-
IC 2076
-
Al registered very little of what Alyce said, but by the time she was headed for the water he had gathered his wits and sussed out what had happened. Dammit, the burn was offense enough, but naturally she was taking the whole thing as some sort of soul-killing personal rejection.
He caught up to her as she approached the water to fill the can. Grabbing her shoulders firmly, he didn’t let her stop at the water’s edge but guided her down the steps into the pool. Yeah, he was still wearing clothes, but he’d been wet before. “Nuts ta cookin’, toots, first thing is git that burn into this here cold water. Jist a first-degree, but smarts like a sumbitch, no doubt, an’ the simplest treatment’s the best way ta start.”
She was shivering from a combination of cold, pain, and mostly heart-hurt. He turned her to face him as they stood waist-deep in the semi-natural pond. He looked up at her. “Alyce, I am truly sorry about that. Filled ta the marrow with regret. I’d like ta hope ya know that even if’n ya irked me some, I’d never inna lifetime of eternities treat ya thus. Fact is, ya caught me comin’ out’n one doozy of a dream, an’ the sort what’s middlin’ hard ta shake free of all at once. An’ fer all that, though, reckon I am dreadfully appalled at the rough treatment ya done suffered, be my hand somnambulized or no.”
His hands had been stroking her shoulders, but his right reached down to grasp the toned softness of her ass, and his left forefinger touched her chin in a way that, with no physical pressure, somehow pulled her quivering lips down toward his, as a magnet would pull metal. “Jist ta put my mouth where my mouth is, an’ so ya can see the proof o’ what I say, this is how I kiss when I’m awake….”
-
Alyce’s sensors picked up Al’s movement, but she was still surprised when he reached out to hold onto her shoulders, propelling her to stand on the lower steps so that the water lapped up above her burn. As he turned her around to face him, she almost screamed out in anger and pain before his words were replayed back to her consciousness. What he was saying was clearly not something Al would normally say to her, which adds to her confusion and delays her reaction.
Her heart almost stops when he touches her ass and pulls her chin down to a kiss. The electricity running through her body as his lips touched hers started her heart beating again. This was a kiss that had been waiting for more than eight years and contained all the stored passion of those years. Alyce presses her naked body up against him as she gives herself to him as completely as she can in a kiss. Some part of her mutated brain tells her that this is a one-off and might not be repeated and may certainly go nowhere beyond this kiss, so she channels all of her considerable love for this man into the kiss. Al would need to be dead to not recognize the meaning of the kiss.
196
-
Even through his shirt Al could feel her arousal against his chest as she pressed herself to him. And keeping his own body’s response from her would have been futile as his right hand pulled her loins into himself.
He allowed the moment to stretch for a frenzied minute or two before lacing the fingers of his left hand into her hair and pulling them apart.
“Ol’ Al ain’t one fer makin’ excuses. But it’s important ta me that ya know that were an’ accident born o’ confused night-visions an’ a mind lost in slumber’s embrace.”
-
Alyce’s body does indeed recognize Al’s arousal and she presses against his hardness, making sure that he knows that she knows. She wants the kiss to last an eternity, but all too soon, Alyce feels her head pulled back, moaning softly as they break apart. She puts her forehead against his and softly responds to his words as her hands lightly hold onto his sides. “You certainly say all the right things to a girl, Al. I know that you would not hurt me. I should have been more careful when waking you and I am sorry to have put you in this situation. However, I cannot fault that we have ended up in this position and would really enjoy it if you were of a mind to continue the embrace for a bit longer.”
197
-
“A bit,” he said, finding her lips once more. It was harder pulling away the second time, which was saying something.
But he did – about an inch-and-a-half. He could still taste her, feel her breath on his face. “Well,” he rasped through tobacco-ravaged vocal cords, “in light o’ yer compromised state o’ dress, reckon if this were that book ya like so much, I’d be one o’ the cads or scoundrels or whatnot.”
-
The second kiss is even better than the first, giving Alyce every indication that a third one would be even better yet. There is no way she could hide the passion and desire she feels for him and she puts all of herself into the kiss. When Al breaks from her, she sighs and places her head against his chest, smelling deeply of him, and chuckles softly. “Where we are in the story depends on you, Al. We could be in either of two places in one of those books. This could be the point where the cad remains a cad for reasons known only to himself and pulls away, leaving the heroine to continue to pursue him, or it could be the point where the cad realizes that he does truly love the heroine and takes her into his arms before carrying her away to a soft blanket and making love to her. Personally, I know which part of the story I would prefer this to be.”
198
-
Not quite as illiterate as he might appear, Al was fully aware that in the second place she referred to, a certain ceremony intervened between the realization of love and the soft blanket.
But it didn’t matter, because, like it or not, his past wrongs had doomed him to the first place she described. Here again, however, he figured her description differed from Austen’s pattern. “Nah, that ain’t how I read it. Way I figure it, the cad’s a cad cuz he doesn’t pull away. Takes advantage when he oughtn’t. Let’s his actions imply promises what’s broken by the very act o’ makin’ ’em. An’ that’d be a worse sin against ya than the unlooked-fer buffets that recently marred our association.”
He let her head stay where it was as long as she wanted. Everything he’d said was true, but at the same time he knew he was full of shit – the lifestyle she’d led (the very one that was such a large part of his infatuation with her) rendered such thoughts of convention and propriety moot if not utterly alien. And yet such thoughts were all he had to cling to in the moment, enough to keep him thinking with his brain instead of his heart or loins.
-
Alyce smiles, her lips moving against Al’s chest as she breathes in the scent of him. “Mmmm. You could be right about that sort of cad, I guess. So that leaves us with at least three places in the story. However, I will point out that in none of the cases does the heroine give up hope and she clearly resolves to love the cad until her dying breath. We are, neither of us, normal lovers, Al. I am completely convinced that we have will last longer than either of us will live. Please forgive me for loving you. I know that you love me. What I do not understand is why you will not let me into your life. I would spend an eternity being your helper, your soulmate, your everything, if only you would let me.”
199
-
Al kissed her on the forehead and stepped away from her, climbing the steps out of the pool. It was that or lose control – of his body or of his words, he honestly wasn’t sure which would go first.
Clothes and boots soaked, he hadn’t brought a change. Looks like it was back to the hippie life for a while. Which wouldn’t make things any easier. Peeling off the wet clothes, he said, “Better or worse, ain’t as though they’s a choice in it. Some actions a man takes, they open doors. Others close ’em. Ol’ Al’s mostly done the closin’ type. Reckon I’m mighty sorry that leaves ya in a pickle. Ain’t my intention ta rankle.”
He sat his bare ass down on a sleeping bag and dug in one of the packs for the Lucky Strikes. His eyes stayed on Alyce the whole time – closed doors or not, he wasn’t gay, and the only sight on earth more beautiful than her naked was her naked and wet.
-
Alyce groans inwardly at Al’s words, sad that he still refuses to let her in, but she displays nothing of her sadness as she turns to scoop water into the pot and returns to the cook stove. She knows that the slight hole in his armor has been patched and that anything she can say will only be the very wrong thing to say, so she concentrates on making the meal. She cannot, however, keep the smile from her lips as she recalls those very wonderful kisses in extremely vivid detail. The curse of her mutated mind is that she can remember everything, such as every painfully excruciating detail of her torture at the hands of that witch or the emotional pain of returning to Cambodia to find that Al had left her without any sort of warning or forwarding address, despite promising love and a night in a penthouse room. The benefit of her mutated mind is that she can remember everything, such as the wonder and joy of the kisses Al has just bestowed on her. She chuckles as she considers that she will be able to call up every sensory feeling of those kisses as well as the emotional pleasure they brought her.
Her sure hands move deftly as she prepares the meal and she begins to hum a cello concerto. When the meal is ready, she carefully checks to see if Al is awake or asleep. As amazing as the kisses had been, she has no desire to have Al repeat his internal remorse for hurting her. He has enough weighing on his mind.
200
-
Al ate the prepared meal happily enough, and was lavish in his praise of Alyce’s campfire culinary prowess.
There was a good breeze, and by the time he’d washed the cooking kit his clothes were dry enough to put back on. It wasn’t a cold day, and it was hardly a question of modesty – hell, his companion was blind, theoretically anyway. it was simply that Al was not a nudist flower-child.
After that, he was fairly at a loss as to what to do with himself. He’d feared it might be thus. But he was here for Alyce, so he sat quietly and smoked, making himself available for whatever it was one did when camping for camping’s sake.
-
Alyce eats and works alongside Al to clean things up and stow the cooking gear away. Afterwards, she stands in front of him and smiles. “In some places, we would need to set a guard for the evening and night, but we are fairly safe here. Alfie and my little drone friends are watching the area. Would you like me to read to you from our zombie book? I am finding that I enjoy the plot.”
201
-
“Yer night, toots, whatever strikes yer fancy. Much as I hate ta say it, though, you’d best put somethin’ on first,” Al said, reaching for the bag where he’d secreted her clothes. “Night comin’ on, ain’t gittin’ any warmer out here.”
-
Alyce smiles and nods as she reaches for the clothes Al allows her to wear. Stripping can easily be considered a sensual art, with the practiced expert able to titillate the viewer, and Alyce is certainly an expert at that. However, Al finds that she is also a master of the art of dressing sensually. She makes a show of putting every bit of clothing on in such a manner that a normal viewer is left wishing for more. She can only hope that Al is a normal viewer since he is the only viewer.
When she is dressed, she pulls two beers from her pack and hands Al one before lighting a couple of cigarettes, giving one to her companion. When ready, she accesses her digital copy of “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, opening it to the page last used and continues the story. She has not read ahead and so every word is new to her and her excitement spills over to her reading.
202
-
Alyce read for a long time. Al was happy to let her. It was otherwise a quiet night, though he occasionally heard telltale sounds of her creature lurking about the perimeter. Well, points to it if it served a useful purpose.
Eventually Al decided he might as well think about sleeping. “Well, ya got the tent there if’n ya want it. Reckon ol’ Al’s more of an open sky sort.”
-
At Al’s words, Alyce stops reading and slips a digital bookmark at the page. “As you will, Al.” She pauses for a few seconds before continuing. “Would you like a bit of company during the night? Just companionship, of course.”
203
-
“Well, it’s not a small sleepin’ bag,” Al said, stubbing out his cigarette. “An’ neither of us is very big….”
-
Alyce smiles and moves to help Al with his sleeping bag, removing her clothes and crawling in beside him when all is ready. She curls up with her back to Al and whispers him a soft good night.
204
-
Alyce awoke to the smell of coffee and the sound of sizzling bacon. The sun was warm on her face. Al was squatting by a fire he’d built, his left hand holding a coffee cup, his right cracking eggs into a frying pan. The hellhound sat at the periphery of the camp, slobbering at the aroma of the food but apparently not daring to draw any closer. Occasionally Al tossed it a piece of bacon.
“Mornin’. Reckoned I’d cook fer once. Eat. Then tell me what ya got planned fer the day. Cuz all I see is flat moor.”
-
Alyce sits up and stretches. She feels a bit saddened that Al had not taken the opportunity to ravish her virginal body during the night. After all, he had had her at his complete mercy. Then she shakes her head; no, that only happens in her dreams. Al is not like that and she has, of course, not strictly speaking been a virgin for many years. Smiling at Al, she still considers what a pleasure it would have been and sighs a bit at the loss.
“Good morning to you, as well, Al. Thank you for cooking. Let me go wash up and I will be right back.” Putting words to actions, Alyce stands up and walks to the small pond, crouching down to splash cold water on her face. She is smiling again when she returns to the small fire, stopping to pet Alfie before grabbing a mug of coffee. “This is very good, Al, and the eggs smell great. As to what to do, well, my original plan was to take you on a week-long journey through the Cornish paradise that is my home. However, you need to be leaving tomorrow, which must cut that trek short. There is a small grotto only an hour or so away from here that I would like to show you.”
Alyce waves a hand at the vista around them. “As to the moor, I am sad that all you see is a flat expanse. The ground all about us actually changes elevation by several feet, but the vegetation and the horizon put up some sort of illusionary effect that makes it seem flat. The path through the moor is sometimes narrow and the ground to either side can be very tricky for the unwary. I would think that we can make the grotto, soak in the majesty of the area, then return to the vehicle in time to be at the manor before dark.”
205
Log in to reply.