The Timefull Cruise

"We'd best be close and I'd like to be holding your hand in case anything goes amiss. If I'm wrong we could just drop into empty ocean along with this machine."

I grabbed her and pulled her to me tightly. "I can think of something better than just holding hands. Where is the reset button?"

She pointed it out to me. As we leaned against the crate I reached over and pushed the button. The hairs on my hand stood on end and there was a 'whoomp'.

XIII

We experienced a little over two weeks ship time and then a couple of days before we were to head back to shore, we reset the time device again. This went on for about five months, our time. Many of the couples noticed how friendly we were early on in the cruise, each time they saw us for the first time. We simply told them we knew each other before the cruise. Neither of us had really talked with anyone until the first dinner. Penny came up with an excuse for us having two cabins: it was a mix-up. She told everyone that we had both booked tickets on the cruise and when we realized the mistake, all our travel agent allowed us to do was to make each ticket a ticket for one. It was fairly easy to fool everyone into believing everything was normal.

As for what we did during that five months: we enjoyed ourselves immensely. We dined and danced. We played shipboard games and made love in the night. Sometimes we stayed indoors during the day and made love all day. We experienced everything that ship had to offer and we chatted with practically everyone on board. It was a five month long first date with the woman of my dreams.

But having a relationship with a living and breathing woman means change and growth and new experiences. Penny marked off her period on a calendar in her room and I noticed that right around the time she was due, we spent the nights in my cabin. She would cast glances my way and then when I returned her look, she would cast her eyes down. She was worried about something. I was going to let her get around to telling me what she was concerned about. And one day, she did.

"Gerry...you know I said in the first cycle that I wanted to have your baby?" Penny was in her bathrobe, facing away from me with her arms bent and her hands hidden from my view in front of her.

"Yes," I responded lazily from the bed. We were in the process of getting up for the day, the last day in the current cycle.

"Well, I've missed my period."

"I know. Great!"

She turned and faced me. She had been crying silently while building up the strength to tell me she was pregnant. "You're not upset?"

"Why should I be upset? It puts a crick in our plans, but that is what life does. Besides you warned me five months ago. I've been having sex with you almost once a day since then and I'm a grown man, if I wanted to make sure that I wouldn't get you pregnant I would have worn a condom." Her face broke into a grin. She was holding something white, the size of a small electric toothbrush, and I assumed it was one of those home pregnancy testers. "Penny, the idea that a woman as beautiful and wonderful as you willingly encouraged my sperm to fertilize one of your eggs is so-so satisfying. Out of all the men everywhere, you have chosen me to be the father of your child, how could I be anything but flattered and happy?"

She undid her housecoat and let it drop to the floor. Then she leapt into bed beside me, slipped under the sheets and cuddled up to me.

"You want to try for twins?" I asked, running one of my fingers along her lower lip.

"You know that's not how it works. Besides, I'm feeling a little emotionally delicate right now. Some cuddling, and some cuddling only, would make me feel much better, right now. By tonight I should be ready to jump your bones. Is that okay?"

I put my arm around her and pulled her close. The feel of our bodies stretched out under the sheet and in full skin to skin contact was paradoxically exciting and relaxing. "I'm fine with that," I replied. "I don't think you're about to go chaste and prudish on me."

We lay together, breathing gently and feeling each other's heart beat steadily for quite a while. I waited as long as I could and then announced "I've got to go to the bathroom, honey."

Penny smiled at me. "That's all right. I need a shower after all the sweating we did last night." She climbed out of bed and I watched how graceful she was as she did so.

"Give me a minute and I'll join you," I suggested.

She turned back to me, smirking. "Like yesterday? I ended up with more semen on me than soap."

"You have to be careful talking like that on a ship," I cautioned and then I dodged a well-thrown pillow.

We cleaned ourselves, dressed and began our day. After breakfast, I found a quiet place for the two of us to talk for awhile.

"Look, I came up with an idea concerning your ex-boyfriend," I began.

"I'm all ears."

"How many people do you think would be able to deduce that Wally's device is actually a time machine?"

"A few, after a quick examination. Many people, after a lengthy examination. But you're not thinking about letting scientists getting their hands on it, are you? That's a very dangerous piece of technology. The government would scoop it up pretty fast and would make everyone involved disappear, except for Wally who would be given everything he ever wanted to keep producing time machines. I don't like the thought of anyone having control over it. We haven't exactly been altruistic in our use of it, have we?"

"Well, I was thinking if we accidentally found it and suspected it was a bomb then the captain would notify the authorities. That would be the coast guard or the American Navy, correct?"

"Yes."

"They would come to investigate a possible bomb, see all the blinking lights, hear the beeping and then see a countdown clock and assume it was a bomb. The police demolition squads don't take chances and try to slowly take apart potential bombs, they blow them up. So the authorities would likely destroy the device before any physicists get a real good look at it."

"Especially if it had nuclear material inside, Gerry!"

"That's right! So if we could open up a panel and release harmless amount of radioactivity, enough to detect but not harm anyone, then the authorities would be desperate to be rid of the thing."

"The Wilsons actually have an old camera that uses film. Radiation would fog their film and I'm enough of a scientist to recognize that. How do we explain finding the device in the first place and opening up the crate?"

"Well, if we were newly married, then we would be making love in obscure places all around the ship. We stumbled upon the crate and heard the beeping. You recognized the name on the crate and recalled that your ex-boyfriend was a brilliant physicist, had access to nuclear material and was very angry with you for ending the relationship. I'm a cop and you're a scientist. Who else would be nosy enough to open the crate and examine its contents without talking to anyone first?"

"That's a great idea! Wally will get blamed. He'll be put in a position where he can never build another time machine. Isn't sending him to jail for a fake crime a little harsh, though?"

"He's hurt you and was willing to use time travel to manipulate you into something you didn't want. Personally, I want to beat the crap out of the guy. But he is a danger to the world. What would he have done with this device if he was on this cruise and managed to win you? Or lose you for good?"

"You're right. He kept a list of enemies in his office and would actively use his clout to try to destroy their scientific reputations. He once saw someone else's grad student accidentally throw out some essential lab books and then Wally publicly accused the lead scientist of falsifying his records and demanded to be shown the now-destroyed lab records. It obliterated the poor man's career." Penny's face lit up. "Wait a minute! Did you just propose to me a minute ago?"

I smiled at her. "Yes, although I suppose it wasn't the most romantic way to do it."

She leapt into my arms and kissed me hard. "That's a yes, buster. Now come with me."

Penny grabbed one of my hands and started dragging me to a stairway leading up to a higher deck. I realized she was taking me to the bridge, to talk to the captain, and tried to hold her back.

"We can't get married now, honey, there'll be no record of it in the next cycle," I pleaded.

"You should have figured out I was smarter than you before you proposed and I accepted, Gerry. It's too late for you now."

I gave in and followed her. As we made our way to a higher and higher deck, we encountered chains and such that were meant to let passengers know not to go the way we were going. Penny ignored them all.

Eventually, we were stopped by someone in the crew. A smartly dressed, older woman gave as a reproachful look until Penny explained that she wanted to talk to the captain because we wanted to be married. The officer slowly explained that it would take a few days to set everything up for a wedding and we would be back on shore before then. Penny pretended to be unhappily surprised at the unwelcome news. Then she went off on a tangent and asked the woman how long it would take the coast guard or a navy ship to reach the cruise ship if there were an emergency. The response was thirty-six hours at most. Penny then dragged me away, towards the stairs heading to a lower deck. I shrugged helplessly at the confused woman.

When we reached the hold, Penny explained herself.

"There will be added urgency to getting rid of the supposed bomb if the timer will count down sooner. So, once we're in the next cycle I'll set it to countdown for about forty-eight hours after we 'find' it. Are you ready for the next cycle?" she asked after having made the necessary adjustments to the device.

"Not yet." I grabbed her and pulled her against me one last time this cycle and then pushed the button. The hairs on my hand and arm stood on end and the machine went 'whoomp'.

Penny reached into the crate again. "Hand me my purse, Gerry? And then go keep watch while I check something here."

I obliged and several minutes later Penny joined me near the door and gave me a quick kiss.

"What was that about?"

"Just looking to see how much shielding I had to remove from the power core. There are three protective plates and I removed the middle one and hid it by another crate. When I check it for radioactivity it should be detectable. Wally also obligingly put a radioactive warning label on the innermost plate."

"I love you. Where to first, my place or yours?"

She put her hand on my cheek and her eyes were glowing. "I think we should talk to the captain about arranging a wedding, don't you?"

We headed back for the bridge, were intercepted again and after our quick explanation, we were escorted to the captain's cabin. Surprisingly, he was overjoyed at the prospect of a wedding on board his ship. We set a date of four days hence and then we went to dinner.

At dinner, we pretended to be introduced to everyone at our table and we told them the news. Penny and I had grown to know many of them quite well over the last five months, our time, and it was an odd thrill to share the good news with them. In the middle of dinner the captain called for attention and announced the upcoming wedding. We stood and everyone toasted us.

And for the next three days, almost everyone on board seemed obsessed with the upcoming nuptials. Penny and I had trouble keeping straight faces much of the time, but the other passengers put it down to nervousness. We were both taken aside at times and offered unasked for advice on marriage. It varied from very spicy ("sexual role-playing my boy, anything from 'me Tarzan you Jane' to the 'lost astronaut and the naughty, alien vixen'") to downright archaic ("remember that there must be one person in the household who makes the decisions and the man is the king of his castle"). Penny was also given a great deal of sexual advice, none of which she was willing to share with me. She did admit that we had already explored almost everything that she had been 'taught'.

Of course, the night before the wedding was to be the stag and stagette. Penny and I had suggested that we have one big party for men and women, a stag and doe, but in some ways our fellow passengers were very conservative. So I bid Penny farewell as the guys dragged me off to an uncertain fate, while the women collected around my betrothed in preparation for their own excitement.

I was wondering what could have possibly been arranged for me, as I was led into the dining room. The tables had all been cleared out, leaving the chairs scattered around the edges of the room. A single chair awaited me in the center. I was led to it and then held in place while a couple of the men tied me down.

I took a deep breath. Obviously, under normal circumstances a peeler would now be led into the room to do a lap dance as all the men cheered her on. But where were they going to find one on a cruise ship?

A slow pop song blared forth from some hidden speakers, until one of the men found the controls and set the volume from 'noise' to 'just loud'. I started sweating as I had a vision of some of my fellow passengers in drag. Luckily for me, that was not to be.

Two of the men came in, each holding one of the hands of a young woman hidden by a cloak. They escorted her carefully down some steps to the main dining room floor and then released her hands. I could see the bottoms of black slacks beneath the long brown cloak and she wore ridiculously high heels.

She put her hands on her hips and turned once for the audience. The men were beginning to quieten down. She faced me again and pulled back her cowl, shaking her head as she did so. Her long blonde hair bounced and flowed. As she raised her face I saw her pale blue eyes, delicate nose and pointed chin. It was the dessert cart girl.

She slowly walked over to me, each step in time with the slow beat of the music. When she reached me she tousled my hair and looked straight into my face.

"Hi there. Are you ready for a good time?" she asked in a whisper.

"Hi, yourself. I'm afraid I'm a little tied up, right now. Won't your boyfriend mind about your activities tonight?"

She looked at me in surprise. "Uhm, well...not really. He's stripping for the bachelorette party. We're getting three thousand each, enough to pay off a good chunk of our school loans. Now that we've both graduated we kind of need the money."

She stepped back from me and turned away. She appeared to be fiddling with the ties at her throat and then she cast a look over her shoulder at me, winked and then the cloak slid to the floor. She wore her regular white blouse, but I could see it was translucent at best and there was no bra underneath. Her blouse was tucked into her tight blank pants. Her bottom was round and she had clearly squeezed into these slacks.

She took a few steps away from me as she unbuttoned her sleeves. Then she walked around my chair, orbiting me, allowing me to see that the voluminous frills on the front of her top kept her breasts hidden from view, at least for now. She smiled at me again and began unbuttoning her blouse very slowly.

The first button came free and she ran her hands over her smooth throat, caressing herself from her chin down to the little hollow at the base of her throat. I twisted my neck to see her undo the second button and then she was behind me.

There was some muttering and a few words of encouragement from the audience. I twisted my head the other way and saw she had just undone button number four or five. The way the frills projected away from the vertical indicated she was a well-developed young woman. She stopped walking and bent over away from me. Men clapped and cheered her as she offered them a good look down her top. She was giving me the chance to see exactly how tightly her slacks fit her lovely bottom and the chance to see exactly how firm her bottom was.

She turned to face me, offering me a fine view of her two breasts, barely restrained by the remaining buttons. There was a perfect line of cleavage between them. Her nipples were hidden by the remainder of the shirt that was still buttoned up and I wondered if they were erect with excitement over exposing herself to so many men at one time. She stood again and resumed her slow walk.

Another button was undone and then another. She stopped directly in front of me, put her hands on either side of her blouse and squeezed her tits together. The mounds slowly rose free of her top and then her erect nipples sprang into view, one after the other. There were a few cheers.

She came back to me. "Do you like what you see?"

"Yes."

"Tell me what you want to do to my breasts."

"Squeeze them and tweak the nipples until you cry out in pain. Then kiss them and suck them until you beg me to squeeze them again."

She licked her lips. "That's good." In an earlier cycle, Penny and I had accidentally learned she and her boyfriend were into some rough games. Now she pushed one of her tits up to her mouth and gently kissed the nipple and taking most of her broad, red areola into her mouth with the suck. Then she tilted close to me and closed her teeth on the nipple. She pulled her head back, stretching out her nipple. She grimaced in pain and then finally released the tortured tit.

"Would you like to do that to me?"

"Yes, indeed."

"How faithful are you?"

"Penny is my whole world."

The girl looked a little disappointed. "Too bad. I had decided to fuck you later right here in front of everyone. Maybe another time..."

She moved closer to me until her breasts were touching my cheeks. She rubbed them against my face and I could feel my five o'clock shadow scraping against her delicate skin. She let out a gasp and then whined quietly. She kept this up until the inside of her boobs were beginning to go pink with the friction.

She stood back and looked at me as if considering her next step. Her nipples were quite long and her areolae were crinkled. Once she had her pussy bared, I was pretty sure I was going to find she was literally dripping wet. Having come to a decision, she undid the remaining buttons on her top and let it fall to the ground. She then kicked both the cloak and the blouse away from where I was seated.

Her hips began to sway to the beat as she ran her hands over her top, spending a great deal of effort in handling and teasing her own breasts. After a minute, she ran her fingers through her hair. Then she brought one hand to her mouth where she put her index finger all the way in and then slowly pulled it out. The finger popped free and was glistening wet. She pushed that hand under her waistband and into her pants. With great effort she managed to get the hand down deep enough so that the waistband was stretched tightly just above the wrist.

She pinched her lip with her teeth and closed her eyes as she concentrated. I could see the bulge growing and shrinking, growing and shrinking. With a start I realized she had stuck the index finger in her own pussy and was teasing herself to either get her excitement level up or bring herself off. She gasped twice, in time with the movement of her hand and then she hummed for a few seconds.

She opened her eyes and looked from her right to her left. "Oops," she whispered.

"Forgot you had an audience, did you?"

She chuckled. "Yes. I'd better get them involved a little. I'll be back shortly." She pulled her hand free and half danced and half walked over to the circle of men. She stood in front of a grey-haired old man, raised her arms above her and slowly wiggled her hips as if she was belly dancing. As he stood idly by, watching her, she inched herself closer and closer until she was actually rubbing her hip into his groin.