Sweet Tina

It was the 1970's, a time of mellowing change after the massive change of the 60's. I was still in love with just about everything 60's... but I wasn't loving my life though.

High School was not the best of times for me. Actually, it pretty much sucked. I was being bullied by punk hillbillies, and had a hard time with the usual teenaged hormone-fueled fantasies that I just for the life of me couldn't fulfill.

It was my junior year, and in a way, I couldn't wait to graduate and leave. There wasn't much I enjoyed there, and I needed to get away from it all. But I knew I had to stay.

But then I walked into my new anthropology class. I walked in and sat down, not knowing what to expect... And then She walked in. "Hello class!" she said brightly. And all of a sudden my mind lit up brightly, too.

Earnestine Blumenthal. Such an old fashioned name for such a very much modern woman.

She only stood about 5'2" and dressed kinda old fashioned as well. But I didn't care. She was a red headed goddess as far as I was concerned, and I fell for her like a lead zeppelin.

She was oh so cute and perky, despite her name and her old-fashioned dress. And she bopped around the room like a seventeen year old, although she was twenty-four (she later admitted) at the time. And she had her hair cut in the same way that my other favorite goddess Joni Mitchell had, with those bangs that came down to her eyes. Along with the same red hair (although Earnestines was more red than strawberry blond).

This essentially very much white woman, was there to lead us in exploration of very different and exotic cultures. She made it a joy to come to school, and even though I had math class right before hers, I didn't even notice how much the math class flew by. I didn't care. Soon I would be in Her class.

She brought in foods from various countries for us to try, instead of just dry learning. She would talk about the cultures of the countries where the food was from. What the religions that were there derived from.

I was still very much a white bread kind of guy at that point, but I tried most of it. My favorite was (and still is) the Ethiopian food she brought in. I especially took to the spongy bread called injera, so different from what I was used to. We were introduced to the whole 'eating with out hands' thing (which I still prefer if I can).

At the end of the year, I was crestfallen that I couldn't take her class yet again. I wanted to get my daily dose of Earnestine. And then she moved on from our school to another one, and I couldn't get a glimpse of my now favorite goddess, even in the halls.

My senior year was not a happy one.

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Now here I am in my late 60's. An age to reflect where most of my childhood dreams and aspirations came from.

I've had a rather colorful life, as Earnestine had introduced me to the world when I was young and very white. I went on to get my degree in journalism, so I could travel the world and bask in other cultures to my hearts content.

Oh, I'd had many a woman in that time. White, Black. American, African. But that slender sylph of a woman from my high school years kept on haunting me wherever I went.

I got married, and then I got divorced. After a very brief and turbulent marriage.

And here I was, retired to Los Angeles, a very different world from which I had grown up in. I was a very jaded and divorced man not happy with my life, but trying my best to settle in for my last remaining years.

I didn't have much in common with Earnestine, but I did share her red hair, although mine was more auburn than her bright orangey red.

And I didn't look my age. I also didn't have children (that I knew of). I would not have been able to travel as extensively as I had if I had had children. I was not one for hauling children from place to new place. I'd had enough of that growing up, and I wasn't going to subject any children to that gypsy lifestyle.

So I was also largely alone. Oh, I had friends here and there, but they were more acquaintances that actual friends. I had learned from my own gypsy years to not form very hard attachments to people as I had traveled. I never knew where my next assignment might lead me to.

I hadn't settled down much either. Didn't want that kind of attachment to form either.

But I had settled down in LA, (if 'settled' was anything close to my need to travel occasionally). I had become rather worn out in my 'old age' from the constant traveling of my youth and middle age. I was content to just spend my days, lounging in the California sun by the modest pool I had in my first (only) purchased house in all of my years.

I went out shopping. I went to the beach. I was kinda envious of all of the families that I saw there. And oh, all those nubile young coeds that I was now too old to do anything but dream about.

I'd had a few unsatisfactory romances since I'd move here almost three years ago, but nothing stuck. I found most of them too shallow, and I was too old to take a wife just so she could have me as a 'retirement' plan in her bed.

I was at the Coop one day, doing my twice weekly shopping, when I stopped dead in my tracks.

In front of me, strolling down the aisle I was in, was a familiar (still) red headed woman walking, not particularly paying attention, in my direction.

"Earnestine?" I asked her, and her head snapped to attention to see who it was who knew her name.

"Do I know you?" she asked, somewhat hesitatingly, looking as if she was about to run.

"From high school," I said. She looked at me curiously and asked, "What high school?" asking me for validation before not running.

"Friendstown High. You were one of my teachers."

Her attitude softened a bit, as she looked harder at me. Some flash of recognition seemed to occur, but she began looking at me again.

"Roger Dean," I told her. "I was in your anthropology class. You know? The first class you taught just out of college?"

She visibly relaxed some, but not completely.

Of course she was changed. I knew I was. But although she had some streaks here and there of grey in her hair, she was still very much a red head. Just not as vibrant a one as her hair once was.

"Ok," she sighed. "How can I help you?" Once the teacher, always the teacher.

"I just wanted to say hello after all these years. You know, you pretty much still look the same after all these years."

She laughed that light elvish maiden laughter again that I had loved so much from her. I'm glad that she hadn't changed all that much from my memory.

She sighed and told me, "I don't go by Earnestine any more. I changed to Tina many years ago."

And also of course, she was no longer the smoothest skinned girl fresh out of college that she once was. I noticed that there were lines in her face, and laugh lines around her eyes and mouth, but not like too many of the women of 'our age' (she being six years older than me).

I gushed like a high school boy as I said, "I just wanted to tell you how much I was desperately in love with you back then. I know that you no doubt have a family and husband, but I just need to tell-- You that."

She lowered her head and blushed brightly. When she looked up, she was biting her bottom lip, as if to prevent herself from saying anything.

"Yes, I have children, but of course they're all grown up now with families of their own. And no, I'm no longer married. I'm widowed. My late husband passed about ten years ago"

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear about that," I told her, it now being my turn to look down at my feet. She sounded like it were still a fresh memory of loss, and I hated to have brought that on for her.

"Oh, it's ok. I loved my husband very much, but... Well, he's long gone at this point. And I still have my children."

Looking up shyly through her eyelashes, she asked me, "And are you married? Do you have children?"

"No. You introduced me to the world, and so I became a foreign correspondent, traveling to all of those countries that you opened my mind to. Back then."

Her smile was deafening to me. It spoke of so much, and didn't dare to speak of her liking that I was complimenting her so much. She blushed again, and sighed, then looking back down in her embarrassment.

I unconsciously moved forward in her direction. She saw that I had and began backing up slightly. But then she moved forward again herself, shyly intrigued that I was still paying her that much attention.

"I'm sure that you have many women vying for your attention," she said, her smile suddenly turning to one of longing. "I doubt that you would still have those kind of affections for an old woman like me."

As far as I was concerned, she looked pretty much like the young woman that I had fallen madly in love with in high school. Yes, she was older, but that didn't really matter much to me. She was still quite beautiful, even being in her mid seventies.

My hand began lifting, as if to reach out to touch her, but I quickly drew it back. I didn't want the 'delicate fawn' in front of me to start to turn to run away again.

But I also noticed that we began moving towards each other, ever so slightly closing the distance between us.

She set her hand basked down as it had apparently begun weighing heavily on her arm. I deftly moved in to take it from her and lower it to the floor. She began rubbing her wrists, as if she had hurt herself, and I moved in quickly and began rubbing them myself, working to relax her trembling arms.

She looked up at me through her eyelashes again, hesitantly but with interest. She almost pulled her arms away, but didn't resist that much.

I bent down and gently kissed her wrists, first her left one and then her right. Even her evidently wrinkled arms felt soft to me as I did.

I wanted to lean down and kiss her, my hands going up to caress her face...

And all of a sudden, she leaned into me, offering up her face for me to kiss. Which of course I did. Which I had longed to do oh those many years ago.

We were now both adults. She was no longer my teacher, nor I her student. I leaned in to gently kiss her forehead, and then worked my way down the side of her face with butterfly kisses, afraid that she'd break away from my embrace and my affections.

But she didn't. She sighed softly, in a way that only I could hear it. Her mouth was hanging open in a sigh-less gasp.

When my mouth reached hers, I kissed her on the corner of her mouth, working my way inwards, until our lips fully touched and I caressed her lower lip with my tongue.

She moaned loudly, and then closed the distance between our bodies. I lowered my right hand down to her still slender waist, and pulled her in fully to me.

We kissed, gently at first, and then more passionately. She moaned once again into my mouth, and wrapped her arms around my neck, locking me into the goodness that she was feeling.

Then suddenly, she realized where we were and quickly moved out of our embrace. Not that it mattered much, as the store was largely empty, and no one was around to see our romantic embrace.

But she became rather self conscious, and backed away hesitantly.

"So. Do you live close by?" I asked her, hoping that she hadn't driven and I could drive her home.

She giggled a little bit like a school girl suddenly, and hung her head down, and said, "Actually... I live upstairs. That's why I chose this place, so I could be really within... walking distance. Of this store.

When she looked up at me again, her eyes had a smoldering look to them that I I had not seen in her before. "Do you want to finish up your shopping later?" she asked me, half fluttering her eyes and once again biting her lower lip.

God, was this woman beautiful! And she was showing a side of herself that was so sexy, I almost couldn't believe it. It was almost unbearable.

"Well, I don't know how long they give you when you park downstairs in the garage..." I told her, hesitant to leave my car there for too long. And I wanted to leave it there overnight at this point.

"Well... We can move it to one of the guest parking sections, if you're afraid that might happen. I don't know how many hours they give you."

"Ok," I said, looking at her look at me out of the corner of her eyes. "I guess we could do that."

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We were standing at my car on the passenger side when I clicked the locks open. I opened the door for her, and she smiled that wonderful shy smile at me again as she got inside.

After we'd parked in the visitor section, I once again moved to open her door and held out my hand to help her out. She was wearing a dress that, when standing, had been to her mid thigh. Kind of sexy for an older woman, I thought.

But when she stretched her legs out, her right moved just a little too far to the right, hiking her dress up even higher than it previously was. She was showing a lot of thigh, and when her left leg joined the right, her dress hiked up even further, to the point of showing me her panties peeking out.

She giggled a little bit, and said, "Well, that was not very lady like I suppose." Her smile once again became on the wicked side, as the levered herself out of the car with my arm helping her.

The door closed and locked behind us, I realized I still had my arm around her waist, and used the 'coincidence' to pull her against me again into a close embrace. I leaned down to kiss her once again, and our kiss was anything but chaste.

After a few passionate moments, she giggled again and told me, "Maybe that should wait for when we're really private." With our hands now gripping each other and her groceries in my other arm, we went towards the elevator.

Once inside her apartment, she took off her shoes and asked me to do the same. I'd been in enough Middle and Far Eastern homes to know that that was merely standard.

But then, she pulled away from me, and her hands went up behind her head as she slowly -- and oh so slowly and erotically -- unzipped, and then let her dress drop to the floor, puddling around her dainty feet. Leaving her in a bra and "granny pants" that went up to her waist and then some.

Standing up erect, "I figured you should see what you're getting yourself in for," she said, with a little edge to her voice. She began pulling her panties down slowly, but not erotically this time -- inch by inch revealing her bloated belly with its child bearing stretch marks. "Not exactly the body I could have shown you when I was twenty-four."

I moved in to caress her cheek, and then kissed her lightly again. "It's not like I still have a teenaged body myself," I said as I unbuckled and dropped my pants, showing her my somewhat oversized belly hang over my tighty whities. "So I guess we'll just have to get used to our old aged bodies and their 'issues'."

She sniffed a little, and then began crying slightly. "I guess I'm still not used to my aged body."

I pulled her to me and softly assured her, "You look fine. You're still the beautiful woman that I remember from my dreams. Just a little older, that's all."

She laughed somewhat comically and sniffed, and then looked up at me with her bottom lip in her teeth, so sexily I took a breath in. God she was still so...

She reached down and grabbed my hand, letting me step out of my pants on the floor before dragging me into her bedroom. Once there, I had her bra hook undone and grabbed her granny pants and slowly pulled them off of her wide child bearing hips past her still cute, though fuller, ass.

When I had us both naked, she slowly and shyly turned around to face me, as if I would run screaming from the room. She had her bottom lip locked again in her teeth, but this time it was a look of apprehension and not sexiness.

With tears forming in her eyes, she bent her head down once again. "You're sure this is what you want?" Sighing, her tear drops left her face slowly and cascaded down into the carpet.

I moved in as slowly and as gently as I could, reaching my arms around her waist and upper back, and help her gently in my arms. Slowly she responded, and let her limp arms slowly creep up to my sides, and then to my neck, wrapping themselves around my neck once more.

Looking up finally from her tear streaked eyes, "Are you sure?"

In answer, I lowered my lips to her mouth, and then lowered them further to her slightly sagging, but still somewhat pert b cup breasts. and kissed her there. First on one nipple and then the other one.

I continued my kissing down to her belly, and licked up her stretch marks, one by one, into her belly button. I lowered my hands from her waist down to her cheeks and massaged them as my mouth continued further south, ending at her thinning pubic hair and into the flowing folds of her still lush lips, now fluted out from years of sex and child bearing.

She took in a sharp inbreathe, and moaned, "YES. Oh my God. Yes."

"Does that convince you?" I asked, breaking away from my ministrations to her nethers and looking up.

In response, she wrapped her hands around my head and pulled me in. "I didn't say to stop."

Standing, I gently took her hand and led her to her bed, laying her down as I pulled up the rumpled sheets. Spreading her legs gently, I leaned in to look at her vulva, in all its still resplendent wonder, nested in the remains of her somewhat red curly hair. "And I'm also not as tight as I used to be," she said, waiting for me to continue pleasuring her.

I used my fingers to pull her inner lips apart, and then stroked her up the middle, letting my pointer finger cruise inside her opening. She shivered and moaned again, I was guessing, pleased with my acceptance of her wonderful mature lips and vagina.

I began moving in and starting at the bottom of her, began licking ever so slightly up her lips into her hot interior, and then up further over her enlarging clit, pulling it gently out from under its hood. I licked and then began to suck on her clit, making it rise ever so slightly and ready for my mouth.

I put my whole mouth over her lips and entrance, stretching up to her clit, as my tongue once again lolled up her crevice and over her jumping and now no longer small (or little) clit.

"Oh, God! ROGER! OhmyGod!"

Clenching down over my head, I felt the rumble from deep inside of the coming climax about to explode. I let my tongue flick a couple of times over that clitty clitty... "Ohmy God. I'm COMING!" she screamed.

As her waves of bliss began to quiet, she pulled on my head to being it up to her mouth. "I've never felt that before in my life! And I thought my husband was pretty damned good!"

"Got your attention now?" I asked with a devilish smirk.

"You've got me for however long you want me!" she whispered her thanks. "I won't doubt that you want me ever again. Unless you tell me I'm too old for you."

"I don't think so," I told her with as loving of a smile as I could. "How bout we go for that whole 'til death do us part' thing?"

Her gaze of love quickly turned into shock. "We just met again. Are you proposing to me?"

"Yes. I've waited for too many decades for my fantasy to become reality. I haven't met anyone for whom I've felt this kind of connection. For a long time.

"If you want to wait for a while, I'll understand."

"Don't be silly, you wonderful man. It's not like I'm in my forties anymore. But you should know that the 'till death part' may come a lot sooner than either of us may want."

Sighing myself, I knew that that was a distinct possibility. I may look young, but I sure didn't feel it. "I'm all too well aware of that," I told her, with a catch in my throat. "I want you for however long we have together.'

We both began kissing as we cried together. Till death...

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And yes, that end came all too soon.

We were married in a simple justice of the peace ceremony a few days later, and I had no regrets. For however long we had. And we only had a year and a half.