Uncle Henry Ch. 01

Henry Milner leaned forward and grabbed the metal pole as the city bus approached his stop. He pulled himself to his feet from his seat behind the driver. The face of a weary middle-aged man stared back at him from Miguel's rearview mirror. He took another look as the air brakes squealed the bus to a halt. A few gray hairs, but most of the brown was still there. The jowls were pale and they sagged a bit, but that wasn't really age; that was just fatigue.

It was the eyes that made him look older than his fifty-two years. They were gray eyes, dull and listless, surrounded by the wrinkles of a working man, a man finishing yet another all-night shift driving a bus just like this one, a man whose grown son never called and whose daughter only surfaced on holidays, a man who had lost his wife of twenty-six years to cancer one year and two days ago.

Henry patted Miguel on the shoulder. "Have a good one," he said, pretending to care.

Still hunched over the steering wheel, Miguel pretended right back. "You too, my friend. See you tomorrow."

The doors accordioned out of his way and Henry blinked against the Ft. Lauderdale sunshine. He pushed through the crowd of old ladies and young kids at the Oakland Park Boulevard stop who were stupidly trying to board the bus before all the passengers had exited. The chipped green paint on the bench and cracked pebbled concrete of the sidewalk were a perfect match for his mood.

The summer air was loaded with heat and moisture. By the time he walked the three blocks to his white-painted bungalow house, he felt like he had spent hours in a sauna. He passed his old Ford sedan in the driveway. He didn't drive it often these days; just to the supermarket once a week and sometimes to visit his older sister Marcy, married to an accountant up in Boca Raton. He had celebrated the Fourth of July with them and their kids just last week, barely managing to escape from the woman they tried to set him up with at their backyard barbecue. Nothing wrong with her particularly, but Henry just wasn't in the mood.

He stripped off his uniform dark pant and white shirt and washed the day's sweat off him with a cold shower. He dressed in some jeans and a blue cotton work shirt and grabbed a beer from the refrigerator, then turned on the TV. He wasn't too fussy about what was on. Anything was better than the unfeeling silence of his empty house.

He sat in a worn armchair and sipped the beer. He didn't have much of a beer belly yet, but if he kept this up he would be down at Wal-Mart buying a new size of pants before long. His wife's green eyes stared at him from the pictures on the mantle. No flower had ever bloomed prettier than Darlene on their wedding day. She had been his companion through life, through the fishing trips, Disneyworld vacations, his parents' funerals, their children's graduations. Now those pictures on the mantle, neatly arranged and dusted once a week, were all that was left.

Henry closed his eyes and let his grip relax on the half-empty beer bottle. He was just dozing off when the doorbell rang.

Wiping a trickle of slobber off his mouth with the back of his hand, he got up from the chair and set the beer bottle down on an end table. He peered through the front door peephole and saw his niece Diane standing there, Marcy's daughter, chewing gum and fidgeting with impatience. He pulled the door open.

"Diane? What are you doing here?"

"Hi, Uncle Henry. Mind if we come in?" Diane brushed past him into the living room, followed by another young lady, a slim auburn-haired thing with big brown eyes and mild acne scars on one cheek. She wore yellow sundress with skinny straps over pale shoulders and a hemline that ended just above her knees. It took Henry a minute to recognize her.

"Mindy, right? From the barbecue?"

She looked down at the floor, her shy smile half-hidden under her long straight tresses. "Yes, sir."

"Come in, sit down," Henry said. "I wish I'd known you were coming. Anybody want a beer?"

"But we're only eighteen," Mindy said. Her voice was as shy as her smile.

"So? That's legal, ain't it?" It had been a long time since Henry had thought about such things.

"For some things," Mindy said softly, taking a seat on the couch and crossing her legs at the ankles. She folded her hands in her lap, where her index fingers twitched nervously. "But not for beer. In Florida, you have to be twenty-one."

"I'll get the beers," Diane said. She opened the refrigerator and pulled out three. "You should have one, Mindy."

"I guess as long as it's just in the house..." She took a bottle from Diane's outstretched hand and sipped uncertainly.

Diane handed a beer to Henry and took a seat next to her friend on the couch. She tipped the bottle to her lips and regarded her uncle through half-closed eyes. She was a bit stockier than her friend Mindy, not enough to call obese, but more than most men these days liked to see in a woman. She had the Milner nose, the same one Henry and his father had, with nostrils that spread out just a little too broadly for her face.

"Uncle Henry," Diane started.

"What can I do for you, Diane?" Henry grabbed the remote and lowered the volume on the TV so he could hear his niece speak. Mindy was blushing and staring at the floor again.

"It's about a guy," Diane said.

"You mean you got a new boyfriend? What happened to that one you were going out with? Rob, right?"

Diane shook her head. "I'm talking about Mindy. There's a guy Mindy likes."

"Oh."

Mindy clasped her hands around her knees without looking up. The backs of her fingers were white.

"Mindy doesn't think she has a chance with this guy. He's a college student at FAU. Florida Atlantic University. She knows him because he's the cousin of one of our friends from school."

Henry wondered why Mindy couldn't say any of this herself, but thought it would be rude to ask. The girl seemed painfully shy. Even at the barbecue last week she had mostly kept to herself, which was why it had taken him a moment to recognize her at the door.

"The guy told our friend Julie -- his cousin -- that he only goes out with experienced girls. Girls who know what they're doing. You know... in bed."

Henry grunted. "Are we talking about sex now? Shouldn't Mindy -- sorry dear, I don't mean to talk about you like you're not here -- but shouldn't you be having this conversation with your parents?" Henry had had the sex talk with his son, and it wasn't so bad. Turned out the boy already knew a lot more than Henry had given him credit for.

"I don't need a lecture on the birds and the bees," Mindy stammered. She took a deep breath. "I need to do it."

Henry's face went red. He took another sip of his beer to cover his embarrassment.

"She needs someone to help her through her first time," Diane said, looking straight at him. "You were married for almost thirty years, Uncle Henry. You have experience. You can treat her right. She wants you to be her first."

"What?" Henry suddenly found himself on his feet, looking down at the two girls. He didn't even remember getting up. "You want me to --"

"She said you were really nice to her at the Fourth of July party."

Henry remembered greeting her when she came in, but that was about it.

Mindy started to cry. She wrung her hands together and then put them over her face.

"No, wait, don't do that --" Henry looked to his niece for help.

Diane crossed her arms. Henry noticed a rose tattoo on her forearm for the first time. The thorns were dripping blood. "Are you just going to let her cry? She needs you."

Henry spread his hands in despair.

"You don't want to do it with me," Mindy moaned. "You think I'm ugly."

"No, it's not that." Henry sat down on the couch next to her. He was close enough to smell her perfume, some sort of flowery fragrance. "It's just that I barely know you. And you're so young."

"I'm not a baby!"

To me you practically are, Henry thought. "Look at me. Stop crying and look at me!"

Mindy turned her head in his direction.

"Take this." Henry handed her a tissue and waited for her to wipe her face. "Now, can't you find someone your own age to do this? I'm sure there's lots of boys who would want to be with you. You don't really want to make love to an old man like me."

"Oh, please. You're not that old, Uncle Henry."

"Let the girl speak for herself. Well? You must know someone else who could take care of you. Maybe one of the boys at your school?"

"I don't want to do it with a boy," Mindy said. "I want to be with a man. A man says 'make love', not 'have sex'. Like you just did."

Henry had been about to touch her shoulder, but now he drew his hand away.

"A man doesn't talk about 'friends with benefits', as if the whole thing doesn't matter. A man cares about the person he's with. Just like you did, when you were married."

She wasn't crying any more. She had finally found the courage to speak.

"It takes a man to turn a girl into a woman," Mindy said. "A boy can't do it."

She reached out and grabbed his thigh and stroked it clumsily. She had no idea what she was doing. Even so, the unexpected heat of her hand on his leg spread up to his groin and warmed his loins. He felt his cock stir inside his jeans, like it was coming out of hibernation, crazy with hunger, with the sure and certain knowledge that the feast of a lifetime lay ready for the taking. He placed a hand over hers. Her skin was soft and smooth.

She looked at him with her big brown eyes as if asking if she did it right. As if asking for permission to continue. Her eyelids fluttered with uncertainty.

Henry's breath choked in his throat. He slowly pulled her hand up to his crotch.

Diane stood up. "Thank you for helping my friend, Uncle Henry." She reached into her purse and tossed a handful of condoms onto the end table. "I'm glad for the both of you. I'll leave you two alone now. Mindy, you know the way to the bus stop, right?"

The girl nodded her head without taking her eyes off Henry's.

"I'll call you later." Diane closed the door softly behind her.

Mindy hooked a trembling thumb under one of her bright yellow shoulder straps to pull it down, but Henry stopped her. "If we're gonna do this, we're gonna do it right." He tucked the condoms into a pocket and stood up. "Come here." He bent down and lifted her off the couch. She wrapped her arms around his neck and buried her face in his chest.

She was a light little thing, warm and soft and no trouble at all to carry. He placed her on the double bed he had shared with Darlene for so many years and stepped back to look at her.

She lay on her back, looking up at him. A strand of hair had fallen across her face.

"You sure about this?"

She nodded without speaking.

He sat on the bed and placed a hand on her neck, sliding it up to stroke her earlobe. She sure was a cute little thing. He'd be lying if he said he wasn't going to enjoy this.

Her lips parted, and he met them with his own. Lightly at first, just to make sure he was welcome there. She didn't react. Just lay there like a lump on a log.

"You doing OK?"

"Don't stop," she whispered.

He kissed her again, and felt her back arch. Her lips tensed up, then pushed against his. They were moist but tentative. Her tongue wriggled its way into his mouth. One timid hand crept up his arm to grasp his shoulder. Her grip tightened, fingernails pinching him right through his shirt sleeve. He reached an arm around her back and pulled her to him. Her breasts pushed against him from under the sundress, soft and firm at the same time, twin temptations just beyond his grasp. He pulled back, ran a hand over them, then caught her eyes with his own and reached for the strap on her shoulder. He pulled down first one, then the other. The front of the dress followed.

Two round mounds of exquisite softness stared up at him. Nipples, brown and erect, stood rooted in rosy splashes on rich, full breasts. The tiniest of little bumps dotted the smooth spread of her areolas. Wider than he had expected, the delicate dark pink flowered out from her nipples, unfurling lightening pigmentation that faded at irregular edges.

She squirmed on the bed, her face red. "Don't you like what you see?"

His heart beat so fast he could barely whisper his response. "I like it very much." He pulled the dress down past the pale bikini outline to expose her flat stomach. He ran a hand along it, up toward her breast, which he cupped in his palm. The fit was perfect. Then he put his mouth to it, caressing its stiffness with his tongue, exploring every bump and smoothness of her marvelous areola with his lips.

She gasped and fumbled for the buttons on his shirt.

He helped her with that, stripping off the blue work shirt and tossing it aside. He wondered how he must look to her, with the bare beginnings of his beer belly and the graying hair around his temples. Before Darlene died, the two of them had kept themselves in shape by their frequent hiking and camping trips. He had let himself go since then. Driving a bus was a pretty sedentary job and the few blocks he walked to get back and forth from work didn't do much for him either. Maybe it was time to start getting back into shape.

She ran her hands down his chest and stomach and tugged at his pants. "Take them off," she said. "I want to see it."

Henry obliged her by unzipping his jeans and pulling them down. Good thing he was wearing a decent pair of underwear. He dropped the boxers and kicked them aside. The size and shape of his cock left no doubt about what kind of mood he was in.

She wrapped her fingers around his shaft. "Feels kind of rubbery." She moved in for a closer look. Her hot breath washed over his erect cock, teasing him in ways she probably didn't even know about. It took all the patience he had to sit still while she examined him, moving her fingers up and down his shaft and even peeking under his scrotum. The way he saw it, the intimate inspection was all part of the lesson he was supposed to be giving her. At one point she touched the head of his cock with her tongue, then withdrew it. Her blush went right down to her breasts. "I don't want to suck on it right now, if that's OK with you."

"No problem."

She wriggled out of her sundress, exposing light pink panties. Apparently she had dressed for the occasion. Two tempting vaginal lips enticed him through the near-transparency of her underwear. It was a thing of beauty, that young pussy. It was too bad she had shaved herself, but Henry was no complainer. His own tastes ran toward the welcome mat, but she might have heard something different about that boy she wanted to be with.

He tugged her panties down and off her, then kissed her clitoris. He brought his head up to look at her. She fidgeted uncomfortably on the bed before him, naked and exposed and vulnerable. Suddenly he was flattered that she had placed her trust in him. It was a great responsibility.

"I'm ready," she said, bracing the muscles in her stomach. "Do it to me."

Henry pulled one of the condoms out of its wrapping. She watched him intently as he slipped it on. "I had a vasectomy years ago, so you won't get pregnant. Don't have any diseases as far as I know. That overpriced doctor of mine tests my blood once a year."

Mindy propped herself up on one elbow. "Then we don't need that thing. Or do you think there's something wrong with me?"

It was good question. Henry didn't care much for condoms; that's why he had gotten a vasectomy in the first place. "That's not the point. That boy you want to be with better be using one of these. So think of this as part of your lesson. Because if he doesn't want to put one on, you tell him to go to hell. You're better than that."

She nodded and lay back down. "OK. I'm ready."

Her legs trembled when he touched them. Heat radiated from her skin. There is a special softness on the inside of a woman's thighs that is duplicated nowhere else in nature. It gave him pleasure to fondle it, to place his hips between those two welcoming friends, to probe her pussy with his cock and feel the moist readiness awaiting him. Her breathing sped up, breasts rising and falling, stomach curving and flattening. He penetrated her, slowly, alert to any sign of discomfort on her part, carefully filling her up, urged on not only by her wishes but by his own growing need.

"Keep your legs spread wide," he whispered in her ear. "It will make it easier for you, your first time."

"Uh huh," she breathed against his neck.

"You doing OK?"

"Hurts a little. But don't stop. It feels kind of -- just don't stop."

He was in. He had found his way into her warmth and now was the time to stroke it. He pulled out almost as slowly as he had entered, then thrust back in again. He waited a moment, heard no objections, and repeated the movement. Slowly, in and out, in and out. She gasped and started to rock with him. The bed creaked, but the sound was very far away. They moved together, oblivious of time and space and the whole wide universe around them.

Excitement coursed through him like a lightning bolt, a shock wave that raised sweat on his skin and sped down his spine and pulsed into the shaft of his penis. The jolt triggered his hips into action, into taking on a life of their own, a life of throbbing and swelling and thrusting and needing. He exploded into her, pouring himself into her, releasing all his pent-up need and desperation into her, giving her everything he had. It was a feat of heroic proportions, unmatched by any other in the history of mankind. He held himself above her, gasping, as the last of his fluid jetted into her in ever-diminishing bursts. He looked into her eyes.

She smiled up at him, her lower lip twitching. "You just came, right? That was nice. And it didn't hurt that bad."