Chapter 6

Lani Walker made her way slowly along the steep grade of the path leading from the Chapel down the hill to the Village. Her face was dirty, caked with dust that had mingled with her tears and left dry little rivers running down her soft cheeks. Her beautifully white body was scratched and bruised from the lashings of tree branches and undergrowth that had torn at her completely naked body as she had run hysterically from Moses' cabin after being completely humiliated at the hands of Moses and her own boyfriend, Bob Seikerd. She had run blindly, unconsciously, for more than 15 minutes that afternoon, tripping over hidden roots, falling, picking herself up only to fall once more, or to run headlong into a low hanging branch. Finally she had stopped, trembling like an animal at bay, gazing fearfully around as though she expected the trees themselves to come alive and advance on her sinisterly from all sides.

Then she had made her agonizing way up the hill to the Chapel, to the one place in this awful commune where she might find peace, might be able to think, and to reason out what had happened to her. She had been there for almost four hours, and was making her way back to her cabin now only because the cool night air had begun to chill her naked flesh, making her shiver and arousing her from the completely apathetic state she had fallen into.

Bob Seikerd, the boy she'd thought she loved, the boy she'd followed to this commune in order to find love and security of a kind her transient mother could never provide, had betrayed her so totally that Lani felt as though the ground had been torn from under her feet! He had permitted, even encouraged, Moses to shove his long cock up into her while she was bringing Bob to a climax with her own mouth! The sight of the three of them writhing on Moses' mattress impressed itself indelibly on Lani's tortured mind, as though she'd been simply a spectator in the cabin, watching three other people engage in the same disgusting perversion she herself had been a party to. She tried to rid herself of the terrible image, but it remained as fixed in her thoughts as a fully developed obscene photograph, which she didn't want to look at, but was forced to.

And the way Bob had talked--how he'd promised to fuck her again as soon as his cock was hard, right in front of the leering eyes of his friend, Moses! Lani felt doubly betrayed, because Moses, whom she supposed to be such a sensitive, kind man, had so inexplicably metamorphosed into a lusting, animalistic monster, taking her mercilessly as though she were nothing more than a piece of meat hung up for sale in someone's filthy, fly-ridden butcher shop. The whole experience had shattered Lani's ego and self-respect almost totally, making her doubt all things because her deep felt love for Bob Seikerd had proven to be such a disastrous delusion.

And so she walked slowly down the hill, her lovely blonde hair snarled and tangled with bits of grass and leaves, her eyes dry now and reddened, her bruised body bowed and slumped over pitifully as she walked. She skirted the clearing of the Village by a hundred yards, not wanting to meet anyone else from the commune with their questions and their peering eyes. Her thoughts now, as she walked, were centered strangely enough on only one thing, and that was her mother... her mother as she had been so long ago when Lani would come home from school bleeding from a schoolyard fight... her mother when Lani had rushed into the house from her first date in tears because the boy had brought her home an hour early... her mother as she had always held and comforted her daughter in the warm, loving embrace of her soothing arms.

Lani realized now that she'd been completely wrong about what had happened this afternoon. It was obvious to her that Bob had instigated the whole sordid affair, and that her mother had been completely blameless. Lani chastised herself mercilessly for the words she had flung at her mother so hysterically that afternoon by the Pool, and knew that those words must have hurt Ann terribly, especially because she had been innocent and the violence of Lani's attack was undeserved.

Lani finally made her way down through the trees surrounding her own cabin, and saw a dim light shining through the closed window. With a shiver of excitement and longing, she realized that it must be her mother, waiting for her, still believing her daughter had meant all those things she'd said to her. Lani's overpowering love for her mother coursed through her almost violently as she suddenly knew that her love for her mother was the only thing remaining to her amid the shattered ruins of her world, and that no matter what happened, she must cling to that love as the only stable thing in her disordered life!

With a cry, she rushed up to the cabin, and flung open the door, and then stopped with a start, inside. Her mother lay sobbing on Lani's cot, completely naked, her dress thrown in a corner of the room, her eyes red and swollen as she turned quickly to see her daughter standing in the doorway.

"Oh God, Lani, what... what happened to you?"

Lani was suddenly aware of the impression she must be making, her own naked body standing motionless in the doorway, scratched and bruised from her wild flight? and rushed to her mother with a cry of shame.

"Oh Mother, I'm wicked! You were right... Bob is a monster, horrible... I don't know how I never saw it... Can you ever forgive me for what I said to you?"

Ann opened her arms to her daughter, and Lani melted into them like she had so many times before.

"Lani. I... I don't understand... what happened?"

"I can't... I can't talk about it..."

"You must, dear, you must," Ann said soothingly. "You have to get it out of you."

Lani raised her head to her mother's and saw the concern and love there, and gained the courage to tell her mother what had happened. She described her horrible session with Bob and Moses, from the time she left her mother by the Pool until she ran off into the woods. As she did, Ann hugged her daughter tenderly to her breast, her heart going out to her in compassion as she realized that they'd both been the innocent victims of the same, sinister man.

Her hands caressed her child's soft back and shoulders as Lani moaned out her story, and Ann hugged her instinctively, smelling the young, sweet hair and feeling her daughter's firm, round breasts against her own swelling mounds, nipples against nipples. Her own eyes brimmed with sympathetic responsiveness, and she was at a loss to know what exactly to say.

"I'm not fit to live," Lani concluded, tears in her eyes.

"Yes, you are, darling," her mother cooed. "You're the best girl a mother could ever want and... nothing you've done could make you unfit... nothing."

"You... you really mean that, Mother?" Lani whimpered.

"Lani, I love you more than anything in the world, and when I thought I'd lost you today, I wanted to kill myself. You're my light, my life..."

"But I've been so bad, so sinful!"

"I've... I've had to think a lot about sins, dear," Ann said ruefully, tenderly kissing the tear stained cheek nearest her, still running her hands over Lani's soft warm back. "I've had to somehow come to terms with myself, too, you know. I'm... I'm like you said, unworthy of being called a mother. I let you down so badly..."

And with the tears beginning to well up in her own eyes, Ann forced herself to tell Lani the terrible tale of her experience with Moses that evening, leaving out nothing, desperate to cleanse herself, to confess to her daughter as Lani had done to her. And when she finished, both mother and daughter were crying, locked in each other's arms as though they were trying to find in each other the answer to their own doubts and fears. They lay on the cot for a long while, silent and rocking together in mutual love, rebuilding the faith and trust they had had for one another over the years. The minds of both were whirling with private thoughts of guilt and remorse, which only served to cement their common bond further. Finally Lani was able to stop crying, and she blinked and drew away from her mother just enough to wipe her swollen, red rimmed eyes with the back of her hand.

"M-mother, can I talk to you?" she asked in a soft whisper.

"Of course, Lani!"

"I mean really talk, mother. I... I don't think that I've been mature enough before for us to do that, but after what's happened to both of us, maybe we can be closer than just mother and daughter."

Ann stared at her lovely daughter, into the other's pain- flecked eyes, and decided the time had come for her to drop all the barriers, be honest and frank. She had no moral righteousness to preach anyway, not after this evening, and she vowed to open herself up to her daughter completely. In a strange way, all the hurt and fear she had gone through were beginning to turn out for the better, she thought, and as she looked at her daughter, she seemed to feel calmer and more loving than ever before. Unified. In perfect communication now, she and Lani would find a way together without false barriers or hidden questions.

"Darling child," she said contritely, "after what you walked out on this afternoon, with me fucking..." she swallowed at the word, but managed to say it..."fucking with your boyfriend..."

"He's not my boyfriend," Lani spat vindictively.

"Bob, then. Well, I don't feel in any position to give advice. I am just overwhelmed with your willingness to consider me an equal, a friend." She gazed at her daughter's angelic face, so similar to her own.

"No, Mother, no, I must have your advice. I... I'm so confused and miserable. And you've had so many other men..."

"Oh no, Lani, you're mistaken! I haven't at all! In fact," Ann blushed slightly, at the intimacy of her revelation, "I haven't ever even slept with a man except... except your father... until today."

Lani's eyes grew wide with amazement.

"Mother, you're kidding! Really?"

Ann smiled ruefully.

"Yes, it's the truth. Oh, I had some friends, some men after Tom and I were divorced, but... but I never let it go very far."

"But why?" Lani asked in disbelief. "That's been more than fifteen years! I didn't think it was possible! How could you go so long without being loved?"

Ann drew her daughter to her, almost sadly.

"I was loved, dear... I was loved by you." She lowered her eyes to Lani's naked body. "And I guess... I've never admitted it... but I guess I was just scared... scared of giving myself after... after your father."

"That must have been a pretty bad scene," Lani said compassionately, becoming aware for the first time of the tremendous burden her mother had carried for so long.

"It was... " Ann admitted. "It was more than bad. It was hell. Sometimes I almost went mad, crazy. I can see it now, and it was silly. It's all been a terribly neurotic, sinful waste. When I think of all those years..."

It was Lani's turn to comfort her mother, and she did so, taking Ann's trembling hand and pressing it to her smooth rounded breasts impulsively. "You mustn't think of that, Mother, you mustn't!"

"I can't help it though! Today, Bob, Moses, it's all come back to haunt me. I... I've been without sex so long... I mean real sex... I just couldn't control myself today. I didn't want... I tried to stop it, but then everything was too strong. The thought of having a man... of being filled up inside again after all those years..."

Lani looked gently at her trembling mother, loving her more at this moment than ever before, feeling infinitely close to her simply because that artificial barrier between parent and child had in one tumultuous day been swept forever from between them. She felt she knew her mother better that day than she ever had before, but she knew that there was much, much more to learn.

"Mother, can I ask you a question?"

"Of course, dear," Ann said, drying her eyes, "anything."

"I don't really know how to put this, but... well, I couldn't imagine going so long without love... I mean, well, sex, you know?" Lani was encouraged by Ann's nod of the head, and went on. "Well, if you never had any men, in all that time... I mean... how did you... You must have gotten very frustrated."

Ann smiled almost wearily, hoping her daughter would never experience just how frustrated she'd gotten. She answered her daughter with a simple nod of the head.

"Well," Lani went on, "what did you do? I mean how did you handle it?" Lani watched as her mother's eyes turned away from her, and stared intently at some undefined point on the wall opposite them. She knew her mother was embarrassed by her question, but Lani had to know. It would bridge that last gap, and make her mother more human to her than anything else could.

"I'll tell you something, Mom," she said quietly, taking the first plunge, "when I used to come home from dates, and I'd been well, petting or necking or something, you know..." Lani looked at her mother and saw she was listening, "... sometimes I'd go up to my bedroom and I'd be so... so frustrated, like you must have been, that I... I would play with myself. And it would help, and most of the time I'd cum, too, and it would relax me. And I somehow always felt bad about it, but... but I think now that... that maybe you did that too, huh?"

There was a pause, and then Ann heard herself whispering, "I did... I've done it before when I've gotten so hot I had to have relief."

"Did... did you ever use a handle of a hairbrush or something like that?"

"Oh, never... only my fingers." Dizzy with her confessions, Ann first stared at her hands as if seeing them for the first time, then down at her softly hair covered vagina which had felt their touch so often.

Lani gazed with an electrifying intensity at the same soft pubic mound where her mother was looking... and her breath caught in her lungs. She was unable to take her eyes off her mother's displayed sexuality, where she'd seen Bob's cock slide in and out, from which had spurted his overflowing sperm, and which now in her imaginings she dreamed of fingers whipping back and forth, over and over...

She stared enamored for some unknown, unthinking reason, and though she had seen other nipples and breasts and vaginas of other girls, she'd never reacted this way before. It was because her mother was her own flesh and blood, and she was instinctively attracted to the womb which had produced her; there, so close that she could touch it, softly protected by the curve of one firm, soft thigh and the slightly puffy cuntal lips. Her own genitals began to tingle in response to her words and thoughts...

"I used to use that yellow hairbrush you gave me for Christmas when I was ten," Lani murmured in a fevered hush. "Then, when I was older, one of my friends showed me a vibrator, a round, candle-shaped one made of plastic and that ran on batteries. They're cheap, and when I used it, it reminded me of a man's cock..."

Ann swallowed hard, agitated by her daughter's immodest talk- --of her own perverted admissions. She had always been so ashamed of having used her fingers to curtail the hunger of her unrequited sex drive, and the thought had never occurred to her to use anything else as a stimulus. Her stomach was a thousand butterflies, her breath seemed to grow harder to draw into her lungs, and she realized with a wrenching guilt feeling that as Lani talked about what she did with that vibrator, her hips were beginning to quiver and her breasts were actually throbbing in response to her own daughter's immoral practices.

"... I bought one at the drug store," Lani droned on mesmerically, lost in her memories and staring openly at her mother's now trembling vagina. "I'd sit on my bed in my room and read a text for homework, and when the urge would hit me, I'd turn on the little vibrator and run it up and down the crotchband of my panties. I'd let it play there, buzzing and tickling like crazy until I couldn't stand it any longer, and then I'd push my panties aside with the tip of it and spread my legs on the bed and slide it up and down my open pussy. When I felt my orgasm nearly there, I'd throw the book aside and jam the round, smooth tip of the vibrator up inside my cunt as far as it would go... and I'd squeeze it and squeeze it and squeeze it..."