Love Long Gone

"Iris..." he started to say, paused.

She darted in, cut him off with a palm over his mouth. "J.L. You're a good man, a nice man. I think I understand why you're so shy, but, please..."

She took a deep breath, dropped her eyes, as if summoning up her courage. After a second, she raised them to stare into his. "Please, might I be somebody you don't feel you have to be shy around?"

Her blue eyes seemed to J.L. to be growing in size, expanding to fill all his consciousness.

He went to reply, realized her hand was still on his mouth. Instead, he just nodded.

Surprised, she snatched her hand away. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean..."

"Let's see how it goes, Iris." His words were sombre, but he was smiling and her heart jumped a little at that.

Iris smiled back, looked at her watch. "The tide's coming in, J.L. Much as I would like to stay, I either leave now or I'll blow the assignment."

He nodded.

"May I come back, please? I'm asking this time." Iris said softly.

"Of course. Anytime."

She pulled him into another kiss. This time, her hands slid down from his waist to his behind. Encouraged, he allowed his own hands to roam up and down her back, lingering on her bum.

After a long, long time, she broke away, smiling.

"See you to your car, miss?" he asked.

She giggled, nodded and the two walked, hand in hand, back to the mainland. There was time for one last kiss before he had to turn around or be cut off from the island. The water was over his knees by the time he got ashore. When he turned around, Iris was gone.

+

She appeared next when J.L. was harvesting his year's crop of carrots.

This time, she got a welcoming kiss, one which had her tingling all the way down to her toes. She tried to return it in kind, but noticed the man's hands had not touched her.

When she pulled back to look, he gave an embarrassed grin and held up two very dirty hands.

"Sorry," he smiled. "That's a very pretty dress."

Iris had already made up her mind where this relationship was going, even if J.L. clearly hadn't.

"Well," she said. "That's thoughtful of you, but I could say 'go ahead anyway'.

"Or," she said solemnly, "I could use those shorts you loaned me originally, J.L.

"Or," she grinned, "I suppose I could just take it off." His eyebrows went up at her own audaciousness and he smiled back.

Iris was surprised at how disappointed she was to see him go back to the house, returning with shorts and t-shirt.

The two spent the day digging carrots.

"I'm sorry," he said as they were finishing. "Not much fun for you, Iris."

The girl smiled, wiped perspiration from either brow.

"It's OK, J.L." she smiled. "I'm enjoying myself, truly." She rolled her shoulders back, as if to relieve sore shoulders. As she did, her breasts rolled upwards against her t-shirt.

He suddenly had a vision of her breasts on the beach and felt both a little stiffening and a lot of longing.

Down, boy!  he thought to himself. 'Waaay too young for you.

"Well, I do appreciate your help, Iris," he replied. "It's a lot more pleasant with two."

"Most things are, J.L.," she smiled.

Again unannounced on her next visit except for a welcoming 'Woof!'  from the two dogs, Iris found him with a hoe in his garden.

Naked in the sun.

"Damn it, Iris!" he said to her back as she pointedly stared out to sea. "It's been really good to see you these times, but maybe you could call ahead or something?"

"You don't have a phone, J.L." she smiled.

"Well, I'm almost finished this row," he said, pointedly ignoring her logic. "You can admire that sailboat out there or something until I'm done and can get some clothes on."

Ten minutes later, he finished the weeding. He stood up to see Iris studying him.

"Iris!"

"The boat sailed out of sight," she giggled. "And you said I had to admire something until you were finished. A girl's got to take her chances when she can, J.L."

J.L. shrugged. It was her choice and he was not easily embarrassed. Without making a big deal of it, he simply turned, put the hoe over his shoulder and headed back to the house, Iris following. She admired the play of his muscles under his tanned skin as he walked. He seemed to her to be almost perfectly-coordinated, moving with a feline grace.

It was not often, she realized, that anybody these days got a chance to actually see how a body moves. She found herself regretting society's insistence on clothing.

While J.L. was hardly buff or chiseled, he led a fairly active life, using his muscles as they had been intended, with regular hard, physical work. The result would not have won any prizes among bodybuilders, but the young woman found herself both impressed and intrigued. To her surprise, for Iris was not normally much of a voyeur, she also found herself just a little turned on by the solidly masculine figure moving ahead of her. She had a flash, a momentary vision of herself being permitted to run her hands over that hard, lean body.

Blushing herself now, she tried to push that thought away.

"What time do you have to leave today?" he asked over his shoulder as they neared the building.

Iris knew he knew the tide tables.

"No deadlines, J.L. Not this time."

Half-turning, he smiled over his shoulder and the girl felt a heaviness in her loins. It lasted a long time after J.L. had emerged from his bedroom wearing jeans and a shirt.

The two spent their day in fairly routine activities -- routine for Townes Island, of course.

They walked the beaches. Autumn inevitably to be followed by winter, J.L. showed Iris how to split kindling; her results were added to the growing pile in his wood shed. Bonnie and Clyde each had their claws trimmed. Iris learned to use the camera system.

After some thought, J.L. had given Iris access to his video files from the trail cameras. She spent quite some time going through videos -- and, yes, the osprey nest was one of her favorites.

"I notice there's that one folder still locked," she observed impishly after a couple of hours exploring the take. "'Trespassers'."

"Nothing fit for an innocent young lady in there," he said, half-seriously.

"So that's where you keep your video of me on the beach?" she said, teasing.

J.L. looked solemnly at her, but his mind replayed that sequence, as it had many times.

"I deleted it, Iris."

Her eyes grew wide. "You mean, I..."

"Yes, you were. And yes, I deleted it. Hardly proper to keep it under the circumstances."

Iris wasn't sure how she felt about that. She blushed, then, summoning up her courage, asked the obvious question.

J.L. looked out to sea through a window.

"Of course I enjoyed it, Iris. I'm a pretty normal man; you're a very pretty young woman. But some things just aren't right."

Her blush fading, she kissed him on the cheek. "You're a gentleman, J.L."

"Naw. No hope for that, Iris."

"Well, J.L., I still think it's a gentlemanly thing for you to do. I just wish I could have seen it."

He grinned. "You could always try to recreate it for me. Less twisting an ankle and losing your clothes, of course."

The girl blushed scarlet now, but J.L. could see the interest in her eyes.

"So who else is still on file, J.L.?"

He thought for a moment, entered a quick password to open the folder. "Feel free, Iris." He left the room; when he returned with two cups of tea, Iris was avidly exploring the file.

Iris skimmed through countless shots of human visitors, many unclothed. One or two individuals she casually recognized from campus or in town. Many of them, she realized, were engaged in pretty normal activities, even given the lack of clothes for some.

Some were warmly touching, such as a undressed young couple merely walking the forest paths together. Iris could tell they were deeply, deeply in love, their hands never leaving each other's bodies. There was a lot of contact, but none of it was sexual. The boy, for instance, never even approached an erection. The stream of soft caresses, it seemed to Iris, were expressions of love rather than anything erotic.

It was just two loving people comfortable with their bodies.

"Did you post that one on the Net?" Iris asked, dryly.

"No. It was too nice, Iris. They were in love, not in lust."

A number of videos showed individuals and couples engaged in fairly normal sexual acts. Others...

"Oh my God, J.L.!" Iris's eyes were wide open in shock at the sights on the screen in front of her, her hands covering her open mouth. "How could they even think  of doing that? Especially where they were?"

Stunned though she might have been at what she was seeing, Iris didn't stop the video. J.L. smiled to himself at that.

"In answer to your next question, Iris, yes I did post it online. It got a hundred thousand hits and a threatened lawsuit, later dropped."

"Oh my god!" Iris repeated, her stunned eyes flipping back and forth from the screen to J.L.'s face.

Eventually the girl pushed herself away from the screen, took a deep breath.

"Well, that was educational, but it's my turn to make dinner," Iris said.

"Erm, OK?"

"Nothing planned?"

"No."

She moved to the kitchen. From her rather full backpack, she started pulling out ingredients -- mushrooms, thinly-sliced prosciutto ham, a package of puff pastry and a long package wrapped in brown butcher's paper. And a bottle of red wine.

"Here," she said, passing that last to her host. "There's something about cooking with wine. Would you open that, please?"

Iris took out a large iron frypan, set it on the stove to heat.

J.L. handed her a glass of wine, which got him another kiss.

The brown package proved to hold a cut of meat. "Beef tenderloin!" she announced, setting J.L. to mince a pound of mushrooms as finely as possible.

Putting some butter in the pan, she rapidly browned the surface of the meat before setting it aside.

She added more butter to the pan and began to cook the mushrooms. "Just keep stirring those," she said. "We want the excess water to boil off."

Watery juices did in fact appear quickly, began boiling under low heat. Iris kept stirring, pressing down on the mushrooms with a flipper. In perhaps 10 minutes, the mushrooms were becoming more of a paste.

"It's working!" she grinned.

Leaving J.L. with his task, Iris swiftly grated three large carrots from the recent harvest.

Putting that aside and passing by the stove, she gave J.L. a kiss. "Doing OK?"

"Oh, yes."

"Do you have any cling film?"

J.L. thought. It wasn't something he used a lot of, but he found a roll tucked away somewhere.

"Goody! Now stand back and watch some magic happen, J.L.!"

She spread out a piece of the plastic on the counter and laid out the sliced ham on top of it to form a rough rectangle one layer thick. Over this she spread the mushrooms, now almost a fairly dry purée.

"I forgot mustard, J.L." she said. "Do you have any? Like Dijon, by preference?"

A search of his refrigerator showed only standard yellow mustard.

"It'll do," she said, taking from him. A heavy blob of mustard was squeezed into one of her palms. Iris spread the yellow goo over the beef before carefully placing it on top of the ham and mushroom layer. Swiftly, she rolled everything up to form a cling film-covered log, mustard-coated beef in the centre, a layer of mushroom purée outside that and finally the outside layer of ham.

Putting that in the refrigerator, she pulled a double sheet of thawed puff pastry from the package. "It's a cheat," she acknowledged, "but I'm not that hard-core."

The girl obviously knew something about cooking, for her motions in rolling out the thawed pastry were swift, certain.

Over the rectangle of pastry, she put the roll of beef, less the cling film. Slim fingers tucked in the pastry around the log, arranged it in a roasting pan with the seam down and hidden. She beat an egg yolk and spread it over the surface of the pastry before popping it into the oven beside quartered potatoes already cooking. She set the timer.

"Whew!" she remarked. "Intense, but fun. Thanks for your help, J.L." Iris rolled her shoulders, as if stiff.

Wordlessly, he moved behind her. The girl sighed as strong fingers massaged the stiffness from her shoulders and neck.

"Mmmm," she breathed softly. "That's so good, J.L! Where did you learn that?"

The massage paused. "Sandy taught me," he said in a low voice.

Iris spun in place, put her arms around his waist and rested her head on his shoulder.

"I'm sorry, J.L." she whispered. "I didn't mean to hurt, to call up bad memories."

His hand slid slowly over her hair, down her back.

"It's OK," he replied softly, "they're good memories."

Iris wasn't sure if he was addressing her, himself or Sandy's ghost.

"It still hurts though, doesn't it?" she said. "But I'm not trying to rob her, J.L. Really I'm not!" She turned her head to look at his face.

J.L. froze, his hands motionless on her. After a moment, they began moving again.

"It's OK, Iris," he said. "It's OK."

J.L. was in fact very conflicted. To his shame, he found he was having trouble remembering Sandy's face.

The girl pulled him into a deep hug, released him.

"Promise me, J.L., that you won't ever allow me to do that, to steal you from her. You loved her, still do and I know that. It's something that makes you you."

His eyes locked on hers, closed silently. Then his lips came down on hers, softly, almost in need. He broke the kiss, turned his head. Iris thought she could see a tear in one eye as his head turned past hers.

"It's OK, baby," the girl said very softly. "It's OK."

Her hands began to gently stroke J.L.'s body, almost in comfort. It took a minute before he responded with caresses of his own.

J.L.'s lips came back to hers, harder, more demanding now. He pulled her body against his in a tight embrace, so tight the girl had trouble breathing. Instinctively, she hugged back with all her strength.

Their hands began to sweep over each other, their kisses got deeper. Iris mewed with pleasure as his hand touched her breast for the first time. There was a heaviness in her, an ache. Her own hands ran over his bum, his back and were moving from there when the timer went off.

"Oh, damn!  the girl said.

"It's OK, Iris. It's always OK."

They broke apart. Iris wiped out the frypan, added a thumb-sized piece of butter and put it on a burner. Over it she dumped the grated carrots, sprinkled them with salt and put a lid on.

"Three minutes," she said.

Her finger came up and ran lightly over the man's chest.

"J.L.?"

A finger of his came up to her lips, silencing her.

"It's OK, Iris," he repeated. "Whatever will be will still be later on."

The bell went a minute later and Iris pulled the pan off the burner, turned the stove off, pulled the two roasting pans out of the stove.

"There you go, J.L.," she said. "Beef Wellington, carrots á la Iris and oven-roasted potatoes."

The meal was excellent, J.L. thought, far better than he would have made for himself. The beef as juicy, tender and exploding with flavor. The carrots were as sweet as anything he'd ever tasted.

It seemed far too short a time before he sat back, his plate empty.

"Thank you, Iris-Iris Mackenzie. That was wonderful."

The two did the dishes together. Once in a while, their hips or elbows touched. Their light chatter slowly faded into silence.

"Iris..." the man said at last.

The woman knew what he would say and cut him off.

"It's OK, J.L.," she said, a sad smile on her face. "I understand."

Iris spent the night, although it was again in the library kept company only by the dogs. She had a hard time falling asleep and the couple's earlier fondling had not made it any easier.

+

The October mornings had become a bit chilly to sit on the widow's walk without getting dressed. Instead, J.L. sat at his desk inside, treasuring his first cup of coffee.

On impulse, he opened his e-mail. There was a note from Iris.

"There's a Halloween party at the sorority day after tomorrow. Would you like to come?"

He thought about that for a long time, sitting there. From time to time, he looked at a framed picture on the wall beside his chair.

"I'm sorry, Sandy," he whispered. "I'm trying as hard as I can, hon, but it's been so long. I'm kind of out of practice."

Sensing his mood, the dogs quietly appeared. Bonnie sat beside him, laid her muzzle on his lap. J.L. scratched behind her ears with one hand.

He took a deep breath, brushed a tear from one eye, turned to the keyboard.

"Thank you, Iris, but I think I'm going to have to pass on this one. Rain check?"

There was no reply.

Maybe she's angry at being turned down?  he wondered.

There was no reply the next day, the day of the party, either. J.L. tried to shrug it off. It doesn't matter anyway,  he told himself. Nothing has changed. Ships passing in the night, right?

It hurt though and the hole Sandy's death had left in him seemed for some reason suddenly much, much bigger.

Halloween night was cool, with intermittent rain. J.L. made a frugal meal for himself, retired to his library to read. His thoughts kept drifting to Iris, to the party he had evaded.

Suddenly the dogs dozing by the fire came alert, ears up. He listened, heard nothing but the sound of drizzle outside.

Clyde gave a low growl, then a lower 'Woof!'  Bonnie got up and went to the back door.

Curious, J.L. got up from his place and was heading to the door when he was startled by a loud knocking.

Who in hell?

J.L. was wary, but noticed the dogs' tails were wagging.

He turned on the outside light, opened the door.

Outside, dripping in the rain, stood a figure in a long raincoat, its face hidden beneath a raised hood.

"Trick or treat!" Iris said loudly.

"Iris? What in hell? Isn't this a school night! How..."

"Are you going to let me in out of the rain, J.L. or should I find a tree to hide under?"

Embarrassed, he stepped back, held the door open for her.

"I couldn't stand the thought of you spending one more night out here by yourself, J.L. And you were too darned stubborn to come to the party, so I brought the party to you. And, yes, thanks, I'd love a drink, something strong or something hot -- preferably both."

J.L. simply stood staring at her. He hadn't been this flustered in years.

The girl turned away from him and crouched down, water pooling at her feet from her long coat. The two dogs crowded in on her, eagerly wagging their tails in greeting.

"Hello, Bonnie. Hello, Clyde." She ruffed the fur on their heads, looked up at the man. "At least they  seem happy to see me."

J.L. came to his senses.

"Oh, but I'm more than glad to see you, Iris! You just surprised the hell out of me is all."

Surprise turned to shock when she stood again and shrugged out of the coat, revealing her Halloween costume.

What there was of it.

Iris' belly-dancer get-up was made almost entirely of a filmy kelly-green chiffon - not quite transparent, but far short of opaque. Her thin bra cups clearly showed the areolae inside; her nipples made small, firm tents in the soft fabric.

A gold lamé hip scarf circled the girl's firm hips, just long enough in front to cover her sex. From under that, front and rear, descended two strips of green fabric perhaps eight inches wide and ending just above her ankles. The thin cloth served only to emphasize her legs, which were in any case entirely bare on her sides. Another square of translucent chiffon was worn as a nose-to-chin veil, again serving more to emphasize than conceal.

The girl's only jewellery consisted of a gold circlet around the top of her head, supporting a gold starburst pennant in the middle of her forehead. Her makeup was bold, confident.