Twenty-Five Pairs by T.S. Severe
Chapter Ten Merritt Island, Florida 2025
"Oops! Hi." I smiled at the uniformed marine as I slipped out of Allen's room. His name was Walter and he loved NCAA basketball, his wife, and rhubarb pie. In that order, or so he claimed.
"Good morning, Doctor Pinchbeck." He nodded at me, looking up from his magazine.
"Is it morning already?" I rolled my eyes and Walter chuckled, and all the guards knew about Allen and me. It was a very badly kept secret. I made my way to my own room, hoping for a couple hours sleep anyway.
Or maybe just a long hot bath. I needed less sleep than most people and like many things about me, I wondered if that was my DNA or just...Me? I had no way of knowing, and probably both, but it was convenient being able to get by on just a few hours rest out of a very busy day, maybe one full night's sleep out of every four or five. It was wearing Major Fuller thin though and that was a giggle while I soaked in my tub.
Our rooms at the crew's quarters were VIP apartments really, single bedroom, full bath, a study, living room and small kitchen. We had our own guards, our own catering and maid service. We even had our own secretaries, for lack of a better word. Warden was one that came to mind and my own was a sunny and attractive young woman named Rio, like the river. She was from Puerto Rico and she had the binder memorized, being the bright vivacious girl she was.
"You've got zero-G evac procedures all morning. Lunch with Dale Watersman, twelve to one..."
"Who?" I looked up from my breakfast.
"Watersman? He's with Time magazine, they're running the profiles every week for two months, starting in October. Remember? Your studio session is in three weeks..."
"Studio?" I frowned.
"For the cover?" Rio wrinkled her pert Hispanic nose, tapping her small computer. "You get, um...The week of November third. I want an autograph on mine."
"I just want to go to Mars." I sighed and I'd grossly underestimated the amount of public relations work I'd have to endure on this job.
"Playboy still wants to know if you'll do the Feb 2026 issue." Rio laughed. "They sent a check for five million by courier, all you have to do is sign for it."
"Where is it?"
"I sent it back." She rolled her eyes and I nodded. "After lunch more evacuation drills, in the tank with Doctor Chin."
"Evacuating a space ship twenty-three light years from earth?" I sighed. "What's the point? Chin doing the Playboy thing?"
"No." Rio smiled. "They didn't ask her, so far as I know."
"Oh, she's gonna be mad. Don't say anything."
"I won't. Then tonight, dinner with..."
"I won't be making dinner." I shook my head. "Whatever you've got tonight, cancel it."
"You've got a meeting with the people from Mayo, the teleconference..."
"Reschedule it." I told her. "I'm unavailable tonight."
"Why?" She looked at me.
"Personal reasons." I said. "Nothing goes in your book, understand? Call it...Female problems, okay?"
"Jen..." Rio sighed.
"I'm serious, take my calls after five until...Whenever. I'm busy." I stared at the girl until she nodded and Rio was a good assistant, but she wasn't going to be very happy with a blank spot in her diary.
"I need a number." She told me and that was an argument I wouldn't win.
"I'll be in Maryland, up at Bethesda." I said, going back to my breakfast. "I have a friend in the hospital."
"Alright." She nodded.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"So, how does it feel to be the world's first xenobiologist?" Dale Waterman was older, in his fifties and smart. He was also quite charming, with a generous smile and pleasant voice. We'd been talking for thirty minutes already and I was enjoying our little lunch.
"Heh." I smiled at him. "Well, I'm not a xenobiologist yet. We have to find something first."
"Sure, but you have to be pretty excited about it, Doctor."
"I'm very excited, yeah." I nodded and this was all well practiced. "Part of the mission is obviously to search for and find extraterrestrial organisms. Such a discovery would be the achievement of a lifetime and a credit not to me, but to all those people who have contributed in so many ways to create this opportunity."
"Sure." Dale smiled and he'd heard that before. "So what makes you qualified, Dr. Pinchbeck? Why were you selected for this mission?"
"Xenobiology." I laughed lightly and took a sip of wine. "When the requirements were being drafted, some big brains at IAS in Princeton and the Rand people, the Thinkers, they had to define what Xenobiology meant."
"What skills a xenobiologist would need, you mean?"
"Yeah, exactly." I agreed. "And so among other things, a background in genetics, immunology, virology, ummm...Biochemistry..."
"And you're a geneticist..."
"Yes. I'm also a virologist, that was my specialty and so I naturally have a strong background in..."
"A virologist, right." Watersman jumped on that like he'd been waiting for it. "And you worked for the Army, yes? At Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. What did you do there, Doctor?"
"I worked on IDSR, Infectious Diseases Survey and Response." I told him. "I headed up a team of international doctors and scientists to manage viral outbreaks worldwide. It was...Hard work, but rewarding."
"Sure." Watersman nodded. "And so that's the response part, the survey part though...I understand you did some work for Fort Dietrich? What was that about?"
"Oh, that's, uh, not a subject I'm able to discuss really." I cleared my throat. "I'm sure the Pentagon can answer that better than I can."
"Well, I asked the Pentagon and they told me that, among other things, you were on special assignment through your office at CDC to something called Project Tempest."
"There you have it." I smiled at him and let the awkward silence hang.
"May I ask what Project Tempest was?"
"Tempest was part of a United Nations joint initiative to catalogue infectious disease in developing nations and develop a vaccination program that would be effective against a broad spectrum of contagions."
"That's pretty...broad, Doctor." Watersman chuckled.
"I'm not at liberty to discuss the details, that has to come from World Health Organization and...I'm sorry."
"The Christian Science Monitor, last month, reported that the Central Intelligence Agency may have been subverting UN sponsored programs to conduct field exercises in biological warfare..."
"I'm sure I don't have any comment on that." I said behind my frozen smile.
"Was Tempest part of..."
"Tempest was a viable program directly administered by the World Health Organization to the benefit of 34 countries and some three billion people, sir." I leaned forward, staring the man in the eyes. "I'd suggest you take these questions up with Geneva rather than spreading rumors which can only undermine the efforts and sacrifice of so many good people."
"I see." Watersman pursed his lips.
"Our time's about up." Rio was right there to save me, leaning close and touching my shoulder.
"Right." I nodded up at her. "I'm sorry, Mr. Watersman. I'm afraid Dr. Pinchbeck does have a schedule to keep." Rio smiled at the reporter who was looking decidedly unhappy.
"Thanks for the ambush, Dale." I stood up. "I won't forget it."
"Hey, nothing personal, Jen..." He said, but I was already walking away.
"If Time Magazine ever calls..." I looked at Rio, "...For anything? Tell them to fuck off and die."
"No problem." She frowned and Rio was a little unhappy with Watersman herself.
Tempest was secure, I knew that anyway, but still...It would be bad if any trace of the project, the real project I'd run through CIA/DARPA, was ever exposed. I hadn't lied, not exactly, but the details of my work were necessarily secret. The irony was that my long involvement with the government was both my ticket into the Deep Space Survey and a very large black mark on my record. A lot of the scientists, those in the academic community at least, had little enough love for governments and I'd taken a beating as my application had been advanced through the screening process.
Strange as it may seem, being selected for the biggest scientific endeavor in human history was as much a popularity contest as anything else. That's why I was doing fluff, like interviews for Time magazine, to sell myself to the public, as much as selling the program itself. Watersman had taken advantage of his opportunity and I understood that, but I very much resented it as well. The man should be careful though, some rocks just aren't meant to be looked under and I'd found myself liking Mr. Watersman.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"Acute myelocytic leukemia." I flipped through the medical chart and it was all bad news. "They're giving you monoclonal antibodies..."
"And chemotherapy." The old man looked tired, pale and thin. Hardly dapper anymore.
"And chemo." I nodded.
"Be glad you'll never suffer this, my dear." Mr. Fox closed his eyes for a moment while I pulled a chair close to his bed.
"It's undignified." He opened them again, looking at me as I sat close. "I heard you had an interesting lunch."
"Oh? You heard that, huh?" I wasn't surprised.
"A little bird told me." He smiled, the air rattling out of his lungs.
"Watersman tried to hit me with Tempest." I shrugged. "There's nothing there."
"I know." He closed his eyes again.
"Does it hurt?" I glanced up at his I.V. and he was getting meperidine already.
"Oh yes." He smiled. "You received my gift."
"The files?" I nodded. "There was more than I expected."
"Hmmm...I should have kept some then." He licked his thin white lips. "Death is an unfinished business."
"The immunotherapy might work." I said moving to rise. "You need to rest."
"No. Stay...Ask me what you came here for."
"I came to see you." I settled back into the chair.
"Too soon for that." He chuckled softly. "You came to ask me something. Like a good daughter."
He sighed and I looked at him for several minutes.
"Where's Ronald?" I asked gently.
"It's in the files." Mr. Fox breathed, but he was avoiding the question and perhaps on his deathbed the old man had found a conscience.
"Not the baby." I shook my head. "Abduction of the placenta in the second trimester? I don't believe that either."
"I knew you wouldn't." His eyes were closed again and I wished he'd look at me.
"Where's my brother?"
"I told them." He breathed slowly. "They always underestimate you."
"Mr. Fox..."
"He's gone, Jennifer." His eyes opened and the old man turned his head. "I couldn't do anything."
I looked down and felt a great sadness inside.
"I saved you." He made a satisfied sound deep in his frail chest. "I got you in, they can't touch you now."
"What do you mean? DSS?"
"Yes." He coughed softly and looked at a cup with a straw in it. I held it to his lips and he nodded gratefully while he took a small sip.
"What to do with you?" Mr. Fox smiled. "You frighten them, you see? After all this time..."
"You tried to talk me out of it."
"Only because I knew I couldn't, darling girl." He reached for my hand, barely stretching his limb and I gave the man my fingers to hold.
"And you got me in." I frowned.
"It wasn't easy." He nodded. "Everything is so hard these days. It's good to sleep."
"And I thought you just wanted a failsafe."
"I do." His eyes weren't dulled by the cancer or the pain and he looked right through me. "You're going because you're the best."
"Oh, you're sneaky." I sighed. "Now I don't know what to believe."
"Believe in yourself, dear." He closed his eyes.
"Goodbye, Mr. Fox." I let the old man go and I was free of him now. He'd given me that much at least, after taking away everything else.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
Ronald was in the files, but only as a number. An experiment terminated after twenty-two years, three months, and seventeen days. It had taken me two hours to find it and then it was just a bad photocopy of an interagency memo.
More than ten years spent with one eye always open, hoping to spot him through a window, or walking down the street. I could close both of them now. My brother was dead.
I drank a lot. Too much and I cried. For Ronald, for our baby, for my parents. I cried for me and I felt almost better afterwards, but not really. Nothing was changed. I had two cartons of files, my whole life on paper. From my mother's original request for a research grant, now classified top secret/compartmented information to the TSCI order terminating the project less than an hour after public announcement of my selection as a scientific member of the Deep Space Survey.
I was untouchable then and I understood that some of those persons responsible for my existence were anxious to see me terminated. Not for any specific reason, just for insurance. Tying up loose ends, as it were. Mr. Fox had saved me and so far as anyone would ever know, I no longer worked for him, or the CIA, or anyone but NASA. But I did and that was our little secret. The one Mr. Fox would soon take to the grave and I would take into the depths of space.
That was more responsibility than a half-drunk, genetically engineered, 28 year old woman needed at two o'clock in the morning.
"Hello?"
"Hey sleepyhead." I giggled into the phone, feeling cheered at the sound of his sleep slurred voice.
"Hey new girl." Josh sighed happily. "I was just dreaming about you."
"Liar."
"Well..."
"Don't stop though." I whispered, curling up on my bed, hugging a teddy bear to my breasts. "I like it."
"Yeah, we were by the river." Josh chuckled and he was coming more awake. "Having a picnic lunch."
"Oh, yeah." I closed my eyes, wanting to see it.
"You were still thirteen though, strangest thing."
"Really? How old were you?"
"My age." Josh sighed. "Thirty-three and all I could do was look at you."
"Ohhh..." I pouted. "...What kind of dream is that?"
"You woke me up, remember?" He laughed lightly. "I was just reaching for you too."
"What a tease." I smiled into the phone.
"You were wearing that green dress you used to have. The one with..."
"The yellow flowers?" I giggled. "God! That was horrible!"
"No, no...I loved that dress."
"You never told me." I sighed. "I would have worn it more often."
"I should have." Josh agreed. "When you used to lean over, the top would fall open and..."
"What?" I gasped happily.
"Yeah, you didn't know that?" He laughed. "I always thought you did it on purpose."
"Oh no." I closed my thighs on my bear, my big one from Germany. "You saw me...What? All of me?"
"Oh yeah. Those hard little nipples you used to have, like Bazooka bubblegum."
"Bazooka?" I rolled my eyes.
"God yeah, Jen. I thought that was the sexiest thing in the world." Josh said. "Looking down your dress."
"Hmmm...I miss you."
"I miss you too. What are you doing now?"
"Hugging my bear, lying in bed."
"No..." He chuckled. "...I mean the astronaut stuff, what are you guys doing?"
"Oh, boring stuff. We have to know how the spaceship works and what do if we drive into the moon and..."
"Yeah." Josh chuckled. "You have to come back."
"I know."
"Will you marry me, Jen?"
"Yeah." I giggled.
"I'm serious." Josh swallowed hard and I smiled. "Will you be my wife?"
"You can't ask me a question like that over the phone." I told him.
"I could come there and ask." Josh said. "My truck's working good."
"Heh!" I laughed. "You can't even find the gas to start it, how are you going to drive all the way to Florida?"
"My old man stashed a five hundred gallon tank at the mill." Josh chuckled. "He said he wasn't ever gonna drive plastic."
"He never did either, I bet."
"Nope. Pop never did."
"Well, save your gas for when I come back, okay?" I said, feeling a little sad suddenly. "They won't let me go if I get married."
"I know." Josh laughed.
"Ohhh...I see now." I laughed with him. "Trying to pull a fast one on me."
"I'm just an old dirty sawtooth, baby." Josh said.
"Lookin' for some love." I giggled. "I know."
"I found it once." The man sighed. "I just want it back."
"It never left." I promised him. "I love you so much."
"I could still come out." Josh said. "Even if I can't marry you."
"Do you want to?" I asked and I suddenly wanted to see him desperately.
"Of course I do."
"We go in quarantine in a month." I bit my lip.
"Why?"
"Ninety days before the launch, just to make sure we're healthy." I told him. "Make sure we don't catch anything before we leave earth."
"In a month?" Josh asked and he didn't wait for an answer. "I'll fly out this weekend, okay?"
"Yeah." I agreed with a happy giggle. "I'll have to go shopping."
"Shopping?"
"For a green dress!" I laughed.
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
"How's your trauma, Doctor?" Nielson was looking at me and we were entering the mockup of the ship's sickbay and medical labs.
"I interned at Baltimore General." I shrugged. "The emergency room was an awful lot like World War Three."
"I bet." He snorted appreciatively. Baltimore General Hospital was in the bad part of town and Johns Hopkins liked to send its best and brightest there to be humbled.
"How's yours?" I asked the man.
"Rusty." Nielson admitted. "But there's two of us and only six of them, so we'll be okay."
He watched me as I closed the two airlock pressure doors, because that lab was an exact and functional replica of the real one. It was a level four biosafety facility, although not certified of course, meaning it could safely store the most lethal contagions known to man. Safely was always a relative term however, the word didn't exist in the lexicon of virologists. We called it an ARF...an Acceptable Risk Facility and I wanted to demonstrate that to Dr. Nielson. We needed to have a chat before it was too late and I'd been putting it off.
"Here." I unzipped a breast pocket on my NASA jumpsuit and pulled out a sealed vial, like a test tube.
"What's this?" He took it from me and it looked like dead blood, black and congealed.
"I'll give you five minutes to find out." I looked at my watch. "I treated the stopper with a sulfuric acid solution. That was seven minutes ago."
"What?" He blinked at me and then looked at the vial, noting the deterioration in the rubber seal just as I'd promised.
"Time's wasting doctor." I shrugged. "That gets out and they'll have to take a flamethrower to this place."
"Shit." He was moving then, I was pleased to see, and the doctor seemed almost competent in a lab.
"Been awhile, huh?" I leaned back against an empty worktable mounted to the bulkhead and watched Nielson prepare a vacuum chamber.
"What do I need to know about this?" He frowned.
"It will kill you."
"Great." He wasn't shaking at least, but he might have thought it was just a drill too. Hard telling for certain and I'd seen some very competent physicians lose it completely when they looked at death through the naked eye. A few people thrived on it and most everyone else fell right in the middle, like Dr. Nielson apparently.
"Keep going, you still have three minutes to get it under glass." I said.
"I'm not going to identify it in three minutes." He looked at the vial which was now safely stored in the containment chamber at least. The rubber could melt and the virus wasn't going anywhere. That was the easy part.
"Not if you're talking to me." I smiled. "Come on, Zach's dying! We have to know what's killing him."
"I'm a surgeon." He grumbled, moving the chamber carefully by hand. Theoretically the small box could be dropped from twenty feet onto solid concrete and remain fully viable, but who wanted to find out? Dr. Nielson was being very careful.
It was a simple procedure really, and one any second year medical student would be all too familiar with. Preparing a sample for computer analysis and another sample as a slide to be looked at under a microscope. If you were a shit hot lab tech you could get a slide done in just a few minutes, even with using the remotes. Some technicians preferred the robotic hands, others liked to use gloves. Dr. Nielson was a hands on guy, so he was using a glove box and his time was...
"Up! That's it." I sighed theatrically. "Zach's dead."
"This was fun." The older man frowned at me.
"Keep, going. See what you got." I said. "We're going to have to work on our lab skills."
"I know." Nielson agreed, a little easier than I thought he would, but the man knew as well as I did that if we found life in space, it wasn't going to look like a little green man. It was going to look like...
"That's...A shepherd's crook." Nielson looked up from the electron microscope ten minutes later and I could see what he was looking at on a computer monitor next to him.
"Uh-huh." I nodded pointing at the screen. "That's the RNA strand, see the envelope? With the spikes? That's what's left of the original host cell. In this case, heart tissue from a rhesus monkey."
"That's hemorrhagic fever." Nielson swallowed hard.
"Ebola-Reston." I nodded.
"Are you crazy?" He stared at me.
"It's harmless." I shrugged. "But still, better safe than sorry, right Doctor?"
"You could have jeopardized the entire mission." Nielson's face was red. "What if it had gotten out?"
"Then you wouldn't have belonged on the crew, Doctor." I told him. "Have you seen my Mission Brief?"
"Yours?" He blinked at me. "No. I haven't, why..."
"The short version is that in event of crew exposure to unidentified biological organism I'm to take every possible step to isolate, catalogue, and retain a sample of the organism."
"Okay."
"All other considerations, including crew safety are secondary to that objective." I watched his face. "If that means I have to walk around with a hot sample in my pocket just to find out if you can back me up, I'll fucking do it."
"I want to see that Brief." Nielson swallowed hard.
"You understand why this isn't in a binder, don't you." I asked him. "Why it isn't in the press kit, or up for discussion in one of our scientific working groups. This is between you and me, Doctor Nielson. You need it in writing, you'll have it. What I need from you is more lab skill than I saw today."
"I heard about you." Nielson wasn't the sort of man to take a lecture like that from anyone, but especially a young woman like me.
"What's that?"
"You're a mercenary." He said and I narrowed my eyes. "That was you, in the Sudan, the Lassa outbreak two years ago."
"That was me." I agreed, not bothering to wonder how he'd found out. It wasn't a secret.
"How many people was that, Doctor?" He stared at me. "Sixty? Seventy?"
"After Lassa got there?" I shook my head. "They were ghosts. I didn't kill anyone."
"But you ordered it." He nodded. "Let me see that Brief. I'll back you up, but my crew is not going to be expendable. Understand me?"
"I understand perfectly." I told him. "Come on, let's suit up, we'll work up a PCR on the sample."
"A PCR?" Nielson rubbed his jaw, letting his anger go as he had to. "On the tissue, you mean. I've never done a polymerase chain reaction before."
"It's easy." I looked at my watch. "After dinner we'll do an ELISA. I hope you're ready for a very late night."
"ELISA?" The man shook his head. "You can't do that on just a blood and tissue sample, you need..."
"Oh, ye of little faith." I smiled at him. "Using the 'C' word in my lab, that's a no-no."
"How are you going to..."
"I have a patient coming up from Atlanta." I told him. "A monkey, not a person. Arriving in about an hour."
"I see." Nielson nodded. "Infected?"
"Could be." I laughed lightly. "Don't you love medicine, Doctor?"
"I used to." He actually smiled. "How do we do a PCR then?"
"Let's get dressed and I'll show you." I put my hand on his shoulder. "Arthur, I'm not the enemy, alright? I need you, we need each other."
"I have to be able to trust you." He took a deep breath. "You're not making it easy."
"I'm laying it all out for you, right now." I shrugged, giving him a small smile. "I didn't write the Brief."
"I know." He nodded and we looked at each other for a moment, his eyes searching mine for something. "Your father was a good man. He should've been on this mission."
"I know." I closed my eyes and nodded. "Part of him is."
"I hope so, Jennifer." Nielson said when I opened my eyes again. "I really want to believe that."
=-=-=-=-=-={25}=-=-=-=-=-=
I was looking through my old files, tapping my computer slowly and wondering how many people I really had killed in the Sudan. I'd come through with my team from Atlanta, collecting samples, promising help. But they were dead. A whole village bleeding from the eyes. Black angels with crimson tears. I'd never forget that.
It was a waterborne vector, from the only well in town, and everyone was infected. Sixty-three men, women, and children. The numbers were ruthless and predictable. Forty-four of them would die, no matter what we did, fourteen would survive and be immune to that particular strain of the virus forever after. Five of them would show the anti-bodies, proving they'd been exposed, but never even get a fever.
We spent a week trying to create an antigen. We transfused blood from healthy and convalescing patients into the dying ones, hoping that antibodies and T-lymphocytes would arrest the disease, but that was largely unsuccessful. In the end, we burned the village out with fuel-air explosives dropped from low altitude. That had been my decision and I lived with it every day, and one angel in particular haunted my heart like no other. I was looking at him, an old photo of the two of us in Africa, when Josh came out of the shower.
"What are you looking at?" My boyfriend had been there almost a week already and I was intensely glad of that.
"Nothing." I shut my computer off and turned around, looking at him wrapped in one of my pink towels. "Sexy."
"You like it?" Josh smiled and he was even more handsome than he'd been the last time I'd seen him, back in Utah several years previously.
"Come here." I said, licking my lips and holding out my arms.
Josh stepped close, between my wide spread legs as I sat on my desk chair. I put my hands around his back, feeling him hot inside and cool outside with damp water still beaded on his skin. I pressed my face against his stomach, flat and hard. He smelled clean now, not like sawdust from his lumber mill at all, and I missed that. I kissed him and licked around and then inside his belly button with a soft giggle.
"Hey now." He chuckled. "You're wearing me out."
"Am I?" I sighed, pressing my cheek against him and closing my eyes.
Josh put his hands on my head, stroking my hair and I wondered how I was going to leave him. He was thirty-three and never married. Josh was waiting for me, just like he'd promised, and it was so rare that we were able to spend time together.
"I thought maybe you were thinking of your boyfriend." Josh teased me, but only partly.
"Who?" I blinked with some surprise, not guilt, but...
"Major Fuller?" Josh cleared his throat.
"Oh, don't worry about Allen." I said with a relived smile. "He's just a little unhappy, he'll get over it."
"It's not him I'm worried about."
"What's wrong?" I looked up, into Josh's soft brown eyes.
"You're going to be with him for a long time." Josh shook his head slowly.
"Allen's not happy you're here either." I giggled. "He's afraid to say anything though."
"Oh?"
"He's afraid I'll reject him if he looks for a decision." I said. "And the Major is one of those guys who never got rejected by anyone for anything."
"Would you?" Josh asked me seriously. "Choose me over him?"
"Josh." I kissed his body. "Silly boy. I chose you a long time ago."
"Hmmm..."
"You've ruined Allen's perfect record." I giggled and my fingers were working to let Josh's towel fall from his narrow hips.
"Careful." Josh chuckled as his cock literally sprang free, the swollen head of his erection catching me lightly on the chin and I laughed.
"I thought I was wearing you out?" I lowered my mouth and kissed the top of the man's cock. "You're such a liar."
"Never." Josh sighed, leaving his denial sweetly ambiguous. I licked and kissed his long thick shaft slowly, my hands on his ass, squeezing his firm cheeks. Working lumber hadn't done anything but make the man strong and I loved that. I loved him because he was so simple, so fundamental in his heart and mind. Every other man I'd known had been complex and striving for something beyond himself, but Josh...He was the goodness I saw in the world around me and I needed that anchor desperately.
Josh gave a low moan of contentment as I took him between my lips. I wasn't a thirteen year old schoolgirl anymore and I soon had every inch of the man inside me, opening my throat and making love to him the best I knew how. My own cock was throbbing with the pleasure of it, the raw ecstasy of being with the only man I'd ever been able to love without reservation. My first love. My Josh.
"Don't cum yet..." I breathed five minutes later, pulling my mouth off him with a heavy wash of saliva and precum that ran down my chin and dripped to the carpet.
"Oh, God! Don't stop now." Josh rolled his eyes and he was getting close.
"Yeah, I am stopping." I giggled. "Your turn for awhile."
"Uh-huh." Josh nodded and he was slipping to his knees while I unzipped my jumpsuit, shrugging out of it with the man's help until I was just sitting there in my panties.
My cock was straining at the thin silk, evident as a hard ruddy bulge through the fine lace, and Josh kissed me there, through the material while I smiled. He teased me for a long while, too long, with kisses and soft bites on my thighs and tummy, everywhere but where I wanted it most. I was nearly begging for relief when Josh finally pulled my panties slowly down my legs and I felt his humid breath of my cock and balls.
Josh pressed his mouth to the base of my erection, to the spot where the shaft met my scrotum and he kissed me there, then sucked lightly at that spot so that I giggled with a shiver of delight and wondered what he was doing. He used his right hand to hold my testes, caressing them through the smooth shaved sack hanging between my thighs. His other hand was on my tummy and on my tits, and then my waist, just moving and touching me. It was nice and I sighed pleasantly.
My cock was drooling precum with my arousal and it ran in large clear drops down the shaft and stained the man's cheek where my cock pressed against him. I had my fingers in Josh's hair by then, still short and brown, but wet now from his shower and cool beneath my hand. I rubbed him briskly with a laugh, drawing his eyes upward and then his own smile before taking my cock finally into his mouth. He did love me so well, so perfectly, and I knew it was me. Not my biology, not just my body, but Josh was in love with me. We would have known and loved each other in any time, in any place or guise, I believed that completely and it wasn't chance that had brought us together.
"I'll marry you." I blinked at him and Josh widened his eyes and pulled his tightly stretched lips from around my cock.
"What?" He smiled, looking only slightly confused.
"I said yes." I sighed, stroking his face with the back of my hand. "I'll marry you, Josh."
"I didn't get to ask you yet." He stuck out his lower lip.
"Well?" I tilted my head expectantly. "You're on your knees anyway, that's a good start."
"Wow." He chuckled. "You're kinda taking the fun out of it."
"Oh...Never mind then!" I groaned. "I don't wanna marry you. I take it back. Keep sucking."
"Jennifer?" He asked a minute later.
"Hmmm?" I stared into his eyes.
"Will you be my wife?" Josh asked.
"Yeah." I smiled. "I will."
"Uhhh...Shoot." Josh looked over his shoulder towards the bedroom. "The ring is..."
"You have a ring? Give it to me later." I grinned at him. "Show me how much you love me."
"Yeah." Josh agreed, leaning forward and kissing my soft tummy. "I will, baby."
End of Part 10
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