Mulligatawny Soup

"Jim, can we sit down and talk about this?" She had a real look of concern in her face.

"Yeah," I answered and took a deep breath. We retrieved our wine glasses from the dining room table and took them to the couch in the den. My heart was racing.

She sat down next to me, with one leg up facing me.

"Jim, I'm not sure exactly what it is that upset you, but I do know that it's about money. I can't help it that I have money. It's not all from Bill. I inherited some from my family too. I don't believe that you are trying to cash in on it. In fact it appears to be quite the opposite. If I had the slightest inkling that you were simply after my money then our fledgling relationship would have come to an abrupt end. I don't believe that you are simply after my money. What is it Jim? What's bothering you?"

I had to claw through raging emotions to try to rationalize my thoughts and form them into coherent words. "I'm sorry Julie. I know it's me. I'm just insecure. I'm intimidated and I'm just plain afraid."

"Afraid of what honey?"

"I'm afraid of just being something that can be bought. And then thrown away."

"No." She reached out to put her arm behind my neck.

"I'm afraid of just being an object."

"You're not."

"Of being used."

"I'm not trying to use you."

"I'm afraid of living the kind of life that you did Julie, being a trophy, something that just tags along or gets tossed into the corner."

"No."

"And I'm afraid of losing you."

"Don't say that," she pulled me to herself cuddling me like a child, stroking my face. "Don't say that."

I pulled myself away and took a deep breath.

"Jim, please listen to me. We've known each other for years. You have always been a kind, gentle man. You have a big heart brimming with love and affection. That's what I want to cash in on. And I know that's not something that I can buy with money. You've treated me so kindly. You've made me so happy. I don't want to ruin that. You are making me discover things about myself that I never knew. You will never be an object to me."

I took a sip of my wine.

"Jim, why can't you allow me to show kindness to you?"

"You have."

"How?"

"Just by being yourself."

"Did it occur to you Jim that perhaps I would like to do something for you?" She was getting angry.

"You've done lots."

"Like what, fuck you in the pool? Allow you to eat my pussy? Allow you to make dinner for me? Twice. Babysit my dog? Allow me to cry on your shoulder? Jim it seems to me that it's all been a one way street. If anything, I'm the one using you."

I was shocked by what she said. "You're not using me."

She sat herself straight on the couch and faced the fire. "Shit," she said to herself.

"Jim, I allowed myself to get caught up in a whirlwind of affection. Your affection. I didn't realize that I was being selfish."

"What?"

"I'm confused Jim. I really am. You've forced me to look at my life, to really look at it. You've opened up a way for me to break free of my own trappings. With you I'm the happiest I've ever been in years and years. You've done everything for me. And I've done nothing in return..."

"That's not true."

"And yet, when I try to do something in return, you get upset."

I turned on the couch to face her and put my arm on her shoulder. "Julie don't you get it? Can't you see what you are doing to me? Just seeing you smile brings joy to my heart." I brushed her cheek softly. A tiny smile appeared. "I can't do enough for you."

She placed her hand in mine. "Jim, I..."

"Julie, I don't need anything else."

"Jim, I..."

"Julie, please. You said you're confused. So please let me clear this up. Everything that I've done, I've done because truly I am falling head over heels for you. But please consider my feelings for a moment. Put yourself in my shoes. How should I react if you said, 'thanks for dinner, here's fifty bucks for your trouble,' or, 'thanks for the ride in the hot tub, here's a hundred bucks.'"

Julie's eyes were wide open.

"Or, 'gee Jim you were so kind to me, let me buy you a cruise.'"

"I didn't mean..."

"I know you didn't mean to convey that message," I cut her off again. "I know that. I know you were just being generous. I know that."

"I'm sorry Jim."

"It's okay. And I don't have a problem having you do things for me, or us doing things together. You don't have a kitchen; you've had stuff to do. Bingo, I'm cooking dinner."

Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Jim I'm so sorry."

"Stop saying sorry and just kiss me." Julie practically pounced on me. She pushed her lips hard against mine and mashed from side to side while she held my face in her hands. Suddenly she stopped and sat back down.

"Jim, I have money. It's something that you're going to have to get used to."

"Trust me Julie, I'll be fine with that."

"Can we go on a cruise?"

"Only if I'm paying my way."

"Okay."

"Great!" She pounced on me again and mashed her lips from side to side. Again she stopped and sat back down.

"Can we take this somewhere else?" she asked coyly.

"Ah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that."

"About what?"

"I really wanted to sleep with you last night. Sleep, sleep. And I'm okay with the fact that you didn't want to. I'm hoping that we will soon. But I know that if I take you upstairs to my bed, Cora's presence is just going to freak me out. I mean, some of her clothes are still in the closet."

"Oh."

"And in your bed, I don't know. I'd just feel that Bill's ghost will be looking down at me. I find it a bit creepy."

"I see what you mean about your room. But I can assure you that Bill's ghost is not hovering around in my bedroom or in my house. Although it's physically the same bedroom we had, I've changed all of the furniture. It's not even the same mattress. Except for two or three areas in the house, everything has been repainted and redecorated. Having the kitchen redone is one of the last. Believe me there's no ghost of Bill there."

"Really?"

"Like everything else, all the furniture was what Bill wanted. I hated the stuff. Big bulky brown leather couches. Yuk. I hated it."

"We're on a brown leather couch now."

"That's different, this is your house."

"I loved your leather furniture."

"I hated it. I got rid of it all."

"What did you get instead?"

She stood up and pulled my hand, "Well you're just going to have to come and see." I stood up. "Because you're sleeping in my bed tonight. Besides I wanted you to see how the kitchen is coming along."

I could feel my cock stirring as she led me through the hall.

Before we took off next door, Julie and I cleaned up the remainder of the dinner dishes. I packed a toothbrush into my jacket pocket. We let the dogs out. Gomez guarded the house that night. Lulu came with us.

"Wow, it is different," I said as I stepped into Julie's house. I'd not really been inside since Bill died. "It's all...feminine," my head swept side to side as I tried to take it all in.

"No ghost." She said as she pulled me towards the kitchen. "Come see what they're doing."

The kitchen was completely gone. Plastic tarp had isolated that room from the rest. But nevertheless, dust had been tracked out of the area. The dining room and the hall next to it was stacked with plates, boxes of food, blenders, you name it. Drywall and boxes of cabinets completely filled the front entrance and hall. I could see that the electrician and the plumber had been busy. A new tile floor had been laid but not grouted. There were no cabinets, appliances or counters installed. They'll be finished in two days? No way. The drywall wasn't even up.

Julie's reaction was kind of mixed between excited and worried.

I turned to her. "Julie, the good news is that I went shopping today. I'm going to get to cook for you for a week." She glared at me but said nothing.

"Come on, let's go," she said and led me by the hand through the house. Indeed, everywhere I saw in the house was different. I saw what she had been doing for the last four years. She had completely redecorated the whole place. I didn't recognize anything except for the shapes of the rooms. Everything was feminine, lady like. Pinkish.

It was horrible.

The bar downstairs hadn't changed, but the walls had been painted. Gone was the golf theme, in was the...I don't know what it was, Matisse? There was a repro of Degas' Absinthe Drinker. Everything was kind of mauve. A bit flowery. Even the wood of the bar itself had been bleached and stained.

"Do you like what I've done?" she asked with a bit of anticipation in her face.

"Julie, you said that your paintings had become dark. This is anything but dark. Maybe the woman in the Degas painting is a little gloomy, but this is hardly dark. I feel like I'm in a French restaurant."

She was beaming. I was glad I handled that tactfully.

"What can I pour you before we....before I show you the rest of the house?"

There she stood. I'm sure completely unaware that her mascara had dribbled down her cheeks and dried, trying to be the perfect hostess, polite, ladylike. Enveloped in the new world she had created for herself. This was how she dealt with the grief of losing her husband. She completely redid her environment. No wonder she said she didn't want to move. She'd built a new persona for herself in the house. But it only extended as far as the exterior walls. Outside she was still Mrs. Bill Cavanaugh the grieving widow. Outside she was lost without her make-up on.

"Martini?" I asked.

She smirked. "Gin or vodka?"

"Gin."

Her smirk grew.

She was stuck in this house. Afraid to go out, afraid to face the outside world. Outside she put on a brave face. She had to show that she was strong and independent. In here, in her self-made cocoon she was safe, morphed into her new self. With a bedroom drawer full of sex toys and a head full of repressed desires, she was doing okay, as long as she stayed within the confines of this house. I recognized that when I asked for the old Julie to come for lunch, what I in fact got was the new Julie. Extended on a thin tether from inside this house. On her own she couldn't figure out how to escape the mental cage she built for herself. I came along and shook that cage. The frustrated, lonely, scared bird was given an opportunity to fly.

She was very brave letting me into her nest.

She plopped an olive into the glass and slid the martini down the bar counter.

"Thanks," I said. I knew what I had to do. What I needed to do.

I had to let her fly.

And I knew how to do it, or at least how to start. I had to extend the real world into this house. I was the tether from the outside. I had to go into her inner sanctum, her bedroom and do exactly what she had expressly asked for. To make her cum until she couldn't cum anymore. I needed to bridge that gap between reality and fantasy. An outsider, me, had to open up a conduit into her pink cocoon.

"You haven't shown me your bedroom," I said, or rather asked, nonchalantly.

She smirked at me, "We can take our martinis upstairs if you wish."

Her bedroom was horrific. White and gold Rococo style. It was definitely not Bill. If anything I'd have expected Louis XVI's ghost to step out from the closet. Gold filigree moldings decorated the walls and doors. It was a riot of gold shells, rosettes, and foliage adorning the walls and furniture. Cherubs too. There was a plush white carpet throughout. The bed was king size, four poster, in the same white and gold style. By the window was a chaise longue.

I could picture Julie lying on it naked like Edouard Manet's Olympia, masturbating, lost in her pornographic fantasy world.

Had Cora suggested that our bedroom be decorated like that, I would have nixed the idea too. Julie had expunged Bill from this house with the vigor of an inquisition exorcist. The whole house was a talisman against Bill.

"Do you like it?" she asked holding her martini. She had a very unsure look in her face. I could sense that my answer was critically important to her.

"It's very elegant Julie. There's definitely no Bill in here."

Apparently I said exactly the right thing. Her smile radiated and filled the room, my heart too.

The en-suite was more of the same, ornate gold fittings on elaborate white china fixtures. The mirror was huge with an intricately carved, gold frame. She must have paid thousands for this washroom. Just the mirror itself.

"Wow," I said as I stepped back into the bedroom. Julie sat on the chaise lounge holding her martini.

"Julie, can I ask you to do something?"

"Sure, what is it?"

"Can I get you, to go in there," I pointed to the en-suite, "have a shower and get all that make-up off. I want to see the real Julie on this bed. Naked."

She didn't need to answer. The huge grin on her face said it all. She stood up, put her martini glass on the bedside table, took off her necklace and placed it onto the elaborate dressing table and then stepped into the en-suite.

I watched Julie as she disrobed. Her beautiful boobs swayed below her as she pulled off her jeans. She definitely didn't have a bra or panties on. She smiled at me as she stepped into the shower unit.

I took my clothes off and stacked them neatly on the carpeted floor next to the chaise lounge. Lulu definitely wasn't allowed in this room. I heard the shower turn off.

"That's better," she said and grinned as I stepped into the en-suite doorway. She was drying herself off with a large fluffy white towel keeping an eye on my penis the whole time.

"Where are your sex toys?" I asked. She immediately froze. Paused for a moment, then resumed toweling herself dry.

"In the drawer under my martini glass."

It was no more than four feet away. I opened the drawer. It wasn't a huge collection and there weren't any cufflinks or whips or anything like that. Of course there wouldn't be, it was for solo play. There were a number of vibrators and a rubber penis. Some of the vibrators were quite small. There was a pair of nipple clamps, a pink butt plug and several different lubes and lotions.

"Which one's your favorite?" I called to her.

"The rabbit."

Rabbit? What the hell's a rabbit? "Which one is that?"

"The purple one."

I picked it up. It was sleek, smooth. It had a little auxiliary stub from it that, I rationalized, stimulated the clitoris. If it vibrated, I couldn't figure out how to turn it on, or how to put the batteries in.

"This is your favorite?" I called to her.

"Absolutely." She appeared through the doorway. Naked. Her damp blonde hair flipped to her back. She had no make-up on at all. She was gorgeous.

"Look at you," I said, "you're beautiful." I know I grinned. I stepped up to her, still holding the rabbit, lifted her chin with my left and planted a kiss on her lips.

"I definitely like you without make-up," I whispered into her ear. She smiled in response. There was no nervousness in her expression.

She took the purple rabbit from me. "It's called a rabbit because of these, they're ears." She flicked two plastic flaps that extended off the clit stimulator part.

"Does it vibrate?"

Somehow she turned it on."Whoa!" Not only did it vibrate, but the whole end twisted around. The ears where a blur of motion. No wonder she loved this thing. This was going to be so much fun. "Okay, turn it off," I said. She handed it back to me, off. I flipped it onto the bed.

"Grab your martini, come sit on the lounge. I have a plan."

We snuggled on the lounge chair with an arm around each other, the other holding our martinis. My cock stiffened up. She couldn't peel her eyes off of it.

I considered my words carefully.

"I'm going to tie you up to your bed." I paused to let it sink in.

"Then I'm going to eat your pussy." I paused. She kept her eyes on my cock.

"Then I'm going to fuck you with your rabbit until you can't come anymore." I paused.

"Then I'm I going to fuck you with my cock. Hard. And cum inside you." I paused again.

"And then I'm going to clean my cum out from inside your pussy and feed it into your mouth."

Her breath had deepened and her hand trembled a bit as she tried to take a sip from her martini glass. Her gaze never left my cock.

"How does that sound?"

She blushed and nodded her head.

"Good. I need something to tie you up with. Do you have any scarves?"

She bolted up and headed for one of the ornate doors, her steps diverted slightly to quickly place her glass on the other bedside table. I followed her. It wasn't a closet; it was a whole new room, all carefully laid out and organized with clothing on all walls. From a table in the middle of the room she pulled out a drawer full of scarves. She selected four and handed them to me.

"Let's put a towel on the bed first," she said. She was a woman on a mission.

The rabbit joined her martini glass on the side table. She lay a large fluffy white towel on the bed and lay down on top. I pulled her up, removed the towel, placed a pillow across the bed and then put the towel across. Julie lay on the bed with the pillow under her hips, pussy wide open. I secured each of the scarves to her wrists and ankle, giving them a double knot.

"Too tight?" I asked. Her wrists and ankles could rotate, just slightly.

"No."

My stiff cock bobbed up and down as I made my way around the bed securing the scarves to the bed posts. Julie's was spread eagled, her face flushed. Her chest rose up and down with every breath. Her tit's flattened from their own weight. As I sucked her left nipple into my mouth I could feel her heart beating rapidly. My fingers found her warm soft pussy. She was wet already. I sucked her other nipple. The areolas crinkled up.

From her drawer I pulled out the nipple clamps. I dangled them in front of her eyes. "Do you want these?"

She blinked a few times."Yes." she hissed.

I gave her nipples a little more suckle before I clamped them on. They were already adjusted for a tight fit. Julie's face reddened. There was bit of a grimace on her lips. Her brown eyes dark.

I knelt down on the bed and extended one leg across Julie. I pushed my erection down to her mouth. Her tongue immediately found it and started to swirl around the head. I picked up the rabbit in the other hand, trying to maintain my balance. It had two buttons on the handle, barely perceptible. It took me only a few moments to figure out how it worked. Different speeds. Cool. Julie's tongue never let up. I put the rabbit down and shifted off the bed.

I could see she was hungry for my cock.

I knelt down between her legs. Before my mouth got anywhere near her pussy I could see the glistening between her legs. I could smell her arousal. I was drooling. From her knees upwards I licked between her thighs, slowing inching upwards. Her pussy was beckoning me, I had to use all of my willpower to slow down the advance. Her aroma was driving me wild. I needed to taste. I licked her outer labia, teasing the soft hairs with my tongue. Julie's chest was heaving up and down. Her entire upper body pink.

I gently licked her inner lips up and down. My tongue found her opening. I teased it with my tongue and was finally rewarded with a taste of her juices. With my thumbs I parted her lips. Her clit slipped out from under its hood. I touched it lightly with the tip of my tongue. Her hips jerked in reaction. Up and down her soft pink core, I lapped at her pussy, occasionally touching her clit. Each time her hips jerked in reaction. Julie's head rolled from side to side. Her hands clenched around the scarves tied to her wrists.

I buried my tongue in her hole as deep as I could extend my tongue. My nose pressed against her clit and her hips shook. I flitted my tongue to her bumhole, my nose pressed into her pussy. She shook, her thighs trembled.