The Family Tree

by John Everson

  Caroline ate a couple bites and then fed him a forkful again, before pushing back her plate. “I’m stuffed,” she announced. “Thanks, Mama!”

  “That was amazing,” Scott agreed. “Thank you very much.”

  “Happy to feed my family.” Ellen smiled. “And glad to welcome you all to our Family Table.”

  Caroline pushed back her chair and grabbed Scott’s hand. “C’mon,” she said. “I want to show you something now.”

  Scott briefly considered resisting; he should not get involved with this girl, he knew it. That way lay great danger! But he couldn’t stop himself, not now. He decided to go along with whatever she had in mind, at least for now. As he stood up, he realized the Thornes had slipped off their chairs and were presently taking each other’s clothes off behind the far side of the table on the floor. The brothers had moved their chairs to the right and were clearly poised with freshly filled mugs of ale to enjoy the show.

  “I love it when it goes to their heads like that,” Caroline said, before pulling him out of the room. “It’s just so honest.”

  “Hmmm,” Scott said. “Does this happen a lot here at dinner?”

  She shrugged. “Depends. For some folks, it’s like the ale takes their clothes off for them, soon as they drink it. For others…maybe they’re just stiff as boards and it takes a bit longer to soften them up, you know?”

  She smiled and pulled him after her, until the mumble of conversations and clinking dish noises of the Family Table disappeared. Scott had to push himself to keep up with her as she walked down the same hall that led to his room, but then turned left into another section of the inn that he’d not walked in yet. The way turned and twisted as they passed several unmarked doors before Caroline stopped and finally opened one.

  “We have to hurry, or we’ll miss it,” she said.

  “Miss what,” he asked.

  “Watch your step,” she replied, ignoring his question.

  She led him up a narrow flight of wooden steps. After every eight or ten steps they turned at a ninety-degree angle. Scott felt like he was walking in an Escher painting.

  When they finally arrived at the top of the stairs, Caroline turned and put her hands on his shoulders. “You’re going to love this. It’s one of the best places in the inn, and almost nobody ever comes here.”

  “I can see why,” he said. “You need a guide and climbing ropes.”

  She took his hand and pulled him through an entryway that led to a narrow balcony. They were standing in a cupola high atop the inn. It wrapped around the trunk of the tree, with a rickety-looking wood slat bannister.

  “I call it the treehouse,” she said. There was a wooden bench secured with steel brackets to the tree, and she motioned for him to sit down. “It’s the perfect spot to watch the sun go down over Melton Hill.”

  She slid onto the bench next to him, pressing herself up against his shoulder, then shifted to try to get comfortable with her head leaning back against the tree. Scott adjusted himself, and slipped his arm around her shoulder. Caroline smiled and answered his attention with a happy sigh.

  Scott barely noticed, as he took in the view. Caroline had not steered him false. It was amazing. Dusk was falling, and the sun was slipping low on the horizon, which swam with a spray of purples, deep blues and amber against the long cotton backdrop of clouds.

  “It’s beautiful,” he said, and Caroline snuggled her head deeper against his chest.

  “I love to watch the sunset up here,” she said. “The colors look different every day. I wanted you to see.”

  She took his hand and moved it to rest across her hips, and then cupped his knuckles in her palm as the sun visibly began to slip below the line of the trees. Neither of them said a word for the next few minutes, as the gold changed to purple and the trees slipped from a heavy green to dark shadows, waving and shivering in the unseen breeze. Overhead, the sky was clear, and Scott realized suddenly that the first few stars had appeared.

  “Thanks for bringing me here,” he said, when the last light of the sun finally winked out and the horizon was left with just a faint red glow.

  Caroline shifted and turned to look at his face. “I wanted to share this with you. So you could see how beautiful this place is.”

  It suddenly occurred to him that she might have brought him here, not to show him her cleavage, but to “sell” him on the inn. Her mother had probably instructed her to entice and entertain him…anything to make sure that he didn’t unload the place and put them on the street. Part of his chest clenched with that thought. That Ellen would push her daughter on him, to try to save her position…

  His suspicion and irritation was suddenly interrupted by Caroline’s mouth, which pressed warm against his lips.

  “Caroline,” he said, pushing her back. “Seriously, you don’t have to do this. It’s not going to change my mind on whether I keep or sell the inn.”

  Caroline blinked three times, the blue of her eyes piercing. Her mouth dropped open as the import of his words hit her. “That’s not why I’m doing it,” she said, and kissed him again before he could speak. This time, it took longer for him to push her back. When he broke the kiss, he had to gasp for breath.

  “I think you’re really pretty,” he said. “But I’m too old for you. I don’t want to…”

  She put her hands on both sides of his face, and forced his gaze out over the trees. “I don’t want you to think about anything but the sunset,” she said. Then she sat straight up on the bench and peeled the tank top over her head, and with a quick reach behind, unlatched her small white bra and let it drop to the wood floor. She grabbed his wrists and lifted his hands to her bare chest. “Think about the sunset…and this.”

  More than cleavage… a juvenile voice inside him whispered with awe.

  His head told him to take his hands off her, to stop this now, but her skin was so soft…her nipples were puckered, their tips pressing with desire against his palms. The last time he’d had the chance to touch a woman’s breasts had been…he refused to think about it. And he refused to say no now.

  Scott began hesitantly to knead her breasts, still not quite believing that he was here in this moment. As he did, Caroline moaned and arched her back, hanging her head away from him. She was a goddess limned in sunset, a nymph of the coming night. He stroked his hands up and down her chest with increasing confidence. He sighed as his fingers slid across the silky skin of her tummy, running a thumb into the pucker of her belly button before lifting his hands back up her ribs. She shifted and moaned beneath his touch until he couldn’t stand it anymore. He slipped his arms all the way around her back to caress the thin, smooth bones of her shoulder blades. Then he pulled her close, pressing her body tight and hard to his own. She smiled at his sudden possessive response.

  Caroline slowly opened her mouth until the pink tip of her tongue shone through her parted lips. She leaned in until he could feel the soft heat of her breath on his face, and delicately licked his lips slowly with her tongue, teasing him as his hands slipped up and down her back and sides. Then, when he could barely contain himself, she flipped her leg across his knees and straddled him, topless with the first faint stars beaming out in the sky behind her.

  Scott didn’t think he had ever witnessed a picture more beautiful than Caroline’s lustful smile and small, perky breasts limned against the clearest sky he’d ever seen.

  She didn’t let him take in the view for more than a few seconds though, and then she was leaning back close, thrusting her tongue in his mouth and grinding her crotch against his. There was no question in her intent now. Part of him protested, but he pushed that voice aside. It had been so long… She ran her hands up and down his arms, and guided his hands to her ass, encouraging him to cup and play with her. He did, gasping with excitement as he touched all of her, running his hands from her tight shorts up and over the smooth but firm jut
of her shoulder blades.

  But when, after a few minutes of enjoying his body rub, she stood to shimmy out of her shorts, some feeble sense of reality resurfaced in his head. Scott took a deep breath and pushed himself upright out of the bench, before she could sit down on him again. He put his hands on her waist, stopping her from completely losing her shorts.

  “We can’t,” he said. “We need to stop. I don’t have protection.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, and threw her arms back around him, stopping him from stopping her. “I have all the protection I need,” she whispered into his ear. Then she kissed him wetly on the mouth and urged his hands lower. When they reached her hips, he found that her shorts were no longer there.

  Scott’s head seemed to fill with static, and he no longer even had the ability to think about saying no. It was just gone. All he knew was that Caroline was warm and willing and sexier than hell, and they were alone at the top of the world and he really, really, really wanted to be inside her. He wanted that now more than he thought he’d ever wanted anything. His body burned for her.

  He let her hands undo his belt and then everything seemed to go weird and psychedelic. He saw stars and nipples and her eyes, blue and piercing as ice flame, and he felt hot and cold in the breeze and he wanted to pull her close to him, so close that he couldn’t know anything but her, and he wanted to lay her down on the bench and just use her, hard, like he’d never used a woman before. He felt as if someone had just given him a testosterone transfusion; his caveman was in control. A caveman he’d never really known he had.

  But he wasn’t using her; she seemed to hold all the control. Somehow they both were now completely naked and Caroline was sitting on top of him again, straddling his lap and working him inside her with quick, calculated thrusts. He’d slid easily into her as if he was made to be there, and now the back of his head was rubbing against the rough surface of the tree bark and she was grinding against his waist, bringing her wetness to his thighs and balls and sliding against him in circles, sucking him in and out in her own rhythm. Sometimes she would lean down and let her nipples trail against his chest, and sometimes she pressed them into his mouth. And sometimes she replaced her nipples with her tongue.

  Scott lost track.

  The world was a kaleidoscope of kisses and breasts and stars and the smell of evergreens and the heavy musk of sex.

  He was lost in her.

  Utterly lost.

  When Scott finally called out in orgasm, she held him, and milked it for another minute, moaning and whispering things he couldn’t understand. Except for when she said, “Yes, yes, yes.” Again and again. He stayed hard deep within her as she picked up speed again, moving towards her own moment with soft, anxious gasps, until she finally slumped against him, deflated and exhausted. Caroline then kissed him softly, her lips full and swollen against his. He wrapped his arms around her and held her there, on the hard slats of the bench, for a long time.

  “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear. “I needed that tonight.”

  He realized that the effects of Ellen’s “Drink of Life” were still on him as Caroline’s face shifted and fuzzed out in the dark as he looked up at her. It had hit him all at once really. He’d felt fine when they had come up here, but once Caroline had started kissing him, he’d felt increasingly drunk. Now he felt dizzy and strange…almost as if he were floating out here in the air, in the night. Caroline was holding herself off him on the bench almost like a pushup, her arms slipped between his arms and his ribs.

  “I feel a little funny,” he said, and she bent down and kissed his eyelids.

  “It will pass. Just relax,” she said. “Close your eyes.”

  He did, and she lay down on top of him, covering him with her warmth.

  “Tell me about Chicago?” she asked after a moment.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I’ve never been to a big city,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “What about driving to Philadelphia or Boston for a weekend?” he asked. “You could do that easily. It’s not that far.”

  “We never leave here,” she said. “Mama says our job is to care for the inn, and that job is 24/7. Nobody ever leaves.”

  “Maybe I could take you sometime,” he suggested sleepily.

  “Would you do that?” she asked. Her voice grew excited. “I want to go up to the top of a skyscraper.”

  “If I took you back to Chicago, you could go up to the top of the Sears Tower and walk out on a glass ledge and look down on the street a hundred floors away. It’s almost like you’re walking on air above the whole city.”

  She whispered something, but he didn’t catch it. “What?”

  “I wish I could do that someday.” Her voice caught. She sounded suddenly sad.

  “I’ll take you sometime,” he said. “I promise.”

  She didn’t answer him then, and it must have only taken seconds for him to slip into a dream…because he didn’t remember anything more, and when he awoke, the stars were bright overhead. Caroline was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  Scott was cold. His neck was stiff.

  He sat up and felt the rough surface of the weathered wood against the unweathered surface of his butt.

  He groaned and stood up.

  The night was astounding here. Stars littered the sky in a way Scott had only seen previously in photos from NASA. The air was cool and rich with the smells of the forest. And Caroline was gone. He stood there, naked in the night, with the stars on his back, and for a minute, he felt like he was alone in the world. He felt amazing. Free. Fulfilled. His body felt alive; his manhood thick and sated. It was weird how your body felt after good sex. Very different. Very vibrant. Maybe that was nature’s way of pushing one to seed the species again. Doesn’t this feel good, boy? Do it again! Whatever it was, he felt awesome.

  Finally, he stopped staring at the surrounding hills like a proud nudist and picked up and pulled on his clothes. Once dressed, he stood at the edge of the eyrie, and stared out over the Appalachian hills for several minutes. There was no sound but the night breeze, no light but that of the stars and the faint reflection of light from the windows of the inn below.

  “King of the world,” he said quietly to the dark mountains around him.

  Then he opened the door and stepped back inside the inn, carefully navigating his way down the pitch-black stairs by holding one hand on the wall. When he finally reached the hallway where they had entered the stairs, he breathed an audible sigh of relief. There was light again. And a floor instead of planks and stairs. He remembered that he and Caroline had pretty much followed the hallway around various jogs before they’d walked upstairs, and so he headed to his left and just kept going.

  There were dull lights in the ceiling every few yards that lit the way, and finally he was back in the area of the inn that was familiar. He was walking down the hall that he thought led to his room, when a hand grabbed him.

  “There you are!” a female voice said.

  It was Rocky.

  She was wearing electric-pink biker shorts and a pale green T-shirt. Climb This! it said in white lettering.

  “Hi,” Scott said.

  Rocky didn’t waste time on greetings. She slipped her arms around his waist and pulled him to her. “I’ve been looking for you since dinner.”

  “Where’s Jerry?” Scott asked, not sure what to say, but definitely wondering what would happen if her husband suddenly turned up in the hallway right now.

  “I gave him a glass of Belvedere Bourbon an hour ago. I’m sure he’s snoring in bed by now.”

  “Shouldn’t you be snoring with him?”

  She snorted. “I told you at dinner that I needed to take care of me tonight. So that’s what I’m doing.”

  She pressed her chest against his and tilted her face up to stare into
his eyes. “I think you might have what I need.”

  As she spoke, she slipped her hand between them, and cupped his balls, kneading them ever so slightly.

  “Well, um…” Scott began. He was at a loss for words. But what she was doing felt good… “I was just going to head back to my room and get some sleep.”

  “Show me your room,” she said. Rocky slipped her hands beneath his shirt and let her fingers linger over his ribs and nipples. He shivered at the pleasure of her touch. Part of him wanted to run from her, but another part lit up at her touch. His body buzzed as if he’d just downed another pint of the Family Ale.

  “I was just looking for it actually,” he said. “I think it’s this way.” He stepped to the left, pulling away from her. But Rocky didn’t let him get far. In seconds, he felt her fingers on his ass as he walked.

  “What about Jerry?” he asked again, when he finally honed in on his own doorway. He put the key in, but turned to look at her. Rocky’s eyes were anxious, and her lips full of color. She wanted it; there was no question.

  “He does what I tell him to do,” she said. “And he’s happy with that. Tonight, I told him to go to sleep.”

  Scott unlocked the door, but didn’t immediately open it.

  “Ask me in,” Rocky said. Her tone said that there was no other option.

  Scott thought about fighting it. But the warmth in his groin was too strong. “Do you want to come in?” he said, after a moment.

  “Yes,” she said, and pushed past him. Before the door had closed, she was lying on his bed.

  “Make yourself comfortable,” he said.

  “I am,” she said. “Now…come here and make me feel good.”

  He walked over to the bed. A million thoughts were going through his head. He’d already had the most amazing sex of his life tonight. Despite the tingling in his crotch, he didn’t even know if he could really go again…and it just seemed wrong to try with another woman.