The Babysitter Seduced me!
Lubrican
The Babysitter Seduced Me
by Robert Lubrican
Bookapy Edition
Copyright 2022 Robert Lubrican
License Notes
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Table of Contents
Chapters: One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven
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Foreword
Just to be up front about things, this story contains some scenarios I've written about before, but which continue to fascinate me. One, in particular, "forced" lactation, is quite possible and happens frequently around the world, even though not much is published about it. The story isn't an attempt to recycle these scenarios. They are simply mechanisms I'm familiar with, and which help the characters end up where they end up.
Thanks for reading
Bob
Chapter One
Let me start by saying that the title of this story is misleading. My babysitter didn't seduce me. Not intentionally, anyway. That will be explained as the details of what happened are laid out. But I was seduced by this woman. That's a simple thing to say, but it was a very complicated set of conditions that led to it. I didn't intend for any seduction to take place, either by my intent or hers. What it all amounts to is that we can't choose who we are attracted to. That just happens and we really have no control over it.
That's what this story is actually about.
Let me start like many of these kinds of stories begin. Let me describe myself and some other people in the story.
First me. I'm Bob Wellington and I'm nothing special. I was twenty-eight when all this started, and hadn't done much in the way of working out or exercising since I was eighteen. I'm five-nine, weigh a smidgen over 200 pounds, and have the beginnings of a little pooch where my six pack should be. My hair is brown and is a bit shaggy, since I only get a haircut every couple of months or so. I own my own business and only rarely meet my clients, so a traditional "business-like" appearance isn't necessary. I like comfortable clothing and have never been a fashionista. I wear glasses, to correct mild myopia. Basically, if I'm in a crowd, most people wouldn't give me a second glance.
My wife is Melody Wellington. She's two years older than me and we met at college. She's also an inch taller than me and her personality is that of a mover and shaker. Or at least she wants to be a mover and shaker. Why she actually chose me is a mystery, because she's a good looking woman who was popular with all the guys at college. She was a mover and shaker there, too, active in lots of clubs and involved in student activism concerning a number of issues, both on and off campus. She's the kind of person who, back during the Vietnam war period, would have gone to demonstrations and carried anti-war signs and all that. I wouldn't have said it then, but now I understand that she dominated our relationship. We went where she wanted to go and did what she wanted to do. Our marriage was the same way, with one exception. She didn't want children, but got pregnant anyway, by accident. The pill is only 90-something percent effective and she was in the 10 or so percent who it doesn't work for. Part of that might have been because her sex drive was over the moon. When she decided I was her boyfriend, she was "seeing" three other guys and all of them were fucking her. That stopped when she decided we were "serious" and suddenly, I had to take the place of three guys in her bed. Not that I complained. I got to have hot sex at least twice a day. I think I was a little dazed because there I was, with this fabulous, hot woman, who wanted me over all other males.
That lasted until she had our child, a boy we named Jordan, named after my paternal grandfather. But I'll get to that in a minute.
The other important person in all this was (at that time) a college sophomore named Erica Jardeen. I'll provide more information on her at a more logical point, when she came into our lives, but she needs to be identified now.
Which brings us to the point of explaining why she did work for us. We hired her to be our babysitter. It wasn't in the traditional kind of way, where the babysitter watches the child while the parents go do something together. In this case, it was because my wife decided to go back to work two months after she gave birth, and I work at home, which meant we needed someone to take care of Jordie while she and I were both working. I suppose they call that "child care" nowadays, instead of "babysitting", but in my mind, she was our babysitter.
Let me start by going back to Melody's decision to go back to work so soon after giving birth. She's a paralegal for one of the high profile law firms in a major Missouri city, which we live half an hour north of. Which city isn't important, but the population is over 120,000. That puts in context what "high profile" means in terms of a law firm. They weren't ambulance chasers. Though, come to think of it, they did have an arm of the company that advertised on TV constantly how much they would help you if you were in an accident. Melody, though, worked for one of the partners. She was closed-mouth about her work, saying it was confidential.
I objected, of course, when she said she wanted to go back to work. Jordie was an infant and still needed a ton of care. I was fully aware of that. Quite often I was the one who got up in the middle of the night to give him a bottle. Melody didn't want to breast feed, so Jordie got started in life on formula. I changed his diapers and bathed him and held him and all that. Melody did, too. I'm not knocking her, but she wasn't nearly as interested in her infant son as I was.
I think, now, that she had post-partum depression. I didn't recognize it then and I'm not any sort of expert in the field. In fact, I think she had pre-partum depression, if there is such a thing. She didn't want to have the baby in the first place, and she was miserable throughout her pregnancy. She never mentioned abortion, but I'm sure that's because her parents were staunch Catholics. They'd have had a hissy fit if they'd even known she was on birth control pills, but she did not want children. She wanted to focus on her career. As I look back on it, I think Melody saw those 11 months as an aberration in her otherwise perfectly planned life, a necessary but temporary detour on the path to her master plan. As soon as she could, she got back to her plan, which didn't really include taking care of a baby.
This is not to say she neglected Jordie when she was home. Not at all. She helped take care of him. She just wasn't ... invested ... in his progress, if you know what I mean. Taking care of him, to Melody, was more like a chore that had to be done, whether you wanted to or not. Like vacuuming the carpet. Or dusting the blinds. She liked him. That was clear. She smiled at him and talked to him. But he wasn't the center of her life, like you see quite often with a new mother. She didn't display any of the "normal" symptoms of post-partum depression, but I think, now, that's what led to the decisions she made.
When she announced she was going back to work (not that she wanted to go back to work - she was going back to work) I said I couldn't take care of Jordie and do my own work at the same time.
"So we'll hire somebody to step in while I'm at work," she said.
"You mean a nanny?" I said, because that's what I thought she meant.
"Not a nanny," she said. "A babysitter."
"That's an almost full time job," I said. "I mean if you're working full time, then I'll need somebody on a mostly full time basis. I mean I still have to do my job, too ... you know?"
What I do is debug computer code for a variety of programs that are written by somebody else. Anyone who's in the business knows that the author of code knows what should be there, and so they sometimes miss what actually is there. A second set of independent eyes can catch issues that the author misses. I'm told it's similar to what editors do for authors of books. Big companies have their own full-time IT people to do this kind of thing, but smaller companies can't afford that. That's where I come in.
This is not necessarily high-paying work. My wife made more than I did, usually, though my reputation in the industry was getting better and my work load was slowly climbing. Anyway, I needed to be able to concentrate on what I was doing, without the frequent interruptions a baby causes.
"We make enough to do that," she said. "I need to get back to work before they decide to hire somebody else to take my place."
And that was that. Melody had made (another) decision about how our marriage was going to work.
We put an ad in the paper, and I got calls from half a dozen women, but when I explained what we wanted they lost interest. When I checked into putting Jordie in a regular day care situation, it was too expensive. That situation would cost almost all of what I was currently making.
It was the comment of one person who called that led me to Erica.
"What you need is a college girl to come in and help you," she said.
"College kids are going to classes during the day," I observed.
"Not necessarily," said the woman. "What with Covid and all, a lot of that is being done online. Check into it. For what you can offer, that's probably what you're going to have to do."
So I made some calls and, long story short, ended up putting up notices on bulletin boards in the dorms.
To her credit, Melody didn't just abandon me during this process. She only went back to work on half days, at first. But by the time Erica responded to my ad, my wife was chomping at the bit for me to hire somebody. So, basically, I took the first person who said she was willing to give it a try.
So, this is the logical time to provide some information about Erica that might be helpful. She was nineteen and in her second year of college. She came from a small town in southwest Missouri, where her father worked at the local lumber yard and her mother was the minister's secretary at the Presbyterian church in town. She got to go to college because she received seven or eight small scholarships from organizations like the Lions Club, a ladies' group at church, the lumber yard where her dad worked, and a bunch of others that she researched and applied for when she was a senior in high school. Almost all of them were based on her having a 3.0 GPA or better and she took that seriously. She wanted to borrow as little money as possible to get her degree. She had a part time job at the campus library when I met her and not much in the way of a social life, though I only learned that after she'd worked for us for quite a while.
She had not yet declared a major, and was taking core courses. It turned out a lot of them were online, or she had the option to do them online. Covid had upset the traditional college apple cart and what was going on was very fluid. The point is that, on most days, she could spend from eight in the morning until five in the afternoon at my house. She might be doing some of her own work on her laptop, but what I needed her to do fit in with that. Jordie needed attention about every 45 minutes or so and she could carry him around between times, or keep an eye on him while he was in the wind-up swing we had and all that kind of thing. I heard him cry, but I didn't have to jump up and do something about it. And, with my office door closed, even his crying didn't really distract me too much.
My initial reaction to Erica was somewhat muddled. I thought of her as a "girl" but recognized she looked and acted like a woman. She stood at about 5' 8" and probably weighed 125 pounds, though I never asked her about that. She was slim. I'll admit up front that I looked her over when I first met her. She didn't have much up top, though her hips were noticeable. I suppose if you were an ass man, she might have appealed to you. She wasn't pretty in a classic sense. What I mean is she looked very normal. She wore glasses, like me, and pushed them up with her forefinger, like I do. She was soft-spoken but didn't seem shy. And when she met Jordie, her behavior and motions made it clear she'd been around babies before. I would learn that she'd done a lot of what I perceive as traditional babysitting when she was in high school.
What sealed the deal, though, was that Jordie took to her immediately. What I mean is that he was content to be held by her. He even smiled, which was something he had only been doing for a week or two.
"You're a handsome little man," she cooed at him. That's when he smiled.
I got into the specifics of what I'd need her to do and she nodded all the way through it.
"I can do online classes while I take care of him, and do my homework at the library in the evenings," she said.
Then I got to the salary.
"Can I eat while I'm here?" she asked.
"Of course," I said, somewhat taken aback.
"I didn't get the meal plan at school," she said. "If I can get a couple of meals here, it would save me a lot. What you'd pay me would be my spending money, and I can keep working at the Library in the evenings."
"Meals is no problem," I said. "You could do breakfast and lunch here, no problem."
"Then let's give it a try," she said.
And, just like that, we had a full-time babysitter.
Initially, I didn't see a lot of Erica when she first started working for us. I usually have a bowl of cereal in the morning because it's quick and easy. So I'd usually already eaten by the time Erica arrived to start her duties. There was a little chit chat between us. She didn't talk to Melody much because she was usually in the process of leaving for work when Erica got there. You'd think - or at least I would have thought back then, if I'd been paying attention - that Jordie's mother would give the babysitter instructions about his care, but that really didn't happen much. Melody's disinterest in her baby wasn't really evident, at that point, if you understand my meaning.
And, to be honest, Erica didn't need a lot of instruction. She knew what to do and when to do it. After the first two or three days, it got to the point where I closed my door and didn't worry about either Jordie or his care-giver. I know that sounds like I was disinterested, too, but it wasn't that way. It was just obvious that Jordie was in good hands with Erica. And I was right there, in my office, if any issues came up.
I probably got to know our babysitter at lunch. I knew it was important not to get tunnel vision when I did my work and that I should get up and move around, every so often. I saw Erica when I went to get coffee, or a soft drink, and we might exchange a few words, but lunch was a different situation. I spent a good hour eating lunch and I spent those hours with Erica as we ate together.
Before Erica got there I ate out of cans a lot. Melody wasn't much of a cook and neither was I. If it couldn't be prepared in a microwave, we just didn't go to the effort. Erica, on the other hand, liked to cook and prepare good meals. She asked if she could do that and I rather absent-mindedly told her to feel free. When I came out of my office on the third day, to find meatloaf, baked potatoes, and carrots waiting, I was a little stunned.
"You didn't have to do this," I said, staring at the repast in front of me.
"It didn't take much," she said. "I put it in before Geometry and by the time I was ready for my American History class it was done. I hope it didn't get cold waiting for you."
"It looks and smells delicious," I said, as my mouth started watering.
"Eat up," she said. "I had a plate already. It's time for me to feed Jordie."
She brought a happy-looking baby boy to the table and sat him on her lap while she gave him his bottle. He fussed a little bit, clamping his lips closed and turning his head. At one point she said, "You shouldn't always need ..." She stopped and flushed. "Never mind," she said, to the room in general. "Come on, Sweetie," she begged and about that time he latched on to the nipple and then sucked greedily, in big gulps, gasping for air occasionally. "Good boy," she cooed.
I paid that little scenario no particular attention at that time, but I would think back on it later.
I asked her about her classes, and we made a little small talk, but I was more interested in eating. It's sad to say, but a simple meal of meatloaf, potatoes, and carrots was a real feast for me.
It was probably halfway into our second week before the initial shyness of two strangers meeting and spending a little time together gave way to a more relaxed relationship. She talked a lot about things Jordie was doing.
"I'm thinking about declaring a major in early childhood development," she said, one day.
"Really?" She had made tuna casserole that day and I was pigging out on it. "What made you think about that?"
"Jordie, actually," she said.
I stopped eating.
"Why? Is something wrong? Is he not developing right?"
"No," she said, laughing in a way that made me calm down immediately. "It's just fascinating seeing him develop. I've done some online research and there's a ton of information about milestones in a child's life. He seems to be right on track. He acts a lot like a little girl I sat for when I was in high school. I didn't think about it then, but now that I can compare him to what I remember about her ... it's just interesting. And I love kids, and taking care of them. So why not make a career out of it?"
"If your interest lies in that direction, you should go for it," I said.
"Can I ask you a question?" she said. She was burping Jordie, and the way her hand landed on his back with a solid thump seemed kind of strong to me. He let out a big belch and she lightened up. It was one of the first times I actually paid close attention to what she was doing.
"Sure," I said, distracted by my thoughts.
"Your wife doesn't seem to worry about how I take care of Jordie," she said.
There was a long pause before I spoke.
"That's not a question," I said.
Her cheeks got pink. She pushed her glasses up on her nose.
"What I mean is, I'm used to moms being kind of fussy about things. I guess I've never met a mom who didn't give me lots of guidance about taking care of her baby."
"I don't give you lots of guidance, either," I pointed out.
"I know that," said Erica, "but you pay attention whenever I see you. And you help out." She was referring to those times when she did have to go off to a brick and mortar classroom during the week. "When your wife gets home she never goes right to see him. I guess I've just never met a mom like that. Most of the mothers I've worked for practically inspect their baby after I've been taking care of it."
And that, my friends, was the first time I actually thought about the relationship my wife had with our child. It would be almost two more months before I started thinking about post-partum depression, but that conversation was the seed that germinated into my later ... concern.
"She trusts you," I said. "I do, too. She doesn't get to see you with Jordie, but I tell her how well the two of you get along."
"Okay," she said. "I was a little worried that she didn't like me."
"Melody isn't a very social person," I said. "In her work everything is required to be very professional, and gregarious behavior isn't encouraged, I guess."
"Well, I know she's a good mom," said Erica, wiping up some burp mess Jordie had produced.
"Oh?" I said.
She looked at me blankly.
"Oh what?" she said.
"You said my wife is a good mom. I wondered why you'd say that," I said.
She blushed a lot this time and, for the first time, I realized she had a spray of freckles across her nose, from cheek to cheek.
"I was thinking ... I shouldn't say it," she said, clearly flustered.
"Shouldn't say what?" I asked. I put my fork down. "Is anything wrong?"
"No!" she said. "I just don't want to be rude."
"Rude?" I said. "I'm confused. What does being rude have to do with saying my wife is a good mother?"
"It doesn't matter," she said. "Sometimes I let my mouth run when I shouldn't."
This turned out to be a pivotal point in my relationship with our babysitter. That relationship had become relaxed, familiar in a way that is often associated with people who are friends, without having actually declared they were friends to anyone, or even each other.
"Hey," I said. "You're kind of part of this family now. I don't want you to feel like there's anything you can't talk about, especially when it comes to Jordie."
"Well, it's going to sound discourteous, but I don't mean it to be that way," she said.
"Spit it out," I said. "I can take it."
"It's not about you," she said. "It's just that every morning, when I get here, I kind of ... well ... I sort of inspect Jordie."
"Inspect?"
"Yeah. Look him over. Make sure nothing had changed."
"What could change?" I had a sudden thought. "Do you worry that we abuse him?"
"Of course not," she actually snorted. "I guess I just do what I saw all those moms I babysat for in high school do. I look the baby over to make sure everything is okay."
"Oh," I said. I thought about that. I was still too "new" at scrutinizing Melody's actions, as they pertained to Jordie, to think of anything that had been discussed as odd, or off. "I don't see anything rude about that at all," I said. "Actually, I'm kind of glad you take that kind of interest in him."
"Thank you," she said, looking more at ease. "I didn't mean to offend anybody. It's just that it seems like I do that kind of thing more than Melody does." She blinked. "Of course I have no idea what she does when I leave." Her shoulders slumped. "I feel like such an idiot."
"Don't," I said. That was a simple response that I'd want someone to give me if I had said I felt bad about something. You always want them to say it's okay. So that's what I said.
It wasn't until I was back in my office, after lunch, that I gave some serious thought to what she'd said. The problem was that both Melody and I were new parents. Neither of us really knew what "normal" meant, in terms of the addition to our family and how things should develop. In some ways, Jordie's baby-sitter had more time on the job, so to speak, than either of his parents.
I think that's why she realized something was "off" with Melody's maternal behavior, long before I did. She knew what to look for, or at least knew how Melody's behavior compared to the dozens of other mothers Erica had interacted with. I, on the other hand, was just a bump on a log, the donor of the sperm cell which had made Melody's womb swell.
I stopped thinking about all that and got back to work.
By the time Jordie was four months old Erica and I were buddies. I use that word because our relationship had no tenseness or anxiety in it in any way. She called me Bob and, basically, treated me like I was one of her peers. I didn't really have any peers, so to speak, at least none that I spent any time with. So my most recent "peers" had also been college students. I suppose that's why we settled into a kind of consanguinity. She wasn't family by blood, but what was going on felt that way.
As such, our interactions became almost playful, I guess I'd say.
And then winter was over and things changed. Melody had given birth in January and we lived on the northern edge of the Bible Belt, so by the time he was four and a half months old, the weather had warmed. More importantly, school was out for the summer. And that meant that Erica had no distractions when it came to taking care of her little charge.
By this time Jordie was paying attention to the world beyond the ends of his fingers. He held his head up by himself when being held, and he made noises when he "interacted" with one of us. He wasn't talking, of course, but it was obvious these noises were the precursors of speech. When he was hungry he opened his mouth. More than once he opened his mouth and put it squarely on the tip of one of Erica's breasts before she got the bottle where it needed to go. I thought I heard her whisper, "Not now" to him one time, but it didn't pique my interest. Later I would understand that whispered comment. He interacted with the figures on the mobile hanging above his crib and when he wanted a toy, he'd swing his arm in an attempt to get it. If he did, he held onto it and swung his arms happily.
As the weather got warmer, Erica's wardrobe changed. She went from sweatshirts and jeans to tank tops and terrycloth shorts. On many days she wore a halter top. This was also kind of pivotal in our relationship, because for the first time, I noticed that Erica never wore a bra. She didn't need one, really. I'm not all that up on bra sizes, but I knew my wife wore a C cup. On Erica, my wife's bras would have just fallen straight down, past her hips, and onto the floor. If Erica had to buy B cup bras, she was lucky. I say "lucky" because most of the girls I knew thought that bigger boobs were better boobs.
On Erica, though, her breasts just made her look super trim. It was odd, in a way, because I've always been a boob man, but her tiny titties were not off-putting at all. Her tank tops merely advertised there was nothing covering the nipples under it. When it came to the halter tops, though, they were all too loose. I say "too loose" because if she bent over, I could see everything she had.
What that was were mere swells on her chest, maybe three inches off her rib cage, with pale light brown areolas and nipples. I think the formal name for their color is taupe. What was interesting was that, as small as her breasts were, her nipples were really well-developed. They protruded off the beds of their areolas maybe a third of an inch. Melody's nipples were almost always flat, barely making a bump unless I played with them. Then they stood up to be noticed, but unless she was turned on she could have worn the thinnest of shirts and her nipples wouldn't show. Erica's nipples were always stiff.
I confess, I started looking at her breasts a lot.
And that was when I started getting erections for the babysitter.
I don't want to give the impression that Erica was "showing off" to me. It wasn't like that at all. She never looked at me to see if I was peeking. It was more like she was so comfortable with me that she just didn't worry about that kind of thing. I had never given her any indication I was "interested" in her in any way other than I was 'the guy she worked for'. And she had never flirted with me, or given any sign that she had any interest in me as a man. As I think back on it now, I think her attractiveness was just a natural result of the kind of person she was. That I got some peeks at her feminine attributes, meager as they were, was just a function of my own masculine drive.
Guys never turn down a chance to see a woman's breasts. You know?
And I think it was, at this point, that I finally took notice of the fact that I wasn't the only male who appreciated Erica's breasts. Jordie pawed at them and tried to put his mouth on them all the time.
Had I ever been around a woman who was nursing, I might have seen the signs of a baby who wanted access to a breast for the purposes breasts are intended. But I'd never been around any women who were breast feeding.
It was entirely by chance that my world expanded in a way that changed Erica's and my relationship in relatively Earth-shaking ways.
It happened when I finished a project. I knew that Jordie was eating about every two or three hours. I also knew, at that particular moment, that it had been about three hours since he'd had a bottle. Or at least I knew lunch had been about three hours ago, when Erica had given him a bottle while we ate lunch together. So, since I was taking a little break between projects, I decided to give Erica a break and see if I could give Jordie his bottle and she could stretch her legs, or whatever.
We had made our guest bedroom into a nursery, of sorts. A bed was still in there, but that's where Jordie's crib was, and a dresser we used as a changing table. There was a rocking chair in there, which Melody and I used at night, during his feedings. When I didn't find Erica anywhere else in the house, I went there to look for her.
What met my eyes when I opened the door and walked in shocked me to the core. Erica was sitting in the chair with the tank top she was wearing that day pulled up to her neck. Jordie was cradled against her chest, supported by her left arm and his little mouth was latched onto her left nipple. I could hear him sucking at it.
"Okay," she said, softly. She hadn't seen me, yet. "That's enough of that. Now you need to suck on something that has milk in it. Come on. You know the drill. Help me out, here."
I saw then that she had his bottle in her right hand and I watched as she pushed the rubber nipple of the bottle between her breast and his mouth. Almost smoothly he switched from the warm, human nipple to the rubber one on the bottle. As he started sucking at it avidly, she finally looked up and saw me.
"Oh!" we both said, in tandem. I felt my own face get hot as I watched hers turn red. "I'm sorry!" we said, again, together. It would have been comical if the situation hadn't been so ... intimate.
She hastily tugged at her shirt, but Jordie was in the way. She managed to get most of her breasts covered before she looked up at me with a clearly guilty face.
"It helps him get started!" she gasped.
"Wow," I said, still stunned.
"Please don't be mad," she moaned.
"Okay," I said, my voice shaky. "I guess I didn't know."
I instantly felt stupid. I had no idea how to react or what to say.
"My grandma taught me about it one time, when I had a baby who didn't want to take the bottle," she gasped.
"That's fascinating," I managed. It was fascinating. I'd never once thought about a woman doing something like that.
"Are you going to fire me?" she asked.
"Um ... no."
That was it. That was all I had. It was a somewhat hasty conclusion, based on nothing. I just knew I wasn't going to terminate her status.
"I'm sorry for intruding," I said. "I'll leave you to it."
I backed out of the door and closed it. My mind was in a whirl. Something intruded on my muddled thoughts and I looked down to see the front of my slacks sticking out like there was a zucchini in my pants.
"Good grief," I sighed, as multiple emotions flashed through my mind.
I went back to my office, but I knew there was no way I was going to be able to concentrate on work. I decided to get something to eat and went to the kitchen to make a sandwich.
I was thoughtfully munching on that when she walked into the room. She looked like a scared little rabbit.
"Jordie's down for a nap," she said, softly.
"Okay," I said.
"Can we talk about this?"
"I guess we could," I said. "I'm not sure what there is to talk about, though."
"It really is a tip my grandma taught me," she said. "I'm not a pervert or anything."
"I didn't think you were," I said. "I was just surprised. That's all."
"So you're really not mad?"
I looked at her.
"I'll be totally honest. I have no idea what I am right now." Her shoulders slumped and I felt a need to comfort her, for some reason. "I know I'm not angry, though."
"Ohhh, good," she sighed.
"You hungry?" I asked.
"I was going to make a chicken and rice casserole," she said.
"Well, I'm in favor of that," I said.
She set about working on that and we didn't say anything. The atmosphere was still tense. I didn't like that. I had gotten used to being around her and feeling ... normal.
"It's kind of cool, in a way," I said. It's what came to my mind and I didn't filter it before I said it. She turned and looked over her shoulder at me. "I mean it's what babies want the most, right?"
"Jordie does," she said, softly. "He always wants ... me ... when he's hungry."
"Of course he does," I said. Again, my filters were broken. "I would, too," I said. I flinched. When I glanced at her, she was just looking at me. Her face showed no emotion. "I mean guys are just built that way," I stammered. "I think it starts when we're babies and our fascination with breasts never goes away."
She blinked.
"You're not alone," she said. "Every boy I ever dated was fascinated with breasts."
She blinked again.
"I don't even have any, but all the guys wanted to paw them and see them anyway."
"Yeah," I said, amazed that our conversation about this was happening the way it was. "We're guys. We all want to ... um ..." I faltered. I had been about to say "suck" and suddenly, that was way too wrong.
"Suck?" she said for me. It blew my mind.
"Um ... yeah," I croaked.
"Jordie isn't the only one I've used that trick on. Almost all the babies I sat for wanted to do that, especially the ones who were being breast fed. I guess it got so normal that I stopped being careful about it."
"You didn't think I'd walk in on you," I said. "I didn't knock."
"It's your house," she said. "Why would you knock?"
"I will in the future," I said. "You might work here, but you still deserve your privacy."
"You're the first man who ever saw that," she said. "I was surprised at how it made me feel."
"You're not the only one who was surprised," I said.
She put the casserole in the oven and sat down across the table from me.
"We're friends ... right?" she said.
My brain went on vacation for a moment. I guess I had never categorized our relationship up to that point.
"It's okay if we're not," she said. "I mean, I get it. I just work here."
"No!" something in my brain made me say. "That's not how I think of it."
"How do you think of it?" she asked. She reached for what was left of my sandwich, which sat, forgotten, on my plate. She took a bite and put it back. I could tell she hadn't even thought about what she was doing. It was an incredibly intimate act, and it made things gel in my mind.
"Yes, I'd say we're friends," I said. "I guess it just seems odd to say that, what with me being ten years older than you. That's all."
"You're only nine years older than me," she said. "And you don't act all stuffy, like most men I know."
"I just act like me," I said, helplessly.
"Okay," she said. "So I really like working here. I love Jordie and I want to keep taking care of him. And I really don't want things to get weird between us. Are you going to tell Melody?"
I thought about that. What she was referring to was obvious. Was I going to tell Melody I saw her breast? That I saw Jordie sucking on the other one? I picked up the sandwich ort that was left, contemplated the spot where her teeth had torn through it, and then popped it into my mouth. I felt like I'd kissed her or something.
"I don't think she'd understand," I said.
"Do you understand?"
"Sure," I said, flippantly. "You explained it."
"And you're really okay with it? I can keep doing it?"
My erection had gone away while I ate. Suddenly it was back. I realized in a blinding epiphany that I found the thought of Erica letting my son suck at her nipples ... erotic.
It took long enough, while I had this epiphany, that she got worried.
"It's okay if you want me to stop," she said. "I get it. He should be sucking at Melody's nipples instead of mine."
"She'd never let him do that," I blurted. I blinked. "I mean she wants nothing to do with breast feeding," I explained.
"I don't understand that," said Erica. "I mean I know there are women who don't want to, but I can't wait to feed my own baby. What I feel when I tease the babies I take care of is amazing, and I know it will be mind-blowing when I can actually give a baby milk I've made in my own breasts."
My erection got harder. It was now at that stage when it needs to be grabbed. I normally never had to masturbate, because Melody's sex drive was so strong, but once in a while, when she wasn't in the mood, or was on her period, I handled things myself. It felt like I needed to do that now. I thought about how it was likely that I'd get more erections and she might notice that. I didn't want her getting uncomfortable.
"I need to say something," I said.
"Okay." She just stared at me. For the first time I realized her eyes were this greenish brown shade that, in the right light, can look almost gold.
"I ... um ... sort of ... well ... reacted to seeing that," I stammered. "I don't want you to be afraid of me."
She blinked. Then she laughed!
"I don't think I'll ever be afraid of you," she said. "You're one of the nice guys."
"Yeah, but I might not look like a nice guy if I see that again." I groaned. "I don't mean I intend to see it again," I croaked. Thoughts were darting around in my brain at breakneck speed. Some of them were announcing that I was making an ass of myself. Others were coming up with ideas on how to mitigate that situation. Still others demanded I make her understand that my reaction to her wasn't a problem for her. "I can't help what happens!" I gasped.
She sat back in her chair.
"You mean you might get a boner?" she asked. She said it in the same tone as a fast food employee saying, "Do you want fries with that?"
I covered my face with both hands. It was the quickest way to hide.
"Hey. It's okay. I understand," she said, still calm. "I've been around guys for a while. I know the deal."
Her calm acceptance of my foible somehow calmed my own thundering heart. I peeked through my fingers and then realized how juvenile I must look and took my hands away.
"Every boy I ever went on a date with got a boner," she said. "And the vast majority of them never saw my naked breast."
"Vast majority?" I said, stupidly.
"All but two, actually," she said. "All I ever did with most guys in high school was make out a little. And there was some groping involved. But I only let two get farther than kissing."
"Two," I said, still stupidly.
"One was my very first boyfriend, when I was twelve. I wanted to be all adult, and I thought letting him see my boobs was adult. That's all that happened with him. After my grandma taught me that trick, though, and some babies had sucked at me, I wondered what it would feel like if a boy did it. I let my cousin Ricky do it at a family reunion. That's when I found out doing more than kissing was not a good idea. I was fifteen."
I sat there, dumbfounded that she was being so open about all this. I'd never had a frank, open conversation about intimacy like this. My past with women had been me attempting to get as far as she would let me and her either letting me, or stopping me. We never talked about it. Again, her calm attitude about this seeped into me and calmed me.
"You're wise," I said. "If it gets you going, and you're not with a guy you want to get going, too, then it's not a good idea."
"Yeah," she sighed. "I've stayed away from that since then."
"Even in college?" I asked. I was surprised. I guess I assumed all girls in college engage in sexual behavior. That's ridiculous, of course. Even if seventy-five percent of girls lose their virginity before college, that still leaves millions of virgins enrolled in higher education.
"I have to maintain a three point oh to keep my scholarships, and I have to keep my scholarships," she said. "I still have to get some student loans as it is. Having a boyfriend, at this point in my life, is too distracting. And anyway, boys in college don't really notice me." She reached to pantomime cupping her breasts, which weren't really ' cuppable'. "I don't have enough boobs for college guys to be interested." Her hands moved down rapidly and I realized that cupping them had been an impulsive, unplanned act.
"I guess, in one sense, Jordie is your boyfriend," I joked.
Those eyes of hers bore into me.
"You have no idea how good it is that he's just a baby," she said. "And when you saw me it was even worse."
"Worse?"
"It was crazy. On the one hand I was petrified, because I was afraid you'd hate me, but at the same time I almost lost it because I got overwhelmingly ..."
She looked down at the table again and went silent.
"Overwhelmingly what?" I prodded.
"Excited?" she whispered.
"You're asking me how you felt?" I smiled.
"Okay, I felt horny. There. Are you happy?" she barked.
My penis jerked in my pants but, oddly, I felt more in control of myself than I had since I barged in on my babysitter letting my son suck her naked nipple. I decided to throw her a bone.
"I'd think letting him do that makes you feel that way all the time."
Now she did look back up at me and the look on her face was earnest.
"It's not like that at all," she said. "It feels good and it makes me feel really close to him. I understand perfectly how it can help a baby bond with its mother. But it doesn't make me want to do anything."
I saw her arm move. Her forearm was under the table, but her upper arm rotated and I realized she'd just put her hand between her legs. Somehow I knew she was just touching herself. Not masturbating. Just touching herself. As if, when a doctor asks where something hurts, you reach to touch the spot. I felt like I was in a tunnel of some kind, brightly lit, with shiny walls. As I think back on it I imagine a tunnel through a mountain. The very air felt electric and I felt like I was floating. Her attitude about all this was so forthright, so open, it felt like we'd known each other for decades, had talked about everything in the world and could talk about anything.
"So when I saw you, and you got horny, did you want to masturbate?" I asked.
I blinked. The tunnel disappeared in a flash. The electricity was gone. I saw her mouth drop open.
"That's a very personal thing to ask, Bob!" she squeaked. Suddenly I couldn't breathe.
"I'm sorry!" I gasped. "I shouldn't have asked that. I think events just overtook me and I lost my mind for a second. Please forgive me."
I stood, to flee, and had already taken a step before I realized the front of my pants was advertising my erection. I looked down and it was worse than that. There was a wet spot where I'd leaked precum.