Liberated from Self Isolation

Literotic asexstories – Liberated from Self Isolation by Verhaalen,Verhaalen
‘Self-isolation’ had become the key phrase over recent weeks; uttered by those in authority on both a national and local level. The boundaries to normal, daily, life were being drawn in ever tighter.

Luke wondered about it.

The phrase had been used on him by his new employers. They were taking no chances on having COVID-19 take out many of their key staff thus affecting productivity. Others in the company had been sent on their way too. Like him, they were to work from home. Connectivity, remote working, and hot-desking were all to be applied to the world that he had only just stepped into after completing a Master’s degree.

He sure wasn’t affected by it; but the spread of the virus across the world, even to towns not so far from where he had returned, had seen to it that he was not to attend the company’s Winchester office until the ‘all clear’ sounded. Perhaps, over the rooftops, a long redundant wailing siren, or klaxon, would be heard; the ancient equipment re-employed to tell the local population that normal life could be resumed.

But what was normal life after you had been living in what felt like solitary confinement? He had endured these ways of it for over two weeks and there seemed to be no end in sight. His folks weren’t exactly thrilled to have him here in the family home again; his two siblings were long gone. Their holiday plans had been brought to a shuddering halt, and he was with them; holed up in their home and preferring that over the alternative; to be in ‘self-isolation’ in a bedsit, with people he had yet to fully bond with and where the virus had persuaded them to keep away from any company; or to exchange curt greetings before moving away.

He sure as hell wasn’t about to enjoy this cloistered existence for much longer but, thankfully, the office rang; or he called them about the work that he produced and that was demanded of him. So, no one could say that he was skiving off or taking it easy. The work filled much of his day, but his only too familiar environment kept him from any chance of pursuing any meaningful contact with others.

He thought that he had bidden farewell to the monkish existence that had been university life; hours of researching, writing up his thesis, and concentrating on getting to the end as quickly and successfully as possible.

‘How much more of this?’ he sighed as a soft knock on his door was now to be heard. He met his mother’s concerned smile. She clutched a small tray. On it was a mug of coffee and biscuits. The supermarket’s shelves hadn’t been stripped bare of those; not just yet. The world had become somewhat surreal. She now passed the tray to him. ‘Great, and thanks.’

‘Not too close, dear,’ she said on taking a step back onto the sunlit landing. Maggie looked past him. ‘Good, I see that you have the window open.’

‘Yes,’ he sighed. ‘I’ve done as you asked or nagged me to do.’

‘For all of our sakes, dear.’

‘Yes, I hear you, mother. I’m going out for a breath of air and go out for a cycle ride. If everyone’s so closed-up, holed up in their homes, then the roads will be quiet and safer just for a change.’

‘Do that,’ she said seeing the papers he had been working on stacked up, neatly, on his desk. ‘You are diligent, aren’t you?’

‘I wonder where I got that from?’ he smiled. The tray shook in his hand as Luke drank from the mug. ‘I’ll bring this all down in a moment or two. I’ve got to get those papers bundled up and sent back to the office. ‘I’ll ring and let them know that they’re in the post.’

‘Do that. They’ll hear that you’re working.’ Maggie saw the pout of his lips. ‘I know this isn’t ideal, for any of us.’

‘You could say that.’

‘Well,’ Maggie went on, her voice lifting as if the opportunity to talk of something more important had arrived. ‘To relieve the boredom or your frustration, with the world outside, a friend of mine needs some help at her stables. I wonder if you would be interested?’

‘Jeez! Not Becky Williams again?’

‘Yes, Becky. I told her that you were here, ‘confined to barracks’, so to speak, ‘or shore leave cancelled’, and I thought that you might welcome the distraction from desk work and being cooped up in here. You know what to expect with her. She’s someone who doesn’t always live by the rules.’

‘Tell me about it,’ he refrained from saying. He certainly did know that and what to expect where it concerned Rebecca Williams.

The woman that he remembered was only too haughty and given to dressing in practical clothes that still gave her an air of elegance and allowed her to behave in her superior ways. She sought control of everything that she touched, or of those she associated with. He really couldn’t remember times when Becky was not to be seen seated on a horse and looking down on others.

‘Toby’s away I suppose?’

‘Captain Williams is, yes,’ his mother observed. ‘Don’t get overfamiliar about them.’

‘As if I’d do that,’ he replied with a laugh and choosing not to say more. ‘I am a little older and wiser, remember, since those days.’ He gathered up all that was to be posted and soon piled it up on the tray. He followed his mother down to the entrance hall. ‘Do I need to call Becky, or do I just show up?’

‘I’ll let her know you’re on your way. Go carefully and give her my regards. She’ll be glad of your help, I’m sure of it. We haven’t seen each other for some time, but we still speak on the phone.’

Luke didn’t doubt it for a minute. He sure as heck was older and wiser in the ways of it, now. He’d been an innocent, then, compared to the young guy she would meet again today. He’d played the field when up at university, and then on a gap year out in Valencia. He had done that over the years since he had last seen her and yet, no one had succeeded in truly claiming him.

The fleshy blonde, so superior and in control, had been a revelation even through his innocent’s eyes, then.

♠

The wind tugged at his hair and it made his soft lemon-yellow T-shirt hug his body and press his chinos to his legs as he cycled. The undulating countryside would have been a test were it not for the multitude of gears on his mountain bike. He was young and fit, so he hardly broke sweat as he made his way over the quiet road.

The house and landholding that Captain Toby Williams, RN, and his wife, Rebecca, owned and lived in, with its livery stables, was in the lee of Butser Hill. Views from the Downland vantage point, and out over the Solent and Portsmouth Harbour below, the Isle of Wight beyond, were to be treasured.

Even now, he recalled how little things seemed to have changed since he had last seen her. Becky was the wife of a successful, high-ranking naval officer. Even in these straightened times, he was often away at sea managing the commissioning of new ships and their crews. His absences invariably left Becky to manage the small farm and its livery stables on her own.

It was the thing to do; the only acceptable way for someone of her standing to be known doing, along with running boarding stables and teaching horsemanship to some choice students. Her kids were away at boarding school, so she fended for herself most of the time.

It was the way her life had been arranged that had first brought him into her orbit; pushed on or ‘volunteered’ by his mother, who knew Rebecca from some social grouping or other. Most of that was charitable work, of doing good deeds, and in the summer months helping to organise Gymkhanas and other ‘horsey’ and to be seen at events. They were gatherings that filled out the social calendar and her life alone.

Luke stopped by the side of the road on hearing his iPhone chirrup. ‘Hi, mother, am I wasting my time?’

‘No, dear. Becky’s thrilled that you’re on your way!’

‘I’m almost there, as it happens.’

‘Good. You’ll let me know when you’re on your way back, won’t you?’

‘Yes, don’t I always?’

‘Yes, true, Luke. I can’t break old habits as you know.’

He wondered if Becky was of that mind too.

♠

Secluded, and with the meadows, yard, close-boarded stable blocks, and tack rooms all tended and kept in pristine condition, Luke soon realised that he was entering a domain where ‘in ship-shape’ was more than a descriptive phrase. The influence of the military mind was everywhere to be seen. He may have been a naïve eighteen-year-old when he had been suggested to Becky as a strong and willing yard boy, naïve, perhaps in the ways of the world but only too willing to learn over a long summer vacation and to earn some money.

When the yard, and land that went with it, came up for sale the Williams’ had bought the holding and added it to the land that came with their modern, boxy, red-pantile roofed house.

He’d been turning eighteen when he had begun work for Becky Williams, and the first couple of weeks had been exhausting but uneventful. The hours of his days were long, given that he had taken to showing up before the end of his last term at school and did that for two days a week until school finished and he turned to every morning at the same time as Becky, with her man putting in some time but rarely on a regular basis. It was soon left to him to learn on the job, tasks that included maintaining the equipment and the property’s boundary fences, along with helping some of the temporary yard staff keep the place up to the mark.

‘You’re a gift…a natural,’ Becky had told him as he saw to it that the hay and grain were in the feed barn and some of it ready to be put in the stable blocks’ troughs or, as Becky preferred, into the hay nets. ‘I’ll be sorry to see you go when you go to uni…’

‘That’s a long way off, Misses Williams,’ he had smiled. Underneath that aloof exterior, Luke had begun to see a different woman, someone even he, inexperienced as he was, wanted to engage with.

‘Call me Becky…I’m your mother’s friend after all, so why not you too?’

He had taken to wondering where that familiarity had sprung from. Becky was very much the boss of the place, but people liked working for her. Everyone seemed to feel that way, including Fred the gardener; Vida, the Spanish housemaid; and then there were the two stable girls who prepped the horses for those who paid the livery costs.

‘She’s okay, long as you don’t cross ‘er…’ was Fred’s simple observation. ‘Her man…the captain, now he’s something else…’ he had gone on to opine. ‘I dunno how he can stay away from ‘er, his woman, for so long. She’s a bit of a looker, so something’s wrong there.’

He’d not made his own observation on that because of having his youthful infatuation with Becky by that time; with the woman to be seen in those tight riding breeches; ankle boots, and those blouses and tops that shaped her. Why, indeed, would Captain Williams be away so much? The Royal Navy wasn’t so big, these days, that there would be a shortage of men like him.

‘My wife’s told me that you’ve settled in well… learned the ropes, so to speak,’ the captain had observed.

‘Yes, I have…thank you,’ he remembered answering; choosing not to fall into saying, ‘yes sir’ or, worse still, ‘aye-aye, sir’.

Williams had been met a couple of times before, at some local function he had been invited to with his parents, and when the man was on shore leave. He’d been given a cursory inspection; been quizzed on the maintenance of the equipment Becky had put him in charge of. He was also expected to help his wife in tending the sheep, whenever she asked it of him.

‘I’m doing all of that already,’ he had answered in his direct ways. He wasn’t about to be intimidated by the man when he had a softer boss to engage with, whenever it was necessary, which was as often as he could manage to do so.

Williams did seem pleased that Becky had him around the place, limited in duration as that was to be. For his part he had forged a bond with the curvy woman; one that he wasn’t about to have her son and daughter take a wrecking hammer to.

But that was then.

Sophie and Ben Williams were now away at university. For his part, he had learned to handle the brickbats that came his way from those who had a higher opinion of themselves than their experience, and intellects, offered.

Luke felt a shortness of breath as he pedalled up the long incline to the farm and Becky. She had taken his side at the time and felt that her spoilt kids would learn from doing manual, or menial, tasks that others earned a living by. Oh, how he cursed when Ben was faulted for stacking up the hay bales that summer and before he went on a school trip.

‘It’s only your effing job!’ he had cursed when he had been told to restack some bales properly.

‘True, Ben, and it’s a job that I work long hours for and for the pay I get. It’s still worth doing or else I wouldn’t be here.’

Luke saw the brilliant white paint on the five bar gates to the farm’s driveway as he reached the crest of the hill. In a few moments, he would be in Becky’s company again and he would have to gather his thoughts, difficult as that now felt as he remembered that wordy exchange with Ben and all that had followed, so time ago.

♥

‘Luke! Wait a moment, please, if you have it?’

‘Yes…sure.’ He had time enough for the woman who was now to be seen riding towards him, her riding boots crunching on the gravel. ‘I’m almost through with this job.’

‘I told that lippy boy of mine to do the work properly, whoever sets it, you this time.’

‘It’s okay,’ he answered, leaning on the hayfork for an instant to look up at her. It was clear that she was going to dismount. Luke gripped the bridle tightly as the horse made to break free. ‘Easy…easy.’

For a large woman, she was agile. Becky slipped down from the saddle.

‘Thank you. Is there nothing you can’t do or learn of?’ she smiled up at him. She touched his arm before taking hold of the horse’s bridle and slipped the reins over its head. She gripped them in a gloved hand. ‘Walk with me?’ she asked. ‘Ben spends too much time with people who expect others to do everything for them…’

‘Does that include you?’ Luke blurted out.

‘Yes, sometimes.’ Becky gripped his arm and slowed their progress to the stable yard. ‘It’s only been a few weeks, and you’ve done so well, that I think you deserve a pay rise.’

‘Well,’ Luke said in some embarrassment. ‘I like being here, so that…’

‘Compensates for low wages?’ Becky smiled, her hand moving to touch his cheek for a moment. ‘It’s sweet of you to say it, but I can’t take advantage of that and have you paid so little. I…I needed to know how committed you’d be to what we do here…that…’

‘That you do here, you do Becky,’ he felt compelled to tell her.

She nodded and smiled, ‘You’ve noticed that, have you?’

Luke couldn’t help but laugh. ‘I can hardly miss that…or you. You’re out here most mornings before I am, or soon after I get here. I’ve heard of teamwork at school, but this…what we have here is crazy sometimes.’

‘Luke…Luke,’ Becky murmured and looked away. There was an unmistakable note of admiration in his tone. She had often caught him looking her way. How crazy to be flattered by those admiring glances from a young man.

‘Sorry. I’m speaking out of turn.’ Luke heard nothing from her to make him stop. ‘You’re the boss, yet you put in the time and the hours and work doing the tasks that I, and the girls, should do…Fred also. We should be the ones sweating out, but you’re there with us…’

She was startled by the rush of words that were accompanied by his admiring glances upon her and, now, a moment’s touch to her bare arm; the skin warm and silken. He would see a soft glow upon it from having worked Ranger, a chestnut pony, so hard on the gallops and work that a demanding client expected of her.

There were others to be exercised before the day was out.

‘Enough, Luke…enough.’

‘Yes…okay, enough.’ He broke free of her hold on him.

She did not mean for her ways of telling him to sound like she was admonishing him, but the young man could not be allowed to see the effects that his few words, and his ways of speaking out, had upon her. He was Ben’s age, dark-haired, slender-faced, and undoubtedly strong, his unshaven face and mop of unruly, wavy, brown hair lending him a rebellious look.. She had not missed seeing how lean of build and athletic Luke was. She also sensed that he was smitten and had a crush on her that she had not encouraged. Yet here she now was, her work a surrogate for a companionable family life and a husband so often away so often and she was never certain of when he would return.

She shook her head as if waking from a daydream.

‘Check your pay envelope on Friday. I’ll make up what you’ve been paid and what I think you now deserve. I hope you’ll accept that?’

‘I will…the money’s not the only reason I’m here.’

Becky watched him go; and saw Luke’s purposeful strides as he made his way to the stable yard. She did have to get a grip on this turn of events and dealings with each other, along with her engagement with the young man. His flattering words were only too seductive and she felt the effects of being alone in the house for so much of the time.

♥

Luke arrived home later than usual.

He rushed upstairs and tore away his work clothes. They would be shaken out later and before he went out to meet friends. The job was going great; his mother’s friend, Becky Williams, an eyeful to his ways of seeing her. She was fit and curvy, and he just loved how her riding breeches shaped her thighs and bum. Along with her blouse, they looked like a second skin, that she had been poured into them.

It seemed that he had made no secret of his admiration for the woman. Inquisitive, and talkative, Fred had seen it in his eyes; how they had followed her, the ‘missus’, one morning when they were at work and she had jumped up onto a horse and settled in the saddle. He had seen her breasts shaped by her riding top as she adjusted the fit of her riding hat, how her thigh muscles flexed as Becky pushed her boots into the stirrups.

‘Caught ‘er, the missus, sunbathing one day, a summer or two back. She’s got more than a handful, she ‘as…I can tell you.’

In the shower, he, an eighteen-year-old, was discovering what lust could do to a man; the effect on his body from the rush of blood to a place where relief was solitary and only too easy to find.

♥

They all toiled in the summer heat. Haymaking was upon them and they worked long hours in cutting, raking, baling and finally putting the bales on a trailer, the tractor that Fred drove bringing them to the stack near the stable blocks.

Luke was feeling as fit as he had ever been in his life. He had put on muscle and his skin was deeply tanned, a look that contrasted so wonderfully with his wavy, brushed-back brown hair. His bare legs were scratched by the straw; his hands were rough-skinned, a condition that his mother often commented on. He was unbothered by it all. He was loving his time on the land and working for Becky.

A couple of times he had noticed her stop, and glance his way, as she was on her way to a ride out with two other horses on leads behind her mount. He pretended not to notice and kept on throwing bales, mainly to impress her, his boss, but with a forlorn hope that perhaps she too noticed the changes in him since he had taken to working for her.

He was startled when Becky returned from a ride and picked her moment to talk to him, the stacking of the bales all but done, and the others nowhere to be seen. They had hitched a ride back to the field where the last of the bales would be loaded.

‘Hi,’ he said nonchalantly, wiping a hand over his sweat-streaked brow. His T-shirt clung to his skin.

‘Hi,’ she answered, looking somewhat nervily at him. ‘I…I can’t put out of my head what you said to me a week or so ago, Luke.’

He shifted his weight and looked back at her with stilled eyes. ‘It…it had to be said. I couldn’t help it and I’m sorry if I’ve offended you.’