Chapter 5

Once the anchorage had been cleared and the blue waters of the bay stretched relatively empty before them, Melody opened up the outboard engine. Carol felt a moment of queasiness when the bow of the square-snouted fiberglass runabout lifted high out of the water, but she assured herself that she'd never been subject to seasickness and wasn't going to start now.

It couldn't really be seasickness, anyway, because the bay was like a mirror. More properly, it was fear of their speed. But Melody looked more than competent. If the speed gave her any kind of daredevil exhilaration, she didn't show it. She sat at the helm like a little statue.

She was in no hurry to start working on her tan. She was swathed in an ankle-length terry-cloth robe, a floppy straw hat-secured by a ribbon under her chin against the slipstream-and loopy, opaque sunglasses. She looked vaguely sinister, like something out of a Fellini movie. Carol finally decided that this obscure area of menace was a hangover from her encounter yesterday with Beau Boulton, the sheriff's deputy: the utter impassivity of Melody's face and the concealment of the sunglasses were reminiscent of Beau's facade.

Carol had no quarrel with the sun. Deeply basted in oil, she stretched out in a floral, black and green bikini and invited it to do its worst.

Her hope of getting a quiet afternoon alone with Melody in some secluded place where they would be free from interruption had been rewarded as well as if she'd planned it in detail. It was Melody who suggested that they go to her "private" place, a little island in the bay, for their picnic; and she even had the means at hand, a speedboat that Carol hadn't previously heard about.

Turning up at John's house this morning, Carol had half expected that the date would have been forgotten; that Melody would have gone to school. But the girl was waiting for her, even seemed eager to go.

Even Melody's truancy was partly explained-although now Carol wondered if the explanation hadn't been made up on the spur of the moment-at an odd leave taking scene at the house.

John was saying goodbye to them at the door when a neighbor whom Carol hadn't met sauntered over and joined the group. John introduced him-grudgingly, Carol thought-as Ken Burke.

The scene was odd because of some inexplicable undercurrent of hostility between the two men. Burke had turned on his charm like a light bulb for her and Melody, but she sensed that all of his attention was really focused oil John's slightest words and actions; and John had seemed unwilling to be more than coldly civil. She supposed that John was being overly protective of his daughter, perhaps wary of the attention to his fiancée, too, because Burke came on like a fading beach boy on the make. But that didn't explain Burke's attitude toward John.

"How's the notorious hockey-player?" he'd asked Melody. "You must be making quite a name for yourself at the high school."

"It's a pretty miserable excuse for a school," Melody explained coolly. "They don't want to admit that by skipping me two grades, like they ought to, but they're letting me work on special projects. So I get a lot of free time."

Burke's charm-boyish grin, sun-crinkled blue eyes, sun-streaked hair-didn't seem to work well on Melody, but of course one could never tell with Melody. Her characteristic facial expression suggested that she'd recently arrived from another planet and didn't find the natives of this one especially interesting.

Later, as they were leaving, she'd heard Burke suggesting that he and John do some fishing, "now that he had the ladies out of his hair," and John had mumbled something about having work to do. She would have liked to ask Melody about their coolness toward their neighbor, but the high-pitched roar of the engine made casual conversation impossible.

It wasn't long before Melody had to slow down for the first of the narrow channels between the islands. They didn't look too inviting: half-submerged, jungly, with loopings of Spanish moss hanging from the branches. After a while it was difficult to tell which was the dominant element, earth or water: whether they were traversing a group of islands in a bag or a series of intricate waterways in a body of land.

Melody seemed to know where she was going, which was utterly amazing to Carol. Some of the bends in the channels-or ditches-seemed to turn at right angles, threatening at any minute to trap their boat hopelessly. Once or twice Melody steered confidently toward a green wall, the next leg of the channel revealing itself only at the last possible moment. Carol found herself ducking low branches and loops of moss.

"You seem to know your way around this place," Carol observed, now that they were moving at a crawl and conversation was possible.

"Sometimes I like to be alone," Melody explained. "That takes a little doing, sometimes."

That was the closest thing to a confidence that Carol had ever received from the girl. It suggested a lonely child, unable to relate to her contemporaries, perhaps confused by her own awakening sex drives and a little terrified by the attentions of boys. She decided it would be better not to press for further confidences-for the moment. But she felt that her plan to win Melody's friendship was getting off to a splendid start.

Melody steered straight for another tangled wall of vegetation. This time there was no doubt at all in Carol's mind that they were going to hit it, and she couldn't restrain a squeak of dismay. But Melody found an opening that Carol hadn't noticed until they were in it. They executed another sharp turn, and this time the hull scraped something as it squeezed through. Carol cast a covert glance at Melody, ashamed of her little outburst, but the girl's face showed nothing.

Carol turned back to the bow-and cried out again, this time with wonder and pleasure. She didn't know how they'd done it, but they were floating in a green bowl some fifty yards across. Opposite their point of entry was a pure white beach. The little bay and its beach were surrounded by walls of mangroves that looked impenetrable, and Carol could no longer pick out the spot where they'd entered.

"This is ... paradise!" Carol exclaimed.

"Beware of the snake," Melody said dryly.

That touch of cynicism made Carol feel a little silly, but she wasn't going to retract her description. Trite as the word was, it was the only way to describe this perfect little jewel of a place, hidden and unspoiled even in the midst of a chaos of commercial desolation and unremarkable swampland. Carol had objected to the road-houses and honkytonks, the trailer parks and lagoon developments, but at the same time she'd held no brief for whatever the land must have looked like in its pristine state: until now.

Melody cut the engine when they had just enough momentum to drift in to the beach. Carol stepped out into shallow water while the girl secured a line to a tree. She gazed around, consciously breathing deeply: the same air she'd been breathing all day, but it seemed to have a new freshness and sparkle to it.

"Let's get the food in the shade," Melody suggested.

Carol had bought a cooler for their lunch: much too big, but the only thing she could find in the local five-and-ten on short notice. Fortunately it was light, made of foam plastic. She and Melody carried it up the beach to a shaded spot. She had half expected the beauty of the beach, close-up, would be marred by discarded beer cans, the charred sites of old campfires, the leavings of other picnics. But it wasn't.

"You must be the only one who knows about this place," Carol marveled.

Melody shrugged. "Must be some old swamp-rats who know every inch of the bay. But I've never seen one of them while I've been here. It's not the sort of place somebody would stumble onto accidentally."

"I was really wishing for a place like this. I want to even up my tan."

"You could do that on the beach near our house," Melody said with a laugh. "I never wear a suit when nobody's around."

"Well. You never know when somebody's going to turn up," Carol said.

She thought that sounded a little too stodgy even while she was saving it, so she didn't wait to hear Melody's reaction but walked back to the water, unhooking her bra as she went. She tossed it into the boat, then stood indecisively, ankle-deep in the water, for a moment. She turned back to Melody.

"You sure no one's likely to barge in?" she called. "Or lurk around in the shrubbery and watch?"

"I'm watching. Shall I turn my back?"

Carol made a wry face at her, then peeled her bikini without further hesitation. Melody sat in the shade of a tree, still bundled in her robe and hat and glasses, hugging her knees. To Carol's eye, she looked touchingly like a little girl rigged out as a glamorous spy in her mother's discards. She was smoking a cigarette ROW, and that seemed the final touch to the childish charade.

"Aren't you coming in?" Carol called.

"Sure."

She ground out the cigarette, then got up and shed her costume. She was wearing the most abbreviated version of the string bikini that Carol had ever seen, but not for long. It soon floated down to the pile of her clothing and Melody padded down the beach.

Carol had seen her wandering around the house in advanced states of undress, but she'd never seen her naked before. She was amazed to see what a well-developed fifteen-year-old she was. At that age, Carol would have given her right arm for a body like that. Even now, she found herself standing up a little straighter and sucking in the tummy that she'd previously persuaded herself was virtually flat.

She noted one incongruity: Melody apparently had no hair in her pubic area.

Carol must have stared a little too long, or perhaps her perplexity was written on her face, because Melody said bluntly, "I shave it. So I can wear that bikini."

Carol felt her cheeks bum, and she turned away. The girl had a remarkable facility for making her seem silly and awkward and incompetent. It was Melody who knew where to go, how to handle the boat; it was Melody who made dry comments to squelch her enthusiasm, who suggested putting the picnic lunch in the shade; and now this: with the total result that Carol felt like the child being taken for an outing by the responsible adult.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to stare at you."

Melody giggled. "That's okay. You show me yours and I'll show you mine."

Carol didn't know how to respond to that jibe, if such it was. She turned and dove into the water, swimming quickly out to the center of the pool. She turned on her hack and floated, The solitude, the warmth of the sun, the support of the water on her nude body, all these sensual pleasures combined to make her little gaffes seem unimportant; and she found it easy to regain her composure.

Melody surfaced beside her, wearing a bathing cap. "Alligators like a muddy bottom," she observed.

Carol was not about to let her newly won composure disintegrate over that remark. She said, not unkindly: "You really should have had a big brother. So you could have gotten all that teasing out of your system."

Melody laughed. Her smile could illuminate her face, and Carol thought It was a shame she didn't do it more often. "I wasn't teasing you, I was reassuring you. The bottom here is sand, Turn over and look."

Carol turned. She could see the white, sandy bottom through the water. Now Melody dove. She went down surprisingly far; Carol would have guessed the bottom was much closer. Melody looked as lithe and sleek, her movements beneath the surface were as strong and graceful, as if she were some creature born to the water. She curved gracefully upward, her arms stretched back like wings as she rose to the surface.

"Beautiful," Carol said, and she realized she was talking about Melody as much as she was talking about the setting. She decided to expand on her remark: "You're an incredibly beautiful girl."

"That's what John tells me," she said, with a lack of inflection that dismissed the compliment.

"Every girl's father tells her that. It's only natural."

"Oh."

"My father told me that when I looked like a scarecrow, and I'm sure he meant it. But in your case it's quite accurate."

"I can't see you looking like a scarecrow," Melody laughed.

"I did. When I was your age, my measurements were twenty-twenty-twenty. And I was five feet, eight inches tall. And the way I wore my hair made me look like an Irish setter, but I couldn't think of anything better to do with it."

"Does John tell you that you're beautiful?"

Carol was taken aback by that question, but she knew immediately that she couldn't expect intimacy without returning it. Maybe it was a rude question, but children were notorious for those: and she shouldn't forget that Melody was a child.

"Not in so many words," Carol said, trying to be honest. "He sort of takes me apart. Tells me I have a pretty nose, or beautiful eyes."

"Why doesn't he sleep with you?"

This, definitely, was going too far, especially since Carol could think of no good answer. With a great effort, she succeeded in concealing her irritation, but that still didn't help her find an answer.

"I think it's because he doesn't want to set me a bad example," Melody said. "He worries about things like that."

Carol looked at her. But she might have been holding a conversation with an intelligent creature that had just come up from its home on the floor of the bay, for all the emotional clues she could derive from Melody's expression. She was disconcerted by the girl's insight. She herself had never put it quite so simply and directly, but it seemed the best explanation of John's behavior.

Even though she agreed with her, Carol found herself being less than candid by asking: "What makes you so sure it's not my decision?"

"The way you look at him. And the way yon get nervous when he's around. And the fact that you're in love with him, and that you're a woman, and that we're not living in the Nineteenth Century. I hope you don't think I'm being rude or disrespectful or anything, but you look like you could use a good fuck."

And before Carol's outrage and indignation could boil over, Melody flipped backward and submerged. She suppressed the urge to follow her, to seize her and give her hair a few good yanks. It infuriated her that this conceited little brat should tell her ... should tell her the truth.

Carol dove, but she found that she couldn't go all the way to the bottom, as Melody had. She wished she'd brought snorkeling equipment, at least a face mask. The visibility was perfect, but the water in her eyes blurred her vision.

On second thought, she wished she'd brought John, instead of his irreverent and disquietingly perceptive daughter. She certainly could use a good fuck, and this would be the ideal place for it. She began to imagine lying on the hidden beach in the sun, with John ... She tried hard to turn off that line of thought. The same kind of urgent, unexpectedly voracious sexual hunger that had swept over her yesterday morning returned, this time even more powerfully.

Carol swam back to the beach, where Melody was already toweling herself dry. She stopped at the boat, picking up her blanket and towel and beach bag. She was determined to take issue with the girl's last remark, even though her strategy was yet unformed. It was one thing to exchange confidences, quite another to be made fun of.

She reflected that a peeping Tom lurking in the undergrowth would have hit the jackpot with Melody. She stood in the middle of the beach with her legs apart, toweling herself thoroughly, sensuously. She rubbed the towel against her crotch far longer than was necessary merely to get herself dry. It was verging on an obscene performance when she suddenly stopped. The light filtering through the leaves cast a dazzling, changing patchwork on her taut, creamy skin. Carol found herself thinking of that time in college when she and another girl-but that had just been a youthful experiment, the result of loneliness and innocence, it hadn't meant anything, and she refused to think about it.

"That was a pretty lousy remark," Carol said, busying herself with spreading out the blanket. "It was unfair and uncalled-for."

"And untrue?" Melody prompted slyly.

"God damn it!" Carol cried, thoroughly angry with herself for her inability to control her giggling. After a pause, she managed to maintain her calm as she said: "Let's just stay off that subject, shall we?"

"It's an interesting subject," Melody said, "I'm sorry if I made it ... too personal. But I was sort of hoping that-well, if we became friends and all, that we might be able to talk about things that I can't very well talk about with John."

Carol felt a painful wave of remorse. This was precisely the sort of thing she'd been hoping Melody would say, precisely the sort of relationship she'd wanted to establish with her, and she'd very nearly blown it with her ill-timed prudishness. She smiled tenderly as she met Melody's slant-eyed, enigmatic gaze. The girl didn't withdraw when she took her arm lightly and kissed her on the cheek.

"I'm sorry. You were absolutely right. It's just that-well, that I wouldn't have worded it quite that way, that's all. You sort of shocked me.

"It's just a word," Melody said. "When John was writing dirty books, he said he was doing it only to liberate the English language."

Their friendship seemed to be progressing beautifully. Melody had slipped her arm casually around Carol's waist and was partly leaning against her. She was glad the girl had no inhibitions about warm, friendly, physical contact.

"Of course," Melody continued when Carol made no comment, "he was just doing it to make money. It's the only reason he ever writes anything."

"Aren't you being a little harsh?"

"I think it's a sensible attitude," Melody said. "I've met these friends of his who bust their humps painting pictures or practicing the guitar or writing novels, and they never will make a cent out of it because they're no good. He may be a hypocrite, but he isn't a dope."

Carol murmured non-committally as she lay down on the blanket and began rummaging in her bag for sun-tan oil. Melody had given her something to think seriously about. She was painfully aware of John's puritanical attitude toward her money, but she had nevertheless hoped that she would somehow be able to persuade him to let her support him for a short while so he could work on something more serious than the junk he wrote for a living. Now she wondered about that. She might be undermining his character, destroying his talent, by subsidizing him. Maybe his vehemence in denouncing "rich women's lapdogs" was sparked by the fact that such a Tie was a temptation to him, a distraction from the difficult task he had set for himself.

Suddenly, Carol had an inspiration. Why couldn't she give most of her money away to some charity or other worthwhile cause before their marriage? She could keep it a secret from John, then tell him as a special surprise on their wedding night. The money would no longer be a source of tension between them, and John would have the satisfaction of supporting his , family solely through his own efforts. It seemed like a marvelous idea, but also a drastic one; she would have to give it a lot more thought.

"Want me to do you?" Melody asked.

"Oh, what?"

"The suntan lotion. You don't want to bum those places you're trying to even up, do you?"

Carol laughed. It would be an embarrassing honeymoon indeed if the places covered by her bikini were too sensitive to be touched. She wiggled facedown on the blanket until the sand beneath it had assumed a suitably comfortable depression, they lay still.

"You have such soft skin," Melody observed as she worked the oil into her shoulder blades with a gentle, kneading pressure.

"You're the one who needs the suntan lotion," Carol observed belatedly. "Shouldn't I-"

"Don't worry, I'll lie in the shade. Just relax."

That wasn't hard to do. The exertion of her recent swim, the baking warmth of the sun on her nude body, Melody's deep massage-all these things combined to lull Carol into a torpid, dreamlike state. She stretched her arms before her as Melody slowly rubbed the oil down around her armpits and the sides of her breasts.

She acknowledged that her earlier sexual arousal hadn't subsided completely. It had merely been simmering secretly, waiting to boil up again. Melody's lingering caresses on her breasts and arms and back gave it a fresh impetus.

She didn't dare tell the girl to stop; and she knew that she didn't want her to stop. She decided to give way to it, to let it run its own course, to enjoy the delicious sensations without examining them. She sighed, smiling.

"Feels good?" Melody purred.

"Mmmm. So good."

One of her occasional sexual fantasies began unreeling unbidden in her mind. Usually, in the fantasy, her car had broken down on a lonely road. A man or men stopped, ostensibly to help her, but they would take her into the woods and rape her. Midway through the rape, she would begin to enjoy it against her will.

It was different this time. The fantasy had confused itself with the memory of the sheriff's deputy who'd stopped her yesterday, on a road as suitably lonely as any in her daydreams. It wasn't the pintsized Storm Trooper behind the dark glasses, though, it was-good heavens. It was that overaged beach boy she'd met this morning, Ken Burke. He forced her to take off all her clothes at gunpoint, and then he handcuffed her hands behind her back. He was forcing her to blow him, kneeling in front of his booted feet.

He wasn't gentle. He was shoving his cock roughly into her mouth, cursing her and calling her a dirty whore because she wasn't sucking hard enough or using her tongue the way he wanted her to use it. She licked her lip, and the salt of perspiration reminded her forcibly of the salty taste and cheesy aroma of a cock.

Carol parted her legs slightly as Melody worked lower, below her waist, pressing the oil into her skin. She tried hard to reshuffle the fantasy, to give the cop's role to John, but she succeeded only in giving the rapist a disappointing facelessness.

He shot into her mouth, making her gag, but he ordered her to swallow every drop of his come and suck for more. It dribbled down over her lip a she continued to ram his prick in and out of her mouth. At least it was over-but it wasn't, He was still hard, and he forced her to lie on her belly while he fucked her from behind. She could feel his hands on her ass ... Melody's hands, lingering, kneading the cheeks, sometimes slipping down between her thighs. Her legs opened a little wider.

"Roll over," Melody said. 'I'll do the rest of you."

"I can do the rest-"

"No, let me. It's fun."

Carol wondered how she could possibly stand the touch of Melody's hands on her breasts- and equally, how she could stand not having that touch. She couldn't refuse. She rolled over, shielding her eyes against the sun with her hand. Melody straddled her waist with her knees. She poured oil into one of her palms and slowly, lovingly began to rub one of Carol's breasts. Carol gasped.

The deputy had satisfied his lust for that position, he was now lying on top of her, fucking her vigorously. She was responding, arching her back, moaning. He was no longer faceless. The face behind the opaque glasses was Melody's. They were kissing, embracing passionately, and Melody was masturbating her urgently.

She wrenched her mind away from the abhorrent fantasy and opened her eyes. Without thinking, she'd been stroking Melody's hip and thigh. She made herself stop. But her hand continued to rest on the girl's muscular thigh where it had stopped. Melody was massaging both breasts-caressing them, actually, with her oily hands.

"Please," Carol whispered in a very small voice. "Please-no more."

Melody kissed her lightly on the lips. Carol found herself wishing that the kiss hadn't been quite so light, that it had lasted longer. Melody's oily fingers traced the surfaces of her nipples.

Carol again began stroking Melody's hips, using both hands this time, smoothing them down the hairless silkiness of her thighs. Melody's hands worked lower, stroking her belly now, working lower to her thighs, moving inward between her thighs. Carol's legs spread as if moving of their own accord.

This was unthinkable. This was madness. She was seducing a teenager-and not just any teenager, which would have been bad enough, but her own prospective stepdaughter. She was drifting into a perversion that combined the worst aspects of lesbianism and pedophilia and incest.

"Stop, Melody, stop right now! We can't-"

Melody silenced her with a kiss. This time it wasn't a light touch of the lips. It was a hungering, open-mouthed, insistent questing. Carol responded, and she felt herself growing dizzy as the kiss aroused her to a feverish pitch. She clutched at Melody's ass, stroked her back, caressed her tits, and she did it hastily, fearfully, as if Melody's skin could burn her. The girl's caresses were surer, more steady, and their goal was obvious as her hands moved closer and closer to Carol's cunt.

"No, Melody, no ... " Carol moaned.

"Just let me touch it. Please. Just see how good it feels," Melody whispered urgently.

Carol no longer had to fantasize as she felt the touch on her pussy that she'd been so long lusting for. Melody's lips had moved down to her nipples, her tongue was weaving slow, circular patterns on their pebbly-hard surfaces, and her fingers were stroking her clitoris with steadily increasing pressure. Carol stroked Melody's breasts, marveling at their rubbery firmness and satiny softness.

"Oh, honey, this is so wrong!" Carol groaned, trying to convince the other girl without doing anything to stop what was happening.

"You want it. So do I. It feels good. How can it be wrong?" Melody murmured, her lips brushing Carol's navel as she slid lower.

Carol braced herself up on her elbows and stared down in what she told herself was horrified fascination. She was fascinated, certainly, but she found it difficult to feel horrified as she watched the coronet of Melody's gold braids sinking lower and lower, watched the tip of her tongue emerge from her lips like the pink nose of a shy kitten, watched it flickering and questing in her red pubic hair ... and felt it.

She twisted downward, trying to touch Melody's cunt with her mouth. The girl anticipated her desire and came to meet her halfway on the blanket. She lay on her side, her knee raised, the sole of one bare foot propped against her thigh, her hairless crotch open and inviting Carol's kisses.

Carol licked it slowly, firmly, trying to equal the skill of Melody's lascivious kisses. It had a clean,, salt-water taste from her recent swim. It began to seep sticky fluid almost as soon as Carol began licking it, and she hugged the girl's hips tightly as she began licking faster and more eagerly.

As Carol licked harder and began sliding her tongue into Melody's hot hole, she was surprised to discover that she was no virgin. She was a little disappointed, too, because this fact threw all her previous speculations about Melody's character out of alignment. It didn't jibe with her disdain for her contemporaries, with the lonely life suggested by her too-early maturity and sophistication.

On the other hand, maybe this fact did fit. Maybe she'd been raped at an early age, and maybe that's why she clung so closely to her father: for protection against a menacing world, The even simpler and far less melodramatic explanation that she'd lost her virginity through experiments in masturbation would also be consistent with her antisocial attitudes.

Carol wondered, too, how Melody had ever learned to eat a cunt the way she was doing. No man had ever eaten her pussy with such skillful tenderness; no woman either, she thought, guiltily remembering her collegiate experience with sapphism. Melody's tongue flickered like a butterfly dancing on a flower as it probed and tickled and stroked all the hot, oozing surfaces of Carol's tingling quim. But that was easily explained, too: even if Melody had never engaged in cunnilingus, either actively or passively, she would certainly know what would feel good on her own cunt, and she was able to translate that knowledge into practice.

Carol tried to keep her mind occupied with these little problems, not wanting to let it dwell on the horror of what she was actually doing. She knew that if she permitted herself to think about what she was doing, she would stop, and she didn't want to stop. She clung hard to Melody's reassurance: that it felt good, that they both wanted it, so therefore it couldn't be wrong.

She clung even harder to Melody's ass, and before long she wasn't thinking about anything at all: just feeling. She let her body do her thinking for her as she rooted greedily in Melody's shaven cunt, scooping out the hot juices with her tongue.

They rolled in their tempestuous embrace, and Carol felt the hot sand under her naked back as they left the blanket. The burning heat, the fact that the sand was clinging to her oiled skin and getting in her hair-none of that was at all important. Only the insistent slurping and tonguing at her cunt comprised reality, only the vision of Melody's own pussy above her face.

Melody sank down on her, swabbing her lips and mouth and chin with her steaming quim. Carol responded, flicking her quivering tongue here, there, everywhere in the juicy pink confection. Her legs waved lazily above Melody's head like the wings of a moth skewered on a pin.

Carol wouldn't have believed it possible, but she was coming, coming as she'd never come before. Her body was lighting up, glowing, expanding. She felt like one of those see-through plastic models of a human being, with all the veins and nerves outlined in color: except that the components of her body were outlined in lurid neon traceries of pleasure. She felt as if something were battering against the cage of her body, struggling to be free and fly, and then the key was found and it flew.