Family Ties XVI

“Would you like to get a better look at them?”

Bill asked the question as he watched Laura smile at the sight of dolphins swimming a short distance away from her namesake. They were currently anchored in the cove where they’d spent the night several weeks back, planning to do the same tonight, before her diloxin treatment in the morning.

“How do you propose we do that?” she asked him, her eye still on the lithe mammals diving and surfacing lazily amongst the waves.

He chuckled. “Swim with them.” It was something he’d enjoyed as a boy whenever they’d vacationed on the southern coasts. The Caprican gray dolphin was a small, docile and sociable creature that often sought out human contact. If they got in the water, there was a chance these might come to her.

She sighed at his reply and he knew why — medical restrictions. It wasn’t the first time she’d been annoyed with the no-bath, no-swimming edict of her doctor. He thought he might have a solution, though.

In the military-issue medical kit he’d picked up from Cottle, there was a waterproof bandage that might just let her get into the water for a bit. It was specifically designed to be exposed to water for a number of hours before moisture would eventually seep through; that included submersion. Marine field kits included them in operations planetside, when that was more likely.

Slipping below deck, he found the kit and got out one of the bandages. He went back topside then and sat beside her on the cushioned cockpit bench. She looked at him when he began opening the package, the crinkling catching her attention.

“What’s that?”

He just smiled, said, “Take down your top.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You think that’ll work.”

“Military issue,” he explained. “They put them in field kits. Used to keep a wound dry.”

She looked at the bandage in his hand, which looked different from the kind she had in the cabinet at home. Apparently that was enough to convince her because she shrugged her left arm from her swimsuit and pulled the material down, exposing her breast and the crescent scar along the side.

He was a man; he took a moment to appreciate what he was seeing before he placed the bandage over the area, making sure the sealing edges were flush to her skin with no bubbling or creases. He leaned closer as he did so, running his fingertip slowly along the edge to inspect the seal, and she teased him.

“Enjoying yourself?”

Grinning and chuckling softly, he said, “Yeah,” because there really was no need to prevaricate. He liked her breasts. He liked looking at them and touching them and she knew it. He’d only look like an idiot if he denied any of it, so he didn’t, and was treated to a radiant and knowing smile when he finished his task and helped her get her arm back into the appropriate place.

He rose then and went over to the back of the boat. There, he toed off his shoes and reached over the railing to lower and lock down the swim platform, then stepped over and affixed the ladder after retrieving it from the cockpit stowage.

Once he had everything secured, he stripped off his shirt and tossed it over with his shoes and helped Laura over onto the deck. “Ready?” he asked.

She nodded and he jumped off feet first after double checking the depth of the water, making sure he wasn’t going to hit bottom and possibly break a leg. She joined him as he resurfaced then together, they swam toward the shallows.

They were about in about chest deep water when the dolphins took interest and headed toward them. Spotting them, Bill pointed them out to Laura. Excitement radiated off her as they came closer, swimming back and forth, as if checking them out.

Finally, one of them braved closer and Bill reached out and gave it a stroke along its body as it passed. It came back for more, moving from his touch to Laura’s as she extended her arm out.

“Gods, they’re so smooth,” she exclaimed.

“Yeah,” he rumbled and watched her touch another one of the animals as it decided it wanted attention, too.

“You know, I remember teaching about these but I’d never seen them in anything but pictures or aquariums. Never like this,” she said softly as she petted the newcomer, who tossed its head up out of the water and chattered happily. “Amazing,” she breathed as it swam away.

Seeing her exhilaration made him glad he’d thought about the medical kit. She had been in such an amazing mood since the other night, when he’d given her the necklace and he’d decided he wanted marriage ink, and he was glad to see it continue knowing what awaited her in the morning, and in the days following.

One of the bigger of the dolphins came in now, swimming ‘round behind them, brushing against Laura’s back. She let out a little surprised sound then giggled, apparently not having seen it coming. She turned to touch it as well as the one passing in front of her. Her eyes flickered up to Bill as she did and she smiled brighter finding him watching her.

“This is just amazing,” she reiterated.

He agreed and they spent the better part of a quarter-hour just petting the creatures before they finally decided to move on, likely to find food.

Laura’s smile remained in place as she shielded her eyes from the glare of sunlight and watched the pod venture out to the open waters, and the expression remained a fixture through much of the afternoon and evening. When it came bedtime, though, it changed, muted into one of pensiveness, edged with understandable anxiety.

Bill was already in the sleeping berth, stretched out in his bedclothes, when she came out of the small head, a hairbrush in her hand. She didn’t say anything, just came over and sat on the edge of the bed and began brushing the wild mass of deep red and gold locks. Each drawing of the brush through the long, curling strands came in time with the lap of water against the hull, striking an almost melancholy note that fit the mood filling the cabin.

After a few moments, Bill moved, pushing himself up and moving his pillow to cushion his back from the shelf at the head of the bunk. He beckoned Laura to him then, a hand covering hers and stilling it, taking the brush from her as he spread his legs, making space for her, and rumbled soothingly, “Come here.”

She came, situating herself in the spot he’d made, folding her arms atop her raised knees and resting her cheek against her forearms. Once she was settled, he resumed what she’d started, drawing the brush from the crown of her head down to the end in long, smooth strokes. She sighed occasionally, let out a hum or two as he worked out tangles and kinks until it shone like spun copper in the subdued lamplight.

“My sister had long hair,” he rasped at some point, not sure why, just that he remembered that about her. And that it had been beautiful.

“Dark like yours?” Laura murmured.

“Yeah,” he said, a memory of Tamara sitting in the floor in front of their mother, legs akimbo, to have her hair brushed until it looked like wet ink.

“Did you brush it for her?”

That question amused Bill. He’d been a prepubescent boy; no way, no how would he have brushed his sister’s hair. It just wasn’t done … unless you were considering putting something in it to piss her off. Chuckling, he asked, “Would you have let a ten-year-old boy brush your hair when you were thirteen?”

He sensed her smile and heard it in her reply, “Probably not.”

“Didn’t think so,” he rumbled. “That would have gotten me killed at school.”

She actually giggled at that. “And just look at you now, brushing a girl’s hair, and you’re … how old are you?”

Bill laughed at the near silliness of the question coming at this point of their relationship. “Now you ask?” he teased, not sure why they’d never talked about their respective ages except that it just hadn’t come up. He’d been content that they were both adults and not young any longer.

She shifted while he chuckled, turning partway to get a better look at him over her shoulder. She was smiling ear to ear and her eyes burned bright with curiosity. “Give, Bill.”

There was a command in those two words and he obeyed it like a good soldier. “Sixty-seven,” he told her and watched her eyes widen. Almost as quickly, her eyes narrowed with something distantly related to annoyance.

“Are you having me on?”

He just laughed a soft laugh. “Told you I was an old man.”

Stunned silence greeted his words and he watched the gears turning in her mind as her eyes searched his. Then, her expression softening, a smile fluidly sliding across the line of her mouth, she whispered, “You served in the war longer than I’d realized.”

“Seven years.” That was all he said as she continued to look at him.

“Your youth,” she stated softly.

Bill said nothing but conceded inwardly that she was right. He had lost much of his youth in those years, emerging on the other side of war older than his chronological age, a change his father had noted afterward. He hadn’t lost it all, though, or it had at least been revived since meeting her. When he was with he, he felt invigorated and singularly vital in ways he wasn’t sure he’d ever been before.

“You make me feel young again,” he told her and she cocked her head just the littlest bit. It was a demure action, one of those things she did that never failed to make him want to wrap her in his arms and hold her close to him.

He didn’t resist either impulse, setting aside the brush with one hand while extending his other arm to her in invitation She put herself in his embrace, resting her head on his shoulder, leaning against his chest and belly. The boat rocked them gently as she whispered, “You make me feel alive.”

That confession stole his breath away, the words themselves so simple, the message they carried anything but. Her next words held more of the same and he listened as she told him she was glad she had met him now, when she was old enough to truly appreciate him and what they shared.

“I wouldn’t have been ready for this … fullness,” she confessed, then shifted to look up at him. He met her gaze, unflinching as she continued frankly, breathing, “I was empty for so long and I wanted it that way.”

She shook her head against his chest, her voice tinged with something akin to annoyance as she continued, “No, I kept myself that way. It was like having an empty stomach and eating just enough to keep going, never enough to get full or be nourished. And everyone happily obliged my appetite for just enough.”

Her hand clenched into a fist where it lay against his chest.

“I pushed away friends, who it turns out weren’t really friends at all. I took a lover who could give me just what I needed to get by and not have to worry about him wanting or giving me more.” She smiled almost brutally. “I starved myself from human contact and connection until I didn’t even want what little I had allowed myself,” she whispered then suddenly breathed easier as a different look came over her, one of intense love. “I wanted something different then, needed something different, but I had no idea what it was or where or how to get it until I bumped into you in that hallway.”

While he struggled to breathe as his heart and lungs constricted at the picture her words painted, she touched his face and whispered, “I felt my heart beat with you. ”

A tear slipped from his eye and burned a path down his cheek. He hadn’t even felt it gathering but he felt it now, the warm tickle of it as it traveled through the ridges and valleys of his cheek. It likely would have continued on to his chin had she not eased up to kiss it away with a breathy uttering of his name.

He didn’t know what to say but he knew what he felt as he threaded a hand into her hair and gently palmed the back of her skull. He just didn’t have the words for it beyond simply acknowledging that he was full, and it was because of her.

When her mouth moved to cover his, he thought he might burst with it all. He risked it, kissing her back as tenderly as she kissed him, hooking his arm around and under her legs and lifting her, turning to lay her on the bed beside him. Blessedly, he found his way atop her with more grace than he had thought himself capable, without relinquishing her mouth for anything more than a hurried breath.

She undulated under him, her legs falling open as he settled between them, blanketing her body with his own. His weight pressed her down into the mattress, which groaned as he moved his body against hers, clothing causing little hitches, catches, and a delicious friction that had them both groaning in approval.

But it wasn’t enough.

Her hands tugged at his tanks and pulled them up his body. He raised long enough to strip them off, his tags inadvertently coming away with them. He tossed all of them out of the way without a care and they landed on the deck with a clank and the softest of thumps. Her gown followed, his mouth watering as she lifted her hips for him, then her shoulders so he could bare her.

And she was bare, wholly and wonderfully bare. And whispering, urgently, “I need you.”

He still couldn’t speak, but he could kiss her so he did while her hands pushed at his boxers, moving them down, just out of the way. Warm fingers curled around his cock then and spread the slick fluid emerging from the tip against her sex as she guided him down and down to the sweet nirvana where she needed him and he needed to be.

He sank home, moaning at finding her more than ready for him, giving them one more victory against age and modern medicine, against the motherfrakker of all diseases.

She arched under him, her hands reaching for the shelf and gripping the edge. He planted his own in the mattress, to either side of her waist and, hunched, he undulated his hips against hers, drawing his cock in and out of her in short, sweet strokes, seeking…

“Oh, gods, yes!”

… and finding, that place that she felt him most keenly.

“Yes,” he echoed and shut his eyes, focused, focused, focused.

Control. Discipline. Love.

Even. Paced.

Targeted.

Patience.

She was keening, hands grasping at his chest…

Yes. There. Right there.

… grasping his arms as heels dug into his lower back.

He looked, saw tears escaping eyes clenched shut, her mouth slack around hoarse, labored breaths. He saw joy and love. He saw his wife.

“Cum for me,” he rasped, his control slipping and the fullness growing, the sight of her lost in ecstasy filling him with a blissful sort of agony. He needed her as much as she needed him and he needed her now, the urgency threatening to overtake his senses completely and leave him little more than a savage, rutting beast between the thighs of the woman he loved.

“Baby,” he pleaded and eased a pair of fingers over her clit, caressing, feeling her pulse, her…

“Feel your heart beat, Laura,” he rasped and she shattered for him, on him, easily securing his own surrender to the inevitable.

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