Chapter 1
Belle Stern, the director of Wood Dell, stood on the porch of the administration building and looked out over the camp. She took a deep breath and her breasts filled her blouse in a comely proportion. Even in khaki trousers and blouse her femininity was assured, and this despite her short Italian boy haircut. Her hips flared out to a contour that left no doubt that pants or not, this was a woman wearing them. But the eyes stopped you short. They were startlingly blue and frosty like polar ice. Behind those eyes intelligence crackled and a certain masculine hardness seemed to peer out over her aquiline nose. But then, she was the camp director and such a person must be many things to many different people.
Belle felt good. The camp was filling up, registration was going beautifully. She rubbed her hand across a tanned arm and smiled as a girl from last year waved at her. She'd walk over to the combination gym and theatre where the girls were signing in after she drank in more of this feeling she had.
For the truth was that Belle felt like a queen. And this was her domain. She lived for the summers at Wood Dell. This was when her power became visible, her kingdom took on life. It gave her an intense personal satisfaction to be running such an exclusive camp and it filled a deep need that she was reluctant to face most of the time. Belle was thirty years old and had never married. She wasn't quite sure why something within herself that couldn't be decided. Yet she was happy, reasonably so. Most of the time. But never so much as when her camp, which she had directed for the past six years, was filled with people, counselors, assistants, cooks, instructors, maintenance men, and girls.
Belle let herself indulge in a huge sigh of contentment just as Mark Grant drove through the gate in his bright red MG. He saw Belle as he drove by the cabins and waved to her. She waved back and flashed a smile that was as dazzling as her blue eyes. Her white even teeth were whiter still against the tan of her lean hawk-like face. Mark smiled back and pulled into the staff parking lot. In the upper lots, fancy cars were unloading girls and baggage.
"Hi," Mark said, walking up as Belle stepped off the porch on her way to the gym-theatre. "It's filling up."
"Hello, Mark. Glad to see you. Yes, it is," she smiled. "Do you remember where your quarters are?"
"Sure. It's the second one from here."
"Right. You remembered."
Mark strolled beside her as she headed toward the lower building.
"Do you want to unpack now?" she asked.
"Anytime."
"Good, you can come with me over to the registration. It'll go a lot smoother now. Most of the girls have checked in."
"You're going to have a full house?"
"Yes, Mark, we always do. You put an 'exclusive' on something and that takes care of that."
"I know what you mean."
They walked on pine needles and Mark let the smell of freshness fill his nostrils and his lungs. The pine smell had been teasing him for the past few miles but now it was rich and heady. Driving up to the camp from Bass Lake Village he had thought about his evening before and was glad to get the scent of the two girls out of his nostrils. Although it had been a ball and he'd had his ashes hauled, the clean fresh air of the mountains was almost as good a constitutional as the sex had been. That incident with his hands on Bev's neck had him wondering. Had he been trying to choke her deliberately? He shook off the thought.
Of course not. It was only a caress carried too far. But he had been strangling her and hadn't meant to. He shuddered to think what might have happened had they been alone and he'd been too drunk, drunker than he actually was, to have known what he was doing. Yes, the air felt good and here he was at Wood Dell, assistant director with not a care in the world. His step was springy as he walked along with Belle, feeling years younger already.
"Well, there's where they all check in," she said when they reached the large hall.
"Pretty smooth," he commented.
"Yes, we know most of the girls, from years past. Some new ones are here and the junior counselors help them."
Belle went over the functions of everyone again for Mark's benefit, even though he had heard it in a previous interview. But here he was in the thick of it, and it all made more sense now.
They stood in the large room, watching the routine at the sign-in tables. Each new girl was assigned a cottage and a counselor, according to her age and background. It went very smoothly. Mark was halfway bored with the whole routine until he noticed a dark-haired girl of seventeen, who came in with a taller, more sophisticated-looking blonde. They both wore expensive clothes and had a look about them that put them several cuts above any of the girls he had seen previously. But his ears really perked up when he heard them announce themselves to the girl at the registration table.
The dark one said, "Hi, I'm Ginny Reynolds."
The name struck a chord in Mark's brain and he almost swallowed his Adam's apple. Could it be? Impossible. The daughter of Gilbert Reynolds, the man he had just mailed his materials to? Naw, he told himself.
Until the other girl introduced herself. The blonde. "And I'm Andrea Cornwell," she said, her voice like a husk on the summer wind.
Cornwell! Her father was James Barton Cornwell, Executive Director of Reynolds Industries. No, there was no mistake. Hell no, there wasn't!
Mark was elated, but he did hide his pleasure with a coolness that surprised him. This was just too damned good to be true! What a way to get in with Reynolds. A further in! Damn! If he played his cards right, he'd get to meet both the bigwigs in person at the end of the summer session. Hell, before that. There were two sessions and these chicks were in the first one. All the parents had to come to pick up their children and he was sure that he could bring himself to the attention of both Cornwell and Reynolds. He watched the two girls, comparing them. Both were impressive, but in Ginny Reynolds he noticed an innocence that was appealing. She had long dark hair, impeccably groomed, with a subdued sheen that bespoke of cleanliness. Her face was open, with a small pert sharp nose and full lips, even white teeth. Her figure was remarkably voluptuous without any obvious pretense on her part. Today she wore blue slacks, sandals that showed her bare slim ankles and a light sweater that showed her young saucy breasts to distinct advantage. She wore a light blue band in her hair that showed her high handsome forehead most admirably.
Andrea Cornwell had a slight condescension about her. But perhaps, Mark thought, that was due to her slightly upturned nose. Her eyes were brown in contrast to Ginny's, which were blue, and the effect in both was startling. Andrea bore herself well, as though she had been to a fancy finishing school in the East, while Ginny had been more accustomed to horses on a San Fernando Valley ranch. Andrea was tall and her body was squeezed into her tight pants and sweater. She wore a little vest that could scarcely conceal her full and protruding breasts. Mark was sure he could see her nipples through the sweater and thought that she may not have been wearing a bra. She too wore a band in her hair, brown to match her outfit and she looked like a high-class hooker or a chick who had been around enough to know how to turn a grown man on.
"Well, Mark," said Belle, "you're the assistant director, what do you think so far?"
Mark turned to the woman immediately, afraid she had read his thoughts, which by now were beginning to stray way beyond an honest appraisal of the two girls just checking in. He looked her straight in those ice-blue eyes. "It's going to be a great summer," he grinned. "You have a marvelous camp and fine girls here." Might as well turn on the bullshit.
"Good. Glad you're impressed." She ran her hands through her short thick dark hair and sighed. "It's going to be busy, busy, busy, though."
"Yeah, I'm hip," he said.
"Let's go over to my office for a few minutes and I'll brief you on what happens the rest of today and go over some of your duties. Hate to get right into it, but here it is. Camp has started."
"Glad to do it. I'm eager to start."
He didn't glance at the girls again as the two of them left the building. They walked up a pine lane over a small arched bridge made of redwood and to her office in the administration cabin. He felt good, damned good, better than he could have expected. Life, he thought, was sometimes too good to be true, trite as that sounded. Already, though, his mind was racing ahead with schemes. And not all of them had to do with business.
It took him all of five minutes to admit to himself that he had gotten this job on a pretty good hunch that old man Reynolds' daughter would be there. He just hadn't wanted to seem that goddamned mercenary, even to himself. But it gave him a good feeling to know that he was covering all bases.
Ginny Reynolds thought that it was a gas, coming to Wood Dell with Andrea, her now closest friend. She had begged her folks to let her come up with Andrea and despite the fact that they doted overly much over their daughter, they had agreed. Gil Reynolds had relented because she was coming with Andrea, the daughter of his closest friend and most valued associate. Priscilla Reynolds, her mother, had consented because she had investigated the camp, checked all of their references and found it to be in keeping with their station in life.
But Ginny didn't care about all that. All her life, as an only child, she had been protected. Protected from life. Andrea, she knew, had her own car, went out with anyone she chose and did things, outtasight things that she herself could only dream about. With her, it always had to be the right school, the right friends, the right hours, chaperoned dances, the whole tired bit. But that wasn't Ginny. She wanted to be free, happy, like Andrea. She wanted to get with the world, not be supervised as she had been all of her seventeen years. This was the first time she had been this far away from her parents and inside she gloated, even though it all seemed so unreal.
As she and Andrea walked over to their cabin, she danced over the pine needles like a ballerina. "Oh, it's so great here, Andrea;" she said. "No parents, no checking on you!"
"Wait'll we bomb into the town," Andrea told her square friend. "That's when I'll start to get it on."
"But this is so beautiful up here!"
"Right on, Ginny, but this isn't everything." Andrea had a smile playing over her lips and Ginny thought that perhaps she would be let in on the secret too, now that she was with Andrea, away from her parents.
Their cabin was the end one, overlooking the lake, secluded. It had four walls, which were open, and a canvas roof, with sides that could be pulled down all the way in case of rain. There were rough bunks inside and to their delight they found that they were the only two girls in this one. Their counselor had a bunk there too, but to the two girls it seemed as though the cabin were all their own.
"Take any two bunks you want, girls," said Mary Wells, their groovy young counselor. "We're just the three of us here."
"How come?" asked Ginny, throwing her duffle bag on a bunk.
"This is the overflow cabin. Full camp. This one is usually reserved for late-staying unexpected guests, lost hikers, or what have you. It'll-be great, though, just us. We can always go to the cabin next to us if we want extra company."
"Outta sight," said Andrea, taking the bunk over Ginny's.
Mary was a thin girl who had been going to camp for years and graduated from a junior counselor to a full-fledged employee the year before. She sang, played the guitar, and wrote poetry. She was also a fine swimmer and horsewoman. Ginny and Andrea thought she was really something and both gave her a big welcome hug which seemed to make them all instant friends of one another.
"See you later, girls," Mary told them, "I've got to go to the ad building for a while. Make yourselves at home."
"Hey, we will, Mary," said Ginny.
"See you," piped in Andrea, already unraveling her gear.
The two girls bustled with their things. Ginny was overjoyed to be at Wood Dell and, as she unpacked, her thoughts raced like wildfire over a prairie brush.
"Wasn't that guy cute?" asked Andrea, interrupting Ginny's thoughts.
"What guy?"
"You saw him! Don't give me that! The real cute guy down at the registration building."
"Oh him! The old cat."
"Old?" screeched Andrea. "He's just right!"
"He's in his twenties at least."
"So? That's old? I'm almost eighteen."
"Yeah, me too. I guess it's not old. I didn't pay that much attention," said Ginny.
"Well, you better take another look, then. He was sure as the devil paying attention to you."
"He was?" asked Ginny.
"Yeah. To both of us, but especially to you. Oh, he didn't think anyone noticed. He's a cool head. But I saw him. I know how men look and how to catch them at it." Andrea stood up, tossing her blonde hair back over her shoulders, her head high.
Ginny looked at her with envy. Andrea knew so much! "Gee, I wished I had noticed him more," she finally said to Andrea.
"Well, we'll see him again. I'm pretty sure he's one of the biggies here at Wood Dell. We'll ask Mary when we see her."
Ginny nodded and sat down on her bunk. Everything was neatly put away. Oh, it was going to be so grand up here, she thought. She was still so excited she didn't know what to do with herself. Already there was a man interested in her, if she could believe Andrea, and they had a groovy cabin and the whole summer. It was just too much. She would never forget it. Not a moment of it! She gave a big sigh and just let her thoughts roam as Andrea climbed up in her bunk to rest after all the excitement.
Part of the excitement was seeing Belle Stern again. She had met Belle in Los Angeles and it was because of her that Andrea had picked out Wood Dell and talked her parents into sending her here for the summer, instead of to the camp she had been going to further north. Seeing Belle had given her a tug at her midsection, all right. Seeing the man with her, whoever he was, had brought back another reason why she wanted to come to Wood Dell instead of going to camp in Sequoia. At the other camp, there had been a handsome young counselor too; single, male, and eligible. It had taken Andrea no effort whatsoever to make him break all the rules and give her what she wanted. She smacked her lips in recollection. "I'll bet Belle Stern's a dyke," she told Ginny, for no reason.
"Who?"
"The director. Her name's Belle Stern."
"What makes you think she's a lesbian?" asked Ginny, trying to appear worldly.
"Oh, her job. The way she wears her hair. She's on the mannish side."
"You're jumping to conclusions," said Ginny.
"Hmm. Maybe," Andrea said, unconvinced. The truth was that Andrea was so sex-oriented that she automatically sized up every person she met in terms of sexual potential. Anxious to satisfy her own precociousness, Andrea was eager to see who was who and who would do what to whom. She wasn't always aware of this tendency of hers, but her evaluations, like that of Belle Stern, would always pop into her mind sooner or later.
After supper that night, when Belle Stern had given the welcoming speech to the staff and girls, Andrea was sure that she had sized up the director correctly. She told Ginny as they were walking back to their cabin, whispering, "she may be AC-DC, but I got her right. She'll swing to girls or men, I'll bet."
Ginny laughed. "How'd we ever prove something like that to pay off the bet?" she asked innocently.
Andrea didn't answer, just chuckled silently to herself. She had glanced at the Stern woman several times during the meal in the large dining room and once or twice had found an answering look. The thrill of it had almost been too much. But there was a sexiness about Belle Stern that drew Andrea to her and she felt that she was projecting the same magnetism.
Oh, it was nothing she could pin down for sure, but it was there. A couple of glances, a feeling. The way she looked over the heads of most of the girls, but her eyes stayed ever so slightly longer on Andrea. That's how she could tell. Thinking of it now brought a warmth to her loins and she had a moment of panic. That was the trouble being in such a commune as this. No privacy. 'very little. But she had ways of masturbating that would be virtually undetectable. If she really wanted to, that is.
After supper there was singing around the campfire and all of the girls began to feel a part of the camp. Mary played her guitar accompaniment to the singing and the crackle of the fire seemed to draw them all closer together. When, finally the embers were put out and each girl went to her cabin, there was a feeling of nostalgia mingled with a new camaraderie. Andrea and Ginny waited for Mary, but she told them to go on, that she had something to talk over with Belle. The girls walked back to their cabin alone.
Undressing, Andrea noticed how self-conscious Ginny was. Somehow this intrigued her. She had to admit that she really didn't know Ginny that well. They had never spent any time alone together, not like this-a few shopping trips, weekends when the parents were around. No mutual dates or anything. But she had assumed that Ginny was like herself, able to make out if she wanted to, until on the trip up, Ginny had confessed that she was not allowed to do a lot of things that Andrea took for granted.
Andrea's heart went out to Ginny, but she was not quite sure what to do. She was so sweet, but so square. Those kind always fall hard, she thought. When the pleasures of the world were opened up to them, they sometimes went ape-completely ape. Looking at Ginny, she had the feeling that she was that type. She obviously wanted a great deal more out of life than she felt she was getting. So what to do? What could she, Andrea, do to awaken Ginny to the things that made life a gas, an absolute ball? Her heart quickened. Ginny was naked in the lamp glow of the Coleman, just for the briefest of moments before she slipped into her new pajamas.
Andrea remembered back to her first awakening of pleasure. It was not with a boy, as she would have expected from her dreams and her desires, but with another girl. One much like herself, now, she had to admit. A friend in school, Natalie, had invited her to stay overnight with her. She could recall that evening with a more profound clarity now that she could see herself, her once self, in Ginny.
She and Natalie had laughed and giggled long after the lights were out. Then there was a silence in the room, the laughter echoes faded away, and under the covers, Natalie's soft hand, searching, sliding into her pajama bottoms, finding her nest, her softness, her eager virginity. Andrea's blood quickened in the remembering....
Natalie's hand on Andrea's thigh, at first, brought a delicious thrill to her loins. It was partly the intimacy, partly the secrecy of the very act that made it thrilling to Andrea. She felt her legs go weak, tingling as though they had fallen asleep like they sometimes did in movies when she'd be absorbed in the screen. Despite herself, Andrea had sighed. But her own hand found Natalie's and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
Encouraged by her friend's response, Natalie moved her hand in a gentle fashion up and down Andrea's outer thigh. Her hand seemed to lull Andrea into a cloudy state as though she had just smoked an entire joint of marijuana. She drowsed in a haze of contentment as Natalie's hand continued its soporific massage.
It was a strange feeling. Andrea still couldn't fully define how she felt. But the magic qf Natalie's hand made her bask like a sated kitten, enveloped in a dreamy fogbank of satisfaction.
Slowly, imperceptibly, without Andrea's realizing what was actually happening, Natalie's hand moved up and down Andrea's pajama-clad leg and thigh, on the inside. When Andrea finally realized the subtle change that had unobtrusively taken place, her insides quaked like soft marsh grass trembling from an earth tremor.
"Oh, my God," Andrea had breathed. "Feel good?" asked Natalie. "More than that," said Andrea. "I know, Andrea. But wait. Just relax a little more."
That was when Natalie's hand had reached over the top of Andrea's pajama bottoms and slid downward to her nest. The electric thrill that surged through Andrea's loins was the most exciting she had ever experienced. She wanted to enclose Natalie in her arms, squeeze her until she could squeeze no more. But there hadn't been time for that. Natalie pulled down Andrea's pajamas and was soon kissing her thighs, then the springy hairs around her cunt, finally her tongue entering the soft gate. Andrea had wanted to scream at the top of her voice with the ecstasy of it!
Instead, her body writhed as Natalie's tongue probed her inflamed sex with practiced expertise. "Oh, man, I'm coming!" Andrea had exclaimed.
Natalie had just buried her head deeper between the girl's thighs, her tongue finding new flesh to incite to flame. Andrea had thrown her legs up around Natalie's head with the excitement of gushing orgasm. And so it had gonedelight after delight consuming her until it had been her turn to practice what she had learned-to make Natalie as happy as she had made her.
Andrea smiled to herself at the remembering ... it had been no trouble at all, but in fact, a fine adventure that she had enjoyed. She felt complete-masculine and feminine all at once, a feeling she had longed for each time she had coupled with a boy. Nothing with sex had ever been quite so satisfying as that time with Natalie, she reflected. But looking at Ginny now, she thought, that perhaps it could again. She crossed her fingers as she slid under the covers.
"You going to bed?" asked Ginny, still flushed from the excitement of the day.
"Umm. Not to sleep. I just want to feel how soft it is. You?"
"Yeah, I guess so. I'm so tired. But I'm still up from all that's happened today."
"I know," said Andrea. "You need to relax. I can do it for you."
"You can?"
"Sure," said Andrea as she popped back up again to sit on the edge of her bunk. "Just lie down on your tummy and I'll be right down. It's an ancient Hindu secret passed on to me by a society of gnomes."
Ginny laughed and plopped on to her tummy. Andrea sprang down from her bunk and sat next to Ginny. She pulled up her pajama tops and began to massage Ginny's back and neck, gently but firmly.
"Hey, that does feel great," exclaimed Ginny.
"I told you. Relax some more. I'll have you nodding in a few minutes."
"Ummmm. It already feels delicious," sighed Ginny.
Andrea rubbed her hands over the blades of Ginny's back, up to her neck, softening the flesh under her deft fingers as she went. Ginny began to relax; a feeling of lassitude pervaded her entire body. Her eyelids became heavier and in a few moments she was fast asleep. Andrea gave her a pat on her bottom and whispered into her ear. "I'll come to you later."
Ginny turned over on her side and moaned but did not awaken. Had she heard her? Andrea didn't know, but she already knew what she was going to do.
Mary came in several moments later and tiptoed to her own bunk. She undressed while Andrea watched her. But Mary didn't seem to notice or to care. When she had turned down her own bunk, she turned out the lamp. "Good night, Andrea," she whispered in the dark.
"Good night, Mary," Andrea replied.
Andrea, though, didn't go to sleep. She waited a long time, for what seemed to her like hours, until she heard Mary's steady breathing. Andrea could see the counselor's form as she turned to the wall, her back to the room. Moonlight filtered in through the sides of the cabin where the tarpaulin was rolled up. In the distance, Andrea could hear the lap of waves on the lake and once, the lone cry of an owl testing its voice on the night air.
Andrea was conscious of the heavy sound of her own breathing as she slipped from underneath her covers. Stealthily, she climbed down from her bunk, falling light and barefoot on the rough hardwood floor. Her heart was thumping madly in her chest as she knelt beside the slumbering Ginny. She glanced once more at Mary's bunk, her pulse beating at her temples like an insistent swarm of bees. Moonlight danced on her blonde hair, lighting it with a shimmering halo. Her breasts rose and fell steadily under her pajama blouse and, gradually, she became calm. Ginny slept on, her breathing deep and steady. Her face was turned toward Andrea, and, suffused with tenderness, she reached out impulsively to stroke it.
Lovely Ginny, she thought, so warm and peaceful-so innocent and desirable. Andrea pulled the covers down a short ways and exposed the pajama-clad upper torso of the sleeping girl. She unbuttoned the topmost button and slipped her hand inside. Touching Ginny's soft breast brought a tingle to her own as the nipples throbbed with a surge of blood.
Andrea took one of Ginny's nipples between her fingers and began kneading it gently. As the nipple hardened like a kernel of corn, Ginny stirred slightly. Andrea bent down then and kissed her friend on the lips. Ginny's eyes opened and she would have gasped if Andrea had not then kissed her the harder, her moist full lips smothering any cry that might have sprung forth.
Ginny struggled to break free, startled by this sudden and unexpected awakening. But Andrea darted her tongue inside Ginny's mouth and found hers. Her hand was still on Ginny's breast, kneading, stroking, bringing a fire to Ginny's delicate mounds. Gradually Ginny relaxed in Andrea's embrace. Her own tongue began to respond to Andrea's probing. Sensing the change, Andrea diminished the intensity of her kiss, sighed, and broke her lips free of their clinging.
"Shhh!" she whispered to Ginny.
Ginny's eyebrows arched high in a question mark.
"Move over," Andrea whispered, putting her finger to Ginny's lips in an indication for silence.
Ginny shook her head, uncertain. Andrea shoved gently on Ginny's shoulders, pushing her, and moved her own body up on the edge of the bunk. Obediently then, Ginny scooted over and Andrea pulled down the covers and slid in the bunk next to the still startled girl.
"I want you, Ginny," said Andrea. "But be quiet or you'll blow it."
"No," breathed Ginny.
"Yes," said Andrea and took the girl in her arms.
Ginny's head swam as she felt the soft nearness of her friend. Her thoughts swirled with secrets unlocked, forbidden doors opening, half-understood dreams illuminating. A protest rose up in her throat, then fell back, stillborn, as Andrea's caresses blotted out any thought of stopping this madness, this overwhelming ecstasy.