Chapter 20A

Sunday was the perfect day I had hoped it would be when we made our plans to go to the beach. The sky was a deep, clear blue without a single cloud and the sunlight coming in my bedroom window seemed warm and inviting.

Before I went down to feed Brute, I put on the faux blue shorts that I had made from the faux blue bikini bottoms. Then I tried to simulate the white stars like I had done the blue bikini top. I thought they worked pretty well, but I wasn't completely happy with them. The shiny metal rings against the white didn't look quite right. I thought the star shapes were a little too flashy for backyard wear and really too small, too. Not that dressing like an exotic dancer wasn't fun, but I thought romping with the dog needed more of a tomboy style. I tried thickening the points of the stars that wrapped around my boobs to the inside, then stretching and merging the outside points until I had a sweeping band going under each breast, around my sides and ending in two points crossing in the middle of my back. It looked something like a low-cut, strapless bra that didn't meet in the front. Definitely a new look, and very sexy, too, even if it covered more than the bikini-top.

To fix the problem of the rings, I added some texture and decorative stitching, like I had with the shorts, and that was very effective. The texture seemed to add separation between the rings and the fake fabric. The fancy stitching made the rings look like they were part of the white band, instead of part of me.

I turned around and around in front of the mirror, trying to get a look from every angle. From the front, sides, and back, it looked like I was wearing some sort of stylish top, but you really couldn't tell what it was. It looked like it aught to tie or lace-up or something, just around the next curve, but it never did. I was very pleased with myself. I really felt like I was getting the hang of designing skinwear.

If Brute noticed anything, he had nothing to say about it. Brute didn't wear clothes or need to, so he probably didn't care one bit what I had on. All he wanted to do was play, so I romped with him until he got distracted and ran off after a squirrel.

I still wasn't sure where I was going with this fake clothes stuff. I had already discovered that it wasn't useful for a costume, since it offered no protection and couldn't adapt on it's own to my surroundings, unlike the nice suit Mr. Morton had made. Also, I knew anything I did would basically evaporate if I got knocked silly unless I walked around wearing it enough for it to become second-nature. Aside from being the most comfortable thing in my wardrobe; it seemed that the only practical benefit was that it would save some time doing my laundry.

Still, it was something I could do. I was getting better at it, and I was having fun doing it.

The humid, 90-degree weather had everyone looking forward to the beach and we were all ready to go as soon as we had cleaned up after brunch. I went back up to my room to change clothes at the last minute so no one would know what I planned to wear. I had even managed to avoid anything more than casual conversation with Jim and Bud so I wouldn't be tempted to give anything away, although each of them kept poking his head around doors to see if he could catch me.

Bambi was another story. She stared at me as though she wanted to find out if I had found something that might top her suit, but every time I thought she might ask, she would just press her lips together and look away. It looked like we were both going to keep things secret until the last second.

When I came down lugging my beach bag, I wore sunglasses, a pair of flipflops, and a belted linen cover-up that hung almost to my knees. I was just putting my stuff in the trunk next to the picnic basket when Bambi came out wearing virtually the same thing. It looked like there would be a show-down on the beach later.

The boys wore t-shirts that had faded to pastel and the loudest, most garish, baggiest, swim-trunks I had ever seen. It was all I could do not to laugh.

After we had the car packed, there was a short negotiation for seating preference. It was mostly a discussion over who would get to drive, with Jim volunteering to start, Bud offering to drive back and me staying completely out of it. As it worked out, Bud and I rode in the back with Jim in the front seat and Mom driving. There was a 'possibility' that one or both of the boys would get a turn at the wheel, but Mom didn't actually make any promises.

Once we were underway, I wondered how Jim had managed to screw up so badly that Mom didn't even feel comfortable with his driving even while she was next to him in the front seat. No one had told me the story. No one had even referred to the situation, except for Jim confiding to me that he wanted a new sports car. Since I couldn't imagine Mom denying them anything they wanted bad enough, I could only assume that at one time, Jim had a car, but had managed to do something so terrible in it that now neither he nor his brother were trusted with anything more than bicycles. That also explained why the Dragonbike had sat idle for so long. I wanted to ask, but I also didn't want to risk spoiling the trip, so I kept quiet. Maybe the subject would come up on it's own since we were going to be together in the car for over an hour both ways.

I looked around for something to take my mind off the subject and found myself staring at Bud's trunks. They were day-glo green and purple with big red and yellow flowers on them and I wondered what had ever given the manufacturer the idea that this was what young men should be wearing in public. I mean, if I had something that hideous, I would have burned it.

The trunks looked too big to be swimwear anyway. They came down all the way to Bud's knees and they were very baggy. After my success with my own non-clothing designs, I thought I was qualified to hold an opinion. I wondered why Jim and Bud didn't wear something more appropriate for the beach, like Speedos. After all, they both had the body for it — slim waists, narrow hips, and nice shoulders. They both had kind of bony legs, but you can't have everything.

The Speedo question answered itself as soon as I pictured Bud wearing one. From what I had seen of their rooms and from helping with the laundry, he and Jim both habitually wore jock-straps as underwear most of the time. I guess I had thought of that as an affectation that they had picked up from all the sports they played, like guys who wear football jerseys or bike-shorts all the time. When I tried to picture Bud wearing a Speedo, a thong or a sling, I almost burst our laughing. My face did turn red and I hid my guilty grin behind my hand until I got control.

The answer was quite straightforward: neither boy could possibly wear small, tight swimsuits for the same reason that neither would ever be partial to tight jeans. Their cocks were just too damn big! Even in a totally flaccid state, there was really no way they could manage to wear anything tight or stretchy that wouldn't make them look like they were smuggling overgrown zucchini and tennis balls. Even in baggy shorts, they had to wear athletic-grade underwear to keep things under control. I remembered an encounter with Bud, Janice and Jolene in the schoolyard that had even resulted in a close-up demonstration of how it was possible for things to get very out of control.

So the reason for the huge baggy trunks was simply to be comfortable and to allow them to remain modest should an errant wave dislodge something. Otherwise, they would have to be constantly checking and rearranging themselves, and they certainly did quite enough of that was it was!

As if to illustrate the situation, Bud put his hand between his legs and pulled at some of the brightly-colored landscape in his lap. I don't know if it was cause and effect or not, but he did give me a quick grin when he did it, so I knew he saw me watching. Even though I had been caught, I found I didn't want to look away right then. I didn't have anything better to do for a while and thinking about Bud's equipment seemed a pleasant enough way to pass the time.

I should have known that there could be no idle or casual thinking about cocks on my part. My body was way too responsive to my head for me to be able to think about things like that without feeling the consequences, and we weren't even out of town before I had thought of several things I shouldn't.

Like, I thought that if Bud would have hauled his cock out and started playing with himself, I would have been entertained. I would even have assisted, one hand... two... or any part of my body he wanted to use.

The air-conditioning in my part of the car began to feel inadequate and I turned the vent so that more cool air was blowing in my direction. It helped a little, but just a little. I had kept to myself all last night, so my last dose of cock had been with George, and that seemed like a long time ago.

It was frustrating. Neither Bambi or Jim would have objected if Bud and I got busy in the back seat. The only good reason for me not to jump on Bud was that I was trying to keep my swimwear a secret until we got to the beach and Bambi and I had our little strip-off to see who was wearing the sexiest suit. I had no doubt that she would win, but I had to play the game.

I looked at Bud sideways. He still had a hand in his crotch and he was smiling slyly. I realized that I was being set-up. He was trying to get me hot so I would reveal what I had on under the cover-up. I tried to look away from the growing bulge, but I was mesmerized. I wrapped my arms around myself and crossed my legs to show that I was going to resist. For a while, it worked. I even managed to look out the window a few times, but whenever Bud would shift his position, I would glance back to see if anything had changed.

Bud kept up his teasing until we reached Sarasota. By then, I was more impressed with his ability to keep an erection going for that long than I was by his cock itself. I kept thinking that if I had given in earlier, I might have had that thing inside me for most of the trip. I started to have serious regrets.

When Bambi turned south, rather than going through town, I knew we were going somewhere other than the main public beach on Siesta Key, which was generally known to be one of the best public beaches in the state, and in my experience, was usually what people meant when they said 'going to the beach'. We passed through several small towns and went by a couple of state parks I didn't know existed before she turned west again. It wasn't long before I could smell the salt air even through the car's air-conditioner.

She may have seen my puzzled expression in the mirror as I peered around, because she said, "You've probably never been to this part of the Gulf coast before, Sam. I should have told you, the company has a house on Casey Key. They bought it to use to entertain clients, and I'm sure that's how it's listed on the company's books, but whenever I've called to check, it's always been available for our personal use. It's a really beautiful spot. We'll be there in about fifteen minutes.

Now that I knew I was going somewhere I'd never been, the fifteen minutes seemed to drag on like hours. I forgot all about Bud's distraction and looked out the window, hoping to see new and wonderful things, but what I saw was just one mini-strip mall after another, most of them with the same mix of gift shops, beach stores, and convenience marts.

I was beginning to feel disappointed when I noticed a disturbance in one of the parking lots. It was hard to see, because of all the palm trees that had been planted to make shade for the black asphalt lot. It looked like some people were running away from a small group to one side. I saw a local police cruiser parked crookedly in front of a Little Reb convenience store down at the end of the row and I 'heard' a low wail like a distant siren in the back of my head. The wail changed into a series of sobs and I knew someone was in trouble.

"Stop!" I shouted, when my mental command wasn't heeded. Neeka never needed directions. She always pulled over before I could get the words out. But Neeka wasn't here. "Please, stop here!"

"You should have gone before we left, Sis," Jim wisecracked from the front seat.

Bambi took her foot off the accelerator the car and looked at me in the rear-view mirror.

"We'll be there in just a few minutes, honey," she said. "The bridge is just ahead."

"Someone is in trouble," I said.

Bambi slowed sharply and turned into the last entrance to the lot. No one spoke. Jim, Bud and I tried to spot the trouble, while Bambi pulled up beside the police car.

When everyone got out of the car, I opened my mouth to tell them to wait, to let me go alone, but one look from Mom killed that idea. And with both of us going, neither Jim or Bud would have waited, so we all walked cautiously around the corner of the building toward the small knot of people.

The commotion was in the corner between the convenience store and a hair-salon. It seemed to center on two people who were backed into the angle between the two stores, a man wearing faded blue-jeans and a girl wearing a yellow bikini with a short, white terry-cloth cover-up over it. She looked about 14 to me. It was hard to tell with her face all scrunched up like that. The man looked very unhappy too, but something told me that while they had that much in common, they didn't belong together.

I squeezed through next to a man wearing a Hawaiian shirt and an older couple with their arms around each other. I stopped short when I saw the policeman kneeling down, leaning against one of the palm trees lining the parking lot, about ten feet in front of the two suspects.

The cop had his revolver drawn and was pointing it at the man and the girl. I saw that he had his finger on the trigger. I also saw that he was holding the gun so tightly that the muscles on his forearm were rigid. The barrel of the gun was twitching and waving so much that I doubted if he could have managed to hit the building, even at this distance. This was clearly an 'unstable situation', as I remembered Lt. Grogan saying on TV.

I felt very alone. I missed having Neeka with me. I even wouldn't have minded having Lt. Grogan and his shiny-booted, black-suited, heavily-equipped, SWAT crew around. Instead it was just one very over-stressed local policeman and me.

"What happened?" I asked, looking around for someone who might be cool enough to answer.

"He's got Tammy!" the elderly woman said. "He's got my granddaughter!"

"He tried to hold up the store, here," the man said as he tried to calm his wife. "When he came out, the officer here tried to arrest him, but he broke away and grabbed Tammy. God! It all happened so fast."

A swarthy young guy wearing a dark t-shirt, whom I took to be the convenience store clerk said, "He's got a knife. I thought he was going to kill me with it!"

The man in the corner had his left hand on the arm of the girl and his right arm around her. His right hand was under her terry-cloth top. I could see the tip of a very shiny knife sticking out, poking into the base of her neck. From a distance, it had looked very much like a pendant hanging from a necklace, but from close-up I could see that it wasn't. And the small red spot above it wasn't a birth-mark, it was a cut from where the man was pressing the knife into her throat. Below it were a few small drops of red on the front of her terry top. Those weren't going to be easy to get out.

Mom had come up beside me and put her hand protectively on my shoulder. I really wanted to ask her to go back to the car, but I didn't think we had time to have that discussion. I also doubted if she would have gone, anyway.

I stepped out from the group and slowly sidled past the kneeling officer so I would be in his line of sight.

"Hi, there, officer... Brown," I said, as calmly as I could manage. Thank goodness for name-tags.

"Please step back, miss!" he said, brusquely. "This is police business!" He shouted at the man in the corner, "YOU! I'm not going to tell you again! Drop the knife!"

I reached around for my ID, but I had left my fanny-pack in the car.

"Ease off on the trigger, please Officer Brown," I asked politely. "I can help. Trust me." I tried as hard as I could to keep my voice low, modulated, and friendly. It wasn't easy. I felt like I was about to jump out of my skin.

Brown seemed startled to discover that he was squeezing the trigger so hard that the hammer on his handgun had begun to move backward and the cylinder had started to revolve. He took his finger off the trigger and I took a breath.

"Thank you," I said. "I'll just step over here for a second, OK?"

Before the officer could object, I walked the few feet over to stand next to the man in the corner. I did my best to stay out of the line of fire.

"Hi, there... Tom," I said. Tom was wearing a faded work-shirt with his name embroidered in an oval over his shirt-pocket. There was a dark spot on the other side of his shirt where it looked like a company logo had been cut off. I guessed that must have been Tom's former employer.

Tom jerked his head around to look at me. His brow furrowed as he tried to figure out how I knew his name. At least I had his attention. I decided that that was a good thing. If he was paying all his attention to me, there might not be any left for the hostage.

I eased up close to Tom until my shoulder was against his ribs. He continued to look at me like I was crazy. I reached up with my left hand and tapped the name on his shirt. At the same time, I slid my right arm around his back and lightly hugged his waist, like he was an old friend.

"'Tom', see? Not a real good choice of clothes for a robbery, Tom. Is this your first time?"

"Y'uh. Yeah," he mumbled. He still looked mystified at why a girl would walk up in the middle of a hostage situation and try to chat him up.

"Out of work, hunh?"

Tom nodded. His expression softened just a touch.

"Tough break. Look, Tom, that officer there is pretty nervous. You're pretty worked-up, too. And Tammy here... Hi Tammy! Well, Tammy here is about to pee in her pants she's so scared. I think it would be a lot easier on everyone if you would let me stand in for Tammy for a bit, you know? How about it?"

Tom looked at Tammy. She didn't have to try very hard to look pitiful. She forced the weakest smile I've ever seen onto her face to try and appeal to the man with the knife at her throat.

Tom looked at me. I already had a firm hold on his waist with one arm, and I put the other one across his stomach and hugged him tightly.

My "I've got you equals you've got me" strategy worked like a charm. Tom put his left arm around my shoulders and took the knife away from Tammy's neck. When I saw his hand drop out from under her I patted him on the side.

"Good! Thank you. OK, Tammy, you can go over there and wait with your grandparents now."

As soon as Tammy started to move, I said, "OK, you need to put the knife on me now, Tom."

I winced as Tammy crossed Officer Brown's line of fire, but fortunately nothing happened and she got out of the way just as Tom put the hand with the knife against my chest.

Tom jerked a bit when he found he couldn't get his hand into the same position as he had with Tammy. Under my loose top, there was a good bit more flesh in the way.

"Here," I said, helpfully. "Like this."

I put my hand very gently on his wrist and moved the hand with the knife up under my chin, so the blade was against my throat instead of the tip. I wasn't sure that this position was any safer, but it didn't matter. With one arm around his waist and my other hand on his wrist, Tom was under control. He just didn't know it yet.

I took a deep breath and let it out. Without realizing why, Tom did the same. I smiled up at him. It was almost over. Tom looked very puzzled. I understood completely.

"What the hell was that about?" Officer Brown demanded. "Why did you do that? What did that prove?"

Brown was puzzled, too. He was just a touch pissed, as well. At least he wasn't about to shoot someone. He even had his weapon lowered and pointing at the ground.

"Take it easy, Officer. We're almost done here," I said, reassuringly,

"Hunh?" said Officer Brown.

"Hunh?" said Tom.

"That's right. It's almost over. Tom here is about to lie down on the ground and you are going to cuff him."

This was shocking news to Tom. He had nothing to say, but he tried to press the knife against my neck as a way of asserting his control of the situation. He was mildly annoyed when his hand didn't move. He tried again with the same result.

My gentle touch had hardened to a vise grip. That knife wasn't going anywhere I didn't want it to. I slowly pushed Tom's hand away from me and rotated his wrist so the blade was facing away from both of us.

Tom still didn't get it. He kept trying to bring the knife back. He was still trying when I squeezed his wrist so hard that the knife dropped out of his fingers.

I kicked the knife out of the way so Tom wouldn't fall on it. Officer Brown watched it skitter past him down the sidewalk. Tom was still trying to get control of his hand.

I raised my right knee and jabbed it into the back of Tom's left leg. I shoved him forward with my right hand, stepped behind him and lowered him to the ground, twisting his arm up behind him in an arm-lock. It was very smooth and I was proud of myself. I had picked up something from Ed Morris' brief judo lesson that had come in handy.

I sat down on Tom's back, still holding his wrist. Tom turned his head and looked back up at me, no doubt wondering what the heck had just happened. I didn't bother to explain it to him.

"Cuffs?" I prompted Officer Brown. He didn't know what just happened either. I decided that was the best way to leave things.

Once Tom had been restrained and hauled off to sit in the back of the police car, I tugged on Bambi's hand and headed back to the car with the boys following. We got in and Bambi started the car.

"Hey! Wait!" Brown shouted. He wanted us to stop, but I don't think he could think of any law preventing a stand-in hostage from leaving the scene.

I stuck my hand out of the window and waved goodbye as Bambi drove off. Then I leaned back in the seat and relaxed. Sometimes things work just the way you want them to. I was very happy about that. The best part was, I didn't have to use even a tiny bit of Power. I had done it all on muscle and bravado. And really very little muscle.

We were about a mile down the road when Bud leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. I was very happy about that, too. I shifted over and leaned against him, putting my head on his shoulder. He put his arm around me. I closed my eyes and relaxed. Even though things had gone extremely well, my tummy was still jumping and my nerves were still jangling. For the rest of the trip I worked on calming down.

By the time Bambi turned into the shell-covered driveway at the beach house, my post-action buzz had mellowed and I was I was feeling great. I bounced out of the car feeling like a new person.

The house looked positively marvelous. It was all Spanish-style, with arches everywhere and lots of shady decks and sunny patios around the side and front. I was about to help unload the car when Bambi wrapped her arms around me and gave me a big hug.

"What's that for?" I asked.

"Nothing," she said. "No reason at all."

Jim and Bud each gave me a 'nothing' hug, too. Then they grabbed up everything out of the car and left me with nothing to carry. All I got to do was close the trunk and follow them into the house. The show offs!

I didn't know what to expect of the beach house, so everything was a surprise. The biggest was that it was in every way a 'real' house. It had three bedrooms, four baths, a kitchen, a breakfast room, and a huge living room with lots of sofas and easy chairs and cushions and stuff. The living room was even bigger than the family room at home, and that was the biggest room I'd ever been in that didn't have basketball hoops in it. This place even had an indoor/outdoor pool with the 'outdoor' part shaded by an awning to keep the water from getting too hot.

On the outside it looked even better. The front of the house was about twenty feet above the beach, with a series of wooden walks and decks leading down across some dunes covered with sea-oats to a broad strip of the whitest sand I had ever seen. The public beach sand I remembered playing on when I was younger was kind of a light grey. This was pure white, like powdered sugar. It almost hurt to look at. I shaded my eyes, even though I was wearing sunglasses.

I walked down to the beach and looked out at the ocean. It was a beautifully-clear shade of blue that faded to crystal-clear where the low waves broke tiredly on the brilliant sand. I looked down the beach. There were a number of houses, each as large as ours, evenly and widely spaced on the sweeping curve of beach. I could see several gulls in the distance, soaring and bobbing in the breeze coming off the Gulf. Every few seconds, one would dive down and skim the surface of the water, trying to snag a fish.

This beach could have been on a different continent for all that it resembled the beach I was used to. It was simply the most beautiful place I had ever been.

I looked the other way and saw that our house was at the end of the line. Beyond us was just a large area of dunes and sea-oats that could have gone on for miles. In the farthest distance, if I squinted just right, I could see the shape of a couple of tall buildings with balconies all over. I figured they must be condos at some resort up the coast.

After I stood there for a few minutes, I realized that I was virtually alone in this paradise. There were no more than three or four other people on the beach for as far as I could see, and with my improved eyesight, I could see pretty darn far!

The beach I best remembered going to as a child had been so crowded that you had to get there early to stake out a good spot. I remembered Daddy going on about how important picking a spot was, that you wanted to be close to the ocean, but not too close, and you wanted to be out of the line of traffic from the parking lot, and you wanted to be upwind of the trash cans. Mostly I remember having big people walk through my sand castles, usually just when I had got them just right.

"Not what you expected. Is it?"

Bambi had come down after me. I had been so wrapped up in reminiscing that I hadn't heard her. I was on the verge of making myself sad from thinking about stuff and I was happy for the distraction.

"Not at all what I expected. This is wonderful. This is like paradise."

"I'm glad you like it."

"I do! I feel like I want to stay here forever!"

"I felt that way the first time, too. It is a beautiful place, but you can get bored with anything if you do it long enough. Ben and I stayed here for months at a time at first. But eventually I found that it became routine to live here for too long. That's a terrible thing to do to a place like this — to make it seem ordinary. So we went back to town and rationed our time here so it would continue to be special for us."

I nodded. She was probably right. It sounded like a very wise decision, but at the moment, it was still fresh and new and wonderful to me. I couldn't imagine thinking of this place as ordinary. I watched her looking up and down the beach like I had done, and I wondered if she didn't regret their decision just a little bit. I was sure that if she had it to do over, she would have chosen to spend more time in this paradise with her husband, even at the risk becoming jaded to it.

"Where are the guys?" I asked.

"They'll be along. There is a storeroom in the basement with all kinds of beach toys in it. They like to go out and play in the surf on boogieboards."

The surf didn't look worthy of a board to me. The waves hitting the beach were small things, less than a foot high in most places. It would take some imagination to think about surfing in that.

I reckoned without the determination of Jim and Bud, who arrived a moment later, whooping and hollering and carrying their small boards over their heads. They ran past us and splashed into the water, laughing like madmen. Each tossed his board into the low surf at a run, but aiming it along the beach, not out into the deeper water. After a couple of laughing falls, they jumped on the boards and went skimming along down the beach.

Apparently the size of the waves here didn't have much to do with attraction. The long curve of the beach probably determined how the water behaved. The waves were low, but they seemed to hit at a shallow angle, so one wave could roll for a long way down the beach. Once they caught one of these waves, they could ride it a long, long way. In a matter of minutes, they were far down the beach.

"Wow!" I said, impressed. "I never knew you could do that. How far do they go?"

"They usually ride all the way to the point," Bambi said. "Then they have to walk back."