The Worm Turns: Chapter 8 Afterglow By Richard Gross Constructive comments welcomed: rgross@juno.com Morning brings him the job he really needs. And, the worm... Update: 28/02/1998 to gross Copyright 1991 by Richard Gross When he opened his eyes again it was morning. Without moving he could see out the bedroom window; the sun was already high. He basked in a soft, warm light filtering through the lacy curtains which completed the dreamy quality of the room. They had slept late. Turning his head lightly on her chest, he saw that neither of them had moved in their sleep, and he was still cradled childlike to her breast. He looked up at her. She was awake, watching him contentedly. "'Bout time, sleepy head," she said cheerily. "Slept well, didn't you." "Morning," he said, snuggling deeper into her breasts. She brought his head to hers and kissed it. "Got to get going," she said, sliding him off her and heading for the bathroom. "Get going where?" he thought drowsily. His plans, if you could ever call them that, hadn't gone past last night. Today was a whole new proposition. "You up yet, sweetie?" she called over the sound of running water. "Sure," he fibbed without moving. "Good. Come on in." His feet had hit the floor and had carried him half way to her when it occurred to him that he had obeyed her immediately and without hesitation, without a thought. She was standing at the sink drying her face, wearing only the briefest pair of panties under a halter top which left her midriff bare. He put his hand on her shoulder lightly, tentatively to let her know he was there. Again, that feeling he always had around her, that feeling of being overpowered just standing near her. He looked down at her and felt small. Looking across the mass of her shoulders and the swell of her upper arms as she patted her face with the towel, he began to understand the illusion of height. He couldn't have verbalized it, but he sensed that height, always measured vertically, really included other factors. Maybe there was horizontal height too, he thought. Maybe you had to take into account the personal power people had. Did she ever have it. It was hard to stand there next to her; it pushed him back like a wind. Maybe that's what the guys on the crew had all resented: that unapproachability, that power that gushed out of her, sweeping everything away from her, that... that... towering height with which she ruled her space and had dwarfed them all. "I want you to relax now," she said, folding the towel neatly. "Sit down on the floor and lean against the back of my legs while I do my face." Again, he obeyed without thought. "Now relax, I've got you." She felt his head go loose against her hamstrings. "Comfy?" "Uh huh," he said, and without moving her feet from where they were planted, she spread her knees and let his head fall through. She caught it in her hands and brought it up to her crotch. Closing her thighs around it, she held him there effortlessly. "There, now you can watch me, isn't that better?" He blinked up at her. It was a hell of a view. Just above the panty line and below her halter top began that double row of cobblestone abdominals. They had a kind of chunky muscularity about them today which started him tingling again. Above, the arms and shoulders, relaxed now, loomed huge with latent power. "You can let go now," she prompted, indicating his arms which clung to her legs. He blinked again. He discovered in himself a reluctance to let go. "Really, it's ok, I've got you, you know. I won't drop you." Still he clung to her. "Hey, I promise. Did I break any promise I made to you last night? Did I?" "No," he had to admit. "Well then, are you going to trust me or not?" He thought a moment, then with a significant effort of will let his arms hang limp. He trusted her. She looked down at him. There he was, the cocky bastard of the previous day dangling obediently between her legs, his arms limp. She caressed his face with her hands, brushed his hair out of his eyes, and smiled down at him sweetly. There was that look of unbelievable innocence that she got on rare unguarded occasions. It almost brought tears to his eyes. Then he looked at those strong hands and up her arms at the veins which, starting at her wrists, coursed up her forearms and around her biceps. The light reflecting off the slight wetness of their recent washing helped increase the relief with which they stood out from the muscle they served. It was this combination of innocence and now all too imaginable power that had undone him. It still did. She went to work on her face. He watched her perform the dozen or so operations that went into making a woman feel ready to face the world, amazed he'd never taken the time to notice before. Finishing off the eye liner, she glanced down at him as if just remembering he was there. "Oh... So, what do you think? How do my eyes look?" He looked up at them unafraid to do so now. She knew about him; there was nothing left to hide. Almost nothing, at least. He sensed a barely perceptible tightening of her inner thighs. He wondered if she knew she was doing it. "Your eyes are damn terrific," he said, marvelling that their huge depths could be improved upon. The light hint of steel around his neck relaxed and she went on with her lipstick. Finished at last, she looked for his final appraisal. Pouting her lips dry, she teased, "Done! Think people will faint dead away when I walk by out there?" Again that slight tightening of the living collar around his neck. She's gotta know she's doing it, he objected silently. She needn't have bothered. He answered direct from his confused and aching heart. You're fuckin' beau... You're beautiful... You're wonderful... Jesus... He felt the pressure disappear again, and she smiled down at him radiantly, honestly. Standing there with the morning light glowing through her hair and washing over her body, she felt suddenly happy, truly happy. It was a happiness she had not felt since childhood. She looked at him still dangling passively between her legs, staring up at her face with a look of adoration which nearly embarrassed her. For a long minute there was only silence and a wonderful warmth that spread over her. It wasn't the sexual heat of the night before. It was a gentle, sweet, yet all consuming warmth that came from her breast, not her crotch, and filled her up till she felt dizzy with it. She stood there with him, savoring it, reluctant to let the moment go. He watched her and waited, curiously content where he was, unaccountably at home, wishing he were no place else. Charitable in her joy, she wished to include him in it. "What are you feeling right now?" she asked. The question caught him off balance. "What dya mean?" "Come on, tell me. Don't think about it. You know what you feel. Just say it. Just say it." He waited for that tightening in her thighs, that prompt which had been his cue in this unfamiliar territory. It didn't come. And, as if reading his thoughts, she encouraged him again. "I want the truth. Whatever it is. Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you." "I don't know what I feel." He was becoming upset. He might survive the most humiliating beating of his life, but this, this was too much. He was more desperately lost here than he had ever been between her legs. "You've got to try. Don't be afraid. Don't swallow it." This might be foreign, treacherous landscape to him, but it had been home to her. She knew how to navigate here. "Don't hold back. Just let go. Say anything that comes to mind, no matter how crazy. Let go, let it all go." He tried and tears began to fill the little places around his eyes. They swelled over the banks that held them in and crept down his cheeks. These were not the hot tears of last night's disaster. They were tepid, sweet tears that welled up calmly from a wholly different place. His face remained unchanged as he wept except for a slight softening that made his features almost handsome. "Tell me," she urged again. "You already know, damn it." "Yes, I do know. I want to hear it from you. Tell me." How he wanted to turn away from her again. But, his darkness had lost its protection, its appeal. He wasn't going there any more. He strained wildly to turn his head through even the slightest arc that would unlock his eyes from hers. His body writhed behind her, he pulled at her clothes, he pounded her butt with his fists, he exhausted himself in every vain ploy he could think of. But the vice that had kept his head from falling refused to yield. His head moved not the most infinitesimal fraction of space. It was in cement. It would remain there, his eyes locked to hers forever. "Tell me." She was insistent. There was no escape. "Tell me, tell me so we both know you know. Do it! For god sakes, do it, do it, PLEASE!! His tears blurred his vision. They were gut driven now and it was hard to catch his breath. "I..." It was coming... he could feel it. "I..." He tried to push it out, but it wouldn't budge when he did. "Oh god, I..." He looked at her and saw, rather than heard, her plea, "...please...". Something in him let go by itself. And now it came out of him, not by any effort of his own, but by some force deep within him finally ready to disgorge its last secret. He thought this must be like giving birth. It was a reverse peristalsis of the entire night. And it shot out of him. "I loved it! I loved it all! I love you!" Standing there with him still in her grip, something let go in her too. She felt it pour out of her. She watched it go. Years of hatred, years of pain, years of resentment, years of yearning for attention and approval. They had festered in her and sapped her energies. They had kept her mind always elsewhere, always in the cool, friendly ether, where there was only past and future, never present. Now, for the first time in memory, she was in the present. And content to be here. It felt good. She had become the woman warrior triumphant come down off her wall. And she'd vanquished all her dragons symbolically through the defeat of the very one she'd have chosen had it been up to her. He hung beneath her now, weeping, tear blinded eyes finally having escaped her own for the moment, his will and body helpless, all hers. She could barely contain herself. She had done exactly what she planned, what her secret voice told her she must do, and it had worked. She had had him both ways. She had found him a job he would like. And, she knew he would do it gladly over and over to her heart's content, whenever she desired him to. Her joy filled her totally. Then, quite without warning, appallingly, tears rose up out of a place she had not been to lately. She had not anticipated this. Not part of the Plan. As unacceptable as losing any other part of her control. Surely, she could manage her heart as tightly as her libido. How else could she have muffled the echoing laughter which had always mocked her, unneeded, unloved. The life long contradiction had always been there: she was without value, only as good as her last trick, only as desirable as the current shape of her body; yet, everywhere treated with jealousy and envy. They had taught her she really was only a fuckin' cunt on legs. But, not last night. Last night had been different. So now, a slippery something in that cunt turned over yet one more time, and, betrayed from within, she felt her hardness melting, overwhelmed by tears she had enthralled as surely as she had the man between her legs. And, as he had last night, these tears burst free of her, beyond recalling. She shut her eyes tight against them, but they seared their way through her lids...and watered the cheeks below. "Nothing changes till it becomes what it is." ----- John Bradshaw XXX