Athel the Avenger

My eyes weren't quite open. As I lay on my bed sleeping, I heard a thundercrack and half awoke, looking straight out my loft window down onto to the moonlit landscape of my dreams. That was the first time I saw her. She was racing across the furthest reach of my vision in the midnight haze, but nonetheless, I could see that she was amazing. Her movements were quick and agile and all about her glowed a fiery, radiant brilliance. The effect showed off her glossier white vestments and flowing chasuble tunic that both hugs her lithe body and trailed off behind her in her speed. Just like the stone carvings of Greek goddesses, they clung to her shape, wet and glistening in the moonlight. Her full breasts and youthful nipples were clearly outlined as were her defined abdomen muscles and strong thighs. I stared at the vision. She was a beauty beyond words.

At the end of the driveway, just within the dim circle of a street lamp, I saw her stop, the wind whipping the cloth about her. The angel bent down to open a gaping hole in the earth to hell itself, and with a smooth motion that only comes from long military training, she takes a very long glaive sword she had in one hand and lifts its handle high in the air and with two powerful hands choked high to the pommel, she drops the sword down into the abyssal crack. With a thud it stops. The angel grabs hold of quillons crossbar on the hilt and twists the glaive into that wound between hell and earth.

My eyes blink and I don't see her anymore. I must have been dreaming again. I only see on the street curb, what must be a white plastic trash bag, its edges being whipped by the storm's wind. I try to go back to sleep, but can't stop thinking that I must stop dreaming these things. I needed to get my act together and make my real escape.

I was almost out of this house. At least, I felt like I had escaped. With a lot of elbow grease and some salvaged building materials, I had remodeled the old garage into a studio apartment. There was an old wood stove for heat and a small kitchen and bath and a place for a sofa and table and the prerequisite potted plant. My favorite part of the apartment was a sleeping loft up a ladder where I could open the window under wide eaves and listen to the rain and imagine myself very far off, like one of those mountain lakes that I used to go backpacking and camp near the continental divide. It was peaceful. In the loft, I could be in my own space.

Not at all like my family life. I didn't understand my mother and father and certainly not my sister. As a brother, I was probably not much better. It was as if when we spoke we talked to someone who was elsewhere. We didn't communicate. That was just fine by me. Let them go to hell. I was going to get as far away from here as I could when I graduated high school. I would find my own life. My father did it all the time. He went from job to job, state to state, and marriage to marriage. My mom was a stopping point for him, some sweet oasis in a dry desert but no more than another watering hole left by the footprints of some god walking over an earth he cared little for besides what it could do for him. That was just like my father. He left me and my mom to fend for ourselves and even left a girl from a previous marriage. He brought her along like some trophy from the divorce and dumped her on my mom to raise. Worse than my dad, she was a hell raiser and was so ugly to mom. At one point, I thought she had left us for good.

Last summer, my half sister Dora, ran off with some guy on a motorcycle dreaming of dancing every night and getting away from my mom. She came back sullen and tried to make amends with mom. I can't blame Dora for trying though. My mom is a bitch. She throws herself at every guy that comes along and neglects us and then bosses us around. She still has her looks and she flaunts them. I get so many comments about my mom being a MILF and I protest, but there it is. She dresses in tight clothes and catches every guy's attention that comes within pheromone range. She works three jobs and still keeps at least two boyfriends on the line. The door to our house might as well be a revolving door. I can never keep up with the names of the boyfriends. Even my dad comes back around to visit some times, and my pathetic mom hides her boyfriends and wipes down her clothes in a seductive way in front of dad. I want to cry out to her, "For fuck's sake! He's been married twice since leaving us! Let! Him! Go!" Why bother? She won't listen. We don't communicate.

Every time I do get to talk to dad on one of his infrequent visits, he asks about my love life. What does he want? To give me advice? Or was it to relive his memories of being a hot senior stud. I was never like him. I had girlfriends, but they were just friends. I didn't go around fucking every skirt on campus. How could I really? Any time he could force me to talk about the girls at school or ones that I showed any interest in, he would boast that she was really his daughter and I couldn't date her. I couldn't tell if he was joking with me or just being a prick. It would be just like him to have fathered the whole county. I ignored him and all the girls. I did my work, my art, my computers. I was going to go to college and get out of this state entirely. The girls in my high school were immature anyway. They wanted to go to movies or worse, get pregnant and married. I refused to play my father's game and I know that irritated him, so I did it all the more. I was going to fall in love and get married and be a family man to spite him.

That was my family in a nutshell. The shell itself was the house, a little old and worn down, but big enough for my mom to raise Dora and me. I had lived here all my 17 years and only just moved into the garage apartment. I preferred to call it my Tiny House, but I didn't really build it. It was good enough for me and my computers. I never even let friends come over and play games beside over vid. This was my sanctuary. I had a couple months to have my 18th birthday, graduate, and the leave for good. I couldn't wait!

I thought that was my escape plan. There was never anything more true in my life than a wrench thrown into the engine of my imagination. The sound of clanking and sputtering was the sound of my world about to be thrown into the junkyard. For the second time that night, I woke, this time to hear construction crews pulling up into the driveway and hauling out outer space equipment with giant suckers and tubes and brushes on the ends of gleaming chrome sticks. From my loft window on the driveway, I could see a dozen guys rushed into the house. My mom had never had this many boyfriends rush into the house, certainly not at once. I knew something else must be happening. Shop lights were set up and the driveway lit up like the airport. Motors were revved. The crew was trying to suck out the entire insides of the crème donut that was our house. I could see my mom talking to an insurance agent in the driveway. She was completely clothed for her, silk robe over a revealing night gown, next to the man who was wearing a suit at midnight, complete with pocket protector and clip board. He was asking questions and my mom was doing poorly not to flirt with the man.

Touching the insurance man on the arm, she smiled and then walked up the drive to my window where I was gawking. She lost the smile for me and showed her concerned face, the one she used when she siad she couldn't pay rent and would get handouts from her boyfriends. For not being able to communicate, I certainly did learn her tells and when she was intentionally not communicating. She didn't want to tell me something so she started with nonsense, "Dear, I'm sorry to wake you... Bobby, there's been an accident. We are both fine! Don't worry about us!" she pause thinking I was going to show concern. I let her go one with what she was avoiding. "The hot water heater blew off a thing on top and sprayed hot water all over and busted a water line. The insurance company came right away to save as much as they can. We will have to spend the night somewhere else." She trailed off and in my panic that they were going to try to sleep in my Tiny House, I clearly got upset. Mom quickly changed tactics. "No dear! Don't worry! You can stay here and I'll go over to a friend's house. You try to get some sleep for school and we will talk tomorrow." She turned and walked back to the insurance agent and leaving me to my own devices. At first I thought this was a good thing. It was like she was leaving me. I could be by myself and have all the space I wanted.

As quickly as the disaster started, the men left. The machines stayed and hummed, but quiet enough. They sucked and dried and sucked and dried. Plastic and power extension cords were everywhere. I saw my mom carrying a big suitcase down the front sidewalk to the car and leave. I settled back into my bed and tried to go to sleep. That didn't last long. There was a knock on the door. I guess the men wanted to tell me something after all? I barely dressed and opened the door quickly, not hiding my annoyance. It wasn't a man or pocket protector or a clip board. It was Dora holding two arms full of clothing. I didn't really say anything, She said hi and rushed past me to drop the load onto the couch.

I held back my first instinct for rage at the intrusion. Something told me to hold my tongue. What was really strange was seeing her in a mixed match of mom's clothes. There wasn't any sense of the oriental printed silk robe going with the too tight flannel PJs. She wasn't wearing any shoes or slippers. I knew enough about girls to know that when they didn't complete their outfit, even their supposedly casual clothes like jeans and tee with sneakers, something terrible was wrong. It was then that I noticed the gauze and medical tape on her arms and under the robe.

She turned toward me with disdain. "Ruth told me I could stay here." She didn't seem to care that I would have an opinion in the matter. Sure, I thought. Mom wanted to take the opportunity to go screw a boyfriend and she dumps Sis on me. "Fine." I said, ready to turn my back on the situation, but my house was too small. There was no where to go.

Dora had already started to move the pillows around on the couch. Dropping the clothes on the carpet, she stretches out a blanket, but winces in pain from whatever it was under the bandages on her shoulder. I could do without having a half sister from by dead beat dad, but I grew up with her and I couldn't have her in pain like that. "Sis, you don't have to do that. You don't even have to sleep down here. I'll take the couch. You sleep up in the bed." She turned on me. "I don't need your bed. I'll be fine."

She had pierced me with those dark blue eyes and flared her nostrils like every other time she lashed out at me and pushed me away with her anger. That's how all of our sibling conversations had ended up, us arguing and shutting down any reasonable conclusion to our debates. She wasn't one to be kind and caring like a girl was supposed to be, right? She kept her platinum blonde hair clipped at angles and wore nose rings and various tattoos. I had often wondered what kind of beauty she would be, if she wasn't trying all the time to be exactly the opposite of my alluring beauty of a mother she called Ruth. She had no reason to call her anything but Mom. She spent every remembered day of her life here with us, but in her teenage years, she lashed out and denied Mom any place in her life. The playmate I once had, turned into a tornado of depression and angst and resentment, until I no longer knew her.

Maybe it was the reminiscing about our childhood that made me take a softer tone. I told her to relax and tell me what happened. By the time she did collapse into the couch, I had gone and come back from my play station console. "Roach?" I offered. She tensed as she shrank back from the thing, until she recognized the stub end of my preciously secret mamajuana on a clip. Her face relaxes into a smirk and smile that brightened the room.

"What the fuck! I didn't know you did weed?" She took it greedily and lit it from the candle that I lit on the coffee table. I timidly moved aside the game controllers and girlie magazines, hoping she would be preoccupied enough to not notice what was there in front of her. She toked and laughed, "Shit Bobby! That was exactly what I needed. Who would have thought my little brother would be medicating me on a day like this?"

I looked into her smile and her eyes and found a flash of a moment of relaxation. She was a warrior. Even warriors took a break from the war. There was a silence for a bit between us. We had nothing to argue about. I set aside my possessive need for privacy and she dropped her shields. I was in unknown territory. I felt myself doing something that I never dreamed I would be doing. I started talking to Dora.

She told me about the hot water heater that suffered being in her closet but tonight could not put up with her anymore. The water heater jumped and blew its lid. The closet doors were open and hot steamy water sprayed all over her bedroom, soaking everything including her, scalding her. Water lines burst and everything was flooded. Mom in her cucumber mask had run around blind trying to shut it off in the house, but only managed to get Dora into a fit of frustration. Finally Dora called 911 and raced out into the street soaking wet to use a tee shaped plumber's key to turn off the water meter at the street. Dispatch called the fire department and someone called the insurance agent who called the mitigation contractors. It all happened so fast that Dora wasn't able to save anything. In face, she had collapsed at the curb and didn't even wake until paramedics had her in one of the firetrucks giving her oxygen and patching her up. The medics bandaged her up, but said it wasn't a bad burn. Dora told me that she was just laughing at Ruth running from man to man. "I am never the fuck going to fucking look to a man to solve my problems. They are too dark for any shining paladin to come rescue me from." I sat in dumb silence at her describing herself running to the in-ground water meter and then collapsing. I think Dora took me as a considerate listener, because she leaned the back of her arm against mine. The memory of seeing her running half naked in wet night clothes and then the touching of her skin to mine electrified me. I tried to shake the intense feeling off.

We passed the roach back and forth only a few times before it was gone and we leaned back next to each other on the couch and stared at the ceiling. I tried to talk about things we had in common, music, school, dad,... it all came back to dad. Luckily we were a touch stoned and didn't really get upset like normal when his name came up. She yawned and I remembered that we both had school the next day. I reminded myself that I had to keep up my grade points this senior year to get that scholarship. Dora had come back from her great escape and started up at community college to be a plumber. It was just like her to choose a different path. Secretly I was proud of her for her choice. "We need to get some sleep. You can't do that down here with those burns. Go up to the loft. I suppose Mom took her car. I'll drop you off at your classes on my way."

Dora looked content. She smiled at me and played with my hair. "You take good care of me. I hope there are just as many magazines up in the loft as down here. I might need some more relaxing before bed time," she winked at me and got up and went to the bathroom. I guess my hand was caught in the rat trap. I winced, but then warmed to the idea that she might get off in his bed. There was going to be very few secrets kept between us in this small a house. I straightened the blankets on the couch and got a spare pillow. When she came out in that horrid mish mash of night clothes, she turned quickly to the ladder and then stopped. A second later, she turned her head and said, "Good night Bobby. Thank you." I turned the light off and watched her go up the ladder in the moonlight. For a moment, I caught sight of a beautiful, sensitive girl, springing up the ladder rungs. "Don't sweat it," I answered.

I listened for something like moaning from upstairs about the time that she would find my stash of magazines. However, I only heard a choked cry in her pillow. When I called up to ask if she were all right, there was only silence.

My alarm went off too soon. The couch wasn't long enough for me and I got up with a creak in the neck and stiff leg. I still got up. Nothing like another little family disaster motivated me more to get good grades and get out. I yelled up to Dora to wake up, but she was leaning on the rail watching me and told me that she was waiting for me to get up. I headed into the tiny bathroom to shower. I must have been still dazed and a bit too fast, because when I burst out of the bathroom still dripping wet to make a dash to the dresser to grab a fresh towel, I had to stop in my tracks. Dora stood there going through the drawers and holding onto one of my boxer briefs. What's more, she was stark naked as well and turned toward me with a start.

We stood there looking at each other. I had not seen her without her clothes since when mom would bathe us in the tub together. She was a couple years older than me and grew up keeping to her side of the house, and I to mine. Now, I could see that my sister was a full grown woman, and not only that, a gorgeous one. With the gauzes still taped to her shoulders and sides, her body had the look of a seasoned holy warrior. She was my Athel, as I had named my apparition of the night before. She looked like an angel, but one that dared devils. She heaved a deep breath and I would have sworn that her pronounced pink nipples in large globes of soft perky flesh were staring at me, following me as Dora gasped her lungs full of air and quivered her body. Our eyes fell slowly over each other's edges. My eyes could not help but admire the tight abdominal muscles that were chiseled like the warrior angel that Athel's was. My eyes rested on that secret mound of flesh between her thighs that had a fine blonde matt of pubes and the delicious pinkness of her vagina. She shifted her weight nervously from one leg to another, and that pensiveness gave me such divine views of her clit and labia folds, but she did not shirk from my gaze, because her stare was in turn riveted on my engorged and rising cock, reveling in its hardness as if it were the pride and joy of the family.

"Oh... mmmm," she broke the silence with a deep sigh, after a full minute. "I suppose I can't call you little brother anymore," she smirked. I did not answer, but did manage to raise my eyes up to her beautiful blue eyes looking back at me with something other than sisterly love. "Ummm," I began, my cock pulsing having gotten as big as it could. "...towel" It took her a bit to realize that I was trying to tell her something. She reluctantly looked over her shoulder at the stack of clean towels on the dresser and turned to get one. I had seen naked girls, in magazines, but never in person and certainly not this close. I had avoided having girlfriends for fear of treating them like my dad had, as sex objects, and not as friends, and being friends with girls was never easy for me. This was neither a girlfriend nor a friend before me and it excited me beyond my understanding and I could not be reasonable in it. My body reacted to hers and hers to mine. As she turned, it sank into me that this angel in front of me was more real than a photograph or my imagination could ever be, and the movement set all of her muscles and sex bits into a slow motion that agonized me as much as it pleased me.

She took the towel and threw it at my crouch so I had to catch it against my dick. It covered my lack of all modesty, but she just smiled in her birthday suit. She even giggled like a school girl, much belied by her various tattoos that marked her every birthday and as she often said, her countdown to freedom. We shared that dream.

With an absentmindedness accompanying feigned nonchalance, she slipped into my boxers she was borrowing and pulled one of her tight white sports bras over her head, giving me one last view of her large breasts stretched up and being slowly covered by form reducing whiteness. Still, her nipples showed tantalizingly erect through the fabric. She moved past me around a chair toward her clothes and as she moved unnecessarily close to me, she grabbed my manhood through the towel as if to balance herself. She told me with a bright smile, "Nice bod." She started to get dressed in her jeans and thick flannel shirt and boots. She had to cock her head over to the dresser to herd me there to my dresser. I was painfully aware that she stole glances over as I dried off and dressed.

We grabbed some breakfast fuel and talked about anything but what just happened. I played the host and picked up plates, when Dora protested that I was being too domestic. "Stop being the mom, just because Ruth is being neglectful and leaving us to our own devices. You can be the knight and carry me away to school, but I'll find my way home. AND DON'T COOK when you get home. I know you like all that independence shit, but tonight is Friday night. I'll grab some pizza and we can hang, ok?"

I went along with her bossiness. Even when she was all up in my face, she was being more generous and concerned than mom ever was.

We rushed out the door to my truck. Like my house, it was a work in progress. It was an old truck with rust-o-leum patches, a bench seat and four on the floor. Dora didn't ever ride in my car, since she and mom seemed to go everywhere together and I had only just recently bought the truck with my gaming tournament money. I liked my truck. Dora seemed to have a permanent smirk on her face when she got in. She looked down at the stick shift and laughed, "You good handling your own stick?" She was giving me an overexaggerated wink to make sure I caught the innuendo. "Ha, Ha, Ha." I answered and told her to buckle up. When her seat buckle broke off in her hands, she bowled over with laughter. Not missing a beat, she scotched over next to me and buckled up the middle seatbelt. Taking the stick shift between her legs, she took on a stern look and told me, "Roger that. I've got the controls. I'm going to ride this stick down to our final destination. Oh does it feel good between my legs. Hold on! It's going to be a bum, bum, bumpy ride!" I had a hard time holding back my laughter but putting my hand over hers, I shifted the stick back into reverse, eliciting a squeal from Dora. "Ohh, I like the way you did that." I gently elbowed her. "Now stop that," I told her, but I didn't want her to stop it. It was the most fun we had had in many years together.

As soon as we were out in the street, she grew quiet and distant. The roar of the wind in the open windows preventing any real conversation. We fell back into our usual not talking to each other. As close as she was seated next to me, she was at the same time distant and untouchable. She lost her smile and stared out the window.

When we pulled up to the big entrance to the community college, she shook herself into gear. She looked past me and yelled out, "My bitch!" I look out my window and across the parking lot to see a red headed girl stop and turn to the call. "Dora!" was her joyous reply and she came running up to my window and thrust herself inside and over me to hug Dora. Breasts were crashing into my chest and face as they ignored me. When I could get some air, I got a better look at the girl. Her hair looked naturally red and wavy in locks that fell to more or less bare creamy shoulders with a black halter holding lush breasts. Necklaces, earing loops and bracelets jangled as if she were in some gypsy dance, but her makeup was clean. She smelled expensive but freely smiled.

"Got a new boyfriend?" she inquired, finally including me in their greeting.

"Nah, Chloe, this is my brother, Bobby."

Looking a bit confused by our close seating arrangement, she didn't slow down. She questioned, "Oh then, he's available?"

She looked at me not really knowing the answer. She never had bothered to know what company I kept. I answered for myself, "I don't have a girlfriend, no."

"Wipe that smile off your face Chloe. He wants love and marriage and babies. You can take your eyes right off him. Besides, you are too busy with all the guys in those hospitality studies," she laughed.

"Well, a girl can look at a good looker," she replied and we smiled at each other, "Besides," mocking Dora and leaning over to me , "all the guys in hospitality are gay and I know when a man looks at me like you do, Bobby." Dora laughed as if it were some joke I didn't catch, hopped out of the truck, and invited Chloe to join her. As the red head made her way around the front of my truck, I watched her go by. I couldn't help fill in the suggestiveness of her dress with the recent images in my head of Dora's breasts. I certainly would not have minded verifying my imagination, but Dora was right. I didn't want just that. Love was a prerequisite and it got me into trouble all the time, or rather kept me out of it. Dora stuck her head back in the truck and whispered to me with a nod of approval, "A brother and sister can look at each other's bodies, too." She ducked back out and joined her bestie, arm in arm, beauty queen and plumber's apprentice. Dora's parting words were the only mention we had made of our faux pas this morning, but she was giving us permission for it. I couldn't contain my excitement. I wanted to look at my sister again. Chloe's body too. The whole world's. I had a hard time driving away and concentrating on school.

When I did get home after a long day at school, Dora wasn't there. Her classes ended earlier than mine, so she probably went out with friends. Why would she even bother wanting to spend time with me or following up with our plans? I kept forgetting I her little brother. No, I could not forget that.

The contractors working on the house were leaving and the roll off dumpster in the front yard was full of everything that the initial contractor's couldn't save. The house would not be habitable yet and there was no sign of mom, even though she promised to talk to me already. How habitable was a house where no one talked anyway?

I went around the garage apartment and picked up and cleaned. I started to make dinner, but something told me that doing so was giving up all hope that she would show. So I sat down to build a new champion in my video game. Maybe I could level up an Athel for the next tournament. Thank goodness a noise outside stopped me from doing this stupidly compulsive ego flailing. It was Dora.

I jumped up to open the door as she came in with a large pizza box with a six pack of cheap beer balanced on top. "Hey bro!" She sits the pizza box on the floor in front of the flat screen and pops a beer, tossing it to me. She is smiling at me so entertained, that I cannot get out one word of protest about the beer spilling in the carpet. "Whoa! I get it! You want me to loosen up." She laughs and dropped on the floor with her own beer. "Welcome to the weekend, little brother, where there is no school tomorrow and the grades don't matter."

"Well! I thought you weren't going to call me that anymore?" I laughed.

She was eager to laugh with me, "Oh no. I did say that! How could I forget? To my HUGE brother!"

I offer my can to clink with hers and we toasted the weekend. All my anxieties washed out the door by the rush of laughter and youthful promise of sharing time with Dora. It was a miraculous change from yesterday, when I would not have said two words to her. She grabs a game controller and we fell into playing video games and drank, she more than I. She seemed to be a bit desperate to have a good time. She avoided all my casual conversations of her day or even her life. With a bit of annoyance at having to make conversation, she turned the questions on me, "Chloe says to say hi, but she really wants to know if you know what to do with a woman?" Dora made the question sound like simple conversation, but the topic hit me like an attack. I set the controller down and looked at her, "and what did you tell her?"

"Oh nothing," she said not meeting my eyes. She took that opportunity to slay my avatar and end the game. She was never one to let an opportunity slide by her.

When she finished gloating over her victory in the game, she fell back to poking me in the ribs like she would have done if we were elementary school children. The familiarity was both comforting and out of joint at the same time. We started to wrestle. I pinned her down and then let go.

"Why did you you stop?" she accosted me?

"I didn't want to hurt you," I lied. I found myself thinking about her naked, and again I felt wrong, so wrong.

"Like you could hurt me... " She flexed her muscles and showed off her navy sailor style tattoos on her biceps. She posed so I could get a good look at her and I took it. She fascinated me. This was my sister that I used to ride bikes with as a kid, and hide with her friends in a back room in the church playing cards while the adults had their social pot luck dinners. SHe showed me how to cheat at the cards. She was always my older sister that took care of me, but then then she drifted away as she became a teen and I never saw her. Mom used to call it "the change." I could see it now.

She changed before my eyes. Both then and now. But then again, so did I.

"I told Chloe that you were a respectful boy and wanted all things proper." She stated with a swig of beer. "You are a gentleman... Not like our dad." She chugged the rest of the beer can with a flourish, crushed the aluminum down with the palm of her hand into the floor. "Now, light a fire in that stove. It's getting chilly and I nearly froze last night."

I got up and threw some wood into the wood stove. I tried not to move too much as my muscles were sore from that sleeping on his salvage furniture. Meanwhile, Dora picked up. I don't believe I ever saw her pick up before. I guess with mom out of sight, she actually wanted to help out.

I sat next to her, on the carpet as well. I sat up akimbo. "Do you really believed that? I feel like I have been trapped in my own idea of being a gentleman for all my life. Every girl I ever liked, I over think my emotions. I see dad's careless regard for women and I try to not be like him, but am I? Would I do what dad did to mom anyway? I want the dream. I want to fall in love with my mate for all time and never leave her. I want to protect her and all everything good I see in her. I want to be her paladin. Is that so much to ask? I want love. That is why I have not ever taken a girlfriend. I want it to be right. I want it to be for love."

"Bobby, there is no such thing as love."

"Then how do people be girlfriend and boyfriend if there is no love?" I challenged her.

"Sex is sex. It has nothing to do with love."

I knew in my heart she was wrong and yet everything I ever heard and saw told me otherwise. This is the way the world worked. I was the one who was out of step. I was holding onto an historical idea, one founded in chivalrous fiction, propagated by novelists and bards.

"So it is all rapid heart beats and upset stomachs then. Nothing else. The world is base and humorless"

"No," she laughed. "There's a lot of plumbing involved."

I let her have her laugh and then joined in reluctantly. I had to find out what she meant by what she told Chloe. "So a gentlemen doesn't dirty himself to do plumbing then, is that it?"

I didn't expect an answer from that, and there was none to be had. Dora sat silent. I had had girlfriends, but always pushed them away. She knew this. Did she think I didn't want to have sex with them? Did she think I didn't know how? Was I ever the little brother and she could not see me any other way? I wanted sex to be an expression of love itself. If the girl and boy didn't love each other, then you couldn't do that magical thing called "making love." I never got a single girl to talk to me about love. If this is the way that the world was made, then I might die a virgin.

After a bit, she put her hand on my shoulder and lifted herself up. I was caught a bit off guard by the movement and the pressure. I groaned and held my shoulder. She immediately saw the pain in my face and knelt back down next to me.

"Oh Bobby. Its that couch, isn't it? It looks like something Chewbacca might sleep in, but it is only long enough for an Ewok. You can't sleep in that couch another night. You take back your bed. I'm shorter. I'll sleep on the couch."

"No!" I told her through my pain. "I'm a paladin, mem? You still have burns. You stay in the bed."

"Ok, but don't be ridiculous. There is plenty of space on that bed for the two of us."

She started to gather her things, but I was panic stricken. Images of her naked sprang to mind, to both brains. I hid my reaction and went to brush my teeth. When I came out, Dora was already in those ugly flannels and stoking the fire. It was getting warm, but I let he have her way with the temperature. She went up the ladder to the loft and I followed. We didn't talk and found opposite edges of the full sized mattress to sleep on.

i started to say goodnight, when she jumped out of bed to open the window. "It's hellava hot up here!" I fell out laughing as she settled back into bed. I think I dozed immediately. I wasn't used to the beer. It made my head drowsy and my body spin just a bit. I didn't have much time to think about Dora sleeping next to me. She had her back to me and that was fine by me. It was enough that I could smell her sweet scent. I needed to sleep and I was determined not to disturb her. She, however, put the bottom of her foot on mine, like two bear cubs touching in their den. It felt nice.

Then Dora shivered and tucked her body back up against mine for the warmth, pulling my arm over her. "Now I'm cold!"

This time I couldn't sleep.

I couldn't move lest she moved.

We were cuddled up together like spoons in a drawer. Her sole of her foot found the top of mine again and we laid like that under the covers as if to sleep. The cold breeze from the still open window mixed with the warm air of the wood stove below, but we didn't move, Not only that, but when she pulled my arm over her, my hand fell to her the middle of her belly with my fingers in the gap in her pajama tops. My fingers felt the divine skin of your stomach as she breathed slowly in and out. The tips sank into her soft body, belying the fact that her muscular frame was strong and firm under her skin. I felt the silkiness of the skin at the same time I felt the rhythm of her breathing pushing and pulling on my fingers so that I rode that ocean wave on her flesh so precisely to not give her reason to move away and deprive me of the sensation of flesh to flesh.







"