Emmet

The New York Times columnist told me that he was on the sailing team in college, but I wasn't quite expecting him to be so gung ho about the whole project. He is coiling rope on the deck, grinning like a fool when I hear footsteps behind me and I turn around to see Bella, resplendent in a salmon colored bikini top and floral sarong tied just over her thigh. My breath literally catches in my throat as I look her over with all that smooth, creamy skin on display. She stops a few feet away from me and shyly toes the dock boards with the tip of her sneaker.

“Is this all right?” she asks as she pushes her sunglasses up into her hair.

“It's outstanding!” I sigh, sliding my arms under hers and pulling her close to me. “You realize you are practically naked right? Right out here in public?”

She wrinkles up her nose, nuzzling the tip of my nose with hers in an adorably intimate gesture.

“I'm really glad you like it,” she sighs as she kisses me, her lips sweet as ever.

“Permission to come aboard?” Dillon calls out. I set Bella back on the dock, watching Dillon charming the New York Times guy. He seems to be relaxing into our arrangement, finally. No more outbursts, no more attempts at sabotage. I see him smiling at Bella once in awhile when he thinks she’s not looking. Maybe he's glad that it's almost over. Just a few more days now.

I'm not sure I feel the same way.

“Permission granted!” the columnist yells back to Dillon. He waves vigorously with his arms over his head. “Hi, I'm Kent!”

“Hi, Kent!” Bella yells back. She turns to me, rolling her eyes and smiling prettily. “Okay, let's go impress the New York Times!”

We walk up the wooden gangplank onto the main deck of the sailboat, and Bella coos appreciatively at all the equipment and ropes and other sailing ephemera. Kent makes a great show of walking her up and down the boat, pointing out that he knows the name of every single thing on here.

I don't, I have to admit. I have a crew on hire. I don't have to remember the names of all the widgets and gears and crap like that. I just have to remember that when the sail swings toward the other side of the boat, I need to get the hell out of the way so I don’t get knocked into the water. That is the one thing I know about sailing.

That, and there is a big old waterbed downstairs. I also know that.

Unfortunately, Kent is going to be with us for the duration of our three-hour Lake Michigan cruise — which I guess is not technically a cruise but a “sail” — so there will be no time to slip Bella out of that bikini top. At least not right away.

Once we’re all aboard, the crew motors us away from the harbor, shouting commands to each other in that specialized language they use. I stand a ways back, watching Bella charm Kent with Dillon looking quite sportsmanlike himself. After a little while, I stroll up to the group, dramatically drawing Bella back to my arms in front of Kent. I tuck her windblown hair behind her ears and kiss her gently, listening for the familiar sounds of Kent's camera.

“Oh, you guys make a great couple,” he sighs wistfully. “Bella was just telling me that you to plan to go to New Zealand this winter. What a great trip!”

“Totally her idea, too,” I say, wondering when she came up with that one. It's news to me, but I think it would actually be nice. I wouldn't mind hiking some of those mountains, and I know Dillon enjoys attending to go camping every once in awhile. The isolation, certainly, can't be beat. We could hide among the sheep.

“He gives me anything I want,” she coos. “After New Zealand, can we go to Easter Island?”

“Anything you say, Bella,” I answer immediately, hoping she'll keep this up.

I wouldn't mind having a list of things that she'd like to do. It makes it easier than guessing, anyway. We could do New Zealand, then Easter Island, maybe even Madagascar, since it seems like she's kind of intellectual about her travel locations. She didn't say Paris or Rome, which is what most people fantasize about — the touristy comfort of America in Paris-shaped packaging, I always thought. She's talking about places where we have to really work to see the sights, really have to experience something out of the ordinary.

“Mayan pyramids?” I suggest.

“You read my mind!” she exclaims, jumping up and throwing her arms around my neck. I hold her tight, quickly becoming excited at the combination of sunscreen and sweat on her skin. Feeling her long legs bouncing against my hips is turning me on a frightful amount. I'm not actually sure I want to wait that long. What kind of trouble would I get in if Kent suddenly fell overboard?

“You two make a great couple. It's just perfect,” Kent sighs.

“Aren't they, though?” Dillon smiles, his cheeks dimpled strongly. He seems to really mean it. That makes me happy too.

After a few minutes, we retire to the galley for a quick round of mojitos prepared by our chef. We’ve also got some freshly made ceviche and spring rolls to snack on. Then Dillon pulls out his phone. His eyebrows go up.

“Hey… check your alerts,” he smiles at me. I slide my phone out of my back pocket and glance at it. There's already a picture of us, standing on the prow of the boat. Bella's arms are folded behind my neck and she leans into me, arching her back. Our smiles are mirror images of each other, as Chicago skyline is sunlit and beautiful in the background. Sparks of light reflect off the surface of the lake.

“Wow… you look beautiful, darling,” I say, surprised, angling the phone toward Bella. Her eyes go wide as well. “How did this picture already get on the Times?”

Kent winks at me, smiling impishly. “Fastest fingers in the east!” he declares. “I sent your pictures over to my editor right away. I’m not about to get scooped again!”

“Smart guy,” Dillon nods approvingly, toasting Kent’s shrewdness.

I remember that I'd heard that there were several people who had gotten the pictures of us and the Congresswoman… I'm starting to wonder of Kent was one of them. In the world of gossip, the first one to spike the ball in the end zone gets to claim credit for ever more. I never really thought about pictures going up while the event was still happening, but I suppose I should have.

“Look at us… that's a nice picture. We should have that framed,” Bella smiles at me.

“Love for the Riordan heir?” I repeat, reading the caption aloud. I watch Bella's throat as she swallows, and I deliberately avoid glancing at Dillon. He's been doing so good, I don't want him to negatively react to Kent’s artistic license. Love? That's a bit of a liberty he's taken.

I never said I was in love.

“It just leaps off the page!” Kent smirks. “Everybody can see it. You guys have this magnetism when you're together. This energy! You make a person really believe in love!”

"Well, what can I say?" I respond gamely, pulling her closer to me again, holding her in front of me. Slyly, I bounce my hard-on against the pit of her back. She responds by nudging me with those round, ripe buttocks, letting me know that she knows how hot I am for her.

Kent is so proud of himself, we can't shut him up for the next hour until we get back to the dock. Meanwhile, Dillon, Bella and I are on our very best behavior, milking the rest of his time with all the romance one person could stand.

I presume he will post a follow-up story, in the next few days. He seems enthused to be the first person who's declared this a real love affair. He'll probably have us married off and pregnant by the end of the week. Maybe not in that order.

We sail back to Burnham Harbor, leaving Kent on the dock and posing just one more time for another few pictures for him. After he's done with that, he steps back and gazes lovingly at the boat, making me wonder if I shouldn't have let him spend a little more time on it, just to see how much more flattering he would be in his write up.

“Tommy, why don’t you guys take a walk?” I ask the hired crew. Tommy glances at Bella and smirks, accepts a few hundred dollars in gratuity and whistles to his other crew members. They clamber off the boat, leaving us alone.

“Below deck, both of you,” I bark, doing a rather paltry imitation of a sea captain.

“Yes, sir!” Bella smirks. I drop into the galley entrance, sliding the panel doors securely and closing us inside.

“Gee, it's pretty nice in here,” she muses, looking around and touching the dials and displays, the wood cabinetry. “I didn't realize sailboats had such luxurious, um — um --”

“Quarters,” Dillon smiles.

“Quarters,” she repeats, smiling back at him. “That makes sense.”

“Yeah, well, that's pretty much all I know about this thing,” he shrugs. “Emmet paid a little bit more attention in the sailing lessons.”

“No I didn't!” I object, taking Bella by the hand and guiding her back through the door that leads to the waterbed that I know is here somewhere.

“What do you mean?”

“Take your clothes off.”

Bella puts her hands on her hips, tapping the toe of her sneaker.

“Fine. I'll take your clothes off,” I shrug. I reach out and with a flick of my fingers, that sarong is in a puddle around her ankles. She looks down in surprise.

“Hey!” she pouts. “I was asking a question!”

“I answer questions while you get undressed,” I counter reasonably. She seems to find this acceptable and turns around shyly, slowly unhooking the back of her coral bikini top. Dillon and I stand back, watching the show.

“Please continue with your story.”

“Oh, um…” I stammer, a little distracted, “well there were sailing lessons. But there was also this girl…”

Bella clucks her tongue. “Okay, story’s over!”

“Actually, there's a bar at the harbor too in case you didn’t notice…”

“I said, forget it!” she says loudly, spinning around and whipping her top off. Her breasts jiggle, settling heavily, the light tan of her skin outlining her tits in subtle triangles.

Dillon and I are mesmerized.

“And you,” she continues, tipping her head and looking at Dillon. “Why are you being so nice today?”

He swallows. “What?”

She points at him accusingly. “You're being nice! It's weird. What's going on?”

He shrugs, shaking his head, then glances at me like I'm going to help him or something.

“I don't know,” he mutters. “I guess I'm in love too!”

“Oh shut up,” she scoffs, suddenly leaping toward him, raising her arms. He catches her smoothly, laughing and kissing her as they fall back on the waterbed. It bounces dramatically, shifting the weight from side to side as they giggle, wrapping legs around each other, looking like the mirror image of Bella and I on the prow of the boat in the picture that Kent took.

“Hold on,” I smile, carefully joining them on the sloshy waterbed. “My turn now!”

“You're so right,” she coos, flipping herself over so that she faces me. Her hand drifts over my cheek she smiles, crinkling up her nose. “You got some sun today,” she remarks.

“Yeah, they say the sun on the water is most intense,” I answer absentmindedly.

“Huh,” she sighs, “I never knew that either.”

I stare into her big brown eyes, wanting to come up with something else to tell her. Like a kid, I want to impress her, to spark that look of admiration she gives me sometimes. When she looks at me like that, I feel invincible.

But there’s more there too. Depths. Layers of Bella that go far beyond what we’ve seen so far. I find myself wanting to know more, wanting to plunge deeper into her. As she looks back at me, I see the hunger grow, see that unmistakable invitation in her stare.

Her bikini bottoms come off smoothly and in moments I'm naked, fighting between the twin urges of wanting to simply slide against her, to absorb her, and wanting to plow to the center of her, to own every inch of her.

I keep myself from taking her all at once, greedily, but just barely. She is so ready, so open and wet, I can't bear it another second and line myself up, ready to feel her wet and hot around me again. It feels just as good as the first time, maybe even more so. She is smiling, not a shred of fear in her eyes, but still so tight.

We come like the first time, exploding together as fireworks shatter in front of my eyes, temporarily blinding me. Dillon fists himself, holding himself against her until he comes too. She leans into him and he splashes his come all over her belly. It drifts between her tits, then slides down and pools in that beautiful oval belly button.

The boat rocks us gently, and sleep is tempting, but I'm certain the crewmembers are waiting outside. When we disembark, they toss their cigarettes in the nearby ashtray and don't look at us when they get back on board.

I'm giddy, like I was when I was a teenager. I want to tell them about it. This strange urge to share with everyone is nearly overwhelming sometimes. I have to admit it's only slightly diminished by the fact that this actually is shared with everyone, in real life. Seems to be on every blog everywhere.

As we hike back up to the car, I slip my cell phone out of my pocket to take one last look at that picture. Her smile is utterly convincing. We do seem to have a kind of magnetism, as Kent said. I smile, just looking at it.