Chapter 3

It was getting dark and although Linda was standing at his side with her hand resting on his shoulder, he could barely see her features in the dim light. She was smiling somewhat ruefully.

“If you’re trying to keep a watch for troubles, you aren’t doing much of a job of it,” she chuckled. “I think you’re going to need some sleep while actually lying down if you want to do anything tomorrow. As tired as you are now, you aren’t going to be able to do much otherwise. You need some real rest.”

“Hmm, oh. I wasn’t really asleep,” he mumbled. “I was just dozing and thinking.”

“If you snore like that when you’re dozing, what do you sound like when you’re asleep?” she laughed easily.

“Sorry, maybe I did drop off for a few minutes,” he said struggling to his feet. “My ex-wife used to say that I snored a lot if I was very tired, and to be honest, I’m bushed.”

Linda grasped his arm, helping him to his feet. “Well, I don’t really mind at all. I’ve missed someone’s snoring since my last lover. I’ve often woken up lately, listening for her snores even though when she was there I used to try my best to get her to stop.”

She grinned as he tried to stretch. “You need to lie down and sleep, not try to doze in a chair. Come on, I’ll help you to your bunk, you look so stiff you’re making me feel sore.”

Karl felt her arm slip around his back under his and her body press tightly against his side. He could feel her warmth and smell the shampoo she had used in her hair. He turned his head and looked into her face. She grinned back at him.

“Come on, I’ll help you to get below,” she led him toward the access below decks.

The doors and passageways of the ‘Skolka’ were narrow; not meant for two people to walk side by side, sometimes her body pressed tightly against him, then sometimes shifted close behind. In fact Karl was certain she was intentionally acting tantalising. Since he’d gone without a woman’s close companionship for nearly two months, her teasing touch felt delightful and he quickly grew aroused.

Perhaps it was the situation; both had been alone, living in fear, both had felt they were in desperate straits, both had been in danger and survived, now both felt relatively safe. Now, even though they were surrounded by death and destruction, they had each other. Yet, having found each other, both desperately needed reassurance. Each needed the other in a way that denied any moral code or prior commitment. At that moment, they each needed to feel as close as possible to another human, no matter what happened in the future.

By the time they reached the door to his cabin, opened it and stepped through, then turned to face each other, seduction and acceptance had been mutually achieved. There was a small light on overhead and she seemed only to need to shrug her shoulders, then her robe slipped to the floor, leaving her nude. Her hands slid around his waist and suddenly she was pressed tightly against his chest, her face lifting toward his. He pulled her toward him and their lips met. His hands slid over her soft skin as their lips and tongues explored.

The kiss was mutually impatient, doubly demanding, then they paused, stepped back slightly. In an instant their needs overrode any remaining caution. Without a word spoken, their fingers hands and bodies leapt into frenzied action, moving hurriedly, almost frantically as they pushed and pulled, wriggled and twisted, bent and shifted, stripping off the clothing he wore. Then it seemed the instant he was nude they were both diving toward the bunk.

Afterward she snuggled against him, resting her head on one of his arms, one hand gently touching his chest as his free hand cupped one of her softly rounded breasts.

“Wow!” he sighed. “Sorry to be so rough.”

“Nonsense, we were both rough and I needed that, just like it was,” she chuckled softly. “That was perfect.”

“I’m glad that you’re not upset,” he sighed as he turned to face her. “But, I guess I’m showing my age. I’m worn out.”

“Sorry to be hard on you, Lover. You need to go to sleep. You’ve worked hard today, but you rescued me and became my hero, so I felt you needed a reward,” she whispered, her lips brushing his gently.

“Goodnight, Linda,” he sighed softly.

“G’night, Karl,” she whispered.

He seemed to fall asleep instantly.

Karl awakened to the soft whisper of Linda’s breath in his ear and the warmth of her body next to his. It was still dark and he sighed softly, his body still relaxed and resting. He shifted slightly, freeing the arm from under her shoulders, then waited for her to resettle after the disturbance. It was far too early to get up, the glowing digital clock read just after three, but he knew he was going to have to move soon to gain relief from the pressure in his bladder. Moving carefully so as not to awaken her, he slipped from the bunk and across the cold deck to the head, guided by the soft light of LEDs that he’d installed long before to prevent stubbed toes. Crawling back into the bunk moments later, he tried his best not to disturb her sleep, but she jumped when he accidentally touched her with his cold feet.

She pulled back for a second, then chuckled softly and snuggled back against him.

“Brr, you’re cold and your feet are freezing,” she murmured sleepily.

“Sorry to wake you. I had to go to the head,” he whispered.

“I know,” she chuckled softly, but trying to wriggle even closer. “The pump squeaks when you flush.”

“I’ll have to fix that,” he smiled as he slipped his hands across her smooth skin, pulling her body tightly against his.

“I don’t mind it,” she whispered. “It gives me a second to realise where I am and get ready to warm you up again. I’ll get used to it.”

He pulled his head back trying to see her face.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Oh, I was trying to see the expression on your face. That statement makes it sound like you plan to spend many nights beside me.”

“That’s up to you. I’ll spend my time beside you, or I can sleep alone, whatever you want,” she chuckled. “Just so you know, I think any man that can bring his boat unscathed through an earthquake, followed by a tidal wave, is worth being around.”

Then she giggled, which surprised and delighted him. “Besides, you are good in bed, you know?”

“Getting here was mostly luck,” he sighed. “And you were the one who took me to bed.”

“We’ll argue that later, but what I did was my pleasure and what I was talking about was the pleasure you gave me after we got into bed,” she whispered.

He kissed her then, and nothing else would have told her thank you quite as well. However when he pulled back, she noticed a brief touch of a frown on his face. She lifted a finger to trace a frown crease on his brow.

“What’s bothering you?” she said in a whisper. “Worried about that wife you have tucked away somewhere?”

“Well, not exactly, I’m not married,” he sighed. “Umm, there are these two sisters that I’m sort of involved with...”

His voice trailed off and she waited for a further response.

“Yes, there are two sisters,” she said finally. “Go on. Are you telling me that they’re both your lovers?”

“Sort of, in a way, I guess they are, at least they were,” he frowned even deeper. “It’s a strange situation.”

“A lot of love affairs are, even though this sounds more complicated than most,” she looked slightly puzzled. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“Well, it’s a long story,” he sighed.

“We aren’t in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything and I’m wide awake now,” she snuggled at his side.

“Okay,” he said in a strangely quiet but resolved voice. “Let me get comfortable then.”

He sat up slightly, propping his back on a pillow. She shifted too, resting her head on his chest in a position where she could pull his hand around and settle it on her breast.

He chuckled softly, then gently cupped it and played with the tight nipple under his finger tips. She sighed and shifted just a bit.

“Umm, that’s nice,” she whispered. “But I’m feeling lopsided; you’ve got two hands, use them, please.”

He laughed softly and slipped his other hand under her arm to cup the other breast.

“That’s better,” she snuggled again.

“You sound like Keri,” he chuckled.

“Is she one of the sisters?” she turned her head slightly so she could see his face.

“Um hmm, the younger one. She’s very artistic and extremely sensual,” his voice took on an even softer quality, yet she could feel his strength and resolution in it somehow. “She likes to be touched too, almost anytime and pretty well anywhere.”

“Anytime and anywhere?” she laughed softly. “That doesn’t sound like you should be frowning, but I can hear the frown in your voice.”

“Well, it’s more than likely concern that you hear. I’m worried about them,” he sighed. “I mean, if there was an earthquake and tsunami here, both of them would sure as hell have hit Seattle and that area. They’re living on an island between here and Seattle right now and I’m afraid of what an earthquake might have done.”

“Oh, I see. That’s why you want to get a radio working, you’re curous about the situation, but at the same time you’re almost afraid to know anything, right?”

“Well, no. I’d rather know what’s going on than be left in the dark. I am worried though. I’ve known them for so long and I love the whole family.”

“Mmmm, how did you meet them?” she asked, deciding to try to get his mind away from his worries.

“Like I said, it’s a very long story.”

“And as I told you, we aren’t going anywhere in a hurry.”

“No, I guess we aren’t,” he sighed. “I suppose I should start way back, because it all ties in. I don’t have anything I want to hide and you might as well know about me, but this is going to take a while. Are you sleepy?”

“No, surprisingly, I’m wide awake,” she murmured “Anyhow you have my curiosity aroused. Now, I want to know more about the situation.”

“I’m wide awake too, so since it’s too early to get up, even if I’m not sleepy, I might as well tell you the story of my life,” he shrugged. “I worked at a paper mill for several years, first as an apprentice, then I gradually worked my way up the ladder until I was the second engineer in the steam plant. During that time I met a woman and got married. Then, even though I was only in my late twenties, I was starting to suffer from arthritis. On top of that, one day I just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, so I got a small dose of chlorine gas. As a full time employee I had full medical benefits, so the company paid all of my medical costs during my recovery and because my injury was sustained on the job, they extended my medical for the rest of my life. Then they offered to transfer me to an office job, or give me a cash buyout and full retirement, with a reduced pension. At that point I was using a cane to get around and still needed to use oxygen whenever I did any exercise at all, so I decided that I’d take early retirement and the pension.”

“I suppose that explains how the ‘Skolka’ came about,” she smiled.

“Yeah, I guess. I’ve always been fascinated by steam power. Then too, since I had been working in the steam plant, I saw that modern controls could do so much to improve the way things could be done. I decided that I should use the cash buyout to purchase an old boat then install steam power in it, but with a modern control system. If nothing else, having a boat meant that I’d have a place to live if things went really wrong in my marriage.”

“Things weren’t going well on the home front?”

“No, not really, and buying the boat didn’t help any,” he sighed and then chuckled softly.

“That’s a strange change of emotions,” she said while watching his face.

“Well, I was thinking - when I bought the fish boat, it finished off my marriage. It was sort of the last straw that led to the final breakup. As I was thinking about that, I realized that because of the boat I’ve led a great life for the last few years and now to top it off, I was able to rescue you. I sighed because of one happening and laughed about the rest.”

“That was more of a chuckle of satisfaction,” she smiled slightly.

“I guess it was,” he grinned. “You, and almost everyone else I’ve met since like boats, whereas my ex-wife hated them. She got seasick just looking at a photo of the ocean. Janet had wanted a bigger house, a fancy new car, and a bunch of kids, so when I took early retirement and bought the boat, she asked for a divorce.”

“Janet was your wife?”

“Yeah, I met her when I’d just finished my apprenticeship course to become a steam engineer. The plant had given me a job as a fourth engineer, so I had the money to run around and date women. I met her at a dance and I’m not sure, but I think she decided I was her ticket to the good life. Now that I look back on our dates and our relationship, I’d say she set me up and I fell into her mantrap. We got married inside of six months and inside of another six months I knew that I’d made a huge mistake.

“After we were married, Janet wanted kids, but I’d had mumps as a teenager. I’d told her long before we were married that the doctors had warned me that I was virtually sterile and probably couldn’t have any kids at all, but she hadn’t believed me. So, she insisted that I had to be tested by her doctors. Of course as I expected, the doctors agreed with the previous diagnosis and told her that I had an extremely low sperm count. Since she wanted kids so badly, I suggested we adopt one or two, but she turned that idea down flat.

“Then I guess as a substitute for family she became a social climber. First off she wanted a big car, while I needed a small truck for my job. She wanted a fancy house, but we lived in a bungalow. She worked in an insurance office, but wanted to sell real estate. It seemed like she was dissatisfied with everything in her life and whatever I did was wrong. However, to be fair, I found fault with many of her actions as well. We just grew further and further apart every day.” Karl snorted, scoffingly.

“When I bought the boat, it triggered the final blowup. We separated, so I moved out of the house and onto the boat. At least I had the boat to live on while the divorce was going on. I’d kept the boat where I bought it, at a marina up island a way. The owner of that marina was interested in helping out, but unfortunately, he really didn’t have the sort of setup I needed to do what I wanted. He helped me find Tom Bourgogne, the owner of Bourgogne’s Boatyard, who let me work on my boat there. I took the retirement offer from the paper plant and moved the boat here, then went to work. Toward the end, I didn’t need Tom’s marine ways and boatyard much, so since he had such a small marina, I agreed to move on and give him space. He arranged for me to move to another marina, so I moored the boat at Cap’n Jack’s in Deep Cove while I finished fixing it up.”

“So, before you moved, you lived on the boat at Bourgogne’s marina, then at Deep Cove?” Linda asked.

“Yeah, but that would be about ten years ago. I still think of Tom as a friend though. Actually, I was heading for his place when I came here yesterday.”

“Oh my, finding this mess must have shaken you up?”

“It did. Tom was a good friend and he provided an ear many times while I bitched about Janet.”

“You’d settled the divorce by the time you came here though, hadn’t you?” Linda spoke, trying to haul Karl’s attention back to his story and away from their situation.

“Not completely, the divorce wasn’t final for a couple of years. When I moved out, I’d let Janet have the house and the furniture as well as some other assets. All of it was paid for, but she seemed to get greedy, or maybe her shyster lawyer talked her into trying for more. From what I understand, she tried to garnishee my pension and any money I might theoretically be making on my boat. By then I’d met George and when he found out about it, he put his lawyers and a private eye on the case. When it came to court, the magistrate actually told her I had a claim against her wages, which I graciously declined.”

“I’ll bet that took the wind out of her sails.”

“Actually it did a really thorough job of setting her back on her heels. She sure wasn’t happy with that decision.”

“I don’t imagine she was, but I suppose it made you happy.”

“No, not really. I mean, she was my wife for almost six years and I did love her when we were first married. It was only after both of us changed that our relationship fell apart. I didn’t bear her any ill will.”

“What happened to her afterward? Umm, Janet, was that her name? Your ex wife, I mean?”

“Oh,” Karl’s face twisted into a grin. “She married her lawyer, then divorced him and married a college professor and the last I heard she was planning on divorcing him too.”

“Did she ever have kids?”

“No, she didn’t, as far as I know she’s changed her mind about that.”

“You don’t see her much then?”

“We exchange Christmas cards and I try to remember to phone her on her birthday, other than that we have no contact.”

“How did you ever meet George in the first place?”

“Oh, that’s another long story. I guess it was because of the radios. I’m an amateur radio fan, a ham operator and so is George. Did I mention that he’s in a wheelchair?”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well he is, and he uses the radio to meet and talk to people. I got interested in ham radio when the arthritis first got bad in my back. That was before I found out that I could still do most things if I first planned out how to do them, then took my time doing each job. We weren’t strangers, we talked a lot, at least once a week and I found I liked him. I’d never met him in person though, but I knew he was a writer and I knew he was wheelchair bound.”

“Poor man,” she said sympathetically.

“Oh he’s done all right. I guess writing pays well if you get published often enough by the right publishing company,” Karl chuckled. “He has a habit of finding some way to get what he wants and he often manages to turn things around so that he accomplishes two or more things at once. I think I was an example of that. George’s daughters, Ely and Keri, were getting old enough to want to move away from home and I think he wanted to entice them to hang around. He decided that he needed a man who could build him a generator to supply cheap, reliable electric power, then afterward live nearby and do any of his minor maintenance work. So, he went looking for one who was young enough to be attractive to his daughters. When he heard of someone that might be qualified and able do the job, he hired the Pinkerton agency to investigate the man. He made no secret that he had me investigated or that he let his daughters see the reports. He even took their ideas into account before he approached me.”

“Really?” she giggled. “It sounds almost like he imported a man to seduce his daughters, sort of a gigolo?”

“Umm hm, I guess so, but I think he knew enough about me to feel safe that I wouldn’t be seducing his daughters,” Karl chuckled again. “Actually, I’m not sure if he expected one of them to seduce me or not. However, he had raised them to be independent and he regarded them as grown women, so I think in his mind, where they slept and who they slept with was their business. You’d have to get to know the family to understand completely, but they aren’t exactly a typical family.”

“It sounds like that’s putting it mildly. Just how did it happen?” she asked “The job, I mean?”

“Okay, let’s see,” he leaned back and thought for a second. “Shortly before I’d started work on the ‘Skolka’ at Tom’s, I’d designed a low flow generator system for a friend of mine who lived in an isolated area, using water from a local stream to power it. He’d bragged about his new power plant on the short wave radio, which is how George heard about it. When he contacted me, I was in the midst of working on the ‘Skolka’ and I was fairly flush with money. I’d gotten the cash buyout from the paper mill by then, as well as the money from that first low flow generator job, so I’d made a deal with Tom to pull the ‘Skolka’ up on his ways to work on the bottom. Then too, I had my disability pension coming monthly, so I wasn’t really interested. George quickly sweetened the pot though. He offered me a long term job and sheltered moorage for the ‘Skolka’ on a permanent basis, as well as a place to build a little cabin to live in during the winter months. If you’ve ever lived on a boat in the winter, you should know how big a deal that was all by itself. So in the long run I told him I’d come and have a look at the situation.”

He paused and moved to a slightly more comfortable position.

“So, come on, what happened?” she encouraged him to continue.

“Well, he was going to either send a chopper for me, or I could bring my boat, but he said if I came by boat, I’d need a pilot to guide me into his harbour. Since I had a lot of work to do on the boat and only a short time on the marine ways with the boat out of the water, I agreed to let him send a pilot in two weeks or so. I wasn’t enthused about leaving the boat, or looking forward to riding in helicopter because I don’t like to fly. Let’s face it, at that point the boat was my baby and I wanted to be there if anything went wrong that I could fix. I didn’t know about the private eye checking on me at that time or I would have known that George knew enough to expect that.

“To make a long story short, he sent me a helper, or maybe the helper volunteered. Anyway, the next evening I was working on my boat, just cleaning up at the end of the day. That’s when I saw this figure coming down the dock, tall, dark complexion, sort of androgynous looking, wearing a baseball cap, dressed in baggy clothes and carrying a duffel bag slung over one shoulder. I was sure it was a gay guy looking for work. I moved to edge of the boat to explain I wasn’t looking for help. Instead I was handed a letter.”

“A letter?”

“Unh huh. The letter was from George and addressed to me. It explained that this was Ely, who was a good worker and would work for board and room. As well, Ely was to be my pilot to George’s island when we had the boat ready. When I got done reading the letter and looked up, I’d never seen a more pathetic, wistful look on anyone’s face. I guess I’m a soft touch. I just couldn’t say no. I threw my hands in the air, and agreed, as well as offering a meal, still thinking this was a guy. You have to realize, at that time I didn’t know that George even had a family.

“After I’d shown Ely the way to a spare cabin and where the head was, I went back to the galley and I set about making something for us to eat. Ely took several minutes to come to back, so I was about to go and check to see what the problem was when I got the surprise of my life. It’s a good thing I was sitting down when she showed up. Ely had changed clothes and was now dressed in a cashmere sweater along with a tiny little mini skirt and that outfit left no doubt in my mind that she was female. I just stared, slack jawed.”

“She took you completely by surprise, huh?” Linda laughed.

“Oh yeah, I was blind sided. I had originally jumped to the conclusion that Ely was a young, gay man. Instead, she was definitely a woman and a gorgeous one at that. How the hell she hid her figure on the way down the dock, I’ll never know. After changing her clothes, she was stunning. She prattled on all through the meal, while I must have said about ten or twenty words, all the time staring at her. Finally after we had eaten and washed up the dishes, she quietly took off her sweater and skirt. She said that she was tired of having me undress her with my eyes, and that I might as well see the real thing. I certainly wasn’t about to argue, because she was decidedly easy on the eyes. To make a long story short, she ended up seducing me. I did resist that night and for a few more, but eventually she got me to take her to bed.”

“She was that bold?”

“Oh, Ely would beard a lion in its den. I guess she had read the ‘Pinkerton’ report that her father got on me and had already decided she was going to beguile me,” Karl chuckled. “Inside of a week or two, she got me into bed with her and we each made sure that the other was thoroughly satisfied. Actually during the last two weeks we were at the marina, I think both of us lost weight, but then we’d work our butts off during the day and screw them off every night.”

“I thought you had told George you’d only be a couple of weeks?” Linda broke in.

“We would have been, but we ran into problems. After we got together, Ely and I both found the captain’s cabin too small and too cramped, but when we tried to modify it, we found some dryrot, so a lot of the wood inside the boat had to be ripped out and replaced. Then too, we had to switch marinas because Tom ran out of space and had another boat coming to go on the ways. Anyway, by the time we left Cap’n Jack’s dock and sailed to George’s island, we were heavily involved, which was what Ely had been after in the first place. It seems that she’d decided I was just the guy to relieve her boredom and change her bedroom habits. What did take me by surprise was that it wasn’t long after we reached the island that she told me that she expected her sister to share my bed as well.”

“Was she pretty, the sister I mean?” Linda asked. “Or was it a case of the ugly sister?”

“Oh no, Keri was and is a doll. You have to understand; George is a rogue. He has money, and he flaunts it. At one time he had both a nurse and a housekeeper, and was taking them both to bed. He got both of them pregnant within a couple of months of each other, so the two daughters were born and raised almost as twins, sharing everything. Meanwhile their mothers were sharing a man, so to Ely and Keri, sharing me was no problem. Knowing how much of a rogue he was, they knew there wasn’t much George could say when they decided to share a man and his bed. Actually, I don’t think he really had a problem with it anyway. I was the one who had difficulties with the idea.”

“I’m not surprised that you had problems, although I guess for some guys it would be a dream situation,” she giggled. “I am slightly surprised that they seemed to want one guy between them, that’s very unusual for young women.”

“I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now,” Karl sighed. “Of course, in the last twenty-four hours I’ve complicated my life even more.”

“Do you mean me?” Linda asked.

“Who else?”

“Well, I did say no strings,” she whispered.

“Unh huh, but did you mean it?”

“I’ll let you know in a day or two,” she laughed softly

He laughed and couldn’t think of any response that didn’t sound silly, so he kissed and hugged her, wrapping his arms tightly around her soft body. She kissed and hugged him back just as tightly, then they held the embrace for a moment or two. After their lips separated, she cuddled tightly in his arms, her head tucked under his chin.

She sighed. “I do like someone’s hands on my body.”

“Marvellous,” he chuckled, gently teasing a rapidly hardening nipple between thumb and forefinger.

“Are you trying to get me all wound up again?” she laughed softly.

“Not really,” he said softly, spreading his fingers to cup her whole breast. “First, I think you should tell me about your life, now that I’ve told you about mine.”

“Okay,” she smiled. “But it’s nowhere near as interesting as your story.”

“That’s quite all right. I just want to know a little about you.”

“Well, my marriage was quite different. I work as a physical therapist at the municipal hospital and Jim worked there as an electrician. We had a little house, but we were renting, so we were planning on waiting to have kids until we were a little better established. We scrimped and saved on everything, building up a nest egg to buy a place of our own. We’d been married for six years when Jim got into an accident on his way to work. He almost always used a small motorcycle to go to work because we worked different shifts, so he almost always left the car for me. One day he hit a patch of gravel that a dump truck had lost and skidded into oncoming traffic,” she sighed softly as she paused for a few seconds.

“I am sorry,” Karl sympathetically.

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” she said softly. “He never regained consciousness, even though the hospital kept him on life support for two days. The police think he was speeding and I know he loved to go fast on that damn motorcycle. I like to think of the good times we had. He taught me a lot about enjoying life and I still see his folks once in a while. We keep in contact. They still regard me as one of their family. I think they’d like you, but they sure didn’t like my last lover.”

“Oh, why was that?”

“Well, first off, she was a woman and secondly she talked me into buying a boat, then ran off with a waitress, leaving me with what they consider to be a millstone around my neck. Luckily, I found I liked living on boats and I traded that one in a couple of months ago on the one that got wrecked. I only took possession of the wreck you saw a little over a week ago. If it hadn’t been for the boat being new, I wouldn’t have been there for you to rescue. Heck if it hadn’t been for my former lover, I wouldn’t have had a boat at all.”