Chapter 8

Dawn was ready and waiting when we pulled up at her apartment and she piled into the back seat with Holly and Diana. Ella, beside me in the front seat, had insisted on mixing a shaker-ful of vodka martinis to take along in the car and she was presently occupied serving the drinks in paper cups. I put the car in gear and pointed its long maroon nose toward Boulder Highway.

"I hope Dave's boat sleeps six," Ella said as she passed a martini toward the rear of the car.

"Who's going to be sleeping?" Diana asked, and she gave me a sharp poke with her finger in the side as she leaned between the bucket seats to take the drink. Making certain I got her meaning, no doubt. I was beginning to be sorry already that I'd invited Holly along on the trip, for I was beginning to sense disaster. The cruise could very well turn rapidly into an orgy, considering the morals of the crew I'd assembled.

I began to wonder, as I guided the whining bomb at seventy miles an hour toward the lake, if that was not, after all, the real reason I had wanted Holly to come along. Thinking, perhaps, that the shock treatment of an orgy would be somehow therapeutic? Or were my motives really rooted in a simple, selfish desire to be with her during the weekend?

I fervently and silently hoped that it was the latter.

"Won't your husband mind about Dawn and me coming along with you, Mrs. Foster?" It was Holly's soft, warm voice, and I used her sudden question as an excuse to glance into the back seat and look at her. She was staring directly at me, her face illuminated and shadowed by turns as approaching cars roared along toward the lake. A small half-smile of understanding was on her lips and, again, I had the eerie sensation that she had been reading my thoughts. I returned my attention to the highway.

"Mind?" Diana laughed. "Are you serious? Let me tell you something about Dave Foster, Holly-honey: Dave Foster is the horniest son of a bitch in the county. Maybe the state. He'll mind you and Dawn coming along like he'd mind having a harem." It was plain that Diana was feeling the effects of the afternoon of bridge and booze just as thoroughly as was my wife.

Ella joined the conversation at that point and I tuned out all of them with an ease born of long experience and concentrated on my driving. Twenty minutes later, we parked in the lot by the marina and we were scouting the bar and restaurant for Dave. We found him, naturally, at the bar-the expected can of beer in one hand, cigarette in the other, toothy grin on his alcohol-flushed face.

"Jesus, Di!" He was addressing his wife, but his eyes were lewdly and openly exploring, practically simultaneously, the bodies of Holly and Dawn. "You brought goodies!"

It was quite obvious that Dawn McIntyre had not objected to his interested scrutiny in the least, for she stepped forward without hesitation, took his elbow lightly in her fingertips, and drew close enough to peck him playfully on the cheek. "Hi, Dave," she said, "I'm Dawn."

Dave eyed her enormous breasts with unconcealed admiration, then bent forward and whispered something quickly in her ear. Dawn giggled coyly and sat on the barstool beside him, looking expectantly about, the way a woman does who is waiting for someone to buy a drink. Dave took a step toward Holly but I anticipated his move and slipped smoothly between them.

"And this is Holly Holliston, Dave. She's one of my patients."

Dave gave me a look, saw the warning look in my eyes, and stopped moving toward her. "Glad to meet you, Holly," he said curtly, his eyes swinging back to mine almost immediately, then darting over the heads of our wives, nodding a quick greeting in their general direction. "How about you folks all having a drink on me before we haul ass, excuse me ladies, I mean anchor." He faced the bar again and ordered a round of drinks with considerable clamor.

When they arrived the two of us carried them to the nearby table to which the ladies had retreated, but not before Dave had time to spear me with an inquisitive and interested gaze and mumble, "What the fuck's with you?" in a harsh whisper.

I turned toward him, three of the drinks sweating against my fingers, and said quietly, "Nothing. Just stay away from her." He made a sour and mock-hurt face and I added quickly, "And it's not what you're thinking. She really is a patient."

He nodded, but there wasn't the slightest trace of belief in his expression. I followed him to the table, thoroughly sorry by now that I'd brought Holly along. It would only be a matter of time and opportunity before Dave Foster made a pass at her, and for a fleeting instant it seemed to me that perhaps Diana had been correct: I, for one, probably wouldn't be doing much sleeping this weekend. By the time I reached the table with my burden of drinks Dave had already captured the chair beside Holly and was leering up at me as if daring me to say something.

Diana correct again. He really was a son of a bitch.

"Where are we going?" Dawn was making a new play for Dave's attention, obviously not very happy about his selection of seats.

I took the one beside her and passed out the drinks. Ella and Diana had their heads together and were undoubtedly dismantling the reputation of some unfortunate bridge club member, oblivious for the moment to the rest of us at the table.

"Echo Bay," Dave said, delivering most of his answer to Holly, I noticed, rather than to Dawn. "I know a great little cove up there that's great for swimming. Clear as glass." He favored me with a short glance, and his expression made it equally clear as glass that he was immensely enjoying my discomfort at seeing him close to Holly. But his tone was friendly. "Some nice bass in the area, too, Doc. Bring your pole?"

"Never without it," I said crisply, sipping at my drink, daggering him with my eyes.

"Me neither," he replied, leering again. "I'd be lost without my pole." This last was directed to both Dawn and Holly, and he pressed the final word just an ounce-just enough to make his double meaning unmistakably plain -and then he roared with laughter and sucked noisily at his can of beer. The jukebox, bless some anonymous benefactor's heart, began seeping a slow rhythm into the room and I rose quickly and held a signaling hand toward Holly, already moving toward the dance floor.

She nestled into my arms and murmured softly against my ear, "Thanks. Is he always like that?"

I nodded. There really didn't seem to be any way to apologize for Dave Foster. "Would you rather not go through with this? I can take you back to town if-"

"And spend another weird weekend? No thanks. I'll take my chances." She nuzzled in more closely and her tone became warmer. "Besides, you'll be here ... and you're my doctor, Doctor." She dipped her head back a bit and smiled up at me in that magical way of hers. "Hey," she said suddenly, "I got an idea. Why don't you take me out and show me the boat? I've never been on anything bigger than a row-boat. It would be fascinating. Here comes Dave and Dawn toward the dance floor now. Tell him we'll meet them out at the boat."

Her eyes were sparkling with delight, like those of a child seeing a real live circus for the first time, and it was impossible for me to tell whether her anticipation was at the thought of seeing a cabin cruiser close up. I hoped the real reason was simply to give us a chance to be alone for one small moment of this weekend, but I couldn't be sure. I touched Dave on the shoulder as he folded Dawn into his huge arms, and told him where we were going. He looked genuinely startled at being outmaneuvered by this pipsqueak headshrinker, but he recovered quickly.

"I just ordered another round of drinks!" A frail try at stopping us, but a try, nonetheless.

"I'll leave some money on the table for them, but you two can drink ours. But don't be all night in here. We want to get on the water, okay?" I steered Holly back toward the table, put down a five-dollar bill, and with no little effort, hammered a wedge into the heated gossip session between a very drunk Ella and an even drunker Diana. I told them about taking Holly out to see the boat, but they both appeared much more interested in getting quickly back to their gleeful dissection-vivisection?-of whoever was the present subject of their conversation. For all I knew, or cared, it might have been me. Comparing obscene notes, perhaps, on my ability at fucking.

I took Holly boldly by the hand and led her outside, hoping Dave was watching and fairly certain that he was. We walked slowly toward where the cruiser was docked. It wasn't hard to spot-it was the biggest boat in the marina. A light breeze was stirring the water and I could hear it lapping gently at the pilings.

The distant music from the bar was fading gradually into silence.

"Cord?"

"Mmm?"

A few long slow, silent steps. Holly was staring straight ahead. Finally, she said, "Why wouldn't you tell me what I said while you had me hypnotized this afternoon?"

Her question caught me completely off guard but I tried desperately not to let my surprise show. "I told you all that after waking you up, I just didn't learn anything of value. You didn't say anything of any particular application to your case and, as I told you at the office, even if you had, I wouldn't be able to tell you about it until after I'd had an opportunity to analyze it very thoroughly. It's just standard procedure. People under hypnosis frequently have a tendency to fantasize, to tell the hypnotist what they think he wants to hear, even to the point of making something up. It takes time to separate the wheat from the chaff, as the saying goes." I was smiling and trying my best to sound very pleasantly professional. She seemed to buy the explanation.

"Well," I said, "this is it."

"Wow!" Holly stood in awe, staring at the cabin cruiser.

"Come on. I'll help you aboard." I put my hands on her tiny waist and supported her weight as she stepped to the deck. "What do you think of it?" I asked, joining her.

She scooted quickly from point to point on the boat, taking in the flying bridge, ducking her head through the cabin door, bouncing on the cushioned seats, and touching the highly polished hardware with an extended forefinger, testing for reality as she had done in my house.

Finally she sank onto the long rear seat that converted to a double bed. "It must have cost oodles, mustn't it?" She put her feet up and propped her head against the low rear railing of the craft, fixing her gorgeous brown eyes on mine.

"Seventeen thousand, with discount. No upper-middle-class American family should be without one." I moved toward the rear of the boat and Holly shifted her position slightly to make room for me to sit. "Dave is in the marine supply business, by the way. That's why the discount."

The look in her eyes told me quite clearly that she was not thinking about Dave Foster or seventeen-thousand-dollar cabin cruisers.

"Cord?" Her gaze shifted almost shyly away and she was watching ragged clouds skittering across the black sky behind me, somewhere just beyond my right ear. I felt her small warm hand creeping into mine and nestling there like a frightened sparrow. "Do you-do you like me, Cord? I mean-do you think you might? Do you think you could?"

She looked so utterly desirable, so vulnerable, so incredibly sweet in that moment that there was simply nothing I could do but what I did. I bent closer, very slowly, and placed my lips lightly on hers, feeling her body tense almost imperceptibly at the contact. Then she was returning the kiss, fiercely, passionately, wantonly, her arms locked tightly around me, pulling me close against the soft twin swells of her breasts.

She turned her head suddenly away, her body trembling in my arms. "Oh Cord. I ... I've never felt this way before. I don't understand what's happening to me. I feel so ... so ... cheap ... getting you out here like this. I just wanted to be with you. Just you ... just for a little while." She turned toward me again, her warm lips only inches from mine, her eyes searching mine with a desperate intensity and depth of emotion. It was almost as if she were changing from a child into a woman right before my eyes. Her eyes left mine briefly and then returned, a look to them that had never been there before, not in the short two days I had known her. "I want you to make love to me, Cord," she said.

I must have looked even more startled than I felt.

She brushed my lips with a feathery kiss and moved her mouth to my secret ear. "I mean I want you to fuck me, Cord. Does that sound more like the Holly you know? It has to happen. You know it has to. Sometime. Somewhere. Let it be now, Cord. I want it to be with a man like you. Fuck me, Cord." Her hand had slipped out of mine and was lightly but insistently caressing the hardened length of my cock swelling hotly along my thigh.

I could hardly believe this was happening. It was all wrong, just as it had been all wrong earlier, at the house. The wrong time and the wrong place. Four people who had no business in our lives were ready to spring upon us at any moment from their cave of alcoholic oblivion hardly more than three hundred yards away.

"Holly. Oh, dear sweet marvelous darling, we have to try to be sensible. We have to try. All those other people-" Her frantic lips were smothering my words in irrepressible desire.

"Screw all those other people, I don't care about them. I don't care, Cord. Let them come out here and find us together. I don't care. This is the very last time for two whole days that we will be alone. That's the only thing I care about." She pressed her mouth passionately to mine and her tongue, no longer timid in its penetration as it had been that afternoon, was suddenly thrusting hotly, seeking my own.

Her hand had somehow opened my fly and was tugging my partially swollen cock through the opening. In seconds, it stiffened to rocklike erection in the warm clasp of her fingers. She began gliding her hand gently up and down on the hard shaft, squeezing tenderly as she stroked, her tongue continuing its driving plunges in and out of my mouth. I freed myself long enough to whisper quickly, "Let's go down to the cabin."

She relaxed against me and I lifted her gently, her hand still gripped tightly on my cock, and carried her to the cabin, pushing the door closed securely behind us with my shoulder. I put her on the nearest bunk in the thick darkness that was softened only momentarily and sporadically as the drifting clouds exposed the moon and its cold light filtered through the small portholes in the bulkhead. I turned back to the door and shot the bolt lock, knowing, now, that Holly was right in everything she'd said a moment before, and realizing with a shock that I didn't care anymore than did she about those other people. Here, this moment, there was only the two of us, and the world outside this small bolted door had ceased to exist. I ripped out of my clothes and moved toward the bunk on which she lay.

I felt her soft hand touch my bare thigh and slide smoothly upward, moving slowly, crossing toward where my pulsing cock reared stiffly upward. Her fingers closed gently on the thick root of the shaft, squeezing tenderly, and then pressuring downward on it as the fingers of her other hand tickled lightly on my balls, moved between my legs and began feathering back and forth along the crack of my ass.

A moment later I felt the moist warmth of her mouth closing over the head of my cock and the slick hot pressure of her tongue massaging the sensitive flesh in rapid circular motions as she sucked slowly back and forth, gradually allowing more and more of the thick swollen shaft to sink more deeply between her lips. She continued to increase the speed of her sucking and the depth of the penetration and within moments the incredibly delightful sensation of her hot clasping mouth gliding swiftly back and forth on my bursting cock had driven me to the very brink of ejaculation. I pulled myself desperately away from her swiftly moving mouth and gripped her naked shoulders in my hands.

"No! Holly, no! Let me make love to you the other way. Let me fuck you, Holly!"

She threw her body against my lower torso, locking her arms tightly around my waist and pressing into me fiercely so that I could feel my blood-engorged organ throbbing hotly between us, snuggled firmly in the valley of warm velvet softness of her breasts. I ran my hands gently over her smooth warm flesh, soothingly, feeling her shuddering as she tried to subdue the rising panic that I knew was moving through her body as the full realization of what she had committed herself to with me began making her tremble violently in a very genuine fear.

The side of her head tight against my chest, she said quietly, intensely, into the darkness of the tiny cabin, "I want to, Cord. You know I want to. But I'm so frightened. Please try to understand." Her breath seared my flesh as she moved her lips lightly over my naked chest and I could feel the moistened crown of my erect penis rubbing with slippery smoothness against the soft satin of her throat each time she moved her head in frantic kisses. I put my lips to her hair, its fragrance sweetly powerful, filling the dark air of the small room.

"There's no need to be frightened," I whispered, cradling her head gently in both hands and holding her still against me. "I'll be very gentle... I promise."

My cock went on pulsing with excitement, gripped tightly by her lovely warm breasts, feeling as if it were about to explode at any moment and drench the naked flesh of her body with all the pent up fury of the hot liquid thickness boiling up in my balls.

Abruptly she moved and was holding my distended cock in both hands, the flaming pressure of her tongue licking wildly around and around the broad flaring head, the indescribably delicious sensation impossible to retreat from. I grabbed the railing of the top bunk in my fingers and held on with a fierce desperation, fighting to control my emotions, feeling the burning lust striving to overpower my senses and let her make love to me in the only way she knew how.

"Let me," Holly said softly, "Please, let me make you come in my mouth first." Her fingers squeezed tight on the turgid shaft of my cock and began gliding the taut flesh swiftly back and forth on the hard thick cylinder. Then plunging her lips over the crimson head, she sucked with an urgent intensity as she buried half of the swollen organ in the warm naked cavern of her mouth.

It was impossible to resist her. Somewhere in some remote dark recess of my soul I knew that it might be better for her if it happened this way. Perhaps she would need to have the knowledge of this final, singular indulgence of her obsession with fellatio in order for her truly to discover how much more infinitely satisfying sexual intercourse could be. With great tenderness I moved my hands again to her slowly moving head and began gliding rhythmically with her movements, losing myself in the fantastic pleasure of the unbelievable warmth of her mouth as it sucked voraciously at my prick, her tongue rotating completely around the glans at each backward motion of her lips.

One of her hands left the base of the thick shaft and crept slowly between my legs, tickling lightly along the fulcrum of my body as I stood tensely, feet apart, thrusting very gently in cadence with the gliding motion of her mouth on my cock. Then, startled beyond word or cry, I felt her finger probing gently into the tightly clenched opening between my buttocks, insinuating itself inexorably inward into the warm depths. She began massaging gently with the deeply embedded finger as her mouth continued its suction on the object of her desire, and the combined sensations almost immediately shattered the frail barrier behind which the intense pressure of the sperm awaited its release.

With a sudden and exquisite spasm that shuddered along the entire length of my tensed body my balls drew themselves tightly upward and I felt my cock jerk stiffly a half-instant before the dam ruptured and the hot white fluid began pumping in a pulsing tide from my body into hers, shooting out with incredible force as her finger slipped suddenly from inside me. The next moment her fingernails were biting deeply into the cheeks of my ass as she clenched her hands spasmodically, holding me fiercely against her. When she felt the sperm splashing hotly out on her tongue, Holly increased the wild sucking pressure of her mouth, gulping the gushing froth in a frenzy of abandon and excitement that was making her whole body writhe in ecstasy before me on the bunk.

My own excitement had reached such an intense pitch that the protruding rod of hardened flesh refused to soften more than halfway, and I could feel it drooping heavily downward as her lips slipped wetly over the swollen inflamed head, retreating. One of her hands moved to my waist and tugged gently at my body, urging me towards her, and a moment later our naked bodies were touching as we clutched tightly together in a long embrace, lying side by side on the small bed, oblivious to everything else in the world.

When awareness returned, the twin diesel engines of the cruiser were throbbing dully somewhere in the distance of the black night and a realization of what had happened and where we were gradually petrified my muscles and my brain. Great merciful Christ. We'd been discovered. My darling wife was somewhere up there above us, no doubt assembling some sort of makeshift battering ram with which to shatter the door this very moment and murder us both in our adulterous bed.

I shot upright on the bunk and slapped a hand out fiercely in the darkness of the cabin to awaken Holly. My hand found only the cool soft fabric of the blanket on which I was crouched, knees trembling with an idiocy of their own. Holly was gone.

And even more incredibly, my hand discovered as it explored further, I was no longer naked. I was wearing swimming trunks!

I sat immobile for a long moment, wondering vaguely if I were dreaming or perhaps just going quietly insane. A wild acid-rock rhythm had mingled abruptly with the sounds of the engines thrumming away to the rear of the cruiser and I remembered, with something less than glee, about Dave's recently installed stereo unit. Judging by the loud laughter that was filtering down from the deck, there were no battering rams under construction after all.

Steeling myself inwardly for what I expected would be a brutal confrontation with one Ella Masters-still trying to figure out what had happened to Holly and where the swimming trunks had come from that now girded my loins -I swung off the bunk bed and moved with wary feet toward the door of the cabin. I found the light switch and flipped it on. No Holly. My clothes were arranged neatly on hangers in the small cubicle at the bow of the cabin that served as a closet. What the fuck was going on? I turned the handle of the door and swung it slowly open, fully expecting to find Ella waiting just beyond it with a long and very sharp knife as I peeped out.

High-pitched laughter, with perhaps just a trace of derision, greeted my entrance back into the real world. It was Ella, and she was writhing to the rock music in the middle of the deck, swinging her ass in swift little rhythmic circles as the music pounded. Dave Foster was doing the same, a can of beer clutched in each hand. Ella's long first finger, its sharp nail a dagger in my guilt-ridden mind, was pointing directly at me and her mouth was open, shouting everyone's attention toward my figure in the doorway of the cabin.

"Hey, everybody! Dig! The iceman cometh!" She laughed uproariously and went on dancing. They were all in swimsuits, I noticed, swinging my eyes over the group, not finding Holly. Goddam. Where was she?

I felt bare toes tickling lightly in my hair and I glanced up automatically. It was Holly, wearing the most miniature bikini I had ever seen, standing above me on the flying bridge, one hand on the wheel of the boat, the other holding an ice-tingling glass down to me. I reached up and took it, too bewildered to do anything else, and stepped gingerly out onto the deck.

Diana and Dawn assaulted me simultaneously from their positions of ambush at the boat's small bar and practically dragged me bodily to the center of the deck, both of them bouncing their asses and tits in time to the music, urging me with their gesturing hands into some sort of comparable counter-rhythm. I complied, reluctantly, realizing that they were all completely and abominably drunk and that begging off would be out of the question. I shot a quick glance to the bridge and saw Holly watching, smiling with an almost obscene appreciation at my plight, and then she turned her attention back to guiding the slowly moving boat. Diana's voice brought me again into the three-sided dance.

"You really crashed, sexy," she said, leering lewdly as only Diana could, "Maybe it's those long nights you been spending lately, welcoming people home." She watched closely for a reaction but I didn't give her the pleasure of finding one.

I forced an imbecilic smile to my lips, drank deeply from the ice-clanking glass in one hand, and pretended to enter into the spirit of the occasion, letting my eyes stare quite openly at the hobbling breast-flesh of the two bouncing girls before me. I knew it was what they wanted me to do.

Once, as the driving rhythm of the music began to build in one of its many incredibly loud peaks, Dawn lowered her hands tightly to her sides and danced closely into me and then backwards again, but not before I felt her fingers toy momentarily at my crotch, jiggling my cock and balls in exactly the same way I remembered French girls in the whorehouses of Casablanca used to do in an obscene kind of invitation to fuck.

Mercifully, the music stopped. I took advantage of the slight pause the machine needed to switch to the next track to seek humbly my drunken host's forgiveness. I touched Dave's shoulder, drawing his gaze upward from its scrutiny of my wife's breasts as they stood chuckling loudly together, enjoying some private and no doubt dirty private joke.

"Welcome back to the orgy," Dave said, without any special effort at friendliness, dipping his beer can toward me.

"I just wanted to apologize for passing out on your party. Been keeping some long hours."

"Bet you have." Dave made no effort to conceal his meaning, even darting his eyes toward Holly's bikini-clad figure on the bridge, rolling them in a broad mugging expression, like a circus clown. Killing one of his beers in a single long, gulping swallow, he pitched the can over the side into the water, plunging both index fingers into his ears quickly, as though he'd thrown a grenade and was waiting for the explosion. I nearly hit him, but the fact that he was nearly twice as big as I was forestalled any such stupid heroics.

He stuck out his left hand, indicating the bar, and captured Ella neatly with his right. "Make yourself another drink, shrink. Your wife and me got things to talk about." They staggered toward the rear seat of the cruiser. Ella had simply stood the whole time staring at me through her alcoholic haze, neither damning nor praising, apparently determined to remain conscious until someone suggested fucking.

I whirled about and squeezed gently a very large tit and then a medium-sized tit-Dawn and Diana respectively-as I breezed past them on my way to the flying bridge. I had to find out very quickly why I didn't seem to be in any trouble with friend or wife. Dawn and Diana tried to follow me, each apparently thinking the tit-feel was an invitation. I hung on the ladder and waggled my fingers cheerily at them both, smiling broadly and even managing to come up with a lewd wink.

"Be back in a second, girls. The doctor has to check on his patient, and it ain't visiting hours." I nodded toward the stereo player. "Why don't you put something immortal in that noisemaker and we'll all dance when I return." I scurried up the ladder, but not quickly enough to escape a quick pat on the ass from one of them. I caught a glance at my wristwatch as I stepped off the ladder and discovered, with considerable surprise, that I'd been flaked out in the cabin for nearly two hours. Well. That explained the level of drunkenness that seemed to prevail below me, at least.

Holly was pretending to be severely engrossed in holding the cruiser on a steady line for the moon.

"Having fun?" she asked lightly, a tiny smile betraying the intent straight-ahead stare she was attempting to sustain.

"Would you mind, little lady," I said, picking up her empty glass and doing my best to conduct a very important conversation in what had to look like small chatter from the deck below, "telling me just exactly what the fuck is going on?" I flittered some fingers at the gaudy swimsuit I was wearing. "Like for example, where did I get this? And where pray tell have you been all this time?"

Holly, still smiling, and still staring straight at the moon, said, "I found the suit in one of the lockers. I'm really sorry about that, by the way. You really look terrible in it." Her eyes, finally, came to mine, and I felt very much like a snowman must feel in direct sunlight. "As for the other part of your question, I've been right here. Very primly right here, steering this little spaceship of ours for the moon, and trying to preserve my virginity-for you." When she saw me swing a hard knife of a look toward Dave below, she said, "Don't worry. So far he's only managed a couple of inept feels in not very important places."

I shook my head slowly, eyes on the glass in my hand, then back to hers. "I still don't get it. Did they come out to the boat and find that door locked or not? Did you fall asleep, too?"

Her gaze was back on the moon, and she corrected the cruiser's course, with considerable expertise that did not escape my admiration. "I've been learning how to drive a boat, too, of course. Otherwise, we'd long since have been on those rocks over there."

"You didn't answer my question, Holly." I rattled the fragments of ice in her glass, signaling for her attention.

"I thought you'd notice that."

"Well?"

"No," she said, memorizing the moon, "I didn't fall asleep." After a moment of concentration she got the boat back on line and looked over at me, a sadness coming into her eyes. "I just... I just sort of lay there with you, feeling very sorry. About the way I... I let you down. I was really very frightened, for all my bold talk. But I guess you know that."

I nodded and stepped toward the ladder. "I'll, uh, I'll get you a fresh drink." Foot-looking for the ladder step. Finding it. "Don't go away." She laughed at the absurdity of the remark. Her eyes were sparkling a bit again.

I was met at the bottom of the ladder by two very horny young women.

"Hey." It was Dawn, astonishingly drunk, pressing gigantic breasts into my chest. She was ducking her head rather broadly in the general direction, give or take ten or twenty degrees on the compass, of the bridge. One of her hands was petting quite boldly at my cock. "What's she got that we haven't got down here? And twice as much of?"

"Sobriety," I said, more crisply than I'd intended, and was unable to think fast enough to find a way to turn it into a joke that would sooth the feathers.

"Shit," said Diana, "you mean virginity, don't you, Doctor? Mmm?" She gave me a sharp elbow in the ribs that hurt and I nearly backhanded her. Somehow I found the imbecilic grin again.

I showed them the glass in my hand. "Just let me deliver a quick snort to the driver, girls. Then we'll dance. But please do something about that." I directed their attention to the stereo, which was still pulsing hard rock music at a volume that was vibrating the fillings in my teeth. "Play something soft and celestial. Then we can touch one another." I winked at them, shot a fast look toward the rear of the boat to get a progress report on my wife, and exited up the ladder after mixing two of the fastest vodkas-and-nothing that were ever poured.

By the time I reached the bridge and found my balance a for-lovers-only album was weeping out at the night from the speakers of the boat, and I saw Dawn prying Dave out of a tight clinch with Ella and pulling him toward the open deck area. Ah, young love. Ella looked rather pissed. She was apparently still alert enough to realize she needed to roll out the heavy artillery. I saw her beginning to struggle out of her swimsuit. Christ!

Holly took one of the drinks from me. "Your wife's getting naked," she said, sipping.

"I know." I leaned over the windscreen, enjoying the sobering feel of the slipstream feathering on the face, wondering how many seconds I'd have alone here before Diana broke us up. "So tell me the rest. How did you manage to save our lives?"

She was smiling at the moon. "It was easy. Except for getting you into that swimsuit. That was very hard."

"You must have been exhausted."

"I guess I was. I just decided to let you sleep. After I made you look decent, of course. And I wandered on back to the bar and they all said where's Cord? And I said Cord decided to take an illegal swim off the end of the pier and that since I didn't swim I thought I'd come on back and get drunk with them. And they said 'crazy.' I told you it was easy."

I stared openly and admiringly at her for a moment, then saluted her inventiveness with the vodka and drank.

"Hey!" It was Dave, not Diana. Surprises were assaulting me from every side this night. He was hanging with what appeared to be considerable effort on the top of the ladder. One finger pointing insistently toward shore. "That's it, angel-ass. The cove I was telling you about. Point in the nose and just cut the switch. She'll drift in about right. Then drop the anchor. Help her, shrink." His head vanished.

Yes, sir, Captain, sir. You silly bastard.

"Let's go in bare-assed, ladies!" I heard him shouting below, and then the sound of flesh slapping on flesh. "Ella's already in uniform!"

There were sounds of bodies splashing somewhere below.