It was one of those scorching, hot, humid beach days that sapped all energy and caused people to flock to water or shade. The air was heavy and still, and even when the tide turned, there was not the usual relief of a sea breeze.

Wearing only the thinnest, flimsiest sundress she could find, Abbey lay on a wicker chaise lounge, shaded by pine and maple trees. She had a book in one hand and a long, tall glass of iced tea in the other. It was too damned hot to get very involved in her book and she tossed it down replacing it with the mindless frivolity of Cosmopolitan magazine. The headline 'You and your Lover, How Sexually Adventurous are you?' caught her eye and she began to fill out the survey. She was interrupted by the tinny sound of Marvin Gaye singing about 'Sexual Healing' that came from the old radio they kept on the porch. Jed, Annie, and Zoey were beginning to repaint the old sailboat that had once belonged to Jed and Jon, then Elizabeth and finally Ellie and Zoey, who had re-christened it the 'Zellie'. Growing up, the two of them had spent hours on the water sailing together.

Abbey pretended to keep working on her survey, but she was really watching Jed, as he worked in his old paint splattered khaki shorts and worn, faded Celtics tank top. She watched his biceps flex as he scraped paint, and the rivulets of sweat that ran down his tanned legs, making her itch to run her fingertips over the dark gold hair on his calves. While he may have gotten a little stocky over the years, he was still one damned sexy, attractive man. It always amazed her that after all these years she could still feel such powerful waves of desire for this man of hers.

Jed ran his hands through his sweat dampened hair, then reached for his beer, taking a long pull. When he put the bottle down he caught Abbey's frankly admiring gaze and gave her an all knowing wink. Flustered at being caught, Abbey snapped back to her survey, as if she had not been watching him and fantasizing about what she wanted to do with him. Jed threw back his head and laughed, but Abbey simply ignored him and continued on with her survey.

As the afternoon progressed, the oppressive heat even reached Abbey in the shade. She felt the perspiration trickling down her spine and between her breasts. She pressed her wet glass to her forehead, then scooped out a cube of ice and began to run it down over her throat, her chest, and between her breasts. She was completely unaware that Jed was watching her intently while he painted. When she finally did catch his eye, she stared right at him and ran the cube sensuously over her lips, licking the moisture away with her tongue. But it was watching her suck that cube into her mouth that caused Jed to paint right over the hand that he had braced against the boat.

"Shit!" Jed exclaimed, shaking his dripping hand. He heard Abbey's soft feminine laughter coming from the trees. Zoey shook her head looking at her father's paint smeared hand.

"Where is your mind, Dad?" she asked. "You were just like a thousand miles away."

"I guess I just wasn't paying attention," he muttered. I am not going to tell you where my mind was kiddo, he thought, because my mind was on the fact that if you weren't here, I would be on your mother and lifting her skirts this very instant. I would take that ice cube and run it...

"Damn," he cursed, he had done it again.

"I think the sun has fried your brain. You want to take a break?" Zoey asked.

"Or I could get you another beer," Annie offered.

"No girls, I'm fine," Jed grumbled, thinking that he had better start concentrating on the task at hand before he covered the rest of his body with paint. He vowed not to look up at Abbey and actually kept that vow for almost 15 minutes. When he couldn't resist the urge any longer, he looked over to where she had been reclining. The chaise lounge was empty. He shielded his eyes against the sun and began scanning the area for his wife.

"If you're looking for Gram, she went inside," Annie said. She and Zoey were stripping off their clothes down to the bathing suits they wore underneath.

Damn, Jed thought. Now that they had finished painting he had been hoping for a little more titillation.

"Annie and I are going down to the beach swimming for a couple hours to cool off. OK?" Zoey asked.

"Go ahead, have fun," he waved them off. "Don't forget, no..."

"Swimming alone," Annie and Zoey both called back, "we know, we know."

Jed smiled and turned to head for the house. He couldn't wait to get out of his sweat soaked clothes and take a nice cool shower. As he walked around the back of the house, still thinking about that shower, Abbey was standing, blocking his way.

"Where are you going?" She asked, placing her hands on his shoulders.

"Inside."

"Really," she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his, kissing him deeply. He knew she meant business when her tongue swept into his mouth.

"Hey, I'm all for this babe," he said, pulling back, "but I really should shower first. I'm pretty gross."

"No," she said, pulling his clinging shirt away from his chest to thread her fingers through his chest hair.

"No?" He raised an eyebrow. Abbey usually hated to make love in the heat. How many times had she slapped him away telling him it was too fucking hot to have sex?

"Uh uh...I want you...hot..and sweaty...and NOW..." She took his hand and slid it inside her sundress, pressing it into her breast. Jed didn't need anymore incentive than that. He thought about carrying her inside to their bedroom, but that was too far. He looked around for cover, saw the outdoor shower stall, and yanked her forcefully inside. He pressed her back against the wall and proceeded to kiss her hard, the way she wanted it. There were times she wanted to be made love to and other times she wanted to be taken, and right now she wanted to be taken, to revel in Jed's strength and maleness. She pulled his soaked tank over his head and began to run her lips and tongue over his chest with abandon. The salty taste of his sweat was wildly erotic to Abbey, and she began to rub her face against his chest hair, loving the roughness against her soft cheek, loving everything that was hard and rough and male about him.

Jed's hands moved under Abbey's sundress, lifting it as they moved higher to stroke her thighs. As his fingers moved upwards, coming into contact with the soft curls between her legs, he realized she wasn't wearing panties. The fact that she had come out here wanting this, looking for sex, excited him right down to his bones. He gave a sharp intake of breath as Abbey clamped down on his nipple, sucking hard and he lifted her so her legs wrapped around his waist. Abbey felt just how hard he was against her core and she squirmed against him with what he swore was a purr.

"Jed, now...please," she cried, and he knew there would not be any foreplay this afternoon, just hot, mindless sex. He set Abbey back on her feet so he could unzip his shorts. "Come on Jed...hurry," she urged him while she pulled the sundress over her head and stood before him, gloriously nude in the sunlight. He was finally free and Abbey felt a tingle of anticipation at just how rock hard he was for her. She moved in for another deep kiss, tasting the beer on his tongue. He raised her leg over his hip and lifted her back up so she could wrap her legs around him again

"Oh God Jed, take me now...now." He lifted her hips away from him and she pulled his penis back from his belly to guide him to her entrance. When he was positioned properly, he pulled Abbey's hips back towards him sliding the full length of himself inside her and causing her to give a purely feminine moan of contentment. Abbey held him deeply inside her, squeezing him with her inner muscles.

"Ahh...babe...don't do that," he moaned, "it'll be over too soon." He pressed her back against the wall, burying his face into her breasts, while he thrust slowly into her. Abbey's hands tangled in his hair, her head falling back, as his lips found her left nipple. He flicked the tip of his tongue over and over it until he finally took it into his mouth to suckle. Abbey moaned as she felt her milk let down. She didn't usually let Jed do this, it made too much of a mess, but today it didn't matter if he wanted to taste her, and make a mess in the process, not in this urgent primal mating.

"Harder Jed...I need it harder," she pleaded breathlessly. Jed couldn't get the leverage he needed to comply with her pleas while standing up. Abbey gave a cry of disappointment as he lifted her off him.

"You want it harder, you have to lay down," he instructed. Abbey complied, laying back on the hard redwood floor. Jed settled back in between her thighs and his first deep thrust had her gasping from the combination of pain and pleasure.

"Is that the way you want it?" Jed groaned.

"Oh God...yes...oh yeah, babe...more." Her sexy whimpers had Jed losing control and he began to thrust harder and deeper. The floor didn't have any give so their bodies came together with sweaty claps. Their lips ground together until Abbey tasted blood.

"Oh Abbey...Abbey," Jed moaned huskily into her hair, while his hands were running over the smooth legs that encircled his waist. Abbey welcomed his weight as he lay heavily on her pressing her into the floor, their slick bellies rubbing against each other, so he could thrust with increasing speed and depth that caused her to cry out every time he pounded in to his hilt. This was rough, it was wild, it bordered on pain and they both reveled in the animal nature of the act. Jed heard Abbey's breathing start to come in short gasps, felt her legs tightening around him, her feet digging into the small of his back, and her nails scraping hard down the back of his shoulders. The cries of his name grew louder and louder from her lips.

"Jed...Jed...Jed...JEEED!!" The last time she almost screamed it as she went over the edge into a shattering orgasm. All it took was Abbey's inner muscles contracting hard around him to send him over the edge with a deep long moan of "Aaaa...bbey."

Abbey felt his last deep thrust and then the short bursts of his climax which went on and on inside her, prolonging her own electric impulses until he finally collapsed on top of her, gasping for air. Abbey soothed him by running her fingers through his hair and over his shoulders.

"Oh Jesus," he groaned against her neck, "I didn't think I was ever going to stop coming."

"Me neither," Abbey sighed and the companionable laugher of two satiated lovers filled the afternoon air.

****

"I still say this is a bad idea," Josh said as he, Leo, Toby, Sam, and CJ walked from the rental car toward the cottage.

"Look, we need to get the key to the guest cottage," Leo said. "What is the big deal?"

"The big deal is that the last time I saw the President and we discussed his wife, he ripped me a new one and slammed the door in my face."

"I really don't like the idea of getting in the middle of their marital problems."

"I told you guys that I talked to the President and he said they made up."

"Yeah, come on guys. Don't tell me you didn't hear all those rumors?" CJ wiggled her eyebrows suggestively.

"The Secret Service stuff?" Sam asked with a grin. "About the First Lady...you know..."

"Are you blushing, Sam?" CJ laughed, nudging him. "You are, aren't you?"

"You all know better than to listen to gossip," Leo said.

"Do you think it's tr..." Josh began, then stopped as he approached the house, putting a hand up to shush everyone. "Did you hear that? I think the President hurt himself again...I swear I just heard him moan."

"God only knows what he has done to himself this time," Leo sighed, moving to the front of the group.

"There it is again...We better check. It sounds like he's in pain," Just as they were to round the corner, Leo stopped them.

"Oh Christ, you lunkheads, the President is not hurt, let's get the hell out of here."

"What...why?" They looked at him puzzled.

"I know this job curtails much of a private life, but has it really been so long that none of you recognizes the sound of se..." Before he could finish the sentence, they all heard a sensual throaty moan of the President's name from the First Lady. A few soft whimpers followed from her along with the deeper groans of the President. They all paled with the realization of what exactly they were hearing.

Leo stood transfixed for a moment. He knew that he should leave, but one part of him wanted to hear Abbey again. Ever since he had met her he had wondered what she would be like in bed. She was such a beautiful, passionate, loving woman that somehow he knew she would be completely open and uninhibited in bed. That rumor going around Washington of what she had done for the President on the deck of their boat had given him more than one erotic dream. He had known Abbey for so many years, had seen her in her nightclothes, in a bathing suit, in bed with the covers drawn to her chest while her husband was covered in massage oil. He had caught the couple making out, or in each other's arms, more times than he could count, but he had never heard Abbey in throes of passion and he couldn't believe just how turned on he was by it. He knew his nights now would be filled with wondering just what Abbey looked like when she was making those sexy sounds, and just what she was doing to Jed to make him sound like he was dying of ecstasy.

"Let's GO," Sam said urgently, grabbing Leo's arm and tearing him out of his fantasy. Sam certainly did not want to be the one to catch the First Lady in another embarrassing situation. He still hadn't lived down interrupting her while she was giving birth.

"I told you the rumors were true," CJ said, punching Josh on the arm.

"What do you want me to do? Bow to your infinite wisdom?"

"You're damn right I do."

****

Back in the shower stall Abbey and Jed laid, a tangle of limbs. Abbey's hair was stuck to Jed's chest and shoulders and they were still breathing unevenly. Jed rolled to his side with a groan.

"We're getting too old to screw around on a hard floor."

"Hey, you weren't the one on the bottom," she winced as she sat up.

"I'm sorry. I was a little rough with you," he said running his thumb over a drop of blood from the cut on her lip. He could already see small bruises forming where his fingers had dug into her hips. "Did I hurt you?"

"I'm OK," she assured him, "you weren't any rougher than I was." She ran a finger over the small bite mark on his shoulder and the scratches on his back that now stung from the salt of his sweat.

"We're quite a pair, aren't we?"

"We're a mess is what we are."

"I thought you didn't care about the mess."

"That was before."

"Before what?"

"Before you scratched my little itch," she ran her nails over his belly.

"Oh, is that what I did?" He ran his hand up and down the curve of her hip.

"Mmmhmmm," she purred, "but now I want to get clean." Jed stood, lifted Abbey to her feet, and turned the shower nozzle on. The cool water was refreshing and cleansing. Jed ran his soapy hands down Abbey's spine and surprised her by pressing his lips to her tattoo.

"Annie asked me about this," he said, swirling his tongue over it. "She said you told her it wasn't a secret, just something personal between you and me, and she forgot to ask what it meant."

"What did you tell her?" She asked, pulling him up so she could soap up his chest.

"That a celtic knot is forever. Once it is knotted it can't be undone. And that is what happened the day we got married. We got all knotted up together and nothing will ever make that knot come undone." After the last few months they'd had, those words meant more to Abbey than ever and she kissed him lightly on the lips.

"So what else did you and Annie discuss?"

"Oh, I figure you must have had the will my breasts ever grow speech."

"Well, we used the word boobs, but breasts will do. How did you know?" She leaned her head back while Jed lathered the shampoo in her hair.

"Because she asked me the same thing all three of our girls did. Can a boy like a girl if she doesn't have big boobs?"

"To which you gave your standard response of 'Of course honey, it's what's inside a person that matters.'"

"I guess I need some new material."

"Yeah, and if you remember when you were a 13 or 14 year old boy, don't tell me you were looking to see the person inside a girl. You were looking for big boobs."

"Of course I was, but I'm not going to tell my granddaughter that. But don't you worry, honey," he said, cupping her breasts from behind, "I'd have loved you even if you didn't have big boobs."

"What a comforting thought," she smirked, turning around in his arms, "and so romantic."

"Hey sassy, it isn't always going to be flowers and poetry," he grinned, still massaging her breasts. He felt her nipples harden under his thumbs. "Want to go for another round?" He asked. Abbey looked up at him like he had two heads.

"I am WAY too sore for another round right now. Hell, I'll be lucky if I can walk. Besides, the babies will be up soon and Ellie should be arriving anytime now," she said, turning off the water.

"Well, you can't blame a guy for trying," he said, starting to towel himself dry.

"What time is the staff coming?" She asked, slipping her sundress back on.

"I don't know. They said they would fly in some time tonight and rent a car in Portland." He wrapped a towel around his waist and opened the shower stall door.

"Jed," Abbey stopped him, "you can't just walk out there half naked."

"I'm not, I have a towel on."

"And nothing underneath it."

"If we happen to bump into someone, they won't know I don't have a suit on underneath. Relax." She had been uptight about these things ever since the boat.

***

The staff saw the President and First Lady round the corner of the house. Their hair was wet, their arms were wrapped around each other's waists with her head resting on his shoulder. Their intimate laughter stopped when they saw everyone spread out relaxing on the porch.

"Hey, you guys...you're here," Jed said inanely.

"It would appear that way," Leo said blandly.

"You're early, we weren't expecting you so soon."

"Evidently," CJ smirked.

"Leo's meeting got cancelled and we decided to come early and surprise you," Toby said.

"Surprise!" Josh and Sam said in unison.

"Been swimming?" Toby asked.

"Uh...no. I got sweaty working on Ellie and Zoey's boat so I took an outdoor shower."

"Did you work on the boat too, Abbey?" Leo asked innocently. Abbey touched her wet hair, knowing exactly how this looked.

"Just how long have you guys been here?" she asked sharply.

"Oh, a little while now. We needed to get the keys to the guesthouse but we didn't want to interrupt your...shower," Leo grinned. Jed saw Abbey blush and he pulled her into his arms, giving her a big kiss, knowing the best defense was a good offense.

"Don't let them rattle you sweetheart," he said loud enough for them all to hear. "They're just hot, cranky, jealous, and several of them need a good...shower," he grinned at them.

****

Leo followed Jed into the study to get the keys.

"Jesus," he said, eyeing the bite mark on his collarbone and the scratch marks on his back. "Did you two have sex or try to kill each other?"

"So you heard us pretty good, did you?"

"Josh thought you were moaning in pain and he had us all ready to rush to your rescue."

"Oh Christ," Jed laughed, "thank God he didn't. Abbey would have died. By the way, don't let on just how much you heard. She's still a little sensitive about some stuff that happened on the boat."

"That Secret Service rumor is true?" Leo looked at him incredulously.

"If it includes my wife and a certain act on the deck of the boat, than yes, it is true."

"That would be the one. You know you better be careful doing things like that."

"Don't worry, Dad, those twins I have sleeping upstairs are warning enough about the pitfalls of unprotected sex. Besides, if you had paid attention in hygiene class, you would know that you can't make a baby that way."

"That isn't what I was talking about," Leo shook his head laughing. "I'm not sure if you are aware of this or not, but that certain little act is illegal in some states. You could be impeached if you got caught."

"Illegal? Good Christ, that is positively...un-American...it's unconstitutional."

"And what part of the constitution is that? Freedom of sex?"

"Damn straight, that one ought to be in there too. It's in the Declaration, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. There it is Leo, the pursuit of happiness. That little act sure does make me happy."

"I'll bet it does," Leo said wryly.

"Well, I guess you'll just need to find out what states have this law and make sure we don't campaign there. There are some things just not worth sacrificing, even for the Presidency," Jed was grinning and Leo was shaking his head at him, when they both heard the front screen door bang shut.

"Mom, Dad...I'm here."

"Ellie's here," Jed said excitedly, his face breaking into a beaming smile. "God, I hope she didn't bring that Davis putz."

"Be nice," Leo warned.

"I'm always nice, Leo. You're the mean one."

"So I've heard."

***

"Ellie," Jed said, sweeping her into his arms for a big bear hug. He looked behind and around her and did not see Davis Hunter anywhere. "Are you alone?"

"Yes," she looked down at the ground. Jed tilted her chin to look into her sea green eyes, Abbey's eyes, and was troubled by what he saw. There was a sadness in their depths that somehow he just knew Davis had caused. Well, he had a week to get the story out of her. Or, maybe Abbey could anyway. His sensitive middle daughter had always found it easier to confide in her mother than she did him. He hoped, maybe on this visit, he could get her to open up to him.

"What is it kitten, what's wrong?"

TBC...