Chapter 1
Astrid Maher was feeling more than irritable this morning. She slammed around the kitchen preparing things for the trip. The embittered wife would just have soon stayed home. All this vacation meant to her was extra work away from home. Oh sure, the kids were excited, the spoiled little monsters, their father didn't care if the little darlings ever did anything to help out. They used her just like a maid and so did their father. She was sorry she had ever married at all.
Astrid at thirty-three still had her looks but she had been panicky about losing them when she met Ellis Maher the famous travel writer. She knew the handsome gray-haired man was completely heartbroken about the recent loss of his wife and writing partner and when he had asked her to marry him to be a mother to his children, she had accepted almost too quickly. She hadn't reckoned on his children being ages fourteen and sixteen, either. They not only resented her but actually took pleasure in making a fool of her every chance they got. They seemed to find her priggish and old-maidy and especially the sixteen year old daughter, Kandy, was very sarcastic every time an opportunity arose.
Now that the reality of being married for the second time had worn off, Ellis wondered if he hadn't made a mistake. Getting his wife into bed was like pulling a man back into a flaming house. Maybe I should have gotten a divorcee or someone that at least understood children. She actually seems to hate the children, he worried.
Ellis took a reflective drag of his cigarette and watched his second wife banging things around the kitchen. She was actually very attractive except for the tight hard line to her mouth and a tightness about her otherwise finely molded jaw which detracted from her beauty. She had natural curly chestnut hair cut in the latest style, a clear complexion and a pert tilted nose and hazel eyes. Her body was lean and athletic as she had been a gym teacher at one point. She still enjoyed outdoor activities unlike her sedentary writer husband who preferred to view the world from his armchair. What she probably needs is someone to completely knock her out and put a good ramrod hard cock up her ass, he mused. She doesn't seem to understand gentleness and if I left it up to her, we'd never have sex, ever. She's always pleading headaches or some other such thing to get out of sexual intercourse.
Meanwhile, Astrid was unaware of her husband's random thoughts and was now concentrating on getting the family ready for the road. Ellis had an assignment to write up a dude ranch for millionaire guests that had just opened and the family would be spending two weeks there. Of course, he expected her to make all the arrangements while he just sat there staring into space. The more she thought about it the more furious she got.
"Kandy, for heaven's sake, you're not thinking of wearing those cut-offs, are you? They're positively indecent. Half your rear end is showing. Do you want the whole world looking at you?"
"Well, they won't be looking at you and that's for sure," the petite sixteen year old blonde replied insolently, crossing her shapely tanned legs in an exaggeratedly sexy fashion for added impact. Kandy reminded herself that she had no intention of being bossed around by her stepmother whom she still thought of as a dried up old virgin in spite of the fact that she was now married to her father.
Anyway, the nubile teenager wanted to show off her legs and draw admiring stares from the local cowboys. She really resented the fact that Astrid was around to supervise things, she and her brother Timmy would have been able to have a far better time with their father who was easy to get around.
Everything was packed up in the car now and the family was getting settled, Ellis could see storm warnings of a family squabble brewing and the bookish writer did not like any dissension.
"Be nice to Astrid, Kandy," he ordered with mock sternness which infuriated Astrid all the more.
Perhaps, I am a little too lenient with my daughter, the recently married father thought guiltily. I'm just trying to make up for the loss of their mother. He looked over at his sixteen year old daughter. The tiny blonde did look delightful in her blue jean cut-offs which barely covered her buttocks and a little yellow halter top which seemed to be having a problem containing her breasts, the scanty apparel looking as though it might flutter away in the slightest breeze to leave her naked. like a nymphet, her luscious ripe young body suggested readiness for the plucking whenever he had glimpsed her under the shower.
"All right, kids, Astrid's been nice enough to pack us a picnic hamper so we won't have to stop at one of those revolting restaurants along the freeway, so let's just have a really fun day, okay?" he said, speaking to his children as if they were mere infants.
Ellis was tall, his gray hair still sandy in some parts like his osn's, handsome in a quiet, studious sort of way. He wore a blue open necked shirt and gray flannel trousers even though they were going to a dude ranch and jeans would have been more appropriate for the occasion. He glanced sideways at Astrid to see if she'd accept his attempts at peacemaking and was relieved when the usually sullen woman smiled back at him. He thought hopefully that there would be a chance that this relaxed vacation at a dude ranch would make her less uptight and neurotic. So far the trip preparations had been spoiled by domestic wrangling between the kids and their stepmother with him attempting to accept as a conciliator. This was going to be a working vacation for him and he hoped that the kids would have an opportunity to get to know Astrid better and to like her.
He looked forward to the change of pace since his usual jobs took him gallivanting around Europe and the wilds of the Amazon looking for undiscovered places. His obsession with his work often seemed to his new wife that he was totally out of sync with reality. She had already accused him of being blind to the facts about his children which should have been blatantly obvious to anyone. She had described Kandy and Timmy as having a dangerously developing intimacy between brother and sister.
"We'll just play the day by ear and see how far we get and how long we'll stop along the way. Is that all right with everyone?" Ellis inquired.
"Super, dad," the kids called out in unison. This was much more their idea of a good time. And too, it would be great to get out of the house and into a vacation setting where they could escape the constant discipline and restrictions imposed on them by their uptight new stepmother. She was really getting on Kandy's case and Timmy too resented the strict authority with which their stepmother was trying to rule their lives after her sudden appearance in the household after their mother's death.
He and his sister would make the most of their vacation away from the hard-nosed bat, Timmy thought eagerly. The handsome youth gazed admiringly at his luscious sister, the sexy fox, as he liked to describe her because she looked just as sexy and just as foxy to him, her brother, as to others. He allowed his eyes to finger over the tantalizing hint of her pubic mound subtly outlined by the tight cut-offs, and her uptilted breasts with their little hard nipples pressing exciting against her halter. This vacation was something he had always dreamed about. To be on a ranch and with his sister in a romantic setting different from his home town where it seemed to the fourteen year old boy that everything went along pretty much the same every day.
Timmy thought his sister the most beautiful girl in the entire world; she was his idea of a perfect woman, someone he would like for a girlfriend but he could never find anyone to match Kandy.
Lustrous golden tresses cascaded down her back and huge blue eyes in a soft pixie face, and a delicately voluptuous figure-he decided from his very limited view of womanhood-what one of his cronies described as being "a cherry looking for a banana to make the sundae." He remembered feeling strangely jealous when his friend made that remark about his gorgeous sister. She was his! The boy analyzed his thoughts for a second. Shit, he thought, I'm thinking about Kandy as if she were my girlfriend. I better cool it.
The freeway became an endless ribbon of billboards for everything from restaurants to deodorants. No one else really seemed to notice them but Astrid made several comments about the appalling taste and how advertising agencies were worse polluters than oil companies. She continued her sour barrage but even she couldn't dampen the teenager's high spirits. Kandy and Timmy giggled and whispered in the back seat like two conspirators.
Ellis smiled happily at his wife. "Those kids sure are having a good time."
Had the two adults but known the cause of the mirth in the back seat of the automobile they may not have been so amused. Kandy was speculating on her stepmother's plan of action in bed.
This lewd talk was all part of Kandy's favorite game, gradually bring her brother to a state of sexual excitement until he was crimson in the face, and as she talked she reveled in the adoring looks he gave her. He was her slave. The perverse teenager knew that she could make him do anything, but anything, she wished.
The aggressive beauty, just two years older than Timmy, took sadistic delight instructing him in the mysteries of sex. Not actually giving
I instructions with demonstrations, just educating him in all the weird deviations of human sexual behavior. It was she who had explained the word "necrophilia" to the boy-"getting your rocks off on a corpse" was her succinct if vulgar definition. It gave her a secret thrill to watch her little brother's reactions to her eye popping, shocking revelations and she encouraged him to develop his interest in what she called "bondage".
Blossoming into womanhood, the young virgin was aware of Timmy's furtive stares at her up-thrust cleavage and other intimate parts of her ripe body. She unashamedly used her sex appeal to manipulate her adolescent brother, practising her charms on him while fascinated at the same time by his good looks and lithe physique. It was good practice to find out what turned men on, she thought calculatingly.
With her brother wrapped around her little finger she knew he was ready to back her up in any fight against the common, restricting enemy, namely Astrid, their stepmother. Her father, she knew, was too absorbed in his writing to notice any strange games she and Timmy would play.
In a way, Kandy felt some womanly compassion for Astrid. The nubile teenager thought charitably that maybe she had just stayed a dried up virgin too long, a fate she herself was determined to avoid. She glanced at her brother, wondering if he was beginning to experience tae same kind of glow that she was experiencing.
The hot vinyl car seat and the intimate confidences with her brother were combining to make Kandy feel clammy between the legs. Christ, I hope there isn't a damp patch at the bottom of my shorts, she thought in sudden horror. That would really give Astrid something to bitch about!