Chapter 1
John Creighton sipped his drink and stared at the bright blue waters of the Gulf. He was pleased with himself. He had filled his glass with lemonade instead of his usual midmorning gin and tonic. Today might be one of those days, all too rare lately s when he might get some work done.
He didn't blame his drinking for his lack of progress, not entirely. It was partly due to his utter boredom with his work. Besides, successfully courting a rich and beautiful young widow took time, energy, and careful planning. All things considered, it was understandable that his latest novel was now nearly six weeks overdue.
Unfortunately, his editor didn't find it understandable. She had taken to calling him up every day for the past week. He winced as he realized that the daily phone call hadn't arrived yet. He had a neurotic fear of telephones-no, he corrected himself, not neurotic, because it was well-founded: a telephone invariably rang because someone wanted something from him, a bill collector, an agent, an editor. These unpleasant thoughts made him consider the idea of spiking his lemonade, but he decided against it. He thought of unplugging the telephone, but he rejected that idea, too. Carol might call. Unhappily, she didn't share his distaste for telephones, and he didn't want to seem like an inattentive lover at this stage in the game.
Her love of the telephone, he reflected, was her only really annoying trait; and, once they were married, she would no longer have to call him up four or five times a day to tell him what she was thinking or what she was reading or what she'd recently heard or seen or bought. He supposed that he ought to find that trait endearing, or at least encouraging. It showed her eagerness to share every little facet of her life with him. He hoped she would be equally eager to share her money.
He sighed with something like contentment. He was certain that she would. He had convinced Carol, by putting on an almost paranoid act about paying for everything out of his own pocket, that he wasn't interested in her for her money. She believed that her wealth actually constituted a liability in his eyes. She often said that she had no head for business, and she had recently asked for his advice in a couple of real estate transactions. He should have no trouble gaining complete control of the purse strings.
After that, he could get those annoying bill-collectors off his back. And he could either rescue this beach house from foreclosure or sell it and move to the Riviera. Nor would he be forced to grind out cheap paperback thrillers anymore. He could devote all his energy to the more serious work he'd been thinking about doing for the past fifteen years.
While he'd been thinking, John had been abstractedly watching Melody swim. Now she came out of the water, fifty feet from the screened porch of the beach house. He felt a twinge of annoyance to see that she was wearing her virtually non-existent black bikini. It was little more than a thong, fully exposing both cheeks of her buttocks; in front, it revealed everything but the central cleft of her shaven pubic area. He wondered why she bothered to wear it at all, because she wasn't wearing the top.
"Jesus! Are you trying to get arrested?" he called.
She pouted, saying nothing, while she peeled off her white bathing cap and went through the motions of dislodging water from her ears. His annoyance was swept away by a sudden, almost surprisingly violent, upsurge of lust. His prick pushed hard against his bathing trunks. He reflected a little sadly that Carol, for all her beauty and her other good points, couldn't trigger such spontaneous eruptions of desire in him.
He scolded her some more, but his tone was lighter: "You're the one who's always telling me what they're like around here-swamp crackers and rednecks. That kind of outfit could get you sent up for juvenile delinquency."
"Nobody around, this time of year," she said, walking toward the house with the slow, deliberate, slightly rolling gait that reminded him of the padding of a big cat. "People don't come out to these crummy dumps till school is out, usually."
"Which brings up another point: why aren't you in school?"
"School sucks," she explained. "Is my towel up there?"
"Yeah."
She came onto the porch and let the door slam behind her, took one of his cigarettes without asking, and stared at his drink while she lit it. "Drunk again," she observed.
"It's lemonade, baby."
She snorted with contemptuous disbelief. "Go swimming," she said. "You're getting fat as a pig."
That was a lie, but he refused to rise to any bait. He knew why she was angry. Melody was the only hitch, and a very big hitch indeed, in his plans for the future. He would have to try harder to make her see reason.
With no pretense of modesty, she slipped out of her nominal bikini and began toweling herself in front of him, her cigarette dangling from her lip. It was the pose of a movie whore, given an almost startling impact of obscenity by the fact that she was only fifteen.
Analyze Melody feature by feature, and you would have said she was a weird-looking girl; but the totality of her face transcended the sum of its parts to produce something that was striking and original and almost alarmingly attractive. Her blue eyes were narrow and slanted over very high and prominent cheekbones. Her nose was short and tilted up at an angle that might have made it seem ugly on another face. Her mouth was wide, her lips firm and full above a squarish chin that was cleft in the middle. She wore her hair in two blonde braids encircling her small, regal head. Her expression was habitually one of total impassivity, but it nevertheless gave an impression of contemptuous arrogance, even cruelty: with her slanted eyes and lithe, compact body, she might have been a princess of the Huns.
John studied her face, unwilling to let his eyes travel down her nude body, knowing that she was deliberately posing and trying to provoke him. He sometimes entertained the fancy that her skin had been put on too tightly, making it impossible for her to change expression. Her skin was rosy-white, almost translucent, an oddity in Florida, but she never deliberately sunbathed, and she avoided the hours of strongest sunlight. He knew, though, that she could change expression, that the impassive cat-mask could change into a smile like sunlight. She wasn't smiling now, though.
Against his will, his eyes dropped. She was small, no more than an inch over five feet, but her body was that of a fully developed woman. He sometimes wondered if the early blooming of her body was responsible for her sexual precocity, or if the reverse was true: he'd started fucking Melody three years ago, when she was twelve. He hadn't seduced her, he was sure of that. It had been the other way around. She'd demanded it, she'd caught him in a weak moment, she ... he didn't want to go through all that again. What was done was done.
Her breasts contributed to the theory that her skin was on too tight. They had no sag whatsoever. On the contrary, the nipples tipped slightly upward, at a curiously provocative, perky angle. They were normally big and plump and pink, but now they were darker and smaller and harder from her immersion in the water. They quivered as she toweled herself.
His eyes slid down the concavity of her lithe belly to her pink, hairless pussy. That was one of his pleasant little chores: shaving it for her. She asked him to do it, complaining that she was too hairy to wear a bikini. That was certainly true of the thong she'd been wearing this morning. He sighed, realizing how foolish he'd been to complain about her wearing it, when he'd bought the Rudi Gernreich creation for her himself on his last trip to New York.
"I guess I'm just jealous," he said, trying to apologize. "That busybody next door-"
"Bullshit, jealous! You're the one who wants to get married. Why don't we get married? We could go somewhere, get new ID's-"
"Oh, cut it out, you're too young, obviously, no matter what kind of ID you get. And," he added, trying to make it sound like a joke, "you don't have any money. When I marry Carol, I can get you anything you want. That's one of the reasons I want to have money."
"How noble. You're willing to grit your teeth and fuck that old big-assed redhead all for my sake, huh? You could try working for a change, if you're all that desperate for money."
She was maddening. She was flaying him with her words, but at the same time her body was shouting an entirely different message. She'd been gradually inching forward on her tiny bare feet until she stood over him. The drying motions of her towel had become merely an excuse to roll her hips slowly and lewdly in front of his face, thrusting her pelvis toward him on each grinding gyration.
He could no longer resist the temptation. He gripped the taut young cheeks of her ass in both hands and thrust his face forward, burying his mouth in her crotch. She laughed, the wicked little tinkle of bells in some oriental torture chamber. He thrust his tongue deep into the warm, pink slit, surprised to find that it was already wet with her sticky syrup.
"Now who's not worried about the rednecks and crackers and the busybody next door?" she mocked. "Right out on the front porch!"
John winced. He supposed the man next door-Ken Burke, he said his name was-had designs on Melody, not understanding the situation. He was always turning up, uninvited and unwelcome, trying to make friends. His was the only other occupied house on this stretch of beach, and he seemed to have no regular job to go to. He might pick this moment to turn up at the screen door. Reluctantly, John pulled his face away from Melody's juicy cunt.
"You're right," he said hoarsely, wiping his lips as he stood up. "Let's go inside."
He half expected Melody to do or say something bitchy to break off the moment and leave him in an agony of frustration-she often did lately, trying to get even with him for Carol- but she surprised him by padding demurely into the house before him. He paused to make a survey of the bright white beach, saw that it was empty, and followed her in. She was waiting for him just inside the door, where she began tugging eagerly and inexpertly at his bathing trunks.
"Can Carol blow you as good as I do?"
"Christ, baby," he said, pushing his trunks down. "I told you. I've never even laid her. Honestly."
"That's dumb," Melody said, leading him toward the rattan couch by tickling his bare prick with her fingertips.
"She's an old-fashioned girl."
"Frigid, you mean."
"She's sort of traumatized by the death of her husband."
"That sounds like a crock. How do you know you'll even be able to get it up for her? I bet you won't. I bet it's just me you can do it with."
John was startled by her insight, almost frightened by it, because she'd just voiced one of the innermost doubts that plagued him. His passion for Melody was a constant, all-consuming thing that never changed except to grow. He never saw her without wanting her. She could never touch him without arousing him. He dreamed about her, and woke up reaching for her. He began missing her when she was away from him for more than an hour or so. His own intensity of lust would have scared him if she didn't share it and return it herself. They were like two fires that fed on each other to create a firestorm.
It was nothing like that with Carol. He could tell himself that she was beautiful, witty, intelligent; he could think of all her good features, her lush figure, her flame-red hair, her intense green eyes; he could think of how warmly and passionately she kissed-but it was all intellectualized, it wasn't a twisting in the guts, an emptiness in the loins, a spontaneous swelling of his cock at the mention of her name. Suppose he couldn't get it up for her? Suppose he was damned-or blessed?-to have no woman but Melody in his life?
"What-the bed-" he mumbled, trying to guide her toward the bedroom, but she was intent on pushing him down on the couch.
"No," she said firmly. "You sit down and I'll kneel in front of you and pretend to be your slave girl. And you're the wicked king who'll have my head chopped off if I don't give you the best blowjob you ever had in your life."
He chuckled uncertainly. She had a knack, sometimes an unsettling one, for enfolding ordinary things in weird ideas. Sometimes her playacting seemed to take control of her.
He sat on the couch and she wiggled up between his knees, all her attention fixed on the hard, upthrust rod before her. She stroked it lightly with the fingertips of both hands, a feathery touch that tickled upward from his balls to the tip of his prick.
"And if the queen doesn't do as well as your slave girl," she said, "you have to chop her head off and put me in her place."
John might have had some comment on that, but Melody abruptly blew all thought out of his mind by lowering her pretty face quickly to his cock and slipping the moist red ring of her lips over the swollen head. He gasped with pleasure as he felt her quick little tongue flickering around inside the tight suck. She slipped downward, taking more and more inside her mouth, her wet tongue in constant motion.
He stroked the corona of her golden braids, wishing vaguely that her hair were unbound and hanging down on his bare thighs. But worn this way, it seemed to emphasize the strikingly unusual beauty of her bone-structure; and it revealed her oddly pointed ears. He sometimes wondered if she were a throwback to some primal set of genes that, given another line of evolution, would have resulted in a creature more feline than human. Sometimes he had disturbing sexual dreams in which Melody was metamorphosized into a cat.
He realized that he was letting his mind drift away, that he was all but hallucinating on the sensuous drug of her sucking mouth. She sucked his prick steadily deeper, until her pert little nose was rubbing in the black curls of his pubic hair. Her little fingertips jerked steadily at that part of the root she couldn't fit inside her mouth, setting up a syncopated rhythm with the pumping of her lips and the steady washing of her rolling tongue.
Just when it seemed that the simmering load of juice that was boiling up in his balls was about to burst free and flood her mouth, she made him gasp again by pulling her lips away. It was as if some sixth sense told her just how far she could go without making him come.
"No-please-suck it some more-I-"
"A blowjob that lasts one minute can't be the best one you ever had in your life," she murmured, her lips moving against the superheated skin of his engorged cock as she spoke, "O Great King."
Before he could protest, she was working on him with her tongue again. She licked her way all around the bulging knob at the end, lapping off the sticky ooze that was already seeping out in eager anticipation. He was just barely able to stand this teasing, as he wouldn't have been able to stand another moment of her sucking. She moved downward, her moist, warm breath moving around his prick as she traced every vein in the hard, white shaft with the tip of her tongue. He nudged his cock against the smoothness of her pretty face, trying to force her to take it back within the compression of her sweet lips, but she evaded his efforts, intent on teasing him to the absolute limits of his endurance.
She moved ever lower, pushing his thighs apart now as her tongue probed through his hair to lick his balls. The skin contracted under her touch while she seemed determined to cover every inch of them with her tongue. He stroked her shoulders and leaned forward to cup the firm, silky weight of her tits, trying to pull her back upward, trying to urge her to suck him off at last.
Giggling at the torture she knew she was inflicting on him, she relented at last. She slipped her lips once more over the head of his throbbing cock and sucked it deep into her mouth. She was a wet vortex of sexual delight. She sucked hard, hollowing her cheeks and completely immersing his prick with the feel of her soft flesh. Her lips, pouted out to enclose as much of his tingling meat as she could, kept up a steady, pumping suction. Her tongue slipped and slid around the head in a slow swirl.
He wished he could summon the self-control needed to hold still and relish this dazzling display of her precocious talent, but it was impossible to hold still. The urge to shove his cock deeper into her lips and fuck her in the mouth was overpowering. He did it slowly, though, as slowly as he could possibly bear it, and he restrained himself from thrusting it deeper than she wanted to take it. He slid his hands again to the rosy-smooth tautness of her shoulders and rose from the couch in a half-crouch, rocking his hips to slide his prick in and out.
She sucked harder, knowing he was about to come. She slid her hands behind him and dug her clawed fingers into his ass, bracing him in his strained position so he could move his hips more firmly and shove his prick faster.
He wanted it to go on forever, but the hot surges cresting upward from his balls could no longer be contained. He gasped, shuddering, as his cock gave a hard, hammering pulse, and then another, shooting jets of come into her delicious mouth. The sinuous muscles of her throat moved as she swallowed it, gobbling the hot load down and sucking for more.
He sank back on the couch, breathing hard, while Melody continued to suck until the hot spurts had faded to tiny driblets. She pulled at his softening prick until she was thoroughly satisfied that she had sucked out every last drop. Then she sat back on her heels, licking a trickle of excess semen from her lower lip before she smiled up at him.
"Was it?" she asked.
"The best ever? It always seems that way."
She got up and slipped into his lap, draping her arms around his neck. "You have to promise to tell me, though," she said, interrupting to kiss him, "when Carol does it,, whether she's as good."
"All right," he sighed. "But she couldn't be."
"Off with her head, then," Melody said sternly; but then she giggled. "I was just thinking. You have to write a note telling why I stayed home from school. Are you?"
"Sure," John said, sliding his hand up her thigh as he felt the sluggish stirrings of reawakening lust, "but let's make it a real good one."
"We won't get much opportunity when you marry Carol."
"Sure, we will," John said, although he feared she was right.
"Maybe we ought to tell her."
"Tell her what?" he said, deliberately not comprehending.
"About us."
"Are you crazy? Do you suppose she'd marry me-or stay married to me-if she knew I was fucking my own daughter?"
Melody thought for a moment. "Maybe I'll ten her."
"That would be nice. I'd go to jail, and you'd go to reform school."
"It's something for you to think about, though. In case you let her come between us too much."
John felt a slight chill as he studied her. Her face was once more an impassive, catlike mask, in which he could read nothing.