1
The Sheppard family had, as the words of an old song went, ‘picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and started all over again’. Well, almost. They had drawn on deep reserves of courage and dogged determination to get through the searing losses of loved ones.
In Jeff Sheppard’s case, it was the loss of his wife, Mary, from cancer that was diagnosed too late. In Ava’s case, it had been the loss of her darling husband, Luke, who had been caught in a raging bushfire. He had given his life in saving a family as their house was scorched before it went up in an explosive fireball that had been fanned by the raging wind.
Luke had been Jeff’s only boy and the father of three small kids that Ava devoted her life to now. They lived, as they had always done, in the clapboarded house at the edge of the bush and some ten klicks from Brisbane. Jeff’s place echoed in the empty silence, now that his Mary’s sing-song voice was no longer to be heard as she listened to some music station and went along with the words that she heard sung out.
Ava would often call him on his cellphone as he worked as a delivery driver, work rather than the money important to him now. He had more than enough put by, even for a guy of fifty and a man who didn’t look his age.
‘I just wanted to talk for a moment,’ she would often say, and he would slew to a stop somewhere at the side of the dusty road and he’d listen to her soft voice that had grown mellow by her experiences and loss. They had both known it could happen, but her Luke, his boy, had thrived in the fire service. His comrades, for they were that to each other in the battles they had faced so often, be they fires, car smashes or tempestuous floods mourned his loss. But the bonds had inexorably loosened.
They did not do so between them, the members of the Sheppard family. Jeff had taken it upon himself to step into the breach, as another saying went, and they all kept on mending; went horse riding or frolicked on the beach and the kids fooled around with ‘Pops’, as they called him now, in the yard of their home. They bonded closer than ever, the five of them. And…
And Ava felt that she had found another soulmate.
When she was low, or something brought her to a stop and the tears welled up, Jeff was always there for her. They shared in the pain. They laughed and had drawn strength from each other. She had Jeff’s shoulder to lean on, and she would even do that when they sat on her porch and watched her boys and only daughter cavort among the items of a play yard set that he’d found on an internet sale and simply brought to her place, unbidden.
Jeff would do anything to lighten her load.
Neither of them gave two cents for what others might think about seeing them together. She was a woman of thirty and with an older guy. She didn’t take that in. They could have their ways and she would sure have hers.
So what if Jeff’s spiky brown hair and stubble beard was showing some grey? He was lean and strong, and he had a wonderful smile that creased his face. He was always to be seen in a clean pair of jeans and a white shirt, short-sleeved or long, and his tuff boots covered in dust. He brought her flowers and made her feel special once more; even if she’d had a bad day at a local school working as a classroom assistant. The work often left her blonde hair a little straggly and her make-up a little thin.
She knew that Jeff minded her.
She also sensed that he was relying on her. She even got to thinking that they were falling in love with each other. The union of their bodies would make real what had begun to take hold in their minds, and how they spoke to each other as if they were a couple running a home and minding the kids.
2
Ava was the first to give voice to what she felt about their situation.
‘The past, what we had with Luke and Mary, has nothing to do with this. The present…the reality of it all does, Jeff, and how we are together and it’s also about what my kids need.’
Jeff nodded but said nothing in reply. They had each come to a place in their lives that neither of them could have foreseen, and, as Jeff had confessed, some would disapprove of. He’d always thought that rules were there to be broken; some anyway. They were rules that didn’t put reputations or lives at risk.
His boy, Luke, had always been up to the mark.
And now, here he was, his father talking to his widowed wife, Ava, and wondering about it all and where circumstances had brought them. Ava, a woman working to keep up a home and he rattling around in his place and driving a delivery van when he didn’t need the money. There had to be a place in the middle, where they could meet and feel at ease with the decision they had reached, unconventional as that might turn out to be.
He reached across the space on the swing seat to take hold of her hand and squeezed it.
‘I was thinking that some rules were meant to be broken. I was also wondering which of those rules, where they concern you and me, they would be.’
Ava didn’t resist him as Jeff drew her to his side, their first kiss a sure sign they had both reached the right place, together.
♥
The night lights were plugged in. They cast a soft glow onto the walls near the kids’ bedrooms; the boys sharing one and Casey alone in her little ‘den’ as she preferred to call it.
Ava was seen loitering by their doors, to listen in and know there was no longer any fight in them. Her adored children slept.
Finally, she had time for herself, as on most nights when the house fell quiet. Only now, as she felt Jeff’s arms embrace her and she was drawn against him, did she know that she would not be alone. She knew that she would share in what others might think was a forbidden love and give of herself to another man who was family. She ached for it to be so, but she also yearned for that moment to acknowledge all that had gone before.
There had been nights, when she had lain naked in her bed, and she had thought of this moment. She had imagined her seduction and the sharing of forbidden fruit with Jeff …her late husband’s father. She had thought of a wicked betrayal of all that had gone before, but those times were lost to her. They had been wrenched from her grasp and without a word of goodbye, save the usual kiss and utterances of ‘take care’ before Luke had gone to work.
Jeff had come onto her, discreetly but purposefully. He had, somehow and instinctively perhaps, understood the dilemma that she faced but could not clear from her mind. They had been restrained and had played word games. He had not claimed her body when they had all gone to the beach and swam together, but still watching over the kids. He’d not held her and fondled her tits, and she had not grabbed for his large dick that she knew, from Mary’s few words, the man possessed and that her Luke had also been blessed with.
She had ached to know of him and had acknowledged it during a happy day and with the kids all around them; the boundaries of who they were, or had been to each other, blurred beyond recognition. They had reached the stage where to be lovers was to acknowledge what they meant to each other, what they had gone through alone and as a couple. They had taken to wondering how the future might be made to fit their new expectations.
‘Hold me, just hold me, you darling man,’ she whispered as Jeff brought her to him. She reached behind her back and felt the swell in his shorts. ‘I know…I know and feel it too…I need to live for this special moment and with you.’
The tension between them was palpable. The emotions that she felt now were beyond her imagination. She would soon have given of herself to two men, tp two of a kind, a son and soon, his father. The maelstrom of emotions, that coursed through her body made her tremble in his arms. It provoked her to thread her fingers with Jeff’s and then to guide them over her body; to offer caresses through the fabric of her dress and to feel the warming breaths of the man on her skin, to her throat and neck, his lips just pressed to her skin as they each took their time to acknowledge what had to happen.
‘I need this from you,’ she heard him say.
‘I know and I’m there too.’
She met the slow kisses that Jeff placed on her cheeks and then her lips. They were soft, slow, wondering kisses that revealed his concern for her and what it meant for him to be claiming her thoughts and soon, her body.
She was to share in the journey of discovery, her recent fantasies about having sex with Jeff. Everything that would be associated with the act was to become real.
Ava ripped loose the fastening of her dress. She shivered as his hands were on her thighs, and then on her belly, brushed her breasts, as the dress was lifted away. It was cast to the floor by her feet.
‘Kiss me…kiss me…love me…be with me!’ she demanded, turning in his embrace. Jeff moved so that he could take off his shirt and she pressed her lips to his skin; bent, as he would soon do for her, and offered kisses to his chest. She trembled as he unfastened her bandeau, and pulled it away before he pressed his lips to her skin and claimed the indolent swell of her small breasts.
‘Be my darling, Ava…be my darling,’ he kissed, moving slowly over her body.
‘My room…in my room!’ she urged and took shuffling backward steps into that darkened space that she had once shared with Luke.
‘Are you sure…in here?’ he mumbled, in dismay and through her kisses. Jeff felt her nod. He clamped Ava’s hands on him before she pushed down his shorts. She heard the gasp of hot breaths on his lips as his dick sprung free and she claimed him.
‘You’re here…you’re here!’ she said on trembling lips as she kissed him with renewed ardour. ‘You’re here as I want you to be! We think of ourselves now!’’
Jeff pushed her back onto the hard bed. He felt her scramble and reach for the bedside light; met her gaze upon him as he straddled her, his knees under her armpits and she looked up at what he would bring into her. It trembled and swayed as Jeff knelt over her, allowing Ava to see him as never before.
‘We have no secrets now, darling Ava…’
Brazenly, she lifted her head and licked him. She sucked on his hardening sac and then moved to slide her hands around it. She groaned; writhed beneath him and bucked her hips as far as he would allow it as he reached down and fingered her. Jeff shifted and then moved to bury his lips and tongue in her sweet heat.
‘Move, you wonder! Let me sit on you!’
Jeff lay down as she demanded, and Ava soon lowered her body onto him; fingering her opening to make his slow, gently thrusting, entry possible.
‘Ava…Ava,’ he groaned, reaching up to claim her breasts and to tug on them and pinch her nipples until she pushed his hands away. Where she had taken him felt like a moist, hot cloth had wrapped itself around him. ‘Go on!’
She tugged and clamped with rousing urgency and passion upon his dick and rediscovered her ways of driving her hips over a man in sinuous movements that two years of denial had led her into pursuing with him. She sought a ride of delight and all that he brought to her.
‘I need you! I need this from you!’ she gasped, bending to kiss his lips and to languish in his embrace as he filled her. She met his look of wonder before slamming down upon him once more. ‘Yes…yes, do that!’
He had pushed back, gripped her hips, and pulled her down on him then eased, only to repeat the action. The bed creaked and their breaths echoed in the room. Their skins glistened from their pursuit of each other and the pursuit of new ways between them, as lustful yet caring lovers.
Ava moaned in her passion and from her efforts. She would not ease in her frenzied claims upon him and have Jeff know that it was him she was loving. She shook her head from side to side, her hair swaying from her efforts as her fingers pinched the skin of his breasts. She then pressed her fingers onto the base of his shaft, actions that made him push off the bed.
‘I want you, girl!’ he gasped and plumbed her slender; slack-breasted body so deeply and quickly.
‘Oh God…oh Jeff!’ She had begun the aching climb, her moans those of pain and of recalled pleasure from what a man could bring to her, into her, and with her. ‘Jeff! Oh Jeff, you darling man!’
Her cries filled the room as she shuddered in her orgasm and pleasure as she felt the leap of his flesh within her. Jeff held her on him and gave Ava no respite until he was spent, Ava slowly rocking and stretching him as their shared pleasure slowly ebbed away.
Ava leaned forward. She saw his eyes take in the indolent sag of her breasts before she held her mouth close to his and shared in their hot breaths. She languished in his embrace.
‘I’m…I’m yours now,’ she said over trembling lips, ‘yours if you want me?’ Ava lay down beside him and looked across the space between them. ‘Jeff, my darling?’
‘Hm?’ he said drowsily, her claims on his body wonderful and bestowing a sense of lethargy that had been discovered so quickly.
‘You…you could sell up your place and move in here?’ she suggested softly, wonderingly. The moment had finally come to tell him of her hopes.
‘Or, I rent out my place and we see how this goes?’
She smoothed a hand over his belly, then moved so that his flaccid length could be kissed. ‘I can smell myself on you. You’re covered in me. I don’t want this from anyone else…I’ve known that for some time, Jeff, darling. I’ve…I’ve fallen in love with you now. Love the man who has taken care of me and the kids without me having to say a word about it. You’ve just done that.’
Jeff drew her to him once more. He had her lie on him until it felt as if the whole of Ava’s body was touched by his. ‘We live and love for the day. The rest is for tomorrow…’
Ava moved so that she could look down into his eyes before she pressed her lips to his mouth, his throat, and then his chest. He was so strong and never allowed his deeper feelings to be revealed except for now.
‘In time we could try to make another. I’ve been with two of a kind, two men who loved me in their very own ways. I don’t want to go on living a lie, but I want something else and with someone else. I want all of that to be with you.’
Jeff kissed her into silence. He wanted all that she asked of him. He grieved for his lost son and his Mary. He too had to live on, and he would do that with Ava.
She was the one to make it all come right once more. Just as she had told him that she had been loved by two of a kind, he felt that way about two passionate women who remained in his life, through memory and, in Ava’s case, her warm presence. The Aborigine people probably had a saying for it; the ghosts of the past informed the present.
‘Ava? I want to wake up every morning and know that you’re close and that you know that I love you.’
She nodded furiously and could not hold back the tears.
‘Those we loved…still love, they look down on us. You will be with me, and I will love you now, my darling man. You will be here with me and the kids and, in time, those that we may have. I want that to be with you.’
She took him to her; she would live and love it out with him.
The Sheppard family would mend and live on, just as they had been forced to do, but the search for solace and true company was finally over.
♥
