by L. A. Zoe
All over a simple photograph, like those taken by professional photographers for families around the world. A young woman—obviously Melissa Grant minus a million miles of wear and tear—posing against a standard studio background of blue with two little girls wearing bright green corduroy dresses over white blouses, both with longish black hair tied into a ponytail with a big bow of ribbon and deep black eyes blazing with happiness and smiling wide to display big gaps in their teeth.
Two identical little girls. Twins.
He had to help her, comfort her, so he reached down to hug her.
She slugged him with both fists. Kicked. And writhed away from his touch. “You happy! Now you know! Get away from me! I hate you!”
The more pain she felt, the more he had to comfort her. He ignored her weak blows, got his arms around her back, and lifted her to his lap, where he held her against his chest as she sobbed.
“Goddamnit, motherfucker, shithead!” she shouted at him.
He refused to respond, just kept a tight grip on her. He wouldn’t let go. Not now, not ever.
Finally she tired, and lay against him, arms around his neck, too tired to struggle any longer.
“What happened to her?” Rhinegold asked then, when SeeJai seemed capable of calm thought and rational conversation. “Why do you keep her a secret?”
A quick thought flashed through his mind. Maybe the two girls masqueraded as each other, changing places as they desired. Like Jeremy Irons in that weird movie.
“She’s dead,” SeeJai said in a soft, gray level voice. “When we were three years old, Mother was taking us home from grocery shopping, and a car ran a stoplight, hit us broadside. On JaeSea’s side. I think I was hurt some, though I don’t really remember. I don’t remember the accident. I just remember … waking up one morning and realizing I was supposed to have a sister, and she wasn’t there, hadn’t been there for more days than I could count … “
“I’m sorry,” Rhinegold said. Stupid, but else could he say?
“I don’t hide her. Well, I guess I do. I don’t like to talk about her. What’s there to say? You didn’t know her. You’ll never know her.”
“Now I understand … “ Rhinegold said, and told her of the two pictures in her mother’s apartment. “I thought she put you in two dresses exactly the same except for the color, and I wondered why. I guess I was pretty stupid. And so that’s why your mother’s depressed.”
“She never got over it.”
More sadness in SeeJai’s voice. Was she in even more pain? What else? Best not to ask her now. He spoiled the party for her enough already.
Some Valentine’s Day for SeeJai.
“Any more you want to know?” SeeJai asked in a voice seething with hate. “More secrets you want to spit on while you feel so superior?”
“Yeah … what did Helena do to you?”
Rhinegold held his breath, waiting for her reaction. When she said nothing, but didn’t try to kill him either, he added, “Tonight was a set-up. I’m angry with her and Keara for your sake. How much should I hate her for your sake?”
“Oh God.” SeeJai collapsed, half in his lap, half lying on face down on the bed.
He rubbed her shoulder. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”
“No.” She took a deep breath, sobbed, then seemed to relax. “If I can’t trust you, I might as well shoot myself anyway.”
His heart jumped. “Don’t talk like that!”
“I know, I know. I saw school-appointed counselors for years.” She turned over on her back, looked up at the ceiling. “We met when we were what?—eleven or twelve, like that. Girls that age … well, for months we hated each other, and fought like furies. Then we became best friends. Too much best, best friends.”
Downstairs and many rooms away, the band continued to play, providing a background to the otherwise silence of the room. Rhinegold waited. She’d tell the story in her own time, or not at all.
Hot air roared through the ducts, wailing. He didn’t open the vent to the bedroom, so it remained chilly. Their breaths came out in frosty clouds.
“We were both dreamy romantic kids, so we became close friends like a million dreamy romantic girls have, before marrying a farmer’s son and dying in childbirth, or kneading dough for the local baker to have just enough bread to live on. In the short gap between childish innocence and real life.”
Rhinegold rubbed her back. “Now you sound like me.”
“In those days, I felt like you. Like I didn’t belong to this world, but a brighter, better time in the past. She practiced her violin for hours. Other kids played instruments, but she took it a lot more seriously than anyone else. I loved listening to her.”
“That is her best point.”
“We hung out, did everything together. Mostly at my house, because I didn’t have mall money, and Mother … didn’t care what we did long as it wasn’t burn the place down. I’d check on her, but then I’d close my bedroom door and we had complete freedom, until her mother called on her cellphone.”
Although she continued to stare up, SeeJai’s hand reached out, grabbed his, and squeezed.
“Most of it was so childish and predictable. We watched movies. Romantic comedies. We read Harlequin romances and talked about what we’d do with those hot guys. We wouldn’t resist them, no sirree. We’d get them in a barn and attack them. Pull down their pants, our pants.”
Rhinegold had to smile. “I’d feel sorry for any real men in your lives.”
“Oh, a real older guy would’ve scared us, but it was fun to talk big. Anyway, late one night while Helena slept over, we watched Titanic, and I tried to kiss the screen while Leonardo DiCaprio was on. Helena said real guys were more fun to kiss than glass.”
SeeJai paused, seemed to think over whether she really wanted to tell him that memory, then exhaled with a loud sigh, and continued.
“Helena didn’t have regular boyfriends, but she was pretty, so all the guys wanted her, and she kissed plenty of them at parties and stuff. Me? No. Guys said I was ugly. Or I must be a dyke. Anyway, I had no experience. At. All.”
Rhinegold gave her a squeeze, which she shrugged off.
“Anyway, I admitted what she already knew, that I never kissed a guy, and didn’t really know how, so she suggested we kiss so I could learn.”
“So?” Rhinegold said.
“So, we kissed. And we liked it. And it progressed over the months, from kissing to fondling breasts to rubbing pussies, though we never did it orally. We didn’t talk about it, we just didn’t do it. I think now that would have seemed to much like ’real’ lesbian sex. Too serious. We were just playing. She still kissed guys and I would have if any wanted to kiss me. After maybe six months or so of that, we just kind of drifted apart. She made other friends, while I was still the oddball freak.”
“But now you hate each other," Rhinegold said.
“A few years later, when we were in high school, she was in a clique of real popular kids. Jocks and kids with more money than the rest of us though they’d still seem poor to you. Wannabe Valley girls. I don’t know the whole story, if she told somebody what we used to do, and then had to defend herself, or if she just wanted to get ahead by putting me down, or what, but …"
SeeJai’s voice trailed off.
By then, Rhinegold felt on the edge of his seat. He wanted to know what happened, without considering SeeJai’s feelings. “Then what?”
She shook her head, sniffled, and said, “She borrowed a video camera and told everybody how I was a dyke tried to seduce her, then uploaded it on Facebook and told half the school.”
“My God!”
“She made it sound like I did everything, including trying to rape her with a dildo. Of course everybody at the school, and then our neighborhood, and everybody who didn’t even know me or her but just had to hear it … watched it. Until I thought everybody on Planet Earth or at least Facebook heard about what a crazy bitch dyke I was, like I couldn’t even be trusted to be a
round baby girls.”
She lost control then, and he held her and stroked her, rubbing his fingertips up and down her back as she sobbed.
“If it’s any help,” he finally said, “Out at Edison, I heard something about it, but we didn’t know you or her, so we didn’t really care. Guys were too busy drinking or trying to get laid or find online pornography. When Helena came, somebody told me she was in some kind of online controversy, but nobody knew the details, and after a while, when we got to know her, nobody cared.”
“She took the video down after a few days,” SeeJai said. “I don’t think it’s anywhere now. It’s not like she gets naked or anything. If you didn’t know her or me, I guess it’d be boring. But at school, everybody knew us, and I wanted to fall through the ground and just die. Just die in front of everybody to make them sorry.”
“But it’s never that easy,” he said in a soothing voice.
“Everybody laughed at me, even the real lesbians, because I always told them I wasn’t one. There was Helena claiming just the smell of another girl’s pussy drove me out of control worse than guys.”
“Didn’t you have any friends at all?”
“Areetha stuck by me. A few kids, I think they didn’t approve of what Helena did, because they didn’t laugh or sneer at me, but they kept their mouths shut, with so many kids picking on me. Finally, I dropped out. I got my GED later, but I couldn’t take going to class every day. I spent two years just vegging out. Until Mother went to the hospital so long we got evicted, and you know the rest.”
Rhinegold exhaled, kept his arms around her. He felt a failure as a knight who couldn’t protect his lady fair, even though he didn’t know her then. First her twin sister dies in a car accident, she has to grow up with a Mother lost in grief, and then someone she loved exposes their deepest secrets on Facebook, and totally blames her.
“I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
“It’s over.”
“Small wonder you dumped that plate on her. I would have smacked her.”
SeeJai laughed. Not much, but it was an improvement. “I’m not a black belt in MMA or whatever you do.”
“Then you have to come here and watch me listen to her playing her violin.”
“Like you said, that’s her best quality. Much as I hate her, I still enjoyed the beauty of those pieces she played.”
The blankets over them captured the scent of SeeJai’s floral perfume, bringing to mind a huge garden filled with many flowers: roses and violets and tulips and a thousand more he couldn’t name, with a huge variety of bright beautiful colors and shapes. They covered the ground for acres of gentle rolling hills, a floral jungle marked with green swathes of bushes.
SeeJai must have recovered from her time trapped on the small patio, for her body gave off heat like glowing coals. Despite the below-zero winds outside and the chill air surrounding them, inside the blankets they lay side by side warm and toasty.
The band downstairs played a really old oldie, Do You Believe in Magic?, a song Rhinegold enjoyed when he discovered it on YouTube, because he did believe in magic.
If this night wasn’t magic, what was?
If this young girl’s soul wasn’t magic, none remained in the world.
His fingertips rubbed her upper arm.
“There’s something else I probably ought to tell you,” SeeJai said. “Long as I’m spilling my guts and we’re here together.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m still a virgin.”
“But you were walking the Red Line.” As soon as he spoke, Rhinegold regretted his tone of voice, as though calling her a liar. Not that virginity or not changed his love for her.
She coughed, an embarrassment reflex. “I didn’t know what else to do, where else to go. I just hoped it would be a sort of nice guy.” She coughed again, nearly gagging. “But only you showed up.”
“The romantic fool who wouldn’t let you pay with your body to sleep beside a fire in a condemned house,” Rhinegold said in a joshing voice.
“And food,” SeeJai whispered. “You fed me.”
“And now you let me sleep on the floor,” Rhinegold said. “So we’re even.”
SeeJai grabbed his finger and put her mouth over it, then curled her tongue around it. “Rhinegold?”
“Ummm?”
“Can I give you my virginity?”
“Umm, SeeJai—”
“I don’t mean like that. I can’t promise you the kind of love you want, but no woman can. Faithful love for the rest of my life … that’s too long to think about. Life steals love away.”
“I’ve learned that too.” And he hoped she never learned how.
She sucked his finger hard, then said, “I want you because I want you. Not because it pays you back what I owe, but because I’m aching deep inside, and you’re the only man’s earned my trust.”
The muscle, bone, blood, flesh, gorgeous face, and shining personality behind those brown eyes, lying in his arms next to his own body, felt more precious and desirable than all the gold, all the world’s acclaim, all heroism.
The shirt, pants, dress, and undergarments between them suddenly seemed immediately removable.
The magical mysterious faerie princess sprite opened her lips and sucked his mouth to hers.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Finally
I felt so small beside that big, hard muscular male body. Insignificant.
Not that Rhinegold did anything to hurt me or use me or overpower me against my will.
If anything, he remained too gentle, too giving, even as my conscious mind retreated into my brain like a turtle hiding within its shell, and I just wanted to fuck fuck fuck, take his big throbbing manhood deep inside me and thrust in time with his strokes that nearly ripped me apart.
I wanted to expand, like a puffer fish in a nature video, swell to a gigantic size, so I could engulf at once every inch of his delicious, hot body.
But as I kissed him, I remained my usual ninety-seven pound skinny self. Good thing he did found me attractive, because by then wild bears couldn’t tear me away from him.
A male stud for my pleasure, mine all mine.
His lips sent electric sparks to the top of my brain, making it fizzle like firecrackers going off inside a glass of champagne. Sparklers whirled and popped in front of retinas.
I attacked his shirt, fumbling with the buttons, but too weak or bedazzled to rip them off. So Rhinegold laughed, unbuttoned it in a flash and let it slide down his arms, off his wrists.
Mats of thick blonde gold hair covered his chest. Dewdrops of sweat hit me with an odor so powerful I went into a rabid heat so enthusiastic I made Greco’s snake pets look restrained by their inhibitions.
Rhinegold pulled down the straps of my dress, unzipped it in back, and slid it down past my toes. Because my breasts are so small and the dress’s bodice provided what little support they needed, I didn’t wear a bra.
Then my nipples stiffened, and my breasts expanded, firm and excited.
Rhinegold ran his hand over them, fingers extended straight, palm flat, and I moaned.
The clouds in the sky parted to show Rhinegold the stars, and now my uncertainties vanished with them, and every nerve lit up like a star, twinkling, transmitting pleasure I never dreamed existed.
Even when Helena and I fumbled with each other.
Deep inside my chest, a puppy whimpered, begging for more care and attention. My back arched as I tried to pleasure my groin with the sky, still inside the white nylon panties.
Rhinegold grabbed them, and yanked them off. Then I wiggled naked on the bed, an inner itch driving me mad with the vulnerability of lying naked with a man still wearing pants.
I grabbed for his trousers, missing the belt buckle but feeling the cloth distended by the enormous penis below.
Rhinegold raised himself to his knees, and opened his pants. He then tried to remove just the trousers, leaving his white boxers, but I cried out with frustration, and yanked
at the rubber waistband.
I couldn’t think then, but somewhere in the back of my mind, maybe somewhere along my spine between my ass and my heart, I understood I couldn’t have taken Rhinegold like this before that night.
Before he discovered my secrets, and withheld judgment, still accepting and declaring his love for me.
So I remained grateful. Not just for food and shelter—important as those are when you lack them—but for so much else.
He filled a Rhinegold-sized hole inside my heart, my soul, I hadn’t realized existed.
And I instinctively realized he wouldn’t try to control me. He’d let me grow, let me work, and love him at my own speed, in my own way. He’d protect when I needed, but never keep me away from college or work or business.
This concept was too abstract for my poor forebrain drowning in wine, hormones, and the tiger fumes of Rhinegold’s erect penis, but I grasped it in my bone marrow, in my spleen, and my lungs.
Rhinegold stroked my legs, but I no longer wanted foreplay. I was ready, as ready as I’d ever be. If it was going to hurt, no foreplay could stop that. Juices flowed down my thighs as my pussy slobbered over the sight of Rhinegold’s manhood.
As tall as a mountain, yet thick as homemade sausage, also throbbing with blood. A peculiar combination of brownish pinkish, not as pale white as I expected, though Rhinegold’s pelvis and ass was as white as mother-of-pearl.
The pictures and videos I saw online didn’t prepare me for the thick, curly hair sprouting at the base of his penis, and even lightly growing from the shaft.
The head topped the shaft like a twisted plum.
I gulped. Even in the middle of a lust-fever more intense than a waking dream, I wondered how I could bear to allow such a large, blunt organ between my legs.
Yet, with the madness of a rolling drunk, I couldn’t stop.
I fell to the bed, on my back, and spread my legs.
“Now!” I screamed.
Fortunately, Rhinegold didn’t just fall on top of me and start thrusting. He arranged himself between my thighs, let me bend my knees, pressed his chest close to mine, while keeping his weight on his elbows. Then reached behind me, and picked me up like a mother cuddling a baby.
