Johnny Reb

They kissed a fourth time as Ashley totally undid John's belt and help her out of her pants. The girl wore no underwear. Ashley didn't remember seeing any when she had earlier taken away her dirty clothes. The question of how John handled her time of the month came to mind, but she quickly dismissed it as a question she could always ask later.

Ashley's hand, now much rougher than she would've liked it because of all the labor she did daily, moved between John's legs. No longer surprised by what she found there, she quickly found that most sensitive of spots and began rubbing it with her fingers.

"Oh, that is wonderful," John gushed, remembering Ashley's earlier promise.

"Is it better like this?" Ashley asked as she moved her fingers in a different way. "Or do you like to do it like this instead?"

"I've never done this either," John said.

This, Ashley found harder to believe than the fact that John had never kissed before. How could a woman, even a hidden one, not even accidentally discovered the pleasures her own body was capable of. Even before her first night with Leslie, Ashley had know that it felt good when she touched herself there.

Yet John insisted that it was true. She knew that men could pleasure themselves. Many times, late at night she had heard fellow soldiers moaning in pleasure as they played with their cocks. The first time she had heard it, she had quietly crept close enough to actually see what her fellow soldier was doing to produce such a reaction. Knowing that she lacked the equipment to do that to herself, she wrongly assumed that only men could do it. In her sheltered life, she had never known a woman who could tell her different.

"You actually watched a man play with himself?" Ashley asked, thinking that she had not even seen her husband do that. He would've been too embarrassed to have let her watch.

John replied that she had watched it a few times. It had fascinated her. Even more shocking to Ashley, but seemingly just part of army life to John, the young woman described watching men perform on each other the same unspeakable act that Sergeant Rourke had threatened Ashley with.

Once, John added, she had even seen an older soldier couple with a younger one in the way men normally joined with a woman. It was from that example that John had immediately understood what the older man had in mind when he tried to lure her into a similar secluded spot.

The thought that men might orally please each other brought a totally new thought to Ashley. Could a woman do that to another woman? The idea of doing that to any man, even her late husband made Ashley ill. Yet the prospect of trying it on the young woman sharing her bed filled her with excitement.

"John," she asked softly, "what those men did to each other with their mouths, would it bother you if I tried that with you?"

John immediately agreed. In her simple way of thinking, she reasoned that if women could please each other with their hands the same way she had seen men do, they use their mouths as well.

Ashley parted John's legs over the side of the bed and got down on her own knees. She brushed the thick bush of hair covering the smaller girls mound, then moved her face close enough to kiss it. Following her own earlier advice to John, she kissed it as if she was kissing a lover on the lips, pressings her tongue deep between the folds of the teen's womanhood.

The effect on both of them was immediate and electric as they shared a bond deeper than either had ever known. Not even Leslie in their most passionate embrace had ever suggested anything like this.

Using her fingers in conjunction with her tongue, Ashley brought pleasures to the girl on the bed that John had never imagined. Pleasures that Ashley joined in as the nectars of John's excitement filled her mouth.

Time passed and the strength of those pleasures grew until the smaller girl felt her body convulse with an intensity she had only seen in men dying on the battlefield. Only in this case, the joy of life rather than the despair of death now consumed her body.

"What happened to me?" John asked breathlessly as her body stopped quaking.

"You had a climax," Ashley said as she sat next to John, her own heart beating almost as rapidly.

"A climax?" John repeated, unsure of the meaning of the new word. "Is that the same as those men playing with themselves had?"

"Yes, my dear, it was."

"Then I think a climax is the most wondrous thing of all."

Ashley just smiled, she wasn't going to contest that point. Nor was she going to argue a few moments later when John asked if she could try and do the same thing to her.

For someone with far less experience than Ashley in matters of the flesh, John proved to be naturally quite skilled at their mutual new discovery. In less time than it had taken Ashley, the just deflowered virgin brought the older woman to a rousing climax of her own. It wasn't as good as some of those she remembered with her husband, but it was far superior than any by her own hand. Still, she reminded herself, this was new to both of them and would undoubtedly get better in the future. That is if there was a future beyond the morning dawn.

That thought brought Ashley back to reality. In less than a few days, she had gone from a deep emptiness to a sudden immersion into the horrors of war. Then, just as quickly, she had found comfort and caring in the arms of someone who had delivered her from that horror.

"John," she said as she held the younger woman's hand, "are you planning to leave here soon?"

The short haired blond seemed to consider the question for the longest time. The longer she took, the more Ashley feared what her answer might be.

"I really have no place to go," John replied. "If you'd let me, I'd really like to stay."

Ashley's heart filled with an elation she had not known in years. Elation cut short when she saw a look of concern on John's face.

"What's wrong?" she said, thinking that John might have misinterpreted the question as a desire by Ashley for her to leave. "Of course I want you to stay."

"I was just thinking that I'll never be a lady like you are," came her reply. "I've spent too much of my life trying to be a man. I don't know how to be anything else."

"That doesn't matter," Ashley said rapidly, her excitement causing her to trip over her words. "I don't care if you live as a man or a woman. Just so long as you live as my lover. We'll sort all of the rest out as we go."

"Then of course I'll stay," John said. "I want to stay with you forever."

"It won't be easy," Ashley said, "there are hard times ahead." As full as her heart was at this moment, with the excitement of new love, long years of hardship caused Ashley never to forget her practical side. She didn't want John to make a decision in the afterglow of their lust that she would come to regret later.

"I know that you know what it means to be a farmer," she said, "how rough life it can be. But just in case you've forgotten, it's very different than being in the Army. The enemy isn't someone you can shoot back at. It's the rains and the lack of it at times. It's watching your crop die and not having enough to eat, or money to buy what you can't raise or make yourself."

"I haven't forgotten that," John said, remembering the hard times on her parent's farm. She also remembered how the love they shared had gotten them through the worse of times."

"All that I have, what little it is, I want to share with you. However, most of what I have is sorrow and an uncertain future. I want you to consider all of that before you decide."

"All right," John said after a few moments reflection. "I've thought about it. I'll stay under one condition. Just as you want to share all that you have with me, then I want to share all that I have with you."

"Of course," Ashley agreed, knowing that all that John owned was what she carried on her back. It was obvious to her that John had said it just to feel like an equal. "We'll share everything."

"Then this," John said as she picked up off the floor the knapsack she had taken off the Union Officer and dropped it between her and Ashley, "is my contribution."

Ashley had totally forgotten about the bag of which John had been so excited about this morning. Curiosity overwhelmed her as John indicated that she should open the bag.

The straps quickly gave way and Ashley pulled back the thick flap. Her eyes opened wide and a sense of disbelief filled her.

"Mother of God!" Ashley gasped as she looked into the sack.

Filled to the rim of the large bag were Federal twenty-dollar gold pieces.

"Are these real?" she said, realizing that there had to be a small fortune.

"As real as you and I sitting here," John smiled.

"I can't believe it," Ashley said.

They sat there in silence for the longest time. Ashley was too stunned to say anything. Although her family had led a comfortable life before the war, they, like most of their neighbors, had always been cash poor. In the dark times ahead, these coins could be worth twenty times their prewar worth. Used carefully used, they could be the difference between life and death.

"We have to hide these," Ashley finally said. "So that no one else knows we have them."

John smiled at her use of the word "we", a sign that she already thought of them as belonging together. A sign that after all those long months of just surviving to the next day, both John and Ashley had a reason to think about the day beyond tomorrow.

"We can hide them in the morning," the younger girl said as she closed the bag and reset it on the floor. "Right now, I want to try all those things you showed me again."

The two of them fell back into the bed, locked in each other's arms. For the briefest of moments, just before she felt the touch of John's lips against her own, Ashley thought she heard the voice of her father.

"Ashley, my darling," she could hear him say across the years through a little girl's memory. "May you someday find the treasure of the wee people, and with it the love and happiness that I wish for all your days."

And so they did, for all the days that followed. Even long after both Robert and Noah finally came home and met Ashley's new husband.

END