An ancient black woman, as dried-up as Aunt Minerva, came out of the kitchen with an old-fashioned coffee pot in her hand. "Watch your manners, boy!" she snapped at the big man. "I'll take an' wrap this heah coffee pot around your head."
"Yes'm, Aunt Clarinda," he said meekly. "I'm just upset about Bobby Lee."
"Ain't nobody axed me to work out no problem," she grumbled. Her dark eyes seemed to blaze yellow as she flashed a look at Aunt Minerva.
They took like sisters, Sue Robin reflected as she watched the significant looks pass between the two old ladies. One's white and one's black, but that's the only difference. She sometimes had the feeling that both of them were relics from Civil War days, so ancient they seemed, as if still living in another world. She knew that people around Maxwell feared Aunt Clarinda. The blacks called her a "root-worker" and a "conjure-woman"; the whites called her an old witch. But nobody gave her any trouble.
The comments at breakfast had impelled Sue Robin to drop in on Mary Beth and see if she could do something toward working out her twin brother's problem.
"Would you like some coffee, Sue Robin?" The brunette looked at her, and Sue Robin detected signs of strain in her smooth features.
"I'd like that, Mary Beth. Say, that's a sexy pair of shorts you're wearing."
Mary Beth's eyes flashed and a coquettish smile dimpled her cheeks. As she left the room to go for the coffee, her buttocks swayed enticingly.
I don't believe it, Sue Robin told herself. She had known Mary Beth since the beginning of high school days when the gorgeous brunette had first moved to town. When Sue Robin's long rangy body was just developing a woman's curves, Mary Beth was already a lush, fully developed woman, a teenage Venus. And that flirty manner, designed to turn a man on, any man! Hell, thought the blonde, it's a programmed reflex. She does it as automatically as I blink my eyes. Then how can she be frigid? Take it slow, baby, she warned herself. Buz's happiness is at stake. Don't blow it.
"I had to take off my bra," Mary Beth said when she finally came back with a tray bearing two cups of coffee. "It's too tight." Her melon boobs thrust hugely against the knit tennis shirt she was wearing, swaying rhythmically as she walked across the room to her sister-in-law.
"You've really got a pair," Sue Robin said taking one of the coffee cups. With no trace of self-consciousness, she placed her free hand beneath one of her own beautifully contoured tits and hefted it gently.
Mary Beth frowned slightly, but the compliment overcame her inhibitions. "I've always had these big things," she said, half-complaining, but half-proudly.
Sue Robin sipped her coffee and candidly scrutinized the other, taking in more closely the voluptuously curved hips and the full round thighs, lightly tanned against the white of her brief shorts. Was that sensual look on her face a mask? An accident? Surely the girl knew she had it. It even gave Sue Robin a thrill, and girls had never been her thing, not even at slumber parties.
"How's my big brother treating you, Mary Beth?"
The look of strain was evident for a moment, but the brunettes quickly forced a bright smile. Her eyes flashed suggestively as she said, "Couldn't be better."
"He's a healthy one, all right," Sue Robin said. "But I reckon you're a match for him." She laughed intimately as if they were sharing women's secrets.
"Yeah." Mary Beth's laugh was dry. "I just wish men had something else on their minds."
Now that that's in the open, maybe we can get somewhere, Sue Robin thought. Putting her cup down on the coffee table, she turned an innocent expression toward her sister-in-law. "Why, they do, honey. They do. They have jobs; they work hard, and they're involved in politics and all that stuff. And they like sports. But they're human beings. They like sex. It's only natural. We all do."
"Boys and men have always pestered me, just for one thing."
Sue Robin laughed easily. "No wonder. You're lucky enough to have a beautiful sexy body, and a face to match it. Think of all the women that're eating their hearts out, just wishing they had half of what you've got. Enjoy it, honey."
Unconvinced, Mary Beth gave a little shudder of distaste. Suddenly she groaned and gripped her shoulder.
"What's the matter?" Sue Robin got up and went to her.
"It's this cramp in my shoulder. It's just started recently."
No wonder, Sue Robin thought. You're tensed up, baby, fighting your nature.
"Let me massage it," she said, leaning over the seated woman. "I was a nurse's aide, remember?" She ran her fingers lightly along the other's shoulder. "Here. Lie down on the couch on your tummy. I can relax that."
Obediently Mary Beth stretched out on the long couch, face down, and Sue Robin sat on the edge.
"Just relax now," she crooned, and began to massage her sister-in-law's neck, then downward, pressing outward from her spine across her shoulderblades. She felt the tautness in the muscles around Mary Beth's neck. Baby, you're really strung out, she thought. With skilled hands she kept rubbing the woman's back and neck, gradually digging her fingers deeper into the smooth flesh.
"Ah, that feels better already," Mary Beth sighed.
Sue Robin laughed. "It's better when a man does it for you. In training, we had to practice on each other, and some of the interns used to show us how. They really got a charge out of it."
"They would," Mary Beth sniffed, but she didn't sound so convinced now.
"Let me slip this shirt off," Sue Robin said casually. "It's in the way."
Obligingly the brunette raised up enough for the other to strip the knit shirt over her head. Like her legs, her back was tanned from swimming and loafing on the beach, all except a white strip where her bikini strap crossed it.
Sue Robin increased the scope of her massaging hands, from the nape of the neck down to the waistband of the shorts, and farther to the sides until her fingers stroked the curve of Mary Beth's partly flattened boobs.
"I never felt anything so good in my life," she moaned contentedly. "You're a real expert, honey."
Sue Robin smiled, and dug a little deeper into the small of her back.
"Ah! There! There! That's the worst place of all."
"That's right," Sue Robin agreed. "Those low-back nerves get all knotted up. Let's slip these shorts off, Mary Beth, so I can really work on your back."
Half-hypnotized by the comforting massage, the brunette allowed Sue Robin to reach under her tummy and unsnap her shorts. In a moment they were stripped down over her feet and dropped on the carpet.
With the heel of her hand, Sue Robin worked at the very base of Mary Beth's spine, and the woman groaned with pleasure. "Wonderful," she sighed. "Absolutely wonderful."
Sue Robin stared at the burnt-orange bikini panties, so transparent she could see right through them to the long narrow valley where the two exciting rounded cheeks came together. She felt a flush of heat rising with herself as her eyes roved over the luxuriant body virtually naked, stretched out beneath her hands. Though Mary Beth was considerably shorter than she was, her hips were as wide and as richly curved, matching her opulent boobs.
"Might as well get your legs too," she said with studied indifference. Shifting her seat farther along the edge of the couch, she began kneading the back of Mary Beth's thighs. The brunette's groans of pleasure now became a constant purring of delight as the probing fingers and caressing palms roamed up and down her legs from her knees to the very juncture of her thighs.
What a waste, Sue Robin thought. All this gorgeous body and nothing happens in it. She slid her fingers higher inside the thighs, stroking more lightly as the flesh became more satiny, more humid, the closer she worked toward Mary Beth's cunt. Through the transparent panties she could see the bottom of the curly cluster of dark-brown hair.