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Welcome to the Church of The Reverend Cotton Mather.  This story is
the sole property of the author, and may not be copied or downloaded 
for the intent of profit. Permission is freely given for anyone to 
download or copy for their personal pleasure or use, as long as 
there is no intent to charge money or barter for the privilege of 
acquiring this material.

   (Copyright 2005, revisions c. 2007, R.C. Mather)

E-Mail all comments to RevCottonMather at hotmail dot com
Don't be shy!  I enjoy hearing from you.

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THE COMPETITIVE EDGE:
PLAYING THE GAME III

A Novel

by R.C. Mather



- 28 -

IT'S A DRUMMER THING



A couple of weeks later, the three of us were co-existing in an
unusual triangle. Alex and I slept together several times, and Erin
and I found places to have sex a couple of times. I assumed Alex and
Erin also got together without me. I wasn't sure I liked the
arrangement, but I sure liked the variety.

Did I feel guilty about it all? Maybe just a little, but this wasn't
love. This wasn't anything even remotely resembling love. This was a
friendly case of college lust fulfilled. Not ideal, but not bad,
either. Hey, I walked around with a smile on my face. A lot.

Soccer was over and finals were looming, but my friends and I still
found some time for fun. There were a bunch of parties every weekend,
frat parties and jock parties and street parties and bands playing at
the bars around campus. I blew off steam by hitting some of them
between periods of intense studying. I used my dorm room when Westy
wasn't there, and the library or Alex's when he was around, lugging
my books everywhere I went.

The apartment above Bryan and Jesse's place was being rented by a
couple of graduating seniors, so Spencer and I decided to rent it
together for the next year. I was a little concerned about who would
be doing the cooking, but between the four of us, I was confident we
would be able to work some sort of arrangement out. Jesse, Bryan,
Spencer, and I figured we would open up both places and have pretty
much a communal two-floor pad for the four of us. I had the feeling I
would be having the time of my life my sophomore year. I just hoped I
would be able to survive it.

I was also planning on flying back home after finals. I had arranged
with Eunice, Pick's secretary, to have my soccer equipment shipped
back. Most of my clothes, along with my books and other stuff, were
going into storage. Jesse also offered to keep some of my stuff in
his bedroom, since he was going to be going back home to run Porter
clinics too. With only a few weeks left, things were moving fast.

Alex had an end-of-year banquet she had been helping to plan that
she also was required to attend. She was going to be tied up all
weekend, so on Friday Erin and I cut out from campus early and drove
over to the Atlantic coast for the weekend. We found a cheap motel a
block from the ocean, and we had the weekend to ourselves.

We got to the Oceanview Motel early enough in the afternoon to be
able to toss our stuff in our room and dash over to the beach. The
name of the motel was just barely accurate, what with the buildings
almost blocking the ocean from its location, but we didn't care. We
had a blanket, towels, sunscreen, and a cooler full of beer. What
more did we need?

We found a spot about twenty paces from the breaking waves, and we
spread out our blanket. I shucked off my t-shirt and flopped down
onto the blanket, propping my head up on my hand as I lay on my side.
I was looking forward to watching Erin shimmy out of her shorts and
shirt, down to her bikini. I wasn't disappointed.

She was unconcernedly taking off her clothes, not paying any
attention to me, until she had her shorts down around her knees. She
glanced over at me and did a double-take.

"What are you looking at, Porter?" she asked, a smile on her lovely
face.

"I'm just watching a little slice of heaven reveal itself," I said.

Erin laughed and kicked her shorts in my direction. "Nice," she
complimented me. "That'll get you far."

"That's what I'm counting on," I said. I had to duck as one of her
sandals came flying toward my head.

She finished stripping down, and she handed the bottle of sunscreen
to me.

"Care to do the honors?" she asked. She put her sunglasses on and
lay down on her stomach next to me on the blanket.

I squeezed a dollop of lotion out onto her shoulders. She flinched a
little from the cool lotion, but then relaxed as I began rubbing it
into her skin. I made sure I got lotion under the straps of her
bikini top, and I worked my way down her back and along her sides.
Her bikini bottoms, just barely large enough to cover her buns,
became another target for me. I slid my hands beneath them, but she
slapped at me.

"I'm just trying to make sure you don't burn," I complained.

"Yeah, right," she said. "Trust me, I know I won't burn."

I let her win that one. I squeezed some more lotion into the palm of
my hand, and I started lotioning up her right calf. I worked my way
up to just above her knee, and then began on her left leg. When she
felt me leave off the backs of her thighs, she looked down at me, but
she didn't say anything. I tried to be nonchalant, not wanting to
give her any edge at all, and continued with my task. Once I had her
left leg done to the knee, I started working lotion into her left
thigh. I was carefully staying away from her inner leg, concentrating
instead on the big muscles along the back and the outside of her leg.
I then worked on her right leg, making sure she was well covered
before running my hands along both inner thighs, going slowly up from
her knee.

"Hmmmm," she murmured as she felt my hands slipping along her skin.
She let her legs part just a little, and I took advantage by running
my fingers up along her tender flesh, until my fingertips encountered
the edge of her bikini bottoms. I let my fingers slip under the
elastic, across her bare pussy lips, and along the gentle curve of
her ass.

"You're asking for it," she warned.

"Hell, I'm practically begging for it," I replied.

Erin laughed and turned over. "Okay, you've earned the right to do
my front now," she said. She put her arms down to rest along her
side, her legs splayed out just a little.

I started at her feet again and worked my way up. When I got to the
tops of her thighs I tried to be good, just letting my fingertips run
beneath her suit. I did her stomach, and felt her struggling not to
laugh as I spread lotion underneath the elastic waistband from hip to
hip. The motion of the lotion must have been tickling her. My fingers
worked lotion into her skin below her covered breasts, and then I
applied more to her chest. She smiled as she felt me take small
liberties, my fingers lingering in her cleavage. I made sure her arms
were protected, and I dabbed just a little on her cheekbones and her
nose, leaving the dollops there instead of rubbing the lotion in. It
made her smile again. I decided I liked that feeling of making her
smile.

I sat back and began slathering lotion on my body. Behind her
sunglasses, it was hard to tell if Erin was watching or not, but I
wasn't trying to tease her. I was trying to keep from being fried by
the sun. The Southern sun was a whole lot stronger than the
Midwestern sun, I had found to my painful surprise.

Erin sat up. "Lay down, Sean. I'll get your back for you."

I handed her the bottle and I flopped down on my stomach next to
her. She squirted some lotion onto my shoulder blades. 'She's right,
it's cold,' I thought as I flinched from the contrast. She began to
rub the lotion into my skin. Her hands and the sunblock were quite
relaxing.

As she worked her way down my back, she said, "You could stand to
eat occasionally, Sean. You're too skinny."

"Who was it who said, 'You can never be too rich or too thin?'"

"I think it was Doris Duke," she replied.

"Never heard of her."

"Really?" She sounded surprised. "But you're not from the South, so
the Duke name isn't ingrained in your society like it is in ours."

"It doesn't have anything to do with the Duke brothers, from that
Eddie Murphy movie, "Trading Places," does it?"

She laughed. "No, I don't think so. Doris Duke is the only daughter
of one of the founders of the American Tobacco Company, and the man
who essentially funded the beginning of Duke University. She
inherited something like eighty million dollars when she was about
thirteen, and has been living kind of a rich, bohemian life ever
since. I think she's worth something like a gazillion dollars now.
Homes everywhere, New Jersey and the Carolinas and Hawaii and who
knows where else."

She slapped me on the ass. "Done." She settled back onto the blanket
on her back and readjusted her sunglasses. I propped myself up on my
elbow to look over at her.

"But she's wrong, you see," Erin continued. "You can be too thin.
Just ask Karen Carpenter."

"Yeah, but that was a medical problem," I pointed out. "Anorexia."

"A self-inflicted medical problem," she replied. "If she had eaten
properly, and not let herself get so thin, she wouldn't have gotten
so sick. She wouldn't have died."

"I think it's a drummer thing," I said. "Keith Moon, John Bonham,
Karen Carpenter, all taken too soon."

Erin snorted and laughed. "I'll bet that's the first time those
three names have been used in the same sentence," she said, still
laughing.

"I'm sure somebody thought of it before I did," I said. "I'm just
not that clever."

Erin turned her head to look at me. I couldn't decipher her
expression through her sunglasses. "Don't be disingenuous, Sean," she
said. She sounded serious.

I laid back down and put my hands behind my head. "I don't even know
what that means."

She propped herself up on her elbow. "Bull," she said. "You know
perfectly well what I mean. False modesty doesn't suit you."

"It's not false," I tried.

"Anybody who has accomplished all you have can't claim they are not
clever."

"I can. I can honestly say I have never considered myself to be
clever at all."

"All you have done on the soccer field points out the lie in that
statement. It's a waste of time to try to deny your abilities, and it
is a misdirection you are trying to perpetrate. You want to hide
behind a mask of being less than you really are, and it really
doesn't fool anybody." Her lecture struck a little too close to home.
'Another blonde girl tried to tell me the same thing, a long time 
ago,' I thought to myself grumpily. 

Erin settled back beside me, her arms at her side as she soaked up
the sun, finished with her scolding. 

"It's not my brain that's clever," I said defensively. "It's my feet
that are clever."

She just stuck out her tongue and blew me a raspberry. She knew I
was looking over at her.

"Clever feet. Clever legs," I emphasized, though I knew Erin wasn't
buying it. That was the last we spoke for a very long time. It seemed
like she was just letting me stew in my own juices.

More than an hour later, we were still on the blanket. My eyes were
closed, and I was dozing. I felt Erin stirring next to me.

"Food," she muttered. "We need food. Gotta fatten you up."

Food sounded good. I was hungry and thirsty. I opened my eyes and
squinted in the bright light. The sun had moved behind us, but it was
still very bright. I scrambled up and held out my hand for Erin. She
grabbed it, and I pulled her to her feet.

"Let's leave the blanket," she suggested. "We'll come back for it."

We held hands as we walked down the beach, in search of something
besides burritos or hot dogs. We settled on a fish place right on the
water. We ordered fried shrimp and calamari, with big tumblers of icy
soda.

By the time we got done with our dinner, the sun was sinking lower
in the western sky. We strolled back along the breakwater, kicking up
droplets of seawater as we walked hand in hand back toward our
blanket and our towels. We walked for maybe a mile past our blanket,
to a broken-down pier that jutted out into the ocean, and we walked
gingerly across the splintered boards until we got to the end. The
last several feet of pier had rotted away, and a couple of pilings
were standing vigil in the water directly out from where we stood. We
gazed out at the pale, shadowy water and watched the dancing of the
last rays of the sun as it set behind us.

We held hands as we walked back toward our blanket, not saying
anything, our arms swinging out in syncopation. We stayed on the
firmer sand and let the waves wash across our ankles occasionally. By
the time we got back to our spot on the beach, it was dusk. There
were still a few people walking along the sand, keeping to themselves
in the deepening evening. The streetlights had flickered on, and they
cast pools of illumination on the street and sidewalk, but the light
didn't reflect near to us. We lay down on our blanket and rolled
toward each other, into each other's arms.

I have always been a sucker for the great old movies, and I could
almost hear the film chattering through the projector in my mind as I
envisioned Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr embracing and kissing in
the surf in "From Here to Eternity." Within about fifteen minutes,
however, the reality of making love in the sand was wiping away my
fantasy.

"Ouch," complained Erin.

I had removed her bikini top, and my lips were fastened to her
swollen nipple. Her hand was rubbing my rigid cock through my trunks,
and I had just slipped my hand beneath the waistband of her bikini
bottoms and had run my index finger through her pussy lips in
exploration.

I lifted up from her breast as she grabbed for my hand in her pants.
"What's the matter?"

"I think you've got sand on your fingers," she said. "It's
irritating me."

"Oh, sorry," I said. I wiped my hands on a towel, but I could feel
grit embedded in the fabric.

"Shit," I grumbled. "This sand is everywhere."

"You find that's true when you're at the beach," said Erin. "Here,
let's try this." I thought she, too, might have had fantasies about
sex on the beach, because she sounded like she didn't want to give up
on it yet. She pulled off her bottoms, and then she knelt at my feet
and began tugging on my trunks. I untied the string and pushed them
off my hips, and she took care of the rest. She duck-walked around me
and swung her leg over me. I was on my back, and she carefully
lowered herself down until her pussy was by my mouth. She brushed the
sand from her hands, and carefully took my cock with two fingers at
the base and lifted it until it stood straight up. She put the tip
against her lips, and she began to lower her mouth down on my rod. I
took the hint and started licking her slot, lapping up her moisture
with my tongue and lips. I was just about to reach up and use my
fingers to hold open her pussy lips, but caught myself just in time.
'No sense ruining the party.'

Even as careful as we were, we both found ourselves turning away
from our individual tasks and spitting out grains of sand that had
found their way into our mouths. We had to concentrate to keep the
mood going, relying on our mutual desire to be outside, on the beach,
by the ocean, in the romantic dark.

I thought Erin was working to get me off, and not concerned so much
about her own satisfaction, because I couldn't seem to drive her to
the point of no return. She, on the other hand, managed to elevate me
until my hips were flexing and I was unconsciously trying to shove my
cock even deeper into her mouth.

She clamped on tight and jacked me with her hand, coaxing my climax,
and I finally succumbed to her efforts. I spurted, and she sealed her
lips around the head of my cock and took it all. When I was done, she
lifted off me and scooted around to lie down next to me. I put my arm
around her and felt her struggle to swallow my load. She shivered as
she finally managed to force it down.

"Yahh," she complained.

Her face was very pale in the light's reflection off the sand, but I
could tell she was grimacing a little.

"What's the matter?" I asked concernedly.

She was scrubbing her teeth with her tongue. "What did you have for
dinner last night?" she asked.

I had to think back. "Let's see... Oh yeah, I had beef and broccoli
from Chinee Takee-Outee," I said.

"No wonder," she grumbled. "Do us both a favor, Sean. Any time you
think we might be fooling around, keep away from broccoli the night
before."

"Broccoli? I love broccoli."

"Too bad," she said. "If you ever want me to swallow ever again, do
not - I repeat, do not - eat broccoli. It makes your semen very 
bitter."

"Really? Wow. I never realized. I've never noticed a difference in
your taste. How come mine changes with what I eat?"

"Oh, I think girls change, too," she said with a smile. Was it
remembering? Or is it amusement at my naiveté? She reached down and
played with my shrunken member for a moment. "Has this thing got any
life left in it? I might want to play some more after we take a
shower."

Her words, combined with her soft touch, began to reinvigorate my
cock. "I think it's got a little left to give," I said. "If you talk
to it nice."

"I promise I'll treat it nice," she said. She bent down and gave it
a loving kiss on the tip. I noticed that she did make sure she kept
her lips tightly closed, though. She sat up and put her bottoms back
on, and then she stood up, still topless. She bent at the waist to
pick up the towels, bringing her wonderful breasts within reach. I
squeezed her globes, one at a time, and she stayed in position for a
few moments, allowing me the intimacy. She stood back up, and my hand
slipped off her flesh. She turned around and shook the sand out of
the towel. I found my trunks and slipped them back on, and scrambled
up to help her. We picked up our stuff and began walking toward the
street.

"Aren't you going to put your top on?" I asked, pointing at her
displayed breasts.

She smiled at me, a teasing grin. "Maybe not," she said, though she
did adjust the blanket so her nudity wasn't quite so obvious. We
strolled across the street and back to our room like that, me nervous
and Erin pretty much unconcerned about walking around half-naked.

We took a shower together, and we made sure we were completely sand-
free. In fact, we each got down on our knees in the shower to closely
examine the other person to make sure there were no hidden grains of
sand anywhere. We even used our tongues to be certain we had gotten
even the tiniest grains washed away. It took us a long time.

We spent the rest of the weekend in a haze of sun, sand, and sex. By
the time we packed up True for the drive back to Gainesville, we were
satiated, tired, and quite happy. It was the last great weekend of
the school year for me.

Before I knew it, I was done with finals, packed up, and on a jet
plane back home for the summer. I had a lot to do, and a lot to face
up to, when I got back home. It was past time for me to step up and
face my responsibilities like a man.






(Continued in Chapter 29)


  
CE28