Chapter 6
Troy made a move to pull the Mexican girl to him, and she bent over to give him an openmouthed kiss that was hot with soft promise. One of her breasts slipped out from the loose peasant blouse's wide neckline and dangled enticingly just above him. His hand cupped its fullness, and he marveled at its firmness. A brownish nipple pouted as a cool breeze swept across her naked skin, and Troy raised his head to warm it with his lips and hot breath. She shivered at the light caress, and the breast against his kiss quivered with the movement.
"For what we are about to do it is better that we become acquainted. It is proper for introductions. I am Lorena Diaz, and you are Troy Woodford."
He knew that she was talking only to postpone sex until desire became unbearable. He traced invisible patterns on her naked, golden skin and studied the tiny bumps of gooseflesh that rose everywhere he touched. Her play at his privates was maddening. The lesbian's masturbation had aroused him far more than he had believed possible, and now this girl had him almost at the peak of passion.
Lorena grinned as she sensed what was going through his mind. "We have too much heat. With me, it makes no difference, but I think I would get little pleasure out of you right now. So it is up to me to do something about it, no?"
She leaned over, and her lips closed on his erection. Orgasm came over him almost immediately. She drew back and waited until his spurting passion was spent; then she bent over him again with intimate kisses that renewed his arousal. Both her breasts had escaped from the loose confinement of her low neckline, and he half rose to massage the seductive mounds with both his hands. She drew back a moment to check his rigidity and then nodded in satisfaction at what her work had accomplished.
She pushed him back and raised her full skirt as she spanned his body with a knee at either side of his hips. He saw the start of her impalement, and then she let go of her skirt's hem to guide him into union. He hadn't quite known the extent of her wrought-up anticipation until he felt the core of her heat. She shook with an avid eagerness as she lowered herself slowly. Their bodies met at last, and she sighed in relief that there was no more of him to contain.
"You had me worried for a while there, Troy. I kept going down and you kept going up inside me until there was no more room in me for you. I don't think I could hold you if you were on top. It will be fun to try sometime."
He pulled her down to his chest and caught her lower lip between gentle teeth. She sighed at the tenderness of his kiss, and then she gasped as her bottom wriggled itself free of her first release of stored passion. He reached down and slid his palms under her skirt to sweep them up the backs of her thighs until he cupped both cheeks of her bottom in his hands. He held her close, and she sobbed out trembling breath in the hollow of his neck.
She placed her palms on the ground at both sides of his head and raised herself until her elbows were stiff and straight. She inched her knees forward until they touched the short ribs at his heaving chest, and then she raised and lowered her buttocks in a slow tempo that had an accompanying circular motion in it. She was no stranger to sexual intercourse, and her practice was perfect. Every minute or so she would hunch herself forward and backward in a quick jerk so that he would not become bored with the repetition of her other movements.
She was building up to something, and he found out what it was when she brought down another orgasm on one of the jerks. A few more jerks, and she did it again. He wondered how she found the strength to continue for each time she came was more violent than the last. She looked down at him, and her eyes were pleading.
"For God's sake, hurry up and come, will you? I'll go on this way until you do. This is tearing me apart inside."
He didn't know if she referred to his size or the intensity of her own emotions, but he put his arms around her back and pulled her down. He rolled her to her side and, for the first time, did a share of the work. He held her so that she couldn't move, and then he lunged and withdrew repeatedly as he carefully gauged the length of his drive. He gave her the full benefit of shaft from head tip to the touching of groins.
She climaxed four times in succession and then erupted as he let go. He lost his grip on her with the utter abandon of her barbaric violence as she experienced the ultimate in sex. She was panting through an open mouth, and she rubbed her bare breasts against his shirt as new throbs of ecstasy swept through her body. It was all over, and she still throbbed until she collapsed limply for lack of breath.
She recovered quickly and then raised herself on elbows again to stare deep into his eyes. "You move me, man! I used to think that sex was sex, and it was only a means to an end.
You know, you get hungry for sex once in a while and you get it over with at the first chance. This was different. You don't suppose that I'm in love with you, do you?"
Troy was cautious. It had been a delightful experience, and he didn't think that he could ever tire of repetition, but what he had felt had been just sex. Intriguing sex, satisfying sex, hot sex, but only sex. He looked at her again and knew that he would be proud to have her at his side throughout the rest of his life, but something was missing. Their union had lacked the thrill of something that was hard to define in words, and that thrill was what he had sensed in those dreams where he found his soul mate. He was careful that she read only desire on his face. Her fine brow knitted itself into a pondering knot and she slowly shook her head.
"No, Troy, I do not think that it is love. I would be no good for you anyhow."
She pushed at him, and he rolled to his back with her still joined to him. She tested her weight on quivering knees and then raised her bottom ever so slowly in order to feel to the last vestige the togetherness they had shared. Finally she fell to her side to rest.
"Why do you say that you wouldn't be good for me? Hell, girl, that was the best piece of tail that ever came my way. I imagine that between us it was no accident. We could do it like that again and again. I'm easy to get along with."
"No. Owney and I and Janey Daybird are professional whores. Oh, I know that we're bill-boarded as a singing group, but none of us has real talent. Not big-time talent. Owney's a Negro, Janey's an Indian, and I'm a Mexican, and we get bookings because the people who hire us are afraid not to. They're afraid that their business would be spoiled if someone accused them of racial discrimination."
"But if you get paid for singing, why whore?"
"Money, man. We'll never be as young or desirable again. Another few years and we'll get fat and sloppy. Each time we turn a trick it goes into a pot, and we never spend any of that money. We live on our bookings and save the other. We'll have enough in a few more years to open our own joint and be set for life."
She left him then, and as he put himself back together again, he thought about what she had said. It made sense and he was surprised that the three young girls had planned so well. They chatted amiably on the way back to camp and she halted him just out of sight of the others.
"You better go on ahead. You don't want to be seen with a Mexican whore."
"Don't be so damned silly." He took her arm and led her to the campfire. He had never before allowed his choice of acquaintance stand in the way of anything, and he wasn't about to start a bad habit now. Besides, Lorena had given him a sexual experience to be treasured to his dying day. She had freely donated to him an intimacy that was rare and precious.
Jefferson Burns and the hippie, Bart Coldridge, were waiting for him. Troy wished that he could go somewhere alone and relive the last hour again, but that was not for now. Burns began by talking too loud.
"Where in the hell have you been? Don't answer that. I think I can guess." He looked leeringly at Lorena, and Troy wished that he could hit the nasty bastard. It would serve no purpose except to raise a new antagonism, and he let the insinuation pass. He waited.
Coldridge cleared his throat and started speaking nervously. We've got to get out of here. It isn't safe with the fire still burning down there. You should be making plans instead of-"
"Instead of what? I'd like to know just who you think is responsible for us being here anyway. Who the hell was it that took off up here? Who knocked me cold when I tried to make sense?" Troy was mad now. "Let me tell you exactly what we're in for."
He stood up and stepped onto a rock to gain a little height so that all of them could hear him. They were expectant, and he had their full attention.
"Coming up here was a bad mistake. I don't mean coming to this camp, but coming back up the mountain. We're still in danger of the fire. At Casper's Crossing there was a large firebreak, and the fire had already passed through. There was little chance of its returning to cause us any trouble. Another thing-no one knows we're here. We're off the regular tour run. As far as I know, no one's been up here for six months or so. Who's going to look for us here?"
There were a few mutterings, and Burns hung his head as some of the passengers glared at him. Troy continued, "We've got a few blankets, but we need shelter. We'll have to do some work on one of these building to make it livable. We're short on food, and I don't see any chance of rescue within a week. There's more, but that's enough for now. Remember that we're still alive and there's a good chance that we'll come out of this all right if we don't panic."
He stepped down from the rock and was surprised to hear a bit of applause. He didn't like that at all. It reminded him that they all looked to him for survival. His responsibilities were on the increase, and he was not sure he liked making decisions for others.
He squatted by the fire, and Angela Holmes brought him a tin can of hot, black coffee. She smiled comfortably at him. For the first time today, he felt himself relax a little in the congenial warmth of that smile.
"Here, I've been saving this for you. You should have scared them more. I was born in high country, and I think I have a pretty good idea of our predicament. How does the fire look? Shouldn't we be widening the fire break?"
Troy shook his head. "Maybe, but it would only be to give them something to do. Look around you here. There's thousands of board feet of timber below us. We couldn't clear that out in a hundred years, even with heavy equipment. We're on the tip of the torch if it takes hold with a wind. Maybe we wouldn't burn, but our air would be sucked dry of oxygen and we'd be baked to a crisp in minutes. There's no place to run except to go back down and meet it head on."
"I've heard that the safest place in a fire is to run through it to the burn."
"True, and that's what we'll eventually have to face, I think, but let's be careful to pick the time and the place. Right now the fire's going through brush pockets that go up like fireworks at the touch of a match. Feel like running through a twenty or thirty foot wall of flame?" She shuddered, and he was sorry he had frightened her.
She poked at the waning fire, and he studied her every small gesture. She was pleasant to watch, and every line of her body held a natural grace that was anything but tiresome to see. Her face was like an interesting book where every page mirrored some new emotion or enthusiasm. She had an overall serenity that took away some of his own anxiety, and it worried him to know that some of her serenity was due to her complete trust in him.
She went with him to where Helene and Willa guarded their slim food supply, and he took a mental inventory. The result was discouraging and he couldn't conceal his dismay over the scant stores. Helene tried to joke about it, but they all knew that she was as tense as the rest of them.
"Isn't there a cactus or something that we can eat to stretch this stuff out with? Maybe we should take in the local library and read up on survival."
Forced grins accompanied her sally, but no one was in a gay mood when Troy totaled it all up.
"My guess is that we run out in less than two days. No cactus around, but there is watercress around the spring. Some of you might gather pine nuts and the scrub oak acorns are edible if they're roasted. You can suck the sweet off ripe sumac clusters, but I don't think there's much food value in it. I don't want anyone going off to forage alone, but there are a few possibilities we can try. A thorough search of the buildings might turn up something."
Willa and Helene went off to form a search party for the buildings, but Angela knew that Troy had little hope of help from that source.
"There's something else on your mind, isn't there? I'd say that it involves a little bit of danger. What's on your mind?"
"Meat. We need meat and lots of it. We could make it with even a small deer. The fire is chasing out the animals down below."
"I'm your gal for that. I hunted all through my girlhood with my father and brothers. I'm the best brush beater you ever saw. When do we start?"
"I'm not taking any women along."
"Don't be childish, Troy. Be practical. You can't go alone. Burns and that Coldridge man are useless. That leaves Jay Berry, and he's city born and bred. Bring Jay along, but take me with you. I'll follow along on my own if you don't."
She was being practical, and he had no choice but to accept her help. She looked capable enough, and he knew from his study of her that she moved freely and easily with very good coordination in all she did.