The Bonk Squad (32 page)

“
Waste of money, that hat,”
Eloise said. “I couldn’t pack it to bring it home.”

“
Ah, but you did look the
part, my girl, with those huge sunglasses and the sarong. I could
give Francine a sarong like that...” He leaned back in his chair
and closed his eyes.

“
If she’s French, it would
be a pareu.”

“
Eh?”

“
A sarong’s Malaysian. The
Polynesians call their wraparounds pareus. Where’s she
from?

“
Tahiti.”

“
Well, there you are
then...” The smugness in Eloise’s voice came very close to pricking
Johnno’s post-lunch euphoria. He counted very slowly to
ten.

The pathway across the sea
glittered in the early light. The first rays of the sun settled
like a dusting of pollen on the topmost branches of the tall
primeval trees. Almost as though they were rising out of their
island, they became molten gold.

Cooper watched, alone. The
ocean rested calm now—the best time of day to slip ashore
unnoticed.

A few minutes passed
before the ketch swung around far enough to obscure the dinghy from
the beach. He stepped down into it, rigged up his hastily created
‘fisherman’ and rod, and sank into the water. If anyone had him
under observation from the shore it would now look as though he was
attempting to catch his breakfast.

He swam fast, keeping low
in the water, and raising his head only the bare minimum of
times.

She waited in the
cave.

“
Francine,” he groaned,
pulling her to him and pressing his wet body along the length of
hers.

“
Cooper!” she exulted,
wrapping herself around him to warm and comfort his cool flesh.
“Ah, Cooper...it’s been too long.”

“
Ssshhhh...” he said as
the heat began to build between them, spreading as it always did
until they were consumed by their fierce need for the
other.

“
I didn’t think it would
be today,” she murmured between kisses. “But when I saw the ketch
out there at dawn, I hoped.”

“
Have you been able to
contact Luc?” he asked, wrestling with the knot of her green and
white pareu, knowing full well she wore nothing under it, just for
him. He slid the fabric away from her rich coffee-hued skin and
traced the path from her jaw to her luscious breast with his
tongue.

“
Yes, Luc is on standby,”
she groaned as he suckled at her puckered chocolate
nipple.

“
And Dupres?” he demanded
as he moved to pleasure its twin.

“
Dupres has the
merchandise,” she confirmed, sliding her hands under the waistband
of his swim-shorts and attempting to push them down over his
hips.

“
So everything is in
place? There’ll be no mistakes?”

She knelt and worked the
clammy shorts past his erection and on down his legs.

“
No mistakes,” she
whispered, closing her soft lips around his shaft and then drawing
away. Cooper groaned.

Francine gazed up at
him—her dark eyes holding his silver-blue ones, her dusky skin now
jeweled with water from his swim. Her lush breasts swayed as she
moved.

For him this was paradise
after the long weeks alone at sea. “Come into the ocean with
me.”

She drew a sharp
breath.

“
I want to bury myself in
your heat while the sea rocks us both insane with
pleasure.”

“
No, don’t jeopardize your
cover now you’re so close. You don’t know who might be watching
through a telescope.”

“
I’m just a yachtie out
for an early-morning swim. No knife. No gun.”

She raised her shoulders
in a very Gallic shrug.

“
Spread my pareu out,” she
suggested. “The sand here is soft. You mustn’t risk being seen in
the open, and especially not with me.”

“
You want no public
connection at all?”

“
Only private connection,”
she murmured, drawing him down beside her as the sun continued its
slow climb up the cloudless sky.

She chewed on a long strand of
hair.

Bastard
!

Thought he could treat her to dinner
and then waltz on inside with her, did he?

Scumbag
!

Reckoned a ride in his fancy car and
two entrees and crème brulee was foreplay?

Dream on, Mr Sabatini.
It’s going to take more than that.

Liz tossed, wide awake. It was barely
six o’clock on a sunny Sunday. She was too hot. The sheets were
noisy. The summer light seeped in around the Roman
blinds.

She snapped on the bedside lamp,
dragged the laptop out from under the bed, booted up, and scrolled
through to the Marcy folder. She’d let Marcy loose like a
half-starved Pit-bull and see how Alan Freaking Sabatini liked
that.

“
Where are you today,
Marcy?” she wondered. “Are you shopping, girl? Are you hang-gliding
off the Empire State? Are you maybe at the firing range with your
pistol aimed right between the eyes of a tall dark
Sicilian?”

Or are you...? Yes, maybe
you are...

Marcy hooked her thumbs
into the suspenders holding up her lacy black stockings, pulled,
and snapped the elastic back onto her long thighs. She lifted one
spike-heeled scarlet shoe, grasped her ankle in her hand, and
raised her leg until she’d achieved the splits against the long
silver pole.

If her audience had been
dogs, the drooling would have been disgusting.

But her audience was two
dozen top level businessmen, hidden in the shadows of the dark
smoky club. All eager for a glimpse of female flesh, and willing to
pay handsomely to admire hers.

She wrapped her arm around
the pole to hold herself upright, then bent and straightened her
knee, rubbing up and down in time to the slow throbbing music.
Every eye in the room followed.

She hooked her raised leg
around the pole and swayed backward until her long hair brushed the
dusty stage. Her back arched like a bow; her breasts strained to be
free of the tightly laced corset.

She writhed like a
beautiful snake, around and around the shining silver shaft, giving
them first a cheeky slice of bottom, then an open-thighed glimpse
of pussy with the narrowest strip of crimson silk across it, and
next a luscious sweep of shoulder and a smoldering pout directed
with devastating accuracy into the eyes of every man
present.

She leaned against the
pole, pretending fatigue, rubbing up and down like a sinuous
Siamese cat.

At the twitch of a hidden
cord the straps over her shoulders gave way. The corset’s lacy cups
slid lower. A collective murmur of anticipation rose from her
audience. And she turned her back, denying them their
treat.

She bent from the waist,
displaying her endless legs and enticing bottom...swayed to the
primitive rhythm of the music and shook her breasts free of their
constraints.

She turned, pretending not
to notice that her big dark nipples were now on display.

Her audience leaned
forward. Trousers were adjusted. Banknotes were
produced.

Marcy prowled the central
walkway, suffering the wayward caresses as eager hands tucked
generous donations into her stocking-tops, behind her suspenders,
up under the barely-there thong, into the lowered cups of her black
and red corset.

At the end of the walkway
one tall man sat, impassive.

Marcy raised her foot and
planted the cruel spiked heel of her scarlet shoe close to his
groin. His dark eyes shot sparks, and his nostrils flared with lust
as her scent wafted across the small space between them.

She rubbed her finger and
thumb together in the age old sign for money.

None was
forthcoming.

She ground her heel
down.

He barely
flinched.

But his hand shot out and
grasped her ankle, tipping her off balance so she tumbled into his
arms.

Marcy struggled—to no
avail.

“
Dammit, Marcy,” Liz
wailed. “You’re supposed to be the winner here!”

“
I’ve written a story for
that contest,” Bobbie said, sending Meg a nervous glance across the
kitchen. “It’s not like anything I’ve written before.”

“
Not erotica
then?”

“
Goodness, no. You couldn’t
write erotica for a competition, could you?” She looked down at the
floor again, blushing pinkly. “And I don’t think I was very good at
it anyway.”

“
I wouldn’t know. You never
showed us any,” Meg said, feeling guilty about spying on the
chained warrior. “So is this for the Chapter Bookshop
Contest?”

“
Mmmm. Fifteen hundred
words. It’s not easy when you’re only allowed that many. To make
anything happen, I mean. But Jamie has this boxer dog he rescued
from the fire…”

Meg raised an encouraging eyebrow.
This didn’t sound too promising. A dog story? “So is it about the
rescue? You could make that quite exciting, but it does need to
have elements of romance.”

Bobbie shook her head. “No, not the
rescue. Jamie and I were in Napier—on that big beach walkway
they’ve built—and there were all sorts of dogs being walked, and it
got me thinking.” Suddenly she produced a sheaf of paper from
behind her back and thrust it toward Meg. “Would you read it for
me? Tell me if it’s worth sending?”

Meg glanced down at the first page.
“Inseparable,” she read. “Nice title. I’d love to.”

“
There’s no
hurry.”

“
Fifteen hundred words
won’t take long. Put the kettle on and I’ll read it right
now.”

“
Oh. Well. Only if you want
to. It’s probably no good anyway.”

“
Looking forward to it,”
Meg said, sending blushing Bobbie an encouraging smile.

“
Control that great hairy
beast!” Dan Carpenter yelled as half a ton of slavering shag-pile
rug barreled across the sand apparently intent on killing Miss
Sweetie.

The girl he’d been
introduced to only as ‘Sarah’ let out a piercing whistle and her
enormous Bernese Mountain Dog skidded to a halt, dropped to its
haunches, and continued to eye Miss Sweetie as though she was
lunch.

“
Good boy, Auric,” Sarah
called across the breezy beach.

Dan had joined the Bolton
Bay dog walking group almost by accident. For the last fortnight
he’d pounded past them on his morning run, and one day someone had
called out, “Get a dog, mate, and then you can go
slower.”

“
I’ve got a dog,” Dan
yelled back, cutting his speed down for a few seconds. “I’m looking
after one for someone.”

“
Bring it along and join
us,” a ponytailed blonde invited. Dan had noticed her each time he
ran. He didn’t need asking twice.

“
We’ve got the wrong
dogs,” he said the following morning. Slim blonde Sarah with her
jaunty ponytail should have Miss Sweetie, his grandmother’s snowy
Maltese Terrier. Gran had sometimes tied Miss Sweetie’s topknot up
with a shiny pink ribbon so she had her own little
ponytail.

And he needed the Bernese
Mountain Dog—or at least something more masculine than his perky
white bundle of mischief. A chunky black Labrador, or even better a
bronzy Boxer with its streamlined muscles and athletic gait. Dan
considered himself streamlined and athletic. Bronzy too, with his
summer tan and streaky brown hair. Weren’t dogs supposed to echo
their owners’ looks?

“
I didn’t choose him,”
Sarah said. “I got landed with him when my boyfriend Richard left
for the States. But he’s such a honey.”

Dan wondered if she meant
Richard or the dog until she added, “He won’t hurt her,” as she
crunched across the sand beside him.

Miss Sweetie looked far
from worried. She pranced right up to enormous Auric and sniffed
his black and tan legs. He lowered his massive head and snuffed and
wuffled the length of her excited wriggling body.

The little Maltese Terrier
seemed to adore beach-walking, and had unaccountably chosen the
huge Mountain Dog as her special companion.

Which gave Dan the ideal
excuse to stride along beside forthright Sarah.

“
So why do you have a
fluffy toy?” she asked him in return.

“
I didn’t choose her
either. She’s my grandmother’s dog, but Gran finally got too ill to
live at home and had to go into care. I’m staying in her cottage
until it’s sold, house-sitting I guess. I take Miss Sweetie to
visit her every couple of days. They feel it’s
therapeutic.”

“
How do you have all this
time free?”

Great. First she thinks I
have an effeminate dog and now she suspects I’m a beach bum on the
dole.

“
I’m a chef, so I try to
run or surf most mornings before I start cooking.”

She nodded at that. “I bet
you pay for it at the other end of the day though.”