CHAPTER TWO

Another Year, Another Birthday

With Lavinia almost an invalid, I worked my butt off running the Bed& Breakfast. Times had changed the nature of the family business and our big frame house with the ten bedrooms was more of a boarding house than a B&B. It had been announced that a large military factory was being built five miles down the road. Suddenly every old house, every motel along the highway and every apartment building for ten miles were packed with workers streaming into the area. This should have meant a big economic boom for a community that had suffered when the resort business fell off. But the sudden transient nature of the community turned our once untroubled world into something very different. Packed residences were populated by a lot of disgruntled workers. Rough bars sprung up to smooth off the edges of grueling days. Everything from playful rough-housing to violent fist-fights became part of the coastal scene. Women had to either be as tough as the men, or a lot more cautious where they went at night.

Since I was so busy taking care of business at home, that is where I stayed. Jack and Lydia were no longer there to protect me, so I consigned myself to becoming a virtual hermit. I ran errands in town for groceries, but then, with the exception of a few trips to the library, I headed back home, avoiding the cafés and bars and usual places where young people in town gathered. Once Spring began to show its face some time in mid April, the entire focus of my thoughts was on the return of Jack and Lydia. They promised that they’d make it home for our annual birthday celebration.

The days just prior to the solstice had me restless, not just because I anticipated Jack and Lydia’s arrival. The same raunchy sexual desire that had been triggered the year before was suddenly ignited once again. In fact, it had not ceased to burn for even a single day since early May. I wanted sex so badly that I could taste it on my lips. My tongue burned to lick the lips of a lover, to savor the essence of a clit or cock. My pussy clenched as I glanced at men’s crotches, or a woman’s ass or breasts. I worked even harder, scrubbing floors to take that edge away. But it didn’t do much good. For eleven months since my virginity was taken, I’d suppressed the need to repeat that act. But there was no suppressing once I realized that my lovers, my best friends would be returning soon.

With the summer solstice just a day away, I expected Jack to arrive in the morning. I was almost giddy at the thought of resuming the sexual adventures that made our eighteenth birthday so memorable. Some days I worried that what I’d experienced was no more than a fantasy, driven by my own powerful need for sex. But my body did not lie. I was no longer a virgin, not in any physical, mental or emotional way.

I couldn’t wait to see Jack’s face, though I was less sure of a reunion with Lydia. She had always been the wildcard in our threesome. Her bold sometimes caustic personality, the flaming in-your-face politics and her need to control always made me quake in terror. But I couldn’t help but love her deeply, she was a soul mate, my female twin, and the timeline of our lives would always intersect over the strange circumstances of our birth.

I was actually thinking of Lydia, not Jack, as I carried a laundry basket of clean clothes up the basement steps. On turning the corner into the hall, I abruptly stopped short, seeing Jack casually leaning against the wall.

“Jack! What the he—”

“I got done with exams, my commitments were in order, so I took off early.”

I dropped the laundry basket and gave him a big hug. “Yeah! It’s so good to see you. Lydia won’t be here til tomorrow.” I stood back and viewed him. I wasn’t sure it was possible, but he looked even more masculine and sexy than he had the year before.

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