The Devil Inside

Dedicated to Cyrian,
who sets the standard …

Also by Portia Da Costa

Gemini Heat

The Tutor

Gothic Blue

Continuum

The Stranger

Hotbed

Shadowplay

Entertaining Mr Stone

Black Lace books contain sexual fantasies. In real life, always practise safe sex.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9780753534014

Version 1.0

Black Lace, an imprint of Ebury Publishing,
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road,
London SW1V 2SA

Black Lace is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright © Portia Da Costa 1995

Portia Da Costa has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published by Black Lace in 1995
This edition published in 2006

www.eburypublishing.co.uk

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

ISBN 9780352329936

Chapter One

A New Woman

ONE MORNING, IN May, on the sunlit island of Barbados, Alexa Lavelle woke up a new woman. To describe it that way was a truism, she knew, but it did sum up what she felt. She just wasn’t the same woman she’d been yesterday.

The world around her seemed different, too. Colours were brighter; sounds were clearer; smells assaulted her nostrils so pungently that their richness made her feel almost giddy. Lying still between the crisp cotton sheets of her wide hotel bed, Alexa experienced the weirdest sensation, a kind of buoyant rising-up that enthralled her and turned her head like sweet island rum.

The thought of spirits made her wonder if she was genuinely drunk. She remembered having headaches in the night, but felt nothing now. On the contrary, she couldn’t recall ever having felt more healthy. She felt like running or skipping or jumping in the air. Her limbs were tingling with a great excess of energy, and her skin felt soft as silk and smoothly glowing.

Still trying to discover what had happened to her, she thought back to the previous day. Her memories were one complete, seamless flow, yet at the same time, it was as if she was seeing the action through a filter. Today, she had a whole new set of perceptions that suddenly made yesterday seem drab.

Taking in a deep breath of the ocean-scented air, Alexa stretched, then made another discovery. Although completely alone, and so celibate since the start of her holiday that she’d hardly even thought about sex, she was suddenly aware of being aroused.

Alexa had always enjoyed lovemaking – sometimes so much so that it scared her – but right now she felt a jolt of sharp desire. The physical symptoms were real and unmistakable, and so intense they left no room for doubt.

Between her legs, and in the pit of her belly, she had a fierce urge to be filled by a man. No particular man, just a man in the abstract. One that was strong, hard, and enduring; and alive with a lust that matched her own.

What the devil’s happened to me? she wondered, stirring and stretching luxuriously, then waiting for some kind of payback. She could remember why she’d had the headaches now, but it still didn’t account for everything else.

Two days ago, after falling on slippery rocks and bumping her head, Alexa had spent a couple of hours in the island’s main medical centre. The staff there had examined her thoroughly, done various scans and tests, but found nothing at all untoward. She’d been unconscious a second or two after the bump, but not, they said, suffered true concussion. When her fitness to leave had been pronounced, she’d been sent back to the hotel with the simple instruction to ‘take things nice and easy’ – which wasn’t difficult at the St James’s Cove Refuge.

But last night things had not been nice and easy. Half awake and half asleep, Alexa had just lain in her bed and endured, her dozy, pain-fuddled mind imagining demons jabbing spears inside her temples. Too enervated to move, she’d promised herself she’d seek help in the morning. But when morning finally came, both the headaches and the demons were gone, and she’d woken up to sunlight and the soothing island heat.

And this unignorable craving for sex …

Stretching her fingertips slowly towards the white, stuccoed ceiling, Alexa sat up and looked around her. All her familiar possessions were here in the room with her: her clothes, her toiletries, her souvenirs and knick-knacks. And yet somehow, they didn’t seem to be hers any more. Her pink sundress, draped over a wovenbacked chair, looked irritatingly prim and ‘covered-up’. Likewise her shapeless towelling dressing gown. She remembered loving the robe when she’d bought it, and enjoying its soft, cosy comfort; but now she suddenly wished it was sleek and frivolous instead. Something exotic in flimsy, watered silk. Red, with a fire-breathing dragon on the back.

Now where did I get that from? she thought, re-examining the sensuous image, then realising it was one she’d really seen. Her new friend Doctor Quine – the woman from the next cabana – had a scarlet robe with a dragon. Alexa remembered seeing it draped half on and half off Beatrice’s near-naked body as they’d lazed together yesterday by the pool. The doctor had an incredible shape, slim yet thoroughly sumptuous, and she had a habit of displaying almost all of it. She would stretch out like a graven idol on her lounger – in the shade because her skin was very pale – and let her handsome young ‘companion’ read her poetry, in French, from a small, white leather-covered book. Alexa’s French wasn’t marvellous, but she could tell from the odd word or two, and more so from Drew’s deep, velvet-brown voice, that the verse was deliciously obscene.

Flinging aside the single top sheet, then peeling off her white cotton nightie, Alexa made a long, puzzled study of her body. Like her mind, it was nominally the same as yesterday, but even so, she seemed to see changes. Her shapely, firm-fleshed thighs seemed to invite her touch, as did the softly haired triangle of her sex. She felt her neat, dark pubis demanding something of her, something she’d mostly always done with a slight, childish guilt, but which now she anticipated eagerly. Her crisp black curls had a springy new lustre this morning, an opulence that encouraged exploration.

Her breasts looked different, too. More rounded, more voluptuous. Alexa knew it was a trick of the mind, but they seemed to thrust upwards and insolently outwards, and challenge her to fondle and caress them.

Experimentally, she placed the pad of one finger against the lightly tanned curve of her abdomen; then gasped aloud in surprise. A clear, silvery sensation seemed to shoot from the point of contact, just beneath her navel, and attack the very heart of her sex. The urge to follow its path with her fingers was so strong and compelling that she bit down on her lip in pure shock. It felt as if a man had kissed her belly, sucked it long and moistly, then pressed his hand into the crease of her vulva.

On the bedside table stood her fiancé’s photograph, but his smiling face offered no answers. It wasn’t Thomas who’d initiated the thrill. Alexa had tried to think about him during the holiday, and she even tried now, but there seemed far more than just glass – and an ocean – between them.

Oh Tom, I’m sorry, she thought confusedly, wanting desperately to connect with the photo.

But as she failed, utterly, another image formed instead; one so clear and wickedly erotic that it made her face burn, and her limbs quiver crazily.

She was nude and sweating on this very bed, pinned and spread beneath a strong, faceless man. They were writhing and struggling in a furious bout of sex, and the stranger had his penis deep inside her. For her own part, Alexa could see that her knees were bent and legs wrapped around him, and her heels were thumping hard against his rump.

But the image involved more than just sight. As clearly as she could see the empty white room around her, she could feel the unknown man pounding into her. His pulsing shaft was stretching and massaging her, and he felt massive in the cradle of her thighs. With each new thrust, he drove in even further and ravished her at her soft, molten core.

Hot yearning washed through Alexa, and, pressing her hand to where her dream man laboured, she found a well of mercurial slickness. The groove of her sex was fluid and slippery and her labia were puffy and engorged. She felt alive in every part of her with a heavy, tropic power, yet at the same time felt so light she could fly.

Uttering a loud cry, Alexa smothered her last inhibitions, and gave in to the devil in her belly. Her legs flexing, she kicked out wildly, then arched back against the twisted white sheets. As her fingers danced, she made a final effort to look towards Thomas, but his picture seemed almost transparent. In her mind there was just ‘man’ – an immense, all-consuming presence that possessed her without revealing his face.

Rubbing faster, her bottom writhing against the mattress, Alexa crooned joyfully as orgasm bloomed. The pleasure made her legs wave, her loins clench and her hands claw savagely at the linen. For a moment, as madness gripped her, she imagined she could see faces: all around, faces that should have meant nothing to her, yet which suddenly had a breathtaking impact as bodies joined the torrid inner scene. She saw handsome, tanned men from the hotel; smiling black houseboys, their thin white trousers gaping open; total strangers all primed and ready to serve her. She even saw her new friend Doctor Quine. A woman … but naked and red-mouthed with desire.

What the devil’s happening to me? thought Alexa Lavelle again, as she struggled for control of her senses.

What’s happening and why is it so good?

Chapter Two

Tending the Fires

ALEXA SPENT A long, long time in the shower that morning. First with hot water, using lots of soap, shampoo and shower gel to cleanse her body of the night’s perspiration; and afterwards with cold water, as icy cold as she could bear it, to try to cool the strange heat that burned inside her.

It didn’t, of course, and as she strolled out on to the veranda, where her breakfast was waiting on the table, she felt overwhelmed by the power of her hunger. Her craving not for food, but for life itself. And life in the specific form of sex.

The island, too, seemed to be conspiring against her. The rich scents of the greenery all around; the gentle breeze that tickled her oversensitive skin; the wild, singing blue of the ocean at the bottom of her garden. Even the sly lapping of the waves against the pearly sand reminded her of flesh slapping sweatily against flesh.

As she sat down on her white-painted chair and poured coffee, Alexa realised that her new sensual awareness was going to be difficult, nay impossible, to fight. Already, and without knowing how, she could sense things: almost hear them, see them and feel them. She could detect minds very close to her that were thinking about sex, and bodies that were stirring and embracing.

Were Beatrice and Drew making love now? she wondered, thinking that in her present state, she could not have had worse – or better – neighbours. With the gloriously overstated Doctor Quine around, it was impossible not to think about sex, even if you weren’t normally all that interested. But when you were interested, and you had a kind of subtle, erotic antenna that was constantly scanning for stimulation, having Beatrice near could well be pure torment.

Even so, Alexa looked forward to the experience; if not for the doctor herself, then at least for the presence of Drew. He really was gorgeous, she accepted fatalistically; one of the most impressive looking men she’d ever met.

Thinking back, she recalled the moment she’d first seen him, just a few hours after she’d arrived at the Refuge. Even then he’d had an effect on her, and a sexual one, and that was before these weird changes she’d felt.

She’d been strolling around the pool, wondering what the hell she was doing there, spending money she couldn’t afford, some of which wasn’t even hers – and suddenly she’d seen a holy vision. A man emerging up the ladder at the deep end, water streaming off muscle and smooth, tanned skin; a perfume-seller’s supermodel cliché, yet real and boyish somehow. She’d taken a swift eyeful of long, solid thighs and the skimpiest of black thong-like swimtrunks then forced herself to look the other way. It was bad enough leaving Thomas behind and illicitly using his money, without mentally undressing the first stereotypical hunk she set eyes on.

Taking a long sip of the hotel’s excellent coffee, Alexa tried not to think of Drew Kendrick, and instead considered the effect her new condition – or whatever it was – might have on her fiancé, Thomas.

They’d always had a pretty good sex life, although it wasn’t what she would have called the hub of their relationship. What had brought them together, and still kept them together, was their work, their shared business; the small, occasionally struggling, occasionally thriving computer consultancy that she’d joined about eighteen months ago. Tom had just set it up then, and she was the first programmer/analyst he’d taken on, but they’d instantly formed a rapport. Within six weeks they’d been sleeping together; within ten, he’d offered her a partnership; and within three months, he’d suggested an engagement. Alexa had spent several days debating whether she was in love enough for a commitment, but eventually she’d given him a ‘yes’. She hadn’t been sure then that she’d done the right thing, and she still wasn’t sure of it now. Especially now …

The fact she could happily blow a huge chunk of money on a holiday without him was a bad sign. Tom hadn’t complained. He liked to think of himself as a bit of a new man, all for women’s equality and all that, and he’d told her he accepted her right to spend her windfall in any way she wished. Barbados had always been her dream since she’d first seen it as a film location, and, though Tom couldn’t get away then and there, he’d talked of taking her back there for their honeymoon.

If there is one, thought Alexa wryly, remembering how she’d topped up Aunt Julia’s bequest. She’d had to sneak a little more of KL Systems’ money than she’d anticipated, and it was only the fact that she’d designed the accounting system – Tom’s main speciality was databases – that had kept her deception from his notice.

Lost in her ruminations, she was shocked by the sound of nearby voices; then, almost immediately, felt the resonance that went with them.

It’s happening again, the sex thing, she thought as her mind filled with wild erotic images. Of the two people she could hear speaking, one had a deep and very male voice that was gentle, reasonable and even, while the other speaker’s tone was far lighter, although also still husky and deliciously provocative.

‘Oh no, baby … I can’t get up yet,’ she heard Beatrice protest from beyond the windbreak that divided the cabanas. ‘You’ve worn me out, you greedy thing. I need more sleep so I can get back my strength.’ Drew and Beatrice obviously had their bedroom window open – and the breeze must coming from that direction – because Alexa could have sworn she heard the rustle of sheets against bodies, and the small, playful sounds of a tussle.

‘But Beatrice, this is the best part of the day and you always waste it.’ Drew sounded faintly irritated now. ‘And you did say you’d get up early and go exploring. You could do with some exercise, you know. All you’ve done since we got here is lie about on your backside, and make love.’

‘But that’s a form of exercise,’ replied Beatrice laconically. ‘Excellent for the heart-rate and circulation, as well as a good all-round toner.’

‘You’re hopeless!’ pronounced Drew, but Alexa could hear the affection that tempered his annoyance. Sometimes the couple next door seemed a total mismatch, but at the heart of things she could tell they were devoted. Even though Beatrice was probably twice her handsome partner’s young age.

‘Yes, I know. Come here and kiss me,’ said the doctor, her lovely voice thickened by emotion. ‘Kiss me properly!’ she commanded, after presumably getting only a swift peck, ‘Then you can go out and play with Alexa. And make sure she’s suffering no delayed ill-effects from that bump.’

Alexa was shaken by the sound of her own name, then felt even more unnerved by the silence that followed. It was a long, intriguing hiatus, devoid of sound, yet dynamic all the same.

She’d seen Drew kiss Beatrice – and vice versa – on many occasions while she’d been at the Refuge, and just to watch them was a way of having sex. The pair were so unalike, the contrast was stunning. Drew was all finely developed muscle, tanned flesh and neatly cut straight black hair; while his mistress, the Pre-Raphaelite love goddess, had a slender, yet richly curved shape, milky-pale skin, and a waist-length cascade of red waves.

Alexa could clearly imagine Beatrice arching up from the bed, her body naked and flushed rosy from sleep. Her sculpted, deeply bowed lips would be fastened on to Drew’s in a kiss both devouring and beneficent. Her fingertips would be searching his body, leaving no part unexplored, and she might even be stroking his sex. Alexa remembered seeing Beatrice fondle her companion like that the other day – when they’d all been together on the sun-deck – and she also recalled her own excitement. Drew’s obvious embarrassment had been a potent turn-on, and so had his visible arousal. This again before her bump on the head, she now realised.

And would Beatrice now be taking Drew’s hand, then placing it on her own naked skin? Alexa could almost see those long, creamy thighs lolling apart and making space for her lover’s dark touch. Drew’s fingers were gentle, yet strong – he was a professional masseur, he’d told her. She imagined his thumb running across Beatrice’s clitoris, then startlingly seemed to feel it on her own.

‘Oh …’ she murmured, stirring in her seat, the freshly brewed coffee forgotten. The fires that’d burned when she’d first woken up were back now, and, if anything, they were infinitely more intense. Her thin jersey shorts – chosen, she suddenly realised, because they were clinging and outlined her figure – had ridden up and slipped into her furrow. It would be a simple matter to adjust her position, and use the drawn-tight wedge of cloth to –

‘Hello, Alexa. Lovely morning, isn’t it?’

The jerk of sitting up almost achieved the objective. With her sex oppressed, and feeling scared that her sly attempts at pleasure were visible, Alexa straightened herself carefully in her garden chair and looked up into Drew’s stylishly bespectacled, dark eyes.

‘Y … Yes,’ she muttered, acutely aware of both her own flustered predicament and Drew’s fresh-scented, glowing near-nakedness, ‘It’s lovely. Really beautiful.’

‘May I join you?’ he asked, looking longingly at her coffee. ‘You know what Beatrice is like. She won’t be getting up until midday, and frankly I could do with some company.’

‘Oh. Yes, please do,’ Alexa urged, wishing she didn’t have to sound so eager. But in all honesty, he was a true ‘thing of beauty’, and with the benefit of her brand-new awareness, she could appreciate him far better than before.

‘Thanks, you’re a star,’ murmured Drew, taking a second cup from the tray and pouring himself a steaming black brew. Alexa shifted surreptitiously in the chair again, her roused body almost calling out for his.

Drew Kendrick looked even more magnificent than usual this morning, clad only in his sky-blue swimtrunks. Studying him as discreetly as she could, Alexa wondered if he used a sunbed to keep up that deep, caramel tan, or whether he often accompanied Beatrice to the tropics. Either way, his bronzed skin was exceptional.

Once again, Alexa found his groin the object of her interest. The Lycra of his trunks was both light-coloured and thin, and, with half horror and half delight, she realised she could clearly see the outline of his penis. A feature that appeared to be just as big, sturdy and beautiful as the rest of him. It was no wonder Beatrice moaned so in the night.

Alexa’s hands flew to her face, and she turned away sharply, blushing. Those goddamned thoughts again. She could feel the blood rushing pell-mell through her body, and her mind playing its salacious little tricks. It was almost as if her special sense had a separate existence of its own now. She could feel it flexing and pushing at its boundaries, trying to reach out and read Drew’s hidden sexual thoughts. Unable to stop herself, she tried to divine whether he wanted her or not; then a second later, she consciously willed it, and pictured his hand stroking her body instead of Beatrice’s.

‘Are you OK,’ asked Drew, unwittingly breaking into her fugue. ‘You look flushed, a bit out of sorts. Would you like me to get Bea to check you over? There might still be some residual effects from that knock you took.’

‘No. Thank you. I’m all right, really. I just didn’t sleep very well, that’s all.’ Yes, I spent half the night feeling as if I’d an icepick in my skull, she thought, then I woke up full of dreams of rampant sex!

‘Are you sure?’ Drew’s grey eyes narrowed, then he adjusted the position of his glasses, something she’d often seen him do when deep in thought.

‘Yes, I’m sure. I’m just a bit tense that’s all. It’ll soon pass. I’m in the best place on earth to relax, aren’t I?’ She gestured vaguely at the the five-star resort that surrounded them, and, beyond that, the Eden-like island.

‘Let me give you a massage,’ said Drew suddenly, leaping to his feet in a quick, lithe movement. ‘It’s what I do, you know. And I can guarantee it’ll relax you.’

It’ll do much more than relax you, something impish in his eyes seemed to hint, and Alexa guessed that, too, was guaranteed.

She swallowed, understanding the subliminal message, but felt alarmed in case somehow she’d generated it herself. She saw a momentary image of Tom, then found herself on her feet, looking towards the cool, white interior of her cabana. It will have to be in there, she supposed, if Beatrice was still slumbering next door.

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ she said, accepting the implications and feeling them flood through her veins like voodoo punch. ‘Do you need a –’ She faltered, caught again by the male symmetry of Drew’s body as he stood, lightly poised, before her. ‘A bed or something?’

‘Stay here,’ said Drew, suddenly commanding. His firm voice and decisive action were a glimpse of the man who sometimes defied his idiosyncratic mistress. Then, with a quick smile, he turned away and walked swifly towards his own cabana, providing Alexa wth something equally compelling – a superb view of his hard male rump as it moved powerfully beneath sheer nylon fabric.

I have gone mad, Alexa decided. Definitely. Standing on the stone-flagged veranda, she felt lost, confused and impatient. I want this man, and I’m going to get him. I’m going to let him touch me all over – and everything that promises. Why can’t I stop myself, and think about Tom?

Stuff Tom! said the newly born wanton inside her as Drew emerged around the corner of the windbreak, a thick, rolled mat tucked under his arm and a hessian holdall slung casually over his shoulder.

‘Come here,’ he said, still controlling her. ‘Around the side, by the windbreak. That way we can be outdoors, but hidden from the path.’

‘Outside?’

‘Yes, why not?’ His eyes and his white teeth twinkled. ‘A massage is more beneficial in the fresh air. Balmy breezes on the skin and all that. Especially in a climate like this.’ He nodded towards the designated spot, tucked away between the two cabanas and close to the white, openwork bricks of the windbreak. ‘You’re not scared of me, are you, Alex?’

The question was so much like something Beatrice might have asked that Alexa felt her mettle start to rise. ‘Certainly not,’ she answered, smiling what she hoped was a nonchalant smile. ‘In fact I’m looking forward to this. Let’s get to it!’

‘With pleasure,’ he said, first stepping forward and flipping out the mat with a flourish, then just standing there, eyeing her intently. ‘You’re going to have to take your clothes off, you know,’ he continued, a vestigial smile curving the corners of his mouth – as if he were trying to play it straight, but not doing very well.

‘I know that.’ Alexa’s answer was crisp, but her nerve endings were a-quiver, now the crunch had come and she had to take her clothes off and bare all.

You want this, remember? she told herself, tugging at her T-shirt, and feeling Drew’s dark grey eyes steadily watching. And it’s not that much different to wearing a skimpy bikini, is it? In fact it’s more honest. More natural. Even so, she fumbled with the fastening of her bra, getting hot and bothered as the tiny clasp defied her. She could sense Drew challenging her, and silently calling her bluff. You daren’t do it, dare you? his voice inside her mind seemed to say.

‘Let me,’ he said softly, around behind her in the blink of an eye, his fingers working deftly on the fastening. Alexa gasped involuntarily as the garment swung away from her breasts; her nipples were hard, and very evidently so, plummy studs in twin circles of dark pink. She expected that at any instant Drew would reach around and touch them, but instead he stepped away and to the front of her again.

‘And the rest?’ he queried, cocking his head on one side, still challenging.

I must! I must! thought Alexa, dithering and frozen.

‘Would it help if I stripped off?’ he asked, his slight smile widening to a wide, killer-white one. When Alexa didn’t – couldn’t – answer he seemed to take it as a ‘yes’ and slid his thumbs into the waistband of his trunks.

Alexa had a sudden, bizarre sense of her vision acting like a computerised targeting system. It literally homed in, there was no other word for it, and Drew’s crotch was at the centre of the cross-hairs.

Like the rest of him, his cock was impressive. Long, thick and meaty, it wasn’t fully erect yet, just tumescing ever so slightly. He was clearly on the way to arousal, but seemed either unware of his condition, or simply used to it. Her mouth dry, Alexa wondered if he’d had to develop a certain detachment for his job. After all, he probably had his hands on women’s naked bodies every day, and those who were beautiful must surely affect him.

‘See, that didn’t hurt,’ he observed cheerfully, and in a quick, graceful movement, stepped out of his trunks and kicked them away across the tiles. ‘Now you,’ he said, then paused and almost seemed to strike a pose. Almost, but not quite. ‘Don’t worry, Alex, women’s bodies are my business. You haven’t got anything I haven’t seen or touched before.’

‘That’s all right then,’ she returned tartly, scrabbling her way clumsily out of her shorts, and pulling her panties off with them in a bunch. ‘I feel so much better knowing my unremarkable body doesn’t impress you!’

‘I didn’t say that,’ murmured Drew, reaching down to scoop up her clothing and toss it in a heap with his swimtrunks. ‘Your body’s making quite a big impression on me. It has been all week.’ He glanced down quickly at his thickening sex, then grinned without apology or shame.

Alexa pretended to ignore what was happening, in spite of the fact it was impossible. She was standing stark naked beside the handsomest man on the island, who was also naked – apart from his glasses – and making a substantial impression of his own upon the acutely reactive membranes of her sex. It was as if he’d fondled her before the massage had even started.

He does want me, thought Alexa as she stepped tentatively towards the mat, and considered how best, and most elegantly, to lie down. Even if she hadn’t been able to see his rising penis, she could ‘feel’ his desire hitting her like a ray. There were none of the ‘Is he/isn’t he? Does he/doesn’t he?’ doubts that usually plagued her. She knew – with absolute certainty – that Drew wanted to make love to her. She could almost see the fantasies in his head, and read the way he planned to make them real.

Without speaking, he put out a hand like a stark-naked gallant, and assisted her courteously on to the mat. Alexa lay face down; partly because it seemed the natural position in which to receive a massage, but mainly because it hid a little more of her. Her nipples were so stiff and puckered they were embarrassing. Drew wouldn’t need special powers to deduce whether she was aroused or not; her body was screaming out the message.

Lying very still, and every bit as tense as she described, Alexa listened to Drew’s preparations. She heard his bag rustle as he removed things from it, then the sound of objects being placed methodically on the tiles.

‘I’m going to tie your hair out of the way of the oil,’ he told her after a moment.

Alexa was glad of the warning, because otherwise she was sure that she would have flinched. As it was, she trembled very finely, and prayed that Drew wouldn’t notice it. His touch was efficient and strangely impersonal, and in a couple of seconds she had a tiny little ponytail.

Trying to imagine what Drew would be seeing, Alexa suddenly wished her hair could look different. More distinctive, perhaps … She’d been happy with it mid-length until a moment ago, but now it seemed unimaginative and plain. The colour was good – jet black, just like Drew’s – but she felt annoyed that she’d never done more with it. For a moment, she coveted Beatrice’s hair – a waist-kissing fall that rippled like a crimped satin cloak – then imagined a very short style instead. She pictured herself with a crop of some kind, cut well to crisp up her natural curl.

Drew’s hair, she thought dreamily, was as perfect and healthy as the rest of him. Thick, straight and shiny, it tended to dangle across his forehead in a love-lick. Was it dangling now? she wondered, as he bent over her and studied her naked rump.

‘I’m going to touch you now,’ he said, warning her again, but still causing her to tremble. She nearly jumped out of her skin when his fingers made contact, settling lightly on the nape of her neck. ‘Relax, Alex, give it up,’ he purred, as his thumbs began to circle against her spine. ‘Why are you so tense? You’re on your holidays. The sun should make you mellow and loose.’

‘Some people just don’t get “mellow”,’ she replied, trying for sarcasm in an effort to be impersonal. Drew’s hands managed to be both firm and floating in one motion, and the pressure was electric against her skin. He was doing big, kneading sort of shapes on her shoulderblades, and though it should have been professional and innocuous, the sensations were shooting straight to her sex. She almost choked with desire when he made a small, impatient sound, then threw his thigh across her body and straddled her.

‘You’re so wound up, Alex, I need more leverage,’ he said, by way of excuse, as his penis brushed the crease of her bottom. As his hard penis brushed the crease of her bottom …

‘You’ve got to help me, you know,’ he continued, as if his erection and its resting place meant nothing. ‘You’ve got to let yourself go loose, and stop fighting me. Let your muscles give, and tell me as soon as it feels good.’ He’d returned to the muscles of her neck now, his fingertips working determinedly on the stubborn tension spots.

It feels good now! she thought savagely at him, unable to prevent herself clenching her bottom. Did it feel as if she was gripping him, she wondered, but discerned no change in the rhythm of the massage.

‘Alexa?’ he prompted, lifting one of her arms and shaking it gently.

‘Look,’ she gasped, as he pressed against a patch of skin on the inside of her elbow that she’d never even realised was sensitive. ‘This is your job, you’re a masseur. Don’t you know when you’re doing it right?’

‘Yes, of course I do,’ he said, pressing again and making her groan this time. ‘But it’s much better when there’s feedback.’

‘Better for whom?’

At that, Drew simply laughed and scooted down her body, his penis bouncing, then sliding silkily down her thigh. Alexa could feel warm moisture trailing from it, and not oil – because so far he’d only applied that to her shoulders.

After a second or two of adjustment, he settled into a crouch, his bottom right down against her heels. Alexa could feel his balls pressed against the backs of her ankles, their firm oval shapes slightly hairy. As he began to massage her buttocks, the movements of his body slid his testicles against her, making them roll in their loose, crinkly pouch.

The massage itself was more forceful now, and Drew’s grip on her far more intrusive. She could feel his thumbs working deeply, digging into the muscles of her bottom-cheeks and moulding them with a concentrated precision. The action was so strong it should have hurt her, but he was so skilful, so almost uncannily attuned to her anatomy, that the pressure he imparted was sublime. She squirmed and crooned with pleasure when he stretched her anal furrow, then felt mortified at revealing how she felt.

‘Good, huh?’ enquired Drew, suddenly closer, his breath warm and fragant on her back. ‘Do you want more? Tell me, Alexa. Go on, tell me.’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know!’ she gasped, shocked when his hands abruptly left her bottom. ‘You’re talking at me again. You’re confusing me.’ As she spoke, she felt Drew on the move again, slipping from astride her with lightness and agility, then sliding an oily hand down beneath her ribs. With a neat, negligent wrist action, he flipped her over, then repositioned her, like a cook turning a tender cut of meat.

‘Don’t you like to talk?’ he enquired, making a tiny, mouth-zipping action with his finger and thumb.

‘I’m not used to conversation at times like this,’ she said, fighting an urge to cover her breasts and her pubis.

‘Well, I didn’t used to be –’ Drew turned away, the muscles in his back and shoulders stretching as he reached for another shot of oil. ‘But Beatrice insists on it. She talks all the time. Especially during sex. Whispering this, demanding that … and promising one helluva lot of the other.’ He grinned at his small joke, then flexed and pulled at his long, tapered fingers. ‘She wheedles, she praises, she tells me what to do.’

‘Don’t you find it distracting?’ Alexa’s voice was faint, and, to her own ears, very distracted.

‘Sometimes,’ he murmured, laying hands on her again, ‘but there’s an easy way to shut her up.’

‘What way is that?’ It was difficult to talk, but she managed.

‘Work it out, Alex.’ Drew laughed softly, and Alexa realised it wasn’t at all by accident that his erection was rubbing to and fro against her thigh. Closing her eyes, she imagined Beatrice effectively silenced, her exquisite red lips folded firmly around his stiff wand of flesh. Drew’s big hand would be cupping his mistress’s jaw, holding her still, and, for once, in his control.

Now I’d like to see that, thought Alexa suddenly. She’d surmised already that the fabulous Beatrice rarely kowtowed to anyone, least of all to this paragon who served her.

All at once, Drew’s manipulation of Alexa’s shoulders ceased, and he ran a fingertip along the curve of her brow. Automatically, she opened her eyes, then gasped again. His face was just inches from her own; his breathing so light she’d never felt it, and his eyes like polished slate behind his spectacles.

She tried to turn from him, but the fingertip was persistent and slid instantly to her jaw to still her.

‘Why are you resisting me?’ he enquired. As he spoke, Alexa smelt the sweet, minty tang of his toothpaste. ‘Is it the headaches? Or your boyfriend? Or is it just me?’

‘No!’

‘“No what?”’ he persisted, his body moving subtly as he tilted his head with the question. He was completely erect now; and, to her horror, Alexa found herself still avoiding his eyes, this time by staring down between their bellies.

To his credit, Drew said nothing, and didn’t even smirk; although it was obvious he enjoyed her scrutiny, because his penis seemed to twitch in response.

‘No, I don’t have a headache,’ she said in a small voice, conscious of Drew studying her mouth, no doubt wondering if she could use it as cleverly as Beatrice did hers.

‘Boyfriend then? Surely he doesn’t disapprove of you having a therapeutic massage?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. He lets me do more or less what I want.’

‘Hmmm …’ Drew seemed to consider this most seriously, his parted lips only inches from hers. ‘Must be me then?’

Alexa wanted to look away again, but even though Drew had removed the restraining finger, and now had both hands on the mat, at either side of her head, she still couldn’t tear her gaze from his face.

‘Yes! Yes, it is you!’ she said belligerently, fighting herself far more than she fought him. She wanted him now, like life itself, but her pride made her resist appearing easy. ‘First you keep nagging me to talk to you while you’re doing the most intimate things to me, and now you won’t stop staring!. It’s all too intense, Drew, I’m not used to it.’

She sensed him speculating, imagining what her sex life might be like. She wanted to tell him to mind his own business, but that would mean telling him she could ‘read’ him. And she didn’t even understand her new ability herself, much less know how to describe it to a man.

As his mouth moved above her, she stiffened, expecting some comment about Tom, but all Drew said was, ‘Would it help you if I took off my glasses?’

‘Can you see without them?’ she asked, saying the first thing that came into her head.

‘Yes, perfectly,’ he said, without hesitating.

‘Then why the hell do you wear them?’ she demanded, beginning to wriggle beneath him, and feeling his cock roll against her, its warm tip dripping satin fluid.

‘In the vain hope that people will take me seriously,’ he said, sounding serious. And as he lowered his body a little further, his grey eyes seemed to glower behind their cosmetic glass discs. ‘Oh, I know what you think. That I’m just Beatrice’s toyboy. A body without a brain.’ This last was said with some vehemence, as Drew sat up suddenly, pulled off his glasses, and slid them away across the tiles with scant regard for their expensive designer frames, not to mention the fragile glass lenses.

He looked troubled, deeply thoughtful for a moment, his gravity at odds with his waving erection, which still reared up in splendour from his groin.

‘Are you?’ Alexa asked, wanting to plumb the secrets of the odd, but handsome couple who’d made such an impact on her holiday. ‘Are you Beatrice’s toyboy?’

‘Sometimes,’ he murmured, hesitating. Then, as he spoke again, he let his hand drop blatantly to his cock. ‘I do have the right qualifications.’

‘What do you mean “sometimes”?’

‘I mean “not always”. I have a life. I make choices.’

‘What choices?’ Alexa was pushing, and she knew it.

‘Well.’ He paused again, then moved in close again, bracketing her head with his hands as he looked directly into her eyes, his own far brighter without their filters. ‘I can have sex with you if I choose to.’

‘Is that a fact, you arrogant pig?’ raged Alexa, beginning to thrash beneath him but getting nowhere as he pressed his weight – and his sex – down upon her.

Ignoring her protest, Drew continued to stare down at her, his straight black brows raised questioningly. ‘What about you, Alex?’ he whispered, ‘Do you make choices? And if you do, what do you choose?’

It was a pivotal moment, but Alexa’s body had already made her decision. With a noise that was half a sigh, half a growl – a noise that on her own lips astounded her – she lifted her arms from where they lay upon the mat and wound them around Drew’s perspiring back.

‘I choose what you choose,’ she told him, then pressed her mouth against his for a kiss, and took his soft laugh of triumph from its source.

As his tongue moved immediately between her teeth, probing audaciously, it seemed to bring with it a dark lode of images.

All the sexual fantasies of her waking now returned to her. The man above her assumed a myriad of roles, not just the one of a new, insolent, but basically benign lover. She seemed to see a man in a black mask leering salaciously as he fingered her body. Then it was the same man, fucking her urgently as Beatrice looked on, with her breasts unclothed. The doctor was watching, watching, watching – but she was also being loved herself, too. A young woman, hooded in leather, was sucking at one nipple and pinching at the other with her fingers.

It was all bizarre and dreamlike, but Alexa suddenly fell back into reality. Drew’s body had shifted above her, and he’d put his hand between her thighs to touch her sex. In an instant he was stroking her clitoris, very delicately, just as she’d imagined he would, the contact like a moth’s fluttering wing.

She groaned, and he made a sound in response that seemed to vibrate inside her mouth and her mind. His fingertip floated again, then danced down to her moist vaginal entrance while he lifted his lips away from hers.

‘Yes,’ he said, his deep voice smug. ‘You do chose me, don’t you? At least your body does. You’re wet through down here, Alex. And all for me.’

‘Do you get all this from her?’ Alexa demanded, her voice shaking as her legs waved and her buttocks beat the mat. He was spearing her now, pushing a single long finger inside her.

‘All what?’ he asked, grinning as he pumped her slowly. ‘All this?’ He pulled out the finger, glistening, and held it between them, before her eyes, so close she could almost taste her own juice.

‘No!’ she squeaked as he reinserted the digit with a shocking efficiency. ‘Not that … The way you are … so bloody clever, So gloating. Oh! Oh God!’ His thumb settled squarely on her clitoris, and in a heartbeat she was throbbing and contracting, her flesh gripping him and jumping like a pulse.

‘Beatrice is a good teacher,’ he whispered, his lips worrying her throat as she came. ‘It’s difficult not to emulate her sometimes.’

Alexa was no longer listening. Her loins were dissolving. Her mouth was open and she was gasping. She needed air, oxygen to breathe, but it was being consumed by the flames between her legs.

‘Please,’ she hissed out, then grunted, deprived, as Drew’s finger slid clear of her sex.

‘Your wish,’ he sighed, then nipped wickedly at the soft place between her neck and her shoulder as his prick forged easily into her, ‘is my command.’ he finished, shimmying his hips to bed his flesh even deeper.

Alexa didn’t come again straight away, although she half believed she should have done. Instead, she trembled on the very brink of it, her clitoris quivering as she explored her strange insight, her understanding of what Drew was feeling, too. With each thrust, each stroke of his fascinating rhythm, she felt his pleasure in tandem with her own. He was pure power inside her: dominant, supreme – and revelling profoundly in the experience.

This peculiar transcendentalism didn’t last for more than a few seconds, and when a new orgasm began to simmer again, right at the very edge of her consciousness, Alexa was back in her own body with a vengeance. She felt herself being stretched, ploughed into, laid open; her clitoris tugged by the motion of Drew’s cock. Moaning with relief, with fulfilment, and with pure, uncomplicated happiness, she tried to arch and get him further inside her. Drew in turn seemed to be seeking some obscure, sweet spot right at the heart of her; seeking, seeking, seeking, and shouting in triumph as he found …

Grabbing her tight against his chest, he came in a long, hard spasm, moaning incoherently as his flesh leapt and juddered.

Well, I’ve done it now, haven’t I? thought Alexa as Drew rolled off her, and she snuggled against him as if they’d been lovers for a lifetime.

I’ve done it … So why don’t I feel guilty?

You young rogue! You don’t have to enjoy it quite so much! thought the red-headed woman concealed behind the blocks of the windbreak. Her voluptuous body was clad in a soft cotton robe the colour of sandy earth, in stark contrast to her usual vivid clothes. It wasn’t wise to wear bright primaries whilst spying …

Oh Drew, dearest, what on earth does that feel like? pondered Beatrice, watching the tensing of his firm, athletic buttocks as he drove into the young woman on the mat.

It wasn’t the first time Beatrice had wondered what it was like to be a man, and longed – with all her passionate curiosity – for the chance to change sex for one day. She didn’t think she’d need longer than that, because she derived great satisfaction from being female – and suspected that men, no matter how sexually proficient they were, could never reach the highs that women did.

Still admiring Drew’s grace and strength, she turned her attention to the young woman who lay beneath him, the new friend she’d specifically sent him to ravish.

You’re quite a prize, my dear, she told the gasping girl fondly. A shining star if you only but knew it.

Always sensitive to beauty, Beatrice had noticed Alexa Lavelle the very day she’d arrived. The girl had certain tantalising qualities that seemed to cry out to her. Alexa was vulnerable, slightly unsure of herself, yet had a challenging air of wildness in her, too. A kind of suppressed daring that seemed to bubble up from time to time and wreak havoc.

But it isn’t very deeply supressed, is it, sweetheart? Beatrice reflected. Not if Alexa could come away to Barbados without her fiancé, and quite blithely spend a huge amount of money.

Well done, sister, applauded Beatrice silently. She’d never believed in denying herself in any way, least of all in the disposal of income, though in her case, ample funds weren’t a problem. Her practice, and certain contacts she made by way of it, kept her far more than adequately provided for.

We have a lot in common, Alexa, she told the girl who was moaning beyond the windbreak. For one thing, we both adore Drew.

Beatrice watched closely as the young woman’s legs jerked and flailed, and an orgasm quite clearly overcame her. Drew’s penis must be very deep now, stretching and caressing with its hot living bulk. Beatrice shuddered, remembering those same sensations as she’d felt them this morning; in the small hours, when she’d woken Drew with a kiss and a grope, then whispered a string of crude nothings in his ear. Ever willing to serve, her fine young animal had roused from sleep immediately and in seconds she’d had his cock where it mattered.