Surviving When The Lights Went Out

The looks; fuck but she was gorgeous and I was a bit disappointed that she played for the other team and I did have a bit of a crush on her, no question.

As we walked back from our foraging expeditions, I would talk about what my Dad had taught me, how he'd learned from the best. I told her about writing the book and she asked if she could read it, after all I did have a few copies knocking about the place.

She loved to cook and had done it professionally for a short time, but working in a commercial kitchen had killed any delight it might have had and with her three A' levels she went through the university clearing system and like my sister found gamekeeping and land management and was hooked.

Her love of cooking was given new reign and she learnt about quarry species and not just their care and management but how to prepare and cook them.

We bonded over our situation and of course food. I'd cook something that was in my Dad's book, then Jack would show me a better way to do it that improved the flavour -- already in my head I was working on an updated version!

Like all the best relationships I knew it was working well when we started to insult each other and the banter would fly. She started with a grumble that I couldn't make bread without a machine, I suggested she cook her own; then she criticised my aim with a crossbow, and I criticised her delight in cooking things 'rare'. It became a regular thing and she'd insist my passage through rough ground on a stalk would have been quieter if I'd just jumped in a Land Rover while I'd suggest she couldn't do camouflage for shit. Each morning I'd get such a warm smile from her when we met in the kitchen or outside the bathroom in our T-shirt nightwear.

A fortnight into our solitary lifestyle, one very wet post-forage lunchtime she asked about the selection of DVD's that were on the shelves and picked out the extended 'Fellowship of the Ring' having never seen the special edition.

I said that due to the dark and overcast few days we could perhaps watch it that evening on my quite large portable and fully charged DVD player rather than the big 40" TV and DVD player and any kind of drain on our main power supply.

Yeeeeeah, I know I had lots of big Elon Musk batteries and lots of solar panels but I had a real irrational and unfounded fear about power usage and the last thing I wanted was for one of my freezers to go down and lose the contents because we'd watched a few movies.

"I'll make some cake," she said. As promised we had flapjacks and a sponge cake.

"I'll get the wine," I added, and that evening with the fire gently warming the room, we sat on the big cosy sofa in our night clothes, eating small pieces of her quite excellent sponge cake while I opened the blackberry wine.

We soon got quite cosy and with the lights off and the small screen on my lap, we sat close and watched, after a while linking arms and watching as Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn and the gang did their thing. The wine did relax us quite a bit and when she asked to stop for a comfort break before the second DVD I got a second bottle.

On her return she sat on the sofa and took my arm then raised her legs to lay them across my lap and I placed the screen on her thighs angled so we could both still watch, with the contact of her shapely bare thighs on mine and my arm slipped around her shoulder we went from 'cosy' to 'quite intimate' -- the smell of her hair was amazing.

As we worked our way down the second bottle of the blackberry we both started to get a bit giggly and silly and commenting, quite nerdishly on reflection, about what we loved most about Peter Jackson's masterwork.

"Film or not," said Jack stretching as the titles rolled up the tiny screen, "your blackberry Chateauneuf Du Pop is just the bloody job Jim-Jam!" she giggled. Her perfect boobs evident under the thin T-shirt she was wearing.

"Thank you Jacinda," I said, "praise from a drunk is still praise..."

"Jacinda," she sighed with a giggle, "I've suffered that bloody name my WHOLE life!"

"And you think Jim-Jam is easy do you?" I said swirling the remains of my wine in my glass and checking out the colour, "That's your ex-girlfriend's bloody fault that is, called me it when I was little and the more I reacted to it the more she said it."

"Deana could be such a cow!" said Jack with a grin caressing my hand at her shoulder, "bet you never did what I did when she kept calling my Jacinda?"

"Depends on what you did." I said with a sideways grin.

"I used to..." she mouthed the next two words, "SPANK HER!" even adding the hand movements on an imaginary bare bottom over her shapely pink thighs in case I didn't know what she meant.

"Can honestly say I never did that," I took the final slurp of my wine, "I hope you gave her a few good ones."

"Oh I gave her a few good ones alright, bitch loved it!" She laughed, her face flushing with the memory of what she had gotten up to with my older sister. She paused, "So what about you Jim," she said, "No bright lights of passion or extinguished love in your past?"

"Not to speak of really," I said.

After all there hadn't been, I had a few dates with pretty girls when I first started my course but it was weird when two started out by saying they were already 'in a relationship actually' and would be going back to their boyfriends at home during the holidays.

In my third year it did get more serious as university life changed many of us and one of them asked me if I'd like to go out with her, this raised my confidence and finally reached beyond the bar and restaurant to the bedroom and I'd quite gotten into love-making, and it was great fun while it lasted.

"Boys or girls James?"

"What?"

"A simple enough question," she picked up the bottle and poured the last drips into her glass, "just wanted to check if you were gay? After all," she waved a hand up and down her fine torso covered with a T-shirt, panties and no bra beneath it, "such a thing isn't unheard of after all."

"Definitely hetro Jack," I said with a smile.

"So why haven't you made a pass at me?" she said snuggling closer to me and laughing with a bit of a snort, which I was sure was for effect.

"I didn't want you to shoot me Jack, I still don't have a first clue on how to work that bloody shotgun of yours."

"Oh Jim-Jam!" she burst out, "how sweet!" Our faces were inches apart now.

"AND I can still remember your anger and... fear I think... when you said about how you might have had to dispense favours with your previous employers. Add to that the fact you have slept with my sister right here, spanked her even, and that you asked to stay on the understanding that you didn't have to shag for your supper on that first night, that was a bit of a giveaway!"

She leaned forward and kissed me, a hand on my cheek.

"Aww thank you Jim-ja... James."

"It's been a bit of a struggle, I will confess," I said, wanting to check if she was checking, "you're extremely gorgeous Jack..."

She smiled,

"So you're not gay and you don't already have a girlfriend?" I shook my head with a smile, "thank fuck for that..." she turned a bit and kissed me. I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her closer, so she was sitting on my lap which made her half-sigh, half-purr into my mouth and slip her arms around my neck.

Seeming quite impressed by this she broke our hug and knelt across my lap getting quite nicely comfortable with what we were doing and we got back to it, conscious that my parts and her parts were starting to get interested by all this with only some stretchy cotton and some green lacy silk to separate them.

I hadn't made out with a girl in a couple of years and settled in to enjoy myself, not sure if this would last. After all we were both quite pissed by now, but I still had one thing on my mind. I knew for a fact that in the entire Croft there were only three contraceptives. A box purchased by me in the big supermarket in the nearby town for addition to the 'survival tin' Dad created for me to photograph for our book.

If my memory served they were in a large plastic box with all the other props we'd got or created for the book, and that was stacked in the work room and studio I'd created in the main barn.

"Can I sleep with you James?" she said, and I smiled and nodded. She placed a finger across my lips as I made to speak about my concerns, "Just sleep Jim, we're both a bit too pissed for anything else tonight."

She took my hand and pulled me up, walking towards my larger bedroom with the larger bed and not the single she slept in on her own, and we climbed in and kissed some more and were starting to get very warm, very cosy and we both fell asleep, the effects of my homebrew I guessed.

We both woke the next morning in a lovely cuddle, not as hung-over as I'd expected but also without any embarrassment about having shared a bed. After all we were now both sober and this gorgeous girl looking slightly bleary-eyed lying in my arms was a Lesbian and had slept right here with my sister.

We both got up and made for the bathroom, and it was at this point I noticed she was wearing the green string panties I'd found on the bedroom floor a year before.

"Wow," I said noticing them afterwards as she bent to get something out of the bottom of the fridge, "Now I can see why my sister had you out of them."

"Thank you James!" she said with a blushed giggle, "I like them too."

"My sister never wore them," I said, "That's what first made me suspect another girl had been here."

"Yes," she said brushing her T-shirt down over her bottom as she straightened up, "She liked me in them though."

"And I can see why."

She turned, giggled again and raised her T-shirt to give me another short flash of her quite splendid arse. It was quite the hottest I'd ever seen even outside of fashion or glamour models and something that had remained hidden either under her baggy jeans or the grey trackie trousers of mine she wore.

We had breakfast of oats sat at the kitchen table as we so often did, and she again ribbed me for not having in any cornflakes. I pointed out of the door and suggested she wander down to the town and buy some.

"Like this?" she rubbed a hand down each side of her amazing body and her perfect bosom was brought into relief.

"If someone has some, they'll be more likely to share Jack."

I had a quite considerable supply of porridge oats of course, but confessed I'd completely forgotten about the idea and by the time I remembered the shops had been panic-bought out of existence or looted at the least.

She asked if the shop in the village had been looted.

"I don't think so," I said, "but it was all over the radio at the start."

"Is that why you hid your drive entrance?"

"Yes," I said, "There was very little traffic but I did notice a car taking a real interest in where I was going on my last trip into town. Started to hide it that night."

"I had a real struggle to find the place," she said, "Only did because of those black and white posts I knew I had to turn right at when I was on my motorbike."

"So what did you do with it, your bike I mean."

"It's pushed into a big garden shed at the back of a closed-down antique shop on the main road before the big junction to turn off for here."

"I know that place!"

"Yes, I ran out of petrol on the bit of a hill climb, so ran it into their old parking area, looked around and found the shed. Pushed it in, threw a mess of old hessian and plastic sheets over it and closed the door, which pretty much made the shed roof fall in. Going to be really hard for someone to find."

"Least you know it's reasonably safe."

"Yeah, my crash helmet is still in the top box, more of my wardrobe and there's a good half a dozen tins of salmon and tuna fish in the panniers."

I raised an eyebrow that she'd left food behind.

"First, I didn't have the capacity to carry them..."

"Or a tin-opener."

"Or a tin-opener of course, but more importantly I'd rather eat my own vomit than tinned fish, and that's saying something coming from a rug-munching lesbian."

"Indeed Jack," I said sipping my tea.

"You had the pleasure James?"

What the fuck? I paused,

"Of what, tinned fish?"

She sighed and shook her head,

"Muff-diving, Rug munching, tipping the velvet, drinking from the furry cup, being a cunning linguist! Oh do keep up Jim-Jam!"

"Must confess only a few times."

"You're not... you're not a virgin are you?"

"No," I said quite honestly, "Haven't really been stretched too far in the love-making sense but not bad considering. Fair to say I have experimented with foreplay but my two previous girlfriends didn't want to get too far involved with that," I grinned, "perhaps it was something I said."

The conversation was starting to get a little bit cheeky-rude for that time of the morning and I think we both felt a bit uncomfortable with how it was going. Or perhaps Jack only felt uncomfortable because I did.

We finished our breakfast, and while I washed up she relented and baked me a second fruit cake seeing as I'd been so impressed with the first. Then we dressed and with Jack's stolen shotgun slung over her shoulder we headed out into the woods again for something else to top up our still quite healthy larder.

At one point on our walk that morning Jack tripped and fell, landing quite hard on her right knee and being a gentleman, I helped her up and to a fallen tree, then very tenderly checked she was OK then her leg under her rolled up jeans. When we walked back to the Croft, the arm that I'd given her became held hands, almost without us noticing.

By the time we reached the Croft with our half-full bag of edible goodies and a couple of fat spring partridges, she was hugging my arm and giving it the occasional squeeze as our chat became that easy banter we were used to.

She had a bit of a shiver.

"You cold Jack?"

"Just a tiny bit," she moved a bit closer to me.

"Do you want my coat?"

"No... not that," she said.

"You can have it Jack, I'm fine honest."

"You don't do hints James do you." She said with just the prettiest smile and a bashful, coy look from under the peak of her cloth cap.

"Define 'hint'," I said.

"Don't worry about it," she said.

"Don't worry about what?" I was beginning to get a bit exasperated by housemate's distraction and obvious frustration with something, probably me I could only surmise.

"I wanted a hug James, I just wanted you to put your arm around me." I did as ordered of course and she giggled and kissed my cheek, "James, a girl... sometimes a girl want's to be... well... a bit girly."

"By girly you mean..." I could see the obvious embarrassment in her face as we got into the yard and down to the nitty-gritty. She shook her head and stared up into the barn roof as I stopped thinking of cooking, wild food and survival etiquette and thought about some of the books I'd read, "Jack, if I was to perhaps... shall we say... bring you flowers, cook you a nice dinner, rub your shoulders after a hard day's foraging, complement you on how gorgeous you look, hold your hand in the morning then kiss you goodnight that it wouldn't be frowned upon?"

She gave perhaps the most embarrassed but ultimately happy girly look I'd ever seen.

She giggled,

"That would be extremely nice and you never know what might happen!" She twisted a little on her hips a little with the pleasure, but added, "You'll struggle to tell me how gorgeous I look though James," holding her hands to her sides to indicate my baggy jeans that hung from her, and her long slightly mad hair growing out from the short easy to manage stable-girl bobbed haircut she'd worn before.

I stepped closer brushing her hair back from her cheek,

"Jack, I meant what I said, you are gorgeous."

She looked into my face looking to see if I was taking the piss at all and I clearly wasn't. She leaned forward and kissed me, slipping her arms around my neck and pulling me close and I reciprocated with my arms around her waist, rubbing at the small of her back where her fleece had rode up a bit and down just under the waist line of her baggy jeans.

"Hmmm..." she purred into my mouth then pulling back a bit whispered, "and you can do that too."

We continued to kiss. She stopped suddenly,

"Cake's in the oven!" she gasped and then ran back into the croft, stopping for a moment to turn and give me the most wonderful smile I'd ever had.

I was beginning to see the beautiful woman I shared a cottage with, not the former assistant gamekeeper that had once had a relationship with my sister. Each morning I saw her quite wonderful hourglass figure in her T-shirt, her boobs that I'd seen cleavaged under a towel, her perfect arse I'd peeked that morning in her green string, the most feminine wiggle as she walked; all things I just hadn't noticed or bothered about because I knew that this clever, talented, witty and beautiful girl 'played for the other team'.

I headed into the barn to hang the birds ready for plucking and preparations, then thought about my studio at the end of it. There in the air-tight 'really useful box' where all the bits and pieces Dad brought together for his emergency tin. There as I'd expected was the box of condoms and I picked out the two not in the kit, just thinking about making love to her. Not quite yet though.

Back into the croft she was bending down and shutting the door on the range cooker with her foot as she lifted out the most gloriously rich-smelling fruit cake and placing it on our kitchen table. I stepped in behind her and slipped my arms around her waist pulling her tight to me and kissing her neck and cheek.

"James!" she hissed, but not with that much vehemence I noted, and she rubbed her cheek against mine once the baking tray was safely on the kitchen table, "you're only getting all cuddly because I've baked you a fruit cake!"

"No chance Jack," I said, "I'm getting all cuddly because... well, because you're so fucking gorgeous."

She turned in my arms, wrapped hers around my neck and we kissed - deeply, strongly and just as nice as the night before, only this time we were both sober.

"Good answer Jimmy," she breathed and we carried on, moving across to the sofa and sitting down continuing the good old fashioned necking.

It must have gone on for ages, but in a house that worked on the sun and not the twenty-four-hour clock we really didn't worry about it.

She called me 'Jimmy'; from adolescence when anyone called me that it was a sound that grated in my ears and made me feel 'talked down to' and uncomfortable - when she called me Jimmy it sounded like she was crazy about me, and I just wanted to hug her -- so I did.

We both woke warm, comfortable and well sated with just our kissing and cuddling, and she dragged herself from my arms and to the bathroom, washing her hands and then taking the now cooled cake from the tin it was cooked in and plating it. She smiled at me again, narrowing her eyes, shaking her head and looking at me like I was just being lecherous, after all I was.

I thought for a moment that she might actually be concerned about making love with me. After all we had spent an hour, perhaps two, snogging and sweet-talking on my sofa and while we'd kept our clothes on, our hands were telling a bit of another story. Heavier petting and whatever happened next was bound to follow and I figured she might have a bit of a problem with that when she gently eased my right hand from her fantastic bosom.

I stood up and stretched, yawning after our early but very pleasant start that morning and stepped across to her, placed both hands behind my back and leaned forward kissing her,

"Jack," I said softly and quietly, "While I absolutely love kissing you... we don't... don't have to do anything else unless you really want to, honestly."