Orchard Flower (Version Bravo)

by Lubrican

Chapter : Prologue | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15

Chapter Eight

If you've ever been in a situation where you were having a whale of a good time, but it also caused some problems, then you know what I was going through. I knew Lynne didn't approve of what was going on. And that made me want to shy away from her. In the good old days, I'd see her every other day for this or that reason, or sometimes for no reason at all. Having that strain between us was one of the unhappy parts of the relationship with Jill that I still couldn't categorize. Nowadays there's a term called "fuck buddies" and looking back on things, that's kind of what we were doing. She had discovered and loved sex, and I was handy and interested too, despite myself.

But you don't tell a fuck buddy you love her.

There was no talk about the future, and that was another down side of things, because I was the kind of guy who thought about the future. As you get older, and there's less future to think about, you think about it more often. From Jill's perspective, she was going to go off to college, which was exciting and interesting. But that meant I was going to return to being celibate, and while I had adapted to that lifestyle pretty easily after Vicky died, I was pretty sure the adaptation would be a bit rockier this time.

Lynne must have been thinking about the future too, because she called me and asked me to come over one day. When I got there it turned out Jill was in town shopping for last minute items to furnish her dorm room with.

"You've been avoiding me," Lynne accused as I came in.

"Guilty as charged," I admitted. "I was afraid things would be awkward."

"She isn't working you out of her system, Bob."

"Yeah, I kind of noticed that too," I said.

"I have an idea."

"Really?" I didn't know whether to be interested or not.

"Ask her to marry you."

I gawked, with my mouth hanging open.

"This isn't some motherly plan to make things the way I think they should be," she said quickly. "I just don't think she's really thought things out. But she'll have to if you ask her to marry you. She might begin to understand that this isn't all just fun and games, and that there are responsibilities that go along with this kind of thing."

"What if she says yes?" Do not ask my why that was my first question. I have no idea where it came from.

"She won't," said Lynne, who apparently missed the possibility that while I was willing to fuck her little girl's socks off, I might be reluctant to make an honest woman of her. Lynne went on without a pause. "It will blow her mind. She's never mentioned marriage to me, in any way, at any time. I don't think she's really thought about it at all. Maybe we can get her attention this way, because I know her initial reaction will be negative, and that will cool her off a little."

"I'm not so sure about this," I said slowly. It seemed like a really crazy idea to me. I mean sex with Jill was unreal enough, but a proposal? From me? That was just plain ludicrous.

It occurred to me then that maybe Lynne was right. It WAS ludicrous, and surely Jill would see that as quickly as her mother and I had.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"You'd better hurry then," she said. "You only have three days left, and if she leaves here feeling the same way about things that she does now, she's going to be distracted at school and neither of us want that."

Things, as it turned out, played right into our hand. When Jill got back and found me there, she told me she wanted to have a picnic, and that she wanted to have it in her old tree house. She'd brought a bucket of chicken back with her, and was ready to go right then and there. She handed me a plastic bag that was too heavy to be holding only chicken, but I didn't find out what was in it until I had followed her up the ladder into the structure. What had seemed so large when it was first built, now seemed cramped, or would have for two people in a different kind of relationship. I found out why the bag was heavy when she pulled out a bottle of wine. Apparently she knew somebody in town who was willing to sell it to her.

We ate in silence for a few minutes before I asked the obvious question.

"Why a picnic here?"

"This is the first place I had a daydream about sex," she said calmly.

"I see," I said, smiling.

"It was about you," she said.

"I see," I said again.

"I was twelve, and I thought everybody would know what I had been thinking. I was sure they would see it on my face. I ran home and didn't come back for almost a week. Do you remember that?"

I shook my head. That had been a long time ago.

"Well I do. I didn't know what sex was, back then, and what I wished for was something smoky and hazy, but I knew it was sex, somehow. When my mother didn't say anything to me, and I finally realized that it didn't show after all, I was amazed. Then one day I saw you looking at me with this half smile on your face, and I wondered if you were thinking that too ... about me. Later I saw you look at Mom the same way. I asked her about it. It was the first time we talked about you as a man, instead of just Bob."

"Wow," I said softly. "Clear back then?"

"Clear back then," she said. "I knew back then that you'd be the first man I had sex with."

This sounded like so much more than some thoughtless fling that I thought of what Lynne had suggested. Red flags popped up in my mind, but the feelings I was having for this woman demanded that some kind of resolution be arrived at. I had been worried that her heart would get broken, but now I was concerned about my own. I didn't work it all out in my head, though. It just came out, though not in the traditional way.

"Your mother thinks I should ask you to marry me," I said.

Her hand, moving a drumstick toward her face, stopped, but only briefly, maybe a second or two, before it continued to her mouth. White teeth tore at the flesh and she chewed while almond shaped eyes examined my face. She swallowed and, so help me, I thought of her swallowing a few days before, out in that pasture, with my prick in her mouth.

"That's not a proposal," she said.

"No, I guess it's not," I agreed.

She was quiet for a few seconds. "I'm glad it wasn't," she said. She looked away.

A breaking heart should make a loud cracking sound. I mean your stomach can announce itself loudly enough for people to hear five or six feet away, but a heart makes no noise at all when it is shattered.

"Oh," I said, my voice dull.

She looked back at me. "It's too soon for that."

I didn't feel quite so devastated.

"You and Mom both insist that I'm going to fall madly in love with some boy at college," she said. "What if that happens?"

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"I don't think it will," she said. "But you two seem so sure about it that I'm a little worried. Even if you had proposed, I don't think I would have given you an answer. Not now. I'll have to think about that for a while."

So much for Lynne thinking her daughter was going off on this sexual tangent willy nilly.

She blinked. "But it wasn't a proposal ... so I'd feel weird thinking about it." She tilted her head at me. "How do you feel about it?"

This wasn't going at all like Lynne had thought it would and I realized I was an idiot for even thinking about this goofy plan.

"I think it's a ludicrous idea," I said.

She grinned. "I figured that's what you'd think." She wiped her hands on a napkin and unbuttoned her blouse. She wasn't wearing a bra under it. "Right now, though, I want to find out what it feels like to have an orgasm in my tree house. Do you think you could help me with that?"

The last time I made love with Jill that summer was one of the most tumultuous things in my life, at least on an emotional level. For one thing I knew it was the last time it would happen that summer, and I suspected it was the last time ever. For another, one of my best friends was leaving the next morning, and might be gone forever. It's not unusual for a child to leave for college and never come back for more than the occasional short visit.

What made it so difficult was that I had, in fact, fallen deeply in love with this young woman. I wasn't sure when or how it happened, but I knew it was the case, and even as I held her naked body in my arms, and her frenzied panting was hot in my ear as she strained up against me, I was in some measure of pain.

She spent the last night with me, at my house, something she had never done before. When she got there she said she'd told her mother not to expect her before breakfast. I didn't ask how that had gone over, and she didn't give any clues. She said we'd eat later and simply got naked. She wanted to make love on the couch for some reason and I, in my emotional downsurge, wasn't going to argue.

I had gotten used to our habit of using timing and coitous interruptus as the only birth control we practiced, and I thought nothing of sliding my naked prick into her hot sheath.

Sometimes Jill just liked to fuck. By that I mean she wasn't looking for an orgasm for herself. She just wanted to make love and it didn't matter if either of us climaxed or not, as far as she was concerned. Then there were times when all she seemed to care about was reaching for that orgasmic ocean wave so she could surf in it for as long as possible. This time, on the couch, was one of those.

Her first orgasm took me by surprise, because it was causing her to whimper and buck up at me within a minute of sliding into her. I hadn't even gotten a rhythm going yet, and was still just enjoying the feeling of being inside her. When I realized what was going on I went in deep and rubbed her clitty with my pubes for a while. Her nails in my side told me to keep going and helped me in terms of choosing a direction in which to move.

Now a guy can't help but feel pretty good when his lover gets off that quickly. What made this one even better was that her eyes were wide open the whole time and she was just staring at my face. Both of us closed our eyes quite often during an orgasm. Maybe it was hard not to or something. But having her gaze into my eyes like that seemed to melt us together somehow. My own orgasm surprised me next. Suddenly I was there.

"Oh Jill," I groaned, not happy that it would be over this quickly.

Her legs whipped up and wrapped around my waist, squeezing me with muscles that could do a hundred yards in eleven or twelve seconds. I pulled ineffectually against them, trying to pull out, but realized that wasn't going to happen. Not this time. At the same time her hands came to my face and pulled me down for a long, lip bruising kiss.

I gave up caring and fountained inside her, grunting into the kiss as her legs squeezed me even harder. Just two days before she had deep throated me, milking my prick for its first load, saying it was a bad time for it to go off accidentally inside her. That hadn't happened a lot. I usually had plenty of time to warn her and take precautions, such as they were, but she had made a point of telling me about it then. When we calmed down enough to talk, I asked her what was up with the leg lock.

"Tonight it all goes inside me," she said. "I don't get any more of this for a long time, and when I leave tomorrow, some of you is going with me."

"Isn't that a little foolhardy?" I asked.

"Maybe," she said carelessly, with the bullet proof attitude that most young people have about dangerous situations. "But this is my last night with you, and I decided to spend it at Burger King."

"What?" I was confused.

"I'm going to have it my way," she explained. Then she dug a finger into my side and said "Old people are so slow sometimes."

Whether she was trying to get me off of her or not, I don't know, but the finger in my side led to that. She sat up and lovingly sucked my prick clean before getting up and walking naked to the kitchen.

"What's for supper?" she asked, opening the refrigerator.

"Hamburgers," I said instantly.

At some point that night, with a warm woman in my bed for the first time in a long time, the pain lessened when panic began to replace it. That girl wanted more than I could supply and there were a couple of times when I imagined us married, and me a wreck ... a sad, old, gray man, bent over, walking with a cane, weighing ninety pounds, and pale as a ghost because she was sucking the very life out of me with her sexual demands.

As I was thinking this she sucked my penis hard again and climbed on to have more fun. I don't think we slept - and dozed is probably a better word for it - more than three hours all night.

Pre-dawn light was coming through my bedroom windows, when somehow, I was hard again and she climbed on, riding me for the second time that night. All the other times she had wanted me on top. We had done some other positions, but only for fun, and not in search of an orgasm.

"One more time, old man," she teased, milking me with impossibly strong and talented muscles.

I looked up at her. She was so beautiful it hurt. All the pain of anticipated separation came back. In less than an hour she'd be gone. I tried to think of anything else, because I didn't want to cry in front of her.

"They found him in his bedroom, a dried out husk, his mummified remains naked," I said, trying to sound like a news anchor. "One theory is that he was the victim of some vampire cult, though others insist it was aliens who were responsible."

"You better not die on me," she said, stopping.

"I won't die," I said. "It may take me a week to recover, though."

"That's fine," she said. "I'll tell my mother to bring you soup for a couple of days."

"Don't you dare!" I said urgently. It was the kind of thing I was sure she would do, just to needle me.

"Then give it to me one more time," she said, leaning over and rubbing a naked breast against my lips. "I told you I want you in me when I leave."

"No kidding, Honey," I mumbled, unable to resist tasting her nipple. "I don't know if I can."

She sat back up and commenced to work those muscles. She had a look of intense concentration on her face, and a bead of sweat popped out on her forehead. I couldn't believe the feeling. It was almost magical.

"Oh Jill!" I groaned, as I felt the urge return. I didn't know if there was anything left in my balls, but if there wasn't they were going to do the dry heaves.

"That's my man," she whispered as, for the last time, I erupted inside her. Her muscles kept working furiously while the rest of her sat, motionless, on top of me.

I didn't go over to Lynne's for breakfast with Jill. I'd had my time, and this day was for Lynne. That Jill understood that was communicated in her last kiss, and the squeeze she gave my hand.

Conversely, when Lynne got back from taking her daughter to college, she pulled in my driveway before going home. Ironically, I had half of one of Jill's pecan pies left, so I dished us both up a piece, with ice cream while she filled me in on things.

What she described was a completely normal eighteen-year-old girl seeing a dorm room for the first time, and being slightly horrified by how small, and how plain and thoroughly used looking it was. But the campus was beautiful and Jill's roommate got there a couple of hours later, so they all had lunch together, courtesy of Lynne, of course. The excitement level was high and it kept Lynne going until she was about halfway back home. She was suffering empty nest syndrome by the time she got to my driveway and gave me a long sniffling hug when she left to go home to her empty house.

It's strange when one's routine gets messed up. Over the years I had settled into various habits involving the horses, weather, television and various other things, each of which had its time and place in my life. It's a little like a big, old pecan tree in the yard. You take it for granted. It provides shade, and maybe some nuts. It's just there. Then a storm comes along and takes some of the branches of that tree and it looks completely different. It also looks like it has been irrevocably changed.

Jill and Lynne had been part of my routine too. Sex with Jill was the storm that changed everything.

The thing is that the tree will heal itself if it isn't too badly damaged. It will grow new branches and leaves and pretty soon it's hard to tell it was ever all torn up.

And once Jill was gone, Lynne and I just sort of slipped back into the old routine. We both got emails and calls from Jill. Mine were long hot descriptions of what she wished we were doing. They were superb beating off material, particularly since in these fantasies of hers we were always bareback, and I always spurted inside her.

She seemed to have taken to college like a duck to water, and reported no problems. She got a job, working ten hours a week in the library, which gave her what she called mad money, which wasn't budgeted for anything and could be spent any way she liked. One time she wrote that she used some of her mad money to get a chocolate shake and was dripping some of it on her nipples and pussy lips so I could lick it off.

Things soon calmed down between Lynne and me, and the tension Jill had caused evaporated. I had a little difficulty adjusting back to our old relationship, because I now knew that she had been attracted to me at one time. But our former relationship had been so comfortable that, after a month or two, we slipped back into it.

Two things happened that Lynne and I talked about more than once. Actually, one thing we expected happened, and another didn't, but something that doesn't happen when you expect it to has just as much effect as a "happening."

The thing that was expected was that Jill's calls and emails started coming less frequently. That's common. When a young person first leaves home, contact with that old familiar life can be very comforting. But as she learns how to become a member of a different family, even if it is larger and less intimate, the need for that comfort lessens.

"She's breaking the apron strings," I said one night, as Lynne and I ate supper together. Lynne had complained that she hadn't gotten any news for two weeks.

"When was your last one?" she asked.

"Well ... I guess it was last Friday night."

"That's almost a week!" she said.

"Yeah, I guess it is," I admitted.

"I told you she'd drift away," said Lynne darkly. She blinked. "I'm sorry, Bob. That was a horrible thing to say."

"You did tell me. It's what we hoped for, after all."

"Yes," she said softly. "So why do I feel so bad about it?"

"We never want our kids to lose the need for us," I said.

"I feel bad for you, Bob, not me."

"Oh."

"I mean it's obvious you feel a great deal for her."

"Yeah," I said. I had realized that a long time ago, but it hadn't been the kind of thing her mother wanted to hear. Not back then. "It's for the best, though."

"I know it is," said Lynne. "So why do I feel like I just ran over a puppy?"

Oddly, though, the thing that didn't happen had just as tumultuous an effect. Jill never talked about dating and, as far as we could tell, she only went to the movies once. She didn't mention meeting any interesting men, with the exception of Zack, who was in her Agriculture study group, along with three other women, named Mandy, Ruth Ann and Sherrill. Still, she only mentioned Zack in passing.

Then one night Lynne called me and asked if I was doing anything. She sounded strained.

"Didn't have anything planned," I said. As if I ever did, which Lynne was perfectly aware of. Neither of us had a life, really, when you got right down to it.

"We need to talk," she said.

Now normally, when a woman says that to a man, he cringes, at least inside, where she can't see it. She was on the phone, so it didn't matter, but I didn't cringe anyway. I couldn't think of anything Lynne could call me out on.

"In person, I take it?" I asked.

"Yes," she said tersely.

"You OK?"

"I'm upset."

"Be right over."

"I'll have pie for you."

When I got there she gave me the pie, which was pumpkin, with whipped cream on it. She didn't serve herself any, and she didn't beat around the bush.

"Jill called. She asked if she could bring Zack home for Christmas break."

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