The big yacht was the most notorious palace of perversion since the prison boats of Devil's Island. And the Vesuvius was just that ... a boat that held people prisoners of lust, pawns for the jaded appetites of the Countess Estrella de Lorca, a bi-sexual satan in men's clothing. The boat picked up Beth Fairfax in Tangiers, where she was being framed for the murder of her lover. Dan Salem didn't have much choice but to sign aboard either ... he was up for a manslaughter charge. The ship was far out on the Indian Ocean before both victims realized that prison would have been preferable to the unspeakable depravities and endless orgies that raged from stateroom to stateroom ... deck to shameless deck. They were left with but a single avenue of escape ... Death!
PROLOGUE
An infamous Frenchman and an infamous German were so influential with their peculiar pastimes that their names have passed through history as labels for brutality and degradation. The Frenchman, Donatien Alphonse Francois, Marquis de Sade, capsule-described as "a French pervert of the eighteenth century" by most dictionaries, contributed the word "sadism" wherein sexual gratification is obtained by inflicting pain on others. Oppositely, the German, Cacher-Masoch, contributed his name to "masochism" wherein the application of pain is necessary to an individual for him to react sexually.
It has long been contended that most Lesbians posses strong inclinations in one of these opposite directions. Several studies, following Kinsey, have analyzed this very hypothesis. One such, Female Homosexuality by Frank S. Caprio, speaking of the high incidence of sado-masochistic feelings in Lesbians, discussed: " ... definite sado-masochistic trends characterized by behavior actions of hostility alternating with feelings of self-pity. All Lesbians invariably display marked feelings of ambivalence toward themselves, their love partners, their parents and people in general."
Lesbians are almost everywhere. If you were to step aboard die orgy-yacht Vesuvius, for instance, you could meet the incredible Countess Estella de Lorca. Six feet of masculinely-attired, beautifully-sadistic ambisextrousness.
Welcome aboard!
CHAPTER ONE
The woman who stood at the window of the bedroom overlooking the harbor of Tangier was six feet tall and wore a man's white shirt which threatened to pop open at any moment from the pressure of her large, conical breasts. Her magnificent hips and smoothly muscled thighs were encased in tight black pants that revealed every curve and indentation with startling clarity.
Her face was more handsome than beautiful, with flashing black eyes, a cruel slash of a mouth and a prominent hawk-like nose. She wore her blue-black hair long and tied in a knot at the back of her head. There was power and arrogance in the way she held herself and it was easy to see she was used to command.
She smiled and her large white teeth gleamed wolfishly as she looked out over the harbor to where a large, white yacht lay at anchor near the breakwater.
"It will be an interesting trip ... a most fascinating trip," she said to herself. "Our voyage will make a Roman orgy look like an innocent children's party. I will have much pleasure."
A telephone rang and she took three quick tigerish steps across the room and scooped it up from the nightstand beside the huge circular bed.
"The Pre jet de Police is here, your excellency," her secretary's voice said in her ear.
"Ah, yes."
"He has a young woman with him," the secretary reported.
"Good! I was expecting them. Have them shown into my office in exactly five minutes."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And if the Portilla Gallery calls, tell them the paintings are to be delivered directly to the Vesuvius out in the harbor."
"Yes, ma'am. Will that be all?"
"No, not quite. See that the three truckloads of fancy foods from Gerald's are delivered there also. We sail in twelve hours and everything must be aboard by then."
"Yes, ma'am."
"Send Miss de Restzi to me."
"Yes, Countess," the secretary said. "Is there anything else?"
"No, that is all ... unless Captain Brock arrives. I do not wish to be disturbed until after the Prefet leaves."
The Countess Estella de Lorca replaced the telephone on its stand and left her bedroom. A few minutes later, she was entering a lavishly carpeted, sparsly furnished room. It contained only a desk of gigantic proportions and several armchairs placed at intervals around it. She padded silently across the thick rug and took her place in the chair behind the desk.
A door on the other side of the room opened and another woman entered. She was tall and rangy Hungarian with closely cropped blonde hair and long, brown legs set off by the brief white shorts she wore. A blue and white striped jersey covered high, firm breasts, and there was a forty-five automatic strapped to one lean hip.
The Countess grinned at the sight of the gun. "You are armed to protect me, Terri?" she asked.
The girl patted the weapon. "Your father had many enemies and you've earned a few of your own."
"But I doubt that the Prefet de Police is one of them," Estella said. "He's been on my payroll too long."
"Just the same...." the blonde patted the gun again as the door opened and a short, rolypoly man came in and bowed deeply to the Countess.
"It is a pleasure to have the illustrious Countess de Lorca with us again," he said.
The Countess nodded, but her eyes were on the girl who had followed him into the room. She had carrotty red hair and a splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks. The nose itself was pertly turned up and her mouth was full and lushly red. Her violet eyes were -rimmed with red and reflected both fear and bewilderment.
"This young lady is Miss Beth Fairfax of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the United States," the policeman introduced his charge. "She is, I am afraid, in very much trouble."
The Countess let her eyes roam over the small, lush figure of the girl.
"And how much will it cost me to get her out of trouble, Monsieur le Prefet?".
The man opened his hands in a generous gesture. "A mere trifle for one so beautiful, my dear Countess ... a mere trifle."
"Exactly how much of a trifle?"
"Four million francs."
Terri de Restzi sucked in her breath. "She isn't worth it!" she hissed.
The American girl flushed and turned angry eyes on Terri. "What would a person like you know about anyone's worth?"
"Why you miserable little...." Terri took a step toward her.
"Terri, stop!" the Countess snapped. "I'll handle this." She turned back to the affably smiling Prefet. "Four million francs is a very large sum of money."
Before he could say a word, the Fairfax girl spoke up in her clipped accent. "I'm here at this man's insistance. He said it was a shame for a person like me to be sent to jail. He said he knew a rich lady who for certain considerations might be willing to donate to his retirement fund-and incidentally-help me."
Estella de Lorca smiled in appreciation of the girl's spirit. "Nevertheless, it is still a large sum," she said.
"So was the crime," the small, dark man said.
"Indeed? What was it?"
"Murder," he said. "The nude body of this young lady's lover, a certain Algerian named Pierre, was found dead on the floor of her bedroom, and she was standing over him with a bloody knife in her hand. A very-how does one say?-open and shut case? It is only that she has beauty and comes from a wealthy family that prevented my turning her over to the courts to be tried at once."
"I didn't kill him and you know it!" Beth Fairfax said.
"She came here two months ago on a cruise ship and has been keeping this Pierre ever since," the Prefet said with a curl of his lip. "Before that another woman kept him, a dancer at a place called The White Elephant. A young man who identified himself as Miss Fairfax' fiance complained to us weeks ago and wanted Pierre arrested, but we could do nothing. A woman has a right to her amours, and even rich young Americans can't be protected from men like Pierre."
"So the red-haired pigeon murdered her lover," the Countess murmured, the expression on her face indicating that she found the idea pleasant.
"He was slashed five times with a knife," the policeman added, "and in a way that, had he lived, would have made him far less man than he was before."
The countess threw back her head and laughed delightedly. "She did that? Now that showed real elan. Her lover discarded her, and so she decided to send him to his new love without the necessary equipment."
"He didn't discard me," Beth Fairfax said haughtily. "No man would."
"What makes you so sure?" the Countess asked in an amused tone.
Beth tossed her head and the red curls bounced. "Pierre was quite a man. That's why I took up with him. He adored me and he never would have left me."
"How charming!" Estella said. "Tell me, why did you kill him then?"
"I didn't!" the girl insisted. "He was dead when I found him. I picked up the knife to look at it and-well, that's how they found me."
"She is guilty," the police chief said flatly. "There is a woman who will testify she saw them enter the apartment together."
"Then she lies!" Beth said.
The Countess smiled at her fury. "You say you are innocent, but the police are convinced you are guilty. Here that is all it takes."
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean that unless I choose to pay this man the money he wants, you will never leave this city."
"But I'm an American and-"
"You are a murderess, the committer of a particularly sordid and brutal crime," the Countess said bluntly.
Fear came back into the girl's eyes. "But ... what am I to do?"
"As this man has told you, for certain considerations, I may be willing to pay the required money."
"My father will pay you back," Beth said. "He'd be glad to make good any money you advance on my behalf."
"Oh, no, my dear," the Countess said. "It is you yourself who will have to pay me back."
"But how ... how can I pay you back?" Beth faltered.
"By personal service. Six months of personal service."
"Personal service? I don't understand."
"I will explain," Estella said. "If the Prefet will be kind enough to step into the other room for a few minutes." She grinned widely. "After all, we wouldn't want him to hear anything that might compromise his official position."
The roly-poly man bowed deeply, trying to hide his knowing smile, and turned and left the room.
As soon as the door had closed behind him, the Countess stood up and sauntered around to the front of her desk. She leaned against it while she fitted a cigarette into a long jade holder and let her eyes wander boldly over the American girl's body.
"And now, Miss Fairfax, before we go any further," she said coldly, "I would like to see just what it is I'm purchasing. Take off your clothes!"
Beth gasped and turned scarlet from the roots of her red hair to the rounded tops of her breasts. "How dare you! How dare you even suggest such a thing! What makes you think a person of my background and breeding would lower herself to be inspected like an ordinary piece of merchandise?"
"I dare to suggest it and you will comply with my request because you have no choice. You have become, as you say, an ordinary piece of merchandise and I always inspect such things closely before I buy."
Beth Fairfax' violet eyes locked with the fathomless black ones of the Countess and she struggled to maintain her poise.
"No," she said, dropping her voice, "I won't do it. I was raised as a decent, lady-like ... no, you can't inspect me...."
"Miss Fairfax," Estella de Lorca interrupted her. "I am not interested in how you were raised. You are selling flesh and I am buying flesh. I want to see what I'm buying. Now strip!" She purposely kept her voice as icy and insulting as possible. She wanted to belittle and humiliate this girl; it was the first step in a campaign to break her spirit.
Beth glanced at Terri de Restzi. "I ... I can't take off my clothes in front of her."
"Then I may as well call the Prefet back in here," the Countess said, placing a finger on a button imbedded in her desk.
"Wait!" Beth said. "I'll do it." She pulled hastily at the straps of her evening dress, loosening them and letting them fall down over her shoulders. Reaching behind her, she lowered the zipper and let the gown fall forward, exposing her full breasts encased in the filmy cups of a black lace bra. She pushed at the dress until it slipped down past rounded hips and trim legs to fall in a circle around her feet.
Then she threw back her head and looked directly at the Countess and the other woman with defiance in her lovely eyes.
"All the way!" Estella said harshly. Her black eyes glittered and there was a drop of moisture on her upper lip.
Terri de Restzi's breathing had quickened, and she moved closer to perch on the edge of the desk.
"And be quick about it!" The Countess commanded as Beth hesitated, her eyes moving from one to the other.
Stung into cold fury, Beth all but ripped off her bra and panties and stood facing them with her hands on her hips and her shoulders thrown back proudly. "Well?" she demanded. "Well?"
A low whistle escaped Estella's lips and Terri sighed heavily. The naked girl was a perfect little beauty. She couldn't have been much over five feet tall, but she was built in exquisite proportion. Her firm, high-rising breasts stood out straight from her chest, the white skin almost translucent and the pinkish aureoles of the nipples plainly defined against it. Her tiny waist flared out into richly curved hips which tapered down to beautifully formed thighs and legs.
"Well?" Beth asked as their eyes devoured her glowing nudity avidly, "Do I pass the flesh buyer's inspection?"
"The merchandise is satisfactory," the Countess said.
The girl's face flushed hotly. "Why-you contemptible-perverted thing! In New England a woman like you would be horsewhipped for presuming to-"
"I, too, have a whip, Miss Fairfax!" the Countess said. Shocked amazement showed on Beth's face. "A whip?"
"Yes, a whip. You seem to have mistaken my intentions toward you and misunderstood what I have in mind for you."
"Mistaken your intentions? How could I?"
'I believe you are of the opinion that this is similar to the sort of thing usually done in your circles. A woman sells herself in a genteel way to a man, or even perhaps to another woman, and is set up in a plush apartment as a mistress. Or maybe you have thought that for four million francs I will be content to enjoy your favors for a few hours? Perhaps you place that high a value on your uniqueness." The Countess ground out her cigarette and stood up. "Is that what you think, girl?"
The American girl lifted her face and stared up at the woman towering over her.
"Answer me!" Estella said, reaching out to take hold of the girl's arms, digging steely fingers into the soft flesh. "Is that what you think?"
"I don't ... know what to think," Beth said.
"Well, I'll tell you what to think," Estella snorted. "If I decide to pay four million francs to save this lovely, pampered body from a Tangier prison, I'll expect a lot more from you than that!"
"What ... would you expect?"
"Do you know what a women's prison is like in this country? Do you know what kind of guards they have? Do you realize the pleasure they would take in using a woman like you? Do you understand what delight the other prisoners would take in their enjoyment of this four-million-franc body of yours? And how they would cut you to ribbons if you resisted them?"
"No! Oh, God, no!" Beth cried, her eyes wide with terror.
"Of course, that is on the assumption the court would show you mercy-the assumption that they wouldn't order this beautiful neck of yours stretched by a rope!" The Countess closed a hand around the girl's throat and squeezed roughly. "Now, you listen to me, your highness. I've decided to accept you. You're not going to like it, but that's the way it is. You won't be any fancy mistress; I don't waste money on that. I'm buying your body, you understand? I'm buying your pampered, perfumed flesh! You're going to be my slave, not my one night of love! You will belong to me and I will see you any way and any place I please! And you'll try to please me, because if you don't, you'll regret it most suddenly!"
"Please ... you're hurting me," Beth moaned.
"Good! I intended to!" the Countess said, releasing the girl's throat and slapping her sharply across the face.
"You-she devil! You inhuman monster!" the redhead said. She reeled back and would have fallen if Estella hadn't caught her and lashed her hand back and forth across her face twice more.
"Now which is it to be?" Estella snarled. "Do I call the Prefet back in and let him take you back to your trial and disgrace and then to prison? Or will you stay here and become my property, my thing to do with as I will?"
"I'll ... stay."
"All right," Estella said, forcing her down on her knees and then deliberately kicking her rounded bottom. "Remember, your decision is irrevocable. From this minute on, you belong to me, body and soul!"
"I'll remember," Beth said, but her eyes were filled with hate and suppressed fury.
The Countess turned back toward the other woman. "Terri, give the man his bribe and tell him Miss Fairfax is staying with us."
"Yes, Estella," the Hungarian woman said, her gray eyes still on the lovely nude body sprawled on the floor.
Estella laughed, showing her wolfish teeth. "You'll have your chance at her, my darling. You and all of our friends will, once we're aboard ship and out at sea, but until then-you must wait."
Terri nodded, but her hot eyes didn't leave the small girl's body.
"There is one more thing we must settle this morning," the Countess said, moving around her desk and sitting down.
"Yes, my lady," Terri said. "What is that?"
"Have them bring in the girl who tried to run away, the stripper I bought in London. We'll make one object lesson serve two ends."
Terri disappeared through a door and Estella propped her long legs up on the desk and leaned back in her chair. "You may get up now, Beth, and put your clothes on," she said.
The girl winced at the use of her given name, but got up slowly and reached for her clothing.
"Then come here and sit on my desk. There is something I want you to see."
The de Restzi woman came back through the door followed by a broad-shouldered, short-haired woman who walked like a truck driver and was gripping a third woman by the arm.
"Well, Miss Blair," the Countess said, "I see you decided to come back to us."
The full-bodied girl who appeared to be in her late twenties threw back her head and shook her long blonde hair defiantly.
"Come back, 'ell," she said with a slight Cockney accent. "A pair of your 'oods picked me up trying to cross into Morrocco."
"Where you would have wound up in some sheik's harem or-"
"Wot's the difference between one 'arem hor another?" the girl snapped.
"I'll teach you the difference," the Countess said, standing up. "In the traditional harem, the fate of a runaway would be to have her eyelids slit and perhaps her nose cut off. Your punishment, my dear, will be somewhat lighter than that."
She took a bamboo cane from under her desk and stood flexing it. After some consideration, she returned it to its hiding place and produced another, lighter one. "Now, Maggie, when I found you, you were flaunting your delectable body before bald-head row in a cheap Soho burlesque. You told me you did it to support a worthless mother and several shiftless younger brothers, did you not?"
"Yeah," the girl said sullenly. "So what?"
"So, in order to obtain and keep your considerable charms all to myself, I settled a large sum of cash on your family and set up a trust fund of five thousand pounds for you, the income from which would be payable to you after your contract with me ran out."
"Why go over all that?" Maggie Blair asked.
"Because I want to make sure you understand exactly why you're going to be punished."
For the first time, the English girl looked worried. Her eyes darted from the cane in the Countess' hand to the silent Beth and then to the other two. The husky brunette was grinning broadly and Terri was smiling. "Wot are you gonna do to me?"
"I didn't cheat you," Estella said quietly. "I paid the agreed-upon sums, didn't I?"
"Yeah."
"Then why have you tried to cheat me?"
"I wasn't tryin' to cheat you," Maggie whined. "I just got tired hanging around while you and this other one picked out a bunch of women for wotever you mean to do."
The Countess slapped the stick into the palm of her hand. "The contract you signed said you were to be available for my pleasure for a period of five years. It said nothing about your pleasure, did it?"
"No, but I" she tossed her head with another attempt at defiance, "hain't no bloody slave!"
"You are a slave-my slave-and, you tried to cheat me!" Estella said, and turned to the hulking brunette and Terri. "Take down her slacks and bend her over the desk."
Grinning, they seized Maggie and in spite of her struggles, did as they were told. The Countess came around her desk and stood looking at the big, round buttocks covered by tight pink panties. Leaning forward, she grasped them by the waistband and yanked. The elastic snapped and the cloth ripped and fell away, exposing the firm mounds of rosy flesh.
"And now, my dear, we will teach you a lesson you won't soon forget," Estella said, and brought the bamboo down hard across the girl's bare bottom.
Maggie Blair screamed and struggled with the two women holding her.
"Don't let her move, Terri ... Olga! Hold her!" the Countess ordered, raising the cane over her head.
Again and again, she lashed it down on the quivering hips, leaving long red welts in its wake.
"I take no particular pleasure in this, but there can be only one mistress here," Estella said.
Beth was staring in wide-eyed horror at the woman and knew by the look in her eyes she was lying. She was taking pleasure, great pleasure, in what she was doing to Maggie, and Beth shivered at the knowledge.
Time after time the cane came down on the screaming, girl's buttocks and thighs until they were criss-crossed with fiery red stripes.
Finally, when Maggie's screams had turned to sobs and whimpers, Estella stopped. "You can let her go now," she said, and the two women dropped her to the floor where she lay in a half faint.
The Countess stepped astride the prone figure and prodded her with the end of the cane. "I am letting you off so easily because this was your first offense and because I still have use for you. If you do anything like this again, you will receive much harsher treatment. Do I make myself clear?"
"Yes ... yes ... oh, yes," Maggie Blair moaned, raising herself up until she could wind her arms around Estella's legs and press kisses against the black cloth that enclosed them so tightly.
"Then you've learned your lesson?"
"Yes, ma'am ... I have, ma'am ... please forgive me. I didn't know. I didn't know." She moved her hands pleadingly over the woman's body. "I'll do anything you want me to ... always."
Estella reached down and lifted the girl slowly to her feet. Throwing the cane aside, she steadied her with one hand while with the other she ripped off her blouse and bra. Then she let her eyes rove over the large, red-tipped breasts with their tartly upthrust nipples and down the lean, well-muscled dancer's legs and flat stomach. She put a hand under Maggie's chin and turned the tear-stained face up to hers, grinding her mouth down on the still trembling lips while her hand traveled over the full breasts and flat belly, farther and farther down until....
Maggie shivered in a way that made it obvious to those watching she had forgotten her pain in the presense of quickly aroused passion.
The Countess released her suddenly and turned her over to the big, dark-haired Olga. "Take her to my room," she commanded. "Apply salve to her welts and prepare her for me."
When they had left the room, she turned to face a deathly white Beth. "This lesson, my dear, was administered partly for your benefit. You will go along with Terri now. She will assign you a room and tell you something about what your duties will be."
"You sadist! You rotten sadist!" Beth hissed.
"Perhaps," the Countess said, slapping her across the face with her open palm, "but sadist or not, in the future you will address me as mistress. Take her to her room, Terri."
"Yes, mistress," Terri said, and took Beth by the arm.
Beth permitted herself to be led out of the room, but not without a backward glance of fiery hatred at Estella.
"Come on, girl, come on," Terri said, pulling her along. "You're a fool if you think you can defy the Countess de Lorca."
"But why does she do this? What does she want from me?" Beth demanded as they proceeded down a long hall.
"You'll find out," Terri said, stopping in front of a door and taking a key out of her pocket.
"But I don't understand. I know she's a Lesbian, everyone in Tangier knows that. I also know she's one of the richest women in the world, and I knew when I came here she'd probably take me ... but what's all this nonsense about my being a slave and...."
Terri de Restzi looked down at Beth's upturned face and smiled. "You're a beautiful little thing. Do you know that?"
Beth saw the look in the woman's eyes and she remembered the heavy breathing and lustful look when Estella had forced her to strip. She shivered involuntarily but decided to play it dumb. "I don't know what you mean," she said.
"This is what I mean," Terri said, pushing her against the door and shoving up tight to her.
CHAPTER TWO
Beth gasped as the other woman's big breasts crushed against her own. "What are you? Please, don't, I...."
Her words were cut off as Terri's red mouth came down on hers. She held her lips tight and cold, but it didn't seem to discourage Terri. Her tongue darted and probed at the barrier until she loosened it and dipped deep into Beth's mouth.
"You'll like my kind of love once you've sampled it," Terri said with a deep-throated laugh, pushing the smaller girl into the room and closing the door behind them.
"No, I won't. I never could ... "Beth said, struggling to free herself from the woman's grasp. "Let me go. You-you-"
"Lesbian?" Terri laughed. "Is it really such a terrible thing to be?"
"It's vile. Vile!" Beth said.
"Well, you'd better get used to it, little lady," Terri said. "Like it or not, you'll be getting lots of kisses like mine. You'll learn, and fast, to accept love from women like me-and worse, much worse."
"What do you mean?" Beth asked fearfully.
"There is a yacht out in the harbor, girl, and tomorrow or the next day, we are going to get aboard it and sail for the Indian Ocean and the far South Pacific on an extended cruise. Friends of the Countess will come on board at Algiers and they will expect to be entertained as they always are, by being permitted to indulge all their bizarre and usually forbidden pleasures."
"I ... don't understand."
"Don't you, my sweet?" Terri grinned evilly. "I'll put it more plainly then. You are one of the tempting tidbits Estella de Lorca has purchased for the enjoyment of her friends, and before you leave the Vesuvius, you will have engaged in every variation of the sex game that Estella's fertile mind can come up with."
"But why? Why me?"
"Why not you? You came out here looking for a way to stay out of jail, and you told me you knew the Countess was a Lez when you came. You'll just be getting a little more than you were willing to trade for. You're a lovely little thing and in spite of having done such a terrible thing to your lover, you still have an air of innocence about you that will appeal to the jaded appetites of these people."
"I did not kill Pierre!" Beth flared.
"And you have spirit," Terri said, pulling her close again. "It's always more fun subduing the ones with spirit." She crushed her mouth down on Beth's and, with cruel insistence, forced the redhead's lips apart, thrusting and exploring with her tongue like a bee after honey.
"Will you be taking part in these-sex games?" Beth asked when Terri released her. Maybe if she pretended to like the big blonde, she'd help her escape, or at least protect her from the other passengers.
"Oh, yes. I'm quite prized by a few of the more masochistic guests. I have a certain talent with a whip." Terri closed one big hand over Beth's breast and squeezed gently. "Also, some of the women find me more than adequate for their uses."
Beth looked down at the hand fondling her. "Do you ... really like such things?"
"What do you think?" Terri said huskily, nuzzling under the red curls to kiss the small ear. "This is my kind of love."
Beth shivered and tried not to show her distaste, but Terri apparently felt it anyway because she lifted her head and looked into the wide violet eyes. "You're going to need a friend on board that ship, little Beth, and I can be a good friend when I want to."
"Yes. Yes, I'm sure you can," Beth said, and made herself relax in the woman's arms. Instantly, the hungry, demanding lips closed on hers again.
"You'll see, you beautiful little doll, you'll see how good one woman can be to another," Terri whispered, slipping the strap of the evening gown down over Beth's shoulder and fumbling for the zipper.
Beth closed her eyes and let the woman have her way. There was a dream-like feeling about all this, a feeling that it was happening to somebody else. It couldn't be Beth Fairfax standing here submitting to the caresses of this Lesbian, any more than it was Beth Fairfax who had been arrested and accused of murder. None of this was real, it couldn't be, so what difference did it make what she did now? She'd wake up eventually and the dream would be over and she'd go back to her real life, but for now....
Somehow her dress and bra were off and Terri's strong hands were cupping the firm, white mounds, lifting them to her eager lips.
A thrill of unexpected passion shot through Beth as Terri's tongue found one large pink nipple and circled it teasingly. She was startled and shocked at the reaction of her own body. She had expected to be repulsed and disgusted and instead she was experiencing the same exciting sensation she did when a man kissed her breasts.
"You like that, don't you, baby?" Terri whispered, and squeezed the firm, young breasts almost brutally.
"Please ... don't," Beth moaned.
"Did I hurt you?" Terri crooned, "Well, I'll make up for it." She drew the whole pointed tip of one breast into her mouth and rolled it around with her tongue and lips until Beth gasped at the wild pangs of desire it caused to go racing through her.
"Ohhh, it's good, it feels so good," she breathed as Terri transferred her attentions to the other aroused nipple.
"There's more-there's more coming," Terri said, skinning out of her blue and white jersey and freeing her own breasts from the white cotton bra underneath.
She took Beth's hands and placed them on the marble-like globes, and, as in a trance, Beth kneaded and caressed them, watching with half-closed lids as the nipples sprang to life and hardened under her touch.
Terri's breath came faster and she backed the smaller girl toward the bed, kissing her neck and shoulders and running her hands over the smooth flanks and jutting hips.
"So lovely. Such a lovely child," she whispered, lifting Beth and placing her on the bed.
"Terri! Terri!" Beth moaned, caught up in the madness of the moment.
Terri's hand slipped under the waistband of the black panties and pulled them down and off. "So lovely ... and so eager," she said, watching Beth writhe as she explored the naked body with avid fingers and lips. "You like that, baby? You're not just pretending now? You really like my loving?"
"Oh, yes ... yes ... yes," Beth panted, almost overcome at the intensity of the desire building inside her. "Do that ... do that some more."
Quickly but carefully, Terri unbuckled the gun and laid it on the chair beside the bed, and then unzipped and kicked off her shorts. Beth gazed out of passion-filled eyes at the lean hips and muscular thighs. Desire raged through her and she wanted to feel those legs around her.
"Terri, Terri, I want you," she said brokenly, and reached up to draw the tall woman down to her. "I need you!"
"Tell me, baby. Tell me how much you need me," Terri said, letting her lips trail fire across the tender flesh of the redhead's belly and down onto the downy softness of her thighs. "Tell me, little beauty, how much you want me."
"I'm burning up. Something's inside me, gnawing at my guts. Do something, Terri. Help me. I'll go crazy if you don't," Beth said, pulling the woman up on top of her and running her hands all over the big body.
"Do I feel good?" Terri asked.
"Yes-yes-wonderful! You feel wonderful."
"Then see how I feel this way," Terri said, and joined them in a lovers' embrace.
"Ahhhhh," Beth all but screamed, and twisted and heaved in an agony of lust. "Love me, Terri--love me!"
Terri twined a hand in the red curls and glued her mouth to the other girl's. "I am loving you, baby. I'm loving you like you've never been loved before," she said, and Beth felt as though her very soul were being drawn out by those hard, demanding lips.
The firm flesh of the woman's big body was like a flaming torment that sought to quench its own flame in the lusting small one beneath it. Beth gloried in the feel of every line of Terri's molded to hers. The rock-hard breasts met and dug into her own firm ones; the hard, flat stomach clung to her softer one; and the long thighs with their rippling muscles held and steadily propelled her toward a peak she knew was going to be devastating.
Wild, unfamiliar sensations pulsed and throbbed through her at every movement of Terri's and she dug her fingers into the lean buttocks, straining to get still closer and feel more.
"Terri ... Ohhhhhh, Terri!" she cried as the pillar of flame her body had become shot skyward and burst into millions of fiery stars.
Terri continued to move for a few moments and then she buried her teeth in Beth's shoulder and lay still.
"You learn fast, little one," Terri said in an amused tone minutes later as she dressed rapidly.
Beth was sitting with her arms around her drawn-up legs. Her mad lust was gone and in its place had come shame. She had intended only to submit to this woman to gain her friendship and help, not respond with such wild, uninhibited abandon. She cringed as she realized she had given herself completely to this Lesbian whom she professed to revile and hate. Only a few times previously had she felt the violence of such extreme passion.
"You're having second thoughts, I see," Terri said, buckling on the gun. "You're wondering if you really are a Lez and hoping against hope that you're not."
"I'm not, I know I'm not, but-"
"But you never expected to feel what you did just now with a woman, and you don't understand it."
Beth shook her head. "No, I don't. I-"
"Well, you'll have a lot of chances to find out," Terri said. "You'll get to try it every way there is."
Beth shuddered. "Terri, couldn't you help me? Couldn't you see that I don't have to...."
The woman shook her blonde head. "I'm sorry, baby. Much as I'd like to keep your delicious little body all to myself, I wouldn't dare cross Estella. People who do suffer very violently."
"When ... do we go aboard the yacht?"
"As soon as we locate a first mate," Terri said, "and that won't be long because one of our agents is seeing about it right now."
CHAPTER THREE
Dan Salem was drunk. He had been drunk for a week. He had been drunk ever since the day he threw his first officer's ticket overboard by slugging Captain Towers right in his sneering mouth. He hadn't known it at the time, but he had thrown his freedom overboard too. The captain in falling had cracked his thick skull on a stanchion and spilled what little brains he had on the deck.
Dan had heard that part of it in a Tangier hotel where he had gone after jumping ship. The police were on their way to arrest him for manslaughter and mutiny, his informant had said; and Dan took off with only the clothes on his back and four hundred dollars in his pocket. Since then, he had been busy staying drunk, trying to forget he had ended his career by slugging an incompetent, stupid captain: Towers had almost run the Kenmore Queen aground coming into the harbor and then tried to blame it on him.
Now he was sitting in a dive in one of the more sinister streets of the city, still drinking and still a couple of jumps ahead of the police, but knowing he had to sober up pretty soon and make plans for leaving Tangier.
He stared down at the shot of bourbon on the dirty bar in front of him and thought about his problem. "I gotta get out of here," he muttered.
The rotgut in the glass stared back at him as though in challenge, and he reached for it and picked it up. "Can't leave without one more li'l drink. Just one more," he said, and although his stomach showed signs of rebellion, he downed the fiery stuff.
Getting to his feet somewhat unsteadily, he tossed a coin on the bar. "Gotta get going. Gotta stop drinking and get outta this town."
As he turned to go, he noticed for the first time the two women sitting at a small table in the rear of the bar. A single look was enough to make him sit back down again. That was just what he needed-a woman. He'd been doing a lot of womanizing this last week. He'd found they were an even better way to take his mind off his troubles than drinking.
The younger of the two women had long, blue-black hair and eyes that appeared almost as dark. She also had high, pointed young breasts and was curved along hip and thigh. As he looked at her, Dan was aware that a little ripple of excitement had started in his stomach muscles and was running along his arms and legs.
The other woman was older, about forty perhaps, and quite a bit more fleshy, but there was a definite family resemblance between them. They were obviously mother and daughter, and Dan's drink-fogged reasoning told him they were just as obviously in the same profession and out looking for customers. He fingered the roll of bills in his pocket and leaned toward the bartender.
"Who's the little sexpot over there?" he asked.
The bartender frowned. "Her name is Anita..she's ft Spanish girl. She and her mother are-"
"I know what they are," Dan interrupted. "I just wanted to know what she called herself tonight." He tossed another coin on the bar and headed toward the women on unsteady legs.
They were sipping wine, and the younger one had crossed her legs and her tight skirt had slipped up her thigh.
"Ladies," Dan said with a little bow, "I've got a ten-dollar bill in my pocket that I'm interested in giving Anita."
The two women looked up at him questioningly. Anita looked away quickly but her mother searched his face with her big, brown eyes. "Senor, I do not understand. Perhaps I have mistaken your English. For what reason would you give my daughter money?"
"Why, senora, for the usual reason, of course."
She frowned as though puzzled and Anita tapped her foot nervously.
"For the usual reason? I do not understand, senor. My daughter and I have been looking for work all day and stopped here for a small glass of wine. We do not know you and do not know what it is you want."
Dan leaned against the table and looked at the mother more closely. She was wearing a dark off-the-shoulder blouse which exposed creamy white shoulders and the tops of large breasts. He liked what he saw and decided maybe the confusion was because they worked as a team.
"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll make that thirty dollars for the two of you."
A faint flush colored the woman's high cheekbones and she turned to Anita and said something in such rapid Spanish that Dan couldn't follow it.
The girl's mouth opened and she went white beneath her tan.
"Now, look, Anita," Dan said as she glared up at him, "don't turn your nose up at thirty dollars. It's good American money and hard to come by these days."
"I'm afraid you have made a mistake, senor," the mother said, her lips compressed with anger. "My daughter and I are respectable women. We came in here for a glass of wine and we are not what you seem to think."
It was Dan's turn to flush red now. He straightened up and bowed again. "I ... regret very much that I made such a mistake, senora," he said in halting Spanish. "I am not well, and when I saw your daughter, I mistook her for ... a girl of the streets. I hope you will forgive me this stupid blunder."
He ended the speech with another bow and received a cold not from the woman while Anita stared down into her wine.
Dan turned and, trying to keep from staggering, walked back to the bar with extreme dignity and ordered another drink.
"Salem, you're getting to be a nut," he told himself as he sipped at the liquor. "A real nut. You're starting to think the whole female population of Tangier is composed of nothing but hookers."
He set the glass down. The bourbon was tasteless and unsatisfying now that his mind was on sex. A picture formed in his head of Anita spread out on a bed, beckoning him with naked arms and legs, her curved hips and rounded buttocks flashing an invitation.
He looked back at the two women longingly, his eyes settling on the creamy tops of the mother's breasts. "God! I'll bet she's something in the sack even if she does have the look of a-New England spinster on her face."
Anita was talking earnestly to her mother, gesturing occasionally in Dan's direction, and he had had a good idea what she was saying about him. She probably thought he was some kind of sex fiend. And the funny part was, he was inclined to agree with her. It had only been the day before yesterday that he had a girl in some hotel room, but the way he felt now, he'd better find a woman and find one quick.
He tossed another tip on the bar and headed toward the door. When he had almost reached it, he felt a touch on his arm and turned to find Anita looking up at him pleadingly. "Could I speak to you a moment, senor?" she asked.
"Sure," he said, thinking he was about to get read out for his mistake. "What is it?"
"You said thirty dollars ... and we need money very badly."
"Well, when I said that, I thought...." he didn't exactly know how to put it and not offend her any more. "I thought you were a ... professional."
The girl lowered her eyes and nodded. "I know ... and now ... I am ready to earn the money in the way you wish. Thirty dollars is a lot of money and we need it."
Dan stared at her a minute and then he chuckled. "But wait a minute. When I said thirty dollars, it was meant to pay for both of you and-"
"My mother is a respectable married woman, although my stepfather is in prison in Spain," Anita said. "It is only I who am for sale."
"Then that's too much money."
"My mother and I have talked it over and she has pointed out that as a virgin I am worth a good deal more than a non-virgin."
"A virgin? I'm not sure I care to-"
"Why not, senor? We must have money and until you suggested this, we could think of no way to get it."
"But this virgin business ... I mean, a guy doesn't like to take advantage of a girl who-"
She looked up at him with great seriousness. "If you do not, senor, someone else must, because we have agreed that this is the only way to get money."
Dan shook his head. He was a little more sober now and things looked different to him.
"Is there a difference, senor, between an ordinary prostitute and a virgin prostitute?"
Dan threw back his head and laughed. "A virgin prostitute ... yeah, I guess that's what you are all right."
"And a prostitute can be bought, can she not?"
"Yeah ... yeah, that's right," Dan said, scratching his ear. "I guess you got yourself a deal, Anita. Thirty dollars it is."
"Then let us quit talking and be on our way," she said, "unless you need another drink to bolster your courage."
"I'll tell you, baby," Dan said, "you're more likely to need a drink before the evening's over than I will."
"Very well," Anita said, holding herself stiffly but smiling bravely. "I'll call my mother and we'll go."
"Your mother? I thought you said she's a respectable married woman."
"She is. But she is also very poor. We are refugees from the Fascist government of Spain. They murdered my own father many years ago and now they have put my stepfather in jail for fighting them. We fled to Tangier after he was arrested, and now our money has run out. We have nothing to pay our rent with, nothing for food, not even food for my mother's baby."
"Baby?"
"Si, baby. Sometimes you have them when you marry. My mother and Carlo had one. It is home asleep. Shall we go to our place now?"
Dan was bewildered. What the hell was he getting into? All he wanted was a woman. He hadn't intended getting mixed up with mothers and babies. "Now look...."
"Perhaps you have decided I am too inexperienced or not pretty enough," Anita said. "Perhaps you no longer want me."
Dan looked down at her high, jutting breasts and remembered how delightful her thigh had looked. He shook his head. "No, I still want you," he said, taking her arm and guiding her toward the door. "I'm not in the least afraid of your inexperience. You look like a girl who can learn."
"Oh, I can," she said. "I was always very good in school."
"It's not exactly the same thing," Dan said, but she was too busy signaling her mother to pay attention.
The older woman got up and followed them out of the bar. Then Anita remembered she had left her shawl at the table and went back in to get it.
From the expression on the mother's face, Dan could tell she didn't like him, and he didn't really blame her. Surely there weren't very many women who had to stand by and watch their daughters sell their bodies in order to buy food for a baby.
"You do not approve of what your daughter is doing, Mrs...."
"I am Carmela Montaze," the woman said. "My daughter has always been a good girl, but what she is doing now is not good."
"Well, I'm not forcing her," Dan said uncomfortably.
"It would be better for her soul if you were," the woman said. "It would be better if you were raping her, even."
"What about my soul in that case?"
"Your soul?" There was almost a sneer on her full lips. "How would one such as you acquire a soul?"
"Okay, forget it," Dan said. "You don't like me and I'll have to learn to dislike you."
"But, senor, I have not said I do not like you."
Dan stared at her in bewilderment. What was that supposed to mean? "No, you haven't come right out and said it in so many words, but I get the idea."
"Perhaps one should not jump to conclusions," Carmela said, moving closer to him so that one of her big, full breasts brushed against his arm. "Especially where a woman is concerned."
"No, perhaps one shouldn't," Dan said as she turned her back on him and said something to Anita as she came out of the bar.
"Maybe one should just play it by ear."
Half an hour later, the three of them were making their way up a narrow stairway in a shabby building in the casbah of Tangier. Once during the walk there, Carmela had looked back at them and seen that Dan had his arm around Anita.
"There is still time to change your mind, child," she had said. "There is still time to tell this man to go away."
Anita sighed. "And there will still be no money for food when the child cries," she said. "No, it is better this way."
"To peddle your body? Is that what you mean? Shame on you, a Vargas woman to do such a thing," Carmela said hotly. "If your father were alive, he would hang his head in shame for what you are about to do."
"He would be proud that I would not let his wife's child starve," Anita flared. "I will not sit on my hands and cry and let a baby starve. I will help your child in spite of you, and this man will help me do it!"
"He'll help you all right," Carmela said bitterly. "He'll help you learn to lie on your back every time a man waves money in your face. That's the only kind of help you'll get from this one."
"Now, look here," Dan said, stopping and letting his arm fall away from Anita, "I can leave any time you say the word. This wasn't my idea and I'm not dragging you away to my den to rape you, you know."
"No, don't leave, senor," Anita said, gripping his arm.
"No, please...." Carmela said, "I did not mean it, senor. Do not go."
"I wish you two would make up your minds," Dan said. "I'm getting tired of this business."
"It is all right, senor, I will be quiet," Carmela said. "We are poor and must sacrifice our honor and it is hard for me to accept, that is all."
They had walked on then in silence, and now they were pushing open a door. A baby started to cry fretfully and Anita pulled away from Dan to run to it. She lifted it and kissed it and rocked it in her arms for a few seconds.
"Do not cry, little Carlo," she said. "Do not cry, sweet one. Your sister Anita has brought you money for food. Do not cry."
"Si, si, she has brought you money," Carmela grumbled, "but how will she earn it?"
"Now, now," Dan said chidingly. "You said you weren't going to do that any more." She turned to glare at him and he grinned and winked at her, and was astonished to see her blush as she turned away.
Anita kissed the baby and placed it in its mother's arms. Carmela put a bottle in its mouth and moved across the room and sat down with her back to them.
For crying out loud, Dan thought, this is getting impossible. How the hell can a guy work up a yen under circumstances like this? How can he keep his mind on sex with a baby making loud sucking and gurgling noises?
He found out a moment later when Anita reached down and unfastened the straps of her high-heeled sandals. Her tight skirt rode up and displayed her legs almost to the edge of her panties.
She saw him looking at her and said shyly. "I am ready now, if you are ready for me."
Dan looked around the single room. "Isn't there someplace more private?" he asked in a low voice.
She beckoned him over to a window. "There is a small ledge outside here," she said. "I sometimes sleep here when it is very hot."
Dan looked out and saw that it faced an airshaft and that there were no other windows nearby. "It'll do," he said, and helped her out. It was about five feet wide and had an old mattress spread out on it. It wasn't any luxurious love nest, but it would do.
Anita turned and came into his arms and he felt her firm young breasts and thighs press against him. His lips came down on hers and found them soft and sweet. For a long moment they were unresponsive and then, as his tongue searched between them, they burst into flame and her arms went around his neck.
Without releasing her, he reached his hand into her thick black hair and pulled out several combs, releasing the faintly perfumed mass down almost to her shoulders. He buried his face in it and let his fingers slide lingeringly along her cheek and neck until they were at the neckline of her dress. Her mouth found his again with hungry intensity as he moved his hand inside the dress and under the elastic of her bra to cup a hard, pointed pear of a breast. He had been able to tell her breasts were firm, but the hardness of them and the startled uplift of their nipples brought a gasp of delight to his lips.
"Good Lord, girl," he said, "they're like ripe fruit just waiting to be bitten into."
Anita made a sound in her throat but said nothing as his fingers played with the rapidly stiffening nipples. He opened the dress to her waist and pushed it down off her shoulders, unsnapped the bra and then held her breasts in his hands, admiring the beauty of them with their nipples seeming to rise toward his lips with eagerness.
"Kiss them, senor ... oh, please," Anita whispered. "Make them hurt with a good pain. Make them know desire."
Dan lowered his mouth, drawing one blossoming nipple between his lips and running his tongue over it. A massive trembling ran through the girl and she moaned like a wounded animal.
"It is so good. It feels so good that it must be bad," she whispered.
"What?" he asked.
"It is bad that I give myself to you for money, no? But a girl must make sacrifices for her family, and that is good. But if I give myself to you for money and then find I want to do it for pleasure, that is very bad," she said breathlessly, her hands digging into his shoulders as she tried to press closer.
"Do you want me to stop?" he asked, moving his mouth to her other breast and biting gently on the swollen nipple. "Do you want me to stop right now?"
"Madre Dios, no ... no I'd die if you stopped now, and if I did, I'd die in great sin, so do not stop!"
She pressed against his face and mouth until it seemed he would smother in the sweet-tasting flesh.
"Oh ... oh ... I never knew there were such things," she said. "Nobody ever told me sex was like this."
Dan's lips were moving down from her breast to roam over the gentle roundness of her belly while his hands forced the dress and half slip down over her hips.
There was a delicious natural smell and taste to her young skin that sent rivers of desire racing through Dan, making him want to worship her whole body with his lips, but his need was so great that he knew this first time he would have to hurry, this time there would be no time for the more delicate nuances of love.
His trembling hands pushed the clothes the rest of the way off and he feasted his eyes on the clean, young lines of her naked body. "God, what a woman!" he murmured. "What a sweet, delicious little animal of a woman you are."
"I'm glad you like me," the girl whispered, her body writhing with pleasure as his hands explored her most intimate secrets.
He took her hand and placed it on his body that she might learn about him, and she caught her breath and moved it eagerly.
"Oh, senor ... what a fine, strong man you are," she said with a touch of awe in her voice. "I did not know a man could be so strong."
With passion roaring through him like a flood, Dan drew her close and quickly but gently maneuvered her into position. She cried out briefly as he took her, and then lay still as though not sure what to do, but as he began to move, she caught on quickly and started to match his rhythm.
"This is so bad, this thing we do," she said in his ear, "but it does not seem so now. It is great evil, I know, but it is so good also."
"There's nothing bad about it," Dan said. "As far as I'm concerned, it's all good."
Her hips rose and fell to the accompaniment of little moans and cries which urged Dan on to greater efforts to please her, and in no time at all they were mounting toward completion with a suddenness which astounded him. They clung together, quivering and gasping for breath for long minutes afterward, and then Dan eased over on his back and lay thinking.
Since he had been stranded in Tangier, he had known three or four women, but they had all been streetwalkers or at best semi-professionals, the kind of women found in the dives of the city. This girl was different. She was a good woman but one who could be aroused to passion and fire. No wonder she had stirred him so.
"So now," Anita said, sitting up and sighing deeply, "so now I am what you paid me to be."
"What's that all about?" Dan asked, staring at her face in the dim light.
"Now I am a prostitute!" she cried, and burst into a sudden storm of tears. "Now I am a thing of the streets."
"Aw, come on, Anita," Dan said, putting an arm around her bare shoulders. "It's not like that at all."
"Yes, it is. I have sinned. I have lost my soul and you say it is not so bad," she said, and shook his arm away. "It is the worst thing I could do and yet you say it is nothing. That is the way with men. They make light of the big things that happen to a woman and yell very loudly about the little things that happen to them."
"I didn't say it was nothing," Dan protested. "You're talking like a man-hating old maid."
"Maybe it would have been better if I had gone on being a man-hating old maid."
"For crying out loud, girl, a few minutes ago you were enjoying it as much as I did."
"Yes, I did enjoy it, and that is what makes it so bad. If I had not, I could forgive myself."
"That doesn't make any sense at all," Dan said.
"How like a man to say a thing like that. You don't care what happens to me."
"Now, look, Anita...."
"Don't you see, senor, if I had given myself for money and only for money, while it might have been sinful, it would still have been good, but to have enjoyed it-that is unforgivable."
"That's absolute nonsense," Dan said. "To do it and not enjoy it would have been a hell of a lot worse."
She shook her dark head. "No, you don't understand. If I hadn't liked it, I might have found some other way out of our trouble. I wouldn't have wanted to do it again. But now that I have, now that I know it is pleasurable, I'm doomed. Doomed to spend my life as a prostitute on the streets of Tangier."
Dan looked up at the stars and breathed a silent curse.
Women were something that made navigation look simple. "You're making too big a thing out of this," he said. "You needed some money and you let me make love to you for thirty dollars. That doesn't mean you have to keep on doing it even if you do like it. There are lots of other things you can do. Don't you have any friends you can go to? Or some relatives somewhere?"
She thought for a moment. "There is my mother's brother. But he is in Italy and it costs money to get there."
"It sure does," Dan said, thinking of the almost four hundred dollars in his wallet. But he couldn't part with that. That was to get him out of Tangier and away from the police. He couldn't part with that even for the sake of this ridiculously mixed-up girl and her acid-tongued mother.
CHAPTER FOUR
The sun slanting through the windows of the room found Dan and Anita sprawled naked on the bed side by side and sound asleep. Carmela, who had spent the night in the rocking chair, pretending to be asleep when these two had finally come in out of the damp night air, walked over and looked down at them.
Her eyes ran over Anita's body briefly but when they came to rest on Dan, they paused and darkened as they surveyed his nudity. The man was tall and lean with smooth, firm muscles, and very masculine. It was a long time since she had seen a naked man and she shook her black head to drive away the unbidden thoughts he invoked.
"Look at them," she said scornfully, "sleeping off like animals their night of lust!"
She turned just before Dan stirred and reached for his pants. When she heard him moving behind her, she said, "What do you want now? I suppose you think I should fix you breakfast just because you have bought my daughter."
"I am a little hungry," Dan said, ignoring her surly tone.
"This isn't a cafe. We haven't much food," she said. "Then we'll buy some," Dan said, reaching for his wallet.
"Keep your money," she said fiercely. "You can't buy me as you did Anita."
"But, you said...."
"Never mind what I said. I will fix you an egg." Dan shrugged. "Okay, lady, have it your own way." He looked around for the baby. "Where is little Carlo?"
"I took him to a neighbor," she snapped. "I didn't want him to see his sister's shame."
"Oh, come on now, at his age?"
Anita stirred and sat up, stretching with cat-like grace.
"And how is the town prostitute this morning?" her mother greeted her.
"I feel wonderful," Anita said, stretching again and then leaning over to pick up her dress. She held it up and inspected it, and the happy look faded from her face. It was mussed and dirty and torn.
Dan hurriedly took a bill out of his pocket and handed it to her. "Here," he said, "go down to the bazaar with your mother and buy a new dress. Buy her one too."
"Oh, my wonderful, wonderful Dan," Anita said, throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him.
"I do not want a new dress," Carmela said ungraciously, "and I do not have time to go to the bazaar."
"Then I will go and buy one for each of us," Anita said gaily, kissing Dan again.
"You'd better take it easy," he warned, "or you'll never get out that door."
She laughed and slipped out of his tightening arms. "I will go now while you have your breakfast." And she hurried into her old dress, brushed at her hair and ran from the room.
"Your egg is ready," Carmela said, lifting it out of a frying pan and slapping it onto a cracked plate.
"Thanks," Dan said, taking a chair at the table.
"There is coffee and bread also," she said, leaning across the table to place them before him. The blouse fell away and he gazed in fascination at the big, swaying breasts inside it. They were as bare and unfettered as a pair of woodland creatures. He could see all the way to the large, dark nipples and he had to restrain himself to keep from reaching for them.
She looked up and saw the direction of his eyes and he reached hurriedly for his coffee. "It ... the coffee is good," he said lamely.
"There is more when you want it," she said, turning back toward the stove while he stared at the gentle sway of her womanly hips.
He made himself concentrate on his food as she returned with a cup of coffee for herself and sat down opposite him.
"I like to see a hungry man eat," she said after a few minutes. "There is something exciting about it."
"Is there? In what way?"
"It's like," her voice dropped to almost a whisper, "it's almost like making love."
Dan's eyebrows shot up. "Making love? I thought you were unalterably opposed to sex and all it implies."
"You thought that?" She shrugged. "Then you are a fool."
Dan shrugged and kept on eating.
"My Carlo was a great eater before the secret police took him away." She sighed deeply. "Si, he was a great eater and a great lover."
Dan looked at her over the rim of his cup. The conversation was a surprise to say the least.
"Si, my Carlo was good in bed and I miss him very much." Her tone was almost wistful now and the look she turned on Dan was so intense he spilled his coffee setting it down.
"Do you mean what I think you mean?" he asked.
She got up and came around the table. "Si, senor. Last night you offered to buy both my daughter and myself. Are you no longer interested?"
The change in her had been so swift that Dan was at a loss to account for it. "You were the one who was so quick to point out that you were a respectable woman," he said.
"Last night I thought I was," she said, pulling the blouse off over her head and exposing her golden, honeydew melon breasts to his view. "But that was before I sat in the rocking chair all night and listened to the sounds of you making love to Anita. I could tell by the way you took her you were a real man, a man such as I have not known since the secret police took my husband away, and...."
She took his hands and curved them around the big globes, " ... and although I told myself I would not do it, please, senor, while Anita is gone, couldn't we...."
She leaned down and kissed him, and without his willing it, Dan's hands started fondling and teasing her nipples into hardness.
Her breath came faster as she undid the fastening of her skirt and let it fall to the floor, baring her lush hips and rounded stomach. Dan let his eyes and hands wander over the creamy flesh, feeling desire course hotly through him in spite of his workout the night before.
She straigtened her shoulders and pressed one rigid nipple into his mouth, gasping in delight as he drew it deeper and prodded it with his tongue. "Come on," she said, and pulled him to his feet, her hands busy with the buckle of his belt. "I can give you what Anita could not-knowledge and experience with a man's body. I will love you as you've never been loved before."
Dan let her draw him toward the bed, sat down and waited for her to join him. Instead, she knelt in front of him and, holding her breasts in her hands, began to move them over his legs, the soft, moving flesh sending an unexpected burst of white-hot passion shooting along his veins. Then she was doing more. She looked up at him and smiled as she felt his strength and vigor, and then her lips replaced her breasts and Dan felt as though his very soul was being drawn out of his body by those eager, knowing lips.
"My God," he muttered as she pushed him back on the bed and continued her delectable administering to his needs.
She rose suddenly and hovered above him. "Are you ready for me now, senor?" she asked huskily.
"Yes ... yes," Dan gasped, trying to pull her down beside him.
"No, this time I will do the work," she said, straddling him and bringing them together. "You are tired. Let me serve you as you deserve to be served."
Dan relaxed and let her have her way, but soon he was unable to lie still. No wonder Anita had learned so quickly, he thought. Her mother took fire even quicker and was much more adept and able in understanding and fulfilling a man's every whim.
Carmela's legs held him tightly and her magnificent hips rose and fell as she used him as an altar upon which she worshiped his manhood. Twice he had to bite down on his lips to stifle yells of sheer lust from bursting forth as she led him into a sea of swelling passion, and finally he had to grab her hips and slow her down because she threatened to drive the last vestige of sanity from him.
"This is how I worshiped my husband," she panted. "This is how a woman should worship a man," and she used her body like a bow to play upon his as a master violinist might have played upon a fine violin. She knew everything a man found most exciting, and never hesitated for a moment to provide it.
A grunt of unbelievable gratification was torn from Dan and his body jerked up to meet hers, his hands closing over her breasts with a grip that was close to cruel.
She cried out but not in pain, and continued to move at a frantic rate for a moment or so until her own lust was appeased and she fell down on him, her legs still twitching and her heaving breasts pressed against his face.
Dan lay on the bed, his muscles aching pleasantly and a wonderful feeling of relaxation spreading through him. Carmela lay sprawled in naked abandon beside him with her blue-black hair falling down over her shoulders and breasts. He let his eyes linger on the plump beauty of her thinking she would have made a perfect subject for the brush of a Rubens.
He raised himself on an elbow and leaned over to kiss her half-open lips. Her eyes popped open and she stared at him for a moment before recognition came. Then she smiled. "You are indeed a fine man, Dan Salem," she said.
"Thanks."
"Could you be even more of a man if one asked it?" For answer, Dan leaned farther over and nipped at a breast.
There was a noise on the stairs and the door of the room was thrown open. Anita came bursting in with two dress boxes in her arms. She stood staring at them numbly for a moment and then her face darkened with anger and contempt.
"This is what I should have expected," she said. "My holy mother and the man who bought me for thirty dollars and a couple of cheap dresses."
"Now wait a minute, Anita," Dan said. "This isn't what it seems."
"No? What is it then?"
"It's rape, that's what it is!" her mother yelled suddenly, pulling violently away from Dan. "This man is a monster just like I told you!"
Dan stared at her. "What the hell are you talking about?" he demanded. "I only did what you asked me to do."
"No, no, Anita! Don't believe him!" Carmela shrieked. "He tore my clothes off and threw me on the floor and took me violently before I could get away!"
"I didn't do anything of the kind," Dan said. "What the hell are you trying to do?"
"He raped me, I tell you! He robbed you of your virginity and now he has assaulted your mother."
"He didn't rob me, Mother," Anita said calmly. "I gave myself to him, and you agreed beforehand that it was the only thing to do."
"Si, si. I agreed, but only because you were so determined to go through with it. I did not agree to sell myself too."
Anita looked at him, her brown eyes puzzled and hurt and questioning. "Did you do what she says, Dan?"
"Of course not, baby. She took off her clothes and offered herself to me. She couldn't help herself, I guess, after listening to you and me all night and being such a passionate woman herself, but...."
"It's a lie! It's a lie!" Carmela screamed, winding her arms protectingly around her breasts and rocking back and forth.
"I don't think it is," Anita said slowly. "You miss Carlo very much, don't you? That's why you were so opposed to my having a man. You were afraid you couldn't restrain yourself. You had eyes for Dan before he ever came to our table."
All of a sudden, Carmela stopped rocking and looked up at her daughter. She sighed deeply. "Si ... si ..you are right, of course. I have been so ... needing of love for so long and when I saw such a big, handsome man I...."
"Well, now you've had him," Anita said resignedly. "I'll go for a walk and let you get your fill of him."
"No, no, no! Come back. It is I who shall go for the walk and leave you with your lover-your first one. I know how bittersweet the first one can be."
Anita looked at Dan, her lips trembling slightly. "It would never be the same now. I want him, si ... but he is yours now."
"Don't I have anything to say about this?" Dan asked, his eyes twinkling. He was beginning to find the situation amusing.
Both women stared at him, not saying a word. Anita had approached close enough to the bed that by stretching out an arm he could reach her. He drew her closer until his arm encircled her waist.
"Anita, sweet little Anita," he murmured.
"Please ... don't," she faltered as he pulled her down beside him.
"Why not? You like it, don't you?" he whispered, closing his lips over hers and caressing her pointed breasts with his free hand.
"Si, but not with her watching," she gasped.
"You didn't mind last night when she was across the room in the rocking chair," he reminded her.
"I'll go," Carmela said, starting to get off the bed.
"No, you stay too," Dan said, tangling his fingers in her long hair and pulling her back down beside him.
"You mean ... you want us both?" Carmela asked, color flooding her face and breasts.
"As you yourself pointed out an hour or so ago, I offered to buy you both last night. We can still...."
"No, Dan, it is bad what you suggest," Anita said, her face scarlet as she looked at her mother.
Dan pulled on the neckline of her dress and it gave, falling open to show the hard, pear-like shapes of her breasts. She gasped but he held her firmly and pulled with his lips at the nipple nearest him.
Carmela's breathing quickened as she watched, and he reached to caress her without stopping what he was doing to her daughter.
"Dan, please," Anita said, but her protest was noticeably weaker.
"Tell her, Carmela," Dan said. "Tell her not to be such a prude. Tell her what it's like to be a real woman. Show her how you want me."
Carmela, as though in a trance, rolled closer and began moving her hands over his body, rubbing her swollen breasts against his side and moaning with reawakened desire.
Dan pulled Anita down on the bed and fastened his lips over hers, teasing her with his tongue until she let it meet hers. By the time he let her loose, she was having difficulty breathing and offered no resistance as he stripped the rest of her clothes off.
He kissed her again and then turned to Carmela, who was half sitting up offering him her breasts on her hands. He kissed them and tormented them and then worked his way across her plump belly and thighs. She squealed with pleasure and Anita whimpered on the other side of him.
Almost out of his head with lust, Dan turned back to Anita and devoured her breasts before sampling the delicious warm flesh of her more slender waist and thighs. With his mouth and tongue he turned her into a wildly wanton madwoman whose hands dug into his hair and whose thighs closed around him in insistent demand.
"Dan ... Oh, Dan, love me. Love me too," Carmela moaned.
There was no stopping Dan now. The bodies of the two women were driving him to such a pitch of sexual frenzy that he was beyond any rational control. He reached for Carmela but Anita clung to him.
"No ... no ... no!" she pleaded. "Don't leave me ... don't leave me."
Dan didn't leave her. He moved to take her, although Carmela cursed him in fluent Spanish and caressed him all the more.
Anita screamed as he found her, locking herself to him as though she would keep him there forever. Her slim young body heaved and bucked but he held her and took her with a strength and fury he had only been dimly aware he possessed.
"Please ... do that ... do that ... oh, that's so good. That's what I've always wanted. All my life it's what I've wanted," she said. "I've wanted a man to make me feel this way ... all my life!"
Her round little fanny was bouncing up and down like a triphammer and her arms and legs imprisoned him. In the back of his mind he was dimly aware that there was another woman lying naked beside him and that he would have her again before the day was over, and it added to his enjoyment.
He was soaring in the clouds now, clouds heavy with passion and heady delight. Anita was rising with him and in a few moments they would both plunge headlong into an erupting volcano.
"Dan! Dan!" she shrieked, and went limp as a rag doll.
He followed her seconds later and it was marvelous, but he knew there was more to come. Carmela was waiting for him and he knew he wanted her too.
Much later, when the room was dark again and both women were sleeping soundly, Dan sat up and held his head in his hands. This was a day and a night he wouldn't soon forget, but he knew he'd better leave or he'd want to stay with them indefinitely, and if he did, the police would find him in no time.
He got up quietly, careful not to disturb them, and reached for his wallet. The least he could do for them, he decided, was to see that they had money enough to reach their relative in Italy.
He counted out three hundred, reflecting wryly that it was pretty fair wages for their first, and he hoped last, experience as prostitutes. He wrote a brief note in his bad Spanish, telling them what the money was for and asking that they remember him kindly. Then he dressed and, after one last look at them, spread a blanket over their still nude bodies and left.
Half an hour later, he had checked into another cheap hotel and flopped on the bed. He was almost instantly asleep. Leaving Tangier would have to wait until tomorrow.
And as he slept, a woman was looking for him. A beautiful woman, sent by the Countess de Lorca to find him because he was the only available man in Tangier with a first mate's papers and the police on his heels.
CHAPTER FIVE
The woman who was looking for him found him in the bar of the dirty rathole hotel in which he had slept so soundly for twelve hours. On awakening, he had decided to have a drink while he pondered the possibilities of getting out of town with the police looking for him at all airports, train depots and bus terminals. One drink had led to another and once more he was more than a little drunk.
"Guess I better get going. Maybe go back to Anita and Carmela," he muttered to himself finally.
He wandered in the direction of the door, blinking his eyes in an effort to see through the smoky haze filling the room. He was vaguely aware that a girl slid off a stool with a display of shapely legs, but wasn't quick enough to avoid her and she ran into him.
"Sorry," he apologized. "Guess I'm not doin' so good."
"It is not your fault, m'sieu," she said. "I ran into you on purpose."
"Oh. Well, I...." He blinked rapidly and got her into better focus and saw she was an Arab dressed in western clothing, very attractive, and had large brown eyes and midnight black hair.
"In fact," she smiled, "I've been sitting here watching you for that last forty-five minutes."
"That couldn't be much fun."
"On the contrary, I found it fascinating," she said, looking him up and down in a way suggesting all kinds of delightful things. "You are very interesting, m'sieu, very interesting."
Dan wasn't so drunk as not to know picking up a girl in a place like this was equivalent to playing Russian roulette without even one empty chamber in the gun, but he couldn't summon up enough caution to care. "What is it you find so interesting in a poor old drunken sailor?" he asked.
She leaned closer until the tips of her high, pointed breasts touched his shirt front. "Why don't you follow me and find out?"
This was obvious enough even to his drink-befuddled brain, but she was too well dressed and too young and fresh-looking to be working a place like this. If she were a prostitute, she'd have been working out of one of the plushy, fancy hotels. And if she wasn't trying to sell herself for a few dollars, it meant she was after something else from him. That made her doubly dangerous.
Dan hesitated while she turned and walked out of the bar with a provacative swing of her seductive hips. Then he shrugged his broad shoulders and with an expectant grin on his rugged face followed her out into the night.
Maybe he was just asking for more trouble, but he was too intrigued with the encounter to let it end yet. He drew a few sobering breaths of fresh air and studied the girl, who was a few paces ahead of him. Her voice had been cultured and her whole manner suggested better than average upbringing. Her dress was simple but exquisite, cut to fit her superb figure perfectly. If this was the class of prostitutes they were getting in Tangier these days, he highly approved.
But even as he thought it, he knew it wasn't true. This gal couldn't be a pro or even a semi-pro who specialized in rolling drunks or luring them within range of a boy friend's knife. Girls with looks and clothes like this one just didn't pick men up in dives. And yet she had, quite brazenly and with no pretense.
"I don't get it," he said as he came even with her. "What's it all about?"
"My car is down here a little way," she said.
"What do you want of me?"
"Don't you know yet what I want?" she asked, her voice sinking to a husky whisper. "Here, I'll show you," and she pulled him into a pitch black alleyway.
Here it comes, he thought, tensing for a knife in the back or a blackjack across the base of his skull. But even as he tensed, he wondered if he really cared. After all, the only thing he really loved, his career at sea, was gone, so what difference did it make if he ended up dead in a Tangier alley? But then the racing of his pulses and the way his body prepared for action told him he did care. "Look, what is...." His words were cut off by a gasp as the girl took both his hands in hers and placed them against her breasts. His fingers curled automatically around the firm fullness, and since she wore no bra, he felt the nipples grow hard as they pressed into his palms.
"Now do you know what I want?" she asked, thrusting her pelvis tight against him and rotating her hips.
"Yeah, I guess I do," he said.
"Then come on," she said, taking his hand and urging him back onto the lighted sidewalk.
"But ... I haven't any money," he said, knowing that even for this lucious little thing he couldn't part with the hundred bucks he still had left.
"I don't want your money!" the girl said, her brown eyes snapping. "I'm not a prostitute."
Dan stumbled along beside her, his mind in a whirl. What was she up to? If she only wanted what she said she wanted, why did she have to come looking for it in this section of town? Surely she knew men from her own class who would be more than willing to oblige her. There was something wrong with the picture but he couldn't figure it out.
Her car was parked on a dark, narrow side street, but he could see it was an almost ntw Mercedes and it added to the image of money she reflected.
"Get in," she said, sliding under the wheel with a careless motion that skidded her dress well up over her knees.
Dan paused, enjoying the view and trying to think, trying to figure out what he might be getting into. In the mood he was in, a woman was what he needed, and a woman like this could make a man forget all his troubles.
"Hurry! Get in" the girl said, her eyes flashing unmistakable invitation at him. "Don't you want what I want?"
"Yeah, I want it all right. I want it real bad, but...."
She leaned toward him and took his face between her hands. "Then maybe you think it will not be good with me. Maybe you think I do not know how to please a man?" Her lips closed over his and her tongue darted into his mouth like an eager little animal. One hand let go of his head and ran down his arm and over his chest, finding its way inside his shirt and under his belt.
Dan got into the car quickly then and pulled her into his arms. "I'm sure you know how to please a man," he said, letting his hands rove over her exploringly. "In fact, I think you'd be wonderful."
"I will be. Oh, I promise you, I will be," she husked with her mouth against his. "I'll be better than any woman you've ever had."
That would take some doing, Dan thought. He had been in a lot of ports and had a lot of women in each of them. And some of the women had been phenomenally active in bed. He didn't go into that now because one hand was cupping a vibrant, exciting breast while the other moved up the smooth skin on the inside of her thigh to discover she wasn't wearing any panties. There was only a narrow garter belt to hold up her stockings. No bra and no panties-this babe came ready for action.
Her breath was coming in excited gasps now and he [Remainder of sentence was missing in original pocketbook]
Her breath was coming in excited gasps now and he tried to push her down on the seat, but she suddenly pulled away.
"No ... no, not here," she said. "We have to wait. I know a place we can go."
Dan released her reluctantly. "Okay," he said, trying to get himself back under control. "I hope it isn't too far away."
"It isn't. It's not far at all," she said, starting the car and pulling into the busy street with its teeming foot traffic.
In a few minutes they were out of the old section of the city and on a wide boulevard with modern office buildings and apartment houses on either side.
"Where are we going?" Dan asked. "Some sort of lovers' lane?"
"No, better than that, it's a place just made for love." Her voice was tense, and again Dan felt a tingle of apprehension at the back of his neck. He was being led into something, he was sure of that, but whether it was to a place of death, he couldn't tell.
But what the hell, he shrugged, she was only one small girl and all she could do was rape him or steal his money, and the first he was perfectly willing to have her do.
She turned off the boulevard and through the open gates of what seemed to be a large estate, going up a winding driveway to a large house overlooking the bay. "Here we are," she said.
"What is this?" he asked, looking up at the big house.
"This is the place where we find love," she said.
"Is this your house?"
"I didn't say that," she said, getting out of the car and motioning for him to follow.
He stopped and stared at her in the dark. "What in the hell is all the mystery about? What is this place and why are we here?"
"We're here to make love," she said, producing a key from her handbag and opening a side door. "Come inside quickly."
Dan followed her inside, and as she turned to press against him, he whispered, "I don't even know your name."
"Zoe," she whispered back, "you may call me Zoe." She guided him across a small entranceway and into a room beyond. "I promised you love, and now you shall have it. Love ... love ... love, any form or any kind you want."
Dan's hands were wet and his blood raced through him like molten lava. He heard a rustling and knew Zoe was taking off her dress. He smelled the musky perfume of her body as she dropped it on the thick carpeting. He grabbed for her then, but she laughed and eluded his hands. "Wait, you have to take off your clothes, too, my darling. Let me help you."
Her strong, sure hands were on him then, helping him out of his jacket, swiftly unbuttoning and removing his shirt, opening his belt and stripping off his slacks and shorts.
"You have a fine, man's body," she said, running her hands over his shoulders and chest, down across his belly and over his hips and thighs. "A body a woman can give much love to."
Her hands grew more intimate and she dropped to her knees in front of him. He could feel the rigid points of her breasts against his legs, and then he sucked in his breath sharply as eager lips pressed into his belly and began moving downward.
He reached forward and gripped her shoulders to steady himself as Zoe's lips caressed him. They were worshipful and yet demanding, and for a moment Dan thought they were going to draw his life right out of him.
"Do you find it pleasurable?" she asked.
"Very ... very...." His eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness and he could make out her figure outlined at his feet. .
"Come down here with me and we shall discover more delights," she said, lying back on the light colored rug and opening her slim thighs as he knelt to her. "Love me, Dan Salem ... love me"
He needed no further urging, and as he found her, her thighs welcomed him hungrily and her soft belly thrust up to meet him.
"Oh, Allah be praised!" she sighed. "You are a man, much, much man."
Dan's hands were on the taut globes of her breasts, stroking the warm flesh with his palms and fingering the nipples into greater hardness. He buried his mouth in her neck and she moaned deliriously as he started to move.
She held herself still as the full tide of his passion mounted. Then, as though the effort had been too much, she began to thrust back furiously, lifting her buttocks high off the rug and arching up to him.
"I will show you how a Moslem woman can serve a man," she said. "I will show you how I serve a man!"
Her body twisted and ground against his, the high breasts burning his chest while her thighs and belly rubbed caressingly wherever they touched.
"It is good. It is like paradise-a woman's paradise," Zoe murmured and her pointed tongue darted into his mouth and stayed there, moving constantly.
The woman's body and the way she gave of it were driving Dan mad with lust. She was making her boast come true. She was better than any woman he'd ever had.
There were few in the world who could so abandon themselves to the pleasures of love as this one did.
Sliding his hands under her, he cupped her rounded buttocks and pulled her up more closely to him. She screamed with joy and held him even tighter, locking her feet, and digging her fingers into his flesh.
"Love ... love ... love," she half-sobbed and half-sang.
"You wonderful ... delicious ... little beast," he said, feeling as though the impending explosion would tear him apart when it came.
She writhed in his arms like a wild thing, and shrieked with pleasure as her completion triggered Dan's release and they let the floodtide of their passion sweep over them.
They clung together for a few minutes and then rolled apart. Dan sat up and looked around. They were in some kind of large room, and furniture loomed up in the darkness but he couldn't quite make it out.
"We were good, were we not?" the girl asked.
"Yeah, great," Dan agreed, searching around on the floor for his clothes. "Can't we have a little light in here?"
"In a few minutes," she said, patting her dress into place.
"Will you tell me now where we are?"
"We are in the home of someone," Zoe said.
"I can tell that, but whose?"
"You will know soon," she said.
"Aw, forget it," Dan said disgustedly. "I'll just put my coat on and...."
Footsteps sounded outside the door and it was thrust open suddenly. Dan swung around with doubled-up fists as three figures came through it and the light was thrown on.
A woman laughed throatily and Dan found himself staring at a tall, black-haired woman with an arrogantly beautiful face. She was dressed in a white shirt and dark riding breeches and carried a crop which she now slapped against a boot.
"Did you enjoy him, Zoe, dear?" the woman asked, her white teeth gleaming in a lewd smile. "Was he strong and skillful?"
"My answer is yes to both questions, Countess," the girl said.
"What the hell is this all about?" Dan roared. "What kind of game do you think you're playing?"
"No game, my friend," the Countess said, coming farther into the room. "I need a strong man who also has a first mate's license, and since you were the only one in the city, I sent Zoe to find you and bring you here."
Dan turned and looked at Zoe. "Is that right?" he demanded.
She nodded silently.
"I had a feeling you were leading me into a trap," he said bitterly. "Well, thanks for the free fun."
"You can thank me for that, Dan Salem," the Countess said, slapping the crop into the palm of her hand. "And you can thank me for a job, too. My yacht, the Vesuvius, needs a first mate."
"The Vesuvius ... yeah, I saw her in the harbor. Then you must be the Countess de Lorca."
"That is correct," the woman said.
Dan shrugged into his coat. "Thanks for the offer anyway."
"What does that mean?"
"It means I don't want your job. It means I'm leaving." He looked toward the door where the two husky young women who had come with the Countess still stood. They didn't move but they didn't take their eyes off him.
"And why don't you want it? I understand you'd have difficulty getting one anywhere else."
"Even so, I don't want to work for you. I've heard a lot of things about you. You've smelled up half of Europe one way or another, and I've got a sensitive nose."
The woman opened her slash of a mouth and laughed. "A murderer with a sensitive nose? Very interesting."
Dan shrugged and started for the door. He might have suspected she'd know the police were looking for him since she knew his name.
"Don't let him leave," the Countess commanded, and the two women at the door moved toward Dan.
He stopped and braced himself for the attack. These two babes looked like trouble. They were both tall and powerful-looking, with hard, muscular legs and arms.
Then he noticed something else that sent a shiver of fear down his spine. The blonde had a blackjack in one hand and from the expression on her face wouldn't mind using it.
"I'm leaving here," Dan said, "and anyone who gets in my way will get hurt."
"Olga, Terri, see that he doesn't leave," the Countess said quietly, "but don't damage him too much."
The blonde came at him swinging the sap. Dan sidestepped her and lashed out with a fist that caught her over the ear and sent her sprawling.
The other female thug, a dark-haired brute with a scar across her chin, hit him a glancing blow on one shoulder and he went to his knees. He propelled himself forward and wrapped his arms around her legs and they crashed to the floor with Dan on top. She tried to use her blackjack again but he hit her wrist with his open hand and it went flying. He smashed a blow squarely in her mouth and then pulled away to get up.
That was when everything exploded and then went black as the blonde got to him with her sap.
CHAPTER SIX
Dan awakened to the unmistakable feeling of a ship underway. The bunk he was on swayed gently and there was a throbbing ache at the back of his head.
He looked around the small but well appointed cabin and knew instantly it was too luxurious to be anything but a yacht. He was aboard the Vesuvius.
"Damn it! Damn it to hell!" he swore, staggering to his feet in spite of the roaring pain from his head. "That female vampire has me aboard her lousy hell ship and we're underway for God only knows where!"
He stumbled to the head and threw cold water in his face, then put a tentative hand to the back of his head and found that someone had put a small bandage over the cut caused by the blackjack. He rummaged around in the medicine cabinet until he located the aspirin, and downed three of them with a couple of glasses of water.
When the pain had subsided a little, he went to the outside door of the cabin and tried it. It was locked.
He pounded on it with his fists. "Let me out of here! Open this door, damn it!" he yelled.
The key turned in the lock and the door opened. A huge, ugly gorilla of a man stood there in a neat steward's uniform, holding a forty-five automatic almost casually in one hand.
"Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Salem, sir?" he asked with mock politeness.
"Yeah," Dan said, "you can quit pointing that cannon at me and take me to the owner of this vessel. I've got a few things to say to her about shanghaiing."
"The Countess will see you at once," the man said.
"She told me to bring you to her stateroom as soon as you came to."
He gestured carelessly with the gun and Dan preceded him down the passageway and up on deck. As they went aft, he got a chance to look the yacht over. She was a beauty. He estimated she must be nearly four hundred feet long and displace around seven thousand tons. There weren't many yachts that large and he knew it must cost a mint to operate her. He'd like to have that kind of money himself, he reflected. There was something about the clean lines and rakish mast and the single streamlined funnel of the ship that told him she would be unusually fast and handy for her size.
"Right this way, Mr. Salem," the steward said. "The Countess' stateroom is at the foot of this companionway."
Dan started down the ladder without comment.
"Oh, and, sir...." the man called after him, sliding the gun into a holster, " ... don't try coming up without permission because I'll be standing right here."
Dan looked up at the beefy red face with its small beady eyes under the shaggy brows, at the thick liverish lips twisted in what was supposed to be a smile. "What ships did you ever sail on before, buddy, and who ran them-the Mafia?"
The small eyes glittered with what might have been amusement. "My name is Hanson, sir-Joe Hanson-and I've been with the Countess de Lorca for four years. Before that, I ran guns into Algeria for the secret army."
"It figures," Dan said, and started down the ladder again.
"Mr. Salem, I forgot to tell you, Captain Brock sends his compliments, and he'd like to see his first mate when the Countess is through with you."
"You can tell him as far as I'm concerned, he hasn't got a first mate."
"Yes sir, and don't forget to knock at the Countess' door," Hanson said.
Dan felt the back of his neck get red as he lifted his big fist and rapped on the door of the stateroom. Almost at once there was a husky-voiced command to enter.
He did, and it was like stepping through the door into a setting from the Arabian Nights. The suite must take up most of the after part of the ship, he figured, for it was as large as the living room of a mansion and there were several doors opening off it.
The carpet under his feet was even thicker and more luxurious than that he and Zoe had made love on, and there were two massive couches with marble-topped coffee tables before them in front of a fireplace with real logs and a fire going in it. Books lined one entire wall and a bar took up the back one.
Sitting on one of the white divans was Estella de Lorca. She was all alone and dressed in a clinging, form-revealing, black robe-like garment which fell to her ankles. It was tied tightly at the waist and open enough at the neck to expose the tops of two large creamy mounds.
"Come in, Mr. Salem," she said. "Come in and let me have a look at you."
Dan took a couple of steps in her direction and then stopped as he saw the collection of art objects occupying shelves opposite the books.
Estella laughed and walked over to join him as he stared. It was the most incredible collection of erotica he had ever seen, and it could only be called erotica because of the excellence of its artistic detail.
Dan had traveled enough and observed enough to know this collection must have come from all over the world and cost millions of dollars.
A magnificently conceived but unbelievably erotic piece of sculpture had been given the place of honor. It consisted of three nude women in the act of having simultaneous sexual pleasure with each other.
"That is my favorite," the Countess said, seeing Dan's eyes riveted to it. "The masterpiece of the whole collection. Isn't it superb?"
Dan shook his head. "I suppose you could say it is superbly filthy."
"Thus speaks the common man," Estella said, "A person of real culture and understanding would see the beauty of it."
Dan was still looking at the full-fleshed lovely, bodies of the three Lesbians. He could see the beauty of it, but he could also see the sickness it depicted.
"And you, I take it, are really cultured and understanding and can see only beauty in this?"
"Of course," she said in a superior tone. "I see beauty in anything and everything that has to do with sex."
"And you consider this a work of art?"
"I certainly do, and I'm not the only one who does. Have you ever heard of Rodin?"
"Francois Auguste Rene Rodin?" Dan said. "Who hasn't? He was a French sculptor who specialized in groups of figures showing emotion in motion by means of static marble."
"So, you are not just an ignorant sailor. Then it will interest you to know this group is by Rodin."
Dan's eyebrows lifted. "Really? I've never heard of any group like this."
"It has been in a private collection for thirty years. I obtained it in Germany a year ago. It isn't ordinarily listed among his works, for obvious reasons, but he did others of a smiliar nature."
Dan looked at the other sculptures and paintings of the group. They depicted every known form of sexual activity and depravity, and every combination of men and women that could be devised.
"Is this the way you get your kicks, Countess?" he asked.
A scowl crossed her face briefly, but then she laughed with a display of her large white teeth. "After you've been first mate of the Vesuvius for a while, you'll know that I get what you call my 'kicks' in a thousand different ways."
"I'm not going to be first mate of the Vesuvius."
"Ah, but my friend, you are already signed on."
"Now, get this, sister," Dan said angrily, "I wouldn't work for you if you owned the last ship on the seas."
"Why not?"
"Because I know too much about you and your late father, and I don't like any of it."
"My father?" Estella's voice was a menacing purr.
"Yes, your father, Manuel Lorca. There wasn't a Count in front of his name in the old days, when he was the most powerful man in Spain, was there, Countess?"
"My title comes from the present government of Spain and was conferred for services rendered by my father during the Civil War."
"Uh huh, I've heard about those services. He practically bankrolled the Fascisti during that war."
"That is something I'm not ashamed of," the Countess said. "He helped save Spain."
"You mean he helped save his investments," Dan said. "He helped save the money he made during the First World War by starting the Spanish Civil War and World War II."
The Countess didn't say anything, but her long white hands, which had been resting quietly on her thighs, clenched in anger.
"The part of the stories I like best about your father," Dan went on, "is how he added to his fortune during World War II. It was a real laugh the way he insured his ships for high war-risk rates and then tipped off the German U-boats as to which course they were taking. It didn't matter to him that it was a little hard on the crews of those ships, did it?"
"So a few contemptible seamen died," Estella sneered. "What difference does it make?"
"None at all to you or your old man apparently, but it makes a lot of difference to some of the rest of us."
"And what makes you so noble, Mr. Dan Salem? You have blood on your hands too."
Dan stiffened but was too angry to stop now. "And in addition, there's your own unsavory reputation as a seducer of young girls, and other assorted sex vagaries. All in all, I'd rather not be first mate on your yacht."
"And you really think you have a choice?"
"You're damn well right I have a choice!"
"And what do you choose in place of the job I offer you?"
"I choose to be put ashore immediately," Dan said.
"Very well," the Countess said, reaching to pick up a phone, "I'll call Captain Brock and tell him to turn around at once and return to Tangier. I'll also tell him to put through a radiophone call to the Prefet de Police, telling him the time of your arrival at the dock so he can arrest you for the murder of the captain of the Kenmore Queen."
"I didn't murder anyone," Dan said. "I struck the man in self-defense and I can prove it. It wasn't my fault he hit his head when he fell. At the most, it can only be called manslaughter."
"That's strange," Estella said. "My agents in Tangier have located four witnesses who will testify that you killed the poor man in cold blood with a blunt instrument. You will be arrested and convicted of murder and mutiny."
Dan's shoulders slumped. "You witch! You'll go to any lengths to get your own way, won't you? You're your father's daughter all right."
"Have you made your choice, Mr. Salem? Shall I call the captain?"
Dan looked into her cold eyes and knew she'd do exactly as she said. "No," he said heavily, "don't call. You've got the upper hand. I'll be your first mate."
"Good," she said in a business-like tone. "Now, Dan, I may call you Dan?"
"Sure," he said. "I guess you can call me anything you like."
"Well, Dan, there's one more thing we have to settle and then I'll let you go. We may as well get everything perfectly clear now and then we'll have no misunderstandings or trouble later."
"About what?"
"About your being part of the entertainment on this cruise."
"WHAT?" Dan roared. "If you mean what I think you mean?"
"I do. You're a big, handsome fellow with nice broad shoulders and lean hips and-according to Zoe-you have a certain ability sexually. These are the attributes my guests and I value."
"You go to hell!" Dan exploded.
"I can still call the Captain, Dan," she said, "and the Prefet has been in my employ for many years."
Dan knew when he was licked. "Okay, okay," he said. "You win."
"Then take off your clothes and be quick about it!" the woman's voice cracked like a whip.
"You can take a flying leap at the moon!" Dan said.
Without a word, she reached for the phone. "All right," he said, and reached for the buttons of his shirt.
"That's better," the Countess said. "I always like to examine my new property."
"I'm not your property. I belong to no one but myself."
Estella laughed mockingly. "You belonged to me from the moment you were brought aboard. You're my property just the same as everyone on this ship is. Each of you is my creature. Every one of you has something in his or her past that makes you unable or unwilling to defy me. And I'll use you all in any way I see fit to provide amusement and entertainment for me and my guests!"
Dan dropped his shirt to the floor and stared at the black, glittering eyes. This woman must be as crazy as she was beautiful. The first chance he got, he'd get away from her. He'd jump ship at the first port they entered and lose himself so she'd never find him again. In the meantime though ... well, there just wasn't anything else to do but play along with her. Wasn't that the way to handle crazy people ... humor them? ... even to the extent of a private strip tease?
His hands were on his belt and he opened it and let his slacks drop to the floor, then bent over to remove his shoes and socks. All the time he could feel her eyes on him like hot burning probes.
"I believe I'm going to find your stay with us quite interesting, Dan," she said.
"Don't count on it."
"Oh, but I am," she said as he stood before her with only his shorts and skivvy shirt on. "Take them off, Dan."
"Okay, sister, if this is the way you get your kicks," he said, and skinned his shirt off over his head.
"I told you, I get my kicks lots of different ways, some of which you may find a little outre."
"I'll bet, and this is pretty good for openers," Dan said, and dropped his shorts.
"Well, well, well," Estella said, circling around him, "you are a virile-looking man, aren't you, Danny?"
"I've never had any complaints," Dan said.
"I should think not." Estella paced with all the grace of a mountain lion. "It would take a woman without any taste at all to complain about you."
Dan shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. He had nothing against stripping to the buff with a woman preparatory to bedding her, but this being naked in front of a fully dressed woman and having her inspect him like a choice piece of beef was another matter.
The Countess cocked her black head to one side and examined him carefully. "Yes ... yes, I think you'll do nicely."
"Do for what?"
"For my pleasure, of course."
"Yeah, I figured you meant something like that," he said. So, what the hell, he thought. So I have to bed the witch a few times, she won't be so hard to take, not hard at all."
She stopped in front of him, reached out a long, white hand and touched him on the chest. He felt a tingle of excitement as she trailed her fingers through the hair there and on down across his flat stomach.
"Hey!" he yelled as she grasped him suddenly.
She laughed. "I like to touch as well as look, Dan. Yes, indeed. You'll do very well after you've been trained properly."
She moved back to sit down on the couch again and Dan watched her bewildered. He had expected her to take off her clothes and get down to business. "Trained properly?" he said.
"Yes, of course," Estella said, sitting so that her robe fell open, displaying long, smoothly muscled legs encased in black nylon. "Surely you don't think I permit men to serve me who aren't trained, do you?"
"What are you talking about?"
"I'll show you," she said, and clapped her hands together sharply.
A door at the other end of the stateroom opened and two women came through it. They were the two husky babes he had tangled with before, the ones who had blackjacked him into unconsciousness. "These, Mr. Salem," the Countess said, "are two of my most trusted attendants, Terri and Olga. I use them to train the people who serve me. I want you to observe how well they do their job." She turned to the lean blonde. "Have you finished with Beth?"
"Yes, mistress."
"Then bring her to me," the Countess commanded.
Terri tore her bold gaze away from Dan's nakedness and left the room. She returned almost immediately with a small red-headed girl.
"Now, Beth, my dear," Estella said, "have you learned how to behave properly?"
The girl just stood with her head bowed while they all watched her. Dan had never seen a small girl with such a perfect figure. Her tiny waist flared into lovely rounded hips and buttocks below and full, pointed breasts above. Her skin was so fine and smooth it appeared almost translucent and the shining red hair framed a face of unusual beauty.
Estella leaned back and ran her eyes slowly and insolently over the girl's lush charms, emphasized as they were by the tight white sheath she wore. "I asked you," she said in a menacingly quiet voice, "if you had learned to behave properly?"
The girl glanced nervously sidewise at the two rough females on either side of her and nodded her head quickly.
"Then come to me," Estella commanded. The girl moved forward a couple of feet. "Pretty ... very pretty," Estella said. "You're a pretty girl, Beth."
"Thank you, mistress," Beth said.
"Are you going to do as you're told from now on?"
"Yes, mistress."
"You like men, girl?"
"Yes, ma'am." She looked furtively from under long lashes at Dan. "Of course, I...."
"And do you like women also?"
"I don't know. I...." Beth faltered and blushed.
"Come closer to me!" the Countess ordered.
Beth drew a deep breath that raised her out-thrust breasts even higher and walked toward the woman. Estella brought her to a stop by placing a hand in the middle of her stomach.
"Isn't she a pretty little thing, Mr. Salem?" she said to Dan. "Just the sort of sweet, cuddly girl men dote on, isn't she?"
Dan didn't answer. He was too busy watching the redhead. It had been a long time since a woman had such an effect on him.
"So pretty and so willing, aren't you, Beth?"
"Yes, mistress," the girl said in a dead voice.
"Kneel down at my feet, Beth!"
There was no resistance in her. Beth knelt in front of the woman and looked up at her.
"Now, take off my shoes and stockings!" the order cracked out, and Estella extended her long legs on either side of the girl, letting the robe fall open to show their whole beautiful length.
Beth's hands trembled as she moved her hands up over the full thighs to unhook the diamond-studded garters and pull the nylons down the woman's legs.
"What's the matter, child?" Estella asked. "Does it excite you so much that you tremble?"
"I don't know," Beth said faintly.
"Come now, you must know! Does touching my flesh excite you?"
"I suppose...."
'You've got to do more than suppose," Estella said, leaning over to grab Beth by the hair and drag her up into her lap.
Beth didn't struggle but she didn't help either. She merely permitted herself to be pulled across Estella's legs, and lay supinely while the hard, red slash of a mouth closed over hers. Dan saw the girl stiffen as the woman's tongue probed through her lips, but then as the hand in her hair twisted viciously, she relaxed and let the other have her way.
"Damn you! Leave the girl alone!" Dan flared, and started forward, only to have Terri and Olga each grab an arm and bring him to a halt.
Estella looked up at him and laughed. "All eyes, aren't you? You're standing there watching me kiss her and wishing it were you, aren't you? Don't you just wish you had the power and the will to force girls like this to obey your slightest whim?"
"Go to hell!" Dan growled, but couldn't tear his eyes away from them.
Estella's hands and lips were doing things to the redhead he didn't want to watch but he couldn't help it. Beth lay unmoving, permitting all liberties but not returning any of Estella's caresses.
The Countess unzipped the girl's dress and lowered it until the full young breasts popped into view. She cupped them in her hands and pressed her face against them. She captured one pink nipple in her mouth and worried it with her tongue and teeth while one hand made its way under the white dress, stroking and searching.
Suddenly she stood up, holding Beth's young body tight against her. "You'd like to see the rest, wouldn't you, Dan?" she sneered. "You'd stand right there with your eyes bugging out while I took her, wouldn't you?"
Dan's hands doubled into fists and he glared his hatred at her.
"You'd like to watch the whole thing," she taunted. "You'd like to watch me take her just like I'm going to take you when I'm ready."
"I'd like to kill you," Dan said.
She laughed raucously. "You'd like to see it, but I'm not going to let you. Not this time. This first time I'm going to enjoy her all by myself. Later ... well, who knows?" She started toward a door. "You can put your clothes on now and report to the bridge, and while you're standing watch, you can torture yourself with visions of the pleasure I'll be having."
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the time Dan had stood his first watch on the bridge of the Vesuvius, he discovered the second officer was incompetent and the captain was a drunk.
The ship was ten degrees off course when he reported to take over, and the French officer didn't seem to know or care what course the quartermaster was steering.
"We're following the coast," he said. "We will get to Algiers one way or another. What difference does it make?"
"It'll make plenty of difference if we run onto some reefs," Dan said. "I'll report this to the captain when I go off watch."
"Go ahead, m'sieu," the man shrugged. "Maybe you'll find him sober enough to understand you, but I doubt it."
Four hours later when he was relieved by the third mate, a young Greek who spoke no English but seemed able to keep the yacht on course, Dan made his way to the captain's cabin.
"Go avay" was the gutteral response to his knocking. "Lieber Gott! Can't a man get a liddle rest?"
"Captain Brock! This is the first officer, Dan Salem. I'd like to talk to you about something important."
"Come back tomorrow. Vat's de matter, can't you do your chob?"
"Okay, okay, the hell with it," Dan muttered under his breath, and went to his own cabin and fell onto his bunk wearily.
It was afternoon of the next day when he woke up, and he still had four hours to kill before he had another watch to stand.
He ate a hearty lunch and started up to the bridge to check the condition of the charts. Before he had gone a dozen steps, Joe Hanson came up behind him.
"The Countess wants to see you in her quarters right away, Mr. Salem," he said.
Dan looked into the brutal face and scowled. "What are you, the lady's messenger boy?"
"Yes, sir. In a way, sir. I do a lot of things for the Countess."
Dan looked at him with dislike. He wouldn't have had a thug like this on a ship he commanded, but apparently Estella found him useful. There was a bulge in his pocket which couldn't be made by anything but a gun.
"I'll stop by and see her," Dan said curtly.
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir," the man said politely, but his little eyes gleamed.
Five minutes later Dan knocked on the door of the owner's suite and entered on her command.
He had to stop and suck in his breath at the sensual beauty of her. This time she was entirely in white, and the effect was dazzling. The jersey-like cloth clung to her big, thrusting breasts and full-fleshed thighs like it had been painted on, and her blue-black hair hung in a soft, smoky cloud to her shoulders. Her flashing black eyes told him she was aware of the stunning picture she made.
"You wanted to talk to me?" he asked flatly.
"Yes, Dan, I thought it would be pleasant to spend an hour or so with you," she said, letting her carmine lips curve into a seductive smile.
"Well, I've got some work to do on the bridge and...."
Her eyebrows shot up. "Aren't you forgetting something?"
"Like what?"
Her eyes darkened warningly. "The most important part of your job."
"Not that I know of. You hired me as first mate of this yacht and I'll try my best to keep her afloat."
"No, no, Dan. I told you only yesterday there was more to your job than that." She reached out and dug her scarlet fingernails into his wrist until they drew blood. "The most important part of your job is to keep me happy."
Dan tried to keep his face blank and pretend he didn't understand. He tried to fight down the stirring of lust for her by forcing himself to remember how vilely she had treated the girl Beth.
"I want you, Dan Salem. I want that big, gorgeous male body of yours and I want it right now!"
"Now look, Countess...."
"Shut up," she said. "Don't be a fool. You know your freedom depends on my whim."
The strong, musky scent of her perfume was in his nostrils, and his eyes were held by the cruel red lips. Love with a woman like this might be a hellish thing, but if a man went into it with his eyes wide open, if he took the sex she offered and didn't get involved....
As he stepped closer to her and raised his arms, there was a timid knock on an inner door and Beth stepped into the room.
"Did you want me, mistress?" she asked with a grave curtsy. She was wearing an extremely abbreviated maid's costume, the short skirt of which looked more like a ballet dancer's, giving an unobstructed view of her beautifully tapered legs.
Estella lazily placed a cigarette in a jade holder and motioned for Beth to light it for her. The girl sprang to obey and as she leaned forward with the lighter, Dan stared entranced at the exposed tops of her high, young breasts.
Estella caught the look and smiled tigerishly. "You like my little Beth, don't you, Dan? I'm glad, because dear little Beth and I are so close. We're going to share so many things, aren't we, dear?"
The girl blushed and looked at Dan from under lowered lashes. Estella frowned and without a word reached out with the cigarette and pressed the lighted tip into the delicate flesh of the girl's left breast.
Beth cried out in pain and jerked away from the woman.
"We share many things, Beth, but not Danny. At least, not right now. Maybe when I've had all I want from him, you can have him, but not just yet."
Beth fled the room with tears streaming down her face, holding a protective hand over the ugly red mark with ashes still clinging to it.
Dan turned on the Countess, his disgust showing plainly. "What a cruel thing to do. For no reason! You're nothing but a dirty sadist!"
"Naturally, darling," she said smugly. "You don't think I'd miss a thrill like that. I'm a sadist, and I'm also a masochist. In fact, I'm a little bit of everything and anything that gives me pleasure."
Dan backed away from her, doubling up his fists in frustrated anger.
She laughed and followed him. "Your fists look so powerful and brutal, darling. Would you like to beat me? That would add an extra fillip to our relationship that I hadn't expected."
Dan deliberately unclenched his hands and said through set teeth, "No, I don't want to beat you."
"Oh, how disappointing. I haven't had a man in ever so long who had the courage to beat me. Usually it's the other way around." She locked her arms around his neck and pushed up against him until he could feel every sensuous line of her blended with his. "It would be so exciting if you'd pound me with your big fists. Knock me down and rip off my clothes, and then force me, rape me right here on the floor."
Her eyes were brilliant with excitement and she moved suggestively against him.
"I ... you must be slightly crazy," Dan said.
"Crazy? Hardly. I'm very, very sane. You just think I'm crazy because I refuse to be bound by the stupid rules and conventions of middle-class morality. I know how to live to the utmost, savoring every drop of experience and draining every moment of its excitement."
Her grinding, provocative movement against him was having its desired effect in spite of Dan. He wanted to resist the rising tide of passion but it was a losing battle.
"Your mind may be moral but your body is as amoral as mine," she whispered as she felt the evidence of his excitement. "Oh, Danny, you're such a fine big fellow." She unclasped her hands and ran them down over his shoulders and chest, his stomach and thighs.
"You devil," Dan groaned, "you sadistic she-devil." His lips came down on hers so hard and so suddenly that her neck bent backward painfully.
"Give it to me ... give it to me," she panted hotly, "Give me all the swelling lust within you."
"I'll give it to you," Dan growled, and clutching the white gown at the neck, ripped it clear to the hem.
"Oh, Danny" she screamed as he yanked at the expensive lace bra and sent it after the dress. Her large breasts sprang free, bouncing with the force of the jerk.
Dan's hands closed around them, his fingers digging deep into the firm, resilient flesh. The cherry-red, silver-dollar-sized nipples rose up hard as real cherries and he pulled at them with his fingers and lips until they expanded still more.
Estella tore at his shirt and then her fingernails were like lances down his back. 'Take me! Take me! Take me" she screeched. "I can't wait! Por Dios, take me!"
"I'll take you," he said, "when and how I want you."
He pulled the remnants of the dress from her and then quickly broke the elastic of her panties and dropped them around her ankles. She tried to plaster herself against him again but he fended her off and tormented her lasciviously twisting body with his hands and mouth.
She gasped and heaved and clutched at him with almost insane frenzy, sobbing with frustration and delight as he fondled her with lustful contempt. When she was on the verge of fainting from his intimate, tantalizing attentions, he turned her around and pushed her toward the bedroom. "Now," he said, "now, I'll take you," and he slapped her across the buttocks stingingly to hurry her on.
He shoved the door open and stood looking into the wide violet eyes of Beth Fairfax. She must have been standing behind the half open door watching them through the crack. Her breath was coming fast and her eyes burned into his.
"Get out!" Dan said harshly. "Get the hell out of here! I'll take care of you later!"
Estella laughed wildly as he sent her sprawling onto the black satin sheets of the huge circular bed. "Why don't you let her watch, Danny," she said. "That would be a new experience. Why don't you let her watch?"
"You're nuts," he said, getting out of his remaining clothes and leaping after her. He took her then, in lust and hatred, and it was somewhat like making love to a buzz saw, or trying to hold onto the tail of a dizzily spinning comet. It was like nothing he could describe except all-consuming, torrential passion.
The woman's big, supple body responded to his as though part of it. It molded itself to him and her thrashing hips and wildly gyrating buttocks demanded and demanded and demanded.
"You were made for me, Danny. You were made just for me!" Estella moaned, locking her arms and legs and driving him mad with her seeking body.
"Shut up! Shut up and show me what you can do."
"I'll show you! I'll give you more than you can handle!" she said, and raked her fingernails down his back from shoulder blades to the muscles of his thighs.
"Hey, cut it out" he snarled, and grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head.
Furiously she pulled and twisted, trying to get away, but there was no stopping Dan now. He rode her like a bucking bronco and their lust built up like the pressures inside a volcano and finally blew them both sky-high in an outpouring of pure passion.
When the storm had subsided, they fell apart and Estella lay beside him, her gloriously nude body glistening with perspiration and her eyes glowing. "You were great, Dan," she sighed. "The best. The very best ever!"
"How nice for you," he said sarcastically, his feeling of dislike returning with his sanity.
"I'll never let you go now," she said. "I'll keep you right here on the ship forever. You're mine now, and you'll always be mine."
Dan reached for his clothes and pulled them on. "Don't count on it, Countess," he said as he went through the door into the main salon. "You've got the upper hand now, but sooner or later, I'll find a way to...."
"See you tomorrow, Danny," she said, and rolled over to go to sleep.
Dan stalked through the main room, picking up his shirt as he went, and slammed out of the suite into the semi-darkness of the corridor beyond. He stopped suddenly as he sensed movement behind him.
Whirling, he almost knocked down the girl who was standing there.
"Don't go," Beth whispered, "Please, don't go," and she pushed up tight against him.
"What the hell is this all about?" Dan asked brusquely.
For answer, she took hold of his hands and thrust them into the unbuttoned top of her uniform and dosed them over the firm, unfettered breasts that nestled there. "Love me," she whispered, "Love me like you did her."
"My God, what is this?" Dan said, trying to pull away, away.
She clung to him more frantically and almost sobbed, "I need you, Dan Salem. I need you more than I've ever needed anything in my life."
"What's the matter with you?" Dan asked more gently. "You don't look like these other nuts around here."
"Please, please I can't stand it. I was watching you and Estella and I got so excited. Don't leave me like this."
"It's your own damn fault for spying," Dan said.
"But you told me you'd take care of me later," she said, "and I've been waiting out here for you." She pushed up tighter and ran her hands eagerly over him.
"Look," Dan said, "there's such a thing as too much. I just got through with that she-wolf in there and I couldn't again even if I wanted to and...."
"My, my, aren't you two having fun?" an overly polite voice said from behind, and there was Hanson, grinning like a fiend out of hell.
"Get lost, buster. Get lost," Dan said, "or I'll give you a chance to use that rod you're packing, before I jam it down your throat."
The gorilla took a step backward, still grinning. "If you must rape the maids, Mr. Salem, I suggest you pick a more private place to do it."
"I guess he's right," Beth whispered. "We ought to get out of this passageway." She felt behind her and opened a door into a dark little room that seemed to be a storage room for cleaning equipment. Come on," she urged, tugging at his arm.
"Now see here," Dan said as the door closed behind them, "I told you I've had it for a while. I can't."
"Yes, you can," she whispered. "If I help you."
The absurd excuse for a uniform was open all the way down the front now and there wasn't a thing under it but her smooth, shimmering skin. She seized his hands again and moved them over the rich globes of her breasts, down over the faint mound of her belly and onto the quivering flesh of her thighs.
"You can. I know you can," she kept repeating as she caressed his bare chest ardently.
"But, Beth, I...."
She pushed him back against the wall and went on running her lips over his body. She went down on her knees as she loosened his belt and pressed her hot, wet mouth deep into his stomach and down across his thighs.
"You can ... you can...." she said again and suddenly he knew he could.
She knew it almost as soon as he did, and laughed triumphantly. "Come on, Dan," she said, and rocked back on her buttocks, her knees tilting up in the air so that her throbbing body was fully revealed to him.
Dan knelt too, and threw himself against her. The small size of the room was cramping, but he discovered it wasn't too confining to make love. He had never had a woman in exactly this position before, but it didn't matter. The very touch of this girl inflamed him beyond all reason.
"Ohhhh, Dan ... Dan ... Dan," she moaned as he found her and slid his hands under her rounded little behind to pull her still closer. "Love me good, Dan. Love me so hard I'll forget. Make me forget."
He didn't bother asking what it was she wanted to forget. He was too busy enjoying to the fullest the wonderfully wrought loveliness of her, too busy claiming her beautiful body and making it his.
Her small fists beat on his shoulders and arms in a desperate tattoo of yearning, and her teeth nibbled at his ear lobe. She pushed back at him as much as she was able in her limited position, and couldn't seem to get enough of his lips and hands and power.
"Don't stop ... don't stop," she wailed as they reached completion almost simultaneously.
"Beth ... Beth...."
"Don't leave me, Dan. Don't leave me," she begged, and held him with all her young strength. "Please, Dan, darling, I've got to have you again. I can't bear to let you go yet."
Dan held her tight, touched by her obvious need, but wondering what was wrong with her. He was afraid he'd fail her, and then asked himself why he cared. She was just another of the goofy babes on this ship, wasn't she?
Then, without his willing it, he began to feel an answering welling-up of renewed passion as she continued moving her body wantonly against him.
This time it was like a breathtaking ride on a roller coaster, with Beth's tender little body creating the long drawn-out thrills. Dan felt as though he were being borne upward toward a whirling sea of light and then the track reached a sudden end, and he was plunging off into a dark sea.
He knew a scream was building up in Beth's throat and if it burst forth it would be heard all over the yacht. Quickly he got a hand over her mouth as the force of her release robbed her of all caution. Her teeth sank into his palm and hung on while passion shook them both.
"That was something that doesn't happen to people very often," he said later as he helped her to her feet.
"No, I guess not," she said shortly, straightening the short uniform and turning her back to button it up.
Dan slipped his arm around her shoulders. "What's the matter, kid? I thought it was great."
"It was," she admitted, but her voice was almost cold.
"Then what's the matter?"
"I acted like a prostitute."
"Oh, I wouldn't say that exactly," he said with a grin.
'You haven't asked for money yet, and I understand that's what makes the difference."
She shrugged. "You might as well give me three dollars, because that's what I'm becoming."
"If I paid you what it was worth, it would be closer to three million," Dan said.
Her lip trembled and she started to cry.
"Come on, baby, what is it?" he asked, leaning over to kiss the back of her neck.
"Don't touch me. Please, don't touch me. I don't think I could stand it," she sobbed.
"What the hell?" Dan stared at her in the semi-darkness. "You do remember what happened, don't you? I didn't seduce you. You practically raped me."
"I know it," she said, "but don't you see? I had to. I had to."
"Well, that did seem to be the case," Dan said, "but I'm not sure what you mean. You want to tell me?"
"I suppose I should after what I did," she said, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "I guess I'd better start at the beginning. We came to Tangier on a cruise-this boy and I-we planned on getting married some day, so we ... well, we shared a cabin on the way over. I had never been with a man before and I found out I liked it an awful lot. That was one reason we stopped over in Tangier for a while, so we could have more time together in a hotel. But soon after that I met Pierre. He wasn't much to look at, he was just a half-caste gigolo, but the first time he looked at me...."
Beth shivered at the memory. "His eyes ... they were so expressive. They told me he wanted to make love to me, that he wanted to worship me like some love goddess. Sex with Rod had become a rather ordinary routine and as soon as Pierre had made it clear to me just how he wanted to love me ... well, I had to try it."
"And?"
"And I did. That's how I got into trouble. Once I had been worshiped by Pierre, once he had knelt at my feet and his fervent lips had kissed my feet, my thighs, my breasts ... and...."
Beth shook her red head. "I was lost then. I left Rod and found an apartment and sent home for more money so I could keep Pierre."
"But how did you get mixed up with the Countess?"
"Pierre had been with another woman-an Arab woman-before I came. She killed him with a knife while I was out one night, and escaped. I was found in the room with the body and arrested. Then that creepy Chief of Police sold me to the Countess. I had to agree to be her slave until the amount she paid him was paid back. The alternative was prison or worse."
"So that's why you've been letting that witch torture you?"
Beth wouldn't look at him. "That's why I let her do it. But the worst thing is ... the thing that's driving me crazy is that I've been responding. To her friend Terri first, and now to her. It makes me afraid that I'm a Lesbian myself. I guess the way Pierre loved me isn't too much different from the way women love each other and ... well, anyway, that's why I had to have you."
"Well, I'll be damned!"
"Please try to understand, Dan. I had to prove to myself that normal love was still what I wanted most. Then when I saw you with Estella ... saw the most virile man I've ever seen in my life take a woman like her with brutal fury ... then I knew it definitely had to be you I was with."
"Beth...."
"Don't say anything more, Dan. I just wanted you to know why I acted like that." She pushed past him and opened the door. "I've got to get back before Estella misses me," she said, and fled.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Dan spent part of his watch time the next day taking care of his new duties. He checked the portfolios of charts the yacht was supplied with and discovered they were adequate except that no corrections had been made in them for almost a year. It was important that this be done from the Notices to Mariners, because they concerned such dangers as newly discovered reefs, rocks and floating derelicts. He made up his mind to start working on them as soon as possible.
Then the ship stood into Algiers harbor, picked up five passengers and got underway again. All during this time, the captain didn't put in an appearance and Dan had to handle the yacht.
When that was over, he made a tour of inspection, checking all safety devices. He found the fire-fighting equipment far below par: many of the hoses were actually rotten and the automatic sprinkling system was out of order. The lifeboats were in bad shape and not even properly stocked with supplies. These things were much more important than the charts, so he decided he'd better tell the Countess about it right away.
"Come in," Estella called in answer to his knock.
He opened the door and went in, but then stopped in embarrassment and shock.
Estella was sitting on one of the white couches with her red robe wide open. Her large, white breasts were bare, and Beth was lying across her lap kissing them. The redhead's dress was hiked halfway up her thighs, and Estella's hand was under it.
"Well, Dan," she said, grinning broadly. "Come on in."
"There's something important I have to talk to you about," Dan said, trying not to look directly at them.
"What is it, Danny?" the Countess asked, holding Beth tighter as she tried to sit up. "Don't just stand there looking shocked. Tell me what you want."
"It's about the safety equipment," Dan said tightly. "None of it is up to standard and we'll be in real trouble if...."
Estella waved him to silence. "Why bother me with details like that? Take it up with Captain Brock."
"Captain Brock has been drunk ever since I came aboard," Dan said. "He doesn't even know we're at sea, much less what condition the ship is in."
Estella continued to explore under Beth's skirt, and laughed as the girl jerked. "Then aren't we lucky to have such a competent first officer," she said.
"This is serious," Dan said. "You can't play around with safety on a ship and...."
"Oh, all right," Estella said impatiently. "Don't bore me with it. We'll have everything replaced when we get to Alexandria."
"We're a long way from Alexandria."
"I said, don't bore me, Dan!" Estella's voice cracked like a whip. "Take care of it yourself. You have my full confidence."
"Thanks," Dan said, his anger rising as Estella pushed Beth's blouse aside and leaned over to nip at the pink nipple with her large white teeth.
"You're looking shocked again," she said, watching him with amusement. "Are you really as shocked as you look?"
"No," Dan said. "I'm not shocked at all."
"You shouldn't be," Estella said, shifting her attention to the other breast. "Teaching an innocent babe like this the forbidden joys of Lesbian love is a novel experience ... and you know how I adore anything different."
Dan knew what he wanted to do; he wanted to drag Beth out of Estella's arms and beat the daylights out of both of them.
"Sit down, Dan," Estella said.
"No thank you, I'll leave," he grated. "I don't enjoy witnessing scenes like this."
"Sit down!" she commanded. "Don't forget, we're only an hour or so out of Algiers and I'm sure the police there would be only too happy to cooperate with those in Tangier."
Dan shrugged and tightened his lips.
Estella pushed Beth flat on her back and used both hands to massage and agitate the taut young breasts while keeping her eyes on Dan. "It would be very easy to turn around and go back."
"So? Are you going to do it?"
"I might," she said. "Perhaps I'll call the captain right now."
"You do that," Dan said, "and if you're lucky, you might find the captain sober enough to know what you're talking about."
"Don't push me, Dan," she said, color mounting in her face. "I can make the second mate, Mr. Turot, captain, and get the same results. It might be fun to see you dragged off to a Tangier jail."
She was in a dangerous mood, Dan saw, and changing his tactics, he grinned at her. "What kind of fun would that be?"
"My kind of fun," she said and leaned over to kiss Beth lingeringly. "But maybe I can think of something else that will be more fun."
Dan waited silently, not knowing what to expect.
"Dear little Beth, sweet little Beth, so loving, so sexy ... and so unfaithful," Estella murmured.
"But, mistress, how can you say that?" the girl asked, speaking for the first time since Dan entered the room. "You know I love only you."
Estella laughed nastily. "Yes, you love me and anyone else you can get. Isn't that right, Dan?"
"How the hell should I know?" Dan snapped.
"How the hell, indeed" Estella said. "Do you claim that you and this passionate little beast didn't have yourselves an orgy of lovemaking in the closet right outside my suite?"
Beth turned pleading eyes on him. "I don't know what you're talking about," Dan said.
"It doesn't matter whether you tell me or not. I know you did," Estella said, and pushed the half-nude girl away from her. "Hanson! Hanson, come in here!"
The hulking steward came through the door instantly, moving with cat-like quickness for so huge a man.
"Hanson, tell me again what happened outside my room yesterday."
"Sure, Countess," Hanson grinned. "I was watching your cabin door from mine across the passageway just like I always do. Mr Salem here came out and the girl followed him. She rubbed up against him and whispered to him-You know, trying to sex him up-and pretty soon they went in the room with the cleaning equipment and...." he paused and licked his thick lips.
"Go on," Estella said impatiently. "What did they do after that?"
"Well, I looked through the keyhole," Hanson said, his tiny pig eyes traveling lustfully over Beth. "There was enough light in there that I could see he was romping her ... and she was begging for more."
"Why, you stinking...." Dan yelled, and started for him.
Hanson reached for his holster but Dan didn't stop. He was ready to push the gun down the man's throat and feed him the bullets for dessert.
"Stop it, Dan!" Estella said quietly. "Stop it or I'll make that telephone call."
Dan stopped a foot or so short of the man, and stood clenching and unclenching his fists.
"And so," Estella said, "my dear little Beth, this sweet little creature of mine, has been making love with another of my creatures."
Beth cowered at the woman's feet, looking up at her terrified. "Please, mistress, I didn't mean anything."
"Didn't you, dear?" Estella's eyes glittered with fury. "You two had your pleasure and you did it behind my back!"
"It wasn't anything. It didn't mean anything," Beth babbled.
"Whether it did or not, you're going to pay for it," the Countess said. "It's not so much I mind what you did, but you were so selfish about it. You didn't share it with me. You didn't ask me to join you."
Dan's mouth dropped open in astonishment. This woman must be completely mad.
"Hanson," Estella said quietly.
"Yes, ma'am?"
"I am displeased with Beth, Hanson."
"Yes, ma'am!" Hanson said, his brutish face lighting up as he started toward the terrified girl.
Beth tried to crawl away, but he caught her and twisted her arm up behind her back.
"She has displeased me very much," Estella said.
"Yes, Countess," Hanson said, grinning happily. He drew back his fist and drove it into Beth's face.
That was all Dan could take. He went for him, catching him with a right against the ear, knocking him away from Beth and belting him another in the mouth as he tried to get up. He raised his fist again...."
"Dan! Dan Salem!" Estella yelled.
He looked at her and saw she was holding the telephone in her hand. "You stop that this instant!" she said. "Let Hanson do his job or I'll make the call right now!"
Dan didn't even answer. He just clouted Hanson with another right.
The Countess dropped the telephone and clapped her hands together loudly.
One of the inner doors was flung open and Terri and Olga came charging through. They were both carrying guns and had them leveled right at Dan.
"Now stop it!" the Countess ordered. "Stop it this minute!"
Dan looked at the guns and estimated his chance of making a dive for one of them, but decided against it. Olga was a female elephant with a punch that could probably stop Sonny Liston, and Terri was lean and quick on her feet. Either one of them could put several bullets into him before he got near enough to wrest the gun from the other one.
"Okay," Dan said, backing away from the groggy Hanson, "You win this round."
A peal of laughter broke from Estella's lips. "I won this round, Dan, and I'll win the next one too."
"We'll see about that."
Estella turned to Terri. "Where are the handcuffs?"
The blonde took the steel bracelets from a pocket of her jeans and dangled them in front of her.
"Good. Put them on Mr. Salem," Estella ordered.
Terri stepped forward, grinning thinly. Dan doubled up his fists and moved back. Olga was beside Terri in a flash, her forty-five aimed at Dan's middle.
"You effer see vat one of these do to a man, Mr. Salem?" she asked.
"Yeah, I've seen it," Dan said resignedly, and held out his hands.
As soon as Dan was handcuffed and the two female guards took their places on either side of him, Estella turned to Hanson again.
"Very well, Hanson, you may go ahead with what you were doing."
Hanson got to his feet, blood running from his liverish lips, his beady eyes glaring balefully at Dan. He didn't even look at the girl on the floor, he just started throwing fists at Dan. The first blow struck Dan over the left eye and he backed away with stars exploding in his face. The second one knocked him to his knees and the third and fourth rocked him back and forth.
'No, no!" Estella raged at Hanson. "It's the girl I want punished."
Hanson stopped and turned away from Dan, the gleam of hate in his eyes changing to anticipated pleasure. Dan wanted to get up but his head was still ringing, and he knew he couldn't do anything to stop the brute now, so he fell forward on his face and lay still.
Beth whimpered as Hanson yanked her to her feet and backhanded her twice with his ham of a hand. She fell backward and her skirt slithered up around her waist. Temporarily stunned, she lay with her legs spread, and Dan could see white thighs and tightly fitting pink panties. As she tried to sit up, Hanson hit her again and she fell back, blood trickling from her mouth.
Dan yelled in frustration and rage and tried to struggle to his feet, but Olga leaned over him with one knee in his back and the forty-five at the base of his skull. "Be still and enjoy the fun," she said.
"You lousy sadistic witch!" Dan glowered at Estella.
"You'll pay for this some day."
Estella threw him one of her wolfish smiles and nodded to Hanson. "Go on. Don't pay any attention to him, but can't you think of some more amusing way of punishing the girl than just a simple beating?"
Hanson looked at the Countess with slowly dawning comprehension. "You mean I can...?"
"You can do anything you want to punish her, so long as it entertains me." Her black eyes were sparkly with excitement.
"You mean I got to do it in front of you?"
"Naturally. How else could I enjoy it?"
"Sure, that's right," the big brute said, and unbuckled his belt.
"Mistress, please ... not that!" Beth cried, and dragged herself to Estella and clutched her legs. She kissed the woman's feet and calves and knees. "Please ... please, don't let him do that!"
Estella looked down at the frightened girl and smiled. "But you've been bad, Beth. You disobeyed me. You're not as well trained as I thought you were, and you need to be punished."
"No, no, Estella," Beth sobbed. "Please, I'll never disobey you again!"
"But can't you see it's for your own good, dear? This is the kind of lesson that will make you into the type of good girl I like to have around-good girls who do as I say instantly, without question."
"Please...."
"Take her, Hanson," Estella said.
"Some women wouldn't think of it as punishment," Hanson said, grinning evilly, "I know a few who'd consider it just the opposite." He grabbed Beth by the hair and dragged her away from Estella, then pushed her down on the thickly carpeted floor. With one hand he grasped her skirt and ripped it away. Beth screamed and tried to roll away from him, but he got hold of the waistband of her panties and tore them off with another jerk.
Dan was shouting curses at both Estella and the man, but neither of them even glanced at him. Hanson was staring down at Beth's lush young beauty and Estella was watching them with her scarlet lips parted and her black eyes aflame.
Holding the girl still with one hand, Hanson took off his belt with the other. She thrashed and kicked at him and he hit her in the face. Her red head fell back then and she lay staring up at him in horror.
"Come on, pretty girl, it won't be so bad," he said, forcing her legs apart. "You'll like it once we get started."
"Stop it!" Dan yelled. "Damn it, stop!" He buried his head in the carpet to shut out the sight.
"You look," Olga said, burying her fingers in his hair and forcing his head up. "You looked and haff fun like the rest of us."
Beth was still struggling, but she was obviously helpless against the brute strength of the man. His heavy body pressed down on her and his ugly mouth stifled her moans. In a moment he would take her. In a moment he would....
"That's enough, Hanson," Estella's voice was low and quiet. "We've had enough fun for now."
Hanson stared up at the Countess, his face distorted with lust. "What? What did you say?"
"I said for you to stop," Estella said, moving toward him. "Get away from her!"
"No! You can't do this to me. You can't!" There was red rage in Hanson's face as he glared at Estella.
"Can't I?" the Countess said. "I think you're mistaken, Hanson. I can and I will do anything I want to, and if you ever for a moment doubt it, you'll be in serious trouble."
There was a lash to the voice that cut through to Hanson's lust-filled brain, and he got up quickly and let Beth
"I didn't mean anything, Countess," he gulped. "It's just that...."
"Very well, you may go," Estella cut him off, and with one more longing look at Beth he left.
Beth crawled to the Countess and sobbed at her feet, and the woman bent over and raised her head. "You see, my dear, I'm never more cruel than I have to be."
"Thank you, mistress," Beth wept and rained kisses on Estella's legs in spite of her cut, bleeding lips.
"Poor child ... poor, dear child," Estella crooned, and helped her to her feet. "You really must go and wash yourself off. We have guests for dinner tonight and I want you to look your best."
Beth smiled through her tears and ran from the room.
Dan had struggled to a sitting position and looked at the Countess with hate in his eyes.
She caught the look and laughed. "Still angry, Dan? Still angry at your hard-hearted employer? After all, I didn't let it happen, did I? I stopped him at the vital moment. I felt like the hero arriving just in time to save the heroine from the lusts of the beastly villain."
"After what you put her through, you may as well have let him go through with it."
She showed her large teeth in a brilliant smile. "But I didn't let the nasty monster have the sweet young thing, did I? I didn't let him soil her."
"She's already been soiled by a much worse monster than Hanson," Dan said. "A monster named Estella de Lorca."
Estella kept her smile but her face darkened as she walked toward him. "You shouldn't have said that, Dan. Some day you're going to make me angry enough to punish you like I punished Beth."
Dan looked up at her as she stood over him. He had an excellent view of the long, sleekly muscled legs, and much as he hated her, he could not help the stir of desire that swept through him.
She read the look correctly and the anger went out of her eyes and she laughed. "Dan, you and I are a lot alike. We're both ruled by our passions. The only difference is that I have the will and the power to take the things I want and you haven't."
"The only thing I want right now is to get my hands around your throat!" Dan snarled.
"Is that all, darling? That seems like a simple enough wish. Perhaps I'll let you. It would be a new thrill for me. Imagine, a man's hands around my throat, squeezing slowly ... squeezing...."
"You're crazy as a loon," Dan said.
"Perhaps, and perhaps not. Perhaps I only realize how short life is, and know that those who don't delve into every facet of it go to their graves cheated."
Dan shook his head. Was there no way to get through to her?
"Would you really kill me if you had the chance?"
"You'd see soon enough if I did," Dan growled.
"Maybe I'll give you the chance. I think I'll do it right now, while the rage is still in you. Terri, unlock the handcuffs, and then you and Olga leave us."
"But, mistress, he might...." Terri objected.
"Do as I tell you!"
In a moment Dan's hands were free and the two females had gone.
"So, Dan," Estella said. "We are alone."
"Yeah, and your two hoods are just outside the door waiting to burst in at the first sound."
She smiled conspiratorially. "I wouldn't scream if you had the nerve to strangle me. I'd be too fascinated by the new sensation to scream."
"You're insane-absolutely insane."
"That's what you keep telling me," she said, "but right now we're conducting a little experiment."
"Oh, go to hell," Dan said wearily.
"I will, darling, and I'll probably have a wonderful time there." She opened her robe wide and let his eyes rove over her. "Here I am, Dan. Do what you want with me."
He was intensely aware of the animal magnetism emanating from her, and of her fantastic beauty. He wanted to look away but couldn't.
"Well?" she said, her voice low and mocking, "you're not going to disappoint me, are you, Dan?"
Dan turned his head away and she knelt beside him and, taking his hands, placed them on her neck. "Here, I'll help you. There's my throat and your big, strong hands could crush it so easily."
The musky woman smell of her mixed with the heady perfume she wore was almost suffocating him. "Come on, Dan," she taunted, "do what you threatened. Remember the awful things I've done to you and dear little Beth. Strangle me like you want to."
His fingers curled around her neck and he could feel the pulse beating under the smooth skin. Part of him willed his fingers to tighten, but he knew they never would. Estella had a hold over him that had nothing to do with her knowledge of the crime he was charged with.
"Damn you, damn you!" he said, taking his hands away.
She caught his hands as they fell. "If that isn't what you want, Dan," she half whispered, "maybe this is. And she pressed his palms hard against her magnigicent breasts. "Is it, Dan, is it?"
"Yes, damn your soul to hell, you know it is!" Dan said, kneading the throbbing flesh.
"I knew it" she said, and threw herself at him, forcing him flat on the floor. "You want that and more-much more."
Somehow, between them, they got his clothing off, and she tossed her robe aside. Then her mouth and body were trying to devour him.
"That is what life is all about, Dan," she whispered. "That is all there is to living. The rest is nothing but stupid lies."
Her belly and thighs were grinding into him and his body responded of its own accord. Her swelling buttocks were twisting and rotating in frantic rhythm, and everything was driven out of Dan's mind except the overpowering woman in his arms.
"Love me, Dan. Love me as you've never loved anyone before," she husked, her hair falling in an ebony cascade over her face while her heaving body strove to draw every ounce of strength and virility from him. "There isn't anything else to live for, Dan. Remember that and really live for once!"
Dan heard her and for the moment believed.
CHAPTER NINE
As the hot Mediterranean sun beat down day after day, the yacht Vesuvius crept along the coast of North Africa toward Egypt and the Suez Canal. Dan lived through those days in a half daze. He stood his watches and performed his other official duties plus some of the captain's, and in addition took care of his unofficial duties in the owner's suite.
Then one afternoon as he was shaving, his telephone rang and he learned he must extend himself still more.
"Are you busy, Dan?" Estella's voice asked.
"No. I just came off watch. I'll be right down."
"Fine, but don't come to my cabin."
"What?"
"Lady Sylvia Ashmore is in cabin five," she said. "That's nice," he said, "but what's it got to do with me?"
"Lady Sylvia is bored. She's grown tired of the Arab cabin boy who's been entertaining her up to the present. Now she wants a man."
"So why don't you send her Hanson?" Dan asked.
"I'm afraid that wouldn't work, darling," Estella said. "Even a woman with Sylvia's sexual appetite would find Hanson's too much. It'll have to be you, I'm afraid."
"But I don't even know the woman," Dan protested.
"You will. You'll know her very well, shortly."
"I have something to say about that."
"No, you haven't." The whiplash was back in Estella's voice. "And, Dan, if you're not in Lady Ashmore's cabin in fifteen minutes, you'll be in serious trouble."
Ten minutes later, Dan was knocking on the door of cabin five. The woman who opened it was small and bird-like, with bright eyes and silver-blue hair. She appeared to be about fifty and was dressed in a blue peignoir.
"I'm Dan Salem, Lady Ashmore."
The woman's bright eyes ran over his tall frame like eager hands. "My, my, you're quite a man, Mr. Salem."
Dan shrugged and said nothing.
"Don't let me keep you standing there. Come in, dear boy, come in."
Dan stepped into the room reluctantly, but he was already somewhat relieved by the woman's appearance and manner. He didn't like the idea of playing stud to Estella's guests any more than he had before, but at least it looked like he could get through this episode without too much revulsion.
Lady Sylvia put her hands on his arms and dug her fingers into his muscles. "You're strong too, aren't you? I like strong men."
"That's nice," Dan said inanely.
She guided him toward a couch at one end of the room. "It was awfully nice of Estella to send me someone like you."
"Yeah," he said, "Estella's an awfully nice person."
"She is indeed," the woman said, not getting the sarcasm. Her fingers were busy with the buttons of his shirt and her eyes got even brighter as she touched bare skin and felt the hair on his chest. "Oh, you're hairy! That means you're very virile, doesn't it? Are you really virile, Mr. Salem?"
"Well, I've never had any complaints."
The woman tittered, and one hot hand found its way under his belt and caressed the flat of his stomach.
"So young ... and so strong," she murmured. "I'm going to like this, I just know I am."
"Yeah ... sure," Dan said and leaned back and let the hands do what they wanted.
"I do so enjoy these cruises of Estella's," Lady Ashmore said. "She always finds the perfect entertainment for a poor, bored widow."
"Uh huh," Dan said as she draped herself across him, letting the peignoir fall open so he could see slender, nylon-clad legs and jewel-studded supporters attached to a black, tightly laced merry widow.
She pressed tightly against him and raised her halfopen mouth to be kissed. Dan closed his eyes and lowered his head and felt her mouth lock with his. That mouth was hungry and knowledgeable, and in a moment he was returning the kiss with interest, plunging his tongue beyond her lips to tangle with hers.
"I like that," she sighed, kissing him again while she opened his belt and searched until she found what she wanted. "Ohhh, Dan, you're going to be good. Aren't you going to be good for poor Sylvia?"
"I'll do my damnedest," he said, pushing the silky cloth down off her shoulders and baring her breasts. Lifted up as they were by the merry widow, they appeared quite full and firm, and the brownish nipples blossomed the instant his lips touched them.
"Wonderful, wonderful," she said, holding his head between her hands as his mouth traveled from the tip of one excited breast to the other. "Yes, do that ... like that ... with your tongue ... against the nipple ... ahhhhhhh."
Dan dropped a hand to her knee and let it find its way up under the lacy bottom of the merry widow. Lady Ashmore moaned and squirmed and drew in a long shuddering breath as his fingers reached their goal.
"Oh, Dan, be nice to me," she begged, sliding down on her back and tugging at him.
Dan got rid of his pants and moved to her. "I'll be as nice as I know how," he said as her legs surrounded him and she thrust up to meet him.
He pressed down hard and her breath whoosed out past his ear, but she hung on, digging her fingers into the muscles of his back and pulling him closer.
"Good ... good ... good," she sang, and they began the age-old ritual of love.
As their tempo increased, Dan was amazed at the violent assault she made on his body. Her movements were artful and contrived but they had a devastating effect on a man. She seemed intent on drowning him in her flesh and at the same time drawing all his life and strength from him. Taken aback for a moment, he paused, but then reflecting that any man who could satisfy Estella could satisfy any woman, he renewed his efforts and gave her back more than he received.
Sylvia Ashmore shrieked her fulfillment to the four walls and went limp under him. Dan moved a few more times to attain his own satisfaction, and then collapsed on top of her.
After a few minutes of breathless silence, Lady Ashmore said, "How would you like to go back to England with me, Dan?"
"Well, I've signed on for the full voyage," Dan said, not thinking it wise to tell her about the prison sentence Estella held over his head.
"I have a lovely old house in Kent with huge, comfortable beds in every bedroom," she said. "We could spend a night in each of them and explore all the delicious and unusual byways of sexual joy."
Dan smiled to himself. To suggest to someone in the clutches of Estella de Lorca that he explore oddball sex practices was like carrying coals to Newcastle. Surely no one had dreamed up anything she hadn't knowledge of.
"I've also got a lot of money," Sylvia continued.
"Oh?" Dan encouraged her.
"Poor Lord Ashmore worked very hard for twenty-five years accumulating a fortune, and left it all to me. Frankly, I can't think of a better way to spend it than paying you ... say, a hundred pounds ... for every time you satisfied me."
Dan did some quick calculating and decided a guy could run up a pretty good stake in a short time at a hundred pounds a throw. Maybe even enough to hire a lawyer to get him out of the mess he was in. It was something to think about, especially since Lady Ashmore wasn't too hard to take in spite of her age.
"Maybe after this cruise is over," he said tentatively.
"The offer will be open any time you care to take me up on it," she said, running her fingers through his hair.
"Okay, I'll let you know," he said, reaching for his clothes.
The woman's hand tightened in his hair. "You're not going yet, are you, lover?"
"I have some work to do on the bridge."
"You have some work to do here too," she said. "I'm not a woman who's content with only one time, lover. If we're going to become good friends, you'll have to understand that."
Dan let her pull him down onto the couch again, wondering if earning one hundred pounds every time would be as easy as it sounded.
"Dan, dear, dear, Dan," Sylvia whispered, pressing her naked breasts against his face. "Show me how you make love to Estella."
An hour later, Dan was buttoning his shirt and closing Lady Ashmore's door behind him. His mind was still on the offer she had made. Maybe there was some way he could work it out. A man could work a lot harder for a lot less money, and the English woman didn't seem to have any of Estella's viciousness.
Dan slowed his steps as a door halfway down the passageway opened and Terri stood looking back into the cabin. Estella's blonde alter ego was as free of clothing as the day she had been born, except for a pair of bikini-like panties. A man's arm was around Terri and his hand was under the panties, cupping her muscular bottom. Standing on the other side of her was a tall, plump, brassy-haired woman wearing nothing but a bra and garter belt. Her hands were moving caressingly over Terri's breasts.
"You'll come back and visit us again real soon, won't you, Terri gal?" the man was saying in a soft Texas drawl.
The big Texan kissed her fondly and so did the woman.
"Of course I will," Terri assured him. "We had a real fine time, darlin'," she said, "but then we always have a real fine time with you."
The door closed and Terri started down the corridor, but turned and looked back as she heard Dan's footsteps behind her. She smiled wryly as his eyes swept over her nearly nude body. "I'm afraid my clothes got pretty baclly torn up in there," she said. "So I'll just have to make it this way."
"Yeah, sure," he said.
"Those are the Gibbons," she went on. "A texas oil millionaire and his wife. They get their kicks with threeway deals only."
"Three-way deals?"
"Yes, with a woman they can both make love to at the same time," Terri explained. "It's one of the most interesting variations of sex you'll find on the good ship Vesuvius, Mr. Salem."
"You don't seem to mind it"
"Of course not," she said. "I haven't been with the Countess all this time without learning to like my sex any way I get it. I was just wondering how little Beth will like it the Gibbons' way."
She started to turn away but Dan grabbed her bare shoulder. "What did you say?"
"I said I wondered how Beth will like the type of loving John and Martha Gibbon enjoy."
"Is there any reason to think she'd have to like or dislike it?"
Terri shook off his hand and looked at him unsmilingly. "You certainly do worry about that sexy little redhead, don't you, Mr. Salem?"
"Answer my question!"
"Of course there's a reason. She's part of the entertainment on this cruise, and that means Estella may send her to any cabin at any time of the day or night to take part in any form of sex a guest desires."
Dan grabbed her arm and dug his fingers in painfully. "I want to know all about this. What has Estella forced her to do?"
Terri looked down at his hand. "Let go of me. If you're making a pass, come around some other time. The Gibbons have me pretty well worn out for the time being."
"I'm not making a pass and you know it," Dan grated. "I just want to know if Beth has to visit any of these cabins."
"No, not yet," the blonde said, and her voice was bitter. "Right now Estella is too taken with her to share her. She won't even let me have her."
Dan's sigh of relief died in his throat as she added, "Don't worry, though, it won't last. Estella's fascinations seldom last more than a week or so. Beth will be making the rounds of the guest cabins just like we are before long."
She turned away and Dan stood staring after her, his mind in a turmoil. "I've got to get Beth off this ship," he said to himself. "Somehow, I've got to get her away from here."
But how? That was the question. Both of them were faced with murder charges. The fact that they hadn't committed murder was of little consequence if they should be dragged before a court in Tangier. With all the power of Estella de Lorca arrayed against them, they wouldn't have a chance.
But maybe if they left the ship at Alexandria and hired a good lawyer ... but where would they get the money to do it? Where would they find the amount of money they'd need to fight Estella?
Dan shrugged helplessly. There was always Lady Ashmore, of course, but wasn't that just exchanging one female owner for another? Maybe so, but at least Beth would be out of Estella's clutches. He'd keep it in mind, and if he couldn't think of anything else....
The yacht was steering a course only twenty or thirty miles from the coast of North Africa. If he and Beth could get a lifeboat over the side on a dark night, they shouldn't have too much trouble making it ashore.
But the boats were a problem. Only three of them were in any kind of condition to be trusted even in calm seas. Nor were they adequately stocked. Well, he could see that provisions were put on board in any case. Yes, that's what he'd do. As soon as he got to the bridge, he'd have the boatswain up there get after it.
Dan checked that next day and made sure his orders had been carried out. With the crew they had on board, he wondered how anything got done, especially since Captain Brock still hadn't left his quarters and the second mate couldn't have served as officer on a garbage scow.
Supplies had been put in them, but there wasn't anything he could do about the condition of the boats. He picked out the one that seemed strongest and checked the davits, making sure they were in working order so he could get it over the side in a hurry when and if an opportunity presented itself.
Then he decided he ought to talk to Beth. Maybe he was wasting his time. Maybe she wasn't interested in leaving the Vesuvius if she could.
She occupied a small cabin next to Estella's suite, he knew, and he'd have to be careful he wasn't seen. He'd better wait until he came off the eight-to-twelve watch.
It turned out to be a tired, exasperating watch. Not only did he have to keep a constant eye on the Egyptian quartermaster's course, but the engine room needed constant prodding to keep up the revolutions he needed to maintain speed. He couldn't understand how they managed to stay at sea with the incompetents they had aboard, but somehow they did. He wondered how it had been on previous cruises, and decided maybe the captain had shown up on the bridge once in a while before he had a first officer to push everything onto.
When the third mate showed up to relieve him ten minutes late, Dan was in a rage. Only the prospect of his talk with Beth kept him from throwing the man overboard.
He made his way down to the owner's part of the ship and descended the ladder to the lower deck. He tiptoed past Estella's door, wondering what was going on in there. He'd have been willing to bet it was nothing that would have been encouraged at a young ladies' finishing school.
He knocked lightly on Beth's door and waited for a full minute before knocking again. Wasn't she there? Damn it, was she with Estella? Was she....
"Who is it?" Beth's voice sounded sleepy.
"It's me, kid," he said softly. "Dan Salem."
"Go away!" The voice was frightened now. "I want to talk to you."
"Well, I don't want to talk to you. Go away before she hears you."
"This is important, Beth. Open the door."
"Please, Dan, go away. Do you want the same thing to happen to me as it did before?"
"Beth, listen. I've got to see you, just for a minute."
"No! I don't want anything more to do with you!"
"Why not, for crying out loud?"
"Because I hate you. I hate you for what happened to
"Aw, come on, baby. You know damn well I had nothing to do with that," he said. "I'd have taken any kind of beating to keep you from harm, don't you know that?"
The door opened a crack and she peeked out. Dan put his weight against it and pushed it open before she could close it again.
She backed away from him, holding a shimmering white negligee tightly around her. Her violet eyes were wide as she stared at him. "If I could only believe you meant
"But I do mean it," he said, feeling his pulses speed up at the sight of her luscious little figure through the almost transparent material.
"if you do, maybe someday we can be friends again," she said. "Not now, it's too soon after...." She shuddered " ... after what happened. But maybe, someday...."
Seeing her like this, all disheveled and warm from the bed, erased every thought but one from Dan's mind. She was the most desirable, beautiful woman he had ever known, and he wanted her.
"We're going to be more than friends," he said huskily, locking the door behind him and advancing on her. "And it's not going to be someday. It's going to be now."
"Dan ... Dan," she said, backing away from him, fear in her eyes again. "Please, Dan, you know what happened the last time. I couldn't stand that again."
"This time is different," Dan said. "There's no Hanson outside the door now, and neither he nor Estella will know what we do tonight."
"I know, but she frightens me so. She's like a witch. She seems to know everything I do or even think."
"No, no, baby. She's only an evil, vicious woman. There's nothing supernatural about her."
She stopped moving away from him and he pulled her into his arms, feeling a rush of unexpected tenderness as he pressed her against him and tilted her head back so he could kiss her. She resisted for a moment and then her lips were warm and gently yielding under his. His heart thudded and pounded in his chest and he breathed with difficulty.
"Beth," he whispered, kissing her eyes and her nose and then her clinging, irresistible lips again.
"Darling, darling," she sighed, sliding her arms around his neck and snuggling closer.
After another deep, spinet-tingling kiss, Dan held her away and looked at her. The negligee had loosened and now it fell open, revealing the spectacular beauty of her hips still partially concealed by sheer white panties.
"What a woman!" he breathed. "What a beautiful goddess of a woman!" His mouth ran down the line of her neck to the valley of snow between her breasts, then slowly climbed one of the pink-tipped mountains and found a throbbing nipple waiting for his lips.
His tongue licked out at the sweet-tasting peak and it quivered and stood straight up. He drew it gently between his lips and rolled it back and forth while Beth moaned and locked her hands in his hair.
"Ohhh, Dan, that feels so good. There's nothing else in the world like it. I go crazy when you do that. You send me more than anybody."
"More than Estella?" he asked jealously. "More than Terri, or that Pierre you used to keep?"
"Yes ... yes," she said, and then all in a rush "He did other things too. I told you-like women do-but it didn't feel like this."
"You like those other things they do?"
"Yes, I like it. I can't seem to help myself and I like it a lot, but it's not like with you. There's never been anyone like you."
"I'm glad," he said, "because there's never been anyone like you for me either. I'm almost always ready for a woman-some woman, any woman-and mostly it's good, sometimes sensational, but you get to me down deep where no one ever has before ... Beth ... Beth."
The melons of her breasts were swelling and throbbing with the force of her emotion. "Oh, Dan, take me. Take me," she said.
His lips were working at her breasts while his hands slid down her smooth slides and under the filmy panties to press deep into the firm flesh of her buttocks. "In a minute," he said, dropping to his knees and drawing the panties down so he could kiss her warm, soft belly.
MAhhhhh, Dan ... you'll drive me crazy," she gasped.
"That's the way I want you," he whispered, slipping the scrap of nylon down her legs and off, then kissing his way back up to her thighs. "I want you as crazy for me as I am for you."
Her hands were tearing at his shirt, hardly able to open the buttons she was trembling so. He stood up and skinned out of the rest of his clothes quickly before pulling her tight against him again. Her whole rounded length was thrust up to him wildly, sending delightful ripples of passion through his whole being. His lips played with hers and his tongue darted in and out of her blood-red, moist mouth.
"I can't wait," she panted as his lips ran down the side of her neck, over the smooth slopes of her shoulders and onto the full tops of her breasts.
"Yes, you can," he murmured, determined to bring her to the highest pitch of excitement she could bear before giving her what she wanted.
She shut her eyes and leaned back, holding onto his shoulders, while his hands did things to her that brought gasps and moans of surprise and pleasure to her lips.
"Dan, darling don't. I can't stand it. Please don't tease me, darling."
"I'm not teasing you," he said, drinking in the loveliness of her exquisite body swaying and undulating with longing for him. "I'm not teasing you. I'm loving you."
"Then love me. Love me all the way ... please, darling, love me with all of you," she begged as his fingers found and caressed every sensitive, erogenous spot on her body.
Dan picked her up and carried her the few steps to the bed, put her down tenderly and stretched out beside her. They reached for each other with hands, lips, legs and arms and slid together like interlocking parts of a puzzle. They were together and Dan had the most complete and wonderful feeling of oneness that he had ever known.
"Beth ... Beth," was all he could say.
"Ohhh, Dan, this is worth it," she whispered past his ear as they began to move at the same moment. "This is worth anything that may happen because of it. It's worth whatever Estella does to me if she finds out."
Her rounded little rear bounced up off the mattress in an apparent determination to pound its way through him.
Dan laughed a throaty laugh of lusty enjoyment and gave himself over to answering the demand of her ravenous thighs and belly. She groaned with joyous abandon and pulled him closer with both hands on his rump.
"Oh, God!" Dan gasped, and his mouth moved hers.
There was no more talk and almost no thought from then on, as the world pinwheeled around them and dumped thousands of multi-colored stars to explode within them.
CHAPTER TEN
"Where shall we live when we get married?" Beth asked an hour or so later as they lay side by side enjoying a delicious sense of relaxation and shared intimacy.
"Who said I was going to marry you?" Dan asked lazily.
"You did," she said calmly, "Some time or other while we were ... sometime in the middle of loving me."
"Did I say that? Well, I was probably being unduly influenced. No court in the land would hold me to it, I'm sure."
"I wouldn't try to hold you to it in court," she whispered, brushing his ear with her lips. "I'd just get you in bed and then I could make you say anything I wanted you to."
He laughed. "I'll bet you could at that."
She sobered, and a frown creased her brow. "But first I guess we'll have to get off this ship," she said.
Dan raised up on one elbow and smoothed the frown away. "That's really what I came here to talk to you about tonight," he said.
"Talk? Are you kidding? You had only one thing on your mind when you got here."
"Not until I came through that door," he said. "Up until that moment, I thought all I wanted was to talk about our getting away in a lifeboat and making for the coast."
"Could we do that?"
"Sure. I've already picked out the boat," he said, "and seen that supplies were put aboard."
"But you know what Estella's like. You know what she'd do if she caught us."
"She won't catch us."
"I don't know," she said fearfully. Even if she didn't, what could we do? We've both got murder charges hanging over our heads, and no money. I don't see how we'd get by."
"We'll manage," he said. "We'll find ourselves an island and settle down. I'll get hold of a fishing boat and we'll live on fish and love."
"That sounds wonderful," she said, putting her arms around his neck and kissing him hard on the lips. Her breasts pushed into his chest and again he felt the tingling in his arms and legs that told him he wanted her.
"And you know what I'll do the first six months?" he asked. "I'll spend every minute of it in bed exploring my wife's gorgeous naked body."
"Oh, darling," she sighed as their bodies slid together again. "I won't put any clothes on for a whole year if you want."
"I want," he husked as his hands found the twin delights of her breasts and his mouth covered hers with burning eagerness.
"Will it be as good this time as it was the last?" she asked. "Or is that too much to ask?"
"It'll be better," he promised. "So much better that the first time will seem like nothing."
Her violet eyes widened with love and anticipation.
"This time we'll try every variation and refinement. This time I'll know you as no man has ever known a woman before."
"Oh, yes, I'd like that," Beth said, lying back across the bed with her arms above her head. Her large young breasts strained upward as she arched her back and eyed him provacatively.
Dan moved close and kissed her deeply, using his tongue and lips to tease and excite her. His hands began their play over her body, squeezing her breasts gently, caressing the faint roundness of her stomach and trailing his fingers along the deep line down the middle of it to the swelling of her hips and upper thighs. His lips left her mouth and pressed a kiss into the hollow where her pulse beat under the translucent skin before moving on to play over the snowy mounds with their rosy nipples. He closed his mouth over the whole point of one breast, tightening his lips and prodding with his tongue until he brought a long, sighing moan from her.
His hands on her thighs stroked the soft doeskin and glided around to cup the full buttocks and pull her closer. Slowly, he began to fondle and kiss her.
This was more leisurely lovemaking. He led her tenderly up toward the pinnacle of desire, exciting her fully so that her sensitive body could blossom and enjoy the delightful sensations.
Beth moaned softly as he taught her the meaning of love with a man. She had never dreamed a man would have the knowledge or willingness to send her into spirals of pleasure, let her drift sweetly down and then subtly claim her once more and push her to even greater heights. Then, as she floated on a cloud of pure passion, he took her.
Her hands clutched him and held him as though she would never let him go. "Ohhhh. Do that some more. No one ever told me it could be like this. I never knew love could be made like this."
"Love is a lot of things," he whispered, "And I want to teach them all to you."
"Yes ... yes, Dan, teach me."
Dan's own desire was mounting rapidly but he struggled to hold it back so he could please her, and in pleasing her, intensify and heighten his own fulfillment. He wanted this to be the best, the most perfect experience of their lives.
He wanted to wipe away everything connected with Estella from both their minds.
Beth's frantic movements were making it almost impossible for him to continue his slow, deliberate lovemaking, but he held her firmly with his fingers pressed into her buttocks and exerted himself to raise her to plateaus of passion beyond her most fantastic dreams.
"Dan ... darling ... Dan" she half screamed, and her body jerked spasmodically and her thighs locked.
As he felt her go limp, Dan let his own passion boil over and began to take her with lustful fury. Beth lay passive for a few moments and then as his virility began to stir her, she ground her whole body up against his and demanded more and more.
They clung and moved as one, savoring every delicious second. Neither of them tried to stem the steady stream of endearments, moans and pleadings that came from their lips. Fulfillment came to both of them at almost the same instant and they relaxed against each other. They murmured drowsily and fell asleep still locked in each other's arms.
Dan woke with a start and glanced at his wrist watch. It was almost four in the morning, and he figured it would be a safe time to get out of Beth's cabin without danger of running into Estella, although it was hard to figure what time that vampire went to sleep.
He got up quietly, so as not to disturb Beth, and put on his clothes. He bent over her for a moment and his heart almost stopped at the incredible beauty of her. It was only the knowledge that he had to report on watch at eight that kept him from crawling back in bed with her.
He was outside the door and closing it when he remembered that Beth had never agreed to his plan to lower a boat over the side and make a break for it. He almost turned back, but a slight noise in the darkened passageway hurried him on his way.
Stepping as silently as he could and carrying his shoes in his hand, he headed for the ladder and emerged up on deck beneath the star-filled Mediterranean sky. A sound behind him made him whirl, and he saw a hulking shadow against the opposite rail.
"Aren't you up a little late, Mr. Salem?" Hanson's insinuating voice reached him.
"I don't know that it's any of your business," Dan said, moving toward the man cautiously. If Hanson had seen them, if he knew about him and Beth, this was it! Hanson would go over the side. All it would take was a brief struggle in the pre-dawn blackness and it was doubtful if anyone would hear it. The way the lookouts stood watch on this tub, no one would ever be the wiser.
"No, it's not any of my business," Hanson said. "I couldn't care less how late you and the Countess pound the mattress. In fact, I wish someone would break her back for her."
The man's bitterness saved his life. Obviously he assumed Dan had been with Estella, and as long as he thought that, he was no menace to Beth. Dan relaxed and moved on past him.
"I thought the Countess was the be-all and end-all of your life," he said. "I thought you worshiped her."
"I did," the man said, "I did until what she did to me the other day."
Dan didn't prolong the conversation, and it was only after he was back in his own cabin that it occurred to him to wonder if Hanson hadn't noticed his shoes in his hand. Wouldn't he think it peculiar that Dan would be sneaking out of Estella's cabin?
"Damn it," he said to himself, "I should have killed him while I had the chance-just for good luck."
He got in his bunk and lay staring at the overhead for a long time, thinking of Beth and their chances of getting off the ship. He knew she was frightened, not only of being caught and punished but of what would happen if they did get away. And he had to admit, that did present a problem. They would need help, they would need money, they would need lawyers and somewhere to live until they got out of their present jam.
There was only one person he knew who had money enough to provide all of that. Lady Sylvia Ashmore. Maybe Sylvia would help him save Beth. That was a hell of an idea and he smiled to himself. Make a bargain to make love to one woman because you were in love with another one. It was a funny life.
Dan held a fire drill the next day and it scared the hell out of him. Captain Brock ignored it and the second mate took fifteen minutes to reach his post. None of the passengers bothered to come topside and the crew either dogged it or got tangled up in their own feet.
He summoned the boatswain to the bridge afterward and lit into him. "What kind of seaman do you call yourself? What kind of deck crew have you got down there? They don't even know how to run out a hose line."
The big scarred Algerian shrugged his heavy shoulders. "What good to run out hose? They all rotten. If ship catch fire, she sink. That put out fire."
"Damn it!" Dan yelled, "We've got to have some discipline around here. A ship should be run effeciently and I'm going to...."
The man shrugged indifferently. "How you get that when captain never sober and first mate never out of owner's suite?"
He turned and strode off without waiting for an answer. Dan almost started after him, planning a little personal disciplining with his fists, but thought better of it. What the man said was partly true. He was almost as bad as the captain. The crew must know he spent most of his time in Estella's cabin and what he was doing there, and it couldn't help but have a bad effect on them.
"This ship is heading for trouble," he told himself. "I've got to figure some way to get Beth off before something happens."
The telephone rang in the chart house and he picked it up. "Salem speaking," he growled into it.
"Danny boy," Estella purred.
"Yes?"
"You've been neglecting something." He was in no mood for games. "What?" he asked curtly.
"Lady Ashmore," she said. "You've only been to see her once."
"Oh. I didn't know I was supposed to visit her without orders from you."
Her laugh was a silvery tinkle. "Well, darling, consider yourself ordered."
"Okay, but I'm on watch now," he said.
"Have one of the others take over and get right down to her," Estella said. "And, Danny, be especially nice to her today. She's so lonely."
"Yeah, sure," he said, and hung up. This was a break he hadn't expected. He had been wondering how he was going to arrange another meeting with Lady Sylvia and here it was dropped in his lap.
It took him twenty minutes to get the third officer on the bridge and get down to his own cabin with the intention of taking a shower before joining the Englishwoman. He picked up some clean underclothing and took a step toward the head when there was a knock on the door. He went back and opened it and stared in surprise. Lady Sylvia was standing there with a bottle in one hand and a half empty glass in the other. She was obviously more than a little crocked.
"So, hello," she said. "I couldn't wait. Estella promised me I could have you today and I just couldn't wait."
"Gome in," he said, stepping back so she could get past him.
"I saw you coming out of Estella's room the other night," she said. "Tell me, is she good?"
"Good! The best ever," he said.
"Oh? How can you say that when you haven't had all the women there are?"
"Some things you know," he said, thinking how it had been with Beth. He was glad everyone seemed to assume he'd been with Estella. As long as it didn't get back to her, they'd be all right.
Her bright eyes flickered over him excitedly as she backed toward the bed and sat down. "Gome here," she said, patting the place beside her, "sit down and tell me all about it."
"Not right now," he said.
"Why not?" she pouted.
"I was on my way to take a shower."
Her lip curled slightly. "Go ahead," she said, taking another deep swallow of her drink. "You no doubt need it after spending the night with dear Estella."
"I thought you and the Countess were friends," Dan said.
"We were," she conceded, "but I don't like people who are nasty to other people, and some of the things I've seen Estella do on this trip haven't set too well." She waved the glass. "I don't usually tie it on like this, but the cruise is getting to me. As I told you before, I like my sex, but ... well, I don't like the way Estella goes about it sometimes."
"Yeah, she can be kinda rough," Dan said, pleased at the turn of the conversation. Maybe it wouldn't be so hard after all to get her to help him.
"All I know is I wouldn't want to be in her power," Sylvia said.
"No, you wouldn't. And speaking of that, have you noticed the pretty little redhead? She dresses as a maid and Estella keeps her...."
"Keeps her pretty busy one way or another," Sylvia said. "Yes, I've noticed her. Damnably beautiful little thing, isn't she? If I had Estella's tastes, I might go for her myself, but I'm afraid I'm strictly a one-sex woman. Not a one-man woman, you understand, but at least a woman."
He grinned down at her. "A woman like you doesn't have to settle for just one man. With your talent and your money, you can have any man you want."
"Speaking of money," she said, pouring from the bottle again, "have you thought over the offer I made you?"
"Yes, I've thought about it."
"In between thinking about the little redhead?" she asked, and there was a bright twinkle in her eyes that made her seem less intoxicated.
"I do think about her a lot," Dan admitted.
"That's all right," Sylvia said. "I'm not the jealous type and women aren't my kick. We could still make a deal. As long as I got all I wanted, I wouldn't give a damn who else was getting it."
"That's very broad-minded of you."
"Oh, that's me," she said, "the last of the broad-minded people. So how about it?"
"It sounds good," he said, not wanting to appear too eager. "Guess I'll take that shower now."
He was in the shower with the warm water beating soothingly on his back when he heard the bathroom door open and close. He stuck his head out and there was Sylvia with her dress off, wearing only a black bra, black lacy panties and long sheer nylons.
"Hi," she said. "I thought you might need somebody to scrub your back."
He grinned at the look in her eyes. "I'm pretty clean already."
"Not as clean as I can get you," she said, swaying slightly. "I'm an expert back washer. Used to do it for his lordship all the time." She stepped closer and pulled the shower curtain wide open and stood looking at him out of half-dosed eyes. "I never did really look at you before, lover. I missed a lot, didn't I? Something really smashing."
"Thanks," he said, making no attempt to cover himself from her fervent gaze. He was as determined to make love to her as she was to him. It was the best approach he knew with a woman like this, the only way to impress her and gain her friendship and help.
Sylvia put one foot up on the edge of a stool and slowly rolled the stocking down the length of her leg and off. Dan soaped his chest and watched her. She repeated the performance with the other leg and then looked to see what effect she was having on him. She giggled like a young girl and reached behind her to unhook the bra and let it fall away. The black lace panties were next and then she stood still, letting his eyes run over the small pert breasts with their reddish brown nipples, her narrow waist, lean hips and slim legs.
"You like?" she asked.
"I like," he told her.
"Then why don't you take?"
The words were barely out of her mouth before he was dragging her to him and their bodies were molded together under the warm spray of water.
"Dan, lover," she whispered hotly, "love me like you've been loving that little redhead."
Without a word, Dan cupped her breasts and leaned over to sip at the drops of water forming on her rigid nipples. His hands slipped down her wet thighs and around to the tight mounds of her buttocks. He kneaded them for a few minutes and then brought one hand back around to the insides of her legs, stroking the wet, slick skin in ways he knew would stir her wildly. As his fingers found what they sought, he began to move them rhythmically and Sylvia gasped with pleasure.
"Yes, do that, sailor ... I like that,"! she said.
'You're going to have a lot more to like, my lady," he whispered, "a damn lot more."
He let his lips follow the stream of water pouring down between her breasts, across the flat of her stomach and onto the tops of her thighs, then slowly brought them back up again, finding and caressing all the secret places of her body.
Then he locked his hands under her buttocks and lifted her up to him.
"Oh, Dan, you're so much man," she moaned as he maneuvered her into place.
"And you're quite a lot of woman, Lady Ashmore," he said, and she locked her heels at the base of his spine, her firm thigh muscles pressing into his flanks.
"Under the circumstances, don't you think it would be more appropriate if you called me Sylvia?" she asked.
"I'll call you anything you like," he said, moving until her back was braced against the wall of the shower.
He put his lips against her neck as her thighs glided wetly and passionately back and forth over his hips.
"Will you, Dan? Will you talk rough to me?" she asked breathlessly. "Tell me what a nasty little animal I am.
Tell me how many men I've laid and how many more I'm going to lay."
"Okay, you're a dirty little beast but you're not a nasty one. You're so much woman that all the men in the world would have to get together in one bed to please you. You're so much woman that...." He whispered in her ear and she bucked so hard against him that he almost lost his balance and fell with her. Digging his fingers into the firm flesh of her buttocks, he hung on and tried to control her as she beat a tattoo on his rump with her heels and gave back as good as she got.
"Dan, you're wonderful," she panted aftreward. "That was something I'll remember always. You sure know how to show a woman a good time."
She patted herself dry and had leaned over to reach for her panties when he reached out and touched her at the place where her thighs joined her buttocks. "Don't do that," he said.
She looked around at him startled. "Don't do what?"
"Put your clothes on."
"Oh? Why not?" she asked archly.
"Because we've got lots more interesting things to do and they're much better without clothes getting in the way."
"Why, Dan!" she said in mock shock. "I don't think I understand."
"Don't you, Sylvia?" he said, his hands doing things that left no doubt of his intentions.
"But, Dan, we just did and...."
"Don't be silly," he said, stepping out of the shower and picking her up. "That was just to get warmed up."
"Ohhhhh, Dan. You're my kind of man," she cried as he carried her into the other room.
He put her down on the bed and leaned over her, burning feverish kisses all over her body.
"Lover ... lover...." she murmured. "Do you really think we...."
"Shut up," he said gruffly, "shut up and let me love you." His lips brushed the tops of her thighs and sought even greater intimacy.
"Why, Dan, the things you think of. Where on earth did you learn to do that? Dan ... oh, God, Dan" Her voice quavered and broke and Dan felt her passion rise up even more intense than it had been before. That was what he wanted. He'd use every trick he had ever known or heard of, break every rule of conduct to guarantee her a day of physical thrills she'd never forget. Then when the time came that he and Beth needed help, she'd remember him fondly and be generous. She probably would anyhow, but it was better to guarantee it in advance.
Some time later, when she lay hugging herself with her arms crossed over her small breasts, she looked at him out of pleasure-darkened eyes. "Really, lover, I didn't imagine you could be so imaginative."
"Didn't you?" he said easily. "It doesn't take much imagination to be nice to you."
"And were you ever nice. Nicer than anybody has ever been to me. Are you usually that good to women?"
"No, not usually," he said.
"I was just wondering if it was part of the service."
"For you it could be."
"Dan, I do think we're going to be good friends, don't?"
"The best," he agreed, trailing his fingers lightly over her stomach.
She stared down at it. "I say, are you doing what I think you are?"
"What's that?" he grinned. "Trying to get me excited all over again."
"Now whatever gave you a notion like that?"
"That very active hand of yours," she said, and her hips started to roll under the stimulus of his caress.
"Well, well," he said, looking at his hand as though he had nothing to do with it, "it does seem to be busy, doesn't it?"
"As busy as a little bee," she groaned.
"And how do you feel on the subject?" he asked.
"Three times in one day is a dreadful lot for a woman my age, isn't it?"
"I don't know. Let's try it and find out," he said as he rolled over and felt the instant response of her active little body under him.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
That evening Dan was late in relieving the second mate and the man cursed quietly in half a dozen Levantine languages as he made his way below.
"What the hell is it to you?" Dan shouted after him. "You spend most of your time on watch sleeping anyway!"
Slowly he eased his aching body down into the chair and tried to keep his eyes open and on the quartermaster.
His all-day session with Lady Ashmore had been something out of this world. For a small, almost skinny woman who wasn't exactly young any more, she was a real hellion between the sheets. He had aches and pains in places where even a night with Estella de Lorca had never given him aches and pains. But he also had a sense of accomplishment. If Sylvia had needed any convincing that he was the most man she had ever enjoyed, today had done the job.
She had started by offering him more money than he ever dreamed of and had ended up offering to marry him and support him for the rest of his life. That he had turned down flat. Beth was still his first consideration. Money and help for Beth were what he wanted, not a permanent arrangement with Sylvia, lusty as she was.
She had taken his refusal philosophically however. "Oh, well, I suppose tying down a man like you would be rank cruelty to the other women in the world," she said. "I guess I'll have to be satisfied with a short-term option."
He had left her with a lingering kiss and now he was trying to stay awake through his watch before he went to tell Beth that a lot of their problems were solved.
At eleven-thirty, with the dark blue Mediterranean night closed in around him, he was just barely able to keep his eyes open. At five to midnight, they fluttered closed twice. It was with great relief that he heard the steps of the mid-watch coming up the ladder, and he stretched and stuck his head out the door of the bridge to let the air revive him.
A grumbling third mate took over and Dan hurried below, fully awake now. He had just passed Estella's stateroom when he heard the sound of sobbing.
He stopped and listened for a moment outside her door and then realized the sounds were coming from across the passageway. The only cabin there was Hanson's and his hands doubled into fists as he crossed to it and listened.
"Come on, pretty girl, take off the rest of it," he heard Hanson say. "Come on, let me look at it before I take it."
"Please, please, leave me alone ... no! No!" Beth's voice rose in terror and was followed by the sound of ripping cloth.
Dan's shoulder hit the door and smashed it open.
Beth was crouched on the bunk, naked except for brief black panties. Hanson was standing over her, holding a torn negligee in one hand and roughly squeezing her breast with the other.
Both of them stared as Dan plunged into the room. Hanson recovered quickly, his hand darting toward a shoulder holster. Dan didn't wait for the snub-nosed thirty-eight to appear. He hit the big man with a shoulder block that flung him halfway across the cabin and made him grimace with pain.
He was still trying to get the gun out as he hit the floor, but Dan twisted his hand away. Hanson grunted and aimed a knee at Dan's groin. Dan saw it coming and managed to turn so it didn't connect directly, but it was close enough to send white-hot pain lancing through him and caused him to loosen his grip on Hanson. The big hood took advantage of it and sent Dan flying back against the bunk with his ham-like fist.
He lurched after Dan, aiming a fist at his mouth and tugging at the gun with the other hand. His divided attention cost him dearly. Dan's foot buried itself in his stomach and the man folded over, the gun flying through the air.
Dan scrambled after the thirty-eight, but Hanson followed and landed on him with the full force of his two hundred and seventy pounds. Dan's breath was crushed out of him and he suddenly felt like an old, old mana weak old man.
Hanson wrapped an arm around Dan's neck and pulled his head backward with the obvious intention of breaking it.
Beth screamed and raked at Hanson's face with her fingernails. He yelped and backhanded her across the face. She sprawled back on the bunk stunned, but she had created enough of a diversion for Dan to break the man's hold and roll him off.
They tumbled over and over until Dan ended up on top. He smashed his fist into Hanson's face time after time and felt cartilage and teeth give under the blows. Hanson bucked and struggled but Dan hung on, lifting the ugly head in his hands and smashing it down on the deck.
"Dan, stop!" Beth said. "You'll kill him!"
"Good!" Dan growled. "I don't care if I do." And he banged it down again.
"But I do, darling," a voice said from the doorway. Dan looked up and there was Estella with the inevitable Terri and Olga backing her up with guns.
"I know he isn't much, Dan, and now that you've worked him over, he's worth even less; but he has certain strange virtues I value, so I'll have to ask you not to kill him."
Dan looked at the guns trained on him and decided not to defy her. "He deserves to be killed," he said. "He tried to rape Beth."
Estella laughed heartily. "If you killed every would-be rapist on board this ship, Danny, there wouldn't be very many of us left alive."
Dan got to his feet slowly and stood looking down at the battered Hanson.
"Get some water, Olga," Estella ordered, "and throw it in the Sleeping Beauty's face."
The dark-haired woman hastened to obey and the Countess turned to Dan and Beth. "You two come to my suite."
She walked out the door, and Dan helped Beth to her feet and then hesitated.
"You heard the Countess," Terri said, tightening her finger on the trigger. "Get going."
"Okay, okay," Dan said resignedly, putting his arm around Beth protectively and leading her out into the passageway.
"Come in, darlings," Estella greeted them. "Come on in and tell me why I shouldn't turn the pair of you over to Hanson and Olga to use as playthings."
"What the hell are you talking about?" Dan demanded. "I found that lousy ape trying to rape Beth so I jumped him. What was I supposed to do, let him go ahead and do it?"
Estella smiled coldly. "The question is, darling, what were you doing nosing around Beth? I thought we had a little lesson in discipline over that before."
"I wasn't nosing around her," Dan said. "I was just passing by when I heard her crying and broke into that goon's cabin."
"And what were you doing in this part of the ship?"
"Look, Estella, you did make me first officer of this crummy ship, and as such I have a few duties other than entertaining you and your friends. I was checking the fire-fighting equipment."
"Really? And I suppose it isn't up to your standards either."
"No, it isn't. It isn't up to the standards of a third-class Chinese junk," Dan said.
Estella waved that aside. "Then you're telling me you weren't down here to see Beth?"
Dan looked her right in the eye and lied, "No, I wasn't down here to see Beth."
"Well, perhaps I've been a bit hasty," she said almost graciously, and then her tone sharpened again. "And why haven't you tried to see Beth?"
"What? You know damn well why I haven't. The last time I did you had her beaten and almost raped."
Estella shrugged. "Oh, that. That was just discipline. I don't really object to you and Beth having a little fun."
"You don't?"
"Of course not. Not if you ask my permission."
"Oh, I see. Well, next time I'll submit a request in triplicate. Tell me, Countess, do I have it countersigned by the chaplain?"
"No, darling. You don't have to have anybody's permission but mine-not even Beth's."
Estella turned to look at Beth and noticed her mouth was still bleeding where Hanson had slugged her, and there was more blood on her bare breasts from scratches.
"Go clean up," she told her, "and then come back here."
"Yes, mistress," Beth said.
"What are you up to this time?" Dan asked as the girl disappeared.
"I just thought we might have a little fun, that's all," Estella said.
"What kind of fun?" Dan asked warily.
"You'll see," she said, and paced up and down like a restless tigress until Beth came back, holding a wet towel to her face and still wearing nothing but her black panties.
Dan couldn't keep his eyes from the redhead's nubile young body with its beautifully curved legs and proud, upthrust breasts.
Estella watched him. "Isn't she pretty, Danny?"
"Yeah, I guess so."
"That's all? You just guess?" Estella's voice was softly insistent.
"All right then, I know she's pretty," Dan said. There really was no use denying how he felt because he was sure anyone could read it in his face. "She's about the most beautiful thing I've ever seen."
"Show me how beautiful you find her, Danny."
"No," he said. He had been afraid she was leading up to something like this.
"Yes," Estella insisted. "Beth, show him what I mean, will you, darling?"
The command was given in the most casual of tones, but Beth moved forward automatically to obey. She smiled beguilingly and lifted her breasts in both hands and offered them to him. "Here ... take them, Dan. They're yours to do with as you will. Love them, Dan, please."
Dan's throat was dry and his hands were wet. "Not now, Beth-not now."
"Don't you like me any more, Dan? Don't you like me the way you did that other time?"
"Sure, I like you," he said, wanting to tell her he loved her but unwilling to do it in front of a greedy emotional vulture like Estella.
"Then why won't you do the things we did then?" Beth asked, moving closer to him. She appeared to be completely under Estella's control, responding like a puppet to the pull of the strings. "Dan, don't you want me?"
She lowered her voice and it was soft and husky with pleading. "Please, Dan, want me like you wanted me before."
He ached to reach out and touch her. He ached to hold her in his arms and burn kisses on her luscious red mouth, but not with Estella looking on.
"Dan, please." Beth held her breasts out toward him again, the pink nipples begging for his attention.
Dan looked from Beth to Estella. She was on her hands and knees on one of the white divans, her face flushed and her breasts heaving with excitement.
"Take her, Dan. There she is, just the way you've dreamed of having her. Why do you humiliate her by making her beg? You have my permission. What are you waiting for?"
"I'm waiting for you to leave the room," Dan said as calmly as he could.
"But that can't be, Danny," Estella said, licking her lips in anticipation. "I can't leave you two alone."
"Why not?"
"Because that's not my way." Estella's eyes were glittering even more strangely than usual. "You cheated me before when you had her and now you have to make it up to me by letting me watch while you make love."
Dan's loathing and disgust were plain on his face. "I won't do it. I won't lay a finger on that girl in your presence."
"But you must. I've got to see it!"
Dan turned on his heel to leave, but Beth moved quickly between him and the door. She took his hands and pulled them to her until they rested on the warm tautness of her breasts. "Please, Dan," she said yearningly, "I need it so much."
"She wants you, Danny. She honestly wants you," Estella said. "Don't you want her too?"
Beth's nipples against the palms of his hands were rising up with desire and a little moan escaped her lips. "Love me. Oh, love me, Dan," she whispered, her mouth slightly open and her lips moist and shining. "Love me like you did before."
"Sure, baby, sure," Dan said, his heart thumping wildly in his chest. "Let's go to your cabin."
Estella roared with laughter. "You're so modest, Danny. What possible difference can it make to you whether you're alone or I'm with you? I've seen you naked lots of times, and ready for love too, so it can't be that. Why don't you want to share your pleasure with Estella?"
"Because the idea of your looking on is positively revolting."
"Please, Danny," she said, getting up and coming toward them. "It isn't much to ask, and it will give me so much pleasure."
"But why do you crave such unnatural things?" Dan asked. "Why can't you be content with ordinary sex like everybody else is?"
"You wouldn't ask such a silly question if you had any real understanding of how to live," she said. "Most people go through the same stale actions and feelings day after day, not even knowing they're dead ninety per cent of the time. Life, to me, isn't worth living if I can't have something new and exciting every day."
"You're right out of Krafft-Ebing, aren't you?"
Estella laughed and put her arms around them both. "We could have so much fun, Danny, the three of us together. I could think of so many exciting things for us to do. You could too if you'd just relax and enjoy it. We could reach heights of passion nobody ever dreamed of before."
"Listen," Dan said, trying to push their hands away from him. "You have a hold over me and I've had to do as you say and act as stud for you and your guests, but...."
"Come on, Dan. You know you can't resist it. You know you're going to do it, so let's get started."
Estella hooked her hand in the fragile fabric of Beth's panties and stripped them off her expertly. Beth pushed closer to Dan and used her hands deliberately to excite him beyond reason.
CHAPTER TWELVE
"Do Dan, do it," Estella urged. "Do what you're aching to do with her."
Dan was still trying to back away, although he was so excited he could hardly stand it. His whole body throbbed with an overwhelming desire to pull the gorgeous little redhead into his arms, to rain kisses on her neck and shoulders and arms, to feel those ripe young breasts in his mouth. But he was held back by the leering eagerness in Estella's eyes, by the intensity of her desire to see them locked together.
Beth pushed close and plastered herself against him until they were practically glued to each other from breast to knees.
"Please, Dan, love me. Love me," she begged like a child asking for candy. "Beth, I can't ... not with...."
"What do we care if she watches," Beth whispered passionately in his ear. "We'll forget everything and everyone but us and what we're doing."
Between the two of them they had gotten his shirt off and unbuckled his pants and were pulling him toward the couch.
Estella's knowing hands were on him and she quivered so with excitement that it began transferring to him.
"Take her, Dan, take her," she said, pushing her own big breasts hard against his ribs.
"Take me, Dan, please"
"No, damn it. No!" he said, fighting the powerful waves of passion that threatened to engulf him. "No, not this way."
"Yes ... It has to be this way," Estella said.
"No!"
Estella ripped his shorts off and Beth fell back on the couch and pulled him down to her. Dan could resist no longer and he let the deep hunger burning in his loins take over.
He snatched Beth to him, cupping the firmly rounded half moons of her buttocks with his hands and letting her feel how ready he was. He had never been more ready in his life and the girl moaned with expectant joy. She wriggled into position and in a moment they were thrashing about wildly.
"Ohhhh, Dan, love me! Love me," Beth cried, her arms tight around him. "Love me ... love me ... love me."
"I do love you." The words were torn from Dan by the intensity of his emotion, the pressure of her breasts against his chest.
Beth's eyes widened and he saw something in their violet depths that lust had clouded a moment before. Her hands tightened on his shoulders and she lay still. "Be careful, Dan, be careful," she breathed in his ear, too low for Estella to hear. "She'll kill us if she finds out."
"Come on, you two," Estella said. "What's the matter, Dan, are you worn out already?"
"Shut your filthy mouth!" Dan flung at her over his shoulder, and then as Beth's vibrant body started to move again, he found himself carried along on the flow of her desire.
Beth had been right, he found. It didn't make any difference that Estella was watching. The only thing that mattered was that they were loving each other again. Estella might just as well have been on the moon for all they cared.
They moved together in sweet abandon, Beth responding to his every caress and movement, anticipating and meeting him as though they were a matched set.
"Dan, I love you," Beth gasped, forgetting her own warning. "I love you so much I can't bear it."
Dan's heart swelled until he thought it would burst, and he held her tenderly, fiercely proud and happy in spite of everything.
He was aware that Estella was staring at them avidly, drinking in every motion and nuance of their lovemaking. Her breathing was ragged and her eyes almost insane as she came nearer to them.
She was stripping off her clothes, fondling her heavy white breasts and rotating her wide hips in exaggerated circles as she walked.
Beth's eyes were closed so she couldn't see what the other woman was doing, but Dan could. She came still closer and knelt beside them, rubbing her big, hard nipples up and down his back.
"Dan ... Danny, you're so good," she moaned, pressing her hot, wet lips against his shoulder and letting her hands wander lustfully over his hips.
"Hey!" Dan yelled, almost pulling away from Beth. "Stop it! What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Dan, Dan, don't stop now," Beth pleaded, clutching him tighter. "My God, darling, don't stop now!"
She locked her arms around his neck and her legs across the back of his thighs. He couldn't have stopped if the fate of the world had depended on it. Beth's body was what he had always dreamed of, and Beth's lovemaking was what he had always wanted. Too much for him to ever leave her.
Beth's breathing was a constant enraptured sobbing now, and even as she found release, she rushed on past it to another crescendo of loving fury. A few more moments ... Dan knew he could stretch his own fulfillment out long enough for her to attain completion again, and he did. This time her body jerked with a violence that startled him, and incoherent endearments spilled from her open mouth. There was no sanity in her eyes and she seemed to have lost contact with reality. She was swimming in a whirlpool of sensation and didn't want to leave it. Dan took a deep breath and plunged into the whirlpool with her, and the warm sweetness of it closed over him, momentarily blotting out everything else.
He was summoned rudely from his delight by the feel of hot, seeking hands on his body. He spun upward toward the surface reluctantly and found that he had rolled onto the floor while Beth still lay as though drugged on the divan. The hot, seeking hands belonged to Estella de Lorca.
"Go away," he mumbled.
Estella's teeth sank into his shoulder and she panted, "Come on, Dan ... come on!"
"Cut it out, damn it!" he yelled. She had broken the skin and there was blood trickling down his bare chest.
She struck him across the face with her hand and his eyes snapped wide open. She was absolutely naked, sitting on top of him and grinding herself against him desperately.
"Wake up, Dan ... give it to me!" she said.
"Go away," he said again, pushing at her in disgust.
"No, no, it's my turn now ... it's my turn now!" she screamed insanely, her eyes glazed with lust.
He looked up at the swinging breasts so close to his face, at the sheen of sweat on them and on her belly, at the slack mouth pouring forth the filth she thought would rearouse him. Revulsion and hatred rose up so strong within him he almost choked.
"Get away from me!" he said, gathering his depleted strength for an attempt to throw her off.
"Never! Never!" she screeched, and hung on like an obsessed animal, digging in with her nails and locking herself to him with her strong legs. "Give me what I want! You're mine ... mine ... mine! You can't deny me! You're my creature and you've got to obey me!"
"That's what you think!" Dan said, and heaved suddenly upward, throwing her off him to land with a thump on her bare behind.
"How dare you! You can't do this to me! You can't! You belong to me ... to me!"
"Not any more. Maybe for a while there I did, but not any more. Now that I've had a real woman, there just isn't anything left for you."
She snatched up a letter opener from a small table and came at him with murder in her eyes. "I'll kill you! I'll cut you to pieces!"
Dan didn't stop to argue with her. He braced himself and let her have an uppercut to the chin that stopped her in her tracks and sent her sprawling backward on the rug.
She lay staring up at him, her black eyes like something out of hell. "You struck me! You dared to lay a hand on me!"
"Sure, I hit you," Dan said quietly. "I had to or you'd have used the sticker on me."
Estella rubbed one long hand across her chin. "No one ever struck me before-no one!"
"Then maybe it was a little overdue," Dan said, reaching for his pants.
She opened her mouth and screamed, screamed like a wounded beast crying out its hate and rage.
"Kill ... kill ... kill!" she screamed. "Terri! Olga!"
The door burst open and the two women came plunging in. Dan tried to avoid their rush but the huge Olga hit him like a ten-ton truck, knocking him to the floor and giving Terri time to strike him across the cheek with a blackjack.
He lay there, fighting the blackness that was trying to close over him. He couldn't move but he wasn't out completely. Everything faded to a dull grayness but he could still see and hear partially.
Estella had gotten to her feet and was standing over him, sobbing and cursing. "He struck me! He struck me!"
"Mistress, I...." Terri began, but was interrupted by another insane shriek from Estella.
"He laid a hand on the Countess de Lorca! He's got to die! He's got to die!"
"Mistress, no!" Beth was on her feet trying to get to Estella, but Olga put out an arm and threw her back on the divan.
"Olga, you said you wanted him. Take him! You and Terri take him! Take him to your cabin and tie him down and use him any way you want to! Use him and use him until he's no good any more, and then kill him"
Olga's heavy face broke into a smile and Terri grinned as they moved toward Dan.
"Use him and then kill him!" Estella screeched. "Kill him-very painfully and very slowly-and maybe I'll come and watch!"
Dan was aware that the two Amazons were dragging him away but he coudln't do anything about it. He heard Beth crying and knew she was trying to reach him, but Estella hit her viciously and knocked her down.
"And I'll use you, you lying little cheat! I'll make you give me what he cheated me out of!" She leaned over the sobbing girl and fastened her cruel fingers in the soft flesh. "You'll pay for your disloyalty to Estella de Lorca!"
When Dan came to, there was a light shining in his eyes. He was naked and spread-eagled on a large, heavy table, his wrists and ankles bound tightly.
"So you're awake, are you?" Terri was sitting on the end of the table by his feet. She had on shorts and a halter and her long, lean legs were crossed. There was a sardonic look on her face as she stared at his nude body and played with a long-bladed knife. "Yeah," Dan said.
"You'll probably be sorry you ever woke up," she said.
He looked at the knife. "What are you doing with that thing?" he asked.
She grinned and Dan shivered at the direction of her glance.
"Before this is over, you'll probably wish I had used the knife on you," she said.
"That'll be the day," he said.
"Really, what we were doing was playing a little mumblety-peg to see who got first chance at you," Terri said. "Olga won."
Dan twisted at his bonds.
"She's gone to get ready," Terri said. "She wanted to put on a negligee. You must have quite an effect on her. I don't think she's ever worn anything but pants and a shirt in her life."
"That's something to look forward to-that hippo in a negligee."
"Well, you haven't got much time left to look forward to anything."
"I'll manage," Dan said grimly.
Terri grinned mirthlessly. "How about it, would you rather I put you beyond Olga's ardent attentions?" She moved forward with the knife poised.
"No! No!" he yelled.
"Of course not. Even Olga is better than that. Anything is better to a man like you, who is so very proud of his virility."
"It's not that," Dan said. "It's just that I don't need your help."
"No?"
Dan made himself smile at the woman. "I've heard it's impossible for a woman to rape a man even if he's tied down. You know-if he won't cooperate, what can she do?"
Terri nodded. "Yes, I've heard that too, but you're forgetting something."
"What's that?"
"Estella told us to use you as much as we wanted and then to kill you-slowly and painfully."
"I heard her."
"But you miss the point, Dan. When the sex stops, the torture begins. And any man-even one in love with a girl like Beth-would be crazy not to try to please the women who have the power of life and death over him."
"What about Beth? Is she all right?"
Terri grinned. "The last time I saw her, she was on her knees in front of Estella. Estella had both hands in that beautiful red hair and was impressing on Beth how she wanted to be made love to."
"Damn! Damn!" Dan swore futilely.
There was a noise outside and Terri looked around. "That would be Olga dressed in all her finery, coming to greet her lover."
Dan tightened his muscles and pulled against the ropes that bound him.
"It's no use," Terri told him. "I tied those knots myself. I wasn't taking any chances of you getting loose before my turn comes."
The door opened and Olga stepped into the room. She was wearing a white cotton robe and her dark hair was carefully combed. Her florid red face wore an idiotic expression she might have copied from an American confession magazine.
She looked at Terri and growled, "Ged out. I am not de Countess. I need no audience."
Terri tipped her knife to the woman as she left. "Have a good time," she said.
As soon as the door was closed, Olga moved toward Dan eagerly. "Ja, we haf good time. We haf real good time," she said.
Dan watched her without answering, thinking bleakly of what Terri had said, "When the sex stops, the torture begins."
Olga opened her robe and let it fall behind her to the floor. She stood poised for a moment, looking greedily at his nude body and letting him look at her.
Dan was surprised. She was over six feet tall and must have weighed close to two hundred and fifty pounds, and now he could see there wasn't an ounce of fat on her.
Her legs and thighs were like the trunks of trees and her flesh was smooth over the rippling bulges. Her stomach was held in tightly by its girdle of criss-crossing muscles, and her wide hips and shoulders were solid and firm. The melon-size breasts swelled out and up, peaked with large, dark red nipples.
"You like, huh?" she asked.
"Olga, I...."
"Ja you like," she said, and crawled up on the table with him, smelling of strong soap and still stronger perfume.
Dan's nose wrinkled with distaste, but she appeared not to notice.
She straddled him on her hands and knees and asked coyly, "You gif me vat I vant?"
"No, Olga ... no."
"Ja ... Ja ... you vill," she said, lowering herself so she could rub those gigantic breasts up and down his bare chest. Her thighs were heavy on his and she rotated her torso against him.
Her open mouth came down on his and her big tongue plunged into his mouth. He shook his head violently and stared up at her angrily. "Stop that! Leave me alone!"
Her eyes narrowed and she pressed down harder on him. "You do it goot for me, no?"
"No. You haven't any right to...."
"I tink you vill," she said, raising her hands to his throat and squeezing none too gently. "You get sexy or I kill."
Dan tried to curse her but couldn't get the words out.
She continued her rubbing and pushing against him, demanding his virility with every move.
"Give me ... give me ... give me," she chanted.
"I'll give you nothing," Dan choked, and her fingers closed more tightly.
"Give me or you die now," she said.
Dan didn't find the prospect of dying any more appealing than this female elephant on top of him. He despised her, but if he wanted to live he'd better let his normal male reactions to a naked woman's body take over, he decided. He shut off his mind, closed his eyes and quit fighting her.
Olga laughed lewdly as she felt the evidence of her success. "So? So he iss a man after all," she said, and lifted up just enough.
Dan let his lust sweep him along and pretty soon he was moving in answer to the big woman's movements.
"Dat's more like it. Dat's vat I vant ... give id to me, mister ... give id to me."
By not thinking about it, Dan was able to do as she asked. He concentrated solely on satisfying the passion of this woman as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible.
"Give me more ... more ... more," she babbled, thrusting her big hands under his rump and digging in. "I vant more ... more...."
"Damn you, let go of me!" Dan swore and bucked upward so hard he almost threw her off.
Seconds later a great shuddering sigh went through her and she collapsed onto him and lay panting noisily while Dan attained his own peak.
When he couldn't bear the weight of her another minute, she stirred and raised herself on her elbows and looked down at him.
"All time you vith Countess, I vant dat ... und now I got."
There was a knock on the door and Terri's voice called, "You about through in there, Olga?"
"Go avay!" Olga yelled over her shoulder.
"You've had plenty of time," Terri said. "In fact, you've had enough time for two women."
"Maybe I need as much as two vimen."
"That wasn't in the deal," Terri said. "You won first chance but now it's my turn."
"No! Go avay!"
"Go away nothing," Terri said, pushing open the door and grinning at the tableau they presented. "You can have more when I'm through ... if he's still able."
Olga snarled angrily, but she clambered off the table and picked up her white robe. "I be back," she said to Dan, and left.
Terri ran her eyes over Dan and started taking off her shorts and halter.
Dan was exhausted and he didn't care if he never saw another naked woman in his life. Olga and Terri had finally worn themselves out and left him to recuperate. Terri had thrown a blanket over him and he had dozed fitfully for an hour or so, but then he had forced himself awake, knowing this might be his last chance to get free.
He was working on the ropes that held his hands, tugging at them and clawing at them with his fingernails. Terri had spoken truthfully when she said she'd done a good job of tying him up. It was only his knowledge that he'd be dead before another twenty-four hours passed that kept him at work. When the sex stops, the torture begins, and he knew he couldn't keep up the orgy-like performance they had demanded of him so far.
But as the night faded toward dawn and his fingernails tore and broke on the rope, his hopes dimmed.
The last faint one died as he heard a sound at the door and it opened to admit Olga, bare as a baby, her skin gleaming whitely in the darkness.
"I not sleep," she explained. "I no could vait until morning to come back."
"Olga, please. I've got to sleep. I won't be any good at all if you don't let me sleep."
A sly smile crossed her heavy face. "Veil, if you all vorn out and no goot any more, Olga carry out Countess' orders."
"You man-eating vulture!" Dan said. "If I was loose, I'd...."
"But you not loose, and even if you vere, I break you in two. I vas all-Cherman vuman's wrestling champion vunce."
Dan knew it was probably true as he looked at the layer upon layer of muscle. The only hint of softness was in a small area of her middle, and that was where he'd aim if he got the chance.
"You ready for me now?" she asked.
"As long as you insist on this, why don't you untie my hands and let me do it properly?" Dan asked. "Anyone as strong as you doesn't need to keep a man tied up."
She considered this in silence. "No," she decided, "you don't need your hands, but I loosen your legs so ve get more bounce."
Damn, damn, damn! he cursed to himself as she undid the knots and released his feet. What the hell good would that do him? He yanked hard at the ropes on his hands while her attention was diverted and felt them give slightly. If only he had a little more time! If only he had a few minutes alone without this sex-crazy German wrestler.
She scrambled eagerly up on the table and fondled him excitedly. "You be good to Olga und gif her good time, und Olga see dat you don't take too long to die."
"Thanks ... thanks a hell of a...."
There was a low rumble and the ship shook, then there was a roar and the Vesuvius bucked like a wild horse and the lights went out.
"Vat ... vat is...." Olga sat up, looking bewildered.
Dan started to say something, but was drowned out by an explosion that seemed to lift the ship out of the water. A bulkhead came crashing in on them in a shower of flame and debris.
Olga was struck by a heavy beam that crushed her skull like an eggshell and knocked her off the table, where she lay in a pool of blood. The table was hurled across the cabin and Dan sat up groggily and then realized suddenly that he was free.
He leaped to his feet and plunged out the shattered cabin door just as the whole interior was engulfed in flames.
Someone had set off the fire alarm and it was ringing steadily as he dashed up the smoke-filled passageway. He stumbled across a body and stopped to see if the man was still alive. It was one of the stewards and his face was contorted in death.
Dan made his way as fast as possible to the passenger part of the ship and was heading for a ladder to the main deck when he heard someone cry out.
"Help! Help, I'm trapped" It was a woman's voice and he traced it to Lady Ashmore's cabin.
Dan had only two impulses; to find Beth and to get both of them up on deck, but he couldn't turn away from Sylvia's cry. He pushed open the door and saw that a heavy wardrobe closet had been torn loose and flung on its side. Lady Ashmore had both legs pinned under it.
"Help! Help" she screamed.
"Sylvia ... Sylvia," Dan said, dropping to his knees beside her. "It's Dan Salem. I'll get you loose."
"Oh, Dan Thank God!" she said. "I was so frightened, but I hoped you'd come."
Dan threw his weight against the wardrobe and held it up off her legs. "Can you move? Are your legs all right?" he asked.
Sylvia squirmed her way out from under the wardrobe and tried to stand up. "I don't think anything is broken, but I can't seem to put my weight on them."
Dan scooped her up in his arms and darted back out into the passageway. What he saw sent a wave of terror racing through him. Flames were leaping everywhere and there was only a moment or two left to reach the ladder. He clutched the woman tightly and made a dash for it, barely scrambling up on deck before the roaring flames closed in about the hatch.
There was complete confusion on deck. Fifteen or twenty of the crew were struggling with several fire hoses, only one of which appeared to be in working order. The third mate was giving orders and the drunken captain was countermanding them.
"Stand by to abandon ship!" Dan shouted at the third mate. "She's going to hell in a handbasket and we can't save her!"
The man passed the word to the crew and they dropped the useless hoses and started for the lifeboats.
"Numbers three and five are the only ones worth a damn!" Dan shouted, heading for the number three boat with Lady Sylvia still in his arms. "Stand by to swing them clear!"
"Stand by to fight the fire!" Captain Brock bellowed at them from the bridge. "Stand by to fight the fire!"
"Captain, this ship is going!" Dan yelled back. "We don't have a chance if we don't get off her!"
"That is mutiny!" the captain roared, his voice slurred with drink. "You men heard my orders!"
The men hesitated and looked at Dan.
"Get those boats swung out," Dan said, "and stand by to abandon ship! I'll talk to the captain!"
He headed forward but it wasn't to talk to the captain. He was going to Estella's quarters and Beth. As he ran toward the open hatch leading to the owner's suite, he bumped into somebody and recognized Terri.
"What happened?" Dan demanded.
"It was Hanson," she said, seeming to find it perfectly natural that he was free. "He's been brooding about the beating you gave him and the way Estella treated him afterward. He started the fire with an explosive of some kind. I've got to get to Estella!"
"Come on," Dan said, grabbing her arm and plunging down into the smoke and heat of the lower deck.
"You're looking for Beth?" Terri asked.
"Yeah," Dan said, gasping and choking on the thick, oily smoke clogging the air.
"She'll be with Estella if we can only get to them!" Terri said, clinging to his arm.
"We will, we're almost there," Dan said, feeling his way along the bulkhead.
The door of Estella's cabin was open and the first thing they saw was Estella standing in the middle of the room with Beth crouched at her feet. Then they saw Hanson a few feet away from them with his back to the door. He was holding a forty-five automatic and it was aimed at Estella.
"You used me. You used me like a servant all these years," the man was saying. "I served you well and I never asked you for a thing, never a thing but that girl! She's all I ever asked you for and you wouldn't let me have her! You dangled her in front of me and let me beat her and feel her but you wouldn't let me really have her! Well, you won't have her now either, because...."
Dan leaped as he saw the man's finger tighten on the trigger. He hit him with a shoulder block just as the gun went off. Hanson doubled over like an accordian, but the one bullet struck Estella in the chest and she toppled over.
Dan didn't waste time. He kicked Hanson in the head as the man tried to come to his feet, and then he picked up a heavy chair and beat his brains out before he could recover.
Then he ran to Beth. She opened her arms and he picked her up tenderly and started for the door. He looked back and saw Terri stretched across Estella's dead body, sobbing heartbrokenly.
"Gome on!" he shouted at her. "We haven't got much time. When the fire reaches the fuel tanks, this tub is going to blow to kingdom come!"
"She's dead ... my mistress is dead," Terri sobbed.
"That's right and you can't help her now, so come on" Dan yelled.
"No ... no, I'll stay with her. There is no life for me without her. You two go on."
Dan took one last look at the blonde mourning over the lovely body of Estella de Lorca, and then he raced for the ladder and the safety of the upper deck.
An hour later, the Vesuvius was gone and only lifeboats three and five were left bobbing on the debris-filled sea.
Dan Salem sat at the tiller of number three, with Beth beside him, and tried to estimate the distance to the Egyptian coast. Lady Sylvia Ashmore crouched in the bottom of the boat and half a dozen seamen were at the oars. The third mate and ten other crewmen were in number five boat. These were all who had escaped when the yacht was blown to pieces.
Dan stood up and hailed the third mate. "I'm going to make for the Egyptian coast," he shouted. "Stay close and try not to get separated from us when it gets dark."
The man waved to show he understood and Dan sat down and put his arm around Beth, pulling her head onto his shoulder. It was going to be all right with them, he thought. It was going to be all right in spite of the dual murder raps hanging over them. With Estella de Lorca gone and her influence and money not being used against them, they'd manage to get a fair hearing. Lady Ashmore had money and she was very grateful to him for saving her life.
