"Smeds-MarathonRunner" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

companion to share it with.

Felice was a miniature tornado. She played with a determination that intimidated
blossoms right off the nearby trees. She was easy to admire, and it was likewise
easy for him to imagine building on that respect until it included an erotic
element.

He was thinking of that, not his stumbling, as their court time expired.

They collected their balls and ambled away, surrendering their spots to another
couple.

"Good game," he said. He'd been ahead, but she'd been coming up on him rapidly;
if they'd had time to play out the match, she'd probably have won. He told her
so.

"I did okay," she said, shrugging in such a genuinely modest way that he
couldn't help but feel even better about her. The woman had no pretensions; he
didn't have to strut for her. He didn't have to invent compliments.

"Want to shower together?" Neil asked.

Felice raised her eyebrows. He supposed she was wondering why go to the
trouble--their nanodocs could scrub out their pores, dissolve the grit, and
freshen them up. But showering together had a definite romance to it, like
roasting marshmallows over a campfire under the starlight. He knew he wasn't the
only traditionalist left, or the locker rooms wouldn't still be there, over at
the edge of the courts by the redwood grove.

"Sure," she replied, as if catching his mood. "Why not?"

The spray did wonderful things to Felice's body. The rivulets born on her upper
chest and shoulders twisted and forked as they negotiated her curves. The fine,
almost transparent hairs at the base of her neck caught droplets like dew on
strands of spider web in a morning garden. Her nipples rose. She arched her
breasts toward him, as if to say, "Here, these need the touch of warm, soapy
hands."

He hesitated. The way her wet hair clung to her skull, and the color of it,
reminded him of his own daughter -- may she rest in peace -- as a toddler.

"How old are you, Felice?" he murmured.

Old enough, her wink told him, but she answered, again without guile, "Thirty."

He'd been a widower longer than she'd been alive. Christ, she might not even
have reset her age yet; he might be seeing her natural youth. He stepped behind
her, and used his warm, soapy hands -- on her back. He didn't want to let his
body language commit him to a course he didn't intend.