Summer Swap 6-7

Someone tapped him on the shoulder and he turned to discover it was Lily, mugging at him from behind an extravagant velvet eye mask, like something one would wear to an aristocratic costume party during Mardi Gras. Lily’s bright blue eyes peered out behind the eyeholes, the purple mask festooned with sequins and jewels and small black feathers. Under the eye mask, she’d run her little pink tongue out at him.

He guided her wrist down, revealing her smiling face. “How did you know this place was here?”

She tilted her head, coquettish and teasing, chiding him, “Anybody who’s anybody, my dear, knows about the Blackbeard’s Bounty.”

It would seem that Blackbeard’s Bounty was a large shop collecting a wild inventory of sexual materials, tucked away from the main tourist traffic on Dronningens Gade.

He said, “You’re not anybody, baby girl.”

“Touché,” she said, raising her face at a haughty angle.

He looked around now surmising the store’s wares. Neatly organized, proudly presented. The interior was like an old shipping warehouse, brick archways and weathered boards, lazy ceiling fans circling overhead. A throwback to the time the city of Charlotte Amalie was a pirate haven, the harbor’s deep water a lure for those maritime rapscallions. The modern bounty stored here now was neoprene and leather and feathers and whips and vibrating dildos, silicon and phthalate-free PVC; butt plugs and costumes and strap-ons and lubes. And more.

He put his hands on his hips, looking over Lily’s head from where they stood in the elevated foyer. He said, “You’re a little devil.”

“Thank you,” she said, cute and complimented, slipping her arms around his waist and hugging him.

“Did you want that mask?”

She stepped back, but showed him a scrunched up nose. “I don’t think so.”

“What can I buy you?”

“I don’t know,” she purred, setting the mask back in place from a rack of similar ones before returning. “Let’s see what we find.”

Hand in hand they stepped down the three shallow steps to the store’s main level and toured the aisles, both of them with keen interest. Ever the rational, he said, “Nothing too expensive because we have to get rid of it. I don’t want to fly home with gear in my bag.”

Lily gasped and let go his hand, skipping ahead, stooping to snatch a large box from a display and running back to show him. She said, “What is it, Daddy?”

His cock stirred at her convincing antics, a low lusty engine kicking to life for this wild woman he married. Inside the box was an enormous dildo, sealed in plastic. This one claimed to be flesh-like, and had every detail a real one would have, even casting the fellow’s wriggly firehose veins and large balls in the mould. He held the box’s clear window to his chest and shook his head. “It’s not for little girls, Lily,” he said.

“Oh,” she mumbled, then pouted and swiveled at the hips the way a disappointed child would. “What’s it for, Daddy?”

He said, “I’m going to put it back.”

Lily followed behind him, talking to herself, saying, “Whatever it was, I liked it. It made me feel funny.”

He chuckled, setting the box back in place at the neat display, and Lily laughed and smacked his bottom.

They continued to shop and peruse. Later, Lily hooked an arm under his and leaned her head on his shoulder. She said, “Do you like being my Daddy?”

He waited for an older Caribbean couple to pass them in an aisle before answering. “Of course I do, jitterbug. I love being your Daddy.”

“Do you always love being my Daddy?”

“Always, baby. Always.”

“You don’t like it sometimes.”

“Oh, when’s that?” He paused at a display of costumes in leather; sadistic looking lace-up corsets and a matching peaked cap with silver chains. They couldn’t get away with that on the yacht. And the set cost half a grand, not exactly disposable when the vacation was over. Still, something about the stark female brutality of it stirred his loins.

Lily said, “Sometimes I make my Daddy squeamish.”

“Sometimes,” he said, “my little girl has too many questions.”

“I’m getting bigger,” she said, like an argumentative child.

“Not that big,” he said. “Not big enough to look at the thing that was in that box.”

He didn’t look at her but sensed her pooching out her adorable lower lip in his periphery.

Then she stepped beside him and took a white leather nurse’s uniform from a rack and held it to her body by the hanger, letting the skirt drape over one leg she put out. He admired the color of her skin against the white leather, and her skinny but shapely leg. She said, “But if I said you didn’t have to be my Daddy, would you be happy?”

He touched the tunic’s white leather lapel. “No.”

Lily checked the costume’s waist, seeing if it would cinch her and amplify her figure the way she sometimes liked. Now she checked herself out in the mirror, posing her leg the same way she’d done for him. “What about if it was only three days or so you didn’t have to be my Daddy?”

He joined her at the mirror, looking at their reflection together. “Well, who would I be?”

She turned to his face, and he looked at her. “My husband.”

“I like being your husband,” he said. “I like that a lot. What do I do as your husband?”

She showed him a lusty, encouraging expression. “Whatever you want.”

He growled in his throat and bounced his eyebrows. “I like that, too.”

She said, “Vanilla sex. Missionary. Whatever my husband wants.”

Now he frowned. “Okay, but why?”

Lily scrunched her nose, asking him of the dress, “Do you like this?”

“It’s hot, but I don’t see you as a nurse.”

“Mm, I like the color.”

“That’s what I liked, too.”

Lily hung the uniform back on the rack and they continued. She said, “Do you think Cheyenne’s attractive?”

“Cheyenne? Ew, gross,” he said and shuddered. “No way.”

She giggled. “You don’t?”

“Always with the baseball hat. Is she in little league? Does she have some misshapen head or something? She should ring the bell at Notre Dame.”

Now Lily asked him, “What about Scarlet?”

“Hideous.,” he proclaimed. “Grotesque. A literal swamp creature.”

“Carla?”

He stopped and rolled his eyes up to the store’s ceiling, thinking. Then a decision: “Sloppy.”

“Sloppy?”

“Oh, yeah. Super sloppy. A mess. . . . You know who’s the hottest girl on the boat, though?” He took Lily’s face in his hands.

Her pooched out fish-lips said, “Are you going to say Paloma?”

He laughed and kissed those lips, then let her go. “No way. Paloma’s got like spots all over her.”

“Spots?”

“Like dots.”

“Freckles.”

He turned to look at Lily. “Freckles? More like warts. She probably missed the first week of the trip because she was busy cooking children in a big cauldron in the forest.”

Lily giggled again, trotted to catch up, and hugged him. She said, “They’re doing weird stuff with each other and they do it behind our backs. Why is that?”

“I don’t know, Lily. They don’t do it all behind our backs. Some of it they do with us. Like the cards and stuff.”

“They do way worser behind our backs.”

“Worser? Little Lily, that’s not a word and you know it. You don’t know words like ‘squeamish,’ and not know worser is wrong.”

Lily defied him, raising her voice so others might hear her. “Way, way worser, Daddy!”

He hunched his back and raised his shoulders, leaving her behind. Lily laughed and trotted again to keep up with him.

She said, “Don’t they like us?”

“They like us a lot, Lily,” he said, stopping in the books and games section. “They think we’re too nice for them. They don’t want to offend us.”

“Or corrupt us. They do some really bad things.”

He said, “We’re incorruptible, Lily. We’re the good guys.”

“They’re definitely the bad guys,” she said.

Then she steadied herself like she had a big thing she had to say. He closed the book he was riffling through and looked at her. “Do you want to do bad things?”

“You know, uh, sometimes Daddy’s a bad Daddy.”

“Daddy can get mad sometimes,” he agreed.

“Sometimes little girls can make their Daddies mad by being obnoxious little brats.”

“Sometimes,” she said.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he said, nodding, emphasizing the word to sarcastically insinuate it was more like all the time. But she was so damned cute. He brought the big paperback book of sexual positions over her head and pretended to bonk her with it. She scrunched up her face and let him.

When he opened his book again, she asked, “Well, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Want to do bad things?”

“I already told you, those swamp hags don’t interest me in any way.”

She chuckled. “They’re not swamp hags, they’re our friends.”

“They could shake their titties in my face and show me their cooch and I wouldn’t even twitch.”

Lily looked disgusted. “Gross, Daddy.”

“So, don’t ask gross questions.” He put the book down and faced her, touching her chin so she would look at him. “We’ve talked about this. You said you didn’t want to. It’s a big step, Lily. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t like being left out.”

“That’s not a reason to join in. That’s called peer pressure. You have to tell me you really want to do those things and not that you don’t like others doing them without you.”

“You’re so smart, Daddy.”

“Tell me what you’re thinking.”

“Do bad girls get punished?”

“Bad girls are taught a lesson, yes.”

“Does it stop them from being bad?”

“You tell me. I discipline you. Are you still bad?”

She showed him a slow, creeping smile of malevolence. Her hand squeezed his cock and balls and he grunted, laughing and stepping away. “We’re going to get kicked out of here, Lily.”

She furrowed her brows like she was desperate. “What was that I felt, Daddy? What was that thing?”

He waved her away, trying to look superior and in charge, but could feel the heat on his cheeks. “So, listen, Lily. If you want to play with your friends, tell me your plans.”

She pranced away, looking through board games and party games. She turned to face him, her skirt swishing around her tanned legs. His cock was filling up right now. He adjusted his shorts.

She said, “We could start with some good games. They play boring ones. The closet thing was funny, but we could be having more fun.”

“Okay,” he said, accepting it. “That’s a good start. What else? What else is it you want to do?”

She looked more adult for a moment, saying, “Do you trust me, Arlo?”

“Always, Lily.”

“Will you play along with me?”

“Have I ever let you down?”

“Not once, ever,” she said with a small bureaucratic nod.

He said, “Then let’s get a few things for a party.”

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, when they had as much as they thought they could have fun with and get home safely on a scooter across this mountainous island and then a jet ski out to the yacht, they brought their things to the checkout counter.

As the cashier rang their things up, Lily leaned on the counter looking at Arlo, making lovey eyes at him. Then some big thing occurred to her out of the blue and she whipped around to the cashier, a graying Carib man in his fifties with a white Havana shirt. She said, “Oh, hi, umm... My mom called earlier, like this morning, her name’s Lily and she, um, ordered something to be put away...”

The heat returned to Arlo’s cheeks as Lily toyed with her babygirl in public.

The man said someone called and reached under the counter, poking things around to make space to bring out a plain cardboard shipping box about the size and shape of a loaf of bread. Lily hefted it and gave the box a shake, something heavy shifting around inside. “Good,” she said. “My Mom didn’t say what it was.” She let the statement hang in the air, but the man wouldn’t answer it as a question, freaked out by Lily’s childish antics.

Arlo told the man, “Whatever it is, just ring it up with these other things. I’ll pay for it.”

Now he’d have to worry about what was in the box all the way back to the yacht, knowing Lily wouldn’t tell him until she wanted to.