"I'm cold," Ted said. "I think I'll go below."
"Who stays up here and rings the bell?" Albert asked.
Ted smiled. "This yacht's rigged for single-handing," she explained. She flipped a switch and the electric timer took over.
"Why didn't you tell me about that before?" Albert growled.
"You didn't ask." She gave another look around. Actually the fog was lifting. In another hour there would be no excuse for anchoring. It was her escape hatch. She had one hour to play around and do whatever she wanted with these boys. And when that hour was up neither would be able to argue against her explanation that a boat anchored in bright sunlight was an invitation for everybody from Harbor Police to Coast Guard to come prying. She went below. The boys didn't look at each other. After a moment Albert got to his feet and went below.
Little John followed and after a couple of fumbles managed to close the cabin scuttle behind him. The arrangement below decks was practically a duplication of the cockpit, with two narrow settee berths facing each other. Forward of the mast the berths converged into a wide, roughly triangular mattressed space.
Ted sat on one of the berths. The boys sat across from her. There was a charged air of expectation as each waited for somebody else to make the first move. Slowly it began warming up inside the closed cabin. Topside the bell clanged. The boys still huddled each inside a blanket.
"I think," Ted began, "that it's time we started being honest with one another."
The boys looked at her in wary surprise. For a moment Albert's surly veneer cracked and he became an unsure fourteen-year-old. Little John's curly hair surrounded his face, making him look like some child angel who had managed to be forn without original sin.
"Let's start by admitting where everybody had his hands a moment ago."
The boys looked at each other in mutual surprise. Ted tried not to laugh as she discovered that really, neither of them had suspected the other.
"I suppose," she continued dryly, "that everybody would like to get his hands back there again."
After a moment's shocked silence the boys gave wary nods. Topside the bell clanged again.
"And just where," Ted continued, "are my hands supposed to be all this while?"
From the open-mouthed stares it was obvious that the boys had never considered this side of the question.
"I suppose," Ted continued with just a trace of snappishness in her voice, "that you thought I was going to just sit there and let you undress me."
She tried not to smile, knowing each of these would-be studs had hoped and prayed for exactly that. She sat lacing them fully dressed now in boat shoes, socks, bikini panties, a front latching bra, jeans, a jersey, a watch cap and a parka. She wondered if the boys had the slightest idea what she had in mind, if they were doing frantic sums in their heads trying to figure out how many articles of clothing each wore.
Albert was so overcome by the vistas opening before him that he couldn't trust himself to speak. Little John, at thirteen, was more of a pragmatist. "You want us to undress first?" he asked.
Ted let a wintry smile flit across her face.
"Sheeeeiiiit!" Albert growled.
"If you don't wish to participate, feel perfectly free to go back on deck and ring the bell," Ted said. "It'll save running down the batteries."
"How do I know you will?" he asked.
"How do you know I'll what?" Ted asked.
Though he wished to remain aloof from such things, Albert could not avoid being drawn into this conversation. Albert gulped and searched for words. "How do I know you will if we do?" he finally managed.
"You don't," Ted said. "But on the other hand, you know perfectly well that, if you don't, I won't."
From his silence she guessed Albert found this argument convincing. He glanced at John. The younger boy glanced back. Without speaking both boys let fall their blankets and began untying their sneakers. Topside the fog bell clanged. Down below the cabin was growing warmer.
Ted regarded her own emotions with wry amusement. Moments ago both boys had had their hands on her, busily probing for home plate. And she had not felt the erotic excitement she was feeling now with this delicious sense of charged expectation as everybody knew something wonderful was going to happen, but nobody knew exactly when or how. She glanced through a porthole at the thin fog. There was time for play. There was time for foreplay.
She whipped the parka off and noted the sudden brightened expectation in the boys, followed immediately by disappointment when they learned she now wore a jersey underneath.
The boys sat across from her, each clad in Levi's, shirt, and a light jacket. She wondered if ghetto boys bothered with underwear. They sat tensely, looking at one another, each waiting for the next move. Ted thought a moment, then, stretching in ways known only to tomcats and ballerinas, she extended her feet one to each of the boys. After a moment's discombobulating, Albert managed to tie another hard knot, this time in the lace of her rubber-soled boat shoe. He opened his mouth, then hastily closed it again. He breathed deeply and began picking at the knot. After a moment it yielded to his patience. Covered warmly from head to ankle, she sat with a naked foot in each boy's lap, her preternaturally sensitive heels absorbing warmth from the hot throbbing mounds of maleness in each crotch. She knew all it would take was the slightest wiggle of foot and each boy would erupt like some miniature volcano of eroticism, unable to withstand the assault of his own imagination so far she had not exposed a single inch of controversial skin. "Now you," she murmured.
Without hesitation little John peeled off his jacket. Albert hastened to do the same. Doing hasty mental arithmetic, Ted wondered why she had let the boys take off her socks too. She wondered how this game was going to come out but her mind was so filled with vistas of wonderful things to come that she could not work it out ahead. The boys each still wore shirt and Levi's-and Christ only knew how much else underneath. Ted still had her jeans, her jersey, bikini panties, and bra. Then suddenly she remembered her watch cap. She peeled it off, still leaving her bare feet one in each boy's lap.
The boys were momentarily nonplussed. But little John was quick enough to see this was a game in which it would be hard to separate winners from losers. He peeled off his T-shirt. Albert, after an almost imperceptible hesitation, did the same.
Ted tried on her Mona Lisa smile. "Your choice," she said, and left it to the boys whether she would remove jeans or jersey first. Little John was plainly neutral. As long as he got some article of clothing off her taut ballerina body the smaller boy didn't care much which came first. But, looking at Albert she could almost see the wheels spinning inside his head. She knew exactly what the older boy was thinking. He had unlatched her bra. Maybe he had even managed to catch a glimpse of her peeling it off with the parka in the moment before she had drawn the curtains. He would assume she was bare-titted under the jersey. "Your top," he said, and glared, daring the smaller boy to disagree.
Ted obligingly peeled off her jersey, revealing her smooth-skinned torso clad only in jeans and a snug front-latching bra sincularly free of the Irish pennants and dangling hardware of so many American brassieres. It looked more like a generously cut bikini top than a bra. She was amused at the boys' disappointment.
Face-fallen, they faced her in their bulging crotched Levi's. Without exactly planning it that way, she knew she had come out winners in this crazy game. "Don't take it so hard," she sad. "I'll spot you both five points." While the boys watched wide-eyed she unfastened the waist of her jeans. Each boy still had one of her bare feet in his lap. "Pull," she commanded.
The boys pulled with such concerted enthusiasm that they nearly pulled her off the settee. She managed to hang on and felt her jeans slip down past her ass, down past her bikini panties.