She heard him gasp again and again… until at last he grunted one final moan of release… and she sensed him falling back away, slowly pulling out of her… and as he withdrew, there was only one question in her mind: What was he feeling, now, about her? Was it rage, because she had betrayed his love for her so terribly? Or was that love still strong – strong enough to overlook her unwilling transgressions aboard the Vera? She turned to seek the answer in his satiated face, but that face was now an inscrutable mask, staring at and through her as though she were nothing more than a fragile pane of transparent glass.
CHAPTER NINE
Mark stared down into his wife's frantically searching eyes, and even through the fog of his tremendous orgasm read the unmistakable question those eyes contained. He saw she was pleading with him to forgive her, to take her back into the fold even though she had strayed sinfully.
"Mark…?" her small, trembling lips began, hesitantly.
"Give me time to think," Mark said quickly, swinging his hairy legs off the edge of the bunk, and lowering his face into his hands.
Lynn sat with her eyes fixed on the broad expanse of his muscular back, her eyes trying to bore into his thoughts, to read what was written there. But she could not. She was aware only that she was being shut out of his confidence in a way she never had before in all the time they'd known each other, and she knew instinctively that the gulf that now existed between them might never again be spanned. She turned her head away fearfully, and was confronted by Harry's slightly smiling face peering up at both of them quizzically. The glib used car dealer turned his attention to Mark.
"Listen, Mark," he said, his eyes darting around to discover any reaction on the other man's part, "I don't want you to think that this was all planned. You know? I mean, these things happen and nobody's responsible for them. You get people close together in one spot, and sometimes things happen that nobody wants to happen, you know what I mean?"
"No, that isn't true," Lynn interrupted in a quavering voice, "you did want it, all of you! You had it all planned from the minute I came on board! Mark, listen to me! I was raped! I didn't want to do anything, I didn't even…"
"I suppose you call what you were doing to Harry when I came in 'being raped'." Mark broke in brutally, turning his pained eyes toward his lovely wife.
Lynn started, surprised by the violence of his tone, nonplused by his attitude.
"But I was! Mark, you don't understand – Hans lured me down into his cabin and locked the door and…"
"I don't know who Hans is, but I take it that Harry isn't the only one you've been fucking around with while I was away." Mark's eyes were beginning to smolder now, traces of his earlier anger beginning to seep into him once again. "And what about Tom, huh? And Dick and Harry? Huh? Just how many men have you taken on in the last forty-eight hours, sweet little innocent wife of mine???"
Lynn's eyes blurred with the sudden tears wrenched out of her, by her husband's obscene suggestions.
"No… darling… no… you don't understand…"
"Oh don't I? I understand a lot. I understand a lot I never understood before. I understand you're nothing more than a dirty, low down whore!!!"
Harry watched calmly as the aggression in Mark's voice caused his young wife to double up with pain, tears coursing now unchecked down her smooth, reddened cheeks. He leaned back and wondered whether he should break in, try to say anything to ease the passions that made the air around the three of them brittle with tension. He gazed at the jealousy and rage apparent in Mark's strained body, at the twisted figure of the voluptuous young woman who lay sobbing on the bunk, and decided anything he said would probably only make things worse.
"I guess you'll try to tell me now," Mark said with bitter sarcasm, "that you didn't enjoy sucking Harry's cock, right? Well, I know better. I saw you, Lynn! You didn't even hear me when I called you! You were off in some Goddamn other world, and the only thing that mattered to you was pulling him off!"
"Noooo… I…"
"And when I climbed up on top of you, you thought it was this Goddamn Hans, baby, I know you did! Because you called out his name to me, and…"
"All right, stop it!" Lynn was tortured by the half-truths he was saying. No, she hadn't wanted it, hadn't welcomed it, but she had enjoyed it! And the guilt raised in her by that realization coursed through her like knives, ripping her insides to shreds.
"I won't stop it!" Mark continued relentlessly. His anger boiled inside him now, and he had to let it all out or explode! "And all the time, I thought you were so innocent, so susceptible. Well, you were susceptible all right! I never knew how much! Let me ask you one thing, you little bitch! How many times have you sucked my cock? Huh?"
"Please… Mark…"
"Not once! Not one Goddamn time! And I never tried to make you, because I thought you would be 'offended'. Jesus Christ! If I knew then what I know now…"
"Ooooohhhh…" Lynn's voice rose in a despairing avail, her hands pushed themselves forcefully against her ears, and her eyes closed tight as though desperately trying to shut off every trace of the outside world – a world that now seemed peopled with a million pairs of eyes, all staring into the corruption of her soul, laughing and watching as she tried to hide her nakedly defiled body behind the transparency of her shame. "Nnnnoooo…" Her voice filled the cabin and blotted everything from her mind except its own incredible reverberations in her ears. She pulled her knees to her heaving breasts in a straining fetal position, and clasped her arms around them desperately, lowering her head as far as possible into the cavity between her body and legs. "Nnnooooo…" She lay on her side, crying out now, letting all the tension, the humiliation, the excitement, the fear of the last few days gush out of her with the force of a rain-swollen river, rushing out and over a yawning chasm to crash with a thunderous roar on the rocks below.
And then she stopped abruptly, strangely, all the emotion wrung out of her, and lay completely spent on the bunk as though hypnotized… her eyes wide open, but seeing nothing… hearing nothing… feeling nothing…
Harry stared amazedly at the limp form beside him, and then looked questioningly at the equally confused face of Mark Shaffer. He stirred uncomfortably in the sudden silence that had descended upon the cabin like a gray shroud, leaving them all exposed to the violence of their passions. He started as Mark stood up suddenly, and began to pull his pants on with desperate haste, leaning to pick up his shirt which lay crumpled in a corner on the far side of the cabin.
"Where are you going?"
Mark didn't answer, but continued to dress.
"Listen, Mark," Harry said, "you can't just run away and leave this all behind you. You've got to deal with it."
"I'm through dealing with it," Mark said bitterly. "I can't take anymore of it."
Harry raised himself to a sitting position, and stared at the emotionally wrought husband.
"You're an ass," he said simply.
Mark whirled, and his eyes tore through Harry's calm with ferocious intensity.
"Now listen, you bastard! You just shut that fucking mouth of yours! You're lucky I don't just tear the living shit out of you for what you've done!"
Harry smiled at him disconcertingly.
"For what I've done? Listen, Mark, I'm a man aren't I? What would you have done in my place? Turned around and walked away and said 'No thanks baby'? Is that what you'd have done?"
Mark paused, confused. What would he have done? The answer to his own question jumped with irresistible force against his mind, and he knew that he'd have done the same thing Harry had. If a woman offers herself, like Lynn had obviously done…