Chapter 1

This was a meeting to which I was not looking forward, not in the least, to be frank. Well, I suppose that I should be frank, as that is my name. Franco Lombardo, to be precise, but everyone just called me Frank. I was probably, at least on the surface, your standard fare Italian-American, with a slightly olive skin tone, dark brown eyes, and dark brown hair to match. That there were plenty of blonde and redheaded Italians was beside the point. People have a stereotype, and physically in many ways, I fit that typical look.

Another area where I was pretty commonplace was being at least technically a Roman Catholic. I hadn’t been to Mass in about six months, made any confessions in over a year, or showed any real interest in Catholic dogma or morals in my daily life, but yes, I was, at least on paper, a baptized and confirmed son of Holy Mother Church. Frankly, I was a bit disgusted with the Church since my father’s annulment of his marriage to my mother, along with all those stories about priests molesting altar boys and such, but I still hadn’t broken with Rome or anything.

In terms of my private life, of course, I was about as far from the Church’s morals and teachings as could be, which would be where this meeting came in, of course. You see, I had broken up with my girlfriend Vera about six months prior to this occasion, due to a bit of irreconcilable differences over infidelity, and being frank as always, I will admit that the cheating was mutual. I wasn’t any more cut out to be monogamous than Vera was, to be perfectly candid. This led to a sort of mutual discovery of our infidelity one day at my father’s country club, where a very naked Vera and my own father, Bruno Lombardo, equally nude, walked in on me in a threesome with my sister Alessandra and her boyfriend Steven Goldman.

There were some things that perhaps neither a father or a son wished to see, or even should see, such as brother-sister incest, one’s own father stepping out of the shower with one’s girlfriend, or one’s son taking it up the butt from his sister’s boyfriend, while sticking it up said sister’s ass in a train. That Dad and Vera had been fucking was obvious from the way that they came in fresh from the shower together, holding hands, no less. That I was engaged in a lengthy menage a trois with my sultry sister and her hot, very bisexual boyfriend was equally blatant because they saw us in flagrante delicto.

Naturally, this had led to a very loud, very unpleasant row with my father and now ex-girlfriend, along with Alessandra and Steven, my sister and I being threatened with disinheritance by Dad, even while my ex thundered her disgust at my incest and sexuality at me with all of the invective to be expected of a working-class London girl who had frequently served as a barmaid. I also cast aspersions on my father’s annulment, calling it the divorce that it really was, defending my mother’s honor in my own clumsy way and assuring Dad that I wanted no part of his money. I also implied that he was connected to the Mob, which he found most offensive, of course. He, in turn, insinuated that my incestuous affections extended to my mother, as did Vera (they did not). I very much bit back hard, as did my sister and her boyfriend, calling my ex a “golddigger” and worse things than that, while she called Steven and me “fags” and so forth.

With that, Alex (she preferred that version of her name to Sandra for reasons that escaped me even to this day), Steven, and I got dressed in a hurry, stormed out, and went back to my mother’s place, which my father was still forced to pay for due to the terms of a court settlement that largely ignored the Vatican’s treatment of their marriage as invalid (and rightly so). My mother, who had candidly not given a damn about what I did as long as I didn’t break any laws or anything like that these days, simply shrugged, left us alone to finish our business from before, and brought us sandwiches later, though she also flirted a little with Steven (she was human, right). If she knew or cared what we had just done, she didn’t indicate it at all. She also didn’t say grace before the meal, thanks to her own resentment of the Church (and she had been a pious Catholic up to this point).

Fast forwarding back to this meeting, one should consider that I had ignored the rather insulting (in my view) invitation to Dad’s wedding to Vera and simply refused to have anything to do with either of them. I had books to write, a publishing agent to please, classes to teach, and more to the point, a sister and our boyfriend (by now, this was kind of understood) to gratify sexually. Alex was already pregnant and we suspected that she had twins, because she and I were fraternals, so they ran in the family. We often waited until Mom went out somewhere on one of her mysterious dates to get it on, but we didn’t have her fooled by this point, and she dropped frequent hints that she knew what was happening, but simply didn’t care.

So, at any rate, Vera had invited me to meet with her shortly after Dad and she returned from their honeymoon in the Canary Islands, a popular locale for the British jet set, at least. Apparently, Dad was picking up some of Vera’s snooty personal tastes, at least in terms of what she often called “holiday,” being English, rather than “vacation,” the American term. It was at the club, to add insult to injury, since Dad had caused my expulsion from said club some time back (and Alex’s and Mom’s expulsion, too, whereas Steven was never a member, only his father’s guest, said father being an Israeli diplomat).

“Nice of you to agree to meet with me, love, especially here, given the recent, though hopefully soon forgotten, history. How are things with my darling stepson and stepdaughter these days?” Vera, all of twenty years of age, attempted to be filial, which was to me a rather sick joke.

“You’re kidding, right? You gotta be fuckin’ with me, you dirty, lowlife, trashy, golddigging whore! How dare you refer to me as your stepson or Alex as your stepdaughter? You’re not my mother, or even my stepmother! I’m thirty years old! You’re twenty! You’re ten years my junior and you want to act all maternal, and pretend that we’re family? You’re just my ex-girlfriend, playing my father for a fool so you can get his money! Someday, he’s going to realize that you never loved him, any more than you ever fucking loved me!” I got up, about ready to storm out already, but Vera grabbed my arm with surprising strength and turned down her shades to look at me with real hurt in her eyes, much to my shock.

“But I am your stepmother, Frankie! I married your father, so that makes me your stepmother, regardless of age, and I love him, believe it or not, just as I also loved ... and get this straight, please, STILL LOVE YOU! I never stopped loving you, Franco Lombardo! That has never bloody well changed, and this bollocks about me being just a trophy wife who doesn’t care about anyone but herself has got to stop! It’s no more true than anything else that we said so cruelly and viciously that day, such as your father being a ‘made man, ‘ or anything of the sort!” Vera whined, pouted, and even sobbed a little, much to my astonishment.

“So, you’re in love with both me and my father, is that what you’re saying now?” I asked skeptically.

“Is that so hard to believe, love? Darling, I married your father, because I knew that I wanted to marry one of you, and well, you weren’t talking to me by that point. Partly my fault, I admit, but still, it was very hurtful and he needed company, as did I. By the way, he never disinherited you, not permanently,” Vera assured me.

“I saw the paperwork, Vera!” I reminded her.

“I know, but he reinstated you and Alex later, trust me! I can show you documents to that effect! You’re back in the will, unconditionally, because your father still loves you, even if you’re both too stubborn to admit that you’re still father and son. Yes, I encouraged him to put you in, too, though he only needed a little nudge. Think that he’s going to leave nothing to his children but all of it to me? Hardly! You’re of age to do some good with it, as is Alex. I know that you don’t like your father very much right now, but he still loves you and you still love him. I know that it hurt you, finding out that your father slept with your girlfriend. I get it! It hurt me to see you having a threesome with your own sister and her beau, but I’m trying to move beyond that now.

“Face it, darling, we both cheated! You and I! We’re both guilty of that. We both have to live with that fact. I’m no better than you, and I hate to break it to you, but you’re no better than me. Sorry about calling you and Steven those awful names, same with your sister. She’s a very sweet girl and I always liked her. I don’t suppose that she likes me anymore, though, and I can’t say that I blame her. The fact of the matter is that this would have happened eventually, either both at once, or more one-sided, simply because neither of us is made for monogamy. You know it, I know it, and so do your sister, her boyfriend, your mother, and yes, your father. We all know it, okay?

“I’ll be blunt here. I’m a slut. Hell, I’m a fucking nymphomaniac, a saucy tart eager to hump her way through half the men, and yes, women, that she can get into bed. I’m not sure what to call you, other than a lecher or a libertine, but so is your father, incidentally. Like often, though not always, is drawn to like. It wasn’t hate or malice that made us cheat, nor disrespect for each other, or a lack of love or neglect or anything else. When did I neglect you? I didn’t. Nor did you neglect me, which is impressive when you consider how many times you must have been fucking your own sister and her boyfriend.

“So, anyway, this is my proposition. I want to be stepmother with benefits, dear. I want to shag you, couple with you, do the horizontal mambo with you, and don’t even try to tell me that you don’t do incest, because that would be rich from a man still schtupping his own sister! I want us to be lovers again, whenever either of us want it, and don’t give me that bollocks about being faithful to your father or your sister. The same sister who already has a boyfriend? The same father who is presently screwing your Mum? Yes, he’s having ex sex with your mother, quite regularly, and with my blessing! Why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t you?” Vera made her rather astonishing pitch to me now.

“Is he now? That’s something, isn’t it? But he doesn’t know about your plans to fuck me again, I presume,” I objected.

“Oh, really, do you think that your old man is that bloody stupid? Of course he knows about it! We talked it over already and he agrees that I just plain have needs that he can’t satisfy and vice versa. Your Mum gives him sentimental attachment, great memories, a sense of his lost past and forgiveness for his huge, colossal even, blunder in letting her go. He knows that he fucked up big time on that front, but he’s making the best of it.

“What I give him is hot, sweaty, raunchy, dirty, perverted, deviant, wild, monkey sex, to be even more candid. If he wants to bugger me, I let him bugger me. If he wants me to peg him, and sometimes he does, I peg him. If he wants me to take on his mates in a gang-bang, and he has wanted that now and then, I do it! I’m his personal slut, but I want to be your slut, too. All the things that he does to me, you can do to me, and other things if they appeal to you. Nothing off the table, except scat, mutilation, and anything involving children or animals. Everything else, anything else, I shall do it!” Vera promised me rather forcefully, much to my surprise.

“So, you’re still going to keep fucking him, but also fucking me, and that’s the plan, is it? To what end, Vera? What is the long-term plan for you? What are your motives here?” I confronted her about that.

“Well, eventually, marriage to you whenever he dies, of course. I’d be everything to you that I am to him, and quite possibly more, since you’re young enough to fully avail yourself of my skills and my body. I’d love to be your little whore, just as I am his. Don’t worry, I shan’t ask you to give up Alex. Or Steven, for that matter. Neither your old man nor I would ever want you to break their hearts, especially hers, as she is his daughter, too, in case you forgot that. He still has a father’s love for her as well.

“In fact, that’s one of the conditions of this. Don’t ever dump his lovely daughter, your sweet sister. What you’ve started, you must continue for life. Same for Steven, and in fact, if Steven wants to sleep with me, I’ll let him, as long as he doesn’t break it off with Alex. And if Alex wants to try muff diving, I’m up for that, too. She can eat my quim and I can eat hers just like that. It’s okay to play with others, we all do it, but don’t hurt anyone like I hurt you and you hurt me, please. And, by the way, I really am sorry about the way things went down between us.

“Oh, and here’s your membership card again. And Alex’s. And he even got one for your mother and Steven again. You’re all members of the Herculaneum Club once more, in good standing. Look, this has all been a really big misunderstanding. We both knew, deep down, going in, that neither of us was the faithful sort, and neither of us had the right to expect fidelity from the other in turn. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, turnabout is fair play, etc. We just didn’t expect that it would be so ... brazen on either of us’s part, or that it would be so damn taboo. I certainly didn’t count on being drawn to your father. He’s such a great man. Even your Mum is forgiving him and is okay with all of us.

“All that remains is you, your sister, and Steven, to go along with this plan. Yes, it’s going to require you to focus a little more, not spread it as much, ironically, because you have three, not two, regular companions to service and satisfy. Though I know that you shan’t ever cease to be a lothario. That’s just who you are, love. Also, you should know that Bruno’s vasectomy reversal went badly. His pipes still don’t work. Put more succinctly, he’s shooting blanks. He needs you to breed me, anyway, so that his seed will pass on through you. That and everything else is reminding him of how much he really needs his son, the wonderful Professor Franco Lombardo, Ph.D.

“So, what do you think of the plan so far, love?” Vera dropped all of this like a hot potato on my lap, much to my amazement.

“Well, I think that I should talk to my sister and boyfriend. This doesn’t have anything to do with citizenship and such, does it? An anchor baby would secure your future even better than a green card marriage would,” I observed.

“Yes, but she really does need your spawn,” Dad’s voice uttered from behind me, with Mom smiling at his side, “It’s called levirate marriage in some contexts, and the idea is that the next of kin passes on more or less the same genes as a pitch-hitter for the deceased, or the sterile, in this case. You really should do it, son. Forgive me, please, and fuck my wife, okay?”

“Do it, bro!” Alex stunned me as Steven and she joined us, “Sorry that you’re the last one to know, but frankly, brother of mine, you’re the toughest to persuade, being a proud and stubborn Calabrese hardhead as you are. Mom and Dad went with the path of least resistance first. You’re the last holdout.”

“Well,” I shrugged, “Majority rules, right? It seems that I’m outvoted. But you’re actually all okay with this? Seriously? Mom and Dad having an affair with each other, my stepmother joining me and probably Steven, and maybe even Alex, in bed. What’s next, Mom with Steven? Mom with Alex? Dad with Alex? Dad with Steven?”

“Who knows, except for the gay stuff. It’s not my cup of tea, but I respect it, contrary to how I was brought up and used to believe, that it’s your bag, just that you like women, too. For now, I have no feelings of that nature toward anyone but your mother and Vera. For now. And, by the way, thank you for acknowledging the fact that, younger than you though she is, Vera is your stepmother. That’s the first time that you’ve admitted that, at least in my hearing.

“And sorry about how I handled this. It seems that, given your hesitation to just jump into bed with Vera, which had to be hard to resist, you have more honor about how to treat family than I do. I never meant it to happen, but it did, and I’m making the most of it. Oh, and Frank?” Dad added toward the end.

“What, Dad?” I asked him, still stunned.

“Vera’s fertile right now. She needs to jump into bed with you right now. Don’t worry. Alex and Steven will join you when she’s had her fill. Guess that we’re all family now and family comes first,” Dad said as he hugged me, “Now, go get ‘em, Casanova!”

“Make your mother proud, dear,” Mom winked at me and kissed me on the cheek as I took Vera by the hand, while Alex and Steven actually slapped me on the ass!

“What is this, ‘Whip It’, by Devo, re-enacted?” I joked as I got ready to fuck my stepmother into next year.

“Yeah, how did that cute blonde put it, ‘ride ‘em, cowboy, ‘ right?” Alex said as she swatted me again.

“I don’t have to call you ‘Mom’ or ‘Mommy, ‘ do I?” I asked Vera half-seriously.

“Only in bed, love. Only in bed! Now, get me naked and fuck my cunny! Screw foreplay, I’m wet as can be, just talking about you breeding me! By the way, I wouldn’t be shocked if your actual Mum wants a piece of your fine arse and dick someday, too. Your old man is not in the best of health, sad to say, and she’ll need someone to hold her in his arms at night. I shall miss the guy, but I’ll enjoy his dick and his strong, manly arms while he lives! Someone will have to be ‘godfather, ‘ right?” Vera warned me as she got me naked in a hurry and we both ended up under the covers, my cock sliding into her twat just like it was yesterday.

That was when I felt something slimy and slippery and quickly realized what it was ... cum. I was getting someone’s sloppy seconds. My dick started to soften and Vera quickly understood why. Instead of getting upset, she tightened up on me and began giving me tongue while fondling my ass.

“Don’t worry, it’s not your Dad’s. It’s Steven’s spunk. Just a back-up plan, in case you’re sterile, too. We don’t yet know which of you knocked Alex up, do we? Besides, I didn’t think that you’d mind something that you presumably got inside her quim plenty of times, Steven’s jizz on your prick. Steven and I fucked right before our meeting, as it happens. Don’t get mad at him, though. Get even with Steven,” Vera punned, as I began roughly taking her from above, missionary-style.

“Oh, I’ll get even with him tonight, inside his ass, when I ravage his bottom like the butt pirate that I am!” I chuckled.

“So, that answers the question of which is the Top and which the bottom. You take turns!” Vera giggled as I rammed her very hard and deep.

“Yeah, we take turns, but he really owes me on this one!” I laughed as I screwed my stepmother as far inside her snatch as she could ever wish to have me.

“And I’m sure that you’ll make him pay, too,” Vera taunted me, “Now, make me pay! Rape your stepmom! Don’t hold back! Fucking use me! Make me your slut! Make me your tart! Make me your bitch!”

“You can’t rape the willing, Mom,” I reminded her.

“A figure of speech, sonny. Come on, you know that you want to bottom out in me! Balls deep! Give it your best! Ram me hard and long-dick me from behind! Hit it from the back!” Vera let go of her vise-like grip on my prick just long enough to turn over onto her belly and beg me for doggy-style.

“Wow, you weren’t kidding! You really are a nympho, aren’t you? How long were you with Steven before he came inside you? And how many times did he do that? And even if you did douche, you and I both know that you rode Dad today, or else he wouldn’t be quite so eager to share you! You must have worn him out or else handed him over to Mom’s tender mercies, which I hear aren’t always so tender. Trust me, I’ve heard her through her bedroom door on those occasions when men have visited her. Yeah, you’ve got it bad!” I taunted Vera myself as I indeed got my cock nearly to her cervix a couple of times, I went so far inside her.

“Oh, I fucked Steven, your father, a couple of your father’s friends and business associates, and two staff members from the club, and I plan to do a lot more than that. Your father knows, and again, it’s a back-up plan, in case you’re infertile. He wanted only people that he could trust, and those people are ones that he can, to do the honors, love,” Vera encouraged me as I rammed her very hard and deep indeed.

“But I’m the top choice, then?” I asked her directly, fingering her asshole, which made her squirm and whimper as it always did.

“For at least one of the pregnancies. We’re planning as many as seven, whether Bruno lives that long or not. Maybe even ten. We prefer that most of them are yours, if at all possible. Yes, your father will basically claim them and raise them as his sons, your brothers, and his daughters, your sisters, rather than pass them off to you. It’s a form of adoption, really, if you think of it. Though when he dies, he really wants us to marry. If you think about it, I’ll be his most enjoyable legacy to you, far more than anything else that he can leave behind, except perhaps Alex and your mother,” Vera confessed to me, “Oh, God, that’s right, another finger back there, please! I can’t wait to take your cock up my bum soon!”

“Kinky slut, liking fingers up your tush!” I swatted Vera playfully before slipping in another digit.

“Yes, and you love me that way, now that the dishonesty is over and done with. No more secrets. No more lies, stud. Just cocks inside needy cunnies, arses, and mouths, where they belong!” Vera egged me on.

“I forgot just how wild you could be in the sack, girlie!” I said as I pinched her bottom, making her wiggle her ass at me suggestively.

“You don’t know the half of it. Thanks to your father’s very understanding ways, I’ve been in and out of bed with a lot of folks lately, even more than usual, though I was always a bit of a slut. I think that your father is hooked on my slutdom, to be honest. He finds it attractive, much as you do, now that the fidelity issue is out of the way. Face it, darling, I’m a round-heeled slut and I have no desire to change the fact! Your stepmum’s a regular sex fiend and she wants you for dessert!” Vera made her own view of things pretty obvious.

“So, I can expect that if and when you and I tie the knot, our bachelor and bachelorette party are going to be a bit extraordinary for their entertainment, if nothing else,” I teased her, taking the hints by now that my father’s failing health, while tragic, would be the cause of a marriage that my entire family seemed to determine to arrange for me.

“Oh, darling, just you wait! I shall see to it that your stag party and my hen party are both galas the likes of which few brides and bridegrooms have ever seen! I know that it bothers you to think of your old man in such poor health, but we might as well make the most of it. I love the poor, dear man, he’s such a darling, a real sweetheart when he wants to be, if a bit gruff and macho, but that’s part of his charm. I shall miss him, but I shall also love his son and make him every bit as happy as I made the father. I was a naughty girlfriend, but our kind make the best of wives to the right sort of man,” Vera assured me, before my third digit sent her practically into convulsions, due to the intensity of three fingers in her butt while my cock drove deep within her pussy.

“Good thing that I know that you keep your asshole clean. You always did,” I grinned, relieved at recalling that fact.

“The better to take a good, hard cock up the arse, dear!” Vera snickered as her dirty blonde bangs stuck to her forehead thanks to the sweat of our coupling.

“I guess that you’ve just officially become a family tradition, babe. I don’t suppose that you’ll be able to keep your hands off our son when he’s old enough,” I laughed as she came right then, her climax strengthened by further talk of incest and sodomy.

My own load couldn’t hold back, either, as Vera’s warm, wet hole had clenched and squeezed it once too many, forcing my seed into her wonderful twat. As I withdrew my fingers from her asshole, she pressed her bottom against me in an obvious invitation for round two, the nature of it clearly being buggery. Not yet soft, and seeing that her backdoor was as clean as ever, I yielded to her entreaty and slid my dick inches at a time inside her booty. I knew that her ass would keep me nice and stiff for a good while, but that it would be a considerable length of time before I could cum again, this time up her butt.

My stepmother was in for a rough ride for the next hour or so, and I suspected that I would have an audience by the end of the session. Sure enough, it wasn’t much longer before Dad, Mom, Alex, and Steven all joined us in the country club cabin or whatever one wished to call it, our private lodgings as members of the club. Dad was soon on top of Mom, the first time that I had ever witnessed my parents actually fucking, while Steven had his dick buried in Alex’s twat like it was going out of style. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of this little orgy of sorts, but I kept at it with Vera, my prick growing stiffer and more furious with every stroke, much to my stepmother’s delight.

“Oh, God, Frank, I missed this cock! Especially up my arse! Good, fuck me harder, please! Deeper up my bum! Sodomize me! Bugger me! Take me, stepson! Fuck me good and rough! Use my bottom for your pleasure! It’s yours for the taking!” Vera urged me yet again, this time for even harder anal sex.

“I bet that you say that to all your studs!” I teased Vera as I grabbed her hips for better control and went as deep as I could into her booty.

“Caught me! I’m a sucker for sodomy! Drill my arse like that and I’m your fuckmeat for life!” Vera whimpered as I buggered her.

“Really, then how do you explain dumping me like that?” I asked her bluntly, having her right where I wanted her.

“I didn’t ... not intentionally. I was angry with you, but I was also afraid of you, knowing that I was at fault as well. I suppose that I didn’t talk to you in time, but I left you like sixty messages, which I guess that you never read. Anyway, that wedding invitation, which I gather that you took as an insult, was actually an attempt to seduce you, with your father’s blessing, of course, as he already wanted to heal the breach,” Vera said when not biting her bottom lip.

“So, you wanted to stay together and I let you go. Damn! Mind you, I was already falling for Alex and Steven, but there was room for you, too,” I noted as I really began taking her ass as she wanted it taken.

“It’s not too late for us, just as it isn’t for your Mum and Dad. As you can see, she might not be his wife anymore, but I’m pleased that they’re rekindling their romance, having a nice little love affair. Your Mum has become your Dad’s mistress, really. I find it rather charming myself. Mind you, she wants a piece of your dick, too, and of Steven’s, and I can’t blame her there, either. You’re already a motherfucker in some ways, due to shagging me. Might as well as boff your own mother, too. Believe me, love, she wants it, just as I shall want to seduce our son when he comes of age, as you suspected.

“I told you, darling, I’m a slut. A cum slut, a pain slut, and even a butt-slut, all for you and the other men and women in our lives. I’m a sexual plaything for you all, and guess, what, I love it that way! Screw my arse! Ravage my bum!” Vera encouraged me as I kept using her ass for my own pleasure.

I continued ravishing Vera, but finally, she lost it yet again and I exploded in her butt, sending her a very nice load, given the circumstances. As always, her tush had been nice, hot, tight, and slick around my cock, enhancing my delight in sodomizing her. Behind me, I heard Mom’s moans as she came, not more than seconds after Vera and I did, after which Dad shot his seedless jizz into her twat. At forty-seven, Mom was still quite the looker indeed, and you could tell why Dad had married her when she was sixteen, though being pregnant with Alex and me was a factor, too. She was only seventeen when she was delivered of us twins at last, some months after her wedding.

“Here, let’s wash this off, shall we?” Mom spoke to me as she led me to the shower, while Alex and Steven wrapped up their coitus, both of them moaning and panting as Steven gave Alex his moneyshot.

“Sure, Mom,” I agreed, a bit startled when my own mother began lovingly washing my body with the soapy puff.

“Thank you, Mom,” I told her now, prompting a very sensual kiss from her lips that reinforced Vera’s impression about Mom indeed.

“Oh, honey, for you, it’s no trouble at all! Your father and I are lovers again. We’re in love as if the past never happened. He knows that he wronged me and he is remorseful, but I have forgiven him and I will always love him, of course. He has been my ‘mystery date’ these past few months, and between Vera and I, we’ve worn him down to the point of knowing that he needs Alex and you. We’ve worked as a team on that.

“I dare say that Vera had been his mistress in the past, which I wish that she had been, there would have been no divorce, since she would have discouraged one. She loves being with married men, anyway,” Mom clarified with yet more kisses to my lips and my face, as I began washing her body to the sound of happy sighs from her.