Chapter 4

Clint had finally managed to wrestle Shirley off the terrace and get her upstairs. There, for the first time in his life, he had hit her, slapped her squarely across her laughing face as she teased him and mocked him.

"Brother baby's got a new sweetheart; uh-huh, can't pull the wool over my eyes."

"I'm warning you," Clint spat out, fighting the impulse to slug her again. "You're going to behave. I'm not playing anymore, understand?"

"Sure, brother," Shirley smiled, placing her hands on her hips and looking at him saucily. The cheek where he had slapped her was turning redder. And the flap of her dress still hung away, exposing a triangle of her flesh with one impertinent breast right in the middle. "You know I'll behave, just as long as you don't try to ignore me."

Clint spun on his heel and stalked out of the room, slamming the door on his sister's laughter.

Several minutes later, he was knocking on Katrina's door. It opened, a few inches, and Clint started back. Katrina was standing there, apparently fresh out of the shower, with only a full-length towel pressed to her body.

"It's rather late," she said in an indifferent tone.

"Look, Kat, you've got to let me explain. Let me in, please," Clint urged. Katrina merely turned around and walked away from the open door, giving Clint a careless glimpse of her twitching buttocks, which appeared snow-white against her deeply sun-bronzed skin. Clint walked through the door, trying to regain his composure.

"Look," he started again, "that girl downstairs I don't know what she wants. She was roaring drunk. She just happened to pick on me."

"All right, baby, now look yourself," Katrina suddenly said, abruptly facing him. Clint swallowed hard, for the topmost few inches of the towel had fallen down over her arm, exposing the bountiful bulges of her half-tanned bosom.

"Don't try to sucker me," she shot out. "The girl knows you, knows your name, and from all I saw, knows exactly what you respond to. I don't care who she is or what you do with her. It's your business just don't come around whining for equal time."

"Goddamnit!" Clint exploded, "you don't know the first thing about it."

"I don't need to know. Goodnight, and thanks for dinner," Katrina said, re-arranging the towel with one hand and gesturing toward the door with the other.

Clint reacted by slamming the door shut with a crash. He didn't know who he was really madder at Shirley, himself or the stunning girl who regarded him archly from behind the towel. All he knew was that he was crazy for her more aroused by her than any girl he had ever met and he was in danger of losing her. But the specter of Shirley, and what she was, hung over his confusion and frustration.

"Please, Kat," he started, trying to recover himself, "it's not anything like you suspect it is; it's a screw-up, really. There's nothing between the girl and me, I swear." He moved closer to Katrina, who was lighting a cigarette, looking as if she didn't care whether he dropped dead on the spot.

"Kat it's you I want; you've got to believe me. Nothing seems important except you."

She looked up at him, and sat carefully on the edge of her bed, being careful to keep the towel hugged to her body as she crossed her legs. "Who was she?" she asked him.

Clint waved his hands in desperation. Tell her, urged a voice within him. Never, clamored another. "I don't know, honest," he lied, feeling himself sink into a hopeless mire. "Look, she was loaded and she jumped me, and the only thing that matters is that she came between us."

"What's there to come between?" Katrina said, trying to affect an icy tone of remoteness.

Clint recognized it for what it was. She had given him his cue, intentionally or not. With a swift motion, he stepped forward and, taking the cigarette from her hand before she had time to react, curled an arm around her and pulled her up to him.

"This!" he whispered hoarsely, wrapping her to him, as her jaw dropped open in surprise. She tried to resist the pressure of his hug, arching her back and pushing away with her free arm. Her head jerked away from his as he sought her. But Clint was not to be stopped now. The feel of her body against him, resisting him, emboldened him all the more. And taking the back of her head with one hand, he forced her to meet his lips with her own.

The minute their mouths met, Katrina went slack in his arms. But only for a second. Then she seemed to stiffen as his tongue parted her lips with a passionate frenzy. Her head inclined, and her eyes shut slowly, and she opened her mouth to him, returning his kiss. The hand that held the towel struggled free of the embrace, and she circled him with both arms, pulling him closer to her, working her body to the contours of his, breast to breast and thigh to thigh.

They rocked back and forth for what seemed like an eternity, as the kiss went deeper and deeper, establishing their common will and need. At last Katrina turned her head away and tried to regain control of her breathing. Clint could feel her heart pounding against his own.

"That's quite an argument," she said, looking back and up into his blazing eyes.

"It's the truth," he said, going for her again, and this time meeting her scarlet mouth halfway. Katrina sounded a long, low moan, which resonated between them as they ground against one another for the second time. The sound of it quickened Clint's blood and sent a responsive stab of excitement through him.

Together they tottered back as he forced his weight forward, until they fell slowly to the bed, Katrina pulling his weight down on top of herself.

"Kat," muttered Clint, breaking away and raining kisses on her tossing face. "Oh, Kat, baby..."

"Don't stop!" she hissed, seizing his head and guiding him down her neck. "Don't stop now!" she entreated over and over, as Clint snaked along the delicate bones of her breast and shoulders, leaving a thousand lightning kisses lingering on her skin.

He felt one of her bare legs twine over his, her foot restlessly sliding down the inside of his thigh. Responding to the pressure of her hands, he bent his head lower, raising himself for a second to strip away the towel between them.

He gasped when he had done so. Not since that night as a teen-ager, when he had first seen a girl's body, had he beheld anything so splendid as Katrina's naked charms. Torn between looking and kissing, he raised and lowered his head, devouring her with his eyes all the time.

It was almost with reverence that he approached the breathtaking presence of her breasts. They seemed to float beneath him, like snowy mountains glimpsed from an airliner in fog, each flawless mound thrusting its symmetry up to his eager mouth. He dove down and closed his lips over one of the large rosebud nipples, and felt her chest contract as she let out a quick sigh of pleasure. Then, tearing himself away from the one, he went to the other and then back and forth, like a metronome gone wild, feasting on both of the rich, fertile cones.

In no time at all, their rose-tips had surged to life, growing tough and resistant to his increasingly harsh kisses.

Katrina's hands were now raking his back, pulling his shirt out of his pants, and pushing down the small of his back to increase his pressure on her. His head swam back up to meet her trembling, wet lips, and they locked in a renewed fervor of kissing.

As she arched under him, whimpering with pleasure, Clint grabbed her and pulled her over on top of him, rolling on his back. Her body slid into place on him, its nakedness burning through his clothing. With his hands now free, he began to cover her with caresses, trailing down her back to her perfect buttocks, then up her tummy and sides. As she lifted herself clear of him, his hands found the heavy twin fruits which hung down from her golden form, and he molded them to a new stage of swollen arousal.

She squirmed on him like a cobra now. Her hands fought his shirt free from his body, and as he increased his manipulations, she began kissing him wildly. At the same time, her rapid fingers loosed his belt and trousers.

They seemed to be fighting each other now as Clint shed the last of his clothing and rolled back over on the snapping, clutching amazonian brunette. But in their frenzied reality, they were working for the same thing to the same end, as Katrina opened herself to him, and Clint scrambled between her honey thighs with the rapacity of a young bull.

Katrina's heels skidded on the sheets as she lunged up to meet Clint. Then, with a cry and a wild surge of mutual pleasure, they were together, locked body to body. With the ageless energy that built empires and destroyed cathedrals, Clint raged on her, forcing Katrina's body to react with convolutions of ecstasy. One minute her legs waved in the air, and the next came bearing down on him in a scissoring embrace of lust. On and on they churned, spurring each other to the dream-world of relief neither had known in so long, and even longer, until their exhausted, tremor-wracked bodies could move no more.

Clint awoke the next morning to a toe prodding his ribs through the thin sheet that was standard bedding for the tropical nights.

"Wake up, brother-o. Your loving sister has something to tell you." Clint came to groggily, not realizing where he was for a minute, feeling the memory of Katrina's impact on his body like the last dissolving traces of a dream. But he saw that he was in his own bedroom, and working his eyes further open, made out the figure of his sister looking down at him.

"That must have been a long walk, baby you look absolutely exhausted. I just wanted to tell you that I'll see you at dinner. A gentleman's offered to take me on a donkey-cart ride 'round the island." Shirley turned and skipped toward the door. "Ta, brother," she sang out, " be a good lad."

Clint winced as the door slammed. He sat in bed for several minutes, smoking a cigarette and trying to recover impressions of the night before. Then it hit him what Shirley had said that if she'd been telling the truth, he had a whole day free with Katrina. At the same time, he felt a new sense of guilt that he hadn't been honest with Katrina; all he could pray for now was that Shirley didn't find them out. No, he thought, that wasn't the point. At some time or other, he was going to have to deal with it. But he sure as hell didn't know how at the moment.

"Mr. Westwood," called the man at the hotel desk as Clint bounced into the lobby, "a message!"

Clint read the note from Katrina and smiled. He was one step ahead of her, he thought. It was an auspicious sign.

Fifteen minutes later, he was back on the rock ledge, lobbing a pebble into the tide pool.

"Hey, I surrender," said Katrina, sitting up and holding her bikini to her chest, while shading her eyes against the sun. "Come on down and collect your spoils."

Clint bounded down the rocks onto her roost and took the plastic cocktail cup she handed to him.

"To the most beautiful girl in the world," he smiled, kissing her lightly on her salty mouth. "Hey, you were fantastic last night!"

"So were you, baby. Just think how bad off we'd be if you hadn't seized the initiative."

"Ssshhh!" Clint remonstrated. He leaned over and made a mock show of peeking down her halter. "Hiding something?"

"Not from you darling," she answered, calling his bluff by abruptly tossing the halter aside. Clint nearly choked on his mouthful of gin as the sunlight bounced off the satin white mounds into his eyes. They were even better than he remembered them, standing out against her glistening, sun-darkened body.

He was overcome with an immediate sense of desire. He took her cup and set both of them down in a tide pool, where the water was still cold. Then, without a word, he pushed her back on her pad of towels, covering one breast with one hand and bending his lips to the other.

"Hey," Katrina laughed, "kind of early for all this, isn't it? Oh, Clint," she gasped, as his tongue circled one of the sun-warmed nipples. "Oh, baby, you're so good to me, oh, Clint!" poured out Katrina, sliding her hands up his back and curling her fingers on his shoulders as he lathered her soft strawberry-topped cones with kisses.

Clint reached down and pulled the knot free where the triangular bottom of the bikini was tied to her hips. She lifted her buttocks clear of the towels as he jerked the flimsy cloth from her and tossed it aside.

"Oh, Clint, oh yes, sweetheart, oh please," she babbled as he stopped his kisses and caresses long enough to shuck his own shorts and sportshirt.

"Like me here in the sun?" Clint teased her. "Sure you want to go through with it, right here in broad daylight?"

Katrina didn't answer him straight out. Instead she grabbed him and literally flung him down. "Hey," he protested, as he felt the hard rocks under the towels, "take it easy."

He fought her playfully, but Katrina was determined to show him that daylight or no, her appetite was unchanged. like a young lioness with its half-alive prey, she wrestled Clint over on his back, her naked brown body shining and rippling in the sun.

Before Clint knew what had happened, she was on top of him, straddling him with her lush intimacy. But he wasn't slow to catch on when she leaned forward with a challenging grin, pinning his arms to either side of him. He willingly sought the heavy breasts, which were dangled above him now, their dark extremities pulsing out with a turgid fullness.

And he knew what Katrina was up to now. For half-smiling and half-grimacing, she was working her body desperately against his.

Then she had found him, and Clint felt a thrill of pleasure. It was her show, Clint thought to himself, trying his best to relax as Katrina began swinging her body through the air in a wild, sensuous rhythm.

Now and then Clint reached out to fondle a breast, teasing them as they jiggled and flopped with her excited motions, or pulled her down to exchange a long, searching kiss, only to release her as she struggled to sit erect again and swing back into action. What a girl, Clint thought, as he lay there finally, feeling the punishment and pleasure his body was taking from Katrina's inspired athletics.

He felt immense pride and satisfaction as he lasted through her first cycle of spasms and cries, helping to support her.

And then, with a fierce smile and renewed grip on him, she accelerated her hips again, churning and stirring both their bodies to new needs, bouncing up and down with unrestrained and increasingly unsteady vigor until Clint felt his own back bowing with unbearable tension felt her falter and then go on; and finally, when both of them were clenching their teeth against screaming out and grasping each other's hands, she collapsed against him as the passion flowed out of their sweating, aching bodies.

During the next several days, Clint barely started getting used to her wild and unpredictable gestures. They made love constantly, whenever the impulse seized them up in the cliff-protected roost by day, on the beach by night, even in a back corridor of the hotel one night when Katrina, who had been playfully teasing him during the evening's dancing, suddenly pulled him into the shadows to a back hallway and, raising her dress, pulled down her panties and took him to her with quick, hard loving.

But the love-making was only a part of their days and evenings. Every hour that Clint could manage to free himself of Shirley, who, it seemed, was actually taking care of herself without scandal, he rendezvoused with Kat, to swim or go boating, or buy ice cream and stroll through the less-crowded markets of the main village, or sneak away for a cool drink in a mostly-native canteen down by the further end of the beach.

And every hour that Clint was with her, he felt a renewing a new kind of love coming alive in him, shooting through every fiber of his heart and brain and being. And he realized with increasing certainty that his feelings for Katrina were not the product of a vacation coincidence, but rather his response to the most complete and challenging woman he had ever met.

Katrina felt much the same way, if not more so. To her, Clint's strength and good humor, even his gentleness and tact, were qualities she had become unused to seeing in men consorting as she had been with people for whom men and women were roles to be cast and favors to be used.

She felt herself, almost against her will, growing more deeply fond of Clint with every day. And she was unbelievably happy to have found someone who shared not only her tastes and interests but, for once, could match her and overcome her on any ground.

Katrina wondered if she and Clint were not terribly conspicuous to their vacation-mates the drab, lonely girls who smiled weakly at her, and the paunchy, sick-looking men who nodded to her, and whose eyes she could feel drilling through her clothing.

True, they weren't seen together all that much in fact, rarely. And this had continued to bother Katrina. For Clint did have something else he kept disappearing to. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes at dinner, always at night, after making love. He had told her it was his writing, but Katrina wasn't sure. It was only because she felt herself falling in love with him so fast that she didn't press him on the matter. But in the back of her mind, she had not forgotten the strange blonde girl Clint had seemed to be with, or at least, who seemed to want to be with him.

Another thing that bothered her about Clint's absences was that it left her prey to the hotel staff, who, to say the least, were obnoxious in their solicitations. It seemed she couldn't eat a meal or even walk through the lobby without this girl named Alya coming up to her and asking her if everything was all right, if she was enjoying herself, seeing everything she had wanted to see, etc.

Katrina thought it odd, because she gave the chicly garbed staffer enough credit for being able to perceive that she, Katrina, was no wall-flower or lost midwestern castaway. And she had been politely firm about the girl's offers to help her plan sightseeing tours, etc. But it had been annoying having her popping up at all hours of the day, asking how she felt and so forth. Katrina had noticed that she wasn't the only one singled out for these attentions, which resembled the "Our Millionth Visitor" approach. Every guest seemed to be in the custody of one of these informal, but prying, creatures.

It was a nuisance and Katrina had discussed it with Clint. He only told her to do what he had done go to the manager, if it got any worse. That was how he had dumped the little man who seemed to have been assigned to his welfare.

The only trouble there was that Katrina had met the manager, Mr. Boulo, and had been more than put off by him. He had come along her first day on the beach, as she was lying there sunbathing. And had the rudeness to walk in a complete circle around her, obviously studying her body. On top of that, he had given her the greasiest and most lecherous of smiles when she had glared at him. So there was no real help there.

The only answer, really, she thought, was to bag Clint full-time and try either to get him to take his mind off his work, or convince him that he loved her as much as she did him, and that they were wasting time spending so much of it apart.

If Katrina had even gotten the truth out of Clint, she would have found him in complete agreement. But lately, after the few days' grace he had, Clint's hands were becoming full again full of the troubles caused by his nut of a sister.

Clint had started to doubt Shirley's stories about the book salesman or whoever he was. It didn't seem to him that anyone who lavished quite so much attention on his sister by day, as her story went, would turn up quite so alone in the bar every night. So, with the old sense of weariness and foreshadowed doom, Clint had started asking around, searching for the old trail.

Picking it up from the beginning, Clint got hints of how Shirley had started carrying on day and night with some of the youths who worked at the hotel. "Mees Shod', " was the name she had come to be known by, apparently. And Clint, from past experience, knew that a fin here and a fin there would lead him to his sister.

In spite of all past experience, however, Clint was not quite prepared for what he found one day. He had left Katrina to go grab a nap late one afternoon. And he himself had been starting up the stairs from the lobby when a youth dressed in simple whites had approached him. "Meester Clint, you want to know where Mees Shorl' is at, come with me, please."

Clint turned and followed the boy out of the hotel, around the corner. Then suddenly, the boy darted off and in a second was nowhere to be seen. But as Clint stood, puzzled, an older, half-caste looking man approached him.

"I onnerstan' you want the white American woman, yes?" Clint was asked, the question being accompanied by a gust of foul breath.

"That's right," he answered. "Where is she?"

"Not so fast, gringo," cautioned the man, smiling hideously. "The hotel makes it hard for a man to earn an honest leeving. They are very streect. You will pay me something for my troubles?"

Christ, thought Clint, as he counted out another five dollars and deposited it in the outstretched claw. The money disappeared as if into a vacuum outlet somewhere in the tattered clothes. What the hell has Shirley gotten herself into this time, he wondered, although he could have told himself if he'd wanted to.

And he would have been right. For the man, tugging his sleeve, led Clint across the street, where there was a cluster of little huts scattered through a thick bamboo and palm grove. Clint had always assumed it was where the hotel help lived. The man led him along a path and then stopped in front of one of the huts.

"One half of an hour, senor," he said, pointing to the hut and then to his wrist, to which was fastened the kind of multiple chronometer usually associated with sky-divers or tactical frogmen. Clint pushed him aside and bounded up the rickety stairs. He pushed the door open and took one stride in before stopping. Then he leaned against the door for support, holding his head in his other hand. For there in the hut was Shirley, all right. Stretched out naked on a dingy mattress, surrounded by empty bottles and crawling insects. From the single window of the dwelling came the weak fluttering of an old kitchen fan. It was too much, he thought. Why not just shoot her or strangle her right here? And let it go at that?

"Shirley," he said quietly, instead. "Shirley, get up. We're going home."

"Brother, babeee!" she gurgled, flopping over half on her stomach to look at him. "Fancy seeing you here come to visit your own sister as she lies in regal pomp and ceremony. How sweet," she chortled drunkenly. "How very sweet!"

Disregarding her, Clint searched for her clothes. He found a soiled dress and, yanking her to her feet, managed to get most of her into it.

"Wheee!" she cried. "It's just like old times, with brother baby and me. Ummm! My devoted servant," she beamed, and before Clint knew what was happening, she was shaking the dregs of one of the bottles all over both of them.

Clint let her have it straight across the face, which shut her up for a minute. Rum, he thought, smelling his sopping clothes and looking around the hut. The old man was waiting and rushed up, his face the living portrait of protest. But when he saw the dark clouds of anger on Clint's, he faded out of their path.

Clint's concern was to get into the hotel and upstairs, where he could get her sobered up and straightened out. He took a side door into the hotel and dragged Shirley forcibly up the steps. He didn't see Katrina, who was just rounding a corner of the lobby and who stopped dead at the sight of her lover and his companion streaking up the stairs.

When Clint had gotten Shirley into his room, he noticed she still had a bottle of the cheap rum she had grabbed from the hut. He took the bottle from her and inspected it more closely. Pure fire-water, he thought to himself, shooting a glance at his sister. He shook his head sadly as he watched her. For Shirley had pulled the dress open, splitting it down to her waist, forcing her creamy breasts out into the open. They, like the rest of her, were covered with filth, and Clint thought she looked like some hopelessly retarded waif wandering by the railroad tracks.

"Let's go, Shirley," he said. "You've had enough fun."

But she bounced away from him when he grabbed her to get her into the shower. She was giggling, as she always did when she had embarrassed him, and hopped around the room, her breasts jiggling and her matted blonde hair swinging to and fro as she tossed her head. Then she jumped up onto Clint's bed, purposefully mussing her soiled feet on the sheets and dancing around with her skirts lifted up.

Clint caught a glance of himself in the mirror hot, sweaty, unkempt, bottle in hand, which he hadn't even realized. He made a lunge for Shirley and tripped on the throw-rug near the bed. At the instant he fell, two things happened. Shirley pounced on him, fighting him wildly for possession of the bottle she'd been stalling for. And there was a knock on the door.

But before Clint could yell "Wait a minute," the door opened. Clint wrestled Shirley off him, her breasts swatting him in the face as he did so. Heaving himself up on elbow, the bottle still in his hand, he saw Katrina standing in the doorway. He started to speak, then stopped, as he realized what she was seeing the half-naked blonde, the rumpled bed, the bottle-in-his-hand. "Katrina..." he croaked.

"Sorry I wasn't enough for you, baby!" she said, cutting him off, her face suddenly becoming a mask of hurt and fury. "But don't you worry I won't be bothering you again!"

The door slammed. Shirley wrested the bottle from his hand and took a long pull, falling backward with her dress virtually over her face. Clint gave a long groan and rolled out of the bed onto the floor, where he lay thinking for some time.