Kara's View of Autumn

by Carl Hamlin

  Kara’s View of Autumn

  By

  Carl Hamlin

  ©2012 by Blushing Books® and Carl Hamlin

  Copyright © 2012 by Blushing Books® and Hamlin,Carl

  All rights reserved. No part of the book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

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  Carl Hamlin

  Kara’s View of Autumn

  eBook ISBN:978-1-60968-921-6

  Cover Design by edhgraphics.blogspot.com

  This book is intended for adults only. Spanking and other sexual activities represented in this book are fantasies only, intended for adults. Nothing in this book should be interpreted as Blushing Books' or the author's advocating any non-consensual spanking activity or the spanking of minors.

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  Other books you may enjoy by Carl Hamlin are:

  The Inheritance

  Capitol Punishment

  The Promise

  Chapter 1

  She tried to keep her breathing at a steady rhythm as the sections of pavement blurred beneath her while she ran down the sidewalk. The Wednesday morning air was cool and crisp and some of her puffs of breath fogged upon leaving her body.

  She had run two miles, and her legs were still feeling strong. They were not long legs, as Kara Wulling stood just five foot four. Still, she felt confident that she had another mile in her on this October morning, and she had some time to spare before she needed to get ready to go to work.

  She gazed at her surroundings as she ran, the tree-lined neighborhood of old brownstones standing in defiance of modernity. It was the same neighborhood she had known for thirty-five years, and the one in which she had raised her daughter. Now it was the one in which she pushed her toddler grandson in a stroller when she had the chance. She simply did not have that chance as often as she would like.

  That was why she would never buy a home. When she could retire, she wanted to be free to move if her daughter and son-in-law needed to relocate. She had worked very hard to raise her daughter right, and was too much in love with that little grandson. She would follow them to the ends of the earth. That was how they all wanted it to be.

  Kara Wulling was forty nine, and several years away from being able to retire. If she could, she would stay at home and provide free child-care to help out her working daughter and her son-in-law. However, she had experienced a late start in the job market after becoming a teenage, single mother. That reality delayed her high school graduation and her entrance to the community college at which she had studied criminal justice. Thanks to a set of devoted but demanding parents, she had been given a second chance to live a responsible life.

  Fortunately, her father was a successful and renowned surgeon, and her mother was able to suspend her own teaching career. The parents were more than willing to make sacrifices of time and finances, but there were strict conditions to the arrangement. Kara’s mother had told her that she would help take care of the baby, but Kara would go back to school. She was expected to establish herself in a solid career, and would be judged to see if she had learned from her mistakes.

  She worked as a part-time waitress for a while so that she could spend sufficient time with her baby daughter. She then began taking college classes on a part-time basis at age twenty with no specific plan of action. However, during her first semester she took a sociology course simply by chance as an elective course. A portion of the course was devoted to criminology, and the subject fascinated Kara. She seized onto the field of study, chose criminology as her major, and never looked back. It was a surprise to her parents, but over time, they came to understand that Kara saw herself as someone who had committed an act that was considered by society at that time to be outside the norm. She had simply found a sense of empathy with others who did not fit the mold.

  Finding her interest, she was much better able to concentrate on her classes. Through various realities, such as the stripping away of any social life, the diapers, the crying in the middle of the night and the colic, Kara at least felt that an occupation she liked was awaiting her.

  Kara found that young motherhood was not the easy way to enter into adulthood, but she never regretted keeping Susan rather than giving her up for adoption. Now she had little Michael to light up her life as well.

  After running for a few more minutes, Kara decided to finish for the morning. It was time to head to her rented half-duplex. She had to get ready for another day of surprises in dealing with people who seemed to possess a mind-numbing lack of understanding the ramifications of their actions. Like having unprotected sex at sixteen?

  She reached her home and panted as she unlocked her door. Once inside, she relocked it, and secured a deadbolt and a chain lock as well. She hardly lived in a crime-ridden neighborhood. However, some dangerous people had crossed her path through the years. There was always a risk that they would do so again in a mood for retribution.

  Kara walked into the kitchen and reset her security alarm. She opened t
he refrigerator and drank the protein shake she had prepared the night before. She walked into the bedroom and pulled off her shoes. She next peeled off her sweatshirt, then her tee shirt and sports bra.

  She plopped down on the end of her bed, untied the string on her running pants, and pulled them down. Before taking off her socks, she had to unstrap the ankle holster that held her .32 caliber Beretta. She placed the gun on the dresser next to a badge case that had fallen open and revealed her identity card:

  Kara Wulling

  Deputy Chief Probation Officer

  Park County, Iowa Division of Criminal Justice

  The time in the shower was her daily path to relaxation. It was her most effective means of getting her tensions under control. She padded into the bathroom and turned on the shower. She stepped in and allowed her mind to wander as she shampooed and scrubbed. She always visualized the water washing her anxieties and problems away. There were even mornings when it actually worked.

  She left the shower and wrapped herself in an oversized towel. She stood in front of the mirror and began to blow-dry her shoulder-length blonde hair. As she dried, she leaned close to the mirror as the dancing blue eyes looked back. She had mixed emotions about the random gray strands. On one hand, she saw them as a somber reminder of her age. On the other hand, she felt that she had earned them, and had no inclination to color her hair.

  She usually respected reality. She was a woman who had recovered from a youth that could have put her under for life, as it had so many others who had become teen mothers. It had happened in an era when teen pregnancy was much less common, in a small, conservative community where it was much more of a controversy.

  Her teen pregnancy and childbirth seemed to define her in the past. Now she was attempting to come to grips with her age. Kara believed in being who she was, though she would be the first to admit that it was easier said than done. Still, she saw no virtue in cosmetic surgery, liposuction or clothing designed to compress one’s true dimensions. She was not thin by any measure. In fact, she was curvaceous, but far from plump. She would make her appearance the best it could be by foregoing desserts and by running the pavement even when she would have preferred to sleep in.

  Kara had been a star runner on her high school track team. In fact, she had taken up with Susan’s father as a result of being on that squad. He had been a long jumper, and the boys and girls teams had sometimes practiced at the same time at the small school with a limited budget for athletics.

  Kara and her first love also found that they shared a common appetite for pot, and it was during one of their smoking sessions in the home of the boy’s often absent parents that Kara found her will-power to be equally absent. Nine months later, she gave birth to Susan.

  Her hair dry, she walked into the bedroom and dropped the towel into a clothes hamper. By habit, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and took a personal appraisal.

  She had succumbed to some of the minimal sagging that was inventible with age, regardless of how much she exercised. She had long ago accepted that gravity and nature were forces beyond her control. However, that did not prevent her from being very attractive. A man who had made a serious pass at her at a conference a few months before had described her in a way that made her feel good about herself. He told Kara that she was “…soft and round and lovely.”

  The poor fellow never had the opportunity to see Kara in her current state of undress. That treat was reserved for the viewing pleasure of one Roger Lowry. Now Kara was looking forward to the upcoming weekend, when Roger would see her that way for nearly all of the evening times during their planned weekend getaway.

  In fact, the vast majority of their time together was on weekends. Both were rather absorbed in their jobs, and a mid-week encounter was rare.

  Roger was always on her mind, except when she was thinking of Susan and little Michael. Still, she and Roger had never used the word “love”. Neither had intentions to marry, but when they had met at a conference on managing probation staff two years earlier, they struck up a friendship as they sat next to each other at a table.

  Roger was the chief probation officer in a city in the neighboring county, so their paths did not cross on a routine basis. They found out that although they lived in different counties, they resided just five miles apart.

  They had also sat together for lunch at the conference, but were part of a group. In spite of the presence of the others, each sensed an attraction. As someone who had foresworn romance for forty years, that was a special and rare moment for Kara.

  In the following weeks and months, e-mails flew back and forth. However, they were of a general nature. Roger had just finished tying up the legal remnants of a divorce from his wife of thirty years who had become restless and uninterested in him. They had lived apart for three years, and the divorce turned out to be a slow process. Therefore, the messages between him and Kara contained no hints of romantic intent for quite some time.

  That teasing pattern of communication continued for nearly a year. Then, the day finally came when an e-mail sent by Roger contained a dinner invitation. Kara surprised herself by her eagerness as she replied that she accepted.

  That following Saturday evening, Roger picked her up and took her to a fine restaurant with booths that provided a good place to talk in private. Not anyone overhearing the two hours they spent there would have picked up a clue as to what each of them did for a living. They spoke of their likes and dislikes, football, movies, books and current affairs. He was a political liberal who loved classical art, classical music and movies starring film stars from the forties and fifties. She was a conservative who loved abstract art, edgy movies and power rock bands from the sixties and seventies. They laughed and teased, and spoke of their grown children and grandchildren.

  Roger was a year older than Kara was, and he did share her attitude about staying fit. He simply did not take it to the same level. Still, he was a trim and healthy man who was careful about his diet and avoided the unnecessary intake of anything harmful.

  He was not quite six feet tall, with salt and pepper hair that ran just down over the tops of his ears. He had deep brown eyes, and a smile was nearly always present.

  He and Kara entered into a no-promises relationship. It made each of them feel safe but provided what each felt was needed: companionship, romance and memorable romps on the bed.

  Kara had found herself traumatized by the sexual encounter that had not only resulted in her loss of virginity, but the pregnancy. The episode on her immature boyfriend’s bed, while unquestionably consensual, had been so physically uncomfortable, so lacking in romance, so awkward and brief, that she went through decades feeling nothing but revulsion at the thought of again having sex. No romantic passage in a novel and no steamy movie scene could rid her of that aversion. She had spoken to counselors and therapists, all to no avail.

  Through the years, she dressed fashionably, made herself attractive and kept in good shape, as she felt that she needed to do so for both her health and her role in society. On a couple of occasions, she had accepted requests to be someone’s date, but only for an event of some type. There had always been men she worked with who wanted very much to date her, but that was not a part of her life.

  It was not that Kara lacked a libido. In a candid moment with an adult Susan, the daughter had asked Kara why she still was not dating. Kara replied that she had found that her sexual needs were best left to her own devices – and that she kept an extensive assortment of them in a drawer with a good supply of batteries.

  Kara also viewed dating as time-consuming. When she was not at the office or with Susan, she was taking classes. Class by class, year by year, she earned her bachelor’s degree, and then more time and courses led her to receive her master’s degree in criminal justice. What time she could have spent dating, she instead spent with Susan. Her only leisure activity aside from watching professional football was watercolor painting.

  Aside from her education an
d job, Susan had been her life. As much as she was filled with regret and self-recrimination over the impulsive act, she would have gone through all of the heartache and struggle again rather than not have had Susan. For Susan had grown to be a responsible and respectable woman, a cardiac care nurse who had nearly covered a wall in her home with awards and certificates of commendation. She became a good wife and an exceptional mother. Kara burst with pride at the very thought of her.

  For her part, Susan considered Kara to be a champion of role models, even though Susan had come to understand at an early age just how she had come to be. Kara had successfully walked the tightrope of being able to explain to Susan the mistake she had made, while never allowing the girl to think of herself as nothing more than the result of a moment of bad judgment. Kara had made Susan feel loved at the highest level, but talked to her endlessly about choices and goals.

  Kara and Susan had gotten along quite well. The one point of contention was the same one that had brought some tension within her relationship with Roger.

  Kara had spent so much of her life struggling to be independent, that once she graduated from the community college and began earning a wage as a case aide, she had erected a wall between herself and those who would help or protect her. That included men in general, and extended to offers of extra protection when she dealt with a threatening situation.

  Kara had encountered her first such situation a month after being promoted to be a probation officer. She had been forced to arrange for the arrest of a woman who was not cooperating with drug testing. The woman was arrested and was sentenced to spend several months in jail. Upon her release, rumors were coming to the parole office staff that she was threatening Kara’s life.