It was as if Mark knew she had wanted Karl, had given her space, allowed her to explore, allowed her to experiment, to feed her craving. Mark had given her Karl. Had allowed her sexual freedom.

It was as if Mark had accepted her, had given her permission to fulfill her fantasy with Karl.

She didn't take them at the same time, only one at a time, anything more would have been too much for her inexperienced mind to be able to handle. She did it with her eyes closed. Most of it.

Karl had licked her yoni until she was dripping like a ripe mango.

Mark had done the same.

After two nights of fun and passion in Negril, the last few days in Montego Bay had their own rhythm. She surrendered herself to them, took in all the plea sure they could give her, let them teach her things. With enough alcohol in her, she got in the bed with both of them, tried things she never would have imagined herself doing. They excited her. Aroused her. Had her living an adventurous lifestyle.

Twenty-one times. They gave her what she wanted twenty-one times.

Every time she had sex she wanted more plea sure, and at the same time she needed more than plea sure. They gave her love and sex twenty-one times. With every penetration she became emotional, more vulnerable. She was in a struggle, trying not to lose the plot because she enjoyed the sex, but she wanted more. Twenty-one times, nonstop fucking, countless orgasms, each orgasm feeling like love.

Jewell Stewark said, "But what happened that night might have changed everything."

"I'm listening."

"No, this is too embarrassing."

"Tell me."

"Mark asked me if I loved Karl."

"And you said?"

"I told him to not ask me that."

"And he said?"

"Karl will fuck you, but he will never love you."

"And you said?"

"I cried. The way he said it, the nasty way he said it, he made it sound like I started it."

"What did you say to him telling you that?"

"He hurt me. I know it makes no sense, but his words hurt me. In anger I told Mark that maybe I would sleep with him and never love him. I would torture him. I told him maybe I'd allow Karl to sleep with me because I felt as if I could love him and the best fuck was the fuck of love. That angered him. I wanted him angry. Him being so willing to share me angered me."

"You wanted him to fight for you."

"Yes."

"But he allowed you to do what you wanted to do."

"He gave me to another man. To his brother. I wasn't used to that, wasn't raised in that way. So I gave in to my anger. I told Mark if he drank Irish moss all day and night, he could build his stamina and could fuck me with all the jealousy he could muster, he could make me climb the walls, could fuck me into being his wife, but he could never fuck me into love."

"What did he do?"

"He tried to push me out of the bed."

"Pushed you?"

"He told me I could go to Karl."

"Did you go to Karl?"

"No. I cared for Mark. I was attracted to Karl, yes, but I was with Mark. The attention felt good, but I wanted Mark to stop it. I wanted him to see it going too far and get upset and make it all stop. I wanted him to not want any other man to touch me. But he allowed it. I was angry that he allowed it to happen. And with forethought he had let Karl come inside our room and have his way with me. Yes, I enjoyed it, but yes I was angry. I just wanted Mark angry. Needed to know he felt something for me. I needed to feel valued, not devalued, feel special when I was in his arms."

"He allowed you to make your own choices."

"I wanted him to man-up and shut it down."

"He gave you your freedom to chose the type of woman you wanted to be."

"I wanted him to claim me."

"But you were with Mark and wanting to be with Karl."

She paused. "Yes."

I felt the weight of her desire, pyramids of emotions built over time.

As I treaded in her deepening emotions, I paused a moment.

I paused because my memories were so heavy that the shelves that held the journals of my mind were about to collapse. Like Jewell, I too had succumbed to an unforeseen temptation.

Jealousy manifested itself, always reared its ugly head when relationships reached the physical. Maybe that was a flaw in the human design, to be possessive, to struggle with the desire to own what was not ownable, a constant need to enslave others and chain them to our own needs and desires. If not to enslave, then to be enslaved, led, given instructions on how to live. Or maybe the emotion known as jealousy was there intentionally, to keep lovers together, to force them to protect their nests with a fury. But still. I wondered. I had been resentful in Greensboro. Envious of Kiki Sunshine. But I felt as if I had overcome that jealousy. I'd been able to remain in the afterglow with my identical sins, but maybe because I knew they were leaving with me, in my mind that gave me control, and my being there, even if Mark was married, even if Karl had Kenya's image tattooed on his flesh, I had earned squatter's rights, had made them my chattels to take along if I chose to give in to my rising emotions and do so.

I'd been jealous of the way Mark made Kiki Sunshine moan, of the way she made him come, jealous of the way she had taken Mark and Karl as if she were destined to win the Frankie of the Year award. She had moaned louder than I moaned. She had come faster than I had come.

In that act, as they were experiencing her body, as I trembled and sweated and recovered from my plea sure, she had owned them both. Because what was inside her body belonged to her.

Kiki Sunshine had owned them well.

As she, in our own secret moment, had owned me.

She had owned me as I had owned her.

That would never happen again.

In a soft voice that masked my swelling envy, I told Jewell Stewark, "Tell me more."

"No."

"Yes. Tell me more."

Karl left the next morning.

He said he would be back in a while, took a taxi, and came back with another woman. Jewell thought Karl had gone and picked up a female rent-a-dred, an island girl for hire, but she wasn't. Dark complexion with gray eyes, slender, almost six feet tall, hair black and bone-straight, a tattoo of the sun on her stomach, bangles on her arms, a tongue ring that showed with her every word, like she was an erotic and exotic pirate, a descendant of the people in Port Royal. Her name was Kenya. He had made up with his off-and-on lover girl, flown her in for the last few days of vacation. She thought Kenya was Jamaican, but she was not. Her father was African, from Kenya, but she had never been there. She had been born in Odenville, Alabama, but had grown up in Atlanta, for the most part. Kenya was standoffish, vague, defensive. But she did mention her father was in Georgia, lived in Stone Mountain. She said nothing about her mother. Jewell said she met Kenya briefly, their initial conversation, that questioning lasting no more than five minutes. Threatened by her presence, she didn't care for Kenya, was uncomfortable, her jealousy hidden, and in the middle of their tte--tte, Karl came and pulled Kenya away from Jewell's interrogation, then he and Kenya vanished for two days.

In between, Jewell left with Mark, had hired a car and driven the rugged roads of Jamaica into Portland Parish, over the bumpy, narrow, and pothole-filled roads that led through the rural areas where African slave labor had once been used to cultivate sugarcane and coffee, was with Mark on a short trip in search of her roots, but her mind was too preoccupied to appreciate the journey and conversations about the Maroons, the runaway slaves who used to live in the Blue and John Crow Mountains, slaves that had stood up for their rights and refused to let the British recapture them and take over the land.

She had felt Karl grow inside her mouth. Had allowed him to fill her in other ways, but taking him in her mouth was so personal, something that should only happen between a husband and a wife, had felt him pulsating, had experienced his taste, had done it for plea sure but also to be pleased.

He had come in her mouth.

She had swallowed his seeds for him.

Then he had moved on.

Now Kenya had arrived and Jewell felt disrespected, felt her heart aching, felt her soul withering because her affair with the love of her life had been obliterated.

She had been effaced, as each woman was destined to become effaced by the next.

So it goes.

Mark was making love to Jewell while she longed for Karl, while she wished she could feel as emotionally and physically connected to Mark as he felt to her. He had been her emotional security.

Karl was fucking her, making her scream and beg for mercy, controlling her while she made love to him, and as she came she prayed for emotional reciprocity. He had been her desires unleashed.

Like tasting heaven and hell.

She had been left to Mark. And her sensation of contemptuousness. Her feelings of betrayal.

What she had done was taboo. Had gone against everything that she had been taught as a nice young Christian girl from the South. Was scared. Tried to blame them. Tried to blame Karl. Tried to blame Jamaica, the land of celebrated hedonism and mass nude weddings, but she knew there was more to Jamaica than perpetual sex. She told herself she had been used, coaxed, and liquored up. That they had planned this, had made her comfortable. And she was naive, was just going with the flow.

Karl had left with Kenya. The beautiful dark-skinned girl with the wonderful breasts. Karl wrapped himself around Kenya, kissed Kenya in front of her, held Kenya with so much affection. In front of her face. As if she were nothing to him.

Jewell felt ashamed. But she had done something that she had secretly wanted to do.

She had experienced so much plea sure.

Maybe it would happen again. Maybe after Kenya was gone, it would return to normal.

Two days went by.

Back in Negril. Two nights of hearing Karl making love to Kenya were the start of madness.

The next day they were all at the pool. Jewell's mind remained on Lime Cay, Karl touching her, kissing her, that first kiss forever with her, how they had felt in the water, her hands on his back, her legs around his waist. Now Karl was in the pool doing the same thing with Kenya. They were in the pool, in the Jamaican sun, hugging, so close, Kenya putting sweet kisses on his face, water dripping from her hair. Her legs around his thighs. His hands under her ass.

The way Kenya was holding him, how she closed her eyes and kissed him, how she kissed him and couldn't stop kissing him, kissed him as if he was deep inside her, stirring her emotions.

The way she was bouncing up and down, the way they were exchanging deep tongue kisses, they had to be having sex.

In front of everyone they were fucking.

On the third night, after drinks, after partying, Jewell rested in Mark's arms.

Karl's room was next door. An adjacent suite. She heard him with Kenya. Talking. Laughing. The laughter ended. Followed by silence. The hums grew inside the silence. The hums that became a stream of sexual moaning. Every moan fractured her. Soon the lovemaking sounded violent, abusive, passionate.

She heard Kenya's voluptuous orgasm, heard Karl announcing his love for her as he came.

What had been fractured became shattered.

Her heart was filled with love for Karl. She wanted her wayward lover to come back.

His taste remained in her mouth.

His taste forever lingered on her tongue.

She remained with Mark, pining for his brother.

Brows furrowed she asked, "Who is Kenya?"

"He loves her."

"So she's his...girlfriend?"

"She's his fiancee."

"They're getting married?"

"They're engaged."

Her breathing halted. Insult opened injury wider.

She said, "But he wasn't...he wasn't acting like that...when we...when all of us...you know."

"Karl is being Karl."

"Meaning?"

"A Bajan man's favorite pastime is making love to beautiful ladies."

"Is it yours?"

"I want you. Just you. Would love you to feel the same way."

"So Karl is just being Karl."

"Karl is being Karl. He'll fly beautiful women with agendas to wherever he is to keep him company. He'll wine and dine them at the fanciest restaurants. He'll share his bed with three at a time."

He'd been with her and now he'd moved seamlessly, effortlessly to Kenya.

She asked, "Have you slept with Kenya?"