Chapter 1
Deep brown eyes, wide set and feathered by spidery lashes, squinted through rose-tinted sunglasses perched on a high cheek-boned face. Carla tucked auburn waist-length hair behind her shell-like ear, and shivered. "Look! There's our turn-off. It's got to lead to the beach!" Her voice strained above the heated growl of Paul's MG convertible.
The California five o'clock sun hung like a fireball on the western slope of a jagged Big Sur mountain framing the backdrop of Pieffer Park. If they wanted to find a camping spot on the beach, decisions must be fast in the making.
That came easily to Paul, a self-starting music promoter from Venice, California. The MG fairly spun on its rear wheels in a tight left-hand turn following the hand signal of his fianc'e's red polished fingertip. Out of the corner of his eye, an ever-alert blue one caught the braless jiggle of Carla's breasts hugged tight in a red and white striped jersey that hugged her milky mounds caressingly ... as his hands were aching to!
Slowing long enough to shift from second to first gear, he glowered at a "No Trespassing" sign hung by a two-penny nail to a dusty pine tree at the fork of the road dividing public property from private. Such signs offered little deterrence to city campers who'd come for a noiseless night under the stars and an open vista unto the vast Pacific, rugged and mean as a Sumo wrestler here in untamed Big Sur.
Dust billowed like dragon breath as Paul played the steering wheel like a child driving bumper cars over the eroded pot holes leading from Highway One to a veritable cow trail winding hopefully toward the beach. Paul squinted over the car hood, suddenly aware of a lack of tire tracks. "Doesn't look like anybody's been on this road for a while! Maybe we're in luck!"
Overhead wisps of fog charged off the ocean, dissipating in the mid-August air, leaving the distant mountains to glow orange in the last few hours of sunlight. The air became tangibly moist ... balmy, like the chilled lining of a damp rain coat.
Two miles westward, judged by the meter, the rugged road opened onto the gray Pacific. Through low hanging tree boughs, they could see choppy, high-tide waters washing up on the yellow-lighted beach in warm streaks of summer sun. Four eyes scoured the shoreline for campers. Nothing moved on the beach save for entangled seaweed and kelp, washing up on the beach like a woman's hair. The solemnity was eerie, too definitive to be comfortable for those accustomed to the raucous Los Angeles night life that ages men like Paul well beyond his years-if he's not careful.
Carla shivered and swung around to rummage under the backpacks and camping gear for a heavy knit sweater. She shot Paul a quick, disconcerting glance as he braked thirty yards from the beach and clung to the leather-covered steering wheel, searching the beach mesmerically with the unspoken sensation that despite its purity, this was no virgin beach. Now why would I think that?
"What's the matter?" Carla caught a flicker of in-decisiveness behind his amber-colored sunglasses.
"Nothing ... I was just wondering why Chet didn't beat us here." He made small talk, pushing aside the disquieting premonitions.
"I could tell you why!" She cast her fiance a knowing look. He shrugged acknowledgingly. "You don't think we'll get in trouble for camping here, do you?"
"Naw. But I wish I knew who owned this property." Paul hung his sun-glasses on the mirror where they dangled, shooting prisms of light in the leather-interior convertible.
"I'm freezing!" Carla shivered, anxious to peel out of her shorts and into warmer and more modest attire. "Let's get settled before they get here." She rolled her eyes heavenward, a gesture which Paul chose to neglect.
Paul hopped over the car door and took off for the windswept forest of storm-bent pine offering a windbreak from the roaring ocean. He searched for a dry patch of even ground to set up camp for the weekend. No one heard the whine of his zipper as, with back to the car, he urinated into the marshy spring-fed ground trickling toward the Pacific. His eyes roamed over the pine-needled ground, surprisingly clear of litter which mars most California beaches. Maybe the owner was one of those fanatics, he surmised, his mind ticking away at breakneck speed reluctant to shed city pressures for the slower pace of nature's subtleties. Poor old bastard probably comes out here every night with a plastic bag to clean up the beach.
"Hey, Paul!" Carla cupped her delicate hands to her mouth. "Come here!" Through the low-hanging boughs Paul caught the slender figure of his fianc'e gesturing wildly. He yanked up his zipper and dug the heels of his lizard cowboy boots into the damp sand, reminding himself to change into his old tennies before he ruined his city stompers.
Ocean breezes tossed Carla's auburn hair about her shoulders wildly, curtaining her lovely aristocratic face. She pointed to a leaning pine tree supporting a back pack with attached sleeping bag. Beside it sat a Coleman cooler. "Looks like we have company, sure you want to stay here?"
Paul scoured the beach with his eyes. With intent deliberation, he reached down ran his fingers over the backpack. "It's damp, almost molded, like it's been here awhile."
"Don't be silly! Who would run off and leave their backpack and God knows how much a cooler like that costs. Sixty dollars maybe!" She watched concern furrow his brow and, noting this, he hastily lightened his attitude.
"You're right. I don't mind sharing the beach if you don't." He swung his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close to his chest and kissed her forehead. "I wish we would be alone all weekend, you and me." He breathed deeply, pulling balmy air into his city-polluted lungs. "God, it feels great being off Hollywood and Vine!" Holding her at arms length, he tucked an obdurate strand of hair behind her ear, his eyes fastening on the gold earring sprinkled with sunlight. "It wasn't my idea that Mae and Chet come along." He jerked his head and shrugged his shoulders innocently. "You know what happens when you have a couple drinks and start making plans you can't back out of."
Carla turned her face from him. He waited for the shy smile of acceptance that he had grown to love. None came. Clearly, she was troubled ... about more than sharing the beach with unseen strangers!"
"Hey, what's the matter?" he questioned, knowing very well the cause of her discontent. "You're not- having it, are you?" Paul sighed with self-pity. Nothing worse than going camping with a woman at that time of the month. Carla could get awfully out of sorts ... downright bitchy and he needed her vibrance and acceptance this weekend, with his outrageously sexy ex-girl friend strutting her bikini-clad body on the beach.
And Mae would do just that with biting deliberation. He needed Carla to be competitive this weekend, strut her stuff too, instead of withering in the shadows. He didn't want Mae to beat Carla at her own game and, unless Carla opened her myopic eyes, that was inevitable.
Carla pulled loose of his clutch. "No that's not the problem ... " And emotionless expression was plastered painfully on her face.
"It's Mae, isn't it? You hate the idea of spending the weekend with Chet and Mae, don't you?" More than a suggestion, it was an accusation and Paul was smart enough to realize that. He tried to camouflage the caustic sting in his voice, but it was too late.
Narcissistically, Carla studied a chip in her red nail polish blemishing her thumb. "It seems a little weird, don't you agree?" Now she lifted her chiseled features, aristocratic and arrogant enough to be snobbishly alluring, a characteristic which had caught Paul's eye that night in the club. "Mae being an old client or yours, not to mention near-wife!" Her normally sweet voice was sour with borderline bitterness. "Not to mention the fact that she's treated me like dirt since you dumped her and started dating me!"
This again ... Paul raked fingers through his dark curly hair and turned a disgruntled profile to his fianc'e, choosing instead the white-capped waves crashing over boulders as his point of reference. His teeth ground together, rippling the strong line of his square jaw.
Feminine jealousy, dangerous and predatory as a mountain lion. Black vibrations, ill meaning and dangerously well targeted. This was going to be one unjoyous weekend, if she kept this up. Christ, he'd rather be sitting at his littered desk with a telephone receiver cradled on each shoulder, fingers punching at his calculator, struggling to make a buck ... than step between two feisty human cats.
He spun around, the cowboy heels of his lizard boots digging into the damp sand. "That was last year, honey ... this is now. N-O-W." He spelled it out for her, shaking her gently by the shoulders. "Come on ..." he grabbed her cold hand, squeezing it in his warm one. "Let's set up camp ... some place off by ourselves. I want you all to myself, understand?"
They unloaded the back seat and, parking the car safely under a grove of trees to avoid chipping the paint in case of blowing sand, Paul returned with a wine bottle tucked under his arm. He settled good-naturedly on the space blanket covered with zipped together sleeping bags splayed open and opened the bottle.
"Sorry I don't have a crystal goblet for my sweet," he apologized. "If you don't mind sharing germs ..." He handed her the bottle in a gesture as polite as Paul himself.
That toothy, well meaning grin on his handsome, tanned face, so self-assured and well meaning cut through the ice, tearing a warm smile of familiarity from Carla. The wind whispered through her hair tumbling about the bulky white Shetland wool sweater gave her a childish grace that no sour mood could curdle.
The anxiety of coming face to face with the woman who had been in her place the year before faded in the deepening orange sunlight as the sun hung precariously on the horizon. The lingering dread of spending a weekend struggling to keep pace with Mae's high-strung energy and near nymphomaniac cravings, thickened in her veins. Mae and Carla had been acquaintances; indeed, the blonde-haired striving movie star and entertainer had introduced the two at a Hollywood party.
I'm being a child, Carla rebuked herself moodily as she lifted her lips to the bottle of California burgundy and upended it thirstily. I can't let myself fall into a bad mood because Chet 's only going to let her win! And with a prize like Paul Baxford, it was a race worth running!
Still her heart beat a bit faster at her mind's eye image of Mae-her waist-length blonde shimmering hair and snappy blue eyes. And a body that wouldn't quit! She'd carefully fashioned herself after the 'Charlie's Angels' look. Leggy, slender hipped, generously buxom ... that was Mae and she wouldn't let you stop looking at her. Now for a weekend of feigned smiles and phony endearments. Not that she harbored any ill feelings against Chet. Oh, he was innocent enough. He had his hands full, keeping up with Mae. And to be realistic about it, Paul didn't have to pursue the idea of them going camping for a weekend. Lord knows, he'd used the excuse of having to work seven days a shot before.
Not that Paul and Chet were close friends, either; though Paul had Voiced a concern for the ne'er-do-well acquaintance who turned to alcohol to the extreme of late. The 'of late' being the start of his relationship with the illustrious would-be movie star.
Or was Paul's enthusiasm based on a deeper, more selfish concern-like cleansing his soul of the blonde-haired extrovert? wondered Carla, feeling the suspicions prick at her insides. Coincidental with the time Carla had met Paul, was Mae's sudden attraction for Chet, with his inherited Malibu Beach-front property and motorcycles and vans. A man who need not work has plenty of time for a woman, and Carla guessed that might be the case. Oh, this was a silly game of Hollywood Squares! she thought with bitter amusement. All the ifs and what thens were mind-boggling.
"Wonder what happened to them?" she quipped, catching his noncommittal expression out of the corner of her wary eye as she handed him the wine bottle.
"Like you say, they probably stopped in Big Sur for a quick one. I hear Chefs been hitting the bottle pretty heavy lately. It's his new drug."
"And yours?" she quipped.
"Need you ask?" Resting the wine bottle in a pine-needle bed, he playfully grabbed Carla's Levi pant leg and tugged her in his direction until she tumbled on the goosedown bed into his lap. "You ask too many questions ... get your tight little buns over here!"
"Oh, you ..." tutted Carla, knowing what was coming next. One thing about Paul: he was predictable when it came to sex. Once he got that glimmer in his blue eyes, that was it. Only one thing could extinguish it.
His masculine arms were around her, warming her from the ocean breezes growing more nippy with growing darkness. Flapping the sleeping bag over them, he kicked off his cowboy boots, set them protectively against the backpack, and, beside her in a kneeling position, he peeled down the tight, faded Levi's clinging to his muscular frame. In a second, back to the ocean, he was naked from the waist down. "You're gorgeous, you know that ..." he murmured, slowly lowering his hands to feet off her heavy wool sweater.
"I'm freezing!" she complained, feeling her nipples harden from the soft-fingered touch she'd learned to associate with love. With them it was love, passionate love ... not senseless lust that propelled women like Mae to carouse in singles bars and discos, finding new toys for a night's pleasure. He worked at the zipper of her Levi's then, stripping them down to her knees and lifting each foot in turn to unlace her tennis shoes until her wool socks and skimpy T-shirt were her only protection against the cold.
She shivered ... that old jealousy again. "I don't want you to compare me to her," she let burst unchecked. "You know what I mean? I couldn't stand to have you-"
"Come on, let's not start on that, Carla! I love you, you know that!" He eased her down in the sleeping bag, while the low-hanging pine boughs dipped' like green fingers overhead and the ocean's breezes sang a passionate song for them. His warm hands roamed over her firm breasts, tweaking her nipples under the skimpy protection of her T-shirt.
He had never stopped marveling at her beauty, high cheeked, almost arrogant in a touch-me-not sort of way. Shy, too, in the way she submitted to him, as though she was a virgin every time, as if he was the only man on God's green earth who could arouse her to where passion overwhelmed reluctance. And he was the only man! Of that he could bet a million dollars. He looked down at her now, smiling, while his hands kneaded the soft, tempting nakedness of her breasts.
A gush of emotion warmed Carla. Oh, she needed him to want her ... needed his love as a reassurance that she was the only woman for him. Not Mae, not any of the slender, bosomy models and would-be-actresses who clung to his arm the second he let the word 'talent agent' spill from his lips. Oh, how some of those cheap women would fall over him ... promising him any carnal pleasure for the promise of listening to a pro-tape. How cheap some women made love!
"Paul ... love me ... love me!" she pleaded, desperately. Insecurity stoked need. To feel him deep inside of her would integrate mind and body ... and with anticipation of Mae's sashaying bikini-clad body for the next forty-eight hours, Lord only knew she needed it!
Paul's eyes lowered to the curls of auburn fleece peeking out around the tight legband of her black bikini panties. His cock leaped for joy, blood fed and pointing skyward. He arched his groin, moving his hardened shaft up and down over the bowl of her soft belly, dipping into the jewel of her navel teasingly. He was on his knees, she sitting up. He groaned, feeling the heat of sexual fire raging like an inferno inside his lust-bloated penis and sperm-heavy balls.
Leaning back, his cock sprang up, leaping toward her breasts. For a moment, with the wind brushing his hair, he shut his eyes and let remembrance of Mae's tantalizing lips play in his passion-filled brain. God, how that woman had loved to suck cock! She had a technique that would make Xaviera Hollander seem like Pollyanna! He groaned from deep in his chest and slid up on the sleeping bag, angling his mushroom-tipped cock so that his brushed against Carla's dimpled chin.
His hand snaked along the down of the sleeping bag while his mind clung tightly, possessively to the lusty images of Mae's blood-red Marilyn Monroe lips ovalled around the head of his cock. Jesus, he had to admit, he hadn't had a gonad-crunching experience to match Mae's fervent suckings for a long while. Too long. God, help me, but I'm going to try ...
"Kiss me ... honey, kiss me there!" His hardened prick was a dribble away from her ruby lips. She need only to bend her head a few degrees and her mouth would be closed over the throbbing tip of his sensitive cock-head.
Carla shuddered, and not from the cold. "No ... no ... not that, honey! You know I don't like ... oh, please, let's not fight about that now!" She turned her face to the side, her features contorted in a worried look of revulsion as if to kiss him, to suck his penis in the velvety moistness of her mouth, was a foul, bitter thing to do. "Please ... just put it inside me," she whispered pleadingly. She moved forward, her arms encircling his head and pulling him downwards, full length along the warming pad of the sleeping bag. "I know you want me to ... but after we're married ... then I'll learn to."
Learn to? his mind raged. She should want to ... to please him, if not herself.
As always, the female won the war of do-nots and as always the urgent and gut-wrenching desire to feel his lover's delicate, soft, warm mouth close around his prick died like the fading sun. The image of her mewling and crooning as he spurted his white-hot sperm into her delicate throat vanished like fog on a summer's day. This was the one flaw in their otherwise-perfect relationship.
He held her tight, feeling her warm body undulate against his body, her softness grinding into his hardness as she rubbed her belly against his pelvis until her refusal was accepted and disappointment momentarily buried.
"Oh, honey ..." she read the grief on his face, the tight-lipped expression of doubt, a doubt of his fianc'e's sensuality. She had to eradicate that! "Don't be mad a me, honey. I need you inside of me so bad. You and me and the ocean," she whispered seductively, tearing his mind from his unholy desire.
"Yes ..." he heard himself acquiesce, shouting above his disbelieving libido, too many times quelled by need to keep the relationship moving on a smooth track. He drew her close to him, moved one hand down to cup the smooth curves of her buttocks tightly clad in black panties.
Carla glued her sweet-tasting, wine-scented mouth to his, darting her pink tongue in and out and along his even, white teeth, and then brazenly moved her hand down to grasp his throbbing penis in her hot fist. The sudden contact made him shiver, and he pressed his lips harder against hers to show his appreciation. The full length of her satiny, wind-chilled body ground and pushed, and then she spread her legs and thighs wide and hooking her thumbs in the elastic of her bikini panties, peeled them down. The moisture of her desire was evident. Paul's eyes descended to the pouting pussy mound where the crotch band of her skimpy bikinis was glued to the swollen, ragged lips of her cunt. A tiny wet spot attested to her passion. His penis beat like a separate heart.
Worming out of her panties, the cool ocean breezes played over the hot lips of her womb, wafting the auburn curls, long and silken like prairie wind over ripened wheat. "Give it to me, Paul!"
What man wouldn't? He lunged, his hips thrusting heavily as he drove into her like a pearl diver into aqua waters. He felt her fevered, pulsating cunt greedily clasp and milk him. She wanted all of him today, and Paul was ready to give it! Whatever it was that sparked this sudden wantonness, he wasn't questioning it; deep in his consciousness, the idea percolated that maybe it had something to do with Mae. He couldn't understand this insecurity over Mae, and didn't try now, not with her pussy pushed forward until the head of his cock was pressed hard against her spongy cervix, her motions squeezing into a muscle-spasming tempo.
Carla held him tight, feeling the muscles ripple in his back as she slid her legs around his back and pulled him tight to her, locking her slender ankles around him possessively. Paul grunted, and fucked into his fianc'e with maniacal fury. Oh, God ... he gnashed his teeth. He wasn't going to last long at this pace! Sometimes they would make love for hours, but not today. The ocean's vast energy must have something to do with it, he mused.
"Oh, Paul! Paul! You feel so good inside of me!" His voracious girl friend whimpered, kissing his neck and shoulders. "Yes ... that feels so good!" She babbled mindlessly ... which told Paul she was ready to cum. That was her sure-fire signal to let her have it!
And let her have it he did! His balls smacked against her buttocks punishingly, keeping rhythm with the ocean's roar as wave after high-tide wave slapped against the boulders. Her knees drew up as she raised herself higher off the sleeping bag until her buttocks were waving in the air and her moistly opened cunt bucked wildly back against his ramming penis.
"Ohhhh ... ohhh gooood dddd ddddl," she moaned out as if being strangled. "I'm ... I ... I'm going to-" With a deep-throated groan, Carla erupted beneath her lover's hard-pounding prick.
Paul threw back his head as if someone were holding a knife to his throat and groaned into the wind, the whispering pines absorbing his lusty cries. His cum churned through his swollen testicles and up his penile shaft, bursting through the unseeing eye to flood her hungrily milking cunt. Spurt after scalding spurt shot through that hole and into hers until at last he collapsed, a sigh of contentment mingling with her mewlings of satiation.
Sanity returned, and Paul edged his body off his girl friend and rolled over. Panting with contentment, she lay on her back, staring up at the striated feathery clouds in the sky that looked pregnant and tropical from the orange splash of the setting sun. God, if only she and Paul had the weekend alone ...
Her head popped upward. Amidst a billow of dust, a burgundy van with desert scenes painted on the sides zoomed toward the beach, the tape deck screaming out a Rolling Stones tune.
They scrambled for their clothes. Carla yanked up her Levi's just as the inebriated twosome hopped out of their van.
"Here we go ..." moaned Carla to the wind. "Forty-eight hours of her!"