A Baby for Tina

“I understand.” He really did understand. More than she knew or probably would have believed at that moment, in fact.

“Can I ask you something? Earlier today on the phone, you started to say something when you were talking about your meeting. You said, ‘Sometimes I wish…’ If you want me to mind my own business, just tell me. I won’t take it personally. But I was just wondering what you were going to say.”

“Oh. Well, now that you know my credentials, I guess I can tell you. You probably read on my profile on the hospital website that I do research, right? Sometimes I wish research is all I did. I treat patients, I’m good at it, and I enjoy it. But there are things about it I hate, and my meeting today was one of those. A big one. All the way back to when I was in medical school, I’ve always loved research. It’s where my heart is. I don’t want to just use new drugs and new technologies; I want to discover them. That’s all. But, hell, you know the old saying about wishes, horses, and beggars. Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it right now. What I do want to talk about is the fact that I’m sitting here nearly naked, in my office, with my clit swollen to the size of the tip of my pinkie.”

“Let me call the airport. I’ll be on the next flight,” he joked.

“Ha, funny. I need your help getting off. I want you to tell me what you’d do to me if you really were here right now. Do you have a laptop?”

“Yes.”

“Does it have a webcam?”

“Yes.”

“Get it.”

He got his laptop from another room. They continued to talk while he got it booted up and installed some software.

“I talked to Dr. Cooper today,” she said. “You know, the friend I talked to you about this morning? I told him that while I wanted to still be friends with him like we were when Tim was alive, our friendship was going to have to go back to what it was like when Tim was still alive also.”

“Mm. How did he take it?”

“Very well. Surprisingly well, in fact. He asked why, of course. I told him that I had recently met a man who had swept me off my feet, and I said that I didn’t feel right about continuing to be intimate with him, in light of this new relationship. I didn’t tell him anything about you or about the circumstances, but he said he was happy for me. And he was happy; he wasn’t just saying that. I felt the least I could do is go down to Radiology and tell him face-to-face, so I saw his reaction. That was a big relief. I mean, I didn’t expect him to get angry or lose his temper or anything, but I didn’t expect him to be happy for me, either.”

“Well, if he really is your friend, then he’s going to have your best interests at heart. He’s going to want to see you happy in spite of whatever effect it has on him or what he’s losing. From what you told me about his reaction, I’d say this Dr. Cooper is a good guy. He lost, but at least he lost with dignity and grace.”

“Yeah,” she said distractedly. “Brad, please don’t get angry at me for this, but because John was such a good sport about it, I gave him a sort of ‘consolation prize’: I gave him a blowjob and swallowed his cum. Please don’t be mad.”

“I’m not,” Brad assured her. “Under the circumstances, I can understand why you did it, so it’s okay. I’m sort of glad you did, actually. Honestly, I’d probably have more of a problem if you said that you just pulled the rug out from under him and didn’t give him anything but a goodbye. That’s a pretty cold thing to do, and I didn’t think you had it in you. I’m glad to find out that you don’t.”

She was relieved to learn that he wasn’t angry. “Actually,” she purred, “the blowjob I gave him is why I’m sitting here naked and with a swollen clit right now.”

“How so?”

“I got turned on by sucking him. He wanted to 69 me, but I told him that was further than I really wanted to go. After he came, I went back to my office, turned out all the lights, and took my clothes off.”

“Oh! So this was just recently, then.”

“Mm hmm. Twenty minutes or so before I called you. I knew the effect it was going to have on me, so I planned it this way, so you could help me. Please?”

Brad’s computer was ready. They exchanged connection information, and after a few seconds, Tina’s beautiful, smiling face appeared on his screen. She was seated in a high-backed leather chair, with bookcases and other decorations behind her. Just as she had said, she had on her white lab coat. The two sides of the garment were arranged so that they barely covered her breasts.

“Welcome to my office,” she said.

She picked up her laptop, stood, and turned in a circle with the camera pointing away from her, giving Brad a three-hundred-sixty degree view of the room. It was nicely and tastefully decorated. There were the usual accoutrements one would expect to find in such a place: large and ornate desk, bookshelves, pictures on the walls, a window, and two comfortable-looking chairs in front of the desk for patients to sit in. The only slightly unusual thing in the room was a large leather-covered sofa against the far wall.

“That’s my bed sometimes,” she explained. “Sometimes I’ll catch a twenty-minute nap, or sleep there all night.” She didn’t tell him that for nearly three weeks after Tim’s funeral, it had been her only bed, as she had not been able to bear the thought of going back to the home the two of them had shared.

“I’d show you the rest of the office, such as the exam rooms and things, but janitorial services will be coming through at some point soon, and like I said, I’m naked,” she giggled. “But the sofa is the most important part of the whole place anyway; if you were here with me right now, that’s where you’d have me down on all fours, fucking me silly.”

She set the laptop down on one end of the sofa, then climbed on the other end on all fours, with her pussy toward the camera, seductively looking back over her shoulder. Her labia were swollen and spread, opening her pussy welcomingly, and Brad had an excellent view of both her vagina and butthole, as well as her swollen pink clit. Her entire pussy glistened with wetness. She moved one foot to the floor, opening herself even wider.

“See anything you like?” she cooed.

“I see several things I like,” he said, nearly fifteen hundred miles away, as he stared intensely into his laptop screen and slowly stroked his cock. “I have to say, seeing you in your white lab coat is driving me crazy. I’ve never fucked a doctor before. Not before last night, anyway.”

“Like I said last night, doctors need love, too,” she giggled softly. “Do you want me to wear it for you next time you fuck me?”

“Absolutely. Do you have any toys there at the office?”

“One or two,” she purred. “Do you want to watch me play with a toy?”

He said yes, and she climbed off the sofa, disappearing from view. A moment later, she was back, carrying a realistic-looking dildo. It seemed to be slightly longer than his cock, though he had it beat in terms of thickness. She sucked it a few times, then climbed back onto the sofa in the same position as before.

“Put it in your pussy.”

She reached back and slid the tip of the dildo up and down her slit a few times, then positioned it at the entrance of her vagina and slid it slowly inside.

“Mm, yeah,” she breathed, closing her eyes. “This is what it looked like when you slid your cock in me. I wish this was your cock for real. See it going in me?”

“Oh, yeah, babe. It looks fantastic.” He watched her fuck herself for a full minute, as he slowly rubbed his cock.

“I’m going to buy you a special toy and bring it with me when I come visit.”

“Tell me.”

“I’m going to bring you a remote control vibrating egg. You get the egg, but I get to keep the remote. I’m going to slip the egg up in your pussy, then I’m going to take you to dinner, with the remote in my pocket. You’re not going to know when I’m going to turn it on or how long I’m going to leave it on when I do.”

“Sounds nice,” she cooed, continuing to work the dildo in and out of herself. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Of course.”

“Stick the egg in my ass while you fuck my pussy. You can feel the vibrations while you fuck me.”

“I like it,” he grinned. “Or stick it in your pussy while I fuck your ass.”

“Mm, even better. You liked my ass, didn’t you?”

“It was great. I don’t think I’ve ever felt anything so tight. And I loved cumming in it.”

“I thought you would. It felt fantastic for me, too. I’m glad I could be your first. Are you going to fuck my ass when you come for your visit?”

“Uh huh. But there’s something different I want to do next time.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“I’m going to put you on your back, with your legs up, and fuck your ass. That way I can look at your pretty face at the same time.”

“Okay.” Her smile got even wider. “Do you think I’m pretty?”

“Pretty’s not the word for it,” he said. “I think you’re gorgeous. You’re probably just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

“Ohh!” she moaned deeply. For a moment, Brad thought she was about to cum. “Thank you. I want to be pretty for you.” She fucked herself a while longer with the dildo.

“Do you want to watch me fuck my ass?”

“Oh, yes. I’d love to see that.”

She slid the dildo out of her pussy and reached off camera, retrieving a bottle of lube. Then she applied a generous amount of lubricant to the toy, and to her ass as well. She turned over on her back and raised her legs vertical, pulling them back until her knees practically touched her nipples.

Brad could see her puckered little pink asshole as she probed at it with the dildo. She got it lined up, then pressed it into herself. Her anal sphincter looked like a pink rubber band stretched taut around the large toy. He watched in amazement as she slowly worked the entire eight-inch length up inside herself.

“Oh, God, it feels so good,” she breathed. “Fuck my ass.”

“Fucking your ass in this position not only lets me see your beautiful face, there’s another advantage, too.”

“What’s that?”

“I can suck your little pink toes at the same time.”

“Ohh, yesssss…”

“You liked it when I sucked your toes, didn’t you?”

“Oh, God, yes! If I hadn’t made you stop, you would have made me cum just from that alone.”

“Have you ever came while a guy was sucking your toes?”

“No. I want to, though.”

“Well, you’re going to get to next time you see me.”

“Ohh!” she shouted. “Fuck me, Brad! I’m cumming!!! Fuck me hard!”

On the video, he watched her head go back and her mouth fly open as waves of pleasure crashed over her. The dildo was squeezed almost violently out of her ass as her fingers clawed at her nipples. Her body was lifted off the sofa, and after several seconds, she crashed back down onto it with a loud gasp. As he watched her cum, Brad stroked himself more aggressively, and soon he came as well.

“Wow…” she breathed finally, dropping the dildo onto the floor.

“I agree,” he chuckled.

She lay there for a couple of minutes, just trying to catch her breath. Finally she recovered enough to sit up.

“That was amazing,” she said, shaking her head to clear it. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. It was good for me, too. Not as good as having you here with me, but still very good.”

She smiled with a look of utter bliss. “I’d better say good night. It’s past midnight for you, and I don’t want to keep you up too late.”

“Yeah,” he laughed. “I need my beauty sleep. Be careful driving home. I’m home, you’re not.”

“Mm, as relaxed as I feel right now, I may just sleep here tonight. Don’t worry, I’ll put on some clothes first, just in case my office staff shows up before I wake up.”

“Probably a good idea. Plus, you said janitorial comes through at some point.”

“True,” she yawned. “Oh, by the way: my office staff likes you.”

“They’ve never met me!” Brad laughed.

“Doesn’t matter. When I got here this morning, my office manager, Liz, said I didn’t walk into the office, I floated in. Liz is old enough to be my mother, and sometimes she thinks she is, I believe. She said she doesn’t know where I went or what I did yesterday, but she’s thrilled to see me like this. It’s been a long time since they saw me this way. She told me, ‘I don’t know if you met a guy or what happened, but if it is a man, tell him I like him already.’ So, I’m telling you,” she giggled.

“Well, I appreciate that,” he laughed. “And you make me happy, too.”

“I’m glad,” she sighed contentedly.

They told each other good night and promised to talk the next day. “Can’t wait to see you in two weeks,” she cooed before hanging up.

Two weeks later, he flew out to see her. They spent the three days together in a cabin high in the mountains, fucking and making love morning, noon, and the middle of the night, emerging only to go eat, before retreating back to their mountain hideaway.

They continued to see one another long-distance, alternating visits to one city or the other. At first they typically visited for three days every two weeks, but after a few months their visits together became every week, and soon they were arranging to spend nearly every day off with each other. When they couldn’t be together, they chatted online. They both often reflected that it was a good thing that video chatting and mobile long-distance were free; otherwise, both of them would have enormous bills. Some of those video chats had been so hot that neither of them would have been surprised if their webcams melted or their laptops caught fire.

Normally, their video chat sessions happened from home, or possibly from work just to say a brief and entirely G-rated hello. But one night, Tina had called him via video chat from one of the hospital’s conference rooms, using the room’s state-of-the-art and crystal-clear video conferencing system. Dressed in nothing but her white lab coat and with a stethoscope draped suggestively across her neck, she identified herself as “Dr. Naughty”, climbed onto the middle of the highly polished and no doubt very expensive conference table, and proceeded to ride a very lifelike dildo all the way to orgasm, all in ultra-clear high definition. Brad had been too stunned to do anything more than enjoy the show. He expected he hadn’t even blinked.

Eight months after their first exciting night together, it was Brad’s turn again to host. He asked Tina to fly into a different city than where he lived, promising her a surprise. She had done so, and his surprise for her had been two full days spent at an amusement park. After getting over her initial surprise, they had ridden the rides, played the games, eaten cotton candy and other junk foods, and basically acted like a couple of irresponsible children. At the end of the first day, they enjoyed a nice dinner together, took in a movie, and gone back to the hotel to passionately make love.

They lay cuddled together in the warmth of post-coital bliss, both nude. Tina lay with her head and arm on Brad’s chest, facing his legs, while his left hand stroked her upper back and played with her hair. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply in the musky aromas of their combined scents from the hot sex they had just enjoyed.

So this is what happiness feels like, she said to herself, the thought occasioning a small, blissful smile. She had been happy once, back when Tim was alive. But when he died, she had given up on ever being truly happy again. Over time, she had somewhat forgotten what true happiness felt like. But she recognized it when she saw it, and she knew she had once again found it with Brad.

“Today was incredible,” she sighed contentedly. “I can’t tell you the last time I spent a whole day doing something like this. No worries, no responsibilities. Just like being a kid again. I really needed today. Thank you so much.”

“Just what the doctor ordered, eh?” he grinned, stroking her soft blonde hair.

“Just what the doctor needed,” she replied. “The problem was, the doctor didn’t know how much she needed it. Fortunately, you did.”

“Hey, I enjoyed it, too!” he laughed. “I especially enjoyed watching you on that surfboard gizmo.” At the amusement park, there was a game with a surfboard attached somewhat precariously atop a gimbal. The goal was to stay on the board for as long as possible as the mechanism pitched this way and that. It wasn’t motorized, but even at that, even the slightest shift of the rider’s body weight was enough to give him or her a very wild ride. It had given her entire lower body quite a workout, as every muscle in her legs and feet attempted to keep her balanced. For a leg man like Brad, it was quite a show.

“You, my dear, have amazingly sexy legs.”

“Thank you,” she blushed. “I thought you would enjoy seeing that.” She lowered her voice to just a whisper, as if she was relating some huge secret. “That’s why I got on the thing in the first place,” she managed to say before giggling, and soon they were both laughing.

After the laughter subsided, they were both quiet for a long time. “There’s something else I need to thank you for: saving my life,” she said quietly, in a contented, sleepy voice.

“Uh, you’re welcome, but I think you have me confused with my brother,” he chuckled. “Tim was the one in the life-saving business. Not me.”

“That’s true,” she softly allowed. “But you saved one life. Mine. And I never said thank you. Not until now, anyway.” She turned her head to look at her lover’s face and smiled at the confusion written so plainly there. “Perhaps I should explain.”

“Please.”

“Do you remember the first time I flew in to talk to you about fathering a child with me?” He nodded. “After dinner, you came upstairs to my room and you held me while I cried myself nearly sick. But you never knew why I was crying.”

“I just assumed it was because of Tim.”

“It was,” she nodded. “But it wasn’t the only reason. My heart was broken because I was feeling sorry for myself, and because of what I was going to do when I got home the next day.”

“What do you mean?”

She sighed. “Brad, what I’m about to say, it can’t go beyond this room. Not now, not ever. If this got in the wrong ear, I could possibly have my medical license suspended. Maybe permanently. But I have to say it, because there’s some things I need you to understand.”

“Alright,” he agreed.

“Asking you to give me a child, it was a crazy thing to do, but it was born out of desperation. When all hope is gone, you grasp at straws. I don’t know how many times I’ve sat down with families and told them as gently as possible that the time has come for hospice and palliative care because their loved one isn’t going to recover, and then watched them turn to experimental treatments and therapies that have been proven not to work, just because they were that desperate. That’s where I was: I loved Tim more than I thought it was possible to love someone, and it tore me apart when he died. I thought the pain never would stop, and I seized on the idea of having a baby with DNA that matched his, because it was the only hope I had.

“Back home in my bedroom was 1500 milligrams of secobarbital. Unless you’ve built up a high tolerance, that’s a uniformly lethal dose. Fifteen hundred of secobarbital isn’t a cry for help or an attempt. It’s a bullet to the brain, only not as messy. Having a baby was my last hope. If you turned me down, I wasn’t going to go on. If all I had to look forward to was emotional pain that I believed was never going to go away, I’d rather be dead.

“That night at the hotel, I decided on the elevator on my way upstairs that I was going to do it. I was going to go home the next day, take off my clothes, put on an adult diaper, swallow the pills, and wait to die. You hadn’t said no, but I saw the look on your face and your body language when I asked, and even if you hadn’t said no, I was certain you weren’t going to say yes. I felt like a fool for even having asked. I told myself you thought I was an idiot and a jerk for asking, and I didn’t blame you, because that’s exactly what I felt like.

“When you found me crying, it was mostly because I was feeling sorry for myself. Tim was the only family I had, so my death wasn’t going to hurt anyone left behind. Some of my friends would understand; others would scratch their heads and wonder why, but either way, in a few weeks or months they would forget me and it would be like I had never existed at all. If I was very lucky, Tim and I would be together again in some sort of afterlife, perhaps, but I wasn’t feeling very lucky. But at least it was going to stop hurting.

“You came upstairs, lay on my bed, and held me. I took off my clothes and we had sex, because since I was going to be dead in less than twenty-four hours anyway, I was at least going to go out with a bang. You know how much I like sex, and sex was the only joy I had left. If it wasn’t you, I was going to go back down to the bar and I was going to be the easiest piece of ass some guy had ever picked up.”

Tears began to flow down her face and she made no attempt to wipe them away. “But you know what you did? You did something I didn’t expect: you held me and tenderly made love to me, just the way Tim used to, like you cared about me, like I was more to you than just a piece of ass. It was the first time anyone had made love to me since Tim died. I fucked; I didn’t make love. Nobody wanted to make love to me, and I had come to believe that nobody ever would want to again. But all of a sudden, there you were, doing just that. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was the first even faint glimmer of hope I had had since the day Tim died.

“The next morning, I kept waiting for the shoe to drop, for you to just say, ‘See you later’, and take off, leaving me right where I had been. I was actually surprised when I got out of the shower and you were still there. You touched me and when I looked in your eyes, I saw you actually cared. You told me you wanted to see me again, and I could see in your eyes that you meant it. I had managed to convince myself that nobody wanted me and that nobody ever would again, but yet there you were, and I knew you wanted me. Not just in a sexual way, either; you really wanted me.

“You drove me to the airport, and instead of just dropping me off at the curb, you parked the car and walked me to Security. Then you hugged me and kissed me tenderly, and told me again that you wanted to see me again. For the first time in six months, I had hope that someday I might love and be loved again by someone. I didn’t know if that someone was going to be you, but it could happen, and maybe, eventually, the pain was going to go away.

“I flew home and drove to my house, then made a beeline for the bedroom. I dumped the pills in the toilet and flushed them, and after I did, I felt incredibly relieved. My hands shook for probably five minutes afterward, but when they finally stopped, I called you to let you know I had made it home safely, and I could tell you were genuinely glad to hear from me. That told me that you hadn’t forgotten me before my plane even took off.

“That was eight months ago, almost to the day. Brad, I’m scared to say this, because the absolute last thing I want to do is scare you away, but I love you. Please don’t be afraid of that. I’m not going to get all clingy and weird or start talking about getting married or any of that. I don’t even expect you to love me back. But I do love you, and I just have to tell you.”

Brad smiled and pulled her fully on top of him for a kiss. They kissed passionately for several minutes, and then each turned on their sides, facing one another. He looked relieved.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he smiled. “Because I love you, too, and I was afraid I was the only one who felt this way.”

She melted into his arms as they kissed even more fiercely than before. He rolled on top of her and she spread her legs welcomingly. He slipped effortlessly inside her, her hot love tunnel already well-lubed by her natural juices for her lover’s entrance.

He slid inside her fully, and without a condom, they each felt the heat and tenderness of each other’s genitals as never before. She buried her mouth into his strong shoulder and gently bit him, as she brought her feet up and caressed his buttocks with her soft heels.

“I’d better stop and get a condom,” he said.

“It’s not necessary, my love,” she whispered. “I’m on birth control. I’ll explain later. Right now, let me feel your seed inside me.”

“Alright.”

He thrust into her and she slid her hips back against him to meet his thrusts. He had never felt such heat around his cock. It was as if she was on fire inside. Neither had he ever been so keenly aware of the inside of a woman: it felt like he could feel every centimeter of her vaginal walls, feel her lubrication easing him in and out of her, and feel her tight Kegel muscles squeezing him.

For her part, her vagina was practically overloading her brain with stimulus: she felt the head of his cock, the sensitive frenulum just behind the head, and every ridge and vein along his shaft as it slid in and out of her. Her cervix was drawn back to accommodate him, yet she could still feel the approach of his tip with each stroke, stopping just short of an uncomfortable impact, then reverse direction and repeat the process. She felt an incredible depth of desire toward him and of him toward her, and of love she had not known in a long time. Even as much as she and Tim had loved one another, she could not recall it ever feeling quite so intense as this. Perhaps it was because she had lost love and believed it gone forever, and now it was all the sweeter for having found it again.

She bit her lower lip hard enough that it hurt as she fought off the orgasm her body so longed to have. She was ready to cum seconds after he entered her, so strong was their desire for one another, and she could not recall ever reaching the plateau so quickly.

His pace and breathing changed, even before he announced that he was close. “Yes,” she moaned softly into his ear. “Cum for me. Cum inside the woman who loves you.”

“Ohh!” he cried out as his orgasm began. “Tina, I love you so much…”

“And I love you, my darling,” she whispered.

She felt the first shot of his cum impact her cervix, followed by the second, even stronger. That did it. She let go of her own barely-restrained orgasm and her entire body shook like from an electric current. Oh, God, what an orgasm this was! She covered his lips with her own and screamed into his open mouth as his cock flooded her vagina with his seed.

Very slowly and gradually their orgasms tapered off and they each released the death grip they had on one another. She had gripped him so tightly that the next morning he would have bruises on his upper back from her fingers. She lavished kisses on his chest and caressed his hips and thighs with her soft feet as he slowly relaxed. They kissed one more time and told each other ‘I love you’, before he slipped out of her and collapsed beside her on the bed. A large deposit of his cum followed him out.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed, echoing what both of them felt just then. “You’re going to give me a heart attack.”

“You’d better not have a heart attack!” he laughed. “You’re the doctor here, you know. We’re both screwed if you do that.”

“There are far worse ways to go. At least I’d die with a smile on my face,” she giggled.

“Yeah, but at the funeral I’d probably have to punch anyone who said, ‘She looks so natural’. I’d be like, ‘How the hell do you know?'” That brought on a bout of laughter from both of them.

She raised up on her elbows and looked down at the semen trickling out of her and onto the sheet below. “First cream pie you’ve ever given me,” she declared proudly. “Well, first vaginal cream pie. My asses don’t count. Those pies were just for practice.”

“Congratulations,” he smiled. “I may have just given you that child you asked for.”

“No. I went back on birth control three, maybe four months ago.”

“Why? I thought you wanted a baby.”

“And I still do,” she said, resting her head on his chest once more. “But only if we both want one. Eight months ago, I was asking you, in effect, to be a sperm donor. That’s before I fell in love with you. I would be overjoyed to have a child with you, but only if we both want it. When I realized I love you, I decided that decisions needed to be about us and we, not just I and me. The reason I didn’t tell you before was because one, it takes a couple of months to become fully effective, and two, I wanted to find out if you felt the same about me that I was feeling for you.”

They spent the following day at the amusement park again, though the fun they had was tempered somewhat by the knowledge that Tina had to fly home later that evening. That was always the hardest part about their get-togethers: knowing that they had only a brief while to enjoy each other’s company. Something was going to have to give, they both knew. A few months later, it did.

=======

Four months later, she reminded him that the one-year anniversary of the beginning of their relationship was coming up.

“We should go someplace special,” she smiled. “Where do you want to go? My treat.”

“Actually, I’m way ahead of you,” he laughed. “I’ve already started making arrangements. How does a weekend in the Bahamas sound?”

“Ooh, sounds like fun!” she giggled. “I’ve never been to the Bahamas. I’ve heard it’s beautiful, though.”

“It is,” he confirmed. “All you have to do is arrange a three-day weekend off and get yourself a ticket to Nassau. I’ll meet you there, and everything else is already set.”

She arranged a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off, and bought her ticket. The ticket she bought would require her to leave home before the sun was even up, but it got her into Nassau at a few minutes after 10:00 in the morning. The early wakeup was worth it to maximize the time she got to spend with Brad and whatever plans he had made. She had no idea what he was planning, but she was certain it would be exciting. She informed Brad about her flight plans, and he confirmed that everything was arranged.

“Fantastic. I’m going to have some surprises waiting for you,” he teased. “Some big surprises.”

“Can’t I at least have a hint?” she begged.

“Nope, sorry. I don’t want to ruin any of the surprises. Besides, even if I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. You’d say I was pulling your leg.”

“Oh, alright,” she grumbled.

Brad flew down the day before her arrival to make sure every last detail was in order. On Friday morning, he returned to the airport and waited for her outside Security. When she appeared, he lifted her in the air with a huge bear hug, spinning her around as she squealed with delight.

“Be careful,” she smiled as he set her down and kissed her. “This is all I’m wearing, you know.” He looked her over: she wore a wide-brimmed sun hat, a pretty, flowered blue sundress, and sandals.

“I thought you weren’t shy,” he grinned.

“I’m not. But if Security sees anything, they might want to do a body cavity search on me,” she giggled. “And you’re the only one allowed to do that.”

“Come on,” he said, kissing her. “We have another flight to catch.”

“Oh? What time is that?”

“When we get there,” he shrugged. “Don’t worry, they won’t leave without me: I’m the pilot.”

“Oh-kayyy,” she said slowly, intrigued. She didn’t know he was a pilot. Well, he had said he had some pretty big surprises in store for her this weekend. If this was just the first one he was choosing to reveal, it was going to be an interesting trip!

He took her bag for her and they went outside to catch a taxi. To her surprise, the cab stayed on the airport property, driving around to a mile or so from the terminal. Five minutes later, they cleared through a guarded gate and pulled up outside a hangar. Brad waved to what she guessed to be a mechanic standing on the tarmac a short distance away. The man waved back and then ran off into the large building. A few minutes later, the massive doors slid open, and he reappeared, astride a small tractor with a large, sleek helicopter being towed behind on wheels.

“Our flight’s here,” he smiled, tossing their bags into the large and spacious cabin. “Ready to go?”

“Umm, sure.”

“Just one thing: you have to take off your clothes.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Not at all. Take off your dress and shoes and toss them in the back of the bird. You can keep your hat on, or take it off.”

She looked at him, trying to decide if he was joking or not, and glanced over at the mechanic. Finally she shrugged, handed her hat to Brad, and lifted her dress over her head. Just as she had said, she was nude underneath. Then she slid her feet out of her sandals, picked them up, and handed them to Brad, retrieving her hat from him.

“I assume you’re going to x-ray these?” she teased.

He tossed her clothes into the back, then opened the front left cockpit door for her. She got in and settled into the comfortable seat, as he helped her into the five-point restraints, helped her put on a headset, adjusted the microphone, and lastly pointed out what not to touch and where not to put her feet. Once she was settled in, he got in on the other side, strapped in, and adjusted his own headset. He fussed with a panel between the seats and other controls over their heads, and she heard the whine of generators and turbines spooling up as the control panel came to life. Even for someone as intelligent as Tina, the dozens of gauges, screens, and switches were bewildering, and she wondered how on earth anyone could make sense of it all.

“Ready to go?” he grinned. His voice came through plainly through her headset.

“Why not?” she laughed. “This is obviously a dream and I’m going to wake up any second now, so let’s go.”

Another couple of switches and overhead, the massive four-bladed rotor began to spin, slowly at first, but rapidly speeding up until the blades were a nearly-invisible blur. He keyed a button on the cyclic and spoke briefly. The words sounded like English, but they were virtually incomprehensible to her. She recognized maybe one word in ten, words such as “tower”, “takeoff”, and “heading”. The rest of it was a mishmash of rapid-fire lingo that she couldn’t begin to decipher. When the reply came back in heavily accented English, the only two words she understood were a quick and emotionless “good day” at the end.

Brad’s eyes swept over the various gauges, quickly but carefully making sure all of the needles were safely in the green area of their respective instruments. Satisfied, he twisted the motorcycle-style throttle and slowly lifted the collective between their seats. She felt the aircraft get lighter for a second, like a wild beast eager to take to the air, and then watched as the ground fell away. The takeoff felt like riding a glass elevator, and it didn’t seem so much that they had taken off as it did that the ground simply dropped away beneath them. After takeoff, there was a whirr of machinery as the wheels tucked themselves neatly away into the fuselage and doors closed seamlessly over them. Brad tilted the cyclic forward. The nose dipped slightly, and suddenly they were moving forward. A moment later, the airport disappeared behind them, and soon they were over the ocean.

“You never told me you were a pilot,” she observed, looking at him sideways with a little smile.

“Oh,” he said simply. After a few seconds, he added, “Tina, my love?”

“Yes?”

“I’m a pilot.”

“You don’t say,” she quipped dryly. She had a feeling this was a minor surprise compared with the surprises that doubtlessly lay ahead. In fact, when she later told friends and colleagues about her weekend away, the helicopter ride was so insignificant that she barely mentioned it.

Along the way, he gave her a brief tour of the cockpit, pointing out various instruments and briefly explaining (and demonstrating) what the cyclic, collective, and rudder pedals did. One instrument she found especially interesting was one with numbers around the face and a green arc that covered three-quarters of the dial. The needle rested solidly on a little hash mark just past “120”, at almost exactly the six o’clock position.

“Speedometer?” she guessed.

“Air speed indicator. Close enough. We’re doing 125 knots.” He did some quick mental arithmetic. “Around 140 or 145 miles per hour. And to answer your next question, we’re at 300 feet altitude.”

She looked down through the Plexiglas panel under her feet at the ocean whitecaps just a hundred yards below, racing by at more than two miles a minute, and swallowed hard. She knew the jet she had just flown in on flew nearly five times as fast as they were going, but down here with the water seemingly almost close enough to touch, the sensation of speed was much more dramatic. It felt like riding in the passenger seat of a high-performance sports car: thrilling, but a little frightening at the same time. Her admiration for her lover took a little step upward as she watched him take a difficult and dangerous task and make it look easy.

“Forget I asked,” she said, and Brad grinned at the pale expression he could see out of the corner of his eye.

Ten minutes later, a tiny island came into view. Brad slowly reduced their speed from 125 knots to a much more sedate 50, reducing their altitude at the same time, then banked the helicopter gradually to the right as they gracefully circumnavigated the little patch of land from barely one hundred feet. The entire island wasn’t more than a few acres, but it was bordered by pristine white sandy beach all around, except for the center, where a magnificent house sat on a small rise, shaded by trees. A stone path led from the house down to a sheltered lagoon, where an expensive-looking speedboat was docked. The boat, she noticed, was painted in the same elegant colors and in the same pattern as the helicopter.

Fifty yards or so from the house was a concrete pad with an “H” inside a circle painted on it. Beside it, an orange windsock hung limply in the light breeze. Brad hauled back on the cyclic, bringing the nose up sharply and expertly reducing their speed almost instantly until they were barely moving forward. The landing gear came out and locked into place as he approached the pad at a forty-five degree angle to the ground, gradually moving the collective downward while edging the cyclic forward at the same time. After a moment, they settled onto the concrete like a butterfly with sore feet, in the dead center of the painted circle. Brad secured several switches and the rotor blades slowed to a stop, as the turbines and generators wound down.

“We’re here,” Brad said, giving her a huge grin.

He removed his headset and hung it on a hook overhead, then did the same with Tina’s, before releasing his restraints and doing the same for her. By the time he exited the cockpit, Tina had let herself out the other side.

He led her around the island, pointing out this interesting feature or that, and then up to the house. It was fairly large, but not extremely so, with spacious accommodations for six or, in his words, “eight, if they’re really good friends.” The master bedroom featured an enormous king-size bed in a room with a tiled roof and glass walls that could be slid open for ventilation. Just off the beach on one side stood a tall windmill that provided electricity for the island. Though the entire house was air-conditioned, the cross-through ventilation made it largely unnecessary.

“So, what do you think?” he smiled. “Like it?”

“Like it!” she gushed. “I love it! I don’t think I want to know how much this place rents for. I’m sure I don’t want to know what it costs to buy. Please tell me you’re not spending a fortune for us to stay here. I mean, I’m impressed, but I’m going to be mad if you tell me you spent thousands of dollars to rent this for the weekend.”