Angel From Montgomery Pt. 02

I sort of forgot about him until a week or so later when he called out of the blue. He said he was in Conroe and asked if I'd like to have dinner with him. I said yes, so we went to the best steak house in town, and that was the beginning of our relationship.

He never said until long after the fact, that the only reason he'd come to Conroe that Saturday was to call me for a date. I guess he was pretty sure of himself, because he just shrugged his shoulders and chuckled when I asked him what he'd have done if I'd said no.

"You didn't, did you?" he said.

Unlike Clint, it took a long time for me to fall in love with Jim. I mean, he was funny and fun to be around, but I just didn't sense the spark in my heart that I thought I should feel.

There were a few times when I almost broke off the relationship, because I just wasn't sure of my feelings, and he was going so slow.

Don't get me wrong, I liked him, and he was certainly handsome enough to draw any woman's attention.

He wasn't particularly tall, but he was powerfully built, with broad shoulders and sturdy legs. And he was very good-looking, with ruddy features and thick red hair that he wore in a style a lot like President Kennedy, kind of bushy and brushed back off his forehead.

Jim had a couple of things going for him, though.

For one, he knew about Angel from the get-go, knew about my situation as a single mother and it didn't drive him away. On the contrary, he and Angel quickly became fast friends, and she often tagged along on a lot of our dates.

For another, he had Flo working for him. I had come to love Flo immensely. By turns she was the mother I'd lost and the big sister I'd never had. A lot of what I've made of myself in this world I owe to her. So when she told me I needed to jump on Jim Wilson, it had an effect on me.

But what really started turning me around was the first time we made love, early on New Year's Day in a plush hotel room in Austin.

Jim invited me to be his date at a stylish New Year's Eve party there in Austin. It was an eye-opening experience to say the least.

I found out that Jim Wilson worked at the ranch where he did because he wanted to, not because he had to. I met his family at this party and they couldn't have been more different from the Rouses.

His folks were big-time cattle ranchers, but they could not have been nicer. They owned a large spread near La Grange, but Jim had gone to work for a neighbor who was getting on up in years, both to help him out and get some experience running a ranch.

For a girl who'd grown up in a working-class environment, and who'd seen some hard times in her life, the whole night was a revelation, beginning with our arrival at the hotel, the Driskill, right downtown.

It was like some European castle, elegant and majestic, and as we walked through the lobby and saw Jim greeting and introducing me to friends who looked like royalty -- albeit of the Texas variety -- I felt real insignificant.

Fortunately, his family and friends went out of their way to put me at ease. They acted quite impressed when I told them I was a veterinary assistant, although at the time I wondered if they were just being polite.

Later on, I would learn that in cattle country anyone associated with veterinary medicine is held in high esteem, including the assistants.

Of course, being that I was originally from Louisiana and with a last name like Barrilioux, I got a fair bit of teasing about football, since Texas was going to be playing LSU the next day in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

I have to say I gave as good as I got in that exchange, especially the next day when Daddy's beloved Tigers whipped the Longhorns 13-0.

As the night progressed, I danced with Jim and he held me quite close. I was about to learn something about men that night, that you shouldn't give up on a man with a slow hand.

I still wasn't sure about my feelings for him -- my heart didn't just go pitter-patter every time I saw him, the way it did with Clint -- but I did want him. I'd gone without loving for almost a year, and I needed it.

Besides, I was 25-years-old and I could sense time starting to slip away from me. I didn't know if I could afford to wait around for the bells and whistles to go off the way they did with Clint.

As midnight approached, we drank a champagne toast, and afterward, we made a graceful exit up to our room.

Now, in some quarters at the time, the idea of two unmarried people sharing a hotel room would have been thought of as sinful. But we were right on the cusp of the sexual revolution, and in a sophisticated setting like we were in, it was well within accepted practice.

I was feeling just right as the door closed on the room. I'd paced myself the way I always did at a party and I was feeling good, but very much in control. I've always had a very low opinion of people who can't handle liquor, especially those who drive when they're drunk.

Jim sat back in the plush chair sipping a soda just watching me as I swayed in front of him in a provocative way.

I settled onto the carpet between his legs and ran my hands over his tuxedo-clad body, and I could see the sparkle in his eyes as my hands found his bulging crotch.

"Keep that up, and I may not let you leave," he said in a voice husky with lust.

"Why, sir, I believe you brought me up here to do just that," I purred as I slowly unbuttoned his shirt, raking my fingers over his stiff little nipples.

"God, Rosalie, I've wanted you so bad, for so long, ever since that first day," he whispered as he pulled me up into his embrace and crushed my lips to his.

We kissed with a fearsome passion, as our tongues wrestled together. I frantically pulled his shirt off, and he reached back and fumbled with the zipper to my dress.

When he had it open, I stood up and let it shimmy off my body. My slip quickly followed, then my hose, my bra and panties. I stood in front of Jim panting in my desire, naked to his gaze.

"Like what you see, cowboy?" I said softly. He just stared at my full breasts, which sat high and proud on my chest, my flat belly and the dark curly patch between my legs that hid my dripping sex.

"You are so very, very beautiful," Jim said.

He stood up then and casually stripped naked, revealing a very nice-looking cock that was already standing at full roar. We stood together in that dimly-lit hotel room, our naked bodies together for the first time, and I could feel the tension in his body as we kissed.

His hands softly stroked my body, sending sensations of delight all through my body. And I was responding in kind, feeling his muscular body, the taut butt and the flat stomach, the hard flesh jutting from between his legs, eagerly seeking release.

I knew what I had to do, what I wanted to do.

I turned him around and softly pushed him onto his back. I hovered over him and licked each of his nipples, while softly and slowly stroking his cock. But I didn't tease him, moving quickly into position between his legs.

I ran my nose softly up the underside of his dick, inhaling the essence of his arousal. I wanted to taste him, and I didn't waste much time. I slashed my tongue up the shaft of his cock, licking him up like an ice cream cone.

As I came up to the crown, I opened my ruby-red lips and sucked him in, slowly, lovingly. Jim's wasn't the biggest cock I'd ever taken, nor was he the smallest. Truthfully, he was just about perfectly-sized for sucking, and I've enjoyed sucking his cock ever since.

I watched Jim's face as I bobbed up and down on his churning meat, and the look he had was one of rapture. His eyes were closed and he had a beatific smile on his face.

"Joyce never liked to do this," he whispered, almost to himself, referring to his ex-wife.

Her loss, I thought. Personally, I could never imagine not doing anything and everything to please a man you purported to love. Hell, I was willing to do just about anything with men I didn't necessarily love. To me, it was all part of the give-and-take of pleasure in sex.

That, by the way, was something I learned from Clint. Maybe that was why the women all went crazy over him. They understood that he would give everything he had when he was with a woman -- any woman.

My mind was soaring in mounting lust, just from hearing Jim's words, and the passionate inflection in which they were delivered. As I worked, I could feel his hips thrusting harder, more urgently. He wasn't demanding in his urgency, but I could tell he was getting close.

I swirled my tongue around his shaft as I pumped the base of his cock with my fist, feeding as much of his hard throbbing flesh into my mouth as I could take. As I worked him, I slid my free right hand under my body and found my bloated clit.

The moment I did, I felt my body start to take off on an arc of lust in rhythm to Jim's powerful thrusts.

Up and down, up and down, I could hear the sloppy wet sounds of my mouth on his dick, and the soft moans from Jim's throat, the equally squishy sounds of my clit being strummed like a maestro by my fingers..

Suddenly, there was a quickening of the sounds, a sort of panting noise, then I felt his cock swell, and at that moment I plunged every bit of his cock into my throat and swallowed hard as his cock erupted like a volcano.

I milked his cock with my lips and drank his spurting seed with my throat, feeling the warm tangy sauce flow straight into my stomach.

As I tasted Jim's cum, I felt my body go rigid seconds before I shivered in a powerful climax, like I hadn't had in quite a long time. I swallowed every drop, smacking my lips with an exaggerated sound to emphasize my pleasure.

I crawled up his body and we just cuddled together, our hands softly caressing each other, and soon I could feel his arousal start to climb again, just about the time I could feel his fingers delving into my boiling puss.

Yeah, I used those words, too. I'm always amused by the succeeding generations that think they invented sex and coined the code words for the sex organs.

I've pointed out to my children and now my grandchildren the obvious: How in the hell do they think they got here in the first place? We fucked, just like they fucked, and just like every generation has done and will do as long as humans exist on this earth.

Anyway, Jim's touch on my clit and around my ...vagina ... was heavenly, and we kissed slowly, with the smoldering passion of two lovers who have been working slowly up to that point in our lives where it starts to catch fire.

I slowly stroked his cock until he slowly rolled me onto my back. I opened my legs in an unspoken invitation, telling him with my body language to come on in and love me.

And, boy did he.

He climbed effortlessly onto his knees and slid his cock right up me, no muss, no fuss. There was nothing overly dramatic about it, not like it had been that first time with Clint. But the feelings were there, nonetheless.

Jim worked his cock in a slow rhythm, but fast enough and hard enough to stoke our respective fires. Up and up, Jim fucked me, not as a sex object, but as a lover. And I was responding in every way, my body shivering in delight as he worked his cock in and out, and around and around.

Because we'd both already had one climax, we could take our time, and we talked, telling each other what felt good and what we liked. Jim was from the very first a very considerate lover, and he has spent his life trying to please me.

After awhile, I could feel his pace change. His motions got harder, more intense, and the sounds he was making were more earthy, less intelligible. I was climbing higher on the express train to climax also, but I was afraid I might not get there before Jim was done.

I guess he sensed something, because as he began to fuck me harder, he raised himself up, stared at me with a sparkle in his eyes and reached down to strum my clit with his fingers. He rolled it around in time to his thrusts, and I reached up and grabbed his shoulders to give myself some leverage.

We were getting close and I could feel the sensations welling up through my body, until just about the time I reached a peak, Jim took both of his hands, grabbed my waist, gave me about a half-dozen really extra-hard thrusts and exploded deep in me.

Seconds later, my body shuddered with a full-body orgasm, and as he released his cum, he fell on me and we clutched at each other, kissing deeply while the feelings carried us away.

Later, after we had come back down to earth, we talked, really talked for the first time about what we each wanted out of our lives.

Before, we'd always kept our conversations light, I guess because we were unsure about where we were going with our relationship. I was learning that behind the witty, upbeat jokester was a man who had some insecurities about life.

His divorce had taken a lot of his self-confidence, and developing a relationship with me was restoring some of that.

He knew he wanted to own a ranch, but didn't want to go into debt to do it, and he wanted to do it on his own. Like I said, his folks were super-nice people, but they tended to hover over him just a bit, and he wanted to be his own man.

But, and this was the crucial part, he couldn't do it alone. He needed someone beside him to bolster him, to plan with, to help him fulfill his dreams.

He needed me.

And, it just so happened, his dream fit into what I saw myself doing, working with animals for a living.

That early morning pillow talk was where Jim and I first formed our partnership, and in the coming weeks it solidified, until the night when he proposed to me and I accepted.

I had found that even though I hadn't necessarily fallen "in love" with Jim at the outset, I discovered that respect and friendship can grow into love. It never had the bells and whistles that my first love with Clint had, but in many ways it was better, because it was deeper.

Because for all the passion and love I'd felt for Clint, there was always a little part of me that didn't quite trust him, didn't quite respect him, certainly not the way I have with Jim.

Once Jim and I committed our lives to each other, that was it. Neither one of us ever entertained the first notion of being with anyone else.

Of course, the year was filled with psychodramas. Daddy was hanging on, I think waiting for our wedding, which we had scheduled for the Saturday before Thanksgiving. Well, we all remember what happened the day before in Dallas.

We seriously considered postponing the wedding out of respect for the president, but we decided there wasn't anything we could do about it, so it went off as planned. Still, it wasn't a real festive occasion.

We were in Jim's car the morning after the wedding, driving down to Padre Island for our honeymoon and missed the furor over Oswald's shooting. I will say this: after everything that went on that weekend, Jim and I needed a few days of solitude on the beach.

It became something of a joke in our family -- well, not a joke exactly, but more along the lines of black comedy -- that something like that could only happen to us.

Daddy went into the hospital for the last time not long after we got back from our honeymoon and died the day after Christmas.

All of that -- Daddy's death, the killing of the president in our home state and our new marriage -- meant that 1964 opened without as much of the hope and promise that the previous new year had brought for us.

Nevertheless, Jim and I -- and Angel -- quickly set about making our dreams come true. Jim found a cattle ranch over near Georgetown that was in receivership, and at the auction, he was by far the most aggressive bidder, getting the acreage for far less than he would have on the open market.

The first time he took me out to the spring pond was when I fell in love with it. He took an extra blanket out there and we went skinny-dipping.

Then we made love right there under the warm spring sun, with the gentle breeze caressing our bodies, and I believe that's where our first son was conceived.

It took a lot of work to get the house and the barn back into shape. The people who'd had it before had grown old out there, but had stubbornly refused to sell and they'd gone bankrupt when they couldn't pay their bills.

It was sad, really, and made us both determined that we had people to pass it on to. If not our children, then others that we trusted.

Fortunately, all of our children, especially Angel, took to the life of ranching with a passion, and we sent both of our sons to Texas A&M to learn the agricultural business. Jim feigned distaste over that decision -- he was and always would be a UT man -- but I know he was really proud when both John and Neil graduated from A&M with honors.

We also had another daughter before I decided that we had enough babies in the house. Between the kids and the Chavez family -- Raul's people -- that had been working there when we bought it, it became a very successful operation, as it is to this day.

In fact, Raul is now a shareholder in the corporation that we formed to streamline the operation of the ranch. He built a very nice house on a couple of acres that we gave him for a wedding gift.

Flo stayed in Conroe and ran a flourishing business with horse lessons, raising my brother and sister, and doing so quite well. Mikey is now an architect in Chicago and Cherie is a teacher over in Spring.

Flo eventually sold the business and moved out to the ranch with us, although for a long time she spent more time traveling with her girlfriends than she spent at the house with us. She lived to see the new century and passed away quietly in her sleep at the age of 94.

As for Clint, I saw him once a couple of years after Jim and I got married. He called me and said he was competing in a rodeo there in Georgetown and he wanted to see Angel.

I had contacted him again, because Jim wanted to adopt Angel and we needed the birth father's consent. Seeing Angel just once was the only condition he placed on signing away his parental rights.

We agreed that he would be introduced as simply an old friend of mine, but I think Angel knew what was up, although she never said anything about it until several years later. I mean, it was obvious to anyone who saw them together that she was his daughter. She looked just like him.

Seeing Clint again was weird. I did have a few butterflies and there was still the echo of those bells and whistles I've talked about. And, too, there was just the slightest hint of tension between Jim and Clint that couldn't be denied.

But Clint was a gentleman and didn't overstay his visit. He was there and gone in a couple of hours, and he left the signed consent form that allowed Jim to legally become what he'd already been for quite awhile -- Angel's daddy.

Sadly, it was about a year later that I read where he'd been seriously injured in a rodeo accident. He'd taken to riding bulls, one threw him and he fell wrong, breaking his neck. He lived for about a year after that then died of what I'm pretty sure was a self-inflicted overdose of pain pills.

^ ^ ^ ^

"So you see, Shannon, sweet," I said as we got up off the rock and got ready to head back to the house. I could see some summer thunderheads building off in the distance and I didn't want us to get caught in the open if it stormed.

"You will always have your first love, and, yes, Jason will be your first love. You can't change that. But it's not the end of the world. I always treasure my time with Clint, but he wasn't the man for me. Your Poppy, he was the man I was destined to be with, and I've nurtured his love over the years and we've been very happy together. You'll find the man you're destined to be with, I'm sure. You've got too much to offer for there not to be plenty of young men out there who will be happy to take Jason's place. And it will be his loss."