Honeymoon Inn: The Senator's Wife free porn video

Notes: This is a work of fiction. Any similarity between the characters in this story and any actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This story is copyright 2011 by Kyrie Hobson. Permission is hereby given to share this story on the World Wide Web, provided that (a) no charge of any kind, including, but not limited to, subscription fees, is made in connection with access to the story, (b) the story is reprinted in its entirety, including this notice, and (c) proper credit is given to the author at the time of posting. All other rights, including, but not limited to, those of adaptation to other media and formats, reserved to the author. Contact: [email protected] Honeymoon Inn The Senator's Wife By Kyrie Hobson The political life is never easy for the families. The children have to be cute and behaved, with just exactly enough mischief to allow them to be accepted as normal children. Wives are all attractive and loyal, virgins at marriage with nothing remotely resembling scandal or wildness in their past. The husbands of political figures are another matter. We can't be stay-at-home husbands who choose to raise our families and allow our wives to blossom in their careers; a stay-at-home husband, even one who keeps a clean house and healthy children, is a bum. No, we all have to have jobs, and not just any job. We have to work in a career that manages to be professional without being a conflict with our wives' position. I didn't resent my wife. I had been brought up in the political life and knew what to expect. I didn't even resent that she chose to keep her maiden name, Bradley, because it had more sign appeal than my family name, Cowpens. It stung a little that people would occasionally refer to me as "Mr. Bradley", but I learned to swallow it, because that's what I was raised for. That's not entirely true. My father raised me to be the one in the front, and, had I not been such a monumental disappointment, it would be Stephanie standing in the background, smiling encouragingly while I awed the masses. Well, maybe not Stephanie, but someone. It was fairly apparent even at a young age that I was going to be a huge disappointment to my father. Handsome, charismatic and oh, so ambitious, Terrence Cowpens clawed his way up through the political ranks from local precinct captain to State Comptroller. And there he stopped. His working-class upbringing had denied him the necessary connections to make the leap to national office. While his soon-to-be colleagues were palling around in private academies and exclusive colleges, he was working eight-hour shifts at his father's lumber mill and loading double classes at the state university. He had his MBA by the time he was twenty-one, and it was a good thing, too, because that year, his father suffered a major stroke and left him a lumber mill and yard foundering in debt. My father threw himself into the business, determined to make a success of what he saw as his father's failure. By the time he was twenty-five he had turned the shop around and converted it from a tiny yard into a thriving regional hardware chain. By then, he was getting to know the power brokers he didn't have the chance to meet when he was younger. He married a younger daughter of a respected state senator, and converted her connections and her father's into five successful years as a county commissioner, and another five as county controller. By the time I was born, he was running for state Public Utilities Commissioner, and barely had time to stop by the hospital and dub me Sterling Terrence Cowpens. I never had my father's ambitions. He sent me to the private schools he wished he had attended, but I never made the connections he wanted me to make. Sure, I knew the other wealthy kids, and I was friendly with them, but my closest friends tended to be the scholarship kids, the ones who seemed to need help and a friend. It was the same through high school and college. I found my greatest joy in tutoring others and in helping them get along. I followed the path my father had chosen, but my heart wasn't in it. I met Stephanie Bradley while in my fourth year of a six year MBA program. She was in her final year of law school and laying the ground work for a long and prosperous career in politics. I fell for her completely. Maybe it was because I knew my father would take to her immediately, or maybe it was simply because she was the first person who never really tried to make me live up to her expectations of me. However it started, we seemed to fit together somehow. She had drive and ambition that I lacked, and I offered her love and support that she needed. Of course my connections didn't hurt, either. As soon as she graduated, Father--who had quickly shifted his ambitions from his no- good son to his golden daughter-in-law--arranged a position for her with a law firm the company contracted. She quickly blazed a trail through local and state seats, sometimes not even pausing long enough in a new office to get the chair warm before rising to the next one. Stephanie was only twenty-eight when she won her seat in Congress. Her incumbent opponent had tarred his office with a series of scandals and made it poison to his party with his inexplicable refusal to vacate the office before the end of his term. Only a brutal primary defeat convinced him not to run. We had a harsh primary race of our own. Everyone in the party knew that the seat was a lock to whoever managed to come out on top of the five candidate race for the nomination. Unfortunately, Margaret Cornwall, Stephanie's longtime friend and campaign manager, chose that moment to retire from politics and spend some time with her new husband, making babies. Father introduced us to Leonard Delco. He was ambitious, sharp as a tack, and a smooth manipulator. He was everything my father wanted in a son that I couldn't give. He played the primary field like a champ, setting candidates against one another while keeping Stephanie's campaign clean of the mud. We won the primary handily, and then walked away with the election. Leonard became Stephanie's primary aide. Worse, he became her confidante. Where she had once included me in strategy sessions with Margaret, I found myself more and more pushed off to the side. I don't know when she started sleeping with him, but I know when I knew. She had just finished her re-election campaign. She'd been spending long nights in strategy sessions, and sometimes didn't even come to bed. This night she did. It had been a long time since we'd made love, and I started making overtures. She shrugged me off. We had never been a very demonstrative couple, but she had never shrugged me off, before, closing me out so coldly and completely. I suddenly saw myself for the fool I was. The signs were all there and I'd missed them. Or ignored them. I spent a year trying to decide what to do. Stephanie was gearing up to announce her candidacy for the senate seat that would be vacant that year. The old incumbent was retiring, but he was still heavily popular, and everyone knew that whoever got his endorsement would win the seat. I knew his son; in fact, I had tutored his son through high school and college, allowing him to keep his grades high enough to attend a good medical school. I decided to confront Leonard. I told him if he wanted the endorsement that would put my wife in the Senate, he had to stop defiling our marriage. He laughed at me. "You think getting rid of me is going to get you your wife back? Get a clue! Even if I took your threats seriously--which I don't, we both know where your daddy's money and influence would go if you tried to carry them out--even if I cared about your impotent little pouts, Steph would just replace me with someone else. "She loves you, and wants you around. I don't know why, but she does. But she'll never be sexually attracted to you again, Junior. Women need to feel their man can protect them. It goes back to the wild when the biggest and the roughest got the girls because he chased off the small and the weak. Sex is visceral that way. How can you protect her when you can't even stand up to her? You're less a husband to her than a little brother. Now get out of my office." I retreated in confusion and defeat. He was manipulating me, I knew, mixing just enough truth in to make me think twice. I just couldn't unwind the truth from the fiction. It's one thing to know a magician is playing a trick, but quite another to know what he's doing. I reconsidered for a while. Meanwhile, Leonard took to calling me "Mrs. Bradley" when he thought he could get away with it. I had been called Mr. Bradley before--mostly by reporters and interns who didn't know any better. I usually let it slide, because correcting them would call attention to Stephanie's decision to use her own name, which wouldn't sit well with the more conservative elements of the party. But this was done in a vicious manner, with a tone and a slight sneer designed to remind me what he thought my place was. Finally, I'd had enough. One night, after a party, I confronted Stephanie. "I can't do this anymore, Steph," I said. "I want a divorce." Steph was stricken. As I told her how I felt, what Leonard had said, and how he was now acting toward me, her face went from shock to surprise to anger at Leonard, to sadness. I realized that she really did still love me, in her way, and would be lost without me. She regained her composure for a minute. "If that's really the way you feel, I...I can't stop you," she said. "But I wish you would reconsider. Couldn't we try couples therapy or something, then maybe see where we stand?" That's when it came to me. Margaret and her husband had gone through a rough patch, but they'd visited a retreat in Arkansas, and now they were closer than ever. I couldn't remember what the trouble was, exactly. I wanted to think it was something about a series of miscarriages and her doctor telling her she couldn't have children, but that couldn't be right, because she was now in the seventh month of a very healthy pregnancy. I told Stephanie about the place, and the results they claimed to have. She agreed that she would put off announcing her candidacy until after the New Year, and we would spend the week between Christmas and New Year's Day at the Honeymoon Inn. I was neither surprised nor happy to see Leonard waiting for us when we landed at the Little Rock Airport. At least he had the good taste to be apologetic, although that may have been more of a reaction to Stephanie's displeasure than to the intrinsic wrongness of his presence. Unfortunately, it turned out that it couldn't be helped. One of the louder pundits had escalated a minor incident over the holiday to force a law through, one that Stephanie had gone on record as opposing. They would have to turn our therapy week into a working vacation as they worked out strategies and responses for the expected firestorm. The Inn was located a little outside of Hot Springs, so as we loaded the car, I tried to prepare myself for the long drive, and fight down the burning resentment I was feeling. The driver for the Inn gave us a funny look as the three of us approached the minivan. He tried to argue that he had been given explicit instructions by the Inn's management to only pick up the Senator and her husband, but some persuasive words from Stephanie and an artfully folded fifty ended the discussion. In the car, Stephanie and Leonard began their work, and I tried to amuse myself with a book I'd purchased in the airport book store. Unfortunately, it was one of those romances that ride the middle layer of the bestseller list before sinking away into the obscurity of their authors' prodigious resumes. If I'd brought my laptop along, I could have worked on some accounts that needed attention (I was working as a contract accountant for a number of non-profits), but I'd intentionally left it at my parents' house to be shipped to me in Washington when the vacation was over. So, I spent the next ninety or so minutes bouncing between failed attempts at reading the book and failed attempts at napping. Mostly I looked out the window and tried to ignore the familiar tone with which my wife and Leonard held their conference. Little Rock is on a slope overlooking the broad valley plain that makes up Eastern Arkansas. Just upstream, the Arkansas River becomes a border of sorts between the Ozark and Ouachita mountain ranges, its broad valley sectioned in plots and acreages between the wilder mountain ridges on either side. Once you leave the city on Interstate 30, the highway is crowded on both sides by thick, blended forests. Smaller glades, made up mostly of huge yellow pines, spring up from the highway esplanade, their cultured borders giving the illusion of great ships sailing on the grass. We turned off of the interstate onto a US Highway, and off of that onto a small county road. Peering through the trees I saw a few deer, their tails flashing white as they leaped through the woods. Sometimes we passed old buildings, abandoned farmhouses and cabins, overgrown with vines, with young trees growing where people once gathered around a fireplace to share the heat and discuss the day. I saw my own marriage in those buildings, neglected and empty, overwhelmed by the word around it. We finally turned down a private road. It was newer than the county road, and had seen better care. It meandered down the slope of a ridge in easy switchbacks until it came to a small stream at the bottom of a long valley. As we crossed the bridge over the stream, I felt...odd. I felt as if I was being studied; not in a piercing or distant way, but in almost a loving way, turned and coddled in a mother's arms that just wanted to find the source of my pain and make it better. As the feeling faded, I began to feel good for the first time in a long time, as if something was assuring me that everything would be all right. The shuttle topped the ridge and turned around a small knoll, and we saw the Inn. It was small, but somehow imposing. The main building was a Victorian gingerbread structure with a wide veranda descending to the parking lot. It couldn't have more than ten guest rooms, but the four private cottages huddled at the far end of the lawn made it appear huge by comparison. The whole resort had been lovingly maintained--or restored--so the Inn probably looked much as it had when it was first built. Oddly, the staff were awaiting our arrival on the front steps. Normally, Stephanie rated a concierge or maybe a manager, but the full staff never turned out for us when we arrived at a hotel. Then I noticed the suitcases, and realized that they weren't waiting for us, just the shuttle we were on. The two women kissed the two men lovingly and held their gaze with candid adoration. I felt a little dirty, like a peeping tom. "Is that Kevin Bell?" Leonard asked. It was as if a light had gone on in my head. It was, indeed, Kevin Bell, CEO of MagnaSof, a leader in the business software industry, and the other man was Ike Parks, his best friend and COO of the same company. It was a strange juxtaposition to see these two business giants so closely associated with a tiny word-of-mouth retreat in the Arkansas back country. Bell stepped forward and opened the door so we could shuffle out. As he stepped into the car, his wife kissed him again. She was a strong- looking woman, muscled without looking muscular, with long, strawberry- blonde hair that fell in tight waves to her shoulders. Her face was handsome, rather than pretty, and she reminded me a little of Holly Hunter. "Give my regrets to your folks," she said, "and give Junior a hug for me, and tell him his mommy misses him." She stepped back to let the other couple in. They kissed again standing at the door, the woman's hand resting shyly on her husband's forearm. Then they traded a long look as he entered, broken only by the closing door. I thought I heard her sigh a little as the car pulled away. She was smaller than her friend in almost every way. Short, thin, almost waifish in appearance, she had mousey- brown hair that she kept in a carefully-rolled bun that afforded her childlike face a small bit of maturity. We stood on the porch as the car drove away, the two women waving until the car was out of sight. "Welcome to the Honeymoon Inn. I'm your hostess, Alice Bell. My partner is Sara Parks. We'll be your staff for your stay. You'll have to forgive us. We aren't normally open over the Christmas Holidays, but Mr. Cowpens--" Leonard smirked at me "--led us to believe it was important for you both." She turned to Leonard. "We generally don't allow single guests, Mr. Delco." Before he could protest, she continued. "I understand that the congresswoman has important business that must be attended, but I should warn you that we are a couples' retreat and not a business hotel. Our amenities are geared to the comfort and convenience of people sharing a committed relationship. We have limited access to the internet, and, due to our location, our phone services--both landline and cell--are given to spotty performance. This is no secret and has actually been cited as a selling point by previous clients. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm not entirely sure what you think you'll be able to accomplish here. However, I'm sure you and the Congresswoman know best, and we will make every attempt to assist you as well as we can." She turned to the door. "If you'll all come with me, I'll show you to your rooms. Your bags will be attended to, shortly." She walked us through the hotel's large lobby. It was dominated by a fully-restored Victorian sofa and some matching chairs gathered around a large fire place. She indicated two doors to our left. "The first door is the tea room," she said. "In less active times, it was a place for women to gather and discuss the events of the day, or to just sit and read or work on their sewing. The second is the smoking room. Of course, there is no public smoking in Arkansas, but we still maintain it as a men's room. There is a pool table and other entertainments. The rooms to the right are for the staff, and we ask that you not intrude on our privacy as we would not intrude on yours." "The dining room is through the doorway under the stairs there at the back. Dinner is served promptly at six; lunch is at noon. Breakfast is served between six and eight each morning, although we do serve snacks for tea time, elevenses and just before bed at about nine pm." She led us up the stairs that arched over the dining room door. "The Inn is over a hundred years old, although the valley itself is obviously even older. Both have a reputation for strange occurrences. Some believe the area to be haunted, others say that there is old witchcraft and lingering Indian magic here." Leonard's face twisted into a cynical smirk. "I don't care if you believe the legends, Mr. Delco," she continued, " belief or disbelief don't make any difference. It's a simple fact that neither Sara nor I have degrees in any kind of psychological therapy, nor do any of our regular staff, yet the Inn has a reputation for healing every couple that stays with us. And there have been incidents that go a little beyond the mundane idea of two people growing apart." She stopped in front of a door. "We don't accept single guests because the valley doesn't like for people to be alone." She opened the door. "This is your room, Mr. Delco. The bed is a double and there is space in the armoire and bureau for your clothes, but since you asked for a room and not a suite, you'll have to use the community washroom down the hall." We left Leonard in his room as Mrs. Bell continued guiding us to our room. "We have 10 miles of nature walks on the property, and we can make visitors' hunting licenses available for a fee during the season. There are a number of game animals in the valley, especially rabbits." Mrs. Parks seemed to pale a little. "There is also a gazebo in the glade around back which is a perfect spot for quiet conversation when the weather permits." She stopped at our door. "Your room has all of the amenities that Mr. Delco's room has, with the notable addition of a private bathroom. The robes and towels are free to use while you're here, but if you would like to keep them, please just let us now and we'll sell you a new set and add it to your bill." She bustled through, ensuring that everything was just so (something she hadn't done for Leonard), then she and Mrs. Parks stepped to the door. "Dinner is promptly at six. We'll see you then." We looked around and discovered that our bags had somehow beat us to the room. As we settled in, Stephanie tried to apologize. "I'm sorry, Terry," she said, "I was just as surprised as you when Len appeared at the airport." "I know. It's just--." There was a light knock at the door, and it swung open to allow Leonard to stick his head in. "Why don't you let Junior put the clothes away--" Stephanie interrupted him. "His name is Terrence, or Mr. Cowpens. We've been over this." Leonard made a mock moue as he stepped fully into the room. "My bad. Sorry. Anyway, you don't mind putting up your stuff while the Congresswoman and I finish our discussion downstairs, do you Terrence?" I shrugged. It wasn't a big deal to me. "Are you sure it's okay?" Stephanie asked. "Yeah, I'm good. I'll see if there's anything to read when I'm done." They began to leave. "Weird about the doors," Leonard remarked. "No locks." "They vet their clients extremely well," I responded. He shrugged. We were the only ones in the Inn, so it wasn't like any property losses would be a mystery. They closed the door behind them, and I turned back to putting our clothes neatly away in the dresser and the armoire. Half of Stephanie's dresses and all of her blouses were wrinkled; she never could pack a suitcase. The room had an iron and ironing board in it, so I decided to go ahead and straighten her clothes out before putting them away. I'd never actually ironed clothes before, but I found the action strangely relaxing and gratifying, as if, in some way, I was supporting Stephanie by reducing the chaos of her life before she even had to see it. Just as I was finishing, I heard a light bell sound downstairs. I washed my face and hands in the bathroom sink, and combed my hair in the mirror, then straightened my clothes as best I could and walked downstairs. I could hear Stephanie and Leonard muttering in the smoking room, so I stuck my head in. "I'm pretty sure that bell was dinner," I said. They looked up at me. Leonard said, "So?" "You go ahead," Stephanie said. "I'll catch up." As I entered the dining room, Mrs. Bell indicated a seat near the head of the table. "You may sit there, Mr. Cowpens. Where are the others?" "I'm afraid they probably won't make it, Mrs. Bell. They were on the phone with...someone. I'm very sorry. And I'm also sorry that we interrupted your holiday plans." Her look softened. "Call me Alice," she said. She ducked into the kitchen for a moment, and came back out with a plate of fried chicken. The serving table was already covered with other Sunday dinner fixings, including a plate of steaming biscuits. "I'm afraid Sara won't be joining us, either. She's rather attached to her chickens." She served me a full plate, then a much lighter one for herself, and sat down. "Tell me, Mr. Cowpens--" "Sterling--Terry." "Tell me, Terry, what do you expect to get from your stay at our little inn?" I looked at her in surprise. I had expected small talk of some kind, but this direct questioning threw me off. "I really don't know, I--I guess I just want my marriage back. I'm fine with supporting Stephanie in her career, but things have gotten weird and lopsided. I don't know if there's anything that can be done." "Do you love her?" "Yes. Of course I do." "Does she love you?" Ouch. "I--I think she does. I hope she does. I just don't know. She agreed to the stay here, to try to save our marriage, but I don't know if that was because she loves me or if it was a political move." I put my fork down. "To be honest, I'm not sure how much of our entire marriage was a political move at this point." I'd barely eaten, but I found that I wasn't hungry. Alice regarded me frankly for a moment. "Everything will come out all, right," she said. "However, I must warn you again, the Inn has its own way of doing things. I wasn't kidding about the reputation the Inn and the Valley have. You may notice some differences in yourself and others over the next few days. My best advice is that you should make an effort to remember who you are, if it's important to you, but to remember that it's all for the best." She stood up and collected my plate, much of my food uneaten. "If you have any problems, feel free to come find Sara or me, wherever we are, and we'll do our best to help you." With that, she disappeared into the kitchen. I heard water running, and assumed dinner was over. The library was in the smoking room, and I didn't want to interrupt Stephanie and Leonard, again, but I also didn't want to go back up to our room. I started stacking the clean, empty dishes at one end of the table. I'd like to say the activity gave me time to think about what Alice had said, but really it all just roiled around in there until I was done, and the dishes were neatly stacked in the cupboard and the table cloth and napkins were folded in a basket nearby. I looked out the big picture window at the back of the dining room. It was after eight, and it was full dark, but the moon shone down, especially on the gazebo which almost seemed to glow in the winter haze. I could still hear Leonard and Stephanie muttering in the smoking room, so I went upstairs. The book I had bought at the airport terminal was sitting on the bed. I sighed and resigned myself to its torturous prose, but when I lay back on the bed and opened it, I found myself surprised. The same phrases that I had found too formal and florid just that afternoon seemed somehow fitting to me, now. The quickly-developing plot, which I'd originally dismissed as trite, I now found to be cute and a little endearing. The heroine was a spunky young woman from an industrial town in northern England, and the book followed her triumphs and setbacks as she tried to make her way as a grade school teacher while falling slowly in love with a married businessman. Before I knew it, I was halfway through the book, and it was almost eleven. The Inn was silent, and Stephanie was still not in the room. I was disappointed, but not surprised. I stood up and started preparing for bed. It was cold, so I decided to wear my pajamas, but when I went to get them out of their drawer, I found that the bottoms were missing. I swore that I had the full set when I put them away. I shrugged and buttoned myself into the top, then lay down to sleep. I was dozing lightly when, maybe an hour later, I heard voices out in the hallway. "I'm not going back to your room, Len," Stephanie's voice said. "That part of our lives is over." "You know you don't mean that. You love me." "I love my husband, and I have to make things right with him. If you can't understand that, then maybe you should find other work." "You don't mean that," Leonard's voice said, then, again, distantly, but more strident, "You don't mean that. You know you don't." I heard the door open and pretended to still be asleep. I listened as Stephanie quietly disrobed and did on her nightgown, then I felt her crawl into bed beside me. She slid to my side, and curled around me, spooning me as we hadn't done in years. She was still curled around me, her arm draped around my waist, when I awoke in the morning. The room was still dark, but a glance at the window showed me that the sun was getting ready to rise. The deep darkness of nightfall had already given way to the somber shadows of the gloaming. I carefully, but regretfully, slipped out of Steph's embrace and padded into the bathroom. There was no shower, and the tub was a big claw foot job with the spigot in the middle of the back side--the kind they call a honeymoon tub. I decided there was nothing I'd like better than a nice warm bath to banish the morning chill, so I started filling the tub before turning to other pressing business. Once I was finished with that, I continued to let the tub fill while I brushed my teeth then took out my razor. Looking in the mirror, however, I discovered that I wouldn't need it. I turned off the tap and settled slowly into the tub. The warm water felt amazing, especially on my chest, which had become tender over the night. I gently pressed the spongy areas around my nipples and wondered if I should try a better workout regimen to firm up my pecs. But those thoughts melted away in the luxurious warmth around me. Before I relaxed too completely and settled into an early morning nap, I took the soap out of the bath basket. It was a floral, lavender and jasmine, and the odor relaxed me further as I spread it on my body. I washed thoroughly then dipped my head back into the water to wash my hair. After I rinsed, I felt it fall against the back of my neck. I usually keep my hair extremely short, because it has a long but persistent wave that makes most men's styles unmanageable. I tried to remember the last time I'd been for a haircut, but found such searching thoughts difficult and a little troubling in the cooling water. I realized that the water was very cool; I'd been in the bath much longer than I intended. I pulled the stopper and stepped out to wash my face in the sink. By the time I made it downstairs to breakfast, Steph and Leonard were finishing theirs off. Leonard got up from his seat and pulled a chair out for me. I found it odd, but he seemed sincere, so I decided to let it pass. Steph was wearing a golf shirt and a pair of jeans she'd had since college. They hung strangely on her, but I couldn't put my finger on exactly why. She was still wolfing down pancakes with a verve I'd never seen from her. Between bites, while I selected some fruit and a piece of toast for myself, she told me that they were almost done with the strategy for the upcoming Senate run. The shuttle would be coming by that afternoon, and Leonard expected to leave with it to return home and start the preparations for the big announcement on the third of January. Then we would have the vacation she'd promised me. I finished my light breakfast, then searched my mind for something to do. I sat for a moment, thinking about plans I might form for the true beginning of our vacation, tomorrow, and found myself scraping the leftovers off of Leonard's plate and on to mine. I stacked my plate on top of Leonard's, then did the same with Steph's. I put the silverware on top of my stack, then I stacked the clean, unused place settings separately. Without thinking, I carried the stack of dirty dishes into the kitchen. Alice was there, cutting potatoes into a large pot. She looked up as I entered. "You don't need to do that. I'll get it." "It's all right," I answered. "You look like you have your hands full." The kitchen was immaculate, but something about her suggested she was busier than she at first seemed. "Do the unused dishes go back in the hutch, or do you wash them as well?" "In the hutch," she answered. "The middle drawer is for the silver, and there's a hamper in the lower cabinet for the linens." She treated me with a frank, almost pitying look. "Thank you. I wouldn't let you do the work, but I'm short-handed. Sara went into Little Rock for the day." "Is she okay?" "She will be. She has an appointment with her doctor. I think she wants to surprise Ike with good news when he returns." Alice dropped the last piece of potato into the pot and rose from her stool. "Excuse me," she said, crossing behind me as I began rinsing the dishes. She returned quickly with the partly-full serving platters and scraped them off into the pot as well. I looked at her queryingly as she stacked the scraped dishes with the ones I was rinsing. "Slops for the pigs," she replied to my unspoken question. "I need to boil them now so they'll cool before the evening feeding." She lifted the heavy pot and exited. I finished rinsing the dishes thoroughly and placed them in the dishwasher, then I returned to the dining room and made short work of the rest of the cleaning. The almost-comforting "swish-swish" of the dishwasher gave me a moment of pause. I'd never done that sort of work before. Growing up, we'd always had a cook and a maid in the house, and our public lifestyle almost demanded that Steph and I do the same as adults. It wasn't that I was messy. I always cleaned up after myself, and sometimes after Steph, if she'd had a long day, but I'd never cleared a table and washed the dishes before. It was oddly satisfying to have done so. I stepped back into the dining room to see if there was more I could do. In minutes, the table had a fresh table cloth and full settings for lunch. I marveled at my facility with the placement, and wondered where I'd learned it. I knew enough from long exposure to be able to tell if it was wrong, but I didn't think anything had prepared me to do it right. I sighed a little whiff of satisfaction at a job well done. I found my book upstairs by the bed and took it down to the tea room. The heroine, Darcy, was in trouble when I went to sleep. The charming- but-married boyfriend had also turned out to be an embezzler, which would not have been quite so bad had the financial company from whom he'd stolen the money not shown itself to be little more than an extravagant Ponzi scheme. I settled in and was lost in the growing intrigue until lunch time. By that time, the charming-but-married boyfriend had disappeared entirely, and Darcy was living with her parents (who had lost their retirement and nearly their house to the boyfriend's scheming), trying to make up for her mistakes . She had lost her teaching job and was now working full time at a local pub with a reputation for taking in strays and getting them back on the right track. I reached a stopping point, and, without even glancing at my watch, I knew, as my mother once had, that it was lunch time. I also knew somehow that Staph and Leonard would be unable (or unwilling) to interrupt what they were doing for the mid-day meal, so I decided to make them a platter and carry it in to them in the smoking room. Lunch was laid out on the table, buffet style: a variety of sandwich fixings and chips, plus a bowl of fruit and some vegetables cut as finger food. I made a few sandwiches, filled a bowl with chips and another with fruit, and set them on a tray and took them into the smoking room. Leonard and Steve were watching one of the thousands of college football games that fill the space between Christmas and New Years. They barely noticed me as I entered, but Leonard took a sandwich almost immediately as I set down the tray and Steph patted my behind. I turned to him quizzically, and she gave me a wink and a smile. I left pleasantly flustered. I collected some carrots, celery and a few fruit wedges on a small plate, and returned to the sun room to continue my book. It seemed no time at all when Alice appeared at the door. Darcy had begun getting her life back together, and was showing interest in a friendly film producer she had met while he was doing a documentary on the pub, when suddenly, the charming-but-married boyfriend reappeared, looking for help. Alice waited for me to reach a stopping point, and when I looked up from the book she asked, "Would you like to take tea?" "Yes, thank you," I said. "It's warm out," she said, leading me through the house. "So, I hoped you wouldn't mind sitting in the gazebo." We exited through the kitchen. A well-groomed path of earthen pavers led from there through the oaks and the walnuts out to a stunning white gazebo. "I took the liberty of wheeling the serving cart out here," Alice informed me. We sat on one of the benches that encircled the shelter, and she served in the traditional English way, pouring hot water from a kettle into a china teapot, then while it steeped, preparing the cups to our individual tastes, and finally pouring the tea from the pot into the dainty, ceramic tea cups. We sat for a while, sipping our tea, and enjoying the coolness of the late Indian Summer, the dappled brilliance of the December sun through the leaves. "I like your hair," she said. "It suits you." "Thank you," I answered, taken a bit back. My hair was straight and just shy of shoulder length with sculptured bangs. "I wish it were less severe, but gone are the days when a politician's wife could get away with appearing frivolous and high maintenance." "Are you?" she asked. "Am I what?" "Are you a politician's wife?" "Of course," I responded. "My husband is...no...my wife...my wife is running for the Senate. She's currently a Congresswoman." I turned to her with frightened eyes. "What's happening to me? I know who I am--I remember who I am, but I seem to have different memories. Different...and yet the same...as if a badly-copied transparency were laid over the original somehow." "Have some more tea," she said, refilling my cup. A light breeze flowed through the grove, staring past her shoulder I saw lilies and jonquils--blooming out of season--swaying in a grassy glade beneath the cliff face. "What's happening to me?" I asked again. Alice smiled beatifically. "The valley," she began slowly, "has power. It has a power and a purpose. It wants, no, it needs everyone who comes into it to be happy and to have long, happy relationships. To that end, it exercises the power, mostly in smaller ways, but sometimes--very rarely--as it has on you and the congressperson. "You could no longer continue the way you had been living your life. Your marriage to the congressman was over, not because you didn't love one another, but because neither of you were able to accommodate your roles. You couldn't be the submissive husband, and she couldn't continue loving you in it even if you could. Call it a traditional mindset or societal pressure...what matters is that you were both miserable. You loved each other, but that love was destroying you both because it was impossible in practice. "The valley wants you both to be happy, so it is changing things." "Am I being punished?" I asked. "For not being enough of a man?" She laughed, airily, a gentle trill like the ringing of small bells. "No, it's not a punishment. It's just a change to make things...work." She took my hand in both of hers and looked deeply into my eyes. "You do have choices. You can fight the changes, but that doesn't work, not unless you leave the valley, and if the valley thinks you need what it offers, it will keep you here." She frowned slightly, as if remembering something sad. "Or," she continued, "you can submit to the changes. The valley will finish its work, and it will be as if the world had never been any different for you or your spouse. This happens for most people who come here, when the valley helps them change mentally and emotionally, with few or no physical alterations." She reached up, and gently brushed a growing tear from my eye. "Finally, you can accept the changes, but remember who you were, not losing the you that you had been while becoming the you that will be happiest, owning yourself, but accepting what you've become. That's what I did." "This happened to you?" "Yes, it did." She told me the story of how she--he--and her husband and their friends came to the Inn, and, for a while it was as if a curtain had been lifted and I could see another world, a world that almost was. In it Alice was a young man named Alex who had lost his friends to the tides of change, drifting from one failed ambition to the next, never quite finding his dream. When she finished, the vision faded. I stared at her. "This thing," I said, meaning whatever force lived within the valley, "it changed the world?" She nodded. "In subtle, but significant ways, yes." "I won't let it," I said. "I won't let it kill me." "It's not killing you. It's giving you a chance to be happy." "How can you say that? It changed my mind; it changed your whole life. I can feel it unmaking me on the most basic of levels." "It gave me a chance to be happy," she said, "a chance I didn't have before coming here. Alex was alone and would probably have died alone. I--Alice--am in a very happy marriage, with a beautiful son. I am a world-renowned hotelier with the privacy and liberty to run the Inn the way I want to. "Alex isn't dead. The core of who I am is still built around who I was. I'm just better suited to my best path to happiness." "This can't be happening," I said. "I'm a man." "Are you?" she responded. "I suggest you take a good long look in the mirror above your sink. Terrence Cowpens is almost gone from this world. You can remember him and retain the core you, or you can forget him and make Theresa Bradley a wholly new person." She took my face in her hands. "Don't fight this. There's so much pain in the world because people refuse happiness when it conflicts with what's comfortable." She changed the subject. I was getting upset, and she seemed to want our tea together to be an enjoyable experience. We discussed the weather, her son. She told me about the flowers in the glade that bloomed regardless of season. She told me that just beyond view was a rose arbor with antique white roses; when the breeze was right, she said, they filled the valley with scent of apples. As she spoke, I slowly disconnected. I had a lot to think about. Eventually, she excused herself and took the cart back into the kitchen. I sat alone on the bench for...I don't know how long. I also don't know when I got up, but I found myself upstairs in the bathroom I shared with Steve...Steph...staring into the mirror. My hair, chestnut brown with honey highlights, hung straight to my shoulders in a thick, slightly severe mass with sculpted bangs that framed my face delicately. My face had softened and rounded, my chin narrowing almost to a point. My straight nose led in a thin line from my round sea-green eyes and their full lashes to my delicate mouth, the lips just full enough for femininity. Beneath my long neck, a cream-colored silk blouse opened loosely to the second button, the slight protuberances of breasts just beginning to push out on the fitted fabric below. I ran my hands down my front, feeling the sensuality of the silk as it pressed against my braless top, my tight stomach. When I reached the top of my slacks, I stopped, afraid of what I might find. Then I girded myself and continued. I was still a man--for now. As I stood, staring into the mirror, willing a change that I could see, some visible alteration to convince me that I wasn't insane, I plumbed the depths of my memory and was amazed to find that very little had changed, really. My father still spent my youth in disappointment, but now, it began at birth when his hope for a dynasty was dashed on the rocks of my mother's failure in giving him a daughter. Family dinners were less awkward than I remembered; my father's disappointment and frustrated ambition were not reignited by his failure of a son, and soon gave way to the unavoidable love that father's have for their daughters. Stephen Bradley's easy confidence and obvious charisma almost redeemed me to him, giving him a son, if only by marriage, that could continue his ambitions. I felt myself yearning for this me to be true, real. The bell for dinner rang downstairs and brought me out of my reverie. I freshened my hair with a few swipes of the brush and went down to the table. To my surprise, Alice and Sara were the only ones at the table when I arrived. "Mr. Delco is catching a late flight back to Washington," Alice explained, serving a light soup she had made from the previous days tailings. "The congressman has gone along to see him off. Mr. Delco is much like you in his relationship to your wife. He tries to hide it, but he is devoted to her and fully subservient to her will. I think he'll be more comfortable in his own position." "Don't tell me he..." I trailed off, how would things be any better if he remained my competition. Alice studied me for a moment before she realized at what I was hinting. "No, he is still very much a man. I just think he was uncomfortable being so subservient to a woman." She offered me a basket full of rolls. "Many men are. Old gender hierarchies are hard to unshape." I waited while she spooned some soup into her mouth. "That may be why he cultivated his affair with your wife. He needed to feel in control of some part of their relationship. It was certainly why he treated you as he did. As long as he was brutalizing you, he knew he was still a man." "That doesn't excuse..." "I'm not asking you to excuse anything," she interrupted., "but you need to understand that things will be different when you return. He probably won't even remember your old antagonism." "I will." "But can you put it behind you?" We ate in silence for a while. I was out of sorts; I wasn't sure I wanted to let go of my anger toward Len. I grumpily rehearsed every confrontation, every slight, in my head. My thoughts were interrupted by a light voice, saying, "I was afraid, too." I looked up. "I'm sorry?" Sara looked at me across a roll she was nibbling daintily. "I was afraid, too." He eyes were large and round like a doe's. "I was a nerdy boy...you know, before. School was a torment for me; I wasn't gay, but a lot of my classmates assumed I was. Maybe they just called me that, because they knew it hurt my feelings; I'm not sure any more. I was angry all the time...defensive, anyway. I was always ready for the torment to start up again, even after I became an adult I spent all my time with my fists ready, waiting for the other shoe to drop." She put the roll down, nervously. "When we came here, that all changed. I was still shy and sensitive, but that didn't result in any torment for the new me. My school days were spent wishing I could meet people and get to know them. I realized that the people who had made me the angry man I was wouldn't remember tormenting me now, because they hadn't. Most of them probably wouldn't remember me at all." She had a soft, breathy voice, like one of the Tilly sisters, and it was odd to hear her speak of old anger, odder still to hear her refer to herself as ever having been a man. "But I had a lot of who I thought I was tied up in that old anger, and I wasn't sure I wanted to let it go. I was scared that if I did, I'd lose a vital part of me." She stopped suddenly, and looked down at her lap, as if ashamed. "Ike is sweet," she almost whispered. "He helped me see that the anger had nothing to do with who I am, or even who I was." She looked up now. "It had nothing to do with me at all. It was just debris left behind by clumsy people trying to fix their own pain." She looked down again, and this time her face was suffused with joy, and she rubbed her flat tummy. "I'm very happy, now." I waited for her to continue, but she doted on her unborn child in silence, then went back to quietly nibbling her dinner. Alice caught my eye, and made a silent moue. We talked about other things as we all finished our soup, and I helped them clean up. I felt strangely at peaces, as if I had resolved a conflict within myself that I hadn't known was raging. I hugged them both, then went up to bed. Steph returned late, long after I'd finished my book and fallen asleep. I woke when she crawled into be behind me, but feigned sleep. I was afraid to talk to her; I wasn't sure what we would have to say to one another at this point. She snuggled in behind me and wrapped her arm around me, the hand casually laying across my nipple. She caressed it with her fingers, then began kissing my neck insistently. The feelings of her manipulation became overpowering and I let a soft moan escape my lips. That was all the encouragement she needed. She roughly pulled me over onto my back, and began to kiss me forcefully on the lips, her tongue snaking into my mouth. She shove my nightgown up and kissed and sucked, nipped and nibbled at my nascent breasts, igniting overwhelming passion and desire within me. I squirmed and moaned louder. I could no longer keep up the pretence, and opened my eyes just as she sat back on her haunches. She was fully naked. Her breasts were all but gone, only the slightly enlarged nipples remaining to show she had been anything but a trim and muscular man. He smiled down at me, and I smiled back then he half-squatted to allow me room to wriggle out of my underwear as he pulled it down my legs. My tiny penis (if you could call it that, at this point) stood out maybe two inches, and, straddling me, she fed it into her shrinking vagina. As small as I was, she was still tight around me, and it felt like the first time as he began to gyrate above me. She took my hands from his hips where they'd settled, and, holding the by the wrists raised them above my head. In all our years of marriage, Stephanie had never initiated sex, had certainly never been the unquestioned aggressor she was now. One at a time, she drew his legs inside mine, thrusting rhythmically the whole while, her one hand, still holding mine helplessly above my head, his other supporting the main share of her weight. I could no longer tell who was within whom. We writhed and blended together in a deeply sharing, soaring passion that rose beyond any pleasure I could ever remember. We climaxed together, our voices blended in a strange and haunting harmony. When we'd done, Steph lay atop me, his weight pressing me down. "I love you, Terrie," she sighed, and kissed and nuzzled my neck until he fell asleep. I lay beneath her, feeling the fruits of our labor run out and down between my legs, until the flush of our orgasm wore off, and the fatigue of our exertions (and the lack of air) dragged me into slumber. I awoke the next morning, feeling the dried semen and fluid caked in between my thighs. Stephen had rolled off of me, and was now lying beside me, still on his stomach, his face so deep in his pillow I was half-afraid he would suffocate. His arm lay across my shoulders, and this, I gently lifted with both hands as I rolled out of bed. I worried there would be a stain on the sheets, but decided there was nothing I could do about that until Stephen had awakened. I determined to clean myself, however, and ran water in the tub while I disrobed and took care of other business. I realized, as I sat on the toilet, that the previous night's loving had been the last I would have as a man. That assumes I had been a man then. I was no longer sure. My memory of the night was strange and awash with feminine feelings of being taken and possessed. The bath was warm and soon dissolved the caked evidence of the previous night's activities. As I lay, languidly swabbing myself clean, I heard Stephen rise and lumping around the room a few minutes getting his pants on, head downstairs to breakfast. I finished my bath, quickly brushed my hair, and dressed in a t-shirt and a denim skirt that would be suitable for a long walk. Before I went down, however, I stripped the sheets for cleaning and checked the mattress pad to ensure nothing had soaked through in the night. Since all was well, I semi-folded the sheets so no one would get a moist surprise, and left them at the foot of the bare bed. Stephen was polishing off his second helping, and gulping down coffee when I arrived in the dining room. He looked up and gave me such a huge and knowing smile that anyone who saw it would know what we had done the night before, even on the off-chance they hadn't been awakened by our tumultuous climax. I kissed him chastely, and sat next to him, looking out over the spread and trying to decide what I wanted. "I have to read over the first draft of my speech and make corrections and suggestions. Can you spare until lunch?" he said as I spooned melons in a light syrup onto my plate. Before I could answer, he said, "By the way, I checked our messages when I finally found a clear signal. Your friend Tom Dow called for you." Tom was the son of the senator that Stephen meant to replace. I was confused by the subtle note of jealousy in Stephen's voice, until I remembered that in this world, I had not been his friend and tutor; we had actually dated a couple of times. Nothing came of it, and we remained friends even all these years later. "I'm sure he was just confirming his father's endorsement," I said, trying to hide my pleasure at Stephen's possessive reaction. "I'll call him when we get back." I kissed Stephen lightly on the cheek. "Go ahead and read your speech. Alice told me about a nature trail that runs down into the valley. You can find me there when you're done." We kissed and he went off to the smoking room to do his work. I finished my plate, then, stacking it on Stephen's took it into the kitchen. Alice noticed me with it, and nodded to the sideboard. She smiled encouragingly and I smiled back as I turned to leave. I stopped on my way out in the library in the smoking room to kiss Stephen again and select a George Eliot novel that I'd once been assigned in high school. I'd either not read it, constructing my report from a combination of Cliff's Notes and a quick viewing of the Masterpieces Theatre adaptation, or it had sparked a love of romance novels that I'd never quite abandoned. Either way, I thought it might be fun to read it (again) when I stopped to rest. The path began as the garden path, then meandered toward the high bluff that defined the valley on this side. Near the base of the cliff, I saw a pair of graves, lovingly maintained by the inn staff, and wondered who the departed souls within them might be. The path now followed the base of the cliff up the valley, leisurely winding along the top of the smooth slope below. Not far from the inn, the path climbed a little to a small plateau with the main cliff behind and now a smaller, secondary bluff below providing a panoramic view of the valley that was nothing less than stunning. The upper bluff had been smoothed and an alcove for a lantern cut into it, and a small stone bench had been placed between the cliffs, affording both privacy and a glimpse of that amazing view. I sat on it to begin reading my novel. I was well into the novel, having forgotten everything else in the face of Eliot's masterful prose, when I was suddenly blinded by a pair of hands clasped over my eyes. "Guess who?" a deep, melodic voice whispered in my ear. "Oh dear sir," I replied, jokingly, "I am but a poor country girl. I can't imagine what our state's next senator might want with me." Stephen laughed and released my eyes, caressing my cheeks as he slid his hands down to cup my chin. He kissed me, softly at first but with growing desire. Soon, we were devouring each other in a passionate embrace. I don't know how, but soon I found myself with my back to the smooth face of the cliff. We groped each other like love-starved teenagers at a party. He caressed my breasts, first through my shirt, then through my bra, then directly. I reached down and opened his fly, noting as I reached in that she had changed quite a bit since the previous night, pulling his firming manhood out, stroking it softly as we kissed harder and more desperately. With surprising strength, he lifted me, and I flung my arms around his neck to keep from falling. His hands holding my thighs, he seamlessly slid the crotch of my panties aside and lowered me onto his now-turgid member. Slowly, I sank onto him, filling myself, letting him take me. I was more than his wife, I was his woman, and it was satisfying and gratifying to be both. With the cliff face at my back as a support, we began a slow, but powerful rhythm, each movement an ecstasy of effort and cooperation, building and relenting like breathing good air for the first time. We finished together in silence, and I clung tightly to him. He carried me back to the bench and we sat still like that, still coupled, until he softened. "Thank you, Terrence," she whispered before rising and setting me on my feet. That was the only indication she ever gave me that he knew what had happened, and was okay with it. My last worry melted in my heart and I was free to embrace the future. We walked back to the inn together, arm in arm. The rest of our stay was like a second honeymoon; Stephen even had me listen while he read his speech and give my opinion. When we got home we were once again the tem I remembered us being. Stephen let me in on all of the various strategies, and Len was polite, even deferential to me. Shortly after we secured Senator Dow's endorsement, I learned that I was pregnant. We've already promised Daddy that if it's a boy, we'll name it after him, but if it's a girl, we'll name her Sara Alice.