The Lovers of New Meeting

The Lovers of New Meeting

by Peter_Cleveland

Author's Note:

Like all fiction, this story has some fact mixed into its foundation. The sex-focused "Casaubonite" offshoot of Quakerism is my own invention, but Quakers are fairly common in the northeastern United States. Quakers are not the folks with long beards and horse-drawn buggies. They are ordinary people, members of a small and well-regarded Protestant denomination. I have tried to capture some of their style and tone in this region.

Once again, I thank my wife, Tennesseered, and JBEdwards for their helpful comments and suggestions on this story.

-- P.C.

* * * * * 1

My orgasm overtook me inside Audrey's adorable little ass. Lenore heard my gasp, felt my body stiffen. Moving her hand rearwards along my back, she cupped and patted my own bottom. Beneath me Audrey, prone, continued taking slow, deep breaths.

"That looked like a nice one, Stephen," Lenore said. She moved her hand, brushed a lock of red hair from Audrey's eyes, and stroked her face. "Doing okay, hon?"

Audrey gave Lenore a half smile. "Not too bad this time. Better than last, definitely."

Lenore kissed Audrey's forehead. "We'll have you ready for the big day in plenty of time," she said. She rose from the bed, naked, and left the room. I kissed the back of Audrey's head, shifted my weight onto my arms and knees, then eased my softening penis out of her rectum. A little

pffft

of compressed air escaped along with the glans. Audrey slowly rolled onto her back, pulled me down to her, and kissed me.

"Thank you, Stephen," she said. "For being patient. That really wasn't so bad. I could get used to it.... Lenore was right. I should have started out with an older man in the first place and not expected any

finesse

from these college boys."

I bit my lip at that "older man" remark. Please: I'm only 41--not even twice the age of this beautiful red-headed college senior. Okay,

almost

twice... but not. Before I could grumble, Lenore returned with a roll of paper towels and a saucepan of warm, soapy water. She proceeded to clean up Audrey and me. Then she joined us for a three-way snuggle.

"Gotta go," Audrey said at last. "Got my senior seminar tonight, and I'd better go over my notes some more. I've got to give a presentation on

Middlemarch

." She stood and began separating her discarded clothes from Lenore's and mine.

"Great book," I said.

Audrey's breasts--pink-tipped, a little larger than average--swayed beautifully as she pulled up her panties and then her jeans. "Don't get up, guys. I'll find my way out. You two owe each other some more snuggle time."

Dressed, Audrey came over to me, kissed my lips, winked at Lenore, then said, "Let's do this again sometime, Stephen... without Lenore." Then, kissing my partner, she said, "Let's do this again, Lenore... without Stephen." We all smiled.

"Deal!" Lenore and I replied simultaneously. I

think

we were all kidding. As Audrey left the room, Lenore and I fell back into each other's arms. I fondled a breast.

"Did you like her?" Lenore asked.

"She's a delight. Pretty, poised, smart... beautiful body... fairly 'skilled in the arts of love,' as they used to say. Pretty uninhibited, too. Very much like yourself.... Okay, you're more than 'fairly' skilled.... Aren't you the least bit nervous about introducing me to her? To say nothing of arranging for me to have sex with her."

"'Us.'"

"... arranging for

us

to have sex with her."

"I'm confident in my own desirability, Stephen. And in my worth as a person. I don't need a man in my life to validate me. Plus I have pretty good taste in men. If I thought you were the sort of guy who would ditch me the first time a pretty redhead let you pull down her pants, you wouldn't be here in my bed now.... Besides, we both know you're not an 'either... or' kind of guy. You're more of a 'both... and' kind of guy, aren't you. Which reminds me: when do I get to meet Ann?"

"I am not

hiding

you from Ann, Lenore. I haven't seen the lady myself for about three weeks."

"That's no lady: that's your wife."

I winced at America's oldest punch line. "Okay, I left myself open for that one. But look, even when Ann and I were living at the same address and sharing a bed, I wouldn't have had to

hide

you."

"Good to hear. So the 'trial separation' is still on, I take it?"

"Still on."

One of the perks of my job is a certain amount of free tuition for family members. After a few recent courses in anthropology, women's history, and feminist theory--not to mention personal experience--Ann was having grave doubts about marriage as an institution. As usual, Pope called it well: "A little learning is a dangerous thing." Not that I thought Ann was necessarily wrong on all the issues. Our trial separation was now in its third month.

"And do you still love her?" Lenore inquired.

"Of course. After 12 years of marriage, you don't suddenly stop loving each other."

Lenore pressed her naked body against mine and gave me a long kiss. "Good," she said. "You pass the quiz, Professor Lancome. You can stay my lover."

"I'm most glad to hear that," I replied. "When's the next quiz scheduled?"

"Don't worry," she said, running a hand over my chest. "You'll do fine."

Turnabout is fair play. I had given Lenore and her classmates enough quizzes in two courses of mine, a couple of years ago.

* * * * * 2

Lenore was not the sort of girl most men would dream about--though I myself was deeply attached to her and in fact found her quite a turn-on. But she made little effort to enhance her natural beauty. Her dark brown hair was always in a style that required minimal maintenance, and it was often cut short. She wore a little makeup--never a lot--when she felt like it. Her clothes were almost always casual and comfortable. High heels? Forget it--though she claimed she did own a couple pairs. A little jewelry when she was in the mood, yes. No tattoos, thank goodness. Other girls could compete with each other, if they wanted, to be the hottest-looking babe on Instagram. Lenore wasn't interested.

Not that anything was really lacking about her body--her Mediterranean olive skin, her pleasant facial features, her pretty B-cup breasts, her hips, bottom, legs, tummy, pubic mound. Even her anus was petite, round, and cute. As a present to me, she was allowing her pubic hair to grow back. She had always kept her underarms natural, which was fine with me. She did shave her legs. In sum, every part of her was attractive enough, though no single part would strike anyone as gorgeous.

Yet somehow, especially when she was naked, she

did

seem remarkably beautiful, at least to my eyes. Here was a genuine case of that cliché concept, "synergy." The whole was lovelier than the sum of the parts. At last I decided that what made the difference was her

attitude

--and the way that attitude shaped all the motions of all the muscles of her body. Quite simply, I had never met a woman who appeared to be so absolutely comfortable with--so entirely "at home in"--her body. That enhanced her beauty amazingly.

No surprise that someone that comfortable with her body--and very comfortable with male bodies too--would be an excellent lover, even at the young age of 22.

I guess I had my first taste of that attitude, that body-comfort, on what you could call our first date, about three weeks after Ann moved to her new place. After the movie, a classic art film screened at the university, Lenore and I were in her apartment. Thinking she was still in the kitchen, I barged into the bathroom. There sat Lenore on the toilet, urinating, jeans and panties below her calves. A typical young woman would have reacted with dismay, quickly moved her hands to cover her crotch, maybe looked mortified, maybe emitted a startled, offended sound. Not Lenore. She just sat there calmly, gave me a smile, then tilted her head back and puckered her lips.

I accepted the invitation. She continued peeing throughout our first kiss. Then she spread her legs, wiped herself, stood, and pulled up her panties and then jeans. "You can flush it when you're done," she said, and returned to the living room. I joined her a minute later. We sipped some more wine and talked some more about the film, as though nothing remarkable had happened in the bathroom. We did not have sex that evening. We did have a lovely good-night kiss as I was leaving.

I never figured out if her behavior in the bathroom was a test of my maturity and attitudes or else an expression of confidence in them. Or maybe Lenore was letting me know in advance what I was in for if our relationship developed further. Or maybe she was just being herself. Obviously, every woman has a pussy, and every woman pees several times a day, and a man my age should have learned to deal gracefully with human anatomy and physiology by now, and there's nothing embarrassing or shameful about any part of a human body, right? Or something like that.

If this was a test of my attitudes, I must have passed. On our second date we more than made up for the lack of sex on our first. A week later I went on to pass the bloody-tampon test with flying colors--as you'd expect of a man who had just spent a dozen years living with a woman in her 20s and 30s.

At 22, Lenore was too young for me, of course. We both did our best not to notice that. At least, when our affair began, she was no longer a student at my university. Unlike Audrey.

That

I could get in trouble for.

* * * * * 3

Thursday evening, as Audrey was dissecting

Middlemarch

in her seminar, I was back in Lenore's bed, snuggling and talking with its owner. In fact I was telling Lenore how confident and in touch with her body--a good deal of which was now visible--she had always appeared to me.

"Well, I'm a New Meeting girl," she said. "Audrey too."

"New Meeting is large enough to have its own type of girl?"

You could drive right through the little Connecticut farm town--located somewhere between Canton and the Massachusetts border--without even noticing. Lenore's childhood home was here, as well as the small apartment building where she was now living.

"You betcha!" she replied.

"Thank you, Governor Palin."

"Who's that?" she inquired.

"Ancient history, my child."

"If you say so, Grandpa."

I gave her neck a raspberry. "Tell me more about New Meeting girls. From what I've seen of them, I like 'em."

"Okay," she began. "We probably need to start with some

real

ancient history, though.... This may take a minute: do you mind?... Okay.... As the name suggests, the town was founded by a breakaway group of Protestants--in this case Quakers. This was the later 19th century sometime, after the Civil War. The breakaway group had a charismatic leader named Phineas Casaubon. Anyway, they left, or possibly were kicked out of, Hartford Meeting--that's the Quaker term for congregation. They acquired land up here, started farming, and formed their own, alternative Quaker meeting, which they named New Meeting."

"What caused the schism?" I asked.

"What else! Sex, of course. The Casaubonite Quakers interpreted Mark 12:31 more broadly and also more literally than more conservative folks wanted to. That's the verse about loving your neighbor as yourself? Obviously, love entails sex. Of course, the path forward is not always easy to discern. For instance, the more you put Mark 12:31 into practice, the more you're likely to bang into Exodus 20:14. That's the verse that kind of discourages adultery.

"But the New Meeting people reasoned that the New Testament takes precedence over the Old, and a positive command like "love thy neighbor" carries more weight than a "thou shalt not." Besides, loving your neighbor is one of only two 'greatest commandments,' whereas the ten in Exodus are a real hodgepodge of miscellaneous dos and don'ts. So that seemed to settle the conflict in favor of making love with your neighbors. At least that's how the Casaubonites saw it.

"I know all this stuff because I was brought up in the Meeting. My parents are still active in it. And keep in mind that Quakers don't have any central authority that can tell you what to believe. The people at Hartford Meeting see things one way; the people at New Meeting see things a little differently. Who could say which one is closer to the truth?

"Anyway, the congregation of Casaubonite Quakers called New Meeting still exists. The town that grew up among them also came to be called New Meeting, and the more 'weighty Quakers' of the religious group pretty much run the town too, so when you say 'New Meeting,' nobody knows which organization you're talking about--church or town--but it doesn't make much practical difference. Sort of like 'the Vatican.'"

All this history and theology was starting to make my head spin. "So," I tried summarizing, "you and Audrey and the other young women from New Meeting are so poised and confident and in touch with your bodies and great in bed because everybody in town interprets Mark 12:31 broadly and is fucking all of his or her neighbors?"

"We don't fuck

all

the neighbors these days, Stephen. Community Day and the lottery also are part of the picture. But yes, you've got the gist of it. Now, before I continue, could we make love some more? I'd really like to have another orgasm."

* * * * * 4

I forget exactly why we were both in our underwear at that moment. Some topic or other of conversation must have absorbed our attention when we were in the process of either taking off our clothes or putting them back on--now I forget which. It's easy to distract an English professor with some interesting discourse, and Lenore is kind of similar. We were talking about something or other. Next thing I knew, we were discussing New Meeting girls, and that led to the long tale of Phineas Casaubon and followers, and then Lenore wanted to fuck, and here we are.

We lay next to each other on her bed. Lenore did look alluring in white panties and bra, especially with those prominent brown nipples.

The fabric of her bra was stretchy. I slipped a hand inside, fondling and squeezing her pretty breast as Lenore smiled and made little noises that meant, "that feels nice." I gently twisted a nipple between thumb and index finger, and it stiffened. She rolled onto her back, hooked both hands into her panties' waistband, raised her hips a little, and pulled her panties down to about five inches below her pussy--knowing full well the effect that state of dress would have on any man... and on me in particular. The second-sexiest thing a woman could do with panties is slowly take them off. The sexiest is pull them down to just below the crotch and leave them there.

Lenore's new crop of pubic hair was still short, but it looked promising. I caressed her pubic mound and her pretty, plump outer labia as we kissed. Our tongues explored each other's mouth. Soon her pussy had moisture to spare, and I could bring some of it up to her clitoris and rub that a little, which of course made her moister still. Meanwhile, she had fished my cock and balls out of my low-rise briefs and was doing a fine job of caressing them with her hand.

Breaking our kiss, Lenore looked into my eyes and said, "Lick me?"

"Love to."

We quickly ditched the rest of our clothes, and I moved down, put my head between her legs, and admired the scenery. Then I put my nose to her labia and inhaled deeply. Lovely. My cock stiffened even further, then I tasted. Just as lovely. Then I went all out.

Her first orgasm hit within a minute, the second in another five. In-between, I moved my hands from her pubic mound to her breasts, sometimes squeezing the two mounds, sometimes gently twisting and tugging on those two thick, brown nipples. As a lover, I wasn't doing anything subtle or highly skilled, just the basics. But that's all that my partner needed and probably wanted at the moment. The second orgasm was big and fairly loud.

I lay on my side, caressing her gently as she lay on her back, recovering. After a minute or two she said, "Your turn," and then brought her mouth to my dick and sucked.

She wasn't the best

fellatrice

I have ever had. A former lover named Beth retained that title, with my wife Ann coming in a not-too-distant second. But Beth and Ann had had about 15 more years to hone their skills, compared to Lenore. Lenore was better than any 22-year-old had any right to be, and I can't imagine any man ever complaining. I certainly wasn't. I closed my eyes and attended to the erotic sensations between my legs as her tongue rapidly flicked the notch at the base of my glans.

I heard a voice. "Time for you to get laid, lover. Have any preference about position?"

"Nope," I replied, eyes still closed.

"Woman-on-top sounds good to me."

"It would."

"Watch it, buster," the voice warned--just kidding, I hope.

I opened my eyes, stretched out on my back, and allowed the cowgirl to mount me. Naked brunette cowgirls are a great concept, by the way. I'm surprised that neither Hollywood nor Sergio Leone ever thought of them. I tried to picture Dale Evans, but Lenore's jiggling breasts distracted me.

Skilled lover that she was, Lenore alternated positions. Sometimes she lay on top, her chest against mine. Here I could hug her tight or else caress her pretty back and bottom, and she could rub her clitoris against my body. Sometimes she sat up and rode me cowgirl-style, and I could fondle her breasts or just watch them sway, and I could touch her clit at the same time. Lenore also did variations on both positions.

She came again when she was lying on top, kissing me, and I was fondling her bottom. The clenching of her vagina brought me over the top, too, and I came inside her.

Afterwards we lay side by side, just looking at each other, smiling at each other, holding and touching each other. I found myself feeling an odd, unfamiliar emotion. It took me a minute to get in touch with it enough that I could understand what it was--in touch with it enough that I could name it. It was happiness. I knew it couldn't last all that long, but I savored it while it was here. Lenore and I kissed, and I accepted her invitation to spend the night.

* * * * * 5

The next day, Friday, I had only my 9:30 class. By noon I was home again, sitting in the living room, working my way through a stack of student papers. To my surprise, my wayward wife let herself in, gave me a quick kiss on the cheek, and joined me on the sofa.

"Hi, hon," Ann said. "Doing well?"

"Ça va. Et toi?"

"I'm okay.... They let me out early today. I have to pick up a few things here. Tonight they're flying me off to another trade show. It's in St. Louis.... I know what you're thinking.... No, I probably won't be having another fling with Justin there."

"I wasn't thinking that," I protested.

"Yes you were."

"Okay, the thought crossed my mind."

Justin was a friend of Ann's in her college days. A couple of years ago they had stumbled across each other at a trade show in Pittsburgh. He worked for a competing company. To the surprise of all who knew Ann, Justin spent the night in her bed. At the time, I was not in a strong position to protest, owing to an entanglement of my own with the previously mentioned Beth.

Not long afterwards, Ann and I reaffirmed our commitment to each other and agreed on some ground rules for our marriage. The rules did not prohibit extramarital sex--though in fact that happened fairly rarely. Beth and Justin faded out of the picture. Ann's and my marriage seemed stronger than ever. Until Ann decided that marriage itself was a problem and that she needed to step aside, engage with other women, and think things through some more.