When We Were Married Ch. 03D

After awhile, when my condition had abated, she took my hand and led me to the bar, where I ordered a Bloody Mary, what else, and she a white wine.

As we stood there drinking and talking, a tall redheaded woman in a dress with what looked like hundreds of thousands of dollars of real diamonds and gemstones embroidered into the fabric walked up to Aline and, glancing at me, asked, "Aline, darling, who is your friend? Your very close friend, it appears. Do you realize you haven't let go of him since you two walked in here?"

"Ms. Stein, let me introduce you to Mr. William Maitland. He is a barrister."

She looked at me with only a little disdain and asked, "An attorney? Mergers and acquisitions, stocks, international affairs? Entertainment? Are you located in New York or Los Angeles. Who do you represent? Anyone I'd have heard of?"

"Criminal law," I answered before Aline could say anything. "And I represent clients who've been murdered, raped, robbed or maimed."

She looked at me and her jaw almost literally dropped.

"Criminal law? Murder and rape and robbery?"

"Fraid so. Not as exciting as corporate or entertainment, but somebody has to do it."

Aline fought to hide her smile.

Mrs. Stein, whose big breasts and nice behind had obviously been poured into her dazzling dress, took a deep breath and purred, "A prosecutor. You know...I think...you are The Angel of Death. Aren't you? I saw your story on a web news site. "

She stepped between Aline and myself and grabbed my free hand, placing it squarely over a heaving mound of soft breast flesh.

"That is so exciting. When I saw your picture, all in black, you looked...hard...and powerful. Are you that hard...and powerful...in all areas of your life, Mr. Maitland?"

Without being too obvious, Aline pulled me toward her and at the same time interposed her body between myself and Mrs. Stein. With a sweet smile, she said, 'I'm afraid that is all media hyperbole, Ms. Stein. Mr. Maitland is a very sweet man in all ways. Oh, Bill, didn't you say you had an early appointment tomorrow? I'm so sorry, Ms. Stein, but I'd better get Bill out of here."

With that she whisked me away before the diamond lady could spell out an objection. We approached the outside rail and I just raised my eyebrows. Aline laughed and said, "I'm sorry, but in another moment she would have been unzipping you."

I felt like I was 18 again and couldn't help asking, "And that would be a bad thing -- why?"

The smile flickered.

"You would have wanted that fat old cow touching you?"

"Not her."

I stared into her eyes and she dropped her gaze. I would have sworn she blushed.

I didn't know where the dialogue was coming from. I should be tongue tied and awkward, but I was able to spar with this gorgeous woman in the eternal joust that was male/female relationships. I began to wonder if the 20 year-old I had once been had just been sleeping for the past 20 something years and had decided to come back to life. Or if it was simply being around this woman.

I turned back to look at the waves dropping away in our wake/ The stars were brilliant points in a jet-black sky. There were no clouds. A fat, gibbous, almost completely full moon hung seemingly over the stern of the ship, looking big enough and close enough to touch.

The moonlight washed across her face. It made her flesh look more than living stone than human flesh.

"She walks in beauty, like the night, of cloudless climes and starry skies, And all that's best of dark and bright, Meets in her aspect and her eyes,,,"

"You remember your Byron. Do you use that line often with impressionable young ladies?"

"I might have, once, 20 years or so ago. I don't know why I said that. It just came out.. Something about the way you look tonight brought it out."

I put my hand on the side of her face and she leaned into me.

"Don't do this, don't do this, don't do this," the better angels of my nature screamed at me as I leaned forward and captured her lips.

This wasn't a frantic, tongue twisting against tongue kiss like the first one we had shared. This was soft and yielding and there was only a little tongue.

I thought back to Debbie and I wondered when was the last time we had shared a sweet, loving kiss. Not a husband/wife kiss, but one like this. Where had those kisses gone?

"Go away Debbie," I said in my mind, casting out the ghost of really good and really bad times. She was my past and she had no right to keep dragging me back to a life she had shattered.

I finally got the willpower to push Aline away gently. I tasted mint on my lips. What in the hell was I doing?

"I'm sorry, Aline. I shouldn't have done that."

"Sorry for what? It was just a kiss."

"I'm still a married man, for awhile longer. And you apparently are happily married."

"Most men learn when they're in their teens...if a woman doesn't tell you to stop, she probably wants you to keep going."

She resumed the kiss and this time it was a harder, more insistent kiss. She pressed herself against me and again I started to get hard. Just my luck. I'd been limp for more than three months and the one time I start to get hard, it's with a woman that I can't use it on. Or, at least, I shouldn't.

As the kiss continued she moved so that she was pressed against me and I know she was deliberately rubbing her groin against me. They say a stiff dick has no conscience. Mine did, but not enough willpower. I pushed back against her and she moaned in her throat.

I had to stop this....but she had said, she was French. And we were on French soil. And they did things differently here.

Where in the world is it okay to bed a married woman when her husband is far away? No country I was aware of.

I finally summoned up the strength from God knows where to push her back. We became unattached and we both tried to catch our breath.

"Before we retire, would you like to walk the ship, Bill? It is a different world in the early, early morning. Almost all the passengers are in their beds soundly sleeping and the staff is either sleeping or working below decks preparing for the coming day. It is as if we have the ship to ourselves. As if we are in our own little world."

Walking was better than remaining here because if we stayed here, I was afraid that my dick would not only lose any shred of willpower it still had, but my conscience was also going to retire for the night.

And that would mean one of two things: the first that I would further insult and possibly lose the chance to spend time with this woman, because it was possible this was just the way married French women flirted with male friends and she didn't really want my middle-aged body in bed with her.

Or worse, we would wind up in bed, and if that happened, how was I any different from Doug?

We went back in through the door that had been propped open and replaced the metal bar. As we walked past the Lounge entrance, I heard music and what sounded like loud female moaning.

She gave me a small smile.

"When it gets very late, I'm afraid things sometimes get a bit...wild."

"Well, Heaven knows, we don't want to be in there right now. It might be...catching."

She just poked me in the ribs with her elbow and said, "Are you sure you're just an old married man? Or is that a ploy you use to throw suspicious women off their guard around you?"

"I was...more married than you can imagine. 'Was' being the operative word."

We went down the elevator to the sixth deck and walked out to the bow of the ship. Now I could imagine we could see lights in the far distance, many miles away. Then I realized it was light, but not the constant light of buildings or the winking light of buoys.

This was a faint flickering of light that seemed to grow from the horizon into the dark sky, and then snaked back, casting a pale aura in all directions. Since we were heading for Marsh Harbour I figured the lights were coming from that direction.

"It is storming over Abaco," she said. "That is lightning. It should be ending by the time we get close."

"Is there anything that happens out here that isn't flat out beautiful?"

Despite the distance, I felt the first few drops of rain begin to pelt us. I didn't consciously think out what I did, but I held my arm up and she moved into it. We stood together watching the lightning without words as the breeze picked up.

"Why did you accept the babysitting assignment, Aline, really? If you hadn't, there is no way we'd be here right now, like this? I know you wouldn't have given me a second glance."

"Why do you do that?"

She placed her hand over mine.

"I know women have approached you, despite the pall you cast about you. And you turn every one down. You assumed I was interested in you simply because I had taken on the assignment of watching you. Why do you automatically believe no woman could be attracted to you, for yourself?"

"Because I'm not blind and I can look in a mirror. Because I'm not tall, and I'm not hung and I'm not a hunk. I faced that fact a long time ago. In my world, if a woman approaches me, I know it's because I can do something for her in my official capacity or in some other way. I do not turn women on.

"And the one woman I ever really thought or hoped might love me, told her lover that she couldn't stand being around me anymore. She had to build a life away from me. That kind of shakes your confidence."

She turned into me and with her hand on my chin made me look into her eyes.

"You want me to tell you that looks don't make a difference in how women respond to men? I won't insult your intelligence. Of course an attractive, well-built man with confidence attracts women. But it's only among men that looks tell almost the entire story.

"Where women are concerned, we respond to strength, to power, to confidence, sometimes to arrogance. A woman sometimes wants to feel controlled by a man, no matter what women liberation types will tell you. We also respond to caring, to courage.

" I think you're probably right that your wife loved you for what you did that night. You might call it hero worship, but it is deep within all women to respond to that kind of male courage. It didn't last with her, but Bill, she is not all women. She is ONE woman, and there are a whole world full of women who would be interested in you."

She leaned into me and brushed my lips. It wasn't even a full kiss, but my cock twitched.

"I had your picture when you first came on the Bonne Chance. I was looking for you. I watched you. And...this will sound strange, but there is something about the way you move. I can't put it quite into words, but you move...with grace...and balance. Even walking among other passengers I noticed it.

"And...if I say that you made me think of a tiger, a great cat, you will laugh. But, it's true. You moved as if you saw everything around you at one time. When you looked at people, it was as if you were looking through them.

"You are not a bad man, Bill, I can say that from knowing you only a few days, but I would not want to be around you if you were a bad man. There is something inside you..."

"Now I know you're imagining things," I said, knowing that part of what she was talking about had to be the training Carlos had imposed on me. There is a grace and balance to boxers that you don't realize if all you ever concentrate on is muscular men pounding on each other.

"And the other thing, which I also think you never realize, is the air of command about you. You remind me of the Captain. He does not have to raise his voice. He expects people will do what he tells them to do, and they do. I think in your professional life that is the way you act. That kind of strength and power is very attractive to some women. Maybe if you had brought that strength to your home..."

We stood there in silence watching the approaching storm until I said, "When I saw you for the first time that afternoon, the hairs on the back of my neck rose. Usually that only happens when you sense a threat, some terrible danger approaching. Are you a terrible threat?"

She turned her back and nestled against me.

"When you looked back at me and I realized you knew I was watching you it was as if an electric shock ran through my body. There is only one other time I have experienced that sensation....It was the first time I saw Philippe, my husband, at a party in Paris. We looked at each other across a friend's apartment. He was gorgeous and I knew without any doubt we would be leaving together.

"The reaction I had to you frightened me. I couldn't understand it. You were a stranger. I'm still not sure I understand it. Except that meeting someone who will be important in your life....is a frightening thing."

I thought about her words. Could I see myself as a tawny beast of prey moving through the human herds, making women wet with my aura of power? Even putting it into words made me want to laugh.

But, why would she say it? I realized that if she was doing all this just to get me into bed and get a bonus from Edwards, that made her nothing but a whore. And if I had any instincts at all after 10 years as a prosecutor, I didn't sense that.

Maybe the boxing and the loss of weight and the new fitness and the bald head and a sense of authority I carried over from my job might make women look at me differently, but that much differently? From dud to stud? Except, as divorcee Lee had told me, I had been married and off the market for nearly 20 years. Now I wasn't.

I nestled my face in her dark mane and breathed in an unfamiliar fragrance. If this was friendship between a man and a woman French style, I could live with this.

"You never did answer my question. Why did you really accept the babysitting assignment?"

She moved in my arms to face me, her ass rubbing my cock as she did so and this time it jerked against her. She grinned and said, "Down, boy."

Then:

"I told you the truth the other night...just not the entire truth. I did see the story about "The Angel of Death." Your reporter, Mr. Cameron I think the byline said, did a great job of painting you as a little more than human. I was intrigued, but I had a more personal reason for being interested in you. I told you I had an interest in legal matters.

"My husband, Philippe, is a prosecutor in Paris, one of what is called the avocats généraux -- deputy prosecutors - in the office of the Procureur de la République, the Chief Prosecutor. We have been married for near 10 years and through him I have come to know a great deal about prosecutors and the courts."

I felt as if the deck of the ship had suddenly evaporated under my feet and I was floating in the air.

"Would that be Philippe des-Jardins, in the Paris office?"

"No, des-Jardins is my maiden name. I have kept it because I was employed by the cruise line before we married."

"Could it be....Philippe Archambault?"

She gave me a surprised look.

"How did you know?"

God, please make this be a nightmare.

"I met him about three years ago, in Paris, Aline. It was on my first trip to France. We were working a human smuggling ring transporting young Muslim girls from poorer sections of France, primarily around Paris, for prostitution in Florida and the U.S. Philippe was my liaison. We worked together for a week."

The big, good-looking, friendly Frenchman had taken me out drinking and to some local dives after hours. He had introduced me to Escargot and other delicacies and some interesting sections of Parisian low-life. I had asked about his wife one time and he had simply said she was away on business.

He had been very friendly, too friendly, to a secretary and a junior female barrister in his office, as well as an attractive lady cop and a female bartender at one of the dives frequented by cops, crooks and prosecutors. I figured he was banging them all, but it was none of my business and he seemed like a good guy. Definitely a hard as nails prosecutor and we worked well together.

It was still none of my business, but holding his wife in my arms wasn't something that made me feel good about myself. He might be a cheating asshole, but...

I had released my hold on her and I stepped back away from her.

"What's the matter, Bill. You know my husband? So what? We haven't done anything terribly wrong. A little flirting, a little dancing. Is that so terrible?"

"Maybe not in your world, but in mine....that's how my life fell apart."

She stepped up to me and lacing her fingers behind my neck she literally forced my lips to meet hers. I could have stopped her, but I didn't. I didn't want to.

She let me go and said, "We have not gone to bed, Bill. And I know that Philippe, if he isn't in bed with another woman, will be tomorrow or the next day. Don't waste any of the precious little time we have left worrying about endangering my virtue. You know very little about me, or my marriage. Can you just enjoy the next few days? Don't think. Just be with me."

I remembered the Big Man's admonition, "let yourself be surprised." I was sure as hell surprised. And had been since the Bonne Chance had left its Jacksonville berth.

In my wildest dreams, I never could have imagined myself holding a woman like this in my arms; a married woman, a married woman whose husband had befriended me, a cheating husband who was screwing around on this beautiful woman while I seriously considered sleeping with her.

No, not sleeping. I might as well be honest with myself. I was thinking about and a large part of me was hoping I'd be fucking her at some time in the near future.

"I'll try."

When we reached my suite she kissed me after I'd opened the door and then backed away.

"No, I'm sorry, Bill. It's not that I don't want to, but..."

"Goodnight, Aline. Thank you for this night. And for the last few days. You don't have anything to apologize for."

As I laid myself down on the that huge circular bed a part of me was disappointed that she wasn't with me, and another part was glad she had walked away. Damned if I could figure out which part of me I really agreed with.

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Monday, July 18, 2005 -- 8:30 a.m.

"Oh shit!"

She sat upright in bed as she realized what had disturbed her subconscious. Light was shining in through the bedroom window. It was too light for 6 a.m., which she'd set the alarm for. She looked over at the alarm clock. It was flashing. It had stormed during the night and knocked the power off just long enough to turn the alarm off.

Damn, she couldn't afford to be late for this meeting. She had the feeling they were just waiting for cause to take action against her, and missing a critical planning session would be one of those causes. Doug raised his head and stared at her sleepy-eyed.

"I overslept. You can sleep a little longer, but I need you out of here within the hour, okay?"

He grunted and fell back to sleep. She had an outfit ready and had showered the night before. But it still took time to get dressed, brush her teeth, get her hair ready and grab a mini-bagel on the way out the door.

She was twenty minutes down the road before she realized she had rushed out without a folder on the bedroom dresser. Even if it made her late, she needed the papers in the folder or she really would look like the dumb blonde she had always thought some of the senior male professors regarded her as. Shit, shit, shit.

She had the motor off and the driver's side door open even before her 2004 Nissan 350Z had come to a complete halt. She was inside the front door and headed up the stairs to her bedroom and had her hand on the doorknob when she froze.

"mmmmm...ohhhhh.....god baby...that feels so good...damn suck it...."

For a moment she wanted to back away and then when she wanted to open the door it was as if she were paralyzed. She just stood there with her hands on the doorknob.