“Don’t take it to heart, Bobby,” she murmured, “I felt exactly the same when I first realised just how they were so close, but I soon realised she needed him just as much as she needed me, but in a different way. She’ll soon think of you the same way. She already admires you tremendously, you know, Bobby.”
I must have looked more than a little sceptical, as Shari smiled at me and smoothed my hair back once again.
“Oh yes, Bobby; you lived here all alone in this great, empty, creepy place, working your heart out for a pittance, struggling to keep a roof over your head, and succeeding, eking out a living by eating barely enough to keep yourself alive, no-one to care for you or care about you, lonely and alone, but never giving up or giving in; oh yes, she admires you, her brave, handsome, hard-working big brother! So do I, Bobby, you’re kind of special, did you know that?””
I smiled in embarrassment at that, and Shari grinned back at me, again flipping that pesky lock of hair out of my eye.
“I need a haircut!” I grinned, glad of the opportunity to change the subject.
“No, don’t do that, I like doing this…” she smiled, once more sleeking my hair back into place, making me smile once again.
“You really should smile more, Bobby,” she said seriously, “You really are gorgeous when you smile, much better looking than Ricky!”
Gorgeous? I’d been called a few things in my life, especially by school kids as I shovelled up the filth out of the gutters and off the pavements, but ‘gorgeous’ wasn’t one of them, and I could feel my cheeks burning as I flushed. Shari reached over and patted my knee.
“Maybe after tomorrow you’ll have more to smile about, eh? Don’t worry Bobby, things have a way of working themselves out, you’ll see; until then, you have me, and Ricky, and Yasmin. She’ll start talking to you soon, she knows you’ve changed, she just has a little more to be wary of, so give her time.”
My ears pricked up at that, and my curiosity was piqued. What was she wary of? I had to know.
“Shari, what do you mean, why is she more wary? I know you both had to watch what my father did, what happened to her that made it so different?”
Shari leaned in and whispered in my ear, and what she told me nearly made me vomit as the full sick impact of it burned into my brain; my father had tried to rape her, he’d actually tried to rape his own youngest daughter while he was drunk, to ‘break her in’ as he put it, so his friends could enjoy her, and it was only through sheer luck she’d managed to get away. Shari had gotten her away from him, and the pair of them had had to hide from him until he’d eventually passed out. How could he do that? Truly he was a psychopath, or a sociopath, or a fucking demon, or something equally non-human, because no normal man would even contemplate that, let alone threaten it, and to try to do that to his own daughter…
Shari nodded at the pair of them as they sparred and laughed together, oblivious to our conversation.
“Now do you understand why she needs Ricky? He’s her safe place, her safety and protection, things she needed to feel just as he came along. You’ll come to mean that to her too, I promise; like I said, she likes and admires you, she just has to learn how to trust you, just as she did with Ricky.”
I let it go; Yaz wasn’t snubbing me, she had serious trust issues, and I couldn’t blame her one iota, not after what I’d just heard. It occurred to me that I’d have to work to gain her trust; Shari would have to help me there. I grinned as I heard myself finally admitting that I needed the help of another person; perhaps I really was changing after all!
When we decided to go to bed, Rick and I walked the girls to their room, ensuring they knew where our rooms were in case they needed us at all, and nothing would do but that I must check all their windows again thoroughly, just to make sure they were fully secure; after what I’d heard earlier, all kinds of protective instincts were bubbling up inside me, and that puzzled me, but in a good way.
I realised that I was beginning to care about someone else other than myself, and it didn’t help that Shari’s face intruded into my thoughts increasingly often; as I lay in bed that night, every time I paused to think about what we’d discussed, my thoughts wandered to images of her face, her eyes, her lips, the way she tossed her hair back over her shoulder, and the scent of her, that light, flowery fragrance that trailed her everywhere. It confused me that I couldn’t shake the increasingly intrusive images of her from my thoughts, nor did I want to. I eventually fell asleep in the wee hours, too exhausted to think about her any longer.
The following day was organised chaos as the huge moving vans arrived early from London and disgorged all of the stuff Yaz and Shari had put into storage; beds, carpets and rugs, dressers, chairs, tables, wardrobes, couches, and armchairs, as well as crates of bed linens, blankets, quilts, curtains, the contents of what must have been a substantial house poured out of the vans, and the movers lugged it all around according to some pre-conceived plan that Shari and Yasmin had.
Rick and I made ourselves useful, but the real taskmaster was Shari, and she was obviously enjoying herself immensely as she directed the burly movers to put the furniture where she’d decided it was supposed to be. At last, by the end of the day, we had a furnished house again, and the place was looking almost as it had before everything was confiscated. There was enough to equip every bedroom with a bed, a dresser, a full set of bed linens, a rug, and a wardrobe, and the movers even took away the battered old beds Ricky and I were using when they put the new ones in our rooms. I’d elected to retain my little dressing room bedroom; it suited me and I was comfortable in there. The girls decided to unpack all their clothes and re-populate the wardrobes another day; we were exhausted, so after an order-in pizza dinner, we made for our respective bedrooms.
I was awakened in the early hours by Shari. I came awake as soon as she lightly tapped my shoulder, noting in passing that she was wearing just a short tee-shirt and light sleep shorts. Even in the dim light from my old lamp, her legs were flawless, long and perfect, and seriously distracting.
“Bobby, Yaz is missing, I can’t find her anywhere. I woke up and she was gone, Bobby, help me find her, please, I don’t where to start looking in this place, it’s still so confusing in the dark!”
Of course I jumped out of bed to help, how could I not? I knew this place intimately; I knew I’d find her in double quick time, always supposing she was still in the house.
I picked up a torch and led the way; most of the light bulbs had blown over time and been scavenged from around the house, and we’d not replaced them yet, so most of the house was in complete darkness. With Shari holding my arm we began at the top of the house, opening door after door, flashing the beam around inside, then going on to the next.
There were a lot of rooms, spread over 3 floors; the family who’d originally built this place way back when must have been very wealthy, and had created a series of suites, presumably one for each member of the family and a guest suite, so there were six bedroom suites, as well as the attic rooms, which had originally been servant’s quarters. Each bedroom had a private bathroom and a dressing room; as we searched from room to room, all I could think was it must have been hell for the servants to turn down and clean every day.
Finally we came to the first floor above the ground level, and started at the back of the house, where Rick had his bedroom. As we approached his room I could see soft golden light around his door, which I thought was odd; it was the middle of the night, so all should have been in darkness. As we approached the door we heard voices; Yaz and Rick, talking softly. I was about to knock when Shari put her hand on my arm and motioned me to silence; she appeared to be listening intently, then gasped softly and pressed closer to the door. As she touched the door it swung open silently just a couple of inches, but it was enough to see the occupants clearly.
At first I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing, then suddenly it all swam into focus.
Yaz was on her knees, naked, her body bathed in the golden light of half a dozen flickering candles. Rick was lying on his back, and Yaz was sliding her lips over his thick erect penis, fondling his scrotum as she avidly sucked his cock. Rick in turn had his hand between her thighs, rubbing her and making her moan around the cock she had in her mouth. As I watched, they came to some sort of mutual agreement, and Yaz pulled him out of her mouth, smiling and sighing as Rick pulled her closer to dip his head down and suck her erect nipples. From their familiarity with each other’s bodies, their murmured words and fond caresses, I knew this wasn’t the first time they’d done this, and as Rick sucked her nipples, Yaz sat astride him, holding his face between her two hands,