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"You sure do, honey," I muttered quietly to myself. "And it's me." A clock struck, soft chimes, and I watched its pendulum swing hypnotically. It was an old-fashioned piece, painted white, which rested on the mantle with a vase of red roses on each side.

"Dinner is ready," I heard Mona call from the other room and I went in. She was serving dinner as though we'd never kissed, as though that moment of electricity had never exploded. It was only when I caught her eyes that I knew the current was still there. She looked away quickly, as though she were afraid the spark might catch again, and she kept a steady chatter of pleasant conversation going through dinner. She served a nice Australian sauterne with chicken which bad a pleasant taste to it. After dinner, a good Spanish brandy, a Domecq, with real body and aroma. We went into the living room to have the brandy and I had just about decided that she'd been saved by the bell. She saw me glance at the clock on the mantle. It read eight o'clock.

"If you leave here at ten-thirty you'll easily make it," she said, reading my thoughts. I grinned at her and suddenly the electricity went on in her eyes again. They held mine and never wavered as she drained the brandy.

Suddenly she threw herself forward, arms clasping my neck. Her mouth was working feverishly on mine, nibbling, devouring, her tongue stretching deep into my mouth. And then all the restless itching frustration burst inside me and I answered her feverish hunger with my own.

Mona's white jersey blouse was a ghostly flash as it flew over her head and her breasts, freed from the bra, spilled over into my hands like ripe fruit falling from a tree, made to be tasted and sucked and savoured. She had reached out an arm and flicked off the lamplight and we made love in the half-light thrown from the adjoining room. Mona turned her breasts up to me, and I seized their pink tips with my teeth. The pink circle of her breasts was large and rough and I felt the nipple grow tall in my mouth as Mona gasped in pleasure. I stripped, putting Wilhelmina and Hugo under the couch within a moment's reach, while Mona lay before me, eyes closed, as I gently massaged her breasts. Her body was like her breasts, full and ripe, with a firm, convex belly and wide, deep hips. As I pressed myself down upon her she moaned and began to make convulsive movements, thrusting every inch of herself against me, trying to make her skin my skin, her throbbing desires into my desires. I moved my lips down along her body and she cried out in a steady, mounting gasp that culminated in a scream of ecstasy as I found the center of her pleasures, the core of all desires. Her hands pulled against my shoulders, my head, and she was a creature beyond all caring except for that ecstasy of the body. I moved upon her again and this time I came to her with my own very being and Mona's body moved under mine in a slowly mounting frenzy.

I moved her slowly, slowly, holding back as she cried out for haste, knowing she would thank me for ignoring her. And then, her passion carrying me beyond control, I took her. Mona cried out at that moment of moments with a series of gasps — unbelieving, unwilling gasps — the final, ultimate submission of the female to the male and to herself. She fell back on the sofa, her arms around me, her legs clasped behind mine.

I raised myself on one elbow and glanced at the clock on the mantle. It said nine-fifteen. In passion, no man keeps track of time. An hour is a minute and a minute is an hour. Mona pulled my head down to her breasts, pressing my face into them.

"You have time," she whispered. "Till ten-thirty. I want you again, now. This time I want to make love to you."

"People make love to each other, together," I said.

"Yes, but this time I want to light the fire," she breathed. She moved to my side and I felt her lips against my abdomen. She moved them up and over and across my chest — faint, sweet tracks, like the footprints of a butterfly. Then she moved down my body, pausing to linger on the curve of my abdomen, and then down further. It was a kind of lovemaking I'd found only in the Orient, and it had an exquisite pleasure that was both soothing and exciting. Dimly, I wondered where she had learned it. Or perhaps there are some things with some women that spring into being naturally — unlearned, untutored, an innate talent beyond the average. She had wanted to light the fire. She did a damn good job of it, and we made love again, the gasping feverishness of her desires showing no slackening. But finally the moment was reached again, and in her gasps, this time, there was a kind of laughter, the happiness of a completely satisfied woman.

I stretched when Mona finally unwrapped her arms from around me. I glanced up at the clock. It read nine-fifteen. I looked at it again, my eyes narrowed, squinting. The hands didn't change. I had read right. It said nine-fifteen. I leaped from the sofa and felt for my watch. I'd put it alongside Wilhelmina. It read eleven-twenty.

"What is it, Nick?" Mona said, sitting up as I let out a curse.

"Your goddamn clock," I yelled at her as I flew into my clothes. "It's stopped. The damn thing was probably slow in the first place."

The longest pause in my dressing was to strap Hugo's sheath back onto my forearm and that took not more than two seconds. I was still putting my shirt into my trousers as I went out the door and still swearing. Mona, naked and magnificent, was standing in the doorway.

"I'm sorry, Nick," she called after me. "Stay on the shore road. You'll go right into it."

Delays, I cursed as I dived into the driver's seat. They always spell trouble. I knew what Mona was thinking, standing there nude. If I missed him, I could get to him in the morning. But I didn't think that way and I didn't operate that way. I'd seen too many times when there was no tomorrow.

I sent the little Anglia off in the closest approximation of a jet take-off a car can make. The shore road was almost free of traffic, the moon shining over the sea was a beautiful sight. I kept the speedometer needle plastered against the top of the instrument. It took quite an effort to keep the light little car on the road. Though largely flat and mostly at sea level, the road did rise a few times, making the car throb and vibrate as I forced the engine to its limits. I ate the road up in a furious, headlong pace and still the time seemed to drag.

It was a little after twelve o'clock when I roared into the little community of Innisfail. Right away I saw the low, gray buildings of the coastal patrol with the sentries pacing the entry gate. I halted and showed my credentials and was passed through. I'd gone only a few hundred yards when I saw the flashing lights of police cars and heard the whine of an ambulance siren. Pulling to the side of the road, I got out. The base command building was just ahead and I paused at the steps of it to look down the street as the knots of men parted to make way for the small, white ambulance.

"What happened?" I asked a passing sailor.

"Accident," he said. "One of the blokes just come ashore, too. Bloody rotten deal, it was. He was killed."

A sudden chill swept through me and I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

"What was his name?" I asked. "Comford? Burton Comford?"

"Yes, that's the chap," the sailor said. "Did you know him, mate? They're just taking him off now."

"How did it happen?" I asked, hearing the grim anger in my voice. The sailor pointed to a big personnel carrier that stood with its radiator smashed into the side of a brick building.

"That big job there, mate," he said. "It was parked up on the hill. The brakes gave way and it rolled down to smash the poor bloke against the building just as he was going past. Rotten bit of luck, I say."

I walked away. There was no more reason for me to stay. I didn't need to examine the brakes of the big lorry. They'd work perfectly. Once again, they'd gotten there before me, this time helped by luck. There'd be a minor inquiry and once more there would be no explanations that meant anything. The truck's brakes had just released, somehow. It would be surmised that they hadn't been put on correctly and suddenly gave way. Only they'd done so just as Burton Comford was on his wav to the commander's office to meet me. A coincidence. Just one of those things. I knew better.