Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo (self help books to read TXT) 📕

Nia laughed, “What about this way?” she said as she unfastened her bra, a front loader, and wriggled out of her panties. She lay there totally naked. Tom moved his hands down her body in gentle stroking and massaging motions. She responded to his touch. He kissed her on the lips, she teased him with her tongue. She reached down and held his erection and moved it against her body so he could enter her.

They lay side by side, each enjoying the warm afterglow of satisfying sex. Their skin touching and sticking to each other. “That was lovely,” said Nia.

“Thanks, you make it sound like a cup of tea,” laughed Tom.

Nia giggled and pulled the sheet partway off her body. “Blimey, it does get hot in here.”

Tom turned on to his stomach, resting on his elbows and leaned over and kissed her lightly on her lips. “I love your body,” he said.

She laughed and made some mime movements. “My body is my tool,” she said in an exaggerated French accent. She pulled the sheet off her body completely.

He laughed and kissed her, “Ah, it’s a nude scene.”

She guffawed. “Well, I don’t do them any more. But, when I was young, and pretty, and had perky boobs, and a flat tummy…”

“I love your boobs,” he said, and moved over and kissed each of her breasts gently. “I love your tummy too.” He moved down her body and kissed her stomach, her navel, and started moving down lower but she grabbed him by his ears and pulled him back up.

“This is nothing like acting,” she said. “Those scenes are so rehearsed, so choreographed, that you don’t think about how you move, it’s like dancing.”

“I like dancing,” he said.

She guffawed and reached for him. “Yes, but you’re really rubbish at it.”

Tom laughed. “Is there anything that I am good at?”

“Yes,” Nia said with a lascivious grin and a dramatic pause. “Making tea.”

Tom gently hit her with his pillow. Nia bounced up and hit him back with her pillow. She straddled him and gently bounced the pillow off his chest and head. She felt him harden beneath her. It excited her. Tom eased her over his erection and she pulled him into her. They made love again slowly as the boat rocked gently at its moorings.

***

Tom was in the Periwinkle’s small but efficient kitchen making breakfast. Jack curled up on her bed in front of the Morso stove. In the stern cabin, Nia curled under the bed’s duvet enjoying its warmth. She felt ridiculously happy. She had so carefully guarded her emotions for so long that the depth and suddenness of her feelings for Tom continued to scare her. As Nia listened to Tom as he moved around the kitchen, gently talking to Jack, and humming unselfconsciously to yet another of his quirky playlists she was irresistibly drawn to him.

She slipped on her dressing gown and moved down the small corridor to the kitchen. Tom was making fresh coffee, toast and scrambled eggs. She went up to him and, from behind, wrapped her arms around him. She placed her cheek against his back she shut her eyes.

“Tom,” she began earnestly. “I think I’ve fallen in love with you.”

Tom stopped his cooking and stood silently for a moment and then, without turning to face her, responded,

“No thinking for me. I’m sure I love you Nia.” Then he turned to her; they kissed while the scrambled eggs burnt.

***

The Periwinkle slowly nosed her way eastward through the thin Llangollen canal. With no other boats on the canal, the narrowboat made good time. Nia stood on the stern deck enjoying her first time on a narrowboat and taking in the view of the misty Dee valley down to her right. As the canal approached the basin at the little town of Trevor, Tom steered the Periwinkle through a narrow bridge that led to a sharp right turn.

“Okay,” he said with a smile. “Get ready for the best but also the scariest trip across any aqueduct on any British canal.”

Nia beamed and gave him a thumbs’ up.

“You may want to stand on the left,” Tom said. “There is going to be no railing on the right side of the aqueduct. You could simply step off the boat into thin air and down to the valley floor something like one hundred and twenty feet below.”

“I wouldn’t want that to happen,” Nia smiled.

“Neither would I.”

The canal narrowed as the mouth of the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct neared. The aqueduct had been in operation since 1805 and it continued to inspire awe given its radical design: the canal ran through a cast iron trough supported by eighteen high stone arches which gave it an elegant and light feel. It was the longest aqueduct in the UK and the highest in the world.

Tom slowed the Periwinkle as the narrowboat entered the twelve-foot-wide trough. The towpath was on the left with a fence between the path and the abyss. Tom gently steered the boat to the right side of the aqueduct and all Nia could see off the side of the Periwinkle was sky and space.

“Oh my God,” she exclaimed. “It feels like we’re flying. But really, really slowly.”

Tom smiled. “You want to take the tiller?”

“You must be nuts.”

“Not really,” Tom said. “This is really easy. Just keep it straight. Even without someone at the tiller, the boat would continue to move forward like a slot car on a toy racing track, although the boat would continue to bounce off the canal sides.”

Nia nervously took the tiller, her face etched with concentration.

“Has anyone ever steered a boat off the aqueduct?” Nia asked.

“No,” Tom said definitively. “You can’t. There’s enough of a lip on the trough to keep the boat in the canal.”

Nia visibly relaxed and smiled.