Chapter 3
Joanna Grant opened her eyes and rolled over on to her back. The early morning sun was slanting in through a crack in the curtains masking the porthole; probing the gloom of the cabin and striking fugitive gleams from the sequins decorating the neck of the cocktail dress -- now thrown carelessly over the back of a chair -- that she had worn last night. She allowed herself to waken gradually, stretching luxuriously between the soft sheets as the stateroom assembled itself in the dim half light. One by one she became aware of the sounds and sensations around her: the distant pulse of the Arcadia's turbines, the lazy rise and fall of the bunk as the ship rode the Mediterranean swell, the quiet, even breathing of her young husband beside her, a subdued clatter from the far end of the companionway as Alfred Maddon prepared the early morning tea and coffee trays.
Soon the steward would be rapping on their door with black coffee and orange juice. He was an odd man, Joanna reflected, attractive in a creepy way too -- but there was something about him that made her nervous. It was his eyes, she thought. They almost made you feel . . . yes That was it! -- as though he were undressing you in his mind! She was always glad to have Bob near her when Maddon was around. She was glad to have Bob near her anyway. She loved him very much and they had a lot of fun together. Yesterday had been great. They had spent the morning in the pool, kidding about with some other young folks. It had been nice, too, to win another round of the deck-tennis tournament. It made her feel good to see Bob's athletic figure darting about the court, and proud that she was his wife. It was too bad that he had gotten a little drunk after dinner.
There had been a ship's concert and they had all gathered afterwards in the saloon for a nightcap. It was a merry party . . . they had been drinking champagne with their dinner; now, after the performance, a couple of brandies raised their spirits still farther.
Then, just as they were about to go to bed, the Bonners had joined the group and insisted on buying another round. Joanna had wanted to leave after that, but Bob had mulishly urged her to stay. He wasn't going to be patronized by any jumped-up ad man, he said. He'd damned well stay until it was his turn again and see the thing out!
He'd gotten more and more tipsy, falling into a sullen silence after Len Bonner had made some quite innocent remark about younger men not favoring hard liquor as much as their fathers had. And when they had at last staggered to bed they'd had some stupid dispute that almost ended in a quarrel -- just because the Bonners had invited them to make up a party and go ashore today and Bob hadn't wanted to go. Finally he had started to make love . . . and then fallen asleep on her!
Joanna sighed, turning her blonde head on the pillow. It was too bad Bob wasn't a little more . . . flexible.
It was true, as he said, that the Bonners weren't their kind of people. Perhaps they were a bit ostentatious and uncultured. But even if Mrs. Bonner was a trifle flashy with her gold lame dress and her plunging necklines, she seemed a nice warm person. Certainly she had been most pleasant last night.
As for her husband, he might be coarse and bumptious as Bob said, but surely it was shortsighted -- especially in their position -- to ignore the fact that he was a very important man back home in California! He could certainly be of great use to Joanna, heading one of the biggest advertising agencies on the Coast. And he could put a lot of work Bob's way too, if only Bob weren't so stiff-necked about wanting to do it all on his own. Why, for God's sakes then, had Bob seemed to go out of his way to offend Mr. Bonner? There were two or three occasions, not long before they'd gone to bed, when he had been downright rude!
Joanna sighed again, turning onto her side. Although it was a lot of fun, marriage could be real difficult, too, sometimes!
The finger of sunlight had moved away from the chair. Now it was silvering the mirror above the make-up shelf, casting a wavering reflection on the cabin wall. But why should it be moving like that? She guessed it must be something to do with the motion of the sea. The motion of the ocean! She liked that! Smiling to herself, she let her eyes wander from the crescent of brightness dancing on the white paneling . . . and then tensed suddenly as she found herself staring straight into the open brown eyes of her husband. She'd thought he had been still asleep, but he had been watching her secretly all the time! It was a good thing he couldn't read her thoughts!
The flesh beneath the stubble blurring his upper lips and chin creased open and his white teeth gleamed in a smile. "Hey, baby!" he said lazily. "I guess I must have passed out on you last night. I must have been stinking!"
"You can say that again!" Joanna said severely. "You were terrible!"
"Ah, c'mon honey -- don't be mad! I'm sorry, really I am," Bob Grant cajoled. He turned to face her and Joanna suddenly drew in her breath as she felt the hem of her nightdress ride up to her hips and his fingers came into startling contact with her naked flesh. An electrifying shock rippled through her loins as she felt him stroke gently up towards the tender flesh of her sensitive inner thighs. A moment later he raised himself on one elbow and leaned across her to cup the full mound of one breast through the thin material of her flimsy nightgown.
"Bob . . . ?" she murmured questioningly. "Surely you can't be . . ."
He grinned at her in the dim light of the stateroom. "Can't be what? Can't be getting hot pants for you this early in the morning? Just try me!"
Removing his fingers from her thighs, he reached for one of her hands under the bed clothes and guided it over toward his own loins. She felt the hard rubbery head of his penis nosing wetly against her palm. As the heated shaft grazed rigidly against her, she gasped and said: "But darling we can't . . . not now! The steward will be bringing our coffee at any moment . . ."
"He can wait," Bob said tersely. "We'll tell him to come back later." He moved the palm of his hand softly over the ripely shifting mound of her breast, teasing the thin material of the nightdress against the nipple so that the tender bud of flesh hardened and stood up stiffly erect under his exciting caress. At the same time he released his wife's hand and began to stroke her thigh again. She uttered a small moan of pleasure as the tip of one roving finger found the narrow sensitive slit of her vagina, hesitated, and then gently thrust into it. Her hips arched involuntarily up from the mattress as the lewdly probing finger parted the soft blonde pubic hair and made sudden delicious contact with the quivering button of her clitoris.
It was already wet and slippery from the unexpected and unbidden desire that now coursed through her veins, and she sucked in her breath to hold back the groan of helpless ecstasy she felt building deep in her rapidly heaving chest.
Bob shifted the hand he held on her breast slipping the fingers inside the low neck of her nightgown to roll and tweak the erected nipple as he massaged the whole hair-lined slit of her pussy with the other. Tantalizingly, he caressed the throbbing inner flanges of her cunt, circling his middle finger around the swelling head of her clitoris as she squirmed and writhed beneath him.
Almost unconsciously, her own fingers clasped themselves around the hardened shaft of his cock, roiling the loose sheath of the foreskin slowly up and down the desire-engorged rod of flesh.
"God that feels good!" Bob panted. "Oooooooh, darling! Oh, Joanna!"
Suddenly he moved again. Raising his head, he took his hand away from her breast, reached behind him, and tore the covers off the bed. Then, dragging the length of his body up over her until he was staring directly into her passion-widened eyes, he eased his hips across her pelvis so that her fingers, and the hot rigidity of his penis within them, were jammed in the -- narrow crease of her thigh.
His cock felt enormous this morning, as though her slender fingers could only just meet around the ridged, sinewy hardness of the throbbing shaft. The bulbous head was now pressed wetly in her clenched hand, seeping its warm seminal fluid between her fingers to glide lasciviously across her naked belly. Automatically, she smoothed the viscous moisture around the glans, into the stretched folds of the foreskin and up and down the long, blue-veined member until the whole lust-stiffened length of it was as slippery as a well-oiled piston.
Above her, Bob groaned softly and crushed his mouth down on her open lips, plunging the heated wetness of his tongue deep into Joanna's throat. He forced his hands down between her shoulders and the mattress and ran them over the soft pliant curves of her back and hips, feeling the raised ridges of her spine oscillate almost imperceptibly as she undulated her voluptuous body up against him in a dazed hypnotic motion. Like the legs of a puppet pulled on invisible wires, her thighs spread of their own accord and he sank in between them, feeling the tautness of the tendons firm against the outside of his hips. He knew how they would feel later, when he had buried the excruciating hardness of his cock deep in her quivering white belly.
He shoved his hands farther down beneath her, cupping the fullness of her buttocks in the palms of his hands and pulling her willingly opened loins up tighter against him. Slowly, he moved up and down, sliding his lubricated shaft in and out of her clutching fingers, feeling it grow wetter and wetter with every thrust. Warm trickles of moisture coursed along down the sensitive skin of his balls to mingle with the dampness of her now impatiently waiting cunt.
Joanna's buttocks began a more urgent rotating movement, grinding hotly against his loins -- and then suddenly her legs, snaking out wide on either side of him, locked him to her. Her heels hooked over the backs of his knees and her calves pinioned his shuddering thighs, pulling him tighter up against her.
"Ooooooooh, Bob! Do it to me now, darling!
Put it in now!" she gasped into his open mouth, her eyes tightly shut and her pelvis writhing uncontrollably.
Moaning with desire, her husband began to shift his hips, dragging a hand out from under her writhing ass cheeks to reach for his wetly throbbing penis. But Joanna was too quick for him, thrusting the slippery shaft across her belly and rolling the rigid cock of male flesh toward her aching cuntal opening. Their fingers met stickily around the iron-hard member, sending wild shivers of excitement surging through each of them as together they guided the pulsating cock-head between the lips of her lust-moistened cunt. Bob panted heavily as he felt her teasing it up and down between her legs, grazing it damply against the drenched hairs of her vagina, forcing the blood-engorged cudgel into even greater hardness until it pounded unbearably from the agonizing pressure within the veins.
He couldn't hold back another second. Ramming his hips forward with a sudden cruel thrust, he drove the tip of his cock with a flesh-splitting surge into the widespread mouth of her pussy.
"Aaaaaaaaagh!" she whimpered beneath him as he felt the wide elastic-like sheath slide wetly over his sensitive naked flesh. "Ooooooh!"
He lunged farther and she moaned again. "Aaaaaagh!"
Then Bob levered himself up on his hands over his lovely blonde wife to give greater purchasing power to his loins and thrust again. The relentlessly invading rod drove inward another inch.
"Ooooooooh! Ohhhhh, darling!"
And another excruciating inch . . . "Ah, Bob darling! Aaaaaaalh!"
And then abruptly it stopped. His swollen cock had bored into her cunt, tight and hot at first, aching the full length of his rigidly pulsing shaft, then more easily as the wetness of the passage lubricated the way; now the huge rubbery head nosed jarringly against the tender hardness of her cervix as his sperm-inflated balls slapped wetly into the wide-split crevice of her buttocks.
Joanna gave a low animal cry. She was skewered good and her husband lay for a moment with his penis imbedded to the hilt in her moistly clasping vagina, waiting for the shock of his entry to subside. Then, far up in her soft white belly, he flexed the blood-filled cock-head, and she groaned, her teeth clenching behind her drawn back lips. He flexed once more . . . and Joanna groaned again, more soothingly this time as her thickly invaded vagina grew accustomed to the alien length within it.
The young commercial artist began a slow revolving motion of his pelvis, grinding his massive cock firmly into her naked cuntal flesh, expanding the ridged and gasping walls of her vagina until they fitted the pulsating shaft like a warm, tight fitting glove. She squirmed from side to side as she strained under her husband's weight, arching her loins up, lifting them both momentarily off the bunk. Mewling ceaselessly beneath his pounding body, she began to open and close her legs around his hips as she thrust upwards to meet him on every spearing plunge.
Her mouth gaped wide, and her blonde hair flailed from side to side on the pillow in wild abandon. As he drove his cock rhythmically into the lust-heated wetness of her vagina, a stream of warm moisture ran down the widespread cuntal crevice to saturate his fingers where they still held her hair-fringed pussy-lips wide for his flesh-splitting attack.
Bob sensed his cock growing and expanding still farther inside her until it felt as though it would burst from the exquisite pleasure mounting in his balls as they slapped wetly against her buttocks below. It wouldn't be long now he hoped. He knew he could do it this time. He had to! He had got to hold back until she had cum!
He began ramming it into her with long hard strokes, striving to excite her to completion. Their bodies were steamy with perspiration as they ground frenziedly into each other. Her swelling breasts rose and fell voluptuously under his pounding chest; their bellies slapped nakedly together in the airless cabin; their thighs were gliding one over the other as easily as the greased shaft of his penis raging in and out of her seething cuntal passage.
He could tell she was near her climax as she gripped him with her ankles and knees, opening and closing them around him in lewd rhythm with his long hard thrusts into her wetly clasping pussy. She gurgled softly beneath him, the sounds bubbling up from deep in her throat as though she had no conscious control over them. He knew it couldn't be long now and he continued the merciless thrusting up between her legs with all his strength.
"Aaaaaaah! Do it to me, darling! Do it to me hard!" Joanna chanted, spurring her young husband on with the pounding of her heels high on his muscular back. She had jackknifed her legs up high, pulling her knees back savagely towards her shoulders to offer him the widest opening of her upraised loins. Her body was white-hot. She clasped him with the backs of her calves, winding her tapered legs around his pumping body as her eyes rolled uncontrollably in her head. Her ankles were locked tightly together behind his shoulder blades now, spiraling her ravenous cunt up the full length of his hard plunging shaft.
Her face was contorted and straining for the final explosion of exquisite sensation that was so near . . . so near . . . so near . . . just a fraction of a second away.
And then it happened.
The accelerated friction of the moist elastic cuntal sheath sucking at his throbbing cock was too much for Bob! An irresistible flood of feeling built up in the nerve ends deep in his balls and surged relentlessly outwards -- a towering wave of passion that hurled him forward on its seething crest and then broke thunderously about his ears!
He was too young and too inexperienced to control it. He gasped, and his mouth clamped down desperately on hers as he uttered a long groan that swelled to a cry of despair. His penis began jerking uncontrollably and he spewed his lust-heated sperm far up into her wildly dilating cuntal passage. She could feel it jetting against the tip of her cervix in great gushing torrents, deflating his cock with each scalding spurt . . . and she was still tenths of a second away from her own orgasm!
"Bob!" she was panting. "No, darling, no! Not yet! Please not yet, my love! Wait for me . . . wait for me!"
She squeezed the cheeks of her buttocks up hard against his already softening penis in a desperate attempt to keep it within her. Her naked heels pounded into his spent body as she sobbed her frustration into his widely gaping mouth. Her seething belly ground frantically against his suddenly slack loins, but it was no use. With a long sigh, he rolled from between her frantically gyrating thighs to lie exhausted beside her on the bunk, his head turned away from her and his lower lips clamped ashamedly between his teeth.
Joanna was crying with disappointment and rage. To have been unfulfilled the night before last . . . to have had her husband fall into a drunken sleep just when she had become inflamed with desire last night . . . and now to have been aroused when she had been perfectly happy lying here thinking -- only to be left high and dry once more! It was intolerable!
She kicked her legs out wide and dropped her own hands to her unsatisfied cunt, manipulating ineffectually the hair-lined slit up between her thighs. Greedily, desperately, she thrust two fingers into the cum-drenched cuntal passage, attempting to reach the impossible depths of the vanquished penis that had just slipped wetly from her cunt to betray her to the demons of unfulfillment.
And it was then that Alfred Maddon knocked on the cabin door and threw it open in a single brisk movement.
Bob Grant only just had time to scramble the sheet over himself and his wife before the steward was walking springily across the cabin to lay the steaming coffee tray on the table beneath the porthole. "Good morning, good morning," Maddon said breezily. "And a very good morning it is too! Sun's up, sea's blue. . and we'll be ashore again today, thank goodness!"
He tweaked the curtains aside to let the sunlight flood the cabin and turned to face them.
His crafty Cockney's eyes took in the scene at a glance -- and interpreted it correctly. The hurried movements as he opened the door, the odor of sex in the airless room, young Grant's sullen, handsome face turned away from the girl, Joanna's big eyes, red with crying, staring flintily at the ceiling . . . they all meant one thing to him, and one thing only. The young couple had been having a bash before breakfast, and the kid had buggered it up! Come off before the skirt was ready, by the look of things, clumsy young bastard! Maybe she'd be better off with Len Bonner at that! At least the advertising man knew what he was doing, and good luck to him! Come to that, the steward thought lustfully, he wouldn't mind having a go at that blonde bird himself! Those tits of hers were out of this world!
If ever he did get the chance to lay his hands on that luscious piece of stuff, he'd shove his bloody cock so far up her cunt she'd be able to suck him off from the inside! God, he'd like to grab her right now and throw it to her as she lay on that bunk, whether her pussyfoot husband was watching or not! There'd be something in it for the boy too, come to think of it, he reflected: that little scene they'd worked up in the Bonnets' cabin after he'd been tricked was very interesting! Very interesting indeed!
He poured two cups of coffee and carried them over to the bed. "We drop anchor at ten," he said, "and the tenders will be alongside from ten thirty. So you'd better look slippy if you want to get up and get a good breakfast inside you before you go ashore."
"Thank you, steward," Bob Grant said distantly. His wife was still staring expressionlessly at the ceiling. With an inward smile, Maddon bowed slightly and left the cabin.
For some time after he had left, neither of them spoke or moved. And then Joanna said tonelessly, "We'd better get a move on as he says. Do you want to use the tub first, Bob or shall I?"
"Don't forget your coffee, darling," Bob said.
"I guess I don't want any coffee this morning, thank you."
"No coffee? But you always say you don't feel half way human until you've had your coffee, honey. What gives?"
"Maybe I am only half human . . . this morning," Joanna said coldly."
"Then drink your coffee for God's sakes! What's the matter?"
"Matter?" Joanna repeated, as though it was the first time she had heard the word. "What do you mean, what's the matter?"
`Swell I mean . . . like something's up, isn't it?
Don't you feel good or something?"
"I feel fine," Joanna said. "There's nothing the matter with me . . . I feel fine."
"Then why . . . ?" Bob scratched his head in bewilderment. "I don't get it. You act as though you were mad or something. Look . . . if it's about last night . . ."
"It's not about last night." "Then what is it about, baby?"
"It isn't about anything. There's no `it' for there to be anything about."
"Aw, honey. Quit talking in riddles will you?" Bob gulped down his coffee, grimaced wryly, and turned towards his wife. "Did I say something? Did I do something?"
"You didn't do anything," Joanna said pointedly. "And sometimes you say too much." "Hell! All I did, I asked you what was the matter and . . . ."
"And I said nothing. End of conversation. Period."
"But you just said . . ."
"Oh God, do you have to go on and on and on?" Joanna interrupted irritably. "Sometimes you're just a little boy! As Alfred said, it's time we got moving, Robert. Go take a shower or we shall be late."
"Late for what?" her husband asked sharply. The nucleus of an idea was taking shape in his mind. It was something Joanna had said a moment ago . . . something about his not doing anything. He was sure he must be wrong, but if he was right and she'd meant that . . . The thought sent a flush of humiliation sweeping across his face.
The blonde on the bunk sighed patiently.
"You can't have been that drunk," she said. "Have you forgotten we promised to make up a party with the Bonners to go ashore . . . at . . . wherever it is."
"We did not!" Did she think he'd failed her somehow? The unwelcome idea was becoming clearer in his mind. If he was right, maybe that was why she was so irritable! He'd heard men say often enough that women were pretty damned screwball that way! But the thought was so unwelcome that he refused to accept it. If it was true but it couldn't be true! . . . then it meant that, at least in part, he would be to blame. And since his subconscious mind couldn't permit him to be at fault he transferred the blame elsewhere.
"We did too," Joanna was saying. "You know perfectly well they asked us and we accepted . . . not with a very good grace on your part, I must say."
"They're dreadful people," Bob said. "Flashy and coarse and vulgar."
"Ten thirty at the gangway," his wife said. "On the first tender away."
"We don't want to get mixed up with that class of person. He's a boor -- a crude, uncultured, semiliterate boor. As for the woman, she's not much better than a cheap hustler."
"Robert Grant! How can you sit there and say such things! I thought Harriet was a very nice person," Joanna said warmly.
"Oh, so it's Harriet now, is it? Getting very intimate all of a sudden, aren't we?" the young man sneered. "Well, I don't want you to associate with them. I told you before, the kind of people you meet in that job of yours are going to do us no good at all."
"I happened to meet these particular people on board this ship -- on a cruise paid for by your father."
"Oh, don't drag the old man into it again! Please! Just because I'm lucky enough to have a generous family, you have to keep on beefing about it, on and on and on! I should have thought you'd have been glad enough to take advantage of their generosity. I don't see any cruise tickets in the mail from your family!"
"That's a mean thing to say!" the girl cried angrily. "You know perfectly well that all my folks are out in Iowa, and they're in no position to . . ."
"So you make do with your . . . friends . . . in the ad man's world. Well they're not good enough, that's all. The sooner you give up that modeling crap the better. Making an exhibition of yourself for every dirty old man on the Coast to see!"
"I don't notice any complaints from you when I deposit the money I earn in our account!" Joanna flashed.
He was breathing heavily, his face flushed -- with anger now. "I see. Now my job's not good enough for Madam! It's the men with the money she likes. Men like the charming Mr. Bonner, I suppose?"
"He's a big man in my business back home. And in yours too, if only you were intelligent enough to see it."
"So we have to crawl up his ass on our vacation, in the hope that we can pick up some crumbs from the rich man's table? No thank you! I'd sooner get the work on my own account and stay poor."
"Well your wish has been granted so far, hasn't it?" the girl said sarcastically. "Without the money I earn, we'd still be living in a rented room on the wrong side of town!"
"But I want you to give it up. I just told you."
"That's exactly what I mean, Robert. You don't give a damn what I feel or what I want. Just so long as your ego isn't tarnished, that's all you care! All right, let's go back to that rented room -- then at least you can say: `I did it all myself."
They stared at each other, scarlet with rage. Finally Bob said stubbornly: "Okay. So I'm wrong again. I guess I always am. I'll listened to you, I'd sure begin to believe it! But that doesn't alter the fact: we're not going ashore with the Bonnets today . . . or any other day. And that's final."
"You're so hipped up on manners and politeness," Joanna said frostily. "How d'you think these uncultured boors, as you call them, will take it if we back out on a date we made only last night? Is that cultured? Is that polite?"
"I don't give a shit what they think. We're not going, is all."
"What a nice way to talk to your wife! These college boys are so cultured, don't you think?"
"Fuck the college boys. Fuck the culture. And fuck you too, for that matter," Bob shouted rudely. "I say we're not going, and that's that!"
"But we agreed to go."
"You may have done. I didn't."
"Well okay . . . if I agreed to go, then I'm going on out and going."
"I'm not," the young man snapped -- and he lay down on the bunk and pulled the covers up to his chin.
Joanna glared at him and then leaped from the bed and headed for the bathroom door. "Robert Grant," she said accusingly, "do you mean to tell me that you'd let me go ashore in a strange city with strange people . . . and stay right here on the boat and do nothing about it?"
"Oh, shut. up, Jo, for Pete's sake!" her husband groaned.
She was furious now, her nostrils pinched and white, the corners of her mouth turned down. "You're just selfish," she cried. "That's what's the matter with you . . . you're plain selfish. You're selfish in bed and selfish out of it, and that's the truth! . . . Well all right, I will go ashore with Mr. and Mrs. Bonner. You can stay here and sulk if you want; I intend to go into that town and have a whale of a time, so there!"
As she whisked into the bathroom and slammed the door, he turned his face to the wall and closed his eyes.
An hour later, after they had dressed in silence and he had walked up on deck alone, he stood watching the gangway from behind a ventilator as the tender nosed alongside and the Purser prepared to shepherd the passengers ashore. Across the harbor, a range of hills blue with distance serrated the skyline behind the jumbled roofs and narrow shuttered facades of the waterfront. The shore party crowding into the long slim launch were chattering excitedly. For a moment Bob caught sight of Joanna, wearing a white linen suit and a bright forced smile, talking to Len Bonner, florid and perspiring in a yellow shantung jacket. Then they were lost to sight under the awning sheltering the fore-deck from the beating sun.
The tender's rudders thrashed and she circled away from the Arcadia and headed across the sparkling sea for a jetty in the center of the port.
"So exhausting, don't you think?" a voice murmured beside him. "It's the only time you can really take advantage of the amenities aboard -- when everyone else has gone ashore!"
He swung around. Harriet Bonner, provocatively attired in very short yellow shorts and a revealing halter top, was standing with a seductive smile at his side.