Message-ID: <52843asstr$1137319803@assm.asstr.org> Return-Path: X-Original-To: story-submit@asstr.org Delivered-To: story-submit@asstr.org DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws; s=beta; d=gmail.com; h=received:message-id:date:from:to:subject:mime-version:content-type:content-transfer-encoding:content-disposition; b=WR6Cq/L2m1LC9hMZxwwQVWQBJY3pMJssp89YUgKBHrcfJTitPkJVvR40awwVU57gLb6egAAcCDFkJoeL0cyq9wD0qlTPE+ghF2Tv8XpZyxJ01r/cdiTXV3/uIYBF4AuUb2KBDQ3IhP8qhsh3IZRvcgiuI2vKzoCUZecY5S5tmcQ= X-Original-Message-ID: From: Monroe Stahr MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 01:29:46 -0500 Subject: {ASSM} {ASS} Ash Wednesday {Monroe Stahr} (Mf inc) Lines: 578 Date: Sun, 15 Jan 2006 05:10:03 -0500 Path: assm.asstr.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: hoisingr, RuiJorge Ash Wednesday Monroe Stahr # He was only a few weeks shy of 40 when Cain called him, and on days when he felt guilty about the whole thing he hid it behind that excuse: midlife crisis, staring into the abyss of mortality, the appeal of youth, that whole thing. But the truth was he'd found her attractive even before that. In the last photo he'd seen of her she must have been thirteen, and in that moment right before recognition set in, he'd thought, "Wow, she's hot." Long legs, what they used to call "coltish," but who said that anymore? A bit of thigh paler than the legs, showing from where her denim shorts had pulled up because of the awkward impossible teenage way she was sitting, everything canted at angles. Hair in that transitional phase between childhood and the experiments she'd subject it to in high school. A lightly freckled face beginning to hint at beauty. And the lines of her T-shirt, the promise of breasts. She had never been his step-daughter because he'd never gotten around to marrying her mother. But that was a legal truth and an emotional lie. For five years he'd gone to parent-teacher conferences, packed lunches, overseen homework -- and done it for her more often than he should have -- settled arguments, and gone to zoos, aquariums, state fairs, and talking puppy movies a hell of a lot more than in the rest of his life tallied up. "Cain." What a name for a girl. For anyone outside of soaps and pulps. Her younger sister's name was Christ. No shit, Christ Bodhi McLean, but everyone had the sense to call her Christie. Their mother -- Delia -- had been quirkycute, the kind of effusive and seemingly eccentric but secretly frightened woman who'd appealed to him so intensely when he was in his late 20s and going through one of those stupid not-yet-mid-life crises a parent's death can bring on. It'd helped that she was younger yet divorced -- someone he'd known wasn't looking for a wedding any time soon, and still had all the charm of young women, their enthusiasm that made even their jadedness and stabs at cynicism cute. It hadn't worked out, for all the reasons it began in the first place, and eight years had faded it into some unstated Life Lesson -- the time when he was a father, the time when he Got Serious for the first time (two long-term relationships since then, clocking in at 2 years and 4 respectively), when balancing his budget had Really Mattered, when he'd first thought about Buying A House and Planning For The Future. He'd let it all slide once they split up, because that sudden lack of responsibilities had made him feel twenty again. Now here he was almost 40, and he hardly ever thought about those times until Cain called him in the mid-afternoon on a day when he should have been at work but had called in can't-give-a-fuck. His wife had nodded, probably ready for a black mood to come around the time of his birthday, and just asked him to make dinner then, since he'd be home. He let the phone ring twice before he answered it, just in case it was work. Cain's unfamiliar voice asked for him tentatively, and he thought she might be a telemarketer, but said, "Speaking." "It's -- this is Cain McLean," she said, her name even worse in full. "I don't know if you remember me -- I mean, well, I'm sure you remember me --" "Cain!" he said. "Wow. Of course I remember you. How are you?" It'd been eight years since he'd seen her, and he'd only talked to her on the phone a couple times after that, in the months immediately following his moving out. Delia -- and Delia's family, who still hoped she'd go back to her ex-husband -- had thought it best he cut off contact cleanly. "Is your mother all right? Is anything --" "Oh, she's fine, she's fine," Cain said. God, she sounded like a teenager. She was a teenager, which was hard to fathom. He'd been there from age 3 to 8, years that offered little hint as to young adulthood. "No, I just called because -- is this an okay time? I actually thought I'd get your voicemail ..." She didn't want to talk to him, he realized. This was awkward and weird for her. Well, of course it was. "I had the day off," he said. "It's all right, Cain, what's up, what do you need?" That was such a parental thing, he realized, his knowing she wasn't calling to chat. "Well, I heard you were living in New Orleans these days?" Ah. "I'm fine," he said. "I evacuated before the storm, and my neighborhood didn't get hit very bad. My fridge was the worst of it, personally. It's --" "Oh no, I know," she said, "I know. I googled you. There's -- I checked lists of missing people and everything, it said you were in Texas?" "Yeah, I evacuated to Texas until things blew over." "Yeah, I saw that on the message board thing. And that you'd moved back. You can find like anything on Google now. But the thing is, we were -- my friends and me, we were going to come down for Mardi Gras? Because that's when our Spring Break is?" "Oh okay," he said. "Does your Mom know?" "Yeah, of course. Missy, my friend Missy -- I don't know if you remember Missy -- oh no, I was ten when I met her, wow, that was a long time ago -- Missy's older sister lives here, she'll be like our chaperone. She moved here for college, she's like twenty-five. She works at Octavia Books? You might know her?" "I don't think so," he said. "Well," she said. "Anyway. I was wondering -- there's a lot of us, and Missy's sister's place isn't very big, and when she found out my -- my step-dad, my ex-step-dad -- lived in New Orleans, well, do you think I could crash on your couch?" "For Mardi Gras?" he asked. "For that week. Like afterwards and everything." His wife wasn't home to ask, but she'd gone through a thing once of saying he ought to track Cain and Christie down anyway, get back in touch, in case they ever needed anything -- there was a hint like he'd abandoned them -- so he shrugged. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, let me give you my email address too, so you can let me know your itinerary." "Totally," she said. It was months from Mardi Gras, and his birthday came and went and left him 40 in its wake. He celebrated with a surprise party featuring friends from college, a few awkward and maudlin moments, and a spectacular blowjob from his wife that had left him wondering why they weren't usually that good. She thought it was great that his step-daughter would be visiting, but reminded him she wouldn't be in town for the first half of the week. His wife had been raised in New Orleans and not part of the crowd that got ecstatic about Carnival the way some towns had people who got ecstatic about local sports -- so it was twenty-three years since she'd stayed around for parade season, and these days she stayed with her sister in St Petersburg Florida, going to Ash Wednesday mass with that part of her family and coming back the next day. His wife gave him this news with a grin, like it was sitcom-funny that he was going to be home alone to deal with a teenager who'd probably be a little secretly drunk, as though he was a sitcom husband who had miscapades -- escapades? misadventures? -- every time she turned her back. Oh, he loved his wife, he'd kill a puppy for her, but he hated the way she fell into those stereotypes. He made dinner as often as she did, and they unofficially alternated laundry duty. He'd been separating whites from darks so long he coulda run a Mississippi lunch counter. Cain arrived the Friday night before Mardi Gras, a few hours after he got back from driving his wife to the airport. He buzzed her in at the gate and went down to make sure she found her way through the courtyard and to see if she had anything that needed lugging. He grinned when he saw her, and so did he, because they had both looked right past each other, looking for someone familiar instead of someone changed, before the mind caught up to the eye and dialed it back. She was sixteen now, and he had no idea if she looked her age or not, because everyone under 25 looked about the same to him now. Her legs were longer than they'd been in that photo her mother had emailed him a few years back, but less spindly -- her hair less transitional, and he was relieved that it wasn't shaved on one side or dyed blue or anything -- her clothes showed a lot of midriff but no cleavage, although she had it to show. It was very, very strange looking at her -- as though trying to find the eight year old buried by adolescence, a shadow beneath the skin. He tried to remember distinctive features to look for, and none came to mind -- no memorable birthmark or mole, no oddity, only the freckles on her nose and beneath her eyes, which half the girls in the world seemed to have. When she opened her mouth, he saw two of her front teeth still overlapped a bit -- and that brought it back for him, all those childhood smiles on Christmas and at the zoo. Christ. "Cain!" he said. "Oh geez," she said, and he supposed he meant he'd changed too. Well, he was supposed to, that's how it went. He gave her a hand with her luggage, which was heavier than he would have expected. "Are you here for dinner?" he asked. "Or just dropping stuff off, or what?" "Either way," she said. "We can hang, I can split. I don't have any plans till like, eleven." So he set her up in the apartment's spare bedroom that was storage more often than a guest room, and they got fried chicken and dirty rice from the only joint still open in walking distance. More and more opening every week, though, he told her, and she nodded with just enough wide-eyedness that he knew she'd seen some of the city's ruins already. He was determined not to dwell on that -- not to let this kid associate him with the damage of the city. "You're really cool," she said at one point, through the closed door behind which she was trying on yet another of her outfits and gauging whether it was appropriate to the weather, the humidity, the chance of rain, and the tenor of whatever party she had lined up. "I don't remember you being cool." "I don't remember me being cool," he said. "But it's been a long time. People change." He hardly saw her through the weekend. She's be out all day touristing -- parades, beads, Bourbon Street -- and out late partying, crashing in the guest room when he buzzed her in and dutifully having oatmeal and coffee the next morning when he insisted she shouldn't be going out on an empty stomach. By Tuesday morning she was dragging, and he recognized the look on her face, the face of a Carnival-goer who was too wiped out for the last hoorah on Mardi Gras but would force themselves to it anyway, because how could you say you went to New Orleans for Mardi Gras but didn't do anything on the day itself? For his part, he did what he did every year, he went to one weekend parade in the parish and Zulu and Rex on Tuesday, and this year it felt a little more important -- damn right uplifting when he saw a familiar face in the crowd, one of those faces you only see at a Carnival parade but you see them every year, like the neighbors you only know from the grocery store or midnight mass. He buzzed her in at three in the morning the night of Mardi Gras, or the morning of Ash Wednesday, however you looked at it -- three hours after the streets had been shut down and Carnival officially over. She looked pale and sick, just straight-up overpartied, and he wondered if these days overpartying included coke or ecstasy or whatever they did now, or if it was just pot and cheap booze like when he was that age. "Hey," she said, and gave him a little one-armed hug, her second since arriving in the city. "Can I -- some water? Can I have some water? Sorry." Her voice was slurred and her eyes bleary. He remembered a thousand nights -- God, that probably wasn't an exaggeration -- from college and its aftermaths, when his mirror had had a lot in common with her. When he brought her the glass of water, she was passed out on the couch, with the Saints throw half pulled onto her. He thought about carrying her to the guest room, but she wasn't eight anymore -- if she woke up, she could find her way herself. He left the glass on the endtable behind her head, and adjusted the blanket to cover her feet, after slipping her shoes off. Back in his own bed, pretending he was thinking about other things, he masturbated to thoughts of her -- to the smell of her perfume, which wasn't quite right for her and was therefore perfect for her age. To the image of her slender neck and the concavity where it met her collarbone. To the hint of full breasts beneath her clothes, and the curve of her thigh. He rocked his hips up off the mattress, pushing his cock through the hole of his fist, and kept her face out of his mind until the moment before he came, when she looked up at him with a child's eyes as he plunged into her forbidden cunt. In the morning, he overslept. He'd used his vacation days for Ash Wednesday and the day after, like a lot of people, and didn't bother with the alarm. He went into the kitchen to make coffee, walking quietly to keep from waking Cain up -- and before he entered the kitchen, looking beyond the open expanse of hallway, he saw her on the couch. Her eyes were closed, but she was awake -- the Saints throw covering her from the waist down and pinned under the arm closest to the back of the couch -- her shirt pushed up, one of her hands on her breast as the other busied itself beneath the throw. She was masturbating. Her feet were planted on the arm of the couch, canted against each other, toes clenching and unclenching, her heels rocking back and forth as her hips moved. Her eyes weren't just closed, they were squinted shut -- and she was biting her lip, which he had always thought was maybe the sexiest thing a girl under thirty could do. He watched her. She stayed to a regular rhythm, clench unclench, rise rock, squeeze release, and he noticed she was using quite a lot of pressure on her breast. Her mother had loved tit play, had loved to have her tits bitten and twisted and pinched. It was only when things began to go stale between them, in that year or two before they split up, that her breasts had a chance to lose their bruises -- until then, there was always some old yellow mark lingering when a new one was left. He watched her. She was getting closer, her heels thudding against the couch arm now when she pushed her hips up at her hidden hand, and she adjusted the position of her hand on her breast, giving him the briefest glimpse of the soft flesh there. She arched her slender neck back, and he could hear her breath hitching -- hear how she was holding her breath as she came close to coming, instinctively. He was abruptly so hard that his head went light and everything swam. He put a hand out to grab the jamb of the kitchen door, and saw her pause -- not stop -- at the sound of him, her foot twisting against the couch in frustration, her hand leaving her breast and pulling the blanket up. He stood still, not moving out of sight, and she held herself still as well. When she didn't hear anything, she resumed, faster and more erratic now like to make up for the kick in her rhythm. He wanted to jerk off, to watch her like this and jerk his achingly hard cock, but there was no way he could do it without her realizing he was there ... so, he decided, why let her finish? He went into the kitchen -- quietly but without trying to be silent -- and turned the faucet on to fill the coffee pot. There was almost a yelp from the living room, and he filled the pot, dumped the beans in the back where the machine would grind them, and flipped it on. The brief brrrr of the grinder gave way to the trickle of water as he poked his head into the living room. "Hey," he said. "Morning. Hope I didn't wake you." She had the throw pulled up over her, and her foot was still twisted into that tensed, frustrated position. Her hair was matted to her temples with sweat and her mouth and eyes showed how tense she was, how anxious. "No," she said. "It's okay. Can't sleep all day." "Coffee's on," he said, just as he realized that if she chose to look, she had a perfect view of the bulge of his hard-on. Jeans made it less obvious, but it was still there. "I'll get you a mug and some hair of the dog. Just booze?" "What?" He went back to the kitchen, got a clean mug, calling to her, "Was it just booze that had you so wasted last night? Pot? Anything more serious? I'm just asking." She didn't answer until he'd brought her the coffee, with a splash of whiskey in it and a bit of sugar to take the bite off. She grimaced at the taste at first but kept drinking, and he put a bowl of satsumas on the table next to her. Floridian, not local -- the local season hadn't lasted long enough this year. "Pot," she said. "A little pot. Lots of daiquiris." He nodded. In Louisiana, daiquiris were frozen drinks like Slurpees with high-test alcohol in them, sold in drive-throughs and daiquiri parlors in styrofoam cups you could bring anywhere because of the liquor laws. They were just about the only thing locals and tourists agreed on, and even the most alcohol-phobic person could get fucked up on one damn quick. "I should take you to a movie," he said. "You can get daiquiris at the movie theater. How fucked up is that?" "That is for real fucked up," she said, and scooted her legs to the floor so he could sit down, when it was obvious he wasn't going to leave and let her finish off. He clicked the TV on, and that's how the rest of the morning went -- him getting her something to drink, something to eat, to rehydrate herself, but staying near her, not leaving her alone for more than half a minute. It was unbelievable -- engrossing -- fascinating, even -- how much he was turned on by deferring her orgasm. "Ash Wednesday's usually pretty low key," he said. "You're not the only one who overdid it." "Yeah," she said, fidgeting. She shivered a little. "Your friends aren't going to be mad you're recuperating here or anything, are they?" She shook her head but didn't seem to be paying attention. "Cain?" "Huh?" "Do you need to call your friends or anything, make plans?" "Oh. No, no, it's okay. I'll call them later and see what's happening, but today we're just hanging back." She sounded frustrated, distracted, and he pretended to flip through channels, watching her out of the corner of his eye. She was masturbating again. It was like she just couldn't wait any longer, and had bunched up the throw in her lap so as much of it covered the motions of her hand as possible. Her shoulders were tensed up, her head bent down just a little, and her feet kept shifting nervously. He gradually turned so that he could see her better without looking directly at her. Her eyes kept squinting shut, as it became harder and harder for her to keep composure. Under her breath she made the smallest of noises that she tried to swallow up -- tiny grunts, hummingbird moans. He could feel the echoes of her hip movements on the couch. When he thought she must be close but not there yet, he reached for the blanket in her lap. "Let me take that," he said, "I'll get you a real blanket." "Oh!" she said, and he saw her impulses spasm: she wanted to grab the blanket, to finger herself, to make herself come, to cover up and camouflage, all at once, and she couldn't do it all. She succeeded only in making a feeble grab for the blanket, a hand still shoved down her panties. God knows what had become of her skirt. He pretended he hadn't noticed anything ... but part of him wanted her to know he had. Part of him wanted her to know he was torturing her on purpose. When he came back from the linen closet with a blanket, she'd gotten up to use the bathroom, and he sighed, figuring that was that. He had a couple few shots of whiskey poured when she came back, on an endtable he pulled to the front of the couch. "Little hair of the dog," he said. "Your mother would kill me, but she'd do the same thing. Besides, it's a holiday." She smiled at him. "This is unreal. I can't imagine what it's like living in New Orleans all the time. How does anyone get anything done?" "It's not like this all the time," he said, but tourists never wanted to hear that. It was like pointing out Disney World was in Orlando and not everyone there was a mouse or a princess. She hadn't had anything to eat and was still dehydrated. It didn't take much to get her tipsy again, and it only took one drink for him to decide that he wanted her, and to convince himself that deep down she knew it. He wondered for a moment if he'd ever really been a good person, a truly good person, and tabled that as a forty-but-not-yet-fortysomething thought he'd be plagued with for a good time to come. He reached over and stroked the back of her neck with his palm, from her hairline to just below her shirt collar. "Remember I used to do this when you were upset?" he said. "When you got grounded for flunking that class, whatever it was. Math?" "Reading," she said absently, her head tilted slightly away from him. "I was always good at math." "Reading," he said, nodding. "I don't know how the hell you flunked Reading." "I didn't do the homework," she said. "You and Mom were always arguing then." He kept stroking her neck, and she sighed a little, nodding her head forward. "It feels better now than it used to," she said. "Yeah?" "Do you remember," she said quietly. "When I walked in on you -- um -- ja -- masturbating?" "Jamasturbating?" he asked and grinned. "I don't remember that. Are you sure?" "It was when you and Mom were right about to split up. Like, that week. You were in the guest room -- I think, did you sleep there those last weeks?" "I think so," he said. "It's been a long time." And he had been drinking a lot. "I came in for something, and there you were, and -- I just left, I thought you saw me, but if you don't remember, I guess not." "That had to be weird for you," he said. "I'm sorry." "I guess we're even now," she said in a louder voice, like she had forced it out. He didn't say anything, just looked at her. When he started to pull his hand away from her neck she arched towards it, keeping it there. "Well," he said. "If I don't remember it, I don't think we're even." "No?" He unbuttoned his jeans, watching her. She was impossible to read. He pulled the flaps of the fly out of the way and slid his hand into his boxers, wrapping his fingers around the stiff thick shaft of his cock. Her expression didn't change, except for a flick of her eyes toward his crotch, and when he started to stroke, she turned her head downwards, watching him. He still had his hand on the back of her neck, and without meaning to, stroked her skin to the same rhythm he was stroking his cock. They continued like that for minutes, silently. He didn't shift at all, afraid he'd break the spell if he did. He just jerked his cock for her as she watched, her head tilted down too far for him to see any expression, and if he thought he felt a shiver from her, a ripple of goosebumps across her skin, it could well have been his imagination. "Unn," he said soon. "Are you close?" she asked. "Yes. Should I --" "You didn't see me come," she said bluntly. "It wouldn't be even." "I don't care," he said, and he didn't, he was so close to coming that he didn't care about anything. He couldn't remember the last time he was this hard. His cock felt eighteen again, like sun-warmed marble. She grabbed his hand away and swung a leg over his, settling down on him. She'd put her skirt back on, but her panties were gone. She didn't look at him. Not at his lap, not at his cock, not at his eyes, nothing. "In me," she said, shivering again and blushing so hard he thought her arms might have actually pinked. "Do it in me." It was all he'd been thinking about all morning. He slid in easily -- she was so wet it was like pushing into her mouth -- but snugly, every inch of her pussy clinging to him, clenching him, gulping him. "Oh fuck," he said, against her ear as she wrapped an arm around her neck and pulled herself against him. "Oh fuck you're so tight." "Yes," she said, grinding against him and pushing her tits against his chest. "Say it again, say that again." "You're so tight," he murmured against her ear, and then louder, "You're so fucking god damn tight." She rocked against him, and he grabbed her ass, grunting as he adjusted her rhythm, settled her into it, her hips meeting his, his cock sliding in and out of her hot and wet. Her ass was the firmest flesh he'd touched in years, and he couldn't resist smacking it -- not a love tap, but hard. "Oh!" she said, startled. "What was that for?" "Shh," he said, and smacked her again, harder. He loved the sound it made, loved the tautness of her skin and the muscle beneath -- loved feeling the vibration of the spanking, and the way her thighs clenched against him in response. She still hadn't looked him in the eye. "Come in me," she said, and grabbed the bottle of whiskey, drinking from it. She gagged like she was going to cough it up, but kept it down, and bucked her hips hard against him. "Please, please come in me. Come in me. Tell me I'm tight. Tell me I'm tight and come in me. I'm so tight for you. Oh, tell me how much you love my tight pussy." She sounded so self-conscious, but not forced -- self-conscious because she wanted to say so much more than she was, not because she would rather be silent. That girlishness got to him -- both repelled and engorged him. He put both his hands on the small of her back and pulled her against him, hard -- thrusting his cock deep in her little pussy, looking at her even if she wouldn't look back at him. He didn't say anything, just fucked her. Up and down. In and out. It was the most delicious, most natural, most incredible thing he'd felt since his first blowjob. "Tell me," she said, and now she was whining. Now she was desperate. "Oh God," she said. "I want to come again. I'm going to come again. I can't. Oh God, tell me, come in me, tell me you like it, you like it, I know you like it so much." "I like it," he said, kissing her neck. Beneath the astringence of body spray and the accumulation of pot smoke and sweat-salt, she tasted familiar in an ages-old way -- the body chemistry of a young woman. "I love that pussy. I love that tight little pussy. I love that little cunt." "Oh God," she said, leaning back and bucking him hard, needing it now, needing that spasm. "Oh God, fuck that tight pussy. Fuck it. Fuck it. Fuck it, Daddy. Oh Daddy, fuck it. Oh Daddy, Daddy, be my Daddy, fuck me like a Daddy, fuck that tight tight tight--" She ran out of words and ways to put them together, and he stopped listening. He held her against him tightly, one hand on the back of her neck and the other on her ass, fucking her with no thoughts of anything else, thrusting into her the way he'd thrust into his fist the night before -- and that's what she's like, he thought, she's like a fist, I didn't make my hand but I made a fist, and I didn't conceive her but I raised her, I made her who she is, I'm fucking something I made, I'm inside someone who's mine, oh God -- He came so hard he lost track of the world, and as he leaned back against the couch, he saw he'd left a bright bitemark low on her neck, red and wet with his saliva. She grimaced when she touched it, but he could tell from her body language, the looseness of her movements, the feel of her pussy around his spent cock, that she'd come -- and harder than the first time, if she'd come at all in the bathroom. She put her hand against her throat as though she were having trouble breathing. "When does your wife get home?" she asked. "Tomorrow night," he said. And she smiled. -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ------ send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderators: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |ASSM Archive at Hosted by | |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d; look for subject {ASSD}| +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+