The Refuge Ch. 03

"That over there is Jocelyn's," he motioned to a desk beneath the other large window, piled with file folders and loose papers. "She's a bit more untidy than me, as you can see." He smiled apologetically.

"It's lovely," I said to ease his embarrassment over his messy wife. The entire left wall featured a series of built in shelving and cabinets, all with gleaming cherry wood while a cozy reading nook was built into the right wall, complete with book shelves and rich leather armchairs.

The cabinet closest to David's desk was slightly ajar, catching my eye and bringing to mind Jocelyn's revelation of David's secret stash of all things Rosaline. I was oh-so tempted to peek, but my mother did not raise a snoop, so I resisted.

I was aware of David studying me in that piercing way he had that made me feel like he could read my mind before he reached for my hand again and led me from the room.

"This door here is the kitchen pantry, and this one is a little guest bathroom, just a toilet and a sink. These others beside the office are closets, or shallow storage spaces. And this one," he said, looking over his shoulder at me with more than a little bit of pride shaping his handsome features, "is to the stairs leading to the lower level." He opened the door which had a keyed entrance, and led me down the narrow flight of steps into a dreamy space full of cream and blush tones.

"Wow," I breathed, amazed. It was like a house beneath a house. We were standing in what would be the living/family room, with a small, open, eat-in kitchen at the rear, and at the other end, a small hallway that led to the back yard. I could just see through the glass door at the end of that hallway which opened to an outside stairway that led up to the end of the balcony off the kitchen upstairs. The far wall was natural rock, which played well with the cream carpet and blush toned furniture. David walked to the rock wall and stroked its surface.

"Thank you. It was a labor of love, I'll tell you that. This is the actual hill this house rests on. I come in here from time to time just to breathe it in."

"It's beautiful. And look at the view!" I turned to gaze out the opposite wall, which was basically a wall of glass with an unobstructed view of the rolling California costal hills. It was hard to see the terrain in the gathering dusk, but the sprawling bay at the bottom of the hills was dotted with a thousand tiny lights.

"Come this way, you can see more from this end." He led me past the little kitchen and into another narrow hallway. "This is a little bathroom, with a shower this time, and this is a small bedroom beside the kitchen. There's another bathroom and kind of a wet room where you can take off muddy boots and wash up from coming outside at the other end, just past the stairs heading up. I've got a weight set and some other workout stuff set up in there. This, though, is what would be the master suite of this little house beneath the house."

He opened the door to a room that looked like nothing but glass. "Though, I don't use it for that," he flipped on a light switch to reveal drop cloths over more of that deep, cherry wood, used this time for flooring. There were multiple easels with a table set in the corner of the room dotted with various painting paraphernalia. I was momentarily stunned by both the flood lighting and the array of his artwork.

"The natural light is really good in here for painting."

"Yes, I can see that. You're amazing!" He shrugged, but I could tell that he was pleased by my compliment by the gentle smile that curved his full lips.

"I remember how much you loved to draw, but you've gone far beyond where you used to be. You are so, so talented." And he was. He had captured the vista perfectly in various styles on different easels. Canvases of varied sizes rested against the inside wall and again, I was strongly tempted to peak through them.

I didn't have to resist the urge for very long as David began to tilt them away from one another and I caught glimpses of different vistas in different places around the world as well as his family's faces captured perfectly with oil or pastels. Even little Buck, with his lolling grin, was featured on a canvas or too.

"My god, Davey... wow." I breathed, completely thrown by his talent. He didn't respond, only bit his lip, glancing up at my face apprehensively before he pulled the next canvas back. All of a sudden I was looking down into my own face, except this was the face of my sixteen year-old self.

He had perfectly recreated my high school senior picture, the one where I had donned that partial black shawl they throw over you, and then positioned by the photographer in that unrealistic way, looking down and back, almost over my shoulder to where I was looking up at the camera beneath my lashes.

David, however, had made that pose look natural, and beautiful. A lump grew in my throat. This was the image he had carried in his helmet during his tour of Iraq.

He pulled the canvas from the rack and set it gently on an empty easel. We fell silent, studying it together. The entire canvas was black, the only color present was the creamy peach skin of my face and bared shoulders, my rosebud pink mouth, my brilliant green eyes, and my pale blonde hair waving around my unlined face and ending just below the two glinting gold studs in my ears.

He perfectly captured my youth and vitality, bringing me back to the girl I used to be, innocent and so in love with the boy standing next to me.

"You asked me, um...," he attempted to clear the huskiness from his throat enough to speak, and then started again, "you asked me if I wanted this, Rosaline, if I wanted what Joss has proposed, for you to come here and live with us, to... that's not right, not just live with us, to be part of us." He turned away from the painting and took me in his arms. I could feel him trembling with the strength of his emotion when I wrapped my arms around him.

"Rosie, I have loved every inch of you since you were sixteen years old. I have thought about you, hoped and wondered about you frequently over the past fifteen years. Having you back in my life would mean everything to me. I will do nearly anything to make that happen, and if that means sharing you with Jocelyn, I'll do it. If the only way that I get to hold you, touch you, listen to that sing-song voice of yours day in and day out is for you to come live here with us, then so be it.

"If you won't let me follow you back home, then I want you to come here. I know it's selfish as hell of me to ask you to do it, which is why I couldn't and Jocelyn asked for me, but if you came here..." he shook his head, and squeezed his eyes shut tight, "if you joined our family, that would make me the happiest man in the world.

"I would not only have the mother of my children who is truly my life partner, as well as those children, but I would have my soulmate too, all under the same roof. I feel like life for me would be complete. I'm not saying it won't take an adjustment, and I know its a lot to ask of not only you, but your son as well, but I do think it could work." He kissed the tip of my nose.

"Now it's your turn. Tell me: do you want this?" My breath quickened and my lip trembled.

"Davey... you just asked me the same thing I've been asking myself all evening." I pulled out of his arms and walked to the large bay windows that overlooked the Benicia hills and crossed my arms over my chest, hugging myself. "How can I say yes, how can I come here if the expectation is that I'm 'shared' between you two?" I turned to look at him, a tear rolling down my cheek. "And how can I share you?"

"Oh, Rosie," he took a step toward me and I held out my hand, halting him.

"Ignore the tears, they don't mean anything. They are there simply because I am having this conversation with you, and not because I am upset." I swiped at my easy tears in frustration.

"You just said that you want me any way you can get me, even if that means 'sharing me' with her. She told me a little bit about what kind of marriage you two have, that she's bisexual and has had solitary relationships with women before marrying you, but I haven't. I've never even kissed another woman.

"How can I be expected to make this life-altering decision to be 'shared' which means to basically have sex with a woman when I don't even know if I'm attracted to women? You two are asking me to do something I don't know if I'm even capable of doing." David stepped forward and rubbed my crossed arms.

"I know this seems scary, but no one is asking you to do anything you aren't comfortable with."

"He's right," Jocelyn said, striding into the room and I nearly jumped out of my skin.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't help hearing your conversation, at least the last bit, mostly because, well, I was trying to." At the look on my face she shrugged and smiled.

"It's a nasty habit I picked up over the last fifteen years as a police officer." She stepped close and took me in her arms. I stiffened at the contact, but she rubbed my back soothingly and despite myself, I felt comforted. There was just something about her that invited peace and serenity. Maybe it was because she demanded it, in a way, expecting nothing less. I let out a gusty sigh and rested my cheek on her shoulder.

"Jocelyn," I mumbled into her neck.

"Yes, honey?"

"There is one other thing that is really bothering me about all this."

"What's that?" I pulled back and looked her in the eyes.

"How are you ok with the idea of David and I, you know, making love?" She smiled at me then looked at David.

"She really is an innocent, isn't she?" He merely shrugged.

"About some things, yes, but she has a brilliant, analytical mind, so don't let that innocence trick you into thinking otherwise."

"Would you mind not talking about me as if I'm not here, please." I asked, trying to be as polite as I could. Jocelyn gave me one last squeeze and then stepped back, taking one of my hands in her own. She reached out and took David's hand in her free one, pulling him closer.

"I'm sorry, I am," Jocelyn said.

"I'm sorry too, that won't happen again." David said, taking my free hand.

"Besides, I'm far from innocent, something that David can attest to." I raised an eyebrow in his direction and he grinned at my cheekiness.

"Yes, well, to answer your question, I view sexuality a little differently." Jocelyn continued.

"How so, and what does that have to do with me and David?"

"This was the stuff I hinted at during our conversation earlier, the 'more' that exists between David and me. I don't believe, for instance in 'making love.' That is a concept perpetuated by a society that is determined to deny one of our basic impulses as a human animal. Sex is part of life, it is what all healthy, mature animals do, it isn't this sacred thing that belongs only between husband and wife.

"David knows that I believe this, and it is because of this belief that we have had the sex life we currently have and why it doesn't bother me in the slightest to think of you two together. In fact, I want you two to be together because I love David and it makes me happy knowing that you make him happy because sex with you means something important to David."

"So you're saying that when you make love with someone it means nothing to you?"

"Not exactly, for example, when David and I have sex, it means more to me than if a stranger and I have sex, but it doesn't affect me emotionally to fuck that stranger because my body wanted to. It's just about satisfying an urge, a drive. That's not to say, though, that David and I fuck just because our bodies drive us to do it, it's also because it strengthens our emotional commitment to one another. Does that make sense?"

"I don't know," I said, feeling more lost than before I had asked the question. "The whole concept is kind of foreign to me, really, having sex without a commitment. Every person I've ever made love to was someone that I've had an emotional connection with."

"Everyone?" She raised an eyebrow at me. "You're saying you'e never had a one night stand." I shook my head and she glanced up at David, but I couldn't tell what she was thinking. David, however, did.

"I told you, Joss, she's not like you." He looked down at me, smiling, and squeezed the hand he held in his own. "You're a bit more traditional."

"Hey, that's ok too," she squeezed my hand, smiling gently at me. "Just because I have this view of sexuality doesn't mean you have to as well. You know, Rosaline, I find you so brave. You are all the things David has said about you and more."

"Brave?"

"Just the fact that you are here, discussing this, being open to considering this lifestyle despite your upbringing, is remarkable to me and so brave. It makes me want you even more." I sucked in a breath at the look on her face which was filled suddenly with a startling hunger. I blanched in the face of that hunger and took a step back, starting to pull my hand away.

"You're spooking her, Joss," David murmured.

"Oh, I'm sorry. I don't mean to scare you. I do want you, I'm not going to lie about that. You're incredibly sexy, Rosaline... beautiful... alluring. But on that note, I swear to you that I will not ask you to do anything you don't want to do. What I will ask you, though, is to at least think about it before automatically rejecting the thought outright based on what society expects you to do.

"David's told me about the religion that you two were raised in, and I can understand why you shy away from a more open sexuality, why you and he only fantasized about a more open sex life but never acted on it. If I was raised that way, I'd be fifty shades of fucked up.

"Luckily, I had parents who allowed me to openly express who I was at a young age, nurturing and supporting the choices that I made for myself without imposing choices that society would have made for me. It took a while to convince David that love didn't just have to be between a man and a woman either, that our sexuality is a fluid and changing thing." She squeezed my hand, smiling gently into my eyes.

"We could take things one step at a time, you know," she continued. "We don't have to make any drastic decisions right now. You still have a semester left at your current school, anyway. We've got time to get to know each other before making any life-changing decisions, like allowing me access to that splendidly curved body... oh, and allowing David unlimited access, too." She smiled roguishly at me and I blushed. I was abruptly aware of my smaller hand enclosed within Jocelyn's larger one, that rough/smooth feeling of her fingers and palm suddenly brought me back to the vivid fantasy I had earlier of those fingers playing with my pussy while I furiously brought myself to orgasm. My blush deepened and my mouth went dry.

"What are you thinking, Rosie?" David said, no doubt observing the blush splash across my face and across the cleavage that was visible in the deep v of my blouse.

"What do you mean," I asked, a little huskiness to my voice.

"You know what I mean," David smirked, "what is causing your skin to blush that delicious color? I wish I had paints and a canvas ready to capture it."

"Yes, that color is delicious, isn't it?" Jocelyn said a bit breathless herself.

"Thank you, both of you for your compliment, but, David, I think you know why I'm blushing, you don't need me to explain it to you." I said in my best teacher voice, and he smiled that boyish smile. I swallowed thickly. David could always see right through me and I wasn't about to stroke his ego by confirming out loud what he already knew; the thought of the three of us together did turn me on, despite my prudish upbringing.

"So, back to what David was saying, no one is going to force you to do anything you don't want, or aren't willing, to do. And since you have just told us that having never been with another woman, you don't know what you would be willing to do anyway. Why don't we take one small step at a time."

Jocelyn let go of David's hand and grabbed my other hand from David's, pulling me closer. She had at least four inches on me, so I had to look up slightly to look her in the eye. My breath quickened and I knew even before she started to lower her face to mine that she was going to kiss me and I felt powerless to stop it. My bones had turned to jello and my heart was nearly beating out of my chest. I couldn't move from the spot if I had wanted to, and I just didn't know anymore if I did want to.

Her lips were soft and warm, a complete different shape than David's, but not unpleasing in their quality. She applied a steady pressure to my lips, moving them gently and urgently over mine. When the tip of her tongue touched my bottom lip, I felt my pussy clench, releasing a small spot of moisture in my pink satin panties. I tilted my face up to hers with a whimper, giving her whatever signal she had been waiting for, because she then crushed me to her, dragging her tongue through my mouth, tasting me while gripping the back of my head.

I clutched at her shoulders which felt toned and muscled beneath her soft sweater.

If I didn't think about it too much, kissing her wasn't much different than kissing a man. She confidently took what she wanted from my mouth and my body in much the same way, without asking and without forgiveness. She ran her hand over my ass, following the curve there until she cupped one rounded cheek, squeezing it in her fist.

She backed me up against the cold glass and thrust her hard thigh between my legs. I couldn't think, only react, only feel. She released my mouth to trail kisses down my throat, pulling my hair, forcing my head back. She cupped my full breast in her hand, pinching the crest through my chambray blouse and bra. I moaned, my eyes shut tight, lost in the sensation of her mouth on my neck, her hand on my breast, and her hard thigh pressed against my pussy, rubbing it as she rocked against me.

Her mouth moved lower at the same time she pulled the front of my shirt and bra away, exposing one of my breasts. Jocelyn quickly captured it with her mouth, sucking the taut peak, grazing it with her teeth. She gripped my ass in her fist, forcing me to ride her hard thigh and the seam of my jeans rolled over and teased my clit, spreading the juice from my wet pussy over my panties, which only served

to increase the ease and pleasure of grinding her thigh.

"Mmm... you taste so good, you smell so good. I can smell that sweet, wet pussy from here," she growled against my mouth before thrusting her tongue between my lips again. I whimpered as a hot throb of pleasure pulsed through me. She increased the motion of my hips on her thigh, returning her mouth to my nipple, suckling hard and rhythmically in time to the rhythm of my hips. In mere moments, she had me at the peak of an orgasm.

My head snapped back, tapping against the glass. I opened my eyes and caught David's crystal blue gaze with my own. His face was flushed watching us, his shoulders and head resting on the wall behind him, biting his lip. The raw hunger in his gaze and expression pitched me over the edge and I gave a soft cry as I came in Jocelyn's arms, my eyes locked to his as I rode that orgasmic high.

"Goddamn, you're beautiful, Rosaline, simply, fucking beautiful." Jocelyn said as she pulled my bra and top back into place before releasing me. I dragged air into my lungs, trying to regain my composure.

"Well, I think that answers one question, don't you Rosie." David said, his voice thick with that husky quality it developed whenever he was in the grip of lust. I met his eyes with mine once more and his cheeks were still flushed, his eyes still glazed with hunger. He had his hands clasped behind his back which made the clear erection in the front of his jeans all that more prominent. I broke our gaze, and cleared my throat, looking everywhere but at the pair of them as a sudden rush of shame filled me.