Cafe Lawyer Ch. 02

Bending her slightly backward, I lowered my mouth to her breast, savoring first one breast and then the other. Her own fingers had moved down to my pants, feeling my erection behind my zipper and I could only utter a deep sound from my soul as she touched me.

I reclaimed her mouth. One kiss led to another, deeper, hotter, wilder. My hand skimmed down from the curve of her hip to the smoothness of her inner thighs and then, ever so slowly, it traveled upward to that ever so moist valley between her legs.

I could feel her inhale sharply at my touch. My fingers played there as my tongue played in her mouth; whimpering deep within her throat, she clung to me as she pushed against me, her hips brushing against my erection. I clutched her tighter and felt myself breaking out in a sweat.

She pulled her mouth away from mine to give a little cry out and then put my hand against her pussy, inviting me to enter.

Her mouth opened in a silent gasp as I deepened my touch, reaching farther inside.

"Love me, Jim," she said in a hoarse, almost pained plea as she gazed at me, her face flushed with anticipation.

I knew she was mine for the taking and I lifted her from the floor and laid her upon the bed. If she had refused me, I would have died. I needed her now, in the worst way, for myself and for us. I resolved to bring her to the brink of oblivion and then back off until she begged me to take her. I plunged again and again until my soul merged with hers.

..... .....

Mary slept the whole night through to my great relief.

The next morning, with the sun coming through the windows of her apartment, Cee-Cee slipped out of bed and started breakfast. I felt it was time to start taking the two of them to the café for dinner, breakfast, even.

Two eggs, some bacon and toast, a simple breakfast that had more heart than heartburn. I laughed at my own little joke but recognized the truth of it.

"Cee-Cee," I said, "I love you."

"I love you, too, honey, I love you, too."

I sat down and ate my breakfast while she went to get her daughter.

..... .....

The next few weeks were a whirlwind of romantic evenings, client meetings and animated conversations trying to convince her to move in with me.

..... .....

We were sitting in my back booth at the café, little Mary in a high chair chewing on a carrot stick, when Susan walked in, chased by one of the waitresses.

"I'm sorry, Jim," the girl said, "she snuck in past all of us."

"Don't worry about it," I replied. "What do you want, Susan? I thought I told you I didn't want to see you ever again." I was shocked at how she looked for she had completely changed.

Susan looked at the three of us eating what had been a quiet lunch. "Jimmy..." she started.

"I told you, you don't have the right to say that anymore." Ever since I discovered her affair, I had nothing but contempt for my ex-wife and had done my best to limit my exposure to her toxic presence. It had been more than a year since I had last seen her, a few weeks before I had executed her lover and his friends that night.

"Jimmy..."

I gave her an angry look but she kept speaking.

"I need help. I have no money except for ADC and a little welfare check. I'm living on handouts, Jimmy." She sat down and started to cry.

I wondered what had happened to the girl I had married five years earlier, a girl so bright with love and a future with me. Had I become so cold that her tears crashed against the cold stone of my once loving heart?

Cee-Cee looked at me and went to comfort Susan, putting her arm around the woman I had once loved with all my being and now felt... what? What did I feel?

I didn't know... just a profound emptiness.

Cee-Cee was holding her, the two of them slightly rocking back and forth, sharing a pain that only women can, mother to mother.

"Have you had something to eat?" Cee-Cee asked her, looking at me the whole time.

"No, not since yesterday." Susan wiped away a tear.

That I could believe. My ex-wife looked almost emaciated, showing the signs of malnutrition that I only thought possible in third-world countries. The woman I had once loved was thin, her clothes hanging like rags from a scarecrow.

I got up and went to get her some food, starting with some chicken soup and followed by roast beef and mashed potatoes. Between wiping her tears away and the sound of her knife and fork on the plate, there was nothing but silence.

Eventually, Cee-Cee rose and taking me by the arm, led me away from the table. "You HAVE to do SOMETHING, Jim. If not for her, if not for me, then for yourself. It's one thing to..." She stopped talking.

She was right, in an unfortunate way. It was one thing to say 'I don't want to have anything to do with you,' to say 'I hate you,' but to stand by while the person you once loved more than life itself die was something I wasn't prepared to accept as part of my life. I had already killed two people because of her and almost killed a third but this was different, no matter how much I wanted to hurt her for what she had done to me.

Besides, I had Cee-Cee to think about. Would she want to live with a man who was that cold? I didn't think so and so my reasons for helping Susan were more self-serving than altruistic. For whatever reason, though, I couldn't stand by and let things move on the way they were.

I didn't want to lose Cee-Cee. But, what to do besides feeding Susan? I didn't know. If I gave her a job at the café, then I'd have to see her every day and I wasn't sure that I wanted to do that.

"All right," I said, more to myself than either Cee-Cee or Susan. I called around to my friends, hoping to find her a job somewhere reasonably close but with the economy the way it was, there weren't any. Silently, I cursed the world for everything except Cee-Cee, little Mary and my aunt.

Several hours later, I finally decided to give her a job working in the café's coffee shop to limit my interaction with her. Maybe, if I had done this from the beginning, she would never have met him and destroyed our marriage. The world is full of 'what ifs'. What if Carol had stayed with me that day? What if Cee-Cee's husband had not gone out that morning? What if I had not decided to run that stupid 5K?

I gave her the dishwasher's job. She was in no condition to interact with customers and it would keep her away from me as much as possible. It was the best I could do, all things considered. I also arranged for her to eat as often as she needed. I didn't like it but realized there was really nothing I could do if I wanted to continue my relationship with Cee-Cee. Maybe someone else would have just told her to leave and lose Cee-Cee and what she brought to life but I didn't feel the trade-off was worth it.

..... .....

Several weeks had gone by and Susan was looking better. Not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but better. Her body had filled out some and now she just looked thin. I had made arrangements for her to take food back each evening to the apartment she had been sharing with a friend to take care of the baby. Once in a while, I even saw her give me a small smile when she forgot and saw me. While I didn't scowl, I just found myself unable to smile back and decided to stay out of the kitchen until she had left for the day.

"How long," Cee-Cee asked, "are you going to continue like this?"

"Like what?" I replied.

"Pretending she doesn't exist."

"I'm not..."

"Yes, you are."

"Look, I've done the best I can. I can't put her on the floor because that would mean taking money away from one of the other girls there. I can't have her in the back because I'm there and I can't have her work the register because I don't trust her enough."

Cee-Cee was quiet, having heard my objections to changing things from what they were.

"I..." she tried to say but then was quiet. "All right. I understand."

Thank God, I thought. For a while, I had nightmares of having both women living with me, each with a small child of her own, waking up in a cold sweat. Dreams are crazy things, foreshadowing what we want and what we fear.

..... .....

Cee-Cee, Mary and I had begun eating our daily meals at the café. Thanks to her husband's insurance and military benefits, she no longer had to work and began to help me with my law practice. It was good to be able to discuss things with her. You know... the little screwy things that pop up during lawsuits that only seem funny at the time.

..... .....

I had a simple personal injury case I was working on. The poor guy, also named Jim, had just picked up a brand new Chevy Malibu and was hit head-on by a woman looking toward the back seat to speak with her daughter. His car was totaled and he went to the hospital. His insurance was giving him the runaround, saying that the car had lost value because it had been driven off the lot. A letter from me changed all that, pointing out that it was the woman that hit him and a car with less than an hour on the clock and five miles would be considered new by any jury.

Two days later, he had a check for the entire amount of the car. I didn't even ask for anything except for a couple of bucks to cover the cost of mailing the letter. OK, so I was altruistic. Sue me.

..... .....

Cee-Cee moved toward the edge of the bed, feeling carefully along the floor with her bare feet. I wondered if her muscles ached with a delicious soreness as much as mine did. The memory of our lovemaking returned to me and I wondered why she was on the floor.

I lifted her off the floor and onto the bed. My mouth touched hers with persuasive insistence, tasting and probing until the kiss flowed. She kissed me back with a growing energy as my fingers worked the buttons of her nightgown, tugged at the cloth until I had stripped it completely off of her and then drew her to me with another kiss, deeper and slower.

The feel of her skin against mine was driving me insane as my hand slid smoothly down her leg to her calf and then back up against, coming to rest against her fine ass and then up the small of her back. I put my fingers into her silky hair and pulled her head back for another deep and probing kiss.

She gasped as my erection probed, entered and slowly pushed inside her. I waited just long enough before and then began to push and pull with renewed vigor.

"Oh, Jesus, don't you dare stop," she moaned in the dimness of the room. "You're driving me crazy."

I knew she could drive me crazy with moves of her own, moves that could drive all rational thought out of my mind.

"Who loves you?" I teased.

"No one," she answered, trying to squirm beneath me.

I gave her another smooth, hard thrust, my cock pushing in deeper, filling her. She couldn't stop her body from meeting my thrusts, and I braced myself on my knees and deepened the penetration. My rhythm quickened, my urgency grew until he thrust lifted her hips off the bed. In a groan of desperation, I lowered my body onto hers, my erection still throbbing inside her. I kissed her.

..... .....

Cee-Cee and I were sitting on the couch. Well, actually, I was sitting on the couch and she was laying, with her head near my lap, as we watched a football game on TV. I was lightly rubbing her forearm and felt my erection growing just inches from her face. Too say that I was embarrassed was an understatement and I tried to shift on the cushion a little so that I was more comfortable.

On the coffee table were the remains of a bar of Torrone, an Italian nougat candy that I had grown accustomed to during the Christmas holidays and an almost empty box of See's candy.

Christmas was the only time of year that people at least tried to be nice to one another. We had been lucky enough to give everyone at the café a two hundred dollar bonus. I had relented somewhat and slipped an extra hundred into Susan's envelope. I still kept my distance, not really wishing to see her and although she had shared pictures of her daughter with most everyone, I never bothered to look. I had no ill will toward an innocent child but I still refused to have anything to do with either Susan or her child.

I reached for the Torrone and picked up the last small broken piece. I gestured at Cee-Cee, asking her if she wanted it but she shook her head 'no' so I popped it into my mouth and let the lemon-flavored nougat roll around my mouth.

I watched her lying there, so happy and moved my head closer to hers. I felt we were in some secret place, a quiet, closed darkness that surrounded us away from the rest of the world. Nothing else existed but we two. I could see the laughter in her eyes as she looked back. It seemed like she wanted to say something but couldn't.

I felt the hot rush of desire as I caressed her mouth with my lips, bringing a feverish need to the pit of my stomach. She angled her head slightly. The palm of my hand molded to the curve of her face as my thumb slid down to her chin and somehow eased her mouth open.

My tongue filled her mouth and I heard a sigh, a moan, the sound of her heart beating. My fingertips traced her skin and then I used both hands to cradle her face, resting my body lightly against hers. I could feel her breasts pushing against me. My tongue surged again and she closed her eyes as she slid her hands up my arms to my shoulders and held me tightly.

"James..." she whispered as I covered her mouth again with mine. She leaned back slightly, tilting her head so she could watch me. Her eyes weren't laughing anymore, they glowed.

"Cee..." I whispered back and then brought my arms around her. When I flattened my hands on her back, one by her waist and the other just below the nape of her neck, she closed her eyes and parted her lips, offering herself to me.

I slid my tongue between her teeth and deep inside. I would love her so wonderfully that she'd forget everything else. I would make her come so many times that the only thing more powerful would be a California earthquake.

Her tongue stirred to life against mine, her fingertips brushed the sides of my neck and her body moved closer into my embrace. I skimmed one hand up and down her back, to the slope of her waist, out to the flare of her hip. My other hand went to her hair, weaving through her curls. Her mouth opened wider.

I groaned. I could feel her against me, her body nestling against mine. I slid my leg between hers and she moved one of her legs, rubbing her knee against my thigh and I groaned again and moved my hand to her butt, moving her against the muscles in my own leg. I heard her moan.

She was hot but I was hotter. I nudged her skirt up with my knee, feeling her heat through the denim of my jeans and came close to losing it right there. My hands clenched, my pulse pounded and I realized that with Cee-Cee I was as crazy in love with her as I could be.

There was a cry. Mary had awakened and was calling.

..... .....

As much as I loved Cee-Cee, I debated whether I should ask her to marry me or not. My track record wasn't too good in that department, having been 0 for 2 so far.

..... .....

Cee-Cee was going through the mail, tossing envelopes into the trash as she went. "Entertainment offer... twenty dollars... trash. Chase checks... lot of good they are, cost you big interest payments if you use them... trash. Walthers' model train catalog, that's yours, here," she said, tossing the thin catalog to me.

I took the catalog and thumbed through it, hoping to find something of interest. The promised Santa Fe El Capitan was late due to the slowdown in China's factory work and so everything became a waiting game. Oh, well, it had to come out sooner or later... or, maybe not. I was still waiting for the Southern Pacific Daylight from Broadway Limited and it had been four years already.

The Christmas tree was decorated with a mix of old handmade and some quaint souvenir decorations from my travels around the country and hidden behind one of the largest was a small blue box holding a two-carat diamond ring that I hoped to give to Cee-Cee.

Would I, I wondered, break the curse that had somehow befallen me with the first two women in my life?

That night, after Mary had been put to sleep in the guest room, we sat down on the couch and turned on the television to watch the millionth showing of "It's a Wonderful Life." As many times as I've seen it and as many times as I promised myself that I wouldn't watch it ever again, I always ended up seeing it.

I had set the coffee table with a variety of small cakes and candies from the café and See's and had just poured three mugs of hot chocolate when my aunt stretched out her arms and making a grand gesture of saying how tired she was and kissing Cee-Cee and me 'goodnight', went to her room and closed the door.

"Well," said Cee-Cee, laughing, "that was nice of her."

"Yes, I guess it was." I sat down and put my arm around her, pulling her closer. I leaned over to kiss her, my hand running through her large dark curls flowing down her back. My lips touched hers and as my tongue slipped into her mouth, I could feel my pulse start to race the same way it always had done every time we kissed.

"Cee..." I started to say, putting my hand behind her neck and leaning closer.

"Shhh..." she said, kissing me again. "Don't talk, just kiss."

Later, lying on the couch, my head on her lap, I looked up and smiled. I felt it was time. I got up from the couch and went over to the tree and crouched down, looking at the small box hanging from the tree branch. "Look at this," I said, pointing out the box to her.

"What?" she asked, coming over to my side.

"There seems to be something hanging here, something with your name on it." I pulled it forward toward her. "Look."

Cee-Cee took the small box from the branch and pulled it toward her. She began to form a hopeful smile, as if knowing what was inside. She looked at me with that little girl smile that women have when they know they have what they want.

"Yes," she said, not even waiting to open the box containing the perfect diamond.

Thank God, I thought.

That night, she took in a long, deep breath and after I put the ring on her finger, we checked on Mary and went to my room.

I put my hand over hers and tried to control the rush of heat that blazed through my body but there was no denying it. She instinctively reached a hand to my cheek. With her tenderness, I took a quick breath of my own. I looked down into her eyes and knew I had to kiss her; reaching out I drew her close and lowered my head, capturing her mouth with mine. In the space of a single heartbeat I drew her fully into it. It was impossible to move and I could feel the heat between us as we slipped deeper into the kiss.

I thought I had been prepared for this but as my mouth moved over hers, the sensations that ripped through me had me dragging her closer until her body was molding itself to mine. The ring made everything different, everything new.

I wanted to touch her everywhere, to lay claim to what I now considered truly mine and the simple movement of my hand along her back had me aching for more. The touch of her skin sent sparks dancing through me.

What a kiss. It took all my willpower to keep from ripping her clothes off right then and there. I held her closer, if that were possible and she cried out. Very gently, I took hold of her hands and lowered them before pressing my thumbs to her face, moving them in slow, sensual circles.

Her moans told me that she felt the sensation was one that she treasured and I could feel her heartbeat speed up as her entire body responded to my touch. I could feel the warmth of her breath on my face as I softly brushed my mouth over her face, her forehead, her nose. She closed her eyes and swayed toward me, offering her lips.

It seemed like an eternity before I lowered my mouth to hers again and when I did there was an explosion of color behind my closed eyes and I felt as if the whole room dipped and swayed from one side to the other and I held her to keep from falling to the floor. That ring and her acceptance had made all the difference in our relationship.