Three to Dance Read online

  Married again, indeed. After the last disaster, she wasn’t sure she wanted that piece of paper. It was such a pain in the ass to be tied to someone legally.

  Still, at this point in her life, her professional resume was slightly better than her romantic one.

  For one, she’d had to work full time for a living since she’d graduated high school, then attended college to earn her associates in graphic arts. That took a lot more than eight hours out of a girl’s day right there. And two, she put every spare minute into her art, something both of her parents most firmly did not support, no matter her minor successes.

  The ring, the kids, the house with its white picket fence. That’s what her mother wanted for her. There was something missing from her mom’s equation, though. A reliable man who didn’t suck up the booze. She’d already had one husband who did that. She didn’t need another.

  Make no mistake. She’d dated since she and William parted ways. But nothing ever got I-love-you serious. What she presently wanted was to find a single guy for a simple fuck, no strings attached. She was not seeking another marriage, just some satisfaction.

  She smiled. Why couldn’t she indulge in a quick fling with Josh or Scott? Or both? Hell, who said a woman in this day and age had to settle for a single lover? She knew all about birth control and how to use it. Maybe she should stock up on condoms. The way Josh and Scott were wooing her, something was going to happen. Soon.

  Reaching out, she quickly unwrapped a small bar of soap cadged from the last hotel she’d stayed in. Relishing the warmth lapping against her skin, she lathered up and began to wash herself. Starting at her shoulders, she began to work her way down, pausing when her hands came to her breasts. She gave each a long, soapy caress, going round each mound. She traced the tips of her nipples with her fingertips, feeling tiny electrical shocks go through her body as the steam enveloped her. Her nipples puckered, then hardened, as she gave each a gentle twist.

  Masturbate? Here? Now?

  Why not? She had a little itch that still needed to be scratched. Both Josh and Scott had lit her fires, and the flames weren’t going to be easily banked without a little helping hand.

  Her breathing grew deeper, more ragged. She slid her hand down her belly. Her thighs parted. She slid her fingers between her legs, stroking her clit. Closing her eyes, she fell back into her favorite fantasy, the one where two guys were making love to her. The thought sent a rush of pleasure through all her nerve endings. How badly she needed to relieve the terrible ache between her legs. She moaned lightly, stroking herself with a light, soft pressure. What was wrong with a little self-pleasure? It allowed her to give into her desires in a safe way. She moved her body into a more comfortable position. The tub was large and accommodated her long legs when she braced her feet against the porcelain.

  Feeling wonderfully wanton and fierce, she traced the lips of her vagina, rolling the tender flesh between her fingers. Her fantasy had her on her knees, sucking Josh’s cock, even as Scott took her from behind. She could imagine the feel of Scott’s cock sliding deep into her cunt, even as Josh fucked her warm mouth. Her clit was pulsing with pleasure. She was very excited by the idea of two men at one time, entranced by the thought of two cocks to tease and please her, those angry beasts of sexual conquest. Both men would reassure her with soft whispers and softer kisses.

  Her free hand cupped and caressed her left breast. Her body began to quiver with tension, burn with desire. Nearing climax, she delved two fingers deep into her pussy, pressing them into the center of her passion, meeting each slow delicious wave by arching her back as the first shivers of her orgasm washed over her. She continued stroking, her clit swollen, and sensitive. The needs of her body beat relentlessly against her senses. Water splashed over the edges of the tub, soaking the bathmat.

  Just as she reached the brink, incandescent pleasure exploded through her. As her inner fever broke, she moaned loud and long. Her neck rolling on the edge of the tub, she again caught sight of herself. A fine flush had rose up on her skin, heightening the sparkle in her eyes. The expression on her face was one of satisfaction, like a cat with a belly full of cream. She gasped, running her tongue over her dry lips. Throat parched, her lips were rasped raw by her heavy breath.

  Quickly finishing her bath, Kate lifted her body out of the water. She snagged a towel off the rack and wrapped it around her body, taking another to dry her arms and legs. She made a mental note to shave down her hairy trunks before letting anyone see her naked again. How long had it been since she’d last taken a razor to her legs? Months, she was sure. Her mouth was practically rancid, so she gave her teeth a good brushing, swishing and spitting mouthwash down the drain.

  Without bothering to dig out her pajamas, she padded, naked, through the apartment. That was the freedom of being single and living alone. Because she didn’t want the guys to think she was a total pig, she’d only eaten two slices and drank a coke—and it hadn’t been enough to satisfy her appetite. Scott had razzed her unmercifully about her bird-like appetite, reminding her how she used to scarf down a whole pizza to herself. There, she had to cringe. She’d been a pudgy teenager, carrying more than her share of baby-fat. Then, at fifteen, she’d shot up like a bean pole to five feet nine as her body reshaped itself. Except for boobies. She didn’t have nearly enough tits. Even pushing the two together, which she couldn’t do anyway, barely made one nice big one.

  In the fridge was some left over pizza, so she took the box and settled into bed. She loved cold pizza. Eating in bed was a bad habit she’d developed as a single person. And why not? With the twins on their pillows, a good book in hand and a snack, bed was the perfect place to have dinner alone at night. Begging for tidbits of meat, the twins leapt onto the king-sized bed, immediately heading for the pizza box.

  She shooed the cats away. Good sex, she giggled. And good food. What more could she ask for on her first day in Oregon?

  Taking a slice, Kate fed each cat a morsel of pepperoni and began to eat, munching as she gazed over the bedroom. Scott had taken it upon himself to dig out the bedding, making up the bed with great flourish. He’d winked and half-whispered to her, “I’d like to see you in bed.”

  Plugging in the lamp by the bed, Josh had caught his friend’s words. “With me,” he had finished, and only in a half joking way.

  Already it was clear that the boys were drawing their lines in the sand where she was concerned. Both had their eye on her—and each had been given the go ahead. She felt a little guilty for leading them both on. The stresses of the move had affected her, made her act like a hussy dying to be fucked by the first man who came along. She needed to make it clear that she wasn’t that way at all, that she usually didn’t lose her head around men.

  Yeah, she might know Scott, but it had been a long time since they’d spent a great amount of time together. What if it turned out that she didn’t like him any more? People changed. Friendships blossomed or died on the vine. She supposed it was a good sign that she and Scott had managed to keep in touch through the years and thousands of miles that had separated them for almost ten years. Returning home for their first reunion had unexpectedly lit a spark. They had spent every moment together, parting only when it was time to return to their respective homes. Sure, they had petted and necked a little, but Scott was still stinging from his whiplash breakup with Jennifer, so sex hadn’t really come up between them. Going home seemed to have set the wheels of his mind in motion. Three months later, he’d called her up with a crazy idea, suggesting she leave Montana and move to Oregon.

  She’d been eager, maybe too eager, to go with the idea. After all, what did she have holding her there? Not much. Some friends, but no one close enough to stick around for. Go back to Texas and the small town her parents live in? Unthinkable! So, she’d done it. Quit her job, packed her bags and rented the U-Haul.

  Not once when she was packing did she ever consider going in another direction, any direction, that would take her back to Texas, back
home. That part of her life was long gone, sealed away in the box of memory, rarely opened. Though her parents had often urged her to move back to where her family lived, she’d always declined the suggestions and opportunities to do so. Snowballs would fly in hell before she moved back to that God forsaken area. Muleshoe Texas—and yes—there really was a place named after a goddamned piece of metal that shod a donkey’s foot, was no more than a blot on the dusty, barren plains of west Texas, a place so little that you’d miss it if you blinked your eyes while driving through. The population had never topped more than 5,000 people, less now since the economy had began to decline in that area. The few businesses that had once populated the town’s main street had long ago closed. The buildings were abandoned, the empty eyes of broken windows staring out onto the cracked sidewalks like lonely ghosts. Reflected in the glass were streets of asphalt that rarely invited any traffic aside from the tumbleweeds and dirt that blew in from the plains, driven by winds so high and fierce that the sky would be blotted out for days. Whatever days of prosperity the small town had known were now long gone, and would never again return. The few businesses that did survive there barely did so.

  Kate had spent almost twenty years of her life in that town. A bookish little girl, she’d never managed to fit in with the rest of the kids she went to school with. Football and track were the main activities the small independent school district offered, and she was neither athletic nor interested in cheerleading. Since she didn’t play in the band, there was absolutely nothing else for a kid to get excited about. Activities in such a small town were limited. The single drive in theater had closed down, making even seeing a movie on a weekend impossible. The nearest movie theater was thirty miles away. Her art was her outlet, and she spent hours drawing and doodling, covering her bedroom walls with her art. She especially loved to draw pastoral scenes, feeling an affinity to nature. Unfortunately, her parents were firmly not behind any sort of art career. Her craft was neither encouraged nor nurtured by her parents.

  Ah her parents. Now there was a couple of people who did not need to be married. If ever there was a mismatching of people, this was it.

  Though she loved her parents (at least, she thought she did), she would not want to live near them. Letters and phone calls, an occasional visit that was enough. The word dysfunctional did not begin to describe her parents, or her family. Worse, they had raised a batch of dysfunctional children. That’s what happens when alcoholics and bi-polars meet and mate. It’s sheer chaos.

  The story was fairly cut and dried, always dramatic, never boring. To trace the roots of dysfunction, one had to get back to her parent’s parents. On her dad’s side, his parents had, in quick succession, engaged in sex enough times to create eight kids in twelve years. Seven lived, two boys and five girls. Her father’s twin, a girl, had died. Her father was neither the oldest or youngest, but somewhere in between. However, there seemed to be something about her dad that grandpa just didn’t like. Though grandpa whipped all his kids regularly—this was the time when sparing the rod and spoiling the child was the order of the day and before any child welfare programs had been enacted—he seemed to turn his wrath on Kate’s dad, Richard, the most often. As was custom in those days, Richard was yanked out of school early to go to work in the family feed mill. In farm country, which Muleshoe was, this type business thrived and the Hanson family prospered. The Hanson kids were fed, clothed, somewhat educated. Except for her dad. Richard toiled day in and day out at the feed mill, working his childhood away. His younger brother, Bobby, never worked a day there. Bobby was the youngest boy, the apple of his mother’s eye. Spoiled would not begin to describe the boy.

  Her dad grew up to be one of the best looking men in town. He had a steady job, and more importantly to the girls, he had a car. This made him prime pickings in such a small town. What the girls didn’t know was that the few beers Richard drank on the weekend would, through the years, turn him into a raging alcoholic. By the time he was twenty-nine, he had two wives and five kids behind him.

  Kate’s mother was fifteen when she blew into Muleshoe, a Vegas street rat with no education and no real prospects.

  Faye Phillips’ childhood was a nightmare. Her own mother, Judilyn, was an alcoholic, who would eventually put six husbands behind her before she died. She would also have six kids, all of whom she seemed to hate with equal passion. An intelligent and educated woman born in the nineteen twenties just as the freewheeling jazz age was about to give way to the Great Depression of the thirties, Judilyn had been raised in a nice middle class family, along with her brother, James. She had not been abused. She had not been beaten. She was stunningly lovely, resembling the young Marilyn Monroe, when Marilyn was still the unknown Norma Jean Mortensen.

  However, like poor Marilyn, there was something wrong with Judilyn’s mind, something that doctors of the day would not recognize until near the end of her life. Judilyn was manic-depressive, badly so. Her moods were constantly changing, making her a difficult, sometimes dreadful, person to deal with. To control her moods, she turned to alcohol at a young age. By the time she was in her early twenties, Judilyn was an uncontrolled alcoholic, vicious and unusually cruel to the people around her. Through a decade and four husbands, she gave birth to five kids, two boys and three girls. During a moment of severe mania, Judilyn had even stood on a street corner, trying to give her first daughter away to any passing stranger. She’d been stopped by her mother before she was able to pawn the child off.

  In a few cases, the kids Judilyn gave birth to were not conceived with her husband. Kate’s mother wasn’t even sure if her father was Jay, the man her momma was married to at the time, or his brother, Walter. Didn’t matter though. Faye only met her daddy once, when she was seven years old. The meeting had not gone well. Hiding under the table, afraid of the tall man who could barely speak English, she’d bitten that stranger. She would later learn that Jay was from the Ukraine just as Russia was rolling over it in World War 2 and had immigrated to the United States with his parents. Turns out, she would never see Jay again. Also an alcoholic, he had vanished shortly thereafter, never to be heard from during his lifetime. By that time, he was only a vague memory in Faye’s mind.

  As she descended into her own madness and alcoholism, Judilyn had taken her children with her, straight into a hell that none of them would ever truly recover from. She raised her kids in poverty; threadbare urchins who soon learned to roam the streets of Las Vegas, stealing what they needed. Kate’s mother was seven years old before she learned what a toothbrush and clean clothes were. It was about that age that Faye assumed care of her younger siblings, one brother and two sisters. Judilyn was a promiscuous woman, one who could not keep her legs shut, especially when she was drinking. The fact that she did not want or like kids never deterred her. Had she lived in the age of birth control, Judilyn would have no doubt been childless. It would have been better for all concerned. When she was around and awake, Judilyn beat her children unmercifully, often burning the kids with the cigarettes she chain-smoked. The husbands who were also around at the time were usually helpless to stop it, or didn’t care to. They were usually alcoholics or drug addicts themselves, and didn’t care about kids that were not theirs. Come to think of it, they didn’t care about the kids that were theirs much either. Many of her husbands, Walter included, took a powder, never to be seen again.

  Through her childhood, Kate had heard many stories of Judilyn’s abusive ways. Like the time she and husband number four packed up the house and moved out in the middle of the night—leaving their sleeping children behind. It was the first of many times that Judilyn would abandon her kids. At times like this, Judilyn’s parents would come and pick up the kids from wherever in the country they might be and take them home until Judilyn came dragging in to claim them.

  Kate had met her grandmother only a few times during her own childhood. The first time she’d met Judilyn, she’d been about five years old. Introduced to this chain-smoking woman who
reeked of bourbon and had a perpetual frown on her face, Judilyn had said the words she’d never forgotten.

  “Don’t call me grandma,” she’d snarled in an exhalation of menthol-scented smoke. “My name is Judilyn. I expect to be called that.”

  So much for a loving grandma on her mother’s side. It was not a surprise that the woman had died in a mental institution in California, her beauty ravaged, her body wasted to a thin, shriveled shell by barbiturates and booze, unloved and alone. Kate’s mother did not go to the funeral. Didn’t even shed a tear. There were no tears to shed. Judilyn had long ago wrung all of those out of her six children.

  Alva, her dad’s mother was slightly more welcoming to her grandkids. Everyone called her “grandma”, even her dad. Though a kind woman, she was overwhelmed under grandkids. Her children had reproduced in triplicate and she always had babies hanging off her hip. The poor woman never got a break from kids, which only served to make her distant. Simply, she was tired. Unfortunately, she would not get a break until the day she died.