“Rafe, you’re daydreaming again.”
He grumbled something about spoilsports and turned away so she wouldn’t see the evidence of his perpetual horniness. He wondered idly if lust could be terminal.
“Will you help me with the honey?”
“Okay.”
Boy, was that a mistake!
They smoked the bees out of the tree with lit, pitch-filled, undried evergreen limbs, escaping with only one or two stings. Rafe kept an eye on the swarm, which hung around in the vicinity but didn’t seem threatening. And Helen climbed the tree with ease, up about twenty feet.
She wasn’t naked, but that didn’t matter much to Rafe’s overactive libido. Her straining breasts in the flannel shirt, her curvy bottom in the camouflage pants, were enough to set his blood humming. No, no, no. Forget humming. His blood was singing a full-blown opera.
Helen wrapped a big honeycomb in a piece of oilcloth she’d brought with her and threw it down to him. He laid it on the ground, waiting for her and watching the bees. She left a chunk of honeycomb for the bees so they wouldn’t be too mad. Then, climbing down carefully, Helen set off one of those sudden erotic fantasies that he was prone to these days.
Helen living in the jungle. Swinging from the trees. Wearing only a skimpy leopard skin — fake, of course, for political correctness. He chuckled. Were they Tarzan and Jane? Nah, that was too easy. She was Tarzette, and he was the famous Harvard anthropologist, come to study the beautiful woman living amongst the apes. They had some unusual sexual practices, those apes did, and he wanted firsthand knowledge of…
“Rafe, would you stop that daydreaming and help me?” Helen snapped. She was hanging by both hands from a limb about ten feet off the ground. “Catch me,” she demanded.
He grinned. Hey, she wasn’t wearing a leopard skin, and he wasn’t carrying his Harvard notebook, but what the hell! He moved in for the kill.
“Rafe… Ra-afe! What are you doing?”
“Checking for bee stings.” He was unbuttoning her flannel shirt, spreading the fabric, exposing her chest, about eye level. Rather mouth level. With a sigh, he took a hard nipple between his lips and began to lick. It tasted sweeter than honey.
Moaning, she arched her neck back between her upraised arms, thrusting her breasts forward.
He fingered one breast and suckled at the other. Her booted foot inadvertently rubbed against his erection, and his knees almost buckled. A prickling sensation began at the back of his neck, probably an approaching climax, and…
Prickling?
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed, realizing that some bees were setting up camp on the back of his neck. Quickly, he told Helen to jump. He caught her, and they were out of there, grabbing their booty. When they were back at the cabin, laughing over their escapade, Helen examined his neck and found only a few stings. Nothing serious.
Another close call!
That afternoon, he worked steadily. He even found several nuggets the size of marbles, so he was feeling optimistic.
Belting out an old Jerry Reed country music ballad, he sang, “She Got the Gold Mine, I Got the Shaft.” It didn’t matter that he couldn’t carry a tune. Singing set a rhythm to his work.
Life was good. He was starting to get a little more gold — they had about a thousand dollars worth so far, not a lot, but a start — he was in love, soon he and Helen would be back in the future, they could make love like Energizer bunnies until his battery — or something else — wore itself out.
Yep, life was good.
St. Augustine must be real proud of him. He was handling celibacy better than he’d ever expected. Maybe in another life he’d been a monk.
He smiled.
Until he got a gander at Helen.
She was walking up from the lagoon, where she’d apparently just taken a bath. Wearing only a T-shirt and his black silk boxers — she’d taken a real shine to his underwear — she stopped momentarily to dry her hair with a linen towel. When she bent forward and shook out the drying curls, fluffing them with her fingers, the hem of the shorts rode up. And he got a clear view of her tatoo.