She arrived right on time, wearing a dress of midnight black that clung to every curve and fell clear down to her ankles. The fabric practically beckoned to be touched, not that Monty needed any more incentive.
"We ready?" she asked.
"Aye!" said Monty. "For anything!" The gleam in his eye didn't look like that of a man heading for a college dance.
She rolled her eyes. Men, was the unspoken thought. "Where's your flatmate?" is what she said.
"John? He and Anne left already. Said they wanted to get their music requests in the queue. Did you want to come in for a drink or something first?"
"No, let's not keep them waiting." Lesa extended her right arm. Stepping outside the door, Monty extended his left, elbow bent. She took it and they strolled along the walkway to the stairs.
Monty started up a flight to the rooftop flitter pads. Lesa held her ground. "Let's walk," she said. "I want to warm up for dancing."
Monty gazed skeptically at the sky. Years of coastal living told him the pressure was already dropping. "It's more than likely to rain tonight. With all the crowd, I canna guarantee we can get a transport back."
"I'll risk it," she said. "I don't get out this way much; I'd like to walk around. And I'm not afraid of a little water; I won't melt."
"Dissolve."
"Pardon?"
"Solids melt with an increase in heat; they dissolve when exposed to--"
She was looking at him in that way that girls had all through school when he was just trying to be helpful.
His cousin Mary had tried to explain it to him once. It hadn't made any sense. She had told him that he was thinking too hard. "You can't bait for women, Monty. Or at least you can't hang on to the ones you lure with bait. With women, everything you already know is useless."
He wasn't sure that he understood the first part, but the last phrase he knew was true for damned certain.
He cleared his throat and started down the stairs. "We'll walk to Edinburgh if ye like. I rather fancy the fog meself."
"No, just the dance hall will be fine." She tugged his arm a little tighter and pulled her body in next to his.
The dance was in high swing by the time that they arrived. John knew how to do it all. He taught her how to polka and Lindy and Harriman step and even something obscure called the Charleston. Monty tried, but body kinetics had never been his thing; engines were. They were predictable and far easier to control. "Don't worry he said," I'd rather have a good view to watch you." And he meant it. After all, John was engaged, wasn't he?
John's fiancée, Anne, was easy on the eyes and light on her feet with a friendly smile for everyone. She had no lack of dance partners herself and seemed to delight in every one. Monty caught up with Anne while she sat out a dance to get some punch. "Does it bother you?" he asked nodding to where John and Lesa reeled happily around the floor.
"Huh?" She wrinkled her forehead in confusion.
"John and another girl?"
Anne laughed. "Oh, lord, no. You know him as well as I do, Monty. He's a people person. He lives to make other people happy. I canna and wouldna try to stop him from that. It's possibly the thing I love best about him. How stupid would it be to let jealously destroy the vera best of a man?"
"You are supposed to be pledged--"
"Aye, and we are. That's his public face. He can have as much fun as he cares to with anyone whom he cares to, but I'll always be the one he comes to when he hurts. If that ever changes, then I'll worry."
As they watched, Lesa squealed in delight as John dropped her into a giant dip and whipped her back up again. He whispered something in her ear and she laughed loud enough to be heard across the room.
Anne elbowed Monty conspiratorially. "Besides, how many times can I listen to those same old jokes and be expected to laugh?"
This time, despite himself, Monty laughed.
Protestations of left feet aside, John came and pulled him onto the floor for a Scottish reel. It would be unpatriotic not to, he said. After that was a waltz. Lesa promised to be gentle with him and he didn't step on her toes too often. Next was something fast and Rigelian. Monty escaped before they could lasso him into trying to learn. He worked on trying to deduce why the sound system quavered every now and then. He had it narrowed down to the piciculator or a fault in the ion feed when Lesa plucked at his sleeve.
"It's the last dance," she said.
"I'll see if I can call us a flitter."
"No, silly. I want to dance it with you."
"Really?" Monty couldn't stop the smile.
Lesa rolled her eyes. "Dissolve, melt, and trimodal transports, but you don't know much about women, do you?"
Well, he hadn't exactly considered it a secret.
Apparently he knew enough to end up holding her close in a sweet, slow dance. He wrapped her tightly in his arms and inhaled the heady mix of the sweat and perfume that radiated from her neck and moved without thinking to the strains of "Goodnight, Irene," and decided that he didn't give a damn what he knew anymore.
It was chilly and misting when they finally made it outside, but Monty felt warm all over. The fog was thick as it should be on a proper Scottish night. "We can probably bum a ride off of someone," said Monty. "I dinnae think the weather will hold out much longer. "
"I have magical powers that will keep the rain away," she said and waved her arms in a grandiose gesture.
Monty felt the fog. It was thick and brimming at the edge of saturation. "Aye, well, I do hope that those powers won't--melt if they get wet."
She looked at him with approval. "You're learning," she said and tweaked him on the bum.
Monty made a mental note to send Mary a very nice Christmas gift this year.
"I had a good time," she said as they strolled along the pedway. "I don't know how to thank you."
"Thank John," he said. "You had most of your fun with him." He didn't intend for it to come out sounding so petty.
She gave no indication that she noticed. "I already did. But he had as much fun as I did. It's not the same."
"I had fun," he said gripping her hand a little tighter and remembering how she had felt, warm and glowing in his arms. "I just love to see you happy--however that happens." Much to his surprise, he meant it.
"You make me happy," she said. She stopped where she was and kissed him.
The kiss started slow and gentle, guaranteed not to offend. It wasn't clear whose mouth opened first, but either way soon their tongues were mingled. He clutched her tight against him, trying to press as much of his body against hers as he could muster. It was awkward as he had little thought to spare for the logistics. All that filled his mind was the sinful feel of her mouth on his and the little sounds she made from deep in her breast.
That is until the first wad of rain hit his face.
One would think that it would be a gradual thing, from fog, to mist, to drizzle, to rain, to deluge. Scotland seldom went the way of the rest of the world however, and the sky simply opened up and dropped water on the land by the freightload. Startled, they broke apart and ducked their heads lest they risk drowning otherwise.
"I don't think your magic is working," said Monty.
"I never believed in magic anyway," she laughed.
"Neither do I," he said. "I think we better run for it." Hand in hand, they did.
The nice thing about being soaked to the skin is that once you can't get any wetter, the rain simply ceases to matter. Since they were already drenched, they stopped under the spread of a giant yew tree and kissed some more.
This time there was no gentle hesitation. The delved as far as they could into each other. She took his arm and wrapped it around her back, led it down the curve of her buttock. She began to hitch her dress up in the back, and when he finally got the idea, she moved her other hand to his rear.
He had her backed against the trunk of the tree and pressed up against her, feeling every curve, every wiggle, every rise and fall of her chest. He grew dizzy, almost faint. He thought every bit of his blood must be trapped below his waistband; surely there couldn't be enough to reaching his brain. He backed off from her a little as the extent of his ungentlemanly actions knocked politely at his conscience.
She grabbed his ass and pulled him back hard against her. "I'm not a little girl," she said, running one hand under his shirt and around his nipple until he was sure his head would burst.
"Ah noticed," he managed to choke out.
She ground her pelvis against him harder.
"Lesa, please stop or ahm going to embarrass myself." It was everything he could do to keep himself from moving against her, virtually taking her here and now like an animal.
"Don't let that stop you. You're cute when you're embarrassed," she said and nibbled at his ear.
His world spun. He made one last valiant effort to pull away, and might have made it, save for her other hand sliding down the front of his pants. She barely had tickled the hair and brushed against a little skin when he choked out her name and collapsed against her shoulder.
"Thank you for a lovely evening," she said against his neck.
"Any time." He tried to laugh, but had no breath for it. So settled for holding her and listening to the rain on the leaves,
The rain had slacked off a little when they reached his door.
"Would you like to come in for a drink?" he asked, feeling acutely unaware of the social rules here.
She shook her head. "I don't drink."
"Would ya like me to call you a flitter--or pilot you home myself?"
She shook her head.
He paused. She hadn't moved from the doorstep. "Would you like to come in--not for a drink?"
She nodded. He opened the door. She stood there, dripping wet, the dress clinging to every curve,
He swallowed. "Let me get you a towel. You must be awfully cold."
He went into the bathroom. When he came out with the towel, she was standing there--naked. He forgot what he was going to say. He forgot the towel.
"You're right; I am cold," she said. "Is there a place I can warm up?" She walked to his bed and climbed in. "Like here?"
Monty stripped in record time and leapt in beside her swearing to get Mary the nicest Christmas present she had ever had in her life.
He began by exploring her body, every inch, every curve, every ripple. The skills he didn't uncoverf or himself, she showed him without the slightest hint of laughter and when he lowered himself within her, it was the way he had always envisioned perfection to be.
As he moved over her and in her and watched her face contort in pleasure, he decided she was probably smarter than he was. Had it not been for the earlier interlude, he never would have lasted long enough to feel her claw her nails into his back in desperation or to have her pound her heels against him in a frantic, prolonged climax and that would have been a bloody shame to miss.
As it was, he lasted just barely two seconds longer than that.
His health teacher had never mentioned that it would be like this as the world reformed around him. He decided that he should definitely try new experiments more often.
"What should we do next time?" he asked, fingering her hair. The black streak fascinated him. She'd said that that was her natural color--that generations of her family's women had gone prematurely gray. Her mother had claimed that it was from putting up with generations of her family's men.
Monty was just old enough to agree that that made sense, and just young enough to swear that if he ever had the chance to be the one she chose, that she would never lose another jet-black strand again.
"Oh, ye think there'll be a next time then?"
He rolled over in alarm and gaped wide-eyed into her face.
She laughed. "I'm jokin, silly." She ran the tips of her nails over his balls. "And what we did this time was fine by me."
He relaxed at her words and touch. The skin of his sac twitched and tugged in counterpoint to the gentle scrape. "No complaints from my side either, but I meant before this."
His stomach tightened as his balls were pulled in to the humid heat of her mouth. "Or, mebee, after…" His eyes rolled back and he let himself go where she took him.
It was a curious feeling. It was much too soon. There was not even a spark of an urge to climax anywhere within him. It all felt warm and intimate and tender and so very, very good.
He wondered if this made him a sissy, but if so, that was fine by him. He did decide that he would never tell the guys.
After a time, she came back up beside him, leaving her hand where her mouth had been. It allowed him to think a little. What had he been saying, oh, yes. Their next date.
"We could take a skimmer around the islands, if you want. Maybe do a little fishing. You said you liked it, didn't ye?" When he thought of her, he thought of the ocean in the same flash. He thought of the way he had first seen her on the shore--wild, natural and waiting for him. He hoped he always would.
"Mm." She nuzzled in against his neck. "Aye. What I'd really like is to see it from up high. Really high. See all the islands at once, maybe the whole ocean.
He furrowed his brow. "You've never been into space?"
"Never higher than a commuter flitter."
"It's the twenty-third century, woman!"
"I'm an old fashioned kind of girl."
"I've got just the surprise for you then."
"Oh, really?" She spread her legs.
Monty chuckled and began kissing his way down her body. It wasn't what he'd meant, but he could take a hint. A man's work was never done.