Paths Straight and Twisted Pt. 02

Each part of this story has quite distinctive erotic characteristics. While the chapters can be read and, hopefully, enjoyed in isolation, they were written to form an evolving and complex whole. I hope you will take the time to read them as intended.

I await, as always with thanks, your comments and evaluation.

With Regards, Benultimo.

***

In the following parts of this story, I will often not tell the plain truth. This is not because I wish to hide or prettify what really occurred. It is because in remembering and writing down, I suddenly knew and understood more. My insight into what happened and what I was doing then was limited; foremost by what I then was, knew and wished for. The 20/20 vision of hindsight alters the lived reality of the past. Any retelling becomes, thereby, a story that is, if not a lie, partly fiction.

As such, it often reveals truths that otherwise would have remained hidden or ignored.

My relationship with Helga had ended. It had been, for me, rich in experience and meaning. Inge still wrote regularly, but her letters were vague on why her coming to join me was so delayed. Nevertheless, I hoped that she would come within a few months.

I had settled into my Public-Service-job, was saving some money and intended to study for my Leaving Certificate. After my so temptingly dangerous relationship with Helga, I did not want to get involved with any more women. To avoid meeting any, I stopped going to the Continental clubs in St. Kilda. I was earnestly committed to keeping faith in waiting for Inge.

When Josef and his younger brother Walter - who had followed us to Australia a year earlier - went to the German club one Saturday, I came only reluctantly along. As usual, it was crowded.

On a table, across the dance floor from us, was a party of eight: Six young men who were obviously friends, and two attractive young women. The latter somehow did not appear to belong to their circle. The boys seemed to have no interest in dancing with them. Their conversation with the girls, polite and in German, appeared to be forced.

The smaller and, I thought, more animated one of the women caught me looking across. She lowered her eyes for a second before she gave me an encouraging smile. Josef noticed. As usual, he saw an opening for himself. He egged me on to ask the girl for the next dance. As his wingman, I went across and made my bow. She rose, we danced.

She was charming, well dressed, feather-light on her feet, and immediately friendly when she heard my Austrian accent. In her voice, I detected the Viennese. Her name was Ingeborg. We happily chatted on after the music stopped, not going back to our respective tables while we waited for the next dance. I learned that she and her friend had been in Australia for six months, that they shared a flat in St.Kilda. Regarding tonight, two of the boys at their table were very, very distant relatives of her friend. With a laugh, she admitted that the boys had been pressured to take them out: -

"The boys are very religious, they belong to a sort of sect. I don't think they want to dance with us."

I returned to my table. Josef now felt secure enough to ask Ingeborg for a dance. It was the first of many. After the second he came back and told me that she had asked him to let me know that her friend, Gertrud, was getting very bored just sitting with the boys. I had to take the hint.

Gertrud was, compared to her friend, somewhat reserved. However, she was attractive, felt relaxed in my arms and happy enough to have me as a stand-in partner. At the end of the night, the boys that had brought the girls to the dance left without them. It was us, therefore, that accompanied our new acquaintances home. Josef secured a date with Ingeborg, and I politely said Good Night to Gertrud in honour of my pledge.

Not knowing Ingeborg at this stage, I had no suspicion of her talent as a Go-Between nor, in general, of the wiles of women conspiring in cahoots. Ingeborg had, as I would learn later, firm ideas about what Gertrud needed. Although Ingeborg was five years younger than her, Gertrud listened.

Through Josef, both women knew that I was expecting my long-term girlfriend from home and that she would come soon. I learned - again because Ingeborg had told Josef - that Gertrud was engaged.

On her journey to Australia, Gertrud started a shipboard romance with a young, Danish civil engineer. Unlike her, he was not an assisted migrant but came under contract to work for a mining company. They had a few weeks together in Melbourne and got engaged. Then he had to leave for his assigned job in an outback Queensland mine.

In those days no Fly-In-Fly-Out arrangements existed for Australia's workers in outback mines. Gertrud and her fiancé could, therefore, only be with each other three or four times a year, unless...? Ingeborg dismissed the idea that Gertrud would want to become an outback-bride out-of-hand.

In this scenario, Ingeborg decided to play the devil's advocate. As I found out later, Gertrud and I were pawns in a game she enjoyed playing.

Josef and Ingeborg had dated a few times, and their relationship was close to becoming closer. He had just bought his first new car and planned to take Ingeborg for a 'dirty' weekend to a lodge in the snow. Ingeborg managed to sweet-talk him out of it. Instead of the seduction weekend, it became a day on the mountain for the four of us. Over the long drive and the fourteen or so hours we were together, I got to know both girls quite well.

They had met and become friends on the boat journey to Australia. Ingeborg was nineteen and Austrian, Gertrud was twenty-four and was German. Both were, besides being very attractive, remarkable young women. Although recent arrivals, they had managed to secure for themselves excellent jobs. Gertrud was the personal secretary of one of the managers of one of Australia's largest company. Ingeborg worked as a tailoress in one of Melbourne's top fashion houses. I was impressed, perhaps even a bit awed, especially by Gertrud.

Her English was, not only to my foreign ears perfect. Gertrud spoke the Queen's English and not the colonial version I was beginning to acquire. She had completed a commercial apprenticeship in Germany and then, at only seventeen, had gone to England. At first, Gertrud worked as an au pair and studied at night. Then she worked for another three years in clerical jobs, while she completed her Pitman's Shorthand qualifications as well as the Cambridge Entrance certification in English. Returning to Germany at twenty-one, she worked for an export-company handling their English correspondence.

About her own background and why she had come to Australia, I learned at that time little. She just gleefully told me how she got her job. Going through the job advertisements in the Age, she decided to test the waters by applying for a job she really did not think she could get. All she expected to get was, perhaps, a job in a typing-pool. In ringing the company, it was probably her English accent that secured an appointment. But she impressed. The Manager of Shipping she now worked for, offered her immediately the job as his personal secretary.

The day we spent together went well. Gertrud's initial reserve changed into a relaxed friendliness, but no more. We did not flirt. On the long journey back to Melbourne, some of it in darkness, I kept my distance. In the intimate closeness of the backseat of Josef's' car, I was avoiding anything that could have suggested a sexual advance. While I was attracted by Gertrud, I was also overawed by her class and achievements. This probably stopped me from becoming too interested in her.

On arriving back in Melbourne, Ingeborg and Gertrud invited Josef and me for dinner next Saturday. Of course, we accepted.

During the week the plot thickened. Josef had a date with Ingeborg on Wednesday. As he was going to work late on Saturday, Josef invited Inge for a gala dinner in the City hotel where he was headwaiter. Ingeborg being Ingeborg must have known that he planned to take her home with him after work. It certainly was what he intended.

When Josef told me what they had arranged, I waited for someone to let me know that the dinner invitation was off. As nobody contacted me, I decided to turn up at the girls' flat at the set time. Not being naïve, I sensed that my pledge could be in peril!

Weeks later, catching Ingeborg on her own, I challenged her about the matter. She grinned mischievously: -

"You see, I would have even sacrificed my virginity to bring Gertrud and you together."

Then with a giggle:

"Thank heaven, it was no longer necessary."

The women's rooms were in one of the 19th Century terraces directly opposite Luna Park, situated on the ground floor. The front room was larger than Helga's had been, similarly furnished, and again with a Kookaburra gas-stove in one corner. The bedroom in the back, which I saw later in the night, was smaller.

Overall, theirs was a well-maintained rooming-house, in which four parties shared two bathrooms. Both Gertrud and Ingeborg were well-paid and could have easily afforded the rent of a modern flat elsewhere. However, none of them offered the nearby beach's attraction and the ambience of continental St. Kilda. As it happened, Josef and I lived conveniently just a three minutes' walk away.

I had turned up with a bottle of wine, and Gertrud greeted me in the Australian way with a kiss on the cheek. We had not kissed before, and, our dancing with each other aside, had never touched. Both of us felt somewhat awkward, and momentarily did not know what to say.

We both knew that our meeting tonight was no harmless coincidence. Gertrud had obviously decided to meet me on my own. She had, therefore, not cancelled the invitation. Instead of meeting each other again in the company of others, we would be discreetly and intimately alone. I sensed that we were likely to finish up having sex before the night was out.

The meal provided a measure of relief for our shared tensions. Gertrud had prepared a nice spread of delicatessen and apologised for Ingeborg's absence. Ingeborg was, Gertrud claimed, a much better cook than her. I uncorked the wine. Being somewhat forward, I assured her that I was not too disappointed to miss out on Ingeborg's cooking. It brought a smile to Gertrud's face.

We sat down for a deliberately leisurely meal, talked about this and that, but not about what was foremost on our minds. When the meal was over, Gertrud got up to clear the dining table. We had been sitting on chairs and not on the large sofa along the broad side of the table.

I saw my chance to make the first move into intimacy. While Gertrud put away the dishes and her back was turned, I sat down on the sofa and shifted the wine glasses and bottle within reach. When Gertrud saw what I had done, she seemed to give a knowing smile. Then, she joined me on the sofa, and I put my arm over her shoulder. There was no hesitation; Gertrud turned towards me and offered her lips.

We kissed for a while, almost shyly as if ours was the beginning of a love story. But we were, of course, not love-struck innocents. While I would have quite liked the idea of playfully seducing Gertrud, I soon changed my mind.

Gertrud reacted to the gentle urging of my lips and the probing of the tongue with, I thought, studied indifference. When I pulled her close, her body did not stiffen in resistance, but neither did it respond. She just offered herself without a sign of flirtatious intent or sexual interest. I had known the warmth and the generosity with which women could respond. With Gertrud, I sensed, there would be none of either.

The problem with and for Gertrud, I believed, was not her 'innocence' nor a natural lethargy. She was a lively, mature and, I presumed, sexually experienced woman. It was her and not me that had initiated our meeting. Therefore, I took her refusal to respond as a studied, arrogant show of indifference that intended to put me in my place.

If this was Gertrud's mood and intent, I had no desire to take it any further. Young as I was, I knew this was a contest no man could win by fucking. Not angry enough to get up and leave, I responded with a matching show of So What. I released Gertrud from the unwanted embrace and moved a few centimetres away from her. Then I reached for the bottle, poured us some wine and started talking about neutral things I no longer remember.

Gertrud, for a long while, said nothing. She made no attempt to move away from me, did not look at me as she took small, nervous sips from her glass. But then she turned to me. Gertrud appeared sad, unable to hide her confusion. Her voice low, struggling to overcome her reluctance, she said: -

"It's alright if you don't want me. Ingeborg had the silly idea that we should make love, have sex; that we would be good for each other."

Her directness surprised me. Unprepared and somewhat embarrassed, I had to be equally direct. Sitting there, without looking at her, I told her that the way she had kissed me and reacted felt wrong. I believed that we would not be right for each other. No apologies are necessary. We were just ill-matched; people often were when it came to sex. She was a beautiful woman I was attracted to. But, I thought now that we would have had poor sex and, as far as I was concerned, bad sex was not worth having.

Gertrud listened. Then, with a grimace, she burst out: -

"Is there any other? Ingeborg thinks so. I don't ... didn't really believe her."

I don't know whether I really wanted to comfort Gertrud. Touching her only lightly, I put an arm around her shoulder. Her body stiffened, but as I did not pull her close, she slowly, very slowly relaxed. Then, as if waking from a dream, she turned fully to me. Hesitating, one hand sought my neck and she drew me into a kiss.

I let Gertrud take the lead; I felt that she and not I had something to prove. Soon, the tip of her tongue started to pass slyly over my lips. I opened them slightly, allowing for invasion. As it did not come, I tested her lips, they opened readily to welcome and greet my gently intruding tongue. When it withdrew, hers followed suddenly into my mouth to start a gentle but very sexy mingle with my tongue.

Gertrud had snuggled up close, and her heaving breath put the lie to what I had assumed. Encouraged, I put a gently cupping hand over one of her breasts. Gertrud's eyes were closed as she pressed onto it. I told her to look at me: -

"I want to touch you, make love to your beautiful breasts, touch you everywhere. But only if you want to be touched. You can always say No, but then I will not touch you again until you ask to be touched."

She smiled and looking down on my hand on her breast said: -

"Yes, touch me! I want you to touch me."

"Where? Tell me where?"

"My breasts. Make love to my breasts!"

"Through all that cloth? Is this how you like to make love?"

The way Gertrud wriggled in my arms and her boob pressed into my hand during this quick exchange showed her rising excitement. But she hesitated a moment over my last question. Eventually, Gertrud leant back and began to unbutton her blouse. Without looking at me, she reached back to unhooked her bra. Her face flushed in either embarrassment or arousal. She rushed into the close embrace of before, stopping me from looking at her boobs.

So, I held her off to look. Gertrud had beautifully shaped breasts with large, pink areolas surrounding her nipples. I bent down to close my mouth over one, kissing it quickly into perky hardness.

On switching from one breast to the other and back again, I heard no "NO". And then, Gertrud's hand began to stroke the back of my head, eventually pressing me against her button-hard, now properly aroused nipple. Was I too gentle? Took too long? Whenever I returned from her lovely, now freely offered tits to her mouth, I was met by a more and more demanding tongue. My cock was rock-hard and hurting in its confine. Both of us were wanting more.

So far, I had caressed and tasted no more than Gertrud's tempting nipples and mouth. Its hunger encouraged me to allow my hand to move caressingly up the inside of her thighs. There was a gasping intake of breath as Gertrud stretched out. Barely touching, my fingers brushed over the promise of her panty-hidden sex. Every time my caressing hand returned to rest briefly and lightly on the bulge of her pussy, Gertrude's tongue invaded to swirl deep in my mouth. Also, her groin had begun to push and grind against my hand.

I enjoyed Gertrud's apparent conversion, and her progressing sexual arousal too much to hurry. Not yet trusting her, I also wanted to rob her of a possible, post-intercourse excuse that she had been tricked and rushed into submission. Speaking close to her ear, I demanded an answer: -

"Should we fuck? ... Should I make love to your sexy pussy? ... Are you saying NO?"

After a split-second's delay, she almost shouted a "NO!" Then, quickly collected her wits and shaking with suppressed laughter, she whispered: -

"No, I mean, Yes! ... Touch me. ... Make love to me now!"

With her skirt still on and her blouse unbuttoned, Gertrud was, I thought, in a most tempting state of undress. My hand slid unresisted under her skirt. Moving the palm of my hand and fingers caressingly over her pudenda, I could feel its damp-heat through the fabric of her panties.

Gathering her unbuttoned blouse aside, I began to kiss my way down over her beautiful breasts and aroused nipples. Then I circled her belly with my tongue, sinking it repeatedly into her belly button. She began to shiver as my teeth threatened the edge of her frock with pulling it down to the edge of her, I saw, prominent bush. With a whimpering moan, Gertrud clamped her thighs together. This pressed my fingers hard onto her pussy.

I could not resist pushing the hindering panties aside. Just enough to slowly slide one finger through deliciously fleshy folds into a tight, but hot-slippery entrance. Gertrud grabbed my head and pulled me up into a panting kiss. While my finger slid in and out, curling and finding the sweet spots in her cunt, she moaned into my mouth. It took not long. A drawn-out, mewing cry of surprise told me that Gertrud had a not so little climax.

We rested, recovering our breath. My finger, now keeping still, was still firmly gripped in her cunt. Grinding her groins against its feel, Gertrud murmured: -

"Don't you want to ... do more than just touching me up?"

"Oh, yes. I want to fuck you! Want a long, loving, beautiful fuck. But you should take me to your bed ... and tell me how you love to be fucked!"

Gertrud stiffened and gasped. Then she giggled but refused to answer. Untangling herself from our embrace, she got off the couch. Standing close and facing me, she stretched. She unzipped her skirt and let it fall to the floor. For a long, deliberate moment she stood, fronting me. The dark triangle of her bush, unhidden by the sheerest of panties, was centimetres from my face. I could draw in the exciting smell of her earlier climax.

Suddenly, with a gruff - "God, what am I doing!" Gertrud turned away to walk quickly to the bedroom door. Opening it, she turned around and said, still not smiling: - "Aren't you coming?"

The bedroom was not small, but it was over-furnished. There were two large wardrobes, a long dresser, a very big and heavy Victorian bedstead, and a bedside table. The space between the bed and the other furniture was corridor-like narrow. When I followed Gertrud, she was standing at the bedside table and had switched on the bedside lamp.

Gertrud pointed to the bed, indicating that I should sit down and undress. As I took off my shoes, she squeezed past to go back to the front to turn off the light.