A Final Valentine

"I did Clarence," I said. "The shooting is over. Those idiots across the way killed each other. But, some of the bullets may have come through. Are the wife and kids alright?"

"Yes, sir. We surely are. We were eating breakfast when we heard it start and hit the floor. Don't pay to be standing around with your chin on your chest when the bullets start flyin'. No sir, it don't. Nor sittin' neither. Bullet ain't got no name on it."

"No, it doesn't," I said, smiling. I had caught Clarence out enough times that I knew his folksy way of talking was mostly a ruse to poke fun at the token white person in the neighborhood. But, it was reassuring to hear it since it meant everyone inside really was fine. "Well, since you are all alright, do you think you might use your phone to call 911? Get them over here to clean up the bodies and such?"

Clarence frowned at me then and opened the door wider as his habitual dialect fell away.

"Aaron, we haven't had phone service since this started," he said. "Or electricity either. How did you not know that?"

"I haven't had a phone or electricity since about Halloween. Well, shit."

"Language! My wife and kids."

"Sorry," I said absently. "Is it everywhere do you think?"

"Everywhere as far as my eye can see," Clarence said. "The lights on the highway haven't come on, nor the streetlights either. I would imagine the lines are down, which means nobody will have a working phone or lights in walking distance."

"Well, sh-... stuff," I said. "Clarence, I hate to impose, but when the phone comes back up, could you call them in? Or come get me and I'll call it in if you would prefer since I found them?"

"Sure, Aaron. Sure. Are you and that elephant of yours alright over there? Do you need anything?"

"We're good, thanks. I made it back from the store with everything we need and then some during the first couple of hours of this. Thank you for asking, though. Well, I'll head on back and leave you to your family. Take care of each other and stay warm."

"You too, Aaron. You too."

I briefly considered checking the house on Forty-third Street, behind us, to see if the bullet that had come through our wall had hit anyone. But, as my fury had faded, the pain and weakness had come surging back. I had done all I could do.

Except for making sure Bitty and Angela were alright. Not my Angela. The other one.

I looked down the sea of white, unbroken except for my own churnings, for as far as my eye could see in either direction and saw no sign of any movement and no sign of any electricity either.

Fuck 'em. The cold would keep them from rotting too much before the boys with badges could get involved.

I slammed the kitchen door of the abattoir three times before it stuck fast and limped on back to my own.

I found Bitty and Angela still on the other side of the bed with the candle still burning.

"Are you all right?"

"What's happening?" She asked. "Is that what I think it is up there?"

"That depends on if you think it is a bullet hole," I signed. "Are you alright?"

"Why is there shooting?"

"Who knows? Are you hungry?"

"What?"

"Are you hungry?" I signed slowly. "Are you cold? Are you hit? Do you have blood oozing from somewhere or a broken bone?"

"No," she signed back after a moment. "No. I'm fine. But, why is there shooting? Will there be any more?"

"No. There won't be anymore."

"Did you stop it?"

"No. They stopped each other before I got there."

"Are they dead?"

"No, they stopped the gunfight when a card game broke out. Yes, they're all dead."

My sarcasm, or something, broke through and she stopped asking questions for long enough for me to light a smoke. God, I needed a drag.

"I had not seen you move like that," she signed after a full two minutes. "I didn't know you could move like that."

"I can't anymore," I signed back. "I'm already paying for it. And I'll pay a bigger price as soon as the last of the adrenaline fades. I won't be good for much for the rest of the day or tomorrow either. You're going to have to feed yourself and do your exercises without me. And I should probably take Bitty out while I can. And you should put some clothes on. Aren't you cold?"

"Too scared to be cold."

She did, however, put some clothes on before following Bitty and me to the kitchen where she helped me get Bitty's halter on her since my hands were trembling too much to manage.

Some of that might have been the usual post-battle shakes, even though I'd been late to join in the fun. Most of it, though, I suspected was just my body reminding me I was too fucking old to be doing that kind of shit anymore. And it was pissed I'd forgotten for a moment, caught up in the old familiar fury and adrenaline.

I half-dozed on my feet, leaning against the wall as I kept one eye on Bitty trying to find the perfect blade of grass and the other on Angela rummaging around in the pantry and firing up the stove.

I was tired. So tired. Almost too tired to hurt, which was a good thing I supposed.

Finished with her morning constitution, Bitty took her can in the front room as if it was all just a light entertainment put on purely for her benefit while I rested my chin on my chest and checked my eyelids for cracks.

A plate being set in front of me startled me from my stupor.

I had already taken a bite when I looked over and saw not my Angela but the younger Angela, our guest, and realized what had happened.

"Why did you fix me a plate?"

"You need to eat, too," she signed as she chewed her own bite. "You can smoke one and go to bed after you do, while I clean up."

"Yes, dear," I absently said aloud as I lifted another bite to my mouth.

I have only the dimmest of memories of being herded back to bed after my smoke was plucked from my drowsing hand.

The kiss on my forehead may have been nothing but imagination.

--Interlude the Fifth--

Beautiful coppery tresses filled my vision as I looked down at the weight on my chest and the feeling of a hand handling my cock. Smiling emerald eyes turned up to meet my gaze when I moved.

"You've still got it, love," Angela said.

"No, I don't," I groaned as I let my head fall back and considered. "God, I am so not looking forward to going back in a little while and the world of pain that will be waiting for me. How could I have been so stupid?"

"Shh. Not stupid," Angela's fingers brushed my lips. "You were never stupid. You just did what you thought had to be done. The same as always. And you were every bit as brave and strong as you ever were."

"Not brave," I argued. "A brave man is one who is afraid that does what needs to be done. I've never been afraid. Not in those situations. For me, it was the second best thing to fucking you when I was in those moments. A distant second best. But, better than anything else."

"'There is no greater exhilaration than to be shot at and missed,'" Angela said.

"Well, there is one," I admitted as I lifted her chin for a kiss.

I knew it wasn't real. On some level, I knew. But, I just didn't care. At least for the moment.

Slowly, I eased my lips from hers, across her jaw to her neck as my wandering fingers trailed up her thigh and was rewarded with a throaty moan.

Unable to keep her hand on my hot, throbbing shaft as I bent and twisted over her, Angela succumbed to me and lifted her hands to run her fingers through my hair as I pressed my lips harder against the skin of her throat, nipping and biting at the skin there with my teeth as my hand found that moist heat between her thighs.

Angela, my beautiful sweet Angela, was so ready for me I could easily have sunk my shaft into her depths right then and there in one hard stroke.

But, I had something else in mind. If I was going to abandon myself to this fantasy, this hallucination, I was going to do it right. Let the angels watch if they dared and let all the demons of Hell gnash their teeth as I brought my own paradise into being at least one more time.

Angela's breasts weren't as full as I remembered them being, but I chalked it up as this being one of her younger selves I'd spent time with, in this spot between earth and heaven and hell. Her nipples were every bit as sensitive and responsive as they had ever been to the play of my lips, tongue, teeth, and breath across them.

I could have spent an eternity just working on her beautiful breasts, but there was more I wanted to do for my very own private angel.

Angela's fingers worked and threaded through my hair as I kissed my way down her belly, pausing to tease her navel and make her twist and jerk. I glanced up as she tugged my hair, pulling me away.

"What are you going to do to me, Daddy?"

As always, Angela calling me Daddy made me laugh as she was not only very obviously a grown woman, but eight years older than me.

While it made me chuckle for her to call me Daddy, it had always bothered her for me to call her Mama. I think because our age difference always bothered her more than it ever did me.

Then again, it probably would have bothered me for her to call me Daddy if we had been the same age or if she had been younger.

"I am going to lick the cream away from your cat," I answered.

My hand between her thighs had never stopped caressing her pussy once I'd felt it's moist heat. But, only around and over those luscious, swollen lips. I had no intention of parting them with my fingers ahead of my tongue and wasting the nectar waiting for me there.

But, I was in no hurry. Good things come to those that wait after all. And patience was about the only one of the virtues I yet possessed very much of. Except for maybe a smattering of diligence.

I replaced my trailing fingers with my questing tongue and reached up her body to use my hands on her breasts.

Slowly, but firmly, I drew my tongue across her swelling lips, waiting for the petals of her flower to open to me of their own accord.

I didn't have to wait long for a bead of nectar to escape, only to be lapped up in my circuit. As the taste hit my tongue and the scent of her filled my nose, I struck, pressing the spear of my tongue into her depths to be rewarded by a shuddering gasp and a flood of her juices I craved so much.

God, how I loved making love to this woman. God, how I loved her.

When the flood flowing across my twirling, plunging tongue slowed to a trickle, I knew it was time to press my advantage and brought my hands from her breasts to assist my tongue in bringing us both yet more pleasure.

I have no idea how much time I spent there with her legs resting over my shoulders or up in the air, held aloft by my strong hands as I drank the flows of her pleasure and worked for another wave in the ebb. Time meant nothing to me. Never had when I could steal some time with the woman who was my heart.

But, eventually I could tell that I had achieved all I would in that position with my tongue and fingers and it was time to get a little more serious.

Rather than rising above her to plunge my cock into her depths, I rolled her quickly so that she was face down and ran my strong thumb inside of her, looking for the spot I knew I would find.

It wasn't quite where I thought it should be, but it never was. Eventually, though, I felt that small rise in her front inner wall beneath the gooseflesh raised deep inside her by her excitement. That small rise that meant I'd found the cluster of nerve endings that would bring her even more pleasure than sucking her clit into my mouth and flicking with the tip of my tongue.

As I pressed and began to rub the pad of my strong thumb across and over it, I caught my love around the neck with my arm not questing inside her. Partly for leverage. Partly because I knew from long experience that she loved it.

"How's that?" I whispered. "Do you like it?"

My only answer was a moan and a shudder as I felt wetness surge around my hand. I wouldn't be satisfied with a moan. A mere moan meant she hadn't reached where I was trying to push her. Where I needed to push her.

I kept working my thumb inside her, pressing, pushing, and dragging harder and more roughly across that cluster of nerves and bringing wave after wave of wetness as she moaned and shuddered until finally she gave me what I was looking for and screamed as her bowed body fought against the restriction of my arm, fought to fall forward as the muscles in her abdomen clenched in ecstasy.

It was time. It was time to reclaim my bride.

With one deft motion, I released her neck and shoulders and whipped her leg over so that she was once more on her back to press my cock inside her while she was still riding the wave of her orgasm.

Home. I was home. I was where I belonged once more.

I fought the surge of my own pleasure as I took her lips with mine. I hadn't bothered to keep count of her orgasms. I never did. I just wanted to bring her through one more before I surrendered to mine.

"Oh, fuck!" Angela tore her mouth from mine. "Fuck me! Fuck me hard!"

I drew back and plunged forward. Drew back and plunged forward. Gradually, I found the rhythm she responded to the most and felt her wetness coat my pulsating cock as I drove it inside her. Her nails raked my back as her body shuddered beneath mine and her throat gave out a wordless cry.

That was what I had been waiting on. That was what I had needed.

I drove harder and faster, stretching her orgasm longer and to a new height, but I was past the point of caring. My own release surged just out of reach. It was time to empty my passion into the waiting chalice of my love.

A molten boulder of need forced it's way up the vent of my volcanic shaft as with one last hard thrust I drove myself as deep as she could take me. A second surge of hot cum followed the first, burning its way out of me, then a third, leaving me hollow and empty and my love full of my need.

"Thank you," I whispered as I lowered my lips to hers. "I love you."

As always, I held myself above her, caressing her lips with mine, until my spent shaft softened and fell out of her treasure trove between her thighs.

Gently, softly, more softly than I'd been since my lips first moved from hers to her jaw, I gathered my love, my darling Angela against my body and curled beside her to rest.

"Thank you, Daddy," I heard her say as the post-orgasmic lassitude swept me away and down into darkness.

--Day Six--

The day before Valentine's Day started early for me as pain screamed through my body, yanking me up out of the deep and dreamless sleep I had fallen into after my dream liaison with my beautiful redheaded wife, Angela.

I wasn't sure where I was at first or why I was hurting so badly. I only knew that I was in serious pain from the hairs on my head to my toenails and everywhere in between.

Perhaps that was why I absently kissed the crown of the head on my chest with a murmured "I love you" before falling out of bed and staggering to the bathroom in the stygian dark to relieve myself and step into the shower. Perhaps that is why I did those last two without so much as thinking about closing the bathroom door.

The agony of the spiked needles of water across the nerves in my back was worse than usual. I gritted my teeth against the pain of the skin and waited for the heat to ease the spasms in the muscles beneath.

It wasn't until the shower curtain opened and Angela, the guest instead of my wife, stepped in backlit by that stupid LED rose perched on the counter that I began to suspect something was amiss and cursed myself for forgetting and kissing the top of her head as I so often had my wife when she could manage that position, curled so her head was on my chest.

When little Angela stepped close and raised on her tiptoes to kiss my chin I had a surging suspicion that something was seriously off-kilter.

"Thank you," Angela said aloud in her flat voice.

"For what?" I signed back at her.

"For last night," Angela signed back as the water flattened her short dark hair against her head. "No one has ever done the things you did for me, made me feel the way you did. I didn't know a lot of that was even possible."

Oh, fuck. Had I...? Had we...?

"I think I would rather you shaved the beard before we tried again, though," she signed. "The insides of my thighs feel raw."

Oh, fuck me running! I had! Somehow in my stupor, my dream and my reality had crossed and while I thought I'd been fucking my wife Angela, I had been molesting my guest Angela!

"I'm sorry," I began as she stepped inside to hug me fiercely and interrupt me.

"No reason to be sorry," she signed once she let go and stepped back. "You satisfied me better than anyone ever has. Even those three guys in Mississippi. I just want to make a project of shaving off the beard this morning, if you don't mind. Your kisses would be so much nicer without it, I think. And the rest, God, I'm getting wet just thinking about the rest. And I didn't think I would get wet again for the rest of the day at least."

I would have again tried to explain that I hadn't meant to do those things to her, but thought I'd been doing them to my wife. But, she stepped in close and wrapped her arms around my waist and leaned her head against my chest, giving me no chance to do anything but stand there and let her hold me beneath the cascade of water.

God, what had I done?

I was still conflicted when we stepped out of the shower and dried off.

On the one hand, I had already done just what I'd sworn I wouldn't do. And she seemed to have enjoyed it. Quite a bit, judging from the number of hugs and caressing touches she gave me.

On the other hand, I had sworn I wouldn't do that to her. And I had violated my unspoken vow to be faithful to Angela, my Angela. And, too, I wasn't sure that I would even be physically capable of such an act again, while awake and aware this time, as she seemed to be wanting to repeat.

I wasn't sure what to do or say in the face of her enthusiasm. Losing my cool over her touching me as I'd done the day before seemed more than a little silly if I had done everything to her I had dreamed of doing with the ghost of my wife. And, too, she wasn't touching my cock. Although that was the only part of me she didn't touch as we let Bitty out to use the bathroom and Angela, Little Angela, cooked breakfast. For both of us.

The usual brilliant morning sunlight was magnified reflecting off all that white outside and for the first time, we didn't need a candle or that stupid rose while we ate as it forced it's way through even the heavy drapes and flooded the room in an orange glow.

Oddly, I was hungry. And I blushed as I remembered how I would shovel food in the morning after one of Angela and my sessions. Or, as Angela would refer to it, "reactor mass."

The one thing I did strongly, perhaps even too strongly, react to was when Little Angela called me "Daddy."

"Don't call me that," I signed after I stopped choking on the bite that had gone down the wrong way. "Especially not now. Not after what we did."

"After what you did to me, you mean," Little Angela signed back. "I was just a passenger on that crazy train. And I loved every single second. And I need to go get a towel to sit on since I'm leaking just thinking about it."

I watched in suffused silence as she did go get a towel and made a production of wiping her chair seat before sitting down on it.

Once she had the towel situated and retook her seat, Little Angela entertained herself, and mortified me, with a play by play recounting of exactly what I'd done to her. And, yes, I had done everything I'd imagined I was doing to the lovely memory of my wife. Every single thing.

"I thought you had made me blind when you made me cum so hard," she signed. "But, when you flipped me over and started fucking me, I didn't care if I had. You wore me out and held me so sweetly. And I felt so safe and loved. By the time I could worry about it again, my sight had come back. I didn't know such a thing could happen."