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Erica thought she was being artful. When Bobby came on the line, she told him that part of the railing on the ramp had cracked and he needed to come take a look at it. She didn’t tell him, of course, that she’d had to throw all her weight at the railing … several times … to get something to break. She’d done it at night, when the neighbors couldn’t see her.

She couldn’t admit that she just wanted him. Not on the phone. She wasn’t even sure she wanted him. But she was full of nervous energy again, like she’d been before. She knew Will would make love to her if she asked him to, but she thought of him more and more as Christy’s man. No one must ever find out about her and Will, because that would ruin it for him with Christy.

Besides, Bobby was a different kind of lover than Will. Bobby knew how to make her insane with pleasure. It was those thoughts that made her find a way to get him to her house again. Then, maybe when she could see him, she’d know whether it was him she wanted, or something else. She hoped it was something else. She didn’t know what she’d do if, when she saw him, she got “that feeling.” She knew that if she had to admit to the man who had made her pregnant that she craved his touch again … well, she’d just die. She was sure of it.

She saw the truck pull up and Bobby get out. He walked right up to the broken support and looked at it. Then he looked at the window, for some reason, and then back at the support. He shook his head and came to the front door.

She expected him to knock again, like he did last time, but he didn’t. He just walked in. She stood there wide eyed as he looked at her.

“If you wanted me to come over, all you had to do was tell me,” he grumbled. “You didn’t have to vandalize my work.”

“I need you!” she blurted.

“I can see that,” said Bobby.

“I’m sorreeee,” she moaned.

“C’mere,” he said, holding out his arms.

She was almost crying when he enfolded her in his arms.

“Hey,” he said into her hair. “It’s no big deal.”

“Yes it is,” she said into his chest. “I feel like such a fool.”

“You know what your problem is?” he asked.

She could think of a dozen things, but she said “No,” instead.

“You’re all wrapped up with trying to be who you think you’re supposed to be instead of just being yourself.”

“What do you mean?” she asked, still pressing her face to his chest. He smelled good, like … Bobby.

“Do you like me?” he asked.

“Why are you asking me that?” she moaned.

“See there?” he asked, rubbing her back. “I know you like me, Okay? I know it and you know it, so why can’t you just say it? I’ll tell you why you can’t say it. You think you’re not supposed to like me, am I right?”

“Maybe,” she said softly.

“So, instead of just being yourself and saying ‘Bobby I’m horny, come take care of me, ‘ you play this game of some sort that supposed to make you feel better. But it doesn’t. Am I right about that?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice muffled.

“Erica?”

“What?”

“I’m sorry I got you pregnant, but right now I want you so bad it really hurts. I’m stiff for you. I want to hear you have an orgasm and I want to know I gave it to you.”

“Ohhhhhhh,” she moaned into his chest. No man had ever talked to her like that … that explicitly. Before, if a man had said something like that she would have slapped him. But now … it made her panties wet. Well, it would have made her panties wet if she’d been wearing any. She had nothing on under her robe.

“See?” he said. “How hard was that? I just said how I feel. Maybe you’ll be happy about that and maybe you won’t, but at least you know where I’m coming from.”

“Tell me more,” she said, her voice high.

Bobby had felt her relax against him when he told her he wanted her. She hadn’t tensed. He thought about Amanda again, who had wanted him, but couldn’t admit it either. He still couldn’t use ropes on Erica. He thought about her reaction to his words and got an idea. He didn’t know if it would work or not. On the bright side, it wouldn’t take long to find out.

“You want me to tell you what I want to do?” he asked.

That was apparently too direct, because she didn’t answer. She just hugged him harder.

“I want to see your fabulous breasts,” he said. He waited to see if she tensed. When she didn’t, he went further. “They’re the most fabulous breasts I’ve ever seen. I could sleep on them. I want to suck your nipples and listen to you have an orgasm.”

“Mmmmmmm,” she mumbled into his chest.

“And then I want to squeeze them, the way you like it so much, squeezing until you almost scream.”

“Nnnnngg,” she groaned.

“And while you’re cumming, I want to slide my prick into your slick pussy until it comes out your mouth. I want to fuck you, Erica.”

She looked up then. Her eyes were hot.

“Fuck you, Bobby Dalton,” she said, her voice husky. “You bastard. You manage to tear down every wall I build up. Nobody’s ever talked to me like that in my whole life. And what pisses me off the most is that I’m dripping wet right now, because of it. So fuck you, Bobby.”

He picked her up. She squealed and wiggled, but had no chance to escape. He took her to her bedroom and dropped her on the bed.

“If you don’t want that robe torn apart, I suggest you take it off,” he said, unbuttoning is shirt.

“Bobby!” she complained.

“Do you want me?” he asked.

“Yes!“ she screamed. “There! Are you happy now?!”

“Very,” he said. “In fact, you made my day. Now … I’m going to make yours.”

She barely got her robe off before he was on her like a lion on a lamb. He was rough, but didn’t hurt her. He growled a lot. He practically attacked her breasts, and she squealed as he sucked one nipple and squeezed the other, just like he’d said he wanted to do.

She came within a minute.

He wasn’t finished, though. From there, after her first orgasm, he forced apart legs she tried to keep together and then entered her in one long lunge that took her breath away. Then he pounded her, making her breasts jump and wiggle like Jell-O in an earthquake. He pushed so hard, going in, that she felt herself moving toward the headboard.

Erica found out something else about herself that she hadn’t known.

She liked rough sex.

He was clearly dominating her this time. That was plain to her. But the intensity of his passion, the way he seemed to almost lose control, the fact that she had driven him to this display of raw male sexuality sent streaks of something through her body that felt, amazingly, like power. She had called him and he had come at her call. He was a magnificent male in the prime of his life. He wasn’t with some other female. He had ignored the other women he could have been with and was devoting himself completely to her.

The orgasm she had while thinking these things was only partially physical. Her mind and body had been joined, and her pleasure was exponentially greater.

He seemed to understand how she could both want and resist this domination of her body. After she screamed through that orgasm, he slowed to give her time to breathe, before pressing himself deep and staying there to rotate his loins and make her cum again. In the middle of that orgasm, he spurted in her.

He rolled them, still in her, and held her tight against him as they caught their breath.

“You made a baby in me,” she said into his chest.

“I know,” he said into her hair. “I’m sorry … but I loved every second of it.”

“I’m going to be a mommy,” she said.

“You’ll be a wonderful mommy,” he said, stroking her back. “I’m proud our daughter will have such a strong mother and good role model.”

She snorted into his chest. “I’m neither strong nor a good role model,” she grated. “I let you get me pregnant and I’m here with you right now. Both of those are because I’m weak.”

“Is being fully a woman weak?” he asked. “I don’t think so. Being a mother is neither easy nor glamorous, but it’s the most important job in the whole world. It takes a real woman … a strong woman … to be a good mother. I think you are both.”

“You’re just trying to butter me up so you can fuck me again,” she moaned.

“Based on tonight, I suspect I’ll get to fuck you again anyway,” he said.

She pulled back and looked up at his face. “Sometimes I hate you.”

“I know,” he said. “You’re a little difficult to get along with too, every once in a while.”

When he was hard again, she rode him. She did that languidly, just enjoying the feeling of his hard prick rubbing inside her. She didn’t try to lean forward to get her clit involved. Again, he somehow seemed to know she was just playing and left her nipples alone. That lasted ten minutes, then changed as he started talking again. He reached for her breasts and pushed them together.

“These are the gorgeous breasts that will feed my daughter,” he said. He ran his thumbs over the nipples. “She’ll suck these beautiful nipples and will get delicious milk from them. I will too.”

Erica shuddered. She thought that was just nasty, but it sent a thrill through her too and she sped up unconsciously.

“You’ll do this after she’s born,” he said. “You’ll ride me like this and your nipples will leak and drip warm milk onto my chest. I’ll suck them while you fuck me.”

“Ooooooo,” she moaned, leaning forward.

“Like this,” he said, lifting his head to capture a nipple. He sucked hard.

“I don’t like yoooooou,” she groaned, feeling an orgasm rushing toward her. She leaned forward more and pushed her belly forward so that her clit got involved.

He let go of that nipple and licked the other one.

“And if you’re not on the pill by then,” he said, “I’ll spurt in you and make a little brother for our daughter.”

“I hate you, Bobby Dalton!” she groaned, as the orgasm burst through her loins and made her go rigid.

He rolled and she cried out as the ecstasy she was in the midst of was threatened. But he pushed in deep as she settled onto her back, with his weight pinning her to the bed, and it came back to make her scream again.

“No you don’t,” he breathed into her face.

Then he spurted in her again.

“If you weren’t already pregant,” he whispered, “I’d be trying to make you that way right now.”

When he got up to leave, the next morning, Erica pulled the covers back over her. It was Saturday and she didn’t intend to get out of bed, maybe until after lunch. She had gotten a little sleep … but only a little. She had also given up trying to pretend she didn’t need Bobby Dalton in her life. He leaned down to kiss her gently, once he was dressed.

“You’re right,” she said into his lips.

“About what?”

“I don’t hate you.”

“I know,” he said.

“Let’s not wait so long until next time,” she suggested.

“How about twice a week?” he asked.

“I think that’s a good plan,” she sighed.

Agatha’s hand was shaking so badly she could barely dial the phone. When the ring sounded in her ear, she felt like she might throw up.

“Hello?”

It was him! That deep voice had to be him. She knew there was only one man living out there on that old farm.

“Y-y-yes,” she stuttered.

“Hello?”

“M-m-mister Dalton,” she forced out.

“Yes, this is Bobby.”

“M-m-my floor squeaks,” she gasped.

“That’s too bad,” said the calm voice in her ear. “I’m sure that’s very annoying.”

“Can you f-f-fix that?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It will depend on why it’s creaking and how hard it will be to get access to the underside of the floor.”

“I need … an estimate!” she barked, finally remembering what she was supposed to say.

“I’d be happy to take a look at it. Who is this?”

Terror gripped her. On pure will power alone she managed to clear her throat and gasp into the phone: “Agatha Roberts.”

“And your address?”

A strange, almost surreal calm descended on Agatha. This was the final step. She’d have to tell the pervert where she lived. But it was all for a good cause. Her voice was surprisingly firm.

“625 Madison,” she said.

“I have some time this afternoon,” he said. “Is that too soon?”

Her calm was instantly displaced, as panic gripped her. Today!? Right now?!

“All right,” her voice cracked.

She’d had to sit down, because her knees wouldn’t support her as she hung up the phone. Then, fearing he might be there any second, she jumped up and ran to her bedroom. She pulled off her dress and got her special dress out of the closet.

She took the time to look in the mirror. She saw a white face, with huge eyes staring back at her, above a plain white bra and the slip. Her hair had a permanent wave in it. All it would need was a quick brushing.

She let the scandalously daring blue dress fall past her head and put her arms in the sleeves. Then she looked in the mirror again. Her slip showed, so she tried tugging it up. It was much too long. Of course that was because the blue dress was much too short. It almost showed her knees. She had to roll the waistband of the slip, lifting the dress to reach it. When she let it drop the slip didn’t show, but now there was a round line that went around her waist.

She reached under the dress again and removed the slip. Maybe she’d have time to hem it. She looked in the mirror again. The pockets were right on the tips of her bosom and the white pearl buttons looked, to her, like caricatures of nipples, though they were much too high. Still, she was sure they would draw his eyes. She blushed as she saw fully four inches of skin exposed by the neckline.

Her face looked so pale against the vivid blue of the dress. She was sure she didn’t have time to apply makeup. She used it rarely. She didn’t want to look like a tart, though the dress already suggested that. She decided that a touch of lipstick would help. She chose her usual sedate red.

She needed to get the slip fixed. She could put on panty hose later, when she changed shoes. To that end she kicked off the shoes she was wearing and almost ran to the sewing room. She’d just gotten the machine threaded when the doorbell rang.

She froze.

It took the doorbell ringing again to get her moving. She left the slip there. There was nothing she could do about it now. She felt almost naked going to the door without her slip and panty hose, but there was nothing she could do about that either. She was blushing furiously as she opened the door.

She looked up. She didn’t remember him being this tall. His smile looked so genuine too!

“Hi, Mrs. Roberts. I’m Bobby Dalton.” His smile faded. “I was sorry to hear about Harry. I offer my condolences.”

Harry had died three years ago. “You knew him?” she almost gasped.

“We were at a city council meeting together,” said Bobby. “Back when they were arguing about whether we needed a stop light on First and Main or not. I didn’t really know him. We just talked a little bit there. He seemed like a good guy.”

“Oh,” she said weakly. Harry had been a penny pincher and that translated to how his taxes were spent too. He’d been opposed to the traffic light.

“You have squeaks?” prompted Bobby and she realized she’d just been standing there thinking.

“Yes,” she squeaked. It was all she could get out. She reached deep within her and wrested some measure of control from somewhere. “I’ll show you the floor.”

Agatha looked at her Bulova watch. She was astonished to see that only fifteen minutes had passed before the man had walked back out her door. She stood there, in her alluring dress, and wondered what had gone wrong. He’d been polite. He’d been efficient. He’d explained that, since there was a basement and he could get to the underside of the floor easily, he’d try a home remedy first. He’d gotten into a tool bag she hadn’t even seen him bring in and pulled out a bottle of baby powder, of all things. Then, while she moved her feet around on the floor, making it squeak, he’d gone downstairs.

While she had moved her feet back and forth, the squeak had lessened and then stopped completely. When he came back, he explained that he’d squirted the baby powder into the cracks between the boards. He was covered with a light film of the stuff and he smelled good.

He’d asked if there were other places and she was so flustered that he hadn’t paid any attention to her dress, or her neckline, or the pockets on the bosom of her dress, that she’d just said, “No.”

Then, instead of ogling her, he’d asked if she had anything else that needed fixing, since there was still forty-five minutes left on his minimum charge of one hour. She was so unnerved that he was acting completely normal that again, she just said “No.”

He’d thrown her another curve when he said “That’s all right. I’ll just give you credit. If you think of anything, just let me know and it will be covered until you use up the rest of your time.”

She didn’t know what to think now. He hadn’t acted at all like she thought he would. He hadn’t even stared at her bare feet.

She sat down and tried to think.

The 4th of July was always a big day in Granger. The whole town turned out for the picnic and to see the fireworks. Dancing was popular too. It was almost a form of entertainment itself to see the people in the crowded square ebb and flow as the eating gave way to dancing. Young people ran or strolled together everywhere, laughing and shouting, while the adults sat and caught up on things since the last time they’d seen each other.

Agatha sat at her usual table. Gladys and Ethyl were there too, along with ten or fifteen other women of virtue. Some of the husbands were there too, but many were off on errands that seemed to take a long time. Getting watermelon took forever and the ice cream needed checking on every five minutes or so, it seemed.

The current topics of conversation around the tables were universal. One was the Dalton twins, who were both about to burst, their pregnant bellies shamelessly on display. They shouldn’t have shown their faces in public, unmarried as they both were. Just as much gossipy uproar had been generated when Christy Brown, who they already knew was a trollop, arrived in the company of two other people who had never attended a town celebration.

The chattering women wouldn’t look long at the poor thing who appeared to be escorting Christy Brown, walking in that way that shouted he had a false leg. More than one matron suggested it was in poor taste to appear with that face where people had just eaten. And the man’s sister, Bernice’s replacement at the school, was there too. Her arrival verified the rumors to those assembled. She was unmarried too, and also showed no shame whatsoever that her belly bulged gently with an illegitimate child under the gaily colored sundress she wore.

Agatha was nervous. She’d thought and thought after that first time she’d met Bobby Dalton face to face. Her convictions about him had returned. She’d called him back to fix a drawer handle that had come loose. She’d gone all the way to Wichita to buy a pair of Bermuda shorts to wear that time, shamelessly showing him her legs.

He hadn’t seemed to notice.

She’d tried a third time with the same results. He’d always been prompt and friendly, and never once made any advances of any kind toward her. He always tried to engage her in light conversation, but that was it.

Now she was afraid that if he strolled by, he might acknowledge her … right in front of her friends.

She still hadn’t told any of them about her plan. Her convictions about this man were worn around the edges. He certainly wasn’t a cad who preyed on single women at the first opportunity. Admitting that to herself had been a blow. What had almost frightened her was that now … she was curious about him. There was too much evidence … too many rumors … for all of it to be a big mistake. He came from a family with low moral standing. That was simply a fact.

But he didn’t act like he came from such a family.

She had no husband to go and fetch her ice cream and none of her friends’ husbands had seemed to notice she was there, so she got up to go get herself a bowl. No one seemed to see her leave or at least none asked her where she was going.

She had to go by the bandstand to get to the line of freezers that had all kinds of flavors of homemade ice cream. She stopped when she saw Bobby on the dance floor. He was dancing with that Trimble woman. She remembered then … the Trimble woman had gotten married, finally, somewhat astonishingly to the man who ran the diner. Agatha saw that she was pregnant again. At least this one wouldn’t be a bastard.

Bobby saw her staring at them and nodded. Blushing, Agatha hurried off to get into line.

Will was sitting beside Mirriam, who was sitting by Prudence. Sal was sitting on his other side. Jake and Tilly were across the table. It was the first time they’d had a chance to get together with Will since he’d gotten his leg. He was working full time for Christy now and spent most evenings with her or his sister. Their heads had been together a lot. Jake suddenly threw up his hand.

“All right woman!” he said sternly. “I’ll ask him. Will that shut you up?”

“Yes,” said Tilly, beaming as if he’d just said he loved her.

Jake looked at Will.

“What all was involved in you getting that leg?” he asked.

“Well,” said Will, “it was like this…”

Bobby had been dancing most of the night. He’d danced with his mother and Prudence, of course. Then Linda had asked him to dance and Flo cut in on her. He’d been busy, of late, and hadn’t seen much of either of them. Jill had asked him to dance, and then, when Christy brought Will to the floor – their first attempt at dancing together – Jill had abandoned him to go be the woman Will made his mistakes with, so that he would have some practice when he danced with Christy. Christy had objected, but Jill just pushed her toward Bobby. The conversation that went on between the two couples was eerily similar.

“So,” said Jill, pressing herself against Will as much as she could with her belly in the way. She held him tightly, to be a stable platform for him to cling to. “Have you asked her to marry you yet?”

Ten feet away it was Bobby who spoke.

“So,” he said, holding Christy tight, “when are you going to ask him to make an honest woman of you?”

Will spluttered. He’d become friends with both Jill and Sal, seeing them often. “I know she likes me, but that’s kind of a stretch, don’t you think?”

Christy didn’t splutter. “We’ve only known each other for four months!” she said.

“She loves you, you idiot,” said Jill calmly. “She’s absolutely nuts for you.”

“Does he know you’re pregnant?” asked Bobby.

“Who said anything about me being pregnant?” asked Christy, her voice innocent.

“I know what you look like pregnant … remember?” Bobby laughed.

“I can’t tell him that before … you know … he asks me,” she said. “It wouldn’t be fair to him. It would pressure him.”

Twelve feet away Will moaned. “I can’t support her!”

“You think she gives a flying hoot about that?” asked Jill. “She loves you! Haven’t you heard a word I’ve said?”

“Go dance with him,” said Bobby. “I’ll get Jill out of your hair. Just tell him you can’t live without him. He’ll get the idea.”

“Go dance with her,” said Jill, maneuvering them slowly closer to Bobby and Christy. “Just ask her. Tell her you can’t live without her.”

The shuffle took place, and while Bobby tried to get Jill away from them, she tried to get Bobby away from the other couple too.

“How are you?” asked Bobby, sliding his hand up and down her back.

“Fantastic,” said Jill.

Bobby looked up to see Agatha Roberts staring at him and Jill. He smiled and nodded. She stiffened and turned to hurry away.

As the song finished, Bobby thought about the woman he’d just seen. He’d thought a lot about her. He knew which side of the tracks she was on when she first called him. He was almost amazed that she would have called him at all. He’d gone out of simple curiosity, in fact.

She’d been terrified of him. He could see that immediately, so he tried his level best to be nonthreatening. It seemed as if she’d decided she’d made a terrible mistake, that first time, sending him away with an attitude of almost frantic desire to get him out of her house.

But then she’d called him back. Twice, in fact.

His radar had blipped then, but he couldn’t believe she was interested in him as a man. She was firmly in the camp that would like nothing better if his mother and her friends suddenly had to leave town, never to return.

Still … she had been without Harry for two or three years now … and she was still young.

Fireworks exploded in the sky over Granger, Kansas and the eyes of the whole town were upon them. Those fireworks signaled the end of a good day and the end of this part of Bobby’s story. Much would still happen in his life, but as I’ve said before, the telling of this part has been long.

So I’ll bring this part of the story to an end, so that a new story can be born, just as the babies cradled in warm comfort inside Betty and Matilda Dalton were about to be born.

The next story will be their birth announcement. The End

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On the other side of town, the man Agatha was thinking about walked up the ramp to Erica’s house. He knocked. Something in her voice had told him to knock.

When she answered the door she looked pale, but otherwise normal. She stood back and he walked in. By the time he turned to look at her again, tense had been added to pale.

“I’m pregnant,” she said simply.

Erica had thought long and hard about whether she should face the man she’d made a baby with or not. She didn’t have to, as far as she was concerned. She could go on with her life and just leave him out of it. There had been no agreements and she hardly expected him – any man, really – to take any responsibility for his half of the problem. She was going to offer the baby up for adoption anyway. She hadn’t told Will about that yet. She couldn’t. He’d been so happy about having a nephew that she couldn’t crush him until it was absolutely necessary. He’d understand. She was a teacher, not a mother. The baby would have a much better life with two parents who wanted him … her … it. But something had told her she had to face the father. He’d warned her, after all. He hadn’t done this willy nilly. She was as much at fault as he was. She only hoped Bobby wouldn’t gloat.

“Let’s sit down,” he said.

She was taken by surprise. She’d expected, “Too bad,” or, “I warned you!” She’d even thought it was possible he’d just turn around and walk out. She followed him to the kitchen, wondering why he went there to sit instead of the living room, which was much closer.

She stood, while he went to the cupboard and got two glasses. Then he opened the fridge and poured milk. It wasn’t odd that he did those things. He’d been at her house enough times, and in such casual and intimate circumstances, that he was familiar with everything. What seemed odd was that he didn’t look nervous. He looked completely comfortable. She wondered if he was stalling, trying to think of something to say.

“Sit down,” he said, putting a glass of milk in front of the chair she was standing nearest. He didn’t take the chair across the table, like she’d thought he would. He took one ninety degrees from hers.

“How do you feel about this?” he asked, when she just stood there.

She certainly hadn’t been prepared for that. She sat … somewhat heavily. She didn’t know what to say. A thousand things were running through her mind. It seemed like everything she had thought about since the doctor uttered those fateful words … was going through her mind.

“Will is happy,” she said. She blinked. Where had that come from?

“But are you happy?” he asked.

She shot him a dark look.

“Of course I’m not happy!” she snapped.

“Oh.” She was amazed that he could put so much disappointment into a single word. She felt heat in her chest and couldn’t figure out if it was anger or something else. She opted for anger. Who was he to be disappointed that she didn’t want to be pregnant?

“Why in the world would you think I’d be happy?” she asked, again surprised that she said that instead of cursing at him.

“Some women want to have children,” he said.

Erica stared. He must be insane! She’d been impregnated by a man who belonged in an institution!

“Women who are married!” she barked. “Women who are in love … whatever that means!” She took a breath. “Women who aren’t going to be ruined by being the laughing stock of the whole town … who won’t lose their jobs!“

“Do you want me to marry you?” His head tilted, like he was interested in her answer. It stunned her.

“No, i do not want you to marry me!“ she yelled.

“Drink your milk,” he said calmly, his head straightening up.

“What?” She looked for some meaning in his comment, but couldn’t think of any.

“Drink your milk,” he repeated. “Since you’re not going to have an abortion, then you need the vitamins and calcium and all that stuff.”

Erica thought she might scream … took in a deep breath to do just that, in fact … and then held it, counting to ten in her mind. Something about his responses was completely wrong. She didn’t know what that was, but it was wrong and she felt the need to understand why. She let the breath out slowly.

“How do you know I’m not going to have an abortion?” she asked.

“Because if you were, you would have said ‘I’m going to have an abortion, ‘ instead of ‘I’m pregnant.’”

She was speechless again.

“Maybe I’m wrong,” he said, looking like he was interested in the possibility. “But I’m sure you would have at least told me by now, if that was what you’re planning. You’re too independent to keep something like that to yourself.”

Her mind twisted. His reasoning was sound, but it went against her own assessment of what independence meant. She would have felt more independent if she’d kept the fact that she was pregnant a secret from him.

“No abortion,” she said tightly.

“Good,” he said. “You never told me how you feel,” he reminded her. “I know you don’t want to be pregnant, but you are, so how do you feel about that?”

“I don’t understand you,” she said. It was something between a whine and a moan.

“Don’t feel bad. A lot of women don’t understand me. I’m not sure I understand myself.”

“How do you feel about it?” asked Erica. She was just vying for time. She needed time to think. This wasn’t going at all like she might have expected.

“That’s complicated,” he said immediately. “You have to understand that I would never make love to any woman if I didn’t want her to have my child.”

Her brain skewed sideways again.

“Did you just say you wanted to get me pregnant?” she croaked.

“No,” he said, a pained look on his face. “That’s not what I said, or at least I didn’t mean to say that. I can’t just … have sex … with a woman. I have to feel something for her. I have to like her. Sometimes I even think I love her. Like you said … whatever that means. I guess I feel like sex is for making babies. It’s fun too, but it’s mostly for making babies. So I wouldn’t do that with any woman unless … I don’t know … unless I thought she’d make a good mother or something … a mother I could love.”

That was a lot to chew on and Erica chewed for a while. Bobby sat there and sipped his milk. Seeing him do that made her take a sip of hers too.

“Are you saying that you love me?” she asked, her voice full of disbelief.

“I must love you,” he said. “At least on some level. I wouldn’t have gone to bed with you if I didn’t.” He frowned. “Like I said, sometimes I don’t understand myself very well.”

“No, no, no,” she disagreed. “You didn’t love me. Not that first night, when you took my virginity. We were fighting.”

“All I know is that you needed to be loved … needed something I could give you. I wasn’t sure I could give you that, because I wasn’t sure you knew what you needed. But, when I thought I could, I wanted to help you.”

“You call taking my virginity and knocking me up helping?” she squealed.

“Were you happy when we were making love?” he asked. He sounded quite serious.

She thought about that. She took in another deep breath and counted to ten again as she realized she’d have to admit she was happy when he was making love to her. Actually, deliriously happy was closer to the truth. She didn’t want to admit that.

“I did need that,” she said, her voice low and soft. It was the most she could admit.

“And because you needed it, I needed to give it to you,” he said, an earnest look on his face. “Does that make sense to you?”

Erica thought of Will. She understood exactly what Bobby was talking about. She’d done that with Will. She blinked. She actually understood him! She nodded, still thinking about that, but was distracted when he went on.

“Okay, so I didn’t want to get you pregnant … and I didn’t try to get you pregnant … but the fact that we made something precious together … it means a lot to me. I know having a baby changes things. It changes a lot of things. But I already love our baby, even if you don’t want to have anything to do with me any more … even if you never let me see her … I’ll still love her, because she was created while we were doing something we both loved and needed.”

He leaned back. “Does that make sense too?”

Erica’s mind only twisted a little bit this time. What popped to the surface, of all he had said, was that he already loved … her. He had given a gender to the thing in her womb.

“You called the baby ‘her.’ Why did you say that?” she asked.

He blinked. “I don’t know.” He seemed to think. “I guess I couldn’t imagine you having anything but a girl.”

Erica’s mind shifted just enough that she felt like she was falling over inside. She landed with a thud, as if she’d mentally fallen out of her chair. Sometimes, in a situation like that, it seems funny. And sometimes laughter is an agent of catharsis.

Erica started by giggling as, in her mind, she imagined a group of women … feminists … carrying signs that said, “We will only have female children!” Then, suddenly, Bobby was in her mental image, also carrying a sign. It said, “I will only father girls!”

She laughed then, and her eyes teared up. What she had done with Will had somehow saved her sanity. Will had pulled her up out of the depths where it was dark, and into the light and air where she could breathe. Somehow Bobby – and she couldn’t figure out how – had pulled her into the sunshine, where the warm breeze made her feel fully alive.

She laughed until she felt herself actually falling off her chair … and Bobby’s hands keeping her from doing so.

Erica Bradford was confused again. Bobby had just offered to adopt their daughter.

After her catharsis, she had felt much better and more calm. She’d been able to think a little better too, and had arrived at the conclusion that, once again, she’d misread Bobby Dalton. She thought wryly about how that seemed to be a habit of hers.

But the fact was that she was beginning to think about her situation as an unfortunate accident, which neither of them had really wanted. The only difference between them was that, while she dreaded the pregnancy, he looked forward to it. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t have to go through the physical part. He just loved the baby. She tried to wrap her mind around that, but there seemed to be some kind of wall that she couldn’t get past.

Another reason she felt better was that he had offered to help her get through it. It had come in a backhanded kind of way.

“I know you probably don’t want to see me this summer,” he’d said. “But I also know how hard it is to be pregnant and not have any help. I’d be happy to come over and do laundry or whatever you need.”

She assumed he was talking about having experience seeing his mother be pregnant, or some other woman he knew. If she’d have actually known about the more than a dozen babies he’d fathered before he got her pregnant, it would have gone in a completely different direction.

But she didn’t know.

As a result, Bobby’s charm worked its magic on her, which she also wasn’t aware of.

“I’ll let you know if I need something,” she’d said.

Then, when everything that needed saying seemed to have been said, he threw her another curve.

“I’m going to miss you,” he said, standing up.

It wasn’t her mind that twisted then. It was something deeper in her body, something she wasn’t aware was there, until she thought of him never coming back. She was first surprised, and then amazed, to feel a cold knot in her gut. She didn’t like it there. It was too close to the baby.

“I didn’t say you couldn’t come back,” she blurted.

He sat back down.

“Tell me more,” he said.

“What more?” she asked, not sure what he was asking.

“Tell me how I have to behave when I come back,” he said.

“What?” Now she was even more confused.

“I like you,” he said. “I can’t forget what we’ve shared. I have to be honest. I’ll think about it every time I see you. I’ll want to touch you and I need to know how you want me to behave.”

That cold knot undid itself. In fact, it got distinctly warm.

“I don’t know about that,” she said, a little breathlessly.

“And,” he said, delivering the knockout blow, “I sort of have a thing for pregnant women. They drive me wild.”

“You still want to touch me?” she asked, her voice high. She had thought of herself as slightly soiled … maybe majorly soiled … ever since she’d left the doctor’s office. It was one reason her passions had overflowed with Will.

“Of course,” he said. “Do you think you got pregnant by accident?”

He blinked as her eyes widened.

“No … wait … that’s not what I meant,” he said agitatedly. “I mean … it came out wrong. What I meant was I really liked making you pregnant.”

His face went into a terrible grimace.

“Shit!” He slumped. “That’s not it either. Now I’m all flustered.”

That warm knot expanded even more as her mind recognized a helpless man … a sweet man … a man she had misunderstood since she’d met him, trying to say something to put her at ease and give her control over him. Erica felt very dangerous emotions begin to waft through her body and held up a hand.

“I’ll let you know if you get out of line.”

He sat there for a few seconds.

“That’s not really very helpful,” he said.

She giggled again, but kept in the urge to laugh out loud. He was so cute when he was helpless like this.

“I have to think about it,” she said. “I’m still confused. I don’t know what I want and don’t want.”

He stood up. “Well, at least you know that now.”

He left her sitting there and walked to the kitchen door. Just before he went out of view, he turned.

“That’s progress,” he said.

Erica lay in bed. Will was at Christy’s tonight. He hadn’t said anything, but she knew things were getting very serious there. He talked about the job more than Christy, but the tone of his voice said volumes when she was the subject.

Erica was naked. Ever since she and Will had made love … real love, as she now thought of it … her habit of being naked in bed had returned. It was more comfortable.

She thought about all the things Bobby had said earlier in the evening. He loved the baby … her baby … their baby. He loved her too in some mystical way that she was sure she’d never understand. She knew she didn’t love him. Not like her mother had loved her father. When she thought about Bobby she got hot inside, but it was sexual hot … not love hot.

He was willing to take her daughter. She wasn’t aware of the subtle shift in her thinking about what was in her womb. Since Bobby had said he loved the baby, and named her female, Erica no longer thought of the baby as “it.”

The personification of a fetus is one of the major steps in bonding with a child before it is born. There are all kinds of names for the stages of development, from zygote, to blastula, to embryo and then, eventually fetus. But those names don’t conjure up the same thing that is meant by “she,” “her,” or “daughter.” Many women intend, initially, to be rid of what may be perceived of as a problem. That can happen through abortion or adoption. But with many women, neither of those options stays viable for long, once the woman involved begins to think of herself as a mother, and the baby inside her as a daughter or son.

As Erica Bradford lay there, thinking about her … their … daughter, she had an epiphany of sorts.

“I’m going to be a mommy,” she sighed. Her hand went to rest on her belly, which was still flat, but which, she knew, contained a tiny little person who would call her, “Mommy.”

It was the first time since leaving the doctor’s office that she had characterized herself that way.

Then Erica cried again. But this time it was a completely different kind of tears.

Agatha Roberts was obsessed with her burgeoning plan. She didn’t tell Ethyl or Gladys about it. She didn’t tell anyone about it. She would unmask the pervert in their midst and people would praise her. She would stand up for truth, justice, and the American way.

She reminded herself to be careful. She characterized herself as a careful woman. Living with Harry had required she think things through. Harry had a temper. He had never struck her. She would have left him if he did that, as disgusting as divorce was. But his tongue could slash like a knife when she did something he thought was stupid.

She didn’t like thinking about Harry that way. He’d been a good provider. His insurance policy was proof of that. She had enough money and it would last at least until Social Security kicked in. That was years and years away. Besides, it was rude to think ill of the dead.

She jerked her mind back to the task at hand. She was a widow … an unmarried woman. She still had her figure. The Dalton boy was a handyman and there were plenty of things around that needed repair, now that Harry was gone. Some of the things Harry had fixed needed repair too, for that matter. She’d call him and have him do an estimate or something. She’d be coy. She’d wear her most daring dress … the one that came to just below her knees, with pockets on the breast that she was sure drew men’s attention to her bosom.

She imagined how it would go. He would come into the house. She’d show him something that was broken. He’d make advances. She’d demur, but not too much. He’d flirt with her and then suggest that, for a price, he could make her happy. She’d fan her face and look faint … but interested. She’d make the date and then, before he came, she’d tell Ethyl and Gladys what was going to happen. They would be in hiding as he asked for money. Maybe Ethyl could take a picture of her handing him the money. Ethyl had a camera. Then they’d call the police and have him arrested.

All the decent people would be thrilled, she thought. Maybe they’d even put up a statue of her.

Then her mother would have to be proud of her!

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Erica turned to Christy and smiled.

“You know what seems ironic about today?”

“What’s that?” asked Christy, looking up from a magazine.

They were in the waiting room of the orthopedics clinic at the VA hospital in Wichita. Will had been wheeled down the hall about an hour ago by a busy nurse that sent little zings of jealousy through Erica. She knew what was probably going through Will’s mind as the pretty nurse pushed him.

“It’s tax day,” said Erica. “That’s usually a day everybody hates. But for us, it’s going to be one of the greatest days of our lives.”

Christy smiled and looked at her new friend. Erica had been abrasive and surly, when Christy first met her. She’d been very worried about how Erica might react, when Christy had followed her heart and begun to get to know Will Bradford. Since then she had fallen hard for the crippled man. While his body was wrecked on the outside, she had been given a glimpse of the healthy beauty that lay on the inside, and she had been unable … unwilling, really … to let his scars get in the way of a chance to find what she thought of as “true love” again.

Then Bobby Dalton, who had worked an almost miracle in Christy’s life, had stepped in and worked another one on Erica. Since Erica had been spending time with Bobby, her personality had blossomed. She smiled more, was easier to talk to, and just generally more pleasant to be around. It didn’t hurt that Christy ran her own business and had done so without a man’s help for years. Erica approved of that and respected Christy.

“I love him any way I can get him,” said Christy, referring to Will, whose final, permanent prosthetic leg was being fitted as they waited. “In a chair or walking … I don’t care.”

“You’ve been so good for him,” sighed Erica. “He was so angry when he first got here.”

“Oh, he still has his moods,” said Christy. “But I can usually pull him out of one.” She resisted the urge to ask Erica how things were with Bobby. She was aware that Erica was trying to pretend there was no Bobby. She understood that. Christy had spent probably hours, waiting at the window for Bobby to come and make her feel so good. At the same time, she had always worried that a neighbor would see him too often and that she would be exposed as the unmarried woman who let him between her legs. Having his baby had cured her of that. She didn’t care what people thought about her any more. She had her friends and her business was doing well. And now … she had a man she could cleave to forever.

She glanced at Erica, only to see the woman looking past her in shock. She turned to see Will … alone … walking toward them.

His gait was clearly the gait of a man with troubled legs, but it was also smooth and confident. Will had told her of the hours he spent practicing, under the careful tutelage of the doctors and nurses and physical therapists. He was so used to hopping, that it was almost instinctive now and he had to overcome that. Now, though, other than his too-short left arm and the visible scars from the burning, he looked almost like any other man walking down the hall.

He even was able to compensate for two women almost crashing into him and didn’t lose his balance.

“You two are making a scene,” he said, grinning as much as the tight skin on the left side of his lips would let him.

Everything was new, at least for the women. They had only known the hopping man … the man in the chair. Even Erica, who had grown up with him, had not been able to equate the wreck who had gotten off the airplane six months ago with the healthy young man she had known when they were younger.

Will insisted on pushing each of the women in his chair, as if they were the invalids. Both felt foolish sitting in a chair being pushed by a man with an artificial leg, but they both did it … for Will. He couldn’t put the chair in the car by himself, but he could get into the car, himself, like any other person.

They had taken Christy’s car that day and she was driving as they returned to Granger.

“You know,” said Will, looking over at her. “This car has an automatic transmission. I bet I could drive it now.”

“You don’t use your left leg to drive an automatic anyway,” pointed out Christy.

“Yeah, but I always felt like it just wouldn’t work,” said Will. “I don’t feel like that anymore.”

It would be only one of many changes in his outlook over the next few months.

“You don’t have the flu,” said the doctor.

Erica looked at him. She’d gotten a substitute so she could go to the doctor to find out how to get rid of whatever it was that had been making her sick for the last two weeks.

“What do I have?” she moaned. She had hoped it would be something simple that she could just take a pill for. It had been two weeks since she’d been able to spend a night with Bobby, because she didn’t want to infect him with whatever bug was making her throw up so much.

“I’d like to examine you more thoroughly,” he said.

Ten minutes later, Erica Bradford was trying to control her urge to go off on her doctor, who was obviously using this visit as an opportunity to expose his sexist pig ways. He’d already felt her breasts and now her feet were in stirrups as he peered at her naked vagina. She was quite sure that this had nothing whatsoever to do with her cold or virus, or whatever it was.

“There’s going to be some discomfort,” came the warning voice.

The doctor slid his gloved finger to find the patient’s cervix and rimmed it, feeling for the mucus plug that would tell him what the tests had already suggested. It was there and it was firm. He remembered seeing this woman at the musical he’d attended with his wife several months back. She was the teacher. He’d noticed her, like any man would notice her. He’d also noticed that Bobby Dalton had been sitting next to her. Another of his patients, Christy Brown, was there near him too. He had a theory about Bobby Dalton, but he couldn’t really prove it. And he couldn’t ask this patient. That would be going too far. Still, it would be most interesting to see what the baby she was going to have looked like, when he delivered it.

He stood up, stripping off his gloves, to find the woman glaring at him. That wasn’t unusual. Lots of women glared at him. It was the ones who smiled at him that he had to be careful with.

He didn’t say “Congratulations, you’re pregnant.” He was aware this woman wasn’t married.

Instead, he just said: “You’re pregnant, Erica. I think it’s just morning sickness, and maybe a vitamin deficiency.”

In the 13th century, it was not uncommon for Christians to flog themselves in association with the flogging their savior suffered before his crucifixion. There are still sects of Christianity today who practice self flagellation, such as the Carmelites. Though it isn’t related to Jesus, in Islam, for hundreds of years, the Shiites have also practiced whipping or beating themselves and many still do in the Middle East and Asia. Various mystics use whips on themselves to attempt to enter an altered state of consciousness.

But flagellation, by and large, is thought of by most people as punishment. There was no one to whip Erica Bradford, though, so she had to whip herself. She didn’t use straps, a belt, cane or a switch. She used her own passions. By the time she returned home – she couldn’t go back to school – she was, again in her mind, beaten almost bloody and senseless by her own mental cat o’ nine tails.

Her litany of self confession was endless. She had been stupid. She had been rash. She had been weak. She had been stubborn. She had succumbed to the lure of the flesh. The list went on and on. But uppermost in her mind was the fact that she had subverted her own principles and now she was being made to pay for it.

Part of her anger and confusion was because, as a feminist, she had always supported a woman’s right to choose. Only three years earlier she had been elated when Roe v. Wade had been decided in the interests of women just like her. Of course, at that time, her reaction had been ideological. Now, however, it was personal. And that was the primary problem Erica was torn by.

As often as she had trumpeted the right of a woman to choose to abort the life within her, she could not make that choice herself.

The doctor had mentioned it. He’d seen many women react to the news that they were pregnant, and had developed the ability to tell pretty consistently which women were happy about it and which weren’t. Of course there were many reasons a woman might not be happy. It could have to do with finances or career paths or, perhaps, the particular man who had gotten her that way. But he could tell that Erica was not happy. And so, he had mentioned that there was a way to make her not-pregnant.

He also could tell when that option was not acceptable and had not taken it any farther. It was, after all … by law … her decision.

Imagine that you’re driving along and something comes on the radio that you don’t care for. As you reach to change the station, somebody slams into the rear of your car. Now imagine that, as you’re trying to deal with that, somebody slams into the side of your car too. You’re bleeding. The engine is making a horrible knocking sound. There are fumes in the car. Maybe there are other passengers in the car. Maybe it’s freezing outside and you don’t know where your coat is any more. It’s possible that the hot coffee you had is now all over you. You have to do something. But what do you do first?

That was how Erica felt. The irritating music on the radio was her illness. The rear end accident (no pun intended) was the fact she was pregnant. Then the concept of abortion was the side impact. She was dazed and her emotions were bleeding freely. The yammering of her various thoughts was so loud that she had a hard time concentrating on anything. There was, in fact, another passenger on board … a tiny life she had just become aware of. And the cold outside was all the people who would find out what she’d done … what kind of woman she was … and freeze her out of their lives.

Have I forgotten anything? Ah … yes … the hot coffee.

That was Bobby Dalton, who was so warm and satisfying when sipped of … but who had spilled inside her body to create something that she felt would burn her to cinders.

They say there are five stages to grieving: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Usually those are associated with the loss of a loved one. For Erica, it was the loss of her ideals, her lifestyle, her very future, which can be the same thing. Sometimes it can take years to work through all the stages. Sometimes it happens much more quickly.

She flashed through denial, because her brain was quite sure it was possible for her to be pregnant. Anger set in, starting at anger with herself, then transferring to Bobby. As she lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling, the bargaining that went on concerned what the doctor had said. She could abort this baby. It would be gone and no one, except the doctor and a few nurses, would ever know it had existed. Bobby wouldn’t even know it had existed. Her life could go back to normal.

All she could think about was the time her father had taken her to the dog pound to try to find a family pet. There had been so many cute, little puppies to choose from and she’d gotten to pick, because she was the older child and would be charged with taking care of it. As she’d held her new, wiggly, happy puppy in her arms at the front desk, she’d asked, “What will happen to the rest?” Her father, distracted by filling out the paperwork, had told her the truth. If they weren’t adopted, they’d be killed. She’d hated the Humane Society ever since.

She knew she couldn’t kill the life inside her. The only bargaining option left to her was to have the baby and put it up for adoption.

That’s when the depression set in and she cried, weeping bitterly about the unfairness of it all and how her life was ruined.

There was a week during which Will knew something was wrong. Erica was listless. She didn’t care what happened and sat for long hours paying no attention to the TV. They still slept together, but now it was more out of habit than because their passions needed a route for release. He’d passed his driving test with the addition to a knob that fastened to the steering wheel and rotated freely to let him turn the wheel with one hand. Now he dropped Erica off at school, so he could go to work.

He asked her repeatedly what was wrong, but only got “nothing” in return.

Erica’s grief now was for herself. Soon people would know. Her belly would swell, and the gossips would stare, point, and then talk. She knew she wouldn’t lose her job … but her authority in the classroom would suffer. She’d have to go through the entire first semester of next year’s classes grotesquely swollen, the laughing stock of everyone. The only bright spot she could think of was that at least no one would know for the remaining portion of this year’s classes.

Two weeks into May, Will was still trying to figure out what was wrong. They were lying in bed. She hadn’t cuddled with him for weeks, always lying inches away from him, staring at the ceiling until she finally closed her eyes in sleep. That was where she was now.

He unhooked “Josh,” which he had named his leg in honor of the dead man who had saved his life, and set it aside. He hopped to the bed and settled into it, rolling to face his sister.

“I got a letter today,” he said.

“Oh?” Her voice was distant.

“I got approved for an artificial hand.”

“That’s good.” It was as if he’d said he’d found a new book to read.

His hand went to her stomach. She’d started wearing a nightgown to bed recently and he wished she hadn’t. Her reaction to his hand on her was both astonishing and violent. She slapped at it, pushing it off her like it was a bug or something.

“Don’t touch me there!” she barked. All the distant quality of her voice was gone. The intensity in her almost scared him.

He sat up, hurt and angry.

“I’ll just go sleep in my room,” he said, lashing out. “I’m obviously not wanted here!”

His balance on one foot had actually improved since he’d gotten used to standing on two again. He was already up, with Josh in his hand, when Erica’s broken voice cried, “Noooooooooo.”

What had finally broken through the walls of self pity that had surrounded Erica was the perception that, after losing almost everything else in her life, she was losing her brother too. The shock of that had awakened her.

“What do you want?“ Will yelled at her, helplessly.

“Don’t gooooo,” she moaned.

“Will you please tell me what’s wrong?” he begged.

“I’ll tell you!” she blurted. “Just don’t leave me. Pleeease, Will.”

His reaction gave her psyche another slap or shake, or something equivalent to those concepts. He didn’t revile her. He didn’t get mad at her. In fact, there was no trace of any negative emotion of any kind.

“I’m gonna be an uncle?” His voice was unnaturally high. “I’m gonna have a nephew to play catch with?”

Erica was in no way, shape or form prepared to deal with someone who was … happy … that she was pregnant. She lay there, staring at Will, whose face tried to grin. He was undeniably happy.

“But I’m pregnant,” she moaned, trying again to get the disgust she had expected.

“That is so… great!“ As he shouted the last word, he rolled off the bed, landing on his good foot and started jumping around in circles, chanting, “I’m gonna have a neph-ewww,” over and over.

True elation is an emotion that is communicative in the same way anger is instantly understood. The reaction in others, however, is very different. Perceived anger causes a defensive reaction. Perceived joy is … communicative. When someone is exposed to that kind of joy, it’s very hard not to empathize with it. Erica smiled for the first time since leaving the doctor’s office. On top of that, as he hopped, Will’s penis flopped up and down in such a way that it was almost impossible to keep her eyes away from it. That was comical too, and her smile widened a bit.

Still, while the course of the ship that was her self-pity had been altered slightly, it wasn’t a full turn. When he finally sat back down on the bed, panting from his exertion, her gloom reasserted itself.

“Great for you, maybe,” she sighed. “Not so much for me.”

Now her attitude about things made perfect sense. Now he understood.

Now there was something he could do to try to make her feel better.

There is something about being loved, when you expect only derision and disgust, that can change your world radically. Will knew that intimately. He had been pulled from the darkness, initially, by his sister. Then, beyond all hope, a beautiful woman had taken him far above the earth, where dreams soar. It was logical, in a strange and mystical way, that he pull his sister from her depression.

How that happened, or more correctly, what happened as she surfaced from the dark depths and took a breath of clean, fresh air wasn’t expected.

“I love you so much,” she cried, reaching for Will.

“I love you too, baby,” he sighed.

They didn’t expect to end up kissing. They didn’t expect for his hands to bring back the sensations she had grown so addicted to. They didn’t expect for her nightgown to come off or for Will to roll on top of her. And, with her legs closed, Erica certainly didn’t expect to suddenly be filled with hard prick.

Her mind split apart at that point, one part noticing, almost clinically, how different Will felt inside her compared to Bobby. That part analyzed what he did with his body. The other part, crying out to be loved, didn’t care that it was her brother’s taboo penis that was producing streaks of joy throughout her body.

The first part chuckled as she felt the evidence of his completion and heard his gasps as he jetted into her. She was already pregnant. It no longer mattered whether her brother tried to fertilize her.

The second part made her reach for her own nipples, squeezing them, so she could cum with him.

By morning Erica Bradford was, more or less, her old self. Will’s “therapy” had brought back the capacity to plan and hope. Her problems weren’t gone. But now they were only problems, not the weight of the world pressing her into the abyss.

Mirriam picked up the phone and Bobby saw her face light up with a smile.

“Suzie!” she squealed. “It’s been so long!”

Then Bobby saw the joy on her face freeze, then moderate, and finally turn into sadness.

“I understand, darling,” she said. “Do you want to talk to the others? Bobby’s right here.”

She listened.

“All right. I’ll tell them.”

She hung up the phone.

“Suzie got a job at a research lab at K-State. She’s going to move in with two other girls and stay there all summer. She’s also taking extra classes during summer school. She’s not coming home this year.”

Bobby could hear the tears, before they arrived in her eyes. He went to his mother and hugged her while she was sad.

Eventually she pushed him away.

“Enough self pity,” she said, her voice stronger. “We have plenty to keep us busy this summer, getting this place into shape to receive customers. It would have been nice to have Suzie here to help, but we’ll manage.”

“Yes, we will,” said Bobby.

“And anyway, she says if she does this she can graduate a year early. Can you imagine that? Next year my baby might start medical school!”

“Well that’s a good thing,” said Bobby, smiling. “Maybe she’ll specialize in geriatrics. Then she could come back here and take care of her old, feeble, ailing mother.”

Mirriam stuck her tongue out at him. Then her eyes got a crafty look in them. She walked to him with an exaggerated sway to her hips. She reached out and plucked at the front of his shirt, pulling on it.

“Come to my bedroom, Bobby. I’ll show you how feeble I am.”

It was June before Erica called Bobby again. He hadn’t thought it was that odd. There had been women before who had “overdosed” on him at first, and then calmed down later. He looked at it as a natural progression of things. It was all new and exciting at first and they couldn’t get enough. Then, later, quality seemed to be the important part, rather than quantity.

“I need to talk to you,” she said.

“Okay,” he replied. “You want me to come over tonight?”

“No.” She sounded doubtful. “Not tonight. It won’t take that long. Could you drop by after school this afternoon?”

Agatha Roberts was having tea with her friends, Ethyl and Gladys. It had been a regular thing with them for some years. That it had continued after Harry died, while their husbands went on living, hadn’t surprised her. They were her friends, after all.

The format for Tuesday afternoon tea hadn’t changed in years either. Agatha sat quietly and waited for one of the other women to bring up a juicy bit of gossip. They always did, and it gave them something to talk about while they sipped tea and nibbled at sugar cookies. Agatha didn’t get out as much as she used to, before her husband had succumbed to a diet of fats and a lifestyle that seemed to be centered around smoking and sitting in front of the television with a frozen dinner.

“Guess what I heard!” said Ethyl, right on cue.

“What?” asked both other women dutifully.

“That new teacher … you know the one they hired to replace Bernice?” She looked around, as if there might be people hiding in the corners of Agatha’s sitting room. “She might be pregnant!”

All three women knew of Erica Bradford, though they didn’t know her name. Bernice had been the maternal priestess of a loosely organized group of women, until she retired and moved to Florida to live with her daughter. Those women were the self-appointed guardians of the moral standards of Granger, Kansas. They were the ones who sat on the other side of the invisible line that separated them from strumpets, who were loose and threatened to bring down everything decent women worked hard to protect. It was only natural that they’d take an interest in Bernice’s replacement.

“I knew it!” crowed Gladys. “I knew all that women’s liberation claptrap was a bunch of hooey.”

This was Agatha’s chance to make a comment.

“Can you imagine that?” she cooed. “I knew when that woman showed up there would be trouble. She should have been decently married before taking a job teaching children.”

Gladys wanted more dirt. “How did you find out?” she asked excitedly.

“Penelope’s daughter works for the doctor. She has something to do with records. Apparently the doctor tested for pregnancy. He wouldn’t do that unless he suspected something, you know.” Ethyl nodded sagely.

Agatha felt a stab of irritation. Sometimes Ethyl was so dense. Of course a doctor wouldn’t test for something he didn’t expect. Her mind shut down for a minute as the other two nattered on. Agatha sometimes wished she had some friends her own age. At thirty, she felt like an old woman sometimes. She blamed that on the women who had taken her under their wings, after she’d married Harry, who was ten years older than she was. She felt irritation at her own thoughts. These women had been good friends to her for years. The fact that they were in their fifties – not that that was ever talked about – was just the way it was. She wrestled for control of her restive mind and tried to pay attention.

Gladys asked the obvious question. “So who do you think the father is?”

Ethyl looked around again. It almost made Agatha want to look around too. “You know that Bobby Dalton was hanging around the school while they got ready for that musical.”

That was enough to keep them busy for the rest of the afternoon. There had been much speculation about Bobby Dalton over the last few years. He was almost always good for an hour’s worth of gossip. He went everywhere … into people’s homes … where no one could see what was going on. Oh, surely he carried tools with him and sometimes this or that thing he bought at the lumber yard or the hardware store. It was certain that he fixed things. But what else he did, while he was in those houses … and perhaps not fixing things … that was the topic of endless speculation.

There were children who bore a resemblance to him. In the beginning, they had been quite sure he had fathered some of those children. But as the number of them grew and grew, it eventually exceeded their ability to believe he could be responsible for all of them. And many of the mothers of those children were married too. That was always something that tended to throw a wrench into their theories about Bobby Dalton.

Then again, most of the suspect women sat at the wrong tables when there was a town celebration. There had been the scandalous rumor that some of those women had actually paid Bobby Dalton to do more … much more … than simply fix a faucet. There was no proof of that, of course, but these women wanted to believe it.

Yes, Bobby and those troublesome women were always good for an hour or two of rampant speculation.

“Something should be done!” said Ethyl.

“But what could we do?” asked Gladys.

“I don’t know,” admitted Ethyl. “But something should be done. This has gone on far too long, if you ask me. There are entrirely too many single women in this town who have babies!”

Eventually, they left and Agatha’s mind wandered again, as she cleaned up, washed the cups, and put them neatly back in the china hutch where they belonged.

She was puttering around, trying to find something to do that she hadn’t already done twice and that actually needed doing, when it came to her.

If Bobby Dalton accepted money … for sex … then all it would take to expose him would be to get him to accept money … for sex.

She shuddered. Sex was something she didn’t like to think about. She’d had dreams, before she got married, about how delightful sex would be. Harry wasn’t handsome, but he’d had a good job and was stable. Her mother had pointed that out. When, on her wedding night, she’d given up her carefully guarded and cherished virginity, though, it had been nothing like her dreams.

He’d been rough. It had hurt. Thankfully it had lasted only three or four minutes. After that it hadn’t hurt so much, but she had grown to appreciate the fact that it continued to last only five minutes, at the longest, before he sighed and rolled off of her so she could go and get respectably clean again.

There had been no children. She’d agonized about that for the first two years. When her mother had suggested it was her fault, for not being a good wife, Agatha had been both crushed and angry. She did everything a wife was supposed to do. She cleaned and washed. She prepared Harry’s favorite frozen dinners each night. She went shopping for food. She didn’t buy frivolous things. She even learned how to drive, so Harry wouldn’t have to take her everywhere.

She sat down. For the first time, she thought about the suspect women, looking for similarities … clues … something that would tell her how to catch the attention of a despicable man who would offer to have sex with them for money. It wasn’t easy. The suspect women were of all ages and in different situations. The only thing that seemed to stand out was that some of them had no husband.

She blinked. She had no husband.

She thought some more.

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Bobby’s hand rested on Misty’s stomach as they lay side by side, catching their breath.

“Now that’s more like it,” panted Misty.

“You think we’re done?” Bobby chuckled.

Her eyes got serious.

“The next three days may have to last me for the next five years, Bobby.” There were suddenly tears in her eyes. “Maybe longer.”

Bobby didn’t want her to get maudlin.

“Why? Don’t tell me you’re giving up men altogether.”

She pushed at him, but smiled.

“I should!” she said. “Look what the last one did to me!” Her hand went to lay on top of his.

Now it was Bobby who got serious.

“There is always a second love,” he said. “If you want there to be.”

She just stared into his eyes for a while.

“I know,” she said. “I can’t imagine it … but then I couldn’t imagine you either.” She let him kiss her gently, but pushed him back. “Can you be happy if some other man raises our child?”

“If you’re happy, that’s what will make me happy,” he said.

His face was calm, but inside was a different matter. Bobby had contact with all his children, some more and some less. He was completely comfortable with Jake being called Daddy by two of those children. He had already heard Steven call Sal “Papa Sal,” and that hadn’t hurt at all. There were others, many others, who called another man all the names that would bond them to a man other than their biological father, and he could live with that, because he got to see them and talk to them and know they were happy children.

But this was different, somehow. To know he had a child that he’d probably never see, and never hold or play with. He’d not get the chance to read the child under his hand any stories, or play horsy, or babysit. It made his stomach hurt. An outsider might have thought that Bobby Dalton cast his seed wherever it might happen to fall and that he cared not for the results, but that was not true. He may have looked at it differently than many men would … most, if the truth be flatly stated … but he still cared.

He couldn’t let her know how it hurt him inside, though. He knew this had been a difficult decision for her too. He knew that, somewhere inside her, there was the wish that this hadn’t happened … that she hadn’t run into Bobby Dalton … and that he hadn’t complicated her career. He didn’t want to fan that hopefully small coal of resentment and chance it setting something aflame that would remove forever the possibility that he would see Misty … and their child again.

“Thank you,” she said, leaning into him. “I’m ready to go again.” Her eyes were serious again. “We only have three days.”

Suddenly, the next three days took on greater importance to Bobby too.

Misty didn’t know about the twins, who seemed to ignore their own pregnant condition completely when they came in and squealed over the arrival of their adopted sister. They wanted to show her the room they had prepared for her, oblivious of the fact that she had probably already seen it. Bobby wouldn’t find out until much later, but the twins were neither ignoring their own condition, nor what they had recognized instantly as Misty’s. They spent over an hour in the first official bedroom of the Dalton Bed and Breakfast with the first official customer.

They acted like nothing had changed, when they finally came out. Nothing was said to Bobby by any of the three. But the twins always seemed to have something important to do for the next three days, other than spend time with Misty. The exception was in the evenings. Each night, after supper, Misty performed two or three of the songs that would be on her new album and the twins sat with stars in their eyes as they were treated to a sneak preview. Mirriam was more sedate in her praise. Bobby said nothing.

Mirriam did a lot of chores that kept her away from the house during that time too. Misty was insatiable and made no attempt of any kind to hide the fact that Bobby slept with her every night. On the last night, after she sang the last song and put her guitar back in its case, she stood up and took Bobby’s hand, to pull him toward her room.

“Misty?” It was Mirriam’s voice that broke the silence.

Misty turned to look at her, still holding Bobby’s hand.

“You never told us what the name of your album will be.”

Misty smiled. “That last song was the title song.”

“First Love,” sighed Matilda. “It was so sad.”

“Maybe there will be a second love someday,” said Misty.

Then she took Bobby to bed for the last time.

It was only after Misty left that Mirriam spoke to Bobby.

“I knew I should have pried,” she said the next morning at breakfast. Only she and Bobby were there. The twins were already gone to work at Renee’s.

“Would it have done any good?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t understand that woman,” she said. “I would have married Joe in a minute. I even asked him to marry me three or four times.”

“I didn’t know that,” said Bobby.

“He wasn’t the kind of man to settle down,” said his mother. “I knew that, but I couldn’t resist him.”

“I wish he had married you,” said Bobby, reaching for her hand.

Her eyes cleared and narrowed. “Have any of … them, “ she wasn’t specific, but he knew who she was talking about, “asked you to marry them?”

“No, Mamma,” he said softly. “It’s come up in conversation a few times, but not that seriously.”

“What is wrong with women these days?” she asked, her voice anxious.

“I guess women’s liberation has made them feel like they don’t have to have a man to make a go of things,” said Bobby.

“Not Jill,” said his mother. “She married Sal, of all people! Why wasn’t she interested in you?”

“Did Ted ever ask you or Prudence to marry him?” asked Bobby.

“That’s different!” she objected.

“Is it?” he asked.

“I didn’t love him that way,” moaned Mirriam.

“But you loved him in yes way,” said Bobby.

“Yes … I still do, I suppose. Just not that way,” she sighed.

“That’s how they’ve all felt about me,” he said.

Erica made it almost ten days before she was so agitated that she couldn’t keep her attention on the classes she was teaching. Twice she found herself standing in front of the class, gazing off into nothing, thinking about one of her dreams.

Her dreams since losing her virginity had changed radically. Her conscious mind might not remember all the details of that wild and stormy night, but her subconscious could. It played back what had happened in her dreams, in vivid Technicolor.

She woke wet from those dreams. Twice she had to wake Will, because her fingers couldn’t bring her satisfaction. She had come very close to climbing on top of her brother, like he had described Christy doing.

Will knew her well. He had no such problem, because along with his education in darkroom procedures, Christy kept him almost completely satisfied. He was more relaxed and less angry than at any time since he could remember. He was willing to fulfil his childhood dream … of having his penis in his beautiful sister, but he knew that Erica would end up feeling guilty if that happened. That and the fact that he was so satisfied, let him help her resist that. Christy had taught him how to use his fingers on her, while she sucked his dick, and he did that with Erica too, penetrating her and making her go stiff with the power of her orgasms.

But she knew there was an even better feeling. And she knew where that feeling was. It was only her stubbornness that kept her from calling Bobby for those ten days. That and the fact that she had Will.

Then Christy asked Will to spend the night with her again. That night Erica was almost crazy. She couldn’t sleep and couldn’t relax. She rubbed three times and was a wreck at school the next day.

She called Bobby as soon as she got home.

“I need to see you,” she said, when he came on the phone.

“When?” he asked.

“Right now,” she said, her voice tight with frustration.

“Be right there,” he said.

Will was at Christy’s. Erica was elated for her brother, in that sense. That he was learning a trade and would have something to fill his days made her almost weep with happiness. He had even been talking about having her take him to the VA in Wichita to look into prosthetics. She got the phone book and found the number. When Christy answered, she asked if it might be possible for Will to stay over again.

“That would not be a problem,” said Christy, humor in her voice.

“Thank you,” said Erica.

Erica’s mind was too jumbled up to be able to make any real assessment about what was happening to her. Life seemed to have been flashing by like a locomotive, while she stood three feet from the tracks. The wind of life’s passage had been swirling around her. Her new sexual urges were like a dust storm in which all she could see was what was right in front of her face. And what was right in front of her face was Bobby.

Had she been able to think about things calmly, she might have realized that she was deep in the midst of adolescent growth, even though she had technically been an adult for years. That adolescent rush forward is usually controlled, at least to some extent, by the conventions of society. While many teenagers “have sex,” there isn’t one of them who doesn’t know that they shouldn’t be “having sex.” It’s one of those things that’s built into the tangled structure of “dos” and “don’ts” that weaves through our society like threads in a tapestry.

For those reasons, Erica felt guilty about having sex. She felt guilty about having sex with her brother and she felt guilty for the insane need she had to feel Bobby’s stiff prick in her pussy. Added on top of that were restrictions that she had imposed on herself, about feminism and her desire to be independent of need for men in general.

But, as strong as societal values are, nature is much stronger. Society’s rules have been in play for some ten or fifteen thousand years. Mother Nature’s biological imperative has been around for millions of years. The only species who “beat” Mother Nature are the ones that went extinct.

In short, the war between society and nature was being waged and, in this particular battle in Erica Bradford’s body, society wasn’t doing well at all. Society was being beaten back by the efforts of Bobby Dalton.

Sweat was dripping from Bobby’s nose and chin. Erica had been frantic for the first forty minutes. Her orgasms, both from his prick and from his treatment of her nipples, had come like a row of dominos, falling in order until he had to stop to give her time to get some air into her lungs.

“You stopped,” she gasped, her eyes wild.

“You’re about to pass out,” he pointed out.

“You … let … me … worry … about … that,” she panted.

On top like this, he couldn’t get to her nipples and stay fully inserted all the way. So he rolled them over and sat her up, letting her lean forward into his hands while they worked on her breasts.

She belly danced through three more orgasms before he started squeezing her nipples and keeping them squeezed, only letting off the pressure just long enough for them to fill with blood again, occasionally. To be honest, Bobby was enjoying his first opportunity to see how much a woman could actually take. Finally, he saw her eyes roll up in her head and felt her go limp, and let her fall forward to flop onto his chest.

He rolled her off, made sure she was breathing, and went to get a washcloth soaked in cold water.

She came around quickly and tried to sit up. He held her down with his hands on her shoulders.

“I’ll be here all night,” he said softly.

Tears flooded her eyes.

“I need you so much,” she bawled.

“You have me,” he said, lying down beside her and holding her again.

She calmed eventually. He could tell she was embarrassed.

“You make me feel really good,” he said.

“Really?” Her voice was high. She had never felt this dependent on a man in her life.

“No man could resist a woman like you,” he said. “You make me feel like I’m the most important man in the world.”

“Don’t get a big head,” she sighed, smiling for the first time since he got there.

“It’s not my head you make get big,” he said, leaning in for a kiss.

She spread her legs, bringing the one away from him up and opening herself wide. Her vulva were a mess of pale, spermy liquid.

“I feel like such a slut,” she panted.

“I don’t do this with sluts,” he said, getting up.

When he mounted her again he tried to just stroke her and let her enjoy the feeling without abusing her clit. That seemed to be working. Her hands were roaming along his arms and shoulders, and her hips were thrusting up against him, but not with the same animal urgency as before.

“You know,” he said casually. “When you go on the pill, I’ve heard it takes a month before it’s really effective.”

“Pill?”

“Birth control pills?”

She blinked. “I’m not on the pill.” Her eyes widened. “I didn’t even think of that!” Her eyes got teary again. “I just needed you so badly … I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“Why didn’t you call me sooner?” he asked.

“Because I’m stubborn!“ she whined.

“I should stop,” he said. Suddenly the urge to spew in her was urgent.

“You can’t stop!” she blurted. “We’re not done yet.”

“I came in you last time,” he said, staring into her eyes. “I told you to get off of me and you didn’t. Now I’ve cum in you again. I don’t think you want my baby in your belly.”

“I’ll douche!” she yipped. “Please don’t stop.”

“I can’t do this forever without cumming,” he huffed.

“You can take it out, then,” she moaned.

“I’m ready to take it out now,” he panted.

“Not yet!” Her legs went around him.

“Ohhhh Erica,” he moaned. He thought about just jerking it out of her. Her legs weren’t strong enough to stop him. He’d always had this weakness. He knew it. He always felt it. When he was on top of a fertile woman, he almost needed to try to make her pregnant. He’d never agonized about it before. He warned them and then he didn’t worry. Misty had changed that, though. He’d made a baby in a woman and he wouldn’t get to see that baby.

“Please,” she begged. “Not yet. I can feel it coming.”

“So can I,” he groaned.

He gave up. He slammed in and ground against her clit. She yipped and ground back at him, babbling that he only needed to do it for just a little longer.

By the time she wound down from an orgasm that had made her laugh with happiness, her womb was awash with his second load of sperm for the evening.

It took all night for her to be satisfied. She woke three times and, each time, she woke him too. She got the orgasm she needed each time, and each time he added a regiment of little wriggling soldiers to the army assaulting her womb. When he finally left in the morning, telling her he had to get to work, she was so exhausted that she fell asleep within ten minutes of hearing the front door close.

She did not get up to douche.

Throughout March, Bobby worked on plans to renovate two more of his sisters’ rooms into guest rooms. The greatest challenge was the bathroom arrangements. The existing bathroom was across from the room that had already been renovated. After looking at the structural issues, Bobby decided the most workable solution for the other two was to build a second story onto the utility room and pantry, which were on the back of the house. It would hold two bathrooms, made accessible by putting a door in what had been the outside walls of Mary’s and Bev’s rooms. The existing drain/waste system in the utility room could be tied into, and water could be taken up from the lines that went to the washer and sink in that room as well.

It meant that whoever was in Flo’s old room would have to walk across the hall to use a bathroom, but it was the best they could do with the limited funds Misty had been able to buy in with. Besides, he might think of something else while he did the structural work, which he thought would take until about August. Then they could do the interior work. With luck, they could be open for business in the fall.

Erica was kept busy for most of March herself, helping Will make arrangements with the VA hospital to get into the system for working on his leg. Because he was so recently released from Walter Reed, that went much more smoothly than anticipated, though numerous trips to Wichita were required. Christy helped several times when one of his appointments fell during school hours.

Will was now spending a night or two a week at Christy’s and was already helping with production. He could do almost everything except load the exposed film into developing reels, but that was really no problem because Christy could load the canisters and after that Will could take over to finish the developing. Once the film was in the can, chemicals could be added later, at any time. The onlly time Christy put a lid on a can now, was when it had film in it. The other cans and lids were kept in separate compartments on the shelf above the sink.

With Will being away from home that often, Erica didn’t wait so long to call Bobby again. Once a week wasn’t quite enough, but she still resisted having him over more often. She made up for that by keeping him there all night. Her appetite for sex, once she’d discovered it, tended to lean toward marathon lovemaking sessions rather than several short times in a week.

She read up on the pill and didn’t like what she found. Possible side effects, such as blood clots, seemed ridiculous to chance. Instead, she decided to rely on spermicidal creams, foams and even bought suppositories, all of which embarrassed her, initially, because Bobby wanted to help her “install” them, as he called it. It was impossible to stay embarrassed, though, because everything Bobby did with her was so intimate.

Eventually she got used to being naked with him, and eventually that led to her trying to learn how to tease him.

She went shopping in Wichita one Saturday, while Will was being fitted with his first fully functional leg, she saw a lingerie shop and went in. She felt like she was in a foreign country, and thought more than once that she would never have even considered some of the things they sold if it weren’t for Bobby Dalton. She left with several purchases.

Bobby’s reaction was more than enthusiastic. After wearing her first outfit for him, Erica Bradford decided that maybe she was a slut, at least when it came to Bobby. She also decided she didn’t care, because he made her feel like the most important woman in the world. The primary change in her attitude about that was simple. When Bobby made love with her, it was impossible to feel like she was being exploited, whether she teased him with slutty outfits first or not. She also knew that she was still in control of her own destiny. Bobby was simply a part of that destiny.

On April the first, Erica Bradford accepted an invitation from Bobby to go for a hike with him. He took her on a trail that, after about a mile and a half, led to an old abandoned farmhouse. She felt the melancholy of the old house, silent and empty now, after years of life and noise had graced its walls. It only seemed fitting to grace its walls with the sounds of love again and they went inside.

They had been chatting about things in general, just talking as they trudged along. Now, as she stood in the sad, old empty house, the melancholy of it all made her need human contact.

It started, quite simply, with a kiss.

His kiss was hungry and her body responded like it had been responding so readily recently. His fingertips drifting across the tips of her breasts, while he kissed her, inflamed her and she bared her breasts through the front of her shirt. She had an orgasm standing, almost fully dressed, in the middle of an empty room.

It was still cool, but Bobby’s back pack proved to contain two blankets. When he pulled them out, his intent was clear and Erica’s body sang with anticipation. She got into her own back pack to find the fat, yellow pill, that looked like an M&M on steroids, so she could give it to Bobby to insert into her spasming pussy.

It wasn’t there.

She searched frantically. She remembered laying the new pack next to the back pack … but not putting the box into it.

“Damn!” she moaned.

“What’s wrong?”

“I forgot my suppositories!” she complained. “I thought I put them in here, but I didn’t.”

Bobby smiled.

“It’s all right,” he said. “We can wait.” He stepped closer to her. “Or I can get you off other ways.” His hands went to her still naked breasts, protruding from her shirt.

But, in that war between culture and nature going on in Erica’s body, culture was suffering more and more.

“I don’t want your fingers!” she said, feeling her breasts heat up just from his fingers on them. “I want another part of you!”

She dropped the useless backpack.

“It’s okay,” she said, spreading her shirt. “I can take care of things when we get back.”

Bobby lay on his back, naked, on one blanket and Erica draped the other over them as she, also naked, climbed on top of him and lowered herself onto his prick, taking it deep into her belly.

She rode him through three orgasms. With his back on the hard floor instead of a soft bed when she sank down on him, his penis pushed half an inch further into her than before and she felt the ecstatic pain/pleasure of her cervix being stretched.

After her third orgasm, Erica started milking him off. It was a game they had started playing a couple of weeks ago. She sat still on him and, using only her pussy muscles, tried to defeat his ability to refrain from spurting in her.

Now, in the dry bones of a house that represented only death and decay, her muscles triumphed, and Bobby’s sperm-laced semen jetted into her womb, where an egg, the harbinger of new life, lay waiting, just inside the fallopian tube it had traveled through. Erica’s luck … and time … had run out. To be honest, even if she’d had the suppository, it probably wouldn’t have killed all the sperm Bobby jetted into her. And it only takes one. The war had been lost. Erica became fully the woman of the species.

It was only fitting that they created new life amidst the ruins of old life, where, it was likely, so many other lives had at one time been created. It was also somewhat ironic, because the feminist Erica Bradford had tried too hard to be, had never been more … female … than she was as her body started to create new life.

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PM
The aftermath of the night that changed everything for both Erica and Will Bradford was surprisingly anticlimactic for both of them.

Bobby was gone when Christy pushed Will up the ramp and into the house. Will was nervous, but his sister smiled tentatively at him and welcomed Christy, who didn’t stay long since Jillian was in the car.

Both siblings were feeling similar things. Both felt desirable and like there was a new kind of hope in their lives. For Will, that hope was for a continuing relationship with Christy. For Erica, the hope was for continuing success in her professional pursuits, which had broadened, as well as anticipation for another night … some night … like last night. Bobby’s cautioning comments about how she should think about things, and his lack of an attempt to climb on top of her before he left, had cemented in her mind that he was completely trustworthy and that he’d never try to manipulate her. She already knew that the next time she spread her thighs for a man, it would be intentional and it would be Bobby Dalton again. She just didn’t know when that would be.

That contented feeling was what smoothed the initial reunion of brother and sister. Both had eaten breakfast. After perhaps ten minutes of slightly uncomfortable tension, Erica broke it.

“Did you have a good time last night?” she asked.

“I did,” he said. He’d already decided that what had happened was so important that he and his sister would have to come to grips with it somehow.

“That’s good,” she said. “I did too.” She’d already decided that if Will was somehow in a relationship that would keep him out all night, he’d have to understand that she could have that kind of relationship too.

“Bobby brought you home, didn’t he?” asked Will softly.

She was surprised.

“Yes,” she said.

“And you had a good time with him?”

“Yes,” she said, more carefully.

“Did he stay all night?” asked Will. Christy had told him a lot about Bobby Dalton as they lay together that morning. She had insisted that before he made real decisions, he know the truth.

Erica hadn’t planned on getting into it quite this quickly or quite this boldly, but something in his voice demanded the truth.

“Yes,” she said.

Her brother’s next comment astonished her.

“I think you can trust him.”

“What?”

“I think you can trust him,” said Will. “He cares about the women he sleeps with.”

“Will!” moaned Erica. This was going much too quickly and much too plainly.

“As long as you’re on the pill, anyway,” said Will.

“Will!” she moaned again. Her hands over her face muffled her voice a little. “What are you talking about?”

Will felt his first misgivings. Christy hadn’t demanded that anything she told him be kept secret, though it was obvious it wouldn’t do anybody any good to be bandied about in public. And one of the things he had worried about for years was that his sister’s beliefs would keep her from finding a man to love. Based on what Christy had told him, it wasn’t likely that Erica would fall in love with Bobby or vice versa, but it was possible. He didn’t want to queer the deal by telling her things that might drive them apart. That was Bobby’s responsibility … not his. And if Bobby hadn’t “broken her in,” then she most certainly didn’t need to know about his … other pursuits.

“I’m just saying that accidents can happen,” he said vaguely. “Sometimes things happen that aren’t planned.”

That resonated with Erica, but she was embarrassed now. She wanted to change the subject.

“Was she good to you?” asked Erica.

“I hope Bobby was half as good to you as she was to me,” sighed Will.

“I still love you,” she said.

“I love you too,” he responded. “I’ll always love you.”

“What does this mean?” she asked. “About us?” she clarified.

“I don’t want to sleep alone ever again,” sighed Will.

“Me either,” thought his sister. She wasn’t aware she had actually said it softly.

It wasn’t unusual for Bobby to stay away from home for a night. Both his mother and the twins had gotten used to that idea. It would be too much to say they had resigned themselves to him being gone some nights. That would indicate that they relied on him more heavily than they actually did. All three women loved him and loved spending time with him in bed, both for lovemaking and for just sleeping in his arms. But they had their own lives, too, and Bobby being gone didn’t stop life from happening.

Life was going on, in fact, when Bobby got home. Mirriam was getting a roast ready for the oven. Matilda was gathering eggs and Betty, to Bobby’s surprise, was painting the walls of Florence’s old room. He found that out when his mother turned to greet him as he came in and said, “Go check on Betty. I’m not sure she knows what she’s doing, even if she swears she does.”

That was all she’d said. It was Betty who explained what had happened while Bobby was at the musical.

“Your girlfriend called,” said Betty, bending over to load a roller with apricot colored paint. She’d put down one of Bobby’s ground cloths and had already prepped the wall by using a brush to put a three inch swath of the new color along the ceiling.

“My girlfriend?” he asked.

“Misty,” she said, as if that was no longer anything special.

“I wasn’t aware Misty was my girlfriend,” he said.

“Then why is she coming here again?” asked Betty.

She broke then. She’d been trying to act casual, but couldn’t pull it off. She turned and her arms went out and it was obvious she was going to hug Bobby. He managed to take the roller away from her before she enveloped him in her arms. She ground her pussy on his hip, having to lean back a little to make that happen. The twins were four months along and beginning to show in that obvious way that makes people look twice. She was giggling and trying to kiss him, but couldn’t do that at the same time she rubbed.

“I’m horny,” she sighed, giving up on his leg and rocking forward for the kiss.

“Tell me about Misty,” he said.

She pouted.

“She called last night. She’s coming for a visit.”

“Did she say why?” he asked.

“She said something about business,” said Betty. “She talked to Mamma mostly. Tildy answered the phone. I didn’t get to do anything but say hi.”

“I’d better go talk to Mamma,” he said.

“But I’m horny!” she complained.

“Will you still be horny after lunch, when Mamma takes her nap?” he asked.

“Of course,” she said. “I’m horny all the time, since you knocked us up.”

“Betty!” he moaned. “I didn’t knock you up. I made you pregnant. We made a baby together. Our love resulted in conception. I can think of a dozen ways to say it that don’t bring the image to my mind of me swinging a two by four around while you two run naked, trying to escape.”

She grinned. “All I know is that I’m horny all the time since you spurted a baby into my belly.”

“I’ll see you after lunch,” he sighed. He handed her the roller back and started to leave. Then he paused. “You’re doing a good job, by the way.”

She beamed at him.

“Thank you!”

Back in the kitchen, Bobby got the whole story from his mother. Misty had said she just needed to get away for a couple of days, to write some songs without the normal interruptions.

“She asked about you,” said his mother, her eyes narrowing.

He hadn’t told his mother that Misty was pregnant. He hadn’t really thought she’d come back to Kansas. He thought. She’d be a little more than two months along. She might not be showing that much. He knew he had to say something, because his mother was staring at him, waiting.

“We get along much better these days,” he said carefully.

Mirriam saw the caution flash in her son’s eyes. She wasn’t sure how to evaluate that, though.

“You’re to pick her up at the airport next Thursday.”

For Erica, the angst she felt about everything seemed to calm down in some ways and heat up in others. The night after both brother and sister found ecstasy in the arms of others, they slept together. That had been a little tense for both of them, for the same reason.

Will had always had the urge to find out what Erica’s pussy felt like wrapped around his prick. Now, Erica wondered the same thing. She knew, on a cerebral level, that her dream had been about Will’s penis, because it was the only penis she was really familiar with. But the image of her brother’s penis poised above her pussy lips could not be banished. There were two images she could summon up now. Neither could be banished.

Both siblings knew, however, that they had already pushed their relationship beyond the point where anyone would understand. Bobby hadn’t judged Erica, but she couldn’t believe he would be supportive. For that reason, their passions did not inflame that night and they just slept together.

The next night was the same. Both Bobby and Christy seemed to be letting their new lovers have the time to think about things. That didn’t satisfy new longings, though, and on the third night both Will and Erica were missing what they’d had together.

They finally talked about it, long into the night. A few more details of each other’s nights of passion were shared and they confessed some of the urges they had had for each other. As they talked, her hand drifted to his stomach and her fingertips played with the hair just above his prick, which was stiff.

“Is it wrong for me to think about you that way?” asked Erica.

“I think about it too,” he sighed. “All I know is I love you and I think I love Christy too. It’s weird. Six months ago I looked forward to a nurse stopping by for ten minutes, and figured that was all I could ever look forward to.”

“Six months ago I didn’t look forward to anything that had to do with sex,” said his sister.

“It’s better now … for both of us … isn’t it?” His voice made it plain he wanted her to agree with him.

“Yes,” she said softly. “I can’t imagine going back to where I was then.”

“Just with me?” he asked, wondering if he would have to give up Christy to keep from abandoning his sister.

“Not just you,” she said, her voice just above an audible whisper. “You deserve a full life with a woman you can take out in public. What will happen with you and Christy?” she asked, her voice louder.

“She said she’d call me,” he said. The concept of “taking a woman out in public” would have made him howl with mixed anger and laughter, a month before this. Now it went over his head as if it wasn’t an issue at all. “She said she wanted to see me lots more.” He paused. “What about you … and Bobby?”

“I’m not in love with him,” she said. “If that’s what you mean. I love what happened, but it’s not like I found my prince and can never leave his side.”

“Will you see him again … like that?” he asked. He was assuming some things, but she’d hinted strongly that they’d spent the night in bed, and not sitting up talking.

“He said that was up to me,” she responded.

“And?”

“Do you want to be with Christy again?” she asked.

“Yes.” He wondered if she’d pull away from him now.

“I want to be with him again too,” she said.

That let them renew their own relationship. She kissed him for the first time, and scooted down to suck at him until he spurted on her nipples, while she pulled and twisted them, until they were too slippery to grasp.

Both found release and could then sleep.

Neither was fully satisfied, though.

When Christy called, it was ten in the morning. Erica let the phone ring, as Will hopped to it.

“You doing anything?” Christy asked.

The first thing he thought of was that it was ten in the morning, which was a strange time to be interested in sex.

“No,” he said.

“I have an idea,” she said. “Can I come pick you up?”

“Sure,” he said. He suddenly didn’t care what time it was.

Christy had knocked and then walked in when she got to his house. He was ready to go and she pulled him up to kiss him thoroughly. But then she had put him in the car and driven him to her house. She wheeled him into her house, but not to the bedroom, as he’d expected her too.

She took him to the darkroom instead of the bedroom. Once inside, she leaned against the counter and folded her arms under her breasts.

“Did they ever talk to you about an artificial leg?” she asked.

That was out of the blue and something he hadn’t thought about for a long time.

“Yes,” he said. “I wasn’t interested.”

“How come?”

“What good would it do me to be able to walk around?” he asked. “The chair is easier.”

“Not if you want to work in a place like this,” she said. It was obvious she was talking about the darkroom. “If you could stand comfortably, you could develop pictures.”

“Okay,” he admitted.

“Jill is married and is only working part time now,” she said. “I need more help than that. I thought you might want a job.”

The mix of emotions he felt at that moment was tumultuous. He wondered if she’d had second thoughts about their physical relationship and was offering this as some kind of compensation for pulling back from him.

“I never thought about it,” he said.

“Well … think about it,” she suggested. She leaned over. “We’d get to see each other a lot more.”

The tone in her voice, delivered in a sing-song manner, banished all insecurities. There was raw sexual invitation in her voice. He felt himself stiffen in his pants almost instantly.

On Thursday, the 19th, Bobby stood on the concourse, again waiting for a woman named Misty Compton to get off a plane in Kansas. This time he held no cardboard sign. He saw her coming, carrying her guitar case, and waited for her. He couldn’t help but drop his eyes to her abdomen. She was wearing a coat and didn’t look any different than any other woman. She walked up to him, rested the end of the case on the floor, and looked around.

“I’d kiss you,” she said softly, “but there has been a … development.”

“Oh?”

“A reporter bought the seating chart from the CMA awards banquet and got your name from it.”

He frowned.

“They still don’t know where you are and it’s kind of blown over, but if anybody here recognized me and saw me kissing you, it could be a problem.”

“Why in the world did you have me pick you up?” he asked.

“Because I couldn’t wait longer to see you than it’s already been.” She smiled brilliantly and picked up her guitar. “Now, let’s see if they lost my luggage again.”

They hadn’t. Her battered blue suitcase was one of the first six that slid out onto the belt and ten minutes later they were in Bobby’s car.

“Hurry up and get out of here,” she said, getting on her knees and facing the rear to lean and open the guitar case she’d put on the back seat. She came back with the instrument.

He worked his way out of the parking lot and onto Kellogg Street.

“You remember I wrote a song about us?” she asked, tuning her guitar.

“Yeah.” He smiled.

“It’s called ‘First Love’.”

“I’m still honored,” he said.

She sang it to him there in the car. It was plain from the beginning that it had a melancholy air to it. It was slow and soft. The lyrics told of two spirits drifting and becoming enmeshed by the winds of fate, only to be pulled apart again as the winds kept blowing. He could hear the yearning in her voice as the chorus told of searching for that feeling again and again. It was implied that neither the original man nor an appropriate substitute had been found by the woman singing.

The second verse was all about hope and moving forward, and knowing that love was out there, at the same time she was mourning the loss of her first love who the winds of fate had taken away.

When she was done they rode in silence for a while.

“Well?” she asked.

“It sounds almost like you’re saying goodbye.” He glanced over at her.

“I am,” she said. There was a six or seven second pause. “At least for now.”

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“It’s going to be obvious soon that I’m pregnant,” she said. “When that happens the press will go crazy. My original album hit seven hundred and fifty thousand and everybody thinks the one I’m doing now will do even better. They know your name, Bobby, and you’re the only man I’ve been seen with. They don’t know where you are and I don’t want them to find you.”

“You’re ashamed of me?”

“You know better than that,” she said, reaching to touch his shoulder. “I don’t want them to hound you or your family. I don’t want them snooping around Granger, Kansas and seeing all those little boys with black hair and your jaw and your eyes. I don’t want your world ruined.”

“Why did you chance coming here, then?” he asked. It was a valid question.

“I had to say goodbye,” she said. “And I had to do that in person.”

“Why?” he asked. “I mean wouldn’t it have been easier just to write me a letter or something?”

“No.” Her voice was firm. “It’s important for me to know that you understand that even though I’m doing this, I still love you. I’ll always love you. You’re my first love.”

“You could have written that in a letter,” he said.

“But I couldn’t have shown you.”

“You didn’t have to fly here just to sing me a song.”

“Oh, that’s not how I’m going to show you,” she said, getting on her knees to put her guitar away again. She sat down beside him and her hand went to the inside of his right thigh.

“Oh?” The car suddenly accelerated ten miles an hour, before he eased back off the pedal.

“I’m spending some time at Dalton’s Bed and Breakfast,” she said, pulling his arm around her shoulder. “I hear the food is excellent.” Her hand slid up to press into his groin. “But it’s the bed part I came here for.”

He carried her guitar in one hand and her suitcase in the other, from the car to the door.

“Give Mirriam and me a minute,” she said, reaching for the knob as if she lived there. “I’d like you to take my guitar to my bedroom, please.”

“Sure,” he said.

“And stay there,” she said, giving him a smoky look.

Mirriam was in the kitchen, making bread, but dusted off her hands to come and hug Misty, who had taken off her coat. Mirriam froze and then pulled back, to look down at what she had felt pressing into her stomach.

“Oh no,” she moaned.

“Sit down,” said Misty. “We need to talk.”

Bobby waited in the newly decorated room. The orange/apricot/butter colors made the room warm and cozy. Even the bedspread went with the color scheme. He took off his coat and wondered what was going on downstairs. When Misty had taken off her coat he could see the bare beginnings of the swell of her belly, under the loose frilly blouse she was wearing. His mother would be able to tell. He knew that.

It was fully twenty minutes before he heard footsteps in the hallway and Misty opened the door. She looked around the room.

“I approve,” she said. “It’s beautiful … almost perfect.”

“They worked hard on it,” he said. “What did Mamma say?”

“She said yes.”

Bobby blinked. That didn’t make sense.

Misty looked around again. “There’s only one thing wrong with the decorations.”

Off balance, Bobby looked around himself.

“What?”

“There’s no naked man in the bed, waiting for me.”

He moaned.

“My mother is probably out picking a switch to whip me with right now!” he groaned.

“No she’s not. She’s on her way over to Prudence’s to tell her the news.”

“What?!” Bobby goggled. “I thought this was all supposed to be a secret!”

“It is, from the press. I don’t care if people here in town know about it.” She was smiling a teasing smile and Bobby’s senses went on alert.

“What’s going on, Misty?” he asked.

“Why would I care if people in Granger knew that I was a silent partner in the Dalton Bed and Breakfast?” she asked innocently. “It’s just an investment. That’s all.”

“You’re kidding me,” he said weakly.

“Nope.” She grinned.

“She didn’t notice … the other?” His eyes went to her abdomen.

“This?” she asked, pulling her shirt up to reveal the gentle swell of a stomach that looked maybe pregnant … but maybe just overfed too.

“Yes!” he said, frustrated.

“Of course she did,” said Misty. “I explained things to her. The investment will eventually belong to my son … or daughter. Whichever.”

“Ohhhhh, she’s going to have my hide,” he moaned.

“I told you,” said Misty, unbuttoning her blouse. She tossed it on the bed and then undid her bra and bared her breasts. She stood only in jeans and boots. “I explained it to her.”

“You don’t know Mamma,” he moaned.

“I think my breasts are already bigger,” she said, ignoring him. “Don’t you think so?” She thrust them out at him.

“Misty!” he barked. “She didn’t just go off to let us be alone. That’s not my mother’s style.”

“She agreed to let me be her partner,” said Misty. “She said you’re going to have a lot of work to do to renovate the house. She said something about how maybe that would keep you out of further trouble. I may have said something about how I sent you to this room and ordered you to stay here. I can’t remember for sure. It’s possible that I said something about keeping an eye on you myself.” She smiled brilliantly, like she had at the airport. “Anyway, she said she couldn’t wait to tell Prudence the news and told me she hoped I knew what I was getting into.”

“Man oh man,” sighed Bobby.

Misty Compton rubbed both hands in circles over her slightly protruding belly.

“There’s still no naked man in my bed,” she pouted. “I certainly hope my business judgment isn’t flawed. I had such high hopes that my stay here would be pleasant.”

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Christy lay cradled in Will’s right arm, with her head on his shoulder. Both had almost recovered their breath, but were still breathing more rapidly than normal.

“Wow,” sighed Will.

She kissed his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you!“ His voice carried the fervent honesty of his disagreement.

“Will?”

“Hmmm?”

“I don’t want you to think I always hop in bed with a guy I’ve only known for a short time.”

Since she had done that with him, it was pretty hard to look at it in any other way, but he tried.

“So why did you … with me?”

“It’s complicated,” she said.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. Then, since that seemed awfully assertive, he added “Am I?”

“I hope not,” she said softly.

He felt the kind of relief you feel when you dove too deep in the pool and aren’t sure you’ll make it back to the surface, and then get that first lungful of fresh air when you do.

“Okay … good.”

“Do you believe in love at first sight?”

“Not when the person you’re looking at looks like me,” he said, honestly.

“There is much more to a person than just what they look like.”

“I know.”

“You taught me that,” she said.

“I did?”

“The first time I saw you at the school, I felt sorry for you. And then I heard you talking to Jake and you just sounded so normal. Both of you did. You were just two guys talking about something. If I wasn’t looking at you I couldn’t tell either of you was disabled. That’s what made me realize that you were just a normal guy, in a messed up body.”

“Most people don’t think that,” he said.

“That’s because they don’t take the time to get to know a person like you. You remember how you said the kids started talking to you?”

“Yeah.”

“Kids are generally good judges of character. After I left, I thought about that too. And I thought about how brave you are.”

“I’m not brave,” he snorted. “You should have seen me in physical therapy. I cried like a baby.”

“You did it,” she pointed out. “Even if you cried.”

“I guess so,” he said.

“And then you let me take you out. I knew you had to be terrified, but I was fascinated with you. I wanted to find out what was inside … get past the body.”

“You’re the one who’s brave,” he said. “Most women would be scared to death to be around somebody like me.”

“I wasn’t brave at all,” she said. “I could leave any time. I could take you back home and never have to see you again.”

“I guess that’s true,” he said.

“Anyway, I expected you to be mad … mad at the Army … mad at the world … even mad at me. But you weren’t. Fate handed you a horrible blow, but you tried to bounce back. You were thankful for the things you had instead of being mad about the things you’d lost. I like that.”

His hand stroked her naked shoulder and back.

“And then, you were willing to be vulnerable and let me take your picture. You showed me part of you that I know you don’t want to show anyone … and let me photograph it. I knew then that you had a lot of very special qualities. And on top of that you were willing to try working in the darkroom, doing something completely new. I was just so impressed with you.”

“Wow,” he said again.

“It was then that I knew it would be possible for me to fall in love with you. I’m not saying I am in love with you … not yet … but I sure do like what I see.” She brought her hand up to her eyes and covered them. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless.”

“I knew what you meant,” he said. “How could I possibly be upset with you after what you just said?”

“But I couldn’t let myself fall in love with you … until I knew one more thing about you.”

“What?”

“I’m a woman. I didn’t want to fall in love with a man I couldn’t be a woman with.”

“That’s what this was all about?” he sounded incensed. “You just wanted to take me for a test drive?” He sighed, theatrically. “I feel so used!”

“I knew I was falling for you fast,” she said, completely unrepentant. “I had to know.”

“Did I pass?” he asked.

“Oh, you passed,” she sighed.

“Wow,” was his only response.

Bobby had wanted Erica to make the decisions and she had done so, for the most part. That the latest decision she had made was completely unexpected had to be dealt with.

Bobby knew that she had no idea what she was asking for. He was pretty sure this was still a very bad idea. She was in the throes of passion and probably wasn’t thinking straight. At the same time, he knew her well enough to know that if he rejected her now, she would hate him, even after she thought about it. She thought she wanted this. He knew he did too, but his satisfaction would have to be delayed. It was important that she didn’t regret this.

Passion is an interesting response to stimuli. It clouds the judgment. Even Bobby Dalton’s judgment.

He started by leaning down to do what he knew would give her an orgasm. He sucked in her right nipple.

Her hands came to his head and pushed.

“Nooooo, not that, Bobby! Fuck me!”

He bit the nipple, clamping down hard and moving his teeth from side to side. The response was as expected and, while she was on the upside of the orgasm, he moved his hips forward.

She was so short that he couldn’t keep her nipple in his mouth, though he held onto it as long as possible, knowing that she loved to have them pulled and stretched. He had to release it, lest he do real damage and, as it snapped from between his teeth, his pubic bone met hers with a thump.

She was tight. He expected that. Her pussy pulsed and rippled around his shaft. He expected that too. But she didn’t squeal, scream or in any way express that she was unhappy at being stretched for the first time. He did not expect that.

Erica would be unhappy in the future, but not for the reasons Bobby was afraid of. Her unhappiness would center on the fact that she would be unable to remember, in enough detail to satisfy her, what losing her virginity was like.

The orgasms Bobby gave her were so violent that she had unconsciously developed a mechanism to deal with them. It was while he was sucking her clit that she envisioned herself on a big wooden roller coaster that she had ridden one time, which had both scared her to death and excited her more than anything else she’d done to that point in her life. Bobby’s roller coaster went up much faster than a real one. And the swoop as it rocketed down lasted longer too. Then, as she leveled out, he started taking her up again.

When he sucked her nipple and pulled it with his teeth, she had already been close to the top. Seeing his penis poised there, where she suddenly desperately wanted it, had her right at the top of the arc of the tracks. Then he bit her nipple and she cried out – both because she was already on that long downward rush and because she was afraid she’d miss what she’d demanded he do.

But this coaster ride was different, because when she hit bottom, she splashed into a warm sea of mist that was somehow emanating from her groin. It had no color or odor, but it enveloped her and seemed to touch every bit of her all at once, both inside and out. The mist seemed to be shrinking, until it felt like his chest on her breasts and his breath on her neck, and something rubbing and moving inside her pussy. It all felt like his kisses, everywhere at once.

Her eyes opened and she lifted her head. Her breasts were in the way, crushed together by his chest on them. He seemed to understand what she wanted and his chest rose until her breasts parted. There, through the valley between the breasts she no longer hated, she watched as the thick column of his penis slid out of her body, and then went right back in. She felt the thump of his lower body in the bones of her pelvic girdle and he ground against her.

When he had sucked the place he was grinding against, the roller coaster shot up like a rocket taking off. But this … this was a slow ride. She was going up. She knew that. But she had time to look around and enjoy being able to see things she couldn’t see from any place else.

She remembered the feel of that penis in her mouth and concentrated on feeling it with another part of her body. It was delicious. Nothing else on earth felt like that. When he moved it in her, she wanted to coo and wiggle, like she had when her mother had rubbed her sore shoulders one time. When he ground against her, the car she was riding in jerked forward. She could see the top. She was almost there.

“Oh yes,” she sighed, leaning forward in her mind. She reached for the safety bar that she knew she’d have to hold onto, or be thrown from the car.

And then she was there and the car started down. It gathered speed, still going down, and she could tell that it would go down for a long, long time. She dragged in breath and let it all out in a long primeval scream, as suddenly she was moving so fast that she couldn’t see anything anymore.

Bobby wasn’t at all sure things were going well. She had raised up to see the proof that he had done as she demanded and then lay back. She writhed silently, her eyes taking on a glassy look, but she made no noise … no comment. He stroked her several times, and she lay limp. He tried grinding, and her lips stretched to show her teeth, but she made no noise to indicate whether she was feeling pain or pleasure.

She got more tense and her hands went to his shoulders and gripped with surprising strength as she leaned up off the pillow. His first clue that she was actually having an orgasm was when her pussy squeezed hard as he slid out. He had to push harder to force his way back in. Now she felt like a virgin!

Then she screamed and her head flopped back onto the pillow, while her legs slapped over his, pummeling the back of his thighs.

He sighed and grinned. This was more like it

He was close, but he didn’t want to finish. He wanted her to have at least one more orgasm. He remembered how he’d been able to pick Misty up and lean back, resting on his knees, while her weight drove her down on his prick. Erica was even smaller, so he did the same thing, pulling her loose body up until he was sitting on his calves and her big soft breasts were crushed to his chest.

She opened her eyes, surprised, and he kissed her.

After the disorientation of going from horizontal to vertical, Erica tried to cope with the fact that she was sitting up, almost as if she were in a soft warm chair, but her legs were straight out in front of her. She bent her knees and her heels hit the bottom of Bobby’s feet. She sighed as that let her full weight down on the thing that was filling her. His kiss was so soft and tender that she felt hot all over.

His hands went to her bottom and he pulled and lifted, just a little, making her move on his penis. That felt wonderful and she started moving her hips to do the same thing.

Sitting like this, with his manhood deep inside her, moving only a little, was a completely different kind of feeling for Erica. The tip of his penis seemed to hit something deep inside her, as if it was pushing a button. That button caused a heat that seemed to climb, just a degree or two at a time, each time it was pushed. Soon she felt like she had somehow swallowed a pot of oil that was getting hotter and hotter inside her, where that wonderful hard thing was prodding her. His kisses seemed to add heat that sank from her lips to the nipples that were pressed hard against his chest and then further downward, to make the heavy oil her womb seemed to be floating in hotter still.

Her vaginal muscles spasmed and it felt like bubbles were bathing the inside of her body. She realized that she was going to have another orgasm … one that would not be at all like her last one. She could tell that already, though she had no idea what to expect.

Then it changed from a feeling of bubbling to a feeling that her womb was the oil, getting hotter and expanding. The level of the oil was already even with the rim of the pot that was her body. She pulled her lips from his and dragged in as much air as she could. His blue eyes were staring into hers. Her hips gave a convulsive jerk and the tip of his prick seemed to pry something apart inside her. It was through that breach, where the tip of his penis was, that the hot oil inside her began to seep out. It didn’t happen in a rush. It was more like the liquid heat that had filled her womb began to flow outward, like lava from a volcano.

“Uhhhhhhhhhhhh,” she sighed. This was beautiful. Her former orgasms has been violent, almost scary, but this could last forever and she wouldn’t mind at all.

“You need to get your feet under you,” he said, panting.

“No,” she said. Her voice was hoarse, dry. She didn’t want to move. Her body was melting. She closed her eyes and thought of the Wicked Witch of the West, in her favorite movie, melting into a puddle. That was what was happening to her, except it was fantastic.

“I’m about to make a baby in you, Erica!” came his voice, urgent now. “Get your feet under you so you can stand up and pull off of me.”

Her mind imagined her body melting away to leave only a little baby behind. It was bizarre and her eyes popped open. She leaned to her left and dragged her right foot out and around, until she could lean the other way onto her right knee.

“Hurry!” he gasped.

As she pulled her left foot around and back, the way she leaned made the tip of his penis push into that inner split again and she realized she could keep this orgasm going if she just wiggled back and forth. She closed her eyes and rocked from side to side, from one knee to the other.

“Erica!”

She wished he’d stop talking. He was distracting her. She kissed him to shut him up and closed her eyes to go back to feeling the upwelling of her center.

His kiss was what distracted her next. His lips almost bruised hers as his head twisted this way and that. His arms were crushing her to him, pulling her against his chest. She felt his hands move up her back to her shoulders and he pulled hard. The tip of his penis pried at her insides again and she felt heat flow into her. Her own hot oil was there, still overflowing the crucible that was the center of all her attention, as this heat surged in to join with her liquid. In her mind’s eye it swirled and mixed, making an alloy of molten metals in her womb. She felt another rush of warmth and something broke into her conscious mind and screamed that the male was fertilizing her.

She was almost jerked from the lingering ecstasy of her orgasm and her eyes snapped open. She pushed at his chest, feeling the hard muscle under his skin, and broke the kiss to heave and pant. His eyes had gone dark again. She felt a shiver race through her body. He was the male … the alpha male … the supremely dominant male she had always feared. The penis inside her leapt and spurted again and again. Now her feet tried to come in to play. His hands on the backs of her shoulders held her firmly impaled on the spurting thing inside her. The tip, where all that heat spurted from, dug between those inner lips again and her womb sang.

She felt his penis jump once more and, because she was helpless anyway, she closed her eyes. It was easier to go back to rocking back and forth, because that felt so wonderful. She realized her orgasm had only slowed, not ended. It was hard to move with his hands pulling so hard at her, so she used the muscles she had so recently discovered to squeeze and play with the thing stuffing her.

He actually growled in her ear and she shivered again. She had always heard her feminist sisters say that all men wanted was to take and dominate and use a woman. If this was what it was like to be taken … to be dominated … to be used by a man … then her sisters were insane, because they all said to fight against male domination at all costs. What woman in her right mind, she wondered, would resist this?

She could tell when her mind began to clear. She rose from that sea of hot oil slowly. He had frozen, crushing her to his chest, but she felt his muscles begin to loosen, almost fiber by fiber, until he was no longer pulling her down and she began to lean away from him. His hands slid from her shoulders to her back and his arms strengthened again, to make a backrest for her. She relaxed too and leaned back. His eyes cleared and he was Bobby again, instead of the bull who had taken her.

Her whole outlook had changed radically, but she was still the same woman who had entered this house as a virgin. Except now she understood. Her whole life had changed. She could never go without this … not after finding out what it was like. With something like fear, she realized she needed … a man.

“Bastard,” she said, her voice low.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I tried to warn you, but you wouldn’t listen.”

She realized he was apologizing for taking her … for breeding her … for not giving her the chance to avoid the consequences of him ejaculating inside her. She would think about that, but something else was taking top priority in her mind.

“I didn’t mean that,” she said. “I meant the whole thing.”

“You asked me to!” he said. “You told me to!”

“And you did,” she said, slumping and letting him hold her so she wouldn’t backward. “And now, for the first time, I understand the real danger of men.”

His eyes looked crestfallen. “I told you it was a bad idea too,” he said, in his own defense.

“You’re not hard anymore,” she said, squeezing with her vaginal muscles.

“No,” he said.

“Bastard,” she sighed.

If Erica thought they were done, she was disabused of that erroneous notion quickly, once Bobby found out why she had called him a bastard. Once he learned she had loved it all, but was disgruntled about having to admit that she’d have to have a man in her life from now on, he set about fighting for males everywhere to convince her that needing a man wasn’t all bad.

It was two hours before they slept.

When Will woke, it was with the slowly building need to get to a toilet. He’d learned to act on that more quickly than most men, because getting to a toilet was a lot more time consuming for Will than it was for most men.

He felt a momentary stab of shock as he realized he was in a strange bed and that the warm body pressed to him, and the arm draped over his chest, wasn’t the one he’d gotten used to waking up with. That shock passed quickly, though. She had convinced him she wanted him here.

His right arm was trapped under her. He didn’t want to waken her, if it was possible. He brought the stump of his left wrist up and pushed her hand over to his right shoulder, then tried to wiggle the trapped arm out from under her.

Her eyes opened.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he said, feeling foolish.

She levered herself up and he was able to pull his right arm out. He sat up and twisted. He looked at the chair, but the need was strong now, so he just lurched up and hopped across the room to the door that led to her personal bathroom. He sat, did what needed to be done, then realized he’d have to hop back. It was awkward, in an almost painful way, until he realized she hadn’t gotten up and tried to help him. She’d just let him do what he needed to do. That gave him the courage to hop back to the chair, at least, where he stood on his right leg, naked, and looked at the woman in the bed who had thrown the covers off, showing him her naked body instead of hiding it.

“Come back to bed,” she said.

“It’s morning,” he said, somewhat uselessly. She obviously knew that. Light was coming through the windows.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” she said. “I don’t have to pick up Jillian until ten.”

He was staring at her and he felt like that was impolite for some strange reason. His eyes wandered to the framed photographs above her bed and he saw Bobby Dalton, standing in an open window of a farm house … naked.

He looked back at her to see her looking where he’d been looking. Her head swiveled back toward him and her eyes locked with his.

“Come back to bed,” she said again. “Now that we know this will work between us, there are things you need to know about me.”

Erica woke from a dream about a purple rabbit with cat’s ears, for some reason, that had been having a conversation with a badger about how to grow and harvest asparagus. It was one of those completely insane dreams that mean nothing at all and make you wonder what in the world was going on.

She opened her eyes and saw flesh, then felt it under her cheek and arm, which was draped over Bobby Dalton. His measured breathing told her he was still asleep.

The events of last night burst into her mind. They seemed just as bizarre as the purple rabbit dream, except she knew it had been no dream. She took stock of her body, which felt completely normal. She felt relaxed, just like it was a normal Saturday, when she could lie there and sleep in or just think.

Her mind tried to grapple with what had happened. She knew she should be sorry it had happened. She should be trying to build outrage about how she had been seduced … tricked … manipulated. But the fact was that she had loved it and she knew that. That bothered her more than losing her virginity, which she had been “saving” for some reason she could never quite put into words. She hadn’t been saving it for a man … at least not a man she had dreamed of or hoped to meet some day or anything like that.

Yes, she had loved it and she knew that she was going to want to feel that way again. She felt the urge to get back on the roller coaster right now in fact. And that was what bothered her. For the first time since she had sworn she would never depend on any man, she knew she would now have to depend on one a lot.

She started thinking about the men she knew … the ones who weren’t married. There were three or four at school, but she dismissed them almost immediately. She didn’t know it, but her sorting mechanism had burst into maturity while Bobby was teaching her one of the reasons men had something important to offer a woman. She didn’t know many men outside of school, other than some of the parents. It took an extra deep breath from the man she was naked with to bring her attention back to him. Of course Bobby could do that for her. That was obvious. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of him first instead of last. With a quivery feeling in the pit of her stomach, she knew it was because if Bobby crooked his finger at her, she’d go running to him like a mindless bimbo. That really bothered her.

Her mind drifted back to the feelings that had washed over her last night. It had been different than what she felt with Will. Everything she did with Will was an offering of herself to him, out of love. She was aware that she got something physical out of it too, but that was so different than what Bobby had given her last night that it almost seemed like a completely different kind of activity.

Her mind stalled. What Bobby had given her. She tried to think about it as dispassionately as she could. What exactly had happened last night? She’d already dismissed the notion that she’d been seduced. She couldn’t lie to herself about that. She’d been a willing participant, even though she hadn’t sought anything in the beginning. She remembered her own words clearly. “Fuck me, Bobby.” She marveled that she’d said that, but as clear as the words themselves were, she also remembered clearly that she had wanted him to do that as much as she had wanted almost anything in her life. She had needed something from him on a visceral level.

He had given it to her. There was no doubt about that. She likened it to asking for a sip of water, and finding yourself afloat in a whole swimming pool of it. Never before had she felt like she was at the center of the universe and all the attention of the stars and planets was squarely on her. The orgasms themselves were a misty memory now, hard to make clear in her mind. It was as if a whole symphony had been composed and played, just for her, but all she could remember was a rough idea of how the melody went.

Bobby had been the composer. He had supplied the instruments, and he had played them all. She remembered doing nothing except lying there and loving it. With almost startling clarity, she realized that Bobby hadn’t done anything to her … he had given her something.

Even his moans and groans of satisfaction had been a gift, rather than evidence that he was profiting from the situation. He had made it clear that he was as consumed by her as she was by him. She had been the center of his universe last night.

He took another deep breath and started breathing more quickly. He was waking up. She felt a stab of something like worry. What would he think of her now? Would he get up and say something crass? She could imagine him standing there, leering at her naked body. “You were a great fuck, baby. We’ll have to do it again sometime.” Then he’d go off, leaving her alone, and look for some other woman to heave and pant over.

His arm moved. She hadn’t even realized she was lying on it. She suddenly felt his hand on her hip, sliding, caressing as it came up her side as far as it could go and then back down to just rest on her hip. She couldn’t believe how good his hand felt, just touching her.

“Morning,” he said softly. “You okay?”

She didn’t know what to say, or do.

His body heaved and suddenly he was facing her. His arm went around her and she was lying in his embrace, her face in his chest. He kissed her hair.

“Tell me how you feel,” he said softly. “It doesn’t matter if it’s positive or negative, but don’t keep it inside.”

“Afraid,” her mouth said. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

“What are you afraid of?” he asked.

He hadn’t gotten up and crowed and postured. He hadn’t laughed at her and said she was like any other woman. He hadn’t said something crass or thoughtless. She felt a shiver as she realized he cared about her. Was that even worse? If he cared about her, wasn’t she required to care back? She already cared too much about this man.

“Tell me,” he urged.

“I’m afraid you’ll go,” she said. She followed that immediately with “I’m afraid you’ll stay.”

“How about if I stay for a little while and then go?” he asked. There was no joking in his voice. She had presented him with a scenario in which he couldn’t win … in which she couldn’t win … and he had tried to find a way for them both to win.

“So much has changed,” she sighed. “I’m confused.”

“Then I’d say you’re normal,” he said. “I’m confused too.”

“What are you confused about?” she asked.

“I didn’t plan on any of that happening last night,” he said. “I didn’t expect it.”

Her mind reflected on that. He hadn’t intended to seduce her. That made her feel much better. It validated some of her own thoughts. He had been so attentive to her recently. A part of her had still worried that he was merely stalking his prey. And it matched her own feelings. She hadn’t planned on it either.

“Why did you do it then?” she asked. Some part of her unruly brain still wanted to make it all his responsibility.

“I think you needed something and I was able to help with that,” he said. “I hope so, anyway,” he added.

She asked the question that was primary in her mind.

“What do we do now?”

His hand stroked her hair and slid down her back.

“We live life,” he said. “You have things to do and so do I, and we go about doing them.”

“That’s it?” she asked, tensing. “Last night was just a one night stand?”

“I certainly hope not,” he said.

She was almost astonished at the burst of warmth in her belly as she realized he wanted her again. She could feel that warmth turn into something she knew meant she was getting damp. Her nipples, pressed against his chest, seemed to hum softly.

“I’ve never felt like this before,” she moaned.

“I think that’s pretty normal too,” he said, hugging her. “After all, you’ve never done anything like that before. It can’t help but change things. That’s one of the reasons I wasn’t sure you were ready for that.”

Suddenly, like some door had been opened in her memory, she remembered his warnings:

“Erica, honey, this is a big step. Why don’t we wait a while and see how you feel then?”

“Well then, I shouldn’t do it!” he had moaned, when she insisted.

“You don’t know what you want,” he had said harshly.

Not only had he not seduced her, he had tried to slow things down. She relaxed in his arms and felt a kind of peace settle over her. The memory of him trying his best to be responsible took all her fears and concerns away. What had happened had been on her terms. She was sure she’d think about that some more, but for now she could relax in the arms of a man who really cared about her.

“Don’t go,” she murmured into his chest.

He sighed. “I can stay for a while. When is Will coming home? I don’t think you want him to find us like this.”

She frowned. Will had stayed out all night. Had he done the same thing with Christy? She couldn’t imagine it. All she knew about making love was what Bobby had done and Will couldn’t do those things.

“If we get up, it will all be over,” she moaned.

“Are you saying you’ll never let me in your bed again?” he asked.

She pushed away from him. How could he make her feel so fabulous at one point in time and be so annoying at another? She looked at his face and then wished she hadn’t. His eyes were devastating, somehow.

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

“Well then,” he said smoothly. “If we get up, all that means is that we get to plan for and anticipate next time.”

She knew, at that second, as her body reacted to his obvious desire to be with her again, that she’d let him … no … ask him … for more. It wasn’t over. It was just suspended. That scared her a little, because she already wanted him again.

“But you need to think about things for a while before we make plans,” he said, destroying her rosy mood.

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Erica had never kissed Will. Not really. Not in the sense that most people think of a sexual kiss. Their lips had touched, but the tight skin that formed the left side of his lips wasn’t flexible enough to let him actually purse them. And, of course, she had never made out with a boy before. She had kissed her parents on the cheek, and had received similar kisses. She knew what her lips felt like when that had happened, so she just tried to kiss Bobby’s cheek … on his lips.

So basically, the first real kiss that Erica Bradford ever got was one she couldn’t possibly have been prepared for. Especially since she got it from Bobby Dalton.

He had to let go of her breasts. That was because when her knees gave out, they slammed into his, and he had to lift her with his hands under her armpits just to keep her from folding to the floor.

And to keep his lips in contact with hers … of course.

As her passions had flared (and were in the process of flaring again), his also flared. He knew he hadn’t let her make this decision, but what was done was done … except that it wasn’t done yet. He kept his lips pressed to hers, which were slack, so he gave in to his passions and licked the inside of her lips.

She was short, but she weighed more than she appeared to. Standing like this wasn’t going to work. He broke the kiss just as her head lolled back, her neck muscles going slack. Her eyes were closed and she almost looked like she was unconscious. He felt her knees exert some force when she lightened in his hands, and he simply bent to scoop his left arm behind her knees while sliding his right arm behind her back. Her neck started working again as he lifted her and stepped toward the couch.

When he sat down with her, she was more or less lying across his lap with her head on his shoulder. Her eyes were open now, looking at his face. Her eyes were clear and alert. He saw permission there.

So he kissed her again.

In the next fifteen minutes, Erica Bradford tried her best to make up for every make-out session she had never had as a teenager. Kissing Bobby like this was nothing like she had imagined. She had no basis for comparison, but it was like being able to eat cake and ice cream and never get full. All of her attention was centered on her lips, because his hands just held her against him. The warmth of his body where she was pressed to him was comfortable. Her first blasts of passion gave way to something more sedate, as she explored this new thing that was so delightful. He had at least ten different ways of kissing her and all of them made her feel like she was going to melt.

Eventually he let her lie back. Her back was on his lap and her head was on the armrest of the couch. She felt like her breasts were pushed out, because the transition from his lap to the couch, where her bottom lay, felt huge. She watched his eyes move from her face to her chest and her nipples started wanting to be squeezed again.

Men had looked at her breasts for years and she hadn’t liked it. Then Will had looked at them and she had felt something completely different. Now another man was looking at them. For only the second time in her life, Erica wanted a man to actually see them.

Her hands came to the buttons of her blouse. Her fingers moved languidly, in no hurry, and the top button popped open. Her fingers moved to the next … and the next. When all of them were unbuttoned, she could still feel the cloth covering most of her. The coolness of the air on her skin suggested it was open five or six inches. His left arm was under her, in the gap between the arm of the couch and the base of her neck. His right hand came to flick the left half of her blouse back.

His left arm pulled her up for another kiss and his right hand slid under the cloth of the blouse to stroke her back. He let her back down after what seemed like five minutes.

She used front-catch bras, because her breasts were so large that it was too hard to pull straps together behind her back. His fingers went to the catch and drifted there, almost as if they were exploring. She felt a finger stroke the exposed skin of her cleavage, above the catch. His fingers drifted up the swell of her left breast to slide back and forth across the tip. She sucked in a breath and her back arched.

He let his fingers wander lightly all over both breasts, barely touching her until she couldn’t take it any longer. Her own fingers came to the catch and, with an expert flip, she opened it. She let go and the cups sprang apart. She heard the right one slap against his chest.

She closed her eyes … waiting … only to open them fifteen seconds later as she lifted her head. He was just looking at them. His eyes came up and centered on her own.

“I’d like very much to touch them,” he said softly.

She barked once or twice in almost hysterical laughs that left her panting. He wanted permission! She didn’t trust her voice, so she reached for one of his hands and dragged it to her breast.

“Uhhhhhh,” she groaned as he at last cupped her warm flesh with a hand that felt hot somehow. He squeezed and she arched even more, as she felt his fingers approach the nipple. She closed her eyes in anticipation.

He pinched it lightly.

She felt sudden wetness flood her panties and groaned again.

“Harder!” she gasped, between clenched teeth.

Her eyes were still closed, so she didn’t see him lean forward. She felt it though, and her eyes opened, as her head came up just in time to see his lips close around her left nipple. He sucked hard and bit with his teeth.

Will had also never sucked at her nipples, again, because his lips wouldn’t work that way anymore. He couldn’t use a straw either, unless he closed only the softer right side of his lips around it. When she squeezed her nipples, or when Will did, the pressure was consistent all over the sensitive bud. That effect was achieved partway by the suction Bobby applied. His teeth magnified it tenfold.

Erica’s body jerked, as if she were having a seizure, and a tortured banshee wail was torn from her throat as her passion finally found an outlet. All that emotion burst from the tip of her breast like a spray of the milk that breast would someday produce.

An orgasm is, in many ways, a violent event. It can wrack the body as if it is being whipped and its effects on muscles can cause cramps. Heart rate skyrockets and the lungs work overtime to compensate for the need for more oxygen. Erica had had orgasms before, and the ones that involved her nipples were always the most violent. But all those paled by comparison to the one that made her strain to bend her body in half, backwards, in an attempt to force her breast up against the teeth that were destroying her.

She eventually fell back, limp, all her energy expended. Little zings of ecstasy were still radiating from her nipple and she opened her eyes, lifting her head again, to see him gently sucking and licking at what he had so recently bitten. He stopped to look up at her face and smiled.

Then he moved his mouth to the other one and it started all over again.

Christy dragged his pants down, revealing shorts that were tented enough that she felt almost guilty at the relief she also felt. She stopped, to take in the leg she had never seen. It looked so … incomplete. The scarring there was only on the outside of the leg, but it was thick. She touched it and a sound of sorrow escaped her throat.

“The pain!” she moaned.

“I’m not in pain right now,” he panted.

That reminded her that she wasn’t the only person in the room who was seeking something pleasurable right now. She stood and slowly removed her dress. His eyes gave her the encouragement she sought and she reached behind her to release her bra. She tossed it, and posed for him. Her nipples stiffened at the look in his gaze. She bent over to push her panties down. She already knew she was beautiful, in his eyes, so her attention returned to the part of him she hadn’t seen yet.

He tried to help her, but that only rolled him to one side. She pulled hard, and his shorts shot downward, bending his prick so that it flopped back and slapped his stomach when the cloth cleared it.

“Oh my,” she sighed, stopping for a few seconds. It was tempting, when his shorts came past the stump of his left leg to just leave them on his right one, but she wanted him entirely naked, so she finished.

Dim memories of her husband’s penis surfaced. She’d gotten so used to seeing Bobby’s uncut one that this one looked wrong somehow. With a twist inside her, she acknowledged that there were other parts of Will that looked wrong too, so it didn’t matter.

She couldn’t resist tasting him. Moisture flooded her pussy as she heard his groans of pleasure. Then, still sucking, she pulled her mouth off of him, to hear his groan convey something less than pleasure.

“Are you happy yet?” she asked, teasing.

“I’m happy!” he gasped. “Please don’t stop!” he begged.

“But I want to do something else,” she pouted.

In a flash she was up and over him, standing above him, looking down. She was already ready. as she slowly squatted, she reached with two fingers to spread her labia.

With the other hand, she reached for the thing she needed inside her.

Will wasn’t the only Bradford in town who was almost insanely happy.

While still in the throes of the remnants of her fourth orgasm (two per nipple), Erica had felt herself lifted again and laid down on the couch. She’d worn a skirt to the final performance, and the side closure was no barrier to Bobby’s skilled fingers. She was light-headed enough that she didn’t realize what was happening until the skirt was already off and her panties were slipping past her toes. Then she felt one leg being raised and felt the fabric of the couch press into her calf. She realized her legs were spread and drew breath to object when something warm and soft, but hard at the same time, pressed into her sex. She raised her head to see Bobby’s black hair where her own blond hair should be.

He sucked in her clit at that second and the world went crazy again for Erica.

Erica felt hoarse. She was hoarse. What he had done between her legs had kept her making gasping almost-screams. She was still gasping. After three more orgasms that threatened to make her muscles tear through her skin, she was sure she’d never catch her breath again. She lay limply, wide open, but no longer caring. He had seen every part of her … had sucked every part of her … and it was no longer important that she was naked. She opened her eyes to see him taking his shirt off. Her eyes drank in that chest again and she made a little noise in her throat. When he undid his slacks, and pushed them down, though, it penetrated her brain what was going to happen next.

“Bobby!” she gasped.

He looked at her.

“I’m … a virgin,” she panted.

He stopped, with his slacks at his knees, as if he’d been frozen.

“But what about Will?”

Her hand went unconsciously to her sex and covered it.

“We’ve … never … done that,” she puffed.

He looked at her and his eyes seemed to darken and glitter.

“What have you done?” he asked.

An hour earlier, had he asked that question, he would have gotten a completely different response, but the relationship between Erica Bradford and Bobby Dalton had grown by leaps and bounds.

“I’ll … show you.” Her lungs still heaved.

Erica’s mind was still whirling. So much had happened, that when she thought about showing Bobby what she did for Will, she just took him to the place where she had always done it. She stood by the bed and waited, while he finished taking his slacks off, which he’d pulled back up after learning she was a virgin. He stood and looked at her. She pointed at the bed.

Bobby felt foolish. Of course Will would be lying down. He didn’t know whether to take his briefs off or not. He was rock hard inside them, and decided that Will just had to be naked when they did whatever it was they did. He removed them quickly and lay on the bed.

Erica stared at what he had revealed. It didn’t look anything like Will’s. Will’s was red, almost purple in some places, and bumpy. This one was bone colored and smooth. She stepped forward, fascinated by the differences. The sack that hung under Will’s was red too. This one was brown, with much darker hairs around it.

She reached for the penis and marveled at the satiny feel of it. Will’s was slick and hard similar to but also different than his scars. It didn’t feel like this one unless it was soft. As she gripped it, her hand moved downward and, like a flower blooming, something came out of the end of it. She blinked and realized she had moved the skin off of something, rather than something bursting forth. It felt nothing like Will’s either.

The only other frame of reference she had was the movie that had so troubled her. This one didn’t look like those either. She looked up at Bobby’s face. He seemed to be watching her with interest.

“This doesn’t look right,” she said, pulling the skin back off the tip.

“I still have my foreskin,” he said.

She hadn’t paid any attention to penises in health class. She had even avoided the subject. She must have looked lost, because he went on.

“They cut that extra skin off of some boys at birth.”

She shuddered. Somebody had done that to her little brother? Her mind flashed to female genital mutilation, something she was familiar with as a feminist. This cutting of a boy’s penis seemed similar and she was incensed.

“That’s horrible!“ she moaned.

“I don’t think guys remember the pain,” he said.

“It’s still horrible,” she said. “It’s barbaric!”

“You were going to show me what you do with Will?” She saw something pleading in his eyes. She couldn’t resist the urge to tease him.

“You know, you touched me a whole lot out there without asking.”

“I stopped when you asked me to,” he said.

She thought about that. She closed her eyes. She only had one picture in her mind, of a penis penetrating her. It didn’t look like the one in her hand. She tried to make it look like that, but couldn’t. She felt robbed, somehow. It was as if all those dreams had been about somebody other than this man.

“Forgive me?” he pleaded.

She opened her eyes. He sounded … insecure! That rocked her world.

She fisted his penis again and paid more attention to what was revealed. She heard him sigh as her hand moved, and it sounded just like Will’s sighs as she slid her hand along his hard flesh. She pushed down further and, like magic, something that looked a lot more like Will’s penis emerged. That made sense. If there was skin that was cut off – she shivered again – then Will was just missing what this man still had.

“I do this,” she said, and leaned forward, her mouth opening.

Erica had, without intent, learned how to do something that few women can learn even if they intend to. Will’s frantic jerks had driven his penis past her gag reflex often enough that she had found it easier to just leave it there in the past. That he would spurt for her was a given. She only needed to pull off of him when it was time to swallow. It was only natural that she do the same thing to Bobby.

Bobby had never been deep-throated before. In a world where many things seemed the same, and only the differences between the women involved really made things unique, this was unique in and of itself. It felt wonderful in a completely new way and he realized almost immediately that he could last for a long time while this was done to him. That was because it was the tip of his cock that was the most sensitive, and with that tip lodged in her throat, there wasn’t as much stimulation there. He was used to women loving and sucking and nibbling the head, which would make him erupt much more quickly.

She worked on him for five minutes, until her throat got sore, and then pulled off.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking at his penis.

“Nothing,” he sighed. “I love that.”

“Aren’t you going to spurt?”

His eyes got darker again and she felt the first hint of danger since he’d touched her.

“I’d love to spurt,” he said. “But you’re a virgin.”

“I didn’t mean there,” she yipped. “I meant in my mouth.”

His eyes cleared.

“I’d love to spurt there too,” he said softly.

“But you didn’t,” she complained.

Bobby wanted to thump his forehead with his hand, but didn’t. She was a virgin. Will was the only man she’d ever been with. He should have thought of that before.

“I’ll teach you how to make this one spurt,” he said.

Will’s groan was like a symphony in Christy’s ears as she sank down on his prick. It didn’t feel like Bobby’s, but that was okay, because this wasn’t Bobby. She leaned forward and put one hand on the smooth warm skin above his right nipple, and the other on the rippled hot skin above his left.

“If I hurt you, you have to tell me,” she said, leaning down to kiss his lips.

“I can’t possibly imagine you hurting me,” he panted. “But I’m about to have a terrible accident any second now.”

She kissed him again.

“Go ahead,” she whispered, and kissed his lips.

Erica swallowed and felt like she had accomplished something akin to climbing Mount Everest. Using her lips, with all that skin in the way, had been frustrating at first. Then, as she learned to push that skin with her lips and play with it with her tongue, it had become first interesting, and then fun.

Her first taste of him was another thing she’d have to add to the list of things that were different between Will and Bobby. Will tasted bitter and musky. Bobby tasted salty and musky, and even a little sweet. Both tastes found taste buds in her mouth that were receptive. Both were good, like two different foods. She knew that she’d like it when her mouth was full of Bobby’s taste.

Her eyes opened wide, as she completed her swallowing motion and realized she needed to swallow again right away. This penis produced more fluid than Will’s. She gulped and then gulped again, as Bobby’s groans made her nipples need to be squeezed again. She’d been tempted to squirt him on her nipples, but his taste had convinced her to do that later … if she could ever forgo the taste.

Finally he was finished, and she pulled off to see a long string of white stretched between her lips and the tip. She leaned down to suck and swallow one last time. Her nipples needed attention. She thought of something else she couldn’t do with Will, because she was sure it would hurt him. But she could do it with Bobby.

She climbed up and lay on top of him, luxuriating in the feel of his body beneath her. He closed his legs as she kissed him, and hers slipped down, until her knees were on the bed on either side of him. She pushed with her arms and moved until one of her nipples was over his mouth.

“Suck some more,” she whined.

Will’s body jerked enough to lift Christy several inches higher and she sighed as she felt the warm bath inside her. She leaned down to kiss him again.

“I want you to cum in me, Will,” she cooed.

It worked as well on this man as it did on Bobby.

Erica shuddered through an orgasm as Bobby sucked her right nipple, and squeezed her left. He had learned already that he couldn’t squeeze them too hard. She was wet again and, as her body writhed through her orgasm, she felt her sex rubbing on his soft penis. That just added an electricity to her orgasm, because it was close to what she’d dreamed of, but not too close.

He switched nipples and she almost cried. She could hardly breathe now! But she knew she’d let him do that one too.

Will was young and Christy was experienced enough to know he could go again, so after he filled her, she simply crawled down and sucked him hard again. It took a while, but she didn’t care, because she loved sucking him. She had found a man she liked, and who needed her in a way that made her feel complete. She knew there would have to be much more than sex, but her initial feeling that there was something special about this man, despite his injuries, had born fruit already.

When he was stiff again, she pulled off and crawled up to his face.

“Does it hurt when you press on the stump of your wrist?”

“What?” His eyes were a little glazed.

She found his stump and pressed on it with her hand.

“Does that hurt?”

“No.”

She pressed harder.

“Now?”

“No.”

She pressed as hard as she could.

“Now?”

“Why do you want to hurt me?” he asked, confusion in his voice.

“Did it hurt?” she insisted.

“No!”

“Then I want you on top.”

“I can’t be on top!”

“Yes you can.”

She pulled and helped him roll up on top of her. His right hand went naturally to the mattress beside her left breast. She told him to use his stump on the other side. When he tried that, his eyes opened wide. He was able to lift himself off her breasts.

She reached with her right hand.

“Roll to your right a little,” she grunted.

He did and she captured the thing she wanted. She pulled and he wiggled, and suddenly, he was all the way in her.

“See?” she sighed.

“Oh, Christy,” he moaned.

Then he learned how to rock.

At some point between orgasms, Erica realized the thing she was rubbing her sex all over wasn’t soft any more. She realized that when she slid forward and her labia split to let her clitoris scrape along the hard shaft. The zings that sent through her rivaled what his lips were doing to her nipple and she rubbed harder.

He spat the nipple out.

“Careful,” he warned.

“It feels so goooood,” she moaned.

“If you want to stay a virgin, you’d better calm down.”

She closed her eyes. She imagined the penis she had sucked a few minutes before. Once she had that firmly in her mind, she tried to imagine it hanging above her sex. She still couldn’t do it. She opened her eyes. He had left her nipples alone since warning her, and she could think a little better now.

“Will you do something for me?” she asked.

“Maybe,” he said warily.

She got off of him and laid back next to him, spreading her legs.

“Get between my legs,” she panted.

“That’s not a good idea, Erica,” he said.

“I need to see something,” she moaned.

Almost carefully, he got up and got on his knees. His prick jutted straight out and her eyes were riveted to it. She reached for a pillow and balled it up behind her head.

“Now what?” he asked.

“Get between my legs.”

“Why?”

“Bobby! Just do it!” She sounded a little frantic.

He went onto all fours, and moved one knee over between her legs. Her breasts were right under his face and he dropped it to lick one nipple. He had already learned the power her nipples had over her.

“Stop that!” she gasped and pushed at his head.

He moved his other knee between her legs and she spread her thighs further. He pushed and stood on his knees.

“No,” she said. “I need to see it … hanging there … almost ready to go in.”

“What?”

“Just do it, Bobby,” she pleaded.

“I don’t want to take your virginity, Erica.”

“I don’t want you to either!” she almost shouted. “But I need to see this!”

He didn’t understand. She hadn’t described what was in the dreams … only that she had them. It was a strange thing to ask for, but she had taken the edge off with her mouth, so he was okay now.

He fell back onto his hands, and moved until the tip of his prick was over her pussy lips. She craned her neck to see.

“It needs to be closer … almost touching,” she instructed.

“What in the world are you doing?” he asked.

“My dream, Bobby!” she moaned. “I need to see if it looks like my dream!”

“How could it?” he asked. “You never saw it before today.”

“If you ever want to suck my nipples again, you’d better do this!” she almost snarled.

He moved his knees back. Very carefully, he lowered the tip of his prick. Her wet labia were split, providing a target that was easy to hit. He felt the urge to touch her with it and leaned forward just enough to spread her labia further.

“Oooooo Bobby,” she whined.

“I’m not going in,” he reassured her.

She stared. It didn’t look like her dream at all. It was a different penis and a different angle. But it looked so right!

“I changed my mind,” she gasped.

“You want me to take it away?” he confirmed.

“No.”

Will couldn’t believe the sensations he was feeling. Christy’s hands were all over his back; pulling, pushing, helping. The memories of the few times he’d had sex before the napalm ruined him were too dim to compare to this. It felt like his whole body was alive again. His back was wholly unburned, and her hands on it made him feel almost normal.

Through experimentation, they had learned that if she closed her legs and he put his thighs on the outside of hers, he was no longer off balance. His knees on either side of her held him straight. That also let him use his stomach muscles to jerk his loins forward, and his prick lanced up into her deliciously. By relaxing his stomach muscles, he sagged backwards and withdrew slightly. She was also almost impossibly tight with her legs closed. All she had to do was push up with her hips, and her clit was exposed to the scraping of his prick.

She was moaning and thrusting against him. She pulled and held him in deep. Her hands went to his ass and pulled until he realized she wanted him to move in a circle down there. When he figured out how to do that, she went crazy, and her pussy pulsed all around his cock.

“Make me cum,” she whined. “Ohhh yes, Will, I’m cumming so gooood!”

In that second he felt like a man again, for the first time since the orange glow had seared through his left eyelid. A beautiful woman was under him, cumming on his prick, and she was there because she wanted to be there.

He grunted harshly as his balls bunched and he spurted in her again.

“Think about this,” moaned Bobby.

“I’ve been thinking about it for months!” she wailed. “I can’t get you out of my head, Bobby!”

“Why didn’t you say something?!” he groaned. With his prick right at her gates, and her request for him to push, it was hard not to.

“Because I was scared,” she whined. “I think I was foolish too. Bobby, you’ve made me feel so good tonight. I didn’t think that could happen!”

He hated to say it, but it had to be said. “Erica, honey, this is a big step. Why don’t we wait a while and see how you feel then.”

“If I think about it, I won’t let you do it!” she panted.

“Well then, I shouldn’t do it!” he moaned.

“But I want it, Bobby!” she whined.

“You don’t know what you want,” he said harshly.

“Just a little bit then,” she moaned. “Let me feel a little bit.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he panted.

Erica saw the words, like they were written in the sky in fire. She knew she was about to say those words … words that she would have bet every cent she had and every cent she’d ever make … that she’d never utter. One was a word that hadn’t even been in her vocabulary, until a few seconds ago, when it had blazed across the sky in her mind. She gazed at those words … and then said them.

“Fuck me, Bobby.”

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The adrenaline was leaching out of the systems of most of them. Erica was no different. She felt weak and tired. She’d been separated from Will by the well-wishers. She could see him across the room, surrounded by boys. Jake and Tilly had already left. Someone sat down next to her and she turned her head to see Christy Brown. Erica had seen her sitting with Bobby earlier. They had been eating and talking.

“I need to talk to you,” said Christy.

When Christy had worked up the courage to go talk to Erica, Bobby got up and wandered over to sit with Will. He had no idea how Erica would react to what he suspected Christy was going to tell her, but if it wasn’t a good reaction, maybe he could defuse it. He hadn’t had a chance to talk to Erica about what had happened the night before. He knew she was worried about it, but he was pretty sure he could convince her not to be. He didn’t know how much he’d have to tell her about himself to convince her, though. He regretted what he had said. It had been an impulse, and he should have controlled it. It was really none of his business. She was so abrasive, though, that he hadn’t been able to resist taking a little jab at her. He felt bad about that now, but it was too late.

He couldn’t sit beside Will. There were several boys in those spots, so he sat as close as he could, and looked over at Erica and Christy. Neither was stiff. They were talking and their body language looked normal to his eyes.

“I like your brother,” said Christy.

That statement can be taken on several levels. Both women knew, though, that the “like” that was used in this case meant much more than casual acceptance of a person as a friend. Had it been earlier in the night, her reaction might have been completely different, but Erica was drained now.

“Why?” she asked. It was, in fact, the most important question in her mind.

“I don’t really know,” said Christy. “It’s a little confusing for me. I think he’s brave, for one thing. I just know I feel a pull towards him.”

“Is it pity?” asked Erica. “Because if it’s pity … he won’t take that.”

“He said the same thing,” said Christy. “It’s not pity. I’m attracted to him. I’m sorry for what he’s had to go through, but I don’t feel sorry for him. Does that make sense?”

Erica grappled with that, because she realized she did feel sorry for him. The way Christy had said it, that felt wrong somehow. She remembered the photographs. Those photographs had told Erica things that the casual observer wouldn’t necessarily know. Will had let this woman see his naked chest and for that to have happened, he would have had to feel comfortable. She couldn’t envision him doing that any other way. That meant that he liked this woman. And now, Christy was saying she had feelings for Will too. As completely unlikely as Erica thought it was that anything could come from it, she couldn’t take that away from him.

She felt like something precious was being ripped from her as she thought about Will being drawn to this woman. It was at that point that she realized she was jealous. She had seen it in other women … had scorned those women for letting a man take such control over them that they’d act that way … feel that way. The emptiness she felt at the thought of Will going away from her, though, made her understand those women a lot better now.

Still, it was Will who was important here … not her. She looked over at him and saw Bobby Dalton looking at her. Was he in on this? He’d been sitting with Christy before. He knew about their secret. Had he told her?

“I love my brother,” she said, looking at Christy’s eyes to see her reaction to that.

She saw only yearning in those eyes. There was no trace of judgment or condemnation.

“I know that,” said Christy. “I don’t know if he has any feelings for me, but I want to find out … if I can.”

“I saw the pictures you took of him,” said Erica.

Christy blushed, for some reason. “I was showing him how to develop film and make prints,” she said. “He did all of those himself, except for one.”

“He wouldn’t have taken his shirt off if he didn’t trust you. He’s very sensitive about that.”

“I could tell it was hard for him,” said Christy. “It was hard for me too, but I would never hurt him.”

Having identified her jealousy for what it was, and having seen no indication that Christy knew anything about their secret, Erica tried to evaluate what Christy had said. A normal woman was taking an interest in Will. Erica could understand that interest from her own perspective. She loved Will and wanted him to be happy. But she had always loved him. He was her brother, and they had suffered together. What she couldn’t figure out was why Christy was drawn to him. But that didn’t matter. What mattered was Will’s happiness. If a normal woman was interested in him … that would make him happy … wouldn’t it? Only if it didn’t fail.

She didn’t know what to do, and she was so tired she didn’t want to think about it anymore.

“He’s an adult,” she said. “You are too. What I think doesn’t really matter.”

“It does to me,” said Christy.

“Well, in that case, I don’t know what I think about it,” said Erica, a little snappishly.

Christy heard the frustration. But there was no overt objection, so she stood up.

“Then I guess we’ll talk about it more when you’ve figured it out.”

Erica watched the woman walk over towards Will. She saw Christy move one teenage boy aside, by pushing him gently, and then lean down to say something in Will’s ear.

“I want to spend some more time with you tonight,” Christy whispered.

She had approached him from the front, and he had seen her coming. He had seen her move George to one side and, when she bent over to speak to him, he had seen the cleavage displayed when the front of the purple blouse she was wearing obeyed the law of gravity. Her bra was a creamy tan color and was very lacy.

Much can be conveyed by words, almost as much as can be conveyed by body language. But what part does tone of voice play? It’s not exactly verbal and it’s certainly not non-verbal. It is said that seventy percent of communication in a face to face meeting is non-verbal. So that leaves thirty percent for the spoken part. Sometimes the tone of voice, with its tiny nuances, may account for twenty-nine percentage points. Watching Christy approach had gotten Will’s attention. Looking down her blouse had gotten all of his attention. And Christy’s tone of voice made it virtually impossible for him to give any attention to anything else at all.

“I have to go, guys,” he said, as she stood back up. “It was a great show, and I’m really proud of all of you.”

Bobby hadn’t heard what Christy said to him, but her body language spoke to him too. He recognized some of that body language as what had been spoken to him in the past, by this same woman. Christy was hot-blooded and he had spent enough time around her to recognize the signs. When she had said she liked Will, she was understating things a bit. He glanced over at Erica, who was sitting, staring at Christy’s back.

“Looks like we have time to talk now,” said Bobby, sitting down beside Erica. She had watched him come over, but her face had been blank.

“I’m too tired to talk now,” she said.

“We need to talk, Erica,” he said.

“I know,” she responded, watching Christy pushing Will toward the exit. “Thank you for not telling everybody.”

“Let me take you home.”

“I have my car in the parking lot,” she said.

“I know.”

She looked at him then. His eyes reminded her of pictures she’d seen of the water in the Bahamas, deep … blue … inviting.

“If I spend more time with you, I’ll just make a fool of myself again,” she said. She believed that was true, even though there was no projected scenario in her mind. She always seemed to make a fool of herself when she was around this man.

“Why are you so afraid of me?” he asked.

A spark of anger ignited, and gave her energy. She sat up.

“I’m not afraid of you!” she snapped. His blue eyes never wavered and she realized she was lying. She slumped. “I don’t know why I’m afraid of you,” she amended.

Bobby thought he knew. He had seen bits and pieces of Florence in her behavior. Suzie too. But he had also seen some of the signs that Bev and Mary, and even the twins, had exhibited at one time or another. His instinct was simply to explore that, to see if he could identify what she needed. He realized that was a change, because, until recently, he hadn’t really cared what she needed. He wondered briefly if the change in his attitude was because he knew Will was sleeping in the same bed with her … whatever that meant.

“Let me take you home,” he said again.

Christy hadn’t spoken as she drove Will to her house. He had looked over at her several times. She seemed relaxed and was paying attention to the road. He wasn’t sure what to think any more … wasn’t sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard in her voice.

Then, once they were inside, she got a chair and put it in front of him.

“We need to talk,” she said.

“Okay.” What else could he say?

“I like you,” she said.

“I’m glad.” He felt stupid for saying that.

“I think I like you a lot,” she said.

“You think?” He wished he’d just stop talking.

“We don’t know each other all that well,” she said.

“Yeah.” That seemed safe enough.

“I need to know how you feel.”

This was a conversation Will Bradford was quite sure he would never have. Not in a million years. His mind centered on that.

“This is a conversation I thought I’d never have,” he said.

“Well, we are having it,” she replied.

“How could you … like me?” he asked. It was an honest question.

“I don’t know,” she said promptly. “I just do.”

“Even with this?” His right hand went to the scarring on the left side of his face.

“Yes.”

He thought about the pity angle. They’d already talked about that. She knew how he felt about that. And she didn’t sound like she was full of pity right now.

“Then I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he said. He meant that too.

She seemed to relax. “Let’s save the dying part for later,” she said, smiling. “But we need to talk about the heaven part.”

“What?” That didn’t make any sense.

“I’m a woman. You’re a man.”

“Tell me something I don’t know,” he said. He was amazed at how easy it was to talk to this woman.

“Men and women … when they enter into a relationship… “ She blushed. “Well … they usually want to … do things.”

Will felt blood rushing to a part of his body that he knew wasn’t damaged.

“Oh… that kind of heaven,” he said.

She blushed even more, but held her eyes on his.

“I need to know…” She did look away now. “I feel bad for asking, but I need to know … how injured you are.” She covered her face with both hands and made a little whining noise.

He waited. Eventually she peeked through her fingers at him.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered. “That was totally uncalled for.”

“I’m not that injured,” he said softly.

“I feel like such a dufus,” she moaned.

“You sure made my day,” he said. “That’s twice you’ve made my day.”

“Really?” She perked up and her hands came away from her still red face. “When was the other time?”

“When you kissed me last night.”

“Oh.” She seemed happy.

He slumped. “It won’t work, though,” he said.

“Why not?” Her voice rose.

“I only have one leg, and one arm,” he said, “in case you somehow hadn’t noticed.”

Christy knew at least five or six ways to make love. She’d learned them all from Bobby, and Will’s lack of a leg and hand were the least of her worries. Her worry had been that me night not be able to perform at all. That would have been extremely frustrating for both of them. While his ruined body wasn’t a deal-breaker, if she was going to fall in love with another man – and she had those kinds of vibes about Will – she wanted to be able to love that man in all ways.

“You let me worry about that,” she said. Then she blushed again.

“I’ve never met a woman like you,” sighed Will. “This is all like a dream.”

“I’m sorry to push you like this,” said Christy. “But I really like you … and I just wanted to make sure that if this really does work out, that we could both be happy.”

“If I was any happier, they’d take me off to the happy farm,” said Will.

Christy tilted her head and surveyed him. He saw something almost feral in her eyes.

“Oh, you’re not nearly as happy as I plan to make you,” she said.

Nature, as a single concept, is almost unimaginably complicated. We’ve all heard about the straw that broke the camel’s back. Nature is literally filled with examples of that idea. A single raindrop is what sets off a mudslide. A single snowflake is responsible for an avalanche. An ounce of growth is what makes the roots of a tree finally unable to support its weight, and it falls. Very tiny things can make huge differences in nature. And humankind is not exempt.

The combination of tiny things that caused Erica Bradford to let Bobby take her home, resulted in something that, on the grand scale of things, was also tiny. It was just a man and a woman, alone in a house, in a small town, in a state that was tiny when compared to the country, which was only a fraction of the land mass that wasn’t ocean on a planet that was one ten-thousandth the size of the star that warmed it. That star was an insignificant part of a minor galaxy that could disappear without an observer a hundred or so light years away even noticing.

There were also small things that affected those two human beings after they got to the house too.

One was that Erica was in no mood to be alone. She knew that if she was, all she’d think about was what Will was doing. Another was that the musical had caused her to establish more relationships in four months than she had entered into in the previous four years of her life. She had grown to like the feeling of being “social.” Yet another thing was that she wasn’t used to coming home to an empty house.

“Do you want something to eat or drink?” Bobby’s question broke into her thoughts. She thought it was odd that it was her house, but he was making the offer.

“No.”

She felt like she should resist when he took her elbow and led her to the couch. She stood, looking at him.

“Sit down,” he said, his voice soft. “We really need to talk.”

“What’s there to talk about?” she asked. “You tricked me into revealing that I’m a pervert.”

“If you don’t sit down, I’m going to touch your breasts again,” he said.

She was outraged. But she had gotten to know this man almost better than any other man she’d ever met, and she knew he’d probably make good on his threat. She sat.

“Do you love Will?”

“Of course I love him,” she said.

“Do you care what he needs to make him happy?”

“These are stupid questions, Bobby.”

“Do you want him to be happy?” insisted Bobby.

“Of course!“

“Then I don’t see a problem,” he said.

It was quiet for half a minute as she waited for him to go on. When she realized he wasn’t going to, her mouth fell open.

“That’s it?” she gasped.

“That’s it,” he said.

“Are you telling me you don’t object to me…” She had been about to say, “sucking my brother’s penis?” but chopped that off just in time.

“I’m saying that if your actions are the product of love and caring about Will … it’s really none of my business. It’s not anybody else’s business either.”

“I don’t understand!” she moaned.

“I’m trying to apologize to you for ambushing you like that last night. I took advantage of you, and I’m sorry.”

Erica realized her mouth was hanging open and she closed it. Her jaw sagged right back down as hope exploded into her brain.

“Doesn’t that make you sick?” asked Will, who was panting slightly.

Christy was letting her fingers drift lightly along the scarring that made up the left of his chest, shoulder and the outside of his arm. He was still wearing his pants and was lying on the couch, where Christy had laid him to kiss him some more. She’d kissed his lips, on both sides, and his eyes. She’d licked his lips too, kneeling on the floor beside the couch. Then she’d unbuttoned his shirt and asked him to pull his left arm out of it.

“No,” she said softly. “It’s part of you. I wish it hadn’t happened, but it did, and it’s part of you now. If I’m going to be comfortable with you, I need to get used to this.”

Her fingers ended up at his stump, and she lifted it to bring it to her lips. She stood.

“You need to get up now,” she said.

“What?” He was confused.

“The rest of this needs to be done on a bed.”

She got his chair and he moved into it.

“You also need to call your sister and let her know you won’t be home tonight,” said Christy, bending down to lick his right ear.

The shrill jangle of the phone jarred Erica and she was standing before she realized she even intended to. She moved to it.

“Hello?”

“Erica?”

“Will!” she said excitedly. Then worry hit. Why would he call? “What’s wrong, baby?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just … well … how upset would you be if I … um … stayed out all night?” His last words were almost too soft to hear.

The hope that had exploded inside Erica collapsed like a star after a nova, forming a small lightless density in her stomach. She had just told Bobby she cared about his happiness, though, and that thought made her speak.

“You’re an adult, Will.”

“I know,” he said. “But I love you. I didn’t want you to … um … worry.”

Being told he loved her helped a little.

“It’s okay, baby,” she sighed. “Thank you.”

“Thank you. I love you. I really mean that.”

“I know,” she whispered. “I love you too.”

“Christy will bring me home in the morning,” he said. “But we have to pick up Jillian, so I don’t know what time it will be.”

“Okay,” said Erica.

She hung up the phone. She felt hollow … empty. She turned. Bobby was still sitting on his end of the couch. He was just looking at her with those deep blue eyes.

“That was Will,” she said. “He’s staying at Christy’s tonight.”

“She’ll be good to him,” said Bobby.

“How do you know?“ moaned Erica.

“I know,” said Bobby. “I know her very well.”

Twin tears rolled out of Erica’s eyes. She wondered why she was crying. She felt so helpless … lost.

“He will always love you,” said Bobby, standing up. He came to her and she stood there, immobile as he wiped away the streaks of wetness on her cheeks with his thumbs. “He will never stop loving you, even if he loves another woman too.”

Erica could feel the warmth of Bobby’s body, radiating toward her. She thought that was a singularly odd thing to notice at this particular point in her life. She wanted to believe him.

“I should go now,” said Bobby.

“Go? Why?” asked Erica. “You said we needed to talk!”

“We did,” he said. “I apologized and told you not to worry about loving your brother.”

“That’s it?” she asked again. There had to be more to it than that.

“Is there anything else you want to talk about?” he asked.

There were dozens of things she wanted to talk about, but they were all about unformed nebulous urges, and dreams, and feelings, and she wouldn’t know where to start.

“No.” Her voice was tiny.

“Then I should go,” he said.

“But why?” she whined.

Bobby cocked his head at her and she felt like he was looking through her eyes and into her brain, where her tumultuous thoughts were somehow pinned to the walls of her consciousness where he could wander along and view them at will. She couldn’t see them herself, but she felt like he could.

“Because I’m attracted to you,” he said. “The things I’d be thinking about if I stayed … well you wouldn’t like them.”

The first thing Erica thought about was the image in her mind of that penis poised above her sexual opening, and then nudging between the lips that were somehow open and welcoming. She shuddered and tried to push that thought out of her mind. He turned, and picked up his jacket, which he’d laid on the arm of the easy chair.

“Don’t leave.” The words left her mouth and she felt faint. Her vocal chords had betrayed her, just like her body had betrayed her before.

He turned. She watched his eyes slide from her face … downward. She felt her nipples stiffen and the exquisite ache in them that demanded she squeeze them hard. Her hands were halfway to her breasts when she was finally able to stop them.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she panted.

She wondered why she was panting, and realized she had been holding her breath.

Bobby pulled his eyes back up. She was wide-eyed and looked like she was frozen. She was leaning forward slightly and breathing hard. He knew she wore thick bras, but her nipples were still making themselves known. He recognized the signs, but they didn’t fit with what he knew about the woman displaying them. Still … the signs were obvious. He remembered asking her what she wanted and he remembered her response.

“Do you know what you want yet?” he asked, stepping closer to her.

She blinked. He literally saw tension come into her eyes.

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said.

He compared her to Amanda, who had let him tie her to the bed, so that she could let things happen that she couldn’t enter into “voluntarily.” He didn’t think that would come anywhere near working with this woman. And if he suggested she tie him up … he suspected she’d just walk away after she’d done it. No… this woman … had to decide what to accept. It was the only way anything would work.

But she didn’t appear to be able to make any decisions … other than with her brother.

“I don’t think this will work, Erica,” he said softly.

“Why?” she moaned. “I just don’t want to be alone. Why won’t that work?”

“Because you want more than that,” he said. “You want Will to be here. That’s what you need.”

“No,” she whispered. “That’s not true.”

“Yes it is,” he insisted. “But Will isn’t here … I am, and I’m not what you need.”

“No!” Her voice was louder and she shook her head back and forth, almost violently, like a little girl throwing a tantrum.

His hand came to her chin and he grabbed it, stopping her. She tensed.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Right now your nipples are tingling. You feel all jumpy. You want to be touched.” He knew he was guessing, but he was also experienced in these things.

Her eyes widened. “How can you know that?” she whispered.

“You’re a woman, Erica,” he said. “I know you want to be liberated and strong, but your body … your biology … it wants things too. It doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. It’s just nature demanding to be part of your life.”

He let go of her chin.

“I’m just not the right man to tend to that biology. And if I stay here, I’ll want to. I’m a man, Erica, and I have the same urges you’re feeling. You’re beautiful. You’re passionate. You are strong and that attracts some men.”

The things he was saying were like a flail to her passions, whipping them up into a frothy frenzy. No man had ever said those kinds of things to her in that way. He had drawn her attention to her nipples and they were killing her now. This time she couldn’t stop her fingers from rising to squeeze the points. She stared into those awful, but beautiful, blue eyes, knowing that he couldn’t help but see what her hands were doing, even though his eyes didn’t move at all. Men had lusted after her for years. It had made her skin crawl … until now. This was different. She closed her eyes and then opened them again instantly as the vision of that penis pushed deeper between her sexual lips.

“I think I’m going crazy!” she moaned.

“You’re not crazy,” he said. His eyes dropped to her fingers, which were still squeezing and trying to pull, even though the bra prevented that. “You’re just horny, Erica. That’s all it is.”

“That’s all?!“ she moaned. “I’m feel like I’m going to explode, Bobby!”

“What did you do before Will got here?” he asked. “When you felt like this?”

Two things suddenly registered in her mind when he asked that question. The first was the oddity of the question itself. It was an amazingly intimate thing to ask. The second thing she realized was that Bobby Dalton wasn’t acting like a man at all. He knew how she was feeling, somehow, but he didn’t press her … attempt to subdue her. He didn’t try to take advantage of her, manipulate her into something. He was exerting control, even though he had admitted he didn’t want to. That demanded that she do the same thing. She took a deep breath and let go of her nipples like they were hot coals.

“I never felt like this before Will,” she panted.

He looked surprised. “Surely … as a girl … there were boys…” He seemed to flounder.

“No!” she said. “I knew what the boys wanted, but I couldn’t stand the thought of that.”

“You never masturbated?” He sounded like he couldn’t believe it.

She felt heat of a different kind suffuse her face. She couldn’t believe he’d said that. Who WAS this man?

“You can’t ask a woman that kind of thing!” she moaned.

“I’m trying to help you,” he said.

“By asking me about masturbation?“ she squealed.

“I don’t know a single woman who hasn’t masturbated,” he said, as if he were saying he didn’t know a single woman who didn’t wear shoes. “If you’ve never done that, you’re the first woman I ever met who didn’t.”

Confusion brought her more control and she no longer felt like she was going to collapse. This conversation was so strange, and this man was acting so differently than she expected that she had no idea what to say next.

“If Will isn’t here, that’s what you really need to do,” he said, his voice maddeningly calm. “I could teach you, if you want me to.”

She blinked. His voice sounded completely genuine. He was actually offering to help her learn how to masturbate! It was so ludicrous that her barely controlled emotions found a surprising outlet when she giggled, and then honked two or three times, as she tried to stop the laughs. That was hilarious to her and she gave up. Belly laughs made her bend over in an unconscious attempt to draw more air into her lungs, so she’d have enough to keep laughing. It didn’t work and she felt light-headed enough that she just sat down on the floor and laughed until her stomach hurt enough that it tapered off. She looked up to see him staring down at her. That seemed funny too, but she repressed the urge to start up all over again.

The laughter had drained her, and she felt limp and tired again.

“I’ve masturbated before,” she sighed. “Help me up.”

He reached for her hands and she practically flew up, to land on her toes. The tips of her breasts pressed against his chest briefly and she rocked back onto her heels, only inches from him.

“Why didn’t you say so?” he asked, almost like he was pouting. “That’s what you need to do. Don’t make the mistake of doing something with me that you’ll regret tomorrow. We’re almost friends and it’s been a long haul to get this far. I don’t want to have to start all over.”

She’d never stood this close to a man for this long. The unease she expected to feel was lacking though, and she didn’t move. Her mind was tired, but her thoughts were clearer now. As he said that, she heard a man who cared about how she felt. That was obvious. It felt strange to hear that and something in her mind whispered that she might have been able to hear that before now, if she hadn’t kept men at arm’s length. Her sorting mechanism clicked at that point in time. It had been spinning, like a wheel of fortune, skipping past the pegs that were the men she came into contact with. As that wheel finally slowed and stopped, the pointer quivered … and landed on the man standing in front of her, only inches away.

“You have no idea what I need,” she said, her voice clear.

“You don’t either,” he shot back.

“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked.

He blinked. “Yes,” he said after a brief hesitation.

“Why haven’t you tried to kiss me then?” she asked.

“Maybe you are going nuts,” he sighed. “I don’t even have permission to touch you, much less kiss you.”

She was amazed as what he said brought back the urge to squeeze her nipples again, almost instantly. The thought of a man asking permission … she wanted to giggle again.

“You touched me last night,” she pointed out.

“You were suffering from hypothermia,” he said. “I kind of figured you might forgive me for that.”

“I forgive you for that,” she said. “You threatened to touch my breasts again … just a little while ago.”

A wary look came into his eyes. Her behavior had changed very quickly and the signs she was now exhibiting were mixed.

“It seems like the only thing that will really get your attention sometimes,” he said carefully.

“I am stubborn sometimes,” she admitted. “Okay, I forgive you for that too.”

“What are you doing?” he asked carefully.

“I don’t know,” she answered instantly.

She was surprised that it didn’t upset her anymore. He was right. She didn’t really know what she wanted from this man. With Will, she knew. But not with Bobby. She didn’t know what would happen … what she would do … what he would do. What comforted her about that was that she also realized that she wasn’t afraid of Bobby any more.

“I have dreams about you,” she said, looking into those blue eyes, which weren’t so awful any more.

“What kind of dreams?” he asked.

“The kind of dreams I don’t think I’m supposed to have,” she said calmly.

“You know something?” he asked. “You are a very strange woman.”

She smiled. “I was thinking the exact same thing about you.”

“I’m a very strange woman?” He smiled too.

She poked him in the stomach with one extended finger. His stomach felt like a board.

He poked her back, in her ribs, just below her left breast.

Her eyes widened and she poked him again, trying to make a dent in that hard stomach.

He tickled her in response.

Both of her hands came up and made claws. They gripped his sides and she tried to squeeze.

His hands went to her breasts and cupped them, lifting them, with his fingers on the insides and his thumbs on the outsides.

She froze, her hands still on his shirt, and looked down. As she watched, his fingers squeezed gently and his thumbs moved over the surface of her shirt to rub across the bumps that were her nipples.

She looked up at him. Suddenly, his eyes were deep enough to fall into and never come back from. His face was getting closer to hers, and she knew he was going to kiss her.

She closed her eyes.

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Transferring the exposed film to a stainless steel canister had to be done in complete darkness, but she showed him what she’d be doing with a strip of film that had already been processed. She fed it into a reel that got progressively smaller until the whole strip was curled up in a circle that didn’t allow any part of the film to touch any other part.

Then she turned the light off and told him what she was doing in the dark. The room was cramped, with his wheelchair in it, and he could sense her standing close to him. He could smell her perfume, or at least something that smelled sweet.

“You smell good,” he said, without thinking.

“Thank you,” she said.

He could hear the rustle of the film sliding onto the metal reel, and he heard her drop it into the canister and put the lid on. A red light came on suddenly and, though he knew it was dim, it looked bright, somehow, after the total darkness. He was reminded of the red filters they used on flashlights at night in Vietnam.

“I could do this with white light,” she said, “but I do everything with the safe light on. It’s just a habit.”

He was amazed that she sounded so comfortable. He watched as she poured chemicals into the canister and agitated it gently with her hand while she set a timer. She described what she’d be doing after that. At one point she said “You could do all of this yourself, except for loading the film initially.”

“You’re kidding,” he said.

“Nope. You could do everything I’m going to do from here on out with one hand.”

She found out she was wrong when she hung the film up to dry, and had to use one hand to hold the film and the other to open the spring clip it would hang from. Over the next hour, though, he saw she was right. She had him do it himself. She stood next to him as he stood on one leg, working at the light table. He focused the enlarger and learned how to crop. She had used color film, but limited their processing to black and white prints, with one exception. The exception was one of him draped in the flag. She pulled the strip of film through the enlarger slowly, looking at the projected image of each frame. He couldn’t tell what she was looking for, because he hadn’t yet figured out how to reverse the negative image on the film in his mind. But she must have found whatever she was looking for, because she exposed one frame.

The developing of the color print was more complicated, because it had to go in a tube, like the film had, and more chemicals were required. He couldn’t watch the image magically appear on the paper as he had with the black and white prints, which just lay in a tray while the chemicals worked.

Then, with the white light on, he got to see what they had created.

He was both shocked and deeply moved by the results. The picture of him in profile, of just his right side, didn’t show any scarring at all. It made his stomach hurt, to look at himself appearing normal. Others showed his scars, but it just looked as if he were looking in a mirror. She had captured expression on the right side of his face, in some of them, and even he could tell that the viewer’s eye would be drawn to that part of the shot, rather than the ugly skin elsewhere.

He’d scoffed at her flag shot, but when he saw it he almost cried. The look on his face was without any emotion at all. His left arm looked like he was trying to put the stump over his heart and hug the flag. He felt tears in his eyes as emotion welled up and he felt the catch in his lungs as he tried to stop himself from sobbing. It didn’t work and he felt shame as he started to cry. To keep from sobbing like a little girl, he made a high pitched keening noise, because that was all he could do to control his lungs, pushing out each breath as long as he could, before snatching another one.

He was still standing and he felt her turn him. Suddenly her hair was in his face as she hugged him. Her face had gone to his left side, by happenstance, and it was his left cheek that she kissed, her lips pressing against the angry scars there.

“It’s all right,” she whispered into his ruined, but still functional ear. She kissed his ravaged skin again, making it plain that she didn’t care about that skin … that it didn’t repel her. His right arm went around her, partly to stabilize him, and partly because he needed the contact emotionally.

“It’s all right,” she said again, as her hands slid to his back and she pulled him against her.

Something important had happened in the darkroom. Both of them could feel it, somehow, even though neither of them said anything about it. When he stopped crying, she held him a few moments longer and then turned him on his leg so he could sit down in his chair. She gathered up the prints and put them on his lap, and then wheeled him out.

He pointed out that it was late and she agreed. She helped him put his coat back on, and bumped him over the threshold again. It was dark at his house and Erica’s car wasn’t there. The front door was open, though, and she pushed him in.

“Thank you,” he said. His hand lifted the prints he had made, and that she had given him.

“You did really well for a first-timer,” she said.

Neither said anything about his outburst or her reaction to it.

“I should go,” she said, needlessly.

“Okay,” he said.

She started to walk away, and then turned. She came back to lean down, putting her hands on the armrests of his chair as he automatically looked up at her. Her eyes were hazel, he noticed. He smelled her perfume again. He knew she was going to kiss him, but he couldn’t believe that until her lips pressed softly against his slack ones. She held her lips there, just touching his, and then pulled back.

“See you later?” she asked.

“Um … okay,” he said, suddenly feeling weak.

Then she was gone and he was left alone. He sat there for ten minutes, just thinking. When he moved to roll his chair to the bedroom, he saw the photographs still lying on his lap. He looked through them again until he got to the color print. His chest felt tight, but it didn’t make him break down again. He put it on the bottom again, before it got to him. He shoved with his foot, until an end table was within reach, and put the sheaf of prints there.

He was astonished to sense Erica’s presence almost immediately as he got into the bedroom. He could hear her breathing. He wondered where her car was. He wanted to wake her, to share what had happened, but decided that could wait. He wasn’t done thinking about that yet. He tried to be quiet, but lost his balance and had to sit hard on the edge of the bed to keep from falling. He heard her move.

“Will?” Her voice sounded wrong, somehow.

“Yes,” he said, to reassure her.

“Oh Will,” she sobbed. “I did something stupid tonight.”

The next morning Erica lay in bed after she woke up, instead of getting up. Some of that was because Will was still asleep, next to her, and his warmth felt good. Some was because she wasn’t as convinced as Will was that Bobby wouldn’t say anything.

She had poured out her heart to her brother, in the dark, while he held her, as well as he could. She had surfaced from her self-flagellation long enough to realize that his left arm was under her as she huddled against him, but he didn’t complain. He’d stroked her hair with his right hand until she finally wound down and then cried softly.

“I don’t think Bobby’s the kind of guy who would ruin our lives,” he had said to her. “I mean who are we hurting? Nobody. He can figure that out.”

“But he has sisters,” Erica had moaned. “He must be disgusted.”

“Are you disgusted?” His tone of voice cut through her self-pity.

“No. You know that. I love you.”

“Then I don’t care what happens,” he had said. “If push comes to shove we’ll move somewhere else.”

“We can’t just pick up and move,” she cried. “I signed a contract. I have to stay here at least until May.”

“I don’t think we should worry about it until something happens,” he’d said. “I’ll talk to him.”

“Nooooo,” she whined. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he won’t say anything.”

She’d said that just to keep Will from facing Bobby. Will had just begun to come out of his shell. The musical had made a world of difference to him. He’d cried when the kids dedicated it to Jake and him, and had said he was happier than at any time he could remember.

Now, as she lay next to him, she wasn’t so sure. She didn’t know what to do. If Bobby did spread it around, even a little bit, in a town like this it would spread like wildfire. She remembered hearing tales, as a child, of people being tarred and feathered and run out of town. She wasn’t even sure she should go to the school tonight for the last performance. If she stayed away, at least the kids could have their success, without it being overshadowed by scandal.

They hadn’t made love last night. Feeling his skin next to hers caused unwelcome feelings and, in despair, she got out of bed, trying not to wake him up. He’d come in very late, and needed his sleep. As she put on the robe that was still lying on the floor, where she’d dropped it, she wondered where he’d been and what he’d done. He hadn’t said anything. Of course he hadn’t really had a chance.

She went to the kitchen, but didn’t feel like cooking, so just had a bowl of cereal. When that was done she tried to think of something to do. She didn’t want to watch cartoons on TV. She was afraid to go out, where someone might point at her and sneer. Finally she decided to work on the puzzle Will was currently involved with.

She was on her way to the table the puzzle was on when saw the photographs. The one on top was of his profile. She gasped, because he looked normal again. Her eyes tricked her, just as Christy had known they would. She picked it up and stared at it, wondering where it had come from. It was obviously recent, because of the haircut and the clothes. Those were the clothes she’d seen lying on the floor when she got up.

It didn’t take her long to realize that it must have been Christy Brown who took these photographs. She leafed through them slowly. Some did nothing for her, but there were two that she looked at longer. She couldn’t have said why, except that he was looking at the camera in both of them. His left eye … the eyeball itself … looked just like the other one, and the gaze was clear, almost confident. The juxtaposition of the ruined flesh around one, and the complete normalcy of the other, mixed with the way both eyeballs were the same, made it seem as though the picture was the original Will, uninjured, saying, “I’m still in here!”

Then she got to the color print. She had to sit down, because her knees were turning to water. She stumbled to the nearest chair and sank into it, staring at the image on the paper. How had Christy gotten him to do this? It was incredibly powerful, but it was also obvious that he had exposed his chest … his arm … to the photographer. Even more, his stump was fully exposed, holding the flag to his heart. It was as if he were saying he loved his country, despite what it had done to him.

She stared at it for so long that her eyes felt dry, and she had to blink them rapidly. She leafed through them again, and realized this was what he had been doing last night. While she had been running away from Bobby, almost getting frostbite and acting generally like a foolish little girl, Will had been performing an act of courage that she could hardly imagine.

She felt overwhelming love for her little brother. It didn’t matter if Bobby splattered their secret all over town. They would move away, if they had to. As she stared again at the color photo, she felt determined that she would never let anything tear her brother down again. She had a sudden thought. It was Bobby’s word against hers! There was no proof … no real evidence. She wondered suddenly how he had known. He must have seen something. She’d have to figure out what that was and correct it. Will would have to sleep in his own room for a while. She couldn’t imagine who might come to investigate, but if they did, there would be no evidence to find. She’d make sure of that!

Feeling much better, she got up. Hope had returned to her. She had a mission, a mission to make this all go away. If Bobby Dalton wanted to try to make trouble she’d fight. She’d call him a liar. She felt sudden guilt, at that thought, but pushed that away. She would protect her brother, the only man she loved.

At that thought, the urge she’d felt when she woke up next to him returned. The subtle difference between feeling that while in despair, and feeling that while filled with hope, undid her resolve to avoid doing anything about it. Tonight, they would sleep in separate beds.

But for now, she would join him in hers.

Erica tried hard to feel … and look confident as she approached the school. Her car was still in the school parking lot, and she had bundled up, making sure she wouldn’t get cold again as she walked the twelve blocks to the building.

There were two hours ‘til show time. There might not even be anyone there yet. But, if her secret was out, there would be people here to make sure she didn’t enter the school. If that was the case, she wanted to get that over with. She’d told Will that she’d come back for him later. If there was going to be uproar, she didn’t want him caught in it.

She walked in to be astonished to find that most of the cast was there, some of them already in costume. People were singing bits of this or that number, and little groups of students were everywhere, talking excitedly.

“Hey, Ms. B,” said Felicia Walters as she skipped by. Erica had noticed when some of the kids started calling her by that more familiar form of address, but she hadn’t done anything about it. Secretly it made her feel good.

She was prepared for almost anything … except for everything to be completely normal. There were little problems to be solved. A bulb had burned out in one of the spotlights used to put a blue glow on the forest scene. It required a very tall ladder to get to and Jimmy wanted to go up and replace it. She watched, nervously as he mounted the tall wooden ladder and called several kids to come hold the ladder steady with her. That went without incident, but then there was another problem, and someone else to talk to, until suddenly she realized it was only forty-five minutes to curtain.

She had her coat in one hand, and her keys in the other and was hurrying up the aisle when Bobby Dalton walked into the double doors at the top, pushing her brother in his wheelchair. She stopped dead.

Bobby’s voice, when he spoke, didn’t sound any different than it had any other time. “When he said you’d already come down here, I figured you’d get caught up in things, so I just brought him myself. I hope that’s okay.”

Erica looked at Will, who looked back at her and gave an almost invisible shake of his head. He looked … distracted.

“I was just on my way,” she said, not knowing what else to say.

“I just stopped in to make sure you were okay after last night,” said Bobby. “It was no trouble.”

Erica felt confusion that made her want to scream. People were starting to filter in, though, and she swallowed, trying to get herself under control.

“We need to talk,” she said, her voice tight.

“Plenty of time for that after the show,” said Bobby carelessly.

An older man stopped, looking at Will. He stuck his hand out.

“I heard about the kids dedicating this to you. I was in Korea. I’d be proud to shake your hand, son.”

Erica kept her gasp in as Will gripped the man’s hand and simply said “Thanks.”

“You ought to come down to the VFW and join,” said the man. “We don’t have all that many vets from Nam.”

“I’ll think about that,” said Will.

The man looked up at Erica. She saw his eyes wander a bit, and he smiled. “I hear it’s a great show,” he said.

“They worked very hard,” she said, a hollow tone in her voice. This was something else she hadn’t thought about or been prepared for.

“Well, I’ll just go grab me a good seat then,” said the man. He looked back at Will. “Think about that, son. We’d be glad to have you.”

“Yessir,” said Will. It sounded military somehow, to Erica’s ears.

More people were beginning to stream in.

“Go on back stage,” said Bobby. “I’ll take Will down to his spot.”

“Thank you,” she said automatically.

Everything was ready. All the problems had been taken care of. There was only the waiting left. Erica stood in the wings, peeking past the edge of the curtain. The house was packed. She knew that some of these people had already seen the show, but had come back again.

Julia Staffordshire was sitting in the front row again, though the people with her were different than on previous nights. Will and Jake were at their spots, and Tilly was sitting with Jake. She thought she should just go out and sit by Will, since she’d never actually gotten to see the whole show from out front. While she watched, at least five or six people came down the aisle to speak with Jake or Will, before going back to their seats. There were a lot of parents in the crowd tonight.

She saw Christy Brown come in. She’d been there for every performance, except the one at the assembly. She somehow knew that Christy would go sit by Will, and felt something unhappy in her stomach. Leaving the curtain, she hurried to claim the seat by Will before Christy could.

Had she stopped to think about things, Erica might have realized that that unhappy feeling in her stomach was simple jealousy. But she didn’t have any experience with being jealous, just like she didn’t have any experience with feeling the things she had been feeling over the last month or so.

She might have beaten Christy there, but for Julia, who wanted to introduce her to the people sitting with her. They turned out to be relatives of some sort or another, and by the time she got free, and went towards Will, she arrived just in time to hear Christy speak.

“Is this seat taken?” asked the woman.

Will had to twist in his chair to look up at her and Erica saw Christy move, almost automatically, to where he didn’t have to strain to see her.

“I guess not,” said Will.

“I was going to sit with you tonight!” said Erica, somewhat more loudly than she had intended.

Christy looked over at her and smiled.

“Oh. That’s fine,” she said.

Erica felt a strong hand grip her elbow and turned. She almost gasped when she saw Bobby Dalton was attached to that strong hand.

“I was hoping you’d sit with me tonight,” he said, his voice casual.

“You’re still here?” She did have a gasping quality to it as she said it.

“Wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“It’s all right,” said Christy. “I’ll sit with you, Bobby, so she can sit with her brother. It’s only right.”

Erica’s stomach felt tighter than before. She recognized that feeling as something wrong, somehow, but she didn’t have time to analyze it. Her subconscious mind was processing information that she wasn’t aware of on a conscious level. That information amounted to a decision being required. She loved her brother, and her subconscious saw Christy as a rival, even if her conscious mind would have scoffed at that notion. The problem was that Christy had also made herself a rival for the attention of Bobby Dalton. Erica was attracted to him too, on another completely unconscious level, something she would also have scoffed at, had someone suggested it.

But her subconscious mind required that a decision had to be made. Even her unconscious knew that she couldn’t claim both men. She didn’t know it, but that’s why she suddenly felt like she might throw up.

“Why don’t we just get a couple more chairs?” asked Will. “Then we can all sit together.”

The relief Erica felt was almost palpable. It was dampened slightly, when Christy claimed one of the chairs next to Will, when they were in place. Bobby sat beside Erica.

Oddly, when she didn’t have to make a decision after all, Erica ignored both men. She was tense, and worried about so many things that she couldn’t pay attention to any of them.

Bobby leaned over and spoke softly in her ear.

“Relax,” he said. She could feel his breath on her ear, and she shivered. “I told you … everything will be fine.”

The tension made her speak.

“How can you say that?” she hissed.

“Let’s talk later,” he said. “Right now just try to relax. You have nothing to worry about.”

It was touch and go for a few seconds, as the emotion that had caused her to flee his car the night before, returned and threatened to overwhelm her. Then Will, who was sitting on her left, reached over and took her hand. He squeezed it gently. Instead of exploding, she almost crumbled. She might have too, except that Bobby reached for her right hand and did the same thing. The only difference was that while Will held onto her hand, Bobby did not.

Then Emily came out to make her speech, and it was too late to do anything.

Emily’s speech was slightly different than the previous two nights. She acknowledged that some in the audience might have heard this part before, but said she was going to say it again anyway. That got a laugh.

“The Chumleys aren’t here tonight, but they found us the bagpiper I’m sure you already know about by now,” said Emily. That got another chuckle from the audience. From there on, she acted like nobody knew that the show was being dedicated to Jake and Will, even though it was obvious that most people did know that by now. When they stood, the applause wasn’t polite, or even interested. It was thunderous. Will flushed, and Jake grinned and waved with his only hand.

“And our director, Ms. Bradford, is with her brother!” shouted Emily into the microphone. She motioned for Erica to stand up. She was on Will’s left now, but he didn’t seem to care, as was evidenced by him snaking the stump of his left wrist through her elbow and pressing her arm to his side. Erica looked over and saw that Christy, who had been holding Will’s right hand, to stabilize him as he stood, let his hand drop so he could wave, like Jake had.

Then the show was on.

Anyone who has ever been in a play, or a musical, or any production that requires a lot of rehearsal and preparation will be able to tell you about the conflicting emotions that assail the participants during the final performance. There is a great relief that the drudgery is at last over, and the beast that has taken so much time and energy will be put back in its cage. At the same time, there is the sense that a dear friend is going to leave and never come back again.

The melancholy of the second part is usually displaced, at least temporarily, by the manic drive to make the last performance perfect, and to enjoy every second of it as it plays out. Emotion runs high and adrenaline production is copious. Some of the very best performances … are the last performances.

Thus it was for the kids who put on Brigadoon, at Granger High School, in the spring of 1976. It was as if they were hopped up on speed. They cried real tears and laughed real laughs as Fiona found, and lost, and then re-found the love of her life … the love that would last for eternity, as the village of Brigadoon finally faded into the mists of time for the last time.

Practically every emotion it is possible to experience was splashed all over the stage that night. The over-spray hit, and sank into the woman who had clawed and cursed and cried, to make it happen. She wept openly as the bagpiper marched down the aisle for the make believe funeral that seemed so real.

That kind of emotion can wear a strong person down to the bone, and it left Erica Bradford so limp in her seat that she couldn’t find the energy to stand up as the crowd behind her went wild.

She looked around helplessly, tears running down her cheeks, and then felt her stomach drop as two strong arms pulled her off her chair as if she weighed no more than a wet rag.

She willed strength to her knees as she stood, looking at the wonderful kids, who had made her so proud, take their curtain call. When they finished their bow they pointed at her and clapped.

“Turn around!” hissed Will.

“I c-c-can’t,” she sobbed.

Bobby and Will helped her and she was blinded by the spotlight as it centered on her, taking in the two men who were obviously holding her up. She smiled, forgetting everything else as she realized that, no matter what happened, she would always remember this night.

She gained strength during the aftermath. Kids were running everywhere, jumping and laughing, and people from the audience came to shake her hand. They shook Will and Jake’s hands too. In fact they shook hands with Bobby and Christy as well, even though they didn’t know what role either had played in the production.

The cast party was being held in the cafeteria, because there were too many attendees to fit in anyone’s home. The mothers of the cast members had cooked and baked, and there was more than enough food.

Emily and three other girls came and dragged Erica to the party, while some of the boys vied for the honor of pushing Will. The same thing was happening with Jake, who was growling at them, but couldn’t do anything about it. Tilly just laughed and followed the group.

Bobby looked at Christy, who was watching them go up the aisle.

“You like him, don’t you?” he asked.

She looked over at her lover, and the father of her child. She nodded.

“I do.”

“He’s a good man,” said Bobby.

“I know,” she said. She looked up at Will’s retreating entourage, and then back at Bobby. “Is it too weird?”

“Only if you think so,” he said.

“He might not feel the same way,” she said.

“You won’t know unless you talk to him,” said Bobby.

She looked over at him.

“He’s not the only good man around. Jill told me what you said to her about Sal.”

“She told a lot of people,” said Bobby, smiling. “She’s got a big mouth.”

“I’m like Jill,” she said. “If something develops with Will … I won’t see you anymore … not like we have been.”

“That’s one of the things I love about you,” he said. “Besides, I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

“Oh, I know that!“ she said, laughing. “You don’t need me. That’s for sure.”

“I’ll always need you,” he said softly. “As a friend, if nothing else.”

“You’ve always been very confusing,” she sighed. “I let you give me a baby, and I know you love me, and Jillian too.”

“It’s because I love you that I want you to be happy,” he said.

“Couldn’t I be happy with you?” she asked.

“Could you?” It was an honest question.

She folded her arms. “For as much as I love you, sometimes I don’t like you very much.”

He just grinned. “You want to go to the party?”

“I’m not in the cast,” she said.

“Will’s there,” he said, his voice teasing.

“I don’t think Erica likes me,” said Christy.

“I have a feeling Will’s happiness is very important to Erica too,” said Bobby. “Like I said, you won’t know unless you try to find out.”

They walked toward the cafeteria, hand in hand.

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He opened the door to a bedroom and went in. The bed was made, but he didn’t pay much attention to the rest of the room, as he went to the closet. He saw Will’s suitcase on the floor, next to three or four left shoes and hanging clothes that were for a man. He turned and realized the room looked spare and only partly furnished. He left and found another bedroom. That closet had her robe in it … and something else that was odd. Clothes he had seen Will wear were hanging up in the closet. There were two right shoes … men’s shoes … on the floor.

With the robe over his arm, he surveyed the room. The bed had not been made, though someone had made a half-assed attempt at putting the bedspread in place. There were two pillows on that bed, side by side, with depressions in each that suggested a head had rested there.

He looked at the vanity. Her cosmetics – the few that she apparently used – were neatly arranged. On one end were a pile of safety pins and some Old Spice underarm deodorant. A comb lay next to it that had a few brown hairs caught in the teeth.

Understanding leapt into Bobby’s mind as he realized they slept in the same bed. His mind twisted slightly, trying to imagine that, but the evidence was obvious. He cautioned himself not to jump to the obvious conclusion. He slept with his sisters sometimes … it wasn’t difficult for him to imagine that some other brother and sister did the same thing. At the same time, his mind just would not accept that Will slept with his sister … in the same way Bobby did.

He shook his head. It was really none of his business. But it did suggest why she might feel like she had something to hide. Hiding things was hard on a person sometimes.

He left the room, paying attention to the feel of his face. He wanted to look calm … normal … when he took the robe to her.

She was still in the tub.

“Can you feel your fingers and toes?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Okay, then. Here’s your robe. I’ll just put it here.” He laid it on the toilet seat. “You need to get dry as quickly as you can and then you need to go to bed. You should put on extra blankets because you need to stay warm.”

“I’m not a child,” she complained.

“Well sometimes you act like it.” He frowned. “I’m sorry. Never mind. I’ll just leave now.”

“Wait!” It was out of her mouth before she could stop it. Even worse, she’d sat up and her breasts were out of the water. She covered them with her left arm, which was a little like trying to cover a couple of cantaloupes with a twelve inch ruler.

He turned back, waiting.

“Would you put the covers on for me … once I’m in bed?” She’d had to think of something to say, and that was the best thing she could come up with. She admitted to herself that she just didn’t want him to leave yet. She didn’t know what that meant, but she had to acknowledge it.

He looked at her, and then tilted his head, as if he were examining her.

“All right,” he said. “You want me to leave while you dry off?”

“Of course,” she said, blushing.

“I’ll be right outside,” he said.

She stood up as soon as the door closed, and felt the cool air instantly. She felt fine now, but she knew she’d start shivering any second, so she climbed out of the tub and started rubbing at her skin briskly with a towel. She shrugged into her robe, thankful that it was thick terrycloth. Her hair was wet and she wrapped another towel around it. She was still barefoot, but there was nothing she could do about that.

She looked at her clothes, scattered on the floor and bent to pick them up. She tossed them in the hamper and then remembered to take her billfold and comb out of the pants pocket. She took the towel off her head and ran the comb through her hair.

She opened the bathroom door to find Bobby leaning against the wall, with his arms folded. She walked past him to her bedroom, stopping at the linen closet in the hall to pull out two blankets. She handed them to him and went into her room. She stood by the bed, shifting from foot to foot.

She obviously couldn’t take her robe off with him in the room, so she pulled back the covers and started to get into the bed.

“Don’t wear that robe to bed,” he moaned. “It’s damp now.” He sounded like he was a frustrated parent, talking to a balky teenager.

“I’m not taking this off with you in the room!” she said, almost loudly.

“Look,” he said. “I just saw you in all your glory in the bathroom. You seem to think that if I see your body, you’ll be soiled for life or some such nonsense. Just drop the robe on the floor, climb into bed and pull the covers up, so I can put these on you and go home, okay?”

She was stung that he was in such an all fired hurry to get away from her. She was so distracted by that, that it never occurred to her to just tell him to turn around while she took the robe off. He was shaking out a blanket anyway, and didn’t seem to be paying any attention to her.

She untied the knot in the robe. She turned away from him and let the robe slide off her shoulders. It fell in a heap and she took the first step to dive for the bed, just as he said something that caught her completely by surprise.

“Do you want these all on your side, or some on Will’s side too?”

She was so concerned about him seeing her naked that her reply was automatic.

“Both.”

Time stopped, at least for Erica Bradford. In fact, everything stopped, except for her brain, which seemed to turn in a somersault inside her head. Time then seemed to go in fits and starts as she reacted to what had just happened. Her body turned to face him, while her mind tried frantically to come up with something for her to say … anything to cover up what she had just exposed.

He was no longer unfolding the blanket, but was looking at what else was exposed … mainly Erica’s body.

“No!” she blurted. “That’s not what I meant!”

“Get in bed, Erica,” said the man who now held her future in his hands.

“No!” she said again, but she wasn’t talking about what he had just told her to do.

He stepped toward her and her eyes registered that his own eyes had dropped to her breasts. His hands, still holding the blanket, came toward her and it looked to her like a wall of cloth was about to push against her. His hands, through the blanket, pushed at her shoulders and she leaned toward the bed.

Then, suddenly, time started up again. The bed had assumed a whole new importance in her life, but in a completely different way. Now, instead of being a place of warmth and comfort, she saw it as a place she could get into and hide in. She dove for the sheets, her hand grabbing the covers. Within seconds, she had pulled them over her head. She also started breathing again, and realized she had been holding her breath.

He was still out there. The man who had unmasked her perversion … who knew the secret that had brought so much joy to her brother and her, but which would now destroy them both.

She heard her own choking sobs before her mind realized she was the one making the noises. Then all the emotion that had driven her from Bobby’s car, and into the frigid night, and everything that had happened since then, swooped down to crush her. Her wail was filled with a mix of frustration, anger, shame and disappointment that her life had come to this maelstrom of disaster. Her knees came up and she curled into a ball, as she cried her eyes out for everything she had just lost.

The first external thing that registered in Erica’s tortured mind was the feel of something heavy sliding up and down her back. A tiny piece of her consciousness examined that stimulus and categorized it as a hand, on the outside of the covers, just moving from the base of her neck to her lower back, and then back again. There was something wrong with that, and that tiny piece of her consciousness grabbed other brain cells and shook them, saying “Listen to me! Something isn’t right here!” Perhaps it’s pushing the analogy too far, but imagine with me some of those other brain cells saying “Of course something’s not right, you idiot! Our incest has just been discovered!“

But that tiny piece of rationality insisted on being listened to and, slowly, Erica’s sobs tapered off to intermittent shuddering sniffs, as the hand, which could only be the hand of Bobby Dalton, stroked her back.

“It’s all right, Erica,” said a soothing bass voice.

No it wasn’t! Nothing would ever be right again! She was quite sure of that.

But now the external stimulus demanded more attention.

“It’s all right,” said the voice again.

Yet another upheaval wrenched her system, as she reached for the only life preserver that seemed, somehow … miraculously … to have been tossed near her. He wasn’t laughing. He wasn’t crowing. He wasn’t chuckling at how much fun it would be to tell the world that the strident feminist slept with her own brother.

She reached for the covers and pushed them down off her head. He was just sitting on the edge of the bed, his hand stroking her back.

“It’s all right,” he said again as she stared, unbelieving, into his blue eyes.

The world turned again as he went on, speaking as if nothing unusual had happened at all.

“Right now, you just need to concentrate on getting warm again, and staying warm. Let me see your fingers.”

She didn’t understand. She pushed her hands out, beside her face and he reached to touch each finger, squeezing them individually.

“I don’t think you got frostbite,” he said, casually. “How are your toes?”

She wiggled them automatically. They felt fine.

“Okay … I think,” she said, sniffing between the okay and the rest of it.

“I don’t want to let the heat out, but you need to check them,” he said. “Feel them and see if there is anything that feels too firm, or feels painful when you squeeze it. If you actually have frostbite, we need to get you to a hospital.”

She went back under the covers and felt her feet and toes. They felt completely normal. She stuck her head out of the covers again.

“I think they’re okay,” she said, her voice a little stronger now.

He reached out and brushed her still damp hair away from the side of her face.

“I’m going now,” he said. “Stay in bed and stay warm.”

“But…” She stopped, unable to believe she was about to bring it up again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Then, her world turned another few degrees as he leaned down, kissed her forehead, and then got up and walked out.

While Erica went through her torture, her brother was going through something that was almost diametrically opposed. Christy had driven him to the Wagon Wheel, where they saw the crush of people.

“Oh my,” she said, looking at the single cement step that she had never paid any attention to in the past. “Can you hop up that step?”

“Yes,” he said, “but I’m not sure it’s worth it. The place is already crammed.”

“I have chocolate cake at home,” she said. “I can make coffee.”

Will’s mind wasn’t used to dealing with evaluating this kind of information. Other than Tilly and Jake, no one had invited them anywhere. And this invitation wasn’t for him and his sister. A beautiful woman was suggesting he come to her house. He couldn’t wrap his mind around that. The male in him … the male he had been, and which Erica had helped reawaken … thought about it one way. His rational mind laughed at that and tried to find some other reason she might make that invitation.

“But if you want to go in, we can manage it,” she went on.

“No.” It came out of his mouth without conscious thought. It flustered him a little. “It’s too crowded already,” he said. “My chair takes up a lot of room.”

“Want some cake?” she asked.

He twisted in the seat so he could look right at her. She was just looking at him. She wasn’t grinning. There was no innuendo in her voice. His rational mind told him “It’s just an offer of a piece of fucking cake, moron!”

“Yes.” That time his answer was intentional.

“Do you see Erica anywhere?” she asked. She looked past him, peering through the front window of the diner. “Be right back,” she said.

She hopped out of the car, leaving it running, and ran into the diner. He saw her talk to several kids and look around. Then she spoke to Jimmy Conroy, who was sitting with two girls Will knew only as Sarah and Vicky. All three turned and looked through the window at the car and waved. Jimmy nodded, and Christy came running back to the car.

“She wasn’t in there,” she said. “I asked some kids to tell her where you went if they see her.”

“Okay,” said Will. Obviously she wasn’t trying to keep it a secret that she was taking him to her house. He wasn’t sure how to interpret that.

Getting him through the front door required that she step on a projection on the back of the chair and raise the front wheels. She didn’t seem to have any trouble doing that, though he heard her grunt as she lifted the bulk of his weight as the rear wheels bumped up and over the threshold, which was raised about three inches off the surface of the concrete slab that served as her porch. She pushed him into the kitchen and helped him pull his right arm out of his coat. She tugged the coat out from behind him and draped it over the back of a kitchen chair she’d removed so he could be pushed up to the table.

He watched as she shed her own coat, draping it over another chair back. Then she nattered on about how seeing the show for the second time was interesting, because she picked up nuances she hadn’t seen the night before, as she got the cake out and cut slices. She plopped a plate and fork on the table in front of him, and again asked if he wanted coffee.

“You have any milk?” he asked.

She did and soon they both had glasses of that. She sat down and took a bite of her own cake.

He took his eyes off of her for perhaps the first time since they’d arrived in the house, not counting the times she was behind him, and looked around. It looked like any other kitchen, except for the framed photographs on the walls. There were five or six of them, and the subject matter varied from a landscape that had a stream in it to a picture of a blond woman, wearing a cowboy hat and holding a guitar on her lap. There was a black scrawl of what looked like a signature in the bottom right corner of that picture.

Christy saw him looking at that picture.

“That’s Misty Compton,” she said around a mouthful of cake. “She’s a singer who did some concerts over in Hutch a while back. I took her publicity shots. Country western. Have you ever heard her?”

“I haven’t gotten to listen to much music in the last few years,” he said.

That brought to both minds what he’d been doing the last few years, and conversation lagged. Christy wondered what she was doing. Ever since she’d met this man, she’d felt some kind of tug. That she liked his personality was a given. Anyone who could go through what he’d gone through, and retain his sanity, had to be a strong person. But she had no idea how to interact with a man who was clearly not on the same playing field as all the other men she was acquainted with. She remembered his sharp denial that he was interested in pity. She did feel some pity for him … some sadness at the unrealized dreams he must have had … but she didn’t feel like that was why he was sitting across her kitchen table from her. It was less confusing to merely decide that she just liked him. But what could they talk about? She didn’t want to talk about his troubles. He’d had enough of them to last several lifetimes. They’d gone through the inane chatter that people use to break the ice and learn a little about each other. She could only think of one thing.

“Have you ever seen how pictures are developed?” she asked suddenly.

“Nope.”

“Want to?”

Will’s thought processes were somewhat similar to hers. He wasn’t sure why she was showing this interest in him. He was pretty sure it wasn’t anything a normal woman would feel for a normal man. His sister showed that kind of interest … but that was different. He was different. Like her, he didn’t know what to say, or how to move the conversation forward. He wasn’t even sure if he should move the conversation forward. She was beautiful and he couldn’t ignore that. She was a healthy, vibrant woman. She’d been married. She had a child.

“Where’s Jillian?” he asked, instead of answering her question.

“She’s staying at Jill’s tonight. She misses Steven, so we try to let them do sleepovers once in a while.” He looked confused and she explained. “Jill and I used to live together. We had our babies about the same time and she worked for me. She still does, though she’s gone part time now that she got married. The kids grew up together.” She giggled. “Not that they’re grown or anything, but you know what I mean. When Jill got married, Jillian lost her brother, sort of.”

Will could understand how that would be traumatic. If he lost Erica, he’d be devastated. He remembered her question.

“Sure,” he said. “I’d love to find out how you do your magic.”

He tried to change his mind when she announced that she’d take his portrait, and then develop that.

“You can’t be serious,” he said.

She was almost instantly sorry she’d brought it up, but instinct made her push ahead.

“Look,” she said. “You are who you are. You got those scars honestly. You fought your way back from death to be in this world. Okay, you’re in it. Now what are you going to do … hide?”

“But…”

“Let me just see what I can do,” she said. “I’m not promising you’ll like anything. Just let me take your picture.”

He thought it was crazy, but he let her push him into her studio. Then he sat, feeling more and more exposed, somehow, as she walked slowly around him, stopping to stare before moving on. He watched her face when he could see it. He didn’t see revulsion. Instead she looked like she was examining some painting at a gallery, maybe … just looking at it … and thinking about what she was seeing.

“We can go several ways,” she said, finally. “I’m not sure all of them will work.”

What she was actually thinking was that she was pretty sure she could do a profile portrait that would not show any of the damage. In such a shot, he’d look completely normal. It could create an image of what he might have looked like, if he hadn’t been burned, because the mind would fool the viewer into thinking that the parts that didn’t show were just as normal as what did. But that could work in one of two ways. It could celebrate what had been preserved … or deepen the pain of his loss.

He expected her to leave him in his chair, but she didn’t. There was a low bench that could be covered with various materials, and she posed him there, first. She used several backdrops. He’d expected her to take a picture, and then it would be over. Instead, she took shot after shot. The flash bothered him, because it brought back memories of explosions, but he was able to control his angst.

Then she had him stand, while she arranged a stool for him to half sit on, in what looked like an alcove with three sides. She went in a half circle while she took even more shots, from both sides and the front. She stopped and looked at him.

“The scars go all the way down … don’t they.” She was looking at his left arm. He routinely pinned the long sleeve on that arm closed, so his stump wouldn’t show.

“Yes,” he said, wondering what she was thinking.

“I’d like to try something. I just thought of it. It’s kind of … radical.”

“What?” he asked.

“I have a flag that I hang behind the officers of the VFW when I take their official photographs,” she said. “I’d like to wrap you in it.”

She stopped and looked nervous.

“I want to show the scars,” she finally added.

Will just stared at her.

“Let me explain,” she said, obviously nervous now. “I have this image in my mind … the warrior … scarred while fighting for his country. The flag represents how that country will hold him … care for him … treasure him.”

“Nobody treasures me,” said Will immediately. He was thinking of the endless bureaucracy he’d had to wade through to get treatment. It was supposed to be automatic. A doctor would decide what needed to be done, and then that was supposed to happen. But it never went that smoothly. There were delays, and sometimes his case was pushed aside. Operations that were supposed to be two or three months apart were six months apart. He’d spent countless hours just sitting, waiting for something to happen, and then countless more hours alone in a hospital bed, recuperating from their latest attempt to do something. Those few nurses had cared about him … but that was all. He’d gotten a purple heart, but it had just been handed to him, while he was in bed, by a nameless civilian who had only said “Here, they awarded this to you.”

“Your sister does,” said Christy. “Your parents do.”

“My parents are dead,” he said.

“Oh.” She struggled for something that would lift her stupid idea out of the gutter. “I do.”

He looked at her. “You don’t treasure me,” he said. It was a statement of belief, and that was plain.

“Okay,” she said, as she flushed bright red. “Maybe not treasure. But I respect you, and I think you’re brave and strong. I’m part of America.”

They argued about it for a while longer, until Will did what men have done for centuries … he gave in, just to get her to shut up. That was fine until she returned with the flag and said “Take off your shirt.”

There was another argument then. Believe it or not, it is possible for an argument to bring two people closer together sometimes. It isn’t really the substance of the argument that does that … it’s the fact that both of them care enough to argue about something, at least in situations like this. He was sure she’d be horrified at seeing the scars on his torso, which were worse than what usually showed, because that part of him had gotten a heavier dose of napalm than his face, which had been somewhat shielded by his helmet. She was just as adamant that scars were scars, and that it didn’t matter, except that the scars needed to show if her idea was ever to become a reality.

In one sense, he was arguing “I want to protect you from something disgusting,” and she was arguing “I don’t care if it’s disgusting, it’s part of you and I accept you just like you are.” That’s the kind of argument that can bring two people closer together, even if they don’t realize it’s happening at the time.

Again, however, she eventually wore him down, and he gave in.

He expected her to gasp as he wiggled his bad arm out of the cloth, and then used that arm to press and hold, so he could extract his good arm. The stump was well-healed, with a smooth, normal skin shade where the grafts had been used to cover it. The rest of his arm, his shoulder, and his side were a thick, mottled almost bluish red, crisscrossed with lines. He could have told her the names of the scars, which were a mixture of keloid and contracture scars that had interacted with the Langer’s lines of tension on his body, causing the separation of lumps of scarring. But the technical jargon wouldn’t mean anything to her. All she’d see was ugly looking damage that made him look faintly reptilian, at least to his own eyes.

She didn’t gasp. She did tremble, as she saw the extent of the damage, and how his elbow didn’t bend quite as far as it should. The scarring had robbed him of some of the mobility in his elbow. His shoulder movement was almost normal, due to the hours and hours of excruciatingly painful physical therapy they had inflicted on him. They had worked his shoulder for him, and had told him to work his own elbow. He hadn’t spent as much time doing that as he was supposed to, because of the pain, and the scarring there was tight.

Her fingers held the flag just over his skin, preparing to drop it, when she had a sudden thought.

“Is there pain? Will it hurt if I touch it?”

“Sometimes there are phantom pains,” he said. “I can feel things. It used to hurt all the time, but that’s tapered off. That’s why I can wear a shirt.”

“But I won’t hurt you by doing this,” she said.

“No.”

She draped the flag over his shoulder, bunched so it lay between his neck and the tip of his shoulder, which was visible. The field of stars was crumpled on his sternum. She wanted his stump across that, and had to decide whether to move it there herself, or have him do it. She decided she needed to touch that skin, if only to make herself do it. Her initial impulse was to use just her thumb and one or two fingertips to do that, but she clamped down on her discomfort and gripped the arm, just above the stump.

“Hold the flag against you like this,” she said, positioning his arm. She wasn’t surprised that the skin was warm. It looked hot, and felt rough and slick somehow, but it still felt like skin.

She went behind him to pull the rest of the red and white bars around his back, and draped it over his right shoulder, covering the good skin there. She stood back, and then, like she had done before, moved all the way around him, just looking at him from different vantage points.

Then she picked up her camera.

“Lift your chin a little,” she said, looking through the viewfinder.

The lights flashed and Will blinked.

“Now turn your head to the right a bit.”

She walked all the way around him, taking photographs. She stopped, removed the film canister from the camera and replaced it, and kept going. She took shots both from a standing position, and, in some cases, resting on one knee, looking up. Finally she was satisfied. She helped him put his shirt back on, somehow knowing that it needed to go on the bad arm first, and then told him he could sit back down in his wheelchair

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Will sat stiffly in his seat. He wasn’t sure it had been a good idea at all to go with Christy. He felt a little like he’d been ambushed, though it didn’t bring the fear and helpless feeling he usually associated with that concept. She had sat beside him during the whole show, and had leaned toward him a number of times to make a soft comment about a scene or performance. At intermission she had brought back a plate of cookies, and had asked him if he needed to be pushed anywhere. He knew she was talking about the bathroom, but he had learned to go light on fluids whenever he was going to be out like this, and declined.

He couldn’t figure out what she was doing. He thought at first that it was pity, but she didn’t act like she felt pity for him. She just talked to him, saying whatever was on her mind. During the last quarter of the show he had started doing the same thing. It had just seemed normal to respond in kind.

Then, as he hopped up to join the standing ovation, and her hand came to his elbow while she whistled, of all things. When it finally died down and people began to leave, she had leaned over and said, “I’d like some ice cream. You want some too?”

She’d snuck up on him. He’d said “Yes,” before he could think about it.

Now they were parked at the Dairy Bee and she was at the window, ordering for them. His chair was in the back seat. Once he’d told her where to push, and it began to fold, she’d muscled it into the back, letting him get himself into the car.

It was like she gave him only as much help as he absolutely needed, and nothing more. That was strange. She was strange. She didn’t act like other women did when they saw him, and he didn’t know how to act with her.

She came back with a banana split and a large cup of something. He’d said he liked chocolate, when she’d asked him what he wanted. She got in and handed him the cup. She’d thought of the fact that he couldn’t eat anything with a spoon, unless someone held the dish for him.

She ate in silence for a while, as he took little sips of a rich chocolate shake. That was another thing that confused him. She didn’t talk nonstop to fill the uneasy silence. People usually either said nothing to him at all, or talked all the time, as if they were proving they could interact with a freakish monster and make it appear to be normal. But her silence wasn’t the horrified stiff attempt to ignore the monster. It was as if she just didn’t have anything to say in particular at the moment.

“I love ice cream,” she sighed. “I know it will make me fat, but I love it.”

“You’re not fat,” he said.

“Not now,” she said. “But if I ate ice cream as often as I want to I would be.” She took another bite. “I’ll have to add a mile or two tomorrow just to work this off.”

“A mile or two?”

“I walk,” she said. “It’s an old habit that I just got used to. I do a couple of miles a day, usually.”

“It works,” he said. He wondered why he’s said that.

“I do believe you’re flirting with me,” she laughed.

He was astonished, both by her laughter, which sounded like she was genuinely happy, and by the thought that she could even begin to consider that if the monster flirted with her … that wasn’t something to scream about. It was too much. He couldn’t take it.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked.

“I told you, I love ice cream.”

“I mean me. Why did you bring me here?”

“I asked you if you wanted ice cream too, and you said yes.” This time her tone didn’t sound quite so genuine.

“You know what I mean,” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said. That sounded uncomfortable.

“I don’t want pity,” he said. It was his mantra.

“I can’t help but feel some of that,” she said. “Nobody could look at your situation and avoid that.” The way she said it made pity sound like a natural consequence of being human. “I think I feel guilty, a little bit.”

“Guilty?”

“About my ex husband.”

“Oh.”

“And I like you.”

“Huh?” He was astonished again. “You don’t even know me.”

“Isn’t that what we’re doing?” she asked. “Aren’t we getting to know one another?”

“You’re beautiful,” he moaned.

“Thank you,” she said.

“I mean you could have any man you wanted.”

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, big boy,” said Christy. “I said I like you. That doesn’t mean I’m ready to hop into bed with you or anything.”

He was speechless. This was insane. He had to be dreaming. She was talking to him like he was just a normal guy, who had pushed things maybe a little too far and she was reining him in. But he wasn’t a normal guy. He’d never be normal again. That was why he didn’t feel bad about wanting his sister. That wasn’t normal … but then he wasn’t either … not anymore.

“I’m not shopping for a man,” she went on. “Can’t I just like you for who you are?”

“I don’t know who I am,” he said.

“Well then, maybe we can find out together.”

She had kept him off his mental balance when she asked him if it would be all right if they picked up her daughter from the sitter’s, before she took him home. The girl, named Jillian, stared at him like any normal child would, both fascinated and repelled. Christy, to deal with that, had just had him tell her daughter what had happened to make him look this way.

“I bet that hurt,” said the little girl.

“Yeah, it did,” he said.

“Did anybody kiss it and make it better?” asked the girl, in her innocence.

“Yeah,” he said, thinking of the nurses, and Erica. “They did.”

She invited him to have coffee at her house. She didn’t mind all the extra effort it took to get him in there. He hopped up the steps while Jillian watched, and then she attempted to do the same thing … on two feet instead of one. It was the first time he’d felt more or less normal for as long as he could remember.

He’d told her Erica might be wondering where he was, and she’d said they’d call once they got inside. When no one answered the phone, she said she’d try again later.

They talked for another hour and a half, sipping coffee. Of all the things they talked about, the war never came up. Nor did his physical condition.

When she stopped in his driveway, with the passenger door next to the ramp, he twisted in the seat.

“Thank you,” he said.

“You’re welcome,” she said back.

“No, I mean it,” he said. “Nobody’s treated me like you did tonight in a long time.”

“All I did was take you out for ice cream,” she said.

“You know what I mean,” he said. “You treated me like I was just a normal guy.”

“Isn’t there still just a normal guy inside that body?” she asked.

“I just don’t get it,” he sighed.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said, getting his chair out of the back. “I don’t either. How about we just try and act normal, and see what happens.”

Erica drove up while Christy was pushing him up the ramp. She got out and ran to unlock the door. She hadn’t thought to give Will a key, since the only time he ever went anywhere she was with him.

“Hi,” she panted. “Sorry I wasn’t here. Bobby took me to get a root beer float and the time just slipped by.”

Christy stood back to let Will’s sister take over.

“Bobby took you out?” she asked. There was something in her voice that made Erica’s mental ears stand up, like there was more to hear, but it was too far away or too soft. “Well, well, well,” she added.

“Now what does that mean?” Erica wondered.

“I’d love to stay and talk with you about that,” said Christy, “but I left my daughter sleeping and I need to get back. Can I borrow your brother again sometime?”

Erica was completely off balance, both because this woman had whisked Will away after the show, and because she appeared to be interested in him, at least on some casual basis that Erica had no frame of reference to compare to.

“Of course,” she said, more because that was the expected response than because she meant it.

“Thanks, Will,” said Christy. “I had a good time.”

Then she was off to her car, leaving brother and sister both looking after her.

Erica was worried about going to bed together again. Some of that was because she was afraid he’d have another flashback. The rest of it was because she couldn’t stop thinking about that penis, nudging between those slippery labia.

Will took the flashback excuse away from her.

“I’m awake now,” he said. “That won’t happen again.”

He sat on the bed as she undressed, and she felt the now familiar zing of excitement as his eyes devoured each inch of skin she bared to him. She felt the urge to squeeze her nipples before she even had her panties off. She got him onto the bed first, with the covers pulled down so that she could reach for them when they were needed. She crawled onto the bed carefully, still nervous about touching him.

“Would you … suck me again?” he asked, breathlessly.

Her mind whirled back to what that had been like. His penis had felt so completely foreign in her mouth. And yet, at the same time, it had felt like it was made to fit there. She remembered the smooth tight feel of the head, and the softer, more malleable skin on the shaft. She hadn’t thought about taste, until it was suddenly there, in her mouth, a mixture of something musky, a little bitter, but not in an unpleasant way. It was just a hint of taste at first and she had pulled her mouth off as if looking at it would give her some clue. It had, actually. As she’d watched, a little bubble of something mostly clear had seeped out of the hole in the tip. She had seen that hole spread as ropes of white froth leap out of it many times. But, she’d never thought about it having a taste before. In the film, the woman had opened her mouth, while the men masturbated into it. She clearly remembered almost throwing up at the sight of that, and feeling like the woman couldn’t possibly be debased any further.

But having her mouth on Will just didn’t feel like that. His moans of joy were so heartfelt that she couldn’t think of what she was doing as debasement at all. It was just loving him with her mouth instead of her hand. The taste that had flooded her mouth as he gasped and cried out had been like his offering of thanks, rather than some sexist ritual.

Now, as she got onto her hands and knees, to stare down at his already-hard shaft, she actually licked her lips in anticipation of both the texture of it in her mouth and the taste. The first sensation of the smooth knob sliding through her lips made her feel that if she didn’t pull her nipples hard, she’d just die. One hand shot between her legs, to dig into the tunnel there.

His hand came up to smooth over her butt cheek and the sound she made of appreciation was transmitted to his penis, and he jerked, driving it deeply enough into her throat that she gagged. She pulled off and coughed.

“Not so rough,” she whined.

“Sorry,” he panted. “You wouldn’t believe how good that feels, Erica.”

She had no frame of reference for that, so she just concentrated on the feel of his penis in her mouth. As a girl, one of her favorite treats had been a Tootsie Roll Pop and she treated the knob like it was one of those, sucking at it and pushing it around in her mouth with her tongue.

She felt his hand slide down the back of her thigh, then reach to slide up inside. His hand ran into hers, where her finger was slicing in and out of her sex. Unconsciously, she realized he was trying to help her, and without thinking about it, she raised one knee. Had she been standing and watching this, she would have sneered that the woman looked like a male dog, taking a leak, but she wasn’t watching … she was feeling. By the time her conscious mind realized what he was doing down there … and how she was accommodating him … his long middle finger was firmly embedded in her, as deep as he could get it.

His finger was thicker than hers, and longer too. The feeling of it was so strange that she stopped sucking, shocked that when someone else did that, it felt so completely different. Then the base of his finger ground into her clitty and she thought the top of her head would fly off. The next thing she thought of was that … if his finger felt that good in her … something even bigger … like what was in her mouth … would feel that much better.

Erica Bradford’s virginity was spared that night by another combination of what Erica would have called bizarre circumstances. About the time she was thinking of trying to see what something thicker and longer might feel like in her vagina, the thing she was contemplating using flooded her mouth with flavor. His hips jerked again and his pubic hair hit her nose, as his penis was driven deeper than it had ever gone. It went past her gag reflex so quickly that she only registered a feeling of something stretching her throat, like she’d swallowed something without chewing, and it was stuck. While it was there it belched again. She couldn’t taste it, that deep, but she could feel it, and the choking sensation caused her to jerk her head up. Again, her gag reflex was slipped past, and she concentrated on swallowing and breathing.

The next thing she was aware of was that something was beating against her clit. Her consciousness floated downwards, where his finger was going in and out of her rapidly. Each time it went in, there was an electric shock as her clit was punched. Unable to wait any longer, she fell sideways, landing awkwardly on her right shoulder, so that she could use both hands on her nipples.

She grabbed, squeezed, pulled hard … and had an orgasm that was so intense she forgot to breathe for a full seven seconds. Again, had she been watching all this, she would have sneered at the woman who sounded like some king of alley cat, howling at the moon.

By the time she got her breath back, and had enough energy to turn herself around and lay her head on Will’s good arm and shoulder, the urge to impale herself on his penis had passed.

The next day the performance for the school assembly in the auditorium went well. There were elements in this musical that appealed to teenagers … the magic of a town that disappears … unrequited love … and the lustiness of Meg trying to bed Jeff on the cot in the forest.

Then, that night, with a mostly different crowd, there was another performance that they would call perfect. By now the cast was on cloud nine. It was a Friday night, and nobody had to get up and do anything the next morning, so they all went out together after the show. Someone had thought ahead, because the Wagon Wheel was open late. Sal had been making pizza pies all evening, in anticipation of something like this. On the chance that the kids wouldn’t show, he figured he could just freeze them and use them later, but the crowd that descended on his diner had ten people in each eight person booth, and people sitting on other people’s laps at the tables.

Bobby and Erica had been swept up in the mass migration to the diner. They stood back to let all the others go in first, and when they walked in, a wave of heat, delicious smells, and noise hit them like being slapped in the face.

“You want to take the pizza out to the car?” yelled Bobby.

Erica nodded. Bobby went and got a plate with several slices of some kind of pizza on it. He grabbed two bottles of Coke from the refrigerator behind the counter and they ducked outside.

Tonight Erica had seen Christy wheeling Will up toward the foyer. She felt a twinge of worry for him. This woman could tear his heart out if she wanted to. In the car she asked Bobby about her.

“Christy?” he said, his mouth full. “If Christy took him someplace, she has a reason.”

“What kind of reason?”

“She’s very practical,” said Bobby. “It could be anything.”

“I’m nervous about them being together,” she said.

“Why in the world would you be nervous?” he asked.

“What if she hurts him?”

“Why would she hurt him?” Bobby sounded confused.

“You know … toy with his affections.”

Bobby was just like anybody else. He had the capacity to overlook things, to misunderstand things, and to labor under stereotypical ways of thinking. It wasn’t that odd that, while he liked Will, he might not see Will as being anybody’s potential romantic interest. But Bobby had also cultivated the ability to recognize when he had screwed up and rethink things. He did that now.

“First off, if she’s interested in him … it’s real. She’s not just stringing him along to make him feel better. That’s not her style.”

“She said she would like to talk to me about you,” said Erica. It was about all she could remember about the woman.

“What?” Bobby was even more confused. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” said Erica. “It was last night. I got home just as she was helping Will up to the house. I told her I’d been with you and she said that was interesting and that she’d like to talk to me about that. Then she said she had to get home to her daughter.”

Bobby had a pretty good idea what Christy had been thinking. Christy was perfectly capable of comparing notes with one of Bobby’s women, if for no other reason than to giggle and sigh about some technique Bobby had used. The last thing he needed was for people to start assuming that Erica Bradford was another of his women. If she even found out about any of his women, she’d probably never speak to him again.

Then, because Bobby was … Bobby, he reflected for a quarter of a minute or so on why it mattered if Erica Bradford ever spoke to him again in his entire life. He decided that working on the musical had been fun, and that he might want to work on the next one too.

“I dated her for a little while,” extemporized Bobby. “She may have wanted to compare notes.”

“Last night wasn’t a date!” said Erica.

“Yeah, I know,” said Bobby. “But other people might have assumed it was.”

Now it was Erica who spent fifteen seconds trying to decide whether or not it mattered, if people thought she was on a date with Bobby. She realized she was sitting in his car again, outside the Wagon Wheel, on Main Street. Their breath and the steamy pizza had made the windows go opaque white, so she couldn’t look outside to see if anyone was looking at them.

“Do you think anyone might think that what we’re doing right now is a date?” she asked.

“I suppose some might,” he said.

“But you don’t think so,” she said.

“Nope,” he said firmly.

“Why not?” she asked, actually trying to understand this complicated social phenomenon.

“‘Cause if this was a date, these windows would be all fogged up for another reason.” He grinned, thinking he’d made a joke.

It was no joke to Erica, though, as his meaning burst into her mind. She had spent enough time with Bobby Dalton to know, beyond even her own doubts, that he was no sexist male intent on getting whatever he could from a woman. What she would almost certainly have perceived as a rude and uncalled for comment from almost any other man, simply brought all the images into her head that had so tormented her over the months since she’d met him. She remembered the dreams about him, the thoughts she’d had as, in her imagination, Bobby’s face had intruded on Will’s, while she gave her brother love. Quite suddenly her nipples demanded to be squeezed, and she felt helpless because the fingers she wanted squeezing them were three feet away, on the hands of Bobby Dalton.

She felt shame and confusion and lust all at once … all the things that teenage girls all feel as they thread their way through the minefield that is the onset of puberty. She hadn’t tiptoed through that minefield, at least not until lately with her brother, and the overwhelming crush of not understanding what was going on inside her brought tears to her eyes.

Bobby, in the dim light that filtered through the fog on the windows, saw her crumble and he knew, instinctively, that she was in some kind of terrible pain.

“What’s wrong?” he asked softly, leaning toward her.

He thought he was helping … at least offering help … but as he reached to touch her thigh, her senses equated that touch with what she had felt last night … just before her brother’s thick, firm finger had penetrated her and brought her so much joy.

Her fingers scrabbled for the door handle, as she sobbed convulsively twice and then held her breath, mortified that she was losing control of herself in front of this man. The door flew open, because her shoulder was leaning against it, and she almost fell out.

“Erica!“ She heard her name shouted as she lurched out of the door and ran, almost blindly, because she couldn’t hold her breath anymore and that meant she was sobbing again. She wiped at her eyes and narrowly missed slamming into a light pole.

“Erica?“ She could hear the question in his voice, and she knew he’d gotten out of the car. She hoped against hope that he wouldn’t chase her, because she had no idea what she’d do if she felt his hands on her. Her sobs subsided as she began panting for breath, just to keep running.

It was cold. The jacket she’d worn was fine for going from the house to the car, to the school and back again, but too light for staying out in weather that was ten degrees below zero – lower if you included the wind index. She could no longer feel her face, fingers or feet and she was still six blocks from home.

She had moved through phases of emotion. First was the fright of not understanding why she wanted his hands on her, then anger toward him, because it had to be his fault, somehow. That had given way to exhaustion, as she ran herself almost limp. Then her sweating body had cooled rapidly in the frigid air, and she’d begun to think again. She turned toward home hurriedly, on legs that weren’t used to running and just wanted her to sit down somewhere.

She couldn’t do that, so she plodded, thankful that there was no snow to trip her. Her feet didn’t seem to be working right. She stared down at them as one went forward, and then the other. She’d been shivering, but now she couldn’t feel anything. Her legs were so stiff, she could barely bend her knees. Her whole body was so tired. She needed to sit down. She needed to take a nap. She couldn’t do that though, because something was making too much noise.

The engine noise finally registered, and then the lights, as she realized a car had pulled up beside her.

“Erica?”

It was him.

She stopped, feeling helpless. She’d already worked through the anger. She knew it wasn’t his fault. She still didn’t understand why she’d felt like she was falling apart, but she was too tired to think about that now. She heard the car door slam.

“What did I do?” he asked. She heard honest questioning in his voice.

“Nothing,” she said dully. Her lips weren’t working right either.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” she said, her voice flat.

“You’re freezing,” he said.

When he said that, she heard the chattering of her own teeth.

His hands on her shoulders didn’t make her fall apart. She spent a few seconds reveling at that fact … that he could touch her and she didn’t just fly apart. She let herself be moved past the front of the car and then he opened the door for her. Her feet felt like they were frozen to the ground, but finally she was able to turn in a little circle and collapse backwards. He helped her get her feet into the car.

When the door closed, the heat felt like fire on her face, but it was welcome fire, and she slumped in the seat. In two minutes it would have taken her half an hour or more to walk, they were there, and he was helping her out of the car. He hadn’t spoken a word since he’d put her into it.

“Where are your keys?” he asked as she shuffled up the ramp he’d built. She still couldn’t feel her feet. Tennis shoes didn’t work in this kind of cold either, apparently. She tried to reach into her pocket – she didn’t carry a purse – and she could get her fingers in, but couldn’t grasp the ring of keys.

“I can’t,” she mumbled. Why didn’t her lips work?

She felt his hand pull hers out, and then the pressure of his hand in her pocket. He opened the door and shoved her inside.

“Bathroom.” His one word was an order. The rebellion in her mind wouldn’t translate into resistance, though, and she stumbled toward that room, following him. She stopped in the door and looked at him, bent over the tub, his hands on the faucets. She felt dreamy as she stared at the tight cloth stretched across his backside. Her brain was trying to tell her something, but it was too much trouble to concentrate.

She figured out what her brain was all upset about when he turned and started taking her clothes off. He intended to put her in the bathtub.

“No!” she moaned.

“If you don’t have frostbite, you’re very close,” he said, sounding almost angry. “First you try to cook yourself to death, and now this.”

She closed her eyes, hoping that would stop her from knowing what was going on, because she was quite sure that if he got her naked, he would put his long, thick penis inside her and she wouldn’t be a virgin anymore. She giggled as she thought that might solve all her problems. If she wasn’t a virgin anymore … then she had nothing to protect. The penis hanging over the mouth of her vagina floated into her mind again. She leaned forward, trying to get that penis to move, and felt his hands keep her from falling.

Then there was a moment of complete disorientation as the world turned upside down, before she realized she was in his arms, at which point there was water covering her face. She felt pain in her scalp and suddenly there was air to breathe again. She coughed.

In the next thirty seconds, she moved through a very complex reaction to her new situation. First, she realized he was holding her head out of the water by lifting a fistful of her hair. That hurt. Then her body reacted to the heat of the water he had just drawn. It felt like she had been plopped down into boiling water. That hurt so much she screamed.

In fact, the water was only about eighty degrees. Bobby had mixed cold water with the hot. But her skin temperature was very near fifty degrees when it was submerged into the water that was thirty degrees hotter.

She flailed as muscle control came back.

“I know it hurts,” said Bobby. “But you have to stay still!”

She used every curse word she knew, and made up a few more, but his weight was centered on the hand that was pushing against her stomach and holding her to the bottom of the tub. Still she fought, and, within three minutes, the tub was only half full and her breasts were exposed to the air in the room. It was actually that that shocked her body into submission, because her breasts felt suddenly cold. That led to the knowledge that she was naked, and that Bobby’s head was right over her chest.

She quit fighting him, and covered her breasts with her hands.

“All right!“ she yelled.

He held her for a few seconds longer, waiting to make sure she didn’t try to surge up out of the water again. By then, though, her skin had heated up and the water only felt hot, rather than scalding. He stood up. The front of his clothes were soaked with the water she had splashed on him.

“I’m going to run more water,” he said. “You need to stay submerged until you can’t feel the heat in the water anymore.”

She just looked at him.

He started the water running again, holding his hand under it to adjust the temperature. She felt the heat of it on her legs. Obviously it wasn’t as hot as it felt, because his hand was under it. He wouldn’t burn himself. “He wouldn’t burn me either,” she thought to herself.

The water rose back up until she was covered again. She could scoot back now, and keep her own head above the surface. She had to use her hands to do that, but she put them back on her breasts as soon as possible.

“Do you have a robe?” he asked.

“Yes.” She sounded petulant, even to herself. She knew that what he’d done was the right thing to do. Her body was beginning to feel alive again.

“Which room should I start looking for it in?” There was a half smile on his face.

“Why are you smiling?” she asked, heat in her voice, if not in her bones. “There’s nothing funny about this.”

“No, of course not,” he said. “Unless you think about how the big tough liberated woman keeps trying to kill herself, and would have succeeded both times if a man hadn’t been around to save her liberated skin.”

“That’s not funny!” she snarled.

“It is to me,” he said. “Now, where’s that robe?”

“It’s in my bedroom … where you have no business being,” she said, stubbornly.

He shook his head. “You’re an idiot!” he said. “That has to be it. You’re just retarded or something, because nobody with any intelligence would come up with the crap you come up with.”

“I am not!“ she shouted, but it was too late. He was already gone.

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The reason Bobby was absent from musical practice while all this was going on was quite simple. First off, the sets were done. But he had received another request from Misty Compton too. She had invited Jasper to come to Nashville, to sell some of his songs. She had also asked Bobby to come with him, and offered to pay his way again.

“I feel bad about you spending all this money,” he had told her on the phone.

“It’s my money,” she said. “I want to see you.”

He had agreed, which was a good thing, because Jasper was almost paralyzed by the idea of meeting Nashville music producers. Bobby spent most of the plane trip to Nashville trying to calm him down.

“Look, Jasper,” he said. “You either sell the songs, or you don’t. If you do, you make a little money, and write some more. If you don’t, you sing them yourself and have fun, and write some more anyway.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Jasper. “I just don’t want to do something stupid.”

“Well that’s easy,” said Bobby. “Don’t sign anything until you have a lawyer look at it.”

“I never needed a lawyer before,” sighed Jasper. “It sounds scary to think that I need a lawyer.”

“If that’s the biggest problem you have, then you’re in pretty good shape,” laughed Bobby.

Misty, though she had specifically wanted Bobby to come, dropped him off at her house, while she took Jasper on to a business meeting. She gave him a quick kiss and said her mother would be there to keep him company. That didn’t bother him. Her mother had sent a kiss through Misty, when he’d left last time. Misty dropped him off at the curb, and didn’t go in with him because she and Jasper needed to get to the meeting.

Misty’s mother was, in fact, at home, waiting for Bobby.

She was also cleaning her father’s shotgun on the kitchen table.

“Come on in here, boy,” she said, gesturing at a chair across the table from her. “Heard you was coming back. Set a spell.”

“How you been?” he asked.

“Been peachy keen,” she said, wiping down the receiver with a rag. “How ‘bout you?”

“I’ve been all right, I guess.” he said.

“How come a stalwart young stud such as yerself ain’t hitched by this time in yore life?” she asked, much too casually.

“Never met a woman who would have me, I guess,” said Bobby. “Why, has Misty changed her mind?” Bobby was referring to the last time he’d been there, when Misty had told her mother … in front of him … that she wasn’t interested in marriage, because it would interfere with her career.

“Things change,” said the woman, reassembling the shotgun. “She seems awful sweet on you.”

“Are you asking me if I’m interested in marrying Misty?” asked Bobby.

“Just curious … that’s all.”

“The subject came up a couple of times,” he said. “Not about her and me, you understand, but about marriage in general. She told me pretty much the same thing she told you.” He looked at the woman sitting across the table from him. “You got something on your mind?”

“Younguns,” sighed the woman holding the assembled shotgun. “They think they’re so smart, an’ that they can keep secrets.”

“What kind of secrets?”

“She didn’t have her monthly last month.”

If she expected Bobby to be shocked, she was disappointed.

“Did she talk to you about it?” asked Bobby.

“Nope. She seems to think I won’t notice somethin’ like that.”

“You think she’s pregnant?” asked Bobby.

“A mother knows these things,” she said wisely. “Course it helps that she’s been actin’ squirrelly ever since she should have started bleedin’. It was pretty clear to me she’d been pumpkinated.”

As serious as the conversation was, Bobby almost smiled when he heard a new term for being made pregnant. He forced his mind to be serious.

“She told me she was on the pill,” said Bobby.

“She talked about that kind of thing with you?”

“Yes, ma’am, she did.”

“You know, I like you,” said Misty’s mother.

“Kind of hard to tell when you’re bandying about a shotgun like that,” said Bobby dryly.

“This old thing?” She snorted. “Just needed cleanin’, that’s all.”

“And you just happened to think of that … on the day I get here … when you think your daughter is pregnant.”

“I’m just saying that iffen things change, I wouldn’t mind havin’ you fer a son-in-law,” she said. “I’d sure rather have you than one o’ them slick fellers she keeps runnin’ into in the music racket.”

“Well, I’ll keep that in mind, Mrs. Compton,” said Bobby.

“Whyn’t you call me Madge,” said the woman. “We’s friends and all.”

“Okay, Madge,” said Bobby. “Seeing as how I got some time on my hands … you got anything around here that needs fixing?”

Misty was bouncy and elated when she got home. She’d left an astonished Jasper at the hotel after helping him sell four songs that she said she’d put on her next album. She kissed her mother and went to find Bobby.

Ten minutes later she was back in the kitchen, yelling at her mother at the top of her lungs. She was furious that her mother had even mentioned anything about her suspicions to Bobby. She’d intended to talk to Bobby about it first, and then her mother after Bobby had left.

Bobby waded in and broke up what looked like an argument that could last for hours. After he got them stopped, he turned to Misty.

“Are you pregnant?”

“Yes!“ she shouted.

“You don’t have to yell,” he said. “Why didn’t you tell your mother?”

“Because I knew she’d yell at me!” snarled Misty.

“Can you understand why she might?” asked Bobby.

“Whose side are you on?” she complained.

“I’m not on anybody’s side,” he said. “I just want the two of you to get along.”

“Hmmm,” said Madge. “Good lookin’, can fix things, and a peacemaker too. He’s a good catch!”

Misty tensed up and Bobby put a warning hand on her shoulder.

“Mamma,” she said, her voice tightly controlled. “I know in these modern times, things seem strange to you, but I am not interested in getting hitched right now.”

“How can you say that?” wailed her mother. “You’re with child, girl!”

“Yes, maybe I am,” said Misty. “I haven’t been to the doctor yet, but that’s not the point, Mamma. I have money. I have a career. I’m doing so good singing. I like Bobby. Maybe I even love him a little, but I don’t want to marry him!”

“How could you let him get you with child then?” complained Madge.

“I didn’t intend for him to get me with child, Mamma!” yelped Misty. “That part was an accident.” She looked shrewdly at her mother. “Why are you so upset about this anyway? You’ve been yammering about grandbabies for the last two years. And my cousin Sadie has three children and isn’t married. And I can think of at least two more cousins like that too!”

Madge’s lips got all tight and she folded her arms across her chest.

“Oh, all right then,” she said, sounding disgusted. “I just like this one … that’s all.” She was referring to Bobby.

“And you point a shotgun at him?” Misty’s voice climbed.

“I didn’t point it at him,” said Madge grudgingly. “And it weren’t loaded nohow.” She frowned. “Wouldn’t have done no good anyway. This one has backbone. That’s one of the reasons I like him.”

“I like him too, Mamma,” said Misty. “And I’d like to see him again someday. Do you really think he’ll ever come back here after this?”

“Of course I will,” said Bobby.

“You shut up!” snapped Misty, turning her hot eyes on him. “In fact, you go wait for me in my room!”

“Better do it,” sighed Madge, looking at Bobby. “When she gits like this, can’t nobody do nothin’ with her.”

“I found that out when she got off that plane and I met her for the first time,” said Bobby smiling.

He hurried out of the room before Misty could find something to throw at him.

He was sitting on her bed, wondering what might happen, when she opened the door and walked in. She stopped and just looked at him.

“I’m not happy right now,” she said.

“I kind of figured that out.”

“I was very happy when I knew you were on your way here.”

“Were you going to tell me?”

“That I’m pregnant? Of course I was going to tell you,” she said.

“What do you want to do about that?” he asked.

“Don’t you start in on me too!” she snapped. “Take off your clothes!”

“Misty…” he said.

“Don’t argue with me,” she said, stepping closer. Her voice had changed. It wasn’t pleading, but it wasn’t ordering either. She started unbuttoning her own western style shirt.

“It’s just that your mother is here,” he said.

“She knows what we’re going to do!” The edge was back in her voice. “I told her what we’re going to do! I’m grown up now. It’s none of her business!“

“Don’t pout,” said Bobby softly. “You’re not very sexy when you pout.”

“Please, Bobby.” Now she was pleading. “I’ve been looking forward to this for so long.”

“All right,” he said softly.

She had been looking forward to it. That much was quite plain. She came within about a minute of him penetrating her, and she came hard. Her legs wrapped around him and her arms were tight as he lunged into her. Her nails dug into his back as she moaned, “Ohhhh yessss.”

Three orgasms later she calmed down a bit and lay there while he continued stroking her with his prick.

“I love this so much,” she moaned.

“I can tell,” he said, grinning and kissing her lips.

“You made a baby in me,” she said softly, looking up at him.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“I was too,” she responded. “But the more I think about it, the less upset I am.”

“Why’s that?” he asked.

“Tell … you … in a … minute,” she panted, as her pussy muscles started rippling all along his prick and she had another orgasm.

When she caught her breath she went on like nothing had happened.

“I love you,” she said, looking into his eyes. “I don’t want to marry you, but I love you. And now part of you is growing in me, and I’ll have a beautiful little baby that will be half yours, and I can love him, or love her, for the rest of my life.” She arched against him as he kept stroking. “Maybe I’ll change my mind in a year or two,” she panted. “I don’t know. But I’m not mad at you.”

“I’m glad,” he said.

“I want to feel it, Bobby,” she panted.

“Feel what?”

“I want to feel what it was like when you made me pregnant.”

Within two or three minutes, with her lips locked to his … she did.

Misty didn’t even attempt to put up a pretense and install Bobby in a guest room. Both she and her mother were hard-headed, and Bobby worried about that. Madge said she was going shopping that evening. Her mood was still stiff, but only towards Misty. Apparently she assumed any man would act like a man, regardless of the circumstances. She didn’t seem to hold any of this against Bobby.

Misty was insatiable that night. Each time she got him hard again she did it while moaning that he was leaving the next day, with Jasper, and that she didn’t know when she could have him again. He tried his best to satisfy her and finally, soaked in his sperm, she fell asleep in his arms.

Apparently she was satisfied, because when he awoke the next morning, he was in her bed alone. He got up and got dressed, and found them in the kitchen. Mother and daughter were holding hands and talking softly. He backed up and made a noise, but it didn’t make any difference to them. Madge got up, made him a waffle in an electric waffle iron, and then sat back down to continue their conversation.

It was good to know they’d made up, when he and Jasper got on the plane to fly back to Wichita.

The New Year’s event of 1976 was the wedding of Jill Trimble to Sal Warner on Sunday, the fourth. Christy was her maid of honor and Jillian was her flower girl. Steven, of course, was the ring bearer. Sal had wanted Bobby to be his best man, but Bobby had asked him to choose someone else. He didn’t think it was fair to Jill to have him standing beside Sal while they got married. Since most of Sal’s existence, to that point in time, had been the diner, he’d asked one of his long time customers to stand up with him. There was little fanfare, and only thirty or so guests, but neither the bride nor groom cared about that. They had eyes only for each other. The honeymoon was postponed so that they could spend a week camping at Yellowstone National Park when the weather was good.

On the twenty-third of January, while Bobby was rubbing warm oil on Janet’s distended belly, her water broke.

It had been a surprisingly comfortable pregnancy, at least for the first eight months. She had continued to work and, while her back ached, occasionally, usually at work, she hadn’t had many complaints. They’d stopped having intercourse when she couldn’t find a comfortable position to be in. Even being on her hands and knees got uncomfortable in her eighth month. After that, he simply gave her massages and ran his hands over her body, bringing her release with his fingers and mouth. Leaving her without getting his own satisfaction wasn’t a problem. The twins were only three months along and still wanted him pretty much constantly.

Mirriam had given up trying to talk to her youngest daughters about their impending motherhood. They had adjusted to the fact that they would be mothers and, for them, that was all that mattered. That they seemed intent on living with her, she accepted a lot more readily than she might admit to verbally. She had been a little melancholy, actually, when she had earlier wondered when they’d want to spread their wings, because those wings might take them far away some day.

Bobby drove Janet to the hospital. When he let her out, and said he’d be right in, she told him to go home.

“I can’t do that!” he said.

“While you were getting the car ready, I called Rhonda,” she said. “She’s coming to be with me while I do this.”

“I can’t just go off and leave you alone,” he objected.

“You’ve been here too many times, with too many babies,” she said. She had asked him about all the others, making him tell her, while they made love months back. “I’m going to tell them I don’t know who the father is, and I don’t want you here to start any rumors.”

“That’s silly,” he said.

“No it’s not,” she said. “I may meet a man yet. I’m not so scared anymore, you know. And if I do meet a man, I don’t want him to think that you’re standing in the way.”

“I don’t think you’re thinking straight,” he said.

“You just do what I say, Bobby!” she snapped. Her face twisted as she had a contraction. “And don’t argue with me. I’m having a baby here! You’ll get to see him … or her. You’ll just have to do it at home.”

He didn’t argue with her. He let her hobble into the emergency room, and then parked the car and waited for Rhonda. When she got there and he told her what had happened, she hugged him.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said. “She’s been planning this for months. She wants to be independent about this. It’s important to her.”

“I feel like I’m running out on her,” said Bobby.

“You’ll come around when she gets home,” said Rhonda. “I know you, and she does too. You know she’ll ask for anything she needs, and I know you’ll break your back to give it to her.”

“It just doesn’t feel right,” he said.

“It’s what she wants, Bobby,” said Rhonda.

“Call me if she changes her mind,” said Bobby.

“I will.”

A mere eight hours later, Brie Griswold was welcomed into the world. Her father was never summoned to the hospital.

Brigadoon opened on the twenty-ninth of January, 1976 in Granger. Erica was a wreck as last minute problems were dealt with. Not only was it her first foray into the dramatic arts, but she had big shoes to fill. As the date got closer, people she met in the grocery store, or wherever she was, told her how excited they were to have gotten tickets, or how they intended to do so.

She was quite aware that a number of VIPs, if that was the right term for them, would be in the audience Thursday night. Will and Jake would be there, of course. A special place had been taped off, with room for their chairs, and folding chairs beside them, one for Tilly, and the other for Erica. Additionally, Julia Staffordshire had commandeered the entire front row of seats, in the middle section.

“For people who deserve to be there,” she had said. Erica hadn’t quite known what that meant. She knew that Julia and most of the teachers who had said anything about coming were planning on attending opening night, but there weren’t enough seats in the front row for all of them.

She had wanted the all-school assembly to be done on Thursday, right after the dress rehearsal on Wednesday night. Julia had refused.

“Don’t make their first audience their friends,” counseled the principal. “They can play for the school on Friday. If it goes well Thursday night, they’ll be all fired up for the assembly. If it doesn’t, then use Friday to give them a chance to get their confidence back for Friday night.”

It seemed to make sense to Erica, who had too many other things to worry about anyway.

Now, as she wrung her hands, waiting for something to go wrong, the auditorium filled up with townspeople. People came to her with last minute issues and, by the time she had a chance to look out into the seats again there were only five minutes to curtain. She did a last check of the sound board, at which Terry Caldwell, a senior boy, sat. He would cue all the records being used to back up the singers, since they were too small a town to have a real orchestra in the pit. He was calm, almost bored. He’d done this a hundred times and just wished she’d go away. She pointed to a dial.

“Why is the microphone gain up?” she asked.

“It’s a surprise,” said Terry.

“Don’t play with me, Terry!” she warned.

Just then she heard the microphone being used.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” said a voice Erica knew all too well. It was Emily Emerson, who was in the lead role as Fiona.

“What’s she doing?!” gasped Erica. The curtain was just supposed to open as soon as the overture was done. Terry had that record cued, and it was turning, but he hadn’t dropped the needle on it yet.

“This is the surprise,” said Terry, somewhat smugly.

Erica’s heart dropped. She went to peek out and saw Emily standing there. Her eyes went to the front row. There was Julia. She also saw Bobby Dalton and the Chumleys, sitting there in the front row. Bobby was sitting next to a woman much too young to be Chester Chumley’s wife. Christy Brown was on his other side, with the cook from the diner and the woman he had recently married.

“Welcome. We are so pleased that you all have come to see Brigadoon,” said Emily, as the crowd got quiet. “Before we begin, we’d like to acknowledge some help we got from some very special people.” Emily looked over and saw Erica staring at her from the wings. She smiled brightly.

“The first is our director, Ms. Erica Bradford.” She pointed at Erica and made a “come here” motion.

There was polite applause as Erica stepped out, flushing bright red. She didn’t know whether to go take the microphone away from Emily, or not. She ended up stepping back off stage.

“Two other people we’d like to thank are Mr. and Mrs. Chester Chumley,” said Emily. “I can’t tell why yet, but you’ll find out later.” She seemed to get serious. “But the two most important people we’d like to thank tonight are who we have decided to dedicate this show to.” She looked down. “Jake? Will? Would you two stand up please?”

Erica’s heart almost burst as she realized the horrible mistake that Emily had just made. Both men had only one leg! Neither could stand. They’d be completely embarrassed!

But the kids had planned for all this, completely unknown to their director. A vote had been taken, and all had agreed that Ms. Bradford just didn’t need to know about this, because she’d likely try to stop them.

Tilly went to help Jake stand. She’d been briefed on this, even though Jake hadn’t. And Christy Brown stood from where she was sitting in the front row and went to offer her arm to Will. His face was serious as he looked up at her and Erica saw the woman lean down and say something to him. He looked sideways and saw Jake standing, and almost leapt from the chair. Christy held onto his arm and he turned about halfway around until he could face Jake.

“These two men,” said Emily, “were our unofficial critics while we rehearsed. Mr. Jake Johnson, who most of you know already, was injured in a mining accident. The other man is William Bradford, Ms. Bradford’s brother, who was injured in Vietnam, fighting for his country. They were brave enough to sit in front of us, one night, not knowing what would happen. We learned from them how to be brave enough to do this show for you tonight. Both men donated hours and hours of their time to help us get to the point where we can’t wait to open the curtain.” Emily beamed at the two men as startled silence turned into a ripple of uncertain applause.

“So if it’s good,” said Emily happily, “we just wanted you to know they helped us get that way.” She looked down. “Thank you. We love you.”

Erica’s knees felt weak and she knew she was going to faint. The opening strains of the overture suddenly blared from the speaker right beside her, though, and a shot of adrenaline solved that problem. She turned around to see Terry grinning from ear to ear. He wiped the smile off his face and looked down at the board, trying to look busy. Emily walked back through the break in the curtain and, probably because she was an A student, went to the opposite side of the stage from where Erica was standing.

Then it was under way. Erica thought to go sit by Will, but when she looked, Christy Brown had sat down in the chair beside him. Feeling like things were getting out of control, Erica decided to stay backstage, where she could attack any problems that arose.

It was like a dream for Erica. There were things that happened, and she was involved in them, making decisions and giving instructions, but it seemed like she was floating in the air above all this, watching her body do this. There were problems … missed notes … botched lines … but nothing really horrible. The sets worked like they were supposed to, the kids performed like they were supposed to, the audience went apeshit over Sidney when he paraded down the aisle for the wedding scene, in act one.

She thought she might be able to take a breath during intermission, but there was always something else that needed her attention. She did manage to look out and see how Will was doing. Christy Brown was still sitting with him, and held a plate of cookies she had gotten from the foyer, where the mothers of the cast had prepared refreshments. She saw Will reach out and pick up what looked like a brownie. There was a man she didn’t know standing and talking to Jake and Tilly. He turned and said something to Will, and then walked back up the aisle apparently toward his seat.

Then the second act started, without any direction from Erica. Finally she just sat on a stool, in the wings, and watched as the kids did their thing. Sidney drove the crowd wild with his bagpipes again for the funeral of Harry Beaton, whose unrequited love had married another man. She was so proud of them by the time the curtain closed that she was close to bawling.

Nobody had told her about the tradition of giving flowers to the director, and they had to come get her and pull her on stage after they took their curtain calls. The kids were manic, high on the feel of success. They knew they’d nailed it. The standing ovation didn’t hurt either. That both Jake and Will had stood with the rest, balancing on one leg, until Tilly and Christy reached to support an elbow, made the girls all cry.

Including Erica.

She didn’t know to go up to the foyer and thank people as they left. She intended to go see Will, but never made it, because the crowd came to her. By the time it thinned out, the only person she saw down front that she knew was Bobby. Both Jake and Will were gone.

“Where is he?” she asked.

“I think Christy took him to get ice cream,” said Bobby. “They talked all the way through the show. I had to shush them twice.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked, confused. “They only met once before.”

“Yeah, well, from what I heard, you didn’t know about the dedication either, so don’t feel too bad.”

“I didn’t!“ she squealed. “They snuck that one in on me!”

“You want a root beer?” he asked. He held up a hand. “This is not a date! I know you’re not available.”

She actually grinned at him. Things had gone perfectly. She couldn’t believe how great she felt.

“A root beer float!” she said. “But I’m buying,” she said. “For all your help.”

“All of it?” he asked, looking like he was stunned. “All my help is only worth a root beer float?”

“Don’t try that with me,” she scolded him. “Come on!”

They were halfway up the aisle, her arm in his, her right breast pressed warmly to his arm, when she stopped.

“My coat!” she said.

She ran to get it from back stage. He was already waiting for her by the exit doors. Ten minutes later they were in his car, parking at the A&W.

She finally started to relax. An hour later, as they sat and just talked, Erica wondered if this was anything like a real date. If it was, she decided … she’d been very foolish in the past.

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