and warm and sleek to the waist. She squirmed, rubbing herself against him.
His erect penis felt trapped in his tight shorts. She freed it. Her fingers curled around it, slid down the length of it and up again. Scott moaned as the sensation threatened to break his control. He moved lower, easing out of her hand. His mouth went to her breast. He kissed the rigid nipple, tasting the slight tang of salt on her skin.
Karen rolled onto her back, and he tongued her other breast while his hand roamed down the velvety skin of her belly. He plucked at the drawstring of her sweatpants, opening the bow. He slid his hand down. He felt the soft coils of hair. Her thighs parted to make room. She was warm and slick. Her breath became ragged. She clenched his hair, forcing his mouth hard against her breast as she raised her knees and writhed under his sliding fingers. 'Oh, God,' she gasped. 'Oh, my God.'
He took his hand away. She let go of his hair, and he rolled aside. While she struggled out of her pants, he shoved his shorts down and tugged them off. Then he was on top of Karen, thrusting his tongue into her mouth, squeezing a breast, pushing into her. She sheathed him, tight and slippery. She whimpered as he slid in deep. 'Hurt?' he whispered.
'Oh, Jesus!'
'Is that a yes?'
'No,' she gasped. 'It's a no.' She dug her fingers into his buttocks, pulled, and shuddered as he pushed the rest of the way in.
A few endless moments of mad lunging, burying himself in her dark hugging warmth, in her and enclosed by her and part of her; she strained against him for a deeper joining as if she ached for him to penetrate a secret place just out of reach. Scott sought that place. He plunged for it. He rammed for it. Just beyond him and now he couldn't hold back. He pumped, spurting into her, and knew that his fluid was finding that secret place, making that connection, joining them. Karen quaked under him. Then she held him motionless and tight.
Keep on going,' Ettie muttered. 'Don't you stop here.'
Dropping to her rump, she scooted down the steep side of the boulder she'd been standing on. The granite felt like hot sandpaper through her dress. She pushed off, fell a short distance into a nook among the rocks, and stretched out flat on an uptilted slab. From there, she watched the hikers stride up the distant trail.
They were heading up toward Carver Pass. Three of them. This far off, they were no more than tiny shapes. Something about the way they walked made Ettie suspect they were girls, but she could only be sure about one; the figure of that one made it obvious.
The person in the lead, who wore a cowboy hat, stopped and turned around, waiting for the others to catch up.
'No,' Ettie whispered when the leader pointed down at the lake.
The three stood close together on the trail, gesturing and nodding, apparently discussing the matter. Then the one in the cowboy hat started down the steep path toward the lake. The other two followed.
'Damnation,' Ettie muttered.
Squirming forward on the sun-baked granite, she spotted Merle. He was far below, seated on his favorite rock, fishing. With a high outcropping to his right, he was hidden from the intruders, at least for now. They would need to come halfway up the opposite shore to notice
Merle in his recess. By then, he was sure to hear their voices and take cover.
'You better behave, boy,' she said. 'You better just leave 'em be, or I'll skin you.'
Before yesterday, there hadn't been much cause to worry on Merle's account. Folks had come down every now and again to rest by the lake, explore it, take a swim, or do some fishing, but Merle always stayed out of sight and left them alone. He'd even behaved the few times campers stayed the night. None of the overnight people had been pretty young women, though, until that last. Easy enough to behave when there's no temptation. But the first pretty girl comes along, he rapes her and kills her and lays it on the Master.
Bullsquat.
Ettie turned her gaze to the hikers. They were already at the bottom of the slope, walking single file along the lake-shore. They were heading toward the area where Merle had buried the bodies. With its trees and shade, it stood out like an oasis in the desolate basin. No one came down without settling there.
A fine place to plant those folks, Ettie thought. We oughta dig them up and stick them someplace out of the way.
Sure enough, the three hikers stopped in the shadows and swung off their packs. One red pack was lowered within a yard of the graves.
As they opened their packs, Ettie heard them talking and laughing. From the sounds of their voices, she was sure that all three were girls.
Merle must hear them, too. She looked toward the boulder where he'd been sitting. He was on his feet, leaning out, trying to see around the jut of rock. He stood motionless for a few moments, then leaped across the narrow band of water, set down his fishing pole, and scrambled up the slope. Near the top, he crouched low, then raised his head enough to see over.
Only the width of the lake separated him from the girls.
That couldn't be more than a hundred feet, Ettie figured. Merle could swim the distance in half a minute, if he had a mind to.
'You just let 'em be,' Ettie whispered.
She looked at the girls. They were sitting close together on rocks, passing a couple of small bags back and forth, eating the contents.
Stopped for lunch, Ettie thought. She hoped that was all, that they would finish up quickly and be on their way.
The one in the cowboy hat, who sat with her back to Ettie, took off her checkered blouse. The straps of her bra were white against her tanned skin. She stood up and stretched, as if she liked how the breeze felt. Bending over, she set her hat on a rock. She rubbed her short brown hair, then turned away from the other two girls and walked to the shore. There, she knelt and flipped a hand through the water.
Ettie looked for Merle. He was gone.
The girl returned to her friends. Moving her hat off the rock, she sat down again and began to untie a boot.
'Oh, you fool,' Ettie muttered. She studied the opposite shore, but still couldn't see Merle.
One of the other girls, a skinny thing in jeans and a faded blue shirt, got up and stuffed a bag into her pack. Then she took off her shirt. Her breasts were small mounds, white except for their dark tips.
'Oh, Merle, Merle.' The temptation would be too much for him.
She considered rushing down to the girls, yelling and trying to scare them away. That might ruin everything, though. They'd be sure to tell someone — maybe a ranger — about the wild woman who chased them off. A spell might take care of that, but why take chances? A good spell's hard to call down, and you can't always count on one to take care of business.
Be better off to find Merle and stop him before he did something foolish.
She looked at the girls. The one who'd tested the water was on her feet, pulling down her shorts. The buxom one had her T-shirt off, and was reaching behind her back to unhook her bra. The skinny one sat right where Merle had planted the bodies, and tugged off her boots.
Ettie still couldn't spot Merle. She guessed he was across the lake from the girls, spying on them, probably hard as a club by now and going crazy.
She scurried across the slope, staying low. She squeezed through crevices, slid down steep slabs on her rump, ducked behind every rock cluster offering any concealment, making her way slowly across the end of the lake. When she paused to catch her breath, she found all three girls stark naked. The one in the lead was knee-deep in the lake, walking backward, urging her friends to come in. The skinny one eased in a foot and jerked it out quickly. The other squatted down, breasts bulging against her knees, and tried the water with her hand.
