Love Knows No Color Pt. 24

Afterwards, no matter who was on the receiving end of the oral sex, came the kiss. The warm, passionate, soul searing kiss. Lips fully pressed together, tongues exploring, tasting our own essence in the other's mouth. The kiss neither of us wanted to end, but end it did, only because we had to breathe. And the afterglow, as our bodies relaxed, all the pent-up stress released in orgasmic rapture.

The talks afterward, about nothing in particular and everything at once. After the usual compliments of damn, you're good; and I can't get enough of your taste; the conversations. The ones where we talked until I fell asleep. The ones where we shared our deepest, most private thoughts, without fear of ridicule from the other.

And that was, more than anything, what had made Shavonda different. I could tell her anything, knowing that it wouldn't be thrown back in my face at a later date as most of my previous girlfriends had done. As my ex-wife Rose had done to the point where I had no longer told her anything. For Shavonda truly loved me unconditionally, as I did her. And that why I was willing to take on a hostile world to be with her, a world that often tried to discourage mixed couples like us. Maybe not overtly, but there were signs all around us that disapproval was bubbling just beneath the surface. I took on the world willingly because she did the same for me. And also because while I could, upon leaving her, revert back to my previous life, she could never escape the disapproval no matter what she did. Because I loved her so, I willingly inhabited her world, because they'd never let her fully inhabit mine.

That Friday night Barbara picked up the kids. She was still close to Althea, and over the past two years or so she'd built a strong bond with not only the kids but Shavonda as well. So that first weekend after we'd come back from vacation, she'd noticed how depressed Shavonda seemed and asked why.

"You can't tell Rose, Ms. Barbara," Shavonda blurted out. "If I tell you what happened you can't tell her. Evah!"

"Hon, what happened?" Barbara was truly concerned now. And with good reason. Rose's phone call to the police had set in motion the events that got Shoemacher sent to prison. And ultimately led to his murder. "I promise I won't tell anybody."

"The officer that sexually assaulted me was murdered in prison." Shavonda looked worried. "Rose made the phone call to 9-1-1 that dispatched him that night. And he wound up in prison for what he did to me and other women. The brother of one of those women carved him up. You can't tell Rose. I don't want her feeling responsible for his death."

I looked on in shock. This was not the same Shavonda who had urged the judge to throw the book at Rose at her sentencing hearing. This Shavonda was truly worried about the woman who'd done her best to destroy our relationship. I knew she'd forgiven Rose, but had been unaware of the depths of that forgiveness.

"Oh,,,,," Barbara was stunned for a minute. She hadn't expected that either. After a long pause she replied, "Hon your secret is safe with me. Thank you for caring."

"I do care, Ms. Barbara," Shavonda replied. "I worry about her, and I pray for her often. I'm the one raising the kids, but she's their birth mother. I want her to get out some day, and take her place back in their lives. I feel bad about the officer being killed, and my role in putting him there. I don't want Rose beating herself up about it too. Her life is hard enough already."

One night after the kid had come back home, our bedtime conversation turned to the children. My children. The ones that Shavonda had accepted as her own without question, before we'd been blessed with a little girl of our own. Brittany and Ethan were getting bigger. Soon Ethan would be six. It was time for them to sleep in separate rooms. We decided to let Brittany have the bedroom in the extension, where Miracle would join her when she was old enough. Ethan would get the old bedroom, where they used to sleep when they visited us at what was then Shavonda's house. That was before we were married, before the house became ours instead of just hers. Before the extension that almost doubled its size, making it truly our house, because the only reason the extension existed in the first place was that our combined families had put up most of the money for it to give our little family room to grow. Back when we first found out Shavonda was pregnant.

The next day, after I came home from work, we informed Ethan about the new room. He was ecstatic, a bouncing ball of pure joy. To him, it wasn't just a room of his own, it was proof he was a big kid now. He had learned how to read from the Dr Seuss books we'd routinely read him, memorizing the stories to the point where he recognized the individual words. He was also starting first grade at the end of August. All of these were signs he was a big kid, but none were so special as his very own room, to decorate as he pleased. It would become a place of refuge for him, somewhere he could go to be alone when he wanted.

Brittany was a little jealous of Ethan getting his own room until Shavonda pointed out that she would have the bigger, newer room. And that the room would still have the two beds as it always had. It meant that she could have friends sleep over occasionally. It also meant she could decorate it any way she wanted, even painting the walls her favorite color, pink. And that's all it took to satisfy her.

The weekend after that, we celebrated my 33rd birthday with a small family dinner at home. It was just us, Kenny and Edie, and Shavonda's parents. Shavonda and Althea surprised me with homemade pizza. The two of them had made their own crust, and rolled it out, prebaking it for a slightly crunch texture, before adding the ingredients. Shavonda knew how I liked a lot of oregano in my sauce, and she didn't skimp on either the oregano or the sauce. She topped it with pepperoni and enough cheese to constipate me for a week. And pitchers of grape Kool-Aid to wash it down with. Salvatore's, watch out! I love your pizza but the ladies gave you a run for your money that night. Honestly, if she ever got tired of making jewelry, we could open a pizza shop. It was that good.

Afterward, we all sat around eating cake and ice cream. We even gave Miracle some just to see what she'd do with it. She loved the cake, and it wound up all over her face, in her hair, all over the high chair, you get the picture. But the cutest thing was her first taste of ice cream. When I put the spoon in her mouth she got the weirdest look on her face, like she didn't know what to do. It was like she froze for a couple seconds, before emitting an ear-piercing wail. Evidently she didn't like the cold.

We ended the night, as we often did when Kenny and Edie were over, in the game room playing music. I'd recently discovered Joy Division. The way the bass player avoided the lower notes most people conentrated on, and played the high end of his instrument in an almost melodic style intrigued me. We learned to play Love Will Tear Us Apart that night. The vocals were lower than I normally sang, so we first tried them with Kenny singing lead. But his voice wasn't anywhere close to the sound we were shooting for, even though it was deeper than mine. In the end, we tried the song with me singing about an octave lower than I normally would. Much to our surprise, it worked.

The kids had long ago gone to bed so I was surprised to see Ethan standing quietly in the doorway. He'd often sit and listen to me when I played by myself. Once I asked him why. "You sound like trains," he said. I could see where he got that idea. The rumble of my guitar did vaguely sound like the thundering EMD diesels climbing the mountain at night down on my parents farm.

Tonight, as we played, the others noticed Ethan as well. "Looks like you got a budding music lover there," Kenny remarked. I hoped so. Seeing Ethan there watching us play brought back fond memories of the barn concerts of my childhood, where my family had taken me to see the local bluegrass bands play. Eventually, Pap Waite, who sometimes sat in with the bands, taught me how to play his upright bass. I hoped we could teach Ethan to play something when he got a little older. I wanted him to experience the joy of creating beautiful sounds himself, instead of just listening to what others played.

Not that there was anything wrong with just sitting and listening to music. I remembered Dad loading up the cd player with multiple disks of Beatles, Kinks, and other bands as a child. Laying there on the floor, listening to the music as it took me on a journey. The prog bands he liked, such as Jethro Tull and Genesis were particularly adept at taking me away, with long meandering songs that twisted in unexpected ways so that they never quite ended up where you thought they were going. I traced my love of music to these events. It made me proud to see my own son following in my footsteps.

Ethan's growing closeness to me and fascination with the things I did was emblematic of the changes the children were going through. They were evolving as them grew. Brittany had always been Daddy's little girl, but now she was getting closer to Shavonda than me. It was like she sensed Shavonda's pain and was trying to comfort her. "You're my Mommy now," she told Shavonda one evening as we sat watching a movie.

"No, baby," Shavonda corrected. "I'm just your step mommy. Your real Mommy is in jail. Never forget her."

"But you ARE my Mommy now," Brittany replied. "I'll be a grown up when she gets out of jail. So you have to be my Mommy now. Please don't leave me too. I need you." Profound words from the mouth of a babe. It drove home the point that our children were a lot smarter than we gave them credit for, and that they instinctively understood things we'd thought were beyond them.

Ironically, Miracle, at ten months of age, was starting to gravitate more towards me than Shavonda. I knew that had to hurt, to know the baby she'd wanted but could never have finally, by some miracle of God, had been conceived and birthed, only to favor her Daddy more than her Mommy. There was no particular reason for Miracle's preference. We both loved her, and neither of us mistreated her in any way. If anything, she was spoiled, as were the other kids. Still, her first words had been Dada, and when she saw me she would crawl to me and demand to be picked up.

As the summer flew by, we were now getting into Ren fest season. This year, that also meant a wedding. Brian and Tamika were getting married the third weekend in August, when there was a gap for us in the festivals. Shavonda was one of the bridesmaids. "I'm so happy for my little cousin," she told me. "Brian has been so good to her." I agreed. I'd come to respect the man as one of the family. They were still faithfully paying us the rent, which covered the mortgage on what was my house before we were married. Hopefully, after the wedding once they got on their feet, they could come up with the down payment required to finance the house. We'd gladly sell it to them, and add the money to our little nest egg in the bank.

Because of the Ren fests we had a booth at, we couldn't have their bachelor/ bachelorette parties until the night before the wedding. The previous weekend the four of us had worked the booth in full regalia, staying in a nearby motel for the weekend. This year, Brian helped us with the booth instead of working for a food vendor as he had in previous festivals. Tamika would just have to buy her turkey legs from somebody else.

Ironically, the bachelor party was at the same strip club we'd had mine at just 15 months before. We all razzed Brian about the girls each being only half the woman Tamika was, which they were, by weight. It didn't matter to Brian. He'd always had a thing for the big girls. And Tamika was his ebony goddess, the woman he'd dreamed about years before he'd ever met her. I understood completely. He was like me in that he'd found his soulmate. And also, like me, he was relatively unenthusiastic when the guys pitched in and bought him a lap dance with a tiny oriental girl.

Meanwhile, Shavonda had volunteered our house for the ladies' toy party. Knowing this, I found my mind wondering what decadent goody Shavonda was going to buy. And what adventures she had in store for me when I got home.

To be honest, I was kind of worn out. Shavonda had ovulated the week before. We were still trying to get pregnant, to have a little multiracial boy to round out our family. After this one, we'd leave it in God's hands. If he wanted us to have more children we would. But we weren't going to actively try for any more.

Ovulation week had become an exhausting ritual for us. The way we saw it, the more I came in her the better our chances of conception. So most months we averaged sex twice a day for a week, and at least once a day no matter how exhausted I was, no matter how many hours I'd put in on the road. Because of the Ren fest, we'd had a motel room. It was also Barbara's weekend to spend with Brittany and Ethan. And so, instead of the usual socializing with Brian and Tamika in our motel room, we'd bid them an early goodnight after dinner and quickly got naked in our room. That poor bed took a year's worth of abuse that weekend.

Ovulation sex had one rule we'd set up: any ejaculation I did had to be in her vagina. I was to devote all my resources into flooding her with my sperm. We had sex, we didn't make love. There was no slow and gentle here, only the hard and fast fucking designed to get my seed planted deep within her womb as quickly as possible. No holding back. No oral sex on her after we'd both cum. I could help her orgasm by manual and oral stimulation of her clit, but only my dick was to penetrate her sugar walls. Likewise, Shavonda would use her hands and sometimes mouth to get me hard again, but once hard she'd quickly guide me to her sperm soaked opening, where the results of our previous round(s) eased my passage deep within her body.

It helped that ovulation had always made her extra horny. In the past, we'd used this time to make up for the several days previous when she was on her cycle, making love repeatedly, never once dreaming she'd conceive. After all, the doctors had told her she was infertile. Then came Miracle, who'd proved the doctors wrong. After that, anything seemed possible and Shavonda was determined to have that little boy she'd always dreamed of.

Knowing that sperm lived inside her body for several days after I'd deposited it there was the catalyst that caused Shavonda to finally overcome her squeamishness about period sex, and we'd since started making love during her cycle as a way to get a jump on ovulation. But the ovulation rules didn't apply until after her period had stopped. That was when the rabbit sex began.

Rabbit sex. I don't think there was a better way to describe what we did during ovulation. Get naked, Fuck the hell out of each other until I came. Let her willing pussy squeeze every last drop out of me until I softened and fell out. Lay beside each other basking in the afterglow while I recovered. Then her hand would work its way down to my shaft, stroking it hard again until I was ready for round whatever. Insert your own number here. What I do know was that Saturday night after the Ren fest had closed for the day, we stayed up all night and set a record I will probably never break. Seven times in one night.

The next morning, after maybe two hours sleep. We staggered out of the motel room for a quick breakfast before heading to the fest. We dragged all day Sunday. All day I watched my wench walking funny in her regalia. She had to be sore. I know I was. My back hurt. My legs were stiff. And above all, my dick was so sore it hurt to pee. But I'd risen to the occasion, pun intended. Yes we were going to have this baby if it killed me.

After the week was over, we'd waited a couple of days then Shavonda took the home pregnancy test. By now, I was so comfortable that I stayed in the bathroom with her while she took the test. The result: no plus sign. Shavonda wasn't pregnant. We'd worn ourselves out yet another month in vain. Not that it wasn't enjoyable for us. We always enjoyed sexual contact no matter how we did it. But a week of hard and fast wasn't what either of us preferred. Honestly, I liked slow and easy, and Shavonda did, too.

The week after ovulation, we usually spent just touching each other. Nothing more than oral sex usually. We'd indulge in the gentle pleasures we'd denied ourselves in the rush to conceive. Honestly, I'd come to love and cherish this recovery time. After Shavonda had fed Miracle, and I'd changed her and put her down for the night, Shavonda would feed me the breast the baby hadn't completely drained. Gently suckling her erect nipple, tasting the warm sweet milk she secreted into my eager mouth always calmed me. Often after I'd drank her dry, she'd straddle my head. We licked and sucked each other to completion before snuggling, kissing each other deeply, each enjoying the taste of our own juices in the mouth of the one we loved. Falling asleep in each other's arms.

After the bachelor party, I crawled into bed with my wife, to catch a few hours of sleep with her curled up against me before we had to get ready for Tamika's wedding. Imagine my surprise as my hands roamed her body to find her wearing the softest, silkiest panties I'd ever felt. They felt like her soft brown skin, and the only reason I knew they were there was the frilly lace edges they had. Except for those panties, she was naked. Shavonda NEVER wore panties to bed, except on her period. And that was already over, by about two weeks. And even then, she wore cheap cotton panties, nothing like these.

I turned on the bedside light and pulled back the bedsheet to see the cutest red silk panties. They looked so good on her. I couldn't help myself. Even though she was asleep I had to have her. She woke up with my face buried in her moist lady parts, on the verge of an orgasm. Afterward, she rode me, her breasts swinging in my face as she bounced on my throbbing pole. In no time, I exploded deep within her as her muscled contracted around me. Back arched, she ground herself into me as I emptied inside her warm wet tunnel. My fingers found her clit, and I rubbed her until she, too, went over the edge.

Lying there in the afterglow, I turned to her and smiled. "You liked them, huh?" Shavonda asked, that big, wide smile on her face. I had to admit I did. Somehow, seeing her in those panties turned me on even more than seeing her naked.

Tamika's wedding was held in a small church in McKeesport, where her mother lived. She looked divine in a white wedding gown that seemed to be tailor made for her. It accentuated her full figure in a way that made her stunningly beautiful. Not that she wasn't a pretty woman to begin with. She carried most of her weight in her breasts and hips, and even though she was at least 50 pounds heavier than Shavonda, she was almost as beautiful. And this gown brought all that out. Brian was a lucky man.

Shavonda was stunning as well, as I knew she would be, in a red bridesmaid's dress I'd never seen before. I stared at her entranced as Brian and Tamika said their vows. Wishing we could do it all over again.

The reception was held in the church basement, where they served your choice of fried chicken, barbeque pork, or beef brisket. Much as we loved fried chicken, Shavonda and I pigged out on the brisket. The kids had the chicken, along with some sort of Italian pasta dish they also served. Shavonda had a heaping helping of greens as well but greens weren't my thing so I passed.

After we all ate, we danced. It was nice, but I still preferred our reception, where we'd danced barefoot in the grass of our backyard. The thing that struck me about the wedding, and ours as well, was how well everybody got along. It only confirmed what I already knew, that black folks and white people weren't that different from each other. That there was a lot of common ground for those who cared to get to know people of the opposite race. That basically, we were all fighting the same battles. And that we working class people had far more in common with each other regardless of race than we did with the extremely well to do of our own race.