An Arrangement of Sorts Ch. 03

At the same time, he wondered about his feelings and just where the hell the line was that separated goodwill and the desire to help another person from what he felt for her in his chest. He already thought highly of her, but he was also being mindful that there must surely be a point where he could feel that he was exploiting her, and that wasn't something that he was prepared to allow in himself, so he was thinking that over now.

He found that the line was already more than a little convoluted.

He tried to look at it objectively and it came to him that Joss was allowing the attraction at what he guessed was a bit of a measured rate for her. He tried to see it from his own point of view and smirked.

He suddenly pictured himself in a cartoon from right out of the 1930s, the kind that they used to show at intermission long before he was born. He saw a caricature of himself in a little rounded-fender car being dragged to a big old heart-shaped house. Joss the shapely nymph was standing there on the porch holding a big-assed magnet with that sweet little southern smile on her face as he screeched his way to her with the brake pedal mashed down and the wheels locked up. He chuckled a little.

The little rounded-fender car was gaining speed and there wasn't a damn thing that he could do about it.

There had been a bit if a build-up in the weather and he'd felt the increase in the humidity. The air felt heavy and carried the pungent smells of rain and perhaps a little bit of ozone in the breeze that carried to his nostrils. He didn't mind. Moreth had always liked storms.

He was a little surprised at the opening overture. He'd seen the flickers far off and heard the low booming, but that was miles away. The symphony got underway near him with a searing snarl as a bolt snapped down maybe a quarter mile away and the bang of it shook the house. He heard a shriek from inside and stepped through the door.

"Joss? You ok?"

"No!" she called back, "Could you please come here? I'm scared!"

He set his empty Mason jar on the table as he noticed the flash through the curtains on his way through the kitchen. "Where are you?"

The last syllable was lost in the next crash of thunder, but he didn't miss the groan and the little scream. She was in the bedroom.

When he got there, it was all that he could do not to laugh out of respect for the way that she felt. He found Joss wearing the shirt that he'd given her, in his bed under the covers with Honey, and both of them were looking at him from the foot of the bed with eyes as big as saucers.

"Please, Chris, get into bed," she said with a quaver of fear, "Please?"

He walked over and sank to his knees in front of Joss. She threw her arms around his neck and hung on. He couldn't believe it. She was shaking.

He put his arms around her, "Ok, ok. It's alright, Joss. It's gonna be ok, alright? I've just got to go and turn out the lights in the rest of the house. I'll be right back here, I promise, ok?"

She swallowed hard, "Ok, but, ... hurry, please hurry."

He stood up and walked through, turning off lights here and there. He was back with them in less than a minute.

"What are you waiting for?" she asked with her voice wound so tight that she was beginning to sound like the character in that cartoon that he'd had in his mind.

He could have laughed, but it would have been cruel. He knew that fears like this, no matter how irrational and absurd they could be seen to be to someone unaffected by them, were very real and terrifying to someone under their spell. But he was stuck.

"I, ... I don't usually wear anything to bed. Give me a minute to look for --"

The house shook again and he heard her wail a little, "Never mind," she said, "here -- "

She pushed herself up and stood right up on her knees as she pulled his old T-shirt off as quickly as she could, "If that's all that's holding you back,- "

The shirt was off and they looked at each other. "There," she said, "please come here!"

It all happened in an instant, but Moreth had a recollection of some paintings of topless women that he'd seen by a Japanese artist long ago. During his travels in the Army, he'd seen the paintings and been mesmerized. In those paintings, done perhaps a century or maybe two earlier of Uminchu divers, he saw women who made their living diving for pearl oysters in Okinawa. They were still around, but now often wore wet suits where they had historically only worn loincloths in those cold waters. The way that a woman's body fat is distributed allowed only women to be successful at it.

To Moreth, the breasts of many of those women were rather more like swells on a more aquatic-looking theme, not like the sort of structure that he was used to seeing. He'd mentioned it to a colleague with an Asian background one night as they walked through a gallery on Okinawa. Chris had indicated what he'd meant and the man had nodded and told him that he knew what Moreth was talking about, since his wife was built exactly like that.

That had been the end of the discussion and they'd moved to other works of art, but Moreth had always found that one type of breast on a woman to be very erotic to him. He didn't know why, it just was. He'd just never seen it again.

Until now.

"Come on, Chris," she pleaded. The next blast caused her to whimper and duck into a heap for a moment, but when she looked up, Moreth was taking his clothes off.

She smiled nervously, "I know I'm being silly, I can't help it. I, ..."

He looked at her, wondering what might be wrong now, but she was just looking at him. "It's ok, Joss," he said, "I understand."

He stepped toward the switch for the light on the nightstand, but she asked him to leave it on, so he just got into bed. Joss tried to wrap herself around him and the next crash of thunder had him in the middle of two shaking females. Honey groaned, and he knew what the strange sound had been earlier. He held Joss and just told her that everything would be fine.

Her head was down as she pressed her face against his chest and for a few minutes. He just felt her breath against him as she began to calm down. She looked up into his gray eyes, "It already is, Chris," she said in that soft voice. "Damn, if I can't feel at least a little safe while I'm in the arms of a U.S. Marshal, well then there's no place that I can feel safe -- that's what I'm telling myself, anyway."

The room lit up and she ducked back down with a whimper for a second. He didn't want it to, but his body had figured out that there was a female against it. He tried to will his erection away, but the tactic had never really worked all that well before -- and it failed miserably this time.

"I'm sorry, Joss, " he whispered to her and the embarrassment combined with his reluctance to say anything - along with his decision to say it after all stole just enough of his concentration away to allow his penis to swell against her. Joss smiled as she reached for it and she pressed it underneath her as she moved her leg off him so that she held it captive between her thighs.

"It's alright, Chris," she sighed, "I've been missing this feeling too, even longer. I sure don't mind, but I don't care if this storm lasts all night, or only another fifteen minutes, I really want to sleep against you tonight."

She wrapped her arms around him again, a little tighter and she pulled herself so that her cheek was against his chest. When he looked down under the sheet, he could see the smile that she wore. It was a little out of focus, but he saw it all the same.

"Thank you for everything, Sir Moreth," she said softly. "I haven't had a day like this in my life. And if you don't mind too much lying in bed with the two of us ordinary swine, well then maybe I can have the little wish that I have in my mind sometime soon too."

Chris Moreth noticed several things at that point.

The storm seemed to be receding or moving away, since the thunder sounded more distant to him now. Honey was feeling a little uncomfortable under the covers with them, since she wore a fur coat and she'd begun to squirm a little because of it against his back. If it had just been the two of them here, just Honey and him, he'd have allowed her to lie on top of the covers once he'd figured out how afraid she was of the thunder.

But it was the other things that really preoccupied him at the moment. His erection still pressed against Joss and neither of them really minded it now. He knew how he felt about Joss and he was getting a pretty clear indication of her feelings toward him as well, and that was alright, he decided.

"What's your little wish?" he asked.

She looked up at him. "This isn't just about helping me, is it?" she asked, "You like me, don't you?"

He nodded, "Yeah. I do. A lot, Joss."

"More by the minute?" she asked.

She smiled that soft little smile when she saw him nod. "Because that's the way that I feel about you. This is just us, somehow. That's how I see it. I keep hearing my Momma's voice about something like this, but I just can't help how I feel, I guess."

"I'm afraid that somewhere in this, I'm taking advantage of you somehow," he said, "and I don't want to do that."

"I don't see it like that, Chris," she kissed his chest for a moment and then looked up at him again, "No. It's just, ... I don't know, I just know that there's no place that I'd rather be right now than where I am."

"You haven't told me your wish."

She looked up again and pulled herself a little closer to his face so that she could look at him for just a moment. Honey couldn't stand the warmth any longer and since the storm only rumbled a little now and far off, she chose this moment to wriggle herself out from under the covers and get off of the bed. She looked back at them once and then curled up on her fake yak skin with a groan.

"Fine, Honey," Joss giggled, "he's all mine then, just so you know."

Chris laughed a little and he watched the little grin spread across Joss' face.

"Well, I had a wish that since the mighty knight was in bed with us and all," she chuckled, "two scaredy-cat girls like us. I just kind of had the wish that you might choose me instead of her."

Her eyes brightened, "And I got my wish!"

He rolled his eyes, "I don't think there was really all that much of a contest, Joss. She's a dog."

"Another good thing about you is that you're pretty bright," she laughed, "because that would have been illegal." She leaned back and stretched for a moment and he looked at those breasts for an instant.

"Oh, I know," she said, "I know. Offering my body to you there in the diner was probably illegal too." She brought her face close to his again and tried her best to look serious as she waved her finger at him, "But if you'd picked her over me, well, I'd have been some pissed, just sayin'."

She smiled at him and sighed, "I've always been a jealous little thing, and there's one way that you can prevent me from having evil thoughts."

She sighed, "I'm afraid that you're gonna have to kiss me, Chris, that's all there is to it."

"How does one of those things relate to the other? I'm confused."

She laughed, "They're not related at all, I'm just dying for you to kiss me."

He tried, but ....

She told him that he was kissing her too hard.

So he tried again, and got the same response.

Joss shook her head, "Hold still a minute. Were you married to a horse or something? I'll show you how I like to be kissed, ok? Do you want to learn that?"

He nodded and she began her lesson. She pushed him onto his back and then she climbed up to look down at him. "I know that all of that pillage and plunder stuff doesn't leave a guy like you a whole lot of time to be romantic, but this here's the way if you want to make a forest nymph melt for you."

She closed her eyes and he watched her face as it came nearer. The soft kisses that she left were just like the rest of her, he realized, but that thought only lasted for a few moments as he felt her gentle desire for him in those kisses and he just began to respond in kind. They sighed to each other as they teased back and forth. Her tongue licked him and teased his own out of his mouth to dance in a way that he'd never known. When she pulled back to smile at him, he felt like a happy puddle.

"We have to talk about all of this, "she said very quietly. "I know that you want to pay me, and I'm pretty sure that if I do everything right, then you'll feel a little badly that you can't afford to give me more. I think that I heard something like that from you. But I want to do this for a whole lot of other reasons now, and just so you know, I'm leaving gratitude right out of it, though I feel a lot of that for you. The trouble is that I feel something else as well, and I want to explore that if it's ok with you, Chris.

I'll tell you what," she said, "You were married and from what I can see, it went very wrong for you somehow. Well I'm in that club too. But I know that I think the world of you already, so I'm making you a counter-offer. I'm going to do all of this, everything that you want, for nothing. All that I want is that you try to treat me as though I was your wife. I know that you don't understand that, but all that I want is to be the woman in a good man's life just one time in my life. What do you say?"

He shook his head. "That's not fair to you, Joss. No."

"You're not getting it," Joss said, "I didn't mean that it was all gratitude on my part. I want to be treated as your wife, Chris. I'll run your home for you, and I'll need some money to do that. You said a hundred a day as my pay. Since we'll both live here and I'm suggesting a joint effort at it, I'm saying a hundred a day to run it, and whatever I can do to shave some off the costs where I can, well, I'll hang onto that. If something goes wrong and we need it for something, we'd use it if we have to, but I'd like to try to save it that way.

I hope you can understand, but that way even fits the feeling of being your woman to me, and don't worry, that'll be all the incentive I need.

You'll still have to pay the utility bills and mortgage if there is one. Just let me manage the rest -- or I can do it if I tell you what I need to pay the bills and you provide it so I can pay them."

His eyebrows rose and he was a little blown away at how she was making sense, but he still thought that it was really unfair to her.

"Ok," she smiled, "I haven't told you all of the benefits yet. Just listen to me carefully." She looked into his eyes, "You'll have to pay for my birth control prescription, since I've only got about two weeks left." She looked at him for a moment.

"That's a hint Chris, a big old hint. I want to be your woman, and I don't mean like the 1940's either. I'll run this like a business, and I'll get what's left of the allowance and I'll get you. Now, I was raised to be independent, and I know that I've really screwed that up, but that's how I was raised, and it used to work for me, pretty much. But my Momma taught me about being a wife, too.

A woman, in a relationship that's settled down and stabilized knows that she can expect her man to please her in bed, and she's prepared to do that for him based on their love for each other. Well I never had much of the chance of it, but I want to be that for you if we can make this happen. So even if I'm not all over you -- even if we're both dog-tired some nights, I'll never mind it if you, ...

"Here," she said, I'll show you and we can try it out." She got off him and moved to her side facing away from him. "Come here and just lie against me."

He hesitated, not knowing what she had in mind. "Well, come on," she said, "we've been naked here for a while and we've got the equipment."

He did as she asked him to and then he was surprised when she reached back and pulled his manhood forward against her again between her legs. She began to move back a little and he groaned slightly. She turned her head to look back at him as much as she could. "See? You can do this to me any time that we're both tired. I know how it is for you. That piece of you doesn't care about anything else when it's up against me. All I'm saying is that I accept it from you. You just ask me, and I'll never say no unless I've got my period or I'm dead. Come on Chris, hold onto my hips a little and be smooth and slow."

He was a little surprised at how it felt, but he found that his hands were headed there anyway and they moved together for a while.

"You can kiss my shoulder and I'd love it if you could kiss my neck a little bit if you can reach and keep yourself in that spot at the same time. Do you think that you can come like this?"

To his surprise, he was fairly certain that he could. He was really enjoying this.

"It's not really a big surprise if you think that women and men were made to please each other, is it? I just noticed that you're not cut, that's all, so I knew that we could likely do this. You just probably never had a chance to figure this stuff out, married to a horse and all."

"Rhinoceros , "he said, "She had a temper."

She stopped for a moment. "Shit, you know, that even makes a little sense to me somehow." They began again.

She sighed with her own pleasure, "That's ok, Chris. I never had all that much of a chance to have this kind of loving with Bobby. He'd just work his way to asking me, I'd say alright, then he'd push me back and just nail me like I was a blow-up doll or something. He'd only last a minute and there I was, wondering how the train had left without me again."

Joss groaned softly, "You feel so good when you hold me, and I really like this with you. If you find yourself getting close, well you just tell me and then you can go harder so that you can finish. But I hope that you'll last a little while. I like it gentle, Chris. I can be two ways for you, but this doesn't really count. This is just something that you can have any time, the way that it feels to me here. Am I bothering you with my chatter yet?"

"No, Joss," he said, as he kissed the point where he neck met her shoulder. "What are the two ways?"

She looked back over her shoulder with a smile, "We treat each other like we're married, that's all. We can make love, and mostly when we do that, I'd like it if you make me feel very loved and wanted. I don't like being banged into the mattress then. Nobody's ever asked me, but when I make love, it has to be about the love, not the lust, but I know that it can be important, so I leave room for that with the other way. I do like it harder, but then, I want to be submissive. If you can handle that, I mean that I want to be a little bit of a slave to you, if you'll let me. Either you tell me that's what you want, or I'll show you that it's what I want."

"I'm not into that whole BDSM thing, Joss." he said, "I hear you, but I wouldn't want to hurt you or leave you hanging from the ceiling. I've never done anything like that."

"Neither have I," she said, "that's not what I mean. I just mean that I want to be, ... ok, maybe I need a different word, I think I'd like to be subservient to you when I want to be, but I want to be loved for it. I don't want to be abused, understand? So that's like getting two women - ok, more like one who's sexually schitzo, but I think it could work."

"How will I know?"

She smiled back at him again, "I'll show you the signs, Chris, don't worry. Here's a little thought that I just had. If you see me running around near that pond that you mentioned and if it's uh, private enough, I'll be just like my name. You can even call me that then. I think that I'd really like that," she sighed as she pushed back a little harder for a moment. "I might be wearing my work boots running around in the woods, but I think that'll be about all that I'll have on. That's when I'll want Moreth to be gentle with me.