Heart Ball
by Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net

If you are under the age of 18, or otherwise forbidden by law to read electronically transmitted erotic material, please go do something else.

This material is Copyright, 2001, 2003, Uther Pendragon. All rights reserved. I specifically grant the right of downloading and keeping ONE electronic copy for your personal reading so long as this notice is included. Reposting requires previous permission.

All persons here depicted, except public figures depicted as public figures in the background, are figments of my imagination and any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

Heart Ball
by Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net

Part 5
Continued from Part 4

"Tell Mrs. Green," Wayne told his daughter the next day after lunch, "that school is back in session. She can't have Wednesday and Saturday. Why don't you two just agree on Saturdays, anyway? It's better for school. Or some Fridays?"

"Well, she can get permanent second shift; but she can't get permanent choice of days." Besides, Fridays and Saturdays were date nights. But Mrs. Green had agreed to a limit of one day a week -- way back in the fall.

"I don't want to seem selfish; I don't think I've opened it in a decade. But when is Steven bringing the Shakespeare back?"

"Bringing it back? Isn't it where it belongs?" They looked, and it was on the shelf. "If that's not where you keep it, it's my fault. We didn't get to the footnotes last night. We didn't get anywhere near the amount of studying done that I had hoped for."

"Spend too much time kissing?"

"Didn't get near the amount of that done I had hoped for either." If her dad didn't want to know, Shannon figured, he shouldn't ask.

"When is the next meeting of your committee?" her mother asked. "Is there any preparation you have to do? Shannon didn't think so. It was hard to see where the plans were going, and she hadn't thought of it since walking out of the door of the school. Her mother's question, though, gave her an idea.

"Well, there is one thing I could do, Mom." She called up Heather Swenson, the girl who had been holding out about the decor she wanted to use. "Look, Heather, this is Shannon Bryant. I'm on the dance committee with you. You know those cupids you want to use?"

"And Ken ignored my idea completely. I campaigned for that, that..." (Heather obviously had parents within hearing range) "I carried the junior class for him. He called it a return favor. But when I have an idea different from his, see who doesn't return favors. Just watch!"

"Thing is," Shannon didn't know whether calm reason would penetrate that sort of anger, "I can't see how we would make them. They might look great, but people aren't going to vote for something when they have to do it and they can't see how. Do you see at all what I mean?"

"You're against me, too."

"I'm not against you, not really against your idea. But you could bring in a couple of examples and tell us how you made them. I might vote for it then. So might a lot of others."

"You think so?" Heather sounded a lot less attached to her design plan than she had been attached to the idea of being persecuted.

"Can't hurt. And Heather..." Shannon had seen some odd looking cupids in her time. "make them decent. Know what I mean? That Mr. Babaian talked like an awful prude."

"I'm not like Ken. Anyway, thanks."

At half-past three, She rang Mrs. Green's bell. Her employer handed her a check on the way to her car. Once the demons were in bed, she wiped up the worst of the mess on the kitchen table before having a second helping of the dinner she had fixed them. She left the kitchen neater than it had looked when she arrived. She scooped up the loose toys in the dining and living rooms, dumped them in the toy box, and managed to force down the lid.

She spread out her homework on the dining table and filled out her own cards. A little before Steve was due, she ducked into the downstairs john to remove her bra. She rebuttoned the shirt, tucked it back into her jeans, and checked herself out in the mirror. But Steve didn't come. Well, she had told him not to if he hadn't finished the homework. Still, she was worried; that edict had been supposed to motivate study, not prevent the visit.

An hour after she had given up hope, Steve rang the doorbell. "Sorry," he said, "Mom's car wouldn't start."

"You walked here?" The snow and slush made bicycling impossible.

"Only from the garage." The guy had driven out a new battery in the tow truck. Steve had hitched a ride back with him.

But he still would have to walk home, she thought. Maybe she could prevail upon Mrs. Green to drive him.

Meanwhile, he had shed his coat and a sweater. He took her hands in his and kissed each of them. Then he kissed her left hand as elaborately as he had kissed her right the night before. He kissed her palm, licked it, kissed up the inside of her arm, finally licked the inside of her elbow. Not until she shivered and pulled her arm away did he pull her into a real kiss -- mouth to mouth.

Shannon was flustered. The shivers from Steve's kisses weren't only because his face was cold against her arm. When he kissed her, she opened her lips; but he ignored the invitation, licking her lips until she pushed her tongue to meet his. Then he pulled her hips forward until her groin pressed into his leg, and she could feel his hardness against her stomach. Letting that grip and her own hands around his neck support her, she slumped against him. Her sensitive breasts were pressed against his chest by her weight. His big hands were opening and closing on her jean-clad hips. Conscious as she was that he could bring her no relief tonight, she was deeply turned on.

Steve finally broke the kiss because he had to breathe. Then, however, he headed reluctantly for the john. Shannon's responsiveness had been a joy, her tongue's reaction to his teasing no less than the hardness at the end of the softness against his chest. Her jeans were probably a message, but she had worn no bra under a blouse that could be unbuttoned. As he waited for his erection to soften enough to use the facilities, he removed his own shirt and undershirt. His shirt was buttoned and neatly tucked in when he came out, but he carried his undershirt in his newly-warmed hands.

"Put that in your backpack," Shannon told him. "We have a play to review." Shannon drilled him on the first two acts sitting in a chair halfway across the room from his place on the sofa. "And 'wherefore' means what?" she asked.

"It does? I thought it meant 'why?'"

"It does. I meant, 'What does "wherefore" mean?' You are right. It means 'Why are you Romeo?' She loves him. Her love would be easier without that name."

"Okay." They'd covered that in class, and less confusingly. When they had covered the first scene in Act Three, however, he rebelled. "Just because I did these at home doesn't mean that I don't get a reward." He walked behind her chair. He kissed the top of her head before pulling her chin upward to expose her face to his. While they kissed upside down, his hands cupped her breasts outside her blouse. The nipples firmed into his palms in the way he loved so well.

"Hey," she said when he moved his kiss to her ear. "If that is just for a scene, what reinforcement will you want for a whole act?" He pulled his face back to give her a leer. "Well, you can't have it!" He pulled a dramatically sad face and pouted. The faces were ridiculous upside down. He kissed her forehead while unbuttoning the second button of her blouse.

For Scene Two, he repeated the performance. Her breasts were so soft against his hands that he had to hold himself back from crushing them. When he unbuttoned the next button, she pulled the edges of the blouse forward, letting him see her hard nipples. Somehow, he resisted the impulse to grab them. While he returned to the sofa, she rebuttoned the one he had unbuttoned the first time.

The small gap from that loose button was more disturbing than the direct sight of the naked breasts. He swallowed and managed to go on. When they reached the fifth scene, she had only one button holding the blouse closed over her breasts.

"Boy!" Steve said. "He's as bad as TV. All those dirty jokes in the beginning, and then he deals with the love scene by having them come out early in the morning."

"You just have a dirty mind." Did he really believe that she hadn't thought about love, their love, in terms of a bed? She wanted that, she would have that, just not quite yet. And Romeo and Juliet had been married by that time, too.

They finally returned to studying and agreed on the information conveyed in the last scene.

Steve unbuttoned his own shirt while approaching slowly. She held both her hands towards him. He kissed each knuckle before helping her up. He pulled her blouse out of her jeans, undid the last button, and swept both of their shirts open. They were skin to skin for the next kiss, the first time since summer.

His hands were on her warm back, technically not an erogenous zone. He had sworn, however, to make love to all the parts he had neglected recently. If their culmination was denied him until the wedding night (and he was in no position to argue about that) he would rehearse the first act of that night until she felt as deprived as he did. The feel of the skin stirred some memory. When she broke the kiss to catch her breath, he scratched gently over that lovely warmth.

Shannon sagged against him. Her breasts warmed by his naked skin, her mouth explored by his warm tongue, even her back scratched by his nails, she was equally conscious of what was not happening. Her freely exposed breasts had not been grabbed -- for one thing. She had no objection to Steve's attraction to her sexy bits; on the contrary, she regretted that the messiness below would limit their making out. But Steve was interested in her. Feeling that, she grabbed his face between her hands to kiss him again, kiss him fiercely and possessively. She kissed him, in fact, the way she'd just been grateful that he hadn't kissed her.

If Shannon's kiss was even partly a response to her back being scratched, Steve was willing to scratch forever. He ran his fingernails up either side of her spine, then spread his hands to the corners of her shoulder blades. As the intensity of her kiss waned, he moved her towards the couch. He brushed his notecards onto the floor. To hell with the play, he thought. He had the real Juliet.

He eased Shannon down and back. Then he knelt among his spilled cards to kiss her. He started on her forehead and eyebrows. continued to her temple and ear, and reached her neck before she pulled his face into a mouth kiss. During that kiss, he smoothed his hand down her belly to her belt, slid it up again to cup her breast.

Then he kissed her in the same way he ate caramels; he feasted on the smooth skin of her neck and ribs and belly, but he mostly resisted the greater attractions of her breasts. Even when he yielded to that temptation, he kissed the slopes lightly instead of sucking on the peaks. He chose his spots like caramels from a bag, too, spending some time on each spot, but choosing the next one arbitrarily. He loved her, all of her. He wanted all of her, too. Tonight, the top half was his; and he was claiming it.

Shannon read some part of those feelings from his actions. She felt loved; he was kissing her everywhere. She also felt all tingly; the extra sensitivity of her breasts (she'd actually started the evening afraid that she would have to call off the making out) made these light kisses the more exciting. She felt dominated. At no time had his will clashed with hers, yet Steve was running this show in a way that he had never seemed to run any previous one.

Steve kissed the bridge of Shannon's nose, and then returned to her mouth. Her tongue greeted his eagerly, and the swirl of his desire almost made him forget to move on. He went all the way to her navel, where she wriggled provocatively to his kiss. When he moved his mouth up a little, he stroked her legs with his nails. He used the same nails-reversed stroke on inside of her thigh as he'd used on her back, figuring the denim would provide the gentleness.

"My belt is buckled," Steve said. "So is yours." He climbed between her legs on the couch and kissed her navel once more. This time Shannon's wriggle threatened to dump them both. She quieted as he kissed up her body. He was ready for his darkest caramels, her nipples. "Tell me when I am too rough," he said. He only used gentle licks and tiny, tentative, sucks on them. When his passion grew beyond that limit, he thrust his face between her breasts to suck the firmness there.

She shook as he kissed and licked her breasts. They felt a little sore, but the kisses felt a lot sexy. She took his kiss between them as an expression of gentle care combined with wild passion. When he kissed her mouth, his elbows barely on the cushion, his hardness pressed against her groin, she accepted him. Her hands stroked his back, her thighs hugged his, her mouth opened wider. It was finally Steve who broke the kiss.

He dropped back until his butt hit the armrest. He kissed her mound through the jeans, first at the zipper and then on either side of it. "Aren't girls' jeans supposed to have a zipper on the side?"

"Some do."

"You can't guess what I have."

"What?" Please, she begged silently, not some protection. Her first time wasn't going to be on Mrs. Green's sofa.

"I have notes on the fourth act," he said.

"I need a break," Shannon said

"Don't tuck your blouse in, please," he asked. And, while she took her break, he did a little adjusting of his own clothes in the kitchen. He retrieved the tissues from his coat, then returned to find his note cards a mess. They looked as if some fool had tossed them on the floor and then knelt on them.

She changed her Tampax, straightened her clothes -- obediently leaving her blouse out, and looked closely in the mirror. Once she'd cleaned up around her eyes, she looked a little strange but not too bad. Why messing around affected her eye makeup, she couldn't figure. Lipstick, sure, not that she wore lipstick to babysit, but why eye makeup?

She decided to leave it off. It would only get messed up again. And if Steve was going to run screaming when he saw her without makeup, she had better learn that now.

Steve didn't even seem to notice. After each scene, he would turn her so her back was to him, lift up her blouse to hold her breasts in his hands, lick and nibble some part of her that he could reach from that position. It was nice, sometimes it was very exciting; but when had he taken charge of the reinforcement?

When they had compared their answers for the last scene, he turned off the lamp next to his side of the couch. "We are ahead of the class. I can't believe it." He stowed his notecards carefully this time. Then he kissed her from behind once again.

"Lean over," he said, "there are still parts of you I haven't kissed." She leaned on a table while he pushed up her blouse. He sprinkled kisses all over her back. His position was awkward, but hers evoked some memory. He straightened and pushed his groin against the bottom of her jeans. When he scratched her back, she pressed back against him. Only the very bottom of his cock felt the pressure. "It didn't matter when I said that my belt was buckled. I should have said that my fly was zipped." He slipped his hands around her sides to hold up her breasts. "We could make love just like this." Well, he thought, not like this; her legs were awfully short. She would stand on something or kneel on a sofa. "Your pants down, but mine just unzipped."

She stood. Moving his hands to hold the bottoms of her breasts instead of the peaks, he pulled her back against him. "Not the first time," he continued very softly. "Our first time will be the full monty. Not standing, not the back seat of some car." He had a sudden vision of the back seat of his mother's Civic. "Not even the Cherokee. Y'know how, at the end of a wedding, the groom lifts the bride's veil, he kisses her, and they sort of roll the credits...."

She sidestepped his grasp, then turned to face him. She needed a bit more room. "Lutherans might roll the credits. Methodists have a recessional and then head for the reception." Not that the weddings that either of them had seen broke down on denominational lines.

"That's what I meant. Anyway, what it is is a symbol. In front of everybody, he removes one piece of clothing and kisses what is revealed. Once they get privacy....

"But that's not tonight. Tonight, that stays buckled." He reached out to tap her belt buckle. "Right?"

She nodded.

He took a deep breath. He so wanted her hands on him. "Well, one belt should. English is done for tonight. The question is whether you want to study math..." He tried to sound casual. "... or biology."

Did she, Shannon thought, want to see it again? She could still remember it jumping within her hand. And she needed to get back in control. He was watching her intently. She smiled and nodded.

He stripped off his shirt and then his shoes. Lying down on the sofa, he unbuckled and unzipped. He pushed his undershorts down to the base of his cock before covering himself again with a flap of his jeans. He'd lost some firmness during the pause in their playing, but now he was so hard in anticipation of her hand that he was afraid that he would shoot. "Want to explore?" he asked.

She used the weight of the belt ends to keep the fly wide open. So this was what he looked like: a head that looked a little like a heart -- more than she did really, a shaft that was the same thickness from the head to his groin, some blood vessels were visible in the shaft and one pale vein seemed to run its length. His thing was arched a little above his lower belly and his groin. The groin was covered with hair. None of this was really surprising. It wasn't as if she was some sort of Victorian girl; she'd seen pictures in sex-ed.

What was different from the illustrations in the books was that this was the bottom part. Things like the cleft in the head with the big vein running into it. She pulled it up between finger and thumb and moved her head to see the top. It jerked back. "Don't do that," she said.

"It's not my fault!" She was lucky that he hadn't blasted her in the face. "Or were you talking to him?"

"I was talking to you. Why do you treat it as if it were different?" She could almost see it as different, though. As some separate live animal. And, as she petted it gently, it jumped for her.

"He has a mind of his own; that's a fact. And he loves the way you touch him. Do you think you could give me a kiss before you bring this to a close?"

She adjusted her position and gave him a deep kiss. Their tongues played in a far sexier activity than the one she'd just left. "I like being kissed," he said as she raised her head. Well, she liked being the one kissing him, too. She attacked his right nipple with a sucking kiss.

His response would have surprised her; he murmured something and hugged her head to his chest. Except that her own response shocked her; there was something sexy in being the one giving the kiss. Her nipples got almost as hard as his did.

The break wasn't relaxing Steve's cock as much as he had hoped, but he no longer cared. "Oh Shannon," he sighed. "Oh Shannon, I love you."

"Nope." She rested her head on his chest. In this position, she could hear his heart thump. "Tonight, I'm loving you." She sniffed. He'd worked since showering, walked in the freezing weather, been chilled and overheated. He didn't smell bad, just a touch masculine, maybe a little Steve. His penis looked like it was lying down more; maybe she could see the top part.

When she tried, she could get it straight up away from his body, using her thumb and forefinger. The top part was no surprise, not heart-shaped at all -- maybe like those shields in old time history. But it stiffened while she was holding it, and she could hear his heart speed up.

It had been so hard that first time, and hot. Well, it was hotter than the rest of his skin now. She moved her fingers up and down the shaft. Again the skin moved on top of something harder. It was something much harder now, and his heart went "Kabump." But the shaft escaped her fingers to lie further towards her. She wrapped her whole hand around it. His heart was louder for another beat.

"I hope your father doesn't make you clean his guns," Steve said.

"He hasn't gone hunting in years, and he won't let me touch them." She thought girls should be allowed to handle guns, and she thought this an odd time to bring up the subject.

"Because you are staring straight down the barrel now." Oh, that. Steve laid a tissue down on his belly. "I have some more in my hand. I'll catch it, but you won't see me come from that position."

"How long do I have?" She probably should watch it shoot. After all, he wanted to do that inside her. On the other hand, listening to his heartbeat every time she made his penis jump was fun too. She squeezed a little and moved her hand back and forth. It sort of pushed back at her squeeze, and his heart jumped again. "What should I do?"

"Why ask me? It responds much more to you. The most sensitive part is on the bottom, just under the head." 'Bottom' and 'under' weren't the clearest words just then.

Guessing, she brushed her fingertips over the notch in the heart. The reaction of both penis and heartbeat showed that she's been right. Having decided that these experiments were fun, she brushed other parts at random. His breath was starting to come rapidly, too. Before getting into position to see the whole show, she kissed the nipple she hadn't kissed yet. His breath hissed at that. Too bad that she couldn't listen to his heartbeat while doing that.

Steve's hands were clutching the sofa cushions on both sides of him. Sometimes, he had tried to make it last. But even in the summer before Shannon's, when that had been his usual morning preoccupation, he had never treated his cock the way Shannon had. It was glorious; it was agony. "Anyway, when we do it for real, you will be around me, gripping me all the way from top to bottom. What I usually do," hint, hint, please! "is try to imitate that, moving my hand up and down."

Shannon knelt in a good position to see. She tried to do what he had said, holding it down on the base. However light her grip, however, her fingers seemed to bring the skin with them instead of sliding over it.

Steve was in heaven; Steve was in hell. Shannon slid her hand up to the top and tried again. The same thing happened, and -- anyway -- the thing was jerking around. She took a firmer grip and pumped a little harder. "Oh Shannon. Now. Now. Now!" And it was now; and Steve, feeling his whole body pulse out through her hand, reached the tissues out to catch it.

The sight of the drops squirting out didn't impress Shannon, especially as Steve was catching them very close to the source. What was impressive was the sight of his body as he clenched every muscle and rose off the couch. His head and feet must have touched, but Shannon saw -- even felt -- his belly and groin rise. His face looked odd as well. A minute later, all of him relaxed.

The part in her hand relaxed so much that it got some of the goo on her fingers. Babysitting had taught her not to mind bodily wastes. She dropped it and looked into Steve's smile. "I love you, Shannon," he said. She moved back to her old position where she could hear his heartbeat. It was strong, but slowed while she listened.

Steve had never come like that. And, in the aftermath, Shannon cuddled him where he lay. This was love; this was bliss. After a while, though, he had to get up to wash the mess off. That was fairly clumsy. He got to the bathroom with a lot of wet tissue in his left hand while holding up his pants with his right. When he came out, it was time to go home -- past time really.

He'd come to a decision, though. "When we really do it, I'm going to cuddle you all night afterwards. This having-to-leave bit sucks."

"I'll miss you, too," she said. "Can't you stay here and let Mrs. Green drive you home?"

"What if she won't? What if she does, and then says, 'Steve was a real burden last time; he can't visit you any more'? Besides my mother expects me home. They don't set a curfew like your parents do, but they do have their limits. Dad said once that your having a curfew was enough to get me home. Anyway, where do you sleep here?" If they could share a bed, even fully dressed, it might be worth the hassle.

"She has real trouble finding babysitters. I doze on the couch."

"I've walked it before. Just don't get dressed any more until I go. Do you want to see it limp?"

When he got it out, however, it was partly firm, angling down. "It's limp as a string most of the time," he said. "Just not around you."

He finished dressing: undershirt and shirt, shoes, and sweater. For their last kiss, he tightened and loosened his hands on her hips while pulling her against the near-firmness of his organ. He put on his coat, had one more brief kiss, and walked out into a serious snowstorm.

She shivered in sympathy, made sure that the door was bolted, and went into the john to get her bra back on. Dressing fully to go to sleep, she thought, was a silly act. She checked on the boys, who were -- unfortunately -- perfectly safe. She repacked her backpack, adjusted the lights, and pulled her coat over her.

After flicking a brief prayer upward about Steve's immediate future, she thought about his -- and her -- immediate past. How had he got control?

She remembered all his kisses, his tender holding of her breasts. Beyond kisses, she recalled those nibbles with his lips on the back of her neck and the corner of her shoulder. She shivered once again. What had he said about her rules? No, not yet, not now. Well, the jeans were a 'not now'; and he had conquered her by showing all his love to the parts above her waist.

You would never cast Steve as Romeo. He was more a can-do kind of guy. Configure Shannon's computer? Steve could do that; had done that. Reduce Shannon to a puddle of lust? That seemed one more task he could do. And, if he needed to do it without going below her waist, that only made Steve's problem more difficult. Or, she thought suddenly, did he think of that sort of problem as 'more interesting'? She'd heard him use that term.

Yet she had exercised control at the end. He always claimed that she made his heart beat faster, and now she had. With the hospital not far out of town, there must be some place you could buy a stethoscope around here. She wondered how much one cost.

Why did her alarm clock suddenly have a bell? She slapped out to shut it off and almost fell to the floor. She was on a couch; the ringing was a doorbell; She was at Mrs. Green's. She staggered to the door and peered out. It was Mrs. Green.

"Damn lock froze. I'll check the kids while you get dressed. The car's running." She trotted down the hall while Shannon struggled into her coat and gathered up her backpack. "Took you long enough to answer the bell. What if kidnapers had broken in?"

"You wish!" They walked out into a blizzard, the snow coming sideways at them. Steve! He'd walked home in this. "My boyfriend visited tonight," She said as they got in the car. "I told him that you would be glad to give him a ride home."

"In this? Why don't you put him up? Where is he?"

"Walking home... in this! Dad says to remember that I can sit for only one night a week." They were there.

"Get home. I'll call you in a few minutes." Shannon had to struggle to open her door as well, but she was inside and standing on the hot-air grate when the phone rang,

"Bryants'. Shannon Bryant speaking." Her mom had drilled telephone technique into her long ago.

"Hi. This is Mrs. Green. Look, I have a social life, too. What about if you sat for a few hours, not all night?"

"Eleven o'clock is my curfew, firm. And I have a social life, too. But I'll ask my dad. And we have a dance coming up this Friday. The big one is February. 10. And, of course, other customers can always get there before you." Driving Steve home in this weather would have been a big favor, but that didn't make Shannon happier about the refusal. She was glad to give her all the bad news she could think of right then.

She couldn't sleep without knowing that Steve was safe. She couldn't call at one in the morning. Well, there were only two choices. She called.

"Hello."

"Mrs. Anderson? I'm really sorry to call so late, but I just saw the storm outside. Steve walked home through that, and I have to know that he made it."

"A little late to worry. Yes he made it, and I gave him a piece of my mind. Shannon, the two of you haven't a brain cell between you. Normally, I wouldn't scold you, but you did call me up, What time is it anyway?"

"A little after one. I'm really sorry to call at such a time, but I had to know that he was safe."

"Well, I can understand that. Good night, Shannon."

Before she could respond the phone clicked.

And now Steve was really going to hate her for calling.

"Steve! Steve!" Rachel Anderson shouted outside the door of her son's room. She opened the bedroom door halfway. "Oh, Steve."

At that point, he would have screamed if he were even half awake. She marched up to the head of the bed. "Oh, Steven," she called in a saccharine voice, "time to wake up." She squeezed gently on the soaked washcloth she held. The falling water splashed off his forehead. He pulled the covers higher. Pulling them back down until his total face was out in the light, she squeezed harder.

"Holy hell!" said Steve.

"Shannon called this morning. Said she was worried about sending you out in the blizzard."

Shannon on the phone? Steve started to pull himself out of bed, then realized that he was stark naked under the sheets. He pulled the covers back up again. "Mom! Tell her I'll be there in a minute."

"Tell who? Shannon? She called about two. I told her that her concern was a little after-the-fact." Steve was probably awake now, but a little more effort now could save her from another wake-up in three minutes.

"Dammit, Mom."

"That's 'Mother dearest' to you." His concern over the nudity taboo was silly. She'd seen all that he was hiding, washed the poop off a good bit of it.

"Mother dearest, maternal source of my very being, would you please grant me the favor of a little privacy? Before I wet the bed!"

"If you do, you'll clean it up." She waved goodbye from the doorway, but she shut the door after her. When she did, Steve clambered out of bed, pulled on the jeans he'd left on the floor the previous night, and hurried into the bathroom. After showering, he returned to his room and dressed.

He logged on. Nothing from Shannon, something from Dad. He wrote Shannon,

He was never sure that Shannon would keep his e-mails out of her father's hands.

His dad wrote that he had stopped in Mattoon, and also that he had written Mom separately. He, despite a good amount of computer literacy, had a blind spot about carbon copies.

"Dad wrote," he told his mother on his way to the kitchen. "You'll have a copy in your mailbox."

The snow had stopped falling by the time that Wayne and Shannon Bryant left church Sunday noon, but it was still blowing around. "Isn't it silly that the one waiting on the sidewalk wears special boots?" Wayne asked his daughter, "And the driver has to get by with simple galoshes over office shoes?"

"Well, they make practical dress boots for men. Let me drive, and I'll go get the car for you."

"And let the whole congregation decide that I'm a cripple? Tell you what, we'll walk out together. You can still drive." Shannon wasn't too skilled a driver in the snow, he thought, but she had to learn. Today was extreme in one sense, but nobody was going fast enough to make a collision really dangerous. "And my clothes budget doesn't run to fancy boots."

"Look, Chick," he continued while they stumbled over the covered ruts in the ice, "if you have decided that you won't go to Albion, keeping your mother in suspense is really pointless."

"Absolute secrecy?"

He hated that, but he had brought the subject up. "My lips are sealed."

"Steve may still be accepted at IIT," Shannon said. "If he is, and he accepts, then I do want to go to Albion. It's no farther from Chicago. But choosing Albion because of Steve...."

They reached the car at that point. "Let it warm up," he told her when they were both inside. "You know. most people don't end up marrying their high-school sweethearts."

Unless they married them right after high school, but Shannon didn't want to do that. "Dad, do you think that I don't know that? Do you think that we don't? Look at this hand; notice that there is no ring." She revved the car once and then relaxed. "We never quite say the word -- well, almost never. We've spent a year together, if you can call that 'together' -- and you and Mom treat it as if we spend every minute with one another.

"Anyway, I haven't quite stopped changing physically. We're going off to college where everybody is supposed to change mentally. Steve and Shannon love each other now, but what will be left of Shannon and what will be left of Steve in four years? And then, of course, it doesn't really stop.

"I can't see to drive," she finished suddenly. Her eyes were full of tears.

"That's okay. I got gas yesterday."

"Thing is. What did the preacher say about God last month?"

"Talks a lot about God. What in particular?" If she wanted to change the subject, he would let her; although it was a long time since they had talked this way. He missed that.

"He makes people with free will because he loves free will. Well, one thing that I love about Steve is that he is changing. If he stopped changing it would be a change for the worse. Does that make any sense?"

"Plenty of sense. And you're changing too; even if he stopped, it wouldn't guarantee a match. You love Steven desperately, but...."

"You think it's puppy love." She didn't think it was puppy love.

"Not at all. It's just that he might be out for something else."

"That doesn't change things. Yes, Steve wants into your baby's diapers, but it's my diapers; he wants to make love to Shannon. That's my one gift from Curt."

"Must you be crude? And I didn't know you got anything good from Curt." Concern for your daughter doesn't stop. He didn't think of her as a baby, she was just the woman who had been his baby.

"Nothing he intended. Curt told several stories about me, after we broke up. But, even to the guys who wanted to think the worst, one thing was clear: He tried to get something from me, he didn't get it, and he made me walk home. So, when Steve asked me out, he wasn't looking for a quick lay. He may want my body, but he didn't choose me because he thought that I was an easy target.

"Anyway, we talk. We don't talk nearly enough since the summer, but we talk about things. Lots of things, not only that. There is no way that Steve would talk the way he does if he only wanted one thing from me. And, as I said before, if he only wants one thing, he could find plenty of places to get it more easily. Even now, though it's awfully late, he could probably break with me, find another girl, and get her into bed. So, if getting Shannon into bed was his only goal -- which it isn't, it would still be about Shannon.

"Does that make sense?"

It made quite enough sense that Wayne didn't want it explained any more. Okay, Steven wanted -- beyond the obvious -- a sympathetic ear. When Wayne had been his age, he'd have taken any sympathetic ear offered. And, if they didn't only talk about "that," pretty clearly they talked a lot about "that." On the bright side, while he wanted to thrash Steven for daring to want to get into Shannon's panties, the wording implied that he had failed.

Shannon, of course, was guileful enough to use that wording deliberately. If that was the case, what was he going to do? If, weeks before her eighteenth birthday, their daughter was still a virgin, Allison and he were luckier than most. Hell, they had Shannon; they were luckier than most anyway. "Meanwhile, you help Steven on his English."

"And he helps me in math." Having said that, she hoped Dad wouldn't ask when. "Really, he wasn't doing so bad until Shakespeare. Now, I think he's got it."

"How long do you have?"

"The test's Friday-after-next. Coming week's Act Four and start of Five. Week after ends the play, then review, and the test."

"And you got through what the other night? Act Two?"

"But Steve got the idea. He's worked more since."

"But how do you know that he understood the later part?" Wayne didn't really want Steven to fail English.

Blabbermouth! she thought. And she just hated to lie, especially since she hadn't talked with Dad like this in ages. "We talked on the phone."

"Well, if you want to have him over again, I'll speak to your mother." Not that Allison would object, but this conversation was under seal.

"Thanks, Dad." She put the car in gear. "By the way, you know you said only one night for Mrs. Green?"

"Yes?"

"She wants to know whether that applies to shorter nights?"

"How will she manage that?"

"Well, she dates sometimes. If she gets home before eleven, does that count? I don't see that it should, but I said I'd ask."

"Do you want me to say yes or to say no?" Sometimes kids deserve the excuse, 'my parents won't let me.'

"What do you mean?"

"I thought that those kids were monsters. And she won't pay so much for shorter hours."

"But I'll start later too, so I won't see the kids so much." Shannon said.

"I know that you can study during some babysitting times, but you need to study more; and you need to enjoy yourself, too. I was afraid that you were going to cut way back on babysitting when you figured out the size of your surplus. You seem to be going out of your way to get more."

"I like to see money coming in."

"And a penny saved?" He wondered suddenly whether Shannon had ever heard that term.

"Is just sitting there. It's only real when it is coming in or going out."

"I haven't talked to your mother about this."

"You said you wouldn't!"

"I'm changing the subject. I haven't spoken to your mother about this suggestion which I am about to make. You know all this talk about your babysitting money. I'm going to propose that you set up a budget for the next year, what's coming in and what's going out. I think that you should calculate special expenses and regular expenses -- some mad-money too. Then I think that your mother should dole out the money according to that budget."

"An allowance." Shannon had not enjoyed those days.

"Not quite."

"You want to put me back on an allowance, only an allowance that I have earned. And you are nice enough to mention it to me before you and Mom decide."

"No! This will be much harder on you than that.

"What I'm suggesting," Wayne continued, "Is for you to decide this allowance. I want you to budget it. I'll ask your mother to help; I suspect that I'm not the best choice for knowing what a girl will need her first semester in college."

"Can I think about the idea, or are you going to tell Mom now?"

"Think away. Now, let's go in; she'll think we've died out here."

Rachel's e-mail ran:

She looked out Mallory's window to check the sidewalk. It was buried nice and deep. Steve was coming up the stairs carrying an ice-filled glass of root beer. In January! She shivered. "Well dear, your walk home last night must have worn you out terribly. Maybe you should stick to essentials for the next week."

Steve knew the drill. Either he was exhausted and needed to cut back on his dating, or he was full of pep and ready for any chore. Probably it was shoveling the walk. "Oh, I think I'll recover by tomorrow."

"Why don't you test your recovery with the snow shovel? Now!"

"Let me log on and finish this drink."

"Okay," she said. "Fifteen minutes." If only all negotiations were so easy.

Half an hour later, Steve pressed the shovel into the first bit on the top step. From the door to the street was a pleasure; it was untouched and fluffy from the cold. He didn't mind the exercise, really.

His mother had the special phone with the headset in her room. "Hello?"

"Roger? It's Rachel."

"Darling! Give me a minute." She lay back and adjusted the headset so the earphones were comfortable. The sound quality wasn't quite so good, and she did love the sound of Roger's voice. But, really, talking to your husband was a two-handed job.

"So," she said, "you'll be home on Wednesday. Before school lets out? Your son will be home for dinner."

"That's strange. I was planning to eat at the Y."

"After two weeks away from home cooking?"

"As an appetizer for home cooking," he said. "God bless old Hauksbee! And where is Steve right now?"

"Shoveling the walk." While she was here in the warm bed stroking her own smooth breasts and wishing that they were Roger's hairy arms instead.

"Unnatural mother! Sending your poor son out into the cold so you can listen to dirty phone calls."

"Your poor son walked home," she told him, "apparently across town from Shannon's house, at the height of the blizzard. Got home near midnight. He crashed. Then she called me up at one- thirty -- I checked. Said that she hoped he got home all right. Gertrude had battery problems. Earlier in the night, I mean."

"He walked there, knowing he'd have to walk back?"

"He's your son." She'd wouldn't mention the garage man; the story was long enough as it was.

"You sure about that?"

"Absolutely, totally positive. We came home tipsy. You drove the babysitter home while I checked on Mallory. And you came back just drunk enough. You lasted and lasted and lasted. I came, and then I came. And when I was climbing again, I reminded you that I was open for your seed...."

"And you held my nuts to show what seeds." His voice showed that he was in it, too.

"And you shot and shot and shot. I felt that you'd filled me twice over. First you, then your seed. That was the night. That was the fuck." The memory excited her. His cock had rubbed her right there, where her finger was now, and rubbed there forever.

"Talking dirty are we? Did I fuck you then? Did I screw you? Did I dick your cunt? Make love to you? Swive you? Put the old sausage in the hole?"

"No," she said. "You Rogered me. You drove me up the peak, and over. Not once, not twice, you rogered me to climax three times. Oh Roger!"

"Is it on?"

She flicked the switch on her magic wand. "Is now."

"Rub it over my favorite creampuffs. First the left one.... Now the right." She brushed the wand over her breasts to his directions. The rush was building, she felt her skin get warmer under the cold sheets. "Don't touch the strawberries until... Now! Are they nice and puffy for my lips?... Are they straining upwards for my teeth?" He had never actually bitten her there; neither of them wanted it. But the idea of teeth slicing into her nipples drove her wild. She dialed up the speed on the wand, which drove her wilder as she stroked those nipples.

He crooned to her over the phone lines. She wanted more; she needed more; if he didn't speak, she would break away to get more. "Now your thighs. Let them carry the vibrations to your lips. You haven't touched your lips yet, have you?" She hadn't, but it was a struggle. The vibrations shook her thighs, which shook her lips, which shook her clit; but she needed more, more force, more directly.

"Put the vibrator on your right knee, slow it down. Is it there?" It was, and the slower vibrations shook her whole leg. "Now draw it towards you, slowly, slowly, more slowly yet as it gets closer.... Tell me when it touches your labium." As she drew the wand downward she lost all consciousness of anything but those vibrations.

And then the wand touched her groin. Fire sprang though her, fire filled that lip, fire burned her clit. "Oh yes!" she said.

"Now take it up to the left knee and move it downward again. More slowly this time." She tried to keep it moving slowly. It sure felt like a longer time; it felt like damn-near forever. She was on the edge, so close that she couldn't catch a breath.

"That's me you're holding, Rachel" he said. "Turn it down now; turn it down, and put it in." He didn't have to tell her to do this part slowly; she was stabbing herself.

But she did ease it in. She did feel those vibrations fill her. "Tell me," she gasped. "Oh Roger, tell me."

"I love you, Rachel. I love all of you." The wand was almost filling her. She let go to clutch the sheet. "I love your luscious cunt. I love your daring spirit." Her body lifted itself, thrusting the wand's handle towards the ceiling. "I love you. Oh, darling!" She was spasming now. He kept cooing over the phone, "Come for me, That's it. Come again."

She spasmed, spasmed again and again. Finally, she pulled the wand out and almost flung it away. Roger, who had been encouraging her the whole time, said a final, "I love you, all of you; and I always will." Then he left the phone while she tried to gather her breath and then her mind.

Roger returned to the phone. "Yours?" she asked.

"No hurry," he said. "You almost carried me with you. The lotion is too hot, anyway." Well it would cool fast enough on his hand.

Steve took a ten-minute break to warm himself when the walk was more than half-way shoveled. When he came back the second time, his mom greeted him. "Did you get it all?" she asked.

"Not that the wind won't cover it over."

"My hero." Just because she had to reach up to kiss his jaw, just because it was a little bristly when she did, didn't mean that he wasn't still her little boy. Steve moved back to unzip his coat. These demonstrations embarrassed him, and he suspected that his embarrassment only added to Mom's enjoyment.

"Don't like my kisses?" she asked. "Now, I know how to get you some you'll prefer. Save one of your brownies for Shannon."

"Brownies?" He could manage Shannon's kisses on his own, thank you. On the other hand, a pan of brownies -- with both Dad and Mallory out of the picture -- were worth shoveling a walk any day.

"After lunch. They aren't even done yet." But she was laughing when she said that. She didn't act like this often, especially when Dad was gone; but she did have these funny moods. She looked excited, with a high color. Of course, that could simply be from the heat of the stove -- or the heat of the shower, he could tell she'd taken one from the smell of her special soap.

"Going somewhere tonight?" he asked. Why shower in the middle of the afternoon?

"Tonight? Those guys are lucky I'll show up for work tomorrow! Speaking of which, you'll never get home and back to Hauksbee's on time. Do you want to pack a dinner?"

"I'll get something in town." He had taken a bit extra out of his paycheck. Unlike Shannon, he didn't need to be spending money to enjoy it. On the other hand, learning that much of his check wasn't available to him had been something of a shock. An extra thirty dollars in the back of his drawer would cover emergencies like a gift for Shannon's birthday.

Lunch was great. It wasn't really Sunday dinner with Dad away, but the stew was plentiful. He only had room for two brownies afterwards, so he carried a plateful up to his room.

The bus took forever to get to school, and he totally missed Dave that morning. He was late for English, too; but he took another minute by his locker to shuffle Shannon's cards and get the book into his hands. "So, Steve," Mrs. Foster said, "finally honoring us with your presence?"

"The bus was late."

"Sarah was on the same bus, and she beat you here." The girl, who still had her coat with her, gave him an apologetic look.

"I stopped at my locker, Mrs. Foster. I had to do it sometime."

"Perhaps you could tell us what is going on in the play."

"Which scene?" he asked. "I just walked in through the door."

"Act Four, Scene Three." Her tone implied that knowing the scene wouldn't help him.

"It's a very short scene," he said. "First she gets rid of her nurse. Then she comments on all the dangers of the poison -- fake poison, but she's not sure of that. Then she drinks it."

"What are those dangers?" Mrs. Foster was using a much gentler tone, but he could tell he wasn't out of the woods yet.

Carefully, he kept his eyes on her. He knew this wasn't on the cards anyway. "Well," he said, "she's not sure that Father Lawrence didn't give her a real poison to hide that he'd married her." That didn't sound right. "Her and Romeo. And maybe the potion wouldn't work at all. And maybe she would wake up locked in a dark tomb surrounded by the corpses of her family."

"Very good, Steve. I just hope that you'll read the rest of the play, now that you know you can."

Steve brought out three brownies at lunch. He cut one of them in half and passed the whole lot over to Shannon. She took the two halves. "You can have more, really," he said. "I'm saving two for supper."

"Two brownies apiece. Just that mine are smaller. Really, Steve, that's not an adequate dinner."

"Yes, Mama. I'm eating at Terry's Diner. That's just dessert. Mom thinks I couldn't get home and back in time. I agree."

"Want company?" she asked.

"Love it."

"I felt like kissing you in front of the whole English class," she said "You did great!"

"Well, we could find another time. Anyway, I didn't do anything. It's all your doing. Almost said so, but she might not have liked hearing that you cleared up the play for me when she'd left me totally in the dark. You're the one who deserves kisses."

"Well, I'm sure that we could sort out that problem. Get my message about babysitting?"

"What's this about not wanting to see me?"

"Ask me there, okay?" She suspected that what was bothering Mrs. Jensen was nursing Peggy in front of Steve. She could understand her embarrassment; heck, Shannon didn't want to discuss this in the lunchroom. Even though, she thought suddenly, it was about lunch.

That flicker of a smile accompanied by downturned eyes and a half blush got Steve every time. Phil could have Tanya. Shannon was sexier. She never explained what had caused those looks, but he'd triggered them a few times himself.

Dave caught him as he walked out the door with Shannon. He gave back the disk on the sidewalk across the street from the school.

He ordered the chili-mac with a side order of hashbrowns when they got to the diner. "Cherry pie if you have it," said Shannon, "a cup of coffee -- plenty of cream, and a separate check."

"Come on Shannon! You're my guest."

"I suggested the whole thing. If you'd let me, I would pay your way too. Don't fight about this, and I won't ask what's going on with Dave." Not that she, and most of the girls, didn't know about Dave's little porn game. Boys had the weirdest taste! Even Steve. She saw that she had won.

"You're as bad as my dad," she continued. "You know the money that I saved up from babysitting?" She decided that amounts would embarrass Steve; she made more than he did. "Anyway, I made a good deal more than I've spent. He wants that money doled out to me like an allowance again. Instead of seeing something and buying it, he wants me to budget everything ahead of time." She looked over at Steve for sympathy, forgetting that this was Steve.

"You want polite?" he asked, "or you want true?" She turned her hand up.

"Look. Look down the road a few years. You're married. Maybe not to me, but to somebody. You make a salary; he makes a salary. You say to him, 'Don't worry about me; I'll pay for my clothes and such. All you have to do is pay the mortgage, groceries, car, insurance, things like that.' Do you see a little problem there?"

"I'm not as selfish as you think I am."

"Shannon, there isn't a selfish bone in your body," he said. "The problem isn't selfishness. The problem is that everybody is on a budget. Somebody is going to control what you spend. It can be you; it can be someone else. We could set it up so that you get so many dollars a week, even so many dollars a day. When that's spent, it's gone; and you wait for the next amount.

"But you already have two parents, and that's not what I want to be. I don't think anyone else is looking for that job either. Will you try out a budget? Just try it for me?"

The waitress saved her from answering. When she sipped her coffee, Steve said: "That would keep me awake all night. I don't know how you do it." He was going to let the question drop, which somehow pushed her more than insistence would have.

"Somehow doesn't go with cherry pie," she said when he offered her another brownie.

She went home to a real dinner. He went off to work.

Shannon spent a good deal of thought on the budget issue in her spare time over the next day. In the first place, she'd been right when she told her dad that Steve was thinking about her as a wife -- well, that wasn't quite what she'd told Dad, but close. That was very nice to know, but it was not so nice that he was thinking about her in a wifely role where she didn't meet the standards.

She was far from as stupid as people seemed to think she was. She knew she was irresponsible about money; half the fun was flaunting her irresponsibility about money. Besides, she was responsible as a driver and as a student. She was quite responsible answering the phone, which was important to her mom and an area in which Steve was simply awful. She was responsible in managing the business of babysitting, and -- especially -- responsible in how she dealt with her tiny charges.

If you were responsible about everything, what was the use of being seventeen? And she wasn't one tenth as irritating a daughter as her parents were irritating to her.

But Steve had raised an important point. She was quite prepared to go on as a flibbertigibbet daughter for the next four years; she had no interest in becoming a flibbertigibbet wife. And there were two side issues.

In the long run, if she did end up married to Steve, she wanted to be the one buying his clothes. Wives did that, and it wasn't as if Steve cared. It was more that he bought the first thing that fit. Lots of wives bought their husband's clothes, but probably not many wives who couldn't be trusted with the family money.

In the short run, it was the white wedding thing. She would never say, "I went on a budget to please you; stop there to please me." Steve would probably change his mind about budgets fast. But making a few sacrifices to keep them together set a pattern. More accurately, never making the sacrifice set a pattern.

She was fairly certain that she could operate within a budget if she had to. Right now looked like the time to prove it. Besides, if she found it really hard, her parents would give her more leeway if she had proposed the plan herself. Steve, also, would be a lot happier with a plan that she had accepted because he asked it than with a plan her dad had forced on her.

She thought this out during TV commercials, while walking to school, during class, and other spare moments. She broke it to Steve when classes ended on Tuesday. They were on their way to a dance-planning meeting. "You win. I'll talk to Dad about setting up a budget."

"It's not exactly winning," he said. She looked at him. "I'm not on his side against you. I'm on your side against the world. I just think that this is something that you really should do. And I told you so. But we're not all ganging up on you. I'll never gang up on you."

"You think that I should do it, but you don't think that I should do it because you want me to?" She could almost see that. There were things she wanted like that; his phone calls for instance.

"Oh, it's perfectly all right that you do it because I want you to. Better if you do it because it makes sense, but I'll take what I can get. It's just that I didn't win anything. Certainly not win anything against you."

"Well, you and one part of me beat another part of me. I really enjoyed being a spendthrift." Her mournful tone was mostly a joke, but not quite all of it.

He caught the tone and the past tense. "Well," he glanced around, "this isn't the place to kiss the spendthrift goodbye. Tonight?"

"Tonight."

They got to the meeting after it had already begun. Heather Swanson was talking and holding up a picture of a Cupid. "Well, Shannon -- oh there she is -- asked me to make one and find how long it took. This took me five or six hours for just one. So I'm withdrawing my suggestion. It's way too much work."

"That's a problem," said Ken, "but it's not the problem that I saw." Shannon saw Mr. Babaian wince, but Ken ignored that and went on. "Heather can draw this, and it is beautiful. Who else thinks that they could make one?" There was only one hand raised in the whole meeting. "So we can't have a lot of them. On the other hand....

"Heather, could you make one more? A reflection in the vertical line, but not quite?" Heather looked pleased but puzzled.

"I so move," Steve began, "that the committee ask Heather to make another drawing and to let us use both of them in our decor. The drawing could be a mirror image, and she can ask for suggestions from anyone she wants to."

That passed. "Do I have a motion to go with the hearts as our main decor?" asked Ken. Several people moved that, and that carried as well.

"Now," said Ken, "how many slow dances? I'm going to assume that everybody wants some percent. Lets vote with our feet this time. Mr. Babaian, will you be our midpoint? Everybody who wants more slow dances than fast come to this side of Mr. Babaian, and everybody who wants more fast dances go to the other side of him." By having people move past the advisor, Ken got the committee to show that slightly more than half wanted more than 65% slow dances, and a solid majority wanted fewer than 70% slow.

"Well, can I have a motion to play 65% slow dances?" Shannon made that motion, and it carried.

"Work session the next three days after school," Ken said. "Make two of them."

Gary had a ride for both Ken and Steve, "if you're leaving right now." Still on school property, Steve and Shannon said good bye without a kiss. Ken and Gary were both surprised how brief that parting was.

"I'll call you, Heather" Ken shouted.

"I owe Shannon big time!" Ken said in the car. "You can tell her so."

"What happened there? We got in one minute late."

"Heather's been bugging me about her decor scheme. Much too fancy. Instead of telling her why it wouldn't work, Shannon called her up and asked her to show how it would. I'm supposed to have the brains in this school. But, anyhow, Heather tried it out, figured out the hours involved, and could see that it wouldn't work. But isn't it a work of art?"

They agreed that it was a work of art. Ken got out first, and then Steve.

Continued in Part 6
Heart Ball
Uther Pendragon
anon584c@nyx.net
2001/02/07
2003/01/25
2005/01/27

Thanks to Neneh and Denny for editing Heart Ball

This is one of a series of pages holding the novel, Heart Ball.

The next page in the series is: Part 6

The first page in the series is:
Part 1

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