Chapter 1
"Well," said Susan Caton, rising from the couch with a smile, "aren't you even going to kiss me hello before you go running out the door?" She put one hand on her hip and tilted her head to the side, hair swishing down her shoulder in a tousled fall of burnished gold. "I mean, it seems you could spare your poor old aunt one little kiss and a Hi, doesn't it, Jesse? Oh, come here!" She put her hands on his waist and lifted slightly, and her lips brushed his. She felt him shiver at the touch of her mouth and she settled back, rocking on her heels as she looked up into her nephew's face. Good Lord, was he blushing?
"He's grown a lot, hasn't he, Terry?" Susan went on, turning toward Jesse's mother. Terry nodded, proudly it seemed. And Susan could understand that. Jesse Parrish was a son to be proud of. Sixteen, and a nicely built sixteen. Six-foot-two, with a handsome heartbreaker face and a shock of wavy chestnut colored hair. He couldn't have been a better physical specimen if he'd been genetically engineered, but it was easy see that his good looks hadn't spoiled him. There was a certain hesitation, a kind of awkward shyness that Susan could detect, and she liked it. Such a difference between her nephew and the men she knew in L.A., where the name of the game was push. It was good to be home again, in Ohio, where things were simple and easy.
"Tell you what," she said, running her hand up and down one of his firm taut-muscled arms, "you come out to Hollywood when you get a few years older. I think you can be the next ail-American heartthrob. Maybe I can get you a continuing role on LOVE IS THE PROMISE. What do you say, stud?" And she jabbed him playfully in the ribs, while Terry laughed maternally from the couch. Jesse went beet-red and made a move toward the door.
"Uh, I'd better be going," he said. "The guys are outside. Hey, Aunt Sue, would you do me a favor? Would you come out and tell them hello? And tell them that you really were on CHARLIE'S ANGELS? Tim and Pete didn't believe me when I told 'em it was you."
"My public," Susan said grandly, with a wave of her hand. "I have done Shakespeare for Joseph Papp. And as far as my nephew and his friends are concerned, the only thing I've ever done worth the doing was a six-minute bit as a hooker on CHARLIE'S ANGELS. The price an actress must pay! Where are your buddies? Let's set them straight, kid." She took Jesse's hand-he seemed a little reluctant but her fingers molded around his-and they walked toward the front door.
Pete and Tim were outside, sprawling on the grass under the big old shade tree. They were gangly, fresh-faced boys, Pete a brunette and Tim a freckle-spotted redhead. Neither of them could hold a candle to Jesse, as far as looks went. Or is that my auntly prejudice showing through? Susan wondered. She smiled as Jesse introduced her, and she saw the boys' eyes light up.
When Tim asked the question, Susan laughed, huskily, throatily, totally delighted. She nodded, and her long wavy hair did a dancing swirl around her face. Her wide-set gray-blue eyes glinted. "Yes," she said, "and to answer the next question even before you ask it, Kate, Jaclyn, and Cheryl are all delightful to work with but I don't know them personally."
"Is that your car?" Pete wondered, pointing at the silver Maserati in the driveway. Susan nodded again. His eyes got big. "Wow," he said. "It looks expensive."
"But it's worth it," Susan said. "If you like fast cars. Cars that go much too fast for the speed limit, I'm afraid."
"See?" Jesse was saying, standing at least two inches taller. "I told you guys."
"Yeah," Tim agreed, "you told us." Well, gee, Miss Caton-Susan-it was nice to meet you. I guess we'd better be going. Maybe we'll see you again sometime."
"Jesse, are you going to be home in time for supper? Well, I'll whip up something just in case. So-I'd better let you fellows get on to your affairs. Terry and I have a lot of talking to do and such a little time to do it in. Bye." She turned into the doorway and watched the three of them going down the walk. Jesse's head was a few inches higher than the tall elm in the yard.
"Good Lord," she told her sister Terry, closing the door behind her, "when did he grow up? It seems like only yesterday that he was a little boy. God, I'll bet the girls here are lined up waiting to get to him. Isn't he absolutely gorgeous?" Shaking her head, she strolled back to the chair and sat down. Susan took a cigarette case from her purse and lit up, blowing a perfect smoke ring as she lounged in the chair.
"I'm so sorry you didn't give me a call," Teresa said. "I could have canceled out on the trip to Cleveland, but...."
"But I do everything impulsively," Susan agreed, knocking ash off her cigarette. "My vacation came up and I didn't have any hack work lined up, so I just hopped into the car, blew a goodbye kiss to LA, and tooled out for home. Oh, it does feel good to be home again. Reckardsville never really changes, though, does it? I feel ten years younger, just being here again. Terry-am I really thirty-three years old?"
"You must be," Terry said. "I'm thirty-six. And I'm three years older than you." She sighed, heavily. "I just wish I felt as young as you do."
Susan sat up, stubbing out her cigarette. She reached over the coffee table, put her hand on Terry's knee. "My god, you're not still upset about your lousy ex-husband, are you? You've been a free woman for three years, sis. I suppose Ed and that slut of his are still enjoying themselves in Florida? Oh, sweet Jesus, Ter', if that son of a bitch is on your mind, get him off! Right now! He was no goddamned good. Ever."
Terry lowered her eyes. "It's not only that. It's a lot of things. I don't even know if I can put them into words, it's been so long since I've had anyone to unwind with. Oh, I know we've talked on the phone, but it's long distance and it must cost you a fortune every time you call, and it isn't the same thing as sitting there talking to you, the way we used to do." She made a little sniffing sound, and Susan squeezed reassuringly on her knee again.
"I can't really talk now," she said. "I have to catch that plane to Cleveland at six, and it's almost three now, and I'm a mess, I have a million things to do-I have to shower and wash my hair and-"
"Oh," Susan teased, leaning closer, "the day you don't have time to talk to your kid sister is the day I resign from this family. If something's bothering you, tell me. Maybe I can help. I haven't exactly been in a convent the last few years. Nothing you say will shock me or horrify me, Terry.
Terry looked up and there was a sudden flash of something in her eyes, something which reminded Susan very much of shock. "No, of course not," she said, a little throatily, tensely.
"Really?" Susan persisted, leaning still closer.
She could almost bump forehead's with Terry now and she tried to capture her sister's eyes. "You don't have to pretend with me, Terry. I've known you all my life, and we've never had secrets. Not from each other." She sat up. "Let me guess. It is a man, right? The guy you work for. The one you're flying down to Cleveland with. You've been having an affair with him and lately you suspect he wants to break it off but you don't intend to let him go."
Terry's face went scarlet, then bleached white. "For God's sake, Susan! Mr. Gregory is sixty-two years old! How can you even think-"
Susan grinned sheepishly. "Maybe I'm too deeply involved in soap opera after all. I'm starting to adapt LOVE IS THE PROMISE plots to real life. Is it a man?"
"No, and yes, and-I just don't know, Susan! Things are happening inside me, Susan, things I can't cope with. I take four or five Valiums a day-tens, not fives. I'm afraid to take more than that, but I've been getting so tense and irritable and I'm tied in knots all the time. Jesse-you saw Jesse. I used to be his mother, Susan, but he's almost a man. You said so yourself. Soon I won't be anything, just a woman living in a house that's too big and too empty and-"
Susan hurried around the coffee table and sat beside her sister on the couch. She took Terry's head in her hands just as Terry began to sob, and she pulled her head to rest upon her comforting shoulder. Her fingers laced through Terry's hair and she murmured soft words of love and sympathy. "It's all right, honey," she said, over and over. The clock on the mantle chimed gently, three times.
"How long has it been?" Susan asked, lifting Terry's head. This time her sister's eyes were weak, pliable, and they couldn't escape the hypnotic fix of Susan's. "How long since your last good affair?"
"There-there haven't been any," Terry said almost inaudibly. "I haven't been with a man since Ed left me."
Susan's eyes almost leaped from their sockets. "Three years?" she blurted. "Three goddamned years? No wonder you're chewing Valiums and feeling your stomach twist itself into knots! My God, can't a woman get laid around here anymore? Have all the men joined monasteries or something? You're an attractive woman, Terry, and you know it, and it seems to me that-"
Terry was still crying, the tears rolling in little droplets down her cheeks. She sniffled now and then, but the tears seemed to flow, as if she had no real part in causing them. "Oh, I've had the chance," she said, wiping her cheek. "Men who wanted a hot wet piece in a motel room. Men who wanted a woman for the night. Wham-bam, thank you ma'am. The-the Christmas after Ed left me, I got drunk at the office party, and I almost did it in the stock room with a man. He had my blouse unbuttoned and my bra up around my neck, and my slacks were down to my knees. His hand was in my panties and he had his-his cock out of his pants, sticking out through the fly, and he rubbed my leg with it. But all the time he kept calling me 'Carla,' I don't know why, but that's what he kept saying, 'Carla baby, mmmmm, let me get it in you, hold still Carla, Papa has a big surprise for you', and it started to make me sick. I was so drunk I could hardly walk, but I could hear everything he was saying and my stomach turned over. I was just a-a pussy, Sue! He didn't even know who I was! All he wanted was a hole to bury his cock in."
"There's a lot to be said for the zipless fuck," Sue pointed out, rubbing her sister's shoulder. "And let me tell you, baby, ten times out of ten it's better than going without, even if he calls you 'Matilda' while he's balling you. So you preserved your honor and fought him off, right? Which left you virtuous, but frustrated as hell. And you probably went home and fingered yourself and felt guilty as a bitch when it was over. Am I scoring any points, Teresa? Am I?"
"Yes," Terry sobbed. "Almost. I didn't wait till I got home. I started crying and gagging, and he left in a hurry, and I did it to myself right there, on the stock room floor. I didn't even get up. I just stuffed my hand into my pants and I fingered myself and I came, oh, God, I didn't think I'd ever stop coming!"
"And you've been doing it ever since? I mean, you have to be doing something, if you've been dry for three years. And why, for Chrissakes? Look at yourself, Terry. Sit up and look at yourself. That's a nice t-shirt. You shouldn't wear a bra under it, though. Let your tits swing. They feel so much better hanging free and loose, and the cloth tickles your nipples, like so-"
Her fingers worked briskly and efficiently on the points of her sister's breasts, and Terry made a muffled, squealing sound. "Stop that!" she said in a high-pitched voice, her hands coming up to push Susan's away. But they didn't push. They touched Susan's warm flesh and then they molded themselves around Susan's wrists, flexing and squeezing as Susan continued to massage the ends of Terry's tits. "Stop it," Terry said again, deeper-voiced, not at all convincing.
"You still have great tits," Susan said, leaning close, breathing onto the moist, tear-stained flesh of her sister's face. "I always envied you with those tits, sis. When we were kids and yours started to grow and mine didn't-ooohhhh, there were times I wanted to rip them off your chest!" Her hand opened and she made a cup around each of Terry's breasts, squeezing tensely. She felt the flesh throb in her hands and, even through the twin layer of bra and t-shirt, she could feel her sister's nipples tightening against her palms. Terry's fingers tightened on Susan's wrists, too, and the sisters stared into one another's eyes.
"You could get yourself a man," Susan went on, still massaging those breasts, feeling them harden and warm in her hands. Terry had put on *a little weight. The breasts felt slightly fuller than they should have, but Susan's sister was an attractive woman at thirty-six, even if her face was damp with tears and there were reddish rings around her weakening eyes.
"Possibly," Terry agreed in a taut voice. "But I don't want that kind of relationship. You know me, Susan. I'm not a slut, a playaround. If it doesn't mean anything, if there's no love involved-I loved Ed all the time we were married, right up to the day he told me he'd found another woman and wanted a divorce."
You were a masochist, Susan thought, but it didn't matter.
"And I can't find anyone to love me. To really love me. And I'm so afraid that it's too late for me now, that I'll have to spend the rest of my life alone. It scares me, Susan. Sometimes I lie awake at night, trembling, thinking of how I'll be when I'm forty, when I'm fifty-for Christ's sake, don't stop, Susan, please don't stop, it feels so good, it always felt so good when you did that to me, I love your hands, let me kiss them, let me kiss you, Susan, let's be the way we used to be, please Susan please. ... "
And her lips were puckered and moist and Susan knew that she could not refuse. Not now. She leaned closer and her lips touched Terry's, and they sank onto the sofa, both of them, mouths glued together. Susan's lips parted and Terry's tongue came thrusting inside. Susan caught it, sucked it, felt it throb. Terry made little humming purrs of rising excitement, and somehow she managed to work one denim-clad leg between Susan's, the firm hard thigh rubbing friction against the crotch of Susan's pants. Susan moaned and clenched her legs around Terry's thigh. She squeezed twice, rhythmically, and she felt hot juices beginning to stir in her belly. Her tongue pushed Terry's aside, shot into Terry's mouth, and she found herself receiving the kind of sucking caress she'd just been dishing out.
As they kissed, she opened her eyes, studied Terry's face from this extremely close angle. There were little care lines here and there, around the eyes, around the lips-lines that shouldn't have been on Terry's face. The poor darling, Susan thought. To live with a man for fourteen years and get dumped by him, and then find herself unable to get another man.
Oh, Christ, if it weren't for this stupid business trip, I'd show her. I'd doll her up and I'd take her out on the town and I'd show her just how easily a woman can find a man. God, I'd have them lined up around the block, waiting their turns to come in and try damping Terry's fires. But she's going to Cleveland this evening and she won't be back till Friday evening, and right now all I can give her is this.
Which, when you got down to it, wasn't bad, either. It had been been a long time since they'd last been like this, mouth to mouth, legs intertwined, writhing against one another like bitches in heat.
They'd grown up close, closer than most sisters or so it seemed to them at the time. Their parents had been killed in an automobile wreck when Susan was nine and Teresa twelve, and they'd come here, to Reckardsville, to live with an elderly aunt, their only living relative. The trauma of their loss had driven them together, and neither of the young girls had ever enjoyed much rapport with their aunt.
They had one another. And for a long time, it seemed that they needed no one else.
At the onset of her puberty, Susan had gone, not to her aunt, but to her sister for advice and education. The little budding breasts, the growth of hair between her legs, the flow of blood from her tiny tender slit that had so startled and frightened her the first time it happened. Terry had been there already and explained it to Susan.
And she was able to teach her younger sister, as well. Delightful things could happen to a girl when she touched herself in a special, secret way-ways that couldn't be discussed with Aunt Martha, definitely, because they involved parts of the body Aunt Martha refused to acknowledge existed.
God, Susan though, kissing her sister with the passionate frenzy of a barracuda, how long did it take until we got brave enough to use our mouths on each other's snatches? I can still remember the first time I tasted Terry, the first time I ever parted her sweet puffy cunt lips and screwed up my courage to actually put my tongue inside her. But when I did! Sweet Jesus! I didn't ever want to take it out!
It had gone on a long time, that relationship. Right up to the night before Terry went off to business school in Columbus. They'd known that their relationship was bound to change soon, and neither of them wanted it to, but neither of them could stop that change from coming.
But of course it had to change. Terry met Ed Parrish in Columbus, and there were only a few more sister games. In the spring, just after she turned nineteen, Terry was married to Ed Parrish in the Reckardsville Baptist Church, with Susan as her bridesmaid, and by winter Terry was pregnant with her first and only child, who had grown up to be that lovely boy Jesse. Susan had been left to her own devices.
Masturbation carried her over the relatively short dry spell, and she even loosened up a little with some of the high school boys in her senior year. More than once she wrapped a handkerchief around some boy's cock and stroked him until the handkerchief was sticky and pungent with the hot thick juices he'd spurted, and she even allowed certain favored males to put their hands under her dress, to stroke and rub the moist crotch of her panties.
Her first semester at Athens, she won the ingenue role in a student directed play. While going over her lines with a co-star, at his off campus apartment, she found herself wondering how it would be to go all the way with a man. And since it seemed as good a time as any, she did. He fucked her twice that night, and once more in the morning while she was still half asleep, and it was different-not like the times with Terry-but not bad, either.
And now-God, now, it was coming back to her, every aching, clit-tingling instant of those hot nights and days with Terry in their childhood. Her sister's thigh pressed harder and harder against her crotch and their mouths sloppy wet against one another, and Susan Caton ached with all her being to be rid of the clothes that bound her, to be free and naked with Terry, to go at each other with the love-starved passion they had once shared.
Susan released Terry's tits and slid her hands down her sister's heaving tummy, working her way inside the t-shirt. She fumbled at the lace-trimmed edge of the bra Terry was wearing, and then her fingers were inside it, and the flesh that met her roving fingers was heated and full of throbbing excitement.
Terry worked her mouth loose from Susan's. "God, the way you touch me!" she moaned. "Nobody's touched me that way-nobody's made me feel this way-not in so long, so goddamned long...."
"I'm here," Susan whispered, licking the salty tang of tears from Terry's cheek and chin. She lapped across Terry's face, anointed the eyelids, the tip of Terry's nose. "I'm here and I'm all you need, baby. Oh, damn it, let's get naked!"
And without asking permission, she rose to her knees and started to pull Terry's t-shirt upward. It slid reluctantly, for it was rather tight, but the breasts jumped out at her, full and lush, and Terry's stomach was moist with perspiration and undulating in little waves.
"Sit up," she commanded, and when Terry lifted, Susan was impatiently reaching around her, undoing the clasp of the bra. It sagged, fell away from the tits, and Susan peeled it loose. "Oh, yes," she sighed, seeing her sister's bare boobs once more. They looked as gorgeous, at thirty-six as they had at eighteen, and she wanted to eat them, to bury herself in their full-sized splendor. She wanted to squeeze those tits together around her face, to soak up their warmth and sweetness, but even more, she wanted to suck them, to take the large brown nipples in her mouth and nourish her body and soul on their erected points of passion. Her hands clutched eagerly at Terry's bare tits and the nips were hot and stiff against her flesh, as hot and stiff as they'd been when she and Terry were teenagers playing games they believed to be naughty and forbidden.
But they're not, Susan reminded herself. They're not bad, they're good. And they're going to be good for both of us. For me as much as for her. Oh, yessssss!!
She bent down and started licking Terry's nipples, flailing them with the tip of her tongue. Terry shivered each time the clutching fingers dug into her soft resilient tits, each time the savage expert tongue anointed her nipples with yet another bead of spit. She grabbed Susan's head, pulled it closer, almost smothering her sister with the heat and fleshiness of her breasts, and she moaned, "Eat me, baby, eat me the way you used to eat me. Susan-I love you."
"I love you too, baby," Susan murmured around the breast she was suckling, "but I want to love you a whole lot, not just a little. Come on, let's get these fucking clothes off and I'll show you what I've learned since the last time we went down on each other."
Terry hauled off her t-shirt and somehow she got her bra off as well, without dislodging Susan from her sucking on her tits. Her hands came down to rest on Susan's tousled, fashionable hair, to weave their way through the burnt-gold tresses and tickle the scalp beneath. "No," she was saying, "we shouldn't be doing this, Susan, we really shouldn't. I feel funny."
Susan looked up. "You felt funny when we were kids, too," she said with a gleam in her eyes, "but that never stopped us then. Why let it bother us now?" And to emphasize, she cupped her sister's tits and hefted them in her warm, itchy hands. "Do you know," she said, "who was the last woman I made love to?" Terry shook her head. Susan leaned up, whispered a name into Terry's ear. Terry's eyes swelled enormously.
"But I didn't want her," Susan said, "not the way I want you, not with a tenth of the need I feel for you right now, big sister. Here." She sat up, on her knees, and she popped the snap-buttons which fastened her floppy, loose shirt. Beneath it she was braless, her tits jiggling and stiff-nippled. They were good tits, not so big as Terry's, but size didn't matter. "Your turn," she said. "Your turn to suck, big sister."
Terry threw herself upon Susan, moaning. She pushed the shirt aside, began to bite and lick and suck the tits that had been offered to her, and Susan whimpered through clenched teeth. Terry's attack was rough and vigorous, and it was everything Susan could have asked for if she'd known the words to use. Teeth bit down hard on her tender nips and a soft wet tongue sloshed around to lick away the pain the teeth had cause. Terry sucked like a vacuum chamber, and Susan's nipples, already engorged with passion, seemed to fatten even more.