And Now I Love You

The Sheppard family had, as the words of an old song went, 'picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, and started all over again'. Well, almost.

They had drawn on deep reserves of courage and dogged determination to get through the searing losses of loved ones.

In Jeff Sheppard's case, it was the loss of his wife, Mary, from a cancer caught too late. In Ava's case, it had been the loss of her darling husband Luke in a raging bushfire, he giving his life in saving a family as their house was scorched before it went up in an explosive firewall fanned by the raging wind.

Luke had been Jeff's only boy. Luke had been the father of three small kids that Ava devoted her life to now, living as they did in the clapboarded house at the edge of the bush and some ten klicks from Brisbane. Jeff's place echoed in the empty silence; his Mary's sing-song voice no longer heard as she listened to some music station and went along with the words that she heard sung out.

Ava would often call him on his cellphone as he worked as a delivery driver, work rather than the money important to him now. He had more than enough put by, even for a guy of fifty. He was a man who really didn't look his age.

'I just wanted to talk for a moment,' she'd often say, and he'd slew to a stop somewhere at the side of the dusty road and he'd listen to her soft voice; grown mellow by her experience; They'd both known it could happen, but her Luke, his boy, had thrived in the fire service. His comrades, for they were that to each other in the battles they so often faced, fire or tempestuous floods, mourned his loss. But the bonds inexorably loosened.

They did not do so between them, the Sheppard family.

Jeff took it on himself to step into the breach, as another saying went, and they all kept on mending. They went horse riding as a family. They bonded and often frolicked on the beach and the kids fooled around with 'Pops', as they called him now, in the yard of their home. They bonded closer than ever, the five of them. And...

And Ava felt that she had found another soulmate. She couldn't quite believe that it was happening, or that it had happened.

When she was low, or something brought her to a stop, and the tears welled up, Jeff was there for her. They shared in the pain; they laughed and drew strength from each other. She had Jeff's shoulder to lean on and she; would even do that when they sat on her porch and watched her boys and daughter cavort among the items of a play yard's set that he'd found on an internet sale and simply brought to her place, unbidden.

Jeff would do anything to lighten her load.

Neither of them gave two cents for what others might think on seeing them together; she a woman of thirty and with an older guy. She really didn't take that in or even let it bother her.

So what if Jeff's spiky brown hair and stubble beard was showing some grey? He was lean and strong. He had a wonderful smile that creased his face, and he was always to be seen in a clean pair of jeans and a white shirt, short sleeved or long, his tuff boots covered in dust. He brought her flowers and made her feel special, even if she'd had a bad day at a local school working as a class room assistant.

'Has it been one of those days again?' he'd ask as he saw her blonde hair a little straggly and make-up a little thin. I his voice she heard consideration, nota criticism of how she looked.

She knew that Jeff minded her; she also sensed that he was relying on her and she gotten to feeling that they were falling in love with each other. The union of their bodies would make real what had begun to take a hold in their minds.

'The past...Luke...and Mary...has nothing to do with this. The present...the reality of it all does, Jeff...how we are together and what my kids need.'

Jeff nodded but said nothing in reply. They had each come to a place in their lives that neither of them could have foreseen, and, as Jeff had confessed, some would disapprove of. He'd always thought that rules were there to be broken; some, anyway; rules that didn't put reputations or lives at risk.

His boy Luke...he had always been to the mark.

And now, here his father was talking to his wife, Ava, and wondering on it all and on where circumstances had brought them. Ava, a woman working to keep up a home and he rattling around in his and driving a delivery van when he really didn't need the money. There had to be a place in the middle, where they could meet and feel at ease with the decision they had reached, unconventional as that might turn out to be.

He reached across the space on the swing seat to take hold of her hand and squeezed it.

'I was thinking that some rules were meant to be broken. I was also wondering which of those rules, where they concern you and me, would be.'

♥

The night-lights were plugged in. They cast a soft glow onto the walls near the kids' bedrooms; the boys sharing one and Casey alone in her little 'den', as she preferred to call it.

Ava was seen to loiter by their doors, to listen in and know there was no longer any fight in them and that her children now slept.

Finally, she had time for herself, as on most nights when the house fell quiet. Only now, as she felt Jeff's arms embrace her and she was drawn against him, did she know that she would not be alone. She would finally share in forbidden love and give of herself to another. She ached for it to be so, but she yearned for that moment to acknowledge all that had gone before.

There had been nights, when she had lain naked in her bed, and she had thought of this moment. She had imagined her seduction and the sharing of forbidden fruit with Jeff, her...her husband's father. She had thought of a wicked betrayal of all that had gone before, but those times were lost to her; wrenched from her grasp and without a word of goodbye, save the usual kiss and utterances of 'take care'.

All of that had been taken from her, just as they had from Jeff. They could live on and do that together, if they chose.

Jeff had come onto her, discreetly but purposefully. He had, somehow, instinctively perhaps, understood the dilemma that she faced but could not clear from her mind. They had been restrained, played the word games. He had not claimed her body when out in the sea; fondled her tits; she had not grabbed for his long dick that she knew, from Mary's few words, the man possessed and that her Luke had also been blessed with.

She had ached to know of him. She had acknowledged it during a happy day and with the kids all around them and the boundaries of who they were, or had been to each other, blurred beyond recognition. They had reached the stage where to be lovers was to acknowledge what they meant to each other and had gone through, bot alone and as a couple, and how the future might be made to fit their expectations.

'Hold me...just hold me, you darling man,' she whispered as Jeff embraced her and she brushed her fingers over his hairy arms. She reached behind her back and felt the swell in his shorts. 'I know...I know...I need to live the moment too and with you.'

The tension between them was palpable. The emotions that she felt now were beyond her imagining. She would soon have given of herself to two men; two of a kind; a son and soon, his father. The maelstrom of emotions, that coursed through her body made her tremble in his arms; made her thread her fingers with Jeff's and then to guide them over her body as he offered caresses through the fabric of her dress. She felt the warming breaths of the man on her skin, to her throat and neck as Jeff's slow kisses were placed on her cheeks and then her lips; his soft slow, wondering kisses that revealed his concern for her and what it meant for him to be claiming her thoughts and soon her body.

She was to share in the journey of discovery; her recent fantasies about having sex with Jeff and, all that would be associated with the act, were to become real.

Ava ripped loose the fastening of her dress; shivered as his hands were on her thighs then on her belly as the dress was lifted away and was cast to the floor by her feet.

'Kiss me...kiss me...love me...be with me!' she demanded, turning in his embrace. She moved so that he could take off his shirt and she pressed her lips to his skin and bent, as he would soon do, to offer kisses to his nipples. She trembled as he unfastened her bandeau and pulled it away before pressing his lips to claim the indolent swell of her pert, small breasts. 'My room...in my room!' she urged and taking shuffling backward steps into that darkened space that she had once shared with Luke.

'Are you sure...in here?' he mumbled, in dismay, and through her kisses as he felt her nod. He clamped Ava's hands on him before she pushed down his shorts and heard the gasp of hot breaths on his lips as his dick sprung free and she claimed him.

'You're here...you're here!' she said on trembling lips as Ava kissed him with renewed ardour. 'You're here as I want you to be!'

Jeff pushed her back on the hard bed. He felt her scramble and reach for the bedside light. He met her gaze upon him as he knelt beside her as he offered caresses from her knees over her sex and up to her breasts, in s slow mesmerising touches. She looked at what he would bring to her and reached for him even as he bent to offer the first kisses to her soft pink lips, his fingers tracing a path to open her.

Brazenly, she moved and licked on him; sucked on his hardening sac and then moved to slide her hands around it as he licked and kissed her out. She groaned; writhed beneath him and bucked her hips as far as he would allow it.

'Move, you wonder! Let me sit on you!'

He moved and lay down as she demanded, and Ava soon lowered her body onto him; fingered her opening to make his slow, gently thrusting, entry possible.

'That feels so good, you wonder!' t felt like a moist, hot cloth had wrapped itself around him.

'For me too,' she gasped and bent to kiss him before sitting up. She clutched his outstretched hands as she began to ride him.

'Ava...Ava,' he groaned; reaching up to claim her breasts; to tug on them and to pinch her nipples until she pushed his hands away; tugged and clamped with rousing urgency and passion upon his dick; rediscovered her ways of driving her hips over a man in sinuous movements that two years of denial had her pursue with him. She sought a ride of delight and all that he brought to her. She pushed from her mind how it had once gone with Luke.

'I need you...need this from you!' she gasped, bending to kiss his lips once more and to languish in his embrace. She met his look of wonder before slamming down upon him once more. 'Yes...yes, do that!'

He had pushed back; gripped her hips and pulled her down on him then eased, only to repeat the action. The bed creaked and their heated breaths echoed in the room. Their skins glistened from their pursuit of each other and the pursuit of new ways between them, but as lovers.

Ava moaned in her passion and from her efforts. She would not ease in her frenzied claims upon him and to have Jeff know that it was him she was loving with. She shook her head from side to side, her hair swaying from her efforts and her fingers pinching the skin of his chest, her fingers then pressing into the base of his shaft, actions that made him push off the bed and to plumb so deeply her slender, slack breasted body.

'Oh God...oh, Jeff!' She had begun the aching climb, her moans and halting calls to him those of pain and recalled pleasure from what a man could bring to her...into her...with her. 'Jeff! Oh Jeff, you darling man...how you want me!'

'I can't keep it from you, girl!' he called out, his endearment something new.

'I know and want that!'

Her cries filled the room as she shuddered in her orgasm. She cried out in pleasure as she felt the leap of his flesh within her. Jeff held her on him and gave Ava no respite until he was spent.

Ava leant forward and saw his eyes take in the indolent sag of her breasts. She held her mouth close to his and felt Jeff's warm breaths escape and had them mingle with her own. She languished in his embrace.

'I'm...I'm yours now,' she said over trembling lips, 'yours, if you want me?' Ava lay down beside him and looked across the space between them. 'Jeff, my darling?'

'Hm?' he said drowsily, her claims on his body so wonderful and bestowing a sense of lethargy that had been discovered so quickly.

'You...you could sell up your place and move in here?' she suggested softly, wonderingly. The moment had finally come to tell him of her hopes.

'Or I rent out my place and we see how this goes?'

She smoothed a hand over his belly, moved so that his flaccid length could be kissed. 'I can smell myself on you...you're covered in me. I don't want this from anyone else. I've known that for some time...Jeff, darling. I'm...I've fallen in love with you now.'

Jeff drew her to him once more. He had her lie on him until it felt as if the whole of Ava's body was touched by his. 'We live and love for the day. The rest is for tomorrow. Right now, I reckon we find comfort and company in every way we can and as the kids get used to me being around you a whole lot more...'

Ava moved so that she could look down into his eyes; pressed her lips to his lips, his throat and then chest. 'You think of everything...'

'I've learned to do that, just as you have...'

Jeff felt her move until she could look down into his upturned face and kiss him gently, even wonderingly.

She loved to feel his gentle touches to her skin. He had made her feel so alive and wanted once more.

'In time we could try to make another. I've been with two of a kind...two men who loved me in their very own ways. I don't want to go on living a lie...that I want something else and with someone else. I want all of that to be with you.'

Jeff kissed her into silence. He wanted all that she asked of him. He grieved for his lost son and for his Mary. He too had to live on.

Ava was the one to make it all become right once more. Just as she had told him that she and been loved by two of a kind, he felt that way about two passionate women who remained in his life, one through memories and the other in wonderful reality. The aborigines probably had a word for it; the ghosts of the past informed, or helped, those in the present.

'Ava? I want to wake up every morning and know that you're close. And now I love you.'

She nodded furiously; could not hold back the tears. 'Those we loved...still love, they look down on us. You will be with me...and I love you now...my darling man...you will be here with me and the kids...and in time those we may have. I want that with you.'

We live and love in the way we want now...'

She took him to her; she would live and love it out with him. The Sheppard family would mend and live on.

♥

rn"

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