"It's me," Bob Brennan called over the sound of the radio. As Jeanette was not in sight, she was in the kitchen. "Sorry I'm late, but it was that or go back on campus tomorrow." Instead of the kiss he expected, Jeanette gave him a hushing gesture, finger to her lips.

He washed his hands as quietly as he could, so as not to compete with the voice of the French announcer. After someone else came on, Jeanette clicked off the shortwave. The kiss Bob received might have been belated, but it was enthusiastic. He hugged her with his left arm while caressing her firm butt with his right hand. "Oh Bob!" she said. "I understood it. Directly. Without slowing it down or listening again." That was a breakthrough. It definitely called for a celebrative kiss. This time she sank against him while his tongue chased hers. His hand was less caressing than kneading.

She broke the kiss. "Um, aren't you hungry?"

"Desperately; should I pull out the bed?"

"Nope! You should put up the table." Unfolding the legs of the card table and setting it were the two tasks which another person could do to help the cook. The kitchen could hold two people, if they were good friends; but they couldn't do much food preparation. Jeanette loaded their plates in the kitchen and handed them out. Then they were sitting across from each other.

"Do you want to say the grace tonight?" he asked. She hesitated, and he began to say that she didn't have to.

"I really think that I do." They folded their hands. "Heavenly Father, I thank you for the food and what happened to me this morning. Amen."

"Amen," he said, and reached for her hand. He squeezed it for a second, and they started to eat. "Sorry to spring that on you. But somehow it felt appropriate."

"S'okay. But I felt so tongue tied. I did feel grateful though."

"Far as I know, He doesn't grade on eloquence. Anyway, your experience was the high point of the day. And I didn't know enough about it. So remedy my ignorance." He started to make serious inroads on the macaroni and cheese.

"I was listening to the tape at half speed on the MBTA," she started. "When I got off, the bus was right there and so noisy that I couldn't do anything but rewind. Then I walked along listening to the tape again, full-speed that time. I was getting everything, and then I just kept getting everything. Well, lot's of it anyway. So now I can."

"Forr mee dahh ble," he said. "Or will my accent spoil your ear?"

"Your accent isn't that bad."

"I love you." Which, after all, was what she was saying with her little white lie.

Half his mind followed her expansion of the report, while half played with the idea of celebration. The weather outside was miserable, so ice-cream cones were out. She enjoyed his elaborate stories, but she would probably rather talk about this tonight. Bed for celebration was rather a cheat, he usually enjoyed it more than she did. On the other hand, he would make sure that she enjoyed it. She came to a pause, what had she said last?

"I really think that it was a breakthrough."

"So do I," he said. "Even though I knew it would come sometime." Her face seemed to fall a little bit. Damn! He'd undercut the accomplishment. "But then, you were the one chopping your way through the tunnel with a pickax. All I did was watch. I knew it would happen because I know my wife. When you put your mind to something, you accomplish it.

"And," he concluded, "I'm proud of your accomplishments, especially proud of this latest one." Then he took his plate to the kitchen for seconds.

The conversation became both more general and more sporadic. He cleared the table and was washing the dishes when she turned the shortwave on again. Sitting at the card table, he took copious notes on Mohammed and Charlemagne. He'd read the chapter standing on the MBTA, but it had been too jerky to take any notes. All the while, some part of his subconscious planned the coming night.

Bob often told his friends that the apartment had a small kitchen, but that the living room, dining room, bedroom, and study was good-sized. The time having come to leave the study for the bedroom, he folded up the card table and pulled out the sofa bed.

He prepared for bed and got in on Jeanette's side. Jeanette was slow to take the hint, so he read further into Pirenne. When she did come to bed, however, she took off her robe and slipped under the covers naked. He rolled over into the chilliness to make room.

"Still following it?" he asked.

"Most of it. Sometimes the subject is beyond my vocabulary, but I can catch on when they start on another story. They are all excited about the baptism of Clovis."

It took him a moment to recognize the name with the French pronunciation, but he tried to match it when he responded. "Then you just might want to find a historian and bribe him to tell you about Clovis."

"What sort of bribes would one of your professors take?" she asked.

"Tuition. And you'd have to sit through the whole course, probably taught during your working hours. There might be prerequisites as well. A grad student would come much cheaper."

"Are there any history grad students in this room?" He raised his hand. "What would your price be for a short lecture on Clovis."

"Well, I'd have to prep and give the lecture tomorrow. Give me a sample of your best kiss; I'll tell you how many of those I would charge."

"You're getting predictable. I saw that one coming." She was laughing, though.

At first the kiss was distorted by her smile. It was sexy as hell, even so. She leaned over him supported on her elbow, with one breast pressing into his left shoulder and the other resting on the center of his chest. Her mouth slanted over his.

She licked his lips, and then played with his tongue for minutes; but she wouldn't follow his tongue between his teeth. She left his mouth to peck on his eyebrows and lick at his ears. He writhed while she licked and sucked her way down his neck and onto his shoulder, but made no move to stop her. She spent minutes on his left nipple, sucking it into a hardness such as he had never experienced, licking it, and then sucking it again. She sucked very hard and lifted her head until it popped out of her mouth.

She continued down the side of his chest, kissing as she went. Where could she be going? Stupid question, there was only one place; and his phallus swelled until it ached. But this was supposed to be her celebration! He couldn't say no; he'd sworn never to refused any erotic advances on her part. Breaking that resolve now would be one hell of a celebration. She stopped kissing at the line of his pubic hair, but she turned sideways and slid further down.

She lay for a moment with the side of her face against his belly and Junior just brushing her other cheek. Just then, his stomach gurgled. She giggled. This might have decreased his excitement if the breath from her giggle hadn't struck his erection.

"Junior," she said, "I know you expect a kiss as well. But Daddy doesn't count that as payment. So we'll have to wait for another time." She turned her head upwards until her lips were against the crown. There was the slightest peck of a kiss, and she slid away.

His virgin bride had come a long way in three years, but he'd never known her like this. She'd just given a whole new meaning to the word 'tease.' And she didn't seem to be done yet.

She straddled his left leg, which he raised protectively. Her knee was closer to his scrotum than he really wanted it to be. She settled down over him, breasts pressed into his chest. He felt the hardness at the center of each pressing softness, accepted their testimony of her arousal, pictured them, could remember their taste.

What he tasted now was her tongue as it invaded his mouth. She wasn't being coy this time. It thrust in, dueled with his, licked the roof of his mouth and the bottom of his tongue. When it did withdraw, his followed; she sucked it before invading again.

When he sucked hers in turn, she began to move her torso. That rubbed her softness against his thigh. He could even feel a little dampness. His erection, trapped between their bodies, began to hurt. His hands were compulsively touching everything that they could reach, caressing down her back to her butt and back again.

She broke the kiss to pepper light kisses over his eyebrows, nose, and cheeks. She kissed down his neck to his shoulder and sucked that tendon, moving against his thigh all the while. She sucked on the lobe of his left ear. Then she bit it.

She immediately rolled away, taking the bed clothes with her. He rolled after her, mouth to her luscious breast, hand between her spread legs.

"No Bob," she said pulling the hand away. Before he could begin to be disappointed, she pulled the arm further. "Now, Bob, Now!"

It wasn't what he had planned, but his body wasn't considering that. He climbed between her legs, retrieved his hand to adjust himself, and pressed into her wetness. He barely had time to remove his arm before she arched upwards against him.

The sheets and blankets were a tangle under them, slipping away from his knee when he drove inwards. This was hardly the time to deal with that problem. Her thighs were raised and gripping his, her heels started to beat against the backs of his legs. All his lips could reach in this position was her forehead, so he kissed that. She buried her head in his neck and sucked there. The springs squeaked in time to their movement, but all he could hear from Jeanette was the gasp of her breath.

Her fingernails scratched down his back to his butt. When she clawed him, he drove into her and erupted.

When he came back, his butt was freezing. He was lying on Jeanette with his head just below her breasts, and his feet were sticking eight inches out from the edge of the bed. The mess, which belonged on the lower half of the bottom sheet, was soaking from the top sheet onto the upper edge of the blanket -- and the middle at that. They were going to be sleeping with that aroma for a while.

He cleaned up what he could, including himself and Jeanette; he pulled the bedclothes from underneath her, rolling her when necessary. He remade the bed over her and turned off the light. He crawled in his side of the bed. Her first contribution to the rearrangement was to snuggle back against him.

"Love you," he said. Her response was hardly audible, but she pressed back more firmly and hugged his arm.

He had to extricate himself from that hug the next morning.

He stared blearily into the mirror while shaving. He had a mark on his shoulder. Jeanette had given him a hickey. Hickey, hell! He could see faint tooth marks. The lobe of his ear was sore, too, though he couldn't see any marks. Also, there was a stinging on his butt.

But he certainly wasn't going to register any complaints. Not only had that been the most arousing night in months, but she had initiated it.

He wished there were something he could do to make her that joyous every day; he might not survive it, but he would die happy.

Of course, she was joyous because of an accomplishment of her own, something -- by definition -- that he could never give her. And they still hadn't had the celebration he had planned. Well, he could make today a little special; she'd celebrate the accomplishment of the day, he the passion of the night as well. Maybe tonight he could deliver some fraction of the sexual pleasure to her that she'd provided him.

He'd eaten and put her coffee on before she finally struggled out of bed. He handed her a cup of coffee while enjoying the sight of her staggering past in the altogether. Morning wasn't Jeanette's best time, but she was still sexy as hell in her skin. He started her breakfast while she was in the bathroom. She accepted another cup on her way to find her robe. Well, he couldn't complain; the room was a bit chilly.

She was sipping the third cup when he put the plate at her place at table. "Thanks," she said. "What's with the eggs?"

"Celebration. One of our family members just conquered Gaul. Sorry there wasn't any bacon."

"I know. Terribly expensive. But this means less fancy ramen for the next two weeks. But it was sweet of you." When she dipped the toast into the first yolk, he went to straighten the bed and brush his breakfast off his teeth.

"Bob Brennan!" she shouted from the kitchen. "You had cereal for breakfast."

"Well, it was a celebration of your victory. I couldn't consult the chief cook on how long the supplies had to last and also surprise the honoree. Anyway, it was a tremendous breakthrough. It deserved lobster, let alone eggs. I do think it was the second greatest accomplishment that I've seen you make."

"Second?" she said. "What was the first?" He felt a twinge of guilt; she really didn't get up to speed this soon after waking up. She'd have looked both ways if he had said something like that in the afternoon.

"Seducing me, of course."

"Pffft! I could seduce you with my hands tied behind my back."

"Wanna bet?" This was spiraling away from a celebration in her honor once again, but he couldn't resist an opening like that. He could picture her with her hands tied behind her back.

"No." And the mood seemed to cool down.

"Well it was your choice of words."

"Anyway," she said, "I remember the seduction going quite the other way."

"You just stood there, your chin thrust forward and fire shooting out of your eyes. The seduction was immediate and total, and you hadn't even noticed me yet."

"I don't think that that counts as seduction. I was fourteen then." But her tone softened; the first days of their friendship meant something special to her. To him, too, of course; but she responded more to the first stages than to the spots in between which he thought were finer.

"Sure it does," he said. "It just took me a few years to reciprocate."

"Sheesh! 'Doctor, you're the one with the dirty pictures.'" He had to dig into memory to connect the punch line to a joke about a man who saw sexual content in every Rorschach inkblot. "I tell off a bully before I'd even met you. You use that as an excuse for a nine-year campaign of words and kisses and such to entice me into your bed. And you call that reciprocation."

"Totally unfair."

"How?"

"Well," he explained. "It has been only eight and a half years in all. And I hadn't the goal of enticing you into my bed clearly in mind for the first part of that..."

"How many minutes?"

"Weeks and weeks. I fell in love with your spirit first. Not before the first dance, probably not before the second, was I thinking of bed. Anyway, I stopped trying to entice you into my bed after the wedding."

"Because we used sleeping bags on our honeymoon?"

"Because I was clever enough to set it up so you didn't have any other bed available," he said. "Anyway, I never blamed you for being the sexiest woman in North America. First: I think it's great. Second: you don't try to be; it's just your nature."

She took exaggeratedly high steps back towards her wardrobe. It was her way of miming that the bullshit was getting a little deep. She didn't deny his description of her though; she really couldn't after the previous night. She snapped on the shortwave, and he got dressed.