A Red Leaf & Ten Orchids Ch. 11

He felt as though he'd be lost again, only this time, there would never be a reprieve and he'd wander lost forever. The prospect was worse than death to him in a very real sense. He knew then just how he needed her.

Their eyes remained locked as he eased her backwards. His hot tongue began to skate and slither upwards in long licks up her breastbone between her mounds. She couldn't help the sighs that escaped her.

"God, I need to taste your skin," he hissed, "I can't get enough."

Kayla wanted to laugh a little for the joy that she felt, but her breath was stolen from her when he slid his tongue under one breast to lick her sweat. She squirmed a little unconsciously from feeling his manhood pressing against her and Kayla gasped loudly once but it turned to soft whimpers shortly after as she lifted his chin and let him take her mouth.

For long minutes, the only sound was their breathing as they inhaled and exhaled past each other's cheeks. Neither of them was normally very big on such wetness as they kissed, but it just wasn't important enough to think about just then and once in a while a drop of it would fall barely noticed between them.

"Josh," she sobbed in her want of him, "I really need you now."

She just remembered to grab one of the packets on the table. As they pulled apart and she stood up, she reached for his hand so that she could pull him toward his bed and he got up to follow.

But they couldn't even get there.

They were passing the single short wall that defined one side of his bathroom when Kayla couldn't help it anymore and she stopped for just a few more of his kisses. He gave in to what he felt a little later and began to kiss her throat. Joshua's bed was only another fifteen feet or so away, but, ...

That was as far as they got.

With their bodies pressed together, Kayla slid down him slowly as she held herself close to him, licking and tasting his skin, sucking the little of it that she could get into her mouth, nipping and biting him lightly. That lasted until she got to his pectoral muscles.

Even in repose as he stood before her, they weren't all soft. Just under the skin, they were firm, another difference that she'd never known in a man before. Kayla had a thought and wanted to chuckle at herself. She hoped that something such as this would never end, but in any event, ...

Accountants were now off her list.

She ran her tongue along the topmost of his long scars, wanting to stop for a moment to tell him that it was alright, that she loved these parts of him for what they were, yet happy that this was a deep as his hurts had gone. She pulled him even closer as she thought that he'd been telling her much the same thing about the tattoos that she'd never wanted and had hated for so long.

Then she was below them, pulling what she could of the more natural ridges of his abdominal muscles between her teeth as she nipped and sucked.

She suddenly wanted to stop so that she could mimic the way that he'd looked up at her, but she found that she couldn't. She went higher to begin again.

She was stuck where she was for a long minute as she licked the sweat from his chest wherever she felt that some of it might be in the shadows there. In this warm place and up this close to him, Kayla just gave in to the same addiction that he craved as well. He tasted so good to her that it helped her to get past the thought that she was making love to the maple leaf tattoo on his chest most often, but then her eye caught sight of his nipple and she was on it in a flash, loving the way that she could make him gasp and how his chest swelled out when he did.

She realized that she was wet enough to leak down her leg in another minute, but she didn't care at all anymore as she slowly squatted in front of Joshua and held onto his thighs so that she'd stay stable. She lifted his erection higher so that she could press her face against him and lick his balls gently. She made one attempt at it, but realized that sucking one of his testicles into her mouth was something that she'd have preferred to do for him closer to the outset of this than where they were in this now.

She licked her way higher and began to work him. Kayla knew that he could see it as she drooled some saliva onto her palm and used that on his shaft to while she took the head into her mouth and groaned. A minute of this was all that either of them could stand, so she pressed the packet with the condom into his hand and stood up while he struggled to open it.

"The bed," he said uncertainly.

"Oh God, I don't care," she hissed at him. She looked around and saw the counter. She backed against it and put her palms on the surface and in a second, she was sitting on it, her legs splayed widely and looking at him in a way that made him wonder if she could light the room a little if she just cranked up those flaming green eyes just one more notch.

"I can't wait, Josh, please!" she said, "just come here for now and maybe we can get to the bed in a few minutes."

With the condom in place, Kayla lifted her leg to get it onto his shoulder and they slid together slowly with a shared groan. Now that they were joined, they seemed to slow down a little as they looked at each other. Josh leaned forward and after a long kiss he smiled a little sheepishly. "I like this and how we got here," he smirked, "but really, I wonder if we couldn't have made it to the bed after all."

She shook her head, "No we couldn't."

He sighed and nodded, knowing that she was right.

Kayla repositioned herself so that she had one hand free and she touched his face and stroked his cheek with her thumb. "It was all about getting here, Josh, where we are now. This is what I've wanted, you and me together. How fast or how hard is for a little while from now. Right now, we just need to be together this way, with no ranches or rattlesnakes or anything else."

He nodded his agreement as he leaned his head forward to kiss the nearest of her breasts, loving the nipple slowly as she sighed. For reasons that he didn't really understand, what their hips were doing at the moment became a little like a romantic backdrop to the way that he enjoyed this for the tenderness of it.

After a time, he began to thrust really slowly as they talked and it made them smile at each other whenever they pulled apart from their kisses.

"I knew a woman where I used to work before we moved here," Kayla said quietly. "We were just coworkers and we usually had lunch together. One day, she just blurted something out to me. She told me that she and her husband were really best friends between them. I didn't know what she meant when she said that and I didn't believe a word of it, because I didn't really have anything to relate it to, I guess. Later on, I could see how strongly she felt about it, so then I just thought that either he was really snowing her, or that she must have been deluding herself."

Kayla sighed with a smile after she wet her fingers with her tongue and began to play with her clitoris very gently.

"But one day, I was eating lunch alone because she'd had a morning appointment and I looked out of the window. Her husband drove her in and I could see it as they just stood there talking in the parking lot for a few minutes. They'd been together for 11 years, and it was as plain as day how they loved each other. Neither one was much to look at, but that didn't matter obviously. They were in love, sure, but I could see that they were very close friends as well. It was nice to see, since up til then, I didn't believe that it was possible."

Josh was a bit confused, "What wasn't possible, to be in love?"

"Yes," Kayla nodded, "Not so much that, Josh, to be friends with a man, true friends, and on top of that to be lovers as well."

Kayla's leg began to threaten to cramp up on her a little, so she asked for a change in their position. She bent over the edge of the counter so that he could take her from behind. There had been a second reason for it and Kayla wasn't disappointed. She asked, and he told her that he could see her tattoos fairly well. As they thrusted towards each other, she felt his fingers trace the outlines of the vine on her wherever he could reach and it made her shiver now and then.

"I think that I knew her husband," Josh said after a few minutes.

Kayla knew that it wasn't possible, but she understood what he was telling her. He'd met a couple something like the one that she'd known. Kayla felt happy that they understood each other.

"I want to be a friend like that to you," he said and she nodded as her breasts swung under her chest.

Kayla sighed and whispered just loud enough so that he could hear her.

"You already are, Joshua."

Kayla grabbed a towel that sat folded on the counter and pulled it to her as she leaned lower and placed her forearms on the towel so that she could rest her cheek against it. As Josh took her hips in his hands, she reached between her legs and touched her clitoris as his thighs began to slap against her bottom.

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It had taken some time, but they were in his bed at last. They lay together in the dark and quiet of the afterglow, Kayla with her head on Joshua's chest, and his fingers stroked her ear. His heart still pounded.

Kayla smiled at him "Hate to get all corny on you, but I just adore you, Josh. I just wanted you to know that."

His arm went to her right shoulder blade, and "IT" began to happen again. She'd waited for this tonight, hoping that it would happen. His chest started to expand slowly. She listened intently to his heart slowing.

The powerful beat stopped. She counted four, no, five missed beats before her head was jarred by the stronger beating as it picked up again.

"What IS that?" Kayla asked.

"Mm? What is what?" he asked lazily.

"Your heart. You do that after every time. You can stop your heart. Why? What do you do it for?"

He chuckled, "Why do you need to know? Does being in love with you mean that I'll have absolutely no secrets left from you?"

"Oh, absolutely none," she sighed, "I've already decided that I want to keep you. I need to know all that there is to know about you, care and feeding-wise. You're mine, and I take good care of my toys."

Her eyes brightened as a thought came to her, "Do you come with a manual? I wouldn't have to pester you with questions if I could just read up on you a little."

She watched in the low light as he thought about it. "I think I did come with a manual, but I guess the previous owner must have thrown it away when she moved out. It was a pretty thin booklet, actually. There's not much to know anyway, since most of the systems are automatic. It covered some basics, like minimum fuel requirements, what all of my buttons do, how to adjust the mirrors, how to set my cruise control, temperature settings, and a few warnings."

"Warnings?" she asked, "What kind of warnings?"

"You know, not to over-inflate me, not to leave me outside in the rain or snow for too long, and if I get dirty, to wash me carefully with mild soap and a soft cloth, and how to polish me."

She giggled. "I must be doing at least a couple of things wrong, then. I really want to wash you myself one time, but I'm afraid that if I do anything like that, you'll just activate your stick shift or something. Actually it seems that EVERYTHING I do activates the stick shift and your lotion dispenser system.

That's why I'm asking about your heart. Do you stop it on purpose, or is that just the self-leveling feature of your suspension system? You seem to have a few options that I've never seen before. Is that a love-making feature that I'm using the wrong way, or what?" She raised her pretty head to look at him.

Josh smiled warmly at her. "What do you want to hear? I kind of like the self-leveling feature idea, but what I think you want to hear is that it's some kind of mysterious Far-Eastern Tantric sexual thing that I do."

Kayla laughed. "Yeah, now THAT'S what I'm talking about."

"Sorry to disappoint you, babe. It's actually nothing at all. It's just something that I do sometimes. I always liked to do that to the medical officers back home. They'd be there with the blood pressure cuff, and stethoscope and I'd do that for fun."

He chuckled, "They'd just go nuts,"

"I can only do that when I'm relaxed, and I guess I've been doing it after we make love because it feels good to me then. I do it because I feel very much loved by you."

Kayla looked a little disappointed. "Oh great. I make you feel good and the engine shuts off!

Jesus Murphy, that's what I mean. I'm scared to do anything now. I'll do something wrong, and your engine will seize, or your bumper will fall off, and all your oil will run out, or you'll eject a CD or something... So it's really nothing I need to worry about then?"

"Nope," he smiled, "actually, my heart doesn't really stop at all. When I inhale like that, it's really just so that I can exhale as I relax more, because I'm really content. The inhalation creates a lot more room in my chest cavity, and my heart just has a bit more space temporarily, and it can fill with more blood than usual. There's just a long beat as it's filling.

It's only a temporary thing, and it still beats after it's filled. That's why the pulses afterward are stronger, because I've finished the inhalation, the space is gone, and now the extra blood has got to go.

That's it. No magic, no power-assisted seat cushions or anything. If it means anything, I guess it means that I'm very happy. I don't know how to purr."

"Well I'd be interested in a power seat warming option if you come with that." she smiled.

"I do have that option, but if you sit there it tends to-"

She laughed. "I know. Another of the four hundred things that activate the stick shift. I'm really very glad that I make you happy. That sounds silly, but I mean it. I'm playing a little with the idea of making a life's work out of doing just that."

Kayla got out of the bed and walked to the table to get their drinks. Joshua's gaze followed her amazing backside around the dark room until she came back with them and got back into bed.

"See what I mean?" she exclaimed, "I wasn't even here and look what happened while I was gone!"

He chuckled, "Oh come on, you must have come across that feature before me."

She looked a bit uncertain. "No, not really. I mean not like that. What's this feature called?"

He sighed, as though it was rather boring to him to tell her of his features, "It's part of the docking guidance system. Target acquisition is initiated by any of several means, could be visual, radar, like if I think about you, or even proximity, like if you're very close. After initial acquisition and lock, guidance switches over mostly to heat-seeking mode and the tactile sensor arrays take over at really close range."

"Uh,... which was it that time?" she asked, as she took him in her hand.

He sighed again, "Visual. My night vision system is on. I...ohhh,...watched your lovely butt for a second, and the system armed itself."

Kayla laughed softly. "So you're saying that all I have to do is walk across the room, and you've automatically got a missile lock on my ass?"

"Well yeah, pretty much," he nodded. "I have a lot of built-in automated systems." He looked serious for a second. "I can override it if you want me to..."

"Hell no, " she smiled as his fingers began to trace along her vaginal lips softly.

"I wanted to compliment you earlier, "he said, "I like how you've shaved here."

Kayla sighed, loving the feeling. "I had kind of a clue that you came with all this neat stuff anyway," she said as she tore open another condom package to put it on for him. "Just scream if I hurt you," she chuckled.

"Getting back to why I shaved for you," Kayla grinned, "You know, with all of this heat–sensitive equipment you have, I just knew that you wouldn't really need much in the way of runway markers."

She chuckled as she lay back smiling at him, "You're cleared for the instrument approach on the active runway. Fly straight in, number one for landing. Be advised of just a little bit of tenderness due to razor burn on the left side of the runway and try to stay light on the controls, Honey."

She made him laugh for a moment as he positioned himself and they connected.

"I just love that docking guidance system of yours, "she smiled as she put her legs around him.

"Where did you learn those terms, Kayla? I'm a little curious now."

"My favorite computer simulator," she said, "everything's there. I guess I just picked up on the terminology, and since you were using it, hey..."

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They'd wound down a bit, both of them feeling a little spent and tired, since it had been a long day, so they'd just spent a while holding onto each other and talking.

"I think we're about out of time. My aunt will think we've skipped town or something if we don't get back soon. Let's just do this for a few minutes more" Kayla said.

They got up to shower together a few minutes later, and Josh accompanied Kayla back to the bunkhouse. Rose met them with a smile, and mentioned that she was getting worried that the coyotes might be coming in closer at night since she was having no trouble hearing them at all now.

Kayla thanked her for babysitting Jillian, and they went inside. Once the door was closed, they collapsed into each other with the giggles.

"That was a bit embarrassing," remarked a smiling Kayla a few minutes later as she brought out some tea that she'd made for them, "It's s little like being a teenager and slinking around. We're going to have to do something, but I have no idea. "

"Neither do I," Josh said thoughtfully, "Rosie obviously knows what we're up to, and I'm sure she doesn't really mind, but you're right. We have to make some changes, somehow."

Kayla changed the subject. "Rita and Consuella asked me to join their lady's poker night the evening after next. I was thinking about taking my aunt along. Would you mind being without me for a whole evening, Josh? Think you can handle Jilly?"

Joshua laughed softly. "Sure. I'd love to, I just hope that I can keep her amused. I'm also sensing an ulterior motive, though. What gives?"

"I just think that we seem to be going along pretty fast. I don't want to leave my girl in the dust. She needs to spend time with you, and you need some kid time, if you're as serious about the package deal as you said you were."

Josh thought it over briefly. "Ok, but this time I have conditions. I get free choice about what we do, as long as it's safe, and I decide what we eat for dinner."

Kayla laughed "Deal!" They finished their tea, and he got up to go.

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Jillian stood peeping through her barely opened bedroom door. She liked it when they were together. She watched them kiss goodnight, and scampered back to her bed. Kayla noticed that her door was ajar and looked in.

She cleared her throat. "Alright Miss Super Spy, what did you hear?"

Jillian giggled, "How did you know that I wasn't asleep?"

Kayla walked over and sat on the bed. "I may not be a mom, but I'm close enough for you. I can tell if you're asleep or not. I've spent enough time watching you sleep to have learned a trick or two." She stroked Jillian's head.

"Kayla, I still miss my mom and dad a lot, but you're my mom now. That's how I feel. You take care of me more than my mom did, and Daddy was always too busy for me."

Kayla blinked hard a few times before she spoke. "Jilly, I don't think that's true. Your mom was my sister, and my best friend in the whole world. I knew how she felt about you. Your dad worked very hard at his job, but I know that he loved you too. I wish I could bring them back to you.

Thanks for thinking of me as your mom. I don't think of you as my niece anymore. To me, you're my daughter. It's that simple to me."