Planting Season

The half-full moon that hung over the Texas hills combined with the Milky Way to shed a ghostly light. There was little other light. The town of Koenigsburg had electricity. Farmsteads outside the town limits were not hooked up yet, and light meant candles, lamps and lanterns.

Marie Wanzack waited in the wan light from the kitchen lamp for her husband, Anton, to finish his nightly inspection of the farm buildings and come back indoors. The three children had finished their chores and studies and were now in bed. Asleep, she hoped. Fortunately, they were all good sleepers, bless them—little could rouse them once they had dropped off.

She slipped out the back door and stood on the porch, watching him as he made his way from the barn, carrying a dim lantern he hardly needed. He had grown up on this farm, and he knew it like the back of his hand. He knew it even better than she knew his body, and that she knew very well.

He was stocky and compact, fair-skinned where the sun did not touch him, tanned to mahogany where it did, with dark hair and keen gray eyes. His blocky, worried-looking Slavic face was punctuated by heavy, angular black brows and lightened, occasionally, by an unexpectedly sunny smile. He was the kind of man who could well afford to shave twice a day. After successfully courting her, he only had one reason to ever do so in the evening.

She'd known what was coming when he'd come in before supper, carried a bit of hot water to the washstand, and done it—and then stripped off his shirt and lowered his overalls to take a washcloth to his crotch and armpits as well. She drew a deep breath, as if she could smell from where she was the sharp mixture of male animal and soft soap that would emanate from him when he took his clothes off. She'd watched him at his ablutions, and he'd caught her eye and given her the same sensual, impudent grin she remembered from the day they had met. As she watched him handling his cock, it had started to thicken, and she started remembering those times when they hadn't even bothered with the bedroom. Once he'd had her spread open right there on the kitchen table...that was before the children. And while she was recalling this, feeling the juice trickle from her pussy like nectar from a cracking-ripe fruit, there came the clattering of small feet on the back porch, and that had been the end of that. It was the kids coming in. Anton, with a wry look, put his shirt back on and hauled up his pants.

It had been a long time since he'd wanted to make love in the middle of the week—it had been a while, she thought, since he'd wanted to do more than turn to her in the middle of the night, taking advantage of the welter of sexual images that sometimes came to one or the other of them in dreams. It had even been a long time since she had seen that sassy smile he'd given her. When she had first known him, he'd had a happy disposition. In the last few years he had grown morose. But then, so had everyone they knew.

The weather seemed to get dryer, year by year. In the previous summers, there had been all too many days when clouds appeared in the sky looking as if they might get together and drop some rain, but did not. Anton said the clouds didn't mean anything, and most of the time he was right. When he and the other farmers got together, the talk was all about the drought that was afflicting the lands to the north, the killer winds that lifted the soil off the ground and sent it in black, devastating storms from one end of the plains to the other, scouring, blinding, dealing destruction and even death. They said one of these storms had made it as far east as New York. Things were bad in north Texas—if only, she thought, if only the dust storms didn't reach down here. If only he could clear a little bit of a profit on his crops when the price of all crops had dropped into the cellar. If only this year's cotton crop would turn out better than last year's. If only it would

rain

--the amount of rainfall had been abnormally low for the time of year. Again.

So far, it wasn't that deadly dry just yet—there were just too many pretty sunshiny days when there ought to be rain. She already worried about the state of the well, watering the vegetable garden with the dishwater. She even quarreled with her older son about how much could be spared for the rosebushes in back of the house, which he saw as his especial charge.

Now, as Anton stepped up onto the back porch and set down the lantern, Marie wrested her mind away from the worries that plagued them both, and went into his arms. They closed around her. His kiss, the first lover's kiss he had given her in months, neither asked for nor gave quarter. She'd been frightened, even disgusted, the first time he'd invaded her mouth like that—and yet now, she surrendered to it, tasting his kiss as deeply and energetically as he tasted her. The sensation went like electricity right down to her cunt, jolting it into open, aching readiness. She ran her hands along the thick columns of muscle that flanked his vertebrae and nibbled and licked at his lips; caressing him with her whole body, rubbing her belly and thighs against his. His cock was like a piece of iron pipe. She was tall for a woman, and had no difficulty pressing her wet pussy against it. Her nipples hardened and tingled when they came in contact with the rough cotton of his overalls. She was wearing a diaphanous silk nightgown, a carefully preserved piece of her small trousseau. There would be a spot of juice on it in the morning. She didn't care.

She felt his mouth curve into a smile against hers. "Ah, you want me don't you, Princess?" he said in a hot furry voice. This was a long-standing joke between them. She was no more a princess than he was a prince.

"God, yes, Anton, you know I do," she said, and she did. She was in pain from wanting him. It would have been fine with her if he wanted to turn her around, yank up her nightgown, and take her like a stallion right there on the porch, but the bed was more comfortable. It lay in readiness, the top sheet and quilt folded down out of the way. She boldly stroked his cock through the denim of his overalls, enjoying the way it filled her hand, and gestured with her head toward the bedroom. "It's been too long."

He put a hand on her arm. "Wait," he said. "Let's do something...different." A spurt of anticipation between her legs was accompanied by a heavy thump of curiosity and apprehension in her heart. "Please."

She had managed to make it to the marriage bed with her maidenhead still intact, though it was a near thing. He had broken her, trained her to be his bedmate, his lover, as thoroughly as he would have broken a horse to saddle or harness. He had seldom been anything but gentle, but he let her know he had limited patience with maidenly revulsion, and once she had consented to be his, refusal was not to be considered. Later on, when they went through a very bad time that taught him a bitter lesson, he learned the value of saying please, but he was still frugal with the term.

"What?"

"Come out into the field with me."

"Oh, Anton..." If she could not refuse, she could at least register an objection. "Like this?"

His smile was a flash of teeth in the darkness under the porch overhang. "Why not? Nobody'll see you."

"There's already a wet spot on this gown, for some reason," she said plaintively. "I have to grind dirt into it as well?" The gown would have to be washed singly the next day, assuming she found time to do it. She wasn't about to ruin it by throwing it in with the family's laundry.

"You won't get it dirty. You can take it off when we get there."

"I don't know, Anton. It's a little cold yet to be fooling around outdoors."

"You won't be cold. I promise you. I've made a fire." Marie strained her eyes into the dark, and sure enough, there was a tiny dot of fiery light in the middle of nowhere.

"A fire? When it's so dry? Do you think that's a good idea?"

"It's got rocks around it, it's not going anywhere."

The field had already been plowed and planted. If they were going to do it outdoors, there were more suitable places. There was a fern-lined hollow near the edge of the river, no matter if others used it for the same thing. There was even this porch, where, a few seconds ago, she'd been ready and willing to be taken. She thought about stepping gingerly from one furrow to the next in the dark, and sighed. "Very well—just let me get my shoes on."

"No need to do that," he said, and picked her up in his arms.

The day she met him, he'd been helping some carnies unload equipment from one of their wagons. It had been hot and he was working in his undershirt. She had noticed the way his muscles bunched and slid and rose in thick cords under his skin. As far as she could tell, his strength had not abated one whit since then. She put her arms around his neck as trustingly as a child and pulled her long legs in close to make a more balanced load.

"What about the lantern?" she asked.

"It's about empty, I don't need it," he said, and bore her away into the darkness. Once away from the farmhouse with its dim man-made lights, the darkness was vast. The world seemed to smell of turned earth with whiffs of cow and pig coming in on the occasional breeze. A few night birds called to each other.

She had worked hard all day. By the time he the spot he was looking for, she had started to doze. "Here we are," Anton said, and set her on her feet. The ground beneath them was unexpectedly smooth, as if it had been prepared, and there was the fire, with chunks of stone around it, as he had said.

She shook her head slightly to get rid of the drowsiness, and plucked at the top of her nightgown. "Wait." Anton was taking his clothes off, folding them and laying them in a neat, methodical stack. When she removed her gown he folded it and placed it on top. The fire seemed all the brighter for the greater darkness they had come through.

She looked at him. It seemed an age since she had seen him naked other than on bath night. The changeable light of the flames gave his skin a ruddy cast, as though he were a figure made from red clay, with his body hair making a savage decorative pattern, an impression enhanced by the erection he had not lost while carrying her.

He held her away from him for a moment, stroking the long lines of her body as if it were a piece of art he had wanted for a long time and had at last acquired. He liked her rather spare figure, which had been all too briefly fashionable in the Twenties, but was completely out of style now. To him it was patrician, the symbol of hard-earned luxury. They embraced, skin to skin. He always seemed to run a little hot, which made him a comfort to sleep with in the winter, and made her wish their bed were twice its size in the summer. She parted her lips against his mouth, inviting another ravenous kiss. He kissed her until she was dizzy, melting and dripping and aching with desire. He released her mouth and began a trail of nibbles and kisses down the side of her neck, sucking the skin fiercely between his teeth. She knew there would be a mark there the next day, but it didn't matter to her now. She tilted her head back, looking at the infinite night sky, and felt his tongue in the hollow of her throat. Below, his hard, hot cock pressed against her belly and mound. She went up on her toes, trying to attain enough height to straddle it. She wanted to get it between her legs, so that she could skim her clitoris over its broad back and slide into a sneaky little orgasm that would bleed off some of this arousal that was so acute as to be painful. Anton laughed softly. "Trying to rush ahead?" he said. "I'll give you something better than that. Just wait." His voice lowered into a soft growl. "I'm gonna make you holler, Princess."

She shivered in anticipation as he kissed his way down to her breasts. He flicked his tongue over her nipples and pulled them lightly between his lips, creating a sensation that went all through her and made her pant and groan. His arms were warm and solid around her, his hands hot on the cool skin of her buttocks as he knelt before her. He laid kisses on her lower belly and her thighs, and nuzzled the hair between her legs, luxuriously inhaling her scent. Sitting on the ground, he nudged her legs apart in order to get between them, draping her right leg over his shoulder, depending on her to keep her balance. His mouth was warm on the slippery tender flesh of her vulva; his tongue moved from her perineum to the top of her clit and back down, establishing its territory. Then he went to work on her, butterfly-soft at first, adding pressure gradually as his tongue swirled and figure-eighted and strummed, narrowing its circuit little by little until...

"Unh—ah—ah--

OH GOD, ANTON!

" she screamed, clutching at his thick hair. "Stop, I can't stand this—" He lessened the pressure, but before she could recover, he began the circuit again. She gasped and shouted as ecstasy broke over her nerves like heavy surf. He deliberately and mercilessly brought her off three more times and then she really couldn't stand any more.

She backed away and collapsed next to him, no longer caring that she was sitting down naked on the dirt. Her heart was still shaking her body like an engine with a miss. He put his hand on the back of her neck and kissed her. She tasted herself on his lips. "God, Anton," she said again. "I just can't help myself when you do that to me."

"I know you can't," he said with a grin that she could hear in his voice. "Remember the first time?"

After more than ten years and three children, she could still blush. "Yes! Someone, somewhere, is probably still talking about it." They hadn't had a proper honeymoon, but Old Anton, her father-in-law, paid for them a night in an Austin hotel, so they could spend their wedding night somewhere special, somewhere besides the farmhouse.

Although she had come to her wedding night still a virgin, she and Anton had cheated just enough so she knew what an orgasm felt like. But when he laid her across the bed, knelt between her thighs and slid his tongue into her open cunt it took her by surprise. The climax that followed knotted her gut and took her breath away. When she got it back, she said things she had never said before, and made noises she didn't know she was capable of making. And after that he could do anything with her.

Breakfast at the hotel was served boardinghouse style, and she could tell who had the rooms on either side of theirs and across the corridor. They were the ones who smirked at her. When the manager himself came to oversee their checking out, and said creamily that he trusted she had enjoyed her stay, she couldn't look at him.

"Do you think anyone heard me this time?"

"We're on our own land." He spoke with unusual fervor. "It doesn't matter if they did."

It wasn't often she got to let loose like this. They'd come back to the farmhouse, where there was no insulation between the walls, and her father-in-law's bedroom wasn't far away. They seldom had the house to themselves, except on those rare occasions when Old Anton would go out and they stayed behind. By the time he had succumbed to the last of the series of strokes that incapacitated him in the last years of his life, the children were there. They were sound sleepers—but that was

when

they got to sleep. She had bitten a lot of bed linens over the years.

She ran her fingers down the front of her husband's body, following the line of hair that ran from his chest to his groin. He tried not to giggle, but he was ticklish. At the end of this pleasant trail was his cock; she wrapped her hand around the thick, familiar shaft. She had been so surprised the first time she handled it to find it was vaguely triangular in shape, not round as she had expected. It was even warmer than the rest of him, and now quite hard. Leaning down, she closed her mouth over the end of it, running her tongue around the head, lapping up the tear that stood in its single eye.

He'd trained her about that, too, and while it wasn't her absolute favorite thing to be doing, she derived much satisfaction from knowing it pleasured him. If she could imagine herself in his place, it was even better. Plus, it was handy for when she had the curse or was in the unsafe time in her cycle. After three children very close together and as many miscarriages, she was not eager to get pregnant again. She pointed her tongue into his pee slit and flicked it over the little place under the head where all the nerves seemed to be close to the surface. Anton's cock gave a mighty twitch and he lifted her head up. "Ah, that feels nice," he said.. "But this is what I want. Put 'er here." He leaned back on one hand and helpfully held his cock in an upright position with the other. She straddled him and slowly impaled herself, uttering a little groan of pleasure as he stretched her out and filled her up. "Oh yes. Lord God, that feels good," Anton said. She clasped her hands together at the back of his neck. "Ride me," he said, and she started, slowly at first, feeling for the angle at which she could take him without hurting.

She could see the firelight reflected in his eyes. In a few strokes she found what she was looking for—that streak of pleasure deep inside her that she could rub and burnish, widen and deepen. When it was wide and deep enough, it pulled her tight around him in waves. "Ahhh!" she cried, and kept on moving, drawing it out as long as she could. "Oh—oh—oh—" As she moved, her hair started to come loose and tumble down to her shoulders, pins sticking out of it here and there.

When she met Anton, she wore it in a fashionable bob. But Anton said he liked it long, so even before the bob left with the madcap freedom of its time, she let it grow. It was as dark as his, but finer in texture, with one silver streak that had been there since her mid-teens. It swayed back and forth with her movements.

"I love to see you do that," Anton murmured. "Love it when you come on me. Stroke me, honey, don't quit—"

He tensed beneath her and his face assumed a look of deep agony and concentration. "I'm getting there—" His voice was an urgent grunt. "Harder! Faster!" He bucked into her with a powerful upstroke and held her there, jammed so deep inside her it was almost painful; his breath came hard. She felt the wild throbbing of his cock as he spurted into her. He relaxed and his breathing slowed. They sat there still enjoined for a few more minutes, their foreheads pressed together, as their last spasms and twitches of ecstasy faded.

Presently she got up off him, saying, "I'll be back."

"From where?"

"If you must know, I need to go to the bathroom." She thought about making her way back to the outhouse in the dark. It did not appeal.

Anton flapped his hand in the direction of the plowed field that lay in the darkness beyond their bit of light and heat. "Go on out there, Princess, the ground needs all the help it can get." Treading cautiously between two furrows, feeling her way ahead with her bare feet, she went out a suitable distance; then she squatted down and relieved herself of a high-pressure stream of hot urine mixed with Anton's seed. She could tell by the way it sounded when it hit the soil that it soaked in immediately and vanished without trace. She wished for a brief moment that she had something to wipe with. Her knees and shins were covered with dirt. She brushed them off and returned to the fire. Anton had thrown something on it, for it was burning better than when she had left; he was sitting there cross-legged, gazing into it.

"That ground needs more help than I could give it," she said.

"I know. Come here and sit down." He patted his thigh. Marie settled into his lap appreciatively, and Anton's arms wrapped around her, pulling her in close. They sat there in silence for a few minutes, Marie snuggled up against his shoulder, while he continued to gaze into the fire. "We needed that," he said. "Let's not get into a rut like this again, where we are so worried about everything that we don't even take comfort in each other."