Heather's Exquisite Map of Tassie

"Don't worry, you're tempting me. But you're also cutting off circulation to my arm." She released the pressure on his arm and he flung it around her, tipping her onto the floor rug and pinning her there. "If I stay with you, you need to learn I can play dirty. I've learnt a few things playing footy since I was a kid."

Crushed under his weight, Heather looked up at him with wild eyes and an excited grin. "You're strong, no doubt about it. Big bloke like you, pickin' on an innocent girl like me. Typical thugby league player. I've seen the news stories."

"You're funny. There's something I want to give to ya."

Heather was wriggling and struggling against him, but Tim pinned her well and truly. "What ya goin' ta give me, eh?"

"A big sloppy kiss for starters." And he did, kissing Heather passionately on the lips. She kissed him back and their grip on one another became less forceful and more a desperate passionate hold, both reluctant to let the other go. Still on the floor rug they tore one another's clothes off, kissing each other's bodies anywhere they could get their mouths on a bare patch of flesh.

Tim pushed Heather against the lounge chair, bending her over it, and aiming his massively hard cock between her legs at her pussy lips. She purred, her face in the lounge pillows. "I love it when you take control."

"I love making love to you."

"We do say love a lot, don't we."

"Well, I think we're both a few stubbies short of a six pack right now and might not be thinkin' too straight." He pushed his cock against Heather's entrance and prepared to let her know how he truly felt. "I'm gonna pleasure you so fucken hard."

In her best bogan accent, she said, "Fucken talk dirty to me, ya cunt. I love it!"

They laughed and he sunk his cock into her, pushing against one another, enjoying the closeness of their intimate contact and the pleasure it brought them. Tim placed one hand on her thigh, pulling her onto him, while the other he placed palm down and fingers splayed over her Van Diemen's Land tattoo. Heather cocked her head sideways on the lounge, pushing her hands off the arm rest at their side, and the rear cushions, to push herself onto him.

"I'm fucken you hard, Heather Coughlan. Take my massive cock, you, hot fucken, um, beautiful goddess."

She giggled. "Your dirty talk is so...funny."

They laughed again. "I dunno, I don't normally talk dirty. I'm wingin' it right now."

"You're sweet, Tim. And I love that about you. You don't need to talk dirty to me. But keep it up if you want to cos you're hilarious and make me laugh."

His dick pushed up her vaginal canal, coming to a stop against her fornix, causing her to gasp, before sliding part way back down. "And I love how you used the word love with me while we are engaged in intercourse."

She gasped as once again his cock hit the spot deep inside her. "And I love that you love how I used the word love. Oh, you feel good. I also love how you used the word intercourse. Like I said, you're hilarious. Oh, God, Tim, you feel so nice though."

"You're not making things any easier for me to fly back to Brisbane, Heather." He felt her inner walls surrounding him, embracing his penis where they were joined in copulation.

She pressed her hands to the lounge, pushing her body backwards, around him, feeling his fat shaft all the way inside her. Another gasp left her mouth, a little drool escaping onto the cushion. "I, not, trying to make, it easy, for you, to, ohh, fly back, to Brisbane, Tim, Ohh, feels so good!"

Tim pulled Heather's waist back, her creamy buttocks pushing against him, and giving him pleasure along the length of his cock rod and beyond. He looked down at her messy blond hair sprawled about her head, and her face peeking out of the tangles, her big green eye looking back to him and her mouth slightly open and letting out gasps and moans with increasing intensity.

He admired her sleeve tattoos on both arms, mostly in black ink except for the rose flower on her left arm and the golden Army Rising Sun badge on her right. He admired her detailed Tasmania map in the centre of her upper back, thinking it a true masterpiece, like the canvas it was tattooed upon. Her muscles there taut, like a wild animal, and he looked to her waist and tight bum, down to her thighs, with parts of Hector the python wrapped around her leg there and the thick black broad-arrow. She was beautiful, no doubt about it, and the pleasure in his cock from their intimacy was nothing compared to the pleasure he felt in his heart for having fallen for her.

She was moaning now, letting go with, "Ohhhh, Ohhhh, so, good, OHH, OHH, OH, OH." Faster and faster, a tremor in her breath. The fact she was feeling such pleasure by his cock gave him great pleasure, in both his cock and heart, body and soul. She was close to the edge now, ready to cum, and he pushed hard. His own pleasure was there too, and it would only take a thrust or two before he'd blow his cum load. And then Heather came, throbbing around him, and he blew his sticky juice right up the deep end of her cavity.

They stayed together for some time, with Tim caressing Heather's skin lightly with the tips of his fingers. Heather rested her face on the lounge pillows, breathing deep breaths, but under control. Reluctant to leave, but going soft, Tim eventually pulled out of Heather's body, and a gloopy globule of their combined love fluid dropped to the rug between her knees.

He took her hands and helped her stand, for she'd been kneeling on the floor rug and her legs were wobbly. "I have carpet burn," she said, looking down at her red knees.

"So do I. But it was totally worth it."

She smiled and led him to the bedroom, collapsing on the bed side-by-side. They stared into one another's eyes in silence for a very long time, Tim caressing Heather's skin and stroking her hair. He circled the red rose on her arm, its stem, leaves and thorns inked in black. Eventually he said, "This rose is you."

"My first tat. I secretly got it in my last year of high school, but over the years I've thought it a cliché, having a rose tattoo. I got these Celtic knots around it a few years later, to drown it out."

"Nah, not a cliché on you. It's you all over. Not a delicate flower in the slightest. Extremely beautiful at first glance, but below your beauty there's a sharp, tough side suggesting you're not to be messed with. But still very beautiful, all the same."

She whispered, "You say things to me no other bloke has said. And you look at me in a way no other bloke looks at me either. Like you're after more of me than my body. I let my thorns down for you very early on. I haven't done so for anyone in quite a while."

"Maybe you're getting old and complacent?"

"Maybe you're pushing it. I'll stick my thorns into you." Still, she smiled at him.

"What about sicking the dog onto me?"

"The German Shepherd?" she asked, sitting up and holding out her right arm, showing off the black inked Alsatian near her shoulder with its head slightly cocked, ears erect, grinning muzzle and tongue half out. "This is Lady. She was the best dog ever. Poor girl had a good run and was thirteen when her quality of life quickly went downhill and she could hardly walk. Unfortunately we needed to take her to the vet to put her out of her misery."

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay. It is how it is. She was a great dog though."

"And this arrow?" He traced the thick black arrow down the side of her left thigh, next to the beautiful Tasmanian tiger and devil tattoo. "It looks like the ones you see on convicts in history books."

She chuckled. "That's exactly what it is. Many of these were silly things from when I was younger. Mum did some family history and found both her and Dad's families were thick with convicts. Convicts were once considered a skeleton in the closet kind of thing no one would admit to, but they sent over seventy-thousand or more of them to this little island alone, and so everyone has a convict or two somewhere in their family. No point in hiding it. I was very interested in it for a while, reading everything I could find on the subject. To me it seemed the Scottish were generally transported for major crimes, and the English for minor crimes, and the Irish for pretty much being Irish. For some silly reason I figured all my Irish convict ancestors were probably innocent and was proud of it." She laughed. "Though I suspect some of them weren't too innocent and not all of them were from Ireland either. I believe at least one of the skeletons in my ancestral closet was a violent highwayman from northern England. Anyway, the arrow denotes government property, which ironically I kinda have been since I was eighteen."

Tim laughed. "Violent highwayman, eh. Perhaps this explains your predilection for rough play." She poked her tongue at him with a smirk while he caressed her Tasmanian tiger and devil. "And these two? The state emblems?"

"Yeah, extinct and soon-to-be-extinct, if we don't look out. The tiger's our unofficial animal emblem the devil's our official one, and we hunted both so the tiger's gone for good while the devils are struggling with their facial tumour disease. I always found it ironic how we cause the extinction of so many unique species, then put them up as our mascots."

"Yeah, I see the Tassie tiger symbol everywhere, like on your numberplates and beer bottles. It is sort of strange, I guess, since they were all killed off. What about Hector here? Is he an extinct species too?" He ran his finger gently over her snake tattoo encircling her right thigh.

"Nah, Hector's an olive python from up northern Australia. When I was based in Darwin for a few years I had a housemate named Linda, and Hector was her pet. He was named after the huge thunderstorm which forms consistently over the Tiwi Islands. Hector the convector they call it. He was a beautiful animal, quite placid. Occasionally Linda would let Hector out of his tank and I'd watch him. He was mesmerising, the way he moved, exploring the house. Our neighbour was an indigenous bloke and he'd tell me about his culture, totemism and stuff, and I came to think of Hector as my spirit animal."

Tim considered cracking a joke about his own snake, hard and ready to strike again, but decided it inappropriate given the deeply personal motive behind her snake tattoo. In any case he again outlined her tattooed back-map of Tasmania, her skin turning to goose-pimples as always, and soon they made love again.

It was late in the afternoon now, and when they were done fucking they ducked down to the local take-away shop for some beer-battered trevalla and chips in gravy. They took it home and sat out on the deck, eating the delicious combination and drinking beer. Heather played some music from her phone, putting it on the table between them.

Except for a line of wispy high cirrus cloud, the early evening sky above them was clear with the first star showing brightly, but over the other side of the river an orographic cloud formed, obscuring kunanyi/Mount Wellington's head and glowing orange from the setting sun behind it. It appeared to be raining on the lower slopes and adjacent suburbs. Tim looked up at the star sparkling bright above, and though not superstitious he did something he hadn't done since he was a child, mentally making a wish on Heather's behalf for a life of love and happiness. After taking a long swig of beer, he watched the mountain. "That's fair dinkum insane."

Heather sat adjacent to him, eating a potato scallop, or potato cake as she called it, with her feet resting on his lap, his hand resting on her bare skin near her ankle. "What's insane?"

"It's mostly clear over this side of the river but raining up on the mountain where we were earlier. Crazy."

"Four seasons..."

"In one day," he finished her sentence with a smile. "I know."

"Could ya get used to it?"

"Maybe. If I was with the right person to help me adjust to the craziness of the weather."

"You ain't seen nothing. This weather is glorious. Winter can be a real bitch, but you do get used to it." A song played, a sultry female voice singing, I'ma be your love, I'ma be your love, and Heather turned it up. "I really like this song."

"Who is it?"

"Bishop Briggs. She's a singer from the UK." She began to sing along. "When the fire burn, when the blessed turn, I'ma be you love, I'ma be your love." Tim smiled at her, sipping his cold beer, while she serenaded him.

Later she received a phone call. "That was Javier. The hospital said he's good to go tomorrow morning. They probably need the beds, so are turfing him out. Anyway, he's asked if we can pick him up in the morning. We'll collect him at nine. I reckon we head into Salamanca afterwards for breaky. Markets are held every Sat-dee morning."

"Sounds good to me, cobber."

"Nice, talking like a local. You'll fit right in if you stick about."

"I fit right into you."

"That you do."

And later in the evening their bodies fit together perfectly indeed.

SATURDAY

They found a rare carpark in Battery Point on the hill above the historic wharf district known as Salamanca Place. Named for the Duke of Wellington's 1812 victory at the Battle of Salamanca in Spain, the street was lined with a row of old convict built sandstone warehouses in the Georgian style dating to the 1830s. In modern times the buildings contained restaurants, pubs, art galleries and tourist traps. Every Saturday a market is held in front of the historic buildings, with stalls extending way up the street from the old warehouses, past the Tasmanian Parliament House and Supreme Court.

Under grey overcast, Heather, Tim and Javier wandered through the stalls, stopping to buy breakfast of slow-cooked lamb wraps with generous dollops of sour cream. They sat under oak trees in the park fronting Parliament House, looking across to the wharf opposite where a large bright-orange ship was docked, the name Aurora Australis prominent in white letters on its bow.

"It was crazy," Javier said between mouthfuls of meat, "I climbed down the rock and saw the snake at the last moment. I panicked and slipped, and my hand landed right on it. Of course it bit me, but was gone before I realised what happened. The doctor said I was so lucky because they can be aggressive and could have bitten again. They said it was probably not...what is the word, a full envenomation. I think this is what they said." He took another bite of his wrap.

"Sounds right," Heather said. "Tiger snakes are normally not aggressive unless they feel there's no other option, and then will stay and fight. You're very lucky."

"Heather knows a thing or two about snakes," Tim said. He caught himself about to tell Javier how Heather considered a python her spirit animal, but realised it was potentially a deeply personal thing she'd shared with him.

Javier asked sincerely, "Do you really know about snakes?"

"Tim's talking about my snake tattoo," Heather said as a matter of fact.

"Oh," Javier said, "I remember now. I saw it at the swimming lake. May I ask why you have snake tattoo?"

"He's Hector, a snake I was rather fond of."

"So you were fond of a snake?" Javier asked in amazement.

"Yep. He was a beautiful fella too. Non-venomous snakes are fine in my book."

Javier's eyebrows raised, perhaps in shock at Heather's matter of fact revelation, or maybe in disbelief. "Well its good you know snakes because thanks to you, Heather, I'm alive. And you Tim, and all the others. This food is very nice and I'm glad to be here tasting it!" They all laughed along, joyful for being alive.

"Hello, hello, hello," an Irish accent called out across the park. Kathy was solo and came over with a big cheerful smile, joining them under the oaks. "Fancy meetin' you three here!" They filled Kathy in on the events of the last few days of their walk, and Javier recounted his story again, which he didn't mind, milking it for Kathy's sympathy.

"Heather and Tim saved me," he said again, heaping praise on them. "And some other hikers who called the helicopter."

Kathy's eyes bulged at the tale. "Wow, that's the nuttiest story ever. No wonder Saint Paddy banished the slithery bastards from Ireland! We're warned all Australian wildlife is out to kill us, like, then we see cuddly wombats and think, nah, these animals are all cute and cuddly. Then you get bit by a fucken snake! What are the odds?"

Tim chuckled. "I think Saint Patrick would need more than a miracle trying to banish the snakes from Australia, Kath. But if anyone was going to work out the odds of getting' bit by one, it'd be you, I'm sure."

"Shut yer gob, Timmy boy. Yer such a joker." Kathy gave him a smile and wink, her clear blue eyes sparkling with cheek.

Tim laughed. "Where's ya Italian and Danish friends? All loved up I suspect."

"Yer right there. The bitch left me for him. Exactly like I knew she would. They've hired a car and heading off around Tassie, then flying out to Sydney. Bastards. I could have gone with them, but who wants to be the third wheel?"

The four of them walked through the markets together, Javier and Kathy falling in together in front while Heather and Tim followed. "What was that back there between you and Kathy?"

Tim chuckled. "You really are jealous of her! But don't worry, it's all innocent banter. She likes a bet. Did ya notice how she kicked our arses at poker? I figured she could work out the odds of anything. Then when we said goodbye to them on the track, she wanted to know how you and me would, ah, how our story would end. She gave me her email on a joker card so I could let her know how you and I turned out. All very innocent I can assure you."

Heather laughed. "Okay then. So how are we turning out?"

"I'm not sure, Heather. What do you think?"

She sucked in a deep breath. "I'm not sure either, except if you said you'd stay I'd let you. In a heartbeat. And I'm not jealous of you talking to other girls one little bit. But I will tell you I haven't had the greatest success with blokes in the past. I'm as faithful as a dog, but I've found many men aren't. Well, the fellas I usually go for anyway."

"A-Jays?"

"Yeah, mostly. When I came back here I decided not to waste time with anyone unless we clicked and I had a good feeling about them. That was a bit over eighteen months ago. I've been on a few dates here and there but never felt strong connections. You're the first person I've felt this way about in a very long time." Without saying a word he took her hand, their connection as natural as breathing, and she chuckled. "I think it's something to do with the way you spoil me and the special cuddles you give me."

"Excuse me madam," a female voice with an authoritative tone called out close behind them. "You appear to be in possession of a young man and we'd like to see a licence for him and your ID please."

Heather and Tim turned their heads to face two young police officers in dark blue uniforms with florescent green high-vis vests over the top, who stood there grinning. "Ness, Notcha!" Heather said, happily surprised. "You bastards. How's it goin'?"

"Good thanks, Cogsy," the male constable said. "But you haven't shown us your licence to be in possession of the young man yet."

"Yeah, Cogs, but we'll let you off if you introduce us to your boyfriend," The young female officer said with a grin.

"Oh, sure, this is Tim." Then for Tim's benefit, she said, "This is Constables Vanessa Duff and Isaac Taint. We call Isaac, Notcha, cos he's not ya balls and not ya arse. As in taint ya balls, taint ya arse."

Notcha laughed. "Go easy on the explanation, Cogsy. I'm pretty sure Tim here gets it."

"Yeah, I got it," Tim said, shaking their hands. "Good to meet you guys."

Tim noticed Vanessa look him up and down and was clearly eager to gossip with Heather. Instead she said, "We knock off at two. Some of the fellas are organising a footy game the sarvo. I think friends of Dim's from the uni are making up the numbers. Come down and join us."