Okay, um...wow. NEVER expected the response that I got for the last chapter. Thank you all for your wonderful, encouraging and sometimes hilarious comments. I remember that happening once before when I said something was yukky, and everyone really seemed to like it anyway. Maybe I just obsess too much.

Having all of that positive feedback, so quickly too(!), just made me want to fire off another chapter of this story as quickly as I could. I was inspired! Your comments really are great motivation. Truly.

And for all of you who said that the freak out was in character...thank you, thank you, thank you. This story has gone on for so long and so many of you are so complimentary in your reviews that lately I've been in the realm of worrying that I'm going to write a chapter that just makes people go 'What the he** was she thinking?", and I'll end up screwing up the whole story. But alas, now I know pretty much exactly what I want to do with the rest of the story, so I hope I can write it to be as epic as you all seem to want (and deserve, for sticking with it this long).

Now, specifically for Fabiennka, Malwi, and Shopgirrl...a special note that you should like this chapter. Won't say much more, but this is your reward for reviewing. ;-) Hope you like it. And on a similar note, ImOpenToDumbIdeas, get your ice water. And for those of you that aren't really terribly old yet...I'm just going to stick my head in the sand and pretend you are.

All of the standard disclaimers apply.


The chocolate cake had been eaten, and the margaritas were polished off as they sat and watched the waves roll into the shore. They stayed out on the beach until well past when they normally would have gone up to the house. They did toss the frisbee around for a while-it took a while for them to muster up enough energy to move after eating those huge slices of cake-but then they came back to the chairs once again. When they returned after the frisbee game, Rick surprised Kate by pulling her down on his chair, having her lean back against him as they watched the antics of the birds by the shore.

After they'd been sitting that way for a bit, Rick leaned over and grabbed something from the table, which turned out to be her new camera. He held it out in front of them as they snuggled on the beach chair, and he tried to aim it so he had a good picture of the two of them. The first one had their faces on the lower part of the photo only, so Kate's chin and part of her smile were cut off. He tried again, tilting the camera lower, and this time got an excellent shot of Kate's neck and chest. When they looked at the picture, Rick waggled his eyebrows and said "Now that is a picture that I really like!", which earned him a lighthearted whack on the head from Kate. The third picture was right on the money as far as aim, so after they determined that it was okay, he set the camera down again and leaned back, his arms lightly hugging Kate in front of him. Neither of them said anything more; they just sat together and tried to memorize the last moments of their last afternoon on the beach.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

After showering, Rick walked through the house, wondering where Kate had gone. But when he saw the bright orange light coming in throught the window, he knew. He let himself out of the back door, not bothering to put on shoes. Looking out over the beach, he saw right away that he was right. After walking across the deck, he started off toward her, glad that he'd remembered to grab her new camera off the table. She was once again wearing the yellow sundress, and was standing on the edge of the ocean watching the sunset with her long hair blowing out behind her in the ocean breeze. He had the picture on his phone that he'd taken over a week ago, but the quality was better on the camera. And the sight of her, standing there on the beach looking at the setting sun, was so breathtaking that he wanted a better picture. He took another few pictures with the camera before tucking it into his pocket and walking toward her. But unlike he did the other time, he walked up to her and enveloped her with his arms right away.

"Hey, stranger," she said, hanging her hands on his forearms as they went around her.

"Hey yourself."

He turned his head sideways and gave her a kiss on her cheek. "Still loving the sunset, I see."

"It's our last one." Her voice held a tone of sadness.

His arms tightened around her. "We can always come back," he told her softly. "Just say the word."

"Won't be the same." She sighed, kind of a shuddering breath, and he wondered just how emotional she was getting. Because listening to her, standing here with her like this, he was starting to feel a little melancholy too.

"I know."

The quiet acknowledgement somehow made her feel a little better, that she wasn't being silly for her advanced mourning of the end of their interlude. "So much has changed," she whispered, so softly that he almost missed it.

So much had changed. "But for the better," he told her. "Right?"

"Yeah," she confirmed, turning around in his arms. "For the better." Then, suddenly not wanting to see the moment the bright ball of the sun actually disappeared, she raised up on her tiptoes and gave him a kiss, and then buried her face in his neck and inhaled his scent. And they just stood there, wrapped around each other, while the sun finished plummeting below the horizon, signaling the end of their last day.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Since their food supply had been dwindling again, and because it was their last night, they went out to dinner. Not really having a destination in mind, they just drove around the islands and decided to stop if they saw something interesting. While they were driving, Rick spotted one of the large budget souvenir shops and swung the car into the parking lot.

"Rick?"

"Yes, my love?" he answered dramatically, trying to inject a little bit of humor. He didn't want their last night together here to be totally somber and depressing.

She rolled her eyes, but got into the mood a bit with her response. "Well, dear, I would hate to question your exceptional driving and navigational skills-"

He interrupted her by holding up a hand. "Wait."

"For what?"

"Just a minute..." He parked the car and leaned his head back on the headrest with a smile on his face. He didn't do anything for several seconds, and finally Kate poked him in the arm. "Rick? Are you okay?" She poked him again.

Finally, he sighed. "Fine. I just wanted to bask in the wonderful feeling of your praise of my 'exceptional driving and navigational skills'. I'm trying to commit your accolades to memory because I know you probably won't let me use those skills once we get back home."

Once again, she rolled her eyes. "I could see where that comment could come back to haunt me, but never would I have dreamed that it would haunt me mere seconds after it was spoken. I'd like to retract that statement."

"You can't do that. This isn't a courtroom. And it's already...out there," he said, gesturing wildly at the sky through the top of the convertible.

She glared at him in mock annoyance. "You're right about one thing...you're still not driving when we get home."

"Someday, my love, you will change your mind. Mark my words."

"Whatever. So back to my original question, that I was trying to ask you before you so rudely and flightily interrupted me...what are we doing here?"

He looked around, as if to check to see where he really was. "Oh, yeah. You need a suitcase, right?"

She looked at the place. "You really expect to find some quality luggage in here?" she asked him, gesturing at the large store.

"No. Not at all. But we need something. It just has to survive one trip and then you can throw it out for all I care."

"Fine. Let's go."

They started by browsing around in the store, looking around at all of the strange souvenir junk that people could buy, in no particular hurry. She was looking at a display of flip flops when Rick called out to her. "Hey, Kate, are these 'me'?"

She turned around to find him wearing a bright orange pair of sunglasses with fake rhinestones in the bows and surrounding the dark plastic lenses, striking a pose like he did in the 'Heat Wave' photo shoot he did at the precinct. She burst out laughing because the glasses looked just so ridiculous on him. "Definitely. I think you should get them and wear them this summer at your house in the Hamptons. Dah-ling."

He took them off and pulled another pair off of the display. "Here. I think you need these." He held up a hot pink pair that had small pink plastic flamingos glued to the bows. As he handed them to her, she took a step back to get away from the gaudiness. He saw her retreat and urged her on. "Come on, Kate, you have to try them."

"No thanks. I'm afraid I would make a spectacle of myself." She grinned at him cheekily, pleased with her pun.

He tipped his head down and looked at her over the top of the rhinestone-studded orange frames. "Ooo, listen to you! You're in fine form tonight!"

She walked over and stood close to him. She leaned right up by his face and then said in a low but sultry voice, "I'm always in fine form, Ricky. I thought you'd have figured that out by now." She raised an eyebrow at him before sauntering away, shaking her hair out behind her. Several feet away, she turned around to look at him, certain he would still be standing in the same place, looking at her. She was right. When she turned around, he just smiled at her and shook his head as he walked toward her.

"Should we look for that luggage now?"

"In a hurry all of a sudden?" She stepped toward him in the aisle and wrapped her arms around him, reaching around to grab his bottom in a little squeeze before quickly letting go.

His eyes widened at her overt gesture, but his neither his voice nor his words revealed his surprise. His words were measured and even. "Perhaps. I might have just discovered a better use for our time, so the sooner we can get this and dinner taken care of, the sooner we can get on to other things on the agenda."

"There's an agenda now?"

"There is after the comment about your form, which yes, is definitely quite fine. And especially after that little maneuver of yours just now."

"Glad you approve." She licked her lips. "So let's look for some luggage."

In the end, they found a duffel bag, of sorts, although it was in bright, neon colors and had the word "Florida" emblazoned across one side. Not terribly subtle, but it would work. They also found a few decent looking beach bags that they could use if the duffel bag wasn't enough. Rick told Kate to look around again, and although she looked at him skeptically, she went over to the other side of the store to look at the variey of shells in the bins, that you could buy if you had bad luck on the beach. Rick took the opportunity to run and grab a few more things on the counter, and clandestinely asked the cashier to ring them up and hide them in the duffel.

Kate, while she was walking around, found a few things that she wanted. She did her own clandestine maneuvers of piling them on a side section of a display rack. When Rick called her and told her he was finished, she waved him off, telling him she'd be out in a minute. He gave her a strange look but then exited the store, and she took her items to the cashier. The cashier gave her a knowing smile but didn't say anything else. Finally, with everything double bagged so nosy Rick couldn't peek, she exited the store. She stopped dead in her tracks when she found Rick on his knees, looking down under the car.

"What are you doing?" she asked him.

He stood up and with a somewhat worried look on his face, admitted, "I can't find the car keys. I think I lost them somewhere."

She breezed past him and set her bag in the back seat. "No worries," she said as she opened the driver's side door. "They're right here," she told him, holding up the keys as she sat in the driver's seat.

His jaw dropped. He didn't lose the keys...she... "You stole my keys?"

"Yup." She had a smug smile on her face.

"You pickpocketed my keys? When did you..." Realization dawned on his face when he remembered when she grabbed him in the store. "You just grabbed my butt to distract me!" he exclaimed in disbelief. "You tricked me!"

"Guilty as charged. Now will you get in the car, please?"

Still reeling from her duplicity-not to mention her excellent pickpocketing skills-he silently did as he was told. She started the car and started driving.

"Why did you need to drive? Where are we going?"

"So I could take you where I want to take you."

He prompted again, "And where is that?"

"Don't know. Just shut up until we get there, okay?"

He shook his head quickly. "What? If you don't know where you're going, then how exactly can I know when we get there so I can talk again?"

She rolled her eyes. "Well now it doesn't matter since you're talking anyway." She looked around as if deciding which way to go, and then took a smooth left. It took them down a narrow road. He looked around in wonder. Where was she going?

She came to another intersecting road and turned onto that one. The roads were getting more remote and removed from civilization as they knew it. After she turned yet again, onto a little narrow clearing that could hardly even be called a road, she looked around, before finally stopping and cutting the engine. He turned to look at her. "We're here," she said, with a gleam in her eye.

"Where's 'here'?"

"I have no idea. But it's absolutely perfect for what I have in mind."

He watched her as she kicked off her shoes, and then she pulled up the sundress to reveal matching yellow panties. Which she began to slowly remove. And he could feel his groin tighten so he was instantly hard.

"Kate..." he said, still somewhat stunned, although very pleasantly stunned. But he couldn't get anything else out because in that moment, she very lithely raised up in her seat and crawled over to his, wasting no time in reaching for his belt. She leaned in for a kiss as she undid his belt, then the button of his shorts, and then the fly, pausing before undoing each item to rub her hand against the hardness that was under the clothing barriers.

"Now do you understand why we stopped here?" she asked, but he didn't respond, except to kiss her again. She got the message that he understood.

They didn't have much room in the car, but it didn't matter to them, and the close confines only served to heighten the sensations coursing through them. And of course, the illicitness of pulling over to the side of the road in the middle of nowhere with the prospect of having steamy car sex didn't hurt either.

In between kisses, Rick murmured, "Should we...move...this to...the back seat?"

She stopped for a moment and leaned back from him just a bit, and he felt the loss of her right away. "No," she said with some heavy breaths, "I'm a big girl now. I can...ride...in the front seat quite well." The innuendo about her riding him wasn't lost on him, and he groaned. And then she raised both arms up in the air and he stared, transfixed, as she bent them both back down to undo clasp of her sundress at the back of her neck. When it was undone, she pulled the top down to reveal her bare breasts, which she thrust at him just a little bit. He needed no second invitation as he took one of the peaks into his mouth as he groaned again, with the groan mixing with hers this time.

After several moments of bliss from that, she pulled back a little more so she could have leverage to pull his boxers and his shorts down. When his shaft was free, she bent down toward it, and he thought she was going to take him into her mouth. And he didn't know if he could survive that. But instead, she puckered up her mouth and blew some air onto him. Then she raised her face to him, wearing a devilish smile, and said "You were looking a little hot down there, so I thought I should try to cool you off a bit."

"God," was all he managed to get out before he grabbed her behind her back and hauled her to him again, kissing her madly. Then, as he massaged her back, he felt the zipper at the back of her dress. He made short work of unzipping her dress, and then reached under it as he broke the kiss to lift the dress over her head, telling her "I want you naked..."

He threw the dress on the vacated driver's seat as she quickly undid the buttons on his shirt and spread it open. She arched her now naked body against his chest, and finally moved to straddle him fully. There was really no place for her long legs except to put one through to the opening between the bucket seats, and to put the other one around the other side of the seat, almost up by the top of the door. As she moved over him, she feld him against her now very wet core, and she told him simply, "Now."

"I couldn't agree more," he told her in a strangled voice, positioning himself and thrusting his hips forward as he pulled her down on him. The angle was different because of the confines of the car, and it seemed she could feel more of him as he began to slide in and out of her. Through the delicious, juicy pressure on her core at the motion they were creating, she could start to feel herself get weak with ecstacy. She had no power to do anything but work with him as they moved together in beautiful unison. "Oh, Kate..." She tilted her head up to the starry sky as she braced herself from behind with one hand on the console and the other hand on the armrest of the door.

Rick was lost. The surprise, along with the location, just made it more intense for him. When they left the house, he never thought he'd end up, less than an hour later, parked on a deserted road, with a naked Kate on top of him, riding him with lustful abandon. He grabbed her hips and changed their rhythm, bringing himself almost all the way out of her, so the head of his shaft was just at her entrance, and then slowly letting her sink back on him until he was buried as deeply inside of her as he could be. He watched them slide together like that, become joined together, several times. He raised his eyes and found Kate watching him watching them, her eyes dark with passion. Then, without warning, Kate moved from her semi-reclined state to press against him again, grabbing his head and bringing it to one of her breasts as her hips unconsciously increased their motion as she rode him in a new burst of erotic energy. She could think of no rational thought, nothing but the feel of his lips around her nipple and the feeling of his manhood in between her legs, filling her, stretching her, rubbing against that ultra sensitive nub of hers as he slid in and out of her. And those sensations were enough as she felt the first fissures of pleasure beginning in her core. Her breathing became nothing more than erratic pants, and she wasn't going to cry out, but she had no choice as her orgasm finally skyrocketed through her. "Ohhhh! Yes...Rick...yes! Oh, God, oh...oh...oh...", her cries giving way to breathy pants as she still experienced it, but could no longer form any sounds.

Rick felt her begin to lose herself, and though he tried to hold out, her release was generally too much for him. This was no exception. The woman was phenomonal, with sex appeal oozing out of her pores, and the chemistry between them was just too much for him to resist, especially when her naked body was sitting on him, around him, and he was watching and feeling her release, feeling the incredible feeling as her internal muscles contracted around him. He held out longer than he thought he could, and he kept thrusting into her, trying to make the ecstacy last as long as possible for both of them. Finally, he felt his own release burst from him to spill deep inside her, as he, too, found that he was now incapable of speech. Gutteral moans were the only thing that escaped from his lips as his climax took him, and he was so possessed by her that he couldn't have stopped them if he'd tried.

She collapsed on him, and somehow he found the control on the side of the seat to recline it a little bit. They stayed that way for quite a while, regaining their breath, their energy, their cognizance of the time, the place and anything that didn't have to do with them.

Her voice was soft and quiet by his neck. "We just had car sex. Guess we can add that to the list."

"Really hot car sex." She could hear the smug tone in his voice. "Really, really hot, unexpected car sex."

"Better than when you were a teenager?"

"We didn't have a car for part of that time, so..." he trailed off.

She raised up a little bit and looked at him, surprised. "You never had car sex?"

"Ummm...no?" He seemed a little embarrassed. "Several other places, including the maintenance room of an apartment building, but no, not in a car. Until now."

"Wow." She sighed. "Well, that's kind of cool. Because I never did either."

"Really?"

"Uh huh."

"No way! You? Miss Wild Child Tat girl?"

"No lie. I was ready once, but then Cole, the intended other half of my potential inauguration into the world of vehicular coitus, lost his chance when the little shithead came home rip-roaring drunk and stoned and his parents took away his car right before the big night. By the time he got it back, I'd discovered that he was extending his 'tutoring sessions' with some slut in her bedroom while her parents were away."

"Ouch." And then he laughed. "Well, the joke is definitely on him now. If Cole only knew what he'd missed..." he finished with another chuckle.

"Oh, he knows. It gets better. I was working undercover vice once years ago and busted him for solicitation. I didn't even realize it was him at first. And it was such poetic justice reminding him who I was, that I was a cop, and watching him look me over and see what he lost out on by banging that teasing tutor. Let's just say I was not dressed demurely. Not trashy, but definitely not demurely. And the poor boy's eyes just about popped out of his head when he realized it was me."

He laughed again, then sobered quickly, before exclaiming, "Hey!"

"What?"

"We lost our car sex virginity to each other! How cool is that?"

She rolled her eyes. But it was actually kind of cute. A first, for them, together, even though it wasn't something that they'd ever be able to tell their children about. And the thought flitted into her brain so easily that it took her a minute to even realize it was out of place. Children? Oh, brother. She was losing it again.

So in an attempt to not freak out (because the rest of the chocolate cake was still back at the house, after all), she decided that it was time to move and start putting herself back together. To get some clothing on. She reached to the back seat and grabbed a beach towel that had been left there, and moved off of Rick.

After cleaning herself up and slipping back into her dress, she asked Rick about dinner. "Oh, yeah," he said. "I almost forgot. Some wild, wanton woman kidnapped me and had her way with me," he joked.

"Wonder who that could be? Think maybe she was an alien?" she chided.

"All of her...parts...certainly felt human, so I'd say not." He watched as she got out of the car and came over to the passenger side. "What are you doing?"

"I don't really have the energy to drive anymore, for some reason. So take me somewhere and get me some food."

He slid over the center console into the driver's seat and she slid into the passenger seat. "Where to, m'lady?"

"I need protein. Steak. Lots of meat. For some reason," she said, trailing a fingertip up his thigh, "I just need some protein right now."

He gave her a sideways look as he turned the car around. "Protein it is. I could probably use some myself right too." And with a sexy smile aimed at his lady, he sped off down the road in search of food.


Well, there you go. I hope that satisfies everyone's craving for a little bit more Florida smut.

Thoughts...love it, like it or just so-so? (Notice I didn't put a 'hate it' category in there...wishful thinking.) Let me know!