Bed of Rose's: Jack_Straw

She looked up at me with a devilish smile then opened her mouth and slid the head between her lips. I groaned as she took half of my length in one smooth motion then began to slowly -- very, very slowly -- worked her mouth back up then back down again.

My God, was it ever good. I'd gotten blowjobs before, but those girls were rank amateurs compared to Rose. She knew just how much pressure to put on my cock to extract maximum pleasure, she knew just when I was about to lose control and she knew just how to stem the tide of cum with a squeeze of her hand.

Twice, three times, four times, she did that until I was writhing on the bed in ecstasy, yearning for release.

"God, please Rose," I gasped. "I need to come. It's so, so good."

"Then you're ready," she whispered.

She got up on her knees, reached down and pulled off her negligee and tossed it aside. I drank in the visage of Rose's naked body, with the light sheen of sweat already covering her body from the warmth of the room and the heat of her arousal.

Holding my cock at the base so that it was aiming high toward the ceiling, she straddled my hips, aimed the head of my dick to her pink hole and slowly impaled herself on me.

I have no words that can describe the feeling of Rose's sugary walls as they enveloped my cock. She was hot, wet and surprisingly tight. When she had me in her cunt to the fullest, she just held me there and told me to take a deep breath, to get my control so she could fuck me properly.

When she was satisfied that I wasn't going to blow my load at the first insertion, she started with a slow, sinuous up-and-down motion, rhythmically rocking up and down on my throbbing cock. Her hands fanned her long dark hair as she swayed to the music of our lust.

As much as I wanted to take in every little sight and sound of our coupling, I had to clench my eyes shut to hold back my orgasm as long as possible. And Rose was patient; she knew just when to go fast and when to go slow.

Truly, it felt like we could have fucked forever, but it was really only a few minutes before our motions were becoming harder, faster, jerkier as the passion overwhelmed us. Rose's breathing was getting ragged as she worked herself up and down.

Just about the time I felt like I was one or two strokes away from coming, I took control. I don't remember doing it consciously, but I wrapped my arms around Rose's smaller body and deftly rolled her onto her back.

My twitching, pulsing cock slipped out of her sheath for just a moment, and for just that moment I knelt there between her legs and gazed in wonder. Her eyes were soft and dewy with incipient climax, her breasts were heaving, and her legs with spread wide in eager invitation, her wet pussy actually trembling.

I was ready. I gathered Rose in my arms and my cock knew where to go. I sank myself into her all the way in one screaming thrust and we both went wild. We thrashed on that bed as I ripped my cock back and forth for a full two or three minutes as the orgasmic sensations consumed us.

I think I gasped and cried out as I felt the electric crackle of my cum as it exploded from my scrotum and out the end of my cock, basting Rose's womb with all the pent-up passion I'd had stored back for months.

We clutched at each other as the lust carried us away, and we laughed insanely as we kissed frantically.

Finally, the feelings passed, and I slumped onto her sweat-covered body, then rolled onto my side. We just held each other in the juicy afterglow of our lovemaking. I had never felt more secure in my life.

"Merry Christmas, Jack Straw," Rose whispered.

"Merry Christmas, Ramblin' Rose," I answered back, and we laughed again.

We rested some, then we did it again, slower but with no less passion than before, and when we finished, we fell asleep in each other's arms.

By the time Christmas morning dawned, I knew I had passed a major threshold in my life. When I had entered Rose's bed the night before, I was still a child in many ways. After that night, however, I knew I was a man.

We tried not to let on to our friends who came by to celebrate the holiday that we'd become intimate, but I think they sensed it. But they had too much respect for Rose, and I guessed they liked me well enough that nobody said anything.

Later that night, after we'd got to bed and made love again, I looked over at Rose and I told her what I was feeling.

"I wish you didn't have to go out with those other men," I said. "I wish you didn't have to work the night and let them use you like you do."

"Jack, my love, it's what I have to do," Rose said wistfully. "I wish there was some other way, but that's the course my life has taken. It's what I am. I believe I was put on this earth to please men that way, and, I think, being a whore is my penance for the sins I committed earlier in my life, sins that cost me... cost me my child."

Then she just buried her face in my chest and wept bitterly. She would never forgive herself for the way she put her daughter in harm's way.

"I love you, Rose," I whispered. "And I always will."

She looked at me then, her eyes glistening with her tears, and she imparted some wisdom.

"I know you do, and I love you too," she said. "But, long-term, I'm not the woman for you. I'm not your life partner. Someday, you'll meet someone special, someone closer to your own age, and you will love her with the same heart you have for me. All I can do is prepare you, teach you what you need to know, and when the time comes, let you go. You'll know when it's time."

At that moment, I couldn't believe it would happen that way, but it did.

Early the next year, I took the GED, got my high school diploma and enrolled at the nearby junior college with an interest in business administration.

I continued to stay in my little apartment in Tupelo and work for Joe at the motel. Rose still worked nights, which, by this time, had evolved more as a call-girl operation that simply walking the streets. But she was still whoring, and it took a lot of understanding for me to accept it.

We still got together on Sundays, and sometimes we made love. She could always tell without my saying so when I needed it.

And there were times when she needed me, as well. That was especially the case in July 1980, when her mother passed away. Rose took it hard, and I spent a lot of time comforting her.

I think that was an important time, because it signaled that I had matured to the point where I no longer felt sorry for myself for the tragedy that had engulfed me back in Kansas.

Unlike my abortive high school career, I took to school at Itawamba like a duck to water. I guess because I was paying for it (with help from Rose), I took it seriously. I made almost all A's, and that, along with my test scores, earned me enough in scholarship money that I could go on to college on my own.

By going to summer school and loading up on the hours, I finished junior college in a year and a half, and in January 1982, I moved to Starkville and enrolled at Mississippi State. I got a job at the college through work-study and plunged into university life.

I hadn't been there long when Rose called me and asked me to come see her that weekend, that she had something important to tell me.

I got to her house on a Friday afternoon, and I was appalled by her appearance. She'd lost weight and she looked exhausted. In a flash, I remembered that she'd seemed fatigued that Christmas. Somehow, I knew, but that didn't make it any easier to accept when she sat me down and gave me the bad news.

"Jack, I have leukemia," she said. "They're only giving me about six months. I'm so sorry."

I wanted to scream and curse God for once again taking away someone I loved. She knew it, and held up her hand to stop me.

"Really, it's all right," she said. "It's nobody's fault, least of all God's. You're not the same scared kid you were when your family died. You're a man now, and I expect you to act like one. Cry if you must, but don't be bitter. I'm more ready for this than you know. I'm looking forward to seeing my little girl again, and Mother. All I ask of you is that you make me proud. Help those in need, the way I helped you. Do it in my memory."

And that was it. Oh, I saw her pretty regularly as her health declined, and I did my best to buoy her spirits through the difficult days.

In the end, she didn't make it six months. Rose died in mid-May, not long after I finished my first semester at State. She'd just turned 40.

In spite of my promise to be a man at her death, I was still pretty inconsolable. I was standing over her casket at the wake, crying my eyes out when I sensed a presence next to me and I felt soft arms encircling my waist.

I looked over and was pleasantly surprised to see Kathleen Murphy standing there just holding me. We had been friendly over the years, as she would sometimes spend time at the motel helping out her dad, but I hadn't seen her in over a year, and she'd blossomed into a real beauty.

She was 17 now, and had soft red hair, lightly freckled skin and emerald green eyes that seemed to dance. She had also filled out quite a bit. She had grown to a couple of inches under six feet, but she had enough meat on her bones to make for some most enticing curves.

"I know how much you loved her, Jack," Kathleen said quietly. "But she's gone now. Please know that I'll be there for you if you need someone."

I looked over at her and smiled, and she smiled back.

Later, after the service, when everyone had gone back to Rose's place for lunch, she and I talked, really for the first time and I learned just what a smart, charming young woman she'd become.

She surprised me by saying that she was moving to Tupelo for her senior year of high school. There were two main reasons, she said. One was that she and her mother weren't getting along, and the second was that she was fed up with her high school.

Since her parents' divorce, Kathleen had been living in Jackson and attending a private academy, and she had grown tired of the ultra-preppy atmosphere there. She wanted to go to a real high school, she said, one with some diversity, something Tupelo High offered.

Kathleen moved in with her dad, went to work at the motel and set about getting her college future planned.

I soon found out there was a third reason why she wanted to move back to Tupelo. Seems she'd had a crush on me since the first time we'd met, that first Christmas at Rose's, and she wanted to be closer to me in hopes that I might reciprocate her feelings.

Smart girl. We started dating, and the friendship we'd always had quickly blossomed.

After graduating from high school, Kathleen enrolled at Ole Miss, where she studied a pre-med curriculum. At first, she wanted to be a doctor, but soon she changed her mind and decided to become a pharmacist.

We waited until after I finished at State, then in June 1984, we were married. I took a job as a salesman in Oxford while Kathleen finished college. We rented a small house, an old Tudor-style house right on the main drag that heads south from the courthouse square, and set about making a life for ourselves.

Kathleen earned her pharmacy license in December 1987, and we decided to move back to Tupelo.

Not long after Rose died, I was flabbergasted to learn that she had bequeathed her house to me, along with a trust fund worth about $10,000 that was to go for my college education. Since I had scholarship money paying for college and a job to pay the rent, I kept that money in the bank until I needed it.

I had rented out Rose's house while Kathleen and I were living in Oxford, but we moved back into the house when we returned. Kathleen got a job with a smallish, family-owned drug store and I found work as a salesman for a furniture store.

In 1990, Kathleen blessed me with a daughter, who we named Elizabeth Rose, then three years later we had our son, Jo Jo -- John Joseph, for his grandfathers.

At that point, we reluctantly moved out of Rose's old house and bought a larger home in a more suburban neighborhood. We still own the old house, however, and we rent it out to young families who are just starting out their lives together.

In 1998, the fellow Kathleen had been working for decided to retire, and offered to sell his drug store to us. I took the trust money Rose had left me, bought the store and we set ourselves up as a business.

And that's where we are today. Our little family-oriented pharmacy has a nice niche in the community, and it's been successful. I've also got some other real estate holdings, and we've become active in a church. In case you're wondering, it's not the First Baptist Church. We're Presbyterians.

I left my Jack Straw from Wichita persona behind when I started on the road to becoming a man, and I quickly found I didn't miss it. Rose had seen the real person that I was and could become, and I didn't need that disguise any longer.

^ ^ ^

"So you see, sweetheart," I said to Liz as I finished. "I learned to give to those in need, because you never know what that gift might produce. It's called paying it forward; taking the gift someone gives you and passing it on. That's the legacy your Aunt Rose left with me. I can't do anything but honor her memory by giving to those who need it."

"But Daddy, what if they just go buy drugs with the money you give them?" Liz asked.

"If they do, then so be it," I said. "A gift isn't worth giving unless it's unconditional. Once I give them whatever I can, then it's theirs to do with as they please. Maybe they'll buy drugs, maybe they're scamming, but maybe they are hungry and maybe they are cold and need shelter. God will know what the outcome is, whichever way it goes."

"I didn't know," Liz said as she burrowed into my side and I hugged her tight. "You are the best daddy I could have. I love you, Daddy."

"I love you too, sugar plum," I said.

I thought about what I'd revealed to my daughter, and how she had accepted it.

There was the fact that I was a rebellious dopehead when I was her age. There was the fact that I'd been hungry, homeless and pennyless. And, finally, there was the fact that the woman who saved my life was a prostitute.

Of course, I didn't give her the juicy details of what went on that wonderful Christmas Eve when I learned how a man loves a woman. She can probably figure out for herself what went on in that bed of Rose's.

My wife was upstairs getting ready to shower, and I decided to join her. We talked a little about Rose and how my story impacted our daughter. I think Liz learned a valuable lesson about the true meaning of Christmas, and the real spirit of giving.

And I think she understood the love I'd had for Rose, which transferred easily to the woman who became my wife.

Kathleen knows that Rose was the first love of my life, but she also knows that she's become my soul mate in ways that even Rose couldn't be. She's become my life partner, someone I couldn't live without. And, of course, she's been the grateful beneficiary of the lovemaking skills I learned from Rose.

Rose Madison truly made a man of me, in every sense of the word. I'm convinced that she saved my life, because I was close to the end of my endurance at the life I was leading at the time. It was in that bed of Rose's that I shook off the shackles of my childhood and became a responsible adult.

As I headed to the bathroom to join my wife in the shower, I looked upward with glistening eyes and I blew a kiss to heaven.

"Merry Christmas, Rose," I whispered.