idea. He stopped.
“So long, Kim. Have fun walking back to the motel.”
She slowed. She halted. She turned around and put her hands on her hips. Her chest was heaving as she tried to catch her breath. Her breasts rose and fell. The rest of her skin was dusky. Her breasts looked as if they’d been dipped in cream. And the cream had been licked off the nipples, leaving them dark.
Baxter stared at her. She stared back.
“I don’t think you’re going anywhere,” she said.
The beach seemed no less forbidding than before, and Baxter felt as if eyes were watching from the black area under the boardwalk, but Kim was right. He no longer had the urge to escape from this place.
Kim was bare to the waist, exposed and vulnerable.
Baxter wanted her.
He wanted her right here, right now.
Hands still on her hips, Kim ambled toward him.
He glanced into the dark forest of pilings, and shivered, and knew he wouldn’t run.
His fear, moments ago crying out warnings to flee, now felt like icy fingers caressing him, tickling and stroking him, the fingers of a phantom whore sick with lust and aching for the party to start.
Kim halted a few paces in front of him.
“You must be freezing,” he said.
“I’m not. Feels good.”
He supposed the running had warmed her up. He no longer felt the cold himself. The shivers that still shook his body had little to do with the chilly wind.
“Take off the rest,” he said.
In the moonlight he saw her smile. “Does this mean you aren’t spooked anymore?” she asked.
“Just makes it better.”
Balancing on one foot, she pulled off a shoe and sock. “I feel so daring, don’t you?”
Baxter nodded. He glanced into the darkness. The icy fingers of his fear probed him and squeezed.
Kim hopped, her breasts jiggling as she removed the shoe and sock from her other foot. “You just gonna stand there?” she asked, untying the knot at her waist.
“Yes,” he said.
Her sweatpants fell. She stepped on them to free her feet from the elastic around the cuffs. Then she came to Baxter, but instead of embracing him, she took the blanket. She carried it into the boardwalk’s shadow. As the darkness closed over her, the fear squeezed Baxter hard, too hard suddenly, no longer a lusting slut but a cruel hag hurting him.
Kim shook the blanket open.
“Not over there,” he said. “Let’s put it here in the moonlight.”
“What if somebody comes along?” Kim asked. “This is a lot more private.”
“I want to be able to see you.”
“Ah-hah.” She came out, and Baxter’s fear eased its clutch. Kim turned her back to the ocean wind. She unfurled the blanket. Squatting, she lowered it to the sand. As she pinned down two of the corners with her shoes, Baxter caught the other end and held it down. He took his shoes off and used them as weights.
Kim crawled onto the blanket. She lay down. She rolled onto her back and folded her hands beneath her head. “This is really great,” she said.
“Is it too cold for the oil?” Baxter asked, his voice shaking.
“I want it,” Kim said.
He found the plastic bottle in his pocket. He tossed it onto the blanket at her feet, then took off his socks and sweatsuit. He knelt in front of her.
She lay straight, legs tight together, and where her skin was tanned it was almost the same shade as the sand alongside the dark blanket, but bright compared to the shadow just beyond her head. Her hands were still pressed beneath her head, her elbows out to the sides. She squirmed slightly, as if relishing the feel of the blanket or impatient for the touch of his hands.
Baxter popped open the bottle’s squirt top. He squeezed a line of oil up Kim’s right leg. She flinched and arched her back when the stream crossed her groin, and seemed to relax again as it drew a silver trail down her left leg. Baxter closed the bottle and dropped it. He slid his hands up her skin, spreading the slick film. Its sweet coconut aroma reminded him of cotton candy, smelled good enough to eat, made him want to lick it off her.
Kim’s shaved shins were a little bristly, but her thighs felt like silk.
She opened her legs. She moaned and writhed as he rubbed her.
Baxter, leaning forward, roamed her with slippery hands. The look and feel of her were almost too much to bear, and so was the wind. It stroked the backs of his legs,