Dick, aroused by the gently insistent pressure of Beverly's leg against him, reflected on the kind of people he was suddenly a part of. He had read reports that they actually existed but imagined such people were few and far between.
Dick was very nervous, but the thought that he had become a part of the sexual underground made him deliriously happy, as though he were finally to shed all the frustrations of his lacklustre sex life with his wife.
He looked at Paula. She was a very sexy woman. He wondered if he would enjoy her this weekend. She had indicated that she wanted to have intercourse with him. But so had Beverly. Then there was Linda. And what about Jana whose insatiable capacities were fabled within, the group? Her hand had reached across Dick's leg when they sat at the dinner table the weekend before. There were no doubts about what she was trying to tell him.
CHAPTER ONE
The small, lavishly contemporary apartment had been the scene of so many evenings of fun and good talks and pleasure that tonight it was hard for him to recognize how bad the situation had suddenly become. He was alone in the living room, smoking a cigarette and holding his glass of red wine, waiting for Jean to come back in from the bedroom, where she had disappeared, saying she had something to show him.
She'd been so cool and casual-but with the invisible wall up around her, the wall that only a lover could detect because there had been no walls for so long. Dick tried to understand it.
He could see his own reflection in the mirror on a cabinet in the tiny kitchen, where a little while before Jean had chilled the wine and quite casually given him his first real hint. Seeing the look of shock on his face increased his amazement.
The man seated on the couch was tall and slender, graying, good-looking, dressed in a pale summer suit. His features were even, only the eyes showed signs of the chaos inside.
It was over. She was really telling him it was over.
There was a sound from the bedroom doorway. He looked up, apprehensive but remembering the times Jean had come through this door to his arms, sleek and agile and nakedly eager.
This time was different-but it wasn't a bad shock.
Jean Clossen was a small, electric brunette, her dark hair hung straight to her shoulders. She walked with the grace of the model she was. She stood little over five feet tall but the way she carried herself made her seem taller. In the sports clothes she often modeled, she looked elfin and boyish.
Smiling shyly for his approval, she paused in the doorway before walking in. She wore a very short sundress, yellow, without sleeves. The top of the dress was a brocade or knit of some sort, the skirt flared over her fine, rounded hips and stopping at the midpoint of her firm thighs. She wore no jewelry-she'd never needed it. The dark beauty of her face, lighted by her great, hungry brown eyes, was all the adornment any woman could want.
"Do you like it?" she asked softly.
Dick was flustered. After what she'd said before, why the style show? "Yes," he admitted, throat hurting at her beauty.
She came .nearer, and as she did, Dick was startled.
The top of the dress was not knit or brocade-it was a sort of fine open-work crocheting, and through the fabric's irregular holes he could clearly see the dark brown of her torso and, as she moved, the place where her marvelous breasts became milky white from the bikini she wore at the beach. There was nothing at all underneath the dress.
She sat down beside him, putting one leg beneath her. As she did so, the movement brought a brazen brown nipple to one of the holes in the dress.
Dick's throat went dry and he was assailed by conflicting emotions: sheer pleasure and desire on the one hand, and stark terror that she would wear the dress where any other man could see her this way.
"I modeled this today," Jean said softly, "and I just loved it so much, I had to buy it myself."
Dick looked at her longingly. The thought of losing her-of anyone else beholding her this way-was incredibly painful. Yet his desire for her, too, was mounting wildly.
"You do like it," Jean said, smiling with pleasure.
"Where are you going to-I mean-what sort of thing would you wear a dress like that to?"
Jean lighted a cigarette and inhaled deeply. "Of course, at the show today I had to wear a body stocking. But when I wear it for my own pleasure, I'll wear it like this."
"Oh, Jean, you can't!"
"I bought a sun lamp today, too," she said blithely. "The effect will be better when the rest of my breasts are tanned."
She was doing it deliberately, he thought, taunting him-or perhaps she really had lost all feeling where he was concerned. Driven, he had to say what was on his mind.
"Jean," he groaned, "I don't know where you could wear it!"
"I would have to pick the situation carefully, I admit," she smiled. Then her perfect lips curled in pleasurable anticipation. "An intimate party. Just very good friends."
"I can't imagine a party where it would be appropriate! God, I know that must make me sound like a prig, but-"
"I'll find an occasion," she said.
Images of her with other men in this dress came into his mind. He knew what the sight of her in it would do to any normal man, and at the same time he yearned for her, he felt bleak despair crashing ever higher.
"Please don't wear it," he said. Then, more firmly, "I just have to forbid you to wear it with anyone but me."
Her eyes widened, and the wall of her control was up again. "Don't you understand what I've already told you this evening, dear? I don't belong to you. I never did."
"But I love you!" he groaned. "You've said you love me-"
Impulsively, and with real emotion, her hand reached out and covered his clenched fist. "I wish you could understand," she said.
"I'm trying, but Jesus-I thought we had an understanding. I love you like I've never loved anyone else. You've become my whole life, Jean. You're in my thoughts all the time-"
"But I'm a mistress," she said. Then, seeing he was about to protest, she repeated it more firmly. "A mistress. You have a wife and two children. I'm only your hidden source of pleasure."
"No-"
"You may really love me," she went on, tightly controlling her voice and expression. "I love you, too. But I can't go on being a hidden source of pleasure. I don't wear the scarlet letter very well, darling."
"I'll get a divorce," Dick said desperately.
"You've had time," she replied coolly. "You'll never leave your wife and children. You want us both-the best of both worlds. You can't have that any more. I simply can't go on being hidden this way, never really belonging to you, and you never really belonging to me. I'm not built that way. I've got to have my freedom now. We have to end this."
"We can't," Dick said huskily.
"But it's done."
"But when I want you this much, how can I end it? And you want me, too. Now. You want me. I know you well enough."
He paused, and before she could protest, slipped his hand down to fondle her breast. She moaned and threw her head back with pleasure.
He said triumphantly, "You can't stop seeing me. You need me as badly as I need you."
Angrily she jumped to her feet, pulling away from him. "Dick, please leave. Right now."
He reached for her and caught at her firm thigh and tried to slide his palm toward the moist cleft nestled between her legs. But she moved back, as she had never moved back before.
"I'm going to have you tonight," he said angrily.
Eyes cold, she reached behind her back, and with a quick movement, unfastened the dress. It fell to her ankles, and she stood before him magnificently nude, her brown, firm legs swelling to ample thighs, the white band of her bikini shading starkly contrasted with the dense blackness of her triangle, her belly flat and nipped in, the swell of breasts and the perfection of her face.
She said with absolutely no feeling. "I'll go to bed with you this one last time, if you force me."
He was speechless at the sight of her.
"But," she added quietly, "I can control my feelings. I've made my decision. You can have me, but it won't be making love now. It will only be fucking," she said brutally.
"Isn't there anything I can say?" he pleaded, despising himself for his weakness, but driven.
"In the name of God, Dick, let's just end it! It's all going to be ugly now. I've made my decision. I can't be a mistress any more."
"I'll get a divorce," he repeated.
"It makes no difference," she said sadly.
"What do you mean?"
"We've gone on too long like this," she replied. "My love has-I don't know how to say it eroded. You're so much weaker than I am, Dick, in some ways. I would have given you everything I have to give, and the moon and the stars. But you kept me only as a bedtime girl. I want marriage and children of my own. Right now, I think, I have to have freedom, time to heal-time to play and have a good time and think. But later I want those other things. You'll never give them to me. If you were to divorce your wife tomorrow, it would be too late. Our affair is over. We can't go back again."
"You'll change your mind," he said, trying to believe it. "After our love, you wouldn't want to sleep with another man. It wouldn't mean anything, any more than my sleeping with another woman would-"
"You're wrong," she interrupted softly.
He stared at her, the awful truth trying to break through his defenses.
"I don't know what you're saying, Jean-"
"I had to know about that," she said. "I thought you might be right-that I really might be your slave. I had to know if I could make it with another man."
She paused, then added, "I found out last night."
"Oh, Christ, no!"
"He was here," she said coolly, her face averted. "You were with your wife and children, of course. It wasn't my night. But he was here. He wanted me. I knew that. So I made it clear to him that he could have me. We went to bed-"
Dick's wine glass spilled over. "I don't want to hear anymore!"
"He was big and hard and lovely," she said, her voice cruel. "He was almost as big as you are. Not as expert, but he knew tricks. I thought I couldn't do anything, but he kept hammering it up into me, and it was all right."
She looked down at him, her eyes bright. "I came. I came with him twice. And it was very, very good."
He had no sensation when he hit her. But there was the release, the outraged burst of rage and frustration and shock, and he hit her in the face and she flew backwards, hitting a chair and sprawling against the wall before hitting the floor.
He caught only a sight of the blood on her mouth and her shocked, staggered expression, before he had turned and rushed out of the apartment.
He took the stairs to the ground level two at a time, and only vaguely knew it as he ran through the garden.
He skirted the pool, and got to the parking lot. He found his car, and left.
It was something he could never get over. .He never realized until now how she had grown deeply into the fabric of his life, he cried.
Why had he waited? What feelings of devotion and duty had kept him with Fran and the kids, wrestling with this moral choice-wanting desperately to stay with them and take full pleasure from them, yet driven to go back to Jean again and again, to the sheer pleasure and ecstasy of her arms?
He drove wildly, wanting to die, but knowing with bitterness that he lacked even the self-control to steer the Corvette into a bridge abutment.
There was a light on in the living room of his house when he drove into the driveway. This was surprising, because he had told Fran he had to work the extra shift at the airport control tower, and he would not normally be expected before 4 a.m. Fran never waited up when he was working late.
By now, however, Dick had managed to pull himself together. He felt dead inside. But the tears were choked back, the turmoil controlled. He had to go into the house and smile and act normal. He had his story ready about an extra controller reporting early from Coastal Airport, so he could come on home. He had to play this game well, he told himself.
And now, with the first moments of shock passed, he was trying to reorganize. As he parked the car in the garage beside his wife's little Austin America, he told himself he had everything a man could want. He had been right to delay, his impulses toward duty and fidelity had not been wrong. Now he had been freed of his conflict. He knew Jean had really meant it, had actually already slept with another man. He felt as if part of his guts had been torn out by a giant fish-hook.
He would go into the house and begin anew. He would never have another affair. He would make this marriage work somehow. He thought of his friend, Ted Reeder, who was a clinical psychologist. He would start seeing Ted as a patient. He'd work all this out. Somehow he would work it out.
Quietly, Dick went into the house through the kitchen. The house was still, and he thought for a moment that Fran had forgotten to turn out one of the living room lights.
As he started around the corner into the living room, however, he caught the heavy cigarette smoke, and knew he was wrong.
Fran sat stiffly in a corner chair near the piano. She was in her pajamas and robe. Her long blonde hair was tied up, and she wore no makeup. She was smoking a cigarette and snapping it to remove ashes against a large ceramic tray already jammed with butts. Her face was pinched, rigidly controlled. Dick knew the signs, and his mental alarm system went off strongly-trouble.
He walked in and sat beside her. He smiled, trying to act casual.
"Hi," he said. "Waiting up for me?"
Fran's fine-boned face was ashen, and her blue eyes snapped with rage. "Are you still going to pretend you were at work?"
Dick's insides sank further. "Of course I was at work!"
"I've suspected for a long time," she said.
"Suspected what?" he asked, still desperately playing the game.
"The other day," Fran said bitterly, "I hired a private detective."
"Why?" Even as he realized that the jig was up, he was forced to continue acting.
"Don't ask me why!" she flashed, all the anger surfacing. Her voice trembled. "He called me a while ago with his report. Do you want me to read you the notes I took over the telephone? I know her name, address and the apartment number. I know from the landlord that you're a regular caller."
"Fran," Dick stammered, "I don't know what you're talking about-"
"God damn you! I'm talking about that little whore you've been seeing every night you were supposed to be working! Jean Clossen! I know all of it!"
Dick began to sense the irony of it that Fran should find out on the night when it ended and when nothing happened.
"Look," he said huskily, trying to take his wife's hands, which she quickly pulled away. "Look," he repeated. "I've been-I did see her for a while. But tonight was-the last time."
"Do you think I'm a fool?" Fran flashed.
"But it's true!"
"Was it true when you said you had to go to Chicago for a conference? Was it true when you said you had to work two nights last week and two the week before? Was it true when you packed me and the children off to the beach, and said you were too tired to go-you were going to stay right here and sleep through the weekend?" Fran shed tears that hurt him more than anything that had yet happened. "I called that weekend, again and again, because I just wanted you to know we were having fun at the beach, but we missed you. You never answered. You were never here. You were with her all the time!"
"I could have explained that," Dick said lamely. "I had to go to-"
"I never asked," his wife cut in. She was shaking badly now. "I wanted to trust you. I never wanted to think my husband would cheat and lie and do these things!"
"Fran," Dick said thickly, "I've done a lot of bad things, but please listen to me! It is over now! Let me try to make it up to you-"
"I'm seeing a lawyer in the morning," Fran said icily.
The words hit him in the gut. "You can't."
"I'm going to see a lawyer in the morning. I'm filing for divorce."
"Fran, we have to talk about this!"
"There's nothing to discuss! Not now, not ever! It would just be more of your lies!"
"Fran-"
"I want you out of here," she said curtly. "Tonight."
"But if we'd talk-"
"I don't want to hear anything you have to say. Just get out!"
Staring at her, and seeing the tears splashing down her face, Dick wanted to argue, to try to take her in his arms, try to work it out. But something in him hardened.
If everything had been right in their marriage, he would never have slept with Jean. And now, faced with the renewed ugliness of all this pain, all this rejection, he could no longer beg.
A sense of utter defeat washed through him.
"I'll pack some things," he said woodenly.
Fifteen minutes later, he was back in the car, and driving away from the house and everything he held dear. But he knew that this ending, like the earlier one this same fantastic night, would not be changed.
He had lost both of them, and now he was totally alone.
CHAPTER TWO
Mid-atlantic International Airport had grown steadily through" the twelve years Dick Stone had been in the Air Traffic Control department, until now its busy days rivaled the traffic problems of larger centers farther north. Today was one of the really bad ones, with a steady flow of traffic from all points.
At the data control board and ten-mile radar display in the dimly lighted electronics studio just below the level of the glassed-in control tower top, Dick and a dozen other men were working at top speed, with the kind of grim efficiency that comes only from long experience and the drive of great pressure. Dick's position was in the center of the room, on a slightly raised circular mat. He and another contoller, Dave Jenkins, were controlling the "stack"-planes being held in patterns awaiting their turn to land-by radar and the plotting board. On either side of them, two other controllers handled telephone-radio data from neighboring ATC centers. Spread along the circular walls of the room were technicians monitoring five-mile radarscopes and plot boards, using their headsets to be in constant two-way communication with planes in the air and the tower operators upstairs. Other men worked data boards showing priorities with interchangable plastic cards. Radar screens glowed greenish white, voices spoke in clipped monotones, computer units clattered softly in a corner. The men moved from position to position in the lower tier below the spot where Dick and Jenkins were working, but he and Jenkins were far too busy to help any of the other badly overworked controllers. The ten-mile radar was alive with blips as jet aircraft circled and wheeled, awaiting their turn.
Reeves, the senior supervisor, stepped up onto the platform beside Dick. Reeves was a tall man, about fifty, angular and still handsome in a hawkish way despite the deep lines of perpetual tension on his face.
"Problems?" he asked.
"Nothing you can't see," Dick said curtly. "Hold it." He put a plastic marker on the larger radarscope and thumbed his microphone button. "TransWorld Two-oh-one, this is International tower. Begin execution of continuing ninety-degree turns in your assigned sector and descend to eight thousand on my mark. Mark."
The voice crackled in his headset, "TransWorld two-zero-one to International tower, roger, continuing turns and descent to eight thousand."
Next to Dick, Jenkins talked to a Continental 727 and ordered it on a wide sweep out over the bay, descending two thousand feet. The blips began to swim across the screen as the aircraft jockeyed into new positions. Dick swiftly assigned new vectors and altitude hold patterns to an Eastern 707, a Delta, a Braniff Convair and an American fanjet that had been diverted from Idlewild and needed swift handling because of fuel problems.
The speaker box from one of the lower level controllers said calmly, "Console, we have a pass from Atlanta control on an Eastern flight, two-two-thousand feet, projected arrival for stacking fifteen minutes."
"Rog," Dick muttered, watching Jenkins make the mark on the display board.
The tower shook slightly as the muted roar of a big jet taking off penetrated the dim quiet.
"That's seven, I think, still awaiting takeoff," Dick told Reeves without removing his eyes from the display or radar. "We've got six more incoming and eleven planes in the stack. With the Atlanta handover and the Miami flight-assuming they don't get hijacked to Cuba, which I almost wish they would today-we're piled in as deep as we can go."
"You're tense today," Reeves said, watching Dick closely with those keen, vigilant eyes.
"I'd better be," Dick snapped. Then he thumbed his mike. "Braniff flight forty at four thousand and on final approach, tower. You should have him visually."
"Roger," the voice of a controller upstairs sang back.
Dick automatically began calling out new instructions to two planes just edging into the top of the gigantic, whirling waffle of circling aircraft thirty thousand feet into the sky.
He was working at top pressure, and he felt very much on edge, almost angry. Two days ago had been the ghastly scenes with both Jean and Fran. Yesterday, Fran had seen her lawyer, and he had already been informed that she was to file as soon as the papers could be drawn up. He was tight as a watch spring.
The small apartment he had located was adequate. Last night it had been like a tomb, and his nerves had finally driven him to do something he had never done before a work-day-taken several drinks to try to relax and make sleep possible.
Now it was past noon, five hours into his shift, and the panic was on. He felt bitter resentment at this kind of pressure. A man going through so much should not be required to face a day like this, he thought, knowing as he thought it that it was a crazy thought, and resenting that.
Jenkins moved several aircraft into new circular flight patterns, the TWA landed, and two other jets got airborne, headed into great circles out over the ocean first, into sector Alpha where they would climb to altitude before wheeling to head for their destinations. Dick ordered a private jet to divert to Henderson Field, fifty miles away, and watched the computer print out some new incoming flight plans.
Two blips on the screen were almost too close together. "American Flight Sixteen," Dick snapped "Correct altitude to fourteen thousand and execute one-seventy degree turn into Sector Bravo."
The pilot crisply repeated the order and began to execute it.
Having averted a possible crisis in this sector, Dick now saw quickly that the new trajectory of the plane would take it within a minute or two into the airspace allocation for a Continental flight. A United outgoing was wheeling through on the north side. Dick thought of Jean, standing nude before him, and the terrible hunger came up in his throat as he spoke into the microphone. "Sixteen, upon completion of maneuver, begin descent to nine thousand and proceed on course heading four-two-zero into left quadrant, Sector Alpha."
The blips wheeled and maneuvered. Jenkins ordered planes smoothly. Dick watched the results of his own orders. His head throbbed. Jean, he thought. Oh, God, he wanted her right now, but she was gone ... Fran was suing for divorce. He was alone. His own inability to make decisions had caused everything--
Suddenly Reeves was at his side, saying sharply, "You've got an inbound at nine thousand going into Alpha, and an outbound coming up from six in the same sector."
Dick's nerves clangored attention. "Sixteen," he intoned over the radio, correct bearing to four-two-six degrees."
"Four-two-six," the pilot radioed back.
The two blips moved nearer on the screen, and then the one on the left veered off slightly and they began to diverge.
"Why," Reeves demanded, his face suddenly shiny with sweat, "did you divert an outbound in Alpha? That's not like you, Dick!"
"They missed by eight hundred yards horizontally and over a thousand feet vertically," Dick snapped back.
"You could have diverted sixteen into Y sector."
A quick glance at the display showed that Reeves was right. Dick felt momentarily shaken. He replied solidly, however, "There was never any danger."
Reeves looked at him hard. "Let me relieve you for a few minutes. Go have a cup."
"I'm fine."
"You're relieved for thirty minutes, Dick," Reeves said firmly.
Dick shrugged and handed over the headset. Before he even left the platform, Reeves was jockeying aircraft and wholly buried in his work.
Going down the circular metal stairs toward the lower levels of the terminal, Dick felt a little of his immediate tension slip away. But, paradoxically, the tension of his general situation seemed to become more unbearable. Had he, he wondered, made a serious error up there just now?
The fact that he was not sure, either way, tended to demonstrate that he was not functioning quite as he should.
More worried than ever, he went on down the stairs and came out on the tiered upper deck of the terminal. Below, thousands of passengers swarmed along the spacious tiled corridors and ramps of the airport. Neon tubing glowed, passenger calls went out over the PA system. Outside, beyond the huge glass walls, it was steamy and hot, and far off on the horizon could be seen the great city. But here it was cool, unreal. Airports, Dick thought, removed their passengers from the real world well before they placed them on aircraft. The people below looked adrift, lost.
He descended an escalator and headed for the medium level restaurant.
"Hey, stranger!" a bright feminine voice hailed him as he neared the entrance of the darkly lighted airport coffee shop.
He turned to see Beverly Davis, one of the cute young counter girls for a major airline. Dick had met Beverly at airport coffee breaks from time to time, and once had taken her to lunch on the spur of the moment. She was a bright, leggy blonde, and well equipped with a fine set of breasts. Her blue and white uniform tended to idealize, rather than mask, her sexuality. She was about twenty-two, and Dick remembered that he might have been interested that time at lunch, if he had not been so much in love with Jean....
"Hello yourself," he said, grinning with real pleasure.
Beverly stepped up pertly beside him. "Buy a poor girl a cup of coffee?"
"Great."
They went into the shop, got coffee in the cafeteria line, and took the cups to a corner table. Dick slid in behind the round table because of the awkward way of entry and the added encumberment of the long, draped linen tablecloth that went nearly to the floor. He expected Beverly to use the chair facing him, and was mildly surprised when she slid around the table and sat rather close to him.
"I haven't seen much of you," she said brightly. "I've been busy," Dick smiled. "You look tired, Dick."
"I am, a little."
Beverly's little-girl face was quiet and wise. "You and your girl called it quits."
"Girl?" Dick echoed as if not understanding.
"A person can tell," Beverly said. Her remarkable hazel eyes were calm upon his face. "Otherwise, you would have made a pass that day we went out to lunch."
"I was tempted."
"I know you were. A girl can tell that, too. You didn't. I know how things are with you and your wife. I've seen you together. Ergo, there was a girl."
Dick accepted it, refusing to speculate upon the wisdom of this lovely girl who seemed so wise beyond her years. "It's over, anyway."
"And back to momma?" Beverly asked flippantly.
"I'm in the middle of a divorce."
"I'm sorry, Dick." She said it genuinely.
Suddenly Dick found himself telling this girl about it. He didn't take long, but he let it pour out-the pain of the breakup with Jean, the shock of the divorce.
"So now here I am," he concluded. "You'd better watch out, because if I make a pass today, it's for real."
Beverly's eyes crinkled with a warm smile. "I'm not running."
Dick felt a pulse of interest, his first feeling of being alive in forty-eight hours.
Beverly reverted to seriousness. "Like a sidewalk analysis?"
On impulse, Dick grinned and moved his leg closer to her. Her calf and thigh were very close and his leg rubbed against hers. He moved up and down once. "Why not?"
Putting her hand beneath the table, she rested it on his thigh and pushed him slightly away, not quite breaking contact. "Stop that, you wolf. I'm trying to be serious."
"So am I."
"Maybe you are, but you'll just get me all hot, and we can't go anywhere now to do anything about it. So stop." She left her hand on his thigh.
"All right," Dick said reluctantly.
"How long have you been married?" Beverly asked.
"Almost twenty years." Dick felt sad.
"You married too young," she said soberly. "You never had much time for playing, or what they call swinging today. You married, you had children-how many?"
"Two."
"Two," she repeated. "And responsibilities. So you hung onto the straight and narrow, and then along came what's her name."
"Jean."
"Jean," Beverly accepted. "Now you've messed up your life, you think. Let me tell you something, Mister Gloom and Despair. Your job now is to stop worrying and start trying to get over it! I know that sounds impossible now, but it's what you have to do."
"With you?" Dick asked, with interest.
"Maybe," Beverly said flippantly. "But you mustn't get into one of these exclusive hangups right now, don't you see? You've just been in that bag. You need to have fun-have lots of girls-really swing, for once."
"I'm sure," Dick said, "there are a million places I can start. I mean, it's real easy for a divorced old man of forty to find a big group of swingers."
Beverly looked at him thoughtfully, as if trying to decide something.
"What?" Dick asked finally.
"There's a group of people who work right here at the airport who swing," she said.
"Well, I suppose there is, but-"
"This is a damned unusual group, Dick. Some of us fly to a little island not far in the Gulf about every other weekend. A dozen couples, sometimes, sometimes more. It's wild. And it's a lot of fun, and completely safe, because the man who owns the place-" She paused, putting her pretty pink lips together firmly. "Well, I shouldn't say more now. I think these people, most of whom you already know, would love to have you join us."
Dick stared at her, amazed. "You think so?"
"Yes."
"Is this a joke?"
"It is not!"
"An island, you say?"
Her fingers lightly squeezed his thigh and she beamed. "You're interested?"
"Yes." He thought about it. "Maybe-maybe that is what I need." The idea was so new, so fantastic, that he was willing to grasp at it eagerly.
"Well, then," Beverly suggested, "why don't I talk to my friends? I can let you know in a day or two."
"What goes on out there?" Dick asked. Her hand on his thigh, and the topic of conversation, had begun to excite him. He felt stirring between his legs. It was the first really pleasant sensation he had felt for a while. He thought recklessly, maybe I can be fine. Maybe I can damned, well show everybody, and get control of my nerves to boot.
"What goes on out there?" Beverly was repeating his query. Her eyes brightened mischievously. "Everything and anything!"
"Maybe," Dick suggested, "we could get together tonight and you could show me."
She looked genuinely dismayed. "I've got another date. Sorry."
"Tomorrow night?"
"I'm on the late shift."
Dick accepted it gracefully. "I'll have to wait, then, even though I'd rather not."
"Are you really horny?" she asked easily. He looked at her.
Under the table, and completely masked from view by the long tablecloth, her hand slid along his leg to its juncture. Her fingers slipped up over the straining bulge in his pants, and then closed around it.
"Oh, my," she murmured softly. "You're a big one, aren't you."
"And horny."
Before he knew what was happening, she had unzipped his fly and her cool fingers had snaked inside to draw him entirely out. Shocked and overwhelmed by a welter of conflicting fears and sensations of pleasure, he almost spilled his coffee.
"For Christ's sake, Beverly-"
"Just sit still," she Shushed him.
"But you can't-"
"Hush." As she spoke, her fingers expertly pulled his flesh back and forth. Sensations of sheer pleasure went through Dick's body. He almost groaned aloud.
Beverly, smiling innocently as if they were talking about the weather or the price of haircuts, began sliding her fingertips around the now-slippery knob of his sex.
""Do you come fast?" she asked softly.
"Well, Jesus, I've never come in a cafeteria before!"
She laughed delightedly. "If it were a little darker, I bet I could make you in thirty seconds. But I guess," she said, glancing around the crowded room, "I'd really better not put my mouth down there."
"Listen," Dick sweated, "if you don't stop right now-"
She pulled him again, her fingers slipping, and then began to pump. She used only her wrist, and for all anyone could see, her hand was in her lap.
For Dick, it was something else. Surprise and the intense pleasure washed over him. She was good at this-hell, she was so expert he hated to think how she had learned so well-and he already began to feel the first pulsing, twitching throbs of sheer joy.
"Stop now," he hissed, "or-"
With her free hand, she blithely handed him a napkin. "Use this, love."
With that, she increased the pressure. Her leg pressed against his, and she watched him, and he could tell she knew that he was very near.
"Now," she said, and twisted. She pulled the hardest tug yet.
He began instantly, feeling the hot surge begin deep inside him, and then it was now! She breathed a little sigh as she felt it spurt through the length of him, and held him back fully to give him maximum, aching pleasure.
He seemed to come endlessly. He awkwardly folded the napkin under the table, while at the same time she deftly tucked everything away again and zipped him.
"Now that," she purred, "is a nice coffeebreak, isn't it?"
"You're crazy," Dick gasped.
"You'd better put that napkin in your pocket and dispose of it somewhere," she giggled. "The busboy may not be ready for the shock."
"Listen," Dick said. "I've got to see you soon."
She finished her coffee as if nothing had happened. "I'll see my friends tomorrow. If it's all right, and I know it will be, we can have all the play we can handle on the island next weekend. How about that?"
Then, before Dick could reply, she got to her feet, smiled at him again, and walked briskly out of the cafeteria.
Stunned and unable to evaluate precisely what had happened, Dick paid the check and headed for the rest-room. It was almost time for his break to end. He knew certainly that he would operate better the rest of this afternoon, no matter what tremendous problems still hung over his aching head.
Now, at least, he had something real he could look forward to. He had already made a decision about a couple of things. Beverly was right; the only way to forget was to change his life, and the quicker the better.
As he headed back to the tower, he found himself already speculating on who the others in the group might be, and whether they would accept him as readily as Beverly expected. He hoped so. He was determined, now, that he was going to go the whole route with them, starting, if possible, next weekend.
CHAPTER THREE
"It's a damned nice apartment," Ted Reeder said, completing his brief tour of inspection. "You were lucky to find it, Dick."
Dick smiled ruefully and handed his friend a martini. They sat facing each other across the coffee table.
"Is that," Dick asked, "your opinion as an observer of the real estate situation or a professional size-up?"
Ted Reeder, a youthful looking man despite a receding hairline, frowned and put his martini on the table. "Dick, you know very well that I don't visit friends to work."
"I doubt that," Dick replied. "You couldn't help making observations, drawing conclusions. You meet people in psychotherapy all day. Do you expect me to believe you can. simply turn off your critical facilities when you turn out the office light at night?"
"Nevertheless, I can," Reeder said.
"You haven't formed opinions about me and the breakdown of my marriage?" Dick demanded.
"What are you so angry about, Dick?"
"Is that the kind of question you ask in therapy?"
Reeder sighed and leaned back. "You're really uptight and spoiling for a fight, aren't you?"
"There," Dick said, not knowing why he was so on edge. "The first clinical diagnosis. Thanks."
"Let's change the subject," his friend suggested.
"Does it make you uneasy that I see your analytical procedures? Aren't they supposed to show?"
"Now look," Reeder said, his face betraying mild anger. "You asked me over to see your new place. I was glad to come. We've been friends a long time. But if you're looking for a whipping boy, count me out! I get paid good prices per hour to help people with their problems during the day. I'm here as a friend. And I'm not fighting."
"Sorry," Dick said, suddenly contrite. "I'm uptight, all right."
"It's a nice apartment," Reeder said. "You've moved your things out of that house. Some of the worst is over. You'll calm down."
"I don't know," Dick said. Suddenly, there were tears in his eyes.
"Take it easy," Reeder said quietly.
"I was nineteen when we got married," Dick said. "She was a year younger. People said that was too early. But we were so sure. We knew we could plan everything just right. I finished school; she worked; we waited to start our family. I got into air traffic control in the Air Force, and moved into the civilian end of it after discharge. It paid well. I knew everything would work out.
"I kept my nose to the grindstone," Dick went on, driven to talk about it. "We got the furniture, traded up on houses. I thought everything was all right."
"Look," Reeder broke in with sincere concern. "Have you really tried for a reconciliation?"
"It's out of the question. She's filed."
"I know that. But there has to be a session with the judge, at least. The law provides for that in this state. If you say you want to try, he might order several sessions for both of you together with a good counselor-"
"No," Dick cut in angrily. "It's finished."
"Do you want it to be finished?"
"Yes."
"Are you telling me the truth?"
"Yes," Dick said. "I can't go back there again. I wish I could, but it's impossible."
"Will you marry the other girl when you're free?" Reeder asked.
"You know about that?" Dick asked, surprised.
"I don't know who she is. I know there is someone."
"You've talked with Fran," Dick concluded bitterly.
"I'm your friend," Reeder said firmly, "but I'm also Fran's friend. I'm damned sorry to see you two doing this to each other. I won't be drawn in to take sides. I intend to remain friendly with both of you."
Dick nodded. It made sense. He said nothing, but drained his martini.
Putting the glass down, he said, "No. I won't marry the other girl."
"She's already married to someone else," Reeder guessed.
"No. That's the ironic part. We broke it off the night Fran found out and threw me out."
Reeder shook his head and looked at his shoe. "What a mess," he said frankly.
"I called her," Dick admitted, "and told her what had happened with Fran. I thought we might pick it up. I did that, embarrassing as it is, even after the bitch had already started sleeping with another man so she could get over me. I was ready to do just about anything."
"She wouldn't resume the relationship?"
"She said that she wouldn't be second any more than she would play second fiddle. If I had voluntarily left Fran, she said, it might have been different."
"She doesn't love you, then," Reeder concluded.
"No," Dick replied bitterly. "It doesn't matter."
"Doesn't it, Dick?" his friend asked softly.
"No," he snapped. "I've found some new friends. I've spend my whole life with my nose to a grindstone. Now I've found some swingers, and I'm going to join them."
"A swap group?"
"I don't know all the details yet. But what they want to do, I'll do. I'm not going to sit around here and mope. I'm not going to pity myself or be lonely."
Reeder looked at him for what seemed a long time.
"What?" Dick said irritably.
"You asked, sarcastically, what my clinical opinion was," Reeder said. "I think you're in a bad way right now, Dick. You're more upset than even you realize. You have many self-destructive impulses. I'm worried about you."
"Well, don't," Dick snapped back. "I'm fine." Reeder sighed and changed the subject again. Later, after his friend left and the apartment was silent, Dick wondered how much of his own talk had been bravado. He had to admit he was miserable.
Part of his problem, he told himself angrily, was that he had never really played around. When he found Jean, and had fallen in love with her, he had stayed exclusively with her. He had had a double life-but with only the two women. Now he had lost them both. He knew no one else-
Although it was past midnight, he got out the folder of technical data on the new control approach procedure he was working on. Taking the papers to the dining table in the tiny kitchen, he sat down to try to work.
For a few minutes, his mind functioned properly.
Then he was remembering the early days, the first years of marriage.
She had been so beautiful and passionate then.
He remembered one night in particular. They were still on their honeymoon. The hotel room was warm, with an ocean breeze, and moonlight shafted across the bed to make her long, slender body look like carved ivory. She glistened with perspiration. They had just been making love.
"I did it that time," she whispered brokenly, kissing his chest. "You were so big and hard inside me, and I could tell you were starting because you just seemed to swell and burn, and then all at once it was sweeping over me-I can't explain it-but it was so beautiful, I thought I was going to die, and I didn't even care, all I knew or cared about was you inside me, beating into me, shooting up into me ... so hot ... so hot...."
"Maybe," Dick smiled, "that's just the beginning of what we'll have together."
"Yes," she cried fiercely, clinging to him. "Oh, yes!"
There had been other nights in those early years.
They had been few and far between, however.
Finally their life became routine. Twice a week, perhaps, they went to bed with the idea of intercourse. She insisted the lights be out. She never managed, despite his gentle, and later desperate prodding, to become active in the love act. She lay silent beneath him, and far too often it ended with her whispering, "Don't worry about me, I can't this time-go ahead!"
He had told himself it was what marriage became, with everyone. He had told himself he was satisfied. He lost himself in work.
Until Jean.
The nights with her-from the first night, when they went to the motel, neither of them saying a word, he just took her there. She didn't protest, but waited in the car while he registered under false names.
He could see it now in his memory-remember how she had turned to him when they got in the room, and stepped into his arms.
He relived it in the intensity of his memories....
His tongue went deep into her mouth. She gasped. Using her tongue, fluttering, licking, she brushed the outside and inside of his mouth, flicking with maddening lightness over the roof of his mouth, her arms around his neck tightly while he stroked her back.
They stepped apart after a moment, and kissed again very lightly, her eyes deep with meaning. He cupped her breast in his hand and was surprised that it was much fuller than he had expected. She arched her body to him.
"God, I want you!" he choked.-
"Hurry," she whispered.
They undressed, watching one another, in too great a rush now to take all the time he would have liked. He tore at the buttons of his shirt and tossed it on the chair, sat down long enough to remove his shoes and socks, stood again and undid his belt. Even in his passion, he hesitated a moment before undoing the zipper and letting his trousers fall. He stepped out of them and removed his undershorts.
She had never taken her eyes from him as she reached behind herself and unzipped the short dress, then pulled it over her head, so that he saw first the material slip up along her full, tanned thighs, then reveal the tiny white bikini panties, the flat, brown belly, and finally the magnificent swell of deeply tanned breasts in a white bra cut very low, so that most of her spilled over the top.
She put the dress carefully on the nightstand, stepped out of her sandals with infinite grace that made his throat hurt, then reached behind her, unhooked the bra, and let it slip down her arms, off her magnificent breasts. Her bikini had made a sharp line of suntan against the outer portions of her breasts, where the flesh was softly pale. Her nipples were large, broad, distended and deep pink. She didn't have to wear a bra, really; as she bent to slip her fingertips under the tiny band of her panties, her breasts swayed with langourous loveliness, but did not droop.
She slipped the panties down and off, revealing another white band of flesh, which made her wide, dense patch of pubic hair seem more luxurious and sexual.
She came to him on tiptoes and pressed fully against him, her big breasts flattening so that he felt the nipples hard against his bare skin, her belly rubbing, one slender leg entwined around him as if she were a vine, seeking the root of him for strength to live. His penis pressed up against her satiny belly, and was already throbbing.
They kissed. His hands went down over the jutting buttocks, along her cleft, teasing across her outer thighs.
They moved to the bed, tossed the covers back, and got in, pressing close once more. Her hair was wild and marvelous over the pillow and for a moment he simply looked down, marveling at her beauty from her trim brown ankles and tiny feet to her knees and swelling thighs to the dark triangle, her flat belly, swell of upper torso and grace of cool arms around him. Finally he reached her face, the deep brown eyes, generous mouth, tiny, upturned nose that was almost childish.
He lifted the weight of her left breast in his fingertips and bent gently to kiss the nipple. She shivered, and, locking a leg around one of his, shuddered closer. He took the breast into his mouth and enclosed the nipple with his tongue, sucked, used his teeth, drank in the sweet fullness, and she clung, her fingernails digging his back, her hips beginning to rotate against him.
"Take me!" she whispered fiercely, circling her tongue in his ear, her hand diving down to grab his penis and begin working it up and down with desperate speed.
He rolled over her. Eagerly she spread her legs and he was between them, the coarse curl of her hair tickling his sex. Her firm legs wrapped around his thighs as she heaved up against him, begging for it.
With one hand he moved himself into position, down the slippery cleft to the point of heat, the point of opening. He touched and then teased his fingertips along her clitoris, marveling at its hardness and length. She moaned. Then he pressed the head of his penis closer against her, feeling only the very tip enter, despite her gushing readiness, without encountering real pressure and tightness.
He intended to be gentle because he knew he was big.
She clawed at his back and heaved herself up wildly.
"Fuck me!" she begged brokenly. "Oh, fuck me hard!"
His control was gone and he thrust forward with all his might. She stifled a scream and pushed her hips high, helping him, although the long, deep slide into her was tight and he knew he was hurting her, pulling her apart as he drove down deep ... deep ... in to the hilt, and then, pausing only an instant, withdrew and began to pound steadily into her.
"Jean," he gasped, half groaning, "I'm going to be so fast-"
"It's all right, darling," she whispered, her body thrusting up. In seconds, she began to sob and moan, and her flesh around his sex suddenly contracted, gripping all of his length in almost painful strength. The gripping came in great, rolling spasms as she screamed and he felt his own orgasm, starting far back inside, making him twitch, and then begin in reality, until he groaned with the first gigantic wave just as her body squeezed him the hardest spasm yet and he felt every instant frozen in time, the way he never had felt it before-
At his work table in the empty apartment, Dick pushed his work away savagely and got to his feet. Desperation tore at his vitals. He walked back and forth, the memory screaming at him. He had to stop remembering her, he told himself despairingly. He had to think about other things-bury these memories in new ones.
Shaking, he went to the medicine cabinet. He had his usual supply of Librium. The doctor at the airport clinic dispensed them to air traffic controllers almost routinely because of the fantastic pressure of the work. They were ten milligram capsules.
Three a day, the label directed.
Dick tapped three out in his plam and gulped them down with water. Sometimes the tranquilizers seemed to work well. Other times, he hadn't felt them at all. They had to work tonight. Had to.
It was late. He told himself he might go to sleep gradually as the capsules took effect, if he were in bed. Switching off the light in the living room, he started for the bedroom.
The windows of the living room faced out onto the pool area of the apartment complex, and as he passed the window, movement caught his eye. He paused and looked again, moving closer, so that he could see clearly through a tiny cleft in the drapes.
Only a couple had remained at the pool. Now they were hurrying up the ramp toward his unit of the apartments, the tall, handsome man walking rapidly, his arm around a lovely tall blonde in a tiny green bikini. She was tripping along, half-running, and laughing breathlessly.
They walked closer, coming directly at his door. For a mad instant, he thought they were coming to see him. Then they veered slightly and stood at the door beside his, while the man opened the door. They were so close that Dick could see the chill bumps along the blonde's thighs.
They opened the door and went inside. The door closed.
Aching more hungrily, he went into his bedroom. He stripped and threw himself across the bed in the dark, naked. Except for the tiny ticking of a clock in the next room, there was silence.
Then he became aware of sounds. From the next apartment, just beyond the wall at his head.
He realized the bedrooms backed each other.
Tingling, wishing he couldn't hear, he listened.
"We'll shower later, sweet. Just do it." The girl's voice.
"Toss the suit on the floor. It doesn't matter."
"I know. I know."
Dick heard distinctly the sound of the bed squeaking. "Oh, yes! Hurry," she gasped.
The bed began to creak rhythmically, steadily, in the rhythm of sexual activity.
Dick started to leave the room. He didn't want to hear it. Something held him, fascinated.
The creaking became faster and faster, wilder, and then-He knew what was happening-the girl's orgasm began, rising, rising, the sounds becoming wild, the bed groaning, and then he could hear her soft outcry at the peak.
Dick was bathed in sweat. He stared into the darkness. He thought it was over.
The movement was continuing, however. He could hear her breathless voice, and the continuing regular sliding of motion, and the man said something huskily, and she was starting again, incredibly, another time, so soon-faster and faster, up and up, another climax.
It went on. Dick lay shocked and fascinated despite himself, miserable yet excited. He heard her come again, more wildly than either of the first two times, writhing and sobbing.
The movement went on. He's a machine! Dick thought.
Her voice, brokenly, "I don't think I can stand it again!" Her voice was so torn by satisfaction, so thankful, it was not a protest but the ultimate compliment.
The man said something Dick could not make out, and then he heard the girl say, "Yes, yes, darling, I want you to do that-I want all of you in my mouth-"
Dick sat up in bed, holding his head, trying to keep himself from bursting. Why had he heard this? Hadn't he been upset enough?
Next door it was still. He knew what was happening. He imagined the blonde's hair tickling the man's thighs, her face between them, her mouth hungrily working.
The man began to mutter, and then he groaned and murmured and made guttural sounds in delight. Then a long, sliding sound as they evidently stretched out in bed together.
"Cigarette?" he heard the man ask huskily.
"I love the taste of you," the girl whispered.
Dick got up and strode into the other room. He lay out across the couch, staring at the dark ceiling. It had been that way with Jean. But Jean was gone. Even Fran was gone. He had no one and he desperately needed someone now.
Would the weekend never get here?
CHAPTER FOUR
Twilight lay over the city. Standing by the steps of his apartment building, Dick waited impatiently for the car that was to pick him up. Beside him on the steps was a small, tan suitcase that contained all the clothing Beverly Davis had indicated he would need for the next forty-eight hours.
"Wear a summer suit," she had suggested, her voice husky with anticipation on the telephone. "You'll need swimsuit, shorts and tennis shoes, I guess, and your toilet articles."
"Is that all?" Dick had asked, surprised.
"You have in your pants the really important item of equipment, lover," she purred.
Now Dick saw a white Impala pull around the far corner and drive slowly up the street. He could see three people in the car, a man and woman in front and another woman in back. They were looking up at building numbers. Then the woman in the back pointed ahead to where Dick was standing, and the car sped up, and slid to the curb in front of him. Beverly was in the back.
Dick got in. Beverly wore a pale blue sundress, cut very short on her tanned thighs. She kissed him. "Hi, darling. I want you to meet the Rikes. Paula and David."
David Rike, a slender, curly-haired man of about twenty-five, grinned and reached back to shake hands.
"Welcome to the club, Richard."
"Glad to be here," Dick smiled.
Paula Rike was bigger than her husband, a tall redhead who let her hair hang long on her back. She wore a yellow dress that bared creamy shoulders and barely contained the bursting ripeness of her breasts.
"I think you'll have fun," she told Dick, giving him a meaningful smile.
"I hope so," Dick said. "Thanks."
"Don't thank me," Paula laughed. "I've got an idea that if you have fun at least part of this weekend, I'll be having fun right along with you."
David Rike was driving with smooth competence through traffic toward an expressway entrance. "Paula," he said indulgently, "Beverly already told us she has first choice."
"That's fine for you to say," the amazing redhead countered blithely. "You and Beverly have swung together. But Dick and I are completely new to each other." She put her hand back on Dick's knee. "Isn't that right, Dick?"
"Just a minute," Beverly said good-naturedly. "Dick and I have not been to bed yet, either."
"Then you should have worked faster," Paula flashed, smiling. "It's first come, first served on these weekends, remember."
"I think," David Rike said, "you've got the two parts of that statement reversed."
The girls hesitated a moment, then understood and laughed. "All right, you win!" Paula told him.
David steered the sedan up onto the elevated expressway and into the heavy evening traffic. It was the airport freeway so familiar to Dick.
Rike said, "I think it ought to be exceptionally active this weekend." He glanced back at Dick. "You aren't the only newcomer this weekend. We're very careful and selective, but it just so happens that several couples and singles have expressed interest in recent weeks. This weekend we managed to get hold of a second plane. It carries eight, plus crew. A private propjet. It was supposed to leave the airport about an hour ago."
Beverly rubbed her leg against Dick's thigh. "With that many new people, plus the usual crowd, it's going to be fantastic!"
"It's always fantastic, dear," Paula said.
Dick was fascinated. "How many people will be there?"
"It varies," Beverly replied. "I'd guess about thirty. Possibly more."
"The eight who went in the first plane," Rike mused, "plus our group ... add Steve and Harriet and Frank and Jane-"
"And of course the Smiths and Selveys are there for two weeks now," Paula pointed out.
"Plus," Rike agreed, "the usual number of surprise people. I'd expect at least thirty, Beverly. You're right. Maybe more."
Beverly stretched like a tigress and openly pressed her fingers against herself. "Mmmm, thirty people. I'm counting on at least a dozen orgasms."
"Beverly," Rike said in mock horror, "sometimes you shock me."
"How?" Beverly challenged playfully. "And when?"
"I wonder," Paula said, "if the general will have any surprises."
"The general?" Dick echoed.
"We call him that," Rike said. "Of course we know his real name, but many of his visitors never do. He was in the army, then went into private industry. He made millions. Some sort of special armaments system. I never have gotten that part quite clear."
"Is. he an old man?" Dick asked.
"About sixty-five," Paula replied. "You won't believe it when you see him. He's a marvelous specimen. He looks about forty."
"Pamela had him once," Beverly said. "She said he doesn't act sixty-five, either."
"I've heard that," Paula agreed. "And yet I've never seen him really taking part in any of the group games or anything. I've never even seen him take a girl up to the rooms, and of course he could have anyone he wanted."
"I don't think he digs taking part so much as he enjoys watching," Rike observed.
"He's not a voyeur," Paula argued. "If that was all he wanted, he could have it much cheaper than having these weekend bashes."
"I didn't mean that, darling. I think he just honestly has made sex, and people who enjoy sex, his entire life."
"God," Paula breathed. "If we were wealthy, I'd want to do the same thing!"
No one replied as they thought about this. Dick, aroused by the gently insistent pressure of Beverly's leg against him, reflected on the kind of people he was suddenly a part of. He had never known they actually existed. Oh, he had read the reports, but had imagined such people were few and far between. Was it possible, he wondered, that there simply were two worlds, co-existing? He remembered reading a quote from a woman who had told a researcher into uses of drugs, "Before I smoked pot, I didn't know anyone who did. Now that I turn on, it seems like everyone I know is a head, too." It dawned on Dick that a sexual underground would be similar; those outside would only vaguely suspect its existence, while members would seem to know few who did anything else but swing.
Dick was very nervous, but the thought that he had become a part of the sexual underground made him happy, too. The old life was gone, and a new one was starting. He welcomed it.
When they reached the airport area, David drove to the private terminal area and parked in a high-fenced lot.. They got out and walked toward a nearby steel hangar. No one had any more baggage than Dick had, and Paula's belongings had to include little more than the briefest bikini; she had it rolled in a beach towel. The roll couldn't include much else.
Paula was a very sexy woman, Dick thought. He wondered if he would enjoy her this weekend. She had indicated that she wanted to have intercourse with him. It was still amazing to imagine such open sexuality, but already he found himself enjoying it. I'll have you, he thought, watching her.
The front of the large private hangar was open, and out on the ramp was parked a medium-sized private jet that could carry about twelve persons. A mechanic was topping off the fuel in the wings, and a gray-haired man with a huge handlebar mustache was in the cockpit talking to him.
Standing around the ramp at the foot of the ladder, however, were the people in whom Dick had more interest. There were seven of them, three men and four women. One couple was almost middle-aged, but the man was handsome and the woman extremely chic, with a beautiful body. The two other men looked like young business executives. The three women were young, two of them in their mid-twenties or a little older, the other, tiny and slender, almost boyish; she couldn't have been older than nineteen.
Dick and his friends went over to the group; Dick was introduced all around, and the men were friendly and relaxed, while the older woman and at least one of the younger ones gave him boldly appraising stares as they spoke.
"We've been waiting for Gloria," one of the women .said, "but I think she must be out of town or something. Do you think we should wait any longer?"
"I'm ready to go," the older man said. "Isn't everyone else?"
The tiny girl called up to the man in the plane cockpit, "Cap! Are we prepared to take off?"
The man grinned down at her. "Any time."
"Let's go, then," the girl cried, and ran up the stairs and into the plane.
Beverly took Dick's arm and went with him into the plane. .
The interior was luxuriously outfitted. Everyone took deep chairs, buckled in, and waited while the mechanic closed the rear door, folding the stairway inside. The door to the front cockpit was open, and Dick saw that a younger man was in the co-pilot's seat.
"All ready!" Paula called up the aisle.
The pilot grinned and waved, and began throwing switches. The plane trembled as first one, then the other jet engine at the tail assembly began to whine. Dick saw the pilot reach for his microphone and talk to the tower. Then the plane began to roll.
Poor bastards in the tower, Dick thought. Working while I'm off on a trip like this. Then he thought, Poor bastards in the straight world, they don't know what they're missing.
The plane taxied down ramps and into position behind a TWA 707 and an American 727 waiting for takeoff. A Delta flight smoked in overhead and landed. Then the 707 trundled around, ran up its engines, and departed, tipping sharply into the darkening sky. The American flight was next. In a matter of moments, it was in position, and through the plane's walls Dick felt and heard the roar of its engines as it also took off.
The private jet vibrated as the pilot rolled it forward, next to fly.
Beverly squeezed Dick's hand and wriggled with anticipation. "Do you know what, darling?"
"What?" Dick grinned.
She kissed him. "I can't wait to get you in bed!"
The engines ran up shrilly and the jet began to roll, picking up speed. The runway flashed by, and then the plane soared, leaving his cares behind.
CHAPTER FIVE
Deep night lay over the ocean, but the private jet descended steadily. The people in the plane were in a holiday spirit now. Some had been drinking, some smoking odd cigarettes with an aroma that Dick could not identify. They were laughing and talking gaily. Dick had been taking part, and had had two martinis, to help himself relax. Now, however, he was more concerned with seeing their destination.
The jet banked sharply, as if on approach, and down below Dick suddenly saw land-the brightness of moonlight on the curving white of a surf-washed beach, deep, tropical forest, some hills, and then an amazing panorama: a huge, rambling, Victorian-style house, brightly lit, and beside it gardens, a pool, a large patio area, a tennis court.
He had only a quick look at the house, and it was gone beneath them. He saw they were very near the ground. The pilot was coming in very steeply, which meant the island was small. Then Dick spotted lines of smoking pink flares outside the windows.
The plane came down on a smooth grass runway, braked, and began taxiing back the way it had come between the lines of flares.
Some playful cheering broke out in the cabin.
"You're going to love it!" Beverly told Dick.
The plane stopped. Someone outside ran to open the rear hatch. Everyone got up in the aisles, pressing eagerly to get out. Dick, behind Beverly, was startled to feel a woman's body press firmly against him from the rear, breasts and deep curve of belly and pelvis suddenly moulded to him in a brief, total caress.
At the same moment, a hand slipped around his body, slid down over his front, and playfully grasped, for a second, his halferect penis.
Dick turned and Paula winked at him over his shoulder. "Just to remind you I want you tonight," she whispered.
"I didn't need a reminder," Dick said huskily. She squeezed him once, hard, and then removed her hand. "But you enjoyed it."
"You'd better believe it."
"It's not what you need that counts here," Paula murmured, "it's what you enjoy."
Dick had no chance to reply, then, because they were going down off the plane. It was dark on the landing strip, but the man who opened the door, obviously an employee, had three companions who had come down to greet the new group.
Two of them were men, one a woman. Dick could not make them out in the dimness. One of the men had a flashlight. "It's about time!" he boomed good-naturedly. "Come on!"
They trouped across the strip and through a grove of aromatic brush, then came to stone stairs leading up. Here the area was carefully manicured, and tiny gasoline lanterns lit the way, showing a profusion of brilliant shrubbery and flowers along the ornate stone steps, which went up a long way. Dick understood now why the pilot had swooped in so fast; it had to do not only with the size of the island, but with the fact that the house and main grounds were on some sort of outcropping, and the landing strip was at a lower level.
Up higher, Dick could see the house and brighter lights against the tops of trees. He could hear the surf, it seemed, on all sides.
They reached the top of the stairs, and came out onto a huge patio. The house loomed up ahead of them, a gigantic structure ablaze with lights. Music came from hidden loudspeakers; playing very softly although the music was acid rock. To the left, the patio area curved around the corner of the house and there was a pool with a springboard and deck chairs. About a dozen men and women were there swimming, diving, or lounging with drinks. To the right of the house was the tennis court, deserted at the moment.
Dick walked with the group toward the house, which had a series of long white stairs coming down from the porch. People in the group called and waved to some people at the pool, and a couple dancing in swimsuits on the patio nearby.
Dick gazed at the pair for as long as he dared. They were scarcely moving, and seemed glued together. The girl had her pelvis pressed hard against the man, and his trunks were swollen in front with an obviously massive erection. The two grinned, and continued dancing.
The group went up the stairs and into the house. They entered a large open area with very high ceiling, brilliantly lit by two electric chandeliers. An enormous curving staircase led upward, and the only person in the area was a man on the staircase, coming down.
Dick knew instantly that this was the general.
He was of medium height, burly build, with graying hair cropped short. He wore shorts and a plain tee shirt. His muscular legs and arms, covered with a fine thatch of dark hair, showed great strength in repose. His barrel chest stretched the tee shirt to its limit. His small grayish eyes, set deep under massive forehead, seemed brilliantly inquisitive. As he saw the new guests, he allowed himself a slight smile which broke the craggy solidity of a heavy, squared-off chin. Dick had the impression that the general allowed himself to smile; for the first impression was of a deep coldness-a steely self-control and power.
This first impression-almost, somehow, frightening-was quickly broken as the general came down the stairs and walked to the group with his hands outstretched.
"Welcome!" he boomed. He took Paula's hands and smiled at her in a special way. "I hope the weekend is all you desire." He turned to one of the men and patted him on the back. "Good to see you again, John. We have some special pleasures planned tonight in the game room." Then he turned to Dick.
Beverly, at Dick's side, introduced him.
The general allowed himself the smile again. "Of course." His handshake was very firm. "I've heard about you. Welcome."
Dick wondered how he had heard. Had the general himself been queried before the invitation was made?
"As you can see," the general said, flexing a powerful arm in an idle, nervous gesture, "the party has begun. I know you're eager to join, so feel free to find rooms upstairs. After you unpack and change clothes"-he paused and winked at Paula-"and do whatever else you may desire, come down and join us at poolside."
They all started upstairs. Beverly put her hand in Dick's and squeezed it excitedly. "Do you like him?"
"Like?" Dick echoed. "I don't know if that's the word."
"He's really a marvelous man. Later, when you really get to know him intimately, you'll appreciate what I mean."
Dick wondered what she meant by the word intimately. He was dazzled by the fast landing, the great house, the general atmosphere of frank, sensual lust on all sides. He noticed, as they went up the stairs in a group, that one of the older men had already paired off with the very young girl. He had his arm around her, and her blouse was partly unbuttoned. He was fondling the clearly visible pink tip of her right breast. She had her face against his arm; her mouth hung open as she gasped each time his blunt fingers squeezed the tender flesh of the nipple.
They all reached the top of the stairs. A long hallway stretched out in either direction, and Dick could see at least two intersection corridors to the right. Doorways stood ajar, open or closed along the hall. Most of the group started to the right, although the older man took the girl to the nearest doorway and started to open it.
A voice came softly from inside and the man stepped back out without embarrassment.
"Sorry, old man," he murmured, and led the girl, leaning heavily against him with passion, to the next door. They went in. The door closed.
"We'll find rooms vacant down here," Beverly told Dick, starting along the hall.
From behind them, Paula Rike hurried up. "Dick?" she called.
Dick turned. Paula's desire was obvious in her eyes.
Beverly said firmly, "Paula, the answer is no. Not just yet. He's going to play with me now."
"Shit," Paula said good-naturedly, although with obvious disappointment. "All right." She pointed at Dick with mock severity. "I'll see you later!"
Beverly took Dick on down the corridor. "Sometimes Paula almost makes me mad. Here she is, wanting you instantly, and I haven't even been to bed with you yet myself."
"I'd think," Dick said, "there would be a lot of trouble with jealousy."
"Not much," Beverly replied. "We share and share alike. Those are the rules. Anything goes. Jealousy is out." She peered into a room. "Here we are."
They went into the room, which was enormous.
Carpeted, with heavy drapes at a casement window, it had a high ceiling whose major feature was a large mirror mounted over a king-size bed that stood in the center of the room. A double dresser and closet, along with two chairs and an end table, completed the arrangements. A bathroom adjoined.
Beverly tossed her tiny overnight kit onto a chair, took Dick's satchel and placed it on the floor, and brazenly stepped into his arms.
"At last!" she whispered hotly.
Deck bent to her mouth, and she more than met him halfway. Her lips parted with readiness and she sucked on his tongue with such force that it hurt sharply, and then her white teeth bit into his Up. He tasted blood with the bright pain.
"Hurry!" Beverly whispered, breaking from him and already tearing at zippers.
Dick glanced at the open door to the hall. "I'll lock that-"
"Don't bother, darling. Just please, please strip!"
"Someone will see us." Dick protested.
"All up and down this hall, people are doing the same thing all the time," Beverly said, stepping out of her dress to stand revealed in black net panties and bra. "Sometimes they like to watch. If they do, fine. Let them. We're all the same here. What difference does it make? No one pretends."
With these words, Beverly unsnapped the bra and let it fall. Her breasts, magnificently firm and milky, were tipped by large nipples already dark red and erect from her high state of excitement.
Dick needed no more encouragement. The door was forgotten. He tossed his coat aside, tore off his tie and shirt, got out of his shoes and socks, and stripped on down.
Beverly, yanked off her black bikini panties, went to the bed and tossed back the coverlet. She threw herself down, rolled over on her back, and raised her head.
The cool night air prickling his flesh, Dick started for the bed. It had been what seemed a very long time to him. He was massively excited.
Staring at his thick, upright penis, Beverly gasped and spread her legs, revealing everything of her sex.
Dick joined her on the bed. He leaned down and kissed, then nibbled, her breasts. His hands teased along her thighs.
Beverly was too excited to allow lengthy foreplay. She writhed and moaned, then bit him on the shoulder, breaking the skin.
"Ouch!" Dick grunted in pain and shock-Beverly's hand roughly seized his sex and pulled it up against her.
With a groan of need, Dick forgot techniques, care, caution-everything but his driving need itself. He rammed forward. Beverly moaned as he thrust, roughly and swiftly, shoving with a wildly exultant sense of raw power. He went in to his full length, and felt the throbbing tip fully against the very limits of her ability to accept him.
"That's it," Beverly panted. "Fill me, fill me, hammer it in, tear me to bits, I don't care-oh, you're so big!" Her hips pounded in wild response to every thrust. She tossed her head from side to side.
Then, almost instantly, she convulsed. Her body stiffened and her hands clutched frantically at Dick's buttocks, holding him at maximum penetration while she quivered, thrusting against him in agonized movements. The wave burst over her once, twice, three times-
"Please hold back if you can," she sobbed. "Please try not to come yet, lover, oh, let me have more-"
Biting his lip, Dick watched her wild gyrations, marveK ing at the tension. As he watched, he was straining to the maximum, fighting his own orgasm, trying to hold it back.
Somehow the moments passed, and Beverly became limp for a moment. Dick lay quiet, twitching with the near-pain of imminent completion, still in her.
Beverly roused softly and kissed him with gratitude. "You didn't?"
"I just held back," Dick admitted huskily. "But I'm so ready, I'm afraid when I move again-"
Beverly pulled her pelvis back and then frantically thrust up against him, burying him once more in her in a long, tugging movement.
"Then come on," she whispered, her teeth bared. "I'll do it again right away, I can feel it wanting to start again already. Go ahead, darling, fuck me and fuck me and let it all come."
With a harsh cry, Dick thrust deeper into her and began pounding against her. She was moving swiftly again already, trying to resume the motions that had first brought her to orgasm, but Dick's own rage for fulfillment was overpowering now. He used brute strength to hold her down, fight her attempts. He set the rhythm now, withdrawing almost fully, then crushing himself up and into her, holding, withdrawing, plunging again. It was his rhythm now, his power, his sensations, his body in hers, driving her wild, forcing her to submit, plunging repeatedly, and it was fine for her, too, now, because she had begun to murmur brokenly, accept his rhythm, vaulting her body upward to meet each stroke for the maximum penetration.
Dick began to tremble. The feeling built within him. He doubled his efforts, and Beverly knew it was beginning for him. She sobbed with pleasure and thankfulness and clutched desperately to him, her body one with his, riding with him and beginning again herself. Then the scalding pleasure became a deluge. Dick felt the first massive surge.
"I can feel it," Beverly wept. "I can feel it coming into me!" She was torn by her own spasms of ecstasy, and if Dick had not been completely carried away, crushing her with his weight and holding her brutally impaled on his sex, she might have thrown herself completely off the bed.
With a weak push of completion, Dick let his weight drop limply across her for a moment, they lay still, drenched in their sweat.
"Beautiful," Beverly whispered.
"You're beautiful," Dick said hoarsely, raising himself to look down at her.
Beverly moved her hips gently, but the movement only dislodged him.
"I'm going to want you more," she said. "Because you're everything I dreamed you'd be."
Dick kissed her now-cool lips.
She smoothed her palm along his bare shoulder and arm, and kissed his chest. "We'd better go down to the party, my love."
Reluctantly, his legs shaky, Dick got off the bed. Beverly got up and went first to the bathroom. He heard water run. He looked down at himself, still hardly able to believe what had just happened, and what he knew lay ahead.
It had not been the kind of experience he had known with Jean. The desperation to possess had not been present. Beverly had been wild. He had totally lost himself in her and with her.
It must, he thought, be like this when sex was sought for its own sake. It was keener physically, different from an act of love. He felt no guilt, although he probed into his mind to see if such a feeling was present. He felt surprisingly fit now, as the night air began to dry his body.
Beverly came out of the bathroom, gleaming nude. She walked to the bed and gently kissed him. "Thank you," she said. "It was lovely." He stroked her back. "The party," she said sternly, making fun. "The party," he agreed ruefully.
She put on a two-piece sunsuit that was little more than a bikini. Dick got out shorts and a knit shirt. They dressed quickly, kissed briefly, and went out into the hall.
"I'm sure Paula will try to get you for the night," Beverly said as they walked toward the stairs.
"Will you be jealous?" Dick asked, despite her earlier warning.
"I'd like to have you again myself," she admitted. "But there are other days. I'll be fair. When we get downstairs, don't be surprised if I simply separate from you. You'll get to meet more people that way, and I can have someone else."
They walked past a door that was partly open. From inside came the sounds of a couple at the peak of love-making. Dick glanced toward the door and saw the man and woman on the bed, on their hands and knees. The man was behind her, thrusting wildly forward. She was grunting with delight as he thrust.
With a shock, Dick saw that the woman was Paula. Her big breasts hung their full length, swaying with the pounding she was taking from the man behind her.
"Tell me," Beverly chided gently, "you don't want some of that."
Dick started past the door.
"We can watch, if you like," Beverly said.
"No," Dick said hurriedly. "I'm not quite-ready for that yet."
"You'll get over the hangups after a while," Beverly smiled, and joined him going down the curving staircase.
Most of the guests seemed to be at poolside. Several were swimming. A few sat at tables along the edge, sipping drinks brought periodically by two white-coated servants. Six or seven couples were dancing on the smooth concrete of the patio beside the water. The recorded music was slightly louder here, and although it was still rock, only one of the couples was dancing apart. The others moved dreamily, clinging.
"See you, darling," Beverly said softly, and walked off to join a group at a table nearest the pool.
Standing alone, Dick experienced a moment of near panic. But then he saw the general, another man and two women standing on the far side of the pool area near a serving tray. They were smoking and chatting like people might do at any ordinary garden party. Dick walked around the pool and approached them.
"Here you are," the general smiled. He made introductions. The other man, youthful and bronzed, was named Steve. The one girl, silver-haired and beautiful in a red swimsuit, was Karen. The other, a slender black woman in a stunning white swimsuit, said her name was Linda. Her brown eyes looked Dick over frankly.
Around the group was that strange odor that Dick had noticed earlier. He could not pinpoint it, and it bothered him for reasons he could not understand.
"Are you enjoying your visit so far?" the general asked.
"It's all been pleasant surprises so far," Dick said. "I understand," the general said, "you operate in the air traffic control system."
"Yes."
Karen asked, "Is it true that the system really is overburdened?"
"That's hardly the word," Dick said. "At times, we're far closer to the limits of safety than any of us would like to think about."
"I can't understand," Steve said, "why they can't go for greater computerization. Those computers on the space flights can make thousands of decisions in an instant."
"It's going to come to that some day," Dick admitted. "Computers give us tracking data and flight projections now. Without them, we'd be out of business."
The general gestured. "The only ultimate solution is complete automation both on the ground and in the air. Allow the computer to chart all traffic and handle all aircraft on full automatic."
"There are too many unknown factors," Dick argued. "Wind gusts, for example, private craft-"
"Nonsense," the general grunted impatiently. "Computer science may not be quite ready yet. It will be within ten years, however. The computer can perform any logical operation, given sufficient cells. It can be programmed to handle all aircraft problems, regardless of the number of variables."
Dick did not reply. The general spoke from a great deal of information, he guessed. He was again impressed by the man's seeming power and certainty. A man who could build a fortune from shootoffs of armaments systems probably was up to date on many aspects of science. Dick wondered if the armaments had been computerized missiles.
As he thought about this, he noticed that Steve casually changed the subject to talk about one of the current bestsellers. It struck him as very odd that they could stand here and talk about idle topics just as if it were an ordinary garden party.
Then he realized that for them it was an ordinary party. The difference between this and many other such events he had attended in the past was not so much a matter of content, but of degree. He had never been to a party where some aura of sex did not permeate the air. Usually it Was hidden, played down, ignored by most people, even if it could easily be spotted in the byplay of some couple present.
Here there was no such hypocrisy. Sex was evident and unabashed. This, he thought, probably was healthy.
The general was talking.
"It's a good book," he was saying with authority. "Of course, as you say, there is considerable sex "and sadism. The two go together. They are, to use a crude metaphor, the steam in our boiler. Men and women thrive on violence and sex. They are intertwined. The giving of pleasure and the inflicting of pain are so close together as to be unrecognizable in certain unique circumstances. Consider, for example, every man's desire for a bigger penis."
Linda laughed huskily. "You mean every woman's desire for one."
"Women may seek the well-hung man for the pleasure he can provide," the general partially agreed. "But a man, if he had a tool twelve inches long, would secretly, in his heart of hearts, yearn for just one more inch. Why? Because, for a man, the penis is not simply an instrument of pleasure. It is, quite simply, a weapon. The Freudians' insistance on guns as penis symbols is quite accurate here. The man gives the woman pleasure, but he uses it on her, too. There is an aspect of self-annihilation for almost every man at the moment of his orgasm. He is sexually dead for a while. This is the woman's triumph because she has milked out of him his strength, cut off his weapon and made it harmless to her or any other woman, as it were. The man knows this, subconsciously. He resents it. There is some hate in every love act. The man wants to bludgeon the woman with his weapon, smash it into her, rip her, tear her apart, inflict pain, make her beg for mercy-which of course he will not give-until, at the moment of his climax, he injects himself into a person who has been subjected to such extreme pain and suffering that she cannot take pleasure in having momentarily emasculated him."
Linda smiled at the conclusion of this quiet lecture and shook her head. "Maybe so, general. I just know one thing, I've never found one too big for me yet. Despite all the bragging and stories, the ten-inch ones are mighty, mighty few and far between."
The general smiled indulgently. "One day, my dear, you'll find yourself in bed with a man hung like a horse I would like to be there to hear your screams of pain and cries for mercy."
Linda smiled at the general, but her smile had a certain glaze of half-recognized fear behind it. Dick felt the same twinge-the feeling he had had before about the general, that there was something sinister here. He could not identify the feeling, which made the back of his scalp prickle.
Linda recovered quickly and turned her smile to Dick. Now it was genuine. "I think I prefer fun to talking about it. Would you like to dance with me?"
"Very much," Dick said, feeling a pulse of excitement.
She gave him her hand. They walked out onto the patio, joining the other couples. She slipped easily into his arms, all dark curves and soft flesh against him. Her head came just to his shoulder.
"You're a good dancer," she said after a moment.
"I haven't had much practice for a long time."
"There are some things between men and women that don't require a lot of practice."
Tingling from the contact, Dick began to feel the first stirrings of desire. He marveled at how quickly he could recuperate here after the wild ride with Beverly.
"Have you come here often?" he asked.
"This is my second trip. I belonged to a smaller group for a year or so before that, and finally someone invited me here."
"Do you like it? Are you glad you joined?"
"I was worried," Linda admitted soberly. "You can see I'm the only black woman this weekend, for example I was afraid a lot of the men might want me just so they could say they had humped a nigger."
It was a harsh word, even so casually spoken, and Dick flinched. "I wasn't thinking of you like that."
She smiled up at him. She was extraordinarily beautiful. "I know. That's why I liked you right away."
"I like you, too," Dick said thickly.
She pressed closer. "I know, baby. I know."
They danced. The music served only as a pleasant, abstract backdrop for the gentle gliding of their bodies. Linda clung to him, responsive to the slightest pressure. It was a unique sensation, as if she were tuned to him through her pores, and knew his every feeling.
"This is crazy," she whispered. "I mean it's beautiful. I'm really high."
"I'm getting a little high myself," Dick grinned at her.
"Yeah...." she murmured, her bare thighs brushing his hairy legs as they continued to dance.
In a little while, the music paused. Dick reluctantly let her slip out of his arms.
"That was really very nice," she said, her eyes on his.
Dick saw one of the couples who had been dancing near them leave hand in hand, and start for the house. To bed, he thought. He wondered if he dare yet make any such gesture toward Linda.
Before he could decide, however, someone put a cool hand on his back, briefly rotating the palm to feel his muscles.
"My turn now?" a husky voice asked.
He turned. It was Paula. After being so near Linda, he saw Paula for an instant as shockingly pale, and she was so much more girl everywhere that it was almost overwhelming. Her smile was insinuating and pleased.
"I uh-" Dick muttered.
Linda saved him, saying with a little smile, "See you later." She turned and walked away with elfin grace.
The music began again. Paula, her eyes bold, held out her arms for Dick to hold her. "They're playing our song, love. Let's do it."
Dick began dancing with her. She danced with her hips, and almost at once made a breathless sound as she discovered his already half-aroused sex.
"You were thinking about me," she murmured, her big breasts molded against him.
"Of course," Dick lied.
"Are you having a nice time so far?"
"Yes."
"Beverly was fun?"
"Yes."
Paula squeezed closer, her belly rubbing him. "I bet I can show you a few things that Beverly hasn't even dreamed about yet."
Earlier, Dick had been anxious to experience Paula. Her blatant desire and big body still excited him, but he found himself thinking about Linda. She had kindled something in him with her mysterious quality.
Dick fenced for time as they danced. "You're a regular here, I imagine. I suppose you do know just about everything."
"Everything," she said with pride.
"But it seems odd," Dick admitted.
"What does?" she asked with interest.
"You and your husband, coming here together like this. It strikes me as the kind of thing a man and wife would hide from one another."
She chuckled. "Many of the couples are married. Did you know that? They come together."
"I didn't know."
"I know one woman who came here the first time secretly, without her husband; she thought he was a dull old stick. Then on the second night, as they sometimes do, they have masked games, or games in the dark where everyone strips naked and just takes on whoever he or she finds first. Well, Martha was in the dark, and a man found her, crushed her against him, and started giving her the best ride she'd ever had. When the lights finally went on, so everyone could see, and watch any couple that got started late, she was amazed to find that her mysterious lover was her own husband-who had also sneaked away for the first time because he thought she was dull."
Dick grinned. "It's hard to believe."
"They both had hangups, you see. They wouldn't admit them to one another. Shame played a part, and bad habits, and the breakdown of communications that can come between a man and a woman who aren't making it regularly and well in bed. Here, in the dark, they were freed of all guilts and inhibitions, and they went wild with one another."
"What happened to them? Did they break up? Divorce, when they found each had been cheating?"
"Of course not!" Paula was amused. "They're here tonight. See the couple over by the snack tray? That's them. They still come almost every trip. Of course they sleep with others now, but Martha says that between visits they very seldom have outside experience, and then of course it's on a swap basis, all four or six people in the same room if not even in the same bed. They've rejuvenated their marriage."
Dick thought of Fran with some momentary sadness "My wife-I'm in the middle of a divorce-would never even consider anything like this."
"Are you really that sure?"
"Yes. I'm afraid I am."
"Believe it or not," Paula murmured, "there was a time when David came to me and openly suggested our first swap date, and I was horrified. I had been a very strict girl. He had me as a virgin, there had been no one else, Oh, I didn't experience orgasm very often, but it was fun I tried to tell myself everything was ideal. So when David suggested we sleep with Rick and Phyllis, I was simply floored."
"But you did it?" Dick asked, fascinated.
"At first I refused. God, I was really dumb! I wanted a divorce, I said he was a monster, all the crap you can imagine an uptight girl might say. He kept after me. Rick and Phyllis were already our friends, of course. They came over once a week or so for a cookout and swimming in our pool.
"Well," Paula went on, mildly amused with herself, "I thought I had won, and we were going to go on being Puritans. Then one Saturday night Rick and Phyllis came over, and we had the usual drinks and steaks, and then some more highballs, and then David got up very casually and closed all the drapes and made sure the door was locked.
"I was puzzled, but I had had a few and didn't say anything.
"Then, do you know what my darling husband did? I almost died! He walked over to Phyllis. She was sitting in a wingback chair, and she's really gorgeous, a slim redhead with fantastic legs and breasts. David bent down and kissed her, and she returned his kiss passionately. He had her stand up, and he unzipped her dress and took it off. I was shocked. She had absolutely nothing on underneath.
"Then, without a word or even a glance at me-I was on the couch, sitting a properly prudish distance from Rick, of course, David undressed on the spot before I could even say anything. He did this while Phyllis had already eagerly stretched out on a thick area rug we have right in front of the fireplace. He went over to her and kissed her wildly, and then reversed positions and put his face down between her legs. I could see what he was doing to her. She began going wild right away. Then she grabbed him and took him in her mouth."
Paula paused, shuddering with what had to be delight at the memory. "I thought I was going to die. I knew the signs in David, and almost instantly I saw him twitching and then swelling. It was horribly silent in the room and I can still remember the sound of their bodies on the rug-and then the sound of her gulping."
"All this time you sat there and watched?" Dick demanded, aghast.
Paula wriggled. "Rick had moved over close to me-I had been so fascinated and stunned by what I was watching that I didn't even realize it at first-and when I came to senses, he already had my breast out of my dress and was kissing me there. Well, my first impulse was to scream and throw myself out the window or something equally stupid. But then David was coming in her, and I got mad. I thought, 'What he can do with her, I can damned well do with her husband!' So I turned and gave Rick a passionate kiss. He flipped me down on the couch like I was a lightweight, and before I knew what was happening clearly, he was between my legs."
"And," Dick guessed, "you enjoyed it."
"The shock and surprise, the spectacle David and Phyllis had just put on for me, and Rick's eagerness just simply made me flip. I was engulfed in sensations, and I glanced over at David and Phyllis. They were lying there, naked, grinning and watching us-and I started to come like I had never come in my life. It positively knocked me out."
Paula paused and waited for Dick's response. He was so taken aback by the story, yet fascinated, that he didn't know what to say.
"It saved our marriage," Paula said with certainty. "All the hangups went in one night, and now, with David, it's more wonderful than it ever could have been otherwise."
"But you still make these trips."
"Boredom is what ruins so many marriages, Dick, perhaps yours. We come here and swing, and it refreshes us. We learn new tricks. Sometimes we watch each other with someone else, or take part in a group together. It's fun. Then we sit for night after night, telling each other in minute detail what our experiences here were with others, and we relive them with one another."
Dick sighed. "I wish my wife had acted like that."
"Don't worry," Paula said hotly. "You're never going to lack for sexual expression again, now "
They danced in silence for a little while. Dick puzzled over the story he had just heard. How common was such experience? He had to believe it was very rare In a large city there had to be any number of couples who had shared such an experience. Here they came together, drawn by their common conviction that only total freedom could liberate them.
The music stopped again, and couples broke up, some drifting off. It was getting late. Dick realized that he was physically tired, although so hyped up emotionally that he could scarcely feel the fatigue.
"I'll see you later," Paula said insinuatingly, and, brushing her fingertips across his bare midriff, walked off to join another group.
The pool was empty now, gleaming water under bluc-green lights. Several couples had vanished. Walking around the water, Dick again caught the odd scent of burnt tea. He went to a serving cart and got a drink. One of the older meri of the party stood there alone, drinking.
"I say, old boy," the man murmured, "have you and Paula made a definite arrangement for the night?"
Dick hesitated. Glancing around, he could not spot Linda. He felt a twinge of genuine sadness. She had chosen someone else.
Still, something told Dick that tonight simply was not the night he could quite handle Paula. He wanted her, yet he did not.
"No," he told the man. "We haven't settled on anything."
"By Jove," the man murmured, and heaved himself away from the tray, walking slowly in the general direction of the group where Paula stood.
Dick was left apart from the others. The music began. He glanced at his watch and saw it was nearly 3 a.m. Beverly was nowhere in sight, and the unwritten rules of the house probably forbade anyone monopolizing someone else. Dick glanced over the dozen couples remaining, noting that there were several more girls than men. He would not, he thought, be without a willing bed partner. He began looking over the girls and women still in circulation, but with a continuing sense of loss.
He had really not known how much he wanted Linda.
He took a deep breath of regret and tipped up his drink.
"Why," a soft voice asked nearby, "do you need that stuff?"
Dick turned. It was Linda, smiling softly. "I thought you were gone," he said with a rush. "Are you glad I'm not?"
"Awfullv glnd!"
She smiled, then frowned and pointed at his glass. "Why are you drinking that stuff? Didn't you say you were high?"
"Yon made me high," Dick replied, suddenly reckless and driven by the mounting need.
"Just me?" she asked, smiling secretively. Dick simply said, "I want you." Linda's body seemed to tense slightly. She murmured, "That's good."
He stood looking at her, scarcely able to believe his luck.
"Let's go to bed," she said, and turned to start for the house.
CHAPTER SIX
Linda led the way to a far end of the house. She peeked into a bedroom and then, smiling, took Dick's hand and went in.
The room was on a corner and had two windows overlooking the side gardens, and the dropoff to the landing strip below. In the moonlight Dick could make out distant surf rolling onto a silvery beach.
He saw all this in an instant, because Linda turned and came hungrily into his arms, face raised. As her arms slipped around his neck, she kissed him and crammed her tongue between his teeth.
"I thought Paula had stolen you," she whispered, standing against him, insinuating her pelvis against his.
"I want you," Dick said, stroking her bare back. lil want you, baby!" She stepped back from him. She slipped deftly out of the swimsuit.
Dick caught his breath. Her dark breasts were larger than Beverly's, wide-nippled, erect. Her waist nipped in to a flat belly and her hips were perfect, meeting beautifully turned legs. From her body came the delicious scent of musk.
She went to the bed, threw the covers back, and lay across the mattress, then sat up cross-legged to face him The room was dim, but Dick could make out the cleft between her thighs.
She had taken a small handbag to the bed with her. She opened it and began rummaging around as Dick stripped and hurried to the bed. He had worried about how well he could perform so soon after being with Beverly, but he needn't have been concerned. His sex stood blunt and huge in front of him as he walked to the bedside and sat on its edge.
Linda had taken a package of cigarettes from her purse. She offered it. "Stick?"
"What?" Dick grunted, surprised. i
"Do you want another joint?"
Dick saw that the proffered cigarette had the filter cut off, and the other end was twisted shut. Only then did he understand that the odd odor he had detected on the plane and around the patio was that of marijuana.
"I don't know if I want one or not," he said, confused.
"Still as high as you were earlier?" Linda assumed. She put the cigarette to her lips. "Well, I am, too. But making it stoned is so much better sometimes. I want to feel every inch as intensely as I can."
Fascinated, Dick watched the match flare, illuminating her lovely face briefly as she touched the flame to the cigarette. She inhaled deeply, holding the smoke, as she put out the match. The strong, sharp scent began to permeate the room.
Watching her smoke, Dick felt a sharp increase in his ardor. He had wanted total experience, he told himself, so why not this?
Feeling a bit shaky, he admitted, "When you asked if I was high earlier, I didn't really understand what you meant."
Linda looked at him. "You mean-you mean you've never turned on? You're not stoned right now?"
Dick smiled with embarrassment. "I haven't. I'm not. I was excited by you. That's what I meant."
Linda's gaze softened as she stared at him. "Would you like to turn on, baby? I guarantee you'll love it. There's nothing to be frightened about."
"Yes," Dick decided recklessly. "I want to."
She handed him another of the cigarettes and struck a match. "Smoke it like a regular cigarette, honey, but get in as much smoke as you can with every puff. Take it deep and hold it in."
The match touched the cigarette. Dick drew guardedly. He didn't know what he expected, but it was not what he got. The smoke was very mild, much milder than any tobacco, with a faintly dry taste.
"Draw it deep," Linda urged.
Dick took a heavy drag and took it in, holding it.
Watching him, Linda shivered with pleasure and reached out to encase his throbbing penis with a cool, firm hand.
Dick exhaled the mild smoke and immediately dragged in more. She did the same.
"Sometimes it takes a person two or three tries to get a little high," she said softly. "But this is dynamite stuff and you might be lucky. You might get high with just a couple joints."
Besides the mounting sexual excitement and nervousness of dealing with the unknown, Dick felt no other symptoms although he was probing inside himself for them.
"Smoke," she purred, stroking his side with her fingertips.
Dick dragged in more of the sweetly mild smoke, "Do you do this often?"
"Turn on?" Linda asked. "Once a week, maybe once every couple weeks or even less."
"It's not habit forming, then?"
"Don't be afraid of anything, baby. You hear of people that get psychologically addicted. Maybe you can. But you'd have to smoke it two or three times a day for weeks or months. Only a really dumb head with a lot of other problems is going to do anything like that."
They smoked in silence. The cigarette seemed to burn very swiftly, and Dick, in his eagerness to experience whatever awaited, smoked faster than Linda. She showed him how he had to be careful in disposing of the delicate white ash of the cigarette because the marijuana was ground fine, and the burning ash tended to fall off the end of the joint.
Minutes passed in silence. Linda smoked her joint down to the tip, the butt flaring at her very lips, and then quickly extinguished it as she made a wry face.
Dick, smoking along with her at the same pace and trying to do as she did, inhaled his last puff and got a sharp, acrid blast of smoke. He coughed explosively and stubbed the tiny butt out in the ashtray.
"I forgot to warn you," Linda smiled, "that we leave a little tobacco in the-end at the mouth, so we can be sure not to waste any grass. That bad puff you got was tobacco."
Dick impulsively leaned over and kissed her, their naked bodies touching lightly. She stroked his back, and he ran his fingertips down the long curve of her spine to the cleft of her buttocks, teasing that sensitive opening.
She leaned back from him, her smile lazier. "Oh, I'm beginning to feel it."
"The pot?" Dick asked.
"Oh, yes. God? This is good stuff.'"
Dick examined his own feelings. He felt normal in every respect.
"Nothing yet?" Linda guessed.
"I'm afraid not."
She leaned forward and licked the nipple of his chest. "You taste so good. I can't wait to taste you all over. Mmm, you're salty and sweet at the same time. Don't worry about not feeling anything yet, baby. Sometimes it takes a few minutes, especially for a beginner. If we wait five or ten minutes and you don't turn on at all, we'll give you another joint."
"I don't think it's that I'm afraid," Dick said. "I'm nervous about it, not knowing what might happen."
"You want it to happen?"
"Yes."
"You're open to it?"
"Yes, I think so."
"That's important," she murmured, slowly stretching out on the bed. "Go with the flow ... go with the flow, baby...."
Dick, still sitting up, felt his disappointment more keenly. He knew she was feeling great pleasure and langour and-what else? He didn't know. He felt nothing.
"What am I supposed to feel?" he asked.
"You'll know," Linda whispered luxuriously.
Dick felt a trembling of something.
Her voice had sounded very, very lovely with these last words, with a richness of timber, a depth and breadth of the vibrations of sound which he had never heard before.
"Say something else," he said-now he was feeling something.
"I'm high," she murmured. Her voice was a musical instrument, fantastic in second and third harmonics, like an organ.
"Your voice," Dick said. He felt a little light-headed.
"Hey," she beamed, sitting up. "Are you feeling it?"
Then, with a rush, the stuff came up and hit him. It filled him with a wave of relaxation and increased sensitivity.
"Oh, I feel it," he grinned.
She hugged him, and he felt her touch inside him.
"Tell me," she whispered. "What do you feel?"
"Oh, God, I can't tell you," he murmured. The wave was still coming up, filling him more.
It was inexplicable and profound.
"Lie down with me," Linda said.
He stretched out beside her. Her toes tickled along his shin and the wiry hair of her triangle prickled against him. He stroked her.
With a single motion he rolled over her, as she spread eagerly to receive him. Erect and more massive than he had ever been, he entered her. He glided down lushly into her, down ... down ... he seemed to have no limits of length, and he kept going into her for what seemed an infinity until finally he was all the way, straining gently.
"Ah," she breathed shudderingly, "you're in me all the way, I can feel you pressing up against my belly, I feel like I'm just wrapped around you, I'm just a case, baby, a case for you to carry that beautiful thing around in. I wish I could be your case all the time, I wish I could just be your case twenty-four hours a day, and every once in a while you'd lift me high, high up in the sky, with your getting an erection, and I'd be taller than the Empire State Building, up in the clouds, and when you shot, you'd blow me clear into Europe. God almighty, I'm stoned! I'm stoned on this dynamite and I'm stoned on your beautiful prick and I'm stoned on everything."
Slowly, tortured by an overwhelming welter of rushing sensation, he started to withdraw his sex, coming out so slowly it seemed to take forever.
"Don't pull out," she moaned. "Don't pull out any more, stick it in me all the way. I need it so bad-I can feel my coming on the way and you've just started, it's just been one stroke, hasn't it, or have we been making love a long time?"
"I don't know," Dick admitted, continuing the slow withdrawal that tortured every nerve in his body and told him in his deepest nerve centers how every bit of her body felt, how she trembled. "I don't know. I'm stoned. You said it might take two joints. Jesus, I'm really stoned now and you're so beautiful, I love fucking you."
She sobbed and thrust up wildly. He had just reached the ultimate point of withdrawal. He plunged into her again. She began to moan and writhe slowly, sobbing, her legs around his back, her fingernails clawing his arms and shoulders. He could feel things he had never felt before, the inside of her like a million tiny, wet, sucking tongues, gripping him in the beginning of a spasm.
With this surging sensation, Dick felt his own body quickening, and he knew she was coming, crying out as she thrashed madly, going out of her mind with delight. It was fantastic. Yet, he knew he was not really having an orgasm of his own He was feeling the pleasure of the orgasm without the final stages, the great outward surging. He was caught up in the tornado of the moment and plunged into her again and again, glorying in it, and then-suddenly they stopped, and were lying still.
"I did twice," she murmured. "You're so sweaty! God, I love your sweat and the way you smell! But you didn't come."
"I felt like I did, but I didn't," Dick said. He had no regrets.
"It's like that with a man sometimes," Linda whispered. "He can hold back for so long, he can go again and again. I don't know why. Sometimes he can just come and come, and other times it makes it so he can just make love and make love and not come until the girl is simply worn out."
"I'm going to go forever," Dick said, hugging her, "Do it, baby!"
Dick would never know, he thought, how long they had been making love now. He knew time had passed. He knew he had been inside Linda for a long time. She had had five orgasms, with only slight pauses in between. Now, finally, he had rolled off of her, his own completion still postponed. The bed was drenched with their sweat.
He wanted more, but he knew that she needed a little rest now. She lay very still, her breathing regular.
"Never," Linda said wondering, "ever!"
He knew what she meant, that it was her ultimate compliment. He ran his hand over her belly.
She lay still a moment, then got up and walked across the room, a moving statue in the moonlight. Water ran in the bathroom. Linda came back with a glass. "Thirsty?"
"I feel like I've never had a drink of water in my life!" . he realized suddenly.
She chuckled and handed him the cold glass. He began to drink. The water had a taste and fullness he had never tasted before. He drank and drank.
"I finished it," he said, handing the glass back empty. Suddenly this seemed important, and he felt sad. "I'm sorry, honey. I drank it all and didn't leave you any."
"There's a whole ocean full, baby," she laughed. "Would you like a cigarette?"
"Another joint?"
"I think we're stoned enough. I mean a regular cigarette."
"Yes."
He lit the cigarettes for them. They tasted marvelous, As they lay back smoking in the dark, he asked, "Is it always like this after you smoke?"
"It's always good," she whispered. "But I've never had it this good. Not with anyone. Not ever. My God, you're so big and lovely, and you're really very good, you know. You know everything you're supposed to do."
"I never thought of that," Dick said honestly. "I guess I never thought of myself as much of a lover...."
"You're the most beautiful lover I've ever had. No one has ever made me come the way you do. No one!"
It seemed a remarkably profound, meant and meaningful compliment. Dick drifted, thinking about it, He was still very high.
"How long do we stay this high?" he asked.
"Hours."
"Great, that's great. But how long has it been?"
She laughed. "I don't have any idea." She sat up to look at her watch.
Dick looked into the darkness, thinking it might have been an hour or it might have been two. He didn't know. He had no idea. This, he realized, was part of being stoned.
"Jesus," Linda murmured. "It's almost five o'clock!"
"You mean I made love to you for more than three hours, straight?"
She chuckled and hugged him. "You were straight one place!"
"I'm really thirsty again."
She got up obediently; "So am I." She went to the bathroom.
In a moment she was back with another glass of water.
Dick took it and drank it-Then he saw he had drunk all of it again, "Hell!" he said, chagrined.
"Don't worry, sweet," Linda said, taking the glass and putting it on the floor. "But you're thirsty, too."
She leaned over him with a special look in her eyes Her hand stole delicately down over his belly and found his half-erect penis. She began to squeeze and knead
"You've made me come and come," she said softly. "It's your turn now, and then well go to sleep."
Dick felt the building rising. "I don't know if I can," he said, in a quick and surprising panic. "Why haven't I?"
"You will now," Linda purred. Her hand gave a sudden, sharp jerk backward. "This is what I've wanted to do for you."
Frozen in pleasure and anticipation, Dick lay trembling as she kissed his mouth, his throat, his chest, and paused, poking her tongue maddeningly into his navel. Her hair tickled him as she grazed lower.
"Hey," she whispered.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely.
"Do you know what?"
"No."
"I just found a drinking fountain."
With the words, her tongue flicked out and traced itself teasingly along his entire length.
"Oh, Jesus," Dick groaned. "Oh, you don't know how that feels!"
Her lips touched him gently, teasingly. Her tongue lashed out, making him stiffen from head to foot and go numb with the sensation. Her teeth touched him, nibbling gently.
Her tongue was a molten flower wrapped around him, moving, tickling, pressing, hot-wet agony as she took him for the first time deeper inside her mouth.
Unable to hold still, Dick wrapped his legs around her head. His hips had begun to move of their own volition, probing in and out slowly, and her teeth and tongue and lips held him, accepting his short thrusts. Time passed. A distant fluttering began in his belly, a new and deeper sensation that cut through all the other layers and veils of intense pleasure. He was throbbing, knew what the quivering of his deepest body signaled.
Linda sensed it. With a murmur of real need, she plunged her face downward. Earlier Dick had felt her body sucking at him, but with an overwhelming, blinding burst of ecstasy, he felt her begin this in earnest.
She was pulling at him, sucking, holding him deep, writhing her breasts against his thighs, begging him for it. Her breathing was harsh, wildly excited, knowing even as he did himself that the flutter within his belly had become a bubbling, and then a boiling inferno. The building pain-joy of it had started with the motions of her mouth, and he felt the first surge building for what seemed an incredibly long time. Then the spasms started, once, twice, and he was almost knocked out, and yet it was not until the third that he felt the hot, searing, bursting surge of lava flow along his length and explode out of his own body.
Linda screamed huskily in her throat and worked more furiously, never letting up.
Dick reeled as it went on. Was he never going to stop? He had never felt anything remotely like this!
Then it was subsiding. He felt it, and for a moment, from the sheer release, he came very close to actually blacking out.
With infinite tenderness, Linda finally stole up alongside him again and kissed him on the mouth. "Thank you," she whispered. "Jesus, thank you!"
"No. I loved it."
"I could love you."
She sighed and put her arm softly across his chest. "We have to go to sleep. I'm awfully sleepy. Are you?"
"I don't know," Dick said.
She kissed his shoulder. "I'll stay awake if you want."
Dick examined his feelings. He could do this very consciously and with great care because he was still very high. With the sexual energy drained for a time, he found that the effects of the drug were immediately different. He floated in an ocean of warmth.
"I'm sleepy, too," he admitted.
Linda chuckled and curled close. "I thought so. Go to sleep, darling."
"Yes," Dick said, and closed his eyes.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The next morning, Dick awakened to find late-morning sunlight flooding through the windows. From outside came the distant sounds of play at the pool. There were voices downstairs in the house, too. He glanced at the bedroom door, and realized they had never closed it. Had someone watched any of their activity?
It didn't seem to matter. He was still just a shade high.
Beside him, nestled close, Linda slept softly. She felt good against him.
Something else had happened last night or early this morning, Dick realized. It was something in his memory.
It was frightening.
He tried to remember, and the memory was illusive. Then it flooded back. Was it a dream?
He had been asleep. Was it a dream or something he had really heard? His flesh chilled at the memory, hidden as it was by sleep or the high from the marijuana. He told himself it had been a dream, something which, perhaps, came with the drug.
There had been screams.
Genuine screams. Distant, coming through his sleep, perhaps a part of his sleep as a dream. He could hardly remember them, yet he knew they had bothered him and frightened him at the time.
The scream had been truly horrible, a scream of a man in agony, in death-throes, a broken, pleading, despairing outburst of horror and desolation.
The memory so chilled and unnerved Dick that he slipped quietly out of bed and quickly dressed. His watch showed it was almost noon. Down on the side patio, four couples were playing shuffleboard, for all the world like ordinary vacationers. Back among the shrubbery stood a husky young man in a white jacket and shorts. Dick knew, without analyzing, that the youth was one of the general's employees. Of course guards of some kind would be necessary; Dick hadn't thought of it before.
Somehow, however, the thought of guards, even hired only to make sure no wandering boat brought unwanted guests to the island, made everything seem more worrisome. Dick glanced at Linda, and suppressed a strong temptation to kiss her. She needed more sleep, he thought, and his curiosity was very strong.
The long corridor was empty. At the far end, a maid's cart stood beside a door with a large pile of sheets and pillowcases to be laundered. Dick had the random, funny thought that one of the general's greatest logistics problems had to be sheets.
He went down the great staircase, feeling fit and relaxed, except for the lurking fear and curiosity. Reaching the lower level, he decided on impulse to take a look around.
Several doors led off the massive foyer. Whoever had been downstairs earlier seemed to have gone. It was very quiet. Dick began investigating.
The first two rooms he looked into were large parlors, fitted with conservative, rich-looking furniture. The third was the general's office, and obviously private because papers were strewn over the large desk at the far end. Dick quickly left.
A hallway led to other areas deeper in the house. Opening a door, Dick went into what seemed a large old dining room, with a high, beamed ceiling and stained glass windows. In the original plan, this might have even been a family chapel. Here, however, there were many comfortable chairs along the mahogany paneled walls, and two pool tables under ornate light fixtures in the center:
The next room was a pingpong room, and the next a large, regular dining room with a huge glass chandelier and tiers of crystal in glass-doored cabinets along the walls. A pair of old Spanish swords hung crossed over the smoke-stained rock fireplace.
Going through this room, Dick entered a dim, narrow corridor. He tried a door off to one side, and found it locked. The air was musty here. When he pushed the door ahead of him open, he found himself stepping into a large, sun-washed modern kitchen. Here two husky men were up to their elbows in soap suds, preparing dishes and glasses for a commercial-sized dishwasher.
"Yes, sir?" the bigger man asked curiously.
"I was ... looking for breakfast," Dick made up.
"Out on the patio, sir," the man said, frowning slightly. "No, you don't have to go back. You can go out through the rear door over there."
"Thanks very much," Dick grinned. "I'm starving!"
The two cooks smiled back. One said, "If you don't find what you like, let us know on the intercom."
"Right," Dick said, careful to act unconcerned. He crossed the kitchen and went out into the brilliant sunlight.
The rear patio was in shade. There, breakfast had been set up. At one of several canopied red-and-white patio tables, a threesome of the general, Paula, and another woman sat eating and chatting. No one else was in view. Dick, vaguely irritated that he had been unable to find anything in the house, went to the serving cart and filled a plate. He wondered what he had expected to find. The screams had been dreams, he told himself, dismissing it.
Starting toward another table, he veered off and went to join the trio nearby when the general waved for him to do so. Paula looked stunning in an extremely tiny bikini, and the brunette with her wore a suit that was little more than two bands of silvery cloth. The general, as usual, wore white shorts and a tee shirt.
"Good morning!" the general said as Dick sat down. "You slept well?"
"Fine," Dick said.
Paula's leg touched him under the table and she said archly, "You escaped from me last night."
"An accident," Dick smiled.
"I should warn you," the general said, "that Paula seldom loses her prey."
"I'll catch you today," Paula said. "Who's running?" Dick grinned.
The other woman stood, stretching brazenly. "Speaking of running, some of us are going to walk down to the beach for an ocean swim. I'd better get along if I'm going to join."
"Enjoy it," the general said.
"I think," Paula said, "I'll go with you, Dolores, if you like."
Dolores seemed to draw in her breath sharply. "Oh, yes, Paula. I'd like that."
"Come along after you eat," Paula told Dick. "The general can show you the path."
"Fine," Dick said.
Paula and Dolores walked off.
"Two very beautiful young women," the general said thoughtfully.
"Yes," Dick agreed. He was suddenly feeling uneasy about being alone with the general. It struck him as absurd. He ignored the feeling.
"I hope," the general said, "you're enjoying your visit."
"Very much."
"Good." The general was watching him keenly. "You seem to be one of our kind, Dick. I hope you are indeed enjoying yourself and that you'll want to return often."
"I think I can say that I'll want to return, definitely," Dick said. On impulse he added, "My marriage just broke up. I need a new life."
The general nodded. "I understand."
From around the corner of the house came Linda, wearing a red low-cut sunsuit. She saw them, smiled and waved happily.
"Another lovely person," the general observed, waving for her to come over after getting a breakfast plate.
"I can vouch for that," Dick said with feeling.
"You slept with her last night." It was not a guess.
"Not only that," Dick said. "It was my first experience with pot."
The general's interest quickened. "Did you enjoy it?"
"I suppose I should try to be casual about it, but the truth of the matter is that it was marvelous."
"How do you feel this morning?"
"Great! Bright, alert, rested, famished-breakfast has never tasted better-and maybe just a little bit stoned."
The general smiled. "Good."
Linda started their way with her plate.
"You slept well also?" the general asked Dick.
"Yes."
"I hope the revelry didn't disturb you."
"No," Dick said. Then he added guardedly, "At one point I thought I heard some odd noises somewhere. But it might have been a dream."
"Odd noises?"
"Like a man-shouting."
The general smiled. "The wind plays curious tricks around the eaves of a large house such as this. I know the sound you mean. You understate; it sounds more like a man screaming, really."
"I suppose it might be described that way," Dick said.
"Yes. It's the wind. I've had architects here to try to figure out how to correct it, but it just seems impossible.
You can rest assured that the wind doesn't play such tricks often."
"I'm glad of that," Dick grinned, although he was not convinced. As a matter-of-fact, he was sure the general was lying. But why?
Linda joined them. She looked beautiful and sleepy, "Hi."
"High," Dick asked, "or hi?" She smiled. "Both, a little."
"Dick was telling me you introduced him to the elegant herb," the general said casually.
"We had a ball," Linda said. "An absolute ball."
"There are a lot of fine things to experience on my island," the general smiled. He glanced back at Dick. "I'm sure you'll eventually experience all of them."
"I'm ready," Dick said recklessly.
"Good," the general said. "Now excuse me, you two. I have some matters to check in preparation for things later today. It's unfortunate that your group must return this evening, Dick. We have a small plane bringing some new people tonight."
"Maybe the next time," Dick said.
"Good," the general said. "You're welcome back. Remember that."
Dick and Linda watched the general walk briskly away, out of sight around the house.
"He likes you," Linda said.
Why did this statement give Dick another tiny chill?
When they had finished breakfast, Dick told Linda about the beach swimming. She said she would like that. They found the path and went down a shallow slope, under fragrant tropical trees, and through a grove of well-spaced fruit trees and high grass. They came out onto a little sandy promontory overlooking the beach.
The blue ocean rolled in from infinity, breaking in gentle waves on the sun-drench white sand. It was idyllic. Several naked men and women were playing in the shallows.
"This is another reason the beach is more fun than the pool," Linda said, taking off her suit. "There has to be some propriety around the house during the daylight hours; a stray plane might fly over low enough to see. But the commotion of the waves and everything here makes that impossible, so we can all play in the buff. Come on!"
Naked, she ran across the hot sand and went into the water. Dick, stripping as he ran, followed her.
The salt water was a warm, welcome shock. He ran near Linda into the water until it was chest deep, and then dove. He went down, turning over, and came up blowing like a playful whale. Linda squealed and slapped him. Dick swam further into deeper water, liking the gentle surge of the waves as they lifted him and then let him settle again. He swam out a few yards, turned, swam parallel to the shoreline, and then stroked back in.
Standing, he saw that Linda had a new companion, a sandy-haired youth. They were standing in water only about thigh-deep, smiling and talking. The youth's sexual excitement, since he was utterly naked, was painfully apparent. Linda seemed delighted.
Dick walked over.
"Dick," Linda laughed, "meet Bruce Firnham, another good friend." Dick and the young man shook hands.
"First visit, isn't it?" Bruce asked with interest
"Right," Dick said.
"Have a ball!" Bruce grinned.
Dick smiled. Despite himself, he felt jealousy. He knew-as did Linda, obviously-that Bruce wanted her right now. Dick had no idea how he was expected to react. He had been imagining that he and Linda were paired for the weekend, at least. The pangs of jealousy surprised him.
"Come on, honey," Linda said to Bruce, taking his hand. "Let's run!"
Bruce, accepting with alacrity, turned with her. They ran down the shallows, splashing and laughing.
Dick, feeling very much alone and left out, turned and went back into the deeper water. He swam well out, but the joy of the ocean swells was not as keen now. He swam back in, out of breath and tired. He walked up onto the hot sand of the beach and dropped onto his back, staring painfully into the brilliant tropical sun.
If you're jealous, he told himself, it's a hangup. You have to beat it. You can't have any more hangups. They've destroyed one life for you already.
He let a few minutes pass, then sat up, telling himself he felt better. He looked around for Linda and Bruce. Most of the swimmers were well down the beach now, to the right.
Linda and Bruce were almost directly in front of him. They stood in water about thigh deep, with the waves washing in almost to their shoulders. Linda's legs were slightly spread, and she clung to Bruce, whose hips pistoned. He was inside her already. Judging by their total concentration and movements, were near climax.
With a thunder of torment crashing over him, Dick got up, grabbed his trunks, and headed blindly back off the beach. He ignored the path and headed into the brushy area beyond the high dunes. It was quiet and bugs buzzed. The sun filtered through high, tropical trees.
He had to accept all this, he told himself as he walked blindly. A person who openly and gladly accepted a life of sexual surrender had to be prepared. Linda had pl-edged him nothing. He owed her nothing, she owed him nothing. Why was he so upset?
He walked on a few hundred feet. The vegetation became more dense. He heard a waterfall somewhere nearby. He walked under a citrus tree, and turned around the curve of a faint path, the sound of the waterfall becoming ever louder.
He might have heard them before coming upon them like that if the waterfall sounds had not masked their own cries and murmurs.
As it was, Dick turned the corner and stopped, astonished.
Paula and Dolores, making love to one another, with Dolores hungrily atop Paula, her dark face buried between Paula's twitching thighs, while at the other end, Paula buried her face where Dolores was wriggling and sitting on her.
Dick almost turned and bolted.
No, he told himself. There was no false modesty here, no bogus morality. Even the first instant's sight of this scene he had never witnessed between women before had fascinated him. He wanted to watch. He would.
He stood there, even moving a little closer, unconcerned that they would spy him. He heard Paula grunting with delight, and saw how Dolores' tongue flashed back and forth in frantic movements. Dolores' hips were going crazy. Even her toes were writhing. Paula, underneath, was thrusting upward.
Slowly their movements slowed, and Dolores lay still, her head hanging between Paula's legs. Then Dolores slowly rolled over. Only then did the girls spot Dick.
Paula was not at all surprised. "Company," she smiled.
Dolores' eyes went immediately down the length of Dick's body. He still carried his trunks in his hand, and the brief spectacle that had just unfolded had put him in a trembling state of excitation.
"Are you alone?" Dolores demanded, trembling.
"Yes," Dick said.
Her eyes glazed with excitement. "What got you so excited?" She was staring unblinkingly at his massive erection.
"Watching the two of you," Dick said honestly. "Honey," Paula said, holding out her arms, "come here."
Dick went over and knelt between her still-spread legs. She smelled strongly of sex and the secretions of excitement. She was glistening with sweat.
"Let's take care of that for you," she purred. "I've been wanting to, ever since the airplane. Come on, honey. Right in here."
"What about me?" Dolores protested.
"Oh, all right," Paula sighed. She told Dick, "Lie down, honey. That's it, on your back."
Dick lay down in the cool grass, his sex rearing upward, pulsing. Paula, her eyes ablaze, stepped over his hips and squatted. Using her hand to guide him, she slowly sank down, encasing him completely.
Understanding the arrangement, Dolores knelt over Dick's face. He was trapped by her, engulfed. Her body covered his mouth and nose, and rubbed in aching undulations. He darted out his tongue as he had seen her doing to Paula. The effect was instantaneous.
At the same time, Paula was going wild, wriggling and pitching as she clamped around him.
The sheer excitement and wonder of loving two beautiful women this way, simultaneously, nearly drove Dick out of his mind. He flogged Dolores with his tongue, ramming his hips up at Paula, thinking that this was it, this was the liberation he had sought. He would never be the same after this moment, he thought. These two women, and what they were doing had broken the logjam of inhibitions and worries. He was going to be free, he was going to do anything and everything, and to hell with the consequences.
Fie was liberated.
The joy of this thought, with the maelstrom of tormented pleasures racking him all over, began the rolling, surging, building explosion of the strongest orgasm he had ever had in his life.
CHAPTER EIGHT
"Flight five-six," Dick said, thumbing the over-ride microphone, "correct your bearing." Then, without waiting for the usual "roger," he activated his throat mike. "Flight Alpha ten continue your approach to runway one-four on visual approach."
With a sense of dead-sure calm, he glanced at the computer display and the flight board being worked by his partner at master control, and flipped three sets of flight numbers into the stack. "Flight twenty, your landing designation is Bravo ten. Continue present pattern." He punched a button to recycle a computer tape and read it out. "Zebra six, this is ATL control. You are one thousand feet low, repeat, one thousand feet low. Continue into sector five-zero-four."
Dick turned to his partner, "Signal the GCA room we have a military transport number four to land, and ILS won't cut it for them. Tell Harvey or Ed to signal me when they want a five-mile screen takeover."
Outside the tower, the roar of a landing jet shook the dense fog that had hung over the area all day. Alpha ten was down safely. Although the entire control room was at fever pitch and the tension was thick enough to spread on toast, Dick calmly spoke to two more aircraft and changed the display board again.
A hand touched his shoulder. He glanced back. Ken Jurgensen, the shift supervisor today, was standing there.
"Come to the office on your break." Jurgensen said easily.
"Rog," Dick snapped. With certain quickness, he reached for the hand mike again to correct a flight position in the dense fog overhead.
When his afternoon break rolled around, Dick got a cup of coffee from a vending machine and went down the spiral staircase inside the tower to the supervisors' office. He found Jurgensen, a sandy-haired man of about forty, alone in the small, windowless office.
"Sit down," Jurgensen said.
"Don't mind if I do," Dick grinned. He draped himself into the leather chair facing Jurgensen's desk, put his cup of coffee on the edge, and lit a cigarette.
"Feeling all right?" Jurgensen asked.
"Sure," Dick said. "Great."
"The fog is bad. If it drops another five hundred feet, we're socked in."
"We've alerted Washington International and Miami," Dick said. "No sweat. Only a couple of our stack flights are low on fuel. We could get them down fast and then divert everybody else."
"This is the worst weather we've had in months," Jurgensen said, watching him steadily. "Everyone is uptight." He paused. "Everyone but you."
"My nerves are good these days," Dick said. What was this all about, anyway?
"In the last couple of months, Dick, you've changed. You used to be supertense, always right on top of everything. You had a tendency to make some others edgy, but your performance was so brilliant, we overlooked your own tension even when it showed."
"So now," Dick smiled, "you're complaining because I've calmed down?"
"No one is complaining. I get the weird feeling that on days like this, when some tension is normal, you're almost nonchalant up there."
"I'm not nonchalant," Dick snapped. "I just know my job and I'm keeping cool. Why get all shook up?"
"Because, man, there are several thousand people up in that fog, counting on you to get them down alive!"
"Bullshit," Dick said amiably. "I can't worry about everybody in the world. I'm taking care of myself, and I'm happy; relaxed. That makes me a better controller. I don't have to worry about those people up there; I know I can get them down in one piece."
Jurgensen scowled. "I'm worried about you. On-board flight tapes show three hair's-breadth passes-near midair crashes-ordered by you on control in the last month or five weeks."
"I can tell you just which three they were," Dick shot back. "I calculated them. I knew they'd miss. There was margin. I've never ordered a flight inside the federal margins. If I work right up on the edge of the margins, it just shows what a good controller I am."
"It shows you're taking chances."
"It shows I'm calm and collected, that's all! I know my business!"
"There's no need to operate on the margins," Jurgensen said.
"I saved time and money, and cleared stacks."
Jurgensen sadly shook his head. "Richard, we've known each other more than five years. You've changed."
"I know that. It's for the better."
"You had a divorce two months ago. Instead of showing shock and anguish, you've seemed calmer. Now we have these close calls. You're not at all upset about it."
Dick stabbed his cigarette into the ashtray. "Listen. I'm wasting my break down here."
"You're here," Jurgensen said, his ears reddening, "because I'm sincerely worried about you."
"Let me live my own life, okay?"
"I can't-not when your life impinges on thousands of other lives of passengers and crews in flights over this airport!"
"I'm fine," Dick said, believing it. "A nervous breakdown," Jurgensen said, "can come in more ways than one."
"Oh, balls!"
"Your behavior has changed. I don't like it. Dick, I want you to have a psychological workup." Dick was stunned. "My annual physical-"
"That's an order, Richard," Jurgensen said, his mouth a hard line.
Through the remainder of his shift, Dick continued to work aircraft with a sense of calm certainty. But inside he was angry. When he left the tower and began driving to his apartment in the dense fog, he allowed himself to think about it.
He was surprised that even casual observers like the supervisors had noticed a change in his behavior, although he had been feeling much better. It angered him that they couldn't see the change was all for the good. He had never endangered an aircraft under control.
In the two months, there had been four more trips for weekends at the general's island. Each had been wilder and more liberating than those before. Just last weekend he had spent the entire night and half the next morning in a single bed with three beautiful women and one other man, David Rike. The women had been Paula, Linda and a new girl named Cissie. The memory was vivid. At one point, all five of them had achieved simultaneous orgasm; Paula had at least three spasms in the space of less than a minute. David had been on the bottom of the heap, avidly sucking his own wife's breasts while Linda, moaning wildly, had been sitting on his hips, impaled on his penis. Dick, behind Paula as she knelt on hands and knees, had been pumping into her while he licked Cissie, and Cissie, twisted around like a contortionist, held his dangling scrotum in one hand, kneading him, and buried her face in under the junction of David and Linda at the same time. They had all been stoned, and everyone knew they were all near the climax, when David, gasping, spit out his wife's nipple for an instant and gave the instructions that took them all over the top.
"Dick," he panted, "you're in the wrong place."
"Oh, yes," Paula groaned with desire, wriggling her buttocks.
Dick, understanding, withdrew from her and raised his sights a bit He entered slowly into the new opening, and Paula groaned with the pain of his sudden thrust. He crashed into the hilt, feeling the tightness would tear him off. At the same time, Cissie thrashed around and hungrily glued her mouth to the aperture he had just vacated. Instantly Paula began to spasm, and Dick felt not only this incredible tightening, but Cissie's convulsions began on the length of his tongue. Linda moaned and began bouncing on David's hips.
"Christ!" David grunted. "I'm going over-!"
"Me too!" Linda moaned.
"We all are, we all are," Paula gasped.
The memory lifted a bulge in Dick's trousers as he drove along toward home. Hell, he thought, there was nothing wrong with him now. The trouble had been all the years of uptight repression, of hidden desires and lurking dreams unfulfilled. Now he came back from weekends at the island exhausted, but alive. In between visits to the island, sometimes he had had Beverly to his apartment, sometimes Linda, once-unforgettably-Paula, who had made love with him steadily through the night, using every trick she had ever known to arouse him again and again after he was sure the last orgasm had surely finished him for the night. He didn't need a thing now.
The temporary decree on the divorce had come through, and the few minutes in the courtroom had been bad. He had been torn by the look of anguish on Fran's face, and the distant wish that things could have been different.
Things were not different. This was a new life. He missed the kids. But he did get to see them once a week, more often sometimes. Far from being destroyed by the situation, as he had secretly feared, he was doing beautifully.
Jurgensen was crazy!
Dick pulled off the freeway, remembering to stop by the store for plenty of beer. He was having five male friends over for a poker game tonight. They used his apartment, probably, because their uptight wives didn't like all the cigar smoke in the house, clinging to the curtains. Dick thought about this, and felt superior and sorry for his friends.
"Boy, oh boy!" said Larry Walker when he entered the apartment that night. "This is a really stud place, Dick, boy!" Walker, a pudgy little man, leered and nudged Dick with an elbow. "Poontang hollow, huh?" He nudged again and winked at the other husbands. "Huh? Huh?"
Possibly because the remark seemed too juvenile and pathetic, Dick found his mood flattened for the poker game. They played about three hours only. He lost about four dollars, playing cautiously. His friend, Ted Reeder, the psychologist, comfortably puffing a pipe, was the big winner, collecting seventeen dollars and change, Dick kept the beer and highballs flowing, and when Walker yawned and said he had to shove off for home, so momma wouldn't be mad at him, Dick said he, too, was tired and suggested they call it a night. It was only midnight.
As the other men prepared to leave, however, Dick made it a point to murmur to Reeder, "Hang around a few minutes."
Reeder nodded and said nothing, but he stalled until the others had gone.
He and Dick began cleaning up.
"Larry sort of pissed me off," Dick said.
Reeder nodded. "Sometimes his sexual jokes make me edgy, too. I imagine he leads a pretty repressed life."
Dick poured himself a triple martini, not bothering with the vermouth. "Let's leave the rest of the mess and talk."
"Something on your mind?"
They sat down in the living room. Dick, who knew he had had one or two drinks too many already, downed the gin. Then he got to the point
"Ted," he said, "I want you to give me a psychological write-up."
"You mean you want to come in for therapy?" Reeder asked, surprised.
"Hell no! I want you to give me a letter that provides me with a psychologically clean bill of health."
Reeder began to reply, then evidently thought better of it. He puffed his pipe in silence for a while.
"Why?" he asked finally.
"The idiots at the tower want it"
"Why?" Reeder repeated.
"I don't know," Dick said, feeling the last drink begin to hit. "They think I'm too calm up there. Can you beat that? I'm not nervous enough to suit them!"
"They want a psychological evaluation?"
"That's it. So how about it, Ted? Write me a brief letter, saying I'm in great shape."
"Are you in great shape?" Reeder asked, watching him closely.
"I've never felt better."
"Are you sure of that?"
"Of course I'm sure! Come on, Ted! This is your friend, Dick Stone. I know all about hidden motivations and self-deception and all the rest of it. I know how I feel, and I feel great!"
"You're drinking too much," Reeder said.
"I'm fine. I've never felt better."
"That's what bothers me," Reeder said, clearly worried.
"Look-"
"No," Reeder said firmly. "You look. You asked me for an evaluation. I'm going to give you one, very briefly. A curbstone opinion, anyway. I think you should come in for some real sessions if you want more than that."
"All I want is the letter, Ted."
"You've been through a divorce," Reeder said. "I've never seen a divorce yet that didn't work some sort of genuine psychological change through its trauma. Yet you show little or no signs of concern. You act as if nothing had ever happened, and your whole life has been uprooted. That's not normal."
"I've started a new life, a better one," Dick snapped, "That's why I'm not moping around. I'm happy!"
"A new life?" Reeder repeated, and he seemed quietly amused and sad at the same time.
It angered Dick. The drinks had made him reckless, "I'm part of a group of real swingers now. We have a--a place to go. A dozen people, two dozen, hell, any number!" , "For sex?"
"For sex, you'd better believe it."
Reeder's expression sagged as if in disappointment.
"I'm having a ball," Dick insisted, almost angry. "Listen. A couple of weeks ago I fucked four different women a total of nine times in a single night I had it in one's cunt at ten o'clock, and in her ass a little after midnight, and in her mouth in the morning, while two of the others watched. I've found a girl only about eighteen years old at the-at the place. She digs the oral bit exclusively. She's learned how to take full-length strokes in her mouth and right down her throat. I've had it down so far into her throat, you can see the swelling on the outside. There's one woman with huge breasts I've used, and after I've shot up onto her upper chest, she reaches down and licks-"
"This," Reeder broke in explosively, "is your new life?"
"For me," Dick admitted, "not yet. But if somebody out there wants it, I'm ready to go with him any way he wants it, the two of us or with an audience, or two guys at once. I've talked with one man. I think he digs that scene. If he comes around, I'm ready to try anything. Everybody in the group is the same."
Reeder stood and looked down at Dick. "I was worried about you before. Now I'm really concerned."
"Do you want to come along some weekend?" Dick asked. "Maybe that way you'd see how healthy it all is. Or," he said, with sudden insight "are you scared you'd dig it as much as the rest of it, and you don't want to face yourself?"
"I've faced myself," Reeder said calmly. "But I wonder if you have, really."
"Just give me the letter saying I'm okay, Ted. That's all I'm really asking."
"I'm sorry," Reeder said. "What?"
Reeder went to the door and turned back for a minute. "I can't give you any such letter, Dick, because I think you're in a bad way."
Dick stared, incredulous, as his friend left, shutting the door behind him.
The sonofabitch wasn't going to do it for him!
Angry, Dick got up and started slamming dishes into the washer. It was a risk you ran, he thought, when you tried to deal with people who kidded themselves, who clung to the old morality that no one had ever really followed anyway. He was furious. Well, he would look up a shrink in the phone book, go in and give him a brief snow job, and get the letter anyway.
That would be simple enough.
He worked steadily, and finished straightening up the apartment Glancing at the clock, he saw it was about one o'clock.
As he was lighting a cigarette, the telephone rang. "Hello?" he said.
"Dick?" The voice was soft and lonely. Instantly, he knew who it was. He was softly surprised, "because he had not heard a word from his former mistress since that awful night when she ended it
"Jean?" he asked, amazed.
"I just wanted to call," she whispered. "To see if you were all right."
"Hell, honey, I'm fine." He thought a moment. "And you?"
She hesitated, then said, her voice breaking, "Dick, I'm terrible."
"What's the matter?"
"I miss you. I'm sorry for the things I said. I saw in the paper about your divorce, and I've been so worried about you-I missed you so much-"
He had a strong sensation of power and strength. "Jean, I'm just fine. Don't worry about me at all."
There was a long silence. He could hear her breathing.
Finally she asked huskily, "Would you like to come over?"
"It's late," he lied, and then added with venom, "I'm in bed and I'm not alone."
"Oh!" The pain in her tone made him feel good.
"Maybe some other night," he said gently. He was sorry now he had hurt her. He added, "I'd love to see you some other night, honey."
"No," she whispered. "Good night."
The connection broke.
Dick replaced the receiver. He had a pang of guilt and longing, which he quickly put down. So Jean was sorry and wanted him back. Remembering the horrible pain of that night when she had rejected him, he examined his feelings now.
There was still love for her, but it was muted. His memories of lovemaking with her were misted now. It was hard to recall exactly how she did it, how she acted. Memories of Linda and Paula and Cissie and a dozen other women intruded, the steamy memories all mixed up in an orgiastic sensation of sheer pleasure.
It made Dick feel good. He was over the hurdle, he thought, with both his ex-wife and mistress. He was a free man!
Lighting a cigarette, he poured himself another drink He wished he could smoke some pot, but the matchbox hidden in the closet contained only enough for a couple of joints. He wanted to save it for a special occasion.
He was free of Jean and the entrapment of his love for her.
In only another few days was coming another weekend at the island.
He was looking forward to this weekend more than normally. The general had said they would have a large number of new people, and, for the first time since Dick had been attending, the group had voted to have an all-out orgy at poolside in honor of the occasion. There would be "fun and games," the precise nature of which the older members had refused to disclose, except to assure Dick that his mind would be blown, "along with everything else," as Paula had put it.
The general, too, had seemed pleased by the prospect He had told Dick, "We have all sorts of special entertainments in store for you."
For an instant, Dick had had the feeling that the general was speaking of special entertainment for him alone, and it had been a chilling moment. There were still times when something vaguely sinister about the general bothered Dick. But everyone was having so much fun, and loved the general so much, Dick figured he was imagining things.
There had, at least, been no recurrences of that first night, when he had heard the terrible screaming sound, On another night he had awoken, with three other people in the bed, and had heard a distant keening sound, as of moaning and wailing in anguish.
"It's that damned wind again," Beverly had said disgustedly, and, before Dick could pursue the subject, she had buried her face in his thighs.
So it would be a great weekend, Dick thought. He found himself wondering about the new people, especially the women. He was hungry for new experience. He hoped he could get two or three of the new ones, anyway.
The thought brought him to a partial erection. It had been three days since he had last slept with Beverly. Damn! He walked to the thin drapes of the front window overlooking the pool. He wished he had been nicer to Jean on the telephone. He could have invited her over and humped her.
As he stood at the window, he forgot his idea.
Standing outside the door next to his own was the blonde he had seen the night when she and her boyfriend came up from the pool. She wore shorts and a halter, and had a little purse. Her long silvery hair hung down her bare back. Jesus, she was a big girl. Dick vividly remembered the sounds of her wild lovemaking with his neighbor, whom he now knew. He remembered her repeated, shuddering orgasms.
As Dick watched her, she raised her hand and tapped again on the door beside his.
Dick went to his own door and opened it.
She turned quickly, startled. Her eyes were very blue.
"Burt's out of town," Dick informed her. "He had to leave this morning, and asked me to take care of his mail because he won't be back until late tomorrow night."
The blonde's face fell. "Oh. I was just dropping by to say hello."
Dick took her in within an instant. He knew she had come by for something much more significant than a casual visit. The signs were all there: the high color in her cheeks, the slightly glazed look in her eyes, even the way the material of the halter showed that her nipples were already erect He sensed the arousal in her.
Then he thought, Burt said to take care of his mail, Well, you're part of the mail, baby.
The blonde had started to turn away.
"Wait a minute," Dick said casually. "Look. I hate to see you wandering around late at night, after coming all the way over here. Why don't you come in and have a drink?"
She turned, and eyed him honestly. "You must be Dick. Burt has mentioned you."
"Yes," Dick said, "and your name is Mona. So we're practically old friends already. Come on in for a drink before you head home."
"I don't know," she said.
"Come on." Dick grinned at her.
She smiled. "All right. I can use one."
He let her in. She was tall enough to come to his shoulder, and as she brushed past him entering, he caught the light fragrance of her perfume. She had come over, Dick thought with dead certainty, for a good roll in the hay. Suddenly he knew that he was going to give her precisely that, if he played his cards right.
Mona sat on the couch and stretched out her legs. She could squeeze a man....
She said, "I live alone, of course, and I couldn't get to sleep. Some nights I just get uptight and never know why. I didn't know Burt was out of town."
"It was sudden," Dick said. She had fantastic breasts. He wondered if they would sag without the halter, and guessed not.
"I'm disappointed," she said.
"Not too much, I hope," he told her, smiling. "I've been wanting to meet you."
"Oh?" she asked, wide-eyed.
"The walls between these bedrooms are very thin, you know."
For an instant she didn't understand. Then she did. A trace of color stole up the column of her throat as she realized he was telling her that he had listened to her lovemaking with Burt.
She quickly recovered, and laughed breathlessly. "I think someone ought to complain to the management about that."
"Not me," Dick said. He went to the bar. "What will you have?"
"Anything," she said, giving it two meanings, perhaps. Dick had an, inspiration. "If you're uptight, maybe you'd like to smoke some grass."
Her eyes widened. "Do you have some?"
"I might, for a big occasion."
"I've never-" She hesitated, then came out with it. "It's embarrassing, but I never smoked any."
"Would you like to try it?"
Their glances locked, and many things began to be understood although Dick knew she would be wary, might still run away.
"You'll like it," he assured her.
"Why not?" she said, laughing.
Dick winked at her and went in to the closet. He brought back the matchbox and sat beside her on the couch while he emptied two regular cigarettes and carefully filled them with marijuana.
"So that's how it's done," she murmured, her leg lightly brushing his.
"That's how," he said, twisting the end closed on the second stick. He was pleased to see he had enough left for another joint, if the first didn't turn her on.
"Do I smoke it like a regular cigarette?" she asked, holding the joint carefully.
"Drag it deep and hold it in," Dick counseled.
They lit up and began to smoke.
After just a few drags, Mona stretched luxuriantly and kicked off her tiny sandals. She smiled. "Oh, my!"
"You feel it already?" Dick asked, surprised.
"Oh, yes," she said deliciously, with the unmistakable pleasure that went with it.
"Tell me how you feel," Dick said, only beginning himself to go up.
"Floating," Mona murmured. "Soft. Oh, I'm really relaxing . , . in one way." She dragged more smoke deep into her lungs and leaned her head against Dick's shoulder. "Oh, wow. You really know how to relax a girl."
Dick slipped his arm around her. She nestled, allowing her breasts to press firmly against him. He moved his leg against hers, and she moved her thigh gently up arid down.
"It's coming over me in waves," she whispered. "Christ, I'm all relaxed in one way, but it's-so sexual."
"Good," Dick smiled, kissing her ear.
"I knew when you invited me in that you wanted to fuck me," Mona whispered.
Dick finished his joint and busied himself cupping her breasts in his hands. They hung very firm and tipped by hard, broad nipples which he traced with his fingertips, making them come more erect as Mona lay still, breathing gently.
"I came over here because I needed it," she said softly, drifting. "I was afraid of you. I don't sleep around much. I might not have made it with you if you hadn't given me this. Now it's all right. I know you want me and I want you. I can say that. Golly, I'm getting higher and higher! Oh-baby-" She turned, raising her mouth.
Dick kissed her long and deeply. She sucked his tongue, biting him. As they kissed, he slid his hand under her halter, pulling it up and over her breasts with some difficulty because of their size. He smoothed his palm over her nipples and broke from her lips to look down at her. The breasts were immense white globes with thick fiery-red, erect points, but they did not droop. Their firmness and texture was lovelier than any he had ever seen. He bent to lick and kiss them, taking their points alternately into his mouth.
Feverish with excitement, Dick continued to suck until her first explosion had begun to subside. Then, hungrily, she kissed his mouth again, and her hand stole along his thigh and found the hard mound of his sex. She gently felt his length and thickness, and her breath blew hotly in his mouth as she gasped at his dimensions.
"I'm almost afraid to look," she whispered, "But I want to."
Quickly she bent to his front and unzipped his pants. She pulled them down ... and then his shorts, drawing them carefully all the way off, onto the floor, before she turned to stare at his penis. It stood massive, throbbing, and on the deep red tip of the glans glistened a silvery-clear droplet, proof of his rising excitement.
"Oh, my," Mona whispered. She put her hand around his shaft and squeezed. The droplet drew and then began to slide off. She bent her head quickly and licked.
Squirming, Dick managed to slide her shorts down, and she stood, trembling, to allow him to slide them on down the lush curve of her thighs and then to the floor. As she stood there, Dick slid his hand between her velvet thighs and moved his fingers upward, entangling them in her hair and then reaching her clitoris. It was hard and erect, and he gently stroked it with his fingertips.
Mona threw back her head and sobbed as another orgasm tore through her.
Dick marveled as he manipulated her. She had dropped to one knee on the couch close beside his seated position now, and he easily sucked her breast back deep into his mouth and slid his fingers farther back between her legs, reaching her vagina. She trembled and pressed more of her breast into his mouth, shuddering.
"Yes, yes!" she gasped.
Dick slid two fingers deep up inside her. Instantly she groaned and clamped down and began still another time, shaking and moaning as her hips convulsed.
"Oh, God, this stuff is good," she said hoarsely, still half-standing in front of him. "And you're good. You're so beautiful." She gazed into his eyes with mute adoration for an instant, then knelt between his slightly spread legs on the floor. She bent and bestowed a long, loving kiss on him, making him squirm with delight and desire.
"Careful, honey," he choked. "You've got me so excited-"
She stroked her fingers along his length, making him even thicker and harder at every moment. She watched him grow with a sense of awe and wonderment clear in her expression.
"I read how ancient civilizations worshipped the penis," she said huskily. "I know why. I adore it, too. I've never loved one more than I love yours right now."
She looked up at him. "Can I please kiss you more, and suck it? Please? I want to, so much."
"I don't know if I could hold back."
"I don't want you to hold back!" she whispered fiercely, and then bent down and took him into her mouth, sucking furiously.
"Oh, Jesus," Dick sighed, twitching his hips, feeling the lava begin to build as the wet rasp of her tongue surrounded him. "Baby, you don't know how much you're going to get-it's been three days-"
She moaned with desire and increased the pressure.
He watched this beautiful girl, her massive breasts crushed up into his scrotum, wriggling with her own delight against them, her mouth pushed down amazingly far, working her lips and tongue up and down in insistent, demanding, insatiable rhythm. He felt it starting, building, and it felt like a red-hot poker being slowly withdrawn from his deepest bowels as he surged up and out.
Mona stiffened slightly, and stayed with him through the long, surging climax. She did not release him from her lips until he had begun to shrink.
She licked her lips. "Oh, it was nice," she gasped, and then threw herself back on the floor, spread-eagled in front of him, and her hand dove to her sex "I loved it," she panted, working her fingers and going wild with her hips. "When you did, it just took me over right with you, and now I'm going again...."
Watching with mute fascination, Dick saw her bring herself to another orgasm which shook her, made her belly and hips and breasts tremble as she threw back her head, eyes open and unseeing, body raised almost entirely off the rug with the crashing force of the release.
Then Mona fell back, relaxed again momentarily, but her broad hips continued to move slightly, undulating. "I hope you won't take long to recover," she said thickly. "I need you. I want you again and again. I don't think I can get enough tonight."
Dick stood, and as he did so, felt with surprise the first throb of his own readiness and desire. He could never have done this, he thought, if it were not for the island.
He took her hand and helped her up, and they clung in a blazing kiss. She felt his penis rise up between her thighs, hard and ready again, and cried with joy.
Dick led her into the bedroom. The night, he thought, was only beginning.
CHAPTER NINE
Torches flared and smoked redly around the edges of the patio. Their crimson light cast shadows on the house, and made the skin tones of scantily clad women at pool-side pink and eerie. Dick, seated at a table with Linda and a couple named Georgia and Sam Cline, had just finished eating. It had been dark only a little while, and so far the party was ordinary-perhaps even quieter than usual.
"Where are the new people?" Dick asked for the third time. "I know everyone here." He glanced around again at the approximately twenty people in sight "What's going on?"
"The way I understand it," Georgia smiled, "the general is having one of his surprises tonight. I saw the newcomers ushered into the house, but as part of the game, they had to agree at the outset that they would be the general's slaves for the entire evening, and do precisely what he ordered. I understand he has them in the game room now, giving them their instructions."
"Whatever it is," Linda said, "I wish we would get started."
Dick noticed a stir at the door of the house, and the general walked out, smiling. He had with him two of his male employees, who were carrying what looked like sections of pipe and a roll of material.
"It looks like it's starting," Dick observed, "whatever it is."
"Good!" Linda said with relish.
As the general strode out onto the patio, the other people around the area stopped what they were doing and turned to see what was going on. The general held up his arms, and everyone quieted. Perhaps on his signal, the music coming from loudspeakers around the patio also stilled.
"We have new people tonight," the general smiled, his voice carrying over the sucking sounds of the gas torches. "I thought it would be a fine occasion for them to be initiated by watching some of our games. Some of you who have been here many times are familiar with these games. For others of you, they will be new. I think you will all enjoy them. Now, while my men are setting up the equipment for the first group game, I think we could have the newcomers walk out and assemble along the pool, and we'll all watch a game or two of fastest on the draw."
Linda laughed and clapped her hands. Around the area, there was other smattering of applause.
"What's this first game?" Georgia asked.
"I have no idea," Dick admitted.
"Just watch," Linda said with relish.
"Who," the general asked, "would like to participate?"
Hands shot up all around.
The general laughed. "All right, I can see I'll have to choose, since we're all in such a good mood." Putting his hands behind his back, he strode around the patio.
While he did so, two of the guests went to a side area and brought out a pair of air mattresses, which they spread out in the center of the patio, in clear view of everyone.
The general paused in front of Paula, winked at her, and put his hand on her shoulder. "You will be fast-draw number one."
"Goody!" Paula squealed, and hurried toward one of the mattresses.
The general walked on, and stopped in front of a young girl named Jana. She was trim and slender, with high, uptilted breasts and marvelous tan legs. "Jana?"
"Yes!" she accepted eagerly.
"All right," the general announced. "The male competitors, for Paula, will be Jack, Ray, Peter and Les. The competitors who will act with Jana will be David, Morris, Don and Saul. You're all old-timers here, and know the game, so you can assume your positions and make whatever strategy talks you wish."
As the eight men hurried toward the mattress area, Paula and Jana brazenly stripped off every stitch of their clothing, The contrast between the two women-Paula so buxom and beautifully endowed, and Jana so trim, hard, and bronze, was exciting in itself. Paula immediately lay down on the mattress as her four competitors gathered around her. Jana knelt with her four men. Everyone was smiling, and as the men quickly undressed, everyone could see that most of them were already in a state of high excitement. Paula, seeing that one of her men was slightly slow coming to full erection, smilingly said something to him and reached out to move her hand gently once or twice up and down his length, tugging. He sprang up at once.
While this spectacle was taking place, the two employees were setting up their equipment across the patio, near the darker area adjacent to the house. The pipes stood in tripods, and between the pipes, about fifteen feet apart, the two men were stretching a band of what appeared to be light canvas. It formed a barrier from about waist height upward, leaving the lower area empty.
Whatever this later game was to be, the thing now was the competition the general had first set up. All eyes were on this arena. Paula was talking animatedly with her four men, and Jana with hers.
"What are they going to do?" Dick asked.
"You'll see," Linda said with pleasure.
Georgia wriggled. "I think I've guessed."
From the house came a group of another dozen people, seven women and five men. Dick saw with a shock that they were all stripped naked, but wore full-face masks. It was impossible to identify anyone by facial features, and so since they were the new people, no one could identify them. This group walked slowly to the far side of the pool. The general, having walked to greet them, invited them to take individual chairs and lounges. The general had walked around the pool again and everyone's attention shunted quickly from the newcomers.
"For those of you unfamiliar with the game," he announced, "the object is uniquely simply. As you can see, each woman has four men. Everyone is stripped for action and-" he grinned at the men-"quite obviously up for this occasion.
"Whichever woman can bring all four of her partners to a climax first is the game winner. The prize is that the winner gets to select any four persons here, and have them to herself for whatever uses she wishes, the entire night after the other games are completed. The men on the winning team, after a period of rest, of course, get their choice of any other woman."
There was a general ripple of excitement. Dick could see that the men among the newcomers, like himself and the others not in the game, were visibly aroused. Women in the crowd were squirming, too, as all anticipated what was to follow.
"All right," the general said. "Paula, are you ready?"
"Hell yes," Paula cracked.
"Jana?"
"And eager," Jana trilled.
"All right, you may assume your positions. On my signal, begin."
Fascinated, Dick watched Jana immediately lie down, roll over on her back, and gesture to one of the men to lie between her legs. She placed his penis close to the juncture of her thighs, and with a word told him to pause at the very opening. A second man she motioned around to her head, and he knelt over her face, extending himself down toward her mouth. The other two men obediendy lay down on either side of her and she took each in one of her hands.
At the same time, Paula had turned over onto hands and knees, straddling the hips of one man and placing herself so that she was ready to plunge down upon his trembling sex. Another man, on his knees, moved up behind her buttocks, in position, while a third knelt in front of her upraised face. The fourth lay beside her. She curled one hand around him, supporting her weight with the other arm alone.
"Would you like to make a bet?" Sam Cline asked Dick.
"Who do you pick?" Dick asked. "For a dollar?"
"Fine. You can pick your team, Sam."
Sam Cline grinned. "I pick Paula's team. I think Jana is at a disadvantage, having two hand jobs."
Dick was disappointed, because he, too, had been thinking the same thing, but he agreed.
"You're on," he said, "for a dollar."
"Ready?" the general called.
Neither woman spoke now, so eager were they to begin, and breathless with passion. Paula smiled. Jana, her eyes closed and lips hanging open to receive the thick muscle poised a fraction of an inch away, nodded slightly.
"Begin!" the general ordered.
A complete hush fell over the crowd, and everyone leaned forward.
Paula thrust downward with her hips, burying the man below her in one opening, and at the same time the man behind her lunged, shooting himself up into her from behind. She groaned audibly from the massive penetration, but as she moaned, the man in front of her plunged himself between her lips. She fell to work at once. Her hand on the fourth man was busily pumping.
Jana, meanwhile, had been entered by the man above her hips, and was working her mouth eagerly up above while both hands went like jackhammers. Her slender legs showed cords like steel as she hurled her pelvis up at the man shoving switfly into her from below. Dick knew she was clamping down as tight as she could, to hurry him.
A moment or two of fascinated silence followed, punctuated only by Paula's grunting.
"Look!" Linda gasped excitedly, pointing.
The man on Jana's left, amazingly, had been the first. In the flickering torch light spurted an ivory stream as he stiffened and called out softly. Jana, her body writhing, continued to work both hands frantically until the second or third spurt hit her wrist and she triumphantly released this partner. Quickly, although he must still have been in the throes, he rolled away and stood up, grinning.
"That's amazing," Georgia whispered. "A hand job coming first-"
"Quiet!" Linda said hoarsely, her eyes now turned to Paula and her quartet.
The man behind Paula was going wild. He was plunging back and forth so rapidly that her entire body shook with every piston drive, and the sound of flesh slapping against flesh was loud. He strained, his face contorted, and remained buried inside her to the hilt, his hips twitching.
Almost simultaneously, the man in front of Paula grabbed her hair and pulled her hard against him, throwing his head back in an agony of pleasure. The shadows clearly showed Paula's throat begin to work just as the man behind her sharply withdrew and jumped to his feet, smiling.
Jana, on the other mattress, cried out brokenly and experienced an orgasm as the man between her legs pumped into her.
By this time, two of Paula's men were on their feet, and the third, underneath, was obviously near. Paula frantically motioned to the man at her side to leave her hand and move around behind. He hurried around, knelt, and thrust, going in easily to the hilt. The man below, perhaps driven over the brink by the sensation, was obviously peaking.
"Paula has her now," Sam said. "You lose the bet, Dick."
At this moment, however, the man between Jana's legs got shakily to his feet. Jana used her free hand to reach around the man at her mouth. She drove a finger inside him from the rear, and instantly he spasmed, falling backward so that the evidence was unmistakable. He got to his feet.
Now the man beneath Paula crawled out, leaving her with only the one man giving it to her from the rear. She clearly abandoned herself to the pleasure of this, her mouth hanging open as he drove into her again and again.
Jana, left only with the one man in her left hand, fell upon him and kissed him passionately on the mouth, then nimbly reversed herself, squatting over his face as she; plunged her mouth down to his thighs. She used both hands on him frantically, jerking hard.
The man behind Paula had begun the unmistakable swiftening long glides that precluded orgasm, and victory in the game.
Jana suddenly went stiff and held both hands full back against her last man's body, holding him at his stiffest, and began gulping. The man withdrew from her and managed to get up.
At this moment, as Jana's last man stood proudly beside her and she fell back, limp and exhausted. The last man with Paula stabbed so deep and hard into her that she was thrown forward and flattened by the force of his impact.
There was another long moment of hushed silence.
Jana, on her feet now, walked unsteadily over to Paula as the man behind her withdrew. Jana bent and kissed Paula tenderly on the lips.
"The winner, obviously, is Jana!" the general announced.
Everyone applauded and whistled enthusiastically. Sam Cline grimaced and handed Dick a dollar bill. "You win."
Linda laughed. "I bet Paula has never lost that game before."
If Paula was chagrined, she handled it well. Getting to her feet, she smiled and kissed each of her men in thanks, while Jana was doing the same to her group. The man who had been first to achieve orgasm grinned at her, whispered something in her ear, and gave her a truly passionate squeeze. Dick smiled, guessing that he would be surely one of those Jana chose for the night as her victor's spoils.
The general walked over and grinned at Dick and Sam. "All right, men; behind the curtain my people have draped between the poles. Once behind, undress completely."
Dick walked obediently with Sam toward the canvas barrier, joining several other men already behind it in the darkness and stripping. As Dick removed his trunks, he said, "I still don't get it."
"The women take turns coming along the line," David Rike explained. "We stand behind this material. They can't see us, because each girl is blindfolded. She tries to guess identity by feel alone. If she guesses correctly, she can have the man she selects, plus another man for a bonus, to do whatever she wants to do out there in front of everyone. If she guesses incorrectly, she gets tossed into the pool."
"What's in it for us?" Dick asked.
"A hell of a lot of excitation, buddy. Wait till you see what all that feeling starts to do to you!"
Puzzled, but excited, Dick joined the other men standing behind the sheeting. The result was a line of eight men, invisible and unidentifiable from the patio side, but with their lower bodies sticking out beyond the canvas in easy reach. The material was light enough for Dick to be able to see through it. He could see that every man was straining and as upright and rigid as he had become.
The general announced, "When you think you can identify a man, you must signal that fact in some unique way."
The first contestant was a girl named Veronica. Giggling, she allowed the general to blindfold her and lead her up to the far end of the canvas.
"All right, dear," the general said gently, stepping back.
Veronica reached out into thin air, the canvas and one of the men to her left. She felt air for a moment, then began to move her hands. Her left hand bumped into the man's erect sex, and she laughed breathlessly and eagerly grasped for it with both hands. She soothed her fingers along its length and squeezed slightly, let her hand slide down beneath to test the weight there. She shook her head and moved to the next man, her hand more bold now. Again she could make no identification.
Dick's excitement increased as she came down the line. There were only two men to his left. By now he was throbbing, anxious for her hands to caress him and try to identify him. He had had Veronica only once, in a group, so he had little hope she could know him. He waited breathlessly.
She reached his position. Her hands reached out, touched electrically, soothed and tickled, then squeezed. Veronica paused, frowning again, and her fingertips traced Dick's circumference very carefully, with loving care. He thought she was going to know him. Then she moved on.
David Rike was on Dick's left. Veronica stroked him briefly, felt, explored, and squeezed again. Then she suddenly knelt. "This is Sam!" she called with certainty, and signaled her recognition by opening her lips and taking David into her mouth.
David, mightily aroused, groaned and reached under the canvas to grasp her head. He pulled her roughly onto his length, and shoved his hips, twitching madly.
Veronica was held fast for long moments, and then fell back, gasping, the cause of her surprise dribbling down her chin. Everyone was laughing and applauding, but the general, holding up his hands, stepped from his position at the end of the curtain.
"Veronica," he laughed, "after that exhibition, I hate to tell you, but you guessed wrong!"
Veronica recovered from her shock and boldly walked back to the curtain. "All right, then, who are you, swiftie?"
David ducked under the screen and into full view of everyone. "Sorry, honey, but you're such a gourmet-"
"Into the pool with her!" the general interrupted, and several of the women, laughing, ran to drag Veronica toward the pool.
"It was worth it!" she called back, just as she plunged head over heels and landed in the pool with a huge splash.
The game continued for nearly another thirty minutes. One girl guessed Sam's identity correctly. Linda instantly knew Dick, being as familiar with him as she was. Georgia thought she recognized a man named Harry, and signaled her certainty by bending over and backing up to him on the spot. It wasn't Harry, but the identification procedure provided a breath-taking public spectacle that lasted almost two minutes before Georgia had a tremendous orgasm and sank weakly to her knees while her partner ducked under the canvas to follow her hard and fast to his own completion moments later. When Linda identified Dick, she only kissed him gently on his very tip, sending crazy chills of pleasure through him. He knew he was on the brink. She identified him correctly aloud and then whispered, "Save it for me later, baby!"
By the time the game concluded, most of the men's equipment was in sad shape, the worse for wear momentarily. It was this factor that caused it to end Everyone began correctly guessing Dick and a man named Harvey, because they, were the only two who had not already achieved orgasm and were still rampant.
The general suggested that everyone relax and mingle, which signaled an end to the games for the evening. The music started again. Couples relaxed and began to have refreshments or dance.
The group games, however, had clearly brought about a marked change in everyone's behavior. Dick began to understand why they were occasionally beneficial. There had never been much obvious actual copulation around the pool. Occasionally, some of the women had lost their tops, and their partners could be seen pressing against their pelvises and touching their bare breasts. Beyond this, the couples ordinarily had decided to go into the house, or at least out of the light. The group scenes had fired everyone, and as Dick went back to the table to join Linda, Georgia and the general, he saw that Sam, already in a high state of excitement again, was dancing nude with a girl named Mary. They were scarcely moving, and Mary's feet hardly seemed to be touching the ground. Dick saw why with a little shudder of pleasure; the girl's thighs were spread a bit, and she was practically being carried on Sam as he moved gently to the music.
The newcomers had been invited to circulate, although the general had suggested that they might feel more at ease if they retained their masks. Several of them had already been led to the dance floor, and clothes were coming off everywhere. In the flickering torchlight, Dick could see some of the other newcomers making love with passionate abandon right in the spot where they had first reclined on the other side of the pool.
Linda, still wearing her bikini, handed Dick a drink as he sat down. He hadn't bothered to dress again.
"You look like you need this," she smiled.
Georgia, also still dressed, was sitting in the desk chair on the other side of where Dick sat. She glanced at him, changed her glass to the other hand, and reached out to teasingly stroke him. "God! If you get any harder, you'll burst."
The general chuckled and put his arm around Linda's shoulders with a fondness Dick had never seen him display previously. "The group activities always stir all of us up."
Linda looked interested. "Even you, general?"
"We have plenty of pleasure remaining tonight," the general said, winking at Dick. "But we all have a bit of the voyeur in us. I should say."
"And," Linda persisted, "you're excited too?"
"Would you like proof?" the general asked.
"Yes." Linda's lips curled around the word with relish.
Smiling, the general stood. Deliberately he stripped off his tee shirt, revealing his muscled, hairy torso. Then he unbuckled his shorts and dropped them, removing his undershorts simultaneously. He stood there in front of the three of them, his hands on his hips.
Linda uttered a little moan of pleasure.
The general was a very big man, Dick saw with some .surprise.
"Proof enough?" the general asked softly, his voice hoarse now.
Linda nodded and reached out, her dark fingers gently tracing his length and thickness, then sliding beneath to test the weight of the sack below. The general's muscles twitched and jerked.
"You'll have to take care of that now, my dear," he said.
"Yes," Linda said adoringly, her eyes never leaving the object of her desire. "How do you want me?"
The general moved closer to her, and since she was sitting down, his hips were at a level with her face. "This will do very nicely, Linda."
Linda, her eyes glazing with delight, opened her mouth to accept him. Her cheeks began to swell as her tongue worked.
Dick and Georgia, who had been watching raptly, glanced at each other. Georgia's face was contorted with need.
"I can't wait any more," she choked. "I can't either," Dick admitted.
She stood, and with a single motion stripped off both bra and panties. Then, before Dick could issue any instructions, she straddled his hips. With one eager hand she grasped him and guided him up and inside her, coming down on him with her full weight.
"Oh, God, that feels good!" she gasped.
Dick had to do very little, for already Georgia's hips were drumming up and down with almost painful intensity, and her vaginal muscles clamped down on him harder and harder as she rode. Dick glanced at the general and Linda, and saw that she was using a hand on him now, too, pumping. The general had his head back, relishing the exquisite sensations she was providing.
Georgia, moaning, thrust a nipple into Dick's mouth. He bit and began to suck the tender, firm flesh, and she went wilder, clutching at his shoulders as she practically wrenched him off at the root with the vibrancy of her squeezing force.
"What a come!" she gasped.
Then, at the same time, Dick felt his own long-delayed climax on the way, and he jammed deeper inside her, hammering. He knew some people strolling along had paused to watch, whether him or Georgia or the unusual spectacle of the general and Linda, he didn't know or care. Georgia's lush hips rotated insanely. He exploded up into her.
CHAPTER TEN
After his bout with Georgia, Dick agreed with pleasure when Linda and the general, cooling off, suggested smoking. Dick had long ago learned that the term "smoking," used in a special tone, meant marijuana. The four of them lit up without bothering to put back on any clothes, and relaxed.
By this time it was getting late, and some of the couples had gone inside the house for the night. Most, however, remained outside. Swimming resumed as just about everyone had indulged in some sexual play that had taken the edge off immediate desires. The gas torches continued to smoke redly, and music went on. Girls yelped with delight in the pool as men tried to duck them or tease them with their fingers in delicate places. Dick noticed that several of the new peoplp were in the pool, but had playfully insisted on retaining their masks, although most of them, like the regulars, were naked.
"Dick," the general said, "this is your first experience with one of our outdoor parties. What do you think?"
Surprised by the question, Dick paused before answering as he tried to sort out his thoughts. Finally he admitted, "I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it right at first. I was uptight. But your games took care of my inhibitions pretty fast."
The general smiled and patted Linda's thigh. "Your performance with Georgia a little while ago would suggest that you lost your hangups in record time."
"I'd like to think so," Dick said.
"Well, you're practically a full-fl-edged member of our group now, I would say."
"Practically?" Dick echoed. "You mean there are some experiences I still haven't met?"
The general chuckled as if vastly amused, and for some reason it was chilling. "We manage to have continuing fresh surprises."
"Well," Dick said boldly, "whatever they are, I'm ready for them."
The general eyed him thoughtfully. "Yes. I dare say-you are, now."
"When do I get the next short course in pleasure?" Dick asked, winking at Georgia and Linda, although the question was addressed to the general.
"In due course," the general smiled. "You won't be kept in suspense long, I can assure you."
"I'm ready," Dick repeated. Whatever they might have in mind, he thought, he would meet it head-on. Aloud, he said frankly, "I don't know how I might have turned out, if Beverly hadn't invited me out here that first time. This place has been a real lift for me. I'm very grateful."
"Don't be grateful to us," the general said with another smile. "We're grateful to you. You see, there aren't really too many people in this world of ours who will face their desires with complete honesty and the kind of courage that the pursuit of total pleasure sometimes entails. When we find a man of your quality, Dick, we treasure him."
Georgia wriggled. "I treasured him just a little while ago!"
"Indeed," the general chuckled. "You see, Dick," he resumed seriously, "there are probably, in the entire United States, only a dozen clubs as widespread and wholesome as ours. I've tried to make ours the best, the safest and the freest. We like new members. When new people turn out as well as you have, we want them to become total participants."
Dick's curiosity, given some courage by the general's relaxed air, came freely to the surface. "Would you mind a question, general?"
"Of course not," the older man said.
"It strikes me as strange, somehow. You were in the army. Then you made a fortune, as I hear it told, through science and technology. Yet now you devote your life to pleasure-and so often, the pleasure of others."
"That strikes you as strange?" the general mused.
"Frankly, yes."
The general frowned as he formulated his philosophy. When he spoke, it was obvious that he was not extemporizing, but giving words to a deeply felt belief.
"I saw the business of war first-hand," he said. "War is a business of death. It revolted me, and I tried to see what fascinates men with it-why at times, I myself was fascinated despite myself. I saw tremendous, needless suffering. Then, in my business, I found myself again dealing with things of death.
"So I began to try to define for myself what are the things of death, and what are the things of life. I decided, finally, that most people deal their entire lives in matters of death. Whether it's the soldier in the mud in Vietnam, waiting for the bullet or spiked trap that may rip out his bowels, or the insurance salesman in New York City, working his way from gritty house to gritty house, and riding those ghastly commuter trains, and trying to drown his frustrations in liquor, the business is the same. It's death.
"Death is a refusal to accept life fully, as it really is," the general went on somberly. "And what is life? I looked into myself, and into the lives of the few people I knew who seemed really to know life. What I found was unbounded enthusiasm, a tremendous, honest appetite for sex and all the other pleasures, and a courage to accept even real pain if the pain led somehow to pleasure.
"When I made these decisions," the general added, "I knew I had to devote the remainder of my life to life itself: pleasure in all its forms. The most intense forms of pleasure-of life-pivot around man and woman; around sex."
Dick thought about it, seeing it more clearly. It made sense to him, and he felt very glad he was a part of it.
"I think that's enough 'weighty conversation for now," the general smiled, getting to his feet. Deftly he got back into his clothes, again becoming the debonair elder man. "If you will excuse me, I have some things to attend to inside the house. I'm sure you'll all find things for amusement."
Linda glanced around the scene with pleasure. "I certainly hope so!"
Chuckling, the general walked off. "I'm going to circulate a little," Linda said after a moment.
"That's not a bad idea," Georgia smiled. "Dick, are you going to sit here like an old stick and pretend I milked you dry?"
"I hope not," Dick laughed.
They all got up and separated, Linda to head for a group of the dancers at the far end of the patio, Georgia to walk in the opposite direction and quickly stop to chat with a man who put his arm around her and kissed her soundly after only a few words had been exchanged.
Dick walked across the patio, and around the pool. There in the dimness, one new couple was lustily making love on some thin pillows. Several others, he thought, had moved back farther, into the near-darkness of the grass beyond, for he heard sounds of other lovemaking. Mildly interested, he strolled on. Two girls were entwined in a passionate embrace on the grass nearby, and beyond, a man lay on his back, while a slender woman, still wearing her partial mask, knelt on all fours between his legs, eagerly ministering to him with her mouth.
Dick paused a few feet from the straining couple, and watched for a moment. The woman was slender, but her buttocks were white and fully formed, her thighs full, her breasts neatly tipped. There was, Dick thought suddenly, something very familiar about the body, even in the near-darkness, and this surprised him because he knew the woman was a newcomer.
At this point, the man groaned and held the woman's nicely coiffed head hard against him. She murmured and eagerly continued her play as it brought steaming out of him the ultimate compliment to her technique.
The man fell back, fully satisfied. The woman hungrily licked his belly.
Dick heard her groan, "You've got to do me now. I need it!"
With a stunning shock, he knew then why the body had been so familiar. Christ! How had he missed it, even for a moment-after living with this body-making love to it-for so long?
The newcomer woman was his ex-wife, Fran!
Dick's first impulse was to turn and rush away, before she could turn and recognize him. He was terrified of a confrontation-the horror and surprise and the way she would berate him for being a part of a group like this.
Then, instantly, he saw that this reaction was insane. She was here, which meant she had come of her own free will, seeking sex as openly and honestly as he, Hadn't he just seen her openly-happily-do something to the other new man, a total stranger, that she had been willing to do for him, in their marriage bed, only once or twice in their entire life together?
Dick's reaction became one of anger, and then, quickly, of anger mixed with a desire to do something that would reveal himself to Fran at the same time he degraded her in some way that she would love-to prove to her that she was no better and no worse than he was, that she had been carrying her phony puritan airs all these years in contradiction to her true sexual nature.
Almost without conscious thought, Dick knew immediately what he was going to do, and was already moving forward, approaching the couple from the rear. Fran's delectable backside was still perched high in the air as she moaned desperately and tried to revive her sagging partner, and in the center of Dick's vision, clearly revealed even in the darkness by her wanton position, was the single portal that she had never opened to him. He remembered once or twice when they had both been drunk and he had tried, and she had hissed, said he was debased, said it was physically impossible, that he would split her and send her to the hospital. Now, by God-!
He reached her back. Dropping to his knees, he reached around her and let his hands slide softly up over her velvet belly to caress her breasts. She gasped with surprise and tried to turn.
"Hold still," Dick commanded, altering his voice partly by choice, and partly because he was husky with the passion to do this to her at last-make her pay, make her cry for joy in the very act she had always denied him.
"Oh," she murmured brokenly as he pulled at her nipples with his fingertips. "I don't know who you are, but that feels so good, don't stop!"
The man beneath her, eyes wide with surprise, scrambled back out of the way. "Your turn, eh, buddy?"
"My turn," Dick grunted.
"Oh, yes," Fran moaned in a tone Dick had never heard in her voice before. "Yes!"
The excitement and fury of his imagining, and contact with her familiar, yet somehow completely new, body, had raised Dick to massive readiness. Holding one arm around her waist so that she couldn't turn even if she wished, he guided his penis upward, sliding along the dripping cleft of her thighs. She groaned and rotated her hips.
Dick was not about to succumb to the temptation of giving it to her there. He slid his sex on upward a bit, and felt her stiffen, gasp, as he placed himself at the tiny, puckered opening that he knew, with dazzling, angry triumph, was still virgin territory.
"I don't know," she moaned. "Please, no, I never have. Give it to me in-"
"You know the rules," Dick whispered. "Here you hold back nothing!"
So saying, he shoved against her, hard.
Her hard flesh gave only a tiny fraction of an inch, but she groaned with real pain.
The groan, and knowing he was to have this at last from her in revenge, drove Dick harder. Carefully, yet with inexorable pressure, he moved forward again. He began to slip slightly inside, although it was incredibly tight, and finally he gave a real shove.
"You're tearing me," Fran wept. "Oh, it hurts!"
By sheer force, Dick had now made entry an inch or two, and he could tell from recent experience that he was at the point where another huge shove would burst through the interior barrier and carry him home.
He savored the moment for a few seconds.
"Baby," he choked, "here it is ... now!"
He lunged into her.
She screamed softly and would have collapsed forward if he had not held her up with his free hand. Jesus, he was into her, all the way in, and the pressure was so great around him that sharp spasms of pain coursed his length and into his own bowels. He withdrew slightly and lunged again, slapping hard against her buttocks, sparing her nothing.
"Agh!" she cried.
Grasping a hip bone with either palm, Dick pulled her back into a hunched position, half-sitting on his thighs, and began furiously pounding into her with regular, brutal rhythm. She sobbed and squirmed and tried for another few strokes to escape, but he would have none of it. He slammed against her, feeling his penetration high up into her, clamped harshly.
"You wanted it, baby," he taunted, churning steadily and feeling, through the welter of rage, possession, joy and pain, the first ticklings of approaching climax. He not only had her, he was going to fill her, let her feel him spurt. Have her feel it and have no orgasm of her own!
His ex-wife must have felt him growing and moving more spasmodically with his approaching orgasm, too, for suddenly she was no longer crying for mercy, was no longer fighting. When his hips drove his weapon up into her, she crunched back to meet him. When he withdrew, she sighed and trembled and waited, not pulling away. He lunged and lunged, and she was with him. Suddenly he could feel the mounting pressure, and then, just as his completion reached its peak and he crashed still deeper than ever before into her body, she sobbed and he felt her spasm.
Amazed and carried away, he continued as she experienced two harsh climaxes, very close together and stronger than anything he had ever dreamed she could ever have. With the second, she collapsed softly forward onto her belly. He finished lying, atop her in this position.
Dazed with exertion and fruition as well as triumph, Dick pulled himself free and rolled over on the cool grass.
"I thought you were killing me," Fran murmured, her eyes still closed in delight. "But oh, then it was marvelous, like nothing I've ever felt before. Thank you, whoever you are. Thank you!"
With this, she opened her eyes behind the mask. Dick saw the eyes widen with shock and recognition.
"You!" she gasped.
Dick grinned at her. "Relax. You loved it. You just said so."
"You bastard!" she cried bitterly. "You know I don't allow that-"
"Bullshit," Dick said brutally, still grinning. "You're just mad because you found out it wasn't a stranger."
"What are you doing here?" she demanded, sitting up-and wincing.
"The same thing you are," Dick said. "Getting laid."
"My God! You're not in the newcomer group!"
"Hardly, Fran. I've been here several times."
Fran tore off her mask, and revealed her face. She was torn by all sorts of emotions engraven clearly in her features. "But we're divorced-you had no right-"
"Anyone has a right to anyone here," Dick shot back.
"I didn't know-"
"If you had known, you would never have let me do it to you that way, right? You had two orgasms! Deny that!"
Fran stared at him. A dozen reactions raced across her face.
"You loved it," Dick told her. "It hurt me-"
"You loved it," Dick insisted, grinning at her now. "And by Christ, I want you to know I've never had a better piece of ass myself."
She blushed crimson. "I don't know what to say. I'm just shocked out of my wits. You, here-and doing that to me, and my not even knowing-"
"Don't worry that it complicates things," Dick said. "I took you because I wanted you. A little while ago, I had another woman while you were having that guy, here. That's the way it is here. You knew that when you came here. You came here for only one thing. Don't let the fact that I'm here spoil it."
"I thought-" Fran began.
"You came here for a hell of a good fucking," Dick snapped. "Deny it, and it's the most outrageous and obvious lie of the century!"
Fran surprised him by suddenly laughing breathlessly and rubbing her back. "All right, damn you. It's true. I didn't expect that. I didn't expect you!"
"That's just the start of your surprises," Dick smiled.
"I can't get over it!" she admitted.
The man lying on the grass looked at the two of them quizzically. "You two used to be married?"
"Yes," Dick said.
The man grinned. "When you can make it like that-and she's got an oral technique like she used on me-I don't know what you went to court about."
"It's a long story," Dick grinned.
Fran threatened to get frosty. "That's over. We are divorced."
"Sure," Dick agreed. "But here, whether you're married, or single, or even if you were married to each other once, it's all the same."
"This," Fran said, "is going to take some getting used to."
Across the lawn walked three persons, whom Dick quickly recognized as Linda, Paula and David Rike. They were grinning.
"I see," Linda said archly, "you recuperated, darling."
Dick grinned at her. "And wore down again."
Paula turned to Fran and the other man, and introduced herself, her husband and Linda by first names only, as was the rule. Fran, obviously surprised at the actual fact that Dick and Linda were lovers-and that probably he had loved Paula, too, nevertheless had the presence of mind to give only her first name. So no one else had to know she and Dick had been married.
The new man grinned and identified himself as Steve.
"We're going up to bed," Paula said. "It's a big bed. We were going to ask you to join us, Dick. It looks like you're already busy."
Dick instantly had an idea. "Hell no. Look, let's take Fran and Steve along. We can have a sixsome."
"Why not?" Paula trilled.
Fran looked apprehensive. Dave Rike had recovered from his earlier experience, and was lookhg down at her with frank lust. His throbbing evidence of readiness for new action was out in plain sight for her to see. She eyed it with fascination.
Steve said, "I say what the hell, let's go!"
"Okay, Fran?" Dick grinned.
"Yeah, baby," David cajoled. "You won't be sorry."
Fran smiled, and her eyes got hazy with reckless desire. "Why not?"
"Good!" Linda said. "We'll get stoned and have a ball!"
Dick helped his ex-wife to her feet, and took some pleasure in noting that while she rose with obvious discomfort, she involuntarily leaned against him for a moment in the universal sign of a woman well satisfied.
"Let's go," Paula said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Upstairs, sighs and cries of pleasure were issuing from many of the rooms. Dick had to lead a hectic search for a vacant space where they could play. It was Paula who finally spotted a room toward the end of a side corridor. They filed inside, the girls giggling, and David Rike flicked on the overhead lights.
"Ouch!" Linda cried, blinking. "That's awfully bright!"
"We want to see each other," David said.
Linda instantly flared with desire. "Yes. I agree with that."
"While you're at it," David said, immediately slipping an arm around Fran's supple waist, "would anybody mind if I started the ball rolling?"
"Go ahead," Paula smiled. "We'll watch."
Dick watched his ex-wife with blazing intensity, and saw that she was a bit upset and frightened by David's quick insistence. At the same time she took a deep breath, making her breasts heave, and slid her body up against him, allowing his sex to press against her. David kissed her soundly and pulled her over to the bed, tossing her down. She sprawled, legs apart, startled at first, then laughing breathlessly.
David lay down beside her and began smoothing his hands over her belly and sides.
Without anyone saying anything, Linda and Steve went to one side of the big bed and sat down together, their feet on the floor, to watch this spectacle. Paula shivered with delight and led Dick to the other side. Paula slid her hand nervously up and down Dick's thigh. "This is going to be fun."
Dick smiled, but his experience with Fran had left him momentarily drained of overt sexual excitement, and he was far too busy watching the strange spectacle of another man beginning to make love to the woman he still, somewhere inside, considered his wife.
Fran was still a very beautiful woman, a bit on the slender side, but with jutting hips and long, tapering legs. She was disheveled and upset. As David first stroked her body along its whole length, she lay rather passively, watching him with mute fascination.
David petted the outside of her lush thighs, stroked her hips, tickled his fingertips along her sides and up in the tender flesh under her arms, rubbing the length of her arms very gently before returning his hands to her calves, teasing along the length of her outstretched legs. He had a vacant smile on his face, and was watching Fran intently, as if aware that she was still tight and that he had to proceed with some care to bring her to fever pitch. He bent down and kissed her navel, and then licked along her belly to her left breast.
Fran gasped as his tongue traced along the rise of this hillock, paused at the pink tip, circumscribed its throbbing edges, flicked out to touch the straining nipple. Then David gently took the nipple between his lips and began to suck easily.
Fran moaned, her eyes closed. Her arms went around his bare back. Her fingernails gently raked the muscles of his shoulders, and she began to move her hips ever so slightly.
David kissed her fiercely on the mouth, a long, burning kiss that seemed like it would never end. Fran's hands stroked his back, and one of her fingers teased lazily along the cleft of his buttocks. Dick watched in mute fascination as her hand paused there, before moving lower, as if some of her old inhibitions remained. Then her hand moved again down into the juncture of his legs and boldly seized him.
David grunted and surrendered the kiss, quickly moving about on the bed to reverse positions. He kissed her belly again and buried his face between her legs.
"Ah!" Fran cried with pleasure. "Ah, that's so good-"
It was a fantastic experience for Dick, one he could not quite know how to feel about watching another man do this to Fran. The amazing part was her passion, the way her hips began to rotate, the way sweat glistened on her body. Dick was horrified and repelled, yet elated and heated, as he watched.
"Do him, too," Paula prompted, perhaps speaking only to herself, saying aloud what she would do instinctively if she were receiving the love David was now bestowing on Fran.
Whether Fran heard or not was impossible to tell. But David's position had already moved the front of his lower torso close to her straining face, and she reached out and grasped his penis hungrily. David, without ever letting up from what he was doing to her, moved spasmodically closer. She pulled him into her mouth.
The two bodies entwined in silence, writhing. Dick along with Paula, Linda and Steve watched in silent fascination.
"I need a smoke," Linda choked, rummaging in her purse with trembling hands.
She passed out four joints and they lit up. Paula, her own nipples angrily erect, her hips beginning to stir, put her hand in Dick's lap and began mindlessly to work to arouse him, but she never turned her eyes from the scene going on in the bed. Dick wondered what thrills she was feeling, watching her husband make love to another woman. Of course she had probably done it often, but the height of her passion showed that it was a scene that never grew old or lost its savor. On the other side of the bed, Steve was toying with Linda's breasts. She was stroking the inside of his thigh as they watched.
David now, perhaps sensing that Fran's quick, eager ministrations were bringing him toward completion, drew his hips away from her face. She surrendered the morsel reluctantly, and tried vainly to move around so she could kiss him more. David made a guttural sound, and reversed positions on the bed again.
Fran eagerly flopped over on her back. He moved over and between her legs. Everyone could see everything. David paused, looking deep into Fran's eyes, and then used his hand to guide himself into position. As he touched her, Fran gasped and began to tremble.
David held this position a moment, savoring it.
Dick watched, ablaze. Everything up until now had been almost abstract. Now he was about to see David actually enter her. Would she allow it? Did she really want to go all the way, doing anything, in front of watchers? Could she break down her inhibitions? Did she have enough fire and passion? Somehow it was unbelievable. He half-thought that something would break the spell.
Then David suddenly moved, and his huge organ began its entrance. Dick could see Fran strain to receive him, but if she felt any pain or hesitation, it was not apparent. With a glad cry she raised herself to meet him. He shoved in and up, gliding against pressure in to the root.
Then, before Dick's amazed stare, Fran lost all control. Her legs locked around David's waist as she raised herself half off the bed, her arms twined around his back, and she began throbbing against him. David, already very near, began hammering spasmodically, long, complete, shuddering strokes. From Fran's lips issued a stream of pleas-loving words, obscene words, in a wild torrent. The bed shook crazily.
Then Fran began to sob and softly scream and grunt with the fury of her orgasm. Her hips crescendoed, and, as she did so, David smashed harder against her, impaling her in his own gushing instant of bliss as she shuddered weakly, helpless in the throes of their combined pleasure.
"Oh, beautiful!" Paula whispered hoarsely. Her hand on Dick moved harder and faster in desperate need, and Dick was responding.
"I'd say she's one of us," Linda murmured, her eyes gentle with love.
Steve muttered, "I've never watched two people exactly like this." His own excitement was now standing for all to see.
Linda kissed him gently.
Paula told Dick, "You've got to do me now, honey."
"Yes," Dick murmured. He continued to watch Fran and David in mixed shock and pleasure.
David slowly withdrew. Fran moaned with sadness as they separated. She tried weakly to pull him back onto her, but he muttered something and rolled over, gasping to get his wind back.
Fran, her face yet contorted with need, glanced blindly around at the others. "I've never had people watch before ... it drove me crazy. I'm still so hot ... I'm burning up and I don't know what" to do."
Her own hand dove to her crotch and began moving there. Her hips again swung in undulations of pleasure.
"Please," she moaned, "won't somebody do something for me?"
"Oh, honey, of course I will!" Linda cried sympathetically.
With this, Linda pressed by David and extended herself over Fran's naked body. She planted a long, burning kiss on Fran's mouth, and began stroking breasts against breasts, while Fran again opened her legs eagerly, and Linda snaked in between them, her own hips working.
"Jesus," Paula panted, stretching out on the edge of the bed. "Listen, kids, move over, I've got to have it right now. Dick, come on, darling, right bow, baby! Give it to me before I burn up!"
Fran and Linda mindlessly moved over a bit on the bed, providing room. Dick, burning up, stretched out half atop Paula, his hip brushing either Linda's or Fran's as he began making love to Paula. She was afire, and even a usual entry was almost painful as she was contracting so hard.
"Oh yeah," Paula grunted, heaving. "Oh, yeah, darling, th-t's'it! Pump it in me, honey, give it to me, give it to me!"
Dick was giving it to her, sweat bursting from his body in the wild exultation of the group act, and beside him Fran was crying out loudly, almost as if in pain. David, momentarily sated, was watching wide-eyed.
Steve, however, was standing beside the bed. His erection was massive. "What about me?" he asked huskily.
"Climb on somebody," Paula panted, laughing through her passion. "Get in somewhere, sweetheart, it doesn't matter, we're all one."
Dick laughed at this, and purposely paused a moment and twitched inside her, driving her to new peaks of wildness. He pumped regularly again, riding out the first crashing peak of her orgasmic cycle.
Then, suddenly, he felt someone else-Steve-in the bed. Steve was behind him. Steve's legs brushed the back of his legs, and he felt the man's weight against his buttocks.
"All right, old man?" Steve muttered. It had never happened before, but Dick had known one day it would. Recklessly he replied, "Sure-anything-"
"You'll have to hold still just a moment, old man," Steve murmured almost apologetically.
Dick paused, an avalanche of fear, expectation and surprise coming over him at this exotic new wildness.
"What's he doing?" Paula gasped, raising herself on her elbows. "Oh my God!"
Steve pressed against Dick from behind. Dick felt the great pressure and panicked for a split second, tightening. At the same time, realization of what was going on had driven Paula over the brink of her second orgasm, and the sensations were so exquisite that Dick relaxed.
Steve-gigantic, impetuous and not to be denied in his fervor-chose this moment to lunge.
Dick cried out despite himself. It felt like he was possessed almost the length of his body, and at first the pain was excruciating.
Then Paula began to move demandingly again, and Steve was pushing and pulling gently, mounting toward a quick conclusion, and Dick, still in agony, yet driven out of his mind by the pulsing pressures against him on the inside, was moving too. Steve battered him. Dick felt the swelling and long, wildly hot, full surge of Steve's pleasure. It detonated everything in Dick as he lunged madly into Paula, being carried over a torrential deluge of pain-pleasure into an incredible conclusion.
The shattering group thing had concluded only a few minutes when David casually turned off the lights, plunging the room into darkness, and all six of them curled up in the bed, talking and smoking and teasing one another. Dick, very sore and still a bit shocked by his new experience, nevertheless felt no bad feeling toward Steve or anyone else. The six of them nestled close together in the dark and talked a while.
"It's getting late," Linda purred, "I suppose we really should go to sleep."
"Fat chance," David chuckled.
Bodies squirmed in the bed. "Aren't you relaxed?" Linda asked. "Do I feel relaxed?" David asked. "You feel partly relaxed."
"How about now?"
Fran whispered, "If that's you I'm feeling, David, you're not relaxed at all."
"I don't know if I've ever been helped by two at once," David said.
"Spread the joy around," Steve suggested good-naturedly.
"Here," Paula said.
"Better," Steve said.
Someone's hand began to stroke Dick.
"That's me," Linda said.
David chuckled again. "How does anyone tell who you might be talking to?"
"It's been a lovely, lovely day," Paula murmured. "And night," Dick corrected.
"Listen to how quiet it is in the house now," Fran said.
Bodies stirred around again, legs twisting around legs. Then they all listened. It was very still, and the wind whispered at the eaves. Dick imagined he could hear the surf.
"I'm so happy," Fran sighed.
"Do you know I really am sleepy now?" Linda said, amused.
"What if we all slept a little while, if we can?" Steve asked.
"And then wake up?" Paula asked. "Yeah."
"The waking up part will be the most fun."
"Shall we try it?"
"All right."
They lapsed into silence. Minutes ticked by. Someone stirred. Paula said, "You know, I really think I'd rather just fuck."
David laughed softly. "Shut up." Paula sighed and said nothing.
In another few minutes, regular breathing said some of them in the bed had fallen asleep. The others considerately kept very still. In the dark, it was hard to tell who was awake and who asleep. Dick, on the outside, with Paula's thigh over his and Linda's-or Fran's-arm lightly over his chest, lay still and stared into the dark.
He was no longer high, and he knew sleep was not far away; This struck him as singular. There had been a time very recently when even the thought of being in bed with five other people would have kept him awake all night.
Fie was very tired. The experience of seeing Fran here and of even having her again had been emotionally exhausting. Dick knew he could fall asleep soon.
He lay there a while longer, sensing that perhaps everyone else was now asleep. The room was quiet, the house still. He stared into the darkness and let sleep slowly approach. He was completely relaxed.
Down the hall somewhere came some soft footsteps. Several people, it sounded like, in rubber-soled shoes.
His ears imagined the sounds came closer. He heard whispers. He imagined that a couple or two couples, having been outside at play, were sneaking in like guilty children. He got slightly more awake. He would be able to hear them.
The footsteps came closer-right near this room's door. A shadow fell across the light from the hall inside the room.
A voice whispered, "Dick?"
Dick raised up carefully on one elbow. It sounded like the general's voice, and he could see the squat shadow in the doorway.
"Dick!" the voice called slightly higher.
"Yes?" Dick hissed.
"Will you come out here, please?"
Curious, Dick carefully extricated himself from the tangle of arms and legs around him. What could the general want at this hour? Maybe someone wanted another person for a party, he thought. He wondered if he was in shape to join them. Or maybe there was a problem of some kind.
He got free of the tangle in the bed and to his feet. He padded naked to the doorway. It was the general, all right. He was smiling.
"Come with me," the general hissed.
"What's going on?" Dick asked.
"Come on." The general started to turn away.
Dick felt a sudden gust of fear down deep. "Look. I'm bushed." He didn't want to go. He didn't know why, but he was suddenly very scared.
"Come," the general whispered. It was an order.
Dick stepped a step into the dim light of the hall. "No, really. I'm awfully tired."
"Take him," the general said.
Two big figures lunged out of the shadows on either side of the door. A hand grabbed Dick's mouth and savagely rammed a rag into his mouth, stifling his outcry. Strong arms bound around his chest, lifting him clear off the floor, helpless, and then a sack of some kind was shoved over his head, pitching him into blackness.
He tried to fight, but a knee crashed up into his midsection, doubling him over with agony, and the two big men picked him up and carried him bodily.
Dick felt himself being carried rapidly down the hall, then down flights of stairs. He tried to struggle, but he was helpless and befuddled.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dick's captors carried him down the stairs and through part of the house without a word. He had stopped struggling, and his mind tried to ascertain what was going on. Sheer terror made it impossible to do more than allow himself to be carried along like a sack. Was it a raid? Impossible, the general was involved. Dick couldn't make any sense of it.
A door creaked slightly as it was opened. Dick felt himself turned sideways by the two big men as he was carried through a doorway. The door slammed behind them. Did he imagine a quickly-hushed murmur of voices? Where was he now?
He quickly found out.
His captors carried him another few feet, then abruptly stood him on his feet. His bare soles touched carpet, and then, as he was led forward, cool tile. The two men held him securely by the arms, and someone flipped the sack from over his head, allowing him to see again.
He stood in the center of the game room, the one with a cathedral ceiling and billiard tables which he had looked into briefly that first visit so long ago. Overhead lights shone brightly, casting harsh shadows.
In many of the chairs around the room sat people he knew, about a dozen of them. Dick's light-dazzled eyes recognized them, but he saw immediately that none of his closest friends was present; a woman named Fredricka, whom he had slept with one night, was there, and so were the Armours and Jason Ternial, with whom he had hiked once. The others were nodding acquaintances-people who were always at the weekend parties, ones he recognized as "old people" in the sense they were obviously very close and members of perhaps the original founding group.
It was not until he stood there, shocked, naked, with the gag still choking his mouth, that Dick realized these people had always, while being part of the larger group of hedonists, remained somewhat aloof, just like the general himself. This sudden awareness chilled him further, as did their cool stares now as he stood, held captive.
Nothing else seemed out of the way in the game room. It seemed as he had seen it before: the two billiard tables, the large empty space in which he stood, the tightly draped windows.
The general, who had been behind him and out of view, walked around to face him. The general reached for the gag in Dick's mouth. "No struggling, please," the general said quietly. "It's useless."
He removed the gag.
Spitting, Dick tried to speak.
"Now, Dick," the general said soberly, "I'm sure you're frightened."
"What's going on?" Dick demanded hoarsely, finding his voice.
"I assure you that nothing is going to happen to you that will permanently injure you in any way. It's very important for you to remember that."
"What the hell does that mean?"
The general allowed himself a thin smile, and now all the moments when Dick had sensed some hidden horror in the man were back again, but reinforced a thousandfold. "You won't be crippled," the general smiled. "You won't be maimed. I feel very confident that you can withstand everything. Several of us have had you under observation for a considerable period of time, almost since your first visit. You have stability and you have a capacity for many varieties of pleasure. Not only do we feel that you can handle our games well, you may be like some of us here and others who have served, who actually learned to take pleasure in the proceedings."
Dick was more scared by the moment, and was too far gone to hide it. "I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't like it. What do you mean, having these two guards of yours drag me down here with a gag in my mouth and a sack over my head? If this is pleasure, you know I would have come voluntarily."
Impatience flickered over the general's rugged features. "Enough talk. Prepare him."
Two of the spectators rose and came toward Dick's position. One was an older man named Casey, the other was a young girl whose name Dick couldn't remember. Casey's face was pink with excitement, and in his shorts there was a hard bulge of pleasure. The girl, wearing shorts and bra, was pale and very controlled.
The girl knelt at Dick's feet and put a small tool into a wedge in the floor tiles. A tile lifted and she placed it aside to reveal a ring bolt indented in the concrete sub-flooring. Moving a few feet away, she turned over another tile to bare another ring bolt.
Casey moved behind Dick toward the pillar and started doing something. Dick shuddered as he heard pulleys, Straining against his captors, he managed to stare straight up.
Casey was lowering a block-and-tackle arrangement of ropes from the deep shadows of the high ceiling. Dick went berserk.
His struggle against the two big men holding him, however, was fruitless. The two men, the biggest of the general's corps of island guards, squeezed him mercilessly between them and twisted his arms behind his back so harshly that he groaned with pain, thinking his shoulder sockets would pop.
At his moan of pain, several of the men and women watching leaned forward, pleasure clearly etched on their faces.
Casey had the block and tackle equipment swung down to head height.
The general went to a side cabinet and came back toward Dick with odd pieces of metal-pairs of steel ovals, padded with leather, attached to chains. He handed two of these to the girl on the floor, and helped Casey with the others.
As the rough leather bit into his ankles and wrists, Dick began to understand, and tried again to struggle, One of the guards smashed a knee into the small of his back, momentarily stiffening him and making him unable to move.
Deftly, the girl and Casey did their work. Dick's legs were spread apart as the clamps on each ankle were snapped with chains onto the floor bolts. The handcuffs on his wrists swung his arms over his head, spreading them, too, and at a soft command from the general, Casey expertly drew on the block and tackle rope, pulling Dick's arms upward and outward.
In moments, he was spread-eagled in mid-air, legs and arms stretched out by the chains above and below, his body drawn painfully taut.
He was hopelessly exposed and defenseless. The tension drawn on every part of his body was so great that he could not even struggle.
The general told the guards, "You may report to your usual stations."
The two men nodded and left the room, closing the door behind them.
"All right," the general murmured then. A sigh of anticipation went through those in the room.
Dick dripped sweat from every pore. His mind raced around, trying to make mad sense of what was happening to him. He wondered if it was some sort of hallucination-it was so weird, so fantastic and unbelievable. Was this truly happening to him?
"Frances and Zelma will perform," the general announced. "Elizabeth will assist."
The girl on the floor stood, her face glowing with pleasure, and quickly stripped off all her clothing. While she did so, two of the other women, a blonde and a brunette, also stood from the group of spectators and did the same.
All the others watched raptly, in total silence. Some were smoking pot. Dick's brain reeled.
Frances, a statuesque blonde with huge, erect breasts, walked up to Dick, looked deep into his eyes, and gently teased her fingers down his chest. Her blue eyes were wild and strange. She kissed him briefly, passionately.
"You'll thank us later, Dick," she whispered.
Zelma, the smaller, slender brunette with magnificent legs and hips, walked to him next and repeated the performance.
She said louder, for all to hear, "Remember, pleasure and pain are brothers."
Elizabeth, the girl who had worked the leg bolts, came out of the back of the room somewhere and into the light again. She pushed ahead of her a small portable bar on rollers. The top of the bar was covered with a large white linen cloth.
Elizabeth pushed this cart to a position within a few feet of Dick, and drew off the linen covering; Dick gasped.
On the surface of the cart glittered an array of cruel instruments: long, silver needles; gleaming stainless steel clamps; what looked like surgical pincers and pliers; scissors.
Also on the surface were limp brown coils of rubber surgical tubing, and, on one edge, a coiled black leather whip.
The three nude women, their faces pale, lined up beside the tray in ritualistic silence. All the others sat in their chairs, watching breathlessly.
The general, standing slightly to the side, told Dick quietly, his voice ringing in the utter silence, "Dick, I found the bases of pleasure in the horrors of war. I first learned how closely allied are pleasure and pain in my earliest experiments with pleasure for its own sake. One night we talked about this during a party, and I explained much of it to you."
The general paused, then added, "What I did not explain to you is that sometimes a man must endure torture in order to open all his senses to the ultimate frontiers of pleasure-to reach that point where the two are joined in genuine ecstasy. Also, I did not explain to you that there are many people who receive their highest raptures in handing out pain, or in watching pain inflicted.
"Dick, you have enjoyed all the pleasures of my island. Now you are being given the supreme opportunity to plunge to the farthest boundaries of pleasure-through receiving torture."
"No!" Dick choked. All his protest, all his terror and revulsion came out through the single word.
"If," the general went on, as if Dick had not spoken, "if you do not receive, ultimately, the great paradoxical beauty of pleasure through extreme suffering, you must still endure it. For pleasure is not all taking. You must give, you must serve."
The general paused dramatically, then said, "Tonight you serve our pleasure. Let the pleasure begin!"
Mute with horror, Dick hung hopeless in the spreading chains, watching the three women in front of him. They, he knew, were to be his tormentors.
Frances, the tall blonde, spoke briefly to the others, then walked over to stand in front of Dick. She again kissed him passionately, sliding her cool hands over his entire body. Then she allowed her attentions to center slowly on his chest, and then his belly, and then her hands curved down below, cupping his weight, beginning gently but with rising force to squeeze and knead him. Despite his fear and tension, Dick felt his body responding as the beautiful woman worked on him, her eyes never leaving his own. Slowly he began to rise and thicken.
Just as he would have begun to achieve full erection, however, Frances transferred her teasing attention to his back. Her fingers stole down the cleft of his buttocks and teased at the tender opening, made more aware and slightly sore by the onslaught he had undergone earlier in the night. Frances smiled into his eyes, and nibbled at his chest. Dick's excitement began again to rise.
At this point, while Frances continued her subtle techniques, Elizabeth silently went to the cart and got from it the coiled whip. She handed it to Zelma, who uncurled it deftly, like a long snake, on the floor, Zelma, breasts rising and falling with excitement, walked around behind Dick.
The whip whistled and cracked onto his back. Dick moaned in pain. His back instantly came afire where the whip had lashed a long welt from shoulder to hip.
Before he could even get his breath, the whip whistled and exploded across his back a second time-a third-a fourth.
"No," Dick sobbed.
"Hush," Frances murmured, as she continued gently working his sex back and forth in her expert hands.
The whip cracked again, and this time Dick dropped loose for an instant in the taut chains, and felt blood trickling down his back.
When next the whip came, it sizzled across his buttocks. This seemed to go on endlessly, and while it continued, Frances continued her work in front, and Dick sobbed aloud with every battering blow, his whole body simmering with bright pain.
Now blood trickled down his legs and made tiny pools on the floor beside each chained foot. The pain became a steady blur, mixed somehow with the rhythm of Frances' prodding hand, mixing the distant pleasure of her sexual attentions with the crashing pain of the beating.
Dick was only dimly aware of the strained attention of those in the chairs. He was half dazed, alone with sensations of pleasure and pain, reeling and almost unconscious.
Suddenly, after what seemed a very long time, he realized that the whipping had ceased. He roused slightly. Elizabeth was holding a cup of cool liquid to his lips. He drank thirstily; it was some sort of fruit punch with an exotic ingredient which immediately brought back full consciousness.
His back was afire, and blood dripped. If this was the worst, he thought dazedly, he could endure it ... if they were going to release him now-
He saw with new horror that they had only paused to change the macabre game. Zelma replaced the whip, now stained and wet, on the cart. Then she came to him, hips swishing, a smile on her lips. She smelled rankly of towering sexual excitement. Throwing her arms around his neck and digging long fingernails into the tortured flesh of his back, she kissed him long and hard, thrusting her tongue into his mouth, then with a quick movement, spitting forcefully. The action aroused Dick anew, and she pressed against him, insisting with her pelvis.
She raised herself slightly, and, with a little gasp, implanted his now-towering organ all the way inside herself. She groaned and instantly experienced an orgasm, but even as she was moaning and clamping down on him with ecstasy, she pushed back violently and left him alone.
Now it was Frances, who earlier had dealt pleasure, who walked to the tray and took something out of a gleaming metal box. It had straps, and as she strapped it about her hips, her back was turned, so Dick could not see what was happening. Then Frances turned.
She had strapped onto her pelvis a gigantic dildo which glistened with a lubricant. The black leather straps gleamed dully in the bright light, and the enormous instrument protruded a full twelve inches. It was made of a hard leather of some kind, with a huge knob.
Frances walked behind Dick, nestled against his raw back.
Dick felt the huge knob of her instrument touch him coldly with the lubricant.
"You can't do that," he choked. "You'll destroy me-"
Frances moved closer, positioning herself with accuracy.
She lunged.
Dick cried out brokenly as he was penetrated. He felt he was being split. Frances was not all in, and the incredible pain kept boring into him as he writhed against the chains.
Somehow, unbelievably, he did not faint, Frances began steadily pumping him.
At the same time, Elizabeth came toward Dick from the front. She had with her in her hands one of the long silver needles.
Bending silently, she reached between his thighs.
The searing agony burst up through Dick's savagely tortured body like a poker at flaming heat. He opened his mouth to scream, but he was beyond screaming now, torn to pieces and nothing but ragged nerve endings.
Some of the spectators were no longer sitting idle. They had begun to pair up frantically, acting as they continued to watch.
For a moment, Dick fainted, and then was conscious again of the continuation of Frances' torture of his rectum. This torture was not alone, for Elizabeth had gone to the tray again and come back with some strange oval screw-clamp, and stood watching him expectantly. Meanwhile, Zelma, eyes ablaze, kissed him again and knelt before him.
Zelma's eyes worshipped the lower part of his body. Her tongue flicked out, and through all the welter of pain Dick felt the stab of sexual pleasure.
Zelma's lips formed an oval. She engulfed him hotly in her mouth.
Dick felt the continued stabbing of her tongue, drawing at him like a thousand tongues. As she worked, she began to move her hands on him, tugging back and forth insistently.
Despite the towering pain behind-or perhaps because of it-Dick felt himself mounting toward climax. Dazzled by the way the pleasure broke through his agony, he began to moan in steady conjunction with the battering from the rear, and his pleasure mounted and mounted-
Then, Elizabeth, sensing that he was on the brink, moved with great precision and speed. The oval surgical clamp was snapped around his straining circumference, and Elizabeth tightened the clamp-tightened it still more, shutting him off entirely, closing every blood vessel and opening between his body and Zelma's hungry, beseeching lips. The pain stabbed deep, but it was too late. Dick was already beginning to surge in orgasm from deep within his body.
The first surge came, but the clamp gave it nowhere to go-As Dick heard his own broken scream pierce the room, he understood fully, for the very first time, the meaning and source of the nightmares he had had, the screams he had thought he heard on other nights of pleasure.
The realization was only an instant of pain, however, for now he was in spasm of pain and pleasure, love and hate, agony and ecstasy, in every cell of his body, and as his body surged again, mindlessly, blocked by the clamp, he plunged down into total darkness.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
For two days after the night in the game room, Dick, returned to the mainland, went about his duties like a zombie. His mind simply was not capable of accepting what had happened.
He had regained consciousness after the ordeal in a single bed, alone except for one man sitting beside the bed. The man, somewhat older, was a member of the group. He had been among the spectators. He told Dick he was also a doctor, and complimented him on his stamina.
"There's no permanent damage of any kind, I can assure you," he said, smiling. "We always exercise care, and I'm there in case of any accident."
Dick had been far too drained, emotionally and physically, to argue or even protest. When the doctor gave him an injection of something, it did ease the pain and also make him feel more alive. He found that he could walk, although painfully, and soon found himself joining the others for the plane trip back to the city. No one seemed to notice that he looked at all different, although his back was a welter of cuts and bruises.
Dick had gone back home in silence, too shaken to tell anyone or make any sign:
Now, however, as the first deep shock had begun to drain off, Dick had an appointment with Beverly for lunch in the airport coffee shop. He had not seen her since their return. He had to warn her.
Walking through the echoing, milling crowd of the airport terminal, Dick felt quiet amazement that the ordinary world was going on as before. How many of the people around, he wondered, would have savored the hell of that night in the game room? How many swapped wives, or had mistresses, or had suffered through some major break in their lives? How many were happy, how many tortured?
Did every man and woman have to find his own way? Was there truth behind the general's insistence on pain, despite how perverted and cruel it might have become? Did mankind grow only through suffering?
Dick wondered if his real suffering had been not in the game room, but in all the nights of seeming pleasure, all the times when, for his personality and for his personal integrity, he had been ignoring and giving up things most dear to him. The torture had brought one thing home to him very clearly. For him-and he would never again in this world try to make judgement on anyone else-hedonism was not the answer.
He entered the coffee shop. Beverly, pretty and crisp in her uniform, sat at the same corner table where she had first mentioned the island group. She smiled as he sat beside her.
"Hi, lover," she purred, rubbing his thigh with her hand.
"I wanted to talk to you," Dick said. She frowned, seeing he was very serious. "Yes. What is it?"
"Bev, I have to warn you. Things on the island aren't what they seem. It isn't all pleasure. The general is-the general likes to inflict pain."
"You mean," Beverly said coolly, "the game room."
"You mean you know about the game room?" Dick gasped.
Beverly nodded. "I didn't realize you had served. Was it this last weekend?"
"Yes."
"I've served once myself," Beverly said. "I imagine they'll call me again some night soon."
Dick stared at her. She was completely calm about this. "How in God's name can you contemplate serving a second time?" he asked.
"I don't pretend I enjoyed it," Beverly said. "Not much of it, anyway. "Men tortured me. I guess women did it to you. That's the way it works. Men and women torturing each other on an island. It's strange ... but in a way I took pleasure from it, in looking back on it. If that's how some people groove, then I'm willing to help them get their kicks."
"Beverly, Jesus Christ!"
"Did it really shatter you that much, Dick?"
"Of course it did! It's a horrible thing!"
"Some people got pleasure from it," Beverly insisted.
Dick had no idea of what to reply. It struck him as incredible and somehow monstrous that this beautiful young woman who had given him so much pleasure, and who seemed so alive and normal, should accept the game room and all it implied.
"I can't accept it," he said finally, stricken.
She smiled. "But of course you must, you know."
"Why?"
"If you're to keep going back to the island, you must serve."
"Then I'll never go back!"
"Oh, Dick," Beverly said, disappointed, "don't be childish!"
"Is it childish to hate that kind of pain?"
"It's childish to fight reality. The game room is the life most of us live in, the house is our nation, the island is the world. Don't you see that? Our lives are metaphors."
"Beverly, do you believe that?"
"Of course," she said quite calmly.
"I wanted to warn you!"
"I need no warning. I'm aware of all of it. I may even torture someone some night. I can, you know. Now that you've served, you could, too. Think of the new pleasures open to you."
"I can't believe it," Dick choked.
"Pain and inflicting pain are part of pleasure, Dick, don't you see that now? You should be thankful to the general. He's a very wise man. Most generals are."
"No," Dick said, his mind reeling.
"You have to accept it to have a healthy attitude," Beverly said blithely.
"Beverly," Dick said huskily, "I'm never going to the island again."
"Then," she responded somberly, "I feel sorry for you, honey."
Dick got up and stumbled out of the coffee shop.
He found himself walking the stairs toward the tower, but his confusion and hurt sent him instead to the observation platform. The warm summer breeze gusted at him as he stood, gripping the guard railing tightly, watching the big jets rumble around the runways.
There was, Dick realized suddenly, only one more thing he had to do.
Fran.
She had been to the island only once. She couldn't know about the tortures. She had to be warned. He had to warn her. He would call her-see her tonight.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was after dark when Dick finally got away from the terminal. Although he was hungry, he drove directly toward his former home.
He had not called before heading out of the terminal traffic. He was afraid that his ex-wife, despite their group encounters on the island, would not be willing to see him alone. The warning he had to give her was not the sort of thing he could say over the telephone.
When he drove up in front of the house that had been his home for so many years, he knew at once that the children were not there. He could see no lights at all in the downstairs, where they might ordinarily be playing or watching TV at this time of night, almost ten p.m. The only light in the entire house was upstairs, in the room that had been his and Fran's bedroom.
Dick parked in front, rather than in the driveway, and walked up the front walk. The trees made it very dark, and he was almost to the porch before he spotted the strange car in the driveway. Frowning, he saw that it was an expensive sports model. The license plate was from another part of the state, which meant that Fran had not purchased it.
So Fran had a visitor inside.
The thought made Dick tingle with bitter rage. His wife-he instantly corrected himself-his former wife was entertaining a man.
The only lights were upstairs, in the bedroom.
Dick hesitated, a cauldron of conflicting emotions spilling through him. His impulse was to sound the door chimes and bring her down, regardless. He had to warn her immediately, and no matter how embarrassing or painful it might be for her to be interrupted with a lover-or how angry she might get, or how angry he might be, it had to be done.
Then Dick had another thought.
What if the man upstairs with Fran was another member of the island group?
No one else must know that he was here to warn Fran. He had no way of knowing, but he sensed that talking about the island to someone else, to warn off a newcomer, would be considered a grave deviation that might even result in violence. The island had not been kept such a secret only by chance or voluntary silence. Anyone who told tales might be badly hurt.
Dick knew, then, that he had to find out who was upstairs with Fran before he could risk warning her now. The thought of simply going away and coming back later was out of the question; he was too upset, and the visitor might be here for the night. Dick had to find out, and had to figure out a way to warn Fran, tonight.
Casting around for a solution to the dilemma, he found one almost at once.
He could tell that the upstairs window curtains were not fully drawn. The window to the bedroom opened over the porch, and the trees hung low over this lower roof, making it dark. A man who got to the porch roof could observe into the bedroom with maximum security.
Dick also knew the trellis work at the side of the porch would bear a man's weight. He had built the trellises himself.
Knowing it was risky, and that he might be opening himself up to new shocks, he nevertheless immediately turned and went quietly across the porch. He tested the trellis work experimentally, then lifted his weight onto it and began to climb.
It was easy work, and in moments he was heaving himself up over the edge of the composition roof, still warm from the day's sun. He got himself carefully onto all fours, and crawled over to the window.
The light on the nightstand beside the bed, at right, was on, casting pink illumination over the scene. The bed was turned down, but unrumpled as yet. At the left, Fran sat at her nightstand, wearing a beautiful, transparent negligee which allowed one lovely long leg to be exposed as she sat, legs crossed, brushing her hair.
As Dick watched, Fran finished brushing her hair and examined herself briefly, nervously, in the mirror. She reached for a perfume bottle and applied the fragrance liberally to her arms and the cleavage of her breasts. Then, on a quick impulse, she spread her legs and rubbed some in the matted hair of her triangle. She shuddered a bit with pleasure as her fingers touched herself.
A movement at the far side of the room, the door to the bathroom, claimed Dick's attention then, and the door opened. A tall, handsome, beautifully muscled young man strode out, smiling. Dick saw with shock that he was entirely naked and in a high state of excitement. He was quite big and powerful in appearance.
The youth went to the dressing table and embraced Fran from behind, slipping his hands inside her negligee to rub gently on her breasts. She arched her body with pleasure and got her hand behind her body to tease the lower portions of the youth's body.
The youth smiled, nuzzled her, and bent forward to pull her gown open and begin sucking furiously at her breasts. Fran threw her head back with delight, moving her hips. The motion dropped the gown off her body and into a billowy pile of fragrance on the carpeted floor.
Half-falling, the youth pulled Fran to her feet. They embraced rapturously and stumbled toward the bed. The youth lay doWn, grinning, and said something. As Fran began to lie beside him, he caught her naked hips and swung her so that she was reversed over him.
Crouched on the roof outside the window, Dick watched with mute fascination and amazement as Fran eagerly opened her mouth wide and took a surprising length of the youth's organ inside. At the same time, the youth expertly began bestowing lavish kisses and strokes between Fran's thighs.
The couple entwined, twitching and writhing in mutual pleasure. One minute became two, then three, and Fran's body began to convulse frantically, her hips jerking against the youth's tongue. Almost simultaneously, she worked harder to bring him intense pleasure, and even from outside the window Dick saw clearly when the object of Fran's adoring attention swelled enormously and detonated, gushing, into her mouth. Her throat worked frantically to keep pace.
In another moment, the couple relaxed, sliding apart and lying very still for a little while. Dick saw the sweat gleaming on their nude bodies, and wondered if now the man whom he had just watched love his-ex-wife so well would be satisfied, and leave for the night.
Fran did not even pause for a cigarette. She turned over, and, again placing her face between the man's thighs, tried to arouse him once more. The youth, grinning as he immediately began to recover his powers, worked his finger in and out of Fran.
Then Fran tried for the second time to stretch out beside him, begging mutely for the loving she still wanted so badly. But the youth was not to be denied his control over her. For the second time Dick saw him turn her expertly, this time bringing her to her hands and knees.
As the youth moved behind Fran's buttocks, she looked back and seemed ready to shrink with fright. But Dick's own attack from this position had strengthened her for whatever the youthful lover might desire, and she seemed to realize this. Her face changed, relaxed, became sensual again.
The youth stroked her buttocks, teasing the tip of his penis along their cleft, and then very slowly began to enter her.
The look of pain and anguish on Fran's face told Dick very certainly that the youth was using the path that he had broken through only a few days ago for the very first time.
The youth achieved maximum penetration, and Fran slowly relaxed as he remained still, allowing her to shift her body slightly to adjust to the great pressure.
Then the youth began moving. More and more rapidly he stroked, and Fran, her breasts wobbling from each shuddering full-stroke impact, took it and loved it.
Dick turned his face away from the window. He was assailed by a gust of furious jealousy and rage. Were they going to go on and on all night? Was the young man so powerful that they simply would continue, in one position after another, endlessly?
Dick knew he could not remain out here much longer. He had to give Fran the warning tonight, he was driven to do so. His unwilling voyeurism had strongly aroused him, despite everything. He was very uncomfortable.
He turned back to the window and looked again after a little while.
The couple on the bed had again climaxed, and now lay side by side quietly, cooling off and smoking cigarettes.
Dick watched and waited.
After a little while, the youth said something and got up. He started across the room toward the bathroom.
Fran, anxiety clear on her face, jumped off the bed and hurried after him. To Dick's astonished eyes, she threw herself on the carpet in front of her lover and grasped him beseechingly around the hips, clinging to him, begging, actually being dragged a step or two.
The youth stopped and looked down at her clinging to his body. She raised her face and said something, asking for something with open, wanton need.
Whatever Fran said, it was successful. The youth smiled, bent, and raised her to her feet. He carried her bodily back to the bed and deposited her. He still, Dick realized, had not made love to her in the usual way, and this was what Fran was begging for.
Now Fran got her desire. The youth spread her legs, and knelt between them. He kissed the nipples of her breasts, kissed her face and her belly, and lay between her trembling thighs. He was again, surprisingly, huge and ready. With a single thrust, he entered her to the root. It was such a potent, throbbing thrust that Dick almost thought he saw Fran's sides swell as the youth glided home.
With this, Fran immediately got wild. She heaved and pitched, using fingernails, crying out softly, thrashing her pelvis, fighting the youth who had so completely possessed her, going crazy in delight as he stroked steadily, filling her. Then Fran began to come, shaking uncontrollably, and before the first mad spasms had passed, she came up a second time. Dick watched with amazement as the youth continued the steady ride, pounding into her as if fixed on the purpose of delighting her thoroughly this time. Fran cried out brokenly and climaxed a third time, and, within a few seconds, still once more.
The fourth time was too much for the youth's control. He hammered furiously into her, losing all semblance of pattern and rhythm, and as he held her the closest close, spurting into her, it brought about Fran's fifth, and perhaps most gigantic, orgasm of all time. She simply lost her mind as she shivered, almost entirely raised off the bed to enfold every inch of the big tool that had given her such pleasure.
Dick could watch no more. He crawled down across the roof and got to the trellis, quickly descending.
If the youth left now, he thought nervously, then he would give Fran a few minutes to collect herself, and still warn her tonight, pretending he had just arrived and had seen or guessed nothing. If the youth stayed more than a-other few minutes. Dick would go to his lonely apartment and try tomorrow.
The spectacle of seeing his ex-wife so voluptuous and lascivious had shaken him. He wondered if he could convince her of the evil of the island, after it had so obviously liberated the wanton in her.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
"All right," Ted Reeder said with quiet concern. "Try to stay as calm as you can, Dick, and tell me about it."
It was the next night, and they were at Dick's apartment. He had invited Reeder out of total desperation.
"I told you about the group of people I was involved with," he began, trying to be rational.
"Yes," Reeder frowned.
"I found out new things about them. Ted, they're not just hedonists, not just innocent fun-seekers. They have a-a torture room. Some of them take pleasure in watching agony. Guests are taken there, forced to serve. I was taken there."
"Last weekend?" Reeder asked, worried.
"Yes. I saw that it was bad. Fran-you may as well know this, too, Ted-I'm beyond kidding anyone, even myself-Fran was there."
"In the-"
"No," Dick corrected frantically, "not in the game room. She was on the island. I don't know how she got invited, but she was there. We even-made love. She was open to all of it."
"Does she know about the tortures?" Reeder asked.
"No, I know she doesn't," Dick gasped. "Earlier tonight I tried to warn her.".
"What happened?"
"She wouldn't listen," Dick said, fighting tears now. "Ted, she wouldn't believe me!"
"Couldn't she imagine such a thing? Were you really convincing?"
"I told her all of it." Dick wept. "I even offered to show her the marks on my back from the whip. Oh yes," he added, seeing Reeder's startled look. "That was part of it. But that was the easiest part!"
"Why wouldn't Fran believe you?" Reeder asked, puzzled.
"She said T was mad," Dick groaned. "She said I only wanted to deprive her of the kind of total, wanton pleasure I myself had found. She said it was all too impossible and fantastic-she said she was going back again and again, nothing could sway her. Finally, while I was still pleading, she slammed the door in my face."
Reeder smoked in silence for a moment, only Dick's stifled sobs making sound in the room.
Finally Reeder said with great sympathy, "She has to find out for herself, Dick."
"She has a lover," Dick groaned.
"Here? In the city?"
"Yes, at least one lover-a big, handsome sonofa-bitch-"
"Are you jealous?" Reeder asked quickly.
"Yes! No! I don't know!"
"Dick," Reeder said, "do you know what you've been going through?"
"I know," Dick said.
"No," Reeder smiled. It was a sympathetic smile. "I'm not sure you do, Dick. You've been going through a slow, gradual personality reorganization."
"A nervous breakdown?"
Reeder puffed his pipe thoughtfully. "Some might call it that. I wouldn't."
"What is it, then?"
"A reorganization, Dick. A truly deep .and shattering personal reorganization."
"I don't care so much about myself," Dick groaned. "But I see that a life like that can lead to total degradation. Fran doesn't see that. She's going, God help her, the same road I took. I want to save her from it if I can!"
"You can't," Reeder said. "No one can save a person from himself."
"I want to try, for her sake!"
"Yes," Reeder replied, smiling sympathetically again. "I believe you, Dick. That marks part of the change you've .undergone-that you're still going through. You're concerned for Fran now. Perhaps more than you ever were."
Dick stared at his friend, and saw with slow dawning that this was indeed true. He doubted that what he felt included genuine love for Fran. Perhaps the spectacle he had witnessed through the window of the house had forever ended the possibility of loving her again. But he cared, and deeply.
It was a surprising thing to learn about himself.
"There must be some way I can help her," he insisted.
"She has to go the route you went, or a similar one," Reeder suggested. "She has to have the shock. She has to hit bottom."
Dick thought about this. "Have I hit bottom?"
"What do you think?" Reeder countered.
"I think I have," Dick decided firmly.
"What do you plan to do about it, then?"
"I don't know. Continue work. Think. Go along. Try to mend. Does that make any sense?"
Reeder smiled. "It makes a lot of sense."
"One other thing," Dick decided. "I'd like to come in to your office-start seeing you regularly."
"As a patient?"
"Yes, as a patient. Do you think it's a good idea?"
"I do," Reeder said simply. Dick smiled, feeling better.
"It won't" Reeder warned, "be easy, or a quick process. I think you have a great deal to learn about yourself yet."
"I want to try," Dick said. "No more island?"
"No more island!"
Reeder grinned and got up to go. "I'll call you tomorrow about an appointment. I'll have to check my book first."
"The sooner the better," Dick said fervently.
"Yes."
After seeing his friend out, Dick went about the quiet routine of straightening up the apartment. He was stiff and sore, and continued to be plagued by thoughts of Fran. He also felt relieved and liberated in a way he could not adequately define for himself.
He had a drink and was reading a magazine when he heard a soft tap on his door.
He opened it and was surprised to see Mona.
"Hi," she smiled. "Can I come in?"
Dick hesitated.
"It's no accident this time," Mona said. "I was lonesome, and you were the one I thought of. You're not second choice or anything else."
The quiet yearning in her eyes, and her sincerity, moved Dick. "Come in," he said quietly.
She sat on the couch, the same place and in the same position she had that first night when she tried to visit next door, and ended up here smoking pot and giving Dick such an unforgettable night in bed.
"Drink?" Dick asked her, feeling dubious.
"Please," she said. "If you're not busy or anything-"
"No," he reassured her. As he went to the bar, he almost added flippantly, I was about to go to bed and you can join me.
He didn't. His days of playing at sex, and pretending it never affected a person, were over. He was not going to make a toy of anyone; he was not going to use anyone.
He mixed two highballs and carried them back to the couch.
"Thanks," Mona said with pleasure. "The mix is flat, I'm afraid."
"I don't mind."
They sipped their drinks in silence. Dick found himself being moved by her closeness, and memory of their love-making. Yet he said nothing, was determined not to use her as a toy.
"You're quiet," Mona said.
"I'm pretty worn out, Mona."
"I'm sorry," she said, meaning it.
Dick looked at her, and there was genuine concern and compassion in her deep eyes.
Impulsively she placed her hand on his arm. "We haven't known each other long, and-it's kind of embarrassing, but even with all the bed things we did that night, we don't know each other well. I want you to know that I didn't come over here, thinking I'd get a lay."
"I didn't think that," Dick partially lied.
"I like you," she said. "You're nice. I got lonely, and I don't know exactly why, but here I am."
"I'm glad," Dick said.
She smiled. "Good."
For another little while they were quiet together, and Dick found that it was very nice. He felt none of the uptight tensions he had known with Fran, none of the sexual urgency of Jean, none of the sheerly wanton drives that had characterized all his recent excursions into sexual experimentations. He felt at peace. Mona was a good person, and the fact that they had been to bed before didn't seem to matter a lot one way or the other.
"It isn't "often," she said after a while, "that a girl meets a man she really likes. Oh, I've grooved with several men, but with you it was more than that. I guess that's why I had the gall to come by here tonight. Does that sound dumb?"
"No, it doesn't," Dick said, touched by her sincerity. "As a matter-of-fact, I was thinking a lot of the same things about you, Mona."
"When you opened the door, I thought for a minute you weren't going to ask me in."
"I wasn't sure," Dick admitted, wanting suddenly to be completely honest with this beautiful person. "I am tired. I'm beat. I guess I don't feel much like sex tonight, and I was afraid, just for a minute, there, that you had me pegged as strictly a swinger, and you were looking for more grass and the kind of night we had before. I frankly just don't think I'm up to that right now."
"I wish I knew what's bothering you," Mona said softly. "But no, I don't want you even to try to tell me. Really. Not yet, anyway."
"I like you, you know that?" Dick asked, with a burst of feeling.
Her smile was beautiful. "I like you too. You've made me feel better. I think I'd better finish the dregs of this drink and get on the road. It's a long way back across town, and it's getting late." .
"Look," Dick said, surprising himself. "You could stay here."
She watched him.
"I mean, if you'd like to," Dick said lamely. "I'd like to very much," she said with great feeling. "This may sound weird, but-maybe we'll just sleep. Okay?"
She smiled happily. "Yes. Sure."
"Or maybe we won't," Dick grinned. "Yes," she laughed.
"Either way."
They finished their drinks, and without anything ever coming out precisely in words, they had settled a great deal about themselves and their relationship. Dick put their glasses in the sink, and turned out the lights. Mona went on into the other part of the apartment, and was already in bed when Dick finished in the bathroom, turned out the light, and went to the bed.
He climbed in beside her, and gently kissed her, and she responded with the same quiet, loving care.
"God," Dick breathed, seeing her faintly in the dark. "That was lovely."
"Yes," she whispered, tossing the coverlet back. It was an innocent gesture, one of total relaxation and trusting.
"I guess people everywhere get lonely," Dick said in the dark.
"It isn't often we find each other," she said.
The content of her words, and their tone, touched Dick again. He kissed her once more, feeling a tiny trace of sexual feeling, but sexual feeling of a different kind than any he had felt for a long time, it seemed. He wanted to be with her more closely; he wanted to make her happy, and he wanted to be happy, too. They had shared so much, non-verbally, in the few minutes here tonight, he waited more complete communion.
He didn't know if he could manage, but he began gently soothing her body with his hands.
She responded very slowly and gently, too.
Then Dick found that he needn't have worried at all. When he climbed up on top of her and entered her, very slowly and with great care and exquisite sensations of belonging there, he knew everything was going to be all right for them.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dick awakened very early. Mona slept cuddled beside him. Dick watched her sleep, and felt very protective and concerned for her, very touched in ways he did not yet understand.
Perhaps, he thought, this affair would lead nowhere. Perhaps it would take both of them to happiness. He did not know yet how things would turn out with Fran, and now he was also honest enough with himself to admit clearly that he still cared, in one way very much, for Jean.
This moment was sufficient for today. He had loved Mona long, and well. It had been special. There had been no selfishness. They had touched in many ways other than the physical.
It was just possible, Dick realized, that he had never understood Fran at all. Perhaps they had been two people who could never really communicate-perhaps she would even shock him further by going back to the island repeatedly, learning finally about the horrors of the game room, and accept these things, as Beverly had done.
This was something Dick had no control over, he saw, even though he was afraid for Fran, and sorry, too.
He could do something about himself. Perhaps he could learn a better life-and perhaps Mona would be a part of it.
The telephone rang in the living room.
Dick answered it quietly. "Yes?"
"Ted Reeder, Dick. Sorry to wake you so early, but I find I have a cancellation this morning at nine. Since you're on late shift at the airport, I thought you might want to start our sessions straight off today."
"Yes," Dick said. "That sounds fine. I want to get started on a new life, Ted," he added impulsively.
"Good," ' Reeder said. "See you at nine."
"Yes."
Reeder hung up.
Dick went quietly back into the bedroom, intending to return to perhaps a little more sleep or serious thought.
The ring of the phone had awakened Mona, and she curled luxuriously and sat up in the bed, smiling tenderly at him.
"Hi," she said huskily, welcoming him back into the bed.
"Hi," Dick smiled, putting his arms around her. She was sweet and warm and sleepy.
"Are we really here?" she asked, half-asleep. "Am I really this happy?"
"Yes," Dick murmured, and held her close. It occurred to him that his new life might already be started.
