Chapter 1

Steve Oldham crept up the carpeted stairs as quietly as he could, not wanting to disturb Randall. But as he got to the top, the noises made it obvious Lucy's husband was not asleep. Nor, Steve assumed, was Lucy -- the groans he heard were a harmony of male and female.

He paused, one foot on the landing, the other still on the stairs. His room was only twelve feet away, but he'd have to cross right in front of the pull-out sofa where the action was. If he crawled, keeping low -- no. That was too much like a bad sitcom script.

It was a dilemma. He was tired and achy, and his bed was only feet away. He paused, considered waiting for his wife. But Paula's after-sex showers were legendary in length. And his back was killing him. Then he realized: If Lucy was down here, then her bed upstairs must be empty. He could lie down there awhile to give his back a rest, then come back down.

Up one more flight of stairs, Steve blinked. After three days, he still hadn't adjusted to the pitch black nights. True, they were lucky the condo hadn't been battered by the previous month's hurricane, like so many others. And they were getting a big discount on the rental because the power was going to be out for their entire long weekend stay. But it was a pain, trying to navigate in a strange house when you couldn't see the nose in front of your face.

He bumped that nose into a wall he also couldn't see before feeling his way to Lucy's door. He fumbled with the knob and got the door open a crack before the sounds within made him freeze.

At first he was completely confused. How could Lucy be fucking in two places at once? Then he smiled. He must have gotten the rooms confused in the dark. And if this was Pete's room, his buddy must have gotten lucky with one of the other house guests -- or, knowing Pete, both. Well, the guys always had said Pete could charm the pants off a lesbian. Steve guessed they were right.

With only one stubbed toe, he found the other second-floor room and settled into the bed. No sooner had he sighed with relief, though, than he felt someone crawling into bed beside him. Before he could even say hello, soft lips were on his. A hand reached down, slipped under his pajamas, grabbed his cock. Paula must have made the same decision on the stairs, he thought. But, wow! Twice in one night! She hadn't been this eager since they were dating!

"Florida?" Paula looked up from her chair. "For our anniversary?"

"Sure!" Steve's face was beaming. "It's perfect. You wanted sun? You got it! Beach? Check! And the best thing..."

"Yes?"

"We can take the kids! Disney! Epcot! The whole deal! We'll make a family vacation out of it!"

Paula kept her sigh to herself. It should please her, she thought, that Steve was so devoted to the children -- red-haired Suzy, with her slim good looks, their first-born, and little Ricky, with his broad nose and crinkly black hair. Paula loved them too -- they looked so nice, walking alongside her, bookending her blonde, leggy strut. But, really. There was such a thing as being too devoted. When Paula thought of getting away from it all, the kids were two of the things she counted as part of the "all."

All she said was, "But, sweetums. It's our tenth anniversary. Do we really want the children along?"

And she batted her long lashes.

"I know," he said, "but they'd love it, and --"

"Darling, wouldn't you love a little time alone... with me?"

"Yes, but --" Steve faltered.

Paula could smell victory. She went in for the kill. "Tell you what. We'll take the kids later in the year -- when the rates go down. But for our anniversary, we'll go away -- just for a few days -- to someplace where there are no theme parks. We'll just stay in a house by the beach, cook steaks on the grill, and in the evenings --" She let it trail off. She knew she had him. Saving money, eating red meat, making love -- he could never resist.

Steve flashed a grin. "You win. I'll call the agent and see if he can recommend --"

"Mestife."

"What's that?"

"Mestife. It's a little island in the Caribbean. Bobbi Jo told me about it. Sun, sand, surf, and she knows a lovely condo right on the water. Oh, Steve, it's perfect! Say yes."

"But I've never heard of it."

"Of course not! That's the great part. It hasn't been discovered by the riffraff. Bobbi Jo says we'd have it almost all to ourselves. Doesn't that sound nice?"

He raised his hands. "OK. I surrender. Mestife it is."

"Great! I'll call Bobbi Jo right now."

"Why?"

"So she can make her plans, of course. I mean, she tentatively planned to take those days off, but now she can --"

"Bobbi Jo's coming with us?"

"Of course. The condo has four bedrooms, and we all can split the cost."

"All? Who's all?"

"Well, us. And Bobbi Jo and Sam. Plus Lucy and Randall --"

"What, and Teri too?"

"No, she couldn't make it. But I thought you could ask Pete. We haven't seen him in ages -- at least two wives ago, isn't it? And you two used to be such good friends."

"Sure. I guess. But -- I thought it would be just the two of us."

"It will, Steve. Just the two of us. You won't even notice the others. Trust me!"

Paula had been right, Steve thought ruefully. They had Mestife to themselves.

A bug the size of a three-month-old infant splatted against the windshield. It distracted him just enough that he missed the chance to check the name of the turn-off as he passed it. All he could see ahead of him before the headlight beams steamed away into darkness was more debris scattered over the narrow blacktop -- palm fronds, shards of wood, pulpy messes he couldn't even separate into mammals, reptiles and amphibians.

They had flown into Mestife utterly unaware that a hurricane had passed through just weeks before. Since only a few people had been killed, it apparently hadn't risen to the attention of the TV station Steve relied upon for news. But it was immediately clear something was wrong once the prop plane touched down. The airstrip looked like a war zone. A hot, steamy war zone.

Steve's starched Hawaiian shirt wilted the second the humidity rolled off the tarmac onto them as they ducked their heads to exit the plane. He felt something on his neck and slapped at it, expecting to find a mosquito. Instead, he sent up a spray of sweat. He checked his dark hair: It was matted to his scalp just seconds after he'd left the air-conditioned plane.

As if the heat and humidity weren't enough, the rental agent who met them explained about the hurricane. Power was out over most of the island, with emergency generators keeping only essential services open -- the airport, a grocery, stuff like that. Most definitely not luxury three-story condos for crazy American tourists.

The prospect of four days and three nights, with no AC, no TV, not much of anything, was enough to make Paula vote for getting back on the plane and going home. But Bobbi Jo held firm. Steve wasn't sure whether that was because the place had been her idea or because she couldn't take any more delays before she got her hands on Samantha, the college student Bobbi Jo insisted on referring to as her protege.

In the end -- and after several drinks in the hotel bar, with its working ice machine -- they'd agreed to tough it out. Squeezed into two small rental cars, the seven of them followed the rental agent to their condo.

Seven, it was, because Margrit, Pete's latest wife, had backed out at the last second, turning on her heels while they were waiting for their connecting flight in Atlanta. She hadn't said anything to the rest of them, but from overheard snatches of the argument she'd had with her husband, Steve gathered Margrit was not pleased by the attention he showed to the other women.

Pete was a hound. But, then, he'd always been. There'd even been a time when Steve had gotten jealous over the way Pete treated Paula. By now, though, he realized Pete just couldn't turn it off; the (bottle) blonde bomber came on to every set of tits-and-ass he met. On this trip, he seemed to have Lucy in his sights, but that was understandable. Once-mousy Lucy had blossomed into a real looker. The money of her new husband, Randall, had paid for a major reconstruction project, and Lucy's body was now as stacked as -- well, as Paula's.

In fact, all the women at the condo were wet dreams waiting to happen. As Steve shifted in the seat of the car, peeling his bare legs from the sticky plastic, he felt a little guilty to realize that the hard-on trapped painfully in his shorts wasn't just due to his own wife. The sight of Lucy in her teeny bikini, with her spanking-new ass and tits spilling out and her freshly blonde hair sweeping over her shoulders, had already at least twice forced Steve to take refuge, until the bulge subsided, in his and Paula's bathroom, tucked in their master suite on the condo's main floor.

The condo had a simple layout. The two-car garage shared the first floor with a bedroom, a bath and a small sitting room just big enough for two chairs; it was the path to the back door that led to the patio and the beach. The stairs to the rest of the house were at the other end, leading from the front door to the first floor's living room. You had to walk through the living room into the kitchen to get to the big bedroom and a half-bath. If you skipped all that and kept going upstairs, you hit the top floor -- a narrow corridor with a bedroom on either side and a bath at the far end. Everything was done in shades of white that Steve thought of as beige and beiger but the women insisted had names like "ecru" and "eggshell."

He and Paula had been awarded the best room because it was their anniversary. Pete accepted one of the two smaller upstairs bedrooms because he was baching it -- no one was surprised he'd gone on when Margrit walked away; Pete had gone through too many break-ups to let one more crimp his plans.

Lucy had the other upper room to herself. Randall was camping out on the roll-out sofa bed in the living room on the main floor. No fight there for the two lovebirds; Randall sheepishly admitted to being such a heavy snorer that Lucy and he always slept separately -- "Except when we're not sleeping," he'd said with a wink.

That had left the big basement room with its two twin beds for Bobbi Jo and Sam. More temptation there, Steve thought, even if they were carpet-munchers. He suspected that was a part-time thing, anyway. He knew that Bobbi Jo had a few men in her past. And Sam -- god, she made him drool just thinking of her -- dark-skinned Sam seemed to flirt with everyone indiscriminately.

Her flirting was so obvious that it must have irked Bobbi Jo, whose enthusiasm had begun to wane the moment her chortles of glee at uncovering the hot tub on the back patio, just outside her room, had turned to a groan of disgust when she remembered that hot tubs run on electricity, too. Sam had dipped in a hand and pointed out that the water was still warm and clean, but from that moment on the frown on Bobbi Jo's face had deepened. Since her frizz of red hair had sagged at the same rate, she had more and more resembled a sad-faced clown.

A clown with a killer body, though -- slightly taller than Paula, but in much the same proportion now that age had filled in her former lankiness. And absolutely incredible legs.

It was the prospect of having those legs on display next to him, Steve had to admit, that had gotten him onto this godforsaken road in the pitch-black night. Bobbi Jo had taken the other car into town as evening fell, on a mission to find bug spray and mosquito netting. The insects didn't bother the others -- not after they'd drenched themselves in repellent. Steve had suspected it was just an excuse for her to get away from Sam's goo-goo eyed fascination, which seemed to be focused that evening on Paula, of all people.

Bobbi Jo had been gone for hours and they were getting worried when an island kid pedaled up and knocked on the door. He said Bobbi Jo's car had foundered on an uprooted tree just outside the village; she was going to spend the night there. Lucy and Paula had objected, and even though Sam didn't seem too concerned, Steve had volunteered to retrieve her.

But he had almost left the road twice already, the detritus of bugs on the windshield was making it hard to see even the short distance illuminated by the headlights, and he could barely keep his eyes open. Steve gave up, swinging the car around in a three-point turn. Bobbi Jo could fend for herself.

Even though all the windows in the house were open, the breezes that staggered through the condo wouldn't have stirred a wisp of dandelion fluff. The heat hung on the walls like a shroud and dripped from the sheets as everyone within slept fitfully. The only sounds were the buzz of flying hematologists, the intermittent ploink of a leaky faucet in one of the four bathrooms and the window-rattling snores from the bald, middle-aged man sprawled on living room sofa bed.