PREVIEW

CHAPTER 1

Three days in a row now it rained. Beyond the crescent of the Ninh Van Bay, the East Vietnam Sea roiled in chilling gunmetal. Waves dashed with the white arrow caps of crashing sea foam. Above the choppy water, the sky swirled in capricious brushstrokes of charcoal and moss. At least the storm clouds were high overhead. The main deluge would be deep in the sea, out where they called it the South China Sea. Here at the sandy bayshore of their luxury resort they were only misted with a fine rain. Above the hammock where they both lay, a reedy thatched roof kept them dry, but the air was damp and chilly. Sadie cuddled against his side, one arm hooked his waist, her breath on his neck.

The vacation wasn’t exactly ruined, but they’d expected hot. But home was Minneapolis, and it was February. Three days of tropical wet and gray was miles above slush and snow and sleet and freezing rain.

Sadie read his mind. “At least it’s not lightning,” she said, soft wet breath on the clammy skin of his neck.

“There’s always a bright side,” he said, getting her to chuckle, slink against him. “I thought you were napping.”

“I was.” She yawned, covered her mouth with a hand tucked in the deep-purple sleeve of her St. Thomas Law sweatshirt, Class of ’16 across the front.

A wooden fishing boat bobbed and swayed with the waves  of the bay. Some diehard out there in a charter, transparent rain slicker on, pole with a line cast in the water. He and Sadie did the same fishing tour yesterday, but stayed inside the wood boat’s shelter and toured the bay. They didn’t even try to catch anything, then ended up visiting the lobster farm up the coast for an hour. They spent the afternoon learning how to cook sweet and sour soup. Then they had a couples rubdown, indoors, on wooden beds overlooking a corner of the bay and the mountains beyond. Two women worked their backs hard with fresh-cut green bamboo as rollers. He could still feel it today.

He cuddled Sadie against him, his hand cupping the point of a shoulder. “What do you want to do for dinner tonight? You want to go to the Bayside again? How about the Rock Grotto? They have pool tables and a juke box, and, like, a twelve-hour pork belly. What do you feel like?”

Sadie hummed in her throat, thinking. Her long bare legs slunk up and down against each other. She wore only bikini bottoms and her sweatshirt, a leather thong anklet on one ankle, showing off her muscular college athlete legs. First time he’d seen her was on campus. Sadie'd trotted past him, face flushed red, honey-blonde hair clinging to her sweat-soaked skin. She wore athletic shorts in purple, and a white Tommies Hockey T-shirt. Not the picture of classic beauty in that get-up, but damn if Sadie didn’t have him snapping his head around. Sadie was running laps around the campus with four other teammates. As he stood dumbstruck in the path, that big girl, defense, Ashley Carter, spat in his ear: “Stop staring.” She shot an angry glare at him as she ran past, paces behind Sadie. It irritated him because the girl was right. He was a lowlife lech standing there unabashed, watching Sadie’s hard and high ass bounce against satiny purple shorts, those long legs darting and flexing, the swoop of her thighs and calves, the grace of her narrow knees. He’d said Sorry but no one heard him. Stood there still watching as three more hockey girls wove through the pedestrian traffic on the path under the burning fall canopy, October 3, four years before he married that girl that ran past and stole his heart. At that point he’d never in his life watched a hockey game, men or women, pro or college. Didn’t care. But after October 3 he never missed one Tommies game for the rest of Sadie’s time as an ultra-fast Tommy winger.

When she didn’t answer, still humming in her throat like she couldn’t decide, he prompted her again. “What do you feel like having, Sade?”

She groaned, stretched a little, and then chuckled.

“What?”

“A hot dog,” she said.

It bothered him at first, thinking she wasn’t enjoying herself. All the way out here in Vietnam, blowing the bank on their vacation, all this rain, no sun, and poor Sadie wasn’t having a good time. He said, “You done? Want to go back home and have American food?”

She said, “I can get a hot dog here.”

“Where?”

She stretched her legs, stiffening them, pointing her toes, got up on an elbow. The daylight was pale gray. It caressed her straight nose, and the wet of her un-made face and un-glossed lips. It lit up the silvery gray-green of her beautiful eyes. She traced hair behind an ear, looking out at the sea. He watched out as well, both of them looking at the boat.

Now she was looking down past their feet to the end of the hammock, her head circling around and looking above his forehead somewhere. They were the lone occupants of a flagstone tier set on a rocky outcrop just off the main building of the resort. But the rock crop rose behind them blocking the view of the resort. It was a picturesque spot, at once seeming secluded, the view of nothing but the sea, and the hooked ends of the bay. There were spots for other occupants, two tables with four chairs each at their feet and at their head. But they were out alone, other guests at the resort off doing their indoor activities during the inclement weather. Her hands pried from the cuffs of her sweatshirt, and she rolled off an elastic from her wrist. She sat up, tied her hair back behind her head and into a long swooping blonde tail.

He said, “Hot dogs for dinner? Maybe lunch tomorrow . . .”

She sighed: “No, I want a hot dog right now.”

“It’s not even dinner yet,” he said, trying to figure out what the hell she was talking about.

She settled back down to lay against him. Her legs slid against his, shaved smooth skin working against his scruffy hair. She hugged him, her hand going up under his T-shirt. Then in one dive-bomb motion, right down the front of his shorts and into his underpants. His knees rose, the sudden thrill of his wife’s hand closing around his sleepy penis drumming his heart beat to life.

“Well, hey,” he said, now darting his own furtive glances around. It was them alone, them with the bay, one single boat out on the water. “What are you doing, Sade?”

“Looking for my hot dog,” she said and laughed.

He tucked his chin down to look at her, she smiled at him, kissed his lips.

“You are such a crazy monkey,” he sighed. “God, I love you.”

She kissed his mouth again, said, “Good old American hot dog,” pinching his glans between thumb and forefinger. Her hand curled it then, stretched, tugged, squeezed, caressed.

He groaned sounds of pleasure to let her know that while this was a surprise, it was just about the most perfect thing in the world. Nervous, he glanced around still, looking left and right, making sure it was still just them, nobody coming up from along the beach to mount this rocky knob and see if the hammock was available.

“Let’s go upstairs,” he said.

“I like it right here,” she said, his cock growing hard in her hand. She was masterful too,  good at pleasing him. She knew how to work him into a froth quick. Her touch was gentle on his testicles, her ministrations squeezing and pleasing the end of his dick. In about twenty seconds she had him steel-hard.

Erection throbbing in her hand, he said, “What if somebody comes up here?”

“To do what? Sit in the rain?”

“We’re out here.”

“We’re from Minnesota,” she laughed.

He raised his knees a little higher, decided there was no way he was going to stop her. His stomach trembled and he let the feeling of his loving wife’s hand delivering pleasure take him over. Then she withdrew her hand, making him moan with disappointment.

She put her ear against his chest, both of them looking down his body, her two hands working together on the outside of his shorts now, unbuttoning them, unzipping them.

He smiled. “You’re crazy,” he whispered, and hugged an arm around her, the light but strong feeling of her lithe body against his feeling so damn good.

“You love it.”

“I do.”

She pulled his dick out, his underwear mashing his scrotum, pulling his balls up to hug the base. He stuck up like a rod, and Sadie held it in her hand, looking at it. She let it go to lick her fingers, then began to tease the head of his cock. She ran the pads of her fingers around it, one clear-coat nail tickling at the pee-hole. She had his thighs shaking.

She licked her hand again, the webbing between thumb and forefinger, looked around to make sure they were still alone before closing a grip on him and starting to stroke.

It was heaven and he wanted more. He groaned, “Let’s go to the suite, Sade . . .”

“I’m staying right here,” she said, stroking.

“Fuck, that feels so good . . .”

His hand moved from her shoulder down to the narrow of her waist. College athletics were years behind her, but she still had the perfect hard-body. She was tall, five-nine, almost as tall as him, legs that went forever, pretty feet, tight belly. He slipped a hand under her sweatshirt to feel the flat of her stomach, traced his fingertips along the edge of her panty line, following that bikini edge over the bent-over curve of her ass cheek. She wriggled.

“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t distract me from my work—just lay back and enjoy it, Teddy.”

Right, first name Graham, nickname Teddy. She’d called him that since grad school when she’d discovered it one tipsy night and thought it was about the most hilarious thing ever. But he cherished being her Teddy bear.

Handjobs were nothing new. Public ones were about as in-the-past as her college athlete days. She’d done it once to him on a park bench, but it was night time, nobody could see because they were in the dark. But still, that thrill of being in public had that escapade as a killer stand-out in their sexual history. Dating only a month, after a party down at Bender’s Bar, the two of them in their senior year sitting on a bench in the park in the hub outside of MacPhail, making out, this hot ass college hockey player pulling his dick out and jerking him off. Wasn’t their first sexual experience, but the ones before that had also just been hands only. Her on him, him on her.

Now she worked her body tighter against his, her stroke picking up, her hand going fast.

“Point it out,” he whispered, his head at an awkward angle to peer over her head resting on his chest. She heard him, angled it upright, let him see that beautiful hand of hers jerk him up and down. It was her left hand, but she was good with it, not clumsy. She had long, thin fingers, well-formed knuckles, nails perfect, groomed, currently manicured in a colorless high gloss. In the low light her wedding ring winked, flashing as her hand jerked up and down on him. “Shoot, Sade, I’m going to . . .”

“Do it,” she said, “do it,” and now her hand assumed new masterful motion, swirling, squeezing, thumb and forefinger choking on the upstroke, his cock streaming clear excitement and making the end of his dick shiny. “Do it, I want to see,” she whispered.

“Shoot, babe,” he said, “I’m going to come . . .”

Sadie wriggled, cupped the hand hidden in the sleeve cuff of her sweatshirt ready to catch his ejaculate. Faster and harder she stroked, her strong arm working like a piston.

“Okay, mm, okay,” he said, putting down one knee, squinting, feeling the pressure bulge on his insides, all his vesicles swelling to maximum proportion as his sexual product boiled over and was sent into propulsion. He groaned and arched his back, and he heard Sadie’s high girlish giggle as he ejaculated. He watched; his watery seed laying dormant just about three minutes ago suddenly excited, simmering, then bursting forward through sex tubes out into wet stormy Vietnam air. The wind caught it, sudden gusts from the sea whisking it away somewhere against the rock face that hid them from the resort’s main building. Sadie laughed and stroked. Angled him downward, moving her head out of the way so he could see. Her hand choked and stroked in little jerks as his semen spurted onto the royal purple of her St. Thomas sweatshirt. He watched the pearly seed ball then soak into the fabric, Sadie groaning, sounding like she enjoyed it as much as he did. She squeezed and shook him, a web-like strand still connecting the tip of his penis to the puddles on her sweatshirt sleeve.

She arched, craned her neck, chin pointed to him. Her eyes were glassy, her smile broad, lips pulling back to show her teeth. “So hot,” she laughed, then kissed him on his chin.

He hugged her tighter, searched for her lips, found them, took them.