CHAPTER NINE

My first impulse was to pull away and hurl her out of the cabin. But when a man is two seconds away from heaven he doesn't pull away so willingly. Sandra's evil hips thrashed up and down, and anger coiled in me as I realized how the little teenage bitch had tricked me into loving her, and in that moment it was over for me. But Sandra gripped me tight and continued to move, until finally she let out a whimper, a long indrawn hoarse sigh, and it was ended for her.

"Get out of here now," I muttered.

"Don't be angry with me."

"Get out of here!" My voice was thick, harsh, strange-sounding. I was furious—furious with her because she had slybooted me into sleeping with a girl less than half my age, and furious with myself because I knew I had really been desiring her all along.

"Please don't be angry with me," she murmured, passing her hands over me in a way that made me scowl in anger and shiver in delight all at once. "It was fun, wasn't it?"

"You're under age," I snapped.

"So what? I've done this before. Don't you think I'm pretty?"

"I think you're precocious. And I hate precocious brats. Get out and let me sleep. And if you breathe a word of this to anybody, I'll break your sluttish little neck."

"I won't tell a soul," she promised. "And I think you're horrible for being so nasty. After all, I did give you some pleasure."

"Who asked you to?"

"You didn't stop me till it was all over. This isn't the right time to be moralistic, Al. You should have said something before."

"I didn't know who you were." I shook my head, realizing how silly that sounded. "I mean, I thought you were someone else."

"Who?"

"None of your damn business!"

"You were expecting someone else tonight. And I came instead, and now you're angry." She was gloating like a little girl who had done something naughty and who knew she was going to get away with it. "I think that's funny," she said. "You don't even look at the people who get into your bed."

"I wasn't expecting you," I said sourly. "Now get out of here before someone catches us and I get put away for statutory rape."

"Come swimming with me."

"What?"

"Swimming. Right now, right at dawn. Have you ever been swimming at dawn? It's beautiful. You think you're the only person alive in the world." She tugged at me, trying to get me out of bed.

In annoyance I yanked my arm free. She sat on the edge of the bed, cooing persuasively into my ear, and after a few more minutes I gave in. I wasn't going to get any more sleep anyway, no matter what.

Naked, we tiptoed out onto the porch. The sun had risen, a few minutes before, but it still was no more than a faint pinkness against the horizon. Pearly grey mist shrouded the sleeping colony. Not even the crickets were awake yet. Everything was absolutely silent, held in a frozen stillness.

I looked at Sandra. She was drawing in her breath, filling her lungs to bursting, making her breasts swell outward and up. Her nipples were still stiff. She was ready for another round, I realized.

I drew in breath myself. The morning air was sweet and clean. We stepped off the porch, barefoot, into the wet grass. Silently we walked down to the lake. The morning mist was thicker down there, rising in steaming clouds from the water. The sound of a bullfrog came to us like an explosion in the quiet: "grr-uNNK!" Sandra laughed. Despite myself, I laughed with her.

It was cool, but not uncomfortably so. I stood at the beginning of the dock, while Sandra walked out toward the water. I watched her, eyeing the smooth curves of her back and buttocks. She rippled sensuously at every motion. As I watched, she picked up speed, running toward the end of the dock and launching herself in a slicing arc toward the water. She came up a moment later, grinning, pushing the hair out of her eyes, and waved to me.

"Come on in! It's grand!"

I walked out on the dock. Standing at the edge, I looked down, clearly seeing Sandra's nakedness beneath the crystal surface of the water. I watched the eddies rippling over her breasts for a moment. Then I dove in. The water was icy, and I came up gasping and shivering, but after a moment or two I began to adjust to the temperature and become comfortable.

We drifted gently back and forth in the water, watching the day begin. The sun rose higher, beyond the trees to the east, and as it climbed the clouds changed colors, from gray to pink to creamy white, and the mist lifted and the sky became morning-blue. The birds awoke and began to chatter in the treetops. Bold fish leaped out of the water for a nip of fresh air, making little splashes as they slipped beneath the surface again. I saw a big old turtle crawl up onto a rock near shore to sun himself in the warming air.

After perhaps half an hour, we grew tired of swimming.

"I'm going in," Sandra announced.

I nodded. I had hardly taken notice of her. I loathed her for the trick she had played, for the self-indulgent little girl she was. What she needed, I told myself, was a good spanking administered by her parents.

She swam to the dock, breast-stroking. I followed her, treading water while she scrambled up the ladder. Despite myself I had to admire the taut loveliness of her buttocks as she clambered up the ladder.

Reaching the top, she turned and thrust a hand down as though to help me out of the water. I shook my head, but she kept the hand out anyway. I climbed up onto the coarse hemp matting that lined the dock, and shook myself dry.

Then Sandra sprang.

It is the only way I can describe it. She sprang, like a tigress. She leaped forward, wrapping her arms around my neck and locking her thighs around my hips. I staggered and almost fell back into the water in my surprise. Then I managed to get control.

"Get down, you idiot!"

"Let's have some fun, Al."

"Will you get off me or—?"

She laughed and opened her legs, sliding down my body and rubbing sensuously against me. She stood flattened against me, her wet breasts sharp-pointed and thrusting into me, her arms still locked around my neck, her hips undulating in a motion that sent shivers through me.

"Do it to me, Al. Do it right here."

"Don't be crazy."

"I want it, Al! Do it or I'll scream rape. I'll scream and get you thrown out of here."

"No one will believe you."

"My father will. He thinks I'm a sweet little innocent virgin. Do it to me, Al."

I glowered at her in complete loathing. But then her hands slipped down and she began to do things, and I felt desire like a spear through me, and she dropped to her knees and began to kiss me.

She pulled me down too, and we crouched on the matting, both of us still wet, and the morning bursting all around us and the frogs doing a triple chorus. She leaned over backwards, her head touching the coarse matting, her legs an invitation.

I hated her.

But right then I hated myself more.

She groaned. She moaned. "Do it to me, Al! Give me everything!"

She pulled me down to her, and there was a devil's smile in her eyes. I thought to myself, Suppose someone comes along and catches us now? Catches me making love to the director's teenage daughter? I'll get hell. I'll get thrown out of here on my ear. I'll go to jail, maybe. I'll lose my job and end up on the crap-heap on account of this little sexpot.

But I couldn't stop now. I felt the desire in me again, and I shuddered and made hoarse sounds and felt the pounding and heard the drumming in my ears. Sandra let out a gasp too, but she wasn't finished, not just yet. She continued to move while I hovered motionless above her. She was using me, now. Shakes wracked her again and again, until her appetite was sated, and she slumped down on the dock matting.

I moved away from her. I half expected to see an audience watching us on shore, but there was no one there, and silence still shrouded everything.

Sandra lay on the dock, her face flushed, her lips slack and moist.

"Come back here," she murmured.

"Go to hell."

"There's still more than an hour before breakfast. That's plenty of time for—"

"No," I said coldly. "You're a devil. A sluttish little devil. Someone ought to take a hot poker to you."

She smiled. "Why don't you try?"

I wanted to swear at her. But I knew the real evil lay in myself, for having given in a second time to her. I made sure there wouldn't be a third. Stepping across her nude prostrate form, I strode quickly off the dock, pausing near the basketball court to turn on the shower and scrub myself clean. Then I walked up to the cabins, not looking back.

It was not yet half past six. I considered getting the typewriter out and doing some work before breakfast, but changed my mind when it occurred to me that in this silence the clacking of the machine would be audible all over the camp. Instead I sat down on the porch, my mind practically a blank, to wait for breakfast.

I saw Sandra come trooping up from the waterfront a few minutes later. She did not look in my direction. Like some nude sprite that had materialized out of the morning mist, she crossed the lawn and disappeared into her cabin. For fifteen minutes all was still. Then the door of a cabin on the far side of the semi-circle opened, and a young couple emerged. It was the girl who had worn the bolero jacket on the tennis court. She and her friend ran down toward the water, hand-in-hand.

There were other pre-breakfast swimmers. Dr. Richards went down a few minutes later. Just before seven the door of Cabin Two opened and Joanie Baker emerged, looking like Aphrodite greeting the dawn. She stood on her porch, touched her toes a couple of times, and sprinted toward the lake. She saw me and waved. I waved back. I watched her vanish behind the trees.

The swimmers returned by quarter past seven. At half past, Dr. Richards appeared on his front porch to ring the big gong that summoned everybody to breakfast. I went inside and woke up Meehan. He looked bleary-eyed and unaware of anything that had happened in the last few hours.

"Breakfast," I said.

"Oh. Yeah. Yeah." He sat up sleepily and thumbed his eyes. "You sacked out early last night, huh?"

"Around ten. What time you come in?" I asked.

"Midnight. The Kinowski girl gave me a hard time. You can look, but you can't touch. That sort of deal." He staggered off to the john. "Bet you enjoyed a vacation from women, eh?"

"Yeah," I said bitterly. "Yeah, sure."

We went to breakfast. I got a reproachful look from Bonnie—who was hurt because I hadn't taken her up on her invitation to come to her cabin—and I got a sly look from Sandra, who was rejoicing in the way she'd led me around by the nose. I ignored them both.

I got back to the cabin early and cleaned up. It was a bright, sunny day. I hauled the typewriter out onto the porch, got the folder containing my outline, matched up a sheet of paper and a sheet of carbon paper and a second sheet, rolled them into the typewriter, spaced down to the middle of the page, and boldly typed out in capital letters, CHAPTER ONE.

Then I stopped.

I stared at the page. My outline was right there next to the typewriter, but I couldn't begin.

I knew just how I wanted to begin. A scene in my hero's office, showing him in action, illuminating his character right at the start and providing a sort of overture to the story. But I couldn't decide whether I wanted to begin with a line of dialogue or a paragraph of description. I typed out some description, finally, and it sounded wooden and stilted. I threw the page away, inserted a new one, and bravely typed out CHAPTER ONE again.

And stared at the page some more.

I knew what the matter was. It had nothing to do with nervousness about beginning the book. I knew that once I got rolling the opening chapter would flow easily. The real trouble was that I couldn't concentrate. I had women on my mind.

Too many women.

Harriet. Bonnie.

Joanie.

Sandra.

Harriet with the freckled breasts and the ping-pong paddle. Bonnie with the bug eyes and the pathetic desire to be loved. Sandra with her devil's lust, her hotbox insistence that could not be brooked. And Joanie with the flawless body and all the amorous fervor of a Greek marble statue.

They bothered me. The girls I wanted I could not have. The ones I didn't want gave me no rest. They made eyes at me in the mess hall, they crept into my bed in the early hours of the morning, they pleaded with me to visit their cabins after taps.

Al Fieldston, Stud.

Sure. You sit back there and you envy me. You say I'm crazy to be complaining because three different women have a need for me.

Brother, let me tell you something.

It's possible to have enough. I mean that. You can eat filet mignon, charcoal-broiled and dripping with juice, until your gut gives up and the next mouthful brings everything up. You can really get to despise filet mignon.

Especially when it's free.

And especially when you'd much rather be eating lobster.

The same here. Bonnie, Harriet, Sandra—I could have them any time, any time at all. Well, love is fun. But there's a challenge involved. Whether the woman is your wife or your mistress of ten years or just somebody you picked up on the corner opposite the Merchandise Mart, you want her to resist a little. You want to have to do some seducing before you get their clothes off. You don't want them to run around with everything out for grabs, and you don't want them slithering into your bed at all hours of the day or night. That kind of stuff is strictly for sultans. Me, I like a little resistance.

Bonnie didn't resist. Neither did Harriet. Neither did Sandra. For them it was Sadie Hawkins day all the year round.

Well, I didn't go for that routine. I've never seen much in shooting fish in a barrel. I wanted to have to chase a girl a little bit, and I didn't want to be chased myself.

I knew who I wanted to chase, too. Only she couldn't be reached.

Joanie.

I sat there and stared at my typewriter, trying to begin Chapter One, and I realized what the trouble was. I was suffering at the same time from too much sex and from frustration. I wanted Joanie. And not just to lie on that muscular body and fill my hands with those big boobs of hers, either.

I loved her.

I shook my head. You're out of your mind, Fieldston. You don't know a thing about the girl except that she's either frigid or a les. Pretty, sure. Ravishing. But cut out this jazz about loving her.

I scowled at the typewriter for half an hour more. My net progress for the morning was nil. I had used up sixteen sheets of paper on eight false starts totalling maybe one hundred words. I knew when I was licked. I got up and put the typewriter away. Meehan was lying on the grass in front, scribbling notes for his article, and he said, "You giving up?"

"For the time being. I can't get started."

"Take the day off, then. Start tomorrow. Let your subconscious get the book started for you overnight."

"Yeah," I said. I walked past him and headed toward the volleyball court. A small group of colonists were choosing up a game. They were waving to me.

Joanie was there. She called out, "Hurry up, Al! You're the tenth man."

I counted up. She and Don Riemann were the captains, and Riemann's team had five, Joanie's only four. I walked out onto the court and Joanie put me up front at the net, just to her left. Someone on Riemann's team volleyed for serve. The ball went into our backcourt, where Ted Nichols passed it up to Joanie. She hit it over. It came back and went back again, and when they returned it it came down straight at me. I took it on my fingertips and popped it up in the air, still on our side of the net where Joanie could reach it.

She went high in the air and blasted the ball over the net in a perfect spike that won us the serve. As she came down she lost her balance and started to tumble in my direction. Without even realizing what I was doing I opened my arms wide and caught her. For one moment we were together, body against naked body, her full, firm breasts warm on my skin, her thighs touching me. Then, recovering her balance, she pulled away.

She grinned. "Nice play, Al."

I didn't reply.

I was tingling all over. My skin seemed on fire where she had touched me. I was trembling like a schoolboy who had just held the class belle's hand. I could almost feel the imprint of her breasts and thighs on my skin.

Christ, but I want her! I thought.

I was still thinking it when the ball came sailing over the net straight at me. It bounced off my chest and skittered to the ground.

"Wake that guy up!" someone yelled behind me.

I looked shamefacedly at Joanie. She was smiling.

"Asleep at the switch," I muttered, embarrassed. When the next ball came at me I leaped ten feet high to smash it over the net. Like a schoolboy showing off for his girl, I thought. A thirty-four-year-old schoolboy.