Inadvertently Llona disconnected Bowdler’s airhose!
Panic replaced lust in the eyes behind the face-mask. Then the face vanished altogether in a rush of water. Bowdler’s hands flew to his throat as he thrashed about, strangling. Right before Llona’s eyes, her lover of a moment ago was drowning!
Fortunately, Llona reacted quickly. She managed to get behind him and get a grip around his neck. Striving mightily, she hauled him to the surface. Somehow she managed to push him over the edge of the pool and onto the surface of the patio beside it. She clambered up alongside him, ripped off his mask and hers, and started giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
After what seemed like a frighteningly long time to Llona, he responded. He sputtered and coughed and his eyes opened. Then they closed again and she redoubled her mouth-to-mouth efiorts.
Canny Bowdler! His lips returned the pressure and very quickly the lifesaving effort was transformed into a necking session. The transformation came about so easily that Llona didn’t even think to protest. She just went along with it.
One of his hands rose weakly and latched onto the fullness of the breast suspended over him. His other hand, more strength in it now, peeled the skindiving suit away from Llona’s upper body. Their tongues were live flames, teasing and darting, and then he pulled the ruby breast-tip to his mouth and Llona sprawled over him, trying to force still more of the firm flesh between his teasing lips. His hands slid over the full hips and down the length of the burning thighs, carrying the rest of the rubber suit away from the flesh.
Now Llona was completely stripped, lying naked on the hard cement of the pool patio, her body arched, the long legs widespread and reaching for the stars as she waited impatiently for the culmination of their lovemaking: Bowdler stood up and hastily peeled off his own rubber suit. As he knelt down beside her again, Llona reached for him . . . intimately. Her groping hand found its target with it, it found—
Disappointment.
“I know things are magnified underwater,” she observed, “but not this much!”
“Well, 1 can’t help it.” Bowdler was hurt. “The water sort of makes things shrivel up . . .”
“And die,” Llona sighed.
“If you’ll just be patient—”
“No.” Llona sighed again. “It’s a sign. It’s fate. This just isn’t meant to be. You’1'e a married man, and it isn’t right.” Llona didn’t add that what she really felt was that she was a married woman and now that circumstances had saved her from indulging her own lust, she wasn’t going to hang around and risk being overcome by it again. Bowdler’s water-shrunk softness did indeed strike her as a symbol capable of upholding no more than fidelity. She patted him on the cheek and went into the cabana to get dressed.
But if Bowdler couldn’t have the game, he figured his efforts at least entitled him to a try at getting the name. He followed Llona into the cabana and stood just outside the dressing room peeking through the curtain. When she turned her back to the curtain, he reached in quickly and grabbed her panties. This was the proof demanded by the office lottery. The way Bowdler looked at it, the panties—and the winnings they’d claim for him-—were the least he deserved by way of a consolation prize.
Llona turned around just a bit too quickly for him to get away with it. She was just in time to see the panties vanish behind the curtain. “What’s the big idea?” She stuck her head out and glared at Bowdler accusingly.
“Uh, just a memento. A souvenir to remember you by.”
“Really, Mr. Bowdler! Don’t you think you’re too old for panty raids?” She snatched them back from him.
“You’re only as old as you feel.”
“Really?” Llona stared pointedly at a spot beneath his naked, slightly pudgy belly. “Then you must be ancient!”
Bowdler sighed and didn’t answer. He went into the other dressing room and put on his clothes. His defeat was complete. He’d come so close; but he’d failed. The starch——emotionally as well as physically—had gone out of him.
And Llona, unknowingly, had cleared the first hurdle in the Nymph sweepstakes .
CHAPTER SEVEN
“We think she must be a bull dyke on the make! That’s what we think!”
“Oh, Archer, how can you be so ridiculous?” Llona hissed into the phone. She was sitting naked at the Nymph reception desk and she didn’t want her annoyance to be overheard.
“Why else should this dame want to get so chummy with you? Dinner in her apartment for just the two of you. It sounds pretty damn suspicious in our judgment.”
“Will you please stop talking in the plural! You sound like you’ve got two heads!”
“Don’t change the subject,” Archer growled.
“But you’re being impossible. A girl I work with asks me to dinner and I call you up to tell you I won’t be seeing you tonight, and you come up with these paranoid suspicions—-in duplicate, no less.”
“Why? Just answer us that. Why?”
“She’s probably lonely. And frankly, so am I. What’s wrong with a little companionship between two women?”
“When one of them’s got a name like Beulah Von Dyker, a lot could be wrong. That’s a Lesbian monicker if ever we heard one.”
“You can’t tell a book by its cover.”
“The hell you can’t! Nobody we know ever mixed up a dictionary with Tropic of Cancer!”
“Why are you so unreasonable?” Llona gritted her teeth.
“Don’t grit your teeth like that into the phone. It hurts our ears.”
“Are you feeling better?” Llona decided to simply change the subject.
“Our leg itches like crazy,” Archer whined. “The damn cast — Here we go again,” he interrupted himself. “Here we come with our enema bag again.”
“I’m sorry,” Llona sympathized.
“Sorry? Why?”
“I mean I’m sorry you have to keep getting these purges. I know how you must hate them.”
“Hate them? No. Not any more. They sort of break up the monotony. And we’ve grown to appreciate them. There’s something sort of erotic about them, you know? And since we’re pretty limited in that area, we settle for what we can get and enjoy what there is to enjoy.”
“That’s revolting!”
“Nonsense. We’ve come to terms with the hospital environment. That’s all. Well, we’ve got to hang up now so we can get on with it.”
“All right. Enjoy yourself.” Llona’s voice was sarcastic. “I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she added more warmly.
“Then you’re going through with it regardless of what we say!” Archer’s voice was ominous.
“Why not? If you can revel in your enema, then even if you’re right about Beulah, why shouldn’t I go to her place? To each his own, Archer!”
“I’m not going to forget you said that! Good-bye!” Archer slammed down the phone.
With a sigh of alienation, Llona also hung up. Looking up, she saw Beulah Von Dyker walking toward her. Llona had to admit to herself that the Nymph art director did convey a sort of mannish style.
“I’m ready to leave anytime you are, sweetie,” Beulah announced.
Llona glanced at the clock. It was one minute past quitting time. “I’ll be with you as soon as I get some clothes on.” She slid out from behind the desk and headed for the ladies’ room.
Beulah watched her go, staring from behind her tortoiseshell glasses. Yes, she thought to herself, Llona was really something all right! Look at those naked hips! On the plump side to be sure, but all the more provocative as they swayed because of the hint of heaviness. And that high, round derriere rotating so deliciously! Beulah observed her walking across the reception room with the appreciation of a gourmet.