Chapter 9

The concert Saturday night went as well, if not better than the one the previous night. Misty saw a lot of faces in the crowd that she had seen the night before, waving photographs at her and seeking autographs. The fact that they were hearing some of the same music didn’t seem to bother them.

After a set of five uninterrupted songs, Misty announced that they were going to play a home-grown song and introduced Jasper. She went through the rest of the band, too, something she had forgotten to do the night before. The audience loved it, and they clapped and shouted just as hard for Jasper’s song as they had for her own compositions. That didn’t bother her at all. She just turned around and grinned at the blushing bass player and had him take a bow.

Autographs after the concert were more organized. Amanda had seen what happened the previous night, and had people on hand to handle the crowd of admirers. Still, there were hundreds of pictures to sign, and it took over an hour before the line dwindled. Amanda asked Misty if she wanted to go out for a late bite and, feeling better tonight, she agreed. That turned into something a bit comical, as all the people who Amanda had hired decided they were invited too and followed. Initially, the manager of the restaurant threw up his hands when twenty people walked in the door and asked to be seated together. Money went from Amanda’s hand to his, though, and they were given a private room. Employees scurried around getting the tables set while people relaxed into seats and were introduced to the star.

Misty noticed that Bobby sat at the other end of the room, and then wondered why she’d noticed that. He was chatting with the people near him, who seemed to know him. They turned out to be employees of the radio station Amanda ran, when it got to their introductions.

“This has been fabulously successful,” Amanda said after she finished the introductions. “I couldn’t be happier at having you here. This will be a festival a lot of people will remember.”

It took a while for the unexpected large group to place their orders and, by the time they left, it was very late. Bobby was still talking to people when Misty sidled up beside him and stuck her arm through his.

“We need to go,” she said softly.

“Okay,” he said simply, bending his arm so she could hold on. He seemed to take in stride, the fact that she had her arm in his. She had ridden to the restaurant with Amanda, and let him lead her to the truck. He put her in her side and then went around. Once they were going she spoke.

“You know, I saw your car at the farm. But every time you take me anywhere, you use still this old truck.”

She saw him grin in the passing light of a street lamp.

“At first I did it just to needle you,” he admitted. “Now it just seems like the kind of vehicle people would expect you to be in. You know ... country songs and pickups?”

“You’re the last person I would have thought would stereotype me,” she said, but there wasn’t any discontent in her voice.

“Contrary to popular opinion, I’m not perfect,” he quipped.

“So ... are you going to give me another massage tonight?” Her voice was lower than it had been.

“Do you need one?”

“Probably,” she hedged. In truth, she felt much better. She still remembered the feel of his hands on her, though, and that was a pleasant memory, all things considered.

“We’ll see,” he said.

She didn’t know what that meant until they got back to the farm. It wasn’t dark this night. Mirriam and the twins were still up, though little Theodore was already in bed. Mirriam seemed nervous, somehow, and the twins seemed excited for some reason that had nothing to do with Misty.

It was almost as if they had been waiting for them to get there. Suddenly everyone announced it was bedtime, and Misty got the impression that, if she’d have said she wanted to stay up, she would have been told to go to bed anyway. She didn’t want to stay up, though, and when Mirriam said “Bobby, I need a word with you please,” she went on to her room. It looked like there would be no massage that night.

She wondered why that seemed like such a loss, all of a sudden.

“What’s up, Mamma?” asked Bobby as Mirriam waited until everyone was gone.

“I need you tonight,” was all she said. Then she turned and walked toward her bedroom, as if she just expected him to follow her.

He did.

Bobby was surprised that she’d want him, with a stranger in the house. She still didn’t know that the twins had seen him making love to her. The twins didn’t let on that they knew Bobby occasionally stayed a long time in their mother’s bedroom. But he knew she was still rather circumspect about having him spend too much time in there.

On this night, though, she was intent on keeping Bobby out of what she thought of as “trouble”. Misty was a beautiful woman, and she’d displayed the same kind of interest in Bobby that too many other women had displayed in the past. Mirriam had no trouble building up desire to spend time with Bobby in bed. She was used to her desires now. She just helped them along a bit so that he wouldn’t be tempted to do whatever it was he did to women ... at least not insofar as doing it to their guest.

An hour later Mirriam lay weak from a succession of orgasms as Bobby stood up and put his clothes back on. His copious spend was dripping from her pussy, and she closed it off with two fingers, not wanting to get up, but also not wanting a wet spot in the bed.

“Good night Darling,” she sighed.

“Night,” he said, leaning over to kiss her one more time. “I love you, and I love doing this with you.”

“I know,” she sighed. “I love it too. I’ll make you a special breakfast in the morning.”

“Okay.”

Then he was gone, quietly leaving. She was almost asleep by the time the door clicked shut.

If there hadn’t been light coming from under the door to Misty’s room, Mirriam’s plan to protect her guest might have worked. But after getting ready for bed, Misty realized she wasn’t as tired, this night, as she had been the night before, and a book on the night stand had caught her attention. It wasn’t the kind of thing she usually read. It was by an author she’d never heard of before, a man named Isaac Asimov, and it had the strange title of “I Robot”. It turned out to be a series of short stories, and she had read the first one just out of curiosity. She was on the fifth, completely enthralled by the exploits of Powell and Donovan and with the way Susan Calvin thought about things, when there was a tap on her door.

“Yes?”

The door opened, and Bobby stuck his head in.

“You still need that massage?”

“I’m in my nightgown,” she said needlessly. She was lying on top of the covers.

“I see that.”

Misty closed the book. She had been reading a story called “Liar” and wished Herbie, the mind-reading robot in the story, was there so it could tell her what Bobby was thinking.

“Why do you want to give me a massage?” she asked.

“I don’t want to give you a massage, necessarily,” he said. “But if you need one, I’d be happy to do it.”

Something ... perhaps the woman in her ... was a little disgruntled by his casual attitude. Like most women, she wanted men to be intoxicated with her ... on her terms anyway. Bobby’s take-it-or-leave-it attitude miffed her a little. The fact that he’d seen her naked last night and had not molested her miffed her a little for much the same reason, though she didn’t consciously think about it that way. He was so attentive to other women. Their attitudes toward him made it obvious that he had the capability to make a woman happy. His mother had even said he “had a way” with women. Now, though she didn’t think about it on a conscious level, the stories she had just read about what made robots tick made her curious about what made Bobby tick.

“Will you behave yourself?” she asked, thinking about the first law of robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

“Of course,” said the man who wasn’t a robot.

“Will you do what I tell you to?” she asked, thinking about the second law of robotics: A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

“Within reason,” said the man with a real brain, instead of a positronic one.

“I won’t take off my nightgown,” she said.

“Your call,” he responded.

“Okay, then,” she said, somehow feeling as if things had been decided, and she was perfectly safe and in control.

She flipped over onto her stomach, and lay her head on her arms, getting into a comfortable position. She felt the bed move as he sat beside her, and it tilted toward him a little, making her list slightly to one side. His hands came down on her back first and she was almost surprised to feel herself pressed down into the bed as his hands slid across her shoulder blades and up to the skin between her shoulders and neck. He squeezed and she groaned as she felt the sweet pain of his fingers kneading her muscles.

In fact, the casual voyeur would have heard what sounded like a torture session going on, if Misty’s groans and moans had been the primary input to the voyeur’s senses. Bobby pulled and pushed and moved her joints around as she got more and more relaxed. He moved down her body, like he had the night before and, like had happened the night before, when he got to her buttocks, and began mauling them, she was so relaxed that she didn’t say a word.

Her nightgown only went to her knees and, when his hands slipped off that onto her legs, she was astounded by how different his hands felt on her bare skin. She felt the warmth first, and then the roughness of his hands, which somehow scraped her skin in a way that felt delicious. When he’d done her feet, and was working his way back up, his hands slid under her nightgown to the back of her thighs.

“You’re being naughty,” she murmured.

“No I’m not,” he said softly. “I’m giving you a massage.”

She tensed a little when his hands slid up to her bare butt cheeks.

“Now you’re being naughty,” she rasped.

“Not at all,” he argued.

She couldn’t believe how good his hands felt on her butt, moving the skin around and squeezing her. By and large, people touch and scratch themselves on most parts of their bodies ... except the buttocks. We sit on them, but we don’t touch them much. Misty found out just how good it can feel for that area of the body to be touched.

His hands got to the small of her back before the nightgown got so tight on his wrists that he could go no farther. Her butt felt so warm and alive that she didn’t realize it was exposed to his gaze.

“You have a cute butt,” he said casually.

“You’re not supposed to be looking at my butt,” she muttered.

“Why not?”

“Cause it’s my butt!”

“Which is precisely why I’m interested in looking at it,” he countered. “There are thousands of men right here in central Kansas who wish they could be looking at what I’m looking at right now.”

“Now you’re definitely being naughty!” she groaned, as he pressed hard and his rough hands scraped down to her waist.

“Yeah, I guess so,” he sighed.

He pulled his hands out from inside her nightgown and started working her back again. The feel was completely different. It felt good, but with cloth between his hands and her skin, it was a totally different sensation.

“If I took my nightgown off, would you behave?” she asked.

“I’d try really hard.”

“You have to promise to behave,” she groaned as he pressed hard with the flat of his hands, pushing her into the bed and making it hard for her to draw a breath.