She let him withdraw from the warm moistness of her mouth, then licked and sucked at the dangling threads of sticky fluid that led from her lips to the softening shaft. She sucked the last pearly drop from the tender opening, making him groan louder than before.
The two of them lay limply on the rug until they gathered their reserves. Then Paul told her to dress, and put his own costume on while she fought her way into the tight suede jumper.
It was comparatively quiet in the large salon when they entered it. Couples and larger groups were clustered in several spots, but the only conversation was in tired, low tones. He led the way up on deck for some fresher, cooling air, and as they emerged just aft of the gangway, he saw a man crouched on his heels, leaning over a pile of something against the rail.
Light spilled out of the windows in the bridge above them, and Paul saw the face of his erstwhile challenger as the man looked up at the sounds of their approach. His face was sheet-white, and his eyes were frightened.
Then the face looked down, and Paul watched as the man reached into the pile before him. Paul could see now that it was a nude woman. From between her spread thighs, her attacker tugged something. It was his "thing" – the whip with the oversize butt. He tossed it over the rail into the sea, then rose to his feet in a crouching position and ran across the deck to disappear in the shadows of the starboard superstructure.
Paul and his slave needed only one look to see that the girl was dead. Her sightless eyes had filled with the reflection of great pain before they ceased to function.
Paul flipped the trigger of his butane lighter, and in the pale glow of its flame they could see the pool of blood on the deck beneath her hips and thighs, and the torn flesh of her crotch where the massive leather phallus had been forced into her cunt. There were still marks where a hand had covered her mouth to silence her screams of agony.
And on one calf and ankle were other marks: sticky white blobs of semen pumped over the struggling victim and deck as the perverted attacker blew his load with the enjoyment of the girl's brutal invasion by the murderous weapon.
Paul knew where to find his host, thanks to a previous party he had attended aboard the houseboat. He made the girl stay with the body while he went to report the tragedy.
An hour later, the police arrived. By then, all the guests were again dressed in proper evening wear, and the investigators found a very normal houseboat-party group reacting quite as might be expected after the brutal death in their midst.
Had the lawmen been able to see some of their marks of punishment which were hidden by clothing and cosmetics, a different sort of investigation would have been conducted. But the briefing of the guests by the cunning and determined host had been quite effective.
Questioning led to no clues whatsoever. The "couples" were all certain that they had never seen the victim before, and the host assured the police that she must have been about to crash the patty when her attacker followed her aboard, or else she was already being pursued along the dock and had not been quick enough to escape him.
Since Paul and his host had done a good job of tearing the clothes they brought from the dead girl's dressing room, and had scattered them around the deck near the body and burned her skimpy leather costume in the incinerator while the other guests were getting into gear for their official visitors, the theory seemed to be valid.
Although everyone was questioned and their identities recorded, the affair ended as another unsolved mystery on the police ledgers.
It wasn't too surprising that when Paul spotted the murderer at one of the hospitals in his territory, they had a lengthy private conversation. It was even less surprising that Dr. Stillwell was interested in joining Paul's foundation staff.
The isolated facility would not only allow him the sane freedom of research in his more legitimate efforts, but he was greedily eager to share the extracurricular activities that Paul promised him would be a regular part of the schedule.
The two girls Paul had kidnapped and transported in the hidden compartment of the slide-in service cabinets of the station wagon had been great for the fun and games shared by the doctor and his young partner. And there was more to come…
CHAPTER FIVE
Paul parked with the front bumper almost touching the huge iron gates, then reached under the instrument panel and pressed a switch. When the short-range signal was received on the unit in the clinic offices, he knew, his vehicle would be studied on the television monitor which displayed the scene picked up by the hidden cameras behind the gateposts.
The gates opened inward, and he drove on up the wide asphalt driveway. In his rear-view mirror he could see the electrically operated gates close and latch behind him. Their twelve-foot height matched the level of the rugged fence which encircled the entire grounds.
He rounded a sharp curve, admiring the heavy growth of tall shrubs and trees which lined both sides of the drive. Then he stopped at the second gate which separated the central complex of the foundation from the outside world. This one, like the fence it formed a part of, was electrified.
It swung open to let him drive through, then closed behind him. Moments later he pulled into a huge garage that adjoined the main clinic building.
Stillwell came out of the swinging doors which separated the garage from the larger building. He met Paul at the rear of the vehicle with a comradely smile and upraised eyebrows. As Paul unlocked the lift-gate tail-gate latch, the doctor's scarcely concealed eagerness was put into words.
"Bring us another playmate, Paul?" he asked.
"Yes and no," was the confusing reply. "She's going to be my playmate, at least for a while. If I decide to keep her to myself longer than you can wait with only Betty and Heidi to amuse you, I'll help find you another new one."
"Like that, huh?" said the slightly disgruntled doctor. His expression revealed his disappointment, but he seemed to resign himself, shrugged, and set down the bag he had brought out with him.
"Yeah, like that, Jonas. At least, for now. We won't need to bring her out of it with the needle, though. I used the new oral stuff on her – Boswell's Cyclopentenyl variant. Gave her one and a quarter grains. She ought to be coming to in another hour or so."
Paul had the rear wide open. Now, he grabbed a leather strap at the center of the wooden platform which rested on the interior "floor" formed by the collapsed seats, and pulled. The whole big section of cabinetry moved rearward for almost eighteen inches, and Paul reached under the edge, then pulled down sturdy legs with casters which rested on the garage floor.
He grabbed the leather loop again and the cabinetry wheeled out until he was able to open the ingeniously vented and padded compartment in the center. They looked down on the slightly flushed face of Palmyra Weston. Paul checked her pulse while Stillwell peeled back one of her eyelids and studied the pupil.
"That's good stuff, all right," said Stillwell. "I like it a lot better than the earlier versions. I hate to fuss around with Bemegride I.V.'s to balance the toxicity some of them seemed to get from the older forms."
"Yeah," replied Paul. "Especially since you might have to turn around and feed 'em pentothal to counteract the Bemegride."
"God, yes!" said Stillwell. "I remember a case where…"
"Later, Jonas," Paul interrupted. "Let's get her inside and settled down before she starts to come out of it." Stillwell gave a grunt, then helped his partner lift the limp form out of the coffin-like compartment. They carried her in through the swinging doors, down a hallway past surgical-looking rooms, and to a large elevator at the center of the hall.
They put her down on a padded, sheeted cart which stood by the elevator, then wheeled it into the car, closed the door, and took their patient to the floor below.