Taboo The Collection (18 page)

Clara felt it before it happened, something like electricity in the air, when the sow made her decision to move. She moved too, sprinting for the fence, praying she made it in time, zigzagging at the last moment, hoping to get out of the angry mother’s beeline of fury. If Clara hadn’t fallen, she would have been dead. The sow charged past her, just inches away, hitting the fence so hard it felt like it shook the whole barn.

Clara grabbed the fence, splinters gouging into her hands, and pulled herself out of the mud, scrambling up and swinging a leg over the top, falling with a grunt to the dusty barn floor on the other side. The sow squealed in frustration, rooting in the mud, sticking her snout between the slats, but her piglets were gathering around, squealing and snorting too, some of them rooting for milk, and now that Clara was on the other side of the fence, Mama began to lose interest.

“Stupid.” She chided herself as soon as she could breathe again, sitting and checking herself over. Nothing broken, not even a cut or a scrape, aside from the splinters in her hands. But she was absolutely full of filth from head to toe. She considered going into the house, but the walk from the back door to the shower upstairs was long and even though the floors were wood, it would be a lot of extra cleanup. There was always the hose, but she shivered at the thought. It was a warm day for May, somewhere in the mid-seventies, but not
that
warm.

Then she remembered Grover’s shower.

He’d rigged it up when Clara’s mother had begun harping about the dirt he dragged into the house every day, up the stairs, to the shower. Even when he took his boots off at the back door, and eventually, started stripping down to his boxers there too, she complained, so he’d run a hot water line out behind the barn and screwed together some wooden pallets to create a shower stall.

Clara found a towel hung on a nail outside the make-shift door and a bar of Ivory soap inside. She glanced around before she started to get undressed, but even as she did, she knew there was no one around for miles and it would be hours before Grover got back. The water grew warm quickly and she stepped in, soaping off not only the filth from her foray into the pig stall, but the nastiness of the entire day, from the horrible, dirty prank to the lecture in the principal’s office.

They’d asked her over and over who she thought was responsible, but she wasn’t going to tell them anything. Giving up her tormentors would do nothing but give them more ammunition, and even more reason to tease her. Instead she’d clammed up completely, letting the counselor do all the talking, while Grover looked between her and the adults with a bewildered, puzzled look on his face. The girl they were describing wasn’t the one he knew at all. Of course that was true. The girl she was with him was the real one. Home was the only place she could really be herself.

Clara used the soap to wash her hair first, leaving her long, blond tresses squeaky clean. She usually braided it or pulled it back, but she hadn’t today. She’d been up very early, before dawn, helping Grover with a mother cow birthing her calf, and had neglected to do much but grab her backpack on the way out the door that morning. She smiled at the memory, the struggle and mess and miracle of birth culminating in one very wet, braying little black and white calf who wobbled to his legs just moments after he came backwards into the world.

Grover had slipped his hand into hers, she remembered fondly, both of them bloody and full of goo, but what did it matter? He’d kissed her forehead and thanked her, and her heart couldn’t have swelled any bigger for him. Clara slipped the white bar of soap over her belly, the muck of the pig stall and the darkness of the day swirling down the drain at her feet. She felt cleansed, renewed, her skin tingling and alive.

The soap traveled further down, between her thighs, and she scrubbed gently there, shivering at the sensation. They were wrong about her, all of them, so very wrong. She wasn’t a lesbian, or asexual, or uninterested in the opposite gender. She wasn’t depressed—not really—nor was she suicidal or withdrawn or even shy. She was just… preoccupied.

And she wasn’t about to tell them with what.

But even as her mind tried to deny it—and not just to her herself or her peers and teachers and the school administrators—her body knew just what it wanted. Her fingers took root at the top of her cleft, moving back and forth in the soapy wetness, sending warm waves of pleasure through her body. She couldn’t help remembering the time Grover had first built this shower, before he’d rigged up the wooden pallet stall, and she’d stumbled across him using it.

Her mother had still been here then, she remembered—her mother was the reason for the outdoor shower in the first place. No more dirt in her house, she insisted! Her mother had forced Grover to wash off outdoors, even in the winter, and it had been winter then, the steam rising up out of the snow at his bare feet, his body revealed in the half-light of a setting sun, the strong, broad muscles of his back, still brown with a tan even in the middle of February, the sharp, angled muscles of his belly, and the rising tower of his cock between his legs, clenched tightly in his fist.

She’d retreated quickly back behind the barn, heart beating fast, mouth so dry she could hardly swallow, but she hadn’t been able to stop herself from peeking again. She’d watched him, feeling ashamed and dirty, but excited too, as he stroked his hard cock with abandon, thinking no one at all was watching him. His head was thrown back, eyes closed, mouth a gaping “O” of pleasure, and his cock… oh god, the sight of it made her knees feel weak, and she’d had to hold onto the side of the barn to keep from collapsing.

But it was when he came that she actually did fall to her knees, because just as he thrust forward and exploded like a geyser over the rapid pump of his fist, he called out, not “oh god,” or “yes!” or even her mother’s name, which she might expect. No. Grover threw his head back and cried out, “Ohh fuck, Clara!” as he splashed the side of the barn with streaks of his cum.

Nothing had been the same since.

Of course, she’d tried to not think about it, to pretend she hadn’t seen. She’d risen to her feet, still trembling, and had run back to the house, staying in her room until dinner. But she’d never looked at Grover the same way again. And it wasn’t long, months really, before her mother had told her she was leaving him, forcing her to choose. Not that it was much of a choice. The moment Grover said she could stay, her heart had decided.

Clara’s hand continued to work between her legs, the soap abandoned on the ground as she leaned her cheek against the makeshift door with its hook and eye lock. The splinters in her fingers were forgotten as she rubbed herself faster, faster, seeing her stepfather in her mind’s eye, imagining his big, hard cock not just in his fist, but in her own hand, in her mouth, oh god yes, buried deep inside of her. She sought to mimic the sensation with her fingers, pumping them in and out, seeing herself bent over in this very shower, Grover’s hands gripping her hips as he drove hard into her.

“Ohhh god,” she whimpered, breath coming faster, eyes clenched tight. “Oh yes! I’m going to come for you!”

And she did, trembling all over with the force of her orgasm, her knees weakening, just as they had that day, and she gave in and sank to them under the hard, hot spray of the shower, whispering her stepfather’s name over and over. She knew it was wrong. She knew very well she shouldn’t be thinking about him, fantasizing about him. But she couldn’t help herself.

With a sigh, she picked up the soap and slowly finished washing, finally turning off the shower and opening the pallet door to reach the towel. It was rough but it served the purpose, and it was a little exciting to think Grover had dried off out here with this very towel. The slivers in her fingers ached now and she looked at them, frowning. They were already turning red.

She spread the towel out on a pile of hay Grover had shoveled out of the loft, sitting down to see if she could do something about the splinters. The air was cool, but the sun was warm against her skin, and it felt incredible to be naked outside in the fresh air. She smiled as she reclined in the hay, giving up on her splinters. She’d have to go inside to get the tweezers. But for now, this was divine, resting clean and drowsy in a pile of hay, more relaxed that she’d been in months.

Her mind drifted. She didn’t understand her mother and her decision, but she never had. Clara didn’t remember her own father—her mother had left him when she was still a newborn. And she couldn’t count how many “Dads” she’d had, although most of them had been “Uncles,” to be fair. Her mother had married only two. Grover had been the last—and the longest. But that had ended too. When she closed her eyes, she could almost imagine him beside her, holding her hand and whispering into her ear. Oh he was so sweet, so kind and gentle and perfect.

“Clara.”

She could almost feel his heat against her ear, smell the sweet hayseed of his breath. She squirmed and smiled and ached for him, reaching out with a sigh, wishing he was really there, solid and warm, so she could wrap her arms around him.

“Clara!”

She opened her eyes when her hands found the buttons of his shirt and found him kneeling above her, bent down with his mouth near her ear, a hand on her arm to shake her awake.

“Grover?” she whispered, blinking at the sight of the sun beginning to set over the tall grass. “Am I dreaming?”

“You must have fallen asleep. What happened? Your clothes are a mess… and…” He blinked, glancing down, his cheeks pink, and she remembered then that she was completely naked. The look on his face was unreadable, but his eyes were filled with a sort of heat she could almost feel. How long had he been there? What had he seen? She felt redness creeping up into her cheeks as she sat, reaching for the towel beneath her and trying, rather unsuccessfully, to cover herself.

“What time is it?” she muttered, fumbling with the towel as Grover stood, holding out a hand for her. “I had to rescue one of the baby pigs and I fell. There—”

He exploded. “You went into the pig pen? Alone?”

“I had to!” She stood, wrapping herself up. “There was no—”

“No what?”

Clara stopped, eyes wide, finally registering what it meant—the sun setting over the horizon. “My chicken! Oh my god, my chicken!”

She ran. The towel fell off halfway to the house, and she let it, leaping over the black and white cat and bursting through the door to find the kitchen hazy with smoke. She coughed and sputtered her way to the oven, opening it to find a very black chicken inside.

“Oh crap!” She grabbed the oven mitts and pulled the roaster out, but it was far too late to save dinner.

“What the hell?” Grover came in behind her, coughing and propping the door open to let the smoke out.

“The chicken.” Clara dropped the roaster on the stovetop with a clatter and burst into tears. “I ruined it.”

“Oh Clara…” He took a step toward her and she sniffled, waving him away and wiping at her eyes with the big red oven mitts. That’s when she realized she was still completely naked, standing in the middle of the kitchen, wearing just oven mitts. She looked up at Grover and saw the corner of his mouth twitching. “Don’t you dare! Don’t you
dare
laugh!”

“I wasn’t…” He cleared his throat, tossing his hat onto the table. “I’m not…”

But the other corner of his mouth twitched and he started to smile.

“Grover Lindsey! If you laugh at me, I’ll… I’ll…”

“You’ll what?” He chuckled. And that did it. It was like a dam burst. His chuckle led to a snicker. He tried to cover it with his hand, but it didn’t work. Neither did trying to hide it in his chest. His silent mirth grew and inevitably escaped in great, whooping, knee-slapping guffaws.

“You!” She flew at him, not thinking at all, beating at him with her fists. He caught her easily, although he was thrown slightly off balance because he was still laughing so hard, keeping her from really doing any damage. “Ooooo! I hate you!”

“Oh Clara, you are too precious.” He kissed the tip of her nose, her wrists still caught in his grip. That just made her madder, and she tried in vain to wiggle free, struggling so much it took her a moment to realize Grover wasn’t laughing anymore. He was staring at her hands, a frown creasing his features.

“What in the hell did you do to yourself?”

She surrendered to him as he turned her hands over, palms up, revealing the splinters there. Before she knew what was happening, he had her upstairs in the bathroom seated on the closed toilet lid while he sat beside her on the edge of the tub with a pair of tweezers, pulling little pieces of wood out of her skin. But he did take the time to give her a towel to wrap herself up in, and she couldn’t help notice the way he looked at her before she covered herself up.

“I’ve told you a million times not to go into the pig pen by yourself!” he growled, releasing his grip a little guiltily when she yelped at how tightly he was holding her.“What’s the number one killer on a farm?”

She sighed. “Pigs. I know.”

He tweezed and squeezed and removed all of the splinters she’d acquired during her piglet rescue, and then he got the hydrogen peroxide and the cotton balls.

“Clara, if I ask you something, will you be honest with me?” he asked, dabbing at her tiny wounds.

“Sure.” She said it, but she wasn’t sure if she would or not, depending on what he asked.

Grover put the cap on the peroxide and set it on the sink, tossing the cotton ball into the trash. His jaw was tight, and she wondered if she was in real trouble.