“I didn’t hear that, Daniel.” Gina had music in her voice. She was wearing a red and yellow flowered sundress that brushed her bare legs at knee level. Her dark hair fell loosely against her shoulders and her lips were parted in a half smile. She looked ethereal, an exotic creature from another planet.
His ache welled up as she stepped close. He mumbled something incoherent.
“What, Daniel? I bet you thought you’d never see me again.” She touched his arm. “Didn’t you?”
He held back for an instant as she looked up and opened her arms. Then he became lost in her lips and mouth and the press of her body.
The tinkling sound of young girls giggling arose from Skip’s porch. O’Brien broke away from Gina and peered next door. The giggling turned into oohs and aahs and scattered clapping. “Don’t mind us,” his friend hollered with a laugh. “Kids have gotta learn somewhere.” He said a second goodnight and ushered his family inside.
Gina smiled. “Maybe we’d better go somewhere more private. If you lead the way, I promise I’ll follow—to any room you like. Remember what Lucy said?”
“What was that?”
“She said we talked it to death.”
He grabbed the wine and two glasses passing through the kitchen. “Stay right behind me. We’ll climb up to the second floor. I’m not tuning on another light.”
He led the way to his bedroom and opened the sliders leading onto the porch deck. Far away in the city a police siren wailed. The night closed in around them and left them insulated and alone. He poured wine and watched her take a sip.
“You didn’t tell me your bedroom looked out on such a bright moon,” Gina said.
“I just ordered it up when I saw you.”
She giggled. “You are kind of a funny guy.”
He took his glass and placed it with hers on the bedside table. Then she came into his arms.
The world seemed to crawl on its axis as he kissed her deeply and slowly. The dull pain of his longing began to dissolve as she clung to him, to be replaced by the pent-up desire of his body. He could not let her go. A single tear spilled down her cheek, a drop of salty wetness that he kissed away, and then another. He held her face in his hands.
“Daniel.” Her arms were locked around him. “I’m sorry...I...missed you so much...I—”
“Shhh. You don’t have to say it.” He kissed her wet cheeks again.
She touched the side of his face, ran her fingertips over his coarse stubble. “I was thinking I might stay for a little while if you don’t mind. I took a leave of absence from the hospital for a couple of weeks.”
He touched his lips to the corner of her mouth, worked his way over the bridge of her nose and back down the other side. “Two weeks and I may never let you go.”
“I might like that.”
“Look,” he said. “I would have shaved, but I didn’t know...”
She sighed. “Daniel?”
“What?”
“You could be one of those models in a fashion magazine, the ones who are made up to look tough and hard. Only you actually are tough and hard because you’ve lived it, and it’s making me…well, you probably know what it’s doing to me.”
“So I really am your hero?”
She laughed. “Maybe I’ll show you.”
“Remember the first time I looked at you? Really looked at you?” he asked.
“In Starr’s office. I caught you staring at my breasts.” The swell of softness under discussion rested above his hand, and he cupped her through the light fabric of her dress. Her nipples were hard pinpoints of fire to his touch.
Gina released a languid sound of pleasure and held his hand in place against her breast. “Daniel?”
“Mmm?”
“This is the first time we’ve been alone together, in the entire time we’ve known each other.”
“I know.”
“So now I can love you anyway I want. We’re in this private world of yours, and we don’t have anybody around to watch us.”
“There was only Lucy most of the time.”
She slid her hand downward to thigh and stuck a thumb into his quadriceps.
“Ouch!”
She separated from him and for a moment said nothing. Then, “Would you help me take this off?” she said with a throaty softness to her voice. She raised her dress over her shoulders.
O’Brien slid the thin fabric over her head and draped it over a chair. “I’m trembling, I think,” he said in a shaky breath as she nuzzled against him in her bra and panties. The touch of her bare skin against him was electric.
She nodded as she began unbuttoning his shirt. “Yes you are, my love. Me too.” She walked her fingers down his chest releasing buttons. He helped with the project, and then slipped it off. “Daniel, remember when I touched you lower down, when we were in the plane. I was reaching over you for the first aid kit.” She allowed her hands to travel up and down his chest, and then lower to his belt, and below that to his erection.
His breath seemed to evaporate with her touch. “I wanted you so badly then, just like the night before, just like now.”
“We have to take the rest of our clothes off, my love. Otherwise nothing will work.”
“Just what I was thinking,” he said.
In the early morning hours a damp breeze came through the open porch sliders. O’Brien had no idea what time it was. He pulled a thin, flannel blanket over their naked forms and drew Gina in tightly. He closed his eyes again and tried not to lose the sleepy, dreamlike edge of heaven he was riding in her arms.
He became vaguely aware of Gina stirring against him. A warm hand drifted down between his legs and enfolded the hardness that always seemed to be there. She worked herself closer, pressed her body heat to his skin. In his semi-conscious state he felt lips that were warm and puffy nuzzle his own, then travel to his closed eyelids and back. Her hot breath worked at a corner of his mouth until his lips gave up and opened to her sweetness. He was clinging to sleep, living through a hazy bliss that was too good to risk waking up.
A smooth thigh slid over the top of his legs as she parted herself. A sigh that was feminine, languid, and sensual settled over him as she eased herself down, a slow-motion slide along his length that brought forth his own protracted groan from somewhere deep in his subconscious. They moved slower this time with pauses at sleepy intervals in a rapture of drawn-out pleasure. As the room became gray with morning light, he shivered in a drowsy rumble of release. She tightened against him, drew out her own consummation in a series of sharp breaths into his chest.
Much later, O’Brien cracked an eyelid to the bright sun cascading through the room. Gina’s arms and legs entangled him.
She stirred and put her lips to the corner of his mouth. “Daniel?” She kissed him and yawned against his chest. The flick of her eyelashes stroked a cheek. “Are you awake?”
He opened his eyes fully. “Uhmm, you wouldn’t believe the dream I had.”
* * *
About The Author
William C. Walker started his writing career as a columnist for a regional newspaper. During a thirty-five year span as a military pilot and captain for Delta Air Lines he began writing short stories and novels. He is currently the author of five novels and is the recipient of numerous awards throughout the publishing industry.
He lives on Florida’s Treasure Coast with his wife and a fluff dog that likes him.
Errand of Mercy: How far do you run, and where do you hide? Page 27