**Teri**

Welcome to another misty noon in Moose Bridge Harbor - the Bridge, as locals say - where the air looks as if it's been jetted from a vaporizer and even a flying volleyball seems to gather dewdrops. Blame the sleep-sucking heatwave back home in the Hudson Valley that's frying car seats (and the screaming thighs that weld to them) for the sixth day in a row. Even from Portland to Presque Isle, it's reported that sidewalks are steaming like Sunday night tempers at the Hampton tolls.

I've escaped all that, of course. Out on the peninsula, the sea buffers June's dying dragon gasp into a wet-muzzled, barkless sheepdog, which any minute now will shake its fluffy coat and fan beachgoers with a friendly onshore wag. Unlike the Cape's famous Saharan sandscapes, Quonnicut Beach is a quaint crescent half-carpeted with stones at low tide. But a fragrant necklace of balsam pine and islet cufflinks beautify the little strand into a best-kept-secret destination. 

Between the weathered cedar bathhouse and silvery pillows of dune grass sprawls a recreational area where tourists and townies alike join flailing forests on either side of the threadbare net. There's no line referee. Players, much like the ramshackle blueberry stands lining Route 3, are on the honor system.

It's the perfect hideaway to exercise paroled-from-senior-year-study-grind wings and dust off the residue from Forgot His Name, who had the colossal cojones to ditch me the day after senior prom for Hatchet Profiled Homewrecker. I have to admit that four hundred miles of separation plus four hours a day of slamming ball beat the heck out of the urge to embellish the latest 'couple selfies' on his Snapchat with Snidely Whiplash mustaches - not that I could even access Snapchat in this village where Bluetooth is spelled with lower-case, always in the plural and refers to the condition of your dentistry after a serving of the Hungry Buoy Diner's most famous pie.

New acquaintances have also helped, like Lauren, the ginger-kitten Colby undergrad whose mewls of 'y'all' softened even stony Mrs. Danforth when the latter rang up our sunblock and Tic-Tacs at the apothecary's behemoth bronze bell of a cash register. Unfortunately, Lauren's just passing through on her way to Savannah and she's probably charming a new pair of gloves onto a TSA capo at the Jetport about now. I miss her sweet-tea mojo already.

"Match point!"

The foghorn shout belongs to a zinc-anointed warrior who relays the ball toward a girl about my age poised coolly behind the end line. Soundlessly her fingers trap the pass before it can rebound off the lofty Blue Hills mounding the front of her tank top. Above them, a pair of latte lips aerates and cracks hot-pink balloons of gum. 

I have no idea what her name is but have spotted her about the beach and village. Those striking eyes stand out in a crowd. No, not like the chick who was all over social media a few years back, the one whose look was, well, Surfer Groucho. The brows are far less extreme - think vanilla beans instead of Vanilla Ice. Pretty sure she's a natural blonde too. Texture-wise, not California-shiny but more rustic, like a coyote's winter coat.

Barbi Breckenridge, walking mannequin for Revlon and sorority queen of Van Cortlandt High, isn't even in the same league.

"Slut's turn to serve," hisses from behind me. 

She tosses, leaps, then connects with a well-aimed fist.

This is no casual lob but a missile that whooshes five feet to my left and dodges two sets of upstretched arms. Heads in the second row duck in self-preservation and allow the ball to crater the sand, inches from a token dive.

Cheers override groans; players scatter like marbles. Some roll toward the beach while others, drawn by the greasy waft from sizzling clam fritters, cluster under the snack bar's faded Coke signs.

My side might have lost, but secretly I'm gloating over how the slandered scorer showed up the Bitch Whisperers. Now is as good an opportunity as any to introduce myself and congratulate Vanilla Eyes before the rest of her fan club shows up. 

She's bent forward rummaging her canvas tote, profile veiled by fanned-out locks, caramel shoulders warmed by a milky splash of sunlight. Her roomy caboose strains the gym shorts into a relief map of their subsurface. Today's Rand McNally is cotton-plain with well-defined borders.

"Nice job," is the most I can manage, attention diverted by the primitive gull wings etched across her butt cheeks.

The ace goddess straightens and turns my way, lips hooked into a smirk that makes it clear I've been busted. She's even prettier up close.

"Thanks, New Yawk." The coastal drawl smokes of Demi Moore and accessorizes the sable brows to perfection.

From two words? What is she, some kind of linguistics prodigy too?

"Hey, Dawn," squeaks from my left.

Here come her homies. At least I said my piece. "Hey, Brooke," the blonde calls past my shoulder. "You missed a good game."

Turns out Squeaky aka Brooke isn't breaking stride, and her, "Maybe tomorrow. Catch you then!" fades into the thump and whoosh of an incoming swell.

We're alone again and my adrenaline-fueled bravado has crashed and burned. I can't think of a thing to say other than to sputter my name and, "Nice meeting you." 

"You were here last year," Dawn challenges, flicking the coyote tail over her shoulder. The briny dampness blooms with sugared orange blossoms. 

"Yeah..." Between her scent and the midnight sun of her stare, my pulse is doing pirouettes. "I stay with my aunt. How 'bout you?”

“Live here, just the other side of Harbor Ro-oww! Shit!"

"You okay?" Did she twist something? One leg bent flamingo-style, she's hobbling over to rest on a nearby boulder. I follow discreetly in her wake, ready to help without hovering.

"Yeah. Fucking stones." She hoists an ankle atop the opposite knee so she can inspect her sneaker. 

"I know, right? Happens to me all the time."

While she attacks the lacing, the leg opening of her shorts yawns like a windblown curtain to reveal the innermost sweep of its occupying thigh. Moments ago, the same limb was a sturdy propellant for victory. Its musculature, now in repose, softens to a gilded curve of temptation luring the eye inward, where a shaded juncture...

Hold up. What exactly are you looking at?

... is hiding the gull of her gull wings...

Mind your own business.

... and if one focuses hard enough... 

No. Don't even think about it.

There it is - a pale slender funnel, barely visible where the shade is deepest... 

I said behave yourself!

It takes a strong dose of willpower to look dutifully downward. Virtue's reward is - eww - a cigarette butt crushed in a dirt nap. 

Screw virtue.

What did you just say?

Fuck virtue. Check out that painted-on gusset that, well, isn't covering much on this side of her kitty-cat canyon. 

Wash your brain out with soap, pervette.

First impressions, after the obvious shock value? Nicely xeriscaped. Quite photogenic. Upload this, and porn surfers would unzip and grab themselves in record numbers.

Heh. Someone's been browsing Desktop Dix waaay too much.

Offstage, her French-manicured grip twists the heel free. The ripple effect flaps the scene shut, then open, shut, open.

I realize my fingers are crossed inside my pocket. It stays open.

Though I'm no mathematician - cute Mr. Kirby notwithstanding - my imagination quantum-leaps into theories on how such cloistered smoothness might have acquired its lovely tan. Theories such as the velocity of a tossed thong, complementary angles of parted limbs and solar penetration, degrees of friction in lotion application techniques leading to spontaneous surface tension experiments -

Will you have some respect for a person's privacy? My A-student side stamps its foot, startling my truant twin into a guilty glance at our new acquaintance's newer frown.

See? Curiosity just killed your social cat.

She's looking daggers - at her empty shoe.

Whew. That was close. Better not push your luck.

But this visual cookie jar is too tantalizing not to take advantage of its lifted lid. And the risk-reward ratio sweetens upon observing how the taut meringue slingshot molds to the narrow frond of her inner lips and purses both boundaries into one delectable honey-glazed pout. The overall effect is Oreo Golden. Or, as a typical From Away observer who didn't know any better might think, snickerdoodle whoopie pie.

Knock it off!

The flutter in that spot normally tweaked by pop icon Anton Sivrett's leather-hugged stage bulge is making me wish Blondie's maneuvers would uncover a little more. Or better yet, rip the canvas altogether. Anything to answer the riddle of whether her Intracoastal matches the aesthetic appeal of its Outer Banks. 

So tight... one deep breath could pop it right open...

My thighs clamp together to suppress the sudden zig-zagging effervescence, which only makes it worse, like dropping an unopened can of Moxie during the late-night fridge raid.

If she catches you gawking, the rest of your summer is toast.

Miraculously, she doesn't, and when her posture changes again, it's not in a Peeping Tomika's favor. The cookie jar is moved out of reach.

What was she saying? Oh yeah... Harbor Road.

“Lucky you. Wish I could stay after the summer." Disappointed, I heave a sigh at the pine-spiked horizon, dreaming of a certain creamy contrail.

Having ejected the offending pebble, she cinches the bow, leaps to her feet and snorts. “You haven't been here in winter. Snow up to your ass, and there's nothing to do but shovel it.”

Bang. It's a shot over the bow and enough to chase off the naughty nibbles. Despite occasional annoyance at the Bridge's lack of infrastructure, a lot of its memories have been collected and treasured: rainy-day sunporch hours immersed in a tattered paperback, wild-rose-scented bike rides to the village for postcards, and of course, the cute weatherman who brightens over-the-air TV from Bangor. Even if Miss I-Live-Here has a point, I refuse to indulge self-pity about being marooned in such a magical place.

“Not so different from home, then. But it’s getting hot now and I could go for a swim.”

“I’ll go with you. Wait for me while I change?"

Huh? Back home, I'm as visible to the 'in' girls as cashless constituents to a congressman. Now someone who makes even Barbi Breckenridge look like a spaz wants to tag along on my outing? Anton might as well be asking me to be his date for the Grammys. Okay, maybe not quite.

"Um... sure. I have to change too."

We take side-by-side dressing cubicles in the small, rustic bathhouse. The door hook is broken but it's damp enough for the panel to stick shut. I set the beach bag on a sand-caked bench and coax a pink scrap from its terrycloth cocoon as shrieks of acute discomfort pierce the hiss and splatter from the communal cold-water shower.

"What happened to that redhead you were hanging with?" echoes from Dawn's side.

Hmm. She's noticed more than I thought. "Lauren? She flew back home for the summer."

Beneath the painted-wood partition scribbled with 'J Luvs D' graffiti, Dawn's shorts and panties glide down over the tanned calves, form snowy hoops for her Skechers, then whisk out of sight, leaving legs bare and... and... and a lot of inappropriate curiosities to swarm and attack like Aroostook blackflies. Except these feel much different. Like feathers instead of bites. 

Act normal. At least, try. "So how'd you know where I'm from?"

"Your t-shirt."

"Oh." Logo amnesia humiliates another wearer. The Judas screenprint distorts when I unhook my bra, enjoy the random caress of its loose ends, and stretch the straps through the sleeves. "Could've been a gift." It isn't. I'm just messing with her.

One by one, her shapely legs thread a glimpse of lucky - I mean, bright - yellow. "We don't get too many from your tribe out this way, but I've heard enough of you to recognize one." 

As my skivvies come off I stare at the clear sap drizzling their hammock, bewildered anyone but Anton could have tapped it. Hasn't it only been hours since I propped up his picture, fingers instigating their usual mischief under the sleep-warmed LL Bean duvet until I bit my lip through two... Geez, wasn't that enough to calm things down at least till tonight? 

I'm debating whether there's time - and whether I can be quiet enough - to delay pulling up my suit and erase the zig-zagging feathers with a few targeted rubs when a sharp knock on the partition collapses the opening argument.

"I said, how long you here for?" Dawn is asking with a second-time-around edge.

"Oh, sorry. Last week in August." Forget the fun method. Shock therapy in a cold sea will have to do instead. I snap the shoulder straps into place and grip the top of the stuck door. It opens with a scuff and a squeak. 

Dawn emerges a few seconds later in a bikini that barely restrains a pair of pomelo swells in its lemon-sized cups and frames a surprisingly flat wall of tummy dusted with the same sun-bleached down that highlights her forearms. The coyote-fur tresses are coiled into a loose topknot. The overall effect is...

"Wow." Where's my camera when I need it? Barbi Breckenridge would turn bile green under her bleached roots.

She glances at my chest and grins. "Cute nips."

What did she just say?  

I look down and there they are - twin buds puckering the skintight fabric as if to blow tiny kisses at Dawn's haltered, jutting supremacies. 

Before we can get to the exit, I unzip the bag and scramble for the safety of the t-shirt once more. Tomorrow I'll be sure to pack the ribbed flower-print. Not even the business end of a thumbtack could show through that.
 

**Dawn**
 

He's waiting when we come out of the changing area. He doesn't say anything, just leans against the breezeway scrolling his phone. But his first glance peels away the skimpy bikini I squeezed into not five minutes ago.

"Mind taking this? I'll be out in a few." I hand my tote to the girl with the cute nips. Too bad she's such a prude and put her shirt back on. Even now, she hesitates. "Go ahead, set up anywhere. I'll find you."

She nods and is carried off in a squealing tomato tide of Parks and Rec t-shirts, so anxious to get to the water that I doubt she's noticed him.

I bend down and pretend to retie my shoe until the passing group wanders out of earshot. "The fuck are you doing here?"

"Hoping to run into you." Barechested and buff in khaki shorts with a low-slung waistband, Reid Collins looks scrumptious, more like a fitness model than the future starting QB at Orono.

No surprise there. Lissa Brewer, his touch-me-not cheerleader, is out of town for the week.

"I'm kinda busy," I shrug, though a twitch down below says otherwise.

"Just for a minute. Please?"

Something else is missing besides the shirt: his cocky-jock smirk. His eyes are moist and pleading. He's never come on to me in public like this before and if Lissa Brewer gets wind of it, we'll both be up shit creek.

By my calculations, he's had no nookie for the past three weeks. He must need to get off really bad to take this kind of risk. 

Flagship trickles French-kiss the twitch. "Okay. Just for a minute."

We steal separately to the woods off a remote corner of the parking lot. As soon we can't be seen, he starts to back me into a fir, tongue diving into my mouth, khaki bulge excavating the front of my hip as he grinds his body against mine.

"Not the goddamn tree," I snap. "I'll never get the sap out of my hair."

"Geez, Hotcakes, the gum again," he pants nearly at the same time. 

I turn my head and blow-gun the obstacle. "Better?"

His large mitts have burrowed beneath my bra and are shoving it into a shoulder-bridging twist. "Much better." While he seizes the uncovered boobs as if they'd just turned into a game-winning interception, I yank at his trunks, ejecting a thick goalpost that slaps my palm with expectant arrogance. 

"So where's your girlfriend?" I murmur into his lips. We both know she's hiking in Cape Breton, but it turns him on to hear the prospect of forbidden relief in plain words, and he moans from the snug tug of other-than-girlfriend fingers wrapping his upright.

His eyes glaze with the delirium of a frat pledge about to get laid for the first time as he humps my fist. We haven't been alone together since sneaking off to his bedroom the week before his graduation party, to which I'd worn nothing under my dress and thought it was Reid feeling me up until...

"Fuck!" Frustration shortens his breath when I let go.

"That's exactly what you need, isn't it?" My fingers glide up the sensitive belly of his beast until a thumb and two fingers mimic sucking lips atop the hard-candy dome. "A hot fuck. It's why you keep coming back."

Next thing I know, he's maneuvered us onto a carpet of patchy grass and broken pine boughs so that I'm on all fours, pulls aside the bikini's gusset and tries to keep it there long enough for his probing pigskin to split the slippery seam and spike the end zone. Eagerly it sinks up to the stitching but goes no further. One push, a second push...then, to my hollow disappointment, it slips out.

He releases the band with a defeated snap. "Take 'em off."

"Take 'em off yourself. Why should I do all the work?"

"'Cause I might rip them, Smartass, and then you'd have to walk home in a very fuck-able, not to mention arrest-able, state." His palm delivers an emphatic smack on a suit-bared bum cheek. "C'mon, don't keep us waiting."

He lets up long enough for me to wrestle myself bottomless, then sneaks a dewy swipe from my slit and gloats over the telltale gloss it harvests. "You want this as bad as I do, you little slut. Turn over and get ready to take it."

Too excited to wait, he tackles me into position from behind. His dense thighs splay mine for the aggressive, stout crown which pokes its way through my lips. I wish he'd do it some more, but the rest of his strapping teen pride is gung-ho to slide up my drenched longneck and cork it shut with a mighty throb.

"Unnhh," Reid gasps and gropes.

This won't take long. Think I'll let the horny jock in on the idea I've been brewing - and fast. My tush jiggles against the bristled sinew of his abs, seating him even deeper.

"Ever been with two girls at once?" 

He huffs a hopeful, "Nope."

"Huh. Not even the Jones twins? Erin bragged she went commando in the bleachers during your last practice and made sure you and Jimmy G. got a peek." Instant thickening below. Bullseye. "Come on, you can tell me." I reach down to coax some compliance with a few strokes over the rigid base of his inserted horniness.

"Huh, yeah... Thought about it... Oooh... But that's as far as it went."

"Like to do more than think about it?"

He thrusts, and my fingertips reconnect with a pair of prickly Moses Woods. "Long as one of them is you," he grunts.

Neither Jones would use her mouth on anything other than a double scoop of Giffords Moose Tracks. "Me, and someone else I could teach how to blow you the way you like it."

"Mmmph!"

"There's more than enough room for both of us to lick your lollipop at once--"

"Onnhhh!"

"- until you were good and hard for her cherry -"

"Unhhh!"

"Or I could play with her first... make you watch... get you so hot and bothered, your dick blasts all over itself before you can even get your hand near it."

"Rrnhh!"

"Or if you couldn't wait to pop her, I might just let you do it... then let you look while I tongue your cum out of her quivering little -"

"Nghhh!" His cock jerks and swells to what feels like twice its normal hugeness.

"Think you'd like that? 'Course you would. How long do you think you could stand it -"

"Dirty bitch!"

"- before you slid it in and started to giddy-up the nearest one of us, Big Boy?"

"Unnh... ohhh... nghh!" He knocks my arm out of the way to recapture the bouncing tits and he doesn't pull out, just jams in tight and spurts as if soldering himself inside me. In all the times we've fucked, this is a first; he usually unloads all over my boobs. I'm so turned on from talking him up, my nub is as swollen as a grape, but his watermelon has jettisoned its load and is already receding like a sucked-on Popsicle. No dice on doing something about it.

I scoot out from under him, shimmy into my brief, unravel the bra so it scoops up my boobs again, and start running. Reid's a big boy. He can look after himself.

"Hotcakes!" he implores. "C'mon. Who?"

I turn and wag my tits at him. "Don't you trust me?"

His semi-stiffness bobbles a horizontal nod as he reclaims the crumpled trunks from around his ankles. The sight of it refires a wicked need.

I'm impatient for the trees to shield me completely so that I can strip off my brief again, drop to my knees and walk them outward until Reid's favorite Fleshlight is drooling inches above the dirt. It's either this or climb the lifeguard tower and straddle and hump the impressively packed Fanta Shorts on duty.

Below the pushed-up jock magnets blocking my view, my fingers spread Reid's jizz up and down until they slither with naughty intent over the button I didn't get to push enough while his boner was enjoying a hot snuggle so close to it.

What we just did doesn't even qualify as a coming attraction on my fantasy playback. I'm thinking of other secret rituals submitted to in the woods lately, and it multiplies the slickened prods into strategically twisting tongues. The harder they lap, the deeper I'm sucked into the scene. 

Shutting my eyes to approximate blindfolded blackness, I can almost smell the loamy tarp and feel myself squirming against its coarse weight, gruff commands burning my ear, rougher hands chafing my bare bottom, ropes biting -

Oh fuck.

All fuses overload, sizzle and pop within light-headed seconds. My thighs split wider under the urgent weight and a surprising prickle of pine detritus in the right place catapults a groan past clenched teeth. I goad and grimace through a haze of sweet, dirty agony until my sleeve finishes convulsing its gratitude and expels melted marshmallow icicles onto the rusty forest floor.

Dying to go for more but satisfied I can at least concentrate again, I drag myself to my feet, dress and sprint onward across a short-cut track until the gloom yields to a bright sandy amphitheater peppered with folding chairs and umbrellas. I have other things to think about, like putting my plan into action.

First, a swim to rinse off.

Then, it's time to get to know the new girl.

To be continued...