CHAPTER ONE

 

Ah, this was the life!

Carina Barrington-Smythe relaxed back onto the deck of the smart yacht and let her luscious young body soak up the sun.  As she was only wearing a tantalisingly brief bikini, there was very little of her silky smooth skin which the sun's rays was not turning a golden brown.  Carrie, as her friends called her, had considered going topless: there were only the three male crew members, plus one female maid, to see and they were only servants, so what did they matter?  However, she had decided against it in the end: why should she give them a free show?  They were already being properly paid for their work and didn't deserve perks.  Anyway, she felt like showing off this expensive and smart new bikini bought for her by a rather boring young man back home in Chelsea.  He thought he would get to see her in it, maybe even accompany her on this holiday cruise, but she had soon disabused him of the notion.  The memory of the look of disappointment on his face was one she was still enjoying.

On the other side of the foredeck lay the person she had invited instead, her friend Penelope Fortescue.  Penny was wearing cut-off shorts and a halter top.  Carrie eyed the girl's lovely long legs enviously: she herself was stunningly beautiful and knew it, but so was Penny and her superb legs were gorgeous, giving her a couple of inches advantage in height.  Still, Carrie's striking blonde hair turned most male eyes in her direction, although Penny's deep-hued brunette locks helped lengthen her own list of admirers.  Together, the girls made a dynamite team, and Carrie never tired of the sensation they caused every time they entered a party together.

A discreet cough made her look round.  The young maid whose name Carrie forgot, or rather couldn't be bothered to remember, was hovering.  "Miss Smythe," the girl began obsequiously, "lunch will be ready in about ten minutes."

Carrie frowned.  "We ordered fish, didn't we?"

"Yes, Miss Smythe."

"Well, I've changed my mind," Carrie announced haughtily.  "It's too warm for a hot meal.  Make me a salad instead."

The girl turned purple for a moment, then brought herself under control.  She had worked hard for hours in the sweltering galley below deck preparing the fish dinner and now this bitch had casually swapped her order.  "Yes, Miss Smythe," she forced out and, after a nod of dismissal, went back to the galley to start all over again.  Carrie watched her go, enjoying the girl’s struggles to hide her hatred.  How nice it was to have menial nobodies to order about!

Penny watched the scene slightly more critically.  She cared nothing for the extra labours caused for the maid, but Carrie was making the usual mistake of the common rich.  Real upper class people did not taunt the servants, who were quite simply not worthy of the effort.  Besides, flaunting power lacked dignity.  But then, Carrie's family was not real upper class.  Wealth alone did not bestow that honour, especially earned wealth: one simply had to be born to it.  Penny was, of course: her family tree was related at several points to royalty, whereas Carrie's father was simply middle class with plenty of self-made money, and her mother, well, a former model for goodness sake!  Still, Carrie had inherited her mother's good looks, exceeded them in fact, and at least her expensive education had given her a sheen of respectability.

Not that Penny didn't get on well with Carrie, in fact the two of them were genuinely good friends; it was just that in Penny's opinion, her breeding made her superior, whilst Carrie considered that wealth engendered sufficient social mobility to give her the edge and was proud of her father’s achievements in raising their family to its new financial status.  But the girls never argued about it, any more than they argued who was the more beautiful: they simply knew that they complemented each other and left it at that.

Right now they were enjoying the cruise too much to be bothered.  The yacht was in the Indian Ocean, somewhere off the coast of East Africa, a little less than a mile out from the shore and the weather was perfect.  Carrie's parents had been with them until yesterday, when they stopped off in Mozambique for her father to conduct some business, her mother staying to keep him company.  (This was the sort of thing Penny meant: her own father would not dirty his hands by conducting business himself: he employed others to do that.)  The girls had been left to cruise around for a couple of days until Carrie's parents rejoined them.

That meant soaking up even more sun, getting a tan that would be the envy of their friends back home and for Carrie the chance to be the big boss, pushing the servants around to her heart's content.  Carrie had also expected to be able to cock-tease the men, tossing her golden locks around and leading them on before slamming the door in their faces.  Somehow, though, they never seemed to take the bait, nor was she able to satisfactorily establish dominance over them.  The three men were hard-looking, tough types, muscular and lean.  They stayed only just presentable, their uniforms sloppily worn, their shaving only half-hearted.  When Carrie had tried to tell them off about it, they looked at her with an amused eye and shrugged, more or less totally ignoring her.  That made her blood boil, but she had quickly discovered that there was nothing she could do about it, so she retreated with as much grace as she could and tried instead to wrap them around her little finger using the considerable attractions of her stunning body.  That also failed: when she flirted around in her brief bikini, or leaned forwards in a low cut top to show them her deep cleavage, they leered at her in a way she found insulting rather than complimentary, but all three refused to be led around by the nose.  Thoroughly annoyed now, Carrie transferred her waspish attentions to the teenage maid, who at sixteen was only a few years younger than herself and Penny.  The maid was quite pretty, but lacked the stunning, expensive presentation of Carrie and Penny: for example, her hair, like Carrie's, was blonde, but neat and unobtrusive rather than attention grabbing.  She was completely different to the male crew, appointed separately and never having met them before and Carrie found it far easier to boss her around.  The poor girl found herself isolated on the boat: she shied away from the three men, who showed no interest in her and Carrie and Penny, of course, would not dream of mixing socially with her.

 

Carrie lay on the deck, slightly puzzled.  Normally she could feel the faint throb of the boat's motor through the hull beneath her back, but a minute or two ago it had faded away.  She hadn't bothered to find out details of the planned voyage - such trivia was beneath her - but she wasn't aware of any reason why they should be stopping.  Still, she couldn't be bothered to get up and go and find out why and anyway it might mean another confrontation with those rude men.  She debated saying something to Penny, lying beside her, but the brunette looked half-asleep.

Then she became aware of a presence nearby.  Somehow she knew it was male, not the maid, so instinctively she moved into a bit more of a seductive position.  As she did so, however, a rough male voice sneered, "don't bother with the posing, bitch: ain't you found out yet that it don't work on us?"

Carrie's eyes opened wide.  These men might have been surly and unfriendly before, but nothing like this.  She sat up, fuming.  Two of the men were standing there, idly viewing her.  "How dare you," she began furiously.

"Ah, shuddup," the other one said carelessly.

Carrie stopped in mid-sentence, speechless.  Penny was now also sitting up, frowning.  The more well-bred girl might not share Carrie's love of pushing her weight around, but she was still not used to being addressed in this sort of way.  "What is the meaning of this?"  The brunette's cultured voice contained none of Carrie's brashness, but still exuded arrogant authority and expected a polite, even fawning, reply.

She didn't get one.  The man who had spoken first fished a toothpick out of his pocket and hunted for a bit of meat stuck between his teeth: the crew had had their lunch earlier.  Then he spoke again.

"Nice boat, this: it'll fetch a good price."

Behind the two men, the maid had appeared with the third man standing behind her.  She looked rather frightened and somehow the man with her gave the impression of making sure she wasn't going anywhere, not that there was far she could go on a craft of this size.  Carrie turned her attention back to the first man.

"What the Hell do you mean?"  she stormed.  "My father has no intention of selling it!"

The man snorted.  "You haven't got the idea even now, have you?  Boy, you might have nice tits and a good ass but you ain't got much between the ears!"

Carrie flushed.  "How dare you speak to me like that!  My father will fire you and make sure you never get another job in yachting again!"

The man shook his head, grinning.  "He's got to find me first and his yacht and his daughter."  His expression hardened.  "Now listen, bitch, and listen good.  We're taking this boat, see.  We've got a buyer all lined up: a respray job, a new name and a bit of re-arranging and nobody will ever find her.  It's a big ocean."

There was a moment's stunned silence, broken by Penny.  "But they'll find you."  Her voice lacked conviction.  This act of piracy was obviously planned, so no doubt they had thought of all that.

She was right.  "You don't think the names and references we supplied to your papa were real, do you?" the second man sneered.  The other man had been correct: it was a big ocean, and both the boat and the men could end up in any one of three continents: Africa, Asia or Australia.  Furthermore, in this part of the world there were plenty of countries where the authorities would not co-operate overmuch with a British search.

And as all this ran through Carrie and Penny's minds, another thought began to grow in the brunette's head.  "What about us?" she asked quietly.

The first man grinned again, but did not answer directly.  "Where's that maid?" he asked his companions, without taking his eyes off the two rich girls.

The third man thrust her forwards and the girl staggered into the centre of attention.  Like Carrie, as has been said, she was a blonde, but unlike Carrie's beautifully coiffeured shoulder length tresses, her tousled locks were shorter and cheaply cut.  Her skin was also paler: she had spent most of the trip indoors, either cooking meals or cleaning up the girls' rooms, which were always in a complete mess: Carrie and Penny, of course, never put anything away themselves.

The first man, evidently the leader, eyed the maid up and down.  "Samantha, ain't it?"

"Yes, sir."  The cheap (to Carrie) accent quivered with fear.  She wore a classic maid's outfit, black with a white apron; her fingers clutched the hem and twisted it, betraying her nerves.

"The other two wenches are already half nude, so you can join them.  Get that outfit off!"

"Sir?"

"Get it off, girl, unless you want one of us to tear it off!"

Samantha looked around and noticed the third man behind her take a step forwards.  There was no doubt in her mind that these men would do as they threatened; she was also sure that, even under these circumstances, if her uniform was ruined the bitch Miss Carrie would ensure that the cost of it was taken from her pitiful wages, if of course they ever made port.  She glanced around, looking for a miracle reprieve, but none was forthcoming.  Gripping the hem with both hands now, she took a deep breath and then pulled the dress over her head and let it drop to the deck beside her.

Carrie could not help the instinctive noting of the cheapness of the girl's white bra and panties; there were even a couple of tiny tear holes in them.  Still, the brat was pretty enough and she had a good figure.  She filled the bra and panties well, sensuously in fact; maybe she had a trace of puppy fat compared to Carrie and Penny, who had all the time in the world to exercise and access to some top quality gyms and expert trainers.  The girl also lacked poise, Carrie saw: her face flushed, she was trying to hide her firm young bosom behind her arms, although really she was still more fully dressed than Carrie herself in her brief bikini.  Carrie was beginning to wish that her swimming costume was a tad less brief, but she wouldn't demean herself by trying to cover herself up.