By Brutal Beauty Bent

Chapter Two-1

Chapter Two

The Cuddle Monster

Hot and thirsty and trailing a dust plume behind her dented SUV, Kelly Jensen, 25, trundled down the rough rural road toward her home at the very end. Though it was largely un-stocked and had stood unoccupied for months while she was off finishing her current tour of duty, the big Marine corporal couldn’t wait to get there. Oh, her feet hurt!

Though she’d doffed her uniform blouse and unbearably constrictive bra for the skimpiest possible halter top at the first opportunity, Kelly still wore regulation khaki shorts, socks and combat boots. Now the spaghetti straps and scant white fabric flattered her big breasts and buffed arms and shoulders while leaving her wonderfully free up top and at least mostly open to the air.

In contrast her sweaty crotch itched even in a g-string and her feet could use the mother of all massages. Thoughts of the few amenities that did lie ahead beckoned: air-conditioning, ice in the freezer for the scotch she’d picked up and most of all ‘the cloud’, a huge sectional sofa that had dominated the living room since it was her mother’s parents’ place back in the seventies.

By now it was distinctly shabby. But that didn’t matter. It was still amazingly comfortable to sprawl out over and filled with pleasant associations. Kelly couldn’t wait to mix a drink, kick off her boots and socks, collapse back into it and let the whole sultry day slip away. This last tour had been particularly hairy. Some kind of cleansing and recuperative was sorely in order.

Reaching the cul-de-sac at last, Kelly’s heart leaped to see her diminutive neighbor sitting on the steps of his own porch across from hers.

Next to the people she lived and died with in combat, Kelly was closer to Corey than anyone else in the world – this despite them being such opposites. Where she was tall, built and bulky he was a classic shrimp. Where she reveled in both innate and earned self-assurance he was a timid retiring mouse. Roughly eighty percent lesbian with butch-short black hair, Kelly pitied Corey’s untested heterosexuality. While unmistakably aroused by her and other girls, Corey’s slightly effeminate air (enhanced by the surprisingly thick blonde locks Kelly had always encouraged him to nurture) doomed him to undesirability for almost all women.

She loved him dearly of course. But they went way back. Pulling up to Corey’s porch rather than her own despite her earlier urgency, Kelly cut off her exuberant greeting just in time. Corey was sitting there crying, sigh. What a surprise.

He’d been susceptible to this since she first met him. As he’d had good reason for this weakness, she’d always been compassionate. But now he was an adult. An exasperated part of her wanted to put him over her knee just like in the old days.

Corey had moved to this dead-end street when he was seven. His parents, a pair of despicable meth-heads, had been sent to death row for murdering the wrong set of grandparents. It was some tweaked-out inheritance-fraud scheme. He’d been sent to live with his remaining kin right here across from where Kelly was growing up with her own harried single mom.

Though already edging into infirmity, these last living relatives through perhaps obsessively frugal prudence had actually amassed considerable wealth despite remaining in such a relatively impoverished backwater. Rather than condemn the unlucky boy to foster care, these rich-but-stingy grandparents knuckled to pressure from the court and reluctantly took him in.

Still it was clear they were both unenthusiastic and inadequate to the task at hand. With fourteen year-old tomboy Kelly running wild alone across the road while her mother worked seventy-hour weeks struggling to make ends meet, a seemingly inevitable deal was soon struck.

For a pittance her family couldn’t refuse, Kelly was pressed into service as a kind of babysitter-s***h-teenage nanny. First across the street under the gradually ailing grandparents’ disinterested supervision but then mostly at her own otherwise empty home, she quickly became the dominant presence in the otherwise isolated life of the abandoned little orphan.

Tomboy Kelly settled down and thrived on the responsibility.

She kept Corey eating and reasonably clean. She did her best to keep him out of trouble and spanked his bottom when she failed, just as her mother still did to her. She doctored his scrapes and went out of her way to comfort his loneliness and more enduring woes. And still being mostly a kid herself she played with him daily: hide-and-seek, tag, other chasing and tackling and even tickling games – anything to keep him cheerfully engaged. Then there were all those hours on the cloud watching movies and TV together…

Kelly flushed suddenly.

In retrospect, a lot of their interactions seemed heavily pre-erotic. With neither of them realizing it, their horseplay and comforting and endless spells snuggled up close had grown powerfully charged. In those penniless days without air-conditioning they’d practically lived in swimsuits, her own threadbare bikinis perpetually outgrown. Kelly remembered lying about in a kind of heat-struck stupor with her little ‘cuddle monster’ molded up against her. His small hands were running slowly, wonderingly all over her. She was letting him do this because she was doing the same, both of them breathing deeply of the potent musk pouring from their pores. Parts of each were jutting out their suits, inviting investigation in their fraught yet listless languor…

Pre-erotic, hell: Kelly shook herself.

They’d just been curious kids doing what came naturally. No harm had been done. Still even as an adult with several rewarding gay relationships behind her, a nostalgic frisson from those early experiences remained. Kelly often dreamed and even occasionally daydreamed of those days and was always stirred by this. She would forever have a tender spot in her for her little cuddle monster, and always recall the pride, fun, fulfillment and even more unsettling excitement she always got from basically raising and semi-intentionally dominating him all those years.

Jesus, how long had that gone on, the better part of a decade? Despite her wry sigh of impatience, Kelly still found her former charge’s vulnerability more than just endearing. It made him sneakily attractive. Jumping from the truck, her concern was genuine as she hurried over.

“What’s wrong, Corey? Are you okay?”

“Welcome back, Kel. It’s always so wonderful to see you alive and well.”

“How are you?”

Corey gave a shaky laugh, pulling up his too-loose t-shirt to wipe his eyes.

“Actually, I’m fabulous. That’s what’s so upsetting.

“Here I am, I just graduated from high school a month ago with no real clue what to do. Then suddenly my grandparents die within eight days of each other. Three days after that, I find out they’ve left me the house free and clear plus over three million dollars’ worth of reliably profitable investments! We’ve just been living on the interest all these years. It’s all happened so fast I can’t sort my stupid head out.

“Screw having to get a job, right? I’m suddenly solvent. Hell, I’m rich. And all it cost me was the grandparents who never loved or wanted me.”

Corey dissolved into weeping again.

As she had on hundreds of occasions, Kelly sat down and took him in her arms. As always he went eagerly into her envelopment. Clutching her big body hungrily in return, he wept on as she crooned and stroked and comforted him. This too she’d done a hundred times, and even a decade later all those potent old associations welled up immediately. Kelly welcomed them.

Oh, it felt so good!

How often had such comforting led to yet more prolonged snuggling, even peacefully napping together for entire afternoons molded up close? After endless complicated tensions with lovers, bosses and colleagues (not to mention the harrowing horrors of war) Kelly acutely longed for that simple old unquestioning warmth and acceptance – and that strangely compelling if formerly unsuspected erotic connection. More, she missed that prideful coddling and rightful dominating of his adoring and adorable vulnerability. Kelly knew what she truly wanted (if not where it finally might lead) when she issued her invitation.

“Come on, Corey. I was just going to make myself a drink and collapse on the cloud. You look like you could use one too. Join me, for the sake of old times and new. I meant more to you than your whole asshole family. And with them in the past at last, I’m still here for you. I always will be, my honorary little brother.”

This brought a tightening of Corey’s clutch and another spate of sobs. But this was the last one, and brief.

After a moment he stopped wetting the bare slopes of her left breast and reluctantly released her. This time he pulled the t-shirt right off, leaving his small and slight, underdeveloped and still a bit ungainly teenage body clad only in thin gym shorts and sandals. Wiping his face and even blowing his nose on the shirt, he hitched a last quavering sigh as he dropped it beside him.

“I’d love to come over, Kel. I’m going nuts all alone. And I’ve missed you beyond words here these last few years. Not only do I have no other family or friends, but I’m always so worried about you. You have such a dangerous life. Though of course, I still jerk off every day thinking about you swashbuckling your way around the Middle East with a machine gun.”

Corey gave a jagged laugh while Kelly let this pass. She drew him to his feet by the hand.

“Come on little guy. Let’s go get that drink.”

Linking their fingers together (as she’d also so often done) Kelly pulled him over hand-in-companionable-hand to her door, only stopping by the truck for the bottle. As if still concerned about his safety in the perpetually deserted street she didn’t release him until she had to dig out her key. Then she ushered Corey into the dim, warm and stuffy old house in which they’d spent their pubescence together. Again his voice quavered to a treble as she shut the door behind them.

“I need to pee.”

“We both need to get comfortable.” Kelly already had her boots off and was working on the socks. “I need to get the AC going.” She dropped her shorts next, nonchalant though she was warmly aware of Corey taking in the sight of her in just her halter and that camo-patterned g-string. Of course they’d lived in those swimsuits once but bodies and perceptions had changed. They hadn’t been so intimate since Kelly hit full adulthood.

“Go ahead and freshen up. I’ll make some drinks and meet you in the living room.”

Though his gaze lingered, Corey didn’t. To this day he always did just what she told him. Kelly herself hurried to start the AC, though she left the blinds closed and the lights off. Blowing the dust off glasses and dumping ice in a bucket, she slipped quickly into her bedroom for secrets one and two. Carrying everything to the living room, she secreted those secrets in a crevice of the cloud. Then picking up the remote she put some mellow piano concertos on the stereo and an underwater landscape DVD featuring coral reefs on the big TV.

With only that rich blue aqua-video ameliorating the indoor afternoon dimness Kelly poured a pair of stiff double-scotches on the rocks. His face washed, hair brushed and ponytail fixed up nice, barefoot now, Corey joined her a bit hesitantly as she set down the bottle.

“I’ve never had whiskey, or really drunk much of anything.”

“I bet there’s lots you haven’t done. If you start trying some of them, it might lead to all kinds of wonderful new experiences. Here’s to them.” Kelly handed him the drink, clinked rims and sipped her own. She slipped her fingers back into his and tugged him toward the cloud.

“How many hours did we spend entwined on this thing?”

Corey coughed, his eyes leaking again at his first swallow of liquor.

“Too many to number and not nearly enough.”

“I was thinking the same thing.”

She pulled him down to sit on the edge. They sipped and let the piano have its say for a while. Huge shoals of brilliantly colored fish swan across the wall, scattered from a shark and re-schooled with eerie ease. Kelly sensed Corey’s uncertain suspense after all this time apart and savored it while she got the top-shelf scotch into him. Then she continued her thought.

“All those rainy or lazy TV days aside, you always needed comforting over something.”

“I could use some now.”

“Me too, my friend. I’ve missed my little ‘cuddle monster’.”

“Remember how I used to bury my face in you and growl when you called me that?”