Alan Cook - Honeymoon for Three

“Do you like my navel?”

Alfred continued to feel her navel. He grunted something that sounded like an affirmative.

“What do you like about my navel?” Make him face his secrets.

“It’s an innie.”

“An innie? Oh, I know what you mean. What’s yours?”

He didn’t answer. She turned her head and looked into his eyes, inches away. He looked stricken. She took her right hand and ran it lightly down his shirt to the hem. She pulled the shirt up so she could reach his bare skin. His skin gave way under her touch like a partially inflated balloon. It wasn’t firm, like Gary’s. She could feel his body tremble.

She found his navel. She swore that it withdrew when she first touched it, like a girl the first time a boy touches her breast. She persisted and placed her fingers squarely on it. It protruded slightly. Is that what he didn’t like about it? She began to caress it.

“You don’t like your navel, do you?”

“No.”

“Well, I like it. I think it’s an outstanding navel.”

Oops. Wrong choice of word. But Alfred didn’t take offense at her language, and he seemed to like having his navel rubbed. He began to move his stomach against her fingers. He continued to rub her navel. So far so good. Penny thought about one way she put Gary to sleep when she had her period. Maybe the same thing would work with Alfred. She was willing to go that far.

She moved her hand down to the waistband of his shorts, intending to slide it underneath the elastic. His hand grabbed hers and stopped it cold. This was a real surprise to her. Men liked hand jobs. Or at least most men did. She regrouped and moved her hand back to his navel. He relaxed. One thing she noticed was that he smelled clean. He had taken a shower recently. His shirt was clean, too. It made her job easier.

This couldn’t go on all night. With sex there’s a climax and a definite ending. Where was the climax to navel rubbing? Penny got up on her elbow and rolled Alfred over onto his back. He looked surprised, but he didn’t resist. She shifted her body around so that she could place her mouth on his navel.

She began to flick her tongue against his navel. At first she thought she would be grossed out, but it wasn’t so bad. It was only a navel, after all. He reacted to her ministrations. He started moaning softly. After a couple of minutes of this, she placed her hand on his shorts, hoping to speed up the process.

She was shocked to find that he was flaccid. She jerked her hand away before he could react to what she was doing. No wonder he had restrained her previously. He was with a sexy young woman-as she thought of herself-and he couldn’t get it up.

Something was definitely wrong with one of them, and past experience told her she wasn’t the one with the problem. However, her activity seemed to be producing some kind of a cumulative effect on Alfred. His panting grew louder and faster. Finally he had what could only be described as a climax, with deep moans and muscle spasms in his stomach, although Penny couldn’t have given a physiological explanation for what actually happened.

She lay on her back, hoping that her job was done. Alfred rolled onto his side and placed his hand on her navel. His movements were lethargic. Within three minutes, he was snoring. It had worked. She felt relieved.

Now was her chance to get away. Since his hand was resting on her stomach, she didn’t move for another five minutes, hoping that he would fall into a deep sleep. Then she cautiously started to inch away from him. He groaned and closed his fingers on the flesh of her stomach. Damn. She stopped moving, and his hand relaxed.

Another ten minutes went by. She tried again. He reacted the same way. This was going to be harder than she thought. She would wait another ten minutes. She found herself drifting off. She was exhausted. She tried to focus on escaping, but she felt strangely languid. The events of the day and evening had tired her out. The last thought she had was that she should try moving again.

If he hadn’t parked near the entrance to one of the campgrounds he had been searching and slept for several hours in the VW, Gary was certain he would have driven off the road and wrecked the car and himself. He was weaving back and forth before he stopped and had completely lost his concentration. He argued with himself about whether he would be deserting Penny by stopping but came to the conclusion that killing himself would be a much worse form of desertion.

His search had been fruitless. Barring the possibility that he had missed finding the campsite of Penny and Alfred, a possibility that nagged him continually, they hadn’t stopped at a campground north of Bodega Bay. Perhaps Alfred had driven straight to Los Angeles on Route 101. If so, how could he stay awake? He certainly couldn’t trust Penny to drive. In fact, he would have to keep her restrained at all times, because she would not be a passive captive. Her students called her Miss Tiger with good reason.

They might have stayed at a campground along 101 instead of 1, or in a cheap motel, or…? Or simply gone beyond Bodega Bay before stopping. There were too many possibilities. How did he ever think he could find them? He had been looking for a couple of minnows in the ocean. Searching had helped to lift his spirits for awhile, but as he became more and more tired, he became more and more depressed.

The rising sun woke Gary. He drove the few miles to Bodega Bay and pulled into the parking lot of a cafe advertising breakfast, determined to call the Highway Patrol, refuel himself and the car, and rethink his plan. He hoped the police were having better luck than he was. If not, he couldn’t bear to think of the consequences.

The first thing Alfred saw when he opened his eyes was the profile of Penny’s head a few inches from him. He couldn’t think of a more beautiful sight with which to greet the day. He would like to draw her, but he couldn’t do that at the moment. There would be plenty of time to draw pictures of Penny in the years to come.

He remembered how wonderful Penny had been last night-and how understanding. This was even better than his dream of their lives together. Now he was convinced he had done the right thing. She had been so good to him that he must be winning her over.

With a light heart he got out of bed, careful not to wake her, put on his clothes, and went outside to light the stove for coffee and breakfast. This was one of the happiest mornings of his life.

The sound of the sliding door opening woke Penny. She lay still with her eyes closed, listening to the sounds of Alfred getting the stove and food out of the camper, not wanting to see her surroundings. When the noises faded, she opened her eyes out of necessity.

The first thing she saw was the raised roof of the camper over her head. The camper was her prison and the reality of that came to her. She wasn’t free to leave the camper, or at least go very far from it, while Alfred was awake. She had blown any chance she had of escaping last night. She couldn’t let that happen again.

In addition, she had a bad taste in her mouth. It was partly from not brushing her teeth last night. But it was more than that. The memories of what had happened in this bed came rushing back. She had always considered herself a moral person, a step above some other people she knew. Last night’s events had disproved that.

She had done things no good girl would do. It’s true that she and Alfred hadn’t technically had sex, but whores didn’t always have sex with their clients either. They fulfilled their clients’ needs in return for compensation. That’s exactly what she had done-fulfilled Alfred’s needs in return for him not doing something worse to her. She was no better than a whore. If the situation arose again, she knew she would do the same thing.