The Lover From an Icy Sea (22 page)

He threw back the sheets and jumped out of bed. He first looked in the bathroom. Nothing. He then walked out into the living room. Nothing. He went into the kitchen. Still nothing. The sensation he’d not felt in weeks—namely, when he’d awakened the first time in his apartment in New York to find her gone—came raging back.

He went to the front door, found it locked. Then it suddenly occurred to him: she was probably in the pool again. A woman of Daneka’s age didn’t—couldn’t—look like Daneka and maintain her exquisite shape without exercise. He smiled ironically at this bit of residual separation anxiety, walked to the back door and opened it.

There she was—swimming. She’d been doing laps, apparently, while he’d slept. Sleep was the prerogative of youth; laps were the obligation of creeping age. He, too, would be doing morning laps soon—and doing them, with any luck, right alongside her.

Whether she sensed his presence or decided she’d swum enough, Daneka stopped at the far end of the pool, stood up and took off her goggles. Kit suddenly understood that this was probably routine for her; that she might even have an extra set of travel goggles. He smiled again at his private speculation: what different worlds they lived in!

“
Good morning, darling,” she called out, only partially out of breath. ‘Sleep well?”

“
Like a rock!” Kit answered.

“
How about a little swim for my merman?”

“
You mean a little dip like last night’s dollop?”

“
Well, now,” Daneka replied with a throaty guffaw that sounded as much like a threat as a tease, “whatever my little merman’s in the mood for is fine by me. A dip, a dollop, or just a …” Daneka was wearing a one-piece bathing suit—a concession, Kit supposed, to habit or exercise or both. As she slipped the straps of her suit off her shoulders and pulled the material down to her waist, she looked up at Kit with a disingenuous smile.

“
Do I hear any interest, or should I pack my things and go to town?”

How can she look this good?
he wondered to himself. How can she look this desirable? Not just the first time, or even the first few times he’d seen her naked. But over and over again. He wanted her. And the message he was getting from her—a message that left him almost delirious with joy—was that she wanted him, too. He wondered if the two of them should be made illegal.

“
Oh, I think you should stay for a bit. I might need a lifeguard.”

“
Are we speaking literally or figuratively now, darling? The question was not one Kit was prepared to quibble with so early in the morning. He thought for a moment.

“
Well, I think a bit of both, really.”

“
Huh?” Daneka tilted her head just so and began to take little baby steps towards Kit.

She can be monstrously coy when she wants to be
, he thought to himself.
And me, she could have in chains. Could have in chains? Has in chains!

But Kit wasn’t quite ready to become anyone’s slave—not even Daneka’s. For one thing, he was simply too headstrong. For another, he’d worked too hard to become his own master and a slave to no one. He wanted to love, and be loved, now more than ever. But he wanted that love without bondage. He wouldn’t lend his soul to anyone; nor would he borrow another’s soul. He simply wouldn’t do commerce in souls to anyone’s advantage or disadvantage, least of all to his own.

As he watched her stepping gingerly in his direction, head at an angle and breasts exposed, he looked at her with as much love as he thought any man capable of feeling for a woman. But his love, tender feelings, yes—even desire—were not entirely free of a certain sense of wariness and circumspection. He loved her beauty and he loved her charisma. He was also beginning to appreciate both with something approaching dread for the enormous power they exerted over him.

She reached him and stopped just short of stepping on his feet; slowly relaxed her neck from its previous tilt; then bent her head up, eyes closed, to put her lips within an inch of his.

“
How can I save thee? Let me count the ways,” she said, eyes still closed. She then opened them and fluttered her eyelashes half a dozen times. It was clear to Kit she was about to burst out in a fit of raucous laughter. Just as she’d caught him off guard with her question, he reciprocated by pulling her bathing suit down to her ankles. She obligingly stepped out, hooked it with one foot, and flung it into the garden. Kit then pushed his boxers down to his ankles, stepped out, grabbed Daneka about the waist with both arms, and launched them both head first into the water.

When they came up for air, Daneka was the first to speak. “Dear, dear, dear! What shall we do with you?”

“
It’s not what you’ll do with me, darling, but what I’ll do with you!” It was now from Kit’s throat that a half-menacing, half-teasing growl issued. Daneka bit her lip in mock terror. She really had no idea what Kit could be up to, but she’d already won a healthy respect both for his imagination and for his willingness to exercise it on her behalf.

Unknown to her, Kit had discovered something the evening before just after they’d first made love in the water. On the side wall, about a foot below the surface of the water, he’d found the hole through which filtered water entered back into the pool. He next discovered that the water flowed in with considerable force. It required little of him to figure out how he might use this artificial force to their mutual advantage. Assuming she’d cooperate, Kit wondered to what degree Daneka might be willing to let herself go without his being part of the mix. He, this time, would remain in complete control of himself—and ultimately, of her. She, he conjectured, would remain in control of nothing—and least of all of herself.

“
Show, don’t tell, darling,” she said as she smiled at him, and Kit had a moment of déjà entendu. He turned her around so that she was facing away from him and towards the wall, then lifted her arms and placed her hands behind his neck. He put his own arms around her waist and lifted her just enough so that she could put her feet down on his. Then he began to walk both of them towards the wall. When they were close enough to touch it, Kit put his hand out and found the water-jet. It would be better, he knew, than any vibrator. The steady, liquid throb would deliver sensations he couldn’t even begin to give her. What’s more, they wouldn’t stop until she wanted them to stop, until she begged him to remove her from the source.

Daneka still had no idea. From the way she was positioning herself without his prompting, it appeared to Kit she thought he wanted to enter her from behind and make love to her against the side of the pool. To that end, she was slowly arching her back and leaning forward with her hands extended, reaching for something to hold onto. At the same time, she spread her legs to circle Kit’s hips from behind and pull him in. But he pushed her legs back down, pulled her torso back up against his chest, and repositioned her arms back around his neck. When he began to massage her breasts with his free hands, she craned her neck around to find his ear. Her lips smiled into it as her tongue and teeth found the lobe.

“
Ah, yes. Foreplay. Thank you, darling. I’d almost forgotten.”

Kit’s script for foreplay in this instance lasted little more than a few seconds. He found the hole in the wall again with his finger, grasped Daneka around the waist, lifted her just a couple of inches and pushed her forward. He knew that from his angle he’d be able only to approximate her exact position for maximum effect. But he trusted nature—more precisely, Daneka’s nature, to hone in on just the right spot for her to feel the full force of the water—and that once she found that source, it wouldn’t be her upper thighs or stomach muscles she’d want to oblige with a massage.

He was right in at least part of his assumption. Once she got the drift of his plan and felt the water-jet, she moved to it like a newborn to its mother’s nipple.

Kit was less correct, however, in the remainder of his assumption. He’d figured this pleasant little stream of water would bring her to a comfortable orgasm—even several, if she wanted—in approximately the time it might take her to achieve the same result through coitus. The principal advantage here, to Kit’s way of thinking, was quite simply in the inexhaustibility of the supply, and he was entirely prepared to concede victory to hydrodynamics.

None of that, however. Daneka clung to the side of the pool as if her body and it were both made of Velcro. Luckily—given not only the increasing duration of her orgasms, but also the increasingly louder celebration of their effects—the two of them were far enough away from both neighbors and passers-by so as not to panic either into unwittingly calling for emergency help.

Sounder reason told Kit he had no good grounds for becoming jealous of a water-jet. And yet, there it was: the damned thing was making a fool of him. In his scheme to have her lose a little bit of self-control, he’d introduced her to a virtual stud whose energy was boundless, whose aim was accurate beyond any known means of calibration, and who would never talk back, need a shave, or expect breakfast. How in God’s name was he ever going to compete with that? And more to the point, how was he going to detach the woman he loved from this mere gadget?

He didn’t have to wonder long about his predicament, as she finally collapsed backwards into his arms. He withdrew them both slowly from the water-jet and walked across the bottom of the pool to the steps. Having disqualified his competition, he wondered how he might now remove the smile on her face. They paused, and she kissed him lightly on the lips, her lids only barely open.

“
Darling, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll skip breakfast and take a little nap.” She pulled herself up by the handrail, and Kit noticed that her legs were trembling as she picked up a beach towel and disappeared through the back door.

When he walked into the bedroom five minutes later, Daneka appeared to be fast asleep with a look of perfect contentment fixed on her face. He sat down next to her, then bent down and kissed her forehead. “Hmm…” came back to him.

Kit walked into the kitchen and started preparing a pot of coffee. As the water boiled, he thought about what he’d just witnessed. The good news for him was that the water-jet was a lover of only one organ. However efficient it might be in the exercise of its singular talent, it could, in fact, not talk back or hold any kind of reasonable conversation. However receptive and responsive her own corresponding organ might be, Daneka had more than that one. His salvation, he knew, lay in being able to satisfy the others.

He lit a cigarette and looked out the back window at the pool, then specifically at the location of the water jet.

“
Loser,” he whispered emphatically, then exhaled a long and confident lungful of smoke.

Chapter 30

As Kit sat quietly at the dining room table gazing out over the Atlantic, smoking and drinking his coffee in silence, Daneka slept. This was his first real opportunity to reflect upon the state of their affair—at least its past and present—and also to ruminate upon its future.

The past of it had been turbulent, sexually-charged, flesh getting comfortable with flesh. The electricity between them couldn’t last forever—that he knew. But if there was such a thing as finding the perfect mate, no matter how coincidental the circumstances of their first meeting, he felt he’d found his.

The present of it was indeed that—a present, a gift by any reckoning of time, place and opportunity, to explore and become intimately familiar with another human being. Familiarity, he knew, could lead to contempt; it could also head down an alternative road to family. Perhaps the two weren’t so mutually exclusive as might appear at first glance. It was, in any case, a risk he was willing to take.

The future of it? In a matter of a few days, he’d meet her mother, would become acquainted with however many members of her extended family were still alive, would feel with his fingers the soil and roots of her earliest years. He longed to know, to the extent possible, the infant, toddler and young girl this woman had once been, and then to reconcile all of that with the mature woman whose life he now wanted to make part of his own. If she showed an equal interest in him and in their future together, he’d willingly take her to Pennsylvania to meet his parents and to sit in the swing of his youth—to hear, as he’d heard, his first songs of nature. To smell the same luscious lilacs and feel the same whiplash wind. To know what earthly stuff had informed his child’s mind, had made of him the man he’d become, would accompany him for all of his remaining days, and would then prepare him to exit gracefully, manfully and thankfully at the end of those days. Would that future contain her? Would they exit together? If Kit had been a praying man, this would’ve been his prayer.

Instead, he lit another cigarette.

At the same instant, Daneka emerged from the bedroom. Kit suddenly became aware of the cloud of smoke he’d created, stood up and opened the back door to clear the air.

“
Sorry, darling. I got carried away. I wasn’t thinking.”

“
Oh, nonsense! It doesn’t bother me in the least.”

“
Really?”

“
No. In fact, I think it’s rather sexy. With you, that is. With others, well, they don’t have your eyes.” Kit ignored the complimentary non sequitur as Daneka bent down to kiss first one eyelid, then the other.