Storiesonline.net ------- Growing Up by Openbook Copyright© 2009 by Openbook ------- Description: A My Brother's Keeper Story. Jimmy finds himself once again negotiating from a position of strength. At least, that's what he believes. Codes: MF FF cons reluc bi ------- ------- Chapter 1 The leaves were turning once again, and there was a refreshing dash of chilliness in the New England Autumn air. October in Connecticut is really the most beautiful time of the year. It is the month where residents begin to brace themselves for Winter's onslaught. God provides this brief time of tranquil beauty in order to let everyone know what they'll soon be missing. Tina and I were in the October of our relationship. In the nearly five months that we had started "seeing each other", she had really started to grow on me. At first, there was a period of adjustment for both of us. I needed us to slow down, to not overpower each other with too much sudden closeness. Tina, on the other hand, wanted to be totally enveloped by what she called "the first sweet fruits of a blossoming romance". We resolved these conflicting needs by keeping ourselves more separate than she wanted, and less apart than I was actually comfortable with being. The shared lure of satisfying sex was the one connection that kept us both from throwing in the towel and giving up on this new relationship entirely. We ended up by constantly negotiating and renegotiating all sorts of compromises and adjustments, thereby retaining meaningful portions of what each of us felt was important, maybe even necessary. By each of us being willing to tolerate much that we would have rather done away with entirely, we managed to remain together. If only we could have been in agreement about what we each wanted to do away with. Tina wanted us to share our lives, to spend time with each other doing things we both would enjoy. For her, sex was something two people did spontaneously, whenever the mood came upon them. She didn't believe in the concept of too much of anything good. She had no reservations when it came to shared togetherness. I, on the other hand, needed long periods of solitude. Time to spend contemplating how I fit into the world around me. I didn't want or need anyone encroaching on the decisions I was constantly trying to make as to my future life's direction and purpose. Sex, for me, was best rationed, kept doled out in healthy portions, so as not to completely overtake or overwhelm all my other senses. Tina said I was the one with the New England Yankee mentality while she was one of those free spirited California beach girls. As time went by, we were wearing down each other's rough edges, compromising in a healthy way, reaching for the middle ground to build a sustainable relationship. Tina would spend the night at my house on Monday and Tuesday nights. In return for that, we wouldn't see each other at all from Friday afternoon until Monday evening, when I'd come by to take her somewhere for dinner, or maybe over to my house, for something I'd cooked and an early night of making love and catching up. Tuesday's, after I dropped her off at her place, were day's when each of us pursued our own interests exclusively. Wednesdays and Thursdays were mostly open days, where either of us was free to suggest a shared activity, but also free to plan something we might wish to do separately. Wednesday and Thursday, twice a month, had also become my buy/sell days. This was a time when I went off, alone, in search of bargains to buy and later sell, to generate all my trip expenses, and also, now, to earn some additional income. Having a girlfriend like Tina could be an expensive proposition. She had very little in the way of living comforts, being so far out on the poverty side of the financial edge with her sister, that I wanted, no, needed, to make up for that lack on the days when we were together. All these compromises had left neither of us satisfied, but both thought there was enough left to make our continuing to come together an attractive enough proposition. It wasn't even a close decision for either of us to make. I knew that Tina was already in love with me. I saw it in her eyes, and in her reactions to my touching her whenever we were in each other's presence. Of course, there was also the further complication of Tina's sister, Sherry, who lived with her, and who took up much of Tina's surplus time, energy, and concern. Whatever love Tina wasn't allowed to lavish on me, went to Sherry. Whatever lack of returned sentiment she felt coming from me, was, in large part, compensated for by the enormous outpouring of love that Sherry would constantly communicate to her twin. We were a love triangle, but only in the most Platonic use of that term. Tina loved me, and she loved Sherry. Sherry loved Tina. I loved me, had a growing fondness for Tina, and a sick, suppressed, longing for Sherry. All this was further compounded by an even more deeply suppressed ambition, on my part, to someday have a sexual relationship with both of them. Together, at the same time, and in the same bed. I managed to give noncommittal replies whenever Tina tried to bring up her sister's name to me. This was something she often did, probing, trying to get to the bottom of where all her suspicion's took her in that regard. Many times, as we lay spent in my bed, after a bout of strenuous, and very satisfying, lovemaking, Tina would bring up her sister's name to me, asking me questions, hoping to get me to confess something to her. "So, are you really planning to leave at six tomorrow morning? Why not leave at eight or eight thirty, so I could spend the night here tonight?" "I told you, I'm driving up to Maine. If I don't leave real early, I'll catch all the morning commuter traffic near Boston. I'm leaving at five anyway, not six." "Tell me again why you couldn't take Sherry and me on any of these little trips of yours? We could spend our free time painting while you work. You could drop us off somewhere good, then pick us back up when you're done with what you do. You never seem to want to take us anywhere together." "Why do you keep insisting on encroaching on the time I need to go off and earn my living? These trips I take are what allow me to pay for any extras that dating you costs. I'd think you'd encourage me to go off on more of them." "Nice try, but don't you remember me looking over your shoulder at that bank statement you were looking at online? What was it, something like forty thousand dollars in deposits for that month? I know you aren't spending that kind of money every month, not even close to it." "I have business expenses, you know I do. Somebody has to pay for all those chimes I've been delivering. they don't just give them to me, you know?" "You don't want us with you. Why won't you just admit that you'd rather be all by yourself?" "Okay, I admit it. I'd rather be alone. Satisfied now?" "You don't really mean that. Even if you did, you know you'd miss me if I weren't here for you." "You aren't here just for my benefit, and it isn't healthy for you to program yourself that way. We both like sex, and we're good together, in bed. We're also friends, so we sometimes like to do other things together. Not everything together, and not all the time though. I already explained to you that I don't do romance. You keep trying to elevate things beyond a level where I'm comfortable. I'm very fond of you, but I'm not ready to move beyond that point. You know you're going to end up disappointed and unhappy if we continue this to where we both know its now headed." "You love making love to me. Admit that much at least." "I do. Sometimes, with you, its the very best sex that I've ever had. I feel more for you than I do for anyone else, but that isn't the "L" word that you seem to expect me to say to you." "Love, not the "L" word. I don't expect you to tell me you love me, because I know you don't. Love isn't something I necessarily need from you, not the emotion at least. I do wish you'd include me in your life more though. Sometimes I feel like you're deliberately shutting me out, away from everything really important to you. It hurts me that you keep everything like that to yourself." Tina always tried to keep her anger and other emotions out of those types of discussions. She knew I'd use her acting upset as an excuse to end the conversation. She knew that because I'd done it to her many times before, in the beginning. This time though, she had a surprising change of tactics ready for me. "Look babe, if it hurts you, then maybe we should quit discussing these types of things?" "Would you be telling Sherry the same thing about the "L" word, if she were in bed with you and not me?" "Whoa there! Where did that one come from? Why bring your sister into this?" "Because I can't think of any other good reason you have for just being fond of me. I've never had this problem with any boy before. Usually, they're the ones trying to get me spend more time with them. Do you know I've had four different people propose to me?" "From me only being very fond of you to telling me how many guys want to marry you, isn't that a very broad leap from one place to another? I also can't see any connection to those two things that points to anything having to do with your sister." "We talk you know, Sherry and me. She tells me things and then I watch for them myself. I know how you look at her when you think nobody is paying attention." "This is starting to get crazy. Tell you what, you can go take a shower, then get dressed and I'll run you back home, or else you can just get dressed and I'll drive you home like you are. I'm not going off into this whole pack of wild conjectures with you. You're the one who's in my bed. I haven't spoken ten words to Sherry, ever since she turned those pictures over to me three months ago. Name me one time when I even asked you about her, or when I ever invited her to do anything at all with us?" "I'm not leaving now. You wouldn't have reacted like this if what I said hadn't struck a nerve." "You don't want to keep striking this so called nerve that you think you've struck. The problem we're having right now isn't one that we're ever going to get resolved. You want more from me than I'm willing to give. I don't want to keep going over the same ground with you. It has become obvious to me that you won't ever be satisfied with what I'm willing to give you. That being the case, I think we should call a halt to this before it leaves us both with a lot of unnecessary bad feelings towards each other." "This is it then, is that what you're telling me?" "It certainly will be if you keep on hammering on me with this ridiculous nonsense of yours. You don't talk straight. I know what you want, and I've already told you how I feel about it. Either accept what I'm telling you at full face value, or else we will be through, completely. We're friends, and that is all I want us to be." I could see her eyes beginning to tear up. About once a month things would break down during these discussions. I felt bad that Tina and I weren't close to wanting the same things from our relationship. Resuming having sex had been her idea. At the time we'd done it, she'd been full of promises about how she could accept a casual relationship, a friendship, just so long as sex could be a component of it too. I knew at the time that it would never work for long. Those situations never do work out, not long term. "I'm going to take a shower. When I come out, if you haven't come up with any new ideas to change things so they're fairer, you can take me home and I'll stop trying to worm my way into your tiny little heart." Saying this, she got out of bed and padded off to my bathroom. As soon as the door closed, I got up, got dressed, then gathered up my wallet and keys before leaving the bedroom for my living room. She'd know what I'd decided when she came out and saw that I'd left my bedroom. Twenty minutes later she came out to where I was sitting. I noticed she'd packed up all her spare clothing. I also noticed she was taking her box of Tampons, her toothbrush, hairbrush, and the little bit of make up she kept in my bathroom for use on her overnight visits. The ride back to her place was made in frosty silence. Neither of us had one word to say to the other. A line had been crossed, a line I knew would one day need to be crossed, or else erased. I hadn't reached the point where erasure of that line had felt like a viable option for me. I watched as Tina exited my car, clutching her things tightly to her as she carefully stepped down from the taller than normal doorway of my large SUV. I could see the shed tears that had dampened both sides of her face. I said nothing to her. No goodbye's were going to be exchanged. Several months before, Tina's painting of a trash canned lined alley had been sold by a New York gallery. It had sold for more than we'd first been told it would be offered at, and Tina's share, Twenty eight hundred and fifty dollars, had gone a long way towards righting her sinking financial ship. She had used the money to pay off all her debts and to stock up on needed art supplies and other necessities. In the intervening months, Tina had completed one other painting that she liked far more than the one that had sold for six thousand dollars, and had two others, near completion, that actually stayed focused on one theme, all along the same lines as her previously completed one, but each painted from completely different perspectives. She had borrowed my digital camera one day when we'd driven through the seamier side of New Haven. We'd stop whenever she asked me to, then she'd get out and start taking pictures of whatever had caught her artist's eye. The three paintings were actually a compilation of several different photos she had taken on that day. I had no idea if her new paintings were any good or not. They did nothing for me, but then, I hadn't been all that impressed with her earlier trash can effort either. I had promised a woman in New York that she would get the first look at anything else Tina completed in a similar vein to the picture she had gotten placed in that art gallery. Three months after our most recent break up, Tina phoned me to tell me she was now ready to show her completed art to the lady in New York. When I tried to give her the contact information for the woman, Tina reminded me that I'd promised to drive her there, once she had something she wanted to show. I hadn't taken much convincing to decide to do her this favor. I'd missed seeing her all during this time. I had missed the sex, but I'd also missed having another person that I could interact with. We had truly been friends, and, whether or not I admitted it, I needed a friend to keep me from retreating too far back into myself. I had a tendency to live too much in my mind, and not enough anywhere else. We had settled on getting an early start on Thursday, two days after her calling me. I'd made the phone call to the woman, and another to my New York dealer friend. I had purchased and saved some items I knew he'd be interested in acquiring from me. It hadn't really been enough to warrant making a special trip in to see him for, but, since I'd be in New York anyway, I'd arranged to come see him as well. I planned to go see him while Tina was busy meeting with the art broker lady. When I pulled up in front of Tina's decrepit little hovel, she was already standing outside, alongside her sister, and a crated up box which I knew was where she kept her paintings when she needed to travel with more than she could conveniently hold in her hands. It was early January, and the weather was on the milder side of normal, maybe somewhere in the high twenties or low thirties. You could see your breath when you breathed out, but it didn't hurt your lungs to breathe the cold air in. I got out and wrestled the crate of paintings into the back of my Navigator. "Sherry wanted to go to New York with us. I told her you wouldn't mind." "Not a problem for me. How have you two been? Keeping your head's above water okay?" "Sherry has one of her paintings that she's agreed to have this woman look at, isn't that exciting?" "I guess. Look, I'm planning on dropping you guys off and then I've got some business with a friend that I need to take care of. My stuff will take about an hour to get finished. How long do you expect to be?" "How should we know? You aren't planning on just putting us out in the street in front of her house and driving off right away, are you? I thought you'd come in and introduce us to her, and help carry the paintings in as well." "Well, I already made an appointment to see this guy. What else would you need other than an introduction and my help carting your stuff up to her apartment. Her building has a super. For a tip of ten bucks I'm sure he'd haul everything up on his furniture dolly for you." "For once, can't you just do what I'm asking? This is a special day for Sherry and me. We're both nervous enough already, without having to worry about getting lost or getting mugged while we're waiting outside for you to come back to get us." "Fine. I'll phone him when we get closer to the city and set up a later time for us to get together. This means you're going to have to either wait out in the car, or else come into his shop with me and wait for us to get finished with all our business." "Is this the same man who bought that other picture from you, the bird painting?" "Yes, Glenn is his name." "Good, I'd like to meet him." "I'm just going to be in and out, business. This isn't a social call. You can come in and look around until I'm finished with what I need to do. After, if you want, I'll introduce you both, and you can talk to him for a few minutes. He's busy, trying to run a business and make his living, so don't take up too much of his time, okay?" The visit with Muriel, the art broker went pretty well. She took all five paintings to sell, even though she didn't think any of them were as commercially valuable as the trash can picture turned out being. Tina didn't seem at all disappointed when Muriel quoted her a range in the asking selling price of between twenty five and thirty eight hundred for those three, similar in conception, but differently rendered, works she'd brought to show. Muriel also liked Sherry's picture which was of a bunch of row boats tied in the water by ropes, but really held in place by the ice crust that had formed at the waterline. She liked it a lot, but said it would probably only fetch around fifteen hundred to two thousand dollars. Sherry got very excited when the art broker agreed to place her picture in one of the gallery's she said she had a very good relationship with. The last painting, one of Tina's, was a painting of King Richard III. In it, he was riding a leather armored horse and was in the middle of a great battle between large opposing army's. He had a raised drawn sword and was dressed in elaborate purple courtier's clothing, with an ermine collar around his throat. You could see his disfiguring humped back as well as his cruelly twisted back and ungainly appearing shriveled up left shoulder, as he raised his right sword hand to ward off an attempted stabbing attack made by an enemy pike man. The face for this King Richard painting was mine. Twisted too into an ugly grimace, but all mine, in any case. I looked at the painting when she first lifted it from the container, right away recognizing exactly what she had done. When I looked into Tina's eyes a moment later, I could see how pleased she was at my near instant recognition of who she was depicting with my face. "I'd never wear my hair that long, and royal crimson isn't a good color for me." "I think its my best work, ever." Muriel and Sherry were laughing at me too. I took some pleasure in hearing her tell Sherry that her sister would need something signed from the subject in the painting, in order to satisfy any gallery owner's need for a model's release. I was happy to see that Tina got a worried look after hearing about that. "How much would a painting like that sell for?" I asked Muriel, pointing at the Richard picture. "With the right buyer, perhaps as much as five thousand." "I'll give you twenty five hundred for it, Tina, but you have to give ten percent to Muriel out of that. You'd still walk away with twenty two fifty that way, and I'd have a painting that I liked that I could put above the headboard in my bedroom." "I'm not selling this picture to you. If you want to buy it, you can buy it from the gallery that ends up showing it." "No problem. I won't sign any release for it then, and I'll sue anyone who decides to put that painting on any kind of public display." "He's right, Tina. You won't be able to sell your painting without his releasing it to you. It doesn't matter whether he was a paid model or not. You used his likeness, and that's what controls in these situations. To sell it, you first need his written consent or a signed model's release form." Muriel was speaking calmly, but we all sensed how serious she was. We all also knew that now wasn't a good time for any of us to get on her bad side, not when she was in a position to do so much for the girl's art careers. "Would you really be willing to hang it above your bed?" "Sure, why not? I like it, but that doesn't mean I'd like to have it hanging in a museum somewhere." "Fine, I'll sell it to you for twenty five then." "You'll also give Muriel her ten percent?" "No, I'll happily waive any commission. I haven't lifted a finger yet to do any placing. All I've done is appraise it, and offer to place it in a gallery for her. Five was just the maximum figure I threw out as a possible sales price." "I'll pay her the two fifty, Jimmy, don't worry. Do we have a deal?" "Absolutely. You surprise me by being so accommodating." "I just like the idea of a part of me always being in your bedroom." "Wrong part if you ask me, but you didn't." "What do you mean by that crack?" "Nothing, I was making a little joke, that's all. Relax and enjoy your moment. Today is a big vindication for where you've taken your art, right Muriel?" "Yes. This new work confirms what her earlier work was just hinting at. Everything you've brought me today is readily salable at professional art gallery's. Grow your portfolio of completed work, and I'm sure I could arrange a one woman show for you at a gallery here in the city. Perhaps fifteen works of around this size, although having different sizes of canvas to show would work out better. You don't want to limit yourself to only the smaller canvas's. The larger the painting, the fewer of them you need to have ready for a one woman show." We trooped back down to where I'd left my car, with me once again carrying the nearly empty crate she'd used for storing her paintings. I was happy for both girls, and I could easily see how excited they were at knowing both their work had been accepted, and that now, both could claim to be professional artists. I drove over to where Glenn's shop was. I'd called earlier to let him know I would be there later than I'd originally told him to expect me. Once inside his shop, he and I went into the back, where he did most of his purchasing. It took us less than fifteen minutes to unwrap the eight pieces I'd brought to sell to him and to have them each carefully by Glenn's critical eye. "Some of these are merely nice, but these three, they are truly exceptional. We can dicker for these three and come back to this other clack after, agreed?" "Sure. Name me a price for these three." "Eight hundred for the two lead soldiers, three hundred for the little drummer boy." "Sounds good to me. What about these other five?" "Call it twelve fifty for the lot?" "Sold. Nice doing business with you, Glenn." "With you as well, James. You have this highly treasured trait of being able to somehow restrain any personal greed you might be feeling. I marvel at your ability to still wind up dealing for what is a very fair deal for both sides. As a collector myself, I'm sometime apt to allow my collector's emotion to override my businessman's good sense. You save me from myself, so, in return, I try to make you a decent offer on whatever you bring to me. Now that our business is concluded, please tell me something about those lovely young women you've brought with you today." "One is Tina, the girl who painted that bird picture you bought off me awhile back. The other one is her twin sister, Sherry. She paints as well. We just got finished taking some of their new work over to your friend Muriel. By the way, since we're both letting our hair down today, so to speak, I want you to know that I consider you not just a customer of mine, but as my primary mentor in all my dealings with most of the many things I seem to come across out there. The last thing I'd ever want to do is stick it to you on any deal. If you've noticed, I almost always take your first offer. The few times I didn't, it was only because I already knew I could get more for it from another source. I always bring this type of purchase to you first though, and I want you to know you'll always have the first chance to look through any of it and buy whatever you want." I could see that my words had the effect I'd wanted them to have. I really did appreciate all the help Glenn had given me over the years. My little pastime had been very much enriched after I'd accidentally made his acquaintance, over at a sale we both were attending. "Did you bring me any of her other paintings to look at today? I'm quite happy with the other purchase I made. Muriel tells me that the girl might have a real future." "Nothing today. I could let you look at a picture of hers that I bought for myself today, but it isn't for sale." "No, don't show me. What if you did, and then I ended up wanting to own it? Better to not be tempted." We went back out to the front then, and I introduced the girls to Glenn. He made a few very complimentary remarks about her bird painting, then made his own personal pitch for her to stop in, anytime, if she happened to have anything else in the way of her paintings that she might consider selling directly to him. We were driving back home, probably a little less than halfway back, when Tina started talking to me about the possibility of both she and her sister coming over to my house instead of being dropped off at theirs. For her first reason for why we should do this, she told me she wanted to supervise me while I hung her painting. I told her I was going to get professional help to do that, because my walls were lathe and plaster finished, and I didn't want to just try to pound a nail into it. She told me that she had hangers for the painting that simply stuck to that type of wall which wouldn't come off unless someone deliberately twisted off the vacuum seal. She told me she already had some in the bag that Sherry was carrying. She got Sherry to take a few out of her bag and handed these to me. I put them in my pocket. "Maybe later then. I'm going to take some time to decide where I want to move your other two paintings. I don't want them where they are now, not if we're putting this other one in my bedroom too." "You have my paintings in your bedroom? I thought you said you were putting them over your mantle?" "Sherry's are up there. Yours are in the bedroom." "You put hers out where everybody could see them, then put mine in your bedroom where they'll never be seen?" "I look at your painting's far more than the ones in my living room." "You do? Why, because you think they're better than hers?" "No. I like all four of them about the same amount. I look at yours more because I do more thinking in my bedroom, and it relaxes me to have something to look at while I'm trying to figure things out." "We want to come over even if you aren't going to put my painting up today. Do you have anything you can make us for dinner?" "No, but there are plenty of restaurants we could stop at along the way. I'm not in the mood for any further company today. All this driving has gotten me too stressed out. I hate driving in heavy traffic." "I don't know why you can't just force yourself to accept this outstretched olive branch I'm offering you, Jimmy. You're forcing me to work a lot harder at this than I should have to." "Nothing's changed here on my end, Tina, and nothing is liable to change anytime in the foreseeable future. We want different things. I'm used to having things turn out that way. Hell, if it makes you feel any better, I'll even admit the whole problem is all my fault. That doesn't change the fact that there is this problem, or that it is unlikely to ever change." "I know that now. Sherry and I have talked about the problem for months now. We both agree that you need everything to be all your own way. We know it, but that doesn't mean we can't enjoy some of the things we want from you, things that you always seem willing to give." "You're losing me here. You go from I to you and now you've moved all the way to we, which I assume refers to you and Sherry. As far as I can remember, the only we I've been involved with has been the we of you and me. Why are you bringing Sherry's name up while we're discussing all this?" "We've been talking about all three of us maybe going on one of those cruises together. You and me, as a couple, and Sherry too, because it's too cold and scary for her to have to stay at our place all alone. She can't go back to our parent's house, and I don't want to leave her here all by herself." "Aren't you assuming quite a lot? Aside from everything else, do you even know how Sherry would be on a cruise ship, out there in the middle of the ocean? Suppose she had one of her panic attacks? Plus, we wouldn't exactly be by ourselves on these boats. I think there must be at least three thousand other people who'd be on board with us, counting the passengers and all the crew. That is a lot more people than the number who live in Drayton and Patler combined. You had to have seen how nervous Sherry got when we drove into the city today. Why put her through something like that?" "You'd be there, and so would I. We could all get one big room together, and she probably wouldn't have any problems anyway. If she did, I'd just go back to the room with her until she settled back down again." "Well, you two know better about handling that kind of stuff than I do. Now though, getting back to that part about you and me going as a couple, what, exactly, does that mean to you?" "A couple, like that time we went to Miami before. Don't worry, we can have all the sex you want. Sherry doesn't care if we do that. She knows we did that before anyway." "Those staterooms are very small. With three people, it would get very cramped in a hurry, if two of them were having sex. I'm sure something like that would be very uncomfortable for Sherry to have to deal with. There isn't any way to hide all the sounds and smells there'd be in a little room like that. With her history of having been attacked and all, Sherry might not enjoy being around something that would remind her like that might." "She's been in my place when I've brought a guy there. She never complained about us fucking then. Hell, most of those times, I think she was getting off on it. You wouldn't care if Jimmy and I had sex, would you Sherry?" "Not if it was warm outside, and it meant I'd gotten out of Connecticut. I really think you might have hurt your cause though by even mentioning having other lover's besides him." "Did you think I was going to stop getting laid after we broke up, Jimmy?" "Never thought about it one way or the other. Doesn't bother me hearing about it either. Doesn't make me want to take you on this cruise thing of yours though. Why don't the two of you just go by yourselves on this cruise? Leave me completely out of it." "See, I told you, you never should have told him anything about what you've done since him. Now we're going to be stuck here all Winter." "It was only two guys, and one of them was a guy I used to go out with, not somebody who was completely new." "Tina, I already said that wasn't a deciding factor for me. What is a deciding factor is not wanting to get reinvolved in something that will end up badly like the last two times have. I'm ready to admit that I'm one horse you'll never be able to tame." "I'm not sure about that. I know I've already ridden you plenty. I don't want to tame you anymore anyway. Can't I just want a week's vacation, a chance to go off to where the weather is good, and I can finally get unbundled and maybe relax for a few hours in the sunlight? We both like having sex together too, so that was going to be a little bonus for you, something I could contribute to making our trip more enjoyable for you." I ended up driving straight through, not bothering to stop anywhere for something to eat. Tina talked about that cruise for the entire time it took to get back to her place. She was still talking when I turned off the engine and went to get her painting holder out of the back. I took out my new painting and left it uncovered in the back. When I got back in my car, Sherry and Tina were having an argument. It sounded to me like Tina was angry with Sherry for not jumping in and promoting the whole cruise idea more than she had. They finally noticed I was finished unloading the painting carrier and had put it over by their door. I'd gotten back into my car and was waiting, in the cold, for them to get out. "You really aren't going to let us come over to your house tonight? Our space heater broke, and we practically froze our asses off for the past two nights." "I told you I'm not in the mood for company. Why don't you get out of the car and go inside to finish your argument?" "If you let us come over to spend a few nights, until we can get that money you owe me paid off, Sherry and I will both let you see us naked together. You know you always wondered about that." "No I won't. Besides, Jimmy doesn't want to see me naked anyway." This was so rehearsed. I could tell. They both sounded like two bad actor's in some amateurish play. They were both involved in trying to set me up. The only question I had was how far they were both willing to go to get whatever it was they really were after? For more than a year now, counting the times when she and I were broken up, I'd been insisting to Tina that I had no interest in her sister. There was simply no way for me to take it all back, to finally admit to her my fascination with her sister. This was all part of some kind of new test, I was certain of it. "She's right, I don't want to see that. Now please get out, both of you, because I have things I need to do, alone. I'll bring you the cash for the picture in the morning, Tina. Just make sure you have lots of layers of covers on for tonight. You'll be fine." "See, I told you he'd tell us that. You ended up fucking it all up, trying to make him jealous. I'm calling mom in the morning, and I'm going to ask her if Dad's gotten over things enough to let me move back into my old room. You always have to try to do everything your way. You and him were made for each other when it comes to being that way." They bickered with each other for another five minutes before Sherry just opened the door on her side and stepped out of my car. After she did that, Tina wasn't really left with any choices other than opening her side and leaving too. I drove off, even more confused now than I'd been earlier. I knew they both had lied to me, so many of their statements conflicted with each other. I now knew a different side of Sherry too. A side that made her less attractive to me, not more so. That they had each tried to set me up to take them both on a free cruise was a given. Tina definitely wanted the two of us to resume at least the sex part of our prior relationship. I had zero doubts about that conclusion. I wasn't sure about what all I was being offered as far as Sherry was concerned. What I did know didn't particularly bother me. Truth was, I would have happily welcomed some resumption of my visits from Tina. Even taking a cruise with one or both of the sisters would have been well within my personal tolerance parameters. Seeing Sherry naked, or having her in the same room while I was pounding away on her sister, both of those were highly acceptable options from my point of view as well. The only part I couldn't accept was having the two of them colluding together against me. I didn't want that, not even if it meant my losing out on all the rest of it. I still had my own fantasies, but none of them featured those two women controlling my every move like I was just some puppet attached to the strings they'd be pulling. Tina and I were once again involved in a negotiation. I knew she was more anxious to resume our former friendship than I. She had just upped the ante, by including opening things up to where, now, they'd also have something to do with her sister. For some of this at least, Sherry was actually going along with her. I wasn't yet sure of her motivation for doing so, but I was quite willing to wait and find out what their next move would be. When I got home, I looked at an open area just above where I'd hung the two paintings that Sherry had done for me. I tried to picture, in my mind, what that area would look like with all three of Tina's paintings hung there. I could easily switch the paintings of my house around, so that Tina's were in my living room, instead of Sherry's. I enjoyed thinking about how Tina would react upon learning that it was Sherry's work that I now looked at whenever I was thinking about things in my bed. ------- Chapter 2 In late January, Connecticut experienced another one of those Canadian cold fronts. One that came on us suddenly, got stalled in the air above us, only to then stay to linger unabated, seemingly for weeks this time. I suffered through a week of it. My threshold of tolerance for living in cold weather had already been reduced by the previous two and a half months of a milder than normal cold season. Having the weather suddenly turn brutally cold this late in the cold season was more than I wanted to continue enduring. I started thinking about another trip to Florida. It had been more than a week since the trip to New York I'd taken with Tina and Sherry. I'd gone over the following morning and paid her for my new painting, and that had been the last time I'd seen them. When I started planning my escape from the cold weather, naturally, I thought of the girls, and of our last discussion about the three of us taking a cruise together. When I did, it was as if I'd opened up a whole host of lewd thoughts in my mind. They had planted the seeds for this, and I now found myself given over to that reverie. The paranoid part of me started trying to resist the lure of imagining myself on a warm tropical beach with these two lovely sisters. My first thought was to make a single reservation to fly to Miami and remove myself from the temptation I suddenly felt. I even got on the internet, looking for flight and hotel deals. My mind wasn't as cooperative as I might have wanted though, and I was powerfully tempted to call the girls, to at least give into the idea of inviting them over to discuss some possible ideas for us taking a joint vacation. I could go into all the rationalizations for this I made to myself, but rather than do that, I'll just tell you that I did make the call in the end. I'd purchased a cell phone and some anytime minutes for Tina shortly after we'd gotten back together the last time. I did it for my convenience mostly, so we could better coordinate our schedules. I had kept paying for the plan even after we broke up. "It's me. I can't stand anymore of this cold, so I'm going to go somewhere nice tomorrow. If you want to, you can come by and take a shot at trying to convince me I should take you along with me." "What about Sherry? She's still here with me." "I thought she was moving back with your folks?" "No. My dad. He says she can't move back, so she's still here with me." "Well, it was just an idea. I'll send you a postcard from wherever I finally end up." "Jimmy, that was really sweet of you to call me this way. I was really beginning to think you didn't care anymore." "Me feeling sorry for you isn't the same as what you're saying. I like you as a friend, and I know you hate the Winter's here as much as I do." "I do, but not as much as Sherry does. Cold goes right through her. Last night she started crying, and we were both wearing six layers of clothing." "You guys can come over here to house sit for me if you want to. I'll be gone for at least a week. I'm sure it is a lot more comfortable here than over at your place." "You aren't leaving until tomorrow? Can we come over now? I don't think Sherry can take too much more of this." "Sure, I guess. You want me to swing by there and get you? You'll probably want to pack some things too, and it'd be a big hassle to backpack it through the woods in all this cold." "We'll be ready. Give us thirty minutes, okay? And, Jimmy, I really appreciate you doing this for us." Right after I hung up the phone, I started laughing. I knew I was going to have a lot of fun for the rest of the time before I left. I knew the temptation I'd felt was mild compared to what they'd be feeling when I brought them up to date on all the places I was looking at possibly going to on this little trip of mine. I'd already checked Miami, and they had their own cold spell. Some of their orange groves had frost damage, and high temperatures during the day were only in the forties and low fifties. California was one possibility, since they were currently enjoying most days in the seventies and the eighties. Too bad I'd already sold both my houses there. Hawaii was another possibility, as was either Mazatlan or Puerto Vallarta, in Mexico. There were also tons of cruises leaving from Florida too. When I finally went over to drive them back to my place, they were both all bundled up, like Eskimos, and Tina had two shopping bags filled with all her extra things, while Sherry had all her stuff in two pieces of matched leather luggage. They were both excited at the prospect of soon being in front of my fireplace. I had the heat turned way up in the Navigator, plus I'd set the thermostat in my house for eighty degrees before I'd left to pick them up. "Did you decide where you're going yet?" Tina had put her two bags in the back seat with her sister, not wanting to put them back where I normally stowed luggage for some unspecified reason. She climbed into the front with me, which answered my question about why she'd put her bags on the back seat. "Too cold in Florida right now. I'm thinking maybe Hawaii, or down on the Baja peninsula. I might try to go see my brother and his family first, then go down to Mexico, or else fly to Hawaii from there. It depends on what deals I can find." "Hawaii? You're going to Hawaii? That really sucks. Remember I told you that I wanted to go there on my honeymoon? You told me you already went there on vacation before. You should go somewhere new, not there." "If it was me, I'd want to go to Hawaii. The water is warm all year long, and the temperature always stays the same." Sherry was actually leaning forward in her seat to tell us that. For her, that was a sure sign of interest and excitement. She wasn't usually very animated. "I checked on cruises leaving from Miami too. Further South, the weather warms up in a hurry. Anything South of Cuba is nice right now. Jamaica looks good, or even the Virgin Islands, if I was just going to fly in and out." "You said Mexico and Baja, aren't they the same?" Tina was turned in her seat, facing towards me. "Baja is this long peninsula on the West coast side of Mexico. I forgot, they have cruises that leave from Los Angeles and San Diego that go down to all the tourist ports along Baja. That might even be better for me. You need a passport to go on cruises that stop outside the US though." "You don't have one?" Tina seemed concerned. "No, I have one. I was just saying that the law changed, and now you need one. Before, you didn't need one. After 9/11, they changed all that." "We both have passports, if that was what you were wondering." This was Tina again. "That will be good if you ever get to go on one of those cruises you were asking about before. I'm leaning towards flying out to California to see Danny tomorrow. I can get a direct flight at a cheap fare. Once I'm warm again, then I'll decide where else I might want to go." I set the girls up in my two guest bedrooms. Tina was already very familiar with where everything was in my house, but I wanted Sherry to know everything too. I had a suspicion that Tina and I might be going away on this trip together, and I wanted Sherry comfortable with staying at my house alone. I cooked a nice pot roast dinner in my crock pot. I liked more carrots with my pot roast than potatoes, but I put in plenty of each, because I already knew that Tina didn't eat carrots at all. I made my special horse radish and ketchup sauce to flavor the pot roast with. Everyone seemed to enjoy the dinner. Tina had been trying to find out if I wanted to sleep with her or not. She wasn't being very subtle with her inquiries either. "You know you want my body, Jimmy. All you have to do is ask me. I wouldn't say no." "It isn't your body I have problems with, Tina, it's all the rest of it. You want a different relationship than I'm ready for. You need to go out and find someone who wants the same things you want." We had been skirting around the issue of sleeping together. I already knew that I'd probably end up with Tina in my bed, sometime that night. She might wait until I was asleep and sneak in to attack my body, but all the telltale signs were present that she was horny. I had my own telltale sign prominently on display, for anyone who was the least bit observant. "Keep throwing yourself at him, Tina. You never learn, do you? You keep playing right into his hands. Try using some self control. Remember what we agreed on, about waiting for him to make the first move?" "He called me. Doesn't that count as him making the first move? He invited us over to stay here. The last time I asked him, he said no. As far as I'm concerned, he made the first and the second moves both. Now, its my turn to make a move too." "So pathetic. No wonder he leads you around by your twat. You make it so easy for him to take advantage." I'd been listening to them both. I thought Tina had much the stronger argument going. There was no question in my mind about my having been the first to make a move. I didn't like Sherry's twat comment though. I knew how much influence she had with Tina. "Please explain your last comment, Sherry. How am I leading her around like you say?" "You always end up getting what you want. In this case, you were horny, and you wanted to get laid before you went off to visit your family. You knew how easy it would be to call Tina and get her to come over here to take care of your needs." "An interesting theory, but it happens to be completely wrong. Tina is my friend, and when I called her, she was very worried about you, with how you're managing in this extreme cold. She came here to help you as much as anything else. She already knew she was welcome to come over herself, whenever she wanted to. As far as her wanting to have sex with me, that has never been a secret. We both enjoy sex together. Believe me, sex was never any part of our relationship problem." "How about you dangling the trip in front of her? What's that a part of?" "I'm sorry you think that's what I've been doing. When I spoke with Tina about that possibility, earlier, she told me she wasn't free to leave. She gave me her reasons, and I agreed with her. There is no dangling going on. If it offends you to listen to my dithering around about where I'm going, then I'll stop doing it. I want you to be comfortable Sherry. I also know you have Tina's welfare as your primary concern, just as she worries about you." "Does that mean you aren't going to take advantage of her weakness tonight too?" "I was unaware that a healthy interest in having sex with a willing partner was a weakness. All I can tell you is that taking advantage of Tina wasn't ever any part of my plan. To make you more comfortable though, Tina and I will cease with our friendly banter." "You think you're so smooth, but your charm only works on Tina, not me. You don't have to go out of your way for me, I'm not the least bit interested in ever sleeping with you." "Not a problem. I've done everything possible to your sister already. She's assured me you both have nearly identical equipment. It isn't necessary to eat two oranges from the same tree to know how the second one would taste." I knew I'd struck a nerve when she started blushing so attractively, and when Tina started laughing at her. "I thought it was my little peach you liked eating? That's what you told me. I don't even know where my orange is located. Sherry likes eating some peaches too, don't you sister?" I had often experienced petty displays of anger from Tina, so I knew she was capable of lashing out petulantly. I'd never expected her to do so at such an intimate level, or with her sister. The deep pink blush from Sherry that my comments had elicited was as nothing when compared to the crimson that suffused her cheeks following Tina's last comment. She turned away from where she'd been standing and walked back over to the fireplace with her back to us. I gave what I hoped was a stern look to Tina. "What? She started it. She doesn't mind telling stuff about me. Why can't I do the same about her?" "I guess because you love her and don't want to make her embarrassed, or leave her feeling bad? You've had your feeling hurt often enough to know how it feels. You should go apologize to her." "I'm not going to. Part of her problem is that everyone insists on walking on eggshells around her. Its been more than five years already. She acts like she does because it gets her a lot of special favors. You should see all the things our parents have bought for her. She's used to getting anything she ever asked for. You want to know why she set fire to their house? Because they wouldn't buy her this dress she wanted. A dress, and she thinks that gives her the right to burn their house down. She gets away with it too. Anyone else would be in jail for it. I know I would be, but not her." "Okay, Tina, that's enough. No matter about any of the rest of it, you owe her an apology for what you said. You're both guests here, and I don't like what's been going on around here anymore. Please apologize to her." "I'm sorry, Sherry. You know how I get when you go out of your way to mess things up for me. I shouldn't have said what I did though. Will you please forgive me?" "Go to hell, Tina! I know why you said that to him. You're worried, but you're worried about nothing." I started getting the feeling that they were playing me again. Maybe still, for all I knew. I couldn't figure out any real direction they were trying to move me to though. When I'd had this same feeling before, I'd believed I knew what they wanted. This time, I didn't have any real clue about what they might be after. I knew, that if I was patient, they'd let me know what they were after. I could wait, but I have to admit they had me very curious. "I told you I didn't really care if you did, so how could I possibly be worried about it? All I'm asking is that you don't keep trying to screw it up for me, just because you aren't ready yet." "I wasn't. I just wanted him to know how I felt about what he does to you." "He isn't doing anything I don't already want him to do. Not everybody thinks what they have is so special. Some of us can admit we like it just as much as they do. It doesn't have to mean that much if you don't let it." A few minutes later, and the two sisters were standing close to each other over by the fireplace, talking in whispers and looking back occasionally to see if I was still sitting in my chair. By now, I knew a little more about what they were after. I could even understand why Tina had been after me so much about Sherry. I had gotten it wrong before when I just assumed she was jealous of her sister. The two little minx's were trying to set me up to give Sherry a ride. It was probably all Tina's idea. I could see her counseling her sister about her needing to get laid by someone who made it pleasant in order to erase the lingering after effect's of her rape all those years before. Well, that was what I started to think right then. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, because if it was that, then I'd get to live out one of my prime fantasy's too. The girls stuck closely together until it was time for bed, at around ten o'clock. I got up to wish them both good night, and that was when Tina first informed me that she'd be bunking in with Sherry, to help her get to sleep since she was in a strange new bed. I didn't say anything. I still expected that Tina would come see me after I was asleep. I now amended that to when Sherry fell asleep. I was still thinking that Tina would try to get me to take at least her on my trip the following day. I woke up early the next morning, having spent the night all alone in my bed. I got up and showered, then I started packing my bag for the trip. At eight, still the only one awake, I went online and finalized a single ticket for my flight from New York to Los Angeles International Airport. I'd booked an open return, so I could take up to thirty days to fly back to New York. I had just finished finalizing my ticket for the six thirty PM non stop flight. I'd get in sometime after ten o'clock Pacific time. I was joined by both sisters then. Tina was wearing one of my tee shirts that I'd given her when we were going together. Sherry had on a light robe over some pajamas, and was wearing furry slippers. "Morning, Jimmy. Did you sleep well?" "Good morning to you both, and, yes, I did sleep well. I kept having these dreams about walking around in my bathing suit and drinking strawberry margaritas. I wonder what caused those dreams?" "Bastard!" She laughed to let me know she was kidding. "Are you still going to California first?" "Yep. I just finished booking my flight. The plane leaves at six thirty today. I wasn't sure when I'd come back, so I left the return date open. I'll give you a call when I know for sure when I'll get back here. Until then, make yourselves at home, and be sure to enjoy the warmth." "Sherry wants to know if its all right for us to sleep in your bed? We'll change the sheets so they'll be clean when you come back." "Sure, go ahead. You already know where the linen closet is. You're welcome to eat anything in the house, especially anything still left in my freezer. I have a lot of soups in my cupboard, but I pretty much stopped eating them when I found out how much salt they all seem to have. I was going to throw them away, but, if you want them, go ahead. Oh, and another thing, you guys are welcome to open up the Winter curtains I've got out on the enclosed deck out back. It should be good if you want to use all that light out there for doing some work on your painting, but make sure you close them at night, or else my furnace bill will shoot through the roof. I'm not leaving until after lunch, so maybe I can run you guys out to the grocery store to stock up on what you'll need while I'm gone? Franklin's will do a free delivery for groceries, but only if you buy more than fifty dollars worth at a time. Their phone number is on one of those magnet things stuck to the front of the fridge." I waited for the two of them to get dressed, then had to wait while they went through all my cupboards to get an idea of what else they might need. It was close to ten thirty before they were ready to be driven into town. Shopping didn't take very long, and we were back at the house before eleven thirty. "I was going to sneak into your bedroom last night to give you a surprise, but Sherry had trouble falling asleep. I ended up falling asleep before she did." Tina whispered this to me while Sherry was in the restroom. "That wasn't you then last night?" She smacked my arm really hard when I said that. "I hope you're just kidding." "I'm surprised you fell for it. Do you really think something like that is possible from her?" "You'd love to know that, wouldn't you?" Just then, Sherry came back from her little trip to the girl's room. "What would he love to know?" she asked. "Nothing, we were just kidding around about some things." Tina looked at me, almost daring me to say anything to contradict her. I knew better than to do that. "Well, ladies. I'm off. I'll call you to let you know what I decide to do, and where I'm going after Los Angeles. I'm probably going to Hawaii, but I'm not totally sure yet. Take good care of my house, and get some work done on painting your new pictures. Tina, you know where my camera is, and you have my permission to use it anytime you feel like it." Tina came over and wrapped herself around me as she planted a good kiss right on the lips. It wasn't an open mouthed one, but I'd felt some tongue towards the end of it. I thought I could taste her pussy on her lips too. I wondered if she'd used some wet fingers to transfer some of her juices. That wondering led me to my usual physical reaction when thinking such thoughts. I grinned at her. "Did you like the way that tasted?" "I always have, you know that." "Yeah, we both taste the same, don't we?" I made it to my plane on time, but I'd barely paid attention the whole way to the airport. Tina had raised the stakes we were playing for once again. On the plane, both stewardesses came by, several times each, to check to make sure I didn't need another drink, or to see whether I wanted a magazine, a blanket, or a pillow. I finally figured out that they kept coming by to see whether I still had my obvious boner or not. The plane was over the midwest somewhere before I felt it gradually easing up some. ------- Chapter 3 The flight out to LA was routine. I felt tired by the time I'd cleared the baggage area and had picked up my rental car. Instead of driving all the way up to the high desert, I decided to get myself a motel somewhere along the way. I knew I wanted to put at least twenty miles between myself and the downtown LA area. I ended up finding a motel right off the 210 freeway. It was only around eight thirty, West coast time, but my body's internal clock was telling me it was after eleven. I'd had a sandwich on the plane, and really wasn't hungry. The place I finally settled on was a typical businessman's one or two night stopover. They charged more than the room was worth, but who didn't anymore? The next morning I called my house to let Tina know I'd gotten in all right, and that I still hadn't decided where I was heading once I left my brother's. I took some quiet joy in letting her know that I was enjoying an outside burrito breakfast in a short sleeved shirt. I told her the temperature had to be somewhere in the seventies. "You should have asked me to come with you, Jimmy. If you had asked me nice, I'd have left Sherry here and come with you. I told her I was going to if you asked me." "You seem to always tell the wrong people what your plans are. It's funny that you say that, because I was only waiting for you to ask me if you could come. That's the main reason I waited so long to finalize my ticket out here." "Sherry's right about the way you lead me around. I didn't want to tell you that when she first said that to you, but she's right." "By your twat, you mean? I don't think so. I remember you leading me around by grabbing my cock and pulling on it, but I never led you around with my finger in your little puss." "Maybe you should have. Maybe you should ask me to do a lot of things, instead of always waiting for me to be the one to ask you?" "I've got to go. I wish now I'd paid the extra and gotten one of those convertibles. It would have been nice to feel that warm breeze blowing on me when I drive. It will be colder up the hill though, so maybe not." "Don't call me if you do end up going to Hawaii without me. You know how much I've always wanted to go there someday." "Listen, if you look in my top dresser drawer, in the back, I left an envelope there for you. There's some money in there, and the number of a guy you can call that will drive you up to the airport in New Jersey. I already set this up with him, just in case you changed your mind. I can buy you a ticket from out here, online, for that same six thirty flight I took yesterday. You can pick it up at the airline's counter, just like I did with mine. You can give the guy a hundred, that's what he told me he'd run you up there for. Once you get out here, I'll come get you at the airport, and we'll decide where to go after that." "You think you've got it all figured out, don't you?" This was the anger that I'd expected from her. "No. Look in the envelope before you get mad. I left a list of options you might decide on instead of coming out here to be with me. I'll hang up now and call you back in an hour. Look at the note I left first, and then decide what you want to do, okay?" She agreed to doing that much, and that's where we left it when we hung up. I'd put twenty five hundred in cash in the envelope, along with several suggestions for places she and I could visit, or places where she could choose to go with Sherry instead. I'd even written down the best prices I'd found on the internet, along with the web site she had to use to get those prices. I'd also included one of my credit cards, for her to make the vacation package purchase with. I was hoping she'd choose to pick one of the choices that included me, but I still wanted to give her several other options for getting away from the cold, even if her choice didn't end up with her being somewhere with me. I phoned my house again in an hour. Tina answered on the first ring. "Sherry and I both picked Hawaii, but I want to be with you too. Why wasn't that one of the choices?" "It is. Go ahead and book it, using my card, then get Mike to drive you guys up to the airport. Call me on my cell and let me know which package you picked, out of the three different options I found. After I'm done visiting with my brother and his family, I'll fly over there and join you. Those condos are all two bedrooms. I think the two week one on Maul is the best, but if you want to see more of the Islands, that cruise/condo combination deal looks to me like it's the next best one. If you pick that one though, make the cruise for the second week, not the first, and let them know you'll have a third person in your stateroom. They only charge like three hundred for the third person, and the condo package doesn't care if you have two, three, or four people." "Why did you put so much cash in the envelope, and your credit card too?" "That was always the other half of your money from the King Richard picture. I was just waiting for a good time to give it to you. Someday, when you're famous, I'll tell people you used me to model for it. It should be worth a lot by then. The credit card was to pay for your vacation with." "After doing all this, you're going to have to admit you love me. Will you say it?" "Call me when you have all your flight information, and tell me where you'll be." "Please?" "If I ever do say it, it will because I'm sure I mean it. I have to go, especially if I'm going to be cutting my time in California really short. Take care, and don't forget to call me." "I love you too, Jimmy. Remember what I told you about when I wanted to go to Hawaii. That's why I'm bringing Sherry, so she can be my maid of honor." "Now you're talking crazy, Tina. Don't go acting all weird on me and make me regret setting all this up. Your friend isn't visiting is she?" "No, I'm clear for at least another three weeks. Tell me that you love me, and I'll tell you what I made Sherry promise she'd do if I let her come to Hawaii with us." I almost said it to her, but stopped myself before I did. It was hard enough getting along with her without her knowing that I probably did love her. I wasn't a hundred percent sure that I did anyway. I knew I missed her a lot, and that I didn't want us to be fighting and apart like we now were. "If she already promised, how would my telling you that change any thing? I'm very, very, very fond of you, and I've missed having you with me. That's all I'm going to say about that, so try to make it be enough for you." "We're both going to make you so glad you brought us on this vacation, Jimmy. What you just said, that's enough for right now. I know you really do love me though, and I'm madly in love with you, and have been for a long, long time. Go see your brother and his family. Tell them their future sister in law sends her fondest greetings too." After the phone call, I started worrying about how I could cut my visit short without hurting Danny and Kaitlyn's feelings. If I just stopped by for a few hours, they would be upset. I'd called them already to let them know I was coming. I wished now that I hadn't, but it was too late for me to be wishing for that. I drove up to their trailer park, getting there before eleven. I figured another four and a half hours for the girls to get on their flight and leave New Jersey. It all depended on what connection they made for the next leg of their trip to Hawaii. I was assuming it would be sometime in the morning of the following day. That didn't give me much time to spend with my family, I had to come up with a big excuse, or else come up with something to get their mind off of me, and onto something else more important to them. I'd found out, over the phone, that Danny had hurt his back moving some furniture and had been forced to go on disability for awhile. He was getting a check from Workman's Comp, but that was only for about two thirds of his base wages. Even with the money in that account I'd set up for Kaitlyn, I knew they were just scraping by. Thinking about that, I had my answer. When I got done greeting everyone, marvelling at how big Danny's kids had gotten, the three adults grabbed seats around my old dining table and had a few beers, trying to get caught up with each other's lives. Danny's back was really messed up, he told me, and he was afraid his days of driving trucks and delivering furniture had come to an end. "What do you think you can still do, Danny?" "Not much, Jim. When my back isn't killing me, I earn a little bit extra doing handyman things around the park. Maybe something like that. I can try putting some ads in the Recycler papers. I wouldn't be able to do any of the big jobs, and not much of anything requiring ladders, but I could probably get by just doing the things I know I can still do. Problem with doing that though, is I don't have many of the tools I'd need, and I'd need a work van to hold everything. Plus, I'm not that sure my back will hold up if I did all that bending over to get under sinks and things. What I'd really like to do is buy one of those re screening franchises. I know a guy down the hill that makes some damn good money going out on calls and re screening or making all new screens for people's homes. I did some of that with him, and it's as simple as learning how to suck milk out of a tit." How much do these franchises cost?" "With all the materials you'd need to get started, including the re screening trailer itself, only twenty thousand. You have to go to the factory school so they know you can do everything right too, but once you finish that, you can make five or six thousand a month easy by busting your hump, or an easy twenty five hundred to three grand each month by not even breaking a sweat. If I get a big settlement for my disability claim, then that's what I'm going to do. They already offered me thirteen thousand, but I told them it wasn't near enough. I'd need at least twenty five to get caught up with things, and still do that franchise deal." "You think your back would allow you to do this screening deal?" "Fuck yes. Hell, last month I helped him out for three days on some new homes he was building all the screens for. My back was worse then, and I didn't have any trouble at all, long as I sat down and rested when I got some twinges down in my lower part." "If you were sure you could do the work, I could probably help you out with a good part of that, and you could save whatever disability money you finally end up with for a back up, just in case this doesn't work out quite like you'd hoped. It would mean I'd have to leave here right away though, and I hate having to cut my visit short. I'd do it if it would help you though. How much can you come up with on your own?" "Nothing, man. We're living on short rations already. It's been tough sledding since I got laid up. Katie's even been talking about looking for something." "We could get five thousand of it, Jimmy, and I could go with him to help out in case his back acts up. The kids are in school, and I can get help watching them if I needed to." "How do you figure that, woman? I know your mother can't swing anything close to that." Danny had been shocked when Kaitlyn had chimed in about her getting five thousand. I'd known, being able to access her savings account online, to the penny, how much she had saved up in that account I'd set up for her. I waited to see what she was going to tell him before I commented on what she'd claimed. "Danny, you know I always tried to keep a little something back whenever you got any overtime, or when you went out and brought home any extra when you did those odd jobs of yours. This was to be our rainy day money. If Jimmy can help us with the rest, we shouldn't let this chance get away from us. This would mean us having our own business, baby. We wouldn't have to be dependent on anyone else. The two of us could do this, I know it." This was the very first time, in memory, that I'd heard Kaitlyn being so completely supportive of any scheme that Danny had come up with. I'd watched her facial reactions when Danny had spoken about the re screening business. She had looked excited about it. "Kaitlyn, have you looked into this franchise deal yourself?" "Just what Danny told me when he was down the hill working for that guy. He told me how much the business was grossing from making those screens for the new houses. He paid Danny one fifty a day, and that's pretty good money for just an inexperienced helper to be paid. I know Danny can put two and two together and come up with the right answer. You had it right ever since you were a kid, you make a lot more if you have your own business. But only if you work hard at it. Danny and me, we're not afraid to work for what we want. We just never got our chance before." I knew that was bull shit, because I couldn't count the number of chances Danny had blown over the years. Strangely, if Kaitlyn was planning on getting directly involved in it, I had a pretty good feeling about their chances to make a go of things. "Here's what I can do then, but it would mean I'd have to fly on to Hawaii earlier than I wanted to. I was going to see about getting in touch with some people, like your sister Bridget, Kaitlyn, and maybe Leslie, or even Delilah if I could find out where she is now. I was hoping we could go out a few times and do some things too. I can see you aren't up for any bowling, Bro. Too bad, because I could probably kick your ass now that you've tweaked your back. If I'm going to give you this other help with the business thing though, my money is going to be pretty tight. I'll need to sell some of the things I've been meaning to sell but haven't gotten around to so far. It might take me some time, so I'd better get on it as soon as possible. You don't think anyone's going to get all hacked off at me for not looking them up while I'm out here?" "Fuck no, and the hell with them if they did. Especially Leslie and Bridget. Dee was different, but those other two, they have no business expecting anything from you, not even the sweat off your balls. If they ask, which they probably won't, we'll tell them you weren't even able to stick around to spend much time with us. They can like it or lump it." "I really only came out here to see you and the kids, but I know they'd at least expect me to call them while I was here. You guys are different though, and I feel bad that we couldn't spend more time this trip. Why don't all of us go out and get dinner at the Steer & Stein. Are they open even now?" "Good idea, get some steaks and a few beers. Kids like their burger's and fries too. When would you have to leave, Jim?" Danny was mostly concerned with himself, and I knew that. He was real excited at the prospect of making such a big score from me. Kaitlyn was different this time though. I figured she must have really been worried about where their money was going to come from after Danny's disability money ran out. "Kaitlyn, I'm depending on you to make sure this franchise thing happens, just like Danny says it's supposed to. As soon as I get enough put together, I'll wire transfer it into your account. I'll send fifteen by the end of the month, and another five a week after. You keep that other money you saved, for your living expenses. Danny, I want you to let Kaitlyn handle all the money from this business. I don't want to hear that you went off and pissed any big chunks away. In business, there are always lulls, and you need to have some money in reserve to cover those times. Just let Kaitlyn handle the money, she already knows what she needs to do." Kaitlyn called the kids in from where they were busy playing in the trailer park, and all six of us somehow squeezed into my rental car for the trip to the restaurant. "Jim, what am I supposed to use to pull the re screening trailer with? I forgot about that little detail. I'll need a truck, used is all right, but it needs to be dependable. We'll have to use up most of Katie's savings until I finally get my settlement. That okay with you, Katie?" Danny was either a great actor, or that little transportation detail really had slipped his mind. I figured I was already on the hook for twenty, and I really did have enough money to help them out with this thing they wanted to do. The worse that could happen is they'd end up losing everything I'd put in it for them, but the best that could happen was worth a lot more than all the money we were talking about me risking. "Fat Teddy still got that used truck lot over on Main Street?" "He sure does, but I'm not giving that fat bastard any of my business if I can help it. You know he repo'ed two trucks on me, don't you?" "I know you weren't paying him his money too. What was he supposed to do, let you slide forever on what you owed?" "He could have waited, and he didn't have to have them come here to my home to embarrass me when they hooked them up and towed them off." "Are you saying you would have brought those trucks back to his lot and turned the keys back in to him if he tried sending you a letter about what he needed?" "You know what I meant. He could have repo'ed them over at the bowling alley, or at one of those beer bars that I sometimes used to go to. He didn't have to do it right in front of the kids and all my neighbors." "This time we'll get you clear title to something from him. That should hold him off from embarrassing you for awhile. I always liked Teddy, and his trucks were usually what he claimed they were, not something with a lot of hidden problems. You want to stop off there and see if he has anything? I don't have much time left if I'm going to catch an earlier flight out to Hawaii. I'll need to head back to LAX to turn in this car and get a room over by the airport. If we don't find something tonight, then you'll have to fix this transportation problem yourself. I'll be too busy trying to sell things to put my hands on this money I'm promising to send you." We finally decided to go over and take a look at Fat Teddy's lot. You should have seen Teddy's face when he first recognized Danny getting out of the rental car. I thought he was going to have a coronary, his face turned so red at first. Then, he just started laughing, which he continued doing for the longest time. "You here to try to get me to finance another truck for you, Masters? If you are, you better just turn around and go find some other sucker to trust you." I could see Danny wasn't happy being talked to that way. I thought I needed to step in try to salvage what we'd come there to do. "You got any decent trucks on this lot, Teddy? Also, you shouldn't be so quick to run off an all cash buyer like my brother." "That really you, Jimmy? Damn, I heard you were hung!" "You heard right, I am. How's Tanya doing? She still pounding out more of those little rug rats with Ed?" "Hell no! That son of a bitch turned out to be a thief, a liar, and an all around bastard. Stole a bunch of money down there where he was working and lit on out of here. Left me with a houseful of his little bastard's, and a daughter who just eats and eats, because her heart got broken by that slime ball." "Tanya got fat then? Damn, that's a shame. You sure it didn't have something to do with her genes? There's a reason people keep calling you Fat Teddy, you know? I remember dating Tanya one time when she ate a whole extra large pizza all by herself. She had the metabolism to get away with it back then, but having all those kids had to slow it down some. She was right on the edge of being a big girl back when we were still in school together. You tell her I said hello, okay?" "I'll do that for you, see if I don't. Tell me you didn't come down here to see if I'd let you co-sign for Danny Boy here. It would plumb break my poor old heart to have to turn you down, but I'd do it in a second, believe me I would." "Show me your best deal on a good work truck. Something you wouldn't be ashamed to sell to an honest man." "It isn't for Danny then?" "This will be an all cash transaction, so you might not want to alienate the man. His wife and kids are in the car too, so it just isn't him you're making feel bad." "Hell, don't they know I was just funning with him? You kids know your daddy and I go way back. I believe I sold him his first four or five trucks, didn't I Danny? He was maybe sixteen or seventeen years old back when I sold him that first one. That was a good truck too. Shame you had to go and wrap it around that tree over by the golf course." "We going to roast marshmallows and sing some songs together, or are you going to finally show us what we came here to find? Jim doesn't have that much time. Unlike you, he's a busy man, and only has a few hours before he has to fly off to Hawaii to close another big deal. Do you have anything decent to show us or not?" "Teddy, I'm sorry about his attitude, but I'm afraid he's right about us being pressed for time. Why don't you take us right to the best truck for the money you have?" "That big Jimmy over there would make a damn fine work truck. Not many miles, and the man that owned it had no business buying such a beefed up son of a bitch as that there truck. It has all the heavy load packages. You could tow a big heavy trailer up the grade with that baby and never need to slow down at all. I'd need to get eight for it, but at that price you'd have a damn good truck. I'm in it almost seven, and that's the truth." "Seven out the door, or seven plus tax and license?" "I said eight, dammit, but, for you, Jimmy, that's my out the door price. Want me to write it up for you?" "Damn Teddy, I really am short on time, and those kids need to get some dinner in their belly's. Can we just dispense with all the haggling and write it up for seven, out the door?" "Seventy three, and only because it's you. I wouldn't do it that low for anyone else I know, but I will for you, because you always treated my baby girl with respect. Now you want me to write it up, or not?" "Sure Teddy, go ahead and write it up. You have a choice, my out of state check, putting it on my credit card, which do you prefer?" "Your check is good, right? Damn me if I want to have to repo another truck from your brother. Put this one in his name too?" We bought that truck without even turning over the engine, or kicking a single tire. I knew, if Teddy said it was top of the line, it was. When we drove off, fifteen minutes later, Danny and his two boys were in the new truck and Kaitlyn and Angela were still in the rental with me. "You've changed a lot Jimmy. I've never seen you like you are this visit. You finally find someone that's right for you?" "I'm not sure yet. So far it looks a bit shaky to me. She's very pretty, and she's an artist. Comes from a rich family, and is probably way too good for the likes of me. We argue and fight about where she fits in my life. She's so pushy that I feel like she wants to take my whole life over. She scares me too, because I sometimes can't do what I've decided with her. She forces me to change my mind, or gets me to back down from things I already told her." "You love her then. Look at your brother and me, at all the things we put each other through over more than twenty four years. All it could be is love. Anything else, and we'd have already killed each other a hundred times by now. Somehow, we managed to stay together when ninety nine point nine percent of other couples would have split up long before now. Don't you worry about this money you're spending on us either. You'll get it back someday. This is really our first good chance since we've been grown up enough to maybe deserve one. You should be proud that you somehow managed to not give up on us, even with all the crap we pulled on you all those times. We still own the trailer though, and there still isn't a mortgage on it either. That money you send every month, I've really tried to hang onto every penny. This thing with Danny's back, the doctor's tell us it's bad. He won't ever be able to lift like he used to before. It hurts him to not be able to do those things he used to be good at, but he's getting older, we all are, so this is a good time for him to start using something besides what used to be his big strong back. You know he pee's sitting down a lot? I think he hurt his kidneys from all that driving he did." "What do his doctor's say about that?" "Ha, you think he tells them that it hurts him to take a leak? No way, but that's Danny for you. He won't tell anyone about it until it hurts him bad enough that he's more scared not to. He'll piss blood before he complains or admits it hurts him to pee." "You think all the booze and the drugs hurt him?" "Could be. Probably was a combination of things that did it. If this re screening thing works out really well for us, I'm going to take some of that reserve money and get the kids teeth fixed. Probably too late for me and Danny, but the kids need a chance to have better than we got." Dinner was high spirited. Danny and the boys couldn't stop talking about how good the new truck was, or how much power was under the hood. For the first time in a long time, I looked around at my family and felt good about being there with them. I'd always been afraid for them. I still was, a little bit, but I also was seeing glimmers of real hope that I hadn't seen when I'd looked at them before. It was after ten PM before I said goodbye to all of them and got into the rental car and drove back down to Los Angeles. I was down the Cajon Pass and getting ready to turn onto the 210 freeway when my cell phone rang. It was Tina, calling me from the Airport. Their flight had been a little delayed, she said and they were waiting for their baggage to be deplaned. I told her I was about forty five minutes from the airport, and I'd pick them up out in front of the baggage area when I got there. Tina told me they were booked to fly out of LAX at eleven the next morning. She said she'd reserved me a seat on the same flight, but I needed to call the airline before midnight if I wanted to confirm it. I had no trouble spotting both women. For one thing, they were right where I'd told them to wait. For another, they were probably the only people in Los Angeles, who weren't homeless, but were still wearing four or five layers of Winter clothing. As soon as they got their bags loaded in my trunk, and were inside the rental car, they started stripping off all their excess clothes. They were very tired from the trip, as was I from my visit with my family. We found a room at the nearest airport motel we could. It had two beds, a king and a single, and was only $130.00 for the night, and that included free parking and a special reduced long term parking option that I didn't need, since I'd be turning in my rental car in the morning. By the time we finally got up to our room, on the fifth floor, because this was a big motel, it was midnight. In the elevator, after giving me a big kiss, Tina asked me how my visit with my family went. "Pretty good, I'd say. I spent thirty thousand on them today, but it might be the best money I ever spent for them." I explained what I'd meant over the next ten minutes, and Tina seemed to understand what I'd meant about not feeling bad about putting out all that money. Sherry was the next one to ask me something. "Jimmy, please tell me you aren't really going to force me to go through with that ridiculous promise Tina made me make her so I could come with you guys, okay?" "I don't even know what you promised yet. Why don't you tell me what it was, then I'll tell you if I'll ask her to let you out of it or not." "You better not be about to spoil my surprise, Sherry. If you do, I'll never trust you again. You made the deal with me, not with him. You just wait until its time." Tina used a sharp tone with her sister. Whatever the promise might be, it was something important to Tina. "By the way, Jimmy, I booked us in on that condo/cruise deal. I might not ever get back to Hawaii, so I wanted to see all the Islands, not just Maul. I hope that's okay?" "I left it up to you, Babe. I need to go to bed. Do I get the big bed with you, or the single by myself?" "You get the big one, and you get to choose whichever one of us you want to have sleep with you, or even both of us if that's what you'd prefer." "Okay, I think I know the promise you're trying to get out of now, Sherry. Don't worry, I'll have a talk with Tina about this. Would it bother you too much if I asked Tina to sleep with me tonight in the big bed?" "Don't ask her, Jimmy. I already told you that you could choose any way you wanted to. This isn't the promise she's trying to wiggle out of doing anyway. She already knew, before her promise, that she would have to sleep with you if you wanted her to. This is something else she needs to do." I chose Tina to be in the big bed with me. I tried to be somewhat circumspect about what we were doing, even keeping the covers over us until Tina threw them off us and made me let her get on top. Cowgirl style had always been her favorite position, and she didn't see any reason why we had to be quiet, or why she shouldn't just climb on top and go for a nice slow canter. I admit I was a little bashful and reluctant in the beginning, but I managed to get over most of that when I noticed Sherry's hand moving under the covers in the area where her legs came together. Tina noticed it too, at about the same time I did. "Wish you were up here getting what I have, don't you Sher? It feels even better than you'd think it would. You probably can't see what he has that well. You can go turn on the lights if you want to, we don't care." Tina's talking was having an erotic effect on me. I knew she could feel how hard I was getting the whole time she was talking. Sherry didn't get up to turn on any lights, but she was still looking over at us, and her fingers sure seemed like they were moving even faster than before. I came first, and that seemed to set Tina off too. She exaggerated the amount of noise she usually made when she came, but maybe it was just that getting fucked in front of her sister really made her hotter. I wasn't complaining. I knew it had made my come better too, and there wasn't any question that I was more turned on than I could ever remember being. When Sherry started coming, we all knew it at the same time. She just exploded. One minute she's rubbing at herself furiously, then, the next, she starts screaming something, but I couldn't make out what it was. After that, Tina noted some evidence of my returning interest. This time, she set right off at a fast gallop. Sherry moaned when she saw this, and a few seconds later, I once again noticed her fingers moving between her legs. ------- Chapter 4 Hawaii was much better for me this time. It was being there with someone else, having someone to share all the experiences with. We spent the first week on Oahu, at a nice little condo in Honolulu. Tina and I were in one bedroom, with Sherry staying in the other. On two of our nights there, Tina and Sherry went to bed together in Sherry's room. Both nights, a few hours after she went to bed in her sister's room, Tina came back to our bedroom and crawled into bed with me. Both times, her face smelled of pussy, and her pussy was gushing and swollen from having been stimulated by something or someone. She certainly wasn't trying to hide what they'd been doing. The second time she'd been with Sherry, Tina started taking me to task for my seeming reluctance to move things forward with her sister. "You have to make the first move with her, Jimmy. She's ready, but she needs that first push to come from you. She's a lot more passive than I am." "Right, you're about as passive as Attila the Hun. I see what you're trying to do here, and I'm not falling for it." "Oh really? You think I'm trying to trick you? We both know you've got the hots for her, so what's your problem? She wants you to do it; she just needs to be able to pretend it was all your idea. She's always been that way, since long before the time she got raped. Even now, she pretends she doesn't want to do things with me. I have to take the lead with her. If I don't make a move on her for awhile, she'll do things to really annoy me until I finally do. After someone makes her get started though, that somehow makes it all right for her to let herself go, to join in with everything. She just needs that first little push." "Even if I was attracted to her, the way you've always claimed, you're the one I'm in a relationship with, not her." "I know that. You think I'd be jealous, but I've been trying to convince you that I'm really not. Sherry and I are extremely close, and always have been. We've been doing what we did together tonight, ever since we were thirteen years old. Only with her though, no other girls for me, not ever. With her, it's more about the closeness we feel towards each other than it is just the sex. Unlike me, Sherry has been with other girls and women. No matter what ends up happening with you and me, Sherry and I will still be close like we are. I don't think I could survive if she wasn't in my life like she always has been." We made love for the longest time. It was a gentler, more clinging coming together sort of lovemaking. As much kissing and touching, as actual thrusting and pressing ourselves together. It seemed to take me forever to come. Tina had several orgasms to my one, although hers seemed more restrained than they usually were. She drew them out and savored every second of them, but seemed to act calmer than was the usual case when she came with me before. After I came, we stopped, with me rolling off her so I'd be on my back. Slow or not, my breathing was sharp and ragged, as though I'd just finished a sprint race. "You need to tell me now, tell me tonight, tell me right now." I knew what she meant. I'd been half expecting that she'd make another demand like this one. I'd tried three or four times to tell her, over the past six days we'd been in Hawaii. I didn't know what it was that was keeping me too afraid to actually say the words to her. I'd said those words to several other girls, back when I was in school and dating, and I'd last said them to Leslie. I knew I felt more for Tina than I had for all those other girls and women. I wanted to tell her I loved her without her having to prompt me to do so. "I'm not going to tell you if you keep pestering me to do it. If I love you, then I'll tell you myself. You won't have to force the words out of me." "I already know you do, Jimmy, but hearing you say you do is like the next step for us. Until you tell me you do, we can't go past where we are now." In a funny way, I found myself knowing what she meant by that. It was like something finally clicked on inside my brain. Telling her I loved her wasn't the final step that I'd been treating it as being. It was just another milestone along the pathway of our future together. An important milestone, to be sure, but not the end all and be all that I'd been making it out to be. For the first time in awhile, I felt myself relaxing around Tina, letting some of the tension from what I saw as our main conflict ease itself away. I had a fairly good idea about what the progression of events would be, once I finally told her the words she was so anxious to hear me say. Telling her I loved her would remove the final barricade I'd set up as a defensive shield to keep her from being able to totally take over my life. It would be like giving her permission to start planning out our future. Marriage, kids, the whole ball of wax. Once I said the words to her, she'd have carte blanche to go ahead with everything else she wanted to plan for the two of us. I was thirty one years old, she was only twenty four. When I'd graduated high school, she'd been an eleven year old. She was too young for me for one thing. The difference between her childhood and mine was another big thing too. I couldn't very well marry her and not take her out to see Danny, Kaitlyn and the rest of my family. I'd seen her parent's house, and when I contrasted that house with Danny and Kaitlyn's trailer, it brought home to me the vast economic gulf between our two families. I just wasn't good enough for her, and I never would be. I'd escaped from my low life surroundings, even managing to make something of myself, financially speaking, in the process of doing so. I'd gone from making my money by buying and selling other people's junk, to having a nice, very profitable, wholesale wind chime business. In my own estimate of myself though, I was still just a junkman. I'd never escape who I really was, no matter how much distance I tried to put between myself and my family. I was no better than they were, just a little luckier, and not plagued by so many personal weaknesses, that's all. "You don't really know that much about me. You can't really know, not until you've seen for yourself where I came from, and had the chance to meet the people who raised me, and who had such a strong influence on coloring the way I look at things. When we get back to California, after this part of our trip is over, I'll take you and Sherry up to meet my family, so you can see for yourself how I grew up, and what kind of life I'm used to living." "You've already told me a lot about them, and the things that happened to you before you moved out to Patler. I'd love to meet your family, but nothing I learn while I'm there will ever be able to change how I feel about you, or how much I love you." "Easy for you to tell me that now. We come from different world's, Tina, And I've been trying to pretend I could fit into your world, just like you've been trying to fit into mine by living the way you do. Any time you felt like it, you could have gone back and made up with your folks. If you did that you'd be a part of the aristocratic, upper crust, society again. I'll always be a part of the two pitchers of beer and an extra large two topping pizza for twenty bucks crowd that gathers around down at the bowling alley." "You think I'm just playing at being a starving artist? That I still have the same choices that Sherry used to have, before she set that fire? You're wrong if you think that. I haven't spoken one word to either of my parents, not since way back when I first turned eighteen. Sherry and I were both given an ultimatum then. I chose my way, and she chose hers. This complete separation from my parents was their choice, not mine. I was never mad at them before they kicked me out of their house. I live like I do, because that's the best I can manage on what I can earn for myself. I'd live just like you do if I could afford to. I'm waiting though, and my time for living comfortably again will soon be coming. None of this has even the least bit of relevance when it comes to determining whether or not you love me though. You either do or you don't. Don't try making excuses, or coming up with any fake reasons for not telling me if you do." "We'll go see them anyway. You should get a chance to meet them either way it ends up going for us. You won't ever be able to understand the way I am until after you've met my family, and have seen for yourself how it was for me, growing up with them like I did." Tina's attitude was subdued after that. I could see how frustrated my stubborn refusal to declare my love for her was making her. Added to this was her failure to get me to make any move on Sherry. I had managed to get through the first week in Hawaii without succumbing to temptation with regard to her. We were packed up and about to leave the condo for the cruise ship when Tina brought up that particular subject with both her sister and me again. "You both need to stop pussyfooting around with each other. It's really starting to get on my nerves. You know you both want to, so just do it and get it over with. Tonight, on the ship, you two need to sleep together." We took a cab down to where the cruise ship was anchored. We waited in line for the better part of an hour before they finally started letting us move our things on board. Our stateroom was nothing fancy, but it was a little bigger than what I'd been expecting. There were three single beds in the room, with two of them pushed together, while the third one was all the way across the open space, over by the door. "Jimmy, help me move this other bed over with those other two. Yours will be the one in the center. It has rollers, so it will be easy to move it back to where it now is in the morning." "Tina, I don't appreciate it when you keep trying to force everyone to do what you want. Why don't you just relax about this thing? Sherry doesn't need you putting all this pressure on her either. Let's just relax and enjoy the cruise, okay?" "No, it isn't okay. You spent a lot of money to bring us on this nice vacation, and Sherry needs to show her appreciation to you for it. She said she would before we left your house, and she hasn't done squat while we've been here, not even offering you a blow job." I left that one alone. To keep everything calmed down between us, I went over and helped Tina with moving the bed. This seemed to satisfy her. She was all smiles as we pushed it over to where the other two were. "Do you want a blow job, Jimmy?" Sherry almost whispered the words to me. She had moved up right behind me when I was putting that third bed alongside the other two. I turned to look at her and her face was all flushed and she refused to look at my face in return. I could see that it had been difficult for her to get the question out. I was going to tell her no, but Tina spoke up before I got the chance to. "Don't answer that, Jimmy. She's trying to trick you into telling her no. Sherry, tell Jimmy what you told me after that night in the hotel in Los Angeles." The flush on Sherry's face got deeper, and I could see the first hint of her own fiery temper in her eyes as she turned to look right at Tina. "All I said was it looked like you were having fun." "That isn't all you said, and you know it. Tell him the other parts, about how hot it made you looking at his big dick going in and out, and how you wished it was you he was fucking." "Tina! You said you wouldn't do this. I asked him already, like you said to, okay?" "Girls, don't fight. Sherry, thank you for the lovely invitation, but, tempting as it might be, we need to go up on deck now and let them take us through all the emergency safety procedures, just in case the boat starts sinking or something later. We need to know where we're supposed to go if an emergency happens." "If I knew you were going to pull this innocent act of yours again, I'd have left you back home to freeze. You're the one who told me you were ready, and that you wanted to do Jimmy. We brought you out here with us and all you do is play with yourself and then get me come in to help you out. I told you it was past the point where you could keep on having things all your own way. Jimmy, I already told you what she's been waiting for. Tell her what she has to do." I was already getting angry with Tina for not letting this thing of hers go, especially after I'd repeatedly asked her to. I figured I'd pretend to act like she wanted me to and let her see for herself how Sherry would react. Normally, I'd never have spoken to Sherry like I was going to do. I was concerned with the browbeating she kept being exposed to at Tina's hands. I thought my being forceful and demanding with Sherry would end up badly, then seeing it do that would teach Tina a lesson she was really in need of being taught. "Strip out of your clothes right now Sherry. We've got some time before they call us to come up for that fire drill. Your sister isn't going to be satisfied until we give her what she's after. Maybe, once we're done fucking each other, right in front of her, she'll leave us alone about it so that we can all enjoy the rest of our vacation." As soon as I said those words, you could see both sisters start to react. It got almost an immediate response from Sherry. She was out of her clothes and down on the bed in a matter of mere seconds. The anger in her eyes had been replaced by something else. I wasn't sure yet what that something else was, but it didn't look like fear, and she didn't act like she was feeling forced to do anything she didn't want to do. I looked over at Tina, and I could easily recognize signs of her obvious sexual excitement, and the look of undisguised hunger on her face. "Last chance to put a stop to this, Tina. You better speak up now, if you don't really want me to do this." "Do it, Jimmy. She needs this, and so do we. Fuck her until she begs you to stop." I started peeling off my own clothes when she told me that. I knew my fucking Sherry was going to happen, and I suspected that Tina was right about our needing to have it happen too. For too long, I'd had these fantasies about Sherry and me, and about the three of us, all together. When I was completely naked, I eased my way down on top of her and we started kissing each other. It was like a dam had suddenly burst inside Sherry, letting all her passion come streaming out at once. One minute we were kissing each other, desperately, and then, without my knowing exactly how it happened, we ended up with me on my back, and her on top, hungrily sucking on my very hard cock. I grabbed her hips and started in with returning the favor. She did taste exactly the same as Tina did. I remember thinking that Kaitlyn, Bridget, and Mona had all tasted quite a bit differently than each other. Not so with Tina and Sherry. I thought it must be one of those identical twin things. I heard the room speaker come on and tell everyone to come up on deck for the life jacket and emergency life boat drills, but I had just turned us around and was beginning to work my way into Sherry's tight little box. She was helping me get it up inside her, not afraid, or acting worried in any way about what I was starting to do to her. It took me awhile, but I finally managed to get myself wedged all the way up inside her. As soon as I managed to do that, I was off to the races with her. I vaguely heard a loud knocking at the door, but nothing was going to call a halt to what I was then doing, not unless it was me halting after a big heaping dose of my cum had ended up spraying itself up against the opening of her cervix. I was in, and I wasn't going to stop for any damn fire drill or safety lecture. I heard Tina go open the door to the stateroom, and I also heard her telling whoever was at the door that her fiance was doing something with her sister, and that all three of us would head on up to the proper deck as soon as we were all dressed again. I almost laughed, but I didn't because that was when my dick started feeling like it was almost ready to let go with a big load. This had always been my favorite part, and I had this little game I played with myself, to see how long I could delay myself from actually letting go with it. It never lasted for very long, but the longer I delayed, the better the actual cum itself would feel for me. This time I lasted for longer than I usually could. I'm not sure why. Sherry had already gotten off a few times that I knew of. Once when I started eating her pussy, twice more when we started fucking for real, after I'd gotten finished up with putting it all inside her. I was just starting to hose her down, when her pussy suddenly just clamped up on me and wouldn't let me move a bit. That turned off my spigot in a hurry, and I'd only managed to get one good splash out before she did that to me. This cum of hers beat anything I'd ever seen from Tina in that department. It had to be two minutes or more before she eased up her grip on my unit. By then, her squirting had soaked both of us and all the blankets and bed linen underneath us. Even the mattress got soaked, like if she'd pee'd herself or something. As soon as I could move inside her again, I did. It took me another three or four minutes before I'd gotten myself worked up enough to resume my own, too long delayed, release. This time, I managed to just about finish up before she again started clamping down and seizing herself up. This one wasn't as intense, and it didn't seem to last half as long as that other one had. By the time she started relaxing again, I was through, for that session at least. "Hurry up, you guys, we need to get ready to go up and get our life jackets, and find out where out life boat is, in case we ever need to use it. When we finish that though, I need you to do me too, Jimmy. God, that was so intense. When she really gets her cum, isn't it something?" I managed to get to my feet and started putting my clothes back on. I'd have finished a lot sooner if Tina hadn't been trying to crawl inside my skin while she busily licked my face clean of all her sister's juices. I was already fully dressed before Tina started pulling on Sherry's arms, trying to get her off the bed and started getting back into her clothes again too. We finally made it up to where we were supposed to be, then we all had to stand around waiting for another ten minutes until the last of the straggler's made it to where we were all supposed to gather. The actual drill, and the accompanying safety lecture itself, only took about fifteen minutes, once they finally got it going. For the rest of our cruise, it was the three of us always together. I wasn't fighting it, but I wasn't as convinced as Tina seemed to be, that this was how we needed to do it. I felt a real big difference between the way I felt about Sherry, and how much I cared about Tina. I was definitely admitting to myself that I was in love with Tina by now. With Sherry, it was simply a case of physical attraction, and the excitement that came from indulging in some forbidden sex. It wasn't love though, and I was fairly certain it would never be like that between the two of us. Sherry was very submissive. I don't know if this was because of her prior rape experience, or if she had always been that way. Even Tina wasn't sure how much of it was due to her being raped. Tina said Sherry had never directly initiated anything between the two of them. She attributed that to Sherry's passive nature. What I was seeing was a lot more than a very passive woman. She loved feeling powerless, and would always put herself in situations where someone had to push her toward's doing certain types of things. From her reactions while doing those things, it was readily apparent that the coercive nature of being forced only added to her pleasure. Once I heard Tina slapping her arms and shoulders, getting her to hold still so Tina could sit on her face. For that entire three way session that took place after that, Sherry's responses were off the charts. It was our last night on board, and Tina and I were walking out on one of the open decks. Sherry was back in our stateroom, catching up on her post card correspondence. We had reached the stern of the ship, midway through our fourth circuit of the ship when I went over to the railing to look out at the ship's phosphorescent wake. Tina just naturally came along with me. I turned so that we were facing each other. I'd been waiting for a good time to do this, and knew this would, in all likelihood, be the best possible opportunity I'd ever have. "I love you Tina, and being here with you like this is absolutely the happiest time of my life. I don't ever want us going back to how things were in my life without you. Will you please marry me?" I honestly was braced for what I was sure going to be a case of her throwing herself at me because of the excitement my declaration would be bringing her. Instead, she remained calm and asked me a question. "What about Sherry?" "What about her? I love you, but I don't love her. I'm asking you to marry me, just you, and that's all." "I know that, silly. I meant what would happen to her after we get married? She needs to be with me, and I need to be with her too. You must see how it is with us after this vacation? We have to be together." "Oh, I thought you meant something else. Sure, she can live with us. You have to understand though, I'm only going to have one wife, and that's you." "She'll still want to have sex with you, and for the three of us to keep doing things together too." "I'm fine with that, just so all three of us understand that you're my wife, and she isn't. I mean that too, Tina. Fucking her is one thing, but I'll never love her, not like I'm in love with you." "I can live with that, and so can she. She doesn't actually love you either, you know? You're her first man since she was beaten up and raped. For her, it's more like she finally found a man that she trusts again. I'd be surprised if she doesn't find herself another woman to love someday though. She really likes what you do to her, but she thinks you're too much of a namby pamby, too nice. I think she wants a mean woman, one like me, but someone she could have all to herself." "You never answered my question about the two of us getting married?" "Of course I'll marry you. After my next birthday. We need to go see Sherry now, to let her know you finally said you love me. She needs to ask you something too, now that you told me this. Don't tell her about you asking me to marry you yet. Let her do what she promised first." ------- Chapter 5 We walked back to where our stateroom was. I was feeling very good, because I'd finally summoned up the nerve to tell Tina how I felt about her. I'd certainly meant it when I'd asked her to marry me, but that hadn't been part of what I'd planned to say to her. It somehow just escaped my lips before I'd had an opportunity to restrain my sudden impulse to ask her to marry me. Impulse or not though, I was pleased with her acceptance of both my declaration of love, and the proposal. By the time we got to the room, I had my dazed smile back under control. "Sherry, guess what? He said it! He told me he loves me. See, I told you he would. Now you can ask him what you promised you would." Tina and her sister embraced as they shared and celebrated Tina's excitement, and our obvious happiness at being there with each other. After her mind finally got around to the part about her now having to ask her question though, I noticed the smile abruptly leaving Sherry's face. My concern that Tina was exerting too much pressure on her sister, once again surfaced. "Jimmy, please don't make me go through with this. Make her stop, please." "Tina, maybe you shouldn't force her to do something she obviously wouldn't be doing willingly? This should be a happy time, for all of us." Tina no longer looked happy. Her smiles, and all the joy she'd been exhibiting just seconds before were suddenly gone from her countenance. "Sherry, you promised me you would, so go ahead and ask him." Tina was using her firmest tone with her sister. It was a tone of voice that I'd come to recognize during those times when she was pushing her sister to do something she was very reluctant to do, without first having some strong outside pressure being exerted. I wasn't happy seeing it used for something I was apparently deeply involved with. What kind of question is this, that Tina's pulling out all the stops for? All I could tell from her tone of voice was that she was willing to brook no nonsense, or to tolerate any failure to comply from her sister. Sherry moved away from her sister, distancing herself in the only way she could. She was now upset to the point where tears came streaming from her eyes. She looked over at me, in a silent appeal for my help. I'd often been whipsawed just like that between Danny and Kaitlyn, back when I was just a young kid. Both used me all the time to try to bolster their side of whatever argument they were then having. I'd hated it back then, and I hated it even more now. Back then, I'd always steadfastly refused to take sides, even when it was patently obvious that one or the other was right. This was my first conclusion about what I should be doing with these two now. Only the fact that I'd just finishing asking Tina to share the rest of our lives together served to prevent me from doing what my natural instincts told me was the only correct thing to do. "Sherry, if you promised you'd do something, then you should keep that promise." Even as I said those words, I felt like I was betraying something important to me. I wasn't exactly sure what, but I knew it was something. As soon as she heard me side with her sister, Sherry abandoned all her resistance to asking her question. It was sudden, but it was also in keeping with her prior reactions in similar types of situations. "Tina and I have some money in two trusts set up by Grandma Kerry, our mom's mother who died when we were very young, maybe seven or eight, I don't remember exactly when. Anyway, in the papers she signed creating the trusts, she named her bank as the trustee of the money until we turned eighteen. When we turned eighteen, we had some say so in how the money got managed, including the right to appoint a new trustee, or to split up the trust fund and have different people or banks manage the funds for us. When we turned eighteen, I signed papers to make my father trustee of all my money, but Tina kept all hers with the bank people that our grandmother had originally appointed. Tina wants me to ask you if you'll take over as the trustee of my trust fund?" "Sorry, but I know nothing about managing other people's money. If you aren't happy with what your father has done, you should hire a professional money management company, or at least the trust department of a big bank. That's what they specialize in doing. Let the experts take care of it for you." "He won't even give her any statements on how her money is doing. No one but him even knows how much is left of her money. I get my statements at the end of every quarter from the bank. What I'm really worried about is that he's going to pull something on her birthday, come up with some reason why he doesn't have to turn her money back over to her. I wouldn't put it past him to try to get her declared incompetent, just so he could keep her money for himself. You could stop him, if you took the appointment before he tries to do anything like that." "It still doesn't address the fact that I don't have any experience with that type of investing. You might not like or even trust your father, but I'm sure he's better with handling investment money than I'd be. How much money are we talking about?" "It was fourteen million for each of us when she died. Right now, the bank says mine is worth almost forty million. We'll get it from our trust on our twenty fifth birthday, in less than six months. My not letting him take over my trust money is what we fought about, and the reason they kicked me out of their house. He browbeat Sherry into signing his papers for her trust, but none of his strong arm tactics worked with me. I didn't want him to use up my money like he used up our mother's." Fourteen million was a lot of money, not to mention the other bombshell Tina had just dropped, about what she was soon to be worth. She was a rich heiress, there was no other way to describe it. If I'd thought she was way out of my league before, now it was even more manifestly the case. Had I known about this before I proposed, I never would have done it. "She can go to your bank and sign the papers reappointing them as her trustees. They'd know what to do to force your father into complying with Sherry's wishes." "She trusts you, Jimmy, not some impersonal bank, filled with people she doesn't even know." "You know them, or at least you trust them, and it sounds like they've done a damn good job with growing your assets. Forty million dollars, now I know what you meant when you said your starving artist days were nearly over. Don't you think you might have at least mentioned all of this to me before?" "I had to be sure you loved me first. Sherry feels the same way. If you loved me, she said she'd ask you to help her. I told her you would tell me you loved me sometime on this trip, and she promised she'd ask you if you did." I was still trying to wrap my head around the kind of money we were talking about here. I already knew this was far beyond my very limited abilities. The only thing that prevented me from outright refusing to get involved was my deeply ingrained sense of responsibility towards my family. Having just accepted my marriage proposal, that made Tina part of my family. By extension, this also applied to Sherry. I couldn't just refuse them both and walk away. It didn't work like that. I had sensed before, as far back as that trip we took to New York, that the two of them were conspiring in some way to set me up for something. "How long have the two of you been planning on trying to get me to do this?" As soon as the two of them looked at each other, I knew I'd struck pay dirt with that question. They both looked guilty, and surprised at having been found out so easily. "We weren't exactly planning, but we've discussed this since back when Sherry got kicked out, for setting the house on fire. Until they treated her like they had me, Sherry never believed me when I told her she couldn't trust either of them. After that, she did believe me. Jimmy, we both need you to do this for us. We don't want to try any legal maneuvers, we just want to get Sherry's money back from him, and get an accounting for how he managed it over all those years. We're both worried about what we'll find when we finally do get him to say what he did with her money." "I'll help you look into it, but that's all I'm willing to promise you. I'm pretty sure he's legally required to give the trust beneficiary some reports about how the trust is performing. I can go to an attorney and find out more, without bringing either of your names into it. After I find out what he has to do, then we'll decide what needs doing next." Surprisingly, to me at least, that seemed to satisfy the two of them. We went to bed right after that, with Sherry being used by both of us, in ways I now knew she received the greatest pleasure from. We were up late, in spite of the fact that we'd be disembarking early the following morning. We had scheduled a one day layover on Oahu, mainly to give us time to decompress from being in vacation mode. I had booked us into a nice resort hotel, close to the beach, and we proceeded to continue to celebrate our engagement. Tina had told Sherry that we were getting married, right after we'd concluded our trust fund discussion. That had been the catalyst for our over exuberant late night celebrating the evening before, on the boat. Our celebration at the hotel was a more traditional one, featuring a champagne filled dinner, one that later included even more champagne and plenty of dancing in the Tiki Lounge, inside our hotel. It was fortunate that our hotel accommodated late check out's, and that our flight back to the mainland didn't depart until five o'clock in the afternoon, Hawaii time. ------- I had mixed feelings, and was more than a little bit worried, on the flight back to Los Angeles. This was mainly due to my being nervous at the prospect of taking both Tina and Sherry up to Hesperia to meet my family. I'd known, at least since the time I'd first admitted my love for Tina to myself, that this was something I'd eventually need to do. Whatever else my brother and his family might be, they were my only family, and in my own way, I loved them and needed to show them my own new love. Calling Danny and Kaitlyn a little rough around the edges wouldn't do them complete justice. I had no idea how Tina or even Sherry would react to meeting them, or to finding out the kind of people they were. One thing I was pretty sure of, was that both Danny and Kaitlyn would see absolutely no need to put on any airs, or to pretend any greater refinement than they naturally possessed. I knew that the sisters would get quite an earful if Danny and Kaitlyn got near to anything alcoholic to drink. I'd had years of experience with watching the two of them interact together, once they'd been drinking. I rented a really nice luxury sedan at the LA airport. I wanted the three of us to be comfortable on the drive up the pass to see my family. We arrived at the trailer park a little before eight in the morning. We were all tired, still a bit out of sorts, and more than a tad irritated from the long flight and our lack of rest after our late night partying at the hotel. If I'd thought about it, I'd have stopped somewhere and given the three of us another day to recover from our recent overindulgence's. Everyone inside the trailer was fast asleep when we arrived. After my knock, I could hear a wild flurry of activity inside. I heard Kaitlyn yelling for Danny to get up, and for him to go outside to give her a chance to straighten things out inside so their home was ready to receive guests. "No guests here, Kaitlyn, just me, my fiance and her sister. All family. Open this damn door, I need to take a whizz." I felt like I wanted to set the tone for our visit. I didn't want my family to feel uncomfortable about how they lived, or to think that Tina and Sherry were there to pass judgment on them. I'd finally decided that they were my family, warts and all, and that I would no longer subject either them or myself to my hypersensitivity, or to the critical part of my nature that heretofore had been controlling most of my fears. The door finally opened for us, about five minutes after I'd called out for them to let me in to pee. Danny had opened it, telling me with a big grin on his face that 'Katie needed to go put some clothes on, she'll be out in a minute'. I shouldn't have been concerned that Danny would try to be anything but who he actually was. As I made the introductions of Danny and the girls, I noticed he stood up a little straighter and pushed out his chest and sucked in the little gut he'd grown back after his back injury curtailed a lot of the physical exercise he'd been used to getting. Danny had always been a good looking man. If he hadn't been, I'm sure his life would have been much harder. He was still good looking, even with that little touch of gray hair at his temples. When he smiled, I noticed he'd lost yet another tooth. I made a mental note to talk to him about going to see a good dentist. With a better smile, I was sure he'd be able to talk countless housewives into letting him re screen their entire supply of window screens. Kaitlyn finally made her appearance, obviously freshly scrubbed and with full make up and carefully brushed hair. She still looked good when she bothered to get all spiffed up. In her youth, she had looked great, spiffed up or not. Time was catching up to her, but I'd still have to admit she looked good for her age. Looking at her, I took a little trip down memory lane, remembering some of the times we'd had, and some of the most lurid things she'd done to get me to give my money to her. While I'd always felt some guilt about doing that with my brother's wife, I'd never had any question at all about whether or not she was worth all that guilt. Even a lackluster fuck from Kaitlyn was better than most of my other sexual experiences. Delilah, Tina, Sherry, and Leslie excluded, she was the best. Leslie only because I'd actually loved her. As I thought that, it came to me that I'd loved Kaitlyn too. In my own way, but still, for all that, a love that was kept somewhat masked by my distrust and unhappiness with her over the way she'd treated both my brother and me at different times. As much as anyone else, Kaitlyn had acted as a surrogate parent for me in those first two or three years after my own parents died. It was me that first instigated a sexual relationship with her, blackmailing her into allowing it. Later, we were both to blame for what happened between us. I took another moment to look at her, hoping that she could see, from my face, exactly what I was feeling for her at that moment. It was hilarious what happened later, after all the introductions were made, and the kids were gotten up and rushed off to school. The five of us sat around the big dining table, the nice one that once was mine, drinking beer and white wine, laughing, with Danny, Kaitlyn and I alternating as we told stories about things we'd done and scrapes we'd all gotten out of. Kaitlyn didn't spare herself when she told her stories. Danny tried, but Kaitlyn and I both corrected the "spin" he tried to put on things to make himself seem like a victim rather than an active and willing participant in his various woes. This too was a kind of therapy. All of us laughing and vying with each other to bring up episodes that once caused us massive worry and grief, but which now, with the passage of time, seemed no more than amusing anecdotes to explain our family's strange history to both Tina and Sherry. Tina and Sherry both, unused to either heavy consumption, or morning liquor after being up for most of the previous two nights, got themselves lit up like Christmas trees. They were soon in bad enough shape as to be unable to keep from staggering around while getting up to get refills of their Chablis. While they sat and kept sipping, they were also laughing themselves hoarse at all the stories the three of us were telling on ourselves. We were all surprised when the three kids announced their arrival back home from their day at school. None of the adults were in any shape to either do any cooking, or to go out anywhere, so we ordered up some delivery pizza and sent the children outside to play until it got there. Tina, Sherry, and I wound up sleeping on the sofa that was also a pull out bed. The next morning was punctuated by voices on edge, and periods of quiet desperation, as Kaitlyn tried to marshal up the necessary resources to make cereal for her children, and to then get the kids off to school. After they left for school, all of us went back to sleep for a couple hours. I woke up hearing Danny and Kaitlyn's loud noises as the two of them celebrated yet another hectic consummation of their marital rights. I looked over at both Tina and Sherry, discovering that they too had awakened hearing the mating sounds. "Wow, Katie sure makes a lot of noise, doesn't she?" Tina whispered loud enough that both Sherry and I could hear. "No need to whisper, they don't care who hears him. I don't know what Danny has that I don't, but she never carried on like that with me when I used to do her." Sherry's eyes got as big as saucers when she heard me admitting to having fucked Kaitlyn. From my age and Kaitlyn's, she knew it had to have been after she was already married to Danny that it must have happened. "You and Katie? How could you do that?" "I know. I've asked myself that same question after just about every time with her. After I asked myself that though, my next question was always 'what has Danny got that I don't'?" Kaitlyn's voice came yelling out from behind the sliding door panel of their bedroom. "He always really means it when he fucks me, and that's something a woman can always tell, and that she appreciates. He never holds anything back either, like you always did. You better have learned to mean it with those two girls you have out there, because, if you don't, they'll go right out and find someone else who does." I heard Danny's full throated laughter, but this was soon drowned out by more noisy lovemaking sounds from them both. "Ignore them, they're just trying to show off." "I've got news for you, Jimmy. If that's what they're doing, it's working. Why don't you see if we can start making our own noises? With three of us, we should be able to drown their noise out." We had to force ourselves on, Sherry. She put up quite a struggle while I held her down and Tina pulled down her jammy bottoms. She ceased fighting us, just as quickly as Tina's tongue began parting the lips of Sherry's pussy. I continued holding her down though, not because I thought she was resisting, but because I knew my doing it would intensify the force of her explosion when it finally came. After her first, very loud cum, I rolled her over onto her hands and knee's and took her doggy style while Tina and I got her moved into position so she could do for Tina what she had just gotten done to her. I was vaguely aware that the three of us had an audience. When I turned to look down the trailer's hallway, sure enough, there were Danny and Kaitlyn standing there. They were both naked, and showing signs of their recent activity. Danny had his arm around Kaitlyn's shoulder, and the two of them were just standing there with big smiles on their faces, watching proudly as I poured the coals to Sherry's back thrusting pussy while she ate out Tina. Tina saw them watching us too, and I could see it intensify everything for her to be watched like that. I wanted Sherry to benefit from knowing she was being watched, so I called out to Danny and Kaitlyn, asking them if they'd please make us all some coffee. Hearing me, Sherry lifted her head and looked down the hallway. Even her back turned bright pink with her embarrassment at seeing that she was being watched in such a compromising position. Back down went her face, straight into Tina's muff, and she started pushing her ass back at me with twice her previous vigor. In fifteen more seconds, we all heard her screaming out her orgasm, right into Tina's very happy pussy. The pussy muted the noise, but we all knew she was having a big one. For the next hour, as all five of us sat at the table, naked, and drinking our coffee, Sherry experienced a kind of humiliated joy that had her practically vibrating in her extreme excitement over being the primary subject of our discussion. "She's really cute, Jim. Hell, they both are. What's it like, fucking 'em both like that at the same time? You ever forget which is which? Naw, I guess you can always tell 'em apart just from their hair being so different. If it wasn't for that, how could you tell 'em apart?" "Well, it would be hard, but I could do it. For one thing, even thought their pussy juices taste the same, Sherry is a big squirter. Tina doesn't squirt, and when she comes, her pussy squeezes down a lot differently than Sherry's does. When Sherry gets one of her big ones, you can't move your cock at all. She has it in this vise in her pussy, and even if you were just starting to cum yourself, she squeezes so tight, you can't." "Bull shit, Jim. If that was even possible, I'd have run into it before now." "I'm telling you, Bro, it's the truth." "She can't. Nobody could make it so tight with her muscles that I couldn't keep plowing her, not with how hard my cock gets when I'm shooting." "You want to prove it to him, Sherry? Take him in the back bedroom and turn your pussy into a vise he can't move in?" This was Tina, knowing what to say to increase her sister's arousal and embarrassment. "You'd let her, right, Katie?" "No, please, no. Can't you all stop talking about me like this?" The words came out as though she meant them, but all her body language told us a different story. Sherry was tingling with her sexual hunger. All of us except Sherry knew it wasn't going to really happen. We kept it going for another fifteen minutes, until even Sherry started understanding we were just pulling her chain. I thought I saw some disappointment mixed in with her relief. I leaned over and whispered in her ear, telling her that Danny often walked in his sleep. I told her she better sleep with her ass pressed tightly to my groin if she wanted to avoid having her pussy pounded by my sleepwalking brother. In all, we spent four nights at my brother's place. He grew concerned that my long stopover would delay him getting the money to buy his re screening franchise. I used my lap top to effect a wire transfer of funds out of my business account and into Kaitlyn's savings account. When I told him the whole twenty thousand was in his wife's account, I saw real relief on his face. He got up from where he was sitting and came over to give me a big hug. He hadn't done that with me for many years. By the time we left, Tina and Sherry were planning a big summer visit from Danny and the family. They would wait for the kids to finish up their school year and then fly out to spend two weeks visiting with us. I knew who'd be footing the bills for their plane tickets, and for all their vacation expenses. I was all right with that too. When we got back to Connecticut, the cold spell had broken. It still wasn't Spring weather, but you could definitely feel that Spring was coming. The three of us took a few days, after we got back, to try to recover from our long trip. I did make a phone call to an attorney I'd used for past business matters, on the day after we got back home. He told me that anyone serving in a fiduciary capacity was required, by law, to give at minimum, a written annual accounting to someone. With just this much information to go on, we had sufficient reason to question the girl's father about Sherry's trust assets. Mr. Axelbland, Sherry and Tina's father, was a tall man, a substantial man too in his body's mass. Not fat, but heavily built. When I called him the first time, he'd simply refused to speak with me, claiming that what his daughters might want was of no interest to him. I had that lawyer send him a letter, demanding that he see me and give me some accounting for his daughter's funds currently under his control. The letter threatened to bring in the appropriate authorities should he refuse to cooperate with me. The second time I phoned him, he questioned me about my relationship with Sherry. When I told him I was engaged to his other daughter, Tina, he again hung up on me. I gave him two days to calm himself down before I again phoned him. "If I agree to meet with you, Mr. Masters, I want your sincerest assurance that nothing that I reveal to you will be communicated to Christina. Can you give me such assurance?" "No sir. On the other hand though, I can assure you that I'm quite aware that you are in full breach of several Connecticut state laws dealing with your fiduciary responsibility towards Sherry. If you meet with me about that, I promise to listen to what you have to say, with an eye toward resolving any conflict this may pose. I have no interest in making myself your adversary, or of escalating, in any way, the rift that currently exists between you and both your daughters. Sherry has requested that I assume trustee duties over her late grandmother's trust. I have a signed and notarized affidavit to that effect." "Are you an attorney, Mr. Masters?" "No sir, although, as I'm quite sure you are aware, I've retained the services of one." "Well, I am an attorney, and I can assure you that my standing in the legal community is quite high. I doubt you can disturb that standing in any way with what you've claimed. Sherry has received annual statements of the investment results from the trust I administer on her behalf. I currently have copies of all such documents in my possession." "Shall I have you served then, Mr. Axelbland, so that we can both appear in open court to answer questions as to when and where you might have delivered these statements to your daughter? She claims, unequivicably, to not have received any such statements, and further, to have no knowledge of any current status concerning her trust assets, or of their cumulative worth." "If you know my daughter, as you claim to, you are undoubtedly aware of the fragile nature of her mental state. Her claiming not to remember being given those statements, is not sufficient reason for you to doubt what I'm telling you. I'm sure she received them, and I'm also sure that she burned them all, while setting fire to her room, inside my home last year." "I do know her, and I find her to be normal in all important respects. However, in keeping with our wish to keep everything as smooth as possible, would it be possible for me to gain access to photocopies of those annual reports you claim to have?" "Not if you plan to use that information to press your claim for taking over the management of her trust. I will not have Sherry taken advantage of by someone who is obviously out to improve his station in life by preying on the naively innocent, or the transparently gullible. I think both my daughters suffer from these unfortunate conditions." "I'll have to disagree with you there, sir. I've been acquainted with Tina for some time, and after spending a considerable amount of that time in intimate contact with her, two things I'd never accuse her of are being either innocent or gullible. Sherry isn't gullible either. Her problems lean more toward her being very submissive. I'll ask you again, will you make copies of those statements available to me?" "Very well, Mr. Masters. I find myself curious to meet you now, for some bizarre reason. Will you bring me a copy of this supposed notarized affidavit that Sherry reportedly has given to you?" We agreed to meet in a neutral setting, fifteen minutes from his home, and forty five minutes away from mine. I didn't tell either Tina or Sherry that I'd spoken with their father, or that we'd made an appointment to meet. We met at a country club, one where he held a membership. He shook my hand and ushered me into one of their meeting rooms so that we could conduct our business in privacy. "You're somewhat older than I thought you'd be, Mr. Masters. You claim to have an entered into an engagement with Christina?" "Yes, sir. We got engaged during our recently concluded vacation in Hawaii. Sherry accompanied us. I love your daughter, sir, and will try hard to make her happy." "If you should somehow succeed in that attempt, my hat will be off to you." "Both your daughter's are well on their way to becoming successful professional artists. Tina recently sold one of her paintings for six thousand dollars. Sherry doesn't like showing her work at all, but she has a painting hanging in a New York gallery right now. Tina has three paintings on display, at another New York gallery." "May I see the change of trustee appointment affidavit my daughter has given you? Do you have a copy of the trust agreement yet?" I handed him a copy of the signed affidavit, telling him to feel free to keep it for his own records. "I don't have a copy as of yet. I know where it was filed though, and the law firm that initially created the document. Even though Sherry appointed me to be her trustee, I'm not certain I want to take on the responsibilities it would entail. For one thing, I have no training in the field. I'm hoping that you and I can work out some sort of compromise to make this problem disappear." "Are you soliciting a payment of some kind from me, Mr. Masters? If you are, you've made a large error in judgment in doing so." As he said this he got up out of the chair he'd been sitting in. I noticed he moved pretty well for a big man, he was undoubtedly a man who was well up into his fifties. "No sir. I was hoping to get this matter resolved by verifying the figures in the statements you promised to provide to me, and by then convincing you that you needed to find a way to cure the rift that exists between your two daughters and yourself. I recently made some very interesting discoveries concerning myself and my own family. I believe most issues keeping you separate from your daughters could be resolved, if everyone first agrees to try to accomplish this." "I feel no need to effect any reconciliation with Christina. She long ago made her own choices in that regard. Her mother and I have accepted her decision. While not actually dead to us, she no longer occupies any place in our thoughts." I listened to him speaking, recognizing, by his words and facial expressions, the same kind of emotional disconnect between the words he spoke, and his actual beliefs, that I'd previously noted with some of Sherry's statements. This man was lying. At the very least, he was fooling himself about his true feelings. I had personal experience with doing that, and with the same person he was now talking about too. He needed to be jolted out of such negative conclusions, or else to be put in touch with his true feelings for Tina. When he got done telling me of his lack of interest in reconciling with Tina, he reached into an inside jacket pocket and pulled out a folded sheaf of papers, handing them to me. These purported to be annual statements of Sherry's trust, dating all the way back to six years before the present time. I scanned all of them, taking note of the steady growth in the value of her portfolio. With the last statement, dated only a matter of a few months before, the stated or claimed value of assets in the trust was more than sixty seven million dollars. I also noted a footnote under each annual statement, noting the fact that the trustee was foregoing compensation for managing the abovementioned trust. This probably accounted for why the performance of Sherry's trust had surpassed Tina's results by such a wide margin. "How can I verify the accuracy of these statements?" He reached into the other side of his suit coat and pulled out yet another sheaf of papers. These papers were a report of the recent audit performed on Sherry's trust, and on all it's assets, by a major internationally renowned accounting firm. The report was signed by a named senior partner, over the accounting firm's logo, and on their heavily embossed letterhead stationary. If it were a forgery, someone had gone to a great deal of trouble to pull it off. Still, for that much money, going to a great deal of trouble would be well worth it. "Are you satisfied, Mr. Masters?" "About the trust assets, yes. I remain very much dissatisfied with how you are treating this opportunity to solve your difficulties with your daughters. I find it difficult to believe you don't really love them. Also, because of all their similarities, I fail to see how you could not love both of them." "I do not remember stating any such thing to you. I said that Christina's mother and I have accepted Christina's decision to remove herself from our family. I'm aware that she tells everyone that we threw her out of our home, but I assure you that such was not the case. I'll further admit that the causative argument was both protracted and rancorous, but at no time was she even so much as threatened with the consequence of her being cast out into the street. She chose to remove herself from our home, and, since then, has encouraged Sherry to leave our home as well. She has finally succeeded in all her attempts." "She told me that you threw her out. She said you did so because she refused to change over from the trustees her late grandmother appointed." "I understand. Did she also tell you that the reason she refused to have me appointed her new trustee was because I'd already squandered her mother's own fortune?" "As a matter of fact, she did. This isn't an accurate statement for her to be making?" "My wife came to our marriage with some of her own funds. Their cumulative value was somewhere between five and six hundred thousand dollars. Today, almost twenty seven years later, those same funds have grown to more than one hundred million dollars. Does this sound like any kind of squandering that you're familiar with?" Saying this, he reached into yet another pocket in his suit coat and pulled out a single page, handing it to me. This too was an audited summary of a group of assets purporting to be the non-marital property of Lenore Kerry Axelbland. The appraised value of all the assets listed was one hundred and seven million dollars. It came from a different, but also well known, national accounting firm. It was dated three days before our meeting. "Why would she make something like this up? What does she have to gain by doing it?" "She's punishing me for not being a better parent to her, and to her sister. For being so distant, and for what she claims is my failure to love anything or anyone, except for the almighty dollar. I'm afraid this is the one charge she has leveled against me that I'm powerless to refute. I have long been a man with a single goal in my life, and, acquiring money was the widely accepted method of keeping score of a man's achievements. I accepted and adopted that standard as my own. Now, when it is obviously too late, I wish that I hadn't made many of the choices I did. Unfortunately, it doesn't work like that. We have to live with all the ramifications of our choices, not just the ones we enjoy." "I don't know whether you'd be interested in seeing them, but I packed up and brought with me, four paintings that both your daughters painted for me last year. They normally hang in my home, but I brought them with me, just in case you might be interested in seeing how their talent has progressed." "Yes, I would be interested in seeing anything they've created. Christina was always either drawing or painting. Most of the memories I have of her childhood were from the few times I returned home early enough for the girls to still be awake. Christina always had a new picture ready to show me. Always one she claimed to have made for my eyes only." It was uncomfortable for me, seeing how moved this man was while remembering those times with a much younger Tina. I felt sorry for him, knowing he now had no way of expressing all the love he so obviously still felt for her. We left the clubhouse, walking down to my Navigator. I opened up the back, and, one by one, pulled out each picture. I told him about how I'd first met Tina, how I'd mistaken her for Sherry. I went into the story about how I'd ended up commissioning the four paintings from his daughters. I noticed that he'd spent far more time lingering over the two that Tina had painted. It was almost as though he were trying to absorb some of Tina's essence from the painted canvas he was looking at so intensely. I could see he was moved, as well as impressed with how much more sophisticated and complete her art had become. He looked at Sherry's work too, but not in the same way he had with Tina's paintings. I guess it was true what they said in the bible about it being the lost sheep that was always most highly prized by the shepherd. "Is there, perhaps, a possibility that you would consent to sell either or both of Christina's paintings? I'm sure her mother would like to see them also." "I could either sell both or none. They're a matched set. I could make you a deal, like buy one and get the other one for free? I think I'd need a million dollars for whichever one you buy." "A million dollars? Are you out of your mind? You just finished telling me her highest selling price was six thousand dollars. Why would I pay you a million dollars for these two?" I could see I'd made him angry. I was glad I had. "I don't know why. I guess I thought it might prove to Tina that you'd grown up finally, and that you'd found someone who was more important to you than mere money is. Was I mistaken about that?" He handed me the painting he'd been holding in his hand and turned away. I watched for a few seconds, sensing his indecision. I knew I had him when he turned back and approached me again. "One million. you say?" "A million for this one. I'll give you the other one, just to show you I'm not really that greedy." "You'll probably be laughing at me, behind my back, for the rest of your life." "There's always that chance. On the other hand, maybe this might eventually help make it possible someday, for another little girl, maybe a granddaughter, to come running into your house all excited, climb up on your lap, to show you a picture she drew, for her gram pa's eyes only. How much would her picture be worth to you? That's the question you should be asking yourself, not worrying about if someone is possibly laughing at your expression of love for your child." I took his check for the one million dollars, and walked with him back to his car, showing him the safest way to store his new art. This time, when we shook hands, it was a much more sincere undertaking, for both of us. When I finally returned home, Sherry and Tina were still out somewhere together. I brought in the two remaining pictures and re hung them in my bedroom. The area above the mantle for my living room fireplace looked so bleak and empty without Tina's two house pictures back in their accustomed place. Even King Richard III looked sad to have them gone. It wasn't five minutes after the girls got home that Tina came racing into the kitchen to tell me that her paintings were missing. "I know. Don't worry, they aren't missing, I sold them." "You sold them, my paintings, why would you do that? I painted those just for you. How much did you sell them for?" "I showed them to this guy and he fell in love with them. What could I do? I could tell how much he liked them. When he asked me how much I wanted for them, I told him I'd only sell them together, as a set. I told him I'd sell him one, and give him the second one for free. He liked that idea, right up to when I quoted him my price. After I first told him how much, he turned around and walked away. He came back though, so then I knew he really wanted your paintings. I sold them to him then." "I can't believe you'd do that. Tell me how much you sold them for first. If it was for enough, you can give me the money and I'll paint you two more just like those other two." "No way, Tina. You'll never paint anything you can sell for as much as I made this sucker pay me. It was a private sale, and I'm supposed to keep the purchase price confidential." "You can tell me, I'm the artist. I'm your fiance, and you love me. Please? Okay, can you at least tell me if it was for more than ten thousand or not?" "I guess I can do that. Yes, it was for more than ten thousand. Now, go get Sherry, it's time to eat." "Oh God, how much more? Don't tease me this way, Jimmy." "A lot more, and that's definitely all I'm going to tell you. Go wash up and get your sister. I've baked us a nice flounder, and we have to eat it before the rice gets too dried out." At dinner, Sherry was just as excited as Tina was. I waited until dinner was over and all the dishes washed and the table cleaned. I went into my living room and sat in my great chair. I let them both go to work on me, trying to finagle the sales price information out of me. Finally, acting like I was getting upset with all their questions, I told them both that I'd tell them how much I had sold the paintings for, but only if they both gave me their solemn promise that they'd never ask me another question, about the paintings, or about the man who purchased them from me. They tried to get out of making such a blanket promise, but I held firm. Finally, we compromised, Tina could ask me one question, after I told them the price, but it couldn't be one where she was trying to learn the identity of the buyer. After securing both their sacred promises to abide by what we agreed, I told them how much. "He paid me one million dollars." It took a few seconds for that number to register in their minds. Tina was the first to recover. She blurted out a question, just like I'd known she would. "Why would anyone pay a million dollars to own two of my paintings?" "I can only surmise his reasons, and that only by piecing together some of the things we had talked about before I showed him the paintings. What I think was, that they reminded him of something he'd once had but later lost. Something he knew he hadn't valued highly enough until after it was gone." I noticed Sherry standing behind her sister with fresh tears running down her cheeks. I guessed then that she'd already figured out who the buyer was. Finally, Tina turned around and looked at her sister's face too, then she turned back to me and screamed. "It was my father, wasn't it? You are such a fucking bastard. I hate you!" ------- Chapter 6 "It was my father, wasn't it? You are such a fucking bastard. I hate you!" I can't say I was terribly surprised that Tina was angry. I had expected that. It was the degree of her anger that startled me. It wasn't the first time I'd drawn her ire for something I'd done, but I found myself now hoping that it wouldn't be the last time either. "You're the one who set all of this in motion, Tina. Didn't you stop to think that it was possible that something like this could happen? Instead of being pissed off with me, you should ask yourself what him buying your paintings for that much money must mean to him? As for the rest of it, I'm not about to apologize for selling property I owned, and to anyone I choose to." "You sold me out to him. I can't forgive a betrayal like this." "I didn't ask for your forgiveness. I've listened to you talking about your father for a long time. How do you think I felt when he claimed most of what you've told me wasn't true?" "Like what? Why would you believe him and not me?" "He told me you left the family home of your own volition, that he and your mother didn't kick you out or even ask you to leave. He showed me an audited asset statement for Sherry's trust fund, and for the money your mother had when she married him. Both showed he'd gotten excellent returns on the investments he's made for them. He understands why you hate him, and he willingly accepts the blame for his failures too. Most of all, he regrets the choices he made to not be there for you or your sister when you were growing up." "I don't care about any of that, and neither should you. If you really loved me, you wouldn't have done what you did. If you remember, all we asked you to do was see about getting Sherry's money away from him. Did you at least manage to do that much?" "If you remember, all I promised was that I'd look into things. I have, and I'm very well satisfied that Sherry's interests are being well looked after. Your father loves you. I think you need to make your peace with your parents, Tina. I don't want to start out our marriage with you having all this emotional baggage you seem to be carrying around in your head. I saw how much he loves you, even though he isn't the easiest person to discuss emotions or feelings with." "It is way too late for him to want to be a part of my life now. It was too late even before their coldness finally forced me to leave. I can't believe either you or he thought you could buy me with a million dollars. I'm not for sale." "How is he trying to buy you? Besides, I owned those paintings that I sold, not you. I'm not sure what you think anyone is asking of you. I didn't ask you to do anything other than see if you could possibly find it in yourself to put these bad feelings and memories behind you so we can get married with the two of us having a clean slate to begin our married life together." "He bought you off too. You're just like all the others. Let's go, Sherry. I'm just happy that I found out about you before we ever got married." I offered them a ride back to Tina's place. It wasn't that cold out, but it was getting dark outside, and the two of them still had all their things here from when we went on vacation. At this point, I was more than willing to let Tina have some time to think about things. I waited half an hour while they located and packed everything. When they finally came into the living room to tell me they were ready to go, I put on my coat and walked out to my car. I loaded up all their things, marvelling at how quickly people can accumulate. We drove over to Drayton in silence. I had nothing new to use to try to bolster my arguments. When we got to Tina's place, I could see that Sherry was holding herself back somewhat, allowing Tina to move the bulk of her things inside before they dealt with any of Sherry's stuff. "Jimmy, would it be all right if I still stayed at your house? I feel safe there, and it's nice. I hate living in Tina's crummy apartment." "I think she needs your support tonight, Sherry. Give her a few days to think about everything, okay? If she doesn't decide to change her mind by then, you're very welcome to come back to your old bedroom." "If she decides to really leave you, do you think maybe I could take her place?" I was a little floored by her question. There could be no question that Tina was the glue that kept the three of us together. I'd always just assumed that Sherry understood this. Tina and I were the couple. There could never be an option where Sherry could step in to take her place in my life. I felt some confidence that Tina would come around eventually, realizing that whatever I'd done, it had been with her best interests first and foremost in my mind. "Sherry, I'm not sure how to answer your question, other than by telling you that it's Tina I love. I like you, but that's because you're her sister, and you're a nice girl. You both resemble each other so much, physically, but are so opposite in so many other important ways. You and I, by ourselves together, that couldn't work out. You'll be better off by sticking close to your sister. By the way, I'm pretty sure your parents would welcome you back if you just went to them and told them how sorry you were about starting that fire in your room." "Did daddy say anything to make you think that?" She looked so lost, and, at the same time, so pathetically hopeful. "No, I guess he didn't. If you want me to, I can call him tomorrow and ask him what you can do to be able to come back home again?" "That's okay, I guess, but I'd rather come stay with you, like before, except without Tina bossing me around all the time like she does." I leaned in and kissed her on her nose, something I'd taken to doing to differentiate the good bye kisses that Tina and I usually shared when one of us went somewhere without the other. Sherry seemed to like and accept that difference in how I treated each of them. "Look after your sister. She's going to be having a rough time of it for awhile, I think. She has a lot to think about now." I drove back to my house, upset and anxious, but still thinking that something good might eventually come out of this currently bad situation. I didn't have any trouble sleeping that first night. By the fourth night though, my doubt demons were out in full force. I'd gone over and over my meeting with Mr. Axelbland in my head, still unable to find a place where I'd taken a wrong turn. When I tried the same thing, looking at things from Tina's perspective, I could understand some of her fears, but they never rose to a point where I'd consider all of them together as being sufficient justification for how she'd reacted to me when she found out about what I'd done. On the fifth day, Sherry showed up on my doorstep, carrying all her worldly goods, on her back, and in those two matching leather suitcases she'd brought with her on the trip to Hawaii. "Tina told me to come here. She said she doesn't want to be responsible for me anymore. Have you talked with Daddy yet?" "Come in, come on in. I'm sorry. I completely forgot about calling your father for you. How's Tina?" "She's a grouch, but it isn't as bad now that her period is finished. She's still really mad at everyone. She put that phone you gave her in that tank behind her toilet. In the water. I'm sure it doesn't work anymore." I had to laugh, that was so like her to do something like that. I left Sherry in my kitchen, making herself something to eat. I went into my bedroom to call Sherry's dad. After I got him on the phone I tried to explain what the situation was now, and about how Tina and Sherry were at odds with each other. When I inquired about the possibility of Sherry coming back to his house, his flat refusal really surprised me. I'd expected they might have some conditions for her to return, but an outright refusal like he gave me, that had surprised me, and really had caught me off guard. I went looking for Sherry. "He told you no, right?" At least somebody wasn't surprised. "That's right. I guess he's still mad about that fire." "I'm fine with it, if you'll let me stay here. Have you gotten my trust money away from him yet?" "No. I assumed you were satisfied that he's done a great job with investing your money." "How much is there now?" "Sixty seven million. I have those account summary's he gave me, if you want to take a look at them." "No, that's okay. Did he tell you anything about what I'm supposed to do when my birthday comes? Will I have to sign a lot of papers to get my money?" "I'm not really sure. I can get you an appointment with the same lawyer I used to force your father to agree to see me. He should be able to answer all your questions." That night, I slept in my bedroom and Sherry kept to her room. In fact, that's what happened for the next six nights. For some reason I'd gotten it into my head that Sherry intended to make some kind of a sexual play for me. If she did plan that, she was either extremely subtle, and I'd missed all her signals, or she was equally as patient as I was, biding her time to wait for the perfect opportunity before pouncing on me. After two weeks of going without, I found myself very 'pounceable'. I knew better than to attempt to initiate things, even though I was beginning to strongly doubt that I be seeing Tina anytime soon. Mr. Axelbland's check had cleared his bank, without any problems. I'd decided to leave the money in my personal checking account, not really sure about what I should do with so much. I'd thought about buying back those paintings from him, then I thought about giving Tina the money, just to see what she'd do with it. Finally, I just left it where it was, and moved Sherry's paintings back out to where Tina's had once been hung. It was a Sunday night in April before Tina came over to my house again. As soon as I let her in, she started looking all over my house, checking all the rooms, and seeing what changes I'd made since she'd left me. She spent several minutes in my little living room staring at the three paintings above the mantle. "You put Sherry's paintings back here? They look good out here. Where is she?" "She left this morning, with a woman named Evelyn. I don't know her. I think they said something about going into New York for some charity event. I'm not real sure though." "Evelyn Caro, she was Sherry's first roommate, back in her freshman year in college. She's a big lezzie. I bet they went to some lesbian fund raiser. I think I heard that Evelyn had turned into some sort of a sexual/political militant. I hope Sherry doesn't fall for supporting their whole weird agenda they keep trying to get enacted." "I didn't know. Do you want me to have a talk with her about it?" "She sleeps in her old room, not with you?" "So far at least. Some nights I find myself hoping she'll sneak into my room, but so far, she hasn't." "Speaking of that, can we go in your bedroom and have some sex, without either of us bringing up all our other problems?" "I can only speak for myself, of course, but I sure can." "Just to help each other out, right? Not like we were before?" "Is that how you want it to be? If it is, that's how we'll do it." The sex was great, like it had always been, but without all the frills and the hundreds of little niceties that move sex over into a different column, one where deep emotions seem to color everything, and seem to play a part in enriching the overall experience. It was somewhat emotionally detached, but still satisfyingly intense, on a purely physical level. "Thank you, Jimmy. I was getting so itchy, and it was beginning to affect my painting too. Can I use your shower before I go?" "Sure. You want me to give you a ride back to your place?" "No, I'd prefer to walk. Did you ever cash his check?" "Go take your shower first. I'll be in the living room, if you want to talk after." "It was a simple question, Jimmy. Either you cashed it, or you didn't." "I cashed it. Yes, it was good, which was what you really wanted to know. Are you still going to take that shower?" "Why not? I'm still sweaty and all grungy, aren't I?" Once she went into my bathroom I got up, threw my sweats back on and went out into the living room to wait for her. I wasn't at all sure that I liked the way this little visit of Tina's was turning out. I could stand it when she was ignoring me, easier than I could stand for this, being a convenient hard dick she used whenever she needed to scratch her occasional itch. Talk about being marginalized. When she came out again, we made some small talk. Absolutely nothing of any real importance was discussed. She got up and put her jacket back on, then started heading for my front door. "You sure you don't want me to give you a ride back to your place? It wouldn't be any trouble for me to do it." "Don't try pushing me, Jimmy. I came as far as I can right now. Tell Sherry to come see me. Tell her not to bring Evelyn with her if she comes. Good bye." That was it too. One minute she was there, back in my life, for a little bit at least, and the next minute, she was gone, with me not knowing when or even if I'd ever see her again. Her leaving like that got to me a little. When Sherry got back, sometime in the late morning on Monday, I gave her Tina's message. "Was she here yesterday?" "She came over for a short visit. She was horny, and worried about you being with that Evelyn. I don't think she wants you joining any lesbian activist groups." "You went to bed with her?" "Sure, why not? We both were ready for some sex." Sherry didn't speak to me again for another week. I noticed she didn't go over to Tina's either though. "Why her and not me? You never said why." Sherry spoke her first words to me since the Monday before. It was now Tuesday, more than a week from her returning from her visit with Evelyn. "I did say why, don't you remember?" "Is it because I'm not pushy like she is? I can be pushy if that's what you want." "Sherry, pushy isn't in you. You need someone who is pushy for you to be happy. When Tina was here with us, it worked all right, but with just the two of us here, have you noticed that neither of us has made even one move for us to get to do anything together?" "You could be pushy enough if you tried to be. I can remember times when you were." "Think about it, how many of those times when I was being pushy, was Tina somewhere close by? All of them, right?" "I guess." "Face it, Sherry. We need Tina with us if you're going to have any real good cums." "Three more months until our birthday. I still don't know what I'm going to do with all that money. I'm thinking about giving it all to Tina. If I don't, I'm afraid someone will come and make me give it to them, and then leave me. I trust you, Jimmy. You can have all of it, if you'll promise to always take care of me." "Let me think about it. Maybe I can think of something you can do to protect yourself, okay?" The next morning I went out on some errands. While I was out, I placed a call to Sherry's father, telling him about the deal Sherry had offered me, and, more importantly, why she had offered it. "She really needs someone who loves her to watch out for her. Not everyone would decide to call you and tell you about it. I think you and your wife really need to step up and start looking out for her again. If she gets in with the wrong crowd, they might decide to kill her to get their hands on that much money." Three hours later, I finally met Sherry and Tina's mother. When I came back to my house, she and Sherry were carrying the last of Sherry's belongings out to the trunk of her mother's car. Sherry came up to me and planted a big wet one right on my lips. That was an unusually bold move for her, especially right in front of her mother like that. "I knew you'd convince them to let me come back home, Jimmy. Thank you." "You had something like this in mind the whole time?" "Maybe. Maybe I wanted what I asked you for too. This is the best I can do if you and Tina aren't staying together. If you ever get back together, call me right away." That afternoon, after Sherry moved out, I drove over to Tina's place. I got over there and went to her door to make sure she wasn't home. It was dark by the time she came home, and I had been waiting for more than three hours. "Sherry moved back in with your parents. I called them and warned them that she was trying to give away all her money. She offered it to me, but I already had my heart set on getting all of your money." "You called them and they both agreed, or just my mother agreed?' "Both. Your mother came and got her, but it was your father I called to tell him about the offer she'd just made to me." "She will suffocate over there. I keep trying to tell her she needs to get free from them, but she's too weak to manage it." "She told me to call her if you and I get back together. She'd prefer to live with us, so you could boss her and I could hold her down and make her have all those good cums." "Would you promise to let her always live with us? Live like we did on our vacation, with all of us sleeping together?" "Why not? Are you proposing to me?" "I could be. You'd have to make some big changes, to make it up to me for what you did with my father." "I couldn't marry you if you don't make peace with both your parents first. If you don't, they'd always come between us. Also, what about Sherry having my children? Would you have any problem with that?" "Go back to that first thing you said. Are you really making that a condition, me making peace with them?" "Damn right. That's a deal breaker if you don't. You and I already know you want me to push you into doing it. I'll probably end up having to twist your father's arm too. I've got a feeling that he's going to be a world class grandpa. He'll spoil our kids rotten. He'd probably give up his work if we ever gave him a bunch of grand kids to play with. I'm thinking three for you, and three for Sherry. Unless one of you have a set of twins. If either of you do, we'll only count them as one towards the quota of three." "You knew I'd be coming back to you after that last time at your house, didn't you?" "I didn't know, but I did start feeling more confident about it eventually happening. I think Sherry knew that her moving back to your parent's house would make you come back to me too. She didn't think you would want to take a chance on me moving away from here. She never said it, but I think she knew you'd be more worried about something like that happening if she weren't there with me. She told me that you did your best to make her leave your house, and that you were the one who first suggested she come over to my house." "I'd be afraid to face them. I've done a lot of things to try to ruin their reputation. You saw how stiff my father can be. He hates what I did, I know it." "He does, but not as much as he hated losing you. Besides, I have a secret weapon to loosen him up with. When Danny and Kaitlyn get here, we'll take them over and ask your parents to put them up until after our wedding. What do you think your father would be like once Kaitlyn got through with him? I'll tell her he has more than a hundred million dollars, and has never really been well laid. I've seen your mother, no offense, but I'm pretty confident that Kaitlyn could have him in her bed within a day, or maybe even less than that if I offered her some financial incentive for promptness. Does your father ever drink? We could bring them over there and get them all drinking. I'm sure Danny would put a smile on your mother's face, if they both got drunk enough together. Kaitlyn told me once that Danny fucks even better when he's nearly passed out from too much booze or from smoking pot." Tina was laughing at everything I was telling her. That was good, because I didn't want her getting all uptight about her first meeting with her parents in more than six years. "Your plan sounds good, but what about when Sherry wants some variety in her female lovers. She will, you know?" "I've already got it covered. Remember when I told you about my friend, Delilah? I'm sure we could get her to come out for a visit, especially if we offered to pay her way. I'd like to see Delilah with your sister. We'd need to put one of those plastic sheets over the mattress on their bed though. Delilah would have Sherry making waves big enough for surfer's to ride on when she finds out how to get her to squirt." "I need to have a reason for going to see them. I can't just go over there and act like nothing had ever happened." "Why not? Danny and Kaitlyn do it all the time. They've done a lot worse to each other than either you or your parents have ever done. People can do anything they choose to, as long as they all can agree to it." "Yes, but I still need a reason. I don't want to go back if I'm really not welcome there." "I promise I'll call your father first. Don't worry, I'll handle everything." Easier said than done. There were several weeks of hand holding involved. I started ferrying Sherry back and forth from my house to her parent's. It made it easier for me to negotiate with her parents the terms for Tina's impending visit. I made Tina give up her dilapidated little hovel, as an act of good faith on her part. I didn't want her having an easy hole to run to if she ever panicked and ended up bolting away from me again. It was already May, and I was itching to set the date for our wedding. We were having a difficult time getting Sherry to agree to stay at her parents house. Our sex life was sizzling, and Sherry resented having to miss out on any of it. I'd already set it up so that she was instant messaging with Delilah. I'd given Delilah some hints about which buttons she'd need to push with Sherry. I was happy to learn that Sherry's father had set up a special kind of trust that kept Sherry from being able to dispose of her wealth. She could spend all or any part of her annual earnings, but needed her father's approval before she had the ability to touch a penny of her principal. I was flattered, and even a little honored that he and Sherry had named me as the successor trustee in the event he became incapacitated in some way. Danny and Kaitlyn were reporting good earnings with their re screening venture. Danny had finally settled with the disability insurance people for thirty four thousand dollars. They offered to pay me back for the money I'd given them, but I told them I'd made a million extra dollars unexpectedly. They were afraid to take any time away from their new business during their peak Summer business time. When I told them Tina and I were definitely getting married in the Summer season, probably either June or July, they promised they'd be there. As I'd threatened to do, I called Kaitlyn when Danny wasn't around. I described Mr. Axelbland, and his wife to her, mentioning to her, casually, that he was worth much more than a hundred million dollars. I told her to invite her sister Mona to come to the wedding as well, assuring her that I'd pay all of Mona's expenses. Tina's father was in for one hell of a good time at his daughter's wedding reception. I'd double teamed Kaitlyn and Mona once when I was only fifteen years old, and I still remembered the experience. I still wasn't sure about trying to turn Danny loose on Tina's mom though. Danny might convince her to run off with him, and that would definitely complicate things for me with the family. ------- Chapter 7 It was still in early May when I finally figured out how difficult it was going to be to get Tina to go over to her parent's house. She had hundreds of different ways and excuses to thwart my various efforts to put her and her parents together in the same room again. It was frustrating, but our relationship was going strong in every other regard. Sherry was doing her utmost to quietly re-infiltrate herself back into her old bedroom at my house. Every visit she made to us, two or three new articles of clothing were left, and I noticed that more and more of her toiletries were being left in the hallway bathroom that she mostly used when she was visiting. July nineteenth was the girl's birth date, and I was absolutely determined to get things settled between Tina and her parents before that date. I knew that, unless things changed, Tina could and would delay the reconciliation with her parents to well beyond the deadline I'd set to get the matter accomplished. Tina and I had reached an accord about including Sherry in our lives. Neither of us had bothered with including Sherry in any of those discussions. She had no knowledge of what we'd planned out for her. Neither did her parents. I got this idea in my head, mostly inspired by my growing frustration with Tina's reluctance to get things done and over with, as far as her serious rift with her mother and father went. It had gotten to be some kind of contest with her, one where she and I were competing to see which one of us would have enough force of will to overcome the other's. It began to seem to me that it wasn't getting back with her parents that Tina was worried about, but rather, having me able to force her into doing so. She was protecting her role as the most dominant one in our relationship. I had read enough psychology to recognize that I had some strong passive/aggressive tendencies. Mostly though, I was passive by nature, in most of my social dealings with people, other than with my brother and his wife. I'd been forced to adopt an aggressive, no nonsense, manner with them, in order to try to impose some discipline and order to our relationship. If I'd remained passive with them, they would have kept me down where they were in life. I had to push back at them to avoid being co-opted into the chaos their lives had become. With Leslie, I'd been able to be more passive, outside of my business role, and she had made most of the social decisions for us when we were together. It was probably my passivity that had given her the idea that she could get me to accept her behavior when she decided she wanted to be with other men. She must have believed I'd accept her actions. I know she seemed shocked when I refused to give in to the changed terms she was seeking. My idea, to force this reconciliation between Tina and her parents couldn't succeed as long as I allowed myself to remain passive in Tina's presence. She was so used to dominating her sister, and to getting her way with other people by being aggressive towards them, whenever they wouldn't give in to her demands right away. In my own mind, I'd seen many signs that being dominant wasn't a natural role for Tina. It was something she'd conditioned herself to being. Her relationship with Sherry was a good example of this. Sherry, by inclination and sexual orientation, was gay. Being submissive though, she had been with members of both sexes who used their own natural dominant nature to impose their will upon her. She preferred sex with women, but had been with several men and boys over the years, mostly because she didn't have a strong enough will to overcome their desire to be with her. Her rape had simply reinforced her passive and submissive nature. Added to all this was the obvious masochistic tendency she had that produced sexual pleasure in her when she was being either physically controlled or humiliated in any way. This wasn't her strongest tendency, but it was the one component of her psyche that was, for some unknown reason, totally heterosexual in nature. Sherry only got off by being controlled or humiliated by either males, or, for some other reasons, her sister. I'd confirmed this with our three way sex play, and by some of her reactions during that time we'd spent at Danny and Kaitlyn's. With these things in mind, her having a threesome with Tina and me, with me being the one feeding her masochistic needs, became nearly the ideal sexual situation for Sherry to be in. What I'd mainly noticed about Tina was the fact that she was far more into sex with Sherry than she ever would admit to being. She had been the one to first seduce Sherry, and the one who always initiated their lovemaking sessions. Tina had bragged to me, several times, that she'd only been with one girl or woman, her sister. She also seemed to have some resentment each time Sherry went off with yet another of her female lovers over the years. "I'm thinking about asking Sherry to go off the pill. I think it might be time for us to start a family of our own." Tina and I were sitting at the counter in my kitchen, drinking our first cup of morning coffee. I had come right out and told her what I wanted, directly, and without any preamble. I noticed she put her own cup down before answering me. "We aren't even married yet. What's with the big rush? Have you even talked to Sherry yet about what you told me, about us each having three babies?" "Sherry will do what I tell her to. You know she will." Tina picked up her coffee cup and left the kitchen without saying anything more. I left her alone to think about what I'd just told her. I was working on some business stuff on my laptop, a couple hours later, when she came into the living room where I was sitting. She resumed our earlier conversation, as if the pause had been for a few seconds, rather than a matter of some hours like it actually had been. "I know what we said about both of us having babies, but won't it be a difficulty for Sherry, her not being married, and everything that goes with things like that?" "Sherry wasn't likely to ever get married anyway, considering her sexual orientation. She'll want to have children though, especially mine, because she knows it will permanently connect the two of us. She's right too, it will." "I'd rather you wait, at least until after we're married." "I'd planned on doing that, but you know we won't get married until that other thing gets taken care of. Since you seem to be dragging your feet with that, I figured I'd just go ahead with Sherry right now." "It would be embarrassing for me if she were already pregnant at my wedding. People would be talking about her at the wedding. I don't want to be put through that." "I'm planning for us to be married sometime this Summer. She wouldn't even be showing by then. The only way people will be talking about Sherry being pregnant at our wedding will be if you force me to delay it by stalling with you getting back with your parents. I'm definitely expecting your father to walk you down the aisle to give you away to me." "You never said I had to let him do that." "Why wouldn't you want to, if you were truly reconciled with them? Keep going the way you are, and you'll just build this thing up in your mind to where you'll make it seem worse than it is." "I told you I don't like being pressured. You never told me you'd treat it like you're doing." "I love you, and I'm definitely getting married this Summer. I hope it ends up that you're the one I end up marrying." "Is that supposed to be some kind of threat?" "I'm not going to play these games with you anymore. I've put a lot of work into talking sense to both your parents. I've explained to them why you're still very upset with them. They've both agreed to try to be more like you'd expect normal parents to be. You're almost twenty five years old, so it would be unreasonable for you to demand they go back in time and read you some bedtime stories, or always come to tuck you in at night. They aren't exactly what you'd call 'touchy feely' kind of people anyway. They both are reserved people, even somewhat cold and distant, but they both love you, and they always have. Their way isn't what you would have preferred, but it was what they had in them to give you. Instead of always moaning about what you didn't get, you should try to appreciate all you were given." "It all comes back to the money, even with you, doesn't it? I've heard that same argument from them, all my life, and I'm sick of it. I know you had it a lot worse economically than I did growing up, but at least you had real flesh and blood people to talk with, to share laughter and joy with. Do you really think having a beautiful bedroom all to yourself makes up for all that? Sherry and I both grew up very lonely, except for having each other." "Think about what you just said for a minute. You can't seriously be comparing my childhood to yours, and then claiming that mine was better? You had parents, and you still do. Mine are dead, and have been for more than twenty years now. Talking with Danny and Kaitlyn can be funny now, but I sure don't remember that much joy and laughter when Danny was going out gambling all his money away every week, and Kaitlyn was getting drunk, and giving guys blow jobs, just to get herself a ride back home before Danny got back to the trailer from work. They were flesh and blood people all right, but I'd have traded places with you on any day of the week." "You can't have a wedding without me anyway." "That's another thing you're wrong about. I can, and if you force me into doing it, I will. I've already got a plan that wouldn't necessarily need to include you. I'm trying to explain to you how tired I am of constantly having to push you to finally do something we both know needs doing." "If you think marrying Sherry would work, then go right ahead. She'd leave you as soon as another woman came along, or even I could take her away from you. Did you forget what your sex life was like when it was just the two of you living here?" "I told you I had a plan, and it wouldn't just be the two of us living here. I know you think it's you that brings Sherry's sexual response up to a boil, but I don't think it really is. I've been watching her with us, and my opinion of it is that almost any attractive, bossy bitch of a woman could do the job just as well as you do it. Luckily, I just happen to know one, and she's a woman who'd appreciate having all the things you say don't really matter. Unlike you, who's so adamantly perfectly straight, except with Sherry, of course, Delilah is totally bent, bi-sexual to her core, and a real sex maniac. A woman who never seems to tire of doing it with other women. I've personally seen her eating pussy for five straight hours. Three different woman have assured me that Delilah is absolutely the best at eating pussy. She also happens to be a woman who doesn't seem to get P.M.S. either." "You wouldn't dare. If you even tried doing something like that, I'd put a stop to it. Sherry listens to me, and we'd both end up leaving you forever." "Go ahead then. I have something I need you to do, and you aren't ready to do it. Without that, we have no future together anyway. You're throwing away the one unique advantage you have, just like you did back when you were eighteen, and were all pissed off because nobody loved you like you wanted them to. I can make a good life in many ways. How many ways do you have? Not very many, I think. Maybe, you only have the one way. Think about that." "What advantage am I throwing away?" "The fact that I love you, and you're my first choice, to marry, and to make my future with." This time she left the room without making any final comment, or without again trying to push forward her own preferred agenda. The lines were more clearly drawn now. She had been issued both a warning and a challenge. She was on the clock now, as far as her needing to make a decision. I pretty much expected that she would resist. That was her usual method of forcing people to give her what she wanted. I wondered how many ultimatum's her family had met, before she finally found one they couldn't meet? I loved the woman, a great deal too, if I was being completely honest. One thing I'd learned though, from my early life dealing with Danny and Kaitlyn, is that you have to set a limit, then stick to it. Tina was pressing against that limit with me already. Tina came back a few minutes later, still upset with what I'd told her. "Which one were you saying you'd marry, Sherry, or that other woman?" "Sherry, of course. She'd make a great wife, if everything was in place to meet all her needs." "You'll see. I know Sherry much better than you do." I was happy that I'd already gotten Tina to give up her converted garage apartment. This greatly reduced the options she'd have if she again decided to leave me. I knew she'd already run through most of her money, including all the money I'd paid her for the King Richard picture. The art gallery in New York hadn't called her to say that they'd made any sales with the three paintings of hers they were then displaying. It occurred to me that they'd have had a hard time contacting her, since her only phone was sitting down at the bottom of a gallon of water, in the water tank of what used to be her toilet, back at the vacated hovel she'd moved out of. Thinking of this gave me an excuse to go find her to tell her about the gallery having no contact number for her. When I found her, she was moving her things out of my bedroom and into Sherry's room. "I just thought of this, that gallery with your paintings can't contact you now." "What makes you think that?" "Sherry told me what you did with that phone I gave you, and you never asked me to buy you a replacement phone." "I called them and left your phone as my new number. I'm not stupid, you know?" "I'm just trying to help you. I'm sorry I disturbed you. I'll let you get back to your move." "Sherry has half her clothes in my closet, and in the drawers. I won't have enough room for all my things now." "You could clean out the spare room and put your stuff in there." "Why should I have to use the storage room? Why not Sherry?" "You know what? Just do what you want to, okay? I'm going out for a couple days anyway. You want me to call home and check in with you, or not?" "Not. I haven't decided what I'm going to do yet, but I know I'm mad at you." I left on one of my buy/sell trips, happy to get away from all the stress and tension I was under. I had a fairly exciting trip, picking up quite a few nic nac's and trinkets that I was sure Glenn could find a good home for. I bought up over fifty old mink coats from a guy who'd been buying them with the idea of using the fur for a line of doll clothing he and his wife had been planning to manufacture and sell. A divorce had ended those plans, and he was anxious to get rid of all reminders of his ex. For fifty dollars, I'd gotten all of it from him, five bags worth of ratty looking old mink coats and stole's. I had no idea where I'd find a buyer for any of it, but I couldn't pass up such a good deal. When I got back to my house, all my clothes and personal things had been moved into the storage room, or else along with Sherry's toiletry things she kept, in the hallway bathroom. I was now displaced from my own bedroom. I remembered telling Tina to do whatever she wanted, but I hadn't meant this. Since there was no bed or futon in the old storage room, I slept between two king sized sheets, on top of a bed of very soft mink and silk lining. To tell the truth, it was exceptionally comfortable too, and easy to put back in their bags and store away in the morning. I was in the kitchen whipping up some scrambled eggs for myself when Tina made her first appearance since I'd returned back to my house. "Did you sleep well?" "Like royalty, how about yourself?" "I slept well too, thank you. Did you sleep in Sherry's room then? I looked there but didn't see you." "No, I slept in the storage room. I'm going to go out and buy another bed and a couple of new clothes chests today. I take it you've decided to take my old bedroom then?" "Only until I decide what I want to do. You don't mind I hope? You did tell me to do whatever I wanted, right?" "Absolutely. Did you hear whether Sherry's coming over today or not?" "She said to call her when you came back. Do you want me to ask her to come over when I call her?" "That's okay. I'm going up to New York later, and I thought she might enjoy a little time away from your parents. I'll swing by there on my way, to see if she does. Would you like some scrambled eggs?" "No thanks, just some of the coffee. You're talking about just you and my sister going?" "I'm sorry, did you want to go too?" "No!" "I didn't think so. I guess it will just be the two of us then, unless your sister has another friend of hers she wants to take along on our little trip." "Will you be late?" "I'm really not sure. If we finish up in New York early enough, maybe we'll swing by Atlantic City to do some gambling. I haven't done any gambling for a long time. I guess that million I got for those two painting's of yours is burning a hole in my pocket. If we decide to spend the night somewhere, do you want me to call you, or maybe leave you a message?" She made a face at me, then told me not to bother. My eggs tasted quite good. Tina sat at the little counter area beside the coffee pot, watching me eat but saying nothing further to me. When I went over to the Axelbland's to see if Sherry wanted to take a trip to New York with me, she was right in the middle of a phone call with her very angry sister. They stayed talking for another fifteen minutes. Tina doing all the talking, with Sherry just standing there, listening to her. When the call finally ended, Sherry came over and tilted her head up expecting to have her nose kissed. Instead, I kissed her like I usually only kissed Tina. A wet one, with a lot of my tongue in her very surprised mouth. Sherry finally broke our kiss, looking at me nervously as she did so. "What was that all about? What did you say to Tina to make her talk so crazy about things?" "She's still dragging her heels on making up with your folks. I've decided to light a fire under her ass, that's all. I bet she really laid down the law to you, didn't she?" "She said you've changed your mind about her, and now you're going to marry me instead of her. Is it true?" "Probably not. Possible though, so don't give up all hope of it happening. Did she tell you that I was coming to take you away from all this too?" Sherry giggled nervously, shaking her head up and down to confirm that Tina had. "To New York, and then Atlantic City, right?" "New York for sure. Maybe Atlantic City, or maybe I'll just stop at some cheap motel along the highway, and force you to let me fuck that sweet little pussy of yours." "Tina told me not to let you. I told her I wouldn't." "Perfect. Now we'll get to see which of us you have to listen to when you get directly conflicting orders. I wasn't planning to ask your permission Sherry. If I decide to take you, I will. If I wanted to do it, I could fuck you right here in this room, in front of your mother and the maids. You already know you couldn't stop me if I really wanted you. Be a good girl for me now, and go pack an overnight bag. Hurry up because I'm already running late." "What about Tina? She'll get mad if you try anything like that with me." "How about you quit asking so many damn questions and just do what I told you to? Hurry up about it too." Sherry's mother came into the room we were in then. She looked worried about the tone of voice I'd just used with Sherry. "Hello Mrs. A. I'm trying to get Sherry to move her ass, but she seems awfully slow today for some reason. Do you know any way to get her to hurry things along?" I thought she was going to swallow her tongue the way she started gulping. For awhile, she couldn't seem to make any noise come out of her mouth, but then something must have happened, and she finally spoke. I was surprised her words weren't to me. "Sherry, please hurry, before your friend gets upset with us." Next, she turned to me. "I'm so sorry, sometimes Sherry can be very frustrating. Can I ring Clara to get something for you while you're waiting? Coffee, or perhaps a drink of some kind?" The woman was clearly flustered, thrown totally out of her comfort zone by my earlier outburst to her daughter, and by the way I'd spoken to her. I made up my mind then and there to keep Danny away from this woman. I looked back to see Sherry already at the staircase, hurrying up to her room to gather her overnight bag. Looking back at Sherry's mother, I had a very clear picture of how Sherry would be in another twenty five years or so, if she ended up married to a workaholic who liked to make it difficult for her to ever please him. Mrs. Axelbland was just as submissive and beaten down as Sherry was. Maybe even more so. "I'm taking Sherry to New York with me. I'm teaching Tina a lesson. I don't know how you managed to raise identical twins to be so different, but you did. Tina is so stubborn that she hurts herself constantly because of it, and Sherry is a total door mat, just begging for someone to come along and kick her. How do you explain that?" "Christina favors her father. Sherry is more delicate, more like I am." "You should be very careful about who finds out things about you like I have. Some people would take advantage of you. My brother, Danny, he's like that. If he meets an attractive woman and sees that she's delicate, he moves right in on her and takes every advantage. He knows they can't stop him from doing whatever he wants. He doesn't care about anything but getting what he wants from them. You'll need to stay far away from him when he comes out for the wedding. He has a good eye for the type of woman that would be putty in his hands." I had her back to where she was again unable to speak. Her mouth kept moving, but, again, nothing was coming out. I was relieved to see Sherry, apparently packed and ready, hurrying back down the stairs. She walked the last few steps and was soon standing next to me. "Go out and wait in my car. I still have a few things I want to tell your mother." She took off like a shot, anxious to not incur more disfavor with me. I looked at her mother again. Her mouth had stopped moving, and she was waiting to hear what more I had to say to her. "I don't think I'll be bringing Sherry home tonight, so don't be worried if she doesn't come home. I hope you remember what I warned you about with my brother. Don't ever let him get you alone somewhere private. I'm ashamed to admit it, but he'll take advantage of you if you give him half a chance to. There's one other thing too, and I don't know any delicate way of putting it, so I'll just say it straight out and hope it doesn't offend you. Danny's much larger than most men, down there, and he isn't too considerate of his partner's comfort, if you know what I'm trying to say?" When I left her, she was still trying to form some words of protest. I had been getting myself into the proper frame of mind for playing the role of an aggressive dominant type with Sherry. The spillover thing that had just happened with her mother hadn't been planned by me or anticipated. It was a direct result of my having gotten too far into playing the role. I hoped what I'd told her wouldn't get back to her husband. I didn't believe it would, and I was counting on Sherry's mom being unused to hearing those kinds of things I'd just talked to her about. Unused enough to prevent her from wanting to discuss them with others at least. When I got to my Navigator, Sherry was sitting in the front seat. It surprised me, because she'd always gotten in the back before this, even those times when she and I had driven alone, which we'd been doing quite a lot of as she shuttled back and forth between my house and her parents. "Sitting up in the grown up seats I see. Did you know your mother is quite a bit like you are? She likes being bossed around and intimidated too?" "She isn't like me. I can see what you mean about her being timid, but it isn't the same as me." "Because it makes you hot when some guy makes you obey him? I bet your pussy is pretty wet right now. I should make you go back inside and put on a dress or a skirt so I can check on it more easily. We have enough time for that if you hurry up. Get out and run back in and put on a dress. Something that isn't tight on you, so I can easily check to see if you're wet whenever I want to. Put on some nice panties too. I'll give you five minutes from right now. I'm leaving you here if you aren't back by then." It worked just like I'd been pretty sure it would. She had the door opened and had jumped out of the SUV before I'd gotten to 'leaving you'. In my mind, I could almost hear the squishing sounds as her legs hurried, spreading her vaginal moisture all around. She was back, in a light summer dress, really too light for the May weather we were having, in less time than I would have predicted. I hadn't looked at my watch, so I had no real idea of how long it had actually been. "You took too long, Sherry. Can't you even do a simple thing like change clothes in five minutes?" "I didn't know which dress I should wear. Is this one okay?" "I can't tell yet. Spread your legs and lift up the bottom hem of your dress. Let me look at your panties." She readily complied, spreading them and showing me an opaque pair of black panties. I stared at them for a few seconds before turning my key in the ignition. When the engine started, I pulled forward and turned around in front of her house before heading back down the long driveway. I noticed Sherry had left the hem up on her dress, although her legs weren't as open as they had been. "You should have brought a towel with you. Now, you're going to get my leather seat wet and make it smell like pussy. I can already smell you from here. I can't believe how easy it is to get you hot. I wish we didn't have this console between us, smelling you like that has made my cock stiff. If you hadn't fucked around so much getting ready, I wouldn't be getting such a late start. I should make you bend over the console and suck me anyway, but if I did that, all the trucker's we'd be passing would be able to see your head bobbing up and down, and see that nice ass of yours waving in the air. They'd all know just what kind of a slut you are. Pull that damn dress down before you give me a case of blue balls." "This is a lot past you being a little bit bossy, Jimmy. I like it, but you still need to tone it down a little bit if you expect me to believe it." I pulled the Lincoln off to the side of the road and put the car in park. As soon as I had moved the steering wheel up out of the way, I reached over and grabbed Sherry by the back of her neck and pulled her over the console until her head was three inches from mine. With my other hand, I opened the zipper to my pants and pulled out my very stiff cock. As soon as it was free, I started pushing her face down on it. She resisted a little, but not very much. "Why don't you tone this down a little bit before you start trying to tell me what to do? Go ahead, suck it!" A few minutes later, and she had my hot cum sliding down her throat. I waited until she'd finished getting all of it cleaned up and swallowed, before I released her neck after I'd first pushed her back over to her side. I tucked myself back in, zipped up and then started my engine. The whole thing hadn't taken longer than three or four minutes. I could really smell Sherry's pussy now. I pulled back on the road and turned on my radio to some nice soft music. It was quiet, except for the music, for the rest of our drive into New York. Glenn and I completed our business rather quickly, with me once again accepting his initial offer. I told him I needed to leave, because I was heading over to Atlantic City for some gambling, just as soon as I left his store. Back in the car, Sherry was still sitting exactly where I'd left her. She hadn't even removed her seat belt while I was gone. "I'm finished up here. I'm heading over to Atlantic City for a day or two. You can either come with me, or I can give you a ride over to one of your friend's house close by. Which would you prefer?" "With you?" "Is that supposed to be a question, or an answer?" "Answer." "You know I'm going to fuck you when we get there, right?" She nodded her head that she knew. I put the car in gear and drove for the next hour and a half, until we were finally pulling into valet parking at the Borgata Casino. Being a May weekday, I managed to get us a room at a halfway decent rate. I knew, from my past Las Vegas experiences, that I could get one of the casino host's to comp my room, so I didn't worry about having to pay for it. A few minutes after we had checked in, right after the usual room inspection was done, Sherry and I were naked on the bed, doing the hot and heavy "NASTY". She was already gagging for it by the time I'd shucked out of my pants and shirt. A lot of woman would envy her ability to keep her arousal alive for that long, especially considering the fact that there was absolutely no touching, or anything at all being said. The mind was a wondrous organ, and Sherry apparently had hers very well trained. Fucking Sherry, when she was in full arousal, was always a wonderful experience. The whole time I was pumping myself in and out of her I'd kept up a running commentary about what I had planned for Delilah, her and I, just as soon as I could get Delilah out to Connecticut for a visit. I knew that she and Delilah had progressed from internet chat to near nightly phone conversations. I knew, because I had been communicating to Delilah myself, encouraging her to do this. I hadn't been completely bluffing when I'd warned Tina about my intention of marrying someone this Summer. If Delilah came out for a visit, and I found out that she and Sherry were as sexually compatible as Bridget and her had been, I was ready to take a big chance by marrying Sherry. Even if I ended up married to Sherry, I figured that Tina would eventually come around and join in with whatever we wound up calling our new threesome, either turning it into an intimate foursome, or forcing Delilah to return to California. The only thing I was confident I'd be doing was marrying one of the lovely Axelbland sisters, sometime in the current Summer. The rest would just have to work itself out. Sherry and I never made it down to the gambling tables. I ended up having to pay for the room, as well as for all the food we ordered. I stayed completely into my role playing, and Sherry seemed to thrive on all the solo attention I was giving her. A few times, back when we were on our Hawaiian vacation, or even later, over at my house when Tina was living there, Sherry and I had fooled around with each other, without Tina taking part in what we were doing. This time it was far different. Sherry was really into the sex, maybe even more than she usually was when it had been the three of us participating. We ate two room service meals, and then grabbed a quick bite in the Casino coffee shop, right before heading back home, nearly two full days and one night later. I was worn out from all the sex we'd crammed into that thirty hour period. It reminded me of that first time with Tina, down in Florida. It was like she couldn't get enough back then, and Sherry was acting the same way with me this time. As soon as we left the Casino that following afternoon, I reverted back to being the person I normally would consider the real me. I'd never pretended to be anything or anyone for as long as I'd managed to do it this time. I felt a little strange, needing a few minutes to once again get used to being my normal self. Sherry didn't seem to notice any change in me until I waited beside her chair to pull it out for her when we were shown to our table at the coffee shop. When I did that she had a little frown on her face and I heard a quiet groan of disappointment. "You should keep being like you were this time, Jimmy. It makes you a lot more exciting to me. In some ways, you've kind of reminded me of someone else this time. Do you want to guess who?" "Your father?" She laughed, reaching over to touch my arm as she shook her head from side to side. "Tina?" Again a negative head shake. "Okay, I give up then, who?" "Your brother. At least that's the way I think he'd be if the two of us were ever alone somewhere like this." "Danny? No way! You didn't hear what I was saying when I was talking to your mother, did you?" She shook her head no. "If you did, I was just kidding around with her about Danny. I was practicing then, like you said to me when we were first in the car, remember?" "That was before you actually showed me that you really meant it. I bet Danny would do that to a woman too, grab her head and make her suck him in his truck. I remember you telling us about doing things with Katie, but did you and Danny ever do things to any other girl, together?" "We almost did once. You wouldn't believe me if I told you how close we came. We never did though. We did fuck some of the same women, but never both of us together." "Well, you reminded me of him before you stopped pretending." "Very interesting. You've been hotter than I ever remember you being when it was just us doing things, and now you tell me I remind you of my brother. If I were the suspicious sort, I'd suspect that you have a little fantasy thing going about Danny. Maybe you'd like him to do what I've been doing with you here?" "Maybe, or maybe something else, something with all three of us." "Sometimes, you surprise me. Tina had me convinced that you weren't into men, except when another woman was involved in it too." "Before I was raped, I needed a certain type of man, if it was just going to be the two of us, but Tina's right about how it was with the usual kind of men. I always favored being with girls, ever since I remember starting to think about things like that. After it happened, the rape, I didn't even want to be around any men. Mostly, I still don't. That time in California, when we all sat naked at the table, drinking beer and wine the whole morning, that was the first time I thought about fucking with just one guy, since before it happened. "We were all laughing and happy, and the five of us had listened to or watched each other having sex. When Danny said that about me, about my being cute and everything, I really thought you were going to get him to fuck me. I wanted you to tell him he could. I was embarrassed by all those things you were telling him about me, but it was the first time I wanted to be alone with a guy, just for having sex with him. I felt that way this time with you too, like I didn't want it to ever end. It was the best it has ever been with just a man." "I enjoyed it too. It was different, but I don't think I could pretend to be like that all the time. In fact, I'm sure I couldn't. I like women, and it doesn't turn me on to treat them mean. Not even when I realize it's what they want, or maybe even need." "I'd marry you, if you asked me to, and if I could have sex sometimes with women. You wouldn't have to act like you did yesterday and today. Maybe sometimes though, just to make it exciting for me?" "If Tina doesn't get it done with your parents before too much longer, I will marry you. If I do marry you, I promise you'll have some nice times just like we got finished with. I don't think I'd team up with Danny, or any other guy, for you though." "I hope she doesn't, then. Is that really terrible of me?" "No, not terrible. We all have to root for what we want, that's not terrible, it's just human nature. We need to settle one other thing while we're alone too. I want you to have a baby with me, and I want you to stop taking the pill, as soon as you finish the cycle you're currently on." "I don't know about me having a baby. Why would we?" "If Tina and I get married, we both agreed we wanted you to live with us, forever. If you and I get married, it's the same thing, forever. I want children. I want them with Tina, and I want them with you. Other than for possibly to me, right now, did you have any plans of ever getting married?" "No. I didn't have plans to have kids either though. I've never had any urges to be a mother. I don't think Tina does either." "This is another one of those deal breaker's, Sherry. If you plan on living with me, having sex with me, you'll need to have my children. I want at least six. I've planned on having three with each of you. Tina already agreed to doing it." "I've heard it hurts, a lot." "Women have done it since the very beginning. They have drugs to make sure it isn't that bad." "Can I take some time to think about it?" "I was hoping to get started right after your next period. Can you let me know by then?" "I'll try. When you say deal breaker, is that for getting married, or for us all living together, all of it? "All of it. It has to be that way for me." ------- Chapter 8 I dropped Sherry off at her parent's house. She'd been fearful about what she could tell Tina the next time the two of them spoke. When I saw that she was getting very anxious about it, I told her that I'd talk to Tina and fill her in on the fact that I'd more or less forced her sister to do whatever I'd demanded. "Don't worry about it, Sherry. Tina knows now that she won't be able to use her supposed control over you against me in our little struggle. She told me that you'd leave me, and never look back, if she ever told you that was what she'd decided needed to be done." "She can do things to make me feel bad. She will too, if I don't do whatever she wants." "She needs you just as much as you need her. Don't let her fool you about that. You might have to wait her out, but she'll get over herself when you don't just cave in to whatever she demands. After I'd dropped Sherry off, I drove back to my house. When I got there, Tina was gone. Not just out of the house for awhile, really gone. As in moved out. Everything of hers was missing, and she hadn't been neat about it when she was packing up either. Drawers were left open, my bed was unmade. Anything of hers she'd decided she no longer wanted, whether books, magazines, old clothing, it was all left scattered around on the floor. There was no note or explanation about where she was going. I spent at least three hours putting all my stuff back into my bedroom, straightening everything up, just the way I liked it. When that was done, I took my own advice, the advice I'd just given to Sherry. I would try to wait Tina out. If she loved me anywhere near as much as I did her, she wouldn't want us to stay separated for very long. I could take some comfort in knowing that I'd already given her my deadline before she took off. I phoned over to the Axelbland's house to speak with Sherry. The maid that answered the phone informed me that Sherry was on another call just then, and I could either leave my name and number, or else try her again, later. I left my name and number. I was nearly certain that Tina was the one on the phone with Sherry. Forty minutes after leaving my name and number, Sherry returned my call. "Tina's staying over at our cousin's house, in Mystic. She said she's moved there for good. She told me not to tell you where she was." "I'm going to wait for her for one week. If she hasn't come back by then, or been over to visit with your parents, I'm calling Delilah and inviting her to fly out here for an extended visit. You can move in here with me in the meantime, if you want to. Otherwise, you can stay where you are, until Delilah gets here. When she does, you'll need to come here, so the three of us can find out how we'd all fit in together." "I can't." "That's all you're going to say? You can't?" "She told me if I don't do what she tells me, then she won't let me come live with you guys, after you make up again. She means it too, so I can't chance it. Don't be mad at me, please?" "This will mean she was right, Sherry. Right when she told me that she'd leave me forever, and take you along with her. If you let her win again this time, there won't be any marriage, and you'll be right back to how things were when I first met Tina. At some point, I'll have to throw in the towel and admit she won." "She promised me she'd work it all out, but only if I do what she tells me to." "She's wrong, and I can prove it to you. I told you that I'd give Tina one week, and I will. At the end of that week, either she does what I told you I needed, or else you need to come over here, to take her place. If you come, I'll bring Delilah here too. If Tina doesn't come, and if you don't come, to take her place, then I have no reason to stay here in Connecticut anymore. I'll put the house up for sale, then I'll move back to California." "She could still work it out before then." "If she does, then you don't have anything to decide. If she doesn't though, you need to decide what's best for you. If I were you, I'd try to have my mind made up before next Friday at noon. On Thursday, I'll be booking my flight and calling a real estate broker about selling the house. I'll box up all your things and deliver them over to your house before I leave." After the phone call, I went back to doing what I usually did. The only thing I did that was different was me making a few phone calls to California. I told Delilah that she might need to be ready to make a quick trip out to Connecticut soon, and to be sure she was ready to leave on very short notice. I called Danny and Kaitlyn and let them know that there could be a drastic change in my marital plans, and that it might mean me coming back out to California to live. On Thursday, after not hearing from either sister, I went online and made my reservation to fly to California on the early flight on Saturday. That done, I decided it wasn't yet necessary to put my house up for sale. I could do that at anytime. I knew I'd need to fly back anyway, to get my car out of long term parking at the airport, and to pack up all the stuff I'd be taking with me when I moved. I found some boxes up in my attic and began packing up all Sherry's things, everything that I'd promised to take over to her house for her. Thursday night, I went to bed at eleven. For the first time I started believing that Tina was really going to let me go. I admitted, also, that, to Tina, it would mean that I was going to be letting her and Sherry go too. This had happened to me before, and I knew this time would be much harder on me than all the other times had been. I knew I always had the option of backing down, of retreating from carrying out what I'd threatened doing. Friday came, and I was on edge all morning. By eleven thirty that morning, I was finding it extremely difficult to even breathe. The enormity of what I had put into motion was overwhelming me. I felt like I was being forced to detonate my whole life, to blow up myself, and everyone I loved, and for what? For a deadline that I'd set myself. I could just as easily have made it two weeks, or even two months. I was sitting in my great chair, looking deeply into my empty fireplace, struggling with myself about my commitment for following through with what I'd threatened. Time was running out for me, and for all the happiness that I'd so recently been anticipating the three of us having. It came to me that I'd always been better at giving advice than I was at taking it. I looked at my wrist, turning it enough to be able to see the hands on my watch face. It was 12:05. My absolute deadline had already passed. There had been no phone calls, and no one had come knocking at my door. My ultimatum hadn't been complied with. I went to my laptop and fired it up, moving over to the site where I needed to confirm the flight reservation I'd earlier made. I was one click away from keeping to what I'd promised Sherry I'd do if neither of my demands were met. I spent fifteen minutes arguing with myself about whether I should confirm my flight for the following morning or not. I couldn't make the decision. Too much of what I wanted would be given up forever if I stubbornly continued on this path I'd set for myself. I've always found that when I had this much indecision in my business, the best thing to do was to do nothing. It occurred to me that this option was open to me now. I clicked off the site and shut down my notebook. As I did this, I felt a definite easing of the stress I was feeling. It wasn't gone, but it was certainly more manageable that it had been before I'd decided not to decide. I went out to the Navigator and climbed in. I then drove straight to the Axelbland's home and started unloading all the boxes of Sherry's stuff that I'd brought over. I piled it all up in their outside entrance way, then just left it there, unwilling to ring the bell, not wanting to speak with anyone. I drove back to my house and packed my own bag, wanting to go somewhere, away from all the reminders of what I probably was losing. I ended up in Rhode Island, in Providence. I spent a week there, walking around, driving around, buying and selling other people's things, wherever I happened to stop. It was a whole week of me going back to my earliest business beginning. I had my laptop, and I continued tending to my main business interests, everyday, for an hour or so, in the mornings, but I still managed to spend eleven or twelve hours a day, out and about, pursuing my hobby. It relaxed me, getting back to doing something I was so comfortable with. It was profitable too, but that was just a pleasant by-product, not my real reason for doing it. I was thinking too for that whole week. My dilemma was eating away at me, in the forefront of my thoughts the entire time. I couldn't find any solution that was anything more than me capitulating to Tina completely. I wasn't sure that even this would lead to me getting the three of us back together again. It was the only plan I could come up with that offered me any hope at all though, so I was slowly coming to terms with it being what I'd need to do. After my week long retreat was over, I still hadn't gotten myself to the point where I could go find Tina and tell her I'd given up on setting any conditions for marrying her. Somehow, it had been important to me that she get past this long running separation from her parents. Important, but now it was turning out that it might not be more important than the very real possibility of my losing her and her sister over it was. I even started drawing parallel's between my separation from Tina, and hers from her parents. In some ways, both were similar. She hadn't been able to tolerate what she saw as their cold indifference, while I found myself unable to tolerate her inability to forgive them, to move on with her life. It was a test of tolerance for both of us, and it immediately became obvious to me that I was asking her to do something I wasn't willing to do myself. As soon as I saw it, I realized I could yield to her now, even grovel a little bit, if she insisted that it was necessary. Perhaps, seeing that I was willing to do it, she'd understand that it was the right thing for her to do as well. If not, hopefully I'd succeed in regaining what I now believed I'd foolishly thrown away. I drove home, really believing I was ready to tell Tina she'd won. On the drive, I'd even practiced how I was going to say the words to her. When I got to my house though, all that suddenly changed. Both Tina and Sherry were industriously painting away in my side yard. Seeing me drive up in the Navigator, both stopped what they'd been doing and ran over to greet me. I climbed out from behind the steering wheel of my car and accepted and returned all their excited hugs and kisses, trying to answer all their questions, while still letting them know how much I loved them, and how badly I'd missed being with the pair of them. "We couldn't get here in time, and none of them thought to bring their cell phones along, so we could call you. That Evelyn is such a bitch too. I wouldn't put it past her to have deliberately run over that metal thing in the road that made her tire go flat. The other one was no help at all either, insisting that we all had to stay together, by Evelyn's car, so we wouldn't get raped or killed like we could have if we were walking back to get some help. By the time someone stopped and let us use his phone to call for a tow truck, it was noon already. We called you from the repair shop, but there was no answer. We got here a little after three, but you were already gone when we did. "I did what you wanted too, I went with Sherry over to their house after we found out that you'd left. We all had dinner together, and I even spent one night there. I'm sorry, but I've got to tell you this, I still can't stand either of them, and I needed to get away from them after just that one day there. We came to stay here on Saturday. We were hoping and praying that you'd come back here after you were done with your trip to California. Can we still get married now?" "I never went to California, I've been in Rhode Island, thinking, and making some deals for things. I was just getting ready to start looking for you, to tell you I was wrong for trying to make you do something you didn't want to do. I shouldn't have put any conditions at all on my love for you, because it wasn't right for me to do that. I'm glad you went to see your folks though. It isn't necessary for you to like them, but it isn't good that you should stay so separated from them like you've been. It helps no one, and it caused them some serious grief. I guess I'll have to send him his money back now. Damn, I loved being a millionaire too." "Why would you send the money back? He made the deal, and he thinks it was a good one. Even more now, since I went to their house and let them see me. I talked to both of them, for hours, and I let them ask me all those questions they kept having. I still don't want him giving me away at our wedding though." "I'll let you make that decision. The thing is, the bride's family usually pays for the wedding, and for the reception. I had my heart set on having a big wedding reception over at your parent's house. Remember when I told you I thought our wedding would be a great time to introduce Danny and Kaitlyn to your side of the family? I told you I was thinking of getting Kaitlyn to help loosen up your father. Since then, I've added her sister, Mona, to the plan. You get Kaitlyn and Mona drinking, and then go ahead and point them at someone, it just might turn out to be a lot of fun for us to see what happens." "Katie, with my father? You don't know him at all if you think he'd do anything. No way! She wouldn't want to do anything with him anyway, would she?" "I've been telling her about him, and I told her to bring Mona along to the wedding. At first, I was thinking about turning Danny loose on your mom, but then, after I saw how she is, I've pretty much decided not to chance it. Besides, I couldn't very well ask him to throw a huge wedding for us, and then not let him participate. It would shame him in front of his friends and all his business associates." "If I really believed you'd set it up, like you said, I'd let him give me away. You should try to get Danny to put a move on my mother too. It would be hilarious to see how upset she'd be. Don't you think so, Sherry?" "It would be better to have him put a move on me. I'm not sure how funny it would be, but I'm sure I'd enjoy it." "With Danny? I don't believe that. Why would you want him when you could have Jimmy?" Tina sounded genuinely confused. I wasn't, because I was used to it by then. Danny had some kind of ability to attract women. All kinds of women too. It wasn't just his good looks either. It was that he looked like he was someone who, while handsome, could also be a bit dangerous. A lot of girls and women seemed to have liked that about him. I knew I didn't have that look. I decided to answer her questions instead of waiting for Sherry to do it. "Danny has always gotten his pick of women, ever since high school. There's something about him that makes women want to try him out, to see for themselves if he's as dangerous as they think he might be. If I ever did turn him loose on your mother, she'd have no chance at all. He'd have her sucking his dick and begging him to fuck her before the first toast was made. He'll be my best man you know? I hope he doesn't do any bragging while he's making his toast to us. He'll be drunk, or high, by then, of course, probably both. He's liable to say anything then." "Oh my god! You've really got this planned out, don't you?" Tina looked like she was finally beginning to believe me. I'd felt sorry for her father after I'd met him. I didn't think any parent should be put through what he and his wife had been through with Tina. Still, after meeting the two of them, I couldn't help believing that they were the exact opposite's of Danny and Kaitlyn. The four of them, if they were all mixed up together, might turn into two pretty decent couples. As it was, they were polar opposite's of each other. "It might be a lot of fun, especially if we were to distance ourselves from it, then just let it unfold. I mean we'd have to get my family pointed at yours, but we'd need to stay completely out of it, as far as anyone else ever knowing what we did. We'd need to agree on that before we actually did anything." "What do you think. Sherry? Should we let Jimmy do this to them?" I could tell that Tina was already very willing to do this. To her, this might represent some sort of payback for what she believed were their years of indifference to all her emotional needs. I thought it might actually help them, but I'll admit that wasn't my primary motivation for planning it. If I was the one who planned it, that would take away any feelings of embarrassment that Danny or Kaitlyn might have otherwise caused me at the wedding. I'd be robbing them of their particular power over me, on a very important day in my life. "Maybe not for mom? Daddy can say no if he doesn't want to fool around with Katie and her sister, but you know how mom is. She wouldn't be able to tell Danny no. I don't like thinking about him with mom anyway. You know I'd like to be the one doing things with him." "Danny and Kaitlyn would be staying here with us. They'll be here for at least a week. How about I give Danny a hint that you might want to take a little ride on his pony, sometime before the wedding? Tina and I could take Kaitlyn out to buy her a dress for the wedding, and leave the two of you alone for a few hours." "I'd much rather have Katie and Tina go shopping. Katie can drive them in your Lincoln. If you do that other thing, the one you told me you wouldn't do, then I'll do whatever you want after that. I'll even agree to have all the babies you want me to." Tina looked confused about what Sherry was referring to. "She wants me to double team her with my brother. She has this fantasy about the two of us doing it to her, together." "With two guys, Sherry? Even I wouldn't do anything as naughty as that. Are you sure? Which ways would you do it? Oral and in the pussy?" Sherry colored up, lowered her head and shook it from side to side. "Oh my God! You want one in your ass, and the other one in your puss? That's it, isn't it?" This time Sherry moved her head up and down, signifying that Tina was, indeed, correct about what she was after. "Which one where?" Sherry shrugged, then she suddenly decided she was through with taking any further part in this conversation, running back to her easel, resuming her painting. "Are you going to give her what she wants?" Tina looked at me, staring at my eyes, hoping to be able to see if I was answering her truthfully. "I don't know. I told her when we were in Atlantic City that I wouldn't, but that was before this thing today. Now, I guess it would depend on how you feel about my doing that with them." "Too bad I couldn't be there to watch you doing that. Sherry would go crazy if you two did that to her. If she had me as an audience, to see her being such a slut, she might never stop cumming." "We could have a pre-wedding party orgy I guess, like a bachelor party and a bachelorette party, all at the same time. I'd have to tell Danny and Kaitlyn that it was a New England tradition. You'd have to include Kaitlyn as your matron of honor if we did that though. What about Mona?" "I forgot about her. Didn't you tell me that you and Danny had both been with her before?" "Me a few times, but Danny has been drilling her, off and on, for years. I don't think Kaitlyn even cares about him and Mona anymore. She still looks damn good for her age. All those Keller sisters do." "I don't care what Sherry thinks, I want Danny to try something with my mother too. Also, if Sherry gets to do that with you and Danny both, I should be able to do it too." "I'm not much into us having an open marriage, Tina. The only reason I'd ever consider doing it, even for this one time, is because Danny and I are brothers, and because you and Sherry are sisters. Like that, it doesn't seem as weird for us to do something like that. Plus, maybe if he did you two, I won't feel as guilty about all those other times, when it was me fucking his wife. I haven't agreed to it yet, but I think I could live with it, if it was just him, and you two weren't going to be after me to find other guys to do that with." Tina went back to where she'd been painting, while I got my bag out of the Navigator and moved it into my house. I looked out the window at them. It looked to me like they were doing a lot more talking and giggling than they were painting. Sherry's face had a deeper pink tone to it, and she kept squirming around behind her easel. When they came back inside, a short while later, there was still plenty of sunlight. There was still a lot of sunlight left when they attacked me and dragged me off to bed too. We ended up driving each other crazy, and neither of them would let me get any rest until I'd fucked each of them in their asses, while the other one used three fingers to simulate Danny's dick in their pussies. I kept warning them that three wasn't enough, but they didn't want to believe me. I knew I'd let them have their threesome with my brother and I. I was so relieved that I hadn't lost them, that I'd have agreed to doing almost anything to make them happy. I warned both of them that Danny was in his mid forties now, with a very bad back, and that he might not be up for such a strenuous challenge as the one they were planning on presenting him with. It didn't seem to worry them though, and that worried me. For years Kaitlyn had assured me that I couldn't hold a candle next to Danny, not when it came to bedroom gymnastics. I didn't know what holding a candle had to do with it, but I'd always accepted her estimate of our relative abilities in that particular department. Sherry had done a complete turnaround about Danny and her mother, ever since we'd talked about the three of us possibly doing something with Danny before the wedding. If the sex we'd had with her later in the day was any indication, Danny and I were in for one hell of a ride. ------- Chapter 9 Tina decided we should be married on the third of August. When I asked her about why she had picked that particular date, a Monday, she refused to answer, laughing when I kept after her about it, telling me I didn't really want to know. I asked Sherry, but she wouldn't tell me why her sister had picked that date either. Sherry wanted to know when Danny and Kaitlyn would be coming out. At least I knew why she was anxious about that. I'd spoken with them on the phone twice since Tina had set the date. They were excited for me, and promised they would be ready to come whenever I wanted them to. Kaitlyn's mom would be staying in their trailer, watching the grand kids for them. Kaitlyn told me that Mona was really excited about her being invited to attend my wedding. Everything seemed in readiness at that end. Kaitlyn also told me that she had gotten Danny a big contract with a homebuilder over in Palmdale. He'd be building and installing screen doors and window screens for the two hundred and seventy two new houses that the builder was putting up between Palmdale and Oak Hills. Kaitlyn told me they would make more on that one job than Danny had ever made from a whole year's work in the past. I didn't ask her if she gave that builder any "special" incentives to induce him to give her the contract. In July, I took both girls on a trip to Lake Tahoe. It was a combination birthday/business trip. Tina and Sherry turned twenty five years old on the nineteenth. Because of their trusts maturing, with all the assets being distributed to them, it was a very significant birthday for them. Sherry's money was being transferred into another trust that had been set up for her protection. She was happy about this arrangement, as were her parents. I was relieved that she would be protected from any possible predator's. Even Tina seemed to approve of how her father had set things up for Sherry. Lake Tahoe was beautiful, and we had fun, in the casino, on the lake, and in our suite. The suite was really lavish, up on a high floor, so that we had a sweeping panoramic view of both the lake and most of the surrounding mountains. Tina and Sherry both ran out and bought pencils and spiral sketching pads. Each morning they'd get up early and stand by the big picture windows, making their sketches and putting little notes along the sides and bottoms of the pages of the drawing they were working on. Most of these notes were about colors and contrasts they were seeing, and about where the light was coming from. They told me the notes would allow them to better paint the pictures, at a later date, when it was from their sketches alone. It took me two days to get an appointment with a group of families living in a remote commune over on the California side of the Sierra Mountains. They manufactured cow bells and braided hemp, turning all of it into another unique style of wind chime. They called them "Spirit Singers", and each of their bells put out a slightly different sound from all the other bells woven into the braid. I'd purchased one on Ebay, for nine dollars, plus shipping costs. It came to twenty dollars, total cost, delivered to my front doorstep. I really liked the melodious sounds these bells made. To me, it seemed very soothing. I wanted to speak to whoever was in charge and try to secure the exclusive marketing rights for them. I had rented a four wheel drive Jeep for the trip out to where the commune was situated. Henry Galt, my contact with the commune, had warned me that the roads leading up to their village were difficult to navigate in the Summer, and almost impossible for any motorized vehicle, other than snow mobile, in the late Fall, Winter and early Spring. Their commune was situated at 6,750 feet of elevation. I left the casino hotel at six in the morning, hoping to cover the eighty miles in an hour and a half. I expected to be gone overnight if the negotiations looked promising. Tina and Sherry had opted to remain in our suite, drawing more sketches. Driving cautiously, and only getting lost three or four times, I finally made it to where I was going, at two thirty that afternoon. Eight and a half hours to cover eighty miles. I'd put one hundred and twenty miles on my odometer, needing to backtrack, after missing several turnoffs. I was apologizing for being so late for our meeting, but Henry, and the other three "village elders" were amused at my explanation of where I'd gone wrong. Their amusement about all my many travails before arriving to meet with them was as nothing when compared to my own amusement after they first showed me their stockpile of unsold "Spirit Singers". Saying their business model was a complete failure would be a fair summation. Counting their one sale to me, they'd sold a grand total of sixteen of them. Even their freight expenses had turned out to be more than they'd charged successful bidders for shipping the purchased chimes. This wouldn't have been so terrible, except for two things. One, they'd invested the lion's share of all remaining communal money when they were out purchasing all the equipment necessary for doing the pouring and casting of their own bells. They were starting from molds they'd hand created themselves. Number two, was what they'd just shown me. It was a salvaged tin Quonset hut, filled to the rafters with thousands of these bell sets, already manufactured and woven together by hand. They had bet everything on being able to sell these rope and bell chimes on Ebay. Having found it this wasn't working, they had no money left to try anything different. I grilled them about what their true costs were, even helping them with things like depreciation of their casting equipment and any labor time spent carving out the bell molds themselves. It took me two hours, but we finally arrived at an approximation of their true cost of manufacturing each unit. I told them it was around five fifty per manufactured unit. Another complication with our negotiations was the fact that these bell chimes had a religious component for all members of the commune. Maybe a spiritual component would be a more accurate way to state things. They weren't as much religious as spiritual. Not all the hemp they were growing was being used to weave their bell chimes either. By seven that evening, just from sitting outside with them in a tight little circle while we talked, I was having the contact high of my life from all the smoke that kept floating around me. They were anxious to sell off the "Spirit Singers" they had already made, and then give the whole manufacturing idea up. They were fine with the idea of now admitting that it was simply an unsustainable idea for extending their spiritual outreach program. Between the twenty or so families in the commune, there were about fifty people who enjoyed working on the bell chimes. Henry told me that they could assemble two hundred units, with about four hours of the joint steady effort of all those who were involved in the project. He then told me that four hours a day was about all anyone wanted to contribute to the undertaking. That was also the limit that the various non involved village members would be willing to either encourage or support. He said the elders had long ago issued a decree stating that a twenty hour work week should be a sufficient contribution of time from any member. Henry's main worry was that, because of how the "Spirit Singer" project had failed so completely, some of the village men would now need to go away from the village just to earn enough money to keep everyone fed and clothed over the coming Winter. Their monetary reserves were depressingly low. His words, not mine. When I'd asked him how many "Spirit Singers" he had ready for immediate sale, he pulled a piece of paper out of his back pocket and rattled off the exact count, 3,245. I then asked him how much he'd take for all of them, delivered to me in Connecticut? That led to a full conference between all the adult villagers in the commune. I stayed where I was sitting, not too confident that I'd be able to stand, even if I'd tried to. The marijuana they grew was very potent, and I was totally wrecked, just from spending so much time in the heavy cloud they'd created, while we all sat there, discussing their situation. "Could you see your way clear to giving us eight thousand for all of them? In addition to paying us back whatever money it ends up costing us to mail them to you?" "You don't just mail over three thousand bell chimes, Henry. That would cost you a fortune. Besides, you can't sell them for less than they cost you to make. That's not how you run a business. You'll wind up losing your asses if you do what you just finished telling me. If they cost you five fifty each to make, just for the cost of the materials, not counting all your labor costs, you need to get more than that for them. Twenty thousand, maybe even twenty five, if you want to show even a halfway decent return for all your efforts." "We'll take whatever you think is fair, Jimmy. We can take them down the hill for you, but it might be better if you arrange for shipping them to your store. Can you do that?" All the original "Elders" were back sitting down with me again, and I noticed all of them were puffing away on their water bong's while they waited for my reply. I was lost in a tiny reverie of my own, wondering if these commune people took in paid visitor's, like a dude ranch. We could call it the dope ranch. I was giggling a little, thinking about what a blast it would be for Danny and Kaitlyn to spend a few days visiting up here. "Where were we again? Oh yeah, I remember now. I can't answer your last question without knowing what you plan to do after you sell those "Spirit Singers" you already have. If this is just a closeout sale, and I can't ever lay my hands on more of them, then that's one price I can pay. If it is just the first of many deliveries, meaning that I take them on as a permanent part of my business line, then that's a different thing altogether, and I can afford to pay you more for them. Does that make any sense? I'm not sure if it does or not." I think it was around this time that I actually took my first hit on one of those bong's. I'd been refusing to puff on them for the past few hours, but I could already tell I'd gotten loaded anyway. Time was kind of getting away from me by then anyway, and I had already started feeling a little hungry too. I remember mentioning to someone that I could stand to eat a little something, and one of the woman started bringing us all bowls of some kind of soup with honey butter slathered cornbread. I ate three helping's, and then pigged out even more on these dynamite brownies another woman had brought over for our dessert. There was a lot of laughing going on, and I'm pretty sure I saw people making out and playing with each other. One thing I do remember for sure, was me waking up, some time later, from what must have been an all night long nap. I'd taken my nap lying right there on the ground. When I woke up again, I was all alone, except for this huge mongrel dog who was laying down a few feet away. He opened his eyes when I sat up, but then closed them again, right after. I needed to piss, really bad, and my mouth was so dry I couldn't even work up any spit. I had a bad headache as well. A woman with a small boy in tow, came walking past me, so I asked her if there was a restroom I could use, or maybe someplace where I could wash my face and rinse out my mouth? She told me she was taking her son to the bathroom and I could follow along with them. There were these three big outhouses out in the woods, about two blocks away from the village. I thought it was very inconvenient to have them way out there, and I told her so. She just laughed at my big city ways. Lily and Jonah, her four year old son waited for me to finish up with my business, then she led me back to the village and over to where their communal kitchen was located. I had a big jar of apple juice, homemade she claimed, and a few more pieces of that leftover cornbread. I asked her if there were any more of those tasty brownies left, but she just smiled and told me no. I was finishing up the last of the cornbread when I saw Henry walking over to me. I apologized to him for drifting off like I had, telling him that I wasn't really used to smoking marijuana. "Yesterday you were getting ready to tell us what you'd pay for our bell's, but then you keeled over, fell asleep and never finished. Should I go get the rest of the elders, so we can finish up our meeting?" "Why don't you first tell me whether or not you plan to keep making the bells, if I buy up all the one's you have in storage now. If you do decide to keep on making them, I think I'll be able to sell all you're able to make in the future." "If we knew we'd at least break even, we would probably want to keep making them. The "Spirit Singers" are a gift from all of us here, one we wanted to make to the earth. Making money on them would be a very acceptable thing, but it isn't necessary to any of us that we do so." "Jesus, Henry, you make it too easy for me to squeeze you hard, when you keep telling me stuff like that. You take all the fun out of negotiating with you." "Jimmy, you're the businessman here, not us. Our main goal is to get more of nature's music out into the world. If we cared about money, would we be living out here, like this? We want to be left alone out here, to live our lives harmoniously, in tune with the natural order of the earth. Our village is forty years old now. I was born right here, and have lived here all my life. It's been a good life for me. Two of my sons left the village once, wanting to go out into the world, to see what it was like for themselves. They both returned to us in less than three months. Others have gone away and stayed gone. This was their choice to make and we take no issue with them over it." "Seven dollars each, and that's about twice what I've been paying for the other wind chimes I usually buy. I'll need five thousand more a month from you, at a minimum, and that would mean you'd have to have 200 made a day, for twenty five days each month, or else you could work an extra hour and make 250 a day and only need to make them for twenty days a month. You'd need to deliver them to a place I'd tell you in Sacramento, so I could get them shipped out to wherever I'd need them. They'd need to be in boxes too, one hundred forty four to a box, or else seventy two to a box, you take your pick which. You buy the boxes, and you pack and double check them before every delivery. This won't work if you smoke too much of that dope of yours, and then forget to count how many you put in the boxes." Henry laughed, nodding to indicate he knew that could easily happen. "That's okay in the summer, loading things up and running them down to Sacramento, but not the other eight months of the year. It would make more sense for us to deliver whatever we had ready as soon as the roads were cleared for travel each Spring, and then right before the first snow comes, around September sometime. Probably late May, and early September, but we'd need to lay in a lot of metal to be able to cast that many bells. We do most of the work in the cold months, when there isn't too much else for any of us to be doing here." Henry met with me and the other elders again, but by now I knew Henry was the one who was really in charge of everything. I found out what they needed in the way of raw materials, and the usual prices they paid for them. Naturally, they were getting royally hosed by their suppliers. Henry and I started the whole negotiating thing all over again, working out a deal where I supplied everything they needed in the way of metal, including delivering it to their village, then paid them three dollars a unit profit, delivered in Sacramento, to whatever warehouse I had decided to deal with. I even agreed to replace their bell making equipment, whenever it needed replacing. Since we were entering in what amounted to a partnership, they were happy to get a check for $16,000.00, in full payment for all their current inventory. I took the two hundred and forty five odd "Spirit Singers" with me, back to Lake Tahoe, figuring to send them out to my biggest wind chime customers as a sample of the new line. When I got back to our suite, the girls were still sketching, but they did tell me they'd gone outside the hotel and worked on other sketches of some of the "A" frame and other styles of cottages they'd happened across in their little journey outside. Both girls had really liked the sounds my Ebay bells had made, and they played around with one of the boxes full of "Spirit Singers" I'd brought back with me. It was soon apparent that every set of bells made a slightly different sound in the wind. All were pleasant, but the girls and I each had picked out our own personal favorite set. We had the big birthday dinner in our suite, catered by four members of the hotel's staff. We had bacon wrapped prime filet mignon steaks, with baby mushrooms cooked in a light buttery gravy, red potatoes, and asparagus topped with a real nice Hollandaise sauce. Later on, to top it all off, we had this pretty little chocolate confection for dessert. The confection came with a lit birthday candle stuck in the two servings of it that were meant for the girls. We also enjoyed a large bottle of a very nice Merlot with dinner, followed by a much smaller bottle of sweet Muscato to go with our dessert. After dinner, we went right to bed and worked off all those calories. Dinner in our suite, even with four servers in attendance, only came to a little over twelve hundred dollars, and that included a cash tip of a hundred dollars for each of our servers. I stopped off to see a casino host right before we checked out, and was able to get a thousand dollars knocked of our total bill. This was given to us as a complimentary discount, for all the gambling the three of us had done while we were there. I thought that was very fair of them, considering that Sherry had won over five thousand dollars when we were all playing "21" one of the nights, and Tina and I had only ended up losing about two thousand each. We'd played pretty long on one night, maybe six or seven hours each, but only for an hour or two each, the four other days. I'd missed one day of gambling completely, because of my business side trip. I went online and found a warehouse that would handle shipping for me in Sacramento, setting up my account with them over the phone. I then wrote Henry a note, sending it to to his post office box, with the address and the phone number for the warehouse, along with my new identifying account number at the warehouse that he needed to use when making his deliveries to me. I found a metal foundry over in the Bay area that quoted me much better prices on the iron and other trace metals that went into casting the bells. This represented a substantial savings over what the commune had been paying for their raw metal needs. I'd already anticipated being able to do this when I made my deal with Henry. Henry had agreed to rent a storage place in the small town nearest where the commune was located, and he had also agreed to have someone there in the town to accept delivery on all the metal I had told him I'd order. Getting from the village to the town in Winter, using a snow mobile with a freight sled towed behind it wasn't a very big problem for them to be able to manage. Henry said several different members of the commune traveled back and forth from there all the time, even in the Winter. When we left Lake Tahoe, on July twenty third, we drove our rental Jeep back down to the airport in Sacramento. From there, we flew to San Francisco airport, on a small commuter airline, then took a major carrier non stop back to New Jersey, where we hopped in the Navigator and drove straight back home. ------- Right after I'd gotten back from Rhode Island, I'd driven over to see Mr. & Mrs. Axelbland at their home. I handed him my personal check for $994,000.00, telling him that I was returning the money I'd overcharged him for those two paintings I'd sold him. He finally took the money from me, but not before telling me, over and over again, how happy he and his wife were to have had the opportunity to finally be able to make their peace with Christina. I told him that Tina and I had set our wedding date, telling him it was to be August 3rd. The Axelbland's looked at each other when I named the date, but didn't comment on whether or not that date had any significance for either of them. All Tina's mom kept saying about the date was that there was too little time for her to be planning a complete wedding and the wedding reception. She kept complaining that we were giving them less than three months to prepare everything they'd need. "Tina said to tell you we can just get married when we're out in Lake Tahoe for the girl's birthday, if that would make it any easier for you?" When Tina and I had first started talking about getting married, Sherry had told her mom. At that time, Tina's parents probably weren't expecting to even get an invitation to the ceremony. Right after I came back from Providence, and the three of us got back together again, all that had changed. We had decided to put my plan in motion. I'd known, from the very beginning, that Tina would need a very good reason for allowing her parents to participate in our wedding. The plan I'd outlined for what Danny and Kaitlyn might be doing at the wedding with her parents had supplied all the incentive she'd needed to be willing to include them. After I went over to give the money back to her father, something Tina had objected to strongly, Tina seemed more determined than ever to see her parents either humbled or embarrassed at our wedding reception. Sherry was much less sure that any of it was a good idea. I had my own reasons for liking it, because it took away any possibility that I'd be embarrassed by any of my family's behavior at the wedding or later, at the reception. I didn't really believe that Mr. Axelbland would succumb to Kaitlyn and Mona's overtures. I just thought it would be amusing for all of us to watch him trying to avoid their not very subtle attempts at seducing him. I was far less sure that Danny wouldn't succeed with Tina's mom, especially if I went to him and challenged him to try. If I told him I didn't believe he could succeed in getting her to give it up to him, that would be enough motivation for him to give it a good try. Tina, because she was looking forward to the plan working, really started cooperating with her mother on the wedding plans. She went for bridal gown fittings with her, went to upscale stores to register for our wedding gifts, picked out the invitations, and helped with most of the planning to convert her parent's back yard into a nice place for holding the reception. They ordered the tents, hired the caterer's, selected the wedding cake, picked out our wedding rings, and even the rental chairs and tables they'd need for the reception. She even agreed to the Anglican minister her mother had preferred. Her parents were each thrilled at the amount of time Tina was spending with her mother, participating with all the planning being done. Somewhere, at some point during this process, Tina began to change, if only slightly, some of her perceptions about her mother. It wasn't any large breakthrough, but she did start mentioning to me her surprise at how important our wedding had obviously become to her mother. She was constantly remarking to me how much time and hard work her mom was putting into making everything perfect for Tina on her wedding day. It became more difficult for her to support her claim of her parent's neglect. Apparently, Tina's mother had been preparing for her two daughter's weddings since around their third or fourth birthdays. It had been something of a hobby of hers as it turned out. For maybe the first time in her life, Tina was forced to concede there was some evidence which pointed out her mother's caring. As the day for our wedding drew closer, Sherry and Tina, along with their mother, seemed to go into panic mode. The wedding photographer they had originally hired, their first choice, suddenly tried to return their deposit money, citing a conflict he was having with another wedding he was committed to covering up in Maine, the day prior to our wedding. He was claiming that he'd just discovered that the travel logistics would prevent him from being able to do complete justice to both weddings. Tina's father hired the photographer a chartered helicopter, to fly him back to his Connecticut studio immediately after he finished shooting the other wedding in Maine. When the photographer still tried to back out of his commitment, Tina's dad put an end to that by threatening to sue him for all he owned if he wasn't at the church and ready to honor his promise to his wife and daughter. That seemed to finally accomplish what all the Axelbland's had wanted. Tina wanted to have this one woman who sang at wedding's, and whose husband always accompanied her on the organ. Apparently Tina, when she was much younger, had seen her appearing at many of the rich or famous people's weddings down in our area of Connecticut. Unfortunately, it seemed the couple had scheduled themselves for a holiday in Bermuda that week. Nobody understood why they wanted to go to Bermuda in late July, but those were their plans. Again Mr. Axelbland opened his checkbook wide enough to get them to change those plans. Tina, Sherry, and her mother each picked out one of the songs the woman would be singing at the wedding. Every day something new would come up, threatening to derail one wedding plan or another. Usually, towards the end of July, more than one thing came up each day. Working together, everything kept getting handled. Two days before the wedding, I actually heard Tina comment to Sherry that she hoped all the running around and the stress of planning everything didn't end up killing her mother. That was real progress. Danny, Kaitlyn, and Mona all showed up at my house on the Friday afternoon before the wedding. I'd told them I'd be glad to come in and pick them up at the airport, but Danny told me he'd rather hire a rental car. Mona had a credit card that was still good he'd told me. They'd used that to get the rental. I had mixed feelings about seeing them, especially my brother. Ever since the day we'd all gotten back together, I'd had more and more doubts about what the girls and I had agreed to, as far as the Wedding Party orgy went. I tried to tell myself it wouldn't be the end of the world if we went ahead and did what the girls said they both wanted. We had initially set things up to do it on Sunday, after Kaitlyn and Mona had both gotten their dresses for the wedding, and after I'd taken Danny to get fitted for his new tuxedo. I had been planning on just renting one for him, but that was before Tina and Sherry both looked at me like I'd stabbed someone when I'd informed of this. That's why we went out early on Saturday morning and found a new tux for him to wear. He looked good in the tux, especially with the seventy dollar razor cut hair styling, and the fifty dollar manicure we'd treated him to. They even did his nose hairs, and the few hairs growing in his ears. Danny got a big kick out of all this, but he drew the line at getting a facial to clean out his pores. Fourteen hundred for the tuxedo, shirt, and a cummerbund for Danny, and another four hunded and fifty for a pair of nice black boots, then another sixty for three pair of fine thin black dress socks. Danny would be wearing clothes at my wedding that had cost more than his entire wardrobe had, back home in Hesperia. A lot more. Mona and Kaitlyn both got the same kind of treatment, spending most of Saturday morning at the beauty parlor. Tina's mom had hired a woman to come to the church early on Monday, to comb out and fix up all the women's hair, and another one just to come help them with their makeup. Sherry and Tina slept in my bedroom, Danny and Kaitlyn in Sherry's room. Mona slept in the old storage room, which had been cleaned up and made into another nice guest bedroom. It was Saturday morning, and Sherry was out in the yard, working on a painting she was very excited about. Tina and I were still in bed, just talking about wedding related things. She seemed uncomfortable about something, so I asked her what it was. "I've changed my mind about wanting to do that thing with you and Danny, Jimmy. You can go ahead and do it with Sherry and Danny if you want to, but I don't even want to watch you guys anymore. I was only going to do it because she was, but now I've decided I really don't want to." "I don't either, Tina. I never did, but, Sherry seems to really have her heart set on us doing it." "I know. I've had to listen to her, ever since they showed up here yesterday. She really does want this. I don't think you should back out of it now." "What about that other thing we talked about doing, that wedding party orgy thing? Are we just going to cancel that too? I already talked to Danny, Kaitlyn, and Mona. I told them it was tradition here in New England." "Tell them whatever you want to tell them. My having sex with your brother, less than twenty four hours before we exchange our wedding vows, I don't know, it just seems very wrong to me." When we were coming back from buying Danny's wedding clothes, later that same day, I talked with Danny, telling him honestly about what Tina, Sherry, and I had planned. I told him that what I was asking him to do wasn't anything I wanted for myself, but was something that Sherry really was dying to try. While I was at it, I told him about what we had been hoping he, Kaitlyn, and Mona would do at the reception. I felt bad to be admitting how I'd planned to use the three of them, but Danny just laughed when I tried to apologize to him. "Fuck, if this is what you call using me, you've got my permission to keep right on doing it. Bro, we both know where the balance scales tip between us, and don't you ever think Katie and I don't both appreciate all the times you've bailed our asses out of those jams of hers, and all those scrapes with the law I've had. I know how we both paid you back for all you've done for us. It's us who should be apologizing to you for what ungrateful son's of bitches we've been to you. "Katie and me, I really think we're starting to get our head's screwed on, at least a little bit straighter than before. We both still do shit, but not like we did before. The kids are getting older now, and we can't get away with pulling so many things right under their noses like we used to could. You know what Monday is? Besides the day you and Tina are getting married? Katie's and my twenty fifth anniversary. Can you believe that? Twenty five fucking years. You know what else? We still love each other. All the shit we've both had to put up with, and God knows there's been a lot of it, but we somehow stuck it out, and now the hardest part is over for us, and I really believe that too." "I didn't remember that. In fact, I don't think I ever even knew your anniversary date. I wonder if Kaitlyn might have told Tina, and that's why she wanted August third for us too? I'll have to ask her. So, what are we going to do about what Sherry wants?" "Only one thing to do, Jim. Woman gets to really wanting something like that, it's an itch she's bound to have scratched, by somebody. It may as well be us that does it. You remember that time with Jennifer? Later on, maybe two months after that time with you, we got it on with another guy, an old friend of hers. Her idea, not mine, but it wasn't any big thing. Let's go ahead and do her. She needs to try it and maybe get it out of her system." "What about at the wedding reception? Should we just call all that off, or what?" "From the way you described Tina's mom to me, I wouldn't mind giving it a shot. Can't hurt much if I take a run at her. Hell, all she has to do is tell me no. I'm not going to rape her." "What about Tina's father? That's the one Tina really wanted to see happen." "Those two, Katie and Mona, I can guarantee you it wouldn't be the first cock they've ever shared. You know they would be up for it. If you're asking me if I'd mind, then I guess I have to say no. Big party, plenty of free booze, why should I get all upset if some of our partying gets a little bit out of hand? If I wasn't able to wear both their pussy's out by now, then I don't guess some rich ass hole like Tina's father is even going to make that much of a dent in either of them. I say let them go for it too. What the hell? Let's party! You only get married once or twice, or maybe three times, at the very most, so why not enjoy yourself whenever you do?" Later, I filled Tina in on what Danny had said. She said, if we were going to go through with it, Saturday night, that night, would be better for her. She wanted to take Kaitlyn and Mona over to her parent's house, to show them where the reception would be held, and to introduce them to her parents. She expected them to be gone for at least three hours, she said. "I'm okay with this, Jimmy, and I checked with Sherry earlier, after you and I talked about it, and she's still excited about doing it. Katie, Mona, and I will leave here in an hour. We'll be eating over there too, so it will be at least three hours we're gone, if not even longer." Fifteen minutes after Tina and the others left, I went looking for Sherry. She was already in my bedroom, naked, and under the bed covers. I noticed two new tubes of KY gel on the night stand, and three or four small towels up by the pillow, over on the far side of the bed. "Are you sure about wanting this, Sherry? Too late for you to back out when both our cocks are already inside you." "Remember that time in Atlantic City, Jimmy? That's what I need from both of you today." I could see the fear and excitement on her face. I was absolutely certain that she was already into some fantasy world of her choosing right then. She'd given me a very big hint already, so I turned my back on her and went back out of my bedroom. I found Danny sitting in my great chair, drinking a beer, his attention riveted on the baseball game underway on the TV set. "You ready to do this, Danny?" "Been ready. Born ready for shit like this. She already know today's the day?" "She's in my bed, naked under the sheet, with a bunch of towels and two tubes of KY gel standing by. What do you think?" "She's ready, I'd say. How you want to do this, like that time with Jennifer? I'll go in and get her going, then you come in later and take her ass?" I nodded that this seemed all right to me. I couldn't seem to rid myself of the doubts I was having about doing this. "Sherry likes to be dominated, Danny. She likes being humiliated, and forced to do things. Not hurt though, just controlled a little bit. She likes it if you talk to her like she isn't important to you." "That's easy for me, Bro, because she isn't important to me. Don't worry, I've played with plenty of sick bitches before. I'll play my part, you just make sure you don't go all weird on me and touch anything you aren't supposed to. I mean that too, Jim, so don't you start fucking around on me, just because you think it might be funny, okay?" "Don't get so nervous, Danny. Your ass has never held any appeal for me. Sherry's ass though, that's a whole different story." I let Danny go into the bedroom first. I could hear him yelling at her, telling her she better pull down that sheet so he could look at her to see if she was even worth bothering with. It got pretty quiet for awhile, and then I heard a loud slapping sound. When I rushed to the bedroom, Danny was on his back, his big bone buried deep inside Sherry, and she was riding him for all she was worth. She had a very red hand print on the left cheek of her ass, so I knew then where that loud slapping sound had come from. "God damn it, Sherry, is this what's going to happen every time I leave you alone for a few minutes? I turn my head, and five minutes later you're climbing up on my own brother's cock? What a fucking slut you are! I can see I'm going to have to teach you a lesson now. Slow her down, Danny. If she wants to act like a slut, let's treat her like one." I'd gotten undressed by then, and noticed my cock was standing at rigid attention. I reached over in front of where I was standing and grabbed for a tube of the KY. Sherry's eyes had started to glaze over, but she kept them on my hand as I squeezed some gel out of the tube and started working it into my cock skin. I moved backward and climbed up on the bed directly behind her ass. Danny was trying to hold her in place, but she was grinding herself against him, his cock now completely buried inside her. I smeared more gel into my hand and reached out to start working it into her ass hole. She pulled herself forward when I did that, earning herself another hard slap on her ass. This time, it was her other cheek, and now she had a set of handprint's on her. Damn, Danny had almost slapped my hand when he'd reached around and smacked her on the ass that last time. He called her a stupid bitch, telling her stay still or else he'd really hurt her. Less than a minute later, I started exploring her anal depths with my cock. I could tell she was in some pain, but I'd tried being careful not to split her. Either Danny had grown some, or else Kaitlyn had been lying to me all those times when she'd told me I was a little thicker than he was. Sherry was straining to take what we both were feeding into her. The whole time we were sliding in and out of her, I was telling her that this was all she was good for, to be a cum dump for anyone who wanted her, and other not so nice things of that type. The worse the things were that I said to her, the more aroused she seemed to get. I'd already lost track of how many times she'd cum. She wasn't talking or even yelling. She would grunt and groan until she got her cum, then she'd shriek. She'd make these high keening sounds from somewhere deep in her throat, until after her cum had once again subsided. After resting for a few seconds, she'd start to move a little again, letting us both know that she still wanted more from us. Towards the end, Danny started telling her about all these friends of his, back in Hesperia. Friends he told her he owed a bunch of favors to. He told her he wanted her to come out for a visit, so he could take her around to meet his friends. He told her he'd use her pussy, ass, and mouth to get all those favors he owed them squared away. It didn't take the two of us that long to fuck her into a semiconscious torpor. Danny and I both came, nearly at the same time, and that pretty much did it for her. I got off her first, then Danny rolled her off him. When she collapsed on her stomach, we both got off the bed, just leaving her there. Her juices had drenched the both of us. I was glad that Tina and I had insisted on putting one of those plastic mattress liner pads over the mattress. The room smelled like I'd imagine a whorehouse would, after a whole night filled with sexual activity. I went into the shower of my bathroom, and Danny went into the bathroom down the hall. In the shower, I thought about what we'd just done. It hadn't been quite as bad as I'd feared, but it wasn't anything I had any interest or intention of ever repeating. If what had happened in my bedroom tonight was something Sherry was going to develop a taste for, I wasn't going to be one of the one's who'd be satisfying it for her. The whole thing, from start to finish, hadn't taken more than half an hour. My shower took almost as long, but finally, I started feeling clean again. Coming out of the bathroom, with a towel wrapped around my waist, I saw Sherry stripping down the bed linens. She took both sheets, and even the plastic mattress liner off the bed. She wouldn't even look at me. I tried to talk to her, but she hurried away to the laundry room to throw the sheets into the wash. By the Time Tina and the other girls got back, Sherry had long since disappeared from sight. I had no idea where she might have gotten off to. "Where's Sherry?" Tina asked me. Naturally that would be her first question she asked me. "She went for a walk, I think. Haven't seen her for a couple of hours now. How was it over at your parent's house?" "It went all right, I think. Mother's very nervous. I never realized how nervous she gets about every little thing. She's a lot like Sherry, except Sherry talks whenever she moves her lips. Can I take it that things didn't go quite as planned?" "I'm not positive, but I'm guessing that they probably didn't. Afterwards, Sherry was acting pretty strangely towards me. We might have been too rough with her. I know she had two big red hand prints on her ass the last time I checked. Danny's hand, not mine." "Is she hurt?" Tina looked very concerned when she asked me that. "I'm sure she's sore down there, probably in both holes. We weren't all that gentle with her. She didn't seem to want us to be. If I were to take a guess, I'd say she's more embarrassed than anything else. We were only with her for a few minutes, twenty or thirty, I'd say. She probably came ten times at least. The last few were big squirter's too. Go in the bedroom and take a whiff. The smell was three times as strong as what it is now, back before she stripped the bed and washed all the sheets." "Do you think she'll be all right by the time of our wedding?" "You need to go find her, and then ask her those kinds of questions yourself. When I got out of the shower I asked her if she was okay, but she wouldn't answer me. I'm not going to do anything like that again, and I don't care how much she liked it. This was a one time thing for me. If she asks you about it, you can tell her that for me, okay?" Sherry came back before bed time. She wouldn't even talk to Tina. Usually, when we went to bed, I ended up sleeping on one side or the other, with the girls next to each other. Usually Tina slept in the middle, not me. That night, Sherry was in the middle, and Tina and I took turns holding her as she cried. She never did tell either of us how she'd liked it. Tina told me she wouldn't talk to her whenever she tried to ask her about what had happened. One thing I'm certain of, and that is that Sherry had a lot of very strong orgasms that time. If she ended up not liking what happened, it wasn't because the sex didn't arouse her enough. ------- Chapter 10 Monday morning dawned early, and I got out of bed full of anticipation. It was my wedding day. Tina and Sherry had gone over to their parent's house on Sunday afternoon. Supposedly, it was bad luck for the bride and the groom to see each other on the day of the wedding, at least before she was taking that long walk down the aisle to finally become my bride. The wedding rehearsal, and the dinner that followed, had both gone very well. I finally had a chance to meet my four groom's men. They all seemed like nice guys, husbands of four of Tina's bride's maids. Kaitlyn was the matron of honor, and, of course, Sherry was to be the bride's maid of honor. Two of Tina's cousin's children, twin girls, would serve as flower girls. Mr. Axelbland had prevailed on several of his young legal associates to serve as my ushers. The dinner had ended up serving as a combination bachelor/bachelorette party as well. After the dinner, the older folks and the Anglican minister all excused themselves. At first, some of the ushers and groom's men started to leave also, but Danny put a quick end to their doing that, by announcing that there was an open bar for the next three hours, his treat, and that I couldn't get married without a proper send off. Kaitlyn and Mona prevailed upon all of the girls to remain as well. It was probably the wildest, most drunken bash that staid country club had ever hosted. It became obvious, an hour later, that most of Tina's friends weren't used to downing copious amounts of alcohol in very short order. Danny showed all of them how to do rum and seven up shooter's. When you drink them all fizzy like that, so quickly, they don't make that big of an impression on you. It sneaks up on you though, especially if you aren't used to drinking, and your body hasn't built up the tolerance for it. I like to think that most of our wedding party really enjoyed being led down the dark side by Danny, Kaitlyn, and Mona. I accidentally caught Danny getting himself blown by Pattie, one of Tina's married bride's maids. Rick, Pattie's husband, was sleeping it off down in his car at the time. I'd gone out a side door of the room we were partying in, hoping to get some fresh air to try to clear my head, and that's when I discovered the two of them. Danny laughed when he saw me, but Pattie didn't seem happy at being discovered down on her knees like she was. Kaitlyn and Mona, the two oldest women in the party, by at least a decade probably, managed to find something to amuse them out in the member's bar area. They both disappeared for better than an hour, but no one was looking for them out there either. I was starting to be worried about Sherry. I hadn't ever seen her so quiet around me, not since she had first started talking to me. She kept to herself the whole time of the party, really the only one not getting into the spirit of our celebration. I tried talking to her, as did Tina, but she refused to speak to me, and only answered Tina's questions by either saying no, or else just shaking her head from side to side. It was after eleven when the party finally broke up. A very drunk Danny needed to come to me to get some extra cash to pay for our bar tab, and to take care of the two cocktail servers. He hadn't realized the difference in prices between the kind of bars he usually frequented, and those charged at a private country club. Tina stepped in then and took Danny to see the night manager of the country club, insisting on putting everything on her father's tab. I was glad to see Danny go over to each of the cocktail girls, as well as both bartenders, to give them some tangible reward for all their efforts. I then saw him put whatever money he had left in his pocket. I guess it went against his grain to ever pay back any borrowed money. Back at the house, after first dropping off Tina and Sherry on the way, Mona tried to get me interested in knocking off one last quickie with her before I actually got myself married. I hope I couched my refusal in a way that didn't hurt her feelings, when I begged off by claiming performance fears for my wedding night if I wound up over indulging with her. My loss was apparently Danny's gain, because I later heard him and the two former Keller sister's having a romp together, across the hallway, in Sherry's bedroom. My guess was that this was another thing Danny and Kaitlyn couldn't get up to anymore, not with their older kids right there in the trailer with them. ------- I didn't get that nervous until the four of us arrived at the church, just before one o'clock. The wedding was scheduled for two, and, when they led Danny and I to a back room, right behind where the choir room was, it finally really started hitting me. Danny looked really good, all dressed up in his tuxedo. His eyes were the only indication that he'd tied a big one on the night before. I tried to hand him my tiny bottle of Visine, telling him to use it to get the redness out of his eyes. Rather than accept the offered bottle, Danny smiled and brought his own little bottle of Murine out. We both shared a little laugh at that. The tension kept mounting for me until Tina's dad came into the room to tell me that the bridal party had arrived all right. I'd been a little worried that Tina might have a last minute change of heart and decide to cancel everything. After he left, Danny started telling me the strategy he'd devised for his upcoming seduction attempt on Tina's mom. It was a typical Danny sort of plan, something that I would have expected from him. Later, sensing that I was too nervous, he started joking around with me, coming up with all these very coarse ideas about how else he might get Tina's mom interested in him. It worked too, before too long I was joining in with him, expanding on ideas he'd come up with. His best one was pretending to have caught his dick in his zipper, and then going over and appealing to her for some help in working it free. It did relax me for a short time, right up until I remembered that I'd left my cheat sheet for the wedding vows that Tina and I had decided to compose ourselves. Neither of us yet knew what the other one would actually say at the wedding. Danny, who had been my practice dummy while I had extensively rehearsed the vows, calmed me back down by repeating the whole thing back to me slowly, word for word. Finally, the minister had come for me. For the last fifteen minutes, all my groom's men had come into that little waiting vestibule to join us as we waited for things to get started. When the minister came to get me, the others went back to the front of the church to be ready to begin the processional. After I'd taken my place up at the altar with the minister, I looked out to a veritable sea of unknown faces sitting on both sides of the aisle. All of the groom's family were already part of my wedding party, except for Mona, who was seated in the front row on the groom's side of the aisle. At first she was all alone, but as more and more guests kept being led in by the ushers, my side began to fill up as well. The organist had been playing some music to muffle the sounds of so many people tramping up and down the way, or of all the little conversations people were having as they waited for the services to begin. There had to have been some signal I didn't notice, but I was too busy watching the wedding photographer go around checking on the three video cameras his assistant's were manning, to have noticed it. From the back of the church, up in the balcony, this woman started singing "Like A Bridge Over Troubled Waters". I couldn't help myself, breaking out into a wide smile. That was the song title I had given to Tina when she'd asked me if I wanted to pick a song for our wedding. I had been joking, but, strangely, as I listened to the lyrics, my pick seemed on point, and totally appropriate for this wedding. I'll never forget the surprise that Tina and Sherry had decided to spring on me. All of my groom's men and all Tina's bride's maids, along with Kaitlyn and Danny together, had already come down the aisle first, taking their proper places, just like we'd rehearsed it the night before. When I didn't see Sherry, I really started getting concerned. Then, the bridal march started playing, and I was looking all over the church, desperately hoping to see Sherry somewhere. I couldn't believe she'd willingly miss our wedding, no matter how she felt about what had happened between us on Saturday. When Tina's dad and Tina came into view, I found myself truly saddened. I knew I had only myself to blame for causing Sherry to miss out on her sister's wedding. I felt lower than a dog turd on a hangman's boot heel. Suddenly, Sherry came into view, moving behind her sister's long train on her wedding gown, and moving up along the free side of her father. She too was dressed all in white, not a sweeping full wedding gown like Tina's, but, unmistakably, something similar, something another bride might have picked for a wedding dress, possibly for a less formal city hall type marriage. Both girls carried bridal bouquets in their hands. Sherry looped her arm through her father's free arm, and both girls started moving down the aisle to the strains of the wedding processional. When the three got to where Tina and her father were supposed to stop, he turned first to Sherry, and kissed her cheek, whispering something to her that I couldn't hear. She turned from him and walked over to Tina, kissing her on her bridal veil before turning to me and walking up to give me a firm kiss on my lips. For the first time since that time with Danny and me, she spoke to me. "I love you, Jimmy." Right after that, she moved over and took her place at the head of the bride's maids, just slightly behind a beaming Kaitlyn. I figured out that Kaitlyn had to have been in on this too. From all the twittering going on out in the audience though, all this must have been a complete surprise to everyone else. People didn't seem to know how to take it. I wasn't sure myself. I remember being very happy to hear Sherry's voice, as this meant she was speaking to me again. Tina's father leaned down and whispered into Tina's ear for quite a long time, maybe for half a minute or longer. I could see tears running down his face as he spoke whatever words he felt he needed to say to her. At the end, Tina reached for his hands and pulled him in closer to her. The whole church heard her cry out. "I love you too, Daddy, and I'm sorry for what I did." From the way she'd yelled it, it was equally obvious to me that she too was crying beneath her veil. Hearing her, I couldn't quite manage to rein in my own emotions, as I too started to drip tears down from my eyes. I had always hoped, but never actually believed that Tina would manage to find it in herself to forgive her parents. I looked over to see who it was that was bawling so loudly behind Tina, and discovered it was her mother, overcome with her own emotions. The ceremony hadn't even really begun, and already fully half the guests gathered in the church were crying. Even Danny's eyes looked a little bit misty to me. All the people who really knew of Tina's history with her parents were crying. The minister had to prompt Mr. Axelbland by asking him who was giving the bride away? He made the customary answer. "My wife and I are." He paused for just a second or two before going on. "I have two daughters that I'm giving away today, trusting in their judgment that, for them, this is the right thing." He leaned in and kissed Tina's face before lowering her veil back down for me. That was my cue to step down and take my bride's hand from him and lead her up to the altar where the minister would start the marriage ceremony itself. He looked very agitated as the two of us turned to face him as Tina's dad went to take his place beside his wife. We hadn't rehearsed what had just occurred, and I wasn't sure that he'd be willing to proceed with so many new wrinkles having been added. "We are gathered here today to join Christina Templeton Axelbland with James Irwin Masters, into a state of holy matrimony." I tried to concentrate on all his words, but my mind was trying to remember the words to the vows I had planned on making. Eventually the time came for me to recite my vows: I, Jimmy, take you, Tina, as my lawfully wedded wife. To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, forsaking most others, til death should pull us apart. I promise to always love you, to make room in my heart for all those that you have in yours. To make a place in my life for us to dwell in great peace and harmony, and to always keep alive the hope we all now feel in each other." The minister looked like he'd swallowed something that didn't agree with him. He turned his face to Tina, signaling her that it was now her turn. I, Tina, take you, Jimmy, as my lawfully wedded husband. To have and to hold, in sickness and in health, from this day forward, for as long as we all shall live. I promise you both that I will always love you and never leave you, and to forsake all others." As she spoke the words, she, like me before her, had turned to include Sherry in her vision. When we were done with our vows, we both could tell that we would never again be invited to attend this church, not while this minister was the head pastor of the flock. Nonetheless, he did finally pronounce us man and wife. By name though, making it quite clear that, notwithstanding what we had vowed, he was presiding over the marriage of us two only. We didn't care. We three all knew what the real promise had been. I've been to many weddings, and to just as many wedding receptions. This was the only reception I'd ever been to that lasted all night, or that finally ended when the police showed up and nine people were arrested for racing on foot, nude, down a public street. Unfortunately, for my plan at least, Kaitlyn and Mona were unsuccessful in their quest to seduce Mr. Axelbland. Kaitlyn swore she got some mean tongue while kissing him, and that she had groped his crotch while they kissed, for a minute at least, during one of the times the two of them were dancing. Danny had much better luck with Tina's mom. Danny had spent a good part of the reception in her company. They were two of the nine nude runner's arrested early the next morning. I thought it was a show of real class when Tina's dad paid Danny's fine, along with his wife's. I was left wondering how her arrest would affect their marriage. The staid country club set living in that part of Southeastern Connecticut had seldom been exposed to people like those three from my family. One thing my family did know how to do was to liven up a boring party. Most of the guests, and all of the staff hired to serve those guests, ended up either very drunk, or else very high, on the half pound of really good pot that Danny had managed to score while we were getting his new tux fitted over in New Haven. I'm still not sure how Danny convinced those other three couples, and one of the bride's maids, to shuck off their clothes and race down to the end of the cul de sac with him and Tina's mom, but I know for a fact he did. I even have pictures of Danny holding up the arm of the race's winner. His other hand held one of her very nice breasts too. Out in front of my house, two days after the wedding, I still hadn't been able to pry too much in the way of lascivious detail out of Danny concerning his successful seduction of Mrs. Axelbland. He confirmed that they had both performed oral sex on each other, and that he'd taken her, doggy style, up in her bedroom, an hour or so before their ill fated race began. Just before he drove back out to the airport, for the first leg of their trip back home, he told me something I found pretty interesting. "If you really want to confirm everything I told you, then ask Sherry. She was standing just inside the door of that bedroom, watching her mom and I going at it." "Sherry was there?" "Just watching, bro. I invited to come in to join us, but she took off when I asked her to." I was glad to see my family leaving. I was more at peace with them than I ever remembered being. I understood that they had their lives, and that they needed to be lived their way. I had my own to live, and I couldn't worry so much about how they decided to live theirs. I could only control how I lived my own life. Money for them was something different though, and I'd continue helping them that way, whenever and however they ended up needing me to. I still loved them, but I now knew that we were drifted too far apart, This was primarily because of the vast difference in the path that we had each chosen for ourselves. I was totally at peace with those decisions now. Tina had been standing a little way away from us, having said all her goodbye's while we were all still in the house. After they drove off, she came over and drew me into a hug with her. "Sad, Baby?" "To see them go? Not really. They're my family, but that's really all we ever had in common anymore. You and Sherry, you're my new family, and, unlike Danny and Kaitlyn, or like with your parents, we have made the choice to be with each other. It's time that we all moved on with our lives." "Sherry has been avoiding your brother ever since that time you three got together. She still won't talk to me about it. Maybe now she will, since he's gone." "Sherry saw Danny with your mom, up in your parent's bedroom. Danny said he invited her to join them, but she ran off again." "I'm worried about what will happen if my father finds out about what Danny and my mother did." "Don't you think he might have already asked her? Your mom was arrested for running out in the street, naked, with him, and with three other couples, along with that other friend of yours. I forget her name. I think they'll manage to get past this, but not without having a long talk about what really happened. Kaitlyn told me that your father has a few things he probably wouldn't want your mother to find out too." "Candace Pleeker. She's also the girl who won their race." "I know. I'm the one that took her picture, just as she crossed the finish line. Danny nailed her too, you know? I also happen to know he got at least a blow job out of one of your other friends, Pattie." "Gail and he left the reception for at least an hour too, early, almost right at the beginning. Gail doesn't surprise me, but Candace does. She's only been married to Tom for four or five months." "Tom is the tall groom's man, the one with the real short haircut? I saw him going off with your little red haired friend, Agnes something or other?" "Agnes Terryman? Oh my God! Tom went with Agnes before he started going out with Candace. Are you sure it was Agnes?" "Shorter girl, maybe five one or so? Wore a blue dress, and is kind of small up on top? I'm pretty sure Agnes was the name you gave me for her." "Then no wonder Candace went with Danny. She was paying Tom back for cheating on her with Agnes." "Don't know, and I can't see why we should care what they do. Have I told you today that I'm a very happy man, Mrs. Masters?" Just then Sherry made an appearance. "Did they leave yet?" She walked right up to both of us. "All gone. I guess you're happy to see the last of them for awhile too?" I was happy to see her coming to us and talking again. "Of him, for sure. I like Katie and Mona. Your brother isn't a very nice man." "That isn't fair Sherry. I told him what you wanted. If you need to blame someone, then blame me for telling him to treat you that way." "I am blaming you for some of that, but that isn't what I was talking about. He is totally amoral. You wouldn't believe some of the things I saw him doing at the reception." "You mean besides fucking your mom?" Her head snapped right up when I said that. "He bragged to you about it? Did he tell you about all the others too?" "Tina and I were just discussing them. We know about Candace, Pattie, your mom, and Gail. Can you add any names to that list?" I stared back at her. I didn't want her building up any big grudges against Danny. Like he'd told me earlier, when we were speaking about what Sherry wanted, and about taking a run at Sherry's mom, he'd said then that he didn't rape anyone. These women had all been willing participants too, as far as I knew. "I knew about Gail, but not Candace. I saw him with Mrs. Knudsen too. He and Mr. Knudsen, did to her what you and he did to me that time." "Mr. and Mrs. Knudsen, I don't believe you Sherry. He's at least ten years older than daddy. I don't remember what his wife looks like, isn't she pretty old too? Tina was laughing again. "She's his new third wife, according to what mom told me. I think she was his secretary before they got married. She looks about thirty or so. That isn't all either. Remember that young girl with the metal braces? The girl that came with the Simpson's. I think she's their niece from Virginia. The one mom told us was only visiting them for part of the summer? How old do you think she is? I bet she can't be more than fourteen years old." "Wait a minute, Sherry. Do you know he fucked this girl, or did you just see the two of them talking together, and just assumed all the rest of it?" "He was the only one doing any talking when I saw them, her mouth was too full of his big cock for her to be doing any talking." "Is that all of it? Did you see him doing anything with anybody else? It sounds to me like you were keeping a pretty close eye on him throughout the entire reception." I started wondering if she hadn't been hoping to get a rematch with him. "She's my mother, and I didn't want him to hurt her!" "How did he hurt her? I'm pretty sure that everything that happened to her was with her full consent. The same is true for you. You might resent what we did, but you gave us both permission to do everything we did to you." "I know I did, but it wasn't the same with him as it was with you that time in Atlantic City. He wasn't pretending. I always knew you were. He really wanted to use me like he said he would. I felt so bad after, because I knew how he really felt about me. That whole thing made me hate myself for responding so strongly to what we were doing. You are different, Jimmy. Even when you said all those bad things to me, I knew they weren't true, just like I knew you really cared for me, underneath whatever you might have said, or what you'd been doing with me." "I treated you the same way he did, maybe worse." "No, you didn't. I could feel the difference, feel how careful you were being, making sure not to hurt me. Danny didn't care. He wanted me to feel some pain from what he was doing." "I'm a much different proposition than my brother is. For one thing. I've known you for a lot longer than he has. I also happen to love you, so those two things would make a big difference in how he and I would be treating you in that type of situation. If you hadn't asked me to set it up though, Danny wouldn't have had the chance to make you feel bad. Some of the blame for it is yours. I'm one hundred percent sure he was just playing a part with you. A part that I'd asked him to play. Maybe he played that part too well, but, if he did, I think it was because he wanted to make sure you had a chance to see there was a downside to trying to actually experience some of those fantasy's of yours." "I still think he is totally amoral, and that he doesn't care if he hurts women or not." "Was he hurting your mother when you saw them fucking? Danny told me you stood in the doorway and watched them. Did she give any indication at all that he was hurting her?" "No. She was pushing back at him and saying things I'd never heard her say before. That doesn't mean anything though. I was doing the same thing that time when we did it with him. How your body responds is different than how you'll feel about those same things after. With Danny, afterwards, he makes you hate yourself for having responded to him. I'm sure my mother regrets what she did with him now. I know I sure do." "Danny told me that a woman needs to do things like that, just to have the experience, and to get it out of her system. If we hadn't gone ahead with what you wanted, he said he believed you'd go out and find others to give it to you. We both wanted to protect you from something like that. We both knew we didn't want to hurt you." We went back into our home and sat around the living room, trying to decide what we wanted to do, now that we were finally married. I liked to look at the two of them. To me, they were like two pictures of the same scene. Only a very slight difference in the artist's interpretation accounted for their lack of total similarity. I wondered how I'd ever believed that a matched set like they were could ever be split up. Like those pictures of the before and after of my house, these two needed to be looked at together, in order to appreciate all the changes they've both made. I finally discovered the significance of that August third date, it was the day Tina had moved out of her parent's house at eighteen, determined to strike out on her own. Her intention, picking that particular date for our wedding, had been to add fuel to the fire of her feud with them. They had taken it as an entirely different thing. They thought of it as a message from Tina, signaling her willingness for a new beginning, the start of a new relationship that coincided with the date when they'd broken off their old one. Whatever the previous misunderstanding might have been, the significance of that date in everyone's eyes was forever changed by the birth of our son, James Templeton Masters, at three ten in the morning on August the third, our one year anniversary. Tina was happy to be the one who bore her parent's first grandchild, and a boy at that. Sherry didn't seem to mind at all that Tina was able to beat her to providing the first grandchild. Why should she mind? According to all the tests the doctors had done, Sherry was soon to deliver our first set of twins, both girls. Pregnancy had done quite a bit to settle Sherry's somewhat disturbed nature. Somehow, realizing that she was soon to be a mother, Sherry decided that she could no longer afford the luxury of acting as if all her fears were valid. Mothers shouldn't give in to those fears, she believed, so she started facing up to them again. With some help from her new therapist, all of us are confident that the worst is behind her, at least in terms of her continuing emotional health. Sherry also has another new friend, a young woman who is much like the way Sherry herself now is, oriented strongly towards loving other women, but triggered within, through most of her past sexual experiences, is her definite strongly submissive and masochistic nature. Glenda, Sherry's new friend, seems to spend most of her free time, including many sleep over night's, at our house. She too is an artist, and her shy personality absolutely blossoms whenever she finds herself in the company of both Sherry and Tina together. Tina came to me about four months ago, asking if I'd be upset with her if she started having a different type of relationship with Glenda? She made it clear, right from the start, that this new relationship would be extremely similar to what she has had with her sister, since back when the two of them were first reaching puberty. Of course, I quickly gave her my permission. With first Tina, and now Sherry too, temporarily out of commission, because of Sherry's size and Tina's six week enforced abstention from coitus, it has more than once been strongly suggested to me that Glenda would be amenable to helping me out with any horniness problems I might be experiencing. Both Tina and Sherry seem to think that I will just fall into their obvious trap, that I'll just go ahead and do what they want me to. I'm stalling though, until all four of us are back in the sort of physical shape that allows for complete physical intimacy. Unlike Tina and Sherry, I already know that it is really Tina's strong, dominant presence that makes the whole thing work whenever we're engaging in these sexual threesome's of ours. Sure, my having a genuine flesh and blood dick is an important part of it. This, along with my willingness to provide that strong hint of a physical threat to both of them is what enhances Tina's control over her submissive sister. We both are doing Tina's bidding, but it turns out to be so much more fulfilling for Sherry when she believes Tina and I are working together, both playing our separate roles, and providing her with the heated excitement that most submissive's crave. Of course, I'll play with Glenda, in the end. Why wouldn't I want to? By adding her to it this way, we'll be two incomplete couples, each one needing the other to balance out our lives. I'm already wondering what we'll do though, when all our children start getting older, and become more aware of what is going on all around them? ------- The End ------- Posted: 2009-09-03 Last Modified: 2009-09-12 / 11:27:21 am ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------