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That's when Lono fucked the guy up.

...

Although she was a pacifist and didn't approve of violence for any reason, Yuki had to admit she was relieved when the big Hawaiian saved her from Francis's drunken dementia. She just wasn't equipped to talk him down off his speed- and rum-fueled psychosexual high-wire walk.

It had gotten weird fast. He began referring to her as his cabin boy and complaining that she wasn't reporting to the deck for her nightly watch. He was going to have to strap her to the mast or rope her to the plank or some kind of bizarre nonsense. At first she'd laughed. She thought he was just drunk and joking, like he was flirting with her. But soon it became clear that he believed what he was saying. He had slipped into some kind of method-acting role as captain of the ship and believed it was his obligation to sodomize her for her various lapses of duty and assorted transgressions.

That's when she left the table.

He'd followed her, of course. But she hadn't expected him to start masturbating in front of her and demanding that
she worship his hard-on. That was just too much. Although she didn't believe that Francis would rape her, or even hurt her really, she was relieved when the big Hawaiian entered the picture.

She had seen fights in movies, those slow-motion kung fu ballets with people doing back flips and walking on walls, but had never seen one in real life. In real life they don't last too long. An explosion of violence. A winner. A loser. Just a couple of seconds, no more, and Francis was knocked out on the beach.

Yuki recognized the Hawaiian. He was the pimp who had started her transformation. The one man who saw her potential. She had secretly hoped they'd meet again, and now here he was, like a shining prince, saving her from the weirdness.

As he led her away to the relative safety of the streets, he introduced himself. He had a cool Hawaiian name, Lono, and—could this be right?—he asked her if she'd like to go out with him. Yuki couldn't remember the last time anyone had asked her out on a date. Actually, that was a lie. She could remember quite clearly because it had been four and a half years ago.

“Would you like to get a drink? Are you hungry?”

“I don't want to go to a bar.”

She watched as Lono thought for a moment, his handsome face scrunched in contemplation, his dark, intelligent eyes searching her face for clues.

“How about a shave ice?”

“What's that?”

“Kind of like a Japanese snow cone.”

Yuki shrugged. “Okay.”

He extended his arm for her to hold. She was still trembling a little and gladly took it. He was very strong, his arm soft and hard and smooth and firm. Holding on to him made her feel light, like she could float. For a brief, fleeting moment, she thought about Francis. She hoped he wasn't dead.

...

Hannah and Joseph sat naked in bed, eating pizza and sucking on longneck bottles of Kona. Hannah smiled at him.

“Cold pizza and warm beer. My favorite.”

Joseph smiled apologetically. “Dinner's been a disaster. Sorry.”

“Don't apologize. Unless something's going on that you need to apologize for.”

“What do you mean?”

Hannah put down her slice of pizza. “You're acting kind of. . .”—she searched her mind for the word—“amorous.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Not at all. But it's a different thing. I'm wondering what's up.”

Joseph thought about telling her it was nothing. But she was someone he'd shared a large chunk of his life with. She was someone who'd stuck by his side through good times and bad. She had heard him complain about his growing claustrophobia from living on the island, and she'd heard him rant about the plight of the natives. She didn't judge him. She didn't push him or try to change him. She accepted him as he was. If anyone would understand his fears and frustrations, it was Hannah.

So Joseph told her about Francis's offer and Sid's belief that he should actually go through with it for the good of the family. He laid it out for her. Told her everything.

When he was done, she was laughing.

“What's so funny?”

“You.”

“Me? What's so funny about me?”

“That's why you kept jumping me. You wanted to make sure you weren't gay.”

“I'm not gay. Not that there's anything wrong with being gay. But I'm not.”

She laughed some more. “Oh, honey. You are a goof.”

“I'm not gay.”

“No one ever said you were.”

“So why does Sid want me to sleep with that guy?”

Hannah looked at him. “You should. It would help everybody if you did.”

...

Sitting at a little table just outside the shaved ice store on a small side street, Lono watched Yuki dig in to a massive bowl of the stuff. She'd gotten the kind he'd recommended, sweet red azuki beans and
lilikoi
syrup.

“You like?”

Yuki nodded, her mouth full of melting ice. “I'm getting brain freeze.”

“That's a common side effect.”

She scooped up a big mound of the ice and held her spoon out to him. “Have a bite.”

“You sure?”

“You've earned a reward.”

Lono smiled. “What did I do?”

“Saved me.”

“You could've taken him.”

Yuki smiled; she locked eyes with him and pushed the spoon up to his lips. “C'mon.”

Lono knew resistance was futile; he wanted her to feed him, to put something cool and refreshing and sweet in his mouth. He parted his lips.

“I thought this was your favorite.”

“Mmm. It is. It is.”

Lono had eaten this exact same dessert from this exact same shave ice stand hundreds of times. He'd had it at least once a week for as long as he could remember. But this was the first time it tasted so sweet it almost brought tears to his eyes. The ice she put in his mouth was crunchier, more crystalline. The
lilikoi
syrup was brighter somehow, not just the color but also the flavor. And the azuki beans? Had anyone ever tasted such earthy sweetness and depth of flavor in a shave ice before?

“Do you want another bite?”

“Please.”

She playfully spooned another helping into his mouth. He could tell she was having fun feeding him. She was looser than when he met her before. Sexier. Confident.

He tasted the shave ice, and the second bite was even better than the first. That's how Lono knew he was in love.

...

When the beach patrol finally found Francis, sometime after midnight, he was curled up in a fetal position, his pants around his ankles, his right hand still clamped on his erection. He had two cracked ribs and a bruised kidney, but his face was what scared them. At first they thought he'd been in an accident or fire, but after they shined a flashlight on him they realized that it was just sand sticking to the blood that was smeared all over.

One of the patrolman noted—he actually wrote it down in his evidence report pad—that the badly beaten man had muttered one word over and over.

“Chad.”

When they got back to her hotel room, there was no awkward pause, no small talk, no hesitation whatsoever. They got right to it.

Yuki hadn't even gotten the door closed when Lono leaned into her, putting his lips gently on hers and sending his soft warm tongue gliding into her mouth. She returned his kiss, only she wasn't gentle; she kissed back ferociously, wrapping her arms around him, holding on to his strong shoulders, using them for leverage to drive her tongue deep into his mouth. Her tongue wrestled with his, slipping back and forth in their mouths as she pressed her crotch against him.

She could feel him getting stiff. She could feel his hardness, his length. It was a big one, and she wasn't going to let it get away. She unbuttoned his shorts—they fell to the floor with a
thunk
—and reached into his underwear, fishing for his cock. He kicked his shorts across the room without ever breaking from the kiss as he slid his hand up her shirt, feeling for her breasts.

He started lightly, just brushing the tender ends of her nipples with his thumb. But the sensation caused Yuki to emit
a loud moan. Somehow holding on to his cock, stroking the head of it, somehow that connected with his twisting of her nipples, like two ends of an electrical current, positive and negative, alternating and direct. It sent a shock through her body. A heart-skipping, hair-raising, eyes-rolling-up-to-the-ceiling blast of current.

And then she had to have him inside her. She pulled his underwear down and then her own, ripping her panties when they snagged on the doorknob. He hoisted her up as she lifted her legs, wrapping them around his waist. She gasped when she felt the head of his cock press against her labia lips. She pulled hard with her legs, wanting him to plunge into her, but he resisted. He let his cock slide in only an inch or so and then he stopped. He held it there. Not in and not out.

Yuki felt herself expanding. A vibrant and moist electromagnetic charge rolled through her. It started right there at the entrance to her pussy and radiated outward through her body in strong rolling waves of sensation. If she'd had her eyes open, she might've seen her aura crackle for a brief blue flash.

As he held her there, not entering and not exiting, loitering at the door, her vagina became like a snake, pulsating, undulating, gripping and pulling, expanding and contracting until it had slowly enveloped his cock like an anaconda that swallows its prey whole.

When he had fully penetrated her and was thrust in as far as she thought he could possibly go, Yuki gasped. Lono's cock was touching her in places she'd never been touched before, reaching deep into her body and making her tremble.

He used his strength to hold her up, pressing her against the door, gently driving his cock into her. It seemed to Yuki
that it went deeper with each thrust. But she didn't really know for sure. She just pulled him hard with her legs and squeezed him with her pussy, locking them together in a groove, a rhythm punctuated by moans, grunts, and the chain lock on the door whacking gently against the wood.

Yuki had always been a big believer in the school of self-pleasure. She unabashedly masturbated with abandon on a regular basis. She believed that having orgasms was like eating vegetables and getting regular exercise; it was good for you. Like a bowl of Cheerios, it was part of a healthy lifestyle. But all the orgasms she'd had, even the ones with her battery-powered, multispeed, latex dildo, hadn't prepared her for this.

As Lono thrust into her, picking up the pace and the intensity, her body got hot. A tingling at the base of her spine soon turned into a burning, uncontrollable, almost painful sensation. The heat spread and expanded, rippling through her body. She threw her head back, banging it sharply into the door, but didn't notice. Weird gurgly sounds began rising up out of her throat, and her breathing became shallow, staccato.

Yuki closed her eyes. In her mind's eye she saw her clitoris suddenly light up like a roman candle. Burning white-hot phosphorus. And then the convulsions came. Her back arched and her body shook with strong pulsating spasms. The orgasm rocketed up her spine, exploding in her head like a bottle rocket, and for the briefest possible moment Yuki lost consciousness. She stopped breathing.

She died a little death.

...

Lono felt her melt against the door and then fall into his arms like a deflated pool toy. He stopped thrusting into her and held on. Even though her body was still, he could feel her vagina contracting and jumping in wild spasms around his cock. He watched her eyes flicker open and try to focus, like she was coming back from some kind of trance.

Lono lifted her up and slowly pulled himself out of her. He then gently carried her over to the bed and put her down. She sighed and reached down, touching herself, giving her clitoris a last little tingle. Lono watched her groan and wriggle and then he began stroking his cock. She looked up at him and watched as he stood over her and jacked off.

When he came, she couldn't help herself; she squealed with delight as hot arching gobs of come rained down on her.

Jack thought it was a done deal. He'd spent twenty minutes on the phone with the young woman at the bank, giving her detailed instructions on the whys and wherefores of transferring cash. He'd sent it in four installments of four thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents. That way the bank wouldn't be required to report the moves to the IRS. He figured the hitman would be happy to pay a nickel to keep it all under the radar. The wire transfers were small enough to be lost in the paperwork shuffle of day-to-day business transactions. And sent to the hitman's numbered account, they were virtually untraceable.

Jack poured himself a cup of coffee and sat back. He was feeling pretty good about the world. Sometimes, Jack realized, the best-laid plans of mice and men really work out just fine. His business was expanding into a lucrative new market and he was about to show the Sumo just who was a punk-ass bitch.

It was Stanley, of course, who stuck a wrench in the deal. He called from Honolulu.

“Dad? What are these transfers for?”

Jack didn't like to be questioned or second-guessed. “None of your fucking business.”

There was a long silence on the phone. He heard Stanley clear his throat.

“Okay. Well, the bank called because I need to approve the transfers.”

“What the fuck're you talking about? I just made 'em.”

“They need my approval.”

“Since when?”

“Since you had the stroke.”

Jack's coffee had suddenly gone ice cold; it left a bad taste in his mouth. Suddenly struck with vertigo, he felt dizzy and grabbed the table for balance. He didn't say anything for a long time.

“I've been signing checks.”