This is the first book in the Jocko Trilogy. She came over without speaking, stood very close and smiled, looking me straight in the eyes. That close, I could indeed see that her skin was flawless; it was translucent porcelain with a flush of pink. But oh the eyes! They were hazel, but beyond hazel. They were further than the definition of hazel, into a deeper, richer emerald than I had ever seen. They were so expressive, filled with warmth, fervor, and I don't know... was it compassion? She stood there quietly studying my eyes while I studied hers, neither of us saying anything. My heart pounded. This close, I could see through her thin, starched white cotton blouse; she wore no undergarments. The form of her breasts surged firmly against the cloth. She took my hand with a deliberate, almost commanding movement and pulled it to her breast. The surprise lasted only a second before instinct overwhelmed me. I stood up, grasped her around the waist and pulled her warm, beautiful body in close, feeling the muscles in my back and buttocks tense up. With my face against her neck, I inhaled a heady fragrance that was like no perfume I had ever known; it was the fragrance of her skin - the aroma of the back of her neck. Her smell was every bit as unique and alluring as her physical form was. It was instantly imprinted, or more accurately, branded into some deep, fundamental part of my brain. "Is this what you like, Andrew?" She whispered the words, deliberately seducing me with those dark, emerald eyes. "Is this what you want?" I felt her hand guiding mine across her breasts. I could not speak. Instead, a powerful, ancient instinct took control; I embraced her tightly and put my lips against hers, demanding an intimate, physical communication. I sensed my very being merging with hers. This connection had volition of its own and I explored and mingled with Julie not just physically, but simultaneously on some higher plane. I felt her groin press against mine and heard a slight moan. She put her hands to my face, breaking the embrace and then backed away. I stood there transfixed, overwhelmed, and painfully erect watching her go. When she reached the door, she turned around and waved. I couldn't tell if the wave was goodbye or hello, and I felt awkward at the discontinuity. Should I follow? In that moment Julie did something to me that I can't accurately describe. When she touched me so intentionally, some unfathomable thing transpired between us and as a result I was changed; profoundly and permanently changed. My inner being fractured and a tidal wave of pent-up emotion surged out. It washed over the dark lowlands of my inhibition then flooded the highlands of my reason, washing every bit of logic and sensibility away with a brand new configuration comprised of love and passion. I stood there completely stupefied; a new person in a new world. In that moment, Lucius Andrew Davis was healed by the passionate touch of Julie the Mariner. He would no longer be the wounded person he had been; all the pent up frustration, sadness, and disappointment was fading. The toxic, frightening burdens that I had carried around for so long were now miraculously dissolving into the memory of her holy caress.
About the Author: Jerry Cooper was born into a world of wind, sand, crude oil, and cotton fields in Lamesa, Texas in the late summer of 1949. His parents were the children of dirt-poor share-cropping cotton farmers. His teenage mother was one of six siblings and his father was one of eighteen. In 1967 Jerry graduated from Odessa High School in Odessa, Texas. He was the first person to ever obtain a high school diploma (on either side of the family). Art has always been his first love, but electronics and technology have necessarily been the machine putting bread on the table. In addition to writing prose, he loves all things creative: music, poetry, painting, digital art, photography, pottery, wine and the culinary arts. He considers himself to be a competent, minor league chef. "Those who eat should necessarily cook!" He ponders that perhaps his brain didn't properly separate into traditional left and right functions at an early age. His simultaneous love for abstraction, reason, art, and logic, as well as a driving obsession with the combined smell of perfume on the neck and amaretto on the breath bare some testimony to that possibility. He has been president of corporations, holds several US patents, and with his talented son created the first Internet Provider Service in West Texas. He has written software sold in over 60 countries, and is published scientifically. All that said, his greatest joy and greatest accomplishment is embodied in his two beautiful, intelligent, creative children, who like their father neither easily nor obediently conform to the status quo.