Myra, her mysterious urge to fuck becoming almost uncontrollable, needed a time to be alone. She needed these quiet moments for thinking and hanging on and making her spinning universe settle into something she could recognize. This wild point of land seemed not only to defy the shape of reality, but to twist feelings and behavior among whatever humans dared invade it.
Surf curled onto the beach before her, its gray-green wall toppling in slow motion so that she caught herself holding her breath while she waited for the thud that seemed to shake the balcony floor beneath her feet. The dying hiss of each breaker drew itself out like the prolonged sigh that follows orgasm, amplified a thousand-thousand times.
And that was the whole problem, she thought. The whole scene throbbed with sex. The harder she tried to escape its erotic message, the more tightly it seemed to enclose her. The pulse of the surf felt like a majestic beat of the climactic waves of contraction. A lone seagull, soaring with motionless wings, reminded her of the full-curved silhouette of her own proud-standing breasts. The spray-laden breeze played over her body with the intimate caresses of a lover.
Where else, she asked herself, would she ever have considered such a weird notion as this: to come out onto the observation deck naked and stare at the scenery? More than anything else about Pulsegate, this behavior of hers was a symbol of the way the place was warping her impulses.
She loved the other two couples; she and Rocky had spent happy hours wondering lazily how many people were lucky enough to enjoy the kind of friendship they had with Leanne and Jim Stokes and Bonnie and Ward Ramos. She had concluded long before that the feeling was love – that mere "liking" could never be as deep and satisfying as the feeling they shared with their friends. But loving could be a nonphysical thing. At least, its physical components could consist of pleasant warmth in the harmless embraces they shared upon meeting or leaving each other and the occasional quick hugs that came spontaneously when delight bubbled over.
What was happening here was not like that innocent fairy tale she and Rocky had been living. Something – maybe it was the isolation from civilization, or the primitive savagery of the landscape, or the chemistry of pure, human nature – was reaching through the social fabric to awaken instincts and desires that must have belonged to prehistoric ancestors of man.
A flicker of movement in the undergrowth beyond the corner of the house to her right snapped the spell. She tensed in momentary panic, cringing inwardly and ready to scramble back into hers and Rocky's bedroom. But she relaxed when she made out the head and shoulders of wolflike Soldier, the strange, surly brute who had survived his master's death and continued to course the wild point in search of intruders.
Bonnie and Ward Ramos had been as surprised as anyone else to find themselves heirs to Pulsegate. Bonnie had known nothing about any recluse uncle, and she had clearly been stunned to learn about the lonely way he had spent the last twenty years of his life.
"A retreat!" Bonnie had exclaimed to the others when the facts had begun to sink in. "We can all use it for a retreat!"
And that idea had sprouted and taken hold until all six felt as if there had been no other alternative. So they were all here, airing the two-story lodge and turning it into a livable place to spend long weekends or vacations.
Bonnie's mother had confessed the family's conspiracy against Uncle Walt. They had excluded him when he had married the wild, sensuous Carlita; as if he had never existed, they had shut him out of their memories and away from mention. Until his death, thirty-six years later, they had known nothing of his whereabouts. They had been unaware of Carlita's death in the sixteenth year of the marriage, unaware of the decay of the Pulsegate land – not knowing Pulsegate existed and never hinting to the younger members of the clan that the haunting, abandoned works of the mysterious poet, Walt Mason were those of a relative.
"Cruel!" exclaimed Myra softly. "How could Bonnie be part of a family like that? Ugh!"
Soldier was the only moving creature in her field of vision, except for the solitary gull, and she found her attention drawn to the ghostly, gray beast as he wove his way among the huge boulders. His nose was close to the ground, and his tail was tucked close to his hind legs while he worked whatever old trail he had uncovered.
She shivered and ran her hands slowly over her naked hips and thighs. The silken warmth of her skin sent thrills of pleasure through her fingertips and a brief giddiness to her head.
"Good God, Myra!" she scolded herself. "What the hell's wrong? Pretty bad when you're so horny even the sight of a dog makes you think about screwing!"
They had arranged their vacations together all three couples – the way they had been doing for the past six or seven years. Only this time they had come here to Pulsegate with a purpose. The strange thing was that now, by the middle of the third day, the spell of the place had them all on edge. She knew the others were feeling it as acutely as she; they gave themselves away by the way they kept glancing furtively at each other out of the corers of their eyes and the way they had begun avoiding the normal little physical contacts that were so likely to occur among close friends.
"Everybody's afraid one of those accidental touches is going to explode into an orgy," she murmured to the seagull. "It's like threads connecting all of us, carrying currents between us all the time!"
Bonnie and Ward had mumbled something about inspecting the spring, and had left the house right after lunch. Leanne and Jim had used the excuse of exploring the surf cave on the north side of the point. Rocky had said something about the fence and asked her to go, but she had recognized her need for thinking time.
"Just to let the pressure off," she remarked now in a musing tone. "All of us know we've got to find a way to bleed it off. Christ! What did we have for lunch? I can't even remember; I had to concentrate too hard on not saying anything sexy! What kind of Goddamn black magic did Bonnie's uncle weave around this place?"
But she knew it had nothing to do with magic or the supernatural. It had to do merely with the fact that they were three females and three males, all healthy and vigorous and damned attractive, who loved each other well enough that the isolation and forced intimacy were breaking down conventional barriers. She had difficulty believing that the network of civilized rules could be that superficial. Surely, she kept insisting to herself, morality went deeper than this! But there was no way to deny the thrills that raced over her now, and the vivid immediacy of her recurrent fantasies about Ward and Jim.
Soldier paused beside a rotted post, sniffed, and cocked a hind leg at it.
"Marking his territory," she noted. A finger of the wind probed at her and she flinched at the sudden, hot flush that swept her skin. "Jesus! Territory!"
The notion of territorial privileges had slipped into her consciousness. Dogs in the wild – the wolves, for example – were like so many other animals in their territorial habits. Each male powerful enough to defend his territory established exclusive breeding rights with whatever females chose to live with him within his range. For an instant, Myra had allowed herself to imagine the feelings of such a female in Soldier's domain. She had deliberately, she decided, pretended for a moment to be that female and to thrill to the knowledge that Soldier's cocked leg had been a symbolic demonstration of his exclusive sex rights to the bitch who watched unseen.
She backed silently away from the railing and tiptoed to the open door of her room. "Damn fool," she muttered to herself. "Daydreams about Jim and Ward aren't enough! You would have to come up with a dumb idea like that! Now I'll be having daydreams about being a Goddamn bitch-wolf!"
She fingered her clothes with distaste. Being alone had done nothing toward quieting the hunger that was eating at her. It had merely served to focus her attention and make her more sharply aware of the dangerous state they had all gotten into. She was vibrant with desire right now, she realized; she would get through the rest of the day only partly aware of what was being said, waiting to be alone with Rocky, legs clasping him and cunt beating against him. And in the morning, after all the fucking Rocky could survive, she would still be quivering with need.
This morning had been that way. Yesterday morning had been that way. "God!" she whispered. "It's going to be like that all the time we're here! Maybe we'd better bug out while we can!"
She studied her panties and bra with growing irritation, thinking of the deadening restriction they would subject her skin to. Finally she grabbed them and stuffed them into the hamper, hung her tight dress in the closet, and got out a soft, loose smock. Shrugging into it, she squirmed before the mirror and watched the soft folds slide against her tits. The friction delivered the kind of sensations she wanted. She conceded to herself that she was inviting trouble; pampering her appetite was the least likely way to gain control over herself. She would be feeding the flames, in a manner of speaking. But she was beyond caution.
The afternoon had gotten away from her. She heard voices from outside and hurried downstairs to the big room that made up the entire ground floor. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, the color of ripe wheat and gleaming from the hundreds of thousands of brush strokes she had given it over the years. It seemed half to float, half to bounce, as she deliberately exaggerated the movement of dropping to each succeeding step. Her breasts, firm and ripe and taut-nippled, bounced also; that was what she was trying to make happen. She liked the abrupt surge of pressure at the bottom of each bounce and the dry, rustling stroke of her nipples over the inside of the smock.
Now engrossed in her body, she emphasized the sensuous sway of her hips and tuned her awareness to the complicated grind of her buttocks. Slim-waisted, long-legged and big-chested, she knew how well she made out in the "sexy" department. She liked that always had and knew no temporary tension was going to enable her to hide her sexiness on a moment's notice. She was five feet two of appetizing female – a hundred and five pounds of it – and she was stuck with the fact.
To her surprise, Rocky was already in the house. He was pacing with the light-footed springiness that was so characteristic of him, his expression as troubled as she had felt.
"Rocky! I didn't know you were back! How long?"
"Oh… half-hour, maybe."
"Damn it! Why didn't you holler? Or come on up?"
"Huh?" He eyed her ruefully. "For a quickie, you mean?"
"Honey, I don't know what's come over me! Yes, a quickie! Anyhow, a half-hour would have been time enough to make it pretty good."
Rocky laughed uncomfortably. "Guess so. Figured you'd gone for a walk. Didn't hear a sound."
Bonnie came in, kicking her feet against the doorstep to knock the dust off, and Ward followed her.
"How's the spring?" asked Rocky.
Ward snorted. "Plugged. Take a whole day to get it cleaned out, I'll bet."
"That bad?"
"Yeah. Seeping some, but that's about all. Hey, Jim and Leanne still out?"
Myra nodded.
"Hope to hell they know what they're doing." Ward looked worried. "I hate a Goddamn cave with a passion. Never know when it's going to cave in or something."
"But that bluff's solid rock!" Rocky protested.
"It's got cracks. And it's not real hard rock – more like sandstone or something."
Myra heard Leanne's voice outside, bubbling with laughter. The moment Leanne and Jim came in, she noticed their satisfied expressions and semi-exhaustion. They didn't waste the afternoon, she reflected. They knew what ought to come first!
Bonnie seemed to have caught the same symptoms. "You guys find the cave interesting?" she asked, a note of skepticism evident in her voice.
Leanne looked embarrassed, but Jim chuckled comfortably.
"Sure!" replied the lanky man. "Interesting as hell! Big pile of seaweed like grass at the back. Been there so long there weren't even any bugs around it. Like a haystack, if you like tumbling in hay."
Ward began to laugh. "You two never could get near a haystack without trying to make out!"
"WARD!" Leanne blushed furiously. "For God's sake!"
Jim grabbed his wife's hand. "Come on, babe. Maybe we've got time for a shower before supper." He grinned broadly. "Itchy as hell, after wallowing in that seaweed."
Myra helped Bonnie prepare supper. She heard only half of what the other chattered about, her imagination trapped in fantasies about stacks of seaweed in the backs of caves, and of Jim's long, slender body pressing her own into the salt-scented masses.
Supper was somewhat confused; all six showed the strain that Myra had been concerned about. Again and again, someone would start to say something, then choke it off self-consciously. Myra herself bit her tongue barely in time to stifle a remark that would have been inexcusably suggestive. When that happened a second time, she trembled and felt perspiration dampening her smock. She bolted the remainder of her food and excused herself from the table.
It seemed to her to be a tense, nervous group that gathered at the bar after the dishes had been washed and put away. Ward played host, pouring drinks to order, then took his own to the corner where his guitar was stored. He plucked quietly at the strings, listening and twisting tuning keys, then began to strum a weirdly discordant rhythm. He hummed, the melody a strange one to Myra, but one that made her flesh prickle.
"What was that?" she asked when he fell silent.
"Damned if I know," he said musingly. He turned toward Bonnie. "Didn't we hear something like that down in Mexico last year?"
She frowned briefly. "It was in that temple, wasn't it?"
"Yeah. That's it. Some kind of fertility thing."
Before she quite realized what she was saying, Myra blurted her protest. "Hell of a thing to play hen we're all so damn horny!" She gasped and jerked her hand to her mouth. "Omigod! What am I saying?"
Bonnie broke the uncomfortable silence, her hostess instinct apparently working. "Look, Myra's right. What's wrong with us? We're good enough friends to get it into the open."
"I don't know if I want to run around with mine out in the open or not!" Jim snickered.
Leanne shot her husband a poisonous glance. "Leave it to you to make it as bad as you can!"
But Bonnie interceded. "Don't let's fight," she pleaded. "Not now." She stepped onto a small, circular hooked rug. "Come on… magic circle! Everybody on!"
They converged on her, hesitantly but with grins. Myra felt a surge of apprehension. The magic-circle routine had been fun when things had been normal. It had furnished moments of delicious groping and anonymous appreciation. But nothing was quite normal this time. She joined Bonnie on the rug. The six of them crowded together, bodies pressed into a tight, warm mass, knees working and hands slipping around waists and over hips.
For a time, the only sounds were those of increasingly heavy breathing. Myra thrilled to the sensations of body contact and writhed as one hand and then another found sensitive spots. Her smock was so loose that it seemed the same as having nothing on at all. The hands she couldn't see molded themselves to her contours and sought out the privacy of her cunt. If Bonnie's intention had been to use the magic circle as a safety valve, she had seriously miscalculated. Nobody was going to come out of this bout with the tension lowered, Myra decided. But it was a kind of relief to express her growing affection in a way that offered at least some concealment.
A person didn't know who was doing the feeling, she thought wryly, but it wasn't hard to tell who one's own hands had found. She managed to rub Ward's stiffened cock through the front of his trousers, almost giggling at his muttered exclamation. But her left hand, groping for Jim's crotch, encountered another female hand and had to battle past it to reach the bulging cylinder.
She squirmed happily as someone kneaded her ass and held her breath when fingers pressed deeply into the heat of her cunt. The smock detracted little from the sensation the touch produced.
One of the magic circle rules was that everyone had to keep moving. It was like being in an electric mixer, Bonnie had explained the first time. Keep churning so the group couldn't become static. That brought friction far more potent than the groping hands did. Myra panted as she scrubbed hard against first one, then another, of her companions.
The pressure in the group suddenly began to decrease. Myra found herself pressed tightly against Jim, her belly rubbing on the hardness of his cock, without anyone pushing her from behind. Her arms seemed no longer to be hemmed in, and she slipped them around his neck hungrily, feeling his hands at the small of her back. For the moment, she ignored the rest of the group and turned her face up to meet his. The warmth of his mouth settled on her lips. She ground into his kiss, belly crushing his hard-on and breasts flattened on his chest. Unconsciously, she worked her hips from side to side and tightened her buttocks to force her cunt against the swell of his thigh.
She heard heavy panting around her and closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the other couple's grappling. Jim rubbed her back, and his hands worked their way downward onto her ass, squeezing and mauling her asscheeks.
"Mmmmmm!" she moaned throatily into the kiss. Her tongue pressed between parted lips to touch the firm male flesh beyond them.
Jim responded, driving his own tongue into her mouth where she sucked greedily at its wetness.
She heard Bonnie's strangled voice.
"Oh, dear God!" exclaimed Bonnie in little more than a whisper.
Dragged forcibly back to reality, Myra eased the desperate clutching of her fingers at the back of Jim's head and let him break the kiss.
"Dear God!" repeated Bonnie. "Do we want to?"
Myra knew what Bonnie was asking; she knew everyone else did, too. She lay back in Jim's arms and gazed thoughtfully at her own husband, who held Bonnie tightly, then at Leanne and Ward, crushed tightly together. As if they were awakening from a trance, the three couples slowly released each other. They separated and stared at each other, expressions sober.
Myra tingled fiercely. I'm scared! she thought with surprise. I think I know what I want to do, and it scares me! She thought the others looked a little scared, as well.
Rocky mumbled, "We've shared just about every other way. Maybe…" his voice trailed off.
"That's what it is!" remarked Ward abruptly. He sounded relieved, as if Rocky had found the key to a puzzling situation. "Sharing! Why the hell not!"
The color had left Leanne's face. Her eyes were round, their blue darker and startled-looking, and her delicately outlined mouth was drawn into a doubtful circle. "I… I don't know…" she said in a whisper. "Do you think…"
"Gain more than we'd lose," suggested Jim.
We could lose a lot, thought Myra. If somebody got jealous, we could lose the whole thing. She said nothing. Imagining Rocky fucking either Bonnie or Leanne made her belly tighten, but it brought no painful wave of jealousy. What seemed more to the point, it jolted her with a new charge of excitement. She squirmed at the hot writhing in her cunt.
Bonnie still acted as if she felt the obligation of a hostess. "Maybe we ought to let the idea sink in," she suggested. "I mean, do something sort of halfway while we decide if we really want to do some swapping."
"Halfway?" Ward studied his wife with a puzzled expression, then grinned. "I never was much good at that halfway shit."
Bonnie giggled. "I'll say not! But what you called halfway was all but the…"
"Hold it! Hold it, for Christ's sake!" Ward interrupted her. "You gotta tell everybody?"
His wife shrugged good-naturedly. "Why not?"
"Awww, come on!"
"Oh, all right. Anyhow, maybe we could just dance for a while – or play some kind of strip game – or something…" she finished lamely.
The notion of taking off her smock in front of the others sent a knife of hot excitement stabbing upward from Myra's cunt. If she got that far, she realized, there would be no stopping.
Jim objected thoughtfully. "Hell, we've seen each other in the raw. Wouldn't be the first time. And what's dancing going to prove?"
No one commented. It was obvious that Jim was going to propose an alternative.
He did. "Halfway? Let's take turns letting everybody work on us. I mean, no screwing, but work off some of the pressure by group-grope."
"On one person at a time?" asked Bonnie doubtfully. "Everybody on one person at a time?"
"Right! Why not? Each one take a turn at being tied down while the rest of us make that one come by feeling him or her up!"
Myra's gasp was lost in a flurry of grunts and groans. Jim's scheme had obviously hit all of them hard.
"Oh, no!" she murmured in a panicky tone. "Good God, no!"
But Rocky appeared to have recovered from his initial shock. "Jesus! Why not? Come on, think about it!"
She was startled at the eagerness in her husband's expression. She realized abruptly that he had stopped considering the other two women. He was thinking only of how his wife would look and how she would react. He wanted her to agree!
She drew a long, tremulous breath. "All right," she whispered. "If you think it would be fun, honey."
Leanne made a faint whimpering sound.
Bonnie cringed. "You'd really do it, Myra?"
Myra nodded slowly. She felt giddy. There seemed to be an enormous pressure in her head and chest, and a ringing in her ears. She was terrified, but she would submit, because Rocky wanted her to.
"Well, okay," Bonnie swallowed hard. "If you can, I guess I can too."
Leanne struggled to speak. No sound got past her lips. At last she nodded silently.