“Grapefruit juice and the open-eye breakfast with eggs over easy and Canadian bacon with rye toast. A wake-up call at nine… and coffee strong enough to float a horseshoe. Thanks.”
That left just Carrie and Jim, sitting together by the smoldering remains of their cooking fire as the stars wheeled overhead.
“Turning in, Captain?” she asked him, leaning across to touch him lightly on the arm.
“Yeah. Looks like a soft patch of sand there, just by those rocks.”
“Out of sight of the pickup.”
“Yes.” He looked puzzled at her comment. “You reckon there’s some sort of danger?”
Carrie laughed, shifting to sit closer to him, so he could catch the subtle scents of her body. “Depends on what you mean by danger, Jim.”
Now he could suddenly read the subtext and knew what she meant.
“Not long since I lost Lori, you know.”
“Yeah. But in some ways it’s been around two years, hasn’t it?”
“Suppose so.”
“So?”
Jim looked at the pale blur of her face, then ran his fingers down her cheek. “I’d really like to, Carrie. But…”
She took his hand and moved it to the soft swell of her breast, letting him feel that she wore no bra, the nipple hardening against his palm.
“No ‘buts,’ Jim. And no…what would Zelig have called it? No ’emotional spillage’ tomorrow, either. All right?”
The desert night was cold, but they zipped the two quilted sleeping bags together, snuggling close. Jim stripped naked, but she kept on her pale blue bikini pants.
He was quickly ready. Almost too quickly, and he had to force himself to remember the manual for field repairs on the Aquila’s sewage disposal system to stop himself from ruining the moment.
His hand was between her thighs, fingers sliding under the elastic of her pants, finding her warm and ready for him. Carrie’s breath was coming faster, and she cupped him in her right hand, her left hand touching his lips.
“Yes, Jim. Now…please.”
He gasped as he entered her, the sweet familiarity flooding back to him, aware of her tightening around his body, her arms holding him to her. Her tongue was fluttering at the side of his neck, her breath hot against his skin.
Carrie was whispering in his ear, half-heard words that he could hardly believe. Bedroom words that roused him to a diamond-cutting hardness and brought him rapidly to the brink. But he could feel the woman’s stomach muscles butterflying as she raced inexorably toward her own climax.
It wasn’t quite simultaneous, but twelve years of sexually active marriage had taught Jim Hilton that it rarely was.
The second time took far longer.
Carrie started by sliding down into the deeps of the double bag, lips and tongue brushing over Jim’s chest and across the flat muscular wall of his stomach. Her soft mouth closed around him, and she quickly roused him to readiness.
“Thats…that…” he panted, hips thrusting up, fingers tangling in her long hair as he pulled her closer to him.
But before he could come, Carrie had eased herself away.
“No,” she whispered, voice rasping with her own need.
“No?”
“Do it for me.”
For a frozen moment Jim didn’t move. Though the physically intimate side of his marriage with Lori had been largely successful, this was the one no-go area for them.
She would delight in taking him into her mouth, but she would resolutely refuse to allow him to do the same to her, saying that it wasn’t right. That woman were “dirty down there.” And nothing that Jim Hilton could do or say would make the least difference.
“Not if you don’t…” began Carrie, sensing the momentary hesitation and unable to conceal her disappointment.
“No,” he said. “It’s not I don’t want to, love. I want to do it for you that way more… more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my whole life.”
And it had been all right, better than all right. For Jim it had been the sweetest experience of his life, her giving and taking so joyously, so freely.
NOW, standing by the pickup in the bright light of morning, Jim could still taste Carrie on his lips, could still remember the way her thighs had squeezed as she succumbed to the tidal wave of a powerful orgasm, her hands tangled in his hair as she tried to pull him even closer.