"Hey, Missus Stickles!"
The boy's voice from the topside broke the spell. Ted pulled away. She gave her halter a quick check and darted up through the scuttle. "What's wrong?" she asked. Then before the boy could answer she sensed it. There was a different feel to the water. At first she thought the anchor was dragging. Then dimly through the mist she saw the shadowy bulk of an aircraft carrier clipping past less than a hundred yards away. "Jesus!" she muttered.
"Doesn't sail have the right of way?" John asked.
"Theoretically, yes," she said. "But this sloop is twenty-five feet long. That flat top is nearly a thousand. Which one do you suppose could run the other down and never even notice?"
The boys were both wise in the ways of the ghetto. They needed no further explanation.
"What do we do now?" John asked.
Ted wondered. The flat top must have some shitheaded pilot to be this close to the edge of the channel. Chances were a pack of destroyers would be coming through here any minute now. If she got under way it would be just as easy to run into one as to avoid it. "You boys go below and rest," she said. "I'll stand the next watch."
She repossessed the parka from John and rang the bell. It was still early afternoon but the fog had turned every-thing to darkness. All she could do was ring the bell and pray. She had never been very good a praying. In a way she supposed though that she had been saved by that goddamn bell. Another minute and fourteen-year-old Albert would have had her spread-eagled on the bunk, shoving his fid up her grommet.
Abruptly both boys appeared on deck again, each wrapped in a blanket. "Cold down there," Albert explained.
"Colder up here," she said.
"Not if we all sit close together." It was the younger boy with curly hair. She was suddenly ashamed of her suspicion. This boy didn't know the score. He just wanted to cuddle up to somebody warm. Ted had never considered herself the motherly type but she, wouldn't mind the warmth of his body next to her.
John sat on her left and Albert scooted down the cockpit bench to her right. They opened out their blankets until the three of them were enclosed in a bubble of warmth. Ted could feel the burning maleness of Albert's hard young body through his tight-fitting Levi's. Both boys scooted closer until the outer surface of each of her bare thighs lay hard-pressed against Levi's-clad male flesh. Inside the blanket she felt Albert's arm struggle up from its confinement between them to drape itself naturally over her parka clad shoulders. Ted guessed she couldn't complain. After all, it was a natural thing to do.
Little John kept wriggling closer. She supposed he must have taken a real chill standing watch alone up here. Then abruptly she sensed that his hand on her bare thigh had lain there too long to be accidental. Sonofabitch! she thought. While she had been preparing defenses against the older boy the young one had already grabbed himself a handful. She supposed she ought to slap him but it would stir up the blanket and let the cold in and besides, it wasn't the first tune she'd had somebody's band on her leg. It felt rather nice after all these years alone. And she was curious to see just how far the boy would go if she pursued a strict policy of non-intervention.
Boys' minds worked in weird ways, she knew. Probably he was so befogged with lust that he could believe anything. At the moment the boy seemed convinced that she didn't know where he had his hand, or how he was creeping slow as an hour hand around to get his probing hand between her legs, savoring the feel of her soft inner thigh as he explored his cautious way toward her crotch.
If she hadn't been so scrunched up between the two of them she would have let her thighs fall open to help him. But the boys had her boxed in till she could hardly move. Albert's arm slid off her shoulder and a moment later began snaking its way back up-this time underneath her parka. Sonofabitch! she thought. This must be what every other girl my age was learning how to handle in high school while I was off twisting my ass into a pretzel for some bull dyke of a ballet teacher! She wondered what she was supposed to do now.
This whole maneuver, she suspected, was as formalized as any other ritual. She was supposed to struggle, to resist, but not too much. And there would be a certain point at which she would draw the line and the game would be over. What, she wondered, would happen if she violated the rules of the game by doing something outrageous like grabbing their cocks? Probably scare them both shitless. She wondered what kind of an idealized dream situation these boys were creating in their minds. Probably each was heartily wishing the other would fall overboard. There was safety in numbers, she guessed. Or did thirteen and fourteen-year-old ghetto boys go for gang bangs? The hell of it was, she didn't know.
Her education, Ted decided, had been sadly neglected. Apart from Mr. Hammel when she was twelve, and a few other aging stage door types all prepared to respect her virginity, Ted had a lived a life as empty as a nun's. She remembered that first time on the casting couch in Mr. Hammel's office when she had been twelve and he had been anything-maybe even a hundred-with his mustache wedged firmly into the cleft of her still hairless crotch.
She had held his cock in her hand, not knowing what to do with it. Mr. Hammel on the other band had seemed to know exactly what to do, where to lick, where to kiss, where to stick his tongue in places that would reduce a trim, hard-muscled twelve-year-old ballerina's budding body to giggling Jell-O.
It had felt so good she couldn't do anything except just lay back on the couch and enjoy the wonderful warm feel of his mouth over her cunt licking, sucking, nibbling at her clit until it swelled to rock hardness. Warm waves of passion radiated from her cunt, through her belly through her just curving breast to turn her whole body pink with passion. She could imagine herself, clad only in black patent leather shoes, white anklets and a pink hair ribbon, flat on her back, knees flexed and thighs spread wide to make room for Mr. Hammel's head. She felt so nice, so warm she was willing to bet her whole body was pink as her hair ribbon-pink as the tiny areolas of her just-sprouting tits.
His tongue was running up the tender inner surface of one hairless cunt lip and down the other, stopping occasionally to touch her clit, then to dart unexpectedly into the tiny opening at the bottom of her hymeneal membrane. It was the first time Ted had ever felt anything inside her virgin vagina. It felt-she couldn't find words to describe how warm and soft and cuddly wonderful it felt. It was like a hot bath after hours at the practice bar-only ten thousand times better, warmer, more relaxing.
She couldn't understand how anything that was twisting and tearing, tying her in passionate knots could be relaxing but at the same time she could feel opposing forces within her slight taut body struggling for control. One half of her wanted to lock thighs over Mr. Hammel's head in a scissors, pull him in deeper, harder, faster. The other half of her struggled to do nothing-to relax and let it happen-let Mr. Hammel do it all.
His wonderfully knowledgeable tongue seemed to know every secret of her inner being. He was tickling her, delighting her, turning her on, melting her down into a puddle of girlish giggles as he touched triggers she hadn't even known her twelve-year-old body possessed. It felt so gooood!
Gentle as kissing butterflies, his hands caressed her tits and ass. Ted was used to hands on her body pushing, pulling twisting her this way and that. But she had never before experienced soft caressing hands that were there for pleasure and not to twist her into some new and painfully aesthetic shape.
She felt him moving, gently insinuating his body closer to hers. She didn't have to worry. He was still kneeling on the couch beside her. As long as he didn't try to get up on top of her-so long as he didn't get between her legs… Finally she realized he was taking off his clothes, working blindly as he kept his face buried in her crotch, never missing a stroke as his wonderfully supple tongue pushed and probed its knowledgeable way up and down the seething slot between her legs. How, she wondered, had she gotten through twelve years without ever discovering the capacities for joy within her body? She wondered what it would be like nights alone when she couldn't sleep to experiment with her own gentle finger down there trying out all the nice things Mr. Hammel's tongue was doing…