Fred Ward - Kiss it, sis

"I be dawged if I ever thought I'd see a son of mine cryin' cryin' at his own wedding!"

The big man with the Deep South accent was talking to no one in particular, and nobody in particular paid much attention to his complaint. The guests were too busy refilling their plates from the piled-high dishes on the trestle table in the shade of the huge live oak tree.

"Fill it again, Josh!" The big man held his half-empty glass toward an old black man who walked among the guests, lugging a gallon jug. "Bawlin' like a baby!"

The shriveled-up old lady seated in a lawn chair looked at the shapely blonde sitting next to her.

"He! He! He! Ty sure is taking on about Bobby Lee, ain't he?"

"He sure is, Aunt Minerva. Wonder why?" She brushed a long strand of yellow-gold hair back from her face and forked a bite of barbecued pork from her plate. What Sue Robin Forsythe was actually wondering was, what had gone wrong? Her big handsome twin brother had just got himself married to the prettiest girl in town, but instead of grinning all over like a tomcat on the prowl, he had wiped away tears twice during the ceremony. Like her father had said.

She knew her brother like few sisters know their brothers; Buz didn't cry easy. In fact, she could only remember once that he'd cried. That was when they were eleven or twelve years old, and his collie got hit by a truck. Buz had taken his father's shotgun and finished off the suffering creature. Then, while the two of them were digging a grave for the dog, Buz had begun sobbing.

"Well, I guess we won't know for a few days. The honeymooners are honeymooning off somewhere by now. He! He! Sue Robin, would you tell Josh to fix me a mint julep? I can't drink that white lightning straight like your pa."

It was long after dark before the last of the wedding guests left the spacious grounds of Tyrus Forsythe's estate. Sue Robin went upstairs to her room, eager to get out of the flouncy frock and other semiformal clothes she had worn since the midday wedding ceremony. Blue jeans or cut-off shorts were more her style.

Kicking her bedroom door shut behind her, she reached behind her back and quickly unzipped the frock. In a moment it dropped to her feet and she stepped out of it. The half-slip dropped next. She walked over and stood before the wall mirror that reached from the floor to well above her head.

"Not bad," she murmured, smiling with honest pleasure at the supple grace of her firmly molded body. Reaching back, she unsnapped her bra and let it fall, watching in the mirror as her breasts remained standing with hardly a quiver, as solid as barely ripe cantaloupes. One thing Sue Robin couldn't stand, and that was women who let themselves get flabby, especially young women.

Through her sheer pantyhose she saw the hair-shadowed contour of her cunt. Impatiently she kicked off her pumps, then peeled off the pantyhose. Standing naked before the mirror, she was still a tall girl, even without her pumps.

"Five feet, eight inches," she mused aloud as she moved through some stylized postures remembered from her ballet lessons as a young girl. Straight as a cane fishing pole, Sue Robin had never suffered from the self-consciousness of many tall girls, because her twin brother had always been a few inches taller than she. When she walked beside his six-foot-one athletic frame, she walked proudly erect.

She brushed her sun-bleached hair back over her shoulders with both hands, and the gesture threw her high-arched breasts even higher. Smiling, she cupped her hands beneath them and squeezed gently. They felt humid to her palms, reminding her that she wanted to step into a cool shower.

Before she reached the door of her bathroom, the phone rang. Without bothering to slip on a wrap of any kind, she darted across to her bedside table and picked up the receiver.

"Sis?" came through the wire.

"Buz! Where are you? What are you doing? Or shouldn't I ask?"

Instead of a lascivious chuckle greeting her pointed question, her brother's voice sounded as if be had just lost his best friend.

"We're over at Sasser's Cove, Sis. Mary Beth is in the hotel room with a headache and I'm in the bar. Can you come over?"

Nearly twenty miles, Sue Robin thought quickly. If she took the coast road and the traffic was light, she could be there in less than half an hour. "Okay, Buz. Don't get soused. I'll be right there."

Jerking open the bottom drawer of the old-fashioned chiffonier near the bathroom door, she pulled out a pair of chopped-off jeans and pulled them on without bothering to put on panties. From the closet she took down a shirt and slipped it on.

"No bare feet in the bar at Sasser's Cove Hotel," she reminded herself, and got a pair of sandals from the closet. Then she hurried down the stairs and out to the side driveway where her MG was parked.

From a downstairs bedroom window Aunt Minerva peeked out at the little sports car as it roared down the long winding driveway to the highway.

"He! He! He!" laughed the wizened old lady. At nearly eighty, her eyes were still sharp enough that she didn't need to wear glasses. Good eyesight was one of the chief pleasures Aunt Minerva still enjoyed.

Sue Robin's pleasures were more physical, like the sheer delight of feeling her long hair streaming out behind her as she sped along the narrow coastal road. A half-moon flashed obliquely against the sea, and the smell of the salt air was stimulating. With one hand on the wheel, she caressed her bare thigh with the other. Sue had no hang ups about the sensual enjoyment of her own body.

Only right now her enjoyment was diluted by concern for Buz. Something was wrong, bad wrong. She had felt it at the wedding when she saw the tears on his cheeks. Well, a few more minutes and she'd know what was what.

The tall, broad-shouldered young man was alone at one end of the bar. The bartender's eyes narrowed as he looked up and down the curvy blonde who had just walked in wearing a pair of extremely short shorts and a partly buttoned shirt, the ends tied in a knot across her bare midriff.

"I've got my sandals on, Mike," Sue Robin laughed, poising effortlessly on one leg while she raised the other leg waist-high and extended it toward the bartender.

"I oughta change that sign to read, 'decent clothes required'," Mike growled, but the gleam in his eyes was more than disapproval.

Hard shell hypocrite, she thought contemptuously. You've got a hard-on in both eyes. But her smile was sweetly innocent.

"Sis!" Bobby Lee Forsythe had turned around on his stool. "Put it on my tab, Mike," he said over his shoulder to the bartender, and hurried to his twin. "Come on outside. I've gotta talk to you."

"What's the problem, Buz?"

"Let's get away from here. I'll tell you."

"Do you want to go in my car?"

"No, we'll take mine."

She followed him around to the parking slots in front of the seacoast hotel. Not many customers, she thought, noting how few the cars were. She saw Bobby Lee's Capri at once.

They didn't talk while Bobby Lee drove away from the hotel, on down the coastal highway to a large cleared area against the beach. He drove in and parked.

"Wow!" Sue Robin exclaimed. "After Labor Day, this place goes dead."

"Yeah," Bobby Lee grunted. "Let's walk on the beach."

They left their shoes in the car and walked barefoot down to the water's edge, then paced slowly along the deserted beach. The half-moon cast their shadows feebly ahead of them. Sue Robin slipped her arm about her brother's waist and his arm went about her shoulders.

"Well?" she said after a while.

"It's short and not so sweet, Sis. She's frigid."

"What!" Sue Robin stopped dead in her tracks. "Mary Beth! Frigid?"

"Ya all."