Snowed In Ch. 03

She let her hand glide down his neck, over his hard shoulders to the small of his back, onto his tight, fuzzy cheeks. They moved beneath her fingers; he was thrusting against the rug.

Bending forward, her breasts hanging free, she pulled up on his hip. He did not resist. Without stopping his frenzied feasting, he let her roll him to his side . . . just as her husband began groaning and growling uncontrollably, and her daughter whined and squealed.

Blow the lid off, she thought, pulling the dick to her mouth.

December Twenty-ninth

Sherry remembered a nasty little joke from college: you know you had a good time if you wake up and your face feels like a glazed doughnut.

She stretched her mouth wide, yawning, and rubbed at her cheeks and around her lips to loosen up the skin. In her mouth she tasted something a bit bleachy, a bit alkaline. Her body was sore, especially her back and hips. She had bruises on her thighs. She rolled around against the sheets, trying to work it out.

Twelve thirty, the clock said.

Her bedroom was full of light, and not the dull grey they had gotten used to. This was genuine Florida sun, yellow-orange and everywhere. The snow should be melting, she realized.

Neal was snoring beside her; she rolled onto her side to watch him. Her big man, back in her bed. It scarcely seemed possible. She stroked his arm to make sure he was really there. For a moment she thought about sweeping the covers back, about awakening the lovely cock that slumbered beneath. But no, he was done in, poor man. Best to let him sleep.

She crossed the room naked, liking the chilly air on her breasts, rushing up between her legs. She hugged herself at the window, casting her glance over the brilliant white landscape outside. Yep, melting soon, without doubt. She didn’t know snow but she knew sun. With both hands she cupped her breasts, weighing them, gingerly touching her sore nipples. Ow. Somebody had bitten that one, really chewed on her. She rubbed around them gently, like she used to do when nursing, and continued to take in the view, beginning to remember what the backyard looked like. She had to admit, that crappy old barn looked better with its layer of icing -- it made it seem picturesque somehow . . .

It was then that she noticed, parked where Neal’s car was normally, the long charcoal-grey Lincoln.

“Oh . . . my God,” she breathed.

Her daughter burst through the door at that moment, all bouncing, naked curves.

“Hurry, get up, get up!” she was saying, “It’s Grandma!”

Sherry froze, Vanessa fidgeted.

“Holy shit,” croaked Neal from the bed.

Ten minutes later, when they had struggled into clothes and hustled Sherry’s mother and her array of packages out of the cold, Sherry began to breathe easier. They were all in the living room and had talked about the downed phone lines, the impassable roads, when she snuck into the kitchen to wash the coffee pot. She didn’t notice that the old lady had followed her.

“Did you and Neal make up?” she was asking.

“Um . . . yes! Pretty much so,” answered Sherry.

“I thought so!” said her mother, bright-eyed. “You smell just like spunk!”

January First and Beyond

The Fords’ new year together began more normally than any of them might have expected. Dick Clark, Rosie O’Donnell, Sting. The descending ball in Times Square. The countdown, the popping of the champagne cork. No one mentioned, nor did anyone need to mention, that this was the first New Year’s Eve they’d spent together since Vanessa and Josh were pre-teens. They all felt the significance of this -- the sudden comfort to be found at home, with family. It had taken a freak snowstorm and several defunct automobiles to make them spend Christmas together. But New Year’s they spent together on their own, willingly.

On New Year’s Day Jeannie Crews called to argue with Josh and instead received from him a long and sincere apology for his behavior before the holidays. Vanessa could only overhear her brother’s side of the conversation, but even from this she could tell Jeannie was amazed, thrilled, astounded at his apparent change in attitude, at the sudden abundance of humility in a guy who had formerly possessed not a shred. Vanessa could just imagine the gushing forgiveness on the other end of the line, the new promises Jeannie might make, perhaps even the apologies on her part (oh I made too much of it all -- I was just being childish -- I promise I won’t overreact like that again). She figured that her brother’s apology had probably done nothing but stoke the fires of the little twit’s ego, so that now Jeannie supposedshe had changed Josh. Of course, what she couldn’t know was how the entire edifice of Josh’s smartass persona had been rocked, cracked, and caved in by the events of the holiday. The girl was just dumb enough to suppose that she had caused it all, had put Josh in his place.

All of this -- though more than half of it was surmise -- served to confirm to Vanessa that this girl was entirely wrong for her dear brother. Paired with such a twerp, Josh would only rebuild that facade of cockiness and selfishness, brick by annoying brick. He was too genuinely desirable to help it. What he needed, she was now positive, was a girl who could keep him down in a world of shit. Instinctively, Josh seemed to grasp some inkling of his needs, and realize that Jeannie couldn’t provide them. They dated again for a few weeks during January before he, not she, broke it off.

Late in January, when she had almost worked up the courage to break things off with Brad, Vanessa lost her baby. Among the many unbidden, unexpected emotions that swept over her at the time, relief surprised her by being the strongest. Vanessa would have scratched the eyes out of anyone who dared say anything so pat as “it’s probably for the best,” but, in fact, it probably was. She certainly had never been ready for anything so serious as a baby; the abject fear of it all had probably driven her to her excesses over Christmas more than she realized. But she could never have brought herself to terminate the pregnancy, so that the end, ugly and hurtful as it was, nevertheless lightened her load. Josh surprised her again by taking it as hard as she did, becoming a pale shadow that haunted the house for days. Brad, though full of good intentions, was no help; he could not get between his so-called wife and her new ties with her family, an intimacy he sensed but could not understand. And so, Vanessa not seeming to need him, and the physical reason for the union now gone, he left her. He and his family moved away from town a month later.

In the days following the miscarriage, Vanessa found comfort and release in her mother’s arms, in her mother’s bed. They made love three times on three consecutive weekday afternoons, while the men-folk were away. They wove the elements of a lazy, still, wintry mid-day into a combination all their own: fresh, cool air through open windows, clean sheets on the bed, hot showers together, toweling each other off, lying naked to talk, kiss, and explore. It was their ritual, the most powerful and intimate they’d shared since her girlhood tea parties. Afterwards they usually snuggled for an hour or so, talking, perhaps dozing, rising before Neal or Josh came home. On the third afternoon, gathered up in her mother’s arms, Vanessa heard in warm whispers against her ear how Sherry too had lost her first baby -- the older brother or sister Vanessa would never have.

There were certainly couplings among them all during the year, though they were only couplings, they were infrequent, and they were not “made public.” Once Brad left, Vanessa moved home again to her old room, and it became even easier for rendezvous to occur. Neal had been quite right, in a way; what had happened would indeed always be between them, but as a bridge, not a boundary. And where there is a bridge there are people to cross it.

Vanessa was unwilling to give up her newfound lover, the only man who could both worship and dominate her -- her father. But she was still less willing to interfere in the passion that had been rekindled between Neal and Sherry. The two now behaved in a way that seemed almost insufferably cute and cozy, always in each other’s company, always kissing and touching and sharing looks. They had made a weekend project out of fixing up the old barn, partly (she knew) as an excuse to sneak into the loft and have sex. As gut-wrenching a spectacle as they made, as two people really sickeningly in love always make, Vanessa could not come between them. But she did bring her desire to her father when Sherry was away, when she felt reasonably sure it would do no harm. These times they shared always felt more like a kindness to her than to him. He accepted her happily, and pleased her body with attentiveness and devotion. But he belonged whole-heartedly to Sherry when she reappeared.

Josh still leeched off of Vanessa, still drew a lot of his energy from her willingness to take charge and control him. But he didn’t seem to need her as much as he had, and initiated their sex together only about half of the time. She thought she knew why.

One afternoon in March, she had come home early from work to find the doors to the old house locked, Josh’s and Sherry’s cars in the yard. Vanessa let herself in quietly, said hello to her mother (who looked flushed) and to her brother (who looked exhausted). It was obvious even from a glance that she had interrupted something, that they had spotted her arriving and had rushed into “normal” mode. After using the bathroom upstairs, she poked her nose into her brother’s bedroom, and found three belts and a neck tie fastened to the four bed posts. Also, though someone had opened the window, she thought she detected the scent of cum lingering in the air. She came downstairs again pretending ignorance, but Sherry obviously picked up on her mood.

“Your brother’s a big boy,” she told Vanessa, eyes flashing, “but I think he knows who’s boss now.”

Until he graduated Josh went through a string of girlfriends rapidly, dating some for as little as two weeks before breaking up. To an outside observer this might have seemed like rootlessness or womanizing, but Vanessa knew it was a good sign in her brother’s case. It meant he had broken his old pattern of finding a girl who let him fuck her and staying put, until he pissed her off and she dumped him. It meant that he was looking for something better, even if he didn’t know what.

In the middle of September, knee-deep in his first semester of junior college, Josh brought a new girl home. The very fact that he brought her home was of enormous significance, of course. Her name was Katya, and she was (he proclaimed with awe) a Swedish exchange student. This girl differed from all Josh’s previous girls in some interesting ways.

First, anatomically, she could not really be called a “girl,” but had to be acknowledged a woman. She was tall and lean, with a perfect complexion. She had broad shoulders and short blonde hair that wisped around her ears, small, tight breasts and hair in her pits. She was everywhere so fit and so toned that bullets would have bounced off her. She had miles of leg, which she liked to show off by wearing the shortest of short skirts. The one time Vanessa had run into them at a club, she had to fight the urge to rummage beneath that short skirt, to lift it up and see the ass those gorgeous legs led to. Katya was so unlike Josh’s previous tastes in females -- twigs with tits -- that her anatomy alone signaled a new direction for him.

Second, Josh doted on her, fawned on her, watched to obey her slightest wish. When she was out of the room he watched the doorway for her return -- when she was in the room he deferred to her choice, pulled out chairs for her, did silly things hoping to gain her attention and approval. He made a point of opening car doors for her, whereas his previous girls were lucky if he slowed down enough for them to dive in.

Vanessa didn’t ask what sort of sex life inspired this change, and Josh wasn’t volunteering anything. But she could look Katya in the eye and see most of it. She felt fairly certain her brother was in good hands now, and, when in the awful presence of the girl, found herself wondering just how far she pushed him. Did she whip him? tie him up? piss in his face? Or was she just so damned strong she could make even conventional sex feel like domination? Whatever she did it made Josh happy, and that made Josh easier for everybody to take.

Vanessa herself now watched and waited, content to take her life slower and more carefully. Her clubbing, her hanging out, her playing she had reduced by more than half. She left the Denny’s and got a job on campus at a bookstore, and began taking some night classes, sometimes with her brother. She dated some, but not much. She knew from experience that chance encounters could bring her good sex, terrific sex, mind-blowing sex, but not the emotional security she now needed. Until she found a man (or a woman, she thought, to be fair) who made her feel . . .

Loved, like her mother did,

Beautiful, like her father did,

Powerful, like her brother did,

. . . she resolved to take her chances and wait. She was young, she had life ahead, and above all, she had a family to take care of.

THE END