December, 2002

Whisper on a night so black and still that time seemed a strange concept. Even the waves lapping beneath our perch were muted.

"What is it that holds your attention thus?" he asked me, his voice this caress that seemed to drip down my skin.

"The stars, beloved. I'm still looking at the one you showed me last."

Waiting. Faithful to the moment. 

He never has disappointed me yet, Diary. And in this faithful moment he crept behind me and melded his body to mine. The briefest of moments for he was still not quite used to the freedom he could enjoy with me in such settings. Arms around my waist, mouth at my neck, bent with me as I watched the stars through a telescope. And then he slipped away as if he were nothing in this night except an imagined thought or need.

My ability to see the stars was improved by the power of the lens through which I searched across so many miles of cold space.

My ability to feel him had improved by necessity - because of the brevity of his physical intimacies in moments such as these.

"Do you not believe, sweetheart, that you've studied that particular star well enough by now?" Slow, measured words drifting to me across the space of a few feet.

"Perhaps. Will you show me another?"

"You know I am always your servant. Your most eager and devoted servant, my dear. Most eager." His voice, so full of potent power, now dropped deep in what he knew was his sure-fire key to my lust.

Against the lens, I closed the eye that had been searching the sky. Now with both eyes shut, I reflected on the way he touched me. How he might not have been touching me just then because he was a respectable distance away but how he was touching me nonetheless. He'd taught my skin how to search for the warmth of his hands, the hardness of his groin, the brush of his breath, the wetness of his tongue, the bite of his teeth.

I rose from where I was slightly bent at the telescope's eyepiece and glanced over my shoulder down toward where he rested atop the blanket I'd tossed on the dock so we'd have someplace to sit while we had waited for the stars to come out. His smile faded. His arms opened to me.

"Come, my little dear, and let us celebrate this night."

"The stars can wait, can't they?" I asked him softly.

He chuckled but it was a lascivious sound and so far from lighthearted that it made me dizzy. "Yes, sweetheart, I believe the stars will wait on you forever."

"You, on the other hand, cannot wait. Can you?" Reaching him, on my knees before where he sat, my hand on his chest, my eyes searching his.

"Pray, sweetheart, but you would not have me wait, would you?" His arm around my waist pulling me right up to his chest.

"Jack?" My whisper, falling evenly between us, catching on the warmth there, our mouths so close in the night, trying to keep him near me and knowing he was even then fighting his inbred decorum at the fact that we were touching this way out in the open air. "Have you ever done it under the stars?"

"Under the stars. Under the sun. Upon the sea. Upon a bed of greens in the forest."

My hand stroked his jaw and then enmeshed into the length of his hair. "Will you make love to me here, under these stars you're teaching me about? I love the way this feels out here, with you, in this element. Like anything could happen if we just let it."

Now his breath upon my neck. Deep voice. Rumbles echoing in his chest. "Would it not dishonor you, Ann, to be seen in such an open display?"

"There's no one to see, Jack. No lights here at the end of the dock. No one's on any of the neighboring docks. No one to see, Jack." Then adding a last thought, just to catch his reaction. "Though we are within earshot of the closest cabin."

His mouth was less than an inch from mine and still he hesitated to give me a taste. "Ah. I see. Then we would need to maintain silence. Do you believe this is possible? For either of us?"

"I wonder." Smiling to myself in memory of how little I seemed able to control my reactions to him when he was making love to me. "Are you brave enough, my Captain, to do this for me?"

His mouth slipped toward my ear. The softest voice I might have ever heard from him saying, "Is it my courage that is in question, sweetheart, or your control?"

My body shivered, long rolls of shivers from head to toe. I loved that voice, made all the more magnificent by the way I knew the volume it was capable of producing. We both looked back toward the shore. Calculating the distance we were from the nearest human ear.

We were at the end of a dock that raced about 75 yards out from the shore. The dock we were on began at the back door of a cabin I was borrowing for the night from a cousin of mine. The cabin was perched on the northern shore of Lake Pontchartrain. It was one of a long line of such ramshackle wooden camps along this portion of the shoreline. It had taken us about 40 minutes to get there from the center of New Orleans but we had left behind us city noise and city lights.

I'd brought Jack here to test out his new telescope, the gift he most enjoyed receiving from me this first Christmas we'd spent together. I'd also brought him here because it was about the only way for us to be alone. Over the last few days, we'd done the family gigs, great as always, but we'd had so little time by ourselves by comparison.

A moderate but decidedly chilly breeze from the lake licked our bodies. The old wood of the dock creaked beneath us. What would it feel like to be taken against its unforgiving roughness? I had no real idea why I would want to make love under these conditions.

No, you're so right. And now I know how well you've come to know me. Inside me, I knew just why I wanted to do this out in the open. I wanted to see what Jack was willing to do for me. I wanted to know how this big man would react to doing it under circumstances that he would surely consider risky and risqué. I wanted the thrill. The absolute thrill of believing I had coaxed him into the forbidden.

Jack was an unknown to me in so many ways. Most of the time, he seemed an overwhelming mix of ardent attentiveness, good humor, talented inquisitiveness, enthusiastic skill and absolute eager randiness. We were still getting to know each other.

Could he experiment this way? How could I draw out that side of Jack that would dictate? Where was the Jack that was capable of serious danger? I longed to find him, to experience what he could give me.

Our eyes were on each other again. I noted Jack was still not smiling. He regarded me with a critical tilt to his head. Chin down. Concentrating on my breasts now as I breathed deeply at the knowledge that he was so obviously considering my request.

His mouth reached up for mine and he sucked my tongue into him. Ardor defined. "My dear, you are certain of this game you invite me to play?"

His voice. A quality of command. Lethal in its ability to cause my heart to beat faster.

The slightest of nods and a quick intake of breath. The only signs he needed from me. And what did I receive in return for falling under his command? The benevolence of benign dictatorship.

He already knew what he wanted to do. Just as he'd been so able to instantly device battle plans aboard his quarterdeck or aloft in the riggings - weighing the sea, winds, opposing captains, the ships - every move and countermove already plotted in his mind before he made the first tack. In that same way, he had already decided how this would go between us now that he had joined the game. He was, first and foremost, a master tactician.

No other words. Just his gestures, certain looks, a raised eyebrow. I believe it was the first time I ever saw the absorbed face of Captain Aubrey that his sailors had watched with such infinite unease over the possibility he might have been displeased with them, yet with an eagerness to follow where he led because they knew he would not fail. He no longer had that soft look about him, the one that I'd grown so attached to because in it I always saw my romantic, cuddly Jack. But tonight I was with Lucky Jack himself. I sensed the tension in his muscles and the rigid set to his spine as he regarded me.

His hands cupped my face and he kissed me. With an adventurous tongue. With no reserve. On the attack already. Then abrupt with his orders. "Stand before me. I wish to see you."

"If that is your wish, my Captain. I am yours to command."

"Just so. And make it quick."

He made a gesture with his hands and, even if I had not already guessed, he made clear to me that how he wished to see me was without my clothes. What that did to me, you just cannot understand, I would think. I never even hesitated to follow his direction and it felt like stepping into another world with him.

Not too quick of a strip, though. Because ... because I wanted him to correct me. To give me that jump of startle to recognize that he could be cold toward me. Low voice but he fairly barked at me when I fumbled over my bra; a half-whispered raw order from him to "step lively."

I just stopped in mid motion to take him in. Until he scowled and rose before me, annoyance evident in his every movement. His hands made short work of my remaining clothes. Brisk impatience. And when I was as he wished, his arms enveloped me.

Making me feel smaller, more vulnerable, less sure. His mouth captured mine and he kissed with such zeal that I felt myself being bent backwards at the waist. And then his mouth was pulling in the skin along my neck, my shoulder. Isn't it amazing when a man can so focus you on what his mouth is doing that you really do forget that he still has other parts of his anatomy that can bring you such unbridled pleasure?

Perhaps that's why it took my breath away to feel his hand stroke down my buttocks and pinch me hard. I do know that it woke me to the rest of him because I jumped so at that pinch and gasped at the way his body felt against me as he drew me tight to his groin.

Was this my Jack? Who'd barely begun to hold my hand in public? Who'd blushed when I'd kissed him under the mistletoe the night before and my cousin snapped a picture? Who loved me like there was no end but only in private?

I let him yank me roughly back down to the blanket. The blanket did little to really cushion my back from the unforgiving angles of the deck's lumber. When Jack draped a leg between mine and his hands touched me, I fought the urge to writhe about under the assault. Instead, I stayed as still as I could for fear I'd scrape my back raw against the roughness of the planks beneath me.

Can you bear with me but a moment, Diary? Let me whisper this to you, then. As much as I craved having his bare skin rush across my own nakedness, there was something about being stark naked under his fully clothed body that gave these long minutes an intensity that made me bring my breath into my lungs at a ragged pace.

In the darkness that covered us, his eyes were mysteries to me. His familiar hands moved across me, making me wet and impatient. He spoke to me only once in this time, and that was to warn me from crying out.

I was reduced, in this way, to a woman unable to move as she wished and forbidden to be free with my voice. And Jack was another man, in some ways. For sure, I believe, I saw a part of Jack that was capable of anything under the right circumstances.

When I felt his fingers, solid and wise, stroke over my folds, my knees dropped open and his sudden harsh kiss on my breast told me he liked the speedy response. When those fingers tormented me to an orgasm, his light grunt in my ear was the mark of his approval.

He moved from me quickly as I recovered, shifting lower on my body, lifting my hips and his mouth began to work on me with a sense of unbridled urgency. When there came from me a helpless cry in the onslaught of another, stronger coming, I was punished. He let me go below and placed his hand firmly over my lips. His face came so close to mine that even in the still blackness, I could read the danger in his eyes. His lips dropped to my ear but he must have thought better of saying anything.

When my chest stopped heaving from what he'd given me, he replaced his hand with his mouth and I wrapped my arms tight around his neck because I wanted more from the kiss than was possible. His arms around my back and he pulled me up until I was sitting next to him. He never let up on the kiss and I got lost in it.

Until I felt his arms leave me and then heard the telltale sound of a zipper's release. I relaxed my hold on him and he shimmied his jeans down his hips. Two strong hands wrapped around my forearms and he lifted me over him.

Mouth at my ear, a shushing sound from him done in this tone of authority that was his alone. Facing him, astride his lap, feeling his hardness between us. Briefest time to enjoy the eroticism of the way only the most vital part of his anatomy was bared for our pleasure. And then his hands at my hips encouraged me to rise up; I grasped his hardness and placed him at my slickened opening.

Light spilling from an opening door at a neighboring camp splashed softly across us and we both paused. I could see his expression; he was concentrating on me but judging the danger of detection.

Very deliberately, I lowered myself on him. His eyes flickered shut and he sucked in a harsh breath.

The new light was gone as quickly as it had appeared. But from several piers over, we heard footsteps and voices. I turned to look; two people, strolling toward the end of their dock, three docks down. As I watched, knowing they were not looking our way, I began slowly rocking against Jack. The couple reached the end of their pier and almost instantly they were locked in an embrace.

Looking back at Jack, meeting his eyes. Giving him a slow smile and picking up my rhythm. He scowled at me in concentration, but he didn't stop me.

Instinct took over. I was much too far gone anyway. I reached for his lips at the same time my arms grabbed around his neck. I began grinding against him, seeking my release, determined to bring him with me. At first, it was as if he would follow, grudgingly, along with me. But then, something changed and he took over.

His arms wrapped me up tight to him and his mouth ground hard against mine, sucking my tongue in. He began driving hard up into me below while he pulled me down even more insistently against him.

Between the feeling of doing something naughty, Jack's untapped intensity and the way it felt like I might have been leading him into sin or simply releasing him to reveal a different, more dangerous man of determination, I was nearly gone by that point. Teetering on that edge, welcoming the oblivion of release but fighting it to savor the sweet thrill of impending doom.

Jack's tiny whimper against my lips, this infinitesimal groaning supplication ... it was the final push and there I went.

Oh! We were there together. Passion ... abyss ... coming hard ... struggling ... reduced to silent pleading ... unable to speak ... unwilling to be the one to break the faithful silence.

Our mouths were open against each other but we had long since stopped kissing. When it was over, after I'd felt him spasming inside me, after he'd felt my body grip his cock and shudder in his arms as the orgasms swept through us ... we stayed together, rocking gently in place, watching each other through half open eyes.

He pulled me down atop him as he laid back on the blanket. Cuddling me in his arms, kissing my forehead as our breathing slowed.

In silence again. No more wildly beating heart making me deaf. Only the soft lapping of water along the dock. In that silence, we listened as the other couple talked, their words indistinct sounds on the breeze. Long minutes later, we listened to their footsteps retreat back inside their camp.

"Will you show me another star, Jack?" I whispered to him, feeling myself shake as my body registered the night's chill.

He slipped me down to where I was lying next to him on the blanket, pulling its edges up to cover me. "Let me show you my favorite constellation in this hemisphere first, sweetheart," he replied, soft but with the slightest edge still in that voice.

His hand lifted to point and he drew my attention to the sky above us. I nestled in closer to his side, seeking more of his warmth. And listened as he described Perseus, hidden from my eyes until he pointed out the various stars making up its shape.

And why is it that you like Perseus so much, I asked him. Because, he told me, he loved the tale of how Perseus, on his way back from his quest, had seen Andromeda chained to a rock and had rescued her from the sea monster Cetus. Any sailor loves to hear of sea monsters being vanquished, he quipped, before becoming more serious.

"And, after he rescued her, Perseus and Andromeda fell in love. Both were placed among the stars," he said, telling me of Andromeda's own constellation.

My romantic Jack back with me again, I knew. I wondered if he admired Perseus because he was a hero or because he was a lover. 

Perhaps because he was both. Like Jack.