A Reckless and Loving Arrangement

'You make your own luck' some people would have you believe, and Gemma Clarke had certainly thought so when she fell in love with Jake Maguire. She had first moved in with him, only for marriage to soon follow. They had scrimped and saved for the first two, or so, years of their marriage, and had done enough to get the money together to buy their own place and to begin the process of making a home for not just the two of them.

Gemma had always made it clear that she wanted children and Jake had bought into the idea, if somewhat reluctantly. He wanted to live it all out with his 'Gem' and not feel closed in by the duties of parenthood; to be reliant upon one salary for a while even if the laws on that had changed since his parents' time.

Jake was only too happy with his lot and life with Gem, but for her the passing of the years and having no children was beginning to take its emotional toll on her, though success at work and the money earned took her mind off her situation...most of the time.

They had their friends; they had a busy social life; they would go clubbing and relax, get back home and give free rein to their love and lust for each other, but the magic moment of telling Jake that she had conceived eluded her.

Gemma reached the point of considering it her personal odyssey, a journey with its setbacks but with a final destination that would see her cradling their child in her arms and making her bond to Jake Maguire all the stronger.

She had not reckoned on having Stan Maguire, an often unreadable and bluff father-in-law, as an ally in her quest; just as she had grown accustomed to his wife, Betty's, almost apathetic behaviour and attitude to what was becoming her daughter-in-law's obsession.

Nothing could really prepare her for another crushing disappointment following the 'conventional help' those she had turned to sought to offer.

It seemed that the answer was often to be seen dealing with everyday chores about the house that both she and Jake had neither the skills, or the time, to deal with and that Stan was only too willing to take on.

Just how far could that 'help' now take her?

Gemma thought that she had misheard what he had said and that she had gotten it all wrong, but her husband, Jake, was only too serious in what he was asking of her...or, at least, suggesting what she should consider, as a way out of the spiral of despondency that she often fell into.

'In your warped dreams!' she yelled at him, throwing the wooden spatula down onto the countertop. 'Supper can wait! I can't believe what you've just said!'

The kitchen of their mid-terrace house was having a makeover, along with other rooms, and there was still a lot of work outstanding. They had agreed to keep on living there and put up with the mess and disruption in their lives, somehow.

'No, they're your dreams...us having kids,' he retorted, unfazed by her angry response to his suggestion. 'You never let up! It was just another idea!'

'A warped one!' Gemma glared at him, both in anger and despair. 'One would be enough! I've had to go through hell, and for what?'

'We both have, babe,' Jake continued and using a favoured way of addressing her when Gemma was wound up, which she sure was now. 'What I'm suggesting is just another way. That Stan, my Dad, has been wondering on it too came as a one hell of a surprise.'

'I bet it did! How could you suggest such a thing....that he becomes a donor?' Gemma stared at him angrily. It vied with her continuing dismay with what she was hearing and what it would mean. 'It would be dirty and so mean...wreck your mother, if she ever got to know! Me agreeing to him being a donor? It's just crazy...'

'Stan and I were just talking...kicking ideas around,' he went on, lightly, 'and besides, Mum would never know...'

'But I bloody well would! It would be embarrassing enough thinking of Stan jerking off in the bathroom and me then squirting his cum into my body with the kit the clinic gave me! It hasn't come to that...'

'Or not yet...'

'We'll keep on trying!' Gemma flared, her mind in a whirl. She flicked at her luxuriant hair that now hung to her shoulders, a rebellious fringe pushed away as she spoke. 'I need a drink after what you've just told me...'

Jake detained her. 'This way we keep it in the family...if it went that far.'

'Oh sure! Or maybe I go a step further...I play the whore...seduce your father and we fuck...see if that works. Is that it...the plan you've talked to Stan about? You're effing crazy to think I'll go through with any of it if you have talked about that! Well, have you?'

'No, it hasn't gone nearly so far!' he snapped in response to Gemma's challenging stare. 'You drive me crazy with what you want! It's taking over our life! I want an end to all the mood swings...it's been two or more years of it now!'

'It's taking over my life...mine more than yours...I know that only too well,' she answered in a less confrontational tone and looking at him.

Gemma stared down at her feet, her mind in a whirl. She felt her lips trembling and she looked about their small kitchen as if to find an answer to how she'd get through. It always came back to this, yelling out the angry words and dealing with her obsession, but she'd not thought that Jake would ever go this far...nor Stan. How was she to look Stan in the eyes if she went along with Jake's crazy idea, how was she to look at a child and know, perhaps, that Jake was not the father? Her life with both of them would be turned over and might not settle down to how she wanted it to be.

There had to be limits, that she would set, surely?

Their home was taking shape, thanks to Stan's help, and they both earned good money; she in a supermarket as a supervisor and stock taker; Jake as a delivery driver to those customers who shopped online at the store and who lived in the delivery area in this part of Coventry. They had decided to have kids and Jake seemed to have it all, only he fired blanks or misfired more times than not, he'd say. But Stan Maguire, on the other hand, had fathered three other kids and she knew that she ovulated, regular as clock work. There really was no doubting that Stan had fired all the rounds to make things happen for Betty, his still attractive and only too possessive wife, her love for her man only too clear. He really didn't need anything or anyone 'on the side' from what Stan would find with her; but was that where this was all going, or what she would have to resort to?

Just where was the woman to fit in with what her man was prepared, so Jake had told her, to do for them, but most of all for her? Jake had even confessed that Stan had joked about it when the idea of AI had first been talked of and then pursued without any success. Jake had gone on to repeat something of what Stan had told him.

'It, and whatever else, might work on your woman too...with me as the donor.'

'I'm getting that drink,' she sighed, on a disbelieving shake of the head as the words were recalled. She pulled open the fridge door. There was still some Prosecco left in the bottle for the two of them, although it was really her drink of preference.

In Stan's words lay the temptation for her to think on it some more, wild and destructive as it was to imagine Stan taking her in bed, him finding her and their purposeful trysts, for it couldn't be called an affair, was kept a secret. It was only too mechanical to think of it in those ways. the stud was servicing the mare and it would be done in her home when she had days off, or her shift patterns made it possible, and Stan was in the house attending to some building and finishing-off work for them.

Just how and where was she ever to find the words to ask or suggest that he helped her out?

And yet, Stan was always around to help, now that he was all but retired, 'way too early' Betty had confessed.. He now worked as a paid handyman, often cash-in-hand, who got his work from cards put up on noticeboards in shops about the place where they lived, or he relied on word of mouth from those he'd previously done work for. He stood nigh on six foot tall, was broad shouldered and thick necked, ruggedly lean and muscular. His once black hair was greying and his stern face lined, the grey in his stubble beard stark against his lightly tanned skin. Stan wasn't a man to argue with, and her Jake had more of his mother's looks, but the same dark hair as Stan; he did not have his father's build but was as tall. Jake had Stan's captivating smile and winning laugh, his eyes a shade darker than Stan's grey blue. In some ways there was little to choose between them, so who would ever know?

Just where was she to go with this, what had been suggested, whether in jest or in all seriousness?

Gemma turned Jake's way and met his consoling look upon her. He would know that what he had asked, that she think of, had affected her deeply. It had tipped what she thought to be her ordered world upside down and involved another man; someone she knew.

'It's gone crazy, I know, Gem'...but it matters so much to you that I'll go along with whatever you decide...and...and if it doesn't work for us, first. We really have tried....'

'I know...I know,' she sighed on pressing a hand to his chest as Jake sought to kiss her. How difficult did it have to be to have her dream become true?

And now, without any warning, another option had been presented to her, selfish and destructive as it would be to even consider it, let alone go through with being impregnated by Stan, her only too virile father-in-law who was often to be seen looking at her in ways that had perplexed her for their directness. Unprompted, Jake had given her the explanation for them and provoked the riot of emotions and contradictory thoughts in her mind. He had opened her eyes to other possibilities.

'Your father's a good man...and I didn't know that he cared so much.'

'It's just an idea...we try to make it happen in our ways...and that you're so good at, Gem.' Jake had taken the glass from her hand and now held her tightly, whispered coaxing words against her lips, slicked his tongue over them before he kissed her. 'You sure are the woman I want...even when you're angry with me.'

She wasn't angry. She gripped Jake's hips to keep him to her, felt his state of arousal and smiled up at him. 'I'm...I'm just shocked you could have talked of these things with Stan...even if he is family.'

Jake simply nodded, pressed his lips to the warm skin of her throat and breathed in his woman's scented warmth, as he held her to him, his purpose unmistakable. He tugged on her hands and coaxed her to go upstairs, to the clutter that was their bedroom.

'Let's just see where it goes between us first, darlin' Gem...okay?'

With her mind in a whirl she was all but oblivious to his undressing of her, or that she soon settled on him, that she was coaxed through his caresses and minimal foreplay to settle on his prick and soon bucked her hips and began to ride him. She'd push from her mind that someone else might learn of her, discover techniques of riding cock and her control of pussy muscles that brought Jake on.

Until a few minutes ago she'd never thought that her ways of loving might involve someone else who was in her life. Thinking of that only made her gyrate her hips harder and faster.

She'd milk Jake, for she loved him and knew the strain that she put him under with what were unreasonable hopes to all but her...and Stan.

Perhaps he was the man to find her and then life could move on.

'I'm not late am I?' she asked, looking at her watch, the gentle breeze tugging at her hair, and that she brushed away gracefully.

'No...you're not late, I'm early,' Stan smiled, his eyes darting to take in Gemma's charmingly youthful appearance, and that her work uniform of navy-blue trousers and a thigh length jacket, along with a white blouse, took nothing away from. Her blonde hair was not a rebellious tangle, flopping over one side of her face, but neatly tied back. He knew what he preferred to see.

'Good. I've had hectic few days recently. I was worried I'd have to call off today...'

'I'm glad you didn't...there's so much to catch up on.' Stan watched as Gemma sought her house keys. 'No, I was early and had time to think of what we spoke of the other day.'

'My obsession...and the answer to it, perhaps?' she smiled wanly, finding her keys and taking a step up to the unremarkable front door. She felt uncommonly nervous from being in his company, now, and what they would speak of and what it might lead to.

'We all have them some would say...obsessions, or our offbeat ways, that make us who we are.'

'True...very true,' she smiled, glancing his way for an instant and wondering where that revelation had arisen in him.

Gemma led the way inside the house, tidier than it had been for some time. Stan had seen to that as the building work that he had set out to do no longer produced the debris that it once did.

'Betty sends her love...'

Stan was dutifully attentive to his wife, Betty, in what seemed a long, unshakeable and happy marriage, but recent times had taken them in a completely new direction as she and Jake failed to make her dream of motherhood a reality, the setbacks taking their toll on all of them.

'Come in...come in,' she urged, watching how he put a bag down against the newel post at the foot of the stairs. She took it to contain some overalls to cover his white shirt and faded jeans. Stan's down at heel deck shoes took nothing away from his raw, attractive looks; the soft tan on his face making his neatly clipped beard, little more than a stubble, stark against his skin, and as one with his fashionably cut greying hair.

'Are you joining me for lunch?' she asked, lightly, on seeing Stan stand in the doorway and glancing her way, a frown showing that something preoccupied him. It deepened the soft lines on his forehead and his manner an indication that he wanted to talk with her. 'I can make it as simple as you want...'

'No, lunch can keep...thanks anyway. I'd better get on...I guess.'

'What is it?' she asked, noting his sudden and changed mood. Gemma pulled open the fridge door and took a carton of orange juice from a shelf within. 'Have a drink with me at least?'

'Go on,' he smiled, and came to stand by her side.

Gemma felt small standing beside him, saw the strength in his large hands as he leant on the worktop for a moment and looked her way, turned so that he could do so directly.

'I'm not going to harp on, about what's at work in me...where we have gotten to...you and I...what we have talked about.'

'It's a way out for you...'

'And you're the one to help me, are you?'

Stan heard the continuing dismay in Gemma's voice at what he had suggested should happen, that she consider him being a sperm donor. 'Perhaps I am. The longer the waiting goes on the more wound up you get and the chances...the odds...lengthen.'

She faltered in giving her reply, looked at Stan and pouted as if to acknowledge what he had said. 'We've tried...Jake and I have tried...I can't put him through much more...or Betty, with my moods.'

Stan reached out to caress her cheek as he met Gemma's doubting look his way. 'So, are we in this together, now?'

Gemma met his look upon her. 'What's not happened has brought us here...or me more than you. I've been playing catch-up...have had to think what to make of it all, what you suggested we do...how it affects us.'

He heard the hesitancy in her voice as he met Gemma's doubting look. He'd be breaking every rule, but the young woman's troubles had taken a hold in him too and aroused wayward imaginings of how to really help her. Infatuation didn't come close to how he felt. He lusted after her now.

'I'm here...Gem'.'

'Yeah, I know,' she smiled weakly and in answer to those few simple words being expressed.

An evidently vigorous man, rugged and not handsome, was in the house with her and they would not be disturbed. She had seen that look of his eyes upon her in recent days and remembered, only too vividly, Jake's confession that he had spoken of their problems with Stan, and the crazy answer to it, so utterly crazy, as it still seemed to her. But what were the other options when remaining childless was not one of them? The man had offered...or at the very least suggested in his bizarre ways, to be of help and Jake was complicit in it. He would procure a donor, but she had sensed that Stan becoming her lover would be a certain, and attentive, way to make her dream become a reality. You couldn't make it up! She would have help and would not have to endure endless tests and delays in making real her dream, her prevailing life's purpose with Jake, as she presently thought of it.

A man she cared for...Stan...her gruff father-in-law...he would become her unlikely but chosen lover if she chose that course of action. She would be tamped by a man whom she would often find gazing at her with a wondering look of his eyes and that she had no answer for. She felt drawn into a maelstrom of conflicting emotions and her thoughts often drifting to the man before her and that his presence again aroused.

Yes, undoubted affection and help were close at hand and there would be love in the physical act between them. It would not be a coldly purposeful and ordered arrangement favoured by a clinic. She would be at home and in the arms of a man that she knew; a strong, broad-shouldered man that she was undoubtedly fond of, and, furthermore, she would know of a man who continued to confound her. He was a man who would leave the choice up to her and who would understand...whatever her choice might be.

But she also sensed from those appraising looks cast her way that Stan wanted to take her to bed and that disturbed her most of all. She had begun to sense that with every day that passed, and whenever she was with him. Despite her denials to Jake that she wouldn't go there, her resolve to deny that he might be the one to make her hopes fly free, were slowly ebbing away. The idea of Stan finding her had become a wayward obsession that she could not clear her mind of.

'I'm here...for you,' he murmured as the moments of silence, that had fallen between them, lengthened.

'And I don't know where I am with this and with you...I really don't, Stan,' she replied, meeting his gaze and feeling dismayed to see the undoubted longing for her in his eyes.

Stan was purposeful and she shivered on feeling the lightest of touches to the front of her blouse, his breaths warm on her lips as their eyes held the other's stare. They prolonged the moment when a decision would be reached, and they would concede.

'I...I want to take you to bed...you, Gemma. The rest...helping you with your dream may follow. So...think of nothing else...but loving...and doing that with me.'

She gazed back at him, startled to finally hear him put into words what she had only sensed from his ways with her whenever they had a moment alone and conflicting emotions long with what Jake had suggested might be a destructive way out, took a hold in her once more.

'You make it sound so simple!' she cried out on hearing him give voice to his lust for her, his touches arousing a rush of longing in her belly, the beat of her heart quickening as she met a moment's kiss, the slick of his tongue over her parted lips.

She eased away, just enough to break the kiss but now in his loose embrace upon her.

'I'm here for you...for you,' he kissed, feeling her hesitation in responding to his advances, 'in every way that matters.'

'And I don't know where I am, with this!'