The Love I Never Knew I Needed

This is gonna have a slightly slower build and is a work in progress. I have written in a looong time and so, be gentle lol. Thanks. More coming soon.

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DAMN did it feel good to get out of that Jeep!

I had been on the road for the last two days straight. Three days, only stopping for three meals a day and to bed down each night. Burgers and forty dollar motel beds were starting to have their effect on me. As I stepped out of the car, the muscles in my back and legs were unbelievably tight and sore. Without even thinking I began to stretch my arms towards the sky and stretch the length of my body as far as I could, letting out an involuntary groan as I did.

I'm gettin' old. Well, as old as a 34 year old man can get. The Army will do that to you.

As I closed the car door, I contemplated getting out my luggage and personal affects but I was so tired, I resigned that they could wait until before I go to bed, or maybe even tomorrow. I took a moment to stand beside the Jeep and take it all in. Everything. The smells of the ocean air coming from the beaches a mere 5 miles away. The sight of this big, familiar, safe home. The sounds of...nothing. Not a damn thing. No artillery guns, no tanks, no machine guns. Nothing.

My Aunt's home was in a small beach town in San Diego County, in a very well-to-do neighborhood, in a nice little cul-de-sac. She and her husband, who ran his own small but very successful business, had lived here since I was a teenager. Once my uncle Paul's business really started to take off and his client list expanded, they no longer needed to live in their small, 3 bedroom house in the valley. They could afford a big house, in a small beach town, just like my aunt Laura had always wanted.

Once I had had almost enough of the smells, sights and memories, it was time to go inside and let my favorite family know I was home.

I walked myself to the front door and thought about knocking, then I remembered that I never had before. They had never expected me to and I wasn't about to start now.

I opened and walked through the door, said a moderately loud 'Hello' to whomever might have been home, and heard the beautiful sound of my aunt's voice answer me back with 'Hey, back here sweetie!'

I walked past the hallway and into the very large living room which opened into the kitchen and dining room to find my aunt getting up from the couch to greet me.

I was so excited to see her that it only took me three strides to reach her and we met each other's open arms for a big, long hug from one of my favorite people in the world.

My aunt Laura was my mother's sister and the similarity between them ended right there, but I wasn't gonna think about that now.

She was almost as tall as I was, which was saying something as I was around six feet and 3 inches, with short brown hair, kind brown eyes, fair skin and relatively thin in most areas, which again said volumes about our genes since she was already 58 years old.

I have always thought that my aunt was one of the most beautiful people I had ever known, but I never really looked at her in a sexual way. It was the true beauty within her which always drew me close to her. She had stepped in at an early age and tried her best to make up for the failings my mother naturally was and without even meaning to, in my heart, I replaced my birth mother with Laura. I had always thought she felt the same way throughout my youth and young adult life, and I am sure it was, for the most part, but around the my early twenties, when my body began to fill out into slim, athletic muscles and my height grew in direct correlation with my complexion becoming as smooth and fair as it is now, I noticed something different in the way she interacted with me.

As the thought began to creep up again in my mind, I started to notice everything about how she greeted me and about how we embraced each other at the present moment. She had a twinkle of love in her eyes, laced with what seemed like a distant...something. She smiled her full smile and called me what she started calling me back in my early twenties, her 'handsome boy'.

She wrapped her arms around me in what could only be described as the softest and yet firmest of embraces, and she didn't ever shy away from our bodies coming into direct and complete frontal contact. I had never really thought about it but I began to notice that I had always accepted it eagerly, and reciprocated our hugs in the exact same way, even when she put her hand very gently behind my neck and head and stroked down towards my shoulders, my own arms draped around her and my hand always found a spot in the middle of her back and I stroked her just as gently.

Just as I began to mentally scratch the surface of the oedipal undertones of our relationship, I heard another voice acknowledge me from behind me in the kitchen.

"Hey handsome" the voice said, which made me turn around to see just who it was.

It was my cousin Jane. Beautiful, sexy, odd, confusing, mercurial Jane.

She beamed a smile at me and before I could even give it a second thought, she had crossed two steps and wrapped me in an almost carbon copy embrace of my aunts, right down to her hand holding the back of my head, and stroking down my neck.

I froze in place, since in all of the years we had been alive-her being 9 months older than I-she had never as much as shook my hand.

I remembered vaguely hearing my aunt say that she would be back in a little while, and grab her keys, tell us she was bring back pizza, and walk out the door.

Many thoughts started racing through my head, but they were traveling so fast I couldn't catch them. Instead of catching a thought, I suddenly had the overwhelming urge to break tears and what I could only describe as the most intense crying I have ever uttered.

I couldn't control them, nor could I stop them, and before I knew it I was falling slowly unto my knees, right in the middle of the kitchen,

Stop.

Let's go back a bit. I might have forgotten to mention a few things about both myself, and where this story is coming from, so you can better understand where it's going.

So, my name is Paul.

No I'm not named after my uncle.

I am 34 years old.

I am...well I 'was' a Soldier in the United States Army.

Also 'was' married. Until just about 3 months before the scene I am describing to you.

The short version is, I enlisted to go to college after my contract, I was sent to fight in Afghanistan, I saw combat, I was hurt, I came back, they couldn't fix me, so they gave me a monthly check, a piece of paper and a handshake...and sent me on my way back home.

I couldn't handle things after I got back from war, I thought about suicide, I was hospitalized, I became a bad husband, I did things I shouldn't have, said things I shouldn't have, and now we are separated, soon to be divorced.

Oh and did I mention that my father died? Yeah...my father died. About a month before I arrived back home at my aunt's house.

So, here I was, at literally the bottom of what they refer to as 'rock bottom', crying on the floor in the arms of literally the cousin I am the least close with out of the entire family.

That's not to say that I don't like her, or that she is a complete stranger to me. But comparatively speaking, if I am close with anyone of my aunt's children it would be her eldest son, who is the same age as me.

Gavin and I have been joined at the hip since we were kids. To say that we are 'like brothers' would be an insult to our relationship. We ARE brothers. But, he lives in Phoenix with his wife and baby on the way, so I don't get to see or talk to him as much as I would like.

They both also have a baby brother, Carson, who is close to me as well, but Jane has always kept more of an 'arm's length' relationship towards me for pretty much my entire life.

So to say that even her greeting to me, and her subsequent embrace was a stark surprise would be doing the term injustice.

As I knelt there crying uncontrollably, without missing a step she knelt down beside me, took my head in her arms and held my head against her chest while I instinctively wrapped my arms around her midsection and held on as tight as I ever have held unto someone.

I wasn't sure how long I knelt there crying in Jane's arms, but for as long as I was conscious she held me there, gently rocking me back and forth, stroking my hair and making a constant, soothing 'Shhhhhhh" until I actually fell asleep, right on the kitchen floor.

While how long I was out, how I ended up lying down with my head in Jane's lap, and when my aunt returned home was a mystery to me, I do know that there have been few times in my life when I woke up as embarrassed as I was.

I was so embarrassed in fact, that when I opened my eyes to see both Jane and Aunt Laura smiling down at me, I started to tear up again. I probably would have gotten back into full swing too if they both hadn't stopped me gently but abruptly by saying "Hey, its ok." In unison.

I felt like it was time to sit upright and try to get off the floor as soon as possible, so I slowly got to my feet and sat down on a stool in front of the bar on the near side of the kitchen island.

Jane was first to my side, with a soft, warm hand on my neck.

"What was that about, Paul?" she asked.

It took me a minute or two to start to put the pieces together but when it started to solidify in my head, I answered

"I don't know. I guess the war, the funeral, the end of my military career, the hospital, the pills, and my marriage all chose right this moment in time to catch up to me, all at once. Maybe my mind, or my body, couldn't handle it." I said. "All I do know is that I am really sorry you had to be that involved with my crap Jane. Here I came to your house and within minutes, I'm falling to pieces in your arms, you of all cousins."

I ended with a few chuckles and looked up to my aunt, who smiled at me and said "It's perfectly understandable to react that way Paul. That's probably what happens when you don't let your emotional self feel things like grief and anger and despair for long periods. They WILL come out, when they can't stay in forever."

I gave a silent nod in agreement and looked up a Jane who had stopped stroking my neck and looked at me with the most hurt expression I had ever seen her wear while looking at me.

Confused, I gave a quizzical look back, but she turned towards the fridge, opened it up, got out a water bottle before closing it, and walked out of the room towards the stairs.

I looked at my aunt for a clue as to what I had done, but she was busy setting out the pizza and drinks and beckoning me towards the couch to sit with her and eat.

I sat down at the end of the couch, resting my arm on the rest and she took a seat right next to me on the same couch, placing the pizza on the coffee table in front of us. As we started talking she poured me a drink, put some pizza on a plate, handed them to me, then draped her arm behind me on the back of the couch with her hand gently stroking my neck and across my shoulders while we talked and laughed for the next few hours.

God it felt good to laugh and talk with her again.

I had been stationed in Georgia for the last 5 years and in that time we had sort of lost touch with her. Come to think of it, I had stopped keeping in touch with a lot of people in that time.

I had come home only twice in that time, once for Christmas one year and the other time after I returned home from the war.

But here, now, it was like I had never left. We talked and joked and told stories until the sun had set and the crickets were chirping to a steady pace outside.

As before with our hug though, I had begun to notice that tonight, she was sitting quite a bit closer to me than she usually did. She was dressed in a lovely, soft knitted sweater and a pair of expensive jeans, with no shoes, as she often did.

She almost never broke eye contact with me, and the smile that she held never once wavered from her face. We laughed and joked, but I noticed that whenever I made one she thought was really funny she would bend over a small bit, laughing, and lay her hand up on my thigh. She kept doing this until within the last 20 minutes of our reunion, she just left it there, sliding her hand gently up and down my thigh with one hand, stroking my neck with the other, head cocked to one side and listened to me intently while I told her how glad I was to be back and how thankful I was for her to open up her home to me while I got on my feet and figured out what my next steps were.

We both looked over at the clock on the wall of the living room and saw that it was inching closer to midnight. She turned her face to me and smiled before speaking.

"Well, I am just glad you're home Paul. I wish it was under better circumstances for you, and I wish I would take away all of this pain but...I am glad you're home. My handsome boy." She said.

With that scooted closer into me and pulled me into her arms in one of her hugs I had come to miss so much. And for what seemed like fifteen minutes, we held each other like that. She stroking my neck and head, and me stroking up and down her back. We held each other like that for long enough that my mind started to wander to scenic pictures and images I couldn't recall if you had asked me that minute, I came back to reality when I noticed a change in entire feeling of the room.

Everything changed slowly and very subtly at first. What once was a warm, loving mother-son hug had gone on too long, but there wasn't alarm being felt for either one of us. I found it didn't bother me, it was just something I began to notice. Then I felt her gentle strokes begin to shift from slowly and softly running down my neck to a much firmer grasp, and her hand started run not over my hair, but through it.

Then I noticed that my hand, while stroking up and down her back had found a place near where her sweater met her jeans, only her sweater was covering everything anymore, and there was a small place where her skin was showing. I felt like in a normal world, with a normal aunt and nephew, or mother and son, I would have made my hand stay away from it, but instead, my hand sought it out, found it and begun softly stroking her bare skin. Once I started to do this, both of our breathing shifted, from a slow, steady cadence to almost a little labored and a bit ragged.

Instinctively I turned my head ever so slightly towards Laura and found that her face had turned the same way, until our faces were side by side, facing opposite, cheek to cheek. I took a deep breath and found that her scent was very nice. Comforting, but also like a woman smells. I took a second to try to feel if she was smelling me in and I found that she was indeed taking deeper breathes, her mouth and nose to my ear and exhaling out more and more forcefully.

Then I felt her wrap her arms slowly tighter around me, and I responded the same, but it was more than our arms. I found that our bodies had somehow become to close that, if I had leaned back even an inch, she would be almost laying over me.

The moments started to stretch into what felt like hours, days even, and I was beginning to think to myself: I love Laura. I love her so much. She is my mother in so many ways. She smells good, and feels good. I love hugging her. I love her scent. I love hearing her breathing in me ear. I hope she never gets tired of me being around. I hope she kisses me right now.

Wait...what?

No sooner did I register the thought in my head, then she began to pull away from me a few inches. She pulled away until she was face to face with me, stilling embracing each other and our noses almost touching.

She looked into my eyes, smile still in her face, and I looked into her eyes right back.

This went on for a few seconds then, she looked down at my lips, and brought her face a few millimeters closer, until our noses nuzzled together. Her nose lightly danced on either side of mine and then she looked up to me and whispered to me.

"I love you Paul. I'm glad you're here."

She then turned my head slightly to the side and went to kiss my cheek. But she didn't quite completely clear my lips, with hers finding my cheek and into the corner of my mouth on my right side. And there she held for about 2 seconds, and then brushed her lips again for a second, then a third, right on the corner of my mouth and cheek.

No sooner had I started to consider turning my face an inch more for a full on one when she then got up, told me to get some sleep, and walked off towards the stairs, climbed them, and went to her room.