"Laymon, Richard - AmongTheMissing" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laymon Richard)

He laughed.
"I _do_ love this, though. Just smell the air!" Hurrying ahead of him, she whirled around and pranced backward. "This is so delicious. So _invigorating_!" Suddenly, one of her hands darted out from inside the blanket and tossed both her slippers at him. "Catch!"
He caught one, but fumbled the other. As he crouched to pick it up, she whipped the blanket from around her shoulders and flung it toward him. "Catch!"
It fluttered to the ground in front of him.
Laughing, she lifted the nightgown over her head. She threw it. The wind spread it open and lifted it, carrying it high. The wispy white gown twirled and swooped like an exuberant ghost.
"Don't let it get away!" she called. Then she ran through the moonlight and shadows, her arms waving in the air.
At the water's edge, she stopped. She looked back. "Coming?" she called.
"Might take me a minute," he said, standing up with her slippers and blanket. "I've got to chase down your nightgown."
"Oh, leave it."
"No, I'll get it." Moments before, a low pine limb had snagged the cavorting nightie.
"I'm going in the water!"
"I'll be along in a minute." He hurried over to the gown, carefully freed it from the pine snare, then turned around and headed for the beach with it in his hands, blanket and slippers clutched to his chest.
Standing naked at the river's edge, she looked over her shoulder at him.
"Don't take all night!" she called.
"I'm coming."
"I do hope that's not intended to be some sort of lame, Grant-like orgasm pun."
"Huh?"
"Never mind." Turning her head forward, she dipped a foot into the water.
"How is it?"
"Bearable, but only just."
Against the dark surface of the water, her body looked stark white. She had no tan lines. She might have been molded out of fresh snow or sculptured from ivory -- pure white from neck to foot except for the shadowed gray crescent between her buttocks.
As she waded slowly into the river, her white feet seemed to disappear into blackness. Then the black void climbed her white calves. As she moved forward, her arms out for balance, the black consumed the backs of her thighs, then her buttocks.
She turned around.
Her pure white front was dabbed with dark areas: her eyes, her mouth, her nipples. Below each breast was a crescent of shadow that reminded him of the crevice behind her. But these were horizontal, not vertical, and much smaller.
"Coming in?" she called.
"You bet!"
He dropped the blanket, gown and slippers into the sand in front of him, then took off his shirt.
"Nice chest, babe! Now let's see the rest!"
He let his shirt fall onto the pile. As fast as he could, he pulled off his boots and socks. Then he pulled down his jeans.
"Wow!"
"Wow yourself!" he called.
"I'm impressed!"
"You're not so bad either."
"Don't just stand there. Come on out and show me what you can do with that baby."
"Here I come, ready or not!" He stepped around the pile of clothing and headed for the water.
"Come and get me!" she cried out. Laughing, she dived toward him. The water shut over her and for moments the river looked deserted -- as if she had never been there at all. Then her face appeared, a pale laughing oval. "Ever do it in the water?" she asked, gliding closer.
"A couple of times."
"How was it?"
"Dry." He dived and swam toward her underwater. When he surfaced, she was close enough to reach. Standing shoulder-deep in the river, he found her hand and pulled her toward him.
"You got your hair all wet," he said.
"It'll dry." She rubbed herself against him.
"Not in an hour or so."
" 'So' can be a long time."
"It can be forever," he said. Below the surface, his fist shot toward her. Water resistance slowed the punch, robbed it of power, but his fist connected well anyway.
With the first shock of the blow, her eyes bulged. Her mouth sprang wide. She gagged, trying to suck in air but getting none.
He struck her again in the same place, dead center, just below the sternum.
Then he grabbed her behind the neck and pushed her down. Climbing onto her back, he rode her, hands around her neck, knees squeezing her sides. She twisted beneath him. She tried to roll. She tried to throw him off. Once, she managed to force the top of her head to the surface. Before her mouth could make it to air, he leaned forward, shifting his weight, and her head went down again.
After that, she seemed to give up.
He stayed on her, keeping her down while he counted slowly to three hundred.
Then he climbed off. Gripping her hair, he dragged her slowly toward the shore. When the water was waist-high, he ducked beneath her and lifted her onto his shoulder. He carried her up the beach, then dropped her onto the blanket.