Chapter 1
From the moment she received the letter from her in-laws, Jean had frowned upon the idea of her sixteen-year-old sister-in-law's planned two week stay with she and Ralph. To be responsible for the welfare of a girl like Terri, prematurely wizened in the ways of the world and hankering for that certain kind of excitation that youthful idealism falls prey to, would be the albatross around Jean's neck. And God knows, she had enough to do with Ralph away at the National High School Athletic Coaches Convention in Detroit, leaving her responsible for the athletic sports shop store they owned. Supervising the incoming shipments and keeping an eye on little boys with empty pockets and itchy fingers was too much work for one person.
Had Terri been a boy the situation would have been ideal. But Terri was far from sporting male hormones. Whew! Jean recalled with a quiver of anger how at their wedding, she had caught Terri dressed in yellow chiffon, looking like an angel with her fair youth full freckled skin and brown waves tickling down her back-smoking a joint in the church's ladies rest room. The audacity! The disrespect! Why it was abominable the way the girl carried on, flaunting her naked, up-thrust breasts beneath skimpy T-shirts and sneaking a cigarette now and then.
And Ralph had laughed it off, thinking his little sister's behavior cute and rebellious. But that was her Ralph-a composite of unexpected opposites, headstrong, mulish, and totally unpredictable. And of course her opinion meant nothing. What did she know? She was only a female.. . .
Maybe Ralph thought Terri's stay would bridge the chasm between the two women. Indeed, affections between the blonde-haired wife and the chestnut tressed sixteen-year-old were wide and void as the Grand Canyon.
There was usually a method to Ralph's madness, and as his wife it was her desire to make him happy. In this case it had been to accept Terri for two weeks, pretending to smile through the horrors of watching the girl swish her sexy hips around the store and smoke cigarettes in spite of the signs.
But now, as Jean took inventory of the new shipment of Addidas and Pumas, squatting down on her haunches servilely, she wished bitterly that Ralph could have seen his cute little sister the way she'd looked a couple of hours ago! Maybe that would rip his blinders off!
Oh, Lord, life was so complicated sometimes. As if she didn't have enough to torment her, following the biting quarrel she and Ralph had over the 'usual thing' before he left for the airport, Jean had flitted through the house looking for Terri to open the shop for her. Ralph coached junior league baseball in the summer and Jean would have to replace him at practice for two weeks. The beauty of the sun splattered morning barely registered in her mind that day, with the aching lump in her throat and choked down tears. And it all turned black when she approached her sister-in-law's door left temptingly ajar to smell the sweet heaviness of marijuana smoke billowing into the hallway. That lack of discretion again.. . .
The blue-eyed blonde wife resisted the urge to kick the door open and rip the joint from the girl's hands. To make certain her nose wasn't deceiving her, she peeked around the door. Jean's expression went tight with disapproval, for the joint winding blue trails into the air was only half of the chestnut haired, brown eyed teenager's sins.
There she sat propped up near the headboard in all of her sensuous, queen-like glory, braless and wearing a sheer wisp of black nylon bikini panties that looked like a Fredericks of Hollywood special! Her tanned, shapely legs were tucked underneath her, spread wide apart while her finger slipped beneath the tiny crotch band, soaked with juices, to plunge in and out of the hairy vee of her loins. Now and then one hand would steal up to tweak at her nipples and knead a breast while the other held the smoldering joint. Before her was an open magazine, glossy and suspicious looking. Then Jean's lower jaw about dropped to her knees when she noticed it was that nasty Playgirl Magazine featuring male nudes!
For a long moment Jean was so shocked by the lewdness of it all that she could only stand there staring at the lust-provoking sight, listening to her young sister-in-law giggle and puff on her joint, holding the potent smoke into her lungs and then exhuming it. The intake of breath made the girl's nakedly exposed young breasts blossom in their full up-thrusting firmness. But more sordid than that was the way she crooned over the glossies of naked men, the hunger with which she smoked on that joint.. . as if it were a man's thing in her mouth!
Jean couldn't take another second of this travesty!
With her knee she banged open the door and charged into the room, nostrils flaring stentoriously. "My God, girl, what are you doing in my house?" she had spat. "Oh, you are a disgusting one, aren't you?"
"Oh dear . . . I thought you were . . . at. . . the air-" the nearly naked teenager burst, bolting to her feet. "I . . . I'm.. . . "
"Don't try to sweet talk me, you little hussy! I saw it with my own eyes," hissed Jean. "Look at you . . . wearing those sluttish panties and smoking that dope. You're not a lady . . . you're a whore. Oh, I wish your brother could see you now!" Jean's face was tight with heated emotion.
"Jean . . . please!" the erotically svelte girl gasped, tossing the still smoldering joint into the ashtray and stubbing it out with nervous fingers, then burying her pretty angel face in her hands, her mid-back length, chestnut hair almost hiding her face and arms in shimmering waves. Quiveringly, her naked young breasts responded with rippling spasms to the sudden sobs escaping her, and then she turned, throwing herself onto the bed face down, her smooth, curved body racking convulsively with the noisy weeping heaving from it.
Jean's emotions were a roiling mass of un-certitude at that moment, anger and shock had been so ripe within her. But there had been a strong sensation of incredulous sensual arousal and a tinge of jealousy, too, at the girl's sexual ease. The sight and vibrance of the teenager's unblemished and sun-roasted nakedness . . . or almost nakedness, for she could see the flared roundness of Terri's bikini-whitened hips and buttocks peaking out around the thin black nylon panties and the tuft of chestnut pubic curls kinking about the crotch band. Subconscious and hidden as it was, there occurred a feverish stirring inside of Jean, but she had forced it down like so much castor oil.
"Go ahead and cry . . . I would too!" spat
Jean, grinding the dirt into the girl's face. Vehemently, she watched the girl's tapered bronzed back shake with despair. Then to add a punch to her accusations, her polished fingertips snatched up the magazine and two widened eyes stared at the male nudity of a well-endowed Nordic male stretched out on a sailboat, head thrown back, face drinking up the sunshine while between his legs a long, thrusting pole of male flesh centered itself in the picture. A tingle of shame rippled through Jean's loins and she threw the magazine back down on the bed. "That is disgusting, utterly disgusting! You mean to tell me you like looking at pictures of naked men with their-their things wagging before your face so that you can stick your fingers up your-Oh!"
The room fell silent, save for the hissing of air breathing into Jean's nostrils that twitched still from the heady scent of marijuana still rife in the air. She began pacing about the room, her lithe arms crossed over her breasts. "I don't know if I should tell Ralph about this, or if I dare let you stay in my house another day. God, dear God, I should have known something like this would happen after I found you smoking a joint in church on our wedding day!" she snapped.
"Oh please . . . please don't," she sobbed, her voice muffled by the bed clothes. "I'm sorry . . . I'm ashamed of myself, but how much more can I do? If you want, I'll leave right away . . . but please, please don't tell Ralph!" The four-poster bed rocked from the pathetic sobs.
A strangely exhilarating feeling overcame Jean at that moment, perhaps it was born of the simple knowledge that she did not want to hurt Ralph. Or did she feel a bit of warmth for the teenage girl who lay prostrate and miserable on the bed before her, crying her eyes out and repenting before the damning eyes of her sister-in-law?
Now, as Jean counted the boxes of sporting shoes and sizes of each, she felt a surge of power over the young girl who was now ringing up a sale for a baseball at the counter. There had followed a long talk between them after her anger had cooled, while Terri lay there in her intoxicating tanned nakedness with the summer sun splashing through the window to fall over her heaving, rosebud tipped breasts. Forgivingly, Jean had clasped the girl's trembling hand, still sticky from earlier excesses, between her own, though she couldn't rid herself of the suspicion that Terri was laughing at her up her sleeve.
The talk was over and Jean felt no desire to discuss the matter further with the girl. She could hear Terri making small talk with Gordy Jackson, Ralph's prize pitcher, over the counter; they were giggling and talking in low whispers. Maybe Ralph was right; maybe Terri was more youthful rebellion than womanly wanton, and that must be the case if she could carry on a conversation with an eleven year old boy as she was now. Jean peeked around the corner of shoe boxes to see the T-shirted back of Gordy standing with his Yankees baseball cap perched on his head, the bill of which shaded his face, youthful and freckled. She had seen a lot of the boy since she and Ralph had opened the store.
The idea of opening a sporting goods store was Ralph's idea and the rewards of it delighted Jean. An athletic woman by nature and a lover of children, she relished the intimacy of watching the boys come in an ogle over the new selection of baseball bats or debate in pre-puberty high voices the advantages of one tennis racket over the other.
Jean, as well as her husband, was active in community action programs to help underprivileged children, and coaching the junior league team was but one facet of her concern for youth. Especially boys. One day she wanted a houseful of boys, but Ralph didn't want to rush things, since the income of a high school coach was meager. At twenty-five and twenty-six years of age, they had time to wait, claimed Ralph who encouraged his wife to supplement her natural maternal desire by offering guidance to local youth. Certainly, there were all too many love-starved, unfortunate little guys who might as well be orphans for the affection they received at home, with nowhere to turn but into the streets. The Chicago suburb in which they lived was a low income section of the county, industrialism its major source of revenue. Strikes were rampant in these days of recession.
Jean knew she would be totally lost without the sporting goods store and the baseball leagues, and it had been these time-consuming efforts, she realized all too well, which had helped ease her frustration with her own intimate relationship. Now Terri was here for her to worry about, and that changed the complexion of things.
The blonde haired, svelte bodied wife in her tennis shorts and hugging T-shirt shook her head as if trying to dispel the recurring lurid scene she had witnessed earlier in the young girl's bedroom. Indeed, she wondered if she it; would ever forget it, its mental reflections still causing feverish stirrings in the pit of her belly which she couldn't understand. A congested kind of fullness made her feel fuller for some reason, and she wondered if perhaps it was about that time of the month.
What a day it had been . . . starting with that awful argument with Ralph. God, that was getting to be a hackneyed subject matter. Sometimes men expected an awfully lot of the woman they shared a bed with. It wasn't as if she didn't have the desire to be a good lover. They'd tried every position, every method in the book, but nothing seemed to really do it for Jean. She would get just so close to orgasm and then it was like the premature bursting of a bubble gum bubble-leaving her sticky with Ralph's seed and none of her own energy spent. And some of the lewd perversions Ralph had suggested! Maybe his little sister would enjoy enacting such wicked performances, but Jean could not be that flippant about lovemaking. It was an act meant to procreate children, not replace television as entertainment.
Of course Ralph, the able bodied, brawny he-man would never admit that part of her frigidity was his trigger happy penis. It was her fault for not using the muscles God gave her, for not flaunting her ass and flirting with him, driving him to a titillated frenzy.
She had steamed at him, her eyes blurring with hot, angry tears of frustration. She couldn't let him egotistically heap all the blame onto her like that, and of course, one nasty remark had been returned with another hurting one . . . leading all the way back to the night of their honeymoon and the aborted lovemaking that had taken three days to consummate.
Now, as Jean crosshatched X's on the inventory sheet, she could still hear his biting last words ringing in her ears as he'd stormed out the door, grabbing his golf clubs and banging his way through to the garage. "Maybe my little sister can teach you a few lessons in being a woman!" he'd barked hurtfully, throwing open the car door, tossing himself into it, and spitting gravel on the driveway.
Jean had wanted to give in to tears. God, what a way to leave on a trip that would keep him away for days! And it was in that dark, sensitive mood that she'd gone looking for Terri. As she pranced down the hallway towards Terri's room, it had occurred to her that it might be both she and Ralph's fault. That she loved him with all her heart was a redundancy she needn't repeat to herself. And he loved her. It was simply that torturous spacer between them, and given time and a little patience.. . yes, maybe a stronger effort on her part, their sex life would produce happiness and children.
Enough thoughts for now. Jean flicked her wrist to read her digital wrist watch. It was nearly time for baseball practice to commence. Good . . . she could use some fresh air and a bit of youthful purity.