His ego was of course not very inflated by his coterie of hangers-on, most of whom had been bested by John in various endeavors from time to time ... or, when there was an occasional whiff of chicanery on John's part, as one of these defeated acquaintances put it, "Royally screwed!"
Despite the continuing possibility of an outright accusation of stacking the odds, he had a number of girls and guys who thought that the sun rose and set close behind John, so that he could pose his muscular frame against a proper backdrop. John accepted this as his due, never considering that if the sun did indeed rise and set so close to his possibly vulnerable rear, he might very well be burned, sooner or later.
Now at the very height of John Royall's ephemeral popularity, he had just concluded a deal which did not blatantly stink so much as possess a faint odor of rotten fish, barely discernible to a discriminating district attorney who had long wanted to stop, or at least slow down, Mr Royall's methods of operation. The DA laid certain plans, which if consummated might have resulted in some very hard labor for Mr Royall for a good many years. However, true to his nature, John Royall had several years before befriended ... got out of a tight situation involving some peculation ... a person who was at the time of the imminent presentation to the Grand Jury of the DA's evidence against Mr Royall a medium grade official in that same DA's office.
Mr Royall was safely on a foreign flag ship outside the 300-mile limit when the DA obtained his indictment. Mr Royall had booked a first-class passage to a country with no extradition treaty with the US, oddly enough. He had rightly figured that the DA might have been able to have him arrested if he had flown, or gone by rail to Canada or Mexico; a comfortable trip on a passenger-freighter with only eleven other passengers was John Royall's solution to that little problem.
The ship, although intended primarily for the transportation of time-sensitive cargo to a certain port and thence on a round of scheduled calls, offered rather luxurious provision for twelve passengers. John had been very "lucky" to have acquired an outside stateroom on what seemed to be short notice. Well, perhaps "luck" is not the word that the narrator intended. Very little of what happened to Mr Royall occurred because of fickle luck; in the case of the stateroom on a specific ship bound for a country from which the most zealous DA could not extradite him, a careful application of a considerable amount of those funds which Mr Royall had accumulated over some years of Royall entrepreneurship made his climb up the accommodation ladder a few miles outside the 300-mile line reasonably easy. Of course, the specially chartered flight on the seaplane had cost a bundle, too, not to mention tips to the sailors who had ferried him from plane to ship, to the captain and purser as well, so John Royall was thinking hard about what new enterprise he might initiate at his destination.
At dinner that evening he was distracted from his cogitations about his future wealth and how to obtain it by a gorgeous young lady, apparently traveling alone in one of the other three singles staterooms. She was slightly withdrawn, but with his innate gift of gab, his never having kissed the Blarney Stone by no means dulled his tales of mighty deals and fun on various (mythical) beaches and other charming locations, with (mythical) highly placed companions, John soon had her attending his every word in wide-eyed fascination.
Her name was Mirren Laidlaw and she was red haired, freckled down to what was visible of her cleavage, broad shouldered, well-endowed above and slim hipped below, and a fascinating conversationalist if and when John allowed her an edgewise word. She became even more fascinating to John after their second week of purely platonic acquaintance ... and despite his usual "slam bam, thank you ma'am" relations with female acquaintances, particularly after two weeks, he had not made the first move to test her virginity ... when he discovered after an apparently casual slip she made about her place of residence that she and her sisters owned an entire island!
"Now, Mirren, really, an entire island? I had not known that any unclaimed island existed in this ocean."
"Oh, Johnny ... " so far had Mirren come to like the man " ... it's not in the Atlantic, silly, it's in the Pacific."
"Really? Where?" asked the shark in John, surfacing after some time cruising well away from a prospective meal ... er, sucker. Drat these similes!
"Oh, you'll have to fly with me to Hawaii to get there, Johnny. Want to?" No thought crossed John Royall's mind that this was an odd, a very odd proposition. Regrettably, after two weeks, and with that predatory shark surfacing, another part of John Royall surfaced as well and his previously suppressed sex drive cleared most other thoughts from his mind. Now he was wondering if he could obtain admittance to Cabin 3-A before the ship docked at its interim destination.
John had planned to stay with the ship until it reached the ultimate safety of that non-treaty country, but with a sudden onset of carefully disguised excitement, like a shark smelling blood in the water, he decided that it would be well worth his while, if she meant what she said, to accompany Miss Laidlaw to this remote island where only she and her sisters lived. So she had vouchsafed when John casually questioned her about servants, natives and so forth.
"Oh, no, John, you don't understand. The servants come only daily from the next island, about three miles away. There are a few other people who stay on the island, but they are at the other end and we don't see them until the festival every three months."
"Festival?"
"I'll tell you all about it ... John, have you decided to fly out to Hawaii with me? One of my sisters is here, in this port we're coming to, and we were going to fly back together. Will you join us?"
« Sister? Shit!» went rapidly through John's mind, but he smiled and said, "We-ell, I had some business I wanted to look into at the next port, but I can put that off until I return. Oh, and how long did you intend to stay in Hawaii?"
He had remembered that Hawaii was one of the United States. If there was a warrant out for him already ... .
Mirren grinned and said smugly, "We have our own plane, Sister can fly and we'll never leave the airport, so there's no customs or immigration to worry about."
"Uh ... " Two thoughts crossed John's mind. « These people must be filthy rich if they have an airplane, one of 'em's a pilot and she can fly across a considerable stretch of the Pacific - no customs, no leaving the airport, Christ! I'm damn' near home free.»
Another and more important thought was not to cross John Royall's mind until a good deal later, but by then he didn't care.
"Uh, how are we going to fly, the three of us?" He wondered if Mirren expected him the pay her sister's and her fares?
"No problem, Johnny, Sue has a deal, she can travel free, my fare is paid, so all you have to do is pay your way and we'll be there in two days!"
That suited John well, and that was what occurred. Sue was a lovely dark haired girl, with boobs about the size of Mirren's, the same slim hips and jaunty attitude. She did make one sotto voce remark to Mirren which John heard.
"New recruit?"
"Yeah, probably. Can't bitch, can you ... " and John overheard no more. After a few minutes trying to puzzle out that snippet of conversation, he concluded that they weren't talking about him.
Surely enough, Sue Burroughs (the name difference was because she was married, explained Mirren, and lately divorced) was comped to a seat, Mirren had her ticket and John at the last minute was able to substitute for another fellow who had become ill very conveniently indeed, considering he had John's money in his pocket and absolutely no curiosity.
"So, Sue," asked John when the seat belts were loosened, "you were an airline pilot?" "Second Pilot on Northwest out of Seattle until I was reminded of the island. I had a messy divorce, she ... my ex, that is to say ... was a real bit ... bastard."
John thought that with the dull acoustics in the cabin and the sudden slight turbulence he had probably misunderstood Sue, and let her confusing statement go as it was. Mirren was blushing, though, and he wondered why.
The landing at Oahu was uneventful, the plane of which Sue was pilot was thoroughly checked out and the three boarded with no interference from anyone except a mechanic who handed Sue a maintenance log to recheck and acknowledge. The weather was gorgeous for the flight to Mama Island, as Mirren informed John their sisterly hideaway was named.
"There it is, Johnny, home sweet home!" exclaimed Mirren after six hours of drone-filled boredom. John had been to the tiny toilet twice but that was more from utter absence of anything else whatever to do than need, but now he felt the need.
"Strap in, folks," sang Sue from just in front of them. The plane descended rapidly and swung in a wide bank over the loveliest beach and curling wavelets that John had ever seen. The actual landing was so soft he did not realise that they were really down until Sue revved the engine to turn the plane into the wind. No one was waiting for them.
"Come along, John, the basha is over this way, past the bamboo and cane." John, carrying three suitcases, did not move as fast as the two girls. He appreciated the sight of their two butts as they wriggled along the narrow path between tall bamboo and other tropical plants.
The "basha" was a wide, open, level floored, peaked roofed construction with sketchy shoulder-high walls dividing off several "rooms."
Mirren, very excited, John believed, at being home, showed him a room well away from the others. "You sleep here tonight, Johnny. You'll meet the rest tomorrow. We'll eat in about an hour. Don't refuse anything, it's native food, but it'd be bad, very bad, manners to not eat at least a taste of everything. okay?"
John was inured to "foreign" food and made no objection. He found that despite the shoulder-high divisions, he was well covered as he took a much desired shower from an overhead tank which deluged him with cool water when he pulled too hard on a cord attached to the valve which controlled the flow. Wet but content and becoming randier by the minute, John dressed himself in singlet, jockeys and pale blue shorts. He had a little trouble adjusting his half erect penis, but he thought of money and his incipient boner partially subsided.
Dinner was, as far as John could identify anything on his plate, a meat resembling pork, some sliced dark meat that tasted slightly salty but was extremely good, a vegetable like a leek but without the onion taste and with a green portion that was excellent with the dark meat slices. To his astonishment there was a light wine ... a beverage that he had thought did not keep well in the tropics ... .
"What is this wine, Mirren?" he asked, his curiosity aroused.
"It's a fruit wine, Johnny, Astar makes it fresh every three days."
"Astar?"
"Another sister, Johnny. Do you like your dinner?" John was quite full and a pleasantly lethargic feeling was creeping over him.
"Yesh, ver' mush, Mir ... ren." His head lolled and his eyes closed. Sue and Mirren grinned at each other.
---
John Royall awoke with no particular idea where he was ... he had done that quite a few times before ... never from overindulgence ... and kept his eyes closed until he could suss out the situation. All he smelled was what he identified as frangi-pangi and other tropical flower smells, although the frangi-pangi was certainly dominant. He decided that nothing was about to attack him so he opened his eyes and sat up, swinging his legs sideways over the bedside, to find himself confronted by a reflection of himself. Groggy still, he gazed at the distorted image, reaching forward to see what material the mirror was made of. Not glass at any rate.
Something about the image seemed different, but he could not put his finger on it at once. Finally, shaking his head, he rose and looked round for his few clothes. None in sight. Oh, well, tropic island, no need for clothes if no one objected to seeing his nudity ... a bareness to which none of his lovers had objected to yet. He was not very hungry but his curiosity was active, more so as he awakened more fully. There was surf to be heard in the near distance, through the bamboo, he supposed, but around him was that same thick bamboo through which he could see nothing. Above him was the blue sky with puffy clouds.
He started to walk out of the clearing in which lay the bed from which he'd risen, thinking the basha had somehow changed. His slow progress was brought to a halt by a mesh of finely woven material, which, despite his increasingly strenuous attempts to open a way through, resisted his every effort ... and he had prided himself on his toned strength. John's mental processes were not at their sharpest. He did not immediately realise that his upper body strength had waned; had he looked at his arms he would have seen that the bulging muscle that formerly adorned his frame had softened and lowed into more seemly contours, more seemly for his new body which he did not as yet recognise.. The barrier was resisting him, he was apparently powerless to clear it from his path, so he would call for someone to open the way for him. Had he been in better command of his mental powers he would have realised that his voice no longer issued as a baritone. His contralto was loud enough to bring immediate responses in varying tones from soprano to squeaky tenor from the surrounding but unseen neighborhood.
John Royall decided that he was not going to be helped much by a bunch of women and kids, as he judged his surrounding neighbors to be from their voices, so he turned and trudged back to his bed. He tried to think and slowly his mind began to function.
He had come here with two yummy women, Mirren and Sue. Sue was a pilot. Mirren was named Lay-something, but Sue had a different last name. Then the garbled answer Sue had given him came back to mind.
"...I had a messy divorce, she ... my ex, that is to say ... was a real bit ... bastard."
Just what had Sue meant? Had she spoken as though her former spouse had been a woman? Sue had used the words "she" and possibly "bitch," he was almost certain, and that certainly meant female, but in both instances had hastily corrected herself to make it sound, heard in passing, as though she had just been confused.
John slept again for a while, his mind, having tried to clarify Sue's meaning, now was too weary to keep him awake.
When he woke the next time there was a meal of those same odd ingredients by his side on a small table. John felt a heaviness on his chest as he levered himself upward to swing his legs over the bed rim, but he was too hungry at this wakening to give that much thought. He consumed every bit of food and drank a pitcher of that strange wine. This time he did not pass out, however, but stood and prowled the confines of his "cage," discovering that the mesh allowed him to push a finger into it, but not his body.
For the first time John took note of the change in his body's configuration. His fingers were longer and slimmer, his entire hand slim and graceful. He stood and felt himself, looking down over two mounds on his chest. He could see the nipples clearly for they were almost half an inch long until he felt of them, and then they stiffened, causing the surrounding areola to contract and push his nips outward in a ticklish reaction. John's body wriggled and something in his pubic region tightened and spasmed as he felt for the first time the pleasure of breast manipulation with intent. His hand dripped to his crotch, and although his heart seemed to be hammering at a tremendous rate, he remained relatively calm as his fingers encountered not a penis, as he had halfway expected, but a lump perhaps two inches in protrusion and the same size in diameter. There was a short slit in the middle. Rubbing that caused his body to gyrate sensuously without his intending any such action.
« What the hell has happened?» was his first reaction, but then his mind seemed to calm his terror and he began to move very slowly around the apparently perimeter of his prison. His fingers remained active on that strange mound , the other hand caressing his breasts, until he screamed in his now soprano as his knees buckled and he fell to the ground in the throes of a sensation the like of which he had never, ever, in his entire career as a sexual marauder, encountered. John lay panting on the ground for several minutes, his breath coming fast, the pounding of his heart shaking his slim and curvaceous body.
As his senses slowly returned to his still dazed mind, he looked up and was confronted by a nude Mirren and am equally bare Sue. Both were stunning, although John vaguely thought he had preferred girls with their pubes shaved, polished and kept bare. Both women had large, firm breasts, as he had suspected, no bras needed to keep them jutting proudly from the girls' chests.
His immediate reaction testified to the fact that he appreciated being awakened to see such loveliness. His hips jerked and rose from the ground on which he lay as though he were pushing some hard object into an aperture.
"Jan, you wanted to make love to me when we met on the ship, didn't you?" asked Mirren, a twinkle in her eye and a grin on her mouth.
"And wouldn't I make a nice second, Jan"" asked Sue.
"Oh, my ... my God! Mirren! Sue! Yes, of course I want to, I need to, make love to you girls!"
"We-ell, Janny, dear, I have to tell you ... we're not girls ... not women, nor female, or anything you'd fuck like the snake you were, Janny.!"
"Whaddya mean? I can see you, you're both built like brick shit houses, you're damn sure female and if you think I can't fuck both of you a lot of times running ... ."
Jan ran down as he realised that he had no erection, tnat he was no longer man enough to penetrate a girl.. There was that unaccustomed weight on his chest which he now adored and a definite feeling that he had certainly gotten slimmer overnight. He wanted to make love to Mirren, true, and if she was still around when he got done with Mirren, then Sue ... but how?
"What? How can I make love to you?"
He realised that he was pleading as he rose shakily, tears in his eyes as his desire far outran any chance of performance. His slumped body indicated how far he had surrendered to his circumstances. Very odd! John still felt sexy as hell, frustrated but just the same he wanted to make love to Mirren above all.
"Janny ... your name now, dear ... there is something about this island that changes men into pretty women as far as looks, but under the hair at our pubes ... that little knob you have now that feels, oh, so good, when it's licked.
"Janny, dear, you can make love to me, it'll just be different. You're very good looking, Jan, and you're making me hot just looking at you. We have to recruit every once in awhile, so this time you were chosen. Can't do anything about it. Janny. I want you!"
Janny moved purposefully forward, a smile, or possibly a leer, on his/her pretty face. The girls' arms enfolded, breasts mashed, nipples stiffened and bellies rubbed in increasing rhythm. Each gave a long sigh of contentment as they sank entwined to the ground.