Chapter 6
Lunch was eaten in silence, after another swim. Carol had packed fried chicken, potato salad and coleslaw, and, as an afterthought, a bottle of Chablis. In packing the wine, she hadn't known whether Melody would drink it; but she had thought it might loosen her up, make her less inaccessible, if she did. The irony of that made her laugh when she unpacked it.
Carol found the silence oppressive at first, but it didn't seem to bother Melody. She had retreated behind her mask. But then, while she was licking her fingers, she caught Carol's eye and burst into a sudden grin. Carol felt better after that.
Carol wanted to have an earnest discussion after lunch. Melody wanted to make love. They made love, a long, leisurely session that was even more overwhelming than the first time.
Returning across the tranquil bay at dusk, Carol felt miserable. She didn't know how she could ever face John again. She was a filthy, despicable pervert. To marry the father of this girl-to live in the same house with her as her stepmother, tortured by temptation-she could never do it. She would have to leave tomorrow, go somewhere John would never find her.
But even while she was calling herself filthy and warped and twisted, she kept returning to scenes burned in her memory from the afternoon: the glow of Melody's flesh, her sly glances, her knowing fingers. She saw her swimming, diving, her flesh sleek as a seal's. Leaving John would mean leaving Melody. She couldn't stifle a sob, but she was sure the sound of the motor had covered it.
Melody was no help. She didn't want to talk about it. She simply existed, accepted, and Carol had the feeling she might as well .speak in Chinese when she tried to talk to her about guilt or morality or resolutions to resist future temptation.
Maybe Melody's attitude was the correct one. Maybe Carol's guilt, the residue of her Catholic upbringing, was wrong. Melody seemed perfectly happy with her attitude,' and Carol certainly wasn't happy with her own.
She stole a glance at Melody. She hadn't noticed before this afternoon that there was a savage quality to her beauty. She'd first seen it after their second round of lovemaking. She looked up to see Melody standing above her, alert as a hunting panther as she stared into the forest beyond the beach. The set of her jaw, the iciness of her slanted eyes, the litheness of her nude body-she looked like someone who wouldn't have felt at all out of place in the Stone Age. She thought that she'd heard someone in the underbrush, but she convinced herself-and Carol-that it had only been a deer.
The day had stretched long and leisurely before them this morning, and now it was all used up. They were tying up the boat. They were walking the few short blocks to the oceanfront. They were at the door. Carol felt like screaming. Time seemed to be racing, hurling her headlong into the confrontation she dreaded.
"Leave any chicken?" John asked as he lugged the cooler into the house for them.
Keyed up for melodrama and confronted with a banal remark like that, Carol found herself suddenly at ease. The world was still spinning along. No unwinking eye in the sky had witnessed the events on the island.
"Lots," Carol said. "I bought the family-sized bucket, and we weren't up to it."
"I ate a lot more than I thought I would," Melody observed blandly.
"There's some wine, too," Carol said hastily.
"And potato salad. And coleslaw," John said, unpacking. "And watermelon. You packed for an army, Carol. I guess we don't have to worry about supper. Unless you want to go out?"
The question was directed generally, but Melody answered it: "I am going out. Ken asked me to go to the new Mexican place with him."
"Ken?" John echoed-not questioning the identity, but her use of the name.
"Mr. Burke, then," Melody amended. "I thought you and Carol might like to be alone for a change, so I said okay."
Carol had expected a negative reaction to this news, but John went beyond her expectations. He looked as if he'd just been hit with an axe.
"Wait a minute," he said. "Wait a minute. This guy, he's what? Thirty? Thirty-five? You can't go out on a date with somebody like that."
"It's not a date. We were talking the other day, and it turned out we'd both been in Mexico, only I don't remember it very well, and he said why don't we go over to the new place in Lunalia and see if the food is really authentic. That's all. We're just going over there and back, just over the causeway, and I ought to be back before nine o'clock."
"Listen, baby. We don't know who this guy is. We don't know a thing about him, what he does for a living, anything."
"Well. Wouldn't this be a good chance for me to find out?" Melody asked with a grin.
Carol could see that John still opposed the idea, but that he was wavering. She didn't want the day to end in a sordid family squabble; and she wanted to give Melody some evidence that she was on her side. Trying to sound reasonable and disinterested, she said, "It seems like a harmless idea, John."
"I see I'm outnumbered," he said, with more of an edge in his voice than the occasion seemed to warrant. "Okay. But make sure you're home by nine, honey. And please don't make a habit of going out with this guy."
"I'll change," Melody said.
John poked morosely at a piece of chicken, saying nothing, when she'd left the kitchen.
"I only got a glimpse of this Mr. Burke this morning, John," Carol said, pouring them each a glass of wine, "but I'd say his specialty is wealthy divorcees. With maybe an occasional homeless beach bunny thrown in. He looks a little too shrewd to try to pull something in his own backyard."
"Listen to the woman of the world," he said, with more than a hint of a sneer in his voice.
She set her glass down firmly, about to say something she knew she would regret. Before she could say it, John sensed her mood and slipped in a quick apology: "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you. It's just that I've seen more of this guy than you have, and I thing he's developed a ... a morbid interest in my daughter. She's noticed it, too, and I don't know how he got her alone to talk to her. Her announcement just came out of left field, and that upset me more than anything."
John's little speech gave Carol time to examine her own motives while she half-listened to it. She didn't like the idea of Melody's going out with the neighbor, either, but she was afraid that her sole reason for not liking it was jealousy, pure and simple; and so, by supporting Melody, she'd been bending over backwards to deny to herself that she was jealous. John was probably right. Even if he was her father, he could still see the situation more objectively than her ... her lover. But it was too late to change sides now.
"She's a pretty grown-up girl, John. She can take care of herself," she said honestly; and then, with something less than total honesty, she shot him an up-from-under look and added: "And besides, we don't get much chance to be alone together."
He looked more uncomfortable than pleased, and she was also less than happy with her own tactics. She had put him in a position where he would be rejecting her unequivocal offer if he quibbled further with the date.
"How do I look?" Melody asked, breezing in the door, and Carol noted that John took advantage of this distraction to drain his glass and pour another.
"Like you just escaped from the county road gang," John said.
"John!" Carol cried with mock indignation.
"That's okay," Melody said, cracking a cherry cola from the cooler. "He thinks Ken is on the lam from Raiford, so we'll make a lovely couple."
Carol was surprised that Melody knew how to use cosmetics with restraint and taste. She wore just a hint of lipstick, rouge and eye makeup, just enough to complement the natural beauty of her face without overwhelming it. She wore simple gold earrings. Below the neck, though, was something else: a blue work shirt and a skintight pair of threadbare jeans with a rosebud appliqué over her pubic area.
"You look lovely," Carol said.
"I should have showered," Melody said, leaning against the door of the refrigerator. "I still have that suntan gunk all over me."
Carol looked down hastily, not daring to see if Melody was giving her a knowing glance: because Melody had not applied any of the suntan oil to her body, not directly.
A light tap at the screen door, and then Burke's voice said: "Hello."
"Come on in," Melody said.
Before Ken had even closed the door behind him, John asked bluntly: "What's all this about a dinner date?"
Ken was dressed to match Melody: old polo shirt and faded jeans. His tan looked even darker by artificial light, making his gray eyes almost colorless. He was a very muscular man, Carol noted, and he moved like a sexy tomcat. John was probably handsomer-Carol thought he bore a marked resemblance to Gregory Peck at the same age-but no woman could be in a room with Ken Burke without sensing his very masculine vibrations. She began to see why John was concerned.
"Well, not a date, not exactly," he said, gesturing deprecatingly at his outfit. "Just turns out that Melody and I are old Mexico hands. We thought we'd see how the new place in Lunalia shapes up."
"I've yet to find any really good Mexican food east of the Pecos," John said, seeming to thaw slightly, "You can't tell till you've tried them all. Why don't you and Mrs. Owen come along with us?"
Wow, Carol thought: either his motives were as pure as the driven snow, or else he was an even slicker article than she'd suspected. She also noted his accurate memory for her name and marital status on one short introduction, She knew that short, simple names like her own were the hardest to remember; and she'd observed that people who'd been told otherwise often persisted in calling her "miss."
John was apparently disarmed by Ken's offer,, He actually smiled at the other man as he said, "No, you go on and enjoy yourselves. I've already been stuffing myself with this cotton-pickin', sticky-fingered chicken, whatever they call it-unless you want to go, Carol?"
"No, I'm bushed," she explained.
"I hope you didn't overdo it," Melody said. "I'm not easy to keep up with."
"She's some swimmer," John agreed, while Carol made an intensive study of the gray wavy lines in the red plastic table top.
But Carol had a temper that matched her red hair, and she was sick and tired of being surreptitiously bullied by Melody's disingenuous remarks. She looked up quickly from the table and eyed Melody levelly as she said: "And a remarkable diver. Sometimes she'd go down and I'd think she was never going to come up."
Melody laughed merrily.
"So that's all the more reason to be home early," John said, but he tried to soften this reversion to parental authority with an awkward smile. "By nine, right?"
Ken answered for her: "Don't worry, John. I remember how my folks used to worry about my little sister when she was this age."
Carol thought that might have been laying it on a bit thick, but at least he didn't go so far as to say that he would treat Melody like his own little sister. But John seemed to buy it; and Melody studied Ken behind her cat-mask, observing another denizen of this strange planet.
"Funny guy," John said when they'd left.
"How so?"
"I get the feeling he's as much interested in me as he is in Melody."
"A bisexual beach boy?" Carol asked, tossing the words out before she realized that such little jokes should no longer be funny to her.
John didn't note her discomfiture. "No, I mean interested ... curious ... nosy, that's what I mean."
"Maybe he's a fan. Maybe he's a reporter who's going to write you up."
"Not bloody likely," said John, who sometimes used Britticisms culled from English movies to put his reactions at one remove from reality.
"You have been written up."
"Yeah, I've even been interviewed on TV. But nobody ever snuck around in the bushes for three weeks to set me up for it."
"Then he probably is a fan. He just thinks it would be gauche, or something, to come right out and tell you how great he thinks you are."
John snorted. He poured another drink.
"I think I'll take the shower that Melody didn't. If it's all right with you."
"Of course. There's towels in the hall closet."
"Come along and keep me company," she said, rising and leaving the room without waiting to note his reaction; but she heard him follow.
Her plan was unclear. She didn't know how she would go about doing it. She wasn't, as John had ironically pointed out, a woman of the world. But it had been revealed to her-forcibly revealed, when she made that unthinking crack about bisexuals-that she had to know. Melody had aroused her as no man had ever aroused her, and she'd satisfied her as even Charlie had never satisfied her. She had to know if the experience owed its intensity to a sexuality that had matured in frustration, or if it was so intense because it was the kind of sex that she preferred.
More than that, she had to know about John. Sitting with him in the kitchen this evening, she'd felt a sort of warmth for him-but "a sort of warmth" was nothing to base a marriage on. And in that same kitchen, she'd felt a fluttering in her stomach whenever she'd looked at Melody.
Melody. Maybe that was the answer to all her questions. Lesbian was a word so general, so abstract that it meant nothing to her; and Melody meant much to her. Back in college, it had been-she hesitated a moment, surprised that she had to grope for the name-it had been Valerie who'd been important, not sex, but sex with Valerie. Just as Charlie had been the essence of it, not the sex, but that had made sex with Charlie important. And Melody seemed more important than all of them had ever been.
John was leading her through his combination bedroom and study, which adjoined the bathroom with the shower, when he said, as if cued by her thoughts: "Have fun today?"
"Yes ... yes, we had fun," she said. Realizing that she'd said it with almost reverential solemnity, she tried to lighten her tone as she added: "We got to know each other a lot better. I think I can safely say that we're friends now."
"That's great. One of the troubles with-well, it was unfortunate that she never really got along with my second wife."
Unseen by him, Carol smiled at the clumsy rewording. He'd meant to say: "One of the troubles with Leila ... "
"There you are," John said, flipping on the bathroom light and starting to withdraw after checking that all was in order. "Help yourself."
Carol didn't stand aside when he tried to leave. She was wearing a hip-length jacket over her green and black bikini, and she let that drop to the floor behind her. She kept her face expressionless and looked him in the eye, knowing her words would sound too coy or kittenish otherwise, as she said: "I can never scrub my back properly. Would you like to do it?"
He seemed startled, even stunned. She felt an acute attack of embarrassment coming on, and she knew she had to push ahead boldly. She reached back to unfasten her halter and let it drop to the floor. She kept her eyes fixed on his. She saw his eyes flicker downward, back again.
"Carol ... " He didn't seem to know what to say or do after that.
She stepped a little closer to him. She began peeling her bikini down, stopping when the first red fluff was visible. She saw his eyes flick downward again.
"I know this isn't the way ... the way things have been between us. But-but, goddamnit, John, I'm as horny as a woman can get! I want to take a shower with you. Or I'll do it on the bed if you prefer, only I'll get your sheets all greasy. Or on the floor. Or anywhere. Does that shock you? You looked shocked. Christ!"
The last word was almost a scream as she turned away from him and ran her rigid fingers through her hair. What the hell was the matter with him? Or with her? She'd never told such a pack of lies in her life: she felt about as sexy as an ice cube. But being refused like this-being merely stared at, as if she were a freak on display-that was more than she could stand.
She felt the light pressure of his hands on her waist. Her instinctive reaction was to freeze stiff as a board, but she fought it down. She leaned back against his chest.
"Of course I'm shocked, Carol," he murmured in her ear through the thickness of her sea-scented hair. "It's all I've been thinking about ... hoping for ... "
"You haven't acted that way," she said, and the words sounded harsher in her ears than she'd intended.
"I didn't want to rush you," he said mildly, "after what you told me."
She had almost worked up a case against him for being cold, unfeeling-undersexed, perhaps. And now he'd turned the tables on her, reasonably pointing out that she'd discouraged him with her talk about her own withdrawal from life since the blow of her husband's death.
His hands were moving on her oiled body now, gently tugging the bikini lower. One of his hands slid upward to cradle the fullness of her naked breast, a touch more intimate than any she'd yet permitted him. She felt panic welling up, constricting her throat: whether a return of the traumatic withdrawal she'd spoken about or a result of her current deception, she didn't know, but she tried hard to fight it down.
"You're trembling."
"I'm ... scared," she said honestly.
"Relax. Let it happen, I won't hurt you. I love you."
He was having trouble pushing the bikini down her thighs. She took charge of that operations glad to have something to do with her hands, even though her fingers seemed numb and nerveless. Maybe she was glad for the opportunity to break contact with his body for a moment. She didn't know.
She stumbled as she stepped out of the bathing suit. He steadied her. A glance told her that he'd already discarded his blue shirt and had undone the belt of his khaki shorts. She couldn't stop now, and she told herself that she didn't want to.
"Are you sure ... ?"
"Yes!" she whispered, but she didn't meet his eyes.
He turned her towards him. She fought against the urge to curl into an insensate ball. She locked her hands behind his neck, pressing her breasts against his chest. She felt the firm thickness of his cock against her belly, and she noted that it wasn't fully rigid yet; but it began to stiffen against her skin when he kissed her.
She experienced a weird feeling. A shiver ran down her spine. It was- akin to the shock of greeting an old friend in the street only to find, on drawing closer, that he was a total stranger. The feeling she experienced now was the other side of that coin. For when she kissed John, she imagined-she almost believed-that she was kissing his daughter.
The feeling was so strong, so alarming, that she broke off the kiss and stared at him.
"What's wrong?"
"I ..."
She didn't know what to say. But he didn't wait for an explanation. He bent and kissed the hollow of her throat, her neck, her shoulders.
"I'm all covered with that gunk," she protested. "Let's get in the shower."
"It smells good," he murmured, his kisses moving lower to her breasts.
She couldn't pinpoint the similarity in their kisses. It was a fleeting impression, no more accessible to analysis than a flash of deja vu. She explained it as a curious manifestation of her guilt feelings, a dirty trick played on her by her subconscious mind, and she let it go at that.
She snaked her hands between their bodies to encircle the thickness of his cock with her fingers. It became fuller, more solid under her touch. His earlier flaccidity had led her to suspect-perhaps to hope-that he might prove impotent, it would have been an easy way out of her troubles, an excuse for breaking the engagement. But breaking it for such a cause would probably have involved bitter recriminations. Then she couldn't have remained ... a friend of the family.
She almost laughed at the ironic twist she gave the trite phrase. She told herself that she was shameless, and she found herself taking a perverse pride in the fact that she was. She was not only evil, she was more evil than anyone she'd ever even heard of: seducing the daughter and the father on the same day.
She found herself beginning to enjoy what she was doing. She hugged the wicked secret in her breast, and it warmed her and relaxed her. She sought John's lips again with her mouth, actively searching for the similarity that had earlier alarmed her. She was pleased when she found it.
His prick was stiff and hard in her hand. She loved the hot, pulsing feel of it, the eager way it seeped sticky dew onto her fingers. She began slowly to sag to her knees.
"Carol ... what ... ?" he murmured, as if he felt obliged to protest what she was doing but didn't want to protest, Perhaps she was abasing herself to expiate the guilt she still felt.
Perhaps she was trying to live out the sexual fantasy she'd entertained earlier in the day, when the rapist had forced her to kneel and blow him. She didn't know. She only knew that she had a sudden, urgent desire to kneel in front of John and suck his cock.
Carol had once been startled when, during a discussion of sex, a close friend had told her that she thought cocks were ugly. The Mend bad objection to their function; she just didn't like the way they looked.
Carol simply couldn't fathom that attitude. She thought that an erect phallus was a beautiful thing. It protruded so proudly, so aggressively; it was unquestionably there. Given her esthetic viewpoint, it was perhaps a wonder that she hadn't become promiscuous, but she hadn't. Except for three or four earlier affairs that meant nothing, all her appreciation of cocks had been lavished on Charlie's.
Now, her eyes on a level with John's outthrust prick, she remembered how beautiful they were. She began to take some encouragement from this: no unredeemable lesbian would have felt this way. John's cock was especially big, she thought, and it stuck up at a jaunty angle from the black forest of her pubic hair. She reached out to stroke the dangling, hairy sac of his balls with her fingertips, and he swayed closer.
She knelt up more erectly, until her mouth was right over the tip of the rigid prong. She held it lightly in her fingertips. Opening her mouth, she slowly and lasciviously traced her lips with the spongy head, as if she were using a tube of lipstick, leaving a gleaming smear of anticipatory fluid on her lips. Then she cradled it against her cheek, murmuring wordlessly, as she made a slow circle of its thick root with her tongue.
"Carol ... I want to do something for you, too," John said hesitantly. "Let's go in the bed, and-"
"I want to suck you off. Don't you want me to?"
Her delight in her own wickedness had returned. She seldom used such blunt language, and it gave her a little thrill to know that her uncharacteristic behavior was keeping John off balance. The simple act of saying such words added to her thrill.
"I won't argue with you," John said, stroking her hair, subtly trying to nudge her mouth toward the tip of his cock.
"You have such a big, beautiful cock, John. I just love the way it smells and tastes and ... mmmm ... "
She teased him by slipping her compressed lip rapidly over the head of his prick and sliding them down further and further, until fully half its length was submerged in the wet heat of her lustful suction. She heard him gasp with pleasure. Just as quickly, she pulled it out of her mouth. It was red and wet with her saliva, and the head was almost purple from its tightly stretched expansion. It quivered as tightly as a steel spring when she touched it.
"Please," John breathed, "put it in your mouth again ... suck on it."
Carol smiled as she licked his cock all ever with her busy tongue. She pulled his foreskin back and forth steadily with her fingertips while she licked. His cock felt as hot as a furnace, and it was giving off an overpowering aroma of male.-musk. She felt an itchy tingle between her leg. It surprised her, because it was the first physical symptom she'd felt of sexual arousal for John today. It pleased her, too, to know that a man could still arouse her.
She began to wonder if it wouldn't be better to let him fuck her. But at just that moment John let out a strangled groan: "For Christ's sake-I'm coming! Put it in your mouth!"
She moved a little too slowly, and his first sizzling jet of come splashed against her nose. She giggled. She began jerking him off furiously, reveling in the novel sensation of feeling his gism spouting against her nose and her eyelids and her mouth. She licked her lips greedily as it ran down her face.
His fingers clutched her shoulders convulsively, almost hurtfully. She sensed that she might have carried her teasing game a little too far. While his cock was still spurting, splashing its ropy wads of cream against her face, she thrust her lips down on it and sucked greedily.
John sighed with relief, as if her mouth had quenched a fire in his emitting prick. He swayed back and forth, fucking her in the mouth, while she pumped with her lips and washed him all over with her tongue.
At last he drew her to her feet and looked into her eyes with pleasure and bewilderment.
"You're nuts," he said.
"Now," she said, pausing to dab some come from her cheek and lick it off her fingertips, "I really do need a shower. Are you still game?"
"When I want to quit, I'll tell you."