Near Ypres, France 1918

Everybody knew that the Great War was inching inexorably towards its end. But death was still everywhere. The Americans had entered the war and their fresh soldiers rejuvenated the battle-weary allied troops exhausted after four years of attrition.

In a field hospital a few miles beyond the killing grounds of the trenches an English nurse is on a ward with many men injured in many ways, the long room that used to be the ballroom of a French chateau is lined on either side with steel cots an men, some silent, some sleeping, some groaning.

“Nurse Cooper,” the ward sister said to Susan. “Will you go and bathe the new patient in room 420.”

Susan left the ward where she usually worked, walked down the long corridor until she found the room with a big 420 painted on the door. She didn’t remember ever being in this room before. She entered the room. There was a single occupant, badly injured. His face was bandaged, his arms were both in plaster. She looked at his chart. Mostly just medical information, his blood pressure, his temperature. He was Charles Adams, an American officer, perhaps that was why he had a room of his own. Or perhaps it was because the severity of his injuries that meant that isolation was required to lower the risk of infection. With bandages over almost his entire face he couldn’t talk. In fact his eyes were almost hidden and it was hard to tell that he was, in fact, awake. She didn’t know if he could hear or not, many men had eardrums destroyed by the shockwave from high-explosive artillery shells and were temporarily deaf.

“I’ll just go and get what I need and then I’ll be back to give you a bath.”

Susan went down the corridor and gathered a large bowl of hot water, some soap, sponges and towels, put them all on a rickety trolley and wheeled it back to room 420. She peeled the blankets and sheet back off the man. He was naked underneath, it was easier to take care of him that way. Of course, as a nurse, Susan had seen many naked men. It no longer shocked her like that first time when she came to France the previous year as an innocent seventeen-year old, brought up in the sheltered environment of a middle-class grammar school before leaving at 16 to train as a nurse. She still felt a bit of a fraud. Outside her starched nurses uniform exuded an air of professionalism and medical knowledge that she felt unwarranted. Underneath she felt she was a naïve teenager, ignorant of the ways of the world. She was tired of the war, ready to return to Britain, be courted by a nice boy from the right class, give up her job, get married and spend the rest of her life looking after a brood of bright-eyed children. She knew she would have no problem finding a husband, despite the fact that so many men of her generation had been slaughtered. She was smart, and she knew she was attractive. Her natural blonde hair, currently scrunched up in a bun underneath her nurse’s cap, drew men’s eyes whenever she entered a room. And when they got close, the copious swell of her large breasts would draw their eyes lower. She had never had sex, of course. It would be unthinkable not to be a virgin at marriage. The most she had ever done was a drunken kiss or two with one of the male doctors. He had the temerity to put his hand on her breast, which she pushed off angrily. That was the end of that.

The patient’s lower body didn’t seem to be so seriously injured, so Susan started at his feet and gently washed his legs. As she washed him, she talked to him, as much for herself as for him, telling him what she had recently heard about the war, what the weather was like outside. Incongruously it was a beautiful summer, no dark clouds brooding over the killing fields.

She matter-of-factly washed his genitals and then moved further up to his chest and arms, washing each area first with soap, then with clean water before toweling him try. She was aware of his eyes now, piercing blue lights buried in the dark holes formed by his facial bandages. His eyes followed her as she moved around the room. She was surprised how she enjoyed it. Usually when men she didn’t know followed her with their eyes she knew that their intentions were not honorable. They didn’t want to woo her emotions, they wanted to be immoral with her, to see some of what was hidden by her uniform or by the dowdy clothes she chose to wear outside work. War was like that, it reduced all the good manners of society to more primal feelings. But she knew she was the only thing of interest in this patient’s day, and he was so helpless that she didn’t even care what he was thinking. Finally, she pulled up the sheets and blankets and tucked them in around his body, carefully moving his plaster-clad arms to rest comfortably on top.

That night she had a strange dream. She was with the patient, Charles, and he was naked. He was still bandaged but he was on his feet. She was naked too. The two of them were dancing at a ball in London. Everyone else was in their ball-gowns, they were the only two not dressed. Everybody behaved as this was completely normal as he pressed his body against her, her breasts rubbing against his chest, his hips thrusting into hers as he guided her around the dance floor. She woke up. It was still pitch dark in the nurses’ dormitory. She felt an unusual feeling between her legs. She pulled her nightshirt up around her waist and touched herself. She was wetter than she could remember. Even when she masturbated, which she didn’t do very often since it made her feel so guilty afterwards. It was silly to risk mental illness and other complications for such a fleeting moment of pleasure, but sometimes her body simply insisted. Besides it was difficult to masturbate undetected in a shared dormitory. But tonight she would be strong. She pulled her nightshirt down again to her knees, leaving an unsatisfied feeling. Well, maybe she’d just rock herself to sleep as she called it. She rolled onto her front, with her hands at her crotch, gently stroking her lips through the thick cotton of her nightshirt, pressing her hips against her hands.

The next day it was her job to bathe him again. She looked forward to it. It was a moment of comparative tranquility for her for half an hour, nobody to talk to her, just those blue eyes watching her. Again she started at his feet but by the time she reached his groin his cock was no longer a limp sausage but was a hard rod. Susan had never seen an erect cock before. Of course she knew that men had erections, she knew the genital plumbing aspects of sex. But somehow knowing what an erection was and seeing one for real were completely different. She wasn’t sure how to react. She could hardly ignore it and simply wash him as normal since she was talking to him quietly the whole time that she was in his room.

“You are a very naughty boy,” she said as she sponged his huge member. “I can see you are having very naughty thoughts.”

She continued until she had washed his entire body. She covered his still erect cock with the sheet and blankets and tucked him in. She looked into his blue eyes, imagined the desire she saw there. She remembered her dream where they had been dancing naked together and she knew he wanted to see her naked. That would be far too dangerous for her. She moved so she was leaning against the door so nobody could enter and her head blocked the small glass window. As the blue eyes watched, she slowly undid the line of white buttons that ran down from her neck to her waist. Underneath she was wearing a plain white vest like most women. As Charles watched every movement she slowly pulled the white vest up over the tops of her breasts, revealing them to a man for the first time in her life. She looked down. Her nipples were crimson and hard with excitement. She heard a noise in the corridor behind her and quickly buttoned herself up again just before the sister entered to perform an inspection. Susan quickly left the room with the trolley of sponges and towels.

That night in the dormitory Susan was lying awake, unable to sleep. She couldn’t get Charles’s erect cock out of her mind. And she relived the way that something had come over her and made her unbutton her uniform. It has been so exciting. It was both safe, because Charles could not move, and dangerous all at the same time. Susan pulled her nightdress up above her breasts. Tonight she would not be good. She stroked her nipples, imagining Charles was watching her. Her sensitive nipples sent small tremors of excitement across her belly. She slid one hand down through her blonde curls to that special spot where it nestled in the cleft between her fleshy lips. Somehow it was Charles’ finger not her own that stroked up and down the length of her slit before coming to rest on that hard point, her jewel she called it. She concentrated on keeping her breathing even, not everyone was asleep yet, as she slowly stroked her clit letting her excitement build up slowly. She imagined she was dancing with Charles again like in their dream. Except this time Charles’s cock was rock hard. His fingers were touching her secret folds. She imagined reaching out and closing her small hand around his hard cock as she started to come. She held her breath as her orgasm hit her, forcing herself to remain silent even though she wanted to moan at the undiluted pleasure that spread through her whole body. In no time she was asleep, surprised to awaken in the morning with her nightshirt still bunched above her breasts. She still had that special feeling between her legs. What should she call that place? Her vagina? Too technical. Her cunt? That was what the soldiers all called it, she knew. Her quim? Too old-fashioned, it sounded like a Victorian prostitute’s name. Her vulva? Nice, very feminine, not crude. She reached down and touched her vulva and gently cupped her soft lips. She’d never been so aware of her sexuality, was she turning into a sex maniac? Perhaps she really had been masturbating too much and this was just a symptom.

When she got up she did something she had never done before. She put on her uniform as usual but omitted to wear any underwear. As she walked across the path from the dormitory block to the old chateau served as a hospital she felt very exposed. It seemed everyone could tell she was bare underneath her skirt. In reality she knew that the long stiff material of her uniform would barely move in a gale, the chance of discovery was minimal. But it felt incredibly sexual, like something awaking inside her that had been asleep her whole life.

She didn’t need to be asked to go and bathe Charles, she wanted to make sure that she did it before the job got assigned to anyone else. She wasn’t the least bit surprised when she pulled back the sheet and blanket that he already had an erection. His cock was rock hard and jerking very slightly with his pulse. She started at his feet but when she got to his cock she spent a lot of time washing it as she talked to him.

“I can see you liked seeing my breasts yesterday,” she said as she gently stroked his cock with a warm soapy sponge. “Do you want to see them again? I bet you do. But not today. I’ve got a new surprise for you today.”

She was almost trembling with sexual anticipation. She pulled up the skirt of her uniform to her waist. The curls of blonde hair did little to hide the long gash of her sex, enveloping a pink hint of more hidden within. She moved her feet apart. She picked up his plaster-clad arm and moved it so that his fingers touched her vulva. When he moved his fingers, jolts of electric excitement spasmed through her. He moved his fingers skillfully. She realized that this was not his first time with a woman. He even knew about her jewel since he slid a finger up between her innermost lips until it came to rest there. She had never felt so excited in her life. Without her doing anything her hips had started rocking back and forth moving her jewel over his finger. It only took a few second and she climaxed, crying out “Oh Charles,” as her lover created wave after wave of ecstasy with his barely-moving fingertip.

She looked down Charles’s body. His hairy balls and his member standing proudly at attention, its circumcised pink knob almost aglow. She reached out and wrapped her hand around it and started to stroke him. She had no idea what men really liked, and no way to find out. Charles could not talk, but she could see the pleasure in his eyes as she stroked him. She reached into her pocket and brought out a tube of ointment and put a dollop on his cock before continuing to stroke him, faster now that the ointment removed the friction. She looked down and watched her small pale hand against the darker skin of Charles’s manhood. His knob looked like one of those sherbet lollipops she’d had as a girl.

Suddenly an idea popped into her head. And idea so depraved she wondered where it came from. She’d never heard of anyone doing anything so dirty but she knew she had to try it. She bent forward and took Charles’s pink knob into her mouth. It felt like her juices were running down her thighs form her pantiless slit as she licked his cock like she’d licked lollipops as a little girl. She felt Charles’s body go tense, and backed off, worried for a moment that perhaps she was hurting him. As she stroked his shaft with her fist she enveloped his cockhead with her mouth and ran her tongue around the rim. His cock jerked in her mouth and she tasted something salty-sweet. She knew it must be his seed, as she swallowed, continuing to lick him as his cock repeatedly jerked warm jets into her mouth. Finally his body was quiet.

She stood up. Charles was beckoning to her. He wanted to see her breasts? No he wanted to see the time on her watch? No, he wanted her pen. She put her pen in his barely mobile fingers. She held a notepad for him and he laboriously traced out a letter with great effort. T. It took a couple of minutes for him to write a word, “Thanks”.

She had just got Charles tucked up back in bed when the Sister came in for her daily inspection. What if she had arrived a few minutes earlier to find one of her nurses with an officer’s cock in her mouth? Instant dismissal, Susan was sure. Fate was obviously on her side.

Susan had another dream that night. She was on her back in her bed in the nurse’s dormitory. A full moon shone through the window making the dormitory light as day. Charles walked in. The other nurses were all awake, watching the naked man in their midst. One nurse got up and pulled Susan’s bedding off. She was not in her nightshirt, she was naked too. Two nurses came over and took her knees and spread her legs wide, showing Charles her most private place. His cock was limp but as the nurses all watched his cock grew heavier and longer and then gradually became stiff and elevated like a crane to point skyward. Charles moved over her, his bandaged face against hers. She felt his cock on her vulva, slipping up and down between her wet and welcoming lips, swollen with arousal. It slid into her opening and then went deeper, burying itself in her unused cunt. The other nurses all crowded around watching as Charles fucked her. No made love to her, his lovely hard cock sliding back and forth in her tight wet hole. The nurses had changed into bridesmaids somewhere along the way, the dormitory changed to the honeymoon suite of a hotel. Charles was taking her virginity on their wedding night.

Susan awoke, filled with arousal and love and desire and lust. She looked at her nurse’s watch beside her bed. Two in the morning. She got up, picked her uniform and left the dormitory. In the bathroom she took off her nightdress and buttoned the white uniform over her naked body. It was cold as she walked across the path to the ward, her uniform bright in the moonlight. Everything was quiet. Duty nurses took care of crises that came in the night, but otherwise the action was all during the day. Even the distant bangs of the artillery were silent at this time of night. Susan slipped into room 420.

Charles awoke as she pulled back his sheets and blankets. She said nothing. Instead, she stood up, unbuttoned her uniform and slipped it off her shoulders. It fell to the floor. She could sense Charles’s eyes inspecting her body, completely naked in the bright moonlight. It really was a full moon that night like in her dream. She moved closer and bent forward, moving his hands so that his fingers could play with her breasts, could touch her nipples, hard with anticipation of what she planned. She moved his hand lower, letting his fingers play in her wetness again. She reached out and stroked his hardening cock as one of his fingers found her jewel again. She could feel her juices seeping out of her. She climbed onto the bed and straddled him. She reached back for his cock between her legs and guided it into the opening to her sex. She pressed down on him until he came up against the resistance of her maidenhead. She pushed harder but it started to hurt uncomfortably. She gritted her teeth and sat down hard on him, ignoring the jolt of pain, as she tore through her hymen and impaled herself on his rigid cock, pressing her body down completely against his. She started to rock her hips, stroking his cock inside her, the throbbing pain gradually being replaced with feelings of intense pleasure. She reached down and stroked her jewel as she fucked him. She felt herself climax, felt her body clamping on his cock. A few more thrusts of her hips and he was coming too, jerking his hips slightly as he pumped his seed into her.

Wordlessly, Susan got up and tucked Charles back into his bed. She put her uniform back on. Soon she was back in her bed in her nightshirt. She turned over and fell into a contented sleep.

The next day Susan assembled the sponges and water to bathe Charles, her lover Charles as she now thought of him. She opened the door to his room. But Charles was not there. Instead a new patient was sitting there in the bed where Charles had been but a few hours before. He must have been moved to a new room or onto a ward.

“Where’s the previous patient been moved?” Susan asked.

“Back to America,” said the newcomer in the clipped tones of a British officer. “There was a troopship returning to America in a few days and so they took the worst wounded officers and men to the port to return them stateside.”

Susan looked down in disappointment.

“Are you Nurse Cooper?” the new patient said. Susan looked up surprised, he couldn’t have read her name tag all the way across the room. “This is for you.”

The officer held out a small unsealed envelope, one that a letter had originally come in. It was addressed to Charles Adams through the military postal system. She emptied out the contents into her hand. It was a small matchbook. She didn’t understand at all, perhaps something else more significant had fallen out. She turned the envelope over. There in almost illegible writing was a note. It must have taken him at least an hour to write with his barely functioning fingers, Susan realized, as she deciphered the spidery scrawl.

“If you ever need help take to Chairman American Bank NY.”

She guessed NY must be New York since he was American. That didn’t seem very likely. It was a long expensive sea voyage to America. She put the matchbook into her pocket, a memento of a very special few days of her life.

**

Manhattan, the present day

John Adams leant back in his chair and admired the view across Manhattan from his corner office in the Megabank building. He had a few minutes until his next meeting, a review of their strategy in Japan. His assistant Jill entered, a Starbucks cup on one hand. John knew it would be a low-fat grande latte with one sugar. She put it down on his desk.

“There’s a woman in the lobby who wants to see you but she won’t say why, she says it’s personal?”

“What’s her name?”

“Julia McGhee.”

“I’ve never heard of her. Probably some journalist trying to dig up something. Or maybe one of those financial advisor types. As if I need financial advice as chairman of one of the word’s largest banks. Well, I don’t have time for that kind of thing. Get rid of her. Nicely, of course.”

Jill left to politely decline the meeting. John sipped his coffee as he glanced over the Bloomberg terminal on his desk, trying to get a feel for what the markets were doing.

Jill returned. “She’s a bit odd and I haven’t managed to persuade her to leave yet. I can always call security. But she asked me to give you this. Not really asked, she told me I had to give you this.”

She placed a matchbook on the desk. John looked at it. What an odd thing to do? He picked it up. The writing on it was in French, advertising Café du Nord. It didn’t look particularly new, there was no message he could see written on it. Anyway, he had to go to his meeting. He left the matchbook on his desk and went down the corridor to the conference room.

The Vice-President for Japan started to run through the Powerpoint slides that he had prepared about the state of the Japanese economy. John was only half listening. Something was niggling in the back of his mind. He’d seen that matchbook before somewhere. He didn’t think it was a French restaurant in New York, the name didn’t seem familiar.

“Just a moment,” he said. He picked up the phone and dialed his assistant. “Scan that matchbook, find a matchbook expert and email him the jpeg. Find out what you can about it.” He turned back to the meeting. “Sorry, carry on.”

The meeting went on to the structure of Japanese financial institutions and the terrible state of their loan portfolios even after ten years of supposedly cleaning things up after the property crash followed by a decade of deflation.

The distraction in the back of his mind wouldn’t go away. He’d been to France a couple of summers ago with his wife. They’d done all the sights in Paris, dined in all the Michelin three star restaurants, spent a couple of days in the Negresco in Nice. But he didn’t remember a Café du Nord there either. Come to think of it, it would be a pretty odd name for a café in Nice on the south coast.

“Are you all right?” Everyone in the room was staring at him. He had blanked out completely.

“Sorry, I’m a bit distracted. Let’s postpone this. I’ve got something urgent to attend to.”

John went back to his office. As he walked past his assistant she held up her hand. “I’ve got a matchbook guy on the phone, do you want to talk to him directly?”

“Put him through.”

John walked into his office as the phone started to ring, he picked it up.

“As I was saying to your assistant, it’s not valuable. I’d give you about five dollars for it. They are fairly common. Many soldiers brought back matchbooks like this at the end of the first world war.”

“That’s when it dates from?”

“Yes. I think it is about 1918, maybe a year earlier.”

“Thank you.”

John put down the phone and looked around his office trying to remember when he might have seen the matchbook before. His eyes fell on the old safe in the corner. It came from the first branch of America Bank in the nineteenth century. It wouldn’t take a modern safe-cracker five minutes to get in and, in fact, nobody even bothered to lock it any more. But it contained lots of historical documents. Maybe that was where he’d seen the matchbook, after all it dated from 1918.

John got up and went over to the safe and swung the door open. He couldn’t remember looking at the contents since that day his father went through everything when he became chairman. He pulled out a box of papers. Handwritten parchment founding the bank. The original deed of purchase for the decrepit buildings that once occupied the land where Megabank Tower now stood. The first deposit that the bank ever took.

And there it was, a matchbook just like the one on his desk. It was stapled to a card. There was writing on the card in his grandfather’s spidery writing. It was hard to read since his grandfather never completely recovered from his war injuries.

“If anyone brings a matchbook like this to the bank, do whatever it takes.”

It was signed by his grandfather and dated 1929. That was when his grandfather had taken over the bank. After the stock market crash the existing management was discredited and the best the bank could do was to turn to an untried thirty-five-year old with a face disfigured from burns during the war. His grandfather, Charles Adams, was a legend in the bank. Against all expectation, he’d nursed the bank through the depression and then grown it into one of the largest banks in the country through an aggressive acquisition strategy before he retired around 1960. His father had then taken over and turned it into an international powerhouse. He himself had it easier, just a light hand on the tiller was all that was required to keep the bank at the top of its game, one of the most successful banks in the world.

He looked again at the card: “whatever” was underlined twice. He had no idea what this meant. He guessed that his grandfather’s life had been saved by another soldier or something like that. But his grandfather, Charles Adams, without whom the bank would not be here, was calling to him from nearly a century earlier. He felt tears well up in his eyes. He would not let his grandfather down.

He walked out of the office. “Bring that woman up from reception,” he told his assistant. “Wait, no, I’ll go down and get her myself.”

His assistant sat stunned. In her ten years at the bank she had never seen her boss go to bring a guest from reception, not even his own father.

John Adams walked over to the woman who seemed a bit intimidated by the high ceiling marble lobby. She turned round. He stood there for a second, confused. She looked just like his sister. Or rather how his sister had looked when she was forty. Now he was closer it was clear she was someone different, but the similarity had spooked him.

He held out his hand. “Charles Adams.”

“Julia McGhee,” she said. He was surprised that she had an English accent. “I’m not entirely sure why I’m here but I need some help. It’s a bit of a long story.”

“Let’s go up to my office and we can talk about it.”

He led her over to the express elevator to the top of the building. She walked into his office. There were two identical matchbooks lying on the desk.

“Tell me about the matchbook,” he said.

“Well, before she died, my grandmother sat me and my mother down and gave us the matchbook. She said that if ever we were desperately in need of help to bring this matchbook to the chairman of American Bank in New York. Of course there isn’t an American Bank any more, but I managed to trace the acquisitions to find out that it is now part of Megabank. So here I am.”

“I have a similar matchbook,” said John, picking it up off his desk. “In the light of what you’ve just told me my instructions make sense, but I’m not sure precisely why. I have a note saying that if anyone should ever show up here with this matchbook that I should do whatever I can to help. Who was your grandmother?”

“She wasn’t anybody special. She was a nurse during the first world war. She came back and had my mother, an only child, soon after. She never married. A woman with an illegitimate child in those days was a pariah. Especially since there were so many women vying for every man after half that generation of men had been slaughtered at the Somme and Verdun and the other bloodbaths. She went on to be a teacher and ended up as headmistress of a large grammar school. She died a few years ago. She would never tell my mother who her father was, that secret died with her.”

“Well, my grandfather was in the war although not for long. He was very badly wounded almost as soon as he got there, and was shipped back to the US only a few days later. He was unwell for much of the early 1920s. He then rescued this bank from certain insolvency and had a long and well-deserved retirement before he died recently. I haven’t a clue when or why he would have given this matchbook to your grandmother and left this note about it in the safe here. He never talked to me about it. Maybe he’d forgotten about it, or maybe he assumed that whatever debt this was repaying was long forgotten. Anyway, what is the problem and let’s see if we can help.”

“My daughter Susan is dying of a rare cancer. The British National Health Service can do nothing. The only hope is an experimental treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. But I’m just a teacher, I don’t know the right doctors to get her accepted there, and I don’t have the money to pay for the treatment anyway.”

“Where is she now?”

“London.”

John picked up the phone on his desk and pressed a button. “Jill, have them get the jet ready for a trip to London. And get the director of the Mayo clinic on the phone, he owes me some favors for re-financing that ill-advised building they threw up a few years ago just before a big recession. Oh, and get my son Charles up here. Since he’s an intern he could be working anywhere in the building right now, but I think he’s most likely in the bond trading section.”

**

Julia climbed up the steps to the Megabank private jet. She’d come over on the cheapest ticket she could get, pessimistic that even that expenditure would come to anything. Carrying a matchbook halfway around the world seemed an unlikely way to save her daughter’s life. But now here she was on the first step, flying on a private jet for the first time in her life.

Charles was twenty, a tall handsome man, athletically built. He was working as an intern in various departments in the bank to learn the business. Everyone assumed that one day in about another twenty years he would be running it. But his day got turned upside down earlier in the day when his father asked him to go and bring this woman’s daughter back from London and take her to the Mayo clinic in Rochester. They had a bed ready for her.

Charles, however, was a bit annoyed. This job seemed like something somebody else could handle. The bank had plenty of people in human resources who could arrange things with the Mayo clinic. They had a whole transportation department that could get a person from London to Minnesota. When Charles had asked why his father became sentimental and said that he was named after his great-grandfather and would live up to his great-grandfather’s promises. He told him about the matchbook in the safe. Nobody knew why it was there, but, his father insisted, neither of them was going to renege on a commitment the older Charles had made just because they didn’t know enough about it.

“What is the budget for this caper?” Charles asked.

“Whatever it takes,” his father replied, echoing the words of his grandfather.

Grumpily, Charles agreed to go to London and escort Susan to the Mayo clinic. But then he would return to New York and the bond trading floor. Only a few hours later he was walking down the steps from the plane in a cold English drizzle a few paces behind Julia. A limo was already waiting to take them to the hospital.

Charles and Julia walked into the hospital room. There was one bed in there with a woman, aged about 20, sleeping. She looked very thin and weak, and the fact that she had no hair made her look like someone out of a science fiction movie.

“This is Susan,” Julia said to Charles. “She sleeps a lot of the time, the drugs make her exhausted. You wouldn’t know to look at her now that she used to be on the British rowing squad, strong as an ox and fitter than I’ve ever been.”

“What color was her hair?” Charles asked.

“Blonde. It will grow back one day, I feel confident. Now that you and your father are helping us.”

“The ambulance my office arranged should be here shortly to take her back to the jet. This will certainly be the shortest visit I’ll ever make to Europe. If the traffic isn’t too bad we’ll have been in the country just four hours.”

**

Susan was sleeping again. The new drug regime she was on was apparently starting to work after a week, but it still left her completely debilitated. She stirred slightly and then opened her eyes.

“Hi,” said Charles. “Welcome back to planet earth. It’s about 4-o-clock in the afternoon.”

He was sitting in Susan’s room in the Mayo clinic. He’d never returned to New York as he’d planned. His father had insisted he remain in Minnesota, especially since. Julia had had to return to Britain for a week. But what had started as a chore was starting to become enjoyable.

“I’m not much fun am I?” Susan said. “I was awake for about an hour this morning and then sleep the rest of the day. You’d never know I used to be up by 6 every morning to practice rowing or go for a run.”

Charles was impressed at her strength of character considering how awful he knew she felt all the time. It was a pity she slept so much, she was great fun to spend time with during the few hours that she was awake.

“Your mother said your hair is blonde.”

“It was. But I didn’t really like it that much. I used to cut it pretty short. But now it’s all gone. The drugs attack fast-dividing cells like cancer cells. Unfortunately hair follicles are fast dividing cells too, that’s why your hair grows. The drugs attack them too. So I don’t have any hair anywhere now.”

“Anywhere?” Charles raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve got a dirty mind, you naughty boy. And no, there’s none there either if you must know. The ultimate Brazilian.”

Charles couldn’t stop himself imagining Susan’s crotch. Two smooth hairless lips enveloping the secret pink petals of her vulva. In fact Charles thought about Susan’s body a lot during the long periods that she slept. He imagined her not as she was, weak and thin, but as she must have been, tall, muscular, fit, laughing and living life to the full.

And sometimes he imagined more. He imagined her naked, a muscular male rower bent over her body, stroking his oar in her scull.

“You don’t have to stay here the whole time you know,” Susan said. “I’m waited on hand and foot like a luxury hotel anyway.”

“I like spending time with you, it’s not a chore.”

“As long as you are not just doing it out of a sense of duty to your great-grandfather. I know I’m asleep so much that it must be really boring for you.”

“No, I read when you sleep. Or I just sit here with my thoughts. I like being here with you.”

The two of them joked back and forth about nothing in particular, their different experiences growing up in different countries, how cold it would soon be in Minnesota, when Charles would start school again.

“Do you have a girlfriend?” Susan asked suddenly.

“Not at the moment, how about you?”

“I’m not into girls,” Susan laughed. “But I don’t have a boyfriend which is what you really meant. Who’d want a bald wreck like this? In any case, I don’t think I’d be strong enough to…” Susan’s voice trailed away, a look of sadness crossed her face.

“I thought women just had to lie back and think of England!”

“Hey, I give as good as I get. Well, I used to. Now all I can do is fantasize while I lie here half asleep. Never mind sex, I’ve not even been cuddled by a man for nearly a year.”

Charles stood up, moved over to Susan’s bed and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. He put his arm around her shoulders and slipped his other arm underneath her frail body. He pulled her tight against him. It was the most natural thing in the world to kiss her. Her tongue found his and they battled, a small surrogate for the full physical coupling they both knew was impossible. Charles slid his hand under her blankets. He undid a button on her pajamas and slipped his hand onto her naked breast. She shivered as his fingers closed around a taut nipple. Her breasts were firm. She pushed her body weakly against his exploring hand.

“Charles, I want to see your cock.”

Charles was surprised, both at what she was requesting and the brazen way in which she asked it. He unbuckled his belt and undid his zip. When he pushed down his underwear his hard cock leapt free. Susan gazed at it, a look of hunger on her face.

“Stroke it for me,” she whispered. “I want to see you come.”

Charles stood up and went over and locked the door. He closed a small privacy curtain across the small window. Then he pulled his T-shirt over his head and stepped out of his jeans, before returning to sit on the edge of Susan’s bed.

“It’s beautiful,” she said. “Promise you’ll fuck me if I don’t die.”

“I promise,” said Charles as he slowly stroked his cock.

“Imagine your cock is in my cunt, not in your fist,” Susan continued. “Sliding back and forth in my wetness. Feel me tighten myself on you. Maybe I’d be on top, riding you like a horse, fucking you in a high trot.”

Charles was stroking faster now.

“You’d like to fuck my ass, wouldn’t you? I’ve never been fucked up my ass, I want you to be the first. You could roll me onto my front. That tight little brown hole all yours for the taking. Be gentle won’t you. Your cock is big. I’m really tight and you don’t want to hurt me.”

Charles was close to coming.

“I can feel your big cock as it slowly forces its way into my asshole.”

“I’m nearly coming,” said Charles.

“Come in my mouth.”

Charles moved so that he bent over Susan. He lowered her cock between her parted lips, feeling her tongue as it started to lick his knob. He stroked his shaft a few more times and then he was coming, spurting jets of hot come into Susan’s welcoming mouth. She closed her lips around his cock, using her tongue to prolong his orgasm as long as she could. She swallowed. “That was some of the hottest sex I’ve ever had,” she said.

Charles got up and put his clothes back on again. By the time he was dressed, Susan was already asleep again. Charles unlocked the door and sat back down on his chair. He dozed.

It was early evening before she awoke again.

“Did we really do that?” she asked, with a big smile on her face.

“You don’t regret it, do you?”

“No, silly. I want to do it again. But this time the other way round. I want to come in your mouth.”

Charles locked the door again. He pulled the sheets and blankets off Susan. He worked the bottoms off her pajamas. Her hairless sex was everything he’d imagined it to be. He helped her part her legs. Her pink lips already pouted with arousal as he lowered his head and gently kissed her all over, little fluttery kisses on her thighs, her belly, her outer lips. Finally he started to kiss her inner lips.

“Oh Charles, you have no idea how exciting this is after so long untouched. I thought I must have sealed up or something.”

He reached down and gently parted her outer lips, pulling her cunt open.

“I don’t think so,” he replied. And then he pushed his tongue as deep as he could into the pink tunnel. He felt her trying to rock her hips as he fucked her with his tongue. Then he moved to her clit, hard as a ball-bearing as his tongue rolled in small circles around it and, as her arousal built, finally on it.

“Don’t stop, Charles. Make me come.”

Charles pulled her sex open wider so that her clit was totally exposed. He stroked her harder and faster, working her tension higher and higher until finally her climax burst through her body, and she squealed with ecstasy and pleasure as it took her over completely, wave after wave of undiluted joy washing over her.

“Thank you, Charles,” she moaned as the last dying flutters of her orgasm subsided.

Charles stood up. He pulled up Susan’s pajamas and then pulled up the sheet and blankets. She was already asleep.

**

Susan stirred. “I’m finally feeling slightly stronger now that I’m off the chemo. They may have killed the cancer but they pretty much killed me in the process. Look, I can lift my arm.”

Susan held her arm out straight, something she’d been too weak to do for months.

“Do you know what else I can do?” she continued.

Charles laughed. “Have sex?”

“You’re optimistic! Not yet I’m afraid. And I haven’t forgotten you promised to fuck me when I’m strong enough. But I’ve discovered that I can move my legs apart on my own. What do you think I’m doing under the bedcovers?”

“You naughty girl. And I was just sitting here reading the newspaper innocently.”

Charles put the paper down and stood up. He moved over by Susan and pulled the bedding back off Susan. Her legs were slightly parted and her hand was inside the waistband of her pajamas.

“Having a hairless pussy feels pretty good,” she said. Charles could see that her hand gently moving under her pajamas. “Maybe I should keep it that way.”

Susan put her legs together while he worked her pajama bottom off. She tried to undo her pajama top but her hands couldn’t cope with the buttons. Charles undid them and opened up her jacket exposing her breasts. He noticed her nipples were hard. She parted her legs again. His eyes were immediately drawn to her cunt lips. He could see she was wet. He bent forward to lick her.

“No Charles,” Susan said sharply. “I want to do this myself. I want to make myself come for the first time in ages.”

Charles sat up, a shadow of disappointment across his face.

“You can watch though,” Susan smirked as her finger slipped between her lips. She slipped a finger inside herself and then rubbed some moisture onto her clit. She started to stroke herself with one finger, a slow back-and-forth movement barely grazing her clit.

“Tell me what you are fantasizing about,” said Charles, his erection straining against his jeans.

“Ooh. Maybe you’re the big boss of Megabank and I’m one of your employees. I’ve done something wrong and you have to fire me. I beg for forgiveness and you tell me that you can’t let me off with no punishment, that you’ll have to spank me. I bend over your desk. You make me take off the skirt of my suit. I’m just wearing a thong. It only takes you a moment to have that round my ankles. I bend over your desk again and you bring your hand down on my ass. It stings and I cry out. You spank me again. My cheeks are getting pink. You can see my pussy, can see how wet I’m getting. I move my legs apart so you have a better view. I’m like a farm animal on heat. And you are hard, of course. How can you resist?”

Susan was stroking herself a bit faster now. Her face was starting to look slightly pink.

“You unzip yourself. You put your cock between my lips. You move it up and down, spreading my wetness around, stroking your cockhead on my clit, teasing me. Finally the point of your knob just nestles in my opening. Slowly you push into me. I love the feeling of being penetrated, of a big cock slowly breaching my defenses. I’m looking forward to when you enter me for real, Charles. You start to thrust your hips now, slowly sliding your cock in and out of me. I’m nearly coming, Charles. Hold me.”

Charles moved and lay alongside Susan. He put a hand underneath her fragile body and another on one of her breasts. Susan continued to stroke her clit, pressing harder and rolling her finger in a tight circle.

“You are fucking roughly now. The fronts of my thighs are getting bruised on your desk, you are fucking me so hard, slamming your lovely cock deep into me, your belly banging against my ass cheeks. I can feel your balls on my lips. I’m going to come. For real.”

Suddenly Susan’s body tightened in Charles arms. She let out a small moan as she climaxed.

“Oh, Charles, it’s feels wonderful.”

Charles continued to hold her as her orgasm gradually died away.

“I’m so proud,” Susan beamed. “I did it all myself.”

Charles stood up and worked Susan’s pajama bottoms back on and pulled up her bedding.

“Charles, a few more weeks and I hope my hand will be strong enough to take on your cock,” Susan said. A few moments later she was asleep.

**

The two of them walked into the hotel room and went out onto the balcony. The cool trade winds ruffled her dress. Waves were breaking on the shore, tropical plants were everywhere. They could hear laughter and glasses clinking coming up from the Polynesian themed restaurant below. Kuaii, the garden isle. Finally they were alone.

“Hey Charles,” Susan said. “I hope you are going to overperform like this forever.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I only made you promise to fuck me when I was better. It wasn’t compulsory to go all the way and marry me.”

“You mean I didn’t have to, that you’d have fucked me anyway without our being engaged?” Charles laughed as he poured out another glass of Champagne. “Besides, my great-grandfather ordered me to do whatever it takes.”

“Somehow I don’t think this is what he had in mind!”

She turned around. He reached out and unzipped the white wedding dress. She shook it off her shoulders into a white puddle on the floor. Soon she was naked. She lay naked on the bed. She spread her legs and gently stroked herself. Charles watched as he undressed, noticing that the blonde fuzz of her pubic hair was finally getting thicker.

“It’s so good to be able to masturbate again. It was horrible being too weak to even do that. I knew I was going to be fine that day when I first managed to make myself come again while you watched.”

“Well, I’m glad you didn’t fire me once you no longer needed my tongue.”

“Hey, I still need your tongue even if I can do it myself too. You’ve got good job security. So come here and fuck me Mr Adams.”

“Certainly Mrs Adams.”

Charles slid up the bed and kissed his wife. His already hard cock pushed between her engorged lips. She rocked her hips up and took his knob into her. He slowly pushed his entire cock into her in a long slow movement. She groaned with pleasure. As his hips rose and fell, she rocked her hips in time.

“Oh sir, I’m no longer a virgin,” squealed Susan, laughing.

“It must have been hard to save it for your wedding night. Weren’t you ever tempted?”

“Oh no, sir. A virtuous woman like me?”

Susan pulled her knees up to her shoulders so that she could take Charles deeper into her, all the way to the headwall of her cunt. In no time a small orgasm ran through her like a shiver. Charles pulled out of her, she rolled onto her front.

“Remember I told you I was an anal virgin. I’ve saved it for wedding night.”

She reached back and spread her cheeks. Charles looked down at the puckered rosebud of her virgin ass. He bent down and gently licked it. She trembled with anticipation and arousal. As Susan relaxed Charles worked a finger into her tight hole. Susan groaned. “That’s so good, I should have tried it before.” Charles gradually worked a second finger into Susan’s ass. Susan pulled her legs up underneath her so that her ass was sticking up in the air. Charles moved behind her. He looked down at the beautiful spectacle of her swollen pink pussy on offer, and above that the saliva-slick brown button of her asshole. He positioned the head of his cock on its target. She pushed back against him. Slowly her body opened to accommodate the girth of his cock. He looked down and watched as his cock slowly slid into his wife’s unused rear entrance. She moaned at the intensity of her ass being stretched open for what she knew would be the first time of many. Slowly Charles started to fuck her. He reached underneath her and stroked her nipples as his cock slid in and out of her ass. She was so tight. She reached back and started to caress her own clit. He started to fuck her harder, his belly banging against her cheeks as each thrust buried his cock in her and elicited another grunt of pleasure.

“I want you to come in my mouth like that first time at the Mayo clinic,” Susan said, sensing that Charles was getting close. He pulled out of her ass. She rolled onto her front. He moved up the bed so he was straddling her body, his cock over her mouth. He stroked himself a few more times until a jet of white jism shot from his cock onto her face. He bent forward, pushing his cock into her open mouth. “Mmm” she murmured as her tongue circled his jerking cock.

He lay down beside her. They wrapped their arms around each other.

“So do you think our great-grandparents fucked?” he asked. “That that was the reason for the matchbook? It was a big deal back then, I guess.”

“What was your great-grandfather’s name?”

“Charles. I was named after him.”

“Wow. That’s creepy. My great-grandmother was Susan. I was named after her. How come we never noticed before?”

“Maybe my grandmother’s mysterious father was your great-grandfather. Would that make this incest?”

“No, if people who shared great-grandparents couldn’t get together, small towns would never be able to function. Most people don’t have a clue who their great-grandparents are anyway.”

“Well, I guess we’ll never know.”

“Our great-grandparents certainly matched us up pretty well, anyway.”

“That’s why they call it a matchbook.”