Chapter One

 

Erin's brown pageboy moved like a gentle swell on a calm sea. Highlighted by the sun's rays that occasionally darted through the clouds above, it looked like a sea of shimmering liquid to his eyes. Though he was less absorbed by the look of her hair than he was by her tongue gliding over the surface of his skin, dancing its way down from his chest, through his sandy blond hair to the bush and cock below. How nicely the organ rose without her ever touching it. That was the way she teased him. Skirt around the focal point of his lust to make every nerve ending in his body aroused before she ever touched his erection. At his genitals, she lifted the fluid moving testes in her hand and took one orb into her mouth, fluttering her tongue against the wrinkled skin. Her face with its pageboy hair framing it bobbed softly against his crotch, still ignoring the cock that had nearly stiffened to its full height. She shifted to the second orb and fingered him gently moving down toward his anus.

By then, she'd gone too far. He was too aroused to let her tease him anymore. Grabbing her hair, he pushed her face toward his penis. She smiled at him, still teasing him with her eyes. But she agreed to toy with his main event standing at attention, begging.

Erin's forte was not the blowjob itself but all the preliminaries that made the penis stiff. A few deep throated jabs inside her mouth, and she was moving on to other things, scooting up the length of his body. Pendulous breasts against his chest, her crotch against his crotch, she was purring sweetly to be entered, already opening her legs.

"Please, darling," her gentle murmur drifted softly. Her tongue made a line about his ear, and inside. Her breath, like soft petals blowing on a breeze, blew inside the small spaces so another ripple of tingling sexual mirth moved down his body to give his erection another jolt.

Her body enveloped him when his cock moved inside her. He sensed that her clitoris was alive, about to burst. She shivered on him and rubbed into his groin as he thrust.

"Yes, yes," so softly murmured. She refused to stop the trail of sweet exclamations.

Rolling her to her back, he thrust hard within her while he held her hands above her head and she struggled to get away.

"Don't like losing control?" he observed with a whisper.

"Curtis, please no," she replied.

"You're going to come like this," he informed her with a sexy sly grin on his lips.

She thrashed against him to break free, but each jolt just made her clit more raw. Curtis, adamant about containing her lust, held on to her fast, knowing that in a few angry seconds of frustration she'd let the fire loose and be cumming, creaming around his shaft. At that moment he deposited his load.

They spasmed together.

And only then did he let go of her hands above and allow her fingers to comb his body. They finished making love letting his erection fade between her wet thighs and fall from her cunt. With tender palms they stroked their smiling faces.

It was the third time they'd made love that afternoon.

"My god, Erin, you're like a locomotive out of control."

She lay back against the sheets, her arms voluntarily raised above her head. Her dark aureoles looked bigger still against the elongated flesh of her breasts. Tiny nipples once hard, were softening in the mellow after-sex heat.

"It's not every week I bury my husband and welcome back my lover from Afghanistan," she said.

"I'm so sorry I couldn't make it to the funeral," Curtis replied, his face suddenly overcome with sadness.

"We're suppose to be in mourning," she reminded him. "I wonder if this wasn't more of a celebration."

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Erin. He was my friend too, and he was dying for two years. Maybe, if we'd had the guts to tell him, he wouldn't have been upset about us."

"Maybe." She was wistful. He was pensive for a moment.

"Tell me about the end," he asked.

She shrugged as she changed positions pulling a sheet to cover her chilling body. On her side, she was close to fetal position, with Curtis lying on his side stroking a wet tear from her cheek. "It was quiet, really. I nursed him for two weeks, held his hand, put warm cloths on his cold skin. Bathed his useless body. Kissed his forehead goodnight. He'd been so virile. Just like you. I only wish it had been quicker. Better yet, I would have rather him die on assignment, a sniper's stray bullet piercing his heart as to see him wither the way he did."

"It was not a good death, no. Not the way Robert would have wanted it." Curtis bent down to kiss her cheek. "But we have each other," he reminded her.

"But, I'll always love him."

"I know that," he said.

"And I wonder sometimes ... What if he knew? What if he guessed? What if that made the disease worse?"

"He didn't know, Erin. There was no way for him to, as discreet as we were."

"But he had such incredible instincts."

"We held back most of our passion for him, you know that. This love affair is not half as steamy as it might have been."

Erin knew that well.

They'd made love the first time just after the cancer first struck Robert Longmore. Erin had taken a brief holiday in Maine, pushed there by Robert himself after several months of worrying over him. She'd justified what seemed like a frivolous excursion, thinking that she'd open the old house on the coast. There she might be able to nurse Robert in a quieter venue. She thought it was a strange coincidence meeting Curtis Holbrook on a flight to Portland. Neither she nor Robert had heard from Curtis in eight months. He'd been on assignment with the AP Wire service covering the conflict in Zaire. She and Robert had looked for his by-line in the Times, the only way they could keep up with Robert's colleague and their good friend. She was sure that there had to be some crazy magic putting them on the plane at the same time-particularly since she and Robert didn't know he was back in the States. It might have been an innocent and even bittersweet reunion if they'd stayed at the hotel in Portland. But Erin invited him to the beach house-to help her see if she might move Robert there.

The first night they talked until three a.m. and retired to separate rooms. The second night was much like this latest reunion with her lover. All the tension and anxiety of her months nursing Robert suddenly made her limbs and loins fly free. After a few warming brandies, they simply got too close. The prickly energy ignited in a brawl of spontaneous combustion. It wasn't even making love to begin with. Just fucking. Though there had to be some care and affection shared between them. After all, they'd been friends as long as she'd known Robert.

They spent three days in bed together, and Erin returned to her New York apartment and Robert, having decided that the Maine cottage was much too primitive to restore to her husband's needs. They were better off staying in the city.

Over the next two years, she met Curtis Holbrook seven times, five times in Maine. Each time Robert pushed her into taking a break, assuring his dutiful wife that she needed a respite, and that he'd be fine with his nurses. Maybe he would have also understood that she had needs that weren't being fulfilled. They'd been so very sexual before he'd gotten sick. Robert was a gutsy, robust foreign correspondent. A man's man. Wild and raucous and vigorous in bed.

The fact that Erin's chosen lover was also a foreign correspondent made the affair easier. Their times together were few because she felt too guilty to engage in a tawdry everyday romance, and because Curtis was more often gone than he was available. When they managed to meet, their rendezvous were great collisions. Sexual ecstasy. Violent encounters that were often conducted in silence because there was no way they could talk about love when their good friend and husband was slowly dying miles away.

 

"I do love you for being here now," Erin said as she ran her fingers through Curtis's mussed blonde hair.

"I hope you love more than that," he said.

"Do you mean, do I love you?" she asked.

"I would think that's a place to start."

"Oh, Curtis, I do love you. Don't think anything less of me."

"I'm glad to hear that."

Men are such puppy dogs she was thinking as she watched his face brighten hearing her reassuring words.

"It might take some time for me to get used to not feeling guilty," she said.

"And I'm perfectly willing to wait for that," he replied with a seductive smile. "And while I'm waiting, I'm going to have a field day with this body of yours." He leaned over her and smiled. "With these lips." He kissed them lightly. "And this neck." For an instant he buried his face in the crook of her neck, the skin so silky there it reminded him of petals on roses-even though it was the fragrance of gardenia lingering on the surface. The lotion she'd used hours before mixed with her salty, musky sweat. Just from her aroma he could sense his crotch quivering yet one more time on this long afternoon. "And how about this nipple," he said, with teeth coming around to grab the little bud until it was made hard by the manipulation.

"Ouch!" she squealed.

He moved to the second nipple and made it hard too. And he ran his tongue along the underneath of her sweaty breasts, then down her torso to her belly button. More petal skin and Gardenia perfume. Then at the top of her pubis mound, his cheek enjoyed the softness of the feathery hair. The small triangle of fur ended at her labia. Everything below had been shaved clean. His tongue parting the two plump places found a deep vermilion fold of skin. Contained within it a hard and delicate clit.

His hand massaged her low between her bottom cheeks, his thumb finding its way inside the wet warmth of her vagina , while his fingers explored the depths of her crack to the puckering tight hole of her anus. His tongue and lips worked her clitoris, vigorously, painfully raising the ante of thrill. The sensation so distinctly on the edge, she was afraid a spike of pain would suddenly destroy the perfect build-up to her climax.

"Ah, noooo, Curtis," she hissed to him several times. He backed off just slightly since he knew that perfect edge with her was just one step on the pleasure side of pain. "Curtis noooo!" she barked once. But then he moved down on her clitoris with his mouth and sucked hard, watching as her groin moved toward his face. He tasted nectar in his mouth, a stream of it released as she bit by bit approached the finish. Then, she jerked hard, swayed her hips and thrust her pubis into his face, crying softly all the way, until she went limp.