by Julian Bloom
EPILOGUE
Michael’s death hit JD hard. He was a wreck during the funeral. But he knew that he was a changed man because not once did he consider numbing his pain with alcohol. He had faced his doubts and fears and he had won.
When he won his first award for his comeback album, he dedicated it to Michael.
“I wouldn’t be standing here, holding this award if it wasn’t for two very special people. One of them is no longer on this plane of existence. He died doing what he did for me ever since the first day I met him at an AA meeting. He died helping me stay on the straight and narrow. My sponsor, my friend, my comrade-in-arms in the battle against alcoholism. My guardian angel in the journey of sobriety. Michael. This one’s for you.”
He got a standing ovation.
He went to visit his parents and asked for their forgiveness. For giving them a hard time when he was a teenager, for running away from home…. They sealed the peace deal over a hearty meal prepared by his mother.
During dessert, he told them about Miranda.
When his mother began planning the guest list and sitting positions, JD slowed her down by telling her that he wasn’t even sure whether she was interested in him, leave alone interested in marrying him. With a cheeky twinkle in her eye she told him:
“My dear Son, all you have to do is simply turn on the Dunford charm. Wear her out with it the way your father here wore me out!”
He did turn on the Dunford charm. He made sure that he kept things strictly professional when they were working together and only got personal when she accepted to go out on an official date with him. He took it slow, refusing to make love to her until the “Phoenix Rising” tour was officially over and they could both concentrate on their budding relationship.
It was hard for him to keep his hands off her but he could tell that it was harder for Miranda. He enjoyed seeing her frustration at not getting what she wanted most from him; mad, passionate, crazy, animal on-her-desk sex.
About one year later, his patience paid off. The Dunford charm did indeed wear her out, breaking down her defenses, causing her to trust him with her heart. Miranda said yes to being his wife.
The End
Game Park Games
Safari Lust
Author: Maurice Bedard
PROLOGUE
For Americans Shirlee and Brad, their honeymoon, - “a safari in Zambia” - is taking place before their wedding. It’s a potential disaster for Shirlee, whom desperately wants to be in a safe lifetime relationship. With Brad she has established a “no sex before marriage” policy to ensure that they’re married before anybody discovers she’s not the strait-laced virgin she pretends to be. But sharing a tent on safari leads Shirlee to discovering that Brad is no match either in personality or sexual competence for the African foreign student with whom she previously had a torrid affair. Fortunately or unfortunately, their handsome Zambian safari guide is more than willing to step in. Shirlee soon finds she no longer believes a woman must have a permanent man in her life, and seizes on the opportunity to enjoy life in the present.
Chapter 1 FOREPLAY
Shirlee woke suddenly with the feel of a hand on her bare butt. Terrified, she swatted the hand off and sat up, holding her sheet in front of her, and started to scream.
“Shirlee! What’s the matter? It’s me!”
The sound of Brad’s voice stopped the panic instantly, but then she was angry. “
What the hell are you doing in my room?”
“O come on, Shirlee, we’re engaged. Why shouldn’t I be your room?”
“Because we agreed you wouldn’t be!”
“Surely you didn’t mean it.”
“I did mean it!”
“But being engaged is practically the same as being married.”
“But not exactly the same. Brad you promised! I wouldn’t have agreed to go to Africa with you otherwise!
“That’s ridiculous!”
“It may be ridiculous to you, but it’s not to me.”
“You’re very old-fashioned!”
“Yes, I am! You knew that when you asked me to marry you! In fact, you said that’s partly why you wanted to marry me.”
Brad had no reply to that. It was true. He had seen in Shirlee someone that would stay true to him no matter what. He’s thought he’d be safe with her. He’d agreed to her “no sex before marriage” demand reluctantly, thinking that that was a bit over the top, but if it was necessary, it was necessary. He figured that once they were engaged, she’d relent. And when she didn’t at first, he figured she would when they were on their way to Africa, away from her straitlaced family and friends. What had seemed tolerable in Lafayette, Indiana, wasn’t tolerable in New York City where they’d stopped over before the long flight to Lusaka.
He’d tossed and turned in his bed, and finally persuaded himself that she would be doing the same. He’d been wrong. With bad grace he left her alone. It was early days yet. He’d read that with virgins, you had to take things slowly. “Sorry,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
When Brad left, Shirlee breathed a sigh of relief. It had been a close call. The bare hand on her butt had frightened her for about two seconds, but then had begun to burn in a way that heated up her whole being. If Brad had delayed any further before giving up, she figured, she would have been lost. The moisture between her legs told her just how close it had been.
Her plan had gotten a lot more complicated than when she made it. She’d figured that she could hold Brad off until they were married. Then everything would have been OK. But the wedding had got postponed. Nobody could have expected an earthquake in Indiana. There never had been one before fracking had started. Whether it was fracking or not didn’t matter to Shirlee, but she couldn’t get married in a church with scaffolding and building dust everywhere. And the church was the church her parents had been married in, so had a lot of emotional resonance. And she couldn’t tell her mother exactly why she didn’t want the wedding postponed, so her mother had won. The only problem everyone but Shirlee saw was that the African safari that been planned as a honeymoon couldn’t be cancelled. There was a huge family council; they were a straitlaced family and a honeymoon before the wedding was not consonant with what they thought was proper. What’s more nobody they knew had ever done that, at least openly, which was important to the sort of family they were. It would have been impossible except that the safari was bought and paid for and the sum was huge. They’d tried to change the date but weren’t allowed to. Only then were voices raised, mostly among Shirlee’s generation, that the consummation of the marriage just a few weeks before the ceremony wasn’t such a terrible thing. Times were changing, after all.
So common sense, meaning economic sense, prevailed and everybody but Shirlee was agreed, and she couldn’t say why she objected.
The thing was, Shirlee wasn’t quite the prim virgin Brad and her parents assumed she was. It was a pose she assumed out of necessity rather than preference. Regarding her parents, it was a matter of damage control. They would have gone ape shit if they’d known that their strict control of her comings and goings, designed to protect her, had just the opposite effect, throwing her into Harry’s arms. She now acknowledged that they had been right, and that she’d be better off if she’d obeyed instead of rebelled. She had suffered exactly what they had feared she might, though mostly she thought it had been worth it. Her lover’s intentions had been exactly what they said they would be. He had promised eternal love and fidelity and she had believed him. Her betrayal and abandonment at Harry’s hands had made her cautious. Once burned, twice shy. She was not going to make the same mistake again. When Brad had become her suitor, no way was she going to give in to him before the wedding ring was on her finger.
She was beginning to waver, though. She had, after all, his ring on her finger. The wedding date had been set, and the trip to Africa was a kind of honeymoon, despite the fact that it was pre-nuptial. She desperately wanted, in fact, to give in.
Harry had shown her delights that she had no idea existed, and then removed them cold turkey, so to speak. She was hungry and thirsty in a desert of her own making, but she was afraid. One abandonment was enough for one life.
Chapter 2 THE HOME GAME
Lying in bed thinking about the situation brought back to her the memories she cherished. She had met Harry at the University of Indiana. She was staying at home; her parents would never have allowed her to stay on campus. But though she had to get home every evening, there were lots of unfilled hours of the day between and after classes, and from the beginning Shirlee had been determined to make the most of them. Sex hadn’t been on her mind from the beginning; it was new people, new ideas and new experiences she sought. She emerged from her chrysalis a butterfly. She hadn’t known how many men would find her attractive. Plump rather than slim, she had assumed she was ugly, an impression her parents took care not to dispel. She discovered to her surprise that though she wasn’t one of the campus queens who attracted the jocks, she was sought after by the second ranks. She hadn’t dared to begin wearing makeup; it would have been impossible to hide it from her parents. But she discovered a whole substrata of artistic and socially rebellious guys who preferred her that way. Imitating the girls in their group, she adopted clothing that was deliberately unglamorous – homespuns and cottons, peasant blouses and hiking boots, and stopped shaving her legs and armpits. Her parents, knowing no better, applauded.
It didn’t take long for the citadel of her virginity to be under siege, but mindful of her parents’ admonitions, she resisted, and stuck to group activities, avoiding situations where a defeat would have been possible, and since she was good company, her sexual reticence was accepted. She was one of the guys, suspected in a mild sort of way of being interested only in other women. She was, in her own eyes, being daring – flirting with all sorts of ideas and activities that her parents would not have approved of – agnosticism, beer, pot - and for a while it worked, but then at the moment it was beginning to pall, she met Harry.
Harry was an exchange student from Burundi. His real name wasn’t Harry, but something unpronounceable beginning with “Hari.” A member of the Tutsi cluster of tribes, he had the Tutsi build: 6ft tall with long limbs and incredibly long, delicate, fingers. He moved with the normal grace of the African, something that whites rarely equal. His light brown skin – the color of milk chocolate - was in perfect harmony with his coffee-colored eyes and glossy black hair, which he wore in elaborate corn rows swirling over his head.
If that were the whole picture, he would have been very popular on campus, but unfortunately, he was painfully shy among whites and deeply averse to American culture, a feeling he found it impossible to hide completely which meant instant ostracism in the elite or mainstream groups. After failing to become part of the main campus culture, he gravitated towards the circle Shirlee was in, which was both more tolerant and also somewhat critical of mainstream American culture. It was a group that foreign students often found congenial, so he was not the only non-American. Though shy off stage, the moment he took on a role, he exuded confidence and authority, making the most of his deep and expressive voice and physical agility. That was enough to ensure him acceptance. In addition, as a member of his tribal elite, he was rather well-to-do and had a car, making him popular in a rather impecunious group.
For reasons that puzzled the other members of the group, he was drawn to Shirlee, and she to him. For one thing, like many Africans, he had a preference for well-padded women. For another, the outspoken and aggressive sexuality of many American women offended him. He preferred being the hunter rather than the hunted. Shirlee on her part responded to his innate gentleness and the courtesy with which he treated her. That was a feature of her home life which she missed at the university. As straitened as it was, people in it treated each other considerately. Both her culture and Harry’s home culture were much more communal than modern American culture. One of the Tutsi’s proverbs was, “A man alone is an animal,” which harmonized with Shirlee’s family’s emphasis on brotherly love. As they talked, they found they shared many attitudes and ideas, and both responded with each other to the kind of treatment they had been used to at home.
One area which was never on the table for discussion because they had widely different ideas, was sex. Harry’s culture was very laid back about sex. It was expected that young men, like bees, would go from flower to flower tasting the honey therein. If a girl got pregnant, the couple married, which was no big deal since she would only be the first wife. Marriage was a more practical than romantic institution. Teenage experimentation was normal, and even approved of. It was all done with grace and by mutual permission, however; rape was essentially unknown.
Harry, as a result was frustrated. His pattern for sexual encounters was foreign in America, and that coupled with his shyness meant that it had been months since he’d experienced sex – a most untoward situation. He saw in Shirlee the sort of woman he fancied, and mistakenly supposed that her reluctance to engage in casual sex was assumed. He started off indirectly, and then more to direct pleas, becoming more and more frustrated and puzzled as time went on. What, he wondered, was holding her back. It finally occurred to him that she might be afraid. He had learned that American women, if they weren’t already sexually active, could be very ignorant about sex, which no women at home were.
With that in mind, he took infinite pains to move slowly, becoming gradually more hands on in expressing affection – for a while brotherly hugs and caresses only. Shirlee loved it. There had been practically no touching in her family and she was touch deprived. When Harry thought the time was right, he leaned over and kissed her gently. At first she stiffened, but then she melted and the kiss became tonguelessly passionate. Wisely he left things there for a day or two until he could sense that she would not be averse to another such kiss, and during it, slid his hand up under the back of her blouse. Once again she stiffened and then relaxed against his hand, enjoying the ministration of his delicate fingers.
Chapter 3 TOUCHDOWN
From there things moved quite quickly. Harry made each new experience such a pleasure that Shirlee had no will to resist. She couldn’t see any harm in it. Harry staged the final step with care – a romantic and comfortable setting, and some pot. The trust he had carefully built up paid off and though she said, “no,” as the moment of penetration was imminent, she made a move to stop it. That first time, though no great physical pleasure for Shirlee, was full of emotional thrill and Harry took the trouble to worship her body long after his climax. For Shirlee, the gentle massage and butterfly kisses were almost as thrilling as the genital sex had been.
From there it was all smooth sailing, as Harry introduced her to the full complement of joys he had at his command. He used his enormous organ and facile tongue expertly, and she took special pleasure in the sight of his blemish-free glossy skin, his musky scent and taut muscles. It was special to her because it was new, but also because it was really special. She had qualms, but they were slight and few. Clearly her parents were wrong. They couldn’t have known how much Harry would love her or, perhaps, though she felt disloyal in thinking it, they were not as expert at making love as Harry and she had become, so didn’t know how truly wonderful it was.
As the Christmas holidays drew near, Harry announced that he would go home for Christmas. As a kind of farewell celebration, he managed to procure a holiday cottage remotely sited on a nearby lake. It had become routine for Shirlee to spend nights away from home – at her girlfriend Sally’s home, she said. And though her parents were growing slightly uneasy, they trusted her too much to check her story.
When they got to the cottage, as soon as they had shucked off their snow gear, Harry unpacked the gourmet feast he had brought. It only needed heating and to be shared out. But before they finished that, their hunger for each other overcame their hunger for food and they gravitated to the bedroom, where Harry stopped her from throwing off her clothes. “L
et me undress you.” Positioning her next to the bed, with deliberate slowness he unbuttoned her blouse and slid it off her shoulders, baring his favorite spots on her body, the hollows between her neck and her collarbone. After licking both, he unhooked her bra and released her breasts. Cupping them in his hands, he lifted her nipples up and placed his lips over them, one by one, flicking his tongue across them, making them swell and stand. Kneeling in front of her, he kissed his way down till he reached her belt, which he undid, allowing her skirt to fall to the ground. With a finger under each side of the waist elastic, he pulled her panties down inch by inch, kissing each bit of skin as he uncovered it until with a sharp gesture, he uncovered her bush and buried his nose it.
“Oh! None of the perfumes of Araby could equal yours,” he exclaimed. Then lowering her gently on to her back, he searched the center of her bush with his tongue until he found lips surrounding the inner sanctum and licked them, moving to the nubbin within them when he felt it rising in anticipation. When it was erect, he stroked it with his teeth and then plunged his tongue as deeply into the adjacent cavity as it would go withdrawing it slowly only to plunge it once more to the depths. When Shirlee began to moan, he quickly shifted his position until his organ was where his tongue had been and then stopped all movement until Shirlee clenched her fists and her pelvic muscles in ecstasy whereupon he brought her over the crest of the wave with a few gentle thrusts, so she could concentrate wholly on her own pleasure, and when she began to relax with a few thrusts he brought himself to explosion point, jetting his seed into her in a torrent. After the last spasm had fully subsided, he withdrew and lay beside her, resting his head on her shoulder and breathing gently into her ear.