by JQ Jones
“What study was that?” Linc asked.
“None, I lied but didn’t it sound good for a second with all those extra words?” Willie said.
Linc looked at Jeff and both men broke into laughter. Willie joined in.
* * * *
Willie put on her own clothes for the first time since she’d come into the house. They planned an outing because Linc was concerned about Iona’s goat, although nobody had seen the thing in a few months, but you could hear him from different places in the hollow. On his trip to the house yesterday, the geese were ok, comfortably enclosed in their hutch. Since Iona had left with the dogs, the geese were looked after by Clyde Davis up the hollow. With the blizzard, there was no way that Clyde could get down off the mountain to take care of them so Linc had taken over the job.
Willie started Linc’s concern about the goat with her story of a weird bearded beast that stood on the side of the road on her trip up the mountain. There were no bears or other major predators around, but the Davises at the top of the hollow weren’t too picky about what kind of meat they put into a stew or who it belonged to. During the fall, Jeff fortified the barn that held the geese and the goat. There were signs that the goat had been there, but no one had actually laid eyes on him.
Willie spent a lot of time putting on her own clothes. She’d not had them on in what seemed like forever. Jeff knelt down to help her pull on yet another set of socks so that she would be able to fit into an extra pair of high winter boots that belonged to him. She walked around the room for a few turns before she leaned against a chair. She had on too many clothes to sit down.
“We need to leave soon. I feel like a Thanksgiving turkey as it gets its first blast of heat,” she said.
They finally left after Linc pulled a wool hat over her existing one and added a matching scarf. The snow was deeper than it got in Oklahoma, at least seventeen inches. It was wet, thick snow that was still falling at a steady clip. Willie followed along in Linc’s footsteps that were stretched to match his longer stride. After the first ten minutes, Jeff called a halt after Willie tumbled a little way down the mountain.
“Baby, her legs aren’t long enough to match your stride. Remember that she’s a girl,” Jeff said. He laughed at the pained expression that crossed his lover’s face. Willie lay in the snow with her mouth open catching snowflakes as they fell.
“Yeah, Linc, I’m a girl,” she said. It took both of her lovers to get her upright. Willie and Jeff managed to get Linc under a tree along the way and dumped a loaded limb down his back. He retaliated by pushing Jeff face-first into a snow bank and laying Willie beside him. He didn’t let them up until they promised no more horseplay. By crossing through the forest they should have reached Iona’s house in fifteen minutes.
After forty-five minutes they came off the mountain and onto the road. Finally, Willie spotted Iona’s house with smoke coming out of the chimney. The geese began to honk as they walked out of the forest and past a large black Mercedes SUV parked in the middle of the road.
“Cyn must have come home last night,” Jeff said. He and Linc held Willie’s hand as they trudged out of the woods and onto the road.
“I can move over here with her, then,” Willie said.
“No!” The sound of Linc and Jeff’s shouted denial made the geese squawk louder. Willie stumbled back a few steps. “Okay, okay, okay, it was just a suggestion.”
Cynthia Davis, five feet six inches of cool sophistication, stood on the porch watching them come up the path. “Really, Linc, you guys are out in the middle of a major blizzard, why?” She didn’t comment on the extra person, although her face said that she had a lot of questions.
Willie spent a while on the porch knocking off snow and pulling off the now soaked boots. She smiled broadly as she walked into the house. A fire blazed in the fireplace in the living room, Nina Simone played in the background, and the air was redolent with the smell of cookies.
Cyn disappeared into the kitchen as Linc, Jeff, and Willie fought for a place closest to the fire. She returned with a tray of warm cookies and Irish coffee.
“I’m waiting,” she said as she sat down in a chair close to the fire. “You guys are blocking the heat.”
“Waiting for…?” Linc asked with his back to the heat.
“An explanation.”
“Oh, that. My name is Willie Mae Dollar. I’m the personal assistant to CJ Davis and Iona. Your sister wanted me to drive over here. I was in London working with CJ on the logistics of the wind farm deal, and she called me and told me how to get to her house and where the extra key was. I was driving but it started to snow. We don’t get blizzards like this in Oklahoma, or if we do I usually go to my parents’ ranch in Mexico when the weather people say that a lot of snow is coming. I can’t drive in the snow. Anyway I got lost in the storm. What, a couple of nights ago? Eventually, I took the wrong road and ended up at the wrong house. Jeff and Linc let me in out of the snow but now that you’re here I can stay here with you.”
“No!” Linc and Jeff said.
“Again, okay. I’m staying with them until the storm is over. Did you make these cookies from scratch? I make okay cookies but I think I make better cakes than cookies.” Willie continued talking.
Jeff took pity on the shocked expression on Cyn’s face. “She will eventually wind down.”
“Are you sure?”
“Without a doubt. If she doesn’t Linc and I have ways of making her not talk.”
Cyn laughed as Willie came to an abrupt halt in her story, shock plain across her face. “We do not speak of this in front of other people,” she said. Linc roared at her tone. “Where’s the bathroom?”
Cyn directed her to the downstairs powder room. Her eyebrow cocked up waiting for an explanation.
“Willie is our third,” Jeff said.
“She might be,” Linc added.
“I thought your third was going to be a guy,” Cyn said. She leaned back into her chair calmly sipping her coffee. She and Jeff had talked many, many times about the relationship he and Linc planned to continue with a third partner.
“We want children. I want them naturally, and besides, Willie makes me hot.”
Cyn laughed and shook head. When Willie returned to the room, she had stripped down to her long johns. “Boy it’s hot in here. Can I get I’s quilt? Makes no sense to come all the way over here through a blizzard and not get what I came here for.”
Cyn wrapped the quilt in sheets of tissue paper and put it in a backpack for easy transportation over the mountain. She was indeed down for some downtime. The storm hadn’t put her off. She’d been driving in snow since she was thirteen besides she had brought more than enough food, chocolate, and wine to last for more than a week. The threesome only stayed for thirty minutes before Willie was bundled up once more, Linc strapped on the pack, and they trudged their way back over the mountain.
Willie managed to chat between breaths, but the heavy, happy sigh that she let escape told everybody that she was more than tired. When they finally reached their cabin, Jeff stripped her nude before he joined her in the shower. They washed each other down and got to know one another’s bodies. He said nothing as she collapsed into the guest bed and was asleep before she could finish her next sentence.
Chapter Seven:
Until the Dolphins Fly
By the time Willie Mae woke up it was fully dark outside and she was ravenous. She discovered that she was naked and under a very soft, very warm cashmere blanket. With eyes shut, she used her sense of smell to tell her that someone was cooking salmon, soft music, Nina Simone again, was being piped into the house, and Jeff and Linc were not in the house.
Gathering the blanket around her, Will padded down the hall and into the kitchen. Following her nose, she found lemon salmon and grilled zucchini with wild rice was available on the warming tray on oven. She pinched off a piece of fish and gulped it down. She was more interested in where the guys were.
Behind a brown leather sett
ee, the patio door was ajar. Tightening the blanket, she stepped out onto the patio. Soft light led her to Linc and Jeff. Jeff was between Linc’s legs in a huge bubbling hot tub. Two bottles of wine, German Riesling she saw after lifting a bottle from the snow that covered the lip of Jacuzzi, lay empty along the rim. Jeff’s face broke into a smile. “Baby, come in, but look into the wine locker and bring out another two bottles. I have a glass cooling for you here.”
Linc did what Linc always did, look at her as if she were a particularly nice piece of chocolate that always made him sick. She found the wine and padded back out, tiptoeing across more than six inches of snow. She laid the bottles beside the others and carefully laid the warm blanket across a chair.
Willie carefully stepped into what felt like boiling hot water to her snow-covered feet and gently settled her naked bits into the water close to Linc. At least this time he almost smiled at her. Sex had made him neither friendlier nor meaner. It was a puzzle. Made even more so when he reached over to pull her into his lap. He took a drink of the sharp, crisp wine and kissed her open-mouthed, pouring the wine into her and she openly accepting. After Linc pulled back from the exchange, she pulled Jeff’s head back against her breast and kissed him in the same way, cascading the now warm wine into him.
Jeff drank it down and turned to her for more. They exchanged the wine this way until more than half the once full bottle was gone. Shaking her head in denial of more, Willie lay in the cradle of Linc’s arms with her head back, catching the seemingly nonstop snowflakes on her tongue. It added a level of coolness that she needed right now. They were all nude, and she could feel Linc’s erection against her left thigh and see Jeff’s as it floated against the tide of the powerful jets.
Jeff broke the comfortable silence. “We need to talk about this before we go forward. I’m a pediatrician. I started a practice here because this is where we decided to live. In Appalachia, there aren’t a lot of specialists, not enough money, I guess. Linc is one of the best vascular surgeons in the world and he flies where he’s needed. I like it here, but if it’s too isolated for you we can live anywhere you need to.”
“I can’t make that kind of decision for you guys,” Willie said. Linc’s heavy hand on her shoulder stopped her from saying more. Her head lay on Linc’s chest as he stroked down her back as she rubbed Jeff’s sodden light-brown hair from crown to nape.
“Don’t play, Will. We’re way past the point that we can pretend that what we feel isn’t intense enough to call love,” Jeff said. Water sloshed as he moved to sit beside Linc before drawing his lover into the bottom of the tub. They kissed passionately. Linc, still silent, grabbed Willie’s right leg and placed it over his shoulder. Jeff did the same with her left. Willie gasped and grabbed the edge of the hot tub, floating back until her ears were covered with water.
“This is not a game for me, guys. I don’t do casual sex. I don’t have one-night stands. I don’t fuck for fun. This was so awesome and over the top that my head hasn’t stop spinning. I felt like, oooooo, something I’ve never felt before. I felt like I was really truly home. I want that to continue. I think it’s only fair that if this is something you guys do all the time then I’ll chalk it up to experience and get the hell over it. I don’t blame you. I just dropped in on you so you’re probably used to more sophisticated people but, hey you get what you get in the middle of a blizzard. I can be gone tomorrow. I’m gonna call the plane and see when we can leave so I promise you you don’t have to spend any more time entertaining me.” She stopped when Linc pulled her up from the water and kissed her, tasting all of her mouth, touching all parts and then turning her over to Jeff, who kissed her just as intensely but oh, so differently. Linc was rich caffeine-driven coffee and Jeff was a deep rum punch, and Willie wanted them both. She kissed and groaned and thrashed and moved in the water, wanting more, held down by two men and given what she wanted if not what she needed.
The snow fell into the hot water and melted on her exposed skin. She sank back into the water, feeling Jeff’s hands coming around to cup her breasts. He pinched her nipples until she sucked in a deep lungful of crisp, snow-filled air.
“You talk way too much, but I really like you,” Linc said. He moved her to the top step and slid his hand into her folds. Again, Jeff followed his lead and copied his lover’s actions. They met in all her own moisture, different from the water by its silken feel. Her clit peaked under the two fingers rubbing it and not letting her move, or stop them, or come.
“I know you don’t want to hear this but I love you,” Willie gasped out. She was trying to ride somebody’s hand to completion that neither man allowed.
“Not yet, baby,” Jeff cooed. He stroked her breast, pinching and rubbing her nipple between his forefinger and thumb. “You know you want this to be special. You are our special lady. Once you come this way you’re our one and only. You need to know that. Once you do maybe then we’ll let you come.” Jeff’s fingers interlocked with Linc’s stroking her erect and throbbing clit.
“Oh, that is so unfair. You guys have given me nothing but, I have to admit, really outstanding orgasms, but no commitments. Oh, shit, Oh, shit. Oh, shit.” Willie lay back gasping for breath, so close, but both men removed their fingers before she came.
“Oh that is so unfair,” she shouted into the night sky.
“Life isn’t fair,” Jeff said.
“It’s not fair, but it’s fun,” Linc added.
Willie came in a rush of understanding.
* * * *
Willie regained consciousness—what else could you call it—after an indeterminate amount of time had passed. She lay in the middle of the guys’ bed, Linc to her right and Jeff to her left. Just like all the other times, and it felt like right. She listened to them talking about their relationship with her eyes tightly closed and moving as little as she could.
Jeff’s fingers were threading through her curls and Linc was lightly rubbing her ass. How much longer she could pretend to be asleep was anyone’s guess.
“I’m still not understanding,” Jeff said. “What’s the issue? Any fool can see that you want her. Look at Lil Linc. He’s not been that hard since we were in Italy four years ago.”
Linc chuckled softly. “That’s a lie, Lil Linc, which is not cool to call all this long, hard manliness. I’m always this hard for you, but I am confused.”
“I have never seen you like this, explain.”
“It’s because she’s a woman.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You know I came out to my family when I was fifteen. I’ve spent my life being a proud, strong, black, gay man. Being gay is as much a part of me as being black or a doctor or your partner. She comes along”—he paused to slip his fingers closer to her pussy—“and I lose myself. It’s like all those phony Pray Away the Gay people were right, I just needed to meet the right person.”
Willie laughed and pulled away from his fingers. “You’re so full of shit. Of course you’re gay, you’re bi, and you’re straight. People have the ability to be all those things at once. It’s not situational, it’s called attraction. If you want my opinion, you have issues with intimacy because everybody knows that women require a different type of intimacy and commitment than men. Because all that gruff, “I keep it to myself” that you get away with with Jeff won’t work for me. If I decide to continue in this relationship I expect a no-holds-barred, tell-me-all-your-thoughts-wishes-and-dreams type of relationship from both of you. This is not about me being Jeff’s woman and your fuck toy. That’s just not gonna happen.”
“Oooo, Kitty has claws. You came off all drag queenie on us. She told your ass, Linc. It’s out in the open, the play is yours.” He pulled himself over to lean against her right breast.
Linc sat at the end of the large bed, looking at his lovers in the moonlight, Jeff with his light hair reflecting the light, bronze, muscular frame draped over the much smaller, richly brown body of Willie, with curls that never looked in disarray even though they were
always in disarray. She stroked along Jeff’s neck. Both of them stared back at Linc.
“Fuck, I’ll try, but I can’t think when you two are sending out sex waves to The Mighty Quinn,” he said.
“You named your penis The Mighty Quinn,” Willie said.
“Quinn for short.”
“That makes me hum the song.”
“That could be a good thing depending on what you’re doing as you hum.”
“Let me see.” She crawled down the bed, stopping when she got to Linc’s lap. “I call my girl Mrs. Jones. She’s a bit older than I and I like to be respectful of my elders,” she said. “I’d go with Jonny Dangerously, Jon for short.”
Willie and Jeff laughed as they began kissing Linc all over his body. He never laughed, but he did allow them to play with his body until he finally came in Jeff’s mouth. They lay in a tangle, falling asleep in each other’s arms.
Chapter Eight:
Deep Inside Feelings
A series of heavy bangs reverberated through the house. Both Linc and Jeff were instantly alert. Linc reached for a convenient gun and Jeff began dressing.
“It’s probably a neighbor. You really should trust people more,” Willie said.
“Trust but verify,” Linc said.
Willie lay in a heap, exhausted by their combined attention from the night before. Her curls peeked from the cover that Jeff had quickly thrown over her. He leaned over and kissed the top of her head before he followed Linc out of the room. Jeff stopped to get his medical bag just in case.
Linc stood at the door. Another series of loud knocks sounded while he waited for his lover to join him. Once Jeff was there he opened the door and was confronted with five men of varying sizes standing on the porch.
“I believe my sister is here. She needs to come home with us now,” the tallest man said.
“Oh shit,” Willie said from the hallway.