Chapter 8

We stood and admired each other for a long while. I enjoyed her gaze focused upon my upright cock which I twitched from time to time, just to make her smile. It was a smile of lust that she gave me though, exactly the kind I wanted.

I, in turn, took in the curves of her well-kept body. There was not an ounce of flab anywhere to be seen. Faint outlines of muscle in feminine contour indicated her interest in athletics. Long musculature from swimming. Her belly made a small curve that moved down rapidly into the lovely cunt. She stood with her legs slightly spread and I could see that the lips were tight in there, rather than flabby from misuse. I could imagine how she was the first night of love when she had been a virgin. Not very much different from this, I decided, for Joan had the exquisite ability to come to each new experience as though it were the first. This, the true artist's attitude.

I stepped toward her and put my hands down along one thigh, moved my fingers inside it over the long curve of firm flesh there. Then I turned my hand upward and fingered those tight lips. I felt inward an inch or so, backward toward the vaginal entry. As my third finger probed deeper, it touched ooze. She was wet and ready.

"Go on, press deeper," she encouraged me. "Don't wait."

I didn't. I sent my finger up deep and she spread her legs even wider for me to enter with greater ease.

"Go on. Press. Press."

I did as I was told gladly and soon added a second finger into the canal there.

"You can put in another," she said, breathily.

I added a third and kept them stiff, beginning now to pump her as though my fingers were a prick.

She squatted slightly, moaned for my touch. She leaned forward against me, balancing and strengthening herself by clinging to my shoulders.

"Let's lie down," I said.

She didn't want to but I knew she'd better. Her knees were getting weak from the effects of the liquor, as well as from the sexual stimulation.

There seemed no reason for us to take time to go off into the bedroom. With dispatch I lowered her to the floor right there and lay beside her, continuing to pump her cunt as she wanted me to. She gave me the rhythm of movement through the gestures of her hips, an up and down movement, quite slow, that signalled me to remain within her and proceed with my action of strong, long strokes.

She extended one leg to the side, turned slightly onto her hips, pulled me closer.

"Go on, put that fat hairy cock in me," she said.

I saw the gathering of perspiration along the side of her nostrils. Her mouth, half parted, seemed flaccid. She wet her lips from time to time but they dried because she was breathing through her mouth. I moved to lie on top of her.

She took hold of my prick and guided it into her juicy and more than willing cunt.

Her pussy, wet and ready, was tight enough to hold me in a firm caress.

"Oh, it feels so good," she sighed.

I began pumping her gently, poised and attentive to take direction as she would signal me to do. I had the odd sense that though Joan had been to bed many times with a variety of people, I was, nevertheless, capable of hurting her with my organ if I made a wrong move.

"Harder," she said. "Don't worry," as though reading my thoughts.

I jabbed harder, pushing my throbbing cock against her snatch.

She swung her legs up and around my hips, embraced me with them, clasping her ankles together. She lifted her ass higher, giving me all the room in the world I needed and ready access so that I thrust upward till the tip of my cock touched the mouth of her uterus.

When that contact was made, she moaned a new note of ecstasy. Her nails dug into my back. I felt the sharp, biting sensation of claws digging into my flesh. I knew that she was with me all the way.

"Marvelous," she said. "God, you feel so strong and hard and large. You are large, Joe. You're the biggest prick I've ever had."

Whether this was the truth or not, I couldn't know but it did not matter. She was enjoying herself and I was enjoying her. The moment was important. Neither the past nor the future could touch us as we lay, sliding, slippery, moving up and down on the floor. Our wet flesh grew hotter with perspiration, damp between us, shared passion, turning liquid into the essence of the orgasm to follow.

Yet she could not reach fulfillment immediately. We paused from time to time while Joan caught her breath and seemed to gather together her strength for another attack upon the field of pleasure.

Time became as nothing, a void. We clung to each other in sexual play, our muscles straining and relaxing alternately, reaching, striving for that special moment which would shatter tension into release.

I knew how to hold myself back and could fuck for hours, if necessary. She seemed to need lots of time and the sensation of fullness within her. I reached down and found the tip of her clitoris with one finger and began to rub it in circles rhythmically with the movement of myself inside her. It is not an easy position to assume and yet I managed it.

My reward was the expression that came to

Joan's mouth.

"Yes. Just like that," she whispered forcefully.

On and on we went. Her hand reached around and pressed into my anus a single finger, screwing me there. This touch stimulated her further and she gave out a small cry. Her finger jutted in and out of my ass-hole driving me wild with lust.

I was not really expecting her to come when she did. The suddenness of it swept me along and my insides began to pump out their load and shoot deeply into her. I thought about my ejecting sperm invading the walls of her pussy as my whole body seemed to dissolve into semen.

She clung to me for quite some while until I felt the clenching and unclenching of her orgasm begin to subside.

Afterward she lay in my arms there on the floor and slept.

I cradled her and wondered what was to come next in her life. Whether she would or would not permit herself to be ruined by the Greek whore, Natasha, who was obviously intent on nothing more important than taking what she could get.

I gazed down upon Joan's tranquil profile and hoped that she would come to her senses before giving herself over completely to her Greek passion.

Some while later she came awake and pulled apart from me. She sat up and patted my cheek and smiled.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"Mmmmmm good," she said without hesitation.

She stood up with surprising energy, as though rejuvenated, walked around the room until she found a half empty glass of wine.

"Don't drink that," I said.

"You're right, Joe. I guess I'd better stay sober now," and she padded off to take a shower.

Our screwing temporarily placated Joan's interest in Natasha, or so I thought. After I, too, had showered, we dressed and went back outside to listen to the Greek bouzouki music and drink thick black coffee instead of either retsina or ouzo.

The place, was alive and we sat at a sidewalk cafe watching the passing scene. I enjoyed every minute of it and hoped that Joan was, too.

She looked at her watch.

"It's eleven o'clock," she said. Maybe Natasha is home by now."

My heart sank slightly as I realized that I had not distracted her from her original intention.

"You really mean to go through with this thing."

She nodded. "All the way."

"But, Joan, supposing it's a mistake. I mean, supposing it's all futile for you?"

"I don't care. I'm going to have my way."

"At any cost?"

"Yes."

I realized that Joan had been touched at her central nerve, that she could not let the situation drop between herself and Natasha until she had made some move toward conquest. The acknowledgment of success with Natasha was what she needed, I decided, more than the actual success itself. It occurred to me that maybe I could help Joan without her knowing it. But, first, I would have to meet Natasha.

I hoped that the girl spoke English.

We finished our coffee. I persuaded Joan to have a second cup but she was firmly against any further procrastination.

We proceeded to catch a taxi, which was no small feat at that busy time, and again returned to the hut on the hill.

This time when Joan pushed open the door, the light of candle flame flickered. Somebody was home.

Obviously Natasha was not alone, for we heard voices. That of a girl and one of deeply male. They were speaking in Greek from the sound of it, laughing and enjoying themselves intimately. It was clear to both Joan and myself what we were intruding upon.

But Joan didn't mind barging in on anything at all. I wondered if she had not, perhaps, thrust herself into Natasha's private life many times before. It seemed likely.

The couple were seated upon a cot and the candlelight made a pale yellow glow upon the two entwined bodies.

They had not yet really begun to make love, the sailor in his white clothing and the girl in a blouse and skirt, still looked fairly neat and comparatively unrumpled considering the passion with which they were kissing and rubbing against each other in total oblivion to the world outside.

Joan and myself stood for some few minutes unnoticed by the love-makers. I sensed Joan holding breath as though fighting off a tantrum of fury. I felt sorry for her. But how sorry could I really feel when it was so obvious that Joan insisted on bringing this trouble upon herself. She was dragging them down on her head like a naughty child, pulling at the edge of a tablecloth laden with food. She would have the clatter, she would have the destruction.

I could not simply stand by and allow Joan to stare with such large, voracious eyes. I shuffled my feet, kicked something, making it quite obvious that Natasha was to pull herself away from her activities and acknowledge our presence.

What happened was that Natasha, instead of leaving go of her lover, turned him around and looked at us over his shoulder.

The girl was indeed beautiful. In a hypnotic way her warm complexion, smooth as an olive, was heightened by flashing blue eyes. Not the normal brown or black of the country. She was a cross-breed with a wild, free look, intense, demanding and hot tempered. A profusion of dark curly hair fell about her face. She might have just walked out of the jungle. Yet I saw. too, a fine intelligence on her features, her high forehead and even somewhat delicate eyebrows. These made a touching contrast with her emotional make-up. I could see what it was that held Joan enthralled.

I think the sailor saw us but also did not pay any attention to our presence. I was not sure what country he came from. I could only know that he was an anonymous male figure passing through Natasha's life without leaving a mark.

With stubborn will Natasha deliberately shut her eyes now and resumed her intense embrace, pulling the sailor even closer, I think, for spite, to show off in front of her familiar audience. She had not paid much attention to me at all, merely noted my presence and had, in the fraction of an instant, sized me up for availability.

Joan, who continued to stare upon the passion so openly and carelessly displayed, could not simply stand by and quietly watch like an accustomed voyeur. She was not that. She was a ball of jealousy and rage.

I took Joan by the wrist.

"Come on, let's get out of here," I said.

She was deaf to me, yanked her arm out of my grasp.

"You're being foolish," I said. "This can only harm you. We'll come back another time."

She shook her head, no. I understood that she had probably come back numerous times to find one version or another of the scene that faced us now.

"Well, what do you want to do, then?"

"I don't know," she said hoarsely, "but something.'.

I understood that the worst possible feeling for her was this sense of impotence, of the suspension before Natasha's flaunting. And yet, what was there to say or do? Natasha certainly had a right to her life and Joan the option to leave and never come back. One could not force the girl on the cot to capitulate.

Meanwhile, Natasha had apparently forgotten us as she moaned and writhed in her lover's arms, rubbing her tits back and forth with sinuous relish. She seemed almost deliberately to be egging Joan on to murder. But the worst part of it all was that I knew Natasha was really oblivious, didn't give a damn. And that was what hurt Joan most, the indifference.

Even as I felt this, the situation intensified. Joan, with an almost animal cry of pain, lunged forward. She grabbed Natasha by the shoulders and began to yank her backward. It was a futile attempt. Joan's face contorted with rage. Natasha shrieked with outrage of a very different sort. She jabbed one elbow back into Joan's diaphragm. Obviously the girl was accustomed to brawls. She swung and with curved fingers clawed down Joan's cheek.

I saw red welts rise, then droplets of blood filled the torn flesh.

But Joan didn't seem to feel it.

"Whore! Slut!" Her voice was a defiant call to the gods. She tore down the front of Natasha's blouse, revealing the naked tits which swung as Natasha moved to defend herself.

The sailor lunged between them and tried to push both women apart. They did not seem to notice his presence but were at each other again like two leopards.

I raced forward now. The fight would get Joan nowhere, even if she won it. I knew I had to get her out of the situation regardless of success or failure. There would be nothing for her to gain by opposing Natasha except more misery.

I came up behind Joan, grabbed her around the waist and yanked backward. She was a strong woman and the pumping of adrenalin gave her an even greater strength. But all her force could avail nothing. How clear did it have to be made to her that the situation was futile? I could tell it in Natasha's tone as she washed Joan down with a barrage of foreign words. Contempt and disgust seemed to pollute the air. Natasha could never be won over to Joan's love.

So I did what was most humane under the circumstances. I punched Joan in the jaw, just in the right place to knock her out. She went limp in my arms and I carried her from the hut.

I managed to get a taxi. By the time we returned to the hotel, she was sitting up, conscious, but dazed, aware enough, however, not to have anything to do with me. I knew at that moment she hated my guts.

She hated me all through the night, too, and would neither talk to me nor listen.

I was content for us both to be quiet.

We sat in the bedroom of the hotel suite, watching the dawn rise. It was a fresh day, clear, sunny, cloudless, another of the many Greek days unparalleled for beauty.

Joan got out of bed and walked to the window. She touched her jaw lightly, tenderly. She tried to smile but her face hurt too much.

"I guess you were right, Joe," she said. "Let's go home."

Intuitively I had counted on Joan's sense of balance about life and my faith had been justified. She had lost her head for a few months and no doubt had enjoyed the masochistic pleasure of an unconsummated love affair, but the pain had run its course and was ebbing.

I thought to myself I would find Joan another woman as beautiful as Natasha and more satisfying. But I knew I could never find her one she would love as intensely. There is no doubt that the unfulfilled love is the most delicious of all.