Shouted leather booted Heather Hamilton as she faced the retinue of shipwrecked victims on the unchartered isle in the middle of the Caribbean. "See this leather belt?" She held it aloft, then snapped it as if it were a living black snake elongated and vicious in a gleaming anger. "This proves that I'm your master."
Heather Hamilton, a lesbian who sought to prove superiority over men, forced some of the helpless victims to perform acts of debauchery. Of all her "slaves," she liked Joan Ellis who was responsible for initiating her into the love rites of Lesbos, on the pleasure cruise voyage of Isle Nymph. It was the ship's maiden voyage, but by the time it crashed, no one was a maiden or virgin.
"I'll make you feel like a woman, honey, more than any man ever did," vowed a lesbian as the two girls made naked love in the small cabin.
Heather moved her moist hot lips from one breast to the other. She found a nipple, manipulated it and while her fingers rubbed lightly on the breast, she was doing other things to the girl. She was determined to corrupt anything decent in order to spin her web of Sappho's love.
"Beg me to... you know what... "
The girl writhed hotly on the bed, her moist breasts like milky white balloons. Her mouth opened and she gasped, while her eyes rolled wildly, "Please... please... I'm dying... I'm dying... kiss me... " down... "
Heather needed no second invitation. She swooped down and the girls felt the eruption of a volcano of red hot lust.
MASTERFUL BUTCH LESBIANS ON AN UNCHARTERED ISLE
CHAPTER ONE
The Isle Nymph was not a brave ship. Ever since its maiden voyage, it had never sailed anywhere except in calm waters. Even the remotest possibility of rough water or a storm sent it scuttling to the nearest harbor or cove; there is little else to say about the character of the Isle Nymph.
She was a fun ship. A pleasure craft. Her passengers were headed for Vera Recreo, a small island at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, unknown even to most of the travel agencies. And the passengers were all looking for an unknown, secluded island such as Vera Recreo, five and a half miles wide and seven miles long, lush with trees, vegetation, a lagoon-and one hotel.
Joan Ellis leaned against the railing and let the swaying motion of the ship carry her along with it as she stared down into the water. Her heart pounded rapidly; she looked nervously at her watch, and began to tap her foot against the wooden deck in a gesture of impatience.
Joan Ellis was tall, slim and nicely built, except for smallish breasts. Her short, simply-combed dark hair hardly moved in the breeze, even when she turned her oval white face toward the wind. Where is she? she wondered.
She turned around as soon as she heard the tapping of heels on the deck, and sighed with relief. She looked at the other woman approaching, and felt her body grow warm with anticipation and desire.
"Hi, Joan. Sorry I'm late," the other woman said.
"You had me scared," Joan said, and when the other woman came up to the rail beside her, their hands touched for an instant, then parted. It wouldn't do to be seen like this on deck by another passenger or crew member.
"Let's do dawn to my cabin," the other woman suggested. There was a note of yearning in her husky, feminine voice.
"OK, Heather," she agreed, and they descended the fire-escape steps that led to the cabins below. Joan walked behind her new love-to-be, watching her hips and buttocks rock temptingly against the tight white skirt that she wore. She was slim-waist-ed and wide-hipped, and her buttocks looked like a perfectly shaped heart turned upside down, giving way to two pillar-like firm thighs that the skirt outlined. Her throat went dry with desire as she watched the body below her. When they finally got to the cabin door, she felt the moisture forming between her own thighs. She's a hot-looking little thing, Joan thought. Pretty good for two days out of New York!
They entered the cabin, and Heather closed the door behind her, then turned around to face Joan, who was already near the bed.
"How did you know I was interested?" she asked with heavy breath.
"I just sensed it," Joan said, and grinned wanly. "I'm glad I was right." She watched the other woman undress, first removing her red sweater. There was no bra underneath, just milky-white, round-molded breasts, jutting outward and upward like two glorious mountain peaks, only instead of being tipped with white snowcaps, they were tipped with pink nipple-tops that already began to swell with anticipation and longing.
"I've never done this before," Heather murmured, "I mean with another woman."
"I'll make you feel like a woman, honey, more than any man ever did," Joan heard herself promise. Her voice was heavy with fervent desire, and now, as Heather began to pull her skirt over her head, she saw the whiteness of upper thighs, slightly downy with blonde hair that mingled with the thick golden nest that nestled between her legs, below her flat, almost concave belly. A perfect little beauty! Untried, untouched and willing!
"Heather, are you a virgin?" Joan asked.
"No, I've had a lot of men."
"Enjoy them?"
"Most of them," Heather smiled, and she sat on the bed now, near where Joan stood. "I've always wanted to try it with another woman, though, you know, for variety."
"Yes." Joan stood looking down at the young, firm breasts, then slowly, she bent down and kissed them, one gloriously stiff, rising nipple at a time. Heather made a little sound of pleasure, as if to say "keep going, you're interesting me," and then as Joan ran her hot tongue rapidly and lightly across the swollen little pink morsel, the little sound became a big sound that filled the small room.
"Oooooh, that's nice," she sighed, and leaned back suddenly; Joan followed her down and lay against the trembling body, her lips still glued to the naked swollen white breast, playing against the rising nipple. She felt Heather's hips grinding at her with a pleasure-reflex. "The other one," Heather groaned, and Joan moved her moist hot lips to the other breast that beckoned in front of her eyes. Her lips found the nipple and manipulated it, while her fingers rubbed lightly on the other breast, flesh and nipple, and now Heather was no longer playing a cute experimental little game; she was writhing with passion, the musk-odor rising from her thighs into Joan's flaring nostrils.
The crevice between Heather's breasts was deep, almost bottomless, smooth and smelling sweetly of perfume, mingled slightly with perspiration. Joan buried her mouth there, bathing it with her tongue, while her hands clutched each breast and squeezed them against the sides of her face. Heather moaned loudly now, twisting her body to the tempo that rose in her, already beginning to sob with lust. A hot little thing!
"Has any man ever loved your breast like that?"
Joan demanded. She breathed heavily, her hand tentatively on Heather's thigh, moving unconsciously to the region between them, where it was moist and warm and tender.
"No, don't stop," Heather breathed, and pulled Joan's face back to a stiff, puffed little pink nipple. "Kiss me there," she pleaded, "I like it there. Bite me!" Joan bit her. Heather cried, delighted and horrified by the pleasure that only increased as it mixed with pain. "Again! Again!" she panted, and Joan bit her all over her breasts, light, nippy little bites.
Heather felt hot and weak; her head was light with dizziness, and she felt completely out of control, for the very first time. She had always been able to handle men, until near the end, when passion began to carry her to the peak, but now she was a slave right at the beginning. Her breasts were wet with kissing, her body was weak and torrid with desire The thought that she was being corrupted thrilled her to pieces. She wanted to be corrupted, wanted to escape the humdrum of predictable sex, where one action naturally followed another.
There was no telling what Joan would do now.
She waited. Then she felt Joan's hand come between her damp, sticky thighs, prying them gently but firmly apart, and travelling upward, in a walking motion.
"Oh! Oh! Joan, Joan," she sobbed, feeling the fingers enter, then twist and probe until she felt shooting, itching thrill-pangs race through her loins.
It was better than a man!
Infinitely better, she thought, so much more delicious and pleasing-so this was how women satisfied each other. She pulled Joan on top of her, felt her still-dressed body next her, pressing against her, the hot mouth breathing in her delicately-shaped ear, filling her with more passion, more heat, more joy.
"Take your clothes off, dear," she said. Joan looked at her and smiled.
"You take them off," she commanded, and for the first time, Heather enjoyed undressing a lover Joan's body trembled convulsively as she felt her clothes being removed, stitch by stitch, until she was nude. "Just don't touch my breasts," she said, and Heather nodded silently before her lips found Joan's. Their tongues locked as their mouths gaped open and their breath entered one another.
Heather felt the fingers a gains, and lay back to let them bring her to a crashing, seething climax, thinking, so this is how, when the fingers stopped, and out of her tear-filled eyes saw Joan's body sink down, off the bed and on to the floor, wondering what sweet thing she was going to do now, when she felt it. It was unbearable. It was unreal. It was almost too wonderful.
Her thighs came apart and bent upward, and her body began to lunge erotically at the hips and pelvis as she felt the thrill of the touch, the beauty of the climax that began to build up in her, and then the eruption itself that subsided long enough to make way for a second, better eruption, and then a third, and then she stopped counting, because she fell away in a dead faint.
When Heather awakened, Joan was gone. She looked down at her naked body, and the memory of what had taken place came back to her with a tumultuous rush. She warmed with passion all over again, just thinking about it. It was better than anything else that had ever happened to her. Better than the overanxious, furtive-looking men that she had allowed to paw her savagely, without feeling, without anything like consideration for her feelings or desires. And it had all started out as a kick, a curious seeking, just to see what it would be like.
Well, it was better.
Much, much better. Now everything was different, all changed. She had originally signed up for this select cruise in order to find the ideal existence, which she had defined as being one in which snow-white beaches and sea-green water were foremost. Somehow, the "right" man would come along, one of the men on board ship, woo her, win her and make love to her such as no man ever had before. Days filled with sun and sand and water, roaming the beach, hunting for seashells, swimming in the quiet lagoon-with her ideal man.
Now it was all changed.
No man had ever left her with memories like the ones she turned over in her mind now; no man had left her in such a turmoil of emotions, and no man had ever left her with such a yearning for another encounter. What would she do now? she wondered. There was the island: secluded, private and remote. But there would be other people on it, and only one hotel to stay in. People would talk...
Forget people, she told herself vehemently. She remembered now that she had sought out the seclusion of Vera Recreo to escape the hangup of conformity, of worrying about what "they" would think of her behavior and actions. She realized that she would have a hard time escaping a lifetime of conditioning, and smiled ruefully. Well, she would escape, she decided. They could say what they pleased. She and Joan were going to disregard them, and if necessary, find happiness and fulfillment without them. Who needed them?
Heather Hamilton was twenty-four years old, blonde, beautiful and hot-blooded. She had worked for six years at a large advertising agency in New York, commanding a nice salary, and had finally broken into the account end of the business; the money had increased, and so had the pressures. She had been told how to dress, how to behave, what to say and when to say it-and when she had been told who to cultivate as social acquaintances, she rebelled.
For two weeks after she had left her job, she felt lost. Her first impulse had been to find another, better job. But she realized that she wasn't ready for another dose of the same. There was a definite, powerful need to escape for awhile, to find herself.
This cruise had seemed to be the answer. A friend of hers had told her about it; it was expensive, but since it wasn't really a cruise in the popular sense, she had jumped at the chance to make a reservation.
Actually, it consisted of being taken to the island, and once there, she could stay for as long as she whished. A ship came by once a month to bring people there and take others back. The fare was expensive, the hotel inexpensive: eight dollars a day, and it included absolutely everything. There were no extras anywhere. She had saved over five thousand dollars in six years, so why not? And on a moment's notice, she had signed up.
And now, she wanted to build an affair with Joan Ellis, who she had known for two whole days, yet had sensed a mutual yearning in her. Heather had always thought of making love with another woman, a beautiful, voluptuous woman like herself. Joan wasn't what one would call voluptuous, at least not in the same way that she was. But something about her had been all-appealing, completely magnetic. At any rate, Heather had sensed immediately that a hunger existed in Joan, and that it wouldn't take very much effort to bring it to the surface.
The first night out of New York, they had sat next to one another in the dinning room, and their hands had touched. The dual response had been unmistakable, and it only remained to reach a verbal understanding.
An experiment. An exploration. But now, Heather Hamilton wanted to go beyond that point. Joan had said something about spending at least six months on Vera Recreo-six months of that kind of lovemaking! Thinking about it now made Heather dizzy with desire. Maybe she would still find a suitable man as well, and would have two things going for her at the same time. Her throat went dry. She had seen most of the men aboard ship; they were all single, unattached, looking for the obvious: a female counterpart with whom to while away the time they would spend on the otherwise lonely island.
There were several attractive men on board, but she had not yet met any of them. And she wasn't worried, being only two days out of port. People still felt a little constrained, a little shy. Tomorrow night, at the captain's party, it would change.
CHAPTER TWO
Joan Ellis was frightened. There was no escaping, it seemed. Vera Recreo had seemed the ideal answer to the problem of her identity, a place where she could hide long enough to think, to cope with her problem.
But already, two days out of port, someone had discovered her. And who? Another Lesbian like herself? No. A sex-hungry female, out for kicks, for sensual experimentation, someone who had never even known another woman. That easy, she thought grimly, I'm that easy to spot. Even a square can recognize me.
Once Heather's body had become a target, begging to be hit, there was no resisting the impulse. It was there. How could she turn down anything so lush and ripe and willing as Heather Hamilton?
Joan's head was filled with racing, half-formed thoughts. If Heather wanted to play for keeps, make a permanent arrangement, what could she do about it? How could she escape?
Did she want to escape?
She knew she was attractive, and except for her small breasts, desirable to any man. And in spite of their relative smallness, her breasts were well formed, even pert and youthful. But she did no want a man. She knew she wanted to want a man, but she didn't feel the natural attraction, the urge for male company, except on a purely unemotional, non-physical level. She thought of the homosexual college professor she had known in New York; they had been friends, wonderful friends. There were entire nights spent together drinking scotch and talking, not just making idle meaningless conversation. She'd enjoyed that. They both had, until he had accepted a new job in the midwest.
Escape. How to escape? She thought of Heather, only a few doors away, lying in her bed, ready at any time to make love.
Joan Ellis was not a stupid woman. Anyone with a Ph. D. in modern French literature at the age of twenty-six was not stupid. But brains and Lesbianism didn't seem to have any logical connection. She was smart, well educated-and hooked by her own impulses. Vera Recreo had been a hopeful solution to the problem. But now, maybe it wouldn't be. Maybe she was just kidding herself by thinking she could handle the problem alone. She believed strongly in her work, in her knowledge. She had looked to her authors as having workable, tenable solutions to the problems of life. Camus was her favorite. His philosophy seemed relevant, applicable to her own existence. But now, she wondered-nothing seemed to work, nothing seemed to be able to help conquer the strong desires within her body, within her mind. Do I really want to escape?
Peter Martin sat alone on deck, wrapped in an old p-jacket and scarf. A cold wind from the north blew over the ship, and it seemed as though he were the only soul willing to brave its chill. It was solitude, out here, with the sea and the wind and the lurching ship-and his own thoughts.
Yesterday, he had spent the day reading in his cabin, unable to decide whether or not he wanted to meet the others. Tonight, the captain's party would be held. He was going. Peter Martin's problem was people. He had no use for them, no faith in them, and for a twenty-eight-year-old man, it was a desperate situation that he was fully aware of.
But Peter Martin had seen things; he had seen how people destroy other people, how they allowed their own greed and desires motivate them to smash other people's lives.
The cold raw wind whipped through his long brown hair now, and blew against his lean, almost aesthetic face. It was cruelly indifferent to his skin, and he enjoyed it. He laughed inwardly, thinking that he, too, was a fool who enjoyed private suffering.
Peter Martin had shaved off his beard for this voyage, as he wanted to be unrecognized. His face bearded and gaunt, was plastered on six best-selling novels that he had written. He was successful. He laughed and the wind threw the derisive sound back in his face. Successful. After he had seen the things that he had, his idealism had been destroyed, and with it, his capacity to write. The pessimists had gone out long ago, he realized, and in this day and age, people wanted hope, not doom-messages.
So, he was rolling in money from his books, with no prospect of another one being written until he found his .old faith. Maybe Vera Recreo would solve that for him.
The Camus novel lay across his lap now, unread, as he sat lost in thought. He heard the footsteps across the deck; the wind had stopped howling for several moments. He turned around and saw the blonde, her skirt blowing around her legs, her hair fluttering in the wind that started up again.
It was impossible not to acknowledge her presence. They were the only two on deck.
"Nice morning, isn't it?" he said.
"Are we really heading south?" the woman asked.
"So they say," he smiled, "so they say."
She sat down in the deck lounge next to his, and tried to light a cigarette. The wind blew match after match out. Finally, he leaned over with his windproof lighter and lit it for her.
"Thank you." She looked at him for a moment, then smiled.
"You really should have a lighter like this for ship-riding," he said. "Matches aren't much use."
Heather liked his looks. He was gentle, yet harsh at the same time; thin, yet powerful, a paradox of qualities, a mixture of vitality and frailty.
"I'm Heather Hamilton," she introduced herself. He smiled thinly again and lit a cigarette for himself.
"I'm Pete."
"Just Pete?"
"Just Pete; I'm doing some undercover work," he whispered with mock confidential tones. She laughed, and said "Ok, just Pete," and took a puff on her cigarette.
"Are you going to the captain's party tonight?" he asked.
"Of course. How about you?"
"Of course." She missed the mockery; he didn't even notice it himself. "Yes, I'll be there with the rest of the flock." He closed the book with a gesture of finality, and got up from his lounge. "Well, I'm going down for some coffee. Care to come along?" She nodded, and he waited for her to descend the steps, and was the second person to feel a dryness in his throat and a warmth in his loins as he watched her buttocks and hips and thighs strain against the skirt.
Nice piece, he thought, and was hardly conscious of his calculating mind as it tried to frame a plan for getting her alone in a cabin. Faith had nothing to do with desire...
"This hits the spot," he sighed, and drank the coffee letting the warmth of the mug penetrate his hands.
"It sure does," she said. "If there was some brandy to put in here, it'd really be good."
"I have a couple of bottles stashed away," he said, "if you really want some."
"If you don't mind sharing it, that'd be fine," she agreed. How easy can it get? he asked himself, and they walked towards the cabins. It turned out that his cabin was between Heather's and Joan Ellis'. Heather stood near him as he turned the key in the lock, then walked in after he stood aside for her to get by him. She noticed the typewriter on the small table, with a box of paper nearby. "You type?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, "for letters and things," he directed. She gave it to him and watched as he poured some of the hot black coffee into the toilet and filled the gap with scotch. He corked it, and shook the whole thing up.
They drank the laced coffee, letting the warmth hit them.
"Good," she signed, "really good."
"Yes. Did you come on this voyage alone?"
"Yep." She looked at him now, and he saw the invitation in her blue eyes, the silent, unmistakable come-hither look. It was so intense that it would have been awkward to pretend it didn't exist. It was easier, more natural just to lean forward and put his arms around her and kiss her on the lips. Her arms went around his shoulders, and he felt the fingers digging through his shirt in eager response.
"I'm all alone," she whispered, and their lips met again. Now hers were parted and moist, and Peter felt her tongue glide easily against his mouth, filling him with passion for her ripe, lush body. They kissed for a long time, doing things with their tongues and lips, exciting one another until the sound of their breathing boomed in their ears.
Heather's hand went to the buttons of her blouse and began to flick them away rapidly until he saw her bare breasts. He reached out and took the blouse from her shoulders. They were big. Ripe.
They were fine.
He kissed them, one at a time, thinking that any second the nipples would swell in his mouth, and he was right. He could feel the little pink flowers growing, rising and coming alive between his moving, hungry lips. She moaned, and pulled him down on the bed, on top of her.
Heather's breath left her when her hand touched him, felt the huge throbbing of his passion.
"Oooooh!" she moaned and trembled with sheer excitement. He pulled her skirt up above her waist and looked at her bare white thighs and buttocks as she lay there trembling and panting, eager for him to mount her and bring her to a frenzied jumble of sensations. Her hand clawed at his clothing, which they both removed. He stood naked before her, vibrating with rigid desire.
She was moist and ripe. He kissed her smooth, flat belly and felt the nerves jump under his lips. Her body was hot. Her lips and thighs were moist, and as they kissed again, his hands stroked the two smooth, creamy cheeks of her buttocks, which were moving uncontrollably with desire.
"Take me now, Peter," she groaned, "I need you." He kissed her into silence, stroked her body with his hot dry hands and then began to kiss her naked warm flesh. He found her breasts, her belly, and finally her thighs with his lips. They parted willingly, invitingly, and when his lips found her, Heather knew that she had never really had the right man before, that what she felt right now was every bit as good as what she had felt with Joan. He was magnificent!
She trembled, moving ecstatically to his lips and tongue as they danced and played upon her throbbing passion, and when he finally took her, she cried with uncontained joy.
She felt him enter, big and trembling and eager, felt how she consumed him, swallowed him; their hips met, and Heather rose up to meet him. His hands found her buttocks one on each dancing cheek, and pulled her up to him, hard. They rocked and sighed, until the shattering climactic moment had passed.
"Again," she said heatedly, "let me have it again!"
"I don't know if I can," he admitted.
"Of course you can," she said sweetly, and did things with her body until he could. He felt himself growing in her, became aware of her warmth and vibrancy that cried out for him, and they lunged slowly and leisurely at one another, savoring each little sensation, trembling to every little wave of joy.
"Slow," she whispered, and moved so slowly that it was excruciating. She made gentle, barely noticeable movements with her hips, stopping as he began to reach his peak, then easing him back down again, only to bring him back, and it went on and on, both of them deliberately dragging the act out to its fullest length, experiencing every minute drop of pleasure.
Suddenly, she forced them apart, and shifted her body. She trembled with desire, looked at him with feverbright blue eyes. Her lips pouted, and with a smile, turned around so that her back was to him. Impulsively, he kissed her warm, smooth buttocks, and she arched herself so that they beckoned.
"Will you do it for me?" she asked. No man had ever done it to her before, even though she had asked several. They had all refused, and Peter wanted to refuse, but he was entranced by the beautiful, voluptuous body, the buttocks that invited, the parted thighs that shone with passionate moisture.
"Please," she said, "I'll do anything you want if you'll just... " She waited desperately. Her friends in New York had called it "Greek style," but whatever it really was, she had an overpowering urge to have it done to her.
He did it.
She screamed. It was painful at first; it was a ripping of flesh, a prying apart, but then it subsided into warm, strange, familiarly unfamiliar pleasure. Instinctively, she took his hand and guided it between her legs, and when he complied, she began to move with desire, feeling two hungry live things in her, and she closed her eyes as the blood rushed to her head in a tide of pleasure.
He had never done it this way before. It was good.
He had to acknowledge that it was good. He felt her warmth engulf "him," felt her gentle thrusts against his hips, and when they reached the breaking point together, she screamed and fainted, her body sagging gently against the bed.
Heather Hamilton was a wanton, hungry little female, he thought. There was no limit to what she would do. None at all. A walking experiment, a breathing beautiful sex machine. He looked at her naked sleeping figure on his bed, and decided that the cruise was going to have some interesting developments, after all. Maybe enough for another book.
CHAPTER THREE
Joan Ellis was just going upstairs to the deck when she saw Heather walk out of the cabin. It was someone else's cabin; she walked down the corridor, and looked at the name on the door: Peter... There was an absence of last name. Strange, she thought. But Peter was a man's name, and Heather had been in that cabin. A pang of anger and jealousy went through her, then quickly went away. Maybe if she became interested enough in Peter who-ever-he-was, there wouldn't be any problem. At least there wouldn't be the temptation. She tried to convince herself, but the empty, yearning feeling remained in her. Suddenly, she didn't want to go upstairs at all. Turning, she went back to her cabin to do some reading.
Peter looked at his watch when he awakened from his nap. Heather was gone; her odor still lingered in the small cabin, and the memories of her wanton lovemaking came flooding back. Peter was not caught off guard by women like Heather; he had known females like her before, lust ridden, inconsiderate and impulsive, willing to hurt anyone to satisfy their own gnawing appetites-Peter knew about the Heathers, and loathed them.
But who could stay away from them?
What man could resist Heather Hamilton, for example, when she threw herself upon him, offering every physical beauty that was hers? It was a matter of detesting and loving at the same time, made possible by the fact that love was involved only with the body and what it was able to do.
He went back to the typewriter that Heather had noticed idly, and sat before it. It leered at him defiantly, its metal casing gleaming dully and lifelessly. An instrument of creation, now out of use, its owner no longer its master. He moved away from it again, and threw the plastic cover over it. He owed it that much, anyway. And who was to say what it owed him? Who was to say what anything owed anything else-or anyone? He stared out of the port window now, and watched the grey, dismal looking water; miles and miles ahead, the sky was blue, and maybe that was where they would come into the warm weather and deep blue water. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Everything was one big maybe.
The men wore dinner jackets and the women wore their most elegant evening dresses. There was a six-piece band, made up of crew members, and most of the people were gathered near the long table that served as a bar. Bottles and bottles sat in a straight line, along with glasses and buckets of ice, not to mention every conceivable kind of mixer. The captain was a middle-aged man, with iron grey hair and a strong lantern jaw, the picture of a proud skipper. He was with his officers, the mates, the navigator, all of them younger than he. They were dressed in white, and were meeting all the passengers, now, most of them for the first time. The ostensible purpose of the captain's party was to meet the passengers.
Peter met them all, and the captain called him only by his first name, according to Peter's instructions, which had been given from the beginning. Now they smiled as they shook hands, sharing the secret of identity between them.
"Would you dance with me?" Peter turned around, and there was Heather, dressed in a black, really simple, but elegant gown, low-cut at the bosom so that a good deal of her milky breasts showed, cleavage and all. She was beautiful-but all Heather- types were, Peter thought cynically.
"Why not? he smiled wanly, and led her to the middle of the floor where people were already dancing. She moved close against him, her knee gently coming between his legs to the throbbing tempo of the music, and he felt as though he hadn't had a woman in eons. The desire rose in him, fresh and unmarked by the afternoon's amorous play. He contained himself, however, determined not to let her know what state he was in.
"You're hot to trot again, aren't you?" she asked softly in his ear. When he didn't reply, she said "so am I; we can always sneak away for awhile," and she rubbed up against him until he was in agony.
The music ended, and they drew apart. She looked at him, a warm, full smile playing on her red lips. He wanted her. She wanted him. Before the evening was over, it would happen again. Both of them knew it.
"How about a drink?" he offered. When she nodded, he walked over to the bar, assuming that she liked scotch, and poured out two of them. When he came back over to her, carrying two glasses, he saw another woman standing with her; they were talking, and stopped as he drew near.
"Peter, meet a friend of mine, Joan Ellis. Joan, Peter."
"Hello, Joan," Peter acknowledged, "nice to meet you."
"Hello," she said. Her greeting was hardly friendly. In fact, it was sullen and resentful. He felt very uncomfortable in her presence, more so than anyone he could remember, outside of the publisher who had tried to cheat him on royalties once. Only once. "Well, I'm going to circulate a little," he said.
He excused himself and walked towards the captain and the group of officers and women that stood in a cluster, laughing and drinking.
"He's handsome," Joan said dryly, when Peter had walked away. "Where'd you find him?" Her voice was edged with bitterness.
"On deck. We just met, that's all." Heather felt herself becoming angry, angry that she had to be made to explain her actions to anyone, let alone Joan, a one-time roll in the mattress. "That's all?"
"Sure, that's all. What else should there be?" She looked at Joan, who was looking into her eyes intently.
"I saw you walking out of his cabin this afternoon," she said. Her voice rose in spite of itself.
"We had a 'drink together. We were cold from being up on deck." Heather was getting angrier by the moment, mostly at herself, for even feeling that she had to explain herself to another person. A woman.
"Yeah, sure," Joan said bitterly, "uh huh!" Heather became even more enraged when she heard the sarcasm.
"Look," she said in a low, measured tone, "I'm not about to account for my actions to anyone, hear? I'm not working and living in conformity row any more, and I'm a free agent. You have a little nerve trying to make me feel guilty-what do you think I came on this thing for, if it wasn't to have myself a ball?" Joan began to cry soundlessly; the tears spurted in her wide, sensitive brown eyes, and Heather felt a moment of savage triumph. Beyond that, nothing.
"I'm sorry," Joan stammered. "I just need you so!.." she turned away so that Heather couldn't see the tears. With effort, she stopped the tears, then turned around again, her face composed.
"Forget it," Heather said lightly. "In fact, let's slip away from here for a few minutes, and really make up."
Joan was powerless to resist. Every impulse and desire rose in her, and helplessly, she nodded her agreement, and they wormed their way out of the crowd, heading towards the cabins.
In Joan's cabin, it was quiet. Not even the faintest throbbing of the party could be heard. Heather sat on the edge of the bed and drank from the glass that she had carried with her from the ballroom. Joan was looking at her, in a state of trance. Silence hung between them like a fog cloud; the ice clinked m Heather's glass.
"The quiet's nice," Joan said. It seemed a ridiculous thing to say in the tense atmosphere of the two waiting female organisms. Heather got up from the bed and went over to Joan and kissed her, closing her eyes as she bent forward. In a turmoil of emotion and sadness, tinged with desperation, Joan clung to her, sunk her lips deep into Heather's. She felt the lush blonde sigh into her, the breath warm and heavy with mounting passion.
"Oh, Joan, let's not fight any more," Heather said, and already her hands were roaming over Joan's body, working her into a state of hopeless desire.
Joan forgot about her desperation.
Her hands plunged into the neckline of Heather's evening gown, one on each ripe full white breast. Her fingers found the nipples and teased them into swelling. Heather sighed for a moment, then began to moan with desire, twisting her voluptuously curved body to the tempo that was building up in her rapidly. The shoulders fell away and bared her torso.
"Unzip me, will you?" she panted, and felt the zipper coming down her back, freeing her. She felt Joan's warm hands upon her bare back, caressing avidly. Eagerly, she wriggled out of her dress, and lay naked on the bed, except for the stockings encased her round, shapely thighs, held up by black garters.
Joan looked at the waiting body, and felt her heart leap in her throat. The nylon felt good under her hand-lewd. Lewdness was natural in a woman like Heather Hamilton; it fit her, somehow, and made her all the more exciting and desirable.
"I'll ruin these stockings," Heather, breathed, and in a rapid motion, removed them, exposing all the naked beauty of her thighs. She lay there, looking like Sex. Her breasts rose and fell with her breathing, the nipples rising in sharp points, and two globes of perfection fell away to a wide ribcage and flat, jumping belly, sunk into wide twisting hips, and then finally voluptuous, passion-hungry thighs, moist and tender inside, white and firm on the outside. The downy golden target nestled there, challenging and inviting.
Lying there, looking like hot Sex.
Joan kissed her breasts. She bit the nipple, feeling savage, a little brutal. Heather loved it. She cursed the pain, writhed with the pleasure, and pulled Joan's head down, saving "bite me there again, bite me hard," and Joan did, bit her on each swollen pink nipple until Heather shrieked with agony and delight, lost in the thrill of pleasure-pain.
She felt Joan's lips and teeth all over her body. Her breasts, her belly, her thighs, her shoulders and neck, her lower pouting lip all felt the bite of savage teeth, the hot moist onslaught of lips.
She writhed and moaned, and closed her eyes- Joan saw the flushing of her pretty face, contorted with ecstasy and pain; she turned her over with strong hands and bit into the buttocks, delighting in the feel of the flesh between her teeth, the way it jumped in reflex. She ran her tongue between the moist hungry thighs, sighing as Heather shrilled and cried at the touch of lips there.
"Heather, I have something for you." Her voice trembled. Joan was silent, except for her helpless moaning.
Quickly, while Heather lay on the bed caught in the web of desire, Joan reached into the night table and pulled out the long, rubber-studded object. She looked at Heather, who lay face down on the bed, thrusting her hips and buttocks hungrily, then moved back to her.
"For you, darling, all for you," she whispered, and watched Heather gasp with surprise and pain as she gave it to her.
Heather felt it. It was not Joan. It was something strange, something foreign, and it hurt at first, but that was alright, because her savage lust cried out for a little pain-then the pleasurable sensations swept through her, as the foreign thing came deeper and deeper into her, forcing her to open her legs as far as possible. It moved slowly, rhythmically, in and out. Then out altogether.
She lay back sighing and panting as she felt the warm, already familiar fingers, probing and loving and teasing and pleasing her, making her moist and musky. Instinctively, her hand reached out for Joan, and found her there, waiting and hungry, and now they moaned together, sobbing and rocking madly back and forth, lying side by side, looking at each other, but not seeing, their thighs slamming up and down in helpless spasms of joy.
This is good, so good, Joan thought how can I possibly fight it? Then thought evaporated as another wave of joy moved through her. Heather's hand was there, knowing and probing, joyfully filling her with pleasure, and her own hand moved faster and faster until they both lay back on the bed panting with exhausted satisfaction.
Heather thought calmly about her day. First, with Joan, then with Peter, then with Joan again. And she smiled in a self-satisfied way, thinking she was ready for more. I could take on the whole ship, she thought, and was filled with pride.
"What are you thinking about?" Joan asked. Her voice was not soft and glowed with obvious contentment.
"How nice it is with you," Heather said. She felt Joan's hand move to her body, and caress it fondly, feeling the rise of her mound, then moving down. A warm glow began to spread through her again. "What was that thing you used?" she asked. Joan showed her, and she gasped when she saw the size of it. "I was able to take that?" she asked incredulously.
"You liked it, didn't you?" Joan asked.
"Yes. Of course I did," Heather assured her.
"I'd like it too," Joan said, and when she handed it to Heather, she lay back on the bed, pulling the skirt of her gown up. Heather looked at her thighs; they were trembling, and beautiful. Strong, but feminine and ripe-looking. She saw Joan hold her breath, then exhale rapidly in a sighing moan as it went into her. It was so easy; no resistance at all.
Joan moved her body rapidly back and forth, up and down, in a mad double-motion until she brought herself to the state of bliss; when it ebbed away, she began to move frantically again. And again. Finally, she lay back in a heap of spent joy.
"Now I feel good," she sighed, and smiled up at Heather.
"That's not as nice as you," Heather said. "I like your fingers much better."
"Do you?" Joan asked. "Next time, I'll use them. And you can use yours on me, alright?" Heather nodded, already affected by the frankly lewd conversation, with all its graphic details.
When they went back to the party, Heather saw Peter dancing close with a redhead. Her head was on his shoulder, and her lips were caressing his neck. His hands were moving slowly up and down her back; it was apparent what they were going to do before the night was over. Heather felt a pang of resentment in her. Joan watched her watching the couple.
"See how it feels?" she said softly. Heather hardly heard her. She just stared, rapt at seeing Peter caressing the luscious-looking woman he was dancing with.
Suddenly the absurdity of her relationship with Joan hit her; they could make love together in private, but they couldn't dance together in public. Why should that bother me? By loving Joan, she was truly doing the forbidden, the secret ritual of sin. It thrilled her, filled her with a sense of ecstasy. Impulsively, she squeezed Joan's hand and watched Peter.
CHAPTER FOUR
Peter Martin held the woman tightly in his arms, and thought that his hostility to people seemed to female company.
Her name was Maggie Stevens, and she was a redhead, at least on top. She had magnificent boobs that dug right into his chest, through jacket, shirt and all, and she moved her hips against him in such a way that her invitation was even more blatant than if she'd just come out and said it, or asked it.
"You really a redhead, Maggie?" Peter asked her. "I know it's a tired old question, but I'm really interested."
"I'd be surprised if you weren't," she said with a smile. "You'll have to take my word for it that I am."
"No proof?" he asked suggestively.
"You'd like that," she laughed.
"So would you," he remarked. "Admit it." She moved her body closer to him, so that he could feel every curve, every definition.
"I admit it," she whispered. From that point on, it was just a matter of marking time, waiting impatiently the thing to end. Peter didn't want to appear overly anxious, so he didn't even suggest that they leave before it was over. They stayed until the bitter end.
Maggie had been teasing, taunting, inviting all night long. Now, when she resisted his advances, Peter was surprised, then angry.
"What's the bit?" he asked heatedly. "You rub up to me all evening, then you invite me down to your cabin, and I'm supposed to act like a eunuch."
"Don't you know?" she smiled. She twisted her body, even cupped her breasts and gazed at him with heavy-lidded eyes. As soon as he tried to kiss her, she pulled away. He was drunk. Angry-irritable hot-to-trot drunk, and belligerent to boot. He just wasn't having any nonsense.
Her fists pounded against him when he threw her back on the bed, and she bit him on the arm, making him bleed. The more she resisted, the more desperately he wanted her. He ripped her, hearing it tear. I'm raping her, he thought fearfully. I could go to jail for this. Yet he kept on, violating her struggling white body now, and forced her legs apart and contacted, savagely indifferent to any pain that she might have.
Then Maggie stopped fighting. She began to lunge at him, thrusting like a female animal, consuming and drawing him in to her, writhing at the pleasure of the contact.
"Hit me," she panted, and he hit her, every brutal impulse rising in him. She wanted to be raped. He'd heard of women like that, but had never encountered any. Well, there was a first time for everything. The more he hit her, the more he scratched at her, the more he pried her thighs apart, the more she thrust with pleasure, bringing them both closer to their climactic peak of joy.
He raped her until she cried.
She struggled, but always gave in, and he had to admit it was interesting, that there was a pleasing element of challenge in the thing. The thrill of the chase. Only this was no chase, it was a contest. As long as he raped, they'd both come out winners.
He looked at her now, lying naked and heaving on the bed, her body slightly bruised where he had hit her; now he felt sickened, frightened of the savagery that lurked in him.
"Are you alright?" he asked her.
"Fine," she said with a smile, "you were magnificent."
"I was really mad, you know."
"I know-that's the only way to get people to cooperate. "You can have it regular now, if you want it. I'm ready."
"Only if you want to," he said.
"I want to." She pulled him against her and kissed him on the lips, and he kissed all her bruises, out of sympathy, and she sobbed with passion and emotion. His lips found her breasts, her thighs, her passion, and she became a throbbing dynamo of movement as he brought her within inches of her peak before mounting her and taking her, gently. She responded, gently. They moved against one another slowly, feeling one another's essence in painstaking exaggeration, thrilling to it.
"This is better," he breathed.
"Yes-but I need the other first," she panted and moved faster against him, and he felt the double movement of her body as she moved her ripe lush white thighs him and drew them together, then cried with a slightly insane yelp of joy as they both went hurtling to the top of their desire, and fell, drifted to the other side, down into exhaustion.
They spent the night together. He had to rape her no less than three times, and had her twice in between. He woke up feeling drained and exhausted; at first, he didn't even know who's cabin he was in, his or hers. He'd been drunk, and now he was hung over on top of being just plain tired.
"Food for the conqueror," she said, as she entered the cabin carrying a tray loaded with food. He was surprised, and a first, nausea rose up in him at the very sight of food, but he managed to eat it after a cup of black coffee.
"I don't feel like any conqueror," he growled. He ate the breakfast that she'd brought to him, and while he ate, she told him about herself.
Margaret Stevens had grown up on a farm in the midwest, and was destined for a pretty drab life, until she'd decided to move to New York. She found a job as a secretary for an executive in the dress business, and was making good money, but like so many people who move to New York as strangers, remained one.
She was lonely. When one of the men asked her for a date, she accepted out of sheer gratitude. He had taken her to dinner, then to a movie, and afterwards for a long ride out to the Island. They'd wound up on a deserted beach off the sound, and he'd tried to make love to her. She was a virgin, and as anxious as she was to lose it, he didn't impress her as the man to make the sacrifice with.
He raped her. Just like that. I was brutal, shameful and frightening. He had left her there, and she had had to find the nearest house and call a cab from there. Maggie had spent half the night in the bathtub, trying to remove the filth she felt, but it would not go away.
Afterwards, thoughts of sex filled her with self-disgust, and somehow, if men just raped her first, she could enjoy it afterwards. The shame was gone, which was something. Other women with the same malady always felt ashamed, yet always needed it. But Maggie did not feel ashamed after she was raped. Now, as she watched Peter sitting in bed, drinking the last of his coffee, she talked. It was good to talk. Peter seemed the kind of man whom one could unload her problems upon; he seemed anxious to listen.
"Thanks for letting me cry the blues on your shoulder," she remarked.
"Not at all," he said. "We all have our skeletons, Maggie. Even the smug, self-satisfied little people have their skeletons." He grinned crookedly, and Maggie at once perceived that he knew what he was talking about.
Your skeleton?" she asked softly.
"Plural," he smiled. "Someday, when it's cold and rainy, I'll tell you all about it." She didn't pursue it, but smiled, indicating that she was willing to listen any time. "This rape scene," he mused, "I think we ought to work on that, Maggie -you know what I mean?"
"Would you really try?" she asked brightly.
"What better job could I work on?" He reached out and pinched her breast playfully, and she leaned forward so that he could be more playful.
"I do need help, Peter," she said more seriously.
"OK, Maggie. We'll work on it. Later, though.
I had a rough day yesterday. "Mentally, he reviewed his episodes with Heather Hamilton and Maggie, and" shuddered.
Heather stretched luxuriously, watching the beam of sunlight that came through the porthole. She stretched so hard that she felt every inch of her body; when her eyes opened completely, she threw back the covers and looked down at her naked self. She was beautiful and she knew it.
Her hands ran down the curvature where her narrow, almost tiny waist widened into triangular white hips. Her fingers touched her thighs. They were smooth and war(m, and a slow, gentle tremor ran through her and mingled with her pleasant sleepiness. They found her downy blond womanhood and she trembled a little. It was good. Her fingers touched herself there, and she shuddered, oblivious to what she was doing.
She was aflame with passion when a knock at her door interrupted her reverie. It was Joan. Heather got out of bed to unlock the door, and Joan came in, wearing a robe over her nightie; she looked at Heather's naked body, and closed the door quickly behind her. The glazed, passionate look in Heather's eyes was enough to tell her that words and preliminary maneuverings were unnecessary; she embraced the naked blonde and felt her naked warmth seep through her, smelling the warm, lazy sleep-odor that mingled with the growing musk of passion.
"I woke up so-hot," Heather whispered, leaning against Joan. "I really need it."
"I'm here to give it to you," Joan murmured, and again forgot her misgivings, her resolution to try to break the spell that Heather was weaving around her, tying the knots a little more securely with each encounter.
"I know," Heather said with trembling conviction, and her hand went to Joan's robe, inside and through the negligee, touched her breasts for a fleeting second, felt Joan recoil, and remembered -that Joan's breasts were absolutely taboo. Still, she undressed her, and held her naked body next to her own, putting her knee between her legs and moving it upward, Joan moaned.
"Let's lie down," she said weakly, and they lay down, entangled in one another's arms, writhing and rolling on the unmade bed. Heather felt warm searching lips on the swollen pink nipple that was hers, and was forced to take a deep breath. Her fingers came down Joan's thigh, and found her. When Joan moaned and parted her thighs with a sigh of pleasure, Heather suddenly felt a rising savagery within her, a desire to strike out and inflict pain. She did.
Joan cried with astonishment, then sighed with a mixture of pain and joy as Heather hit her on her buttocks and her back. She felt the flat hand pounding against her flesh, and it was good, good, something she wanted all along, a rewarding sense of punishment that she desired and deserved.
They twisted their warm naked bodies and their lips found one another's thighs and kissed the hot waiting flash. Their moans rose in eerie unison, and their bodies thrust in erotic concert.
Joan felt the hot, searching moist lips on her, then the red, hot little tongue probing at her, and she closed her eyes to let the joy of it all sweep through her. The blood rushed to her head, and she felt every little particle of her panting body turn into an inferno of desire. Her own lips moved against something that she was hardly aware of.
Heather wanted to scream with joy. Those lips, those hot knowing woman's lips! Against her! Doing this to her- "Oooooh, don't stop!" she moaned, but Joan did not hear her; her feverish face was buried in soft-firm, warm musky flesh. Relaxing and staring, thrusting and twisting, they brought each other final thrills, then back to another, and still another until they lay back in two exhausted heaps of cooling flesh.
"It's so much nicer that way," Heather murmured languidly. She was like a satisfied, pleased little animal. Joan was hollow with sadness. So good while it happens, she thought and so awful now. Hooked. Caught.
"You sure learned fast," she said limply.
"I-was born for this," Heather said without any special emphasis. "I was made to please other people, and please myself. As far as I'm concerned, life is just one big orgy."
"No matter who it hurts?"
"How can it hurt anyone?" she asked incredulously. "It never hurt me."
"No," Joan answered, "I don't suppose it ever will."
CHAPTER FIVE
When the Isle Nymph was less than fifty miles off the eastern side of Vera Recreo, a storm came up. The Isle Nymph had a marked aversion to Storms; customarily, she ran from storms and sought the nearest harbor.
But now there was no harbor.
The nearest harbor was the ship's destination, which was a good forty eight knots off-she had no choice but to fight the squall, and her ineptitude was plain. She was a cowardly ship, not brave at all, merely frivolous and now cowardly. She was a fun ship, a pleasure craft, and this was not a fun-type situation, being caught in a never-ending mountain of waves that washed over the decks, and tossed the ship around as though she were a toy.
Desperately, they tried to keep her on course, tried to summon help, but no ship would come. They were having their own difficulties.
When the Isle Nymph hit the coral reef, which really didn't belong fifty miles from the nearest island, but was there anyway, the game was up. It made a gash well below the waterline, and it was simply no use. The order to abandon ship was given, and the lifeboats were made ready for lowering.
It was the most ordered ship evacuation in history, simply because no effort was made to save the ship. The skipper was a practical man; there would be other ships, and he wanted to be around to command one of them. He didn't think about the unpleasant aspects of having to explain the loss of the ship, only the positive side of the mishap entered his mind. He would have to spend some time on Vera Recreo when he got there.
The passengers all felt the jarring impact. When the order came over the intercoms, they were amazingly well composed. Some of them even seemed indifferent; they grabbed their money, and their most essential possessions, and made their way up to the water-tossed deck, where the crew was waiting to assist them to the boats.
Peter quickly packed his typewriter, his toilet articles and put on some clothes and made his way to the deck. He was unaware that he had taken the typewriter, unaware of the admission he made to himself when he took it.
Heather brought nothing but her money and cosmetics.
Everything went about smoothly, considering the circumstances, until the waves suddenly became higher and the sinking hip began to list to one side noticeably, making people lose their balance.
Water was entering the hold fast, and people began to panic, and mill about like lost fish.
People were jammed into the lifeboats to fullest capacity, lowered and sent on their way, with an explanation of direction of Vera Recreo hurled at them as they were lowered.
It was a nightmare towards the end. There were no casualties or mishaps, something that defied all explanation, considering the intensity and severity of the squall that was threatening to become a minor hurricane. As a matter of fact, it was a hurricane slowly building and making its perenvial towards Cuba and the Gulf-but this was the Caribbean, and the storm was in its infancy.
Peter found himself in a life raft, Joan Ellis and Maggie Stevens. It was a eight-man raft, with supplies for ten days. Three of them could make the food and rations last mucho longer, if necessary.
Wordlessly (words were futile in the howling wind) the women bailed water while Peter tried to keep the raft afloat. They worked like silent phantoms through the night, and when morning came, they looked up to an innocent sun and flawless blue sky. The water was placid, with only the usual undercurrent of activity. It was incredible. It was as though nothing had ever happened, as if they had always been adrift in a life raft.
The ship was gone. So were the other boats, except for two, which were staying side by side.
"How far away are those two boats, do you think?" Joan asked. She was the first to break the silence that had lasted throughout the hectic, panic-stricken night.
Miles and miles," Peter said. "If we can just keep them in our sight, we'll be OK. Silly to try to catch up with them."
"Do we get our money back, I wonder?" Maggie quipped. Peter chuckled, and even Joan cracked a smile.
"I don't care if we do or not," Peter said. "Being marooned with two women is worth more than any amount of money." Maggie smiled sweetly; Joan turned visibly cold and barren. Peter looked at Joan intently for the first time, unconsciously studying her with his writer's audacity. She was pretty. She'd be prettier if she smiled; she had a voluptuous quality about her except for the small breasts, but more than that, he noticed the sad, tortured look.
"Don't be afraid, Joan," he said, "we'll make it."
"I'm not afraid," she said icily. "Just don't be so cute about our situation; as far as I'm concerned, it's anything but enviable."
Well, well, he said to himself, she really is indignant.
"Oh, I don't know," Maggie smiled, "it could be worse."
The day wore on, and the sun was unmerciful, beating down out of a clear sky and reflecting off the water into their bodies and faces. Peter took off his shirt and lashed the sleeves to the oars, forming a crude canopy.
"You two can hold this over you until we start drifting too far," he said, "then we have to row so we don't lose sight of the boats up ahead." The women held the shirt over them, and Peter, naked to the waist, felt the sun bear down on him, even through his khakis. Luckily, he was already slightly tan-reaching into the supplies that were stashed under one of the sitting platforms, he found some suntan lotion. After rubbing himself down with it, he handed it to Joan. "Here, pretend it's Jones Beach."
"We have any dry cigarettes between us?" Maggie asked. Peter rummaged again, and found a carton wrapped in clear plastic.
"Yeah, but you better not smoke too much. It'll dry your mouth, and we don't have that much water with us." He thought of the books he had read of sailors stranded in the ocean, surrounded by salt water and out of fresh water, and how they tried the salt water, just a little at first, then more, until they burned and hungered, and their throats swelled, until they lost their minds from the thirst and the raging sun. "We'll have to be careful with the water," he said again, and shuddered in spite of himself.
Joan was silent throughout the day. It filled the hot still air with tension. Three people trapped on a raft together felt the tension.
Even Joan felt it. She knew she was responsible, but inside her heart was pounding, and she was frightened, not about being adrift, but because she was with a man and a woman who was undeniably tempting and voluptuously ripe looking. A woman who was all woman. And a woman who so far didn't promise to be anywhere near as willing as Heather had been. That man.
Peter something-or-other-why didn't the jump overboard? The way he kept looking at her, then at Maggie, then her again, as though he were tossing a coin to see which one he would enjoy first. He was a man, therefore a beast: it was a foregone conclusion for Joan Ellis. Well, he'd better not try anything funny with her! The sharks will look good to him if he does, she thought vehemently.
Peter did all the rowing until his arms ached unendurably. "Time for shade again, girls," he said, and they each picked up an oar to hold the shirt over them. When night came, Peter was sore. The sun had burned his skin until he was red. It was not dangerous, but painful.
"Let me rub you with some of that lotion," Maggie offered. It was dark now, and they gave up hope of keeping sight of the boats ahead. It was a bright night, but the distance between them was too great.
"OK." He felt her gentle hands upon his back, rubbing softly. Even so, it hurt. He winced, and she felt his body tighten with pain.
"Sorry," she said, "I'll try to be more gentle."
"Forget it," he told her, "it'll be better in the morning." Joan was silent, and Peter and Maggie were aware of her watching them coldly. They could hardly help the hostility that was beginning to grow in them.
"Joan, is your skin alright?" Peter asked.
"Yes. Why shouldn't it be?"
"As long as we're all handing out first aid, I just thought I'd ask," he said, not knowing how to answer her hostile rejoinder.
"Don't bother." Peter shrugged, fighting down his anger, which was growing by the second.
"OK," he said coolly, "I won't."
When Joan was asleep breathing softly and lying flat in the back of the raft, her legs dangling over the edge, Maggie's hand came down gently on Peter's shoulder. He lit a cigarette, which they shared. It was cool now, even chilly, and a cigarette was welcome-the first they had had all day.
"Don't let her get you, Peter."
"What's eating her? Who does she think she is?" he whispered angrily.
"She's scared, I think," Maggie said. "You ought to know how scared people act."
"What do you mean?" he asked sharply. He turned to her, and her face was turned towards the sea.
"I know who you are," she said. "I won't say anything, if you want to hide it, but I wanted you to know that I knew."
"It was my job once; to know, I mean. Not anymore."
"Then the typewriter's just for ballast?" Her hand rubbed his shoulder lightly and she took the cigarette when he handed it back to her.
"I really am deluding myself, aren't I?" he asked quietly.
"I believe you are, Peter." They listened to the gentle lapping of the water against the raft, and the silence drew them close together. He put his arm around her, and whispered in her ear.
"So you know about my skeleton."
"Yes. I won't bug you about it. Peter. You said you'd tell me when you were ready." He nodded, and pulled her closer to him. "Right now, let's work on yours," he said.
"What about her?" Their eyes turned to Joan, who was unquestionably asleep.
"What about her?" Peter echoed. "She won't wake up, and I could care less if she did."
"We have to be quiet," she said, and suddenly Peter wanted to giggle, thinking of a couple of people in a farmer's barn-the farmer and the daughter bit. When her lips met his, he no longer saw anything particularly funny, however. He kissed her quietly, letting her breathe and sigh in his mouth. He felt their warmth, their moistness and response against his.
"Do I have to be absolutely quiet?" he asked.
"Absolutely," she whispered, and when his hand went under her salt-crusted skirt, he felt her downy passion already moist, already willing and eager to swallow him.
Gently, he placed her on his lap, and they let themselves move to the boat's sway, hardly moving themselves. He felt the firm warmth of her naked buttocks against his legs; then when her things gently gripped his waist, he felt her lower herself onto him and swallow him in a warm wet gulf of passion; it throbbed against him, held him tightly, caressed him and stroked him. Her belly quivered and her lips trembled against his as they kissed. She felt his hands holding her buttocks, keeping her balanced upon him.
She wiggled.
He gasped.
"How's this?" he whispered softly in her ear.
"Beautiful," she hissed, "the best I've ever, ever had." She moved against him and he felt her legs close a little. The movement gripped him and filled him with sensation. It was so quiet, so controlled, with the undercurrent of sobbing passion running throughout, that it was sheer ecstasy.
"Give it to me, Peter, give it to me good," and now she was crying in his ear, biting the lobe and moving her buttocks, so bare and smooth and warm against him, sucking him in, in still more inward until he wanted to faint. So warm-so moist-so alive, so good, so truly eager.
He opened the front of her dress and cupped her large milky breasts.
"Kiss my nipples, sweet," she moaned softly. He did. She hissed with eager delight. One pink swollen morsel at a time entered his lips, and now she moved harder against him, her buttocks-flesh rubbing his rising hips. The boat rocked precariously, and they subsided, just rocking with the motion of the boat now, letting their passions caress.
Maggie Stevens throbbed against his throbbing, and they quivered with quiet joy, until finally he blasted her with ejaculatory pleasure and she swooned against him, crying softly, laughing with disbelief, because Maggie had been taken, but never possessed, not like this, no never, never, never. Her thighs quivered open and shut against him, and his hands squeezed her breasts as their lips bit at one another's with frenzied joy.
"Again," she sighed softly, after it was over. "Do it again."
"I don't know if I can," Peter said.
"Yes you can," she insisted. He felt her move away, and then, in the darkness-a cloud had settled over the moon for a moment-her lips found him and brought him back to flaming awareness, titillated him until he was feverish with sensation.
Her tongue loved him, her lips surrounded him and he lay back, letting the rising tide grip him, wanting to let it be just like this, but knew that she was thrilling him so that he could thrill her- "Lie back, Peter," she said, "and I'll make you feel good." His pleasure filled her with a strange sense of joy, a feeling completely new to her.
But he didn't, great as the sweetness of the kiss was. He took her, like she wanted. Another time, when Joan was not around, he would experiment with Maggie, because it was obvious she liked to explore the little-traveled roads of pleasure. But for now, he only wanted to appease her wonderful appetite for sensual play. She sat on his lap again and drew her legs stiffly together as she lay back; he couldn't see her, and except for her legs, could not touch her.
He only felt her.
Open slightly, and close, open slightly, and close; she drew him into her, pulling and sucking with her essence until he grew dizzy with it, and when she began to throb and sob, he relaxed and let the pleasure sweep through him. Her imagination was limitless: it was as though she were a man, and knew what a man wanted.
They slept in one another's arms, lusts pacified, now lulled by the gentle motion of the raft in the quiet green sea, drifting southwestward towards the island of Vera Recreo, as though the sea and the raft knew the people had to get there. Simply had to. Joan slept, oblivious. She didn't even dream of Heather Hamilton, the woman whose love and body she hated.
CHAPTER SIX
Heather Hamilton looked behind her and saw the colorless dot that was a lone raft; it was so far away as to be barely visible. She wondered if Joan were on it. As it was, she was on a large lifeboat with six other people. Five of them were ship's officers, the sixth was a woman like herself. The seven people almost filled the boat. They were drifting towards Vera Recreo. It was hardly necessary to row at all, except for an occasional spell when the wind died. The tide seemed invariable, however, pulling in one direction-Vera Recreo.
Now Heather sat on the back edge of the boat, almost at the stern. Her dress clung to her wetly and revealed all of her voluptuous curved body. She sat next to a woman whom she judged to be about thirty-five or so, and who was as firm-breasted as she, remarkably well preserved. Her name was Daphne Starr, and so far she had accommodated every single man on their lifeboat. For some strange, absurd reason they all preferred her to Heather.
She certainly was not preferred because of superior beauty. Heather was easily the more pretty of the two; Daphne was well-cared-for, with her firm uplifted breasts and massive, gently-curved hips and buttocks and thighs. Her skin was not white, but deeply tanned, which gave her pinkish-red lips a stark quality. But she lacked the fresh young look that Heather had. Yet all the men liked her.
Last night, when the other lifeboat that was with them had decided to try to make their way to the island at a faster pace, and had rowed away, Daphne had offered herself to the men. She had taken them on slowly, almost leisurely, one at a time. And she had enjoyed each and every one of them. After she had finished they were too spent and happy to even consider Heather.
And now Heather was angry.
Daphne had set the atmosphere and the environment: there was no pretense, no hesitation, no shyness or restraint on anyone's part-Daphne laughed raucously at everyone's jokes now, throwing her head back as she cackled, and Heather looked at her even white teeth that were set in the deeply tanned, oval-shaped face.
"What's wrong, Heather?" she asked. "You look glum."
"Nothing," Heather said. She grated her teeth with barely-concealed anger and bitterness. Heather Hamilton had never known competition of any kind -she had always had her way. Sex had always been her ultimate, fool-proof weapon. Now, a woman more than ten years her senior had taken it from her, and she was frustrated. All these men, most of them young and appealing, closer to her age than Daphne's, were entranced by Daphne.
It was Daphne's out and out sexuality that got to them. She had that quality. She was stripped of all freshness, all innocence, and presented a picture of pure sensual voluptuousness. And on a deserted lifeboat in a deserted, empty sea, it seemed to be an irresistible quality.
"Are you angry about last night?" she asked Heather. Heather didn't reply. "Come on, let's be honest with each other. If we can't be honest here, what's the use?" she cajoled. "I guess I am," Heather said quietly, "It's not too flattering when a woman can't attract a man even here, under these conditions." Daphne smiled and patted her on the shoulder.
"Well, it's stupid to be mad about that, honey," she said. "We can team up and slit the territory.
There's more than enough action here for the two of us." In spite of herself, Heather smiled at the naked appraisal of the situation.
"There sure is," she agreed. "What do we do?
I mean you took them all on last night and seemed to like it."
"I did. They all turned me on, bless their little hearts."
"We could give them a show." Heather began to smile, and Daphne saw the wickedness in the eyes of the younger woman-and shuddered.
"How?"
"Have you ever had another woman?" Heather asked, and as she did, watched Daphne's reaction carefully to see what effect the question would have.
"Once." No visible expression.
"How was it?"
"Disappointing. It was young, and the woman was old and fat. Not very nice at all."
"I could make it good for you." Now it was Daphne's turn to be shocked by lewdness. This exceeded anything that she had ever said or done. It was so blatant, so devoid of any pretense or delicacy-just a proposal, a proposition.
"I'll try it," she shrugged.
"Tonight?"
"Now." She looked directly into Heather's eyes, as though challenging and pleading at the same time.
"Alright." She leaned forward. Daphne was waiting for her, sitting on the wooden seat; when Heather's lips found hers, they responded immediately. Her tongue moved slowly out of her mouth, between Heather's lips, and moved in such a way that left Heather breathless with mounting desire. Her hand opened Heather's dress and found her naked breasts without hesitating. Then Heather, who had wanted to lead, who had wanted to initiate, found herself moaning and twisting to the dizzy thrill of warm knowing lips upon her nipple, teasing it into swelling response.
Daphne was good.
She knew how. Heather felt the tongue run over her nippies, one at a time and inflame her with their eagerness. It was better than Joan, because their was no emotion involved except for pure lust.
"How am I doing?" Daphne asked. Her voice was calm.
"Fine." Heather tried to keep her voice steady, but it trembled in spite of her effort. Daphne smiled quietly and bent down again to find the naked white breasts.
Heather felt her dress being lifted above her thighs, above her buttocks, then up to her waist.
"Hey, look what those two are doing!" one of the men exclaimed. It was the second mate, and now the others, whose backs had been turned, all turned around to watch.
Daphne was indifferent to the audience. The thrill of being on exhibition ran high in her breast as she brought Heather to a steadily-growing ecstasy. Their eyes were upon her: she felt them, glowed under them, and as though demonstrating a weird machine, showed them how one woman brought another to the heights of lust.
Heather only saw and felt Daphne. She felt lips and teeth and tongue upon her breasts, nibbling and kissing and flicking rapidly, filling her with feeling and sensations that hovered between pain and pleasure, then tipped the scales on the pleasure-side. There was the warm moist contact of lips on her belly-flesh, then upon her thighs.
The men howled and hooted with panting appreciation as Heather began to moan and cry with ever-increasing frenzy. She could do nothing to Daphne, absolutely nothing, she was powerless and weak with passion. All she could do was succumb to the pleasures that the other woman heaped upon her.
Her thighs were pried apart. She felt the hand, then the fingers, then nothing else. Sight, hearing, every sense except inner feeling blacked out-only the tingling and trembling and throbbing of her passion, kneaded and caressed by expert woman's fingers gave her any awareness. She lay back trembling, breathlessly fulfilled, her dress still above her waist. Her eyes were closed with exhaustion.
"More exercise coming up, honey," she heard Daphne say, and in another moment, the first man was on top of her, prying her apart, violating her -enjoying her with long fast movements. Then she felt him leave. A moment later, she was being ravished and savored by someone else, and it went on and on, exhausting her, hurting her, and in a barely conscious way, she thought to herself, I can't take it, I'm not the sex machine that Daphne is. She was unconscious now. She never heard Daphne challenge them.
"Any of you guys have enough left to take a crack at me?" Only one did, who immediately took her. She threw her arms around his neck and drew him down to her as his hands gathered up the firm flesh of her buttocks and lifted her-he slammed into her and she trembled with joy.
"Come on," she prompted, "turn me on." Again and again, she felt him slamming at her, filling her with manhood and pulling her up to him. She felt like an instrument, a toy, being used and dallied with. It was a good feeling. A fine feeling. She moved slowly with even measured strokes against the man until he brought her to the peak and height of joy. She lay back and smiled like a contented animal lying in the sun.
When Heather regained consciousness, she was swept away by the humiliation of the situation. Her proposition to Daphne had worked against her. She had become the victim instead. Her dream of taking on one man after another had turned into a nightmare. She was exhausted, sore and mortified. She remained speechless, and no one spoke to her.
Later that night, when everyone was asleep, she saw Daphne raise herself up, and saw the quick flame of a match as she lighted a cigarette.
"You awake, Heather?"
"Yes."
"I'm sorry about today, but you had it coming. You know that?"
"Yes." She could say nothing to refute Daphne.
"You're too selfish, Heather, much too selfish. You'll never become what you want to become until you learn to think of your partner. You don't get unless you give, honey."
"Oh, really?" Heather's voice was tinged with sarcasm.
"Really. I know your type, Heather, and believe me, you'll run into real trouble."
"My type?" Heather felt the anger and rage growing in her.
"Yes. Selfish, exhibitionist, and that false, phony pride and dependence on your sex-like with that Joan Ellis. That was pretty cruel, Heather, pretty cruel."
"What do you know about that?"
"I have eyes, honey. And Joan Ellis didn't need you to foul up her life. She was fighting enough without you to complicate things."
"I wish you'd make sense," Heather exploded.
"She's a smart woman, Joan Ellis. She probably came on this voyage to straighten herself out. Being a lesbian's no fun, not in this world. So, for kicks, for that phony pride of yours, you threw temptation at her. And how could she turn something like you down?"
"I wanted her."
"And you got her. Like I got you." There was a note of hollow triumph in Daphne's voice. "There're two people who can wipe you out, Heather, and I think we'll just do it. For kicks as you say." She laughed meanly.
"You and who else?"
"Maggie Stevens. That redhead. She won't go for your type, either."
"Lots of luck," Heather said defiantly and turned away.
The next morning it rained. There was no protection, and for awhile it came down so hard that everyone spent the morning bailing water out of the boat. Then it stopped as suddenly as it had started, true to tropical rainfall. They plodded on.
"We're less than twenty miles from the island," the mate said. "If we row a little, we can make it in a couple of more days."
"So let's row," Heather said.
"You going to help, princess?" The mate looked at her with contempt. Heather was silent. I'll get him. But good.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Peter slept fitfully, even with the sun pounding down on the bright-colored raft; Maggie was gazing out across the endless expanse of green-emerald water, trying to see more clearly the ship in the distance. It was easily ten miles away, and Peter had said they were nearly that distance from Vera Recreo. More like fifteen, he had said, before he'd fallen asleep.
"Joan, would you give me the lotion, please?" She watched Joan reach under the canvas and when she handed it to her, Maggie dumped it all over herself.
"I'll put it on your back if you want," Joan said. Maggie and Joan were both wearing bathing suits now, which they had packed with their toilet articles. Peter had not brought his along, but had cut the legs off his khakis above the knees.
"Thanks," Maggie said, smiling. It was the first gesture of civility that Joan had displayed. "Then I'll do you if you want."
"I wonder where Heather Hamilton is," Joan ventured. She tried to keep her voice noncommittal.
"I saw her get in one of the big boats," Maggie told her. "Were you friends?"
"Yes." Joan though of the beautiful, voluptuous body and the impossibility of resisting it-and how really, deep inside herself, she hated herself for her weakness. Heather was evil: there was no other word for it. Evil. A temptress, unconcerned with the welfare of another person, so long as she drank more than her share of pleasure. But she had a marvelous body, and more important, was eager to use it.
"I'm sure she's alright, Joan," Maggie offered. "She'll probably be waiting for us when we get to the island."
Joan's hands were on her back, rubbing in the lotion. Her coppery skin drank it in greedily, and began to glow a shade darker. Joan's hands were strong, sure-they felt good. There was assurance in their touch, and something else, something indefinable as well. But they were good on her back.
"Maggie, did you ever meet Heather?" Joan asked.
"Once or twice, I think." The hands worked a little faster.
"What did you think of her?" Maggie hesitated in answering the question. She hesitated because she did not think much of the blonde; she had struck her as selfish, overly willful and vindictive.
"She seemed alright," Maggie said.
"You don't have to be polite," Joan said. "Tell me what you really thought." Why this preoccupation with Heather? Joan wondered. It struck her as a woman asking eagerly after a man, or vice verse. This persistence and interest had a tinge of abnormality about it.
"How much can you tell when you meet a person one or two times?" Maggie evaded. "I'll give you a more positive opinion after we see her on the island, OK?"
"OK," Joan sighed, and stopped rubbing her back. "You're pretty coated with it."
"Thanks. Now turn around and I'll give you some." Joan did, and when Maggie began to rub her, it was pleasing, but not arousing. Why ? Maggie was a beautiful woman. There was more in her face that would appeal to a woman like Joan than Heather's empty unscarred countenance. It was a face that knew life, that had experienced painful realities. Her body was magnificent, she had an easy disarming way about her. But now there was no sexual attraction pulling in Joan's breast.
I'm .in love with Heather.
No. Yes, yes. That was it. She had fallen in love. Again. With a selfish woman who would only hurt her. Again. She was all mixed up again, caught in the stupid, self-torture trap-again.
Peter woke up with a slight headache from the beating sun. His skin was blackened by the sun, and his beard was blonde-red by the sun as well. He was beginning to look like the old Peter, the Peter who had faith in people and things, the Peter who could sit down before a typewriter and create what he thought was the truth about life and the human condition. But now-he laughed bitterly and reached for a cigarette.
"How's business, girls?" he asked. "Anything happen while I was asleep?"
"Just that ship out here," Joan said.
He looked at it and shrugged.
"We're almost at the island now. A lot of help that tub is to us."
"How far away do you think we are?" Joan asked.
"Ten-fifteen miles at the most. You can even see the little group of clouds," and pointed towards the telltale clouds in the distance.
"How long before we get there?" Maggie wondered.
"Hard to tell. Couple of more days, I guess." The women groaned.
"Sorry," he said with a grin, "but they're just not making them as fast this year." He flipped his cigarette into the sea and picked up the oars to set the raft back on course. He noticed that Joan was talking to him, without the coldness or the hostility in her voice. It was a pleasant voice without those things in it. She was a nice-looking girl, he thought, when she didn't have that sour look on her puss. In fact, it was no puss at all, but a very attractive, deeply etched face. There was substance to it, like Maggie's. Not that empty I-never-heard-of-caring look. Like Heather. But who cared about Heather's face? Heather Hamilton was not a person, not even a female person. Heather Hamilton was a piece, pure and simple. A roll in the day, or in the ocean, to be more accurate.
"Joan, would you put some lotion on my back, please?" Peter asked. He was still rowing, his back and shoulder muscles straining. The redness was almost gone from them now, but he wanted to keep from peeling and turning red all over again.
"Of course." The new Joan was a pleasant surprise. When he felt her hands on his back, he stopped rowing.
"You know," he said while she worked on him, "I almost feel sorry that we're heading for the island. I mean, it's been sort of pleasant and all."
Joan chuckled.
"Pretty grim idea of pleasantness," she said. I'll take dry land any old day."
"Sure you would. So would I. But this hasn't been all that bad, has it?"
"Not for you. And Maggie." Peter was sorry that he said anything, but pursued it, now that she had made a reference to her unhappiness.
"I'm sorry it hasn't been easy for you," he said. "But you weren't easy to get along with."
"I apologize."
"Don't bother. But can you just tell me why?"
"It's a long, sad story." She sighed.
"I like long, sad stories."
"You collect them, you mean?"
"Sort of. But I try to learn from them, without the morbid pleasure, if you know what I mean." I shock him, she decided, I'll make him lose his senses.
"I'm a lesbian. A dyke. The kind of dyke that if I stopped caring, could start dressing and talking like a man. You know the kind? I'm in love with someone, and you happen to know her." It all came out in a sudden rush of words, a blur of emotion. He was silent for several moments. I've shocked him. I've hurt him. His vanity is smashed, that a woman could prefer another to him.
"What have you decided?" he asked. "To live with it or try to escape it?" He cut into the core of the dilemma, and she was caught off guard. It was the last thing in the world she expected to happen.
"I want to escape," she said with a hushed whisper.
"But not only are you afraid of men, you hate them-they're dirty, inconsiderate savage beasts. All of them. Isn't that the bit?"
"How do you-?"
"Know? I had a friend, a man. He was a homosexual, and had the same feelings about women. The same hangup, basically. We used to talk about it all the time."
"He'd talk to you?"
"Yep. He talked to a square, and now he's on his way back." There was never the friend to whom Peter alluded, but he did know about the feelings of gay boys. And he did want to help Joan Ellis; she was nice in spite of herself.
"What did he finally do, your friend?"
"Went out and got a dame. I fixed him up. If that sounds crass, I'm sorry, but it helped him, after we talked."
"Why did he want help? Did he think it was wrong?"
"No. Neither did I. But most of those ninnies who we all have to live with do. They can make it pretty rough for any kind of nonconformist, let alone a sexual one. He was tired of living in the jungle, so he decided to come back to the battlefield."
"You don't sound too entranced with people."
"I'm not."
"Are you a writer?"
"Oh, no-I don't believe it. Just tell me how."
"Your beard. I've seen you before. You're Peter Martin and I read about your divorce and all the mess."
"Yes. How else can the average citizen enjoy his morning coffee except over some gossip? So, now we know about each other, and Maggie and I know about each other. We all know about each other. Cozy."
Maggie had been listening, of course. It was unavoidable, considering the circumstances.
"Yes, we all know-shall we hide or try to help each other? It's a fascinating situation we're in. Peter can't write, I can't have sex without pseudo-rape, and you, Joan, are a lesbian. We're misfits." She laughed.
"But Peter and you-I mean last night. That wasn't rape," Joan said matter of factly.
"You were supposed to be asleep," Peter said.
"I'm getting well," Maggie said ruefully, "thanks to Peter. Which brings up your situation, Joan. He helped me. Why shouldn't you let him try to help you?"
"Like that?" Joan asked. There was a tone of alarm in her voice.
"Why not? What's to hide? And besides, women are renowned for taking advantage of men. Why not live up to the role?"
"I couldn't," Joan shivered. "No offense, but I simply couldn't-"
"May the hired stud talk?" Peter interjected. They were quiet. "Maggie's right, Joan, at least in theory. But no one's trying to force you. We're in an odd situation here. Hardly what one would call a normal everyday situation. If we were all smart, we'd utilize it."
"It's in the open now," Maggie said, "so let's not talk about it any more. Just play it as it comes."
"Good. Now about the weather. I saw the most interesting cloud last night." Peter stopped, aware of his failure to make anyone else, let alone himself, laugh.
It was a cloudless night. A single white cloud covered the moon, and a grey overcast hung beneath the stars. It was pitch black, and there was every indication that it would rain before morning. Peter sat at the end of the raft, smoking a cigarette and looking into the water. He was in a desultory mood; Joan had brought up all the old sores, all the festering wounds that were still far from healed. So much to think about, so much to forget.
I have to die and be born again, he told himself. Yes, but how does one die so that he can live? He was still smoking when he felt the life raft lurch; he turned around, and saw Joan carefully picking her way to the rear, towards him. "Greetings."
"Hi. Are there any more cigarettes?" she asked. "An endless supply. Here," he said, and lit it for her.
"Peter. I want you to make love to me."
"Just like that?" He stared at her in the darkness and could hardly make her out. Only her outline was really visible, except for the part of her face that the glow of the cigarette illuminated. It was a haunted, lovely face. Why must there be pain to create beauty?
"Just like that."
"That's nice, Joan, but you're going about it the wrong way."
"What's right, then?"
"If you go about it with that cold, experimental attitude, that's what you'll come out with. A cold experiment. Is that what you're looking for?"
"Or are you looking for real pleasure, emotional fulfillment, the conviction that some men are considerate and have feelings, that they're people, and that some women are cold and unfeeling too. Like Heather Hamilton. You have to create empathy, Joan. And it won't happen with that show-me-I-dare-you attitude."
"I'm sorry," she said. "I just don't know how to start. I don't know anything."
"You have more guts than I do," Peter told her, and gently laid his hand on her shoulder. She didn't flinch. He kept it there. "You're a brave woman." A brave woman. He called me a brave woman. "Am I a woman?"
"Yes, Joan, you are a woman. I know you are a woman!" His voice rose with heated conviction.
"Make me a woman," she said now, and looked at him beseechingly. "Make me a woman, Peter, please." He took her into his arms and held her tightly.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Joan felt like an object, rather than an individual self. She was something, or someone else, rather than Joan Ellis, and she was being held by another object. She fought down the panic that began to rise up in her.
"Joan, I'm not going to hurt you," Peter said softly.
"It's the last thing I want you to do," she tried to laugh.
"I won't, Joan. I like you. You're a person to me, another human being. Not someone I want to ravish and use. Do you believe that?"
"I want to," she said, "I really want... " He kissed her on the lips and held her gently, but firmly in his arms. They were strong, not grabbing and clutching and greedy, but strong, very strong and assuring.
Her lips softened against his, and she began to sink against him. His heart raced rapidly, not from passion, but from anxiety. Would it work? Would she respond normally? He kissed her a little more passionately, flicking his tongue gently over the outer edge of her lips. Her tongue met his furtively. The beating of her heart quickened against his chest. He felt her clutch at his back, pull him closer to her and now her bands were on his back, roaming up and down caressingly. It was working.
Working beautifully. He was kissing and now she was kissing back. Peter kissed her for a long, long time, just caressing her back and running his tongue lightly and gently against hers, feeling her lips moisten, hearing her breathing grow louder.
"Just don't touch my breasts," she sighed, and fell against him. He didn't. Not at first. His hands went over her thighs and caressed them warmly, until he found her womanhood. She flinched, then pulled away. "I can't, Peter, I just can't do it. I'm sorry."
"You did alright," he smiled. "We'll try again another time. Why don't you get some sleep now?"
She smiled and kissed him impulsively on the cheek. "Thank you," she whispered, and this time, she really did go into a deep, deep sleep, thinking that Peter was really not a bad person. If only she could- After Joan was asleep Peter crawled up the length of the boat to where Maggie lay.
"I'm ready," she grinned, "without the raping. You really should demand a fee, you know."
"Don't be nasty, Maggie. She's trying awfully hard."
"I know. I wasn't being nasty at all. Just my way of saying thanks."
"You're welcome. Now shut up and kiss me, please." They kissed. Their tongues met and clashed wetly and warmly, and Maggie's breathing churned into panting almost instantly.
"I'm hot to trot, after watching you," she breathed in his ear. "Turn me on, Peter."
"If you'd stop talking, I would." His hand moved down to her halter and pulled it off; her breasts were bared, and she cupped them, putting her hands beneath them; there was a tortured, wanting look in her eyes as she looked up at him: a pleading look.
He kissed a breast. The pink perfect nipple grew in his mouth. He felt it, tasted it, wanted to bite it.
Pushing forward, he found an unbelievable quantity of white milky breast in his mouth. She gasped with pleasure. He felt her hand take his hand and put it between her moist, warm firm thighs and pull it upward. He found her passion and excited it into ecstasy.
She wriggled hard now, moaning with no effort to suppress her desire. Her thighs parted and he explored her more deeply, letting her wriggle to the pleasure of his touches.
"Oh, Peter!" she gasped, "it just sends me, the way you-" she kissed him, and her tongue probed deeply into his mouth, and her hand found him, and touched him lightly, fondly. It was a loving, appreciative and knowledgeable touch. A touch that wanted so much to please, a touch that knew unerringly and instinctively how to please.
"That's how I feel, too," she sighed when she saw his response. "It's so marvelous, with you." They touched, lying side by side, kissing touching, kissing. His lips found her lips, then her breast. She cried gently and softly when he nibbled at her swollen stiff nipple, and told him not to stop, that it was just too good, it couldn't stop, never, never stop, because it was meant to last forever. They touched each other.
They squirmed with joy, bringing one another to the doorway of eruption, then retreating- teasingly, instinctively, knowingly prolonging the pleasure in one another. Maggie felt his throbbing, his surging warmth as she gripped him. She felt his fingers pleasing her, almost idly, yet with dedicated desire to make her tremble with feverish joy.
She trembled.
He trembled. They kissed. And kissed and kissed, all over one another's vibrating bodies. She kissed his chest, his stomach, pleased by the nerve-jumping response that came from beneath his taut skin.
When he kissed her stomach, she felt faint with pleasure, knowing, feeling, wanting him to move down, down, and when he did, she divided her legs and begged him to do what he wanted. Then she felt the meeting. It was too much joy, too much passion swelling up in her, and she erupted, trembling with sobbing satisfaction.
"I couldn't help it," she panted with exhaustion, "you're so good for me-"
"I'm glad you're alright," he said. His loins ached, his whole body was tight with desire. It was excruciating. He knew she could go again. Maggie's capacity was endless, bottomless. "Could you help me out?" he asked sheepishly, meaning, Let's make it all the way this time.
She grinned in the darkness and kissed him on the lips. Her hand felt him and she groaned with pleasant surprise. It was frightening, in a nice sort of way, to know that his bigness would stretch her, fill her, bring her to a second avalanche of ecstasy. He was in a more desperate state than ever, and his size was truly awe-inspiring.
"I need help, too," she sobbed with renewed desire. Just knowing what he wanted to give her filled her with panting hotness. Gently, he settled on top of her body. The "V" between her parted loins supported him, held him, and his hands went under her soft smooth buttocks and pulled her gently up.
She felt him push.
It was devastatingly complete. He filled her utterly. She felt him drive slowly, deeper, deeper until her whole body was filled with him, and she strained against him in a vain effort to have more of him, which simply wasn't possible. Her legs were absurdly in the air, straight up, and his hips were flat against her buttocks and the backs of her straining thighs.
She felt him.
All of him. Straining against her, moving at her, lunging at her slowly so that she could feel the length and breadth of all the pleasure that there was. His lips found her breasts, then his hands cupped them, held onto them, pulled them, squeezed them. His shoulders were hard and warm under her knee-backs as he strained and pushed against her. She cried, then laughed, then cried again.
"Faster," she panted barely above a hushed whisper, and her body began to thrust and encourage him, making him move faster against her in spite of himself, and he wanted to shriek out with joy, cry with delight.
She was wet and dripping with animal female passion. The backs of her thighs were covered with her lust-perfume; he could feel it on him, and somehow he went even more haywire with joy, just the association of it, the symbolic implications: a woman turned hungry, preying animal, wanting to perform the pleasure-act as old as time- It went on for a long time.
A very long time. Her thighs and passion throbbed and shut, and then he felt a double movement grip him and pull him down, and when he closed his eyes, he saw stars, millions of stars, all different colors.
Maggie felt his hard body slam against hers, and her hand ripped and raked into his shoulders as she shuddered with a trembling that was bigger and more powerful than herself. They shook with the final eruption of released joy and fell in an exhausted satisfied heap against each other.
Two lifeboats had reached Vera Recreo, in the middle of the night. Heather's boat was one of them. The other was the one that had been fairly near them. Now that they had made it safely, everyone was complaining of the possessions they had left aboard the Isle Nymph before she went down.
It was a wild, forsaken island, beautiful in its loneliness. The hotel was nearby. It was not the American definition of a hotel at all; it was a large wooden building with a thatched palm and cocoanut fiber roof, built low to the ground. When they entered, it was much larger inside than outside, or so it appeared. The rooms were small, simple and devoid of anything like ostentation. They were merely comfortable.
Sixteen people had landed. The owner welcomed them, having heard of the mishap already over his ship to shore radio that played constantly in the large room that served as lobby, dining room and social room. In an hour, he had them all settled and assigned.
The nearest island with stores, he told them, was thirty miles to the west, and that a boat came by once a week to take people there, and back to Vera Recreo by evening. It was due to come tomorrow, for those who wanted clothes and other things.
After Heather was settled and lying on her bed, she tried to relax but couldn't. She was too overwrought from the recent events. But now she was here, where she had planned to spend at least a year. Could she spend a whole year in a place as quiet and isolated as this? After New York City? The city had been lonely, but comforting at times.
Here there was nothing: just swimming, sunshine, fishing, a few other people and herself-to live with and be with. Heather Hamilton had never lived with herself before, only by herself. What had that sex-pot Daphne told her? That she was selfish, and couldn't give her partner pleasure, even in sexual relationships? Pretty hard words. Therefore, sex-pot Daphne was completely wrong.
The next morning, Peter Martin, Joan Ellis and Maggie Stevens were still missing. They had been seen eight miles off the island, even offered rescue, and they had refused. The helicopter pilot had gotten low enough to actually talk to them, and they had told him that rescue was not necessary, that by the end of the day they would be hitting Vera Recreo. No one worried about them; they were simply amused that they wanted to stay out there by themselves. It was conjectured that they were having a good time together.
Heather met most of the people at breakfast that morning. She had met them all before, on the ship, but now she really had a chance to talk to some of them.
It was an interesting collection of human beings. Most of them were relatively young: under forty years old. None of them were married. None of them were ordinary people. What "ordinary" person would ever go in for a spot like Vera Recreo, anyway ?
While they were at breakfast in the large front room, Heather was invited by three people to go swimming with them immediately after the meal, two men and a women. She accepted.
The woman's name was Tammy. She was a sexpot, too, and as soon as their eyes met, it was understood that they would get together and exchange notes. The men were rather uninteresting; they were just males, both young, both devoid of any exciting characteristics.
But Tammy was something else.
Blonde, like Heather. Built like nobody but Tammy. Her breasts threatened to strain through her tight jersey blouse, and they came to points that showed against the loose knit of the material. The blouse hung in such a way that the deep crevice between the two large firm globes of flesh was well defined, and the rest of her-strictly Tammy. Hips and thighs and buttocks with ripe, full curves and a waist that was unusually slim in proportion to the rest of the body.
She was a beauty! Her eyes were large and blue, and they winked, in a suggestive, inviting manner. Her face was oval and smooth, framed by the shoulder length hair Tammy was a hot little number. Heather wanted her.
Looking at Tammy, and thinking of how Daphne had turned her on, she wondered why she had even bothered with Joan Ellis. Joan had been good-she had known what to do and how to do it. But Tammy! Heather just knew that she knew.
When they were swimming in the lagoon, Tammy came up next to Heather, treading water. They swam towards a rock that was big enough for both of them to sit on. When they raced over, Heather proved to be a faster swimmer; she pulled herself up on the rock and reached down to pull Tammy up. Their hands touched. It was like an electric current passing between them. Tammy plumped down on the rock, and her firm flesh hit with an inviting impact: it was the kind of flesh that one wanted to plow into.
"Water's nice," Heather said.
"Stop the games, honey. Where do you want to make it, in the room or behind the trees over there?" She pointed to a group of palms, covered with dense foliage, almost a small jungle.
Heather looked at her. and in spite of her eagerness, became angry.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
"OK, play stupid-see you around." Tammy dived off the rock, and emerged fifty yards away, swimming up to the two men. She treaded water and laughed with them. A few minutes later the three of them swam to shore and walked towards the hotel, leaving Heather on the rocks.
She was angry. She was mortified. All the rest of that day, she was ready to explode with frustration.
CHAPTER NINE
She was so angry that she couldn't eat or sleep. Tammy had put it to her baldly and boldly, cutting through the polite swordplay. And she had left just as baldly and boldly, leaving Heather feeling like a junior, an apprentice. It was as if she were getting paid back for her treatment of Joan. She laughed derisively at the notion. Ridiculous! No one got punished unless they were stupid. All day long, whenever she ran into Tammy, she just got a wink, a wiggle of hips and buttocks, and a retreating back. Her mouth watered. Her blood boiled with anger and desire. She was ready to climb the proverbial wall.
"We can be there in two hours, if you want to go in," Peter told Joan, "or we can stay lost for awhile longer."
It had been Joan's idea that morning to refuse the helicopter. Joan hesitated now; the silence hung between them heavily, and they were able to hear the whirr of the returning helicopter. It descended slowly, then hovered over them, the blades whirling around like a fast-moving chopping machine. The pilot was a young man, the wiseacre type. He managed to make himself heard over the din of the spinning propellers.
"Wanna lift?"
"No!" Joan called out.
"I'll take one," Peter said. To the women he said, "being lost is one thing, pretending is another. You're only a little ways from the island now-see you around." He signalled to the helicopter. The rope ladder came own, and in a minute he was sitting next to the pilot, and the machine climbed and shot straight ahead, towards the island.
"Well, there's loyalty for you," Maggie said with a rueful grin.
"He wouldn't have left unless he was sure we were safe," Joan said.
"Say, you're developing a new outlook on men, aren't you?"
"Only Peter." Joan was still looking up at the sky, watching the flight of the helicopter.
"That's a start, dear. Well, here we are. What else can I say?"
"Maggie. What do you think of Heather Hamilton?"
"You really want to know? I think she's a selfish, narrow-minded little nothing. I think she ought to be punished."
"Punished? Why? And how?"
"You ask how-that means you agree she should. I plan to make her wish she'd never flashed that mean little bottom of hers around."
"How?" Joan repeated.
"I'm not ugly, darling, nor am I adverse to making it in the hay with a girl like Heather. It'll be fun."
"Then you're as bad as she is."
"I suppose so. But I can't stand what the Heathers do to the Joans."
"Suppose the Joans like it?"
"I don't think the Joans can really help themselves."
"You mean, you'd never take advantage-like that?"
"That's what I mean." Maggie looked at Joan's face. It was contorted with a myriad of emotions which were running crosscurrent with one another.
"'I'm all mixed up," she said unhappily.
"I know. You think you have it bad for Heather, and at the same time you'd like to see her done in, but good. And you know I can do it, if anybody can."
"Yes."
"I'm going to do it, Joan, no matter what you feel or think you feel for her." Her face was set in determination. Heather was like her old buddy, the salesman who had raped her. No conscience, no feeling, no nothing but emotionless inconsideration. Yes, it would be fun to do Heather in.
"You really can't be too hard on Heather. You forget what I am."
"You're a lesbian. So what? You're a nice girl, and I like you. No matter what."
"You mean that?" Joan asked. Her voice began to fill with emotional fervor.
"Of course I do. And I'd like to see you forget about Heather. She'll ruin you, destroy you completely."
"I know."
"You mean like make love with Peter?"
"Or any other man who's willing. Although I doubt you'll run across one as helpful as Peter." She grinned, in spite of her serious mood.
"That was no good at all. I tried, and just couldn't make it at all."
"It's a tough scene, I know."
"I could make it with you, though, Mag."
"What good would that do? You're kidding yourself, now."
"A lot of good. It would help me forget Heather, I think."
"You hope. Suppose you got hung up on me? Where would you be then?"
"It won't happen, I promise. I can give you real pleasure, Maggie. How long has it been since you've had a good woman?"
"It only happened once, and it was a long time ago," Maggie admitted.
"Are you against it?"
"No, not really. It's just that I'd like to really help you, not make it more difficult."
"You wouldn't, I promise. You might even make things simpler."
"OK, Joan, if that's what you want." Maggie sighed wearily and began to remove the top from her bathing suit.
Joan's heart leaped.
She looked at the breasts with happy disbelief. They were magnificent! With Maggie, it's different, she told herself different. She understands, she'll help-somehow.
Maggie was indifferent, even-bored until Joan touched her breasts with a hesitant, light-fingered touch of fingers. She felt her breath come a little faster. The touch became more firm, then she felt her breasts being squeezed. Her loins warmed. When they kissed, her lips moistened, and she was hot with desire. In hit her with a flashing onslaught. Before she knew it, she wanted Joan, needed Joan, had to have Joan as much as she ever wanted anyone.
It was overpowering and to even try to stifle her desire was inconceivable. She felt the fingers on her breasts, examining the stiff swollen pink nipples, running over the white flesh, then down her belly onto the mound of red rich hair. She began to pant. They kissed again. Their tongues met, and then Joan's hot breath in her ear, her fingers finding her moist thigh flesh and moving upward, everything, filled her with white-hot desire and longing.
Joan did not want to be loved. She wanted to love. Maggie was nice, Maggie deserved all the pleasure possible, and she, Joan Ellis, knew how to give it to her. Her own body filled with an indefinable joy as she watched and felt Maggie respond to her caresses and kisses. Her fingers felt Maggie's passion.
It was ripe and moist and throbbing, a passion that anyone, man or woman, would want and could enjoy to the utmost.
Her thighs were firm and smooth, like the rest of the body, and that body twisted with pleasure now, on fire with desperate ecstasy, pleading to be satisfied and fulfilled.
Joan kissed the nipples of Maggie's breasts, felt one pink, stiff bud a time, and revealed in the feel of it, the way it tasted and danced responsively in her mouth's grasp.
She felt the eager, grasping, helpless hands in her hair, pulling her face closer, drawing her lips deeper onto the love-hungry breast so that she consumed her way past the nipple and well onto the white warm flesh itself.
Maggie's thighs were parted, and her body lunged joyously and ecstatically to the tempo of passion-probing fingers that filled her, pried her and gave her pain and pleasure, all in a mad inseparable rush. She watched Joan's face; it was stiff with pleasure as she in turn watched her.
"Joan, let me love you," she managed to gasp.
"You are, darling, you are, just by enjoying me." Her fingers continued their crazy dance in her passion, and Maggie could no longer speak; she could hardly breathe at all, just move and thrust and pump wildly to the tune that the fingers played upon her and inside her.
"I'm going crazy," she swore, "out of my mind." Then when her hand reached for Joan's thighs, it was pushed away.
"Just enjoy it," came the voice, and Maggie lay back upon the raft, feeling it rock with her body movements as the fingers played and the other hand roamed over her, squeezing her breasts and rubbing her thighs. They kissed.
Maggie's tongue lashed out like a hot tong into Joan's mouth; she felt it being sucked and swallowed by hungry lips, and now when her hand moved to Joan's legs, the other did not resist.
She moaned and thrust her body. They played the same tune.
She heard Joan sigh with pleasure, and knew that she was satisfied, that she had reached her peak almost instantly and transcended it to the other side. But the fingers persisted in her. They never stopped. Until moments later, when she saw through her half-closed eyes that Joan's body was shifting, her head was moving down, down, down...
"Ooooooh! I can't believe it!" Maggie exclaimed with an incredulous gasp. She felt a slight pain as she stretched her thighs to capacity. The kiss went completely inside her, and something within her met, and she felt herself erupt with an unexpected violence. She bathed her own legs with it, and her whole body became warm and glowing with ebbing, throbbing pleasure, as she sank downward and fell into a soft faint that gave way to sleep.
Joan looked down at the sleeping woman, and felt a pan of tenderness for her. It was their first and last love session: she knew that. She also knew that Heather had never given her that inner, deeper kind of satisfaction.
She knew that Heather had to be punished, and that she could not do it. She would become a slave to Heather's demands.
But Maggie wouldn't. Maggie would play the game with a cold, calculated style, and would leave Heather with the realization of what she was. There was no joy for Joan in dwelling over Heather's possible fate.
There was only the gnawing concern over her own fate. Would she, for instance, ever be able to make it big, really big with a man? The night with Peter had been a failure, and he had honestly tried.
She wanted to cry now, thinking of how considerate and patient and kind he had been. But she had failed. At least, there was the promise, or the threat, however she cared to look at it, that they would try it again.
Now, as she looked at Maggie, sleeping and naked, she saw that she was getting red from the sun, and slipped the canvas over her legs and body. Then she found a cigarette, and smoked thoughtfully, as the island came into sight.
Peter lay in his bed. The scotch bottle sat on top of his stomach as she smoked thoughtfully and watched the smoke travel towards the ceiling. He knew that Maggie and Joan were here now, but had no desire or inclination to stir himself.
There was too much to think about.
Like Daphne. He had met her already. And Tammy, too, since they had both been in the lobby when he'd come into it dragging his typewriter and small bag. Everyone knew who he was now, but it no longer mattered.
It was five in the afternoon now, as Peter Martin lay on his bed, getting quietly and unobtrusively drunk. In three hours, if he were awake and mobile, he would be balling Daphne. If he were still alive by ten, he would be balling Tammy.
He laughed at his gross optimism and took another swig from the bottle. It was mild, warming stuff that he had bought just before getting on the ship in New York. New York.
The writer's nightmare, Peter Martin's source of trouble. Physical source, anyway. The real source had been that as a writer, he needed mobility and freedom of movement. His wife needed (or maybe just wanted) a nice immovable home on an inflexible plot of land in a stationary suburb. He'd tried it that way. It was good. It was secure. It never became a trap, a claustrophobic menace until he had. turned down chance after chance for getting really good material.
Too far away, Peter-too dangerous, Peter- you'll be gone too long, Peter.
What should I write about, Janice? Coffee Matches and who's marrying who and which husband went with who's wife? Or maybe I should write about conditions on the commuter trains?
It had been a conflict of goals, of life-styles. It simply hadn't worked. Janice had been comfortable, secure, but not inspiring and understanding of his artist's ego and needs. How does a woman live with a writer, he wondered now.
He looked into the green interior of the bottle. The answer wasn't there. It never was and never would be.
It was in him, somewhere, in the typewriter that sat idle and slightly rusted on the small table in front of the bed. Daphne. Tammy. Escapes, and maybe, in an indirect, devious way, answers. Who knew anything any more?
He thought of his last book, where he had gone to Africa for the material. Janice had refused to accompany him, in spite of the modern hotels and jungle pleasures that Nairobi afforded.
He was gone for six months, a long, long time, but even then, he felt that he should have stayed longer. It had taken him another six months to write the book, which had left him emotionally exhausted and yet fulfilled. He'd gotten it like it was, which was the most a writer could ever hope to achieve.
He'd lost his wife.
He'd lost his wife.
And a friend. The guy who was in bed with her when he came home. I warned you, Peter, I warned you a thousand million times. Which was perfectly true. She had. He had never been unfaithful in his marriage, but she was sure that he had been. How could a man travel all over the world and not be unfaithful?
Now there was nothing but half a bottle of scotch and three hours to wait for Daphne. He drifted off to sleep, feeling the alcohol cloud his head, pulling him into unconsciousness.
Joan unpacked what she had and sat on the edge of the bed. She thought of Heather, wanted to find her, go to her. But didn't. No, she had to stay away from Heather. She was here now, on the island, and it was time to begin the withdrawal that she had been so sure of being able to achieve. It wasn't her, but them that had made her to decide to make the plunge.
There was a lot in the world that she wanted to belong to, and it just wasn't possible in the psychological ghetto that was hers-or in the restricted element that she was forced to shrink into.
Heather would draw her more deeply into it than ever, because Heather was sadistic, in a psychic way. She delighted in destroying helpless people like Joan. Heather needed help as badly as she did. But Maggie hated her. Hated Heather. Maggie must have good reason to hate her. Maggie would destroy her, if Heather didn't beat her own little game. What a crazy, misguided world, she thought, and managed to fall into a half-sleep.
CHAPTER TEN
Maggie hated Heather. She knew the Heathers of the world so, so well-there were too many like her, but few with her beauty, her body, equipment that could entice and draw the all too few Peter Martins and Joan Ellis'. Don't be smug, Maggie. You, too. There was a time when she could have gotten to you.
She closed her eyes and saw Heather; blonde and naked, incredibly ripe and sensuous with her hands cupping her large upturned breasts with their pink puffy nipples. The hands slid down her sides, to her hips and thighs, and all the time her eyes flashed coquettishly while her lips parted and pouted -Maggie opened her eyes and lit a cigarette. She tried to think of Peter.
Of Joan, yes, Joan. Joan who was at once pathetic and magnificent, Joan who wanted only to give, and knew how to give-:but not take.
She couldn't grab the way Heather Hamilton could. Joan was fighting a losing battle. Only a man could really save her from herself and her generosity, and what the world deemed an abnormality.
Somehow, Maggie Stevens had gotten over her own malady, at least as far as Peter was concerned. She remembered the night on the raft they had made love, sitting almost completely still touching one another so tenderly, so softly, so tellingly. There had been no violence, only delicious emotions mingling with the most joyous physical pleasures.
She wondered if she loved Peter? Was it possible that she could love anyone? Peter was probably sleeping now, so she discounted any idea of going to him.
At eight o'clock, Daphne knocked softly on Peter Martin's door. She felt calm, almost indifferent about the fact that she was going to make love with a man she hadn't known before, ever. She didn't even feel particularly curious as to how he would be.
Daphne had enough confidence in her own body and ability to know that she would get the best out of him. Whatever there was in him, she would get.
"Come on in," she heard his voice through the door, and when she entered, he was lying naked on the bed, taking a long uninterrupted pull from the scotch bottle. A cigarette burned in the ash tray, and in the half light of the room, she could see his naked torso gleaming. The beard that had begun to grow on the raft was still there, only trimmed now, still at the scraggy growing stage, but taking shape and beginning to look good. He was a good-looking man, she thought, a strange mixture of aesthicism and masculine virility.
"Hello, Peter," she said. "Is there any liquor left?"
"Yeah, always some of that," he smiled. "In the drawer over there." He pointed to the dresser.
She opened it and found a new bottle, which she began to open. He took a long pull from his bottle and threw it in the waste basket near the bed.
"Hope you don't mind scotch," he said.
"Not at all. I'm glad you invited me."
"Yeah. Well, we're here together. Might as well get started on the right foot? I mean, why waste time?"
"I agree. Why waste time?" She drained her glass that she had found near the sink and came over, sitting on the edge of the bed. Peter looked at her, and their eyes met. "You're not much of a talker, are you?" she mused.
"Words are cheap, honey," he drawled, "I know, I'm the word expert of the century and they're cheap, meaningless things. People oughta give 'em up an' find a better way o' commun-ic-ation." He was slurred in his speech now, felt fabulously drunk, yet sober enough to know that Daphne could care less about his ramblings. So he stopped. And reached out for her.
He kissed her, and she kissed back, their lips glued together, and she felt the desperate longing in him, the longing that she mistook for passion devoid of something deeper, more crucial. Her lips moistened against his, and their tongues touched.
Daphne moaned gently, in a self-satisfied little grunt, and he felt the vibration of it in his mouth as her perfume wafted through his nostrils and filled, him with increasing desire.
In the growing heat of the embrace, he forgot about his drunkenness and his loneliness and concentrated only on possessing her body. With a sudden savage determination, he pulled at her blouse, then remembered that blouses had buttons. He loosened them and took it off as she shrugged her shoulders in a cooperative, eager gesture. She wore a black, lacy bra that covered only the bottom half of her milk-white breasts. The breasts held the bra in suspension, rather than the reverse; he wondered idly why she even bothered to wear the thing. He took it off.
Her breasts were mammoth, and shapely and lush-and ripe. Big breasts, he loved big breasted women. Janice had small, dried up little things- don't think about her. The desperate feeling began to cloud his brain again, and in a brutal effort to disperse it, he grabbed one of Daphne's globe-like offerings and squeezed it, hard. She winced and groaned with soft pleasure.
He squeezed the other one.
She groaned a little louder. She liked violence, this one, not out and out rape, perhaps, but savage male violence. He was still lying on his back against the bed, and she hovered over him, her breasts suspended and firm and ripe; now she bent slowly down, and he watched the breasts come closer, closer to his face, until one blocked everything out of his view.
His lips met the flesh and tasted the nipple, felt it swell and grow passionately in his mouth, heard her moaning grow a little louder, felt his loins warming-and he wanted her.
Daphne felt his lips on one breast, his hand on the other, squeezing the nipple, shaping it and molding it into swollen perfection, like working with clay. Only it wasn't clay; it was flesh, soft, growing-hard willing flesh, that felt the need for a hand to caress it into excitement.
Daphne moaned with unashamed appreciation and began to press herself against Peter until he felt every inch of her spreading warmth through his body. She kissed his ear and ran her quick hot tongue around the inside of his lobe, filling him with tingling, shuddering sensations. He wanted her. Badly.
But Daphne liked to play.
Games interested her, and Peter knew she would be at her scintillating best if he played her game, which he was willing to do, if he could just hold out.
Bite me, Peter," she rasped in his ear, and he bit her, on the lip, on the neck and on the breast. She loved it. Her white smooth flesh danced responsively and she presented herself to him as a willing, lust-ridden sex machine to be used in any way his imagination and appetite dictated.
His hand went below the waist of her shorts, found downy lower belly where it met the rich crop of silky growth-she made a shrill little joy-sound, and pushed his hand lower until the waistband around her shorts strained and threatened to tear.
He found her.
She jumped and her thighs began to yawn slowly, clamshell fashion, and he felt her moisten to his touch.
"Take them off," she croaked, and he found the zipper, pulled it down. The shorts were tight. She had to wriggle her hips and buttocks while he pulled them downward in order to get them completely off; once they got past her wide triangle hips they went off easily. Her smooth white flesh poured and burst out of the confining material, and now he pushed her back, and put her in a lying-down position so that he could look.
She was full, sensuously over-ripe. It was impossible to look at her without thinking of just one thing. She was a personification, a living symbol of raw lust, female variety. Her smile, her half-closed, lazy-lidded eyes, heavy with voluptuous lust, her body making little suggestive, thrusting half-gestures, while her hands cupped her breasts and made them stand out and up: he wanted her.
She touched him, lightly at first, then in a sudden desperate grab, consumed him and caressed him, filling him with growing, gorging desire.
"Now," she panted, "I can't wait any longer, and suddenly she was on top of him; a bare fleeting second of maneuvering, and she had him, impaling her body on him, moving up and down slowly and erotically, consuming him, feeling him in her hungry passion, while he lay pleasantly powerless under her hip and buttocks-heavy white body.
Her buttocks slammed slappingly against the tops of his thighs; when they rose, his hands duelled at them for support, and it was as though he gave a silent signal for her to give her all.
He felt her move rapidly, making long, drawn, complete movements on him, until she brought him to his peak, and when he throbbed and signed, she sighed and throbbed with him, on him, around him, and he never felt such complete completeness as Daphne's little sex machine passion gripping him and driving him to insane joyousness.
Vera Recreo seemed to be aptly named. Everyone on the island seemed to be in the throes of uninhibited behavior, as the days went by, and the barriers of former conduct lowered. Life became a perpetual orgy. Anyone could have anyone he or she chose, and anywhere at any time. It was nothing to go to the lagoon for a swim, and see couples, even whole parties sprawled on the sand, making love. Even one's own room was no hiding place.
Heather Hamilton was busiest of all. She was the tireless instigator, the superhuman dynamo who could take anyone and everyone-except Daphne, who had already humiliated her enough so that she didn't want to try again. She had finally gotten together with little Tammy, though, deciding that she wanted her badly enough to dispense with pride. It bad proven worthwhile, because she had excited Tammy, given her as much pleasure, as Tammy had her. They had been good to one another, as well for one another.
Maggie was indifferent to all of this wanton riotous behavior, as was Peter. Usually, they went all the way to the other end of the island to make love, or just talk and explore. Silently, deep in the recesses of herself, she was laying plans for Heather's destruction. The more she saw the way Heather was behaving, the more avidly she wanted to undermine her. But how?
Heather wasn't easily dispensed with. Her lack of sensitivity and feelings rendered her almost impervious. She had just one source of vanity and pride. Her body and her ability to serve out pleasure: Somehow, Maggie thought, she had to get at that one thing and tear it to pieces.
"What's bugging you, Mag?" Peter asked. They were walking along the farthermost shore of the island, and she had been silent for a long time.
"Nothing."
"Heather?"
"Yes."
"Forget her," Peter said. "She isn't worth it, hasn't done anything to you, has she?"
"Give her time," Maggie said vehemently, "and she'll get around to that, too." They walked along a bit more, then sat down on a rock overlooking the sea. The breeze whipped over them gently, coming from the water, and it seemed impossible that they were with other people, on the same island with them, here on this spot. It was so lonely, so blessedly secluded.
"You could probably get some writing done here," she said, and looked at him. Peter was staring absently into the water, watching the waves lap the shore below them.
"Yeah, I suppose," he said idly. There was no enthusiasm in him, no expression. Just indifference.
"How's Joan?" he asked after a long silence.
"Depressed. She just stays in her room. Afraid to mingle."
"I guess so. She's fighting it pretty hard."
"Yes. I think you should see her, Peter."
"To try to service her again? Is that all I am, Maggie-a professional stud?" His voice was slightly tinged with irritation.
"Of course not," she answered, "but as far as Joan's concerned, you could help her out."
"If she wanted it. But she doesn't."
"Make her want it." Maggie looked at him with fiery eyes now, and he shrugged.
"Make someone want something? Don't be ridiculous, Maggie."
"You made me want something," she declared. "Haven't you noticed?" She was referring to their lovemaking, which no longer required anything like violence or rape.
"Because you wanted it," Peter insisted. "I didn't have a thing to do with it."
"You have to help Joan," she persisted, "just like I have to do Heather in."
"Look, Maggie, I want to get something straight. I didn't come all the way to this island to indulge in little private battles and big-hearted, phony gestures. I just came here to get away from my own problems. I'm not in the mood for other peoples'."
"Then you'll never write another thing," she said quietly. "You might as well throw that typewriter to the sharks." He watched her walk away, and made no effort to follow her; he turned back around to watch the sea, which was the only thing that understood him now, the only thing that communicated with his loneliness and indefinable sadness.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Heather Hamilton trembled with lust, the muscles in her arm tight with expectancy, as she stood over the naked female body, her leather belt poised over her head, ready to come down and strike.
It struck.
The helpless woman yelled with pain; it came down on her bare buttocks again, and again, and Heather felt the passion rise in her throat as the woman writhed and shrieked with pain. Her ankles and wrists were strapped to the bed, and her red-striped buttocks and thighs filled Heather with glee. She hit again and again, until the woman fell unconscious; there was no pleasure in it for her. Just agonized pain.
The whole thing had been a stroke of devilish genius. After dinner, Heather had gone out to the wide, long porch and sat next to this young woman, probably no more than twenty-one, with that certain air of innocence that Heather was suddenly bent upon destroying. Innocent young women were beginning to do things to her. She wanted them, wanted to trap them and make them panic, like butterflies caught in a net-like flies in a spider web.
They drank rum and coke all evening, out on the porch with the new acquaintance protesting gigglingly that she had never had rum before, and that she was getting giddily, silly-drunk.
"That's the best way to be," Heather had said while she kept filling the other's glass. The woman was almost drugged with sweetish alcohol; Heather made advances. The woman had responded, and panting like a hot-pantsed virgin, had followed Heather up to her room.
She enticed the woman, undressed her, felt her virginal breasts, kissed her untried passion, and brought her to a hot, furious state of itching unsatisfied desire.
Then she turned her on her stomach.
And tied her with handkerchiefs to the bedposts, spreadeagled, her buttocks white and tempting, poking up at her, begging to be rendered raw and bleeding.
They were raw and bleeding now.
The woman was unconscious. She was still a virgin. Still sexually unsatisfied, and obviously ruined. Heather had seen to that. She was good to no one, most of all to herself. Heather thought about this, and began to pant with a strange, uncontrollable desire. Desperate, she went over to the helplessly tied female body. She untied her hands and feet, and turned her over. Slowly, her arms moved, her eyes opened, and as soon as she recognized Heather, they widened with fright.
"I won't hurt you, dolly," Heather said icily.
"That's what you get for teasing-you had to be punished."
"But I never tried-" the girl began to protest, but was cut off by a sharp open-handed slap in the face.
"Shut up!" Heather snapped. "You want some more of the same?" Then she smiled, turned soft and gentle as suddenly as she had become angry. "OK," she said softly, "now that you're punished, I forgive you. I'm going to give you a little pleasure." The girl trembled while she kissed her; gradually, the fright left her, and she began to respond. Her arms went around Heather's neck tenderly.
A virgin, Heather thought wildly, a genuine, no-foolin' virgin!
And a hot little virgin, half-afraid, completely passionate and burning up with desire. She moaned as Heather kissed her breasts, nibbled on the mysteriously swelling nipples, tickled her passion with pleasing fingers-then she screamed with alarmed pain as the fingers deflowered her, entered her mercilessly, and then, after a long time, began to move with pleasure-thrusts as pain gave way to pleasure.
Heather watched her face contort with ecstasy as she reached her peak and lay back with a grateful sigh.
"Now, do the same for me," Heather instructed, and pulled the woman's face down on her thighs. She moved against the eager-to-please, inexperienced lips an diet herself slip into gurgling writhing pleasure until release rescued her from her animal lust.
Ruined.
The girl was hers. She left her there, and went outside into the fresh air, filled with an inner satisfaction. So easy, she thought. So marvelously simple. They all want it. They're all hot for it.
Ever since Joan had stopped coming around, which was ever since they had come to the island, she had felt the need for a steady lover. This one was ripe now. In awhile, maybe just a few days, she would come around, and soon she would be trapped.
Lesbians were made so easily-Heather had noticed her own growing preference for other women. At first, she hadn't been aware of it, but now, when she looked at a man, any man, she felt next to nothing.
But when she looked at a young, firm breasted woman: ah! The island was crawling with young, firm breasted women, an amazing number of them willing to make it with her. The only woman she hadn't gotten to was Maggie Stevens, who seemed hot for Peter Martin. And Joan-well, who wanted that flat-chested little nothing, anyway?
But Maggie.
Redheaded, magnificent breasts, voluptuous, sensuous body: Maggie was a prize worth catching. And if I can't get her, no one can.
Joan Ellis turned around with surprise when Peter came up behind her. She was sitting on the porch, alone; everyone else had either gone for a night swim, or to bed, whether alone or with company. But the porch had been deserted, quiet. Now Peter sat next to her, a cigarette glowing in his hand.
"Nice when it's quiet, isn't it?" he said. "Yes, it is."
"Hibernation isn't going to do it for you, Joan." She was silent. "You're running, not fighting," he continued.
"Are you suggesting more therapy?" she asked icily.
"Yes. I am."
"I forgot. You're a man. A savage beast of a man. I have to be added to the collection. Of course, I almost forgot how those things worked."
"If that were true," he said, "you should feel complimented, flattered. Most women like to feel they're wanted."
"I'm a little more discreet than most women," she countered.
"Look, Joan. I'm not really trying to fight you. I'm too tired to fight. I'm trying to help you. I can't help being a man any more than you can help being a woman."
"I'm sorry." Her voice softened.
"So am I," he said. "Just believe I want to help you. I'm past caring adding to my collection, as you put it. Really I am."
"I know that, too."
"Then what's the big deal? What's the fighting all about?"
"I'm afraid," she admitted.
"Of course you're afraid. I'm afraid, too."
"You are? Of what?"
"If I make love to you, and it doesn't work- I mean, if I scare you, or shock you. You know. I'd feel pretty badly."
"Yes, I would," he echoed, "unless you could tell me honestly of another way for you to straighten yourself out"
"Staying in my room isn't very much to the point, is it?" she asked.
"No."
"But trying to make love to you is."
"I hope it is," he said. "I can't guarantee it."
"Then let's make love."
"That's hardly the way to do it," he said with a sigh. "I mean, even men have feelings, need some kind of emotional atmosphere. You just can't plow into it, like eating dinner." Joan laughed.
"Let's have a drink, then." It was a though she were trying to humor him.
"OK, let's." He went quickly up to his room and brought down the bottle. They drank, passing the bottle back and forth. "Sorry I haven't any glasses," he said.
"That's OK. It's not terribly important."
"No. I guess it isn't," he agreed. "Funny."
"What's funny?" .
"Us. All of us. So hung up on the polite little nothings, that really don't meant a thing." Joan smiled.
"Now you're onto something big, my man." They talked for a long while about Life, and Peter found himself enjoying it. It had been a long time since he'd philosophized with anyone.
Joan was relaxing; she felt at ease with this man, who seemed to be in no real hurry to ravish her, who talked to her and with her, not at her about things, important thing. Like her professor-friend in New York.
"So' we still haven't solved anything," he finished. He sounded bitter. She felt sorry for him.
"But talking is so important," she said, "as important as your writing." He looked at her in the darkness, the tip of his cigarette glowing; he wore a khaki shirt and pants, and with his tan and beard, she thought of Hemingway's short story that she had read a long time ago.
He was attractive, Peter Martin-not sexually, but maybe he could become attractive to her in that way, because he was a desirable human being.
"How do you feel, Joan?" he asked softly.
"About what?"
"Things."
"Like making love with you?"
"Yes," he replied, "but other things too. You feel an awful lot about a lot of things. I'm interested, because maybe I do, too."
"You definitely do. I've read your novels."
"If you can accept my books, why can't you accept me- as a man?" he asked.
She could not reply for a long time.
Because I'm a lesbian. "Because I'm what I am."
"A lesbian?"
"Yes."
"You were a lesbian," he whispered, and his arms were around her. He had gotten up from his chair and come over to the chaise lounge where she was reclining. "No more, Joan, not ever." His arm around her shoulder was tender, but firm, not grabbing but possessive. A possessiveness that she liked.
She turned to face him, and their lips met, softly, gently, without passion-Joan was filled with disbelief, disbelief in her favorable response, and slowly, almost imperceptible at first, but then she was sure, a growing glimmer of passion, mixed with inner pleasure.
"Peter," she whispered, "I-"
"Don't talk," he said softly, and put his hand gently against her lips before he kissed her again. He kissed her gently for a long time and his gentleness aroused her feelings to a more passionate level, and when she put her arms around his neck, and kissed him, her lips were moist, very soft and pliable against his.
She felt her body grow warm with wanting. I want him. I want him to- she searched for his tongue with hers, and found it. The gentle hot touching of the two probing pleasure-tongs filled her with trembling ecstasy; she relaxed, ready to give herself completely to this patient, understanding man. Man. H(. It didn't matter, not now.
She wanted him more and more; he was too gentle now, too slow. She placed his hand on her breast and kept telling herself that this was a man touching her, a man, not another woman, and that she, a woman, was supposed to derive pleasure from having her breasts touched.
II worked.
Worked beautifully. She felt her nipple swell under her blouse, and when he removed it, and laid his hand on the bare firm flesh, he said, "You're a beautiful woman, Joan, a beautiful woman," she shivered with joy and emotion. A man was feeling her breasts, and found them attractive and beautiful, enough to touch them, and kiss them, because he was kissing them now.
She felt his tongue glide over her white flesh and red-brown nipple, swelling it into excitement and pain-filled joy.
She was behaving like a woman being loved and caressed by a man, and she was spellbound by her response.
She felt all the thrill that a willing, slightly-scared virgin giving herself to a man feels that first time.
When he paced her hand gently upon him, she was afraid, and curious. The first time. The very first time that she had ever touched a man there. He was so big, so warm, so throbbing-suddenly she was afraid. She trembled and Peter sensed it, perceived that it was fear-trembling, not passion-trembling.
"It might hurt a little for a minute," he said softly, "but then, Joan, you'll be a woman, and you'll know the pleasure that a woman knows-with a man." He managed to reassure her, and kept her hand there. It was pleasant to touch, to feel, to explore and feel his response. It filled her with a peculiar desire that almost overwhelmed her.
He felt the zipper on his khakis sliding downward, then the tender, eagerly trembling soft, warm hand entering, then clutching; her sharp intake of breath along with his, a moan of delight and innocent surprise as she felt his essence, unprotected and unsheathed by clothing: it was rapture, it was discovery. It was desire.
She trembled with it, heaved with it, panted against it, and then, instinctively, impulsively, touched him with her lips and felt his acute reaction, and became filled with a longing that she had never known before. Peter tried to control himself, knew that her explorations were crucial-that they would make her or break her.
It was difficult. Difficult to control his passion against the onslaught of soft, moist red female lips, hungry for him, eager to please, filled with a longing to know him.
She began to moan when he removed her briefs, and she actually cried when his hand touched her sex, and entered along the periphery that was throbbing with lust, moist with passion and natural response. She felt him move in slowly; it hurt, but just a little. He stopped. Impatiently, she pushed his hand towards her and bit her tongue as she felt the pain shooting through her.
Then the pain melted away, and she was filled with pleasurable little twinges and sensations. It was good, good, yes, better now-Joan began to thrust her hips, and she felt like a woman, panting with passion and desire for a man.
To take her.
She lay down beside him and pulled him close. Their lips met, hot and wet and fiery with wanting. Their bodies met, hip to hip, belly to belly, breasts to chest. Her thighs locked eagerly around him, and then she felt it, the pain, the intrusion, the slow infiltration into her tenderness, and the slow, gradual pleasure that built up with volcanic force inside her.
She had him now. He was part of her, and she was feeling it, feeling its joy, its pain, its togetherness.
"Oh, Peter!" she sobbed, and he held her close to him, and kissed her on the lips, on the neck, on the ear, on the face. And it was good.
Her hands found his buttocks and slammed him against her driving thrusting body, and she began to erupt helplessly and hopelessly with joyous release. Their bodies trembled and rocked together, and they lived and died together, and fell away in exhaustion and contentment.
"I can't believe it," she gasped. She was still holding onto him; he stroked her hair gently. "Can't believe what?"
"That I did it. And that it was so wonderful."
"That's because there was feeling, Joan. Feeling between us."
"It's because I believed you," she said. He was silent, and she let him go on stroking her hair. "I feel like a woman," she said triumphantly. "WOMAN!"
"Don't go raping every man on the island now," he grinned. Then he became more serious. "Just remember it was good because we both felt, Joan. We needed each other. It wasn't any empty, quickie-type thing. You know what I mean."
"Yes I do." Joan thought of all the women that she had picked up, who had picked her up, and how empty it had been with them. And they had been women. Ugly women, drunk women, beautiful women, nice women, all kinds of women. After they dressed, she came back into his arms, and fell asleep there. She dreamed of a bed that filled an entire room-she and Peter were romping and dancing and cavorting in it, like two little sex-starved satyrs, having an uproarious orgiastic time of it.
She smiled in her sleep and turned so that her thigh closed over his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The next morning, Maggie Stevens decided lo see Peter. It had been a couple of days since they had taken their customary walk, and she felt that she owed him some sort of an apology. When she stopped in front of his door, which was closed, she heard the furious clacking of a typewriter; she listened for awhile, then turned away, smiling to herself.
Peter was writing again. Maybe just a letter, maybe just cleaning the machine and testing it- but whatever he was doing, the typewriter was in use. So he was at least contemplating writing, if he weren't doing so already.
She went downstairs for a cup of coffee. It was well after breakfast and too early for lunch. Wordlessly, someone put a bottle of coffee before her, and she drank. So Peter was writing. Well. Something had happened to precipitate it.
She had seen him with Joan last night for a brief time; then she had gone up to her room. Maybe something had resulted from their meeting? Something significant enough to set Peter into creative motion again?
If that were true, there were at least two people who were making good use of their time on Vera Reocreo, instead of spending it and themselves on empty meaningless orgies.
"Good morning." Heather Hamilton's greeting cut into her train of thought. She turned around, but Heather was already coming around to the opposite side of the table to sit down.
"Hello," Maggie acknowledged her. It was impossible for Heather to know how Maggie really felt, because the latter took great pains to conceal her contempt.
Heather was sitting down now, her large velvety-white breasts flowing on the table, barely concealed by the low-cut blouse that she wore, sans bra-that was the thing nowadays, to be as exposed as possible without actually being naked. The more suggestive the state of dress, the better.
Heather was the winner, if not the runner-up to Daphne and that cute, sluttish Tammy. Maggie looked at her quickly and thought of Peter's appraisal - a hot piece. It fit Heather like a glove, she thought now. A hot, blonde little piece- "How's the coffee this morning?" Heather asked.
"Strong." Maggie looked up into Heather's eyes, and saw that she was being watched, observed and appraised as well. Heather was looking at her breasts, that in spite of the unpretentious blouse that Maggie wore, were lush and ripe-looking, that seemed like they would pop out eagerly at the slightest provocation.
Maggie didn't walk around half naked and "half exposed. Perhaps that was why she was most alluring of all.
Heather wanted her. She wanted Maggie because of her beauty, but mostly because of her aloofness, her lack of participation in the big sex game that everyone else was playing these days.
Heather was in her element, here on the island. She had come to escape stifling conformity-ridden existence, and the freedom on Vera Recreo was too much for her to handle.
She had managed to completely strip herself of any binding behavior whatever. At first, she had managed to shock even the most brazen people around her, but slowly, they had conformed to her nonconformity. It was all relative in the end.
"Going for a swim after coffee?" Heather was asking.
"I suppose. What else is there to do?"
"Fishing, they say, is good here."
"Yes, for some people it is," Maggie said lightly. "But there's the problem of bait."
"Oh, I never found that to be a problem." They were on the same wave-length now, and both knew it.
"Well, maybe I'll go fishing one of these days, but this morning a swim'll be good enough."
"Guess I will, too," Heather sighed. "It wouldn't be too hard to get bored around here, would it?"
"Not if it weren't for certain things," Maggie pointed out.
The water was never cold in the lagoon, not even in early morning; sometimes Peter got up around five thirty and swam across and back before breakfast. The sea was cold until the tide went out, so most people preferred the lagoon. One could even swim naked in the lagoon, as it was surrounded by heavy foliage and trees; one side gave way to a dense growth of jungle.
Maggie dived off the rock that had become the diving board and cut the water gracefully; she was a good diver. Her body hung for a split second, suspended in the air, before slicing through the cool, blue water. Heather watched her body descend the depths, her thighs spreading and closing in a scissors kick as she swam underwater.
Finally, a hundred yards away, she broke the surface and came up with a heavy breath. Heather dived off the rock next, but couldn't swim the distance underwater. She came up right away and did a slow crawl to where Maggie was treading water.
"Good this morning," she said breathlessly.
"It's fine," Maggie agreed, and began to swim towards the heavily-foliaged shore. The white sand was already warm under her back as she lay down and stared up at the rising sun.
"I'm really getting a good tan these days," Heather said, "al over." She removed her two-piece suit, casually and without fanfare, and Maggie saw that her whole body was kissed golden by the sun; her breasts were deep bronze-gold, except for the nipples, which were even a more pronounced pink. Her thighs and hips and buttocks were that same bronze-golden color, which with her blonde hair gave her a goddess-like look: the goddess of love, or the goddess of sensuality, or the goddess of ripe love- that kind of mythical goddess. There was no white on her anywhere.
Her face, a deep tan, contrasted with her pink-red, full pouting lips. Maggie couldn't help admiring her beauty, in spite of her personal feelings towards the woman.
"You really have been working," Maggie said. There was grudging admiration in her voice.
"Why don't you take your suit off? It's so much nicer without that wet material clinging to you."
Maggie shrugged and removed her suit. Heather was right. It did feel better to be naked in the warm sun and clean air; being a natural being was surprisingly delicious, both mentally and physically.
"You're really white around there," Heather said, looking at Maggie's breasts. Her heart was pounding in her throat; she wanted to reach out and clutch the. breasts, so milky-white and soft looking, so large and shapely, so kissable, so squeezable-"you'd better put some lotion on yourself, or you'll get an awful burn."
Maggie nodded and reached in her beach bag. Heather watched her put the lotion on her breasts, joggling them slightly as her hands massaged the oily stuff into them; then her thighs and lips.
"I'll do you in back if you want," Heather offered, meaning the buttocks and the backs of her upper thighs that a bathing suit or shorts normally covered.
Maggie smiled, her face turned away from Heather.
"I'd appreciate it," she said, and handed the bottle to Heather, who took it and poured some of the stuff in her hand. Maggie turned on her stomach and spread her thighs slightly-enough to let Heather get a good look at the deep crevice that separated her round firm buttocks, and the pink womanliness that nestled between her white, richly sensuous-looking thighs. Heather felt hot.
In her loins, there was an unbearable,, un-quenchable itch that started to plague her as she watched Maggie's nakedness staring temptingly and tauntingly at her. She began to rub the lotion into the buttocks; they were firm, smooth, well-rounded; good to touch, to caress. She was business-like about it, though, and concentrated on covering the white flesh with a generous coating of the oily goo.
She massaged the backs of Maggie's thighs; they were covered with barely visible downy red hair, more like fuzz, and it gave them a velvet-like texture as her hands roamed over the sweet, sensuous flesh.
Maggie was surprised at her reaction. She had resigned herself to brace herself, to steel herself to making love to another woman again. But Heather's hand there, rubbing gently, dipping every now and then into the insides, near the pretty-pink passion itself, was getting to her.
Feeling good.
She was unaware of moving so that her thighs parted, making the red target more accessible-gentle probing fingers touched her now, and she moaned. It was nice. Her hips began to move gently, as she thrust her belly against the white warm sand underneath her, and the fingers penetrated her essence now, entering deeper, deeper, and- "Ooooooh!" She couldn't help herself. Her legs opened fully, her buttocks raised as she arched her back and hoisted herself up so that she was on her knees while her head rested against the scratchy sand, and Heather drove hard into her now, filling her with trembling, fever-bright pleasure.
"Part of the service, darling," Heather rasped, and Maggie knew she was caught, irrevocably trapped by her own desire. She moved frantically, feeling her whole body grown hot and dry with consuming lust. There was a fiendish itch inside her: it had to be scratched, it had to be eased and soothed.
By those knowing, delicately searching, hard-driving fingers that belonged to Heather Hamilton, the woman behind her that she could not even see, only feel.
Heather stopped. Maggie felt two hands cup her breasts and squeeze them. She moaned, and felt the wave of pleasing dizziness sweep through her, all the way into her brain. Fingers played with, squeezed and rubbed her swollen pink nipples that rose to meet the touch.
"Are you hot for it, baby?" Heather asked. Her voice was crude, harsh with insistent wanting. "Tell me how you want it!"
Maggie told her, in spite of herself. She was caught and knew it. She turned around now, to face her lover; their lips met, and Heather's tongue entered her lips, then came surging through into her yawning hungry mouth. She caught the tongue, bit it, mid listened to Heather moan in her mouth, filling her body with its vibrancy. When she felt the hot moist lips on her nipple, she lay back again and let the thrill pulsate and rip through her.
Right breast-left breast-both breasts, one loved by lips and tongue, the other loved and squeezed by the knowing expert hand.
Heather did things with her hands, and her lips, on Maggie's body, all of her body, playing her like an instrument, getting unheard of sounds out of her, undreamed of responses.
Soft hair tickled her legs, and lips sought and found her, and she moaned and cried and sobbed, unable to do anything but wait for the joy-filled eruption to run through her as she probed and loved and kissed Heather, who waited and panted wantonly for the same, simultaneous passion-spilling joy.
It happened again. And again: one volcanic eruption after another, until Maggie felt that another time wasn't possible. But Heather kept kissing, kept squeezing and probing until she did spill over, each time more violent and pleasing than before.
Her thighs were soaked with perspiration and passion; her lips were pouting with wanton kisses and her breast-nipples were swollen beyond any previous proportion-she breathed hard, deep, spent with passion as she lay back to gather her strength.
Heather looked down at her triumphantly.
"I've been waiting for a long time," Heather said.
"You don't know how badly I wanted you." Maggie was silent. She hated herself, hated her sexuality; she had failed. Her whole plan gone up in smoke because she allowed herself to be the victim of her own impulses. Heather seemed indestructible, impervious to any kind of defeat. She lay there, naked, breathing hard, the sun reddening her breasts and belly and hips, and she didn't even hear Heather's droning incessant voice-she only heard her inner cursing and crying of humiliation and self-defeat.
Joan Ellis heard the typewriter clacking furiously, and knew that Peter was writing. An hour or so later, when she returned the noise had stopped. She listened for awhile. Still no noise; then she heard the sound of the case being snapped shut, some papers shuffled-and she knocked on the door.
"Come in."
She came inside the room, and Peter was just putting the first few pages of a manuscript in an empty paperbox.
"I heard you typing before," Joan said, "so I didn't knock."
Peter smiled and motioned her towards a chair.
"How 'bout some coffee?" he offered, and was already uncorking a thermos when she nodded affirmatively. "Sleep alright last night?" he asked.
"Fine," she said, "I even had a nice dream."
"I'm glad," Peter smiled. "So did I. I had a dream, too. When I got up this morning, I had a story on my hands." He looked towards the typewriter and smiled again.
"That's wonderful, Peter. I'd like to see it when you've finished. Unless that's against the rules, of course," she added quickly.
"Not at all," he said. "Of course I'll let you look at it. Well, what's up for today?" he asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
Joan looked at him: he looked so very rested, so cheerful; better than he had ever looked before, she thought.
"I don't know. The boat's coming today. I thought I'd take a look around in some of the stores. I need some things, anyway."
"Good. I need some stuff, too. What time's the boat come?"
"Right after lunch. It doesn't come back until tomorrow morning, though, right after breakfast. That means we'll have to stay overnight."
"Fine. We'll have lunch and go, if you don't mind my company." Joan smiled to show that she didn't mind at all, and finished her coffee, which had a suspicious hint of scotch in it.
"Is this stuff spiked, Peter?"
He laughed. "No, there was scotch in there before, though. I never wash that thermos out too thoroughly."
The boat ride was pleasant, if nothing else. They sat on the open deck, letting the sea breeze whistle around them, breathing it in, tasting the salt in their lungs after it had entered their mouths and noses. It was pleasant.
The boat was a fast one, powered by two engines, leaving a long churning wake behind it as it cut the water. In less than two hours they were on the island of Freeport. The captain told them he would pick them up at the dock at seven thirty next morning.
"Before here." he warned, and they all left, going their separate ways towards the busy downtown area where all the stores and souvenir shops were. They wandered in and out of the stores.
Peter sat patiently in a chair as Joan tried on different outfits and dresses, giving approval or disapproval when she came out of the dressing room to show him. After an hour or so, they walked out of the dress shop. He was carrying the box that Joan's dresses were folded in.
"You're unquestionably a woman," he laughed. "You spent an hour in there."
"How long do men spend in a clothing store?"
"I never spent much time, because I never had to dress for work."
It was after dinner when they went upstairs to the hotel room where they were staying for the night.
"Did you have fun today?" Peter asked Joan.
"It's funny," she replied. "I looked forward to shopping, seeing stores again-but now, if I never saw any, I don't think I'd be too unhappy."
"That's the way I feel. Just keep me in books, paper and scotch."
They, bad taken a room together earlier. Now, they saw it for the first time, as the bellhop had take their luggage up for them. It was much larger than their permanent rooms on Vera Recreo. In fact, this was a luxury hotel, as Freeport was an altogether different place. The lobby was jammed with tourists, many of them dressed in evening clothes. Music came from the bar, faint and unobtrusive.
"The Bahamas," Joan said, as though to herself.
"Janice and I came here once," Peter said. "After my first book."
"To celebrate, I imagine." Joan looked at him briefly as he sat on the edge of the bed, his shirt half-unbuttoned.
"That's how it started. But the atmosphere got me, you know? I was so entranced by the charm, or what I thought was the charm of the place, that I started an article for a travel magazine. It was quick bread, and I was itchy to write."
"And Janice didn't approve."
"She didn't like me taking my work with me." He shrugged. "But that's all done. .Now we're here, together. We've had a nice day, and it's time to go to sleep. Unless you want to talk some more."
"We can talk in bed." She looked so shy, so disarmingly innocent when she said it, that Peter got -up and kissed her tenderly.
"Sure we can," he whispered. They undressed and after Joan had the cover over her, he turned off the light, and got in beside her. Her body was warm. Relaxed. They held one another and talked, well into the night, not caring about getting up so early in the morning. They talked about themselves; Peter was surprised to discover there was so much for him to say, and was more surprised to hear about Joan. The more she told him, the more he found in her that was good.
"I think, I'm all done talking, Peter," she said, and he felt her embrace tighten around him. Her thighs hugged his hips, and when her belly moved against him, his loins warmed. He felt a strange desire, a mixture of hungry passion and a indefinable emotion of-he didn't finish the thought.
"It's so good to talk," he said. He held her tightly.
"It's also good to be able to stop," she teased, and her hand touched him lightly, and he knew it was time to stop talking.
They kissed. Their lips met, then clung and became moist as their desire and passion mounted within them.
Joan's small breasts felt firm and warm against his chest; the nipples grew large and stiff with response when he touched them. He heard her breathe sharply; her hand tightened against him, and his own fast breathing all but submerged hers.
"Peter." It was a moan, a cry, a vow. a simple statement of pleasure.
She clung to him tightly, and he felt her whole body now, warm and alive and animated with growing desire. It tickled him, filled him with hot dry desire. With desire. It was a new thing, a now feeling-for each of them.
He kissed her breasts. For the second time in her life, someone was kissing them, and she felt a shock run through her. It was good. Good because she was a woman, and as a woman, her breasts were pleasure-vessels.
She felt his hot moist tongue flick rapidly and lightly over her nipple, making it swell even further, filling her with a swooning kind of joy. He kissed the other one now, and she almost fainted with delight.
The whole thing was so natural, so right, and she threw herself into the act with all her being. Her hands roamed feverishly over his body, feeling its hotness ,its dryness as he bathed her with kisses.
It was frantic.
Their feet tore at the cover and sheet where it was tucked into the mattress, and now Joan found herself on top of him, moving, kissing, caressing.
He felt her take him. Her buttocks came slowly to rest against his legs, then she moved. He hissed between his teeth, feeling the slow, excruciating contact of man and woman becoming one. She moved. He moved. It was perfect. Her body leaned back, way back, and her slim, well-shaped womanly thighs moved closer together. He almost collapsed with pleasure.
"Peter, is it alright like this?" There was a crying note of desperate frenzy in her voice.
"Yes," he rasped out, "it's magnificent." Joan felt the man inside her, large and throbbing and warm, indescribably warm. It moved in her as she moved against it, and her whole body wanted it.
He felt her thighs on him; they were moist with woman's desire. Their muskiness mixed with her perfume and assailed his nostrils, making his desire even sharper, making his senses fully aware that he was with a woman, being taken by a woman. Having a woman.
His hands grabbed her buttocks and pulled her down, manipulating her hips in the tempo that his instincts cried out for.
She took the cue, and moved without even being conscious that she was doing it, only that it was good, very, very good.
Now she leaned forward, her hands flat on his heaving chest; he strained upward, and they kissed.
It was a long, searching kiss that filled them with one another's tongues, moving to the same rhythm as their bodies.
"Peter, I'm ready-" her voice was desperate, pleading, strong with a warning note that seemed to say it was beyond her control now. They erupted.
Spilled their passion and their tension, gave them to each other, and lay back panting and smiling and crying. "Again, please," she said, and this time tried to pull him on top of her.
She did things. With her hands, her lips, her tongue, and he was ready; he mounted her waiting, anxious body, felt himself being swallowed. Her legs pulled him down to her, encircling his lower back the way her arms folded around his shoulders, pulling him close, close-he took her hard and fast this time, like a woman.
She was ready to love savagely, instinctively, without the careful tenderness.
She loved it.
She dug into his back with her nails and slammed her hips against him, and he kept moving frantically against her warm, womanly body, feeling the wide live hips move against him, the fleshiness of her thighs around him, pulling hid down, consuming him.
Her teeth sank into his neck when the moment came, the grand moment when everything went black and starry, the moment when man and woman become one, lost in the sensation that defies description.
Again.
Differently, with more imagination, the result being an even mere tremulous coming together and melting away with tingling, mingling joy.
They were exhausted the next morning when the boat came. Both of them plopped into deck chairs and slept. Back on Vera Recreo, they walked slowly to the hotel, went to Peter's room, and flopped down on the bed, side by side, and slept until dinner that night, too spent from the night before to do anything else. Joan had no dreams this time; just solid, unhampered, unhindered sleep. For the first time in a long, long time.
After dinner, they went for a swim in the moonlight, naked. That was how they made love on the beach. The sea was cold, and refreshing. It refreshed their senses, drove away their sluggishness that come from daytime sleep. Joan felt the cool scratchy sand under her buttocks as he lay on top of her, filling her with joy again. Her imagination was on fire, seeking variety. There was a lot of lost time to make up for. In the moonlight, Peter kissed her breasts, watched the yellow hue play on her passion-contorted face and took her.
"Hard." She drove against him, and he took her as she wanted to be taken, but he kissed her, too, and whispered sweet, reassuring words in her ear, all except the word, the word that could change his life. No, not yet, not now.
She cried, and bit his ear, and felt his throbbing and pulsating as he gave her his passion, and she gave him his, all in the same, simultaneously beautiful magic moment.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Maggie Stevens had enough sense of humor to laugh silently over the outcome of Peter and Joan's relationship, one that seemed to be growing into something serious. She had urged him into the role of therapist: and the doctor had simply become attached to the patient. Not to mention that the patient seemed to be attached to the doctor.
Maggie had had that happen to her before. She was not used to it, but she could accept it. The times she'd had with Peter were not lost for her; in fact, she would always remember them. After all, he had cured her, too. So, she'd asked for it. At least that's what she kept telling herself.
No, that was a dead issue. Heather was the issue now. Heather, blonde and wanton and selfish and degenerating day by day, indefatigable, undefeatable Heather Hamilton, who she found herself wanting and hating.
Heather Hamilton walked around the island like a prowling, passion-dripping personification of sensuality. Openly, without preliminary or pretense, she would approach anything that caught her sexual fancy, whether male or female. She saw less of Daphne and Tammy. They had nothing to offer but bodies. There was nothing to corrupt, nothing to destroy and leave scars upon. Heather wanted innocence.
Innocence was something she could sink her fangs into. She wanted bodies with unsuspecting minds that she could whip, humiliate and then suck dry until her appetite was satisfied. Heather was an animal. Worse, because she operated with her mind, calculating, making it synchronize with her instinct.
Innocence was hard to find. But Heather found it, and managed to thoroughly destroy it. Like her young virginal little friend who was by now a crawling, begging passion-starved, lovely thing that could respond only to Heather's frightening mixture of savagery and pleasure-making.
There was a new one now, a new project: she was a brunette from a farm in Kansas, who had come to the island for one last fling before getting a job and looking for a husband. She too had been a virgin, and still was so far as men were concerned. A nameless, soulless project with a voluptuous unexploited body.
Heather saw her now, sitting on the porch reading a love magazine. Heather had just finished her morning coffee; she sniffed the morning air, stretched her supple sensuous limbs and greeted her new toy.
"Hi, Mandy."
"Good morning." Heather raked Mandy's body with her eyes, and already warmed in her loins, yearned in her belly for the innocent body.
"What're you reading?" Heather asked.
"Just a goofy confession thing I found in the lobby."
"For frustrated people," Heather laughed sarcastically. "I guess."
"Are you frustrated, Mandy?"
"I suppose I am," she admitted, after a long silence. Heather had had her just once before, a fast-paced encounter that left Mandy rather breathless. It had been the first time she had had "complete" sex with anybody. Now she looked at Heather slightly frightened. She had heard of lesbian love, but never dreamed that one day she would be part of that kind of relationship.
"Well, how about it?" Heather came right to the point.
"No. not again. I-lost my head that last time." Mandy turned away, shamefaced and feeling small. Desperately, she tried to fight against the building urge that was inside her, getting bigger, stronger by the second as she looked at Heather's tanned, sumptuous body with the breasts that pushed and strained against the braless halter, the live, leering snapping yes that evoked so much promise.
"Mandy. Don't you want paradise? Better than you're reading in that crummy magazine?" Mandy was speechless for a long moment. The eyes bore into her. The body swayed and rocked before her, almost with an imperceptible movement, but enough, more than enough to fill her with the scratch-itch of desire.
"I'm so afraid," she said softly, and lowered her head demurely.
"Don't be," Heather whispered huskily. "You don't have to be anything but excited."
When Mandy rose from the chair, and followed Heather upstairs to her room, her heart pounded in her chest, making her breasts heave and thump against her blouse. She wanted it, wanted Heather's naked hot body and straining thighs against her. Wanted all those thighs, but afraid.
Heather closed the door behind her. They stood near it, standing close together. Mandy felt Heather's arms go around her, and pull her close. She felt the warm full breasts mash against her own, and she wanted to swoon.
"Unbutton me," Heather said throatily, and Mandy did, her fingers trembling with excitement as she did it.
Heather's breasts leaped free. They were tan now, and their coppery hue made the pink nipples even more alluring, irresistible targets.
"Now kiss them, darling," Heather said again, and Mandy did. Heather moaned gently, almost casually, as though trying to decide whether Mandy's lips were turning her on or not. Like a gourmet tasting food. Studied, slightly apprehensive.
"Bite my nipple a little."
Mandy did that too, and this time Heather moaned a little more deeply, feeling the pain mingle with pleasure.
"The other one," and Mandy became a robot, doling out pleasure on command, filled with a strange awareness of what she was doing, wondering why she was doing it, since Heather was just standing there with a slightly amused expression on her face while she had her breasts kissed and nibbled, her hands idly at her sides.
The she pushed Mandy back a little, knelt down slightly and kissed her breasts, running her hot wet tongue over it, letting the very tip of it barely touch the pointed swollen ruby-red nipple of Mandy's milky-white breasts.
Mandy shuddered. Then moaned; her hand went to Heather's hair and pulled her face closer. The mouth closed over the nipple, beyond it and grabbed an incredible quantity of white breast-flesh. Mandy felt the warm wet aliveness of Heather's mouth on her, and now she trembled more and began to cry.
"Oh, it's so good," she whispered, "so good."
"I told you, darling," Heather said, and her mouth closed again on the white, untied breasts, savoring its size and shape and warmth-its perfection.
Slowly, they retreated to the bed, and Mandy fell on it, with Heather against her, still kissing her breasts tenaciously, filling her with undreamed of delight.
Mandy felt her thighs being pried gently but firmly apart, and then the hand rising up between them.
Then the touch.
The probing gentle fingers that made her moist dripping passion bloom and burst into flower, as her thighs came farther apart, and the fingers filled her with their eager aliveness. Untutored and instinctively driven, her hips began to move and thrust to the tune that the fingers played within her, her head tossing from side to side, her face crimson with passionate exertion and pleasure. Impossibly good, indescribably joyous.
"Heather, I'm burning up!" she cried. Heather smiled and let her fingers play the tune even more rapidly, more intensively in the fully bloomed wet musky passion, bordered by lustrous black hair. She looked at it, and felt a tremor of excitement, the way it nestled and lived and even breathed between the protective refuge of beautifully ripe white firm fleshed woman-thighs. She knelt down and kissed her there, briefly.
Mandy shuddered and inhaled sharply. Heather retreated and looked into her face, smiling. Mutely, Mandy demanded a repetition of the too-brief encounter of lips and womanliness.
She complied, and felt Mandy go insane under her. Her thighs did a crazy, uncontrolled spasmodic, dance, slamming on the mattress hard, while Heather reveled and rooted in the flesh.
Heather was embroiled in strange desires, initiate by her taste of flesh, by Mandy's scrying feverish response, by their melting together and. retreating, echoes of smacking lips and slapping flesh. Something rose up in her as she looked at. the naked female body lying on the bed. Big, milky white breasts, capper with ruby nipples, swollen and puffed with desire: concave, dancing belly: wide triangular writhing hips that gave way to firm-fleshed, juicy-looking thighs, separated by shocking-shining black hair.
Sex.
Lust.
"Mandy, let me spank you," Heather breathed, and Mandy nodded eagerly, something inside her saying yes, that would be good, lots of savagery, lots of flesh and buttocks-slapping, oooooh delicious, baby- Heather took her over her knee and felt her downy little target and surrounding hot flesh against her thighs. White, perfectly defined buttocks lay before her, ready for use. She let her hands rain up and down lightly, watched the flesh turn pink, then crimson and felt Mandy twist and cry and swear under her hands, on her thighs.
Warmth flooded through Heather as she destroyed the innocence, savored the new willing body. Her hands hit the back of thighs, slightly covered with light hair that gave them even more sexuality. She moaned in unison with Mandy's sobbing, and when Heather pulled her off her lap and threw her back on the bed, she was waiting, ready, willing, screaming for completion.
Side by side. Their hands found one another, their lips glued together, and they sobbed and moaned and cursed and laughed as they rutted in climactic ejaculatory delight.
Heather walked around the island like a tigress on the prowl. She wore the halter that showed the breasts right down the hint of pink nipples; the tight white short shorts that hugged and rode up her buttocks, defining every-thing that she had to offer.
She wanted them. She had them. They never had her.
Maggie Stevens watched her, and remembered their affair. It had been thrilling, uncontrollably ecstatic. She wanted Heather now, but didn't want to pay the price. No. Heather had to start paying those dues; she had it coming. How? How do you defeat and destroy Heather Hamilton?
"Hi, Maggie." Heather. There, in front of her, leering, offering, mocking, promising.
"Hello." That body. Tanned and female and musky and sweet, all sex and no feeling.
"Nice day, huh?"
"Sure it is." Heather smiled when Maggie said that, the facetiousness in her voice lost on her completely; she felt good. Mandy's pleasure was just beginning to fade out of her loins and memory, and now studied Maggie with a casual eye. For the time, she was happy, satisfied.
Looking at Maggie was like planning the next investment. One had to think ahead. It was a good body, and it new what to do. There was more feeling in it than in Daphne's or Tammy's, who really, were like her, out for the same thing. To take.
Heather wanted women who could give, and for diversion, to experience an occasional amused repugnance, not to mention the thrill of defeating and demoralizing someone, a man.
Men were all the same. They begged, they whined, and when you stuck in their face they became nothing. That was the kick: reducing them to nothing. Ah!
"Well, see you around, Maggie," Heather said, and the redhead watched her wiggle off in the direction of the lagoon. She threw her hips and buttocks out, and Maggie felt the feeling of wanting. How ? How do you defeat and destroy Heather Hamilton?
Peter found himself writing another novel. It had just happened, really. The first day he had started typing, just following the desire to type, to let his fingers race over the keys, he found a story developing, and now it was bigger than he was, and had to finish itself. Only it needed him to type. That was the way it was. He did the typing, but someone else seemed to do the creating, the birth-giving.
It went fast. In the mornings, he worked, in the afternoons and evenings, he was with Joan. Only Joan. They talked, they swam, they fished, they made love. Neither had said the all-encompassing word that would commit them. But the feeling existed between them. It was there.
Peter Martin was happy; he was working, he was sober most of the time, and above all, he had come out of himself and put himself into someone else. People looked pretty good now. Bad, but good.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
It was as Gibbson himself would have predicted: every single soul on the island of Vera Recreo, or almost everyone, went to pot. To seed: kaput They drank themselves into insensibility, and jaded their desires to the point where only the most bizarre, even frightening experiments gave them any pleasure.
Except for Peter Martin, who divorced himself from everything and everyone except Joan Ellis and his writing, and Joan Ellis herself, everyone was hitting the low point.
Even Maggie Stevens was letting herself go; not nearly as much as the others, but enough to discern a noticeable change. And of all the orgiasts, only one remained completely unscathed; only one remained as fresh as ever, and in complete control, over herself and others: Heather. Heather ran the show now.
Heather snapped her fingers, and they came running like bees for honey.
Heather removed her halter, wherever she was, showed her lush pink-nippied, painted breasts, cupping them in mute, eye-closer offering, and her girls came running; she even had Tammy and Daphne now.
Everyone hungered and yearned for Heather, and would do anything to be subjected to her. She whipped them. Beat them. Loved them. Brutalized them, filled them with torment and pleasures, administered by her hands, her lips, her body, her wrecked mind-and they loved it.
One by one, Heather Hamilton had brought them all under control; the men drooled and ached as she had her fill with her victimized women.
How she loved her women! Precious, lovely, all of them! Sometimes she would even allow three of them to love her simultaneously, whom she in turn tortured and loved.
The outsiders-Peter an Joan, and Maggie were afraid of her. She walked around like a demented animal, hunger and lust in her eyes. Sometimes she carried her belt with her, and whoever she pointed her finger at was her victim and recipient for the moment. It was as though the island were a cage full of animals, and she was the owner, the tamer, the torturer of them. They growled, but she always subdued them, no matter what. Heather Hamilton was sick.
Maggie still clung to the hope that she would find a way, the way to defeat Heather. No matter how many times Heather had her, she always hoped, even while she was trapped in the web of her own desires that Heather inflicted upon her. Of all of them, only Maggie hated her enough, had enough courage to hold out that last bare hope.
Heather had taken special delight in taming Daphne and Tammy. One time, and only one time, each in their turn had humiliated her; that had made her victory over them all the sweeter. Each in their turn had been loved beyond endurance, beaten and whipped beyond belief, and now they both were her victims, their tongues almost hanging out for her attentions.
She had them all. Except Peter and Joan, who were no good to her anyway. She ignored them as they ignored her. Joan even went so far as to forget her affair with Heather, and discarded the idea of vengeance altogether. It had been her mistake, her weakness, and she was willing to let it go at that.
As for Peter, he pretended it didn't exist. The evil around himself and Joan had not yet reached the point where they had to leave the island.
They managed to live a separate existence from everyone else. The more isolated they were, the firmer their relationship became, the more they had for one another. They had a common enemy: they. Those animal-like people, "out there."
The situation, fantastic as it was, is easily explained. Vera Recreo was a deserted, empty island. It attracted people seeking release from the bonds of everyday conformity and regulations. It afforded the opportunity to escape them. It was only a matter of time before they reached that point.
Heather, little by little, inflicted her desire to escape conformity on all of them. As her freedom increased, so did her desires and strange appetites, which arose to the surface. For years, they had been suppressed and submerged by civilized society; but here, on the island, they had been allowed expression. It was as simple and as complicated as that.
Peter and Joan sat high up on a hill, the only hill on the island, since it was too high for any but the most hearty to climb. It overlooked everything around them. From the top, they could see down into the lagoon and the surrounding area, and the sea. Everything. The endless miles were visible around them, even the entire shape of the. island. It was like being in an airplane, flying relatively low. They rested now, out of breath from their climb; Peter sat leaning against a thick palm tree, and Joan leaned comfortably against his chest.
"How's the book coming, Peter?" asked now.
"Alright," he said. "I'm going to need your help after awhile, if you'll give it to me."
"You know better than to ask. What can I do?"
"Certain parts will have to be written again, and typed."
"Let me know when." Joan leaned against him now, sniffed the rarified clean air of the island and the sea, and looked out and down; the lagoon lay below them, clear and calm and placid. "What a view. You wouldn't believe that a place this beautiful had such things happening-"
"No," Peter said. "But don't think about it. There's too much to think about that's good." He ran his fingers lightly through her hair, closed his eyes and let the drowsy content feeling roam through him. He was almost asleep. "Peter, look!"
He stirred, made a "huh" sound, and opened his eyes.
Joan was looking down at the edge of the lagoon, wide-eyed with disbelief.
"What is it?" he asked. She pointed silently, and his eyes followed the line of her finger.
Heather.
And Maggie, lying on the sandy beach near the water's edge, naked and embraced, their bodies writhing desperately together, a tangle of thighs and breasts and lips, long hair, blonde and red lying in a confused mess behind them.
Maggie's face was contorted with passion, and Heather had that heavy-lidded, lustful expression, mixed with an amused, triumphant smile.
She lay on her back now, her breasts tan and pink and red-painted-large and beautiful and lush. For a moment, they were obscured by Maggie's head as she bent down to kiss them.
Then, Peter and Joan could see the lips close over a nipple and hide it, could see Heather close her eyes wriggle her voluptuous coppery body sensuously, in a quiet kind of amused animal delight.
It was so quiet here, that they could hear the conversation and the sounds clearly, even from the distance of the hilltop. They looked and listener, entranced and amazed by the scene below.
"My other one now, Mag," Heather commanded. It was a murmur, an assumed order.
Maggie's head lifted slightly and they could see her full red moist lips close on the other large sumptuous breast, while her hand moved to the one she had just kissed. She squeezed.
Heather moved erotically, wiggling her lips and closing her eyes, while she smiled that horrible, beautiful smile of sheer sexuality.
Peter had never before seen two lesbians making love. His reactions were mixed; the two beautiful, ripe naked bodies affected him in a purely male way. Yet, seeing two of them together, making love, filled him with a sense of horror, of violation against nature-something like that.
But there he was, watching all this, not understanding it, unable to turn away.
From those beautiful animals down below.
Making love. Kissing each other's breasts, bellies, probing between one another's beautiful tanned shapely woman's thighs, inflaming each other with eager searching fingers buried in moist hungry womanliness.
They laughed and sobbed and moaned, sometimes together, sometimes separately, in a confused jumble of sounds-pleasure-sounds, pain-sounds, joy-sounds.
Joan felt as though she were watching a chapter in her past. She did not respond with any desire, only detached curiosity. She was unable to believe that she had once done those things. Looking at Peter, it was even harder to believe.
"Poor Maggie," she said now, more to herself than to Peter.
Heather lay against the warm white sand and let Maggie's lips consume her with sensation. It was delicious. She felt the sharp nipple-tips of her breasts between those hungry wet hot lips, sucking and consuming her, making her feel good all over.
That was the kick: feeling good all over, inside and out. Now she arched her back so that more breast-flesh went into Maggie's yawning hungry mouth.
Good!
Incredibly sweet, the way those lips hungered and begged for more flesh.
"Bite," she commanded softly. Maggie bit. It was painful. It was good. "More," she said. More. It was better; Maggie's teeth sank deeper into the flesh and she nibbled faster now, making Heather cry out with pleasure and pain.
It was affecting her a little differently today- turning her on more. She lay back and reveled in the feelings, without bothering to maintain her usual balance of power and control over the situation.
It was too good, and it had been so long since she had just enjoyed a good, relaxed session. She relaxed and let the lips and teeth fill her with joyous delight.
When Maggie's hand became wedged between her moist thighs, pried them apart and moved up to mingle with her throbbing passion, she let it happen-and hissed sharply between her teeth when she felt it. Deeper. Faster. Another something entering-unspeakably delicious!
She moved her hips and buttocks to the flaming tempo that burned inside of her and began to make little moaning, shrill sounds of helpless pleasure.
"Oooooh, Maggie darling," she gasped, "It's too much, simply too-ooooh! yes!" and something slammed inside her. hard, relentless, and almost made her erupt to the point of bursting. She shrieked with pleasure and her buttocks lifted off the ground and crashed against the sand, her whole body a flurry of activity as she thrust desperately to bring herself to completion under the driving fingers and pleasing lips that danced from swollen breast to swollen breast.
Maggie stopped.
And looked down at Heather. She was smiling; she sat back now, breathing hard with passion that she was determined to control, and looked at Heather.
"Want some more, Heather?" she panted. Heather nodded, and grabbed her hand for a moment. Then thought better of it and instead clutched at her head, trying to pull it down to her aching pain-; Maggie smiled again, and moved down slowly. Heather shrilled and gasped as the she felt the wet, warm search in her, and began to move madly, filled with unbearable ecstasy. Her body launched into motion again, driving itself towards that blessed peak.
Maggie stopped.
And looked down at the dripping beautiful thighs that wriggled and spread with helpless reflex.
"Turn over, Heather." There was a long silence, a hesitation. "Turn over, darling," Maggie repeated. Heather did, opening her beautiful thighs as she did, waiting with red-faced pleasure for the tongue and lips to bathe her buttocks, backs of her thighs, before they moved down again to where she could drive herself to bliss- The first blow was not painful at all. She was too surprised to feel pain, in spite of the severity of the leather belt, her belt, against her buttocks. The second blow carried with it a sharp, distinct pain. The third blow was very painful, the fourth blow even more so.
Then she could no longer count the blows against her buttocks and the backs of her luscious thighs. They came down too fast, too hard to count. She tried to crawl away so that she could get up and run. It was impossible. The faster she crawled, the more she attempted to escape, the faster the blows rained down on her tender flesh.
"Maggie-are you crazy?" she tried to stop Maggie tried to reason with her, but it was useless. She couldn't even hear her own voice over the sound of Maggie's panting and the cracking sound of the leather against her flesh.
Her back, her shoulders, her buttocks, her thighs -all a mass of redness, of rawness. Violated, brutalized flesh, inflicted by a leather belt at the hands of a passion-maddened, vengeance-hungry redheaded woman.
Humiliated and writhing with pleasureless pain, Heather Hamilton pleaded, cried and begged the belt (she could not think in terms of Maggie) to stop.
"Stop! Please stop!" she screamed. She turned over so that she could look up, with her eyes, her face, to plead. The belt came down on her breasts, leaving red raw stripes in its wake, on the soft belly, on the thighs. Merciless, relentlessly determined blows that never stopped, never paused, finally began to slow down.
Heather was unable to believe her senses when the blows finally stopped altogether. She had become almost immune to the novelty of pain, of her own flesh being insulted and humiliated and violated.
She was crying now, with pain and utter loss of pride. She had been punished; she looked up, rolling her eyes, at Maggie, who stood large and powerful and sensuously strong, her thighs straddling her reclining body that lay in a tortured heap upon the ground.
The belt was still in her hand, dangling idly, coiling as Maggie flicked her wrist. Heather saw the smile, and shuddered. Punished.
Maggie lay down beside her, on her back, her face turned towards Heather-there was a light, a strange, frightful light in her eyes.
"Kiss my breasts." Heather did. Maggie moaned "The other one, harder," she managed to say through her gasping, and Heather complied with that, too. It felt doubly good to Maggie, infinitely pleasing.
The lips kissed her and thrilled her nipples and breast flesh, done out of defeat and humiliation, mingled with helpless hopeless passion, and it was just too, too good.
"Squeeze them." She cupped her breasts for Heather, held them out for her. The butch lesbian did as she was commanded. Her fingers squeezed and pinched the nipples, while Maggie smiled and grimaced with unabashed pleasure.
"Now kiss me." She watched with her eyes, without moving her head, as Heather, with closed eyes bent downward to obey the command. When she clutched Maggie's hand, and tried to draw it between her thighs, Maggie pushed it away.
"Do as you're told!" she snapped angrily, and Heather carried out the order. Maggie grunted and groaned with ecstatic animal pleasure and smiled that secret, self-satisfied smile as the lips and tongue humbly, yet eagerly, plied her apart and filled her with aching, gasping joy.
She let herself come to the peak, let herself ride on it leisurely, pleasurably, and relaxed, making way for the next wave that Heather would carry her upon.
When she finally panted with exhaustion, unable to bring herself to any more pleasure, she pushed Heather away, discarded her like trash and got up. She stood over Heather again and looked upon her. She was smiling. Heather was crying.
"That's it, baby," she said harshly, "you're all through around here. You might just as well pack up and go." She walked away, leaving Heather lying there, crying and sobbing so that her body convulsed and shook.
Peter and Joan watched Maggie disappear, leaving Heather to lie where she was.
"Shall we go down to her?" Joan asked.
"No," Peter said softly, "that would be more than she could take."
"I guess you're right. It's almost like an old morality play," she murmured.
"Yes. Good and evil meet, good punishes evil. Only there's a modern-day switch in this one."
"What's that?"
"Good just might develop into evil, having had a good taste of it."
"I certainly hope not," Joan said. "Maggie was so good. I liked her."
"So did I," Peter said. "I hope the switch never takes place."
"You've really changed!" She looked at him. and smiled.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"There was a time when you simply would've assumed the worst. You'd have taken for granted that Maggie would turn rotten. Now you're hoping that she won't." Peter laughed shortly, and rumpled her hair with his hand.
"Joan, I've been wanting to talk to you about something, and I think I'm ready now."
"Yes," she said, "I think you are. The answer is yes, Peter."
"You know what it'll be. I'll be travelling, going to places that are considered dangerous. Locked in my room, in the same house, yet miles away, lost in myself. Writers have to be egotists, Joan. There's no help for it."
"I know."
"And there'll be times when I'm impossible to be with, hung up on book, trying to crack a block in my head-it won't always be easy."
"I now." She was smiling now.
"Not to mention the times when I get the urge to write at night, and leave you alone; or the days when you have to throw food at me and slam the door. I'm more than married to my job, Joan. I'm it, and it's me. There's no separating us."
"I know." She laughed now.
"What's so funny? I'm trying to level with you, what it'll be like. It's ten times as hard to be a writer's wife as it is to be an executive's, a doctor's, you name it-"
"I know, Peter, I know."
"Joan, it just won't be easy. I hope you'll never be disillusioned. It's lonely, self-contained work, being a writer, a part of myself that I just can't give to anyone. Janice couldn't endure it. Most women can't. I don't see how they can, frankly."
"I can."
"What makes you think you can, darling?"
"Because I am a woman, Peter. I can do anything necessary to love and hold a husband, make him happy. Even a temperamental child like you."
Peter laughed now, and held her close against him, thinking, I've made it. I love the world. I'm holding it in my arms.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Vera Recreo was not a brave island. Its inhabitants had always been escapists, people trying to run and hide from something. It was a fun island. A pleasure island. Her passengers had been dumped from a pleasure ship, the Isla Nymph, set adrift in a merciless sea, until they had reached Vera Recreo. In essence, they had come from a pleasure ship to a pleasure island-and had dwelled and rooted in pleasure until it became a chore, a mere ritual.
Heather Hamilton was gone. She had taken the next ship back to New York, back to the world of conformity and realistic day to day existence. Whether she would be able to live in that world or not is a matter for conjecture.
Maggie stayed. She met a man, the first mate of the Isle Nymph. They were together all the time now, and even got together occasionally with Peter and Joan.
Daphne and Tammy split the action, so to speak. Instead of one tigress, there were two now who commanded and victimized, who drank deep draughts of pleasure at the expense of helpless others.
Peter finished his book and mailed it to his publisher by the next ship. He was tired now, drained-he had been at it, shut up by himself, and towards the end, Joan had typed tirelessly for him, after he marked over the manuscript with a pencil.
"It was a wonderful book, Peter, really it was."
"They're never good enough. You never hit the top. If you ever think you do, that means you're on your way down."
"Well, I thought it was terrific. I have an idea."
"Yes?"
"Let's go to the lagoon, where it's nice and cool and quiet, take some sandwiches with us, and have some good, straight sex. Do you know how long it's been?"
"Days. Eons."
"More than that. Come on, I'm not going to wait any longer."
They went to the lagoon, and tasted the sweet fires of then bodies before they ate their sandwiches and cold beer, which they left in the lagoon in a net to keep cold.
They kissed and embraced and fondled, and finally undressed one another. In their nakedness and passion for one another, they smiled. Peter reached for her. She came closer. Their bodies met, warm and naked and demanding. He kissed her breasts.
' They're so small," she said, "how can you like them?"
"I love them," he whispered. "They're so firm, and packed-you're all woman." He kissed the pink nipple and felt it rise and swell with eager response in his mouth, heard her pant and moan pleasurably as he kissed her breasts, one by one. Her hands circled around his neck and drew him closer, and he consumed more sweet breast-flesh, filled with mounting passion.
She touched him.
"You're all man," she gasped, "so much man!" She held him, caressed him, fondled him, and he felt the dizzy, mad thrill of being touched and loved by the delicate, willing hand of a woman.
They kissed, lying on their sides, touching one another's passion letting the pleasure of it sweep over them slowly, languidly, moaning gently in one another's mouths as the passion mounted and became stronger.
"I love you," he said. What else was there to say? Words were cheap, feeling was everything. He kissed her with quiet passion while his hand rested between her parted sumptuous thighs, firing her with joy.
"I love you," she moaned, "and I want you. Take me now, Peter, please."
He took her. She lay on her back, thighs parted, aims held out in invitation, and he lay on top of her, resting in the crook-like resting place that offered itself between the parted, moist thighs. He felt her flesh under him, warm and trembling, and felt himself being swallowed by her hunger, demanding desire for him, deeper, deeper, warmer and more throbbing.
She held him, and moved her body to meet his. Her buttocks rose slowly off the ground, then settled back again, while her hips, wide and smooth and all female, moved from side to side in a gentle slow motion.
It was good.
She cried and moaned, and he whispered in her ear while her nails dug into his buttocks to pull him down, closer, so that the meeting was complete. It was complete. They felt and smelled and tasted each other, and rose to their peak, melting into a delicious, unbelievable oneness, throbbing and talking and crying and trembling with joyous joy.
"That was nice," she sighed. She pulled him against her and held him possessively.
"Will you be on constant tap after we're married?"
"Always," she said fervently. And he believed her.
Peter and Joan Martin eventually made their home in the Bahamas, less than fifty miles from Vera Recreo. After a brief flurry of selling the old house, winding up all affairs, they found a small, inexpensive house on the island. Every evening, as they stood on their porch, looking at the sunset as it began to sink into the green sea, they thought of Vera Recreo. And never forgot it.
"It's funny," Joan said now, as they stood arm in arm watching the sun sink into the sea.
"What's funny?"
"What we always tell our friends. That we met in a shipwreck."
"Not a ship, but a shipwreck. That is funny. But it's true."
"I wonder how Maggie's making out."
"I'm sure she's fine. I'm sure I was wrong about my ending for that play."
"So am I. Peter-?"
"Huh?"
"Lets make love. Right here, on the porch."
"But we just-it hasn't been an hour, darling."
"Whoever stopped to count?" she said, and raised her lips to him to be kissed, which he did, and they sank onto the old glider that they had bought together and made love while the sun hissed into darkness.
The sea lapped against the shoreline, making a quiet contented sound as their bodies strained together, their passion met and plunged and satisfied, leaving them weak, eyes, shining up at one another.
