Family Ties

Alone,” I added quickly. “Although you know what I’ll be doing for a while before I go to sleep.” I chuckled as her cheeks glowed. “You’ll be doing the same thing.”

“But it feels so good it probably should be.”

“Ha! You’re right about that.” I kissed her again. “Take care of your

small package for me.”

“What would happen?” she asked without a trace of innocence. “If he lost control, I mean.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “You really want to know?”

“You said there’s a lot I need to understand.”

“Tell you what,” I said with a chuckle, “while you’re playing with yourself—”

“Sure you can.

” I kissed her. “And remember, good things come in small packages.”

She half-sighed, half-whimpered.

I set her on her feet. Then I stood and brazenly adjusted my hard-on. Her eyes widened again.

“Goodnight,” I said softly. “Sweet dreams.”

“Of penises. Big ones.”

I kissed her and left while I still could.

Wednesday was a blur of projects and papers, and the four of us worked through the afternoon and late into the evening. Christy spent most of her time on the computer, proofreading and making corrections and printing out final versions of everyone’s work.

In a few short days, she’d learned to use the thing better than I could.

The next morning Trip and I loaded our models into the back of the Land Cruiser and drove to the A&A building. Trip had to rush off with his, but I had a couple of hours to kill before Joska’s class. I hung out in the atrium and watched art students come and go with their own projects, everything from mixed-media sculpture to one guy who had a bright future (pun intended) as a

When the time finally arrived for my own class, I took my model upstairs to Joska’s classroom.

He was there already and nodded when I entered. He knew all about my design, although his eyebrows still rose at the sight of my model. He’d been skeptical about the roof, but I’d been coy about my visit to Jonas and his plexiglass studio.

Freddie showed up with his own project and set it on the desk next to mine.

It wasn’t the best in the room, but it wasn’t the worst either, and we talked about our designs. The hubbub finally died when Joska went to the front of the room and said he was ready to begin.

We each had to give a three-minute presentation of our design. Then Joska and the class could ask questions. He went alphabetically through the roll. The first presentations were good but nothing special. Freddie’s went well, and he fielded Joska’s single question easily.