Chapter 4: A New and Revolutionary Experience

We had an overnight visit to Cairo planned for the next day. We would drive down there, see the pyramids in Giza and then spend the night at the Conrad Cairo celebrating Hilley’s 19th birthday. She and we had signed all of the papers before we left and the first installment of her trust was sitting in her personal account as of midnight, all eight figures of it.

Hilley being Hilley had already arranged the investment details. She had planned a diversified array of stocks and annuities for herself, which had my financial adviser asking if she might be interested in working at Morgan-Stanley. So, the first thing she did when she woke up on her nineteenth birthday was to check her portfolio to see how things were doing. It was no surprise to discover that she was a lot richer than when she had gone to sleep as an eighteen year old.

We were packed and ready to go out to the gate when my guy Steve appeared at the door of the villa. Steve was a Force Recon Marine before he went SEALs. He is not as big as I am but he is so tough he could whip my ass in about 7 seconds - using only the knuckle of his left pinkie. And, needless to say there isn’t a weapon, including crossbows and broadswords that he isn’t expert at. Besides possessing all of the military virtues of honor and commitment he also has one of the best military minds I have ever known. I appreciated his capabilities and so I hired him away from the SEALs with more money than he could ever count. He was worth every cent of it.

I made a point of not reacting when I saw him standing in front of me. I knew that his crew had been shadowing us all the time we were in Alexandria but I had not seen him. I also knew that the State Department had travel warnings out for Egypt with all of the unrest. So, his appearance didn’t surprise me.

Hilley, who wants to be just like him when she grows up, was standing behind me. She said in an amiable tone of voice, like she had just run into him at the supermarket, “Hi Steve, I saw Billy yesterday.” Steve grimaced and said, “I’m going to have his butt out on a endurance run for THAT!” Hilley said, “Why was he throwing that man around?” It was as if she’d seen Billy shaking the guy’s hand. Steve said, “That’s what I came to talk about.”

Steve pulled out the remaining terrace chair and proceeded to lay out the situation. He said, “We intercepted an attempt on you folks yesterday. I don’t know whether it was a kidnapping, or an assassination, but it was serious.” Janey gasped. Hilley looked disappointed that she wasn’t able to participate. Steve said, “We have all of them stashed in a nice warm nook in our compound. But I suggest that you clear out of here as fast as you can.” I nodded in agreement. Janey looked anxious and Hilley looked crushed.

I asked, “Do you think we were targeted?” Steve said, “We don’t know and since all of them are sleeping I didn’t take the time to ask.” What he meant was that whoever he had stashed had been given a dose of pentobarbital as soon as his guys had finished restraining them, which was standard capture protocol in unknown or unfriendly situations. The tangos probably wouldn’t remember anything at all about the last 72 hours when they woke up out in the Libyan Desert. That was a fortunate fact. since it is never a good idea to kidnap another country’s citizens no matter how malicious their intent.

We could have just buried their bodies in that trackless waste but neither of us operated that way and of course somebody might have been able to connect the dots if they found them afterward. We didn’t have to be hasty in our exit since Steve had a security perimeter set up in the Marina, which couldn’t be breached short of an all-out assault. But it was clear that the trip to the pyramids was off.

Janey, who is the history nut of the two of us, had wanted to see them and I had planned a guided tour but it would be stupid to put her and Hilley into danger that way. So, I had my people in the States call off the car and Umar who was driving it. Steve had his own extraction plan which he would put into effect once we had left town but he wanted to see us outside the twelve mile limit as soon as possible.

Janey and I talked it over with Steve and we decided that the smartest thing to do was to just up-anchor and get moving. We still had four days on the villa lease, which was going to cost me twenty thousand Euros, but my family’s safety always comes first. So, we packed and made our way down to the boat.

Hilley was moping along acting like somebody had shot her dog, which was mystifying to me. But I knew Janey could sort it out. In the meantime, I had arranged something during the three day absence from the boat that I thought might compensate for our hasty exit.

My guy Chuck is a master of making things happen and in this case, he had outdone himself for Janey. Chuck particularly likes Janey because she bought him a Ferrari as a reward for my rescue after the storm ... which they had both engineered. As we stepped onto the boat there was an unearthly high pitched whistle from inside the cabin. Janey and Hilley both looked puzzled.

I had a mile wide smile. I made an “after you” gesture and my wife and Hilley stepped hesitantly into the salon part of the cabin. There - looking at them - was a pair of beady yellow eyes in a grey head attached to a bright green body. I said, “Meet Horus, the falcon headed god of Egypt.” Janey shrieked with delight and ran to the cage. The bird eyed her speculatively and said, “Hello.” She took a step back and the bird squawked “Awk, Horus!!”

I said, “Go ahead, he’s very tame.” She hesitantly stuck a finger in the cage and the bird cocked its head to one side and immediately stepped onto her finger. She withdrew him from the cage and he looked at her and said, “Pretty bird.” It was obvious that my wife was smitten. She sat down at the galley table with the bird on her finger and the two of them just chattered to each other. Janey’s squeaks and coos were not significantly different than Horus’s.

Hand-raised Senegal Parrots like Horus have a lot of advantages. They are extremely intelligent, very affectionate, mostly to their owner and best of all they are natural clowns. They also talk up a storm but in general they are one of least squawky species of parrot there is. I was getting the feeling that I had just been replaced in Janey’s life by a younger bird. That was until she put him back on his perch and plastered herself against me.

She gave me the hottest open mouth kiss I have gotten from her in some time and said, “Thank you!!!” Her tone of voice implied that there would be much more than thanks to come. The bird in the meantime was hanging totally upside down on his perch eying us intently. He squawked, “Naughty bird.” I thought, “Maybe they ARE that smart?”

Hilley, who has stopped her habit of looking aghast when we kiss, pushed past both of us radiating anger. That’s when the cat stepped out of the companionway. Athena barked and the cat instantly disappeared back up the passageway in the direction of Hilley’s cabin. I laughed. Hilley looked at me with puzzlement. I said, “You just met Bastet, the sister of Horus and the goddess of protection, pleasure, and health. She is an Egyptian Mau, which is not exactly a cat. They are actually a little larger and closer to the cheetah in lineage ... and they are only available here.

Chuck discovered her when he was looking around for the right bird for your mother and the fact that she is the most athletic of the domestic cat species made me think of you. They are supposed to be very loyal and affectionate to one person and one person only. She’s yours if you and Athena want to keep her.”

Hilley’s face, which had looked like a thundercloud three seconds earlier, looked absolutely delighted. She said, “What is it again?” I said, “It’s called a Mau. It is domestic but it isn’t a cat precisely. It is descended from animals like the cheetah. They are a little bigger than house cats and they are the only cat that is spotted like a leopard.” I added, “The Egyptians had a cat goddess called Bastet, which was based on the Mau. In fact, Bastet is the goddess of the hunt, like Artemis, so they are essentially the same person, just different mythologies.”

Hilley was entranced. She told Athena to sit and then ran into her room. I could hear the sound of rooting around and she came out a minute later with Bastet in her arms making affectionate noises. The cat was a beautiful, oddly emerald-eyed bruiser with longer back legs than in front. It was lounging regally in Hilley’s arms looking condescending to the humans present. Of course, being a true goddess, the dog was beneath her notice.

In typical Lab live-and-let-live fashion, Athena ignored it completely once she’d determined that the cat was a friend of Hilley’s. Hilley went back to her cabin to have a heart to heart with her new buddy and I set about casting us off thinking, “A dog, a cat, and a bird on a boat? What could possibly go wrong there?”

HILLEY I was surprised and pleased to see Steve. He is a “man’s-man” in the sense that he hangs out mostly with the guys in the unit. But once in a while he will work with me one-on-one on some of the skill training, they do. He has also allowed me to participate in some of their combat exercises that involve things like blind building entries and even their firing range.

I told him that I had seen Billy throwing a guy around yesterday. Billy is a good guy but he’s more muscle than brains. Steve looked totally amused and then mentioned a desire to run Billy through an enhanced training exercise as a result of my seeing him. I decided to stay out of Billy’s way for a while when we get back. Then their conversation hit me. We were leaving immediately without my being able to see Umar. I was crushed by disappointment since I had some very explicit things in mind for Umar that night.

The rest was a blur until we got down to the boat. We hurried around and packed things and daddy and Steve talked for a while but since I had reached new heights of misery, I wasn’t paying much attention to anything that was going on. I am aware that Egypt is a volatile place and I was semi-aware of the cultural problems that my mother and I faced but it never occurred to me that we would have to change plans as a result of any of that. I suppose that sounds naïve in retrospect but I had never run into big-picture issues like that before.

When we reached the boat, I was dejectedly following my parents with my sailor’s bag thrown over my back. Then we heard an unearthly screech from inside. We all froze, including Steve, who probably would have shot it if my mother had not let out a cry of delight. I followed them into the cabin and there was an alien array of weird colors, glittering eyes and a scary beak sitting in a cage, which my mother was elaborately goooing over.

The cage itself was a beautiful brass thing; large enough that the bird had plenty of room but hanging on gimbals on the roof of the cabin so it would not be in the way, or even change orientation as the ship rocked. The bird itself was about a foot long from head to tail and it was eyeing my mother like it was actually talking with her. I think birds are noisy and dirty and so I was not pleased to see it. And my heart hurt at the thought of never seeing Umar again. And then of course at that point my mother decided to do something disgusting with my father.

That did it. I pushed past the two love-birds and was about to go into my cabin to punch my pillow around in absolute frustration when a strange apparition appeared in the door. Athena gave a warning bark and it instantly disappeared back into my room. My daddy had unwound himself from my mother by that point and he said, “Meet Bastet the cat goddess.”

He said it was something called a Mau, not an actual housecat, and it was mine if I wanted it. He said it was the most athletic of the cat family and so it reminded him of me. I know how proud my daddy is of my athletic prowess and that comment meant a lot to me. So, I told Athena to stand down and I went into my cabin. The creature was lounging on the foot of the bed looking utterly composed and regal, as if it had not fled there 30 seconds earlier.

It was big by cat standards. It looked like a miniature cheetah. Like a cheetah, it had a proportionally smaller head than its body with very long back legs. It was grey with darker spots like a leopard and it had a dark ridge down its back from head to tail.

The feature that struck me the most though was its huge totally focused and highly intelligent predator eyes, which were watching me with relaxed insouciance as if she had been waiting for me. I said, “Hello sister.” The cat’s eyes focused even more profoundly and I swear it hissed to me “Greetingssss sssssister.”

All thoughts of Umar and any other male instantly flew out of my head and all I could see was this splendid animal with its sleek beauty and powerful spirit. I went to it. It rose and stretched unhurriedly. I picked it up in my arms. It settled there, totally relaxed as if she belonged there. I said, “We will conduct life’s hunt together sister.” It said, “Indeed we will sssssister, becaussssse we are kindred.”

I carried Bastet out to show her to my parents. I couldn’t keep the delight off my face because I knew that I had found a true soul mate. Athena has been my sister since I was a little girl. She has provided unconditional love and companionship to me over her long life but she is nothing like me. So, I never identified with her. The creature in my arms was my personification.

Athena never even looked up from her food bowl as I went back into the cabin. The cat leapt gracefully back onto the bed. I balled up a sock and tossed it toward the bulkhead. Without seeming to even gather herself Bastet leapt several feet into the air and very accurately batted the sock in my direction. Then she landed lightly back on the bed.

Since I make that exact same move several times each soccer game, I recognized it. I know every pet owner anthropomorphizes their pet but I thought to myself, “She is just me in a cat body?” I could visualize her as my life companion and hunting partner and I don’t think I have ever been happier than I was that moment.

PAUL We decided that we needed a fun break after all of the melodrama in Alexandria and so we made the decision for sail north toward the Cyclades, which are more commonly known as the “Greek Islands” looking for sun, fun and dancing.

Since the wind was coming out of Africa, we raised sail as soon as we cleared the marina. Both the mainsail and jib were full leaning us on a starboard tack and we were moving at over 12 knots into a bright blue, hot and sunny ocean. After the heat and dust of Alexandria it was an exhilarating feeling.

We were on a course west of north that was designed to pass around the eastern tip of Crete and then turn more westerly toward the island of Santorini. The entire trip was about 450 nautical miles with landfall in Crete conveniently being a good two day’s voyage. I was running the ship by myself once the sails were up. That was because my crew had abandoned me in favor of the new creatures in their life.

The shipping lanes out of Alexandria pass through the Rhodes-Karpathos channel to the east rather than where we were headed so I could put the boat on the auto- sailor and go below. Janey was down there chatting with Horus. He was sitting on a portable perch on the galley table with his head cocked clearly listening to Janey while she carried on a conversation with him like they were having coffee together.

Hilley was cooking breakfast and handing out scraps to Athena, who was sitting expectantly next to her. Bastet was lounging four feet above her on the bulkhead shelf watching Hilley with indifference. How she got up there I don’t know. Bastet’s expression seemed to say that if she couldn’t kill it herself, she wasn’t interested in eating it.

Athena and the cat had quickly worked out an agreement. Labs are live-and-let-live creatures and so the dog was more than willing to accept the cat. Particularly once the cat had shown Athena the claws she keeps stashed in those paws. The cat obviously viewed the Lab as beneath her royal notice. The bird was another matter and both Janey and I made a pact with Hilley to keep an eye on her sister when the bird was out of its cage.

I knew that we would not be able to convince Bastet that she should not hunt the bird and as long as the bird was in its cage, he was safe. But it was a little uneasy when they were both out since the cat is lightning fast. We finally agreed that if Hilley was not in a position to intercept her predatory sister, the cat would stay in her room for the duration. Once we got back home that would not be a problem.

We were on course to Santorini rather than Mykonos, which is the legendary island for clubs and fun in the sun in the Cyclades chain. That was because of an incident that had happened before Hilley was born. Without getting into too much detail Janey had faced down five of the locals in a Mykonos back alley who were intent on gangbanging her. It was Janey’s courageous defense of herself that led us to the moment in the ruins of ancient Troy when Hilley was conceived and it was the reason why we named her Helen.

Nonetheless, the outcome of that long ago rumble in the back of a Mykonos tavern might have been a couple of fatalities, among the locals. And one of them was no-doubt crippled for life. So, we thought we would give Mykonos and its clubs a miss in case anybody remembered. The only good thing that came out of that meeting was my lifelong friendship with my old legionary buddy Buster but that is another story.

We sailed with the sun moving across the sky from east to west and we made landfall on Crete on the second day out, just at sunset. There is a marina near Palekastro on the eastern side of the island where we docked as night fell. Hilley steered us into the dockage with her faithful Lab sound asleep at her feet and her new sister sitting on the bench behind her looking around alertly.

The Mau was acting like she and Hilley had been born in the same litter. I am NOT a cat fancier but this one behaved more like a dog with Hilley. It sauntered arrogantly around next to her wherever she went and it seemed to consult with her when a decision had to be made. The creature appeared to not think that Janey and I were worthy of notice. But it clearly was bonded to Hilley.

We ate on board that night. Hilley is a gourmet chef and she loves cooking so we never eat badly when we stay on the boat. It was actually very cozy sitting there on our well-lit upper deck with the warm breeze and the intoxicating feel of the Mediterranean in high summer.

I had a Cohiba which Hilley expertly presented while I held Janey’s hand. Hilley took her old dog out for her evening constitutional. The three of them walking were quite a sight, with Athena waddling along affably on one side and the Mau stalking along beside my daughter on the other. Hilley looked like the Beastmaster in the middle.

With her perfect body and the way that she carries herself, she looked like a larger two legged version of the Mau. The dog sniffed around and did its business while Hilley stood there looking totally relaxed; at the same time giving the impression of absolute grace and power. The cat sat next to her radiating the same lethal potency.

The dog finished and Hilley did her civic duty with the scoop, even though the air was tinged with the faint odor of cow manure. The three of them walked back with Athena conveying her love for Hilley and the Mau communicating how bored it was with people, dogs, and life in general.

Our entire menagerie headed for bed early mainly because we wanted to get a start at sun-up, which was shortly after five. Hilley and her two sisters sleep in her cabin forward, the dog on the floor at the foot of her bed and the Mau on a shelf above it. We sleep in the master which is just off the lounge. We arranged it that way so that we could have a little privacy.

After twenty three years of marriage, I can still never get enough of Janey and her body. We don’t fuck every day but there are some days when you can feel it coming and this was one of them. She had been shooting me glances that made a clear statement about how much she wanted me and that was blowing my mind.

Women probably don’t realize how important an occasional longing glance is in a marriage. Men don’t like always being the aggressor and it often seems like over time women forget that they have to communicate that they want the guy. They probably feel like it isn’t necessary to look enthralled, because in most cases they are always available. But it is important for the guy to know that the object of their affection is suffering from the same horny pangs that they are.

Janey has never lost the hungry, “come-hither” thing that she does. And it is like the first time I ever fucked her when she gives me that look. It tells me that she wants me as much as I want her and it is what makes us a loving couple, not just two people going through the motions.

She came to me in the dim light of the cabin and threw her arms around my neck, hoisted those huge boobs into my chest and proceeded to try to swallow my tongue. I have often remarked on her kissing, which is something that distinguishes her from any other woman I have ever known. She “opens” herself to you in ways that are so intimate that it could easily pass for sexual intercourse.

Janey burns at a hotter than normal temperature anyhow; I have always assumed that that bird metabolism of hers is what accounts for her still hard body. So, when you kiss her, it is almost like you are entering her. And she is totally “there” when she kisses you, like the kiss is the only thing in her world at that instant. It is a form of giving of herself that is characteristically and uniquely Janey.

When Janey wants sex however the kissing very quickly turns to other things. So, she dropped the kiss, took my hand, and led me over to the bed. She sat me on the bed and proceeded to undress slowly and lovingly. The t-shirt she was wearing came off to reveal a frilly white bra that held two of the most magnificent mounds evolution has ever granted to a female. She then undid her bra and the works of art themselves were revealed. Michelangelo could not have created a more perfect set.

Below them, her flat stomach and narrow waist led to the flare of her hips. The first thing I remembered about Janey from our earliest days, was the little gold dangly thing that she has affixed to her belly button. That small piece of jewelry in her otherwise perfect stomach was the thing that I was fixated on when she was sitting on the lap of the football player seducing him as a way of getting my attention. I might add that I am still pea-green jealous about that event even though I technically didn’t know Janey at the time.

Now, after twenty three years of married bliss it was sitting there, as it always had. I gazed at it and the sexiest belly button I have ever beheld and reached out to touch it. That got my hand slapped. So, I sat back like a good boy and waited. She hooked her thumbs in the waist of her jeans and worked them down her fabulous dancer’s legs kicking them out of the way. She was standing there in a white thong with her immaculate round hips naked.

She reached out and slowly and lovingly unbuttoned my shirt. I looked into those hungry cat eyes and they were stoned with lust, but she was planning on taking her time. She gracefully pushed the shirt off my shoulders and I slipped if off and threw it behind her. Then she went to work on my belt. I raised my butt up so she could peel my pants and boxers off but instead of just pulling them she slowly bent over and worked them down my legs.

As she did that, I had a good long leer at that muscular back and her spectacularly full round hips and butt, the essence of womanhood. She then stood up, dropped her thong, and moved past me on her hands and knees and onto the bed. I was about to jump up and mount her from the back but I got my arm slapped again. She lay down on her back and looked enquiringly at me. I flipped onto my side and began to stroke that beautiful naked body. She closed her eyes and I swear she started to purr.

I wanted to take a second to appreciate her perfection. At age 47 she is still as beautiful as she was 23 years ago. Her tits, which at that age are headed south in most women, were still as full, firm and round as they have always been. They are so big that they lap over the side of her rib cage but they have not dropped much since she was a young bride. The aureoles and nipples are bigger now, because she breast fed our daughter well into her second year. She said she wanted to get the full set of antibodies into Hilley and I believe that since I don’t think that our daughter has ever been truly sick in her life.

But the thing I was gloating at was that beautiful face, which has a few lines now but the same symmetry that I have worshipped from the moment I met her. Her eyes are huge and compelling, even when they are closed as they were now. My wife has a perfect, aristocratic Anglo-Saxon nose, long and straight as a Norman helmet guard. Her mouth is wide, her lips are full, and the delights those faultlessly sculptured lips promise defy imagining.

Right that very second though, the mouth was curled in a snarl and those lips were emphatically saying, “You had better fuck me right now or I am going to start the process without you.” I took a final moment to memorize the sharply pointed chin that completes her perfect oval face. And then I rolled over on top of her. I took a second to do the insertion. She normally handles that because she is always in a hurry. But she was in the process of grabbing the backs of her own knees and so I could take a second to slowly slide into that ideal, silky tight fitting space.

The trip up into her was an experience in heat and wetness. Her womanly scent was maddening. I fitted us tightly together pubic bone to public bone and ground. She gave a gasp that I am sure the soundproofing didn’t completely dampen. Then she began to breathe very slowly and deeply, her giant jugs rising and falling and moving around between us as we began to sweat.

I was into my stroke now and our panting merged. She was making little moans and ahhhhs as she moved in harmony with me. Each time I bottomed out in her she would exhale a little puff of air. Then her movements became much more urgent. She began to whisper, “Ahhhh Yesss! Fuck me harder! I’m almost there! Fuck meeee!” and then she erupted in a frenzy of bucking and shaking that drove me into a deep valley of coming.

I have come in many ways with her and each time is always a little different. In this case she seemed to be totally open and accepting my seed like she was a dry field and it was the first rain of the season. You could almost feel her flourishing as it happened. She kept hissing, “Yesss! Fill me up!!” as I pumped into her.” I know that she is on mega-birth-control but there are times that if she wasn’t, this would make a baby. This was one of those times.

We lay there in the afterglow panting. She turned on her side and said, “I will never love anybody as much as I love you. I am yours forever.” I was thinking the exact same thing and I told her that. I often wonder if we have such great sex because we love each other that much, or the sex is just something we are able to do together for no other reason except we want each other that way.

JANEY

I had had it up-to-here with male dominated cultures and hot cities and frankly Alexandria might have been a really fashionable place back in 44 BC but it had certainly not improved with age. We were on this trip to get one last experience with our daughter, not bore her to death. So, I decided we needed a huge injection of fun.

I suggested Mykonos as the logical place for that fun. When I made that suggestion Paul did the thing that he does with his eyebrows when he is cringing and said, “Do you REALLY want to go back THERE?” I DID have to admit that there were some good reasons for not going back to Mykonos, like the two guys we might have killed in the fight in the alley. I don’t take attempts to rape me lightly and neither does Paul.

However, if I did not get inside a club soon, I was going to have to take my urge to dance to the streets and I wasn’t sure the natives were ready for that. So, we hunted around on the Internet and discovered that Santorini had a decent club scene even if it was a lot more limited than the 19 clubs along the beach at Mykonos.

The advantage in Santorini was that it was about 100 miles closer and it definitely didn’t lack for scenery. We sailed through the day and into the night of the first day out. Paul stood the middle watch as he always does and Hilley came up to relieve him. I knew she had gone past because Horus commented, “Hello!”

I was certain that Athena would still be knocked out in Hilley’s room but I imagined my daughter’s new shadow Bastet would be with her. It is uncanny to see a cat interacting with a human like those two do. Hilley told me over dinner that she thinks that she and the cat are kindred spirits. Seeing the two of them together, if you painted Hilley grey and put spots on her I am pretty sure you would be able to see a family resemblance. So that is possible, although I distinctly remember birthing Hilley, not the cat.