Chapter 8
As Liz languidly walked from the hotel back toward Fran who waited for her by the pool, the sun was touching down below the tops of the thick green trees behind the cabanas. What a day this had been, she reflected as she moved around the pool toward the single figure of her older sister on the beachmat. Liz had never felt so good, so sure of herself. She was not sorry that she had allowed Charles everything, besides it was done, and she was now the possessor of a new awareness about herself that she had never known before. She had walked into the hotel little more than a few hours before just a girl. Now she walked out of it, back toward her sister, a woman.
Her body still tingled, she could still feel the warmth of Charles' massively throbbing penis and heated male sperm deep inside of her. She wondered lightly if all this showed in her face, if Fran would notice that something had happened to her. It had made her different, she knew it had, and it had to show! But whether it showed on her face she didn't know. She could even feel the sensual pleasure of the lingering wetness still trickling down through her matted pubic hair inside the loose bottom of her bikini.
She glanced down at herself wondering again if Fran would notice anything. She knew that she was not voluntarily going to tell her sister what had happened. No, this was something that was hers alone. She would never tell anybody! Idly she wished for an instant that the first man to take her could have been Al or even her brother-in-law, Bill, to whom she was so drawn. But she brushed that thought from her mind guiltily. Bill was Fran's husband and she recognized the twinge of conscience she felt for having let someone other than Al be the first. It would have been overwhelming if that had been her older sister's husband, with her back there on the bed inside the hotel. Or maybe not! She and Bill had been talking pretty heavy there by the pool.
Fran looked up questioningly as Liz approached.
"Well, how did it go?" Fran asked.
"He's going to do it," the young girl answered, smiling inwardly as she remembered the conversation she and Charles had just had lying together only a few moments before. He had easily understood the importance of convincing Ramon that he must not make good his threat to Fran. The young girl had been amazed at how easily Charles had agreed to cooperate.
"Oh that's wonderful," said Fran obviously relieved. "But was it difficult? What took you so long?"
Liz smiled, "Charles seemed to enjoy talking. He's such an interesting man that I didn't even realize that I'd been in there so long."
"Yes, it's been over an hour," Fran said. "I've been worried stiff."
"Well as you can see, I'm still intact." Liz answered laughingly, then laughed even harder as she realized that she really wasn't quite as intact as she had been before the visit to the mysterious Charles.
"If you don't mind, I think both of us should go right now and tell Ramon that Charles told you he'll cooperate. Will you come with me?" the older sister asked.
"Sure, let's go." Liz replied as she reached down and helped her sister from the beachmat.
The two sisters walked back toward the hotel once more, their slim bikini?clad bodies from the rear almost indistinguishable from one another, while in the cabana behind Bill napped on undisturbed.
The shame of what had gone on between Ramon and her earlier that afternoon had lessened somewhat in Fran's mind. Lying there alone in the warm sun while Liz was off talking to Charles, the young American housewife had reflected almost abstractly on her situation and had come to the conclusion that, yes, as long as Bill did not find out, as long as Ramon did not show the TV tape to him, that everything would come out all right.
In a day full of unusual events, her enjoyment of Ramon's lewd sexual attentions to her seemed now just one more strange episode in all that had happened to them since early that morning?starting when they had left their house in Shaker Heights to drive to the airport. And now since Liz had evidently been successful in convincing Charles to cooperate with the hi-jack leader, Fran realized that probably the secret of what Ramon had done to her would be safe.
But she was more than a little bit uneasy about her sister. She imagined that Liz was old enough to be able to take care of herself with strange men, but still, their situation here on this isolated tropical island seemed to hold unusual temptations that Liz might not be capable of handling. Fran realized guiltily that she herself had been victim of a situation with Ramon that under normal circumstances she would never have allowed to develop. Had Charles tried to take advantage of her sister there in the hotel? She doubted it. Liz looked as cool and alert as usual, and surely had not indicated that anything had gone amiss. But then here in this strange place, Fran also realized that anything was possible.
Lying there comfortably in the sun before her sister returned, Fran had felt a new freedom in herself. Afterall, she was here next to a swimming pool with a beautiful tropical garden surrounding her. And they had managed finally to get away from Cleveland for their first vacation. She had to do all she could to make everything all right with Ramon so he would destroy that horrible television tape. Aside from that film, she was rather enjoying the whole situation. The exciting events might even in the end bring her and Bill closer to each other. She hoped this with all her heart because to do this had been the main purpose of them leaving for the vacation in the first place, and their marriage was important to her.
Liz's thoughts about what had happened to her were somewhat different from her older sister's, but then she had no husband. What Charles and she had done together inside the hotel was, she felt, something that was necessary for her to have experienced eventually. She was only glad that when it had happened to her the first time that the results had been so successful. She doubted that Al would have been so adept at making her realize her potential. Now she felt a new confidence in herself. And she knew that when they eventually got back to Miami that there was no reason in the world that her boyfriend, Al, would ever suspect a thing. But getting to Al seemed less and less important to her now. She was enjoying the adventure, perhaps more than her sister Fran.
The two girls approached the steps of the hotel not talking. Each was absorbed with her own thoughts. Inside, Fran led the way toward the door of Ramon's office and knocked resolutely.
"Who is it?" They heard Ramon ask from inside.
"It's me, Fran Williams. And my sister."
Almost instantly the darkly handsome leader opened the door and stood there staring at them. His eyes coursed over the two bikini-clad sisters waiting there in the hallway.
The voluptuous young American wife searched his face in vain for some hint of warmth and understanding. Under his stern gaze she felt as though she were once again stripped naked in front of him.
Liz sensed her sister's embarrassed discomfort and spoke first.
"We came to tell you that Charles is ready to cooperate," Liz said defiantly.
A thin smile broke across Ramon's chiseled features.
"I'm glad to hear that," he said. "Now we shall probably be able to avoid some, what would have otherwise been inevitable, complications for your older sister here."
Angered at his use of the word, probably, Fran raised her eyes and looked hard at him.
"Look Ramon, I've gotten you what you demanded," she said. "Now will you please let us alone."
"No, I'm not sure of anything until I talk with Charles and find out for myself," he answered soothingly.
Liz was fascinated by this man's confident manner with her older sister. Images of what had happened so recently between the two of them, of the humiliations, Ramon must have inflicted on Fran, flashed through Liz's head. She wondered if it had been as good between the two of them as it had been with Charles and her.
With a surge of sisterly feeling she found herself wishing that it had been her who Ramon had forced a blackmail upon, she who was without an adoring husband like Bill. And almost unconsciously fresh feeling of the new sexual awareness she had experienced for the first time with Charles that afternoon began to rise slowly again inside her.
Ramon noticed Liz's cheeks begin to flush slightly and smiled this time directly at her. Liz dropped her eyes.
"I'm afraid I'll have to ask both of you to wait for a moment while I check all this out with Charles directly," Ramon said speaking to both of them.
He led them down the hall to the ante-room outside his office, the room through which Fran had ran during those horrible first moments after she had watched herself submitting to his obscene advances on the television screen. Gesturing to chairs along the wall, he left them there and retired to his office.
Almost instantly the office door opened again and the fat, bullet-headed man who had stared so brazenly at Fran in the pool earlier appeared. His ferocious-looking German shepherd dog, held by a short leather lead followed him closely.
"Bring him right in here to me, Hans," the girls overheard Ramon instruct the guard from inside the office.
Hans looked at the two girls leeringly as he passed them on his way out into the garden. Just outside the door he turned, and directing the dog to sit, said, "Watch them, Bruno. Good dog."
Then he disappeared leaving the large panting animal blocking the way out into the garden. The girls sat uncomfortably waiting. Neither felt like talking, both of them knew that everything depended now on what would go on soon between Charles and Ramon inside the office.
It was only a minute or two but it seemed like hours to Fran before Hans returned with Charles in tow. As the handsome man followed the heavy-set guard into the room, he ventured a conspiratorial wink and a quick smile at Fran, then paused with his warm, liquid smile devouring Liz's lushly young figure. Fran almost reeled when she saw the way the two were looking at each other. That was a smile of exchanged intimacy?of two people with sexual knowledge of each other! My God! Liz! And Charles? And even as her mind boiled in a maelstrom of surprise, she unexpectedly felt a bitter arrow of jealousy piercing her heart.
"Come on," Hans ordered, tugging at Charles's sleeve, and the two men disappeared into Ramon's office?shutting the door behind them.
Although the young wife was stunned by what she had surmised about the middle-aged diplomat and her younger sister, she still was anxious to overhear what was being said inside. The room, she thought, was probably sound-proofed, but she slipped out of her chair anyway, intending to go and listen at the door. She hadn't taken two steps before Bruno rose with his neck hair high and growled in warning, Quickly, she resumed her seat. Liz sat back apparently unconcerned, positive in her teen-aged inexperience that Charles would indeed cooperate as he had said he would only a short time ago.
Although the young girl was nonchalant, Fran felt her nervousness building up almost to the screaming point. For her, the results of what was being discussed on the other side of the closed door was everything, for if Ramon was not satisfied with whatever Charles was telling him, then there was little hope that the television tape would not be shown to Bill.
The minutes dragged interminably and Fran began to feel like a defendant in a criminal case anxiously awaiting the jury's return. Then, abruptly, the door opened and Hans, his face stern and obviously angry, came out alone. The German Shepherd immediately left his post by the outside door and trotted quickly to his master's side. Hands arrogantly on his heavy hips, Hans stood for a few seconds in front of the two young American women.
Then, without speaking, he handed Fran a folded handwritten note, before spinning on his heel and leaving them alone once again. Bruno obediently followed him.
"What does it say?" Liz asked breathlessly as she leaned over to read the single folded piece of paper over her sister's shoulder.
"It's from Ramon," Fran replied. "He asks that we come for drinks and dinner in his suite later this evening. Bill's included."
"Well I guess we'd better go," said Liz.
"Yes we'll have to," Fran answered cautiously. "We're going to have to if we want to find out if Ramon's satisfied with whatever Charles agreed to do."