A sexual glance Peggy reddened, and looked down at the grassy floor, and smiled quietly. There was no doubt at all now of what had passed between them earlier in the evening.
The waiter returned. He bore no menus; he simply told of what was available tonight, and they ordered. He took no notes. It was as though they were guests in a private home, and he was a butler detailed to look after their every convenience.
"And shall there be wine with the dinner?" he asked. Reynolds nodded. "Is there any Chateau Lafite?"
"We have the '53, sir. Will that do?"
"Let's have two bottles. With the main course."
"Certainly, sir."
The dinner was one of those unforgettable ones, where everything goes perfectly-where the service is prompt and unobtrusive, where the food itself is superb, where the wine is ideal, where the atmosphere and surroundings are beyond compare, and where the conversation takes on a lightness and deftness that leaves everyone in a state of rarefied pleasure. Evening slowly turned to night, and soon they were in almost total darkness, and the gleam of the moon and the glitter of the town lent a magic touch. The end of the meal came much too soon. The last cup of coffee was drained, the last pony of cognac up-ended, and they were leaving, with smiling, bowing waiters seeing them out.
"What about the check?" Mackell said to Reynolds. "I've left instructions. They'll bill my New York people for it."
"But-"
"Don't but me, Jim. You're my guests, and it's my pleasure. Let's go."
The taxi was waiting. They were fifteen minutes late, but the driver gave no sign of impatience over the delay. As they piled into the cab, he asked courteously, "Did you all enjoy your dinners?"
"It's a marvelous place," Karen said.
"Yes. Indeed. I hope you will enjoy the Club Tropique, too. Have any of you been there in the past?"
"No," Reynolds said. "I've heard a lot about it, though."
"It is-very unusual," the driver said. "Quite different from what you have just seen. Quite."
It took no more than a few seconds, once they had arrived at the Club Tropique, to see that the cabbie was right. The atmosphere at the hilltop restaurant had been one of genteel refinement, of austere tranquility. Not here. The Tropique was bursting with life, with boisterous vitality. Even out in the street, the joyous clangor of the steel band beat a merry rhythm.
They went in. A table for six was waiting for them, up front and to the side. It was a typical night club table, no bigger than a matchbox. They crowded in, knees rubbing together. Mackell sat between Sue and Karen, and was pleasantly aware of voluptuous femininity all around.
A waitress came over almost at once to take their orders. She was a startling sight-a Negress, so black as to seem almost purplish in hue. She wore an abbreviated costume-a tight red cloth' blouse and a pair of green shorts. White mesh stockings covered her supple, powerful-looking legs. Her breasts were all but bare, spilling over the top of her blouse, two massive purplish-brown globes. When she bent to deliver the drinks, the blouse fell away in front, and Mackell could clearly see that she wore no bra, for the jutting tips of her nipples were casually exposed until she straightened.
He looked around.
It seemed like quite a place.
It was big, and old-the high plaster walls seemed to bear the mark of the early nineteenth century. Candles provided the chief illumination. There were only a couple of tiny exits, and Mackell wondered uncomfortably what would happen if one of those candles tipped over onto a tablecloth.
The place was full. In one corner, the steel band banged away ecstatically. There was a dance floor, and then tables, and every table was occupied. At the side door stood a crowd of natives, almost all of them young men in their teens and twenties.
The clientele looked varied. There was a substantial crop of local kids, mostly white, teen-age, and wealthy-looking. Then there was a sizeable number of tourist women. Some of them sat in groups of two or three, but others were out on the dance floor with local boys. Black boys. And still others had taken their dancing partners to tables. The rest of the crowd consisted of tourist couples, but they formed a minority.
Abruptly Mackell understood what sort of place this was. It was a club where unmarried tourist women-schoolteachers, secretaries, librarians-could come-to get picked up by natives. All the rest was incidental. There stood the locals, taxi drivers and the like, waiting. And there were the girls, most of them in their thirties, some even older.
They weren't particular. They were down here for adventure, and they were going to get it. All they had to do was wink, and it was theirs, adventure for the night. A little dangerous, maybe-but also the one memorable interlude in an otherwise gray and bleak existence.
"Look," Mackell said to Sue. "Watch the pickup now. Over there. To your left."
She was a girl of about thirty, rather pallid, not even wearing lipstick. The raw material wasn't bad-there seemed to be good breasts under her blouse-but she had no sense of glamour, of style. She was one of those washed-out young spinsters that can be found in every school, in every library, in every office. She was sitting alone, with a drink in front of her. And now she was looking toward the door. She was nodding. She was smiling.
A handsome black buck was smiling back, and pointing to himself. He came across the floor, a strapping six-footer, swaggering proudly, aware of his own superior maleness and sexual magnetism.
"Would you like to dance, Ma'am?" His voice was a rich, dark, basso.
"I'd love to." Her voice was thin and weak.
Off onto the floor they went, the pallid spinster and the robust native. He held her tight, her breasts crushed against his barrel of a chest. The lower part of his body was pressed hard against hers, and Mackell was sure that the girl was feeling something that she hadn't felt often in her life before.
It was all too easy to predict how the evening would end for her. Some dancing, some drinking to get rid of lingering inhibitions-and then off to her hotel for a wild night of shamelessness.
"Let's dance," Sue murmured.
"All right."
They edged out onto the dance floor. The steel band was setting up a wild, orgiastic clamor, without discernible rhythm or shape. Sue and Mackell chose a rhythm of their own, and stuck to it.
The dance floor was crowded. Couples were packed back to back, and now and then one of the scantily-clad waitresses, her all-but-bare breasts bobbing, would make her way through the gyrating crowd, holding high a tray of drinks. There was no air conditioning, not even a fan, and the tropical atmosphere in the room was steamy and smoky.
Mackell held Sue tight. They had both fallen into the spell of the place now. Sue's breasts ground feverishly against his body. Her hips pivoted from side to side across his loins. Their cheeks touched, and now and then he put his lips to hers. He caught sight of Joe and Peggy dancing, and Karen and Bud Reynolds. Most of the other couples on the floor were mixed ones, except for the local white teen-agers, who were dancing in the most inflammatory, openly erotic way Mackell had ever seen in public.
The steel band took a breather at eleven, and everyone returned to the tables. The bosomy waitress was on hand to bring them a fresh round of rum-and-cola.
Mackell wiped the sweat from his forehead. The night club was a little like a Turkish bath. He wondered why Reynolds had brought them there? Just for sociological reasons, maybe?
He found out soon enough. The steel band did not return. Instead, a dapper little Negro in an Ivy League suit appeared, clapped his hands for silence, and said, "Welcome, everyone! Welcome to the Club Tropique! It's time for our floor show, ladies and gentlemen. This is our first show of the night; if you wish, you can remain for the second show, beginning promptly at half past one. As you know, this show is for adults only, so I'll have to ask anyone in the audience who is under the age of twenty-one to leave immediately."
No one left, even those who were obviously under age. It seemed that the request had been a mere formality, something to fulfill regulations.
The master of ceremonies said, "I'm please to announce tonight's feature performers, then. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you-the toast of the Caribbean-that remarkable group, the Limbo Three!"
Wild cheering broke out as the Limbo Three made their appearance, emerging from a side door in the rear. At the same moment, the steel band filed back in, to provide background music for the performers.
Mackell's eyes widened as he saw the Limbo Three. They were West Indians, two girls and a man. All three were dark-skinned, but their features were more Caucasian than Negroid, with thin lips and high-bridged noses.
They were wearing very little.
The man was a giant. He stood at least six feet five, maybe even taller. His only garment was an absurdly skimpy tiger-skin loincloth, just a band a couple inches wide around his waist.
The two girls, also dark-skinned and lithe, were decked out also in tiger-skin. They wore loincloths that amounted to no more than G-strings, covering the barest of essentials, leaving half their hips and more than half their black buttocks bare. Their halters hardly covered the incredible swollen globes of their breasts.
All three seemed to have oiled their bodies. They gleamed brilliantly under the spotlights.
The steel band began to play. This time, for once, it managed to maintain a steady rhythm, a low, insistent jungle pounding. The two girls uncoiled a rope five feet long, and stretched it taut, a yard or so above the floor.
The male dancer went into a flurry of steps, swinging his spidery arms around, letting out cries of glee, kicking his legs high. Then he came shambling up to the taut-stretched rope and began to shuffle under it.
He cleared it with ease, of course. Then the girls lowered it until it was no more than two and a half feet off the ground, and he came around and went under it again, feet planted flat on the floor, lean long body flexed backward, balance amazingly maintained. There was no sign of strain as he passed under. There was loud applause. The frenzy of the drums picked up.
The dancer was only beginning, though. The next time under, the rope was only some 18 inches above the floor. And the next-unbelieveably-it seemed to have a clearance of no more than a foot, barely enough for the man to pass underneath without touching the back of his head to the floor. It seemed anatomically impossible to go under the rope that way, feet still flat, but he did it.
And then it was the turn of the two girls.
First one, then the other passed under, as the rope was successively lowered. Down, down it went, and each girl passed under, though it never went as low as it had for the man, obviously an exceptional performer.
But the final time through proved a problem for one of the girls. She had passed her knees under the rope, and her thighs, and her middle. But the high jutting thrusts of her breasts would not pass. She remained in her flexed position, apparently trying hard to get under the wire, but could not do it. Her two partners seemed beside themselves with amusement as she wriggled and writhed.
The pounding of the drums remained fixed, steady, as the girl struggled. Then she nodded as though a solution had just occurred to her.
She slipped one hand under her body and pulled the snap on her halter.
Mackell, watching, caught his breath. He hadn't been expecting that. The flimsy halter dropped away, and the girl's sweat-shiny breasts were completely bare. All this time she had remained flexed under the rope. Now she came forward again; she hollowed out her shoulders, pulled her breasts downward. Mackell could plainly see the steep little nubs of her nipples, approaching the rope. Would she make it without touching?
She made it.
She stood up, grinning, to accept the cheers of the audience. Her breasts, big and heavy and high, shook with laughter.
It had obviously been a phony, Mackell knew. If she could get under without her halter, she could have made it with the halter. But now she had the halter off, and everyone's eyes were on her bare breasts.
He began to see that this floor show was going to be something more than a mere limbo-dance.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The second girl went under the rope and went through the same routine, identical in every detail-Obviously this was carefully rehearsed, down to the last millimeter. Off came her halter, finally, and she slid under the rope and bounded up, bare-breasted and grinning.
It was quite a sight, the three of them, naked except for tiger-skin G-strings, sweat-shiny and purplish. The man went under the rope again, and his performance this time was even more fantastic than before. It didn't seem anatomically possible for a human being to bend himself into such a position, or to maintain his balance at that angle for so many minutes. But he did. He was obviously double-jointed, and incredibly supple besides.
Then the first of the bare-breasted girls went under. This time, she got only her legs and thighs past the rope, and then pretended to be having trouble Her arms pin-wheeled madly, her feet trembled and seemed to leave the floor. Just as it seemed she would have to give up and come through at a higher level, the other girl went to her rescue.
She knelt down next to her, found the knot of her loincloth, and pulled.
The loincloth came away. The colored girl was stark naked, now, wearing nothing but a single gold earring. She wriggled gleefully under the rope and came to her feet, eyes flashing, arms outstretched toward the audience.
Mackell was a little startled. He had seen plenty of strip shows in plenty of different countries, but never anything quite as flamboyant, as blatant as this. There wasn't even a pretense of hiding the girl's nakedness, not with pasties, not a G-string, not even-as Mackell had once seen in a London strip club-with a single vertical Band-aid. There she was, ebony Eve, all of her. Sweat rolled down her firm flanks, her meaty haunches, her heavy round breasts. Her body gleamed. She was beautiful, Mackell thought, but in a barbaric, primeval way.
It didn't take long for the other girl to repeat the routine and emerge without her loincloth. The only one who hadn't stripped was the man, who hadn't been wearing much to start with There he was, flanked by the two completely naked girls. He seemed to take no notice of their nudity. The only thing that mattered to him was getting under that tightly drawn rope. He was a pure artist, unconcerned with the things of the flesh. Or so it seemed.
The drums picked up again, and the man started to wriggle under, while the two nude dancers held the rope about a foot and a quarter from the floor. Mackell wondered what would happen now, how the act would unfold from here.
The man seemed to be going under with his usual effortless ease. But now a new element intervened, an element of gross, almost rabelaisian humor. The dancer was unable to get through. For the first time, he seemed to be in difficulties.
He tried to arch his body away from the rope and get through. But no. The audience roared in laughter at his plight. Mackell saw a few of the unescorted schoolteachers get up and leave. They were willing to sit through a strip show, but apparently coarse anatomical humor of this kind was too much for them.
Pretty soon the man arrived at the same solution the girls had reached before him: that the best way to get under the rope was to remove an article of clothing. He began to fumble with his loincloth.
Mackell's eyes were wide. Never in all his travels had he seen a man strip on stage before. He wasn't sure it was actually going to happen now. He thought it was only a pretense, that there was certain to be some gimmick that would forestall the prohibited exposure.
There wasn't.
Off came the loincloth. An audible gasp riffled through the night club. The dancer was an astonishing specimen. The fact of his nakedness seemed to hit everyone like a club. Naked women on the stage, yes, even without G-strings, that was common enough-but a naked man?
It was unbelievable. The atmosphere in the Club Tropique grew even steamier.
But the act was a long way from being over, even now. The nude trio on stage was only beginning.
The limbo rope was tossed into the wings. That had just been a prop to get things started. Now the two nude girls surrounded the towering naked man. His hands reached out, the enormously long fingers closing around full, firm breasts. Their bodies pressed against his. They squirmed voluptuously, writhing in contact with his perspiring skin.
He accepted the homage for a long moment, impassively, like some kind of primitive idol rather than like a living man. Then he stepped back.
The two girls embraced each other.
They came together, breasts to breasts, belly to belly, and did a wild dance, shimmying and shaking, buttocks jiggling madly. Arms folded, the tall man watched quietly for several minutes.
Then he moved in.
He separated the two girls and lifted one off her feet, plucking her into the air like a child's doll. He lifted her-and put her down. On him. He wrapped her around his middle, and swung around so that his back was to the audience, and so the onlookers could see the audience, and so the onlookers could see the girl's face over his shoulder.
Then they began to move. And the ecstasy that showed on the girl's face did not seem to be any act at all. Her face was twisted, contorted with lust, as the giant thrust again and again. Her legs dangled at his sides, and now and then she would kick her feet high as though an electric shock had just passed through her body. It went on for perhaps five minutes. Then he put her down, and she went reeling away, clearly exhausted.
He wasn't, though.
He turned to the other girl.
It was a display of almost superhuman virility. Mackell stared fixedly at the stage, trying to tell himself that this was the 20th century, that he was sitting in a night club in a well-known tourist island, that he was seeing a night club act and not some pagan fertility ritual. He was stunned. This was the kind of thing that could be had in the seamy border cities of Mexico, and in a few cellars of Paris, but he had never expected to walk in on it here.
It went on.
And on.
The trio on stage seemed unbelievably inventive, and the man in particular seemed to have superhuman endurance. His endurance was greater than that of most of the audience, Mackell realized. One by one and two by two, they were filing out. The unescorted women were leaving out of shock and embarrassment, but that was by no means the sole reason for departure. Couples were leaving, too. From the fixed, glassy look on their faces, it was all too evident that they had gone past the breaking point, that they were flocking out to get to their hotels and re-enact the scenes they had just witnessed on stage.
And other couples had even less patience. Mackell discovered as he glanced around. Here and there, a girl had climbed up on her escort's lap, and her skirts were flounced out in a suspicious way, and the suspicions were confirmed when Mackell saw one girl with her panties dangling at her ankles, and realized that some members of the audience Were quietly but fervidly making love right here in the night club while watching the stage.
Their waitress came by. Without a word, she put down refills for everyone's drinks, as though automatically assuming they would be needed. She had also pulled open her blouse to display her own big, rounded breasts. Fart of the general atmosphere, it seemed.
Mackell gulped his drink.
The stage show was coming to its end now. The limbo Three was entangled in a complex and mystifying swirl of arms and limbs, and the steel band was crashing away at fortissimo, and the audience was worked up to a point of near-hysteria, and suddenly the flimsy little curtain descended over the stage.
The houselights went on.
The show was over.
For a moment no one reacted. A stunned silence gripped the entire audience.
Then the stasis broke and cascades of thunderous applause boomed through the stale air. The ovation went on for long minutes.
There were no curtain calls.
The show was over, and that was that.
Mackell looked at the other five at his table. They all felt the same way he did-rocked by the sheer erotic impact of what they had seen. There wasn't much to say after a display of animal energy such as that. What had begun as a simple limbo dance had ended as an orgy of overwhelming power.
Reynolds was the first to speak. He said hoarsely, "Some show, huh?"
"Fantastic," Joe Bryce said. "The hottest thing this side of Juarez."
"Hotter," Mackell said. "Much hotter."
Reynolds laughed. "Should we clear out of here now?"
"What else is there to do?" Sue asked.
He shrugged. "Well, we could split up. You three girls could pick up three of the local boys, and we could pick up three of the waitresses, and-"
"No," Peggy said. "I don't think I'd like that."
"I'd just as soon not either," Sue said.
Only Karen made no objection, Karen who was always willing for all kinds of sin.
Mackell frowned. It had been a tempting suggestion, for the second or two before the girls had spiked it. To pick up these waitresses-no doubt they'd easily be available-and spend an hour or so balling with one of those sultry tropical creatures-maybe Reynolds could even swing a session with the two limbo girls-
It would be pretty interesting, all right, Mackell thought. Even so, they'd be running the risk of getting some pretty interesting diseases. And Sue and Peggy were dead against the idea.
A pity, he thought. He pictured himself in bed with one of the black waitresses, his hands pale apainst the dark curves of her breasts, his body thudding against hers with barbaric force. Well, it wasn't to be.
"You sure?" Reynolds asked.
Sue said, "Enough's enough, I think. Let's keep our orgies private. We'll go back to the yacht."
Reynolds looked disappointed. He had been dearly planning some kind of shindig with the natives. "Okay," he said. "If that's the verdict, that's the verdict."
"Listen," Mackell said, "if you two would like to stay here-"
"That's okay," Reynolds said, "well all go."
He took a pair of twenty-dollar bills from his wallet and laid them on the table. They filed through the crowded club and outside. It was only a short walk from here to the dock and the yacht.
But when they had gone only a block, Reynolds seemed to have a change of heart.
"Look, maybe Karen and I will go back there, okay?" he suggested. "We don't want to drag any of yon people along into something you're not anxious for, but is it okay with you if we-"
"Sure," Joe Bryce said. "Don't let us stop you, Bud."
"Yeah," Mackell put in. "Go ahead. Tell us all about it in the morning."
Reynolds grinned. He and Karen seemed chfldishry eager to be allowed to return.
"See you tomorrow," he said. He put his arm around Karen and the others waved to them as they started back for the yacht.
As they undressed in their cabin, Sue said, "Did you want to stay there, Jim?"
Mackell shrugged. "I don't know. I was curious, I guess. But I chickened out."
"I was a little curious too," Sue admitted. "They say all black men are fabulous in the hay."
"That's just racist propaganda. Don't you believe it."
"But still, some of those big boys-" Sue said wistfully.
"You want to go back?" Mackell asked. "We can put our clothes on and be there in five minutes. You were the one who killed the idea, remember? I could be back there banging one of those busty waitresses, or maybe even one of the dancers, and you-"
"No," Sue said. "It was just a theoretical idea. I didn't really want to. I'm afraid, I guess."
"Okay, then. Get your panties off and come here."
Sue giggled. She stripped away her remaining garments. Mackell, who was already naked, was waiting for her in bed. His body still throbbed with the unfulfilled desires aroused in the night club.
He reached for her. Her body was cool against his. But then he put his hand to her, and found her warm and excited, and knew that the show had had its effect on her too. His mouth covered hers. Her tongue licked out lithely, the tip touching his. He filled his hands with the jutting mounds of her breasts. Her firm haunches rose; her soft thighs opened for him.
Their bodies joined. Their breaths mingled and became one. He buried the aching manhood of him to the welcoming warmth of her body, and soon there came release and relief for both of them, the matchless pleasure of a shared culmination, the wonderful tempest of fulfillment, and then, easily, lightly, magically, sleep.
In the next cabin down the hall, Joe Bryce had his hands on the enormous rounds of Peggy's breasts. They lay naked in bed together. Bryce's head pounded in a haze of lust. He coveted those shiny-skinned black girls, but he had been unable to go after them, not when Peggy had so bluntly refused to share in the festivities.
And now Peggy seemed to be behaving very peculiarly. His hands were on her breasts, cupping them and squeezing them as always, but she wasn't reacting. She wasn't showing passion. Her nostrils weren't flaring, her breath wasn't coming in short eager bursts.
He put his mouth to a red, upthrust nipple and began to draw on it. She didn't go into her usual ecstasies. He squeezed the breast, played with it. Peggy just lay quietly, strangely unresponsive.
Bryce looked up. He studied her face. He put one hand around her left breast, and slid the other down the milky smoothness of her body until it came to rest at her legs. His fingers touched her.
Was that a look of disgust on her face, he wondered? Had she shuddered when he touched her?
"Peggy?"
"Yes?"
"Is something the matter?"
"Of course not."
"You aren't interested in sex tonight?"
"I guess I'm not."
"Aren't you feeling well?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I'm kind of tired, that's all. I'm not sick or anything."
He continued to squeeze her breasts, to fondle and cup them in the hope that he would kindle some spark of passion in her body.
She shook her head "Please Don't."
"I thought you liked having your breasts played with," he said.
"Not tonight. It-hurts tonight. It's kind of sensitive."
"You've been acting very odd all evening."
"I can't help it, Joe. I'm sorry."
Bryce scowled. With Peggy in this kind of mood, there was no sense trying to have sex. She wasn't ready at all, not even interested. He had never known Peggy not to be interested in sex.
"Good night," he said finally.
"Good night."
He rolled over, with his back to her Ten minutes went by. But he was wide awake. Lust pounded through his body. He kept seeing those black girls stamping their feet in pagan lusts, kept seeing black boobs gyrating wildly. It was agony for him. He would be up all night, at this rate.
He turned to her.
"Peggy, are you still awake?"
"Yes."
"I need to, Peggy. I'm burning up."
"All right," she said. "Get on top of me, then."
He was depressed by it all. But he had to have her. He rolled toward her. His body surged with need. She was ready for him, her body took him, and he nestled down on the breasty softness of her.
She moved her hips feverishly, as though eager to get it all over with in the shortest possible time. It ended for him in a matter of minutes. He came to his gasping, spurting relief, and rolled away from her, cheerless but at least no longer afire.
She turned her back to him. They fell asleep without saying a word to each other.
In a dimly lit room behind the Club Tropique, Bud Reynolds stared in unconcealed lust at the two naked girls lying on the bed. They were the limbo dancers. Close up, they were even more desirable than they had seemed on stage. Their breasts were full and heavy, but there was nothing soft and cuddly about the rest of their bodies. Firm, well-developed muscles rippled beneath the glossy skin. Thighs, buttocks, bellies, all were powerfully developed They looked like a pair of panthers.
Black panthers.
Their eyes sparkled in the semi-darkness.
"Come on, white man," one of them said. "Take your clothes off, show us what you got."
"Okay," Reynolds said, smiling. He knew that, while perhaps he wasn't in the superhuman class of the third member of the Limbo Three, he was remarkable enough to impress them and give them a good time.
He stripped. They watched.
They seemed pleased with what they saw.
Reynolds advanced toward the bed They didn't wait for him to get there. They rose and came for him, and dragged him down on the bed. The smell of their sweat was sharp and tangy in his nostrils He reached out, filling his hands with breasts, grabbing each girl's pair in one of his big hands. Their thighs locked tight around him. Their mouths went to work on every part of his body. The bed heaved in the violence of their onslaught.
Firm black buttocks were inches from his mouth, and he took a playful bite. There was a yelp of laughter. Then the girls swarmed over him. But Reynolds disappeared from view beneath the cascade of trembling, voluptuous flesh. He speared forward, and found warmth, and heard little gasps of pleasure.
He knew he was in for a busy night.
Not very far away, Karen was taking off her clothes.
The male limbo dancer was standing against the wall of the dingy hotel room, his arms folded. He didn't seem very interested in her. Maybe, Karen thought, he had burned himself out in the performance. There he stood, leaning like an unwanted statue. His impassive face looked like some sort of tribal mask on a museum wall. He wore nothing but his skimpy loincloth, and there was no sign that he felt any physical desire for her.
Karen unzipped her dress and stepped out of it. She dropped her half slip to the floor. She stood before him in bra and panties and stockings and garter belt. He regarded her with only faint curiosity.
She pulled the panties down. Now the complete nakedness of her was framed by the garter belt and by the tight straps of the garters, and the flawlessness of her legs was outlined and enhanced by the sheer stockings. Without undressing any further, Karen turned, giving him a view of her bare buttocks limned by the band of the garter belt. He smiled but did not move.
What was wrong? Didn't bare white flesh excite him at an?
She took off the bra. As her bare breasts tumbled into view, there was a flicker of interest in his eyes. She rolled the stockings down and kicked them off. Only the garter belt hid her body at all now, and in a moment that had joined her other garments on the floor. She was totally nude now.
"What's the matter?" she asked. "Don't you want me? Take mel Take me!" , The dancer smiled. His body was incredibly long and lean, not an ounce of surplus flesh on it. With a quick, easy gesture he stripped away his loincloth, and Karen now saw that he did want her, yes, very much indeed. He came wordlessly toward her. She stretched out before him on the bed, and drew her knees apart, and the next moment he was with her, still silently, and his hand was touching her, and when he found she was ready he took her, and she yielded to him in joyful surrender, and their bodies began to move, and moved yet more passionately, and Karen's head began to swim as the intensity of the sensations affected her, and she dug her heels into the back of the dancer's legs and thrust herself toward him, and became aware that she was going to experience a flood of passion unlike any that she had ever known before.
CHAPTER NINE
Mackell woke around eight the next morning, ravenously hungry. Sue slept on. Mackell showered and dressed, and headed into the galley.
Reynolds was there. He was still wearing last night's suit. He was sitting quietly on the steps, munching a sandwich. He looked used up. And there were some puffy, bloody marks on his face-scratches, or maybe they were bites.
"Morning," he said hoarsely.
"Morning," Mackell answered. "What time did you get back?"
"Half an hour ago," Reynolds said. "I spent the night over there."
"Have yourself a ball?"
Reynolds rolled his eyes comically. "Mamma Mia! A night like that, I haven't had in years. You won't believe it. I took on those two dancers. A crazy pair of hellcats. And then they had to go back on stage for the late show, so some of the off-duty waitresses came around to keep me company. I was going all night. Jim, I feel ninety-eight years old this morning. But it was worth it."
"What's the matter with your face?" Mackell asked. "You look all chewed up. You get into a fight too?"
Reynolds laughed. "No, no fight. And it isn't just my face, either. It's all over. Those island girls, they don't just make love with their whatchamacallits. They use their teeth, too. Teeth and claws. A real jungle mating. I thought they'd make hamburger out of me." He bit savagely into his sandwich. "But it was fun. I only wish I had a movie of it. Something to play over and over again when I'm old and can't cut the mustard any more."
"What did it cost you?" Mackell wanted to know.
Reynolds shrugged airily. "Fifty, a hundred bucks, something like that. I don't know. I handed out a bunch of fives, all over the place. I think they would have done it on the house for me." He yawned and rubbed his eyes. "You seen Karen yet, Jim?"
"I just got up. You're the first I've seen."
"Wonder if she's back yet." Mackell leaned over, picked up the ship phone, and rang his own cabin. "No answer," he said after a moment "If she came back at all, she's dead to the world. But-"
"I see her," Mackell broke in. He squinted through the porthole. "She's coming along the dock now."
A moment later Karen came aboard Walking in a kind of half-stagger, she shambled down the steps into the galley and grinned lopsidedly at the two men.
"Hi, fellers," she drawled.
She was still a little drunk. And she looked like something the cat dragged in Her auburn hair was wildly disheveled, some of it drooping over her face, some standing up in comic frizzes. Her dress was soiled, and hung so low over one shoulder that one breast was nearly bare. Her eyes were bleary She wore no makeup, and her face looked pale and strained from lack of sleep. Her features were puffy. She smelled of sweat.
Mackell repressed a chuckle. Bud Reynolds said, "You made it with the dancer, huh?"
"Yeah," Karen said. "With the dancer. And with three taxi-drivers, when the dancer got tired. And then with the dancer again. And then-oh, Christ only knows. I'm pooped. And look. Look at this."
Without ado, she grabbed the hem of her dress and pulled it up. She was stark naked underneath No stockings, no garter belt, no panties, not even a bra. She held the dress up over her face or a moment, and then, when she decided she had displayed her lush nudity long enough, she let it drop again.
She laughed drunkenly "You see? All the boys wanted souvenirs. Something to give their girl friends. I was lucky to get out of there with my dress. One of them wanted that Picture me walking six blocks naked at breakfast time. But I told him no. Expensive dress. So they left me that Took all the rest, my goodamn panties and everything. Sent me home this way. Good thing one of 'em didn't want my goddamn boobs as a souvenir." Karen laughed again. "Well, good night. I'm going to get some sleep. You wake me up some time or other, you hear?"
She lurched past them and disappeared in the corridor.
Reynolds chuckled. "Looks like she had fun."
"Looks like both of you had quite a night," Mackell said. "I almost wish I went."
"You had your chance, man."
Mackell nodded. "Yeah. I goofed it. But it hasn't been a dull trip, even so."
The coffee was ready. He poured out two cups, put them on a tray, and carried them back to his cabin. Sue was up. She was sitting up in bed, sunlight glistening on the twin mounds of her bosom. Mackell handed her a cup of coffee and she took it gratefully.
"Who were you talking to out there?" Sue asked.
"Karen and Bud. They just got back. Mackell came in first, then Karen."
"How was their night on shore?"
Mackell laughed. "It must have been pretty wild. Karen seems to have made love a dozen times. She came home without any underwear. Nothing but Karen under her dress. She showed us. And Bud is all bitten up. His playmates liked to use their teeth."
"Sounds pretty far out."
"It was, I gather. They made it with those three dancers, they said. Plus assorted taxi-drivers, waitresses, and bystanders."
"And we missed all the fun," Sue said. "Too bad."
"Yeah." he said. "Too bad."
"Come here, lover," she murmured. "Kiss me good morning the way it ought to be done."
She pulled him down toward her. He put his lips to hers, and a moment later their bodies were writhing in the throes of passion as Sue's impassioned nakedness demanded its fulfillment.
The day was off to a good start.
Karen and Bud were up and around by the middle of the afternoon, looking none the worse for wear after their hectic night. All six went on shore for some shopping.
For four hours, they roamed the shops, down one street, up another, into narrow arcades set between two streets. The tropical heat was fierce, but most of the stores were dark and cool, with free rum drinks to soothe the prospective purchaser.
They left plenty of loot behind. Mackell treated himself to a new watch, at about half the New York price, and sent five bottles of cognac home to himself. Reynolds scattered cash as though he had to unload his wallet before it weighed him down. Bryce picked up not one but two costly cameras. The girls went wild on Thai silks and French bikinis. They were barely able to manage all the stuff as they staggered back to the Merry Mae.
It was half past six. Twilight was gathering in. The plan now called for them to pull anchor and head across the strait to the neighboring and almost uninhabited island of St. John, where they would moor for the night.
They got under way quickly, with Reynolds at the tiller while the girls prepared a steak dinner, to be accompanied by the fine wines they had bought that day in Charlotte Amalie's well-stocked liquor shops. It took only half an hour to cross the bay. They steamed past Caneel Bay, with it's poshly elegent hotel nestling along the white-sanded beach, and headed around the outer limbs of the island, where no one lived. By half past seven they were at anchor in a spectacular half-moon bay on the far side. It was a carbon copy of their first night at anchor, off Vieques Island, except that if anything there was even less sign of civilization around them. From here, it wasn't even possible to see lights on shore.
Dinner went off perfectly. Afterward, they sat around on deck enjoying the balmy tropical evening, and it was almost inevitable that someone would suggest that they go in for a swim. After a full twenty-four hours in port, they were all eager to get back into the sparkling Caribbean.
It was Karen who made the suggestion. The others took it up enthusiastically, and in another few moments everyone was hurriedly stripping. There was no shyness now, no hesitation at disrobing. All that had been left behind at Vieques Island.
Reynolds handed out the snorkel gear. One after another, they went over the side, their bare bodies pale in the moonlight. Mackell was the first, breast-stroking over to the reef, Sue at his side. Then Joe Bryce went in, and paddled after them.
Wearing her mask, Peggy walked toward the ladder. Karen came up behind her. Karen let her bare thighs brush lightly against Peggy's nude flanks and buttocks, and her hand gently grazed the side of Peggy's right breast.
Peggy turned. She smiled behind the mask. Karen murmured, "are you really interested in staring at coral?"
"Why?"
"I have some better ideas," she said. "Let them swim. We can go to my cabin."
Peggy's eyes seemed to glow. She pulled off the mask and looked down at the water. Sue, Mackell, Bryce, and Reynolds were swimming in a group, and they were already more than a hundred feet from the yacht.
Peggy said, "Won't they miss us?"
"They'll never notice. Come on! Or don't you want to do it?"
"Of course I do," Peggy said.
"Let's go, then."
They rid themselves of their remaining snorkel gear, and, naked, ran hand in hand into the ship, their snorkels bouncing, their buttocks quivering gaily as they ran. Karen threw open the door of her cabin, and in they went.
"So you really like it," Karen said. "You're ready for some more?"
"Yes. Oh, yes! It's marvelous!"
"So I've made a convert," Karen observed wryly. She let her hands rest lightly on the high, heavy swells of Peggy's bosom, trapping the already rigid nipples between her fingers. Peggy's nostrils flared as her breath started to come unevenly.
Peggy said, "Last night-Joe made love to me when we got back from the night club. And it felt horrid. I kept thinking of us-how good it had been-it just made me sick to have him lying on me, doing it to me. I told him not to do it, but he was so worked up I finally had to let him anyway."
"You don't want to carry things to an extreme," Karen said. "It's more fun when you sleep with men and women both."
"No," Peggy said. "I've decided. I like it best with women."
"But there's something to be said for the other way, too," Karen insisted.
"Maybe. Maybe. But right now I'd rather not have any men. Maybe I'll swing back the other way after a while. But right now-oh, Karen, let's not talk any more! We're wasting time."
"All right," Karen said slowly. "Tonight I'm going to show you another of the ways women make love to each other. Go stand over there and turn your back."
"Why?"
"Just do it. I want to surprise you."
Shrugging, Peggy obeyed. She stood there, pressing her thighs together in anticipation of the pleasures she would experience. She put her hands over her heavy breasts, rubbing them, squeezing them, remembering how good it had felt when Karen had done it.
She heard Karen opening a dresser drawer and taking something out. A long moment passed.
"All right," Karen said, finally. "You can turn around now."
Peggy turned. She gaped in surprise and disbelief. What had Karen done?
Had she turned herself into a man?
A second look told her that it was only something artificial, a device of leather that Karen had strapped around her waist. It had fooled her at first. It made her look like a man ready for the carnal act-a man the rest of whose body was softly feminine, with lush, heavy breasts, full hips, and firm, inviting thighs.
"What is it?" Peggy stammered.
"Can't you guess?"
"Sure, of course. But-I didn't know people used things like that."
"It's Japanese. The Japs make all kinds of little gadgets. Accessories. You ought to see some of the things they make for men. Bud has a catalog, and it's just fantastic. But this is for women. Lesbians. They use it on each other."
"You mean-just like-"
"That's right," Karen said. "Except that it's better. Because it stays this way as long as you like. You never have to worry about being left high and dry by the man."
Peggy moistened her lips. "It seems-so evil, somehow. To use a thing like that."
"Don't be silly. Come here and lie down."
They settled onto the bed. Karen's motions were unusually clumsy and awkward for her, as though she was not accustomed to having a bulky extra limb interfering with her suppleness of action. She put her hands on Peggy's breasts and began to caress them.
Peggy slid her hands down Karen's body until she came to the device. When Peggy made love with a man, she was accustomed to holding him, to feeling the solid virility of him. And she did that now. But then she realized that there was no sense in doing that now. She passed her hands behind and beyond it, to touch the soft warmth of hex.
Then Karen had her lips to Peggy's breasts, and she was kissing them, and Peggy felt the heat beginning to grow in her and then, suddenly, unexpectedly, Karen was slipping against her body, taking her as a man would, and Peggy felt the bulk of it with her, and soon Peggy was gasping in unfamiliar delight. While it was going on she could reach up and grasp Karen's breasts, full and warm and hard, or she could caress Karen's smooth, sleek buttocks. And all the while Karen's body continued to move.
It was the best of both worlds. It was the brutal intensity of normal lovemaking coupled with the subtle delicacy of having another woman's body pressed to her own. And it seemed to go on and on and on.
And then finally it ended, in a burst of radiant passion. Peggy gasped, and screamed in her excitement, and her body thrashed on the bed, and then the cataclysm came and for a few moments Peggy blanked out completely, at the highest and most blinding moment of her ecstasy.
When she came to, she felt limp and trembly. Karen was crouched above her, her breasts swaying heavily, her body quivering. She was panting.
She unstrapped the harness.
"Here," Karen said. "Now it's your turn."
"My turn?"
"Of course, Here. Put it on,"
"But-I don't know how. Do I have to, Karen?"
"Do you want to give me pleasure?" Karen countered.
"Of course."
"Then you have to put it on. It doesn't give me satisfaction doing it to you. I'm not a man, remember. That thing isn't hooked into my nervous system The way this thing works, you have to take turns. Otherwise one of us gets cheated."
"Yes. Yes, I understand, Karen."
"Okay, then. Put it on."
Karen showed her how to fasten the straps-one around her waist, just like a garter belt, and then two smaller straps.
"There," Karen said with a little giggle. "You're just perfect. From the waist down, anyway. You aren't much good as a man above the middle."
Peggy looked down at herself.
"W-what now?" Peggy asked doubtfully.
"Now you get with me. That's right. Like that."
"And now?"
"You do to me what comes naturally, that's all."
Peggy felt embarrassed. Her body turned beet-red, from her face down to her heavy breasts. All this seemed so strange to her, so wicked and-well, so foreign.
But she had to go through with it. It was only fair. Karen had given her pleasure, and now in turn she had to give pleasure to Karen.
"Yes!" Karen whispered harshly. "That's it! All you've got!"
"Am I hurting you?"
"No!"
"I don't want to weigh on you, Karen."
"You aren't, silly! Come on! Dig! Hurt me if yon have to! I don't care!"
Peggy felt strange new sensations running through her. For the first time, she thought she could begin to understand what it was like to be a man. Of course, Peggy had no idea what it felt like, what sensations went through a man's body during the moments of passion. But now she had a clearer idea of the anatomy of it, of the angles of the bodies, of the sensations involved in pressing against a woman, even in hurting her a little.
She drove to Karen again and again.
Karen's gasping became a high-pitched, continuous sob. And then there was a wail of fulfillment, and Peggy looked down, and saw the wildness in Karen's face, saw the way her lips were twisted and distorted, and Peggy watched in fascination as Karen went through the frenzied climax of her passion, and then it was over and Karen subsided tiredly, and Peggy slumped down on top of her, their bodies still joined as though they were man and woman, and they rested after their passionate endeavors, and after a while Peggy moved away and settled down alongside Karen, pillowing the older girl's head against her full, ripe young breasts.
CHAPTER TEN
Four figures drifted through the dark water peering down at the silent, secret world of the coral reef. Mackell and Sue had moved off together, and were snorkeling in shallow water about fifty feet off shore. Bryce and Reynolds were further out.
Mackell held Sue's hand Nude and motionless, they hovered over the reef, staring now at a big-eyed octopus, now at a sinister-looking moray eel, now at a long-legged crab prudently heading for his hole. After a while they surfaced, standing together on a great mass of brain coral They were head and shoulders above the surface of the water.
"I don't see Karen or Peggy anywhere," Mackell said. "Joe and Bud are out there, but not the girls."
"How can you tell?" Sue asked. "If nothing's showing but their snorkels-"
"And their bottoms," Mackell said. "Unless Peggy and Karen have suddenly become hirsute, those two out there are Bud and Joe."
"Where do you think the girls are?"
Mackell shrugged. "Maybe they're over on the far side of the ship."
"I bet they aren't," Sue said.
"Where do you think they are?"
"Guess."
"I don't know."
Sue said, "Five to one says they never came into the water at all. That they're still on ship giving each other a good time."
"You may be right," Mackell said. "Hey, they're really going at it, huh?"
"It must be fun," Sue said. "Maybe I'll try it some time. If they aren't too busy with each other to take on a novice."
"Hey, wait a minute-"
"And while I'm in an experimental mood, I'd like to try another idea of mine." Sue grinned. "Do you work under water?"
"How should I know?"
"You see? You don't have a scientific frame of mind." Her hand slipped down, below the surface of the water, and found him. She worked on him deftly, skillfully, and it was no more than a few seconds before he was responding.
"Now for the grand experiment," Sue said. "Hold on and don't lose your balance."
She floated up against him and locked her legs legs around his. Mackell, laughing, cupped her buttocks in her hands. He supported her. Her breasts pressed into him. It took a moment while they wriggled around, getting into position, and then with a sudden swift jab he made them one. They stood there, up to their chests in water, and began to move, and after a moment their lighthearted comic attitude gave way to more serious passion as the reflexes of love began to take command.
A goodly distance away, in the fifteen-foot depths, Bud Reynolds surfaced and looked around. There was no sign of Peggy. No sign of Karen. Another submerged figure floated twenty feet away from him, but it was all too obvious that it was not a feminine figure.
Reynolds swam over and tapped Bryce's wrist. Bryce surfaced.
"What's the matter?" Bryce asked, pushing his mask up to clear it.
"You see the girls anywhere? Peggy, Karen?"
Bryce looked around. "Hey, nope. There's Sue and Jim over there, but not the girls."
"Where do you figure they are?"
"Back of the ship, maybe?"
"We ought to see," Reynolds said. "They shouldn't he in deep water at this time of night."
They started to go down again. But then Bryce laughed and pointed shoreward. "Hey, look at those two!"
"Having a conversation, are they?"
"That's not all, Buddy-boy. You see? He's holding her, right below the water, and he's moving her back and forth, back and forth-"
"I'll be damned," Reynolds said, chuckling. "Underwater sex. I wonder if Dr. Kinsey has any statistics on that?"
"She better be careful," Bryce said. "She's likely to get some salt water inside her like that."
"Old Jimbo isn't leaving any room."
"Yeah. I suppose. But it's risky. Suppose when he pulls out one of those little crabs swims in?"
"So she'll have crabs," Reynolds said. "She won't be the first. Come on, let's go look for the girls."
They submerged again, and flippered out to the far side of the yacht. But Karen and Peggy weren't to be found to starboard, either.
Bryce and Reynolds surfaced. Bryce said, "You know what I think? I bet they never even went into the water at all, either of them."
"How so?"
"Well, Peggy wasn't feeling so well yesterday, last night. She was in a kind of funny mood. Not even interested in sex last night. So maybe she didn't feel like going swimming with the rest of us."
"Getting her monthlies, maybe?" Reynolds suggested.
Bryce shook his head. "No, not unless she's a freak-She had them around ten days ago. She's just moody, all of a sudden. Last night in bed, she gave me a hard time. So I guess she stayed behind. And Karen stayed behind to keep her company."
Reynolds nodded. He had been coming to the same conclusion-only he suspected that Karen wasn't there just to provide conversation. Reynolds knew all about Karen's affair with Peggy, but Bryce didn't seem to know a thing of what was going on.
Well, Bryce would find out, sooner or later. Reynolds would see to that.
But in the meanwhile-
"Should we go aboard and see how she is?" Bryce suggested.
Reynolds shook his head. "I wouldn't. If there's any trouble, Karen would be able to handle it herself, or she'll call us in." Besides, Karen wouldn't appreciate having us interrupt them, Reynolds added, silently.
"So here we are," Bryce said.
"Yeah. Here we are."
It was an odd situation. On board, Karen and Peggy were no doubt balling like mad. Over there near shore, Sue and Jim were certainly giving it to each other at a fast clip. Which left Reynolds with Bryce. He's not my type, Reynolds thought. That was one vice Reynolds had never gone in for, and he didn't feel much temptation now.
They swam away from the ship. After they had gone a short distance, Reynolds decided that this was a good moment to make a proposition. He tapped Bryce again, and the smaller man surfaced.
"What is it?"
"I just had a thought, Joey-boy. You want to hear it?"
"Sure."
"You know, the other night, Jim and I played a little bit of switch with our girls. I took Sue, and he made it with Karen. We went up on the beach while you and Peggy were snorkeling."
"I sort of figured it," Bryce said. "So?"
"I was thinking-unless you had any particular objections about it-you and I could work the same deal."
"Me with Karen, you with Peggy?"
"That's it."
Bryce looked thoughtful. "I don't see why not. That Karen's one hell of a dish. I don't mind telling you. Seeing her naked all week, it's got me all worked up. I admit it."
"And Peggy," Reynolds said. "Those boobs-"
"Yeah. She likes her boobs kissed and played with. That's important. You get her hot that way. Just touch them. Kiss them a little, squeeze them. Watch her light up."
Reynolds knew all that already. But this wasn't the time or the place to tell Bryce about the hidden television camera. That could wait.
Reynolds said, "So we got ourselves a deal, then?"
"Sure. When? Tonight?"
"Let's make it tomorrow, okay?" Reynolds said. He didn't want to have to make it with Peggy right after Karen had had her. Karen could take a lot out of a girl, and Reynolds wanted Peggy when she'd be fresh. "Tomorrow night. You think Peggy will back out of it?"
"I won't let her," Bryce said. "A deal's a deal. What the hell, she isn't any virgin. She won't mind a round in the hay with you. And I know damn well I'm going to have a ball with Karen."
"It's set," Reynolds said.
"Yeah. It's set"
They put their masks on again, and slipped beneath the waves to explore the reef.
On board the ship, Karen and Peggy began to stir. The sweet lassitude of the after-glow was leaving them, now. They stretched, sat up.
"We better go up on deck," Karen said. "They're probably through swimming by now. We wouldn't want them to find us like this."
"No," Peggy agreed. She got to her feet. "One more kiss first, though?"
"Just one."
Karen came to her. They locked bodies, Karen tall above the other girl, and their lips met. Peggy's round heavy breasts pressed tight into Karen's smaller, harder ones. They moved their hips in a rotating motion, rubbing body against body.
Just before matters started to get out of control, Karen broke the embrace. They left the cabin, headed up for the deck.
Reynolds and Bryce had returned from their swim and were towelling themselves dry when the two nude girls emerged on deck. Bryce looked up and said, "Hey, what happened to you two? Chicken out on the swim?"
Peggy began to stammer something confusedly. Karen cut in quickly, saying, "Peggy didn't really feel well. A touch of seasickness, or something. She asked me to stay here to keep her company in case she got really sick."
"That's what I figured," Bryce said. "You better now, kid?"
"I'll be okay," Peggy said. She walked to the rail and pressed her body against it. The night breeze was cool against her bare breasts, and the metal rail dug deep into the soft folds of her belly. She looked outward, and saw Sue and Jim still swimming, and remembered how it had felt when Karen had been with her and making love to her.
Bryce came up to her. He let his hand rest lightly on her naked buttocks, stroking the smooth flesh. Peggy did not turn. Even the touch of his hand on an intimate part of her body revolted her, now. She didn't want him. Not him, or any man. Karen could give her all she needed. She had had enough of men for a while.
Bryce said, "I wouldn't want you to get sick, baby."
"I told you. I feel better."
"Better enough to give me a little fun in bed tonight, eh?"
"If you want it," she said, still not looking at him.
"Sure I want it," he said. He put his hand up over one of her breasts and gave it a little squeeze.
"Not out here," Peggy said. "Don't touch me there in front of others."
Bryce laughed. "That's a good one. You stand here stark naked in the open and you're modest! You don't like me squeezing your boobs!"
"Please, Joe. I don't want you-handling me-in front of the others."
"Hey, listen, baby! Everything was so good for you and me till yesterday, and now all of a sudden I can't even touch? What the hell's going on, anyway?"
"Nothing, Joe. Nothing. I'll prove it to you tonight in bed," Peggy said. "I promise."
"Okay. Okay. Let's hope so."
And on another part of the deck, Bud Reynolds drew Karen aside, and folded his arms lightly around her, caressing the tips of her high, pointed breasts as he stood behind her.
He said softly, "Were you and Peggy making it while we were swimming?"
"Yes. I had the Japanese leather thing out."
"Was it fun?"
"It was terrific."
"I'm glad you're having a good time, baby. But listen, I want to borrow this Peggy of yours tomorrow night. I made a little switch deal with Joe while we were in the water. He gets you tomorrow night, and I get Peggy."
"Okay with me," Karen said.
"Good. Only-look, don't fool around with Peggy tomorrow, will you? I want her when she's fresh. I know the way you can tire a girl out."
"Don't worry. I'll see that she stays out of my clutches all day. Even though it may be a chore. That kid is wild for dyking now, Bud."
"You really turned her on, huh?"
"Like crazy. I'm a little afraid. She may come along and rape me some time," Karen said.
"There are worse fates," Reynolds said. "Hey, look, one more thing. While I'm making it with Peggy-take Joe into the radio room and show him the TV set in operation."
"You mean, let him see you and Peggy-?"
"That's what I mean."
"You think it's smart, Bud?"
"Joe's a good sport. He'll get a bang out of it. Anyway, I was planning to let him see that we had the camera rigged. This is as good a time as any. Then we can figure out some way of letting Peggy know, later on, if Joe doesn't tell her."
Karen nodded. "I'll take care of it"
"Good girl. Come here, now."
She came to him. Her full-blown, supple body brushed against his, and he caught her, crushing her in his powerful grip. The hard tips of her breasts bored into him, and he let her feel the urgency of his body. Karen began to pant.
"You want it?" he asked.
"God, yes, Bud, yes! Right away!"
"But you just made it with Peggy. You crazy little nympho, don't you ever get enough?"
"Never!" Karen panted.
"Okay. Come close."
"Right here? On deck?"
"We're all alone, baby. Why not?"
"Yeah. Why not?"
He drew her to him. Her body pressed against him, and she opened for him, twining her legs around his, and with a forward thrust he took her. He sank to the hilt with her, and began to move, with eager, savage jabs. Karen gasped. Her body trembled. Quivers of ecstasy started to run through her from head to toe. She answered his thrusts with writhing twists of her own. Her lust-stiffened nipples rubbed into his muscular chest. Her lips sought his, and he bit down on them, a hard, passionate kiss, his teeth all but cutting into her mouth, and his tongue was hot and big inside her mouth, and his finger-tips dug fiercely into the firm flesh of her buttocks, and as they rocked back and forth in the fervor of their lusts, the yacht rocked with them, water lapping noisily at the bow.
Sue and Mackell came swimming back from the reef. As they clambered aboard the ship and stood dripping on the deck, getting out of their snorkeling gear, they caught sight of the other couple locked in passionate embrace down at the bow, body thrusting against body. Moonlight clearly illuminated every motion. They stared, but only for a moment.
Mackell took Sue's hand. "We shouldn't be watching them, you know."
"No. We shouldn't."
They tiptoed below and went to their cabin, leaving Karen and Reynolds exclusive possession of the deck.
In the meanwhile, in the adjoining cabin, Joe Bryce had his hands clasped on Peggy's breasts, stirring them, squeezing them, cupping them. He put his lips to her nipples, kissed on the rigid little thrusts of flesh. His hand roved down across her soft thighs, exploring the beauty of her.
Peggy had to force herself to respond. She had no interest in making love with Bryce, not after Karen had satisfied her so completely. Bryce's caresses were so coarse, so insensitive by comparison.
But she pretended. She closed her eyes and gasped in passion, as she had always done when Bryce touched her breasts, and then a moment later she felt him trying to take her, and she arched her body upward, away from the mattress, and he got his hands underneath to cup the plump cheeks of her buttocks, and he pulled her toward him and drove sharply upward in the same instant, and their bodies joined and started to move, and Peggy fought back her revulsion and gave herself to him as she promised she would, but all the time their bodies were united she kept her eyes closed and remembered how it had been with Karen, and tried to pretend that it was not Joe but Karen who was topping her now, Karen whose lips were on her breasts, Karen whose body thrust again and again onto hers, Karen, Karen, Karen!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The next day started as a relaxed, easy-going one.
They were all up early. Only Mackell and Sue were on hand to watch the sunrise, but the others left their beds before seven. Some early-morning fishing quickly yielded enough of a catch for breakfast, with some fish left over to go into storage.
After breakfast, they swam and lazed away the morning snorkeling on the reef. About eleven, they all went in to shore, swimming in with picnic baskets held high. Naked, like castaways on a desert island, they picnicked on the shore, and sprawled sunning on the hot white powdery coral sand, and then went exploring inland a short distance.
There was something gay and innocent about the whole thing. It was as though they were all very young, too young to have reached puberty, and the concept of nakedness had not yet acquired a tinge of sin. When they roamed through the scrub forest of sea-grape and shrub oak that bordered the beach, there was no feeling of shame, hardly even a sense of desire.
They were simply nude. Not even naked, but nude. It was a hot tropical island, and they were utterly alone without another human being in miles, and by this time they all knew each other well, not to say intimately, and there was no need even of the skimpiest clothes. So they wore none.
And the fact hardly mattered. When Karen went scrambling up the face of a cliff, the watchers below showed no sign of excitement at the fact that the girl's lush buttocks were bare to their gaze, or that when she reached the top and turned to grin in triumph her nude breasts bobbed and jiggled with every swing of her arm. When Peggy, wanting to rest, stretched out in the sand on her back with her knees in the air, it was of no significance that she was in a position of lust, that any of the three naked men nearby might choose to drop down between her parted legs and take advantage of her exposed nakedness. When Sue, having gone a short distance ahead and having caught a small lizzard, came running back to show the others her prize, the jounce-jounce-jounce of her unrestrained breasts was of no particular erotic import to the others.
At least, not on the surface. Whatever sexual tensions were building up during that long sunny morning remained strictly undercurrents, hidden flickers of desire.
No one made an overt move at anyone else. It was understood that the night was coming. And, with the night, would come the time of pleasure.
After the heat of noon was broken, they swam back toward the ship, and it was up anchor and away, out to the deep waters for an afternoon of fishing. Reynolds hadn't caught anything but breakfast fish all week, and he was itching for some excitement.
Mackell took the tiller and followed the charts, getting the yacht past St. John's coastal reef and out into the broad channel that flowed between St. John and the British Virgin Islands. They would anchor off Tortola this evening, but first Reynolds wanted a spell in the deep water.
For a moment, the excitement of the chase gripped everyone on board, even those like Sue and Mackell, who didn't give a damn about deep sea fishing. The girls, naked, bustled around on deck, and now that there was tension in the air, their nakedness no longer seemed so innocent, their bobbing breasts and wigwagging buttocks added to the element of tautness, the almost sexual electricity. Reynolds was up front, in the fighting chair. Bryce, following Reynolds' instructions, hung the hunks of fresh horsemeat over the stern rail, letting them drip in the yacht's trail, and turned on the taps on the trail barrels.
A rank-smelling mixture of steer's blood and whale oil spurted out into the blue water. Reynolds was taking no chances today. There would be a catch, all right.
The motors were in low The yacht cruised gently. Overhead, the Caribbean sun was big and round, filling an amazing segment of the cloudless sky. The deep blue water was rougher than usual, but still gentle by comparison with any other ocean any of them had known.
The minutes ticked away. Then Karen yelled, "Out there! Fins!" She pointed. Her breasts seemed to quiver, the nipples to rise in excitement.
The deck came alive. Naked girls rushed in every direction, as though the shark were going to come right up on deck. Only Reynolds stayed completely calm.
"Lift that hook! Get the bait out!"
The shark was a monster, all right. Mackell stared in disbelief at the dull green body, barely visible a few feet beneath the surface. The shark looked like a torpedo down there. Ten, twelve feet long, maybe. Big. Frighteningly big. What the hell did Reynolds want to catch a monster like that for, Mackell wondered? What was he proving? It was chilling to think that they had been swimming around in waters that also contained creatures like that.
There was a solid thunking sound as the shark, in its anxiety to take the bait, cracked into the yacht's hull. It had grabbed one of the hunks of horsemeat, but the other was out of reach, now, dangling above the water, and the shark was coming around again as though planning to make a leap for it.
In the chair, Reynolds had socketed his rod and was getting ready. The water roiled. The fin sliced through the water.
"Lead him!" Reynolds ordered. "Use the bait! Get him close to me!"
The shark went for the bait.
The fierce jaws closed over the hooks.
Mackell bit down on his lip. Suddenly Sue was close to him, and her nakedness was comforting Her smooth body pressed against him. He put one hand up over her breast, cupping the firm round bare globe. He could feel her heart pounding furiously.
The shark was hooked. Reynolds had the reel in gear, and the shark knew he was taken, and he swiveted around and began to streak for Cuba.
"You louse!" Reynolds roared in glee. "I've got you, you stinking louse!"
The agitated fin slashed the surface. The shark was running with the current now, and there was a hissing hum as the line paid out, hundreds of yards, and still the shark went, and Reynolds was half-standing in the chair, gripping the rod, shouting a stream of violent obscenities, the most blistering language Mackell had heard this side of the Navy, cheering the shark, urging it on, begging it to give him a fight.
The shark needed no begging.
The contest was a furious one. Mackell watched grimly, and in his tension his hand tightened on Sue's bare breast, tightened, tightened.
"Please," she whispered. "You're hurting me, Jim."
"Sorry. Sorry."
He eased up and watched Reynolds. Veins were standing out on the big man's broad forehead. At his side stood Karen, and it was easy to see from the way her throbbing nipples were erected that she was deriving a direct sexual pleasure from vicariously sharing Reynolds' struggle. Her thighs were clamped tight shut. Mackell was willing to believe that in her mind Karen was experiencing something close to ecstasy as she watched Reynolds playing the fish.
The shark had quieted down some, now. It had broken the surface again, and was just sitting there, perhaps giving up the fight or perhaps just gathering strength for a new attempt to rid itself of the painful thing it had swallowed with the meat. At this stage, there was never any way of knowing which way things would break.
Reynolds was smiling confidently. He began to pull the shark in. The reel clicked merrily.
But not for long. The shark made its move. Straight down.
It headed for the bottom in a wild, desperate plunge, nearly ripping Reynolds out of the chair. He tensed and fought back, hanging in there. The water thrashed. White boiling runnels scoured the surface.
The line went slack for a moment.
"No!" Reynolds cried. "You louse, no, I won't let you do it!"
Next to him, Karen clutched her breasts in sudden tension. Mackell wasn't sure of what was happening now, but it seemed that there had been an abrupt change in the pattern of the contest. Reynolds' face was a study in frustration and rage.
"What's going on?" Sue asked.
Mackell shook his head. "I don't know. But I think he's losing the shark "
The water was still boiling. Reynolds was frantically trying to reel the shark in, but nothing was happening. Suddenly the tension went out of the rod. A moment later the water turned calm again.
Reynolds rose from the chair. His features were black with anger. He turned on his heel, strode away, and disappeared into his cabin.
Mackell walked over to Karen, who was standing by the chair wearing a dazed, blank expression. The excitement in her body hadn't subsided, evidently. Her nipples were still stiff and swollen.
"What happened?"
"He lost the shark," Karen said.
"I gather that. But how?"
"Shark got an extra loop of the line around him and started to roll. Twisted and rolled till he cut the line with his skin. Sharkskin can do that. It's the roughest stuff in the world."
Mackell looked out at the water. There was no sign at all of the struggle that had lately taken place. The shark had gone off to lick its wounds somewhere in the darkness of the depths, and the bait-trail had disappeared as well.
"Why doesn't he try again?" Mackell asked. "There must be plenty of other sharks down there. And he came so close to getting him."
"No," Karen said. "He won't try again for a day or so. He's in a vicious mood right now, and he can't fish when he feels so angry. I better go to him. He can get pretty ugly when a fish steals his hooks."
By evening, Reynolds seemed to be back on an even keel. He could talk philosophically about the loss of the shark, and seemed to shrug the matter off as trivial. Which it was, in the eyes of Mackell and most of the others on board, but Reynolds had seemed to take it as a real tragedy when it happened. Now, though, he had regained his perspective on the situation.
Or so it seemed to an outside observer.
They brought the yacht in out of the deep water and anchored it near Tortola. That evening they had another fine dinner on deck, graced by the most beautiful sunset of the trip so far, and in the late evening they sat on deck sipping daiquiris and relaxing in the tropic calm, while the sound of singing and laughing came to them from the nearby island.
No one seemed in the mood for an evening swim. Mackell realized that something had been arranged among the other couples, because Reynolds was suddenly paying a great deal of attention to Peggy, tonight, and Karen was with Joe Bryce. Mackell nodded. So another switch was in the offing. Okay, he thought. Round two coming up. And tomorrow night would be his turn with Peggy, then.
He was looking forward to it. All week he had watched those fantastic breasts bouncing up and down, and he was itching to get his hands on them. Even if-as Sue insisted-Peggy was having Lesbian relations with Karen, that didn't mean she wouldn't be fun for him to have, also. He had firsthand eye-witness evidence that Peggy was a passionate girl with a man. He had seen her in action. And tomorrow he'd find out what it was really like to top her and nestle between those two mammoth mammaries.
Karen was the first to leave the deck. She went below without saying a word.
A short while later, Joe Bryce rose and ambled inside. That left Sue and Mackell together on deck, and Peggy, and Bud Reynolds.
The switcheroo was on, Mackell thought.
Karen was almost undressed when Bryce knocked at the cabin door.
"Come in," Karen said.
Bryce stepped inside Karen was wearing only her narrow strapless bra, her garter belt, and her panties. Bryce grinned at her.
"What's so funny?" she asked.
"Psychology is," he said. "I was just thinking how sexy you look, standing there. All day long you were running around naked, and you looked plenty sexy then. But now you have a couple of underthings on and you're ten times as sexy. Funny how it works."
"Not so funny at all," Karen said. "This way I'm partly covered. It makes your imagination work That's how you get excited." She peeled off the bra, and the splendid cones of her breasts jutted provocatively at him. Bryce stepped forward. He put his hands on her breasts, gently, cupping them, savoring the smooth coolness of them and the hot, hard points of her nipples. He was almost exactly the same height she was.
Karen said, "What's happening up on deck?"
"They're all still there. Nobody's made a move yet."
"Bud said he wouldn't come down for a while He's still in a lousy mood. He just wants to sit there and stare at the water."
"Because of the shark?"
"What else?"
"Well, that's his problem," Bryce said "We won't let it bother us. We've got the whole night ahead of us. Huh, Karen?"
"You bet." She rubbed his cheeks affectionately. "Help me get undressed, now. Take my stockings off."
"Gladly."
Bryce knelt in front of her. His hands were shaking with desire as he unsnapped her garters, one by one. He paused for a moment, letting the straps dangle, and pressed his lips to the cool, infinitely smooth flesh along the insides of her thighs. Above him, Karen ran her fingers through his hair, tugging at the wiry strands to show her pleasure.
Bryce pulled her stockings off, laid them aside. Then he started to unsnap the garter belt, her sole remaining garment. But as his hands went around back, to find the hasp of the garter belt, he lingered at her silken-skinned bare buttocks, splaying his fingers out over the taut-fleshed cheeks. Karen sighed. Bryce put his face forward again.
They remained that way for a long moment. Outside, they heard the sound of light steps, the sound of the adjoining cabin door closing.
"Peggy. Going to her cabin," Karen said.
"Yeah."
"Does she know about the switch?"
"I don't think so," Bryce said. "Not unless she's figured it out for herself by now. I didn't tell her."
"Peggy isn't too good at figuring things out for herself," Karen said.
"I know. But she'll get the idea sooner or later."
Bryce rose to a standing position, drawing his lips straight up Karen's body as he unbent. He passed the soft round of her belly, lingered for a moment at the deeply inset navel, then continued on upward, pausing at her breastbone, kissing the valley between her breasts, then taking her bare breasts in his hands and moving them together so that they touched his cheeks.
After a moment he turned his head slightly and put his mouth over her right breast It was an easier breast to caress than Peggy's, since there was less of it, though still plenty Karen sighed in delight. His hand cupped the breast from beneath, squeezing it, kneading it.
Then he moved on to the other breast and did the same Both Karen's nipples were sticking out rigidly, now. She was shifting her weight from side to side, moving her thighs and knees together in growing excitement.
She began to undress him while he played with her breasts.
She removed his shirt and started to tug at his belt. There were the sounds of more footsteps outside-two people, this time. A second cabin door opened and closed alongside them.
"Sue and Jim," Karen said.
Bryce nodded.
She had his clothes open now.
Then they were both naked.
"Bud is still up there alone on deck." Karen said, half to herself.
"That's his own affair," Bryce said hoarsely. "Come here, baby. I've been waiting all week for this moment, and now here it is I"
His arms went around her. Their bodies came together and they stood in the middle of the floor, her breasts warm and big against him. She opened her thighs and locked them again, trapping him between, and they stood that way. His hands went to her body, one hand seizing a swelling breast and the other sliding down behind her to come to rest on the curving cheeks of her buttocks.
He started to guide her toward the bed. He was throbbing with desire as he held her tight, and he knew he could not long delay the fulfillment of that desire. Not now, not with both of them naked this way, together in the cabin.
There were more footsteps outside. Heavy footsteps. A door opening, closing.
"That was Bud," Karen said. "He just went into Peggy's cabin."
"Hooray for Bud. But let's concentrate on us, huh?"
"Just a second," Karen said. She pulled free of him and stood back. Her face was flushed, and her breasts rose and fell in obvious excitement.
"What's the matter?" Bryce asked. "Why'd you step away from me?"
"I've got a surprise," she said. "Something for you to see."
She walked toward the cabin door and opened it. As she started to go out, the frowning Bryce said, "Where are you going?"
"The radio room. Come with me."
"I'm naked," he said, looking down at himself.
"That doesn't matter," she said. "Just come with me. Bud asked me to do this."
She started to leave. Bryce was annoyed at the interruption in their lovemaking, but he had no choice but to follow her. He left the cabin. Karen was already halfway down the hall, the ripe globes of her buttocks wigwagging saucily, two magnets of flesh drawing him along after her. What the hell was this all about, he wondered?
His body ached with lust He was in no mood for party games, not now when fulfillment had been just a fraction of a second away.
He followed her into the radio room. He hadn't been in here before It was full of gadgetry of all kinds, a fortune in electronic hardware.
Karen said, "You know, Bud's very talented as an engineer He's got this ship wired up in a very interesting way. Come over here and watch this."
He went to her side. He pressed his body tautly up against hers, and put one hand over her breasts, but she hardly seemed to notice. She pushed a button and pointed to a television screen on the far side of the narrow, cramped room.
"You see the screen?" she said. "It's a closed-circuit television hookup. And guess where the camera is."
Mystified, Bryce stared at the screen It came to life, now, and in its glow he could make out figures, small figures on the small screen.
Peggy.
Bud Reynolds.
He gaped "You mean to say-you've got a TV camera mounted in my cabin?"
"That's what I mean to say, honey bear." Karen smiled. "Come here and snuggle up close We'll watch the fun. And when we're tired of watching, we'll have some fun of our own, okay?"
CHAPTER TWELVE
Peggy hung her skirt and blouse carefully in the closet, and began to remove her underthings. She was in a strange, depressed mood.
It had been a nice day, after a fashion. The picnic on the island had been fun, all of them running around naked in such an innocent way. She had been able to look at Karen all morning, and to have Karen see her. Karen was so beautiful, Peggy thought. Those breasts of hers, just the right size, and the curve of her buttocks, and the firm legs she had-
Peggy had hoped that in the afternoon she and Karen would have a chance to steal away together and make love. But it hadn't worked out that way. There had been that shark-fishing business instead. Peggy had hated the whole thing-the smell of blood, the ugly hunks of raw meat dangling on the hooks, the sinister fin cutting through the water. She would gladly have gone below decks to make love to Kin en while Reynolds was fishing.
But not. Karen had remained at Reynolds's side through the whole session. She hadn't budged. And then afterward, when Reynolds lost the shark, Karen had been in almost as bad a mood as Bud had. So there hadn't been any possibility of making love.
And then it had been time to prepare dinner. Afterward, in the evening, they had all been sitting up on deck, and that was the most peculiar time of all for Peggy.
Joe had ignored her all evening. He had been flirting with Karen in a shameless way that made Peggy doubly jealous, jealous that someone should be taking Karen away from her, and jealous that Joe should be paying attention to another girl.
And Bud Reynolds had been bothering her all evening. Sitting close to her, talking to her, talking about fishing, about sex. The more she thought about it, the less she liked him. He was too rough, too aggressive, too-too male. With all his talk of hunting and fishing and loving. She preferred someone more sensitive.
Someone more female.
Someone like Karen.
But she had been stuck with Bud Reynolds all evening. Sue and Jim had been busy with each other, and Karen and Joe hadn't stopped flirting, and that left her the choice of sitting on deck with Bud and sitting by herself.
And some time in the evening, Karen and Joe had disappeared Peggy was too embarrassed to ask them where they were going, or to follow them It was clear, even to her They had been flirting all evening, and now they had gone down below to make love.
There was a lump of anguish in her throat. She didn't have much use for Joe, any more, but she still felt a kind of proprietary stake in him He was hen. He had no business going to bed with Karen.
And Karen who was so tender, so skilled in the ways of woman-love-why did Karen want to go to bed with Joe? Why had she done it?
Right now, Peggy realized bleakly, they were probably naked in each other's arms. He was with her, squeezing Karen's breasts the way he had so often squeezed her own, kissing them, caressing them. And then parting her thighs, the thighs that Peggy had kissed only the day before. And then going to her, pushing his body to hers, and the two of them breathing hard and moving fast, gasping and thrusting and thrusting and gasping-
After a while Peggy had had enough of Bud Reynolds. She had risen and gone below, to get some sleep. She didn't understand why she had been deserted this evening, but there was nothing left for her to do but call it a night and go to sleep. Maybe tomorrow she would be able to make love to Karen again, she thought hopefully.
She pulled off her bra. The heavy mounds of her breasts tumbled free. She put her hands over her breasts, felt them, lifted them, moved them around. Her nipples felt sore. She was aching with desire. For Karen.
Peggy continued to undress. She stepped out of her sheer, filmy panties and was about to remove her stockings and garter belt when there was a knock on the door.
"Who is it?" she said in surprise.
"Me. Bud."
"What's the matter?"
"Let me come in."
"Just a second," she said. I'm not dressed." It was one thing to run around in the nude during the day, when everybody was together. It was another thing entirely to be all naked in front of Bud Reynolds in her own cabin, just the two of them.
"It's okay," he said. "Don't bother putting anything on.
He opened the unlocked door and stepped in. Peggy had not had time to cover herself. She turned to face him, her big, bare breasts turning crimson in embarrassment. In an automatic gesture of modesty she threw one hand across her breasts and spread the fingers of the other out like a fan over her abdomen.
Bud Reynolds stared at the nearly naked girl in front of him. A muscle throbbed in his cheek, and another kind of muscle throbbed somewhere else.
God, she had a tremendous pair, he thought! He had never seen boobs like that, big and round, cannonball-sized, and nothing flabby about them, nothing gross and cow-like, nothing squishy.
But why was she covering up? What was she ashamed of just now?
"You don't need to hide what you've got," he said in a calm voice. "I've already seen the merchandise. With what you've got, it's a crime against nature to keep it covered, anyway."
She stared at him. She looked a little shocked, almost a little dazed. As though realizing the absurdity of trying to be modest at this late stage, she let her hands drop to her sides, giving him an unobstructed view of her round, heavy breasts and of her whole womanhood, framed in the tight straps of the garter belt.
"W-what do you want?"
"You ought to be able to figure that out easy enough," Reynolds said. He took a step toward her.
"I was just about to go to bed, Bud."
"Sure. So am I."
"No," she said.
"What do you mean, no?"
"Not here. This isn't your cabin."
Reynolds frowned. "Didn't Joe tell you about the arrangement for tonight?"
"He didn't tell me a thing," Peggy said in a husky whisper. "What arrangement?"
"You and me," Reynolds replied. "And him and Karen. You mean to say you don't know-"
"No," she said. "And I don't want any part of your filthy deal!"
Reynolds felt himself going tense. He was in a black enough mood as it was, his body boiling with resentment over the humiliation and shock of losing that beauty of a shark. Karen had offered her body to him right afterward, to console him, but he had said no. He wanted to save all his energies for tonight, for Peggy.
So now he was churning with need. He wanted the blonde girl, wanted to bury his quivering manhood to her soft, voluptuously abundant body, wanted to rock away the hurt of this afternoon. He had waited all day. He was far more keyed up sexually than he had been in years.
And she didn't want to play ball.
"Listen, honey," he said, keeping his voice as calm and level as he knew how, "I've had a hard day today. I lost that shark, and that really stung me. I need some relaxation now. Don't give me a hard time."
Peggy gaped at him. "You think you can have me just by coming in here and-"
"Don't give me the outraged virgin act, will you?" His voice grew harder as his anger rose. "You've laid for half a million guys and you've done some Lesbo stuff too, and I won't buy any innocence routine now. I talked to Joe and he's in there banging my girl right now, and I'm going to get some of the same out of you."
"No," Peggy said.
"Take that no and shove it, baby." Reynolds put his hand to his shirt buttons and peeled the shirt off. A moment later, he was dropping his trousers.
Then he stood naked before her.
Her eyes went to him. She stared, and her eyes went wide, and she emitted a little wordless sound of fright.
"What's the matter?" Reynolds demanded roughly. "You've seen it before."
"Not this way...."
"No," she whispered. "Keep away from me. You aren't going to touch me, Bud. If you touch me I'll scream. You aren't having me!"
"Look, I'm warning you, don't make trouble. I took a load of baloney from a lousy shark today, but I don't have to take it from you too."
He advanced toward her.
He had her backed into a corner of the cabin, now. The pounding in his head was furious, and there was the urgent throbbing in his loins, the dull ache that only a soft woman's yielding body could soothe. He had waited all day. He had refused to do it with Karen, so he'd be all the more sharp for tonight and Peggy.
And Peggy was being coy.
"No," she said. "Don't. I beg you, Bud, don't touch me. I won't let you."
Reynolds moved closer. "One way or another, I'm getting you. A deal's a deal. Joe's in there taking Karen, and I'm damned if I'll take any garbage from you. You want me to force you?"
"You don't understand," Peggy whimpered.
"Damn right I don't!"
Peggy looked at him imporingly. "You know I slept with Karen. She must have told you."
"Sure. What does that have to do with me? With us?"
"I don't want men any more. I just want women. Karen. It disgusts me to see you like that. It makes me sick to think of you against me. Please. Go away, Bud. Go away. Let me alone."
Reynolds laughed harshly. "So you want to be a dyke, is that it? You're finished with men? Well, get this: men aren't finished with you. So long as you've got boobs like that and a sweet little body, men are going to want you. And they're going to have you. Starting right now. Starting with me."
He had had enough. He couldn't stand here all night trying to coax her.
He was going to take what he wanted.
He wondered if Joe was watching all this on the television screen, or if he and Karen had gotten so busy in the hay that they hadn't had a chance to go to the radio room. He half hoped they were watching. He wanted Bryce to see what kind of rotten deal Peggy was trying to hand him.
Reynolds reached out. His big hands closed on the full, swollen mounds of the blonde girl's breasts. He tugged her savagely close to him.
"No," she cried. "No, don't!"
He gripped her breasts tightly, punishing them. He could feel the soft flesh compressing under his fingers. She swung around, squirming. Her tiny balled fists beat against him. She opened her hands, clawed at him with short nails, dug deep bloody furrows in the skin of his shoulders and back.
Reynolds didn't care. He needed her, and he wanted her, and he was going to have her.
He picked her up as though she were a doll, and threw her down on the bed. She landed heavily, on her back, the great rounds of her breasts jiggling demonically as she landed.
Reynolds threw himself on top of her.
She might have been weak in the brains department, but she knew all about how to go about avoiding rape. She kept her legs closed. She locked them together, twined one foot around the other, hooked them, and kept them clamped. Reynolds clawed at her soft thighs, trying to pull her legs apart.
"Come on," he muttered angrily. "Give for me, baby. Give, you little teaser."
There was incredible strength in her. She fought in wild desperation, her legs remaining tight shut as though made of stone. Reynolds tore at her. Her stockings shredded away. He ripped at the garter belt, and it too ripped away, and now she was naked.
And still her legs held.
Reynolds was snorting like a bull. She had slashed him all over, she had bitten him and scratched him, and he stung at the bloody places, but he hardly noticed the damage she was doing. He had to force those legs. He was baffled by the intensity of her resistance. He could crumple a beer can in one hand just by making a fist, but this little soft girl was somehow matching his strength.
He got one hand on a big tender breast and started to squeeze.
He put the other hand as far onto her thigh as he could get it, and squeezed. "Come on," he snarled. "Please-you're hurting me-"
"Give!"
He continued to punish the breast he held. He took a savage, sadistic glee in compressing the delicate tissues, in watching the pale mound turn an angry red as blood congested in it.
"I'll tear you apart if I have to!" he bellowed.
Peggy reacted.
She unhooked her legs and brought her knee up into Reynolds' body.
It was a solid hit. Reynolds howled as the blazing pain shot through him, and he let go of her body. But he recovered in an instant. Half-numb with pain, now, he returned to the attack. Peggy had not been able to lock her legs again, after kicking him.
Reynolds caught her knees.
He forced them.
He hovered above her, kneeling on her arms to keep those deadly fingers pinned where they could do him no harm. At last. He hadn't expected to have to rape her this way, but the choice had been hers, and she had chosen rape, and that was what she had gotten.
He shook with pain. The impact of her kick hadn't left him yet. But he was going to pay her back tenfold for the injury she had done him.
The little witch, I'll split her wide open, Reynolds thought.
He held her apart.
He looked at his target.
Then, with savagely sadistic pleasure, he drove against her unwilling body, wringing a cry of ear-splitting agony from her.
In the radio room, Joe Bryce was watching the rape with mounting shock and horror, j.
He had been startled simply to find that there had been a television camera mounted in his cabin. It meant that possibly everything he and Peggy had done had been witnessed by floating unseen eyes-their lovemaking, their quarrelling, all had been available to anyone who cared to push the button. There was something sickening about the discovery that their host had deliberately set up a spy system of this kind.
But he had managed to suppress his anger, and he had also temporarily held in check his desire for Karen. He had to admit to himself that there was something fascinating in watching another couple in the act. So he had held back, and stared at the screen, eager despite himself to see Peggy and Bud Reynolds making love.
There was no audio pickup. But he was able to make sense out of the gestures, and soon he realized what was taking place in his cabin.
Peggy had been all but naked when Reynolds came in. From the way she tried to cover herself with her hands, she was clearly embarrassed. And when Reynolds' face was turned toward the camera, anger and surprise showed in it. So Peggy was refusing him.
Only Reynolds wasn't taking no for an answer.
At the outset, Bryce's sympathies were all with Reynolds. He himself had been exposed to Peggy's new coyness not very long before, and he could understand what Reynolds was up against. For one reason or another, Peggy had cooled on sex, and who could have predicted that?
But then Bryce began to see the real fear on Peggy's face, the downright dread of Reynolds. All too obviously, he was angrily demanding sex from her, and she was refusing him.
And then the violence began.
Bryce held himself in check even when Reynolds threw Peggy roughly to the bed. But when he fell on top of her and started to pry her legs open, Bryce began to get upset. When he saw Reynolds brutally squeezing Peggy's breasts, the situation became even more intolerable. He knew how sensitive Peggy's breasts were. What Reynolds was doing now amounted to torture, Bryce knew.
"I've got to stop him," he said.
"It's not your business," Karen insisted.
"I brought Peggy aboard. I'm responsible for her safety."
"She'll be okay."
"Hell ruin her. Look how he's got her breast! And that other hand digging into her! Who the hell does he think he is? If she doesn't want it, he's got no right to force her like that!"
"You can't butt in, though."
"The hell I can't," Bryce snapped at her. He pointed at the screen. Reynolds had redoubled his brutality, now. And then, suddenly, Peggy was launching that tremendous kick at Reynolds' groin, and Reynolds was staggering back, his hands clutching himself in agony.
Now Bryce knew he had to break in. Reynolds would be a maddened bull after that. He was likely to kill Peggy in his violence.
"I'm going in there," Bryce said.
"You aren't," Karen snapped.
She tried to block his way. Bryce put his hands on her breasts, the same breasts that he had been fondling so eagerly only a few minutes before, and shoved her roughly back, not caring if her hurt her breasts. Karen slammed up against the cabin wall.
Bryce ran past her and out of the radio room, back to his cabin.
He threw open the door.
Reynolds had attained his objective. Nothing could be seen of Peggy except her outspread legs. Reynolds' bull-like body covered her completely.
"Get off her!" Bryce ordered. "Get the hell off!"
He didn't wait for an answer. He grabbed up a chair and swung.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The chair cracked off the back of Reynold's skull and went skittering to the floor. Reynolds looked up in surprise, blinking and shaking his head. He pulled himself free of Peggy and lumbered to his feet. Peggy lay there exhausted, her maimed body drained of energy.
There were droplets of blood between her legs.
Reynolds roared, "Who the hell told you to come busting in here, anyway?"
"I saw the whole thing. You were raping her!"
"She didn't come across. I had to make her!"
"Not that way," Bryce snapped. "Get the hell out of my cabin!"
"Get the hell off my boat!" Reynolds retorted. Then he lunged.
He came bulling forward and caught Bryce around tie middle. The two enraged men locked in combat, both of them naked, both of them murderously angry. They butted together, the big one and the small but powerful one, and their bodies collided with the door frame. They went hurtling out into the corridor.
In their cabin, Sue and Jim Mackell were deep in a passionate embrace when the sounds of fighting came to them. Although they were only moments from their climax, they quickly separated and rushed out into the hall.
Reynolds and Bryce were pounding away at each other in the narrow corridor. Fists were flying, and connecting with solid impact. Mackell caught sight of Peggy standing just inside her cabin, looking dazed and unsure of her surroundings. Karen came running up.
Mackell said, "What the devil's happening?"
Karen said, "Joe was watching Bud make love to Peggy on the closed circuit. Bud got a little too rough with her and Joe didn't like it."
The corridor was in chaos, with six naked people milling around in it. Mackell pushed his way forward, trying to get between the two combatants before they seriously damaged each other. Already, several teeth had been knocked out, and both men were streaming with blood.
"Cut it out, you two!" Mackell yelled He tried to force his way between them, and was rewarded with a tremendous clout on the kidneys. He went spinning back, not knowing who had hit him.
Sue said, "Don't get mixed up in it, Jim. You'll only get hurt for no good reason."
"I can't let them fight like that, though." He winced as Bryce landed a terrific smash in the pit of Reynolds' stomach. Reynolds gagged, and Bryce swung again, this time belting the bigger man just below the heart. But Reynolds' recovery was swift. He swung a roundhouse right that cracked into Bryce's long, narrow-bridged nose and sent him slamming back, blood spouting from his nostrils, his nose obviously broken.
Neither one had lost his taste for the fight. They were gradually moving down the hall, and in another moment they would be out on the main deck Mackell made a second effort to separate them, but they were too tightly packed, and he was unable to force his way between the windmilling arms. He was driven back.
A moment later, Reynolds landed a massive smash that sent Bryce reeling through the doorway and out onto the deck. He landed heavily on the planking, but got to his feet and stood his ground, shaking his head groggily.
Reynolds stalked after him. Mackell, Sue and Karen followed, with Peggy dazedly coming up behind them. All six were nude, giving the fight a grotesque character of barbarity.
Bryce seemed to have recovered from his grogginess. He came barreling forward, and his fists pummeled into the taller man. Reynolds answered with a counterattack to the chest. Mackell circled the two, shouting at them, begging them to return to their senses. No use. Karen came up behind him and pulled him back.
Mackell whirled on her. Her eyes were gleaming, her breasts rising and falling in intense excitement.
"Let go of me!" he barked at her.
"Keep away from them! Let them fight!"
"They'll murder each other! I've got to stop them!"
"It's none of your business," Karen said.
"They're my friends. I've got to stop them!"
But he knew it was hopeless to try to get between diem. And they were already in bad shape. Bryce's face was a bloody, pulped nightmare, and Reynolds was spitting teeth to the deck. The combat had passed into the anything-goes stage, and now both men were actively trying to land kicks in the other's groin.
Mackell realized that there was one sure way he could put a stop to the fight before further mayhem ensued. There was a fire-hose coiled along the outer wall of the cabins. If he shot a powerful jet of water at Reynolds and Bryce, he'd knock them off their feet, and by the time they clambered up again they'd probably be cooled off enough to call it quits. He hoped so. The savagery of the sudden fight threatened to wreck the cruise's harmony for good.
Sue saw him running to the hose, and she went to help him. Together, they unreeled the heavy hose. It was hard work, since they were both naked and the rough surface of the hose kept bruising them, but finally they got it uncoiled. Mackell pointed the thick nozzle toward the struggling men while Sue worked feverishly to turn the wheel that would start the pump. They were a moment too late. A second before the water began to spurt, Reynolds smashed a monumental haymaker against Bryce's jaw. Bryce went glassy-eyed, but held his balance a moment.
Then he staggered and went pinwheeling back, toppling as he went.
He hit the starboard rail. It held him upright for a moment, But only for a moment. He leaned backward, his arms flying outward, and he slid over the low rail and tumbled, his head striking a glancing blow against the hull as he slipped into the dark water.
For a frozen instant no one budged. Reynolds remained in position, staring stupidly at the fist that had struck the blow. Karen, near the rail, peered into the depths without moving. Peggy, at the doorway, remained statue-like, her mouth forming a wide O.
Mackell still held the hose. Sue was still turning the pump.
Then the stasis broke.
Mackell shouted, "Turn the water off, Suel I've got to go after himl He was out cold when he went over!"
Reynolds hadn't budged. Karen was screaming, now. Peggy still looked blank.
There was no time to waste, Mackell realized. Bryce had hit the water and vanished like a weighted sack. He hadn't even made an attempt to swim. Even if he had still been conscious after taking that terrific clout on the chin, he must have been knocked cold when his head connected with the hull on the way overboard.
Mackell dove. His naked body split the water in the exact spot where Bryce had gone under The water swirled up around him, and though it was a warm night the water felt icy against his sweating, overheated skin.
He filled his lungs with air and forced himself down But there was nothing he could see. They were in relatively deep water, perhaps fifty feet or more. And it was nighttime. Even by day, even in these clear waters, it was probably impossible to see more than twenty feet down. At night, though the moon was still nearly full, visibility was limited to just a few yards below the surface. Only near shore, in ten or twelve feet of water, did nighttime swimming reveal anything.
Mackell forced himself downward. The water grew rapidly colder. His lungs were bursting. He thought of the sharks and barracuda that swarmed in these waters off shore at night, and felt all the more vulnerable in his total nakedness. And there was no sign of Bryce.
Had he bobbed to the surface somewhere else? Or had he simply gone straight to the bottom? Mackell doubted that. The natural buoyancy of the man's body should keep him from sinking, shouldn't it? Shouldn't it?
Mackell had been under the surface nearly a minute. He couldn't take it any longer. His chest was about to explode, his eyes stung from the salt water. If he had time to don a mask, at least, he might not have had that problem. But there had been no time. How long could a man stay submerged without drowning? Two minutes, three? Bryce had already been down at least two.
Mackell broke the surface and gasped for air. He had come up farther from the yacht than he had anticipated-a good thirty yards away. He couldn't see what, if anything, was happening on deck. For all he knew, they had already hauled Bryce in, and he was splashing around in these cold, sharky waters for nothing.
Sue appeared at the rail. "Do you see him?" she called.
"No! Do you?"
"No!"
Mackell sucked in air and went under again, heading back toward the ship. There was Aqualung equipment aboard the yacht, and that was the only way they could hope to find Bryce now. A naked diver relying on his own lungpower couldn't do much. But certainly Reynolds would have enough sense to don scuba stuff and get down here, Mackell thought. A man was drowning. Or perhaps a man had already drowned, he realized grimly.
He was nearly back at the yacht, now. He could make out the dark bulk of the hull ahead of him.
And what was that, he wondered?
Something man-sized, hovering in the water at a depth of perhaps twelve feet. Something that might be Bryce-or might be some finned predator, cruising in to investigate. Mackell didn't know. He could make out a shape, something down there, probably but not certainly Bryce.
But he was unable to reach the hanging figure in the darkness. Once again his lungs screamed for air, and once again he was forced to break the surface.
He sucked in air greedily. Then he yelled, "I think I see him! Somebody come down here and help me!"
But no one was listening.
As the sound of his own shout died away, Mackell heard the sounds from the deck-high, shrill feminine screaming, and a low growl from Reynolds. What the hell was going on up there? What was all the yelling about? Were they being invaded by sea serpents up there? It certainly sounded that way.
Mackell pushed the shape in the water from his mind. He had to know what was happening on deck. He swam toward the yacht, grabbed the ladder, pulled his half-exhausted body up over the rail.
What he saw filled him with dismay and fresh horror. He gasped in disbelief.
Peggy had come to life, and she was marching on Reynolds, who was backing away from her in terror, and uttering sounds of fright that seemed totally out of character for the big man.
But he had good reason to be scared. Peggy had taken down the fire-hatchet that was bracketed just inside the door, and she was wielding it wildly as she advanced on Reynolds.
Karen and Sue stood by, helplessly screaming, all their poise vanished now. Peggy was almost a comic sight, the short plump girl coming forward, her big breasts bouncing and jiggling, her round heavy buttocks doing the same. But there was nothing comic about the way she was carrying that hatchet. She had murder in her eye. And it was a murderous hatchet, with a blade six inches across and honed to a fine edge. Reynolds believed in keeping his tools honed.
Peggy was saying, "You raped me, and then you killed him. He's drowned. And you raped me. You wouldn't say okay, you wouldn't go away. You had to stick it to me. Well, I'm going to stick something in you, now."
"For God's sake, put that axe down," Reynolds said. His teeth were chattering. He had reached the rail, now. There was no place for him to go but overboard. Only he wasn't jumping. He just stood there, frozen and frightened, a big man cowed by a little naked girl with an axe.
Blood streamed down Reynolds' face from the just-concluded fight, and his mouth gaped toothlessly.
Mackell scrambled on board. It was bad enough that Bryce had been lost. Peggy was insane with grief, now, and she might do anything.
"The hose, Sue!" Mackell shouted. "Knock her down with the hose! Turn the water on!"
But Sue was gripped with the same inability to move that paralyzed Karen and Reynolds. Mackell leaped for the hose himself and tried to get the water flowing.
"Jump!" he yelled to Reynolds. "Jump overboard, Bud! She's crazy! Shell kill you!"
Reynolds merely gaped. And a moment later Peggy let out a wild cry, a demonic banshee wail of pure hatred and loathing, and swung the axe.
Mackell gasped. The razor-keen blade chopped into Reynolds' middle. The hatchet scythed through the big man's groin and sent him slumping to the deck, hideously mutilated, blood spouting horridly from the gaping cleft where his manhood had been.
Peggy was lifting the hatchet again. The quiet tropical night was split by the insance ferocity of her cry as she brought it down with bone-splitting intensity on the front of Bud Reynolds' skull!
A moment later, Mackell got the water going. But again it was too late. The doubly mutilated thing on the deck was only a corpse now. Blood and brains slithered out onto the planking and poured in spouting bursts into the water. And Peggy, still mad with rage, was kicking at the shattered body of Reynolds, pushing him toward the rail, under it, kicking him again and again, trying to thrust him over the side and into the water.
Mackell let the hose drop from his nerveless fingers, and the torrent of water went sluicing uselessly across the deck toward the stern. He felt as though his brain would short circuit. The pleasant cruise had turned to pure nightmare in a flash. A rape, a fight-then a man drowned, and now Bud Reynolds chopped to hamburger by a girl gone mad-
And the nightmare was not over yet.
For now Karen had gone into action. Letting out a terrible howl as she saw Reynolds slump to the deck, mortally wounded, she sprang on Peggy.
"You killed him!" Karen cried.
The two girls came together, bare breasts heaving wildly. Mackell and Sue charged in at the same time, trying to avoid still more carnage. Karen clawed at Peggy's body, trying to push her away from the sprawled-out, mutilated corpse of Bud Reynolds. Karen brought her foot up and landed a savage kick in the pit of Peggy's belly, and Peggy went sprawling backward. She hit the deck buttock-first, and lay there, a thin stream of fluid coming from her mouth as she began to retch and heave.
Wild-eyed, Karen seized the axe, which was still embedded in Reynold's body. As she did so, Reynolds went sliding over the side of the ship and landed with a splash in the dark water.
Karen waved the axe around her head like an avenging Valkyrie. Sweat rolled down her breasts, making them gleam in the moonlight.
She charged.
There was no stopping her, no getting in her way. There was murder in her eye.
"No!" Peggy screamed. "No, Karen! I love you! I love you, Karen!"
The hatchet flashed high in the moonlight.
Then it descended. It landed sickeningly right between Peggy's breasts, and sank in, splitting the breastbone. There it lodged, jutting out from between those two great firm red-tipped mounds of flesh. Peggy howled and thrashed and clawed at the hatchet embedded in her chest. Karen bent, determined to pull it out and take a second chop at the wounded girl.
Mackell finally got to her side. He caught Karen by the arm, tugged her back. The look in Karen's eye was one of pure insanity. She spat at Mackell, clawed at him. Her nails raked his flesh painfully. Sue tried to grapple with her, but Karen elbowed Sue in the left breast and sent her dropping back, sobbing in pain.
"Keep away from me!" Karen roared. "I'm going to chop her to hamburger meat!"
She made another grab at the axe. Mackell pushed her away and got hold of her, and the two of them tumbling heavily to the deck.
Mackell landed on top of her and over her spread legs. It was exactly the position of love, and for an instant, despite the gory horror of the moment, that was what Karen seemed to want. She thrust her naked body up against his, and to his amazement Mackell found himself starting to take her.
This was madness, he thought. To take her now, to make love after all this killing, while Sue stood by thinking God knows what-
But he was trapped by her She lay underneath him, moving her body furiously, insanely, ridding herself of her lusts. In another moment, Mackell realized, this bizarre and twisted union would reach its fulfillment.
No, he thought. It was only an accident that he had landed on top of her, and it was sheer lunacy to be making love after all this. He wrestled himself free of her. She clutched at him in the heat of her passion, desperate for fulfillment.
Mackell glanced over his shoulder at Sue. "I'm holding her. Get some rope. Well tie her up until she's back in her right mind."
"No," Karen cried. "Take me! Take me, damn you!"
Mackell realized that this was one way he might be able to hold her still until Sue could find something to bind her with. Once again he thrust himself to the hot, yawning cavern of her, and began to move.
But Karen was not so easily fooled. She spied Sue returning with strong twine.
"You aren't tying me up!" Karen screamed.
She pushed Mackell off her and scrambled to her feet. She darted away, toward the stern. Mackell ran after her.
"Keep away!" she yelled.
She was heading past the hose, now. But suddenly she slipped on the wet deck and went sliding, sliding wildly. She came to the rail, hit it, and went tumbling over the side, just as Bryce had done.
Karen bobbed to the surface a moment later. Her eyes were blazing with insane fury. "You won't get me!" she cried. "I won't let you tie me up!"
She swung around and began to swim. Shore was only a quarter of a mile away. The fact that she was stark naked and heading for a strange island didn't seem to faze her in the least.
"I'll go get her," Mackell said. "God only knows wham happen if she gets to that island."
He started to dive in after her But suddenly Sue caught his arm and tugged him with all her strength.
"No, Jim! Don't go in!"
"Let go of me! Are you crazy too?"
"No," Sue said harshly. "Look! Look at the water, Jim!"
He stared. A blood-slick had formed around Reynolds' drifting corpse.
And the water thrashed with sudden life. Fins broke the surface everywhere.
The creatures of the sea were coming for their din-Mr.
Sharks! Barracuda!
Hungry, and maddened by blood.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Mackell and Sue watched in horror. Sue said, "There's a rifle down below. Maybe you can kill the sharks and save her."
"Not a chance. There are dozens of them. And they're underwater where I can't aim."
There was nothing they could do but watch.
For a moment, it almost seemed as though Karen was going to make it. She was a powerful swimmer, and in the aftermath of the excitement she was moving at a rapid clip shoreward. She had already covered more than half the distance to the beach, and was in the shallow water now, water she could almost touch bottom in.
And the sharks weren't going after her. They were surrounding the half-submerged body of Bud Reynolds, and were ripping it to shreds with fierce, savage snaps of their jaws. A horde of fins rippled around the spreading blood slick that marked Reynolds' position in the water.
Mackell found himself rooting for Karen to make it safely to shore. Murderess she was, but she was a human being. She deserved to be punished by the law, not ripped to pieces by the teeth of sharks.
She was only about fifty or sixty yards from shore, now, and her pace hadn't slackened. She was half-swimming, half-wading, now, in water no more than five feet deep.
But suddenly she stopped. And screamed.
Mackell narrowed his eyes and tried to see what was happening. There was a thrashing in the water around Karen, and she had her hands down below the surface, as though she were fighting off something that had attacked her unexpectedly.
She lunged forward, tried to swim. Mackell caught sight of a shiny gray shape attached to her-a barracuda, its wicked teeth fastened grimly into the firm flesh of her bare buttocks! Then, a moment later, the barracuda pulled away. Mackell gasped as he saw the bloody crater appear in what had been ripe, sensual flesh.
A fresh trail of blood gushed out over the surface of the water.
It didn't take long for the others to find out about it. The crowd around Reynolds' corpse was finding the pickings lean, and abruptly the entire congregation set out for this second and far more interesting source of meat. In a fraction of an instant, Karen was surrounded by a milling, thrashing horde of sharks and barracuda.
Her screams split the night.
She had turned, and was facing the ship now, and Mackell had one last look at her superb breasts. She was beating at the water, trying to shoo the attackers away as though they were a cloud of mosquitoes. But they had her. Mackell realized that they were probably ripping strips of flesh from her legs even as she stood there, slicing her to the bone while she still lived.
Sue vanished. She ran to the starboard rail and hung over it, retching violently.
But Mackell forced himself to watch to the ghastly end. Slowly, Karen sank beneath the surface and disappeared under the tide of creatures. The last he saw of her was her auburn hair, a dark red against the brighter red of her blood staining the water. Then she was gone, pulled down out of sight, and the killers were quarrelling among themselves for the tattered remnants of her flesh.
Mackell turned away.
"It's over," he said. "They got her. They dragged her under."
Sue lifted her head, wiped vomit from her lips. She was deathly pale, and her eyes held the glassy stare of shock.
"And-and Peggy?"
"I'll see," Mackell said.
He returned to the bow, where Peggy still lay slumped on her back, her legs spread limply, the hatchet protruding from between her rounded breasts. Repressing a shudder, Mackell bent over her. He touched the hatchet tentatively, but was uneasy about pulling it out.
A moment later he realized there was no need to try. Peggy's eyes were wide open, but they saw nothing. Karen's murderous blow had split not only the breastbone but the heart below. Peggy was cold, and growing rigid, and her limbs were mottling where the veins and arteries had ceased to do their work.
Mackell rose.
"It's over," he said quietly. "She's dead too. All of them dead."
"Bud-Joe-Karen-Peggy-"
"All of them," Mackell said. "Every last one."
"It was like a fever," Sue whispered. "A fever of killing. What happened? How did it start?"
"It was Bud and his damned television set. He went in to love Peggy, and had Joe watch. But Peggy didn't come across, so Bud had to rape her, and that got Joe sore. And all the rest-it just happened."
Mackell walked to the port rail. The swirling water was growing quiet again. There were no blood-slicks to be seen, and only a few jutting fins.
A strange calm pervaded the scene. It was as though the wild few minutes of murder had not even happened. Only the staring, sightless corpse of Peggy served as a reminder of what had taken place. Cool moonlight bathed the beach, the water, the yacht of sin and death.
Sue pointed toward shore. "There's a boat coming out," she said.
Mackell nodded. "About time, too. Come on. We'd better get some clothing on before they get here. We can't greet them in the nude."
The boat pulled alongside, a few minutes later. It was just a rowboat, and three colored men hopped out. Two were bare to the waist, but the third wore not only a shirt but a gleaming badge of authority.
"Good evening," he said in the soft, slurred island accents. "I am Sergeant Davis, Tortola police. What has been happening, please?"
Mackell shrugged. "I hardly know where to start. Four people are dead."
"Four people? Oh, my goodness! We hear screams from your ship. We see sharks in the water. Oh, we say, something bad has happened here."
"Something very bad," Mackell said grimly.
"You have radio equipment here?" Sergeant Davis asked. "I call the Police Chief, I think. This is too big for mere sergeant. Show me the radio, please?"
Mackell took the policeman down below, ushered him into the radio room, and went out. He rejoined Sue, who remained on deck. Despite the warmth of the night, Sue was shivering, her teeth chattering. The two other Tortolans had unfurled a tarpaulin and had placed it modestly over Peggy's naked corpse.
A few moments later, Sergeant Davis appeared on deck. "He will be right here, sir. He is taking the motor launch. You and your lady are all right?"
"More or less," Mackell said.
"It was a very terrible thing here, sir. Four dead. Oh, my! Yes, terrible!"
Mackell's only answer was a nod of agreement.
Soon, the sound of a motor launch could be heard, and then it came putt-putting into sight, and pulled up alongside the Merry Mae. This time, it was a white man who came on board, a red-faced man in his fifties, short and weather-beaten and unsmiling.
"I'm Lewis," he said. "Chief of Police." His accent was crisply British. "Would you please tell me what's been taking place out here?"
"There was a fight," Mackell said. "Two good friends had a quarrel and came to blows. One of them was knocked overboard and apparently drowned. Then the girl friend of the drowned man took care of the other one with a hatchet-and his girl friend took care of her-and then started to swim to shore and was caught by the sharks."
"As simple as that?" the police chief snapped. "And you? And this girl here? What part did you play while all this carnage was going on?"
"I was trying to break up the fight," Mackell said. "And then, when the man was knocked overboard, I went down to find him. And came up just in time to see the first hatchet murder. After that there was nothing I could do. Things happened too fast."
"Are you the owner of this yacht?"
Mackell shook his head. "The owner's name was Reynolds. He's down there somewhere. I was just a guest. A cruise passenger."
"American?"
"Yes, sir. All of us. Americans."
"All right, all right." The stocky police chief paced the deck in anguish. It was all too obvious that, while he knew exactly what to do when two of the natives cut each other up in a dispute over a woman, he had never been confronted with a case where outsiders came to the island and murdered each other. Americans, at that. Mackell could almost read the man's mind, could almost hear him thinking, Why couldn't you bloody Americans have done your bloody murdering on the other side of the strait, in your own bloody waters?
But nothing could undo it now.
"All right," the man said. "I'll radio to St. Thomas and we'll get someone from your islands over here at once. I suppose you two can't very well spend what's left of the night on this ship. I'll take you to a hotel on shore. Well have to drag the waters for the bodies in the morning. A very nasty business, sir. A very nasty business indeed. Four dead. All Americans. Very nasty. Very nasty."
The hotel was a very nasty one, too. The Caribbean hotels Mackell was familiar with were all elegant, sybaritic, the last word in comfort and style. Not this place. It was a second-rate hotel even for Tortola, and Tortola was no tourist haven. The hotel was a clapboard box three stories high, with low ceilings, unshielded light bulbs, narrow metal beds, and gaping window frames instead of windows. If you wanted privacy, you could pull down an oilcloth shade, but there was no way to shut out the sounds of the street, or the stifling heat, or the crawling, flying, and creeping insects that invaded the rooms in waves.
Because it was a British island, and because the hotel management seemed very, very proper, Mackell and Sue were given separate rooms as soon as it was learned that they were not man and wife. Mackell thought of protesting, but decided against it. He had no wish to start a quarrel here, or to brand himself and Sue as sinful individuals.
After all, he realized, he and she were probably quietly being regarded as murder suspects by the Tortolan police authorities.
It was an impression that was bolstered when he got to his room. He left it to go the John-there was only one on each floor-and noted that a member of the local police was lounging in the corridor.
The man smiled at him. "Good evening, sir."
"Hello," Mackell said, and realized that he was being kept under guard. Sue was on another floor, even though the hotel had few guests, and probably she had her own guard as well.
Mackell slept badly. Scenes of death and carnage kept running through his mind, and there was the sticky heat to cope with, and the insects, real and imaginary, that he felt crawling across his naked body as he rolled in bed. He wished he had Sue by his side, to reach out, to grasp, to hold tight and comfort. But they had put Sue somewhere else. A right proper island, this was.
In the morning, the police chief was there to greet them, and to lead them from the ramshackle hotel to an almost equally ramshackle police station. Mackell was gaunt and drawn, and Sue looked even worse.
Police Chief Lewis said, "We dragged the bay at dawn and found three bodies. If you'd care to identify them, please-just the gentleman will do, thank you-"
They led Mackell into an inner room. The four bodies lay there, Peggy's and the three that had been recovered from the sea.
"Not pretty, are they?" Lewis asked.
Mackell had to fight to keep from vomiting. He had seen death before, but never as grisly as this.
"Would you give me their names, please?"
Mackell pointed to the one body that still had flesh on its bones. "That's Peggy Woods," he said. He stared at the thing next to her-a torso, with one leg attached. The torso of a massive, powerful man. The bones had been picked clean, and there was the mark of a hatchet-cut in the skull.
"Bud Reynolds," Mackell said. "He was the owner of the yacht." He fought back nausea and walked on, to the smaller skeleton, also incomplete. The sharks had carried off whole limbs, bones and all, leaving the smaller fish to pick away the flesh. "This one's Joe Bryce," Mackell said. "The one who drowned. And this-"
It was agony to look at Karen. They had left her face, or part of it-the cheeks, the eyes, the lips were mostly there, and her shoulders, and one breast. Below that was nothing but bone. Mackell remembered the night on the beach, remembered embracing the soft flesh, stroking those satiny flanks-
He spun away, losing his breakfast. Lewis was prepared, and held out a wastebasket. Mackell buried his face in it. A long moment later, he lifted his head.
"Her name was Karen Lyons," he said in a faint murmur.
It was a busy afternoon, perhaps the busiest that the sleepy island had known in many years. Someone from the St Thomas police flew over, and the Governor of the American Virgin Islands sent a representative, and every newspaperman in the Caribbean seemed to be on the scene. Mackell and Sue went through their story again and again, while newsmen jotted it down, television cameras rolled, grim-faced authorities listened for inconsistencies.
Finally, it was all over. Their story was accepted at face value, and the inquest was ended. Mackell spoke by phone with Bud Reynolds' lawyer, who said he was flying down later that day to take possession of the yacht and to claim the bodies. All arrangements would be out of Mackell's hands from that point on.
"What do we do now?" Sue said. "Are we just stranded here, or what?"
"The Virgin Islands authorities will fly us back to San Juan," Mackell said. "After that we're on our own. We can go back to New York tonight, if there's room on one of the jets."
"But we've only been away a few days."
"You want to stay down here any longer?"
"I don't want to go back yet," Sue said. "It'll take me some time-to forget what happened-to get back to normal living-"
"Let me talk to these people a moment," Mackell said. "Maybe I can arrange something."
Something could be arranged, and was. Mackell explained how, under the shocking circumstances, neither of them felt quite ready to return to the stresses of civilization just yet.
The authorities understood, and knew what to do. By late afternoon that day, Mackell and Sue were installed in a small but comfortable hotel on Virgin Gorda, one of the outermost and least visited of the British Virgin Islands. There, they would have seclusion and tranquility until they were ready to return.
There was none of the separate-room business there, either. They asked for and got a double room, and unpacked, and held each other tightly.
"I feel like it's been a nightmare, Jim."
"It has been. But it's all over now."
"Two nightmares," Sue said. "First a nightmare of sex-of sin. Filthy things. And then the nightmare of murder. I don't know which was worse."
"Let's try to forget."
"No," she said. "I'll never forget. We both did some terrible things aboard that yacht. And if what happened hadn't happened, we would have done worse. I would have slept with Karen, probably. And who knows what else-"
"It's over," he said firmly. He drew her to him. Her nakedness was warm and firm against his. It was good to have privacy at last, not to have to share Sue's long-limbed sleek nudity with other people. There was no question, tonight, about whom he'd be sleeping with, no business of changing partners, of seeking sin.
"Jim?"
"Mmm?"
"You know what? Today's my birthday. I'm 25 today, Jim."
"Well see if the hotel has some champagne," he said. He cupped his hands lightly over the full, firm spheres of her breasts. The memory of Karen's breasts drifted through his brain Shark-food now. He thought of Peggy's breasts. With a hatchet between them.
"Sue?"
"Mmm?"
"Know what?"
"What?"
"I think I love you, Sue."
"I know I love you," she said. "You know what else?"
"What?"
"I don't want to share you any more," he said. "I don't want to be generous. I don't want other men to be able to hold what I'm holding now."
Her hand slipped down his body. "And I don't want other girls to get hold of this, either."
"Maybe we can make some sort of deal," Mackell suggested.
"Maybe. I'm sure we can."
"So am I."
He held her close. The strains and agonies of the night before began to slip away. They edged toward the bed, and then they were no longer edging but running, and they landed together, joyfully, and their bodies came together, happily, and in a sudden thrusting embrace they celebrated Sue's birthday and the performance of their love, and they knew that what had gone before was only a shadow, that the reality was just beginning.
