Facets of Love

To my faithful followers and new readers: This is the third chapter of a twelve-chapter love story. The entire book is already written, and I will do my best to get each chapter published as quickly as Lit allows.

This chapter introduces a new voice. Dr. Martha Spencer is a headstrong woman with a unique outlook on life. Enjoy her quirks as you get to know her.

All characters participating in or observing sexual activity are at least eighteen years old. The author is well over the age of consent.

***

Facets of Love

Chapter 3

-

Dr. Martha Spencer

January 2020

This is not my fault.

Before that boy came into our lives, I was living the American dream. My husband was an extremely successful businessman. My daughter was a straight A, eighteen-year-old virgin starting her first year of college. And my therapy practice was doing so well, I was turning away more clients than I accepted.

Now, my entire family is physically, socially, emotionally, and financially fucked. Admittedly, an extremely small portion of the blame for our collective burden might fall on my shoulders. Perhaps a single ounce of the ton of shit we are buried under is due to my negligence. But the preponderance of responsibility falls on all the other participants in a chain of events which will assuredly lead to our ruin.

-

August 2017

Let's lay the first layer of blame on the Ford Motor company. If the water hose in my minivan hadn't sprung a leak on that hot August day, Mary and I would have never met Robert Ryan Jones.

I knew that boy was trouble as soon as he pulled his ancient pickup-truck up to my disabled vehicle. Robert, like all men, gave me an appreciative look when I first climbed out of the van, but when he saw Mary, I no longer existed. She was the bright shiny object that caught everybody's eye and I was just another mom, the movie star's chauffeur.

I was used to being the center of attention in most situations and, while I realized someone younger and prettier would eventually take my place, I didn't expect it to be my daughter and certainly not so soon. Remember, I was only thirty-six at the time, at my sexual and social peak.

But it wasn't jealousy that immediately turned me against Robert. It was love. An instinctual maternal desire to keep my daughter out of harm's way. Although Mary didn't see it, it was obvious to me that Robert was a wolf on the prowl, and I did everything in my power to keep them apart.

My first line of defense was simply telling Mary to stay away from him. "He's way too old for you," was the last thing I told her before leaving Auburn. "Make friends with people your age. Enjoy your college years."

Attacking the problem from the other side, I literally gave Robert a bribe to stay away from her. "Here's $500. Free money if you don't call Mary and ignore her if she tries to contact you."

And, as a last resort, I gave Mary a six-month supply of birth control pills, enough to last the entire fall semester.

I realized I was losing control of the situation when Mary surprised us by bringing Robert home with her for Christmas break. She didn't ask permission, she didn't call ahead to warn us, she just showed up at our front door with the man I expressly forbade her to date. She was obviously head over heels in love with him and, to make matters even worse, Frank, my husband, also succumbed to his charm.

Not the way Mary did. Frank didn't want to sleep with him. He wanted to hire him. I spent the entire week of Christmas doing everything I could to dissuade my daughter from dating the redneck from hell and my husband offers him a job.

"He's exactly who we need to grow our company," Frank told me.

"You realize he's probably fucking our daughter," I countered.

"Yeah, he probably is," he conceded. "But if he wasn't, then somebody else surely would be. She is your daughter after all."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"You know exactly what I'm talking about. Let's just hope they don't make the same mistake we made, and if they do, we need to promise ourselves we'll handle it better than our parents did."

And there it was. After almost nineteen years of marriage, he brings up a dark secret from our past. A secret only the two of us knew, except only I knew all of it.

-

1998

I had known Frank and James Spencer all my life. They grew up two houses down from my childhood home. Frank was twelve when I was born. He was the teenager who cut our lawn when I started kindergarten. When Frank went off to college, his brother James (five years younger than Frank) took over for his brother. By the time James was old enough for college, Frank had graduated and was back on our street, living with his parents while he started his cardboard box business.

I was one of Frank's first employees. At first, I was the pesky twelve-year-old girl that he paid to clean up his office every Saturday morning. As he got busier and I got older, I started coming in after school a couple of days a week to do minor clerical stuff, like filing contracts and sorting his junk mail from the important stuff. Two days a week went to three, and Saturday mornings expanded to most of the day. By the time I started high school, I was an integral part of Frank's business. Both James and I spent our summer breaks working for Frank and, when James finished college, Frank made him a partner.

I'm not saying I didn't have a social life. My parents insisted I had time to go to church functions, school dances, and whatever else they thought I needed to mold me into a proper young lady. But it was no secret that I had a crush on the Spencer boys. During the few dates I went on in high school, I always compared the young man to Frank or James Spencer, and the poor boy always came up short.

The Spencers and the Weavers (my maiden name) were more than neighbors. Our parents were best friends. We had backyard barbecues at each other's houses, went to the same church, and often vacationed together. Which is where things went a little haywire.

Lots of people came to Florida for vacation, especially during the winter. Floridians, at least those with the financial means, tended to go north for their holidays. Both of our families were well off so, for several years in a row, we spent Thanksgiving together in North Carolina, each family renting adjacent cabins on the top of a mountain.

The year in question, the year I turned eighteen, Frank was thirty, James was twenty-five and, despite their business doing well, the two boys still lived and vacationed with their parents. Now don't get me wrong, neither Frank nor James was what you would consider a mama's boy. They were well built, handsome young men who, for reasons only known to them at the time, chose to put their efforts into building their company and completely eschewed a social life. Which was fine with me, because, in my mind, I was destined to marry one of them.

I chose my eighteenth birthday party, to make my move.

Like most any other girl, I always had a party on my actual birthday, except when my late November birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day. In that case, as it was with my eighteenth birthday, we celebrated on the day after Thanksgiving.

I patiently put up with the usual birthday party traditions. Ice cream, cake, silly hats, and party games. I got a few presents from both families and was even allowed a half glass of champagne. But it was obvious I was still considered a child. When the Spencer boys mentioned that they might pitch tents and sleep outside that night, I asked if I could join them.

"Not in the same tent," I reassured everybody. "I just want to sleep under the stars and will feel safer if a couple of grownups are nearby."

Frank and James each put up their own tent in a grassy area between our cabins and my dad pitched mine between them. Frank to my left, James to my right. The boys built a small campfire and the seven of us sat in camp chairs, marveling at the clear night sky for an hour or so after the sun went down. Frank, James, and I stayed outside after our parents retired to their cabins and talked until nearly 10:00 pm.

I can't tell you exactly what we talked about. Not about business. That was a taboo subject on the mountain. Vacation was not a time to discuss payroll, taxes, and inventory. But I remember the subject of the future coming up.

"What are you going to do after high school?"

"What colleges are you applying to?"

And the one that really got to me.

"What the hell are we going to do without you?"

I'm not sure which boy asked but both seemed genuinely concerned.

James was the logical choice for me. Not that I didn't think Frank would make a good husband, but James was a lot closer to my age than his brother. That's why, after we'd all been in our tents for over an hour, I slipped out of my sleeping bag, tiptoed one tent over, and laid my naked body next to James.

When he didn't immediately respond to my presence, I placed a hand on his bare chest and left it there enjoying the feeling of heat radiating from his body to mine. My thigh crept up over his, putting my small body partially on top of his larger frame. He continued to slumber as my hand crept down his chest, passing his abs, momentarily pausing as it encountered the soft cotton of his boxer shorts and then boldly ducking underneath the fabric, stopping just short of its intended target.

My kiss woke him. The one on his cheek. It was so dark inside the tent I missed his lips with my first attempt.

"What the..."

"Shhh," I whispered as he startled to consciousness.

"You shouldn't..." he blurted out.

This time I silenced him with a proper kiss on the lips.

He struggled at first. Shaking his head side to side, trying to break my lip lock, mumbling something about "this isn't right". Each time he resisted, I re-engaged and kissed him even harder. Let's face it, if James had really wanted me to stop, he could have easily grabbed my arms and pushed me away. But he didn't. Instead, his strong hands reached around my back, pulling me closer to him. And then strayed to my waist, centering my body directly over his. And then to my ass, which he fondled while our tongues danced.

Once we got going, once he quit fighting me and started kissing me back, there was a long list of things I wanted to do to his body. My hands wanted to explore every inch of his skin. My eyes wanted him to stand up, strip off his boxers and gaze on the naked body of a fully grown and excited man. My ears wanted to hear him describe my beauty and how good my body felt against his. And my lips... oh god my lips. The things they wanted to do would take a lifetime to accomplish. But my pussy got first choice, and it was bound and determined to not leave that tent until I was no longer a virgin.

So, my lips stayed locked on James'. My eyes remained shut and my ears heard nothing but satisfied moans as my hands pulled James' boxer shorts down and then placed his swollen penis at the entrance of my sex.

"Have you thought this through?" he asked. This time using his superior strength to keep my lips off of his. "Are you sure this is what you want?"

"Absolutely," I said after a moment's pause and then gasped as Frank gently entered me.

That's right. I was with Frank, not James. It was an honest mistake. I turned right instead of left when leaving my tent. I initially thought I was with James. It was dark in the tent and the two brothers had similar bodies. But as soon as I let the man I was with speak an entire sentence, I could tell the difference. While they were often mistaken for the other when answering the phone, I spent enough time around the two of them to distinguish the subtle differences in not only their voices but also their word usage.

"Have you thought this through," was something only Frank would say. When I heard those words, I immediately realized my mistake and, although I hadn't completely thought through what life would be like with a man twelve years my senior, I did know what I wanted at that particular moment.

I would learn later in life that slightly over half of the female population experience little to no bleeding during their first sexual experience. It was one of the rare times I was part of the majority. Once past that hurdle, I continued to take advantage of the patient man below me and, ever so slowly, pushed him deeper into me. At the time, I had no idea how long or thick the average man tool would be but, once Frank was completely inside me, I felt comfortably filled.

We laid still for a while. Me getting physically used to his girth, he mentally trying to process what had just happened. When comfortable with our current situation, we moved on to the fun stuff.

I'd like to say we had sex in eight positions, I experienced four orgasms, and took his sperm in three different holes. But let's be realistic. It was my first time, and he wasn't much more experienced than I. Not that we didn't enjoy ourselves, we did. Just not enough to describe it in gory detail. The key point is that we did it. I lost my virginity to a man. A real man, not a teenage boy. And even though it wasn't the best sex ever, I knew we had a lifetime together to get better at it.

I will readily agree that choosing Frank over his brother was a snap decision, made in less than a second, but it was a decision I have never regretted. He completely satisfied me in the tent that night and has continued to keep me happy ever since. James, on the other hand... well let's just say that in the thirty some years I have known the man, I have never seen him in the company of a woman.

That's the dark secret Frank was talking about eighteen years later when Mary brought Robert home for Christmas.

No, not that James didn't like girls. That's a subject we never discuss.

And not that I initially planned to capture James in my honeytrap. Neither brother is aware of that embarrassing fact.

What I'm talking about is me seducing Frank. After we finished making love that night, Frank held me in his arms until dawn, made love to me one more time, and then told me to go back to my tent. We certainly didn't get up the next morning and confess over breakfast.

"Oh, by the way Mrs. Spencer, I snuck into Frank's tent last night and rode his stallion like a rodeo star. Would you pass the jam please?"

"Good for you Martha. I've always thought you two would make a cute couple. Would you prefer grape or strawberry?"

Although that conversation never took place, in retrospect, maybe it should have. Maybe if Frank and I had owned up to our transgression from the get-go things wouldn't have gone so badly later.

Without going too deeply into the sordid details, neither of our parents took the news of my resultant pregnancy well. To protect what was left of my shaky reputation, Frank claimed that he snuck into my tent and took advantage of a barely legal girl. I countered with the truth, which might have pissed off my parents even more than Frank's lie. Going against my parent's demands, I refused to press rape charges against Frank and also refused to have an abortion.

Frank's parents blamed me, my parents blamed Frank and, after threats of lawsuits and counter suits, neither set of parents spoke to each other again. The shared vacations and joint family barbeques became a thing of the past. Both couples quit the church and eventually moved away. Leaving Frank and me to raise Mary by ourselves.

Trust me, raising a child and going to college while my husband worked crazy hours running his business, is not how you want to spend your first decade of marriage. Thank God for Uncle James. Frank's brother didn't shun us. He didn't move out of town with his parents. When Mary was a baby, James took care of more than his share of the business dealings and, when life got really crazy, he was our go-to babysitter.

So... when Mary informed us she was pregnant with Robert's child, even though I was severely pissed at both of them and considered my future son-in-law the devil incarnate, I remembered what Frank told me the Christmas Mary brought Robert home with her.

"Let's just hope they don't make the same mistake we made, and if they do, we need to promise ourselves we'll handle it better than our parents did."

Yes, Mary and Robert made the same dumbass mistake Frank and I did. We had unprotected sex before we were ready to start a family. But, after a long discussion which included a bottle of cabernet (for me) and six shots of Jack Daniels (for Frank), we decided to go full in for Mary. We vowed to do everything in our power to make the first few years of her married life as easy and as rewarding as we possibly could.

-

June 2018

Robert Ryan Jones

I spent the last two months of my college career trying to figure out how to support Mary and our baby. The obvious choice was to accept the job Mary's dad offered me last Christmas. I wouldn't have blamed him if he withdrew the offer once he realized I'd knocked up his daughter but, a few days after we told them the news, he called me and said the proposal was still on the table.

Working for my father-in-law was not my first choice. Not that I didn't like the guy, I did. My concern was that everybody else in his company would assume any promotion or pay raise I got was because I married his daughter. I interviewed with five other companies and got competitive offers from three of them but still decided to work for Frank Spencer. Like Mary said, "It's hard to pass up a job that offers free housing and babysitting."

Which was true, however, the downside of living with Mary's parents was having to put up with her mother's meddling.

Let's take our wedding as an example. I realize that the first thing a woman does after birthing a girl child is start planning her daughter's wedding, but those long-laid plans usually change when the bride will be six months pregnant during the ceremony. Considering our circumstances, I was expecting a justice of the peace at city hall with maybe her parents and one of my brothers standing up with us.

Martha, on the other hand, was thinking nine bride's maids, an hour-long church service filled with all their friends and relatives, followed by a live band playing in their country club's ballroom with a hundred-twenty guests in attendance.

Which would have been okay with me. I knew Frank had the money to pay for it and, if Mary wanted a big wedding, she should get it. But Mary didn't want a fancy wedding. She was old-fashioned enough to think she didn't deserve to wear a white wedding gown over an obvious baby bump and wasn't ready to tell the world that she got knocked up in her first semester of college by a guy she'd only met twice.

Luckily, Frank sided with his daughter and, after a lengthy negotiation process, Mary and Martha compromised on a small service at a Baptist church in Auburn. My oldest brother was my best man. Casandra, Mary's roommate, was her maid of honor. Mary's parents sat in the left front pew, my other brother and one of my aunts sat on the groom's side. Besides the preacher and organist, the rest of the church was empty.

Instead of a fancy country club reception, Frank treated us all to a steak dinner, and our honeymoon consisted of spending our wedding night in the local Holiday Inn Express. We spent the next day loading all our worldly goods into a U-Haul trailer and, the following day, hitched the trailer up to my truck and headed towards Tampa.