Sequel to ‘Find Me Please’, ‘It Was Never Enough’ & ‘A Constant Hunger’
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Gemma watched as Stan played with his grandson, the boy’s squeals of delight matched by Stan’s deep chuckles of uncomplicated pleasure. The man’s somewhat haughty expression was gone. Now, he was not the least reluctant to cavort with Jonno on the trampoline, holding the child’s hands to keep him from coming to any real mischief.
She resorted to small talk and turned on the sun lounger to look at Betty, then at Jake, but their exchanges soon lessened. They all looked on, as if the performance was for them only. She never saw Jake play with Jonno as Stan was only too able to do. Perhaps, the instinctive bond with the boy could never be repressed. In Jake’s ways, over the years since her boy’s birth, she had seen a continuing hesitancy to bond with the youngster he believed they had made and against his deepest wishes as the difficulties with conception took their toll.
‘Your father was the same with you,’ Betty laughed, on seeing them take a tumble and glancing first at Jake then Gemma. ‘Go and give him a break…’
‘Sure,’ Jake answered somewhat woodenly.
‘And I’ll go and get my iPhone…take some pictures of you two with Jonno…father and grandfather. It’s still a wonder how everything worked out for the two of you.’
‘We found the answer in the end…didn’t we babe?’
Gemma remained seated and chose not to say anything even as she met a moment’s kiss from Jake. To see the three of them together only set her thoughts spooling back to crazy times and what Jake had suggested she do; to sleep with Stan, if being a donor in colder and purposeful ways failed. They had done. Their arguments in those days were etched into her memory, along with everything that had then followed, and Jake knew nothing of. Her refusal to even consider what was being suggested had been accepted and her behaviour excused by Jake’s harsh words, ‘I gave you a way out!’ often recalled. But, she had schemed and Jonno, and then Bryony who napped inside, were the products of their times together.
To recall how she behaved continued to wrench at her conscience, but she had thought of herself, then, as being someone else; a woman who had gotten her way. But in the beginning of her journey, she had been dismayed at what she was hearing fall from the lips of her husband and what it could mean; the secrecy; Jake’s suggestion an only too destructive surprise, that of giving herself to Stan and having the undoubtedly virile man, she gazed upon once more, impregnate her when the chances of her and Jake achieving that being infinitesimally small or remote, but not impossible.
But she had succumbed to other ways…and had done that with Stan. Only, their purposeful trysts had become so much more and intensely passionate; their times together pursued on a whim ever since but less so since Bryony’s birth.
She’d become an unfaithful bitch to match the claims of Stan and his insatiable appetite to be with her, the risks adding to the moments that they could share, but not as often as before.
She missed the man seen cavorting with Jonno; how he beckoned to Jake to take over from him; how Stan then looked at her. Those eyes, as he drew near, held so much promise; the strength and agility in his body, for a man his age, a reminder of what she had known of and shared with him. His chino shorts really could not disguise the swell of all that he brought. She could again glory in ow his patterned summer shirt hung free; the loosened buttons revealing the greying hair on his chest, the brush of them to her naked skin inflaming her senses when they had loved…or was it when they’d fucked as if for a last time?
The man had always found her in ways that Jake never could, and he achieved that in both mind and body. Both Betty and Jake were quite unaware of all that had passed between her and the man who now drew close, a soft smile teasing the corners of his mouth.
Jake stood over her and she looked up. ‘I’ll go and get us some drink from the kitchen…shall I?’
‘I’ll come with you. Betty was supposed to be getting her camera and take a photo of you with the boys…’
‘I get counted in do I?’ he smiled, his eyes drifting over her. Stan looked away for an instant to see if he would be overheard. ‘It’s been a while, girl…’
‘I know. I was thinking the same just now when I was watching you play with Jonno…’ She met his stilled look upon her and knew that he was undressing her. The lustful man couldn’t keep from letting her know that he could so easily allow his feelings to get the better of him. She had to make do with that…for now.
‘Gem…you beauty…I can’t quite let it go. You know how it is…’
‘Yes, I know, Stan…whenever you’re near me. It crazy and so destructive…’
They met Betty in the doorway that led out onto the garden. Bryony was seen wriggling in her arms. ‘Someone wants her mother…’
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