A Baumgartner Reunion

CHAPTER ONE

“Sounds to me like you just want to have your cake and eat it, too.” I listened for the sound of Beth waking up in the room next door as TJ cupped my mound over the sheet. The girl had some sort of extrasensory “Mommy and Daddy are having sex” antenna, and inevitably woke up for a glass of water or to go to the bathroom at the most inopportune times.

TJ’s hand rocked the way he knew I loved, making me squirm. “Actually, I think it’s eat your cake and have it, too.” I rolled my eyes and snorted in the dark but shifted my hips toward him anyway. “Well, think about it. You can have your cake and eat it, but you can’t eat your cake and still have it.”

“All right, enough with the metaphor.” I reached for his cock and found it already hard, and that made me smile-although I wasn’t sure, suddenly, if it was the feel of my warming pussy under his hand that had effected him, or the conversation we’d been having about adding other people to our relationship.

The latter made me suddenly want to cry.

TJ sighed, pulling the sheet aside. “Variety… it’s the spice of life.”

“Great, my marriage is now being reduced to a cliché.” I slid my mouth down his belly, breathing warmth over the head of his cock and nibbling a little at the head, making him jump.

“I’m not talking about reducing it…” He groaned when my tongue slipped through the already wet slit at the tip. “I’m talking about expanding it.”

“To include another woman?” I went back to nibbling, my teeth raking down his shaft.

“Other people, yes.” His hand lost itself in the dark mass of my hair, pulling me back a little.

I sighed. “I don’t want to see other people.”

“Come on, Ronnie…” His hand massaged my scalp, his eyes tender but questioning. “We’ve been married for almost seven years. You can’t tell me you’ve never been attracted to anyone else? I know you have!” I blinked, trying not to think about the way Hector at work smiled and winked whenever I passed his classroom, how he often showed up in the tiny copy room the same time I did, brushing up against me from behind, his hand cupping the side of my hip, to get a ream of legal paper. So I felt a little twinge when he did, a warmth between my thighs, a tug in my belly. It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean-

“Just because I’m attracted to someone doesn’t mean I’m going to act on it.”

TJ’s eyes searched mine, lazily rubbing the head of his cock back and forth against my lower lip. “But why not?”

“Because we made a commitment.” I raked my teeth lightly across the spongy tip and he jumped.

“Don’t be so literal.” He rolled me over, pressing his weight onto me, opening my legs. I acquiesced with a sigh, loving the feel of his hardness rubbing up and down between my slit, but hating his words. “Our commitment is what we say it is…” His lips murmured against the pulse in my throat and I let my fingers brush the fine hairs at the back of his neck, soft as a baby. “I’m not talking about not loving you. I’m talking about sex.”

His words were supposed to reassure me, but I felt my throat constrict.

“So basically, you’re saying I’m not enough for you.”

“No, baby.” He rocked, slow and easy-god, he knew how I loved that, opening me, a slow split, a gentle friction, up and up. “You’re more than enough…”

More reassuring words-but why didn’t I feel reassured? His mouth covered mine, the kiss deep and searching, his tongue slowly drawing me in, drawing me out, teasing me as he rubbed his stiff heat between my thighs. It throbbed there, insistent, making me squirm.

“God, you’re so sweet…” His words were hot against my ear now, his teeth gently biting and tugging at the lobe. “I never want you to think you’re not enough, you’re so very much more than enough…”

His cock found me with a shift of his hips, seeking entrance, and I gasped as he slid forward until he felt resistance, about halfway there. His breath caught and he gave a low moan that went through me like shiver, and still, he didn’t stop talking, telling me… “There’s no other woman like you. I want you and I want to share you, baby. I want the whole world to know how good you are, how sweet, how fucking hot…” He pulled back and plunged forward, so deep I clutched his shoulders, digging my nails in. TJ’s eyes sought mine, dark and full of hunger.

“How fucking mine you are.”

It was true. It had been true from the first time we were face to face like this, much sooner than I had ever planned or anticipated-the rain had soaked us to the skin, but we hardly noticed as we peeled each other’s clothes off and ended up on his living room futon instead of the big, soft bed upstairs in his room.

It wasn’t the tender or gentle or sweet thing I’d imagined-although he was all those things at turns-instead it was mostly heat and friction between us, a desperate need for more, always more with him. I could never get enough.

“Baby, look at me.” I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t refuse him. I met his eyes, feeling the aching throb of his cock somewhere deep inside. “I’m just asking you to think about it.”

I nodded, hating myself for doing it but unable to stop. I clutched him to me, wrapping my legs around his waist, my arms around his neck. My words were whispered, close to his ear. “Do you have someone in mind?” He chuckled, moving now, his hips making easy circles. “Actually, no.” For some reason, those words did reassure me and something in me let go, gave in, my body melting against his. “So this isn’t about wanting to have an affair?”

“I love you, Ronnie.”

I felt that, in every movement, every moment, the way he slipped his arms under my shoulders, pulling me closer, wanting more. He did love me, he did want me-and I was so his.

“I want to get old with you and raise our daughter with you…and maybe fill that sweet belly with some more babies.” His words thrilled me, and I didn’t want

to think about whether or not he knew it, or how much. My belly trembled against his, slick already with our sweat. “I’m not going anywhere.” Still, I wasn’t ready to give in completely. “You just want to be able to sleep with other people.”

“Come here.” He rolled onto his back, taking me with him, sitting me up.

His eyes swept over me and I felt satisfied at the dark look in them as they moved over my breasts, my waist, down to where we were joined, rocking. I couldn’t stop-it felt too good-my hips making faster and faster circles. “I just want us to experiment…shake things up…” He groaned when I squeezed him with my muscles, spreading my legs wide to take him all, belly and balls deep.

“So you’re bored?” I teased, leaning over him and arching my back, showing him my breasts but keeping my nipples just out of reach of his mouth.

“Veronica Mayer!” He didn’t let me tease him long-that was another thing about him I loved so much. He didn’t let me get away with anything. He shoved me off him, making me gasp when he pressed me to the bed on my belly, grabbing my hips and pulling me up to my hands and knees. I was too wet to resist him now and his cock slid in, punishing me with its length, making me gasp and clutch the sheet. “You’re impossible!”

“No, I’m just selfish.” I whispered into the pillow, lifting my hips to feel him in me, deeper, more. “I want this all to myself…”

I was sure he wouldn’t hear me, but TJ chuckled. “Don’t you teach your kindergarteners to share well with others?”

I didn’t respond-I couldn’t. I was beyond the point of talking or even wanting to think. I slid my fingers through my swollen lips, searching past the dark, wet fur toward my clit. TJ sensed my urgency, his hips moving faster-

short, hard strokes that matched the insistent rubbing at my clit, his thighs slapping into mine. I moaned when he grabbed me and pulled me deep into the saddle of his hips, sinking himself as far as he could go.

“God, you know what I love!” He made me want to scream and I buried my face in the pillow, moaning low and loud, hoping Beth wouldn’t hear us.

“That’s right, baby,” he murmured, moving my hand out of the way with his, strumming my clit with his big fingers, back and forth, round and round. “I know everything you like.” He pinched my clit gently between his thumb and forefinger, peeling the hood of skin back and squeezing, just the right amount of pressure, like a pulse, over and over and over…

“Oh fuck!” I felt my orgasm hovering, teasing me, like a pregnant storm cloud waiting for just the right moment to let go with a torrent, a veritable flood.

TJ didn’t stop his tease, jerking my clit now as if it were a tiny little cock, his hips driving into me, pressing me forward on the bed. “Please, please, please!”

“Just imagine it, Ronnie…” He pressed me further, forcing my knees to buckle under his weight. “I could teach her to do all the things you love…” I groaned into the pillow, shaking my head, trying not to imagine it but unable to stop the thoughts as his words flooded over me and his cock found some deep part of me, rubbing there again and again, as if my pussy were some magic lamp and he were searching for an elusive genie.

“Can’t you feel her under you, baby?” Relentless, on and on. “Her tongue buried in your pussy, her cunt spread open for your mouth…” The image was hot-more than hot, it made me burn with a deeper heat than I’d ever known with TJ alone. I wanted more, but I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t have to, though, because he didn’t stop. He kept rubbing and talking and coaxing and crooning, telling me about her pussy and her tongue and her soft, hot body under mine, until I was aching for it, feeling it building low in my belly as I thrashed under him on the bed.

It had been years and years, but the memory came back like it was yesterday, the rich, lush feel of her body, the soft, smooth taste of her flesh. It was Mrs. Baumgartner I was imagining beneath me, with her smooth, tanned thighs, spreading them wide for my tongue. Oh my god, had we really-? I hadn’t forgotten, not really, but I hadn’t thought about it or spoken it of it since Gretchen and I had gone our separate ways.

“Oh Mrs. B,” I whispered, lost in the fantasy, TJ’s cock driving it home with every thrust. I could almost taste her, thick and pungent on my tongue, hear her moaning as I licked her to orgasm after orgasm after… “Oh god, yes, baby, that’s my girl, come for me, come on, do it, do it, come in my mouth!” TJ groaned at my words, his fingers digging deep into my hips. “Oh fuck, Ronnie, oh my god, yesss!”

I want to say it was the feel of him coming, that first, hot spurt of cum, that sent me over the edge-but it wasn’t. It was remembering Mrs. B, the thick, hot lap of her tongue against my clit, and most of all, the feel and taste of her coming in my mouth, how she shuddered and dug her nails into my flesh and pressed her cunt against my face until I couldn’t breathe, and I loved it, oh my god, I couldn’t get enough of her…

“Oh, oh, yes, coming, oh please…” My voice turned small, young, and I lost myself in the memory and the sweet pulse of my orgasm, arching with it on the bed, again and again. Suddenly, I wasn’t a twenty-nine year old kindergarten teacher, mother of a five-year-old, about to celebrate her seventh wedding anniversary-I was a young, naive nineteen-year-old girl having her first experience with the wide open world of sexual pleasure.

I buried my face in pillow, panting and breathless, as TJ slipped out of me and slid off to the side. His belly was wet with sweat as he shifted his hips toward me.

“Wow.” His lips found my hairline, my temple, my ear. “That was something else.”

I didn’t trust myself to answer, but I turned my face toward his. I was afraid of what he might see in my eyes, but I wanted the reassurance I was seeking in his. He gave it to me, too, nothing but love there as his fingers played through my hair.

I knew he was waiting for me to say something, so finally, I did. “I have to admit… thinking about it is kind of hot.”

He grinned. “And if just thinking about it is hot, just imagine…” I flushed, both with the thought and with the memory. I had never told TJ about what happened with the Baumgartners. Gretchen and I had been over for a year when I met him, and I had chalked it all up to some college experimentation thing. I wasn’t a lesbian, I was sure of that. Yes, okay, I’d been attracted to women over the years, but—

“Ronnie?”

”Hm?” I turned onto my side and spooned up against him, pulling his arm across me, a protection, a barrier. I knew what he was going to ask, even before the words were out, and yet, somehow, they still surprised me.

“Who’s Mrs. B?”

I froze, glad he couldn’t see my face. Well, Lucy, looks like you’ve got some ‘splainin’ to do.

I cleared my throat, closed my eyes, my whole body on fire with the memories, and then I started to talk…

The headlights of my Intrepid reflected on the garage door and I turned them off, gathering up my purse and my bag with all my lesson plans. It was such a sweet moment of anticipation, the time between knowing I was home and going into the house where I knew TJ and Beth would be waiting. Knowing the long holiday stretched out ahead of us made it even better, and if it weren’t for staying late to finish cleaning up the classroom and the fact I had a hamster in the backseat, it would be perfection.

I opened the side door and could smell TJ’s spaghetti cooking. It just kept getting better and better! I swept in carrying the hamster cage, complete with hamster, and TJ stood up from the kitchen chair, his eyebrows raised as he moved instinctively to help. “Uh, what’s this?”

I let him take the cage and he looked around for the best place to put it, deciding on the counter. He peered in at a little sleeping ball nearly the color of peach fuzz curled into one corner.

“Taffy, remember?” I began unslinging purses and bags from my shoulder, hanging them over a kitchen chair. “Classroom hamster. Jody Cornwell was supposed to take him home over Christmas break, but he has the chicken pox, and I couldn’t get anyone else’s parent’s permission in time. Poor little guy had to wait in the car while I was visiting with Kathy after work—uh, and what’s this?” I stood staring at the glasses and the wine and looked up at him, pushing my hair out of my face and frowning. He uncorked the bottle and began to pour us each a glass.

“We’re having a dinner guest.” He offered me a glass of wine.

I smiled, my eyes questioning, and shook my head. “You know I don’t like this stuff.”

“Try it,” he said, clinking his glass with mine.

“So do I have to guess who’s coming to dinner?” I lifted the glass to my nose, wrinkling it at the smell.

TJ waited, watching me sip it, surprised as I took my first taste. “It’s good, isn’t it? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not Sidney Poitier.”

“Then who is it?” I took another sip. “This isn’t bad. Fruitier than most of the wine you’ve made me drink.” I winked at him. “But it still tastes like alcohol.”

I sat at the kitchen table, kicking off my heels. As often as I complained about them, I still wore them. TJ liked them, and I liked TJ imagining me standing in front of a classroom of kindergarteners in those heels. I looked up at him, waiting.

TJ took a gulp of his wine. “Gretchen.”

“Who?” I set my glass on the table and stared at him. I knew. Of course I knew, after our conversation last week, what I’d told him about my week in Key West with the Baumgartners and the year that followed. Still, I acted surprised. I was surprised, really. How had he found her?

TJ began talking fast. “It wasn’t hard at all, Ronnie. You could have kept in touch yourself if you wanted to. The Baumgartners still live in the same house, and Gretchen is still their nanny. Well, I imagine it’s more like cook and housekeeper and stuff like that, now that the kids are teenagers. I just called the number in the phone book and asked for Gretchen. It was easy.” Easy. So the Baumgartners lived about twenty miles away from us, in the same house? I tried to imagine them, Doc and Mrs. B. And Janie and Henry, all grown up! My mind refused to wrap around the idea.

TJ took another gulp of wine. “Well, it’s kind of funny how it all fell into place. Mrs. Baumgartner was thrilled to hear from me, and wanted to know all about how you were doing. Apparently, they’re going on their annual trip to Key West over the holidays next week. I think that must be same the trip they took when-”

“You talked to Gretchen?” I stood, taking my glass to the sink.

TJ continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “-when you went with them, the one you told me about? Yeah, I talked to Gretchen. She insisted on seeing you, wanted to call you, talk to you, but I thought… well, I thought it would be better to meet face to face.”

I poured the rest of my wine down the sink, rinsing the glass and setting it on the counter next to the hamster cage. “You thought I’d chicken out and not meet her at all, didn’t you?’”

“Maybe.” He poured himself another glass of wine.

I turned to him, crossing my arms over my chest. “So you just decided to invite her to dinner without talking to me?”

“Honey, she practically invited herself,” he replied, avoiding my eyes and taking another gulp from his glass. “There wasn’t a lot I could do to stop it.”

“TJ…” I sighed. “What did you think? She’d come over and we’d have a threesome on the kitchen table?”

“No.” He laughed, standing up and putting his arms around my waist. “I just thought it would be nice for you to see an old friend.” I rested my head on his chest, putting my arms around him. “I just wish you’d… consulted me?” I lifted my head, suddenly aware of the quiet. “Where’s Beth?”

TJ looked sheepish. “At your mother’s.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh come on! I haven’t seen a setup this obvious since Sidney Poitier showed up for dinner with Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracey.”

“I don’t think they had a threesome… did they?”

I pinched his waist, making him yelp and jump. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m not up to anything. I swear it.” TJ hugged me, kissing the top of my head. “I just thought you two would like to be able to talk about… well, whatever came up. Without having to worry about Miss Big Ears hanging around.”

“Still, you didn’t have to hide it from me,” I said with a sniff. “It feels… icky.”

“I-” I could tell he was about to deny it and he stopped. “I’m sorry. I can call her and cancel. I will if you want me to.”

I raised my eyes to meet his. He was up to something, even if he was pretending he wasn’t. Still, the thought of seeing Gretchen again made my skin tingle and my face feel warm. Did I want to cancel? The truth was, I wanted to see her again. The truth was, now that he’d opened the door, I wanted to see all of them again-Doc, Mrs. B, Janie, Henry. It was like some irresistible Pandora’s Box.

“Let’s just…take things slow,” I said, my voice and eyes soft. “See what happens-” I pressed my cheek against his chest again, shaking my head.

“Okay,” he agreed, hugging my shoulders.

“So, when is she coming?” I pulled away from him and went to retrieve my purse from the chair. “How much time do I have to get ready?”

“Only about half an hour,” he admitted, looking at his watch. “She’s supposed to be here by six.”

“Well, then, I better hustle!” I flashed him a smile as I passed, heading for the stairs, already wondering what I was going to change into.

“Ronnie,” he called, pouring himself another glass of wine. I stopped, watching as he poured another, too, leaving it on the table. “There’s one more thing.”

“What?” I asked as he lifted his glass to the hamster cage.

“Here’s lookin’ at you, Taffy,” he said, drinking it and looking like he was wishing it was a shot of whiskey. Somehow I knew what he was going to say, although my breath caught anyway and my heart hammered at his words. “The Baumgartners have invited us to Key West with them over the holiday break.” He tapped on the glass, trying to look nonchalant, and the hamster yawned, showing its long teeth before turning and snuggling back into the little nest it had made for itself in the cedar.

I didn’t say a word. I couldn’t. I just turned around and went upstairs, wondering just what I was going to do now.