Almost Paradise

by April Hill

  When Emma had regained enough strength to make it back to the beach, McLean put one arm around her waist to help her down from the rock, and back into the water. With the tide coming in, their progress back to the beach along the shifting ocean floor was slow, with Emma still gasping and coughing so badly that he was essentially carrying her. When they finally reached shore, Emma collapsed in the sand, and stayed there for several moments, trying to catch her breath. McLean knelt beside her until she waved him away.

  “I’m all right, now” she told him. “Go and help Merrie back in.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m fine. Just a little winded. Can you see her?”

  McLean looked toward the water, where Meredith was just coming ashore, dragging one-half-empty empty bag behind her. She ran the last few yards and dropped to her knees beside Emma, weeping.

  “God, Emma, I’m so sorry!” she cried, throwing her arms around Emma’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine, you little idiot!” Emma said hoarsely. “Was that your idea of a joke?”

  “I already told I was sorry!” Meredith sputtered indignantly, with just a trace of a whine. “I didn’t know the damned bag would be so heavy!”

  McLean pushed Meredith back, lifted Emma in his arms, and started up the dune to the clearing.

  “I can walk,” Emma protested weakly. “Really, I can. You don’t need to.” McLean said nothing, but kept walking, with Meredith running behind, trying to keep pace with his long strides. When they reached the campsite, he set Emma down very carefully against a tree, and dipped a cup of water from the bucket.

  “Drink this. You swallowed a lot of salt water.”

  Meredith stood nearby, wringing her hands. “Is she going to be all right?”

  “I’m just fine, Meredith!” Emma shouted. “Will you please just shut up, for once?”

  When Emma had begun to breathe normally, McLean left her there, crossed the clearing to the pile of bamboo branches he had collected earlier, and broke off several slender bamboo switches from the be nearest pile. Before either Meredith or Emma understood what he had in mind, he had wrapped one muscular arm around Meredith’s waist and carried her over his hip to the low wooden bench rigged between two trees—their dining table, on most occasions. With Meredith squirming and complaining loudly, he sat down on the single bench and pulled her across his thigh. At this point, she began to struggle harder, wriggling frantically as he pushed her forward and flung up the tail of her long shirt.

  “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing!” she shouted. “But if you don’t let me–”

  She stopped when with one deft tug, McLean yanked her panties down to her ankles, pulled them off and tossed them aside. Meredith threw her hands back to cover her exposed rear-end, and launched into another threat, which was interrupted by a trio of bamboo switches slashing across the lovely, rounded underswell of Meredith Von Kessel’s tender and never-before spanked buttocks. Probably more from surprise and disbelief than actual pain, Meredith screamed—a scream that was to be the first of many.

  And so, it began. As Meredith realized what was about to happen to her, her instincts for survival encouraged her to buck and kick like a wild thing. McLean managed to avoid injury by carefully trapping her flailing legs beneath one of his own, and rewarded her aggression with several well-aimed swats between her opened legs. Meredith’s eyes went wide with shock, and the wail of anguish that emerged from her opened mouth frightened away the seagulls that normally hung about the clearing. As they flew off, Andrew McLean pushed Meredith further across his thigh, until her beautiful blonde hair, covered her face and dragged in the sand. With deadly accuracy, he applied six blows to the backs of her thighs, each a tad lower than the previous one. Meredith shrieked even louder.

  Emma was too tired, too surprised, and much too fascinated by what was happening to her friend than to try to interfere, or to come to Meredith’s defense. From where she sat sprawled in the sand, Emma discovered that she had an excellent view of Meredith’s naked and reddening backside, perfectly heart-shaped in form and utterly flawless in complexion. The truth was that Meredith’s slender, cellulite-free thighs, hips, and flanks could have easily qualified her as a model for Victoria’s Secret, with no air-brushing at all.

  All of these possibly envious thoughts meandered through Emma’s brain as listened to her best friend howl in agony, and as she watched all that female perfection turn an amazing number of colors under the relentless whipping that Andrew McLean was delivering, with apparent expertise, and obvious relish.

  “Oww!” This mournful sound, tripled or quadrupled in length, was the best that Emma could come up with later to describe the sound of Meredith’s prolonged shrieks of anguish. After the first few cries of shock and misery, Meredith’s sharp shrieks had lengthened into long, drawn out wails, and her agonized yelps, shouted apologies, and heart-rending pleas for mercy had gradually segued into a protracted, low moan. Toward the end, when her lovely backside was ablaze, the moans were punctuated by an occasional whimper—which Emma, who knew her better than anyone else, recognized as abject defeat.

  Emma couldn’t help but notice—in a very detached and scientific manner—that McLean used the switches as an artist might paint a canvas, overlaying and crisscrossing Meredith’s perfect buttocks and thighs so that no square inch was left unswitched or without color. When he had finished, Meredith’s perfect butt and the backs of her perfect thighs had acquired a bright red and purplish basket-effect from mid-butt to just above her dimpled knees. Without drawing a drop of blood, Andrew McLean had given Meredith Von Kessel a welting she would remember with a distinct wince until she was a very, very old woman.

  The switches were worn to leafless stubs by the time McLean pulled the sobbing Meredith up from his knee and set her down firmly on her feet. Then, he stood up, and in one final flourish, turned her to face the shelter and laid two barehanded swats across her beet red rump. Meredith jumped, gave one last howl, and then hobbled away to the hovel, unaware that her shirt was still tucked up around her waist. After a few seconds of silence, an ear-splitting caterwauling emerged from inside, and Emma got up to go to her friend’s aid.

  It was almost an hour before Emma came out again, and sat down on the beach next to McLean.

  “Has she calmed down?” he asked.

  “She’s down to sobbing and threatening to sue you. Merrie’s father is a lawyer. She sues everybody, about everything. You’ve made a powerful enemy, Mr. McLean. You can take my word for it; she’s in there plotting some awful revenge. I’ve known Merrie since we were both in kindergarten. Your life isn’t worth a plug nickel.”

  He smiled. “I’m assuming Miss Von Kessel is accustomed to having things her way.”

  “She is. She’s an only child.”

  “God sometimes grants small mercies to those he has unduly burdened,” McLean observed wryly. “I suspect that He realized Meredith was enough for any one set of parents.”

  Emma sighed. “Oh, Merrie’s all right. She’s just … Anyway, I think you made your point. Rather harshly, but …”

  “You don’t approve,” he said.

  Emma hesitated. “Well, I know she was out of line, but … Well, the thing is, I just never saw anyone Merrie’s age get spanked like that, is all.”

  “And you live in New York.” he chuckled. “The capital of kink?”

  Emma blushed. “I don’t mean spanked in … well, in that way. I meant—you know—seriously.”

  McLean shook his head. “Believe me when I tell you that that was not serious. I assure you that when I have occasion to administer a serious thrashing to Miss Von Kessel, Miss Von Kessel will definitely know the difference, and so will Miss Von Kessel’s bottom. She could have killed you, you know.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake!” Emma cried. “Don’t take it so seriously. It was dumb, but sort of funny, actually.”

  He shook his head. “If you found that episode amusing,” h
e said, “there may be yet another person here who could profit from a sound spanking.”

  Emma got up quickly, her face warm in the cool night air. “I’d better get some sleep. Are we still going to leave in the morning?”

  He looked up at the sky. “The following day, I think, if the weather holds,” he said. “I’m afraid Miss Von Kessel won’t feel like walking very far tomorrow. Are you sure you both want to come?”

  She nodded. “Merrie is sulking now, but I guarantee you, she wouldn’t miss it for the world, even if she’s still walking funny. Too many opportunities to push you over a cliff. You might want to watch your back.”

  McLean smiled. “Thank you. I’ll consider myself warned. I’ll see you in the morning, then.”

  “I just realized I never thanked you for saving my life,” Emma said suddenly. “Thank you.”

  He smiled. “It was my pleasure. Good night, Emma.”

  “Good night, Andrew,” she said softly. “Are you coming to … are you going to sleep, now?”

  “A bit later,” he said. “I may even sleep out here, tonight. It’s pleasant, and there’s a full moon.”

  Emma went inside and lay down on her palette. Next to her, Meredith was asleep, sniffing occasionally, and breathing through her mouth. Emma fought an incredibly strong urge to raise Meredith’s shirt and have a quick look at the damage McLean had done, but decided against it—not out of respect for her best friend’s privacy, but because it was too dark in the hovel to see clearly.

  Chapter Four

  Robin waded through the tepid knee-deep water at the shoreline, grateful for the calm surf. She was looking for the small blowhole in the sand that could indicate another concealed ray. The shallows were sometimes thick with them, burrowed beneath the sand, and then, mysteriously, they would be gone.

  “What we need is a book about all these damned tropical fish,” she grumbled, coming back to the hut empty-handed. “Where they hang out, which ones are edible and which ones make you die in agony, that kind of stuff.”

  “I had a shelf full of books like that, on the Sea Spirit,” he said. “Too bad I never had a chance to read them.”

  Robin sat down on a rock and rubbed the bottom of her foot. “Yeah, well, all this on the job training is no fun.” She had stepped on a small stingray several days ago, and her foot was still painfully swollen. “What we need around here is some expert survival advice.”

  “My expert advice would be simple—when in doubt, don’t.”

  “So, all I get to eat when you decide to go exploring is more seaweed and coconuts?”

  “We still have some of the dried fish, and I caught two rats this morning.”

  Robin made a face. “Thanks, but I seem to be losing my taste for rats. You can have too much of a good thing, you know. And I think the dried fish has gone bad. What about the wild boars?”

  “What wild boars?”

  “The ones you promised me were running all over this fucking island,” she reminded him.

  He grinned. “I may have exaggerated.”

  Robin gave him a dirty look. “It figures. Anyway, I have this brilliant idea.”

  “Another one?”

  “Just listen, smartass. This idea is a really good one.”

  “Such as?”

  “Eggs,” she replied, beaming. “Up there on the cliff, where the birds are. I’ll bet there’s a million eggs, just sitting around, waiting to be scrambled and fried.”

  “And protected by a pair of eagle-eyed parents with sharp beaks and short tempers. Besides, birds only lay eggs at certain times of the year.”

  Robin said nothing for a minute. “Well then, what we need is a book about the damned birds! I can already see my ribs! The funny thing is, before I got on your stupid boat, I was trying to lose ten pounds.”

  “Well, then, you won’t be asking for your money back, will you? Actually, I have a surprise for dinner. One of your all time favorites, and considered a great delicacy in the South Pacific.” He held up a slimy glob of gelatinous ooze she recognized as a sea cucumber. He had trapped several of the slimy creatures several day ago, laboriously cleaned and gutted them, then flame broiled the resulting goo over a red-hot rock. Robin had tried her best to reserve judgment, but couldn’t get past the revolting appearance long enough to sample even her first bite.

  “Yeah, well it just so happens that I’m trying to cut back on sea cucumbers,” she said.

  “I saw South Pacific four times, and nobody in the damned movie ate anything this gross.”

  Jack grinned. “They’re not too bad, actually. Like eating latex gloves and swallowing glue all at the same time. Nutritious, though. Anyway, this time, I think I’ve figured out the right way to cook it—what to do with it.”

  “I can tell you what you can do with it,” she snapped. “Want to hear?”

  “No thanks. You know,” he said wearily, “being stuck on this island could be a lot less miserable for both of us if you’d just try a little harder to stay cheerful. I know it’s hard, but…”

  Robin rolled her eyes skyward, stabbed the sea cucumber with one of their bamboo fishing sticks, and slung the “delicacy” into the trees. “You shouldn’t be eating these fucking things, anyway,” she said coolly, “They’re probably an endangered species.” With that, she thrust the long stick defiantly into the ground, and turned to walk away. “You can have my share of sea slime, sweetie. I’m going egg hunting.”

  Jack grabbed her elbow, yanked her around, and had her tucked under his arm before she could take her first step. Enraged, Robin managed to kick him in his left shin—hard. The kick backfired, though, with a flash of searing pain that tore through her bare foot, the same foot that hadn’t yet recovered from her encounter with the annoyed stingray.

  “Ow! My foot! If you lay a hand on me, you goddamned fucking…”

  “I haven’t touched you, yet,” Jack said grimly, preparing to do exactly that.

  A moment later, Robin let fly a second round of obscenities, as Jack laid one terrific barehanded smack to each cheek of her squirming rear-end.

  When she couldn’t wriggle free, Robin settled for biting Jack’s left hand, the only part of him she could reach in her compromised position. Unfazed, he took a few moments to explain to her that the human bite could be extremely dangerous, then dragged her skimpy shorts below her knees, and reached down to pull the two-foot long bamboo fishing stick from of the sand.

  Robin had read about caning, but the descriptions she’d read hadn’t done it justice. Maybe because of his own lack of experience with a bamboo rod, or maybe because he was simply at his wits’ end after a hard, hot day, Jack Garrison did what could only be called a thorough job with his first caning. Ignoring her wails of apparent agony, which he regarded as routine and probably fake, he continued whacking away until she signaled surrender by beginning to cry. He had already learned that Robin was too stubborn, and far too proud to shed tears readily.

  Jack tossed the shredded bamboo stick on the ground, and glanced briefly at Robin’s bared backside, surprised by the number of red stripes he’d left there. Meanwhile, she proved that her tears had been only a momentary lapse—by doing her own quick inspection of the damage, and then swearing at him at the top of her lungs.

  “I don’t fucking believe this!” she shrieked. “I look like a goddamned barber pole!”

  Jack gave a low whistle as he took another look at her glowing buttocks, and had to agree.

  * * *

  By that evening, Jack had cooled down, somewhat, but Robin’s backside had not, and what conversation there was, was sparse and strained. Strained. Jack had actually begun a stumbling apology, of sorts, but she had abruptly changed the subject. She had decided that the only thing more humiliating than being spanked, was talking about it, afterward.

  She had also decided that while she wasn’t ready to admit defeat in whatever war they were involved in, she was prepared to accept a half-hearted truce. Purely in the interest of having a b
it of peace and quiet, she told herself.

  “I hope my boss and his client got rescued,” she said, finally, in an attempt to relieve the uncomfortable silence. “He’s a jerk, and the client’s a pig, but I hate to think of them drowned. I’ll still need a job when we get out of here. If we get out of here, that is.”

  “What did you do for this boss of yours?” Jack inquired. “Or is that none of my business?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t what you’re thinking. Herb liked to call me his ‘administrative assistant’, which means I did everything he didn’t want to do, like order flowers for his girlfriends, fend off the bill collectors, and clean the bathroom. Herb is a talent agent—and I use the word ‘talent’ loosely. He finds bimbo wannabe starlets for lightweight porn films, and then screws them—literally, when he can—but mainly financially. It’s all in his so-called contracts. Herb went to law school at night for two years, just to find out how to swindle his clients with the fine print. They teach that, you know.”

  “Nice job you had.”

  “Yeah, well, it’s probably not as much fun as dragging people thousands of miles out into the damned, shark-infested ocean and then dumping them there to survive on pond scum and vermin, is it?” she asked snidely. “Besides, I’ve had worse jobs, and worse bosses. At least Herb paid me regularly … sort of. This trip was supposed to be a job perk, in lieu of a raise. Some of it was nice, though, while it lasted. I don’t get to travel much.” You looked up at him. “I guess you’ve seen pretty much all of the exotic places the world, haven’t you, being a rich yacht owner and all?”

  “Ex-yacht owner,” he reminded her, “and a long, long way from being rich. The only reason I accepted this charter was to pay my back taxes, and most of my travel to exotic places has been as an underpaid tour guide and baby sitter. The charter before yours consisted of six insurance salesmen in the middle of a collective mid-life crisis. All the idiots did the whole trip was eat, belch, and swill down two cases of beer a day, and then toss the cans over the side. Then, I got really lucky, and met your boss, who promised to pay me twice the going price for a trip like this one. I figured by the time I got back home, I could pay off what I owed, and maybe even have a little to spare.”