Except when it rains like this. Sheets. Cats and dogs. Buckets. Then there’s nothing to do but fuck. If it keeps up like this they probably won’t even go out, he told her. Then he stepped into the shower. Katherine finished brushing her teeth and then she made coffee and made the bed and now she watches him shave. She likes the way he tilts his chin as he maneuvers the razor. “Want some coffee,” she asks him, and he grunts yes, and she goes to pour it. In the little kitchen she pours the coffee and watches the rain rattle the window. She wonders what it would be like out on the boat in rain like this. It might be fun. No way to fish in this stuff. Maybe they’d fuck. That might be fun.

So far they haven’t actually fucked on the boat, but she’d like to try it sometime. Lots of kisses and hugs, lots of touches, sexual touches, once so much of it that she came, a breathless gasp of coming which made her feel like she was falling overboard, but his finger had her hooked, slippery though she was, and afterward, after she had calmed down from that startlingly quick plunge into ecstasy, she thought, if he keeps this up I’ll come again, and a moment later she felt the wiggle, it caught her cunt just right, and she was lost. Wave after wave of coming.

Once on the boat she tried to suck him. She had his shorts unbuttoned and his cock out, and the bobbing of the boat made his cock bob, or so it seemed, and when she tried to kiss it, when she tried to capture it in her mouth, she missed, and he laughed and turned away and buttoned up, saying let’s catch some fish first. They’ll be plenty of time for that later. But on the way back in they only nuzzled, sipping beer and holding each other while he steered.

It wasn’t a really big boat, the Jenny II, but it was a big sea, and when they were way out they often didn’t see anyone—not another boat anywhere. That’s when she got a little scared. How good was this boat? How good was this guy? How well did she know him? Better than he knew her, she hoped. Way out, that’s when she wanted to fuck the most.

“Who was Jenny?” Katherine had asked him on the drive down from Minnesota. She knew his wife’s name had been Jean and that Jean had died about a year ago, a few months before Katherine abandoned UM and her graduate degree for tiny Elbow and a waitress job at Pete’s where he came every night for a sandwich and sometimes a single beer. It was in Alabama and there was a bridge out sign, and he’d glanced in the mirror and laughed.

“Jenny I or Jenny II?” he’d said.

“Either.”

“Neither,” he’d said. “Just the name on the boat when I got it.”

“Can’t you change it?”

“I kind of like the mystery.”

“Okay, who do you think this Jenny was?”

He’d chuckled at that and confessed that he’d thought about it sometimes.

“But now that I’m here you don’t have to think about it, right?” she’d said, poking him in the ribs as he drove the detour.

“Right.” He was smiling, and she’d suspected he knew she knew more about these Jennys than she was letting on.

She liked sucking him. Usually it happened in the shower at the condo after they’d gotten in and he’d taken care of the fish. The shower was small, but there was enough room for the two of them, and the water stayed hot. She’d put a towel on the tiles and after any number of kisses she’d slip down. He’d always be hard. For guy in his fifties he was in good shape, lean and hard, and she’d hold his buttocks as she mouthed his cock, and his buns would be firm and tight in her hands, just like his cock was firm and tight in her mouth. It was cozy, the warm water streaming all around like some tropical waterfall. Sometimes he’d rest his hands at the sides of her face, and she could feel the care in them, though she knew it was also a signal that he was eager to come, or on the verge of it but wanting it to last. Mixed feelings. Sometimes she’d tease him then, let him go and look up through the streaming water and give him a little smile. A mischievous smile. A lewd smile but with a little girl-next-door at the edges. A hint of that “you want to come in my mouth, don’t you, mister?” And then she’d take him back in, as slow and deep as possible, still looking up at him, and those were just about the sweetest sucks, when she could tell how thankful he was, when she could feel him building against the roof of her mouth, the back of her throat. She probably didn’t need to do it, but usually she’d carefully work her finger into his asshole anyway. It was always soapy-slippery back there, and she could ease through the tightness without too much trouble. Ah, the feel of the throb, the throb back there and the throb in his cock. It never took long after that.