The Widows of Willoughby Close Ch. 01

'Thank you,' she said, quietly. 'I did wonder. Women often have a sense that men are looking at them in a particular way. I'm very flattered. But why "disturbingly"? Is it because I'm so much older than you and you're wondering why you're attracted to an old stick like me?' I could see the glint of her teeth as she smiled, taking any sting out of her words. 'For the record,' she went on, 'I am very attracted to you, James. I hope that doesn't sound too ridiculous at my age.' She held up her empty glass. 'It's taken quite a lot of this to get me to admit that.'

'You're gorgeous,' I said, simply. 'Age hardly comes into it, or if it does it's as an enhancer rather than the reverse.' I stood up and extended my hand to Julia. She clasped it and uncurled herself from the chair and stood too; without her heels she was perhaps three inches shorter than me. I leaned forward to kiss her but, to my surprise and disappointment she moved her head back to avoid me.

'No James, not tonight. We've both had too much to drink and I'm going to push you out of the front door.' She steered me to the hall and waited while put my shoes on. Then she put her hands on my shoulders and looked at me with her calm blue-grey eyes.

'If my age really doesn't bother you then yes, I would very much like to be intimate with you. But I don't want to think it's an alcohol-fuelled infatuation, and I certainly don't want you waking up next to me in the morning and wondering how you ended up with this old hag. Do you see where I'm coming from?'

I nodded and grinned. 'Your logic is faultless. That's not bad going after a bottle of wine.'

'I've had plenty of practice,' she replied. 'Now before you go, kiss me.'

She raised her face and I lowered my head and our lips met and her mouth opened against mine and I felt her tongue slip into my mouth and all was warm and soft and liquid as she worked her lips against mine. It was, by some margin, the most sensuous and erotic kiss I'd ever had. I'd thought perhaps her skin would be leathery, even bristly, and that she would kiss with the cool reserve of an elderly middle-class Englishwoman. But she was fragrant and soft and yielding and she kissed with a passion and an expertise that eclipsed all my previous girlfriends in one thirty-second embrace.

Breaking away for air I raised my head. 'Bloody hell, Julia!'

She smiled and opened the front door. Outside the Close was in darkness; there was no moon and the streetlights went off at eleven. 'Goodnight, James. And thank you for a lovely evening.'

'Thank you. And for the fabulous meal. Same time tomorrow?'

'Why don't you come round a bit earlier. Mid-afternoon, say.' She gave me a quick peck on the cheek and closed the front door and I stumbled over the shared drive to my front door, my mind in a whirl of erotic thoughts, my penis throbbing in my underpants.

In bed I seemed incapable of sleep. My next-door-neighbour, the entrancing Julia, had offered me intimacy. That could mean anything from a hug and a kiss to full intercourse. After that kiss the latter seemed the most likely. But what would it be like? I masturbated to visions of Julia naked, imagining what she would look like, what she would feel like and smell like and taste like... About five am I fell into a restless doze.

I woke at eleven-fifteen the following morning feeling tired and gritty-eyed. That was easily sorted out. I went for a five-mile run out into the rolling East Sussex farmland. Back home I shaved and showered and breakfasted and then mooched around doing pointless jobs while I waited for the carriage clock on the front room mantlepiece to strike three and trying not to think too much about what the afternoon might bring, in case I was disappointed.

At the stroke of three I presented myself at the door of number two. After a couple of minutes the door was opened and there stood Julia in a long, black satin dressing gown.

'Come in James.' She shut the door behind me ushered me into the front room. I turned to her and held my arms out and she came to me and we embraced and kissed and it was just like last night. Her perfume was light and tangy and she felt and slim and warm through the thin gown, her breasts soft and fleshy against my chest.

'I'm running a bit late this afternoon. I'm still doing my face. I'll call you when I'm ready.'

'Shall I make us some tea?' I asked, lamely.

'Tea's for later. Now is the time for other things. You do want to make love to me don't you?' There was that hint of anxiety in her voice again.

'Yes, very much so,' I croaked.

'Give me twenty minutes. Watch the telly or something.' Then she was gone.

It was nearer half an hour later that I heard her call my name and I sprang up and went through into her hall. If it was the same layout as my house then the master bedroom was the last door on the right. It was ajar and I pushed it open to reveal a darkened room with a big brass bedstead in the middle and a wardrobe and chest of drawers. Julia was sitting on a stool in front of her dressing table and as I came in she stood up and turned towards me. She was still wearing the black gown but as I watched she undid the cords and shrugged it off her shoulders. Underneath she was wearing a dark-red satin negligee and matching French knickers. Below these she wore sheer black stockings, the suspender straps disappearing under her knickers. I was speechless with desire and admiration. The negligee was close fitting and showed off her flat stomach and flaring hips, although it also outlined her sagging breasts. The stockings highlighted the long slenderness of her legs with their sculptured calves and slim ankles. She came around the bed and stood in front of me.

'Sorry about the curtains' -- they were thick, red velvet and reduced the light to an evening gloom -- 'I suppose I'm a bit nervous about you seeing me.' As she said this her long fingers started undoing the buttons on my shirt, her nails varnished to match her underwear. Saying nothing more, she pulled the shirt out of my trousers and down over my shoulders and arms and onto the floor. She ran her hands over my chest then she was undoing the belt of my jeans and I was panting and light-headed with desire, aware of my iron-hard cock as she pulled my trousers down and it bulged out in my underpants. Turning me round, she sat me on the bed while she took off my jeans and socks and there I was, sitting on her bed, in just a pair of Y-fronts.

She crawled onto the bed and I lay down beside her and we kissed again and I have never been so turned on. Her mouth was warm and wet and mobile and she brought to our kissing an intimacy that I'd never experienced before. I tasted her saliva and smelt her scent and felt her tongue exploring my teeth and gums. I kissed her back as expertly as I knew how and I felt her arm go around my shoulder and her hand on the back of my head and she was pressing herself to me and mashing our lips together and my cock was like iron, drooling seminal fluid into the crotch of my underpants. I stroked her, feeling the loose skin of her upper arm, and cupped a soft breast, the size of a grapefruit, through her negligee, finding her nipple with my thumb and stroking it.

Julia moaned quietly into my mouth and raked her nails lightly down my bare back, causing me to shiver with lust and anticipation. God I wanted this woman; no one else had ever come close. I kissed her cheeks and ears and eyelids and nose and neck and then her mouth again, saliva wet on our chins, tongues locked together in a passionate joust.

I slid my hand down her negligee, over her flat stomach and to her crotch. She groaned into my mouth as my hand glided over the taut material and I cupped her vulva, feeling her labia surprisingly clearly defined through the thin satin fabric. Slipping my hand into her knickers I discovered that Julia was clean shaven and I almost came with excitement. I'd fantasised about shaven pussies but never seen one outside a porn video. As my middle finger sought her slit she broke the kiss and put her head back, eyes closed.

'Oh God, James, it's been so long.'

Her cunt was smooth and warm and my finger, sliding between her labia, found a well of velvet wetness inside. No chance of this old lady running dry, I thought fleetingly as I sank my finger in up to the knuckle and Julia squirmed and dug her nails into the skin of my upper arm. 'Yes!' she gasped. I pushed another finger in and she writhed and moaned as I slid them in and out, smelling her musky secretions in the gloom of the bedroom and hearing the faint squishing and sucking of her cunt around my digits. Her hand found the waistband of my Y-fronts and slipped inside, grasping my iron-hard cock, pulling the foreskin back, smearing the sticky liquid around my helmet and shaft.

We kissed again as I finger-fucked her and she stroked her hand all around my cock. I was excited beyond measure, worried that I'd ejaculate in my underpants before the main event had started but reluctant to stop anything. Julia did it for me.

'I want you inside me,' she whispered in my ear and I knelt up and pulled down my Y-fronts, a string of viscous liquid snaking down my thigh. I took the elasticated waistband of her French knickers in my fingers and she raised her bum to allow me to slide them down, rustling over the nylon of her stockings and exposing her shaven pussy to me, her sticky labia glinting faintly in the darkened room. She opened her legs wide in invitation and I knelt between them, going down on one arm, the other hand on my cock, guiding it towards her sopping twat, rubbing my glans up and down her slit, finding her cunt hole and pushing myself inside, sliding easily in, the full length, maybe six or seven inches, I'd never measured it. Taking most of my weight on my knees and forearms I lowered myself onto Julia and she wrapped her arms around me and hugged me tight, locking her legs over mine, her stockings smooth against my calves, and thrusting her hips up to get the last half-inch of my meat inside her.

We kissed, saying nothing, and it was a gentler, somehow even more intimate kiss and I smelt her scent and the light smell of her sweat and I felt my cock deep in her cunt, her muscles gripping me, her hands on my back and on my buttocks, the nails lightly pressing into my flesh. And slowly, very slowly, I started to move in and out, just a couple of inches and slowly back in, hearing and feeling her moan into my mouth, the air whistling in her nostrils.

It was the most exciting sexual encounter I had ever had, by a country mile. I fucked her slowly and gently because I was on a knife edge and I wanted it to last forever. But at the same time I wondered if she wanted it harder, faster, but she was so obviously deeply aroused: breath gasping, kissing me and sucking my lips into her mouth, licking up the saliva that drooled down my chin, flexing her hips to meet my restrained and gentle thrusts.

We fucked for a long time, though it's hard to quantify it. Time just didn't matter anymore. There was just us. But eventually I felt my climax start to build and I knew that no matter how much I slowed down I was still going to come. But the build-up was slow, exquisitely slow, and where in the past my climaxes had been characterised by my universe shrinking to just me and my penis, now it seemed as if Julia and I were locked together as one organism -- Shakespeare's "beast with two backs" -- moving together, breathing together, feeling, smelling, tasting together.

'I'm coming,' I gasped as I felt the familiar fireworks in my brain.

Julia gave a deep groan and dug her nails in deeper, 'Yes, come inside me.'

I felt a wave of intense pleasure and affection and intimacy wash over me and then I was pumping my sperm into her, feeling the heat of her cunt around my penis, gasping as the sensations wracked my body and Julia looked up at me in the half-light and urged me on with her hips and fingers and legs.

The orgasm, slow to build, was slow to dissipate and for long moments I lay on top of her as the waves subsided and reality came back into focus. Then we both lay still, me on my elbows and looking down at her, brushing a strand of hair from her face and kissing her lips softly.

'That was beyond belief,' I whispered to her. 'I've never experienced anything like that before.'

'Mm, it was delicious,' she said softly.

'I'm sorry you didn't come.'

'What makes you think I didn't?'

'Oh, well, because....'

'Because I didn't scream out loud and shout "fuck me, fuck me"?' She smiled and stroked my face with her hand. 'It's not always like that for a woman. I had at least two orgasms.'

'Really?' I suddenly felt like a callow youth, but I also felt a wave of satisfaction that I could bring such pleasure to this elegant, sophisticated lady.

'The position was very good for me... those short thrusts... you were pressing on my clitoris. And the weight of you on top of me. It was a very intense feeling.'

I was still semi-hard but now I withdrew and lay down beside my elderly lover and she came into my arms and we hugged and kissed and caressed and talked as the afternoon dribbled away into early evening. She told me that she had only slept with one other man since the death of her husband and that had been more than five years ago.

'And it wasn't like this,' she said, bluntly. 'He went at it like a bull in a china shop then afterwards he fell asleep and snored. I didn't get much out of it to be honest. Although he was nearer my age,' she smiled. 'In his fifties, anyway.'

'Does it bother you? My age?' I asked.

'Yes and no.'

'Go on.'

'Well I love the fact that a very good-looking and fit young man finds me attractive enough to want to make love to me. But I'm also aware that you're twenty-six -- I know because Eileen talked about you all the time -- and I'm sixty-eight, just short of sixty-nine. And I know we get on well together and we've had a lovely time this afternoon but the fact remains that I'm an old lady. You'll probably be horrified when you see me naked, in full daylight. A conventional relationship is out of the question. The best we can hope for is a discreet liaison for a few weeks or months until you get fed up with me.' She ended this little speech with a stifled sob and I hugged her tighter and kissed her forehead.

But I was realistic enough to see the truth in her words. Perhaps I would tire of her, find the age gap insurmountable, though that wasn't how I felt at the moment. 'Are you saying we should stop this?' I asked, gently.

'No, I don't want this to stop. But I want us to be completely honest with each other so that... so that when it does end we can stay friends and I know that's all terribly cliched but at my age it's important.'

'Well, the discretion bit should be easy, we're neighbours. There's only numbers two and four that could see our comings and goings.'

'Oh, Phoebe and Jasminder won't say anything; we're a very tight-knit group here. We call ourselves the Widows of Willoughby Close.'

'Oh.'

Julia sighed. 'Have you heard of the book "The Wolves of Willoughby Chase"? By Joan Aiken? No, I suppose not. It was very popular when I was a child, back in the fourteenth century.'

I hadn't heard of it. 'So grandma was a member of the Widows?'

'The founder. She'd been here the longest.'

'And what did you all get up to?' I asked, teasingly.

Julia paused. 'We play Bridge on a Saturday night,' she said eventually. 'Or at least we did. There's only three of us now. Unless you can play,' she added in a tone which suggested this wasn't very likely.

'I can play Bridge,' I replied, slightly defensively. 'I played for my university.'

'Really?'

'Yes, really. I was dead keen on the girl who ran the club.'

'Did it work out?'

'No. It turned out she batted for the other side.'

Julia snorted with laughter. 'Oh, poor you. After all the trouble of learning to play.' There was another pause then, 'I don't suppose you'd be interested in making up a foursome with Phoebe and Jas and me on a Saturday evening would you?'

'Well as long as you and I have screamingly good sex on Saturday afternoon I think I could be gracious enough to accept your invitation. Will your neighbours be ok with it?'

'I'm sure they will.' And with that she climbed off the bed and put her dressing gown on. 'Now I'll have to go and cook, if you want any dinner that is.'

After dinner, with the autumn light fading, we sat together on Julia's two-seater settee and watched a long-winded romantic comedy on the television. About halfway through Julia, whose head had been on my shoulder for the past half-hour, started to gently snore and soon after that I felt my attention wavering and I too fell asleep.

We woke to a music programme -- it was just after ten o'clock -- and sat rubbing our eyes. I looked enquiringly at Julia and she sensed my unspoken question immediately. 'Would you mind terribly if we didn't sleep together tonight? I'm very tired and--'

'And you've still got a bit of a hang-up about showing me your body,' I finished.

'I know it sounds silly and we will sleep together, I promise you.'

'That's fine. It just adds to your mystique and sensuous allure.'

'You're wasted doing electrical engineering; you should take up writing.'

'Actually it's a good thing; I'm travelling to Paris on the early Eurostar tomorrow morning. I'll be gone until next Saturday. So I won't need any more evening meals. Sorry, I should have said something sooner.'

That's quite alright. Would you like to have dinner with me next Saturday evening?'

'I would like that very much.' By this time we were in the hall and I was slipping my shoes on.

Julia opened a drawer in a little occasional table and scrabbled around for a few seconds. 'I think it would be easier if you had a front-door key,' she said, pressing a key into my hand. I was taken aback and thrilled that this lovely lady trusted me to have a key to her home.

'Thank you!' We kissed for long moments. Julia's breath tasted faintly stale after her little nap but this almost added to the intimacy. The kiss was like all our others: liquid and erotic and deeply arousing. My cock was straining at the leash and I cupped her buttocks and pressed her crotch to my erection before she broke away and said goodnight and ushered me out of the door.

Paris was good, as always, but my mind was elsewhere that week and I avoided socialising with my colleagues and our customers in favour of going back to my hotel room and wanking myself silly to erotic images of Julia. We'd exchanged mobile phone numbers and I sent her a number of suggestive texts. Not overtly obscene but hinting at pleasures to come. Her replies were warm and friendly and depressingly correct, with one exception. On Wednesday evening she messaged me to say that a Bridge night had been suggested for Saturday night with Jasminder and Phoebe and would I be alright with that. I replied that I would look forward to it and Julia replied that I should therefore come round to her in good time to have "screamingly good sex" and dinner before her guests arrived. "Would three o'clock suit me?" the text concluded. That was enough to have me stripping off my trousers and flinging myself on the big hotel bed.

I arrived home at lunchtime on Saturday and spent half an hour wandering around my new kitchen and fiddling with the cupboards and drawers and gadgets. Then I showered and shaved and dressed in chinos and a short-sleeved shirt. I watched a bit of football on the television but I couldn't concentrate and at a quarter to three I messaged Julia that I was on my way over and I went and let myself into her bungalow with the key she'd given me and slipped off my shoes. It was quiet inside.

'Hullo,' I called.