Last Present

"This is it. This is what I came for," he said. His voice was weak, but his eyes were sparkling, like he was a small boy opening his Christmas presents. "Claire has the guide book. Read about the legends of the castles as we pass them by," he said. And then, when Claire opened the book. "No not, you, Claire. I want Hans to do it."

Both Claire and I gave him a confused look, but then our eyes went to each other's over his gray head, and we then understood. He was already in that past, back in 1956, cruising the Rhine River gorge with his first lover.

Claire handed me the book, cuddled up close to her husband, and laid her head on his shoulder. I took up the book and started to read about the castle ruins we were passing. George sighed contentedly.

I don't know what made me do it. It was instinct, and I had done it before I even realized I was doing it. While I read, holding the tour book in my right hand, I reached over with my left and moved my hand under the edge of the blankets covering George. I moved it down along his flat belly and then under the waistband of the sweat pants he was wearing.

I found his cock. It was flaccid, but it was a good handful. It didn't engorge for me, but I stroked it slowly anyway, and I could hear George moaning and sighing quietly, no doubt—I hoped, at least—daydreaming about his ride down the gorge in the arms of his first lover, Hans. I was sure that Claire knew what I was doing, but she said nothing. She just leaned her head against his shoulder and put her hand on his arm.

I read on, but as we were passing the Lorelei, the gorge having reached its end, I heard her whisper.

"You can stop reading now, Dieter. He's gone."

* * * *

That evening, Claire and I had the Rear Lounge almost to ourselves again. The blonde pianist was playing and singing Hoagie Carmichael tunes that were complimenting the solemn emotions that both Claire and I were wrapped in—at least I assumed that's what Claire was feeling. I certainly was, although I didn't really understand why. These were just a couple I met on the boat. Less than a week of contact. I was here to score loot. I had no connection to, nor responsibility to these two. I was already packed, ready to jump ship and disappear in Koblenz the next day.

Claire stood and held out her hand to me. "Come."

"Are you sure?" I asked. I was looking into her eyes, and what I saw told me what she meant by that "come." But she hadn't said it. "I don't want to take advantage. I know you are numb, in mourning."

"I don't want to be numb," she said. "I have to honor what George wanted. What he wanted to give me, his last present. It's a new year. He told me the new year would be a completely new beginning for me."

I sat there, not daring to reach out to her. She hadn't said it yet.

"And, yes, it's what I want," she murmured. "Very much what I want."

I stood up then and took her hand in mine.

I took her from the front the first time, her laying on her back on the bed and me standing on the floor between the thighs she had locked around my waist. I wanted to watch her eyes—to see her expressions that first time. I wanted to see the sadness being fucked away and turning to heat and desire and a lust for life—and the want, the need, for a man's hard cock, pumping deep inside her. Her eyes didn't lie. I could tell that she wanted the same thing I wanted. Complete satisfaction. And she wanted it all. George had told me he wanted her to experience it all.

She arched her back and panted hard and cried out as I slowly entered her. "Oh, god. so big. I'll split. Oh, god. Denise didn't lie."

"Shush," I murmured. "Don't cry." She was crying. "Just let me know when I need to stop. I don't want to hurt you. It's the last thing—"

"Oh, god. Hurt me. All of it. I want to feel it. I want to know I'm being fucked. Oh, god, oh god. Yes."

We both moaned and grunted as I moved deeper and deeper inside her. Never taking my eyes from hers. Seeing what I wanted to see. Pain and sadness changing to desire and lust. I ripped my gaze from her and buried to the hilt, waiting for her channel walls to expand so the friction of the fucking would be good for us both, I lowered my mouth to her lovely, milky-white, undulating torso and kissed and tongued every surface I could reach.

I felt her jerk and flow while I was still fully saddled. The extra lubricant and a slackening of her channel walls then signaled she was ready for me. She was groaning and moaning and whispering to me, telling me how much she wanted this, how she'd wanted me inside her from that first day we'd met in Bamberg. How she had envied Denise for the cock she'd said she'd taken—how much she wanted that cock too.

I arched my back up and started to slow pump her. Long, deep strokes, in which we both took in our breath as I withdrew and the then let it out as I moved up inside her and then we both sighed and gave a little cry as I bottomed and rotated, withdrew an inch, then bottomed again. Moaning in concert, one fucking unit as if we'd been doing this for years.

"Ride me harder," she cried out. "Make me feel it."

I had promised to be gentle with her. I was holding back. Fucking her deep, but slowly, enjoying the undulating muscles of her channel walls against my cock, but holding myself in check.

She raised up on her elbows and dug her teeth into the matting of hair between my pecs and tore out tuffs of hair. Then she bit me on the nipple as her hands went around me to my shoulder blades and her claws dug into my skin.

I roared and tossed all caution away, pumping her double time and then triple, pistoning her hard and deep, using her cruelly. Her laugh was choked off as we both came. Together.

I collapsed on top of her, both of us panting hard, sweating.

"Thank you," she said in a small voice. "That was the best present ever."

I raised up on my elbows, still hovering over her, and started to kiss and tongue my way down her body, paying extra attention to her mouth and the hollow of her neck, her arm pits, her nipples, her navel.

She cried out again as my lips and teeth and tongue found her clit inside her folds and began to tease and suck and worry her there. I quickly laced my hands between my thighs and stripped off the used condom and rolled on another while she was still relatively calm with my attentions on her clit. As she realized that I wasn't going to stop at just the first time she peaked, though, she began to writhe and to grab my hair and pulled at it. She was grinding hard against my face and jabbering in words I didn't even try to understand. I grabbed her wrists and held her steady as she peaked again and again and again.

I was hard again, so I let loose of her and stood. She lay there like a spent rag doll, moaning and murmuring my name.

Good, I thought. At least she'll remember me. I hope she finds a man who will do this for her. It's what she needs.

"Oh, god, oh, god, Dieter," she muttered as I reached down and pulled her up and turned her face toward the bed and pushed her chest down on the surface of the bed with a palm of my left hand between her shoulder blades. With my right hand, I positioned my cock at her slit from behind and rubbed it over her clit, lathering that up with my precum, until she shuddered and came for me again. Then I plunged inside her slit and fucked her hard and fast to my second coming.

She arched her back up to me and wrapped an arm around my neck. She turned her face to me and we kissed and murmured endearments to each other while I played her nipples with one hand and her clit with the other. We stood there swaying back and forth against each other as my cock, still embedded in her, found new life.

I withdrew it, pulled the spent condom off, rolled another one on from the collection I had laid out at the foot of the bed and that had caused her to gasp at the beginning of our play.

She began to express concern and "not so sure" as she felt the head of my cock at her ass opening.

"Don't fight, stay relaxed," I whispered in her ear. "George wanted the present to be it all. I'll be gentle. I promised George I'd be gentle. In your new life, you'll have choices. You need to know the menu—everything."

"Oh, god, Dieter. Protect me. Don't' split . . . you're big. Too big."

"Shush. It's in now. Relax."

It was only in an inch, but Claire was relaxing now. Trusting me. Declaring the feeling sensations she'd never felt before. Tight, tight, tight. As long as I went slow. Pant, pant, pant.

I gave her other things to think about, to focus on. I was rubbing and rolling her nipples with the fingers of one hand and worrying her clit with the thumb of the other hand and finger fucking her in increasing rapid strokes with three fingers.

I was in to the hilt; she was even tighter than Denise's ass had been.

She was fully mine now, to do what I wanted with her. Relaxed and moaning. Flowing from her slit and her sphincter grabbing and releasing the root of my cock in a rhythm all its own.

Concentrating hard, I began to slow pump, trying to match that rhythm.

Claire was crying out. Not for me to stop. She was crying for me to take her totally, to possess her fully. I increased the speed of the pumping.

And now I had done it. I had delivered on the promise of George's last present.

* * * *

I tiptoed around Claire's cabin, gathering up my clothes. Checking every moment or two to make sure she was asleep. The creeping light of dawn was playing at the half-open blinds out onto the balcony. I took a moment to take in the vista of the riverside promenade in Koblenz, where we had docked in the night, sometime between when I had taken Clare in a side split and when, at her insistence, she had sucked my cock, telling me that, if she was supposed to receive it all, this could not be overlooked. When I told her how well she did it, she told me it was about all she could remember from her husband's idea of lovemaking—but she was quick to add that he was brutal about it and I hadn't been.

As I was moving around the cabin, the phrase "a thousand-dollar fuck" kept going through my brain. It occurred to me to question how much I would have given to Claire for that fuck if the positions were reversed.

After I was dressed, I went over to the bureau, put my hand in my pocket to return the few condoms we hadn't used, and, surprising myself, came back out with the thousand dollars in my hand. My hand hovered over the bureau for a few seconds, and then I let the folded bills fall onto the bureau's surface.

Somehow that made me feel a thousand times more satisfied with what I'd done. It lifted a weight that had been nagging me in the back of my head. I had said this couple meant nothing to me. But that, of course, was a lie. Still in that spirit, I reached back into my jacket pocket and came up with the two genuine diamond earrings Denise had given me.

"A present of my own. A last present," I murmured, as I laid those gently on top of the wad of bills.

I went to my cabin, picked up the suitcase I'd already packed, and slipped off the boat and into the morning mist of the Koblenz promenade.

It was only hours later that I reached back into my jacket pocket and came up with a slip of paper on which Claire had written her New York address and telephone number.

I had no idea whether I would ever use that—at least right at that moment I didn't.