Thanks to all that wonderful friction I very soon felt myself slip over the edge and I moaned and whimpered as Braden held my h*ps still while my inner muscles contracted around him in waves of pleasure. As soon as the last wave passed, he started pushing my h*ps up again.

“More, baby!” I started bouncing, and once again, within minutes, I was tumbling over the edge but we kept going. Eventually, he started thrusting his h*ps beneath me, gave a final deep thrust, and with a low groan froze and shuddered as he let go. I sat there panting for a minute and then climbed off of him and cuddled into his arms.

“Braden, you made me come like five times.”

“Six,” he corrected.

“Six,” I acknowledged. “I liked that new position. A lot. I think we should bounce more often. Like daily. A few times.”

“I like your new look too,” he said, gliding a hand over my now bald girl parts. “Not in a perverted ‘I’m into little girls’ way, just in a ‘holy shit that’s hot’ way.”

“Did I make a lot of noise?” I asked, wondering if I had provided entertainment for the rest of the group.

“Compared to how much noise you usually make? No. Compared to quiet – well.”

“God, I’m wiped out. Do you think we can sleep in tomorrow?”

“Hell, yeah. Today I prosecuted a pecker, drove fifty miles in a minivan, went to a meet and greet for UFO enthusiasts and made my fiancée come six times. I think that I deserve a break, baby.”

“Goodnight, honey,” I said and I was out within minutes. I was woken out of a deep sleep some time later, though, by the sound of Lily screaming Adam’s name. I had a feeling it wasn’t for the same reason that I usually screamed Braden’s name.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

I shot up to a sitting position and Braden woke up too. I heard a crashing sound downstairs, and Lily, sounding further away, still calling Adam’s name. Braden and I flew out of bed and threw our robes on, heading out to the hall. Cameron and Jessica had just come out of their bedroom too at the other end of the cabin.

“What’s going on?” Braden demanded.

“I don’t know!” Cam replied. “We heard Lily calling Adam’s name and a crash.”

We met in the middle, looked up and saw the sliding doors at the back of the cabin open. Braden ordered Jess and I to stay put while he and Cam went to go check it out. I had brought my cell with me and I prepared to call nine one one if necessary. About five minutes later, though, Braden and Cam came back with Adam and Lily in tow. Lily was dressed in her night shirt. She had been running outside barefoot and she was freezing. Jess and I pulled her over to the couch and wrapped a blanket around her.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Why can you never listen?!” Adam yelled at Lily, ignoring the question. “I told you to wait here!”

“I wasn’t going to just wait here while you went after him!” she yelled back.

“Why in the hell not?!” he shouted angrily.

“Because you were alone and I was afraid he would hurt you!” she screamed. That stopped him. He looked at her silently for a moment and I saw all kinds of emotions flit across his face. Finally, I saw that he was biting back a smile.

“And what? You were going to protect me?” he asked with amusement. “What would you have done? Given him a stern lecture? Put him in your next book and killed him off?”

“Made him sit and listen to your jokes all night! He would have killed himself!” she said, shivering. They looked at each other then and I could see the two of them were trying not to laugh.

“Nutty broad,” he mumbled, shaking his head.

“What happened?!” Jessica repeated.

“Lily and I were in the living room together, uh, talking,” Adam said in kind of a funny way, “and we thought we heard somebody out on the deck. We snuck back there to the doors and we saw somebody out there by the hot tub. I flicked on the outside light and he stood up and turned around. It looked like the guy from the music festival. He didn’t look armed, so I opened up the door and yelled, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ He took off, and I took off after him, and told her to stay here!”

“I wasn’t going to let him just run off into the night after some crazy guy by himself,” Lily jumped in. “So I ran after them. I found Adam, but the guy had gotten away.”

“Because I stopped to make sure you were okay!”

“You wanted to make sure I was okay?” she asked, sounding surprised.

“What were you talking about at three a.m?” Jess asked suspiciously. Adam and Lily gave each other a slightly guilty look.

“Uh, I don’t know. General stuff,” Adam answered.

“I couldn’t sleep and I came to get a book,” Lily explained.

“I was in here reading already,” Adam said, looking away. “That’s not important. What’s important is that schmuck is still following you two around. If he were just here for the UFOs he wouldn’t have known which cabin was yours.”

“He’s right,” Braden agreed. “He may have been coming here, or been here already anyway, but at some point he must have been watching us too.”

“Should we sit up and watch for the rest of the night?” Cam asked.

“I doubt he’ll be back tonight after all this,” Braden said, going over to check the locks on the doors.

“I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep anyway,” Lily said. “Ghost stories, UFOs and now a stalker. I’ll just sit and hold onto my cell phone for the rest of the night.”

“You won’t be any use tomorrow if you don’t sleep,” Adam said, picking up a book. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

“What do you mean, you’ll go with me?” Lily asked.

“I’ll go and sit with you until you fall asleep. Now, for once in your life don’t argue with me!” He pushed her gently toward her room and to my surprise she actually went quietly.

After breakfast the next day, we headed for the lectures and subsequent breakout sessions. We all met up for lunch in the restaurant and upon comparing notes we discovered that if our guy had been present that morning, he wasn’t doing anything obvious to make himself known to us. Nobody seemed to be staring at or following Braden and me. Adam and Lily didn’t see anyone who looked familiar to them, and not many people in Cam and Jess’s group even fit the description.

“It makes sense,” Cam said. “I mean, he knows that at least one of us has seen him, so I don’t know why he would want to take a chance at getting caught by going to a lecture.”

“I wonder if anyone who was registered was a no show,” I pondered.

“No, everybody was present and accounted for,” Lily answered. “I checked the sign-in sheets.”

“Good thinking, honey!” Jess said, sounding impressed. “We should have had her on the garbage can mission.”

“You know, I have to admit, that overview lecture was kind of interesting,” Braden said. “I’ve got to ask my dad about some of this stuff. I’m starting to wonder if he knows any aliens.”

“I think my Uncle Ira might be an alien,” I said. “No human could be that into dry cleaning.”

“Felicity’s dad could be an alien,” Cam suggested and Braden and I agreed.

“So, what’s the plan from here, kids?” Adam broke in.

“If your stalker is really into this conspiracy stuff, maybe he’ll still go on the UFO watch tonight,” Jess suggested. “It would seem like that would be kind of important.”

“I say that we hold our own UFO vigil from the hot tub,” Cam suggested.

“The chances that we would be able to recognize him in the woods in the dark are pretty slim. Maybe we should just decide later whether we think it’s worth it,” I said.

After the later lecture, wherein we discovered that certain celebrities might be aliens, which explained a lot about Miley Cyrus, we went back to the cabin. Everyone decided to retire to their rooms to relax and nap, since we might be having a late night. At around five, we started assembling again. The guys wanted to watch sports, so we ordered dinner and watched football for a couple of hours. After we ate, we decided to play one of the board games called “Say My Name.” It involved giving your partner clues to try to get them to identify the person or character on your card, but you couldn’t say the “forbidden words” as clues. Adam wound up paired with Lily again and the two of them were hysterical. And so were we most of the time watching them.

“Okay, this is a fictional character,” Lily began. “And he’s like a human.”

“What?” Adam asked her, looking befuddled. “What the f**k does that mean? He’s like a human?” He shook his head and scowled at her.

“He wears clothes!” she said frantically. I had feeling that this game had Lily on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

“He wears clothes. Great. Well, that narrows it down.” The sands of the hourglass were pouring away and Braden, Cam, Jess and I, were laughing our asses off at this exchange already.

“And he walks upright!” she added, waving her hands frantically.

“I would hope that most of the people in this game walk upright! Give me a real f**king clue already!” Adam had that homicidal look again.

“Duh huh!” she said desperately.

“Hey! All you’ve told me is that he’s a fictional character who wears clothes and walks upright. Don’t duh huh me!” he spit out angrily.

“No! No! He says that!” Suddenly she started making barking noises.

“Are you okay?” he asked looking at her like she was nuts.

“Has a place in Florida…” She looked seriously stressed out. I was starting to worry.

“He’s retired?” Adam asked, still looking confused.

“He wears bright colored clothes. He tells jokes.”

“It sounds like you’re describing my Uncle Murray,” Adam was shaking his head.

“Time!” I yelled almost peeing myself I was laughing so hard.

“Goofy! The answer was Goofy!” Lily said with disgust.

“Goofy?! That was the best you could come up with for Goofy?!”

“I couldn’t say Disney or dog or cartoon or anything because they were forbidden words!” She pointed to the card.

“Oh now now kids! Play nicely!” Jess said.

“What do you say we do one more round and then hit the hot tub,” Cam suggested after a while. That idea received universal support.

Adam and Lily went last. I had a feeling this would be a Grand Finale.

“Okay,” Adam began, “Now concentrate! This was a real person. White suit!”

“Colonel Sanders!” Lily replied quickly.

“Colonel Sanders? I said it was a real person, not a logo for a chicken joint!”

“He was a real person! If you don’t believe me look it up!”

“Whatever! Not Colonel Sanders though. Humor!” he said urgently.

“Steve Martin!” She clapped her hands with joy, obviously believing that they had finally gotten one right.

“No, uh …” He searched for another clue.

“Wait! White suit and humor but not Steve Martin?” She looked crushed.

“I just said no!” He yelled. “Hannibal!”

“Um, uh, Dumbo …” she said with a deeply pensive expression.

“Dumbo?! What the fuck?!”

“Hannibal! Elephants! And before you say it he was real too, you schmuck!”

“Guess again goddamnit!”

“Anthony Hopkins!” Adam threw down the card and looked like he was going to cry.

“Halley’s Comet!” he growled.

“Halley’s Comet?! What in hell do you mean Halley’s Comet?”

“Time!” Braden informed them gleefully, wiping tears of laughter out of his eyes.

“Mark Twain! You’re an author Christ’s sake!” Adam bit out.

“Oh, right! He was from Hannibal, Missouri! What in the hell did Halley’s Comet have to do with Mark Twain?!”

“It appeared on the day he was born and the day he died! Duh huh!” Adam said.

“This isn’t Trivial f**king Pursuit!” Lily shot back. “Why didn’t you say Mississippi or riverboat or frog jumping contest or something besides Halley’s Motherfucking Comet?!

“Because they’re all forbidden motherfucking words! Miss ‘like a human’!” he yelled. I could just picture them as an old Jewish couple for some reason. Okay, maybe with fewer uses of the word “motherfucker.”

“Okay guys! Let’s hit the hot tub!” Cam interrupted. Adam and Lily stood up and promptly crashed into each other while attempting to walk in opposite directions. They were stuck between a couch and a coffee table and neither was willing to back up so they literally climbed over one another and headed for their rooms. They really were very entertaining.

CHAPTER TWENTY

We were back downstairs and in the hot tub with cocktails and music in fifteen minutes. Let me point out that none of us were really heavy drinkers. It was an occasional thing we did to let loose, like visiting conspiracy clubs and going on UFO hunts.

Our group had varied musical tastes but most of us were eclectic. The guys all preferred classic rock but we girls liked our 80s music and it was our turn. While they weren’t thrilled about it, they sat there tolerantly listening to us do our really bad sing-along Karaoke versions of Blue Jean by David Bowie and A- ha’s Take On Me. Somewhere in the middle of Tonight is What it Means to be Young I looked up and saw something weird. It was a light. Up in the sky. Oh, no way, man!