Chapter 34

Our first three days in the Islands were dreamlike. We spent two days at St. Bart's in a gorgeous little beachfront hotel, sunning and swimming a little, but mostly just touring the little island's shops and taking in the slower, more pleasant pace of life there. Tess and Kim were both cheerfully topless on the beach there, and their beauty -- and Tess' bounty -- attracted some attention, but the beach was quiet and its denizens were mostly European, and blasé to a fault.

On the evening of the third day, we were back on Saint Martin, on the French side. We had a house, now, a gorgeous, fresh-looking Spanish style home hanging off the side of one of the island's steep mountains. The island wasn't tropical. It was reminiscent of California: lots of dry-looking rocky ridges, winding roads that tried to follow the beachfront, but couldn't always manage the terrain. Our house was some distance from the beachfront, but it was quite convenient to Orient Beach, the famous nude beach that was, in an understated way, one of the island's leading tourist attractions.

The beach's visitors were, for the most part, European. Nude beaches were far more commonplace in Europe -- especially, it seemed, in the Mediterranean, but people from Europe still came to the Caribbean. The season for swimming was far longer there, and the beaches were at least as beautiful as those available closer to home.

For Americans, the novelty of an all-nude beach was still, perhaps, a bit more of a thrill. However sophisticated we might regard ourselves, the experience was made more exciting because of the inescapable feeling that we were being naughty. Nude in public -- and with not even membership in a nudist camp, or a professed belief in the power of the sun's rays, to employ as our excuse!

It had been, to say the least, an unusual sort of honeymoon. After Tess and I had spent our first night on the Islands in a blissful conventional night of making love -- just the two of us -- we then invited Kim in for breakfast in bed on the morning of Day Two.

When she got there, Kim found that she was on the menu.

Our easy, loving three-way relationship seemed unchanged by the fact that Tess and I were now man and wife. All three of us knew that things weren't going to stay this way forever. After all, Kim's friend, Roland, would be joining us in only two more days, and would be staying for five days, and sharing Kim's suite.

But the marriage, alone, hadn't changed our relationship, and when Roland departed the following week, he'd be leaving the three of us, once again, together here on the island. There seemed to be no question that our old relationship would then resume.

I had met Roland, back in Oregon, and I liked him. He was a subdued, pleasant, gentlemanly fellow, and it was clear that Kim adored him. They made a cute couple. They were about the same height, and while Kim might be slightly above-average height for a woman, Roland was a tiny miniature-sized man. Oh, he was probably 5' 7" or so, and nicely put-together, like a long-distance runner, perhaps. But he was smallish, so that he and Kim created a "wedding cake" sort of image, when together.

I admitted -- only to myself -- that I remained a little jealous of Roland's relationship with Kim. Sure, I had Tess, and, even after Kim's reunion with Roland in Oregon, I had "had" Kim, too. Outside of the lengthy phone calls, there had been no evident change in our relationship whatsoever.

I had even made love to Kim just the previous night, for God's sake -- with Roland flying in the next day!

I know I didn't have a whole lot to be jealous about. But we men are peculiar animals. We want to be loved by our wives or sweethearts, but we want the wife's best friend, and the wife's sister, and the wife's manicurist, all to have a serious case of the hots for us, too. If there is any limit to the number of women a guy would like to have lusting after him, I don't know what that number would be.

Speaking for myself, I'd like to have one of those little dispensers -- with the numbered tabs? I'd like every woman I meet to just take a number, and wait for her turn. I think I'd get to all of them, eventually. I'd certainly give it my best shot.

But I wasn't such a fool, or so selfish, that I wanted to discourage Kim's relationship with Roland. I realized that however sweet and rich our three-way relationship might be, Kim was, in the final reckoning, getting the short end of it. There was no escaping that fact. A stiff prick may have no conscience, but its owner can occasionally work up a bit of empathy.

So, if Kim wanted to strike out on her own, and find her own guy, I realized that I was hardly in a position to object.

One thing I did worry about, a little. It might be the height of selfishness, but I wasn't interested in any four-way relationships. I discussed this, openly, with Kim, and, later, with Kim and Tess together. Roland might be a prince of a guy, but I wasn't really interested in our all four getting into the same bed, at the same time, and exploring permutations.

"Don't worry," Kim had told me. "Roland knows that you and Tess have just gotten married. He knows that his visit here isn't going to involve any such thing."

"But he knows you and I have been... intimate... You've already told us that."

"He not only knows that we've been intimate, he knows that we still are!"

"And that doesn't bother him?"

"I don't know whether or not it 'bothers' him, but it apparently hasn't bothered him enough to discourage him from flying 4000 miles to be with me, here."

"Well, you're worth it, Kimmy, God knows... But even if Roland is aware that Tess isn't part of the deal, does he -- you know -- expect us all to get into a pile and have an orgy or something?"

"He's no more into sex with guys than you are, Will."

"That's not what I meant. I meant, are we all four going to be... together in bed? What if he figures that it's all one big happy family, and he -- you know, decides to go down on Tess, or something?"

"Well, that would be all right with me, Will, but I already know that it wouldn't be all right with you, so it's not going to happen. We're going to be very conventional. You and Tess in your suite, and Roland and I in mine. Oh -- but, you should understand that, while Roland's here, I'm off-limits to you, too."

"Well, yeah! Of course! I wouldn't expect Roland to, like, share you with me!"

"... While he's here." Kim repeated.

"Jeez, Kim. He must be some guy! I mean, he knows you're sleeping with me. And he knows that, after he leaves, you're going to sleep with me some more. And that's... that's OK, with him?"

"Roland is a very balanced man, Will. He's got a lot of self-confidence."

"OK... If you say so."

"You don't even have to be embarrassed about... you and me. I mean, I wouldn't want you to poke him in the ribs and say something like, 'Man, that Kim is some kind of a great piece of ass, isn't she?'... But it's OK that we've been together. You don't have to go around pretending otherwise."

"And he doesn't expect similar privileges? With Tess?"

"No, Will. I told you!... No."

We covered the same ground, with Tess present, before Roland's arrival. Like me, Tess couldn't entirely escape her essential Puritan-American attitudes, and was a little surprised, still, at Roland's apparent ultimate cool.

But Tess had other concerns, as well. She wanted some reassurance that our having, during Roland's visit, an exclusive Will-and-Tess sexual relationship wasn't somehow going to be considered, by Roland, to be a slight -- an insult -- to our temporary guest.

"Roland is a very cosmopolitan kind of guy," Kim assured us. "More than you, Tess; more than I am, too. And Will? He's light years ahead of Will."

"Will won't be happy until every woman in the world pledges allegiance to him, and to him alone," Tess said, smiling. "He might... rent out... some of them to other guys, but he'd like to have complete control."

"I know I'm possessive," I told them. "But there's more to it than that -- really! I mean, it's so strange, to me, knowing that Roland knows about me being with Kim, and he can just deal with that, with no problems. Hell, I really admire that! But at the same time, it makes me feel like an idiot, being all possessive about Tess. I mean, even I can see that it's not really fair!"

"There's nothing unfair about it," Tess said. "Look at it this way: Maybe Roland has a relationship back in Oregon with some woman we don't even know. Maybe a woman that even Kim doesn't know... Does that mean, when we're in Oregon, that Roland should be expected to let you sleep with this other woman, too?"

"Well, it would be awfully nice of him, to offer," I said.

"You're hopeless, Will. Absolutely beyond all hope."

The day finally arrived when Roland's plane was due to land. His arrival was in the late morning, and the airport was on the far side of the island -- the Dutch side. Kim went alone to pick him up in the tiny, and ancient, Suzuki Samurai that was our only means of transportation on the island. Four could ride in it, but not comfortably, and not with any appreciable luggage.

Tess and I were, for the second day, going to Orient Beach. Later, after Kim had gotten Roland settled in at the house, the two of them would join us there.

I wondered whether the photographer -- the European paparazzi sharpshooter who had been "tipped off" about our presence on the Islands was, even now, snapping photographs of Tess. There was a lot of open space around Orient Beach. Little in the way of structures where a photographer could hide inside to take sneak shots. But there was that little concrete building, there, behind the beach. I estimated it was close enough for a skilled photographer, with an assortment of high-powered lenses, to accomplish his mission in some style.

Well, if he was there, or even out in the parking area, he was going to get some spectacular shots. There were many extremely attractive women on the beach. Oh, not everyone looked great in the altogether. There was a scattering of bodies that had seen their better days some decades earlier.

But for the most part, the pickings on Orient Beach were sensational.

And I was spending a lot of time lying on my stomach in the sand, with a little hole dug underneath my crotch, because I was in the company of the single most stunning nude woman on the entire beach.