They finished their wine. Mary Beth stood up, and turning away from Sue Robin, she pulled off the housecoat. The tall blonde stared. Her sister-in-law was completely naked. She wasn't even wearing the wispy bikini panties.
"It hurts way down here." Mary Beth's big brown eyes looked back over her shoulder at Sue Robin as she pointed with her finger how far down her spine the pain was.
She's apologizing for being naked, Sue Robin thought. She felt like shouting, Damnit girl, enjoy it! But she said nothing.
Mary Beth stretched out face down on the couch, and Sue Robin dusted some body powder in the palms of her hands, then began stroking lightly down the satiny back stretched before her. She kneaded carefully around the very base of Mary Beth's spine, parting the firm-cushioned asscheeks as she did so. Soon the brunette was as relaxed as if she were asleep.
After working all up and down her sister-in-law's back, Sue Robin got out her vibrator and played it around the back of Mary Beth's neck and across her shoulders. Contented purrs arose from the couch.
"Honey," Sue Robin said, "we've got a date next Thursday night."
"What, you mean, a date?" Mary Beth murmured drowsily.
"Aunt Clarinda is having a special meeting and we're invited."
"A meeting!" The relaxed body tensed. Obviously Mary Beth had heard whispered rumors about the old witch's "meetings". "Are you sure?"
"Don't worry," Sue Robin said soothingly, caressing lower along the spine with the vibrator. "We'll be together. Nobody's gonna get hurt. Aunt Clarinda's taken care of me and Bobby Lee since we were babies, when Mama died."
"Have you been to one already?" The tense back relaxed again.
Sue Robin plied the cock-shaped instrument in the small of the brunette's back, then slid it briefly into the top of the crack between her high mounded asscheeks. Mary Beth squirmed with delight.
"No. I've heard some stories. You know, people with broken hearts; women who are jealous of their men; some man who wants to get next to a special woman. You know. Aunt Clarinda does some voodoo, some hocus-pocus. Only thing, I've never heard of anybody that really told the whole story about what goes on. And I reckon you and I had better keep this a big deep dark secret, too. I don't want to be turned into a zombie, or something."
"Sounds like real fun," Mary Beth murmured, relaxing again and enjoying the sensual stimulation of the vibrating object across her buttocks and the backs of her thighs. "I'll never tell."
Sue Robin had gone at the massage more slowly this time in order to convey Aunt Clarinda's message. The old woman had given her the word that morning, briefly and with her tiger-eyes blazing up at the tall young woman. "An' you don't talk, child. You don't never talk. You don't never say a word to nobody. Neither of youngins."
"No, Aunt Clarinda," Sue Robin had promised solemnly.
Now the stimulation of the tapered cylinder was getting to Mary Beth, and she was squirming on the couch. She was ready to turn over.
I'm damned if I'm going through the frustration of masturbating her again, Sue Robin resolved, feeling the perspiration popping out of her forehead and upper lip. She patted Mary Beth's buttocks and said, "Honey, I've gotta run along now. You just keep this vibrator, and you can finish massaging around – uh – your neck and shoulders. I've got another one at home."
She laid the ivory-colored rod on the couch by Mary Beth's clutching hand, got up and picked up her bag. "You just stay right there and do your thing. Y'heah?"
When she reached the door she glanced back at the couch. The voluptuous brunette was twisting over on her back, her eyes closed, the vibrator held firmly in one hand. And it was already gliding down across her belly. She'll bury that thing up to the hilt in her hot pussy before I get my car started, Sue Robin thought, and hurried out.
Thursday seemed never coming to the impatient blonde. If I'm antsy, I'll bet Mary Beth is climbing walls by now, Sue Robin thought. What's going to happen? she wondered over and over.
The clay finally arrived, and dragged endlessly by. Aunt Clarinda stayed in seclusion in her cottage, but Sue Robin noticed Aunt Minerva regarding her from time to time with an owlish expression on her wrinkled face. She's in on this, too, Sue Robin surmised. Something tickled in her brain, a half-formed thought – a scattering of fragmentary memories. But the picture would not shape up.
After supper she drove down the road to Mary Beth's. Her sister-in-law was sitting out on the lawn in a comfortable deck chair. She was dressed in slacks and a light blouse, and Sue Robin noticed immediately that she had a glass of wine.
"Building up your courage, honey?" she said.
"Something like that. Would you like a glass of wine?"
"I don't believe so. Just finished eating."
"Sit down, then." Mary Beth gestured to the other chair. "The moon will be up in a few minutes." She paused, then added, "The full moon."
Sue Robin sat down. Both deck chairs faced the eastern sky, rapidly blackening into deep night. "Are you nervous, Mary Beth?"
The tense laugh of the other betrayed her. "I sure am. What's going to happen, Sue Robin?"
"Nothing to hurt you, honey," the other soothed. "You just relax and enjoy it, like – you know."
Mary Beth giggled. "You're naughty, you know it?"
"And I enjoy it," Sue Robin returned, laughing. She was tempted for a moment to ask her sister-in-law how she was making out with the vibrator, but decided against it. No need of pushing the situation; things were falling into place nicely.
"No," she said, "Aunt Clarinda will just work a little voodoo. We're spectators."
The upper tip of the rising moon broke above the horizon, and both women were silent, staring at it. Slowly but steadily it broke through the shrouds of blackness until it was fully exposed, a huge golden disk that seemed startlingly near. In spite of herself, Sue Robin shuddered in a fearful ecstasy. It was a night for magic, all right.
For a long while they sat silent and still, their eyes fixed on the rising globe.
"What time do we go?" Mary Beth's voice was husky, and her words sounded as if they had been forced through fear-stiffened lips.
"Around ten." Sue Robin shuddered again. Her common sense told her nothing supernatural was happening, that all this was just nature and human beings. But deep inside her feelings were confused, and tiny, primitive terrors pricked at her. Snap out of it, girl, she charged herself.
After a while they began to talk, stiltedly at first, then more easily. They talked about the annual wingding of the Alligator Club coming up that weekend.
"We'll take a room together at the beach hotel," Sue Robin said. "There'll be about twenty of us in all." She laughed. "Funny, isn't it, how many of the people in the club married each other. It's been a real fine group. Imagine high school kids being smart enough to form such a compatible club."
"Imagine that many people keeping everything so private," Mary Beth said.
"That's right." It is surprising, Sue Robin mused, in a small ton where gossip is a way of life, we've kept things so quiet. Not that they ever actually did anything outlandish, not in public, anyway, except really turning loose at the annual get-together. Last year it had been in Atlanta, but this year they'd decided to enjoy the beach. The younger members were mostly in college, and it would be nice to get in one more swinging weekend before fall semester began.
She giggled.
"What's funny?" Mary Beth asked.
"Oh, nothing." She had suddenly remembered chic little Helen Stanfield and big Robbie Early eating each other up in a frantic sixty-nine the other night. Wonder where Helen's husband Jack had been? Somehow, Helen had never struck her as being particularly sexy, although her small figure was shapely enough. Was she making it with Robbie out of revenge? For reassurance? Did she have an old crush on Robbie? Well, it was no worry of hers.