Paul wasn't even limping the next day at work/ He was fine. I think that Leah was beginning to understand the physical nature of my relationship with Paul. It has always been that way with us. He'd say something way out of line and I'd hit him. It wasn't needed often, not until Leah phased. It was the simplest form of communication and he understood it well. And if he wasn't okay with it, he wouldn't have been my friend all these years.
We went to my mom's for dinner again. She had a casserole in the oven. She gave both of us a hug when we came in, not just Leah this time.
"Ma, can we use the computer?" I asked.
"Sure. Just didn't close my mahjong. Don't play it either. I'm almost done."
"Ok, ma, we'll be sure not to." I grinned at Leah and whispered, "Don't play her mahjong!"
I sat in the desk chair and pulled Leah into my lap. I opened my email and had one new message. The rest of my inbox was filled with old emails from Leah.
She nudged me playfully. "You kept all my old emails?"
"Of course. Did you delete mine?"
"No. They have their own folder."
I clicked on the new email from the Twana teacher, Buck White. He had translated the first page of the book as a courtesy. Just to see if we wanted him to translate more. It looked like the beginning of the love story between Ephraim Black and Sarah Uley. Ephraim had married a girl named Martha Young.
"Leah, this one's going to be different," I said, I said with a sinking feeling. "I've never heard of Sarah Uley. Have you?"
She shook her head.
The teacher said that translations costs $10 per page, or we could do a trade. He had an associate who had a Quileute text that he wanted translated. It was about the same length as our text, so they'd be willing to do a direct trade, translation for translation.
We wrote back immediately saying that we wanted to do the trade. There was no way we could afford $10 per page. Even if Old Quil didn't want to help us with this, we'd muscle through this translation ourselves.
Leah and I hustled through Mom's unfinished chores while the casserole cooled off. Mom ate a frozen dinner while Leah and I ate the casserole.
"How're you doing at the construction work, Leah?" Mom asked.
"Good, Sam is running his own crew now. So it's just Sam, Paul and me. We're getting a lot done."
Mom narrowed her eyes at me. "Does Uncle Frank know that it's just the three of you?"
"No, Ma," I said, my head held high. "He doesn't know that we transform into giant wolves either. We told him the size of the crew fluctuates based on everyone's schedule."
"He's not an idiot, you know." Mom was protective of her younger brother, not that he needed it.
"I know," I said, looking her right in the eye. "That's why he gave me autonomy over my own crew. It was a smart decision on his part. We do good work and we do it quickly. All of the work orders come with labor estimates. I will undercharge for labor, but not by a suspicious amount, then the three of us will split it based on hours worked."
"So you and Paul are making the same amount?" Leah asked me.
I rubbed my forehead. "No. Pay scale is graded by seniority."
"So Paul makes more per hour than me?" Leah asked, lips pursed.
"No. You're head of the crew, like me."
Mom was smiling. Leah was too. I didn't know what was so amusing.
"Does Paul know that he is being paid the least?" Mom asked.
"He's not getting paid the least," I insisted. "He works more hours than Leah."
"Per hour, he's getting paid the least per hour?" Mom clarified.
"Yeah."
"And you're getting paid the most?" Leah asked.
"No, baby," I said, putting my arm around the back of her chair. "We're equals."
"But I've only been working there a week."
"So you want to be paid less than me?" I asked. This didn't make any sense.
"No, I'm not saying that," Leah said. "Wouldn't it be simplest if we were all paid equally."
"But I made an equation to calculate our pay!" I had worked hard on that equation too.
"Maybe you can use your equation in the summer when you bring more of the pack onto the crew." Leah suggested.
She knew I was proud of my equation and she just wanted me to set it aside? There was only one explanation I could think of for this suggestion. "Is this about me bullying Paul?"
Mom laughed. "You're bullying Paul again?"
"No, ma, we're just rough housing, but it makes Leah uncomfortable."
"You're a lot bigger than him now, Sam," Mom warned. "You could really hurt him. You're not seven anymore."
"I'm aware." I said looking at Leah with a little smirk. "I remember when we were seven and you had that purple mermaid shirt that you wore all the time, Lee-lee. You loved it so much."
She grinned. "And you spilled fruit punch on it so the mermaids were all stained red but I still loved it." She looked down at her food then up at me under her eyelashes. "I wasn't mad at you for very long."
My mouth fell open. "You didn't talk to me for two days! I made Seth bring messages for you."
"One of them was a good picture of the mermaids that were on the shirt," she remembered. "But most of them were just sweet notes saying that you were sorry and that you loved me."
I gave her a sad smile. "I thought I had lost you forever."
With a pained expression, she exclaimed, "No! I couldn't go on! Losing both you and the mermaid shirt! It would be too tragic. So I kept you both, until the shirt didn't fit me anymore."
Mom sighed. "You two are as cute as ever."
"We still don't drink fruit punch," I said.
Leah laughed. "Sometimes I have some when you're not around."
"Betrayal! Deception!" I cried. "No, that's fine. I think you said I wasn't allowed to have fruit punch anymore."
"That's how we negotiated it," she confirmed. "I'd keep being your friend, but you wouldn't get fruit punch ever again. But I didn't drink it in front of you as a sign of solidarity."
"It was worth it." I said and I meant it. Fruit punch was sweet with little flavor. It wasn't a sacrifice at all to keep my dream girl.
"So you still never drink it?" Leah asked. "Even when I'm not around?"
"Never. Someone once handed me a cup at a birthday party when I was nine but I smelled it before I drank it, so not even then. It wasn't worth the risk that you'd smell it on me or that it would stain my lip."
My mom started clearing the table. "We should get going." Leah said, looking at me with a suggestive gaze. It gave me a fluttering feeling in my chest when she looked at me like that.
"Do you want to stop in and see Old Quil?" I asked. "Or do you want to do that tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow," she said. I had chills. She wanted me tonight.
LPOVI was astonished. This man still would not drink fruit punch because he promised he never would when we were seven!
Goddamn. I was going to make him feel good about that decision tonight.
We had driven to Allison's so we had to drive home. I wanted to run. Instead we had a four minute drive full of lustful looks and thigh rubs.
When I got him in the door I slammed him against the wall and kissed him, mouth open, tongues entwined, needy. I was unbuttoning his pants and he was reaching up my shirt. I pulled off my shirt then got on my knees. I took his thick cock in my mouth and in my hands and I pleasured him. He fisted my hair while grunting, groaning and finally coming into my mouth.
I licked up his abs as I stood up to face him. "What do you want to do now?"
He looked down at me with those hungry eyes. "I finished making the leg holds for the fucking shelf," he said.
"You want to try that out now, big boy?" I asked.
"Damnit, Leah, you make me so hard."
"Good." I ran to the bedroom, undressed and boosted myself onto the shelf. The leg holds made it easier to get onto the shelf and into position.
Sam sauntered in, totally naked and looking like a fucking god. He was holding a folded towel. So god damned thoughtful! He lifted my butt and slid it under.
"Did the fruit punch story make you frisky?" he asked.
I nodded.
"Definitely worth it," he whispered, kissing me and rubbing his hardening shaft on my clit. He had one hand gripping my ass and the other was rubbing up and down my leg. I had one hand around his waist and the other in his hair.
"How did you go so long without drinking it? It's served at every childhood function." I asked, licking his jaw.
"So is water. You're worth so much more than a cup of fruit punch, Leah. You always were."
"Ugh. That feels so nice, Sam. So good. But weren't the adults offended?"
"I didn't notice. I don't know. It doesn't matter. It wasn't worth the risk."
He pulled his hips back and sunk into me. I gasped at the feeling of fullness. "Oh Sam. Sam."
"Lee-lee." He growled back. "You're so tight in this position, almost impossibly tight and it feels so good."
He was fucking me pretty good. My head was beginning to fall forward. He stopped moving and caressed my cheek.
"Are you ok?" He asked.
"It just feels so good." I said, my voice a little dazed.
He smiled at me. "I'm going to transfer us to the bed, ok? Same positions, I promise."
I nodded. Then my back hit the soft mattress and Sam was over me, looking down at me, concerned.
"Leah, are you ok?" He was asking. He wasn't fucking me anymore, but he was still in me.
"Fuck me." I commanded.
He smiled at me. "I'm going to move your legs, Leah, I think you were getting light headed."
He took each of my legs and put them in the standard missionary position. It was a nice position, intimate, but he wasn't moving in me.
I was looking at his face. I loved that face. My man, my person, my best friend. He was everything. He was mine. I was so overwhelmed by love for him.
He was looking down at me, concerned. Not moving at all.
"What, Sam?" I finally asked him.
"I think the fucking shelf messed with your circulation. You almost passed out. I'm trying to think of how to adapt it to be safer, less constrained."
"That's why you're not fucking me?"
"I was waiting for you to come around. I'm not going to fuck you when you're half unconscious!"
"Well I'm here now." I said, not sure about that light headed thing, but definitely wanting Sam to fuck me.
He gently rocked into me, kissing me with just his lips. He leaned on one elbow and reached down to my clit.
"Ahhh, Sam, oh God, Sam!" I was climaxing fast and it felt amazing. Then he pulled out and started cuddling with me.
"I love you, Leah."
"What the fuck are you doing?" I asked.
"Snuggling."
"Why aren't you fucking me?"
"I just did."
"Sam, you didn't finish."
"Leah, you scared me. You were gonna pass out."
"I don't know about that, but I'm fine now."
"I know baby, and I want to hold you now."
"Ok. Is everything ok?"
He nodded against my back. "Just scared."
"I'm fine." I insisted
"I know. But what if there's something wrong with your heart like your dad?"
"Oh, I am not worried about that at all. I think it was maybe the tightness of the position. But it felt so good. Maybe I should ask my mom."
"Or any other medical professional!" Sam suggested. "Do you really want to talk to your mom about that?"
"But I don't have a doctor's appointment for months! I'm not staying off of the fucking shelf for months."
Sam sighed and kissed my back. "I wonder if we had ankle straps instead of leg holds. It wouldn't be so tight. But if something did go wrong, it would be harder to get you out than the leg holds…."
"What if the ankle straps were on a hook and you could just unhook them if something went wrong."
"Brilliant." He kissed me again. "We could have hooks in different places for different configurations."
"Do you want to finish fucking me now?"
His cock was still hard between my butt cheeks. "Yeah, I do."
He rolled me onto my stomach, lifting my ass slightly. Then he fucked me good and proper. He hovered over me after he came, his head on my back, weight on his elbows. Then he rolled us onto our sides.
"You're so fucking sweet and wonderful, Sam."
"You think I'm sweet?" he asked.
"You spent over a decade avoiding fruit punch for me. It doesn't get any sweeter than that."
"Leah, I have to be honest. I don't even like fruit punch."