Dellian had swum, powerskied, learned the rudiments of windsurfing, canoed, played tennis and beach volleyball, lazed around drinking by the pool, or sat in the open-air amphitheater watching old dramas. Then as night fell all the boys would pair up, or form larger groups, and head back to the water bungalows for hours of energetic sex. The sea air and the freedom had reacted with their hormonal bodies to fire their libido up to a relentless height. In those ten days Dellian had been to bed with more than half of the boys, including Xante, of course. Xante, who had everyone queuing up to find out how big his cock really was, and who fucked like an angel.

Some of the boys had even been bedded by Tilliana and Ellici. And that had been a major disappointment for Dellian—which for some reason he couldn’t let go of. He’d been extremely eager to find out what sex with a girl was like, but Yirella hadn’t shared his enthusiasm. He told himself he could wait until she was ready for that level of intimacy, that their friendship was more important to him. Even so, lost in ecstatic congress with his friends every night, it was her face he’d pictured over theirs.

As he waited on the beach, the skin on his bare torso started to tingle in the sunlight. Every morning he’d put on the highest-rated sunblock, which the bungalow’s dispenser assured would last all day, only for him to have to apply it again at midday—or, more often, for someone else to slather it licentiously all over his skin for him. He sat up and started pulling on his t-shirt. As he did, Yirella came off the wooden walkway that led to a cluster of the water bungalows. Dellian waved hopefully. She smiled and walked over.

Now that she and the other girls had molted, Dellian considered her bare skull to be quite erotic. He’d been fantasizing about rubbing sunscreen on for her; after all, who didn’t like a scalp massage?

“The genten said our ride would be here in ten minutes,” he said in greeting.

“And you don’t think that’s odd?”

Dellian frowned, not quite sure what she was talking about. “Odd how?”

She knelt on the sand beside him, looking down quizzically at his thickset form. Dellian had grown a lot over the last three years, but while he’d increased in shoulder-breadth and weight, mainly due to muscle mass, Yirella had continued her upward climb, leaving her and the other two girls increasingly spindly compared to the boys. When they stood up together now, his eyes were level with her boobs, which he considered a size match about as perfect as you could get.

“Why not just portal back to the estate?” she asked distantly.

“Uh…because there is no portal, would be my best guess,” he retorted.

“But why is there no portal, Del?”