Chapter 15
Jill was more than a little bit snockered. But she was warm and loose in the joints. It was dark outside and almost everybody had gone home that should have. Sweet little Sherry stayed, damned well telling off her old man, that dirty old foreclosing banker man.
Then there was Steve looking piratical and rakish-or was it raffish-with the bandage across his cheek. And there was Dink Watson, drinking twice as much booze as anybody else but right now Jill just didn't give a damn how drunk old Dink got; he deserved every swallow, and if they ran out of juice, somebody had to go to town for some more. Damned right.
There was cute old Sam Starr, too. Sam was used to hitting Texas turkeys on the wing, and most generally in the head. Oh, wow; Sam Starr was just too much, with his patched jeans and washed-thin shirt and the new camper rig he'd saved up all his life to get. Because cute old Sam Starr kept talking about his own spread, and Jill thought for sure he said a hundred thousand or so. That was so freaky she shook her head and bumped the heel of her hand against her ear, so she could hear better.
"Takes a lot of ground to run them horses," Sam said. "Most of it's only sagebrush and cactus that don't get enough water to grow needles, and it's away down in Johnson County. But I get by on it. I'm still sorry your daddy didn't see fit to stay there with me, but I guess we was both hard heads. Like I said, I been runnin' them quarter horses on it since before Hale Devlin left, and some of 'em do pretty good on the tracks."
Dink Watson nodded sagely, and Jill closed one eye so the other could focus better. Dink said, "I'm the old school, too; horses do better on the range where nature put 'em, and I expect a hundred thousand acres ain't too much for a herd the likes of yours, Sam."
Sam went on. "Been looking' quite a spell for that blood line cross, but that special little mare died afore her time. I'm fair decided that I found it in that Comet D stud out there in your pasture. I'd appreciate it, was you to let me trailer him on home with me."
"Oh, hell," Jill said, "we're such dingalings that we sit around a kitchen table and get smashed and talk nonsense about horse trading. Damn it, Steve; damn it, everybody! The Rafter D is twenty thousand dollars in hock, and no way of getting out, so the remaining bad guy gets to pick up all the marbles anyhow-and excuse me, Sherry dear. Twenty thousand dollars, and that's that."
"Sounds fair enough to me,". Sam Starr said, and Jill felt as if she had been sloshed in the face with a cold, wet rag. She almost sobered up.
"What? Do you mean that you-that you can afford-that Comet D is really worth-" Jill sputtered out and just sat there staring at the old man.
Dink Watson set her straight by solemnly announcing, "Mrs. Devlin, ol' Sam's too shy to admit it, but he owns so much of Texas that the governor calls up from Austin every day just to say good mornin', and am I arunning' things to suit you, Mr. Starr. Course, Comet D ain't worth no twenty thousand dollars to nobody but him, account of he's got his head set on the stud."
Sam Starr nodded and sat there rolling a Bull Durham cigarette. "Oh, the stud will make out pretty good, I reckon; if he's got the blood I think, his mares will throw some runnin' horses that'll get it all back, and some to boot."
"I don't believe it," Jill said. "I'll sober up in the morning with a headache and it will all be a dream."
Laughing with the rest, but gently, Sam Stan-said, "You want to go to the bank with me in the morning, Steve Devlin-while your pretty wife's soberin' up?"
"I sure will," Steve said. "But if you don't want to pay for the horse, you can take him free. You and Dink stood up for us today, and that's worth more than money."
At the door, guiding Dink and his bottle out into the night, Sam Starr said, "I know that, boy. Good night to you all-Miss Pittman, Mrs. Devlin."
Jill stared at the empty doorway. She sat there blinking at nothing until Sherry touched her on the shoulder and said, "Jill? Can I help you? And if you show me where some bedclothes are, I can make up a bed on the couch, and-"
Putting her lips to the girl's soft palm, Jill drew a deep and steadying breath. "Just give me a minute or two, dear. So much has happened in such a short time." Turning her head then, she looked across at her husband sitting in his favorite chair at the kitchen table.
"Steve," she said, "now the bad part is really, really over. Now the good part, the best part can begin. Isn't that right?"
"Right," he said.
They stood together in the bedroom, and Steve had sense enough to leave them alone for a while, to talk. Jill was still high, but the buzz was a good one now, without trouble looming ahead, and lacking the specter of fear.
So she said to the girl, "Sherry, you stood up to your father tonight and made him back down. You wanted to stay with us. Still apologizing?"
"No," Sherry said. "But I made Daddy cool it because I told him you might press charges of vandalism, breaking and entering, all the stuff he confessed to. Then he said it was because of Mother and me he did it, that you had pictures-of you and him making it, and I said I didn't care, that he was wrong and I'd either stay here tonight or run away for good."
Jill took off her shirt and sat down to slide off her boots. It seemed lately that she was either dressing or undressing. She said, "It's true about Boyce and me, but there was no love. I was lonely; I hadn't seen Steve in two years, and I thought I could buy Boyce off by seducing him. It was my fault, and not his. He never intended to be bribed for long, and there are no pictures; I made them up to get more time for the ranch. So your mother will never know, unless you tell her."
Sherry sat perched on the edge of the bed, her back very straight. "Does-does Steve know?"
"He found out." Jill said, and got up to step out of her jeans. "You were for revenge on your father, and on me. But that didn't take. I saw the two of you, and he loves you, Sherry; he loves you very much."
"But Jill-I-I don't understand; I mean-if he loves me, then how about you?"
Jill unhooked her bra. "He loves me, also. In a different way. But what he feels for you is just as true, just as sweet. You're everything young and pure to him, the first romance, the girl in school-and you're so lovely that he considers himself the luckiest guy in the world. And maybe he is."
Blushing, Sherry moved off the bed. "I-well, thank you, Jill. If you'll show me where the bedclothes are-"
"Nonsense. You're sleeping with us, of course. If you're not too shy, that is."
The girl's blue eyes went very wide, and her mouth made a soft O. "You-you mean-"
"Why not? There's enough of him to share. Do you want to get undressed and hop into bed before he comes back?" Jill peeled off her panties and saw the girl's eyes flick in feminine curiosity at her mound, at the honey-blonde hair curling deep and rich there at her pubis. "Sherry, would you like the light out?"
"P-please," Sherry breathed, fumbling at her belt. "I-maybe it'll be different when I'm kind of used to it, but even this idea is so freaky I can't get hold of it. I mean-oh, wow, Jill!"
Jill regretted not being able to watch the girl undress. There was so much loveliness to see, to admire; but she could picture her as she'd been in the hay barn, that milky skin so finely textured and flawless, the just-budding breasts with their pink nipples, that delicate wisp of hair at the upper edges of her pink-lipped pussy. Jill remembered.
The bedroom was dark then, and they lay naked, lay trembling just a little under the sheet, for Jill felt as childlike, as unsure, as the young girl beside her. Jill held Sherry's hand, and they breathed in offbeat, soft gasps; it was as if they were little kids together, shivering in scary, delighted anticipation at the lion tamer's act in the center ring of the biggest, brightest circus there ever was.
And the calliope whistled, and somewhere there just had to be pink cotton candy, and when the lions and tigers were chased back into the runway, when the handsome daredevil trainer bowed and climbed the benches high up to where they sat, it would be more wondrous still.
Steve came into the room, and they stopped breathing. "Jill?"
"Yes," she said, "and Sherry, too. We've been waiting for you, darling."
And Sherry whispered, "Darling."
They heard him undressing, heard the clink of buttons and the thump of boots, the rustling of denims. When he came to the bed, Jill said, "Over here; I'll slip out so you can be between us."
He said, "Thank you, Jill."
"Not now," she said, lifting the sheet so her husband could lie down next to the lovely little girl. Then she followed him, and curled to his naked warmth, one arm across his body, where it touched Sherry's arm.
All the ugliness fled from Jill; the day was wiped clear, and there had never been a hairy, grunting man working his thin penis into her anus. There had never been a cold, torturing man forcing his huge cock far down her throat. Two men had not done these things to her as her husband watched helplessly. The night was here, and they were three together in love, so the day was gone forever.
Steve turned his head and kissed her. His mouth was at first gentle, then demanding, and she gave her tongue up to him, slid her teeth over his. Her breasts flattened against the side of his chest, and Jill pushed her mound to his thigh.
When he moved, it was to kiss Sherry in turn, and the girl moaned softly. Then he said, "I don't know how to go about this, which of you to-"
"Take turns," Jill suggested. "Just sit up and turn around, while we get adjusted." She felt him lift away from between them, and slipped her arm under Sherry's head to pull the girl close beside her. "Now, Steve," she said, her thigh pressed to Sherry's, her breast snug to Sherry's budding tit.
He went first to the girl, and Jill knew a deep, vicarious joy as she felt him run gentle hands over Sherry's writhing body, stroking hips and belly and thighs, caressing the almost hairless little mound. She trembled as the girl did when Steve lowered himself between the slim, fine legs and sought the tight, hot entrance to her tiny pussy.
He was tender and loving; he was patient and careful, and Jill kissed Sherry's cheek as her husband worked his cock into the narrow, near-virginal cunt. Jill knew the exact moment when he slid it all the way inside, when the glove of Sherry's young and eager vagina grasped the length of Steve's prick.
Stroking into the squirming girl, thrusting slow and deep into the sweetly clinging walls of the dewy cunt, Steve fucked Sherry until the girl gave her little cry of completion, until her slim, small ass hiked and shivered.
Pulling out quickly, he moved to his right, his hands searching for the inner softness of his wife's thighs, and Jill spread herself for him. He pushed into her hurriedly, thrusting strongly and solidly into her wet vulva, an urgency in him that he couldn't put off much longer.
So Jill rolled her tail and ground her pelvis, and heaved under him, riding the frantic hammering of his rod, and when she felt his glans flex in preparation to ejaculation, Jill was ready to meet it. The goodness and sweetness flowed from her clitoris; all the honeydew and oils rushed to bathe his beloved penis with their juices. She came and came, and her head whirled when she thought she could never stop the prolonged orgasm.
Steve pumped his love into her vagina, as deep and far as he could shower the hot semen, and his testicles jerked against her labia. He loved her, she exulted; he loved her again, more freely, more in a total, unselfish way than he had before.
Sinking back, melting under his hot body, Jill thought that it all would be different for them from now on, that her husband would no longer treat her as a fragile object to be laid only in the proper manner, by the numbers, Army style. No; he would let himself go with his wife, because she was his mistress, too, because he knew her to be weak flesh and passionate blood that needed a man just as a man craved a woman.
He knew she had screwed another man; he had watched her degraded in the rear, in her mouth, but he loved her still. Maybe he wanted her more because of the things that had happened.
He rolled from her, and as he lay on his back, Sherry snapped on the bedlight, and blinked in the sudden glare. "It's silly to be embarrassed or ashamed," she said, and climbed on top of Steve to straddle him.
Jill smiled; out of the mouths of babes, or something like that. Sherry was so right, for it should all be natural, all giving and sharing between them. When the girl went home tomorrow, as she'd have to, it would be with a wholesomely liberated outlook of life and sex. She wouldn't fault her father for long, either; she'd be able to see Boyce Pittman as another human being, flawed as they all were, as she herself was, as her lovers were, man and woman alike.
Eyelids fluttering, Jill rolled onto her side. Sherry was trying to fit the head of Steve's organ into her spread labia, rocking back and forth on him as she rode her horse. He held lightly to her slim hips, and moved his pelvis to accommodate her as best he could.
Jill said, "Now you can thank me."
"For-what?" he panted.
"For saving the ranch; for being an understanding wife; for making you a present of that beautiful, insatiable small woman there. You know, the one making you sweat so much."
"Thanks," he gasped, "Thanks-for all of it. Especially-especially for this-oh-this little girl."
"Little girl, hell," Jill said, but without malice.