Elizabeth 07: Before the Storm

Jonathan did as he was told, running his fingers reverently through her luxuriant hair, at first teasing her vulva with only the slightest of tickles as his fingertips brushed across it, then rubbing harder in perfect tight circles as only he could do. As usual, he soon had Elizabeth reduced to a joyful loss of control, and she lay back on the bed with her legs spread wide. If the pain of giving birth was still a quite recent memory, the joy and love of the two treasures they had wrought together were more than enough for Elizabeth to once again lose herself in the primal urges that were her constant companion no matter the consequence. The even more precious - and fleeting - gift of both of those treasures being fast asleep for the moment provided for a wonderful sense of liberation as Jonathan's fingers danced about her rapidly moistening forest of dark curls. "Oh, so lovely!" she sighed in a carefree contentment that mothers can so easily forget ever existed.

Jonathan soon had her as wet as a dewy morning, and his two fingers found no resistance at all as he eased them gently into her vagina. Elizabeth gasped in joy at the caresses as usual, and she wiggled in happy response. Her breasts, heavy with milk, jostled about a bit uncomfortably - as they always seemed to be doing of late - and instinctively she reached up to steady them with both hands. Jonathan, not to be outdone, followed suit with his free hand. "So lovely how they swell!" he murmured.

"For you, perhaps," Elizabeth reminded him, though she said it in a husky whisper that belied her immense pleasure at Jonathan's touch within her.

"Oh, I am sorry," Jonathan said, kissing the underside of her right breast. "I understand it's not all in fun for you. It's only that a woman's body is so magical at a time like this, and yours most of all, dear -"

At that point, Elizabeth's breasts interrupted his soliloquy on their loveliness with a squirt that found its target on his forehead. Elizabeth burst into guilty laughter. "Heavens, Jonathan, I'm sorry...but in a way it is your own fault! Your magic fingers made me lose control!"

"I shall take that as a backhanded compliment," Jonathan said drily, wiping the milk from his face. He made to dry his fingers off on the sheets, but in the heat of their passion he found the courage to try something he had half wanted to do - and that Elizabeth had always hoped he would do - numerous times over the past couple of years. He licked his fingers.

"Oh, Jonathan!" Elizabeth said. "That is perfectly lovely!"

"Sweet," Jonathan mused. "Nothing like I had expected."

Elizabeth was delighted - and a bit relieved. "Well, you know, Jonathan, I'm feeling awfully full up here and the girls are both asleep."

Jonathan was overcome with the same bewildered look that Elizabeth knew so well from every time she had ever suggested anything unorthodox, particularly in bed. "You mean you'd like me to..."

"I would love you to! A bit on each side, please, and don't forget to finish what you've started with your hand, either!" His fingers, still nestled in her vagina, had gone still after the spurt of milk.

"Yes! Yes, of course, sorry!" Jonathan resumed his rhythmic stroking and, the taboo gone at last, pressed his lips gently to Elizabeth's right nipple. Though a bit chapped from Margaret's sloppy nursing, she still found no small pleasure in his suckling and the release and relief it brought. She arched her back to press more firmly against his eager face, and he drank down her warm sweetness so greedily he was only just aware of her cries of joy as he brought her to orgasm.

"The other one!" Elizabeth gasped as she caught her breath. Jonathan continued his caresses down below more gently now as he went to town on her left breast. Though his curiosity and his thirst were now satiated, he did not dare stop until Elizabeth at last whispered, "Thank you."

"Are they more comfortable now?"

"Much, darling. But I believe I must still milk you, now, mustn't I?" Before Jonathan could offer any of his usual disclaimers about how they didn't need to do that if she were too tired or sore, she already had his hard cock clutched in both her hands and was guiding him inside. "You've been so very generous tonight, it would hardly do for me to do all the taking!" she teased.

"I suppose not," Jonathan allowed, offering up no resistance as he welcomed her envelopment. They enjoyed a quiet instant of gazing into one another's deeply contented eyes, and all was still.

As Jonathan began pushing in and out, he kissed Elizabeth and she tasted her own milk for the first time. "Mmm, I am delicious indeed," she said between happy moans.

"In every way!" Jonathan agreed.

Knowing that either of the babies might awaken at any moment, their lovemaking was deliberate and a bit hurried, although it may also have been Elizabeth's long-unsatiated hunger that drove her to her uncharacteristic haste. Whatever the cause, Jonathan's loving thrusts had her back in the throes of orgasm in perhaps half the time their more leisurely relations had so often taken before. To the surprise of neither of them, as Elizabeth's screeches of joy rang out, they were promptly joined by Margaret's ragged harmony from the next room. As they both realized what had happened, passion gave way to laughter for both Elizabeth and Jonathan, and a final burst of intimacy as he came hard and fast.

"My turn to check on her," Jonathan acknowledged, giving Elizabeth a final outer squeeze and receiving a final inner one before he disengaged himself and stood up.

"I suppose I couldn't feed her just now anyway, thanks to you, dear," Elizabeth teased as she watched Jonathan pull on his robe.

Four blocks away, a rather less joyful air prevailed as Irene nursed Frank. Gregory hovered over her chair, half adoring and half pensive as he admired his son. "Festerson enlisted today, you know," he said almost absentmindedly to Irene.

"He never had a bit of sense," Irene grumbled, stroking Frank's head gently. "You know that, Gregory."

"Perhaps, but he's willing to step up and do his part, isn't he? The papers say they're gearing up over there like there's no tomorrow. Anyone who can get out is getting out. By the end of the summer, surely -"

"Stop!" Irene snapped. Frank began to cry at the jolt, and Irene glared up at Gregory. "Now look what you've done! But I suppose in twenty years you'll want to send him off to war anyway - if you come home from this one!"

"Course I'll come home!" Gregory said. "We've been over this again and again, Irene, they'll fold like a house of cards and we'll be home by Christmas. Everybody says so."

"Don't they always!" Irene was still trying in vain to soothe Frank, realizing a moment too late again and again that her tone was hindering that effort. "Good heavens, Gregory, you've read your history!"

"Indeed I have," Gregory replied. "No one ever wants war, but it comes and someone's got to do it. My father did it, his father did it, and they both came home hale and hearty. Besides, have I really got to tell you what people think of young men who don't do their part? I'll not live the rest of my life with a yellow streak on my back. Even if you don't understand that, someday little Frank will. He'll get it!"

"That is my greatest fear!" Irene was near tears. "My God, we have got to stop raising our boys to think that way!"

"Best of luck with that," Gregory said. With a sigh and a conciliatory look, he added, "Now, Irene, I know you mean well. Surely you don't believe I want to go out there and sleep in the mud for months and kill or be killed. But if I don't go, they'll have to send someone else in my place and I'll have that on my conscience for life."

"But you'll still have your life." Irene whispered it, having finally calmed Frank down. She stood up and carried him to his cradle. Once he was down, Irene turned and gave her husband a stern look. "And he'll still have a father."

"It'll only be a few months," Gregory insisted.

"That's what they always say," Irene hissed. "Besides, a few months is a very long time when you're being shot at constantly."

"I won't be harmed." Gregory was cocksure as always, and as they retired to the bedroom, he flashed the grin that nearly always made Irene melt. "You married a charmed warrior, after all."

Irene was having none of it this time. As she untied her robe sash, she said, "I suppose I can think of one positive thing about you going off to war, Gregory."

"You'll treasure our lovemaking even more when I return?" He reached out to caress Irene's breasts as she shrugged off her robe.

"No," she said, swatting his hands away with a firmness she had never before used with him, though his aggressive style in bed had often brought her near that point. "It will likely disabuse you of your arrogance about it all."

Gregory, himself clad in pyjamas, did not try to touch his wife again. Instead, he stood and gazed into her implacable eyes, doubtlessly aroused by the paradox of her absolute resolve despite being naked in his clothed presence, and waited for the punch line to her joke. When she said nothing else, Gregory supplied it himself. "My God, Irene, you're beautiful when you're angry." He gave her the grin again, once again in vain.

"For the love of God, Gregory." Irene did not begrudge his lascivious admiration of her body, but she stood ready to rebuff any further efforts to touch her. "Can't you see what it would do to me if you went to war? And to Frank?"

"I told you, Frank will understand someday!"

"Not if I have anything to say about it, he won't!"

"Darling, you're..." Gregory waved his hand up and down, gesturing at Irene's body.

"A woman?" Irene looked down and clutched at her breasts with both hands. "Why, thank you, Gregory, I hadn't noticed!"

"I have immense respect for women, but there are things they just cannot understand," Gregory said. "And that is just as it should be. It's the way of the world, my dear. A woman's body gives life and nourishment, and it is not for me or any other man to pretend to understand what that is like. But that also colours your own judgment about the nastier matters of the world, and it is up to us men to address those. That is all!" He stepped forward gingerly and reached out to hold Irene, and to his surprise (and, she later told me, her own), she did not rebuff him. "Now, my dear, let us go to bed. I am here for now, after all."

Irene, still thinking over his silly commentary, allowed a tiny smile but once again slipped out of his embrace. "You go ahead and get in bed," she said. "I've got something to consider."

Gregory did as he was told, and watched as Irene stepped up to their full length mirror to look at her own body. He welcomed the sight as well, and as he settled himself under the covers he asked, "Just what is it you're looking for? I'll know where it is. I've admired your body an awful lot, after all. Probably more than you have."

That last sentence, Irene conceded, was likely true: Gregory, like Benjamin and myself before him, saw only beauty over every inch of her body where she saw flaws. But the more she thought of his nonsense on what women did and did not understand, the angrier she became. She would not, though, allow that to show in her face. Looking Gregory's reflection in the eye, she smiled and said, "I'm afraid you can't help me with this. It's something my body has lost, evidently."

"What has your body lost?" Even Gregory knew this was no time to note that she had not yet lost all the weight she had put on during her pregnancy.

Irene took a comically hard look at her body in the mirror, her eyes lingering for a lengthy moment each on her pendulous breasts and the cleft of her vulva. "My ability to understand why senseless slaughter is senseless."

Gregory's smile evaporated. "Irene, I did not say -"

"Makes no sense that we could be born without it," Irene interrupted. "After all, female or male, we are all born of woman, which means it is possible to be born with that ability even though your mother doesn't have it."

"For heaven's sake, Irene!"

"And after all, a girl cannot in fact give life or nourishment for the first dozen years or more of her own life, so presumably at that age it is not yet lost."

"All I am saying, my dear, is -"

"So it must only leave us as we grow into women. Do you suppose it was mixed in with my period blood, Gregory?"

"Irene! That's disgusting!"

"Disgusting?!" Irene turned around and glared at him. "A bit of a mess once a month is disgusting, but months or years of violent death and pestilence over matters most people in the street don't understand and the men who started it all remain safe behind desks, that's just a man's duty to fulfil?! Then I suppose I know which burden I would rather bear!"

"I did not say women were disgusting."

"No, only too stupid to understand why you want to march off to an early grave!"

Gregory tore back the covers and jumped out of bed. Irene braced herself for an altercation of some sort, but none was forthcoming. Rather, Gregory opened the bedroom door. "I shall sleep in the parlour. Good night, my dear." He slammed the door behind him, hard enough to awaken Frank, who set about howling.

Irene stood near the door long enough to sense that Gregory did at least have the decency to pick up his son and rock him back to sleep; and at long last she switched off the light and got into bed. Doing her best to ignore Frank's wailing, she stretched out her legs and tried to forget all that had been said. It was no use, of course, even once Gregory got Frank back to sleep. As Irene tried unsuccessfully to follow her son's lead, her mind wandered to memories of more innocent times, coloured now by her husband's treatises on gender and nature.

I would not, I assure you, ever be so conceited as to expect Irene to think of her affair with me at a time like that. However, she later confided in me that she had done exactly that. Though Irene did prefer however slightly the charms of men to women, we certainly had forged a bond that could only have occurred between two women, and only two women of a certain age and mindset at that. She recalled with delight the elegant curve of my breasts and hips, the delightful softness that was not available with men - and which she would not have desired from them in any event, nor would I - the knowing intimate caresses that could only come from one with the same anatomy, and most of all the absolute understanding we had with one another. Eyes to eyes, breasts to breasts, heart to heart, woman to woman.

Was it then, she wondered now, that the magic of our relations had been due to a woman's innate propensity for nurturing? Certainly there had been a gentleness in her lovemaking with me that was never there with Gregory. Could that have been due to what Gregory had suggested?

Had I been there, I would have argued that it was not. I would have explained, as gently as I could, that while I treasured the memory of our intimacies, I had also experienced that same tenderness with some of the men I had been to bed with. Not many, but a few. In the event, Irene did not need me to explain that to her, for as she gazed at the ceiling and turned the matter over in her mind, she reached a chapter further into her past and thought of Benjamin.

Amazing, wonderful Benjamin! Palpably masculine Benjamin, with his firm body and broad chest, which was ever so heavily forested in virile hair, a swath leading down his belly to a pubic bush that rivalled Elizabeth's, embracing his lovely thick penis. Irene could not recall with any certainty that Benjamin had in fact been better-endowed than Gregory was; but in her bittersweet memories that night he most definitely was. How fitting, therefore, that Benjamin had been far too secure in his own masculinity to concern himself with any nonsense about a man's duties or a woman's inability to understand them!

And oh, what Benjamin did understand about women - or at least about Irene! How accepting he had always been about the idiosyncrasies of her body...not just accepting, but embracing! The way he could stroke and kiss her soft belly until she could nearly forget how she normally disliked it; how the thrill of his agile tongue and appreciative fingertips on her fat pussy lips could make her happy about her overendowment for once. In her own harsh self-assessment, Irene had a big vulva; in Benjamin's eyes and hands and tongue, she had a robust vulva, and he had adored it. Most of all, that hard, masculine, well hung body of his was capable of immense tender affection. Irene had never found that big hairy cock intimidating, only immensely comforting inside her. She had, she now reflected, always felt just as safe and treasured and understood and respected in his arms as in mine. (I took no offense at this revelation when she related it to me afterward; after all, our affair had ended for a reason.)

From the moment that the memory of her trysts with me had entered into the imagery playing out for Irene on the dark ceiling, she had been aware of herself growing a bit wet. After Benjamin had taken over Irene had grown rather more than "a bit" wet. That, she knew all too well, often occurred when her lost love came to mind; but she had always suffered through her arousal rather than addressing it before. It had felt - and still did feel - too much like cheating. While she did occasionally indulge in the memory of me in bed with her, Benjamin was quite different: she had been in love with him, and now she was married to another man. Elizabeth had been all too much on the mark that afternoon - just what did Irene want? Now, with her husband in self-imposed exile in the parlour and her own inability to sleep, Irene's resistance was sorely tested indeed. She thought of the afternoon's news and the stark reality that she might well have to see Benjamin again, and did her best to conclude that it was all the more essential that she resist even entertaining such prurient thoughts of him.

She did her best, but her best was insufficient. Facing a lonely and frustrating night and the real possibility of losing Gregory as she had lost Benjamin, Irene let her defences down at last. Spreading her legs and propping her knees up, she allowed her hands to imitate as best they could Benjamin's loving caresses in and around her frustrated, hungry vagina. Two orgasms later, she was finally off to a restless sleep.

Two days later was to be Alexandria's debut at the baths. Elizabeth had called for lunch with Irene and myself, but I had a prior commitment. "I know it is none of my business," intoned said prior commitment, whose name was Mr. Franke, from across the table over lunch at Miles, "But it is most imperative that we know you are unattached at this time, Miss Marlston."

"Do you say that to your male writers?" I could not resist asking both Mr. Franke and his wife, who sat alongside him.

"Very soon there may well not be any male writers," he replied.

"To address your concern, Miss Marlston, the point of hiring only unattached women is that we do not wish for any undue emotional attachment to any one of our young men," explained Mrs. Franke. "Or to whatever theatre of combat said man may find himself in. As a correspondent, objectivity on your part will be highly important."

"As will discretion," added Mr. Franke. "In any event, Miss Marlston, I do apologize for having to bring it up at all. But it is policy at our press service. It may sound old fashioned to you, but then it is tremendous progress that they are even letting us hire a woman."

"Myself excluded," added Mrs. Franke, correctly anticipating my question as to how she had found herself employed at her husband's bureau for twenty years or more.