The Legacy, Chapter 1: Three Oaks free porn video

 “Good evening, Miss Elizabeth.” The voice should have startled her, but it didn’t. It never did; she knew how silently the big man could move, was familiar with the way he seemed to suddenly appear, and his voice was so soft and gentle, low and deep, a calm, protective voice she had known since childhood. Despite the fact that she’d had no idea he was there, his words didn’t startle her.

She looked up at him, seeing only a silhouette, looking into the setting sun and seeing only the shape of him, the broad shoulders, his hair a short, inch-long brush of stiff, tight curls a glowing halo around his head. “Good evening, Henry: what brings you by tonight?”

He laughed softly. “Your Mr. Robert, he’s a worrier; he wants me to look at that old oak, that last big one with the hollow in the trunk. He’s afraid it will fall and hit your home, especially in the winds we’ll be having.”

“Henry, don’t worry about it tonight, please. He can have a service come and remove it when he gets home.”

“There’s a big storm coming tonight, Miss Elizabeth. I’ll look at it, but not much I can do at this point, I’m afraid. I promised him I’d take a look.”

She hadn’t heard anything about a storm, but she knew better than to question Henry’s wisdom; if he said there was a storm moving in, there unquestionably was, despite the current clear blue skies. It had been an unusually calm and muggy day, and it was always hot in this part of Georgia in late June, a combination which she knew could quickly bubble up a violent storm.

He moved out of the sun’s path, off to her side, and squatted down next to her. She could smell the hay in his clothes, from feeding his horses, and the wood smoke from the brush and downed limbs he’d burned off earlier, as well as a hint of masculine sweat and testosterone. She studied his profile, his strong chin and broad nose, the wrinkles along his jaw and the creases – laugh-lines, she knew – at the corners of his eyes. His skin was remarkably beautiful for a man his age, sixty-seven, the rich dark-chocolate color of it smooth and even.

Like his rich voice, it was a face she had known since childhood, the warm, brown laughing eyes of the man that had gathered her and the other children around him – black and white alike – and told them stories of growing up in rural Georgia, and of monsters and bogeymen and the various creatures of the forests, and taught many of them how to fish and to ride horses. A veteran of the war in Vietnam, a Navy man, he’d been a school teacher back then, history and literature, before becoming the principal and then the county superintendent of schools. He’d retired four years earlier at age sixty-three to enjoy his life, his loving wife, Mary, and their horses.

“What are you planting, Miss Elizabeth?”

“Henry, please call me Beth. Haven’t we had this discussion about a thousand times already?”

He chuckled. “Yes – at least. It’s a habit, Miss… umm, Beth. I’m sorry, but you’ve always been Miss Elizabeth to me, and I suppose you always will be.”

She smiled, knowing he was right. “I’m planting some coleus. I know it’s late in the year – it’s already so hot, but I had this shady spot, and they were so beautiful…”

He reached out and picked up a handful of soil, crumbling it between his long, graceful fingers. “It’s too dry, Miss Elizabeth; this is a good spot, enough shade, but with it being June you’ll need to keep them good and wet until they get some roots down. Don’t drown them; just water… maybe twice a day for awhile, when it doesn’t rain.”

She turned her head to hide her grin; Henry was always advising her on anything to do with gardening – and his advice was sound, she had learned a great deal – but she’d been doing it for almost twenty years now! She was a pretty good gardener herself, by this point. “Thank you, kind sir, I will do that!”

She put the last two plants in the ground, and made small talk with him as she wet them down with a gentle spray. Finished, she turned off the hose and coiled it back onto its reel. “If you’d like some company, I’ll walk up with you to look at that old oak tree.” She knew she should stay and clean up her flower bed a bit more – the weeds were already encroaching – but it was getting late and she needed to get back up to the house in any event.

He positively beamed. “It ain’t in this old man to turn down the company of such a beautiful young woman! You know I’d love to have you walk with me.”

They walked side by side, at ease with each other and talking comfortably. The path followed the route of the old drive that used to lead up to the manor house, the ancestral plantation home that had been burned to the ground by a roving band of General Sherman’s troops in 1864, on their March to the Sea. The old plantation, known as Three Oaks, was long gone, but one of the three massive, graceful trees from which it had taken its name remained; that was the tree they were going to look at. The other two remained only as images in old photos and daguerreotypes from an earlier era, although one dark, rotting stump, several feet in diameter, still existed.

The sole remaining tree, with its huge canopy and wide-spreading branches, stood perhaps fifty feet from the timber frame farmhouse which had been built in the late 1870’s to replace the razed manor house. It cast shade over the broad porch of the house in the afternoon and evening, and was conceivably close enough to do some damage should it fall in that direction.

They looked up into the wide, green canopy as they walked beneath it, listening to the rising and falling trill of the cicadas in the branches above. The air was still now, heavy with humidity, and Beth could feel the thin fabric of her light sundress clinging to her back. The rich, sweet scent of honeysuckle and Confederate jasmine surrounded them like a soft perfume.

They stopped at the base of the tree, and Henry laid his hand on the deeply furrowed gray bark, looking at the hole just above them near the first fork, a place where Beth had watched the flying squirrels pop out at dusk on a number of occasions. “This old girl has stood here a long, long time, Miss Elizabeth; just think of all the things she’s seen!”

Beth loved the sense of wonder in his voice, loved that about him, that even at his age he could be awed by something as simple as a gnarled old tree. She smiled. “You’ve seen many of those things yourself, haven’t you, Henry?”

He chuckled. “Don’t remind me, girl! But this old tree must have at least two hundred years on me!”

She laughed. “The important question is, does she have any more left in her?”

“Oh, I think she’s going to be with us awhile yet, if your Mr. Robert doesn’t get too much of a bug about her and cut her down. She’s stood here through hundreds and hundreds of storms, through drought and floods, and even the flames and cannonballs of The War of Northern Aggression; another bit of wind isn’t going to hurt her.”

They both chuckled at his euphemism for the Civil War; a phrase which had been used widely – and in earnest – in the South for many, many years after the war had ended. “Well, Robert doesn’t really understand the way things here in the south endure, Henry. He wasn’t born and raised here like we were.”

He laughed. “No. I still can’t believe that your daddy let you marry a Yankee.”

Her husband, Robert, was from Chicago originally. An airline pilot, he’d been based there and had flown for United Airlines out of O’Hare, primarily, until he had jumped ship and gone to work for Delta Airlines; he now flew mostly international flights, the big jets, out of Atlanta’s Hartsfield International Airport. Several years older than her, they’d met in an airport lounge in Los Angeles when she was returning from her senior year at Stanford, and the relationship had slowly blossomed from there. He’d been piloting the smaller commuter jets back then.

They had now been married for almost nine years, and while she had gone to live with him in Chicago for the first two years, she had deeply missed her childhood home. A little over two years into their marriage, when her parents had died in an auto accident and the property had passed to her, they had made the decision to move back to Georgia and live in her childhood home, even though it had entailed Robert changing employers.

She smiled. “Well, daddy probably wasn’t pleased about that - a damn Yankee, as he called them - but he knew that if he tried to stop me I’d just become more determined.”

“Mmm, yes, you always have been a stubborn one; even as a child you always had a mind of your own!” He stopped, lost in his thoughts for a moment. “Your daddy was a good man.”

“They both were good people, Henry, momma and daddy. I still miss them.”

“Me too, Miss Elizabeth, me too; wonderful friends. They were so good to us when my Mary took sick, and then she outlived them both, because of a god damned drunk driver.”

She nodded, understanding his hurt and anger. He seldom swore, but she still sometimes felt the same rage and pain about the way her parents had died, so she understood his vehemence. “They loved you too, Henry, you and Miss Mary; you’ve always been like family.” She paused for several seconds. “It’s been almost three years since your wife passed, hasn’t it?”

He looked sideways at her, touched that she remembered, awed as always to see what a beautiful woman she’d grown up to be, the setting sun glinting off her golden hair. “You have a good memory, Miss Elizabeth. Three years tonight – tomorrow morning, actually; it was three seventeen in the morning when the cancer finally took her.”

“You miss her terribly.”

It was a statement, not a question. He nodded. “I do. Every day, but I have to look at the forty-two wonderful years we had together, and our three boys that made her – both of us - so proud. And I’m so happy that she got to see her first grandchild born before she left us.”

Henry was now a grandfather twice over, to a four year-old grandson and a new baby granddaughter, both born to Henry’s eldest son and his wife. He shook his head, as if to shake away the regrets. “But you can’t live in the past, Miss Elizabeth, that’s yesterday; you have to live for today, and be excited about the glorious new world of possibilities that tomorrow might bring.”

She looked wistful for a moment. “It seems so quiet around here now, with her and my parents gone, and your three boys scattered across the country. Do you realize, Henry, that after two hundred and nineteen years of Pettigrews on this land, you and I are the last two?”

He chuckled. “And technically you’re a Bishop now, since you married Mr. Robert, so that makes me the last one unless one of my sons comes back home.”

She smiled. They’d had this argument before, that since she’d married Robert Bishop she was no longer a Pettigrew. “Henry! You know I’ll always be a Pettigrew!”

He nodded, smiling. “Well, you do have the family bull-headedness, and you are a pretty thing; all of the women in your family have been very beautiful… and jackass stubborn.”

She blushed, laughing. “Thank you, Henry – I think!” She looked around, at the front of her home, the old timber and log farmhouse that she loved so much, and at the bare spot where the old manor had stood, and then beyond, back toward the woods, to where the stone chimneys of the old slave cabins still rose from the thick brush like sentinels from a lost and shameful era; it was as if they were on guard to ensure that such things never happened again. She thought it ironic that the carefully constructed brick chimneys of the old mansion had largely crumbled to piles of rubble, and yet the chimneys of the old slave cabins, crude, and made of rough field stone, still stood tall. “Can we walk back by the woods for a few minutes, before it gets dark?”

He looked at the sky. “We have time before dark; the storm is still a ways off too, but the mosquitoes will be bad.”

“It’s alright; they don’t bother me much, and they never seem to bite you.”

He laughed as they turned into the slightly overgrown path that led back toward the stone chimneys. “I think this old hide is too tough for them to bite through.” He sighed, and put his big hand on her shoulder affectionately. “You do like to walk among the ghosts, don’t you, Miss Elizabeth?”

“It’s not ghosts for me, Henry, it’s my childhood. It’s where I played with your boys and my other friends. For me it’s happy memories. We used to play around and climb on these old chimneys. ” She looked sidelong at him, admiring the seams and craggy lines of his beloved face, and then rested her hand lightly atop his. “It doesn’t bother you that your family, your ancestors, were once owned by mine? That they were slaves?”

“We’ve been over this, Miss Elizabeth. It was a very long time ago, well before even my time. It serves no man well to carry these things, to harbor anger or hatred. And besides, if those things hadn’t happened, I’d have never had the pleasure of watching you grow up, of being born and raised here, in this beautiful place. I might have never been born, or served in the Navy of this incredible country, or met my Mary or had my beautiful boys. Things happen for a reason.”

“You’re an amazing man, Henry; I’ve always been proud to share my name with you.”

He laughed. “I’ve strived to not bring shame to it. That was not uncommon, you know, for the slave families to take the surname of their masters, especially the ones that stayed together for generations.”

She knew all of that, they’d spoken of it before, but each time they did it seemed that she discovered new things about her old friend, or gained some new bit of knowledge about her own family’s past. “I still think it was evil, that whole era.”

He nodded. “Oh, parts of it were, for certain, but you’re judging an earlier time by the standards of today. It was the way things were back then; these farms and plantations could not have ever existed without something like that. It was born of necessity, and it was all people knew - the cotton wasn’t going to pick itself.” He chuckled.

She didn’t. “Some people recognized that it was evil; a war was fought over it, and so many men died.” She knew that she was over-simplifying; that the war had been fought over more than just slavery, but it was something that always left a stain in her memories, the knowledge that her own family had been a party to it.

He took her delicate hand in both of his big, dark hands, and patted it gently. “Your grandfather was one of the men that knew it was evil, Beth; he was fighting for his way of life, for his family. He was frightened, like so many that didn’t know how they could possibly go on if things changed so much. I don’t think Alfred was an evil man, not at heart; he was doing what any man would do, simply trying to survive and provide.”

Alfred was actually her great-great-great grandfather, Alfred Pettigrew, five generations past, and the last of the Pettigrews to be a slaveholder. He had fought in the war, rising to the rank of major in the Confederate States Army, and had returned home after Lee’s surrender at Appomattox to find his home destroyed and his family and the few remaining slaves – free men, now – scattered and struggling. By force of will he had pulled them back together and, after a few years in primitive conditions, eventually built the old log and timber farmhouse that Beth and her husband, Robert, now called home.

To those former slaves that had been willing to stay and help rebuild, and to get the plantation operating again, he had deeded to each family twenty acres and helped them to build homes, usually of timber and logs like his own, but smaller. Henry’s ancestors were some of the few that had chosen to stay on, and his family had since bought out one of the other former slave families; the forty acres on which Henry’s home was located was the resulting property, and was folded within the remainder of the Three Oaks estate, itself down to less than four hundred acres at this point from its original fifteen hundred.

If you picture the entire property as a broad, shallow block “U” shape, opening to the north, his acreage made up a square in the top center of the “U”. His home, near the northern property line, and hers, in the western arm, were separated by less than a quarter of a mile.

They stopped near one of the old stone chimneys, and sat down on the flat stones that made up the old hearth. “Your Grandfather Alfred giving property in trade to black men - making his freed slaves landowners - that was a very brave thing to do, Miss Elizabeth; he was widely despised for it.”

“Oh, I know; you’ve told me. Still, the whole thing…”

“What have I told you about living in the past? You just have to let it go, child; remember the good things, like him making sure all the children of his workers, black or white, slave or free, could read and write! He provided a teacher for them, and helped them learn. He thought it important, and valued education. Nobody else dared do that.” Henry shook his head, fully aware of the risks that such a practice would have brought in that era. “I wouldn’t know so much about my family if they hadn’t been able to read and write; many kept journals and diaries, you know, and we owe that to old Alfred.”

“I suppose many had it much worse.” She sighed. “I just wish that wasn’t a part of my family history.”

“Don’t be like that! The members of my family, those that wrote about it, all loved and respected him. All of the members of your family that I’ve had the pleasure to know have been wonderful people, and wonderful friends; most have treated me and mine like family… just as you do.”

She smiled at him. “You’ve always been family, Henry – speaking of which, you will join me for dinner, won’t you?”

“Miss Elizabeth, I can’t keep letting you feed me! I’m always imposing on your generous nature, it’s too much!” He shook his head, tut-tutting over taking advantage of her.

She lowered her head to hide her smile, knowing that he would eventually find a way to accept her offer; he always did, he just liked to be talked into it! “You know how much I hate eating alone when Robert is out of town, Henry. Please join me – I’m making pork chops. Maybe fried potatoes, black-eyed peas… I just made a fresh pitcher of sweet tea.”

“Well, now you’ve set my mouth a-watering! Okay, I’ll join you – but you have to let me do dishes!”

She laughed. “You know darn well we put in a dishwasher when we remodeled last year! You can pour us each a splash of bourbon to enjoy while I’m fixing dinner, make our salads, and then set the table, how’s that?”

He cocked his head and looked at the sky. “I can do that! We should probably think about getting back; hear that thunder?”

“I didn’t hear anything.” She’d noticed the dark clouds piling up to the southwest, but they had looked very far away.

“It’s distant still, but coming; listen!”

Listening carefully, she heard the faint and distant rumble. “You’re amazing, Henry! You heard that before I did, and I’m half your age!”

He laughed. “Less than half! If I remember correctly, you’re only thirty; I turned sixty-seven last May, so according to my math…”

She giggled and poked him in the ribs affectionately. “I was trying to be kind by not pointing out how terribly, terribly old you are!”

“Oh, now there you go, making me feel all ancient and decrepit! My Mary always did say I could hear a mouse in wool socks walking on a featherbed. Guess my hearing is still pretty good.”

“Everything about you is still good, Henry. You haven’t changed a bit since I was a little girl.”

“That’s kind of you to say, child, but sometimes I feel every one of those sixty-seven years – and I am a grandpa now, remember.” He put his arm over her shoulders protectively as they strolled back up to the house, glancing over at the empty hangar as they passed by. “Where is Mr. Robert off to this week, Miss Elizabeth?”

She sighed. “Amsterdam again, but then he has to fly to Tokyo, so he’ll be gone most of the week, coming back from the west coast on Friday evening.”

Henry shook his grizzled head. “Around our old world again! That husband of yours is a traveling man! I heard him leave this morning… I should probably mow that landing strip before he gets home, and check it for fire ant mounds and gopher holes.”

She nodded. Part of the bargain in moving to her ancestral home had been that Robert, her husband, would buy a plane to commute the roughly hundred and eighty miles to and from Atlanta, landing at Hartsfield International Airport directly in order to save many hours of travel back and forth by car. He had found a lightly used Cessna 182 Skylane, and they had stretched their budget to purchase it, at a cost of over four hundred thousand dollars; no longer having a house payment after selling their home near Chicago was the only thing that had made it possible.

He’d had some acreage leveled and landformed, and then packed and sodded to provide a landing strip, and, with Henry and his youngest son providing help and expertise, the three of them had built a wide, shallow lean-to style hangar in the same timber and log style as the old farmhouse. Beth smiled as she recalled how proud her husband had been of that hangar, and that he’d actually had a hand in its construction; it was almost as if he’d taken more pride in the hangar he’d helped build than in the plane itself!

They paid Henry to help maintain the grounds and runway in her husband’s absence, but he would only accept a fraction of what the work was worth, claiming he needed something to do in his retirement years. As they neared her home he lifted his arm off her shoulders. “I’m going to run home and clean up a bit, and get Beau and Sadie into the stable before the storm hits; I should be back in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

She smiled at him. “That’s fine, Henry; I could use a bit of a clean-up myself.”

“Miss Elizabeth, you look beautiful. You always look beautiful.”

“Thank you, Henry! I feel a bit sweaty though, so at least a quick washcloth is in order. Don’t hurry, I’ll wait.”

He turned and started away, and as he did she watched his broad back, still straight and strong, his legs and behind solid and muscular. He suddenly turned back toward her. “Are we going to ride tomorrow? Those two could use a little exercise.”

“That would be lovely! We haven’t gone riding in quite some time. Down along the creek and across the bottoms, maybe?”

“Wherever you like, my young friend; you call it! I’ll be back soon.” With a wave over his shoulder, he walked away.

Inside, she poured herself a couple fingers of Makers Mark over an ice cube and carried it to her bedroom; it wasn’t a typically feminine drink, but she’d learned to appreciate it. She stripped naked and walked into her master bath. They’d had much of the old home extensively remodeled in the years after they’d moved in, giving special attention to the kitchen and bathrooms; her master bath was perhaps her favorite room in the home, a haven of peace and creature comforts.

She washed her face before taking a soapy washcloth to her body, freshening herself from ankles to throat, paying special attention to the moist, humid areas such as her armpits and her sex. Afterwards, after she’d dried herself and applied a lightly scented powder, she felt a thousand percent better. She looked at herself in the mirror; her own worst critic, but even she had to admit that she still looked awfully good at the age of thirty, trim and fit, her stomach flat and toned and her ass high, firm, and nicely-rounded.

Her breasts were not overly large, but large enough – and they still looked pretty damn good, if she did say so herself! She lightly brushed her fingers over her rose-pink nipples, and drew in a shuddering breath as she watched them stiffen and pucker. It sent electric tingles straight to her sex and she could feel the heat and sense the sudden moisture. She was just beginning to touch her mound, smooth and free of hair, the way both she and Robert liked it, when she shook herself and came back to reality, realizing that she didn’t have time for even a quick session of self-pleasure.

She sighed longingly; she missed Robert terribly when he was gone, but had become quite adept at satisfying her own needs… and she had her toys! They would occasionally ‘sext’ message or engage in a bit of phone sex, which was always fun, but it just wasn’t the same as having her guy there to touch, taste, and feel, to enjoy his hands and lips on her, and his sounds and male scent, and she longed for the sensation of his hard cock deep inside of her.

She took some tiny lace panties, a soft peach color, out of her lingerie drawer and slipped into them, and then stood before her closet, trying to decide. Ultimately she chose another dress, slightly dressier than the one she’d worn outside, but nothing fancy; it was just dinner at home with an old friend, after all! She debated about a bra before voting against; this dress didn’t require one, and neither did her boobs, she decided.

The dress she’d chosen was white, with pale blue flowers and green leaves in a tiny print, the neckline cut low enough in front to show some cleavage, but not daringly low by any means. The skirt portion was full and gently flared, and suspended from her slender hips in soft pleats, flattering her round bottom. She thought about some flat sandals as well, but decided to remain barefoot and comfortable.

She considered her bottles of perfume; she only had a few, and didn’t want to wear anything inappropriate or too sexy. She finally selected a soft floral scent with just a hint of musk, her personal favorite, and dabbed on just a small amount. She thought of it more as a replacement for a full bath than an attempt to be sexy. Not for Henry, certainly! They’d known each other too long, had too much history, and there was the age difference…and her marriage.

She ran a brush through her hair and did a quick check in the mirror, satisfied with what she saw; she knew she was attractive, that men were drawn to her blue eyes and friendly smile, not to mention her nice figure, shapely legs, and long, flowing blond hair. She wasn’t particularly vain about her appearance, just quietly confident.

Shortly after she’d gone out to the kitchen to begin to put things together for dinner, she heard a knock at the door, and called out for Henry to let himself in. He came out to the kitchen to join her, and when he did she saw that he was carrying a small crystal vase with two huge, beautiful roses sticking out of it, the petals a brilliant yellow with blood-red slashes running through them.

“Oh my! Henry, those are beautiful! Thank you.” She took them and set them at the center of the table.

“They were too pretty to let this storm smash them. Beautiful roses for a beautiful lady.” He smiled at her. “By tomorrow, every single open flower will be nothing but pretty petals on the ground; thought I’d best rescue a couple for you before that happened.”

She looked at him, noticing that he had changed from his old jeans into a pair of gray flannel slacks that fit him very nicely, and a light blue oxford button-down to replace his old, torn chambray that he’d worn earlier. “You look very nice, Henry. Do you really think the storm is going to be that bad?”

He nodded. “Shaping up that way, yes – and you look absolutely lovely, Miss Elizabeth.”

“Henry! Call me Beth, please? Just for tonight, at least?”

He laughed. “I’ll try – no promises!” They set about putting dinner together, each falling into a familiar routine; since his wife had died, Henry was a frequent dinner companion, often when her husband was traveling and occasionally even joining the two of them when he was in residence. He refreshed her drink, adding another finger of bourbon and a new ice cube to replace the mostly-melted one before pouring his own, neat, two fingers.

She prepared food as he set the table; without being asked, he put music on the stereo in the living room, soft jazz instrumental, set low. He prepared salads as she dealt with all of the hot dishes, and they carried on a comfortable conversation the entire time. It wasn’t about anything in particular, and nothing momentous, just the simple small talk and day-to-day mundane things that old friends – and old married couples – so easily enjoy.

They listened to the music, and to the storm drawing nearer, and enjoyed the meal and each other’s company. Henry was a capable cook, but was old-school enough to enjoy having a woman – and a very beautiful one, at that – prepare a home-cooked meal for him. It was one of so many things that he’d discovered he missed after Mary had passed on, things one tends to take for granted until they’re gone.

After dinner they cleaned up together, loading the dishwasher and putting things away. Moving to the living room he refreshed their drinks again, although Beth requested just a tiny bit, beginning to feel the effects of the alcohol. They talked about perhaps watching a movie – she had a library of movies on DVD – and agreed that it would be a good way to pass the stormy evening.

Not comfortable alone during major storms, Beth was grateful to Henry for staying without discussing it. He’d known her for every one of her thirty years; he was well aware of her fear of major storms, particularly the wind, and simply wouldn’t leave her to face it alone. It was shaping up to be a major blow, loud and probably violent.

The storm was close now, the flashes of lightning and peals of thunder nearly constant and the wind increasing, rattling the shingles and dropping twigs and other debris on the roof above their heads. The sounds of rain began, slowly at first, ticking off the roof vents and metal gutters, and then strengthening into a steady roar, like a waterfall, pounding on the roof and the ground outside.

They had decided to watch “The Bucket List”, because who doesn’t love Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson, especially together, and she was moving toward the TV and sound system when the lights suddenly went out, plunging the room into pitch blackness. Henry chuckled. “Well, I guess a movie is out of the question!”

He started toward the candles that he knew were in a drawer near the front door as she turned toward the kitchen to retrieve a flashlight; a brilliant flash of lightning came a split second too late to reveal that they were on a collision course, and they came together hard in the middle of the living room, Beth’s face connecting solidly with Henry’s sternum!

As she cried out and stumbled backwards, he let out a soft grunt, but had the presence of mind to grab her by the shoulders, preventing her from falling or tumbling into something. “Elizabeth! I’m so sorry! Are you okay?”

“Oh! I think so, it just surprised me, kind of knocked the air out of me. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine… I guess we should have communicated better, huh?”

She laughed. “Apparently so! Oh… uh-oh.”

“What?”

“I think I have a bloody nose… I banged it pretty hard on your chest.”

In the flashes of lightning he shook out a clean handkerchief from his pocket and gave it to her. “Here, hold this to it while I find those damn candles!”

While she tried to staunch the bleeding, he found and lit two candles, and then lit the three kerosene lamps they had around the kitchen and great room in strategic spots. Power outages were not an uncommon phenomenon out there in the country, where most of the power lines were still strung from poles and thus vulnerable to weather and falling branches. People that had lived there for any length of time were prepared for them.

He crossed to her and tilted her chin up, looking down into her face. “Oh, Miss Elizabeth, I’m so sorry! You did bang it, you’re bleeding pretty badly.” He led her to the sofa. “Here, sit; I’ll get some paper towels, some Kleenex.”

She sat, her head tilted back and the cloth pressed to her nose; when he returned, he placed a candle in a pewter holder on the low table in front of them and then sat at the end of the sofa, pulling her back so that her head rested in his lap. He checked her, dabbing at the blood on her upper lip with a wet paper towel before holding a couple of folded tissues to her nose, replacing his blood-stained handkerchief. “I just feel awful, Miss Elizabeth, hurting that pretty nose of yours.”

She laughed, the sound muffled. “It’s all right, Henry, it was an accident. It’s no big deal; it’ll stop in a minute. I’m fine.” The storm raged outside, the wind and rain hammering the house as the lightning crackled across the sky. The thunder was loud and close, rolling in waves above, the vibration of the loud thunderclaps felt as a visceral thing. In truth, Beth felt very secure with Henry, her head resting in his lap, and was glad and grateful that he’d stayed and was there to keep her company through this storm.

They talked, the absence of the television and sound system quickly forgotten, talked as old friends do. About his service years, aboard the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of North Vietnam; about his children, and about watching them grow up alongside Beth; about her parents and times past, and the genealogy research he was doing into their respective family trees. They talked about how much they each loved their country and their ancestral home. Through it all, the wind and rain pounded the sturdy house, and the flashes of lightning lit the room as peals of thunder rolled overhead.

They talked about her husband, Robert, and his work and travels as an airline pilot, and about Henry’s deceased wife, Mary. She could hear the emotion in his voice when he spoke of his wife, and she reached up and laid a hand on his chest. “I’m sorry, Henry; we don’t have to speak of Mary if it’s too hard for you.”

“No, it’s okay. It’s easier now than it was at first, and I do love to remember her, to reminisce. You knew her - Lord, she loved you, girl – so it’s easy to talk to you about her. You were almost like a daughter to her. It feels good.”

She rubbed his chest lightly. “What do you miss the most about her?”

He chuckled. “The most? Mercy, that’s a hard question… there’s so much.” He was silent for a long time, but she knew he hadn’t forgotten, and wasn’t ignoring her question; he was thinking, remembering. “Her smile, I think, seeing her face… or the sound of her voice.” He paused again, his eyes far away. “Maybe just the simple fact of knowing she was there, that she was always there with me, and for me. I miss that something awful.”

“Are you terribly lonely?”

“Oh, sometimes, if I dwell on it – so I try not to. I stay busy, and it gets better every day; I have you and Mr. Robert, and my boys call often. I’d miss her home-cooked meals too, if you weren’t looking after me. You’re a fine cook.”

“Almost as good as your Mary, huh?” She laughed softly. “I love your company, Henry; it’s lonely with Robert gone so much. And you have no idea how much I appreciate you staying with me through this storm.”

“I know; you never have been fond of storms. I love the lightning, and the thunder.”

“Mmm, I know. We’re different that way.” She hesitated for a moment, as if debating whether to say what was on her mind, and then plunged ahead. “Do you miss her touch, Henry? Do you miss having sex?”

“Miss Elizabeth!”

She laughed. “Oh come on, Henry! We’re grown-ups; we can talk about things like that! There’s no shame in enjoying sex, or in admitting that you miss it. Of course, I’m making the assumption that you’re not visiting all the lonely widows in town…” She couldn’t resist teasing him, and she laughed again.

He chuckled ruefully. “I sometimes forget that you’re not a little girl anymore – and you always have had the ability to shock me. And no, I’m not looking for a new wife, but many of those ladies do seem to be looking for a new husband. I dated a few times, but never to that point; I’m too old for that foolishness.”

“So you’re saying you do miss sex…”

“I’m an old man, Beth.”

“You’re not that old, Henry, and you’re in great shape.”

He was silent for a long time, the two of them quietly watching the flickers of the lamps on the dark walls between the frequent flashes of lightning, which washed out the lamplight and created harsh, fleeting shadows, both of them feeling the deep bass vibration of the thunder in their bones, and hearing the soothing sound of the rain, gentler now, on the roof overhead. His big hand rubbed her arm, and there was a longing wistfulness in his voice when he finally spoke. “I miss it, Beth, of course I do, but a person gets used to these things. You adjust. Mary was so sick for her last year that I was pretty used to it even before she passed. I just held her, and it was enough.”

She took his hand in both of hers, and held it. “You’re a good man.” They shared a comfortable silence once more for a few minutes, before she again spoke. “What do you miss most about sex?”

He chuckled. “You are full of questions tonight – and such personal ones!”

“Do you mind? You don’t have to answer if I’m upsetting you - or embarrassing you.”

He shook his head. “No, it’s alright; my generation just never spoke of these things as easily as yours does. I can talk to you about things I’d never talk about with anyone else.” He was silent for awhile, long enough for her to start to wonder if he was going to answer her, and then he did.

“I miss everything about it, Beth. I miss the way my heart beats fast, and the way my whole body would tingle; I miss the way a woman feels, and the way she smells, and the little sounds she makes. I miss the way we’d touch each other, soft and gentle sometimes, other times with more need and urgency, and the many ways we’d communicate without saying a word. And I miss the words we would say, the ‘I love you’ and the ‘I want you’ and all the little ‘Oh gods!’ and ‘Oh yes!’ and all the other special sounds.”

He paused, and then went on. “I miss the way she felt around me, with me inside of her, and the way her back would arch as she’d rise up to meet me. The warmth, the heat, that special way two people become one…” He paused, as if realizing that he was revealing too much, becoming too detailed in his recollections. He backed off, just a bit. “I miss the way a woman’s breasts feel, so soft, yet so firm and resilient… that was the cruelest thing, that they took her beautiful breasts, and she had all that pain and suffering and then died anyway.”

He paused, his eyes on the flickering kerosene lamp across the room, but his thoughts far away. He shook his head and went on. “She was afraid; she thought I’d think it was ugly, that I wouldn’t love her. She was wrong. She came to understand that, I think, before she died.”

“Henry, she knew. She never could have doubted that you loved her.” They sat silently then, for a long time, just two friends sharing each other’s comfort, listening to the first wave of the storm swell and pass, and the second band approaching. She felt secure and at peace, her head resting comfortably in his lap, the older man enjoying the company of this young woman he’d watched grow from a baby to the fine, bright, beautiful woman she was today.

When Beth took his hand and moved it to her breast, neither of them spoke. He didn’t do anything immediately; he didn’t pull away, but neither did he squeeze her breast, or in any way acknowledge what she had done. He simply allowed his hand to rest there, feeling her warmth and softness, her soft perfume and the sweet female scent of her in his nostrils. He was aware of what she was offering him, but he hesitated.

When she placed her hand over his and pressed it to her, he resisted, just slightly. “Miss Elizabeth…” even to him his voice sounded husky, strained. He could feel her nipple harden against his palm, through the thin fabric of her dress, and the beat of her heart on his fingertips.

“Beth, Henry; please, just for tonight at least. Try.”

“Beth, yes, of course; I’m sorry.” He sighed. “Beth, this is wrong.”

She shook her head, just a tiny movement. “No, I can’t believe that it is. I’ve thought about it, Henry.”

“It feels wrong.”

“No, Henry, it doesn’t. It feels very right.”

He sighed again, and she could hear the longing in it. “What about your Mr. Robert?”

“He’s not here, Henry; we are. And he’s my husband, and he will be in the morning, and he’ll still be my husband in a few days when he gets home again. I love him very much. This doesn’t change that.”

“But…”

“Ssshhh! I love you, too. I’ve loved you for many years, since I was old enough to know what it meant.”

“Oh, girl! I love you too, your whole life. But not like this.”

She was looking up, into his eyes, his warm, brown eyes staring into her startlingly clear blue ones, both of them searching, trying to find… something, maybe not the same thing. “This is a way for two people to express love, Henry. Maybe the best way, and beautiful if it’s strong enough.” She felt his hand close on her breast, gently squeezing, his fingers digging slightly into her softness, and her sudden intake of breath had a slight shudder to it.

When he moved his hand, cupping her breast and running his thumb over her hard nipple she gasped softly and bit her lower lip to keep from moaning. She felt his manhood begin to harden and swell against her cheek, pushing against the fabric of his gray flannel slacks, and she brought her hand up and cupped it over his growing bulge.

His hand at her breast was busy now, remembering, reveling in the feel of her, the softness, the heat, the aroused hardness of her jutting nipple. He took it gently between his thumb and forefinger, through the fabric of her dress, and softly pinched it, slightly twisting, and she gasped and made a soft little moaning sound.

When she rose up on one elbow and used both hands to unbuckle his pants, and to unbutton him and lower his zipper, he voiced no objection. When she reached in and found his hard cock and squeezed him he didn’t object, and he didn’t object when she freed his erection and brought it out into the soft lamplight where she could look at his thick, dark cock, swollen and rigid with arousal.

She admired his thick penis, stiff and throbbing, loved the velvety softness of the thin, delicate skin over his hard shaft, the pulsing veins, and she gently touched and toyed with his soft, slippery foreskin, something her circumcised husband lacked. He wasn’t huge, perhaps only an inch or so more than Robert’s usual six inch erection, but he was thick, much thicker, and dark, and his balls were heavy in their soft sack. She reveled in the satin feel of his soft foreskin as she slid it back and forth over the plum-sized purple head of his penis, and she watched a tiny droplet of clear, slippery pre-cum gather at the tip of him.

When she leaned forward and took it from him with the very tip of her tongue he gasped, and when her warm, soft, wet lips closed over the head of his cock, and then slid farther down his aching shaft, he moaned softly. “God… Beth...”

She was totally focused on the feel of him in her mouth, his thickness, his heat, the slightly salty, slightly musky taste of him, and the way his cock throbbed and grew. On another level she was aware of the rush of wet heat between her own thighs, of the slickness of her pussy and the growing need of her hungry sex. As his cock strained between her lips, she felt like her middle was becoming a molten pool of lust, her tiny panties inadequate to absorb the abundant wetness of her arousal.

She let him slip from her mouth, stretching his supple foreskin with her lips before letting it slide free. She looked up into his face and their eyes met, though neither of them spoke, afraid to break the spell. She rose to her feet and unzipped her dress, wriggling her hips free and letting it drop to the floor. She stood before him for a moment in only her tiny panties, her nearly-naked body glorious and visibly aroused in the soft lamplight, and her heart racing as his eyes consumed her. His expression was rapt and full of wonder, his hard cock jutting up dark and virile from his lap, throbbing with arousal, leaking just a tiny bit.

She again dropped to her knees between his legs, touching him before tugging at his pants, trying to pull them down his legs. He raised his hips obligingly, and she tugged them down, allowing his slacks and his black boxers to settle around his ankles. She unbuttoned his shirt, opening it and running her hands over his powerful chest, the sparse hairs a mix of black and gray, and then she rose and swung her leg over him in one graceful movement, straddling him and settling onto his lap.

She put her arms around his neck as his encircled her slender body, pulling her close, and they kissed. It was tentative at first, and then became more intense, with more heat and then passion, and their tongues danced. She could taste the sweet, smoky aftertaste of the bourbon in his mouth, and feel the softness of his full lips, and the pounding of her own heart.

He breathed deeply, very aware of her soft, feminine scent and her hard, aroused nipples where they pressed against his bare chest, rubbing lightly against his coarse, dark chest hairs. He heard her own shuddering intake of breath as their lips parted, her arousal plainly as great as his own, and when she ground her moist heat against his rampant cock, only the thin material of her panties separating them, he groaned and thrust back against her.

His hands rose to her breasts, cupping her, his fingers finding her erect nipples and pinching them gently, twisting, tugging as she gasped, her sounds leading him on. He bent forward and took one of her hard nipples into his mouth, exploring her puckered, rosy nub with his tongue before sucking on it, and she responded by pressing harder against him, the movements of her hips quickening as she rubbed herself against his hardness.

He felt his own rush building, his orgasm rising too soon, and so he finally stopped her, his hands dropping to her hips and holding her still in his powerful grip. “Beth…”

She sensed his need, his imminent loss of control, and rose from his lap, holding her hand out to him. He took it and rose to his feet, and they completed the final few steps of undressing him. With him naked now, and her in only her tiny panties, they looked at each other for a long time, his face serious, in awe, his sexual longing and hunger obvious even without the evidence provided by his throbbing, upright penis.

Her face and neck were flushed, aroused, her pink nipples proudly erect, and her normally sparkling blue eyes were dark with desire; a small, enigmatic smile played about her lips. She reached out and wrapped her slender fingers around his jutting, rigid manhood, and led him in that way back to her bedroom, enjoying the warmth, heaviness, and thickness of his hard cock in her hand.

*****************************************

Author's note: Anyone that has read other stories I've written will recognize this as a departure for me; first, it's short, at a mere three chapters! Second, a couple of fellow members were kind enough to lend me their guidance and expertise. Also, it is a different kind of tale, written as a brief break from my longer tale. I hope you will read it, enjoy it, and let me know what you think. As always, thanks for reading!

*****************************************