Chapter 12

The point of her tongue licked along the edges of my belly button, then dove inside. She breathed through her nose and I felt her warm breath on the fine hairs below my navel, that led down into my crotch. Her tongue explored my belly, her lips kissed my stomach, and moved lower.

I extended my own tongue as her loins came toward my face. I caught her mound in my lips, kissed it, caught her hair with my teeth, and with my nose I smelled her nectar, the honey that fringed the lips of the entrance to her body, her virginity that had known no man but me, that had waited, kept itself warm, anticipated my return.

The candles burned slowly, the flames as upright in the still night air as the shaft of my manhood, as unwavering and steady as Lisa's faithfulness. The mattress was soft, our love calm and unhurried and dark and mysterious as in the shadows we opened ourselves to each other, ourselves for ourselves and for each other.

I raised myself for her to take me into her mouth as she lowered herself over me. And the goodbyes at Tongue River were on my mind, and how I had come home.

The morning after Mrs. Davis had guarded my front door, the pears passed over my grading table like so many marbles. It was all I could do to tell a Number 2 from a cull, a Number I from an apple.

Evelyn had brought lunch for me, along with Lou's, and together the three of us sat on the loading dock and ate bologna sandwiches, spread with mayonnaise and mustard, ate our oranges and pieces of cake, and drank our coffee out of the same thermos. Evelyn seemed to have forgotten that she had ever gone down on me, and Lou was more attentive to her than he had ever been, as if she was giving him something at night that he hadn't had before and was glad to get.

And just as we were finishing lunch, the panel truck that ferried loggers to and from the woods stopped in front of the warehouse. We watched several men in yellow hard hats climb out. Then, oh my God, here he came, Frieda's husband, clambering out of the truck and lumbering toward the warehouse in his pegged pants and caulked boots with his hands swinging like truck tires again.

Evelyn said, "Why, Giff, here comes your neighbor."

"I see him," I said.

Bold as brass, he walked right up to me. He didn't give a damn whether Lou and Evelyn heard him or not. Loggers never cared a damn for fruit growers anyway, or the puny guys who drove lift trucks for a living and hung around warm warehouses all winter. Loggers brushed guys like that aside like wading through buckbrush up on the mountain hogbacks.

Harry had a knot on his forehead that made his hard hat sit at an awkward angle on his head. He looked down at me. I didn't know whether to get to my feet and get knocked down or simply stay down where I wouldn't have so far to fall. He said, "Don't get up or I'll knock you down."

I didn't get up.

He said, "Don't go near my wife again, understand?" I was willing to agree to that. "Harry, I won't."

A grin trickled across his face. "Think she's pretty hot stuff, don't you?"

Frieda's plot came clear to me. "I sure do," I said.

"Don't you lay a hand on her again, or I'll cut it off." The grin became a leer. "I don't care how tempting she looks, how crazy you go for her, don't go near her again."

I thought if Frieda could do that to this big hulk of a logger when she was forty years old, she must have been able to drive him berserk when she was younger. I thought I'd help her however I could, even though it was-likely she would never need help. "It's tough to live in a cabin so close to her and not be able to do something about it."

"You don't know what tough is, but you'll find out if you hang around there any longer. And to make damn sure you don't, I'm bringing my axe home tonight. Keep that in mind."

He spun around on those caulked boots, a lot more agile than he had been the night before, and stomped back to the panel truck. He climbed inside. The other loggers glared at me, then piled in behind him and the truck took off for the mountains.

Lou looked at me with a dazed expression.

Evelyn looked at me with a knowing smile, with memory.

I finished my coffee. "Think nothing of it, Lou. Just a little disagreement between neighbors."

Evelyn started to laugh. She couldn't stop. Lou's face turned red and he started laughing as well. I started laughing. None of us could stop.

We were still laughing when Perkins arrived with his last six bins of Bartletts and had to honk his horn several times to get our attention. He brought with him another opportunity for me to say goodbye.

Mrs. Perkins stood across the grading table from me while I wrote her husband out a clear ticket. She said, "I waited until the last load to ride in. I thought I would see you here. For a while I didn't want to see you, then I decided I did, that it would get you out of my system if I saw you working, like any other normal person. I was right. Have a good time when you get home. It was a pleasure meeting you. Patsy asked me to tell you if I saw you that she enjoyed meeting you too. She asked me to tell you not to get married until you want to, don't rush into it. But you know that. I just wanted you to know I appreciated the lift you gave me that day. My husband appreciates it too."

That night I drove to the Evergreen to try to persuade Melanie, since she obviously knew about the bikini sisters and me, to give up her silly virginity. She was not there. The owner's wife had taken her place for the night. No, she did not know where Melanie was, home sick in bed was where she was supposed to be. And Melanie had better damn well be at work tomorrow night because the owner was plenty mad that his wife had to wait on cars out here just like any old carhop.

I didn't feel like ordering even a hamburger from a bitch like that so I drove around for awhile, then drove up to the motel and stopped in at Mrs. Davis' office.

She asked me, "Harry find you today?"

"Yes,"

"He's a nice guy, Harry is. Not a mean bone in his body. But I'm glad he didn't get hold of you last night. No telling what he'd have ripped from your body. That Frieda really runs him through the paces. But she hangs onto him. I never saw a woman that could hang onto a man like that Frieda."

I shuffled my feet. Mrs. Davis knew I obviously knew more about Frieda than she ever would, and she very politely did not pump me for information.

She simply accepted the fact that I'd fucked Frieda, and the bikini sisters, and who knew how many other of her neighbors, and none of it was my fault. I had been tempted.

"How about some supper? You look starved."

She pulled a big venison steak out of her freezer and threw it on the fire still frozen. With it, she served me home fries, applesauce, a lettuce salad, black coffee and ice cream. It was the best meal Fd had since I left California.

We talked after supper. She was a kind woman, generous to others who lacked what she called moral fiber. "It's not that I wouldn't like to pile into the sack with you myself, Giff. Understand that. It's just that it weakens morals."

"My morals haven't weakened," I said. "It's just that my opportunities have broadened."

She threw back her head and laughed out loud. She said, "I suppose it doesn't hurt anybody, as long as you both want to do it. I'm old fashioned, though. I like myself just the way I am."

"I like you the way you are, too."

About nine o'clock I felt restless and said I thought I'd take a drive, then come back and go to bed early. She kissed me on the cheek as I went out the door, like a friendly old aunt who loved me very much.

I wasn't far down the road when my headlights picked out a figure struggling out of the brush onto the pavement. I stomped on the brakes and a girl ran to my window. As I rolled it down, Mary or Marty said breathlessly, "I thought I wouldn't catch you. We were waiting. You wait now. The others are coming. We almost missed you."

In a minute her sister ran out of the dark, also breathless. The girls' chests heaved up and down as they caught their wind. I opened the door for them to slide in, then Melanie walked out of the brush and climbed in the front seat beside me. She had not run so fast, I think because she saw that the sisters had stopped me.

"I thought you were sick," I said.

"I'm playing hooky," she laughed. She was very excited. "I've never played hooky before."

"It's fun doing things you've never done before," I said.

The sisters climbed in the back seat and my car suddenly was filled with female bodies, sldn, their smells, their hair. I started down the road again, grinning in the dark.

The sisters had persuaded Melanie that it was time she lost her cherry. They had also persuaded her that she would be better off if she lost it to me, a stranger, than to some guy she had gone to school with who would only make her feel guilty, or that she owed him something. With me, the sisters had explained, there would be no chance, none of our getting serious. The matter would be treated as a friendly act between strangers and neither Melanie nor I would feel obligated to the other, or under any compulsion to carry the relationship further.

"I have only one request," Melanie said. "I don't want to do it in the motel. I got very nervous while we were waiting for you. I don't want to have to pass that motel the rest of my life and remember that I lost my virginity in there with Mrs. Davis watching TV only a few doors away."

"All right. I'll take you to a place you have probably never been to and wouldn't be able to find again."

"I'd like that."

Marty said from the back seat, "Oh Melanie, I'm so excited for you I could almost come in my bikini."

I drove up the bluff toward the Perkins place and turned off on the same dirt road I had been shown so long ago. Around the curves and hidden bends to the abandoned mine shaft, the end of the road. Melanie had never been here, and neither had the sisters. I parked beside the tall bushes, perhaps in the same tracks I had been in before. Mary .told Marty to come on out, they would explore by moonlight until Melanie and I called them to come back. "Good luck," they said to their girlfriend. "Have fun."

Melanie lost almost all of her shyness. I unbuttoned her shirt after we got into the back seat. I took her shirt off. My hands passed over her bare shoulders. I thought it would be best if I got into her right away; I had been happy to have been able to fuck the sisters and Frieda with such control the night before, but I still did not really trust myself knocking on a virgin's door.

She took off her own brassiere and I kissed her breasts, fine small mounds on her chest, each with a distinct nipple standing out in front, firm and hard, pointing up. Her tits were beautifully formed and exactly right for an eighteen-year-old girl. They were so much like Lisa's that I thought fucking Melanie was going to be very much like fucking Lisa.

I took off the rest of her clothes, trying not to linger too long over this or the other part of her body. My cock was stiff already, simply from the excitement of undressing her and the idea of her becoming naked on my car seat. She said, "Mary and Marty have this funny idea about saving something for their husbands so they leave some of their clothes on. I don't want anything on, Giff. I want you to be naked, too. Will you take everything off? I want us both to be totally naked when we make love tonight. All right?"

I stripped off my own clothes fast, kicking off my shoes, socks, pants and shorts and my shirt. "I'm naked," I said. My thigh brushed her bare leg.

She lay down under me. I touched her bush once to see if she was ready, and she was. My fingers felt their way through her cunt hairs, and around the edges of her lips. "Giff, Giff," she whispered, squeezing my hand between her legs. "Giff, Giff, nobody has touched me there. Nobody. Giff, Giff, be gentle."

Her hand slid along my cock, feeling its hardness, its readiness. "It will go in, won't it? All of it?"

"Yes. It fits. It's supposed to fit and it will. It might hurt a little at first, but not for long. Did the sisters explain anything?"

"Just how nice it is, and how nice you are." She moved her hand back and forth along my cock. She was not exciting me too much. I felt in control. She felt my balls. "I trust you, Giff. Please don't stop if I cry. If I say to stop, please don't."

I lay over her body, touched her stomach with my cock, her nipples with my nipples, my balls rubbed gently against her hairy mound. She opened Eer knees and I lay between her legs.

"It will be all right," I said. "Don't be afraid for anything." I kissed her mouth. She was very sweet and put her arms around my neck. She spread her legs wider.

"Giff, I'm ready. I'm ready."

I passed my middle finger through her slit and she was ready all right. Her juices were flowing out of her and down her ass, soaking her cunt, waiting for me, anticipating me. "Let me do something first," I said. I raised her body to me, brought my face down between her legs, and gave her mound its first kiss. She was ready for that too. She did not draw back but gave herself to me, raised her crotch so I could get in further. My tongue licked along her virgin cunt, my fingers parted it and my tongue darted inside her, found the top of her slit and almost set her on fire just by shooting in and out against it. I held the cheeks of her ass in both hands, squeezed them and thought about fucking her there too.

"Ohhh, Giffff, GGifffff, yessss, yyyeesssss." Her thigh muscles became taut. She straightened her back. Her ass began squirming in a circle, her cunt pushing up to my face.

I ripped my tongue away and forced her body back down to the seat. Her legs spread, went up, and I lowered myself between them, brought my prick to the mouth of her vagina, pressed down slightly and in it went.

The head first, her cunt lips spreading easily to take it. They closed on it to caress part of my shaft. As I pressed forward some more I felt her maidenhead. I kept pressing and felt it stretch. "Giff, Giffff, it's in me, it's in me."

She kicked her legs. She could feel the head of my dick inside her and it was driving her insane. Her head tossed to the side, she moaned and gasped and kissed me, she clutched my back, held onto my neck, her heels raked my ass, her thighs gripped my hips.

I eased out but not all the way, then came back and her maidenhead parted easily this time, seemed to shred as if made of thin cheesecloth, parted as the head of my prick slid further inside her. I pulled back again, easing the pressure. "Melanie, it's all yours now. You can have all of me now."

"I want you. I want you so."

My ass gathered its strength. My cock grew in size. My balls tightened in their sack. I came down again, slid in almost all the way, in past the head, past the tender circumcised skin, my shaft sinking into her warm, hot, welcoming, insisting hole. I felt the sides of her cunt all the way in, her muscles opening and closing for me, gripping me and parting for me. It was like a tight glove made of kid leather, my prick sliding up the dark, warm, wet finger of the glove, the finger expanding, stretching, accepting me. "I want it all," she sighed, "all of it, all, all, all. I want it so bad, I want you in me, far up in me, now Giff, now." Her legs pulled at my sides, her loins thrust up at me.

Withdrawing just a little, I lay back over her, pushed against the side of the car with my feet, and plunged in her up to my balls, my cock going all the way, giving her what she wanted. All of my cock plunged into her, in and out again, back in, fucking her, in and out of her, in and out, and her loins kept thrusting up at me, her cunt opening, taking me, keeping me, not wanting me out, fighting to keep me in.

We rode together for a long time. My hands held her firm little ass. She stroked the back of my head, petted my back, reached to my own ass and held me in her. "It doesn't hurt now, Giff. It did at first when you broke through but not now. Not at all. It's the most wonderful feeling, the warmest I've ever had. Oh Giff, can you stay in me forever?"

I had never had such a long fuck. I pulled almost all the way out of her, her muscles gripping at me as I pulled out, then slid slowly, long and hard, back in. She closed on me, held me there, pumped her hips up and down and fucked me.

At last we stopped talking. I lay her ass on the seat and fucked in and out of her, in and out, in and out, back and forth, my prick sliding on her juices, back and forth in and out of her tight sheath, her muscles gripping me all the way. She started coming, her ass trying to throw her cunt further up for me, her rhythm matching mine as we rocked back and forth. I pumped in and out of her, in and out, her sweet young slit taking me all the way, her dark place between her legs wide open, my hard cock sliding up into her, back out, up into her, back, out, the head reaching further, stretching further. I felt my orgasm mounting, coming along the backs of my legs, along the shaft of my cock, the head enlarging, growing, expanding.

It mounted in me as Melanie let all of herself go, as she clutched to me, held me tight with all four of her limbs. My come spurted into her, rose in waves, splashed far up inside her, filled her cunt, came and came and came.

When we called the sisters back, they wanted a go at me, dressed in their costumes as Top and Bottom.

Melanie wrapped my old fake Indian blanket around her shoulders. It fell down past her rear and covered her thighs in front. She stepped into Bottom's sandals and walked into the moon glow, excited she said by what had happened to her, and also by the fact that she was walking around naked, wrapped only in my blanket like my lover.

Top and Bottom went to work on me, for the last time. Only a few stray loads of pears remained to be brought to the warehouse and I did not intend to hang around waiting for them. I had left Lou with instructions to give them all clear tickets, so for me the harvest was as good as over. The cold storage room was filled with bins of Bartletts and Lou kept the temperature hovering right at thirty-four degrees, so now there was nothing to do but go home and tell the Exchange to get ready to can fruit because it was all in storage, the fruit was ready any time their machinery was. There was nothing left for me to do but go home, report, and get ready for another term at the university, so when Top went down on me I was ready for her, hungry for her, and I kneeled in the back seat while she sucked on me, leaned over her head as my come started to rise and I held her head with her nose buried in my pubic hair as my come pumped down her throat. And Bottom took me in her cunt. I tried to fuck her ass but she said it was reserved for her husband. I left it for the poor sap. I was willing to leave his future bride with at least some part of her body unplowed. So I held Bottom on her knees, her ass against my pubic bone, and fucked her from the rear, my fingers flicking the top of her cunt as my cock plunged in and out of it. Her ass bumped my belly like Frieda's had and when Bottom started moaning I pumped harder, my balls swinging back and forth, free between my legs until Bottom caught them; and when I came I humped hard, thrust myself forward, driving Bottom's head into the car seat, fucked up into her cunt upside down, loving it and she loving it too.

When Melanie came back she lay the fake Indian blanket on a soft mound of earth. We lay down on it together. Top sat on one side of us, Bottom on the other, and Melanie and I fucked slowly, spread out, our bodies touching from head to toe, my fingers working in her and her fingers working my balls, discovering my prick, my ass, my back, my ears, my mouth. When I sank down into her there was no resistance, only murmurs of approval from Top and Bottom, kisses for my face from Melanie. The fuck was long, slow, a drawn-out orgasm that began slow and stayed hard all the way, a hugging of our bodies, and our mutual orgasms were our offerings to the earth.

As I drove out of the mountains two days later, I experienced an all-over feeling of warmth and pleasure. My body was fulfilled, my job well-done, and people were pleased back there. Mrs. Perkins and Patsy were happy. Evelyn had released some trigger, something pent-up in her libido when she dove down on me in the cold storage room. Even Frieda, old brown-hole Frieda, had her husband again. Mary and Marty were the same as they had probably always been, dashing here and there in bikinis, driving everyone in town out of their minds. Melanie had emerged from the smothering burden of virginity and was ready to move into a life of an adult teenager rather than a shy, forlorn little girl. And Mrs. Davis had kept company with me, very righteous company with nothing untoward occurring just as she wanted, and she had happy memories of me too. The mountains were as gorgeous as they had been when I drove north, and all of my future waited for me, down the road, at home.

I didn't call Lisa when I got home. I stopped at my folks' place to let them know I was home, that the Tongue River harvest had gone well and they could be proud of their darling son. Only after I had eaten something and rested from the drive did I get back into the Ford and drive over to Lisa's. I walked in on her as she was washing dishes after her family's supper. I said, "Ready to go?"

Smiling, she wiped her hands on the dish towel, took off her apron, said, "Bye," to her mother and kissed her father on the cheek. We went out the door, hand in hand.

"I thought you would be home today or tomorrow," she said.

When we got into the car, she asked, "Can I kiss you?"

"Yes," I said, and let her kiss me on the cheek.

We drove to the mountain orchard. Sunset was a red glow over the ridgelines to the west. "Has anything changed since I was gone?" I asked.

She smiled, looking directly into my face. "No. Nothing."

"Do you still love me?"

"Yes."

"Nothing has changed with me, either. If anything, I love you more than when I went away."

"It .seems like three years, instead of three weeks." She held my hands. "Has anything else changed?"

"My experience, a little." I grinned.

Her laughter was like music. "Did those country girls do bad things?"

"No, just good things. Only nice people live in Tongue River."

"If they only did good things to you, it's all right."

I brought my old fake Indian blanket out of the car. It was my idea of resuming with Lisa exactly where we had left off. She held my wrist when I brought the blanket. "There's been some changes," she said. "Follow me."

She led me through the rows of withered, dried-up pear trees, away from the rim of the hill where we had been before. We passed the overgrown lilac bushes and stood at the broken threshold to the old house.

"I've been up here a few times," said Lisa. "I don't know if you'll approve or not, but I've done something."

Only I had ever been to the farm by myself before. I thought that if Lisa thought enough of the place to drive all the way up here in her rattle-trap car she had inherited from an older brother, then she very-likely was the girl for me. "What did you do?" I asked, pretending to be stern. "Tell me, woman, what did you do?"

She made me close my eyes and wait outside. I was nervous because I was afraid that her games would ruin everything I had learned in Oregon, that maybe I loved her too much to make love to her properly. Maybe we just wouldn't be able to make it together. When she called, "All right, come in now," I stepped over the broken threshold into something divine.

Somehow she had wrestled a mattress into her old car and got it up the mountain and into the house. She had covered it with brand-new white sheets. Four candles stood around the bed, one on each side and one each at the foot and head. The flames flickered in the dark, casting a warm glow over Lisa where she lay in the bed, naked, the top sheet held over her breasts. "Will you come to bed, husband?" she asked.

I folded my fake Indian blanket at the foot of the bed, making sure to lay it far enough from the candles that it wouldn't catch fire. I kicked off my sandals and took off my shirt. Standing where a candle could fight my body, I opened my pants and dropped them to the floor and stepped out of them. My penis was stiff, thick, long, pulsing with eagerness but strangely calm, ready but not in a hurry, aware that Lisa waited under that thin sheet, as naked as when she was born.

Her legs moved under the sheet as I kneeled beside her. She lifted the sheet and I lay down along her body, pulling her to me. My penis rose against her stomach. Her legs wrapped one of mine and she pressed her cunt against my skin. Her arms wrapped my shoulders, her nipples kissed my chest.

I kissed Lisa from her forehead to her toes. She turned over and I kissed her from her heels to the top of her head. I turned her over again and kissed her mouth. Her legs wrapped my chest, my waist, my balls fell against her cunt, my prick rubbed her breasts, her stomach, her mound where her hair and smells excited me. I kissed her thighs, then her virgin cunt. My face, blessed with her juices, rose to her mouth and Lisa tasted herself on my lips.

She kissed my penis, my balls, my stomach, my nipples. She took, for the first time, the head of my cock between her lips.

When she was ready I lay her on her back. I let her take my balls in her mouth, then I moved down her body so she could kiss along the bottom of my cock.

"Can I have it again?" she whispered. "Can I kiss it again? Afterwards?"

My answer was a kiss on her lips as I slid the head into her body. I pulled back and lowered myself again and went in further. I felt her maidenhead. I pulled back and went in again. Her legs spread to the side, her loins came up to meet me, stretching her, making it easier, faster. She began to part. "Oooohhh, Gifff, Gifff, I want it so, I've wanted you for so long." She said through her kiss, "So long, so long."

I held her hips with my hands. Her legs locked over my shoulders. I came down again, my cock wet now, soaked with her natural lubrication, and half the length of my prick slid into her. I was in. I was in Lisa. My prick felt no more like coming than it had when we began. It was a hard, useful tool and I was in control of it, not it of me.

Her muscles relaxed. She pumped with her cunt as I pulled out and came thrusting back in and she took all of me. I felt her hair against my hair, her cunt lips gripping the root of my cock, her pubic bone against mine. We began a methodical, rhythmic pumping of our bodies and Lisa came very fast, as I wanted her to. Her cunt filled with her juices, easing whatever pain she might have had, and as I worked back and forth stretching her cunt, enlarging it, opening it, she kissed my lips and caressed my tongue with her own.

When I came it was almost as if mountains fell, the earth bucked, the rains came, and my body shot forth into Lisa's and hers opened wide to receive me.

Afterward we lay still for a long time, petting each other. Very soon we began, quietly, softly, to make love again and Lisa turned her body to kiss my belly button, lick it with her tongue, and she began to kiss the fine hair that led to my cock. I lifted one of her smooth legs over my face and she lowered her mound to me, her aroma filling my lungs, my mouth reaching up for her even as she raised my penis with both hands to slip its head between her lips, and as she began to suck on its tender mushroom shape, and as she took more of it until I could feel her lips completely circling the shaft.

We fucked twice more before we slept. It seemed my cock would not get soft, nor did Lisa want it to. After the third time we fell asleep in each other's arms and woke up sometime after midnight because of a light patter-patter-patter on the roof. I sat up quickly, glared around through the dim candlelight Lisa kissed my back and laughed.

It was raining.

I reached down to the foot of the bed and pulled my fake Indian blanket over our legs. The roof leaked in a few places but luckily not over our mattress. "How did you know it was going to rain?" I asked. "Is that why you fixed the house?"

She hugged my body. "I thought it might rain on us, one time or another when we're up here." She folded the sheet over my old blanket to make a neat bed. "You don't mind, do you, if we come up here again sometime?"

"How about tomorrow?"

She pulled me down to the mattress. I tugged the blankets up over us as her hand dove down to my crotch. My penis had risen in my sleep and was stiff and thick again, ready once again for her. "I always wanted to fuck on top of my old blanket," I said. "I never thought I'd be doing it underneath it."

"Let's see what it's like," she said, her lips kissing me from my mouth down. "Let's see what it's like under the blanket."