Lilly Markham sat quietly on her favorite tree stump in her favorite spot in the old overgrown grotto behind the Reinhardt House.
Although she was quietly sitting, she still was busy. Lilly was sketching again, using pen and ink to capture her view of the top half of Reinhardt House, in all its weird glory. With construction completed in 1888, the house was a curious blend of Richardsonian Romanesque, Gothic Revival styles and other architectural features, especially ironwork inspired by Antonio Gaudi. It was a registered historic house, sprawling in its layout, offering a visually rich subject for Lilly to depict.
The grotto was about a hundred yards behind the house and the in-between trees completely obscured the lower floor of Reinhardt House, and partly obscured for Lilly the middle floor as well. Lilly had sketched the house many times from multiple points of view before, so she was as focused on capturing the foreground of the trees and treeline as she was the house itself. The sky was bright but overcast, perfect for her style of art, which usually was filled with dark, heavy themes.
The Reinhardt estate, where Lilly lived with her artist mother and businessman dad, abutted the woodlands of a large state park in the foothills of the Cadron Mountains outside Central City. Deer hunting season, unknown to Lilly, was starting in a few days. She was so concentrated on her work that Bill Duncan was only a few steps behind her when he emerged from the trees and underbrush of the park. The sounds of rustling vegetation drew her attention and she turned around.
"Hi," she said, smiling at the tall, lanky young man in a camouflage jump suit.
Bill looked at her with confusion, startled to find her nearby.
"Uh, hi," he said
"Are you lost?" Lilly asked.
"Yeah ... I guess I took a wrong turn back there. I was scouting for deer for the start of the season next week, looking for deer trails. Just a sec."
Bill looked at his phone, his cell coverage had returned and he checked a GPS app.
"Oh, this isn't too bad. It looks like I'm about nine tenths of a mile south of the visitor center where I parked."
Lilly smiled. "Yeah, there's a little foot trail up near the house. My mom and dad walk it every morning and it'll take you just a few yards short of the lot."
"Thanks," Bill said. "What're you doin'?"
Lilly explained her sketching and told Bill that she lived in the Reinhardt House with her family and some long-term guests.
Bill was from Cadronia a few miles away, and he'd heard about the house. It had a reputation for eccentricity, hauntings and mystery ever since it was built. He told Lilly he had never met anyone who lived there, but that her father's purchase of the property and his million dollar renovations sure had started the town gossips going three years prior. The talk had died down since though, as the occupants kept mainly to themselves.
"Yeah, Dad goes to CC all the time on business and whatever we need he picks up or it gets delivered to the house, so we don't go into Cadronia much, except maybe gas or a burger."
As the two conversed Bill noticed her oddness. He couldn't put a finger on it because her words were everyday. Also, she was cute and petite with a short, dark bob of hair, glasses and delicate features. Her skin was pale but with a milky, healthy and very smooth appearance. Complexion was almost a fetish to Bill, and he noticed it first and most of all. Still, Lilly's demeanor and voice were a little off. Inwardly, he shrugged and said to himself, "I'll figure it out later."
What he would learn later was simply that Lilly was ... different. In fact, he'd eventually learn nearly everyone at Reinhardt House was different. Lilly had been variously diagnosed with having low-spectrum high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome and separately in another diagnosis with "having schizoid tendencies." Not even clinicians could agree on what made Lilly odd.
Lilly was awkward with people, and she knew she could sometimes put people off with her honesty and directness. Lilly just didn't know how to approach people sometimes, so if she wanted something she sometimes would just ask for it directly with no warm-up or chit chat. Still, she exuded a harmless, daffy charm that disarmed people who might initially be wary of the energy she projected. Bill was experiencing the latter but was about to experience the former.
As Lilly talked to Bill, her attraction rapidly grew. Bill had the lanky build and six-foot-two frame that suggested to her he might be "swinging some pipe" in the bottom half of that camouflage jumpsuit, a phrase she'd overheard from some redneck girls joking around in Cadronia.
Lilly was telling Bill how she occasionally would grab a burger at Sonny's Sunshine Plaza two miles away from the Reinhardt House. Sometimes she just liked to get away from the estate, despite being a homebody and introvert. As she spoke, she recalled her recent awakening at Sonny's. Two young women at an adjacent booth had been talking about giving their boyfriends blowjobs. They had ignored Lilly and thought their conversation was private because the young artist had been listening to music through her ear buds as she ate. What they didn't know is Lilly, lost in thought at the time, hadn't queued up more than two or three songs, so she heard every word. One girl didn't like sucking cock, but the other loved it. As Lilly listened, she felt herself grow flush and aroused. Sex always had been something that held little interest for her. At 20, Lilly still thought of herself as asexual. Growing boobs and widening hips had been more of annoyance to her than an exciting development in adolescence. Even masturbation had been something she only had attempted a few times, and with disappointing results.
But the eavesdropped conversation she heard seemed to trigger something in her that came from out of the blue. It disturbed and excited her as she heard the strange girl describe the intoxicating scent of her boyfriend's crotch, sweaty from a construction job, but somehow enticing, how hot and wet it got her and how good his cum had tasted. The other girl said she couldn't stand cum in her mouth, but the cock lover said she craved it. It was a real study in contrasts. Maybe it was that which triggered Lilly's curiosity, the question it posed to her: Is cock sucking a treat or an unpleasant chore? Of course, she wasn't so naive that she didn't know about oral sex, but the references had always grazed her attention before ¬— a shouted insult like "cocksucker" or a double entendre on a TV show. It had never been as real as this eavesdropping experience.
What she heard had only lasted a minute or so before both girls picked up their wrappers and sodas, discarding the former and keeping the latter, and walked out.
Lilly was stunned for another minute or two and so wet in her panties she irrationally feared her juices had soaked through the front of her shorts. They hadn't, but she quickly made her way to her beat-up, hand-me-down Volvo and drove back to the house.
Her father had been among the founders of two important Silicon Valley startups on in the late 1990s and another in the decade following. He'd gotten out of the first when the market was high, kept his money and put it into the second when the market was recovering again. When a large company you'd recognize the name of bought up the second, Eli Markham had grabbed an executive position inside the merged entity. After years, he sold his shares back to the company at a good price, took his millions and brought his family back to the Central City area he'd left after high school.
That's why when Lilly made it back to her room from the Sunshine, and despite being in the 'hinterlands' of most networks, she was able to log on to a superfast connection using the best laptop. Not that Lilly needed super data speed to look up penises, fellatio and related porn. She even found a female masturbation how-to video and followed its instructions as she looked at cocks and brought herself to a her first, truly powerful orgasm. Lilly was thunderstruck and gasping as she came down from it and licked her fingers clean. Her masturbation efforts gathered steam after Lilly's mother, Evi Markham, helped her pick out some toys online.
All of it seemed to be leading up to this moment in the grotto with Bill Duncan. They'd exchanged introductions and basic background information, and reached that awkward point in conversations between people new to each other whether to dive in further or go about their previous agendas.
