Shooting in Hannah - Version Bravo

by Lubrican

Chapters : 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14

Chapter Nine

This was very different for us than the relationship we'd had in the past. It's hard to describe. If you could interview young married couples about the difference they feel between having "married sex" and "having sex specifically to make a baby" I suspect you'd learn some interesting things. Generally, of course, we don't do that kind of interview in this culture. Or anywhere else that I know of. Most people have heard anecdotal evidence, however, of how trying to get pregnant and not being able to can put great strain on a marriage. Sometimes it can even destroy it.

There wasn't a negotiation, as such. Hannah, as the "go between" (in more than one sense) had most of the contact with me, at least initially. That may seem to beg the question, but it's completely understandable. Most men, even under these extraordinary conditions, don't do well with sending their wives off to have sex with another man, especially sex intentionally for the purposes of making her belly swell with that other man's baby.

Then again, the internet is awash with stories, some of which claim to be true, in which exactly that happens, so maybe it's more common than one would think. In this case, though, Austin and I didn't talk about it - ever.

The logistics of things was part of the problem, and Hannah had already been thinking about this long before she talked to me about it. Through contacts in her company, she found out about a position open for a science teacher at the junior high school in Neosho, Missouri. That would put me a little less than two hours from their house, which was located on the east side of Tulsa.

I interviewed for the job and got it.

My new principal introduced me to a lovely, eighty-year-old woman named Bernice, who became my landlady when she rented me a one bedroom house that was even older than she was. I could walk to school, though and it was the very definition of quaint. It was also in surprisingly good condition.

Hannah came to visit me on her own schedule, always alone.

What happened then was also different than it had been in the past. For one thing it was obvious Hannah was thinking of both of "her men" during these times. She always called Austin to tell him she got there safely. If she stayed more than one night, she also called or Skyped with him every evening. Those calls were sometimes an hour long. They never talked about why she was there. They just talked. Hearing her say she loved him was routine. Hearing the adoration in his voice if he was on Skype was also routine. I took care to stay out of his field of view, to make it as easy on him as I could.

Then, after she Skyped with the other man she loved, she'd make love with me. The fact that Austin couldn't father a child on her was why she was there, but it was also clear she was happy about the solution to their problem. Only an idiot could have believed it was just for the purposes of procreation, even if that was the main intent.

At other times we were just brother and sister, talking about things going on in the family, going out to eat together, and things like that. She liked to take little presents back to Austin and on more than one occasion she asked my opinion about what to get him.

But she was there to have sex ... and lots of it. She wanted as much sperm in her belly as it would hold and she held nothing back during our lovemaking.

She teased me a lot. She had a lot of slinky underwear, things she'd purchased after leaving home. She'd wear some of that and stroll around in my apartment, holding her camera. I'll describe one such incident.

"Want to take pictures of me wearing this?" she asked.

"No. I want to take it all off of you," I replied.

"But you can't take pictures of me naked," she pouted. "What if somebody saw them?"

"I wasn't thinking about taking pictures," I said.

Then she did take it all off and sat down in an overstuffed chair that was in the living room. She leaned back and draped both legs over the arms of the chair, exposing every bit of her to my eyes.

"You don't think this would make a good picture?" She sounded hurt, but I could see a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

One time I had a function to attend the Friday night she got there, but she had a key and let herself in. When I got home, she was wearing an apron that said, "Kiss the cook" on the front. That was all she was wearing and she spent what seemed like hours bending over to check the oven and show off her fabulous ass. It turned out the cinnamon rolls she'd made had been done for an hour and that she'd left them in the oven just so she could tease me.

Eventually, though, we got down to business. That meant got into bed. We didn't make love in different positions. It was always with me on top so that, once we were finished, we could prop a pillow under her hips and tilt her vaginal canal so that all my spunk stayed right where she wanted it. There was the occasional time she rode me, but she never allowed me to cum in her that way. I had to be on top of her when I spurted.

That it was no chore for her was clear. I can't count the times she moaned, "I love you, Bobby, and I'm so glad we still get to do this." Her exhortations for me to cum in her, to "Make a baby in me, baby," or other such sweet (anything but) nothings were surely designed, at least in part, to get me to finish and make the donation she was there to get. The fact that she just flat wore me out every time she was there, though, spoke volumes about her willingness to "endure" this process.

Through it all, though, she made it clear to Austin that he was her man. She never teased him, or made any reference to why she was there when she talked to him. The only times I even heard her acknowledge me were the times when she said something like, "Bobby's taking me out to eat and I'll leave from there to come home. I'll call you when I get on the road."

One thing that might have helped Austin was that as soon as she missed a period she stopped coming to see me. Another was that I never went to their house until after she was firmly pregnant. Initially I didn't stay the night, just visiting, having a meal with them or something like that. After her doctor confirmed she was pregnant, his wife didn't stray back to her "other lover."

She had a little girl they named Cynthia Jean and my mother went over the moon. Dad was happy, too, though I could tell he kind of wished for a grandson. They lived far enough away that they only got down there two or three times a year, but Mom said they didn't have anything else to do anyway, since their children had abandoned them. She also started asking questions about why I didn't have a girlfriend and when was I going to get with the program, like Hannah had.

By the time Hannah and Austin were ready to have number two I did have a girlfriend, another teacher who was a single mom. That sounds both simple and normal, but was neither. The father of her child had taken off as soon as he found out she was pregnant. It was a sad tale, especially since she was a bright, cheerful and very pretty woman. Her little boy seemed to scare off suitors, though. Her parents had taken care of him while she went to college but as soon as she was employed that resolved to a more normal life. It turned out she was from Joplin, though, which was just up the road, so I saw her parents frequently. Chris, her six-year-old, lit up whenever Grandma's car pulled into the driveway.

I'm getting ahead of the story, though, so I'll back up a bit.

I knew she had a child before I asked her out. She taught Spanish, just down the hall from my classroom and we saw each other in the teacher's lounge and other places. She had an elfin face with almost startlingly blue eyes in a round face framed by coal black hair. She was also barely over five feet tall, so she was as different from Hannah as a girl could be. Her name was Phoebe.

It was because of Hannah, in fact, that I decided to ask Phoebe out. Hannah had been coming up to see me for about three months, trying for number two. The weekends weren't cooperating with her cycle this time, and my sperm was entering her on the margins of her peak fertile times. She was tracking her body temperatures and all sorts of other things I didn't know anything about and if her ovulation happened on a Tuesday there wasn't much we could do about it. Still, I hadn't been in a serious relationship with anybody and making love to Hannah reminded me of how much I'd been missing. I had weathered the sudden halt to having a lover when Cynthia began her gestation. Now that carnal bliss had returned to my house, I didn't look forward to the time when it would inevitably stop again. I felt like having a girlfriend would help me transition to a more normal life.

I had actually been interested in Phoebe for a while, but had never done anything about it. So I decided to ask her out on a date.

When I did that, I thought I did so in a very normal way. We were in the teacher's lounge at the time.

"Hi," I said. "I've been thinking. You want to go out sometime?" I asked.

She cocked her head and studied me.

"Why?" she asked.

"I don't know. To eat dinner?" I suggested.

"Why?" she asked again.

"Surely you get hungry now and then."

"I don't know. This is kind of sudden," she said.

"You think so? I guess we have only known each other for two years."

She studied me some more.

"I have a little boy," she said.

"I know. His name is Chris," I replied. "He draws pictures that you put up in your room."

"You've been in my room?" Her eyebrows went up.

"I confess I looked through the window in the door a couple of times," I said. "I assumed the crayon drawings on the wall weren't made by your students." I thought about some of the shenanigans the kids in that school had been involved in. "I could be wrong," I added.

"You're not wrong." She went back to her original question, but added a qualifier. "Why now?"

I was getting mildly frustrated. We had been on a nodding acquaintance for two years and she'd always been pleasant. I began to think there was something wrong with me and she was debating whether to ignore that flaw or not.

"If you don't want to go out it's okay," I said. "I didn't think you were in a relationship with anybody."

"I'm not."

"Well I'm not, either. Imagine that! A guy who isn't in a relationship asking a woman out who also isn't in a relationship." I admit there was a tinge of sarcasm in my voice.

"What about that blonde woman I see you with?"

That gave me pause. I didn't think anybody had noticed Hannah and me together. We left the house when she was visiting, of course, but we didn't spend hours window shopping or engaged in public recreational activities. Most of her time in Neosho was spent naked, under me, or lying with a pillow under her hips, trying to get one of my little swimmers to track down one of her eggs.

"Do you mean Hannah?" I said.

"Is Hannah blond and beautiful?"

"Hannah is my sister," I said.

"Oh." Her face relaxed a little.

"I didn't know you'd seen us together," I said.

"It was at Romano's," she said. Romano's was an Italian restaurant in town.

"She likes Italian," I said. "Does Chris?"

"Chris wasn't with me that night. Ron Taney asked me out to dinner." Ron Taney was the gym teacher and coach at the Junior High School.

"I thought you said you weren't in a relationship," I said.

"I'm not. He just thought what most men think."

"It's probably none of my business, but what was that?"

"You're right. It isn't any of your business."

"Okay, then," I said. "Nice talking to you."

I turned to leave and she said, "Wait."

I turned around.

"She's really your sister?"

"My one and only. She's a year older than me and still thinks she can boss me around."

"It was obvious you were in love with ... I mean that you love her."

"We grew up together and have a lot of fond memories," I said. "She and her husband live in Tulsa. We get together once a month or so."

"I'll go out with you," she said, abruptly.

"I am glad," I said.

"But there are rules."

"Rules?" I felt my eyebrows go up.

"I'm not interested in an ... adult ... relationship."

I stared at her. I couldn't keep my mouth shut.

"Look, I know we're surrounded by seventh and eighth graders, but we are adults."

"If you're just looking for sex, then this won't work out," she said.

"Now we have to go out just so I can find out why you feel that way," I said.

"It's just the way things are at this point in my life," she said.

I didn't have to think about it. She was the most interesting woman I'd met in a long time.

"Okay," I said. "Deal."

She looked surprised, or maybe a little uncomfortable.

"Really?"

"Really."

She bit the left hand side of her lower lip between very white teeth. I'm sure it was an unconscious reaction as she thought.

"Okay," she finally said.

"You pick the time and place," I said.

She looked guarded.

"I'll need to bring Chris," she said, her eyes narrowing.

"Oooo." I winced. "You're going to put me under that kind of scrutiny on a first date?" I grinned. "Then let him choose the place."

She actually smiled. I felt like I'd overcome a fairly substantial obstacle.

"In that case, it will be Chuck E. Cheese's in Joplin," she said.

"I'll bring quarters," I said.

"You buy tokens there," she informed me.

And that was how I arranged a first date with the woman who would eventually become my wife.

That last sentence makes it sound simple, but it wasn't. Not by a long shot. My relationship with Phoebe was just as complicated as the one I had become embroiled in with Hannah. And yes, I'm aware that most people wouldn't say they became "embroiled" in a relationship with their sibling, but you already know how different that relationship was than what is considered usual.

Phoebe was mistrustful of men in general, based on how she was abandoned by one. She was specifically mistrustful of men who took an interest in her as a woman.

She got along fine with a man as long as he was simply a colleague, or the only likely interaction would be either platonic or even dismissive. But when a man started paying attention to her of a romantic nature, her radar flared and her defenses went up. She didn't display a few troops marching around with small arms at the ready in their hands. She was more like the Russians on May Day, parading missiles and artillery, showing the big stuff that would protect a whole nation. Her frankness about how there wasn't going to be any "adult relationship" stuff going on is an example.

That said, she still had the same need for intimacy with another human that's coded into all our DNA. She had some intimacy with her son, of course, but she knew what she was missing and some part of her wanted to reach for that, just like that part of me was reaching. She was just scared to seek that out.

There's an old joke, or imaginary scene or whatever you want to call it in which the pretty young heroine is being seduced/molested by the moustache-twisting bad man, and when things get to the really serious part her dialogue goes like this: "Don't! Stop!" They are delivered as two, clearly negative words, and their repetition announces her desire for this behavior to cease, and for him to leave both her and her virginity alone. As he continues to kiss her and stroke her, however, her body responds and begins to be aroused. Her protestations remain the same, but the distance between them lessens. She still says "Don't!" and "Stop!" in just as anguished a voice, but the pause between them begins to muddy up until, as he finally slides into her and starts fucking her she's passionately inflamed and is yelling, "Don't stop, don't stop, don't stop!"

Phoebe was still clearly separating her "Don't!" and her "Stop!" when she first agreed to go out with me. I was a gentleman, though, and my moustache wasn't long enough to twirl, so she was safe.

When I picked Chris and her up for our 'date' to go to Chuck E. Cheese she didn't look tense, or like a woman who was trying to keep her distance from me. When she opened the door to my knock the first thing she said was, "Do I need a purse?" I thought that was an interesting thing for a woman to ask a man. No woman had ever asked me that before.

"I have no idea," I said. "Is there anything in your purse you might need?"

"I'm hoping I won't need pepper spray," she said.

I thought it was a joke, but she didn't smile.

"Not for me," I assured her. "I'm paying, though, if that's what your question was about."

"Okay," she said. She called out to her son, who came tearing through the house from somewhere in the back and asked if it was time to go. Then he stopped and stared at me.

"He has hair on his face, Mommy!" he blurted.

Phoebe looked at me.

"He's seen men with beards, but never met one."

I knelt on one knee and addressed the little boy.

"It just grows there," I said. "Do you know what shaving is?"

He looked at his mother.

"Like what you do to your legs?"

I had this quick image of Phoebe in the bathtub, surrounded by suds, with one leg up out in the clear and a razor in her hand. Chris came into the bathroom at that point which, in this little fantasy, was completely normal. Seeing his mother naked was no big deal to either of them.

"Yes," said Phoebe, breaking my train of thought.

"I don't like dragging a sharp blade over my face," I said to Chris. "I'm a scaredy cat. I'm afraid I'll cut myself."

He looked at his mother and then back to me.

"Mommy could do it for you," he said. "She never cuts herself."

I wasn't surprised by his innovative way of thinking. Kids often come up with simple solutions to complex problems. Most of them don't work, but they try.

"She'd have to do that every day," I said. "It keeps growing. Someday hair will grow on your face, too."

"Yuck," said the boy.

"Do you still want to go, even though he has hair on his face?" asked Phoebe. My heart sank a little. Was she going to let a six-year-old put the kibosh on our whole relationship?

"It's okay," he said. "I'll just play."

I assumed that meant he felt like he could stand it, because he could keep his distance from the "hairy man" and thus avoid having to feel "yucky."

"Then let's go," said Phoebe.

It was September, and the days were warm, though the nights were starting to cool down. She had on a nice pair of white, cotton shorts, and a blue paisley blouse. The shorts showed off lightly muscled, tanned legs Her sandals showed that her toenails were the same turquoise color as her fingernails. Her hair was simply tied back in a ponytail, as opposed to up, like she usually wore it at school.

Chris had an electronic device of some sort and he ignored us as he sat in the back in a booster seat his mother had installed. Phoebe looked mostly straight ahead or out her side of the car. I decided to let her do that and left the radio off so it would be quiet in the car. It was about ten minutes into the ride before she said anything.

"Other than your sister I've never seen you out with any women."

Don't ask me why, but I decided to keep things on a frivolous level.

"I was raised by monks and tend to adhere to their celibate lifestyle," I said.

"I wouldn't think monks would want to raise a girl," she said, obviously referring to my sister.

"There was a convent next door," I came up with.

She'd played along, but apparently didn't want the game to last.

"There were times when I thought you might be gay."

I swerved when my head turned her way, but not too badly.

"I'm not gay," I said.

"I don't have anything against people like that," she said.

"That's very tolerant of you," I said.

She sat there for five more minutes, looking out her window most of the time.

"I don't know how to do this," she said, suddenly.

"This?" I probed.

"Go on a date," she said.

"Just be yourself," I responded.

"Myself doesn't go on dates," she said, still looking out her window.

"I thought you went out with Ron."

"That was a mistake."

"And you're afraid this will be a mistake, too," I guessed.

She finally looked at me.

"I've only had one boyfriend my whole life. And he abandoned me."

"I'm sorry."

"All he wanted was sex. I didn't know that then, but I do now."

"You were young," I said.

"Men think that because I have a little boy, I'll hop into bed with them," she said.

"Ahhh," I said. "I apologize for the whole gender. I admit most of us are pigs."

"I agree."

"I went to a county fair one time, and there was this girl there who had a pig. Or a hog. I don't know the proper term. It was huge, but it followed her around like a puppy. She'd trained it to do tricks."

"So you're saying pigs can be trained," she said.

"I don't know what I'm saying," I said. "I'm not too good at this dating thing, either."

"When was your last date?" she asked.

"That's complicated," I said, thinking about Hannah. There were times when I felt like I was dating my sister.

"How complicated can it be?"

"I dated women in college," I said. "But none of them wanted to commit to anything serious. I wouldn't classify any of them as official girlfriends."

"Have you had one since coming here?"

"No."

"Why not? You seem like a normal guy."

"And you seem like a normal woman," I pointed out.

"I already told you why I'm wary of men," she said.

That left me trying to figure out how to explain why I avoided women ... until I asked her out.

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