Welcome to my latest series, mashing up a few more tropes. This one turned out to be a crazy ride, so get ready for something that ends quite unlike it begins.
One thing you can be sure of, even though this is Literotica, and this story could easy veer off into… THERE, it does not in fact, go THERE. So either don’t fear, or don’t get your hopes up, whichever your preference.
Lastly, as always, I am not going for deep truths or gritty realism. The aim for me is a plausibly ridiculous course of events.
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Guilty Pleasures – Four
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To say that the end of the cruise was weird was underselling it. It was almost entirely surreal. Dinner together that last night had been terribly uncomfortable for everyone, as far as I could tell. Not one word was spoken about what had happened. My eyes even managed to behave themselves for the first time since Anne had walked into my stateroom.
But there was this almost hysterical edge to the evening, with every joke, every funny story getting gales of borderline desperate laughter.
I sat with Becca on the flight back. Anne and Mary’s parents had used miles to get them to Ft. Lauderdale and back, and were on another airline. Carol sat a row ahead and on the other side. Becca and I had a tranquil ride, mostly reading our books. We did spend about a half hour talking about her classes for the Fall, and the internship she had on campus for the summer. It meant that she was staying on campus, instead of coming home. Neither of us commented on why that might be a little more… tranquil.
Lots of Becca’s friends were staying in the Chapel Hill area for the summer. Some were taking classes, others were working. Becca pointedly did not say anything about our fellow cruisers’ summer plans, but I already knew that they were going to be staying around.
When we finally got home, Becca did not stay at home overnight, which I took to be an editorial decision. She was rooming with Mary over the summer, and that meant she was choosing to go spend her time with her friend. The father in me found that comforting. I would not have wanted to mess up any friendships.
I figured that if I made it to lunch the next day without a call from a homicide detective about either Mary’s or Becca’s corpse, I could go back to just worrying about my own relationship with my daughter.
*
The next Saturday dawned clear, sunny, and warm but not scalding hot. It was a perfect day for a pool hangout, and I wondered apprehensively if those marvelous days of enjoying my daughter’s company were no more. Becca never called ahead, or asked permission. My house was hers as well, and I had always made that clear to her, along with the fact that she never needed to give me a heads up. I just was always prepared.
As usual Becca arrived with a crowd of hangers on. I relaxed a little as kids streamed in.
But conspicuous in their absence were the trinity…
As I was setting up the grill for later work, Becca brought two new faces, both young, attractive, and male, to introduce to me. Carl and Benny were in Becca’s dorm for the summer. It was not hard to surmise from their nervousness about me, their slightly adversarial nature with each other, and most alarmingly from Becca’s pointedly defiant attitude toward me, that one or the other (please God, not both) were going to be a worry for me in coming weeks.
She shooed them off after the introductions, but remained with me. She was giving me the chance to issue some fatherly words of caution as was my usual procedure when she introduced me to new boys. I was not about to fucking take that bait that afternoon, though. Not given recent events. I could not tell if Becca was disappointed I hadn’t stepped into the trap, or pleased that I was sufficiently cowed.
I wasn’t that cowed. If I detected signs of growing closeness, I’d take the hit and dispense the fatherly advice. I always did. I had fucked up, but I had not abdicated my responsibilities.
But I did ask idly about Anne, Carol, and Mary.
“They all were busy today, Dad,” came the flat reply.
Hoo boy.
Carol occasionally had team things to take care of, but Anne and Mary had never in history been too busy for a pool hang. I sensed I was not the only one receiving a not so gentle message that day.
*
But the next weekend, another pool hang went off without a hitch, and Carol, Anne, and Mary were all in attendance, as if nothing had ever happened. My eyes were not quite so well-behaved as they had been in the immediate aftermath of getting caught, but no one made an issue of it. I tried to ogle Stephanie instead, and succeeded for the most part.
I was sure that all three of my… problems were aware I could not entirely keep my eyes off them, and I was quite sure that none of them minded. I found myself with foreboding feelings about that.
Carl and Benny were around to infest the festivities again, but neither seemed to have closed any kind of deal with my daughter, in any way. In fact, a third new face had come along, James, or Jim, or something like that, to further complicate matters. I was glad my daughter was not leaping into a new relationship just to piss me off, but I did not like feeling that she was at the center of an impending feeding frenzy either.
Regardless, I felt like I was fully back in my daughter’s life, if not quite back in her good graces. The party was fun, even if I did have to leave for a few minutes to buy more eggplant for vegetarians and five beers disappeared from my fridge while I was gone.
I made no mention of the fact.
*
Work was… work. We had a critical component we needed to complete a production design for. My team’s prototype was twice as big as it needed to be. Most of the work was supposed to have been done in my absence on the cruise, but I had to throw out much of my team’s efforts when I got a good look at them. They were on the right track, and had done some good work, but the most brilliant circuit layout in the world is useless if the component is two inches too large to fit in the fucking box.
I came home that afternoon, glad we were in a heat wave. I changed immediately into my trunks. (My backyard is pretty private, but with a daughter, I had never gotten into the naturalist thing back there, even when I lived alone.)
Ten minutes after closing the garage door, I was lying back, listening to Bon Jovi, and cracking open a beer.
I heard a knock at the side gate. I looked over to see Mary first peeking around the wooden gate, then coming entirely into the yard and closing it behind her.
Alone.
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
At least she wasn’t in a bikini, but what she had on instead was not really much better. She had pink cotton duck shorts with a high, tight waist that were cut very high in back, high enough that when she turned to close the gate I could clearly see a good thumb’s-breadth of soft ass peeking out. Up top she had on a pale, pastel-colored plaid button-down shirt with short sleeves and the tails knotted below her breasts, leaving a wide expanse of bare belly.
Mary usually dressed in a fairly body-positive manner that showed off her positive body, but this was a bit extravagant, even for her.
I had had two damned weeks since the cruise to get my shit together about these girls. I should have felt calm and ready to put an end to whatever Mary had in mind, not that I didn’t know what that was already.
Should. Have.
My dick instantly made known that it was in favor of whatever Mary’s plans were. And I didn’t even have a shirt to pull down over the swelling front of my trunks.
“Hello, Mary,” I said, as casually as I could. “Becca isn’t here.”
“Oh, I know,” Mary said with a smile that shone with a false innocence. “She just started a four-hour shift this afternoon, and has a date real soon after she gets off work.” She came over toward me, pretending not to look at my lap. “So I know she won’t be coming by to see you tonight, and I thought you might be lonely.”
She sat at the foot of my chaise as I drew my legs up and to the side.
“Mary, maybe this is a bad idea?” I said uncomfortably.
“I’m not sure you believe that,” Yancey’s daughter said softly, looking down openly at my waist, where I had tentatively raised the thigh toward her to obscure things.
“I thought we agreed this was better to be a one-time thing, Mary. Right?”
“Yes.”
“So, um…” I trailed off.
“Because our one time wasn’t really done when we sufferedBeccus Interruptus, was it?” Mary said, rather than asked, firmly.
She had a point, my vile male appendage put in.
“I’ve been thinking of not much else since then, except for the feel of that cock of yours swelling and about to burst inside of me, then having everything cut off in a panic,” she said, inching toward me along the chaise.
I’ll admit that I had emptied my balls a few times since the cruise, thinking of that interrupted impending orgasm as well. None of those times were anything beyond a pale shadow of what I had been about to experience.
She could see it in my eyes. She knew she had me, and I wondered why I wanted to play-act any more.
“I guess we really should not leave a job undone,” I said. “It is important to finish what you start,” I added, leaning over to kiss her, gently at first.
“Absolutely,” Mary said firmly, her hand resting on my thigh, already sliding up the loose leg of my trunks an inch or so. “But I can’t see trying to pick up exactly where we left off. I think we should start over at the beginning.”
Oh hell…
Still kissing her, I reached out and my hands stroked up her sides. After a brief but marvelous caress of her outer curves, I slid my hands over the front of her boobs and swiftly tugged at the knot of her shirt tails. As far as I could tell, not a single button was buttoned on the front.
The knot was really tight however, and I found that I was struggling to loosen it. I dug in my fingers and pulled. It started to loosen, but this was ridiculous.
“Given your obvious plan, I would have thought you might have tied this a little more loosely,” I teased.
“Ha! I wanted both of us to see plainly how committed to this thing you were,” Mary smiled, pressing her chest forward. This child was seriously devious.
No, whatever she was, no matter how young, she was not a child. Never had being inescapably trapped been so (mildly) reassuring.
I slipped a finger into a loop and the shirt suddenly slid loose of the knot. I leaned back to make sure I could see as I spread the front of her blouse open to reveal those scrumptious, braless boobs. Mary just smiled like a cat with a dish of cream as my hands took them in their grasp.
My attempt to bend and suckle on a dark peak was made more difficult as Mary was equally determined to untie my own drawstring and push my trunks off. A gentleman should let the lady have her way, I guessed, and gave up my suckling briefly to lift up and let her complete her task. My happy erection bobbed free. Naked, I returned to my suckling activities.
Mary clearly liked what I was doing, and she let me play for a few minutes, first one hand, then the other, idly making sure my cock wasn’t out in the open for nothing. I soon had her squirming, and I hadn’t so much as touched her shorts yet.
“Oh this is so nice,” she piped up, tilting my chin upward. “But I have been thinking about you all day, knowing I had this opportunity, and I want to get back to our interrupted activity.”
Oh, hell no.
“Not yet,” I shot back with a grin. “You are just going to wait to get fucked a little longer. There is something else I didn’t get to do, and I’m hoping it will make the main event even better for you.”
“That’s not… Hey!” Mary squealed as I pounced on her, pushing her back into the chaise and tugging at her shorts. They were tight on her, and even after working the zipper open, I had to struggle to work them off her wriggling form. I was both glad and unsurprised at this point to see that she had not bothered with panties.
Tossing her shorts away, and wincing because my throw almost sent them in the pool, I grinned and dove my face down to her belly and began kissing and tonguing her cute, deep, slightly off-center navel.
“Oh,” Mary gulped, catching my intent now, “well, if you are going to do this, I can be a little patient. They both said you were really good at going down.”
That actually stopped me. I looked up at her. “‘They?'”
Mary looked little sheepish, something I had not seen in a good long while. “Well, after we had a few days of extreme cattiness, the three of us… notes were compared.”
Good grief. Not only was I going to hell, I was already there, and unlikely to get out.
But what a way to go.
I went back to work, circling her fiery red pussy with lips and fingertips. She was going to be made to wait for…
“Oh no, Mister H,” she said, grabbing my head. “They said you like to tease forever. But I am so fucking dying already. Please don’t do this to me!” She tugged me to the side, away from the lush inner thigh I was feasting on, and in deeper.
I had literally never been with someone who had a scouting report. I grumpily observed that it took away from the spontaneity of it all.
But not the pleasure.
I inhaled briefly, and then dove my lips into her curly pubes. She tasted divine, of course. I think all women do. But she was different from Carol, and worlds from Anne’s crazy savoriness. And she was definitely more than a little turned on. Everything was soaked down there and I grinned happily as I plunged my tongue into her depths.
“Yessss,” Mary breathed almost immediately, pushing her hips up and toward me. I took the opportunity to reach under with both hands and grab her soft, round ass, giving it a good squeeze and my tongue worked around inside her. “Yeeeeesssss.”
After another hard squeeze that made my cock jump with how nice her body was, I slipped one hand out from under her ass and slid its middle finger up inside her. As I curled it up inside her, I dragged my tongue along and up to flick over her hood.
Her clit itself was almost tiny, but hard as a dried pea. Not that it was remotely dry. And she was most appreciative of my attention to it. She squealed with an almost guttural glee. I tilted my eyes upward toward her, and whispered, “Careful! Neighbors…”
She bit her lower lip swiftly to cut off any further noise.
Of course, I then instantly put on a full-court press, flicking her bud and tickling her insides while humming with as much vibrato as I could muster. Her attempts at silence were blown to smithereens, just as I had wanted.
“Oh sheeeeeeeeet,” she gasped. “I’m going to die here…”
Just the Little Death, Mary. Just the Little Death.
The Little But Very Loud Death, in fact. Privately, I knew my neighbors to the left were out of town, while the ones to the right always worked late. I’m just evil and wanted to put a little scare into Mary for coming over and reminding me how hapless a man I was.
I could have pushed her to a second wave of bliss once her first began to subside, but I kind of was impatient to get back to our two week oldcoitus interruptus as well.
“Holy shit, Mister H!” Mary blubbered as my face rose from between her thighs. “That was as advertised! Better maybe!” I just looked at her with an expectant expression, eyes boring into hers. Her wild-eyed expression cleared and she returned my gaze. “Time to get back into it, isn’t it?” she asked happily.
“I like to finish a job,” I said. I grabbed the throw cushion from behind Mary and set it on the rough concrete of the pool patio. My old knees needed protection. I set those knees on the pillow, at the side of the chaise, and Mary let me guide her to sit on the edge of the side, her legs to either side of my worshiping form. I could tell she wasn’t exactly sure what I was up to, but willing to let me set the agenda.
I bent low and once again licked her soft mound until I drew a sharp inhalation of pleasure. At that, I began kissing my way back up her belly to those big, delicious, miraculously bouncy tits, devouring each in turn while making silly noises.
“You really love my boobies, don’t you, Mister H?” she giggled. A perceptive girl…
Impatiently, I rose further and pressed the length of my more than ready cock against her hot, wet, and far past ready pussy. We both just writhed like that for a few moments, pressing ourselves together and getting me well and truly lubricated.
“Now,” Mary breathed and reached down to guide my cock with just her fingertips. She pointed me down and pressed lightly, sinking my tip inside her. I looked down between us and watched in marveling fascination as I made my cock disappear into that amazing, confining, utterly inappropriate-to-be-fucking slit.
I could feel guilty later.
Mary rested her hands on my shoulders, and I held one hip, squeezing a breast with my free hand as I started slowly stroking inside her, with short thrusts at first that kept me well and truly buried in her. She bit her cute little lip like she did, when I found something that she really liked, and I increased the length of my strokes.
Her pussy felt divine, as tight as I remembered, and warmly welcoming. Each passage of my cock sent thrills up my spine, and I kept my pace slow to enjoy each thrust individually. I could and would blend them together in a while, with a faster pace.
I buried myself to the hilt after the warm-up, and paused there. I kissed Mary, softly at first, but she was having none of that and practically inhaled my tongue. Almost against my will, my hips began racking again. My own rising urgency made it hard for me to keep a rhythm, but I forced myself to stay in control. I did let go of that fabulous boobie and grabbed her ass with both hands, pulling her even closer to the edge and harder against me.
“How are you doing?” I asked with a grin. “I’m I hitting you right where you liked it last time?”
“This is amazing,” Mary panted in reply. “You aren’t quite setting off the fireworks like last time, but that’s okay. This is so hot.”
“It’s not okay,” I playfully scolded her. “I am not putting in… all this… effort,” I grunted as I slammed into her extra powerfully for a few strokes, “for you… to get less than… everything out of it!” I slowed my efforts.
“Want me to get back on top?” Mary asked, a little eagerly.
“Selfishly? No,” I snorted. “It takes… a lot less… work to slam into you like this,” I chuckled, illustrating my point. “But you can help me. Rock you hips back and forth so I’m sliding along the fuse for those fireworks. Push me away a little if you need me to go shallower. Tug on me to make me change my own angle of attack.”
Jesus, I was back to instructing again…
“Whether the man is on top, or you are, or something in between like this,” I went on regardless, “nothing says you don’t have ways to guide things for your pleasure as much as mine… his.”
Mary nodded a little breathlessly and began to twist her hips. I saw her eyes suddenly widen, and I knew she had felt it. Her hands grabbed my shoulders tight and she leaned backwards, arching her back and supporting herself on me. I felt a surge of new excitement as her insides clamped down on me with sudden new desperation.
There we go.
I lengthened my strokes, pulling perilously close to all the way out before each stroke. Deliriously good as each passage felt, I needed to be careful not to fall out and mess up our mutual rise. I could feel us both beginning to rush toward a hopefully simultaneous fulfillment, and I wanted nothing to interrupt our journey now.
“Oh my fucking God!”
I had thought that there could be nothing worse than the voice of your daughter, discovering you in the middle of fucking her best friend.
Turns out, the voice of your good friend discovering you in the middle of fucking her twenty year-old daughter… is way worse.
My vision, which had narrowed to the gorgeous redhead whose legs I was between, widened back out, to encompass the shocked form of her mother, still dressed from work, who had wandered into my backyard, via the side gate.
My mind absolutely gibbered with panic. How had I not even thought to worry about this version of getting caught? My body betrayed me and I’m pretty sure I drove twice more into Mary before my brain’s desperate pleas finally convinced my hips to stop goddamned thrusting. I tried to pull out of her then, but Mary, who of course knew that voice all too well, also panicked, and slammed herself against me, clinging for dear life.
Trapped with Mary’s face buried in my neck, my wide eyes locked with Wanda’s blazing green gaze.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
Fuuuuck.
“Wanda!” I babbled. “Uh, hi! I… uh…” There were no words. It had been an astounding feat for me to utter what noises I had.
“Mom!” gasped Mary, twisting away from me as she realized that burying herself in my arms might not be the actual haven at which she had instinctively clutched. “I… we…”
Suddenly, Mary was clutching her hands over her boobs and yanking her knees up to her chest, legs tight together. That left me kneeling there beside the chaise, my bobbing, angry, and bereft erection, dripping with her daughters juices, in full view of Wanda.
Her gaze was literally withering, as I have never lost an erection that fast. I broke my own paralysis and sat back on my haunches, covering myself below the waist at least with the dubious cover of the chaise.
“Mom, I…” Mary started to say desperately, but Wanda cut her off.
“Stop! Not another word,” she said, the anger in her voice leavened only by the incredulity. “Get dressed. Go home. We have so much to talk about, young lady.” Wanda paused to gather herself with a visible effort. “Your father is out of town in Atlanta tonight. We might possibly not have to tell him about this… depending.” She glared at me with those final words. It was momentarily hard to be cowed. upon hearing such sudden, unlooked for hope. But I managed to be cowed anyway.
Mary lunged for her clothes, wordlessly leaping into her shorts. She donned her shirt, doing up all the buttons and at least not looking like the slutty dream she had when she had first come into my yard. Not that it cut any mustard with Wanda. She just shook her head at her daughter. “Clark and I are going to have… a discussion,” she snapped at Mary. “I will be home later. Wait. For. Me. There.”
Mary shot a glance at me that was simultaneously apologetic and imploring, and which did her no favors with her mother, before practically sprinting out of my yard.
Wanda looked back at me, still cowering behind the chaise. “Put your pants on, for God’s sake,” she snorted, looking pointedly away from me. As I scrabbled for my trunks, keenly away that I had no shirt out here to wear, Wanda’s shoulders slumped and she stepped toward one of my big outdoor wicker chairs. She plopped down on it almost despairingly, snapping, “And pour me a goddamned drink.”
A drink? Now?
Well, it occurred to me, were I in a similar situation, I would be experiencing either a murderous rage, or a desperate need for a stiff one. Hoping that alcohol would be enough and Wanda wouldn’t opt for both, I yanked at my trunks and turned toward the house.
I paused as I finally got the suit up over my ass, and turned back to Wanda. “Chardonnay okay?” I asked tentatively.
“Bourbon, you ass,” came the acidic reply. Wanda seldom drank the hard stuff.
Altering my intended destination from kitchen to living room, I poured two fingers into two lowballs from my best currently open bottle, a Basil Hayden’s single barrel, tossed in some ice from my ice maker, and proceeded with as much haste as my reluctant feet could muster to return to Wanda. I handed hers over and sat in the next chair.
She took a big slug and inhaled softly at the burn. She looked deep into the glass, then slowly at the chaise across my pool. Finally, she looked up at me.
“Really, Clark? Really?” Wanda asked, almost plaintively.
I met her eyes briefly, before gazing into my own glass. I took an unwisely large gulp myself. The burn felt… deserved.
“How long has this been going on?”
“The cruise,” I said softly. “At the very end. Just the once, and we were interrupted before…” I cut myself off, not wanting to go down the road of explaining how.
“So, since then you’ve been fucking my daughter?”
“No!” I said hastily. “We’ve stayed away from each other. I mean, she came by for a pool hang with Becca and eight other kids last Saturday, but that was it.” My mouth was running away with me. “Then today, she just…”
Do. Not. Throw. Mary. Under. The. Bus.
“We… we decided to finish what we had started,” I said miserably.
Wanda just stared at me, taking another big slug of the whiskey. Anger and incredulity still warred in her eyes as they stared at me. I resumed fretting about not having a shirt. Why hadn’t I grabbed one when I went in for the drinks?
“I know,” I said miserably. “She’s only twenty…”
Wanda snorted. “Let’s say that I am aware she is not… was not a virgin, Clark,” she said acidicly. “I was more focused on the fact that she is my daughter.” She took another sip.
“I know,” I said miserably. “I understand, believe me,” I added, really beginning to wallow in my guilt.
“No you don’t,” Wanda snapped, taking yet another belt. “If anyone was going to fuck you, it was supposed to be me!”
What?
I stared at her. I had not thought my eyes could have gotten wider than they had earlier, but I was certain that they now did.
Wanda clearly realized what she had said, but too late. She looked back at me in shock of her own. We stared at each other, each looking like we had seen a dancing hippo with a machine gun.
“What?” I said out loud.
Wanda looked at me, frozen. That was okay, I was frozen too.
My confusion was exacerbated by the fact that Wanda is… when I first met her, ten years before, she was pretty much a smoke show. Time had since been very kind, in some ways truly benevolent to her, leaving her more like a glowing ember show, but still definitely a helluva show. A few inches taller than her daughter, they share the same buxom build, same curvy hips, and Wanda’s hair has lost none of the coppery brilliance or wavy texture of her daughter’s mane. Her face, with the benevolence of time, is less cute than elegant, and she possesses an earthy confidence that is a joy to hang around with.
I have never had that mysterious reality distortion field that let me ignore Wanda’s looks the way I used to be able to do with Mary. Since I’d known the Franklins, no get together had passed without a good appreciative look or three in Wanda’s direction. I had felt her noticing my glances from time to time. She was well used to them, and had never seemed to mind.
But I didn’t lust after her, and I didn’t fantasize about her. Even once I was divorced, she and Yancey always seemed well and truly solid. And if they hadn’t been, Yancey was my friend. My very good friend.
And I had damned sure never imagined there were any thoughts about me on Wanda’s part! What the fuck was this?
I should have just shied away from whatever glitch those words had been. But what if they weren’t a glitch? I had just had my cock in her daughter, after all.
Fuck.
I ran through the likely scenario: She wished that she had come onto me, in my monstrous loneliness, so that I would not have leapt at Mary? Was any of that even true? Why did all these women who liked me seem so convinced my life was some giant sea of loneliness?
I mean, I was lonely, yes. But I had a pretty good existence.
Wanda clearly looked like she wished she had never spoken a word in her life. She stared at me warily. Not as warily as I was staring at her, now for multiple reasons, but still quite warily. Then she grimaced, and said simply. “Yancey fucked Rebecca.”
Please note, she said Rebecca. Not Becca. Rebecca is my ex-wife.
“What?”
“It was about a year before you guys divorced,” Wanda said apologetically. “I found out about it, and made Yancey cut it off instantly.”
“You didn’t tell me?” I demanded incredulously. I was a sea of suddenly roiling emotions, but in an almost detached way. It was weird, but I could see that none of the myriad unpleasantries in my mind were as intense as I would have expected. “Wanda, why?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, almost meekly. “I knew I should said something. But if I had, you would not have taken it as calmly then as you are now.”
Calmly? Calmly!? I guess I was not feeling the need for violence… Time and all that.
“I wanted to have the chance to see if Yancey and I could repair things. We were pretty rocky at the time, even without the fucking of Rebecca… but I still loved him, or at least I hoped I did. We worked and worked at it, and in most ways, I think we are stronger now than ever. Certainly miles ahead of the doldrums we were in back then. By the time I felt he and I were back on solid ground, I was afraid to tell you, because I’d waited so long.” She grimaced. “Then Rebecca went and divorced you anyway, the stupid bint. And as down as you were, I thought that telling you at that point would have just been cruel.”
As I said, I was calmer than I’d have expected. That does not mean I was calm. “I think I’m going to have to talk to Yancey,” I said, almost to myself.
“Clark! Don’t, um…”
“Easy, Wanda. I am fine. I had already figured out that she must have cheated on me toward the end. I just have proof now. I don’t care enough about her anymore to get too terribly mad. That said,” I finished almost good humoredly, “at some point, Yancey and I need to have a little chat.”
“I just… I don’t…” Wanda said, still uncertain.
“But that still doesn’t explain,” I went on, still almost to myself, “what you meant to begin with.” Don’t think out loud about someone else, right in front of them. Especially not when you don’t really wish to restart a conversation.
Wanda didn’t look like she wanted to restart the thing either. But she also seemed like she did, now that she had. She took a deep breath.
“Like I said, Yancey and I have patched things up, and are mostly better than before. But it just won’t go away. I’ve forgiven him, and he has forgiven himself, I think.” Wanda looked at me seriously. “But we still have the problem. It is an imbalance, if you will. He did it. I didn’t. We can’t quite get past it.”
“You guys seem so happy, so together,” I offered, a little puzzled. I feel like I’m a bit more perceptive than the average guy (cheating wife aside), and I meant what I said about Yancey and Wanda.
“We are,” Wanda said firmly. “But…” she thought a second, “but I win every argument.”
I laughed. “The wife always wins the argument, Wanda. That’s not news.”
“We wives win because the wife is almost always right,” Wanda snorted. “And I am right, of course, almost all the time.” Her grin faded. “But even when I know I’m wrong, when I’m just being bitchy about something, I win. We are not even in our relationship.”
“I see,” I said.
I did not see.
“Back right when it happened, when I was deciding if I should tell you,” Wanda said, a whole lot more hesitant again, “I wondered if the best thing to do, or at least the most satisfying, would be to just hook up with you, so we could both get some revenge.”
“Wanda!”
“Yeah, I know,” she muttered.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “If you have patched things up with Yancey, how are you still even thinking about revenge?”
“I’m not. Not about revenge. Not any more. But… I do still think about how uneven things remain. Yancey had his fun. Whether I forgive him or not. Whether you forgive him or not, he still is one up on me… on us. Not a year goes by where it isn’t occasionally in the back of my mind that there would be an easy way to reset things. To make the field level again.”
I stared at her in final comprehension.
She quirked her lips in a half-smile. “So now you can see why I am a little peeved at my daughter for grabbing a guy I sort of felt I had dibs on.”
And she didn’t stop looking at me. I know that look. I’d seen it from three other women lately, including earlier that day.
Now that her ‘evening up’ strategy was out in the open with me, she was seriously looking to carry through with it!
Oh, shit.
On the one hand, I was now confronted with a beautiful, entertaining woman who was a full woman, my own age and everything–the sort of partner civilized people have. On the other, she had her own, even more nuclear drawback. Whatever the surrounding circumstances, she was married. Married to my friend.
Who was I kidding? I was weak and broken. Repeatedly. How could I resist this new disaster?
I looked at Wanda, really looked at her. She was my friend too, independent of my relationship with Yancey. Too many things could go wrong. I would not take the risk. I would not let her take the risk.
And Yancey, who was a third party and not being consulted, deserved consideration… despite being the one responsible.
But really looking at Wanda was a serious reminder of how attractive, how sexy she was.
I sighed in pain.
“No.” I said, plainly and gently. I realized that I meant it. My self-esteem soared. My dick kind of wept.
“No?” Wanda asked in a small voice.
“I can’t do it, Wanda. I…”
Her face just fell apart. This beautiful woman with the unlooked-for saucy attitude sagged. She looked down at her glass, found it empty save for a few, sad, mostly melted ice cubes, and set it gently on the table. Then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.
Christ!
“Wanda! My God, Wanda. I… I’m sorry! I just don’t think…”
“I get it,” she said, looking up a me briefly, with tear-filled eyes, before burying her face once more. “I get it. I knew my chance was gone, and stupidly said something anyway, making you confirm it.”
“Wanda…” I searched for words. This was a far different reaction than I had bargained for. “I just don’t want to…
“I said I get it!” she almost snarled, though I could tell her anger was not at me. “I’ve seen my daughter, Clark! After being with… that, why would you want to…” She cut herself off with a gasping sob, gesturing somehow incoherently at herself.
Oh, Hell no! I needed to head this off instantly. I leapt from my chair and went to sit on the arm of the one she was slumped in. I grabbed her shoulders and pulled them gently against me. “Stop right there, Wanda!” I said sternly. I sensed that it had already been a bad idea to take her in my arms in the first place, but I followed it up by putting a gentle finger under her chin and tilting her face up toward me. I was under no circumstances going to let my friend have a breakdown over this stupid, idiotic fear.
I looked her intently in the eyes. “We need to be perfectly clear about something,” I went on in the sternest, most serious voice that I could summon. “You need to understand that you are one incandescently hot piece of ass.”
That caught her off-guard and I saw a fleeting hint of a smile. It didn’t last, but I wasn’t done.
I did think it wise to disengage my arm from her and I got up off her chair. I backed away a step or two and knelt down on one knee to bring my face to eye level with her, as she managed to straighten in the seat. “Wanda, ever since I realized where you were going with telling me about Yancey and Rebecca, parts of me have been screaming to just rip your clothes off right now and just fucking revel in you.”
“Oh yeah? Which part?”
Thank God. Her sense of humor had come back. She still wasn’t happy, but she wasn’t crying.
“More than just that one,” I said with total honesty.
Here I was, about to bring up Mary. This start of this conversation had supposed to have been about the daughter, and how Wanda was going to kill me over what she had just seen, right? And I was about to go right back there. Sort of.
“I am not saying no because of anything having to do with Mary.”
“Really? She is the new model, after all,” Wanda grumped.
“She is a sequel,” I smiled at her. I wanted to get back off that subject, however. And to the real point. “I am saying no because of Yancey. I know what he did. You told me. And he and I are still very much going to have that chat. But I won’t… I can’t do this to him. That’s why, much as it is absolutely killing me, I have to say no.”
She stared at me for a long time. I just knelt there, smiling at her and letting my genuine disappointment show.
Please don’t go back to the subject of Mary. Please don’t go back to the subject of Mary.
“I have groceries in my car,” she said at last. “I was on my way home from the store when I saw Mary’s car and…” And I blew up both our worlds. “I better get home before the ice cream melts.”
With that, Wanda just stood, smiled, said thanks for the drink, and walked out my side gate. I could not help but watch hungrily as she went. She was older than her daughter. Her boobs were bigger, but could not possibly be as bouncy as her daughter’s. But ye gods, she had an objectively better ass, and she knew how to move it. And she was moving it for me in punishment as she left.
For years, I had not encountered an attractive woman who seemed remotely interested in me, and now all of a sudden, this embarrassment of riches… and not a damned one of them I could feel anything other than guilty for even looking at.
*
The next day at work went almost well. I did not have to restrain myself from yelling at my team over anything. An important function test went well. Budget numbers came in better than expected. The company’s founder dropped by specifically to see me, delivering an attaboy… and a brutal new project.
Over all, I should have known the day was going too well.
About two o’clock, I was starting to wind the management things up, and thinking about some of my own design responsibilities. It didn’t do to let the underlings think they did more actual work than I did. My phone buzzed in my pocket. I set down my folders and pulled it out.
YANCEY FRANKLIN
Oh shit. While I wanted to have a talk with him about Rebecca, I much, much, much more did not want to have a talk with him about Mary.
At least he had not just shown up at my door with a head of steam…
“Hey Yancey,” I said easily into the phone.
“Hey Clark,” he said back. Then he went quiet for a moment.
“What’s up?” I asked, wincing as I spoke.
“I want you to say yes.”
“Huh?”
“I want you to say yes to Wanda’s idea.”
—————-
Thanks for continuing on this latest ride with me! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. This is the general point in the series where I had planned on ending it in my original outline. Wanda had other ideas. Now, we are less than halfway there, folks. Thanks in advance for your kind votes and favorites, and please take a moment to comment. As always, that’s how I get rewarded and encouraged.