Chapter 14
There was a note on the table when Cathy arrived back at the quadruplex. It was from Linda.
I won't be home tonight, Cathy, so don't wait up for me. Pick you up tomorrow for the flight back to San Francisco. Enjoy yourself with Pete. I'll be in Miami. Love, Linda.
Cathy wanted to cry. Pete wouldn't be with her. He had checked with his answering service at his home and he had an appointment with an important client—a politician, she gathered, and he didn't expect to be free. She was all alone and didn't know a soul in St. Petersburg. Well, she thought wryly, there's plenty of booze, and Pete had left two joints for her to smoke.
Mingled with the disappointment was a great feeling of elation. She and Pete had made love after eating their lunch and drinking beer under the palmetto tree. It had been very satisfying. While he hadn't committed himself to anything permanent, she gathered that he considered her his steady date anytime she was in St. Petersburg. It was something, at least. Something to look forward to. And, there was Randy back in San Francisco. Or here, if Pete wasn't available.
She accepted the fact that she needed both men. One on each coast. Sex was something that had intruded into her life. Now, she needed it. It was like a drug to her. She was hooked on it. Even Linda had contributed to her addiction. Well, was that so bad? Lovemaking wasn't meant to be limited to those of opposite gender. She was sure of that, now. It was too big, too complex to be meant to be shared in only one way. Linda wasn't a lesbian. Neither was she. Linda, if anything, was pan-sexual. She enjoyed it, no matter what form it took. Cathy was sure she was the same way. Knowing Linda helped to ease her mind concerning her own sexuality.
Sex wasn't everything, Cathy reasoned. But, it was an important part of life. She knew that now. Pete and Randy and Linda had shown her that. Mac and Paulson had presented other facets of her own sexuality to her. Mac had brought her to life and Paulson had put the stamp of his own sexuality on her. Both were important, somehow, though she couldn't quite grasp the total significance. Maybe they were important because they represented extremes. Mac had been quiet and withdrawn, in his own way. Paulson was a brute, savage, a dark side of sex that usually only manifested itself in fantasy, in dreams.
And Pete? Pete was the innovator, the joyous personification of no-holds-barred sex. Linda and Randy probably fell somewhere in between—joyous, too, in their own ways, but followers, not leaders. She would do anything with Pete. Indeed, there seemed to be no end to him. Would someone like that ever be able to settle down with one woman? She doubted it. Pete was too wild, too full of freedom ever to work well in harness. Yet, he did have a soft conventional side to him too. He had proved that last night after Linda had fallen asleep, and that afternoon under the palmetto tree. There was a core to him that she couldn't fathom. That was what made him so interesting. Interesting and provocative. Pete was a diamond that dazzled and taunted, flashing his lights so fast every time he turned around that you could never discern the middle, the heart.
It was no good feeling sorry for herself and Cathy made up her mind not to allow herself to descend into the depths of despair. After all, she had everything she needed there, and she was tired after a strenuous night and an exhilarating day. She checked the icebox and saw that it was well stocked with food and snacks. She made herself a Bloody Mary and found a sack of potato chips in the cupboard. She went to the living room and turned on the television. There was a vintage movie on the tube and she curled up in a chair, still in her shorts and halter, to watch. Maybe Pete would get through early, after all, and call her or come over. That was something she might look forward to. It was better than brooding. She envied Linda being in Miami. She herself had never been there. She knew it was an exciting city. She had seen little of St. Petersburg. It seemed, however, to be a quiet town, leisurely in its pace, populated mostly by elderly retired people. If it got too boring, she could always go for a swim, either in the Gulf or in the pool.
Cathy found herself nodding to the movie. She had seen it before, but in a way it was comforting to be watching something familiar. It made her less homesick for San Francisco. She mixed herself another Bloody Mary and put a tv dinner in the oven. She wasn't going to smoke the joint. It wouldn't be the same without Pete and Linda there. A couple of drinks, the dinner, and early to bed. That way she wouldn't miss her friends so much. And she was tired, getting more tired by the minute.
Cathy wore her baby dolls to bed after she had eaten and turned off the television. The big apartment seemed to be full of whispers, empty as it was. It was after nine when she finally put out the bedside lamp and stretched out on top of the bedding, her head on the pillow. She had mixed herself three Bloody Marys instead of two and was woozy from them. After dinner she had sampled some Schnapps but it reminded her of Randy and she didn't finish the small glass she had poured. She fell asleep sometime before ten o'clock, the moonlight pouring through the window and streaming between the shadows in the silent apartment.
The dreams were crazy, mixed-up, elusive. She kept trying to ride a horse that had wheels for hooves, but it kept getting bogged down in mud, silver, slippery mud. She was dressed in several heavy dresses that she kept shedding the more the horse kept sinking into the mire. A dark man, naked, came strolling up with a rope. He threw it out like a lariat and it caught the horse's neck. The lariat came out of the man's penis and there was no end to it. He pulled and the horse struggled free. She kept trying to get out of the heavy dresses. The more she tossed them away, the more dresses she wore. They, too, seemed endless to her. The horse got out of the quagmire, but she fell off. The dark man disappeared. A lady came up in his place as Cathy slipped on the silvery mud and began sinking. The lady pulled on her feet. The dresses came off in a bunch. The water, from a spring near the mud hole, lapped at her vagina. She felt very warm in her loins and happy that she was naked. The lady danced away like a butterfly. Several more men came up and pointed to her crotch. Their fingers were long and kept growing longer. They touched her flesh, prying open her legs and vagina. Their fingers kept going in until she was filled up with water and fingers.
Sometime during her dream, the front door opened. A man crossed the room and stood at the foot of the bed. He was in shadow. He disrobed, carefully folding his clothes and hanging them on a chair. When he was totally naked, he slid onto the bed, his breathing shallow. He looked at the sleeping woman and drew a deep sigh. Cathy's pert breasts rose and fell with her breathing, jauntily upthrust, the aureoles dark and bumpy, the nipples dormant. Gently, he eased next to her, his cock rising from its jungle of pubic hair like a stalking serpent.
He ran a hand up her legs, to her slightly mounded tummy, on up to her breasts. He teased the nubs of her nipples for a few moments, then retraced his finger's path back down to her legs. He ran a finger through the thick hairs of her pussy, barely grazing the lips. They were soft and pliant to his touch. The sleeping woman didn't stir, lost deep in her dream. Emboldened by his small successes, he parted the lips of her cunt, touching the slippery inner lining with his fingertip. He moved her legs wider apart and drew his face closer, so he could smell the musk released when he opened her up.
She smelled as he had imagined she would, young and exciting, as heady as a field full of heather like some he had strolled through in Scotland. He fingered her deeper, probing for the love-button inside. He found it easily and under his deft manipulation her juices began to flow, the wine of her youth seeping over his finger. He strummed the nubbin until it hardened. He moved closer to her, sidling crablike until he was between her legs, his face inches from her smoldering cunt. He buried his face between her legs and sniffed deeply. It was like burying his face in a bowl of dried flowers, the countryside flowers that grew in England, whose fragrances lasted for months after they were picked and closed away in a box.
"Oh, Cathy," he whispered, "you smell so good, so fresh and sweet."
He knew she couldn't hear him and he was glad. He wanted these few moments to drink in her beauty. He wanted to admire her body as it was now, magnificent in repose, the secrets within waiting for his key to unlock them, to set the very oils of them in motion.
"Sleep, my sweet," he murmured, his only answer the susurration of her breathing, the pale light of the moon streaming through the window.
He could see her perfectly. He attuned himself to her breathing as though he were a mystic coming to a shrine after a long journey. He felt that way, lying there on his stomach, his cock burrowing a depression in the bed, its slit seeping precoital fluids in preparation for his carnal entrance into her body. Not yet, he told himself, not yet. There was more to her than that. There were the oils of her that he must drink, the long thirst that he must slake at her precious well.
His tongue slid past his teeth and into the crevice of her cunt. He pulled the skin at the sides of her pussy apart, exposing the pink innards of this most lovely of objects. His heart beat fast in his chest as his tongue ventured beyond the outer lips and into the muggy depths of her cavern. The clit was still hard, still upright from its pod, waiting for this further intrigue, this gentle assault on its diminutive dwelling place. He tongued it lovingly, stroking its point with care, swabbing it with saliva as though it were some blinded creature come to him for succor. The musk of her sweet dank pussy filled his eager nostrils. He became drunk on her scent, a diver too long in the depths, his blood overloaded with nitrogen, his brain muffled with an enveloping narcosis,
"Sweet, sweet Cathy," he murmured as he came out of her sweaty nest for air. "If you only knew how sweet you really are."
Like some sleeping succubus, Cathy dreamed on, unaware of the reality of the man in shadows who was lapping at her honeyed spring. She slept on as if she were awaiting the dark prince who would awaken her to life, when she could summon the magic only she could invoke for this strange meeting.
The man moved up between her legs then, his cock fully hard, the head of it slick with the unguents of love. She was still open where he had tongued her, the flesh curled back where he had pulled it, as though it were gifted with memory.
"Now, my darling," he breathed. "It is time."
He eased his cock inside her pussy, holding himself above her with straight arms at her sides. The crown of it lingered a moment between her lips as they closed upon it. The sliding in was easy and smooth, the sheathing something exquisite like a clasping of lover's hands under a table, like the pulling on of a new glove.
He almost succumbed to the allure of her pussy then. His juices flared and threatened to burst loose from their vesicles. He stilled the almost overwhelming desire to ejaculate by quickly withdrawing. That would never do. Steeling himself, he entered her again, more slowly this time. He found the will power that he needed and flowed through the warm folds of flesh until he had fully ensheathed his penis within the clutching depths of her.
"Flesh of my flesh, spirit of my spirit," he said softly, his tone sacerdotal.
He left himself down on her loins, deepening his penetration. He stroked in and out of her soaked sheath, his member tight inside her. Her flesh was pliant, giving, her cunt like some sea creature that feeds by absorption. He moved slowly, enjoying every stroke inside the sleeping woman.
In the dream, Cathy was swimming. Her lungs fought for air. She was deep under a sea, climbing toward light. The sea water was thick, like oil. Fishes brushed against her bare flesh. Objects loomed close, then fell away as she struggled higher and higher toward the distant surface. An eel slithered close, entering her body through the vagina. It began to swell and its tiny teeth to nibble on a mushroom growing inside her vagina. The eel began flashing on and off like a neon sign. The surface came closer. The light from the eel merged with the light she swam toward. One big strobe light clicked on and off, its rhythm getting faster and faster, its white light so blinding she had to blink her eyes several times when she broke the water high above the depths where she had been swimming ...
He had increased his rhythm the last few seconds because Cathy was stirring in her sleep. Her hips had begun to move, her legs to twitch, as her climactic spasms increased. He moved with her, slipping in and out with rapidity, plummeting deep and fast into the innermost regions of her pussy. He watched her face become animate. The eyes stirred without opening. A pulse appeared in her neck muscle. Her breath became deeper, more labored. He let himself down, then, so that his torso covered hers. He began to nibble on her breasts, laving the dark aureoles with his tongue, enticing the nipples to rise with his tongue tip. And, still, he pounded Cathy's cunt with increasing force as though this was the injection that would bring her to life.
It took Cathy several seconds to separate herself from the dream. She felt as though she had been dreaming. There was a great weight on her body. Her breasts were slightly sore, the nipples hard and straining at their roots. Her cunt was filled out, swollen from inside. She opened her eyes and saw the top of a man's head, felt his tongue wetly swabbing her breasts. She touched a leg with her hand, cried out when she realized that his cock was inside her, submerging deep.
"Oh, Pete, Pete," she said. "You did come back. You angel! Oh, thank you, darling. What a thrill to wake up fucking like this. Ummm, I'm so happy."
She threw her arms around the man and squeezed him. She began moving her hips in counter rhythm to his, taking his cock deeper inside her, her pussy meeting his organ on the downstroke with its upstroke. She began coming with every third plunge as the man slowed his rhythm once again.
There was only one thing wrong, Cathy realized.
The man fucking her wasn't Pete!
For one thing, he had blond hair. For another, he felt different. He wasn't as big as Pete, and he had a different way of stroking. Oh, there was nothing wrong with it. His cock was deeply satisfying. Her cunt clasped it desperately, squeezing its thick bulk like a tube of toothpaste. There was nothing wrong with the way she was being fucked. Except that it wasn't Pete. And if it wasn't Pete, who was it?
"Who—who are you?" she stammered.
The man raised his head and looked at her.
Cathy gasped.
"Cathy, darling," he said, "you're everything I dreamed you would be. Are you upset?"
"I—I don't know." She had stopped moving. So had he. They lay there, coupled, the engines idling. "It's such a shock. You! Of all people! How did you get in here?"
"Linda gave me a key. In San Francisco. I really thought this was her apartment."
"It is. We share it. She's in Miami."
"I don't care. Cathy, tell me you don't mind. Tell me you're not angry with me."
She looked at him for a long time. Thoughts scrambled for attention in her brain. She had to have a quick answer for a situation like this. What could she do? He was inside her. His cock was throbbing there, a sleeping giant. Her breasts were afire from his tongue. Her loins burned from the heat of him, yearned for further excitation. What could she do? Order him out of the apartment? Make him take his cock out while she whimpered for sexual relief? Curse him for doing what he had done? Condemn him? Punish him?
No! No! No! She couldn't do any of this! This was her own flesh and blood, this unexpected and unannounced lover!
"Bill," she said, "oh, Bill, my god, how did this happen?"
"Maybe it was destined to happen," he said.
"Oh, I don't know. My own brother! It's all so fantastic."
"So, now what, Cathy? Do I slip away in the night and pretend this never happened? Do we deny ourselves each other for the rest of our lives?"
She squeezed him tightly in her arms.
Slowly, her hips began to move. She kissed him, her tongue flicking over his lips. Her hand glided over one of his buttocks.
"Don't leave, Bill," she whispered, a moment later. "Fuck me. Fuck me all you want. Just keep fucking me like this."
"Oh, Cathy," he said. "I've wanted you for so long. I think that's why I really left home. I wanted you so badly, I was afraid."
"Fuck me, Bill. Don't be afraid anymore."
Maybe, she thought, she had wanted him too. She sighed as his cock slid across her clit and she climaxed—with her eyes wide open.