Chapter 4: Tearful Moments

I leaned my chair back for a moment, thinking about the situation. As I closed my eyes, I heard the whisper of clothing sliding over skin and a moment later one of my concubines dropped into my lap, causing me to look up. To my surprise Mara looked down on me and gave me a long, gentle kiss.

"Norman, I'm sorry," she whispered.

I looked over at Mio and was surprised to see tears in her eyes. She had her hands holding back Sarah and Heidi. I wanted to say more, but a drop of water falling from Mara's eyes hit my cheek and brought my attention back to her.

Mara barely noticed and kissed my lips again before taking a deep breath and continuing. "I'm not fair to you. I know I owe you so much, and I still try to hold back. I pretend that I don't know why I'm doing it, but I can't keep lying to you."

"Mara?" I asked. I would admit to others that Mara was not as openly loving as Sarah or Heidi, but she had always been a caring member of the household and I enjoyed having her living with me, even if I knew she preferred Mio's touch.

My normally timid concubine put her hands on my head and forced me to look right into her eyes. "Let me talk. I know you won't throw me out over this, but it's still hard to say. Norman, you keep being so patient with me and I love you for it, but you deserve to know my past. I grew up without a father, and my mother was very bitter that he dumped her after she became pregnant with me, as she was later with all the men in her life. She has four other children, each with a different father and none of the fathers stayed around to see their child born."

I winced but Sarah merely shook her head and put a hand on Mara's shoulder. "I've met men like that. I'm sorry your mother couldn't escape from that."

Mara laughed bitterly. "Mother didn't want to escape. She'd fuck anyone, anytime. Men, women, heck I think she went down to Mexico and did a donkey for money when I was eight. And the men she brought home didn't exactly shy away from approaching her children. I know Roger was giving blowjobs before he turned fifteen."

"Roger?" I asked.

Mara nodded. "My older brother. I was the second oldest of the five children in the family. Roger got beat up by one of mother's regular visitors and after that gave blowjobs to avoid additional beatings. He vanished shortly after he turned seventeen."

My other concubines had gathered around Mara and were giving her gentle hugs as she continued to speak. I gently ran my fingers through her hair. "I got lucky and unlucky at the same time. A woman Mom had grown up with returned to town shortly before my fourteenth birthday. She refused to tell anyone what she had done while she was away, but she had plenty of money. The one thing that she made very clear was that no man would ever set foot on her property. Any service call she placed included a clear request that the service people to be sent to her place had to be female and she accepted men only if there was no choice. If a man did have to come out, she arranged for one of her friends to be there and vanished for the duration of the time the work was being performed. No one saw her work, but she did wander the town regularly. During her wanderings she encountered me and invited me to her home."

Mio gasped. "Was she the one who introduced you to sex?"

Mara laughed. "No. I suspect that she had worked as a paid escort in Las Vegas for several years and wanted nothing to do with men or sex. When I visited her home she worked with me on my studies. My grades in high school were close to the top of the class, and by the time I graduated I had scholarship offers to a number of small liberal arts colleges. Roshawna was the one who found me the scholarships and encouraged me to leave town to study. There were other girls she did the same thing for. We were always from the poorer neighborhoods, and she'd help as long as we never dated. I think a couple girls stopped coming, but I never paid much attention to the others."

I pulled Mara in for a kiss and was surprised when she returned the kiss eagerly. Never before had she wanted my kiss and I relaxed so she could continue her story.