Cathy and Chris

It was a Monday night like any other; a school night and the kids were in bed, the washing machine and dishwasher rumbled to themselves and he made her a decaf coffee before sitting down with his own tea. She was sat on one of the sofas, a blanket over waist and knees and her body drawn up.

As she took the coffee from him, consciously or unconsciously, she stretched her legs out on the other large cushion and Chris sat at the end of the sofa nearest her and smiled. She noticed but didn't make eye contact, just smiling noncommittally and thanking him for her coffee with the briefest look. He had been very attentive tonight and quieter than usual. She couldn't begin to think what was up with him.

He guessed what was wrong with her though. Just like her late sister he knew when she was due or actually coming on. She would go quiet and just a bit moody. She would occasionally snap at the kids, even his, and as soon as her back was turned, Dan who knew his mother better than anyone would make the action of turning on a switch.

His late wife Jen, being a Doctor, had explained to her children why once a month she was moody; Cathy was so impressed that she had Jenny have the same discussion with Daniel and Colleen. Jenny had explained to all four children at various times what she or Auntie Cath was cross about and they weren't to mind. Dan being older kept the 'on' switch as a joke between him and Chris.

Jenny would become unaccountably upset and burst into tears and need comforting. Chris knew this of course and would be ready with a pocket full of tissues and reassuring hugs. But not Cathy. It seemed when she was down she wanted to stay down.

This was her second menstruation since the move, and Chris would need to play it very carefully he decided, if only for his own sanity.

It was obvious, the last two nights she had stayed in her own room. If any hint was needed, as he slid through the wardrobe he heard the barely audible 'oh no, not tonight' she whispered to herself.

She heard him as he put some things down, tiptoed to the bed, raised the cover and slid in behind her.

"Hey you," he whispered.

"Hey Chris," she said with a groan.

"Take your nightie off," he said.

"Not tonight Chris, I'm really not..." He didn't give her the chance,

"I didn't mention your knickers did I? Do as you're told, trust me."

She grumbled slightly and raised the T-shirt over her head and shoulders, dropping it to the bedside.

She felt a warm hand and then he was pleased to hear the "Oh yeah," she mumbled as she felt the heat of the hot water bottle at the small of her back.

Rubbing the bottle across her lower back he leant forward placing a gentle but warm hand on the slight rise of her tummy barely touched by her knickers. He rubbed with just the right amount of pressure to relieve the pain she was feeling, eventually resting his hand again, allowing his little finger to rest just under the band of her panties.

"Oh that's nice, you don't have to stop doing that." Gently he rubbed again, and she sighed, "thanks Chris, ooh that's fantastic," she gasped and pushed her back into him feeling the hot water bottle squeeze between them. She also felt that he was wearing T-shirt and pyjama shorts, something he had never done before, at least not in bed with her.

The hand that was trapped between them curled under her and gently held her breasts, not mauling, squeezing, just cupping and holding. He continued to rub.

"Bastard," she sighed.

"What?"

"You come to bed and with evil intentions of making me feel better and I can't reciprocate." Her voice raised from a sigh to a definate female 'tone'.

"What do you mean reciprocate?"

"You want a fucking blow job don't you?" she sighed almost like she was forcing herself to be cross.

"I thought I was trying to make your tummy ache go away."

"Oh, that's what you were doing," she said, her raised angry tone replacing the air of sarcasm to her voice, "and you always fucking grab a girls tits when you want to make her feel better do you?" she snapped.

"Oh," he sounded startled and a little hurt, "I'll... err... I'll fucking leave you to it then."

She felt him slide from behind her, the removal of his comforting and warm body and hands leaving her cold for a moment.

"Oh for fuck's sake, don't get all..." she stopped when she heard the familiar click of the wardrobe door closing. She sat up, "Chris?" He wasn't to be seen, "CHRIS?" she said louder. Nothing.

On the bedside table was two cups, one held his usual tea and the other held milky hot chocolate, her all-time favourite made in a saucepan with proper chocolate and everything. A night time relaxer, not the kind of thing he made for her if they were to make love. Next to it was a small foil packet of Ibuprofen.

Shit.

He really had just been trying to nurse her, to make her feel better. She had spent all evening groaning in pain at him in a very real discomfort, it was a really bad one this time, and she'd made sure he knew all about it. Second time she'd pissed him off when he was just trying to be nice.

She tried the wardrobe door and it slid open, quietly. His partition was across too. Not a good sign. She looked at the bed with the duvet undisturbed and with no occupant. She looked at the bedroom door, still closed.

"Don't tell me, the hot water bottle isn't hot enough anymore." She jumped and turned to face him stood in the bay window.

"You... you scared me." She said trying to add a lift to her voice.

"You certainly scared the fuck out of me." He said, still looking out the window.

"You... you left your tea on the table," she stumbled, feeling the embarrassment burning in her cheeks, "Shall I..."

He didn't turn to face her continuing instead to look out across the starry night sky and the rooftops.

"Chris?"

"What." The voice chilled her, devoid of humour and emotion, something she had never heard in him before.

"Nothing," she said, not wanting to make it worse. She really must have blown it with him for good this time. Her pain, discomfort and the added hormones did nothing to help her mood, and suddenly the atmosphere and darkness closed in and she had visions of packing everything back into the boxes again, the impossible task of finding somewhere as great to live as this with someone as great as him. And the kids; starting that decline back to how they were before him...

"I was only trying to be nice," he said quietly.

"I'm really sorry," she said, "I always get cranky at this time of the month, you know how it is."

"Yeah, all to well, you hardly let anyone forget."

The hormones wouldn't let that one through and she snapped back.

"I'm sorry but I'm just not used to spontaneous bursts of affection OK? Brian stayed out of the fucking house when I was on..." She bit her tongue, Oh Christ, that sounded terrible - what the fuck was she saying!!

She felt cold all of a sudden, and the coldness seemed to radiate from Chris, just stood staring out into the darkness; still he said nothing, and she moved closer. She had to try and make it up somehow,

"I'm so sorry Chris, I... I don't know what to say, please... please don't let me spoil all of this, forgive me, please."

She stepped behind him and put her hands on his shoulder, resting her cheek against his neck, her eyes tightly closed, his body warm against her still bare breasts.

In the light of the street lamps across his face, he looked to have aged. She looked closer, the lines on his face weren't wrinkles, the silver traces on his cheeks were the tracks of tears. It came to her in an agonising flash, Jenny, his wife and her sister.

Her ovarian cancer had appeared from nowhere, thought by all to be just bad period pains and by the time it was found and cut out it has spread its evil poison through her body. Chris had nursed her through it.

On the really bad days she'd had Karen and Robert, so that they wouldn't have to see Mum suffer. The mornings when she'd dropped them back to school Jenny would lie like a ghost in her bed telling of how Chris had a constant stream of hot water bottles and cold compresses.

He'd held her and caressed her, and given her the painkillers, painkillers that gradually had less and less effect. And as the things gr)ew inside her, he had just held her as she cried out with the pain she could no longer contain.

At her bedside Jenny had confessed her shame, her own desire of a quick end to it. She said how in the darkest nights her sleep deprived brain had begged for relief and she'd cried and cursed him that he wouldn't help, wouldn't give her the tablets (she even knew how many would do it) and he wouldn't smoother her. He was a special forces soldier and must have known a hundred ways to kill someone.

She was dying anyway, she'd said, and he wouldn't help her out of the hell she was living. She'd cursed him that he was thinking of himself and not of her.

He had held her all the way through and until the end, in the hospital, the house, and finally the hospice.

Cathy herself had driven the twenty miles from her house to the hospice when her tearful Father rang to say that if she was coming at all she had to come now. None of her friends could or would take Daniel and Colleen for what could be a very long night, and Brian was halfway through a building job and wouldn't leave until it was finished, which added an hour to the wait, he even had the temerity to complain that she hadn't left him any tea as she ran from the door.

"OK, she's dying," he'd said, "You knew it had to happen;" She wanted to punch him for his insensitivity. Not giving him the satisfaction of seeing her cry, she grabbed her coat and made for the door, he threw a final comment in for good measure.

"If I took so bloody long, why couldn't you have put a pie and some chips in the oven while you waited?"

When she got there it was to find her distraught aunt being driven out of the hospice in a taxi, she abandoned the car in the car park and ran. Her tearful father sat on the steps of the hospice, her kind, wonderful, strong, gentle father, a man she had never known cry, head in his hands and completely inconsolable.

She couldn't find Jenny's room, some of the staff too were in tears and Cathy simply followed the trail of crying nurses.

Her mum was the other side of the bed holding Jenny's lifeless hand. And there, in the room that Chris had filled with flowers and bright colours he was sat, eyes closed, with Jenny wrapped in his arms for one last embrace. That hand holding hers across her swollen abdomen as if he was still trying to take the pain away.

At the last it had worked like they always said; in that final sleep the pain and the years had all gone, her sister looked free at last.

And here he was now, trying to help her, doing what he knew best to calm her and relax her and help her through the pain she had so vocally and visibly demonstrated to the whole house, and that he knew so well and with so much hurt. And she had thrown a tantrum worthy of the very worst spoilt teen, because he had dared to be nice to her and want a cuddle when she had a strop on and wanted all the attention.

She thought of that long drive through the spring rain, seven days after Brian's birthday, which was...

Fucking hell, it was two years ago; to the day.

No wonder he'd sat close to her all night and had tried to be nice and make conversation and all she could do was remind him so visibly and so often of his beloved Jenny's last days - on the anniversary of her death no less.

"Oh Jesus - Chris I am so sorry," she said turning him and putting her arms around his neck. "Oh Chris, please, I'm... I forgot," in desperation she started to kiss his face, his cheeks, his chin, his mouth, anywhere just to make loving contact with this man in such pain that she had done nothing to ease. She pulled him tight, feeling his head rest on her shoulder. Still he said nothing,

"Chris!" she wailed, "please..." needing him to say something, even if it was just to tell her what a thoughtless heartless bitch she was. The hug had been to comfort him, until the hand that went around his neck was across her face clasping her own closed eyes. Tears flowed down her face now.

"I'm so sorry Chris," she wept, "I didn't realise, I'm so sorry, I won't be like this again I promise..." There was something there; something that her brain had hidden and had been hurting her since Jenny's death.

Finally in that dark misery filled, starlit room it finally struck home and she gasped, "I... I never got to say goodbye..." she hissed, "I never got to tell her I loved her Chris," she warbled with a thin voice that almost crackled, "my own baby sister and I never got to say goodbye. Daddy said I was to look after her when she was little and... and I couldn't..." Her voice finally petered out as she pushed her face into his neck.

She hadn't noticed his strong arms were now hugging her, supporting and comforting her now abject misery. They held each other and she cried into his strong shoulder.

"OK, Honey," he was whispering through his own tears, "it's OK, she knew you loved her and that was all that counted. I don't think she knew who was there at the end."

"That old bastard," she growled, "He didn't want to leave that house with the room half done. Cared more about the fucking customer than he did about me." She almost screeched.

He picked her up and carried her to his bed and sat her down. She slumped to her side weeping inconsolably, crying and calling her dead sister's name. He held her tighter, letting her get it out of her system, and they both wept.

"Please," she begged too emotionally drained for hysteria, "Please tell me I haven't ruined it all Chris, please, forgive me, I'll do anything, don't send me away, I can't lose you too..."

She woke some time later with the duvet pulled over both of them. He was laying flat on the bed, and she was lying half on him her face resting on his shoulder, hugging him. His eyes were red even in this light, and she felt a soreness to her face as well. She brushed her hand down his chest, softly rubbing through the rough hair. She looked over him slightly at the large illuminated timer on his radio alarm, it was four o'clock.

The curtains were still open and the rest of the room was bathed in the hazy light of the street lamps. Looking down the bed she saw a distinctive bulge at his groin, and slid her hand down from his chest to his loins where she found his erect penis. It was iron hard, as hard as she'd ever known it. Without any further thought she slid under the cover beside him, gently sliding his hardness through the loose cotton fly of the shorts.

Taking him in her right hand she fed the purple head between soft lips. She wanted to make him come.

Many times when she'd been miserable or feeling down, he'd taken her to bed and had made her come. Sometimes she'd sat on the sofa and looked grumpy just because she knew that he'd just grab her and fill her night with ecstasy.

Her mouth massaged his sensitive knob, caressing softly, doing all of the things he'd explained to her once she had given him that first blow job at the beginning of that first session those few months ago. They'd learned together of course.

He had spent hours playing with her genitalia, her breasts, her bottom and its sensitive anus finding the parts that lit her fire and for her she had to confess it was everything he touched. She hadn't slacked either - she had sucked him and licked him, caressing his balls and his bottom, even going so far as to investigate what his anus had to offer, falling with delight on the pleasures available to him via his prostate.

He stirred slightly, and she slowed. She didn't know if he was dreaming or not and where his subconscious might take him, if he was dreaming about Jenny then this was one special favour she could do for her late sister that few other women could.

She tried to think of the right strategy, she could slowly bring him to it, which hardly ever worked with them because he had really good control. Alternatively she could suck and blow him like a Bangkok hooker and get him to come as fast as possible. In her fantasies, she'd always fancied herself as a Bangkok hooker.

He came around with a start, "Hey," he said whipping off the bedclothes to see Cathy leaning over him with his penis in her mouth. She withdrew it and carried on pumping it.

"Thought you might need one." She said not looking him in the face.

"You don't have to Cath, honest."

"Yeah but I want to," she said, "I was unbelievable shitty to you, just because I was on."

"Well, I can't argue with that," he smiled a second later, "I shouldn't have bitten honey, I'm sorry too."

"Yeah well, I started it and you deserve a blow job by way of an apology."

"And you don't want a fuck then?"

She pointed at her panty-covered groin and the bulging pad evident at the front. "D'uh," she said, "got the painters in?"

"And precisely what difference does that make?" The look on his face let her know that he was serious,

"Well, I have to wash the sheets and even though this is your bed I still..."

"Oh for heaven's sake, you 'dark age' girls, you won't go blind if you fuck when you're on you know."

"Yeah, what about all of the guck,"

"What guck?"

"All of that guck that comes pouring out of me every 28 days?"

"If any 'guck' does come out of you I will personally throw these sheets away and buy some more." He smiled at her, "Come here." She slid up to him and he swung her around. They kissed, gently and tenderly. Looking into his big blue eyes, she stroked his strong masculine face feeling the bristles of his day's worth of beard growth. She held his face and kissed the redness of his eyes. He pulled her into his strong arms, a place that she was increasingly coming to love and rely upon. They kissed and each kiss seemed to make it just a bit better.

He laid her down and pulled at her panties, she raised her bottom to allow this, until finally they were all the way off. She reciprocated and tugged at his T-shirt until it was off also.

Finally that wonderful penis of his was free of his shorts and she could only stare knowing it was coming for her.

Kissing her, he climbed between her legs,

"Chris, are you sure... Oh I say." She crooned feeling him slide between her soft and spongy lips to sink and slide in an altogether new way. Even though her brain had been saying no her body had prepared the way and he slid in easily.

His weight on her was so reassuring after what she had done, and she clung to him. He began to kiss her again and she kissed back, part of her thinking that this could just be a revenge fuck and it could still be all over between them. She couldn't let that happen.

She fucked back at him enjoying the passion after the upset, and it felt wonderful in there. "Oh Chris," she whispered in his ear, "it's so lovely." He squeezed her in response. "You're lovely," he whispered back and she purred, pulling him tighter.

They writhed together, both trying to get closer and closer to the other until they came together, each gasping with relief into the neck off the other. He rolled slightly to take his weight off of her, but she pouted pulling his gorgeous and reassuring body that could give her such delight back where she wanted it. They smooched for a while until he felt his softened cock slip free --she pouted again. He moved a bit, one arm feeling on the floor.

Still half over her and reaching down, he slid her panties over her feet and pulled them into place, the protective pad still there. She looked at his cock, just the slightest hint of red around the base and on his pubic hair. This disappeared with a wipe of some tissues.

"There," he said "no damage done."