Chapter 5

Cathy stopped a moment at the tubful of punch to put on her clothes. She was no longer hot, and the air that blew in from the waters of the Cove had raised little goosebumps on her flesh. At that moment she could have chewed up a silver dollar as effortlessly as if it had been an Oreo.

She filled a paper cup from the tub of punch, guzzling down the cupful without removing it from her lips. Her head reeled and her throat burned. Either the alcohol had all clustered together in the tub or someone had decided to spike the already-potent concoction. What she was drinking was mostly grain alcohol, at any rate, with just a bit of grape juice for flavoring.

Cathy closed her eyes as the mixture oozed into her tummy, and then she bent over to fill her cup once more. Her lips and tongue felt just a bit numb already, and the second drink, just as strong, just as biting, didn't help matters any. She took a deep breath as the raw spirits entered her bloodstream and began their work.

"Oh, the hell with it," she muttered, tossing her paper cup into the bonfire. She walked away, looking at the other kids-some of them dancing, some necking and petting on the sand, some just standing and talking. She hadn't realized there were so many people in her age group in the island-so why did it have to be that rotten bastard Chris whom she'd met first and let herself get hung up on? What a bummer!

The radio music grew faint behind her as she walked down the coastline, walking with no goal in mind save being alone. She could feel the Purple Jesus taking hold of her head and she wondered if she were going to get drunk and sick. She'd just finished downing two successive cups of almost pure alcohol, and with every step she took, the raw liquor seemed to be gaining control of more and more of her consciousness.

Her first reaction was a slight dizziness, followed by the almost irresistible impulse to sit down on the sand and cry her heart out. She fought it bravely, but the tears welled in the corners of her eyes nonetheless, and she had to wipe them away lest they blur her already-faltering vision.

"Cathy! Cathy!"

Someone was calling her name. She turned unsteadily and saw that it was Jennifer.

"Go away!" Cathy yelled, and she tried to run. Her legs were rubber and she merely stumbled, staggering at first, then dropping to her knees upon the sand. Before she could pick herself up, Jennifer was kneeling at her side, offering a smile and a hand. "Leave me alone," Cathy mumbled. "I don't want you around."

"Come on," Jennifer wheedled, touching Cathy's shoulder. "There's no harm done."

"Screw you, too," Cathy told her. "I just want to be by myself for a while. Go away."

"It's no good being alone," Jennifer countered. "Not when you have friends." Her fingers trailed down Cathy's arm, and the blonde girl could feel them, warm, almost electric, through the flannel of the oversized shirt she wore. And then her hand was cuddled gently inside Jennifer's and the red-haired teenager was moving closer.

"Knock it off," Cathy said, her tongue growing thicker so that her words were an almost indistinguishable mutter. "I know what you're after, and you can't have it."

"You're too suspicious, Cathy. I just want you to feel better. That's all."

"Sure-just like you made Chris feel better." Cathy tried to squirm away, but there was no strength in her body.

"Came off it," Jennifer said commandingly. "You're making too much out of nothing. So you saw your boy friend balling Penny. And so you saw me adding my two cents' worth. It didn't mean anything. Besides-it was your fault in the first place. If you hadn't jerked off Penny's guy, none of it would have happened."

"I didn't jerk him off! He flopped onto me and-"

"And you got your hand on his cock and made him shoot his wad. Penny was only getting what was due her. Besides, I heard her tell Chris not to shoot off inside her, so he'd have wasted his load anyway. I just popped in to give them both a little assistance. C'mon, Cathy. Be liberal. Be modem. It's what the sexual revolution is all about in the first place. Chris never gave you exclusive rights to his body, did he?"

Cathy wriggled on the sand, her head turned away from Jennifer's coaxing voice. She knew now that she was about three-quarters drunk, and the alcohol seemed to have a reserve of potency building inside her body that would put her over the line very soon.

Jennifer's head moved closer, and she took Cathy's chin in her hand, pulling the uneasy girl's face around. "Let's kiss and make up," she suggested in the faintest whisper of a voice, bringing her lips in to seal the bargain.

Cathy winced at the first touch of Jennifer's mouth upon her own, at the wet warmth of the open lips which sucked at hers, and she whined wordlessly as her taste buds picked up the unmistakable fragrance of male jizz in Jennifer's kiss. No wonder-Chris had fountained his load into Jennifer's sucking mouth and his surplus had coated her lips and chin-and now, in a sense, Cathy was receiving it for her own, through an intermediary. She hated the idea! She wanted to break away, to run, to hide, but she couldn't. There seemed to be no power at all in her young body now, and she was but a plastic toy in Jennifer's hands. "Please," she tried to say. "I don't want to." But Jennifer's white, capped teeth were chewing ever so gently on Cathy's lower lip, and now Jennifer had her arms around Cathy's body, hugging her tight, imprinting Cathy with the contours of her own frame, and the two girls lay in a tangle of twined arms and legs. Cathy moved her arms, intending to push Jennifer away, but she realized to her own shock that she was instead embracing the red-haired girl, hugging her in return, and that her teeth were parting to allow Jennifer's tongue entrance.

I'm drunk, Cathy told herself. I don't know what the hell I'm doing. That's it. I've let the booze overcome my morality. Of course! It was such an obvious explanation. She closed her eyes and began to suck Jennifer's tongue as though it were a cock plumbing the wetness of her mouth.

Jennifer's full boobs, nestling inside her blouse free and unsupported, brushed again and again upon Cathy's halter-covered tits, and their bare legs wrapped tantalizingly as they rolled upon the sand, kissing, embracing. Another moment drifted by, and now it was Cathy's tongue that was seeking its way into Jennifer's mouth, finding itself accepted happily.

Cathy closed her eyes, kissing and being kissed, touching and being touched, and it no longer mattered that she could blame her situation upon Demon Drink. Explanations and justifications were of no importance whatsoever now, with Cathy high from liquor and sex alike, finding a new intoxication in the heady combination.

She made a soft cooing sound as she felt Jennifer's fingers intruding through the cut-off legs, seeking the hairy bulge of Cathy's pussy. The fingers made contact, tugging and curling among the abundant locks of pussy fur, and they slid irresistibly onto the lips of Cathy's snatch, parting the pink gateway, slipping inside. Cathy tightened her thighs upon Jen's hand, wetting those fingers with her free-flowing juices, and she moaned as the fingers stole farther and farther into the honeyed treasure of her cunt. Her own hands went to the buttons of Jennifer's blouse, undoing them, flinging the shirt front open, taking hold of the full-sized tits inside.

And now Cathy was rolling on the ground, seeking the position of power, using her body to pin down a perfectly willing Jennifer, pausing for one fleeting second to wonder at the strangeness of it all.

Cathy had never, never ever, done anything like this before-not even at boarding schools where girl/girl love was almost as common as eating supper in the dining hall. In her days of nervous virginity, she had sometimes stopped outside a closed door in a dorm hallway to listen to the sounds of female passion seeping out of a darkened room, and her chaste, frightened body had reacted in a variety of ways. For one thing, her nipples had grown pebble-stiff as she eavesdropped, and there had often been the telltale weakness of the knees and dampening in the crotch that she now realized were the unmistakable signs of her sexual arousal. And once, when she was thirteen, there had been a roommate-a girl named Valerie-who seemed to take some delight in touching Cathy, in the demure brushing of fingers across skin or hair.

That had been a nerve-racking experience indeed, for Cathy, though virginal, was not quite innocent. She knew what Valerie's apparently neutral caresses had meant, and she had been scared silly. Afraid, yes, that Valerie might tire of subtle means and institute a forthright campaign of seduction, but afraid, too, that she might respond willingly.

Her own ambiguity on the matter filled her with the most dread. She couldn't deny that she enjoyed having Valerie brush her hair or tease it into stunning coiffures that never went outside the walls of their shared quarters. And the feather-light touch of Valerie's fingers and hands had been sensual and provocative, imparting much the same feeling that Cathy sometimes had when she stood naked in a shower room full of girls after gym class, surreptitiously watching them, comparing their bodies with her own, wondering if they had the same sensitivity in their budding boobs that she had, wondering if their pussies also grew moist and warm upon occasion-so moist and warm that only the application of fingers and hands could return them to normality.