“It’s your family,” Carl insisted. “You need to reconnect with your roots.”

Brenda had no desire to attend her family gathering, even less to do so on Halloween. Who schedules a family get-together on Halloween anyway, she wondered, mentally blaming the idea on one of her senile aunts. But the invitation had reached Carl’s desk, and when Carl got an idea into his head, there was no getting him away from it.

So: Louisiana. Cypress trees, smelly bayous, overly spiced food, and a hometown population both proud of their ignorance and unaware of it. Brenda’s husband was the very antithesis of all that and she wanted to keep things that way. It had taken Brenda four years of college, one nose job, and two years writing marketing copy and moonlighting as a bartender before she lucked into the man who would get her far away from the home and upbringing that she had put far behind her.

Carl hit on her one Saturday night in the Shreveport bar where Brenda was working. It was almost closing time; he was older but cute and she was bored, so she didn’t shoot him down immediately. However, when he said something about a popular television commercial and she pointed out the flaws in it, his posture changed and his eyes moved north of her chest to stay. An overhearing customer, had there been a sober one around, would have been very confused to hear talk of market share and group psychology at two in the morning.

The Shreveport Hilton wasn’t tricked out like the ones in a bigger city, but a hotel suite is a hotel suite. Anyway, neither Carl nor Brenda cared about the decor - they were too busy stripping off clothing and feeding their mutual hungers. Much to Brenda’s surprise and disappointment, Carl ignored her proud breasts once they were on display. Instead he slid around behind her back to trail fingertips down her sides and his tongue down her spine. By the time his hands met over her mound, his tongue was teasing insistently between her asscheeks and Brenda made up the balance by squeezing her own nipples, spreading her legs and bending forward, wanting and needing him inside. She had to let go of her breasts and plant her hands on the wall for balance, rolling her hips urgently as Carl worked her into a dripping near-peak.

Finally he drove into her, not into her well-teased ass as she’d expected and almost wanted, but directly into her sex filling her well then pulling almost all the way out leaving her vacant. The noise Brenda made seemed to satisfy Carl, and he dropped all pretense of delicacy, giving her a raw fucking that she did her best to make last. Her own explosion came just a minute before he flooded her sex and slammed his pelvis against her, reaching around to hug her tight while he emptied his balls again and again.

By the time they left the suite for a Sunday brunch, Brenda ached between her thighs and inside her ass, and Carl was walking with a carefully awkward posture. His business trips took him to Shreveport frequently, and they were married just six months later. It was a love match for Carl, and a professional bonus for Brenda as she quickly landed a lucrative position with a boutique agency. When they weren’t making trails in business, they found plenty of time to explore all of the things a man can do to and with a woman, and vice versa. Something about Carl brought out an urgent dark side of Brenda that she hadn’t even suspected, and it made him that much happier to have found her.

The only sore spot was the absence of Brenda’s family at their wedding. Brenda had never been able to justify or explain it away, and at random times over the ten years of their marriage Carl would bring it up and harp on the matter. Brenda had always managed to change the subject or otherwise divert him when the topic came up, but the arrival of the family invitation made it impossible to avoid. She packed her suitcases for all of the usual Louisiana considerations - mosquitoes, uncomfortable heat, sticky air, intrusive relatives.

Carl found the family mansion (an impressive word for an undermaintained building that housed parts of four different family lines) elegant and redolent with history. He adored what he called the almost-living presences of the cypress trees. Brenda bit her lip and managed a smile as she hugged one relative after another. The obligatory reception provided her with much-needed drinks, and Carl was in his business element meeting and greeting as if he’d always lived in this part of the world. Brenda watched him work the crowd, and pictured him naked with his cock in her mouth. If anyone noticed how she licked the edge of her glass, they chose not to mention it.

The party that evening was - thankfully - not a costume party. Carl wore a muted grey business suit, and Brenda slid into a curve-hugging scarlet gown designed to make her older relatives envious and the younger ones hungry. For a change, she was able to relax and enjoy herself. The conversational groups separated generally into the young crowd, then older men in one area and women in another. That spared Brenda the boredom of listening to hunting stories.

Some time later, when boredom was setting in again, Brenda wandered around the house looking for her husband but couldn’t find him. Nobody was wearing a grey suit like his, and nobody she talked with had seen Carl for quite some time until she broke into the conversation of some pierced-nose college girls. One of them looked disapprovingly at Brenda and said, “Not since the two of you were doing whatever in the gazebo - ewww!”