Edwina's Second Chance Ch.04

***Ah, so much fun to write this pair. This is the last bit where things ought to make a bit of sense if I've done this right. 0_o

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It changed things after that. From then on, they just fit somehow and they were both very pleased and relaxed together. The thing of it was, that Edwina felt the oddest sense that she knew Tommy somehow.

But that clearly was not possible, was it? The strangest feeling of familiarity kept coming to her, and even during their interlude in the shower it had been there. Edwina knew that she faced all sorts of issues in getting along in the modern age. But at the same time, she knew from his actions and also from that sense, that she could always depend on him.

She could have fallen over when he put on one of his favorite compilation CDs and she stared, wondering what made those sounds. He explained it all and she absorbed, but there was one song, ..

"I like so much of what I have heard," she said, "but please, Tommy, could I hear the one about the black magic woman again?"

While she enjoyed it, the music and the lyrics reminded her of something in her family's past and the second playing of it cemented a plan for her. Black magic had always been a bit of a family specialty on her mother's side.

"I must say that music seems to have changed a great deal," she smiled, and he nodded, "Yes and no, Some things have and some classics always remain. Would you like to hear what has been called the greatest piece of music ever written? I don't have it in its original voicing, but I have an old copy of a rather dramatic version, voiced by instruments which didn't exist when the piece was written, but I like it anyway."

She nodded eagerly, "It must surely be something. I play the harpsichord. You have probably never heard of my favorite composer, but I used to buy sheet music of anything by the man that I could get my hands on. They would order it in for me at the store in Rosemount."

Tommy dug out an old vinyl recording and ten minutes later, Edwina begged him to play it from the beginning, even though it wasn't done yet. "That sounds like – "

He nodded, "Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in D minor, the final movement, finished in 1824. This was done on synthesizers – even the choir - and recorded in 1971. That's why you can't understand the words, since there are none. They only sound like people's voices."

"I thought they were singing German or something. Oh, again please!" Edwina begged, "And can it be played louder?"

The house shook and Edwina wept in joy. She'd never heard a symphony.

Bruster hid in the bathroom.

Later, Edwina watched as he cooked their burgers and then watched as he struggled over her question of why, when as he'd said, there was a perfectly good stove there in the kitchen and it was already in use for the oven fries.

Their talk became a lot less strained between them, now that they'd been intimate. After Edwina had noticed the guitar leaning in the corner, she managed to get him to play and sing that old song for her as well as thrill her with the way that he could play so many other songs that she'd never heard or heard of.

And they did all of that in and around an old farmhouse, a little hidden by a few trees, situated on the top of a hill – without a single stitch of clothing between them. Bruster looked as though he didn't know whether to be interested, confused, or what. He settled on confused and happy.

It was still hot.

Swelteringly so, and though Tommy had about all of the upgrades, he lacked one thing which would have been a little nice to have had that day. The old house was not air conditioned.

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"What is that thing?" she asked, looking up.

She'd told him plainly that she wished to sleep with him, rather than in any bed once used by his ex-wife. He'd said no; that he'd think of something else, such as her sleeping in his bed and him sleeping in the other one. She very politely told him that he was being an idiot and he gave in then.

"It's a ceiling fan," he chuckled as he patted the bed next to him, "Come over here where you can get the most benefit from it."

She got onto the bed and lay on her back for a moment, "Well this is very pleasant, but I think that I'd rather kiss you instead."

He rolled onto his side and looked down at her, "Really? You aren't going to tell me that it's too hot to do much more than try – and fail – to go to sleep?"

She shook her head. "No. I have spent so many nights, an endless line of them; spanning years and years, alone in a bed. The last ones, I was not alone, but wishing that I was anywhere but in bed with a drunken, snoring brute who bathed less than a tenth as often as I am sure that you do, to judge by the scent of your clean-smelling sweat.

I love the way that you smell, Tommy. Even with a sheen of wetness on you, I feel pleasantly aroused when I smell you, not offended at all, but aroused. I have never had anything like that happen to me before in my life. Your body is like a dream to a lonely girl such as I always was. To be allowed to touch that – to find myself lying next to you, to only see you looking at me that way – those would have been such wonderful answers to my prayers every single night.

I cannot think that my prayers could have been answered any better than they have been this day.

I think that you were right. I think that I must have been dead somehow. I cannot imagine any way that what has happened to me might have happened otherwise. I might have flickered when I was upset earlier and perhaps that is the key somehow.

But I found myself here today. I learned that I can sweat and walk and wonder over all of the miracles which surround me. I can drink coffee and it makes me need to make water and a dead woman cannot do that. I can eat a fine meal that an amazing man made for me and feel full from it. I can take off my ghostly dress and wash under a stream of warm water with the man who has befriended me, and I can tease his seed from him and stand breathless against a wall while he drives me mad with his loving tongue deep inside of me.

Tommy, all of the nights that I lay alone and wanting, out of all of them, the ones during which I had the most want of a man were the warm ones. That was when I felt the keenest want of a prick in me.

Now, I lie here next to someone who steals my heart with only a look and the way that he calls me 'honey' sometimes. I do not want air conditioning tonight.

I want to sweat against you and not in sleep either. If you have a need of me tonight, then take me. Make me Edwina Rosemount again, or better still, make me yours for I find the thought of becoming Edwina Anderson a very pleasant one and I would be happy to think of myself in that way since there is no way to make that wish into reality. Take me this night and I will submit to whomever you say that I must; to answer questions and give my poor guesses – as long as I may have you against me in the dark for it."

He touched her cheek and noticed her warmth in the heat, feeling the slightly slick film of perspiration on her skin.

"Edwina, we've barely met. You must have been wondering the whole day how you ended up here. I've been wondering the same thing, but after what you've just said, I find myself wondering what I did to deserve someone like you here with me saying those things. You're so beautiful."

"I am not," she said quietly, "I am only pretty at best. That's all that I have ever had. I suppose that for an old girl of one hundred and eighty-eight years, I must be holding my own, though one hundred and fifty-eight of them have passed me by without my knowledge.

I am near, in my body's age, to you," she said, "and I wear the passage of that much time for certain."

He shook his head, "I've seen you without anything on. You'd give any twenty year-old a run for her money, and that's a fact."

"Tommy," she sighed, "where are your spectacles? You must need them if you see me like that. My bosoms –"

He chuckled, "So now you'll moan to me that they've always been small?"

She nodded and opened her mouth to speak, but he pre-empted her argument, "I suppose that I could give you that. But small is not the same as undersized. I like them. You're lying here with a man who was married to a woman who had the body of a goddess once. Without wanting to be critical or hurtful to her, that was a long time ago.

I'd be willing to bet that your body never changed much in ten years. If you want to hear me speak in the tones of a man – and men; when they talk of women's bodies can often sound as though they're discussing horses without even meaning to."

He leaned down and kissed her very slowly for a long minute before he looked down again and said, "Edwina Rosemount never had the body of a goddess. But she has the body of a nymph," he smiled with a nod, "and nymphs hide their age far better than goddesses."

"You're just feeling attracted to a man who seems to have a need to want to care for a girl who is lost at present. I'll help you, Edwina. I'll be a friend to you, and from the way that I see it, I won't even mind having you live here once all of the nonsense is done with. I'd love it if that could only come to pass.

But I'm just a guy who doesn't have much in him anymore for something as wonderful as you want to reach for. I've always believed that what a man ought to do if he's found the right woman is to do everything that he can for her.

Not be her slave by any means, but always show her what she means to him.

I guess that I must have been wrong. I now don't think that can ever work at all. I've been there. I did all of that. The only reason that I'm here at all is because Mandy wanted this house, not me.

Well after some years in her dream house, she doesn't want it anymore. Two years later, I'm still here in it. I like it and have no desire to leave, but it's my prison, isn't it? I had to buy it all over again or take a huge loss when it was sold, only for the whims of the one who I bought it for in the first place.

I won't speak ill of her, but I really don't care if she's dead or alive anymore.

The truth is that I'm the ghost who walks these halls."

Edwina looked up at him and she shook her head, "No you are not. You are all that I have, and if you allow me to be what I want to be, then I can be all that you have, just as well. I have spent the day learning to trust you and I can say that it has happened in a way that never has for me.

Do for me what you can in what you tell me that I need to have done, and Tommy, I will be your woman out of it all. I am prepared to become her this night, that woman – your woman.

You forget where I came from. I lived in a world of arranged or agreed-upon marriages, where a girl is often handed over across an aisle in a church. The ceremony is for the benefit of the mothers and a few others such as relations.

Certainly not the bride, no matter what she might be foolish enough to believe.

Often, a bride finds herself with a man who is little more than a stranger – and now she must service him and run their home, taking all in her stride, from their brats to the washing, from cleaning to cooking. She might have had idle girl's dreams of romance, but reality is as wholesome-smelling as the chamber pot when it needs emptying the next day – and that is never the task of the prince, is it?

I have the notion that a marriage here is supposed to be a matching of equals. I do not know if it is ever accomplished, but I find that I like the notion. I confess that I do not know a thing about living here and for that I need you.

You consider yourself to be a fool, Tommy, when all that you are is a romantic man. It happens that I am in the market for one of those, seeing a chance to live the girl's dream properly for once.

It might have escaped your notice, Mister Anderson, but if you were to think of my situation in a different way, it might come to you that I seem to have been given a second chance somehow and I mean not to waste it.

I need a male and you, Tommy, are the one that I want. I will not fail you and I will never tire of you because there is only one ghost between us if there is one and I am she. See that you get us through the difficulties which lie before us, Mister Tommy Anderson, and after I learn what I must, I will be your partner and as it was before, I will manage what I must for us.

You have waxed long over my poor body, Tommy. Well I heard it all and I am flattered. I will leave you to your delusions of my beauty and I am not fool enough to ever want you to see it my way.

Let me be all that you have and I will become all that you ever need. I do not know if we might run the risk of making children, but I can say that I look forward very eagerly to sharing your bed and your thoughts.

My husband never saw the side of me which Reggie only glimpsed now and then. In your arms, I will show all of my heart. I love a good fucking. I so enjoyed what we did earlier and if you can be gentle with me, I would be happy to allow you to bugger me quite often, for that is another thing that I love.

I will not be subservient beyond a small degree and I expect nothing more than that same degree in my man. I think that I would complain if you were to give me more than that for it is not natural to me.

I lie now with a man who more than any that I have ever seen in my life was made to give pleasure and comfort to a woman who knows what she is looking at when she sees such a creature.

Goddess or nymph, Tommy, the truth is that I was made to fuck often and give my own comfort to the one I choose. If you have the mind which I perceive in you, you will also possess the wisdom to bow to my convictions for I am a better one to have as a friend and lover than as an enemy.

Have I earned your interest now, Tommy?" she smiled, "And may we please begin? It is a hot night and I have the want in me to feel us sweat together. If your love must be earned, then look to your defense if you must, but I will have it and soon."

She ended it with a coy little smile and he stared at her as it all sunk in.

"I don't what to say to that, " he said quietly, "I don't know – "

Edwina saw her chance and drawing from what she'd remembered because of that old Santana song, she threw the last of her shyness away, deciding that it had never served her well and that this was her moment.

She lunged for him, rolling him over onto his back and she was all over him.

"Then say nothing," she hissed through her teeth as she bit into his shoulder gently, running her tongue over his skin to taste the finest manflesh that she'd ever tasted.

Tommy was shocked and when she lifted her head, he saw lust in that woman's eyes such as he'd never known could have existed. Edwina saw his expression and she rose up on him, dragging her wet pubes over the ridges of his abdominal muscles and throwing her head back in laughter.

"Say nothing, since there is nothing which needs saying," she chuckled, "Feel the way that we can slide together like this in the heat – our heat, such as it is." She reached back and helped his hardening shaft up from between his thighs, "This night, Tommy, this night is for you and I alone."

"Bruster!" she called, and the dog was beside the bed instantly, "I seek to win your master's love this night. See to the door and let no one pass until it is done."

The dog was gone then and his nails on the hardwood steps could be heard as they receded.

"You –you ordered the dog?"

She shook her head with a grin as she lifted herself up with her thighs so that she could guide the thing that she craved into herself, "No," she groaned as she slid onto his hardness, "I commanded the dog."

Her breath came out of her in a wicked and lustful sigh, "hhhhhuuuhhh, and I like his name now."

She began to move on him and Tommy was more smitten with Edwina that he could have ever imagined himself feeling for anyone. She rocked on him, her hips making the age-old motions that women have always made, but to begin, they were different.

Edwina moved in the way of a woman seeking pleasure for herself and not the male that she was riding. It was only for a little while and then they changed into slightly different motions for them both. To Tommy, it seemed to be bliss which went on forever.

Edwina's head hung for a time as she worked him and then it slowly rose up so that she was looking at the male that she wanted for herself. She knew this would work. It just needed time, and they had that; lots of it.

With a wave, the candles that he kept in his bedroom for use in the event of a power failure were lit, all four of them different sizes yet they all burned with flames of the same size. "Look at me, Tommy," she said, "See your woman in her desire for you, the want which will never fade or pass, no matter what is on the television or how her back aches from the day's work. See a woman as she was meant to be for her man.

See the woman who will not accept that you are tired when her want of you is on her. I must have been dead for all of that time, those long years, though I do not know where my body lay. But I am dead no longer. I live.

I am a woman and I yearn to be more than a woman to you."

She moved then, and he felt himself slipping nearly but not quite out of her as she brought herself forward to lie on him with her breast centered on top of his own. She stopped then, her cheek against his collarbone.

"Can you feel it, Tommy? Can you feel my heart beat against yours?"

"Yes," he whispered, "Your heart is pounding."

He heard her pleased smile in her speech, "It pounds against your heart. It pounds for your heart. I want Tommy, and I want Tommy as mine. I offer myself to you. We need none of the nonsense of courting. This is courting as it was meant to happen between men and women."

She turned her head and kissed his chest over his heart and she rose up again and went back to fucking on him, "This is what we are and have always been, no matter the age or whatever damned year it might be. We make our choices then. We offer our love and our comfort to a male and ask for protection and love in return.

We offer to gather nuts and berries to go with the meat that our men kill so that we all might live better. Nothing has changed. I did nothing to ask for this, but I know what it is. I have another chance at life and I choose the man that I want for the same reasons which always were."

Her motions were slower now, more languid and so sensual. He could have watched her like this all night. She raised her arms a little and it became a dance for him to see.

His eye was caught by a drop of sweat as it slid from under her jaw. It might have originated in her mane of hair and run along on its way to her collarbone. But before it got there, it was met by another from under her ear. The two merged and, bigger now, it was more influenced by her motions so that it sometimes ran and sometimes only slid a little. Now and then, it didn't move at all, pooling in the depression just behind her collarbone.

There, it was met by others which added to it and when it was enough – or when her motion forced the next step of its journey, some of it overran the dam and slipped down to her breast. When it reached her nipple, it hung there and Tommy was forced to act.

He sat up then, holding her with one arm around her waist as she shifted gears effortlessly. His other hand went around the side of her throat to hold her there. Edwina's eyed widened for a second as an ageless thrill of fear ran through her before she saw that she had nothing to fear from her man. He was only holding her and with no pressure on her throat, she smiled.

Tommy leaned down a little and he seized the droplet with his lips, sucking and tasting her salty flesh. Edwina moaned his name and shifted gears again, driving herself downward with whimpering gasps while he licked and bit her flesh gently.