The Misadventures of Mrs. Taken Ch. 02

It was awful. The both of us were nervous and a little scared. Foster's hands were shaking so badly he couldn't tear open the condom's foil wrapper. We were in the middle of make out central. All the kids came out here under the cover of darkness to swap sloppy kisses. The county sheriff made random patrols up and down the gravel roads scouting for horny teenagers doing what we were about to do. We were terrified that, if the sheriff didn't catch us with our literal pants down around our ankles, our friends would.

Foster was sweating like a pig and I had never, ever seen him sweat before. It was one of those muggy nights in late July where the corn is high as the sky and the humidity is so thick it creeps close to the ground. We both stank like mosquito repellant and our skin was sticky with the stuff. But, there was no way either one of us would risk our tender bits to an onslaught of mosquitoes. We didn't bother completely undressing. We didn't want to take the risk of giving the sheriff or some dopey high school kid a peep show.

I was fresh out of high school and Foster was about to graduate from the HVAC program at the local vo-tech. The world was our oyster, although the pearl was a bit small. We both were still living with our parents, but Foster had big plans after he graduated. I had plenty of plans for myself too.

I was going to start college in the fall. My parents wanted me to be a nurse, but I wanted to make the world a prettier place. I was going to be a photographer and live in some big city as far away from this place as I could get. Foster, of course, would be there with me. He had his degree to fall back on until he made it big in some rock band. The two of us were going to have the life of our dreams.

My parents simply shook their heads when I told them what my plans were. His parents were a little more vocal and his dad landed him a job working for the heating and air conditioning repair shop in town. They all had known what we were too young and dumb at the time to realize. Just like them and their parents before them, we weren't going anywhere.

We were young and in love. Our first time was awkward and embarrassing. I had worn a cute polka dotted sundress. When I had dressed for our date, I really didn't know if that night would be the night or not. But, I wanted something easy on and off, just in case it was. All Foster had to do was untie the spaghetti straps, lift up the skirt, pull off my underwear, and he had access to my important parts.

My mom didn't buy me sexy panties. I guess it was too much for her to think about her only child, her baby girl, as a full-fledged woman. But, I had a summer job at the local hair salon as a shampoo girl and all around gofer. Hey, it was a step up from grading eggs for a lousy two bucks an hour so, I couldn't complain. I had taken my meager minimum wage earnings plus pocketful of tips and was wearing the sexiest nylon panties the dime store had in stock.

The ground was hard beneath my back. The mosquito repellant made a great marinade for every insect in a tri-county area and I was covered in itchy welts. Foster fumbled his way underneath my bra and over the waistband of my pretty panties, covering me in sloppy kisses and panting in my face out of desperation. I was squirmy and nervous. I was fumbling too and the more I fumbled with him the more awkward he got. His body was heavy and hot, and he was squishing me beneath him.

I don't imagine either one of us was very good at doing IT. He was probably not having any better of a time than I was. This was hardly the romantic stuff I read in books and nothing at all like my girlfriends said it was. At the time, with Foster dripping sweat onto my cheeks off the ends of his hair and gritting his teeth like he was in pain, I wasn't sure I ever wanted to do IT again. Sex didn't seem like it was worth all the fuss. It hurt and Foster's muttered apologies between frantic thrusts of his hips really didn't help matters much.

The whole thing probably didn't last five minutes. I certainly didn't enjoy it. Not like I thought I would. Given the shocked expression on Foster's face. I didn't think he did either. He collapsed on top of me and stayed there, panting and shivering and bathing me in his sweat. I was going to spend the rest of my life celibate. I didn't ever want to do IT again and I was certain Foster would agree with me. We would get married and live our dream lives, but sex just wouldn't be part of the equation.

Then, cupping my cheeks with his big palms and long fingers, his thumbs tracing a pattern from the bridge of my nose to the tips of my ears, the diamond chip in my promise ring glittering in the moonlight, and his hot, trembling lips pressed against mine. He said the words every girl needs to hear after her first time. "I love ya', babe."

After getting married and settling into a daily routine, a couple looses a certain amount of shyness. I didn't bother with shutting the bathroom door when I did my business and neither did Foster. These days, I didn't raise an eyebrow when he hiked his butt off the couch and farted or reached into his boxers to readjust the boys. I no longer got embarrassed or troubled myself with the usual platitudes after belching. Sometimes, Foster would even clap me on the back and congratulate me for the sound effects.

I didn't run for the bathroom to brush my teeth before he woke up and he didn't rush to put on deodorant first thing in the morning either. We took each other as we came, farts, belches, bad breath, B.O., creaking joints and all. And as for the sex, part of losing that awkward initial newly married couple's shyness made the sex better.

We didn't end up celibate and I was glad for it. I won't say we hadn't had our fair share of fumbling and bumbling our way through things though. It takes a while for a couple to learn what their partner likes or doesn't like. But, after nineteen years of married life, I think we finally had figured things out.

Damn, I was going to miss sex with my husband. No, I wasn't. I was going to quit smoking. I couldn't imagine not making love to Foster. I certainly didn't want anyone else in my bed. For me, it had always been him and it was always going to be him and nobody else. I didn't want to believe what my parents and everyone else over sixty had always told me. That there would come a day when our sex drives would fizzle out and the well would run dry. It couldn't be true. I wouldn't let it happen to us.

I knew middle age, menopause, and erectile dysfunction wouldn't be any picnic. But, for Foster and I, we'd figure out a way around it. We were going to be fucking like bunnies until they put our wrinkled corpses into the ground and even probably after that. We were going to be wearing our wings and halos and screwing on some fluffy white cloud in heaven, if I had my way about it.

Sure, sex was all about procreation. That was the basic nuts and bolts about the whole thing. But, I figure that if God had furthering the human race as his only intent behind such a wonderful thing as sex. He wouldn't have made it so much fun. If God wanted us to rut like animals, he wouldn't have given us the ability to form attachments. We wouldn't make love. We'd have sex. And well, with that being said. I was going to take full advantage of making love to my husband for as long as I could.

The truth of it is. Foster is a middle-aged man and I'm hanging on to forty with both fists. Wasn't it just yesterday we were out in the middle of that cornfield making love for the very first time? It certainly seems like it was anyway. We've had plenty of false starts in the bedroom. These days, it took a little more priming of the pump to get the water flowing. But, we had always managed to get there and sometimes, the fun was in getting there.

I had been thinking about making an appointment with Doc. Adams to get a prescription for viagra. Poor Foster, you'd think he had lost his best friend and I suppose in a way he had. Then the day Foster came home and announced not only had he been to the doctor, but had quit smoking, everything changed. As it turned out, Foster really didn't need the viagra. He simply needed to quit smoking to recover his spunk and past enthusiasm between the sheets. I was a happy woman and an exiled smoker, but with my man in my bed, I couldn't bring myself to regret giving up the post-coital cigarette in the comforts of my bedroom.

I wondered what would happen when I gave up smokes. Would I be just as enthusiastic as Foster? Did smoking affect women as it did men and I had lost my spunk between the sheets? It was true. I didn't have the stamina for riding on top like I once had. I thought it was my weight and my reluctance to do anything remotely resembling exercise that had caused the huffing and puffing I experienced with exertion. Maybe, and yes, I didn't want to admit it, but it was more the cigarettes than my extra pounds that were responsible for my lack of endurance.

I fell asleep ticking off all the possibilities that would come to life on the heels of my new smoke free lifestyle. I could ride my husband like a bucking bronco at the county fair again. I wouldn't reek like an ashtray anymore. I'd have a ton of extra cash at the end of the week. I wouldn't have to worry about forgetting my cigarettes or not being able to find a lighter. There was nothing worse than having a cigarette and no lighter or a lighter and no cigarette. But, I had a niggling kernel of doubt in the back of my mind and the thought stuck. Would I have the same conviction and determination of purpose in the morning when the withdrawals hit that I did right now?

Foster

I was almost proud of Claire, almost. She was curled up on her side asleep. Her face was bathed in the silvery, grayish-purple glow of pre-dawn and I could see on her face remnants of the young girl I had fallen in love with. Her features were softer now. Claire was getting the first faint traces of laugh lines around her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. I was glad I had traveled this journey called life with her and had helped to put them there.

Her brow wrinkled in a frown as she dreamed. She hated the deep creases between her brows and wore her bangs long to hide them. Claire saw her wrinkles as a sign of getting old. She thought the wrinkling of her skin was ugly and unattractive. I didn't see them as such. I thought the lines, both the deep and the thin, spidery ones, added character to her face. To me, wrinkles and gray hair was a badge of courage of sorts. I didn't relish the thought of becoming an old man. But, I didn't mind it so very much with her getting old by my side.

I thought she had earned each and every wrinkle on her face and she should be proud of them all. Though I did regret that I had added more than one of the worry lines creasing her forehead and the narrow space between her eyebrows.

My Claire was a worrier. I didn't need to worry about one damn thing. Claire did enough of it for the both of us. I admit our futures aren't as secure as I'd like them to be. We had almost nothing in savings. Our 401K was practically non existent. The truth of it was that I didn't have a retirement plan because I didn't plan on retiring. I loved my work and I'd have to be dead not to show up day after day. We had the house and our beater cars. Sure, maybe it wasn't the life we had dreamed of in our youth. But, it was a good one. We got by ok.

I didn't stay awake at night worrying about our future. I didn't want some retirement villa in Florida. I wasn't about to waste my golden years sitting on the front porch watching the world pass me by. I was going to keep right on working and living till the day I didn't and I wanted Claire right here with me through it all.

I had no regrets about my life or the life I had built with Claire. Gently pressing my hand to her soft belly I let myself think about all the things that could have been instead of how they had turned out. We didn't have children. Maybe, my sperm weren't good enough swimmers or her eggs didn't do what they were supposed to do. Who knows? We didn't try to have kids, but we didn't try not to either. We figured it'd happen when it happened, or not. We hadn't even had a close call. Claire had never had a missed period.

We had both agreed that neither one of us wanted to be middle-aged parents of a newborn baby. Mother Nature could sure as hell play a joke or two on people and we weren't willing to take the chance. Not at thirty-seven years old. I put the boys on the chopping block to make sure nothing like that could happen.

Claire rarely mentioned it, but I knew the future worried her. Who was going to take care of us when we got old? We were going to take care of ourselves. That was my plan. I know the odds weren't in our favor. I was kind of hoping when the time came to have the good graces to simply fall over dead. I didn't want to linger on and on and on. Nobody does. But, the truth of it is very few people get that damn lucky. I didn't care if we ended up in the nursing home as long as we ended up there together and I could still crawl, hobble, or creep into her bed at night.

Did I have regrets about not having kids? Sometimes. I have to admit it would have been nice to have a carbon copy of Claire or myself running around. I could imagine a little girl with her mother's strawberry blonde curls and big brown eyes or a little boy with my long feet and knobby knees. My siblings had children and by this stage in the game their children had children. If any regret I had hit home, a family visit quickly fixed the problem. After spending an afternoon with a bunch of rowdy kids I could honestly say I had not one regret about not having my own. My branch of the family tree would go on and on thanks to the dubious efforts of my brothers and sisters and that was A-ok with me.

Claire had no regrets either. On that, I was pretty sure we were a united front. She liked kids. But, after being bombarded with curling irons, bows, and ribbons to transform her little nieces into princesses every time we visited them or they visited us. By the end of the day, she was over it.

Both sides of our families were fertile as the Nile Valley and why the trait had skipped us was a mystery. But, it was fine by us. Kids were fun, but after borrowing a niece or nephew for an afternoon. We were damn glad to send the little tykes home and have some peace and quiet and the house to ourselves again.

I thought at first Claire had slept through the night. I dipped my head to kiss her awake and realized my mistake. Her hair smelled like cigarette smoke and I knew at some point while I was asleep she had snuck out to the back porch and lit up. We had a relationship built on honesty. I didn't think she'd lie to me about smoking. It wouldn't do her any good if she did. My nose was never wrong. As an ex-smoker, I could smell cigarette smoke a mile away.

The alarm was set to go off in another five minutes. Sometimes, five minutes made all the difference in the world. A man could do a lot for and to his wife in five minutes and she could put a smile on my face that would last all day. I wanted to send her off to work in a good mood and I'd like that for myself too. But, I was a man of my word and I had meant what I had said. I gritted my teeth and willed my semi-erect cock to go back to sleep. There would be no loving today. I kissed her forehead, planting my lips against all the worry lines I had unfortunately put there and said my usual, "Good morning, babe," as I nudged her awake.

Claire's hand went straight to my boxers. God, how I loved the mornings she woke up amorous. But, it wasn't happening. I captured her wrist with my fingers and guided her hand away. She practically growled at me in discontent. Well, I wasn't very happy about it either. But, I was a man of principle. I had spent the first two years of our relationship taking cold showers and I could suffer through them again.

I was an adult by law and I had to be careful. Claire's parents had the authority to forbid us from seeing each other. We probably would have snuck around behind their backs anyway, but I wasn't about to rock the boat. So, I did the only thing a guy with a raging case of hormones and head over heels for a girl two years younger and well under her father's thumb could do. I took a lot of cold showers and got to know my right palm very, very well.

I had been too awkward and shy to do anything more than cop a feel and explore Claire's body with my fingers back in the day. We dated for two years before I finally got up the nerve to take things farther. She had finally turned eighteen and legal. I was terrified that if we did the deed and her father caught wind of it. If he found out I had defiled his teenage daughter, he would have probably come after me with his shotgun. But on her eighteenth birthday I was more than ready to seal the deal and risk a backside full of buckshot.

To this day I still get that fluttery feeling in the pit of my stomach and my heart skips a beat just thinking about it. I wasn't a Romeo. I was an awkward post-teenage guy in love with the girl of my dreams. I would have crawled across broken glass on my hands and knees just for the chance to kiss her. Hell, I still would.

I had it all planned out, just her and I, and a blanket under the stars. Plans don't always work out the way you want though. It was a muggy night in late July and Claire was sitting so prim and proper dressed in this little orange and white polka dotted sundress in the passenger side seat of my beat up '76 Chevy Nova. She was blushing bright red as if she knew tonight was going to be the night. Claire was a virgin and yes, I was sure about that. We had done almost every act conceivable by this point except for the deed.

Most nights she left me hot and bothered. That night was no exception to the rule. We started out our date doing what couples teetering on the verge of adulthood and trapped in a small town did. We cruised the main drag and hung out with our friends at the drive through ice cream stand. After a little bit of snuggling and kissing on the hood of my car and shooting the shit with our friends, we took a drive out past the edge of town and onto the maze of gravel roads that led to the heart of make out central.

I had spent every summer in these cornfields since the age of fifteen when I finally turned old enough to land a summer job detassling corn. The haze of heat and muggy fog rolling off the fields didn't faze me in the least. I had been out here at least a million times with my friends. We hung out, sat on the hoods of our cars, smoked cigarettes, drank stolen beers, and contemplated the important things in our teenage lives, which, looking back really amounted to a whole lot of nothing.

Guys took girls here to make out. It was simple. You just pulled off to the side of the road and found a spot either in the woods or the middle of a cornfield. Sure, you had to be careful of the county sheriff. But, even if he did catch you, as long as you didn't smell like a brewery and your cock wasn't hanging out of your fly, I don't think he really cared. Old Mack sure as hell wasn't going to get out of his car to walk through the miles and miles of cornfields and woods to catch you in the act anyway. Mack was a good old boy and well, back in his day he had probably been out here and done the same thing himself.

I had the perfect place picked out, smack dab in the middle of the field. We were going to have to walk to get to it, but that was more than fine by me. I was twenty, and adult. I could have rented a hotel room, if I had actually had more than two nickels to rub together, which I didn't. But, Claire deserved better than the backseat of my car for her first time. In the essence of being the smooth operator I thought outside under the stars was more romantic anyway. We hadn't talked about doing IT. I wasn't sure tonight was the night, but I was prepared, just in case.