Chapter 7
A noisy thunderstorm that burst over Myrtle Beach late at night two weeks later gave Vivien the excuse she had been waiting for to go to Julia's bedroom. From early childhood, her daughter had been terrified of lightning flashes and the ensuing years hadn't changed the fear. It was the opportunity Vivien had wanted.
"Julia?" she called from the doorway to the girl's room. A tear-marked face lifted from under a pillow and looked toward the light from the hall.
"Can I come in and snuggle out the storm?" Vivien asked in a voice tremulous with uncertainty.
Julia's head was burrowed back under the pillow, but her body shifted to one side on the bed, giving Vivien her answer. Clutching the filmy peignoir tightly to her body, she crept under the sheet and slipped an arm across Julia's trembling shoulders.
"Nothing to be afraid of," Vivien comforted, stroking across the shapeliness of her daughter's back, then along the rise of the buttocks out to the sleek curve of her hip. "Such a big girl you've become," she murmured, remembering other nights and other storms.
A shudder traveled involuntarily across Julia's upper body in response to the gentle touch, and Vivien, feeling the tremble and sensing rejection, snatched her hand away.
"I'm sorry," she apologized in a whisper. "I didn't mean to annoy you."
"No!" Julia twisted to curl toward her mother and groped for the hand. "I want you to. It reminds me of when I was little."
"Good!" breathed Vivien, letting the girl guide her hand and feeling a little shock wave of surprise when Julia led her fingers along the curve of a breast, then released them.
From the first touch, Julia's resentment of Vivien had begun to change to a new emotion. She wondered if it was the darkness that made it all so different from other snuggling sessions. It had to be more than that, she knew. In sporadic lightning flashes she could see her mother's face and she could clearly visualize the body under the sheet-a form Julia had always thought of as the perfect female figure. And that was what was new-new since she had seen her mother behaving like a wanton female there in Mr. Wilson's apartment.
Always before, Vivien had been "Mums". From the moment her daughter saw her performing with a phallus in her mouth, "Mums" had turned into a sex symbol-a flame-haired voluptuary whose man-pleasing skills had taken over when Julia had fled Sherman Wilson's advances.
A strange demand began to gnaw her as she felt Vivien's fingers resting quietly on the fullness of her breast. There was something far beyond a mother-daughter relationship between them now. They had shared the same men sexually, and even though it would be a disaster for her mother to know it, the two of them were competitors.
Sex competitors? Impossible! The brazen thought started a little quiver in Julia's shoulders and she struggled to suppress it. Again Vivien trembled, but this time her response was a tender tracing across the breasts, pausing as she came to a turgid nipple, then moving quickly to Julia's shoulder as though she had touched the forbidden.
Julia remembered the woman in Elm Lodge and the delicious intimacy of the feeling of another female. At St. Mary's there had been frequent thunderings against "unnatural lusts" and Julia knew that what she was feeling would qualify for violent disapproval by the teaching sisters. But the woman beside her must be feeling the same need if that too-quick withdrawal meant anything.
"I like that," murmured Julia, reaching to draw the hand from her shoulder and placing the fingers directly across the center of her breast.
Vivien felt the shooting pinpricks of a long suppressed hunger rifling through her middle. Years before, she had let her older sister play with her for several terrifying, adolescent hours. They frolicked only once and the power of the emotion had frightened both of them too much to risk losing self-control in more experimenting. Men had come into both their lives and removed the temptation-but now it was back. Perhaps this was the answer to win the confidence of her daughter again. Just a gentle toying and nothing more...
"The lightning does it," Vivien giggled, tweaking the taut nipple between her thumb and forefinger, then moving in search of the other nub.
"I'm such a ninny to be frightened of storms," Julia replied, squirming slightly to urge her upper body toward the fingers.
A moment of quiet and then, impetuously, Julia reached to grope for her mother's breast, and when she found the center, she teased a tittie that was stiffened and pointing as eagerly as her own.
"Yours are so much nicer," she whispered, scrooching her body to permit both her hands to fondle breasts that now were moving in a soft swelling, involuntary rhythm. Julia knew her touch was wanted.
"You've matured so beautifully," praised Vivien, imitating Julia's action and cupping both her daughter's globes. She massaged lightly.
"Ooohh!" Julia moaned. "That's nice. Why do some people say it's wrong?"
"Maybe because they see wrong in everything." Vivien hardly heard her own reply. She felt the tantalizing deviltry across her breasts and the huge dividing wall between herself and the girl seemed to be coming down.
"But what can be wrong with anything if there's love in it?" Julia persisted.
"Nothing, my darling."
A flash of light illuminated the bedroom and the burst of thunder was almost simultaneous. In the momentary brilliance, Vivien saw the sudden terror showing in Julia's face and with a little cry of compassion, she flung an arm around her daughter's shoulder and drew her tightly to her front.
"Ummm," murmured the girl, molding herself to the other's front. Her hand drifted across Vivien's hip and traced the contour of her tail. Then as it crossed the lower curve of the cheek, the hand tightened its grip and forced their two bodies even more tightly together.
"Know what I'd like?" whispered Julia. "I'd like to stay like this forever, and never have to put up with the way men are."
Vivien was silent, waiting for the girl to go on, suspecting she wanted to talk about Sherman Wilson. It was what she had been waiting for weeks to hear, she reminded herself, and now she couldn't care less. The feel of those breasts! Those eager nipples! And that prominent Venus mound on so young a girl!
"I love you," said the girl.
"And I love you, Julia."
"Let's pretend."
"What?"
"Let's pretend that we're the only two people on the whole earth and we want to show each other how we feel."
Vivien felt the sudden change in the girl. "How would you show me?" she asked.
"I'd begin here," replied Julia, pressing gently to separate their bodies and leaning to a breast. Vivien felt a growing need as Julia surrounded the tumid center with her lips and for several torturous seconds kept a mere breath away from actually touching the cone.
Frantic desire seethed through Vivien and she urged herself upward to force the contact. It was no longer the child she had borne eighteen years before and often held close to this same breast. This was a maddeningly erotic creature who had power to set another-male or female-afire with need for her body.
Mercifully the ovaled lips closed on the sensitive cone and Julia began a gentle sucking. With each thirsty contraction of her daughter's lips, Vivien felt herself drawn further into a whirlpool of need. A spearing tongue darted to stab at the hard nub and then remained to strum the nipple to near hysteria.
Abruptly, Julia broke from the love play and moved to the other breast, again sending shock waves of sensuality racing wildly through Vivien's body. The sensitizing of her globes had every part of her body inflamed and with a moan of sheer delight, she felt the lips press a loving, moist path from her boobs down across her midriff till at last Julia's cheek rested on her tummy.
A violent electric charge crashed to the ground outside, but it was mild in comparison to the electricity between the two females on the bed. Julia's hand drifted to rest on the curve at the top of Vivien's thigh and one fingertip barely touched the lower curve of her mons, less than an inch from the start of her sex cleft. The finger probed forward and dipped into the little valley where the thighs met, and with a shock Vivien felt the light pressure against the edge of her pussy tissue. It stayed there unmoving and a voice inside her screamed, pleading for the exploration to go on, hoping Julia would dare more, and even as she hoped it, she fought it.
"I love this place on a woman," whispered Julia. "It's so much prettier than a man's body."
Vivien hid the shock she felt. "Have you seen a man's body ... I mean ... you know, that way?"
"Of course. I think most girls have by my age, don't you?"
"I don't know." The opening was there and Vivien knew that if she asked, Julia was ready to spill her feelings about Sherman and about what had happened in this room the day those wet footprints showed in the hall. But now Vivien didn't want to hear-only to feel.
"Do you touch yourself there often, Julia?" Vivien spread her thighs slightly as she felt the finger press more urgently through the cunty slit.
"You mean masturbate? I do when I can't stand it any longer ... I ... you know, waiting." She fell silent and Vivien felt the soft pressure of the finger against her clitoris. She waited to feel the quickening of the tease that would surely send her over a spunking crest.
The girl suddenly shifted, and, leaning across Vivien's hip, bent and placed a long, lingering kiss at the lower curve of her mons. Then, in one graceful, sliding motion, she crept into the valley that opened spontaneously between her legs. A flash of lightning illuminated a blonde head burrowing toward its target.
"Ohhh ... Julia ... what are...! " The words stopped coming as Vivien felt the boldness of a tongue spearing through the molten fissure of her love center. The flesh probe was boldly licking at her labia, then piercing the threshold of her vagina to toy with the taut clitty muscle.
"My God, you'll ... oh yesss!" Vivien's orgasm raced from out of nowhere and held her paralyzed and helpless as her spunk bath washed across the invading tongue. Little sounds of eagerness came from below and now nibbling lips were pressing the attack and heightening the ecstasy of her coming.
Almost as quickly as the rapture had seized her, it slipped away and she felt the stilling of the thirsty lips and the deviling tongue.
"It was wrong of me, wasn't it?" came the small voice of her daughter.
"Wrong?" whispered Vivien. "It was beautiful of you to do that to me. I needed, and you filled my need. You were real and natural. Now it's my turn."
Julia uncoiled from her position and wilted to her back. "Think of it the way you said it before," cooed Vivien. "We're the only two in the world. Where would you want me to start?"
"I'd want you cuddled at my breast the way I used to be with you."
"like this?" Vivien leaned across the girl's body and felt an arm circling to draw her close. Thirstily, she puckered rich lips around a turgid nipple and began to milk and siphon the nub.
"Ohhhh ... it's so good. Is it right to feel so good?"
"It is! It is! Let yourself go!" Vivien's lips were sucking with a frenzy and now a flitting tongue was maddening the nipple. "I ... I ... oh, you're making me...! " A violent convulsion claimed Julia, and as Vivien felt the climax the breast-love had produced, an uncontrollable need swept over her. She had watched the wildness in Julia from a distant voyeuring point in Sherman's apartment and the passion that claimed her daughter had been a thing of beauty in the way it possessed every muscle and nerve. Vivien felt compelled to stir that same total rapture again.
Now the crazed spasms of the first orgasm were quieted and Vivien saw her daughter's blonde hair tumbled across the pillow as Julia rested and waited. Casually Vivien stroked the silken smoothness of the plateau between the girl's hips, then began to brush feather-light kisses across her midriff, hearing quickening breathing as she neared the breast she had just loved.
Impatient with the same pattern, she nuzzled slowly across Julia's shoulder into the hollow of her neck and across the finely chiseled curve of her chin. For a tense second she hovered above the parted lips, then bent quickly and pressed her mouth against her daughter's, her tongue spearing deep in to the startled oval and taking the immediate response of Julia's tongue as the sign of her want. For long, sensuous minutes they fought a happy duel of tongues and lips, nibbling and sucking, moistening the other's lips, then kissing the satin richness till it was nearly dry.
With a sudden wrench away from the hands that held her hips, Vivien contorted across the straining body and burrowed into the waiting lips below. It was as if the session of love play had animated every love nerve. Julia began to show a new wildness. At the first taste of a woman in climax that she had ever known, Vivien was a wild woman. Drawn by an unrelenting thirst, she nuzzled through the gates, and finding the clitoris with her lips, she milked avidly at the taut little tube.
"Yesss!" gasped Julia. "It's like a man! like a man!"
Slowly the passion ebbed and Vivien forced herself to abort the assault on Julia's body. As they rolled apart, both felt the furious sensual flame between them.
"That was scary!" breathed Julia.
Vivien nodded and reached for her daughter's hand. "Do we get to be honest with each other again?"
"I want to be," came the answering whisper. "Do you like this kind of love, woman to woman?"
"Ummmm! I do!"
"You said something a minute ago." Vivien reached carefully for her next words. "It's like a man! It sounded as if you know that way, too."
There was a long silence, then what sounded like a sob. "I don't. Not really. I'm so all mixed up from things you used to say and from what the teachers at school used to scream about. And now ... well, this way at least two people are helping each other and it's not really hurting anybody, is it?"
Vivien leaned to kiss her daughter on the cheek, then began to edge toward the side of the bed. The instant tension in the girl when she mentioned men was warning enough. What had been a tender sweetness that brought them close together could be soured by forcing Julia to talk when they were back in the spell of their love play with each other.
"No, my darling, it's not hurting anyone. And a lot of things people say, even mommies, never should be said. Sometimes we say what we think is right for a child's ears." She groped for the silk peignoir which had slipped from her body as they had romped together.
"Don't go yet," she begged. "I have to talk."
"Maybe tomorrow would be better."
"Now! I want to talk about men and why I can't stand them any more."
Vivien lay back against the pillow and braced herself for what could be a bad moment for both of them.
"What can't you stand, Julia? You'll have to tell me; I'm not going to pry anymore, ever."
"It's Daddy, first of all," she began, stretching to the bed table and turning on the light. "I want us to see each other when we talk. About all I know about men has to begin with my father, and that's pretty silly. I mean, what good is he? He's always getting stoned out of his mind and he doesn't do anything for you in that state, or any state."
"He has a problem..." Vivien began, then stopped, wondering if the revelation about some footprints was to come.
"He surely has!" Julia's response was explosive. "But he's not all that different from most men, once they hook their woman. They ignore her and go on to have their fun wherever they can find it. It makes me so mad!"
"There are ways for a woman when her man treats her that way, Julia," Vivien propped to an elbow to study her daughter's face as she went on. "Maybe when a woman is driven far enough, she has a right to find those ways."
The girl was silent as she looked deeply into her mother's eyes. "I guess so, but how does she knew when she has a right?"
Vivien tried to be as gentle as the touch of her hand on Julia's when she replied. "A woman knows she's right when she can do what she wants, what her body wants her to do, without any guilty hang-ups about it. If her conscience says no, she'd better forget it."
"Does it really work like that for you?" demanded Julia.
Vivien nodded and took a deep breath. "It worked that way for me just now when we did things together-things that lots of people would condemn. You gave me something very special. But we were talking about men. I'm going to tell you a secret, and I know you won't breathe it. What would you say if I told you the lover who makes up in my life for your father is Sherman Wilson?"
It looked like shock on Julia's face and it was precisely what Vivien wanted. Something to shake loose the torment on the girl's mind and encourage her to talk openly about her seduction by the very man she called "louse", about the picture, about her father.
"I ... think ... that's ... that's how it should be!" The words spilled over each other and sudden moisture studded the corners of Julia's eyes. "Daddy has it coming to him!"
Her fingers gripped tightly at Julia's hand. "Baby! That's no reason to make love! Not to get even-not ever! You're beginning to sound like a man-hater."
Julia shrugged. "Maybe I am. I don't understand the way men are with women. Sneaky. Trying to get what they want, regardless of what she wants."
"There's more to men than that," Vivien murmured, disappointed that her daughter hadn't taken the opening to talk about Sherman or Bart.
Julia leaned on an elbow and looked pensively at Vivien. "Look at you," she went on. "You look maybe a year or two older than I am, and no one would believe thirty-seven. And besides Mister Wilson, I'll bet a hundred men a day get hot and bothered, wishing they could put themselves into you."
"So? Isn't that a compliment? The female in me would love to get a hundred men in a state like that."
"But that's where I get mixed up," mourned Julia. "All of them are the same: ashamed if you notice you've got them excited, then making it seem dirty. Men are like that right from the first time they notice girls."
"Give me a for-instance." Vivien was certain this would be the moment of confession about Sherman.
"like what happened two nights ago down at the pool, for instance. Just before we closed. There was only one person there, except for me-a real cute boy about my age. He was here with his parents."
"What happened?"
"Well, Jamie-that's his name-had been coming out for about a week when he knew the pool was almost deserted. He swam around and watched me all the time. Even a cute boy can upset a girl staring that way."
"But you did like it."
Julia shrugged. "I guess so-till what happened night before last. He came and said it was his last swim, and he'd miss me. I told him I'd miss him, too, and that was silly because I'd already turned him down twice when he asked for a date."
"I don't understand why," interjected Vivien.
"You will. Anyway, he loafed around, treading water, and when it was only a few minutes from closing, he called to me that he bet he could beat me in a race. I wanted to be nice, because it was his last swim, so I jumped in the water and swam to where he was. Well! You know the pool has new underwater lights, and when I came alongside, I saw what he'd done."
"What?"
"Pulled his penis out of his trunks and had it flapping outside as plain as day."
"Flapping? You mean it wasn't..."
"Oh yes, it was! As hard and big as he could make it with his fist. And the very second he realized I had seen it, he swarmed all over me, like I was some kind of ladder! I grabbed for the side of the pool and he locked his legs around my middle. He was crazy! Squealing and beating himself, and saying awful things..."
"like what?"
"like he knew what I wanted, dressing in teeny bikinis the way I did and how I really wanted something to remember him by."
"Did you want something?" Vivien's hand caressed Julia's shoulder and she felt the high tension in the girl.
"Of course! like your hundred men! A man is so pretty when he's that way! He's pretty and he's dangerous and he's kind of helpless to control himself, I guess."
"So, how did Jamie seem when he was climbing all over you?"
"Pretty, but mostly helpless. I wasn't afraid of him a bit and I knew something had to give, so I reached right down and grabbed his cock out of his hand and began to do it for him." Julia giggled suddenly. "That penis was so hot I was sure the water was going to turn to steam!"
"Go on," urged Vivien.
"That's just what I wanted to do-go on." She sighed. "It felt natural to make him come with my hands, but lots more fun between my legs. That's right; I wanted him to fuck me! He was sort of jerky but my insides told me our bodies wanted each other, and why not? Then the bomb dropped."
"What bomb?"
"His father showed up. Almost like he'd been watching-and maybe he had been, too. They had one of the rooms next to the pool and he might have seen our heads close together in the water and got suspicious. Anyway, I saw him before Jamie did and I ... well, I was stupid again, I guess."
"What did you do?"
"Jamie was already making little sounds that told me what was going to happen, so I yanked him real fast and hard and he shot at the very second his father called."
"That must have been lovely!"
"It was awful. Dumb Jamie could have faked it, but his face said he was guilty. He was scrabbling around, trying to put himself back in his trunks when his father reached the edge of the pool and looked down."
"Do you think he saw?"
"I know he saw ... and the look he gave me! He'd tossed me a million lecherous looks before when his wife wasn't looking, but now he cased me like I was a special kind of dirt!" Julia flung an arm around her mother's shoulders and buried her head against her breasts. "That's what it's all about with men. like it's not clean or something. . . and ... and that's what I love about our making each other happy like this. It feels so right."
Bewildered, Vivien drew her daughter close to her body and hugged. "It is right, my darling, and it's a thing not many people even know. But what have we done to my baby about the best way?"
"You haven't done anything." Julia leaned back and looked saucily from under lowered lashes. "Men have."
"Have you known any who weren't like that boy or his father?" Vivien still hoped to bring the discussion around to Sherman's seduction, or to the picture-taking session, or most of all, to her father.
"Not many." Julia's voice drifted off and she closed her eyes and lay back against her pillow. "Maybe Mister Reichard. Let's not talk any more, Mums." She stretched luxuriously against the sheet and Vivien felt the surge of a new desire spreading through their bodies.
Within, she felt the selfish need to possess the vivacious golden-bodied girl before her and claim her entirely as her own. After all, the girl was hers; she had even carried her in her womb and given her life. It was her right to share the joy of so devastatingly sexual a person. And her sharing seemed to be wanted!
Julia seemed to read her thoughts. Her hand drifted over to Vivien's tummy and rested tentatively across the down of the pubic mound. Then her daughter's gloriously tapered thighs opened slightly, enough to reveal the sense-maddening magnetism of Julia's cleft. Blonde locks tossed impatiently as she turned to give Vivien freedom to stare wherever she wished without being watched.
"Kiss me goodnight," Julia murmured sleepily.
Vivien felt the pounding in her head as the inner conflict intensified. It would take very little to carry her and her daughter fully into the Lesbian life, and as she looked at the gorgeous body before her, she knew that she was as attracted as Julia by the newness of what they had found together. But it could go in only one direction. Sooner or later there would be exposure, and what was now precious between them would be mocked.
And there was more. The girl was blessed with high sexuality-a need to express her love of life in the fullest, most uninhibited way. For all her heartbreak in Bart Cochran and in spite of the half-love Vivien knew she had from Sherman Wilson, it was a man's body that belonged to her daughter.
"Mummy," came the whisper. "Kiss me our way." Julia's hand had moved back to her own thirsty center and her fingers were stroking slowly along the dark line that hid sweet passion. Vivien leaned hesitatingly toward the golden triangle. To deny the girl would simply confuse what was good and right and make what had just gone before a suspect thing like everything else had been in this girl's sexual development. To take her in Lesbian embrace again was a risk ... but who could refuse such a need?
"Ohhh, yesss!" moaned Julia in response to the warm kiss pressed against the softness of her moist labia.
As Vivien tongued through to the taut clitoris and heard the mounting cries of joy, she knew what she would do-had to do-before the two of them were swept into a trap too deep to escape...