Love Potion #9

Maggie welcomed the toddler onto her lap and whispered to him a little bit, smiling. ("Ready for some yummies?" I thought I heard her say.) Then she took hold of one of her big breasts, aimed the nipple at his mouth, and pulled him close. He quickly gobbled up the entire nipple and areola and started nursing enthusiastically. Maggie leaned back into the chair and tilted against the headrest, still cradling the toddler. She closed her eyes blissfully as she breastfed.

"Your turn!" Shirley was standing in front of Molly now, holding another baby. It was fussing.

Molly turned to me. "It's OK, right? This won't bother you?"

I shook my head, although I wasn't completely sure about how I'd really feel.

Molly was wearing a full-length pleated dress, very pretty. She casually pulled a couple of the pleats apart on the front and revealed a bra cup. (I probably should not have been surprised by the secret openings.) Within a couple of seconds, she'd unclipped the cup and pulled it down off her breast. (These were called "nursing bras," Molly had explained. They were usually handmade by someone in town by the name of Mavis Beale.)

I stared at Molly's nipple; it was swollen, ripe. Her large areola looked shiny and puffy, a pink glistening bulge on top of her breast. She glanced at me again, smiling. Then, she took the baby from Shirley and set it in her lap. She cupped her breast while she lifted the baby's head to her chest. Her boob was the perfect size for this—she could easily hold the whole thing in her hand. I watched her tickle the baby's lips with her nipple, wobbling it back and forth. When the infant opened its mouth wide, she pulled it close, and I saw her entire areola slip into its mouth. It started to suckle. Molly was breastfeeding a child.

I just sat there, watching. How did I feel? I wasn't sure, at first. I wasn't going to be jealous of an infant; it wasn't like that at all. This "wet nursing," as it was called, was just something I had to get used to, and I knew that. Molly looked serene as she nursed the infant; her eyes were closed and she looked relaxed, dozy. It was a wholesome, enchanting scene. Molly was a woman feeding a small child. What could be more beautiful than that?

She opened her eyes and looked my direction. "How's it goin'?" she smiled.

"You're beautiful," I told her.

"You're sweet to say that."

"I mean it." I paused for a second, then asked. "So—what does that feel like?" I couldn't help it. I had to ask.

Molly didn't hesitate. "Oh, I dunno. Different, really." She lowered her voice. "Not at all like you. Not the same feelings, and"—she leaned slightly in my direction and spoke even more softly—"it's obviously not sex."

She thought for a second, looking down at the baby suckling at her breast. "It can get pretty intense, not gentle like with you. It does make me feel kind of nice, though. Pleasant. Dreamy, in a way. Tingly. It can be pretty nice." She leaned back. "And, it's good knowing that I'm feeding him, and like, actually feeling the milk flow. That's the best part, really.

"When you first start out, it can really hurt 'cause you don't really know what you're doing and you don't get the latch right. It took me a while to learn how to really do it right. Now, though, with a good latch, it feels kinda tingly and sorta pleasant but it's, like, deep and powerful, too. But also really gratifying, you know?" She giggled softly, in spite of herself. "I'm sure that doesn't make any sense."

I nodded. "It's just kind of amazing to watch. I still can't really believe you can do this."

She grinned and gave me a slight shrug. "It's just part of being a woman," she said.

There was a small ruckus as Maggie, done feeding the toddler, bopped around on the floor, entertaining him by pretending to make a ball disappear behind her back. Her bare boobs, the size of smallish melons, were bouncing as she did that, but far less than I would have expected; they were obviously very firm. I wondered if she had a boyfriend—and, if he was aware of how she used her breasts.

"Ssshh!"—both Molly and Sarah were shushing. They were smiling kindly, but there were sleeping infants around, and it was obvious to me that the girls didn't want to deal with a room full of crying babies rudely awakened from their naps.

"Sorry!" Maggie mouthed. She continued the game but toned it down some. Her boobs bounced around even less.

Meanwhile, the baby in Molly's charge had drifted off to sleep. She called (quietly) to Shirley, who came to collect it. I watched Molly then reach into her little bag and pull out a small washcloth, and started cleaning off her breast; her areola was now a wet, swollen pink crown, and her nipple looked bright red and distended. She finished wiping, but didn't bother covering up. Instead, she took some whitish paste from a small jar and smeared it over her entire nipple and areola.

"Nipple cream," she whispered to me. "Keeps me from getting sore and chafed and stuff." She smiled; she seemed to enjoy being able to share secrets with me.

Meanwhile, Maggie's toddler had decided he was hungry again. They were back in the easy chair, and he was back in her arms, feeding earnestly from one of her melons. Maggie looked tranquil as she fed him.

Molly and I talked quietly for a few more minutes before Shirley arrived again with another infant. Seeming to work on autopilot, Molly pulled pleats apart on the side of her dress to uncover the other bra cup. She did quick work on the clasp above the cup, and bared her breast. Her nipple looked hard and ready, and her areola was swollen and puffy and had its usual light sheen.

Shirley leaned down to put the baby into Molly's arms. Molly deftly positioned the baby so that it lay with its mouth in front of her nipple. Within a few seconds, she'd gotten the baby to latch on and was breastfeeding again. It was an enchanting sight; it didn't matter that I'd already seen her do this. It was the display of feminine power that captivated me, the amazing thing she could do so casually with her body. For her, it was just another day at the office. For me, it like witnessing a miraculous phenomenon. The thought kept zinging through my head: she'd never had a baby, never been pregnant, and yet she was sitting there quietly feeding a child with her breast.

This is the main thing breasts were actually for: it was clear to me right then. Whether or not a woman has a baby of her own, her breasts can make food, if she wants them to. Watching these girls use their bodies like this was a revelation. Breasts were not simply a sign of womanhood, not just feminine decoration, not just provocative curves, not just sensitive sex organs. Breasts could do something significant and important—and there was no need to wait for motherhood to use them.

Being able to feed a human being from your own body is a remarkably powerful thing, isn't it? I'd never stopped to think about it before, much, but now that it was on display all around the room, I was brimming with wonder. It was one thing for Molly to give her milk to me—that was a super-intimate, sexual thing shared between us, two adults. But to provide food to a helpless child, that was amazing in an entirely different way.

There was only one general store in all of Watley, and it didn't sell infant formula. Breastmilk was the only source of food available to an infant. Its own mother would probably make enough to feed it, sure, but by having so many of the women share in the effort, they ensured that the baby would thrive and be healthy. And if something unfortunate happened to a mother and she couldn't breastfeed, well, no problem. The town had plenty of other women already feeding it—many of them teenagers.

I once read in a textbook that "the female is the species," and the meaning was clear: females are genetically complete, unlike us males, and they have the power to create life. But things go a lot further than that.

Females have so many abilities and strengths we males do not: they live physically healthier lives, they live years and years longer, they fight off disease and infection much more readily, they can handle pain and endure extreme conditions far better than any male, they have better senses of smell and taste and touch and hearing, they can see far more colors and have much better peripheral vision. Women can think and do several things at once (also unlike men)—and yeah, they have profound sexual sensitivity and can have nearly infinite strings of enormous orgasms. They're proud owners of the only human organ solely dedicated to sexual pleasure (the astonishingly powerful clitoris).

Females are even naturally better singers than us males, something that always hit close to home for me. Molly has always doubted that this is true—but it is true, Molls. Science says women naturally hear and sing with correct pitch much better than men, and I've found it true in my own experience. When I was learning to sing in high school, I had to work my ass off to stay in key, while for the girls, it came easily. A female singer can accurately glide through whole scales of notes, and it's difficult for a man to even come close to that. We don't think about this when men sing because our ears are just used to the idea that guys just can't do what girls do. Compare your typical male singer with the likes of Amy Winehouse or Beyonce.

Fact is, women naturally outshine men in nearly every way, with the lone exception of upper body muscle strength. And, women don't tend to be jerks about these sex-based disparities. But what most impressed me right at that moment was their ability to make wonderful food inside their bodies, and feed it to others with their nipples. Super-beings.

Credit to the men of Watley for not being afraid to acknowledge the power of women. From their point of view, this was just God's will, God's reality. It rubbed off on me. It's not that I didn't admire women before I came back to Watley, but the vibe there freed me to embrace my reverence for the opposite sex. It just turned out that there was more about them to respect than I'd ever realized.

I sat there staring at her; everything about Molly was amazing.

A woman entered the room right around then. She waved a quiet "hi" to the wet nurses, and waved to me, too. Pointing to herself, she mouthed, "I'm Eliza."

I did the same in return: "Rob."

Shirley trotted over to her and said, "Hi Mom."

Eliza was maybe 30 or so, a pretty, willowy woman with light brown hair. She was, like so many others in town, slender but quite busty. (Like I said, there had to be something in the water.) She and Shirley were quietly talking for a minute, and then Eliza walked over to Molly and whispered something in her ear. Eliza looked my direction and smiled warmly.

While Eliza and Shirley disappeared through a back door into a small adjacent room, Molly leaned toward me and said, "Shirley's gonna try dry nursing."

"Oh, OK."

The girl did look like her boobs had really started growing. So, today was the day she would start using them for their intended purpose. It was kind of fascinating to imagine: here was a young girl who was about to put a baby to her still-developing breast. Girls, they jumped straight from childhood to adulthood, right? It was amazing to think that a girl of not even 12 years would do something as grown up as nursing a child, even if just a dry run. But Shirley was literally about to do that. She was going right from tender youth to womanhood. The boys her age still played with toy cars; they would not be men for a long time still.

Molly continued, "She's embarrassed to do it in front of you, though." There was an empathetic look on her face, as though she was afraid I'd be hurt by that. "She doesn't have nursing dresses or bras or anything, so she's gonna have to pull down the top of her dress. You know."

"It's no problem," I whispered back. "I should really go anyway. And yeah, I get it." I got up. "See you soon?"

"I'll send you a note," she smiled. It was a secretive sort of smile, as if we were colluding together on something, our own private conspiracy.

I thought about giving her a kiss goodbye, but thought better of it. Not really appropriate here. I gave her a look that said as much.

On the way out, I was thinking that I would never look at Sarah, Maggie, or even Molly the same way ever again—or any other girl in town, for that matter. Sarah and Maggie, I had seen them half-naked, so the large swells in their blouses were no longer big secrets. I had seen them use their bare breasts for their true purpose. That changed the way I viewed those girls—and all Watley girls. They were much more than met the eye.

And Molly, yeah, I'd seen her bare breasts before, but watching her use them with children had been a revelation. I had known what I was going to witness, but seeing it firsthand had still been a preternatural, emotionally moving experience. It felt like I had been let in on something veiled, secretive, exciting. I'd discovered what amazing creatures women actually were. I was truly in awe.

---

Sure enough, the next afternoon, I got a note. It was secured under my windshield wiper while my car was in the parking lot at work. This was a mystery in itself: my job was miles away from Watley, and Molly didn't drive. How did she get a note all the way out there?

Rob,

Molly's dad is out of town until Saturday.

She wants to cook for you.

Come over to her house at 5.

It wasn't signed. It was in a girl's ornate handwriting, but not Molly's. It was definitely Molly's message, though.

---

Molly's house looked downright eerie in the twilight. It had been a windy day—choking hot persistent gusts—and still, now in the early evening, you could hear it howling in the distance. Her house had the appearance of a small Victorian mansion; it was maybe a century or so old, well-maintained enough that that it didn't look dilapidated, but aged enough that you might have convinced me it was haunted.

The porch creaked a little as I walked up the steps to the front door. I grabbed the ring of the tarnished old brass door knocker and rapped, clack clack clack.

I heard a distant voice call, "Come in, babe!" I turned the old-fashioned jewel knob, and the door squeaked open.

The front room, which Molly told me later was "the parlor," was empty. I half expected the house to smell musty, but it didn't. The parlor was lined with bookshelves, most of them packed with books, and it was lit by a lone, spooky lamp sitting on a small table. Next to the lamp, I saw a note.

Come find me in my room.

Down main hall, door on second left.

Love potion now. Supper later.

-kisses, M

I walked down the hall, slowly, as if I might suddenly encounter her dad, even though I knew he was out of town. Or maybe I would meet a ghost.

The second door on the left was mostly closed; I pushed it open, slowly. And there she was.

At the far end of her bedroom, Molly stood as if in a pose, as if she'd put herself on display. She had on only a floaty, sheer gown, completely see-through in the dim, flickering light. For the first time, I could see the entire form of her naked body. I took in a sharp breath. Her silhouette showed her to be thin but with swells, wiry but womanly; she was beautiful. After a moment, I realized that I had stopped breathing.

The light in the room came from candles; it seemed very romantic. I could feel a light draft, and I could hear wind faintly blowing in the walls. Between that, the light scents of candle wax and lavender and clove in the air, and the twinkling candlelight, the room had a mystical quality. It was as though I was in the presence of a witch who was revealing her secret powers to me.

She turned her head, looking my direction, and gave me a wicked smile.

I walked right up to her and took her in my arms. I couldn't help it; I was under her spell. I wanted her body pressed against mine. We kissed, and I savored the sensation and taste of Molly's tongue; it slipped through the tight passage our lips were forming and into my mouth, as my own tongue slid into hers. Our tongues danced as if sensuously choreographed. It felt as carnal as if she was touching my penis.

I kissed her as long, hard, as expressively as I possibly could.

Then, she whispered to my face. "I have to tell you another thing, something else about Watley."

I nodded.

She spoke softly, tenderly. "You've already seen what I look like between my legs. So, the thing is, I have to tell you—" And she stopped for a second and looked into my eyes, as if ready to gauge my reaction. "I don't shave at all. I don't even have a razor. I, uh—I hope that's OK with you."

Molly backed away from me and posed again for a moment, arms slightly apart. Under her gown, I could see now that there was hair under her arms, small patches of light-colored armpit hair. I looked down below the hem of her gown, and I could see darker hair running along her shins; it actually looked kind of nice on her.

I couldn't put my finger on why, exactly, but her body hair didn't bother me. I shrugged at her. "I like you, a lot. I really don't care about your relationship with razors. You're still beautiful. It's kinda hot, really, because"—I stopped to think for a second—"the hair doesn't change how pretty you are. It doesn't take away from it at all. And, so, that just makes you even hotter, if that makes any sense."

Molly was visibly blushing. "It's not just me, though—just so you know. It's all of Watley. Women here don't shave. Not that I miss doing it or anything! But it's another sort of religious thing. We don't shave our bodies. We—they say women are perfect in our natural state, and that it would be a sin for us to mess with God's perfection. Razors are for men, not for us."

I looked Molly in the eyes. "I guess I agree. You're perfect, and I don't really care about body hair anyway. I've, uh, seen it before back in Seattle and I guess it never bothered me, then, either. Like I said, it can be kind of hot, especially if the girl is hot. Like you."

She was still speaking quietly: "I was afraid you were gonna try to get me to shave. And I can't do it. Girls would notice."

She kissed me. Then, she stood back and tugged on a lacy string behind her neck, and the whole gown dropped to the floor. She was stark naked.

I stood there looking at her. I took a slow breath. "Wow," I said. "I'm kinda speechless. Fuck, you're hot."

She looked at me with that knowing smile. "Well, hurry up and get your clothes off so you can take advantage of me."

I quickly stripped naked. Molly took off her horn-rimmed glasses and set them on her night table. We fell into her bed together, kissing, tongues dancing in each other's mouths; her body felt warm and soft against mine. Her hand went straight for my stiff cock, gliding up and down on it, exploring. Meanwhile, my hands were all over her body, caressing the hair and the softness. Her sheets felt nice, too.

"Here," she whispered, "have some of me. Scoot down."

I scooted, and found her hand cupping a round breast, holding it for me. Her naked body smelled fresh and sweet and alluring. I snuggled in and pressed against her, stretched my mouth around her puffed-up areola, latched on, and suckled. Milk flowed, sweet and satisfying. I was having dessert before supper, but I didn't care at all. Her body was filling mine.

We didn't get to the point where we would normally switch breasts. Molly had started moaning, telling me how good I felt, how good it felt for her to feed me. Then, she pushed me away and sat up.

"I can't take it anymore," she said. She was gasping a little. "I have to join bodies with you. Right now." She eyed my huge, rock-hard cock, and pointed a finger at it. "You scare me a little, I won't lie." She looked back up at me, looking wanton. "But I need you inside me. I need us to join our bodies."