Chapter One

 

A crisp wind chilled her cheek and blew her matted hair across her eyes so that she couldn't see the shoreline clearly. On this gray, foggy afternoon, the Gull Island ferry loped through November's choppy waters, pushing its way unhurriedly against the current. Some weathercasters predicted snow by nightfall. Mariel considered the thought romantic, to be trapped on a windswept, snow-covered island, harbored inside a warm lodge-air steeped in the smells of cinnamon and fresh baked bread while a blizzard blew outside.

Albert would be there. A little, ticklish tease skirted about the inside of her panties at the thought of her fiancé. Tall, straight, handsome, eager-his smile could win a hundred hearts and had broken several in his last semester at college. He wore his tenderness and vulnerability on starched shirtsleeves, was visited by demons-self-doubt and predictability-and lived for Mariel Fitzgerald's approval.

Her eyes searched the evaporating clouds for Albert, hoping to see him standing vigil in anticipation of her arrival. Two weeks was much too long between visits for their recently cemented relationship. He loved the idea of her, while she loved her need for him-a need as sexual as it was emotional and romantic. He'd spent hours talking of his family's island retreat... how they'd scour the attic for artifacts of his family history, make love in the cellar... hold hands walking on the beach, and roast marshmallows in his secret boyhood hideaway-a secluded cave on the quiet side of this serene island. At the moment, however, all the romance of this visit seemed extraneous to her greater need. Every nerve in her was frayed for lack of satiated lust. For days, her dreams and nightmares had been filled with thoughts of body parts colliding. Cock. Cunt. Humping. Albert's stiff erection banging her crotch to ruthless completion. What he loved about her, but had not the courage to discuss was the unbridled force of her unleashed sexual desire. He remained in awe of it-and so did she.

Their last night together two weeks before, they'd met in Darby's pub, just outside the university, drank beer, played darts with Sid and Hannah, then screwed in the alley, in an alcove lined with brick and collegiate ivy. Before they landed in that alley hot and horny, they'd been playing touchy/feely games under the table. Albert had pressed his hand to her thigh, and she squirmed with the first recognition of sexual juices flowing. Sid dared the girls to take off their panties right in the booth where they'd been eating fish and chips and pepperoni pizza. With skirts on, there were no excuses, so the two hiked them high and squirmed their way out of their bikini briefs, laying them on the table, while sporting great grins of inebriated triumph. Albert's hand kept Muriel's skirt pushed back enough to dig in and find her pussy seeping love juice. Mariel blushed seeing Sid's randy eyes focused on the covert activity-there really was a prudish side to her character that shunned overt exhibition. But being drunk took all the filters for appropriate behavior and pushed them off like used campaign posters.

Even Albert was a little shocked by his fiancé's behavior, when she'd finally had enough of finger-play and pushed him out of the booth toward the back of the pub and out into the alley. She found the alcove between buildings seclusion enough; and raising her skirt, displaying unabashed nakedness, she found Albert almost too overcome to react. But after recovering from the shock, he grinned like a drunken sailor, unleashed his fleshy weapon from his pants and plowed it deep between her thighs in the cottony regions of her labia, where he was lucky to strike with acute accuracy. She was awash with exploded molecules, sexual sparks that shot from her cunt right through to her limbs. Sixty seconds of exuberant bump and grinding crotches followed, until both were consumed with heat and exclaiming to the night, softly so, that they had come.

The two grinned sheepishly coming down from their euphoria, instantly sobered when they heard the pub's screen door crash on its hinges. The pair turned, seeing the back of someone's head retreat inside. Had they been seen? Both too bashful to return through the same screen door, they fled the alley, Sid and Hannah, and the rest of their night, holding hands and laughing-but refusing to say a word about their moment of reckless impropriety.

This had been the first truly reckless thing they'd done in the year of their acquaintance, and perhaps it saved their relationship. Though, neither one had forgotten the half-remembered incident; it might take years before they had the guts to mention it to the other. So instead, they individually harbored the feeling that it had been the best among a lot of best times. In two weeks, Mariel could hardly think of anything else when her head hit the pillow for the night, and her squelched lust would jump out and grab her sleeping crotch. The memory turned every light on in her sexual cells, the ones that controlled heartbeat and breathing, sweat glands, pheromones and the muscles of her pelvic floor that spasmed involuntarily, that called to her hands, 'come out and play.' Masturbating to back alley fucks took little time at all; and afterwards, she'd zoom to sleep and think of nothing until morning.