Chapter 6: Love And Joy Come To You

I woke about an hour later. If there is a better feeling than waking up from an afternoon nap, with a gorgeous, naked girl in your arms, I do not know what it is. Jess stirred when she felt me stretching, and opened her eyes, and leaned over to kiss me. Then she pulled back.

“Sorry,” she apologized. “I must have terrible breath.”

“I promise that I will never complain about your breath if you’re kissing me. Especially if I’m the one who gave you the bad breath in the first place. But maybe we should get up and do something about it. Besides, we don’t want Katelyn coming home and finding us like this, do we?”

Jess laughed.

“She’ll be gone for another hour. And it wouldn’t surprise her much. She knew what I was planning on doing to you. That’s why she left us alone.”

I was speechless. So they had planned this together?

“Kate and I talk about everything, Alex. So if there is something you don’t want one of us to know, make sure you don’t tell the other one. But before you ask, this was my idea, not Kate’s. She just agreed to get out of the way to let it happen.”

I filed that information away for later, and we got up, then, and went to the bathroom, where we brushed our teeth. I also washed my face. I didn’t want Katelyn smelling her sister’s juices on me at dinner time. We dressed after that, and went and sat on the couch together. Jessica mixed us each a rum and Coke, and snuggled up against me.

“Jess, while we have a few minutes alone, there is something I wanted to talk to you about.” She looked at me, with a concerned look on her face. “Oh, no, it’s nothing bad. At least I don’t think it is. But it is something that I need to discuss with you. It’s about your sister ... Well, uh, I don’t know how to put this, so I’m just going to say it ... I’m worried about how physical she’s getting with me. I know it’s at least partly my fault, since I encouraged it with the whole thing about hugging me in exchange for the money for your boots, but I’m worried that she’s taking it too far. And I am having difficulty controlling my responses sometimes, like when she was sitting on my lap this morning. I’m afraid that sometime she’s going to do something like that, and I’m going to get hard, and it’s going to freak her out and make her think that I’m some kind of a pervert or something.”

Jess smiled softly. “Oh Alex,” she said, “you are such a gentleman. Of course you’re going to get hard. That’s what she wants, you dummy. And she knew you were hard this morning when she sat on you.”

“That’s what she wants? What do you mean? And what are you, a psychologist?”

“No. I’m a bartender. That’s even better. And, yes! All girls that age want to know that they can turn a man on. They want to know that they have what it takes to get noticed. They know they’re becoming sexual beings, and they need someone safe to practice kissing and hugging and cuddling and flirting with. That’s why so many teenage girls like to cuddle up to their dads. It’s not because they want to have sex with their fathers. It’s just that they want to have someone safe to be with.

“Katie doesn’t remember our Dad very much. She was only four when he died. I was eleven, so I have pretty good memories of time with him. After Dad died, Mom never saw anyone else. He was the love of her life, even with all his failings, and she never wanted a relationship with another man. And I’ve never brought a guy home before. So you are the first safe guy Kate’s had around, and she wants to be around you. She wants to snuggle with you, and sit on your lap, and give you hugs and kisses, and feel your hand resting on her back. And yes, she wants to know that her sexuality turns you on. She wants to feel you get hard under her. She wants to see you check out her butt. She wants you to do all that because she craves male attention, just like a teenage boy craves female attention, and she knows that you’re safe.”

“You keep telling me that I’m ‘safe’. I don’t feel very ‘safe’ when I’m around Kate. What do you mean by ‘safe’?”

“You’re safe. You’ll tell her she’s pretty. You won’t laugh at her or make fun of her. You won’t make crude comments about her. You won’t call her names. You won’t tell her that she’s a tease for making you hard by sitting on your lap and not wanting to go any further. You won’t tell her that she’s a slut because she likes what it feels like when her boobs push up against your chest. You won’t touch her in places that she doesn’t want to be touched yet. You won’t make her do anything she’s not ready to do. And you won’t talk about her with your buddies at school and make people think she’s something she’s not. You’re safe.”

“So I’m just supposed to let her keep doing what she’s doing?”

“Other than the concerns you have about whether this is proper or not, are you bothered by her? Does the way she is being physically affectionate with you upset you?”

Now, that was a no-brainer. I mean, what guy minds when a hot seventeen year old rubs her body up against him?

“No, I don’t mind. I just don’t want her to ... I don’t know. I can’t really explain what I’m trying to say.”

“I think I know what you mean. So here’s what I think you should do. Don’t push her. Let her lead. But don’t be scared of her, either. That would destroy her self-esteem and her confidence. You know where the lines are. Don’t cross them. If she sits on your lap and you get hard, don’t sweat it. She will notice, and if it bothers her, she’ll get up. If it doesn’t, she’ll stay there and be pleased that you’re turned on by her. Don’t thrust into her butt, but don’t worry about reacting to her. If she hugs you, hug her back. Just don’t put her your hands down on her ass and squeeze her cheeks like you did with me earlier!

“But it’s ok to touch her, Alex. We’ve gotten all messed up in this society. We think that all touch, especially male-female touch when the guy is older than the girl, is wrong. We teach young girls to panic every time someone touches them. And of course there are lots of guys out there who can and will take advantage of younger girls in ways that they shouldn’t. But not all touch is bad. And you can help her to understand that. I saw your hand on her legs this morning. That was fine. She was the one who sat in your lap. You had to put your arm somewhere, and resting it on her legs where you did made perfect sense. Don’t grab at her - but don’t be afraid to touch her. You know what is right and what isn’t. And it will be ok, I promise.”

She kissed me, then, and at that moment, while we were in mid-kiss, Katelyn unlocked the door and entered the apartment. She looked at us, and threw her hands up to cover her eyes in mock disgust. “Oh, gross, you two. Stop it! I thought if I gave you three hours alone you’d be done that by the time I got back here. Ick!” And then she started to giggle.

Jess disengaged from me, and stood to go over and hug her sister. I followed suit.

“So, good afternoon?” Kate asked her sister.

“Incredible afternoon,” Jess replied. Kate raised her eyebrows and left it at that. I was sure they would talk about it later. And I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what Jess told Kate.

It was now time to get working on Christmas dinner. Katelyn put the oven on to preheat, then put the roast in to cook. She said she could manage without our help, but put us to work anyway. She said (several times) how much better it would all be because of her new cookware. The kitchen soon smelled divine, as Kate put an apple pie she had made yesterday into the oven to bake with the roast, and then began chopping vegetables and preparing a sauce for the meat. She gave us minor tasks to do, like peeling potatoes and chopping mushrooms, and then sent us to set the table. Jess told me that the dishes we were using had been their Mom’s good dishes, and that they hardly ever used them. Christmas was one of the times that they got them out.

This was my first opportunity to really watch Katelyn working in the kitchen. It was marvellous. She was so confident and assertive, moving from the fridge to the counter to the stove, chopping, measuring, stirring, tasting. She also seemed to be able to multi-task, keeping several things under control simultaneously. In what seemed like no time at all, Christmas dinner was ready, and we all sat down at the table.

Kate had prepared a lovely beef tenderloin, cooked medium rare. It was amazingly tender and juicy. It was topped with a lovely sauce that she had whipped up from red wine, mushrooms, and onions. We also had roasted potatoes, mashed carrots and parsnips, and brussels sprouts fried with a bit of bacon. I ate two full plates, and was seriously contemplating a third. We washed it all down with some red wine, which even Kate shared in, and then ate pie and drank coffee. I could not remember when I had eaten a better meal, and told Kate so.

“Well, you’re to thank for that,” she said. “You bought all the food.”

“Not true,” I replied. “Any idiot can pay for groceries. You, my dear, are the culinary genius who prepared it.”

She blushed, then, and looked down at her plate, but I knew she was pleased with the compliment.

After dinner, we all shared in the cleanup, then decided to watch some of the classic Christmas specials on TV. We moved to the couch, where Jess had me sit in the middle. She snuggled in on one side of me, with her head on my chest and my arm around her shoulder, and Kate snuggled up on the other side. After a few minutes Kate shifted and raised my arm so that I could put it around her. I thought about what Jess had said earlier, and went with it. We watched Charlie Brown and the Grinch and Rudolph and Frosty, which were being aired one after the other by one of the networks. We laughed at the funny parts, and sang along with all the songs. It was a fun, low-key way to end a perfect Christmas day.