“These things hurt, Mickey.”
“Hey, don’t blame me. I’m just flipping those switches.”
“Bastard,” she said, amused.
“Mm hmm.”
When the laundry was done, he took her to bed. She gave him a look, lying down. “I see you came prepared,” she said. “Got rope. Clothespins. And dare I ask what the wooden spoon is for?”
“Gonna whack you with it,” he said.
Sandy rolled her eyes. “Ooh, it sounds so romantic when you say it like that.”
“You might cry a little bit,” he said. “That alright?”
“Get me a box of tissues for the bedside,” she said. “You know how much I blow my nose when I’m crying.”
He kissed her and said, “Good thinking.”
Chapter Sixteen
They lay in bed making out like they used to as kids. The clothespins weren’t a problem. When he pressed up against her, they folded over, and they didn’t seem to bother her much after the first few minutes.
“Hurt like a bitch at first,” she said. “Then that sort of faded to a dull ache. Now they’re starting to hurt again.”
“I was thinking about adding a few,” he said. “Or making you add them.”
“Now that would be a dirty trick,” she said.
“Wouldn’t it, though?” He kissed her breasts around the pins and bit her a little. Sandy squirmed. “I’ll do it, this time,” he said.
“This time?”
He added clothes pins to her breasts, one on each side of the central ones already in place. She whimpered a little, but not as much, until he put one in the center of each armpit.
“Wow,” she said.
“I’m not going to tie you up,” he said. “But I don’t want you trying to pull any of these off. Know what I mean?”
“I’m not going to touch them,” she said.
“You can do that. Just don’t cheat.”
“I don’t cheat,” she said.
Mickey turned his face away at that, kissing her belly, and then between her legs. He reached for the clothespins.
“Oh, honey,” she said. “I don’t know...”
“Shush,” he said.
She gasped and squirmed when he did it. Three pins on each side clamping her outer lips, and then two more on the inner. There were tears in her eyes before he finished. He went to the bathroom and got the hand mirror to show her.
“How are you going to...you know, get inside me?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
Mickey tugged at the clothespins a little. They worked nicely as little handles, and had Sandy ah, ah, ah’ing quite satisfactorily. He could hold her open so that when he put his mouth on her, there was nothing but pink wet flesh with her clitoris in the way. And that wasn’t in the way at all. Much to her surprise, she came almost immediately.
He relented then and took the clothes pins off, which hurt, they learned, quite considerably more in the removal than the application. The resultant massage made her even wetter. He crawled up between her legs to get inside her, which turned out to be exactly where she had wanted him. He settled into that hard, deep elliptical hip swing that she liked best, and made her cum again.
“You can teach old dogs new tricks,” he said, wonderingly.
Sandy laughed. “Who you calling an old dog?”
“I was talking about myself.”
“Just checking,” she said happily, and then, “hey, how many fingers have you got in there?”
“Three,” Mickey said. “Um...four.”
“That’s awful,” she said, drawing her legs back helpfully.
He tucked his thumb in and pushed. It was something he’d never tried before, but he had seen it on the porn sites. The bridge of his hand stopped against her and she groaned.
“You okay?”
“If you don’t mind me gritting my teeth.”
“I don’t.”
He worked at her, and Sandy writhed under the pressure. It took a couple of minutes to open her up, but she was a woman grown. Children had come through that passage, so he knew it was possible, even if he’d never seen it done to anyone else. He eased up, kissed her, and started again.
“I don’t know,” she panted. “Maybe it won’t...”
And then she gasped and let out a long, half strangled moan as the width of his knuckles opened her further and his hand, without any more resistance, slid up inside her. She reached down to clasp his wrist, keeping her eyes closed.
“That’s...”
“Wonderful,” he said, finishing for her. “See if you can get off again.”
“I’ll...oh...oh...I’ll...try.” She was having some trouble getting any words out at all, never mind put a sentence together.
Mickey had never felt anything like the warm intimacy of the inside of Sandy’s body. She was open to him more completely than she had ever been, open and welcoming so that they shared in it. He kept his hand loosely balled inside her, pulling it gently partway out to stretch her again, and then dipping his shoulder to press inward so that the backs of his curled fingers were pressed against the rubber thumb of her cervix.
Sandy lay panting, sweating and straining, but the orgasm wouldn’t come, so to speak. He took his hand out of her after awhile and lay down to hold her. She reached for his cock and stroked it with both hands.
“That was...”
“I’ll use more lube next time.”
“Another next time?”
“We’re going to have a lot of those,” he said and then rolled over to stick it to her again, hard and deep and fast.
“Oh, baby,” Sandy said with a gusty little voice.
As his orgasm swept through his belly, Mickey pulled out and shifted around to shoot off into Sandy’s mouth again. He didn’t ask her, but she went right to work like she was reading his mind, which maybe she was. They lay curled into the classic sixty-nine, Sandy jacked him off and swallowed and let him shove into her until she coughed. He kissed her wetness hard, which she seemed to enjoy even with him squirting into the back of her throat. When it was over, she got up and went to the bathroom, while Mickey drifted off to sleep.
They slept awhile, and then Sandy got up to pack him a change of clothes while Mickey got things ready for the trip. She was very serene and happy, blushing a little about the bruises on her nipples when he teased her. The marks that Davidson left on her had faded to a light yellowish green, but the new ones were very dark, like something with small hard teeth had bitten her. The same marks were on her pussy lips, as well.
They went to have supper at her parent’s house. Mickey shaved carefully and put on slacks, rather than jeans. Sandy pulled things out of the closet and held them up for him to decide what she would wear. He settled on the simplest one, a summery yellow halter dress with a skirt that moved prettily around her knees, black with white printed patterns.
“I’m not sure I can wear this without a bra,” she said uncertainly.
“What do you have?”
They looked in her lingerie drawer and found a push-up that wasn’t proper for dinner with her parents, and a strapless long line that she hadn’t worn since her senior prom in high school. He picked that, of course, and then had to help her into it. The undergarment was tight around her, accenting her waist, and forcing a little curve into her lower belly. Sandy looked at it in the mirror and made a face.
“Awful,” she said with judicious calm. “I can hardly breathe in this thing.”
“You think that’s tight, wait until I get you that corset we were talking about.”
“We were talking about?”
She brushed her hair back on the sides and clipped it behind her head so that the mass of it hung like a mane down her back, and wore the big hoop earrings that he liked. She was very careful and deliberate about her make-up, and wore her glasses without him teasing her about it.
Sandy knew how he liked girls in glasses, and seemed very much to want to please him. It had been a
long time since they took that much care about getting ready and they laughed about it with just a touch of self consciousness.
Her mother hugged Sandy and said, “Good heavens, darling, what are you wearing under that dress?”
Mickey shook hands with Sandy’s father, a man he liked very much and respected, Kent Graham by name. He was a school teacher and very much in charge of his family, although he never seemed to be. Cindy whirled in from the back and hugged Mickey around the legs and went to her mother.
“We’re gonna make biscuits, Mommy, and Grammy said I could help.”
“Of course you can, darling,” Sandy said, and picked her up for a hug. Mickey watched the sway of her skirt and thought about her naked under there, and hoped like hell Cindy didn’t notice.
“How about a beer, Mickey? I hear you’ve been busy the last couple of weeks. Let’s go out on the patio. You can tell me all about it.” When they got outside, he gave Mickey the sly look and said, “Did you bring an extra cigar?” He wasn’t allowed to smoke in the house, or very much at all come to that, but exceptions were made on occasion because he loved a good cigar and Mickey always brought him one.
They lit up and Kent smiled broadly around the cigar. The late afternoon sun made long shadows across the small paddock in their backyard. They lived in a community of horse people. Horse trails snaked away in the distance, and everything else was green and gold from the sunset.
“Sandy’s got that look,” her father said. “Haven’t seen her so relaxed in a long time. You guys find the lord or something?”
Mickey grinned. “There’s all kinds of religious experiences that don’t have anything to do with religion,” he said.
Graham understood that and laughed. “Tell me about this trip,” he said, not prying, just curious.
They sat together and talked generally about the boat delivery to Key West and the last couple of weeks in Mickey’s life, and by inference, Sandy and Cindy’s. Mickey liked talking to Kent, and he had a lot on his mind. It was a relief to talk to someone friendly and concerned, although he couldn’t say anything about the things that bothered him most.
“Getting your feet under you again, sounds like,” Graham said. “I’m mighty glad to hear it, Mickey.”
“The last couple of months have been rough,” Mickey conceded. “Kind of like swimming in molasses.”
Graham chuckled. “We’ve all been there, son.”
“Yes, sir. Doesn’t make it any easier, though. And I still haven’t found a job. Not a full time one with retirement and benefits, at least.”
“Jobs are overrated,” Graham said. “Maybe you ought to think about starting your own company.”
“I’m just freelancing for now.”
“Nothing wrong with that, if you’ve got the energy and don’t mind scrambling some. Build yourself a customer base. Get a website. Advertise on television. Hell, Mick. You can do damned near anything.”
“I don’t know,” Mickey said. “It’s an idea.”
“You’re a straight shooting guy, Mick. You don’t lie and you treat people right. Integrity like that is getting harder and harder to come by in the world. People learn that about you, they’ll flock to you.”
“Yes sir,” Mick said, cringing a little inside, wondering how honest it was when everything he was doing with Sandy was based on a lie, even if it was a lie by omission. Whatever else the thing with Linus Davidson was, it was based on a fundamental untruth, and Mickey still didn’t know what to do about that.
Cindy banged the kitchen door open behind them. “My biscuits are ready,” she said, happy and excited.
Mickey got up, not remembering until then that he had threatened to whack Sandy with that wooden spoon, and then forgot to do it. He was going to have to do better with his promises.
Chapter Seventeen
Pete Oliver’s boat had a pair of bellowing twelve cylinder diesels and ran like a train on the trip south. He put the throttles down and set her on course about a mile offshore to keep out of the strongest part of the Gulf Stream, which flowed against them at two knots. The boat was a real pleasure. She was a big, broad shouldered bitch, and howled across the calm summer sea like a thoroughbred on a race track.
The only place you could hear yourself think with the engines spooled up like that was on the fly bridge. Nadine Olson and Motýl Falk got down to bikinis pretty early, and took possession of the two fighting chairs on the boat’s back deck, slathering each other with suntan lotion every once in a while.
Mickey watched them out of the corner of his eye, noticing that one girl put cream on the other, and took her time with it. He thought they might be lesbians, but they were very kissy face with Carlyle, so that didn’t seem right, either. They seemed very nice and made an effort to check on the three men sharing the bridge, bringing up drinks or sandwiches as needed. They were beautiful girls, whatever they were.
He was keeping an eye on things. Oliver was comfortable with his boat, and very knowledgeable. It turned out that Phillip Carlyle was just as good. They were real boat people, not week-enders, Mickey decided, and relaxed a little bit. He liked these people. They were rich, not like him, but they weren’t painful about it, and never made him feel like the hired help.
A hundred miles down the coast, at nearly lunch time, Mickey throttled back and took the boat off plane. The starboard engine had dropped a smidgen on the oil pressure. Oliver shut that one down and they went down to check. The engine room was like a long closet with a low ceiling, and it was hot in there. Mickey checked and added some oil from the case on a shelf. The pressure went back to normal when the engine restarted.
“Not a big problem,” he said. “But she’s using a little. Better keep an eye on it.”
“Never did this before,” Oliver said.
“It’s not smoking,” Mickey said. “You have a flashlight?”
He found a leak on the far side of the pan where it was hot as blazes, and squirmed back there with his teeth gritted to tighten the bolts. Oliver passed him clean shop rags to wipe up some of the mess over there, and then an emulsifier to dump into the bilges.
“We’ll pump to the waste tank,” he said unhappily. “Don’t want to be dumping oil over the side.”
They shut the port engine down to check it over and it was dead solid. When they came out of the engine cubbies, Nadine and Motýl were in the galley making sandwiches. Mickey dove over the side to cool off, and had a look at the props, which glinted in the crystalline water like knives. He sluiced off with the freshwater wash down hose on the back deck and Oliver threw him a towel.
“Good job,” he said. “Let’s hit the road, Mick.”
“Yes, sir,” Mick said, and they went.
Working together made them pals, apparently. Oliver told jokes about the court system, where he’d spent his working life as an attorney and then as a judge. Carlyle talked about the house he’d built somebody on Jupiter beach in the north end of Palm Beach county. And then Mickey, to his utter amazement, told them about Linus Davidson.
“Call the district attorney,” Oliver said without a pause. “They might not be able to hang him for what he’s done, but they will damned sure put him on the radar.”
“It’s...personal,” Mickey said, uncomfortable.
Phillip Carlyle tipped a beer up and drank, looking at Mickey over the upended bottle. He took it down again and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Has this guy got you for something?” he asked after a minute.
“Not me,” Mickey said, making fists unconsciously. “Not exactly.”
“Somebody close to you?”
“Yeah, you could say that.”
Phillip cocked an eyebrow at him. “Friend, cousin...?”
Mickey sighed. “Closer,” he said, and it felt like he had a rope around his neck, trying to get those two syllables out.
“Your wife?” Pete Oliver said, and reached out to clamp a hand on his shoulder. “Christ Jesus, Mickey. I hope it was
you put the son of a bitch in traction.” He held the hand up like a cop at an intersection. “Don’t tell me. I’m an officer of the court, in case you yahoos forgot. The less I know, the better.”
Carlyle grinned at him. “Might want to ease on down and talk to my ladies, Judge. Got something to say you might not want in on.”
“Good man,” Oliver said, and went to clamber down the teak and stainless ladder to the main deck.
Mickey sat behind the wheel with his feet braced against the juddering of the boat, and thought he’d never seen a more beautiful day on the water in his life. The clean sea air had cleared his sinuses, and the second degree burns on his arms and the one on his chest from the hot engine didn’t feel like punishment, they felt like rewards for a job well done.
“What are you going to do?” Phillip asked after a minute.
“No idea.”
“But you can’t let it go.”
“If I do, he gets away with it.”
Carlyle polished his sunglasses on a shirttail and put them back on. “More than that,” he said thoughtfully.
“Yeah, he’ll do it again to somebody else. Doesn’t seem fair, letting him do that.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
Mickey sighed. “My girl doesn’t know that I know,” he said finally. “She finds out, then I’m screwed. She’ll figure it was me put him down.”
“Which he deserved, I might add,” Carlyle said. “I got to tell you, Mick. It takes serious balls to go after somebody like that.”
“Just takes a baseball bat,” Mickey said.
“Most men would just curl up, though. You didn’t.”
“Could have done it another way.”
Carlyle looked at him. “No you couldn’t,” he said. “You did the right thing.”
Mickey turned in his seat to look back at those sunglasses. “You think it’s a good thing, busting somebody up over...?”
“Damned right I do,” Carlyle said crisply. “The question isn’t about good and bad, anymore. It’s about consequences.”
“Truth or consequences? You mostly get both, been my experience,” Mickey said. “I’m kind of stuck in between here, Phillip. Damned if I can figure out which way to go on this deal.”
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