Kinetic

It's interesting to me to look at Patty. She's like a different version of Melanie. At 5'8" Patty is an inch shorter, but still statuesque. She has slightly bigger bones and is a bit more muscular, but she doesn't have quite the exceptional grace of Melanie. Facial features and hair are very similar, and they both keep their hair in ponytails. Late last evening on deck I caught myself glancing at toes trying to decide if I was looking at Patty or Melanie. Patty's toes are painted. I could have just probed with my sense of course, but my abilities there are so awesome I'm a little embarrassed to do it with other people's bodies. I just don't want to invade their privacy. The contact feels too intimate.

Patty and I have had a lot of time to talk together. The hold has two staterooms, a master stateroom with a queen-size bed, and a second stateroom almost the same size with a queen-size bed and a single. It's a bit crowded, but we only use the rooms for sleep and storage, and we try to be as considerate as possible. Once we adopted the mindset that we're all family it's fine. Earlier this morning while dad was driving the boat and mom and Melanie were preparing lunch, Patty and I cleaned the lower level together.

We chatted about our lives as we cleaned. Patty works now as a legal assistant at O'Hare and Snyder. My impression of Patty is that she's bright, amiable and, if I may say this without being unfaithful to my wife, very cute, a C-cup version of Melanie. The only thing odd about her is her absolute obedience to her parents. From Patty's perspective, her mom and dad are the co-skippers of the boat, and she is the subordinate.

It's a subtle thing to observe, but a good example was this morning, when her mom asked her to clean the lower level with me. Patty asked a few questions to be sure she understood exactly what was being asked, and then immediately changed her schedule to comply. She looked at me and smiled as she went below, and I knew I could either help her now or she would do all the work herself. I don't know... I really can't fault someone for being obedient. It just seems a little extreme...

And then came the swimming challenge. The day itself was warm, mid 80F on deck with a gentle breeze, and we were all dressed in swimsuits, Melanie and Patty in bikinis. We had eaten lunch before noontime, and the time was approaching 2 PM.

Melanie leaned out over the boat and dunked her foot in the water. "Uh, this is freezing! You sure you want to do this sis?"

"Absolutely! You're a college graduate and, if I might say, managed to bag a great husband! You must allow me to still beat you in something!"

Melanie looked reluctant, but then both her parents starting encouraging her to jump in too. I decided to come to my wife's rescue. "Oh, go ahead Melanie! It won't feel so cold once you're in the water!"

Melanie looked at me and suddenly smiled, realizing what I had said. They started the contest a few minutes later. Patty called out a final dare, "Winner gets to be warmed by Eric first!" and then, at the stroke of 2 PM, Melanie and Patty made two graceful dives off the stern of the boat, heading in near opposite directions.

Our sounding was showing more than twelve meters of water, no problem there, but the water really was too cold for swimming. The two sisters swam out about ten meters from the boat and were a dozen meters apart. And then they just trod water as dad timed them with a stopwatch.

After a minute Patty's teeth started to chatter, no surprise there. But Melanie seemed quite relaxed. And she should have been. The water temperature in contact with her skin was a uniform 89F.

The minutes dragged by. I experimented a bit with how I was warming my wife. I found an interesting mode of warming Melanie but not the lake. I was cooling the water 1 cm away from Melanie's body, back down to the background temperature of the lake. Pumping heat from oblivion and pushing it back to oblivion 1 cm away, after a few seconds of practice it was easy to do. And the minutes dragged by...

It was a very difficult endurance contest. Melanie's parents had insisted we study the boat's safety devices and read their instructions the first night we came on board. The thoughts of those manuals were still in my mind. I thought this contest was right at the safety limit, and I think without my kinetic powers I would have raised an objection.

With no PFD's (protective floatation devices), neither woman could curl into H.E.L.P. (heat escape lessening posture). But Melanie didn't need too. She and Patty did need to tread water however, and the waving arms and legs were rapidly pulling heat from Patty's body.

Looking back, I should have warmed Patty too, or just signaled Melanie to come back. I think without that last dare Melanie would have conceded defeat very early, even though she had no reason to. But the thought of her bikini-clad sister stealing cuddle time with me brought out Melanie's competitive spirit.

I don't know exactly how much time went by, but it must have been at least ten minutes. The parents were looking on and smiling, calling out encouragements to both their daughters. And then they started looking curious and puzzled. Melanie should have been at a physical disadvantage. She has the lean hard frame of a distance runner, and I think they were expecting her to lose body heat much more quickly than Patty. But Melanie just kept floating and treading water calmly, as Patty got more and more agitated in the water trying to stay warm.

It was a hopeless battle. Patty's teeth stopped chattering, and she seemed to make some strange hand gesture to us. And then she slipped under the water. Patty's mom started screaming.

Melanie saw what happened and started to swim over. I yelled at her, "MELANIE! MY JOB! YOU COME TO THE BOAT!" and I dived into the water.

Melanie gasped as I lost my power lock on the water around her. Realizing how easy the rescue would be for me, she swam quickly to the boat and climbed shivering up the ladder. By that time I had reached Patty, about five meters under the surface. I had the water around the both of us raised twenty-some degrees F. I could have pushed it more, but I didn't want to heat Patty too rapidly.

She fought me a bit as I tried to bring her to the surface. She was clearly disoriented and didn't seem to recognize me. Fortunately, she wasn't trying to breathe underwater. I got her into a lifesaver hold and with just a touch of force got us to the surface near the boat.

Dad helped me lift her into the boat, mom was still screaming, Melanie ran up from the hold carrying a bunch of dry blankets. Patty was conscious but groggy. She clung to me as Melanie wrapped both of us in a blanket. Melanie looked at me with a pleading look and then wrapped both her sister and me in a second and then a third blanket, like a cocoon.

I realized what Melanie was asking. It would be easier to disguise adding heat to the blankets if I were in there with Patty. So I guess Patty won her bet after all. We did cuddle together, with her in her bikini, for almost half an hour. I slowly added touches of heat to the air trapped in the blankets with us. Patty felt like a refrigerator against me at first. I brought her temperature back up nice and slow. Patty gave me very affectionate hugs under the blankets as she recovered, and then one quick smile when we finally separated.

Time: Wednesday, August 2, 2006

The next morning we had choppy water as a squall moved through. Melanie's dad and I drove the boat east northeast up the coast while the women chatted below. Dad is an interesting guy to talk to. He has a wide variety of insights into many topics. We talked about all sorts of things, from school to science, from boating to banking. We talked about everything except Melanie's childhood, and why did he ever want to manipulate her so badly.

The storm cleared by noon and the weather afterwards was delightful. We anchored off a pristine deserted island shortly after 1:00 PM, and then when down to join the women for lunch. I was feeling very confused. Does Melanie's dad still want to manipulate her? If her parents are still seeking vengeance, they are true masters at hiding it.

After lunch we all pitched in lugging a barbeque grill and various items up a short hill. We would be having a picnic dinner on land this evening. Melanie's mom invited us to go hiking with her, and just as Melanie accepted dad asked Patty to go back to the boat and clean the bilge pumps. Patty nodded at once and started heading down the hill.

I looked at Melanie and got a quick nod of approval. Then I excused myself from the hike and followed Patty back to our small skiff. We went back to the yacht together, Patty joking with me that with my Mechanical Engineering degree from M.I.T., she was expecting expert instructions from me about how to clean the pumps. I assured her that she would have to teach me anything that needed doing.

She changed into some work clothes, a halter top, old cutoff shorts, and a pair of truly dead sneakers. I put on my own sneakers and stayed in my trunks. And then we crawled down an access port to the very bottom of the boat.

Patty started giving me a lecture on the pumps as she began her work cleaning the oil drip pan under the starboard engine. I tried to duplicate her cleaning efforts on a second pan under the port engine. Two of the bilge pumps were also nearby, and another two much further forward in the boat.

"All four pumps can run directly off either engine in an emergency," she said, on her hands and knees and cleaning the oil drip pan. I looked at her and had to smile. Her breasts were hanging loosely inside her halter top and jiggling as she scrubbed. "Our effective pumping rate is probably about 8000 gallons an hour..."

"Wow... Sounds like a lot... Uh, effective rate?"

"You want to be a good boater Eric, you have to learn how to read the numbers. The pumps are actually rated for higher flows, but that's for horizontal pumping. In practice, you have to pump the water up before you pump it out."

"Oh, of course, the static head. That'll pull the flow rate way down."

"That's right. Very good Eric!"

And so it went. We spent over an hour cleaning and crawling together in some very tight places. Patty was very professional and proficient. It was turning into a warm day topside, but down in the bottom of the hold surrounded by the cold water it was pleasantly cool. We wound up pressing against each other a bit and sharing our warmth. I think it reminded us both of our time yesterday under the blankets. Neither of us minded the close contact.

It wasn't just cleaning. Patty was checking and occasionally tightening the hose connections, inspecting the gaskets and filters on the engines and pumps, looking over everything with her expert eyes for any sign of trouble, testing and cleaning the float switches and the junction boxes. I realized she was a very proficient mechanic, an engineer in the true sense of the word. And she taught me very patiently how to do each job. I felt humbled with my Bachelor's degree, dimly remembering Professor Hanson's words that M.I.T. was not a trade school.

We collected the last of the oil traces at the fourth pump and were finally finished. I looked at our accumulated set of oily rags.

"Gee, this isn't much oil at all. What, a couple of ounces maybe?"

Patty looked at me sadly. "Probably about right... Eric! Do you know the Federal limits for pumping oil out with the bilge water?"

"Uh... Gee, no idea."

"The Federal limit set by the EPA is fifteen parts per million of oil in the water pumped from a boat. So, Mr. Four Years at M.I.T., how much water would we have to pump to legally discharge one ounce of that oil?" She then pointed to the rags and smiled at me sweetly.

I thought for a moment. "Yikes! Five hundred gallons! More..."

"Excellent! Exactly right. Imagine ten fifty-gallon water heaters, and dumping all of them just to legally get rid of one ounce of oil. Eric, it's no joke. Even a few ounces would leave a sheen of oil on the water. If I just flipped on the engine blowers and the bilge pumps instead of doing all this cleaning, and if the Coast Guard happened to be passing by, the next thing I'd know they'd be asking me for the boat's registration papers and some personal ID. My parents would flip. Pollution fines around here are huge, as high as five thousands dollars. I'm not the Exxon Valdez, but I'm not joking either."

She held up the dirty rags. "You dump this much oil into Lake Superior, you could quickly find yourself in the land of the big bucks."

I nodded, properly chastised. "Got it! And I agree, I don't want to be a polluter either." And then I spent a few minutes complementing her on her proficiency.

Patty seemed startled by my complements, as if receiving praise occurs so rarely in her life she had no idea how to respond. She finally looked at me and smiled. "Thanks Eric! And for a novice, you did a great job. You cut my time down here in half." She gave me a quick kiss on my cheek, and then we turned and began crawling out of the hold.

We stowed the rags in the waste after taking off our dirty sneakers so as not to dirty the carpet by the staterooms. Both of us were in need of showers. I gestured with my arm to our stateroom. "Ladies first."

Patty gave me a coy smile and shook her head. "Oh no, Eric. We did this job together, and aren't due back on the island for over an hour. This is definitely not the time for ladies first."

And so saying, she untied her halter top, keeping her breasts covered only by holding the two ends of the untied halter together. Then she leaned over and gave me a lingering kiss on my cheek. "And I also haven't thanked you properly for saving my life yesterday..."

She turned around and headed into our stateroom. With her back to me, she removed her halter. I got a clear look at her from behind wearing only a pair of cut-off shorts. My eyes traveled down her bare back, clothed butt, bare legs and feet... I felt a primal male reaction of being alone with a willing female, and then she was through the door. She left it half open. I could hear her pausing for a moment and unzipping her shorts, and then the water in the shower started running.

I stood there just outside the entrance shivering. Was there any way else to interpret this? We had developed a simple rule for changing, closed door means knock first and open means just come in. The door was clearly open, and if I bent forward just a bit I was sure I would see Patty naked in the shower.

Not the time for ladies first? Did she really say that, right before going first? The implication... the offer was that we shower together. But the showers on the boat were tiny, much smaller than a land shower. If I tried to squeeze behind her, I'd be humping her right up her butt... Did she really offer that?

I stood there shivering, reaching down unconsciously and finding myself semi-erect, and then my love for Melanie came to my rescue. "What the hell am I thinking of?!" I shook my head and cleared it, and then went topside to wait for my turn in the shower.

Chapter 20.

Time: Thursday, August 3, 2006 8:30 PM

We spent the last couple of days camping and hiking on the small island, with several short hops back to the boat for an occasional meal or shower. Melanie has been spending a lot of time with her parents, and over the past week it's been a sea change in their relationship. Melanie's parents actually seem to be respecting her, all the interactions on this trip have been very friendly, and Melanie is astonished. I can tell she's been doing a lot of thinking about this.

I've had no time along with her. We all slept in one five-person tent last night, and we were packed in like sardines, me, Melanie, Patty, mom, dad. I guess I could have forced the issue, pulled Melanie aside to talk. But I'm a little embarrassed about how to do it. I don't think I did anything wrong. Still...

I weakly tried to avoid it, but I've had some time alone with Patty today. She acts as if nothing had happened yesterday, and I don't feel like opening the topic with her either. It's such a strange feeling. I actually like her, a lot too. But she's my wife's sister, and that's the relationship I want to have with her. Maybe she's accepted that. Today on the beach, she sat near me and we chatted. She was genuinely interested in my life, and shared a little of her own interests and hopes. It was all friendliness. If it weren't for the sexual overtones of yesterday, I think I would consider her a good friend.

We all had a nice picnic dinner on the island this evening. The weather is currently gorgeous, a few clouds and a cool breeze and about five minutes before a picturesque sunset. But the marine channel is broadcasting a weather advisory of possible severe thunderstorms before daybreak, and Benjamin has decided we should all sleep on the boat tonight. All the camping gear is already aboard.

Patty offered to take the parents to the yacht and then come back with the skiff and wait for us on the beach if Melanie and I wanted to take a twilight stroll. It would be our first time alone together since we left Cambridge. We gratefully accepted.

Melanie was relaxed and happy and we strolled holding hands through the pristine landscape. We walked down the beach and then climbed a small sand dune to admire the last of the evening twilight and watch the stars come out. The moon was bright, just past first quarter, and heading towards the horizon. I knew from experience with the previous days that the moon would set in about two and a half hours, just after 11:30 PM.

We sat down, still feeling faint traces of the sun's warmth in the sand. Melanie rested her head on my shoulder and sighed.

"I'm happy Eric. It's astonishing, but I'm so happy. This is a beautiful vacation, and I'm actually enjoying being with my parents and sister. I'm so glad we came."

I hated what I was about to do, hated to destroy the serenity and beauty of the moment. But my loyalty to Melanie was demanding that I speak up. I had made a vow to myself years ago that I would never not trust Melanie, never keep anything from her again. I told her about the incident with Patty and me on the yacht.

Melanie listened quietly, stiffening as I mentioned Patty removing her halter, but remaining silent, even after I was finished. She was stiff and motionless in my arms for the longest time, and then gasped. I realized she had been crying.

"Melanie... I'm sorry..."

"You're sorry?! For what? Were you tempted?" She sounded quite agitated, upset, an extremely unusual condition for Melanie. She shrugged off my arm that was holding her.

"Huh?! Melanie! I was faithful to you! I did nothing to dishonor our marriage!"

"That's nice. But were you tempted?"

I sighed heavily and lay down in the sand, hoping Melanie would follow me down and cuddle. She remained stiff and sitting. "Melanie, I was not tempted to dishonor you. I thought of my love for you, and my actions were swift and appropriate. I went straight to topside. I did the right thing."

"Eric! You're not answering my question! Do I have to ask a third time?!" Her voice was quivering.

"No, you don't... I want to give you a completely honest answer, but I can't sum it up in a single word. Hear me out?"

"Go."

I thought for a moment, my heart racing. "I like Patty, even though what she did was grossly inappropriate. She reminds me of you in some ways, and she's so different in others... The dichotomy... It's interesting..."

"Uh huh... Keep this honest Eric... Real honest..."

"Hey... Okay.... I think she's cute, and I think... she's offering me friendship... independent of offering me sex. It's so hard to explain... I still want to be friends with her... But Melanie! You are my wife! There might have been a stray thought of thinking of Patty as sexy, but..."