The Dark Side

"I believe, monsieur," Danielle murmured unperturbedly in my ear, "if you are going to lay on top of me, you should at least kiss me," she suggested.

So I did, a nice long, exploring kind of kiss that was deeply satisfying. Her hands, which had been resting on my upper chest slipped comfortably around my neck.

"Ewwww! Dad! Get a room somewhere!" my darling daughter, Evelyn protested. I looked up to see she was only teasing. She'd been lighting Megan's Molotov cocktails, but now she was grinning naughtily at Danielle and me.

Disengaging from Danielle, I crawled a few yards further toward the bow to peek over the edge and draw back quickly. The vessel my group and the other one stationed at the middle of the freighter had attacked was arcing away from our ship, fully engulfed with a raging fire, and apparently not under command. There was no more firing from it. A quick glance fore and aft showed me the other firebombed pirate vessels were in similar conditions. Our freighter was rapidly pulling away from the three burning wrecks.

I didn't know if there were any survivors, and didn't care either. All of the pirates on board those vessels had been a threat to my girls. They'd deserved what they got.

* * *

We tossed the unused Molotov cocktail bottles over the side of the ship, not wanting to go to the trouble, and potential danger, of dismantling the bombs. Then we set about cleaning up the mess. There were a couple of singed eyebrows and one of the crew members had a nasty little burn on his forearm, but there was nothing very serious. The ship's doctor took care of the burned forearm quickly and returned him to duty immediately. No one had taken a bullet on our side.

We presumed all the pirates were dead or dying, not that we were inclined to reverse course to make sure of that. The Captain radioed the position where the three ships were last seen to the Australian destroyer so the Aussie Navy could investigate if they wanted. As for us, the ship altered course again, eventually coming back to the heading for our next destination.

* * *

Three days later, my daughters and I, accompanied by Danielle, left the ship when we dropped anchor near an island so small they didn't have a custom's control checkpoint. From there we boarded a small ship bound for the Philippines. Once there, we found a little port on the island of Luzon and boarded a boat, en route to Danielle's home on what she described as a beautiful, and remote little island. She'd invited us to stay with her for a while. It sounded like a great idea to my daughters and me.

CHAPTER FOUR

Waking up next to Mademoiselle Danielle Bastien in the morning was a wonderful thing. For one thing, Danielle recalled buying a nightgown sometime in the past, but she couldn't remember where she'd put it. It didn't seem to matter; she said she went to bed for one of two reasons—and neither required clothing. That suited me just fine.

Secondly, Danielle was a morning person. She woke up wanting to snuggle and kiss; she liked making love then too.

It was July, winter south of the equator, and our day would be cooler than normal; probably in the low 70's, sunny and with a nice ocean breeze. My daughters and I ruefully compared our first "hideout" in rural Mexico with our current abode. They couldn't have been less alike.

Danielle was laying with her back to me, stretched out on her left side. After caressing the soft flesh over her firm buttocks for a little while, I hitched myself a little closer and began kissing her from her shoulders down her side to the point of her hips. Still half asleep, Danielle was soon purring and beginning to move around, undulating delightfully. Finally, she rolled onto her back, smiled without opening her eyes and reached for me, sliding her arms around my neck.

We kissed for a few moments while she finished waking up. I kissed the tiny starfish tattooed on her shoulder, then swept my hands down her smooth back all the way to her buttcheeks and back up, gradually adding in kisses to her nipples and a palm on her outer labia. She was already wet and her legs spread invitingly. I pushed her gently onto her back and was ready to mount her for some early morning loving when she pushed back, leveraging me over and onto MY back.

"Non, non," she protested. "It is my turn to be on top," she told me.

"Oh, no!" I complained facetiously. "You mean I have to play with these lovely boobs, and you're going to get to do all the work?" I grinned.

"Oui, exactement, mon amour," she murmured, climbing on top of me. Whatever might have been was suddenly ended when Danielle caught sight of the clock sitting on the nightstand.

"Mon dieu. I'm going to be SO late!" She scrambled off me and away from the bed in a rush to get to the bathroom. I heard the shower flowing a moment later.

"Want me to do your back?" I called.

"Hah, pas probable!" she replied. "If you come in here to wash my back, I will NEVER get there!" she added, shutting the clear door to the shower stall.

I grinned. I had no idea where it was she had to go, but she knew me pretty well. Warm water, slippery soap, and my hands on her satiny flesh were a recipe for tardiness. I lay on my back smiling at the ceiling, waiting for her to finish so I could shower and make my way home.

* * *

Danielle and I had a comfortable relationship; we hadn't used the "L" yet, and I really didn't know if we ever would. I didn't have a clue if we were in love or not. Certainly, we were more affectionate than simply "friends with benefits," but I didn't know if it would ever mature into something more than what it was right now. For now, it wasn't love, but it wasn't bad. No sir, not at all.

Danielle had been on the sea voyage to get some space between herself and a badgering ex-husband, and my experiences with my ex-wife hadn't left me with any overwhelming desire to jump into a more binding attachment either. So there we were. We enjoyed each other's company, we had enough differences to talk about, and there were numerous things we had in common. Being with Danielle felt damn good.

Sex with Danielle was ... interesting. The life-threatening experience of the pirate threat had turned out to be a catalyst, ushering Danielle into a decision that she wanted to explore a number of things in the bedroom she'd never imagined doing while she was married. I, being the accommodating gentleman I am, cooperated with her desires to investigate lots of new things.

...So, we did just about everything a man and a woman could do together. We tried anal sex, twice, because she wanted to make sure she didn't like it before discarding the idea. It turned out to be a thing we never did after the second time. I'd never cared for it, myself, and Danielle didn't get anything good out of it either.

We started working our way through the pages of on-line versions of the Kama Sutra—at least those that looked interesting to Danielle. Then we tried other sources, porn sites, on the web. Danielle was captivated by the idea of having sex with another woman and doing threesomes, so she brought another woman into the mix on occasion.

She watched some videos of two men on one woman but wasn't interested. She said it was too crude and brutish ... but two women and one man was beautiful and exciting. I didn't have any problem with her reasoning; I just nodded wisely, keeping a gleeful smile to myself.

So we tried that several times with young women on the island. The island girls had a tradition of happy sensuality dating back before Captain Cook's explorations, so Danielle had already found four girls eager to explore Danielle's sexuality with her, and me. Life on this Pacific island had turned out very well for me and my daughters, and it seemed to only be getting better.

* * *

After Danielle left, I showered and got dressed. I had a fair selection of clothing here in Danielle's home and she had a closet full in the three-bedroom place where my daughters and I lived.

My daughters knew about the relationship I had with Danielle; they couldn't miss it. It was curious to me that they didn't remark on it very much at all, except to ask whether I'd be home for breakfast on some occasions. They didn't seem to worry that Danielle, though she and I weren't married or even contemplating it, had taken their mother's place in the bedroom.

My relationship with my daughters was closer than ever. When I thought about them collectively, I still called them my girls, but they weren't girls any longer. Megan was seventeen and Evelyn sixteen, and they were fast turning into mature and poised young women. Back in the world we'd had in the U.S., they'd have been dating long before now and, as cute as they both were, they'd probably be collecting boyfriends like a philatelist collects stamps. There weren't that many eligible boys on the island, though, and most of the young men around knew the story of how we came to live there, including the stories of how these attractive young women had helped destroy a pirate attack by fire-bombing them to death.

Also, I'm sure my daughters' maturity intimidated many of the guys who might have been interested in Megan and Evelyn. The "girls" had gone through two life-threatening experiences, crucibles that tested their souls, and they'd come out the other side confident and ready for whatever life threw at them next.

...And then there was the fact that the first young man coming to our home to collect Megan one evening saw me cleaning my Glock at the living room coffee table. He brought Megan home well before curfew and never called again. The word apparently got around.

We'd solved the issue of their continuing education. While we'd been in Mexico, we simply ignored the problem because our intent at the time was to dig a hole, disappear down it, and pull it in after us. When we arrived on the island, we located an online school offering high school equivalent education and degrees. I found a hacker on the main island who set us up with connectivity routed through any number of servers around the world. No one could track us down using our computer access.

I suspected we'd be moving back to the U.S. at some point under another assumed family name, probably about the same time Danielle returned to France. Danielle knew of my daughters' increasing need for contact with young men and women, in their age group ... and we knew Danielle was going to be leaving the island and going home too, eventually. It was just a matter of when.

Thinking of these things occupied my mind on the way back to the bungalow my girls and I shared. On the other hand, none of the problems needed an immediate solution; we had plenty of time.

I grinned. The problem du jour this week was a renewed campaign by my daughters. They wanted tattoos, just like all the girls back in the real world. Just small ones, they said, like the one on Danielle's shoulder, though maybe they'd do it on an ankle. They'd been trying to convince me for a long time now.

What the girls failed to take into account was that there were no modern tattoo machines on the island. Danielle's small tattoo had been painfully acquired at a shop run by "Mama BeBe" who used a needle, ink, and a mallet to produce Danielle's starfish. I didn't think my daughters really wanted understood what was involved, and I knew damned well I didn't want them to endure what Danielle told me she'd suffered.

At home, I found a note from my girls to the effect that they had gone shopping with Danielle and not to expect them home for lunch. They'd see me at dinner this evening.

I shook my head. Apparently, the shopping trip was why Danielle rushed off in such a hurry this morning. It made me grin. Danielle's sense of priorities always amazed me. A visit to her office in the only four-story building on the island sometimes was placed ahead of everything else, and sometimes a shopping trip with my daughters took precedence. One just never knew.

I left the house en route to my own office. I had a job on the island, one that no one else had the experience nor aptitude to accomplish.

I was the island's "Jondee."

The island was a holdover from French colonial days. Danielle's position in the island society was that of a full, or part, owner of most of the island's businesses. I was the only "cop" on the whole island, and I was seriously under-worked. Other than an occasional drunken singer trying to stagger home, there was little for me to do.

The word for an armed policeman in French is "Gendarme," and to an Anglo's ear it seems to be pronounced "John Darm." During WWII, a small detachment of Army Air Corps personnel had been positioned on the island as weather watchers. Among them, gendarme was transformed to Jondee. It was eventually adopted by the locals as the name for the person tasked with keeping the peace on the island. That was me.

I had to go into the station, but I probably wouldn't be there more than two hours. I could look forward to a nice nap in the afternoon while I waited to see what my daughters had found in the marketplace that they just "had" to have. Such was life on an island in paradise.

* * *

I dealt with the few vestiges of paperwork quickly, filing one copy in the file cabinet against the wall and slipping items needing to be forwarded into envelopes for delivery to the post office on my way home. Sweeping up and dusting took twice as long as the police work. I'd just finished replacing the broom in a small closet when there came a quiet knock on the outer door.

"Come on in!" I called out, thinking it was probably a local dropping by to register a complaint against a neighbor, or perhaps just someone coming by to sit on the patio outback and discuss whatever came to mind. I continued filing the short stack of documents in the file cabinet.

"Hello, Russ," a woman remarked behind me in an amiable tone. "How've you been?"

Startled, I whirled around, not realizing I should have just ignored a name I hadn't answered to for a very long time now. Rookie mistake! But it didn't matter—not really.

My dear ex-wife, Allison stood just inside the outer door, her head cocked to one side and smiling a little at me. I looked beyond her, wondering if there was some kind of official from the main island with an arrest warrant for me, but there was no one standing around looking officious. There was no crew of big, muscular goons Allison might have hired to beat the crap out of me either. No one except the slender woman I'd been married to and with whom I'd had two children.

"Hello, Allison," I answered in as steady a voice as I could manage. "Long time, no see, eh?" I added lamely. "Come on in and have a seat," I suggested, gesturing toward the straight-backed chair at the side of my desk. "Want some coffee?" I asked, searching desperately for something to return stability to a world that had just been thoroughly jolted.

"Yes, thank you," she replied, moving into my office and sitting where I'd suggested.

She watched without saying anything as I poured her a cup of dark brew. "Oh, you remembered," she cooed as I set the cup on the desk beside her.

I could feel my eyebrows arching. I didn't have a clue.

"...The sugar," she explained.

I could feel the heat in my cheeks. I'd automatically added two lumps of sugar to her coffee, just as I'd done for her at home in our kitchen a zillion times, because I knew that was the way she liked it. I'd just lost the first round in a contest, but I didn't know the game and didn't know the stakes either. To cover my dismay, I just shrugged.

I got myself a mug from the shelf behind my desk and poured it full. I sat down with the corner of the desk between my ex and me. I felt awkward and decidedly uneasy.

"I saw the girls on the way over here," Allison remarked, taking the initiative. "I was surprised you let them walk around with no clothes on," she said accusingly, "...mind telling me why you let them do that?"

I'm sure my eyes widened in shock. I couldn't imagine what the hell—and then I knew.

"...And who was that woman with them?" Allison added before I could respond.

My jaws tightened and I felt a tinge of anger creeping over me. That was good. Getting mad was better than being frozen in astonishment.

"The people of this island ... historically, women here never used to wear any covering above the waist. Captain Bligh and the boys on HMS Bounty found the women around here were dressed that way just before their little mutiny, too. What you saw was Megan and Evelyn keeping to the old customs, but they were wearing a wraparound skirt, weren't they?"

"Yeah, they were," Allison replied, unperturbed. She'd only used the hyperbole for shock value.

Megan and Evelyn didn't have my permission to go around without a top. They knew I didn't like it, but I'd never actually forbidden them to do it. I'd commanded several thousand cops in my career and I'd known better than to give an order to police officers that I knew probably wouldn't be obeyed.

The same thing applied to raising kids, of course. The girls knew I didn't like it, and I'd hoped the girls weren't taking off the bikini tops they usually wore with their outfits too very often. They'd obliged by never making me "officially" notice they went native every once in a while. It was just plain bad luck Allison had caught them. I wasn't going to tell her that, though.

"...And the woman parading around with them?" she prompted.

I was recovering from the shock of Allison showing up without any notice. "That was Danielle ... my girlfriend," I announced. "We've been together since ... ever since we got to the island," I added. I'd almost said, "since the pirates," but I didn't really want to talk about that event just yet—maybe never, if I could get away with it.

"...Another cultural thing about the island?" Allison asked matter-of-factly. I'd hoped for a little shock value from my revelation but that hadn't happened. "Married men get to have someone on the side here?"

"Yes, they are ... much like CEO's of major corporations!" I shot back. She'd given me the opening and I jumped on it. She had the grace to wince slightly. The last time I'd seen her, she'd justified herself by claiming office sex was one of the perks of her position.

"I did say something stupid like that," she admitted. "I'm sorry for saying it, and I'm sorry for even starting to do what you saw in the office that day," she added.

That surprised me. I hadn't received many apologies from Allison the past few years.

"I'm actually pretty glad you stopped what I was going to do," she remarked. "It would have been pretty damned idiotic."

Amazing.

"And this ... epiphany you've experienced? Those were bad things you were doing and ... in deep remorse for what you'd done ... you decided you should come find us and make our lives that much richer? All this came to you ... when?" I asked scornfully.

"Oh hell, no," Allison fired back. I'm a hardcore selfish kind of bitch. I want you all back because I want someone to love me and who I can love back!" She paused.

"...And I figured it most of it out when my sister called me the next day," Allison continued matter-of-factly.

I blinked. "Tricia?"

"...Only sister I have, yep!" Allison confirmed. "She called me the next morning ... when I woke up and found out I wasn't handcuffed to the danged bed ... to congratulate me on having screwed my life up too."

I'd been engaged to Tricia until I caught her having sex with a guy who turned out to have been one of her ex-boyfriends. The incident had been engineered by Allison who'd invited a number of Tricia's old boyfriends to Tricia's and my engagement party. Allison had been sure Tricia couldn't resist an opportunity to have a quickie with one or another of them.