One Bride for Five Brothers

by Jess Bentley

  She kicks up those pink little heels, standing up as she dances away from me, placing a sweet, precious kiss on Hank’s mouth.

  “That whistling is something else,” she gushes. “You're like a pro!”

  “Oh, brother Henry considered investing time on the competitive whistling circuit,” Hank jokes dramatically. “It was only his duties shoveling out the barn that kept him from those hallowed halls of whistling stardom.”

  “You laugh, but competitive whistling really is a thing,” she insists. “He's really good! You should appreciate him.”

  “Oh, we appreciate him all right. Up and down every row of the orchard. We appreciate him in the springtime, in the summertime, and through every fucking harvest for the last twenty-five years. I'm all appreciated out, to tell you the truth!”

  Hank flips us all the bird, holding his hands high over his head and rotating them around the room.

  “Yeah, Vanessa, these jerks have a point. You might think it's great now. But in five years, you'll probably be sick of it too,” Hank shrugs, rolling his eyes.

  “In five years, I can't imagine being sick of any of this,” she shrugs. “I feel like I can do this forever.”

  The room falls silent as we all look at each other uncomfortably.

  “What? What did I say?” she mutters. “Am I wrong? Are you guys bored already?”

  “Oh, no, nothing like that!” Charlie insists. “Actually… we want to talk to you.”

  She sits down on the edge of the couch and folds her hands in her lap. I'm distracted by the way the skirt rides up over her knees. It's my day with Tom. I'm ready to get this show on the road so we can get back to business.

  “Okay, so, talk,” she shrugs.

  “Yeah… well, you remember us talking about an international deal, right?”

  “I remember,” she nods.

  “Well, it's come time that we need to make a decision. We're leaning toward Germany.”

  He holds out his hands, looking at his palms, then lets them drop.

  “Oh, I see,” she says, her voice choked. I watch her bite her lips together as her cheeks start to redden. “Well, that's all right. I wasn't really thinking that we would —”

  “Oh no!” Charlie blurts out, rushing toward her and taking her hands in his. “I mean, we want you to come with us! I mean, would you? I mean, if you want to —”

  “Come with you?” she repeats, her eyes wide and confused. “But I thought you were telling me you were leaving? What are you saying?”

  Stan strides over to her, cuffing Charlie on the shoulder.

  “I think would Charlie was trying to say, and failing to say, that we would love it if you would think about coming with us. You know. Staying with us.”

  “Staying with you where?”

  “Oh, it's a little place in Germany. Bavaria actually. Do you happen to speak German?”

  “A little, actually,” she confesses shyly.

  “See? It's perfect,” Stan smiles.

  “It does sound pretty amazing,” she says in a small voice. “Is it all right if I think about it?”

  We all look at her, then look at each other. Think about it? What's there to think about?

  “Yeah, sure. Think it over,” Stan says, even though I don't want him to.

  “Take all the time you need,” Charlie agrees.

  I glance at Tom. Is he hearing this? He shoots me a look that says that he can't believe it either. Are they really willing to let her go?

  “Okay, well, it's getting late,” I interrupt, holding out my hand. "Tom and I have a big night planned with Vanessa. Say goodnight, boys.”

  Stan, Charlie, and Hank kiss Vanessa on her cheek as I pull her away by the hand, eager to get her out of the house. Tom trots up behind us as we cross the dark back yard, strolling through the orchard to her cabin.

  She doesn't say anything, just walks slowly with her chin raised, looking at the big white moon overhead.

  “Full moon tonight,” she remarks.

  “You know what that means,” Tom chuckles.

  “No, what does it mean?”

  We climb the stairs up into her cabin and Tom shoots me a look, grinning widely.

  “Seriously, what does it mean?”

  “You'll see,” Tom says.

  As soon as he crosses the threshold, he tugs her by the hands, leading her to the bed. With a squeal, she lets him bend her over as he pushes her skirt up over that big, lush, round ass, groaning as he buries his face between her cheeks.

  “Tom! You beast!”

  “Better just let him have what he wants,” I remark, slowly undressing at the foot of the bed. “He's been waiting for ages.”

  “Just relax, baby,” he says, his voice muffled by those luscious buttocks. “You're gonna love this.”

  Tom goes to town, making wet, sloppy trails up and down her ass crack, judiciously lubricating her with spit so he could start circling his tongue around her asshole. At first she seems dubious, but pretty soon she's backing up into him, pushing up on her toes to angle her tight little hole right at his tongue.

  “That's it, Vanessa,” I encourage her. “Let him have it.”

  Her fingers dig into the bedspread, and I fist my cock while I watch them and think about how juicy her pussy must be by now. I know how she likes it, how she likes to be pushed to the very edge and then maybe just a little bit further. She's so sweet and doll-like on the outside, but on the inside she's an absolute savage. When she's got both of our dicks in her, one in her mouth and one in her pussy, she looks rapturous. She looks like she's going to start speaking in tongues.

  She's gonna love this.

  “Get underneath her,” Tom tells me, lifting his head up briefly. He wipes the juices from his bottom lip and smiles, winking.

  “Whatever you say,” I answer, flopping down on the mattress and picking up my sweet girl in one smooth motion. She gasps in surprise as I settle her back on top of me, sliding that dripping pussy over my belly as I push her down onto my fat cock.

  “Oh, ohhhhh,” she groans, rolling her eyes back up in her head. “Oh my God, Tim, I missed you so much!”

  “Yeah, baby I missed you too,” I manage to tell her even as the air is being choked out of me. I want to bust a nut so bad, but I want to wait for Tom too.

  As soon as I'm in her, he slips a finger into her asshole. Her eyes fly open in alarm.

  “Don't tighten up,” he chuckles. “Just let Tim's big dick loosen you up, baby. Yeah, like that. Let me in.”

  I scoot down to the edge of the bed until my ass is practically hanging off, pushing up with my heels so that her ass is in the air. She grinds against me, obediently loosening up those muscles like she knows what's coming.

  "Oh, yeah,” she grunts desperately. “Oh, yeah. Yeah.”

  I feel pressure against the base of my cock when Tom starts to push in, slowly, millimeter by millimeter. He guides himself with his hand, letting a line of spit drip onto the head of his cock to keep her lubed up. I keep her distracted from the front, grinding my hips against hers to set her clit on fire.

  There's an almost audible pop when he passes that first ring of muscle, and he groans like he's going to come right away. I feel his dick sliding against mine, separated by only a thin membrane inside her. Slowly he inches forward until we’re both balls deep, stuffing her like a Christmas goose.

  The sounds she's making aren't even human sounds. She's way past human now, deep in that animal part of her brain, deep in that part we've mapped out, the part that loves to be fucked. And fucked she is, as we time ourselves to stroke in and out of her together. Over and over, tip to root, smoothly rooting and plowing our baby girl, ravaging her in a way nobody else can.

  She takes it all, her arms shaking, her forehead damp with perspiration. Her eyes are rolled back and her mouth open, quivering with inhuman syllables. She takes every inch of us until we both explode, dousing her with rivers of cum that overflow and splash back out, mingling on our balls, d
ripping down three sets of thighs to the floor.

  Gently we disengage, and I almost feel like I should take her pulse or something. She's making kitten noises, her mouth open, a dazed expression on her face.

  “You okay, baby?” I ask her, gently kissing the sweat off her cheeks and brow.

  “I'm amazing,” she sighs.

  Tom and I look at each other and smile. Amazing, yeah. That she is.

  Chapter 16

  Vanessa

  Charlie hired four additional workers to help with harvest and I have to wonder what they think of us. Me and the guys go up each and every row, filling basket after basket with apples, chatting and laughing and talking like we've known each other our whole lives.

  Sometimes Stan will start singing — he has the most beautiful baritone voice — or Hank will start whistling, or I'll start a song. We literally whistle while we work.

  It's like a cartoon.

  So the days go by so fast, from dawn until dusk. This is the crunch time, they say, when we need to get all the apples off the trees that we can so they can either go to the farm stand, or to the barn for juicing. Their sweetness is peaking right now. We don't want to miss our window.

  Actually, the days have been going by so fast that a couple times the guys have almost missed their shifts. We just fall asleep, forgetting to make love, content to cuddle and whisper to each other until exhaustion overtakes us. It’s the sweetest feeling in the world, nestling against one of my guy’s big shoulders, drinking in their musky scent until I'm drunk on it, then drifting swiftly into dreams where they sing to me, love me, and feed me sips of sweet wine.

  But I’ve caught the workers giving us puzzled glances when we laugh and flirt. One of them, a college girl named Lorraine, even tried to join in the fun by flirting with Charlie. I banished her immediately to directing traffic through the parking lot by herself, far from the fruit stand. This is not a free-for-all.

  This is mine.

  I suppose it looks strange to outsiders, but this is absolute heaven to me. They treat me like I'm their queen, fussing over me but never underestimating me. Lavishing me with as much attention as I can stand and then some. I feel like I'm on a high all the time.

  When we come to the end of the row, I see Charlie squint toward the house. He gestures to Stan, who stops in mid-verse and chokes off a song.

  “What's going on?” Tom asks.

  I crane my head to see, dropping a skirt full of apples into the canvas basket that Hank has slung over one shoulder. A figure rounds the corner of the house, and I suck my breath in through my teeth.

  “Dad!” I holler, waving over my head.

  He waves too and starts jogging toward us, smiling.

  The guys all line up behind me, sort of an automatic formation for them. Dad is breathless when he approaches, nodding at each of the guys in greeting.

  “Vanessa! There you are!” he says like he always does.

  “Here I am!” I answer, throwing my arms around his neck. It's only been a month, but it feels like forever. “I didn't know you were coming! Why didn't you call? I could've made lunch or something!”

  “Oh, that's all right,” he shrugs. “We just thought we'd drop by to… talk. You know.”

  I squint toward the house. “We? Is mom here too?”

  “Yes she sent me back here to look for you. Why don’t we go have a chat?”

  I smile up at him, shielding my eyes from the sun with my hand. Something about him looks off. Awkward.

  The guys resume their work, smiling at me as I wave politely, even though my natural urge is to kiss them all goodbye. It doesn't seem appropriate though, so I resist.

  Mom waves when we come around the front of the house. She pushes the rocking chair back with her heels and rocks back and forth a few times before standing up and opening her arms for a hug.

  “Really, this is such a surprise!” I breathe. “How was Wyoming?”

  “Wyoming is enormous,” my dad smiles. “We had a great time. Actually, we got an offer to do a follow-up film in China.”

  My eyes go wide. “China? Well… that's amazing! You guys have never done anything in China before.”

  “I know. We were shocked too,” my dad explains. He settles against the fence rail and crosses his ankles casually. I sit down next to my mom and lean my head on her shoulder. It feels really good to be next to her.

  “A foreign distributor saw our work, thought it might be good to cooperate. We’re going to look at some primate sanctuaries in China. Doesn’t that sound cool?”

  “It really does,” I nod sincerely. “I'm sure you guys will put together some great work there. Congratulations!”

  Mom strokes my hair, smiling wistfully into the distance.

  “So… want to come with us?” my dad says, slapping the dust from the knees of his jeans.

  My mouth falls open. “Well… I have this job…”

  He waves his hand in the air as though brushing the job away with that simple gesture.

  “Your passport is still good,” he explains. “Then you need shots… and the visa only takes a few weeks to get. You can finish up here first!”

  My stomach starts to feel sick. Tight.

  “Well, I like my job,” I explain slowly. “And it won’t be done for a while. Even after the harvest, there's juice to work on. Or something. Actually I don't understand the whole process yet. But I'm learning!”

  “I'm sure you are,” he nods. His smile seems stiff. Glued on. “You can learn a lot from us too, you know. I mean, maybe that would interest you? Filmmaking? I know we didn't really talk about it all that much before. But it is definitely still a possibility. We could have a family film empire, of sorts. What do you think?”

  My discomfort starts to turn into something else. Something like irritation. Anger even.

  “I think I want to stay here, like I said,” I repeat. “Thanks for coming. Really. It's great to see you.”

  Dad looks around, glances at my mother, and cranes his neck to see into the orchard again.

  “You're saying you're fine here? With all this?”

  “Yes. Totally fine here,” I repeat.

  “And these men? They’re… appropriate?”

  I glance at my mother, trying to figure out what's really going on here. This is not something my parents talk to me about, as a rule. Long ago, they gave me some hippie speech about how my sexuality was my business. Suddenly, their opinions seem to have changed.

  “They’re perfect gentlemen,” I sigh.

  Gentlemen might be loosely applied here, but I’ve said it and I'm sticking with it.

  Dad sighs heavily, dropping his head into his hand and knuckling the space between his eyebrows.

  “Listen, Vanessa,” he starts again. “I think we’ve been really patient here. We gave you two choices, you decided to do something else. So we thought we would go ahead and let you experiment.”

  “Experiment?” I repeat, incredulous.

  “And now the experiment needs to be over,” he continues like he didn't hear me. “Now it's time to move on, I think. You understand what I'm saying? You could still get into school. Late application fees can't be that much. And your grandmother said that she would even pick you up.”

  “Experiment?” I say again.

  “And now I'm offering you a third option,” Dad says apologetically with a strong undercurrent of insistence in his voice. “China! Think about it! It would be a really cool adventure for us, don't you think?”

  I stand up on shaky legs, listening to the sound of my heart beating wildly in my ears. I'm actually so shaky, I'm not sure I can say anything. I'm not sure what I want to say — what I need to say — but I know I had better make it a good.

  “Every day is in experiment,” I begin, my voice remarkably controlled considering how I feel on the inside, “and I like it that way. I like the adventure. More importantly, it's my adventure, okay? I'll make this decision for myself.”

  “Don't be unreason
able, Vanessa,” Dad grumbles impatiently. “Your grandmother said —”

  “— it doesn't matter!” I shrug. “I'd like you to respect my decision. I'm staying here to finish this job. And then I might go somewhere else. I might go to school, or I might go to Nashville and start playing guitar for money. I might go to Germany, or I might meet you in China. But Dad, it's my life. It's my decision, okay? I'll let you know. You have to wait for that.”

  Slowly my mom gets up from the bench. She looks me over, smiling. It almost seems that she didn't hear anything, but then she takes my shoulders and pulls me to her, kissing my forehead for long seconds. Then she drops another single, brief kiss on the tip of my nose.

  As she walks down the steps toward the car, my dad looks after her, then looks at me. His expression softens into sadness, then resignation, then back to frustration again.

  “I hope you know what you're doing,” he huffs sadly. “I really do.”

  “Nobody ever really knows what they're doing, Dad,” I say. “I'm just trying to be happy, okay? I’m happy for you. Try to be happy for me too?”

  He doesn't say anything, just holds his arms out so I hug him again. Then he whispers goodbye into my hair and leaves the porch. I watch their car pull away down the long driveway, then back out into the cul-de-sac.

  Chapter 17

  Stan

  Something that never ceases to amaze me about Vanessa is her strength. She's physically strong, sure, but I mean her mental strength. Her resilience.

  Though she's only in her early twenties, she carries herself with the wisdom of someone much older. Maybe it's because her family has traveled so much and gone on so many adventures together. Maybe she's just accustomed to having the world shifting underneath her.

  And at work, she's impressive. She can definitely pick as much as Charlie, filling up that basket on her back as she stands on the ladder in each tree. She seems to take it with some pride that she doesn't just give up immediately, though it took just a little while for her to get the hang of it. But because she's a lot smaller than Charlie, she can really weave her way between some of those heavy, thick branches. She adds something to the team, that’s for sure.