Charlie and Mindy Bk. 02 Ch. 06

This is the sixth chapter of seven in Book 2 of Charlie and Mindy, which is a story of forbidden love between a brother and a sister.

While this book stands on its own, it does make references to events that took place in Book 1. That book also contains some of Charlie and Mindy's family history that bears on the story. You may therefore want to read Book 1 before reading this book.

And please leave your comments. I usually try to respond, when possible, to comments within a few days.



—CarlusMagnus

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

Tuesday, September 29, 1987

I was still just hungover enough to be aware of it when I stepped up to Dr. Liddell's office door shortly after one o'clock that afternoon. It was open, and he was sitting at his desk reading something from a large book—which, in retrospect, I now know was a bound journal. He didn't see me, so I reached out and rapped gently on the open door. At the sound, he looked up.

"Uhh, Professor Liddell," I said, "you asked me to come by to talk about my examination."

He took off his reading glasses, and looked at me again.

"Ah, yes. Mr. Magness, isn't it? You're in my American history course this semester. Please come in and have a seat." He had a dry, reedy voice, which fairly crackled with precision; he habitually spoke as if his life depended on good diction and careful enunciation.

"Dr. Liddell," I began, "I've gone over my exam paper and what you wrote on it, and I don't think I deserve the grade you gave me."

A cloud formed on his brow.

"Mr. Magness, we all make mistakes, and if I have made one I will be glad to rectify it. But I went over your examination, in particular, with great care. I don't believe that I can award your work a single point more than those I've already awarded it."

"Sir, I don't think you understand. I don't think you should have given me an A for this work at all. Especially after reading what you wrote on it. You were very critical, and I think you were right about everything."

The cloud vanished. Was that a twinkle in his eye replacing it? Did the corners of his lips turn up a bit? I thought so, but I couldn't be sure. I'd never met a man who was so hard to read.

"That, I have to say, is a very unusual complaint," he replied. "I don't believe I can remember the last time a student came to me to ask me to lower a grade."

Given his reputation, I could well believe that! But I'd thought my work poor when I'd handed it in, and, after I'd read his comments and understood how really shabby it had been, I did believe that he'd given me a grade I didn't deserve. I'd talked to Mindy about it that morning. She thought I was crazy—even after she'd read his comments.

And she'd laughed herself almost into unconsciousness when she'd read his comment about the word "obsidian".

But she'd agreed that I had to do what I thought was right—even though she said, grinning nastily as she did, that she thought that I was being "obsidian" about it. I got the sick feeling that that particular malaprop was one I was going to regret for a long time—a very long time.

I started to say something to him, but he wasn't finished, and he held up his hand to stop me.

"You wrote a very nice examination paper," he continued. "Very nice, indeed. I did criticize your work severely, but I did so because I believe that you will profit from honest criticism. And that is one of the reasons why I asked you to come discuss your examination with me.

"I want you to understand something else, as well.

"I intentionally ask deep, difficult questions on examinations, because I believe that examinations should require students to think. Some of the questions I asked on this examination would not have been out of place on an examination set for a graduate-level course on American history. And if this course were a graduate-level course, your work would not have been acceptable. But it is a freshman-level course, and, in most respects, what you wrote in response to those questions far exceeds my expectations at this level.

"I was a bit disappointed by your work on the fourth question. You seemed to quit in the middle of a paragraph, just as you were getting to the important observations you needed to make. That question cost you most of the credit you lost. I surmise that it was the last question you worked on, and that, owing to the unnecessary writing you'd done on the second question, you had run out of time. Was that so?"

I was stunned. The campus ogre, after dumping shit all over what I had written, was now praising it. Weakly, I nodded my head in response to his question.

"Yes, sir. That's what happened," I mumbled.

He went on. "You appear to me to be a strong student who is capable of doing well, very well, in history. That you have understood my comments and decided in consequence that your work was undeserving strengthens my judgment of your ability. It is exactly the way a strong student should respond.

"Have you thought, yet, about what you will major in?"

"I've been thinking about majoring in math, sir," I replied.

"I'm sure you will do well in mathematics," he answered. "You have a logical turn of mind that is very evident in your writing, although you have not yet learned to marshal evidence in support of a thesis. But if you should decide against mathematics, I hope you will consider a major in history."

I gulped inwardly and said, "I will, sir. I've found your course very… rewarding." Never before in my life had I chosen a word more carefully.

And then I continued, "But may I ask you a general question about college work?"

"Of course," he replied.

"Well, sir, when I turned in my exam to you, I felt awful. I thought I'd really done a bad job. But earlier that same day, I'd turned in an econ exam that I'd felt really good about. And then, between the two classes, I remembered other exams, last year, that I'd felt good about when I shouldn't have. And that made me think I'd done really poorly on the econ exam in spite of how good I'd felt when I turned it in.

"And then I got A's on both the econ exam and your exam.

"How can I decide whether I've done well or not on an exam?"

That question did bring a smile to his face. It was a small, dry one, barely perceptible, but I really did see it. By his standards, it was probably a grin.

"Really, Mr. Magness," he began, "you are unusual. First, you ask me to lower a grade that I think you deserve, and then you ask me how you can, in effect, assign a grade to your own work. And your second request is almost as strikingly unusual as your first was! Moreover, I believe that if you think carefully about these two requests, you will come to the conclusion that they are related.

"But I am very much afraid that the answer to the latter question is that you cannot do so reliably. Or, somewhat better, that you cannot do so reliably at this point in your intellectual development. You have not yet gained the perspective that one needs to evaluate oneself.

"I believe that you have demonstrated that you are capable of true excellence, which requires, among other things, that you become your own worst critic. When you reach that point, you will be capable of judging your own work—but you will always judge it to be of inferior quality, just as you did with your work on this examination.

"That you thought your performance poor when you handed your paper in means that you perceived the depth of the questions I had asked, and that you knew that you could not achieve that depth in answering them. It is an impressive perception for an undergraduate—a sophomore, even—and the fact that you had it strengthens my estimate of your intelligence beyond my original estimate, based as it was upon just the examination itself.

"I think that you will eventually become your own worst critic. You are young, and you have yet to develop either the perspective or the discipline you will need. But you will do so in good time, because you have a mind that will not allow you to do otherwise. I must say that, on the evidence I have seen so far, you possess one of the finest, if yet undisciplined, minds I have encountered in many years of teaching at this and other institutions of higher learning.

"For now, you must strive to do the best work that you are capable of doing, and then you must leave it to people like me and the instructor in your course in economics to evaluate your work."

I thought then that that discourse included several compliments—especially the business about the "one of the finest, if yet undisciplined, minds". But twenty-four years later, I'm still not sure about some of the things he said. He seemed to have seen in me something that I don't yet see. Of course, if he was right, I may never be able to see it…

He finished, "I fear that I haven't given you an answer you want to hear, but it is the best I can do."

"You have given me a great deal to think about, sir," I said, rising from the chair.

"Giving you food for thought," he said, "is what I am here for."

"Thank you very much for your time." And with that, I left his office.

I meant both of the last two things I'd said to him. He had given me a lot to think about, and I was grateful for the time he had spent with me—not to mention the A I was still afraid I didn't deserve. And, although I thought him stiff, pompous, and condescending, I no longer thought him a cranky old son of a bitch. He wasn't cranky at all.

*************************

It was about two o'clock when I returned to the house to find Mindy waiting for me. When she heard me come through the front door, she ran to meet me at the head of the stairs—where she greeted me with a full-body hug and a deep, loving kiss. In spite of the thorough fucking she'd given me the evening before—less than 18 hours earlier—I felt familiar twinges in my cock; it was preparing to go to battle-stations.

When she decided she'd kissed me long enough and hard enough for the moment, she looked up at me and, still in my arms, still pressing her amazing little body against me, she smiled and asked, "Well, did he lower your grade?"

"Ummm…, well…" I paused.

"I take it that's a 'No'," she said, and her smile deepened.

"No, he wouldn't. He said I'd made 'a very unusual complaint,' and he explained why he'd done what he'd done. At great length.

"And then he told me he thought I should major in history."

She walked me through the conversation I'd had with Liddell. I was embarrassed by some of the things he'd said about me—especially the "finest mind" part. So I tried to downplay those things by under-reporting them. But she was still just as sharp as she'd always been at catching me when I equivocated, and she pinned me down.

"Tell me again what he said about you," she said, looking me in the eyes.

"He said he thinks I'm smart and a good student," I replied.

It wasn't quite a lie, but it wasn't the complete truth, for sure. She looked at me; her deep blue eyes seemed to bore right into me. And she saw right through the false front I'd put on things—as she always did.

"Tell me exactly what he said, Charlie."

She paused. Her deep blue eyes continued to peel off the sham I'd tried to erect. And then she spoke the words from the childhood we'd shared, the words that nailed my dissembling hide to the wall.

"I invoke The Code."

She had me. I was obligated, then, to tell my little sister the truth—the whole truth. Her appeal to The Code reminded me, as she surely had intended it to, that there could be no lying—not even understatement intended to deceive—between us. So I did what I was obligated to do. And when I got to the "finest mind" part, her eyes widened and her jaw dropped. She recovered and squeezed me to herself, putting her head on my chest.

"I knew it! I knew it!" she squealed gleefully. "You're so smart! I've said it over and over and over again, and now Liddell says I'm right! My big brother's a genius!"

She meant it literally, and I blushed furiously. I mumbled and I murmured. I backed and I filled. I hemmed and I hawed. I muttered something about how wrong he must be. But she would have none of it. Fortunately for my composure (or unfortunately—depending on which part of my composure we're talking about), the touch and the close proximity of her firm little body were having their effect—and not only on me, but on her as well.

The light fragrance of her hair and the gentle perfume of her skin filled my nostrils. My cock—which has never given a damn whether I'm a genius or not—had gone to a state of full alert, and she felt it against her belly. It distracted her enough that she rubbed herself against it. Then she reached up and pulled me down into another kiss.

As we kissed, I ran my hands over her body, reveling again in my little sister's soft, curved femininity. When I got to her tits, I cupped them and squeezed them gently. Through the cloth of her shirt, I felt her nipples harden against my palms; and she moaned into my mouth. As I continued to knead her boobs, she broke the kiss and looked up at me; her eyes commanded my attention again, and I lost myself in those crystal pools yet another time.

"Ooohhh! I like it when you touch my boobs like that," she whispered to me, breaking the spell her eyes had cast. "It turns me on."

"I like touching them, too," I replied. "They turn me on. Your little body turns me on."

Gentle lightning flashed from her eyes. "I am not little!" she said. "And don't you forget it."

And then her countenance softened again as she reached up for another kiss. When it ended, she brought her arms from around me, took my right hand into her left hand, and pulled me into my room and around to the right of the bed—which stood with its head against the far wall. She didn't have to pull very hard.

When we reached the side of the bed, she stopped and turned back toward me. Her little hands reached up around my neck, and she pulled me into yet another kiss. My arms went around her as we kissed, pulling her to me. We stood there, our tongues intertwining, our bodies communicating their mutual need for each other, even as they drove that need higher and higher.

At length, our lips parted. She looked up at me, I down at her, and we read the desire in each other's faces.

"God, I'm so in love with you, Charlie!" she whispered softly.

I bent over and whispered, "And I'm so in love with you," into her left ear and then nibbled on her earlobe with my lips.

I felt her shiver in my arms from that touch; her arms clutched me more tightly to her.

She uttered a deep guttural growl, and breathed out, "That feels good, too."

I nibbled a little harder, bringing my teeth into play very gently. She shivered again, as, still nibbling, I backed away a bit and reached for the buttons of her shirt. She brought her own hands from my neck down to my shirt buttons. Soon, we had both wiggled out of our shirts. I held her against me again, thrilling to the touch of her firm little tits, and their hardened nipples, against me.

I bent over, keeping my right arm around her, under her own left arm. I swung my left arm behind her knees and lifted her into my arms. Her arms now around my neck, she pulled our lips together for another kiss. Still kissing her, I set her down gently on her back on the bed, and I reached for her belt buckle. I undid her belt and the front of the Levis she was wearing, and then I had to break our kiss to remove her shoes. I felt her hands playing over my back as I leaned leftward toward her feet.

When I'd gotten her shoes off, I stood up, grabbed the bottom ends of her pant-legs, and pulled upward, raising the lower half of her body off of the bed. Slowly at first, and then faster and more easily, she slid out of her jeans and back down onto the bed, leaving the empty pants in my hands. She smiled expectantly at me. She was now wearing only her short white socks and her panties. She had on another pair of those little, pink, cotton, bikini panties, and they were identical to the pair she hadn't worn the day before—the pair, that is, that she'd worn just long enough to imbue with her odor and then taken off so that I could carry them around with me for most of the day.

Those little panties clung tightly to her; it was almost as if they'd been painted on her body. They accentuated her shapes—her rounded ass cheeks, the swell of her hips, the prominence of her mound, the nook sheltered between her thighs, the shapes of her outer lips and the cleft between them. They outlined her slit so clearly that it excited me even more then than when she was naked.

Deep in her crotch, I saw a patch of darker pink where her panties were wet from the moisture that now flowed from her—and I knew that moisture for what it was, the moisture of her desire. The sight inflamed me. If I hadn't already had one, seeing her clothed only in those panties—dark with her liquid, raising the memories of yesterday's pacifier—would've given me an instant boner. As it was, my rod throbbed and pulsated at the sight.

Before I could reach to remove those panties, however, she wriggled up onto her knees and reached for my own belt buckle. Anticipating what she had in mind, I kicked off my shoes. She undid the buckle, opened the front of my jeans, and pulled them down along with my shorts—freeing my cock from its confinement.

As I wiggled my feet free of both pairs of pants, she took my boner into her right hand and stroked gently a few times before guiding it into her mouth. She wrapped her left arm around my hips, placed her hand on my ass, and pulled my cock all the way in. Her tongue swirled around me as she enveloped me. The heat, the moisture, the feel of her tongue and her silken mouth paralyzed me, and I groaned with delight.

But, kneeling on the bed as she was, she'd had to crane her neck, and she couldn't hold that position for long. So when she couldn't hold her breath any longer, she backed away and stretched herself out on her left side near the middle of the bed. As she moved, she took my left hand into hers and, smiling up at me, pulled me onto the bed with her. She didn't have to pull very hard this time, either.

I laid myself down on my right side next to her. I took her into my arms, and we embraced again, front-to-front, body-to-body. I kissed her, deeply, hungrily, as my cock rubbed against her furrow through her panties. She moaned into my mouth again as she returned my kiss. She had her left arm under my head; and I felt her left hand on the back of my head, encouraging me to keep my lips to hers. Her right arm clasped around me under my left armpit, and she scratched me lightly up and down my spine with her right hand.

At last, she released my head, her fingers twining into my hair and gently pulling back. We broke the kiss and lay there a while in each other's arms, each of us looking deeply into the other's eyes. What, I remember thinking, can I have done to deserve such love? Our hands were still for the moment, but our hips rocked gently in counter motion. With my whole body I caressed her, and I received her body's caress in turn.

The soft curves of my little sister's flesh molded themselves against me, and my own turgid flesh stiffened even more. I inhaled again the sweet fragrances of her hair and her skin. Those aromas were different from each other, and they were much different from—and far lighter than—her snatch's perfume. And yet, somehow, her lighter scents both bore hints of the heavier scent that so enthralled me.