Forty-nine Candles... Ch. 02

By the time that I had gotten my over excited little princess to bed that night, I was exhausted. Despite the orange juice that Marco had given me, several pain pills and a full dinner, my head was pounding like a mariachi band. Old, hung-over and horny. What a combination? What a shitty way to end my forty-ninth birthday!

I had just managed to slip into bed with my ereader and the gift card that my older daughter gave me when she snuck her head around the corner. "You busy, Mom?"

Me? Busy? When I am in bed, hardly. For two years since the separation, my bed had been a no-man's land. My private domain. I shrugged and said, "No, sweetie. What you need?"

My beautiful older daughter, who reminded me of the young woman I had been almost thirty years ago, took a seat on the edge of the bed. "I am so sorry, Mom," she said through tears.

I shook my head, 'what was she talking about?' She had nothing to be sorry about. She made the Dean's list almost every semester. She worked a part-time job to supplement the loans, scholarships and what little money her grandmother had left her for college. She even came home early to study instead of staying at college and partying until exams. Hell, she even took care of her little sister on my birthday so I could make a total fool of myself. Who could ask for a better daughter? "What are you talking about Stacy? Sorry for what?" I asked through the pounding mariachi drums in my head.

She kept looking at the floor. She wrung her hands over and over in her lap. The tears were sliding faster and faster down her cheeks now. I was starting to get worried, really worried. Stacy was not the type for theatrics. She had always been a good girl, just like her mother. But this afternoon proved that even the best girl could have her bad moments. "What is wrong, baby?" she asked again as she held open her arms.

Her usually got-it-all-together threw herself into my arms with the abandon I had come to expect from her little sister...after a meltdown. But then again we all deserved that kind of freedom once in a while. I had certainly made the most of mine this afternoon. She cried and cried as I held for several long moments until her eyes were swollen, her nose was running and her body shook with great hiccups. I brushed her back from where it had fallen in her face and I placed a soft kiss on her forehead. "Tell Mommy," I smiled.

She nodded her head, but looked down to where her hands were wringing restlessly in her lap. "There's this boy at college."

I smiled, boy troubles are easy to handle. At barely twenty anyway. Hot man troubles that is another matter I thought as a picture of tall, dark and Marco filled my fertile imagination. "You like him?" I questioned.

She shook her head violently from side to side. "No, that's the problem. We were in the same group for a class project in abnormal psych. He always walked me back to my dorm from the library after our meetings. But I just thought that was sweet. Then after the project he started texting me and putting crap up on my wall. I told him that I wasn't interested in him like that but then I started seeing him around campus like he was following me."

Her fingers stopped and she looked up at me then, "That was why I came home early, Mom. I had talked to the campus police but they said he had not done anything all that wrong. Not yet anyway. They couldn't help me. So I thought I could get away from him by coming home early."

I nodded my head, feeling as helpless in light of her current situation as I had when the school and doctors began using the A-word as I had come to think of my youngest daughter's autism. I nodded my head and took a deep breath as determined to save this one as I was her little sister, even if I had no idea how to do either. "We'll figure something out," I promised bravely and foolishly.

She shook her blond head at my words, "No, Mom, you don't understand. I saw him today. After I picked Katie up from school. He is this spoilt rich kid and drives this fancy red Jaguar. I swear I saw it parked around the corner from her school."

I inhaled as my motherly alarm bells rang even louder. This boy...man...could be a danger to both my girls. "Are you sure, Stacy?"

She gave me that look, the one that says adults are idiots. "Mom, how many red Jaguars are there in THIS neighborhood?"

I had to chuckle at her honest assessment of our financial situation. My small apartment in Queens was a far cry from the condo on the Upper Eastside that I had once shared with Katie's father. But it was mine and I called it home. I was determined that I would protect my girls here too. "Point made," I said as I held up my hands in surrender. "Did you call the police?" I asked.

She shook her head 'no' again. "What's the use? They will just say that he has the right to go wherever he wants in the city. That he is not doing any real harm. That they can't do anything unless he harms me." She blushed, "The sergeant on the campus police even said I should be proud that a guy like Jason Dodd even noticed me."

She looked up at me with those big trusting eyes and I felt as if someone had stabbed me right in the heart with a dagger, the pain was so deep at her next words. "Mom, I know his family is rich. And I guess he ain't that bad looking. But something about him just gives me the creeps." She paused and stared back at her hands in her lap for a long moment, "I don't know why I told you any of this. I am a big girl now. You have plenty on your plate with Katie." She shrugged her shoulders, "I guess I just wanted you to know in case..."

The way that those words hung in the air between us was one of the most frightening moments of my life. "In case what, Stacy?"

She shook her head, "I'm just being dramatic I guess, Mom. You are probably right. It is probably nothing. Just that I know his last girlfriend." She looked me in the eye as she spoke, "He beat her up pretty bad when she broke up with him, Mom. Told her who was she to break up with him? She went back to him then because she was afraid of him."

She reached across and squeezed my hand as she added, "He hurt her real bad then, Mom. She won't call it rape because they were together. But that is what it was. Then he just dumped her. Said that he was the one that decided when something was over. She left college after that."

My blood ran cold that my daughter was facing such things at such a young age. That there was little I could do to actually help her even. That I was as powerless to keep her safe as I was to give Katie the kind of future that I had wanted for her. But somehow I would do both.

I drew Stacy into my embrace and held her for several long moments. At first she resisted, determined now that she had unloaded to bear her burdens like the adult she was rushing to become. Then she relaxed into my arms. "Don't worry, sweetheart. We'll figure something out. I promise." Although I had absolutely no idea how I was going to keep that promise. Just that I was going to. I brushed the tears back from her eyes and kissed her nose just like I used to when I tugged her in at night.

"You start exams tomorrow. You better get to bed," I smiled reassuringly. She nodded and hugged me a bit tighter.

"I love you, Mom."

"I love you too, princess," I smiled at the woman-child next to me on the bed. Really what more could any woman want than two amazing daughters?

She smiled coyly, "So, Mom, what did you get up to today?"

I shook my head, "Nothing much," I lied.

She burst out laughing as she pointed to the spot where my neck and shoulder met, "Next time tell him to be more careful where he bites, Mom. Gees, you old people are disgusting. I never knew my Mom was into vampires."

I must have blushed a dozen shades of red at my daughter's frank assessment of the situation. I honestly could not even remember Marco biting my neck. Of course, between that alcoholic brew from Hades and those heavenly kisses I could barely remember my own name by the time the man was done with me.

My daughter smiled at me and giggled, "Sweet dreams, Mom," as she disappeared back down the hall way to the tiny room that the girls shared when she was home.

My hand came up to rub the spot she had pointed at. It was certainly sore. I thought about getting up and looking in the mirror to see for myself, but I was just too damned tired at that point. I would look more closely when I showered before work tomorrow morning. And tomorrow was looming closer and closer as I looked over at the clock. I turned off the lamp on the bedside table and tried to get comfortable.

I tossed and turned. Thoughts of crazed lunatics and rapist pursuing my daughters filled my mind with fear. Then visions of handsome bartenders with seduction in mind intruded. I fell into a restless sleep where the two battled and warred for supremacy, merged into an erotic nightmare of warm kisses and bone chilling fright.

I sat straight up in bed. My nightgown was damp with perspiration. My heart pounded out an Africa drum symphony in my chest that heaved with each breathe that burned its way into my lungs. My head spun as I tried to put all the puzzle pieces together. I could remember little of the dream. Except his face. The taste of him.

'Damn,' I cursed my needy body. I had always been a highly sexual person. It was one of the things that I missed most about marriage...an available cock. As horrid as that sounded, it had been one of the things that held my hasty marriage to Katie's father together for as long as it had lasted...sex.

Stacy's father had been the great love of my life, my high school sweetheart and soul mate. After high school, while I went on to college, he had gone to the police academy, joined New York's finest. He had even made Detective a couple of years before that day.

That day. It was how the whole world thought of it. It certainly had been a day that the whole world changed. For our family too. As a Detective, Mike should not have been in those buildings. That was a 'beat' cop's job, but Mike always did have that hero complex. And he had been too. We had met a dozen people whose lives he had saved that morning, directing them down the stairways as he himself climbed higher and higher to his end. I felt the tears then. Almost fifteen fucking years and still I cried when I thought about it...about him.

That was what it was...Marco reminded me somehow of Mike. That had to be it, I thought as I lay back in my bed to toss and turn once more. How was it that after all these years my body still called out for his commanding touch? Missed his caress, his firm hand?

Mike would have known what to do about our girl's situation. He would have called in a couple of favors and everything would be just fine. But I was as alone to face this dilemma as I had been to face everything else for so fucking long. Alone to face the dark night and deep burning need that went so much deeper than just another body in bed, loving me, buried deep inside of me. I remembered the words to Katie's favorite Dr. Seuss book, "Alone will be something you'll be quite a lot."

I felt the tears piling up like spring flood waters behind a dam. They threatened to burst its walls at any moment. But after so many years, too fucking many tears to count, I knew better than to think they held any real answer, any real sense of relief. No tears only got you swollen, red eyes in the morning.

As shallow and meaningless as it might seem to some people, I reached for the drawer of my bedside table. I opened it in the dark just as I had so many other nights over the past couple of years. My fingers wrapped quickly around him. Bob...my battery operated boyfriend as I called him. The one that I could turn to for relief at least of the physical ache of being alone. If he could not listen to my problems, offer the loving support that I needed, well at least what he gave only cost me a couple of dollars' worth of batteries every now and then. And if people wanted to judge me, let them. Let them try walking a mile in my shoes some days...especially on birthdays like this one.

I tried very hard to push all those thoughts back from my mind. To concentrate only upon the soft whir of my rabbit pulsating reassuringly in my fingers. I drew in a deep breath as I pushed my nightgown those couple of inches higher beneath the sheets. I closed my eyes in the darkened room and brought the cool, soft plastic throb into contact with the soft, wet throb between my legs.

I held it in place for a long moment. My nipples tightened against the heated cotton of my night gown. My other hand moved slowly up my body to squeeze and pluck at my nipples. I bit my lower lip to keep from moaning out loud. It had been so long since I had felt another's hands on my ripe body...too long. Until today...

I allowed my mind to drift off then. To imagine what it would have felt like if... If Marco had not been such a fucking gentleman. How much better my tits would have fit into his big hands. He could easily hold a whole one in each hand. Would he have pinched them hard? Twisted them just the way I liked. The way that I could never quite manage to get just right. Not like Mike had. No one had ever done it like Mike did.

I felt the tears scalding the back of my eyelids once more. I sniffled back the pain and tried to focus upon this new fantasy. I had lived for long enough with that man as the only comfort besides Bob. Tonight I would forge new pathways, new fantasies.

I pulled on my nipples as hard as I dared but not hard enough. I moved the rabbit deeper between the wet folds of my thighs as I arched up to meet the teasing sensation of its bunny ears upon my clitoris. I buried the pulsating shaft as deeply inside of my needy cunt as I could. But still it did not quite reach that sweet spot that his shaft had. Then again neither had my ex-husband.

I felt it then. That damned frustration that grew and grew. That left me hanging without any real relief. That had been the outcome of way too many of these late night assignations with Bob. I stifled back the sobs of unfulfilled desires as I tried turning the magic dials upon my vibrator. Perhaps this time a higher setting would do the trick. Would give me the relief that I desperately needed. Would fill the hole that nothing had since that early morning quickie so very very very long ago.

In desperation I allowed my mind to go what I so rarely did these days. I allowed it to drift back over time to that morning. It was beautiful. We had just gotten back from a summer vacation to Florida. It was Mike's first shift, an early one. But as he still did after over a decade as man and wife, he reached for me even before the alarm rang that morning. The early morning sunlight was drifting through the bottom of the blinds.

I felt his morning woody pressed against my ass and chuckled, "How many times have I told you not to bring a loaded gun to bed?" I teased.

Mike lifted my top leg and slide inside of me without a pause. "Just let me unload a couple of rounds then, sweetheart," he returned with good natured teasing as he slid all the way inside of me, finding that sweet spot that sent me spiraling out of control.

Then suddenly I was...spiraling out of control. My cunt contracted tightly around the cold plastic of the mechanical device. My clit throb in time with the humming of its ears just as it had that morning when his fingers found my magic button. Before everything had come crashing in on us.

I collapsed back against the pillows. Exhausted but not fully satisfied. I never was. I feared I never would be again. The tears slipped over that dam then. Poured over until I turned my face into the pillow to keep the girls from hearing me cry...again. I fell back asleep to once more fight those confused nightmares.

***

I awoke still tired. I was late once more. Stacy needed to catch the bus across town to make it to her first exam. She could not help me get Katie ready. And of course, any deviation from her routine, especially a Mom rushing around like a crazy woman, is certain to set my special princess off to a bad start. By the time I finally got her dressed and to school I was almost an hour late for work. It was the second time this month and I feared another might well be my last as I got my boss's stare at me across the room.

I skipped lunch, determined to make up for lost time and perhaps salvage my job at least for another day. I had just about forgotten my early morning decision to call one of Mike's old friends at the station. See if there was anything they could do to help me out with Stacy's situation. As I rushed the final blocks towards Katie's school, I reached into my purse for my phone.

I saw it then. The wadded up paper with his number on it. I shook my head as I tossed it into the next garbage can that I saw. That was that, I reassured myself as I finally found that phone number in my contacts list. I would handle this on my own...just as I had handled everything for the past thirteen years. As I probably always would. But that was okay...I had Bob when things got too stressful. If he did not quite hit that magic spot? Well, we made it through...somehow in the end.