The Gatekeeper

Part I The Temptress Chapter 2

To draw Savannah closer, I first had to win over Angelica. 

During our next paid date, Savannah brought Angelica to meet me. I knew this was significant. I sensed I was being given an opportunity to prove that I might be a compatible component of a more normal family unit she was considering building around her daughter and for her daughter’s sake. We played, and laughed, and talked. Now feeling more comfortable with me, several weeks later Savannah invited me to cross over into her secret sanctuary—her home.

Angelica’s mother, who is herself exceptional, believed her daughter to be bright and precocious. I needed to show Savannah that I shared her high opinion of Angelica—that I was willing to set her daughter as the highest priority in our relationship. My intentions were true, but all did not go smoothly.

We were all playing on the living room floor with a video game and I felt comfortable reaching out to touch them both, the kind of casual physical contact that would go on in a typical family. Angelica was all right with my touching her, but when I displayed affection toward her mother, she got upset.

“I hate you Erik!” Angelica cried out while bursting into tears. “My mommy doesn’t need a boyfriend and I don’t like you anymore,” the distraught four-year-old child cried out.

Things had been going so well. Trying to understand Angelica’s reaction, I knew that from the beginning it was just the two of them facing the world. Angelica’s natural father was never involved in her life. Two previous men, who’d lived with them for a while, ended up hurting her.

 “Angelica, please don’t feel that way,” choosing my words carefully. “Your mother and I are just friends,” I conveyed as reassuringly as I knew how. “No one will or ever could take your mother’s love away from you.”

THE REST OF THE EVENING I kept a safe distance between myself and Angelica’s mother. A sense of family slowly seeped into our leisurely days together. Going to the park was one of Angelica’s favorite activities. I spent many hours that summer watching her climb the ladders, crawl through the plastic tubes, slip down slides, and rock back and forth on the swings of the city’s public playgrounds. 

I was so proud to be seen with Angelica and her mother. Angelica had dark hair and a dark complexion, and because I had a similar look, people assumed that I was her natural father. I finally understood the primal drive that overcomes a man when the right woman triggers his primitive procreative passions.

On many of those hot memorable lazy summer afternoons we would find ourselves playing at a lakeside park. I’d take the first shift watching Angelica while her mother spent time sunbathing. Her sun-worship ritual involved exposing most of her cute cutaneous exterior to the burning rays raining down from the bright sunlit skies above. Her micro-thin thong bikini, a garment comfortably worn by my exhibitionistic companion, provided a sensual feast for my highly heterosexual and voyeuristic eyes.

WOMEN COULD LEARN MUCH from my Savannah about how to please a man, and or how to turn your man into your slave, if that’s what you wanted. It’s not about how you perform in bed, it’s about how you perform when you’re not in bed—how you share your sensuality. 

At this point I would have done anything for this woman who made me feel so fulfilled and so desirable, whose life was lived as a continuous act of foreplay. These emotions were so fundamentally satisfying that I was prepared to make any sacrifice in order to preserve them. 

That was how I thought I felt, but was I ready or willing to risk the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of my commitment to angelica and her mother?

“Erik, I’m sure you have a personal relationship history, well so do I,” Savannah began one day with a tone in her voice that indicated troubling information was coming.