Gavin eased himself up and rolled between her open legs.
Her heart was pounding and her breath was coming faster and faster. 'Give it to me properly, Gavin, like every woman wants her man!'
Slowly he slid into her and it was only when he had penetrated her fully that he spoke.
'Liz!' he murmured. 'Oh Liz! Believe me, I want to give it you properly but... damn it! You could end up pregnant as it is. 'I'll try and do the same as I did last night. I...'
'No, please no,' she swung her legs round and closed them over his body in a vice-like scissors grip. 'I won't let you draw out. I want all of you ... everything ... inside me... even if I do have a baby!'
He lowered himself down on to her and their lips brushed.
'Liz,' he breathed, 'Liz ... I'm in love with you. I know we've only known each other a few days but... but I'm not doing this just for a thrill. I want to be part of you. I don't ever want to be away from you. I'd ... I'd love you to have my baby. That is, if you really wanted to .. .'
'Of course I want to.' She tried to press him further still inside her. 'I love you too, Gavin!'
She dared not voice her innermost thoughts. It was only then that she realised exactly what she was trying to do. In some ways it frightened her, disgusted her. Wenches who thought there was a good catch in the offing did things like this. She knew full well that she was trying to trap him! She was using a ploy as old as the hills. Eve might even have used the same tactics to secure Adam. Liz despised herself for it. Once she was pregnant Gavin would not leave her. He wasn't the type.
For a long time they were in a world of their own. The Wash, the Slime Beast, Professor Lowson, all were forgotten. Just a gentle rhythmic movement of two bodies, each caring for and trying to please the other. Every so often they relaxed, trying to prolong the greatest joy known to mankind for as long as possible. Liz released her captive grip on her man. It was not necessary. Nothing on this earth would have stopped him now.
Suddenly, neither of them could contain themselves any longer. Rising tensions burst open and then they were both jerking and writhing in unison. Liz felt as though she was being hurled and then suspended in mid-air, before falling into a bottomless chasm. On the downward journey she sensed a beautiful warmth spurting into her with force, engendering a feeling which she had never experienced before.
Totally exhausted, they lay in each other's arms, thinking of nothing except what they had just done.
'I... I never thought I'd ever let anybody do that to me outside marriage,' Liz murmured drowsily. 'Oh, if only we weren't in this terrible place. Gavin I wish we'd never come here.'
'Then, we wouldn't have met each other, would we?' Gavin laughingly replied and kissed her passionately. 'I guess we can thank old King John for this. Blow him, he can keep his damned jewels. I've found some treasure even if the Professor hasn't!
They dozed uneasily. The thought of that monstrosity at large on the marshes did cast a cloud over their supreme happiness. Gavin promised himself that on the morrow he would do everything in his power to bring about its total destruction. If only the police would listen to them...
Chief-Inspector Harborne looked across his desk at the two young people who had just told him the most amazing story he had ever heard in all his years in the Force. He studied them intently before replying.
'Any other time Td ask for you to be examined,' he said. 'It's like something out of a weird science-fiction magazine. Yet, things have happened here these last few days which we are unable to explain logically. For instance this strange trail of stinking slime which the thing left behind it; it evaporated into nothingness before we had a chance to examine it properly. Nobody apart from yourselves has seen the creature, but tell me, why has Professor Lowson not accompanied you here this morning? I should have thought that he would have shown more interest in this matter than he has done so far.'
'Uncle's too wrapped up in other matters,' Liz put in diplomatically before Gavin had a chance to speak. 'He lives in the past He's not interested in the things which happen around him.'
'I see.' Harborne turned to Detective-Inspector Borg who had so far remained silent. 'Naturally we shall make investigations into what these people have told us. However we can't really call in the army yet to deal with some mythical creature which only they have seen. Perhaps then Inspector you would take some men and locate the body of this man Glover.'
Borg nodded and left the room.
'Thank you for coming to see me,' Harborne smiled as he ushered them to the door. 'Please don't think that I disbelieve you. There is something very strange going on certainly. Yet I feel sure there is a logical explanation for it all.'
'Like what?' Gavin fought to control himself. The bloody fool was going to waste more valuable time in trying to find some down-to-earth solution.
'Well,' Harborne coughed and looked away. The idea of something out of space is a bit far-fetched you must admit. We must look for something more explicable. There are creatures on this earth which man has never or seldom set eyes upon. The ocean bed holds many secrets, so do the jungles of the Amazon. Could not some exploration party returning from South America have brought this Slime Beast back with it secretly? It escaped and its owners feared to report it to the authorities. There are many lines of thought available to us.'
Gavin remembered his owe earlier theories and was silent
Professor Lowson had gone off on his own somewhere when Gavin and Liz returned to the blockhouse.
'So much for that,' Gavin mused as they ate sandwiches and drank coffee. 'We've virtually got nowhere. The police don't actually disbelieve us which is something I suppose. Now we've got to wait a few days until the experts come up with something. It'll either be a giant gila monster secretly smuggled into the country or a homicidal maniac who has discovered some kind of slime with which to throw the police off the trail! Whatever they decide it all adds up to one thingdelay. Every hour of indecision means another hour of freedom for the Slime Beast! '
'Couldn't we destroy it ourselves?' Liz lit a cigarette and began clearing the packing-case which they used as a table.
'What!' He looked up at her, amazement and concern evident on his face. 'Are you crazy, girl?' Then more gently, 'you've been through a helluva lot this last few days. Maybe I should take you back to London after all!' She smiled, confident, taunting him. 'You're the one who's backing down now,' she said. 'It's just that I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and I've come up with a theory. If you'd just shut up for a minute and listen...'
'Go on,' he sighed, 'let's hear it. We've had that many theories today that one more won't make any difference.'
'Well,' a smile touched the corners of her pert mouth. 'You remember when the Slime Beast tried to get in here and you repelled it with burning newspapers?' He nodded.
'It's obviously a creature that thrives on cold and damp,' she continued. 'Fire will frighten most wild beasts, but I think we could go a stage further with this one, and subject it to the exact opposites to the requirements of its body. Dryness and heat are the reverse of damp and cold. Its body structure could not stand up to it I'm sure. Look how the slime which it leaves evaporates after a while. Anyway, those scales, from what I've seen of them, are tougher than armour-plating, so a bullet or even a heavy missile would just bounce off them.'
'What are you getting at?' Gavin was intrigued.
'Just this,' she said. 'I believe that the Slime Beast could be destroyed by fire. I don't mean just a bundle of blazing papers, I mean fire projected at it with force. A flame-gun for instance. One of the paraffin models you can buy for a few quid. Lots of people use them for clearing weeds in their garden.'