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Au Courant
The late afternoon sun shone brightly; the light skipping like smooth stones across the glassy surface of this portion of the River Ness. Save for our own tiny vessel, the waters and shores of the river were practically deserted, it being a mere Thursday afternoon in early April.
It was unseasonably warm, thank God. Not quite vacation time for the rest of Britain, not yet the week-end for those fishing sport warrior types, but practically perfect for Gabby and myself to take a small, yet deserved and, more importantly, quite private getaway in the Scottish Highlands.
"Switch!" Gabby called out, and I obeyed, shifting my paddle from one side of our fibreglass canoe to the other. Gabby did the same, moving hers in the opposite direction from mine. Both the canoe and the trip were Gabby's birthday gifts to me that February, and I'd been itching for this jaunt for months since then.
We'd been in and out of the boat, taking occasional portages in different parts of the river; camping out or bed and breakfasting our overnights for the past five days, and I enjoyed absolutely every outdoorsy, roughing-it, Tom Hiddleston-a.k.a.-Indiana-Jones fancy moment of it.
"So perfect. It's all so perfect," I hummed, glancing not only at the seasonal cottages lining the widening loch side, but my eyes also catching the shape and contours of Gabby's ample back side, or at least that part of her not hidden beneath her life jacket.
I sighed, letting my oar drag in the water for a moment.
"Keep up, Tom, we're turning leeward!!"
"I am. I'm just... enjoying the view."
Gabby peered over her shoulder, cocking a half-smile at me. "Cheeky bugger."
"Aren't I always? You’d not have me any other way." I glanced up to the heavens, my attention drawn to a quite distinct line of clouds near the western horizon. They looked grey, slightly threatening, but not immediately so. "Storm's coming," I observed. I brought my oar into the small boat, and Gabby did the same, peering up at the skyline herself.
"We should get in, then," she said with thinly veiled disappointment. "We can pull in by the town over there, have supper?" She cocked her head to the left, indicating a small jetty down river and across the loch, just on the other side of Urquhart Castle. “Probably best to pretty soon. Meantime, toss me a beer, yeah?"
"We’ve beer? What beer?" I turned round and glanced at our gear stored in the stern behind me.
"It’s in the blue soft side cooler; beneath your bench."
"You mean to tell me that you've had beer this entire week and I never knew it?" I stuck my bottom lip out and furrowed my brow. "Why've you never told me? Don't we share things, you and I?" I inched the lip out just that bit further, blinking away false tears.
"Oh would you quit with the pudgy face, for Christ’s sake." She cocked her head and pursed her lips... damn her. "I simply forgot about it, to be honest. Found it tucked away back there this morning. I didn't hide it intentionally, just… never thought to bring it out until today."
"You purposefully kept it from me, you beer hoarder, you. You're naught but a bloody selfish wee bizzem, you are." I growled in a false Scottish accent.
Gabby laughed and wiggled her fingers at me. "Shut it, wank face. Just bend your sweet little arse over, dig in there, and pass one here, will you?"
I scrounged beneath me, shoving Gabby's rucksack aside, and unearthed a small, insulated zipper case. I pulled it open and found six cans of some sort of beer, didn't recognise it. I drew one silver and blue container out. "Coors? What's with the Coors? Isn't this American? Where the hell'd you get this?"
"Brought it home from Denver after the IAAI convention last month; kept it in the back of the fridge." She replied. "Thought it would be a good opportunity to drink it on the trip since we're, you know, in God's country, and all that. Even if we're not in Colorado."
"God's country, yeah?" I teased. I grabbed two of the brew cans, slung the cooler bag about my shoulder, and stood, upsetting the boat’s balance a bit.
"Ooh! Careful!" Gabby warned. "Don't come all the way up to me or you'll tip the canoe."
"Meet me half way, then," I stepped, gingerly toward the centre and sat on one side of the midship seat. Gabby did the same from her end, resting beside me, thigh to thigh.
I handed her a beer and watched as she popped her finger atop the can, tapping rapidly against the sealed opening. "Keeps it from busting out all over the place from the bubbles if it's been shaken up." She tapped a few times more and, with a deft finger, flipped the top open, took a sip, swallowed, smiled broadly, and let out a long, extended, "aaaaaaahhhhh."
I did the same with mine, opened the can, said, "cheers," clinked my can against hers, and poured a long draught into my own mouth….and immediately bent over the side and spit the entire swallow into the loch. I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. "Holy crap, Gabby, that's horrible, how can you possibly drink this swill?"
"It's Coors! It's good stuff." She defended.
"You lived in America too long, I'm afraid. That's not beer, that’s cowboy piss you're drinking, don't you realise that? It's horrible! Jesus Christ, there's nothing to it!"
"If you're thirsty, you'll drink it. The water's gone from this morning, so either we get out the water now or you go without...or you drink the beer."
And so I did. And I suffered through two more of them after that. Both of us did, in fact, until Gabby and I were both still afloat on the water whilst slightly afloat in our minds.
We'd stayed in the centre of the craft, our craft buzzing along the currents as we buzzed our brains, letting the gentle laps of the loch take us this way and that and whereever and come what may.
Yet the line of storms approached, coming ever so closer.
"It's a slow moving front, that is," I observed, pointing. "May not get here until nightfall."
"I love... I love… love schtorms.... ‘scuse me. Storms at night." Gabby said. "They smell sooooo good," She turned to me and grinned, her eyes just that much glazed over and her smile that much wider, "like you do."
She leaned closer to me, her hand upon the bench, and nuzzled her nose and mouth into that crook between my neck and shoulder. She nipped, here and there and this way and that at the exposed skin beneath my jumper. She moaned a little, and cooed. "You do, Tom, you know. You smell like the springtime air right before a thunderstorm in a pine forest. All natural and green… warm and fresh...and all dewy and wet."
I swallowed, hard, my breaths coming faster and harder. "Gabby," I warned, "shouldn't we wait until we're on shore and in our tent before we... um....do anything like this?"
She sat up, peering just a little bit more soberly into my eyes. "No, now. Here. Before the storm comes in."
"Here, you said? Here. In the canoe?"
"Right. Here." Gabby grasped me around the back of my head, tilted her own at just that right angle (damn her, damn her, damn her) and before I knew it I tasted that damn beer and the fruit leather she'd snacked upon and smelled sun cream, and I hummed with the sensation of her soft lips upon mine.
My hand found its way up her shoulders, over the life jacket to the exposed skin of her neck beneath her long, windblown ponytail. “Okay, yes. Yes. Here. Here. Come here.” I pressed her forward, further into me.
I opened the sluice gates for her, and she burst forth through the dam, flooding the caverns of my mouth with wave after wave after wave of delicious warmth. She explored me fully, and I her, each of us testing out the echoes of sound round the eddy pools of our moans and heavy breaths.
The boat rocked a bit, and she yelped, parting from me only just enough to giggle, the rapid fire breaths tickling the edges of my lips, and I laughed with her, throwing my arms out to both sides to steady the craft. "There, there... there... okay, now... there."
"Woo!" Gabby howled, "got a bit giddy there."
"We both did," I replied. We moved closer to the deserted shoreline, the destination cafe only a short paddle away. On the other hand, the storm crept even closer, the stark edge of the dark clouds against the blue sky now hung over the nearby town. "Storm's still rolling over."
"It’s a ways away. We still have time."
"We do, I suppose," I said, my voice quiet, deep, rich... "have time." I licked my lips, pressed forward and brushed them, trailing them along that soft, soft, delicate spot just behind her ear. I schussed back and forth over the slopes of her skin, humming gently as I drew her earlobe between my lips and pulled, poking a canine into her flesh. "We have time," I whispered.
Gabby swallowed, bent her head to expose more of her neck to me, and exhaled, "Ahh. Time, lots of time."
I curled my hand around her hair elastic and pulled, freeing the damp, dark blond strands. I wound the same fingers into her loose wind-tangled hair, letting it cascade down over one hand, and then the other, as I pulled her back to me. My lips met her lips and we once again engaged in our mutual spelunking expeditions.
I released her hair, drawing my fingers down over her neck, and shoulders, and proceeded down, down, down. I released the latch of her life jacket with a deft snap, leaving the orange vest hanging about her shoulders, but giving me the access I needed.
My fingers belayed skillfully at the hem of her jumper, burrowing deep beneath the layers of fabric until they found the mother lode at the summit of her breast. I staked my claim, squeezing ever so gently, ever so firmly, and ran my thumb over the landscape of her nipple, terraforming out a small, lonely granite mountain peak.
And the whole earth trembled. Well, Gabby did, at least. And she moaned, oh, Christ, did she moan and the sound of it bounced off the still waters and around in the caverns of the loch, off the bluffs, and back into my ears. The sound compelled me to echo the sentiment back to her, calling out like an Alpine warbler.
Call and response. Call and response. Call and response.
Yodel-eh-hee-hoo indeed.
Gabby fisted the back of my head with one hand, and with the other, she pressed, firmly, into my hardening flesh. We'd both turned so we were straddling the midship bench, facing each other, one leg on either side of the flat plastic slat.
So, as you could imagine, the evidence of both of our arousals was quite easily discerned, one by the other. "Jesus, Gabby," I breathed, "you're incredibly wet. You’re soaking, in fact."
"It's not from the water," she panted, her breaths coming point and counterpoint with my own. Gabby pressed two of her fingers against the nylon of her shorts. "You did that to me. Perhaps, you should finish the job."
"Oh, I'd like that very much." My tongue flicked out, wetting my lips, as I forced my upper teeth down into the lower one. I felt my face go incredibly slack, my eyes glazed over once again, but that time not from the drink, and I moved off the bench, slowly, carefully, the canoe sloshing slightly from side to side with the shift in our centre of gravity.
I grasped Gabby's prosthetic leg by the ankle joint and gently lifted it over, so she sat with both of her legs dangling into the gunwale.
"Comfortable?" I asked, peering up at her as I lowered myself, crossing my legs beneath the bench in an open lotus position. I leaned forward, bracing my forearms on either side of Gabby’s legs. “Ready?”
"Yes," she hissed as she worked the fingers of both hands through my tousled hair. She pushed me down, toward her centre, ever so slightly, and I resisted.
"Eager, aren't we?"
"Storm," she said, "finish me before the storm."
I bent forward, crooked a finger between the lining of her old University of Illinois Umbro shorts and her sex and grinned against her skin. "Don't worry, love, we'll both be finished before the first drop of rain hits your beautiful head."
"Tom," Gabby begged, "please. Your mouth, I want your mouth on me."
"Of course, love." I ran the flat of my tongue over her exposed flesh, slowly, carefully, savouring her. "Besides," I said, humming against her, "I desperately need to rid myself of the flavour of that horrible American swill you call beer. I’d much rather drink you."
She chuckled, low and deep, and her laughter was accompanied by rumble of thunder, itself long and distant, as it rolled through the loch valley. The sun still shone to the east, so I didn't fret, but I felt Gabby tense beneath me. "Shhhh," I said, and she let out a keening wail of pleasure as my breath hit her sensitive skin. "Relax, love, it’s just a bit of thunder."
“Yes,” she huffed air through a grin, “but I’m not overly fond of what follows.”
This made me laugh, yet again, my mouth open against her moistened lips below. I brushed my tongue against her in my mirth, working the tip inside, still letting tiny chuckle bubbles erupt from my throat over her skin. She curled her fingers against my scalp, telling me in no uncertain terms that the time for levity was over. “Tom.” I peered up at her. Her mouth hung open and her neck and chest muscles were tight, taut and corded with sexual anticipation. "Tom. Please. Don't stop. Please. Your mouth."
"I've been dreaming of doing this all week, Gabrielle. I truly have."
"So have I, so do it."
"Your wish; my command," I whispered and bent to my carnal work. I replaced my intrepid explorer tongue with two fingers below, pressing a third in when she felt slick enough, and I bent all three against that small ridged area within.
"Ah! Jesus! Oh, oh... oh, that's good." she bucked, her hands pressed into, fingers curled around the plastic of the seat; and her hips took off, airborne against me.
She cried out, then, and she backed up her passionate song with the steady tap tap rhythm of her prosthetic foot against the hull of the canoe. We rocked a little, the canoe tipping this way and that, but I steadied her, calming her with a long, languid suck on that small bundle of nerves at the apex of her sex. "There, now."
A seething hiss, and a tight fist grasping harder at the back of my head told me that I'd hit the right spot. I brought my tongue to a point and flicked it up and down, side to side, and in little circles around that same place, my fingers pumping in and out of her, feeling her squirm around me. Her muscles moved, lithe and graceful, both beneath and above. The sheer heat of her increased exponentially inside and out, insulating me against the cooling breeze kicking up across the loch. The mass of flesh around my fingers grew and opened out for me like a morning flower as her blood flowed in, expanding her tissues and squeezing me tighter and tighter until...
I hummed, gave her a flick of my tongue, a gentle gnash of my teeth against her, and a long, drawn out suck; two more long, hard pistoning movements inside, and she let go. She released her grip upon her proverbial belaying lines and fell. She fell deep, deep down into the chasm, where I caught her, safe and sound.
Gabby's voice, once again, echoed, bouncing waves off the cavernous walls of her pleasure, "Oh, God, Tom!" Her song carried upon the wind into the stratosphere, seeming to shake and wake up the dormant storm clouds. "Ahhh. Oh. Oh God!"
There was another crash of thunder, still in the distance, yet closer that time. In the same moment, the very same synchronous moment, I felt the final push and pull of Gabby’s inner muscles against my hand, as if the booming din originated from the electrical impulses within her body, and not those from the clouds above.
I withdrew, unfolded my legs and sat back on my haunches, simply watching her. She huffed breath after breath, her chest pumping up and down, sucking and forcing out great gobs of Scottish air. She shoved her hands into her hair, pulling it this way and that, her eyes screwed closed and her mouth agape. “Oh, fuck, Tom,” she panted.
A crack of lightning glowed an instant of yellow behind her, and it illuminated all of the loose hairs around her head. This was followed by an incredibly loud explosion of thunder from the west. Gabby startled and fell forward, off the bench, and into my arms. “We have to finish now,” she hissed into my ear. “Now.”
I pushed myself up off the bottom of the canoe, scooting back so that my shoulders rest against the stern seat. My legs, then, had room to splay between the seats, my knees beneath the first thwart. Gabby bent, adjusted the position of her prosthetic and turned back to me, a quite wicked grin forming upon her features. She bent forward, her warm, moist tongue licking at my lips, not even bothering with the invitation of a kiss, and I let her back in.
Always the multi-tasker, Gabby worked deftly at the buttons and flies of my olive green cargo trousers. “Now,” she repeated, and brought herself forward, scooting with her legs either side of my body between me and the hull.
The canoe shifted again, this time more violently, and I grasped her waist to steady her. “Whoa there. Steady on.”
Gabby cringed against my cheek. “Oops! Oh, jeez. I’m gonna fucking capsize us.”
“Rock the boat, don’t rock the boat baby; rock the boat, don’t tip the boat over,” I sang, low and deep and throaty, much more slowly than the Hues Corporation original, as she pushed the nylon of her Umbros off to the side and sank down, enveloping my hard flesh with her soft. “Rock the boooaaa...oh...oh..oh, ho...ooooat,” I finished, the melody utterly lost and completely ruined by the long, drawn out involuntary moan and catch in my throat that came with the hot, pillowy sensation of being inside of Gabby.
We moved, slowly at first, carefully, constantly cognizant of the potential for disaster in the middle of the deep, dark loch. She lay atop me, life jacket to life jacket, and simply moved her hips back and forth, rolling over me, and that was more than enough. “Gabby, I… oh, fuck.” Her movements ebbed and flowed, pushing waves after wave of lusty tides upon my flesh. I stayed stock still, as any movement I made sent the canoe listing, and worse, cold water sloshing over the top and onto my bum.
Her lips met mine again, and I bit down upon her bottom lip, spurring her to hit the throttle and coast even faster over me, and she did. She rocked, again back and forth, and then sat up, her hands braced on the stern seat behind me, and she bounced, keeping her centre of gravity low, and I once again grasped her by the waist.
“Gabby, it’s… I’m… oh, Jesus.” I hissed through grit teeth.
My eyes flew open at the crack of another show of lightning and the thundering din that followed only seconds thereafter. Gabby moved on me again, and licked my chest, and I felt as if I had been struck dead by that very lighting. Every muscle, every fibre in my body tensed, some strange electrical force pulling every cord and sinew within me taught, like a strong bite upon fishing line, ready to snap and spring at any moment, and when Gabby threw her head back and her breasts perked out against her jumper beneath her life jacket and she twisted her hips just that little bit to the right and rolled just that little bit more to the left and her fingernail scratched my nipple and and and… oh, Jesus but that line did snap with a loud twang and a thwack and all of those electrical impulses within me crackled and hissed and finally, oh they finally exploded. I exploded, not once, “aaaah,” not twice, “oh, fuck,” but three times, “Ga...bri...elle!”
And once again, there was a massive thunderclap and I was gone. I couldn’t catch a proper breath. I was done for. Zapped out of existence. “Oh, Gabby. That was. Oh, God, I never. I, oh, fuck.”
Gabby kissed me once more, lifted herself up, pulled back, and sat her arse down across my thighs. She peered up at the sky, her hand shading her eyes, and those eyes following the line of impending doom across the heavens. “We’d best get in then, now, I think.” She pointed to the nearby shoreline, only a short distance away from where the current had carried our little craft. “If we row there and portage to that little café on the shore there, we’ll be inside before the first drop hits your pretty head.”
“That’s my line.” I sat up, scooching up onto the stern seat. I picked up my paddle and smacked Gabby in the arse with it. She squealed and covered her rear with both hands, turning and scowling at me. “To tha’fore with ye, and row. Row like yer life bloody depends upon it, ye dirty landlubber.”
Gabby worked her way back to her position in the bow, and before she picked up her paddle, she lifted a near-empty Coors can, and emptied the dregs of it into her mouth. “Fortification,” she grinned, “for the rest of the journey.”
I shuddered. “Fortification, my arse. I need fortification after drinking that shit.”
“And you got it in spades, my love.” She crushed the can in her fist and chucked it into the gunwale. “Forward! Forward, me hearties.”
***
"What do sex in a canoe and American beer have in common?" I posed the riddle as we completed the portage out of the loch, hoisted our gear onto our backs, and lifted the small craft over our heads.
"They're both amazing? We just had both?" Gabby grinned, shrugging her shoulders beneath the weight of the canoe. "I don't know. Tell me, Tom. Tell me. What do sex in a canoe and American beer have in common?"
I turned round beneath the bow, and walked backwards. I grinned a Cheshire at her and replied, "Both are fucking close to water." I laughed. Gabby didn't, opting instead to roll her eyes and twist up her lips playfully at me. "Get it? Fucking? Close to water? Oh, Jesus," I turned back around. "I slay me."
The lighting crashed, the thunder clapped, and the first drops of the storm pattered upon the bottom of our canoe.