Chapter 46: Chapter 46

The house was one of those old summer homes on the bay: one big room with a porch and two smaller rooms off the back. It was no treat in the winter when the wind blew off the water with a damp chill and the lack of insulation made the house hard to heat, but in the warm weather the rickety house was full of charm. The view was all grandeur: an expanse of water held in the wide curve of the bay, the mountain rising from the foot of the far shore, cloaked now in the brown grasses of summer, with the darker green of oak and bay in the gullies and the lighter green of willows growing in the

streambeds.

Jackson didn’t own the house. He was renting. Abigail parked on the road and walked up the narrow drive. Common wrens twittered in the bushes and out in the

marsh she could see an egret standing on one leg, stately, looking for lunch in the tall reeds. They were friends. They’d met, had a few beers, gone hiking. She liked him, but she wasn’t sure how much. He hadn’t put on the hard press. He was even-tempered, reserved. Maybe he was waiting for something. Abby didn’t know; he hadn’t told her. The door stood ajar. The house was quiet and cool. She didn’t call out, thinking he was working outside. The house was somebody’s second home. When he had time, Jackson paid the rent in labor. He cleared brush, fixed fences, replaced broken windowpanes. He liked to sit in a wooden chair in the evenings with a beer in his hand, watching the marsh and cataloguing his next round of chores.

Abby left her shoes by the door and prowled to the back rooms, curious. In summer, everyone lived mostly out-of-doors. She’d never seen the rest of the house. She was brought up short, silently, in the doorway to the bedroom. She’d found Jackson. Not the man she thought she knew—the modest East Coast geologist with the lopsided smile. This Jackson was naked and held his penis in one hand, working the shaft slowly in his tight fist. He had no hair at all on his body. Except for the hair on his head, a sandy brown, he was shaven smooth all over. And he was wearing stockings, flesh colored thigh- highs that clasped the top of his legs in lacy elastic bands. His eyes were closed. Abby stood, barely breathing. Her belly flip-flopped, the desire surprising her. Looking at the familiar face, reddish color staining his cheekbones,

it was as if a finch had metamorphosed into an eagle. Not so modest, nor so reserved. He had a kink or two and that made him interesting. Her eyes went back to his cock. He moved slowly, teasing himself. Near the begin- ning, then, she thought. She watched the way his hand curled tight around the flesh, viscerally felt the pleasure he was giving himself and wanted it to be her hand. The thought made her go wet in a liquid rush.

He stopped moving and Abby glanced at his face. He was looking at her. Still waiting? Sweat gleamed on the delicate skin below his eyes and on his eyelashes. The grip on his cock did not slacken. “I’m not going to apologize for this,” he said evenly, eyes moving to indicate the stockings. She thought it was the stockings. “Did I say you should?” Abby asked, coming into the room. “I’m wet. I like it.” She knelt down between his legs, pushing them farther apart to make room for herself. He said nothing, neither inviting nor rejecting. She ran her palms from his ankles to the tops of his thighs, burrowing her fingers under the elastic. He had them on for a reason. His fingers flexed and his cock jerked in his hand. “Do you mind?” she asked. He still did not speak. He was guarded, Abby realized, waiting to see what she would do. But his fingers opened and Abby’s fingers replaced his on his cock. She squeezed firmly. He was hot and silky and slick from a little precome that

emerged from the slit on the head of his penis.

All that she knew of him, Abby thought, was drift, flotsam pushed up by the tide and left on the beach. It

was politeness and manners and social mores. It didn’t do much for her. It made him like everyone else, nodding and smiling at the appropriate moments. But this was a man with wary blue eyes and shaved skin and stockings and a hot erection growing and throbbing in her hands. This, she wanted. She moved closer, shifting her grip to the base of his cock and taking him into her mouth. He made a soft sound, the switch from the pressure of her hand to the warmth of her mouth making him flinch. She sucked him gently, giving him time to adjust, letting him go long enough to lick and kiss her way up the thick shaft and run her tongue around the rim of the circum- cised tip. She lifted her head to look at him. “Do you want this?”

“Yes,” he finally spoke. “I do.” He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “A lot.”

Abby nodded, sucking the length of him back into her mouth, as much of him as she could take. She moved her head, pushing him to the back of her throat and breathing through her nose to keep from gagging. His breathing changed, becoming fast and uneven. His hands fisted in the sheet and she wondered if he was reluctant to touch her. Sort that out later, she thought. Or now? “Hold my head,” she told him. “Move your hips.” He did it with an alacrity that was gratifying. She gripped his legs with her freed hands and let him use her. She held herself immobile and he thrust his cock, hot and purplish, in and out of her mouth, hands tightening in her hair.

Her own fingers curled, pressed, making runs in the stockings, then rents, then great tears. She tangled her fingers in the material and laid scratches into the smooth skin of his thighs. Men were always hairy and this one wasn’t. It excited her and she flattened her tongue on the underside of his shaft, soft, soft and wet for him to slide against. He came, stiffening in every muscle, arching beneath her. Slowly he relaxed, breathing like a bellows. Abby rested her face in the crease of thigh and groin, breathing as hard as he was, breathing in the scent of him, licking the salty taste of come from her lips. His hands, open now, rested on her head. “Jesus, Abigail,” he said, something like wonder in his voice. “That was no bird-watching hike in the park.”

“No,” she agreed, smiling and turning her face to kiss his cooling skin. “I think that was much better.”