This story contains detailed descriptions of sexual acts between consenting adults. If you are not of legal age in your community, or if you find such material offensive, don't read it.

Whose Brother, Whose Sister
(Who's Brother, Who's Sister)
by parthenogenesis

After four months of beating the bricks, I finally got a job offer. The start-up I'd been working for had vaporized almost overnight, tossing me back into the job market just before Thanksgiving, the worst time of year to look for a job in Silicon Valley. The whole valley essentially shuts down for the holiday season, and in January, everybody's hassling budgets and don't want to commit to new hires. Things don't return to normal—whatever normal may be in the goofiest industry on the face of the earth—until February.

Moreover, the market was tight right then, and, on top of that, I have a pretty heavy-duty resume, so most of the people who were hiring were looking for somebody who'd work cheaper than I was willing to. When DigiHertz decided they wanted me, they moved fast. I got the offer after only a single interview, and had only three days to wrap up my loose ends before I was to report for work. I would have preferred to think things over a bit, but my bank balance was on a rapid collision course with disaster, and, I kept reminding myself, "This is only a living, not a life." I took the job.

DigiHertz, incidentally, has nothing to do with cars. They make digital microwave radios. If you have a digital cellular phone, it's probably a DigiHertz radio that's carrying your call to the phone company. If you see little microwave dish antennas on the corner of a building, there are probably DigiHertz radios behind them, pumping data to a building on the other side of town.

I had to go into the DigiHertz building to sign the offer letter late on a Friday afternoon. When Sarah Nesbitt, the woman from Human Relations who was handling my offer, gave me the letter at the reception desk, she did kind of a double-take and stood off to one side, looking at me closely. As I was reading the letter, I glanced at her out the corner of my eye from time to time, and every time I did, it seemed to me that she was looking at me rather strangely. I was both puzzled by her looks and wondering whether maybe I was misinterpreting something or whether maybe I'd missed a patch under my chin when shaving, but the whole transaction took less than five minutes, and after I was out of the building, I didn't give it any more thought.

My introduction to DigiHertz, the following Monday, was four hours of orientation that focused heavily on company policies and procedures; in essence, 110 pages of reminders of who was boss and what was and what was not permitted, carefully worded in politically correct "you can't blame me" phrasing. There was a heavy emphasis on sexual harassment, which was not surprising.

About a year earlier, DigiHertz had been involved in an ugly lawsuit involving sexual harassment. It had cost them a million dollars in settlement and a whole lot of bad press, and had rocked the company to its foundations. One of the VP's had leaned a little too heavily on his administrative assistant, assuming that there was a "yes" down there somewhere beneath all her "no's." The admin had filed a complaint with the HR department. The director of the HR department, who was an old friend of the VP, had treated the matter lightly, taking the view that "well, that's just Harry." He'd spoken to Harry, but Harry didn't get the message, so the admin got a lawyer. The upshot of it was, aside from the million dollars, that both Harry and the HR director were now working elsewhere, the president managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth, and the company was hyper about sexual harassment. In order to keep his butt covered, the president had hired as the new director of HR "Battleship" Barbara Corrigan, who was known throughout Silicon Valley for her utter intolerance of anything that even hinted of sexual harassment. One of her hallmarks was that, although she was the director of the department, she never assigned sexual harassment complaints out to any of her staff. She handled them herself.

None of which bothered me much. I certainly didn't have any intention of harassing anybody, sexually or otherwise. I was there to work, to try to get back on my financial feet after four months without income, and to be able to relax and enjoy having a steady income again. For the first week, I did nothing but read documentation and experiment with the product I'd be working on. I talked to only three people, Ben, my boss, Mike, the fellow with whom I shared office space, and Suzi, the departmental admin. I went home at night with my head feeling like it was stuffed with oatmeal, ate dinner, watched TV, checked a couple of newsgroups, and hit the sack.

I got around the company only to the extent of going back and forth to the men's room and the coffee pot. It just so happened that, in those few and brief excursions, Sarah's and my paths crossed fairly often. I'd give her a nodded greeting, but nothing more, and it seemed to me, once again, that she looked at me strangely and veered away a little, almost going around me, making more space between us when we passed than people usually do under those circumstances.

Despite its tedium, my nose-to-the-grindstone approach during that first week was worth the effort. DigiHertz's equipment was not remarkably different from a lot of other similar equipment I'd worked on. Sure, they had a few twists and a whole bunch of local lingo I was unfamiliar with, but those were minor details I could pick up as I went along. On Friday, I told my boss that I was ready to go to work seriously, and the following Monday, I attended my first product team meeting.

Tuesday morning, when I went to my desk, I found waiting for me a voicemail message from Barbara Corrigan, asking—directing—me to report to her office immediately. Barbara's imperious tone was a bit off-putting, but I wasn't bothered. I assumed that there was some kind of HR paperwork that had to be completed.

I'll swear that Battleship Barbara could have driven nails with her face. She was about fifty-five. Her salt-and-pepper hair was cut in a short, no-nonsense style, her dress was businesslike and severe, and her rock-solid jaw gave no indication that she ever smiled. Nor did she beat around the bush. After a curt greeting, she said, "Sarah Nesbitt has filed a complaint of sexual harassment, visual harassment, against you. Do you know what visual harassment is?"

My shock must have been visible. I'd scarcely even nodded at Sarah Nesbitt. How on earth could she be accusing me of sexual harassment?

"Yes, I know what visual harassment is," I said.

"And will you tell me, please?" Battleship Barbara asked.

"Visual harassment is when someone displays sexually offensive material in his or her work area, or when someone repeatedly looks at another person in a way that makes him or her uncomfortable."

"That's right," Battleship Barbara said. "You are hereby issued a verbal warning for this infraction. If there's a second instance, you will receive a written warning. If there's a third instance, you will be placed on probation."

"Whoa! Wait a minute," I said. "I think you'd better say that Sarah Nesbitt alleges visual harassment. I don't have any idea what you're talking about. Sarah Nesbitt handled my offer letter. I've never been near her or spoken to her, except when I came in and signed the offer."

"Sarah claims that, on numerous occasions, when you and she passed in hallways, you leered at her," Battleship Barbara said.

"Leered at her!" I exploded. "I nodded to her in passing, just as I have with other DigiHertz employees, both male and female. This doesn't make any sense at all."

Battleship Barbara fixed me with an icy stare. "Ms. Nesbitt has filed her complaint. Unless you can produce evidence to the contrary, I have to assume that her complaint has merit."

Nice. Lovely. HR taking care of its own. I'd seen this tactic in other places and under other conditions. Put somebody instantly on the defensive, then watch them squirm, especially when the accused person has to try to prove a negative, which is damn hard to do. How could I prove that I hadn't leered at Sarah Nesbitt? Sexual harassment laws are written so that if a woman claims to have been sexually harassed, the claim is virtually as good as proof. I knew that the worst thing I could do was start to blather in protest, so I sat quietly, trying to regain control of myself and gather my thoughts. In the process of doing my homework the preceding week, I had read all 110 pages of company policy. I thought back over the lengthy section on sexual harassment. Finally, I spoke.

"Ms. Corrigan, I believe that, according to company policy, and consistent with law, I have a right to confront my accuser."

Battleship Barbara looked at me coldly, but she had to comply. She lived by written policy, and she'd written that one. She picked up her telephone, called Sarah Nesbitt, and asked her to come to her office.

When Sarah walked into Battleship Barbara's office, her chin was thrust forward, and she had a defiant stance. I looked at her closely as she passed by me. She was pretty, not model-pretty, but healthy, girl-next-door pretty—somewhere beneath all her makeup. I hadn't really noticed the makeup before, very dark lipstick, and heavy eyeshadow and eyebrow liner. She didn't need all that makeup, and it seemed inconsistent, made her look older than she probably was, late twenties, I'd guess, a few years younger than I am. She looked lithe, with a figure like a ballerina, almost no chest, long, solid legs, and a muscular, round, high, protruding butt, framed nicely in a pair of very tight slacks. She took a seat at the other corner of Battleship Barbara's desk, sitting on the edge of the chair, her back rigidly straight.

"Sarah," Battleship Barbara said softly, "I've informed Mr. Wilson of your complaint. He has cited, quite correctly, company policy that permits him to confront his accuser directly, and that's why I've asked you to come in. I know this will be difficult for you, but it's required by policy and by law. Do you understand?"

"Yes, I understand," Sarah said.

Battleship Barbara reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a small tape recorder, which she placed on the front of her desk. "I'm going to ask your permission to tape this meeting," she said. "This tape will be as confidential as the conversation, and will be locked in my file cabinet. It will be used only in the event that future action may make reconstruction of this conversation necessary. Do you both agree to the taping?"

"Of course," Sarah said.

"Of course," I said.

"Now, then, Mr. Wilson, what would you like to know?"

"I've been accused of doing something I haven't done," I said. "In order to be able to refute Ms. Nesbitt's claims, I have to know the specifics of her charges, details about what she believes I did."

"All right," Battleship Barbara said. "Sarah, would you please tell us exactly what happened? It's okay. Take your time."

"It's quite simple," Sarah began. "It happens that Mr. Wilson and I have walked by each other a number of times since he started at DigiHertz. Almost every time we passed, he looked at me hard, strangely, running his eyes up and down my body, focusing his attention on my groin area and my chest. It made me feel like he was sizing me up, undressing me with his eyes."

Battleship Barbara looked at me with her lips pursed, as if to say, "See, I told you so." This was unbelievable. I knew I hadn't stared at Sarah Nesbitt and sized her up. If anything, it was she who had looked at me strangely, though I hadn't felt like I was being sized up. I'd felt like I was being looked at like a zoo animal in a cage.

"Then he touched me," Sarah said.

Battleship Barbara's jaw dropped. I whipped my head in Sarah's direction so fast that my neck cracked loudly.

"It was very late at night," Sarah continued, "maybe two or three in the morning. It was a very hot night, and I was wearing a baby-doll nightgown with nothing else on. I'd turned the covers back, and was lying on the sheet, trying to get to sleep in the heat. All of a sudden I saw him walking into my bedroom. He thought I was asleep, but I wasn't. I was so scared, I didn't know what to do, so I lay there quietly, pretending to be asleep. I could see that he was wearing only undershorts, and that his stiff thing was making them stick out in front."

Sarah's eyes were closed. As she spoke, she began to rock forward and back slightly. Her voice lost its adult timbre, and started sounding more and more like the voice of a young girl.

"He came over to the edge of my bed, and looked down at me, holding his stiff thing in his hand and squeezing it. He reached down and pulled the hem of my nightgown up until my private parts were uncovered. He just stood there for a long time, looking at me and squeezing his stiff thing. Then he put his hand onto my private parts, very lightly, as if he didn't want to wake me up. I still didn't move. Then he started to rub my private parts. He rubbed and he rubbed, squeezing his hard thing while he was rubbing me."

Beads of perspiration appeared on Sarah's upper lip and brow. Battleship Barbara rendered me a menacing stare.

"Then he put his finger into my slit and started rubbing on the inside, and took his hard thing out of his shorts and started stroking up and down on it. While he rubbed me inside my slit, he kept sliding his finger farther and farther between my legs, pushing it just a little bit into my vagina. I was getting all wet and slippery. He kept rubbing his finger between my legs, getting his finger wet and slippery too, and rubbing my button. Oh, Davey! Daveeeeeey! What are you doing to me? It feels so good and I'm so scared and you shouldn't be here but it feels so good!"

Sarah's voice had become high and thin, completely like that of a little girl, and she was rocking back and forth harder and harder. She dropped her hand to her lap, and started rubbing between her legs. I looked at Battleship Barbara and saw that her eyebrows had gone to the middle of her forehead, and well they should have. As if Sarah's rocking back and forth and putting her hand between her legs wasn't enough: my first name is Mark.

"I knew this was wrong and I knew I should scream, but I couldn't. He kept rubbing and rubbing between my legs. His finger was so slippery that it just went back and forth and back and forth so easily. He started stroking his stiff thing with the same rhythm he was rubbing me. While he was rubbing, I felt my body getting all tingly. I'd never felt like that before and it felt so good even though it was so wrong and I was so scared, and then, all of a sudden, my body did something funny and it felt all kind of like fireworks inside. Davey. Daveeeeey. Oh, Davey. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oooooooooooh!"

At the same time Sarah made her final long "Oooooooooh," her rocking stopped and her body became completely rigid. She'd given herself an orgasm, right there in Battleship Barbara's office.

"And then stuff spurted out the end of his stiff thing and landed on my stomach and my hip. It was warm and gooey and it felt good in a funny kind of way when it hit my skin. Then, after he rubbed me between my legs a few more times and squeezed his thing a little bit more, he took his hand away. He took some tissues from a box beside my bed, mopped up his gooey stuff, pulled my nightgown back down, and left."

Sarah stopped rocking and sat silent. As softly and as evenly as I could, I said, "Sarah, how old are you?"

"Eleven," she said, in the high, girlish voice.

Battleship Barbara and I looked at each other. The steel in her gaze had been replaced by a look of concern.. She came around her desk and put her hands on Sarah's shoulders and shook her gently. "Okay, Sarah," she said. "It's okay, sweetheart. That's enough. You can stop now."

Sarah remained motionless. Battleship Barbara shook her a bit harder.

"Sarah? Sarah? Can you hear me?"

Sarah's head gave a quick jerk, and her eyes popped open. She gazed around the room with a look of disorientation and concern on her face.

Battleship Barbara turned her attention to me.

"Mr. Wilson, I believe you can go now. I'll be in touch with you later. And surely I don't have to remind you that everything that took place in this office is in strictest confidence?"

"Of course not, Ms. Corrigan. Thank you."

I stood and prepared to leave.

"By the way, Sarah, who's Davey?" Battleship Barbara said.

"Davey? Davey? I don't know any ... oh, Davey. 'Davey' is what I used to call my brother. He died in an automobile accident ten years ago, when he was nineteen. He was three years older than me. When am I going to get to tell my story?"

Battleship Barbara and I exchanged a quick glance. She pulled the chair I'd been sitting over next to Sarah's, and, as she sat down and put her arm around Sarah's shoulders, I left.

Obviously, Sarah had some kind of problem, and I felt kind of sorry for her. But it just as obviously didn't have anything to do with me, and I was confident that Battleship Barbara would be off my case.

But there was one other thing wrong. Sarah's story had given me a raging hard-on. What Sarah had described—apparently, an incident between her and her brother that had taken place what? sixteen years ago—was virtually identical to an incident that had taken place between my sister and me. I hadn't thought about that in years. One hot summer night, when I was fifteen and my sister was twelve, I had been overcome by horniness and curiosity and had gone into my sister's bedroom. I'd never seen a naked girl before, and I thought that, with the hot night, I might be able to catch a glimpse of my sister's bare skin. Light from a full moon was shining directly on my sister's bed, illuminating her almost as brightly as if it had been day. Her covers were thrown back, and she was lying on the sheet, wearing a baby-doll nightgown. The nightgown was covering her crotch, so I couldn't tell when I first walked in whether she was wearing panties or not. But I could see all of her legs, as she lay there asleep, completely relaxed and natural; innocent. And she looked so beautiful.

I didn't know what to do next. I didn't have any plan to do anything, so I just stood by her bed, looking at her, getting harder and harder, squeezing my hard-on through my Jockey shorts. After a while, I just had to see whether she was wearing panties, so, very gently and slowly, I eased the hem of her nightgown up, and almost spurted on the spot when I saw her naked pussy. My heart was beating so loudly I couldn't hear anything else. I felt dizzy and my ears were ringing. She had a little patch of fur up at the top of her slit, but her pussy lips themselves were bare. Like the rest of her, her pussy was so beautiful that I couldn't take my eyes off of it. I looked and looked, all the while squeezing my hard-on through my shorts. Finally, I just had to touch it. And I did, just barely. When my sister didn't move, I touched her again, then a little more firmly, and then I started rubbing her pussy lips, as gently as I could. After I'd rubbed her pussy lips for a while and she still didn't stir, I pressed my finger into her slit, and began to rub up and down. And my sister had got wet and slippery, too. By that time, I was so crazy with horniness, love for my sister, and lust that I took my cock out of my shorts and started jacking off with the same rhythm I was rubbing her. And then I came, like I'd never come before, spurting my semen all over my sister's stomach and pussy and legs. When I realized what I'd done, I was scared to death that my sister would wake up and tell Mom and Dad, and I was full of guilt for masturbating myself while I masturbated her. I mopped up my come and got out of my sister's bedroom, as fast as I could. I was scared that my sister would say something for days afterward, and guilty for as long as I was scared. Apparently, my sister never said anything, and my guilt and fear dwindled. Then I must have pushed the incident into a far, far corner of my mind. It had never occurred to me, until Sarah told her story, that my sister might have been awake during the whole thing.

I never went into my sister's room in the middle of the night again, and the two of us never did any other sexual experimenting. But I think that single instance left me with a predilection for women with girlish figures, not big-breasted, wide-hipped women, but lithe women, women built like ballerinas, women with small breasts and long legs, and high, rounded bottoms, women built like ... Sarah? I dismissed that thought from my mind. Sarah had the right kind of figure, to be sure, but she wore way too much makeup, and she had problems, besides. Even if I had felt some attraction to Sarah, I would have had to be stone dumb to do anything about it.

When I walked out of Battleship Barbara's office, the chatter on the HR floor stopped as quickly as if someone had sliced a knife through it. The corporate jungle fell silent as the tiger passed by.

I walked though the corridors, climbed the stairs to the second floor, and threaded my way through the maze of cubicles. As I passed by the secretarial area near my office, the women quit chatting and typing and fussing with their hair and fixed their eyes on me as I passed by. I was sure that what had happened in Battleship Barbara's office was still in her office, but some kind of word had spread. Apparently even the taint of accusation was as good as an admission of guilt. I had trespassed against womankind. It's too bad upper management couldn't learn to make effective use of the corporate tom-tom, surely one of the most efficient means of communication ever devised.

I returned to work and tried to put the Sarah business out of my mind. Two days later, I got a memo from Battleship Barbara, officially clearing me of any and all charges. Sarah had withdrawn her complaint. But even being officially cleared by Battleship Barbara didn't satisfy the natives. The women were nervous and avoided me. The men kept their distance, too, civil when we had to do business, but not willing to shoot the bull. God only knows what they might have had on their minds as far as the women in the building were concerned, but they must have feared guilt by association. When I walked by a group of people talking, conversation ceased. If I approached a group of people as if I were going to join them or needed to talk to somebody, they dispersed, leaving behind one poor soul whose unfortunate chore it was actually to speak to me. I was uncomfortable, no doubt about it, but I knew that I wasn't guilty of anything, and decided that I was just going to have to keep my head up and let time run its course until people forgot, or something more juicy came along.

Then, two weeks and one day following the meeting in Battleship Barbara's office, just as I was beginning to feel an easing in the tension around me and permit myself the hope that my life at DigiHertz might assume a more normal routine, I got an email letter from Sarah.

Dear Mr. Wilson,

Please accept my apology for causing you trouble and
discomfort. I know now that you in no way sexually
harassed me, and I'm deeply sorry that I accused you
wrongly.

I would very much like to talk to you. Could we meet for
lunch one day soon?

Sincerely,
Sarah Nesbitt

I was utterly dumbfounded. Certainly I appreciated Sarah's apologizing, and I could understand how that might have been difficult for her, and something she felt was necessary. But I couldn't see any reason to meet with her, and I didn't want to do anything that might jeopardize the relationship I was trying to build with DigiHertz and my co-workers. It didn't take long for me to compose my reply.

Dear Ms. Nesbitt,

I accept your apology.

However, considering the circumstances that led to your
apology, I think it would be unwise for us to meet.

Yours truly,
Mark Wilson

I then put Sarah Nesbitt as much out of mind as I could. I was really getting into my new job. I'd found that DigiHertz had a way of looking at all its products and projects with a strange kind of single-mindedness, that they seemed to consider each product line in complete isolation from any other, and that there were huge areas of confusion and overlap. I'd put together a package describing how they could eliminate two major areas of redundancy, speed up their time to market, and save a good deal of money in the process, and I needed to start the politicking I'd have to do to make my point. I was working hard, and I was, in my own slightly less than humble opinion, earning my keep.

Three days later, I got a second email letter from Sarah Nesbitt.

Dear Mr. Wilson,

I can appreciate your reluctance to meet with me, but I
feel like I *have* to talk to you.

This is *very* important to me.

If we can't meet for lunch, could we get together for
perhaps an hour at any other time that would be
convenient for you? Please?

Sincerely,
Sarah Nesbitt

Probably there isn't a man alive who doesn't respond at some level to a "damsel in distress" message, no matter how much he may know consciously that her distress has nothing to do with him, and I was no exception. Consciously, I still thought it was a bad idea to meet with Sarah. But it was very important to her, and she felt like she had to talk to me. My ego and my curiosity were piqued. And I felt kind of lousy. It seemed clear that she had some kind of problem, and I'd be a rat if I didn't help her try to solve it. My guts were saying "yes" at the same time my head was saying "no." One lesson I had learned in life, the hard way, was that when I let my head overrule a strong gut feeling, I was almost surely making a mistake. Men can have intuition, too, no matter how hard American society tries to drub it out of them. I wrote back to Sarah, and we arranged to meet the following day at a little Mexican restaurant out on the north side of Milpitas, far enough away from DigiHertz that it seemed unlikely we might encounter anyone from work there.

Our meeting was, of course, strained at the start. The last time we'd actually spoken to one another was in Battleship Barbara's office, after Sarah had accused me of sexually harassing her, and she'd told her trance-like story. But we made it through terse hellos and ordering a meal. I was uncomfortable with the silence, but it was Sarah's show. I was here because she'd asked me to me here, and I didn't know what she had on her agenda. I sat and waited. Sarah smoothed her hair, brushed invisible lint off her blouse, inspected her fingernails, and rearranged the silverware. When the salads came, she finally spoke.

"This is even harder than I thought it would be," she said. "I'm so embarrassed."

Be gentle, be helpful, a voice inside my head cautioned.

"It's okay," I said. "Please try not to feel embarrassed."

"Well, I, I mean, after all, in Barbara's office, I, well, I masturbated, and I had an orgasm, right in front of my boss and a man I don't know. Oh, this is terrible, I don't even know where to start."

"Like they always say in the movies, why don't you start at the beginning?"

"Mostly because I don't know where the beginning is. I mean, I'm not sure any more what's real and what's not."

"If you can't start someplace, then start any place, and let's see where it goes from there."

Sarah looked off in the distance, crunching a piece of romaine as she thought.

"Okay. I'll start with what happened after you left Barbara's office. She played the tape of what I'd said. I heard what I said, I heard myself come, and I heard me say that I was eleven when you asked me how old I was. I didn't remember saying any of those things, but I understood that I had said them, that I'd gone into some kind of a trance. Barbara talked to me for a while and helped me get my bearings straight, then she suggested that I call the company's AEP number and get some counseling. So I did.

"I've seen the psychologist three times now. I took the tape and played it for her, too. We've talked, and the psychologist says that either one of two things happened. Either Davey did come into my room late one night and fondled me, or that's a fantasy I've been carrying for so long, unable to resolve because of Davey's death, that I truly don't know whether it happened or not."

"Can I ask a question?" I asked. "I'm confused and curious about one thing."

"Sure."

"I really don't think I was giving you any particular kinds of looks when we walked by each other at work. Why did you file your complaint of visual harassment in the first place?"

Sarah sighed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Wilson, but I don't have a good answer for that, either. To me, it felt like you were staring at me, undressing me with your eyes. I think I would have felt the same way even if you were staring off into space as we passed. I don't know why I felt that way, but I do understand that it came from inside of me, not in response to anything you did."

"How about if you call me Mark?"

"Okay. And, of course, you should call me Sarah. The psychologist told me that it's very common for an incidence of childhood molestation to take on a dream-like quality, that kids try real hard to make it all go away. After a while, they're not sure whether it actually happened or not, but it's not uncommon for some small thing—the shadow of an arm crossing your face or a quick glimpse of a profile—to reawaken the memory. I think what happened was that when I first saw you, when you came to sign your offer letter, some little glimpse of you triggered the memory."

"Do I look like David?"

"Not at all."

Sarah started fishing in her purse. The waiter came and took away our salad plates and brought the main course, the usual chiles rellenos for me, and cheese enchiladas for Sarah. As the waiter left, Sarah handed me a photograph.

"This is a picture of Davey when he was sixteen. After all this business started, I went to an old photograph album to see if there might be any similarity between you and Davey. I haven't found it yet."

I looked at the picture. Sarah was right. If there was any similarity between Davey and me, I couldn't see it either. In the picture, Davey was sixteen-gawky, on the skinny side, sharp features, and dark-haired, like Sarah. My hair is sandy blond, and I have a big frame, wide shoulders. I gave the snapshot back to Sarah.

Sarah and I sat in silence for a few minutes, stirring around the steaming food on our plates, lifting bites to cool a bit before we moved them to our mouths. Conversation between us, now that we'd got started, was becoming easier. But I still didn't know why Sarah had wanted to talk to me. Maybe she just needed to get Davey and me separate in her mind.

"Probably you're wondering why I wanted to talk to you," Sarah said, hissing breath around a dollop of scalding cheese. "This is the hard part. The really embarrassing part. The part I've got to do."

"Take your time," I urged. "It's okay."

"That's the problem. I can't take my time. I'm afraid that if I don't go through with this now, I never will. It's most definitely not okay. Mark, I'm desperate, that's all there is to it. I'm twenty-seven years old. I want to have a real life, to fall in love with a man, to get married, have some kids."

Sarah paused for a few pensive bites of enchilada, then resumed speaking, more with determination than with ease.

"This whole ... business ... has brought a bunch of stuff to a head, and I feel like I'm standing at a turning point. Either I can confront it and try to overcome it, or I can avoid it and accept its interfering with my life for the rest of my life. I'm scared to death that I may never have another opportunity to deal with this again, that if I don't act now, I'll lose the chance forever."

Sarah closed her eyes, clenched her jaws for a moment, then continued.

"I've never been able to have a real relationship with a man. I become attracted to someone, feel like I'm falling love, and want with all my heart to be close to him. But when I try to be intimate, something goes haywire. I know there's nothing physically wrong with me. I can masturbate myself to orgasm, but when I'm with a man, I just go numb, shut off. I lie there and feel him moving in and out of me, but nothing happens in my body. I can't let go, wrap around him, move, scream, come until I think I won't be able to draw another breath. No matter hard I try, nothing happens. I get disappointed, the man thinks there's something wrong with him, and the whole thing falls apart."

"Isn't confronting it what you're doing with the psychologist?"

"Yes and no. Certainly if I hadn't seen her, I wouldn't be able to be talking to you now. But psychotherapy takes a long time, lots of talk. After thinking it over for a couple of weeks, I've decided that I want to meet the problem head-on, to try to shock myself out of whatever it is and see if I can decide what's real and what isn't, and get on with my life."

I felt like I should make some sounds of acknowledgment or say something. But I couldn't find any words that seemed appropriate. I looked at Sarah with what I hoped was an encouraging expression.

"Here's why I wanted to talk to you," she said. "I want you to help me confront the problem"

My eyebrows went up. I couldn't think of a way in the world that I could help her wrestle with her own demon. Sarah reached into her purse, then placed two items on the table between us.

"Here's the tape from Barbara's office," she said, "and a key to my apartment. What I want you to do is listen to the tape. Then, some time during the next week—I don't want to know exactly when you're going to do it—I want you to come to my apartment in the middle of the night and do to me exactly what I described on the tape. After you've done that, if I haven't woken up, I want you to wake me. I need to know what happened to me, and that you're not Davey."

I almost blew a mouthful of arroz across the table.

"Are you kidding?" I exploded. "I don't know anything about psychology, but that sure seems to me like it could backfire completely. I could scare the absolute shit out of you, or you could freak out entirely. Uh-uh. No. No way. I don't like it. Better you should stick with your psychotherapist, or maybe find someone else who'd be willing to help you. Did you tell your shrink you were going to do this? I can't believe she'd go along with it."

Sarah's face fell. She looked directly into my eyes. As she did, her eyes began to pool and glisten, and tears ran down both her cheeks, leaving stains in her heavy makeup.

"I was afraid you'd react that way. I guess I really can't blame you. It's an awful lot to ask of someone who is, after all, a complete stranger. I'm sorry. But it was you who triggered the response in me. I don't think there's anyone else who could help. And no, I didn't say anything to my therapist about it. This was my decision alone. I told you I was desperate, Mark. So desperate, I'm willing to bet the farm. I accept full responsibility for what I want to do. If I freaked, I wouldn't hold you responsible."

"When it comes right down to it, you don't know anything about me. I could be some horrible guy who'd take real advantage of you in the middle of the night or use your key to get in some other time and steal everything you own."

"I thought about that, too," Sarah said, with a weak smile. "What I know about you is that you could have come completely unglued when I accused you of sexual harassment. You didn't. I heard your voice on the tape when you asked me how old I was. You figured out quickly that something was wrong, and were gentle, not vindictive or mean. After I withdrew my complaint, you could have counter-complained about false charges. You didn't. You could have refused completely to meet with me. You didn't. And, after meeting me today, you could have told me I was nuts and just to buzz off. You didn't. You listened. Besides that, you look like a nice guy. I'm comfortable with you. I'm really not terribly concerned about the nature of your character."

My mind took off in two directions. The part I wanted to listen to kept telling me, this isn't your problem, this isn't your problem, this isn't your problem. It's a bad idea. You could get yourself into a heap of trouble. It could turn out badly. You have no business even thinking about creeping into a woman's apartment in the middle of the night and fondling her in her sleep. It's crazy, is what it is. The part I didn't want to listen to was the mucho macho, white horse, knight in shining armor, pure ego part. You could help the damsel in distress, it said to me. Only you, nobody else. You could save the day and be a hero. The debate between my ears raged for several minutes.

"You sure you want to do this?" I asked.

"Very sure," Sarah said.

With a bit of effort, I got out of my own ego and fear and tried to consider the situation from Sarah's point of view. What a courageous woman, I said to myself. There's an incredible strength of character and self in there. She knows she's bogged down, and she wants to be able to live a normal life so badly that she's willing to take extreme measures to get what she wants. I understood, finally, that if I could get out of myself enough, I had the opportunity to give something to somebody else, to help her with no thought of gain for myself. I suddenly felt very selfish.

"Okay," I said, picking up the tape and the key and putting them in my pocket. "I'll do it." Sarah wrote her address on the back of a business card and handed it to me. I put it in my pocket along with the tape and key.

"Thank you," she whispered, and began to cry in earnest, not loudly, but visibly. The people around us in the restaurant looked at us with veiled eyes, obviously uncomfortable.

Sarah sniffed, fished a kleenex from her purse, and blew her nose with a satisfying gurgle. "I think I'm making a scene," she said, "and I must look awful." Her eye makeup was smeared and her cheeks were streaked. "We'd better get out of here."

Sarah went straight out to her car while I settled the check. When I went outside, I looked around until I saw her, using her rear-view mirror to touch up her makeup. I put a hand on top of her car and leaned down to look at her through the open window.

"Seems like we ought to say something more," I said, "wrap this up somehow."

"It's wrapped," she said. "I don't want to say anything more right now. Any more talk might ruin the plan. I'll see you when I see you. And thanks again."

At that point, clearly, there was nothing more I could say. Slightly bemused, I walked to my car, sat for a moment to catch my emotional breath, then returned to work.

That night, I listened to the tape. I almost relived the scene in Battleship Barbara's office, recalling again the similarity between what Sarah had described and what I'd one with my sister all those years ago. And I got a bursting hard-on again. I went into my bedroom, lay down, and jacked off, coming with a ferocity that surprised me. Then I tried to decide when would be a good time to go to Sarah's apartment. If I did it immediately, I thought, it wouldn't be much of a surprise, and she might not be sleeping, lying awake waiting for me to show up. If I waited too long, the plan might lose steam of its own accord—Sarah would think I changed my mind, chickened out. Four days finally settled out as the right time. Not too soon; less than a week. And four days would be a Saturday night, probably a better time for extracurricular activity than during the work week.

When I returned to work in the morning, I had a terrible time concentrating. I kept replaying Sarah's and my lunchtime conversation in my mind, each time being slightly astonished that I'd agreed to go along with such a bizarre scheme. And I was thinking about Sarah ... and my sister, and what this all might mean in some larger context, the metaphysics of it, coincidences, how people get thrown together and the strange things that happen sometimes. But I kept plugging away, trying to keep my mind on business and ignore the still-fractured social dynamic around me. When Sarah and I crossed paths in the hall, we both averted our gazes, each of us pretending that the other one wasn't there.

All day Saturday, I was nervous as a cat. My stomach was wiggly, my appetite was zip, and it seemed like I couldn't sit still. When pacing around my apartment didn't help, I went outside and walked for miles. During the evening, I listened to the tape again to be sure that I had my role down right—and had the same reaction I'd had the first time I listened to it. I got such a raging hard-on I could hardly concentrate. I lay down on my bed and jacked off. Better, I thought, not to be carrying such a load of sexual heat anyway. I was going to Sarah's house to help her, not to get my jollies, and I thought I might be in better control if I wasn't thinking one hundred percent with my cock. At 1:45, I slipped my little Maglite into my pocket and left to drive to Sarah's apartment.

I tiptoed up the stairs to Sarah's apartment. I double-checked the apartment number she'd written down against the one on the door. My first fear was that I'd try to get into the wrong apartment, somebody would call the police, and I'd spend a night in jail trying to explain why I was trying to get into the wrong apartment. I eased the key into the lock and turned it with all the speed of a clock hand. The lock made a soft click, and the knob turned. Slowly, I pushed the door open just enough to enter, then eased the door shut, turning the knob as it closed so that the shaft wouldn't snap into place. Then I stood with my back to the door, listening to the thumping of my heart and trying to control my breathing. My second fear was that Sarah might wake up when she heard me enter, forget about our arrangement or change her mind on the spot, and scream bloody murder—and somebody would call the police and I'd spend a night in jail trying to explain why I'd walked into the apartment of a young woman at 2:00 in the morning. But there was dead silence. All I could hear was my own heart and breath.

I turned on the Maglite to be sure that I didn't bump into any furniture or trip on something on the floor. I narrowed its beam to a pencil's width on the floor in front of me, then softly walked toward a hall that must lead to the bedroom. When I entered the hallway, I could see a soft glow coming from the bedroom, so I turned the flashlight off. Peering into the bedroom, I saw that the glow was coming from two votive candles burning in shallow glass bowls atop the bureau. With the script I was to follow in mind, I returned to the living room and removed all my clothes, except my undershorts. Then I returned to the bedroom.

Sarah had followed her part in the script, too. The covers were turned back, and she was lying on top of the sheets, wearing a very short nightgown, so short that it barely covered her pubic area. I walked over to the edge of the bed and looked down at Sarah, and, as my cock started to rise, I began to squeeze it. After gazing at Sarah for a few minutes, I reached down and pulled up the hem of her nightgown until her private parts were uncovered—and my cock sprang instantly to full hardness.

Sarah's bush was a grown-up version of my sister's pubescent one, a larger tuft of hair at the top of her slit, with no hair at all on her pussy lips. I pulled my gaze away from Sarah's crotch and let it run slowly from her toes to her forehead. Her legs were long and shapely, and, while she was lying on her back, her breasts were almost invisible beneath her nightgown. She'd washed off all her makeup before she went to bed. Between the soft light from the candles and her lack of makeup, she looked like she was about fourteen. She was so beautiful, so innocent-looking that my heart began to ache with her loveliness. All the maleness in me made me want to wrap my arms around her and protect her from anything that might threaten to harm her. There was no way I could ever do anything mean to this woman.

At the same time I was looking at Sarah and trying to reconcile my emotional reaction to the sight of her lying there on her bed, practically naked and completely defenseless, I was staggered by the sudden appearance in my mind of images of my sister in her bed fifteen years ago. The images were stunning in their clarity and detail, overlaid on the real Sarah in front of me, just like clips in a movie. Reality wavered around me, and I began to wonder who was trying to deal with whose demons here. I shook my head and snapped myself fully back to Sarah's bedroom. Looking at her and squeezing my hard-on was not a difficult task. With considerable difficulty, I put my own feelings aside and shifted my mind to the script I'd agreed to enact. I put my left hand on her pussy, very lightly, and began to rub. I rubbed and rubbed, squeezing my cock while I rubbed her. Sarah lay motionless, her breathing even, apparently sound asleep.

Then I pressed my middle finger into her slit, as slowly and easily as I could, at the same time pulling the waistband of my Jockey shorts down and letting my raging hard-on spring free. I grabbed my cock firmly, and began to stroke it slowly. As I rubbed inside Sarah's slit, I began to dip my finger lower and lower, letting it run across the entrance to her pussy, pressing gently on her pussy with each pass. Sure enough, before long, her pussy started to get wet and slippery. When my finger was thoroughly slick with Sarah's pussy juice, I moved it to the top of her slit and found her clitoris, which was erect and protruding from its hood. Sarah's hips began to rock slightly, and her breath rate increased.

By now, I was beginning to think seriously about coming. Just like the script said, I started rubbing Sarah's pussy and clitoris and jacking off with the same rhythm, but I didn't need a script. This motion was completely natural. Unavoidable. There was nothing else I could do. Images of my sister's twelve-year-old body flickered and flashed across my vision. Sarah's hips pumped harder, and her breath became ragged. Then, all at once, her body went rigid and I came as if a gun had been fired inside of me. I didn't just spurt, I shot, and the first blast of my semen landed on her stomach with an audible splat. I rubbed Sarah's pussy and clit as my balls drained dry, and I mean drained dry.

"Davey," Sarah moaned. "Daveeeeey. Oh, Davey. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oooooooooooh!"

I pumped myself so dry I had an ache between my legs, and my knees were shaking so violently I feared that I might collapse. When I finally finished coming, I stroked Sarah a few more times and squeezed the final few drops of come out of my prick. I took some tissues from a box on the nightstand beside the bed and mopped up both Sarah and myself, then pulled her nightgown back down.

Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my hands on Sarah's shoulders, shaking her gently. "Sarah?" I whispered. "Sarah! Are you all right?"

Sarah's eyes snapped open wide in alarm. She sat up and snapped her knees to her chest, knocking my hands off her shoulders and almost clipping my chin. She threw one arm across her face, her hand turned palm out, in the classic defense reaction. "Davey!" she shouted. "What are you do—"

"No, Sarah," I said softly. "Not Davey, Mark. Remember?"

Sarah's eyes flicked right and left in confusion and fright. Then she blinked and gulped and gasped sharply. "Oh! Mark! Oh! Oh. Yes, I remember, now."

"Do you remember my coming into your room and rubbing you?" I asked.

"No, I don't remember anything. I must have been sound asleep." Sarah sniffed the air. "But I came, didn't I. And so did you. I can smell it, both of us, and it feels like I just came."

I sniffed, too. The air was rich with the smell of Sarah's heat and my semen. I wanted to go back and start rubbing her again, and now I wanted to taste her too, to bury my face in the wonderful aroma of her sexual excitement.

"Yes, you did. And you called out Davey's name while you were coming."

Sarah looked disappointed. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised," she said. "I suppose it's human nature to look for a quick fix. I want a quick fix."

As we talked, Sarah relaxed. She lowered her knees and dropped her hand from her face and slumped forward.

"I guess I should be going," I said. "Are you going to be okay?"

"I think so," she said. "I was scared to death when I first woke up, but I'm okay now. Thanks for trying."

I reached out and hugged her. She returned the hug without much enthusiasm. "You're welcome," I said. "The pleasure was at least partly mine."

Sarah's mouth twisted into a wry smile.

"Well, good night," I said.

"Good night," Sarah responded.

I left her sitting like that on her bed, slumped forward, looking disappointed. I dressed quickly and returned home, again feeling out of joint, as if we should have said more, reached some kind of closure or conclusion to the failed experiment. But we hadn't, and it didn't seem right to go back into Sarah's bedroom.

When I got back home, I went straight to bed—and lay awake for several hours, excited by what I'd seen and done with Sarah, sharing something of her disappointment. I tried hard not to remember the visions of my sister, but they wouldn't leave me. This was Sarah's business, not mine. It was she who needing fixing, not me. As much as I didn't want to look at it, I had to admit to myself that something was going on with me. My hero complex was suffering, too. I hadn't rescued the damsel in distress, fixed everything and made it all right. Finally, I drifted off into a shallow sleep.

Sunday, I rattled around like one pea in a very empty pod. I was unsettled, unhappy. I wanted to call Sarah, to see her, to talk to her. I still felt like there was more I could do, something that would be helpful to her, something that would make her smile. But my part in the script called only for my visiting her in the middle of the night. It was still her show, and I couldn't intrude and try to force my feelings or beliefs into her life. I did my best to ignore what I was feeling and consider that I'd done all I could under the circumstances.

Monday, when I got to work, there was an email message from Sarah waiting for me. I opened it with a mixture of joy and fear.

Do it again.

was all the message said. Those three words were enough to make my heart leap. Yes! Sarah wasn't going to give up—and I'd have the opportunity to see her and touch her and feel her again. I sent her back an even shorter message:

Okay.

Sarah's request both made and ruined my day. I was all but quivering like a puppy with anticipation at being close to her again, and that excitement ruined my ability to concentrate on my work. And I had to figure out when to "surprise" her again. This time, I decided to go immediately, that same night. The reason I told myself was that she wouldn't be expecting me so soon. The reason I didn't admit to myself was that I just wanted to be with her again as soon as I could. I made it through the day with maybe 51% of my mind on what I was supposed to be doing for DigiHertz.

At home, I ate a light supper that I barely tasted, then fidgeted and twitched. I turned on the television and looked at it, without the foggiest idea what I was watching. I read the same six pages of a book three times before giving that up. I went out and walked around the neighborhood for an hour. I took a shower. Finally, inexorably, no matter how slowly, the appointed hour arrived, and at 2:00 a.m., I let myself into Sarah's apartment.

I took a quick Maglite check of the floor to be sure there wasn't anything to trip over, then skinned out of my clothes, except, of course, for my Jockey shorts. Sarah had again left votive candles burning on top of the dresser. In the soft glow, without makeup and looking completely innocent and vulnerable, she seemed even more beautiful than she had on Saturday. Tonight, she was lying on her side, with her marvelous, long legs slightly scissored, the luscious curve of her bottom exposed where her nightgown had ridden up slightly. As if anything could have prevented it, my cock started to rise, according to the script. I gave my cock a couple of squeezes as I stood there, looking at her and feeling my heart begin to ache with her loveliness.

I wasn't too sure how to get her onto her back so I could move to the next part of the action. I didn't want just to push her for fear that I'd wake her, so I began to stroke her thigh lightly, letting my hand run up and over the exposed part of her bottom. Her skin was incredibly soft and smooth and warm. I didn't want only to touch and rub her, I wanted to kiss and taste that skin, to run the tip of my tongue over it, to bury my face in it—but I couldn't, and I didn't. After a few minutes, Sarah sighed and rolled to her back.

I gave her a minute to settle into her new position, then I pushed her nightgown up. This time, I did depart from the script slightly. I didn't lift her nightgown only enough to expose her pussy. Carefully, carefully, I kept inching it up until her breasts were exposed, too. I wanted to see her breasts and nipples so badly I could barely stand it. I wanted to see as much of her as I could. All of her. When her nightgown was at the top of her breasts, I stood back and looked again, marveling at the sheer beauty of her grown-up little-girl bush, and her adolescent breasts, only slightly rising from her chest as she lay on her back. She had adolescent nipples, too, pink and small. In that position, in the soft glow of the candlelight, she looked half her real age, and my cock swelled almost to bursting.

Then I started touching her, but again I departed from the script slightly. I didn't do exactly what she'd described on the tape and go directly for her pussy. I let my fingers trail lightly up her thighs, stroking repeatedly from her knees upward, stopping just before I got to her pussy lips. Then I moved to her breasts, placing the palm of my hand flat on them and rubbing softly. I traced the outline of her breasts with a fingertip, making circles that spiraled inward toward her nipples. As I teased around those pink, pubescent buds, the aureoles puckered, and her nipples rose to proud little points. From her breasts, I moved my hand downward, rubbing her stomach and tracing circles around her navel. Sarah sighed again and moved her legs apart slightly. Only after I'd satisfied myself that I'd touched as much of her as I dared did I let my hand come to rest on her pussy, cupping all of it like a fragile treasure.

When my hand's journey arrived for its sojourn on Sarah's pussy, I pushed my shorts down and brought out my bursting cock. If I'd wanted to, I could have come in only a few quick strokes, but the script didn't call for that, and I wanted to make these moments last as long as I possibly could. Barely squeezing my cock, I dipped my middle finger between Sarah's legs. She moaned softly and lifted her hips slightly to meet my touch. She was already wet. My finger started its dance between her legs, stroking gently from bottom to top and back down, again and again. On each pass over the opening to her vagina, I pressed lightly, letting my finger just slip in to pick up more wetness and lubricate its slide. My finger slipped and it slid, up, down, around, dipping in, going down to the ridged pucker of her asshole and up to the bump of her clitoris. I squeezed her pussy lips together gently, then put my finger back between them. Finally, I focused my attention on her clitoris, hard and sticking out from her pink, swollen labia, and at the same time began stroking my cock in earnest. This time, no images of sister flashed across the reality of Sarah. This was only Sarah, and I wasn't just fondling her slyly in the middle of the night. I was making love to her in the only way available to me.

As I zeroed in on her clitoris and began rubbing around it and stroking it back and forth as I stroked my cock with the same rhythm, beads of perspiration appeared on Sarah's upper lip. She began to moan and to move her hips in time with my stroking, her movements becoming stronger with each pass of my finger over her clit. As her breathing quickened and I felt her muscles begin to tense, I quickened the strokes on my cock, then, all at once, just as her legs clamped my hand between them and she let out a long "Aaaaaaaaaaah," I came so hard that my vision blacked out for a few moments. From somewhere in the blackness, I felt my cock pulsing and pulsing, pushing out shot after shot of semen with an intensity that eclipsed the entire world.

When my vision returned, I saw that I'd drenched Sarah's pussy and stomach with my come. She was panting as if she'd just crossed a finish line, and her chest was a bright pink. I was gulping air and struggling to remain upright on knees that were threatening to fold like paper at any moment. The air was redolent with the scent of Sarah and me, tropical with the heat and moisture of our passion. I gave Sarah's clitoris a few more very soft strokes, her hips jerking at every touch, and squeezed the final few drops of semen from my softening prick. Finally, I swallowed hard, then gathered up some Kleenexes for the mop-up.

I put my hands on Sarah's shoulders and shook her gently. "Sarah?" I whispered. "Sarah?"

Once again, her eyes flew open. "Da—" she began, stopping herself quickly. "Oh, Mark. Mark! My God, what happened? Oh, my God. I feel like I've been on a roller coaster ride between Mars and Venus. Oh, my God!"

She threw her arms around my neck and pulled me down to her with astonishing strength. As my nose went into the hair above her ear, the points of her nipples pressed against my chest. I inhaled deeply, smelling her shampoo and skin, and feeling the dampness of her skin against me. "Oh, Mark," she said again. "Oh, my God." I ran my fingers through her damp hair and down to her shoulders and hugged her back. I nibbled at her earlobe and kissed the side of her neck. With the tip of my tongue, I tasted her slight saltiness.

Finally, after a long time, but still too soon, Sarah relaxed her hold on me and pushed me back. "Oh, Mark," she said. "What happened? What happened?"

I looked down at her, feeling love and tenderness for her that the script didn't call for and that I couldn't tell her about. "From the outside," I said, "it looked pretty much the same as it did last time. I think that whatever happened that sent you on your roller-coaster ride happened inside of you."

Sarah looked at me with wide eyes, chewing pensively on her lower lip.

"Mark, I.... I mean, .... I think...."

"Go ahead," I said. "It's okay. You can say anything you want to."

"I ... I don't know what to say. My emotions feel all scrambled up, and I don't know exactly how I feel. I feel .... I think ...."

Sarah lapsed into silence again. I waited.

After a long minute or two, she said, "I think I need to think about everything for a while." She threw her arms around my neck again and gave me a bone-crushing hug. "Thank you, Mark. Just thank you. You're so ... you're so nice to have agreed to help me like this."

I thought maybe I should be thanking her. I'd never felt as strongly about a woman as I now felt about Sarah. I wanted to lie down beside her, wrap my arms around her, hold her, protect her from herself and the world, give her a safe place, lose myself in the feel and scent of her. But I couldn't do that. I suddenly became aware of a tremendous emptiness within myself.

"You know you don't have to thank me," I said, stroking her hair. "All you have to do is be yourself."

Sarah relaxed her grip again, and, reluctantly, I stood, looking down at her. "I guess I should go," I said. I bent forward and kissed her on the forehead. "Sleep well."

Sarah drew a breath as if to speak, then stopped. When she did speak, she said, "You too. Good-night."

I went to the living room, dressed quickly, and then slipped out the front door. I didn't want to leave. Even though my body was walking away from her apartment and getting into my car, I'd left some part of me behind with Sarah. Back home, I undressed again and went to bed, lying in a fetal position, trying very hard to wrap around the sudden emptiness I was feeling.

The next day at work two things happened. The first, completely unexpected, was that I was asked to go to observe and analyze a customer's installation in Kuala Lumpur. Cell phones were big business in Southeast Asia, where the population wants to become First-World and it's a lot faster, easier, and cheaper to set up a microwave transmitter than it is to run phone lines through congested cities and dense jungles. I was to leave the next Saturday at noon, stay a week, and return the following weekend. Ordinarily, I would have been overjoyed with the opportunity for travel. I loved going to foreign countries, seeing other cultures, and learning more about the world. But, this time, I'd rather have stayed at home. At least a while longer before leaving the country for a week. But I was in no position to say no.

The second, not unexpected, was an email message from Sarah:

Thank you again for last night.

I think it's working. Can you do it one more time,
please?

Could I do it one more time? I could do it a thousand more times. A million more times. I could spend the rest of my life touching and feeling and smelling Sarah.

You're welcome.

Good. Of course.

I sent back to her. What about timing this time? I fussed and fretted for a while, then finally decided on Friday night. I wanted the memory of an evening with Sarah, uncluttered by work days in between, to take on my trip with me. And, I reasoned, if I lost some sleep Friday night, all I had to do was get to the airport on Saturday, and help sleeping on the long flight would be welcome.

The rest of the week went by in a complete blur. I had all kinds of homework to do to prepare myself for the visit to the customer's site, a zillion meetings to attend, and all kinds of pep talks to listen to from both engineers and sales and marketing people. When I got home at night, I was so pooped that I was brain-dead from dinner time until an early bed time. Friday was there almost before I knew it.

And Friday night, I was as exhausted as I'd been all during the week. I ate dinner, then made sure that all my papers were in my shoulder bag, and that my suitcase was packed, except for my shaving kit. I took a shower, then, about 11:00, I sat down to watch television—and dozed off. At 3:15, I awoke with a start. Shit! I thought. I almost missed my appointment with Sarah! I grabbed my Maglite and jacket, and ran out the door of my apartment.

This time, as I was undressing in Sarah's living room, I departed from the script again. I didn't leave my Jockey shorts on. They were only an encumbrance, and, I decided, Sarah and I had gone far enough that her possibly seeing the bulge in my shorts wouldn't add much to the drama.

Sarah was, once again, sleeping in the glow of candlelight. This night, she was lying on her back, and her nightgown had ridden up just enough to bare the very bottom of her pussy lips. She was so achingly beautiful lying there that the instant I saw her, my cock started to rise. I stood and looked at her, squeezing my swelling cock and stroking it from time to time. When I couldn't endure the wait any longer, I once again slid her nightgown up enough to bare her breasts. This time, I started with her breasts, rubbing them softly and teasing circles around her nipples. When her nipples had become thoroughly hard, I moved my hand down to her stomach, rubbing in circles, and pausing to move just the pad of my index finger around her navel. Then I started at her ankles and rubbed up her lower legs and her thighs. Her legs parted slightly. I put the palm of my hand on the inside of her thigh and stroked up almost until I touched her pussy, when slid my hand back down to her knee. I repeated the motion on her other thigh with the back of my hand, not quite touching her pussy, but lifting my and tracing around the top of her slit and through her bush, then back down the inside of the thigh nearest to me.

After some minutes of rubbing her thighs and around her pussy, I dipped one finger into her wet and ready slit. Her pussy lips parted, and her clitoris made its appearance. Up and down I rubbed, her pussy and my finger getting wetter, sliding my finger down to her asshole and back up to her clit. Her breathing got heavier, and she moaned softly.

At this point, I didn't much care whether there was a script or not. I wanted to taste Sarah, all of her. I leaned over the bed and put one hand one either side of her shoulders, and kissed her on the forehead, at the same time inhaling the fresh scent of clean hair and shampoo. With my lips barely touching her, I kissed around her forehead and onto her cheeks, the tip of her nose, and, very lightly, brushed my lips over hers. I kissed on down to her chest, all around her breasts and her nipples. I ran the tip of my tongue around and over her nipples, then placed my lips over them, more giving them a very wet kiss than sucking them.

My mouth continued downward, to her stomach and around her navel. I licked all around her navel and dipped my tongue into it. My lips continued down to her bush, where I moved them back and forth over her fur as it were the finest pelt, then moved further downward still, along first one side of her pussy lips, then down the other. I kissed down one thigh and back up the other.

Finally, throwing both the script and all caution to the wind, I got up on the bed and knelt between Sarah's legs. I bent forward and kissed her on the outside of her pussy lips, from her bush down as far as I could go. When I extended my tongue and ran it up her slip, I heard her breath hiss in through her teeth. I curled my tongue into the wet opening between her legs, savoring the flavor and the hot, female scent of her, then licked up until the tip of my tongue flicked over her clit—and felt her fingers lace themselves into my hair and grip tight.

"Hi, Mark," Sarah laughed. "You're late tonight."

"You're awake!"

"You bet I am." Sarah sat up just enough to skin her nightgown off over her head, then lay back and wiggled her fingers at me in a come-hither gesture. "C'mere, you," she said, "c'mere, c'mere, c'mere."

I raised up, leaned forward, and, in one motion, wrapped my arms around her and slid into her waiting wetness. Without speaking, we clung to each other like two survivors of a shipwreck, hanging onto each other for dear life. I touched my lips to hers, then our mouths joined, and we kissed, and we kissed, and we kissed, our tongues dancing with each other, sharing our souls along with our saliva.

After several minutes, Sarah rocked her hips up and wrapped her legs around the back of my thighs. "Oh, Mark, I can feel you," she sighed. "God, can I feel you, and God, do you feel good. Then, as we started to move, time ceased to have meaning. We were completely lost in each other, the twistings and thrustings of our bodies only the physical expression of the dance of our souls. As Sarah's hips became more insistent against mine and her orgasm washed over her with a wail that started at the tips of her toenails, I came, too, dying and being reborn in moments.

We continued to cling to one another while the world reassembled itself, panting and rubbing our perspiration into each other. Finally, Sarah gasped, "Mark, I.... Mark, I ...."

I touched her lips with my finger. "Shhh," I said. "Me, too."

We continued to lie wordlessly, face-to-face and belly-to-belly, kissing lightly and touching each other's faces, until I shriveled out of her. We mopped ourselves up a little, then we rolled to our sides. Sarah drew her knees up and snuggled against me; I wrapped my arms around her as I might have a child, my heart aching with love and tenderness, a desire to protect this woman next to me, and a hope that the feeling could last forever. And then we slept.

I woke up again at about 8:00, and my first thought was about catching my flight to Malaysia. Then I realized that I was not at home. However Sarah and I might have twisted and turned as we slept, we were snuggled in the same spoon position in which we'd gone to sleep, and my morning hard-on was clamped firmly between Sarah's thighs, resting against the nearly hairless lips of her pussy. I moved only slightly, tentatively, as if to separate myself from her. Sarah grabbed my wrists and pulled me more tightly to her. Then she lifted her top leg a bit, wiggled her hips a little, and I was inside her to the hilt. We lay joined like that, drifting in and out of sleep, I think, for a while, then I moved in and out of her with long, slow strokes, until I came with a peaceful release that carried with it all the love I felt for Sarah, and she shuddered against me. And we lay joined still, until I was no longer in her.

We separated, and Sarah rolled over so that we could look into each other's eyes. I kissed her lightly, and ran my finger across her forehead, brushing her hair from her eyes. What was in my heart was, "I love you." What I said was, "Sarah, I have to go now."

Disappointment traced across her face in capital letters. "Oh, Mark, I ...." She wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged me until my bones cracked. "...I know," she said.

Even though the script had gone completely out the window, I still dressed in the living room, just as before, and departed, leaving Sarah lying in her bed. This time, a large part of me remained behind with her, wishing circumstances were different, wanting to stay wrapped around her, to be inside her, to have breakfast with her, to brush my teeth standing next to her at the bathroom sink.

I raced home and took a quick shower, my hair still damp when the airport shuttle arrived at my door. Thank God I'd had the foresight to be completely packed the night before.

I wish I could say that I enjoyed my stay in Kuala Lumpur to the limit, that I was able to be there one hundred percent, and go with the flow, but I didn't; I wasn't. My meeting with the customer was completely successful. We tweaked his installations and surveyed new routes for his expansion. I more than justified my trip. I did do touristy stuff, in a detached way. I learned that KL was not an ancient city, but had been built from scratch during the middle of the nineteenth century. I learned that "kuala lumpur" means "confluence of two muddy rivers," and I stood at the confluence of those rivers, now encased in concrete flood control channels, and far less muddy than they might have been a hundred or more years ago. Being accustomed to the semiarid climate of Silicon Valley, I was wretched in the tropical heat and humidity, and, along with thousands of locals, ate dinner on the street, purchased from a two-block long array of sidewalk vendors. I fell in love with satay, thin strips of grilled beef on wooden skewers, served with a peanut sauce. Being 180 degrees out of phase with my own time zone, and having crossed the international dateline, I literally never knew what day it was. I finally made a list of days, and crossed one off each night when I went to sleep.

Sarah's spirit was with me every waking moment, hovering around my head and shoulders, reminding me of the night we'd spent together, and it visited me in my dreams, leaving me with and ache in my chest and my groin. My body was in Malaysia, but my heart was in an apartment in San Jose, and I couldn't wait for my body and my heart to be reunited.

I got home at 4:00 on Sunday afternoon. With my last ounce of energy, I washed off the stickiness and smell of Malaysia, airplanes, and airports, and collapsed on my bed, where I remained for fifteen hours. It was 10:00 on Monday morning before I got into the office. My body was in San Jose, but I felt like my biorhythms were somewhere between Guam and Hawaii.

At work, I dropped my tote bag at my desk, then went out onto the main floor to get travel expense forms from the departmental admin. Sarah was there, on the other side of the room, chatting with some friends. She and I saw each other at the same time, and she began to run. She came toward me as fast as she could, bobbing and weaving around desks like a backfield runner. Her face was clear and shining with a smile that lit the room and my heart. She wasn't wearing any makeup, except for some light lipstick, and, to me, she looked more beautiful than she ever had. "Maaaaaaaark," she began to call loudly, when she'd closed about half the distance between us. Heads all over the room popped up, and people came to the doors of their cubicles.

When she was close enough, she launched herself, and hit me with an impact that nearly bowled me over. She wrapped her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist, and clung tight. With her face buried in my neck, she said, "Mark, oh, Mark, I thought you were never going to get back. I've missed you so much." The entire room was dead silent, and there wasn't a jaw that wasn't agape.

Presently, Sarah relaxed her grip and let her legs slide down mine until they reached the floor. With her wrists crossed behind my neck, she said, "You gonna come see me tonight?"

"You bet," I said. "How about if I take you out to dinner first?"

As for the rest of the folks at DigiHertz, I'm sure they'll figure it out by and by.