Beta- StacyO72- Don't ever spell Barnegat wrong. She'll go all Jersey girl on you, especially if you do it twice. The saying is, "Can't read, can't write- Barnegat Light." That's because it's impossible to spell!

Disclaimer: Stephenie Meyer owns all things Twilight. No copyright infringement is

intended.

Way down the lane away, living for another day
The aphids swarm up in the drifting haze
Swim seagull in the sky towards that hollow western isle
My envied lady holds you fast in her gaze- The Chauffeur, Duran Duran

A/N- I was completely blown away by the reviews for the last chapter- all thirty four of them! Thank you to everyone who wrote one. I didn't mention it last week, but I submitted TUITML as an Under the Radar fic on Ficcentral and I'm thrilled to say it was accepted! Hello to everyone who found the story there. I was amazed by how many of you asked for more Duran Duran in your reviews. One of my favorites was the comment about Edward possibly being the offspring of John Taylor and a redhead because of the bedhead hair. I can safely safe that John Taylor isn't Edward's father. Hmmm…. John Taylor discovering he has an adult love child. I wonder if there's a fic out there somewhere lingering unfinished about that very topic – STACYO72!

By the way, I hope everyone likes crack-fic lemons….

Ch. 8 Beaches, Bluffs, and Mazes- Pt. 1

"Are you going to tell me where you disappeared to last night?" My words tumbled out in a quick whisper. Even though I knew Rosalie and the others couldn't hear us from the shoreline, I still kept my voice low.

"Calm down. I know what you're thinking. I was with Jasper but it was perfectly innocent. We just talked."

I don't respond other than to glance at her in disbelief.

"O.k., there may have been a kiss."

Again, I don't respond.

"A few kisses; a few really hot kisses." She adds. "And maybe, possibly a boob could have been touched. I'm not sure. It definitely wasn't a grope, more like a light fondle."

I just look at her over the frames of my sunglasses. Alice puts down her e-reader and huffs in exasperation.

"O.M.G. Stop looking at me like that! What is wrong with you? I swear that was it. Did you think I humped him in the bathroom?"

"Well, maybe the back hall, the bathroom…not so much." I concede.

"Gross. As if I'd settle for a quickie in the Wolf bathroom, when I know he's staying at the Mallory. You've been in those bathrooms at the end of a Friday night." We both shuttered, picturing end of the night clean up and the gagging that has occurred. "Besides, I'm not some fishing groupie looking for a quick fuck. You saw that body. I want that all night."

I ponder this for a moment. "So it's gross because it's a quickie, or it's gross because it's in the bathroom?"

"Bella," She huffed impatiently, "can you really not distinguish the difference between a quickie, a one-night stand, and a relationship?"

"I thought you said to not take deckhands seriously." I counter. Alice, along with Rose and I, had an informal pact of sorts. We stayed far away from the commercial fishermen who worked on the island. Unbeknownst to Rose, Alice occasionally bent the rules if she thought a guy was particularly appealing.

"I don't want to marry the guy; I just want to screw him on a bed, a big comfortable bed with three hundred thread count sheets." She plopped back on the beach blanket and spread her arms out.

I glanced up and watched Rosalie, Jessica, and Angela making their way over to us, effectively ending our conversation. We had chosen a spot further back from the high tide line, towards the northern edge of the beach. A smattering of umbrellas and chairs covered the wide sandy expanse. Rose dropped her boogie board and plopped into the chair next to me.

"I can't believe how crowded it is!" Rose bitched, wringing out her hair with a towel.

"Rose, there are probably no more than fifty people here." Jessica replied as she looked out across the mostly empty white sand.

"When we were in high school it would have been just locals." Rose glared at a family of five making their way down to the ocean.

"A couple of years ago, one of those travel sites named MB the best beach on the island and since then there's been a lot more tourists." Angela explained.

"Fuckers." Rosalie complained. She looked back over her shoulder. "Ali, can't you put that reader down for one minute."

"No."

"What are you reading?"

"Nothing you'd be interested in."

"It's not that one about the guy and the girl and the tie and the room?"

Alice's eyes flicker up from the reader for a moment, her voice indignant. "Please. Of course not." Her eyes catch Jessica's as she lowers her voice. "I read that one two years ago."

They both giggle, the distraction allows Rose to grab the e-reader. Alice protests but Rose holds her off as she reads aloud.

"Lance's throbbing massive manhood hovered at the entrance to her wet walls, oozing with her honeyed juices.

'Please.' Sage begged him. 'Please, I need to feel you on the inside.'

'Are you sure?' He asks.

'Yes, yes, yes!' came her rapt reply. "Fuck me like an animal."

He pushed his hard length into her sopping heat, penetrating her barrier with one firm thrust.

'Uh, Sage, you're so tight.' He became impossibly harder as she clenched around his gigantic peen.

'Lance, please, fuck me. Fuck me hard' she cried, grabbing his firm supple buttocks as she tried to push him even deeper into her tunnel of love.

Lance set a fast pace, pounding into her hot core over and over as his free hand reached down to rub her…"

Rose hands back the e-reader, her face a mixture of exasperation and disgust. "I really cannot believe my sister reads this shit. Honestly, that has to be the most unrealistic piece of crap I've ever read. I have those words burned into my retinas now. And did the author plagiarize a song? "

"Don't be such a prude, Rosalie. There's nothing wrong with a little erotica."

"Trust me, Ali, erotica doesn't bother me. Bad writing, however, does."

"That's not fair. You're taking it out of context."

"Out of context? When are wet walls of honeyed juices ever IN context?"

Alice ignored Rose but her stepsister wasn't finished. "And what is with the 'penetrating her barrier'? Is she supposed to be a virgin? I certainly don't remember my first time being like that. Right ladies?"

She looks to Jess and me for confirmation. "Please, your first time was the best out of all of ours. At least Royce knew what he was doing." Jess answers. I shoot her a look, trying to telepathically ask her what the hell she's doing saying his name out loud.

Rose snorts. "Yeah, he knew it too well, didn't he? What's better: losing your virginity to another virgin or to an asshole, who after a year of dating, fails to ever mention that he has a pregnant wife and kid back in New Jersey?" The question is left unanswered.

Royce King was a deckhand on a squid boat out of Barnegat Light. The boat began offloading on the island during Rose's junior year of high school. She was seventeen, he was nineteen. He was handsome and charming and everything the local boys were not. Rose fell hard. She waited from Fall through Spring for that dragger to arrive once a month. Just when the season ended and he was about to return to New Jersey, Royce transferred to a Rhode Island boat. The pattern continued. Royce would show up for a few days and spend all his time with Rose. She convinced herself that he was her Prince Charming. She never thought to question where he was the rest of the time, every though draggers typically go out for much less than a month. She never questioned him if he didn't have money, she assumed the trip was a broker even though every other boat had a record season that year. I had watched first hand when Royce's pregnant wife showed up at the docks. She held a crying toddler while she screamed at Rose, calling her a home wrecker and much worse even though Rose had no idea Royce had a family in Barnegat Light. Her heart broke in front of the entire island.

Since then Rose, Alice, and I had avoided getting involved with deckhands. Almost all crewmembers my age were like Royce- transients from somewhere else. The ones who still lived on the island were mostly my father's age so it wasn't as though I had ever been attracted to them. Very few island boys of my generation planned to make commercial fishing their career. It was just too hard to make a living as a full-time fisherman.

Rose settled her gaze on Angela, determined to change the subject from her disastrous experience with Royce. "Have you and Ben done it yet or are you still giving that boy blue balls."

Angela turns beet red and looks down. She and Ben have been together for five years now but she is deeply religious, although in a personal, spiritual way. Angela, the daughter of the island's only full-time minister, is perhaps the most non-judgmental person I have ever known and I don't like when Rose gets a little blunt with her.

"Rose, you know both she and Ben agreed to wait until marriage. Don't make her feel bad about their choice. I think it's great they are so committed to each other." I defended, my protective instincts kicking in.

For all her forwardness, Rose does not have a mean nature and is immediately contrite. She quickly apologizes and Angela easily accepts.

"Angela was smart to wait. She and Ben can learn from all of our mistakes and maybe really enjoy their first time." Jessica pipes up.

"Yeah, don't forget the lube!" Alice looks pointedly at me and they all laugh.

I groan and rest my head on my hands, letting my hair fall around my face. There were times I really wished I had never confided in them.

"Hey, how was Bella supposed to know she had a hymen of steel?" Rose comes to my defense but I can hear the teasing laughter in her voice. "How many times did it take to break the super hymen? Two?"

"Three." I huff as I try to block the memory of my first college boyfriend, Garrett, grunting above me. He finally gave up and told me he couldn't get it in. The same thing happened the next time we tried. We were both naïve virgins who didn't know anything about how to make the experience easier. It wasn't until I broke down and asked Rose for advice that we were able to "overcome the barriers" puns intended in every single way.

"Three times before you got your cherry popped?" A deep masculine voice drawled from behind us. "He must really not have known what he was doing."

Oh.

God.

OH GOD.

Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod.

I closed my eyes in silent supplication. Please let me be hallucinating or dreaming or dead- hit by a rogue wave, anything but to be sitting in front of the crew of the Vampress. I froze. If I didn't see them, maybe they weren't really there.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Rose's voice was cold and sharp as it cut through the silence that had enveloped us all.

"We heard this was the best beach on the island." Emmett's voice was so confident; you'd never have guessed Rose had turned him down less than twelve hours ago.

"Well you heard wrong. You won't like it here. There are no facilities and no booze. You should go to Ballard's with the other tourists so you can sit under an umbrella and order beer all afternoon." Rose made a shoo-ing motion with her hands.

"I think we'll stay here. The view is much, much better."

"You keep staring at my tits like that and the only view you're going to have is of my fist."

"Rosie…."

Emmett's voice faded in the distance. I was only remotely aware that I had grabbed my backpack and walked away. I kept moving further north from Mansion Beach towards Clayhead Bluff and the tidal pools. One good thing about living on such a small island: even though I was headed the wrong way, I could still get home in an hour and never have to go back. I tripped over a piece of driftwood lying close to the tideline.

"Bella…"

Shit. My stomach sank to my knees as I heard Ted call my name. I regained my footing and kept moving as though I hadn't heard him. Part of me wanted to stop. I wanted to let him catch up, despite my mortification. The other part of me didn't know how I'd ever face any of the Vampress crew again. I had always been so careful to keep details of my personal life private during the four summers I had worked at Newton's. I had never before been interested in a commercial fisherman. I always kept my conversations professional. I never talked about dating or my social life beyond a few vague pleasantries. Now, an entire crew knew the intimate details of how I lost my virginity. It was beyond mortifying.

"Bella…"

Ted. Ted had heard. It was bad enough that Emmett and Jasper knew but Ted… he was important. It bothered me that I cared what he thought yet I couldn't stop worrying. Did he think there was something wrong with me? He seemed interested last night, would this change things? I suddenly felt the need to explain. Ted was getting closer. I reached the beginning of the Clayhead Trail. I could turn and take it inland and try to lose him in the grouping of trails known as the Mazes that lead off the main path. Instead, I passed the path and kept close to the tide line. I stopped and waited for him to catch up.

"Bella."

A/N A little cliffie, I think you all can handle it. Hey, they are standing in front of a bluff, after all. Look for teasers on Fictionators and Ficcentral on Monday and Wednesday. Also, thank you to everyone who reviewed- you reviews make my day!

Find me on twitter and I'll tweet you Duran Duran playlists filled with obscure b-sides and album tracks. What? No Hungry Like The Wolf? No- just no. shelly_duran (2 underscores)