The fifty-two-metre fishing trawler loomed high above us, its rust-ravaged hull already succumbing to the relentless invasion of barnacles and other parasitic sea life. Listing forty-odd degrees on its port side, it exposed its belly like a lazy dog hoping for a pat. It was a monolith. I felt tiny in its presence.

I chased the slowly ascending trail of bubbles around the leaning prow of the trawler. They were long, diagonal dashes of air, luminescent silver against the azure of the ocean from which they rose. Following the broken line to its source, my eyes fell once again on that perfect, heart-shaped ass flexing and undulating in the tight purple wetsuit as she finned along the hull.

It was a short wetsuit, thankfully, revealing plenty of creamy flesh on George’s slender thighs. She manoeuvred into a vertical hover alongside the wreck, and I drifted in beside her, bumping gently against her. Even beneath twenty-two metres of ocean, the smooth touch of her skin against my exposed forearm and calf felt lovely, the semi-weightlessness making her all the softer.

George playfully wacked me on the bicep, the tap sounding almost metallic under the water. I protested my innocence with an exaggerated shrug, but she was having none of it. Shaking her head in mock admonishment, she turned off the camera and tucked it into a pouch on her black buoyancy-control vest.

Finished with our survey of the shipwreck, I secured my underwater writing slate in one of my own orange pouches. The unworldly rip of Velcro broke through the periodic percolations of the breath fizzing from my regulator. There was something eerie about the soundscape of a dive: the roaring silence, the enveloping echoes, the closeness.

Not for the first time during the dive, the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Knowing better than to ignore my sixth sense, I double-checked my equipment, paying particular attention to the depth and pressure gages, and my remaining air. Everything was as it should be. Then I scanned the endless blue around us in slow, sweeping arcs. It was probably verging on paranoia, but long bitter experience had taught me to trust those little feelings of dread.

George’s fine dark brows were furrowed behind her yellow-rimmed face mask as she studied me. She hadn’t put a lot of stock in my military diving experience from a previous life, and my anal checking and re-checking rituals had become a source of great amusement for her. No doubt the ribbing I would receive back on dry land would be merciless. Still, none of the other rangers responsible for patrolling the Batemans Marine Park could keep up with her underwater, or topside for that matter. Consequently, we had formed a tight partnership over the last three months.

Holding both my thumbs up to her, I indicated that everything was okay. She paused a moment, then checked her own gages before forming a circle with her thumb and forefinger, the other fingers extended to make the correct civilian ‘okay’ signal. I snorted a laugh, a short puff of bubbles hissing from my regulator. Despite the shit she would sling my way, George was still a professional. I knew she couldn’t help herself.

She took her regulator from her mouth and poked her tongue out at me. I gave her a wanking gesture in return, moving a loose fist back and forth near my crotch as she bit back into her mouthpiece. George’s hands went straight to her hips, complete with a head tilt. Short blasts of air betrayed her amusement with our mimed banter, but then she quickly refocussed us on the task of returning to the shore.

A quick flurry of hand signals, and then George gracefully spun in the water as I finned in on her left. The towering wreck stood behind us. In front, the bed of dark boulders, rock gullies and vegetation, linked by increasing patches of sand, meandered back towards the beach a few hundred metres inside Guerilla Bay.

She set off first, and I made to follow, lifting my knee to kick my fin. I glanced over at her. A thick line of glowing bubbles lifted off from around her face, drawing a curtain of air across my view of the ocean beyond.

I thought I saw something in the distance, just before it was obscured by her exhalation.

Time stood still.

It was the ice-cold chill that shot down my spine that first confirmed the danger. Even before I knew what it was, the flood of adrenalin prepared me to face the threat.

My heart rate quickened. My vision tunnelled. What sound there was dissipated until there was nothing but a high-pitched ringing in my ears.

The bubbles cleared, leaving a clear view of the deep blue ocean beyond the curved purple horizon of George’s ass.

The muted sunlight reflecting off the pectoral fins caught my attention first. Then my eyes focussed on the large illuminated area that ran all the way from its pointed nose up to its high dorsal fin. Its dark, menacing smile beneath was almost hypnotic. But it wasn’t until I made out the small black eyes on either side of its head, seemingly angled in an angry expression from my vantage point directly in front, that my brain finally processed the situation.

Shark.

A fucking huge one!

I blinked away the terror and immediately felt my heart start beating again in my chest. With it came a flood of other senses. An ocean of blue poured into my dilated pupils, instantly making me aware of everything around me. I could hear each individual bubble that was expelled from my regulator. I flushed with heat, my limbs alive and poised for action.

I lunged for George, grabbing her left knee. She twisted with a start, staring back at me. Holding my hand flat, with my fingers vertical and my thumb against my forehead, I signalled that I had seen a shark. I then gave the gesture for danger by pointing a clenched fist in the direction of the threat. She spun around to look for it, but turned back, giving me a big shrug, with her palms held upwards. She couldn’t see it.

We didn’t have time for this shit.

I snatched at her fluorescent-yellow weight belt. Wrenching her back across me, I kicked hard, propelling us both backwards in the water. I instinctively wanted the protection of the shipwreck at our rear, keeping the threat limited to our front, where we could keep our eyes on it.

Our air tanks clanged loudly against the hull. The groaning collision emitted two frightening gongs that reverberated ominously through my body. I couldn’t help but wince, clenching my head down between my shoulders like a turtle and clamping my eyes shut. The shock of it nearly made me bite through the plugs in my mouthpiece.

Again, I snapped myself out of the tail-spinning fear. It would do us no good to simply curl up into a little ball and hope the big bad fish would go away. The reality, of course, was that there was little alternative. But if there was the slightest chance I could improve our prospects, even the smallest glimmer of hope, I would do whatever I could to grab it.

My eyes shot open and locked immediately on the shark. It was maybe twenty-five metres away, a third of the way down the length of the wreck. Gliding effortlessly towards us, I couldn’t perceive any movement in its enormous, streamlined body. It just seemed to magically grow larger– closer - in the water.

I shoved George roughly along the hull, kicking furiously. My fins were a blur, the opaque blades bending and straining off the orange toes of my boots. We were close to the bow, and I suddenly thought we might have a chance if I could just get us around the stem.

George’s bright-yellow tank bounced and screeched horrifically against the rusted steel, loosening a hailstorm of barnacles and rust fragments from the trawler. The debris peppered me as we scraped back along the hull. Clouds of air bubbles tickled at my ears and neck while she clawed at me, trying to grab a hold.

The shark was only twenty metres away.

We jolted to a stop with a deafening clang that echoed through the water. My attention torn from the oncoming threat, I whipped my head around to see what had halted our progress. Some collapsed rigging, already caking over with coral, had formed a large rib down the side of the wreck. Past it, the trawler’s prow was too far. We weren’t going to make it.

George’s nails dug painfully into my arm. I could tell by the way her body stiffened even before I saw her deep blue eyes, wide with terror, that she had finally seen the approaching shark.

It had closed to fifteen metres.

The large, jagged triangular teeth grinned at me as it approached. There was no mistaking it. It was a great white.

Our only chance, if it attacked, was to fight back. Slipping my knife from the sheath strapped to my right thigh, I brought it up over my shoulder in a two-handed stabbing hold. I was poised - armed and ready to defend ourselves. I really didn’t want to injure it, but that was up to the shark.

Ten metres.

I knew it was a myth that it could smell our fear. Whatever adrenalin we were secreting into the water had not yet travelled the ever-closing distance to the shark’s nose. But what it could sense were the electrical impulses from our excited heartbeats.

Drawing on my special forces training to calm myself down, I took long, slow breaths deep into my lungs. I squeezed as much tension as I could into the handle of my knife as I inhaled, then relaxed the pressure as I imagined it all flowing out my fingertips and toes on the exhale. It was a well-practiced sniper’s technique for steadying the nerves before taking the long shot. Like so many times before, I felt my anxiety drain away.

Five.

My whole world became that great white shark. Suspended in the bright blue ocean and framed by the reddish-brown hull on my right, it cruised towards us, swallowing up the last few metres of water between us in no time at all. I locked my focus on its left eye and willed it to swim on, my knuckles glowing white around the handle of my knife.

Its cold, lifeless eye glared into mine. I could see it twitching as the shark adjusted its focus. The thought of such an awesome predator keeping its gaze fixed on me was chilling. Worse still, I could gage no measure of emotion or intent in its eye, just a soulless black abyss staring back at me.

Then it was there, right on top of us.

I lost all concept of time and space. My universe became an impossible slow-motion, each nanosecond an eternity.

The shark’s pointed nose inched past my face, the huge nostrils undoubtedly inhaling the slick of adrenalin gushing from every pore. Its tapered head filled my field of vision. Ripples of silver shimmered across its skin from the shafts of sunlight glimmering through the gentle swell on the surface. Below, row after row of razor-sharp teeth sawed through the water, and my consciousness.

And that eye: a cold, inky porthole into an endless terror.

Twisting my torso to the left, I kept my knife trained on the big black bullseye as it sailed past. Its eye continued to twitch, rolling farther back in its head to stay locked on me. Then, all of a sudden, the giant black lens flicked forward. In an instant, the great white shark looked away.

I sighed, an overwhelming wave of relief crashing over me. An explosion of bubbles roared from my regulator, and the burn in my lungs was extinguished. It was then that I realised I had been holding my breath.

The shark was a massive grey wall. There was nothing else. The dark vertical lines of its gills strobed past me from right to left. Then a fin the size of an aeroplane wing glided by within mere inches. Looking to my right towards its tail, unbelievably, there was just as much of it again still to swim past.

There was no room between the great white and the trawler’s hull. It felt like being stuck between two trains. I could have reached out and touched it. Thankfully, I managed to fight back the impulse. But at the same time, something inside me regretted not making contact with the impressive animal.

With frightening speed, the shark twisted in the water. It seemed to almost bend in half as its powerful tail cocked, before launching it in a new direction with a single sweeping lash. The wash from its wild manoeuvre buffeted me against George, causing our tanks to clink and scrape against the hull.

It shot away from us in a tight turn, heading back out to sea in almost the same direction it had approached. It swept its tail back and forth as it swam, moving fast. Whatever it had thought of us, it was no longer interested. It kept going, until eventually it faded into the deep blue infinity.

I don’t know how long I waited, watching the open ocean in case it returned. It wasn’t until I felt George moving behind me that I snapped back into the moment. Realising that I was still clutching my knife with both hands under my chin, I sheathed it and spun in the water to face her.

George stared back at me, her eyes ablaze in her yellow face mask. Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths, enormous clouds of bubbles blasting from her regulator. I flashed her a thumbs-up, half letting her know I was all right, and half asking if she was too. She gave me an okay signal in return, along with a rapid nod of her head.

More gage checks and hand signals, and then George led us back towards the shore. We stayed close to the bottom, gently ascending with the seabed. I stuck to her, much closer than I usually did, making sure she was within reach. My protective instincts on overdrive, I turned around every few seconds to scan the ocean behind us.

We eventually made our way past the rocky outcrop of Burrewarra Point, which stood guard on the southern end of Guerilla Bay. Crossing the mouth, we fought the current towards the smaller beach to the north. George was aiming for the sunken rowing boat between the northern heads and a rocky islet twenty metres off the cliffs. It was quite a challenge, given the visibility inside the bay had fallen to about eleven metres. But she nailed it, of course.

The swell rolled in above us, looking like molten glass from beneath. The waves growled and wheezed in the shallow inlet, pushing and pulling at us as we swam. We stayed as deep as we could, threading the relatively unaffected waters in the gully that led to the shore. Finally, we breached the surface amongst the breaking waves and body-surfed the last few metres onto the beach.

Crawling and clambering up the slope, weighed down by our dive gear, we plonked ourselves down in the wet sand. The surf lapped at us, rhythmically surrounding us in white foam, occasionally up to our armpits. On our left, the northern bluffs towered some thirty metres above, while on the right, the beach stretched into a salient that extended around to the rocky islet a hundred metres or so in front of us.

“Oh, my God!” George beamed, pulling her face mask and snorkel down over her face, leaving them to dangle from her neck. “Did you see that!”

“You mean the huge fuckin’ shark?” I laughed over the roar of the surf, amazed that she had even asked. “Yeah, George, I saw it.”

She gave me a sheepish grin, momentarily embarrassed by such a silly question. Then she laughed, a mixture of elation and exhaustion. “That was so incredible.” Clenching her fists and throwing her head back, her face bathed in sunlight, she moaned again with giddy excitement. “My God!”

“Tell me about it,” I scoffed. I was buzzing. I was so jacked up, my hands were shaking. I fumbled for the zipper on my bright-orange buoyancy-control vest in an attempt to mask it. It wasn’t working, and my teeth began to chatter. It was just the come-down from the adrenalin high, I knew all too well. Still, I felt ashamed to be going through it in front of George.

I deflected. “I didn’t think great whites came this far north.”

She paused a second, pressing her lips together with concern. I could see she was weighing up in her mind whether to check that I was okay or let me off the hook. Thankfully, for my ego at any rate, she chose the latter and flew into her senior ranger routine. “Yeah, they go right up into Queensland. The big ones like stalking the humpback whales as they migrate up and down the east coast. They go after the calves. Usually the mothers fight them off, but every now and then they get lucky.”

A feverish back and forth followed as we each came to terms with our excitement, our hands flailing in animated discussion. We were both in awe of the spectacular animal, and how close it had come to us. It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was almost spiritual.

George ran her fingers through her scruffy pixie cut, brushing a sparkling spray of water from her hair. The wet ebony tufts still shone in the sunlight, and tiny droplets of seawater crept their way down the porcelain skin of her finely-tapered neck. She looked up at me, a twinkle in her eye.

I lost myself in her gaze. Her eyes were a deep, almost royal blue. While she was a strikingly-beautiful woman in a rough-and-tumble tomboy kind-of way, I had never been caught off guard by it before. But I definitely was in that moment, staring back at her on that beach.

Her chuckle fell silent into an open-mouthed grin. The mood grew awkward for a second. Then she broke eye contact to retrieve something from one of the Velcro pouches on her vest. It was the yellow underwater camera she had been using to photograph the wreck.

“I got some video of it,” she proudly announced, looking back up at me with a broad smile.

I frowned at her. “So I’m there, scared out of my mind, about to get into a knife fight with a great white shark, and you’re on fuckin’ YouTube?”

“Do you want to see or not?” She tilted her head, batting my feigned incredulity straight back at me.

I sidled up against her in the foaming surf and leaned in to watch the tiny screen. It elicited a triumphant double-hum from her, only too happy to gloat at nailing my reaction. I playfully bumped her with my shoulder and sneered, “Shut up, you. You don’t know me.”

George giggled as she started the video. The shaky image began with an extreme close-up of my hands clenched around the handle of my knife before panning to the right. Half the shark’s face, blurry before the auto-focus corrected itself, filled the screen. Then George obviously zoomed out to capture a menacing shot of the whole thing, my forearm sliding back into the frame on the left. I could just make out the sound of bubbles from the camera’s speaker over the roar of the wind and surf around us.

Mere seconds later, the shark was too big to fit in the shot. All I could see were nostrils, teeth and that cold left eye. It glided past a lot faster than I remembered. The back of my head sailed through the shot from left to right as George kept focus on the shark’s head.

The image panned right, along its body. “Man!” she breathed as we watched. “It must be at least four, maybe five metres long. Probably a female. They get a lot bigger than the males.”

“Unlike us, huh?” I grinned down at my petite dive partner sitting in the surf. I had at least a foot on her, and I was easily twice her weight.

She flashed me a crooked smile, then returned her attention to the display. Just then, the shark recoiled, before sweeping its tail to launch in a different direction. The image shook wildly, with a metallic thwack, and I saw myself being buffeted on screen. The clink of our tanks against the hull was audible through the speaker, along with a muffled groan from George.

“Whoa!” George laughed. She looked up at me, her eyes bright. “It looks like it hit you with its tail.”

“No, I don’t think so,” I dismissed, patting down the pouches of my vest as I kept watching the footage of the shark disappearing into the distance. “I think it was just the…”

The underwater writing slate was no longer secured to my orange vest. The large mesh pouch I had tucked it into was ripped open, the Velcro flap hanging uselessly with nothing to grip. Other scuff marks and abrasions adorned the front of my buoyancy-control. It had definitely clipped me. I obviously hadn’t noticed in the heat of the moment.

“Holy fuck!” George breathed. She stared up at me, her mouth gaping open.

“Phew,” I tried to laugh off. But the realisation of how close I had come brought back the tremors in my hands. Attempting to avoid her intense gaze, I asked her to play the video again. Although my respite from her close scrutiny only lasted another twenty-eight seconds. That’s all there was, including the ten seconds or so of empty water at the end of the clip.

Neither of us spoke. The only sound was the foaming waves washing in around us. I held my hands in my lap beneath the froth, willing them to be still. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George tuck the camera away and look back up at me.

I stared off into the main part of the bay beyond the rocky islet, not really watching the sun seekers sprinkled on the larger beach that curved southeast to the base of Burrewarra Point. Turning back, I met her gaze. Her big blue eyes were smouldering in a sincerity I had never seen in her before. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t pity. It was something else.

“You tried to save me,” her voice cracked, barely audible above the din. “You put yourself between me and the shark. You…” The words failed her, but her mouth kept moving regardless.

I had nothing to say myself, and I felt my face flushing with embarrassment. “Look, it’s…um…” I cleared the lump from my throat. “Don’t worry about it. Like you say, it was just curious. No real danger.”

I reached into the water and took off my fins. Then standing up and clipping them to my weight belt, I held out a hand to help her up. She strained under the burden of her tank and other dive gear as she stood. Before we could exchange another awkward moment of eye contact, I lumbered up the beach towards the carpark, with her in tow.

The narrow sand pathway wound its way through the low-lying coastal vegetation to the freshly-marked-out bitumen. Our white four-wheel-drive sat in a nearby space in the dappled shade of the eucalypts, the Marine Parks Authority logo emblazoned on the driver’s door. Dumping my gear at the rear of the vehicle, I reached under the rear bumper for the magnetic key and got the tailgate open.

George and I methodically sorted out our equipment first, checking everything as we packed it away. Her yellow air tank was deeply scratched down to the metal in a vicious tiger-striping. Her black buoyancy vest, too, had a number of small tears in it at the shoulder. Squatting on the ground behind the car, she ran her fingers over the damage.

“Sorry, I…” I meekly offered as I inspected the scratches in the white paint of my own tank.

“Don’t worry about it, Newbie,” George smirked as she stood up. “I’ll still sign off on your probation.”

“Gee, thanks, Boss,” I laughed sarcastically, lifting my tank into the back of the wagon. George was actually the same age as me, but she had spent her ten years since high school patrolling the Marine Park as a ranger, while I was only new to it from a life elsewhere.

With her hands on her hips and her head cocked, she poked her tongue out at me. “Don’t thank me too much,” she said, leaning down to grab her tank. “The replacement gear’s coming out of your pay.”

I wasn’t really listening. The vision of her ass bending over in that purple wetsuit had me frozen to the spot. I don’t know what got into me. The crotch of my own black wetsuit tightened at the sight. I just wanted to…

The sound of George clearing her throat snapped me back into the moment. “Ah, you want to give me a hand there?” she smirked, her eyebrow arched. She was hugging her air tank, now separated from her buoyancy-control vest.

‘Fuck!’ I scolded myself. I could feel the heat returning to my cheeks, my forehead prickling with sweat. I took the big yellow cylinder from her and loaded it into the back of the car.

When I turned back, George was unzipping the front of her wetsuit down to her waist. As she peeled it from her right arm, the purple neoprene tore away from her shoulder and fluttered down towards the ground. “What the fuck?” she frowned, twisting and contorting to retrieve the tattered segments flapping around her right hip.

Distracted with the ripped edges of her wetsuit, she didn’t notice the shoulder strap of her navy-blue bikini top snap. The triangular cup fell away from her right breast, exposing it brilliantly in the sunlight. It was small, as she was, but well-rounded and perfectly-proportioned for her body. Her nipple caught the sun, standing out a few shades lighter than the lovely pink areola surrounding it.

Staring as long as I dared, I half-gasped, “Ah, George, your…um…” I waved a finger at her naked breast.

She looked up at me, her brows deeply furrowed. Then finally understanding the gesture, she glanced down at herself. “Oh, shit!” She met my gaze again, blushing. “Whoops.” Her nipple tightened as she held her hand over her breast and turned her back to me.

Her bare shoulder was badly grazed, some deep scratches inked with blood. “Hang on a sec’, George,” I cautioned, reaching for the first aid kit in the back of the wagon. “Your shoulder’s a bit of a mess. Let me get some antiseptic on that.”

George eyed me suspiciously, then tried to look over her shoulder at the scratches. It was as if she couldn’t feel the injury. She reached across herself with her left hand to touch what she couldn’t see. She winced when her fingers made contact with the raw flesh, sucking a lungful of air in through her teeth.

“It must have been the barnacles and shit on the hull,” I explained as I applied the ointment to her damaged skin.

Literally bursting out of her wetsuit, George stood right in front of me. She was painfully close. The way she looked up at me over her shoulder, the way she cupped her breast to preserve her modesty, I was lost. She felt so smooth, so delicate.

“Sooo, what’s the deal with that?” she teased, pointing at the aching bulge in my wetsuit once I had finished administering first aid.

It was my turn, yet again, to blush. My face seared with humiliation. Snatching my fins from my belt, I held them pathetically in front of my rock-hard cock. “Um…it’s…ah, the adrenalin. You know? From the shark.”

“Hmmm,” George grinned, barely able to contain her delight. Then she giggled, “Isn’t adrenalin supposed to suppress erections?”

“How the fuck should I know?” I spat. “I’m not a scientist.”

She threw her head back, laughing. “Oh, come on. I didn’t mean to make it hard on you.”

“Fuck you, George,” I chuckled, throwing my fins into the back and reaching for the last of our gear on the ground.

“If wishing made it so, Big Boy,” George giggled, smacking me on the ass as she skipped around to the driver’s side.

I closed up the tailgate and went to the passenger’s side. Swinging open the rear door, I could see through the car to George. She had taken off her ripped bikini top and was shrugging into the light-brown cotton shirt of her uniform. Both perky breasts were briefly in view across the back seats before she buttoned it up, her nipples erect.

She stared at me as I unzipped my wetsuit and peeled it off my shoulders. I shoved the black neoprene down my thighs, leaving me standing in the sun in my black Speedos. While the last few months of civilian life had robbed me of my six-pack, I was still in pretty good shape. I resisted the urge to strike a pose to mess with her, and stepped into a pair of brown shorts. Fishing my badged ranger shirt out of my backpack, I could still see George’s nipples poking through her top.

“Cold out, is it?” I grinned, immediately regretting it. I was afraid I crossed the line. She was my supervisor. I didn’t know what the fuck I was thinking.

George’s cheeks flushed pink, but she set her jaw defiantly. Slipping on a pair of sunglasses, she pushed them up her nose with her middle finger.

I breathed a sigh of relief. That one, none-too-subtle gesture, and the smirk that went along with it, let me know she had seen the funny side of it.

She hooked her thumbs into the tattered wetsuit around her waist and wiggled it down over her hips. If I didn’t know better, I could have sworn she was being deliberately seductive. The contrast of her tiny navy bikini bottoms with her pale skin, set against those curves, was stunning.

“You know?” she taunted, balling up her ruined wetsuit and bikini top into a plastic bag, and retrieving a pair of shorts from her gym bag. “That shark’s gone now.”

I frowned. It took me a second to realise what she was saying. Glancing down, my hard-on was still prominent in my shorts. I looked back at her, defeated.

She held my gaze a moment, a Cheshire grin spreading across her face. She always had to have the last word, even if it was a gloating giggle. Throwing the door shut, George climbed in behind the wheel and fired up the Landcruiser.

The air conditioner roared as it blew the stifling heat from inside the car. Still hanging out of the door, I brushed the sand from my calves and feet before putting on my shoes and socks. George was already filling out her log book, recording times and depths, and working out our surface interval. I did the same once I was in, using the charts to confirm her calculations. It would be another sixteen hours before the nitrogen in our blood dissipated to a safe enough level for us to dive again.

A short, winding road led us out towards the Princes Highway a few minutes later, where George patiently waited for a gap in the traffic. As she looked out her window at the oncoming cars, I took the opportunity to sneak a peek at her legs. The hem of her shorts had risen high up her thighs.

Of course, she caught me again. My face burned as she glared at me over the top of her sunglasses. The corners of her mouth pulled back in a bemused smirk. She snorted, then shook her head.

“So… um…what do you think about that trawler?” I swallowed, trying to change the subject. “I think it’d make a pretty good dive site.”

“Yeah, it’s not bad,” she said, pulling out onto the single-lane highway. “I’m a bit worried about all those nets and cables though. They’re a real snagging hazard. We’ll talk to the salvage guys and see what they think.”

The reality was that it would probably be easier, and therefore cheaper, to raise the trawler entirely. Not only would the kilometres of nets and lines need to be recovered if the wreck was to be left in place, but all its fuel would need to be pumped out as well before it contaminated the Marine Park. That was a much more delicate operation than just floating the vessel onto a barge and hauling it away.

We continued chatting about the wreck and the arduous paperwork we had ahead of us that afternoon as we drove north, the Landcruiser lurching from one sweeping bend to the next. Sunlight splashed on the windscreen through the snarled limbs of eucalypts beside the road. Wild scrub blurred past too, along with the sporadic coastal buildings in various states of repair.

“Can we stop at Berny’s for lunch?” I pleaded like a little boy as we rumbled into Batehaven.

George shot me a quick smile and heaved us right at the next set of traffic lights, catching the last of the amber arrow. It was still the school holidays, and the parking around the shops was a nightmare. We both scanned the area for possibilities. Finally eyeing a dumpy family returning to their car across the road from Berny’s, she flicked on her indicator to claim the space.

While George’s attention was on the holiday makers bundling themselves into their light-blue Nissan Pintara, mine once again fell to her shapely thighs.

“Seriously, Dude, what is with you today?” Her entire face was screwed up in a what-the-fuck expression. “You’re perving way more than usual.”

I stammered, my heart thumping in time with the clip-clop of the indicators. “I don’t know what…‘usual’? What do you mean?” Then, eventually finding something approaching wit, I tentatively offered, “I just have a new-found appreciation for life.”

“Yeah, right,” she laughed, easing the car into the empty space. “You’re hopeless.”

We climbed out of the car and made our way across the park to the traffic lights. I did my best to avoid eye contact with her as we walked over the grass. But I should have known she wasn’t going to let me off the hook that easily.

“I tell you what, why don’t you head over there,” she cocked her head at the toilet block farther inside the park towards the water. “And take care of yourself. You know? Get rid of some of that…adrenalin.” Then, particularly pleased with herself as she pressed the button for the pedestrian crossing, she added, “You never know your luck, there might be a glory hole.”

“Is that an offer?” I shot back with a cheeky grin. The filter between my juvenile brain and my mouth had clearly failed. I could already feel the heat of regret spreading across my face.

Interestingly though, George’s cheeks stained a pinkish hue as well. Trying to mask it, she stuck her tongue out at me, along with a twitch of her nose.

“Oh, good idea,” I foolishly went on. “That way I’ll be able to recognise you when you’re on the other side.” In for a penny, in for a pound, I suppose.

George threw her hand over her gaping mouth, her astonished guffaw causing the other pedestrians around us to stare. It was the absolute-most inappropriate thing I could have said, and she loved it. She still punched me hard in the arm in the pretence of being offended, but as the pedestrian signal beeped in quick succession to release us across the road, she kept laughing.

When we got to the other side, George planted her feet and touched my arm. “Hey, why don’t you go ahead and order. I’m just going to nip over to that surf shop and see if they have any decent wetsuits.”

I glanced across the other road of the intersection to the short line of shops. “Sure. You want the perch?”

She nodded. “And some potato scallops,” she sang as she leapt out onto the road at the rapidly beeping signal.

Still rooted to the spot, I frowned. “What about the hand-cut chips?”

George flashed me a wicked grin over her shoulder. “I’ll just steal some of yours.”

I huffed a laugh, thoroughly impressed with her moxie. As she bounced across the road, my eyes were once again glued to her perfect ass in those snug brown shorts. In retrospect, I probably should have headed off in the other direction to order the fish and chips instead. Still, I couldn’t tear myself away. Nor did I want to.

George looked back at me from the footpath on the other side and flashed me a knowing smile. Like a dickhead, I allowed myself to wonder if there was anything in her turning back. But that idea was shattered when she flicked her head towards the toilet block and made a wanking gesture with her hand. To top it off, she splayed her fingers out at the top of the fourth or fifth upstroke to mime an ejaculation.

Cringing, I dropped my head in shame. I couldn’t hear it across the traffic, but I saw her head thrown back in laughter. “Fuckin’ George,” I sighed under my breath, spinning on my heel to retreat to Berny’s.

The popular takeaway was packed, as it always was in summer, the queue spilling outside. It took a good twenty minutes just to get to the counter to order. With my number in hand, I escaped the shoulder-to-shoulder throng inside to wait for George out on the street. I couldn’t see her though, so I made my way over towards the surf shop.

A refreshing blast of air conditioning, and not so of outdated reggae, greeted me as I entered the surf shop. Scanning the space, I could see that the left wall was lined with an assortment of surf boogie boards, complete with a clutch of teenage boys big-noting themselves in front of their respective favourites. A young mother was wrestling her two small children into face masks and snorkels by the door, while three scantily-clad blondes posed by the sunglasses display on the right near the counter. The rest of the shop was dedicated to brightly-coloured beach wear, with the swimsuits and wetsuits along the back wall.

I couldn’t see George anywhere. Thinking she might be in one of the change rooms, I weaved my way through the racks of Billabong, Mambo and Rip Curl towards the back corner. Just past the register, there was a short hallway, with two curtained stalls on each side and a full-length mirror at the end.

“George?” I half-whispered, like it was a big secret.

“Will? Is that you?” she whispered back, poking her head out from behind a blue curtain on the right.

“Oh, hey,” I beamed. “Berny’s is heaving. It’s going to be about thirty minutes on the fish and –“

“Quick!” she hissed. “I need your help. I’m stuck.”

“Of course you are,” I chuckled, stepping over to her change room. I could see her reflection over the top of her head around the curtain. The zipper of the navy-blue wetsuit she was trying on was stuck fast between her shoulder blades.

She looked up at me, her eyes pleading pitifully. “I’ve been trying to get out of this fucking thing for the last twenty minutes,” she whispered through gritted teeth.

My shoulders bounced with silent laughter. “Why didn’t you ask the sales assistant for a hand?”

We both looked over at the pimply-faced teen behind the counter ogling the blondes. Then she glared up at me, an eyebrow lifted in a question that needed no answer.

“Yeah, all right,” I grinned, pushing her back into the change room and closing the curtain behind us.

I towered over her, the confined space only exaggerating our height difference. Conscious not to appear physically intimidating, I sat back on the stool in the corner. It brought my eyes level with her breasts and the very apt Adrenalin logo scrawled in yellow across them, and I had to swallow the smirk from my face.

“What?” I pleaded innocence as she narrowed her eyes at me.

George shook her head and turned around, her back to me. From the reflections bouncing off the mirrors in front and beside her, I noticed her smiling to herself. She was staring off into space.

Turning my attention to her zipper, I could see it was caught on the strap of a red bikini top she was obviously trying on as well. It took a bit of manhandling to get it free. George’s petite frame swayed back and forth, the backs of her smooth legs brushing against mine under my ministrations. “So, am I going up or down?”

“Huh?” She was a million miles away. “Oh, um… go up, I guess.”

She twisted and twirled, studying herself from every angle in the mirrors. “Hmmm, I don’t know. What do you think?”

I brushed my fingers down her left side. The wetsuit was almost loose around her waist. Then I pulled her around by her hip bone to face me, the neoprene unreasonably taut around her curves. I had to drop my head to one side to get a close look between her legs.

“Ah, are you all right there?” she balked, her hands self-consciously hovering above her hips.

The crotch was unflatteringly baggy. “This is a guy’s wetsuit, isn’t it?” I accused, smirking up at her.

She pressed her lips together, and her hands settled on her hips. “The women’s ones are too…”

“Girlie?” My eyebrows rose to emphasise my mockery.

George blushed slightly. “You don’t know me,” she conceded with a giggle.

“Ah-ha.” I looked back down at her crotch. “Well, Georgie Girl, this one needs a cock in it.” It elicited a bawdy chuckle from her, and I lifted my gaze to meet her eyes with a mischievous grin. Pointing up at another wetsuit hanging on a hook in the change room, I asked, “What about that? Is that a chick’s one?”

“Yeah,” she groaned, her shoulders slumping as she did. She turned her back to me again. “Here. Help me out of this, will you?”

I unzipped her down to the small of her back. Then holding the right-hand-side away from her grazed shoulder, I helped her peel the tight navy neoprene off her arm. George did the left on her own, turning it inside out in the process. The top half bunched around her waist, and she squirmed to get her fingers between the rest of it and her skin.

It was far too tight around her hips, and when she pulled it down, her bikini bottoms went with it. My eyes boggled at the four inches or so of ass crack that revealed itself. In an instant, my body flushed with intense warmth and my heart began to pound in my chest. My erection, too, strained uncomfortably in the Speedos beneath my uniform.

She seemed aware of the accidental exposure, but was totally consumed with separating the wetsuit from her bikini. I don’t know how long I gawked at the top half of her ass, which was well within reach. I was almost in shock.

Like I did in the water only an hour or so earlier, I summoned my wits. There was no way I was going to miss this. I shot a sideways glance into the mirror. The reflection of George’s neatly-trimmed pubic hair pinballed right into my line of sight, her short, dark curls poking over the lowered red waistband of her swimsuit.

Hobbled by the wetsuit around her thighs, George pulled her bikini bottoms back into place. The tag was still attached, and it stuck to the sweat-moistened apex of her hip. She turned and leaned over me, steadying herself on my shoulder with one hand as she tugged at the gathered neoprene around her legs.

Her breasts were right in my face. I’m not sure whether it was the incredible closeness, the deep cleavage caused by the cut of the bikini top, or the gorgeous contrast of the dark-red fabric with her creamy complexion, but I was mesmerised. I couldn’t stop staring.

The jiggling stilled as she finally kicked the wetsuit into the corner with an elastic thud. I could have sworn I could see her nipples stiffening through the red material. What I couldn’t perceive, though, was George making any attempt to stand up straight. She kept leaning over me, her hands on my shoulders.

My sixth sense twinged. I could feel her eyes boring into the top of my head. Tearing myself away from her perfect breasts, I looked up to meet her gaze.

Her deep-blue eyes smouldered inches above mine, our noses nearly touching. I could feel her breath against my lips. It was cool, and from what I could tell, steady. I listened for it in the almost smothering closeness, but the heartbeat hammering in my ears was the only sound.

Her eyes flicked down for a second, then darted back up with a twinkle. “See another shark, huh?” she breathed smugly.

My face flushed, and I could feel the sweat prickling on my forehead. I desperately wanted to move my hands to conceal the erection tenting my shorts, but I dared not move a muscle. I was frozen to the spot.

The shark swam away. George pushed against my shoulders as she stood, her cheeks coloured slightly. She gave me a wry smile and spun to retrieve the wetsuit hanging on the wall behind her.

Not for the first time that morning, I exhaled the fire from my lungs and took a breath. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on.

George stepped into the purple wetsuit and threw her arms into it. Despite plenty of stretching and snapping, it went on a lot more easily than the last one had come off. The tight neoprene hugged her body perfectly. As she zipped it up the front, the flourishes of pink on the sides of her torso came together to cup her breasts and accentuate her curves.

“Oh, I don’t think so,” she sighed after a thorough examination of her pirouetting reflections. She was definitely more sexy surfer chick than hard-core marine park ranger.

“I like it.” I grinned up at her impishly.

“I bet you do,” she scolded, her hands on her hips. She continued to decry the abundance of pink on the feminine design.

“No, seriously.” I ran my fingers across the streaked pink material on her stomach. “Remember, your BC is going to cover all this. It’s pretty much just purple, like your last one.”

She studied herself in the mirrors once more, clearly debating in her mind whether she should settle for the wetsuit. Rejecting it would mean battling the crowds at the mall in Batemans Bay after work for an alternative, given we were diving again the next morning. Resigned, she turned back to me and sighed, “Fine.”

“Way to go, Gidget,” I teased.

George wrinkled her nose at me in retaliation, but unusually, she didn’t bite back. She just stood there, staring at me. That same smouldering expression returned to her face along with the hue that began to stain her throat and cheeks.

The knocking pulse returned to my ears as the air thickened in the small cubicle.

George slowly unzipped her wetsuit. She drew the zip down between her breasts, holding my gaze the entire time. A sharp triangular sliver of her creamy skin grew down her stomach. Each click of the zipper’s teeth seemed to pound in my head. It echoed like we were still underwater, every tick somehow raising the tension.

She peeled the pink and purple neoprene off her shoulders, leaving her top clad in only that red bikini. Then the agonisingly slow wriggle of her hips as she worked the wetsuit down her thighs. She bent forward to guide it past her knees, her cleavage deepening in the process.

The whole thing seemed to go in slow motion.

Straightening, George swept the wetsuit away with a bare foot. She stood there in her red bikini, staring deep into my eyes. I noticed the rise and fall of her chest, much more than it otherwise should have been. It was only an instant, but I could have sworn I heard the faintest tremble in her breath.

She dropped to her knees between mine.

My own breathing had already halted. Still, I managed to somehow gasp. My entire body seared with an immense humidity. It was dizzying.

George had the button of my shorts undone and the zip halfway down before I realised what was happening. There was no tenderness in her touch, just a clinical, businesslike efficiency. She yanked the cord of my Speedos, taking the tight bow with it. Then reaching in over the black waistband, she lifted out my rigid cock, together with my balls.

Her eyes darted up at me as her head sank down into my lap. Just like a shark, they appeared to close when her jaws opened. My cock disappeared into her mouth in an instant. She consumed my entire length in one bite.

I gasped again, helpless to her attack. The tightness of her suck, the heat of her mouth, the wetness of her saliva. I was doomed.

Her head bobbed back and forth along my shaft in moaning wet smacks. Joining the frenzy, her tight fist pumped in shorter, faster strokes at the base. The soft cradle of her tongue together with the twisting grip of her hand was phenomenal. Adding to the lurid sensations, her other hand cupped my balls, gently kneading them with her fingers.

I was paralysed.

My feeble brain struggled with the scene. I couldn’t make sense of it. Flirtatious banter, sure. But a spontaneous blowjob in a change room?

Blinking away the confusion, I decided to just go with it. I tentatively reached out and combed my fingers through her short dark hair as she blew me. There was an intimacy in that touch that strangely surpassed what we were already doing.

George threw her head back and glared up at me. She pointed my cock at me like an accusing finger. “And don’t go thinking this is a thing,” she warned.

Holding my hands up in surrender, I quickly agreed, “No, not at all. But hey,” I panted with a shrug. “If this is what happens whenever we see a shark, I’m going to start diving with pork chops tied to my belt.”

George snarled at me from beneath my cock, her eyes flashing with menace. But as she licked the drizzle of pre-cum from the tip of my penis, she couldn’t help but huff a laugh. When she did, her shiny pink lips slid back to reveal a broad smile full of teeth.

“Easy with those,” I cowered in jest, which of course made her smile all the broader.

She dipped her gaze and returned her attention to my cock, sucking the head into her mouth. George’s tongue lapped at the seam where the head met my shaft until she regained control of her smile. Then, as before, she eased my length farther inside. The stilted harmony of our breathing blocked out all other sound in the surf shop, save for her rhythmic slurping.

I brushed my fingers through her ebony locks again. I didn’t care how presumptuous it was to gently cup the back of her head as it bobbed back and forth. In fact, I craved the affection. I eagerly wanted to feel that connection with her.

George’s deep-blue eyes gazed up at me as she released my cock. She ran her lips down the underside of my shaft and took one of my balls into her mouth. Still wanking me with one hand, she tickled my perineum with the other, stroking her fingertips dangerously close to my asshole.

“Oh, fuck!” I gasped. I was taken aback by how good it felt to have my ass tickled.

George blushed deeply, seemingly embarrassed her proficiency for ass-play was no longer a secret. Still, she kept spiralling her finger around my knot as she licked back up the bottom of my cock like an ice-cream cone. I don’t know how many laps she made from base to tip, but each one brought me closer and closer to the brink.

Once again, she sucked my cock into her mouth. My saliva-slicked shaft glistened under the glow of the halogen downlights above. Her engorged lips kept pace with her fist as it pistoned up and down my length. The whole time, George kept her eyes locked on mine.

I held on as long as I could, but I was racked with tremors. “Oh my God,” I wheezed. “George, I’m…I’m going to…”

Although she kept furiously jacking my shaft with her hand, she held her head still on my cock, her lips forming a tight seal around my glans. Her eyes softened and her expression radiated kindness. It was a silent invitation. She was accepting me.

I erupted in her mouth. Every blast of semen gushed with an intensity I couldn’t remember experiencing before. I bit down, clenching my jaw to try and stifle my groans. Each one involuntarily escaped through my teeth with every spurt of cum.

I buckled over, tightly clasping George’s head for support. My knuckles were white. The contrast with her dark hair was extraordinary.

Watching her gulp and swallow down my cum was one of the sexiest things I have ever seen. She didn’t spill a single drop. Better yet, she kept sucking my cock, licking the tip to capture the last of my semen.

“Is everything okay in there?” an awkward teen voice enquired from the other side of the curtain.

George’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, and she stared up at me in a panic. Still, she made no move to release my cock from her mouth.

“Ah, yeah, Mate. Thanks,” I offered. “We’ll just be a minute.”

“Cool,” the sales assistant grunted as he scuffed back along the carpet towards the counter.

I flashed a big smile down at George, who still had my cock in her mouth. She lifted her last three fingers off my shaft, forming an ‘okay’ signal of sorts, with my penis threading the circle made by her thumb and forefinger. I barked a short laugh and shook my head at her. Her lips peeled back in a smile, ominously exposing her teeth again.

My amusement faded as I watched her lazily suck the last of my erection. The almost unbearable sensitivity waned, giving way to a renewed arousal. The tingle in my cock buzzed all the way to the head and I fought the shiver it radiated throughout my body.

George stared into my eyes as she fellated me, but her brows soon knitted with confusion. She frowned down at my still-hard cock bridging the gap between her mouth and my groin. It wasn’t softening. When she looked back up, her expression was desperate, almost pleading.

Redoubling her efforts, George began blowing me in earnest. It was as if she felt personally responsible for draining my hard-on. She rammed herself onto my cock over and over, taking me deeper with every stroke.

My vision was a kaleidoscope of stars as I gulped down huge lungfuls of air. I was exhausted, and my breath roared in the claustrophobic change room. Trickles of sweat tickled at my back and chest, and I could feel the moisture growing on my face and forearms.

George was a mess too. Her ragged breathing had devolved into more of a fevered grunting. She slurped wildly, losing control of streams of saliva and occasionally gagging on my cock. Her skin glistened with sweat, and the reflections of her sleek, half-nude body were captivating in that red bikini.

Sitting back on her heels, George let my cock slip from between her lips with a pop. She gasped for air, no longer able to inhale what she needed through her nose. Her stunning blue eyes met mine, and she began seductively licking the underside of my length as she had before. Except this time, she smeared my shaft across her face, basting her porcelain skin with saliva and pre-cum.

She made a filthy show of devouring my cock. It was just so wonderfully sloppy.

Blushing, she spread her knees on the carpet and ran a hand down over her flat stomach. Her fingers made their way inside her red bikini bottoms. As they did, the waistband stretched away, revealing snippets of her dark pubic hair.

George strummed at her clit, causing her whole body to writhe as she did. Her soft, breathy moans were music to my ears. The sight of her masturbating in front of me as she licked and wanked my cock was mind-blowing. My grip on her head tightened, my fingers interlacing behind her.

Then her hand dove deeper. More of her bush came into view as she undoubtedly slipped her fingers inside her pussy. Her earthy arousal permeated the confined space, and I was lost.

I wanted her. I wanted to taste her. I wanted to be inside her.

But I was frozen with fear.

Just like reaching for the shark, I knew better than to force the issue. As much as I wanted to lift her up onto my lap, or stand her up and bend her over the stool, I couldn’t do it. This encounter, whatever the fuck it was, was entirely on her terms.

George was close, as I was. She made no attempt to stifle her moans. With her creamy thighs splayed, she unabashedly fingered herself as she jacked my cock into her mouth.

The tingle swelled deep inside. I shuddered uncontrollably. I wanted to hold on just that little bit longer, but my orgasm surged inside me like a tidal wave.

George’s own climax crashed through her first, forcing her to yawn off my cock with a tortured groan. Her thighs clamped shut on the hand down the front of her swimsuit, and her body bucked in heaving spasms.

I was gone a moment later. A thick rope of cum sprang from my cock onto her cheek and coiled in on itself, before dripping down off her face. It landed on her left breast, oozing over the protruding bump of her nipple in that red bikini.

George caught the second and third jets of spunk in her gaping mouth, then clamped her lips around the spewing head of my cock to capture the rest. She didn’t do as well the second time around, with much of my seed dribbling down her chin.

With a heavy-lidded expression, George slowly lapped the remaining cum from my deflating cock. She used her fingers to gather up the stray dollops that adorned her face and chest, and carefully sucked them clean. She looked up at me as she did, the corners of her mouth pulling in a wicked smirk.

I was speechless.

Without saying a word, she stood up and inspected herself in one of the mirrors. She was far from presentable. Her face was a little grubby, but she wiped it clean with her forearm. Not so easily fixed, the left cup of her bikini top was marked with a large cum stain, and the crotch of her bottoms were clearly wet.

Not to be defeated, she snapped the tag off her hip, then reached behind her back to rip the other one off the clasp of her top. Grabbing up her uniform from the floor, she looked over at me as she put it on over the bikini. “Well, come on. Our fish and chips will get cold.”

Just like that, it was over.

I dumbly followed her from the change room, and helplessly watched on as she dumped the pink wetsuit and the bikini tags on the counter. “I’m wearing the bikini,” she announced to the pimply-faced teen, unfastening a button to expose a flash of it covering her right breast, shortly followed by pulling the waistband of her shorts down an inch or so to reveal the bottoms.

“Whoa! Cool.” He was just as dumbstruck as I, but eventually got it together enough to ring up the sale.

“Oh, hey, wait a minute,” I tried to interject, reaching for my wallet. “I should get this.”

“Don’t worry about it,” George dismissed, waving her hand and avoiding eye contact. “I’ll get work to reimburse me.”

I didn’t know what to do with myself. My face burned. I was convinced everyone in the surf shop knew I had just had my cock sucked. All I could do was awkwardly follow her outside and try not to knock anything over.

We silently made our way to Berny’s, not looking at each other. The tension was palpable. I couldn’t rationalise what had just happened. I didn’t know what it meant.

“You’re not going to get all weird on me now, are you?” George narrowed her eyes at me as she punched the button for the pedestrian crossing.

I shook my head, unable to find any words. Again, I felt my face flush. I desperately needed to talk it through with her, but it was painfully clear that was not an option.

She squinted up at me. Looking away, she slipped her sunglasses on and sighed under her breath, “Oh, God.”

Throwing my head back, I squeezed my eyes shut and let the rapid beeps of the traffic lights take her away. Her judgement was mortifying.

I stepped off the curb after her. Skipping to catch up, I fell in beside her. A thousand thoughts flooded my mind. The better of them screamed at me to just pretend nothing had happened in that change room.

It was obviously what George wanted.

An older couple stood up from one of the two tables out the front of Berny’s just as we arrived, and George pounced into a vacated seat almost before the man had finished pulling it out. She sat vigil under the scornful stares of other customers who had been waiting out the pair, while I went in to collect our order. The chaos inside was a welcome distraction from my confusion, as I had to concentrate on listening for my number to be shrieked above the din.

Fumbling the searing package of fish and chips onto the table a few minutes later, along with a couple of bottles of Pepsi MAX, I sat down. George tore into the butcher’s paper wrapping our food and juggled a piping-hot chip into her mouth.

“Hey!” I objected, sliding the cardboard tray away from her.

She chewed a smug, open-mouthed grin at me as she pulled a piece of battered perch out onto the paper in front of her. Licking the heat from her fingertips, she twisted the lid off her Pepsi and asked, “Can you pass me some lemon, please?”

“You want some lemon?” I confirmed.

“Yeah, it’s really talking to me.” George took a big swig of her soft drink.

I fished a wedge out of the box and held it up in front of my mouth. Pretending to be the lemon, in my deepest, creepiest voice, I sneered, “I want to be inside you.”

George spat an enormous foaming spray of Pepsi onto the pavement, almost as much of it again pouring from her nose. She threw her hand to her mouth in a futile attempt to hold back the liquid, coughing and spluttering in fits of laughter.

“You shit!” she laughed, punching me hard in the arm as I offered her a napkin.

We were back to normal.

***

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed it.

This is just one of the fun stories in the Lush Summer anthology, currently available on Amazon. It includes some sizzling hot pieces from Buz, Liz, Poppet, Molly Doll and Pervy Storyteller too. And if that’s not enough of a teaser, it’s also one of the only places you’ll still find a smoking hot story from Sitting, a.k.a. Papergirl. Trust me, pick yourself up a copy.